■®w$&! LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE DEAD-SEA FRUIT \r^7// C8a BY THE AUTHOR OF 'LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "AURORA FLOYD' ETC. SIO ETO Stmotggtb $bifrn» LONDON JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL 4, SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET {All rights reserved.} CONTENDS. IflA*. I. QuTTB Al/ONK II. A Retrospective Survey III. "Take back those Letters, meant fob Happiness IV. Un menage a deux . V. The Editor of the "Areopagui VI. At Bayham .... VII. Mr. Jerningham's Quest . . VIII. Greenlands .... IX. How they Parted X. There is always the Skeleton XI. " J'aime : il faut que j'esperb XII. The Green-eyed Monster. . XIII. Miss St. Albans . . , XIV. In the Green-Room . . . XV. Alpha and Omega XVI. Miss St. Albans breaks her Engagement, XVII. Mr. Desmond to the Rescue XVIII. A Perilous Protegee XIX. Out op the World . . . XX. Mrs. Jerningham is Philanthropic XXI. Deceitful above all things XXII. Daniel Mayfield's Counsel XXIII. Between Eden and Exile. XXIV. "L'OISEAU FUIT COMME LE BONHEUB W XXV. "The Disappointments of Dion" XXVI. "Infinite Riches in a Little Room XXVII. Vale . XXVIII. "Still from one Sorrow to another Thrown XXIX. Left Alone .... XXX. The Morland Couoh. XXXI. Lucy's Farewell to the Stags. XXXII. "Could Love part thus?" . XXXIII. A Summer Storm XXXIV. A Final Interview XXXV. Timely Banishment XXXVI. Sit tibi terra Levis, XXXVII. Hidden Hopes . XXXVIII. Northward XXXIX. Halko's Head . XL. Hopeless . XLI. Stronger than Death XLU. Reconciled . , 1 7 14 22 28 35 45 52 CT 69 75 86 95 104 114 132 141 150 160 165 174 180 187 195 201 214 227 236 239 243 249 253 26(1 277 283 287 292 300 304 310 334 342 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. CHAPTER L QUITE ALONE. The marble image of Hubert Van Eyck stood out against the warm blue sky, and cast a slanting shadow across the sunlit flags. The July afternoon was drawing to a close. Low sunlight ehone golden on the canals of Villebrumeuse, and changed every westward-looking window into a casement of gold. Those are no common windows which look out upon the quiet streets and lonely squares of that sleepy Belgian city. No handiwork of modern speculative builder is visible amid that grand old archi- tecture — no flimsy nineteenth-century villa perks its tawdry head among those mediaeval splendours — no upstart semi-detached abominations of spurious Gothic, picked out with rainbow- coloured brick, affright the eye by their hideous aspect. To live in Villebrumeuse is to live in the sixteenth century. A quiet calm, as of the past, pervades the shady streets. Green trees reflect themselves in the still waters of the slow canal which creeps athwart the city ; and by the side of the tranquil waters there are pleasant walks o'ershadowed by the umbrage of hmes, and wooden benches whereon the peaceful citizens may repose themselves in the evening dusk. In despite of its solemn tran- quillity, this Villebrumeuse is not a dreary dwelling-place. If it has drifted from amidst the busy places of this earth — if the bh.strous ocean of modern progress has receded from its shores, leaving it far away across a level waste of reef and sand — this quiet city has, at the worst, been left stationary, while the noisy hde sweeps on with all its tumult of success and faihxre — its prosperous ventures and forgotten wrecks. The peace which pervades Villebrumeuse is the tranquillity of slumber, and not the awful stillness of death. There is a jog-trot prosperity in the place, a comfortable air, which is soothing to the world-worn 2 Dead- Sea Fruit. *] irit; but the wrestling, and scuffling, and striving, and strug- gling of modern commerce is unknown among the quiet mer- chants, who content themselves with supplying the simple wants of their fellow-citizens in the simplest fashion. And yet this city was once a mart to which the Orient brought her richest merchandise ; and in the days gone by, these quaint old squares have been clamorous with the voices of many traders, and bright ^uith the holiday raiment of busy multitudes. A young Englishman walked slowly up and down the broad Hagged square, across which the painter's statue cast its sombre shadow. He was teacher of English and mathematics in a great public academy near at hand, and his name was Eustace Thorburn. For three years he had held his post in the Villebrumeuse academy ; for three years he had done his duty, quietly and ear- nestly, to the satisfaction of every one concerned in the perform- ance. And yet he was something of an enthusiast, and something of a poet, and possessed many of those attributes which are com- monly supposed to constitute a letter of license for the neglect of vulgar every-day duties. That was an ardent and an ambitious spirit which shone out of Eustace Thorburn' s gray eyes; but if the fiery sword had chafed the scabbard a little during three years of academical routine and Villebrumeuse monotony, the young man had been patient and contented withal. There was a public library in Villebrumeuse to which the tutor had free entrance, and in the mediaeval chambers of this institution his leisure had been spent. That dreamy idleness amongst good books had been very pleasant to him; his work in the academy was endurable, despite its tedious and laborious nature; and he had a lurking tenderness for the quaint old city, the slow canals overshadowed by green trees, the simple people, and the old-world customs. Thus, if there were times when the eager spirit would fain have soared to loftier and fairer regions, the young student and teacher had not been altogether unhappy since his destiny had brought him to this place to earn his bread amongst strangers. Amongst strangers ? Were the inhabitants of this Belgian city any more strange to him than all the other inhabitants of this populous earth — except the one man and woman who made the sum total of his kindred and friends? Amongst strangers P Why, if the statue of Van Eyck could have descended from yonder pedestal to walk in the streets of the city, the animated effigy could scarcely have been a lonelier creature than the young in a 11 who passed to and fro athwart the sloping shadow on the flags this July afternoon. Looking backward through the shadows of the past, how many of those images, familiar to most men, were wanting in the mystic pictures that memory presented to Eustace Thorburn J Quite Alone. 8 Memory, let him question her never so closely, could not show him any faint tracing of a father's face flickering dimly athwart the half-consciousness of infancy. Nor could he, in surveying the events of his childhood, recall so much as one visit to a father'3 grave, one accidental utterance of a father's name, one objed however trivial, associated with a father's existence — a picture., a sword, a book, a watch, a tress of hair. The time had been when he had been wont to question his mother about this miss- ing father ; but that was long ago. The time had come, and too quickly in this young man's life, when a precocious wisdom had checked his questioning, and he had learned to refrain fiom all reference to a father's name, as the one subject, of all others, most scrupulously to be avoided by his lips. He was twenty- three years of age, and he had never been told his father's name or position in the world. For the last ten years of his life it had been a common thing for him to lie awake in the solemn quiet of the night, thinking of that unknown father, and wondering whether he were alive or dead. He knew that he had no claim to the name which he bore, and that he had as good a light to call himself a Guelph or a Plantagenet as he had to call himself Thorburn. How many childless men upon this earth would have boon glad to call Eustace Thorburn son ! How many of this world's mag- nates, with mighty names to transmit, would have rejoiced with unspeakable rapture, could they have set the joy-bells tinging for the coming of age of such an heir ! As there are rare an:l peer- less flowers that adorn inaccessible regions where no hand can gather them, where no eye may delight in' their loveliness, so there are friendless creatures in the world who might make the joy of empty hearts, and be the pride of desolate households. The "something in this world amiss," which the poet has sung of, pervades every social relation. The plaintive wailing of the minor mingles itself with every earthly melody ; and it is only by and by that the veil shall be lifted ; it is only by and by that the mystic enigma shall be unriddled, and the full chords of perfect harmony peal on our earB, unmarred by that undertone of pain. Not often has a nobler countenance looked upward to the counte- nance of the statue than that which looked at it with a dreamy gaze to-day. The face of the young man was, like the face of the statue, more beautiful by reason of its nobility of expression than because of its perfect regularity of feature. In Eustace Thor- burn's countenance the intellectual radiance so far surpassed the physical beauty, that those who looked at him for the first time were impressed chiefly by the brightness of his expression, and were likely to take their leave of him in complete ignorance as to the shape of hi>» nose or the modelling of his mouth 4 Dead- Sea Fruit. It is but a thankless task to catalogue such a face ; the dark gray eyes which pass for black ; the mobile mouth which, in one moment, seems formed to express an unbending pride and an in- domitable will, and in the next will wreathe itself into such a smile that it must needs appear incapable of any expression but manly tenderness or playful humour; the loosely arranged auburn hair, which gives something of a leonine aspect to the lofty head ; the complexion of almost womanly fairness, with a rich glow that comes and goes with every changing impulse or emotion — all these go such a little way towards the individuality of the young Englishman walking up and down the lonely square during his hall-hour's respite from the monotonous duties of the afternoon. This half-hour's holiday was not Mr. Thorburn's only privi- lege. He had two hours in every day for his own studies — two hours which he generally spent in the public library, for his ambition had shaped itself into a palpable form, and had mapped the outline of a career. He was to be a man of letters. If he had been a rich man, he would have shut himself in his library and made himself a poet. But as he was nothing but a name- less and penniless stripling, with his bread to earn, he had no right to indulge in the luxury of verse-making. The wide arena of literary labour lay before him, and he had no choice but to force his way into the hsts, and fight for any place that might happen to be vacant. Fate might make of him what she would — journalist, novelist, dramatist, magazine-hack, penny-a-liner ; but Bhe must use him very cruelly before she could quench the fire of his young ambition, or bend the crest with which he was pre- pared to confront the world. He had selected for himself this profession of literature chieflv because it was the only calling which demanded no capital from the beginner, and a little because the only kinsman he had in the world was a man who Lived by his pen, and who might have prsspered and won distinction by means of that fluent pen, had he not chosen to do otherwise. The half-hour's respite expired presently, and a great clanging bell in the academy near at hand summoned the pupils to their evening lesson. It was a summons for the master also, and Mr. Thorburn ran across the square and turned into the street on which one side of the academy looked. He pushed cpen a little wooden door in the big gateway, and passed under the arched entrance; but before going to his class-room, he stopped to examine a rack in which letters addressed to the masters were wont to be kept. He rarely omitted to look at this rack, though he had very few correspondents, and only received about one letter in a fortnight. To-day there was a letter. His heart turned cold as he looked at it, for the envelope was bordered Quite Alone. 5 rith black, and addressed in the hand of his mother's brother irho very seldom wrote to him. His mother had been an invalid for a long time, and such a letter as that could have hut one fatal meaning. For months he had looked forward to his August holiday, which would enable him to go to England and spend a few happy weeks with that dear mother — and now the holiday would come too late. He went out into one of the dismal playgrounds, a gravelled yard surrounded by high whitewashed walls, and read his letter. His tears fell thick and fast upon the flimsy paper as he read. Ten minutes ago, walking to and fro in the sunshine, he had lamented his loneliness, remembering that he had only two friends in the world. He knew now that the dearer of these two was lost to him. The letter told him of his mother's death, "There is no need for you to hurry back, my poor lad," wrote his uncle. "The funeral is to take place to-morrow, and will be over when you get this letter. I saw your mother a fortnight before her death, and she then told me what she could never find the courage to tell you— that the end was very near. It came suddenly at the last, and I was out of the way at the time; but they tell me it was a calm and holy ending. Her last words were of you. She dwelt much on your goodness and devotion, Mrs. Bane tells me. The last two days were spent in prayer, poor innocent soul ; and I, who stand in so much greater need of that kind of thing, can't bring myself to it for half a:-i hour! Poor soul! Bane thinks it was for you she was praying, she repeated your name so often — sometimes in her sleep, sometimes when she was lying in a languid state between sleeping and waking. But she did not wish you to be sent for. ' It is better that he should be away,' she said ; ' I think he knew that this day must soon come.' " And now, my dear boy, try to bear up against this sorrow like a brave, true-hearted lad, as you are. I say nothing of what I feel myself, for there are some things which come with a bad grace from certain people. You know that I loved my sister ; though, God knows, I never knew how dearly till yester- day, when I saw the blinds down at Mrs. Bane's, and guessed what had happened. Remember, Eustace, that so long as I can earn a crust, my sister Celia's son shall be welcome to his share of it ; and though I may be a disreputable acquaintance, I can be a faithful friend. If you are tired of that slow old Belgian city, come back to England. We will manage your establish- ment here somehow. The impracticable Daniel has a certaiD kind of influence ; and though he rarely cares to use it on his own account, — being so bad a lot that he dare no:; give himself a decent character, — he wiM employ it to the uttermost for a r.iwtless nephew. 6 Dead-Sea Fruit. " Come, then, dear boy ; a kind of heart- sickness has come over me, and I want to see the brightest face that I know in this world, and the only face that I love. Come, even if you must needs return to the whitewashed saloons of the Parthenee. There are letters and papers of your poor mother's which it might be well for you to destroy. My profane hand shall not tamper with them." The young man thrust his kinsman's letter in his breast, and paced the playground slowly for some time, meditating the loss that had come upon him. In one of the big class-rooms neai at hand his pupils were waiting for him ; and there was wonder- ment and consternation at this delay in the most punctual of all the masters. His tears had dropped fast upon the letter some time ago; but his eyes were dry now. The dull agony which filled his breast was rather a sense of desolation than a poignant grief. He had seen and known that his mother was fading from this troubled earth before his coming to Belgium ; and poverty's bitterest penalty had been the necessity which had separated him from her. The shadow of this coming sorrow had long darkened the horizon of his young life. The sad reality had come upon him a little sooner than he had expected it, and that was all. He bowed his head and resigned himself to this affliction ; but there was something to which he could not resign himself, and that was the manner of his loss. " Alone — in a hired lodging — with a poor, ill-paid, hard-working drudge for her sole companion and consoler ! mother, mother, you were too bright a creature for so sad a fate!" And then there arose before this young man's eyes one of those pictures which were continually haunting him — the picture of what his life and his mother's life might have been, had things been different with them. He fancied himself the beloved and acknowledged son of a good and honourable man ; he fancied his mother a happy wife. Ah ! then how changed all would have been ! Sickness and death would have come all the same, perhaps, since there is no earthly barrier that can exclude those dark visitors from happy households. They would have come, the dreaded guests, but with how different an aspect ! He made for himself the picture of two death-beds. By one there knelt a group of loving children, weeping silently for a dying mother, while a grief-stricken husband suppressed all outward evidence of his sorrow, lest he should trouble the departing spirit whose earthly tabernacle was supported by his fond arms. And the other death-bed ! Alas, how sad the contrast between the two .it area ! A woman lying alone in a dingy chamber, abandoned and forgotten by every creature in the world except her son, and even he away from her. " And for this, ns woll as for all the rest, we have to i^"wik Quite Alone 7 him .'" muttered the young man. His face, which until now had been overshadowed only by a quiet despondency, darkened suddenly as he said this. It was not the first time he had apostrophized a nameless enemy in the same bitter spirit. He had very often abandoned himself to vengeful thoughts about this unknown foe, to whose evil-doing he attributed every sorrow of his own, and all those hidden griefs and silent agonies so patiently endured by his mother. He kept a close account of his mother's wrongs, and of his own, and he set them all against this person, whom he had never seen and whose name he might never discover. This nameless enemy was his father. CHAPTER n. A RETROSPECTIVE SURVEY. From the Mediaeval tranquillity of Yillebrumeuse to the dreary desolation of Tilbury Crescent is a sorry change. Instead of the quaint peaked roofs and grand old churches, the verdant avenues and placid water, there are unfinished streets and ter- races of raw-looking brick, half-built railway arches, chasm-like cuttings newly made in the damp clay soil, and patches of rank greensward that mark the site of desolated fields. The sul- phurous odours of a brickfield pervade the atmosphere about and around Tilbury Crescent. The din of a distant high-road, the roar of many wheels, and the clamour of excited coster- mongers, float in occasional gusts of sound upon the dismal stillness of the neighbourhood, where the shrill voices of children, playing hopscotch in an adjacent street, are painfully audible. Decent poverty has set a seal upon this little labyrinth of streets and squares and crescents and terraces, before the builder's men have left the newest of the houses, while there are still roofless skeletons at every corner, waiting till the speculator who began them shall have raised enough money to finish them. The neighbourhood lies northward, and the rents of those yellow-brick tenements are cheap. So decent poverty, in all its many guises, comes hitherward for shelter. Newly-m arried lawyers' clerks take up their abode in the eight-roomed dwell- ings, and you shall divine, by the fashion of blinds and curtains, the trim propriety of doorsteps and tiny front gardens, whethef the young householders have drawn prizes in the matrimonial lottery. Small tradesmen bring their wares to the little shops which break out here and there at the corners of the streets, and struggle feebly for a livelihood. Patient young dress- makers exhibit fly-blown fashion-plates in parlour windows, and wait hopefully or despairingly, as the case may be, for custom 8 Dcaa-Sea Fruit. and patronage. And in more windows than the chance pedes' trian would care to count hangs the pasteboard announcement of apartments to let. Eustace Thorburn came to Tilbury Crescent in the blazing July noontide. He had landed at St. Katherine's Wharf, ant had made his way to this northern suburb on foot. He was rich enough to have ridden in an omnibus, or to have enjoyed the luxury of a hansom, had he been so minded ; but he was an ambitious young man, and had cultivated the nobler Spartan virtues from his earliest boyhood. The few pounds in his posses- sion would have to serve him until he returned to the Parthenee, or obtained some new employment ; so he had much need to be careful of shillings, and chary even of pence. The walk through the dirty bustling London streets seemed long and weary to him ; but his thoughts were more weary than that pedestrian journey under the meridian sun, and the sad memories of his youth were a heavier burden than the carpet-bag he carried slung across his shoulder. He knocked at the door of one of the shabbiest houses in the crescent, and was admitted by an elderly woman, who was slip- shod and slovenly, but who had a good-natured face, which brightened as she recognized the traveller. In the next moment she remembered the sad occasion of his coming, and put on that conventional expression of profound sorrow which people assume so easily for the affliction of others. " Ah, dear, dear, Mr. Thorburn ! " she cried, " I never thought to see you come back like this, and she not here to bid you welcome, poor sweet lamb ! " The young man held up his hand to stay the torrent of sym- pathy. " Please, don't talk to me about my mother," he said, quietly, " I can't bear it — yet." The honest woman looked at him wonderingly. She had been accustomed to deal with people who liked to talk of their griefs, and she did not understand this quiet way of putting aside a Borrow. The mourners whom she had encountered had worn their sackcloth and covered themselves with ashes in the face of the world, and here was a young man who had not so much as a band upon his hat, and who rejected her friendly sympathy ! " I can have my — the old rooms, for a week or so, I suppose, Mrs. Bane?" "Yes, sir. I've took the liberty to put a bill up, thinking as perhaps you might not return from abroad ; and if it's for a week only, perhaps you 'd allow the bill to remain ? There are so marry apartments about this neighbourhood, you see, sir, and people are that pushing now-a-days, that a poor widow-woman l..is scarcely a chance. It's a hard thing to be left alone in tne -rorld.Mr Thorburn." A Retrospective Survey. 9 There was an open wound in the heart of Eustace Thorburn which ignorant hands were always striking. " It 's a hard thing to be left alone in the world," he thought, echoing the landlady's lamentation. " She was left alone in the r.'orld before I was born." « The landlady repeated her question. " Oh, yes, you can leave the bill ; but don't let any one come to look at the rooms to-day. I am not likely to be here more than o. week. Can I go upstairs at once ? " Mrs. Bane plunged her hand into a capacious pocket, and, after much searching the depths of that receptacle, produced a door- key, which she handed to Eustace. " Mr. Mayfield told me to lock the door, sir, because of papers and such-like. The bedroom door is fastened on the inside." The young man nodded, and went upstairs with a brisk, rapid footstep, and not with that ponderous, solemn tread which Mrs. Bane would have considered appropriate to his bereaved con- dition. " And I thought he would have took on dreadful !" she ejacu- lated, as she went back to her underground kitchen, where there was generally an atmosphere laden with the steam of boiling soap- suds, or an odour of singed ironing-blanket. Eustace Thorburn unlocked the door, and went into the room which had so lately been inhabited by his mother. It was a dingy little sitting-room, opening into a bedroom that was still smaller. It was a lodging of the same pattern as a thousand other lodgings in newly-built suburbs. The personalty of the woman who had left it for a still narrower lodging would scarcely have realized twenty shillings under the auctioneer's hammer ; and yet to Eustace Thorburn the shabby room was eloquent of the dead. That dilapidated rosewood workbox — for which the auctioneer would have been ashamed to propose a starting bid of a shilling — conjured up the vision of a patient creature bending over her work. The little stand of books — cheap editions of the poets, in worn cloth binding — recalled her sweet face, illumined by a transient splendour, as the inspired verses of her favourites lifted her above this earth and all her earthly sorrows. The valueless china inkstand, and worn blotting-book, had been used by her for more than four years. Eustace Thorburn took the things up one by one, and put them to his lips. There was something almost passionate in the kiss which he imprinted upon those lifeless objects — it was the kiss which he would have Eressed upon her jjale lips, had he been recalled in time to bid er farewell. He kissed the books which she had been wont to reaa, tne pen with which she had written, and then cast himself EU'Menly into the low chair where he had so often seen her seated, and abandoned himself to his grief. Had Mrs. Bane, the 10 Dead- Sea fruit. landlady, heard these convulsive sobg. and seen the tears stream* iog between the fingers which the young man clasped before his eyes, she womd have had no need to complain of Mr. Thorburn s want of emotion, Fo: a long time he sat m the same attitude, still weeping. But the passionate grief wore itself out at last. He dashod the tears front his eyes with an impatient gesture, and rose; pait, and calm, t< begin the work which he had set himself to do. His love ior Ids mother had been the ruling passion of his life. She was at lest now, and he could ?aiok posses- sion of him anew. There was a ponderous, old fashioned mahogany desk on a side-table, and it was in this desk that the lonely iahabita'-t oi the room had been accustomed to keep her letters ana paper?, together with those few valueless relics — that pitiful jetsam aur* tiotsam from the shipwreck of hope and happineoS wluca ar) left to the most desolate creature. Eustace unlocked and opened the desk as softly as if hit* mother had been sleeping near him. He had often seen her eeaied at this desk; he had once surprised her in tears, vith a little packet of letters in her hand, but he had never seen the contents of any of those discoloured papers, tied with faded ribbons, and disfigured by obsolete postmarks. And now that she was gone, it Avas his duty to examine those papers, — or so he considered. Yet there was a shade of compunction in his mind as he touched the first packet, and he felt as if he had been committing a sacrilege. The first packet was labelled "My Mother's Letters," _ and contained the epistles of some good womanly creature, written to a daughter who was away at boarding-school. They were full of allusions to a comfortable middle-class household — a tradesman's household, as it seemed, for there were occasional references to events that had occurred in the shop, and to " my dear husband's over-exerting himself in the business," and to " Daniel's unsettled ways and indisposition to take to his father's occupation." Eustace smiled faintly as he read of poor Daniel, whose nnsottled ways had been notorious before Sir Rowland Hill's {)ost-office amendments, and who remained unsettled in these atter days of electric telegraphy and labyrinthine railway cuttings. The letters were very sweet, by -eason of the tender motherlj 12 Dead-Sea Fr DsaJ-Sca Fruit, hind the counter, with a book in your lap ; and all my thoughts came back to Bayham, to take up their abode with you for ever. You were so absorbed in your book, that you did not hear my modest request for a quire of letter-paper, until it had been three times enunciated ; and I meanwhile had time to read the title of the book which interested you. I suppose every writer can read the title of his own book upside-down. You looked up at last, frith such a pretty, shy, innocent look, and the wild-rose bloom came into your cheeks. And then I asked you what you thought of the book ; and you praised it with such bewitching eloquence, and wondered who the writer could be. I had heard the book lauded by a great many people, and abused by more ; but I had never until that moment felt the smallest temptation to reveal myself as the author of it. I had, indeed, taken great trouble to conceal my identity. But when yon praised my work, I flung prudence to the winds. It was so delightful to see your bright blush, your bewitching confusion, when I told you that it was my happiness to have pleased you. O Celia, if you like my book so well, why is it that you distrust and avoid me ? Let me see you, dear, I implore — anywhere — at any time — under any conditions you may choose to imj)ose upon me. I wait in this dull town day after day, in the hope of seeing you. A hundred duties call me away ! and yet I wait. I shall wait for a week after having posted this letter ; and if I receive no sign from you during that time, I shall leave Bayham, never again to venture within its fatal precincts. " Ever and ever faithfully yours, •u to him, M Take Back these Letters." 2) When I got to 13a) ham, I found that there was something worse than want of money in the grief-stricken household. Celia had disappeared, leaving a letter for my father, in which she told him that she was going away to be married ; but there were reasons why her marriage and the name of her husband should be kept a seGret for some time ; but that he had promised to bring her back to Bayham directly he was free to reveal his name and position. Of course we all knew what this meant; and my father and I set out to seek our poor cheated girl, with as gloomy a despair at our hearts as if we had gone to seek her in the realms of Pluto." "And you failed?" " Yes, lad, we failed ignominiously. There were neither elec- tric telegraphs nor private detectives in those days ; and after following several false scents, and spending a great deal of money, we went back to Bayham — my father looking ten years older for his wasted labour. He died three years after that, and my mother followed him very quickly, for they were one of those old-fashioned couples who cling to each other so fondly through life, that they must needs sink together into the grave. They died ; and the poor girl, whom they had forgiven from the very first hour of her offending, was not permitted to comfort their last hours. They had been dead more than twelve months when I saw a woman's faded face flit past me in the most crowded part of the Strand. I walked on a few paces, with a strange sudden pain at my heart, and then I turned and hi rried after the woman, for I knew that I had seen my sister." There was another brief pause — broken only by the short eager breathing of Eustace, and one profound sigh from DanieL " Well, boy, she had been living in London for more than three years, hidden in the same big jungle which sheltered me, and Providence had never sent me across her path. She had been living as many such lonely creatures do live in London ; managing to exist somehow — now by means of one starvation work, now another. I went home with her, and we gathered her few pitiful possessions together, and carried them and you away with us in a cab, and — you know the rest. She lived with me until you were old enough to be in danger of suffering from a bad example ; and then she made some excuse for leaving me — poor innocent soul, she was afraid lest dissolute Daniel should contaminate her pet-lamb. In all the time that we were to- gether, I forbore to question her; I always believed that she would confide in me sooner or later, and I waited patiently in that hope. She told me once that she had made two journeys to Bayham — the first while her father and mother were still alive, and that she had waited and watched, under cover of the winter evening darkness, until she had contrived to see them both ; the 22 Dead-Sea Jfruit. second, -when they were lying in the parish churchyard. Tliic was all she ever told me. I asked her one day if she would tell me the name of your father. But she looked at me with a sad, frightened face, poor child, and said No, she could never tell me that ; he was away from England — at the other end of the world, she believed. This was the only attempt I ever made to penetrate the secret of your birth." "The letters — the man's letters — are full of allusions to an intended marriage. Do you think there was no marriage?" " I am sure there was none." Eustace groaned aloud. For a long time he had suspected as much as this ; but to hear his suspicions confirmed by the opinion of another was none the less bitter. "You have some reason for saying as much, Uncle Dan P" he asked presently. "I have this reason, Eustace: if my sister could have come back to Bayham, she would have come. The sorrow must have been a very bitter one which kept her away from her father and mother." The young man made no reply to his uncle. He walked to the window, and looked out at the dreary street, where the per- petual organ-grinder, who seems to grind all our sorrows in a musical mill, was grinding on at the usual pace. For the common world the thing which he played was an Ethiopian melody; but Eustace never ^fter waras heard the simple air without recalling this miserable hour, and the story of hia mother's luckless life. He came back to his kinsman. Heaven pity him, the law denied him even this human tie, and it was only by courtesy he could call this man his uncle. He came away from the window yid flung himself on honest Daniel's breast and sobbed aloud. " And now take me to my mother's grave," he said presently CHAPTER IV. UN MENAGE A liEUX. Harold Jerningttam lived in Park Lane. To say this, and to say in addition to this that it was his privilege to inhabit a Bnug little bachelor dwelling, with bay-windows from the roof to the basement, is to say that he was one of those favoured beings for whom this world must needs be a terrestrial paradise. There are mansions in Park Lane, stately and gigantic — man< sions with lofty picture-galleries, and staircases of polished marble, o-nservatoriea which roof-in, sma.ll forests of trotter; 1 verdure; Un Menage a Deux. 2o but the glory of this western Eden lies not in them. Are there not mansions in Belgravia and Tyburnia, in Piccadilly and May- fair ? Palaces are common enough in this western hemisphere, and the roturier may find one ready for his occupation, seek it when he will. But it is only in Park Lane that those delicious little bachelor snuggeries are to be found, those enchanting toy- houses, " too small to five in, and too big to hang at your watch- chain,'' as Lord Hervey said of the Duke's cottage at Chiswick — those irregular little edifices, with bow-windows, and balconies, and miniature conservatories breaking out in every direction, and with a perfume of the country still about them. The house which Harold Jerningham occupied when he favoured the metropolis by his presence was one of the most enchanting of these enviable habitations. The house had been a pretty old-fashioned cottage with bow-windows, when Mr. Jerningham took it in hand, but in his possession it had under- gone considerable change. He had transformed the rustic bows into deep roomy bays, and had thrown out balconies of iron scroll-work, whereon there flourished bright masses of flowers, and ferns, and mosses, amidst which no eye save that of the nurseryman's minions ever beheld a faded leaf. He had built mysterious and spacious chambers at the back of the small dwelling, on ground that had once been a garden ; and beyond these chambers you came suddenly upon a shady quadrangle roofed-in with glass, where there was a wonderful tesselated pavement, which had been transported bodily from a chamber m Pompeii, and where there were ferns and cool grasses, and a porphyry basin of water-lilies, and the perpetual plashing of a fountain. Mr. Jerningham had furnished his house after his own fashion, without regard to the styles that were " in," or the styles that were " out." One rich carpet of dark crimson velvet-pile lined the house from the hall to the attics, like a jewel-casket ; and the same warm and yet sombre tint pervaded the window-hang- ings _ and the walls. The ordinary visitor found very little to admire in Mr. Jerningham's drawing-room. Thin-legged tables and chairs, adorned with goats' heads and festoons of flowers; a shabby little writing-table, considerably the worse for wear, but enlivened by patches of china, whereon rosy little Cupids frisked and tumbled against a background of deep azure ; a generally untidy effect of scattered bronzes and intaglios, gold- and-enamel snuff-boxes and bonbonnieres, Chelsea tea-cups, and antique miniatures ; and on the walls some tapestry, just a little faded, with the eternal shepherds and shepherdesses of the Watteau school. The connoisseur only could have told that the spindle-legged chairs and tables were in the purest style of the Louis-Seize period ; that the shabby little writing-table with the 24 Lea J- Sea Fruit. plaques of old Sevres had belonged to Marie Antoinette, and had been sold for something over a thousand pounds ; that the bronzes and intaglios, the miniatures and bonbonnieres were the representatives of a fortune ; and that the somewhat faded tapestry was the choicest work of the Gobelins, after designs by Boucher. Harold Jerningham was fifty years of age, and one of the richest men in London. The poorer members of the world in which he lived talked of him as " a lucky fellow, by Jove, and a man who ought to consider himself uncommonly fortunate never to have known what it was to be hard-up, or to have a pack of extravagant sons sucking his blood, like so many modern vampires, confound 'em ! " Harold Jerningham had neither sons nor daughters, and lived in a bachelor's snuggery. But Harold Jerningham was not a bachelor. He had married a very beautiful young first cousin some seven years before, and the union had not been a happy one. It had only endured for two years, at the end of which time the husband and wife had separated, without open scandal of any kind whatsoever. Mr. Jerningham had chosen that occasion for a long-postponed journey to the East, and Mrs. Jerningham bad quietly withdrawn herself from the toy-house in Park Lane to another toy-house on the banks of the Thames, within two or three hundred yards of AVolsey's old palace at Hampton. But let man and wife arrange their affairs never so quietly, the world will have its own ideas, and make its own theories on the subject. The world — that is th say, Mr. Jerningham's worid, which was bounded on the south by Great George Street, "Westminster, and on the north by Bryanstone Square — told several different stories of Mr. Jer- ningham's marriage. The beautiful young cousin had possessed the real Jerningham pride, which was the pride of the Miltonio Lucifer himself, wherefore the peaceful union of two Jerning- hams was an impossibility, said one faction. But the majority were inclined to believe Mr. Jerningham in some manner guilty. Neither his youth nor his middle age had been s]X)tless. Too proud and too refined to affect coarse vices or common dissipa- tions, he had done more mischief and had been infinitely more dangerous than the common sinner. The master of a ruined household had cursed the name of Harold Jerningham, and innocent children had grown up to blush at the mention of that fatal name. For three-and- forty years of his life he had been a bachelor, and had laughed at the men who bartered their liberty for the sake of a wife's monotonous companionship and the prattle of tiresome children. He had not been a deliberate sinner — indeed, the deliberate sinners seem to be a very small minority, and even the man who poisons his wife with minim doses of aconite will tell the gaol-chaplain that he was a poor, Vn Menage h Dru£. Z~ Weak creature, led away from time to time by the impulse of the moment. The Tempter took him by the hand, and drew him on, foot by foot, to his destruction. There is a thick and blinding fog for ever hanging over that fatally easy slope which leads to Avernus, whereby the traveller cannot perceive what progress he has made upon the dreadful downward road. Mr. Jerningham had not been a deliberate sinner. He was not altogether vile and wicked. He was too selfish a man not to wish for the approbation of his fellow-man ; he was too much of a poet and an artist not to perceive the loveliness of virtue. He was not an honourable man, but he knew that honour was a very beautiful thing in the abstract, and he had a vague sense of discomfort when he acted dishonourably— just such an npleasant sensation as he would have felt if he had worn an ill-fitting coat or an ill-made boot. He was not without benevolence, and could even be generous on occasion ; but in all his useless fife he had never sacrificed his own enjoyment for the good of another. He had taken his pleasure — all was told in those few words — and if pleasure was only to be had at the cost of evil-doing, he had shrugged his shoulders regretfully, and paid the price. _ He had gathered his roses, and other people had been inconvenienced by the thorns. The roses were still blooming about his pathway, but Mr. Jerninghani no longer cared to pluck them. A man may grow tired even of roses. His marriage had been the result of one of those generous impulses which redeemed his character from utter worthlessness. A kinsman had died in Paris, in the extreme depths of patrician poverty, leaving behind him a very lovely daughter, and a letter addressed to Harold Jerningham. The lovely daughter came to London, unattended, to deliver the letter, which she presented with her own hands to the elegant bachelor of three-and- forty. If she had not been a Jerningham, there is no knowing what story of sin and folly this interview might have inaugurated. But she was the daughter of Philip Jerningham, and the direct descendant of a Plantagenet prince ; so, after a brief acquaintance, she became the wife of the eldest representative of her family, and the mistress of that delicious little house in Park Lane, to say nothing of parks and man- sions, farms and forests, in three of the fairest counties in England. She ought to have considered herself the most fortunate of women, said the western world. Whether she did so consider herself or not, it speedily transpired that she was not a happy woman. For a few months the world had the pleasure of be- holding Mr. Jerningham in frequent attendance on his wife. He handed her in and out of carriages, he went out to dinner with her, he stood behind her chair at the Opera, he was even seen occasionally to r ] «ve her iu his unapproachable mail-phacton; 26 Dead-Sea Fruit. and this seemed the perfection of domestic felicity. Then then came an interregnum, during which the Jerninghams were rarely seen together. They Y_~\ an erratic existence, the rule cf which seemed to be that Mr. Jerningham should be at Spa when his wife was in London, and that Mrs. Jerningham should be on her way to one of the country houses whenever her lord came to town. Then all at once arose the awful rumour that the Jerninghams had parted from each other for ever. Elegant gossips discussed the subject at feminine assemblies, and men talked about it in the clubs. Why had the Jerninghams separated? Was he to blame? Was she? Had Jerningham, the irresistible, dropped in for it at last ? Or had he been play- ing his old trick, and had the little woman plucked up a spirit, and cut him ? It is to be observed that Mrs Jerningham wae amongst the tallest of her sex; but your genuine club-lounger would call Juno herself a little woman. It became generally understood before long that Harold Jern- ingham had himself alone to thank for the failure of his matri- monial venture. He made his name somewhat notorious just at this time in conjunction with that of a French opera-dancer; so Mrs. Grundy shrugged her shoulders deprecatingly, and pitied Mrs. Jerningham. "A superb creature, my dear; the very model of propriety; and a thousand times too good for that dissipated wretch, Harold Jerningham," exclaimed the sagacious Mrs. Grundy. While the world made itself busy with the story of her brief married life, Emily Jerningham endured her wrongs and sorrows very quietly in the toy-villa at Hampton. She had an ample income settled on her by her husband; and as shehad been steeped in poverty to the very lips before her marriage, it is scarcely strange, perhaps, if she forbore to complain of Mr. Jerningham's conduct, and. elected to talk about him— whenever intrusive people compelled her to mention his name— as her friend and benefactor. The world lauded her generosity, but considered itself injured by her reticence. For the first twelve months after the separation, Mrs. Jern- ingham secluded herself from all society except that of a few chosen friVmds, and devoted herself to the cultivation of orchids at the toy-villa. She started with the intention of passing the remainder of her days amongst the chosen friends and the orchids; but slie was young and handsome, rich and accom- plished, and society had chosen to exalt her into a social martyr. So people penetrated the depths of her suburban retreat, and beguiled her to return to the world, of which she had seen so little. She went into society, tolerably secured from the hazard of meeting her husband, who had his own particular circle, and that a very narrow one. Emily Jerningham was liked and ad- Un Menage a Deux. 27 mired. She was a beauty of the Juno type, and the Jerningham pride became her. It was not by any means an intolerable pride, never parading itself on unnecessary occasions — pride defensive, not pride aggressive ; the pride of a prince who will be hand-and- glove with his dear Brummell, but who will order Mr. Brummell's carriage when the beau is insolent. Mrs. Jerningham was very popular. She had all the charm of widowhood without its danger. There was even the faintest flavour of Bohemianism about her position, spotless though her reputation might be. She was a saint and martyr who gave nice little dinners, and drove the most perfectly appointed of pony-phaetons. It was only by an indescribable something — a tranquil grace of bearing, a subdued ease of manner, a pervading harmony in every detail of her surroundings, from the unobtrusive colouring of her cos- tume to the irreproachable livery of her servants — that strangers could distinguish her from other unprotected women of a very different class. Young men were ready to worship and adore her. "If the gurls a fellah meets were like Mrs. Jerningham, a fellah might make up his mind to go in for the domestic," said young Tyburnia to young Belgravia. " S'pose the odds are agains* Jerningham going off the hooks between this and the firs;, spring-meeting, so as to give a party a chance with Mrs. J. her- self," speculates young Belgravia, dreamily. Mrs. Jerningham had enjoyed her quasi- widowhood some two years, when Mrs. Grundy's attention was called to a new pheno- menon in connection with that lady. It was observed that whoever was bidden to the nice little dinner-parties at the toy-villa, there was one gentlemen whose presence was a certainty. It was observed that whenever Mrs. Jerningham dropped in for an hour or two at any fashionable assembly, this gentleman was sure to drop in at the same hour, and to depart, listless and weary, as soon as he had handed that lady to her carriage. He was not one of the butterflies, but had been admitted amongst those gorgeous creatures on account of certain gifts and quahties which the butterflies were able to appreciate. He was a powerful satirist, something of a poet and the editor of a fashionable semi-political, semi-literary periodical, entitled the Areopagus. He was five-and-thirty years of age, as handsome as an intellectual man can venture to be, and as elegant as a Lauzun or a Hervey. He had chambers vu the Temple, a hunting-box in Berkshire, the entree to all the best houses in London, and a hundred country houses always open to him. The Bohemians of the press watched his career with envious eyes, and would have rejoiced infinitely to catch him tripping on the difficult editorial pathway, so that they might band themselves together to rend him in pieces. The 28 Dcad-Sca Fruit. first time these watchful enemies obtained any advantage oVtn him was when the western world began to whisper that he had fallen in love with Mrs. Jerningbam. Then the literary Bohe- mians, the " Chcrokees " and " Night-birds," and all the little clubs and cliques in London, set up their malicious chatter ; and men who had never beheld Emily Jerningham's face speculated upon her conduct and gloated over the anticipation of some tremendous scandal which should terminate in Laurence Des- mond's expulsion from the Eden of fashion. The clubs and cliques were doomed to disappointment. No tremendous scandal ever arose. After a little discussion, the world agreed to accept this Platonic attachment between the lady and the editor as the most delightful of social romances. Mrs. Jerningham bad taken care to provide herself with a perfect dragon in the way of an elderly widowed aunt, whose husband had been in the Church — and, sheltered thus, she was free to bestow her friendship on whom she pleased. Time, which sanctifies all things, gave a kind of legality to the Platonic attachment; and in due course it became an understood thing that Mr. Desmond should never marry until Harold Jerningham's d^ath should set Emily free. If any rumour of this romantic friendship reached Mr. Jern- mgham's ears, he received the tidings very quietly. No preux chevalier ever spoke of his liege lady in a more reverential spirit than that in which Harold Jerningham spoke of his wife. It seemed as if these two people had agreed to sound each other's praises. Emily declared her husband to be the most noble ana generous of men ; Harold lauded his wife as the purest and most onourable of women. Malicious people shrugged their shoulders and hinted at hypocrisy. "Jerningham was always a Jesuit," said one; "he is tin Talleyrand of social life. And if you want to arrive at what ho means, you must take the reverse of what he says." " If they are both such delightful creatures, what a pity it is *hay couldn't live peaceably together !" Baid another. CHAPTER V. TTTE F.IUTOB, OP THE " AEEOPAGTJS." Amongst the contributors to the Eterary periodical of which Mr. Desmond was the editor, Daniel May field occupied no insignificant position. The most genial and good-natured of men was at toe same time the most ferocious and acrimonious of critics. When an innocent lamb was to be led to the slaughter, The Editor of tie «Areopagu9." 29 it was Daniel who assumed the butcher's apron and armed himself with the deadly knife. When a wretched scribbler was, in vulgar phraseology, to be "jumped upon," honest Daniel put on his hobnailed boots, and went at the savage operation with a will. The days were past in which the Edinburgh reviewer apologized with a gentle courtesy before he ventured to express his dissent from the opinions of a lady historian. Criticism of to-day must be racy, at any price. Daniel's strong arm smote right and left, cleaving friend and foe indiscriminately asunder ; and if it was on a woman's head that the blow descended, so much the better. The woman should have been at home studying her cookery-book, or working that domestic treadmill, the sewing- ttiachine, instead of jostling her betters in the literary arena. "Hark forward, tantivy!" cried Daniel the critic; "run her down, trample her in the mud, make an end of her! She would quote Greek, would she ? Why, the creature can barely spell plain English ! She would prate of gods and goddesses, whose names she picks hap-hazard from a cheap abridgment of Lem- priere. She would discourse of fashion and splendour, forsooth, who was ' born in a garret, in a kitchen bred.' " Daniel the man was tender and courteous in his treatment of all womankind; but Daniel the racy essayist knew no mercy. Daniel the pitiless was one of Mr. Desmond's most valued coadjutors, and had received many offers of kindly service from that gentleman ; but the literary Bohemian had refused all. " A government appointment for me ! " he cried, when the popu- lar editor offered to use his influence with a Cabinet minister in Daniel's favour ; " why, I should languish in the trammels of an official life. Begular hours and a regular salary would be the death of me in less than six months. I was born a dweller in tents, my dear Desmond, and my instincts are naturally dis- reputable. I can work seven hours at a stretch, and produce more copy in a given time than any man in London. I have been locked up in a room with a wet towel, a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and half a ream of paper, and have written five-and- thirty pages of a popular magazine between sunset and sunrise. But I must take it out in vagabondage afterwards. I am of the stuff which makes your Savages and your Morlands, and I shall die in a sponging-house when my time comes, I have no doubt. Nevertheless, I will ask a favour of you some day, Desmond ; bm. rt shall be for somebody better worth serving than I am." Within a week of Eustace Thorburn's return, Daniel MayfU*d presented himself at the editor's chambers. He had done no work for the Areopagus for some little time, and Mr. Desmond Was glad to bid him welcome. " I've been thinking of looking you up for the last three 30 DeacUSca Fruit. weeks, Dan," said the editor, striking his pen across half a page of proof. " What second-hand twaddle this man writc-3 ! We want the sterling metal of your stylus, old fellow." " Any new victim to be flayed alive ? " asked Daniel. " I 've been rather seedy for the last week or two, and perhaps a little of the old work will set me right again." " You'll find plenty of material there," answered Mr. Desmond, pointing to a heap of cloth-covered volumes. " What have you been doing with yourself since I saw you last ? No good, 1 suppose," he added, without looking up from the proofs on which he waB operating. " Well, no, not much good. It 's a business I shouldn't care about repeating; but it's a business that must be done — it must be done, Desmond, sooner or later, in every man's life, I suppose." The unwonted gravity of Daniel Mayfield's tone surprised his friend. Laurence Desmond looked up from his desk, and for the first time perceived the change in his erratic contributor's costume. "In mourning, Dan ! I 'm sorry to see that," he said, gently. "Yes ; I have buried the dearest friend I ever had — my only Bister. God bless her! The Freethinker's Quarterly people won't get me to do any more dcistical articles for them, Laurence. I 'm a bad fellow myself, with no opinions in par- ticular about anything in heaven or earth. How should I have opinions ? I 've sold 'em too often to other people to have any left for myself. But I like to think that she is in heaven, and I '11 never write a ' rational ' essay again as long as I live." The two men shook hands upon this, without effusion — as it is the habit of Englishmen to do. "And now to business," said Daniel. " You once offered to get me a government appointment, and I told you I wasn't fit for one. I haven't forgotten your offer, or the kindness that prompted it. My sister has left a son — a lad of three-and- twenty. He is clever, honourable, ambitious, and indefatigable ; but, except myself, he has neither friend nor relative in the world. He has been a tutor in a great Belgian academy, and the principal will certify his merits. If you can serve him, Desmond, you will do me treble service." " What kind of thing do you want for him P" " A private tutorship, or the post of secretary to a man worth Berving. The lad is a fair classical scholar, and a good linguist. He is a great deal more than this into the bargain ; but I air. bo fond of the fellow that I am afraid of praising him too much." " Bring him here to dine to-morrow night," said Mr. Desmond ; "I '11 think tho matter over in the meantime. I dare say I shall The Editor of the "Areopagus." 31 hit upon something to suit him. Why doesn't he take to this eort of thing P" The editor of the Areopagus laid his hand upon the proofs. Daniel Mayfield shook his head sadly. "Anything but that, Desmond. I don't want him to be a publisher's hack. I don't want him to put my worn-out old ehoes on his brave young feet, and tread the miry road along which I have travelled. I don't want him to make merchandise of his best and purest feelings while the stock lasts him, and deal in sham sentiments and spurious emotions when the real ones are worn out. I don't want him to weep maudlin tears over philanthropic leaders, or work himself into an unreal fury over the denunciation of a political measure he has barely had leisure to consider. I don't want him to sell his convictions to the highest bidder— to be Conservative one day, Liberal th« next, and Eadical the day after. He 's too good for my work, Desmond, and he 's too good for my company. When he was old enough to be injured by a bad example, his poor mother took him away from me — though I was sorry enough to part with the little rascal, and it went to her heart to give me sorrow. She is gone now, Desmond, and it is my duty to see that the boy comes to no harm." " Has he any of your talent, Dan p " " He has something better than my talent, sir," answered Mayfield, gravely. " The lad has the soul of a poet, and is destined to be one. There is real genius there, sir — not the marketable trash I deal in. He has written verses which have brought the tears into my eyes ; consider that, sir — tears from such a hardened wretch as your Daniel should count for some- thing. I want some quiet, comfortable position for him, in which he will have a little leisure to think his own thoughts. I want him to bide his time; and some day, when his intellect has ripened and mellowed, the divine breath will innate his nostrils, ind we shall have a new poet." " I think I can get him exactly the sort of thing you want," answered Laurence Desmond; " but I must first make sure he is fit for it. Bring him at half-past seven to-morrow, and let me see if he is worthy of your praises. You '11 take those books, and send me copy to-morrow, eh?" Daniel nodded, took the books under his arm, shook hands with his friend, and departed — departed, with peace and good- will and all Christian feelings in his big, generous heart, to annihilate the lackless wretch who had written a stupid novel. Daniel and Eustace dined in the Temple the next evening, flnd sat late over their wine in the summer twilight. Laurence Desmond was delighted with the young man. He led him oa 32 Dead-Sea Fruit. to talk freely on his own sentiments and opinions, while Daniel listened with a fond smile to his nephew's eloqnent discourse. It was pleasant to Mr. Desmond, whose lot had been cast in that serene and exhalted sphere in which there was no such thing as emotion — it was very pleasant to the popular editor to come in contact with this fresh young nature, and to discover that, even in this age of high-pressure, a man may retain youth- fulness of spirit, faith in his fellow-creatures, pure and poetic aspirations, and childlike simplicity of feeling, after his twenty- third birthday. " The young men I know have been used up at nineteen," thought Laurence ; " and there are hardened wretches of five- and-twenty more blase than Philip of Orleans at forty-eight." From talking of his opinions, Laurence Desmond led Eustace on to talk of himself and his own experiences; and before Daniel and his nephew departed, the young man's future was in some measure provided for. "A very old and dear friend of mine," said Mr. Desmond, M has for some time been in want of a secretary and amanuensis to assist him in the completion and publication of a great work to which he has devoted many years of his life — a work which he calls the History of Superstition, and which, I believe, is as dear to him as his only child. I have been trying to find him the kind of person he wants, but have hitherto failed most com* pletely. There are plenty of shallow, flippant young fellows who would like the position well enough, for the salary will be a decent one, and my friend is the best and kindest of men ; but, until now, I have met no one capable of giving him the assistance he wants. Your knowledge of languages and your Villebrumeuse reading — which seems to have been very wisely chosen, — exactly fit you for the position. If you can tolerate a quiet life in the heart of the countiy, I can offer you the eituation, Mr. Thorburn, and may conclude all arrangements with yon, on my own responsibility." " If your friend is a gentleman, I say • Done ! ' " cried Daniel Mayfieid, heartily; "nothing could be better suited to this He laid his hand caressingly on the young man's shoulder as he spoke. " And you '11 be safe out of my way, lad," he murmured, softly, " and I shall lose my bright-faced boy — so much the better for hinr, so much the worse for me ! " " My friend is something more than a gentleman," answered Laurence Desmond. He is a preux chevalier. He is the de ecendant of a noble old Spanish family — a Frenchman by birtk and education, and half an Englishman by long residence ir ; England. He lives in a picturesque old bowse near Windsor, The Editor of the " Areopagus." 33 and on the banks of the Thames ; such a spot as one scarcely expects to see out of Creswick's pictures. I don't see much of him, for my life is too busy for friendship; and — and there are other reasons that keep us asunder," added Mr. Desmond, with some slight embarrassment of manner. "Can you exist in the country, Mr. Thorburn?" he asked presently. " I love the country so well that I can scarcely exist in London, except for the sake of my uncle's society." " Which is about the worst thing you can have ! " growled Daniel. " Ah ! you are a poet, and a poet should live amongst lonely woods and sylvan streams. Well, you will be delighted with my friend, Theodore de Bergerac, and still more delighted with the place he lives in. I '11 write to him to-morrow, and tell him I 've found the blue diamond of the nineteenth century, a young man who does not affect to be old. Can you go to him im- mediately ?" " M. de Bergerac will no doubt wish to hear from my late employer, the principal of the Parthenee," Eustace answered, after some hesitation. " Not at all. I will be responsible for the character and qualifications of my old friend's nephew. There need be no delay on that account," said Laurence. " There need be no delay on any account, then," exclaimed Daniel ; " the boy is ready to leave London to-morrow, if necessary." ' I beg your pardon, Uncle Dan. Unless M. de Bergerac really wants me immediately, I should be glad of a week's delay," said Eustace, with considerable embarrassment. " I have some business to do before I leave London." " Business ! " cried Daniel ; " what business ? " " I will tell you all about it by and by, Uncle Dan." "My friend has waited six months, and he can afford to wait another week," said Laurence, good-natui-edly. " Come and see me when your business is finished, Mr. Thor- burn." " Good-night, and thank you, Desmond," said Daniel, wring- ing his friend's hand with muscular heartiness. " I told you that a favour to him is thrice a favour to me; and if ever I have a chance of proving that I meant what I said, I won't let the opportunity slip." When the two men had left the Temple, and were walking homewards through quiet back-streets, Daniel Mayfield turned sharply upon his nephew. "What the deuce is to keep you in London for a week, Eustace?" he asked. 34 Dead-Sea Fruit. " I want to go to Bayham, Uncle Dan, to make some inquiries that may help me." Daniel laid his hand on the young man's arm. " Drop that, lad," he said, earnestly. " I 've thought about it for twenty years to no end. No good will ever come of it — nothing but disappointment and vexation, shame and sorrow. Forget the past, and start fair ; the world is all before you. You have got your chance now. Desmond is a friend worth having ; and this man De Bergerac may be a good friend too, if you serve him well. Wipe out the memory of that old story, my lad. Tour father has chosen to ignore you ; ignore him, and cry quits. The day may come when he 'U hear your name, and regret that he has forfeited the right to Call you his son. Don't waste your thoughts upon him, Eustace. The man may be dead and gone for aught we know. Let him rest." " And my mother's wrongs — are they to be forgotten ? Do you remember the oilier evening in Highgate Cemetery, Uncle Dan ? You thought I was praying, perhaps, when I knelt by my mother's grave; but I was not praying. On my knees beside that newly-laid turf I swore to be revenged on the man who blighted the life of her who lies beneath it. I must find that man, Uncle Daniel, and you must help me to find him." "Was there no clue to his identity to be found in those letters?" asked Daniel, after a pause. " Only one, and that a very slight one. He had written a book, — a book which seems to have been popular, and which my poor mother was reading when first he saw her. Can you remember any particular book which attracted attention in '43 ? " " No, my lad ; my memory is not good enough for that. There are people who might be able to remember, and there are literary papers that might help you. But scarcely a year goes by in which there are not a dozen books that make some slight sensa- tion. This must have been a woman's book, though, — a poem or a novel, or something of that kind, — or your mother would scarcely have been reading it." "The book was published either anonymously or under some nom de plwme," said Eustace; " and even if I discover the right bonk, I may not be able to identify it with the writer. So you see the clue is a very poor one. I shall go to Bayham, Uncle Dan. Accident may help me to some better clue than the letters afford. The man was staying at the George Hotel; I may make some discovery there. He speaks of a JVtiss K., a friend and confidante of my mother. Can you tell me who she was?" " Sarah Kimber ! " cried Daniel, — " undoubtedly Sarah timber, a girl whose father kept a linendraper's shop, and who went to school with Celia. My poor sister and she were fast At Bayham. 35 friends •, out I never could endure her. She was a lank, lantern- js, T ;ed, whitey-brown girl, and I always thought her deceitful. Good God ! how the old time comes back as you talk to me ! I can see the little parlour at Bayham, and those two girls seated ride by side on an old-fashioned, chintz-covered sofa, with an open window and a green trellis-work of honeysuckle and jasmine behind them. I can see it all, Eustace, as fresh and vivid as a picture at a private view — Celia so bright and lovely; that Kimber girl an unconscious foil to her beauty." "Do you know if this Miss Kimber is still alive? " " No, lad. Bayham may he fathoms deep beneath the sea, like the mystic city of Lyonesse, for anything I know. I have never been there since the day of my mother's funeral." " I shall try to find Miss Kimber, Uncle Dan. She may be able to tell me a great deal." " As you will, dear boy. If you took poor old Dan's advice, you would let the story rest. But youth is fiery and impetuous, ind must take its own course. If ever you do find that man, Eustace, let me know his name, for he and I have a heavy reckoning to settle." CHAPTER YI. AT BAYHAM. Eustace Thorbuhn went to Bayham, and took up his quarters at the George Hotel. The Dorsetshire watering-place had once been fashionable ; but its fashion had departed, and an atmo- sphere of decay pervaded the grandeurs of that bygone day. Happily, the departure of fashion, which had never had any hand in the loveliness of the bay and the broad yellow sands, had robbed the Bayham shore of no grace or charm. Tha changing opal waters retained their brightest hues, though only west country gentry came to look upon them. The golden sands were golden still, though the crystal chandeliers and sconces which had once adorned the assembly-room had been sold by auction, and the room itself converted into a Baptist chapel. There had been many changes at the George within the last twenty years. That once popular establishment had been superseded by a gigantic, stuccoed railway-hotel — itself a dismal failure— and the last two proprietors had been insolvent. Eustace Thorburn sought in vain for a visitors' book dated '43. All such books had been sold for waste paper years ago, and the only creature to be found in the hotel who had belonged to the same establishment in the year '43 was a semi-idiotic ostler. Eustace abandoned all hope of information in this quarter, an