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a
OUIDA'S NEW NOVEL.
One volume, crown 8vo. At every Library.
PIPISTRELLO, and other Stories.
By OUIDA.
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY, W.
WITH A SILKEN THREAD
ETC.
With a Silken Thread
AND OTHER STORIES
Bv E. LYNN LINTON
AUTHOR OF
'I'ATRICIA KEMBALL," " THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS,^
"the WOXLD well LOST," "under which lord?" ETC.
IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. I.
1Lonl3on
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1880
\The ri^ht of trajislation is resei ved}
Printed hy William Clmves and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles.
^ INSCRIBED
TO
MY DEAR FRIENDS OF LANG SYNE,
MR. AND MES. HENRY WILLS.
W,^08
I DESIRE to tliank tlie Editors of All the Year Bound, London
Society, The Illustrated London News, The Queen, The World, etc.,
for their courteous permission to publish in a collected form some
of my stories which have from time to time appeared in their
papers and magazines. In the story " Fur Love," which fir.-^t
appi ared in The Queen newspaper, lies the original idea of my
novel "The World Well Lost."
E. LYNN LINTON.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
With a Silken Thread —
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Giving Rope ... ... ... ... ... 3
II. Her Ordeal ... ... ... ... 23
III. Shibboleth ... ... 44
IV. Out of Place ... ... ... ... 63
V. Like to Like ... ... ... ... 86
The Countess M^lusine ... ... ... ... 103
Mildred's Lovers ... ... ... ... ... 1.37
The Last Tenants of Hangman's House ... ... 157
Dear Davie ... ... ... ... ... ... 187
The Family at Fenhouse ... ... ... 209
The Best to Win —
PART
L The Start ... ... ... ... ... 233
IL TheEace ... ... ... ... 252
III. The Finish ... 271
WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
VOL. I.
WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
CHAPTER I.
GIVING ROPE.
Doubtless the story of King Cophetua reads well. The
picture of the Eoyal lover condescendiBg to the maid
of low estate — lifting beggary to a seat on the Imperial
throne and covering rags with the Eoyal purple —
thrills the hearts of all those who prize love more
than conventional laws and who hold that social dis-
tinctions should he subordinated to human emotion.
But the thing works awkwardly in real life. When
King Cophetua's choice drops her h's and marries
plural nouns to singular verbs her grammatical slips
count as so many flaws in the crystal of her purity,
and every uncouth phrase chips so much off the marble
of her moral worth ; a malicious world looks askance,
hiding its laughter in its sleeve, and prim old dowa-
gers, whose main occupation in life is to preach down
a daughter's heart that her hand may close on money.
WITH A SILKEN THE E A J).
point to the defective syntax of the lowly born as to
the kind of thing which a romantic fancy idealizes,
and to the peccant prodigal himself as one whose
example is a warning to both sexes— showing em-
phatically the way to be avoided, not followed.
We have no symj)athy nowadays with virtue in the
rongh. Of what good a woman's sincerity, devotion,
unselfishness, when she eats with her knife, drinks
with her month full, says " We was a-going to " and
" Was you a-laying on the grass " ? Sincerity, devotion
and unselfishness are not confined to her or her class,
we sa}', pleading the cause of humanity at large when
it suits us ; and many a lady might have been found
who would have been as noble in her conduct as she
and would have understood syntax and manners better.
Bad grammar has not the fee-simple of all the virtues ;
and education scores honours by itself.
This was the philosophy which was to be brought
home to Bernard Haynes, when his mother, apparently
yielding to his passionate prayer, agreed to receive
at Midwood, as one of themselves and his prosjiective
wife, pretty Lois Lancaster, the daughter of a Wyth-
burn guide living at the foot of the Helvellyn, and
necessarily not well up in the accidence of refined
living. Bernard had fallen madly in love with Lois
this last summer down in the lake country, whither ho
had gone to read for the Long — or to imagine that he
GIVING ROPE.
was reading ; fallen in love in all honour and youthful
sincerity of purpose be it understood — designing to l^e
a modern King Cophetua in a minor degree, and to
make the peasant-born girl his wife when he had
entered actively on the administration of his estate.
It was his ideal of life just then ; for the mission to
which he this year specially believed himself conse-
crated was the fusion of classes and the establishment
•of universal fraternity. Mrs. Haynes, clever in her
generation, understood to perfection the art of giving
rope. She knew the generic impracticability of youth
and the headstrong nature of her son Bernard in
particular, given as he was to temporary theories by
which the world was to be regenerated and all the
wrongs of society set to rights ; Init she trusted to
early influences, to the sensitive perceptions of educa-
tion, to the glaring discrepancies of caste, to the con-
trast which would be presented to his lover by his
sisters, and above all to the grace and beauty of Edith
Grattan — the only daitghter of Lad}' Julia and Mr.
Grattan, of High Heath ; and she believed that, Avith
all these silken fibres laid among the strands, her rope
would be found effectual, and that by concession she
would conquer. Wherefore, after the due amount of
reluctance and remonstrance, she took her resolution as
one who yielded; invited Lois Lancaster to come and stay
at Mid wood ; and kept her own counsel for the remainder.
WITH A SILKEN THBEAD.
" Yoii always were the best mother in the world ! "^
cried Bernard enthnsiastically, Avlien she had dropped
her guard and lowered her foil. " I should be a brute
if I did not love yon beyond aU things."
" And show your love by your obedience ? " she asked
with a smile partly weary, partlj^ satirical. To at
respectable Philistine as she was, these excursions into
the loft}^ regions of ideal ethics were fatiguing and con-
temptible ; and Bernard's frequent " crazes," now for
communism, now for patriarchal simplicity — at one
time for benevolent despotism and the return of the
Can-ing man, and now again as at this moment for
the general uplifting of beggars' daughters by modern
King Cophetuas — seemed to her almost as melancholj-
a state of things as if he had been a declared lunatic
in Hanwell, pronounced unfit to manage his own
concerns at Midwood.
" In all but this one thing — only this one ! And
when you have seen Lois 3'ou v^iYl understand and
forgive," he pleaded.
" I understand and forgive noAv," she answered.
" That does not however, include sanction; even though
I have put my own feelings aside to meet your wishes."
" I am content to wait till you have seen her," he
repeated.
She passed her hand caressingly over his smootli,
young, earnest face.
GIVING EOPE.
" All ! my boy ! " she sighed ; " if your poor father
had lived yoa "would have been in better hands than
mine. He would have been a successful guide where
I have failed. I have always been too indulgent, and
have trusted too miich to love and too little to
authority. I see my mistake now when it is too
late."
" Don't say that, mother ! " cried Bernard, really
pained. " You know how much I love you — ^how
deepl}' I respect you ! Don't cast a doubt on my love
and devotion for you ! "
" No, dear, not so long as you have your own way
and ave not thwarted. But see, in the first serious
conflict between us, who has to yield ! Ah, Bernard !
words are easier than deeds."
" No, no, mother, only in this one thing. And am
I not in this what every man is? "
" Man ! " she half whispered, smiling. " My boy
Bernard, scarcely twenty-one, a man ! "
" And then, you have not seen Lois yet," he said
again, ignoring her anaternal disclaimer and going back
to the central point of his position, the very core and
meaning of his love — the girl's beauty — which was
indeed supreme.
" Well, my boy, we will say no more now. I have
consented to her coming here, at your request; but
you can hardly expect me to think that the daughter
8 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
of a mountain guide is the right kind of person for
your future wife — you, our Bernard, to whom we had
looked, your sisters and I, as the head of the house
who would take his dear father's place and keep the
family name where it stood in his lifetime ! It is a
hitter disappointment and humiliation, as you must
see for yourself; and you cannot expect us to do more
than tolerate it. The influence too, that it will cer-
tainly have on your sisters' marriages "
" No, not to men worthy of the name of men — men,
not barbers' blocks — men, not coxcombs ! " interrupted
Bernard, full of the righteous thoroughness of icono-
clastic youth.
Mrs. Haynes smiled again.
" Men of our position are gentlemen, my dear boy,"
she said quietly ; " and gentlemen have what you
would perhaps call the prejudices, but I the obligations,
the refinements, of their order. Such a man as Sir
James Aitken, for instance, or young Charley Grattan,
would not like his wife's sister-in-law to be a peasant-
girl out of Wythburn."
" She is equal to either Maud or Cora ! " cried Ber-
nard hastily.
Mrs. Haynes laid her hand on his arm.
" Hush ! " she said authoritatively ; " your sisters are
sacred ! "
" So is Lois, mother," he cried in hot defence.
GIVING ROPE. 9
She lifted lier head proudly and looked at him
straight between the eyes.
" But your sisters are ladies," she said with emphasis.
" Now let the discussion drop. I have given way, as
you desired, and the thing is at an end for the pi-esent."
Seeing nothing of his mother's secret thoughts and
unconscious of the rope which was heing paid out so
liberall}^ Bernard's only feeling at her acquiescence to
receive Lois Lancaster as her guest, on an equality
with herself and his sisters, Avas naturally one of the
very excess of loving giatitude. His mother, he said,
was one in a thousand ; she only needed to be tried to
prove her surpassing excellence. What a heart she
had ! That a proud woman, as she confessedly was,
should have so far sanctioned such a choice as this
which he had made, showed how deep was her real
human worth and how innocently shallow her conven-
tionalism when brought face to face with the higher
and holier things of life. He declaimed for a good half-
hour to his favourite sister, Cora, on the sweetness of
his mother and the delightfulness of Lois; on the moial
harmony and spiritual worth of the arrangement alto-
gether ; and how he expected everj-thing from it — how
his sisters, and especially his dear little Cora, would
give his Lois that " tone " which she had not perhaps
in such perfection as might be, and which, when
acquired, would jmt the finishing touch to her loveli-
10 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
ness; while they wotilcl get good from her simpler
nature and unspoilt manners, her directness and abso-
lute innocence.
To all of which Cora assented openly, with secret
reservations unexpressed ; wondering what Bernard
could possibly mean l)y saying that Maud and she
would " get good " by their association with a peasant-
girl ; but — sighing — supposing it was because he was-
in love I Being in love made every one so stupid I
There were Maud and Sir James Aitken, they were
stupid enough, and she was sure they were in love with
each other; though Sir James had not said so yet and
Maud only showed her state of mind to eyes as quick to-
read the hidden thinirs of a heart as a sister's. And
now Bernard was talking nonsense about a guide's
daughter from the foot of Helvellyn doing them good
— them! — Maud and herself — ladies, with a landed
proprietor for their dead father and a living bishop
for their uncle !
But as she had the pliant hypocrisy which belongs to
a peaceful and loving nature, she said nothing. She
merely smiled very sweetly and looked as if she agreed :
and Bernard kissed her with a curious air of patronage,
and thought what a dear little thing she was, and how
well Lois and she would get on, and what a lucky
fellow he was altogether.
If Bernard was charmed with his mother's acqui-
GIVING BOPE. 11
escence, the girls were dismayed— Cora quite as nnich.
so as Maud, though she hid it better. Maud indeed
openly and passionately resented the arrangement.
She thought she should never be able to meet Sir-
James Aitken's grave eyes, which could be so scornful
on occasions, when he should be introduced to Lois
Lancaster as Bernard's future wife and her own sister-
in-law. She was almost as keen as mamma herself in
her estimate of social harmonies, and felt that the oflFer,.
for which she had waited so long and patiently, would
be farther off now than ever — in fact, so far off as never
to be made — when once the degradation of the family
was published abi'oad. She wondered at her mother
for sanctioning this mad infatuation of Bernard's ; but
he had always been her favourite, she said to Cora,
with angry tears in her dark blue eyes ; and they, Cora
and she, had been sacrificed to him from the first. It
was very wrong of mamma — very. Of course, neither
Sir James Aitken nor Edith Grattan — and if not Edith,
then not Charley— would come to the house now. How
could they, with such a person as Lois Lancaster to
meet them ?
And when she said this, angry tears came into Cora's-
softer ej^es to match her sister's, as she sighed by way
of echo : " I wonder at mamma, too ! It is very wrong
of her to forget us, as she does, for Bernard ! "
When however, they carried their griefs to their-
12 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
mother, hoping that remonstrance would make her
change her mind before she was committed to action,
she put them aside — not harshly, but with the iron
hand which they knew of old to lie hidden beneath her
velvet glove.
" Do not talk nonsense, my dears ! " she said calmly.
'• I know what I am about."
" It is degrading to little Cora and me ! " flashed
Maud, taking the attitude of her sister's protector — as
indeed she was, being the eldest of the ftxmily and six
years older than Cora, who was only seventeen.
" What I can endure, you can also," returned Mrs.
Haynes. " And I do not think I have ever shown
myself indifferent to your best interests."
" Not unless Bernard came in between," said Maud,
who quaked so soon as she had spoken ; for Mrs. Haynes
'was not meek towards rebellion.
Her mother looked at her sternly. She was a woman
with a rather set face of the classic type, with a fixed
mouth, and a pair of fine dark eyes that did a great
deal of work for her.
" I have never sacrificed you to yoxw brother," she
-said slowly. " You are unjust, Maud, and ungrateful
to say so."
" You are sacrificing us now," sobbed Maud.
" Go I — you are a silly girl ; you understand nothing,"
returned her mother, with a fine dash of contempt in her
GIVING HOPE. 13
voice and manner. "Leave me to manage my own
affairs, and when I want jour advice, I will ask yon
for it. Till then oblige me by not giving it."
" It is too bad," fired Mand as her parting shot, sub-
siding into furtive tears and her modern point ; Cora, her
eyes swimming too, seating herself close to her disgraced
sister, but looking with pleading love at mamma, thus
keeping on terms with both, as her manner was. She
was called the " peacemaker " in the family, and some-
times " the dove ; " and her raison cVetre was to be a
kind of elastic cushion, softening the shocks all round
by never taking part with any one and always making
the best of everything.
Presently the hall bell rang and two young men
entered the room. The one was Sir James Aitken, the
owner of Aitken Park and the desired of all the un-
married girls for miles round; the other Charley Grattan,
who, when his father should be gathered to his fathers,
would be the possessor of High Heath, one of the best
properties in the neighbourhood.
It was on these two young men that Mrs. Haynes had
fixed her eyes as husbands for her daughters ; including,
with Charley, his beautiful sister Edith as the wife
manifestly designed by fate and fitness for Bernard.
Character, position, age, circumstances, everything
harmonized in this triple arrangement ; and she felt
sure that she had only to play her cards skilfully to
14 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
make the three tricks she had counted on in lier hand.
This absurd affair of Bernard's had therefore been a
subject of much anxiety to her. She had pondered on
it night and day ever since he had broken the ice and
confided it to her, as a dutiful son should ; looked at it
all round and in every light ; foreseen all its dangers ;
mapped out the obstacles ; weighed all the chances ; and
had at last, as we have seen, come to the conclusion
that giving rope was the Ijest way of strangling the
incubus, and that Bernard miist prove for himself how
fatal was the mistake he wished to make, no one at-
tempting to counsel or coerce. It was a bold game,
taking into consideration all the collateral circum-
stances at stake — Sir James and Charley Grattan, and
the indignation which Edith might naturally be
supposed to feel at having had a girl of Lois Lan-
caster's degree as her antecedent rival. But Mrs.
Haynes was clever, as has been said. She knew that
large games incUide great hazards, and that when one
is in deadly peril the way of escape cannot possibly be
easy. Hence she decided on her course, and now had
•only to watch, and guide as well as she could if things
threatened to go wrong and needed a skilful touch to
put them right.
They were two handsome 3'oung men who came in
now to make one of their frequent calls on the Midwood
ladies. Sir James was the older, graver, darker of the
GIVING ROPE. 15
"two. He had had a long minority and a not too happy
boyhood, for his father and mother had died while he
was still an infant, and he had not been over-well
"treated by his guardians. They had cared for his
money and what they could make out of him, not for
his best advantage and what they could do for him.
Hence, he had developed a certain sadness, which was
natural, and, what was alto quite as natural, a certain
suspicion of motives wljich seemed to have robbed his
youth of half its charm because of all its spontaneity.
He was in love with Maud Haynes, yet he doubted
her. He was diffident of himself; he had a title and
an estate ; and he was steeped to the lips in distrust of
women. It was then onlj' too easy to him to be wary
and cautious, timid and unconvinced, feeling as he did
that no girl could love him for himself while his ad-
vantages hung like millstones round his neck. Thus it
was that, although he loved Maud Haynos, he had not
yet declared himself, uncertain as he was if it were him-
self or his name and possessions which would be the
bait to which she would rise — if she rose at all. For
Maud was both proud and shy, and concealed her feel-
ings with the skill of a veteran ; so that she gave him
no kind of intimation as to what she thought or Avhat
she desired. And her physique aided her in her reti-
cence. She had great eyes habitually cast down and
veiled by long lashes, and that pale cream-coloured
16 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
skin wliicli emotion only renders paler. Hence, she
never blushed ; and Sir James was imdirected by stock
finger-posts. So the aifair between them had dragged
on for some months now, the one yearning, the other
hesitating, but the final plunge not made and never
seeming nearer.
Meanwhile Mrs. Haynes looked on, and considered
within herself — should she bring matters to an issue
suddenly or leave them to the gradual development of
time ? — which was very slow and wearisome. She
saw that Sir James was blind and Maud perforce was
dumb ; but as there was no rival, near or far off, she
decided on leaving the young people to themselves ;
and now she thought it best that nothing had yet been
said, with tliis ridiculous affair of Bernard's in the
wind. Sensitive and suspicious as he was, Sir James
might have been estranged for ever had he thought that
his name and fortune had been taken to bolster up the
name and fortunes of a partially disgraced family. No,
it was best that nothing had been said — that nothing-
should bo said — until this cva/e of Bernard's had got
itself settled.
As for Charles Clrattan, that could wait almost in-
definitely. He was but two and twenty, Cora only
seventeen ; and they were destined. No one who saw
them together could fail to see the sequel. The fair,
laughing, light-hearted youth was the exact match for
GIVING BOPE. 17
the fair, genial, affectionate girl. They were not en-
gaged any more than Maud and Sir James were engaged ;
for Charley had promised his mother to wait until Cora
had had a season in London. She was so pretty that
Lady Julia, a woman also wise in her generation, wanted
to test the quality of her mind and heart and to see for
herself whether the girl counted constancy among her
virtues. But they were safe, thought Mrs. Haynes.
If only Maud and Bernard were as safe she would
sound her maternal Nunc Diinittis with a light heart
on the chord of matrimony !
Presently Bernard came into the room. lie was in
radiant spirits and looked more than ever the young-
poet, blessed and ecstatic, which was always more or
less his expression. His long, brown Mvayy hair was
flung back from his smooth face and pure white fore-
head ; his large, grey limpid eyes were dark and tender
with joy and love ; he seemed as if he had seen an angel
by the way — as if, like the Lady who tended the garden,
his " dreams were less slumlier tlian Paradise," and
the things of his soul were more realities than the
things of his daily life. Mis. Haynes looked at him
with an expression made up of pride and sorrow. If
he could be got safely over these next few years, she
thought — appraising poor Bernard's idealisms as if
they were measles or smallpox — he might wear right
in time ; but these next few years were the tests. And
VOL. I. c
18 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
that dreadful girl in the background ! If it had been
Edith, now^ — calm, sensible Edith — how glad the
mother's heart would have been !
" What a time it is since we have seen you ! " said
Charley, on Avhom a three-days' absence, if it had not
in any way saddened him while it lasted, seemed in-
terminable now when he thought of it.
*' Yes ; what have you been doing ? " was the sym-
pathetic answer of handsome Mrs. Ilaynes.
" I don't know exactly. Edith was bitten with a
mania for fishing, and I have been up the river with
her every day."
" Oh ! " said Cora in a tone of disappointment. She
liked fishing and wondered why they had not asked her
to join them, seeing that Edith and she were such
friends.
"Why did you not come too, Miss Cora?" asked
Charley.
She looked at him with a certain reproach in her
sweet face, but quite frankly and innocently.
" Because you did not ask me," she answered. " How
could I go when I knew nothing about it ? "
Whereat Charley laughed and she laughed too. She
always laughed when ho did, being one of those natures
which simply echo and reflect the moods of others and
are nothing of themselves ; hence are bright or dull,
according to their company. With Charley Grattan
GIVING ROPE. 19
she was bright, but Sir James Aitken made her dull ;
while Bernard thought her as idealistic and unpractical
iis himself.
"It is long too since I have seen you," said Sir
•James, seating himself by Mrs. Haynes.
"Yes; so it is. And what have you been doing?
Pishing, like 3'oung Mr. Grattan ? " she answered.
*' No ; I do not know what I have been doing," he
;said. " Dreaming a little and growling a good deal."
As he said this he looked across the room to Maud.
" Ah ! that is a bad habit," said 3Irs. Haynes in her
maternal, tranquil way. "Nothing deserves the ex-
penditure of strength needed for growling. ' Break or
bear' — that is x\iy motto ; and I find it a good guide."
" Sometimes one growls at what one can neither break
nor bear," he returned. " There may be such a state
as uncertainty."
" That can easily bo ended," said Mrs. Ilaynes. " I
dislike uncertainty too much to suiier it for long, and
would soon know my fate if I had any doubt of it."
" True ; but it is difficult," he answered.
" Life is a succession of difficulties," was her reply,
with a glance at Bernard; " biit they have to be con-
quered at all costs."
" Ah ! you are so biave, Mr.<. Haynes ! You have
such clear views and are so firm ! " he said with a
certain dash of envy running through his admiration.
20 WITH A SILKEN THEEAD.
" It is just because I have clear views tliat I am
firm," sliG answered witli a smile. " It is a necessity
of my nature to see my way plain before me, and to
walk straight to my point."
Perhaps this was a euphemism. All persons woiild
not have called the life-Avalk of the handsome widow
straight ; and especially would not Bernard, her dear
boy and hojDe, could he have read between the lines
at this moment and seen the real meaning of her
gracious bearing.
"Is this the same?" asked Sir James abruptly,
getting up and going over to the ottoman where Maud
was sitting, putting dainty stitches at intervals into a
breadth of modern point.
" Yes," said Maud quietly, her manner still, com-
posed, indifferent, betraying nothing of her heart or
feeling.
" You don't tire of it ? " he asked with a slicrlit
accent of surprise.
" Oh no ! " she said ; " I like it."
" How wonderful to like the same thing for so long I
Why, how long have you been about this? I kno^v
it by this," he said, pointing to a wrong stitch made
at some distance, and which ho himself had put in oiio
day as a kind of test whether she cared more for him
than for the sjnumetry of her work, and so would
either let it remain or take it out.
GIVING EOFE. 21
" I began it iu the spring," she answered.
"And not tired yet? " he repeated.
"Certainly not. I am not so silly as to want a
-new interest every day," was her reply, made quietly
as to manner, but secretly with both excitement and
meaning.
He looked at her keenly, but he saw nothing in her
calm face and well-bred impassivity of manner. If
she were angling for him, he thought, she was angling
in the daintiest way in which woman ever held the
line for a human life : so daintily that she almost
■deserved her reward. And yet, if it were not angling
but truth? As he thought this his sad face almost
beamed and his grave eyes lightened suddenly — if she
did really love him for himself?
" I am glad you are constant and not easily tired of
an interest," he said in a low voice ; and Maud, not to
show how suddenly she trembled, laid her work in her
lap and answered, as of course : " I thought every one
knew I was not fickle."
" Such a nuisance, this folly of Bernard's," thought
j\Irs. Haynes, watching them covertly. " Just as things
.are getting on so well ! So inconsiderate of him ! so
wrong ! My poor girls to be perhaps sacrificed to the
crazy whim of a wilful, foolish boy ! "
Which unspoken reflection was a curious commentary
on Maud's fiery accusation that she and Cora had been
22 WITH A SILKEN TUBEAD.
always sacrificed to Bernard, and that mamma cared
notliing for them in comparison with him. It was-
only another of the many instances abonnding which
prove that the truth is the one nndiscoverable element
of human life, and that what things are and what they
seem to he can never be made to agree.
( 23 )
CHAPTER II.
HER ORDEAL.
Meanwhile the cause of all this domestic difficulty at
Midwood, distracted between love and fear, excitement
and apprehension, pleased vanity and humiliating self-
distrust, was preparing for her ordeal. A visit to the
lady-mother of the fine gentleman who had offered to
make her his wife and raise her to a place almost as
far bej'ond her own, in the modern estimate of things,
as was that mythical King Cophetua's beyond his
beggar-girl's, was a trial which naturally appalled the
daughter of the "Wythburn guide.
Not that Lois Lancaster was a peasant-girl of the
conventional type. Her father, who knew what he
was about, had determined that she should be " made
a lady of; " and a lady accordingly she was — that is,
she had never milked a cow in her life, could not
churn nor make a cheese nor cut out a shirt nor knit
nor cook like a Christian ; but she could tat and
crochet and embroider with creditable dexterity, if her
plain-work Avas no more commendable than her baking.
She was a country girl of the modern school — rather
24 WITJr A SILKEN THREAD.
delicate in liealtb, "vvitli a tendency to hysterics and no
digestion to spealv of; avIio conld play a little on the
piano and sing prettily in the choir; who dressed by
the fashion-papers ; took in her weekly instalment of
penny literature ; wore an elaborate chignon and a
great many beads (chiefly of wood and glass) and
would as soon have thought of swearing as of talking
"broad Cumberland." She called the vernacular of the
dales-folk '• rough talk " — rough pronounced with a
slight leaning towards "roof" — and her grammar was
really not very much more imperfect than the grammar
of most girls, though some of her phrases and epithets
were local. She had caught up current slang too, and
had been heard to say " awfully jolly " all the same
as if she had been the real lady she assumed to be. In
a word, she was the half-bred of the summer show-
place ; neither gentlewoman nor peasant ; having lost
the racy colour and untrained simplicity of the latter
without gaining the grace and refinement of the former.
But she was a good girl in both mind and conduct ;
and if not thorough in polish, was at the least sub-
stantial in propriety. And she was beautiful — Avonder-
fully beautiful ; slightly impassive perhaps, and too
much like a wooden Madonna ; but every feature was
perfect and her colour was as lovel}^ as her form.
Her pure, transparent skin, through which the blue
veins could be seen so clearly traced, was at all times
HER ORDEAL. 25
as delicate as the lining of a sea-sliell ; Lut when the
colour mounted, as it did under slight emotion, few
things in nature could bo compared to it for exquisite
tenderness of tint. And, as she knew the value of her
complexion, she took care of it and did not suffer
herself to get freckled, sunburnt or coarsened. Her
hair was as fine as silk and of the colour of dark
amber ; her eyes were large, light blue, and heavily
fringed with dark lashes ; and her eyebrows, of that
long and lovely arch which is so beautiful but not in-
tellectual, were the same colour as her lashes. She was
tall and slight; — altogether, a supremely lovely person,
who, had she been born in the purple, would have
attained an almost fabulous reputation, like Helen,
Cleopatra, or poor Scottish Mary. As it was, her father,
who had eyes and a decided faculty for arithmetic,
determined that her beauty should be made to pay
somehow, as a valuable investment placed to his credit
by nature.
This father of hers, old Timothy Lancaster, was one
of those clever, anchorless men of whom every village
possesses at the least one. " He could do anything he
had a mind to," was the phrase usually applied to him
by his fx'iends and neighbours ; but the worst of it was
he had a mind for so little. He disliked hard work
almost as much as he disliked routine ; and found loaf-
ing about the glens and mountains the plea santest thing
26 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
he knew when he was not king of his company at the
beershops. He was a self-taught geologist, botanist and
naturalist ; Imt the profession whereby he made his
bread was that of mountain guide. He was ambitious,
and liked the society of the gentry with whom he was
brought in contact during the summer ; and as he was
" slape " and sharp, he made a A^ery pretty penny in
consequence. Part of these pennies he had })ut into a
good substantial stone cottage, which he had Imilt at
Wythburn and had had the wit to make picturesque :
hence valuable as lodgiugs to the tourists who cared to
stay at the foot of Helvellyn and whom he piloted up
and down during the season. But he liked housing the
" young gentlemen from college " best ; for he had
secret hopes of Lois and the soft moments that overtake
men in the twilight among the mountains. In spite
of his natural artistry and good-fellowship, he was
a shrewd man of business who knew how to make all
things pay — a fern or a flower or a bit of lead-ore from a
mine ; so why should he not hold his daughter's youth
and beauty as possessions to be disposed of advanta-
geously like the rest? To do him justice he kept her
strict, and had no squanderings in the market-place;
and, to do her justice, his task of overlooking was not
heavy, for she was no gad-about nor flirt.
She understood, young as she was, that her name had
to be kept as carefully as her complexion ; hence she was
HER ORDEAL. 27
more chary of herself than her neighbours liked. They
called her proud and stuck-up ; but she let them talk.
When she had won then she would have the right to
laugh. Meanwhile their ill-nature did her no harm.
It broke up no schemes, but if anything worked to her
good in that it proved her caution. She sometimes re-
gretted a little that bad things were said of her to John
Musgrave, the young farmer who lived on the fell over
there by Dunmail Eaise ; but she could not help it. If
John thought ill of her, she used to say to herself, be-
cause she kept herself to herself, and was not a fly-by-
night like the rest of the girls, it was a pity ; but sho
could not help his foolishness and he must think as he
had a mind. If he chose he could find out for himself
that she was neither proud nor stuck-up ; onl}', being
without a mother and with a house mostly fiill of young
gentlemen in the summer, she was tied to be careful,
else she would give folks leave to talk in a worse way
than they did now. All of which showed a certain
wisdom as well as rectitude in Lois that was not with-
out value in the formation of her character.
This year it seemed as if old Tim Lancaster's wishes
Avere near fulfilment. Bernard Haynes had taken lodg-
ings in his house ; had spent a great deal of money in
specimens for which he had neither use nor liking ; had
seen Lois ; and, being in one of his idyllic moods, had
dreamt of the possibility of transplanting so SAveet a
•28 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
cottage-flower into the trim parterres and costly
" houses " of Midwood. He was a youth of moods. He
had hegun his thinking life as an ascetic worshipper of
Sir Galahad and the Arthurian legends; then he de-
veloped into benevolent despotism, the King the best
man — the Can-ing man, as he used to say — ruling his
subjects with strength and wisdom combined ; and
from this he had branched off into his present craze — a
belief in the universal brotherhood of the future, to be
brought about mainly by Lois Lancaster as the mistress
of Mid wood.
Fascinated by her beauty, he believed her more really
refined than she Avas. Down in that remote district,
without the companionship of ladies of his own class,
her manners, which truly were excellent for one of her
degree, seemed to him better than they were, or than
they would have seemed had he been able to compare
her, say, with his sisters or Edith Grattan. Even when
he caught this little failing, that small lapse, he did not
allow it to affect the main point of his admiration. To
him Lois was like some classic nymph, and far superior
to the conventionalized ladies of his own time and land.
She merely needed a little, very little, polish to make
her absolutely perfect ; when it Avould be seen that she
was of infinitel}^ better material than were those who
should polish her. Li short, he was in love; and as
foolish as men in love for the most part are; but he
HER OBDEAL. 29
played old Timothy Lancaster's game to perfection, and
the soft moment in the twilight came.
Being young, he made an offer of his hand as well as
of his love ; for he was an honourable fellow and in-
tended to do well to every one. He would inaugurate
his system of universal brotherhood aiid equality at
Midwood, and the world would take the lesson to heart
and repeat it for the advancement of society generally.
If only Lois would 1)0 liis wife, the human race would
be benefited to the end of time, and the reign of false-
hood and humbug and pretence, and a thousand other
bad things, would be shortened and contracted by so
much. All this was natural enough to a youth in the
idjdlic stage, when he has consorted closelj' for two
months with a lovely girl in a lonely place — a girl who
dressed neatly, acted discreetly and spoke with pro-
priety ; who had golden hair, sweet tender eyes and a
seraphic face ; who was gentle in her Avays, low-voiced
and sparse of speech and neither gross nor affected in
mind or action. It was natural that he should dream
and idealize, and forget all that stood between them
when the spell had had time to work and the world,
that seemed forgetting, had been forgotten. Cophetua
was a King, and the beggar's daughter was his Queen ;
so why should not Lois Lancaster, the daughter of the
local guide and geologist, be his, Bernard Haynes's,
wife?
30 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
The father's delight was boundless when Bernard,
carrying out the thing properly all through, told hiui
what he had done and how that Lois had consented
to be his wife ; but when the news got abroad that Lois
was promised to a young gentleman from London^for
all hiffh life is from London in the dales — and that she
would be most as grand as the Queen herself, John
Musgrave was startled as if by a shock out of his dream,
and, as Lois herself translated it, was " not best jileased
with himself or any one else."
He went over to Brigend to wish her good-bye the day
before she was to leave ; and he went with a curious
mixture of sorrow and anger making havoc in his
usually quiet breast.
" So you are going on a visit. Miss Lancaster, I
hear ? " he began ; for he too was of the new school,
and not as frankly familiar to Lois as his father had
been to her mother. She was " Miss Lancaster," not
"Lois," nor "lass," as the old way would have had
it. As he was " Mr. John " to her, not plain " John," as
Ms father had been to her mother.
" Yes, Mr. John," said Lois, raising her lovely eyes ;
" to jMr. Haynes's mother ; that was the young gentle-
man as we had here all summer."
" So I heard," said John, twirling his hat by the
brim between his fingers. "It'll be a fine uplift for
you, 3Iiss Lancaster."
BER ORDEAL. 31
" I don't know abont an uplift, ]\Ii\ John," answered
Lois ^vitll a certain assumption of haughtiness that had
its irrave side if also its comical. If she had to be Ber-
nard's wife she must hold herself his equal, she thought.
The role of the heggar-girl was not to her mind, though
she was pleased enough with her King Cophetua. " The
finest lady in the land is nothing hut a lady," she con-
tinued ; " and folks can be ladies as hasn't great'
names."
"Yes, I know that well enough," said John. " And
I know that you're a lady yourself, Miss Lancaster.
Still the quality is of different stuff to us dalesmen and
statesmen ; and by all accounts this Mr. Haynes's people
are real quality."
" And father's as good as any of them," said Lois.
*' Father knows a deal more than most of the young
gentlemen themselves know ; and that they say when
they leave."
" Still," said John, who had the dogged persistency
of his kind, '• if your father is a clever man in his way,
which there's no denying, he's not one of the quality."
Lois was silent. She thought John Musgrave
uncommonly disagreeable to-day, and wondered at the
sudden change that had come over him. Before this
summer she had thought him well enough, and maybe
a little beyond. He was a fine-looking, clear-skinned,
bright-eyed young fellow who bore a good name and
32 WITH A SILKEN TIIBEAD.
was not given to drink, and who, with his freehold of
seventy acres, had the girls' eyes on him far and near,
and was acconnted a prize equal in his own waj^ to Sir
James Aitken and young Charley Grattan in theirs.
And though, if Lois had been asked, she would have
scorned the insinuation as an insult and would have
denied that she had ever thought of him twice or
wanted him once, yet she had often looked at him at
church when they met in the choir; and if Fellfoot
was a dull place in winter it was not so dull as it
would have been had any l)ut John Musgrave held it.
" I suppose, then," said John, " you'll not he for
staying here long, Miss Lancaster, when you come
back again ? I've heard a tale as points that way."
Lois blushed that faint fair flush of hers which was
so infinitely becoming.
"I don't know about that, Mr. John," she said.
" Nothing's settled yet anyhow."
" But it is to be ? "
His rasping voice was very sad, his ruddy face a
little pale, his smooth brow furrowed, his full, fleshy
lips contracted.
Lois hung her head and twisted her neck-ribbon
whence dangled the locket which Bernard had given
her. Many feelings perplexed and disturbed her at.
this moment; pride in her prospective grandetir and
present importance ; a dislike, she could not under-
HER ORDEAL. 33
stand why, to confess her engagement to John Mus-
grave how glad soever she might be to tell it to others
— fear of the future either way, should it be realized
or should it be broken off; — a very tumult of con-
tending thoughts and feelings, each fighting for
supremacy in her mind, made her bashful, sorry,
moved, silent.
Then she faltered, shyly: " I suppose so, Mr. John ; "
and did not look at him.
" I am sorry for it, Miss Lancaster," said John
bluntly. " You'd be best with your own people and
your own kind. I reckon naught of these weddings
out of a body's home and calling, as one might sa}'.
Best bide with one's own ! "
He spoke with feeling, therefore with a broader
accent and less precision than usual ; and Lois was
quick to note the difference.
" That might have been all very well fifty years ago,
but it doesn't do now, Mr. John," she answered, taking
heart of grace to speak in self-defence. " The world
has pushed on a bit since our grandfathers' times, and
we must go with it."
" They knew a thing or two afore," said John with
more sense than elegance ; " and if we take hold of
some new good, we needn't leave loose of all the old."
" Dear me, Mr. John ! " cried Lois with a forced
smile; "one would think I was going to New Zealand,
vol.. I. D
34 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
never to come back no more ; and I'm onlj^ going iiito
Warwickshire, and sliall be home again quite soon,"
"Yes, home again; but how?" said John.
Again she blushed.
" That has nothing to do with my going away now,"
she said. " That was to be, whether or no."
John Musgrave sighed.
" I don't like it," ho said after a pause, with a fine
assumption of fraternal feeling as if thinking only for
Lois and in nowise foi' himself.
Lois looked at him. Her calm eyes brightened with
a certain something ; it was not wholly malice and it
was not all regret, but it was a curious mixture of the
two. Deep down in the innermost recesses of her
heart was a certain consciousness that she had been
tacitly false to John Musgrave. How much soever she
would have disclaimed the accusation, she knt-w that
when she had first come home from her Penrith board-
ing-school she had thought Mr. Musgrave a young man
of very fair attractions, and had more than once
pictured Fellfoot as her future home. To be sure, she
would have preferred some gentleman in the com-
mercial line to a fellside farmer, and a town life to a
country one. She would have liked a neat little six or
eight roomed suburban villa, with a green door and a
brass-handled bell, Venetian blinds, and a nice little
plot of ground in the front where she might have
HER ORDEAL. 35
•gi-own marigolds and mignonette ; and she would liave
•enjoyed town liousekeeping, where everything is at
your hand and you need not trouhle with laying in
•stores and forethought for every detail. Her one girl
would have done the rough work, while she would
Irave put her hand to the finer parts, dusting the
" drawing-room," and the like ; hut John Musgrave
was too fine a fellow in himself to be lightly regarded ;
and though she was fit for something better than to be
a farmer's wife, as she often said to herself when she
looked in her glass, still she might go farther and fare
worse ; and he had a good bit of land and was cleanly-
living, sober and handsome.
But when Bernard Haynes came to lodge at Brigend
and made himself the Strephon to her Chloe, then John
Musgrave faded away like a dissolving view ; and to
be the wife of a real gentleman who talked so well that
she did not fully understand hiui was a prospect too
dazzling to be foregone. For all that, she had this
certain uneasy consciousness, and more than once
wished that John MuKG:rave had not come to bid her
good-bye; though it did gratify her to show him the
prize which she had won and to make him feel the
worth of that which he had lost. Had he not been so
cautious and deliberate, according to his race and kind,
the thing might have been settled long ago ; and then
she would have been caught and caged. What a good
36 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
thing that he had been so backward ! She knew that
she would have accepted him had he offered, and what
a miss she would have had ! But for all this know-
ledge and self-confession, had she been' asked she
would have averred warmly that, of all the gentlemen
of her acquaintance, John Musgrave was the last at
whom she would have looked, even over her shoulder.
" Well, I must be toddling," said John, rising with
a heavy sigh and limp look. "Good-bye, Miss Lancaster.
I supj)ose you'll be writing home, so that we may have
word of you ? "
" Yes, of course I shall be writing to father," said
Lois.
" And take care of yourself," he added earnestly.
" Thank you, Mr. John; I hope so," she answered.
" And let us hear how you get on," he repeated.
" Yes, Mr. John," she said.
" Grood-bye, Miss Lancaster."
" Good-bye, Mr. John."
"I'm main sorry, Miss Lancaster. Eh! but I is,"^
said the poor fellow with tears in his eyes. " I don't
like it anyhow. It isn't the thing for you, and I'm
afraid you'll find that out when it's too late to change."
" It ain't too late now," said Lois, stirred more than
she cared to acknowledge to herself.
He lifted his eyes with a sxxddcn tlash. She lowered
hers and was sorry she had been so indiscreet.
HER ORDEAL. 37
"Do you mean to say ?" he began, drawing-
near to her and taking her hand in his.
How rongh and brown and toil-hardened his was !
How white and fine Bernard's had been ! She drew
her own away.
" I meant nothing," she said coldly. " Good-bye, Mr.
John. Please excnse me, I am throng just now."
" He has no one to blame but himself," was her un-
spoken thought, as she went upstairs into her room
«,nd turned over the dresses that had just come in from
Keswick, in preparation for her intended visit to Mid-
wood — with Mr. Bernard's mother and sistei's, those
formidable critics and judges in the background, wait-
ing for her arrival before delivering their verdict ; and,
turning them over, she said half aloud : "I am sure
they are as nice as nice ; no one need be finer."
Mrs, Haynes was not one to make war with rose
water. By no means naturally cruel, she was yet one
of those resolute women to whom cruelty comes easy
when it has to fulfil the purpose in view. Accept-
ing her son's infatuation as a disease, she had no more
scruple in using sharp measures for his cure than
has the surgeon scruples in applying the knife when
only the knife can herald healing. Her object was to
show Lois to Bernard in a humiliating light, and thus
convince him by demonstration of the unfitness which
he would not receive as a doctrine preached by another.
38 WITH A SILKEN TEBEAD.
Wherefore, to the "bewilderment of Maud and Cora, and'
to Bernard's dissatisfaction for the one part and grati-
tude for the other, she asked a few friends to dinner on
the ver}- evening of the girl's arrival. She had no-
wish to let her get somewhat accustomed to her new
surroundings before she was introduced to Bernard's
world. She should be shown with the full flush of her
native awkwardness upon her ; with the fatigue of
travel and the excitement of the first meeting to add to^
her discomfort and make her still more nervous and
ungainly. This too was part of the rope she was pay-
ing out with such consummate skill, and in the coils of
which both Bernard and Lois Avere to be caught and
their untimely love-affair strangled out of existence.
An hour before dinner — that is, at seven o'clock — the-
carriage sent by Mrs. Haynes to the station drove up'
to the door of ]Midwood, bringing Lois, escorted hy
Bernard, to her ordeal.
" ]\Iother, Miss Lancaster," said the boy, his face-
flushed and radiant as he brought into the stately
drawing-room, whei'c his mother and sisters sat, the
fair-haired, weary Lois Lancaster, looking more im-
passive than ever because she was scared, and scarcely
knowing, as she told her father afterwards, her right
hand from her left.
Mrs. Haynes rose with her most courtly manner and!
wade a few steps forward. Perfectly well bred and
EER ORDEAL. 39
graceful, «lic put ou her grandest air and received tlie
fluttered country girl with the magnificent politeness
with, which she would have received a duchess. No
fault could possibly be found with her method of re-
ception. How better could she show her respect for
her son's choice than by treating Lois, peasant as she
was, as though she had been an earl's daughter ?
Nevertheless, it was inhuman, if magnificent ; and
Bernard felt that he would gladly have exchanged this
resjjcctful politeness for one dash, of maternal warmth,
of womanly consideration.
"I hope you are not tired. Miss Lancaster?" said
Mrs. Haynes with exquisite courtesy, but frigid as an
icicle. " It is a fatiguing journey from Windermere to
our place."
" Thank you, Mrs. Haynes ; I am not overdone," said
Lois, whose unmistakable accent, so slight at Wyth-
burn, was frightfully distinct now. But she spoke
with self-possession though stiffly.
"My daughters — Miss Haynes; my youngest daugh-
ter," said Mrs. Haynes regally. •
The girls cauie forward and shook hands with Ber-
nard's choice. They scanned her critically after the
manner of girls with each other, and a glance of intel-
ligence passed from Maiid to Cora and back again.
They saw before them a cieatuie whose every feature
was simply perfect ; a creature with the materials of
40 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
beauty fit to set the world aflame ; yet one who some-
how missed the sonl of all beauty — power to charm.
She was bad style ; and they denied the material seeing
the imperfection of the result.
That bad style moreover, was a thing so subtle that
it could scarcely be explained. The girl was dressed as
it would seem by the description unexceptionably ; and
yet the sum total was failure. Her grey merino was
made with the profusion of flounces and trimmings
dear to second-rate fashion, and trimmed largely with
mock lace of a common kind and pattern. Eound her
neck she wore a blue tie — Bernard's locket slung on to
a long streamer of blue ribbon of a lighter shade than
her tie — and a row of white satin-stone beads with a
cross depending. Her golden hair was dressed in mul-
titudinous puff's and braids — a wonderful structure,
through which were visible unsightly tracts of greenish-
coloured frizettes, rather destructive of the eflect sought
to be produced ; her hat was an audacious but very
picturesque Eubens, with a long white feather, a red
rose, a mother-of-pearl buckle, and a skeletonized kind
of aigrette as the artistic ornaments among the black
lace and velvet with which it was trimmed ; and her
gloves were dark green, single buttoned.
Maud, in her simple dress of cream-coloured "work-
house sheeting " over her brown silk skirt, and Cora, in
her sailor serge, looked what they were — ladies whose
HER ORDEAL. 41
ladyhood no dress could have diminished or advanced ;
while Lois, lovely as a dream, lovely as Eaflfaelle's fairest
Madonna, stood confessed a pretence — a homely Dork-
ing spangled to represent a silver pheasant, fondly
thinking herself disguised to the life and nndistinguish-
able from her hosts.
*' I hope you are not tired, Miss Lancaster," repeated
Maud, as a younger echo of her mother.
" No, thank you, Miss Haynes," said Lois.
Cora asked kindly : " Are you cold ? " and Lois
answered quietly: "No, thank you, Miss Haynes. I
don't feel the cold, thank you."
" Perhaps you would like to go to your room and
dress for dinner. We dine at eight," then said Mrs.
Haynes, still with her grand air of stately courtesy.
*' My daughters' maid shall assist you to unpack. You
have not brought a maid with you, I think ? "
" Thank you, Mrs. Haynes ; but there's no occasion,"
said Lois. " I can undo my things very well by myself,
thank you."
" You had better let Sherwood assist you," said Mrs.
Haynes with dignity.
*' You are very kind, I'm sure ; but there's no occasion,
thank you, Mrs. Haynes," answered Lois, as she had
answered before.
She shrank from the idea of a grand creature like a
lady's maid handling her treasures and spying into
42 WITH A SILKEN THEEAD.
vacant spaces ; and, with, tlie suspicion of lier class, slie
dreaded lest picking fingers should accompany prying
eyes.
Mrs. ITaynes bent her head stiffly ; and Bernard, who
had the lover's quickness of perception, saw that the
first hitch had come.
" Take my mother's advice, Miss Lancaster. She
knows best," ho said hastily.
r>ut Lois answered as before : " No, thank you, Mr.
Bernard, there's no occasion. I can do for myself, and
I don't require help."
And again the critical eyes looked at each other, and
said mutely : " What a Goth ! "
Even Bernard was conscious of a certain want. He
would have been hard put to it to define it ; but he
know that something was amiss. Nevertheless, when
Lois left the room he cried enthusiastically : " Is she
not lovely, mother ? "
Mrs. Haynes answered quietly : " Yes, exceedingly
beautiful."
" I was sure you would think so," said Bernard.
" But though she is so beautiful, she shows too much
of her upper gums when she smiles, and her hands are
underbred," said Mrs. Ilayncs in just the same voice
and manner as that in which she had assented to the
proposition of her exceeding beauty.
" No — capable," cried Bernard, loj'al to his idyll.
HER OBDEAL. A3;-
Mrs. Ilaynes smiled.
" Capable, if you like that word best, my dear," she
said. " At all events, the capability which makes the
palms thick and the tips of the fingers coarse. Very
honourable, I allow, for her station, but not hands
generally seen at the table of one of us."
" Innocence and love and modesty are more impor-
tant things than the useless white hands of ladies," said.
Bernard, flinging back his hair.
"Just so, my boy. I agree with you entirely,"
returned his mother. "All the same, I have a prejudice
in favour of ladies, as I think I told you before; and I
deny that innocence, love and modesty are confined to
peasants. My dears," to her daughters, " the dressing-
bell has rung. Are you not going ? "
*' You will be kind to poor Lois, mother ! " cried.
Bernard pleadingly.
" I shall treat her as I would treat any other lady,"
his mother answered, holding her head high. " You
desire no other mode, do you, Bernard ? "
*' No, dear mother. You are awfully good, as it is, I
know," he said ; " but," boyishly, " be kind to her, poor
darling ! "
" What a child you are ! " said Mrs. Haynes, scorn
mingled with her affection, as she SAvept from the room ^
leaving her son a vague crowd of shadowy yet all the
same uncomfortable thoughts, for his share of the day's,
transactions.
M WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
CHAPTER III.
SHIBBOLETH.
Dressed for dinner in her high "black silk, also made
after the patterns of the third-rate fashion-hooks and
greatly trimmed with hlue hows and white mock lace
• — her lovely face, impassive and unchanging, sur-
mounted hy that elaborate structure of amber-coloured
hair silken as to texture but hideous as to arrangement
— Lois presented that same odd combination of beauty
which did not charm and apparent correctness that was
in fact bad style, which Mrs. Haynes and the girls had
caught as her characteristic from the first. Neither
rough nor awkward, she yet was totally devoid of
grace ; moving as if she were tightly braced in stays so
stiff that she could not bend from the waist, and with
u certain air of constrained discomfort about her that
suggested unusedness to both her dress and her sur-
roundings. But if constrained she was pale and quiet,
and so far Mrs. Haynes respected her. Had she been
flushed and fussy she would have been activel}^ un-
pleasant; as it was, she was simply passive and gave
120 trouble to repress.
SHIBBOLETH. 45
As each guest arrived there was the same look and
movement of surprise, which betrayed the sense of her
unfitness as clearly as Mrs. Haynes for her own part
felt it. This young unknown Madonna, sitting holt
upright on the sofa, dressed like and yet unlike them-
selves and neither a lady nor a servant, neither a
gentlewoman nor a peasant, with a face that would
have been perfect in its fitting frame of simple rusticity
or aesthetic refinement, but that now was all out of
harmony and drawing, made quite an excitement
among the women as well as the men.
" Who is she ? " they asked curiously ; Mrs. Haynes
answering calmly : " A young person from the remote
north, whom a strange chance has thrown on my hands
for a few days. It is an odd stor^', but I cannot go-
into it now."
And when she had said this to every one alike, in
precisely the same tone and with the same accent and
expression, the dinner was announced, and Lois Lan-
caster went down Avith the rest.
Seated between Bernard and Sir James Aitken —
Bernard having on his other hand Edith Grattan — the
country-bred girl was dimly conscious of perils and
perplexities before her ; and the guests, who noted her,
were as conscious that she was a misfit among them,
and did not know how to pronounce her shibboleth as
it should be said. For one thing, she did not know the
46 WITH A SILKEN TIIREAB.
use of tlie fisli-kuife, but, to be quite fine and correct,
chased her piece of cod about the plate witli a fork
and a bit of bread, and hunted up the slippery morsels
with amazing perseverance. For another, she cut her
quenelle as if it had been beefsteak, and when offered
Tvine asked for beer ; she ate her jelly with a spoon
and fork, and the ice-pudding was evidently experi-
mental ; but when the cheese came round she took two
l)its with the look of an old friend long parted and now
happily met again, and carried it on the point of her
knife without fear or faltering. At the dessert too she
had no fears, but accepted her apple as she had accepted
her cheese, like an old friend ; and when she attacked
it she bit it bodily with heart}'- good-will, and made
light of the peel. All these were trifles, if one will,
but they were sufficient to show that a wide social gulf
separated this beautiful young creature fiom her com-
pany, and that the chance which had thrown her as a
guest and an etpial into the hands of the proudest and
most fastidious woman in the district must indeed have
b)een an odd one, as she said.
The same kind of thing was manifest in her conver-
sation. She did not speak like a peasant, but certainly
:iot like a lady — rather as a shop-girl or an upper maid
would have spoken.
"Have you ever been in Warwickshire before, 3Iis8
Lancaster?" asked Sir James Aitkcn during soup —
SHIBBOLETH. 41
poor Lois, and that tinaccominodating vermicelli ! — by
way of opening the' ball.
Lois raised her starry eyes.
"No," she said with a certain hesitancy; then added:
" You have the advantage of me, sir. I don't know
your name."
" Aitken," said Sir James, smiling. " Sir James
Aitken."
" Oh ! " said Lois, relieved. " No, I have not been
here before, Sir James Aitken," she then answered, con-
tent now that she could catalogue her companion.
" It is too soon yet to ask how you like it," he
continued.
" I thought the scenery very romantic as I rode
along," said Lois; "but I was not overmuch taken
up with it. I like the mountains better. Do you live
here. Sir James Aitken ? "
" Yes ; not far from here — at Aitken Park," he
.answered. " You miist come over and see my place. I
have some curious old Eoman remains that will interest
you."
" Thank you, Sir James Aitken, I'm sure. I shall be
most agreeable," said Lois simply. "When shall 1
•come ? "
" I will arrange the party to-night," he ansAvered
kindly.
He was a man, hence more tender to the social sliort-
48 WITE A SILKEN THEE AD.
comings of a girl so lovely as Lois Lancaster than any
woman would have been, and her odd mixture of pro-
priety and unconventionality, stiffness and simplicity,
amused him.
At this moment the salmi came round. Lois refused.
" No salmi ? " asked Sir James, just as a silence had
settled on the table.
" No, thank you, Sir James Aitken," answered Lois.
" I've had as much as I've a mind for, and done very
v/ell, thank you."
At which Edith Grattan raised her bright, mis-
chievous eyeSy and looked demurely into Bernard's
face.
" There is nothing so charming as idiomatic Eng-
lish ! " cried Bernard boldly. " It is such a pity that
we have refined it away into the tame and colourless
language of conventional use. Had I my own way
we would go back to the language of Shakespeare and
Chaucer."
The step was wide, but Bernard's blood was up.
" Do you mean to say you woitld like us all to speak
like the common people ? " asked Edith, surprise dashed
with indignation. Eeally Bernard Haynes, though verj-
handsome and fascinating, and the owner of Midwood
into the bargain, was almost too odd !
" A few racy idioms and pictorial expressions would
he an advantage to us — they would lift up our daily
SHIBBOLETH. 49
tongvie and give it life and force," argued Bernard.
" Wliat you call the speecli of the common people is
only old English, pure and undefiled — the English, as
I said, of Chaucer. If we went back to our forefathers'
time we should speak as — as — the north-country people
do, for instance."
" But I do not want to go back to our forefathers'
time, if the result would be that I should speak like
a common person. It would be very frightful to hear
ladies and gentlemen speaking broad Cumberland, for
instance, because that was the accent used in Chaucer's
time," said Edith disdainfully. Lois, catching the
words "broad Cumberland," turned her head to look
at the young lady treading on her borders, fixing
on her those calm, sweet, ravishing eyes which how-
ever, did not excuse in Edith's mind such a solecism as
that of which she had been guilty.
So the dinner passed ; Mrs. Haynes betraying
nothina: ; Maud and Cora disturbed and uncomfortable
and showing that they were ; Lois uncomfortable too,
but as quiet in her own way as Mrs. Haynes was in
hers ; and Bernard wondering what subtle change it
was that had come over her, making her less supremely
delightful than he bad found her at the foot of
Ilelvellyn.
When they rose to leave the room, Lois modestly
stayed behind till she encountered Mrs. Haynes.
VOL. I. E
50 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
"Do yoii please, ma'am, to go forward," she said,
slirinking back.
Mrs. Hayues took up her air of lofty courtes}^
" I am your hostess," she said with her grand manner
and proud smile. " It is 3'onr place to go first."
" I would rather you went forward, Mrs. Haynes,
please," returned Lois, meaning the perfection of polite-
ness ; hut something in the lady's face seemed to
compel as well as enlighten her, when she hurriedly
brushed past both mother and son, and nearly tripped
over her entangling train; Mrs. Hajuies smiling to
Bernard with cruel meaning as her eyes led his to tlio
girl's awkwardness of exit.
Sir James, as a man of his word, made up the party
which he had proposed to Lois during dinner ; and the
next day it was agreed that they should all go over to
Aitken Park, to see the Eoman remains and picture-
gallery for which it was famous, when they would
lunch there and come home to five o'clock tea.
In arranging how they should go, there was a ques-
tion of riding ; and Maud, Cora, and Edith all voted
for horseback over the dulness of driving in the cold of
an October day ; when Cora said good-naturedly : " But
we can scarcely do that, ]\Iaud ; Miss Lancaster has no
habit."
"Oh!" said Lois, "I don't mind for a habit,
Miss Cora. I can ride in any old skirt you have
SHIBBOLETH. 51
liandy. We never Tbotlier aLout liaMts down at
Wythburn."
" You cannot ride witliout a liat and liabit," said
Mrs. Haynes a little disdainfully.
" It makes no odds, 3Irs. Ilaynes ; indeed it don't,"
slie repeated earnestly, and in her eagerness forgot
her best style. '• We don't fash about such things at
the place where I came from, and I can do quite well
with an old skirt, or even a shawl to lap around me."
" You forget. Miss Lancaster, that you are not at
Wythburn now," said Mrs. Haynes with a smile that
was neither genial nor reassuring. " You cannot ride
in an old skirt, or even a shawl round you" — con-
temptuously — " and I should have thought that even
you would have had enough perception to have un-
derstood that ! "
" I meant not to give trouble," said Lois meekly.
" Pray allow me to arrange as I think best. You
will give me least trouble by the most obedience," was
the lady's reply ; and Lois felt humbled and humili-
ated. But why ? What had she done ? According lo
her lights, she had done only what was right and kind
and considerate ; but she had evidently missed her
way somehow, and had offended when she meant Ijut
to serve. Yet, if she had ridden, she would have
shown them how to stick on, she thought, with the
pride of one who, as she phrased it, could ride bare-
52 WITH A SILKEN TEBEAB.
back as well as side-saddle, and who had never heen
beat by any beast she had yet mounted nor was afraid
of the best that ever laid leg to gi'oiind. In the end,
despite the ojoposition of Mrs. Hayncs, it was arranged
that Bernard should drive Lois in the pony-carriage,
while his sisters rode with Charley and Edith Grattan.
This was the best plan that could be devised, and
suited every one save Mrs. Haynes.
When they were seated in the carriage and safely
started, poor Lois drew a long bieath as if a heavy
weight had been taken oif her ; and turning to Bernard
said, for her almost warmly : " IMy word ! this is nice,
Mr. Bernard ! It is like homo ! "
" It is home," said Bernard fondly ; " your home,
Lois ! "
" I like Wythburn best," she said. " I feel strange-
like here, j'et."
" You will soon get accustomed, dear," he returned.
" My mother is very good and means everything that
is kind."
" Does she ? " said Lois. " Did I offend her just
now, Mr. Bernard ? I didn't mean to, I'm sure ; but
she didn't look best pleased at what I said about the
habit. But I meant no oftence."
" No, no ! " he answered hastily ; " she Avas not
offended, Lois ; she only wanted to put you right and
make you understand."
SHIBBOLETH. . 53
*' She was ratlier sLort, all the same," said Lois
quietly ; " hut father, he is short too at times ; and
one must see and hear a good hit in this life and never
take heed. Don't you think so ? "
" I hope you will not have to see or hear much that
is unpleasant at j\Iidwood," said Bernard gravely.
Lois looked at him. Was he too going to be short
like his mother ? If so she, Lois, would not trouble
him ; so she lapsed into silence, and Bernard drove on,
wondering if he should say anything to her that might
help to bring her into more harmony with her new
■surroundings or leave things to work themselves clear,
when — would that nameless charm by which he had
been fascinated, and which now seemed lost, return?
Perhaps ; he hoped, nay more, he believed, that it would.
It came back in part now, in this lonely drive together,
when she was more natural and at ease, he less critical
and more ready to be charmed than at the stately in-
harmonious home. All the same, it seemed to him
that she had manifestly deteriorated since he parted
from her at \Vythburii, and that a nameless but un-
doubted change had taken place in her manners and
appearance. It never occurred to him that the change
was in himself, because of those domestic and social
influences on which Mrs. Haynes had counted so much.
This little renewal of lover-like good-fellowship soon
came to an end, and they reached Aitken Park where
54 WJTE A SILKEN THREAD.
they were met by Sir James and the riders, who had
distanced them by taking a short cnt across country.
The girls, ashamed of their uncongenial companion,
visibly shrank from her in a way that said but little
for the thoroughness of their good breeding, if we take
good breeding to be more than the correct pronunci-
ation of shibboleth. Edith was openly antagonistic,
and 3Iaud seemed to fear infection in anything like
close association. Only Cora, good-natured, kind-
hearted Cora, the dove and peacemaker of the company,
kept with her ; and Bernard was gratefiil, and mentally
doulded the sum he would give her on the day of
her marriage — whenever that might be. As he was
naturally obliged to attend to Edith who looked to
him as her assigned cavalier, while Sir James, playing
host, singled out IMaud as the representative lady,
Charley and Cora had Lois between them ; and, though
both felt her something of a nuisance and wished her
safe back at the foot of Helvellj-n, both, being good-
hearted and gentle of soul as well as of birth, treated
her with consideration and made her as welcome as
was in the nature of things. Occasionally however,
they all got into a group together ; and once they did
so when they were at the Jioman remains.
'• How long aa;o is it since these old stones were set
here, i\[r. Bernard?" asked Lois in a rather high-
pitched key. " Over three hundred years, I reckon ? "
SlilDBOLETIL 55
" Longer than that hy two thousand," answered
Bernard, who wished that she wonkl not speak.
" And who was |^it laid them, say you ? " she asked
again.
" The Eomans," answered Sir James.
Lois raised her dark-fringed, starry eyes.
" Were those the same as St. Paul wrote to ? " she
asked with a certain reverence, almost awe, of manner.
" The same people, but not the same individuals,"
said Sir James ; while Maud flushed for vexation and
pretty Cora, for all her kind heart, looked at Charley
and giggled, girl-like.
" You should go through a course of ancient history,
Miss Lancaster," said Bernard, more disturbed than he
cared to acknowledge. " Did they not teach you
history at school ? "
" Yes, the Kings of England," she answered ; " but
not the Eomans, except what the Bible says of
them."
"What kind of school could it have been? What
did they teach you?" asked Edith Grattan, who had
taken, she scarcely knew why, tlio bitterest dislike
to this beautiful but not fascinating young person.
" Needlework, and the Bible mornings and evenings,
and reading, writing and ciphering, and such like,
Miss Grattan," said Lois with the sublime contentment
of ignorance.
m WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
" And nothiug instructive."
" Miss Symes — Miss Symes was our mistress — called
that instruction," said Lois, lifting her lovely eyes.
Miss Grattan smiled Avith calm disdain.
" I am afraid that would not pass muster with most
lady principals," she said. " ]\Iodern education is
rather more complete than that, is it not, Mr. Haynes ?"
to Bernard.
" Literature is not everything ; there is a deeper
knowledge which is more important, and Miss Lan-
caster has that," said Bernard loyally. " The minci
is sometimes dumb when the soul is most eloquent.
The sweetest songs are not those of most scientific
precision or freighted with the greatest amount of
learning."
" That is like you, Bernard ! You are idealizing
ignorance now. What a queer boy you are ! " cried
Maud petulantly. " We shall have you next finding
the wrong to be l)ettcr than the right ! "
" How soon your people gets put out," said placid
Lois to Bernard, when they were alone for a moment
afterwards. " JMy word, but they are tetchy ! "
" Lois ! " remonstrated Bernard.
" Well now, j\Ir. Bernard, I'm sure you can't deny
it," she continued. " Here's Mrs. Haynes as sour and
sad as a Friday's child, and Miss Maud bites your
nose off for next thing to nothing. I'm glad you're
SHIBBOLETH.
sweeter-tempered," she added "with a timid little smile
and lovely fleeting hlush, as she lifted up her eyes and
looked at him with an unmistakable look of admiration.
And Bernard, meeting that look, forgave her.
Aitken Park was as famous for its picture-gallery
as for its Eoman remains ; and Sir James was natiirally
proud of a collectiou of Old Masters that would have
been a not unworthy annexe to the National Gallery.
He liked nothing better than to be the showman of
his treasures; and part of the day's programme was to
visit the gallery and hear him expatiate on its merits.
Among other things there was a " Marriage of St.
Catherine " which Sir James always maintained was
better than that in the Louvre ; and here the party
halted while the host pointed out this fine line and
that superb flesh tint, this marvellous bit of compo-
sition and that crafty _^ combination of colours. He
was an artist in his own way and had the artistic
dialect by heart.
" The Marriage of St. Catherine ! " at last broke in
Lois with an accent of profound horror. " How could
our Lord marry her when he was a baby ? The Bible
saj^s nothing about it, Mr. Haynes " — to Bernard, in-
dignantly — " it is downright impious ! "
" It is one of the Eoman Catholic legends. Miss
Lancaster," Sir James explained.
" But it isn't true and it isn't right," said Lois. " It
58 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
is wicked to say suda things of onr Lord, and thcj^
not in the Bible."
" These old legends and saints' histories have given
us some of our noblest pictures," Sir James apologized,
" Art would have perished but for them."
" It had lietter perish than men paint what isn't
true, and is blasphemy into the bargain," persisted
Lois. " I reckon nothing of a thing that has" to live
as you say, Sir James Aitken, by such means. Give
me the Bible and nothing else."
" Well, if it offends you wo will go on to another,"
Sir James said good-naturedl3\ " I can understand
your dislike, if you are not accustomed to such things."
This he said to stay the current of girlish disdain
that had set in, and to give Lois '• reason " before her
superior companions.
"No, indeed," she answered a little proudly, as if
boasting of a distinction; "I am not accustomed to
such things, as you say. Sir James Aitken, and I
don't hold with Papistry anyhow."
" You will have to enlarge your borders if j^oxi go
on the Continent, I fear ! " returned the host, smiling.
" Every step you take and every place you visit will
shock voTi else."
"I don't Avant to go among the Papists, Sir James,"
said Lois. " I am a professing Christian and don't hold
with outlandish ways anyhow."
SIIIBBOLETIL 59-
" Bernard ! " said Maud in a low voice to her brother.
" How could yon allow mamma to invite this girl here
to disgrace ns with her ignorance and common manners-
in this way? What can Sir James think ? "
Bernard threw hack his poetic head.
" Do you not see any beauty, Maud, in the loyalty of
a simple nature, a childlike creed ? " he asked, his heart
belying his reason. " There are tAvo waj's of looking at
everything ; why not take the more beautiful as well
as the more charitable ? "
"Because I like common sense and reality," said
Maud disdainfully, also flinging up her head, biit falling
back to join the party. Contemj)tuous of poor Lois as
she was, she was not inclined to let Sir James Aitken
see too much of those glorious eyes which men seemed
to think superior to learning or deportment.
Perhaps conscious that she had made rather a random
shot in the matter of an Old Master, Lois discreetly held
her tongue for the remainder of the tour round the
gallery ; perhaps too she was not incited to testify, as
there was nothing of so purely a legendary character in
the pictures after this unlucky marriage of St. Catherine ;
though one or two, Avhere the drapery was of a rather
diaphanous quality and scanty quantity, made the
blood come up into her fair face hotl}- and lowered her
eyes Avith shame. How ever could the}' ! she thought ;
wondering at the ease with Avhich the young ladies
<50 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
stood before these undraped representations of humanity ;
it was downright indecent ; and before the gentlemen,
too ! But her evident bashfuhiess only had the effect
of making every one else uncomfortable and conscious ;
Avhile, had she taken her lesson in art without wincino-
like the rest, they would have been perfectly at ease
and with no thought of evil.
" What a horrid girl ! " said Maud in sacred conclave
with Cora and Edith. " Did you see how she behaved
when we Avere looking at that Venus ? She made me
feel so uncomfortable, for I am sure Sir James noticed
her by the way in which he hurried on ; and the same
when we came to St. Sebastian and that Cupid."
" She must be very indelicate to think anything,"
said Edith ; but Cora suggested kindly : " Oh, she is so
countrified, you see ! — she has seen nothing, and I dare
say it would shock any one not accustomed. For after
all these undressed creatures are not very pleasant to
look at for the first time ! "
" Cora, how can you talk such nonsense ! " cried Maud.
" You will soon be as bad as Bernard."
" Poor Bernard ! " cried Edith, laughing.
" Oil ! he is a dear boy, and as good as possible,"
ansAvered Maud briskly :— Edith must not laugh at him
or believe him to be despised at home. " But he is an
awful goose sometimes ! " she added pleasantly.
" Is he a goose about this girl — this Miss Lancaster ? "
asked Edith with false calmness.
SHIBBOLETH. 61
" Oh dear, no ! " answered Maud. *' He knows nothing
of her, and cares nothing. It is only that he is too kind-
hearted generally, and makes excuses for every one."
By which it may be seen that leaining to say shib-
boleth as it should be said does not include truth as one
of the obligations of the lesson.
The rest of the day passed without any very glaring
misdeeds of Lois to excite the anger of Bernard's sisters
and to awaken unpleasant emotions in Bernard's owni
heart. To be sure, she did everything in the way of
table-gaucheries that she did yesterday, and got into
continual entanglements easily discernible by educated
eyes — knowing no more than a heathen what to eat or
how to eat it. But she stumbled on, for the most part
in happy ignorance that she was offending ; and as Sir
James and Bernard were kind and Cora was gentle and
forbearing, her spirits gradvially rose, and she bore her-
self with a certain amount of ease that showed her to
advantage in some aspects, if to disadvantage in others.
For, if she was less awkward because less constrained,
she was more assured, consequently less guarded ; and
now and then let the natural flavour of Wythburn have
broader scope — when she forgot that she was a lady and
must not talk Cumberland nor make free.
Asked if she could play, she said "Yes," and sat
down without hesitation to the magnificent Erard
which even Maud, who was a proficient, toiiched with
'0)2 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
fi certain reverence. But Lois, thinking that her sole
duty lay in doing her best and knowing nothing of
how had that best was, played her piece with the
missed notes and slurred passages, the false chords and
scamped bass of her kind ; shaking her head and saying
" Tut ! "' to herself Avhen she tumbled on to flats and
sharps where she had no business to be, and taking the
whole thing with the mindless docility of a schoolgirl
set to her task. But she looked so sweet and simple
while she was murdering her music that Bernard, who
was both tortured by and ashamed of her performance,
was unable to feel really annoyed because of the naive
good faith and candour with which she made her fiasco ;
but the girls, with whom neither her siraplicit}^ nor her
beauty counted in her favour, made wry faces to each
other behind their screens, and Maud said quietly to
Sir James : " Were 3^011 not rather cruel ? "
After this thej^ went back to Midwood ; and Bernard's
"theory on the fusion of classes, and the advantage that
would accrue to the race were gentlemen to marry
jjeasant-girls, did not seem such a hopeless absurdity
when he had level}' Lois with him alone, as it had
flashed across him that it was when she was playing
flats for sharps and missing whole bars serenely in
" The Wedding ]\Iarch " at Aitken Park.
CHAPTER IV.
OUT OF PLACE.
The sudden change of habits and manners — from sim-
plicity and porridge to luxiirionsness and a French
cook — from continual exercise about the house, gusty
breaths of fresh fell-side air at all hours of the day,
and small rooms, cosy and closely heated, to much sit-
ting, little walking, and spacious apartments where
she felt chilled and unhomed because she could not " sit
into tbe fire " as she said, but did not feel warm or com-
fortable at a distance — began to tell on the health and
spirits of Lois.
She was at no time robust, being of the kind which
drinks tea and does not eat meat — which pinches its
waist in stiff stag's and goes in airy costume on bleak
days, if so be that vanity prompts gossamer and re-
pudiates woollen, catarrh and subsequent consumption
notwithstanding ; hence she had but a small amount of
reserve-force wherewith to resist unfriendly influences,
and with all her placid demeanour she suffered as
acutely as those who are more demonstrative and out
wardly excited.
64 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
The personal strain too, under wliicli she was living
also told on her and made her yet more nervous than
before, hence more inicouth — and, by the vicious round
of action and reaction, more distressed ; so that alto-
gether the visit on which she had counted so much
Avhile at Wythburn, seemed proving itself one of those
Dead Sea apples of life which a mocking fate so often
flings into our lap, charming to the imagination and
bitter to the sense.
Ill at ease and uncomfortable, she had not even the
satisfaction of any tangible cause of complaint. Maud
was harsh and contemptuous truly, but then Cora was
sweet and friendly; and though Bernard was a little
perplexed and restrained before folk, on those rare
occasions when he got her to himself, alone, he was all
that he had ever been, and his faithfulness to the ideal
he had created for himself was as unshaken as his
tenderness. As for Mrs, Haynes, she continued to treat
her unwelcome guest as she had treated her from the
beginning, with cold and stately courtes}?', seeking to
make her conscious that she was an alien among them
wlaile fulfilling the law of politeness to the letter, only
dropping out of the canon human kindness and womanly
compassion. In the neatest but the most cruel way
possible she dissected and displayed the girl's utter
ignorance of all those things into the knowledge of
which ladies of condition are supposed to be born as a
OUT OF PLAGE. G5
gift of race. She fatliomed lier deepest deptli in litera-
ture and art— then sliowed her son, and all the world,
how contemptibly shallow it was; she made her reveal
herself as substantially uncultivated, unrefined, plebeian
in her views of life, in her estimate of social obligations,
and unable to rise to the height of patrician magna-
nimity, no matter what the gloss put on her by a gentle
nature and the glamour wrought by her surpassing-
beauty. At every turn she made her betray her un-
fitness so plainly that Bernard, distracted between love
and common sense, respect for his mother and loyalty
to Lois, scarcely knew what course to take — more-
especially as all by which he was wounded was as vague
as was all that by which Lois herself was pained ; so
that he, no more than herself, could put his finger on
any one spot and say : " This is the core of my com-
plaining."
AVere they never to discuss art, for instance, because
Miss Lancaster did not know Eaflfaelle from Eembrandt,
and had heard as little of Turner as of Claude ? Was
all mention of the latest discoveries in astronomy to be
tabooed, because, when she was asked, this unpromising
young friend of theirs was forced to confess that she
had no idea of how the earth went round the sun;
thought that comets were balls of fire with their tails
of streaming flames ; held that the stars and moon and
sun were things set in the sky for the good and dclecta-
VOL. I. . F
66 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
tion of man alone ; and maintained that the earth was
the centre of the universe? Were Shakespeare and
Milton to be names without meaning for tliem, because
Lois Lancaster did not know one from the other ;
confessing to have tried " Paradise Lost " once at
boarding-school, and to have ended in weariness and
tears? Were they all to forego their inherited breeding
because she said " Mrs. Haynes " at the end of every
phrase, and ate fluids as if they were solids ?
Had Bernard remonstrated with his mother on her
subtle cruelty, she would have opened her fine eyes on
him with the look for which she was famous, and would
have asked, with every appearance of surprise and
interest, where she had failed?— and how could she
act to please him if what she did now displeased him ?
Was it her fault, she would have said, if he had insisted
on bringing into their circle one so entirely unfitted for
her position ? And did he expect them — his mother
and sisters — to lower themselves to Miss Lancaster's
very meagre standard of refinement and education ?
Whatever discomfort existed in the arrangements would
have been shown as his own creation ; and Bernard,
conscious of all this, forbore to remonstrate — having
also that difficulty which his mother intended he
should have, in formularizing what was amiss, b}' which
he ran curricle with poor Lois, also tormented and
effectually gagged.
OUT OF PLACE. 67
There liad seldom been so gay a time at Midwood
as now during the stay of Lois Lancaster. Every day
Mrs. Haynes got up something fresh and fair for the
young people of the neighbourhood; so that by the
outside look of things she was doing the daughter of
the Wythburn guide rare honour and paying her
supreme attention. But somehow everything caused
Lois increased mortification and showed her at a dis-
advantage; and when others were at the zenith of
enjoyment she was at the nadir of distress. Amongst
other pleasures, an impromptu ball Avas given at Mid-
wood, none the less delightful because rather more
informal than such things generall}^ are. And to this,
of course, came all the neighbourhood, still greatly
wondering, and some greatly scandalized, at the con-
tinued presence as an equal at such a place as Midwood
of this beautiful nondescript, whom no one knew where
to place nor how to catalogue — fair as a flower, gentle
as a dove, ignorant as a servant and with a manner in
;accord with her ignorance.
Now Lois had learnt dancing " at boarding-school,"
much in the same way as she had learnt music, and was
about as proficient in the one art as the other. Style
and execution were no more perfect in her feet than in
her hands. If she played flats for sharps, struck wrong
chords, slurred her shakes, and left out all the difficult
bars without an idea of grammar or construction in
G8 WITE A SILKEN THREAD.
music, in dancing she swam when she should have
walked, and hopped when she should have waltzed ;.
hut, in return, she did her steps on every possible
occasion with conscientious fidelity, and she held her
gown at each side, with her elbows turned out, as in
the old days of Dutch shirts and sandalled shoes. She
W'ent through the Avhole performance with painstaking
exactness, her sweet face at first serenely unconscious
of any cause of ridicule in her proceedings — but as time
went on, and she caught the amnsed glances of un-
friendlj- critics and heard the half-whispered remarks
with which the well-bred were not ashamed to over-
whelm her, getting gradually perplexed — from per-
plexity passing to pain, as security became doubt, and
doubt developed into certainty that something was
amiss, and that she was not quite as others were.
Among the rest she danced with Sir James Aitken ;
but only once. Amused as he was at this new sj)ecimen
of humanity, he had no desire to make himself sport
for the Philistines and afford cause of imgodly ridicule
to a room full of scorners ; and pretty Lois Lancaster,
ducking and pirouetting, hopj^ing, curtseying and
doing her steps with zeal, was a sight so unusual to
l^eople who had been educated in the art by the first
professors, that it was scarcely to be wondered at if a
proud man, and a sensitive, had not magnanimity
enough to brave the smiles of his comrades for the
OUT OF PLACE. G9
sake of giving a false sense of security to an underbred
unknown. But liis dancing with her at all was an
oftence to Maud, which went far to destroy all her
pleasure in the evening — ]Maud, pioud, reserved, Avell
bred, and with fair average reason, luit with not force
<5nough to resist that meanest passion of the whole
category, jealousy without cause of an inferior without
attraction.
It did not make matters better for Lois, bad as they
already were, that one of her young hostesses either
studiously avoided her, or treated her when forced into
momentary contact with a disdain so marked that
every one in the room could see it. She was uncomfort-
able enough already without this to add to her misery ;
and her efforts to put these crooked things straight
were certainly not crowned with success. At last, in
despair, she phmged into the depths with Sir James.
" Patience, me ! " she said, lifting ber lovely face
full of trouble to his ; " what can have put Miss Maud
■so sadly about. Sir James Aitken ? She looks as sour
as verjuice at me; and Avhat have I done, I wonder?"
Sir James raised his eyes and looked over to Maud,
who, with a flushed face and discomposed air, was
talking to young Charley Grattan by no means as if
she enjoyed the circumstances of the moment, but
rather as if she would have given worlds either to
break into wrath or burst into tears. A smile broke
rO WITH A SILKEN THBEAD.
tliroiigh the gravity of liis face. It l>ecame almost
radiant; and for a moment he had that look of
effulgent delight which only the habitually melancholy
show, whq^i hy chance a ray of happiness pierces the
sober-hued integuments of their thoughts and they are
joyous in proportion to their general gloom. Did she-
real]}^ love him? was this in truth jealousy? Love
includes jealousy, thought Sir James ; who also was on
the wrong track this Ava}^ If he could convince him-
self through Lois tliat he was truly loved by Maud,
how ho would bless that odd young person and think
kindly even of her dancino- !
"I do not think that Miss Haynes is annoyed with
you for any reason." was his repl3% made quickly,
'• Oh yes, she is, Sir James Aitken," answered Lois
Math seriousness. "If you don't see it. I do, and I
shall just ask Mr. Bernard what's to do with her when
I see him."
" Let me advise you, Miss Lancaster, to say nothing,"
said Sir James. " There is a great deal of wisdom in
silence."
" But I don't like it. Sir James Aitken," said pretty
Lois. " If anything's amiss I like folks to say it out,
and not do as Miss Maud does, look black, a body
doesn't know why. Oh ! here is Mr. Bernard "
" Come to take you down for an ice," Avas Bernard's
hurried interruption ; he, for his part, not caring to see
OUT OF PLACE. 71
the girl appropriated any longer by the Baronet on
whom his mother had fixed her eyes for Maud. As the
master of the house his duties were naturallj^ manifold
and called him perpetually off guard, else, when he
could, he had engaged Lois in talk on some pretext as
now, or, dancing with her himself, had bravely borne
as his burden the half of her artistic absurdities. But
this could not be very often, and these moments of
reprieve were, as she said, few and far between.
She was overjoyed then, when he came to her now
to carry her off into the refreshment-room ; and the
instant she took his arm — she called it " linking " —
plunged into the history of her wi'ongs against Miss
Maud and those sour looks of hers which hurt her so
much in her mind; saying, what Avas quite true, that
she hadn't a notion what it was all about, and that she
would sooner eat her fingers than oftend one of the
family. To which Bernard, heroically conquering the
little spasm that crossed him at her homely metaphor,
answered kindly : " I am sure you would, my dear
girl. You have the sweetest nature in the world.
Who would have the heart to offend you or be angry
Avith you? "
" Then you thinlc it may be only a maggot of my
own?" asked Lois with a sweet smile. "If you do,
Mr. Bernard, I'll not say anything to Miss Maud, for
I'd not like to add fuel to fire, you know, and I'd bear
a deal for your sake."
WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
"I am sure you would," lie answered. "But I
hope, my dear, you will have nothing very bad to
bear ; and as for Maud, you are, I trust, mistaken, and
she means nothing personal to you. Perhaps she has
a headache. Girls often have headaches," he added
pleasantly.
'•Yes; I am often but poorly myself," said Lois,
accepting his explanation simply; for indeed she was
an amiable, single-hearted creature, beautiful in her
nature so far as education and training would allow,
and if not pushed beyond her powers always sure to
respond true to a moral harmony. " So I'll say
nothing about it, Mr. Bernard, but think that maybe
it is a headache, as you say."
■'You are alwaj^s just and sweet-tempered, Lois,"
cried Bernard enthusiastically; to which the guide's
daughter answered with a blush and a smile : " Hoot,
Mr, Bernard ! you flatter me."
And with this their time of retreat was over, and
Bernard had to take her back to the dancing-room and
leave her to herself, while he kept his engagement
with Edith Grattan for the waltz that had just begun.
Mrs. Haynes, cruel only to be kind, as she argued in
her own mind, took care that Lois should have plenty
of opportunities for her damaging display of steps and
hops. To be sure, as the evening wore on it became
an increasing difficulty to find partners for this lovely
OUT OF PLACE. 73
bungler. Her face was all very well, thouglit the
young men ; but style goes further in a ball-room than
beauty, and proficiency in the art of keeping time
and step is a sine qua non for round dances as well
as square ones. Wherefore, one by one towards the
end of the evening they Avere all engaged when Mrs.
Haynes asked them to take out Miss Lancaster ; and
at last, as if in honest despair at finding her good
intentions of no avail, she said in a moderately loud
voice to Bernard :
" My dear Iwy, what on earth shall I do ? None of
the men will dance with Miss Lancaster, and you can
easily understand why. It is excessively unpleasant
for me, yet what can I do ? "
Bernard saw it all, and was on thorns. As his
mother said, what could she — or indeed any one — do?
This was no place for Lois. His mountain daisy, so
beautiful in her own simple home, was ill set when
transplanted to the artificial grace and conventional
circumstances of a life like this at 3Iidwood. There
she satisfied his highest ideal ; here — ho was forced to
admit it — she was inharmonioiis and discordant. And
yet, was not his life to bo spent here? Was not his
home to be at Midwood, and his duties comprised in
tlie ownership of the place? He could not live on the
Wythburn crags or under the dark shadows of Hel-
vellyn, forgotten and forgetting, as in last summer's
WITH A SILKEN TIinEAD.
Long. He must take up the position into whicli lie
hacl been born, and fit liimself into bis spbere. These
thoughts flashed like lightning through his brain while
his mother spoke ; but he gave words only to the first
of them, when he answered, very coldly :
" You were wrong, mother, and cruel, to expose her
as you have done."
" Which means, my dear boy, that when Miss Lan-
caster is Mrs. Haynes, Midwood must be closed against
society at laige," she said in a low voice, turning away
to capture a young guardsman not quick at fence or
falsehood, and present him to Miss Lancaster for the
next lancers.
If Bernard who saw clearly was on thorns, Lois who
saw but dimly Avas not on roses. The occult difference
between herself and the rest became at every moment
more confessed ; and gradually her sense of humiliation
worked on her nerves so powerfully that she was on
the verge of a fit of hysterics. At last, escaping to the
safe seclusion of her own room, she sat down before the
glass and had what she herself called a good cry. She-
was unutterably mortified and wretched, she scarcely
knew why ; for the glass gave back a face which she
knew well enough to be the loveliest of ail in the
room, and a general appearance with which, in her
ignorance, she was perfectly content and wherein she
saw no jioint of inferiority to the best among them.
OUT OF PLACE. 75-
None tlie less she was miserable and wished quite
aloud at least a dozen times that she had never come ;
and she would go home to-morrow, that she would, and
never set foot in Midwood again ! If Mr. Bernard had
to go with Midwood, let him. Mrs. Haynes and Miss
Maud would take the sweetness out of honey itself, and
make the very sunshine but a dree hillside mist ! She
could not bear it, and she would not; they would
break her heart before they had done with her ; and
she would not have it, that wouldn't she !
When the housemaid broke in, singing, to arrange
her room for the night and make up the fire, poor Lois,
more at home with Mary Anne than with any of the
grand folks with whom the mocking fate which gave
the Dead Sea apples had thrown her for the time,
frankly fraternizing, poured out all her troubles and
wept like a sister on her neck.
" Why, miss, what's to do ? " cried Mary Anne,
amazed that any one should cry who had on a muslin
frock dotted with a thousand sky-blue bows, and who
had been dancing with real gentlemen in the Midwood
ball-room.
" I feel so lost, Mary Anne ! " sobbed poor Lois pite-
ously. " I'm not myself here, and I've taken the rue
for coming."
Then said Mar}'- Anne briskly, having her own
private suspicions of King Cophetua, and thinking tc-
76 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
herself that if slie could slie would put any number of
spokes possible into that wheel: " La, miss, if you'll not
mind my saying so, you're no fit company for our
folks ! — you're not the same kind as our young ladies ;
and it's a shame of them to ask you here and make
game of you as they do. You're best with yoxir own,
and it's my advice that you go back to 'em sharp. You
and I are not so far different when we come to measure
things, and I'm sure I couldn't do as you do — make
free with a family as grand as missis's."
" "Why did they have nie here if they wanted to
make game of me ? " cried Lois, indignant through her
distress.
" Ah, why indeed ! " returned Mary Anne. " That's
best known to you and the young master. But I'll tell
you what," she added with a burst of virtuous scorn,
" these grand folks are precious mean when you get
close to 'em. And that's the blessed truth ! "
" I'll go away, that I will ! " cried Lois, still sobbing.
•' Yes, I should," said Mary Anne coolly; "and you'll
be best at your own home."
" Oh, Mary Anno, how badly I do feel ! " said the
poor girl, turning pale.
" Have a cup of tea, miss," the servant answered.
" There's nothing like a cup of tea when you are out of
sorts."
But Lois fainted before the words were well uttered ;
OUT OF PLACE. 77
and Mary Anne, ringing the bell, brought up a small
army of fellow-maids, who stood about the girl and
conjectured, asserted, pitied or condemned according
to the calibre of brain and direction of thons-ht belons--
ing to each.
" Yon left the ball-room early last night. Miss Lan-
caster," said Mrs. Haynes the next morning at break-
fast. " Were yon fatigued or indisposed ? "
She spoke coldl}', as if fatigue or indisposition were an
offence deserving rebuke ; and she looked with a kind
of surprised annoyance at the girl's pale cheeks and
sunken eyes which sufficiently betrayed her discom-
fort.
" I didn't feel myself very well, Mrs. Haynes,"
answered Lois rather shakily. She could have repeated
last night's fit of weeping under very slight provocation
indeed.
Bernarrd's soft eyes looked sympathetic and distressed.
"Were you not well?" he asked with the unmis-
takable emotion of a lover.
" Oh, not badly to mind about, i_Mr. Bernard,"
answered Lois heroically.
"'Was the dancing too much for you?" asked kindly
Cora.
" Maybe it was, Miss Cora," Lois said with a jerk,
grateful for the suggestion which was so well cal-
culated to conceal the real cause. " I'm not used
78 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
to it, and I'm only delicate. A very little does for
me."
" Then yon should not have danced so mnch," said
Mrs. Haynes, always with that subtle accent and
manner of condemnation which seemed to place Lois
Lancaster as a culprit before her, whom it was part of
her daily duty to rebuke.
" How could I hinder myself, Mrs. Haynes ? " asked
Lois, opening her eyes. " When the young gentlemen
asked me if I was going to dance, and seemed to want
to take me out, how could I give them a back-word? "
" You are not obliged to dance with every one who
asks you," said Mrs. Haynes with her superior smile.
" But I wanted to, Mrs. Haynes," said innocent Lois,
goaded into spontaneity. " It isn't pleasant to sit b}^
oneself when one sees all the rest as gay as gay ; and
it's a treat I don't often have."
"Then don't complain if you suffer," said Mrs.
Haynes.
" I didn't complain, Mrs. Ha^'nes," Lois answered
with unnecessary earnestness. " It was yourself as
asked me if I felt myself poorly, and I said I did. I
didn't mean to find fault," she added, her eyes filling
with tears.
" No, mother," put in Bernard ; " Miss Lancaster did
not complain. She never complains of anything."
" No ? " said Mrs. Haynes coldly ; while the poor
OUT OF PLACE.
girl's tears dropped slowly on her plate ; " then we
need not pursue the subject. And pray, Miss Lan-
caster, control 3'ourself a little better than this. People
do not cry like children in public — at least, not the
people with whom we are in the habit of associating."
Which speech of course had the effect of making Lois
cry still more and of deepening Mrs. Haynes's dis-
l^leasure.
After breakfast Bernard watched his opportunity.
Mrs. Haynes was always careful to prevent his getting
apart with Lois ; but this morning she was obliged to
attend to some business that would not wait, and her
son took advantage of her absence to endeavour to con-
sole his disconsolate beloved. He himself was to the
full as wretched as she was. He saw quite plainly that
his mother whom he loved, and his future wife whom
he adored, did not "get on together;" but, beyond
this elemental perception of things, he was lost. He
thought that perhaps Lois might know more than he
knew, and, as was perfectly natural, he felt sure that
it must be somehow in her power to change the present
discords into harmonies, and that, if any blame was to
fall anywhere, it must righteously fall on her head.
It was her knowledge of this natural decision which
had made Mrs. Haynes so certain of her game and so
resolute to carry it to the bitter end.
" Lois, my darling," he said tenderly, " what is it
80 WITH A SILKEN TIIBEAD.
that makes j'ou and vay mother jar so perpetually ? I
had hoped everything from your visit here, but some-
how things seem all to go wrong, and nothing that I
can say or do mends matters in any way. What is it,
Lois?"
" I'm sure, Mr. Bernard, you'd better ask Mrs.
Haynes, not me," answered Lois with an ominous
quiver in her voice.
" I wanted you so much to be friends," said Bernard
with almost pathetic earnestness.
" It isn't my fault, Mr. Bernard, indeed it isn't," said
Lois, the tears beginning again to start. " I've done
all I could to be agreeable to Mrs. Haynes and the
young ladies ever since I came, but I don't think the}-
like me; and the more I try the more they seem to
snap me. J«[ot Miss Cora, though, I must say," she
added generously ; " she has been as good as gold to
me ; but," beginning to cry outright, " Mrs. Haynes
and Miss Maud, they can't abide me, and that's the
Avhole tale from beginning to end, Mr. Bernard."
"But, Lois, dearest Lois, cannot you make things
better?" he cried with the illogical insistence of a
man's disappointment.
" No, ]Mr. Bernard, that I cannot," she answered
weeping ; " and — I'll not tell you any lie about it —
I've taken the rue for coming, and want to go back
home."
OUT OF PLACE. 81
" Lois," he cried, " you cTo not mean that, I am
sure ! "
" Yes I do," she said ; " I'm best at home. This
isn't the place for me, Mr. Bernard, and I was jnst a
silly gowk for coming. Yon're all over grand for me,
and I'm a sight too simple for you. I'm best at home,'^
she repeated.
" You are at home," said Bernard, taking her hand.
It was a well-shaped hand in essentials, but it was not
the hand of an aristocrat.
She shook her head. " No," she said ; " no, Mr. Ber-
nard. This is no home to me, and never could be."
At that moment the servant entered the room with
two letters on a tray for Lois, and " Mrs. Haynes desires
to see you, sir," as his message for Bernard.
" I will be back directly, dear," said the young lover
tenderly as he turned away, Lois answering unselfishly,
as her manner was : " Don't put yourself about, Mr.
Bernard. Don't trouble about me. I've got father's
letter to read ; " again dissolving into tears as she rose
from her place and went over to the window, carrying
not only her father's letter, Init one from John Mus-
grave as well — to soothe or sting the smarting sore of
her wounded spirit.
She read her letters, still standing by the window ;
and then her hands dropped by her side, and her soul
went back to the past and the beloved. The fresh free
VOL. I. . G
82 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
life of the fells came like a turst of snnsWne in the
gloom of a winter's day across the memory of the poor,
fevered, uncomfortable girl. She saw visibly before
her the lovely little Thirlmere Lake, with Dale Head,
its mansion, grander to her than even the palatial
stateliness of Midwood. The crags and fells rose np to
her inward sight, clothed in their insset of autumn,
their purple and gold of summer, their greenery of
spring — beautiful always ; her friends and companions
always ; things that were like living creatures loving
her and sympathizing with her, knowing her and
understanding her. She knew that she was out of
place here, and she felt that she must take her courage
in both hands and break her bonds before they had cut
more deeply into her soul. She knew where her best
wisdom lay, and she must conform to its demands.
John Musgrave, who was her friend, would counsel her
to do as her own heart was counselling her now ; and
John Musgrave would not have led her into circum-
stances which were in real fact no better than so many
snares — circumstances wherein he knew, as Bernard
must have known, that she would suffer and be pained.
John Musgrave was at her feet, and would be trans-
lated to heaven upon earth if she would but return
home and smile on him. And now that she had seen
him nearer, Bernard did not seem so fine a fellow after
all. He was under his mother's thumb too much for
OUT OF PLACE. 83
Lois, whom tliat tliumb oppressed and crushed ; she
preferred a more vig•oro^^s independence, like John's for
instance ; and a man who woukl 1 le proud of her, and
not ashamed.
The ohl passion of home that possesses the heart of
the mountaineer came upon Lois with its loving sick-
ness, its infinite yearning'. She felt as if she could not
breathe in these cold, spacious, unhomelike rooms ; she
must go back to her simpler mode of life, to her moun-
tains, her crags, her mere, her home. Bernard Haynes
and all his grandeur were as nothing to her compared
to the loveliness of her own. The daua;hter of the
fells, born and reared in the shadow of Helvellyn, she
must go back- to her cradle, else she would pine away
and die ; she must shake herself clear of the false
ilream that had bewitched her if she meant to see
happiness or fulfil her allotted length of days.
Mrs. Haynes found her standing thus by the window
in the drawing-room, those two dirty, crumpled, uii-
grammatical and ill-spelt letters, which had been the
awakening magicians, still in lier hands ; her lovely
face softened by its yearning dream ; her mind lost, her
thoughts away ; but, through the dream her resolve
sloMdy consolidating and fashioning itself to an intelli-
gible course of action.
The lady wallced up to her with her noiseless, stately
step ; and Lois, starting, made a little curtsey and said
84 WITH A SILKEN TIWEAD.
with perfect resj)ect but no assumption of equalitj^ :
" Mrs. Haynes, ma'am, if you please, I leave liere to-^
day."
Mrs. Haynes bent her head.
" The carriage shall be ready for you at your own
time," she said, her handsome eyes flashing with sudden
pleasure. " By what train ? "
" The soonest that will carry me, Mrs. Haynes, if
you please," Lois answered. " I have my things to
pack, and then I am ready."
" I hope you have not had bad news from home ? "
asked the lady politelj^, glancing at the letters in the
girl's hands.
Lois lifted up her beautiful eyes, again filled with
tears.
" Thank you, IMrs. Haynes, father's quite well ; but
I'm best at home," she said. *' It was a pitj" I ever
came."
" I think so too," answered the lady significantly ;
"but I do not think you have any cause to say so.
You have been well treated."
" No, Mrs. Haynes, I have not been well treated,"
said Lois with a huskj^ voice. " You and Miss Haynes
have made me feel that I am not good enough for you ;
all that I could do and say would not make j'ou cotton
with me, and I have been miserable ever since I came.
But don't tliink I want to force myself where I am not
OUT OF FLACE. 85
wanted," she added. " I Lave a home, if it is small ;
and I would rather be in my own with father and them
as loves me than be here with all of yon, where no one
but Mr. Bernard can abide me ; and he don't stand np
for me."
On which she broke down; and retreated sobbing
from the room.
" Poor girl ! " said Mrs. Haynes to herself, pitiful
now because victorious. " I know that I have been
cruel ; but what could I do ? It was destruction else ;
and Bernard will live to thank me, as will she. That
dear, foolish boy, with his dreams and absurdities, to
imagine that he could begin Communism and inaugu-
rate Utojiia at Midwood ! What an abyss I have saved
iim from ; and how cleverly I have managed him ! "
8G WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
CHAPTER Y.
LIKE TO LIKE.
If Bernard was to fulfil his mother's prophecy and live-
to thank her for preventing his ruin, that time was
evidently not at this present date. If he was " viewy "
and unpractical, because young and romantic, he was.
neither fickle nor unloving ; and his aftection for Lois-
was as sincere as his dream of the future they might
have made together, had but a friendly fate permitted,.
Avas impossible. Her virtues were of a kind specially
delightful to him in his present phase of thought ; they
were virtues which upheld his ideal of fraternal equality
and made it seem reasonable as well as good; while
they deepened his revolt against caste distinctions and
the vices of his own order whereby such an angel as
Lois Lancaster Avas excluded and abased. Hence he
had wished to make her his wife almost as much for
moral reasons as for personal liking, and drew as much
comfort from his reverence as joy from his love.
When, therefore, she left in this abrupt way, almost
at an hour's notice, declining to give any satisfactory
explanation because declining to have any private^
LIKE TO LIKE. 87
interview with him ; refusing his escort to the railway
station ; saying only, when he pleaded and remonstrated :
'• I will write to you, Mr. Bernard," and: "'Please not to
press me, Mr. Bernard, I have my reasons," and the
like — the poor lad fell into the despair to which we all
succumb when the fool's paradise in which we have
been living melts into thin air and leaves us only the
rugged rocks of the sterile desert — when our gods lie
shattered at our feet — stocks and stones no more divine
than ourselves.
But despair, tears, protestations, what not, it had
to he borne; and lovely Lois Lancaster went off, ac-
cording to her desire ; unattended and in silence ; but
leaving behind her the distinct impression that all was
over between them, and that she, the beggar girl, de-
clined the offer of King Cophetua to share his pui-ple,
and preferred her own native rags instead.
" You have broken my heart, mother," cried Bernard
with a boy's self-abandonment to sorrow.
" My dear boy, I have saved you from destruction,"
was his mother's reply, made calml}^ from the heights
of superior^ wisdom. " Had it not been for me you
would have been lost for ever ; but I rescued you just
in time."
" Saved ! Rescued ! You call forfeiture of my word,
breaking my promise, destroying a noble woman's hap-
piness and my own for life, salvation, rescue ! " he cried
88 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
bitterly. " I shall never see her equal, never ! Slie was
an angel — simple, sweet, strong, pure ! You did not
know her, mother, because you would not. You were
prejudiced from the beginning, and you saw everything
through a false medium."
"You mean that you did, my boy," she answered.
" What I saw was a pretty and creditable young woman,
well-mannered for her station if ridiculous enough when
brought into a false equality with such as ourselves ; a
young woman who will make a capital wife for a well-
to-do farmer or small tradesman, where she will not
have too much hard work to do, but who, as the wife
of a gentleman, would have dragged her husband into
the lower levels of society and would have ruined the
prospects and position of his whole family. That is
what I see, my son, and I think my eyes have been the
clearer."
" And your heart the colder," flashed Bernard, stung
by love out of his ordinary filial respect.
She bent her proud head in acquiescence.
" Yes, my heart the colder because my reason the
keener," she answered, fixing her bright eyes on liim
steadily ; " and reason goes farther than fancy."
" And wisdom— the best wisdom — the wisdom Avhich
accepts things, not appearances, — goes farther than that
cold, dead, godless thing you call reason ! " said Ber-
nard, pacing the room feverishly, prepared for a month's
LIKE TO LIKE. 89
close arguing; Avliich liis motlier cleverly avoided by
going into the dining-room and giving some unneces-
sary orders to the butler.
Difficult as Mrs. Haynes foiind her boy in tlie first
hours of his disappointment, he was slightly more
amenable than Lois found her father. If a young
man's crushed love is hard to soothe, Avhat is an am-
bitious man's crushed hope when his cunningly devised
schemes are torn into shreds, and the cup which has
touched his lips is dashed to the ground before he has
tasted the rich wine on which he has counted as his
life's future food? I^ond, in his dry way, as old Lan-
caster was of Lois — a fondness greatly helped by his
faculty of arithmetical calculation — proud of her as a
bonny thing to look at, and lonesome as he found his
home without her — the beershops getting the good of
her absence — -he had no fair greeting for her when he
returned late in the evening from Keswick, and found
his daughter in her every-day dress, sitting by the
kitchen fire as if no possibility of a grander time, when
she should be a lady with waiting-maids at her feet,
had ever crossed her days ; as if she were content to
live and die in the poor obscurity into which she had
been born.
"Why, Lois, lass, how's this? " he cried as he strode
in, shaking the wet from his dripping clothes and staring
at her as if she had been the Armboth Bogle — so at least
00 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
slic told John Musgrave some time afterwards, Avlien
Bernard Haynes and Midwood and her chances of ad-
vancement had all sunk back into the phantasmagoria
of a feverish dream.
'■ I have come Lack, father," Lois answered laconi-
cally.
" Ay, lass, a Llind man conld see that ! " he said.
" But why, for mercy's sake ? — that's what gets over
mo!— why?"
" Because I was not suited and was not wanted where
I "was," she said with a certain soft dignity that was
infinitely touching; "and because, father, I made a
mistake. These grand folk arc nut for me, nor I for
them, and I've done with them for ever ! "
" Softly, my lass ; softly there ! You've got to reckon
with your father before you've wiped that chalk off the
door," cried old Lancaster with an expression on his face
known only too well to Lois. " We dalesmen are not
of the kind to be taken up and laid down again like a
bit of stack peat. That young man, that Mr. Bernard
there, he courted you ; and by the Lord ho shall wed
you or I'll know the reason why ! "
" No, father, he shall not," said Lois ; " for I'll not
wed him. He'd be willing, fast enough, whatever his
mother and sisters may say, biit it's me as cries oft". I'll
have none of him, not if it was ever so ! "
" And I say you shall ! " said her father sternly.
LIKE TO LIKE. 91
Lois lifted up her head.'
" I'll not wed where I don't love," she said, very quiet
in her manner, pale as to ftice, resolute as to accent ;.
" and I find that I don't love Mr. Bernard Haynes as
I ought if I was to he his wife; so I'll not make-
believe the thing I can't sw^ear to as certain sure."
" We'll see, my lass ; we'll see ! " was his reply. " If
there's been foul play between them all we'll see to its-
being righted, or my name's not Tim Lancaster ! I'll
have no young fly-by-night coming here after my girl,
and then crying off when he finds he's changed his
mind."
" Father ! " she interrupted a little scornfully as well
as angrily. " Don't I tell you that it's me who has
cried off, and not Mr. Bernard who wanted to get shot
of me ? How can you go harping and harping like that
on such a foolish Avord when I tell yon the exact con-
trary, as plain as tongue can speak ? I Avouldn't marry
Mr. Bernard Hayes and have to live at Midwood yonder,
no, not if he was made of gold ; so noAV ! They ain't
the sort for me, and I'm not the sort for them ; and
I'd rather never have a name to my back at all than a
name I didn't agree with and hold by. Leave me to
manage my OAvn affairs, and I'll not ask your help."
"You're a fool," said old Lancaster coarsely. " Such
a chance doesn't come twice in a lifetime, and you've
got your fortune in your OAvn hands."
92 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
" I onl}^ rue that it came once to me ! " cried Lois,
Inirstiug into tears. "" I know I'd have been saved a
sight of money and a vast of trouble if I hadn't been
fool enough to think that I was fit to wed with a gentle-
man like Mr, Bernard Haynes, or that I could ever be
the like of his mother and sisters I "
" The long and the short of it is just this, Lois, they've
been badgering you," cried old Lancaster, rufiSing his
grizzled hair in his wrath.
" They behaved as fine as if I was one of themselves,"
answered Lois with a mental twinge at the falsehood
which she felt herself compelled to make for peace' sake ;
*' but I came to my senses while I was there, father. It
wouldn't do for me to wed with Mr. Bernard. He is too
far away from such as us, and nought but sorrow would
come of it."
"And his money?" cried old Lancaster with an
oath.
" Father, when I marry I'll marry the man, not his
money," she answered coldly.
" Marry ! — when you marry, lass, it will be some
poor crazy old tinkler, I'm thinking, if this is the way
you are going to carry on," said her fiither passionately.
"Who, in mercy's name, but yourself would have
given up such a chance as this ? "
" Every honest girl who held herself as she ought,
and who disdained to push herself where she was not
LIKE TO LIKE. 93
wanted," Lois replied, holding her head high ; " and
I tell you again, father, I'd rather eat my fingers off
than wed with Mr. Bernard Haynes to have to live at
Midwood with his mother and sisters. So that's plain ;
and I can't make it no plainer ! " Saying which she
retreated with dignity to her own little room upstairs,
and, taking her slate, wrote on it the first draught of
the letter of renunciation which to-morrow's post was
to bear to Bernard Haynes.
Life is simple enough and action easy while our
feelings are single and not complex, while our motives
run clear and are not entangled ; but when desires pull
passionately to the left and reason warns us loftil}'
to the right, when self-interest and self-respect are at
war together, it is difficult to decide on our best course ;
and even when decided on it is difiicult to follow. This
was the case now with Lois. She knew qiiite well
what she ought to do, and she intended to do it. Still
it was hard. The vision of her grandeur had been
very seductive while it lasted and before it had been
tested; and, naturally enough, it was a trial to put
off her regal gold and purple and come back to her dull
homespun. But it had to be done.
She had never been deeply in love with Bernard.
He was not the kind of man Avhom she would have
chosen for himself, and before every one else in the
world, to be her husband. He was too refined in
•94 WITH A SILKEN TTTBEAD.
-thought, too subtle, too much above her head to be
completely sympathetic with her; that well-to-do
tradesman of her earliest aspirations was more the
kind of thing to suit. A county gentleman, with
views, was altogether beside the mark; and she was
sufficiently reasonable to confess all this to herself— and
to act as she confessed. Also, she knew full well that,
as she had said to her father, she was entirely out of
place among his people. Her self-respect in this had
been wounded ; it must now reassert itself. She must
show them all — that proud woman more than all — that
she, the daughter of the fells, had too much inde-
pendence of character to force herself into a family
which did not want her — to marry for money one
whom she found that she did not really love. All the
same it was a sacrifice ; and she suffered while she
made it.
But she did make it ; and gallantly. She wrote her
first copy on the slate, and by care she managed to
write it correctly. It was without care and by the
;spontaneity of nature that she wrote it with dignity.
She sent these few lines, she said, to wish Mr. Bernard
and them all good-bye — to break off the engagement
between them — because she was not fit for them, and
they could not make her feel at home with them, and
-things that went wrong in the beginning generally
£nished off worse at the end. She saw that she was
LIKE TO LIKE.
in Mrs. Haynes's way and that she could do nothing
to please her ; and it was best to part now, before it
became liarder to do. He had better keep to his own,
she said — and the tears fell fast as she added, re-
nouncing for ever all her splendid hopes — she would
keep with hers"; and not all the world could offer
would make her go through another such time as she
had had at Midwood, or induce her to see him again
or cany on with him in any way. She ended by
wishing him and them all health and happiness and
"by being his obedient servant, Lois Lancaster.
So ended the dream of the beggar-girl and the
endeavour of our modern King Cophetna to lift her
to a place beside him on his throne ; so ended the new
Utopia planned by the young reformer — the regenera-
tion of society that was to follow on the sons of the
aristocracv taking to themselves wives fiom among
the daughters of the peasantry. It was a prosaic
sermon on a poetical text, a halting envoi to a gracious
idyl; but it was inevitable, as things stood, and the
■only way of wisxlom open to either.
" Now, nry dear," said Mrs. Ilayncs to her daughter
Maud, after she had read the letter which Bernard
flung over to her in a paroxysm of- despair and she
had failed in her first attempts to soothe him ; but she
knew quite well that time would do what she had not
been able to do, and that he Avould live to be happy in
06 WITH A SILKEN- THREAD.
her way and to thank her for havino: saved him from
his own; " now, was I right or wrong? Had I opposed
this mad passion of Bernard's he would have married
otit of hand. He was fascinated for the time, and saw
all things as he wanted to see them. Quietly letting
him prove for himself the incongi'uity of the whole
matter, letting the impossibility show itself, saved him
and us. Ah, Maud ! a silken thread makes the hest
driving-rein a woman can have when she has to deal
with man ; and to check while seeming to permit is
the only way to secure the command."
She smiled radiantly. She was pleased with herself
and her method ; and success repaid her for many a
hitter moment.
" You are always right, mamma," said Maud, cling-
ing to her with a gesture of special fondness.
" And the yoimg woman has behaved admirably,"
returned Mrs. Haj'nes ; " with great good sense and
dignit}' ; that I feel bound to confess,"
"Yes," said Maud with a happy smile; "most ad-
mirably. I quite like her now."
Mrs. Haynes looked at her daughter keenly.
"So has some one else, I fancy," she said with
meaning. " Can I read yoti, my Maud ? "
The girl hid her face on her mother's shoulder.
" At last ! " she breathed with a happy sigh. " Oh,
mamma, I am so happy ! "
LIKE TO LIKE. 97
" I knew it would come, my dear," said Mrs. Haynes.
" I am charmed, for you will now be at rest, my Maud ;
all the same, I never doubted it,"
" I did, mamma ; once — when that girl was here,"
said Maud.
" Yes, we were in danger certainly then," returned
her mother ; " and we should have been lost for ever
had Bernard carried out his mad design. But we were
saved, you see; saved without loss — quitte pour la pew!'"
" And you managed so well, mamma ! — and I was so
stupid and impertinent ! " Maud said with loving
penitence. She was so happy that she was glad to be
repentant; it seemed to add to her present delight
to say how far she had failed in the past.
Her mother smoothed her glossy hair.
"This is the reward for which we mothers long,"
she answered ; " that our plans should succeed and our
children acknowledge our foresight and good sense.
Xow we must think of settlements and your trous-
seau, my darling ; and next year perhaps we may have
to repeat it all over again for Cora."
" With Charley, mamma ? "
" With Charley."
" I thought so ! " cried Maud. " Dear little Cora,
what a sweet little wife she will make ! How much
I wish that Bernard would marry Edith ! " she added
with a little sigh.
VOL. r. H
98 WITH A SILKEN THREAD.
" So he will some day," said Mrs. Haynes. " He is
broken-hearted now, poor boy — or thinks that he is —
and that this young woman from Wythbxirn is the only
creature Avorth a second thought in the world. He
swears that I have ruined his happiness for life and
that he will never marry any one if he cannot have
Miss Lancaster ; but I know him better than he knows
himself; — and some day he will marry Edith Grattan."
" That will be delightful ! — what a haj)py family
party ! " cried Maud, kissing her mother enthusiasti-
cally just as Sir James Aitken rode up to the door, and
the first chapter of her book of betrothal opened.
It was a curious coincidence — but then life is made up
of curious coincidences — that on the evening of the very
day in April when Bernard disappointed his mother's
hopes and formally refused to propose to Edith Grattan,
Lois, who had been but pale and wan all through the
winter, was standing out for a moment by the garden
gate at Brigend, watching the last rays of the sun
slowly passing from the fell-tops when John Musgrave
came riding by. John had been a good deal on and off
at the house this Avinter ; and folks did say — but then
folks say a vast ihey have no call to, as John always
answered when attacked on the subject — that he had
helped old Lancaster out of a pinch which else had
threatened him severely' — that pinch for the need of
which he had blustered to Lois loud and long, and
LIKE TO LIKE. 99
«worn that he would take the law of young Bernard
Hajmes and make him smart for his villany. It did not
make him lower his voice to he told that he had not a
hair's-breadth of standing-ground. He was angry and
disappointed ; and when men are in a rage they do not
care much for reason. John's help however, tided him
■over the Avorst part ; and he, for his part, was by no
means sorrj- to be of use to Lois Lancaster's father. It
made the future bright and the pi'esent very sweet, and
it seemed somehow to redeem the mistakes and disasters
of the past ; and it made Lois tender and patient Avith
her rustic friend — gratitude gilding the roiigh metal
which might be accepted but could not be denied, and
rendering all that was homely beautiful and comely.
"Eh?" he said as he came up. "You out in the
■damp like this ? Are you doing wise-like, Miss Lan-
caster ? Aren't you best indoors ? "
He spoke with an indescribable accent of tenderness,
his fine blue eyes bent on her with grave and serious
affection.
" It is very mild, Mr. John," Lois answered, blush-
ing vividly.
"But you are very frail," John returned, hitching
his horse to the rail and passing through the gate to
place himself by her side. " We must take care of you,
you know. Good gear's bad to spare ! "
" You are very good to think so much of mc, Mr.
100 WITH A SILKEN TUBE AD.
John," she said, playing with her rihhons, and looking
sninemely pretty if a little awkward.
"Do you like me to mind you as much as I do?"
returned John in a lower voice.
" Yes " said Lois, looking down.
" I don't fash you when I care for you ? "
The w-ords seemed somehow to choke him ; and he-
waited for their answer as a man waits for the verdict
which will give him life or death.
" No," she said.
" You mean that, Lois ? "
"Yes, Mr. John; I mean it," she replied.
He clasped her in his arms.
"Eh, my lass!" he cried, his voice broken with
emotion ; " you've made a proud man of me to-night !
I've waited for you, Lois, as patiently as Jacob waited
for Eachel; and I've oft wondered if it would ever
come ! And now it has ; and you do mean it, lass ? "
"Yes," repeated Lois bashfully but firml3^ "I da
mean it, Mr. John."
"And you can make yourself hai-)p3'- with a rough
farmer body like me ; you as is a lady ? "
" Yes, I'll be happy," she answered.
He put back her face tenderly, almost reverently,
and kissed her fresh, fair lips.
" My lass ! " he said, straining her to him "like's best
to like, and love's more nor gear. The highest lady in
LIKE TO LIKE. 101
the land sliau't be better cared for nor you — shan't be
happier or more looked to; and, as for me, I'd not
change my place to-night with a crowned king on his
throne ! "
" Yes," said Lois, and she meant all that her words
implied ; '• like's best to like, as yon say, Mr. John ;
anything else is of no good. Bvit many a body goes the
wrong road that way, and it's a good job when they
find it out before it's too late."
"I'm not too late, am I?" asked John, Avith the
foolish repetition of one asking to be assured of that of
which he is already convinced. He was only a lover,
poor fellow, and no wiser than his kind.
" No," said Lois ; " you're in time, Mr. John."
" And you mean it ? " he reiterated.
She laid her hand in his.
" There's my hand on it," she said frankly. " Now do
you think I mean it ? "
" I do, my lass ! I do ! " he answered, kissing her a
little strongly; Lois making a feint to resist, as she
gasped breathlessly :
" Oh, Mr. John, such ways ! Well, if ever I saw the
like ! "
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
CHAPTER I.
The world was dull and life was veiy dreary to young
Anthony Carthew ; and all sorts of strange unanswered
questions gathered heavily upon his heart, like the sad
dreams which oppress the mournful. For what was he
living ? — to what aim, end, purpose or intention ? For
pleasure ? — pleasure in the dullest of societies and the
most uninteresting of countries? For ambition? —
what ambition was there for a daily tutor in Stoneleigh,
whose best pupil was the exciseman's eldest boy, and
whose noblest energies were fulfilled when he had
ground his " hie, ha3C, hoc " into the unwilling brains
of half a dozen farmers' sons ? For a pleasant home-
life of love and sweet affection ? — but his possessions in
that way were not rich enough for the needs of the
poorest heart. With a half-sister, much older than
himself, who usurped the domination without granting
the tenderness of a mother and who thought that the
106 THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
fit guidance of youth meant the supi:)ression of its in-
stincts and the annihilation of all its jo^'^s, — with only
such a companion as this, there could not be much love
shut up for him within those four walls called by cour-
tesy his home. So that, turn which way he would, his
whole life seemed barren and his very existence a
mistake.
Anthony was not unreasonable in his discontent ; for
in truth never was there a more comfortless life than
that which Eachel Cavthew provided for her young
brother in that miserable house of theirs. Old maiden-
ism was stamped on every square inch of the naked
cleanliness and exasperating order which she had a
grim delight in scraping round her; and even mild,
well-conducted, sober-tempered men were tempted to
commit unusual domestic crimes for the sake of breaking
the hard lines of her hideous regularity. All gloom
and narrowness — all repression and domination— in
such a melancholy dungeon as this Rachel thought to
forge the links and grappling-irons which were to save
her youthful brother from external evil, and anchor
him to the safety lying in the calm of home aifections.
Can 3'ou wonder, then, that Anthony was weary of a
life which gave him only such a stagnant pool as thi&
for the bay which held its choicest pearls ?
Fifty at the youngest, stiff-backed, lean, bony and in-
expressibly sour-tempered, Rachel Carthew was a living
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 107
protest against every grace of womanliood and every
suave deliglit of life. No one had been ever known to
love her — not even when she was young and what
people, who measure beauty by length of inches and
weight of bone, call a " fine woman ; " and now, of
coiirse, such a contingency was out of the question — she
was as far removed from love in any of its forms as if
she had been one of the Gorgon sisterhood unearthed.
But the hardest have a soft place somewhere ; and even
Eachel had her preferences. The soft place in her heart
was given to a certain little Nelly Blair, the daughter
of the Stoneleigh attorney ; who thus was admitted
into the huls clos which so few had found means to
penetrate.
Nelly Blair was a pretty little creature of the apple-
cheek order; with large light-blue eyes, well shaped
but inexpressive ; a fair, round, fat face ; a short, bhmt,
positive nose ; red lips, neither full nor wide ; a figure
made up of a succession of circles ; and with a temper
as even as a bowl of fiesh milk. Such as she was, she
was Eachel C'arthew's chosen friend ; and Eachel had
her designs on her friend's future fortunes. Now
Anthony well knew what those designs were, and gave
way to them according to the habitual indolence of his
character, according to the deference he always paid his
sister and according to the pliancy of the discontented
and unhappy. The suit went by Eachel's ruling ; and in
108 THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
due time Antlion}-, clieated Toy tlie crying need of sym-
pathy into the belief that he loved Nelly Blair, who, by
the way, was the only girl of his own age and condition
with whom he was acquainted, made his proposal in
proper form and in proper form was accepted. For
though he was only the village teacher of Humanities,
he was not poor ; and though Nelly was the attorney's
daughter, she had no portion. So that they were about
equal in rank and condition ; and neither could despise
the belongings of the other.
And now Anthony thought he should be happy;
surely j^es — ^was he not loved and did he not love ?
But, to his shame as well as to his sorrow, the dead-
Aveight was not lifted from his heart nor the shadow
on his life lightened. He was not happier than he Avas
before ; and often a great deal more bored, because less
alone. For the rest, Eachel was grimly satisfied and
Xelly temperately content ; smiling Avhen her band-
some lover met her and smiling just as placidly Avhen
he left her; smiling if she said: "What a long time
since I have seen you ! " and smiling in precisely the
same curves and depth of dimples if she said instead :
" What ! here again so soon ! " In short, Xelly was
always the same. She lived in her small world of
crochet-work and household duties, of jams and pickles
and bead-purses and cunning economies, with a calm-
ness and equanimity that likened her to a monotonous
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 109
plain without thorns, weeds or flowers : or to a wave-
less lake beneath a colourless gray sky, tossed by no
passion and beautified by no reflection. Doubtless she
was very good ; but she was horribly uninteresting.
Anthony was angry with himself that he was not
more contented ; for was he not truly, really, devotedly
in love ? Eachel said he was, and Eachel knew every-
thing ; and Xelly was satisfied — and would she ba that
if he failed even in the smallest particular ? It was
said young girls were exacting ; and she was doubtless
like the rest.
More weary and melancholy than ever, one day
Anthony plunged into the only square yard of copse to
be seen for miles round Stoneleigh. It was tlie wood
of the neighbourhood, and might have been an acre cut
out of the Black Forest for the magnificent ideas of
gloom and grandeur associated with it by the Stoneleigh
people ; and naturally it was a favourite place with
Anthony, with his romantic tendencies and insatiable
love of nature. Lost in his own vao-iie dreaminsrs, his.
head buried in his hands, over which his picturesque
black hair hung thick and wavy, Anthony's senses were
closed against the outside world, when suddenly a voice,
most rarely sweet and musical, asking with the dain-
tiest dash of foreign accent : " What was the name of this
wood ? — and in which direction was Stoneleigh ? " woke
him to the knowledge that a ladv was standing; before
110 TEE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
him. Conftised and startled, he sprang to his feet, and
his eyes met two Large hazel orbs fixed with a strange
perplexing expression on his face.
"This is Beech Copse, madam; and Stoneleigh lies
to the north," stammered Anthony.
"Thank yon; yon are kind," said the lady, still
keeping her perplexingly Deautiful eyes fixed steadily
upon him. " And you, monsienr — forgive me the
liberty — but do yon, too, live at Stoneleigh ? "
" Yes," said Anthony, blushing.
"I am glad of that," she answered with a low sweet
laugh ; " for I am your neighbour noAV, and shall hope
to see you sometimes at Oakfell Hall."
" Oakfell Hall ! " echoed Anthony in a tone of
surprise. " In its ruined state, how can you bo there,
madam ? It is years since it was inhabited, and it is
little better than a ruin."
" I am usually ver}- rapid in my movements," said
the hidy with a (lingular smile. " I took tlie place
only a few days ago, certainly ; but if you will do mo
the pleasure of paying me a visit, you will I think
agree that I have not lost my time. Will you come ? "
Anthony stammered something, he scarcely knew
what; but it was sufficiently unintelligible to jiass for
an assent ; and the lady accepted it as such.
"Adieu then, monsieur ! " she said. " Eemember, I
•count on seeing you at the Hall; and soon — the sooner
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. ill
the more cliarming." She waved her hand, then
passed with a pretty, light, balancing step round the
clump of gorse that grew beside them. Anthony saw
her light-blue summer robe flutter through the golden
lacings of the blossoms, and it seemed as if heaven
itself had fluttered away in its folds.
With a magnificent burst of stoicism he left the copse
and came out upon the open common; and there,
walking in the direction of Stoneleigh, he saw the
flutter of a light-blue robe and a graceful head turned
back towards the road; one small fair hand holding
the chestnut curls from off the face. Was the air so
marvellously clear to-day that every line and hue and
movement of that figure should be preternaturally
distinct? — or was it, in very truth, a chapter of
glamour? and was Anthony under the spell of an
unblessed faj^? A couple of centuries ago he would
have thought himself possessed, and would have
straightway gone to a priest to be exorcised. Now,
with the light of science slanting in his eyes, he spoke
reasonably to himself of nerves and liver, of the virtue
that lay in calomel and black-draught, and of the
foolish excitability of those who dwell much alone in
•country places. But he was bewitched nevertheless.
112 THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
CHAPTER II.
" Who has taken tlie old Hall, Eacliel— Oakfell Hall?"
cried Anthony, in a rushing headlong kind of manner„
He was out of breath and heated, having run all the
way home in the hope of overtaking that gracious form
gliding so swiftly iDcfore him ; and lie had been disap-
pointed.
" How did 3^on know it was taken at all ? " said
Rachel stiffly. She was displeased at his abrupt
entrance and more abrupt manner.
" Never mind that, but tell mc the name of the
person," said Anthony, still more impatiently.
" When you address me with becoming respect, I may
reply to you ; not before," was Rachel's frosty answer.
" Pshaw ! I meant nothing disrespectful, sister. I
only want to know the lady's name."
"How do you know it is a lady?" asked Rachel
again, with a quick suspicion in her glance. "Yoi^
are very odd to-day, Anthony."
"Why, sister?" he answered, forcing a laugh and
putting on a caressing manner that was as false and
strained as the rest. "What is there odd in asking
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 113
the name of a new tenant of the ohl Hall ? I heard it
was let, and I simply wished to know to whom, as any
one else would wish to know. It was a piece of ordinary
gossip, snrel}" not surprising."
" Well — there ! that's enough ahont it, boy ! I don't
know her name and I don't want to know it. She
has no name at all, I dare say. Very likely she is an
adventuress, and thinks it best to leave her old address
behind her." Eachel smiled grimly; her gruff wit
pleased her.
" Eachel, j^ou are absurd," cried Anthony angrily ;
"and uncharitable beyond bounds. It is really too
bad — a stranger whom you have never ever seen — te-
at once conclude evil ; it is too revolting — too un-
womanly ! " Anthony was in much agitation when he
spoke, and kept his face turned away.
Eachel opened her eyes. In all the years of her
young brother's life, during which he had submitted to
her uncomfortable authority like the most dutiful son,
he had never spoken to her so disrespectfully as now.
She turned upon him savagely, and while rolling out
her deep-mouthed peroration, the door-bell rang and
Nelly Blair entered.
Vapid and unmeaning — with those abrupt decided
manners which have no grace in them, and dressed in
the singularly unbecoming fashion delighted in by
staid 3'oung ladies in the country to whom beauty of
VOL. I. . I
114 THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
toilette is a sin, and wlio cannot, for the life of tliem,
divorce elegance from frivolity, f;\sliion from worthless-
ness — Nelly offered sixcli a painful contrast to the
beautiful stranger whom he had just met, that Anthony
felt like one who had Leen blind or crazed, and whose
senses were that moment restored. Had he ever really
loved Nelly? — thought her lovely or found her lovable?
Was that the portion which life had meted out to him ?
and was he to accept it with thankfulness? Surely
it was all a dream, a hideous dream, from which his
guardian angel had awakened him before too late while
standing there by the golden gorse in the lieech-wood
cOpse. Nell}^ was not sensitive, and her heart gave
her no revelations. She shook her lover's hand just as
nsual ; looked into his pale face with her usual smile ;
cauglit the earnest piercing eyes upon her own jnst as
placidly as ever ; then turned to Rachel amiably, and
brushed her corkscrew curls by way of kiss.
" Well ! the Hall is taken at last," said Nelly, sitt^ing
down in a fat little bundle, and unfastening her bonnet.
" Queer, tumble-down old place ! I am sure I wonder
at any one living there ; don't you, Kachel ? "
" Who has taken it ? " asked Anthony quickly.
" Oh, a foreign Avoman ; the Countess Melusine, or
some such name. Who she is I don't know, you know ;
but father drew the agreement, and she signed herself the
Countess Melusine — such a heathenish name too ! Oh,
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 115
Eacliel, ain't it a good thing ? — father has agreed with
Joe Styles to draw his coals, and Joe will do it for a
shilling a week less than what we joaid old Ned. I am
so glad ! And, Eachel, how did yonr potted beef turn
out ? Mine was all spoilt. I put in too mueli pepper,
and father conghed himself nearly into a fit. Tity,
wasn't it, such good stuff to ho, wasted ? "
'•For how long is the agreement made, Nelly?"
asked Anthonj'-, kicking up a square of drugget, much
to Eachel's displeasure.
" With Joe Styles ? "
" No, no, Nelly ! Can 3'ou never rise out of the
kitchen ? " said Anthony scornfully. '• I mean the
lady's — the Countess Melusine's — for the Hall."
" Oh, I don't know, I'm sure, Anthony. But how
«he runs in your head ! What is it to ns how long she
stays? She will very likely be too proud to notice ns."
" Anthony, I cannot understand you," said Iiachel
very sternly. She had kept her eyes fixed on her
brother for some time ; and Kachel, though narrow,
was sharp.
" Perhaps not, sister. Did you ever understand me? "
With which the young man flung himself out of the
room, swinging the door after him in no very gentle
fashion.
" Anthonj- 's queer to-day," said Nelly equably, as she
threaded her needle. '• What is the matter, Eachel ? "
116 THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
" I cannot tell yon," said Eacliel, straightening the
disordered square with angiy hands. " The letting of
the Hall seems to have upset him somehow, I think
that foreign woman has bewitched him."
" Dear me ! " said Nelly laughing. " "Well, that is
odd, now ! Why, I have never thought of her twice !
Men are queer folk. Eachel; not half so rational as
women, after all."
" Some are not, certainly," said Eachel ; meaning
Anthony as the apex of the world's j^yramid of fools.
After what was to Anthony a constrained and most
wretched evening, but which seemed to Nelly just the
same as all other evenings and to Eachel neither more
nor less filled A\-ith foolishness and the waywardness of
life, the lawyer's daughter, to her lover's profound
relief, prepared to go home. Never had he felt her
presence so oppressive nor her society so uninteresting ;
never had Eachel appeared harsher, less womanly, less
admirable ; never had he felt himself less suited to his
companions, more lonely in heart or more desirous of
escape. He could think of nothing but that beautiful
stranger who spoke to him so kindly in the wood,
whose smile had made his life a glory, and Avhose
friendship seemed as if it would be no unworthy fore-
taste of heaven. He could render no account to himself
for the persistency of his thoughts. Youths of his age
and temperament are rarely introspective, and for the
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 117
most part content themselves with feeling, without
caring to examine ; and Anthony gave himself up to
the tide without seeking to fathom its depth or discern
its outlet. Time enough for that when the harbour
was reached or the wreck came.
The weary night passed, and the dull morning
broadened into day. But the hours seemed to Anthony
to lag as they had never lagged before — as if they
were all halt and lame, staggering one step where
formerly they ran two — until he stood at the lodge-
g'ate of the Hall. Had a magician passed through that
ruined place? or how was it that the waste and desola-
tion which had grown round the Hall in its seven
years' desertion had been removed vvitli such marvel-
lous speed? The tangled shruljbery was thinned and
trimmed ; the broad walks, which had grown green
with moss and weeds, were newly gravelled, hard-
rolled, smooth and firm; the lawn was closely mown,
and from rank coarse grass spangled with ox-eyes and
the bitter hawkweed, had turned to moss close-grown
xind fragrant ; the flower-beds had been cleared of their
waste of nettles and groundsel and were now gay with
the choicest flowers; while the house itself was changed
in all but the mere outside lines — trellis-work, paint
and gilding, marble and paper and cement transforming
its whole appearance and creating a palace from a ruin.
But the marvel of it all was the exceeding celerity
118 THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
■with whicli tlie transformation had been accomplished^
and the nnostentatious manner in which it had been
done.
Anthony was bewildered ; and Avhile looking about
him, almost superstitionsl}^ — " I have been exj)editious,.
monsieur, have I not?" — said that sweetest voice which
the world had ever heard ; and the Countess stood
noiselessly beside him.
In her fresh morning dress, with the soft wind
blowing her chestnut curls loosely over her face and
giving a warmer tinge to her fair cheek, with her
strange eyes so full of hidden meanings looking at
him more kindly than woman's eyes had ever looked
before, her smiling mouth and graceful figure, she
seemed more than mortal to the young country tutor,
accustomed only to the dull dowdyism of -Nelly Blair
and the rest of the " second set " in Stoneleigh. He
scarcely knew what he answered. He blushed, hesi-
tated, stammered, much as a young Greek shepherd
might have done if a goddess had suddenly revealed
herself: And something never felt before rose up
within him ; the inner depth was for the first time
struck, the living spring for the first time oj^ened.
The acquaintance was not twenty-four hours old, but
already it had stolen from Anthony the sacred treasure
of his life.
Plow the time passed he never knew. He thought
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 119
lie had been about an liour, perhaps a couple of hours,
at the Hall, when the sunset fell and the moon came
out. He had spent then, the whole afternoon and part
of the evening in the gardens with the lady, and had
taken his delight in such deep draughts that he had
scarce been able to understand its flavour. But if
Anthony had been nnconscioiis of all save feeling, the
Countess had done her appointed work with vigour
and understanding ; and long before parting-time had
come had learnt the names, biographies and rent-rolls
of every family in the neighbourhood, their weak
points and their strong ones, where they were most
vulnerable and where they were intact. Anthony was
too much absorbed to notice the greedy interest which
she lent to this description ; too much fascinated by
her grace and kindness to ask himself why she cared to
know all these minutiai of people whom she had never
seen, or of what possible interest it could be to her that
young Mr. Briggs had two thousand a year and old
Mr. Smith four ; that the Hopgoods were the principal
friends of the neighbourhood ; that the Joneses —
retired Liverpool merchants — were said to play at
ruinous stakes sometimes ; while Captain MacArthur
was a professed gambler and lived by the Baden
tables.
If Anthony had looked at his companion as he
detailed this last bit of local gossip, he would have
120 THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
seen that she changed colour and slightly frowned,
while something that might have been a naughty
expletive, from the sound, rippled musically over her
lips. But he paid no attention to this, nor to the
inexplicable half-muttered exclamation : " Keady made
to my hand ! " said in the sweetest and gentlest of
voices, with the brightest of glances flung far over the
landscape.
The Countess laughed. " I could tell you more than
this, Monsieur Antoine," she said pleasantly. "My
friend M. le Baron von Guldeustern has told me a
pretty little nest of secrets — perhaps more than you
know of here in your virtuous little valley."
And then Anthony was gracefully dismissed, the
dinner-bell having rung : and midway in the broad
walk a fair soft hand joined itself with his, and the
loveliest of hazel eyes looked with swimming gentle-
ness upon him, as two small dewy lips parted, and a
voice as sweet as a young bird's expressed pretty
thankfulness for the honour of this long visit, and
many gracious hopes that it would be soon repeated,
and that they, the speakers, joined now hand in hand,
would become firm friends and great allies. Whereat
the delicate palm gave an almost imperceptible pressure
against his, and the dewy lips smiled a tenderer smile.
" For he is really very handsome and his innocence
is quite delicious," she said, speaking to her maid, to
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 121
whom she related the substance of this long day's
talk.
"Well, and after?" said that individual, in French,
seating herself familiarly by the Countess on the sofa.
" Well ! " answered the lady, yawning. " It is a
good field, my dear, and a safe venture. And now to
dinner ; for, oh, I am so hungry ! "
122 THE COUNTESS ME LU SINE.
CHArTEE III.
The Countess Melusine became tlie rage at Stoneleiglu
Flattcrinc; letters of iiitrodiaction from the Baron
Guldenstern, a Hanoverian nobleman of unqnestionable
standing, to the Hopgoods, Avho were the leading people
of the place, gave the pass-key into every house beside.
For the Baron was a great friend of the Plopgoods, and
one whose notice somewhat honoured them ; so that
any recommendation of his was sure of eager acknow-
ledgment. But among all her adherents none wor-
shipped her with so much singleness of heart — the
infatuation of none struck so deep or soared so high- —
as the young teacher's. To him she was a revelation,
a being from another world; it was adoration rather
than love that he felt for her ; and he could have died
for her simple wilful pleasure with as much rapture as
other men would have lived for their own. And she —
perhaps she pitied him; perhaps his innocence and
ingenuousness touched her ; perhaps even another feel-
ing came in ; — be that as it may, she spared him.
The great events of the present year at Stoneleigh
were the balls and parties given by the Countess at
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 123-
Oakfell Hall. The wealthy Joneses and the superior
Hopgoods both asserted that they had never seen any-
thing equal to them in their way ; and if aught had
been wanting to confirm their admiration of their new
neighbour, it would have been the faultlessness of her
entertainments. They were subjects of conversation
and imitation for years after, when the whole thing had
exploded and gone to the winds. To be sure, the play
was very deep and the fair Countess was no coward va>
her laughing bets ; to be sure too, no one ever seemed
to win, and the beautiful hostess herself always pro-
tested most strenuously of all, how she had been
victimized ; complaining in her fascinating accent of
the cruelty of her guests and their inhospitality to a.
stranger and a foreigner.
" It was very odd," Mr. Jones used to say when
counting up the stakes, " very odd indeed who had got
them all ! " And Mr. Joues, as a retired Liverpool
merchant, was pretty well up to gambling in all its
aspects.
Very odd too, was it how often the best cards turned
up at the right moment in the hand of the Countess ^
and how that pretty graceful way of shuffling of hers
seemed to bring her good luck : " As, indeed, it should,
as a reward of its gracefulness," said Mr. Briggs
gallantly, though somewhat ruefully as well, as he
disbursed his golden losses.
124 THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
The only joeison who held off from joining in this
universal choir of homage was Captain ]\Iac Arthur.
Between him and the lady existed a something — no
one exactly knew what — hut a certain mute distrust
on his part and a scarcel}^ veiled defiance on hers. He
went less to Oakfell Hall than any one in the neia'h-
bourhood, and often he used to say : "I cannot think
where I have seen the Countess before, but her face
seems so very familiar to me." Once he made the
same remark to her ; but she answered him so haughtily,
so much as if the assertion were an offence, that Captain
MacArthur thought it needful to apologize and assure
her he was mistaken. Still, there was nothing like
open hostility between them ; and the fre(]^uentcr of
the Baden tables simply forbore to adulate her like the
rest ; he never spoke with positive disfavour.
The most curious thing in her social tactics, was
how she contrived to be secretly on better terms with
half her society than came out in public bearing.
Almost all the gentlemen in turn were admitted to
private consultations in tliat delicious little boudoir
hung with blue and silver, that " gave off" from the
drawing-room, as she phrased it; but specially and
most frequently might young Mr. Briggs and old ]Mr.
Smith have been seen there by those of the curious
who had cared to penetrate the secrets of the Hall.
But no one knew of their long, earnest, gracious collo-
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
quies in the little boudoir of blue.and silver ; no one
knew that even Mr. Hopgood spent many a half-morn-
ing closeted there with the Countess in the freshest
and most becoming of morning toilettes, and with the
daintiest and most delicate of " slight refreshments "
on the table beside them ; no one know that Mr. Jones,
more than once, told the partner of his bosom a whole
chapter of fibs to conceal the fact that he had passed
hours at the Hall under a spell of blue and silver, and
old Ehenish wine in cut crj'stal goblets, and floating
muslin and chestnut-coloured curls, which for ever
culminated in a tangible result better not detailed
at length ; — no one knew all this, or what those tete-a-
tetes meant, or whether it was ambition or intrigue,
love, mone}^ or politics, that animated the Countess
Melusine and made her life the busy web of secrets
that it was. The most carefully guarded secret of all
was the iiltimate purpose of this blue-and-silver boudoir
off the drawing-room.
More noticeable than her secret intimacies with the
moneyed men of the district, becaxise more open, was
her daring patronage of young Anthony Carthew.
She invited him to her revels, where the Hopgoods
in their silks and flounces and severe local aristo-
cracy and the Joneses in their flighty haughtiness,
were assembled as by right ; and she bore down the
opposition which would have swamped a less popular
12G THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
innovator. And her protege did not disgrace lier.
With the tact of an inborn gentleman, he carried
himself with qnietness and dignity ; not making him-
self conspictious in any way and even catching some-
thing of the tone ahout him. And thongh it was all
new to him, no one who saw him in those brilliant
rooms, modest, frank and beautiful as became his
yonth, would liave supposed that he was making his
novitiate and that all, even to the proper mode of
address, was a new study to him. In one thing he was
markedl}^ distinct from the rest; he never played.
The Countess forbade him the card-room ; and he was
too happy to obey her desires to Avish to infringe them.
He was the only one in the place who knew of those
secret colloquies in the boudoir, and he used at times
to be vaguely fearful, mutely uneasy, as a faithful
hound might have been ; jealous of his mistress — but
jealous for love not self-seeking. But the Countess
never neglected him. On the contrary, she petted
him openly in her reunions, as she called them ; made
much of him, and kept him always about her; praising
his manners, his face, his talents, to every one around,
and raising him, by the might of her popularity, to
the startling equality of recognition even from the
Hopgoods themselves. Six months before he would as
soon have expected a bow or a " hand-shake " from the
Head of the Empire himself. But the daytime gave
THE COUNTESS 2IELUSINE. 127
Anthon}^ liis dearest pleasures, more so than even those
brilliant vivid evenings. He was rarely twenty-four
hours away from the Hall, excepting when the houdoir
was tenanted by a rival. Whole days would pass like
minutes, while he wandered in the garden by the side
of the Countess, whose varied knowledge and sparkling
wit enthralled him quite as much as her beauty or her
gracious kindness.
In the mean time what did Nelly Blair? and what
the austere Eachel ? They held themselves aloof fri)m
the popular current and predicted all sorts of shameful
couchings to tlie popular blindness. Nelly at last
began^to see that Anthony's life was centred in the
Hall, and that he had become indifferent to her even to
neglect, Eachel had long seen as much ; and she
fumed and raged and even wept for spite — but all as
unheeded as if she had been but the boisterous wind or
the angry rain lashing the distant fells.
Nelly took it much more quietly. She would listen
placidly to Rachel's fierce wrath, and, when she had
ended, would give a light sigh and say : " Oh, he'll
come round, llachel ! He is very j'oung, you know ;
and I always thought him rather foolish ; but he'll
come round in time. Let's wait and see, and not
trouble ourselves too much about him, Rachel."
128 THE COUNTESS MELIJSINE.
CHAPTEE IV.
One day Anthony was at tlie Hall as usual, in the blue-
and-silver boudoir. The Countess had never looked
more beautiful than .she did to-day and had never been
more charming. Her manners had a warmer shade than
nsiial, and were more familiarly caressing ; and, for the
first time, she spoke of her private afQxirs. Hitherto
she had only alluded incidentally to herself as the
daughter of a prince with a barrow-load of consonants,
and a name unpronounceable by any but a compatriot ;
or^ as the widow of The Coimt. She never gave Ids
name, though the German Baron had written it in his
letter of introduction, but so ill, that whether it were
Eussian or Eoumaic no one on this side Babel could
tell. For the rest, she was the Countess Melusino.
From speaking of her parentage and condition, touch-
ing feelingly on the various troubles she had under-
gone, and letting her sweet eyes, beaded with heavy
tears, rest lovingly on Anthony's eager face as she
spoke of death and disappointment and the fresh
heart's early sorrows, she glided by easy transition into
the more worldly matters of money and expense.
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 129
Lightly and without complaint, laughing in her
natural bird-like manner, she confessed to a tiresome
momentary embarrassment and to her need for a paltry
three hundred pounds — just for a few days ; certainly
not longer than a week ; merely to pay an insolent
tradesman who would not wait her convenience. And
then she appealed to her cher Monsieur Antoine to tell
her — she so ignorant of English business — how she
could raise that three hundred pounds ; for see !
touching her bracelets and pointing to her furniture —
what grand security she had to offer ! — and jewels and
plate, she had often heard men say, were only consoli-
dated bank-notes. And again she laughed; but her
cheeks were paler than before and her dark-browm
eyes were troubled.
Anthony's whole fortune was just one compact three
hundred pounds, — his, though his sister dealt with it
as her own, even sometimes, when irreflectively irate,
threatening to leave it away to strangers. Simple boy I
he had told this to the Countess the very first visit he
had paid her; but he had forgotten now; and her
request came as an unhoped-for opportunity to be of
service. Eager, proud, glad, he spoke to her of this
sum, which to him seemed, as indeed it was, a fortune.
" And would she not honour him by taking it ? She
might repaj^ it at her leisure, for he could scarcely
hope that she would honour him so far as to accept his
VOL. I. ' K
130 THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
little offering as a gift. Yet he would be so glad, so
proud, to offer it. Would she not render his whole life
hlessed by the remembrance that once he had been
enabled to spare her half an hour's embarrassment?
Would she not prove the sincerity of her friendship
for him, and test the loyalty of his devotion, by suffer-
ing him to aid her ? Oh ! would she not grant him
this, when if need be he would aid her with his
life?"
Powerfully moved, but respectful as ever, he took
her pliant hand and pressed it between his own, all his
honest love in his eyes and quivering like sunlight
over his face. In the lady's eyes flickered a painful
half-frightened glance. She looked fearfullj'' at the
door, then bent forward with a caressing movement, as
if to thank him. And then a longing loving look
veiled that painful glance; her cheek flushed, her lip
quivered and tears gathered rip into her eyes ; she laid
her hand on the boy's forehead, and with a voice full
of genuine tenderness said sadly : " No, no, my poor
child, not you ! "
" Maudite hete ! " growled Justine, the maid, watching
the scene through the keyhole. " She shall pay for
this ! "
That touch sealed Anthony's fate. He flung himself
at her feet ; he did not know Avliat he said, scarcely
what he felt ; he only knew that the barrier was
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 131
Lroken down and that the love which had hidden deep
in his heart, scarcely daring to confess itself in the
silence of his own thoughts, now leapt forth into the
life of words.
The Countess JMelusine was Tised to hear men talk
<of love, but this was something different from her iises.
She listened gently, tenderly ; and tears more than
once fell from her eyes. Then stooping forward, so
that her scented hair fell lightly over the young face
xij)turned to hers, she put her arms with a gesture of
almost maternal tenderness round his neck, and kissing
his forehead, said softlj'- : " My child, my poor boy, you
know not what you ask ! — you know not whom you
love ! I had a little dream of escape, Antoine," she
whispered ; " but that "
" Madame est sercie," said Justine, entering abruptly.
That night a rufSanly-looking man drove up to the
Hall-door.
" The game is up, my lady ! " he said insolently,
sweeping up some of the more portable valuables.
" They will be here to-morrow morning. Come ! you
have no time to wait. Get together all of your best ;
the rest must go. Sapristi ! what is she at now ? " he
cried, as the Countess stood pale and. as if stunned.
" Come, come, madame ! none of those airs, if you
please ! Bustle about and help Justine there ; and.
132 THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
if I find that you liave not ^^lajed yonr part well, you
know what yuii have to expect. How now ! Justine \
Justine ! quick ! the fool has fainted ! "
Before morning the Hall was deserted. Noise-
lessly, and without disturbing the English servants,
the three accomplices withdrew ; and by the time the
noonday sun brightened over Stoneleigh, a couple of
detectives held Oakfell and every soul in the place
knew the story.
" Tricked, by Jove ! " cried old Mr. Smith ; " and my
three thousand."- — •
" And. mine ! " swore young Mr. Briggs, with a large
jDercentage of expletives.
The Hopgoods said very little. It never came out
publicly whether they and the Joneses had been
swindled or no, or, if they had, to what extent. Only
Mrs. Hopgood complained to her daughters, some
months after, that their dear papa had grown very
close lately, very, and that she was afraid he had met
with heavy losses unknown to her ; and Mr. Jones
rode over to the County Bank the morning after the
explosion and spoke privately to the manager. The
Hopgoods wrote to Baron Guldenstern to learn more-
of his fascinating friend and protegee ; but, as soon as
the post could bring it, they got an answer, saying,
that he knew nothing whatever of an}' Countess M('lu-
sine, Avife or widow, and certainly gave no letter of
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE. 133
introduction to such a person for his good friends tlie
Hopgoods, or any one else ; but, he added, about fonr
years ago he, as well as all Baden, had been victimized
by a certain beautiful IVIadame la Baronne Me In sine
and her sister Justine, who acted as her maid, both of
whom belonged to one of the cleverest and best-
organized bands of swindlers in France or Germany.
And perhaps his good friends the Hopgoods had been
visited by these worthy people, who unfortunately had
got into his confidence and purse ; when, if so, adieu to
all hope of reclamation of Britannic gold !
That letter was the Hopgoods' writ of exculpation.
By it they obtained public forgiveness for their tre-
mendous mistake in having stood sponsors for an
impostor to the choice society of Stoneleigh ; and public
sympathy for their supposed victimization completed
their whitewashing.
" Then she did cheat at cards, after all ! " cried Mr.
Jones. " I had my suspicions all along ; but Avho
would have listened to them ? Indeed, how could I
have tested them ? She Avas deep and beautiful enough
to have cheated the ahem ! She was, though, the
little baggage ! " with indignant reminiscences of the
blue-and-silver boudoir, and of the heaps of lies piled
up on his innocent wife's credulity.
" And that's why she always fought so shy of me,"
laughed Captain MacArthur. "I saw her once or
134: THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
twice, under the title of Madame la Baronne, at Baden.
She was jnst beginning her career when I was leaving.
Lord, lord, Avhat fools we have all been ! "
That evening a more painful rumour ran through
Stoneleigh. It was said that young Anthony Carthew
had destroyed himself; — some said poisoned, others that
he had hung himself, and others detailed a circum-
stantial account of how he had blown out his brains.
But all agreed that he was lying dead in the boudoir
at Oakfell Hall. And, too surely, there he lay lifeless
on the very spot where only yesterday he had passed
through the courts of paradise. A letter in Italian,,
prajdng for forgiveness and ending with " lo f amo,'"^
a lock of shining chestnut hair and a faded bouquet,,
were in his hand ; and on the sofa, beside the torn
envelope of a packet, lay a valuable diamond ring.
The Countess, before the}^ left the house, found means,
to make up this packet which she threw, t;nobscrved,.
into the little garden before Anthony's house as they
passed it in the gray dawning. The ring was the most
valuable piece of property that she had ; and its losb
entailed on her both insult and ill-treatment.
An inquest was held, but neither poison nor mark of
violence was discovered ; a ruptured vessel in the heart
sufficiently accounted for the death. Perhaps it was
as well. The sun had set for the poor boy for ever :
what joy would he have had through a long unending
night?
THE COUNTESS MELUSINE.
As the funeral passed the house of Lawyer Blaii%
Nelly, in her new mourning, looking up from making
apple-jelly, wiped her eyes and said sobbing : " Poor
Anthony ! poor fellow ! he was very handsome and
clever and all that ; but see how foolish ! Poor
Anthony ! I am sure I loved him as much as I could ;
he need not have gone after a foreign swindler like
that ! Oh, Sarah, Sarah ! " in a tone of anguish, " what
are yoii doing ? Don't you know that apple-jelly burns
if you don't keep on stirring it? — and you with the
spoon out, gaping like that ! Come, give it to me, do !
and go and set the tea."
MILDRED'S LOVERS,
MILDRED'S LOVERS.
" Such presumption ! " said Mrs. Lyndon, the stock-
broker's wife, frowning ; and ; " Such forwardness ! "
returned Miss Manvers, the lady par excellence of the
establishment, tossing her head.
"A man with five hundred a year and expectations!"
said Mrs. Lyndon disdainfully. Mrs. Lyndon, though
at present in difficulties, had married, as people say,
above her; and was consequently very bitter against
mesalliances.
" And one who cares nothing about her !— as how
could he, such a plain little hodmadod as she is !
Quite forced, as one may say, into paying her atten-
tion ! "
" I have no patience with that's girl's boldness ! "
sneered Miss Manvers, who, by virtue of traditional
beauty in her j'outh, had a private patent for propriety,
being suj)posed to know what temptation meant. So
they settled it between them, that poor ]Mildi;ed, the
HO MILDRED'S LOVERS.
(laughter of the house (it was a boarding-house) was
an arrant little minx : — and there they left her.
Mildred came into the room a moment after they
had so prettily arranged her, as the French say, with
her shy look and queer, embarrassed step, as usual —
^ step that seemed to stumble over itself, as if her
feet were too long at the toes and caufi'ht in each
other's waj^. She alwaj's walked too, with her head
down and her eyes cast up from under her eyebrows.
She was very short-sighted as Avell as nervous, and
her shoulders and hands were conscious and restless.
She was not so pretty as interesting in face ; and as
she attracted more attention than many handsomer
women, this, of course, Avas a truer criterion of her
powers of pleasing than mere regularity of line and
featui-e. She was quaint and original and clever —
sarcastic too, and said odd, out-of the-way things ; she
knew how to put old matters in a new light ; and had
always something striking to add to every discussion,
which made other people feel that they had been very
tame and commonplace and stupid : and she sometimes
ventured on extremely beautiful illustrations, all in her
little nervous, hesitating, unequal manner; and intel-
lectually she was worth half a dozen of the fine ladies
who despised her with such comfortable contempt.
Then she was young and had good eyes — those large,
dreamy, innocent, short-sighted eyes which she was
MILDRED'S LOVERS. 141
fully conscious were good, and which her way of looking
up from under her brows made yet more remarkable ; '
and she was openly slighted by the ladies because she
was poor and because she flirted — a combination of
offences which few women forgive. And she had a
good deal of artistic taste and feeling, which always
lightens up a character ; so that in consideration of
all these facts, the men paid her vast attention ; and
she generally had one or two flirtations on hand at the
same time — the intricacies of which she managed with
the skill of an old general.
The foolish child rejoiced in her triumphs — as per-
haps was natural; and managed to display them
before her main enemies, Mrs. Lyndon and Miss
Manvers, without showing that she did so intentionally
— as perhaps was only natural too, though unwise. But
Mildred, in her secret heart, was one* of the most
reckless creatures imaginable, like many other quiet
and compressed people ; and at any time would have
hazarded all her future for the pleasure of half an
hour's piiblic success. It was so glorious to be able
to revenge herself on those who despised her, by
showing them that she could triumph both over them
and fate ; and that meanly as they thought of her,
there were others who placed her far before even them ;
and that though they looked on her with contempt,
other people worshipped her with enthusiasm — with
142 MILDRED'S LOVERS.
other like thoughts and feelings alvvaj's busy in a
slighted woman's brain. But she had to pay dearly
for her naughty pride afterwards, poor little soul !
While she was fidgeting over the music-books,
looking for something — she had forgotten what alread^^
— -Mr. Kelly lounged in. Mrs. Lyndon and Miss
Manvers glanced at each other, and each lady drew
herself up tight in her particular corner of the sofa,
with a soldier-in-a-sentry-box kind of a look, that told
plainly enough they were on guard and could not be
bought off at any price.
Mr. Kelly was the gentleman alluded to in the
opening conversation ; that boarding-house miracle, a
man of five hundred a year and expectations. He was
always very attentive, according to his own notions of
attention, to Mildred Smith ; or, as Mrs. Lj^ndon
phrased it : " was being taken in by that artful girl."
And as he was the richest and best born man of the
establishment, his regard was a great deal prized and
pronounced decidedly too good a thing for Mildred.
And more than once he had been attacked both by
open accusation and covert sneer about her, and had
been asked : " When the day was to be ? " and she had
been alluded to as "the future Mrs. K." And if by
chance she was absent at dinner, Kelly was exhorted
to keep up his appetite; and delicate things were
pressed on him because he was down-hearted and could
MILDRED'S LOVERS.
not eat ; with sundry other well-known arts by which
hostile and vulgar women prejudice men against one
of their own sex in the beginning of an affair. But
Mr* Kelly, who was a curious, loose-limbed, lounging
fellow, enamoured of old curiosity shops and all manner
of out-of-the-way things, did not care much what any
one said, whether in praise or ridicule ; but shambled
on in his own way and made queer love to Mildred,
to the scandal of the other ladies, mainly attracted to
her because she was about as odd as himself, in a
different way. She was morally what a rare bit of
Dresden, or a monumental brass, or a unique species
of scarabajus or trochilus, would have been artistically ;
and he valued her accordingly.
He went now direct to the piano where she stood,
speaking to her in his slow, drawling voice, with all
the words looped together by a thin line of sound and
all the a's pronounced as aw's. But he spoke gently and
flatteringly too. The sentinels glanced again ; and Miss
Manvers broke the knot of her netting by drawing the
stitch too sharply home. Mildred coloured as she
answered his question — it was only : " What was she
looking for?" — speaking in her queer little way, half
glancing up and half turning her back — or at least
one shoulder — with a coaxing, pretty kind of shyness
that makes a man inclined to treat a woman like a
■child.
lU MILDRED'S LOVERS.
" I am looking for ' Herz, mein Herz,' " said Mildred,
peering over the pages and fluttering them about.
"Can I help yon?" he asked, loixnging on to his.
other leg and shuffling with his elbows on the piano.
" No, thank you, Mr. Kelly."
" May I never help you ? " he added in a lower voice ^
but very much as if he had asked the price of a marble
Venus or an embroidered stole, it was so lazily and
shamblingly said.
" Oh yes ! perhaps I shall some day ask you for your
help, very boldly," said Mildred, looking straight into
his eyes ; and looking so that the sentinels could see her.
" What the deuce does she mean ? " thought the
possessor of five hundred a year. " Does she imder-
stand me, or is she only plajdng with me? Or is she
as innocent as she pretends to be and knows no more
of love than she does of archceology ? "
" Will you be kind enough to copy this for me to-
night?" said Mildred, suddenly coming back and
holding out her piece of music. She spoke then like a
spoiled beauty, with her head up and her eyes wide
open ; and she held out her music royally. This to
show off before her enemies.
"Certainly — yes," said Mr. Kelly with wonderful
vivacity.
Mildred smiled her triumphant smile, and then
clouding down into nervousness and embarrassment
MILDRED'S LOVERS. 145
again, stumbled over her feet out of the room, her head
hent quite into her twitching shouklers.
"Did you see her look at him?" whispered Mrs.
Lyndon. " Did you ever see such presumption ? "
" !N^ever ! " answered Miss Manvers ; " her effrontery is
quite frightful ! What Mr. Kelly can see in her, I can-
not imagine ! Why, lier nose is a mere snub, and she
has no e3'ebrows ! " Miss Manvers had a Grecian nose
pointed at the end, and a pair of pencilled eyebrows ;
they were her own facial battle-horses and her
essentials of beauty in others. She would have allowed
neither Aspasia nor Venus herself any loveliness to^
speak of, if they had not had straight noses and narrow-
hair-lines above the eye.
Mr. Kelly took no notice of their whisperings, but
lounged to the opposite sofa where he flung himself at
full length, with his feet on the end cushion ; as men
do in boarding-houses — and, let us hope, nowhere else.
And there ho remained, with his eyes closed and his
crossed ankles drumming against each other, until the
bell rang for dinner.
As Mildred went downstairs, she met Henry Harley
coming in from the Academy where he had been
spending his morning. Henry was an amateur artist
who drew lengthy figures with attenuated limbs and
heads without any place for the brains ; fur his style
was elegance rather than power, he used to say : — " a
VOL. I. ' L
146 MILDRED'S LOVERS.
disciple of Eaphael, my dear sir, more than of Michael
Angelo." He used to teach Mildred drawing — for love ;
and he made the most of the bargain ; for he got more
love than he gave knowledge by a vast deal, spending
the hours assumed to be devoted to the study of shading
and perspective in discussions not calculated to do a
young girl any good.
" My little Mildred ! " he cried, seizing her hands.
He did something more, I believe; but I don't quite
know what it was. Only it made Mildred blush, what-
ever it was. " I have been longing for you all this
morning at the Academy ; upon my word I have !
Don't you believe me?" He spoke very quickly; not
so much in the artist rollicking voice as in the manner
of a man grown fine from original vulgarity, and now
affecting superior fashions.
Mildred looked up — a different creature now from
the girl who had stumbled over her toes in the draw-
ing-room not a minute ago — different even from the
one who had enacted the part of a society queen, when
she handed Mr. Kelly the music and showed her supe-
riors how five hundred a year was her slave and humble
admirer. She had looked pretty then ; but forced and
conscious; while now she was quite beautiful in the
sudden rush of love and self-abandonment that chased
away the timidity from her face, like a noble, song
breaking through deep silence. She put her hand
MILD BED'S LOVERS. 147
fiankly into his, and tliey Avent together into the dining-
room — a grand place for boarding-honse flirtations ;
"being supposed to be the safest from intrusion.
" And have you thought of me, little Mildred?" said
Mr. Henry Harley in the same off-hand Avay, twirling
his hair just at the corner curls.
"A little," said Mildred quietly, creeping closer to him.
After some more sweet passages of the same kind as
those alread}' gone through, Mildred said she must go;
" It was getting near dinner-time, and the servants
would be coining in to lay the cloth." Mr. Harley,
after a show of sorrow and persuasion, caught hold of
her as she turned to leave the room and was kissing
her when the servant opened the door — opening it full
■on Miss Mildred in the very lact of having an offer
made by Mr. Harle}^. So at least was her version
■downstairs to cook, whore they laughed over the matter
together. Ann shut the door with praiseworthy dis-
cretion, and Mr, Harley made half a pirouette, and said
— " Mildred, we were fairly caught then ! "
Of course Ann told Mrs. Smith. And of course Mrs.
Smith spoke to Mr. Harley, and asked him what he
meant ? and what were his intentions ?
Mr. Henry Harley fidgeted about the fireplace, where
he was standing when his landlady put him through
his facings, like a stoker with St. Vitus's dance. In-
tentions? Mildred was, ho said, a very nice girl —
148 MILDRED'S LOVERS.
odd, amusing, clever, and all that — but^a— lie liad^
in short, no intentions. Then he hummed a few bars
of " Non andrai," and stirred the fire furiously.
Tears came into Mrs. Smith's mild blue eyes. This-
would have been such a good match for Mildred,
friendless, fatherless, penniless as she was ; for though
Mr. Harlej* was not so rich as Mr. Kelly by two
hundred a year, yet a man of any income whatever is
a good match for a dowerless girl. And it had been
part of Mrs. Smith's hope in the future, that her child
might meet with a partner, as she used to call it, among
her boarders, and so be saved from the miseries of an
uncertain and dependent position. Of course she would
have preferred Mr. Kell}^ ; but as she would have been
well content with IMr. Harley, who was such a kind-
hearted creature and such an elegant artist ! — the blow
of his denial was severe.
" I am sure, Mrs. Smith," continued Mr. Henry wdth
considerable embarrassment and a guilty blinking of
the eyes — " I am sure I was not aware your daughter
did me the honour of caring more about me than about
anybody else. I have laughed and flirted a little with
her, of course — all men flirt wdth nice girls; and
Mildred is a very nice girl — but I never thought of
gaining her aflections — upon my word, I didn't ! "
" I hope not, Mr. Harley," said Mrs. Smith, wiping
her eyes. " It is very unfortunate, I am siu'e, for
there's Mr. Kellv "
MILDRED'S LOVERS. 14»
"Ah — yes!" cried Mr. Henry Harley, making as if
lie would poke the ribs of his respectable landlady, as
she stood soft and solid before him, " Kellj^'s the man.
Of course he is. All the house is talking of it. Of
course — Kelly, Kelly. He Is a catch, he is ; and Miss
Mildred had better make up to him. I have nothing,
and should not dream of marrying a nice girl like that
and not be able to keej) her like a lady. I think that, if
you like, the most dishonourable thing a man can do.
However much I loved a girl, I Avouldn't marry her
unless I could keep her properly. No, Kelly's the man.
He can afford the luxury of a wife — I can't ! "
" But then, Mr. Harley, if you did not mean to marry
Mildred, how was it that, as Ann said " began
Mrs. Smith, with a puzzled air.
" Servants are invariable fibbers," interrupted Mr.
Harley. " Whatever Ann said, it was an untruth, be
assured. There, now, I don't want to know what it
was ; but I tell you beforehand it Avas false."
"But, I think," urged Mrs. Smith faintly, after a
moment's pause " for Mr. Kelly's sake, and Mildred's,
Mr. Harley, I think you had bettei' "
"Go?" said Mr. Harley.
"Go," said Mrs. Smith; and she twirled her cap-string.
" That is a hard punishment," said Mr. Harley.
" How have I deserved it ? "
" No, no ! — not a punishment."
150 MILDRED'S LOVJERS.
" A precaution, then ? "
" Perliaps. Mr. Harley." And the widow's blue eyes
looked np from the ground, much as Mildred's would
have done ; and then looked stolidly down again.
But Mr. Harley would not admit that. He pleaded
his cause with a vast deal of fervour, vowing that, if
suffered to remain, it should be better for Mildred, for
that he would treat her so judiciously, so tenderl3%.
and yet so strictly, that insensibly her feelings would
slide into the merest sisterly interest, so that she would
be prepared to accept any other eligible offer which
might come in her way. In fact, Mr. Henry Harley
demonstrated to Mrs. Smith, in the clearest and most
logical manner, that the best way to cure a girl of an
unfortunate attachment was Ibr her lover to remain
in the same liousc with her, seeing her every day,
constantly employed in friendly offices for her, such
as teaching her drawing — -figures of Cupids and
Ariadnes and pretty little Psyches ; reading poetry
to her while she sketched ; discussing with her matters
of psychological interest ; and so taming her feelings
down to a sisterly attachment by tenderness and
affection. And then in the end, he assured Mrs. Smith,
Mildred would cease to love him and be the happy
wife of some one else ! It was quite affecting — this
picture that ho drew of the beneficent effects of his-
remaining always near her !
MILDBED'S LOVERS. 151
Mrs. Smith, being a guileless, innocent woman, be-
lieved bim and consented to bis arrangement ; and
told Mildred not to be silly, but to love Mr. Harley
from bencefortb as a brotber. At wbicb Mildred cried ;
and said sbe would.
Matters now went on oiled binges ; and every one
was satisfied. Mr. Ilarley was glad not to be turned
out of a comfortable bouse wbere be bad it all bis own
way and a pretty girl to love bim into tbe bargain ;
Mrs. Smitb was glad not to lose a boarder ; and
Mildred was glad not to lose a lover. For, of course,
tbey were still lovers — Mr. Harley taking no notice of
ber in public, but making up for bis coldness in pri-
vate, to Mildred's great bewilderment and tbe increase
of ber passion ; sbe perbaps because of tbis secresy,
loving ber artistic reprobate more tban if all bad been
confessed and commonplace. Tbey managed their
affairs so well however, that no one in tbe bouse —
not even Ann — suspected Mildred Smith of loving
Mr. Harley ; still less did any one suspect Mr. Harley
of making tbe most violent love to Mildred Smith
whenever he was a moment alone with her — which
moments be contrived should be pretty frequent.
Least of all did Mr, Kell}- suspect that he had a
rival ; and that bis rival was master of the situation.
What a strange life was Mildred's now ! Openly
slighted and sometimes insulted, by tbe ladies ; dis-
152 MILDRED'S LOVERS.
owned by her lover in society to be so fervently
indemnified in private ; knowing that she had five
hundred a year and expectations waiting for her
acceptance, which, if she accepted, Mrs. Lyndon, the
stockbroker's wife iu difficulties, and Miss Manvers,
of the good family and traditional beauty, would then
be obliged to look up to her, yield her precedence, and
be thankful to be patronized by her ; her private life
and her public standing in this boarding-house society
so different one from the other ; — her head was some-
times giddy with the various thoughts and feelings
that used to rush so tumultuously through it ! And
as she thought of the position which he was merely
waiting for an opportunity to offer her, Mildred would
look up gratefully at Mr. Kelly with her sweet, dreamy
eyes ; at which that loose-limbed gentleman would knot
himself up into an angular conglomeration of misfitting
members, and feel almost as joyous as if he had found a
new coinage of the time of Alfred.
Mr. Kelly, never very precipitate, at last made up
his mind to write to Mildred. He had been a long
time about it, but he was one of those queer men
without impulse who find as much satisfaction in
thoughts as they do in facts. And as he believed that
Mildred loved him, belief was quite as good as know-
ledge. However, he did write at last, and make her
an offer of his hand and heart, his present goods and
MILDRED'S LOVERS.
future expectations — concluding by expressing liis con-
viction that she was an unique specimen of womanhood,
and one that any man might be proud of possessing in
his collection,
Mildred kept the letter for some days unanswered.
It was such a triumph to hold in her hand the veritable
offer whicli the ladies said she had manceuvred so hard
to get — to hold it only to refuse ! It was such a
luxury to sacrifice this splendid position to her love.
She could not better prove the intensity and singleness
of her own faith in her double-dealing lover ; and she
gloried in her sacrifice as a martyr suffering for his
creed.
She wrote to Mr. Kelly ; kindly, gently, gratefully,
coaxingly. But she said No. Mr. Kelly rubbed his
eyes, winked, carried the letter into the sunlight,
turned it round and about and inside out and upside
down ; and still could make out only the same startling
words : — " thanks ; sorrow ; No."
Not a syllable more passed on the subject. All had
been said that need be said, and Mildred was now left
the only sufferer. The ofier, with its rejection, was
kept a profound secret from every one ; from Mrs.
Smith more carefu.lly than from the rest ; for if she
had known that Mildred had refused such a magnificent
settlement for love of Mr. Henry Harley, she would
have banished that undesirable individual forthwith.
15i MILDRED'S LOVERS.
as indeed he deserved ; and would so liave cut off all
Mildred's hapjiiness at a blow. For, as is but natural,
Mildred loved all the more because of the sacrifice her
love had cost her — a sacrifice for which Mr. Henry
Harley showed himself in no wise grateful, merely
giving her a kiss and calling her a "regular little
trump " when she told him.
But she had a bitter punishment to undergo. Mr.
Kelly, in the midst of all his queer shambling ways,
had the very pride of Jjueifer in his heart, and the
little girl's refusal roused it to the full. He was
at first speechless with indignation and then angry ;
so he took to revenge, which he found a wonderful
solace. And he performed his part to perfection. For
there was not a petty spite, I grieve to say, in Avhich
he did not indulge ; not a malicious expression, not
an evidence of contempt, that he let pass, whether
to bo understood by the company at large or by
Mildred alone. Every form and phase of disdain 'he
showed her by turns ; every kind of galling allusion
he made spitefully and continually ; Mildred sitting by
with her shoulders twitching painfully and her large
eyes raised with a kind of imploring wonder to his
face. This secret persecution continued for a long
time, the poor little girl growing paler and more
nervous every day under it ; Mr. Henry Harley cooling
towards her too ; till it became a melancholy thing
MILD BED'S LOVERS. 155-
to witness the gradual fading of the pooi' child's life,
and the patient despair with which she sat by the
closing tomb of her hajjpiness.
In the very blackest hour of her desolation Mr.
Henry Harley went away. No tears, no prayers
from Mildred, could keep him. He had fallen in
love with a painting lady at another boarding-house,
where he had been to visit a friend — for people
who live in boarding-houses are a peculiar race,
almost as exclusive and well-known among each
other as the gipsies or the Jews — and Mr. Harley's
artistic tastes were called iu action ; — he must go to
study her effects. So he went, and none could stay
him. And now poor Mildred was left alone ; left to
reflect on the past and perhaps to learn from disap-
pointment that saddest scepticism of all — as to whether
the sacrifice of worldly advantage to principle, of
ambition to love, were a folly or a good. But she kept
her faith in principle, and her pride and her secret
as well ; and no one knew that Mr. Kelly, who treated
her now with such bitter contempt, had once asked
her to become his wife and had punished her for re-
fusing him.
Years rolled by, and still this strange girl kept
faithful to her first love, who now had wholly deserted
her : and still Mr. Kelly stayed on and on in the same
dull boarding-house, as if for the one express purpose
156 MILDRED'S LOVERS.
of insulting ^the poor cMld with an endless ruthless
punishment. Till at last Mildred could bear it no
longer. Too timid to resent, she was too sensitive to
endure this kind of life, which seemed to have no term
to its sufferings. So one morning she quietlj^ Avalked
out of the house, leaving no address ; and after a long
time of silence and of fearful suspense to Mrs. Smith,
she wrote to her, saying that she had entered a family
as governess, and that she was going abi'oad next
week. The reason why she had not written before,
she said, was because she wished to be settled and well
provided for, before she met her mother again. Her
pride would not allow her to undertake a matter like
this, to fail, or to have to depend on her friends for
success.
" Ah, she was always a proud child ! " sighed Mrs.
Smith tenderly ; " and none the worse for it ! "
When Mr. Kelly heard where Mildred had gone and
what she was doing, he paid his bill, packed up his
effects and drove away into the fog. And if a clair-
voyante had described what he was about, and how he
looked that day when rattling through the streets of
murky London, ho would have been seen huddled up
in a corner of the cab, sobbing like a child, and crying :
" Mildred ! Mildred ! I have driven you to this ! "
Perhaps I may have more to tell of poor Mildred
Smith some day. And of Mr. Kelly too.
THE LAST TENANTS OF
HANGMAN'S HOUSE.
THE LAST TENANTS OF
HANGMAN'S HOUSE.
They came no one knew whence and they lived no
■one knew how ; for though she was evidently a lady
born and bred, and more delicate than most, yet they
had no servant but Molly Hartland, the shock-headed
" maid " of old Jose living in the mud cottage under
the cliff; and she went only by chance times, and not
for long together. She never stayed a niglit in the
house, nor saw more of it than the kitchen where she
•did her "chores" in her rough way — and then left.
"Who or what they were was a mystery to the whole
country side; and so far as things went at present,
seemed likel}^ to remain so. They had come quite
suddenly one wild October night, and had taken pos-
session of Hangman's House— a dilapidated old jdace
which had got its name from one of its former pos-
sessors, who, suspected of treachery by his comrades,
had been hunted like a rat, caught in the loft and
his body left hanging on an improvised gallows out of
160 THE LAST TENANTS OF
the window. Since tlien the place had earned but evil
repute, now for smugglers, now for spectres — with
darker tales of bewildered travellers or shipwrecked
men who had been seen to go in but never to come
out again — for all those terrible half-mythic crimes
which are sure to centre in a long-disused house
standins; lone and desolate on a wild sea-coast.
These latest tenants had lived ever since their
arrival, a year or so agone now, in the strictest
seclusion ; asking nothing of the neighbours but STich
food as was absolutely necessary, which was paid for
by the lady herself and always at the time ; with
Molly Hartland to do such work as the lady was.
physically incapable of doing — Molly being the most
ignorant and brutish of any creature born in woman's
shape possible to be found, and therefore it might be
supposed the least likely to carry tales. They had
no visitors ; they never received a letter ; they called
themselves Capstone ; and were man and wife though
they looked more like father and daughter. For ho
was a good twenty years older than she, and she
seemed to have more fear of him than goes with wifely
love of the right sort.
He was a tall, lean man, with sloping shoulders, a
hatchet face, sucked-in leathery cheeks, and a large
hooked nose like the beak of a bird of prey ; his eyes
were small and of a fiery red, sunk deep beneath heavy
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 161
brows, the coarse light hairs of which fell over them
like the thatch of a pent-house ; his thiu lips were set
into a perpetual smile, crueller than curses, and fuller
of subtle warning than a sneer ; his straw-coloured
hair hung evenly all round from the centre of his
head ; and his long and bony hands had curved fingers
and pointed nails, which, to carry the resemblance still
further, were like the talons of a bird of prey. His
manner, when by chance he spoke to any one, and
always to his wife, was of exquisite politeness ; but
long before this Lilian had learned to dread his polite-
ness more than his wrath. Indeed it was his wrath;
for the more anger he felt the more suavit}^ he shoAved
and the more cruelty he practised.
For the wife herself, poor Lilian, she was doomed by
nature to be a victim. With very little judgment and
of varying mood — being sometimes timid to abjectness,
at others bold to rashness — never seeing when to yield
or when to oppose, and her opposition always ending
in tears and obedience, she was all that such a man as
her husband could desire in his creature. Her very
changefulness of temper gave his tyranny the zest of a
struggle ; and served him as a kind of excuse, if he had
Avanted one, for his brutality when he conquered. And
as all he needed was a creature, not a companion, he was
well enough suited for the present with one whom he
might use as he would, without fear of enduring resist-
VOL. I. M
162 THE LAST TENANTS OF
ance ; without fear eitlier of unwelcome protection — for
Lilian was an orphan, and her only brother had gone
away to sea many years ago now, and had never since
been heard of. So, if not dead, he was as good as dead ;
and as, for his own reasons, Mr. Capstone had covered
up all traces of his removal to Cornwall, there was not
much chance, if ever Fred should turn up again, of
his finding his sister under another name and in such
a God-forgotten place as Hangman's House, out by
Michael's Eun. Wherefore, the lean man with the
booked nose and the curved fingers wrought his will
unchecked by the fear of God or the law of man.
Mr. Capstone had been about a year at Hangman's
House, and the rough October weather had come round
again, when a cry went up that a ship, caught between
the two headlands, was drifting into the bay. The
tide was running high and a strong west wind was
blowing straight in shore. Black and Titanic rose the
sharp and broken line of cliffs; long reefs, sunken,
treacherous, ran far into the sea, appearing only at
low water — at high, making unseen bars over which
the sea foamed and flew ; while every here and
there huge rocks reared themselves up from the foam-
like savage sentinels, barring all ingress into a bay
as threatening, fierce and deadly as themselves. It
was a coast where was no mercy for any wandering-
boat, no way of escape for any drowning man; it was
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 1G3
the cruellest bit in all tliat cruel line, and it had lost
more lives than any other spot ; it was the terror of
every seaman who had to pass that way; and the
current set so strong in shore that ships steered far out
to sea, insomiich that a sail was scarcely ever seen on
the horizon. When it was it was mostly for doom.
On came the ill-starred ship,, blown right out of her
course ; her helm useless, her smaller spars gone,
caught by the wind and the tide and driven madly
in shore. Already some of her men, the captain
among them, had been washed overboard; but some
were still left, whom the watchers on the cliffs could
see clinging to the rigging or lashed to the main-
mast. The whole district had collected on the cliffs.
The two coastguards nearest at hand, and the men
who, but for them, would have been wreckers of the
old stamp, women, children, all were there; some to
save and some to spoil; and among them the lean,
lank figure of the tenant of Hangman's House with
his pale and pretty wife on his arm. The storms
which beat on the coast were his pastimes, when he
would wonder if her brother had perished in such
a gale as this? — the brother of whom time and
yearning thought had made an ideal, and who, if she
could bring back to life, would be to her as a god under
whose care she would never know sorrow or suffering
agam.
164 THE LAST TENANTS OF
Holding then her hand on his arm, her attitude
tender and affectionate, he every now and then stooped
his face close to hers, saying at intervals : " And who
knows, my dear, perhajDS yonr brother went down on
such a day as this. Let us fancy that man Fred. Do
you see him ? that man in the bows : 'pon my soul !
not unlike your brother. Phew! he got a ducking
then ! and Lord, now he's gone, washed clean overboard,
as clean as a ninepin ! Poor Fred ! Don't you see his
brown head in the water there, bobbing up and down
like a seal ? Ah, well, you'll never see it again ; he's
done for. Now, my dear, if you scream or faint or
play any of your tricks — you know the dog-whip with
the red handle, don't you? I think you do. And
you'll have cause to know it again, my love, if you don't
stand steady."
All this while the ship came drifting on, plunging
into the waves and rising oiit again with a shudder,
like some creature in agony, flung from reef to reef as
the waves lifted her and the wind carried her onward,
till at last she came grinding on to the Lion rock in
the centre of the bay. There was no lifeboat belonging
to Michael's Eun, and she could not have lived in such
a sea if there had been one ; but the coastguards fired
a couple of rockets, one of which fell short and the
other struck true. A tall man, who had been holding
on gallantly, took the cord. He jiushed aside a comrade
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 165
who seemed to dispute it, and the weaker fell into the
sea, while the stronger lashed the cord round him, and
gave the signal to pull on shore.
" Good," said Mr. Capstone applaudingly ; " that
fellow understands business."
The man had no sooner cleared the deck than the
mainmast fell ; and in less than two minutes after, the
hoat went to pieces like a toy puzzle, and only a mass
of broken firewood showed where she had been. Not a
man on board was saved, except the one who had seized
the rope and lashed it round him ; and he was hauled
in, senseless, close to where the Capstones stood. He
was a swarthy man in the prime of life ; this was all
that Lilian saw; when her husband, touching him
lightly with liis foot, turned to Molly Hartland, and
said : " Here, Molly, the sea has brought you a lover.
Take him to my house, you fellows ; I'll have him."
"Be advised, sir," put in Molly's father, old Jem — the
most notorious wrecker and smuggler of bygone times
\vhen brandy was drunk out of milk-pails, and Molly's
mother gave the child sovereigns to play with on the
cabin floor; "there's no good in taking a man into your
house as is washed up from the sea.
' Save a stranger from the sea,
And he'll turn your enemy.'
That's what we say hereaway, sir; and there's the
story of Cruel Coppinger to bear us out."
166 THE L4ST TENANTS OF
But Mr. Capstone only langhed till his red eyes were
nearly lost behind the straw-coloured thatch above
them, as he answered, turning his back on Jem : " I'll
dare the saying, my man. Here, fellows ! haul him
along to Hangman's House — we'll soon bring him to
his senses again ; and I'll give you a sovereign to drink
his health and hurt your own."
The man now lying senseless on the ground was a
magnificent fellow to look at; tall, dark, and powerfully
built; with a face absolutely faultless for manly beauty,
and yet a face at which women would involuntarily
shudder and which no man would like to trust in the
dark, and unarmed ; a face which, speechless and life-
less as the man was, marked a nature at once desperate
and resolute, bold, lawless and determined. He was
not the kind of man of which a creature could be made,
thought Lilian ; what then did her husband want
with him ? She who knew the guilty secret of their
lives, knew also the necessity of keeping prying eyes
out of it. What could they do with a man like this
castaway, admitted to partnership in the crimes that
had to be hidden ? Or was the guilt to be passed on to
another ? at once shared and miiltiplied ?
Indifferent to the set look on his face, reckless of the
consequences so sure to follow on her opposition, Lilian
turned to her husband with a shuddering kind of
appeal.
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 167
" Do not take this man into the house ! " she said
earnestly. " Hear me for once — do 'not."
"What, my love, after all my lessons?" said Mr.
Capstone with a smile, taking her arm with a caressing
gesture.
The pale fair woman shrunk, blenched and put up
her left hand to wipe away the drops that started on
her upper lip ; hut she said no more. When they
turned away from the crowd no one saw the hlood
that trickled down her arm into her ungloved hand.
At night, when she took off her gown, there were four
sharp cuts where her husband had clasped her arm so
affectionately, and dug his talons into her flesh.
He laughed when he saw them, as she lay fainting
under the whij) with the red handle.
" I don't think Mrs. Capstone will venture on another
remark for some time to come ; " he said to himself.
" Dear ! dear ! what a pity it is she needs so much
breaking in to make her steady ! "
For such a trirbulent-looking man, it was wonderful
how easily this castaway slipped into his place in this
dull cloistered life at Hangman's House. No schoolboy
could have been more tractable or apparently more con-
tented; and Mr. Capstone daily congratulated himself
on the good luck which had cast up such an invaluable
helper on Michael's Eun. He was no common sailor
with hard and horny hands ; he was a Spanish artist
1G8 THE LAST TENANTS OF
accustomed to engrave on metal; and he liad some
knowledge of chemicals and casting. And as Mr.
Capstone could speak Spanish, and Lilian could not,
nor could Manuel, as he called himself, speak English,
he was thus no restraint on any one. The two meii
talked as they pleased without betraying to the woman
what they wished to keep secret: and Mr. Capstone
said what he would to Lilian, and threatened her with
his polite air and affectionate smile, the presence of
Manuel sitting there at the bench, engraving, being-
no check on him. Indeed, that presence seemed rather
to incite him to a keener kind of cruelty, as giving the
zest of an audience that could not condemn.
From the first Manuel superseded Lilian in the work
Avhich she had been accustomed to do for her husband.
He knew what he was about, even better than Mr.
Capstone himself; and thus was of more use than the
nervous, uncertain and now mutinous and now hysteri-
cal little wife ; and one day, Avhen he had specially
pleased his employer, Mr. Capstone turned round to
Lilian sitting idly crouched over the fire, saying, Avitli
a smile —
" My love, I begin to find you insupportable. My
ruffian here can do all that you did, and ten times
more ; and it irritates me to see your pale sickly face
about and those idle hands doino- nothins;. I must
find employment for my own, my dear, if yours are so
useless, or — get rid of you altogether."
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 169
And when he said this, he lient his face down to
hers, as if to kiss her, with an expression in his eyes
that froze her very blood. She knew him. to be capable
of any crime. Would he, now that she was of no more
use to him, do as he said, and get rid of her as a
witness, a participator who might be inconvenient?
He was standing with his back to Manuel, and
Lilian had turned her face towards him. Suddenly
she saw the Spaniard's eyes fixed on her. As a rule he
never looked at her; seemed to be hardly aware of
her existence ; save the most curt formality or polite-
ness, took no notice of her ; but now, when she caught
his great black eyes fixed full and blazing upon her,
she saw before her the chance of another peril almost
worse than those already surrounding her. She would
rather have read the deadliest hatred in those flamino-
eyes than what she did read. And so audaciously ex-
pressed, too ! It was almost as if he had known what
Mr. Capstone was sajdng, and had invited her to take
refuge in liis love against the persecution of her
husband.
Frightened, trembling Lilian, making some kind of
excuse, or what her husband took as a promise of
amendment, rose and left the room ; running down-
stairs into the kitchen which, imtil then, had been her
own poor sanctuary, inviolate save when Molly Hart-
land came to do her " chores." She Avas standinc:
170 THE LAST TENANTS OF
there by the fireplace, trembling, palpitating, confused
yet, when the door quietly opened and Manuel stole
in -with a noiseless step. It was rare that Mr, Cap-
stone left him a moment alone. Under one pretext or
another, he kept him always by his side, having an
idea that " fast bind safe find " was a good motto to
go upon ; leaving Manuel only the night-time in which
to make explorations and plans.
Lilian's very heart stood still for terror when she
saw who it was that thus stole into her darkness. He
came up to her, swift, stealthy, noiseless as a panther,
his dark eyes flaming, his bronzed face alive with
passion ; and when he was near her he caught her in
his arms whispering : . " My love ! my love ! " Her fair
hair broke loose and fell in long, soft waves over her
face and breast ; he kissed her hair, and he kissed the
pale face beneath, but with no respect in his tenderness
—more as a master than a lover.
" I love you," he said, in perfectly good English.
" I will j)rotect you, for I will kill him, and then you
shall be mine."
"Good heavens ! " cried Lilian, shrinking from him;
but he held her tight. " You are an Englishman ! "
" I am nothing but the man who loves you," said
Manuel, kissing her again; she would rather he had
stabbed her.
" He must know ! " she cried.
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 171
" If yoii betray me I will kill Loth him and yon,"
said Mannel, in a hissing kind of whisper. " Don't be
a fool, pretty Lilian ; you are one, but I love yoii
nevertheless. T have given yoii my secret ; I know
yon can keep secrets ; bnt, by all the saints in heaven,
if you betray me you shall repent it ! I love you, my
pale Lily ; but I am not so mad as to put my life in
peril for you. If one of us has to go, it shall be you ;
but it shall be neither. Another kiss. Peste ! You
refuse ? Then I will take it. Adios, little girl. You
are mine, remember, and I will kill him for you ; but,
silence : else ! " With a peculiar gesture, Manuel
dropped her into a chair, and glided from the kitchen
as noiselessly as he had entered it.
So now Lilian had a secret to keep from her husband,
as she had his to keep from others.
The work went on : it went on well.
" That fool of a Spaniard is putting his neck into a
fine noose," said Mr. Capstone to his wife, smiling
to Manuel, as he took up Lis last plate and examined
it microscopically ; Manuel taking no heed of his
words — why should he, when he did not understand
them? — but quietly resting his head in his hand,,
while he looked at his employer patiently.
Still smiling, and in the same voice, Mr. Capstone
continued in Spanish —
" My good Manuel, jou are invaluable. You shall
172 THE LAST TENANTS OF
share like my brother. Yoii are my more than brother
—friend!"
On which Mannel smiled too ; sedately ; and replied
that if his preserver and benefactor were j)leased, all
was well.
" When I have got what I want from him," said Mr.
Capstone in English, with the most affectionate look
and accent towards the Spaniard, " I shall give hirn np
to the police or get rid of him in some other way. He
mnst be a fool to think I would trust him ! I was
saying, my friend," he went on in Spanish this time,
" that you have been a very treasure to me, and that I
can never be too grateful for the work you have done.
Courage ! a few days more, and it will be completed ! "
" Good ! " said Manuel quietly.
Lilian stood quivering in every limb. True, she
loved neither of the men, but she feared for fear's sake
if not for love's; and then she herself was so desperately
involved on all sides; but worst of all by her know-
ledge of Manuel's secret and his cognizance of how
much her husband was betraying him. What a nest
of crime it all was ! There was not one M^holesome
part in it.
What was going on in the house at night? Foot-
steps crept about the passages, and sometimes she
thought she heard her own name whispered; strange
sounds kept her heart beating with mad terror far into
HANGMAN'S HOUSE.
(O
the night. She had been sent up into the loft Avhere
the man had been hnnted and hanged, and Avhere
she had to make the best of her lonely fears ; lying-
there listening to sounds which she coixld not compre-
hend, and in her fear foncying more than she heard.
Sometimes she woke to feel, rather than hear, a stealthy
presence at her door. But the door was never opened,
though often it seemed to be tried; consequently she
never knew whether it was her husband or the
Spaniard who was there. Only it was not likely to
be the former, for it was locked on the outside, and he-
always took away the key.
After repeated trials, at last a perfect plate was pro-
duced. The imitation was not to be detected by the
keenest expert living : for had not the clever thief and
forger got some of the Bank paj)er ? and was he not,
therefore, master of the situation ? His false gold too,
was to the hair's-breadth of balance. To be sure, he
could not counterfeit the ring ; but, save the ring, all
was right : and with the paper he could make play
securely.
"And now," said Mr. Capstone, expanding his narrow
chest, as the three were assembled round the fire on the
evening of the day of success : " to leave this old rat's
castle and enjoy life afresh ! "
" Afresh ! " said Lilian with a weak kind of scorn.
" Would you think it afresh if I were to efface my-
174 THE LAST TENANTS OF
self, and give you ixp to this black-lieaded ruffian ? "
asked Mr. Capstone smiling, and putting Lis liead on
one side amiably.
" Husli ! For God's sake do not say such things ! "
cried Lilian, turning paler than usual. Then she
flushed to the very roots of her hair ; and her husband
looked at her curiously.
" He is a good-looking ruffian enough," he said
blandly. " Shall I make you over to him ? "
" I will leave the room if you talk so," said Lilian
angrily ; and she rose from her chair. But he laid his
curved fingers on her arm.
" You will do nothing of the kind, my lady," he said.
"You will wait as long as I choose and you shall
hear what I choose. I begin to suspect you. Aha I
Have you been looking over the fence, my lady —
making eyes, hey?, thinking of handsome ruffians o'
nights ? This must be seen to. You and he together —
by the Lord, but you'll smart for it ! "
*' You are mad," said Lilian.
" And you bad, love ? Ha, ha ! that's another to the
score. You were both a trifle inconvenient before ;
now you are something beyond. The score is running
— upon my soul it is. No matter. I can pay it."
Lilian saw the Spaniard's face.
" Let me go," she said faintly. " Oh, God ! let
me go."
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 175
" My love, you are inconvenient," said her liusband,
pusliing her down in her chair while he played with
her long hair. " Sit where you are, and be good com-
pany. It is an auspicious time ; let us celebrate it."
The black December night was sharp and keen. The
moon had not yet risen and the sky was overcast with
heavy clouds. Not a star shone above ; not a light
twinkled below ; nor land nor sea nor heaven gave the
faintest sign of life ; only a cruel wind whistled
through the crannies and blustered round the house
— as fierce as on the day when Manuel Avas cast up
from the sea.
" A glass of wine, for the good result of the day ! "
then said Mr. CaiDstone with sudden vivacity, rising
and taking with his o^nn hand glasses and a bottle
from a locked cupboard in the room.
During all their late talk Manuel had been sitting in
a lounging careless attitude, his legs stretched out, his
hands folded in each other, his chin on his breast, appa-
rently half asleep. The firelight flickered on his face,
and Lilian saw just one narrow glittering line between
his eyelids, which showed that he was awake and
watching. Mr. Capstone was, for him, somewhat slow
and clumsy at that cupboard. He drew the cork of
the bottle ; and they heard him drink and smack his
lips.
" The primest port that was ever grown," he said,
170 THE LAST TENANTS OF
enthusiasticallj'". " Here, Manuel, rouse up, my friend,
and drink to our joint fortune. There are Init two
glasses left."
" I won't drink to-night," said Manuel sleepily. " I
am feverish."
" Tilt, tut ! such wine as this will drive both care
and fever away," urged Mr. Capstone. " No fear of
that," he added, in English.
" I tell you no," said the Spaniard doggedly. " You
English can pour molten lead down your throats. You
could drink the waters of Styx if you called it wine.
But your vile stuff that you pay your guineas for is
hateful to us who know what true wine is. Drink
yourself, and let me he."
" As you wish, my friend ; I would not press you
against your will," said Mr. Capstone amiably. " That
cursed dog, he shall repent this," he said to Lilian —
looking kindly at jManuel, as if telling her what they
had been saying together.
But Manuel took no notice. He still sat stretched
out before the fire, looking three parts asleep and
Avholly indifferent.
Suddenly he roused himself.
*' Let me drink," he said, holding out his hand.
Mr. Capstone gave him the wine with alacrity. " Th©
finest grown," he repeated.
Manuel put it to his lips.
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 177
" Pah ! " he said, disdainfully. " You call this wine ?
It is only fit for hogs." And he emptied it into the
fireplace. "Now," he said, "you will lot me sleep."
" Ill-mannered hound," said Mr, Capstone ; " your
tether is nearly out. Here, you pale wretch, drink
this," to Lilian, with a smile. " It is too good to waste
on such as you, but I am in a jolly humour to-night,
and I will indulge you. That fool has done the trick,
so I don't mind throwing away a glass of wine on you.
'Pon my soul, though, you are not worth it ! Here !
drink it, I say ; and see if you cannot look more like a
woman and less like a ghost than you do. Your white
face makes me sick."
" It is you who made it white," retorted Lilian.
"My love, that red-handled whip!" was the only
answer ; and poor Lilian quivered into tears. " If you
cry, my dear, I shall take you into the reformatory
at once, where I saw a lovely large rat to-day, and lock
you up without a candle. What a thousand pities it is
tliat you will be so unruly, SAveetheart ! However, drink
your wine, ' rosy wine,' first ; and then we'll talk
about it."
Was Manuel dreaming ? As Lilian raised the glass
to her lips, he started up, shouted something in Spanish,
and flung out his arms, striking the glass which fell in
fragments at his feet.
" Thousand pardons to the senora," he said, rubbing
VOL. I. • K
178 THE LAST TENANTS OF
liis eyes. " By the saints, I was dreaming ; and a pretty
dream they sent me ! "
" Don't mention it," said Mr. Capstone, quite amiably.
" An accident, who can prevent that? The vile hound !
— that goes down two to him. His score is really
getting insupportahly long, but I'll pay it off with in-
terest. Well, my love, you have lost your wine ; your
lover's doing, not mine, remember. Never mind, you
will sleej) soundly enough without it. x\nd I'll let you
off that whip. And now to bed, and — don't wake."
Lilian rose without remonstrance.
" Kiss me," said Mr. Capstone. " It will give me a
new sensation in the presence of your black-haired
ruffian. Kiss me, Lily," very tenderly.
" No," said Lilian abruptly ; " I will not."
The Spaniard was standing before the fire now, and
she saw his hand move into his bosom and clutcli at
something.
"No? You'll wish you had before the night is out,
Mrs. Capstone," with meaning.
" I wish I had never seen you and never kissed you
in my life ! " burst out Lilian. " I Avish I had died
before I had married you."
" Gently, gently, my love ; you forget the conse-
•quences," said her husband in a soothing voice. " Don't
bo so impatient, dear. The ruffian's turn will come,
perhaps."
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 179
Manuel, standing before the fire in a brown study,
smiled and nodded to himself, soliloquizing. " Yes," he
said to himself aloud. " By the saints ! yes."
Lilian fled, while Mr. Capstone laughed ; but as
she turned she met the Spaniard's eyes — just one
glance — but that one glance was enough, both for him
and for her.
"Pretty little playful kid," said Mr. Capstone in
Spanish, kissing his hand to her as she disappeared ;
but Manuel did not take up the ball. He only smiled
in a quiet kind of amiable approval.
After she had gone the two men fell a-thinking.
They were both silent, looking into the fire; both
thinking the same thing, and meditating on the best
way. At last Mr. Capstone, giving himself a shake as
a dog might, reared up his lank, lean figure and looked
about him.
" How strange it is," he said musingly, " the regret
one feels when one has come to the last of a thing!
Take now the last of this old rat's castle where I have
enjoyed such a quiet time of love and happiness with
my Lilian — the last night — it oppresses me ! I have
keen perceptions of beauty and I have enjoyed the
beauty here."
" Where? " asked Manuel simpl}'.
" On the clifis. I have a mind to see the old place
once more. What say you, my friend ? "
180 THE LAST TENANTS OF
"It's a wild night," said the Spaniard reluctantly.
"Dark, is it not?"
" No, the moon is up now. The sea will look grand.
Come."
" I don't see the delight," said IManuel, still reluctant.
Mr. Capstone laughed. " Afraid ? " he said.
" Carambo, no ! But 3'ou English are for weather as
for wine ; nothing is too strong for you. However,
I'll come." He buttoned up his jacket, but left the
middle buttons open, where he could thrust in his hand.
" Thanks ; a minute," said Mr. Capstone, and he left
the room.
As he left Manuel drew out a dagger and tried its
point. " It will settle his business, I think," he muttered,
grimly. But he kept a watchful eye on the door while
he opened, with a false key, the desk where Mr. Capstone
kept that roll of bank paper and the fine steel engraved
plates.
Meanwhile the master, in his private room, looked at
the chambers of his revolver for the second time to-day.
They were all loaded ; and there were six of them.
" If necessary, sufficient," was his comment. Then
he went up to Lilian's garret door, which he locked,
and put the key in his pocket, saying to himself: " The
fool ! meddling idiot ! I wished to spare her, and he
spoilt my plan. She will know now; and she might
have been spared. And he, too. What a cxirse it is that
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 181
people will not do as tliey ought ! " All of which he
half said, half thought, as he was arranging a lighted
candle in a staircase cuphoard filled with tarred rope,
shavino-s and the like. Then he went downstairs,
humming an opera tune gaily.
" For our last walk ! " he said airily.
" Yes, our last," repeated Manuel qixiotly.
They took the way of the cliifs right over the Gauger's
Path, where once, it was said, Coppinger had got an
over brave and zealous ganger in his boat, had laid his
head on the gunwale and had deliberately chopped it
off with a hatchet. It was a wild place, where the
cliffs had split asunder, leaving a chasm as clean and
black and smooth as if it had been cut by a knife. By
this time the wind had fallen and the moon had come
out, so that the chasm yawning at their feet was dis-
tinctly visible. The two men walked in an even line
together, each careful not to give the other half a foot's
pace in advance. Manuel was to the right, and had
taken Mr. Capstone's arm, thus leaving his own right
arm free, the hand thrust into his breast. But then he
had only a dagger, and the other might nse a revolver
with his left hand to advantage.
" Peste ! " cried Mr. Capstone, stopping suddenly on
the very edge of the chasm, and hastily withdrawing
his arm.
In an instant Maniiel had swung him a few steps
182 THE LAST TENANTS OF
backwards, and \\\ doing so faced him, and faced Hang-
man's House. Flames were creeping out of the windows,.
and the smoke was rising in dense clouds.
" Wretch ! " he cried in English; " you have set fire to
the house and left her to he burnt alive ! "
" "What ! a traitor ! " exclaimed Mr. Capstone, reeling
back, and raising his hand.
The moonlight shone on the barrel of a pistol ; there
was a click, a flash, a report, and the ball grazed the
Spaniard's cheek; but before he could fire a second
time Manuel had leaped ujion him, borne him to the
earth and buried his knife to the hilt in his side.
"And you thought you were deceiving me?" he
hissed, as he knelt on the dying man. " You thought
you were making a tool of me ? — getting my neck in a
noose ? ha ! while your own was to go free. Miserable
dog ! it is I — the black-haired ruffian — who used you \
I who have been master throughout — who will have
your wife and your money, and who, up to this last
moment, when you thought to throw me down that pit
where I will throw you, have played with you and
foiled you ! "
" Mercy, mercy ! " sobbed the dying man. " My good
Manuel, mercy, dear friend — pity ! "
" The same mercy that you have had on her ! " said
the Spaniard between his teeth.
He raised himself from the bleeding body, met tho
HANGMAN'S HOUSE.
glassy eyes as they were fixed on him with the yearn-
ing look of death and despair ; then, laughing harshly,
he kicked him over where he lay, and flnng him down
the chasm. He heard the heavy fall of the body as
it struck against the smooth sides ; then a splash in
the sea ; and all was still.
Swift as an Indian he ran back to the house, just as
Lilian appeared at the window in her white gown, her
fair hair streaming over her shoulders ; looking, in the
moonlight, of ineffable loveliness — more like an angel
than a woman. The sight of her burnt the Spaniard's
heart and convulsed it with pain. AVhat if he could
not save her ! He must save her ; he would ; he had
vowed that she should be his, and ho would keep his
vow though the very elements opposed ! He rushed
into the house and through the stifling smoke ;
braving the creeping tongues of flame that were lick-
ing up the wall. He came to her door, which the
fire had not yet touched. It had not been for nought
that Lilian had heard those stealthy footsteps at night
— had been conscious of his presence. The Spaniard
had employed his hours well ; and before she nad time
to realize that it was he whom she had seen crossing
the grass in the moonlight, her garret door was flung
open, and Manuel, blackened with smoke and crimsoned
with blood, had seized her in his arms.
" Now you are mine ! " he said ; " I have killed him."
184 THE LAST TENANTS OF
"Heaven protect me!" cried Lilian, covering her
eyes with her hands.
"I am better than Heaven," said Manuel; "and I
will protect you." He kissed her passionately.
" Lilian ! Lilian ! say that you love me ! " he cried.
" By the saints, if you do not, I will fling you into the
flames and let you perish ! "
He lifted her up in his arms, and hers fell round his
jieck as her hair fell over his face.
" Yes, I love you," she said ; and fainted.
Manuel could never tell how he got out of the 1 turn-
ing house with that lifeless woman in his arms. It
seemed to him as if nothing could have hurt him ;
as, through smoke and fire, ho hore the pale fair woman
he loved, and laid her on the grass in the quiet moon-
light. But when he flung himself down by her, and
took her head on his knee, and called to her to look up
and thank him by her love for her life, it was the
howl of a wild beast more than the cry of a man which
Imrst from his lips when he found that she was dead.
When the neighbourhood was roused, as at last it
was, by the news that Hangman's House was all
ablaze, they came upon a strange sight. On the grass,
some little distance from the house, evidently placed
there by human care, her long rich silky hair spread
smoothly out, her hands laid tenderly across her breast
and a pale December rose placed within them, lay poor
HANGMAN'S HOUSE. 185
Lilian, where the flames could not touch her nor the
falling rafters strike her. Not a trace of the master
nor yet of the stranger was to he found ; only the dead
hody of the woman without a mark upon her to show
how she died. But while they were all yet full of
wonder at what had become of the men, washed up
by the tide the lank, lean figure of the one whom
they had known as Mr. Capstone, of Hangman's House,
drifted on shore, with a gaping knife-wound in his
side.
Not lono- ag-o after this there flashed into London
society a stranger, rich, handsome, reckless, who seemed
to have come from the clouds ; but from a golden cloud ;
a stranger whom mothers courted for their daughters,
and to whom fathers and brothers gave their honest
hands; a stranger who could speak many languages,
who was an accomplished artist and who had travelled
to all parts of the world ; but who, when any one by
chance spoke of Cornwall, and asked him if he knew
that coast, lased to aver with some warmth that he
<lid not and had no wish to know it.
And again, not long ago, a man who might have
been that stranger's twin brother, was to be seen at
Toulon, wearing the bullet and the chain, under sen-
tence of hard labour for twenty years, for a homi-
cide which he had not committed. But in his in-
dictment of crimes done on French soil, no mention
186 LAST TENANTS OF HANGMAN'S HOUSE.
was made of a body wliich was washed ashore near
Michael's Eun in Cornwall, with a knife-wound in the
side ; of the fair-haired woman laid on the grass near
the burning ruins of Hangman's House ; nor of the
forged bank-notes by which that brief and brilliant
season of London splendour and Parisian gaiety was
maintained. And the man, being a philosopher in his
way, used to smile to himself as he pondered on the
difference there is between the things which are known
and punished in the life of a man, and the things
which are concealed and bear no harvest of sorrow or
of shame; — and how the latter are so frequently the
worse of the two !
DEAR DAVIE.
DEAR DyWIE.
I KNOW it is the fashion to cull servauts selfish and
mercenary, and to make out that they have all the
faults common to humanity in excess of every one else ;
Init we had an old servant whom I do not think any-
one would have disliked ; at least I used to think so,
until we had bitter proof of the contrary. He was the
last of a long race of retainers in our family ; for the
Moffats had been servants at the Hall for three genera-
tions ; and old David, or " dear Davie," as wo used to
call him, was as much a part of our family as one of
ourselves. He had come in when a mere boy as a kind
of general helper ; rising by the orthodox stages, till he
had grown to be head man of everything ; nominally
butler, but in substance i^tendant, maitre rVhotcl, man-
housekeeper, " acting lieutenant under a very easy-
going captain," as poor papa used to say.
He was an old man now ; past seventy ; and I dare
say he did cling to his place and privileges with per-
haps at times uncomfortable tenacity. But who would
190 DEAR DAVIE.
have had the heart to take them from him ? Our father,
a kind-hearted, good-natured man, let him have his
own way ; and what he thought right to do, of course
we thought right to imitate. He and Davie had been
hoys together ; or rather Davie had been a young man
when he was a hoy : and had taught him all that boys
like to learn of rural life and sports ; so that he always
remembered this, and never qiiite got over the feeling
of Davie's superior wisdom on certain points. My
two brothers also were very fond of him ; so were we
girls ; and he of us. And then he was the best creature
in the world.
Dear Davie ! I think I see him now, with his tall,
thin, square-cut figiire just beginning to be a little
bowed at the shoulders ; those flat angular shoulders
from which his clothes hung as if from two pegs ; his
fine white head and mild blue ej-es, and that nice
manner of his, which was such a pleasant mixture of
familiarity, affection and respect. All our troubles
were Davie's, as were all our pleasures. "When Norah
married so well, Davie Avas quite as miserable and
proud and happy as any if us ; and when Charlie
Avent to India, nine years ago, the dear old man cried
as openly as both Lucy and I did ; and he was almost
as glad when we used to get his letters. Indeed,
Charlie, the youngest of us all, had perhaps been his
favourite of the two brothers ; if he could be said to
DEAR DAVIE. 191
have liked one best when he loved both so well. And
when that terrible sorrow came iipou us, and we lost
first papa and then Eeginald, both in the same year,
I am sure Davie was like another father to Lucy and
me, he was so kind and tender and faithful.
Since Charlie had been in India he had married. Of
course we had not seen his wife yet ; but now that our
darling Eeginald had gone — our eldest, our pride and
stay — Charlie was the heir, and had to come home with
his wife and children — there were two, both boys — and
take possession of the Hall. You must not think that
Lucy and I thought only of ourselves in all this sorrow
if I tell you that, beside being so unutterably miser-
able, we were also uneasy and uncomfortable. The
family tradition of the Lombes had always been one of
close union. We had been a notoriously united set of
people for generations ; perhaps too much so ; and
there had never been a question of right or sufferance
to the old home among the unmarried women. Papa's
two sisters had lived with us till they died ; and here
were Lucy and I in the same condition with respect to
Charlie. But somehow we doubted Kate, Charlie's
wife ; and we had an idea that she would not like the
arrangement so much as dear mamma had done. All
her letters to us had been strangely cold. I cannot
tell you how it was they struck us so unfavourably,
but they did ; more I imagine by what they did not
192 DEAR DAVIE.
say than hy what they did. She never signed herself
our sister ; never called Charlie anything but " my
hushand " or " your brother ; " always wrote of poor
papa as " Mr. Lombe ; " of Regy as " Mr. Eeginald,"
or " your elder brother ; " and, after papa's death, she
called him " Mr. Lombe " in the only letter she wrote
to us ; and, in fact, the whole tone was stiff, reserved
and tmfriendly. However, she was now to be mistress
of the old house — dear, handsome, generous Eeginald,
ah ! what a loss that was ! — and Charlie and she were
coming over by the next mail.
As for Charlie, of course we had no doubt of him.
He was a Lombe ; a true Lombe ; but all the same his
wife might make it a little unpleasant for us if she
chose, especially as Ave had been mistresses of the place
so long : at least Lucy had. For even I was beyond
thirty ; and our mother had died when Charlie was
born ; so that for more than twenty years Lucy had had
the command, and we could scarcely understand any-
thing else. We had lived too, in the real old-fashioned
English way, seldom leaving home and taking a per-
sonal interest in all that went on in the village and
estate. So that we had plenty of occupation and a not
very narrow sphere of action and influence. But Kate,
Charlie's wife, was to be mistress now. Lucy and I
often wondered how we should get on with her and
what she would leave in our hands.
DEAR DAVIE. 193
Ah ! cau I ever forget that day ? Lucy and I were
sitting in the drawing-room after dinner, very sad,
very broken, speculating on the time when we might
expect to see Charlie and his wife and trying to drown
our vague fears of her in our joy at having our brother
with us again. We made out that they would be at
Marseilles about now ; and that it would not be lone: —
say a Aveek — before they Avould be at home. While we
were sitting there talking, Ave saAv a horseman come at
full speed up the avenue ; then a noisy ring tore at the
hall bell ; and soon after Davie came hurrying into the
room Avith a telegram. Telegrams were not so common
then as they are noAv, and they had never been usual
at the Hall, Avhere indeed they Avere specially dreaded.
Davie looked frightened ; Ave girls trembled ; and then
Lucy, ojDening the cover, read just these Avords from
Kate : " Your brother died at sea a fortnight ago.
Prepare for my arrival at the Hall in a fcAv days."
Telegrams cannot be sympathetic, I knoAv, but this
read to us so cruel, so heartless and unfeeling! It
came so abruj)tly. The news Avas so crushing, so aAvful !
Oh ! Avords fail me. I cannot express A\'hat it was to
us. Charlie dead ! the last of our house ! Father and
two brothers all gone in less than a year. We had
scarcely recovered from the shock of poor papa's death,
Avhen Reginald Avas taken from us ; and now Charlie,
the last of the generation ; and poor Lucy and I left
VOL. I. -
194 DEAR DAVIE.
alone. Alone, with a stranger to come and take pos-
session of the old house, and to bring up in ways
different from ours the future master of the Hall, the
future representative of the Lombes. Cannot you
xmderstand all the different waves of sorrow that over-
whelmed us ? Grief at the loss of our only brother,
family pride and old-time conservatism, our utter lone-
liness and the vague fear and antagonism Texisting
between us and Kate. All these smaller feelings helped
to swell the current ; though the fact that Charlie was
dead, and that we should never see him again, was the
most terrible sorrow of all.
Well, we did not go mad, nor break down into illness,
we lived through the next few days in a kind of
crushed despair ; feeling something, I fancy, as crimi-
nals must feel before their trial, not knowing what was
to be our ftite. And in a few days Kate arrived. She
sent no further intimation. We did not know where to
write to her ; and all that we had to do was, as she
said, to prepare for her coming.
It was just a week after that dreadful telegram, and
it was early in the day ; I remember the very hour —
•exactly twenty minutes past one; a fine bright summer
day — when three hack -flies drove through the gates
and up the avenue. They were loaded with trunks
and packages of all kinds ; on the outside of the first
was a native servant in his Eastern dress, on the last an
DEAR DAVIE. 195
English servant in livery — bnt a different livery from
ours. Ours was the old murrey colour and gold ; this
was olive and silver. The servants flocked into the
hall; and we went to the door to meet our sister
Naturally, at least it seemed natural to us, dear Davie
stood out on the step with us. He Avas so like one of
our family that neither Lucy nor I thought, for a
moment, whether it would look odd or not to a
stranger that he should be standing on a level with
oui'selves, and occasionally speaking to us with the
affectionate familiarity of a poor kind of uncle.
In the first fly was Kate alone. She was very pretty ;
and her jaunty, fresh, coquettish weeds set her off
immensely. She was a small, round kind of woman,
with large light eyes that looked as if there had never
been a tear in them — those dry, glittering eyes, like
polished stones or metal, with narrow upper lids and a
trick of staring steadily, as if nothing could lower or
■abash them ; the mouth was thin but prettily curved,
and the nose was small but prominent. It was a face
that ended in the tip of the nose- — don't you know what
I mean? — with the forehead and chin sloping back-
wards; but though it was decidedly a pretty it was
not a pleasant face. It was fair, and the colours were
pure and the outlines rounded ; but it was a face that
had neither tenderness nor sympathy in it ; it was as
hard in its expression as if cut out of wood.
196 DExiR DAVIE.
She got out of the fly deliberately, and shook hands
with lis in a quiet niattor-of-fact way, drawing back as
Lncy bent to kiss her. I took the hint and did not
offer. And, looking at ns full in our faces, she said, in
a slow, monotonous voice : " You are Miss Lombe, I pre-
sume ? " to Lucy ; to me : " And you are Miss Mary ? "
She stared with cold surprise at Davie who had
come forAvard in his kind old-fashioned way, half
offering his haiad ; and that was her sole acknowledg-
ment of him ; and then she turned round and spoke to
the servant sharply in Hindostanee, while he stood
bowing and salaaming in a way that seemed quite
shocking to Lucy and me, accustomed to treat English
servants with respect, and to be treated by them with
independence.
Li a few moments however, the second fly drove up,
in which were a black nurse and two children. The
dear children ! You can fancy how Lucy and I yearned
towards them ! Poor Charlie's boys ! and the last of
the Lombes ! The black man, a little rudely I thought,
thrust himself before old Davie and opened the door of
the fly, and we ran up and held out our arms to them ;
but the younger began to scream and hid his face in
the ayah's neck, and the other made naughty faces and
called out to us in Hindostanee to go away, and that
we were pigs and ugly old women. So we learnt
afterwards. Kate laughed, and said : " Cheep, cheep ; "
DEAR DAVIE. 197
the ayah smiled and looked on helplessly, and, oh,
dear ! it was a dreadful meeting ! Kate so cold and
indifferent, the strange servants, the reluctant children,
and poor Charlie only so lately dead!
Lucy and I, with tears in our eyes and that dreadful
spasm at our hearts, led the way into the house ; when
Kate, stopping in the hall, asked abruptly, looking at
the servants generally but not acknowledging their
curtsies : " Which of you women is the cook? " just as
if she had been speaking to people at an inn. Jane
Clewer came forward and curtsied. She had lived with
us fifteen years, and was a great favourite with us all.
*' Can you cook well? " asked Kate.
Jane smiled nervously,^ coloured and curtsied again.
" I believe I know my business, ma'am," she answered.
'' So you all say," said Kate, in such an odd, bloodless
kind of way ! " However, I shall soon be able to judge
if you will suit me or not. Prepare tiffin — luncheon I
mean — at once, if you please, and take care that the rice
is properly boiled. Said will show you hoA\- to boil it,
as you will not know. English servants never do."
Then she spoke to the servant in Hindostanee, while
poor Jane got scarlet and looked at us, scarcely knowing
ivhether to blaze out on the spot or take her humilia-
tion quietly. But I felt for the poor thing, with all
her English Avays and prejudices, having a black man
— a heathen — set over her in her own kitchen, and to
198 DEAR DAVIE.
teach her such an elementary thing as how to boil rice t
However/there -was no help for it ; so they all filed out
of the hall again, and Said, salaaming, followed them,
while little Eegy, the eldest boy, pulled the tail of our
Persian cat till she cried ; and the younger one ran
screaming after the j^eacock which we had just begun
to tame, and frightened it away over the lawn into the
shrubbery.
" Now you must show me the house," said Kate,
turning to Lucy. " We shall have time before tiifin is
ready, and then I shall knoAv where I am and what to
arrange."
So we understood it all now. Of course we expected
her to be mistress ; Iput we thought she would have
allowed us to resign our authorit}^, instead of taking
it out of our hands. Don't yoii know the diflerence?
Well ! I need not go into this. I give you just that
little opening sketch as an indication to all that fol-
lowed. Before Kate had been an hour in the house
she was fully installed ; and had even asked for the
keys, saying, in her quiet manner : " I must ask you
to label these for me. Miss Lombe, till I have learnt
which is which ; " and making Lucy and me feel only
guests in our old house. She took the head of the
table, and asked Lucy " to be kind enough to take
the foot ; " she assigned the children their places, and
made her two men, Said and Eoss, of more imj^ortance
DEAR DAVIE. 199
than Davie whom, indeed she ordered abont and
spoke to as he had never been spoken to in his life.
She said very little to ns, but talked to the little boys
and her Indian servants, always in Hindostanee; and
altogether she made herself as utterly unpleasant as it
was possible for her to do. And yet we could say
nothing. You cannot very well complain of people for
that intangible kind of rudeness which only wounds
you but does not strike you openly.
We found out afterwards that she had made up her
mind to this course of action from the first. She
thought we might be difficult to move by gentler
means ; tliat we were old maids who had grown into
the soil, as it were, so she determined on uprooting us
at once. According to her view of things it was the
most merciful way. I do not mean to deny that we
should have liked a little fuss over our abdication;
we should ; we should have liked to give up our
authority generously, with a little scene, a little effu-
sion ; we should have liked the importance of teaching
her our ways and of training her to follow in the
Lombe footsteps. That was very natural, for we were
old maids ; thin, home-staying, fixed in thought and
habit ; but we were not, I think, unjust or bad-hearted,
and we wished to do what was right by Charlie's wife
and children. Still we were Lombes. The house had
been ours for all our lives; and the family traditions
200 DJEAE DAVIE.
were strong, as I told yon. Perliaps it was equally
natural ; — Kate's unconditional assumption of authority
without any reference to us, and our desire to make
ourselves of importance by giving up gracefully, as
of our own free will, what she took as her right.
Of course the servants were the chief trouble. Kate
did not get on with any of ours, and Eoss, her footman,
was given all the functions of the butler if Davie
retained the name. Lucy and I had an utter horror
of this man Eoss. He was a bold, showy, impudent
fellow, who treated us all, even Lucy and nie, in the
most free and easy manner possible — and with covert
disrespect, as if we knew nothing beyond crows' nests
and butter-milk. Davie frankly hated the man ; but
Kate tipheld him ; and between him and Said our poor
old friend's life was by no means a pleasant one at
this moment. Nothing but his affection for us kept him
to his post ; but, as he used to say, his eyes filling with
tears : "I mistrust them, young ladies, and I will not
leave you, dear children, in their power." Dear Davie !
we were always " young ladies " and " dear children '' to
him ! And indeed both Lucy and I had a vague mis-
trust of the new men ; but perhaps that was because we
were such thorough old maids, and so disinclined to
anything new !
Kate had been at the Hall about a fortnight, when
one day all the servants were called up into the
DEAR DAVIE. 201
dining-room ; and, without any previous warning, all
received notice to leave tlais day month.
" I have no fault to find with you," said Kate, in her
quiet, monotonous way ; " and you will all have excel-
lent characters; but you have been too long in the
place, you are too familiar with your former mistresses,
and there is too much gossip and secret caballing going
on. As I dismiss you all, I single out none; but I
must be mistress in my own house, and do what I
like without the remarks that are made now. So,
for all our sakes, every one of you must find another
situation."
You may imagine how this took us all by surprise.
Some of the maids fell to crying. Jane Clewer was
one ; and Davie, dear Davie ! I thought the old man
would have fainted. He staggered back as if he had
been struck, and I ran up to him and put a chair for
him.
" Not Davie, Kate," cried Lucy, putting her hand
on his shoulder ; " Davie is one of our own family,
poor papa's friend and Charlie's — of all of us. Davie
must not go ; Charlie would never have let him go."
"And old Mofiat with the rest," said Kate coldly.
She never got excited. " He is past his work and very
troublesome ; and I should think, with his long service
and absurdly extravagant wages, he must have saved
a fortune by now — certainly quite enough to live on.
202 DEAR DAVIE.
Besides, I wish a younger man at the head of the estab-
lishment." She meant Eoss.
" Then if Davie goes, Mary and I will go too," said
Lncy excitedly.
Kate bowed. " That is quite for yourselves to
decide," she said. " If you choose to stay here I will
not turn you out ; if you wish to go I will do nothing
to keep you against your will. You must act just as
you think best."
" We will leave," said Lucy again. " Mary, don't
you say too ? "
" Leave, yes ! without a moment's hesitation," I
answered. " If we do not go of our free will we shall
&^
be forced to go before long. This is meant for us."
" You are wrong there," said Kate ; " I would not
have forced you. If you like to leave because I wish
to change the servants " — here she lifted her shoulders
and spread out her hands — "you are your own mis-
tresses," she added with a smile full of meaning. " But
do you think it well to discuss these delicate matters
before 'the domestics ? "
" They are our friends ! " I cried warmly. " The
only friends we have in the house."
" I do not envy your choice," returned Kate ; and,
with a mocking bow : " I beg to leave you to your
select associates ; " she said, and swept out of the room.
Of course all this was very dreadful. That we should
DEAE DAVIE. 203
have to leave our dear old home was bad enough ; hut
that we, the Lombes, should have to confess to famil}^
jars, to he the cause of public talk and public scandal,
was worse than all. You can imagine what it must
have been to prim — I dare say we were prim — and in a
manner proud, old maids, who had given the tone to
society for so long, who had been the models of home
affections and family loyalty for generations. But it
must be done. We knew that this dismissal of our old
servants, specially of Davie, the change of living, the
change of style altogether, were so many blows aimed
at us ; and for self-respect we felt that we must with-
draw from further suffering.
There was a small house about two miles off that we
had always liked. It was just on the borders of Calne
Wood, in a lovely situation ; and the very thing for
Lucy and me. For we were not rich. Our portions
were small, in consideration of our being at home ; but
we were proud enough to resolve that what we had
should be sufficient. We were to take Jane Clewer
and Davie with us. But the dear old man would not
hear of such a thing as " wages." He said that Mrs.
Charles was right there, he had saved enough to
keep himself for life and he would not take a penny
from us.
"I know what you have, young ladies," he said,
" five hundred a year between you ; and you'll find
•204 BEAR DAVIE.
that a tio-lit fit after tlieHall. Jane there can take her
wages, she is young yet (she was nearly fifty) and must
think of her old age ; and yoii'U have to have a man
for the garden and the boots and shoes, and all that ;
hut I'll he your man without wage, so no more need be
said about it."
Was not that being good ? No wonder we called him
dear Davie! And really, servant though he was, we
felt no degradation in the arrangement. We would
3iot have taken a shilling from Kate ; but dear Davie
was our own — and she was a stranger !
I cannot understand what I am going to tell you
now. How it all came about, what it all meant, I do
liot know and can only conjecture ; but the story is a
true one, if confused and unintelligible.
It was the night before Lucy and I Avere to leave the
hall. There had been a rather warm dispute with
Kate about some old silver which had belonged to our
mother, and which Lucy and I thought we ought to
have had ; a silver tea service, candelabra, side dishes,
etc. And as the Lombe family silver was rich and
abundant, this, which was never used and wliich we
had always looked on as belonging to us by right,
would not have been missed. But Kate, in her
character of trustee for her children as she used to
say, would not part with a single piece. Everything
in the Hall had devolved on them, she said, with her
BEAR DAVIE. 205
immovable air; and she had not the power, if the
inclination, to give lis anything whatsoever. There
had been sharp words about this silver, and Davie had
upheld ns, and Ross had heard the dispute ; and then
Kate ordered that special chest to be placed in her own
room as if we were thieves !
It was in the middle of the night when we were all
aroused by a hideous noise. Breaking up our sleep
we could not tell what it was : but it was a dreadful
«
mixture of groans and screams coming from Kate's
room, Lucy and I, who slept in adjoining rooms, threw
on our dressing-gowns and ran across the corridor to
the blue room where Kate slept. Many of the servants
were up and clustered on the landing; the younger
women shrieking vaguely, and the ayah making a
shrill unearthly noise like nothing I had ever heard
before ; and with all this, groans and half-stifled screams
came from Kate's room, and the dogs were barking
furiously.
We rushed into the room ; and here I can scarcel}'
tell you what we saw. Everything was in a dreadful
state ! The silver, about which there had been so much
disinite, was strewed about the floor ; there had evi-
dently been a tremendous struggle, for chairs and
tables were knocked down and the bed-curtains were
torn ; on the bed lay Kate, with a handkerchief round
her neck and mouth, nearly strangled; on the floor
206 . BEAR DAVIE,
was Davie, pale and covered with blood — he had beeu
stabbed. But he was not dead, only insensible and
dying. The bedroom window was wide open, and Eoss
was nowhere to be seen. All the other servants were
there ; onr own, and Said, and the ayah ; but the new
man was not to be seen. Davie could tell us nothing,
neither what he was doing in Kate's room, nor what
was the meaning of the struggle, nor yet who had
stabbed him. Kate would not speak ; all she would
say was : " It was not Moffat who came to rob me."
But the next day, when the local inspector came to
the house to inquire into matters, and when, immedi-
ately after him, a detective arrived from London with
a warrant for the apprehension of John Hard, alias
Eoss, for robbery and all sorts of crimes, the mystery
seemed to make itself clear to these men at all events.
It was evidently a robbery, they said, planned before
his flight. He had probably received a hint that he had
been tracked ; and the servants said they noticed how
long he was talking to a beggar woman in the garden
late in the evening, and that he had said he thought
he "would make a good thing of it, and bolt."
As for the old man — and here they looked as if they
could see further into dear Davie's character than we
could, who had known him all our lives — if indeed he
were qiiite incapable of having a hand in the robbery,
he had probably heard something which had roused his
suspicions, and had gone to see what it meant.
DEAR DAVIE. 207
To which Kate said to me, quite earnestly: " I should
think that must have been the case. I do not for a
moment believe that Moffat had any hand in the in-
tended robbery."
*' If you had said that he had, Kate, you would
have deserved to have been strangled outright, instead
of being saved by him at the sacrifice of his own life ! "
said I, bursting into a passion of tears like nothing I
have ever known before or since.
From this time Kate entirely changed. The dreadfiil
scene she had gone through and the danger she had
run, seemed to have shaken her nerves so that she could
not steady herself. She was continually in hysterics
and would not be left alone for a moment. She clung
to us as if we had been her real sisters, and became as
nice and good as she had been unfriendly before. But
we had lost our Davie, our friend, our protector in her
service ! We had bought her at a heavy cost, dear
Charlie's wife though she was. So the quarrel was
made up over our faithful servant's grave; and we
remained at the old Hall, as the Lombes should. And
the boys are growing up dear loves and great beauties,
and do not now call us pigs or ugly old women. Dear
Davie ! dear old man ! It was through him, after all,
that we got back our home. Heaven rest his soul !
God reward his sacrifice!
THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
VOL. I.
THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
1 WAS to be a governess ; but I coixld not obtain a
situation. My pooi* mother had been insane for many-
years before her death ; one of my brothers was deaf
and dumb, another was deformed, while none of us
showed health or vigoiir. In a word, there was
no escaping the fact that we had the seeds of some
terrible disease sown thickly among -us, and that, as
a family, we were unhealthy and unsafe. I was the
eldest and the strongest, both in mind and body, but
that was not saying much. I was always what I am
now, tall and gaunt, with the spasmodic affection
which you see in my face; as nervous as I am now
and nearly as thin; short-sighted, which made my
manners doubly awkward, and they would always
have been awkward from my nervousness and ungainly
figure; and with an unnaturally acute hearing, often
followed by attacks of unconsciousness, which some-
times lasted many hours and rendered me, for the
time, dead to all outward life.
212 THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
Unpromising as our family condition was, when my
father died and left ns destitute, it was absolutely
necessary that those of us at all capable should get
something to do, and that the rest should be cared
for by charity. The last we found more easy to be
accomplished than the first. Many kind hands were
stretched out to help the helpless of us, but few to
strengtheii the weak. However, after a time, they
were all settleel in some Avay or other, at least secured
from starvation, while I, who had been considered the
most hopeful, was still unprovided for, looking vainly
for a situation either as governess or companion.
Each was equally difScult to procure. On the one
side my manners and appearance were against me,
on the other, my family histor3\ As I could not
deny my inheritance of disease and insanity, mothers,
naturally enough, would not trust me with their
children ; and I was not sufficiently attractive for
a companion. People who can afford companions want
something pliant, bright, animated, pleasant. No
one would look at my unlovely face, or hear the harsh
tones of my voice — I know how harsh they are — and
pay me to be an ornament or pleasure to their lives.
So, as I tell you, I was refused by every one ; until I
began to despair of success, and without blaming any,
to understand that the world was too hard for me and
that I had no portion in it.
THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE. 213
As my last venture, I answered an advertisement in
the Times for a companion to a lady in delicate liealtli,
living in the country. My letter was replied to in a
bold, manly hand, and a meeting arranged. I was to
go down that next day by train to a place about twenty
miles from London, and find my way from a certain
railway station named — conveyances not to be had —
two miles across country to a village called Fen-
house Green. A mile farther would bring me to
Fenhouse itself, "the seat of JMr. and Mrs. Brand."
The note was couched in a curiously sharp, peremptory
style ; and pompously worded. I remember too, that
it was written on a broad sheet of coarse letter-paper,
and sealed with what looked at first sight to be a large
coat of arms, but which, when examined, proved to be
only a make-believe. With my habit of making up
histories out of every incident that came before me, I
decided that the writer was a military man, wealthy
and high-born ; and that, about to leave on foreign
service, he wished to place his young and beautiful
wife in careful hands so as to ensure her pleasant com-
panionship during his absence. I made quite a romance
out of that peremptory letter with its broad margin
and imposing seal.
" They will nevei- take me when thej^ have seen
me ! " I sighed, as I settled myself in the third-class
carriage which I shared with three sokliers' wives and
214 THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
a couple of Irish labourers ; and I wislied tliat I could
have exchanged my fate and person with the meanest
among them. Though they were poor they were not
under a curse, as I was ; though man had not uplifted
them, Fortune had not crushed them as she had crushed
me. I was weeping hitterly behind my veil, over-
powered with my own sadness and desj)air and almost
decided on not going farther to meet only wdth fresh
disappointment, when the train stopped at my station,
and I let myself drift down the tide of circumstance,
and once more dared my chance.
Asking my way to Fenhouse Green, much to the
astonishment of the solitary station-master, I struct
into a rugged by-road, which he said w^ould take me
there. The two miles' walk seemed as if it would
never end. The road was lonely and the country
desolate, ugly and monotonous — nothing but a broad
ragged waste, without a tree or an autumn flower
to break the dead dreariness of the scene. I did
not meet a living creature until I came to an un-
wholesome-looking collection of cottages, covered with
foul eruptions of fungi and mildew starting out like
leprosy on the walls. "Where the village green should
have been, was a swamp, matted Avith conferva\ It
was a place to remember in one's dreams, from the
neglect and desolation, the hopeless poverty and
feverish squalor of all about.
THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
If this was the village of which the writer had
spoken so pompously as his property, and of which I
had imagined all that was charming and picturesque,
it did not argue much for what had to come ; and I
l^egan to feel that I had painted too brightly, and
perhajDs had ranked my chance too low. The place
frightened me. I went through, glad to escape the
stupid wonder of the pallid women and children who
came crowding to the doors, as though a stranger were
a rare and not too welcome sight among them. Indeed,
some seemed to have a kind of warning terror in their
looks when they pointed in the direction of the
House, as they called it ; and one old witch, lifting her
stick, cried : " Surely, surely, not there belike ! " in a
tone which froze my blood. However, it was too late
now to recede ; so, full of an indescribable terror, I
went on my way, until I arrived at Fenhouse where
my future was to lie.
It was a lonely house, standing back from the road ;
completely concealed, in front, by a tangled shrubbery,
while at the rear stretched a close dark wood with a
trailing undergrowth of briars and thorns. The gate
hung broken, supported by one hinge only ; the garden
was a mass of weeds and rubbish ; the flower-beds were
overgrown with grass and nettles ; and what had
once been pretty rose-trees and flowering shrubs were
stifled by bindweed and coarser growths. The house
210 THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
was of moderate size, two-storied and roomy; but su
neglected and nncared for that it looked more desolate
than anything I had ever seen before. My dream
of the young and beautiful wife had vanished, and
I felt as if about to be ixshered into the presence of
some fantastic horror or deadly crime. The wet leaves
plashed beneath my feet and sent up their clouds of
autumn odour — the odour of death ; unsightly insects
and loathsome reptiles glided before me with a strange!
familiarity which rendered them yet more loathly ; not
a bird twittered through the naked branches of the
trees; the whole place had a wild, weird, haunted
look ; and, shivering with dread at I knew not what, I
rang the rusty bell hanging loosely out of the chipped
and broken socket. The peal startled me and brought
out a small terrier, which came running round me,
barking furiously and shrilly. The door was opened hj
a ragged, slip-shod servant-girl ; and I was shown into
a poorly furnished room, which seemed to be a kind of
library — to judge, at least, by the open bookcase thinly
stocked with shabby books. The room was close and
musty ; the fire in the grate was heaped up carefully
towards the middle, and the sides blocked in by bricks.
It was a mean fire : a stingy, shabby fire.
After Avaiting for some time, a gentleman and lady
came in. She was a pale, weak, hopeless-looking woman ;
very tall, fair and slender; with a narrow forehead,
THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE. 217
lustreless light blue eyes without eyelashes, scanty hair,
strtiAv-coloured ill-defined eyebrows, and very thin pale
lips. She was slightly deformed, and carried her arms
thrust back from the elbow, the hands left to dangle
nervelessly from the wrists. She stooped, and was
dressed in a limp faded cotton gown, in every way
too scant and cold for the season. "When she came in,
her eyes were bent towards the soiled grey carpet, and
she never raised them or made the least kin,d of saluta-
tion, but sat down on a chair near the window and
began to unravel a strip of muslin. The gentleman
was short and thick-set ; active and determined-
looking ; with dark hair turning now to grey ; a thick
but evenly cut moustache joining his bushy whiskers —
the large square heavy chin left bare; overhanging
eyebrows with small, restless, passionate eyes beneath :
in his whole face and bearing an expression of temper
amounting to ferocity,
lie spoke to me peremptorily and haughtily ; asked
me my name, age, family condition, previous history, as
if he had been examining me on oath, scarcely Avaiting
for my answers, and all the while fixing mo with those
snail angry eyes till I felt dazed and restless, and as
if under torture. Then he said, abruptl}' —
" You have a strange look — a scared look, I may call
it. How have you come by it ? "
" I am of a nervous temperament, sir," I answered,
pulling at the ends of my gloves. .
218 THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
" Nothing else ? Nothing hereditary ? "
"Yes, sir," said I as steadily as I could; "there i&
hereditary misfortune among ns."
"Father or mother?"
" Mother."
" Ah ! " said the man, rubhing his moustache and
looking at me with eyes all aflame ; " so much the
nearer and more dangerous."
" I am not dangerous," I said, a little too humbly
perhaps ; but that man was completely subduing me.
•' I am nervous, but I have no Avorse tendency."
He laughed.
" Perhaps not," he said with a sneer that made my
blood curdle ; " no one ever has. Don't you know that
all maniacs are philosophers, when they arc not kings
and queens ? Shall I take you on trust then, according
to your own estimate of yourself, or discharge you at
once, according to mine ? "
" I think I may be trusted, sir," I answered, looking
everywhere biit into his face.
" What do you think, Mrs. Brand ? " he said, turning
to the pale woman unravelling her strip of muslin and
who had not, as I thought, looked at me once yet.
" She is ugly," said she in a dull, monotonous voice ;
" I don't like i:gly people."
Mr. Brand laughed again.
" Never mind that, Mrs. Brand ; goodness don't go
THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE. 219^
b^' looks, does it, Miss — Miss what ? Are you a name
or a number ? "
" Miss Erfurt."
" Oh yes ! I forgot — Jane Erfurt — I remember now,
and a queer name it is, too — does it, Miss Jane Erfurt?"
" Not always, sir," I said, moving restlessly.
" Well, Mrs. Brand, wha-t do you say ? "
" She is ugly and George will not like her," said the
lady in the same half-alive manner.
" Who the deuce cares ! " shouted Mr. Brand, flaming
with passion on the instant. " Let him like her or not,
who cares for a stupid fool, or fur what he thinks?
That, for his liking ! " snapping his fingers insolently.
The lady's face grew a shade paler; but, beyond a
furtive, terrified glance at her husband she took no
notice of his words. He then turned abruptly to me,
and told me that I was to hold myself engaged to per-
form the duties of companion to Mrs. Brand, and that I
was to enter on those duties early next week.
"But without the lady's consent?" said I, too weak
to resist, and too nervous too accept.
She put away her muslin and rose. " Mr. Brand
is master here," she said ; " do what he tells you ; it
saves trouble,"
The week, after I went to Fenhouse, as the companion
of Mrs. Brand.
The first day's dinner was a strange affair. After we.
220 THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
had seated ourselves, to what was a very scanty supply,
there lounged in a youth of about seventeen : a heavy,
fulhblooded, lumpish being Avith a face devoid of in-
telligence, but more animal than imbecile ; not specially
good-tempered but not vicious ; a mere idle, eating and
drinking clown, scarcely raised above the level of a dog
or a horse, and Avithout even their instinctive emotions.
What an unwholesome, unnatural circle Ave made ! I
longed for a little health}^ life among iis, and turned
with a feeling of euA'y and relief to the commonplace
•servant-maid, Avho, if not intellectual, was at the least
more in accord Avith ordinary life than we.
There Avas ill-blood between Mr. Brand and Master
Oeorge, as the boy \vas called ; and I soon understood
why. His mother's only son by a former marriage, and
heir of the neglected lands lying round Fenhouse, he
stood in the way of his step-father Avhose influence over
his Avife was supreme, and who, but for the boy, would
have absolute possession of everything. He had married
for money and had been balked of half his prize. I
used often to Avonder that the tAvo Avere not afraid to
trust themselves in the hands of one so passionate and
unscrupulous ; but, though Mrs. Brand was undis-
guisedly afraid of her husband, and the bo}^ was not too
stupid to understand that he was hated, and Avhy,
neither seemed to look forAvard to evil days. I do not
think that they had mind enough to look to the future
THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE. 221
in hope or dread. Mother and son loved each other,
with the mute instinctive love of dumb animals— a love
which would be helpless to save either if bad times
came. They were not much together and they seldom
spoke when they met ; but they sat close to each other,
always in the same place and on the same chairs ; and
Mrs. Brand unravelled her eternal slips of muslin while
her son gathered up the threads and thriist them into
a canvas bag.
I had been there a fortnight, and I never saw either
of them employed in anything else ; and I never heard
lialf a dozen words pass between them. It was a silent
house at all times ; and, more than this, it was a house
full of hate. Save this dumb-animal kind of love
between the two, not a ray of even kindly feeling
existed among any of us. The servant was the mark
for every one's ill temper ; while I stood out as a kind
of pariah among them all, not even dignified by active
persecution. I was shunned, and could not understand
Avhy I was there at all. The lady never spoke to me,
not even to say good morning ; she gave me no duties,
but she forbade me no employment. I was free to do
what I liked, provided I did not make my existence
too manifest to her, and did not speak to her husband
or ]\Iaster George. If by chance anything like a con-
versation began — for IMr. Brand had his talkative
moods in a violent, angry kind of way — she used to
222 THE 'FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
order me out of tlie room in just the same tone as that
in which she spoke to the dog. If I remonstrated, as I
did once, her only answer was : " You can go if you
like ; I did not hire you."
One thing especially troubled me. It troubled me
because, like all morbidly imaginative people, anything
of a mystery terrified me more than an open danger ;
and this, of which I am going to speak, was a myster3\
The boy took no notice of me at the first. He never
spoke to me when he came into the room ; he passed
me in the fields as if he did not see me ; indeed, he had
always that manner to me — he did not see me — I did
not exist for him. I was well content that this should
be ; but, after I had been there a short time, Mr. Brand
began to make distinct mischief between us. From
brutish indifierence. Master George passed rapidly to
brutish aggression. When he met me in the lanes and
fields he made mouths at me ; once he flung stones
and mud as I passed him ; at table he would kick me
silently ; and whenever I caught his eye he made
hideous grimaces, muttering in his broad, provincial
accent : " Mad dog ! mad dog ! We hang mad dogs
hereaway ! " His insolence and brutality increased
daily; and Mr. Brand encouraged him. This was the
mystery. W hy should he wish this lad to hate me ?
There Avas a plot imderneath it all which I tor-
mented mj'self to discover. Day and night the thought
THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE. 223
taunted lue, till I felt growing crazed with dread and
teri-or. I conld not conceal my abhorrence of the youth
— I was too nervoTis for that — nor hide the fear with
which that wicked man inspired me. I was as helpless
as the poor pale woman there ; and as thoroughly the
victim of a stronger fate.
One night Master George had been more than
•usually intolerable to me. He had struck me openly
before both father and mother ; had insulted my misfor-
tunes, and spoken with brutal disrespect of my family.
It was a wild winter's night, and the howling Avind
shook the windows and dashed the trailing ivy-leaves
sharply against the panes ; a fearful night, making all
visions of freedom and escape impossible; a night which
necessitated one to be content wdth one's own fireside
and forbade the idea of wandering afield. Yet it was
something worse than death to me to be shut up in that
mean room with its squalid furniture and scanty fire,
with such companions as I had and to feel that I could
not escape them — that they might ill-treat me, mock me,
persecute me as they would, and I was bound to bear
all without protection or means of escape. The stormj'-
nio-ht had excited me, and I felt less than ever able to
bear all the insolence and brvitality heaped upon me.
When Master George struck me again, and called me
" mad dog," something seemed to take possession of me.
My timidity and nervousness vanished, and I felt as if
221 THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
swept away in a very tumult of passion. I do not
know now what it Avas that I said or did. hut I re-
niemher rising passionately from my place, and pouring-
out a torrent of hitterness and reproach. I was almost
unconscious of what I was doing, for I was literally for
the moment insane ; but I remember the words : " You
shall die ! you shall die ! " rising like a scream through
the room. I have not the slightest recollection of liow
I left the parlour, nor how I got to my own chamber, .
but it was past midnight when I awoke from what
must have been a kind of swoon and found myself
lying on the floor.
The wind was still raging, howling through the
trees outside, tearing down branches and scattering the
dead leaves like flakes of frozen snow on the ground.
Every door and window shook throughout the old
house, and the wild moaning in the chimneys startled
one like the cries of tortured beings. Confused and
giddy, I rose up out of my trance, stiff with cold and
scarcely conscious. But as my brain grew clearer it
"•rew also feverish, and I knew there was no rest for
me to-night. My hearing began to be distressingly
acute, and every painful thought and circumstance of
my life rose up before me with the force and vividness
of living scenes actually present to my senses. I paced
my room for some time in a state of despair, Avringing
my hands and sobbing violently, but without tears.
THE FAMILY AT FENIIOUSE. 225
By degrees a little calmness came to mo, and I deter-
mined to go downstairs for a book. I would get some
quiet, calm, religious book which would soothe me like
a spiritual opiate, and take mo out of the abyss of
misery into which I had sunk. What friend, indeed
had I in the world, save the Great Father above us all ?
As I opened the door I fancied I heard a stealthy
step along the passage. I held my breath to listen,
shading the candle with my hand. I was not deceived ;
there %ms a step passing furtively over the creaking
boards in the direction of Master George's room. I
shrank back into the doorway. Yet there was nothing
to alarm me. A quiet footfall at midnight might be
easily accounted for : why should it affect me with mis-
trust and dread ? and why should I feel this over-
powering impulse to go towards the sound ? I scarcel}"-
knew what I expected to find ; but something stronger
than myself seemed to impel me to the discovery of
something horrible; and, placing the candle on the
floor, I crept noiselessly along the passage, every nerve
strung to its utmost tension.
Master George slept in a room at the end of the
back-stairs gallery which ran at right angles to the
passage in which my room was situated. My door
faced Mr. and Mrs. Brand's ; Master George's faced the
kitchen stairs, and was properly the servant's room,
but she had been moved to a small closet near to me,
VOL. I. Q
226 THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
Mr. Brand not approving of her holding so large a
chamber for herself, or willing to allow the hoy any
of a hotter class. When I stood hy my door I could
see Mr. and Mrs. Brand's room ; hut it was only hy
going the whole length of the hack-stairs gallery
that I could get to Master George's. I could see now
however, that his door was open, for a ray of light
fell along the staircase wall; and I could hear his
heavy snoring breath. And I heard another sound. I
heard a man's step in the room ; I heard the hoards
creak and the bed-clothes softly rustle ; I heard an
impatient kind of moan as of some one disturbed in his
sleep, and then a heavy blow, a stifled groan, a man's
deep-drawn breath ^nd the quick, sharp drip of some-
thing spilt on the floor. Dumb from terror, I stood in
the doorway of the boy's room. Pale, heavy, motionless
on the bed lay the youth, his large limbs carelessly
flung abroad in the unconsciousness of sleep and his face
as calm and quiet as if still dreaming. The sheets were
wet with red blood ; the light of the candle glistening
on a small red stream that flowed over the side of
the bed to the floor beneath. At a little distance
stood Mr. Brand, wiping a knife on a handkerchief.
He turned; and our eyes met. He came tip to me with
an oath, caught me by the throat and drew the knife
iicross my hands. I I'emember no more until I awoke
in the broad daylight, and found myself in the midst of
a crowd gathered round my bed.
THE FAMILY AT FENIIOUSE. 227
Curious eyes stared at me ; harsli voices mocked me ;
rough hands were laid upon me; and I heard myself
branded with the burning name of Murderess. Eed
ti'acks anade by a woman's naked feet — made by my
feet — led from the boy's room to mine ; each track
plainly printed on the bare uncarpeted floor — tracks of
■a woman's feet — and of none other. There was no ex-
plaining away these marks and signs of guilt. Who
would believe me, a half-mad lonely stranger with
such a family history as mine, and, according to
popular belief, at any moment liable to make a mur-
derous attack against one offending? Had not this
unhappy youth notoriously offended ? — and had I not,
only that very evening, openly defied and threatened
him ? Escape was impossible. Against all the evidence
heaped up against me with such art and cunning, I
had but unsupported accusation, which would be set
down as maniacal raving, and only deepen the ' case
against me.
All day I lay there ; all that weary sobbing winter's
day ; and when the night came they fastened me with
cords and left me once more alone. I was so well
secured — bound hand and foot, and triply bound — that
it was not thought needful to watch me ; and they
were all too much excited and overwrought to wish to
remain through the night with a lunatic murderer, as I
was called. So they went, and Mr. Brand locked the
228 THE FAMILY AT FENHOUSE.
door, saying, as he turned away : " We must have no
more such dangerous fits of madness. Miss Erfurt ! "
with a sneer on the word.
I was too hopeless and desolate to think of any plan
of escape, feasible or not. The reaction had set in, and
I was content to lie there in quiet and to feel that I
had done with life for ever. It hael not offered me so
many joys that I should grieve to leave it; and for the
shame — who cares for shame in the grave ? No ; I was
content to have done with all that had weighed U2:>on
me so long and heavily. I had no one to mourn for
me ; no one to love me with a broken heart and a
sorrowed faith ; I was alone — alone — and might well
die out at once and sleep tranquilly in my murdered
grave. And I was not unhappy, thinking all these
things. Perhaps my brain was slightly paralyzed, so
that I could not suffer. However it might be, it was a
merciful moment of calm.
It was nearly throe o'clock when I heard a light
hand upon the door. The key was turned softly in the
lock, and, pale and terrible like an avenging ghost, the
mother of the murdered boy glided into my room. She
came up to my bed and silently unfastened the cords.
She said no comforting word; she gave me no kind
look, no pitying human touch ; but in a strange, weak,
wan way, she unbound me limb by limb until J was
free.
THE FAMILY AT FEN HOUSE. 229
" Go," she then said "below her "breath, still not
looking at me. "I do not love you, and he did not ;
but I know that you are innocent and I do not want
your blood on my head. My turn is to come next, but
I do not mind, now he has gone. Go at once ; that
sleep will not last long. I made it come for you."
Without another word she turned from the room,
leaving the door open. I got up as she bade me.
"Without energy, without hope, I quietly dressed myself
and left the house, going forth into the darkness and
desolation, more because I had been bidden to do so
than to escape a greater peril. I wandered through
the by-roads aimlessly, nervelessly; not shaping my
course for any goal, but simply going forwards to
wherever chance might lead me. A poor woman gave
me some milk, and I slept, I believe, once beneath a
haystack. I remember lying down there and finding
myself again after many hours. In time — I cannot tell
you how or when, nor how long I had been out in the
fields — but it was evening and the lamps were lighted
— I was in London, reading a description of myself
posted up against the walls. I saw myself described as
a murderess and maniac, and a reward offered for my
apprehension ; my dress, my manners, appearance, gait,
voice, all were so minutely noted as to render safety
impossible. Seized with terror, I fled : I fled like a
wild being hunted and pursued, and I have never
rested since.
THE BEST TO WIN.
THE BEST TO WIN.
PAET I.
THE START.
A FINE estate nursed by a long minority ; a young
heiress coming to take possession, having escaped from
the bondage of Chancery and the clutches of her
guardians — having too completed her education and
made the most of herself by travel and new sights.
Was Jiot this enough to set the whole society of
Wensley in a ferment ? — to excite every brain with wild
conjectures of disaster or good fortune, according to the
circumstances of the person concerned? Each mother
with a marriageable daughter felt the arrival of Miss
Calvert — Miss Julia Calvert — as the charge of an
enemy ; each widow, still possible, prepared to receive
in her a mortal foe ; but the women with grown-up
sons smiled complacently, and the men without wives
looked twice in the glass where they had looked only
once before.
234 THE BEST TO WIN.
She came into the little world where henceforth she
was to reign supreme, as a creature endowed by the
fairies with every good gift possible to humanity. She
had the prestige of youth, a vague repute for bcaixty,
and one rather less vague for oddity; but more than
all else, she came with the blazing honours of wealth
and position, and had she been old, Txgly and with a
character for something worse than oddity, she would
have been the dominant circumstance of the hour and
the country would have been at her feet all the same
as now.
There wore three men in the place marked out by
nature to be the principal aspirants for Miss Julia
Calvert's hand — men destined to stand in the relation of
triangular duelists, 'each against each, until such time as
she should choose a husband to profit by her guardians'
savings. These three were the Eev. Mr. Tufnell, the
young vicar of the parish, a man of good family and in-
fluential friends, the son of a bishop, and though young
and rather weak, himself destined to come in time to
ecclesiastical dignities ; Mr. Ealph Mattison, the owner
of Shoreham Close which adjoined Beechovcr, Miss
Calvert's estate, on the right ; and a certain Honour-
able Caj)tain Luxmoore, whose place, Ashdown Manor,,
adjoined it on the left. Thus — with the spire of the
church seen at the end of the long elm-tree avenue
ivoiix the drawing-room windows of Beechover — the
THE START. 235
yoimg heiress was set as it were in the centre of the
triangle; and tliose of the county personally nnin-
terested — young married folks and parents of callow
hroods — looked on in amused expectancy as to which
of the three would win the race that all felt sure would
be set afoot.
They were three good-looking young men of well-
defined types : the clergyman smooth-faced, soft-voiced,
with long wavy brown hair — a cross between an apostle
and an artist, as some said like St. John, and others,
less profane, like Eaffaelle; Mr. Ealph Mattison, a
stalwart English gentleman of the muscular school,
with the short curly hair of an athlete, light-blue e^'es
and a frank smile, by no means one of your illiterate
squires whose soul alternates between the hounds and
the crops, but a man of fashion and a gentleman, if too
good-natured to be very dignified and too self-com-
placent to be very sensitive ; and Caj)tain Luxmoore,
tall, dark, well set up, an Indian officer assumed to
have a history and who, because he was reserved and
unsocial, was pronounced wicked by his social inferiors,
and disliked in consequence. The general feeling of
religious respectability was in favour of the clergyman;
the Laodiceans, standing midway between worldly and
religious respectability, went for the young squire ;
while those who upheld the captain were of the two
extremes — the aristocratic and supreme, like the Fresh-
fields ; or the looser of the lowest class — and not many
236 THE BEST TO WIN.
of even these. A reserved man, who goes his own way
and lets the rest of the workl go theirs unhindered, is
never very popular. Second-rate gentilities want show
and fuss if they are to be propitiated ; and the greatest
offence of which the finer sort of gentlefolks can he
guilty is to treat them with quietness and good breed-
ing. Hence, very few of those who disposed of Miss
Calvert's hand — without her consent — assigned it to
the owner of Ashdown Manor ; and in the triangular
duel set by circumstance and nature he was assumed to
have the worst place and the smallest chance.
Meanwhile Miss Julia Calvert came to Beechover,
took possession, arranged her household, and displayed
herself.
She did not seem to be the kind of girl to be disposed
of without her will. Indeed she looked a young lady
of an eminently decided will, to judge by the ringing
tones of her clear voice, the firm tread of her small feet,
the proud bearing of her handsome head and the
complete self-possession of her manner. When she
walked up the long room at the assize ball she walked
^s if she had been the young queen of the district
passing among her subjects ; one who knew her place
and meant that others should know it too ; one who, if
society fell at her feet, thought it good for a footstool,
and manifestly intended to keep it there. She was
accompanied by Mrs. Marsh, the lady who acted as her
THE START. 23
6L
cliaperon and companion, but who, a censorious world
laiglit have said, looked as if she needed some such
functionary on her own account. She was a pretty,
dark-haired, piqnante little joerson whose small form
and low tones contrasted well with the broader lines
and richer tints of her well-developed charge, each
enhancing the other by a contrast more suggestive of
artistic completeness than of conventional safety.
In the group of aristol standing in a little world
apart, gravitating to the top of the room by the law of
their being, were Lord and Lady Freshfield ; the Listers
and the Vernons ; the Pagets and the Powers ; the De
Lacy Smiths and the Du Marc Browns ; Mr. ]\Iattison
talking to Miss Lucy Paget ; Captain Luxmoore listen-
ing to Lady Freshiield ; and the apostolic Mr. Tufnell,
who, on the high-road to ecclesiastical dignities, thought
it wise not to renounce the world where his future
influence had mainly to be felt. For as our bishops are
gentlemen who do not sully their white hands by
meddling with the unwashed and ill-conditioned sheej),
it behoves them to keep terms with the cleaner sort,
and to share their lives if they would save their souls.
Lord and Lady Freshfield went forward to greet the
handsome young heiress as she came wp to the " cream
of the cream," whereof she was one of the most notice-
able drops. Dressed in white and gold, with ornaments
of diamonds and pearls, she looked really regal ; and
238 THE BEST TO WIN.
she bore herself as she looked, gazing round on the
assembly with calm, full, unflinching eyes that seemed
to measure and subdue them all. She looked gracious,
however, and glad when she saw the Freshfields, whom
she had known last year in Eome ; and she returned
their cordial greeting by one as frank.
On the whole they were favourably disposed towards
her ; though Lady Freshfield, who was a colourless
woman afflicted with neuralgia and dyspepsia, preach-
ing submission and inferiority as among the things dealt
Dut by Providence to the weaker sex, was inclined to
think her a little too pronounced for good taste. But
as my lord upheld her, my lady, to be consistent, was
forced to follow his lead and uphold her too, in spite
«f the firm tread, the long steps, the ringing voice,
the decided opinions and the authoritative assumption
which announced Miss Julia Calvert as a young person
sadly needing a husband to keep her in wholesome
check.
Acting then as social sponsors, Lord and Lady Fresh-
field presented her subjects to the new queen, and
watched the impression that she made.
On Mr. Tufnell and Mr. Mattison it was decidedly
favourable. It might almost be called love at first
sight. jMr. Tufnell coloured and lowered his eyes with
a kind of poetic inward admiration ; Mr. Mattison
opened his wide, and smiled all over his face ; and both
THE START. 239
took it to heart, as a matter for personal congratu-
lation, that the owner of Beechover was a beautiful
young woman still unmarried. But Captain Luxmoore
neither blushed like the vicar nor smiled like the
squire. He was just as quiet and with an air as
retrospectively historical as ever ; and Miss Calvert,
seeming to see in him at once a rebel, after looking at
him with a kind of surprise, swept past him with
the finest little touch of disdain in her superb head,
and left him to pallid Lady Freshfield undisturbed.
She found the flutter and open admiration of the others
more to her taste — also more in accord Avith her usual
experience ; and she resented as an affront the indifter-
ence of that tall, distinguished-looking warrior, whose
dark eyes had no flattery in them, but only calm scru-
tiny, and who looked as if he intended to be the one
bold dissentient who would dispute her sovereignty.
"Who is that Captain Luxmoore?" Miss Calvert
asked presently of Mr. Mattison with whom she had
just been dancing.
" A queer ungenial kind of fellow ; your neighbour —
as I am," he answered. " I am on your right ; he on
your left."
" Then I am between you ? " said the heiress with a
little laugh. " I hope not as a bone of contention."
" As a treasure we are both bound to guard with our
lives," returned Ealph gallantly.
240 THE BEST TO WIN.
]\riss Calvert turned her large gray ej-es on him
approvingly.
"But I do not want guarding," she said after a
moment's pause, giving her golden head the faintest
little toss. " I am sufficient for myself."
" So you may be, but you will be none the worse for
extra care. It is the masculine privilege," he said.
" And the feminine disgrace," she answered, with the
look of a young Pallas laying her lance in rest for a
lunge at the baser sex in a body. " Why should we be
taken care of, merely because we are women ? We are
not idiots, though I believe the law — the law which
you men make," with a contemptuous accent on the
Avord " men " — " ranks us with children and lunatics."
" Still, you are not the worse for being protected
from creatures stronger than yourselves, and not always
better," urged Mr. Mattison, standing gallantty to his
guns, and too obtuse to see that he was treading on
dangerous c;round.
" Public opinion should be sufficient to protect us,"
said Miss Calvert superbly, " If you are stronger than
we, you should be so much better. There should be no
question of protection at all. Protection ! it is an
insult ! "
" No, no ; protection is our duty," repeated Mr.
Mattison, wide of the point.
" It shall never be said of me," cried the heiress a
THE STAET. 241
little hotly : '• I intend to live my own life, and to force
every one to respect it. I do not want protection ! "
" Yon mnst let ns disobey yon for yonr own good,"
ansAvered Ralph, with whom women were as eggshells,
and men the granite cnps in which they were to be
held in safety, and who did not understand Miss Cal-
vert's ethics any more than he understood the Positive
Philosophy. " We men were sent into the world to take
care of those beings who are so mnch higher and better
than we are, and Avho cannot take care of themselves."
"We can," repeated Miss Calvert with energy;
" and I fur one Avill ! "
Diiring this conversation Mr, Tnfnell, thinking that,
failing the rose, that Avhich dwelt nearest to it was
better than nothing, set himself to projiitiate pretty
little Mrs. Marsb. She had been conrteonsl}^ entreated
by the Freshfields, else perhaps Mr. Tnfnell, who
believed in principalities and powers, would not have
gone out of his way to be civil to her ; but as things
were she seemed to be a nicely arranged hook on which
he might advantageously hang a few initial loops.
He thought too that he might get from her some
useful information about Miss Calvert's inner self; her
likes and dislikes, opinions, views, and so forth ; for as
he was a meek and amenable kind of person, whose
favourite motto was reader ixnir mieux sauter, it M-ould
be better for him to fall into steji at once, instead of
VOL. I. E
242 THE BEST TO WIN.
trying tlie wrong foot first and then having to shift to
the right.
His questions were really very trenchant, though
they were softly spoken and delicately worded ; hut the
companion was as clever as the clergyman, and had no
intention of throwing light into dark places for the
better guidance of a matrimonial burglar, or of knot-
ting up a rope-ladder by which he might ascend and
she be thrust out. She had heard the local gossip from
the upper servants, and knew what was expected of the
triangular duelists. Hence she regarded them all as
her enemies, and was not disposed to play into their
hands.
"When he asked her" what were Miss Calvert's favourite
pursuits — did she favour the splendour of Eitualism, the
searching spirituality of Evangelicalism, or the noble
generosity of the Broad Church? had she her heart
in simple parish work, or did she prefer to influence her
own, the educated class ? — he need not ask if she had
gone into the touching delusion of asceticism ; her
splendid health and magnificent physique answered
that question before it was made ! — but what were her
•views on the administration of riches ? — Mrs. Marsh
made uncommunicative replies, and never true ones ;
the only answer near the truth being, that Miss Calvert
Avas of the new school of man-haters — with a pretty
little laugh — fond of her own way and determined
never to marry.
THE START. 243
" She does not look capable of hating any one," said
Mr. Tufnell softly, as Jnlia appeared on Mr. Mattison's
arm, her bright face slightly flushed, her fine eyes
full of life and fire, her whole appearance one of
abounding vitality and the very excess of j^outhful
vigour. " Hate is for the old and soured, not for
such a glorious creature as that," he added with
fervftur.
"Do not be deceived by appearances," said Mrs.
Marsh quietly. " Julia is, as I say, a decided man-
hater; and if ever she marries it will only be one who
will consent to be her slave."
"The post would not be difficult nor the part irk-
some," said meek Mr. Tufnell. " Slavery is pleasant
under some leaderships."
Mrs. Marsh glanced up into his face.
She had nice brown eyes, dark curly hair that
fluttered in becoming little ripples about her low
forehead, a pretty mouth — a trifle thin, and a pretty
chin — a trifle pointed ; altogether a very dainty little
person, whose assumptions of chaperonage over such a
splendid young woman as Julia Calvert, a head and
shoulders taller than herself and strong enough to
have taken her up under one arm as a child might take
a kitten, seemed almost a farce.
" It is very good of you to say that," she said wdth a
fascinating smile. " I am sure now that you will be
244 THE BEST TO WIN.
friends. It is just what dear Julia likes— submission,
absolute submission."
This was said in rather a low tone as the bright and
vigorous owner of Beechover came back to her chape-
ron, smiling on her blithely and dismissing Mr. Mattison
to take up Mr. Tufnell.
It was now his innings ; and he was soon deep in an
animated talk about the parish, the poor, the charities
and the like. The ball was spun down this professional
groove by Miss Calvert herself; for to do the vicar
justice he eschewed " the shop," as Captain Luxmoore
used to say somewhat irreverently, with as much
care when in society as if there had never been a
laying on of hands at all, and his clerical tie was an
emblem of no more sanctity than a waiter's. But as
Miss Calvert preferred to take him wholly on his pro-
fessional standpoint, he was forced to hold himself
steady where she had placed him.
She found him tractable and he found her generous.
She promised quite a cycle of subscriptions, and seemed
ready to forward on all sides what he sweetly called
" the work." But he was quick enough to mark,
amidst all his flutter and fascination, that she always
said " I," and that she only asked for information, not
for advice. Evidently she was not one of the kind who
needed a director; and so far Mr. Tufnell acknowledged
that Mrs. Marsh had spoken the truth— there was
nothing for it but submission.
THE START. 245
All this time Captain Luxmoore took no part in the
race that had begun. He stood in a lounging attitude
against the wall, talking to such as Avandered by ; but
he declined to put himself in competition with the two
already on the course, and he seemed as if he did not
care even to make his first impression fiwourable. But
Miss Calvert often looked at him as he stood slightly
apart from the rest of the crowd. He Avas too hand-
some, too distinguished- looking, to be passed over ; and
she felt his indifference more keenly than she had ever
felt anything of the kind befoi'e. He quite annoyed
her, made her petulant antl cross, and seemed to rob
the evening of half its pleasure and more than half its
social success. She could not understand it, she said
to herself; and she Avas determined not to allow it;
though Avhat she proposed to do was about as hazy as
Avhat she was decided not to allow. At all events she
Avas annoyed ; and the captain saAv that she Avas.
" I consider that Captain Luxmoore behaved quite
rudely to me," she said with temper to her chaperon,
as they returned home.
" So do I," said Mrs. Marsh. "But it was a pleasant
ball, I think, on the whole."
"Pretty well," said the heiress a little crossly.
" Mr. Mattison is as dense as if he was made of avoocI,
mid Mr. Tufifnell is a goose."
The companion laughed.
246 TEE BEST TO WIN.
"Yes," she said; " yoii are quite right, Jnlia ; the
one is, as you say, a blockhead, and the other an awful
goose."
"But he is very amiable, and Mr. Mattison is cer-
tainly handsome," said Julia, veering.
" Do you think so ? " asked Mrs. Marsh in a tone
of surjDrise.
" Do I think so ? Of course I do ! Who could think
anything else?" said Miss Calvert, letting down the
window without thinking whether her friend would
like the frosty midnight air or not. "And Captain
Luxmoore is odious ! "
" Odious indeed, dear! "
" But handsomer than Mr. IMattison," said Julia,
relenting. " And what splendid eyes he has ! what a
distinguished-looking man altogether ! "
" Take care ! " laughed Mrs. Marsh. " We shall be
having you caught by the handsome cajitain if you are
so enthusiastic."
"How can you bo so absurd!" snapped the heiress
who had known her present chaperon for years, and
treated her more like a sister than a companion. " You
are always thinking of love-affairs and Aveddings. It
is horrid. I wonder at you, Hetty; such vilely bad
form — and to me too ! "
"Peccavi!" cried Hetty Marsh, her brown eyes
tAvinkling.
THE STAIiT. 247
After this the county was as if possessed about Miss
Calvert. She Avas in every one's mouth ; and the final
cause of every one's existence seemed to he to do her
lionour. The Freshfields gave a dinner; the Yernons
a ball ; the Powers a luncheon ; the Pagets a soiree ;
the De Lacy Smiths had private theatricals ; the Du
3Iarc Browns tahleaux vu-anis — all on account of her ;
and notes of invitation flew about the country like the
far-famed leaves of Yallombrosa. Mr. Tufnell made
himself feverish by the little network of plans which
were to include Miss Calvert as his parochial right
hand ; Init she preferred to be Lady Bountiful on her
own account and declined his leading-strings with
disdain. Where she was she must be mistress and no
man's helper; thus costing the " Eaffaelle-faced young
priest" many an anxious hour in thinking how he
should insure the substantial good of her help yet avoid
offending her by seeming to check her absolute in-
dependence of action, while preserving the appearance
of his own authority unimpaired to the multitude. It
Avas a nice balancing of opposing forces ; but the vicar
Avas a man to whom such, nice balancing came as second
nature.
Mr. Mattison, as Master of the Hounds, clainied her
as bis Diana, and proposed a new button for the Hunt,
embodying the idea; Jiilia assenting with the frank
pleasure of a pretty Avoman not disinclined to be
248 THE BEST TO WIN.
reminded of her beaxity. Her assent made the squire
happy ; and set hiiu speculating on the improvements
that he wouhl make when Beechover was his own and
Shorebam was let on a tAventy-one-years' lease — to he
kept aired till it was wanted for their eldest son. And
when he gave the regulation breakfast on the first day
of the season, Avhere Diana reigned as queen, he showed
his mind so manifestly that folks began to talk, some-
what prematurely, and a few made bets as io the very
month when it would be.
Mr. Tufnell was discomposed by this breakfast and the
button. He knew the weakness of humanity and how
it goes after the fleshpots and hankers for the jewels of
gold and jewels of silver which are not to be had in the
" higher life " — as he chose to call his small parochial
agitations, which had nothing high about them save
his own self-estimate. Penny-banks and clothing-clubs
have not much chance with handsome vigorous young-
heiresses, in competition with Hunt breakfasts and
emblematic buttons ; and so he said to Mrs. ]\Iarsh,
looking downcast and doleful, feeling himself distanced,
and showing what he felt; — which was unwise in the
apostolic vicar. Miss Calvert was a woman, hence
cruel to the men who were at her feet, and if given the
Avhip sure to use it with effect. It amused her to see
the young clergyman look as if the world, and all it
held, had been given over to Satan and destruction
THE START. 249
because Mr. Mattison's star was in tlie ascendant ; just
as it amused her to see tlie squire's boundless satisfac-
tion Avlien she allowed him to singe bis wings at her
candle. She played with both ; and threw each crumbs
alternately with pellets. When she had smiled the
vicar into the lowest abasement of humility, so that he
was less the priest than the acolyte in her presence,
then she would turn on him superbly, and tell him that
a clergyman should have more settled convictions and
not be so weak as to defer to the opinions of a mere
girl like herself. When she had lured Mr. Mattison to
the very verge of a declaration, she would suddenly
piill him up, all standing as it were, and say that she
would only marry into the jDcerage if she ever married
at all, and if a commoner should ask her she considered
he would take an unwarrantable liberty with her
Avhich would end their acquaintance; and that she
would never forgive such an affront. Then the next
time they met she would be all smiles and graciousness,
the most bewitching siren to be found within the
four seas, so sweet and charming and alluring that
the bewildered squii'e scarcely knew what to think,
and was half inclined to believe she was madly in love
with him of her own accord and wanted him to propose
that very day. She tried the same kind of thing with
Captain Luxmoore ; but in vain. He stood aloof, and
would not be subdued nor yet deceived. She could do
250 THE BEST TO WIN.
nothing with Lini. Her grand airs, which fascinated
Eali:)h Mattison and dominated the weak-minded vicar,
were quietly put aside l)y him as the aficctations of a
chihl, pretty if you will, but silly and not worth serious
attention. When she vaunted her independence he
smiled, a quiet superior kind of smile, and said that
was just Avhat people always did — prided themselves
on that of which they had least : was she not a woman ?
how, then, could she be independent? AVhen she was
angry, he was cool ; if she was haughty, he was bland :
when she disdained him, he ignored her contemjDt and
accepted it with maddening indifference; when she
smiled on him, he was gravely responsive but never
caught; and neither by coldness nor — something that
was not coldness — could she touch him. He was
always himself, never her plaything ; neither elated by
her smiles nor depressed by her frowns : altogether the
most disappointing and enigmatic of her world — the
one whom she strove the hardest to gain and the one
Avho was utterly unimpressionable.
She resented his attitude towards her bitterly, and
complained of it daily to her companion.
" He treats me disgracefully ! " she used to say to
Hetty Marsh, with flushing cheeks and flashing eyes;
and Hetty always answered warmly : " Yes, dear, dis-
gracefully ! "
It was not for her to pour oil on the troubled waters.
THE STABT. 251
She tliought it well to be free of two of her natural
enemies — the vicar whom she led on the wrong waj^
and the captain for whom she widened the breach that
he himself had made. She was not afraid of Mr.
Mattison. He took too much on trust; and Julia liked
to be entreated. She also needed to be mastered while
delicately handled, and her varying moods seized and
followed with subtle tact; having the complex cha-
racter of a high-sj^irited woman whose heart is right if
her head is wrong. But unless that complex character
was rightly understood and ministered to, she would
be still safe for Hetty; and the luxurious home and
handsome salary, which made up her so-called chape-
ronage, would be secure for yet a few years longer.
252 THE BEST TO WIN.
PAET II.
THE RACE.
Eeallt Miss Calvert was becoming a public nuisance !
At least the ladies said so among themselves, though
the gentlemen looked sly and muttered uncompli-
mentary paraphrases to the reeds when the women
fell foul of the handsome heiress — all for her own
good ; and still for- her own good wished the men
would not make such a fuss with her. Even Lad}'-
Freshfield lamented as ^undesirable, not to say inde-
corous, the prominent position taken by one so young :
and one day said to Captain Luxmoore, who was a
favoiirite of hers, that she wished Miss Calvert would
put an end to this absurd state of things and take one
of the two for good.
" Take one of which two ? " asked the captain inno-
cently.
" Mr. Tufnell or Mr. Mattison," was the answer.
" Oh, those two ! " he drawled. " Yes, it would be
better ; but which ? "
" Either," said Lady Freshfield generously.
THE RACE.
" Would either suit her equally ? " he asked Avith an
air of ingenuous inquiry.
" Surely ! As a wife she would learn to love her
husband, whoever he might be ; for women can always
be won by their husbands. Besides, it is their duty
to love them," she answered, with the hazy logic and
crumpled grammar of her kind.
" Just so ; but not very flattering, is it, to men of
character who would like to be loved for themselves?"
Captain Luxmoore asked, still ingenuous.
" You would not like a nice girl to fall in love with
you before she was asked ? " cried Lady Freshfield, a
little scandalized.
" No ; I should not like a forward young j)erson in
that line," he answered. "But I confess I have so
much of the weakness of my sex as to dislike the idea
of any other man ' doing as well ' as myself. I should
like to feel tlie one, and the only one."
" Well, perhaps I have gone too far," said Lady
Freshfield. " I will grant her a i^reference ; but I
wish she would show it, and put an end to this un-
pleasant excitement and not very delicate prominence.
She puts me in mind of that picture in the Eoyal
Academy, the ' Babylonian Marriage-Market ; ' and
that, you know, is a horrid idea. By-the-by," suddenly,
" why don't you try your fortune with her, Cajitain
Luxmoore ? Beechover is a pretty place, and would
round off with Ashdown perfectly."
■254: THE BEST TO WIN.
" I ! " He sLirvigged his shoulders. " I care nothing
for Beechover, and she cares nothing for me, Lady
Freshfield. Miss Calvert and I do not agree on a
single subject we have ever discussed ; and I think if
you were to ask who it is that she hates most in the
world, she would say myself. We are like fire and
water together ; and she makes no secret of her
aversion."
" Then you could follow Mrs. Malaprop's advice ;
which however is very shocking," said Lady Fresh-
field, checking herself gravely as she was beginning
i:o laugh.
" The field is not open to me," repeated the captain
with more than his usual quietness of manner — so
quiet indeed as to appear forced and a little unnatural.
" I should be nowhere against our apostolic vicar who
has no mind but hers, and an unsuspecting soul like
Mr. Mattison who never sees when they are at cross
purposes, and whose temper is of that persistent
sweetness which nothing can sour. I am too decided
in my oavii views for oNIiss Calvert, and too proud to
enter the lists against such men as Mr. Tufnell and
Mr. Mattison."
"Oh," said ' Lady Freshfield innocentlj^; "don't say
that ; you are far wiser than either."
This conversation took place at a school-feast that
bad been got up by Miss Calvert, assisted by the vicar,
THE RACE. 255
to break the weariness of winter and give the poorer
little ones a glimpse of the fairyland created by the
dazzling fruitage of a Christmas-tree. As she stood
there on a raised platform, dispensing toys and sugar-
plums, the Diana of the Hunt looked a very charming-
young Lady Bountiful, dashed Avith the feminine inde-
pendence of the new school of man-haters — so charming
that it was not to be Avondered at, all things considered,
if Mr. Tufnell offered himself as her sacrifice, or if
Mr. Mattison, serenely certain of winning in the long-
run — as a manly man must when the question is only
the subjugation of a woman — built Spanish castles on
the Beechover grounds and lived in them comfortablv.
Both men were now hovering about her as usual ; but
as tViis was the vicar's day, the squire's star was under
a partial eclipse ; as that of the former had been on the
clay of the Hunt breakfast. She, radiant, supreme,
fond of power, confident of herself and contemptuous
of the baser sex, held her pair in hand with consum-
mate skill, playing them off one against the other till
she made them both half mad, now with love and now
with jealousy ; but all the same she looked often to
that part of the room where Captain Luxmooro stood
saying to Lady Freshfield things which he did not
believe. Not looking pleasantly, granted ; rather with
the anger of a pretty woman who wanted to be admired
and felt herself slighted. Still, she looked.
256 THE BEST TO WIN.
After a time tlie captain drifted from Lady Fresh-
field, and wandered in his slow uninterested way to the
dais where she stood.
" Can I be of any use?" he asked, as she was handing
a tin trumpet to a certain beatified little Hodge.
" Thank you, no ; I have almost finished," said Miss
Calvert, straightening her slender neck. "• And at no
time should I have dreamed of asking you to help mo,"
she added in a lower voice that slightly trembled,
ending with an unpleasant laugh.
" Ko ? Why ? " innocently.
" Captain Luxmoore at a school-feast, making him-
self amiable to peasant children, distributing toys and
sticky sugar-plums — 4hat would indeed be beating his
sword into a ploughshare ! " she said ironically.
" Should I be more out of place than Miss Calvert ? "
he asked in a voice as veiled as her own. " Should I not
be following her example if I chose to perform such an
act of humbug ? "What are you doing ? "
" My duty," said Julia superbly.
"So at least you think it wise to say," he answered ;
" but you know better. Au fond, we are not so very
far apart."
" I am as far as the poles from all that you are,
Captain Luxmoore," returned Miss Calvert a little too
bitterly for play. Then looking at IMr. Tufnel, she
said with a Circe-like smile, which he was meant to
THE BACK. 257
take to himself as his prospective reward shoxiKl he
answer discreetly, " Tell me, Mr. Tufnell, are not
Cai^tain Liixmoore and I the very antipodes of each
other?"
"I do not see much likeness, certainly," stammered
^Ir. Tufnell, as unwilling to contradict the j^oxmg
queen of the parish as to oifend one of its princes ;
and while wishing to conciliate each, failing both, as
trimmers generally do.
Miss Calvert shot a scornful glance at him that went
near to imdo all the glory of the day, so specially his.
"Mr. Mattison," she said, "do you tell me! Do you
think that Captain Luxmoore and I are alike?"
" Certainly not," said Ealph with energy and a laugh.
" You and Luxmoore alike ? Absurd ! It would be
odd if ^-ou were."
" I mean in mind and disj)osition, not in face," said
the heiress pettishly. " IIow stupid you all are ! "
" Oh," said Ealph good-temperedly ; " now I take
you. Well, I don't know. No, I should say not. It
would be paying Luxmoore too high a compliment,"
with another laugh.
" As I am not fond of being made the subject of dis-
cussion, may I ask you to change the conversation ? "
said the captain quietly, but with a certain gravity
too close on the border-land of displeasure to look like
trifling. " Now may I help you ? "
VOL. r. s
258 TEE BEST TO WIN.
" No," answered Julia rudely ; and Captain Lux-
moore, taking her rebuff with the placidity with which
he took all things, stood by the tree for a few mo-
ments as if examining the toys critically, then
lounged back to his former post near Lady Freshfield
and the door.
No one had eyes quick enough to see that Miss
Calvert's hands trembled and her cheeks flushed, as the
man credited with a history drifted away from her
with such patient equanimity, save perhaps that man
himself. And he, with eyes that could watch and
never show they looked, saw the ill-suppressed storm
as clearly as if it had been transacted in physical
thunder and lightnifig, instead of an angry flush and
an impatient quiver; and felt a not unnatural plea-
sure in his power to disturb one who had so much
power to disturb others.
Presently the little pageant began to dissolve. The
children were drawn up in order, and sang a short
hymn of adulation to their " kind patroness," composed
and written by Mr. Tufnell. It was a vapid compo-
sition and full of bad taste ; but Mrs. Marsh whispered,
with crocodile tears in her light-brown eyes, that it
was quite as pretty as any of Mendelssohn's " Songs
without Words," and that she was sure dear Julia
would think so too.
The young heiress however, looked more embar-
THE BACE. 259
rassed tlian pleased, wondering if Captain Lnxmoore
thoiiglit sliG had known of this piece of idiotcy, and
wishing that she coiikl tell him she hated it, and that
she thought Mr. Tufnell the " most awful goose for
doing it." But she had to content herself with her
own thoughts. The captain looked as if the thing in
no way interested him, and did not offer her a square
inch of opportunity for explanation or disclaimer. It
was provoking ; but what coxild she do ? She was
caught in a trap which she herself had helped to set ;
and if Captain Luxmoore thought worse of her than
ever, she was to blame for her own folly, and must
bear it.
But Miss Calvert was by no means patient in her
generation, and did not like to have to bear even her
own self-made unpleasantnesses.
After the hymn the children filed out — the girls
dipping, the boys making parabolic salutations, as is
their wont ; and when they were at the gate they gave
a shrill cheer, led by Mr. Mattison, which startled the
horses so that some of the carriages blocking up the
road nearly came to grief; and with this tonic yell
the school-feast ended and the vicar's star paled.
Now there was a general crowding of fine ladies and
gentlemen round the heiress ; all thanking her in the
name of the nation and humanity for the marvellous
kindness that she had shown in spending five pounds
260 THE BEST TO WIN.
in trash to make some tliiity little sinners liappy. And
tliey all said that they hoped the poor people, whose
generous friend and patroness she had been, would be
as grateful as they ought to be.
" I hope they will," said Julia, who was no social
democrat if a woman's-rights woman on her own
account. If she had lighted her lamp she bad no desire
to hide it under a bushel. She did not believe in doing
good by stealth and blushing to find it fame. On the
contrary, it suited her nature that the things done
should be the things known, and that virtue should
have other reward than its own.
" They ought ! They deserve horsewhipping else ! "
said Mr. Mattison warmly.
" They will," said Mr. Tufnell sweetly.
And the heiress smiled aj^provingly on her slaves,,
and then looked defiantly at Captain Ijuxmoore.
" Did you give this not very overwhelming treat ta
have the praises of the world and the grateful servility
of the poor little wretches themselves, or simply to
give them pleasure with no thought of self-seeking ? "
asked the captain when he had managed to draw Julia
for a moment aside, without showing how he had
manoeuvred.
" You are always ill-natured to me. You are sure to
find an evil motive for my actions — even my best," was
her rej)ly, made tartly.
THE RAQE. 2(il
" Do you call it ill-nature to hold it well for a
sensible woman to understand herself and despise
flattery ? " he answered. " I have a constitutional
horror of humbug and excess. So I should have ima-
gined had you. I should not have thought it would
have seemed to you ill-nature to credit you with abso-
lute straightforwardness."
" You did not mean that — that is only your way of
putting it," said Julia hastily.
" Pardon me ; I am not accustomed to tell falsehoods,
nor to hear that I do so," he said.
She glanced up at him with eyes that strove to be
defying, but failed. His handsome face, always proud
and self-contained, had a little dash of sorrow in it
and more than a little earnestness — so earnest as to be
almost tender. He looked at her straight in the eyes ;
and she, gatheiing her forces, tried to look him down
with the full gaze that made Mr, Tufnell lower his lids
and blush and Mr. Mattison open his wider and laugh ;
but she could not. Her eyes drooped under his ; her
flushed cheek grew pale ; she was conscious of a kind
of schoolgirl tremor, a kind of childlike self-accusing
timidity, entirely alien to the principles and ideas of
tlie new school in which she had graduated ; l:)ut her
embarrassment was cut short by the closing up of her
little court again and the exaggerated praises of her
flatterers — Mr. Tufnell and the owner of Shoreham the
262 TEE BEST TO WIN.
most extreme. This devotion sent up her self-esteem
to its usual doniiuant place in lier moral nature. This
worship was her due ; these praises were not flatteries,
hut recognition dul}^ earned and rightly paid ; she was,
what she ought to he, the honoured queen of her little
world, the woman superior in all things to men ; and
what they offered she had the right to accept. It was
with all her old self-assertion that she turned to Cap-
tain Luxmoore, haughtily challenging his contribution
to the incense floating about her.
" You have been kind," he said simply ; and she felt
herself change colour when he said it, cold and few as
his words were, and that her lips involuntarily smiled.
Then remembering that she was at war with him,
she laughed satirically as she cried : ' ' What evil have
I done that Captain Luxmoore praises me ? " and stif-
fened her lips out of their late gracious curves into
hard and ugly Mephistopheiian lines.
Again she caught that grave, tender, yet sorrowful
expression in his face as with a slight sigh he turned
away, and soon after bade her good night.
The days passed a little heavily after this school-
feast of which Julia hated to be reminded, no one
knew why. There was the same outward flow of life
and amusement as before ; there were the hunting days
and the dinners, the luncheons and the soirees, the
drives and the visits, the usual round of toilsome
THE JRACE. 263
pleasures by which rich people kill time and call it
enjoyment ; but the fire of life seemed to have
slackened for the young heiress, and though the atten-
tions of the constant two were as profound and untiring
as ever, somehow the zest had gone, and she began to
fool it no better amusement to make them haj)py or
miserable than shooting barndoor fowls is an amuse-
ment to a sportsman. They had gone down before her
too readily, and left her none of the excitement of con-
quest. Mr. Tufnell's invertebrate compliance and Mr.
Mattison's muscular self-complacency had wearied her ;
and she Avas now a handsome young female Alexander
Aveeping for more Avorlds to conquer.
She gazed from her windows over to where Ashdown
stood among its trees — the one spot as yet impregTiable ;
but by the look of things Captain Luxmoore had no
mind to change his plan or to make one of the human
worlds subjected to her; and she beat herself against
the bars of his self-possession in vain. Pie was uncon-
querable by any of the methods known to her, and for
the first time in her life she had to own her master.
One day the Hunt met as usual, and as usual its
Diana was there, looking supremely lovely and more
than ever Amazonian and independent. It was not a
favourable morning for the men, if the beast profited;
for the scent was cold and the hounds wild. The field
was scattered everywhere, and no one seemed to know
261 THE BEST TO WIN.
much about the matter, from the huntsman to the
butcher's hoy. Miss Calvert was of course closely
squired by the master ; and though bhe manifestly
wanted to shake him oil', he, with his sweet-tempered
obtuseness, saw nothing, and believed he was not only
doing his duty and making himself happ}', but giving
her pleasure as well. He was a fixture ; seeing only two
things — ^that she was beautiful, that he had a personal
interest in her loveliness and meant to have more.
In the distance, sitting like a statue on his hand-
some bay, Captain Luxmoore stood sentinel at one
corner of the spinny where the hounds were ranging.
He was quite alone, the rest of the field, spread every-
where but where he was. Julia had often looked across
to where he sat so quietly, but he had not seemed
aware of her existence. It was provoking to make
pretty flourishes Avith her whip, her handkerchief, lo
attract the attention of a statue — -to try to animate a
lump of clay. At last, still accompanied by IsVx.
Mattison, she lode at a sharp pace and in a sharp
temper to where the captain stood in such quiet
patience and watching.
'^ You are not taking it out of yourself or yoirr horse
to-day, Luxmoore," said the master a little banteringly
as they drew up and confronted him.
" ISo," answered the captain ; " I have my fancies.
This is the spot."
THE RACE. 2G5
" Is it acuteness or indolence ? " asked Jnlia with an
unpleasant smile.
She was so sore against him all through, she could
never forego the opportunity of a thrust.
'• I do not think it is indolence ; hut it may be," he
answered tranquilly.
" It looks like it. You might as well make a try
with the rest," said Julia, tossing her head with her
disdainful air, l:)ut alluring too, and pretty if un-
amiable.
He smiled, as he might have smiled at an impatient
child. " Tout vient a qui salt attendre," he answered ;
and as he spoke the fox broke away almost directly
under their feet.
Either Julia's nerve had failed her to-day, or her
chestnut, always a little too fiery for a lady, had had
an extra feed ; for some cause or other, unexplained,
she lost her hand, and the chestnut, with a &iiort and
a plunge, was ofi' at a anad gallop, striding down a
ploughed field which ended, as they all knew too well,
in a low hedge Vv^ith the hard roadway lying about
twenty feet below. There was a general shout and a
general commotion. The heiress of the county in such
deadly peril ! Miss Calvert, young, beautiful, and
fabulously wealthy, with the chance of lying a corpse
in less time than it takes to tell ! Men left the hounds
and the fox to their fate and rushed madly after the
266 THE BEST TO WIN.
ruuawaj'- horse ; — Mr. Mattison the foremost as he was
the most excited and the most distressed. The
thundering hoofs of the following horses only made
the chestnut wilder; and increased the poor girl's peril.
She drew nearer and nearer to the ftital hedge, and
many checked their horses and turned away their heads,
shuddering : they did not want to see her cruel end.
A minute more and all would be over ; when Captain
Liaxmoore, who had made a diagonal cut across the
field, drove his horse ahead, and at the risk of his own
life stoj)ped the chestnut just in time.
Miss Calvert's self-possession was admirable. She
was very pale and looked a trifle scared ; but though
the chestnut had checked himself so suddenly, that it
took good horsemanshij) to hold on ; she kept her seat
and smiled graciously on the man who had saved her.
He, now that the danger was over, looked perhaps the
more disturbed of the two.
" Thank you," she said Avith fervour, and held out her
small hand impulsively; her chestnut standing rigid,
apparently struck to stone by the reaction of terror.
Captain Liixmoore's face flushed, and his eyes had
a strangely bright and searching look for a moment as
he leaned forward and touched her hand. But he, too,
was good at fencing with his feelings.
" I am glad to have been of use," he said without
affectation; adding in a manly way, not flattering so
TEE RACE. 2GT
much as earnest : " We all hold it a privilege, Miss
Calvert, to serve you."
" Save, you mean ; and. all would not have done so
much for me," she answered, still with that dangerous
softness in her face and with the perilous abandonment
of her old disdain,
" Well, save, if you like," he said, wheeling his horse
to her side, neck to neck.
Mr. Mattison, and those of the gentlemen of the Hunt
who had preferred woman to fox, now surrounded her,
and she was beset with questions, advice, congratula-
tions, inquiries, till she scarcely knew how to answer
or whom. lu spite of her pride and courage too, her
nerves were a little shaken, and she longed to be alone
or with only one to befriend her — some one quiet, silent,
with a still manner, not excited, not interrogative —
some one with that nameless sense of superiority
belonging to the true man, and on whom she felt slie
could rest — supreme blessedness of all women, even the
most independent ! — some one who would bo strong-
enough for them both, stronger even than her own
strength.
" My head aches," she said after a few moments to
Captain Luxmoore who still kept close to her side. " I
am going home."
" And I with you," he answered quietly, as if he had
had the right.
268 THE BEST TO WIN.
She looked pleased.
" Thank you ; that will be kind," she said with
gentleness, and turned to wish the squire, who was at
her other side, good-bye.
" I must see you home. I cannot let you go
alone," said that worthy fellow fussily. " Here ! hi !
where is your groom ? You must not be left only to
him."
" I am going with Miss Calvert," said Captain
Luxmoore in a level voice, but decidedl3^
And before Mr. Mattison could reply, Julia added a
little hurriedly : '• Yes, Mr. Mattison, Captain Litxmoore
will take care of me; and I would rather you finished
your day. You are losing time."
" I would rather go with you," said the squire
positively.
" And I would rather you did not," said the heiress
just as positively. '' Good-bye."
" Miss Calvert ! " he remonstrated.
" Come, Captain Luxmoore," said Julia, wilfully not
hearing ; and the two rode off together — poor Mr.
Mattison thrown out in both ways, having lost the fox
■and the girl at one blow.
" You will come in to luncheon ? " asked Julia, as
they rode up to Beechover.
He smiled.
" Thanks," he said ; " if you will allow me."
THE BACE. 2(y{>
" "With pleasure," she answered, trying to speak
nucoucernedly, but failing.
She was not unconcerned in any way, and she could
scarcel}' feign so well as she would have liked ; but lier
companion did not seem to notice anything, and Diana
with her impenetrable Endymion entered the house.
This was the first time that Captain Luxmoore had
been domesticated at Beechover ; and it was a novelty to
him to see Miss Calvert quiet, almost tender, natural,
with no affectation of man-hating or the like, the mere
woman at home. She was delightful ; far more so than
as the woman of society, as the Amazon in opposition
to men whom yet she placed her glory in befooling.
She played after luncheon and sang his favourite songs
to please him ; she showed him her drawings and dis-
cussed her favourite authors and his. She seemed to
Tise no arts ; to be just the simple, graceful, unaffected
woman, liking to please but not seeking to subdue ; a
little timid and naore ready to defer than to assmne,
having abandoned her follies for the sweeter realities of
womanhood, and most serene when least certain. He,
with a subtle air of tenderness that made her heart beat
as no man's tenderness had made it beat before, Avas
always master over himself — and her. He made her
feel that even love could not make him a slave, and that
even if she conquered him, she should still be forced to
respect him. It was the dignity of manhood to which
270 THE BEST TO WIN.
she was not too well accoustomed in these later days :
but if she was wrong-headed, she was, as we have said,
true-hearted — and she liked it.
So the time passed in a sweet and simple friendliness
that had both its charm and its danger, when it carae
suddenly to an end by the breathless arrival of Mr.
Tufnell, pale, scared, red-eyed, having just heard of the
peril in which " his adorable " had been placed, and
which that chattering Eumour with her hundred
tongues had magnified into the next thing to total
destruction ; and close on his heels came Mr. Mattison,
feverish and upset, and only to be consoled by a sight
of his adorable safe and sound in her own house.
And when they came. Captain Luxmoore took his
leave, with the look of a man whose airy vision has
faded, and who has come back to the dull prosaic life
of every day where are wars and rumours of wars,
troubles, tears, misunderstandings, and desires impos-
sible of fulfilment.
Mr. Tufnell and Mr. Mattison did not stay long.
They both found that her peril had shaken Miss
Calvert's nerves most unmistakably; and that her
temper, always a little "short," was now dangerous,
and necessitated a speedy retreat if terms were to be
kept Avith the future.
( 271 )
PART III.
THE FINISH.
Yes, Miss Calvert's temper was certainly "sliort."
Neither Mr. Tufnell nor Mr. Mattison knew from one
day to another from which of the airts the fickle wind
of their lady's favour would blow ! and hoth were
unhappy in consequence. Or rather Mr. Tufnell was
unhappy and the squire was perplexed. The former
had a weaker fibre and a less robust self-complacency
than the latter; but then as a set-off he had Mrs.
Marsh to counsel and console him. From the first she
had, as has been said, advocated unqualified submission ;
l)ut, however good the theory, the apostolic-looking
bishop in embryo found that, in fact, the more he
abased himself the more he was trampled on ; and
after a while he began to wonder if his was in truth
the right way, and should he not have done better to
have taken higher ground from the first ?
To be sure, he had the comfort of seeing that Mr.
Mattison, who was not humble, fared no better, though
he did not seem to know it and took his pains like
pleasures ; and on the whole it looked as if the young
-72 TEE BEST TO WIN.
heiress had said what she really meant when she
vaunted her independence, expressed her contempt of
men, and vowed she would never many unless some
one offered to whom it was worth her while to sell
herself. Also it looked as if it was no empty lamen-
tation when IMrs. Marsh said, as she did no often Avith
a sigh : " Dear Julia, she is the best darling in the
world, hut she has such an awful temper ! "
Still the vicar held on; and his fair friend the com-
panion stood by him so gallantly that more than once
he found himself wishing he could exchange natures
and persons, and endow Julia Calvert with the mind
and disposition of her charming and sympathetic
chaperon Hetty Marsh.
No one knew exactly what was the cause of this
sudden accession of ill-temper and uncertainty ; and
perhajis the heiress herself would have been puzzled to
explain it. It could have nothing to do with C'aptain
Luxmoore, for he had never called, save once, since her
prevented accident ; and then she was out. So what
it all meant was an enigma to more than one.
In the midst of this dumb discomfort Mr. Mattisou
gave a ball, as the best propitiation he could devise.
It was ostensibly the ball at the breaking up of the
hunting season and before they all drifted to London ;
and naturallj' it became the great fact of the hour, and
much was expected from it. " Diana," of course, was
THE FINISH.
there, accompanied hj her cliaperon ; and among the
crowd were of course her clerical adorer and that enig-
matical captain — -whom no one knew where to place —
whether as a secret lover sigliing out his heart in
silence ; a warj- old campaigner biding his time and
too wise to he caught before he himself had first
secured ; or as one indifferent to the great prize of
the neighbourhood, and neither biding his time nor
losing it.
The ball was a brilliant affair, eclipsing all its prede-
cessors ; and the squire's good-natured jubilant face was
like a very sun of gladness beaming through his rooms-
He had made up his mind to end this shilly-shallying
this very week, and force from the coy beauty the
confession he had no doubt would come when properly
entreated — the confession of her willingness to accept
him in exchange for her beloved freedom and boasted
independence.
All noticed his face and bearing, and many guessed
what was in his mind. Even Mrs. Marsh said to 3Ir.
Tufnell : " He looks as if he had seen an angel." Then
she added with a sigh : " You do not think that Julia
has been so ill-advised, do yon ? Yet how else to
account for this unusual excitement and very marked
happiness ? "
" Oh, Mrs. Marsh, do not say that ! " gasped the younc
vicar piteously. " She will be lost for time and
\'0L. I. T
274 THE BEST TO WIN.
eternity if she flings herself away on such a common
nature as this. She is fit for so much better things ! "
The chaperon looked up sweetly.
" Yes, she is," she answered ; and the vicar accepted
what she manifestly intended to bestow.
At this moment Julia, with a very discontented face,
came up leaning on the arm of young Mr. Paget ; whom
she dismissed immediately with a cool bow, professing
herself tired.
" Let me wrap this shawl round you, dear," said Mrs.
Marsh in a cooing, coaxing voice, holding up a dainty
Bquare of Brussels.
Julia, who was decidedly cross, turned away her
head and said : " No,"
"I am so afraid you will catch cold," pleaded the
companion, full of tender solicitude, her sweetness
contrasting so vividly with ]\Iiss Calvert's abrupt
and ungracious manner that Mr. Tufnell himself was
startled, and again wished he could change natures and
personalities.
" Nonsense, Hetty," said the heiress. " I never catch
cold."
" My dear ! " remonstrated Hetty, as if the vigorous
young huntswoman had been a delicate consumptive
creature always fluttering about the edge of the
grave. Then turning to Mr. Tufnell she besought him
in the prettiest manner possible to use his influence.
THE FINISH. 275
and induce Miss Calvert to take care of her precious
health.
" Do, Miss Calvert ! " said Mr. Tufnell, weakly trying
to place the square of lace round her strong firm
shoulders.
Julia drew herself up haughtily.
" I do not want it, Mr. Tufnell. You annoy me ! "
she said, with such decided displeasure of face and
accent that the unhappy young vicar felt as if he had
been morally unhorsed and overthrown.
Ealph Mattison, coming up just at this moment, got
the benefit of the vicar's disgrace ; for to punish Mr,
Tufnell for his audacity, Julia was so outrageously
kind to the squire that he naturally enough looked on
the thing as done ; and while the case seemed hope-
less to the one,' success seemed just as certain to the
other.
All of which was noted by Captain Luxmoore stand-
ing at a little distance, discussing the last accounts
from India with Lord Preshfield, who did not know the
difference between a durbar and a court ; apparently
seeing nothing while studying and seizing all; when
suddenly, almost as if to protect her, he left his com-
panion and made his way straight to the little group
of which Julia, cruelly disdainful to Mr. Tufnell and
exaggeratedly amiable to Mr. Mattison, made the dis-
contented centre.
276 TEE BEST TO WIN.
" Shall I take you for an ice, Miss Calvert ? " said the
captain, as if offering a way of escape.
" Thanks," answered Julia, mean enough to feel
grateful; and sweeping i;p from her place she took
Captain Lusmoore's arm and went away, not deigning
to cast so much as one comforting look on her disconso-
late adorers, nor even to fling a parting word to her
chaperon. Yet if pleasure makes the heart good she
might have done so ; for she was pleased — and for the
first time to-night.
As they went. Captain Luxmoore looked down on
her hand resting on his arm.
"I see no blood on those white fingers," he said;
"yet they are cruel- — -as cruel as if tipped with
steel."
" You are cruel to say so," she answered indignantly.
" But then you always are cruel to me — have been
from the first."
" On the contrary, I am the onl}'- true friend }'ou
have here," he said in an intimate, earnest kind of
way that touched her more than she would allow to be
seen.
" Friend ! You a friend ! Heaven keep me from
more of the same kind ! " she cried, making an effort to
maintain her petulance of manner.
" Do 3'ou say so from your heart ? " lie asked in a low
voice full of tenderness — a voice that made her blush
THE FINISH. 277
and tremble as it bad done once before. " Is it yourself
or yonr wounded vanity tbat speaks to me ? "
" Myself," said Julia, turning away her bead — falter-
ing ; tbougb balf angry at bis plain speaking.
He slightly pressed her band against bis arm; so
slightly, that she was scarcely sure whether it was an
accident or by intention.
" I know you better than you know yourself," he
said gently ; " and in the future you will confess it."
" Only if I can be brought to see myself as one mass
of faults — a monster without a redeeming quality,"
she returned.
"Is tbat portrait your work of art or mine?" he
asked with a smile. -
" Yours," she answered hardily.
He laughed lightly.
"I repudiate it. Miss Calvert. Some day I will
present you with mine — yourself as I see you."
" Pray not ! " she cried. " I should find myself such
a wretch I should be tempted to disown myself for
ever after."
He looked down into her face.
" Perhaps to disown me," he said in bis softest, most
eloquent tones.
" Why ? " she asked, playing with her fan.
" For presumption," he answered.
A look of triumph shot from her eyes. Had she
278 THE BEST TO WIN.
then closed her hand over him ? was he too one of the
victims with the rest ? was she really irresistible, and
was her master, the man who could withstand and
subjugate her, yet to be found ? It was only one swift
rapid look, and then, with drooping eyes and a tender
face, she stood as if listening for what he Avould say
next. But Captain Luxmoore had seen that self-reveal-
ing glance, and had read her.
" Not yet," he said to himself, as with the most
charming well-bred air of explanation he said : " You
did not know that I could draw? and you do not in-
tend to cut me for asking vou to ^ive me a sittino; ? "
" I should not cut you, but I should not give it,"
the heiress answered after a molnent's pause, during
which she had more difficult}^ in conquering herself
and subduing her turbulent emotions to the placidity
of demeanour demanded by socict}', than she had ever
had before.
" No ? That would be crxiel," he said, moving away
to the refreshment-table for an ice.
Julia was very silent during the drive home. The
chaperon who knew her moods to a hair and was
wise enough to respect them, followed her example
and also held her peace, when suddenly, a propos of
nothing, Julia exclaimed with energy : " I detest
Captain Luxmoore ! "
" So do I," said Mrs. Hetty Marsh ; " I always have."
THE FINISH. 279
" Then why should you ? " she answered snappishly.
" I am sure he has always been very civil to you. You
have no cause to dislike him ; and I hate to see such
unjust prejudices."
" Shall I say I like him ? " asked Mrs. Marsh with a
little laugh.
" Don't be silly," was Julia's superb answer ; after
which silence fell again between them, and Julia shed
a few tears — in the dark.
The next day Mr. Mattison called. He had found
no opportunity handy for the final plunge that he had
intended to make last night ; but elated by the unmis-
takable encouragement given him by " Diana " when
she had wished to snub the vicar, he thought that his
standing was entirely secure, and that he had onl}'" to
ask and receive. He came in radiant, confident, with
the look of a man who has conquered fate and fortune
and has but to accept what grace lies ready for him.
As soon as he entered, Julia read what was coming.
It was the little difficulty she had staved off for so
long, yet which she had always known would one day
overtake her. If she was vain and headstrong and
inconsiderate, fond of power and proiid of her facility
of conquest, she was not cruel when brought face to
face with a catastrophe, and she shrank from giving
serious pain. Besides, it is a bore to have for your
next-door neighbour in the country a man who has
280 THE BEST TO WIN.
made you an offer wliicli you have refused— a man
whom you are meeting everywhere ; at all dinners, at
all balls, on every hunt-day and in the suggestive
mazes of garden-parties. You have to keep a quiet
face to the world, and not to let the busvbodies see the
truth ; but you cannot talk and laugh and flirt with
the innocent unconcern of former times, and the cleft
stick into which you have put yourself is unpleasantly
hard and tight. How bitterly poor Julia regretted her
follj^ in playing with the fire which, sooner or later
must burn her own fingers ! After all, why should
site have led that poor fellow on as she had done, only
to his own discomfiture? He was a harmless, kind-
hearted man ; why should he be made unhapj)y for her
vanity and wilfulness ?
She was quite penitent and ojipressed when she sat
down on the sofa ; he drawing a chair right in fi out
of her, for his better encouragement during his oration
and to see her resjionsive face more clearly. Knowing,
as she did, the ordeal before her, the humiliation of
what was substantially a confession of guilt, and —
somehow taught softness for others in these later days
— sorry for the pain she was about to inflict, she was
almost moved and decidedly subdued. And her peni-
tence and discomfort gave her an air of such delicious
softness that the squire's hopes were raised into more
certainty than ever, so that his confidence was that of
THE FINISH. 281
a man who has already won. Had there been, as there
was not, the faintest chance for him, he himself would
have destroyed it by his over-certainty. It went a
little way towards hardening the softening fibres of her
heart, making her feel that if she was to blame he
would be none the worse for a lesson that would last
him perhaps for life.
When he had made his confession and demand, Julia
put on the astonished face which comes like second
nature to women after they have lured men on to the
point of self-committal and a declaration of feelings
which it was never intended should be returned.
•' You have taken me by surprise," she said, acting
her part with considerable skill. '• 1 had no idea
you felt for me more than the most ordinary friend-
ship."
*• I have loved you from the first moment I saw you,"
said Ralph, by no means cast down. If certainty of
his feelings was all that w^as wanted, he would soon
.supply that.
" But I didn't know," Julia answered with a half-
ashamed face. '• If I had, I would have been more
careful of my conduct. I would have shown you "
" That you sanctioned and returned my love ! " Mr.
Mattison interrupted, taking her hand and looking into
her face with rather dangerous ardour.
'• No," said Julia coldly, withdrawing her hand ; " I
THE BEST TO WIN.
would Lave sliown yon that I nevei- could sanction,
never could return it."
There was something in her manner as she said this
which was not coquetr}-, which was still less indecision.
It staggered Ealph, dense as were his perceptions,
strong as was his self-complacency.
"I cannot believe you," he faltered, his handsome
joyous face blanched and pitiful.
" You must," she said firmly, looking down.
" But you love me ! " he exclaimed. " I am sure
you do ! You have as good as told me."
" Good gracious, Mr. Mattison, I am sure I never
have ! " cried Julia, startled into vehemence and in-
elegance. " What are you talking about ! "
" My life and all that makes life worth having," he
answered, with so much simple pathos that for a
moment Julia felt her own eyes grow moist.
" I am so sorry ! " she said, without pretence or affec-
tation. " But I can do nothing."
" Yes, yes," he cried ; " you can make me, from one
of the most miserable, one of the happiest of men ! "
She shook her head.
" The price is too heavy," she said in a low voice.
" I do not love you, and I cannot marry you."
An hour after this, Captain Luxmoore met the owner
of Shoreham — a transformed man. His bright beaming
smile had passed like yesterday's sunshine in to-day's
THE FINISH. 283
storm ; his florid face was drawn and pale ; his blue
eyes were sad, wandering and no longer bold and
frank ; he looked shrunken and shorter, as if he had
lost something of his personality and much of his
strength and vitality ; altogether a different man from
what he was last night when, joyous and radiant, he
thought to have touched the gates of heaven and to
have accomplished hiti prescribed time of waiting.
Nothing was said between the two men ; but when
they parted Captain Luxmoore drew a deep breath as
he said involuntarily half aloud ; " The course clearer
by one."
kSoon after this it was announced that Mr. Mattison
had shut up Slioreham and gone for a 3'ear's travel
through America; and if some were sorry, Julia Calvert
was relieved, and the vicar on his side w^as rejoiced
and blessed the roving blood born in Saxon veins. The
squire's absence encouraged him. He had never liked
this perj)etual buzzing about Miss Calvert, as he used
to call it disdainfully ; buzzers themselves being always
intolerant of their kind. He had held Mr. jMattison
as an inferior creatine by the side of a man of thought
and spirituality— such as himself; nevertheless he
had been afraid of him, representative as he was
of the fleshpots and the finery of life. He breathed
more fully now that he had gone ; and the skirts of his
surplice seemed to brush the gates of the same heaven
284 THE BEST TO WIN.
as that before which the poor deluded sqiure had stood
in expectation.
He had always heen given to lengthy discourse on
the influence possessed hy the dignitaries of the
Cliurch; and with all his meekness of manner, the
spirit of a very A'Beckett seemed to possess him when
he exalted the functions and position of the lords
spiritual. But where he had discoursed for one hour
before, he perorated for two now; and the higher he
•exalted the function the lower he placed the man — in
relation to Miss Calvert. He reasoned it out clearly
and fitly that a bishop's wife is the bishop's conscience-
keeper and the mistress of the diocese. It was a
position that might "be coveted for its own sake b}^ a
princess, he said, with longing looks raised in respectful
■self-abasement to the heiress; but Julia, whom Mr.
Mattison's complacent certainty had disgusted, Avas
even more revolted by Mr. Tufnell's servility and
cut his maunderings short, turning him over to Mrs.
Marsh who found him and his reasonings what Tepys
would have called "pretty," though less than profit-
•able for her own purposes. For quite suddenly, after
a brief and rather tearful interview with Miss Calvert,
the vicar obtained a six months' leave of absence
from liis diocesan, who was also his father ; and when
next heard of, he had been given a stall and been
married out of hand to a wealthy widow, a few years
THE FINISH. 285
liis senior, who would take care of hiui. And when
Hetty Marsh heard of this, she said he was a wretch,
and a mean-spirited animal whom she had always
detested.
So now the fair owner of Beechover had lost her
two principal aspirants and was left practically lover-
less — the only one of the triangular duellists remaining-
being the one who had made no effort to win her, who
had not flattered her, had not wooed nor sought, but
who had stood aside and proclaimed his faith in wait-
ing, had told her in plain language of her faults, had
ridiculed her pretensions to independence, had always
asserted the supremacy of his manhood, and had re-
fused to be cajoled or subdued.
Yet this was the only man who had ever cost her a
tear, or whose favour she had yearned to gain.
This then was the condition to which she was re-
duced — she, the believer in woman's rights as the new
order of regenerated society — she, the despiser of men
as wretched creatures only good to be the superior
being's humble slaves and to take the law from her
lips — she, the proud and self-sufficing Julia Calvert,
now weeping hot tears in the dark for the sake of a
man whom she could not conquer, but who had con-
(][uered her — without trying.
What would Captain Luxmoore do now that the
field was clear and the two favourites come to grief?
286 THE BEST TO WIN.
The country held its breath as it looked on in anxious
expectation ; but the captain gave no sign of beginning
a new act in this little drama of the Love Chase play-
ing at Wensley. To be sure he went rather ofteuer
"than before to Beechover, and his ways and looks wei-e
decidedly softer, more melancholy, more enigmatic;
iDut he was always the same substantially — grave, self-
possessed, reticent ; and the siren who had subdued the
•others was still baffled by him.
" You must miss your old playfellows," he said one
day to Julia, as he sat by her on the lawn after having
discussed the monotonous aspect of life as Wensley
just now knew it — no balls, no dinners, nothing going
■on, all the families away and the heiress and himself
lingering in the country when they ought to have
gone up to town at the beginning of the season.
" Do you mean Lady Freshfield ? She was never an
intimate of mine," answered Julia, wilfully misunder-
standing.
" No ; I mean the apostolic-looking vicar and Mr.
Mattison," he answered.
"I do not see why yoii should call either of those
gentlemen by such an absurd name as that of my play-
fellow," said Julia, colouring with a curious feeling of
shame and annoyance combined.
"No?" The captain's voice expressed surprise.
" What else shall we call them — your victims ? "
TEE FINISH. 287
" Captain Luxmoore ! " she cried indignantly.
'• Miss Calvert ! "
" You have no right to say such things to me ! " she
said, deeply disturbed.
'• In what do I offend ? " he asked innocently. Then
changing his tone to one of earnestness, he added :
'• You know the end of your cruel amusement with
these two poor fellows, Miss Calvert, and I know it
too. Was it good ? was it nohle ? I cannot say was it
womanly ? — for unfortunately it was only too much so !
Two men, worthy and faithful enough each in his own
way, made fools of, for what ? — the gratification of that
terrible vanity which seems like a very curse on some
women — women who make men love them only to ridi-
cule them for their passion and punish them for their
belief ! I ask you again — is this a worthy pastime, a
noble life ? "
" I did not ridicule them ! " said Julia, part petulant,
part angry.
" Not even Mr. Tufnell, with his meek ways and
shadowy mitre? Let then the question of confessed
contempt pass, you cannot deny that you made fools of
them both, and allowed them to hope and strive for
that which you never intended to bestow."
" It is not my fault if people want to marry me.
Beechover is a pretty place," said Julia, suddenly flash-
ing out into her old disdain; '-and men are mercenary,"
she added.
288 THE BEST TO WIN.
Captain Liixmoore looked at her as if lie would have
driven his eyes right into her heart.
" That is an answer which far from excuses you,
Miss Calvert," he said gravely. " Mattison, at all
events, loved you for yourself, not your money. And
even had it not been so, you had no right to act as you
did. Is it fair on human nature to trade on its con-
fessed weakness, and to think yourself justified because
3'ou find it as weak as you know it to he ? "
" You are severe, Captain Luxmoore," was all that
Julia could say. Had she said more, she would have
ended in tears.
" Kespect — affection which sees the faults in the
one" — the captain hesitated, then said '"admired," as
if he had checked himself — ■" that is not severity ; it is
the truest homage. If I did not think you a noble
creature in heart. Miss Calvert, and that all these
faults were only sujoerficial and the faults of youth
and want of guidance, I would not care to speak. But
just in proportion to jny — esteem- — is my sorrow to see
you fail and my desire to see you perfect. Now for-
give me," holding out his hand ; " I will never oftend
you again ; but I felt that I must tell you how men
regard the kind of thing you have done. Do you
forgive me ? "
Julia did not speak, but she laid her hand in his,
and he pressed it tenderly.
THE FINISH. 289
There was silence after this for some moments ; and
then Captain Luxmoore, rising, said in a moved voice :
" I am glad you have forgiven me ; for I should have
been grieved to have carried away your displeasure,
and I must hid you good-bye now for some time."
" What ! Are you going away ? " she cried abruptly,
as if startled.
" Yes," he answered ; " very soon."
" Are you going far ? "
" Eather — to Africa," lie answered.
She grew as pale as if she were about to faint and
her dumb lips moved inaudibly.
" I am sorry," she then said after a long pause,
during which she had struggled with her emotion and
conquered it so far as to be able to articulate. " You
are running into danger unnecessarily."
" A man must do something," he said. " I am losing
my time here — wasting my life in fruitless regrets."
" Are you so unhappy? " asked Julia in a low voice.
" Ah," he sighed, " the heart knows its own bitter-
ness — and I know mine ! "
" But why go so far because you are unhappy at
Wen^ley?" she said timidly. "You will be killed —
those horrid lions and savages ! "
" One can die only once ; and if I am killed, who
cares ?
She looked up into his face with moist dilated eyes.
VOL. I. U
290 THE BEST TO WIN.
" Some will," she faltered.
" Some ! I do not want some to care. I want only
the one ! " was his replj-.
" That depends on who that one is," she said, trem-
bling.
"You, for instance, would not care," said Captain
Luxmoore in a voice which he vainly tried to make in-
different and steady.
" Should I not? " she answered.
" Would you ? "
He sat down by her again and looked into her face.
" A little," she said, turning away her head.
" Only a little ! about so much regret as you would
give to your dead dog ! " bitterly, despairingly.
" A little more than that," half whispered Julia.
"As much as I for you?" said the captain, again
taking her hands in his, she leaving them passive in
his hold.
" Perhaps more,'' said Julia ; her head drooped still
luwer.
" Is this said sincerely ? You are not playing with
me ? Darling, tell me ; do you really love me ? "
As he spoke he drew her gently towards him.
" I am afraid I do ! " said Julia, turning to him half
coyly, half generously, and hiding her face on his
shoulder.
"Ah, this is happiness at last ! " he cried, passing
TEE FINISH. 291
his hand over her hair. " The happiness I have been
afraid to hope but have longed for from the begin-
ning ! "
She gave a little movement of surprise.
"Yes," he said; "from the beginning. But I had
to keep my secret, else I should not have won the
prize. If I had made myself your slave, you would
never have been where you are now — in my arms.
Confess, darling, is not this better than all your old
false theories ? Is not Love sweeter than Liberty ? a
man's care better than a woman's independence ? "
She lifted up her face, blushing, tender, smiling; but
she did not speak.
" I can read my answer, dear ! " he said fondly,
taking her head between both his hands, and kissing
her bashful lips.
END OF VOL. r.
Printed by William Clowes atid Sons, Limited, London and Beccles.
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