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STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS.
STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS
">^A.j^«//,7??rs- 777a rt/QlzJiU-l^
BY THE AUTHOR OF
•LADY AUDLEFS SECRET," "AURORA FLOTD"
£IC. ETC. £TC.
" Egypt, thou knewst too well.
My heart wm to thy redder tied by the strings.
And thou ehouldst tow uic after ; o'er my spirit
Thy full supremacy thou knewst ; and that
Thy beck misrht from the bidding ci tl.e goda
Cuiuiuuiid lut)."
Sifrwtptii ^iiitiiin
LONDON
JOHN AND ROBEKT MAXWELL
4, SHOE LANE, FLEEX SIKEEI
[AVi righXa rccrri'ed.j
e>
STRANGEKS AND PILGRIMS.
9SooU t^f jFirat.
CHAPTER I.
" Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace ;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free ;
Such sweet neglect more taketh me
Than aU the adulteries of art ;
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart."
The scene was an ancient orchard on the slope of a hill, in the
far west of England : an orchard bounded on one side by an old-
fashioned garden, where roses and carnations were blooming in
their summer glory; and on the other by a ponderous red-brick
wall, heavily buttressed, and with a moat at its outer base — a
wall that had been built for the protection of a more important
habitation than Hawleigh Yicarage. Time was when the green
slope where the rugged apple-trees spread their crooked limbs in
the sunshine was a prim pleasance, and when the hill was crowned
by the grim towers of Hawleigh Castle. But the civil wars
made an end of the gothic towers and machicolated galleries
that had weathered maiiy a storm, and nothing was now left
save a remnant of the old wall, and one solitary tower, to which
some archeologically-minded vicar in time past had joined the
modest parsonage of Hawleigh parish. This was a low white
building, of the farmhouse type, large and roomy, with bow-
windows to some of the lower rooms, and diamond-paned case-
ments to others. In this western land of warm rains and flowers
the myrtles and roses climbed to the steeply- sloping roof, and
every antique casement was set in a frame of foliage and blossom.
It was not a mansion which a modern architect would have been
2 Strangers and Pilgrimi%
proud to liave built, by any means, but a dwelling-place witb
whicli a painter or a poet would have fallen madly in love at
first sight.
There were pigeons cooing and boop-boop-booping among the
moss-grown corljels of the tower ; a blackbird in a wicker cage
hanging outside one of the narrow windows; a skylark in a
little green wooden brtc decorating another, llie garden where
the roses and carnations flourished had somewhat of a neglected
look, not weedy or forlorn, only a little unkempt and over-luxu-
riant, like a garden to which the hireling gardener comes once
a week, or which is left to the charge of a single outdoor
labourer, who has horses and pigs upon his mind, nay perhajis
also the daily distraction of indoor duties, in the boot-and-
knife-cleaning way.
Perhaps, looking at the subject from a purely poetical point
of view, no garden should ever be better kept than that garden
at Hawleigh. What ribbon-bordering, or artistically variegated
mosaic of lobelia,, and petunia, and calceolaria, and verbena,
could ever eqnal the wild beauty of roses that grew at their own
sweet will against a background of seriuga and arbutus — shrubs
that must have been planted by some unknown benefactor in the
remote past, for no incumbent of late years had ever been known
to plant anything? What prim platter-like circles of well-
behaved bedding-out plants, spick nnd span from the green-
house, could charm the sense like the various and yet familiar
old-world flowers that filled the long wide borders in Parson
Luttrell's flower-garden ?
Of this small domain about half an acre consisted of meadow-
like grass, not often improved by the roller, and sometimes
permitted to flourish in rank luxuriance ankle-deep. The girls
— that is to say, Wilmot Luttrell's four daughters — managed to
play croquet upon that greensward nevertheless, being at the
croquet-playing stage of existence, whesi a young woman hard
driven would play croquet in an empty coal-cellar. Near the
house the grass assumed form and dignity, and was bordered by
a rugged sweep of loose-gravel, called the carriage drive; and
just opposite the drawing-room windows there stood an ancient
stone sun dial, on which the ladies of Hawleigh Castle had
marked the slow passage of the empty hours in centuries gone
by. Only a hedge of holly divided the garden from a strip of
waste land that bordered the dusty high-road ; but a row of fine
old elms grew on that intervening strip of grass, and secured
the Luttrell damsels from the gaze of the vulgar.
But for seclusion, for the sweet sense of utter solitude and
retirement, the orchard was best — that undulating slope of
mossy turf, cropped close by occasional sheep, which skirted the
flower-garden, and stretched away to the rear of the low white
Strangers and Pilgrims. 3
house. The very wall, crowned with gaudj dragon's-mouth, and
creeping yellow stone-crop, was in itself a picture; and in the
shelter of this wall, which turned its stalwart old back to the
west, was the nicest spot for an afternoon's idleness over a new
book, or the.worthless scrap of lace or muslin which constituted
the last mania in the way of fancy-work. Thi?, at least, was
■what Elizabeth Luttrell said of the old wall, and as she had
been born and reared for the nineteen years of her young life
at Hawleigh, she was a tolerable judge of the capabilities of
garden and orchard. She sits in the shadow of the wall this
June afternoon alone, with an unread book in her lap.
Elizabeth Luttrell is the beauty of a family in which all
the daughters are or have been handsome — the peerless flower
among four fair sisters, who are renowned through this part of
the western world as the pretty Miss Luttrells.
About Gertrude the eldest, or Diana the second, or Blanche
the youngest, there might be differences of opinion — a question
raised as to the length of Gertrude's nose, a doubt as to the
width of Diana's mouth, a schism upon the merits of Blanche's
figure; but the third daughter of the house of Luttrell was
simply perfect; you could no more dispute her beauty than that
of the Florentine Venus.
What a picture she made upon this midsummer afternoon, as
she sat in the shade of the ruddy old wall, in a holland dress,
and with a blue ribbon twisted in her hair, profile of face and
figure in full relief against the warm background, every line the
perfection of grace and beauty, every hue and every curve a
study for a painter ! O, if among all the splendid fashion-plates
in the Royal Academy — the duchess in black-velvet train and
point-lace flounces and scarlet-silk peticoat and diamonds; the
marchioness in blue satin and blonde and pearls : the countess in
white silk and azaleas; the viscountess in tulle and rose-lnuls —
if in this feast of millinery Elizabeth Luttrell could but shine
forth, sitting by the old orchard wall in her washed-out holland
gown, what a revelation that fresh young beauty would seem !
It was not a rustic beauty, however — not a loveliness created
to be dressed in white muslin and to adorn a cottage — but
splendid rather, and worthy to rule the heart of a great man.
Nose, a small acquiline ; eyes, that darkly-clear gray which ip
some lights deepens to violet; complexion, a warm brunette;
forehead, low and broad ; hair of the darkest brown, with ruddy
golden beams lurking in its crisp waves — hair which is in itself
almost a sufficient justification for any young woman to setup
as a beauty, if her stock-in-trade were no more than those dark-
brown tresses, those delicately-arched brows and upward curling
lashes. In all the varying charms of expression, as well as in
regularity of feature, Nature has gifted Elizabeth Luttrell with
4 tStrangers and Pilgrims.
a lavisli hand. She is the crystallisation of centuries of dead*
and-^^one Luttrells, all more or less beautiful; for the race ia
one that can boast of good looks as a family heritage.
She sirs alone by the old wall, the western sunlight shining
through the red and yellow flowers of the dragon's-mouth above
her head; sits alone, with loosely-linked hands lying idle in her
iap, and fixed dreaming eyes. It is nearly an hour since she
has turned a leaf of her book, when a ringing soprano voice
calHng her name, and a shower of rose leaves thrown across her
face, scare away her day-dreams.
She looks up impatiently, angrily even, at Blanche, the
hoyden of the family, who stands above her on the steep grassy
slope, with a basket of dilapidated roses on her arm. The
damsel, incorrigibly idle ahke by nature and habit, has been
seized with an industrious fit, and has been clipping and trim-
ming the roses.
" What a lazy creature you are, Lizzie ! " she exclaims. " I
thought you wee going to put the ribbons on your mushn dress
for this evening."
" I wish you'd be good enough to concern yourself about your
own clothes, Bkinche, and leave mine alone. And please don't
come screaming at me when I'm — asleep."
" You weren't asleep ; your eyes were ever so wide open.
You were thinking — I can guess what about — and smiling at
your own thoughts. I wish I had anything as nice to think
about. That's the worst of having a handsome sister. How
can I suppose that any one will ever take any notice of poor
little me?"
" Upon my honour, Blanche, I beHeve you are the most pro-
voking girl in creation ! "
" You can't believe that, for you don't know all the girls in
creation."
" One of the most, then ; but that comes of sending a girl to
school. You have all the schoolgirl vulgarities."
"I'm sure I didn't want to go to Miss Derwent's, Lizzie. It
was Gertrude's fault, making such a fuss about me, and setting
papa at me. I'd much rather have run wild at home."
" I think you'd run -^fild anywhere, in a convent, even."
" I daresay I should ; but that's not the question. I want to
know if you're going to wear your clean white mushn, because
my own toilet hinges on your decision. It's a serious matter for
girls who are allowed only one clean muslin a week."
"I don't know; perhaps I shall wear my blue," replies
Elizabeth, with a careless air, pretending to read.
" You won't do anything of the kind. It's ever so tumbled^
Hnd I know you like to look nice when Mr. Fordeis here. You're
Buch a mean girl, Elizabeth Luttrell. You pretend not to car«
Strangers and Pil^rimo. 6
a straw how yon dress, and dawdle here making believe to read
that stupid old volume of travels to the Victoria Thingerabob,
which the old fogies of the book-club choose for us, instead of
some jolly novel; and when we've put on our veriest rags you'll
scamper up the back- stairs just at the last moment, and comt^
down a quarter of au hour after he has come, all over crisp
muslin flounces and fresh pink ribbons, just as if you'd a French
milliner at your beck and call."
"I really can't help it if I know how to put on my things a
little better than you and Diana. I'm sure Gertrude is always
nicely dressed."
" Yes, Gertrude has the brand of Cain— Gertrude is a born
old maid ; one can see it in her neck-ribbons and top-knots.
Now, how about the white muslin ? "
"I wish you wouldn't worry, Blanche; I shall wear exactly
what I please. I will not be pestered by a younger sister.
What's the time?"
The fourth Miss Luttrell drags a little Geneva silver watch
from her belt by a black ribbon — a silver watch presented to her
by her father on her fifteenth birthday — to be exchanged for a
gold one at some indefinite period of the Vicar's existence, when
a gleam of prosperity shall brighten the dull level of his finan-
cial career. He has given similar watches to all his daughters
on their fifteenth birthdays; but Lizzie's lies forgotten amongst
disabled brooches and odd earrings in a trinket-box on her
dressing-table. Elizabeth Luttrell does not care to note the
progress of her days on a pale-faced Geneva time-piece, value
something under five pounds.
" Half-past five by me," says Blanche.
" Are you twenty minutes slow, or twenty minutes fast r '^
"Well, I believe I'm five-and-twenty minutes slow."
" Then I shall come to dress in half an hour. I wish you'd
iust tack those pink bows on my dress, Blanche — you're
evidently at a loss for something to do."
"Just tack," repeats the younger sister with a wry face;
" you mean sew them on, I suppose. That's like people asking
you to ' touch ' the bell, when you're comfortably coiled up in an
easy-chair at the other end of the room. It sounds less than
asking one to ring it; but one has to disturb oneself all the
same. I don't see why you shouldn't sew on your own ribbons ;
and I'm dead tired — I've been standing in the broiling sun for
the last hour, trimming the roses, and trying to make the garden
look a little decent."
"0, very well; I can get my dress ready myself," says
Elizabeth with a grand air, not lifting her eyes from the volume
in which she struggles vainly to follow the current of the Vic-
toria Njanza. Has not Malcolm Forde expressed a respectful
6 t^trangers and Pilgrims,
wish that she were a little less vague in her notions of all that
vast worldwhich lies beyond the market- town and rustic suburbs
of Hawleigh ?
"Don't be offended, Lizzie; you know I always do anything
you ask me. "Where are the ribbons ? "
" In the left-hand to^D drawer. Be sure you don't tumble my
bounces."
" I'll take care. I'm so glad you're going to wear your white :
/or now I can wear mine \vithout Gerti'ude grumbling about my
extravagance in beginning a clean muslin at the end of the week ;
as if people with any pretence to refinement ever made any dif-
ference in their gowns at the end of the week — as if anybody
but utter barbarians would go grubby because it was Friday oi
Saturday ! Mind you come up-stairs in time to dress, Lizzie."
" I shall be ready, child. The people are not to be here till
seven."
*' Tlie people ! as if you cared one straw about Jane Harrison
or Laura Melvin and that preposterous brother of hers ! "
" You manage to flirt with the preposterous brother, at any
rate," says Lizzie, still looking down at her book.
" 0, one must get one's hand in somehow. And as if thei-e
were any choice of a subject in this God-forsaken place !"
" Blanche, how can you use such horrid expressions ?"
"But it is God-forsaken. I heard Captain Fielding call it so
the other day."
" You are always picking up somebody's phrases. Do go and
tack on those ribbons, or I shall have to do it myself."
"And that would be a calamity," cries Blanche, laughing,
"when there is anybody else whose services you can utilise !"
It was one of the golden rules of Elizabeth Luttrell's life that
she should never do anything for herself which she could get any
one else to do for her. What was the good of having three
unmarried sisters — all plainer than one's self — unless one made
some use of them P She herself had grown up like a flower, as
beautiful and as useless ; not to toil or spin — only to be admired
and cherished as a type of God-given idle loveliness.
That her beauty was to be profitable to herself and to the
world by-and-by in some large way, she regarded as an inevitable
consequence of her existence. She had troubled herself very
little about the future; had scarcely chafed against the narrow
bounds of her daily life. That certainty of high fortune awaiting
her in the coming years supported and sustained her. In the
meanwhile she lived her life — a life not altogether devoid of
delight, but into which the element of passion had not yet entered.
Even in so dull a place as Hawleigh there were plenty of ad-
mirers for such a girl as Elizabeth Luttrell. She had drunk
freely of the nectar of praise; knew the full measure of her
Slranger nd Pihjrims.
beauty, and felt that slic w;is bcnnid tu conquer. All the li_ttl(3
victories, the trivial flirtations of the present, were, in her mind,
mere child's play ; but they served to give some variety to an
existence which would have been intolerably monotonous with-
out them.
She went on rjading, or trying to read, for half an hour after
Blanche had skipped up the green slope where the apple-trees
spread a fantastic carpert of light and shade in the afternoon sun-
shine ; she tried her hardest to chain her thoughts to that book
of African travel, but the Victoria Nyanza eluded her like a
will-o'-the-wisp. Her thoughts went back to a little scene under
an avenue of ancient limes in Hawleigh-road— a scene that had
been acted only a few hours ago. It was not very much to
think of : only an accidental meeting with her father's curate,
Malcolm Forde; only a little commonplace talk about theparisli
and the choir, the early services, and the latest volumes obtain-
able at the Hawleigh book-club.
Mr. Luttrell had employed four curates since Lizzie's six-
teenth birthday ; and the first, second, and third of these young
Levites had been Lizzie's devoted slaves. It had become an
established rule that the curate — Mr. Luttrell could only afford
one, though there were two churches in his duty — should fall
madly in love with Elizabeth. But the fourth curate was of
a different stuff from the material out of which the three sim-
pering young gentlemen fresh from college were created. Mal-
colm Forde was five-and-thirty years of age ; a man who had
been a soldier, and who had taken up tliis new service from
conviction ; a man who possessed an income amply sufficient for
his own simple needs, and in no way looked to the Church as an
honourable manner of solving the great enigma of how a gentle,
man is to maintain himself in this world. He was a Christian
in the purest and widest sense of the word; an earnest thinker,
an indefatigable worker ; an enthusiast upon all subjects relating
to his beloved Church.
To such a man as this all small flirtations and girlish follies
must needs appear trivial in the extreme; but Mr. Forde was
not a prig, nor was he prone to parade his piety before the eyes
of the world. So he fell into the ways of Hawleigh with con-
summate ease: played croquet with the mallet of a master;
disliked high-jinks and grandiose entertainments at rich people's
houses, but was not above an impromptu picnic with Jiis intimate
associates, a gipsy-tea in Everton wood, or a friendly musical
evening at the parsonage. He had little time to devote to such
relaxations, but did not disdain them on occasion.
At the outset of their acquaintance the four Luttrell girls
vowed they should always be afraid of him, that those dreadful
cold grey eyes of his made them feel uncomfortable.
8 tStrangers and i'ilgrim*.
" Wlien he looks at me in tliat grave searching way, I posi«
lively feel myself the wickedest creature in the world," cried
Diana, who was of a sprightly disposition, and prone to a candid
confession of all her weaknesses. " How I should hate to marry
such a man ! It would be like being perpetually brought face to
face with one's conscience."
" I think a woman's husband ought, in a manner, to represent
her conscience," said Gertrude, who was nine-and-twenty, and
prided herself upon being serious-minded. " At least I should
like to see all my faults and follies reflected in my husband's
face, and to grow out of them by his influence."
"What a hard time your husband would have of it, Gerty! "
exclaimed the flippant Blanche, assisting at the conversation
from outside the open window of the breakfast-room or den, in
which the four damsels were as untidy as they pleased ; Eliza-
beth's colour-box and drawing-board, Gertrude's work-box,
Diana's desk, Blanche's Dorcas bag, all heaped pell-mell upon
the battered old sideboard.
" If you spent more time among the poor, Diana," said Ger-
trude, not deigning to notice this interruption, '"you need not be
afraid of any man's eyes. When our own hearts are at peace "
" Don't, please, Gerty; don't give me any warmed-up versions
of your tracts. The state of my own heart has nothing to do
with the question. If I were the most spotless being in creation,
I should feel just the same about Mr. Forde's eyes. As for
district-visiting, you know very weU that my health was never
good enough for that kind of thing ; and I'm sure if papa had
six daughters instead of four, you do enough in the goody-goody
line for the whole batch."
Miss LuttreU gave a gentle sigh, and continued her needlework
in silence. She could not help feeling that she was the one bit
of leaven that leavened the wliole lump; that if a general de-
struction were threatened the daughters of Hawleigh by reason
of their frivolities, her own sterling merits might buy them off—
as the ten vighteous men who were not to be found in Sodom
might have r^iasomed that guilty population.
Elizabeth had been busy painting a little bit of still-life — an
over-ripe peach and a handful of pansies and mulberry-leaves
lying loosely scattered at the base of Mr, Luttrell's Venetian
claret-flask, She had gone steadily on with her work, laying on
little dabs of transparent colour with a quick light touch, and
not vouchsafing any exiDression of interest in the discussion of
Mr. Forde's peculiarities.
" He's very good-looking," Diana said meditatively. " Don't
you think so, Lizzie ? You're an authority upon curates."
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders, and answered in her most
indiflferent tone :
Strangers and Pilgrims.
,j "
" Tolerably ! He has rather a good forehead;
" Eatlier good ! " exclaimed Gertrude, grinding industriously
across an expanse of calico with her cutting-out scissors. " He
has the forehead of an apostle."
" How do you know that ? You never saw an apostle," cried
Blanche from the window, with her favourite line of argument.
" And as for the pictures we see of them, that's all humbug ! for
there were no pliotographcrs in Judea."
" Come indoors, Blanche, and write a German exercise," said
jcrtrude. " It's too bad to stand out there all the morning,
idling away your time."
" And spoiling your comj^lexion into the bargain," added
Diana. " What a tawny Uttle wretch you are becoming ! "
" I don't care two straws about my complexion, and I'm not
going to cramp my hand with that horrid German ! " _
" Think of the privilege of being able to read Schiller in the
original ! " said Gertrude solemnly.
" I don't think much of it ; for I never see you read him,
though you do pride yourself on your German," answered the
flippant Blanche. And then they went back to Mr. Forde, and
discussed his eyes and forehead over again; not arrivingat any
very definite expression of opinion at the last, and Elizabeth
holding her ideas in reserve.
" I don't think this one will be quite like the rest, Liz," said
Diana significantly.
" What do you mean by like the rest ? "
" Why, he won't make a fool of himself about you, as Mr.
Horton did, with his flute-playing and stuff; and he won't go
on like Mr. Dysart; and he won't write sentimental poetry, and
languish about all the afternoon spooning at croquet, like little
Mr. Adderley. You needn't count upon making a conquest of
Mm, Lizzie. He has the ideas of a monk."
" Abelard was destined to become a monk," rephed Elizabeth
calmly, " but that did not prevent his falling in love with
Eloise."
" 0, I daresay you think it will end by his being as weak aa
the rest. But he told me that he does not approve of a priest
marrying — rather rude, wasn't it ? when you consider that wo
should not be in existence, if papa had entertained the same
opinion."
" I don't suppose we count for much in his grand ideas of re-
ligion," answered Elizabeth a little contemptuously. She had held
her small flirtations with previous. cura,tes as the merest trifling,
but the trifling had beenpieasant enough in its way. She had
liked the incense. And behold, here was a man who withheld all
praise ; who had made his own scheme of life — a scheme from
which she, Elizabeth Luttrelb was excluded. It was a new thinar
10 Strangers a 'id Fih/rlms.
for lier to fiad that she counted for nothing in the existence of
any young man who knew her.
This conversation took place when Mr. Forde had been at
Hawleigh about a month. Time slipped past. Malcolm Forde
took the parish in hand with a firm grip, Mr. Luttrell being an
easy-going gentleman, quite agreeable to let his curate work aa
hard as he liked. The two sleepy old churches awoke into new
life. Where there had been two services on a Sunday there
were now four; where there had been one service on a great
church festival there were now five. The dim old aisles bloomed
with flowers at Easter and Ascension, at Whitsuntide and
Harvest-thanksgiving-feast; and the damsels of Hawleigh hat?
new work to do in the decoration of the churches and in the
embroidery of chalice-covers and altar-cloths. ,
But it was not only in extra services and beautification of the
temples alone that Mr. Forde brought about a new aspect of
affairs in Hawleigh. The poor were cared for as they had never
been cared for before. Almost all the time that the soldier-
curate could spare from his public duties he devoted to private
ministration. And yet when he did permit himself an after-
noon's recreation, he came to gipsy tea-drinking or croquet
with as fresh an air as if he were a man who lived only for
pleasure. Above all, he never preached sermons — out of the
pulpit. That was his one merit, Lizzie Luttrell said, in a some-
what disparaging tone.
" His one fault is, to be so unlike the other curates, Liz, and
able to resist your blandishments," said Diana sharply.
Mr. Forde had made himself a favourite with all that house-
hold except Elizabeth. The three other girls worshipped him.
She rarely mentioned him without a sneer. And yet she was
thinking of him this midsummer afternoon, as she sat by the
orchard wall, trying to read the volume he had recommended ;
she was thinking of a few grave words in which he had confesseif
his interest in her ; thinking of the dark searching eyes whicl»
had looked for one brief moment into her own.
" I really thought I counted for nothing," she said to hersel,
" he has such ofi'-hand ways, and sets kimself so much above
other people. I don't think he quite means to be grand ; if
seems natural to him. He ought to have been a general at leus^
in India, instead of a twopenny-halfpenny captain ! "'
The half-hour was soon gone. It was very ])leasant to her,
that idling in the shadow of the old wall ; for the thoughts of
her morning's walk were strangely sweet — sweeter than any flat-
teries that had ever been whispered in her ear. And yet Mr.
Forde had not praised her; had indeed seemed utterly uncon«
Bcious of her superiority to other women. His words had been
■Tank, and grave, and kindly: a little loo much bke a lecture
StraHf/era and Pihjrims. 11
perhaps, and yet sweet; for they were the firat words in which
Malcolm Porde had betrayed the faintest interest in her welfare.
A-nd it ia a hard thing for a young woman, who has been a god-
dess and an angel in the sight of three consecutive curates, to
find the fourth as indifferent to her merits as if he were a man
of stone.
Yes, he had decidedly lectured her. That is to say, he had
spoken a little regretfully of her trivial wasted life — her neg-
lected opportunities.
" I don't know what you mean by opportunities," she had an-
swered, with a little coutemptuous curl of the rosy upper lip. " I
can't burst out all at once into a female bishop. As for district-
visiting, I have really no genius for that kind of thing, and I'eel
myself a useless bore in poor people's houses. I know I have
been rather idle about the church embroidery, too,'' she added
with a deprecating air, feeling that here lie had cause for com-
plaint.
" I am very anxious that our churches should be made beau-
tiful," he answered gravely; "and I should think it only
natural for you to take a delight in that Icind of labour. But I
do not consider ecclesiastical embroidery the beginning and end
of life. I should like to see you more interested in the poor
and in the schools, more interested in your fellow-creatures
altogether, in short. I fancy the life you lead at Hawleigh
Vicarage among your roses and apple-trees is just a little the
life of the lotus-eater.
* All its allotted length of clays
TLe tlower ripens in its place,
Eipens and fades and falls, and Iiatli no toil,
Fast rooted in the fruitful soil. '
It doesn't do for a responsible being to live that kind of life,
you know, leaving no better memory behind than the record of
its beauty. I should hai'dly venture to say so much as this
Miss Luttrell, if I were not warmly interested in you."
The clear pale face, looking downward with rather a mood v
air, like the face of a wayward child that can hardly suilV-r
a rebuke, flushed sudden crimson at his last words. To Jli-.
Forde's surprise ; for the interest he had confessed was of a
purely priestly kind. But young women are so sensitive, and
ne was not unused to see his female parishioners ]}lush and
tremble a little under the magnetism of his earnest gaze and
low grave voice.
Conscious of that foolish blush, Elizabeth tried to carry o.'T
her confusion by a rather flippant laugh.
" You read your Tennyson, you see," she said, " tliough you
12 Strangers and Pilgrims.
lecture me for my idleness. Isn't poetr\- a kind of lotoa.
eating P"
" Hardly, I think. I don't consider my duty stern enough to
cut me off from all the flowers of life. I should be sorry to moon
about with a duodecimo Tennyson in my pocket when I ou^ht
to be at work ; but when I have a stray half-hour, I can give
myself a little indulgence of that kind. Besides, Tennyson is
something more than a poet. He is a teacher."
'• You will come to play croquet for an hour this evening,
won't you ? Gertrude wrote to you yesterday, I think."
" Yes, I must apologise for not answering her note I
shall be most happy to come, if possible. But I have two or
three sick people to visit this afternoon, and I am not quite
sure of my time. The poor souls cling to one so at last.
They want a friendly hand to grasp on the threshold of the
dark valley, and they have some dim notion that we hold the
keys of the other world, and can open a door for them and lei
them through to a better place than they could win for them-
selves."
" It must be dreadftil to see so much of death," said Elizabeth,
with a faint shudder.
"Hardly so dreadful as you may supjDose. A deathbed
develops some of the noblest qualities of a man's nature. I
have seen so much unselfish thoughtfulness for others, so
much tenderness and love in the dying. And then for these
poor people life has _ been for the most part so barren, so
troubled, it is like passing away from a perpetual struggle to a
land that is to be all brightness and rest. If you would only
spend more time among your father's parishioners, Miss Luttrell,
you would learn much that is worth learning of life and death."
" I couldn't endure it," she answered, shrugging her shoulders
impatiently ; "I ought never to have been born a parson's
daughter. I should do no good, but harm more likely. The
people would see hc'^ miserable I thought them, and be all the
more discontented with their wretched lots after my visits. I
tan't act goody-goody as Gertrude does, and make those poor
tvretches believe that I think it the nicest thing in the world
to live in one room, and have hardly bread to eat, and only one
blanket among six. It's too dreadful. Six weeks of it would
kill me."
Mr. Forde sighed ever so faintly, but said no more. What a
poor, selfish, narrow soul this lovely girl's must be ! Nature
does sometimes enshrine her commonest spirits in these splendid
temjoles. He felt a httle disappointed by the girl's selfishness
and coldness; for he had imagined that she needed only to be
awakened from the happy idleness of a young joy -loving spirit.
He said no more, tbouirh they walked side l/y side as fai us
Slrangert and Pilgrims. 18
St. Mary's, the red square-towered church at the beginning of
the town, and parted with perfect friendliness. Yet the thought
of that interview vexed Malcolm Forde all day long.
"I had hoped better things of her," he said to himself.
" But of course I shan't give up. She is so young, and ssems
to have a pliant disposition. What a pity that Luttrell has let
his daughters grow up juat as they please, like the foxgloves in
his hedges !"
In Mr. Forde's opinion, those four young women ought to
have been trained into a little band of sisters of mercy — a pioua
rsisterhood carrying life and light into the dark alleys of Haw-
leigh. It was not a large place, that western market-town,
numbering eleven thousand souls in all; yet there were
alleys enough, and moral darkness and poverty and sickness
and sorrow enough, to make work for a nunnery of ministering
women. Mr. Forde had plenty of district-visitors ready to
labour for him ; but they were for the most part ill-advised and
frivolous ministrants, and absorbed more of his time by their
need of counsel and supervision than ho cared to give them.
They were of the weakest order of womanhood, craving per-
petual support and assistance, wanting all of them to play
the ivy to Mr. Forde's oak ; and no oak, however vigorous,
could have sustained such a weight of ivy. He had to tell
them sometimes, in plainest words, that if they couldn't do
their work without continual recourse to him, their work was
scarcely worth having. Whereupon the weaker vessels dropped
away, admitting in their High-Church slang that they had no
" vocation ; " that is to say, there was too much bread and too
little sack in the business, too much of the poor and not
enough of Mr. Forde.
For this reason he liked Gertrude Luttrell, who went about
her work in a womanUke way, rarely applied to him for counsel,
had her own opinions, and really did achieve some good. It
may have been for this reason, and in his desire to oblige
Gertrude, that he made a little effort, and contrived to play
croquet in the Vicarage garden on this midsummer evening.
CHAPTER II.
•• Best ]eave or take the perfect creature,
Take all she is or leave comjjlete ;
Transmute you will not form or feature.
Change feet for vrings or wings for feet."
Ir waa halcyon weather for croquet; not a cloud in the warm
summer sky, and promise of a glorious sunset, red and glowing,
I!
14 Stranrjers and Pilrjrims.
for " the shepherd's delight." The grass had iDeen snorn that
morning, and was soft and thick, and sweet with a thymy
perfume : a little uneven here and there, but affording so much
the more opportunity for the players to prove themselves
superior to small difficulties. The roses and seringa were in
their midsummer glory, and from the white walls of the
Vicarage came the sweet odours of jasmine and honeysuckle,
clematis and myrtle. All sweet-scented flowers seemed to grow
here vnth a wider luxuriance than Malcolm Forde had ever
seen anywhere else. His own small patrimony was on a
uorthern soil, and all his youthful recollections were of a bleaker
land than this.
"An enervating climate, I'm afraid," he said to himself; and
it seemed to him that the roses and the seringa might be a
" snare." There was something stifling in the slumberous
summer air, the Arcadian luxury of syllabubs and cream, the
verdure and blossom of this flowery land. He felt as if his soul
must needs stagnate, as if life must become too much an affair
of the senses, in so sweet and sensuous a clime.
This was but a passing fancy which flashed upon him as he
opened the broad white gate and went into the garden, where
the four girls in their white gowns and various ribbons were
scattered on the grass : Blanche striking the last hoop into its
place with her mallet; Diana trying a stroke at loose croquet;
Gertrude busy at a tea-table placed in the shade of a splendid
Spanish chestnut, which spread its bi-anches low and wide,
making a tent of greenery beneath which a dozen people could
dine in comfort. Elizabeth, apart from all the rest, standing
by the sun-dial, tall, and straight as a dart, looking like a
Greek princess in the days when the gods fell in love with the
daughters of earthly kings.
Mr. Forde was not a Greek god, but a faint thrill stirred his
senses at the sight of that gracious figure by the sun-dial, never-
theless; only an artist's delight in perfect beauty. The life
which he had planned for himself was in most things the
,ife of a m»nk ; but he could not help feehng that Elizabeth
Luttrell was perfectly beautiful, and that for a man of a weaker
stamp there might be danger in this friendly association,
which brought them together somehow two or three times in
every week.
*' I have known her a year, and she has never touched my
heart in the faintest degree," he told himself, with some sense
of triumph in the knowledge that he was impervious to such,
fascinations. " If we were immortal, and could go on knowing
each other for thirty years — she for ever beautiful and young,
I forever in the prime of manhood — I do not think she would
be any nearer to me than she is now."
Strangers and Pilgrims. 16
Mr. Forde was the first of the guests. The three girls ran
forward to receive him, greeting him with a kind of rapture.
It was so good of him to come, they gushed out simultaneously.
They felt as if a saint had come to take the first red ball and
mallet. Gertrude always gave Mr. Forde the red-ringed balls ;
she said they reminded her of the rubric.
Elizabeth stirred not at all. She stood by the sun-dial, her
face to the west, contemplative, or simply indiff'erent, Mr. Forde
could not tell which. Did she see him, he wondei'ed, and
deliberately refrain Irom greeting him ? Or was she so lost in
thought as to be unconscious of his presence? Or did she
resent his little lecture of that morning ? She could hardly do
that, he considered, when they had parted in perfect friendshij).
" It is so good of you to be punctual," said Gertrude, making
a pleasant little jingb'ng with the china teacups ; the best china,
all blue-aud-gold, hoarded away in the topmost of cupboards,
wrapped in much silver paper, and only taken down for festive
tea-drinkings like this.
It was not a kettledrum tea, but a rustic feast rather ; or a
" tea-shufiie," as young Mr. Melvin the lawyer, called it.
There was a round table, covered with a snowy table-cloth, and
laden with home produce: a pound-cake of golden hue; pre-
served fruits of warm red and amber tint in sparkling cut-glass
jars; that standing-dish on west-country tables, a junket;
home-made bread, with the brown kissing-crust that never
comes from the hireling baker's oven ; teacakes of featheiy
lig»iitness ; rich yellow butter, which to the epicure might have
been worth a journey from London to Devonshire; and for the
crowning glory of the banquet, a capacious basket of straw-
ben-ies and a bowl of clotted cream.
" The Melvins are always late," said Diana ; " but we are
not going to let you wait for your tea, Mr. Forde — are we,
Gertrude P Here comes Ann with the kettle."
This silver tea kettle was the pride of the Luttrell household.
It had been presented to Mr. Luttrell at the close of his minis-
trations in a former parish, and was engraved with the Luttrell
loat of arms in all the splendour of its numerous quarterings.
ft spirit-lamp burned beneath this sacred vessel, which Gertrude
tended as carefully as if she had been a vestal virgin watching
ihe immortal flame.
Mr. Forde insisted that they should wait for the rest of the
company. He did not languish for that cup of tea wherewith
Miss Luttrell was eager to refresh his tired frame. Perhaps in
such a moment his thoughts may have glanced back to the
half-forgotton mess-table, and its less innocent banquets ; the
long table, glittering in the low sunshine, with its bright array
of ^'ry 8fi","'» and costly silver — was not his corps renowned for
iO Strangers and Pilgnim.
ito tnste in these trifles? — the pleasant familiar facos, the talk
and laughter. Time was when he had Hved his life, and thai
altogether another life, difiering in every detail from his exist-
ence of to-day, holding not one hope, or dream, or project which
he cherished now. He could look back at those idle pleasures,
those aimless days, without the faintest sigh of regret. Sad-
dened, discouraged, fainthearted, he had often been since this
pilgrimage of his was begun ; but never for one weak moment
had he looked longingly back.
He said a few words to Blanche, who blushed, and sparkled,
and answered him in little gasps, with upward worshipping
gaze, as if he had been indeed an apostle ; talked with Diana
for five minutes or so about the choir — she played the har-
monium in St. Mary's, the older of the two churches, which did
not boast an organ ; and then strolled across the grass to the
sundial, where Lizzie was still standing in mute contemplation
of the western sky.
They shook hands almost silently. He did not intend to
apologise for what he had said that morning. If the reproof
had stung her, so much the better. He had meant to reprove.
And yet it pained him a little to think that he had offended
her. How lovely she was as she stood before him, smiling, in
the western sunshine ! He never remembered having seen any-
thing so beautiful, except a face of Guido's — the face of the
Virgin-mother — in a Roman picture-gallery. That smile re-
lieved his mind a little. She could hardly be offended.
" You have had a fatiguing day, I suppose, with your sick
people P " she said suddenly, after a few words about the beauty
of the evening and the tmpunctuality of their friends. " Do
you know, I have been thinking of what you said to me this
morning, all day long ; and I begin to feel that I must do some-
thing. It seems almost as if I had had what evangelical
people describe as ' a call.' I should really like to do some-
thing. I don't suppose any good will come of it — I know it i.s
not my line — and I am rather sorry you tried to awaken my
.<ylumbering conscience. But you must tell me what I am to
io. I am your pupil, you know — your Madame de Chantal,
St. Francis ! "
She looked up at him with her thriUing smile-wthe deep
violet eyes just lifted for a moment to his own, with a glance
which was swift and sudden as the flight of an arrow. Across
his mind there flashed the memory of mediaaval legends of
witchcraft and crime: records of priestly passion — of women
whose noxious presence had brought shame upon holy sister-
hoods — of infatuation so fatal as to seem the inspiration of
Satan — of baneful beauty that had lighted the way to the tor-
ture-chamber and the stake. An idle memory in such a mo-
Strangers and Pilgrims. 17
ment! iVhat had he to do with those da^rk passions — the
fungus-growth of an age that was all darkness?
" I think your father is more than competent to advise you,"
he answered gravely.
" 0, no man is a prophet in his own country," she said care-
lessly. " I should never think of talking to papa about
spiritual things ; we have too many painful interviews upon the
subject of pocket-money. If you want to reclaim me, you
must help me a little, Mr. Forde. But perhaps I am not worth
the trouble?"
" You cannot doubt that I should be glad to be of use to you.
But it would be presumption on my part to dictate. Your own
good sense will prompt you, and you have an admirable
counsellor in your sister Gertrude, my best district-visitor."
" I should never submit to be drilled by Gertrude. No ; if
you won't help me, I must wait for inspiration. As for district-
visiting, I can't tell you how I hate the very notion of it. If
there were another Crimean war now, I should like to go out as
a nursing-sister, especially if" — she looked at him with another
briefly mischievous glance — "if there were nice people to
nurse."
"I'm afraid, young ladies whose inclinations point to a
mihtary theatre are hardly in the right road," he said coldly.
He fi^lt that she was trifling with him, and was inclined to be
tngry. He walked away from the sun-dial towards the hall-
loor, from which Mr. Luttrell was slowly emerging— an elderly
gentleman, tall and stout, with a still handsome face framed in
lilky gray whiskers, and a slightly worn-out air, as of a man
pho had mistaken his vocation, and never quite recovered hia
liscovery of the mistake.
" Very good of you to come and play croquet with my
hildren, Forde," he said in his good-natured lazy way — he had
lalled them children when they were all in the nursery, and he
jailed them children still — " especially as I don't think it's par-
ticularly in your line. 0, here come the j).Ielvins and Mis
Harrison ; so I suppose we are to begin tea, in order that you
may have an hour's daylight for your game ? "
Elizabeth had walked away from the sundial in an opposite
direction, smiling soi'tly to herself. It was something to have
made him angr}^ She had seen the pale dark face flush hotly
for a moment; a sudden fire kindled in the deep grey eyes. In
the morning he had confessed himself interested in her welfare;
in the evening she had contrived to provoke him. That waa
eomething gained.
" He is nofc quite a block of stone ! " she thought.
She did not trouble herself to come forward and welcome the
Melvin party, any more than she had troubled herself to greet
18 Strangers and Pilgrims.
Mr. Forde ; but came strolling across the grass towards the
tea-table presently when every one else was seated ; the guests
here and there under the chestnut branches, while Gertrude sat
at the table disjDensing the tea-cups, with Frederick Melvin in
attendance. Mr. Melvin was the eldest son of the chief solicitor
of Hawleigh, in partnership with his father, and vaguely sup-
posed to be eligible from a matrimonial point of view. He was
a young man who had an unlimited capacity for croquet, vingu
et-un, table-turning, and small flirtations ; spent all his spare
hours on the river Tabor, and seemed hardly at home out of a
suit of boating flannels. He was indifferently in love with the
four Miss Luttrells, with a respectful leaning towards Elizabeth,
as the beauty ; and he was generally absorbed by the flipiiant
Blanche. His sister Laura sang well, and did nothing else to
I^articularise herself in the minds of her acquaintance. She
was fond of music and discoursed learnedly of symphonies and
sonatas, adagios in flat and capriccios in F double sharp, to
the terror of the uninitiated. Miss Harrison was a cousin,
whose people were of the gentleman-farmer persuasion, and who
came from a sleepy old homestead up the country to stay with
the Melvins, and intoxicate her young senses with the dissipa-
tions of Hawleigh market-place. The Melvins lived in the
market-place, in a big square brick house picked out with white
■ — a house with three rows of windows five in a row, a flight of
steps, and a green door with a brass knocker; the very house,
one would suppose, upon which all the dolls' houses ever manu-
factured have been modelled. She was not a very brilliant
damsel, and when she had been asked how she liked Hawleigh
after the country, and how she liked the country after Hawleigh,
and whether she liked Hawleigh or the country best, conversa-
tion with her was apt to languish.
Mr. Forde, who was sitting a little in the background, talking
to Mr. Luttrell, rose and gave his chair to Elizabeth — the last
comer. He brought another for himself and sat down again,
and went on with his talk ; while Frederick Melvin worshipped
at Elizabeth's shrine — ofi'ering tea, and pound-cake, and straw-
berries, and unutterable devotion.
'■ [ wish you'd go and flirt with Blanche," she said coolly.
".'>.), thanks; I don't want any strawberries. Now, please,
don't sprinkle a shower of them on my dross ; I shall have to
wear it a week. How awkward you are ! "
"Who could help being awkward?" pleaded the youth,
blushing. " Sir Charles Grandison would have made a fool of
himself in your society."
" I don't know anything about Sir Charles Grandison, and I
don't believe you do, either. That's the way with you young
men ; you get the names of people and thiuss out of tha
Strangers and JPilgrims. 19
Saturday lleview, and pretend to know everything under the
sun."
"Wasn't he a fellow in some book — Pamela or Joseph
Andrews ? something of Smollett's P some sort of rubbish in
sixteen volumes? Nobody reads it now-a-days."
" Then I wouldn't quote it, if I were you. But the Saturday
Beview is the modern substitute for the Eton Latin Grammar.
Please, go and flirt with Blanche. You always stand so close
to one, making a door-mat of one's dress ! "
" O, very well, I'll go and talk to Blanche. But remember "
— this with a threatening air — " when you want to go on the
Tabor "
" You'll take me, of course. I know that. Run and play,
that's a dear child ! "
He was her senior by three years, but she gave herself
ineffable airs of superiority notwithstanding. Perhaps she was
not displeased to exhibit even this trumpery swain before the
eyes of Malcolm Forde — who went on talking of parish matters
with her father, as if unconscious of her presence. Very little
execution was done upon the pound-cake or the syllabub. The
atmosphere was too heavily charged Avith flirtations for any
serious consumption of provisions. It is the people who have
done with the flowers and sunshine of life who make most
havoc among the lobster- salads and raised pies at a picnic —
for whom the bouquet of the moselle is a question of supreme
importance, who know the difference between a hawk and a
heron in the way of claret.
So, after a Httle *trifling with the dainty cates Miss Luttrell
had hospitably provided, the young people rose for the business
of the evening.
" Wouldn't you rather have a cigar and a glass of claret here,
under the chestnut?" said Mr. Luttrell, as Malcolm Fortfe
prepared to join them. V^'
*' That would be a breach of covenant," answered the Curate,
jaughing, " I was invited for croquet. Besides, I really
enjoy the game ; it's a sort of substitute for billiards."
" A dissipation you have renounced," said the Vicar, iu
his careless way. " You modern young men are regular
Trappists!"
Whereby it will be seen that Wilmot LTittrell was of the
Broad-Church party — a man who had hunted the Devonian red-
deer in his time, who had still a brace of Joe Manton's in hia
study, was good at fly-fishing, and did not object to clerical
billiards or a social rubber.
They played for a couple of hours in the balmy summer
evening, the Luttrell girls and their four visitors — played till
the sunlight faded into dusk, and the dusk deepened into the
20 Strangers and Pilgrims,
Boft June night — which was hardly night, but rather a tender
mixture of twihght and starshine. Gertrude had taken
Mr. Forde for the leader of her side, Miss Harrison and Blanche
Luttrell making up their four. The Beauty headed a skirmish-
ing party, that incorrigible Frederick for her supporter, Df
Xiuttrell and Laura Melviu bringing up the rear. To hei
Malcolm Forde addressed no word throughout the little tonma*
ment. It may have been because he had no opportunity ; foi
she was laughing and talking more or leas all the time, in the
■wildest spirits, with the young solicitor perpetually at her
elbow. And Gertrude had a great deal to say to the Curate ;
chiefly on the subject of her parish work, and a little of a more
vague and metaphysical nature concerning the impressions pro-
duced upon her mind by his last Sunday-evening sermon. Ha
listened kindly and respectfully, as in duty bound, but thai
frivolous talk and laughter upon the other side worried him not
a little. Never had Elizabeth seemed to him so vulgarly pro-
vincial ; and he was really interested in her, as indeed it was his
duty to be interested in the welfare of his Vicar's daughters.
"It is all the father's fault," he said to himself; "I do not
believe he has ever made the faintest attempt to train them."
And then he thought what an estimable young person
Gertrude must be to have evolved out of her inner conscious-
ness, as it were, all that serious and practical piety which made
her so valuable to him in his ministrations. As to the future
careers of the other three — of Blanche, who talked slang, and
seemed to consider this lower wf>^Ad designed to be a perpetual
theatre for flirtation ; of Diani., who was selfish and idle, and
set up a pretence of weak health as a means of escaping all the
cares and perplexities of existence; of Elizabeth, who appeared
in her own character to embody all the faults and weaknesses
he had ever supposed possible to a woman — of the manner in
which these three were to tread the troubled paths of life, he
could only think with a shudder. Poor lampless virgins.
Btraying blindly into the darkness !
Yet, measured by a simply sensuous standard, how sweet was
that low rippling sound of girlish laughter ; how graceful the
white-rebed figure moving lightly in the summer dusk; how
exquisite the dark-blue eyes that looked at him in the starlight,
when the game was ended, and the Church Militant, as Blanche
said pertly, had been triumphant over the Devil's Own, in the
person of the mild-eyed Frederick Melvin ! Mr. Forde's un-
erring stroke, mathematically correct as the pendulum, had
brought them home, in spite of some rather feeble playing on the
{)art of Gertrude, whose mind was a little too much occupied by
ast Sunday-evening's sermon.
Mr. Luttrell had strolled up and down the garden walk.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 21
■moking his cigar, and had loitered a little by the holiy liedge
talking to some people in the road, while the croquet players
amused themselves. He came forward now to propose an ad-
journment to the house, and a claret-cup. So they all went
crowding into a long low room with a couple of bow windows,
a room which was lined with bookshelves on one side, contain-
ing Taylor and Hooker, and Barrow and Tillotson, and South
and Venn, and other ecclesiastical volumes, freely intermingled
with a miscellaneous collection of secular literature; a room
which served Mr. Luttrell as a library, but which was neverthe-
less the drawing-room. There was a grand piano by one of the
bow windows, a piano which had been presented to Diana by a
wealthy aunt and godmother, and the brand-new walnut-wood
case whereof was in strong contrast with the time-worn old
chairs and tables; the chetfoniers of the early Georgian era;
the ponderous old cane- seated sofa, with its chintz-covered
pillows and painted frame — a pale, pale green picked out with
gold that was fast vanishing away. The attenuated crystal
girandoles upon the high wooden mantelshelf were almost as
old as the invention of glass ; the Chelsea shepherd and shep-
herdess had been cracked over and over again, but held together
as if by a charmed existence. The Derbyshire-spa vases were
relics of a dead-and-gone generation. The mock-venetian mir-
ror was of an almost forgotten fashion and a quite extinct
manufacture. Blanche vowed that Noah and his wife, when
they kept house before the flood, must have had just such a
drawing-room.
Yet this antiquated chamber seemed in no wise displeasing to
the sight of Mr. Forde as he came in from the starlit garden.
He liked it a great deal better than many finer rooms in which
he was a rare but welcome visitor, just as he preferred the
ill-kept Vicarage lawn and flower-borders to the geometrical
parterres of millionaire cloth manufacturers or pompous squires
on the outskirts of Hawleigh.
Frederick ^Melvin and his sister pleaded for a little music,
upon which the usual family concert began: a showy fantasia
by Gertrude, correctly played, with a good firm finger, and not
a spark of expression from the first bar to the bang, bang,
hang ! at the end ; then a canzonet from Blanche, of the " 0, 'tis
merry when the cherry and the blossom and the berry, tra-la-
la-la, tra-la-la " school, in a thin little soprano ; then a sonata
— Beethoven's " Adieu " — by Miss Melvin, which Mr. Forde
thought the longest adieu he had ever been obliged to listen to.
He lost patience at last, and went over to Elizabeth, whose ripe
round mezzo-soprano tones he languished to hear.
"Won't you sing something?" he asked.
" What, does not singing come within your catalogue of for*
22 Strangers and Pilgrims.
bidden pleasures — a mere idle waste of time — lotos-eating, in
short?"
" You know that I do not think anything of the kind. Why do
you try to make me out what I have never pretended to be — an
ascetic, or worse, a Pharisee ? Is is only because I am anxious
you should be of a little more use to your fellow-creatures ? "
"And of course singing can be no use, unless I went about
among your cottage people leading off hymns."
"Does that mean that you won't sing to-night? " he asked
in his coldest tone.
"Yes."
" Then I'll wish you good-night. I've no doubt the music
we've been hearing is very good in its way, but it's hardly my
way. Good-night. I'll slip away quietly without disturbing
your friends."
He was close to the open bow- window, that farthest from the
piano, and went out unnoticed, while Miss Melvin and her
cousin Miss Harrison were debating whether they should or
ohould not play the overture to Zampa. He went out of the
window, and walked slowly across the grass, but had hardly
reached the sun-dial, when he heard the voice he knew so well
swell out rich and full in the opening tones of a ballad he loved,
a plaintive lament called " Ettrick."
" 0, murmuring waters, have you no message for me?"
He stopped by the sun-dial and heard the song to the end;
heard Fred Melvin supplicating for auother song, and Eliza-
beth's impatient refusal — " She was tired to death," with a
little nervous laugh.
He went away after this, not offended, only wor.dering that
any woman could be so wilful, could take so much j^ains to
render herself unwomanly and unloval)le. He thought how
keenly another man, whose life was differently planned, might
have felt this petty slight — how dangerous to such a man's
peace Elizabeth Luttrell might have been; but that was all.
He was not angry with her.
What would he have thought, if he could have seen Elizabeth
Luttrell half an hour later that night, if he could hp"<^, seen her
fall on her knees by one of the little French beds m the room
that she and Blanche occupied together, and bury her face in
the counterpane and burst into a passion of tears .'*
"What is the matter, Liz — what is it, darling?" cries
Blanche the impulsive.
The girl answers nothing, but sobs out her brief passion, and
then rises, calm as a statue, to confront her sister.
" If you ai-e going to worry me, Blanche, I shall sleep in the
Stranc/ers and Pilgrims, 28
passage," she exclaims in impatient rebuke of the other's sympa-
thetic caress. " There's nothing the matter. I'm tired, that's
all, and that absurd Fred of yours has persecuted me so all the
evening."
" He's no Fred of mine, and I think you rather encouraged
his persecutions," said Blanche -with an aggrieved air. " I'm
sure I can't make you out, Lizzie. I thought you liked Mr.
Forde, and yet you quite snubbed him to-night."
" Snubbed him," cried Elizabeth. " As if anybody could
snub St. Paul!"
CHAPTER III.
*' I know thy forms are studied arts,
Thy subtle ways be narrow straits ;
Thy courtesy but sudden starts,
And what thou call'st thy gifts are baita,"
The Curate of Hawleigh, modest in his surroundings as the
incorruptible Maximilian Piobespierre himself, had lodgings at
a carpenter's. His landlord was certainly the chief carpenter
of the town, a man of unblemished respectability, who had even
infused a flavour of building into his trade ; but the Curate's
bedroom windows commanded a view of the carpenter's yard,
and he lived in the odour of chips and shavings, and that fresh
piney smell which seems to breathe the ]ierfume of a thousand
shii:)s far away from the barren main. He had even to submit
meekly to the dismal tap, tap, tap of the hammer when a coffin
was on hand, which might fairly serve as a substitute for tho
" Frere ilfaut mourir f of the Trajipist brotherhood.
It must not be sujoposed, however, that this choice of a
lodging was an act of asceticism or wanton self-humiliation
upon the part of Malcolm Forde. The Hawleigh curates lodged,
as a rule, with Humphreys the carpenter: and Hawleigh being
self-governed, for the most part, upon strictly conservative
principles, it would have been an outrage against the sacred
existing order of things if Mr. Forde had pitched his tent else-
whithc". Mrs. Humphreys was a buxom middle-aged woman
of spotless cleanliness, who kept a cow in a neat little paddock
behind the carpenter's yard ; a woman who had a pleasant
odour of dairy about her, and who was sujjposed by long prac-
tice to have acquired a special faculty for " doing for curates."
" I know their tastes," she would say to her gossips, " and
24 Strangers and Pilgrims.
it's astonishing how little their tastes varies. *0, give me a
chop, Mrs. Humphreys,' they mostly says, if I werrifc then?
about their dinner. But, lor, I know better than that. Their
poor stomachs would soon turn against chops if they had thera
every day. So I soon leaves off asking 'em anything about dinner,
and contrives to give 'em a nice variety of tasty little dishes — a
whiting and a lamb cutlet or two with fried p;irsley one day ; a
red mullet and a split fowl broiled with half-a-dozen mushroome
the next, a spitchcook, they c-a\\ it; and then the day after I
curry what's left of the fowl, so as their bills come moderate ;
and I never had a wry word with any curate yet, except Mr.
Adderley, who didn't like squab-pie, and I did give him a piece
of my mind about that."
The rooms were comfortable rooms, though of the plainest:
lightsome and airy ; fui-nished with chairs and tables so sub-
stantial that their legs had not been enfeebled by the various
fidgetinesses of a whole generation of curates : honest wide-
seated leather-bottomed chairs bought at the sack of an ancient
manor-house ; stalwart Avalnut-wood tables and brass-handled
chests of drawers made when George the Second was king.
Mrs. Humphreys was wont to boast that her Joe — meaning Mr.
Joseph Humphreys — knew what chairs and tables were, and did
not choose them for their looks. There were no ornaments of
the usual lodging-house type, for Mrs, Humphreys knew that.it
is in the nature of curates to bring with them sundry nicknacks,
the relics of university extravagances, wherewith to decorate
their chambers.
Mr. Forde had furnished both sitting-room and bedroom
"amply with books, nay even the slip of a chamber where he
kept his baths and sponges and bootstand was encumbered with
the shabbier volumes in his collection, 'piled breast-high in the
angles of the walls. He was not a collector of bric-a-brac, and
the sole ornaments of his sitting-room were a brass skeleton
clock which had travelled many a league with him in his
soldiering days ; a carefully painted miniature of an elderly lady,
whom, by the likeness to himself, one might reasonably suppose
to be his mother, on one side of the mantelpiece ; a somewhat
faded daguerreotype of a sweet fair young face on the other ;
and a breakfast cup and saucer on a little ebony stand under a
glass shade. Why this cup and saucer should be so preserved
would have been a puzzling question for a stranger. They were
of ordinary modern china, and could have possessed no value
from an artistic point of view.
He had performed his early morning duty at St. Clement's,
and spent lialf an hour with a sick parishioner, before his nine-
o'clock bieakfast on the day following that little croquet party
at the Vicarage. He was dawdlinc; a little as he sipped his
8lrangei*9 and Pilgrims. 25
flecond cup of tea, with one of Southey's Commonplace Books
open at his elbow, turning over the leaves now and then with a
somewhat absent air, as if in all that jetsam and flotsam of the
poet's studious hours he hardly found a paragraph to enchain
his attention.
What manner of man is he, in outward semblance, as he sits
there absent and meditative, with the broad summer daylight on
his face ? It would be a question if one should call him a
handsome man. He is distinguished-looking, perhaps, rather
than handsome; tall and broad-shouldered, like the men who
come from beyond the Tweed; straight as a dart; a man who
is not dependent upon dress and surroundings for his dignity,
but has an indefinable air of being superior to the common herd.
His features are good, but not pai-ticularly regular, hardly coming
within the rule and compass of archetypal beauty; the nose a
thought too broad, the forehead too dominant. His skin is dark,
and has little colour, save when he is angry or deeply moved,
when the stern face glows briefly with a dark crimson. The
clear cold gray eyes ai'e wonderful in their variety of expression.
The firmly-moulded yet flexible mouth is the best feature in his
face, supremely grave in repose, infinitely tender when he
smiles.
He smiles suddenly now, in the course of his reverie, for it is
clear enough that he is thinking, and not reading Southey's
agreeable jottings, though his hand mechanically turns the
leaves. He smiles a slow thoughtful smile.
" What a child she is," he says to himself, " with all a child's
perversity ! I am foolish ever to be angry with her."
He heard a double-knock from the little brass knocker of Mr.
Humphreys' private door, shut his book with an impatient sigh,
got up and walked to the window. The Humphreys' mansion
was in one of the side streets of Hawleigh, a street known by
the rustic title of Field-lane, which led up a gentle hill to the
open countrjr ; a vast stretch of common-land, sprinkled sparsley
on the outskirts with a few scattered houses and a row or two
of cottages. Nor had Mr. Humphreys any opposite neighbours ;
the houses on the other side stopped abruptly a few yards below,
and there was a triangular green, with a pond and a colony of
ducks in front of the Curate's casements.
Malcolm Forde looked out of the window, expecting to see his
visitor waiting meekly on the spotless doorstep ; but the door
had been opened promptly, and the doorstep was unoccupied.
He looked at his watch hastily.
" I've been wasting too much time already," he said to him-
Bolf, " and here is some one to detain me ever so long. And 1
want to make a good morning's round out Filbury way."
The medical practitioners of Hawleigh prided themselves oo
26 Stranc/crs and Pilgrims.
the crushing nature of their duties, yet there were none among
them who worked so hard as this healer of souls. Here was
some tiresome vestryman, perhaps, come to prose for half an
hour or so about some jset grievance, while he was languishing
to be up and doing among the miserable hovels at Filbury,
where, amidst the fertile smiling landscape, men's souls and
bodies were consuming away with a moral dry-rot.
The door of his sitting-room opened, but not to admit a
prosing vestryman. The smiling handmaiden announced " Miss
Luttrell, if you please, sir." And, lo, there stood before him on
the threshold of his chamber the wilful woman he had been
thinking about just now, gravely regarding him, the very image
of decorum.
There was some change in her outward aspect, the details
whereof his masculine eye could not distinguish. A woman
could have told him in a moment by what means the Beauty had
contrived to transform herself. She was dressed in a lavender-
ootton gown, with tight plain sleeves, and a linen collar — no
bright-hued ribbon encircling the long white throat, no flutter
of lace or glimmer of golden locket, none of the pretty frivo-
lities with which she was accustomed to set-off her loveliness.
She wore an old-fashioned black-silk scarf, a relic of her dead
mother's wardrobe, which became her tall slim figure to perfec-
tion. She, who was wont to wear the most coquettish and
capricious of hats, the daintiest conceit in airy tulle by way
of a bonnet, was now crowned with a modest saucer-shaped
thing of Dunstable straw, which at this moment hid her eyes
altogether from Malcolm Forde. The rich brown hair, which
she had been accustomed to display in an elaborate structure of
large loose plaits, was neatly braided under this Puritan head
gear, and packed into the smallest possible compass at the back
of her head, She had a little basket in one hand, a red-covered
account-book in the other.
" If you please, Mr. Forde, I should like you to give me a
round of visits amongst your poor people," she said, offering
him this little volume. " I am quite ready to begin my duties
to-day."
He stood for a moment gazing at her, lost in amazement.
The provoking saucer-shaped hat covered her eyes. He could
only guess the expression of her face from her mouth, which was
gravity itself.
'•' What, Miss Luttrell, do you mean to help me, after all you
said last night ? "
" Did I really say anything very wicked last night ? " she
asked naively, lifting her head for a moment so that her eyes
shone out at him under the shadow of the saucer-brim. Peer-
less eyes they seemed to him in that brief flash, but hardly th j
Stranfjrrs and Pilr/rims. 27
most appropriate eyes for a district-visitor, whose beauty sliould
be of a subdued order, like the colours of her dress.
"1 don't know that you said anything wicked; but you ex-
pressed a profound disgust for district-visiting."
" Did I ? It was the last rebellious murmur of my unre-
generate heart. But you have awakened my conscience, and I
mean to turn over a new leaf, to begin a new existence in fact.
If the piano were my property instead of Diana's, I think I
should make a bonfire on the lawn and burn it. I have serious
thoughts of burning my colour box — Winsor and Newton's too.
and papa's last birthday present. But you must be kind enough
to make me out a list of the people you'd like me to visit. I
don't want to be a regular district-visitor, or to interfere with
your established sisterhood in any way; so I won't take any
tickets to distribute. I don't Avant the people to associate me
with sacramental alms. I want to have a little flock of my
own, and to see if I can make them like me for my own sake,
without thinking how much they can get out of me. And if
you could coach me a little about what I ought to say to them,
it would be a great comfort to me. Gertrude says that when
she feels herself at a loss she says a little jarayer, and waits on
the doorstep for a few minutes, till something comes to her.
But I'm afraid that plan would not answer lor me."
Mr. Forde pushed one of the heavy chairs to the writing-table
near the window, and asked Miss LuttreU to sit down while he
wrote what she wanted in the little red book. She seated her-
self near one end of the table, and he sat down to write at the
other.
" I shall be vei-y happy to do what I can to set you going," he
said, as he wrote; "but I should be more assured of your sin-
cerity if you were less disposed to make a joke of the business."
"A joke!" exclaimed Miss Luttrell with an aggrieved air,
" why, I was never in my life so serious. Is this the way in
which you mean to treat my awakening, Mr. Forde ? "
He handed her the little book, with a list of names written on
the first leaf. " I think you must know something of these
people," he said, " after living here all your life."
" Please don't take anything for granted about me with re-
ference to the poor," she answered hastily. " Of course it is
abominable in me to admit as much, but I never have cared for
them. The only ideas about them that I have ever been able to
grasp are, that they never open their windows, and that they
always want something of one, and take it ill if one can't give
them the thing they want. Gertrude tells quite a different story,
and declares that the serious-minded souls are always languish-
-Tig for spiritual refreshment, that she can make them quite
happy with her prim little sermons and flimsy little tracts,
28 Strangers and Piigrimi.
Did you ever read a tract, Mr. Forde ? I don't mean a contro-
versial pamphlet, or anything of that kind; but just one of
those little puritanical booklets that drop from Gertrude like
leaves from a tree in autumn ? "
" I have not given much leisure to that kind of study," re-
plied Malcolm, with his grave smile. "I hope you won't think
me unappreciative of the honour involved in this viSit, Miss
Luttrell, if I am obliged to run away. I have a round of calls
at Filbury to get through this morning."
" You remind me of poor mamma," said Elizabeth, with a tribu-
tary sigh to the memory of that departed parent ; "she had alwaya
a round of calls, and they generally resolved themselves into
three — a triangle of calls, in short. But they were genteel
visits, you know. Mamma never went in for the district
business."
The loose slangy style of her talk grated upon his ear not a
little. He took his hat and gloves from the sideboard — a gentle
reminder that he was in haste to be gone.
" I won't detain you five minutes more," she said. " How
nice the room looks with all those books! I know Mrs.
Humphreys' drawing-room very well, though this is my first
visit to you. Papa and Gertrude and I came once to drink tea
with Mr. Horton. He gave quite a party ; and we had
concertante duets for the flute and piano — * Non piu mesta,'
and ' Di piacer.' and so on," this with a faint blush, remem-
bering her own share in that concerted music. " You should
have seen the room in his tenancy — Bohemian-glass vases, and
scent caskets, and stereoscopes, and photograph albums ; but
very few books. I think I Hke it best with all those grim-
looking brown-backed volumes of yours."
She made the tour of the room as she spoke, and paused by
the mantelpiece to examine the skeleton clock, the cup and
saucer, the two portraits.
" What a grand-looking old lady ! — your mother, of course,
Mr. Forde ? And, 0, what a sweet face ! " pausing before the
photograph. " Your sister, I suppose ? "
•' No," Mr. Forde answered, somewhat shortly.
" And what a pretty cup and saucer, under a glass shade ! It
looks like a reHc of some kind."
" It is a reUc."
The tone was grave, repellant even, and Elizabeth felt she
had touched upon a forbidden subject.
" It belonged to his mother, I daresay," she thought ; " and
ne keeps it m memory of the dead. I suppose all his people
are dead, as he never talks about them."
After this she made haste to depart with her little book,
knowing very well that she had outraged all the convention-
Strangers and £ilgnm^. 29
alities of Hawleigh, but rather proud of having bearded this
lion of Judah in his den,
Mr. iTorde left the house with her, and walked a little way by
her side ; but was graver and more silent than his wont, as if
he had hardly recovered from the pain those injudicious
questions of hers had given him. He parted from her at
the entrance to a row of cottages, in which dwelt two of
the matrons whose names he had entered in her book.
" Good-bye," he said. " I hope you will be able to do some
good, and that you will not be tired of the work in a week or
two."
" That's rather a depressing suggestion," said Ehzabeth. " I
know you have the worst possible opinion of me ; but I mean
to show you how mistaken you have been. And you really
ought to feel flattered by my conversion. Papa might have
preached at me for a twelvemonth without producing such an
effect."
" I am sorry to hear that your father has so little influence
with you. Miss Luttrell," the Curate answered gravely.
He left her with the coldest good-bye. The proud face
flushed crimson under the mushroom hat as she turned into the
little alley. This morning's interview had not been nearly
so agreeable to her as yesterday's lecture under the limes at the
entrance to the town. She began her missionary work in a
very bad humour; but brightened by degrees as she went
on. She was a woman in whom the desire to please dominated
almost every other attribute, and she was bent upon making
these people like or even love her. It was not to be a mere
spurt, this adoption of a new duty. She meant to show
Malcolm Forde that she could be all, or more than all, he
thought a woman should be — that she could be as much
Gertrude's superior in this particular line as she surpassed her
in personal beauty.
"Gertrude!" she said to herself contemptuously. "As if
poor people could possibly care about Gertrude, with her little
fidgety ways, and her Low-Church tracts, and her passion for
Boapsuds and hearthstone ! She has conti-ived to train her
people into a subdued kind of civility. They look upon her
visits as a necessary evil, and put up with them, just as they
put up with the water coming through the roof, or a pig-
stye close to the parlour window. But I shall make my people
look forward to my visits as a bright little spot in their hves."
This was rather an arrogant idea, perhaps ; but Ehzabeth
Luttrell succeeded in realising it. She contrived to win an
unfaiUng welcome in the twenty cottages which Mr. Forde had
assigned to her. Nor was her popularity won by bribery
and corruption. She had very little to give her people, except
Q
30 Strangers and Pilgrims.
an occasional packet of barley-sugar or a paper of biscuits for
the children, or now and then some cast-off ribbon or other
ecrap of genteel finery for the mothers. For the sick children,
indeed, she would do anything — empty her own slenderly-
furnished purse, rob the cross old parsonage cook of her arrow-
root, and loaf-sugar, and isinglass, and cornflour, and ground
rice, and Epps's cocoa, and new-laid eggs ; but it was not
by gifts of any kind that she made herself beloved. It was the
brightness and easy grace of her manner rather, that delightful
air of being perfectly at home in a tiny chamber with a reeking
washtub at her elbow, a cradle at her knee, and a line of damp
clothes steaming in close prosdmity to her hat. Nothing
disgusted her. She never wondered that people could live in
such dirt and muddle. She made her little suggestions of
improvement — no blunt plain-spoken recommendation of soap-
suds and hearthstone, but insinuating hints of what might
be done with a little trouble — in a manner that never offended.
And then she was so beautiful to look upon ; the husbands and
wives were never tired of admiring her. " Ay, but she be a rale
right-down beauty," they said, " and thinks no more of herself
than if she was as ugly as sin;" not knowing that the fair
Eliza.beth was quite conscious of her own loveliness, and
hoped to turn it to some good account by-and-by.
Nor did Elizabeth forget, in her desire for popularity, that
the chief object of her mission among these people was of
a spiritual kind : that she was to carry enlightenment and
religion into those close pent-up hovels where the damp linen
was ever dangling, the waehtub for ever reeking ; where the
larder was so often barren, and the wants of mankind so small and
yet sometimes perforce unsatisfied. Although she was not her-
self, as Gertrude expressed it, " seriously mmded," though her
thoughts during her father's sermons, and even during those of
Mr. Forde, too often wandered among the bonnets and mantles
of the congregation, or shaped themselves into vague vision*
of the future, she did notwithstanding contrive to bring about
some improvement in the theory and practice of her clients.
She persuaded the women to go to church on Sunday evenings,
if Sunday-morning worship was really an impossible thing,
as the poor souls protested ; she induced the husbands to clean
themselves a couple of hours earlier than had been their
Sabbath custom, and to Bhamble into the dusky aisle of
St. Clement's or St. Mary's while the tinkling five-minutes bell
was still calling to loiterers and laggards on the way ; she
taught the little ones their catechism, rewarding proficiency
with barley-sugar or gingerbread; and she sat by many a
washtub reading the Evangelists in her full sweet voice, while
the industrious noasewife rubbed the sweats of labour from her
Strangers and Pilgrimi. 31
husband's shirt-collars. She would even starch and iron a
handful of collars herself, on occasion, if the housewife seemed
to set about the business clumsily.
" I have to get-up my own fine things sometimes, or I should
fo cuffless and collarless," she said. "Papa is not rich, you
uow, Mrs. Jones." Whereat Mrs. Jones would be struck with
amazement by her haiidiness.
" I don't believe there's a thing in this 'varsal world as yo'vi
can't do, Miss Elizabeth," the admiring matron would cry witk
uplifted hands ; aiid even this humble appreciation of her merits
pleas'^d Lizzie Luttrell.
Her reading was much liked by listeners who were not com-
pelled to sit with folded hands and a brain perplexed by the
thought of neglected housework. She had a knack of choosing
the most attractive as well as the most profitable portions of
Holy AVrit, an acute perception of the passages most likely to
impress her hearers.
" I do like your Scriptures, Miss Elizabeth," said one woman.
" When I was a gal, I used to think the Bible was all Saul
and the Philistings — there seemed no end ot 'em — and David.
I make no doubt David was a dear good man, and after the
Lord's own heart; but there did seem too much of him. He
wasn't like Him as you read about ; he didn't come home to us
like that, miss, and you don't read as he was fond of little
children, except that one of his own that be was so wrapt up
in."
"The Gospel sounds like a pretty story, when you read it,
miss," sfiid another ; " and when Miss Gertrude read, it did seem
80 sing-song like. Sometimes I couldn't feel as there was any
sense in it, no more than in the Lessons of a hot summer's
afternoon, when it seems only a droning, like a hive of bees."
So Ehzabeth went on and prospered, and grew really interested
in her work. It was not half so bad as she had supposed.
There was muddle'and there was want, but not such utter ti-loom
and misery as she had imagined in these hovels. The spirits of
these people were singularly elastic. Ever so little sunshine
warmed them into new life; and, above all, they liked her, and
praised her, and spoke well of her to Malcolm Forde. She knew
that from his appi-oving manner, not from anything he had dis-
tinctly said upon the subject.
Earely had she met with him on her rounds. The list he had
trlven her included only easy subjects — jseople who would not be
likely to repulse her attentions, homes in which she would not
iiear foul language or see dreadful sights— and having allotted
her path-way, he was content that she should follow it with
very little assistance from him, and even took pains to time
his own visits, so as to avoid any encounter with h«r.
82 Strangers and Pilgrims.
He did, however, on rare occasions find her among his flock.
Not easily did he forget one summer afternoon, when he saw
her sitting by an open cottage window with a sick child in her
lap. That figure in a pale muslin dress, with tho afternoon
sunshine upon it, lived in his memory long.
" If I could only believe that she was quite in earnest," he
said to himself, "that this new work of hers has some safer
charm than its novelty, I should think her the sweetest woman
I ever met— except one."
jlizabeth had been engaged in these duties for two months,
and had done her work faithfully. It was the end of August,
the brilliant close of a summer that had been exceptionally
fine ; harvest just begun in this western land, and occasional
tracts of tawny stubble baking under a cloudless blue sky;
hazel-nuts and wortle-berries ripening in the woods ; great sloe-
trees shedding their purple fruit in every hedge; a rain of
green apples falling on the orchard grass with every warm
eouth wind; the red plums swelling and purphng on the
garden wall — a vision of plenty and the perfume of roses and
carnations on every side.
"If we don't have that picnic you talked about very soon,
Gerty, we shan't have it at all," remarked the youngest and
the pertest of the four sisters at breakfast one _ morning,
when Mr. Luttrell had mthdrawn himself to his daily duties,
and the damsels were left to enjoy half an hour's idleness
and talk over empty coffee-cups and shattered eggshells and
other fragments of the feast. " The summer's nearly over, you
see, Gerty, and if we don't take care we shall lose all the
fine weather. I've no doubt there'll be a deluge after all
this sunshine."
Blanche always called her eldest sister "Gerty" when she
wanted some indulgence from that important personage.
"Well, I'm sure I don't know what to say, Blanche,"
T?plioi Miss Luttrell with provoking coolness, as if picnics and
f-ifsuch sublunary pleasures were utterly beneath her regard;
strong, too, in her authority as her father's housekeeper, and
conscious that her sisters must bow down and pay her homage
for whatever they wanted, like Joseph's brethren in quest
of corn. " I really think," she went on with a deliberate air,
" as the summer is nearly gone, we may as well give up any
notion of a picnic this year, especially as papa doesn't seem
to care much about it."
"Papa never seems to care about anything that costa
money," cried the disrespectful youngest. " He'd like life
well enough if everything in it could be carried on for nothing;
If his children could be born and educated, and fed and clothed.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 33
And doctored and nursed, and introduced to society gratis,
so that he could have all the pew-rents and burial-fees and
things to put in the bank. It's very mean of you to talk
like that, Gertrude, and want to sneak out of the picnic, wheu
it's about the only return we're likely to make for all the
croquet jiarties and dinners and teas and goodness knows what
that our friends have given us since Christmas."
"Really, Blanche, you are learning to render yourself
eminently disagreeable," Miss Luttrell observed severely,
" and I fear if papa does not face the necessity of sending
you back to school to be finished, your deficiency in manner
will be your absolute ruin in after-life."
" Never mind Blanche's manner," interposed Diana, " but
let's talk about the picnic. Of course we must have one. We
always have had one for the last five years, since the summer
after poor mamma's death, — I know we were all in slight
mourning at the first of them, — and our friends exjject it. So
the only question is, where are we to go this year ? "
This was intended in somewise as an assertion of indepen-
dence on the part of the second Miss Luttrell, who did not
intend to be altogether overridden by the chariot of an elder
sister, even though that elder had bidden a long farewell to the
golden summer-tide of her twenty-eighth year.
" Elizabeth won't go, of course, now she's turned serious,'*
said Blanche, with a sly glance at Lizzie, who sat leisurely
watching the skirmish, with her head against the clumsy frame
of the lattice, and the south wind gently stirring her dark-
brown hair, a perfect picture of idle loveliness.
" You'll have nothing to do with the picnic, of course, Lizzie,
not even if Malcolm Forde goes," pursued the " Pickle " of the
family.
"Who gave you leave to call him Malcolm?" flashed out
Elizabeth.
" No one ; but why shouldn't one enjoy oneself in the bosom
of one's family. I like to call him Malcolm Forde, it's such
a pretty name ; and one ought to get accustomed to tha
Christian name of one's future brother-in-law."
Two of the Miss Luttrells flushed crimson at this speech :
Gertrude, who turned angrily upon the speaker, as if about
to retort; and Elizabeth, whose swift reply came like a flash of
lightning, before her senior could reprove the oflender.
" How dare you say that, Blanche P Do you supj^ose that i
would marry Mr. Forde — a Curate — even if he were to ask me?"
" I won't suppose anything till lie does ask you," answered
the incorrigible; "and then I know pretty well what will
happen. Whatever fine notions you may have had about a
rich husband, and a house in London, and an opera-box, and
34 Strangers and Pil/jrims.
goodness knows what, will all count for nothing the day that
Malcolm Forde makes you an offer. "Why, you worship the
ground he walks on. Do you think we can't all of us see
through your district- visiting ? A pretty freak for you to take
up, after admitting that you detested such work ! "
" I suppose it is not (juite unnatural that one should try
to overcome one's dislikes, and to do some good in the world,"
replied Elizabeth with dignity. " Have the goodness to bridle
your tongue a little, Blanche; and rest assured that I shall
never marry a Curate, be he whom he may."
"But Mr. Forde is not like common Curates. He is
independent of the Church. He has private means."
" Yes ; three or four hundred a year from a small estate in
Aberdeenshire."
" 0, you have been making inquiries, then P "
"No; but I heard papa say as much, one day. And now,
Blanche, be so kind as to abandon the discussion of my aflfairs,
and of Mr. Forde's, and let us talk of the picnic. I say Law-
borough Beeches."
This " I say " was uttered in a tone of authority, unbefitting
a third sister; and Gertrude immediately determined not to
brook any such usurpation ; but it somehow generally happened
that Elizabeth had her own way. She had a happy knack
of suggesting the right thing.
" Lawborough Beeches is a jolly place ! " said Blanche ap-
provingly.
" When will you learn to abandon the use of that odious
nr^eciive ? " cried Gertrade with a shudder. " Lawborough
Beeches is low and damp."
" Well, I'd as soon have it on the moor, and we could have
donkey races and no end of fun."
"Was there ever a girl with such vulgar ideas? Donkey
races ? Imagine Mr. Forde riding a donkey with a piece of
white calico on its back ! And imagine picnicking on the
moor, without a vestige of shade ! A nice blistered state
our faces would be in ! and I should have one of m;^ nervous
headaches," said Diana, who had a kind of copyright in several
interesting ailments of the nervine type.
Lawborough Beeches was a little wood of ancient trees, with
silver-gray trunks and spreading crests; beecnes which had
been pollarded in the days when Cromwell rode rough-shod oyer
the land, and had stretched out their mighty limbs low and wide
in the centuries that had gone by since then. It was a little
wood lying in a green hollow, through which the Tabor
meandered— a silvery stream dear to the soul of the tiy-fisher;
here dark and placid as a lake, under the broad shadow of the
trees ; there flowing with swift current towards the distant weir.
strangers and Pihjrinis. 35
Miss Luttrell acknowledged somewhat unwillingly, after a
good deal of discussion, that the Beeches was perhaps the best
place for the picnic, if the picnic were really a social necessity.
"I must confess that I do not see it in that light," she
said, " and I rather wonder that you should do so, Elizabeth,
now that your mind has been awakened to loftier interests.
'fhe sum which thLs picnic will cost would be a great help to our
blanket club next winter."
Elizabeth pondered for a few moments. Of course she was
anxious to help those poor people who were so fond of her ; but
the winter was a long way off. Providence might increase lier
means in some unthougM-of manner by that time. And the
near delight of a long summer afternoon with Malcolm Forda
imder Lawborough Beeches was very sweet to her. She had
seen so httle of hmi of late. The very change in herself, which
she had fancied would bring them nearer together, seemed to
have only the more divided them. She did not meet him halt
Bo often as in her unregenerate days, when she had been always
strolling in and out of Hawleigh, to change books at the library;
or to buy a new song, or a yard or two of ribbon ; or to look at
the last Paris fashions, which the chief linendraper had just
received — from Plymouth.
" We ought to make some return for people's hospitality," shft
said. " I consider the picnic unavoidable."
So Blanche produced a sheet of foolscap, and began to make
out a formidable list of comestibles : pigeon-pies, chicken-salads,
lobsters, plovers' eggs, galantine of veal, hams, tongues, salmon
en mayonnaise, and so on, with a wild profusion that seems so
easy in pen-and-ink.
" I wish you would not be so officious, Blanche," exclaimed
the eldest Miss Luttrell. " Of course, I shall arrange all those
details with Susan Sims."
Susan Sims was the cook — an important functionary in the
Vicar's household — who managed Miss Luttrell.
" That means that we are to have whatever Susan likes to
give us ! " said Blanche. " You do give way to her so, Gertrude.
I think I'd rather have a bad cook, and one's dinner spoilt occa-
sionally, if one could order just what one hked. However, I
suppose, if I mayn't make out a hst of the dinner, I may make
a list of the people P "
" Yes, you can, if you'll take your inkstand to another table.
Tou've made a blot upon the table-cloth already."
Upon this, the three elder damsels separated to pursue their
divers occupations: Gertrude to hold solemn converse with
Susan Sims ; Diana to practise Mendelssohn's sonatas on the
drawing-room piano; Elizabeth to her district- visiting ; leaving
Blanche wallowing in ink, and swelling with importance, as she
86 Strangers and Pilgrimt.
wrote the names of her father's friends on two separate sheet*
of foolscap — the people who must be invited upon one, the people
who might or might not be invited upon the other.
Mr. Luttrell happened to be at home for luncheon that day —
a privilege which he was not permitted to enjoy more than once
or twice a week — so the sisters were able to moot the question
of the picnic without delay.
The Vicar rubbed his bald forehead thoughtfully, with a per-
plexed sigh.
" I suppose we must do something," he said dolefully. " It's
H long time since we've had a dinner-party ; and if you think
people really like their dinner any better on damp grass, Gertrude,
and with flies dropping into their wine, why, have a picnic by all
means. There's always an immense deal of wine drunk at these
ttffairs, by the way ; young men are so officious, and go opening
bottles on the least provocation. Be sure you remind me to
write and order some of the Ball-supper Champagne and the
Racecourse Moselle we saw advertised the other day."
The matter was settled, therefore, pleasantly enough, and the
invitations were written that afternoon, and distributed before
nightfall by the parsonage gardener or man-of-all-work, Mr.
Forde's invitation among them ; a formal Uttle note in Gertrude's
hand, which he twisted about in his fingers for a long time while
he meditated upon his answer.
Would it do him any good to waste a summer day under Law-
borough Beeches ? He had been working his hardest for some
weeks without relaxation of any kind. He felt that he wanted
rest and ease ; but hardly this species of recreation, which would
involve a great deal of trouble; for he would be required to make
himself agreeable to all manner of people — to carry umbrellas
and camp-stools ; to point out interesting objects in the land-
scape; to quote the county history — and, in fact, to labour assi-
duously for the pleasure of other people. Nor had he ever felt
himself any the better for these rustic pleasures ; considerably
the worse rather, especially when they were shared with Elizabeth
Luttrell.
No; better to waste his day in utter loneliness on the moor,
under the shadow of a mighty tor, with a book lying unread at
his side. Better to give himself a pause of perfect rest, in which
to think out the great problem of his life. For without inordinate
eelf-esteem, Malcolm Forde was a man who deemed that his
existence ought to be of some use to the world, that he was
destined to fill some place in the scheme of creation. He felt
that al-frcsco banquetings and junketings were just the idlest,
most worthless use that he could make of his rare leisure ; and
yet, with very human inconsistency, he wrote to Mifiu Luttrell
i.ext mornini; to accept her kind invitation.
Strangers and Filgrimu 87
CHAPTER IV.
' ' you gods !
Why do you make us love your goodly gifts,
And snatch tbem straight away ? We, here below,
Recall''uot what we give, and therein may
Vie honour with yourselves."
A PERFECT lull in the summer winds, a sultry silence in the air ;
Tabor lying stilly under the beeches, dark and polished as a
mirror of Damascus steel, not a bulrush on its niargent, not a
lily trembling on its bosom. There seemed almost a profanity
in happy talk and laughter in that silent wood, where the great
beeches that were crop-eared by Cromwell spread their gnarled
Umbs under the hot blue sky.
Mr. Luttrell's party, however, do not pause in their mirth to
consider the fitness of things. It boots not them to ask whether
Lawborough Beeches be not a scene more suited to Miltonio
musings than to the consumption of lobster-salad and galantine
de veau. They ask each other for salt, and bread, and bitter
ale, while the lark pierces the toijmost heavens with purest
melody. They set champagne corks flying against the giant
beechen trunks. They revel in clotted cream and syllabub, and
small talk and flirtation, amidst the solemn shadows of that
leafy dell; and then, when they have spent nearly two hours in
a business-like absorption of solids and fluids, or in playing
trifling with the lightest of the viands, as the case may be, the
picnickers abandon the scene of the banquet, and wander away
in little clusters of three or four, or in solitary couples, dispersing
themselves throughout the wood, nay even beyond, to a broad
stretch of rugged heath that borders it on one side, or to the
slope of a hill which shelters it on the other. Some tempt the
dangers of smooth-faced Tabor in Fred Melvin's trim-built
wherry, or in the punt which has conveyed a brace of Oxonians,
James and Horace Elgood, the sons of one of the squires whose
broad pastures border the town of Hawleigh.
Mr. Melvin has been anxious that EHzabeth should trust
herself upon that silver flood.
"You know you're fond of boating," he pleads; "and if you
Haven't seen much of the Tabor this way, it's worth your while
to come. The banks are a picture — no end of flowers—' I know
a bank whereon the wild thyme grows,' and that kind of thing.
One would think Shakespeare had taken his notion from here-
abouts."
" As if the Avon had no thymy banks! " exclaimed Elizabeth
contemptuously. "I don't care aboiit boating this afternoon,
thank you, Mr. Melvin. T am going for a walk."
'CS Strangers and Pilgrims.
She glanced at Malcolm Forde as she spoke, almost plead*
\ngly, as if she would have said, Give me one idle hour or your
life. They had sat apart at the banquet, Gertrude having con-
trived to keep the Curate at her side ; they had travelled from
Hawleigh in different carriages, and had exchanged hardly hall
a dozen sentences up to this stage of the entertainment. It
seemed to Elizabeth as if they were fated never to be together.
Already she began to think the picnic a failure. " I only
wanted it for the sake of being with him," she said to herself
hopelessly.
And here was that empty-headed Fred Melvin worrying her
to go ill his boat, while Malcolm Forde stood by, leaning against
the gray trunk of a pollard willow, hstlessly gazing at the river,
and said never a word.
" Let Forde punt you down the river as far as the weir," cried
one of the Oxonians, coming unconsciously to her relief. " There's
an empty punt lying idle yonder, the one that brought the Towers
party; and Forde was one of the best punters at Oxford."
Mr. Forde had gone up for his degree at a late stage of his
existence, after he left the army, and his repute was known tc
these youngsters.
" There's nothing like a punt in this kind of weather, Miss
Luttrell," said the Oxonian, as he rolled up his shirt-sleeves and
prepared himself to convey a boatload of young ladies in volu-
minous muslin skirts ; " such a nice lazy way of getting along."
He stood up high above his freight, plunged his pole deep
into the quiet water, and skimmed athwart the river with a slow
noiseless motion soothing to see upon a summer afternoon, while
Elizabeth was silently blessing him.
Mr. Forde did at last awake from his reverie.
" Shall I get the punt ? " he asked ; " and will you come ? "
"I should like it of all things," she answered gently. She
was not going to hazard the loss of this perfect happiness by
any ill-timed coquetry. Yes, it was perfect happiness to be with
him. She acknowledged as much as that to herself, if she did
not acknowledge any more.
" I suppose I think so much of him simply because he thinks
nothing of me," she said to herself musingly, while Mr. Forde
had gone a httle way down the bank to fetch the punt.
He came back presently, with his coat off and his sleeves
rolled up like the Oxonian's, skilfully navigating his rude bark
with lengthy vigorous arms that had pulled in the university
eight. It was the first time that Elizabeth had seen him on the
river, and she wondered a little to find him master of this
Becular accomplishment. He brought the broad stem of the
punt against the bank at her feet.
" Wouldn't your sister Blanche like to go with us? " he asked.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 30
lo'ilving round in quest of that youag lady. But Blanche had
guue off in the wheiTy with the Melvin set— Miss Pooley, the
doctor's daughter; the Miss Cumdens, the nch manufactnrer'a
daughters; Captain Danvers, and Mr. Pynscnt. Slirill laughter
sounded from the reedy shores beyond the sharp curve of the
river. Even James Elgood's punt was out of sight. They had
the river all to themselves. Utter loneliness secnied to have
come upon the scene. The sound of that shrill laughter
dwindled and died away, and these two stood alone in the
Bweet summer silence, between sunlight and shadow, on the
brink of deep still Tabor.
Elizabeth lingered on the bank, doubtful whether it would not
be the properer course to wait for some stray reveller to join them
before she took her place in the boat. A tcte-d-tete excursion
with Mr. Forde would entail sundry lectures from Gertrude, a
general sense of disapproval perhaps in her small world. But
Malcolm Forde stretched out his strong arm and calmly handed
her into the punt. It was quite a luxurious kind of boat, as
j)unt3 go, provided with a red cushion on one of the broad
clumsy seats, and a tin vessel for bailing out unnecessary
water.
She seated herself in the stern, and thoy drifted away slowly,
doftly over the still blue water. It was the first time they had
been together, and alone, since the morning when she called
upon him at his lodgings.
For some time there was silence, sweet silence, only broken by
the hum of insect life around them, and the skylark's song in
the clear vault above. The navigation of a puut is not a very
difficult business ; but it requires some attention, and Tabor's
windings involved some small amount of care in the navigation.
This made a fair excuse for i\Ir. Forde's silence, and ElizaLelli
was content — content to watcli the dark thoughtful face, the
firmly-cut profile, the deep gray eyes, grave almost to severity ;
content to ponder on his life, wondering if it were hard work
and careful thought for others thtit had blanched the ruddier
tints from his somewhat sunken cheek, or whether he was by
nature pale; wondering if that grave dignity, which made him
different from the common race of curates, wpre << earnest of
future eminence, if he were verily liorn to greatness, an^ a
bishopric awaiting him in the duys to come; wondering iJly
about this thing aud that, her iancies playing rour.d him, like
the flickering shadows on his figure as the boat shot under
the trees, and she supremely content to be in his company.
Eerhaps, since she had more than all a woman's faults and
weaknesses, it may have been some gratification to her to con-
sider that this boating excursion would occasion some jealous
twinges in the wrll-crdered mind of her eldest sister.
4U Strangers and Pilgrims.
** Gertrude has such a way of appropriating people," she saii
to herself, "and I really believe Mr. Forde considers her a
paragon."
The navigation grew easier by-and-by, as Tabor became less
weedy. The banks, now high and broken, now sloping gently,
were rich in varying beauty; but it was not of wild flowers or
shivering rushes that Elizabeth thought in that slow summer
voyage. The banks slid by like j^ictures gently shifting as she
looked; now a herd of lazy kine, fetlock deep in the odorous
after-math, and then a little copse of ancient hawthorn, and
then a silveiy creek darkly shadowed here and there by drooping
willows that had grown aslant the stream. She was faintly
consciows of these things, and felt a vague delight in them ; but
her thoughts were all of Malcolm Forde.
" Did you ever hear that story of Andrew Marvell's father? "
he said at last, breaking that lazy silence which had seemed
only a natural element of the warm summer afternoon.
There was a straight stretch of water now before him ; so he
laid down his jiole, and seated himself in the bows with a pair
of sculls. " He was a Hull man, yow. know, and a clergyman,
and was going across the Humber to marry a couple in Lincoln-
shire. He was seized with a strange presentiment on stepping
into the boat, and flung his walking-stick ashore, crying, ' Ho,
for heaven ! ' The presage was not a false one, for old Marvell
was drowned. The story came into my mind just now, when we
left the bank, and I couldn't help feeling that it would be a
pleasant way of solving the problem of life to shoot mid-stream
at random, crying out, ' Ho, for heaven ! ' like that old puritac
parson."
" It would be very nice if heaven could be reached so easily,"
said Elizabeth, who had a feeling that for her the pilgrimage
from this world tr a better one must needs be difiicult. She
had never yet felt herself heavenly-minded; of the earth, earthy
rather, with mimdane longings for an opera-box and a barouche-
and-pair.
" But I did not think you were tired of life, Mr. Forde," she
added, after a little pause.
"ISloi «xa?tlv tired, but at times perplexed. I sometimeL
doubt whether I am doing much good in Hawleigh — whether,
indeed, I am doing anything that a man of less energy and
ambition might not do just as well."
" You feel like an eagle doing the work of a crow," she
answered, smiling. " I can fancy that Hawleigh must seem a
narrow field for you. When you have persuaded people to de«
corate the churches, and attend the early services, and taught the
choir to sing a little better, and bought surplices for the boys, it
eeems as if there was nothing left for you to do. I should think in
Strangers and Pilgrims. 41
a populous seaport, now, wliere there are narrow streets and a
great many wicked people, you would have a wider sphere."
" There might be more to do in a place of that kind," he said
thoughtfully. " It wouldn't seem quite so much like a gardcner'a
work in a trim smooth garden, always going over the same flower-
beds, dragging up a little weed here and there, or cutting a
withered branch. But that is not my dream. The field ot
action that I have thought about and longed for lies far away
from England."
He was looking, not at Elizabeth, but above her head, along
the shining river, as if he did indeed with his bodily eyes be-
hold that wider land, that distant world of which he spoke.
Elizabeth grew pale with horror.
" You surely don't mean that you have ever thought of turn-
ing missionary ? " she exclaimed.
" That has been my thought sometimes, when my work here
has seemed wasted labour."
She was inexpressibly shocked. The very idea was disagi-ee-
able to her. There was even a kind of commonness, in hei
mind, in the image of a missionary. She imagined him a Low
Church person, not very far removed from a dissenter, a mar
who let his hair grow long and was indifferent as to the fashion o .
his garments; such a man as she had heard hold forth, in short
trousers and thick boots, at a meeting for the propagation of
the Gospel. She did not imagine that the commonness was
in her own mind, which could not perceive the width and gran-
deur in that sublime idea of gathering all the nations into one
Hock. It had never occurred to her that South Sea Islanders
were of any importance in the scheme of creation, that univer-
sity men in this privileged quarter of the globe owed any duty
to dusky heathens dancing strange dances in distant groves of
palm and breadfruit trees under a hot blue sky.
" 0, I hope you will never think of such a desperate thing,"
she said with a little piteous look that touched him strangely.
" It seems a kind of moral suicide."
" Say rather a second birth," he answered : " the beginning of
a new and wider life — a life worth living."
" You must care very little for any one on this side of tha
world, when you can talk so calmly of going to the other."
" I have very few to care for," he replied gravely. " My
family ties are represented by a bachelor uncle in Aberdeenshire
— a grim old man, who firms a wild sheep-walk of five thousand
acres or so, and lives in a lonely homestead, where he hears few
sounds except the lowing of his kiue and the roar of the
German Ocean. I tbmk 1 am just the right kind of man for a
missionary ; and if j ou knew the story of my life, and the cir-
cumstance that led to my change of profession, I fancy you
would agree with va( ."
42 Stranrjers and Pilgrims.
" But I know nothing of your life," Elizabeth cried im«
patiently. She was unreasonably angry with him for this mis-
sionary project, almost as angry as if it had been a deliberate
wrong done to herself. " You came to us a stranger, and you
have remained a stranger to us, though you have been at
Hawleigh more than a year. You are so reserved — not like
papa's other curates, who were only too glad to pour out their
inmost feelings, as it were. I'm sure I knew every detail of Mr.
Dysart's family — his papa's opinions, his mamma's little pecu-
liarities, the colour of all his sisters' hair, even the history oi
the gentlemen to whom the sisters were engaged. AnditVaa
almost the same with Mr. Horton. Mr. Adderley was fonder of
prosing about himself than his surroundings, and I don't think
the poor young man ever had an idea in his rather narrow brain
that he did not impart to us."
" You see I am not of so communicative a disposition," said
Mr. Forde, smiling; "and when there has been one great sor-
row in a life, as there has in mine, it is apt to assume an un-
natural proportion to the rest, and obscure all minor details. I
had a great loss five years before I came to Hawleigh. I Jiava
often been inclined to tell you all about it, especially of late,
since I have seen your character in its most amiable light. But
these things are painfril to speak of, and my loss was a very
bitter one."
" You are speaking of the death of your mother? " inquired
EUzabeth, trembling a little, with a strange sharp dread.
"No; my mother died fifteen years ago. That loss waa
bitter, but it was one for which I had been long prepared. The
latter loss was utterly unexpected, and shattered the very fabric
of my life."
" I should like to hear about it," said Elizabeth, her face bent
over the water, one idle hand drawn loosely through the tide.
"I am assured that you are kind and sympathetic," he said,
" or I should never have touched upon this subject. I never had
a sister, and perhaps on that account have not acquired the
habit of confession. But — but — " very slowly, and with a curioua
hesitation, " I think I should like to talk to you — about her.
About AHce Eraser, the woman who was to have been my wife."
The face bent over the river flushed crimson, the little whito
hand shivered in the tide ; but Elizabeth spoke no word.
"When I went to India with my regiment — it was just after the
Mutiny — I left my promised wife behind me. We were old friends,
had been playfellows even, though the little Scottish lassie was
seven years younger than I. She was the daughter of a Scotch
parson, a mm of noble mind and widest reading, and the best
friend and •'■•.Hsellor I ever had. I will not try to tell you
what she v^.t >fce. To me she seemed perfection, pretty enough
t<> eo charm-.", fu^ -"'viqhtness and vivacity, yet with a derth
Strangers and Pilfjrimt. 43
and earnestness in her nature, that made me — her senior by seven
years — feel that here was a staff to lean upon through all the
iourney of life. I cannot tell you how I revered this girl ot'
nineteen. You will perhaps think that she was self-opinionated,
or what people call strong-minded ; but there was never a more
simple unassuming nature. She had been educated by her
father, and on a wider plan than the common scheme of a
woman's teaching. Of late years she had shared his studies,
and had been his chosen companion in every hour of leisure.
Of her goodness to the people round about her I cannot trust
myself to speak. Her memory is cherished in Lanorgie as the
memory of a saint. I doubt if, among all who knew her well
in that simple flock, there is one who could speak of her even
now without t>ears."
He paused for some few minutes, perhaps lost in thought, re-
calling that remote Scottish village, and the sweet girlish face
that had been the delight of his life six years ago. The oars
dipped gently in the river, the boat glided on with imperceptible
motion, and EUzabeth sat silent with her face still bent over the
water, dragging the long green river-weeds through her cold
white fingers.
" She had the very sHghtest Scottish accent — an accent that
gave a plaintive tone to her voice, like music in a minor key.
She was slender and fragile, just about the middle height, very
fair but very pale, with soft brown hair — the sort of woman a
painter would choose for Imogen or Ophelia; not an objective
nature, strongly marked with its own individuality ; subjective
rather, yet strong enough to resist all evil. ^ bad husband
might have broken her heart, but he would never have sullied
her mind."
He stopped again, laid down his sculls, and drew the boat
under the reedy bank. EUzabeth was obliged to look up now.
The little gray straw hat with its convenient shadow hid the
change in her face, in some measure; but not entirely, for
Mr. Forde observed that she was very pale.
*' I fear you are tired," he said, " or that my dreary talk has
wearied you."
" No, no ; go on. She must have been very good."
" She had less of humanity's alloy than any creature I ever
knew," he answered. " I used to think that it would be a
privilege for any man — the best evcci —to spend his life in her
company. There was one subio".^. I'liat gave her great pain, anii
that was the fact of my pro^oigica. To her gentle spirit there
was something horrible in j .jOidier's career. She could not ace
the nobler side of my calli..^. And I loved her too well to hoM
by anything that gave her pain. I promised her that I would
sell out immediately on my return from ^"r.«ign service, u-sd
l:ept my wc»d "
44 ' Strangers and JBilgnnts.
" It was not of your own accord, then, that you left the
army ? " asked Elizabeth absently, as if only half her brain
were following his words.
" No, it was entirely to please Alice. I sacrificed my own
inclinations in the matter. That conviction which has become
the very keystone of my life since then is a faith that grew out
of my great sorrow. I cannot tell you the rest of the stoiy too
briefly. I went back to Lanorgie a free man. I was to be a
farmer — a country gentleman on a small scale — anything Alice
pleased, in the district where I was born. My sweet girl was to
live for ever among the i^eople she loved. Our life was to be
Arcadian — a pastoral poem. We were both very happy. I can
safely declare that there was not left in my mind one spark of
mankind's common desire of success or distinction. The long
calm years stretched themselves out before me in sweet event-
less happiness."
" You must have loved her very much ? "
" If you could measure my love by the change it made in
me, you would have good reason to say so. I had been as eager
as other young men for name, position, wealth, jjleasure — per-
haps even more eager. But Alice's love filled my mind with a
great content. She made herself the sun of my life. I desired
nothing beyond the peaceful circle of the home that she and I
were to share together. "Well, Miss Luttrell," — this with a
sudden abruptness, as if the words were wrenched from him, —
" it was a common trouble enough when it came. Our wedding-
day was fixed; her old father, every one was happy. The last
touch had been 43ut to our new home ; a house I had built for
my darling upon a hill-side facing the sea, on my own land.
Everything was arranged — our honeymoon trip southwards to
the Cumberland lakes had been planned between us on the map
one sweet summer evening. We parted at her father's door ;
she a little graver than usual — but that seemed natural on the
threshold of so great a change. When I went to the manse
next morning, they told me that she was not quite well — that
her father's old friend, the village doctor, recommended her to
keep her room for a day or two, and to see no one. She had
had a little too much excitement and fatigue lately. I re-
23roached myself bitterly for our long walks on the hills and by
the rugged sea-shore we both loved so well. AH she wanted was
perfect rest.
" They kept me off like this for nearly a week ; now confessing
reluctantly that she was not quite 60 well ; now cheering me
with the assurance that she was better. Then one morning I
heard they had sent to Glasgow for a physician. After that, I
insisted upon seeing her.
" She did not know me. I stood beside her bed, and the
sweet blue eyes looked up at me, but she was unconscious. Th«
Strangers and FiJfjrims. 45
physician acknowledged that it was a case of typhoid fever.
Tliere was very little ground for hope. Yet we did hope —
blindly — to the last. I telegraphed for other doctors. But we
tould not save her. She died in my arms at daybreak on the
day that was to have seen us married.
" I will not speak of the dead blank that followed her death—
of the miserable time in which I could think of nothing but the
one fact of my, loss. The time came at last when I could think of
her more calniy, and then I^et myself to consider what I could
do, now she was gone, to ^ove that I had loved her — what
tribute I could render to my dead. It was then I thought of
entering the Church— of devoting myself, so far as in me lay, to
the good of others — of leading such a Hfe as she would have
blessed. That is the origin of all I have done, of all I hope to
do. That is the end of my story, Miss Luttrell. I trust I have
not tired you very much. I thought we should be better friends,
if you knew more about my past."
" I am very glad," she jmswered gently. _" I have sometimes
fancied there must be something in your life, some sorrowful
memory: not that there has ever seemed anything gloomy in
your character ; but you are so much more in earnest, altogether
BO unlike papa'o other curates."
A faint blush ht up the pale face as she said this, remembering
that he differed most widely from these gentlemen in his total
inability to appreciate herself.
Yes, she had fancied there was some bitter memory in hia
fast, but not this. His confidence had strangely shocked her.
t was inexpressibly painful to her to discover that his love — and
60 profound, a love — had all been lavished upon another woman
years ago ; that were she, Elizabeth Luttrell, twice as lovely,
twice as fascinating as she was, she could never be anything to
him. He had chosen his type of womanly perfection ; he had
giveq away all the feeling, all the passion that it was in him to
give, long before he had seen her face.
" Did he suppose that — that I was beginning to think too
much of him," she said to herself, blushing indignantly, "and
tell me this story by way of a warning ? O, no, no ! his manner
was too straightforward for that. He thinks that I am good,
thinks that I am able to sympathise with him, to pity him, to
be sorry for that dead girl. And I am not. I think I am
jealous of her in her grave."
The boat glides softly on. They come to a curve in the river,
and to Mr. iielvin'a party returning noisily.
" You are not going to take Miss Ehzabeth any farther, ar«
you?" cries Frederick. " "We are going back to tea. How slow
you've been ! We went as far as the Bells, and had some
»handy-gafiEl"
46 Strangers and Pilgrims.
•
Mr. Forde turned his clumsy bark, and all tte voyage back
was noisy with the talk of the Melvtn party and the Oxonians'
punt-load of vivacious humanity. They were all in holiday
spirits, laughing on the faintest provocation, at the smallest
imaginable jokes. Elizabeth thought it the most dismal busi-
ness. AU the sunshine was taken out of her afternoon ; Tabor
seemed a sullen stream flowing between flat weedy banks. But
fihe could not afi'ord to let other people perceive her depression
— Mr. Forde above all. She was^obliged to affect amusement
at those infinitesimal jokes, those stale witticisms, while she was
thinking all the time of that thrice-blessed woman whom
]\Ialcolm Forde had loved, and who had timely died while his
passion was yet in its first bloom and freshness.
" I daresay if she had gone on living he would have been tired
of her by this time," she said to herself in a cynical mood,
" She would have been his wife of ever so many years' standing,
with a herd of small children, perhaps, on her mind, and just as
commonplace as all the wives one knows — women whose in-
tellects hardly soar above nursemaids and pinafores. How
much better to be a sacred memory of his life than a prosaic
fact in his everyday existence ! "
After this, Ehzal^eth felt as if she could have no more
pleasure in Malcolm Forde's society. Her selfish soul revolted
against the idea that the memory of his dead was more to him
than any favour her friendship could bestow, that she waa
divided from him by the width of a grave.
" I wish his Alice had lived, and he stayed among his native
hills with the rest of the Scotch barbarians," she said to herself.
" 1 don't think I've been qiaite happy since I've known him.
He makes one feel such a contemptible creature, with has grand
ideas of what a woman ought to be ; and then, after one has
tried one's hardest to be good against one's very nature, he
coolly informs one that there never was but one perfect woman
in the world, and that she lies among the Scottish hills with hir
heart buried in her grave."
CHAPTER V.
• * Well, you may, you must, set down to me
Love that was life, life that was Icve ;
A tenure of breath at your lips' decree,
A passion to stand as your thoughts approve,
A rapture to fall where your foot might be."
The gipsy-tea went off" brilliantly. The fuel-collecting and fir©-
makinpr and kettle-boiUng aff'orded ampL? sport for those wilder
Strangers and Pilgrimg. 4lt
ajd more youthfnl spirits whose capacity for flirtation was not
yet cxhansted. Fred JMelvin belonged to that harmless class of
young men who, although in the dull round of daily life but
moderately gifted, shine forth with unexpected lustre on such
an occasion as this, and prove themselves what their friends cail
"an acquisition." He fanned life and light into a hopelessly
obstinate fire, with his straw hat for an extemporaneous bellows ;
he showed a profound knowledge of engineering in his method
of placing the kettle on the burning logs, so as not immediately
to extinguish the flames he had just coaxed into being.
" I don't think there was anything so very wonderful i^i
Watt inventing the steam-engine," said Miss Melvin, standing
by and admiring her brother's dexterity ; " I believe Fred would
have been quite as likely to hit upon it, if it hadn't been done
before his time."
They drank tea in little scattered groups: the elders fore-
gathering in small knots to talk scandal or parish business, or
to indulge in mild jeremiads upon the frivolity and gener£c
empty-headedness of the rising generation, their own sons ana
daughters and nephews and nieces not excepted ; the juniors to
disport themselves after their kind with inexhatistible nothings,
vapid utterances which filled the soul of Elizabeth with con-
tempt.
She carried her teacup away to a lonely little bit of bank
where the rushes on the shelving shore grew high enough to
screen her from the rest of the company, and sat here alone,
absorbed in languid contemplation of the quiet water and all the
glories of the sunset reflected on that smooth tide.
Fred Melvin, seeing the white dress vanishing beyond the
trees, would fain have gone in pursuit, but the Luttrell sistera
prevented him.
" Elizabeth has one of her headaches, I daresay," said Diana.
" It would be no use going after her."
" One of her tempers, you mean, Di," exclaimed Blanche with
sisterly candour. " That's always the way with Lizzie if every-
thing doesn't happen exactlj^ as she wants it to happen. I think
she would like a world made to order, on purpose for her."
" I hope we haven't done anything to offend her," cried the
anxious Frederick, whose adoration of "the beauty," as chief
goddess of his soul, had never suffered diminution, not even
when he amused himself by offering his homage at lesser
shrines. " Perhaps she didn' t like our going off in the boat
without her; but it really couldn't have held so much as a
lap-dog beyond our load."
" As if anything you could do would offend her ! " exclaimed
the impetuous Blanche, always ready to rebuke Mr. Melvin 's vain
passion. " Do you think she wanted to come in our boat ? She
48 Strangers and Pilgrims.
would have given lier ears for that tete-a-tete row with Mr. Fordo,
caily I suppose it didn't answer."
"Blanche, how can you be so absurd!" cried Gertrude.
" If you don't learn to behave yourself with common decency,
we really must leave you at home in the nursery another time,"
eaid Diana.
Mr. Forde was happily beyond the hearing of this little
explosion. He was in infinite request among the matrons of the
party, who all regarded him more or less as a modern St.
Francis de Sales, and who gave him not a little trouble by their
insistence upon communicating small facts relating to their
spiritual progress ; little sentimental gushes of feeling which he
did his best to check, his ideas of his duty being of the broadest
and grandest character. He would rather have had the conver-
sion of all the hardened or remorseful felons at Portland or
Dartmoor on his hands than those gushing matrons and senti-
•aiental spinsters, who could not travel the smallest stage of
their journey towards the heavenly Jerusalem without being
propped and sustained by him.
Nor was it pleasant to listen to little laments about the Vicar.
" A kind, generous-minded man, Mr. Forde, and very good to the
poor, I believe, in his own careless way, — but so unspiritual !
We hardly knew what light was till you came among us." And
so on, and so on. He was glad to slip away from the elder tea-
drinkers, and stroll in and out among the giant beech boles,
with the gay sound of youthful laughter and happy idle talk
filling the atmosphere around him.
He Hngered to say a few words to Gertrude Luttrell and her
party, and then looked round the circle curiously, as if missing
some one.
" I don't see your sister," he said at last, " Miss Elizabeth."
Miss Luttrell coloured furiously.
" Lizzie has strayed off somewhere," she said. " She appears
to prefer the company of her own thoughts to our society.
Perhaps had she known you would express so much anxiety
about her she would have stayed."
" I am not pai-ticularly anxious," replied Mr. Forde, with hia
thoughtful smile, a smile which lent sudden life and brightness
to the dark grave face. " Only I have it on my conscience that
I kept your sister on the river a long while under a blazing sun,
and I feared she might be too tired to enjoy herself with the
rest of you. Can I take her a cup of tea? "
" I don't think I would if I were you," cried Fred Melvin, who
»^as in a picturesque altiiude, half kneeling, half reclining at
the feet of Blanche Luttrell, while his cousin, Jane llarrisou, for
whom there was some dim notion of his ripening into a husband
by-and-by, sat looking nn ■^'\\h. an aggrieved air. " I took her
Strangers and Pilgrims. 49
a second cup just now," grumbled Fred, " and very nearly got
my nose snapped off for my pains."
Not an encouraging statement ; but Mr. Forde was not afraid
of any attacks upon his nose : was not that feature in a manner
sanctified by his profession, and the very high rate at which the
curate race is held two hundred and fifty miles from London P
He was in nowise deterred by Mr. Melvin's plaint, but went otf
at once in quest of Elizabeth.
" I saddened her with that melancholy story," he thought.
" Perhaps I ought not to have told her. Yet I think she is the
kind of woman a man might dare to choose out of all other
women for his friend. I think she is of a different stuff from
the rest of Hawleigh womankind. She has shown herself
superior to them all in her power to win the love of the poor.
And we could never be friends until she knew my story, and
knew that the word ' love ' has been blotted from the book of
my Ufe."
It was a new fancy of Mr. Forde's this desire that there
should really be friendship— something more than the every-day
superficial acquaintance engendered by church decoration and
croquet — between himself and Elizabeth Luttrell. It was not
to be in the slightest degree sentimental — the popular platonic
idea. The Madame-Recamier-and-Chateanbriand kind of thing
had never entered into his thoughts, nor did he mean that they
should see any more of each other than they had done hereto-
fore ; only that there should be confidence and trust between
them instead of strana-eness.
He found her presently on Her lonely bank by the Tabor,
seated in a thoughtful attitude, and casting little turfs of mosa
and lady's-slipper idly upon the tide. She had arrayed herself
with a studied simplicity for this rustic gathering; perhaps fully
conscious that she was one of the few women who can afford to
dispense with frillings and pufiings and ruchings— the whola
framework of beauty, as it were. She wore a plain white muslin
gown, high to the throat, round which she had tied a dark-blua
ribbon — the true Oxford blue, almost black against the ivory-
white of her neck. The long dark ribbon made a rippling line
to the perfect waist; perfect in its exquisite proportion to the
somewhat full and stately figure — the waist of a Juno rather
than a sylph. Her head was uncovered, and the low sunlight
lit up all the bronze tints in her dark brown hair, shone, too, in
the luminous grey eyes, fixed dreamily upon the gleaming water.
Mr. Forde stood for a few moments a little way off", admiring
her — simply as he would have admired a picture, of course.
His footsteps made a faint rustling among the rushes as he
came nearer to her. She looked round suddenly, and all her
Ikce Hushed crimson at sight of him.
60 Strangers and Pilgrims.
That blush would have elevated Fred Melvin to the seventh
heaven ; but Malcolm Forde was no coxcomb, and did not attri-
bute the heightened tint to any magical power of his own. She
was nervous, perhaps, and he had startled her by his sudden
ajjproach ; or she might be indeed, as her friends had suggested,
a httle out of temper, and annoyed at being tracked to her
lair.
" Don't be angry with me for disturbing your solitary musings,
Miss Elizabeth," he said, very much detesting the ceremonial
Miss ; " but I really don't think you're enjoying your father's
picnic quite so much as you ought, for your own satisfaction
and that of your friends "
" I hate picnics," she an s«Fered peevishly ; " and if papa gives
one next year, I'U have nothing to do with it. I'm sure I
wish I'd stayed in Hawleigh and gone to see my poor people.
I should have been much happier sitting by Mrs. Jones's wash-
tub, or reading to Mrs. Brown while she mended her husband's
Btockings."
" If you speak like that, I shall think I spoiled your pleasure
by that egotistical talk in the boat."
She only shook her head and looked away from him at a dis-
tant curve of the river. There was an awkward sensation of
eemi-strangulation in her throat. For her very life she could
not have answered him. Yes, it was a bitter disapj^ointment
to discover that he had flung away his heart before he came to
Hawleigh ; that he was a kind of widower, and pledged never to
tiarry again.
" I am so sorry that I told you that story. Of course it was
JO fitting time. I was a brute not to have thought of that ;
but we so rarely have time for a confidential talk, and I have
been so much interested in your work lately, so much pleased by
your hearty manner of taking up a duty which I know did at
first seem uncongenial to you, and I was anxious that we should
be friends. Pray do not let the gloom of my past life weigh
upon your spirits even for an hour. It was a most ill-advised
confession. Try to forget that it was ever made."
Silence still, and the head turned obstinately towards tho
river. Was it temper ? or compassion for another's woes more
profound than he had dreamed of ?
" Say, at least, that you forgive me for having depressed
you."
Still no answer in words, but a hand stretched out towards
his, a hand chiU as death.
" Let me take you back to your friends," he said, alarmed by
the cold touch of that little hand, which he clasped for a moment
with a friendly pressure and then let fall. " I shall not forgive
niyaelf till I see you haPDv with the others."
Strangers and Pilgrims. 51
She rose slowly and took the arm which he offered her. That
choking sensation had been conquered by this time, and she
was able to answer him quite calmly.
" Pray don't distress yourself about me," she said ; " I am
very glad that you told me your story, that you think me worthy
of your confidence."
He took her back to the cii-cle under the Beeches. Cups and
saucers were being gathered up, the bustle of preparation for
departure had begun. Wagonette, omnibus, and dogcart stood
ready for the homeward journey, and the usual discussions and
disputes as to the mode and manner of return were going on :
elderly spinsters languishing to travel on the roof of the omni-
bus, and prote.sting their aliection for the perfume of cigars ;
fastish young ladies pleading for the same privilege ; and all tlie
male kind thinly disguising the leaven of selfishness that waj
in them, and the desire to appropriate the roof to their own
accommodation, by an affected solicitude as to the hazard ol
cold-catching.
«' We ought to have had a dance," grumbled Blanche; "it
would have been the easiest thing in the world to bring a couple
of men with a harp and a fiddle, but I suppose it would have
been considered unclerical. It would have been so nice. We
should have fancied ourselves fairies tripping lightly under the
greenwood tree. I declare it seems quite a shame to go home
so early — ^just when the air is pleasantest, and all the stars are
beginning to peep out of their nests in the sky — as if we were a
children's tea-party."
The fiat, however, had gone forth, the vehicles were ready,
the fogy-ish element in the pai-ty eager to depai-t before dewa
began to fall, and toads, bats, owls, spiders, and other rustic
horrors to pervade the scene ; the juvenile population loth to
go, yet eager for the excitement of the return journey, with all
its opportunities for unlimited flirtation.
Fred Melvin was the proud proprietor of the dogcart, a con-
veyance usually apijroprialed to the uses of his father — the
family carriage, in short — which, if it had only possessed one of
those removable Amencan-oven tops pojjular in the rural dis-
tricts would liave even done duty for a brougham. Urged
thereto by his sister, and with considerable reluctan..;<;, the
young sohcitor entreated Mr. Forde, who had come on the box
of the omnibus, to accept a seat in his chariot — a variety
in the mode of return being esteemed a privilege by the
picnickers.
" Mr. Forde won't want to go back on the omnibus, I dare-
say, Fred," argued Laura Melvin. " You might as well offer
him a seat in the dogcart."
To which suggestion Frederick growled that he wanted no
52 Strangers c^ Pilgrims.
parsons, and that he was going to ask one of the Liittrell
girls.
" You can ask one of the Miss Luttrells, too, Fred. There'll
only be you and me and Mr. Forde, Jenny's going home
inside the omnibus. She has a touch of her neuralgia ; and I
don't wonder, poor girl, you've been flirting so shamefully with
Blanche Luttrell. I wonder how a girl hardly out of pinafores
can go on so."
So Fred went away to offer the vacant seats ; first to Mr.
Ford», with reluctant politeness.
"You don't like too much smoke, I daresay, and those
fellows on the 'bus will be smoking like so many factory
chimneys every inch of the way. You'd better have your quiet
cigar in my trap."
" You're very good. I don't like bad tobacco, certainly ; and
the odours I enjoyed coming were not by any means the
perfumes of Arabia. But are you sure I shall not be in
\he way ? "
" 0, you won't be in the way. I am going to ask Lizzie
Luttrell, and that'll make up the four."
Mr. Fordo winced at this familiar mention of the damsel in
whom he had permitted himself to become interested; but that
kind of familiarity is a natural attribute of brothers in their
intercourse with their sisters' friends. "A different race, these
provincial brothers, from the rest of mankind," Mr. Forde
thought.
" I'm going to ask her," repeated Frederick, as he tightened
the chestnut mare's kicking-strap, " but I don't suppose she'll
come, unless her temper's undergone some improvement since I
took her that cup of tea."
Elizabeth Luttrell drew nigh at this moment, in grave con-
verse with a little silver-headed gentleman, the ancient banker
of Hawleigh.
To Mr. Melvin's surprise, she accepted his offer with extreme
graciousness.
" I hke a dogcart above all things," she said, " especially if I
may sit behind. I do so like the excitement of the sensation
that one will be jerked off if the horse shies."
But against this Fred protested vehemently.
"You must sit next the driver," he said; "La^ara din sit
behind with Mr. Forde. Not that Bess ever shies, but you must
have the post of honour."
" Then I'll go home in the omnibus," said Lizzie; "I know
riding behind always makes Laura nervouB."
Miss Melvin, pressed hard upon this point, acknowledged that
the jerky sensation which was pleasant to Elizi..beth's bolder
spirit was eminently appalling to herself. So Elizabeth had
Strangers and Pilijrims. 53
her own wa}', and occupied the back seat of the dogcart, witt
Mr. Forde by her side.
The journey back to Hawleigh was a ten-mile drive through
west-country lanes, bordered by steep banks and tall tangled
hedges that shut out the landscape, except for those privileged
travellers on the roof of the omnibus. Only now and then did
the dogcart emerge from the shadow of hawthorn and wood-
bine, wild rose and wild apple, into the moonlit open country ;
but the odour of those leafy lanes was sweet, and beyond
them, far away in the soft silver light, spread fair hill-sides
and wooded slopes, and brief flashes of the winding river.
It only lasted an hour and a quarter, that homeward
journey, the dogcart keeping well ahead of the heavier vehicles,
and Bess the mare performing the distance in so superior a
manner as almost to justify that pride in her which was one of
the chief articles of faith in the household code of the Melvins.
Elizabeth would have thought better of the animal had she
loitered a little on the way. Not often could she enjoy a
moonlight tete-a-tete with Mr. Forde — for it mattered little that
Fred interjected his trivial little remarks every now and then
across Miss Luttrell's shoulder; not often had he unbent to her
as he unbent to-night, talking to her as if she were verily in
some measure a ])art of his inner life, and not a mere accident
in the outer world around him. That confession of his past
soiTows seemed really to have brought them a little closer to-
gether, and Elizabeth began to think there might indeed be
such a thing as friendship between them ; friendship that
would brighten the dull round of district-visiting, sweeten all
her hfe, and yet leave her free to dream her favourite day-dream
of a wealthy marriage in the days to come ; a splendid position
won suddenly by her beauty ; a swift and easy translation to a
land flowing with silks and laces and all kinds of Parisian mil-
linery; a little heaven here below in the way of opera-boxes
and races and flower-shows and moruLiig concerts; while Mr.
Forde remained at liberty to fulfil that scheme of a monkish
life which he had in his own quiet manner avowed to his more
familiar friends of the district-visiting class.
" And perhaps some day, after I am married, he will really
go to the South-Sea Islands, or the centre of Africa, as a mis-
sionary," she thought, with a little regretful sigh ; " and years
afterwards, when I am middle-aged and his hair is growing gray,
he will come back to England as Bishop of Tongataboo, or some
fearful place, and I shall hear him preach a charity sermon at a
fashionable London church."
It seemed hardly worth her while to be sorry about so remote a
contingency; but she could not help feeling a pang at the
thought that this part of her vision was the most likely to be
64 Strangers and Pilgrims.
realised; that whether the hypothetical baronet, with thirt;^
thousand a year, did or did not appear upon the narrow sceiia
of her life, Malcolm Forde would spi-ead his pinions and soai
away to a wider field than this small provincial town.
The dogcart arrived at the gate of Hawleigh Vicarage quite
half an hour in advance of the other vehicles. It was past ten
o'clock, and rare lights burned dimly in the uf)per casements o.
the houses that wei-e scattered here and there along the high-
road on this side of the town, the more exclusive and suburban
quarter, adorned by the trim gotliic lodges of the villas that
half aspired to be country seats. The vicarage servants — Ann
the sometime nurse and general factotum, Susan the coolc,
Rebecca the housemaid, and Jakes, the man-of-all-work — were
clustered at the gate, waiting to witness the return of the pic-
nickers, as more sophisticated domestics might stand at gaze to
Bee all the drags and wagonettes and hansom cabs of the
famous Derby pilgrimage file slowly past Clapham-common.
"You'll come in, won't you, Laura?" said Elizabeth, who
did not wish her evening to close abruptly with brief farewells
at the gate. " Jakes can take care of your horse, Mr. Melvin ,
You'll wait for papa, won't you Mr. Forde, and to say good-
night to every one P "
" If you are sure that you are not tired, and would be glad to
get rid of us and go in and rest," said Mr. Forde doubtfully.
" I am not in the least tired. I feel more in the humour to
begin a picnic than I did at one o'clock to-day. Why, in
London fashionable people are only just beginning to go out to
parties ! We seem to cut off" the best end of our lives in the
country with our stupid humdrum habits. Don't you think the
night is best, Mr. Forde ? "
" For study, I admit."
" 0, for pleasure, for everything ! " cried Elizabeth impatiently.
" I feel another creature at night, out of doors, in summer
moonlight like this. There is a kind of intoxication : one's soul
seems to soar away into clearer air, into dreamland. What
would dancing be like at eleven o'clock in the morning, or at
three on a sultry afternoon? Why, it would seem perfect
lunacy ! But at night, with o^sen windows, and the moonlight
outside, and the scent of the flowers blowing in from the garden,
it is simply rapture, because we are not quite the same people,
you see, towards midnight. For my own part, on a summer
evening I always feel as if I had wings." She said this in a
rapid excited tone, as if this particular moonlight had indeed
produced an abnormal effect upon her spirits.
They had all strolled into the garden, Frederick having reluc-
tantly committed the mare to the man-of-all-work. Mr. Forde
was walking bc^^weeu the two young ladies, Miss Melvin feeling
Strangers and Pilgrims. 55
that it was mere foolishness to hope for any attention from a
curate while Elizabeth ran on in that wild and almost dis-
reputable way of hers, not in the least like a well-brought-up
young lady. But then it was a well-known fact that the
Luttrell girls had received only a desultory training, not the
regular old-established boarding-school grinding: but sometimes
a morning governess, and sometimes an interregnum of inter-
mittent instruction from their father; sometimes masters for
music and drawing, sometimes nothing at all. They were all
clever girls, of course, said the genteel matrons of Hawleigh, or
they could hardly have grown up as well as they had ; but they
had not enjoyed the advantages of the orthodox discipline for
the youthful mind, and the consequences of this irregular
education cropped up occasionally. The girls had read ahnost
what they liked, and had stronger opinions than were becoming
in a vicar's daughters.
To Laura Mc'lvin's gratified surprise, Mr. Forde did not take
any notice of Ehzabeth's tirade about moonlight, but turned to
her, Laura, and began to question her politely respecting her
enjoyment of the day, while Fred, eager to snatch his oppor-
tunity, flew to Elizabeth.
" Didn't Bess do the ten miles well? " he asked by way of a
lively beginning, quite prepared to have his advances ill received.
But Elizabeth was still under the intoxication of the moon-
light. She was a person of singularly variable spirits, and the
sullen gloom that had come upon her after that interview in the
boat had now changed to a reckless vivacity.
"The drive was delightful," she said. "I should like U
scamper all over Devonshire and Cornwall in such a dogcart,
with just such a horse, stopping at all manner of wild places, and
being benighted, and camping on the moors. What a mistake
it is to live all one's life shut up between four walls, in the same
place, with no more variety from year's end to year's end than a
fortnight in seaside lodgings ! 0, how I wish Providence had
made me a gipsy, or a Bedouin Arab !
" Awfully jolly, I should think, the Bedouins," replied Fred
doubtfully. "They tumble, don't they? I remember seeing
some Bedouin tumblers at Vauxball when I was a youngster,
and was up in London with the paternal party. But those were
all men and boys. I don't think the women tumbled ; and their
lives must have been uncommonly dull, shut up somewhere
in London lodgings, while their husbands and brothers were
performing, not being able to speak English, you know, poor
creatures, or anything."
" you stupid Fred ! " cried Elizabeth, who sometimes deigned
to address the young man in this familiar way. " As if I meant
performing Araba ! I should like to be the daughter of som©
56 Strangers and Pilgrlmt.
Arab chief in the great desert, with my own darling horse to carry
me on the wings of the wind, and only a tent to live in, and locusta
and wild honey for my dinner, like John the Baptist. I should
like to be one of those nice brown-faced girls who go about the
country with a van-load of mats and brooms. There seema
Boniething respectable in brooms. They would hardly send me
to prison as a rogue and vagabond ; and 0, how nice it must be
never to stay very long in the same place ! "
*' And to have no friends and no home, and no books or piano,
and to be of no particular use in the world ; only always toiling
more or less hopelessly for one's daily bread : and to die some
day by the roadside, of hard work and exposure to all kinds of
weather," continued Mr. Forde, who had soon exhausted his
little stock of civihties to Miss Melvin, and turned to listen to
Elizabeth's random talk. " I'm afraid you must be very tired
of us all, Miss Luttrell, when your soul yearns for the broom-
girl life."
" Not so tired as you confess yourself to be of us when ;you
contemplate convertmg the heathen," answered the girl, turning
her back upon the hapless Frederick.
" It is not because I am tired of you that I think sometimea
of a broader field and harder work," he answered gravely, " but
for quite a difierent reason — because I sometimes find my life here
too easy, too pleasaut ; an enervating hfe, in short. It is not
always wise for a man to trust himself to be happy."
" I thought you had done with happiness, after — what you
told me this afternoon," said Elizabeth, almost bitterly.
Her speech shocked him a little. He answered it in his
coldest tones.
" With one kind of happiness, yes, and that perhaps the only
perfect happiness in this world — companionship with a perfect
woman."
" A very good way of reminding me that I'm an imperfect
one," thought Elizabeth, not unconscious of deserving the im-
plied rebuke.
They walked slowly round the garden in the moonlight, side
by side, but somewhat silent after this, leaving Frederick to
straggle in their rear with his sister, an ignominious mode of
/reatment which he inwardly resented. Nor was he sorry when
the omnibus and wagonette drove up to the gate to release him
from this humiliating position. He felt himself rehabilitated in
his own self-esteem when Blanche, who really came next_ to
Elizabeth in the scale of prettiness, skipped gaily up to bim,
telling him that she had had the dullest imaginable drive inside
the omnibus, and that she had been dreadfully jealous of Lizzie,
who of course had been having capital fun in the doo;cart.
" I don't know whether Forde is particularly good fun," Mr
Slranyers and Pilgrims. 57
Melvia replied with a sulky air. "Tour sister had /tn;i all to
herself. There was no getting in a word edgeways. I think
when a man as good as gives out from the pulpit that he never
means to marry, he ought to give up flirting into the bargain."
" 0, Fred, how shameful of you to say such a thing ! Aa
if Mr. Forde ever flirted ! "
" I should like to know what he's doing now," grim? bled Fred.
" If that isn't the real thing, it's an uncommonly good imitation."
Elizabeth had taken up her favourite position by the sun-
dial, and Malcolm Forde was standing by her, talking earn-
estly, or at least with an appearance of earnestness -, and it is
one of the misfortunes of youth that two persons of opposite
sex cannot converse for ten minutes with any show^ of interest
without raising suspicions of flirtation in the minds of the
beholders.
" Doesn't it seem absurd," exclaimed the aggrieved Frederick,
" after all Elizabeth has said about never marrying a clergy-
man
'>■
" She is not obliged to marry Mr. Forde because she talks to
him for five minutes, is she, you stupid creature ?" cried Blanche,
disapproving this appearance of concern in her admirer —
eligible young men were so rare at Hawleigh.
And now, after some consumption of claret-cup or sherry-
and-soda among the elders in the low candle-lit drawing-room,
and a straggling flirtation among the juniors here and there
about the garden, there came a general good-night, and Mr.
Luttrell's guests dispersed, in carriages or on foot, to that
gentleman's supreme contentment. This kind of thing was
one of the penalties that went along with a flock of daughters.
" Thank heaven, that's over," he said ^vith a faint groan, and
in a tone of voice strangely diflferent from the friendly warmth
of his last farewell. "And now mind, I am not to be bothered
about any more party-giving on this side of Christmas."
" I am sure I shouldn't care if there were never to he an-
other party on the face of the earth," said Elizabeth drea'-'Jy.
Whereby it might be supposed that, so far as the prettiest Miss
Luttrell was concerned, the day's festivities had been a failure.
Blanche questioned her by-and-by up in their tower chamber
— the ancient octagon room, with its deep-set casements and
litter of girUsh trifles, its bird-cages and bookshelves, and glove-
boxes and scent-bottles — questioned her closely, but at the
outset could extort very little from those firm proud lips.
" You know you were glad to have that nde home with
him,* said the girl persistently. "You know you quarrelled
with him in the boat, and were miserable afterwards. You
k now you are fond of him, Lizzie. What's the good of trying
to hide it from me ? "
68 Strangers and Pilgrims.
" Fond of him ! " cried Elizabeth passionately. "Fond of a
man who scarcely ever says a civil word to me ! Fond of a
man who, if he ever wei'e to care for me — and he never will —
would want to make me a district-visitor or a female mission-
ary ! You ought to know me better, Blanche."
'* I know you are fond of him," the girl repeated resolutely.
" Wliy, you've changed your very nature for his sake ! As if
we didn't all of us know the influenoe that has made you take
up Gertrude's work !"
Elizabeth burst out laughing.
"Perhaps I wanted to take the shine out of Gertrude's
Bupernal virtues," she said. " Perhaps I wanted to show him
that I was just as v/ell able to do that kind of a thing as his
Hawleigh saints, v '^o call it their vocation — that I was able to
make the poor people love me, which very few of his saints can
manage."
" Upon my word, Lizzie, I'm afraid you're very wicked,"
exclaimed Blanche, staring at her sister with an awed look.
Elizabeth was sitting on the edge of the low French bed, her
brown hair falling round her like a sombre drapery, her eyea
fixed with a dreamy look, a half-mischievous, half-triumphant
emile upon hfv lips.
" I'm afraid you're right," she said with a sudden burst of
candour. " I feel intensely wicked at this moment. Can you
guess what I should like to do, Blanche ? "
" Not I. You are the most uni'athomable girl in creation."
" r should like to bring that man to my feet, to make him as
deej^ly in love with me as — as ever any miserable slavish
woman was with a man who did not love her, and then spurn
him ; fool him to the top of his bent, Blanche ; and when I
had become the very apple of his eye — perhaps while he
was deliberating in his slow dull soul as to whether he should
make an election between me and the conversion of the South-
Sea Islanders — astonish him some fine morning by announcing
ftiy engagement with somebody a little better worth marrying.
He would have his South-Sea Islanders left to console him."
She flung the cloud of hair back from her face impatiently,
with a bitter little laugh and a downward glance of the dark
eyes, as if she did indeed see Malcolm Forde at her feei^ and
were scorning him.
Blanche gazed at her \vith unmitigated horror.
" Goodness gracious, Lizzie ! What can put such dreadful
ideas into your head? _-Whai hos M.alcolm Forde done to
make you so savage ? "
" What has he done? O, nothing, I suppose," half hysteri-
cally. " But I should like to punish him for all he has mado
me suffer to-day."
Strangers and Pilgrims, 69
CHAPTER VI.
Wlicn God smote His hands together, and struck out thy soul ns a sp.irk
Into the organized gloiy of things, from deeps of the dark, —
Say, didst thou shine, didst thou burn, didst thou honour the power ii?
the form,
Ab the star does at night, or the fire-fly, or even the little ground-wcrm i.
" I have sinned," she said,
" For my seed- light shed
Hag smouldered away from His first decrees.
The cypress praiseth the fire-fly, the ground-leaf praiseth the worm ;
I am viler than these."
What had Malcolm Forde done? The question was one
which that gentleman demanded of himself not unfrequently
during the next few weeks. Was it wise or foolish to have
bared this old wound before the pitying, or unpitying, eyes of
Elizabeth Luttrell; to have made this appeal for womanly
sympathy, he who was by nature so reticent, who had kept his
griefs so sternly locked within his own breast until now ? Was
it wise or foolish ? Was he right in deeming her nobler than
the common herd of women, a soul with whom it might
be sweet to hold friendship's calm communion, a woman
whom he dared cultivate as his friend ? He was not even yet
fully resolved upon this point ; but of possible peril to himself
in any such association he had never dreamed. Long ago he
had told himself that his heart was buried in Alice Eraser's
grave, laid at rest for ever in the hill-side burial ground beneath
the mountains that shelter Lanorgie; long ago he had solemnly
devoted all the power of his intellect, all the vigour of his man-
hood, to the pursuit of a grander aim than that mere earthly
happiness for which the majority of mankind searches. From
that burial of all his human hopes there could be no such
thing as resurrection. To be false to the memory of his lost
bride, to forswear the oath he made to himself when he
took his priestly vows, with a wider or a sterner view of the
priestly office than is common to English churchmen — to do
this would be to stamp himself for ever in his own esteem the
weakest and meanest of mankind. Such a thing was simply
impossible. He had therefore no snare to dread in friendly
companionship with a bright generous-hearted young creature
wlio was infinitely superior to her surroundings, a faulty soul
vaguely struggling towards a purer atmosphere, a woman
vinom he might help to be good.
He felt that here was a noble nature in sore peril of shipo
^reck, a creature with the grandest capabilities, vAio might lor
60 Strangers and Pilgrims.
lack of culture achieve nothing but evil; a soul too easily
led astray, a heart too impulsive to resist temptation.
" If she were my sister I would make her one of the noblest
women of her age," he said to himself, with a firm faith in his
own influence upon this feebler feminine spirit.
" Her very faults would seem charming to some men," he
told himself sagely. " That variableness which makes her at
times the most incomprehensible of women, at other times the
sweetest, would lead a fool on to his destruction. There was a
day when I deemed her incapable of serious thought or un-
selfish work; yet, once awake to the sense of her obligations,
there has been no limit to her patience and devotion."
And he was the author of this awakening. He felt a natural
pride and dehght in the knowledge of this. He was the Pro-
iiietheus who had l^reathed the higher and more spiritual life
into the nostrils of this lovely clay. He had snatched her
from the narrow influences of her home ; from the easy-going
thoughtless father, whose mind hardly soared above the
consideration of his cellar or his dinner-table ; from the petty
provincial society, with its petty gossip about its own works
and ways, the fashion of its garments, and its dinings and tea-
drinkings and trivial domestic details, from Mrs. Smith's new
parlour-maid to Mrs. Brown's new bonnet. It was something
to have hfted her from this slough of despond even to the
outermost edge of a better world.
Yet she had flashes of the old leaven, intervals of retrogres-
sion that afflicted him sorely. During that homeward drive
from the picnic she had been all that the most exacting of
mankind could desire; sympathetic, confiding, understanding
his every thought, and eager to be understood ; candid, un-
affected, womanly. But when the drive was over she had
changed, as quickly as Cinderella at midnight's first fatal stroke.
All the glorious vestments of her regenerated soul had dropped
away, leaving the old familiar rags — the flippancy, the fastness,
the insolence of conscious beauty. That earnest talk by the
sundial, which Frederick Melvin had watched from afar with
jealous eyes, had been in reality expostulation. The Curate
had presumed to lecture his Yicar's daughter, not in an insolent
hectoring spirit, not in a tone to which she could fairly object,
but with a gentle gravity, regretful that she who had so many
gifts should yet fall short of perfection.
"How can you talk such nonsense?" she exclaimed im-
petuously, with an angry movement of her graceful shoulders.
'' You know there is no one perfect, you know there is no one
good. Are you not always hammering that at us in your
sermons, making believe to consider us the veriest dirt — yes, eveu
Mrs. Polwhele, of the Dene, in her new French bounet ? I don't
Stranijers and Iftlgrt-mt. 61
lee any use in trying to please you. There never was 1 ^ut one
perfect woman, and she is dead."
" I do not think it veiy kind of you to speak like that/" said
Mr. Forde, " as if you grudj^^ed my praise of the dead."
" No, it is not that; but it seems hard that the living should
Buffer because — because you choose to brood upon the memory
of some one who was better than they. I will not shape myself
by any model, however perfect. Why," with a little bitter laugh,
"if I were to become the faultless being you tell me I might
make myself, my perfection would only be a plagiarism. I
would rather be original, and keep my sins. Besides, what can
my shortcomings matter to you?"
" They matter very much to me. Do you think I am in-
terested in my congregation just for twenty minutes, while I am
preaching to them, and that when I come down the pulpit-stairs
all interest ceases till my next sermon P "
"You should reserve your lectures for Gertrude. She enjoys
sermonising and being sermonised. I believe she keeps a journal
of her spiritual progress. I daresay she would like to show it to
you. No doubt you would find jjlenty of my sins duly booked
en loarenthese."
" Your sister Gertrude is a very admirable person, and I was
beginning to hope you would grow like her."
"Thanks for the compliment. If I am in any danger of
resembling Gertrude, I shall leave off trying to be good the first
thing to-morrow morning."
" Good-night, Miss Luttrell "
" I am not Miss Luttrell. My name is Elizabeth."
" Good-night, Elizabeth," he said, very coldly ; and before she
could speak again he was gone, leaving her planted there by the
sundial, angry with herself, and still more angry with him;
passionately jealous of that memory which was more to him
than the best and brightest of living creatures.
" Alice Eraser ! " she said to herself. " Alice Eraser ! A
Scotch clergyman's daughter, a girl who never had a well-made
gown in her life, I dare say. It was her portrait I saw over the
mantelpiece in his sitting-room, no doubt. A poor little namliv-
pamby face, with pleading eyes always seeming to say, ' For-
give me for being a little better than everybody else.' And
that cup and saucer under the glass shade ! Hers, no doubt,
used in her last illness. Poor girl ! it was hard to be stricken
down like that; and yet how sweet to die with his arms holding
her, his agonised lace bent over hers, his quiveiing lips bent
close to hers to catch the last faint breath ! What was there in
that poor little meek-souled thing to hold him in life, and after
death — to set a seal upon his strong heart, and keep it even ip,
hor gruye ? It is more than I can understand."'
E
62 Strangers and Pilyrms.
In tte brief intervals of leisure whicli his daily duties left him
— very brief at the best — Mr. Forde found his thoughts return
with a strange persistency to the image of EUz;abeth Luttrell.
It was not that he saw her often, for they had not encountered
each other since the picnic, the young lady having been absent
when he paid his duty-call at the Vicarage. It was perhaps
because she was less agreeable than other women ; because shs
rebelled and defied him, and argued with him flippantly, where
other damsels bowed down and worshipped; because she had
never weakened her optic nerves by a laborious course of tent-
stitch and satin-stitch; because she had refused to lead the
choir of Sunday-school children, or to take a class in the Sun-
day-school; because she was in every respect, save ii her late
amendment in the district-visiting way, exactly what a clergy-
man's daughter ought not to be, that Malcolm Forde suifered
his mind to dwell upon her in the dead watches of the night,
and gave her a very disproportionate amount of his consideration
at all times and seasons.
Of late he had been seriously disturbed about her ; for shortly
after the picnic there came a change in the damsel's conduct, a
sad falling away in her district- visiting. The women whom she
had attached to her bewailed this fact to Mr. Forde.
" I thought as how she'd been ill, poor dear," said one ; " biit
when I went to church last Sunday, there she was, with her
head held as high as ever, like a queen, bless her handsome face,
and more colour in her cheeks than she used to have. She sent
me a gownd last week by the vicarage housemaid, and a regular
food one, not a brack in it ; but though I was humbly thankful,
'd rather have seen her, as I used when she'd come and sit
agen my wash-tub reading the Gosjoel."
He heard this lamentation, in different forms, from several
women, and after some inquiry discovered that, exceptto visit
a sick child, Elizabeth had not been among her people since the
day of the picnic at Lawborough Beeches. She had sent them
^a, and small benefactions of that kind, by the hand of a
menial, — benefactions for which they were duly grateful, — but
they missed her visits not the less.
" She's such good company," remarked one woman : " not
like most of your districk-visitors, which make you feel that
down-hearted as if you'd had a undertaker talkin' to you. She's
got such pleasant lively ways, and yet as pitiful as j)itiful if
there's sickness. And she do make herself so at home in one's
place. 'Let me dust your chimbleypiece, Mrs. Mon-is,' she
says to me ; and dusts it before I can look, and sets the things
•>ut so pretty, and brings me that there blue chaney vaise next
my, bless her kind heart !"
Mr. Forde was deeply grieved by this falling ofiP. It seemed
Strangers and Pilf/rims. 63
as if the Promethean spark had been untimely blown out. The
beautiful clay was once more only clay. He felt unspeak-
ably disheartened by the straying of this one lamb, which he
had sought to gather into the fold.
Once possessed of his facts, he went straightway to the
Vicarage to remonstrate.
" I do not care how obnoxious I render myself to her," he
thought. " I am not here to speak smooth words. If her
father neglects his duty, there is so much more reason I should
do mine."
The year had grown six weeks older since the picnic. In
summer time the Luttrell girls — with the exception of Gertrude,
who was always busy— lived for the most part a stragi^ling hfe,
scattering themselves about garden and orchard, and doing all
things in a desultory manner. In summer the Curate might
have felt tolerably sure of finding Elizabeth alone under some
favourite tree, reading a novel, or making believe to work. To-
day it was different. The October afternoon was fine, but chill.
He would have to seek his erring sister in the house, to inquire
for the Vicar and the young ladies alter the usual manner of
visitors, and to take his chance of getting a few words alone
with Elizabeth.
He looked right and left of the winding path as he went from
the garden-gate to the house, but saw no ghmpse of female
apparel athwart the tall hollyhocks ; so he was lain to go on
to the hall-door. He was not particularly observant of details ;
but it struck him that the gray old house had a smarter aspect
than usual. The carriage drive had been lately rolled; there
was even some indication of a thin coating of nev/ gravel.
Muslin curtains that were unfamiliar to his eyes shrouded the
bow-windows of the drawing-room, and a little yapping black-
and-tan terrier — the veriest abbreviation of the dog species —
flew out of a half-open door to gird at him as he rang the bell.
The vicarage parlour-maid — a young woman he had prepared
for confirmation twelve months before — came smiling to admit
him. Even she had an altered air — more starch in her gown, a
emart white apron, cherry-coloured bows in her cap.
" Is Mr. Luttrell at houie .? "
" No, sir. Master went to Bulford in the pony-chaise with
Miss Luttrell directly after lunch. But the otheryoung ladiea
are in the drawing-room, sir, and Mrs. Cheveuix."
He went into the hall — a square low-ceilinged chamber, em-
bellished with antiquated cabinets of cracked oriental china ; an
ancient barometer ; a pair of antlers, with a fox's brush lying
across them, both trophies of the Vicar's prowess in the field";
a smoky-looking piece of still-life, with the usual cut lemon and
dead leveret and monster bunch of impossible grapes ; the still
64 Strai^gers and Pilgrims.
emokier portrait of an old gentleman of the pig-tail period ; and
Bundry other specimens of art, which, massed into one lot of
oddments at an auction, might iA^Bsibly have realised a fi'^e-
pound note.
"Mrs. Chepenix? " said the Curate interrogatively.
•' Yes, sir — the yonng ladies' aunt, sir — master's sister ? "
" 0," said Mr. Forde. He faintly remembered having hoard
of this lady — the well-to-do aunt and godmother who had given
Diana the grand piano; an aunt who was sometimes alluded to
confidently by Blanche as an authority upon all matters of taste
and fashion ; a person possessed of a universal knowledge, of
the lighter sort; whose judgment as to the best book or the
cleverest picture of the season was a judgment beyond dispute ;
who knew the ins and oiits of life aristocratic and life diplomatic,
and would naturally be one of the first persons to be informed
of an approaching marriage in fashionable circles or an im-
pending war.
Without ever having seen this lady, Mr. Forde had, from his
inner consciousness, as it were, evolved some faint image of her,
and the image was eminently distasteful to him. He disliked
Mr8. Chevenix, more or less on the Dr. Fell principle. The
reason why he could not tell, but he most assuredly did dislike
her.
He could understand now that tlie new muslin curtains and
the sprinkling cf new gravel were expenses incurred in honour
of this superior jjerson. He kept his hat in his hand, — he
•would ha.ve left it in the hall most likely, had the young ladies
been alone, — and thus armed, v/ent in to be presented to Mrs.
Chevenix.
" 0, how do yon do, Mr. Forde P" cried Diana, bouncing up
from the hearthrug, where she had been caressing the infinitesi-
mal terrier. " You are quite a stranger. We never set -"^ou
now, except in church. Let me present you to my aunt, Mrs.
Chevenix."
He had a sense of something large and brown and i-ustling
rising with a stately air between him and the light, and then
slowly sinking into the luxurious depths of a capacious arm-
chair ; a chair not indigenous to the vicarage drawing-room,
evidently an additional luxury provided for aunt Chevenix.
He had shaken hands with Diana, and bowed to aunt Cheve-
nix — who maintained an aristocratic reserve on the subject of
hand-shaking, and did not go about the world offering her hand
to tke first comer — in a somev/hat absent-minded manner. He
haa performed th^se two ceremonies with his eyes wandering in
quest of that oCner Miss Luttrell for whose special behalf he
had come to the Vicarage.
She — Elizabeth — sat in a low chair by the ire, reading a
Strangers atd Pilgrims. 65
novel, tne very picture of contented idleness. She too, Uke the
house, seemed to him altered. Her garments had a more
fashionable air. That Puritan simplicity she had assumed at
the beginning of her career as a district-visitor was entirely dis-
carded. She wore lockets and trinkets which he had not seen
her wear of late, and rich plaits of dark brown hair were piled
high on the graceful head, like the pictures in fashion-books.
She rose now to greet him with a languid air, an elegant indif-
erence of manner which he surmised had been im[.iHrted by the
stately personage in histrous brown silk. They shook handf
coldly cinough on both sides, and Elizabeth resumed her seat,
with her book open in her lap.
Mrs. Chevenix sat with her portly brown-silk back towards
the bow window. It was one of Mrs. Chevenix's principles to
sit with her back to the light, whereby a soupfon of pead-
powder and hair-dye was rendered less obvious to the obsei-ver.
A beauty had Mrs. Chevenix been in her time, ay, and as
acknowledged a beauty as Elizabeth Luttrell herself, although
it would have cost Malcolm Forde a profound effort of faith
to believe that vivid flashing brunette loveliness of Elizabeth's
could ever develop into the fleshly charms of the matron. But
in certain circles, and in her own estimation, Mrs. Chevenix still
took high rank as a fine woman. She had arrived at that arid
full-blown stage of existence in which a woman can only be
distinguished as fine, in which a carefully preserved figure and
a complexion eked out by art are the last melancholy vestiges
of departed beauty.
She was a large person, with a large aquiline-nosed counten-
ance framed by broad-plaited bands of flaxen hair. Her cheeks
bloomed with the florid bloom of middle age, delicately toned
down by a judicious application of pearl-powder ; her arched
eyebrows were several shades darker than her hair, and a little
too regular for nature ; her eyes were blue — cold calculating eyes,
which looked as if they had never beheld the outer world as any-
thing better than a theatre for the advancement and gratification
of self; or at least this was the idea which those chilly azure
orbs inspired in the mind of Mr. Forde as he sat opposite the
lady, talking small talk and telling Diana Luttrell the news of
his parish.
Mrs. Chevenix had a certain good-society manner which was
as artificial as her eyebrows, or the bluish-white tints that toned
her cheek-bones; and of this manner she kept two samples
always in stock — the gushing and vivacious style which she
affected with people whom sh# deemed her superiors, the
listless and patronising, or secondary manner, wherewith she
gratified her niferiors.
It wai of course not likely she would take the trouble to guall
66 Strangers and Pilf/rims.
for her brother's curate, even though he might be a person ol
decent family, and possessed of independent means. Had he
been an " Honourable," a scion, however remote, of aome dis-
tinguished house in the peerage, she would have beamed upon
him with her most entrancing smiles. But an unknown
Scotchman ; a man who had been described to her as terribly
in earnest; a person of revolutionary principles, who set him-
self against the existing order of things, wanting to reform this
and that, and perhaps to level the convenient barriers which
keep the common herd in their proper places ; a dismal person,
no doubt, full of strange wailings, Uke the ancient prophets,
whom she heard wonderingly sometimes at church, giving them
just as much attention as she could spare from the fair vista of
new bonnets shining in a shaft of light from the gothic window,
and who seemed to her to have been distracted personages
eminently ineligible for dinner-parties.
" Aunt Chevenix missed your sermon last Sunday morning,
Mr. Forde," said Diana. " She had one of her headaches, and
was afraid the church might be hot."
" In October ? " said Mr. Forde, smiling. "Our congregation
is not vast enough for that." He did not express any regret
about his loss of such a hearer as aunt Chevenix.
"I am really fond of a good sermon," remarked the lady
blandly, trifling with a shining black fan, wherewith she was
wont to flap the empty air at all times and seasons. This fan, a
gold-rimmed eye-glass, and a double-headed scent-bottle, were
Mrs. Chevenix's only means of employment, after she had read
the Morning Post and accomplished her diurnal tale of letter-
writing. "And good sermons are become so rare," she went on
in her slow pompous way. " I have heard no eloquent preacher
for the last live years, except the Bishop of Granchester."
" You would not say that if you had heard Mr. Forde," said
Diana.
Mrs. Chevenix put up her eyeglass and looked at the Curate
with a languid smile, as if with the aid of that instrument she
were able to make a precise estimate of his powers.
" Mr. Forde is a young man, my dear. It is hardly fair to
name him in the same breath with the bishop."
Elizabeth, who had been turning the leaves of her book list-
lessly with an air of absolute inattention, flashed out at this.
" Mr. Forde is natural," she said, " which is more than I can
say for the bishop. I admit his eloquence, his grand bass voice,
sinking to an almost awful solemnity at every climax. But it
Beems to me a tutored eloqufeice. I could fancy him an actor
in a Greek play, declaiming behind a mask. Mr. Forde"— a
Budden pause, as if she had been going to say a great deal, an<J
had hastily checked herself — " is different."
Strangers and Pilgrims* 67
Malcolm Forde listened with eyes bent on the ground ; but
jnst at the last words he raised those dark deep-set eyes, and
glanced at the speaker. "What a splendid face it was, with ita
look of intense hfe, its scorn of scorn, or love of love ; a natui-e
in all thinfTs intensified, like that typical poet who in a golden
chnne was born.
" Yes, she is a noble creature," he said to himself. " No
matter how capricious, or fickle, or unstable. She is a creature
of fire aud light, and she shall not be lost, not for all the aunt
Chevenixes in the world."
He cast a swift glance of defiance at the harmless matron in
brown silk and flaxen plaits crowned with blonde and artificial
roses, as if she had been the foul fiend himself, and he playing
a desperate game of chess with her for this fair young soul.
He had always disHked the family fetish, when she had been
only a remote and unknown image to bo invoked ever when
there was question of the proprieties. But he disliked her most
of all now, when she was seated within tlie citadel, and was
poisoning the atmosphere of EUzabeth's home with her worldly
spirit.
He was swift to condemn and to suspect, perhaps, since he
had seen very little of the lady as yet ; but that inane small-
talk, that stale gossip of Eaton-square and Lancaster-gate, that
bismuth-shaded cheek, that practicable eyebrow, which elevated
itself with a trained expression of irony, or drooped with a
studied langour — all these artificialities told him the nature of
the woman, and told him that she was the last of creatures whom
he would care to see in daily communion with a girl whose way*
ward disposition had of late been curiously interesting to him.
That dogmatic assertion of his superiority even to a bishop,
hurled at the very teeth of the family idol, pleased him
mightily. It was not conceit that was gratified — it was sweet
to him to discover that, in spite of all her affected scorn, this
girl appreciated him.
He did not ackno-^fledge her compliment, except by one brief
smile — that slow quiet curve of the firm thoughtful lips, which
was sweeter than common smiles. He went on patiently with
the morning-caller talk, listened tolerantly to small scraps of
information about the Lancaster-gateites, until he could fairly
rise to depart. But he did not mean to leave the Vicarage with
his mission unfulfilled.
" Will you give me a few minutes in the garden ? " he said, iu
a low voice, as he shook hands wj^h Elizabeth. " I want to talk
to you about your cottagers."
The ears of the Chevenix, more acute than those chilly blue
eyes which required the aid of binoculars, pricked up at this
eound of confidential converse.
C8 Strangers and Pilgrims.
" Did I hear you say something about cottagers, Mr. Forde P"
she demanded sharply.
"Yes," he replied. "I was speaking of that order ot
creatures." He was strongly tempted to add, " who do not
inhabit Lancaster-gate," but judiciously held his peace.
" Then I must beg that you do not put any more nonsense
about district-visiting into my niece's head. It is all very well
for Gertrude, who is strong, physically and mentally, and is not
of so impressionable a nature as Elizabeth, and is some years
older, into the bargain. I consider there is more than enough
done for the poor in this place. My brother gives away half
his income, and spends as much of his time amongst his
parishioners as — as — his health will permit. Besides which he
nas of course a powerful auxiliary in his curate, whose duty it
is, naturally, to devote himself to that kind of thing. And then
there are always maiden ladies in a place — good-hearted dowdy
souls, who delight in that sort of work ; so that you can hardly
be in want of aid. But, however that may be, I cannot pos-
sibly allow my niece to fatigue herself and excite herself as she
has done at your suggestion. I found her in a really low state
when I came here — depressed in spirits, and nervous to the last
degree."
Elizabeth flamed crimson at this.
" How can j'ou talk such nonsense, aunt?" she cried angrily,
being the only one of the sisters who was not habitually over-
awed by aunt Chevenix. "I am sure I was well enough;
but those London doctors put such twaddle into your head."
Mrs. Chevenix sighed gently, and gravely shook the head
which was accused of harbouring professional twaddle.
" If your niece is to go to heaven, I fancy she will have to
travel by her own line of country, without reference to you.
Mrs. Chevenix," said Malcolm Forde. " I do not think she will
submit to be forljidden to do her duty among her father's flock.
It is not a question of just what is most conducive to health or
high spirits. I do not say that I would have her " — this with
an almost tender emphasis on the pronoun — "sacrifice health
or length of years even for the holiest work, but we know such
Bacrifices are only the natural expression of her perfect faith. I
am not asking her to do anything hard or unpleasant, however.
For her, the yoke may be of the easiest, the burden of the
lijhtes*^.. If you knew, as I do, how in two or three months
she ha< contrived to win the hearts of these people — what good
her in/' ^nce may do almost unconsciously on her part — I think
you T.'Oj.J hardly talk abou^ forbidding her to give some time
and thought to her father'^ poor."
He spoke warmly, and it was the first time that anything
approaching praise had dropped from hisUos. Elizabeth looked
Strangers and I'llf/rims. G9
Bi him with a glowing face, dark eyes that brightened as they
looked.
"Thank you, Mr. Forde," she said; "I did not know I was
of any use, and I got disheartened; and when aunt Chevenix
came, I gave the busiaess up altogether* But [ shall begin
again to-morrow."
Aunt Chevenix stared at Eliaabeth, and from Elizabeth to
Mr. Forde, with a stony stare of speechless indignation.
" O, very well, my dear," she said to her niece at last. " Of
course, you must know best what is conducive to your own
happiness." And then she sniiled a sniff, as who rhould say,
" I can bequeath my money elsewhere. You have sisters, my
foolish Elizabeth, as dependent as yourself. I can instruct my
solicitor to i^repare a codicil revoking that clause in my will
which has reference to your interests."
Mr. Forde had gained his point, and cared very little what
smothered fires might be glowing in the Chevenix breast.
Elizabeth went out into the garden with him, bare-headed,
heedless of a chill October nor'-wester, and heard all he could
teU her about her neglected poor, questioning him eagerly.
" Poor souls, are they really fond of me ? " she exclaimed
remorsefully. " I did not know it was in me to do any
good."
On this Malcolm Forde grew eloquent, told her as he had
never told her before the value of such a soul as hers, gifted
with rare capabilities, with powers so far above life's ordinary
level; urged her to rise superior to her surroundings, to be
something greater and bettor than the common uew-bonnet-
worshipping young-ladyhood of Hawleigh.
" I am not depreciating your home or your family, Elizabeth,"
he said, remembering that sh-e had accorded him this free use
of her Christian name ; " but the world has grown so worldly,
even religion seems to have lost its spirituc>.lity. There is r\
trading spirit, an assumption of fiishion, in om very temples.
Indeed, I am sometimes doubtful whetlif- our floral decorations
and embroidered altar-cloths are not a dekisicn and a snare. It
should be good to make our churchis beautiful: yet there
are moments when I doubt the witdom of these things
They make too direct an appeal to the senses. I hud myself
yearning for the stern simplicity of thp Scottish Ch irch — that
unembellished service which Edward living could make so vast
an instrument for the regeneration ot rnaukind. He had no
flower-decked chancel, no white-robed choir. It was only r.
voice crying in the city-wilderness."
This he said meditatively, straying from the chief subject of
his discourse, and giving expression almost involuntarily to u
doujii' that had been tormenting him of late. He broutrht him-
70 Strangers and Pilgrims.
self back to the more personal question of Elizabeth's spiritual
welfare presently.
" Why did you keep away from your people ? " he asked.
" Were you really ill? or was it your aunt's influence?"
Slie looked at him with a mischievous daring in her eyes.
"Neither one nor the other."
"Then why was it? You had been going on so well and so
steadily, and I was beginning to be proud of you. I trust — "
this slowly, and -with hesitation — " I trust there was nothing I
said that day at the picnic which could have a deterring influence,
or which could have off"ended you."
"I was not ofi'ended," she answered, her lips quivering faintly,
her face turned away from him. " What was there to offend
me P Only you made me feel myself so poor a creature, my
highest efforts so infinitely beneath your ideal of perfect woman-
hood, my feeble sti'uggles at self-improvement so mean and futile
measured by your heroic standard, that I did perhaps feel a
little discouraged, and a little inclined to give up striving to
make myself what nature had evidently not intended me to be
— an estimable woman."
" Nature intended you to be good and great," answered Mr.
Forde earnestly.
" But not like Alice Fraser," said Elizabeth, with a bitter smile.
" There are different kinds of perfection. Hers was an innate
and unconscious purity, a limitless power of self-sacrifice. She
was the ideal daughter of the manse, a creature who had never
known a selfish thought, to whom the labours which I presa
upon you as a duty were a second nature. She had never lived
except for others. I cannot say less or more of her than I told
you that day — she was simply perfect. Yet you have gifts
which she did not possess — a more energetic "nature, a quicker
intelligence. There is no good or noble work a woman can do
in this woi-ld that you could not do, if you chose."
Elizabeth shook her head doubtfully.
" I have no endurance," she said ; " I am vain and feeble. O,
believe me, I have by no means a lofty estimate of my own
character. I require to be sustained by constant praise. It is
vU very well while you are encouraging me, I feel capable of
anything ; but when I have gone plodding on for two or three
months longer, and yea take my good conduct for granted, I
shall grow weary again, and fall away again."
"Not if you will iook to a higher source for support and inspira-
tion. My praises are a very poor reward. Trust to the approval
of your own conscience rather ; and forgive me if I urge you to
keep yourself free from the influence of Mrs. ChevenLx. It
seems imj^ertinent in me, no doubt, to presume to judge a lady
I have only seen for half au hour "
Strangers and Pilgrivis. 71
"0, pray don't apologise," exclaimed Elizabeth in her careless
way ; " I have a perfect appreciation of aunt Chevenix. She ia
the family idol ; the goddess whom we all worship, conciliating
her with all manner of sacrifices of our inclinations. She pre-
sides over us in spirit even when at a distance, imparting her
oracles in letters. Of course she is the very essence of worldli-
ncss. Is it not written in all the roses that garnish her cap ?
But she married a clever barrister, who blossomed in due course
into a county-court judge, and died five years ago of a fit of
apoplexy, which was considered the natural result of a pro-
longed series of dinners, leaving aunt Chevenix fifteen hundred
a year at her own disposal. She never had any children, and
we four girls are all she can boast of in the way of nephews or
nieces, so it is an understood thing that the fifteen hundred a
year must ultimately come to us, and we are paying aunt
Chevenix in advance for her bounty, by deferring to her in all
things. She is not half so bad as you might suppose from her
little pompous ways and her fan and eyeglass; and I really
think she is fond of us."
Not a pleasing confession to a man of Malcolm Forde's tem-
perament from the lij^s of a beautiful girl. This waiting for
dead men's shoes was of all modex-n vices the one that seemed to
him meanest.
" I hope you wiU not allow your conduct to be influenced by
any consideration of your reversionary interest in Mrs. Chevenix's
income," he said gravely.
" You need have no fear of that," she answered lightly. " I
never took any one's advice in my life — except perhaps yours —
and as to being dictated to by aunt Chevenix, that is quite out
of the question. I am the only one of the family who defies
her ; and, strange to say, I enjoy the reputation of being her
favourite."
" I don't wish you to defy her," said Mr. Forde, with his
serious smile. She seemed to him at some moments only a
wayward child, this girl whom he was urging to become good
and great. "You may be all that a niece should be — kind,
affectionate, and respectful— and yet retain your right of judg-
ment."
He looked at his watch. He had been at the Yicarage more
than an hour, and half that time had been spent walking to and
fro beside the autumnal china-asters and chrysanthemums, with
Ehzabeth for his companion.
" I have detained you longer than I intended," he said. " I
shall tell Mrs. Morris and Mrs. Brown that you are coming td
see them. Good-bye."
He stood by the broad barred gate— a homely farmhouse
looking gate, painted white — a tall vigorous figure, unclerical (A
72 Strangers and PiJgrimt.
aspect, with the erect soldierly air that had not departed from
him on his change of jorofession, a man who looked like a leader
of men, the dark earnest eyes looking downward at Elizabeth,
the broad strong hand clasping hers with the firm clasp of
friendship. Verily a tower of strength such a friend as this,
worth a legion of the common clay which men and women
count as friends.
Elizabeth stood by the gate watching him as he walked along
khe white high-road towards Hawleigh.
" He looks like a red-cross knight disguised in modern cos-
tume," ^he said to herself; "he looks like Hercules in a frock-coat.
How different from slim little Mr. Adderley, picking his steps upon
the dusty causeway. And now he will go from house to house,
and teach, and read, and exhort, and help, and counsel, till tea
o'clock to-night, with only just time for a hasty dinner between
his labours. And yet he is never weary, and never thinks his
life barren, and never longs to be in London among happy
crowds of refined men and women enjoying all the delights that
the science of pleasure can devise for them — operas, and concerts,
and races, and picture-shows, and flower shows, and a hundred
gatherings together of taste, and beauty, and refinement.. Does
he ever long for that kind of life, I wonder, the very fringe or
outer edge of which is> delightful, if one may believe aunt
Chevenix? Or does he languish for a roving life — as I do some-
times — among fair strange countries, sailing on the blue waters
of the Adriatic or the Archipelago, among tiie sunny islands of
the old Greek world, or wandering in the shady depths of the
black forest, or on thymy mountain tops, or amidst regions of
everlasting snow? Has he no hours of vain despondency and
longing, as I have ? Or did he concentrate all his hopes and
desires upon Alice Eraser, and bury them all in her grave ?"
She was in no hurry to return to the drawing-room fireside
and the Chevenix atmosphere of genteel idleness. Instead of
going back to the house, she went from the garden to the
orchai"d, and paced that grassy slope alone, circulating slowly
among the mossgrown trunks of the apple and cherry trees,
'•'uinking of Malcohn Forde.
" How good he is," she said to herself; " how earnest, how
real ! What a king among men ! And yet what hope is there
for him in life? what prospect of escape from this dull drudgery,
which he must surely sicken of, sooner or later P He has no
interest that can advance him in the Church — I have heard
him say that — so his preferment will most likely be of tho
slowest. I hardly wonder that he sometimes thinks of turning
missionary. Better to be something — to win some kind of name
in the centre of Africa, or among the South-Sea Islands— than
to be buried alive in such a place as Ilawleigh. And if he ever
Strangers and Pilgrims. 78
were to change liis mind and marry, what a brilliant career for
his wife ! " She laughed bitterly at the thought. " How I ])ity
that poor demented soul, whoever she may be ! And yet lie
seems to consider this kind of life perfect, and that one might be
good and great; goodness and greatness consisting in perpetual
district-visiting, uidimited plain needlework for the Dorcas
society, unfailing attendance at early services — all the dull, dull
routine of a Christian life. Of the two careers, I should certainfy
prefer Africa ! "
Thus did she argue with herself, this rebellious soul, who
coidd not understand that life was intended to afford her any-
thing but pleasure, the kind of pleasure her earthly nature
pined for — operas, and concerts, and horses and carriages, and
foreign travel. She roamed the orchard for nearly an hour,
meditating upon Malcolm Forde, his character, his aspirations,
his prospects, and that hypothetical foolish woman who might bo
rash enough to accept him for her husband ; and then went back
to the drawing-room, to be sharply interrogated by aunt Chevenix.
"My 'dear Elizabeth, what a dishevelled creature you have
made yourself I" exclaimed that lady, lookiir^ with disfavour at
Lizzie's loosened hair and disordered neck riubou. The young
ladies of Eaton-place rarely exposed themselves to the wind,
except at Brighton in November, when a certain license might
be permitted.
" I have been walking in the orchard, aunt. It's rather blowy
on that side of the house."
" I hope you have not had that Mr. Forde with you all this
time."
" Mr. Forde has been gone nearly an hour. I wish you
wouldn't call him that Mr. Forde. You may not mean any-
thing by it, but it sounds unpleasant."
*' But I do mean something by it," replied aunt Chevenix,
fanning herself more vehemently than usual. "I mean that
your Mr. Eorde is a most arrogant, disagreeable, under-bred
person to presume to dictate to my niece — to over-ride my
authority before my very face ! The man is evidently utterly
unaccustomed to good society."
" You might have said that of St. Peter or St. Paul, aunt,''
replied Ehzabeth in her coolest manner; " neither of those be-
longed to the Eaton-place section of society. But Mr. Forde is
a man of good family, and was in a crack cavalry regiment be-
fore he entered the Church. So you are out in your reckoning."
" A crack regiment !" echoed the matron. "Elizabeth, yon
have acquired a most horrible mode of expression. Perhaps you
have learnt that from Mr. Forde, as well as a new version of
your duty to your relations. If ever that man was in a cavalry
regiment, I should think it must have been in the canacity of
74 Strangers and Pilgrims.
rough-rider. What a man-mountain the creature is, too! I
should hardly have thought any sane bishop would have ordained
such a giant. There ought really to be a standard height for
the Church as well as for the army, excluding pigmies and giants.
I never beheld a man so opposite to one's ideal of a curate."
" O, of course," cried Elizabeth impatiently. " Your ideal
curate is a slim simpering thing with white hands — a bandbox-
ical being, talking solemn small-talk like a fashionable doctor —
a kettledrumish-man, always dropping in at afternoon tea. We
have had three of that species, varying only in detail. Thank
heaven Malcolm Forde is something better than that."
" I cannot perceive that you have any occasion to feel grate-
ful to Providence upon the subject of Mr. Forde's character and
attributes, let them be what they may," said Mrs. Chevenix;
" and I consider that familiar mention of your father's curate —
a paid servant remember, like a governess or a cook — to the last
degree indecorous."
" But I do thank heaven for him," cried Elizabeth recklessly.
" He is my friend and counsellor, — the only man I ever looked
up to '"
" Tou appear to forget that you have a father," murmured
Mrs. Chevenix, sitting Like a statue, with her closed fan laid
across her breast, in a stand-at-ease manner.
" I don't forget anything of the kind ; but I never looked up
to Mm. It isn't in human nature to revei'ence one's father. One
is behind the scenes of his life, you see. One knows all his
little impatiences, his unspiritual views on the subject of dinner,
his intolerance of crumpled roseleaves in his domestic arrange-
ments. Papa is a dear old thing, but he is of the earth, earthy.
Mr. Forde is of another quality, — spiritual, earnest, self-
sacrificing, somewhat arbitrary, perhaps, in the consciousness
of his own strength, but gentle even when he commands ; capable
of a heroic life which my poor feeble brain cannot even
imagine ; his eager spirit even now yearning to carry God's
truth to some wretched people buried in creation's primeval
gloom ; ready to die a martyr in some nameless Isle of the
Pacific, in some unknown desert in Central Africa. He is my
modern St. Paul, and I reverence him."
Elizabeth indulged herself with this small tirade half in
earnest, half in a mocking spirit, amusing herself with the
discomfiture of aunt Chevenix, who sat staring at her in
speechless horror.
" The girl is stark mad ! " gasped the matron, with a famt
flutter of her fan, slowly recovering speech and motion. " Has
this sort of thing been going on long, Diana? "
"Well, not quite so bad as this," rephed Diana; "but I
don't think Lizzie has been Quite herself since she took ud the
Strangers and Pilgrims. 75
rlistrict-visiting. She has left off wearing nice gloves, and
•liessing for dinner, and behaving in a general way like a
CJiristian."
" Has she, indeed ? " said aunt Chevenix ; " then the district-
visiting must be put a stop to at once and for ever, or it will
leave her stranded high and dry on the barren shore of old-
maidism. You may be a very pretty girl, Elizabeth Lattrell —
I dare say you know you are tolerably good-looking, so there's
no use in my pretending you are not — but if once you take up
ultra-religious views, visiting the poor, and all that kind of
thing, I wash my hands of you. I had hoped to see you make
a brilliant mari-iage ; indeed I have heard you talk somewhat
over-confidently of your carriage, your opera-box, your town
house and country seat. But from what I hear to-day,
I conclude your highest ambition is to marry this preposterous
curate— who looks a great deal more like a brigand chief, by
the way — and devote your future existence to Sunday-school
teaching and tea-meetings."
Elizabeth stood tali and straight before her accuser, with
clasped hands resting on the back of a pric-dieu chair, exactly
as she had stood while she delivered her small rhapsody about
Mr. Forde, stately and spiritual-looking as Joan of Are
inspired by her " voices."
" Perhaps, after all, it might be a woman's loftiest ambition
to mate with Malcolm Forde," she said slowly, with a tender
dreamy look in her eyes ; and then, before the dragon could
remonstrate, she went on with a sudden change of manner,
" Don't be alarmed, auntie ; I am not going to hold the world
well lost for love. I mean to have my opera-box, if it ever
comes begging this way, and to give great dinners, with cabinet
ministers and foreign ambassadors for my guests, and to be
mistress of a country seat or two, and do wonderful things
at elections, and to be stared at at country race-meetings, and
to tread in that exalted path in which you would desire to train
my ignorant footstep.
Mrs. Chevenix gave a half-despairing sigh.
" You are a most incomprehensible girl," she said, "and give
me more trouble of mind than your three sisters put together,.
But I do hope that you will keep clear of any entanglement
with that tall curate, a dangerous man I am convinced; any
Hirtation of that kind would inevitably compromise you in the
future. As to cabinet dinners and country seats, such
marriages as you talk of are extremely rare nowadays, and
for »■ Devonshire parson's daughter to make such a match
would be a kind of miracle, lint with your advantages you
ought certainly to marry well ; and it is better to look too high
than too low. A season in London might do wonders."
76 Strangers and Pilgrimi.
This London season was the shining bait which Mrg.
Chevenix was wont to dangle before the eyes of her nieces, and
by virtue of which she obtained their submission to her
amiable caprices when the more remote advantage of in-
heritance might have failed to influence them. Gertrude and
Diana had enjoyed each her season, and had not profited
thereby in any substantial manner. They had been " much
admired," Mrs. Chevenix declared with an approving air,
especially Diana, as the livelier of the two; but admiration had
not taken that definite form for which the soul of the match-
maker longeth.
"There must be something wanting," Mrs. Chevenix said
pensively, in moments of confidence. " I find that something
wanting in most of the girls of the present day. Alfred
Chevenix proposed to me in my first season. I was a
thoughtless thing just emerged from the nursery, and his
was not my only olfer. But my nieces made a very different
effect. Young men were attentive to them — Sir Harold Haw-
buck even seemed struck with Diana — but nothing came of it.
There must be a deficiency in something. Gertrude is too
serious, Diana a shade too flippant. It is manner, my dear,
manner, in which the rising generation is wanting."
"A season in town," cried Elizabeth, her dark eyes sparkling,
her head lifted with a superb arrogance, and all thought of
Malcolm Forde and the life spiritual for the moment banished.
"Yes, it is my turn, is it not, auntie? and I think it is time I
came out. Who knows how soon I may begin to lose what-
ever good looks I now possess .5^ I am of a nervous temper;
impressionable, as you suggested just now. I have a knack of
sleeping badly when my mind is full of a subject, and excite-
ment of any kind spoils my appetite. Even the idea of a new
bonnet will keep me awake. I lie tossing from side to side all
night trying to determ$ie whether it shall be pink or blue.
Living at this rate, I rnay be a positive fright before I am
twenty; no complexion can stand against such wear and tear."
" You have been allowed to grow up with a sadly un-
disciplined mind, my poor child," Mrs. Chevenix said sen-
tentiously. "If your papa had engaged a competent governess,
a person who had lived in superior families, and was
experienced in the training of the human mind and the figure
— your waist measures two inches more than it ought to at
your age — his d:iughters would have done him much greater
credit. But it was only like my brother Wilniot to grudge the
expenditure cf sixty guineas a year for a proper instructress of
his daughters, while frittering away hundreds on his pauper
(iarishioners."
"Now, tha+ is one of the tbJies for which I do reverenc«
Strangers and Pilgrims. 77
papa," cried Elizabeth with energy. " Thank heaven, neither
our minds nor our bodies have been trained by a professional
trainer. Imagine growing like a fruit tree nailed against
a -wall; every spontaneous outshoot of one's character cut
back, every impulse pruned away as a non-fruit-beuring
branch ! 1 do bless papa with all my free untutored soul
for having spared us that. But don't let us quarrel about
details, dear auntie. Give me my season in London, and
see what I will do. I languish for my opera-box and barouche,
and the kind of life one reads of in Mrs. Gore's novels." _
•' You shall spend next May and June with me," said Mrs.
Chevenix with another plaintive sigh. " It will be hard work
going over all the same ground again which I went over for
Gerty and Di, but the result may be more brilliant."
" Couldn't you manage to turn me off at the same time,
auntie ? " demanded Blanche pertly.
"I am sorry Gertrude and I were not fortunate enough to
receive proposals from dukes or merchant princes," said Diana,
whose aristocratic features had flushed angrily at her aunt's
implied complaint. " Perhaps we might have been luckier
if we had met more people of that kind. But of course Lizzie
will do wonders. She reminds me of Mirabeau's remark about
Kobespierre ; she will do great things, because she believes in
herself."
Elizabeth was prompt to respond to this attack ; and so, with
email sisterly bickerings, the conversation ended.
CHAPTER YII
** Je ne voudrais pas, si j'etais Julie,
N'etre que jolie
Avec ma beaute.
Jusqu'au bout des doigts je serais duchesse.
Comme ma ricbesse
J'aurais ma fierte."
Elizabeth, having in a manner pledged herself to a career of
<vorldly-mindeduess, to begin in the ensuing spring, deemed
herself at uberty to follow her own inchnatious in the interim,
and these inclinations pointed to the kind of life which Malcolm
Eorde wished her to lead. She went back to her district-
work on the morning after the Curate's visit ; put on her
Puritan hat and sober gray carmelite gown, which seemed to
her mind the whole armour of righteousness, and went back to
her people. She was welcomed back with an affection that at once
78 Strangers and Pilgrima.
surprised and touched her. She had done so little for them—
only treating them M'd thinking of them as creatures of the
same nature as herself — and yet they were so grateful, and so
fond of her.
So Elizabeth went back to what Gertrude called her " duties,"
and the soul of aunt Chevenix was heavy within her. That
lady had cherished high hopes upon the subject of this lovely
niece of hers. A perfect beauty in a family is a fortune in
imbryo. There was no knowing what transcendent heights
upon the vast mountain range of " good society " such a girl as
Elizabeth might scale, dragging hrr kith and kin upwards with
her ; i^rovided she were but plastic iu the hands of good advisers.
To scheme, to plan, to diplomatise, were natural operations of
the Chevenix mind. A childless widow, with a comfortable in-
come and a somewhat extended circle of acquaintance, could
hardly spend all her existence with no more mental pabulum
than a fan and a scent-bottle, and the trivial amenities of i^olite
life. Mrs. Chevenix's intellect must have lapsed into stagnation
but for the agreeable employment afforded by social diplomacy.
She knew everything about everybody ; kept a mental ledger
in which she registered all the little weaknesses of her ac-
quaintance ; and had even a journal wherein a good deal of
genteel scandal was booked in pen and ink. But although by
710 means p.^sentially good-natured, she was not a mischief-
maker, and 1,0 unfriendly criticism or lady-like scandal had ever
been brought home to her. She was, on the other hand,
renowned as a peace-maker : and if she had a fault, it was a
species of amiable officiousness, which some of her acquaintance
were inclined inwardly to resent. Malign tongues had called
Mrs. Chevenix a busybody; but in the general opinion she was
a lady of vivacious and agreeable manners, who gave snug
little dinners, and elegant little suppers after concerts and
operas ; and was a fine figure for garden parties, or a spare seat
at the dinner- table ; a lady who had done some good service in
the way of match-making, and who exercised considerable in-
fluence over the minds of divers young matrons whom she had
assisted in the achievement of their matrimonial successes.
It seemed a hard thing that, after having been so useful an
ally to various damsels who were only the protegees of the
hour, ]\Irs. Chevenix's diplomatic efforts ic relation to her own
nieces should result iu utter failure. She had never hoped very
much from Gertrude, who had that air of being too good for
this woi'ld, which of all things is the most rejDellent to sinful
man. Still, even for Gertrude Mrs. Chevenix had done her best,
bravely, and with the sublime patience engendered by profound
axperience of this mundane sphere, its difficulties and disap-
pointments. She had exhibited her seriously-minded niece at
Stranrjtrt and Pilgrimg. 79
charity bazaars, at dejeuners given after the inauguration of
church organs, at choir festivals, and even — with a nolile sacri-
fice of personal inclination— at Sunday-school tea-drinkinga,
orphanage fetes, and other assemblages of what this worldly-
minded matron called the goody-goody school. She had angled
for popular preachers, for rectors and vicars, the value of whose
benefices she had looked up in the Clergy-list ; but she had
cast her lines in vain. The popular i^reachers, crying from
their pulpits that all is vanity, were yet caught, moth-like, by the
flame of worldly beauties, and left Gertrude to console herself
with the calm contemi^lation of her own virtues, and the con-
viction that they were somewhat too lofty for the appreciation
of vulgar clay. It had happened thus, that with the advent of
Malcolm Fordc, the eldest Miss Luttrell fancied she had at last
met the elect and privileged individual predestined to sympa-
thise with, and understand her; the man upon whose broad
forehead she at once recognised the apostolic grace, and who,
she fondly hoped, would hail in her the typical maiden of the
church primitive and undetiled, the Dorcas or Lydia of modern
civilisation. It had been a somewhat bitter disappointment,
therefore, to discover that Mr. Forde, although prompt with the
bestowal of his confidence and friendship, was very slow to
exhibit; any token of a warmer regard. Surely he, so different
in every attribute from all former curates, was not going to
resemble them in their foolish worship at the shrine of Eliza-
beth. So long as this damsel had stuck to her accustomed line
of worldliness, Gertrude had scarcely trembled. But when her
younger sister all of a sudden subdued her somewhat reckless
spirit, and took to district-visiting, Miss Luttrell's heart sank
within her. She had no belief in the reality of this conversion.
It was a glaring and bold-faced attempt at the Curate's subju-
gation, to bend that stiff neck beneath the yoke which had been
worn so patiently by the flute-playing, verse-quoting Levites of
the past. And Gertrude did not hesitate to express herself in
somewhat bitter phrases to that efi'ect.
When Diana came to Eaton-place for the season, the hopes of
aunt Chevenix rose higher. The second Miss Luttrell was
decidedly handsome, in the aquiline-nosed style, and was a?
decidedly stylish ; wore her countiy-made gowns with an air ■
which made them pass for the handicraft of a West-end mantua-
maker; dressed her own hair with a skill which would have
done credit to an experienced lady's maid ; and seemed alto-
gether an advantageous young person for whom to labour. Yet
Diana's season, though brightened by many a hopeful ray, had
been barren of results. Perhaps these girls in their aunt's
bouse were too obviously "on view." Mrs. Chevenix's renown
\s a match-maker may have g^ne against them ; her past sue*
80 Strangers and JPilgnmfi.
cesses may have induced this present failure. And if Gertrude
erred on the side of piety, Diana possibly went a thought too
far in the matter of worldliness. She was clever and imitative,
and caught up the manners of more experienced damsels with
a readiness that was perhaps too ready. She had perhaps a
trifle too much confidence in herself; too much of the veni, vidi,
vici style; went into battle with "An opera-box and a house in
Hyde-park-gardens " blazoned on her banner ; and after suf-
fering the fitful fever of high hopes that alternate with blank
despair, Diana was fain to go back to Hawleigh Yicarage with-
out being able to boast of any definite offer.
But with Elizabeth, Mrs. Chevenix told herself, things would
be uttei'ly different. She possessed that rare beauty which
always commands attention. She was as perfect in her line as
those heaven-born winners of the Derby, Oo.ks, and Leger,
which, by their performances as two-year-olds, proclaim them-
selves at once the conquerors of the coming year. Fairly good-
looking girls were abundant enough every season, just as fairly
good horses abound at every sale of yearlings throughout the
sporting year; but thei-e was as much difference between
Elizabeth Luttrell and the common herd of pi-etty girls — all
more or less dependent on the style of their bonnets, or the
dressing of their hair for their good looks — as between the fifty-
guinea colt, whose good points excite vague hopes of future merit
in the breast of the speculative buyer, and a lordling of a crack
stable, with a pedigree half a yard long, knocked down for two or
three thousand guineas to some magnate of the turf, amidst the
applause of the auction-yard.
" Elizabeth cannot fail to marry well, unless she behaves like
an idiot, and throws herself away upon some pauper curate,"
said Mrs. Chevenix : " there is no position to which a girl with
her advantages may not aspire — and I shall make it my
business so give her plenty of opportunities — unless she is ob-
stinately bent upon standing in her own light. This district-
visiting business must be put a stop to immediately; it is
nothing more than an excuse for flirting with that tall curate."
Mrs. Chevenix was not slow to wtu-n her brother, the Vicar,
of this peril which menaced his handsomest daughter; but he
■who was the easiest-tempered and least-designing of mankind,
received her information with a provoking coolness.
" I really can't see how I could object to Lizzie's visiting the
poor," he said. " It has always been a trouble to me that my
daughters, with the excejition of Gertrude, have done so little.
If Eorde has brought about a better state of things in this
matter, as he has in a good deal besides, I don't see that I can
complain of the improvement because it is his doing. And I
don't think you need alarm yourself with regard to any danger
Strangers and Pilf/rims. 81
of love-making or matrimony between those two. Forde has
somewhat advanced notions, and doesn't approve of a jjriest
marrying. He has almost said as much in the pulpit, and I
think the Hawleigh girls have left off setting their caps at him."
"Men are not always constant in their opinions," said Mrs,
Chevenix. " I wouldn't give much for any declaration Mr.
I'orde may have made in the pulpit. It was very bad taste in
iiim to advance any opinion of that kind, I think, when hia
vi(-ar is a married man and the fatlier of a family."
" Foi-de belongs to the new school," replied Mr. Luttrell, with
liis good-natured air. "Perhaps he sometimes sails a trifle too
tii'nr the wind in the matter of asceticism ; but he's the best
curate I ever had."
•■ Why doesn't he go over to Rome, and have done with it,"
exclaimed aunt Chevenix angrily ; " I have no patience with
Biich a wolf in sheep's clothing. And I have no patience with
f ou, Wilmot, when I see your handsomest daughter throwing
herself away before your eyes."
"But I don't see anything of the kind, Maria," said the
Vicar, gently rolling his fingers round a cigar which he meant
to smoke in the orchard as soon as he could escape from his tor-
mentor. " As to playing the spy upon my children — watching
their flirtations with Jones, or speculating upon their penchant
for Robinson, I think you ought to know by this time that I am
the very last of men to do anything of that kind."
"Which means in plain English that you are too selfish and
too indifferent to trouble yourself about the fate of your
daughters. You ought to have had sons, Wilmot; young
scapegraces, who would have ruined you with university debts,
or gone on the turf and dragged your name through the mire in
that way."
" I have not been blessed with sons," murmured Mr. Luttrell
m his laziest tone. " If I had been favoured in that way, so soon
83 they arrived at an eligible age, I should have exported them.
I should have obtained a government grant of land in Australia
or British Columbia, and planted them out. I consider emigra*
tion the natural channel for the disposal of surplus sons."
" You ought never to have married, Wilmot. You ought to
have been one of those dreadful abbots one reads of, who had
trout-streams i-unniug through their kitchens, and devoted ali
the strength of their minds to eating and drinking, and actually
wallowed in venison and larded capons."
" Those ancient abbots had by no means a bad time of it, my
dear," repUed the Vicar, with supreme good humour, " and they
had plenty of broken victuals to feed their poor with, which I
have not."
*' I want to know what you are going to do about Elizabeth,"
82 Strangers and Pilgrims.
said Mrs. Chevenix, rapping the table with her fan, and return*
ing to the charge in a determined manner.
" What I am going to do about EUzabeth, my love ? Simply
nothing. Would you have me lock her up in the Norman lower,
like a princess in a fairy tale, so that she should not behold
the face of man till I chose to introduce her to a husband of
my own selection? All the legendary lore we possess tends to
show the futility of that sort of domestic tryanny. I consider
your apprehensions altogether premature and groundless ; but
if it is Lizzie's destiny to marry Malcolm Forde, I shall not in-
terfere. He is a very good fellow, and he has some private
means, sufficient at any raia for the maintenance of a wife-
what more could I want ? "
" And you would sacrifice such a girl as Elizabeth to a Scotc\
curate," said Mrs. Chevenix with the calmness of despair. " 1
always thought that you were the most short-sighted of mortals;
but I did not believe you capable of such egregious folly as thia.
That girl might be a duchess."
" Find me a duke, my dear Maria, and I will not object to
him for my son-in-law."
Mrs. Chevenix sighed, and shook her head with a despondent
air ; and Mr. Luttrell strolled or.t to the orchard, leaving her to
bewail his folly in a confidential converse with Diana, who in a
manner represented the worldly wisdom of the family,
" I wouldn't make such a fuss about Lizzie, if I were you,
auntie," that young lady remarked somewhat coolly. •' I never
knew a girl about whom her people made too much fuss, setting
her up as a beauty, and so on, do anything wonderful in the way
of marriage."
Like the eyes of the lynx, in his matchless strength of vision,
were the eyes of aunt Chevenix for any sentimental converse
between Elizabeth and Mr. Forde. It tortured her to know
that they must needs have many opportunities of meeting out-
side the range of that keen vision — chance encounters in the
cottages of the poor, or in the obscure lanes and alleys that
fringed the chief street of Hawleigh. Vainly had she en-
deavoured to cajole her niece into the abandonment of those
duties she had newly resumed. All her arguments, her flit-
teries, her ridicule, her little offerings of ribbons and liices aad
small trinketry, were wasted. After that visit of Malcolm
Forde'G the girl was constant to her work.
" It is such a happiness to feel that I can be of some use
in the world, auntie," she said, unconsciously repeating Mr.
Forde's very words ; " and if you had seen how pleased tliose
poor souls were to see me amongst them again, yon would
hardly wonder at my liking the work."
Strangers and Pilgritiis. 6^
" A tribe of sycopliants ! " exclaimed Mrs. Chevenix ctai-
temptuously. " I should like to know what value they'd attach
to your visits, or how much civility they'd show you, if thero
were not tea and sugar, and coals and blankets in the back-
ground. And I should like io know how long you'd stick
to your work if Mr. Forde had left Hawleigh ? "
Elizabeth flamed crimson at this accusation, but was not of
a temper to be silenced by a hundred Chevenixes.
" Perhaps I might not like the work without his approval,"
she said defiantly ; " but I hope I should go on with it all the
same. I am not at all afraid to confess that his influence first
set me thinking ; that it was to please him I first tried to be
good."
" I am not. an ultra-rehgious person, Elizabeth ; but I should
call that setting the creature above the Creator," said ]\trs.
Chevenix severely. To which Lizzie muttered something that
sounded like " Bosh."
" What else is there for me to do, I should like to know," the
girl demanded contemptuously, after an interval of silence,
Mrs. Chevenix having retired within herself in a dignified
sulkiness. " Is there any amusement, or any excitement,^ or
any distraction in our lite in this place to hinder my devoting
myself to these people?"
This speech was somewhat reassuring to Mrs. Chevenix : she
inferred therefrom that if Elizabeth had had anything more
agreeable to do, she would not have become a district-visitor.
" You have a fine voice, which you might cultivate to your
future profit," she said ; " a girl who sings really well is likely
to make a great success in society."
" I understand. One gets asked out to entertain other
people's friends; and one is not paid like a professional singer.
I like music well enough, aunt; but you can't imagine I could
spend half my existence in shrieking solfeggi, even if papa
would tolerate the noise. I am sure, what with one any
another of us, the piano is jingling and clattering all day, as_ it
is. Papa and the servants must execrate the sound of it:
Blanche, with her etudes de velocite, and Di with her ever-
lasting fugues and sonatas— it's something abominable."
" You might have a piano in your tower bedroom, ray dear.
I wouldn't mind making yon a present of a cottage."
" Thanks, auntie. Let it be a real cottage, then, instead of a
cottage piano— against I set up that love-iu-a-cottage you seem
so much afraid of."
" Upon my word, Elizabeth, I can never make you out," said
Mrs. Chevenix, plaintively. "Sometimes I think you are a
thoroughly sensible girl, and at other times you really appear
capable of any absurdity."
84 Strangers and Pilgrims.
" Don't be frightened, auntie. It rather amuses me to see
your awe-stricken look when I say anything particularly wild.
But you need have no misgivings about me. I am worldly-
minded to the tips of my nails, as the French say ; and I
am perfectly aware that I am rather good-looking, and ought
to make an advantageous marriage ; only the eligible suitor is
a long time appearing. Perhaps I shall meet him next spring
in Eaton-place. As to Mr. Forde, he is quite out of the
question. I know all about his past life, and know that he
is a confirmed bachelor."
" Your confirmed bachelors are a very dangerous race,
Elizabeth," said Mrs. Chevenix sententiously, " They con-
trive to throw families off their guard by their false pretences,
and generally end by marrying a beauty or an heiress. But
I trust you have too much common sense to take up with a
man who can barely afford to keejD you."
By such small doses of worldly-wise counsel did Mrs.
Chevenix strive to fortify her niece against the peril of Mal-
colm Forde's influence. Her sharp eye had discovered some-
thing more than common kindliness in the Curate's bearing
towards Elizabeth — something more than a mere spirit of
contradiction in the girl's liking for him. But there was time
enough yet, she told herself; and the tender sprout of passion
might, by a little judicious management, be nipped in the bud.
She would not even wait for the coming spring, she thought;
but would carry off Elizabeth with her when she went back to
town a little before Christmas. She had intended to spend
that social season in a hospitable Wiltshire manor-house; but
that visit might be deferred. Anything was better than to
leave her niece exposed to the perilous influence of Malcolm
Forde.
Again and again had she made a mental review of the
tritons in the matrimonial market; or rather, of those special
tiitons who might be brought within the narrow waters of her
own drawing-room, or could be encountered at will in that
wider sea of society to which she had free ingress. There was
Sir Bockingham Pendarvis, the rich Cornish baronet, whom it
had been her privilege to meet at the dinner parties of her own
particular set, and who might be fairly counted upon for daily
tea-drinking and occasional snug little dinners. There was Mr.
Maltby, the great distiller, who had lately inherited a business
po23ularly estmiated at a hundred thousand a year. There was
Mr. Miguel Zumires, the financier, with a lion's share in the
public funds of various nations, aquiline-nosed and olive-
skinned, sjDeaking a pecuhar Spanish-English with a somewhat
guttural accent. These three were the mightier argosies that
«ailed upon society's smooth ocean ; but there were numerous
Strangers and Filgrinti. 85
craft of smaller touuage whereof Mrs. Chevenix kept a record,
and any one of which would be a prize worth Doarding.
Inscrutable are the decrees of the gods. YV^hile this diplo-
matic matron was weaving her web for the next London season
— even planning her little dinners, reckoning the expenses of
the campaign, resolving to do thing* j with a somewhat lavish
hand — Fate brought a nobler prize than any she had dared
to dream of winning, and landed it, without etFort of her own,
at her feet.
CHAPTER VIII.
•* He never saw, never before to-day,
What was able to take his breath away,
A face to lose youth for, to occupy age
With the dream of, meet death with — "
It was early in November, and Mrs. Chevenix had been at the
Yicarage a month — a month of inexorable dulness, faintly
relieved by a couple of provincial dinner-parties, at which the
Hawleigh pastor assembled round his well- furnished board a
choice selection of what were called the best people in the
neighbourhood. But the best people seemed somewhat dismal
company to Mrs. Chevenix, who cared for no society that
lacked the real London flavour — the bouquet of Hyde-park and
the Clubs. She was beginning to pine for the racier talk of
her own peculiar set, for the small luxuries of her own
establishment, when an event occurred which, in a moment,
transformed Hawleigh, and rendered it just the most delightful
spot upon this lower sphere.
She had gone to church witii her nieces on Sunday morning
in by no means a pleasant hiimour, captiously disposed rather,
and inclined to hold forth about their papa's pecuiarities and
their own shortcomings in a strain which Elizabeth openly
resented, and the other girls inwardly rebelled agairtst.
" If I had been as cross as aunt Chevenix is this morning in
my nursery days, I should have been told that I had got up on
the wrong side of my bed," said Blanche, walking with Diana
in the rear of the matron. " I suppose it wouldn't do for us
mildly to suggest to auntie that she must have got up on
the wrong side of her bed this morning. It might seem out of
keeping."
" I wonder you stop with us if our society is so very nn
pleasant, aunt," said Elizabeth boldly.
" You ungrateful girl 1 You ought to know that I an
staviner in this r(4nxinir c^mate, at the hazard of mv own
86 Strangers and Pilgrims.
health, simply in order to interpose my influence between yoa
and destruction."
Elizabeth greeted this reproach with a scornful laugh, even
at the gate of the churchyard.
" You foolish auntie ! you surely don't suppose that your pre-
sence hei'e would prevent my doing any thing I wished to do ; that
the mere dead-weight of your worldly wisdom would quench
*he fire of my impulses? " she said.
They were within the church-porch before aunt Chevenii
could reply. She sailed up the central aisle with all her plain
'jails spread, and took the most comfortable seat in the vicarage
pew, without bestowing so much as a glance upon the herd of
nobodies who worshipped their Creator in that remote temple,
aud whose bonnets and choice of colours in general she protested
was barbarous enough to set her teeth on edge.
She sat with half-closed eyelids and a languid air during the
earlier portion of the service, and kept her seat throughout the
reading of the psalms; but in the middle of the hymn that was
sung before the litany, Elizabeth was surprised by a complete
change in her aunt's manner. The cold blue eyes opened to
their widest extent, while their gaze grew fixed in an eager stare.
The carefully-finished eyebrows were raised ; the corners of the
mouth, which feature had previously been distinguished by a
Bomewhat sour expression, relaxed into a faint smile ; the whole
physiognomy indicated at once pleasure and surprise. The look
was so marked that Elizabeth's eyes involuntarily followed the
direction of her aunt's transfixed gaze.
Her wondering glance that way did not show her anything
▼ery strange — only old Lady Paulyn, a somewhat faded dame,
in a lavender satin bonnet, a black velvet cloak, and rare
old mechlin collar, all of ancient fashion. In precisely such
garments could Elizabeth remember Lady Paulyn from the days
of her childhood. She lived in a huge and dismal architectural
pile about seven miles from Hawleigh, saw very little society,
kept no state, and gave but sparingly to the poor. She had an
only son, for whom she was said to be hoarding her money, and
very large were the figures by which the gossips of Hawleigh
computed her hoards.
Of young Lord Paulyn (Viscount Paulyn in the peerage of
England, and Baron Ouchterlochy in Ireland), her only son,
Hawleigh had of late years seen so little that his fiice and figure
were known to but few among the denizens of that town. Put
various were the rumours of that young man's manners and
movements in the more brilliant scenes which he affected. His
tastes were of the turf, turfy ; he was said to have a tan gallop
of hia own at Newmarket, and a stable in Yorkshire ; and, while
some authorities declared that he was makins" ducks and drakes
s
Strangers and Pilgrims. 87
of all the wealth of past generations of Paulyns — all more or
less disting-aished by a miserly turn of mind, and dating their
nobility from the time of Charles the Second, who, by way of
recompense for divers accommodations of a financial character,
created one Jasper Panlyn, merchant and money-lender. Vis-
count Paulyn, of Ashcombe — other wiseacres affirmed that he
had doubled his fortune by lucky transactions on the turf —
betting against his own horses, and various strokes of genius of
a like calibre.
On whichever side the truth may have lain, and whatever
hazard there might be of future ruin. Lord Paulyn was, at this
resent date, accounted one of the richest bachelors in England,
rlrs. Chevenix had met him on rare and happy occasions, to he
remembered and boasted of long afterwards, aud had gazed upon
him with the eyes of worship. He had even been civil to her in his
easy off-hand way, and had spoken of her to a common acquaint-
ance as a *' decent old party ; " " held her head uncommon high,
though, and looked as if she'd been driven with a bearing-rein."
The Luttrells were on sufficiently friendly terms with the
Viscount's mother, although the Viscount himself was a stranger
to them. About twice a year Lady Paulyn called at the Vicar-
age, and about twice a year Mr. Luttrell and a brace of his
daughters made a ceremonial visit to Ashcombe, the seat of the
Paulyns. At school-treats and other chanty festivals, on warm
summer afternoons, the lavender satin bonnet would sometimes
make its appearance, nodding to the commonalty with benignant
condescension ; while plethoric farmers of a radical turn opined
that "it 'ud be a deal better if the old gal 'ud put her name
down for a fi'pun note a little oftener, instid o' waggling of her
blessed old bonnet like a Chinee mandarin."
Whatever five-pound notes Lady Paulyn did bestow upon the
deserving or undeserving indigent were dealt out by the agency
of Mr. Luttrell, or Mr. Chapman, the incumbent of an ancient
little church in the ancient village of Ashcombe. No necessi-
tous wanderers were allowed to prowl about the courtyards, or
loiter at the back doors of Ashcombe Manor. No dole of milk,
or bread, or wine, or beer, or broken victuals, was ever dispensed
in the Ashcombe kitchen. Lady Paulyn sold the produce of hei
dairy and poultry-yard, her garden stuffs and venison. Orchard-'
houses and vineries she had none, holdmg the cultivation of
fruit under glass to be a new-fangled mode of wasting money, or
she would assuredly have sold her grapes and pines and peaches.
But she had acres of apple-orchard, whose produce she supplied
to a cider manufacturer at Hawleigh, retaining only a certain
number of bushels of the least saleable apples for the concoction
of a peculiarly thin and acid liquor whicn she drank hersel^ and
(rave to her servants and dependents.
88 Strangers and Pilgrimg.
" If it is good enough for me, my dear, it ought to be good
enough for them," she told her companion and poor relation.
Miss Hilda Disney, when the voice of revolt \was faintly heard
from the servants' hall.
The lavender satin bonnet was not alone in the great square
pew. Miss Disney was seated opposite her benefactress — a fair
quiet-looking young woman, with long flaxen ringlets, and a
curious stillness about her face and manner at all times ; an air
of supreme repose, which seemed to have grown n]) out of the
solitude and silence of her joyless life until it had become an at-
tribute of her own nature. She had refined and delicate fea
tures, a faiiltless complexion of the blended rose-and-lily order,
large soft blue eyes, and lacked only life and expression to be
Rlmost beautiful. Wanting these, she was, in the words of
Elizabeth Luttrell, a very pretty picture of a pink-and- white
woman.
" There is not a factory girl in Hawleigh so much to be pitied
as Miss Disney," said Elizabeth, when she discovered this young
lady's character and surroundings. "How much better to be
waxwork altogether than be only half alive like that ! But there
is one advantage in having that kind of semi-sentient nature.
I don't believe Hilda Disney feels anything — either the gloom of
that dismal old house, or the tyranny of that awful old woman.
I don't suppose she would mind very much if Lady Paulyn
were to stick pins in her, as the witches used to stick them it,
their wax figures ; or perhaps she might feel pins, though she is
impervious to nagging."
To-day Elizabeth looked from the Viscoimtess to Miss Disney,
and wondered, with some touch of feminine compassion, if she
would ever have a new bonnet, or go on wearing the same head-
gear of black lace and violets to her dying day. But there waa
a third person in the Paulyn pew, and it was upon the counte-
nance of this last individual that the distented eyeballs of Mrs.
Chevenix gazed with that gaze of wonderment and delight.
This third person was a stranger to the sight of most people
m Hawleigh. He was a man of about six-and-twenty, broad
shouldered and strongly built, but not above the middle height,
with a face that was singularly handsome, after a purely animal
type of beauty — a low forehead ; a short straight nose, moulded
rather than chiselled ; full lips, shaded by a thick brown mous-
tache ; a square jaw, a trifle too heavy for the rest of the face ;
a powerful column-like throat, fully exposed by the low-cut
collar, and narrow strip of cravat; short-cut hair of i-eddish
brown ; and large bright eyes of the same hue, a reddish hazel
— eyes that had never been dimmed by thought or study, but-
had something of the sailor's hawk-like far-oif vision. It waa
the ftice and figure of a Greek athle^.e, the winner of tli«
Strangers and Pilgrims, 89
wild olive-crown, in the days when strength was accounted
beauty.
" Do }ou know who that is in the pew by the altar ? " whis-
pered Mrs. Chevenix, under cover of the tall grecu-baize-lined
pew, when they knelt down for the litany.
"Don't know, I'm sure," replied Elizabeth indiflferently ; " i
suppose it's a stranger that they've put in the Ashcombe pew."'
" That young man is Lord Paulyn, one of the richest men in
London," said Mrs. Chevenix, in an awe-stricken whisijei*.
" O," said Elizabeth settling down to the responses, and not
peculiarly impressed by this announcement.
Soreh'- mechanical was Mi-s. Chevenix's share in the service
after this discovery. Her lips murmured the responses, with
undeviating correctness. She escaped every pitfall which our
form of prayer offers for the unwarj^ and came up to time at
every point ; but her mind was busy with curious thoughts
about Lord Paulyn, and very little of the Yicai"'s good old
English sermon — a judicious solution of Tillotson, South, and
Venn — found its way to her comprehension.
She contrived to steer her way down the aisle so as to emerge
from the porch with her elbow against the elbow of Lord Paulyn,
and then came radiant smiles of recognition, and intense
astonishment at this unexpected meeting.
" There's nothing very remarkable in it," said the Viscount,
while the Luttrell girls were shaking hands -with Lady Paulyn
and Miss Disney; "my mother lives down here you know, and
I generally come for a week or so in the huntin' season. Going
to church is rather out of my line, I admit; but I sometimes
do it here to gratify the mater. Any of your people live down
here, Mrs. Chevenix ? "
" Yes ; I am staying with my brother, the Vicar."'
" Bless my soul ! old Luttrell your brother, is he ? I had no
idea of that. Those girls belong to you, I suppose ? rather nice
girls — talking to my mother."
" Those young ladies are my nieces."
" Uncommonly handsome girl, that tall one. We're rather
noted for that sort of thing in the west ; pilchards, clotted
cream, and fine women, are our staple. Pray introduce me to
your nieces, Mrs. Chevenix. Do they hunt ? "
Mrs. Chevenix shook her head despondently.
" Elizabeth has all the ambition for that kind of thing," she
said, " but not the opportunity. My brother has four daughters,
and the Church is not a Golconda."
" That's a pity," said the Viscount, staring at Elizabeth, who
was talking to Miss Disney on the opposite side of the path,
along which the congregation was slowly moving, with a good
deal of nodding and beckoning and friendly salutation ; " that tall
90 Strangers and Pilgrims.
girl looks as if she would be straiglitisli rider. I could give ter
a good mount, if her father would let her hunt."
" That would be qiiite out of the question," said Mrs. Cheve^
nix; " ray brother has such strict notions ;" a remark which
might have sounded somewhat curious to the easy-going pastor
himself; but ]\Irs. Chevenix had certain cards to play, and knew
pretty well how to play them.
" Hump, I suppose so ; a parson and all that kind of thing.
Which is Elizabeth ? The tall one ? "
" Yes, Elizabeth is the tallest of the four."
" She's an uncommonly handsome girl."
" She is generally considered so."
" Egad, so she ought to be. There wasn't a girl to compare
with bor in this year's betting. Introduce me, please, Sirs.
Chevenix."
The matron hesitated, as if this demand were hardly agreeable
to her. " I think the introduction would come better from Lady
Paulyn," she said, " as my nieces appear to be on friendly terms
with her."
" 0, very well ; my mother can present me — it comes to the
same thing. Don't you know her ? "
Mrs. Chevenix shook her head with a gentle melancholy.
" My nieces have not taken the trouble to make us acquainted,"
she said ; " I was not even aware that Lady Paulyn had a seat
in this part of the country."
She might have adJed, that she was not even aware of Lady
Paulyn's existence until this morning. She had supposed the
Viscount to be in the independent position of an orphan.
" 0, yes, we've a place down here, and a precious ugly one,
but my mother likes it ; doesn't cost much to keep up, though
it's big enough for a barrack. I say, mother," crossing the path-
way, which was now nearly clear, " this is Mrs. Chevenix, Mr.
Luttrell's sister, who is dying to know you."
Mrs. Chevenix made a sweeping curtsey, as if she had some
idea of subsiding into unknown depths below the timeworn
tombstones that paved the pathway. The lavender bonnet gave
a little friendly nod, and the Viscountess extended a paw in a
crumpled black kid glove.
" And now, mother, you may present me to these young
'adies," said the Viscount.
The presentation was made, but hardly with that air of cor-
diality which it was Lady Paulyn's habit to employ as a set-ofJ
against the closeness of her financial operations aud the inhospi-
tality of her gaunt old mansion. Mrs. Chevenix detected a
lurkmg reluctance in the dowager's manner of making her son
known to the Luttrell girls.
The Vicar came out of the porch while this ceremoDj was
Slrangerg and Pilgrims. 91
lieing performed, •with Malcolm Forde by his side. There were
more greetings, and Elizabeth had time to shake hands with her
father's cui-ate, although Lord Paulyn was in the very utterance
of some peculiarly original remark about the general dulness of
Hawleigh. Mr. Forde had been very kind to her since her re-
turn to the path he had clialked out for her — deferential even
in his manner, as if she had became at once the object of his
gratitude and respect. But he had no opportunity of saying
much to Elizabeth just now, though she had turned at once to
greet him, and had forgotten to respond to Lord Paulyn's re-
mark about Hawleigh ; for Gertrude plunged immediately into
the usual parish talk, and held foi'th upon the blessed fruits of
her late labours as manifest in the appearance of a certain Job
Smithers in the free seats : " A man who was almost an infidel,
dear j\lr. Forde, and used to take his children's Sunday-frocks
to the pawnbroker's every Thursday or Friday, in order to ob-
tain drink. But I am thankful to say I persuaded him to take
the pledge, and I cherish hopes of his complete reformation."
" Rather given to pledges, that fellow, I should think, Miss
Luttrell," said the Yiscouut, in an irreverent spirit. " I can't
conceive why young ladies in the country plague themselves
with useless attempts at reforming such fellows. I don't beHeve
there's a ha'porth of good done by it. You may keep a man
sober for a week, but he'll break out and drink double as much
for the next fortnight. You might as well try to stop a man
from having scarlet fever when the poison's in his blood. I had
a trainer, now, in the north, as clever a fellow as ever breathed.
I think if you'd given him a clothes-horse to train, he'd have made
it win a cup before he'd done with it. But there was no keeping
him away from the bottle. I tried everything; talked to him
like a father, supplied him with chateau Lafitte, to try and get
him otf brandy ; but it was no use, and the stupid beggar had
one attack of D. T. after another, till he went off his head alto-
gether, and had to be locked up."
This improving anecdote Lord Paulyn apparently related for
the edification of Elizabeth ; since, although he began by ad-
dressing Gertrude, it was on the younger sister his gaze was
fixed, as he dwelt plaintively on the hapless doom of his
trainer.
" Won't you come to the Yicarage for luncheon. Lady
Paulyn?" asked ITr. Luttrell, who had the old-fashioned eager
country-squireish hosi)itality, and who saw that the Yiscount
hardly seemed inclined to move from his stand upon a crum-
bling old tombstone which recorded the decease of " Josiah Judd,
of this parish ; also of Amelia Judd, wife of the above ; and of
Hannah, iniant daughter of the above," and so on, through a
perplexins string of departed Judds, all of this parish ; a fact
92 Strangers a?id Pilgrims.
dwelt upon with as mucli insistence as if to be " of tliis pariish"
■were an earthly distinction that ought to prove a jDassport to
eternal felicity.
" You're very kind," said the dowager graciously, " and
your luncheons are always excellent ; but I shouldn't like to
have the horses out so late on a Sunday, and Parker, my
coachman, is a Primitive Methodist, and makes a great point of
attending his own chapel once every Sunday. I like to defer to
my servants' prejudices in these small matters."
" O Lady Paulyn, I hope you don't call salvation a small
matter ! " ejaculated Gertrude, who would have lectured an
archbishop.
" Hang Parker's prejudices! " cried Lord Paulyn ; " and as
to those two old screws of youi's in the chariot, I don't believe
anything could hurt them. They ought to have been sent to a
knacker's yard five years ago. I always call that wall-eyed
gray the Ancient Mariner. He holds me with his glassy eye.
We'll come to the Vicarage, by all meanc, Mr. Luttrell."
The dowager gave way at once. She was much too wise to
make any attempt at dragooning this only son, for whose en-
richment she had pinched and scraped and hoarded until pinch-
ing and scraping and hoarding had become the habit of her
mind. Too well did she know that Eeginald Paulyn was a
young man who would go his own way ; that her small
economies, her domestic cheese-paring, and flint-skinning were
as so many drops of water as compared with the vast ocean of
his expenditure. Yet she went on economising with ineffable
patience, and thought no day ill-spent in which she had saved a
shilling between sunrise and sunset.
They all moved away in the direction of the Vicarage, which,
unlike the usual run of vicarages, was somewhat remote from
the church.
There was a walk of about a quarter of a mile between St.
Clement's, v/hich stood just within the West Bar, a gray old
archwjiy at the end of the high-street, and the abode of th«
Luttrells. The Vicar offered his arm to the dowager.
"You'll come with us, of course, Forde," he said, in hia
friendly way, looking round at his curate, and the curate did not
refuse that offer of hospitality.
Sunday luncheon at Hawleigh Vicarage was a famous insti-
tution. Mr. Luttrell, as a rule, abjui'ed that mid-day meal,
pronouncing it, in the words of some famous epicure, " an
insult to a man's breakfast, and an injury to his dinner." Buu
on Sunday the pastor sacrificed iTlmself to the convenience of
hia household, and went without his seven-o'clock dinner, in
order that his cook might exhibit her best bonnet in the after-
noon and evening a*, his two churches. There was no roasting
Strangers and Piljrims. 9S
or boiling in the vicarage kitchen on that holy day, only a gentle
simmering of curries and fricassees, prepared overnight; nor
was there any regular dinner, but by way of substitute therefor,
a high tea at eight o'clock, a pleasant easy-going banquet,
which hai been much afi'ected by former curates. But woe be
to the household if the two-o'clock luncheon were not a select
and savoury repast! and Miss Luttrell and the cook held
solemn consultation every Saturday morning in order to secure
this result.
So the Vicar enjoyed himself every Sunday with his friends
round him, and bemoaned himself every Monday on the suliject
of that untimely meal, declaring that he had thrown his whole
internal machinei-y out of gear for the accommodation of hia
servants.
To-day the luncheon seemed a peculiar success. Lady
Paulyn, who was somewhat a stranger to the good things of
this life, did ample justice to the viands, devoured curried
chicken with the gusto of an Anglo-Indian, called the parlour-
maid back to her for a second supply of oyster vol-au-vent, and
wound-up with cold sirloin and winter salad, in a manner that
was eminently suggestive of indigestion. Lord Paulyn had the
modern appetite, which is of the weakest, trided with a morsel
of curry, drank a good deal of seltzer-and-brandy, and enjoyed
him self amazingly after his manner, entertaining Elizabeth, by
whose side he had contrived to be seated, with the history of hi«
Yorkshire stable, and confiding to her his lofty hopes for the
coming year.
She was not particularly interested in this agreeable dis-
course; but she could see, just as plainly as Mrs. Chevenix saw,
that the Viscount was impressed by her beauty, and it was not
unpleasant to her to have made such an impression upon that
patrician mind, even if it were merely the affair of an hour. Nor
was she unconscious of a certain steady watchfulness in the dark
deep-set eyes of Malcolm Forde, who sat opposite to her, and
was singularly inattentive to the remarks of his next neighbour,
Gertrude.
" I don't suppose his perfect woman ever had the opportunity
of flirting with a viscount," thought Elizabeth, " or that she
would have done such a thing if she had. I like to horrify him
with an occasional ghmpse of those depths of iniquity to which
/ can descend. If ne cared for me a little, now, and there were
any chance of making him jealous, the pleasure would be ever
so much keener ; but that is out of the question."
So the reformed Elizabeth, the Christian pastor's daughter,
who visited the poor, and comforted the afflicted, and supported
the heads of sick children on her bosom, and read the gospel
to the ignorant, and did in some vague undeterminate manner
u
94 Strangers and Pilgrims.
struggle towards the higher, purer life, vanished altogether,
giving place to a young person who improved her opportunity
with the Viscount as dexterously as if she had been bred up at
the knees of aunt Chevenix, and had never known any loftier
philosophy than that which dropped from those worldly lips.
Malcolm Forde looked on, and shuddered. " And for such a
woman I had almost been false to the memory of Alice
Eraser ! "
It must not be supposed that Elizabeth's iniquity was of an
outrageous nature. She was only listening with an air of pro-
found interest to Lord Paulyn's stable-talk, even trying to
comprehend the glory of possessing a horse entered for next
year's Derby, about which fifteen to two had been freely taken
at Manchester during the autumn, and who was likely to
advance in the betting after Christmas. She was only smiling
radiantly upon a young man she had never seen until that
morning— only receiving the homage of admiring eyes with a
gi-acious air of unconsciousness; like some splendid flower
which does not shrink or droop under the full blaze of a meridian
sun, but rather basks and brightens beneath the glory of the
Bun -god.
But to the eyes of the man who watched her with an interest
he would have hardly cared to confess to himself, this conduct
seemed very black indeed. He groaned inwardly over the de-
fection of this fair young soul, which not a little while ago he
had deemed regenerate.
" She is not worth the anxiety I feel about her," he said to
liimself : " Gertrude is a hundred times her superior, really
earnest, really good, not a creature of whim and impulse, drifted
about by every wind that blows. And yet 1 cannot feel the
same interest in her."
And then he began to wonder if there were indeed something
inherently interesting in sin, and if the repentant sinner must
needs always have the advantage of the just person. It seemed
almost a hard saying to him, that touching sentence of the
gospel of hope, which reserves its highest promises for the wilful,
passionate soul that has chosen its owivroad in life and has only
been brought home broken, and soiled, and tarnished at the last.
Gertrude was virtuous, but not intei-esting. _ Vainly did
Malcolm Forde endeavour to apply his ear to her discourse. Hia
attention was distracted, in spite of himself, by that animated
talk upon the other side of the wide oval table ; his eyes wan-
dered now to the handsome, sensual face of the Viscount,_ now to
Elizabeth's lively countenance, which expressed no weariness of
that miserable horsey talk. Nor was Mr. Forde the only person
present who took note of tliat animated coversation.
From her place at the farther end of the table, Miss Disney 'a
Strangers and Pilgrims. 95
caim blue eyes wandered ever and anon towards her kinsm&n and
Elizabeth, nardly with any show of interest or concern, \m\
with a coldly curious air, as if she wondered at Lord Paulyn's
vivacity, as an unwonted exhibition on his part. She was very
quiet, spoke little, and only replied in the briefest sentences to
any remark made by Mr. Luttrell, next to whom she w^is seated.
She ate hardly anything, rarely smiled, and appeared to take
very little more interest in the life about and around her than if
ohe had been, indeen, a waxen image, impervious to pain or
pleasure.
Luncheon came to an end at last, after being drawn out to a
point that seemed intolerable to the curate; St. Mary's bells
Bounded in the distance, from the eastern end of the large
straggling town. There was only a short afternoon ser\'ice ; the
litany and a catechising of the children, which Mr. Luttrell
himself rarely attended, deeming that perambulatory examina-
tion of small scholars, the hearing of collect, epistle, and gospel,
stumbled through with more or less blundering by monotonous
treble voices, a task peculiarly adapted to the curate mind. So,
as soon as grace had been said, Mr. Forde rose quietly, shook
hands with Gertrude, and slipped away, not unseen by Ehza-
beth. " There's a good deal of that fellow for a curate," said
Lord Paulyn, casting a lazy glance at the retreating figure; " he
ought to have been a lifeguardsman."
" Mr. Forde has been in the army," Elizabeth answered coldly.
" I thought as much, and in a cavalry regiment, of course.
He has the ' long sword, saddle, bridle ' walk. What made him
take to the Church? The army's bad enough — stiff examina-
tions, bad pay, hard work; but it must be better than the
Church. What made him change his profession?"
" Mr. Forde has not taken the trouble to acquaint the world
with his motives," said Elizabeth with increasing coldness.
Lord Paulyn looked at her curiously. She seemed somewhat
eensitive upon the subject of this tall curate. Was there any-
thing between them, he wondered ; a flirtation, an engagement
even perhaps. He had caught the curate's glance wandering
her way several times during the banquet.
"Egad, the fellow has good taste," thought Lord Paulyn.
" She's the prettiest woman I ever saw, bar none, and is no end
too good for a snuffling parson. I'll make that old Chevenix tell
me all about it presently."
" That old Chevenix" had been trying to make her way with
the dowager during the lengthy meal, entertaining her with
little scraps of town-talk and small lady-like scandal ; not viru-
lent vulgar slander, but good-natured genial kind of gossip,
touching lightly upon the failings and errors of one's acquaint-
ance, deploring their little infirmities and mistaken courses with
96 Strangers and Pilgrims.
a friendly compassionate spirit, essentially Christain. But she
was mortified to discover that her small efiForts to amuse were
futile. The dowager would not acknowledge acquaintance with
one of the people Mrs. Chevenix talked about, or the faintest
interest in those public characters, the shining lights of tho
great world, about whose private life every well-regulated British
mind is supposed to be curious.
" I don't know her," said this impracticable old woman ; " I
never met him ; I'm not acquainted with 'em ; " until the soul of
the Chevenix sank within her, for she was ardently desirous of
establishing friendly relations with this perverse dowager.
" I'm a Devonshire woman, and I only know Devonshire
people," said the dowager, ruthlessly cutting short one of the
choicest stories that had been current in the last London
season.
"Then you must know the Trepethericks!" exclaimed Mrs.
Chevenix, in her gushing way; "dear Lady Trepetherick is a
Bweet woman, and one of my best friends ; and Sir Charles,
what a thorough independent-minded Englishman!"
"I never heard of 'em," replied the dowager bluntly; and
Mrs. Chevenix was hardly sorry when the conclusion of the
meal brought her hopeless endeavours to a close.
" I can't keep those horses waiting any longer," said this un-
grateful old woman, as she rose from the table, after having
eaten to repletion. " Will you tell them to bring my caniage
directly, Eeginald?"
" Nonsense, mother ; the horses are in the stable, and much
better off than they'd be at Ashcombe, I dare say," answered the
Viscount: "I'm not coming home for an hour. Miss Luttrell
is going to show me the garden, and an ancient turret that was
part of Hawleigh Castle."
" Miss Luttrell is at the other end of the room," said the
dowager grimly, perceiving that her son's gaze was rooted to
Elizabeth.
" Miss Elizabeth Luttrell, then," said that young man ; "you'll
show me the garden, won't you ? "
" There's not much worth your looking at," answered Eliza-
beth carelessly.
" 0, yes, there is : a man would travel a long way to see as
much," cried the Viscount significantly; and then thinking that
his admiration had been somewhat too direct, he went on — " a
mediaeval tower, you know, and all that kind of thing. But you
needn't wait for me, mother, if you're really anxious to get
home. I'll find my way back to Ashcombe somehow."
"What, walk seven miles between this and dinner-time!"
fKclaimed the dowager.
•'There are circumstances under which a man might do as
Strangers and Pilgrimt. 97
much," answered the Viscount; "and the Ashcombe dinnerg
are not banquets which I hold in extreme reverence."
Lady Paulyn sighed despondently. It was a hard thing to
have toiled for such an ingrate.
" I'll wait for you, Reginald," she said with a resigned air
" Parker must lose his afternoon's service for once in a way. I
daresay he'll give me warning to-morrow morning."
So Lord Paulyn went into the garden with Elizabeth, longing
sorely for the solacement of a cigar, even in that agreeable
society. He made the circuit of grounds in which there was
very little to see in the month of November ; went into the
orshard, which he pronounced " rather a jolly little place," and
contemplated the landscape to be seen therefrom ; examined the
moss-grown tower which flanked the low white house, and
uttered divers critical remarks which did net show him to be a
profound student of archajology.
"Nice old place for a smoking crib," he said: "what do you
use it for? lumber-room, or coal or wine cellar — eh?"
"My sister Blanche and I sleep in it," replied Elizabeth,
laughing : " I wouldn't change my tower-room for any other iu
the house."
"Ah, but you'll change it, you know, one of these days whe**
you have a house of your own; and such a girl as you must
look forward to something better than this old Vicarage."
"I am quite satisfied with surroundings that are good enough
for the rest of my family," said Elizabeth with her proudest air;
" and I have never looked forward to anything of the kind."
" 0, but, come now, really, you know," remonstrated the Vis-
count, " a girl like you can't mean to be buried alive for ever.
"Sou ought to see the world — Ascot, you know, and Goodwood,
and the Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, and the pigeon-shoot-
ing at Hurlingham. You can't intend to mope in this dreary
old place all your life. I don't mean to say anything against
your father's house, and I'm sure he gave us an uncommonly
good luncheon ; but this kind of life is not up to your mark,
you know."
Here was a second counsellor suggesting that the life Eliza-
beth Luttrell lived was not good enough for her, urging upon
her the duty of rising above her surroundings; but in a some-
what different spirit from that other adviser, whom she had of
late pretended to obey. And this foolish impressionable soul
was but too ready to follow the new guide, too ready to admit
that it was a hard thing to be fettered to the narrow life of a
country parsonage, to be cut off for ever from that brighter
world of Ascot and Goodwood. It was not that she considered
the Viscount at all a superior person. She was quite able to
perceive that this heir of all the ages and all the Paulyns was
»
n8 IStrangers and Pilgrhna. ■
■aiade ot very vulgar clay ; but she knew that he was a powe?
in that unl^nown world whose pleasures she had sometimes
longed for with an intense longing, and it was not unpleasant to
hear from so great an authority that she was worthy to shine
there.
She was not alone with the Viscount in the garden even for
half an hour. The proprieties must be observed in Devonshire
as well as in Belgravia. Mrs. Chevenix was taking a constitu-
tional with Diana close at hand, while Elizabeth and the lord-
ling were strolling along the garden walks, and making the
circuit of the orchard. The dowager had also hobbled out by this
time, with Mr. Luttrell in attendance upon her, not too well
pleased at being cut off from the sweets of his afternoon nap.
'• I might as well be catechising the children as doing this,
he thought dolefully. But there is an end of all social self-
sacrifice, and the lumbering old yellow chariot came grinding
over the carriage drive at last, whereupon Lady Paulyn declared
that she mtist go.
" I am sure we have had a vastly agreeable visit," she said,
cvagging her ancient head graciously, and softening at her de-
parture with a grateful recollection of that toothsome vol-au-
vent; "you must all come and dine with me one of these days."
This was a vague kind of invitation, which the Luttrells had
heard before ; a shadowy coin, wherewith the dowager paid off
small obligations.
" Yes, mother," cried Lord Paulyn eagerly ; " you'd better
apk Mr. Luttrell and the young ladies, and — er — Mrs. Chevenix
to dine with you some day next week, while I'm at Ashcombe,
you know. It's deuced dull there unless we're lucky enough to
get nice people. What day will suit you, eh, Mr. Luttrell ? "
"Hilda shall write Miss Luttrell a little note," said the
dowager graciously; " Hilda writes all my little notes."
" Notes be hanged !" exclaimed Lord Paulyn; " why not settle
it now ? You are not going to give a party, you know ; you
never do. Come, Luttrell, name your day for bringing over
the young ladies. There'll be nobody to meet yon, unless it's
Chapman, the Ashcombe parson, a very good fellow, and an
uncommonly straight rider. AVill Thursday suit ybn ? that's
an off-day with me. You might come over to luncheon, and do
the family pictures, if you care about that dingy school of art;
— couldn't you ? " this to Elizabeth.
" The I\Iiss Luttrells have seen our picture-gallery, Eeginald,"
said the dowager.
" Well, never mind, they can see it again. I know those old
{)ortraitB — a collection of ancient mugs — are not much worth
ooking at ; but in the country, you know, one must do some-
thing; it's a good way of getting through a winter's afternoon.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 99
And I can teach you bezique, if you don't know it " — this to
the damsels generally, but with a special glance at Elizabeth.
" We'll say Thursday then, at two o'clock ; and mind, we shall
expect you all, shan't we, mother ? "
He hoisted her into the chariot before she could gainsay him,
and in a manner extinguished her and any objection she might
have been disposed to offer.
" What a charming young man ! " exclaimed Mrs. Chevenix,
as the chariot rumbled away, after very cordial adieux from the
Viscount, and a somewhat cold leave-taking from Hilda Disney.
" So frank, so easy, so unassuming, so utterly unconscious of
his position ; one would never discover from his manner that he
was one of the richest noblemen in England, and that the
Paulyns are as old a family as the Percys."
" I don't see any special merit in that," said Mr. Luttrell,
laughing ; " a man can hardly go about the world labelled with
the amount of his income, or wear his genealogical tree em-
broidered upon the back of his coat. And you're mistaken
when you call the Paulyns a good old family. They were in
trade as late as the reign of Charles the Second, and owe their
title to the King's necessities. The young fellow is well enough,
however, and seems good-natured and friendly; but I cannot
say that the manners of the present day impress me by their
elegance or their polish, if I am to take Lord Paulyn as a fair
sample of your modern fine gentleman."
" The fine gentleman is as extinct as the megatherium,
Wilmot ; he went out with high collars and black-satin stocks.
The qualities we appreciate nowadays are ease and savoir-fairfc.
If poor George the Fourth could come to life again, with his
grand manner, what an absurd creature we should all think
the first gentleman of Europe!"
" I am sorry for our modern taste, then, my dear," answered
the Vicar ; " but as Lord Paulyn seems inclined to be civil, I
suppose we must make the best of him. I wish he'd spend more
of his time down here, and keep up the old house as it ought to
kept, for the good of the neighbourhood."
" O you blind old mole ! " thought Mrs. Chevenix, as Mr.
Luttrell retired to his den ; a little bit of a room at the end of
the house, with a latticed window looking down upon the sloping
orchard : a window that faced the western sun, and warmed the
room pleasantly upon a winter afternoon. There was a tiny
fireplace in a corner ; a capacious arm-chair ; a wi-iting-table, at
which the Vicar hammered out his weekly sermon when he
treated his congregation to a new one ; a battered old book-case,
containing a few books of reference, and Mr. Luttrell'a college
classics, with the cribs that had assisted him therewith. Here
he was wont to slumber peacefully on a Sabbath afternoon until
\00 Strangers and Pilgrims.
Blanche brought him a cup of strong tea, and told him it was
time to think about evening service.
Mrs. Chevenix ensconced herself in her favourite chair by the
drawing-room fire, with a banner-screen carefully adjusted for
the protection of her complexion, and sat for a long time slowly
fanning herself, and meditating on the events of the day. That
Lord Paulyn was impressed by her niece's beauty — in modem
phraseology, hard hit — the astute widow had no doubt ; but on
foe other hand he might be a young man who was in the habit
)f being hard hit by every pretty girl he met, and the impres-
sion might result in nothing. Yet that invitation toAshcombe,
about which he had shown such eagerness, indicated something
serious. It might be a question of time, perhaps. If the young
man stayed long enough in the neighbourhood, there was no
saying what brilliant result might come of the admiration
which he had exhibited to-day with such a delightful candour.
" How very odd that you should never have seen Lord Paulyn
before, Blanche ! " said Mrs. Chevenix to her youngest niece,
who was sitting on the hearth-rug making believe to read a
volume of Sunday Uterature.
" It's not particularly odd, auntie, for he very seldom comes
here ; and when he does come — about once in two years perhaps
— it's only for the hunting. I never saw him in church before
to-day, that I can remember."
" But it is still more strange that I should never have heard
you speak of his mother "
" 0, she's a sting}^ old thing, and we don't any of us care for
her. We only see her about twice a year, and there's no reason
we should talk about her. She's a most uninteresting old
party."
" My dearest Blanche, ease of manner is one thing, and vul-
garity is another ; I wish you would bear in mind that distinc-
tion. Party, except in its legal or collective sense, is a word I
abhor ; and a girl of your age would do well to adopt a more
respectful tone in speaking of your superiors in the social
Kcale."
"I really can't be respectful about old Lady Paulyn, aunt.
We had a housemaid from Ashcombe ; and, 0, the stories she
told me about that dreadful house ! They'd make your hair
stand on end. I wonder what they'll give us for dinner next
Thursday. Barleybroth perhaps, and boiled leg of mutton."
" Blanche, I beg that you will desist from such flipjiant
shatter. Lady Paulyn may be eccentric, but she is a lady
whose notice it is an honour to receive. Do you know how long
Lord Paulyn usually .stays at Ashcombe? "
" He doesn't usually stay there, aunt. He has been there
once in two years, as far as I know ; and has stayed for a ibrt-
Strangers and Pilgrims. 101
nignt or ■three weeks. I've heard people say that he cares for
nothing but horses, and that he spends his life in going from one
race-meeting to another."
" A thorough Englishman's taste," said Mrs. Chevenix approv-
ingly. If she had been told that he was an amateur house-
breaker, or had a passion for garrotting, she would have hardly
blamed his weakness. " But I have no doubt he will give up
that sort of thing when he marries."
CHAPTER IX.
*' The burden of sweet speeches. Nay, kneel down,
Cover thy hea^l, and weep ; for verily
These market-men that buy thy white and brown
In the last days shall take no thougl)t for thee.
In the last days like earth thy face shall be.
Yea, like sea-marsh made thick with brine and mire,
Sad with sick leavings of the sterile sea
This is the end of every man's desire."
The Vicar had fully expected to receive one of Miss Disney's
little notes postponing the dinner at Ashcombe, so foreign was
it to the manners and customs of the dowager to extend so
much hospitality to her neighbours; but instead of the little
note of postponement there came a little note " to remind ; "
and, as INIr. Luttrell observed, with an air of resignation, there
was notiiing for it but to go.
Then came a grand consultation as to who should go. It was
not to be supposed that Mr. Luttrell could enter society, even
in the most friendly way, with five women in his wake. Ger-
trude at once announced her indifference to the entertainment.
It was Thursday, and on that night there was an extra service
and a sermon at St. Clement's. She would not lose Mr. Forde's
sermon for the world.
" And I should think ijou would hardly miss that, Lizzie," she
eaid, " since you have become so stanch a Forde-ite."
But on this Mrs. Chevenix protested vehemently that Eliza-
beth must go to Ashcombe. She had been especially mentioned
by the Viscount. He was to teach her bezique.
" I know all about bezique already, and I hate it," Elizabeth
answered coolly ; " but I should like to see a dinner at Ashcombe.
I want to see whether it will be all make-believe, like the Bar-
mecide's feast, or whether there will really be some kind of food
upon the table. My impression is, that the dinner will consis't
of a leg of mutton and an epergne."
It was decided therefore, after a little skirmishing between
102 Strangers and Pilgrims.
the sisters, that Elizabeth and Diana should accompany Mk
Luttrell and Mrs. Chevenix to Ashcombe, and that Gertrude
and Blanche should stay at home. The vicarage wagonette,
which had a movable cover that transformed it into a species of
genteel baker's cart, would hold four very comfortably. The Vicar
could afibrd to absent himself for once in a way from the Thurs-
day-evening service, which was an innovation of Mr. Forde's.
The appointed day was not altogether unpropitious, but waa
hardly inviting : a dull dry winter day, with a gray sunless sky
and a north-east wind, which whistled shrilly among the leaf-
less elms and beeches of the wide avenue in Ashcombe Park a«
the vicarage wagonette drove up to the house.
Ashcombe Park was a great tract of low-lying land, stretched
at the feet of a rugged hill that rose abruptly from the very
edge of the wide lawn on one side of the house, and over-
shadowed it with its gaunt outline like a couchant giant. The
mansion itself was a triumph of that school of architecture in
which the research of ugliness seems to have been the directing
principle of the designer's mind. It was a huge red-and-yellow
brick edifice of the Vanbrugh school, with a ponderous centre
and more ponderous wings ; long ranges of narrow windows
unrelieved by a single ornament ; broad flights of shallow stone
steps on each side of the tall central door ; a garden-door at the
end of each wing ; an inner quadrangle, embellished with a
hideous equestrian statue of some distinguished Paulyn who had
perished at Malplaquet : a house which, in better occupation and
with lighter surroundings, might not have been without a certain
old-fashioned dignity and charm of its own peculiar order, but
which in the possession of Lady Paulyn wore an aspect of
depressing gloom.
There were some darksome specimens of the conifer tribe
in huge square wooden tubs upon the broad gravelled walk
before the principal front; but there was no pretence of a
flower-garden on any side of the mansion. Lady Paulyn
abjured floriculture as a foolish waste of money. The geo-
metrical flower-beds in the Dutch garden, that had once
adorned the south wing, had been replaced by a flat expanse of
turf, on which her ladyship's sheep ranged at their pleasure ;
the wide lawn before the grand saloon — a panelled chamber of
fifty feet long, with musical instruments and emblems painted
in medallions on the panels — was also a pasture for those
useful animals, which sometimes gazed through the narrow
panes of windows, with calm wondering eyes, while Lady
Paulyn and Hilda sat at work within.
Lord Paulyn was pacing the walk by the conifers as the
wagonette drove up, and flew to assist the vicarage man-of-all-
work in his attendance upon the ladies.
Strangers and Pilgrimt. 103
" I'm so glad you've all come," he exclaimed, as he handed
ont Elizabeth, apparently unconscious of the absence of her
two sisters. " Very good of your father to bring you to such a
dismal hole. I sometimes wonder my mother and Hilda don't
go to sleep for a hundred years like the girl in the fairy tale,
from sheer inability to get rid of their time in any other way.
But they sit and stitch, stitch, stitch, like a new version of the
Song of the Shirt, and write letters to distant friends, the
Lord knows what about. Here, Treby, take care of the ladies'
wraps, will you," he said to a feeble old man in a threadbare
suit of black, who Avas my lady's butler and house-steward, and
was popularly supposed to clean the knives and fill the coal-
(Bcuttles in a, cavernous range of cellars with which the mansion
was undermined.
The Viscount led the way to the drawing-room, or saloon —
that spacious apartment with the flesh-coloured panelling which
had been originally designed for a music-room. It was a stately
chamber, with six long windows, and two fireplaces with high
narrow mantelpieces, upon each of which appeared a scanty
row of tiny Nankin teacups. Scantiness was indeed the
distinguishing feature of the Ashcombe furniture from garret
to cellar, but was perhaps more strikingly obvious in this
spacious apartment than in any other room in the house. A
faded and much-worn Turkey carpet covered the centre of the
floor — a mere island in an ocean of bees-waxed oak ; a few
spindle-legged chairs and tables were dotted about here and
there; two hard-seated couches of the classic mould — their
frames rosewood inlaid with brass, their cushions covered with
a striped satin damask, somewhat frayed at the edges, and ex-
hibiting traces of careful repair — stood at a respectful distance
from each fireplace ; and one easy-chair, of a more modern
manufacture, but by no means a choice or costly specimen of
the upholsterer's art, was drawn close up to the one hefth
upon which there burned a somewhat meagre pile of small
wood, the very waste and refuse of the timber-yard. Lady
Paulyn was seated in this chair, with a, little three-cornered
shawl of her own knitting drawn tightly round her skinny
ohoulders, as if she would thereby have eked out the sparing
supply of fuel. Miss Disney sat at one of the little tables
remote from the fire, copying a column of figures into an ac-
count-book. Both ladies rose to receive their guests, but not
with a rapturous greeting.
" It's very good of you to come all this way to see a quiet old
woman like me," said the dowager, as if she had hardly ex-
pected them, in spite of Hilda's note "to remind."
" Why the deuce don't you have a fire in both fireplaces iu
such weather as this, mother ? " the Viscount demanded,
104 Strangers and Pilyrims.
shivering, as he placed himself on the centre of the heartnrug,
and thus obscured the only fire there was.
"I never have had two fires in this room, Reginald, and I
never -will have two fires," replied the dowager, resolutely.
" When I can't sit here with one fire, I shall leave off sitting here
altogether. I don't hold with your modern luxurious habits."
" But it must have been an ancient habit to warm this room
a little better than you do, or it would hardly have been built
with two fireplaces," said Lord Paulyn.
"That, I imagine, Avas rather a question of architectural
uniformity," replied the dowager.
•' There's the luncheon-gong," said her son. " Perhaps we
shall find it a little warmer in the dining-room."
There was a good deal of ceremony at Ashcombe, con-
sidering the scantiness of the household ; and Lady Paulyn
took no refreshment that was not heralded by beat of gong.
Her little bit of roast mutton, or her fried sole and skinny
chicken, cost no more on account of that majestic prelude, and
it kept up the right tone, as my lady sometimes observed to
Hilda. The luncheon to-day, though quite a festive banquet in
comparison with the silver biscuit-barrel and mouldering Stilton
cheese which formed the staple of the daily meal, was not too
bountiful a repast. There was a gaunt piece of ribs of beef,
bony and angular, as of an ox that had known hard times, at
one end of the long table; a melancholy-looking roast fowl,
with huge and scaly legs, whose advanced age ought to have
held him sacred from the assassin, and who seemed to feel his
isolated position on a vei-y large dish, with a distant border of
sliced tongue, lemon, and parsley. There were two dishes of
potatoes, fried and boiled ; there was a little glass dish of mar-
malade, that was made quite a feature of on one side of the
board ; and a similar dish containing six anchovies reposing in a
grove of parsley, which enlivened the other side. There was an
artistic preparation of beetroot and endive on a centre dish,
and two ponderous diamond-cut celery glasses, scantily supplied
with celery ; these, with a pickle-stand or two, and a good deal of
splendour in the way of cruets, gave the table an air of being
quite liberally furnished.
The meal was tolerably cheerful despite a certain toughness
and wooden flavour in the viands. Mr. Luttrell pleaded hia
sworn enmity to luncheons as an excuse for not eating any-
thing; and conversed agreeably with the dowager, who had
brightened a little by this time, and seemed determined to
make the best of things. Lord Paulyn sat between Mrs.
Chevenix and Elizabeth, and had a good deal to say for himself
in one way or another. He was enchanted to hear that Eliza-
beth was to have a season in town next year.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 105
" You must come to me for the Oxford and Cambridge, mind.
Mrs. Cheveuix," he said. " I always charter a crib— I beg your
Sardou — take a house on the river for that event. I thought
[is3 EHzabeth would never consent to be buried alive down
here all her days. She isn't like my mother and Hilda. It
suits them very well. There's something ol the fossil in their
composition, and a century or so more or less in a pit doesn't
make any difference to them, I'm so glad I shall see you in
town next year."
This to Elizabeth, and with an extreme heartiness. He could
hardly behave like this to every pretty girl he met, Mrs.
Chevenix thought ; it must mean something serious ; and in
the dim future she Ijeheld herself allied to the peerage, through
her niece. Lady Paulyn.
The Viscount seemed very glad when luncheon was over, and
he could carry off the two young ladies to see the family portraits.
" You won't care much about that kind of thing, I daresay,"
he said to Mr.s. Chevenix, not caring to be troubled with that
matron's society; "you'd rather stop and talk to my mother."
"There is nothing would give me more pleasure than a chat
with dear Lady Paulyn," simpered aunt Chevenix, inwardly
shuddering as she remembered her vain attempt to interest that
inexorable dowager; "but my brother Wilmot seems to have a
gveat deal to say to her, and if I have a passion for one thing
above another, it is for family portraits, especially where the
family is ancient and distinguished like yours."
"0, very well, you can come, of course. I'll show you the
old fogies ; my grandfathers and greatgrandfathers, and all their
brotherhood and sisterhood."
" Miss Disney will accompany us, of course," said Mrs,
Chevenix, smiling graciously at Hilda, who sat opposite to her,
very fair to look upon in her waxwork serenity.
" 0, Hilda knows the pictures Iiy heart. She'd rather sit by
the fire and spin; or go on wilh those everlasting accounts she
is always scribbling for my mother."
" I will come if you like, Mrs. Chevenix," repUed Hilda,
ignoring her cousin's remark.
The party of exjjloration, therefore, consisted of three damsels,
Mrs. Chevenix and Lord Paulyn; aj^artylarge enough to admit
of being divided — a result which aunt Chevenix had laboured to
achieve. Lord Paulyn straggled off at once with Elizabeth
through the long suite of up[)er chambers, with deep oaken
seats in all the windows— Hamjiton Court on a small scale — ■
leaving Hilda to play cicerone for Mrs. Clievenix and Diana,
whom her aunt contrived to keep at her side. This left the
coast clear for the other two, whose careless laughter rang gaily
through the old empty rooms. Merciless was the criticism
106 Strang&n and Pilgrims.
which those departed Paulyns suffered at the hands of their
graceless descendant and Ehzabeth Luttrell. The scowhng
miUtary uncles, the blustering naval uncles, the smirking grand-
mothers and aunts, with powdered ringlets meandering over
bare shoulders, or flowing locks and loose bodice of the Lely
period. Lord Paulyn entertained his companions with scraps of
Family history, their mesalliances, extravagances, and other mis-
deeds which did not tend to the glorification of that noble race.
But Reginald Paulyn did not devote all his attention to hia
duties as cicerone. He had a great deal to say to Elizabeth
about himself and his own affairs ; and a great many questions
to ask about herself, her likings, dislikings, and so on.
"Pm sure you're fond of horses," he said; "a girl with your
8upei"ior intellect must be fond of horses."
" I did not know that taste was a mark of superior intellect ;
I may have a dormant passion for horseflesh, certainly, but you
Bee it has never been developed. I can't go into raptures
about Toby, that big horse you saw in the wagonette. I used
*o be very fond of Cupid, a pony that Blanche and I rode when
we were children ; but unfortunately Cupid grew too small for
me, or at least I grew too big for Cupid, and papa gave him
away. That is all my experience of horses."
"Bless my soul !" exclaimed the Viscount, with a distressed
air. " It seems a burning shame that a girl like you should get
so little out of life. Why, you ought to have a couple of
hunters, and follow the hounds twice a week every season ; it
'voi:ld be an introduction to a new existence. And you ought to
have a pair of thorough-bred ponies, and a nice little trap to
drive them in."
Elizabeth laughed gaily at this suggestion.
" A clergyman's daughter with her own hunters and pony-
earriage would be rather an incongnious person," she said.
" But you're not going to be a clergyman's daughter all your
life. When you come to London you'll see things in a very dif-
ferent light."
" London," repeated Elizabeth, with a little sigh. " Yes ; I
think I should like that kind of life ; only the poor old home
will seem ever so much more dismal afterwards. I sometimes
fancy I could bear it better if there were not quite so many
Sundays. The week-days would go drifting by, and one would
hardly know how long the dreary time was, any more than one
counts the hours when one is asleep. But Sunday pulls you
up sharj^ly with the reflection — ' Another empty week gone ;
another empty week coming!' A day of rest, too, after a
week of nothingness. What a mockery ! "
" Sunday is a bore, certainly," said the Viscount. " People
are so dam preiudiced. If it wasn't for Tattersall's, and the
Strangers and Pilgrimg. 107
Star-aud- Garter — a rather jolly dinner-place near town, you
know — Sunday would be unbearable. But I wouldn't hurry
myself about coming back to Hawleigh after you've had a season
in town, if I were you. Sufficient for the day, you know, as
that fellow Shakespeare says. In the first place, it's a long
way ahead; and in the second, you may never come back at all.
Who knows ? "
They were sitting on one of the deep old window-seats, waiting
for the two young ladies and Mrs. Chevenix, that diplomatic
person having contrived to ask Hilda so many questions about
the pictures, and to be so fascinated ever and anon by glimpses
of that flat waste of verdure called the park, as to detain her
party for some time by the way, thus affording Elizabeth and
the Viscount ample leisure for their tete-a-tete. They wei'e sit-
ting side by side in one of the windows ; Elizabeth with her
head resting against the ponderous shutter, the golden-brown
hair melting into the rich brown of the polished oak, the heavy
eyelids drooping lazily over the dai-k-blue eyes, the whole face in
a half listless repose. Very different would have seemed the
same face if Malcolm Forde had been her companion — radiant
with a light and life whose glory Eeginald Paulyn was destined
never to behold.
" You can't tell what's in the future, you see," said the
Viscount, looking curiously at the tranquil face opposite him.
" Suppose I were to tell your fortune — eh. Miss Luttrell? "
" I should have to cross yonr ^mlm with a piece of gold, per-
haps, and I'm sure I haven't any."
•' Never mind the gold. Shall I tell you your fortune ? "
"I have no great faith in your prophetic power."
" You wouldn't say tha-t if you saw my betting-book. I have
not been out in my calculations three times since the Craven
meeting."
"But that is quite another matter ; you have some solid ground-
work for your calculations there ; and here you have none."
" Haven't I? Yes, I have ; only you'd be oflFended if I were
to tell you what it is. I must have your hand, please — no, the
left," as she offered him the right with a somewhat reluctant
air. " Yes, in tliis pretty little pink palm I can read a great deal.
First and foremost, that it will be your own fault if ever you
go back to Hawleigh jaarsonage as Miss Luttrell ; secondly, that
you can have as many hunters as you Hke at your disposal next
winter; thirdly, that it will be your own fault if you have not
your pony-carriage and outriders for the park in the following
spring. That's my prophecy. Of course it will depend in a
considerable measure upon yourself whether I prove a trufc
prophet."
Elizabeth's heai-t beat a little faster as Lord Paulyn released
108 Strangers and Pilgrims.
her hand, with just the faintest detention of those slim fingers
n his strong grasp. Was not this the very realisation of her
Drightest, fondest dream of earthly glory P Eauk and wealth,
•!ashion and pleasure and splendour, seemed, as it were, flung
■iito her lap, like a heap of gathered roses, without trouble ot
effort of her own to compass their winning; prizes in life'slot-
tery that she had only thought of in a far-off' way, as blessings
which might come to her sooner or later, if fortune were kind —
but prizes that she had thought of very much and very often —
to be cast thus at her feet ! For, although the Yiscount had
not in plain words offered her his hand and fortune, there was a
significance in his tone, an earnestness in his looks, that made
his speech almost a prehminary offer — a sounding of the ground,
before taking a bolder step."
She gave a little silvery laugh, which seemed a sufficient reply
to Lord Paulyn's vaticination.
Even in that moment, with a vision of 'horses and carriages,
country seats and opera-boxes, shining before her ; dazzled with
the thought of how grand a thing it would be actually to win
the position she had talked of winning only in her wildest, most
insolent moods ; to prove to Gertrude and Diana, and all the
little world which might have doubted or disparaged her, that
she was indeed a superior creature, marked out by destiny for a
splendid career — even amid such thoughts as these, there came
the image of Malcolm Forde, a disturbing presence.
"Could I bear my hfe without him?" she thought; " could
I ever jjut him quite out of my mind ? "
All her worldly longings, her ignorant yea^-ning for the splen-
dours of this world, seemed hardly strong enough to weigh
against that foolish passion for a man who had never professed
any warmer regard for her than for the most commonplace
yr^ung woman in his congregation.
" If he loved me, and asked me to be his wife, should I be
foohsh enough to marry him, I wonder?" she thought, while
Lord Paulyn's admiring gaze was still rooted to her thoughtful
face; "would 1 give up every pleasure I have ever dreamed
about fer his sake ?"
The Viscount was happily unconscious of the turn which hia
companion's thoughts had taken. He fancied that it was Ida
own suggestive remarks which had made her thougi»Vful.
" I fancy I hit her rather hard there," he said to himself. " 1
don't suppose it will ever come to anything, and I have made
my book so as to hedge the matrimonial question altogether ;
but if ever I do marry, that's the girl I'll have for my wife.
Not a sixpence to bless herself with, of course— and there are no
end of young women in the market who'd bring me a hatful of
•noney — but a man can't have everything, and a girl who'd been
Strangers and Pilgrima. 109
■brought up in a Devonshire parsonage wouldn't be likely to have
Rny extravagant notions calculated to ruin a fellow."
By which sagacious reflection it will be seen that the Viscouj**)
■was not without the Paulyn virtue of economy.
Hilda's calm presence ajipcai-ed anon upon the threshold oi
the open door, leading the way for the others ; and this being
the last of the state rooms, the Viscount's opportunities carne
to an end. He was hardly sorry for this, perhaps, having _ said
already rather more than he wanted to say. " But that girl is
handsome enough to make any fellow lose his head," he said to
himself, by way of excuse for his own imprudence.
Miss Disney surveyed the two with a thoughtful countenance.
" I hope you have been entertained with the pictures, Miss
Elizabeth," she said, with the faintest possible sneer ; " I had
no idea that Eeginald was so accomplished a critic as to keep
you amused all this time."
" We haven't been looking at the pictures or talking of the
pictures half the time," replied Elizabeth coolly. " You don't
imagine one could interest oneself for an hour with those dingy
old portraits. We have been talking of ourselves — always a
nwst delightful subject."
Miss Disney smiled a wintry smile.
" Then if we have done with the pictures, we may as well go
back to my aunt," she said.
" 0, hang it all," exclaimed Lord Paulyn, looking at his watch,
a bulky hunter that had been over more five barred gates and
buUtiuohes than fall to the lot of many timepieces, " there's an
hour and a half before dinner ; we can't shiver in that Siberian
drawing-room all that time. Put on your wraps, and come for
a walk in the park, and I'll take you round to the stables and
show you my hunters."
Anything seemed preferable, even to aunt Chevenix, to that
dreary drawing-room with its handful of fuel ; so the ladies clad
themselves in shawls and winter jackets, and sallied out with
Lord Paulyn to inspect his domain.
There was very little to see in the park — a vast expanse of
flat greensward dotted about by some fine old timber ; here and
tiiere a young plantation of sycamore and poplar — the dowager
affected only the cheapest kind of timber — looking pinched and
poor in its leatlessness, protected by a rugged post-and-rail fence,
with Lady Paulyn's initials branded iipoii every rail, lest mid-
night marauders should plunder her fences in their lawless quest
for firewood. It was all very sombre and dreary in the early
November twilight, and the black moorland above them took a
threatening aspect, as of a sullen giant meditating some ven-
geance agains^the house of Ashcombe, which had lain a vabsal
at his feet so long.
110 Strangers and Pilgrimii.
" I would rather have the humblest cottage perched up yonder
on the snmmit of that hill," cried Elizabeth, pointing to_ the dark
'idge of the moor, behind -which the faint yellow light was
fading, " than this grand house down here ; there's something
stifling in the atmosphere."
" You'd find it uncommonly cold up yonder in the winter,"
replied the Viscount in his practical way ; " and Ashcombo
wouldn't be half a bnd place if it was properly kept up, wi^.v
about six times the establishment my mother keeps._ But she
has her whims, poor old lady, and I'm bound to give way to
them as long as she's mistress here."
" How good of you ! " said Hilda ; " how very good of you, to
allow my aunt to deprive herself of luxuries and pleasures in
order that you may be the richest man in the county !"
" You needn't indulge your natural propensity for sneering,
at my expense. Miss 'Disney," " replied Lord Paulyn rather
savagely. " It amuses my mother to save money, and I let her
do it. Just as I should let her keep a roomful of tame cats if
fihe had a fancy that way. I don't think your position in^ the
family is one that gives you a right to criticise my conduct."
The fair transparent face flushed faintly for a moment, but
Miss Disney vouchsafed no answer; and Diana Luttrell plunged
valorously into the gap with an eager demand to see the hunters
before it grew quite dark.
"Very proper indeed," thought Mrs. Chevenix; "that kind
of young woman requires a good deal of putting down. I never
like the.-o dependent cousins about a young man — especially if
they happen to be good-looking."
She glanced at Miss Disney, a shm graceful figure of about
middle height, dressed in a shabby black silk gown, but with a
certain elegance that was independent of dress. A fair delicate
face, in whose thoughtful calm the Chevenix eye could discover
very little. She had only a general impression that these quiet
young women are of all others the m< st dangerous.
They went to the stables to see ] ord Paulyn's horses; and
Mrs. Chevenix had to endure rather an uncomfortable quarter
of an hour going in and out of loose boxes, where satin-coatoiJ
steeds with fiery eyes jerked and champed and snorted at her
with malignant intentions, or seemed so to champ and snort;
but she bore it all with a lamb-like meekness: while Ehzabclh
patted the velvety noses of these creatures with her ungloved
hand, and stood fearlessly beside them in a manner that went
far to confirm the Viscount's belief in her vast superiority to the
common order of women. Not that Hilda Disney showed any
fear of the horses. She was as much at home with them as if
they had been so many lap-dogs, and they seemed to know and
bve her, a fact which Mrs. Chevenix marked with a jealous eye.
Strangers and Pilgrims, IH
•* Love me, love my dog," she thouglit ; " some people begin
by loving the dog."
It was dark when they left the great roomy quadrangle where
tlie long row of loose boxes had the air of so many cells for
solitary confinement, and Miss Disney conducted them to one
of the numerous spare bedrooms to readjust their toilets for the
evening, a bedroom which was spare in every sense of the word;
sparely furnished with an ancient Ibur-poster and half a dozen
grim high-backed chairs, a darksome mahogany dressing-table, a
tall narrow looking-glass which was a most impartial reflector of
the human countenance, making everyone alike hideous; spareljr
lighted with a single candle in a massive silver candlestick,
engraved with the Paulyn arms. Here Hilda left them to their
own devices. There was no offer of afternoon tea, and Diana
yawned dismally as she cast herself upon one of the high-backed
chairs.
" How I wish it was over ! " she exclaimed ; " I don't think I
ever had such a long day. It's all very well for Lizzie, she has
Lord Paul3'n to flirt with, and I suppose it's i-ather nice to Hirt
with a Viscount. But Miss Disney is really the most un-get-
on-able-with girl that it was ever my misfortune to encounter."
" Miss Disney is a very clever young woman, my dear, for all
that," replied Mrs. Chevenix mysteriously ; " rely upon it, she
has her own views about her position here."
" You mean that she would like to marry her cousin, I sup-
pose." said Elizabeth.
" I mean that to do that is the sole aim and object of her
life," replied Mrs. Chevenix with conviction, "but a design in
which she will not succeed."
" You're so suspicious, auntie," said Elizabeth carelessly.
" Aren't we to have any more candles ? O, dear me, what a
dread ful old place this is ! — something like those goblin castles
one reads of in German legends, where there are a number of
luige ancient rooms and only one old steward, and where a
traveller begs a night's shelter, and is half frightened to death
before morning."
The dinner, which Elizabeth had looked forward to seeing aa
a kind of natural curiosity, was of a somewhat shadowy and
Barmecide order, like'the pale wraith of some decent dinner that
had died and been buried a long while ago. There was Julienne,
that refuge of the destitute in soups, a thin and vapid decoc-
tion, with a faint flavour of pot-herbs and old bones ; there waa
filleted sole a la niaitre d'hotel, with a good deal more sauce^
h compound of the bill-sticker-and-paste-bru.sli order — than sole.
There was curry, that rock of refuge for the distressed cook — a
curry which might have been veal or rabbit, or the remains of
tJie ancient fowl that had graced the board at luncheon ; and
112 Strangers and Pilgrims.
there were patties also, of a somewhat flavourless order, patties
that were curiously lacking in individuality. The joint is a
more serious thing, and the cook, feeling that her art was here
unavailing, came to the front boldly with a very small leg of
Dartrnoor mutton, which gave place anon to a brace of pheasants,
the victims of Lord Paulyn's gun. The sweets were various
preparations of a gelatinous and farinaceous order, stately in
shape and_ appearance, and faintly flavoured with Marsala, or
essential oil of almonds. The dessert consisted of biscuits, and
almonds and raisins, a dish of wintry apples, and another of
half-ripened oranges, and some fossil preparations of crystallised
fruit, which looked like heir-looms that had been handed down
from generation to generation of the Paulyns. This banquet —
served with a solemn air, and a strict observance of the pro-
prieties, by the ancient man-of all- work and a puritanical-look-
ing parlour-maid, who evidently had the ancient under her
thumb, and who gibed at him and scolded him ever and anon in
the retirement of the sideboard — was a somewhat dreary meal ;
but Lord Paulyn had Elizabeth on his left hand, and found
plenty to talk about with that damsel while the barren courses
dragged their slow length along. Mr. Luttrell, to whom a good
dinner was the very mainstay of existence, sought in vain to
satisfy his appetite with the insignificant morsels of provision
that were handed to him by the ancient serving-man; nor was
he able to console himself for the poverty of the menu by a
desperate recourse to the bottle ; for the vintages whicb the
ancient doled 011+ to him were of so thin and sour a character,
that he was inclmed to think the still hock was more nearly re-
lated to the dowager's own peculiar brand of cider than that
lady would have cared to acknowledge. He ate his dinner,
however, or made bleieve to eat, witli a cheerful countenance,
heroically concealing the anguish that gnawed him within, and
did his best to make himself agreeable to Lady Paulyn, who was
a strong-minded old woman, read every line of the Times news-
paper daily, and was up in all the ins and outs of the money
market, being much given to the shifting of her investments,
and to cautious little speculations and dabblings on her own
account. The Yicar, who never had sixpence to invest, found it
rather uphill work to discuss foreign loans, Indian irrigation
companies, and American railways with this astute financier,
and was glad when the conversation drifted into a political
channel, when the dowager proclaimed herself an advanced
liberal, with revolutionary notions about the income-tax.
He was hardly sorry when they all left the table together,
after a small ration of very indifferent cofiee had been served out
by the ancient, " in the nice friendly continental fashion," as the
dowager remarked with a sprightly air, and he found a quiet
Stranrjers and Pilgrims. 113
little dark corner in the drawing-room — dimly illumined with two
pair of sallow-comjilesioned candles, which gave a sickly light,
as if just recovered from the jaundice — where he sank into a
peaceful and soothing slumber, while Lady Paulyn played fox-
and-geese with Mrs. Chevenix, who was enraptured by this
small token of favour from the dowager. Lord Taulyn insisted
upon playing bezique in a remote corner with Elizabeth, leaving
Diana and Hilda to languish in solitude on one of the Grecian
couches, Diana making feeble little attempts at conversation,
which Miss Disney would neither encourage nor assist.
Bezique, which neither of the players cared about playing,
afforded a delightful opportunity for flirtation, in a shadowy
corner, where the four languishing candles made darkness
visible ; and it was an opportunity which Lord Paulyn contrived
to make the most of. Yet he was careful, withal, not to com-
mit himself to anything serious. There was always plenty of
time for that kind of thing, and he had some years ago made up
his mind never to marry, unless marriage should offer itself to
him backed by very substantial advantages in the way of
worldly wealth. But this girl, this country parson's daughter,
had attracted and fascinated him as no other woman had ever
done. He had, indeed, from his boyhood cherished an antipa-
thy to feminine society, preferring to take his ease in a public
billiard-room or a stable-yard, rather than to sacrifice to the
graces of life in a drawing-room or boudoir. He was not in
the least degree like that typical Frenchman of modern French
novels who spends his forenoon in an-aying himself like the
lilies of the field, and then sallies forth, combed and curled and
perfumed, to languish in the boudoir of the young Marquise de
la Eochevielle till dinner-time, and after dinner elaborately at
the Cafe Eiche, repairs to the side-scenes of some easy-going
theatre, to worship at the shrine of Mademoiselle Battemain the
dancer ; thus employing his life from morn till midnight in the
cultivation of the tender passion.
JSTot often did Keginald Paulyn meet with a woman whose
society he considered worth having ; but there was in Eliza-
beth's manner something that charmed him almost as much as
her beauty. She was so perfectly at her ease with him ; showed at
times an insolent depreciation of him, which was refresliing by
its novelty ; received his adulation with such an air of divine
right, that he felt a delightful sense of security in her society.
She was not trying to captivate him, like almost all the other
young women of his acquaintance. Her mind was not filled to
the brim with the one fact that he was the best match of the
season.
" Do you think your father would let you ride," he asked,
•* if I were to prt a couple of horses at your disposal, and a
114 iitrangers and Pilgrims.
steady-going old groom I've got down here, who'd take no end
of care of you ? "
"If'.m qiaite sure papa would not; and even if he would, I
have no time for riding."
"No time! Why, what can you find to occupy you down
here?"
" I have my poor people to visit."
" "What ! " exclaimed the Viscount, with a look of mingled
disgust and mortilication, " You don't mean to say that you
go in for that kind of thing? I thought your eldest sister did
it all."
" I don't see why my sister should have a copyright in good
works."
" No ; hut, really, I thought it was quite out of your line."_
" Thanks for the compliment. But, you see, I am not quite
80 bad as I se«m. I have taken to visiting some of papa's poorer
parishioners lately, and I have found the work much pleasanter
than I fancied it would be."
" Oh, you have taken to it lately," said Lord Paulyn, with a
moody look. " I suppose it was that tall Curate who put it into
your head ? "
" Yes ; it was Mr. Forde who first awakened me to a sense of
my duty," replied Elizabeth fearlessly.
" How long has he been here, that fellow ?"
"AYhat fellow?"
"The Curate."
" Mr. Forde has been with us nearly two years."
After this the conversation languished a little, while Lord
Paulyn meditated upon the possibilities with regard to Miss
Luttrell and her father's Curate. She had flashed out at him so
indignantly just now, as if his disrespectful mention of this
man were an offence to herself. He determined to push the ques-
tion a little closer.
" I daresay he's a very decent fellow," he said ; " but I could
never make much way with men of that kind. They seem a
distinct breed somehow, like the zebra. However, I've no doubt
he's a well-meaning fellow. I thought he seemed rather sweet
upon your eldest sister."
Elizabeth gave a liittle scornful laugh.
" Mr. Forde is not sweet upon any one," she answered ; " he is
a priest for ever, alter the order of Melchisedec ; or after a more
severe order, for I beleve that matrimony was not forbidden to
that ancient priesthood. Mr. Forde sets his face against it."
" An artful dodge upon his part, perhaps," said the Viscountv
doubtfully. " I daresay he is lying in wait for a wife worth
having."
His keen eyes surveyed Elizabeth's face with a searching gaze.
Strangert and Pilgrims. 115
but could not read the mystery of that splendid countenance.
He would have gone on talking about the Curate, but she checked
him with an authoritative air.
" I wouldn't trouble myself to discuss Mr. Forde's inclina-
tions, if I were 3'on," she said ; •' you have confessed your
inability to sym])athise with that kind of person. He is a noble-
minded man, who has marked out a particular line of life for
himself. There is nothing in common between you and him."
" Candid," said the Viscount, with a careless laugh, " but not
complimentary. No, I don't suppose my line of life is what
you'd call noble-minded ; but I mean to win a Derby before I
die; and I mean to win something else too" — this with the
bright, red-brown eyes full upon her face — " if I make up my
mind to go in for it."
The wagonette was announced at this juncture, and Mr.
Luttrell awoke from refreshing slumbers to gather his woman-
kind around him, and depart from the halls of Ashcombe, rejoic-
ing in his soul at this release.
" Thank goodness that's over ! " he exclaimed, as he settled
himself in a corner of the wagonette, half-smothered by his
sister's am;)le draperies and cashmere shawl; " and if ever Lady
Paulyn catches me trusting myself to her hospitality again, she
may give me as miserable a dinner as she gave me to-day."
" Upon my word, Wilmot, I believe you are the most short-
eighted of created beings," exclaimed Mrs. Chevenix, with a pro-
found sigh.
" It would have required an uncommonly long sight to see any-
thing fit to eat at that dinner," answered Mr. Luttrell. " Supper
is a meal to which I have a radical objection ; but if there's any-
thing edible in the house when we get home to-night, I shall be
strongly tempted to submit my digestion to that ordeal."
" I'm sure I could eat half a barrel of oysters," exclaimed
Diana, with a weary air. " I never went through such a day in
my hfe. It's all very fine for aunt Chevenix and Lizzie to be
puffed up with the idea of having made a conquest, liut anybody
can see that Lord Paulyn is a professed flirt, and that his inten-
tions are as meaningless as they can be."
" These are questions," said aunt Chevenix, with dignity,
"which time alone can solve. I think we have had an extremely
pleasant day, and that Lady Paulyn is a woman of wonderful
force of character. Eccentric, I admit, and somewhat close ia
her domestic arrangements — I'm afraid my cap was on one side
all the evening, from the inadequacy of light on the toilet-table
when I dressed for dinner — but a very remarkable woman."
" That's a safe thing to say of anybody, aunt," rephed Ehza-
beth. " Mrs. Brownrigg, who starved her apprentices to death
was a remarkable woman."
116 Strangers and Pilgrhnt.
CHAPTER X.
•• Who knows what's fit for us ? Had fate
Proposed bliss here should sublimate
My being — had I sign'd the bond —
Still one must lead some life beyond,
Have a bliss to die with, dim-descried."
Whether Lord Paulyn's attentions were indeed meaningless, or
whether serious intentions tending towards mati-imoiiy hirked
behind them, was a question whose solution Time, the revealer
of all secrets, did not hasten to afford. The Viscount spent
about three weeks in Devonshire, during which period he con-
trived to see a good deal of the Vicarage people — calling at least
twice a week, upon one pretence or another, and dragging out
each visit to its extremest length. He was not an intellectual
person, and had contrived to exist since the conclusion of his
university career without opening a book, except only such
volumes as could assist him in the supervision of his stables, or
aid his calculations as a speculator on the turf. His conversa-
tion was therefore in no manner enlivened or adorned by the
wit and wisdom of others ; but he had a little stock of anec-
dotes and reminiscences of his career in the fashionable world,
and of the " fellows" he had encountered there, wherewith to
entertain his hearers. He had also a yacht, the Pixy, whose
performances were a source of interest to him, and whicli
afforded an occasional variety to his stable-talk. In fact, he
made himself so agreeable in a general way, during his visits to
the Vicarage, that Mrs. Chevenix pronounced him the most
entertaining and original young man it had ever been her good
fortune to encounter.
Elizabeth was not always at home when he called, but lie
contrived to spin-out his visit until her return ; an endeavour
in which he was much assisted by Mrs. Chevenix, who took care
to acquaint him with her disapproval of this parish work, and
licr fear that dear Elizabeth was undermining her health by
these pious labours.
" If slie weije an ordinary girl, I should regard the thinfi^ iu
quite another light," said aunt Chevenix; "but Elizabeth is
not an ordinary girl." An opinion in which the Viscount con-
cun-ed with enthusiasm.
" It's all that Curate's doing," he said. " Why don't you
use your influence against that fellow, Mrs. Chevenix? "
" 0, you're jealous of the Curate, arc you? " tlionght the
matron; " then perhaps we can bring you on a little faster by
ttiat means."'
Strangers and Pilgrmt. 117
She gave a plaintive sigh, and shook her head doubtfully.
" I regret to say that my influence goes for nothing when
Mr. Forde is in question," she said. _" He has contrived to
impress Elizabeth with the idea that he is a kind of saint."
" You don't think she cares for him?" asked the Viscount
eagerly.
" Not in the vulgar worldly sense of the words, dear Lord
Paulyn," said Mrs. Chevenix ; " but she has a sensitive impres-
sionable nature, and he has contrived to exercise an influence
which sometimes alarms me. She is a girl who would hardly
astonish me if she were to go over to Eome, and immure her-
self for life in a convent."
" That would be a pity," said the Viscount; " and it would
be a greater pity if she were to marry some stick of a curate."
Bu-t he did not commit himself to any stronger expression
than this ; and he left Devonshire without making Elizabeth
Luttrell an oflfer:— a fact which gave rise to a few sisterly
sarcasms on the part of Gertrude and Diana. Blanche was
more good-natured, and was really desirous of having a noble-
man for her brother-in-law.
But before he departed from his native place Lord Paulyn
dined two or three times at the Vicarage, having hung about
late in the afternoon in such a manner as to invite Mr. Luttrell's
hospitality. " I don't much wonder that he shirks his mother's
dinners," remarked that short-sighted incumbent; nor did he
eee any special cause for self-gratulation when the Viscount
spent his evenings in hanging over tho piano while Elizabeth
sang, or in teaching her the profound theories of ecarte.
If the Vicar was slow to perceive anything pecuhar in this
gentleman's conduct, there were plenty of more acute observers
in Hawleigh who kept a record of his movements, and told each
otber over afternoon teacups that Lord Paulyn must be smitten
by one of the Vicarage girls.
Before the young man had left the neighbourhood, this
rumour had reached the ears of Malcolm Forde.
He heard this scrap of gossip with a somewhat bitter smile,
remembering the Sunday luncheon at the Vicarage, and to
whom the Viscount's attention had been exclusively given.
" I am hardly sorry for it," he said to himslef. " God knows
that I have fought against my own folly in loving her so
dearly — loving her with no higher hope or thought than a
passionate delight in her beauty, a blind worship of herself, a
sinful indulgence for her very faults, which have seemed in her
so many additional charms; knowing her all the while to be the
last of women to help me on in the path that I have chosen for
myself, the very woman to hold me backward, to keep me down
by the dead weight of her worldliness. I shall have reason to
lis Strangers and Pilgrim*.
be grateful to Lord Paulyn if he comes between us, and makes
a sudden end of my madness."
Yet, with a curious inconsistency, wben the Curate met
Elizabeth in one of the cottages, he saluted her with so gloomy
a brow and so cold an air that the girl went home miserable,
wondering how she had oftended him. That he could be
jealous was an idea that never entered into her mind, for she
had never hoped that he loved her. She went home that after-
noon thinking him the coldest and hardest of mankind — a man
whose gloomy soul no act of submission could conciliate ; went
home and avenged herself for that outrage by a desperate
flirtation with the Viscount, who happened to eat his farewell
dinner at the Vicarage that evening.
Lord Paulyn departed and made no sign : yet it is certain
that he left Hawleigh as deeply in love with Elizabeth Luttrell
as it was in his nature to love any woman upon this earth.
But he was a gentleman of a somewhat cold and calculating
temper, and was supported and sustained in all the events of
life by an implicit belief in his own merits, and the value of his
position and surroundings. He was not a man to throw himself
away lightly. Elizabeth was a charming girl, and, in his
opinion, the handsomest woman he had ever seen, and the very
fittest to lend a grace and glory to his life in the eyes of his
fellow-men — a wife he might be proud to see pointed out as hia
property on racecources, or on the box-seat ot his drag, as his
favourite team drew themselves together for the start, on a
field-day at Hyde-park Corner. But, on the other hand, there
was no denying that such a match would be a very paltry
alliance for him to make, bringing him neither advantageous
connections nor addition to his fortune ; and if on sober reflec-
tion, at a distance from the object of his passion, he found that
he could live without Elizabeth Luttrell, why he might have
reason to congratulate himself upon his judicious withdrawal
that too delightful society.
" Mind, I shall expect to see you in town early in the season,"
he said to Elizabeth, when making his adieux. A speech which
he felt committed him to nothing.
"You mustn't forget your promise to show us the university
boat-race," said Mrs. Chevenix with her vivacious air.
She felt not a little disappointed that nothing more decisive
liad come of the young man's admiration ; that he should be
able thus to tear himself away unfettered and uncompromised.
She had fondly hoped that he would linger on at Ashcombe till
in some impassioned moment he should cast his fortunes at the
feet of his enchantress. It was somewhat bitter therefore to
see him depart in this cool manner, with only vague anticipa-
tions of possible meetinits during the London season. I^IrB.
Strangerg and 'JPilgrims. 119
Chevenix was well aware of a fact which the Viscount pre-
tcuded to ignore, namely, that her set was not his set, and that
it was only by means of happy accidents or diplomatic struggles
that she and her niece could hope to meet him in society.
" But he will call, no doubt," she said to herself, having taken
es,pecial care to furnish him with her address.
Elizabeth gave a great sigh of relief as the Vicarage door
closed for the last time upon her admirer. She had been grati-
fied by his admiration, she had listened to him with an air of
interest, had brightened and sparkled as she talked to him ; but
it was dull work at the best. There was no real sympathy, and
it was an unspeakable relief to know that he was gone.
" Thank heaven that's over! " she exclaimed ; " and now I can
live my own life again."
After the Viscount's departure Mrs. Chevenix began to find
life at Hawleigh a burden too heavy for her to bear. The cere-
monial call which she and her two nieces had made at Ashcombe
about a week after the dinner there, had resulted in no new
invitation, nor in any farther visit from Lady Paulyn. Intimacy
with the inexorable dowager, which aunt Chevenix had done her
utmost to achieve, was evidently an impossibilit}'. So about a
'veek before Christmas Mrs. Chevenix and her coniidential maid
lelt the Vicarage, to the heartfelt satisfaction of Mr. Luttrell'a
household, and not a little to the relief of that hospitable gentle-
man himself.
December was nearly over. A long dreary month it had
seemed to Elizabeth; and since that Sunday luncheon at which
Lord Paulyn had assisted, Malcolm Forde had paid no visit to
the Vicarage. EHzabeth had seen him two or three times in
the course of her district-visiting, and on each occasion he
had seemed to her colder and sterner of manner than on the last.
Gertrude was the only member of the family who made any
remark upon this falling away of Mr. Porde's. The Vicar knew
that he worked harder than any other labourer who had ever
come into that vineyard, and was not surprised that he should
lack leisure for morning calls; nor had he ever been a frequent
visitor at the Vicarage. But Gertrude remarked with an injured
air that of late he had ceased from calling altogether.
" I've no doubt he heard that Lord Paulyn was always here,"
she observed ; " and of course that kind of society would not be
likely to suit him."
" i can't see that papa's curates have any right to select our
society for us," exclaimed Blanche, tiring up at this. "Lord
Paulyn was no particular favourite of mine, for he used to take
about as much notice of me as if I were a chair or a table ; and
Mr. Forde is always nice ; but still I can't see that he has anj
right to object to our visitors,"
120 Siravf/ers and Pilgrvnis.
" No one spoke of such a right, Blanche," answered her eldest
sister ; " but Mr. Forde is free to select his own society, and it
is only natural that he should avoid a person of Lord Paulyn'a
calibre."
Elizabeth felt this defection keenly. It was not as if she had
neglected her duties, or fallen away from the right path in any
palpable manner. She had gone on with her work unflinchingly,
even when, depressed by Ms coldness, her spirits had flagged
and the work had grown wearisome. She had been constant in
her attendance at the early services on dismal winter mornings,
when the outer world looked bleak and uninviting. She had
struggled to be good, according to her lights, perceiving no sin-
fulness in that flirtation with Lord Paulyn, which had helped to
fill her empty life.
She missed the excitement of these flirtatious when Lord
Paulyn was gone. It was all very well to declare that he had
bored her, and to express herself relieved by his departure ; but
she missed that agreeable ministration to her vanity. It had
been pleasant to know, when she made her simple toilet for the
home dinner, that every fresh knot of ribbon in her hair made
her lovelier in the eyes of a man whose admiration the world
counted worth winning — pleasant to discover that fascinations
which had no power to touch the cold heart of Malcolm Forde
l^ossessed an overwhelming influence for the master of Ash-
combe. Yet the end of her flirtation with the Viscount was
hardly less humiliating to her than the coldness of the Curate.
He loved and he rode away. She began to think that she had
no real power over the hearts of men; that she could only
startle and bewitch them by her beauty ; hold them for but the
briefest space in her thrall.
If the Viscount's admiration had gone a step farther, and he
had made her an offer, what would have been her reply ? That
was a question which she had asked herself many times of late,
and for which she could find no satisfactory answer. The pros-
pect was almost too dazzling for her to contemplate with a
steady gaze. Had not a brilliant marriage been the dream of
her girlhood ? a vision first evoked by some prophetic iitterances
of aunt Chevenix, when Elizabeth was only a tall slip of a girl
in a pinafore practising major and minor scales on a battered
old piano in the school-room. She had dreamed of horses and
carriages, and opera-boxes and country-seats, from the hour
when she first learned the value of her growing loveliness at the
feet of that worldly teacher. All that wa-s basest in her nature,
her ignorant yearning for splendour and pleasure, her belief in
her divine right to be prosperous and happy, had been fostered,
half unconsciously perhaps, by aunt Chevenix. Mrs. Luttrell
vaa the weakest and simplest of women, and had always referred
Strangers and Pilgriih^s. 121
to her sister-in-law as the very oracle of social existence, and had
fondly believed in that lady as a leader of London fashion to her
dying day. There had been no home influence in the Vicarage
household to counteract the Chevenix influence, and although
Elizabeth took a pride in defying her aunt upon occasions, she
was not the less her faithful disciple.
Could she have refused such an offer from Lord Paulyn ?
Could she of her own free will have put aside at once and for
ever — since two such chances would hardly come in her obscure
life— all the delights and triumphs of this world, all the pleasures
she had dreamed of? It hardly seemed possible that she could
have been so heroic as to say no. It was very certain, on the
jther hand, that she did not care for Keginald Paulyn, that hia
handsome face had no charm for her, that the hngerinc^ clasp of
his strong hand sent no thrill to her heart, that his society after
the tirst half-hour became a bore to her. It was quite as certain
that there was another man whose coldest look quickened the
beating of her heart, whose lightest touch had a magical influ-
ence ; for whose sake poverty would seem no hardship, obscurity
no affliction ; by whose side she could have felt herself strong
enough to make life's pilgrimage over ever so thorny a road.
" i could hardly have been so demented as to refuse him,"
she thought, remembering that this one man for whom she could
have so cheerfully sa.riticod all her visions of earthly glory had
no desire to profit by her self-abnegation.
Christmas was close at hand, and the LuttreU girls were busy
from morning till evening with the decoration of the two
churches; but Eliz:abeth performed her share of this labour with
a somewhat listless air, and did a good deal more looking-on than
Gertrude or Diana approved. She was beginning to be very tired
of her work, tired even of her poor people, despite their afiection
for her. It seemed altogether such a dreary business, unchcered
hj ]\Ir. Forde's counsel or approbation ; not that he would have
withheld his counsel, had she taken the trouble to ask for it ;
but she could not bring herself to do that. She remembered
that October day in the Vicarage garden when they had walked
together over the fallen leaves, while autumn winds moaned dis-
mally, and autumn clouds obscured the sun — that day when they
had seemed so near to each other, and when the dull gray world
had been lighted with that hght that never was on sea or shore —
the light of a great joy. What would she not have done for hia
sake, if he had only taken the trouble to order her. If he had
been a Redemptorist father, and had presented her with a cat-
o'-nine-tails wherewith to go and scourge herself, she would have
taken the whip from him with a smile, and departed cheerfully
to do his bidding. But he asked no more from her than from
aiy other member of that httle baud of ladies who helped him
122 Birangers and Pilgrims.
in the care of his poor, and he distinguished her from that littla
band only by his pecuhar coldness.
Slie flung down her garland of ivy and holly with an impatient
air, in the midst of a little cluster of ladies working busily in the
vestry of St. Clement's, the decorations -whereof were but half
completed.
" I shall do no more," she said; "my fingers ache and smart
horribly. I am tired of the whole business ; tired of parish work
altogether."
Miss Melvin looked up at her friend wonderingly, -with her
meek blue eN'es.
" Why, Lizzie, I'm surprised to hear you say that," she ex-
claimed. " Mr. Forde says you are the best of all his district-
visitors, because you are sympathetic, and the poor people
understand you."
" I feel ver}' much honoured by his praise," said Elizabeth,
with a scornful hitle laugh ; " but as he has never taken the
trou.jle to give me the slightest encouragement of late, I begin
to find the work a little disheartening."
" Elizabeth has an insatiable appetite for praise," remarked
Gertrude; "and I daresay she has been not a little spoiled by
Lord Paulyn's absurd flatteries."
"You have been rather fortunate in escaping that kind of
contamination, Gert)%" replied Elizabeth, whose temper was by
no means at its best on this particular Christmas-eve ; " but I
assure you it is rather nice to have a viscount for one's slave."
" Even when his bondage sits so lightly that he is able to
shake it off at any moment," said Gertrude. To which Eliza-
beth would have no doubt replied, but for the sound of a firm
tread upon the stone threshold, and the sudden opening of the
door, which had been left ajar by the busy workers.
It was Mr. Forde on his round of inspection. Elizabeth won-
dered whether he had overheard that shallow unlaihdike talk
about Lord Paul}^. She picked up her unfinished garland, and
set to work again hurriedly, glad of any excuse for hiding her
face from his cold gaze.
He did not stop long in the vestry, only long enough for a
general good-morning, and a few questions about the decora-
tions ; nor did he address one word to Elizabeth Luttrell. Her
face was still bent over her work, and the wounded fingers Avere
moving busily, when she heard the door shut behind him, and
his departing footstep on the pavement of the church.
He had come to the vestry-door just in time to hear EHzabeth's
flippant speech about Lord Paulyn ; a speech which to his mind
Beemcd to reveal the utter shallowness and worthlessness of the
woman he had suffered himself to love.
•* And yet she has been able to cheat me into a belief in the
Strangers and Pilgrims. 12&
latent nobility of her nature; slie has been able to bewilder my
reason as she has bewitched my heart," he saidto himself, as
he walked slowly down the quiet aisle, and out into the bleak
churchyard ; " as she has distracted me from hotter thoughts
and higher hopes, and has been an evil influence in my life from
the first fatal hour in which I let her creep into my heart."
Even the Vicar's friendly invitation for Christmas-day waa
rejected by I\Ir. Forde. He would have been very happy to join
that agreeable circle, he wrote, but it was a pleasure which he
felt it safer to deny himself. The services on that day were
numerous; there were sick people he had promised to see in the
course of the day, and he should hardly have time for anything
else, and so on.
He spent his day between the two churches and those sick-
rooms, and his night in solitary reading and meditation; trying
to lift his soul to that higher level whither it had been wont to
soar before an earthly passion clogged its wings.
That he would, so far as it was possible to him in his position
as Mr. Luttrell's curate, renounce and abjure the society of
Mr. Luttrell's daughter, was a resolution that he had arrived at
very promptly on hearing the town-talk about Lord Paulyn's
frequent visits at the Vicarage.
" I will not trust myself near her," he said to himself. _" She
has deceived me in the past, and would deceive me again in the
future. I have no power to resist her witchery, except by sepa-
rating myself from her for ever."
He was just strong enough to do this; he had just sufficient
force of will to avoid the siren. Knowing the houses in which
Bhe was most likely to be found, her customary hours, the way
she took iu her walks, knowing almost every detail of her daily
life, and how easy it would be for him to meet her, not once did
he swerve from the rigid line which he had marked out for his
conduct : he saw the famihar figure in the distance sometimes,
and never quickened his step to overtake it. He heard that she
was expected in a cottage where he was visiting, and hurried his
departure straightway rather than run the hazard of meeting
her. But it is hardly by these means that a man learns to for-
get the woman he loves. It is a kind of schooling that is apt to
end another way. Perhaps no man ever yet forgot by trying to
forget : but he is on the highway to forgetfulness when he tries
to remember.
A poison had entered into Malcolm Forde's Ufe. That sacred
calling which demands the service of a heart nncorrupted by
earthly passion began to weigh upon him like a bondage. It
was not that he was in any manner weary of his office, but
rather that he began to feel himself unfitted for it. A deadly
iense of monotony crept into his mind. He began to doubt hi?
124 Strangers and Pilgrims.
{)0wer8 of usefulness ; to fancy that his career at Hawleigh •was
ike the round of a horse in a mill, grinding on for ever, and
tending towards no higher result than that common daily bread.
The natural result of these languors — these painful doubts of his
own worthiness — was to turn his thoughts in that direction
whither they had turned not unfrequently in the days when he
had been better contented with his lot. He began to think more
seriously than ever ujion the missionary life which comes nearer
to the apostolic form of service than the smooth pastures of the
church tit home. He collected all the information he could ob-
tain upon this subject; wrote to men who had the work at
heart, and who knew where a worker of his stamp was most
wanted.
" I have a vigorous constitution," he wrote to one of his cor-
respondents, " and have hardly ever known a day's illness. I
am therefore not afraid of climate; and if I do finally determine
to go, I should wish to go where such labour as I can give
would be of real value ; where a weaker man might be unfit to
face the difficulties and dangers which I feel myself qualified to
cope with and overcome. Do not think that I am boasting of
my strength ; I only wish to remind you that my former pro-
fession has in some measure inured me to peril and hardship,
and that I should be glad to be able to employ some of thai;
military spirit still inherent in my composition in the nobler
Bervice to which it is now my privilege to belong. I want to
feel mj'self a soldier and servant of Christ's church militant
here on earth, in every sense of the word ; and I do not m my
present mood find the work of a rural parish adequate for the
satisfaction of this desire."
CHAPTER XI.
" 'Tis the pest
Of love, that fairest joys give most unrest;
That things of delicate and tenderest worth
Are swallow'd all, and made a seared dearth.
By one consuming flame : it doth immerse
And suffocate true blessings in a curse.
Half happy, by comparison of bliss,
Is miserable."
That Christmas at Hawleigh was not a peculiarly festive season.
Mr. Luttrell being happily rid of his sister was indisposed for
farther society, preferring to bask in the genial glow of his
liearth untrammelled by the duties of hospitality. So the Lut-
trel girls sat round the fire on Christmas evening in a dismal
circle, while their father, silent and motionless as the sculptured
Strangers and Pilgrims. 125
figure of some household god, slumbered peacefully in his easy-
chair behind the banner screen thai; had shaded the fair features
of aunt Chevenix.
" I really do wish that boy-bal>y had lived," exclaimed Blanche
after a long silence, alluding to an infant scion of the house of
Luttrell which had jDerished untimely. " Of course, I know he'd
have been a nuisance to us all — brothers always are — but still
^e'd have been something. He must have imparted a little
variety to the tenor of our miserable lives. Paj)a would have
been obliged to send him to Oxford or Cambridge, where he
would have got into debt for shirt-studs and meerschaum pipes
and things, no doubt ; but he would have brought home nice
young men, perhaps, in the long vacation, and that would be
some amusement. He might have touted for papa in a gentle-
manly way, and brought home young men to be coached."
" Blanche," exclaimed Gertrude, " you positively grow more
revoltingly vulgar in your ideas every day."
" Let the poor child talk," cried Diana, with a stifled yawn.
" I wonder she has spirit enough left to be vulgar. Any inverte-
brate creature can be ladylike, but vulgarity requires a certain
amount of animal spirits; and I am sure such a miserable
Christmas as this is a damper for any one's vivacity."
Elizabeth said nothing. She sat on a low seat opposite the
fire, motionless as her slumbering father, but with her great
dark eyes wide open, gazing dreamily at the smouldering yule
log which dropped its white ashes slowly and silently into a
deep chasm of dull red coal. She had sat thus for the last half-
hour thinking her own thoughts, and taking no part in her
sisters' desultory snatches of talk.
" ' She sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief,' "
exclaimed Diana presently, exasperated by this silence. " Upon
my word, Lizzie, you are not the best of company for a winter's
ni-ht by the fire."
" I do not pretend to be good company," replied Elizabeth
(sr^lly.
" iicw different it would be if Lord Paulyn were here ! " said
Diana, ryhose temper had been somewhat soured by the dreari-
ness of that long evening ; " then you would be all smiles and
bewitc'.iment."
*' I should do my best to entertain a visitor, of course. I do
Bict consider myself bound to entertain you."
" Poor Lizzie," miirmured Diana, with an insolent air of com-
passion. " We ought not to be hard upon you. It is rather a
trial for any girl to have a coronet dangled before her eyes in
that tantalising manner, and nothing to come of her conquest
after all!"
" Po you mean to say that I ever angled for Lord Paulyn^"
1
126 Stranffers and JPilgrime.
cried Elizabeth, with a sudden flash of scornful anger, " or that
I could not have him if I chose? "
" I mean to say," replied Diana, in a provokingly deliberate
manner, " that you and aunt Chevenix tried your very hardest
to catch him, and did not succeed. Perhaps you look forward
to seeing him in London, and sulijugating him there; but \
fancy that if a woman, cannot bring an admirer to her feet in
ihe first flush of her conquest, she is hardly likely to bring him
ihere later. He has time for reflection and distraction, you see;
md a man who has snfiicient prudence tc keep himself uncom?
mitted as cleverly as Ijord Paulyn did, would be the very man
to cure himself of a foolish infatuation. I don't mean to say
anything ofi'ensive, but of course a marriage with one of us
would be a very disadvantageous alliance for a man in his
position."
" You are extremely wise, my dear Di, and have acquired your
wisdom in the bitter school of experience. But I doubt if you
are quite infallible; and to show you that I am ready to back
my o])inion, as Lord Paulyn says, I will bet your poor dear
mamma's pearl necklai;e, my only valuable possession, that if he
and I Uve so long, I will be Lady Paulyn before next Christ-
mas-day."
A foolish wager to make, perhaps, when her heart was given
utterly to another man; but these little sisterly skirmishes
always brought out the worst points in Elizabeth's character.
She had been thinking too, as she watched the softly-dropping
ashes, of all the grandeurs and pleasures with which she might
have surrounded herself at such a season as this, were she the
wife of Viscount Paulyn ; thinking of that dismal old house at
Ashcombe, and the transformation that she might effect there;
the spacious rooms glowing with warm light, filled with pleasant
people, new furniture, splendid draperies, life and colour through-
out that mansion, where now reigned a death-Hke gloom and
grayness, as if the du?t of many generations had settled and
become fixed there, covering all things with one sombre hue.
These visions were strangely sweet to her shallow soul: and
mingled with the thoughts of those possible triumphs there waa
always the thought of Malcolm Forde, and the impression that
iuch a marriage would make upon him.
" He would see that at least some one can care for me," she
daid to herself; " that if I am not good enough for him, I may
be good enough for his superior in rank and fortune."
And then came a vi.sion of that tall figure and grave face
among the witnesses of her wedding. He would take his sub-
ordinate part in the service, no doubt ; " by the Vicar of Haw-
leigh, father of the bride, assisted by the Reverend Malcolm
Forde."
SlrangerB and Pilgrinig. 127
" He would not care," she thought ; " he would not even be
angry with me. But he would preach me a sermon about my
increa»;d means of usefulness; he would expect me to become
». sister of mercy on a wider scale."
After that joyless Christmas-time life seemed to Elizabeth
Luttrell to become almost intolerable by reason of its dreariness-
She gave up her spasmodic attempts at active usefulness alto-
gether. She had emptied her purse for her poor ; wearied her-
self in going to and fro between the Vicarage and their hovels;
steeped herself to the lips in their difficulties and sorrows, and
to some of them at least had contrived to render herself very
dear; and having done this, she all at once abandoned them,
stayed at home and brooded upon her vexations, sat for long
hours at her piano, playing wild, passionate music, which seemed
like a stormy voice answering her stormy heart.
" Let him come to me and remonstrate with me again," she
said to herself, looking up with haggard eyes at the drawing-
room door, as if she expected to see that tall figure appear at
her invocation. "Let him come to reprove me, and I will tell
him that I am tired of working without any earthly reward ;
that I have neither faith nor patience to labour for a recom-
pense that I am only to win, perhaps half a century hence,
in heaven. And who knows if I should see his face there,
or hear Ids voice praising me.'*"
But the days went by, and Mr. Forde took no heed of thia
second defection.
One thing only gave colour to Elizabeth's life in this hope-
less time, and that was the daily service in the big empty
church of St. Clement's, at which she saw the cold grave
face that had usurped so fatal a power over her soul. Once
in every day she must needs see him; once in every day she
must needs hear his voice; and it was to see and hear him
that she rose early ou those cheerless winter mornings, and
ehared the devotions of a few feeble old women in poke bonnets,
and a sprinkling of maiden ladies with frost-pinched noses,
showing rosy-tipped beneath their veils. It was not a pure
worship which was wafted heavenward with Elizabeth's orisons :
rather, no worship at all, but an impious adoration of the
creature instead of the Creator; in every word in the familiar
prayers, every sentence in the morning lessons, she heard the
voice of the man she loved, and nothing more. His voice with
its slow solemn depths of music; his face with its earnest eyes
for ever overlooking her. These were the sole elements of that
daily service. She went to church to see and to hear Malcolm
Forde, and knew in her heart of hearts that it was for this alone
she went; and in some remorseful moments wondered that
Heaven's swift vengeance did not descend upon so impious a
creature.
128 Strangers and Pilgrims.
" How could I bear my life if I were married to ar.oLher man,
and it were a deadly stn to tliiuk of him? " she asked herself,
wonderingly; and then argued with herself that in an utterly
new life, a life filled to overflowing with the pleasures that luid
never yet been within her reach, pleasures that would have all
the freshness and delight of novelty, she must surely fini it
an easy matter to shut Malcolm Forde's image out of her
heart.
" In what is he different from all other men that I should go
on lamenting him for ever? " she thought. " If I lived in the
world, I should meet his superiors every day of my life. But
living out of the world — -seeing only such people as Frederick
Melvin and his fellow-creatures — it is hardly wonderful that I
think him a demi-god."
And then, in the next moment, with a passionate scorn of her
own arguments, she would exclaim: —
" But he is above all other men ! There is no one like him in
that great world I am so ignorant of. Thei'e is no one else
whose coldest word could seem sweeter than the praise of other
men. There is no one else whose very shadow ac^ross my path
could be more to me than the love of all the world besides."
In this blank pause of her life, when all the machinery of her
existence, which had for a long time been gradually growing
abominable to her by reason of its monotony, seemed all at once
to become too hateful for endurance; like a long dusty road,
which for a certain distance the pilgrim treads with a kind of
hopefulness, until, gruwn footsore and weary long ere the end of
his journey, that ioJg white road under the broiling sun, those
changeless hedges, that pitiless burning sky, become an affliction
hardly to be borne; — in this sudden fiiilure of happiness and
Aope, it was not unnatural that Elizabeth's eyes should turn
with some kind of longing to the dazzling prospect perpetuallj
exhibited to them by aunt Chevenix.
" Eemember, my dearest Lizzie," wrote that lady, wh ose
longest epistles were always addressed to Elizabeth — " remember
that you have a great future before you, and pray do not suffer
yourself to be depressed bj"- any remarks which envy or vialice
may dictate to those who feel themselves your inferiors in accom-
plishments and 'personal appearance. Your fate is in your own
bands, my dearest girl, and it is you alone who can hinder, by a
foolish preference, of which I cannot think with common patience,
the very high advancement which i/e^Z assured Fortune holds in
reserve for you. But I venture to ])elieve that your absurd aci'
miration of Mr. F is a thing of the past. Tliink, my love, of
the delight you would feel in being mistress of a brilliant esta-
blishment — in finding yourself the centre of an aristocratic and
fashionable circle, invited to state balls and royal garden-partieg
— and then contrast this picture with the vision of some obscpje
Strangers and Pilgrims. 129
Jtarsonage, its Sunday-school, its old women in. black bonaeta —
hat species of black bonnet which I imagine must be a natural
product of the soil in agricultural districts, so inevitable is its
appearance, and I can hardly believe there are people still living
■who would voluntarily make a thing of that shape. Look upon
this picture, my dearest girl, and then on that. — as Pope, or
some other old-fashioned writer, has observed, — and let reason be
vour guide. Easter, I am pleased to see, falls early this year,
by which means we shall have done with Lent before the fin«
M-eat?ier begins. I shall expect you as soon after Easter Sunday'
as your papa can manage to bring you."
To this visit she looked forward as a release from that life
which had of late become worse than bondage ; but even in this
looking forward there was an element of despair. She might
have balls and garden-parties, and pleasures without number;
she might wear fine dresses, and sun her beauty in the light of
admiring eyes ; but she would see Malcolm Forde no more.
Would it not be happier for her to be thus divided than to see
him day by day, and every day become more assured of his in-
difference ? Yes, she told herself. And in that whirlpool of
London life was it likely she would be for ever haunted by his
image ?
" It is this Mariana-in-the-moated-grange kind of life that is
killing me," she said to herself, as she sat by her turret window,
preferring her fireless bedroom to the society of her sisters,
watching the winter rain fall slowly in the drenched garden, and
the dripping sun-dial by which she had stood so often talking to
Malcolm Furde in the summer that was gone. It was arranged
that Mr. Luttrell and his third daughtm- should go to London
on the 30th of March, the Yicar treating himself to a week's
holiday in town, after the fatigue of the Easter services ; a burden
which was chiefly borne by the broad shoulders of Malcolm
Forde. Towards the end of February, therefore, Elizabeth was
able to occupy herself with the pleasing task of preparing for
the visit; a business which involved a good deal of dressmaking,
and a greater outlay than the Vicar approved. He grumbled
and endured, however, as he had grumbled and endured when
Gertrude and Diana spread their young pinions for their brief
flight into those fashionable skies.
"It seems a nonsensical waste of money," he said, with a
doleful sigh, as he wrote a final clearingup cheque for the
Hawleigh dressmaker, " and I don't suppose that your visit will
result in anything more than your sisters' visits. But Maria
would lead me a life if I refuhcd to let you go."
" I beg your pardon, papa," exclaimed Gertrude. " Praj "i^
not make any comjiarison between Elizabeth and us. The
belongs to quite a diti'erent order of beings, ^ud is sure to make
130 Strangers and Filgrims.
a brilliant match. It ia not to be supposed that the world can
overlook her merits."
" I don't know about that," said the Vicar, with a rueful
glance at the figures on his cheque; "but this seems a large
amount to pay for dressmaking. 1 think girls in your position
— the daughters of a professional man — ought to make your
own gowns."
"The bill isn't all for dressmaking, papa; Miss March has
found the material," said Elizabeth, waiving the question of
what a girl in her position ought or ought not to do. "The
trimmings are rather expensive, perhajDs; but dresses are so
much trimmed nowadays."
" Yes, that's what I hear on every side, when I complain of
my bills," replied the Yicar. " Butcher's meat is so much
dearer nowadays, says the cook; fodder has risen since last
month, says the groom ; Russia is consuming our coals, and
prices are mounting daily, says the coal-merchant. But un-
happily my income is not so elastic — that is a fixed quantity ;
and I fear the time is at hand when to make that square with
our necessities will be something hke attempting to square the
circle."
The Luttrell girls were accustomed to mild wailings of this
kind when the paternal cheque-book had to be produced, and
cheques were signed as reluctantly as if they had been death-
warrants waiting for the sign-manual of a tender-hearted king;
so they were not deeply impressed by this threat of future des-
titution. They gave their minds very cheerfully to the prepa-
ration of their summer clothing ; envied Elizabeth those extra
garments provided for her approaching visit; quarrelled and
made friends again after the manner of sisters whose affection
is tempered by certain individual failings.
Frivolous as the distraction might be, this choosing of coloura
and materials, and trying-ou of new apparel, served to brighten
the bleak days of a blusterous March with a feeble light.
Elizabeth thought just a little less of her hopeless wasted love,
while Miss March's head apprenti.Te was coming to the Vicarage
every day with patterns of gimps and fringes and laces and
ruchings, for the selection whereof all the sisters had to be con-
vened like a synod. Even Gertrude and Diana were not alto-
gether ill-natured, acd gave themselves up to these deliberations
with a friendly air ; while Blanche Hung herself into the subject
with youthful ardour, and wound up her approval of every
article by the declaration that she would have one like it when
she went to aunt Chevenix for her London season.
" Or perhaps you'll be married, and have a town-house,
Lizzie, and I shall come to you ; which would be much nicer
than being under aantie'n thumb. And of course you'd enjoy
Strangers and Pilyrims. 131
bringing out a younger sister. Viscountess Paulyn, on ter
marriage, by Lucretia Viscountess Paulyn; Miss Blanche Lutt-
rell, by her sister, Viscountess Paulyn. Wouldn't that look
well in the local pa^icrs ? "
CHAPTER XII.
** A man can have hut one life and one death,
One heaven, one hell. Let me fulfil my fate.
Grant me my heaven now ! Let me know you mine,
Prove you mine, write my name upon your brow,
Hold you and have you, and then die away,
If God please, with completion in my soul I "
Mr. Forde's letters brought a more definite response than he
had looked for. One of the chief members of the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel wrote, strongly urging him to
lend himself to that vast work. It was just such men as he
who were wanted, and the need for such was great. A new
mission to a land of more than Cimmerian darkness was
on foot ; the harvest was ready ; had long been waiting for the
sickle, but fitting labourers were few. The letter was long and
eloquent, and went home to Malcolm Forde's heart.
From the first, from that first hour in which the slumbering
depths of his spirit had been stirred with a sudden rush of
religious enthusiasm — like that strange ruffling of Siloam's
still waters beneath the breath of God's angel — from that iniliay
hour in which, beside the clay-cold corpse of her who should
have been his wife, he dedicated his life to the service of his God,
he had meant to do soinethiiuj — to make a name which should
mark him out from the unnoted ranks of the Church — to ac-
complish a work which should be in itself the noblest monument
that he could raise to the memory of his lost bride. Not in a
quiet country parish could he find the fulness of his desires. It
was something to have made a ripple upon this stagnant pool ;
something to have stirred the foul scum of indifference that had
defiled these tideless waters. But having done this successfully,
having awakened new life and vigour in this slumberous fioclii
he began to think in all earnestness that it was time for him to
be moving forward. The life here was in no manner unpleasing
to him ; it was sweet rather, sweet in its utter peacefulness, and
the i'ruition of all his present desires. He knew himself beloved
and honoured; knew himself to have acquired unwillingly the
first place, and not the second, in the hearts and minds of thia
congregation. But all this was not enough to the man wl^^
had made St. Paul his tyjiical churchman — to the mai. who
132 Strangers and Pilgrims.
boasted of himself as a soldier aad servant of Christ, yer^'
Bweet was this pleasant resting-place ; very dear the afFectioii
that greeted him on every side ; the blushing cheeks and reve-
rent eyes of school-children hfted to him as he went along the
quiet street ; the warm praises of men and women ; the genial
welcome that greeted him in every household ; the hushed expec-
tancy and upward look of rapt attention that marked hia
entrance to the pulpit. But precious though these things might
be to him, thej^ were not the accomplishment of his mission.
It was as a pilgrim he had entered the Church ; a teacher
whose influence for good could not be used in too wide a field.
Not in this smooth garden-ground could he find room for hia
labour ; his^ soul yearned for the pathless forest, to stand witt
the pioneer's axe on his shoulder alone in the primeval wilder-
ness, with a new world to conquer, a new race of men to gather
into the fold of Christ.
This having been in his thoughts from the very first — a desirfe
that had mingled with his dreams, sleeping and waking, from
the beginning— it would have been curiously inconsistent had
he shrunk from its realisation now. And yet he sat for a long
time with that letter in his hand, deliberating, with a painful
perplexity, on the course which he should take. Nor did that
lengthy reverie make an end of his dehberation. He who had
been won't to decide all things swiftly (his Ufe-path being so
narrow a thread, leading straight to one given point, his scheme
of existence hardly allowing room for irresolution) was now
utterly at fault, tossed upon a sea of doubt, perplexed beyond
measure.
Alas, almost unawares, that mathematically adjusted scheme
of his existence had fallen out of gear : the wheels were clogged
that had gone so smoothly, the machine no longer worked with
that even swiftness which had made his life so easy. He waa
no longer able to concentrate all his thoughts and desires upon
one point, but was dragged to this side and to that by contend-
ing influences. In a word, he had given himself a new idol.
That idea of foreign service, of toiling for his Master in an un-
trodden world, of being able to say, " This work is mine, and
mme only !" which a little while ago had been to him so ex-
hilarating a notion, had now lost its charm.
" Never to see her any more," he said to himself; " not even
to know her fate ! Gould I endure that P O, I know but too
well that she is not worthy of my love, that she is not worthy
to divide my heart with the service of my God, not worthy that
for her sake Ishouldbefalseto the vow that I made beside Alice
Fraser's death-bed ; and yet I cannot tear mjr heart away from
her. Sometimes I say to myself that this is not love at all,
only a base earthly passion, a slavish worship of her beauty.
Strangert and Pilgrims 133
Soflietimea I half bolieve that I never truly loved before, that
my affection for Alice was only a sublimated friendship, that
the true passion is this, and this only."
He thought of David, and that fatal hour in which the King
of Israel, the chosen of the Lord, walked alone up on the house-
top, and beheld the woman whose beauty was to be his ruin ;
thought and wondered at that strange solemn story with its
pathetic ending. Was he stronger or wiser than David, when
for the magic of a lovely face he was ready to give his sovl
into bondage ?
For three days and three nights he abandoned himself to the
demon of uncertainty ; for three days and three nights he
wrestled with the devil, and Satan came to him in but too fair
a guise, wearing the shape of the woman he loved. In the end
he conquered, or believed that he had conquered. There was no
immediate necessity for a decisive reply to that letter, but he
determined to accept the mission that had been offered him ;
and he began to make his arrangements with that view.
Having once made up his mind as to his future, it was of
course his duty to communicate that fact to the Vicar without
loss of time. So upon the first evening that he found himself
at liberty, he walked out to the Vicarage to make this announce-
ment. It was an evening in the middle of Mai'ch, — gray and
cold, but calm witiial, for the blusterous winds had spent their
fury in the morning, and there was only a distant mysterious
Bound of fitful gusts sweeping across the moorland ever and
anon, like the sighing of a discontented Titan. There was a
dim line of primrose light still lingering behind the western
edge of the hills when Malcolm Forde passed under the Bar,
and out into the open country that lay beyond that ancient
archway. He looked at the dim gray landscape with a sudden
touch of sadness. How often had his eyes looked upon these
familiar things without seeing them ! The time might soon
come when to remember this place, in its quiet English beauty,
would be positive pain, just as it had been pain to him some-
times in this place to recall the mountains and the lochs ot
his native land.
" If I could but have lived here all the days of my life with
Elizabeth for my fellow-worker and companion ! " he thought.
" I can conceive no existence happier than that, if I could be
satisfied with small things. But for a man who has set all his
hopes on something higher, surely that would be a hving
death. I should be stilled in the languid sweetness of such
an atmosphere."
He thought of himself with a wife and children, his heart
and mind fi^lled with care for that dear household, all his desires,
(dl his hopes, all his fears converging to that one centre— only
134 Strangers and Pilgrims.
the remnant of his intellectual power left for the service of hia
God.
"A man cannot serve two masters," he said to himself.
*' Sweet fancy, sweet dream of wife and home, I renounce you !
There are men enough in this world with the capacity for
happiness. The men who are most needed are the men who
can do without it."
The Curate stood for some moments before the Vicarage gate
with a thoughtful air, but instead of opening it, walked slowly
on along the waste border-land of unkempt turf that edged the
high-road. Just at the last moment that new habit of indecision
took hold of him again. He had hardly made up his mind
what to say. He would find Mr. Luttrell with his daughters
round him most likely. Elizabeth's clear eyes would peruse
his face while he pronounced his sentence of banishment. He
was not quite prepared for this interview, and strolled on
meditatively, in the cold gray twilight, wondering at his own
Tinlikeness to himself.
" Will she be sorry ? " he wondered, " just a little grieved to
see me depart out of her life for ever? I remember when I
Bpoke of my missionary schemes, that day I told her the story
of my life, there was a shocked look iu her face, as if the idea
were dreadful to her. And then she began to talk of mission-
aries, with the air of a schoolgirl, as a low sort of people. She
is such an unanswerable enigma. At times deluding one into
a belief in her soul's nobility — at other times showing herself
frivolous, shallow, empty in brain and heart. Yet I think— after
her own light fashion — she will be sorry for my going."
Then arose before him the image of Lord Paulyn, and the
memory of that Sunday luncheon at the Vicarage; the two
faces turned towards each other— the man's face ardent, en-
raptured — the girl's glowing with a conscious pride in its
loveliness; two faces that were of the earth, earthy — a brief
scene which seemed like the prelude of a drama wherein he,
Malcolm Forde, could have no part.
He bethought himself of that mere fragment of conversa-
tion he had overheard unawares on the threshold of the vestry,
a gush of girlish confidence, in which Elizabeth had boldly
ipoken of the Viscount *s her " slave." He remembered that
common talk in which the Hawleigh gossips had coupled Lord
Paulyn's narr.e with EUzabeth Luttrell's, and he thought, with
a pang, that this was perhaps the future which awaited her.
He thought of such a prospect with more than common pain,
a pain in which selfish regret or jealousy had no part. He had
heard enough of Lord Paulyn's career to know that the woman
who married him would prepare for herself a doubtful future;
in all likelihood a dark and stormy one.
Strangers and Pilgrivia. 135
" If I can get a minute's talk alone with her before I leave thia
place, I will warn her," he said to himself; "though. Heaven
knows, if her heart is set on this business, she is little likely to
accept my warning."
He wasted half an hour idling thus by the way side, anc^
in all that time had been thinking wholly of Elizabeth, iustea(
of pondering on what he should say to her father. But about
that there need be no difiiculty. He had never yet found him-
self at a loss for words : and though Mr. Luttrell would doubtless
be reluctant to lose so energetic a coadjutor, his affliction wouW
hardly be overwhelming. There was always a fair supply of
curates in the ecclesiastical market of various qualities ; indeed,
the supply of this article was apt to be in excess of the
demand.
It was past seven when Mr. Forde entered the Yicarage. Th«
six-o'clock dinner was fairly over, the lamp lighted in the long
low-coiled drawing-room, the four girls grouped round the fire
in their favourite attitudes — Elizabeth on her knees before the
blaze, gazing into the heart of the fire, like a prophetess intent
on reading auguries iu the coals. She started to her feet when
the servant announced Mr. Forde, but did not leave the hearth
to greet him, though her three sisters crowded eagerly about
him to give him a reproachful welcome.
" It is such an age since you have been near tib," said
Gertrude, almost piteously. " 1 cannot think what we have
done to offend you. '
" You must know that I have had no possible roason for
being offended, dear Miss Luttrell," he answered cordially, but
with his glance wandering uneasily towards that other figure
rooted to the hearth. " Your house is only too pleasant, and I
have had very little time for pleasure. I see your papa else-
where; and to come here is only another name for giving
myself a holiday."
Gertrude cast up her eyes in a kind of ecstasy.
" AVhat a saint you are !" she exclaimed ; " and what a
privilege to feel your blessed influence guiding and directing
or.e's feeble efforts! I have felt myself almost miraculously
assisted in my poor work since you have been with us, and
I look back and remember my previous coldness with a shudder."
" I have no consciousness of my saintship," said Mr. Forde,
with a little good-natured laugh, making very light of an elderly-
young ladylike worship to which he was tolerably accustomed.
" On the contrary, I have a strong sense of being very human.
But I am glad if I have been the source of enthusiasm in you,
and trust that when 1 am no longer here to guide or inspire —
quite unconsciouslf again — you will not be in any danger of
falling away. But I do not fear that contingency " — this with
136 Strangers and Pilgrims.
a somewhat severe pflance in the direction of that figui-e by the
hearth—" for I believe that you are thoroughly in earnest.
Thei-e is no such thing as earnestness without constancy."
Elizabeth took up the challenge and flashed defiance upon the
challenger.
" O, Gertrude was born good! " she said. " I wonder papa
took the trouble to christen her. It is impossible tJiat she could
have been born in sin and a child of wrath, like the rest of us.
She is never tired of church-going and district- visiting; she
has no intermittent fever of wickedness, as I have."
" When you are no longer here, dear Mr. Forde ! " cried
Gertrude, deaf to her sister's sneers, with her hands clasped,
and her somewhat-faded gray eyes opened very wide, and gazing
at the Curate with a wild surmise. " You surely do not mean
that you are thinking of leaving us ? "
" I have been nearly two years at Hawleigh," he answered
quietly ; "longer than I intended to remain when I fir.st came
here — two very happy years ; but I have awakened lately to the
conviction that Hawleigh is not ail the world, only a very
pleasant corner of it; and that if I stamp my name upon
nothing larger than a country j^arish, I shall scarcely have
realised the idea with which I entered the Church."
" You have been offered a church in London perhaps," gasped
Gertrude dolefully.
Diana and Blanche had seated themselves, and watched the
little scene with a sympathetic air, regretful but not despairing.
They would be very sorry to lose Mr. Forde, who was tall, and
good-looking, and gentlemanlike, and had money of his own ;
but perhaps the vast ocean of curates might cast up at their
feet even a more attractive specimen of that order, a man better
adapted for i^icnics, and small tea-drinkings, and croquet.
" You are going out as a missionary," cried EHzabeth with
conviction.
They all turned to look at her, startled by the certainty of her
tone. She had not stirred from her position by the hearth, but
^tood there confronting them, calm as a statue, a curious con-
trast to the distressed Gertrude, who was wringing her hands
feebly, and gazing at the Curate with a half-distracted air.
The single lamj) stood on a distant table ; but even in the
doubtful light Mr. Forde fencied that Elizabeth's face had grown
suddenly pale.
"You are going out as a missionary," she repeated, as if she
had by some subtle power of sympathy shared all his thoughts
from the hour in which he briefly touched upon his views in his
one confidential talk with her.
" You are good at guessing," he said. " Yes, I am going."
*' " cried Gertrude, " it is like your apostolic nature to con-
Strang eti and Pilgrims. 137
template such self-sacrifice. But, 0, dear Mr. Forde, consider
your hcsiltli, — and the natives."
" I don't think St. Paul ever gave much consideration to his
health, or the question of possible danEfer from the natives,"
answered Mr. Forde, with his grave smile; "and if you insist
upon comparing me with saints and apostles, you would at least
expect me to be as regardless of any peril to myself as the
numerous gentlemen who have spent the best part of their hves
in this work."
" Those lives may not have been so precious as yours, Jlr.
Forde."
" Or they may have been much more precious. There are
very few to regret me, should the chances of war be adverse."
Again he stole a glance at Elizabeth. She stood Hrm as a
rock, and was now not even looking his way. Her eyes were
bent upon the decaying fire, with that customary prophetic look.
She might have been trying to read his fate there.
" However," he continued, "the die is cast. I have arrived at
the conviction that I am more wanted yonder, to dig and dtlve
that rugged soil, than to idle among the delights of this flower-
garden. And I came here this evening to announce my deter-
mination to Mr. Luttrell. Do you know if I shall find him in
his study P "
" Papa has gone into the town, to the reading-room," said
Blanche.
" Then I can take my chance of finding hira there," said the
Curate, preparing to depart.
" 0, Mr. Forde, how unkind to be so anxious to run away,
when this is perhaps almost your last visit. You must stop to
tea, and you can tell us about your plans ; how soon," with a
little choking noise, " you really mean to leave us."
" I will stop with much pleasure, if you like, ' he answered,
putting down his hat, which Gertrude took up with a reverent
air, as if it had been a mitre, and removed to a convenient
abiding place. " As to my plans, they are somewhat vague as
yet. I have little to tell beyond the one fact that I am going.
Only I thought it due to Mr. Luttrell to give him the earliest
information of that fact, insignificant as it may be."
" It is not insignificant," exclaimed Gertrude. " Hawleigh
never had such a gain or such a loss as you will have been to it. '
"Will it be" — with another little choking interval, like a
strangled semicolon — "very long before we lose you? "
" I do I'.ot know what you would call long. About a month,
perhaps."
" Only a month — only four more blessed Sundays ! 0, Mr.
Forde, that is sudden ! "
" Do not suppose that I am not sorry to go," said Mr. Forde.
138 Strangers and Pilgrims.
"I am very fond of Hawleigh. But that other work ia a pari
of an old design. I have only been trying my strength here."
" Only fluttering your wings like a young eagle betore soaring
to the topmost mountain peaks," exclaimed Gertrude with a
little gush of poetry, raising her tearful eyes to the ceiling, in
the midst of which burst the maid brought in the tea-tray, a,nd
Miss Luttrell seated herself to perform her duties in connection
therewith, not without a consolatory pride in the silver tea-
service. She was the kind of woman to whom even in the
hour of despair these things are not utterly dust and ashes.
Elizabeth had seated herself in an arm-chair by the fire, on
which her gaze was still gravely bent. She made no farther
attempt to join in the conversation, but sat silent while Gertrude
persecuted the Curate with questions about his future career,
not consenting to be put off with vague or careless answers,
but evincing an insatiable thirst for exact information upon
every point.
Scarcely did Elizabeth lift her eyes from that mute contem-
plation of the fire when Mr. Forde carried her a cup of tea. She
took it from him with a murmured acknowledgment, but did not
look up at him, or give him any excuse for lingering near her.
He was obligrd to go back to his chair by the round table at the
other end of the room, and sit in the full glare of the lamp,
submitting himself meekly to Gertrude's cross-questioning. He
bore this infliction perhaps with a greater patience than he
might otherwise have shown, for the sake of that quiet figure
by the hearth. Against his better judgment, even although the
plan of his life was fixed irrevocably, and Elizabeth Luttrell's
image excluded from it, there was yet a pensive sweetness in
her presence — her silent presence — the sense of being near her.
" What does it matter if the pleasure is a fooUsh one ? " he
thought : " it must needs be so brief."
He stayed about an hour, sipping orange pekoe, and talking
somewhat reluctantly of his hopes and views, for he was a man
who deemed that in these things silence is golden. He tried to turn
the thread of talk another way, but Gertrude would not be put off.
" O, let us talk of you and your future, dear Mr. Forde," she
exclaimed, with her accustomed air of pious rapture. " It will
be such a comfort when you are gone to be able to think of yon,
and follow your footsteps on the map."
The clock struck the half-hour after nine, and Mr. Luttrell
had not yet appeared, so the Curate rose to depart, and went
across to the hearthrug to bid Elizabeth good-night.
" You had better say good-bye at the same time," said Diana.
" Your visits are so few and far between that I daresay Lizzie
will have gone away before we eee you again."
" Gone away ! "
Strangers and Pilgrims. 139
" Yes ; she is going to town in a fortnight to stay with aunt
Chevenix."
" Indeed." This in a disappointed tone, yet it could matter
BO httle to him whither she went, when he was about to discon-
nect himself altogether from Hawleigh. Only he disapproved
of aunt (Chevenix in the abstract, and it was disagreeable to him
to hear that the woman he had admired, and at times even
believed in, was about to be subject to her influence.
" I believe you are half a Puritan at heart, Mr. Forde," said
Diana, " and that you look upon all fashionable pleasures as crimi-
nal. I could read it in your face one day when auntie was holding
forth upon her delectable land in the regions of Eaton-place."
" I have no passion for that kind of thing, I admit," answered
the Curate. " But I trust that your sister Elizabeth wiU pass
safely through that and every other ordeal. If good wishes could
insure her safety, mine are earnest enough to count for something."
He shook hands with Elizabeth as he said tliia. The hand she
gave him was very cold, and he fancied even that it trembled a
little as his strong fingers closed on it. Then followed Gertrude's
effusive fiirewells. He would come to see them oftener, would he
not, now that his hours among them were numbered P Diana
and Blanche were also efiusive, but in a milder degree, having
already been speculating upon the possible attributes of a new
curate. In so dull a life as theirs even the agony of such a part-
ing was not unpleasing distraction, like that abscess in the cheek
from which an Austi'ian archduchess derived amusement in her
declining years.
While these farewells were being somewhat lengthily drawn
out, Elizabeth slipped quietly from the room. Mr. Forde heard
the flutter of her dress, and looked round for a moment, to dis-
cover that her place was vacant. How empty did the room seem
to him without her !
He dragged himself away from the reluctant Gertrude at last,
and felt not a little relieved when he found himself in the open
air, under a windy sky ; the moon shining fitfully, with swift
clouds scudding across her silvern face, the night winds sighing
among the laurels on the leaty bank that shadowed the almost
empty flower-border, where a fringe of daffodils showed pale in
the moonlight. Mr. Forde walked slowly towards the gate, over
the lawn on which he had condescended to foolish games of
croquet in the summers that were gone, thinking of Elizabeth,
and her curious apathetic silence, and the almost deathlike cold-
ness of the hand that had touched his.
" She is the strangest girl," he said to himself, "and there are
moments when I am half tempted to think "
He did not finish the thought even to himself, for looking up
suddenly he beheld a figure standing before him on the edge of
140 Strangers and Pilffrimg.
tlie lawn, a woman's figure, wifh a shawl of fleecy whiteness
folded Arab-wise, and shrouding it almost from head to feet.
Yet even thus muffled he knew the figure by its bearing ; a
loftier air than is common to modern young-lady-hood — some-
thing nearer akin to the untutored grace of an Indian princess.
"Elizabeth!"
" Yes, Mr. Forde. I have come out here to ask you if it ia
true, — if you do really intend to fling away your life like that ? "
" There is no question of my flinging away my life," he an-
swered quietly, yet strangely moved by her presence, by the
smothered passion in her tone. " I shall be a,s much in thehanda
of God yonder as I am here."
" Of course," she answered in her reckless way, " God is with
as everywhere, watching and judging us. But He sufi'ers human
Bacrifices, even in our day. It may be in the scheme of Provi-
dence that you should be eaten, or scalped, or tomahawked, or
\urnt alive by savages."
" Be sure that if it is, the thing will happen."
" 0, that is your horrible Calvinistic doctrine ; almost ai8 bad
as a Turk's. But if you do not leave England you cannot fall
into the hands of those dreadful savages."
" And perhaps remain at home to be killed in a railway acci-
dent, or die of smallpox. I hardly think the savages would be
worse ; and if I felt I had done any good among them, there
would be a kind of glory in my death, which might take the sting
out of its physical pain."
" ' The path of gloiy leads but to the grave,' " said Elizabeth
gloomil_y. "Don't go, Mr. Forde. There are heathens enough
to convert in England."
" But I feel that my vocation calls me yonder."
" It is a mere fancy. You were a soldier the other day, and
cannot forget the old longing for foreign service."
"Believe me, no; I have considered this business with more
ieHberation than is usual to me, and I am quite convinced that
my duty 1:63 in that direction."
" A delusion ! You would be greater and more useful in
England. Your countryman, Edward Irving, had once that
fancy, I remember; he had his ideal picture of a missionary's
life, and seriout-ly thought of trying to realise it."
■' Better for himself, perhaps, if he had achieved that early
aim, than to be a world's wonder for a few brief years, and die
the dupe of a disordered brain."
" Don't go, Mr. Forde ! " clasping her hands, and looking up
at him so piteously with her lovely eyes, so diSerent from the
seraphic gaze of poor Gertrude's faded orbs. " I wish to Heavf r X
were eloquent, and krew how to plead and argue as some -i j^ ia
do"
Strangers and Pilgrimit. 141
"You are only too eloquent; your words go to my heart. For
God's sake, say no more ! "
" Yes, yes, I will say mucli more ; if I can touch you, if my
words can penetrate your obstinate heart, jow shall not go. I
am pleading for Hawleigh, and all the jjcople who love you, who
have drawn their very faith and hope from you, as if your soul
were a fountain of righteousness. I have a presentiment that if
you go to those savage islands it will be to perish ; to lose your
life for a vain dream. Stay here, and teach us to be good. We
were half of us pagans till you came to us."
They had walked on towards the gate while they were talking.
They now stood close beside it; Elizabeth with one bare hand
clasping the topmost bar, as if she meant to hinder the Curate's
exit till she had extorted the recantation of his vow.
There was a little pause after her last speech. Malcolm
Forde stood looking downward, thinking of what she had said;
thinking of it with a passionate delight which Avas new and
strange to his soul; a rapture which had been no element in his
love of Alice Fi-aser. Suddenly he took the hand that hung
loosely by Elizabeth's side.
" If I were weak enough, mad enough, to prefer my own hap-
piness to tho call of duty, I should stay here," he said ; " you
ought to know that."
" I know nothing except that you have been hard and cruel to
me always, in spite of all my feeble endeavours to please you,"
answered the girl with the fiiint touch of the pettishnesa
common to undisciplined beauty.
" Your endeavours to please me ! " he repeated. " Could I
think yi)U valued my opinion? If I had imagined that; if
I could have supposed, for one presumptuous moment, that you
loved me "
" If you could have supposed !" she cried impatiently. " You
must have known that I loved yon, that I have hated myself
for loving you, that I hated you tor not loving me."
No swift answer came from his lips, but she was clasped in
his arms, held close against his heart, his passionate heart,
which had never beaten thus until this moment.
*' ]\[y darling, my darling ! " he said at last, in the lowest
fondest tones that ever stole from a lover's lips. " I never knew
what passionate love meant till I knew you."
"Not when you loved Alice Fraser?" she asked doubtfully.
" Not even for my sweet Alice. I loved her because she was
as good as she was beautiful, because to love her seemed the
nearest way to heaven. I love you even when you seemed to
lead me away from heaven."
" Because I am so wicked," she said with a shade of bitterness.
"No, darhng; only because you are not utterly perfect?
K.
142 Slrangen and Pilgrims.
because to love yon is to be too fond of this sweet world, to be
less eager for heaven. my dearest, what a slave you can
make of me ! But beware of this passionate love which you
have kindled in a heart that tried so hard to shut you out. It
is jealous and exacting, tyrannic, perilous — perilous for you and
for me. It is of the earth, earthy. I love you too much for the
sake of your beauty, too much for the magic of those lovely
eyes that seem sweeter to me than summer starlight."
" And if something were to happen to me that would spoil my
good looks for ever, you would leave off loving me, I suppose ? "
she said.
" No, dearest, you would still be Elizabeth. There is a name-
less, indefinable charm which would be left even if your beauty
had perished."
" 'L'hen you do not love me for the sake of my beauty ? " she
asked persistently, as if she were bent on plucking out the heart
of his mystery.
"Not now, perhaps; but I fear it was that which won me. I
never meant to love you, remember, Elizabeth. No battle was
ever harder fought than mine against my own heart and you,
nor ever a battle lost more ignominiously," he added, with a
faint sigh.
" Thank Heaven it is lost!" she said; "not for my sake— I
will not claim so unwilling a victim— but for your own. You
will not go to the Antipodes to be eaten by savages ? "
" Not if yoa offer me the supremest earthly happiness at
home. I will try to do some good in my generation, and yet be
happy. I will forget that I ever had any higher aspiration than
to tread the beaten tracks. I will try to be useful in my small
way — at home."
This half-regretfully, even with her bright head resting on his
shoulder, her lovely eyes looking up at him with an almost
worshipping fondness.
" And you will help me to lead a good life, will you not,
Elizabeth ? " he asked earnestly.
' I will be your slave," she said, with a strange blending of
scorn and pride — scorn of herself, intensest pride in him. " I
r/ill be your dog, to fetch and carry; the veriest drudge in your
parish work, if you hke. I can fancy our life : in the dreaiuest
parsonage that was ever built, a wUd waste of marsh and fen
round about us, a bleak strangling street of hovels for our town,
not a decent habitation within ten miles of us, only the poor with
their perpetual wants, and ailments, and afflictions. I can fancy
all this, and yet my hfe will be spent in paradise — with you."
Sweet fooling in which lovers delight ! Doubly sweet to
Malcolm Forde, to whom it was so new.
" My dearest and best," he said, smiling at her enthusiasm.
strangers and Pilgrims. l^i
"I will forgive you the marshes and fens; that is to say, we
will not go out of our way to find them. But tve will go wher-
ever we are most wanted."
" To a nice manufacturing town, for instance, where there
will be a perpetual odour of soap-boiling and size-making, and
Boot blowing in at all our windows."
" Perhaps to such a town, darling; but I would find you a
nest beyond the odours of soap-boiliug."
" Or if you have set your heart on a mission to the Dog-nb
Indians, or the Maoris, or the Japanese, I will go with you.
Why should I have less courage than that noble creature. Lady
Baker? Indeed, on reflection, I think I should rather like such
an adventurous existence. If one could go about in a yacht,
now, and convert the heathen, it would be really nice."
" I will not risk a life so precious to me. No, dearest, we will
be content with a narrower sphere. After all, perhaps a clergy-
man who has a wife may be of more use tlian a bachelor in an
Enghsh parish ; she can be such a valuable ally if she chooses,
almost a second self."
" I will choose to be anything that you order me to be," she
answered confidently.
" But, 0, my darling, are you really in earnest P" he asked in
his gravest tone, scrutinising the upturned face with a serious
searching gaze. " For pity's sake, Elizabeth, do not fool me !
You have told me that you are fitful and inconstant. If— if —
this love, which fills my soul with such a fond delight, which
changes the whole scheme of my existence in a moment, — if, on
your part, it is only a brief fancy, born perhaps of the very idle-
ness and emptiness of your life, let us forget every word that we
have said. You can trust me, darling ; I shall not think less of
you for being self-deluded. Consider in time whether it is
possible for you to change ; whether the kind of life which you
speak of so lightly would not really seem dismal and unendur-
able to you when you found yourself pledged to go on living it t<i
the end of your days ; whether there is not in your heart some
hankering for worldly pleasures and worldly triumphs: a longing
which might grow into a regret when you had lost all hope of
them for ever. To marry me is to accept a life that must bo
lived chiefly for others. My wife must be a lay sister of charity.
" Have I not told you that I will be your slave ? " she an-
swered; and then withdrawing herself suddenly from his arms,
^' 0, I begin to understand," she said, with a deeply wounded
air; "it is I who have been offering myself to you, not you to
me, and you are trying to find a polite mode of rejection. Why
are you not more candid ? Why not humiliate me at once by
saying, ' Keally, Miss Luttrell, your readiness to sacrifice your-
Belf is most obliging, only I do not happen to want you ?' "
\44 Strangers and Filgrims.
" Elizabeth, you know that I love you with all my heart and
mind."
"Do you P No, I cannot believe it; I have wished it too
much ; no one ever obtained anything so ardently wished for.
It is not in nature that I should be so happy."
" If there is any happiness in being assured of my love, drink
the draught freely. It is, and has been yours almost since the
beginning of our acquaintance."
" There is more than happiness, there is intoxication ! " she
answered in her fervent unmeasured fashion. "]Sot because
you are handsome," she went on, with an arch smile ; " for in
that respect I am superior to you. It was not your face that
won me. I love you because you seem to me so much above all
other men ; because you have dominion over me, in fact. I did
not think it could be so sweet to have a master."
" Say, rather, a guide and counsellor, dearest. There shall be
no question of dominion between us. I want your life to be as
happy as min^ will be in the pospeL«sion of your love."
"But I insist upon your being my master!" she answered
impetuously. " I am not a creature to be guided or counselled ;
Bee how little inflt'ence papa has ever exercised over me with his
mild bewailings and lamentings, or Gertrude with her everlast-
ing sermonising. Believe me, I must be commanded by a being
stronger than myself. Even my love for you is. slavish. See
how little value I could have set ujion my dignity as a woman
when I came out here to-night to make my supplication to you.
But I did not mean to betray myself. I only meant to plead for
the people of Hawleigh. Tou wiU not think me too contempti-
ble, will you, Malcolm ? "
The name was half whispered. It was the first time she had
ever pronounced it.
" Contemptible 1 " A lingering kiss upon the broad white
brow made the rest of his answer.
How long this kind of talk might have lasted is an open ques-
tion, but at this moment Elizabeth's quick ear caught the sound
of a footstep on the high-road.
" It is papa, perhaps," she said nervously. " O, please go."
" If you wish it, darling. But I may tell him everything to-
morrow, may I not? "
" To-morrow ! That is so very sudden."
"There can be no reason for delay, dearest. Of course our
marriage is an event in the future. I am not going to hasten
that unduly. Though, as far as worldly matters go, I am in a
Eosition to marry to-morrow. But there should be no delay in
.jtting yout father know of our engagement."
"I supj/ose not. Our engagement! How strange that
Bounds ! Do yon really mean it, or will you write me a little
Strangers and Pilgrims. 14.5
note to-morrow morning recalling your ill-advised expreswons of
to-night ? "
" Such a note is more likely to come from you than from me.
But one word, darling. What about this visit to Mrs. CheveuLx?
It can be put off, can it not, now ? "
"I hardly think so; auntie has made all preparations for
me.
" They cannot involve much."
" She would be so disappointed, and papa so angry ; and
there are my expectations, you know. One cannot fly in the
face of fortune."
"My wife must be independent of expectations, dear. And
London gaieties are not the best preparation for life in a par-
sonage among the fens."
" Do you think not ? I shall find out how hollow and empty
such pleasures are, and learn to despise them."
" That is according to circumstances. But as a matter of per-
sonal feeling, I would rather you did not go."
" I only wish it were possible to slip out of the engagement;
but I don't think it is ; aunt Chevenix is so easily ofiended."
" Offend her then, dear, for once in the way."
Elizabeth shook her head hopelessly. After the money that
had been spent upon her dresses it would seem something worse
than folly not to wear them. They might have served for her
trousseau perhaps, but she doubted if so much flouncing and
trimming on the garments of a country clergyman's wife would
have satisfied Malcolm Forde's sense of the fitness of things.
There was a white tulle ball dress dotted about with tea-roses, a
masterpiece of Miss March's which she thought of with a tender
regretfulness. 0, the dresses ought really to be worn; and what
a pity to offend aunt Chevenix for nothing !
"Very well," said Mr. Forde. "I see my tyranny is not to
begin yet awhile. If you must go, dear, you must. But it
seems rather hard that our betrothal should be inaugurated by a
separation."
" It will only be for a few weeks. And I am not going till th<
end of the month."
The footstep had approached and had passed the Vicaragf
gate. It was not the step of Mr. Luttrell, but of some bulky
farmer walking briskly towards his homestead.
" Good-night, dearest ! " said Malcolm Forde, suddenly
awakened to the recollection that it was a cold March night, and
that Elizabeth was beginning to shiver. *' How inconsiderate of
me to keep you standing in the open air so long. Shall I take
you back to the hall-door ? "
" O, no ; my sisters might see us, and wonder. I will run
round by the orchard, and go in the back-way."
146 Strangers and Pilgrimg.
" Very well, dear. They shall have no ground for wonder-
ment after to-morrow. Good-night."
CHAPTER XIII.
" For Destiny does not like
To yield to men the helm,
And shoots his thoughts by hidden nerve*
Throughout the solid realm.
The patient Damon sits
With roses and a shroud;
He has his way, and deals his gifts —
But ours is not allow'd."
Vekt little slumber ca«ie to the eyelids of EHzabeth that night.
She had spent many a sleepless night of late ; nights of tossing
to and fro, and weary longing for the late-coming dawn ; nights
full of thought and wonder about the dim strange future, and
what it held for her ; nights full of visions of triumphs and
pleasures to come, or of sad longing for one dearer delight which
was never to be hers — the love of that one man whom she loved.
Yery diiferent were her thoughts and visions to-night. He
loved her. The one unspeakable blessing which she had for a
long time deemed unattainable had dropped into her lap. He
loved her, and she had given herself to him for ever and ever.
No more vague dreams of the triumphs that were to be won by
her beauty, no more half-childish imaginings of pleasures and
glories awaiting her in the world she knew not. On the very
threshold of that dazzling region, just when success seemed cer-
tainty, Love closed the gate, and she was to remain without, in
the bleaker drearier world she knew, brightened only by that dear
companionship.
She had told him that the most dismal home to which he could
take her would be a paradise, if shared with him ; and she be-
lieved that it would be so. Yet being a creature made up of
opposites, she could not let the old dream go without a pang._
"From my very childhood I have fancied that something
wonderful would happen to me, Bomething as brillliant and
unexpected as the fate of Cinderella : and it all ends by my
marrying a curate ! " she said to herself half wonderingly.
" But then he is not Hke the common herd of curates, he is not
like the common herd of mankind. It is an honour to worship
Mm."
And then by and by she thonght :
*' I wish I had been a Russian empress, and he my serf. What
e delight to have chosen him from his base-born brotherhood,
Strangers and Pilgrim*. 147
and placed liim beside me upon the throne ; to have recognised
all that makes him noble, in spite of his surroundings ; to have
been able to say, ' I give you my heart and soul, and all this
northern world ' ! "
An empress could afford to make a bad match. It was a bad
match. Even with all the glamour of this new delight upon her,
she did not attempt to disguise this fact.
" I am glad he has money of his own," she mused. " We caiv
at least have a nicely-furnished house — what a comfort to have
modern furniture after our ancient rubbish! — and silver like
papa's. And I daresay Malcolm will give memoney enough to
dress nicely, in a simple parson's-wifeish way. I shall have to
work very hard in his parish, of course, but it will be for his sake,
and that will sweeten everything."
She thought of Lord Paulyn, and smiled to herself at the idea
of his disappointment. Now that she had plighted her faith to
some one else she felt very sure that the Viscount had been des-
perately in love with her, and had only waited, with the insolence
of rank and wealth, his own good time for telling her of his love.
It would be not unamusing, if she met him in London, to lead
him on a little, to the point of an offer even, and then crush him
by the information that she was 'engaged.' And it would be
still more agreeable some day in the happy future, when she
was Malcolm Forde's wife, to tell her husband how she had re-
fused a coronet for his sake.
She remembered that foohsh wager of her pearl necklace.
Diana was welcome to the bauble, and even to any touch of
spiteful triumph which she might feel in her sister's acceptance
of so humble a destiny. " But they can hardly crow over me if
Lord Paulyn makes me an offer, and I refuse him," she said to
herself.
"Was she not utterly happy in the first flush of her victory,
having won the thing she had longed for P Almost utterly, per-
haps ; but even with the intoxication of that delight there was
mingled a vague notion that she had been foolish, that the world
— her own small world — would laugh at her. She had carried
her head so high, and protested, not once but a hundi'ed times,
that, come what might, she would never throw herself away
upon a curate. What a storm of anger and ridicule must she
needs encounter from Mrs. Chevenix, whenever that worldly-
wise matron should be informed of her infatuated conduct ? That
defiant spirit, which so often had flouted the Chevenix, quaUed
and shrunk to-night at the thought of the stormy scene that
was likely to follow such a revelation.
" But surely I am the mistress of myself," she thought. "It
is myself I am giving away. And papa is not up to his eyes in
debt, or ia danser of dying in a workhouse unless I make a rich
148 Strangers and Pilgrimt.
marriage. And if I am a little better-looking than my Bisters,
and the sort of girl people say ought to make a success in life, ia
that any reason why I should not be happy my own way, un-
utterably happy with the man I love so dearly, and tt> be loved
by whom is hke the beginning of a new life ? "
It will be seen therefore that even in the hour of victory Eliza-
beth was not unconscious of having thrown herself away. She
had been miserable ^vitbout Mr. Forde's love ; but she was quite
aware of the price her devotion to him was to cost her. The
phantasmal opera-box, and town-house, and country-seats, and
carriages, and saddle-horses faded slowly from before her eyes,
like a ghostly procession of this world's brightest glories, melting
for ever into shadow-land. The worldly half of her soul suffered
a pang at parting with these pomps and vanities.
" They do not constitute happiness, I know," she reilected ;
" but I have thought of them so long as a part of my future life,
that it does seem just a little difficult to imagine the future with-
out them."
And then she remembered the dark eyes looking down at hers ;
the grave low voice speaking words of love, sweeter words than
she had ever thought to hear from the lips of Malcolm Forde.
She remembered these things, and the pomps and vanities
seemed as nothing when weighed against them.
"Thank God that he loves me," she said to herself. "What
do I care if other people are disappointed or mahcious P I will
be hapi^y my own way."
In spite of this resolution she felt strangely nervous next
morning at breakfast, when she met the family circle, about
which there seemed somehew to be a lurking air of suspicion,
thouuh nobody could have reason to suspect. She had slipped
quietly in from her nocturnal excursion, and had gone up to her
Qwn room unobserved : whence she sent a message to the draw-
ing-room by one of the servants, to the eifect that she had a
headache, and could not come down to prayers.
'* I hope your headache is gone," said Diana, with the lukewarm
solicitude of a relative.
"Thanks; yes, I think so."
" A headache is scarcely a subject for thought," remarked
Gertrude ; " one has or one has not a headache."
" There are such things as nervous headaches," said EUzabeth
carelessly.
" Which I have always regarded as another name for affecta-
tion," replied Gertrude.
" But you're not eating a crumb of anything, Lizzie," ex-
claimed Blanche ; " and you're so pale, and have such a heavy
look about tlie e3'es."
" I did not sleep much last night ; and as for breeififtst. I have
Strangers and Pilgrims. 14f
always considered it a most uninviting meal — perpetual ^ggfi,
and rashers, and dry toast, and Dundee marmalade." Give me
another cup of tea, please, Gerty ; I am feverishly thirsty. And
I am sure, if we are on the subject of looks, I cannot congratu-
late you on your appearance this morning ; you look as if you
had been crying half the night."
Gertrude flushed crinison at this accusation.
"I do not deny that Mr. Forde's announcement of last night
was a blow to me," she said. " We have worked so long together,
and I had learnt to look upon him almost as a brother.''
Elizabeth smiled to herself as she looked into her teacup.
She was wondering how Gertrude would like to look upon him
quite as a brother ; that is to say, as a brother-in-law.
" The idea of his going out as a missionary," exclaimed
Blanche, spreading marmalade on her bread-and-butter. " It
Bounds Low Church, somehow, to me."
" I wonder what his successor will be like ? " speculated Diana.
" Good-looking and gentlemanlike, I trust."
" And not a horrid man with a herd of brats," said the flip-
pant Blanche.
"Blanche, I do not consider it consistent either witli Christian
principles or the preservation of your health, to put marmalade
on your bread-and-butter to such an extent as you are doing! "
said Gertrude, with a housekeeper's eye to waste.
" I suppose we shall see no more of Mr. Forde till just as he is
foing away, and then perhaps we shall only get his card with
'.P.C. in the corner," remarked Diana listlessly. She had
already begun to put Mr. Forde out of her miad, as a thing of
the past.
Elizabeth smiled again, with bent head, a happy triumphant
smile. The smile of a heart which held no regret for a possible
coronet; a heart which was filled to the very brim with love for
Malcolm Forde, and joyful pride for having won him. She was
tiiinking how soon they were likely to see him again, and how
often. He was hers now ; her vassal. Yes, he, the saint, the
demigod, had assumed an earthly bondage. She had talked, in
her foolish childish rapture, of being his slave; but she meant
to make him hers.
" I wish I could get out of the visit to auntie, as he wishes,"
Bhe thought. "If Blanche could go in my place, for instance.
But my dress wouldn't fit Blanche; and perhaps it would be as
well for me to see the world a little before I bid good-bye to it,
drain the cup of pleasure to the dregs, and find out how vapid
the draught is."
This was an easy way of settling the question ; but the fact
is that Elizabeth Luttrell, having looked forward during the last
four years to the unknown delights of a London season, was
150 Strangers and Pilgrms.
liardly disposed to reliTtqiiish so much pleasure, even for Oi<t
sake of the man she loved bettei- than all the rest of the world.
She was a girl who thought she had a right to obtain every-
thing she wished for, and even to serve two masters if she
pleased.
She appeared unusually restless during the interval between
breakfast and luncheon; wandered out into the garden and
orchard, and came back to the house with her hair blown about
by the bleak March wind; sat down to the piano, when that in-
strument was available, and sang a little, and played a little, in
her usual desultory manner; took up a book from the table,
only to fling it down impatiently five minutes afterwards ; and
every now and then went to the window, and stood looking
absently across the lawn.
" One would suppose you expected somebody, Lizzie," said
Diana; "you do fidget so abominably, and stare out of the
window so continually."
" You may suppose it, if you like."
" Has Lord Paulyn come back to Ashcombe ? "
" I know nothing of his lordship's movements."
" Indeed ! I thought he was about the only person in whom
you were interested, and I began to think you had received pri-
vate intelligence, and were on the watch for him."
" I am not on the watch for him, nor do I care if I never see
him again."
" What a change ! But how about your wager in that case P"
" My wager ! what, the pearl necklace, you mean ? Of course
you knew that was the merest nonsense ? "
" What! are you going to back out of it? I thought it was
a serious challenge,"
" Take the necklace, if you like. I don't think I shall ever
wear it and I have other things of poor' mamma's."
" But does that mean that you confess yourself beaten — that
you promised more than you feel yourself able to perform ? "
" Have it so, if you like. You put me in a passion that
night, and I said anything, only to annoy you. But I shall
never be Lord Paulyn's wife."
" What a death-blow for poor auntie ! She had set her heart
upon having a niece in the peerage. Her Debrett would have
opened of its own accord — like the book Thackeray speaks of—
at the article Paulyn."
The sisters were dawdling over their luncheon, when they
heard a footstep on the gravel, and anon a ring at the hall-door.
Blanche, the agile, dashed to a window in time to recognise the
visitor.
"Now, whoever do you suppose it is, girls?" she cried.
"Guess!"
Strangers and Pilgrims. 151
Nobody appeared able to solve the enigma, although Eliza-
beth's fast-beating heart told her the visitor's name.
" Mr. Forde !" cried Blanche.
" He has come to tell papa, no doubt," said Gertnade, tating
a hasty survey of the table, to see that the mid-day meal made
a respectable appearance, and then going straightway to the
dining-room door, to intercept the visitor. "Papa is in hia
Btudy, dear Mr. Forde." she said, shaking hands with him_; "but
do come in first and have a little luncheon. — Blanche, ling for
some fresh cutlets."
" No, thank you, Miss Luttrell. I never take any luncheon.
And I do particularly want to see the Vicar."
"But I told him everything, and he is so grieved."
" I don't think you can have told quite everything," he
answered, with a stolen look at Elizabeth, who was standing
just within the doorway, and a little smile, "and I hope we
shall be able to overcome his grief. I will go to him at once,
and look in upon you young ladies in the drawing-room after-
wards."
" Now, remember, we shall expect you," said Gertrude, with
her reverential air, hardly sorry that he had been proof against
the temptation of the hot cutlet, which had been a somewhat
speculative offer ; since there might or might not be a section
of the ' best end of the neck ' in reserve in the larder.
" What delightful manners !" she said, as she went back to
her place at the table ; " no assumption of goodness, no con-
sciousness of possessing a loftier nature than the common
herd."
" Why, you wouldn't have him stalking about in a surpHce,
or expounding the Scriptures on the doorstep, would you,
Gerty ?" cried the irreverent Blanche. " I don't see why sinners
should be the only people with decent manners."
" Hold your tongue, child ; you are incapable of understand-
ing such a nature as his. You can gaze upon that saintly brow
•without one thrill of emotion."
" I certainly shouldn't offer mutton cutlets to people with
saintly brows; I have more sense of the fitness of things,"
rephed the uncmshable youngest.
EUzabeth said nothing. She was subject to long lapses of
silence in the company of her sisters. They were so little worth
the trouble of conversation. And now she had sweet thoughts
that filled her mind while they were babbling,— a new wealth of
happiness. He had come to speak to her father, to offer him-
self as her husband; and afterwards he would come to the
drawing-room, and she would know the result.
" Suppose papa should reject him," she thought, with alarm.
** I know how aunt Chevenix preached to him about Lord
162 Slrangera and Pilgrimo.
Paulyn, and the brilliant future before me. But, thank Heaven,
papa is not mercenary; so long as he is not disappointed in
his dinners, he is sure to take things easily."
The four girls repaired to the drawing-room soon after this,
and Gertrude skirmished round the room, making a clearance
of litter — books that had been flung down anywhere, work-
baskets overturned, flying sheets of music; and having done
this, seated herself at her own particular little table, with its
neatly-kept Dorcas basket, and began to tear calico. Elizabeth
subsided into her favourite chair by the fire, and did nothino^
after her wont — nothing, except look at the clock on the mantel*
piece every now and then, wondering how long the interview
would last.
" What a time they are !" Blanche exclaimed at last, with a
yawn. " I should have thought, as papa knew all about it,
they'd have made shorter work of the business."
" If you would employ yourself, Blanche, you would have less
time for idle speculations of that kind," said Gertrude, severely ;
" but the whole weight of the Dorcas basket is allowed to fall
on my shoulders."
" That's the worst of being bom too good for this world, my
dear Gerty; people are sure to impose upon you."
The door was opened at this moment, and Mr. Forde came
in, and crossed the room to Elizabeth's place by the fire, and
planted himself on the hearthrug by her side, towering above
her as she sat in her low chair, and looking down at her with
a tender smile. The sisters stared at him wcmderingly. There
was an air of appropriation in the manner of his greeting,
grave and subdued as it was.
"All has ended happily," he said, in a low voice, as they
shook hands. " You will meet with no opposition from your
father."
" Have you told papa everything," asked Gertrude, watching
the two with jealous eyes.
" Everything."
" And he is very sorry, is he not ? "
" A little disappointed, perhaps, but hardly sorry."
" Disappointed, yes, of course. He had hoped you would stay
with us at least three years. How I wish he could have per-
suaded you to change your mind !"
" Suppose I have changed my mind?" said Mr. Forde, smil-
ing at her anxiety. " Suppose 1 have found an influence power-
ful enough to make me forego my most cherished ambition ?"
" I don't quite understand," faltered Gertrude, looking from
him to Elizabeth with a blank dismayed look. " You seemed to
have made up your mind so completely last night. What can
have happened since then to make you waver?"
Strangers and Pilgrimt 153
"Wonderful things have happened to me since last night.
All my thoughts and dreams have undergone a revolution. I
have discovered that a life at home can be sweeter to me than I
ever dreamed it could be— till last nighl ; and it must be my
endeavour to find a useful career for myself at home.]'
Gertrude grew deadly pale. Yes, she understood it all now.
He was looking down at Elizabeth while he spoke — looking
down at her with love unspeakable. It was clear enough now.
Ehzabeth was to have this priceless boon flung into her lap-
Elizabeth, who had done nothing to deserve it.
" I want you to accept me as your brother, Gertrude," said
Mr, Forde ; " and you Diana, and you, Blanche, I mean to do
my best to supply the place of the brother you have never had."
"There was the baby," said Blanche, with a matter-of-fact
air ; " »uch a poor wee thing ! — christened Wilmot Chevenix
Trelawney, and died half an hour afterwards. Such a waste of
good family names ! "
Mr. Forde held out his hand as he made this offer of brotherly
affection, but no one took it. Diana gave a little laugh, and
Sot up from her seat to look out of the window. Gertrude stood
ke a statue, looking at the Curate.
" You seem surprised by my news, Miss Luttrell," he said at
last, struck by her singular manner.
" I am more than surprised," said Gertrude, " after the things I
have heard my sister say — after some things that you have said
yourself, too. However, I suppose one ought never to be sur-
prised at anything in this world. I hope you may be happy,
Mr. Forde; but I do not remember ever having heard of so un-
suitable a match."
She said this with calm deliberation, having jast sufficient
eelf-command to keep the tempest of angry feelings pent up in
her breast for the moment ; and having delivered herself of this
opinion, left the room.
" It will be for us to find out that, won't it, Lizzie ? " said the
Curate, looking after her wonderingly. "Your eldest sister
hardly accepts our new relationshij? in so pleasant a spirit as 1
hoped she would ha^e shown towards me."
" Perhaps she wanted you for herself," said Elizabeth, with a
scornful laugh, " She has made no secret of worshipping you."
" Diana, Blanche, we are to be good friends, I hope ? " This
with a kind of appeal to the two others, who this time responded
warmly enough.
" Believe me there is no one we could like better than you,"
said Diana,
" I'm sure we doat upon you," cried Blanche. " I may say
it now you are going to be my brother. But, you see, we were
taken a little aback at first, for Elizabeth is the beauty of our
154 Strangers and Filgrim»,
family, and there lias been s« much talk with annt Chevenix
and one and another about the grand marriage she was to make ;
go it does seem rather a come-down, you know."
" Blanche ! " exclaimed Elizabeth furiously.
" Don't I say that we all doat upon him P " expostulated
Blanche. " But however good your family may be, you know,
Mr. Forde, and however independent your position, and all that
kind of thing, a curate isn't a viscount, you know; and after
Lord Paulyn's attentions "
" Blanche ! If you don't hold your tongue "
" Don't be angry with her," pleaded Malcolm. " I can for-
give Lord Paulyn for having admired you, and your family foi
expecting all mankind to bow down and worship yon, so long as
you can forgive me for having made you disappoint them."
Diana beheld her with wonder. Had worldly ambition, had a
boldlj"-- declared heartlessness come to so poor an end as this ?
But when Diana and Blanche were alone together presently,
Elizabeth having gone into the garden to see her lover off, with
a rapid appropriation of her rights as his affianced, the youngei
eister shook her head sagely.
" How Wind you must be, Di ! " she said. " I knew all about
it ever so long ago. She was always madly in love with him.
I have heard her say such things ! "
" I used to fancy she liked him a little once, but I thought
Lord Paulyn had put all that out of her head, and that she had
set her heart upon becoming a viscountess."
" Elizabeth is a mixture," said Blanche sententiously ; " one
moment the most mercenary being in the world, and the next
like that classic party, with a name something like Sophia, ready
to throw herself off a rock for love. It'll be rather nice, though,
to have Mr. Forde for a brother, won't it, Di ? "
" It would have been nicer to have had a viscount," respondei
Diana.
In the bleak garden once more, the March winds buffeting
them, the daffodils waving at their feet, the world a paradise.
" Was papa very much surprised ? " inquired Elizabeth.
"Yes, darling; more surprised than I had ex]oected to find
him, for he had evidently learned to consider Lord Paulyn
almost your plighted lover."
** How absurd ! " cried the girl with a little toss of her head ;
•* such an idea would never have entered papa's mind of itself.
He is not a person to have ideas. But aunt Chevenix talked
euch rubbish, just because Lord Paulyn came here a good deal.
I suppose this was about the only place he had to come to, on
the days he didn't hunt."
" I think there would be a few more houses open to him within
Strangers and Pilgrims. 155
a radius of ten miles, although he does not boar a very high
character," said Mr, Forde gravely.
" Perhaps. However he seemed to like coming here," replied
Elizabeth carelessly. " I am sorry he has not a good character,
for he is not at all a bad-natured young man, although one is apt
to get tired of his society after an hour or so. You are not
going to be jealous of him, I hope ? "
"I should be very jealous of any farther friendship, of any
farther acquaintance even, between him and my future wife. He
is not a good man, believe me, Elizabeth. There are things I
cannot possibly tell you, but he is known to have led a bad life.
I think you must know that I am not a collector of scandal, but
his character is notorious."
"You were jealous of him that Sunday at lunch, Malcolm/'
she said in her childish way, clinging to his arm with a timid
fondness. " I saw you scowling at us, and I was prouder of
your anger than I was of his admiration ; and then you kept
away, and I saw no more of you for ages, and I thought you a
monster of coldness and cruelty."
" Yes, dear, I was savagely jealous ; and 0, my darling, pro-
mise me that there shall be no more intimacy between that man
and you. I hate the idea of this visit to your aunt's, for that
reason above all. You will meet him in town, perhaps ; you
will have aunt Chevenix by your side, dropping her worldly
poison into your ear. Will you be deaf to all her arguments?
Will you be true and pure and noble in spite of her ? "
" I will be nothing that you disapprove," said Elizabeth ; and
then with a little burst of truthfulness she went on, " Do trust
me, Malcolm. I only want just one little peep at the world
before I bid it good-bye for ever — the world about which I have
dreamed so much. It wiH be only for a few weeks."
" Very well, dear, I will trust you. If you could not pass
scatheless through such an ordeal, you would be hardly worthy
of an honest man's love. My dearest treasure, I will hazard
you. I think I can trust you, Elizabeth. But if you cannot
tome back to me pure and true, for God's sake let me never look
»fpon your face again."
SKC OF BOOK THE TIBBt.
156 Strangers and Pilgrims*
3Soo& Vit Setonti.
CHAPTER I.
"Two Bonis, alas, dwell in my breast : the one struggles to separata
itself from the other. The one clings with obstinate fondness to the
world, with organs like cramps of steel ; the other lifts itself majeEtically
from the mist to the realms of an exalted ancestry."
A suNNT afternoon in the second week of May, one of those
brilliant spring days which cheat the dweller in cities, who has
no indications of the year's progress around and about him —
no fields of newly-sprouting corn, or hedges where the black-
thorn shows silvery- white above grassy banks dappled with
violets and primroses — into the belief that summer is at hand.
The citizen has no succession of field birds to serve for his time-
keepers, but he hears canaries and piping bullfinches carolling
in balconies, perhaps sees a flower-girl at a street- corner, and
begins to think he is in the month of roses.
It seemed the month of roses in one small drawing-room in
Eaton-place-south — a back drawing-room and of the tiniesl^
with a fernery of dark green glass, artfully contrived to shed a
dim religious light upon the chamber, and at the same time
mask the view of an adjacent mews — the daintiest possible thing
in the way of back drawing-rooms, furnished with chairs and
dwarf couches of the 'pouff species, covered with cream-coloured
cretonne and befrilled muslin ; a coffee-table or two in con-
venient corners; the clock on the maroon- velvet-covered mantel-
piece, a chubby Cupid in turquoise Sevres beating a drum ; the
candelabra, two other chubby blue bantlings struggling under
their burden of wax-candles ; curtains of maroon velvet and
old Flemish lace half screening the fire in the low steel grate-
Ensconced in the most luxurious of the povffs, with her feet o^
the tapestried fender-stool (a joint labour of the four Luttrell
girls), and a large green fan between her face and the glow, sat
Elizabeth Luttrell. She was not alone. Aunt Chevenix was
writing letters at her davenport in tlie front drawing-room ; the
swift flight of her quill pen miofht be heard ever and anon in
the rearward chamber; and lEeginald Paulyn was sitting
d cheval upon a smaller fon^, rockn.g himself to and fro, to the
en(iangerment of the castors, as he discoursed.
" C"me now. Miss Luttrell, I want you to like Mrs.
Oinqniars," he said, in an argumentative tone. " She may not
»e quite what you'd call good style "
" I know very Uttle of good or bad style," interrupted Eliza*
beth, in a somewhat contemptuous tone; "your world is so new
to me. B"* certainly Mrs. Cinqmars has hardly what that
Strangers and Pilgrims, ■ 157
French secretaiy of legation I went in to dinner -wxtli the othw
night called Vair du faahottrg."
" Well, no, perhaps not; dresses a little too much, and indulges
rather too freely in slang, perhaps. But she's the most kind-
hearted creature in the ^YorId ; gives the best parties out — not
your high-and-mighty nine o'clock dinners, with cabinet
ministers and ambassadors and foreign princelings, and so
forth, but carpet dances, and acting charades, and impromptu
suppers, and water parties. You go to her house to amuse
yourself, in short, and not to do the civil to a lot of elderly
fogies with orders at their button-holes, or to talk politics with
some heavy swell whose name is always cropping up in the Timeo
leaders."
" Who is Mr. Cinqmars P " inquired EUzabeth with a super-
jilious air.
" Henri du Chatelet de Cinqmars. Bom a Belgian, of a
French- Canadian father and an English mother — that's his
nationality. Made his money upon various stock exchanges,
and continues so to make it, only extending his operations now
and then by buying up a steamboat line, or something in that
way. A man who will burst up some of these days, no doubt,
and pay ninepence or so in the pound ; but in the mean time he
lives very decently at the rate of twenty thousand a year. He
has literary proclivities, too, and is editor and proprietor of the
Ring, a weekly paper m the sporting and theatrical interests,
with a mild flavour of the Age and the Satirist, which you may
or may not have seen."
" I never look at newspapers," said Elizabeth ; " but pray
why are you so anxious that I should like your Mrs. du Chtitelet
de Cinqmars? " she asked, lowering her fan and gratifying the
Viscount with an inquiring gaze from her brilliant eyes, more
than ever brilliant since she had drunk the sparkling cup of
London pleasures.
" Because she's the nicest person you could possibly have for
a chaperon. Ah, of course, I know," answering her glance in
the direction of the busy letter- writer, whose substantial form
was visible in the distance; " your aunt is a plucky old party,
and can stand a good deal of knocking about for a veteran, but
I think she'd knock under if she tried Mrs. Cinqmars' work :
that blessed little woman shows up at every race in Great
Britain — from Pontefract to the Curragh — and at every regatta;
and in the autumn you find her at Hombourg or Baden, gam-
bling like old boots. Now, if you would only put yourself under
her wing," concluded Lord Paulyn persuasively, " you'd stand
Bome chance of seeing life."
"Thank you very much; but I think I have seen enough in
i,he last five weeks to last me for the remainder of my eristence.
158 Strangers and Pilgrims.
Mrs. Cinqmars is a most good-natured person, no doul)t ; sh«
called me ' my dear' lialf an hour after I'd been introduced tf
her; and I won't be so rude as to say that she's not good style;
but she' ^ not my style, and I shouldn't care about knowing her
more in imately. Besides, papa wants me at home, and I am
really ai xious to go back."
She smiled to herself with a pensive smile ; thinking what
reason she had for this anxiety; thinking of the quiet country
town, the gray old Norman church, with its wide aisles and
ponderous square tower — the church along whose bare arched
roof Malcolm Forde's deep voice echoed resonantly; thinking of
that widely-different life, with its sluggish calm, and that it
would be very sweet to go back to it, now that lite at Hawleigh
meant happy triumphant love, and Malcolm for her bond-slave.
But, in the mean time, this other and more mundane existence,
with its picture-galleries, and gardens botanical or horticultural
putting forth their first floral efforts, its dinners and dejeuners
and kettle-drums and carpet dances, was something more than
tolerable to the soul of Elizabeth. She had made a success in
her aunt's circle, which was by no means a narrow one, and had
received adulation enough to turn a stronger brain ; had found
the cup of pleasure filled to overflowing, and new worshipj^era
everywhere she appeared. Had Mrs. Chevenix been a step or
two higher on the nicely-graduated platform of society, Miss
Luttrell might have been the belle of the season; as it was,
people talked of her as the beautiful Miss Luttrell, a country
clergyman's daughter, a mere nobody, but a nobody whom it
was a solecism not to have met.
She accepted this homage with an air of calm indifference,
something bordering even upon arrogance or supercihousness,
which told well for her ; but in her secret soul she absorbed the
praises of mankind greedily.
She showed herself an adept in the art of flirtation, and had
given so much apparent encouragement to Lord Paulyn, that,
although she had been only five weeks in town, her engagement
to that young nobleman was already an established fact in the
minds of people who had seen them together. But she was not
the less constant to her absent lover ; not the less eager for his
brief but earnest letters. She looked forward to her future
without a pang of regret — with rapturous anticipation, rather,
of a little heaven upon earth with the man she adored. But
she thought at the same time that her chosen husband was a
peculiarly privileged being, and that he had need to rejoice with
a measureless joy in having won so rare a prize.
*' If he could see the attention 1. receive here, h3 might
think it almost strange that I should love him better than ali
♦h© rest of the world," ahe said to herself.
Strangers and Pilginms. 0^169
" Going back to Hawleigh ! " cried Lord Paulyn aghast.
" Why, you mustn't dream of such a thing till after the Good-*
wood week ! I have set my heart on showing you Goodwood."
" What is Goodwood ? " asked Elizabeth, thinking it might
be some new kind of game — an improvement upon croquet
perhaps; "and when is the Goodwood week? "
" Towards the end of July."
" In July; that would never do. I must go home in a fort-
night at the latest."
•' Why, your aunt told me you were coming up for the
season ! "
" My aunt had no right to say anything of the kind."
" 0, but it's positively absurd," exclaimed the Viscount,
" going back just when there'll be most people in town, and to
such a dingy old hole as Hawleigh. What possible necessity
can there be for your returning? Mr. Lnttrell has your three
sisters to take care of him. He'll do well enough, I should think."
" O, yes, I daresay he will get on very well," said Elizabeth,
thinking of another person who had written lately to inquire,
rather seriously, whether the few weeks were not nearly
over, whether she had not had ample time already for a brief
survey of a world whose pomps and vanities she was going to
renounce for ever, only thereby conforming to the pious pro-
mises of her godfathers and godmothers, which her own lips
had ratified at her confirmation.
" Come, now," said Lord Paulyn, returning to the charge,
•' do let me arrange an alliance between you and Mrs. Cinq-
mars. She's just the kind of person with whom you could
enjoy yourself. She has a box on the grand-stand at Epsom
and Ascot every year — I shouldn't wonder if she had bought
the freehold of them — and always takes a brace of pretty girls
with her. If you would only let her drive you down to the
Derby now, to-morrow week, I'll be responsible for your having
a delightful day ; and I'll be in attendance to show you every-
thing and everybody worth seeing."
" Thanks. 1 don't think my aunt cares for Mrs. Cinqmars."
"You aunt is about a century behind the times; but per-
haps Flora — Mrs. C. — hasn't been civil enough to her. Let me
drive you and Mrs. Chevenix down to Pulham this afternoon.
Tuesday's her day for receiving, and you'll see no end of nice
people there. I'll send my groom for the drag, and take you
through the Park in good style."
A four-in-hand seemed to Elizabeth the glory and triumph
of the age; and there was nothing particular in the Eaton-
place programme for this afternoon.
" I should like it very well," she said, brightening, " if auntie
would consent."
IGO Strangers and Pilgrims.
" O, I'll soon settle that," replied Lord Paulyn, rising from
ais pouff, and going into the next room.
Mrs. Chevenix, after a little diplomatic hesitation, conseated
to everything except the drag.
" No young lady, with a proper regai'd for her reputation,
can ride on the box-seat of a four-in-hand, unless the coach-
man is her brother or her husband."
*' I am very glad I'm not the first, in this case," said Lord
Paulyn; " and I certainly mean to be the second, if I can."
These were tlie plainest words the Viscount had yet spoken,
and they moved the spirit of aunt Chevenix with exceeding joy,
albeit she knew that her niece was engaged to Mr. Forde.
" If you really wish us to visit Mrs. Cinqmars — and you
know, dear Lord Paulyn, there is very little I would not do to
oblige you," she said, with a maternal air — " I'U take Lizzie
down to the Eancho in the brougham, and you can join us there
if you like. Mrs. Cinqmars has called upon me several times,
and I have not returned her visits. She seems a very good-
natured little person; but, you see, I am getting an old
woman, and don't care much about cultivating new acquaint-
ance."
Thus Mrs. Chevenix, who would have run herself into a fever
in the pursuit of an unknown countess.
Lord Paulyn waived the question of the drag regretfully.
" My horses haven't been as fit as they are to-day since they
came from grass," he said, " but I'll drive down alone. What
time will you start? It's just four; Mrs. Cinqmars is always
in full force from five to six."
" If you'll be kind enough to ring the bell, I'll order the
carriage for a quarter to five. I shall have time to dress after
I've finished my letters for the general post."
" Can't think how any one can write letters, now we've got
the telegraph," said Lord Paulyn, staring in amazement at
aunt Chevenix's bulky despatches ; " I always wire."
" But if you were in love, and separated from the object of
your aff'ection ? " suggested Mrs. Chevenix, smiling.
" I should wire : or if I had something uncommonly spooney
to say, I might spell it backwards in the second column of the
Times. I don't know how to write a letter: indeed, I'm not at
all clear that I haven't forgotten how to write long-hand alto-
gether. I keej) my betting-book in cipher; and when I send a
telegram, I always dictate the message to the post-office clerk."
" But I should have thought now, with respect to your race-
horses, the telegraph system might be dangerous. There are
things you want to keep dark, as you call it, are there not ? "
" Of course there are. But we've got our code, my trainer
tttid I, an.,1 lS' private names for every brut« ic ray stable.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 161
Got a message this morning : " Bryant and May taken to tlia
bassoon." By which I know that Yesuvian, a two-year-old
I was backing for next year, has been run out of her wind -in
some confounded trial, and is musical."
" Musical ! "
" Yes, ma'am ; a roarer, if yon want it in plain English."
"Dear me, how provoking!" said Mrs. Chevenix, with a
sympathetic countenance, but with not the faintest idea what
the Viscount meant.
Elizabeth consented to the Rancho business languidly.
" I'd rather stay at home and finish my novel," she said,
looking at an open novel lying on one of the 'pouffs. " You
can't imagine what an exciting chapter you interrupted. Lord
Paulyn; but of course I shall go if auntie hkes. Auntie has
Buch an insatiable appetite for society."
Mrs. Chevenix raised her eyebrows, and regarded her niece
with admiring wonder. " Who would ever imagine the child
had been reared in a Devonshire vicarage ! " she exclaimed, as
Elizabeth sat fanning herself, an image of listless grace.
" Who would have supposed Venus came out of the sea ! "
r<'plied the Viscount. " She didn't look weedy, or sandy, or
shell-fishy, that ever I heard of; but came up smiling, with her
hair combed out as neatly as the tails and manes of my fillies.
And as to rustic bringing up, there was that young woman in
the play — Lady Teazle, you know. See how she carried on."
The Viscount departed after this, happy in the prospect of
meeting Elizabeth an hour later in the happy hunting-grounds
of the Rancho, perhaps the best field for tiirtation within three
miles of Hyde-park- corner.
" Eliziiibeth," exclaimed Mrs. Chevenix, when they were alone,
with an air of almost awful solemnity, " there is a coronet lying
at your feet, if you have only the wisdom to pick it up. I am
not going to make any complaint, or to express my opinions, or
to say anythiag in disparagement of that person. I have kept
my feelings upon that subject locked within my breast, at any
cost of pain to myself. But if, when you have looked around
you, and seen what the world is made of, you can be so in-
fatuated as to persist in your mad course, I can only pity you."
" Don't take the trouble to do that, auntie. I can imagine no
higher happiness than that which I have chosen. A coronet is
a grand thing, of course, with all the other things that go along
with it. I am not going to pretend that I don't care for the
world and its pleasures. I do care for them. I have enjoyed
my life in the last three weeks more than I thought it possible
that life could be enjoyed. I fear that I have an infinite capa
city for frivolity. And yet I shall be proud to surrender all
these things for the love of the ma» I have chosen." -r
162 Strangers and I'ilgrims,
" The man you have chosen ! " repeated Mrs. Chevenix, with
a shiver. " My dearest Lizzie, is there not a shade of indelicacy
in the very ph rase ? "
"I can't help that," answered Elizabeth coolly; " I know that
I did choose him. I chose him out from all creation for the
lord of my life, worshipped him in secret when I thought he
was indifiereut to me ; should have died of a broken heart, I
believe, or at any rate of mortification and disappointment, if
he had never returned my love."
This was a bold declaration intended to extinguish aunt
Chevenix at once and for ever.
" My poor child," said the matron, shaking her head with a
deploring air, " I am inexpressibly grieved to hear you speak in
that wild manner of such a person as your father's curate. A
man in that position cannot afford to be loved in that ex-
aggerated way. A grande passion, is ont of keeping among
people with limited incomes and their career to make in the
world. With people of established position it is different, of
course ; and though I might smile at such an infatuation, were
you to entertain it for Lord Paulyn, I could hardly disapprove.
You and he would be as far removed from the vulgar herd of
engaged persons as a prince and princess in a fairy tale, and
might safely indalge in some httle extravagance."
" You need fear very little extravagance on my part if Lord
Paulyn were my accepted lover," answered Elizabeth, with a
cynical laugh. " Imagine any one mated to that prosaic being,
with his slang and his stable talk ! "
"In spite of those small drawbacks — which, after all, are
natural to his youth and open-hearted disposition — I believe him
to be callable of a most devoted attachment. I have seen him
gaze at you, Elizabeth, in a way that made my blood run cold
when I considered that you were capable of trampling upon
such a heart for the sake of a Scotch curate. However, I will
say nothing," concluded Mrs. Chevenix with heroism, after
havitg said all she wanted to say.
In half-an-hour the two ladies were dressed, and on their way
to Fulham; Elizabeth enveloped in a fleecy cloud of whiteness,
with gleams of lustrous mauve here and there among her
drapery, and a mauve feather in her white-chip hat, glovea
faultless, parasol a gem : a toilet whose finishing touches had
been furnished by the well-filled purse of Mrs. Chevenix. The
matron herself was resplendent in bronze silk, and an imposing
blue bonnet. They had put on their richest armour for the en-
counter with Mrs. Cinqmars, a lady who spent her life in trying
to dress-down her acquaintance.
Strangers and Filgrims. 168
CHAPTER II.
"Applause
Waits on success ; the fickle multitude,
Like the light straw that floats along the stream,
Glide with the current still, and follow fortune."
FuLHAM 18 a neighbourhood of infinite capabilities. It is
almost impossible to know the ultimate boundaries of a region
to which nature seems to have hardly yet assigned any limit ;
from squalid streets of six-roomed houses, to splendid places
surrounded by park-like grounds ; from cemeteries and market-
gardens— bare expanses of asparagus or turnips, where the
atmosphere is rank with decaying garden stuffs — to arenas
reserved for the competition of the fleet- footed and strong-armed
of our modern youth, and to shady groves dedicated to the
slaughter of the harmless pigeon ; from newly-built red-brick
mansions hiding themselves coyly within high walls, and
darkened by the shade of immemorial cedars. Fulham has
stomach for them all. Queer little lanes still lead the explorer
to unknown (or at least to him unknown) tracts of inland
country; and on that wild shore between the bridges of Putney
and Hammersmith there are far- spreading gardens and green
lawns which a worldly-minded person might long for as the
paradise of his departed soul.
The Rancho was one of these places by the river; a house and
grounds which, after belonging to a titled owner, had sunk to
gradual decay under undistinguished and incapable tenants ;
and, at last, coming into the market for a larger price than
speculators were inclined to give, had, after hanging on hand
for a long time, been finally bought a dead bargain by Mr.
Cinqmars.
This gentleman, being amply provided with funds — whether
his own or otlier people's was, of course, a minor question — and
being, moreover, blessed with a wife who had a taste, set to work
to remodel the house, which was old and not capacious, and al-
together in that condition in which it is cheaper to pull down
than to rebuild. Mr. Cinqmars, however, left the lower recep-
tion rooms, which were fine, almost untouched, only widening the
windows in the drawing-room to the whole width of the room,
and putting a glass roof to the billiard-room, which could be
replaced by an awning in warm weather, or thrown open to the
sky on starlit summer nights. On each side of these central
rooms he built a commodious wing, in rustic wood-work, alter
the model of a Mexican farmhouse in which he had once spent
a week during his travels. All round the house he put a woodeu
verandah, ten feet wide, and paved with cool blue and cream<
lG4i Strangers and Pilgrims.
rcloured tiles ; and having done this he furnished all the rooma
in the purest rustic fashion — with light woods ; pastoral chintzea
Bcattered with violets and primroses ; no drajjeries to the win-
dows, which were amply shaded by Venetian blinds within and
Spanish hoods without ; very few carpets, but oak floors
polished to distraction, and Indian matting in the passages. It
was a house that was built apparently for eternal summer, but
was yet so contrived as to be extremely comfortable when March
winds were howling round the verandah, or an April snowstorm
drilling against the glass roof of the billiard-room. On a real
summer's day it was distractingly delightful; and to return
from its light and airy chambers to the dingy square rooma of a
London house— a mere packing-case set upon end in a row of
other packing-cases — was not conducive to the preservation, of a
contented mind.
_ But Mr. and Mrs. Cinqmars were people who could not have
lived in a house that was not better than everybody else's
house. They were people who lived upon their surroundings ;
their surroundings were themselves, as it were. If anybody
asked who Mr. Cinqmars was, his friends and admirers plunged
at once into a glowing description of the Eancho, or demanded
with an air of amazement how it came to pass you had not
seen his horses in the park — high-stepping bays, with brass-
mounted harness. There was a place in Scotland too, which
Mr. Cinqmars spoke of somewhat vaguely, and which might be
anything, from half a county down to half-a-dozen acres. He
was in the habit of promising his acquaintance good shooting
on that domain ; but in the hurry and pressure of modern life
these promises are rarely fulfilled. Every man's autumn is
mortgaged before the spring is over; there is nothing safer
than a Hberal dealing out of general invitations in June or July.
Mrs. Cinqmars was at home every Tuesday throughout the
London season, and to be at home with Mrs. Cinqmars meant a
great deal. The grounds of the Rancho were simply perfect —
ancient gardens, with broad lawns gently sloping to the water;
lawns whose deep fend tender herbage had been cultivated for
ages ; forest trees which shut out the world on every side
excL'pt that noble curve of the river which made a shallow bay
before the windows of the Eancho; cedars of Lebanon spreading
their dusky branches wide above the shadowy sward. Mrs.
Cinqmars did not to any great extent alFect gaudy flower-beds
— parallelograms of scarlet geranium and calceolaria, silver-
gray leafage, and potting-out plants of the pickling-cabbage
order — or ribbon bordering. Are not these things common to
all tlie world ? Instead of these, she had masses of rough
stonework and young forests of fern in the shady corners of
bcr grounds, and a regiment of century-old orange-trees ia
Isf rangers and Filgrima. 1G5
great green tubs, ranged along a broad walk leading down
to the river. Her grounds were shady realms of greenery,
rather than showy parterres. She had her hot-houses and
forcing-pits somewhere in the background, and all her rooms
were adorned to profusion with the choicest Howers ; but only
in the rose season was there much display of colour in the
P'lrdens of the Eancho. Then, indeed, Mrs. Cinqmars' lawn
was as some fertile valley in Cashmere, and the very atmosphere
which Mrs. Cinqmars inhaled was heavy with the odours of all
ilie noblest and choicest families among the rose tribe — arcades
of roses, roses climbin^Ej skyward upon iron rods, temples that
looked like gigantic Inrdcages overrun with roses, roses every-
where — for a brief season of glory and delight, the season of
fresh strawberry ices, and mature but not overgrown whitebait.
On these her days, Mrs. Cinqmars kept open house from five
o'clock upwards. There was a great dinner later in the evening,
but by no means a formal banquet, for the men who came in
moruinf,- dress to lounge remained to dine; mature matrons,
whose bonnets were as things immovable, were permitted to
dine in that kind of headgear; there was a general air of
Bohemianism about the Eancho ; billiards were played till the
summer daylight; the sound of cabs and phaetons, dog-carts
and single broughams, startled the slumbering echoes in the
Fulham lanes between midnight and sunrise; the goddess of
pleasure was worshipped in a thorough-going unqualified
manner, as intense as the devotion which inspired human
sacrifices on the shrine of mooned Ashtaroth.
In fine weather, when the sun was bright and the air balmy,
and only occasional shivers reminded happy idlers that an
English climate is treacherous, Mrs. Cinqmars delighted to
receive her friends in the garden. Innumerable arm-chairs of
foreign basket-work were to be found in snug little corners of
the grounds ; tiny tables were ready for the accommodation of
teacups or ice-plates. Champagne and claret-cup were as
bounteously provided as if those beverages had been running
streams, watering the velvet lawns and meandering through the
groves of the Rancho. Wenham's clear ice was as plentiful as
if the Thames had been one solid block from Thames to Nore.
There was no croquet. In this, as in the flower-beds, Mrs.
Cinqmars had been forestalled by all the world. But as a
substitute for this universal recreation, Mrs. Cinqmars had
imported all manner of curious games upon queer little tables
with wiry mazes, and bells and balls, at which a good deal
of money and a still larger amount of the manufacture of Piver
or Jou-^an were lost and won on that lady's Tuesdays. The
chatelaine herself even was not insensible to the offerings of
gloves ; she had indeed an insatiable appetite for that "com«
166 Strangers and Pilgrims^
modity, and absorbed so many packets of apricot and lavendef
treble buttons from her numerous admirers, that it might be
supposed that her husband, while lavishiug upon her every
other luxury, altogether denied her these emblems of civili-
sation. But as Mrs. Cinqmars was never seen in a glove
^hich appeared to have been worn more than half-an-hour, it
may be fairly imagined that her consumption of the article was
large. Taking a moderate view of the case, and supposing
that she wore only three pairs per diem, she would require
more than a thousand pairs per annum, and this last straw
in the expenses of her sumptuous toilet may have broken Mr.
Cinqmars' back. However this might be, Mrs. Cinqmars was
singularly successful in all these small games of chance,
trinpered by skill, and did a good deal of ladylike speculation
upon various races into the bargain, whereby the glove-boxes,
not paltry toys made to hold half-a-dozen or so, but huge
caskets of carved sandal wood, with partitions for the divers
colours, were never empty. Young men were seen approaching
her through the groves of the Rancho armed with dainty
oblong packages, their humble tribute to the goddess of the
grove, tribute which she i-eceived with a business-like coolness,
as her due. There were malicious people who hinted that Mrs.
Cinqmars was not inaccessible to larger offerings ; that diamond
bracelets, ruby crosses, emerald ear-rings, which were not the
gifts of her husband, had found their way to her jewel-cases ;
but as Mr. Cinqmars was exorbitantly rich, this was of course
a fabrication. Only there is an order of goddesses somewhat
insatiable in the matter of tribute; goddesses who, on being
suddenly possessed of the Koh-i-noor, would that instant lan-
guish for the Star of the South, as a pendant thereto.
Upon this particular afternoon in May the air was balmy,
and the sun unseasonably warm, for it is only the fond
believer in idyllic poets who exjoects genial weather in May;
and the grounds of the Eancho were gay with visitors, brightly-
costumed groups scattered here and thera in the shade ; a per-
petual crowd hovering about the footsteps of Mrs. Cinqmars as
sht moved to and fro among her guests, so delighted to see
every one; a cheerful chatter of many voices, and a musical
jingle of tea-spoons mildly suggestive of refreshment.
Mrs. Cinqmars was a little woman, with intensely-black eyes
tnd long black hair — hair which she wore down her back, after
the fashion of a horse's tail, and which reached ever so far
below her waist — hair which she delighted to tic with bright-
coloured ribbons. She was a woman who affected brilliant
colours, and as she flashed here and there amidst the greenery,
had something the air of a gorgeous paraquito from some fax
Bouthern isle.
Strangers and Pilgrimg, 167
Her hair and her eyes were her strong points, and to come
within the range of those tremendous orbs was like facing a
battery of Lancastrians. They dealt ruin across the open
country, bringing down their quarry at terrific distance. To be
able to stand the blaze of Mrs. (^inqmars' eyes, was to be case«
hardened, tried in the fire of half-a-dozen London seasons. Fot
the rest, she was hardly to be called a pretty woman. Her
complexion was sallow; and as she wished to have the freehold
and not a short lease of whatever beauty she possessed, she was
wise enough to refrain from the famous arts of our modern
Medea, Madame Rachel Levison. Her small hands and feet,
coquettish costumes, brilliant eyes, and luxuriant hair, she con-
Bidered all-sufficient for the subjugation of mankind.
She received Mrs. Chevenix and her niece with eflFusion: so
kind of them to come, and so on. And she really was glad to
see them. They belonged to a class which she was peculiarly
desirous to cultivate, the eminently respectable — not that she
for her own part liked this order of beings, or would for worlds
have had her parties composed of snch alone; but a httle leaven
might leaven the whole lump, and Mrs. Cinqmars was quite
aware that the mass of her society did require such leavening.
Not that Mrs. Cinqmars was herself in any manner disreputable.
She had never been accused of carrying a tiirtation beyond the
hmits which society has pi*escribed for a young matron ; she
was known to be devoted to her husband and her husband's
interests; and yet the friends and flatterers she gathered
around her were not the choicest fruit in the basket ; they were
rather those ever-so-slightly-speckled peaches which only fetch
a secondary price in the market. The class with which Mr.
Cinqmars shared the glories of his wealth and state was that
class which seems by some natural affinity to ally itself with
the wealthy parvenu — second-rate authors, newspaper men, and
painters, fastish noblemen, military men with a passion for
amateur theatricals, and so on; toute la boutique, as Mrs.
Cinqmars observed.
Mr. Cinqmars had a two-hundred-ton yacht of notorious
speed and sailing capacity, which assisted him in the cultivation
of youthful scions of the aristocracy, whose presence imparted a
grace to the dinner-parties and kettledrums at the Rancho; but
it happened, unfortunately, that the youthful scious were for
the most part impecunious, and did not materially advance
Du Chatelet's interests. It was not often that Mr. and Mrs.
Cinqmars were so fortunate as to cultivate such an acquaint-
ance as Lord Paulyn, and the friendship of that wealthy
nobleman had been a source of much gratification to both
husband and wife. Reginald Paulyn liked the easy-going style
•f thft Rancho; liked to feel himself a god in that peculiar
168 Strangers and l^ilgrims.
circle ; liked to be able to flirt with agreeable young womeu who
were not perpetually beneath the piercing eye of a calculating
parent or guardian, to flirt a little even, in a strictly honour-
able manner, with Mrs. Cinqmars herself; to play billiards till
the summer stars grew pale, or to gamble in moonlit groves
where the little bells on the be-wired and be-numbered boards
tinkled merrily under the silent night. Lord Paulyn liked to
enjoy himself without pajang any tax in the shape of ceremony,
and the Rancho offered him just this kind of enjoyment. He,
too, had his yacht, the Pixy ; so there was sympathy between
him and the adventurous Du Chatolet, who had crossed the
Atlantic in a half-decked pinnace of thirty tons, and discovered
the scource of the Nile for his own amusement, before any of
the more distinguished explorers who have made themselves
known to fame, according to his own account of his various and
interesting career.
" I like the Rancho, you know," the Viscount would remark
to his friends, with a condescending air ; " it's like a little bit of
Hombourg on the banks of the Thames; and Cinqmars isn't
half a bad fellow — a little loud of course, you know ; and so is
Mrs. C. ; and one needn't believe a large percentage of what
either of 'em says. But I rather like that kind of thing; one
gets surfeited with good manners in the season."
To these happy hunting-grounds, the Viscount was peculiarly
desirous to introduce Elizabeth. It was all very well calling
three or four times a week in Eaton-place, and whiling away a
couple of hours under the eye, or within reach of the ear, of
Mrs. Chevenix; but the lover's soul languished for a closer
communion than this, for tete-a-tett rambles under the forest-
trees of Fulham ; for a snug little corner on board Mr. Cinq-
mars' barge, when she gave her great water-parties up the river,
between Hampton lock and Henley ; for waltzes in the rustic
drawing-room, where half-a-dozen couples were wont to have
the floor to themselves late in the night after the Cinqmars'
dinners. The Viscount's chances of meeting his beloved iu
eociety were not numerous. His circle was not Mrs. Chevenix's
circle, and it annoyed him to hear of dinners and balls to which
Elizabeth was going, the dinners of wealthy professional men or
commercial magnates, just outside the boundary of his patrician
world. The Rancho ofiered an open field for their frequent
meeting, and it was for this reason that the Viscount de-
sired to bring about an alhance between Elizabeth and
Mrs. Cinqmars.
Miss Luttrell accepted the lady's enthusiastic welcome with
her usual coolness, and allowed her aunt to descant alone upon
the charms of the Rancho grounds, and her astonishment
at finding so large a domain on the very edge of Lendon. Lord
Strangers and Pilgrims. 169
Paulyn had arrived before them, and was ready to carry oflP
ElizaVjeth at once to explore the beauties of the place.
" I know you're fond of old trees," he said, " and you must
see Mrs. Citiqmars' cedars."
Flora Cinqmars looked after the two with an air of enlighten-
ment. So Lord Paulyn was sweet upon that handsome Devon-
shire girl people talked so much about. The discovery was not
an agreeable one. Mrs. Cinqmars liked her friends best when
their affections were disengaged ; and no doubt, if Lord Paulyn
aiarried, there would be an end of an acquaintance which had
been very useful to her. She was not, however, an ill-natured
person, so she gave her graceful shoulders a careless little shrug,
and resigned herself to the inevitable.
" I suppose I had better be civil to the girl," she thought ;
" and if he cuts us after he is married, I can't help it. But
perhaps he'll hardly do that if he marries a parson's daughter,
though he might if he took up with some heavy swell, who'd run
her pen through the list of his bachelor acquaintances, and put
her veto on all the nicest peoj^le."
_ Elizabeth found Mrs. Cinqmars' afternoon by no means
disagreeable. There were plenty of pleasant people and well-
dressed people, a few eccentric toilets, 'pour se divertir, a good
many people with a certain kind of literary or artistic distinc-
tion, a mere effervescence of the hour perhaps, — a temporary
sparkle, which would leave them as flat as yesterday's un-
finished bottles of champagne by next season, but which for the
moment made them worth seeing. Then there were the grounds,
pink and white horse-chestnuts in their Whitsuntide glory, and
the river running swiftly downward under the westering sun.
Lord Paulyn tried his uttermost to keep Elizabeth to himself;
to beguile her into lonely walks where he could pour forth the
emotions of his soul, which did not express themselves in a par-
ticularly poetical manner at the best of times; but Elizabeth
was anxious to see the celebrities, and a good many people were
anxious to see her, as a celebrity in her own peculiar line, by
reason of her beauty ; so Lord Paulyn was thwarted in this
desire, and was fain to be content with keeping his place at her
side, whether she sat or walked, against all comers.
" I never do seem able to get five minutes' quiet talk with
you," he said at last, almost savagely, when Mrs. Chevenix had
joined them, and was talking of going back to town.
" I really cannot imagine what 3'ou can have to say that
can't quite as well be said in a crowd as in solitude," answered
Elizabeth coldly.
She gave him these little checks occasionally, not quite for-
getting that she was the plighted wife of another man — a fact
which she had begged her aunt to tell Lord Paulyn, and which
170 Strangers and Pilgrims.
she fondly supposed had been imparted to him. Secure in the
idea that the Viscount had been made acquainted with her
position, or at any rate serenely indifferent to that gentleman's
feelings, she enjoyed her new lite, and permitted his attentions
with a charming carelessness, as if he had been of little more
account than an affectionate Skye terrier. It was one of the
prerogatives of her beauty to be admired, and she was worldly-
wise enough to know that her position in her aunt's circle was
wondrously enhanced by Lord Paulyn's very evident subjuga-
tion. He had as yet neither committed himself, nor alarmed
her by any direct avowal ; she had taken care to keep him so
completely at bay as to prevent such a crisis.
And even in the midst of all these pleasures and excitements, in
this atmosphere of adulation, her heart did yearn for the lover
from whom she was parted ; for the light of those dark steadfast
eyes ; the grasp of that strong hand, whose touch thrilled her
soul ; for the sound of that earnest voice, whose commonest
word was sweeter than all other utterances upon this earth.
She did think of him ; yes, in the very press and hurry of her
new life, and still more deeply in every chance moment of repose
— even to-day under those wide- spreading chestnuts, beside that
sunlit river. How doubly, trebly, unutterably sweet this life
would have been could she but have shared it with him !
'* If some good fairy would change the positions of these two
men," she thought childishly, " and make Malcolm Lord Paulyn,
what a ha])})y creature I should be !"
And then she was angry with herself for thinking so base a
thought. Had she not won much more than the world in win-
ning him ?
*' He knows that I am not good, that I am just the very last
of women he ought to have chosen, and yet he loves me. I am
proud to think of that. I should have hardly valued his love
if he had only chosen me because I was good and proper, and a
suitable person for his wife," she argued with herself.
Mrs. Cinqmars entreated her new friends to stay to dinner.
There were a great many people going to stay, really pleasant
people. Mr. Burjoyce the fashionable novelist, and Mr. Macduff
the Scotch landscape painter, whose Ben Lomond was one of
the pictures of the year ; and Lord Paulyn had promised to
stay if Mrs. Chevenix and Miss Luttrell would stay, whereby it
would ^^e peculiarly cruel of them to depart. But Mrs. Chevenix
was inflexible ; she was not going to make herself cheap in
society which she felt to be second-rate, however cool the cham-
pagne cup, however soft the sward on which she trod.
" You are very good," she said ; " but it is quite impossible.
We have engagements for this evening."
Lord Paulyn hereupon began to talk of the Derby,
Strangers and Pilgrims. 171
** I want to get up a party, Mrs. Cinqmars," he said, " or you
shall get it up if you like, as you're a top-sawyer at that kind
of thing. Suppose I lend you my drag, and you can ask Mrs.
Chevenix, and Miss Luttrell, and myself, and a few other nice
people; and Cinqmars and I will tool the team, eh? wouldn't
that be rather jolly ? "
Mrs. Cinqnaars opined that it would be charming — if dear
Mrs. Chevenix would go.
Dear Mrs. Chevenix beheld a prospect of being choked with
dust, and blinded by a blazing sun, or chilled to the marrow
by an east wind, and was not elated. And after all it might be
almost wiser to let EHzabeth go to the races with this rather
fast Mrs. Cinqmars, without the restraint of any sterner
chaperon. It might bring matters to a crisis.
•' He can't propose to her if I'm always at her elbow," thought
the sagacious matron. " I am hardly equal to the fatigue of a
Derby-day," she said ; "but if Mrs. Cinqmars would not think
it too much trouble to take care of Elizabeth "
Mrs. Cinqmars protested that she would be charmed with
such a charge. Elizabeth's eyes sparkled : a race-course was
still an unknown pleasure, one of the many mysteries of that
brilliant world which she desired to know by heart before she
bade her long good-bye to it.
So, after a little discussion, it was settled that Miss Luttrell
was to go to Epsom in the drag with Mrs. Cinqmars.
" But I must see you between this and to-morrow week," ex-
claimed that lady, who, perceiving in which quarter the wind
lay, was resolved to ake the best of the situation, and estab-
lish herself in the good graces of the future Viscountess. " I
have a carpet dance on Friday evening ; you really must come
to me, Mrs. Chevenix. Now pray don't say you are full of en-
gagements for Friday night."
" We are to dine in the Boltons," hesitated Mrs. Chevenix ;
" we might possibly "
" Drive on here afterwards," cried Mrs. Cinqmars ; " of course
you could. Remember you are to be with me on Friday, Lord
Paulyn."
" I shall certainly come, if "
" If Miss Luttrell comes. It's really too bad of you to make
me feel how little weight my influence has. Good-bye, if you
positively won't stay to dinner. I must go and say good-bye to
those blue-and-white young ladies yonder."
And with a sweeping continental curtsey, Mrs. Cinqmars
flitted away in her befnlleJ-muslin draperies, and wonderful
cherry-coloured satin petticoat with its organ-pi |)e flutings, and
tiying ebon tresses — a figure out of a fashion plate.
" I've told Captain Callender to drive the drae home," said
172 Strangets and jPilgrints.
the Viscount , " I thought perhaps you'd he charitable euougli
to give me a seat in your brougham, Mrs. Chevenix.
The third seat in Mrs. Chevenix's brougham was entirely at
his disposal, not a very roomy seat ; he was carried back to
town half smothered in silk and muslin, but very well contented
with his position nevertheless.
" Are you going to some very tremendous set-out this even-
ing P " asked Lord Paulyn as they drove homewards.
" We are not going out at all, only I didn't feel inclined to
accept Mrs. Cinqmars' invitation, so I had recourse to a poHte
fiction," answered Mrs. Chevenix.
"And I am particularly engaged to finish that novel in whica
you interrupted me so ruthlessly this morning," said Elizabeth.
" But the novel need not jirevent your dining with us this even*
ing, if you have no better engagement," rejoined Mrs. Chevenix.
" If I have no better engagement! As if I could have a better
engagement."
" You might have a better dinner, at any rate. I can only
promise you our everyday fare," answered the matron, secure in
the possession of a good cook.
She had made a mental review of her dinner before hazarding
the invitation; spring soup, a salmon trout, an infantine
shoulder of lamb, a sweetbread, a gooseberry tart, and a par-
mesan omelette. He would hardly get a better dinner at hia
club; and had doubtless seen many a worse at Ashcombe.
"I should like to come of all things," said the Viscount.
"And if you'd like to hear Patti this evening, I'll send my man
to Mitchell's for a box while we dine," he added to Elizabeth.
To that young lady the Italian Opera-house was still a scene
of enchantment.
" I cannot hear Patti too often," she said ; " I should like to
carry away the memory of her voice when I turn my back upon
the world."
"Turn your back upon the world !" echoed Lord Paulyn.
" What do you mean by that ? You are not thinking of going
into a convent, are you ? "
" She is thinking of nothing so fooHsh," said Mrs. Chevenix,
hastily.
" No ; but the world and I will part company when I go back
to Devonshire."
" O, but you're not going back in a hurry. You must stop
for Goodwood, you know. She must stopfer Goodwood, mustn't
she, Mrs. Chevenix ? "
" I should certainly hke to take her down to Brighton for the
Goodwood week."
" Yes, and I would have the drag down, and drive you back«
wards and forwards."
Strangers and Pilgrims. 173
" My 5ionday must come to an end before July," said Eliza*
betli ; and then turning to her aunt she said almost sternly,
•' You know, aunt, there is a reason for my going back soon."
" I know of no reason but your own whims and follies," ex-
claimed Mrs. Chevenix impatiently; " and I know that I made
all my arrangements for taking you back to Devonshire early iu
the autumn, and not before that time."
EHzabeth's smooth young brow darkened a little, and she was
silent for the rest of the drive ; but this was not the first indica-
tion of a temper of her own with which the damsel had favoured
Lord Paulyn, and it by no means disenchanted him. Indeed, by
b. strange perversity, he liked her all the better for such evidencea
of high spirit.
" I shall find out the way to break her in when once she be-
longs to me," he thought coolly.
The little dinner in Eaton -place- south went off very gaily.
Elizabeth had recovered her serenity, and was elated by the idea
of a night with Patti and Mozart. She went to the piano and
sang some of the airs from Don Giovanni while they were wait-
ing for dinner ; her fresh young mezzo-soprano sounding ricti
and full as the voices of the thrushes and blackbirds in the
grounds of the Kancho. She was full of talk during dinner ;
criticised Mrs. Cinqmars and the Rancho with a little dash of
cynicism ; was eager for information upon the probabilities of
the Derby, and ready to accept any bets which Lord Paulyn
proposed to her ; and she seemed to have forgotten the very
existence of such a place as Hawleigh.
Yet after the opera that night there was a little recrimination
between the aunt and the niece ; there had been no time for it
before.
" I hope you have enjoyed your day and evening, Lizzie,"
said Mrs. Chevenix as the girl flung off her cloak, and seated
herself upon a sofa in her aunt's dressing-room, with a weary
air. " I'm sure you have had attention and adulation enough
this day to satisfy the most exacting young woman."
" I hardly know what you understand by attention and adula-
tion. If I have had anything of the kind, it has all been from
one person. Lord Paulyn has not allowed me to say half-a-
dozen words to any one but himself; and as his ideas are rather
limited, it has been extremely monotonous."
" I should have supposeii Lord Paulyn's attentions would
have been sufficient for any reasonable young woman."
*' Perhaps. If she happened to be disengaged, and wished to
secure him for her husband. Not otherwise. And that reminds
me of something that I wanted to say to you, auntie; you must
remember my asking you to tell Lord Paulyn of my engagement
to Mr. Forde."
174 Strangers and Pilgrimi.
** Yes, I remember sometliing of tlie kind "
"But you have not told him."
"No, Elizabeth, I have not," replied the matron, bney taking
off the various bracelets in which she was wont to fetter herself
as heavily as an apprehended housebreaker, and with her eyes
bent upon her v/ork. " There are limits even to my forbearance ;
and that I should introduce yon to society, to my friends, with
that wretched engagement stamped upon you — labelled, as it
were, like one of the pictures in the Academy — is something
more than I could brooli. I have not told Lord Paulyn, and I tell
you frankly that I shall not waste my breath in announcing to
any one an engagement which I do not believe will ever be ful-
filled."
" What! " cried Elizabeth, starting from her half-recumbent
attitude, and standing tall and straight before the audacious
speaker. " What ! Do you think that I would jilt him, that
after having pined and hungered for his love I would wantonly
fling it away ? Yes, I will speak the truth, however you may
ridicule or despise me. I loved him with all my heart and soul
for a year before he told me that my love was not all wasted
anguish. I was breaking my heart when he came to my rescue,
and translated me from the lowest depths of despondency to a
heaven of delight. Do you think that after I have suffered so
much for his sake I would trifle with the treasure I have won ? "
"Please don't stand looking at me like Miss Bateman in
Leah" said aunt Chevenix with an ease of manner which was
half-assumed. " I think you are the most foolish girl it was ever
my misfortune to be connected with, and I freely admit that it
is hardly safe to speculate upon the conduct of such an irrational
being. But I will nevertheless venture to prophesy that you will
not marry your curate, and that you will marry some one a great
deal better worth having."
" I will never see Lord Paulyn again. I will go back to Haw-
leigh to-morrow," said Elizabeth.
" Do just as y^ou please," rephed Mrs. Chevenix coolly, know-
ing that opposition would only inflame the damsel's pride.
*' Or, at any rate, I shall tell Lord Paulyn of my engagement."
" Do, my dear. But as he has never spoken of his regard for
you, the information may appear somewhat gratuitous."
Elizabeth stood before her silent, lost in thought.
To turn and Hy would be the wisest, safest course.
She felt that her position was a false one ; dangerous even,
with some small danger ; that Lord Paulyn's attentions, com-
monplace as they might be, were attentions she, Malcolm's
plighted wife, had no right to receive. She knew that all these
garish pleasures and dissipations which occupied her mind from
morning till night were out of harmony with the life she had
Strangers and Pilgrims. 175
chosen ; the fair calm future which she dreamed o\ »ometimes,
after falling asleep worn out by the day's frivolous labours. But
to go back suddenly, after it had been arranged that she should
remain with her aunt at least a month longer, was not easy.
There would be such wonderment on the part of her sisters, so
many questions to answer. Even Malcolm himself would be
naturally surprised by her impetuosity, for in her very last letter
Bhe had carefully explained to him the necessity for her visit
being extended until the second week in June.
No, it was not easy to return to the shelter of Hawleigh
Vicarage; and, on the other hand, there was her unsatisfied
curiosity about the Derby, that one peculiar pleasure of a great
race which had been described to her as beyond all other plea-
sures. Better to drain the cup to satiety, so that there might
be no after longings. She would take care to give the Viscount
no encouragement during the remainder of her brief career ; she
would snub him ruthlessly, even though he were a being some-
yrhat difficult to snub. So she resolved to stay, and received hei
aunt's pacific advances graciously, and went to bed and dreamt
of the Commendatore; and the statue that stalked in time to
that awful music — music which is the very essence of all things
spectral — bore the face of Malcolm Forde.
CHAPTEE III.
•* Bianca's heart was coldly frosted o'er
With snows unmelting— an eternal sLeet ;
But his was red within him, like the core
Of old Vesuvius, with perpetual heat;
An<^ oft he long'd internally to pour
His flames and glowing lava at her feet ;
But when his burnings he began to spout,
She stopp'd his mouth — and put the crater out."
The Derby-day was over ; an exceptionally brilliant Derby, mn
nnder a summer-like sky ; roads gloriously dusty ; western
breezes blowing ; the favourite, a famous French horse, triumph-
ant ; everybody, except perhaps the book-men, and sundry other
mistaken speculators, elated ; Mrs. Cinqmars seeing her way to
H twelvemonth's supply of Piver and Jouvin ; Elizabeth also a
considerable winner of the same species of spoil.
The Viscount was not altogether delighted by the great event
of the day. He had withdrawn his own entries two or three
months ago, but had backed a Yorkshire horse, from Whitehall,
somewhat heavily, sceptical as to the merits of the Frenchman.
176 Stranger* and Pilgrims.
" It's all very we?! while he's among French horses," he had
said, " winning your Grand Prix, and that kind of thing ; but
let him come over here and lick a field of geuuine English blood
and sinew, if he can."
The Frenchman had accepted the challenge, and had left the
pricle and glory of many a British stable in the ruck behind his
flying lieels,
" Couldn't have done it if there wasn't English blood in him,"
said the Viscount grimly, as he pushed his way within the
sacred precincts to see the jockey weighed. " I wish I'd had
some money on him."
Instead of the pleasing idea of that potful of money which
he might have secured by backing the Frenchman, Lord Paulya
had a cargo of gloves to provide for the fair speculators — whose
eager championship of the stranger he had smiled at somewhat
scornfully half-an-hour ago — to say nothing of far heavier losses
which only such estates as the Paulyn domains could bear
I shall pull up on Ascot," he thought, and was not sorry to
resign the reins to Mr. Cinqmars during the homeward journey,
while he abandoned his powerful mind to a close calculation of
his chances for the next great meeting. He was a man with
whom the turf was a serious business; a man who went a8
carefully into all the ins and outs of horse-racing, as a great
financier into the science of the stock-exchange; and he had
hitherto contrived to make his winnings cover all his stable
expenses, and even at times leave a handsome margin beyond
them. Above all things he hated losing, and his meditative
brow, as he sat beside Mr. Cinqmars, bore a family resemblance
to the countenance of the astute dowager when she gave
herself up to the study of her private ledger.
Even Elizabeth's fresh young voice running gaily on just be--
hind him did not ai»ouse him from his moody abstraction. He
had been all devotion during the drive to Epsom, and Miss Lut-
trell's coldness and incivility, which of late had been marked,
had not been sufficient to repel or discourage him. What did he
care whether she were civil or uncivil ? iJe rather liked those
chilling airs, and angry flashes from brilliant eyes. They gave
a charm and piquancy to her society which he had never found
in the insipid amiability of other women. What did it matter
how she flouted him ? He meant to marry her, and she of
course meant to marry him. It was not to be sup[)osed that any
woman in hor right mind would refuse such an off'er. And in
the mean while these coldnesses, and little bitter speeches, and
disdainful looks were the merest coquetries — a Benedick-and-
Beatrioe or Katherine-and-Petruchio kind of business. See how
uncivil that fair shrew was at the outset, and how much she
Strnngerg and Pilgrims. 177
bore from her newly-wedded master afterwards. Lord Paulyu
smiled to himself as he thought of Petruchio. " I've got a trifle
of that soi-t of stuff in me," he said to himself complacently.
" What is the matter with Lord Paalyn ? " asked Elizabeth of
Mrs. Cinqmars, when they were changing horses at Mitcham,
and the Viscount's gloom became, for the first time, obvious to
ner. She had been too busy to notice him until that moment,
agreeably employed in discussing the day's racing with a couple
of cavalry officers, particular friends of Mr. Cinqmars, who were
delighted with the privilege of instructing her in the mysteries
of the turf. She had a way of being intensely interested in
whatever engaged her attention for the moment, and was as
eager to hear about favourites and jockeys as if she had been
the daughter of some Yorkshire squire, almost cradled in a racing
stable, and swaddled in a horse-cloth.
" I'm afraid he has been losing money," said Mrs. Cinqmars,
as the Viscount descended to inspect his horses and refresh him-
self with brandy-and-soda. " He ought to have backed the
foreigner. He does look rather glum, doesn't he ? "
" Does he mind losing a little money ? " exclaimed Elizabeth
incredulously.
" I don't think there are many people who like it," answered
Mrs. Cinqmars, laughing.
" But he is so enormously rich, I should have thought he could
hardly care about it. I know that Lady Paulyn, his mother, ia
very fond of money; but for a young man to care — I should have
thought it impossible."
" Very low, isn't it ? " said Major Bolding, one of her instruc-
tors in the science of racing; " but rather a common weakness.
So very human. Only it's bad form to show it, as Paulyn does."
" It's only rich people who have a genuine affection for
money," reniarked Mrs. Cinqmars ; " a poor man never keeps a
sovereign long enough to become attached to it."
The examination of his team did not tend to improve the
Viscount's temper. They had sustained various intinitesima'
injuries in the journey to and from the course, so he refreshed
himself by swearing a little in a subdued manner at his grooms,
who had nothing to do with these damages, and then consumed
his brandy-and-soda in a sullen silence, only replying to Mr,
Cinqmars' lively remarks by reluctant monosyllables.
" Can't you let a fellow alone when you see he's thinking ? "
he exclaimed at last.
" I wouldn't think too much if I were you, Paulyn," said Mr.
Cimqmars, in his genial, happy-go-lucky manner ; " I don't be-
lieve you've the kind of brain that can stand it. I've made a
])oint of never thinking since I wa3 five-and-twenty. I go_ up
to the City and do my work in a couple of hours with pen, ink,
178 Strangert and Pilgrims,
and paper ; all my figures before me in black-and- white, not
dancing about my brain from morning tiU night, and from night
till morning, as some men let them dance. When I've settled
everything at my desk, I give my junior partner his orders. And
before I've taken my hat off the peg to leave the office, I've
emptied my brain of all business ideas and perplexities as clean
as if I'd taken a broom and swept it."
" All very wellwbile you're making money," said the Viscount.
" but you couldn't do that if you were losing."
" Perhaps not. But there are men who can't make money
without wearing their brains out with perpetual mental arith-
metic, men who carry the last two pages of their banking-book
pasted upon the inside of their heads, and are always going
over the figures. Those are the men who go off their nuts by
the time they're worth a million or so, and cut their throats for
fear of dying in a workhouse. Come, I say, Paulyn, I know
you're savage with yourself for not backing the foreigner, but
you can put your money on liim for the Leger, and come home
that way."
"Very likely, when there's five to four on him!" cried the
Viscount contemptuously. Then, brightening a little, he in-
quired what was to be the order of things that night a,t the
Eancho.
" We've a lot of people coming to dinner at nine, or so, and I
suppose my wife means a dance afterwards."
" Like Cremorne," said Lord Paulyn. " Mind your wife makes
Miss Luttrell stay."
" 0, of course ; we couldn't afford to lose the star of the
evening. A fine girl, isn't she ?" added Mr. Cinqmars, glancing
critically upwards at the figure in the front seat of the drag.
"A fine girl!" echoed the Viscount contemptuously; " she's
the handsomest woman I ever set eyes on, bar none."
Lord Paulyn improved considerably after this, and when he
went back to the box-seat took care that Major Bolding had
no farther opportunity of demonstrating his familiarity with
the arcana of the turf. He engaged the whole of Elizabeth's
attention, and was not to be rebuffed by her coldness, and took
u])on himself the manner of an acknowledged lover ; a manner
which was not a httle embarrassing to the plighted wife of
Malcolm Forde.
" I must make an end of it as soon as possible," she thought.
"I don't know that to-day's amusement has been worth the
penalty I have to pay for it,"
The drag was crost>ing Clapham-common, an admiring crowd
gaaing upward at the patrician vehicle as it towered above
wagonettes, barouches, landaus, hansoms, and costermongers'
trucks, wh'in Rlizabeth gave a little start of surprise at recog-
Strangers and Pilgrims. 179
nising a face that belonged to Hawleigh. It was only the
rubicund visage of a Hawleigh farmer, a man who had a family-
pew at St. Clement's, and who dutifully attended the two ser-
vices every Sunday, with an apple-cheeked wife and a brood of
children. He was one of a very hilarious party in a wagonette,
a party of stout middle-aged persons of the publican order, who
were smoking veheuiently, and had wooden dolls stuck in their
hatbands. She saw him look up and recognise her with inef-
fable surprise, and immediately communicate the fact of her
presence to his companions, whereat there was a general up-
ward gaze of admiring eyes, more or less bedimmed by dubious
champagne.
" What's the matter ? " asked Lord Paulyn, perceiving that
slight movement of surprise.
" Nothing. I saw a person I know in a wagonette ; only
Mr. Treeby, a farmer who goes to papa's church ; but I was
surprised at seeing him here."
" Not very astonishing ; the Derby is a grand festival for
provincials ; and we are such an unenlightened set in the West,
we have no great races. For a Yorkshireman, now, there is
nothing to see in the South. His own race-courses are as fine as
anything we can show him hei'e."
Elizabeth was silent. She was thinking how Mr. Treby would
go back and tell the little world of Hawleigh how he had seen
her perched high up on a gaudy yellow-bodied coach, one of two
women among a party of a dozen men, dominating that noisy dis-
sipated-looking crowd, with a pink-lined parasol between her and
the low sunlight ; and she was thinking that the picture would
hardly seem a pleasing vision to the eyes of Malcolm Forde.
She had meant of course to tell him of her day at Epsom, but
then the same things might seem very different described by
herself and by Mr. Treby. She tried to take comfort from the
thought that, after all, Mr. Treby might say very Httle about the
encounter, and that the little he did say might not happen to
reach Malcolm's ears. Malcolm ! dear name ! Only to breathe
it softly to herself was like the utterance of some soothing spell.
After that glimpse of Mr. Treby's rubicund visage in the wagon-
ette her spirits flagged a little. She was glad when the drag
passed Putney-bridge. How brightly ran the river under the
western sun ! How gay the steep old-fashioned street, with it's
flags and open windows and noisy taverns and lounging boating-
men. The scene had a garish tawdry look, somehow, and her
head ached to desperation. She was very glad when they drove
into the cool shades of the Rancho.
" 0, yes, thanks ; I've had a most delightful day," she said, in
reply to Mr. Cinqmars' inquiry as to her enjoyment of the great
festival: " but the noise and the sunshine have given me a head*
180 Slravgers and, IPilrjrimi.
ache, and I think, if yoa would let me go home at once, it would
be best for me."
" Go home ! nonsense, my dear ! your aunt is to dine with us,
and take you lack after our little dance. It's only half- past
seven. You shall have a cup of green tea, and then lie down
and rest for an hour, and you'll be as fresh as a rose by nine
o'clock. Turner, take Miss Luttrell to the bine room, and make
her comfortable."
This order was given to a smartly-dressed maid, who had
come to take the ladies' eloaks and parasols.
Elizabeth gave a little sigh of resignation. If it were pos-
sible to grow sick to deatli of this bright new world all in a
moment, such a sickness seemed to have come upon her. But
from the maelstrom of pleasure, be it only the feeblest provin-
cial whirlpool, swift and sudden extrication is, for the most part,
difficult.
" I will stop, if you wish," she said; " but my head is really
very bad."
In spite of her headache, however. Miss Luttrell appeared at
the banquet — which was delayed by tardy arrivals till about a
quarter to ten— brightest amongst the brilliant. Mrs. Chevenix
was there in her glory, oii the right hand of Mr. Cinqmars, and
was fain to confess to herself that the society which these people
contrived to get about them was by no means despicable — a little
fast, undoubtedly, and with the masculine element predominat-
ing somewhat obviously ; but it was pleasant, when venturing
out of one's own strictly correct circle, to find oneself among so
many people with handles to their names. Lord Paulyn had by
this time entirely recovered his equanimity, and had contrived
to take Elizabeth in to dinner — a somewhat noisy feast, at which
everybody talked of the event; of the day, as if it were the begin-
ning, middle, and end of the great scheme of creation. The
wide windows were all open to the spring night ; hanging
moderator lamps shed their subdued light upon a vast oval
table, which was like a dwarf forest of ferns, stephanotis, and
scarlet geranium. It was quite as good as dining out of doors,
without the inconveniences attendant upon the actual thing.
A little after eleven o'clock there came a crash of opening
chords from a piano, cornet, and violin, artfully hidden in a
small room off the drawing-room, and then the low entrancing
melody of a waltz by Strauss. The ladies rose at the soiinc^
and the greater number of the gentlemen left the dining-room
with them.
" We can leave those fellows drinking cura^oa, and squab-
bling about the odda for the Oaks," said Major Boldiug. *' We
don't want them."
This was an undeniable fact, for the danseuses were much io
Strangers and Pilgrims. 181
the minority. There were asprinl<hng of wives of authors and
actors ; a few dearest friends of Mrs. Cinqmars, who seemed to
«tand more or less alone in the world, and to be free-lances in
the way of flirtation ; a young lady with long raven ringlets and
a sentimental air, who was said to be something very great in the
musical hue, but was rarely allowed to exhibit her talents ; a
Btout literary widow, who founded all her fashionable novels on.
the society at theEancho; and a popular actress, who could
sometimes be persuaded to gratify her friends with the " Charge
of the Six Hundred," or the famous scene between Mr. Pickwick
and the Bath magistrate.
Elizabeth found herself assailed by ii herd of eager suppli-
cants, who entreated for round dances. No one ever suggested
quadrilles at the Rancho, nor were these unceremonious assem-
blies fettered by the iron bondage of a programme.
" Eemember," said Lord Paulyn, " you've promised me threo
waltzes."
" If I dance at all; but I don't think I shall.''
" Neither shall I then," answered the Viscount, coollj.
•* A d'autres, gentlemen. Miss Luttrell doesn't dance to-night."
" I'd rather take a refusal from the lady's own lips, if it's all
the same to you, Paulyn," said Major Bolding.
" The dust and heat have given me an excruciating headache,
and I really do not feel equal to waltzing," answered Elizabeth.
" Shall I get them to play a quadrille?"
"No, thanks. I'm hardly equal to that either; and I know
Mrs. Cinqmars hates square dances."
"Never mind Mrs. Cinqmars. Half a loaf is better than no
bread. If you'll dance the first set, the Lancers — anything
Shall I tell the fellow to play the Grand Duchesse or La Belie
Helene?"
" Please don't. But if you'll take me for a turn by the river
I should be glad. Will you come, auntie ? I don't suppose
these rooms really are hot; but in spite of aU those open wi;i-
dows, I feel almost stifled."
Lord Paulyn's countenance was obscured by a scowl at this
proposition, and Mrs. Chevenix was quick to perceive the cloud.
What could Elizabeth mean by such incorrigible fatuity ? Waa
it not bad enough to have a country curate in the backgro\;nd,
without introducing a new element of discord in the person oi!
this dashing major? There was no time for careful diplomacy;
the situation demanded an audacious master-stroke.
" Lord Paulyn can take care of you, Lizzie," said the matron,
" and I'll ask Major Bolding to give me his arm ; for I want to
talk to him about my dear friends, the Clutterbucks. Relatives
of yours, are they not. Major?"
"Yes : Tom Clutterbuck's somethiner in the way of a cousin,"
182 Strangers and Pilgrima.
growled the reluctant Major, rather sulkily. " But they're in
Rome, and I haven't heard of them for an age."
He offered his arm to the aunt instead of the niece, with a
tolerably resigned air, however, perceiving that the position waa
more critical than he had supposed, and not wishing to mar Mise
Luttrell's chances. So Mrs. Cheveiiix sailed off through the
open window to the lawn, a ponderous figure in pur])le satin and
old point, and Elizabeth found herself constrained to accejDt the
escort of the man she so ardently desired to keep at a convenient
distance.
They walked slowly down to the river terrace, almost in
silence. That scene of a moonlit gai'den by a moonlit river ia
one of those pictures whose beauty seems for ever fresh ; from
Putney to Reading, what a succession of riverside paradises
greets the envious eyes of the traveller ! And at sight of every
new domain he cries, " Oh, this is lovelier than all the rest !
here would I end my days." And all mankind's aspirations
after a comfortable income and a peaceful existence include
" A river at my garden's end."
But it was not the tranquil splendour of the moonlight, or
the eternal beauty of the river, that moved the soul of Reginald
Paulyn, and held him in unaccustomed silence. He was angry.
Some dull sparks of his vexation at having backed the wrong
horse yet smouldered in his breast ; but he was much more
angry at the conduct of Elizabeth Luttrell. It was all very well
to be snubbed, to be trilled with, to be played with as a fish that
the angler means to land anon with tender care, but there had
been something too much of this. The damsel had said one or
two thiugs at dinner that had been intended to enlighten him,
and had in some measure removed the bandage from his eyes.
He wanted to know the exact meaning of these speeches. He
wanted to know, without an hour's delay, whether she, Eliza-
beth Luttrell, a country parson's penniless daughter, were capa-
ble of setting him at naught.
He hardly knew in what words to frame his desire ; and per-
haps at this moment, for the first time in his life, it dawned
•jpon him that the chosen vocabulary of his own particular set
was a somewhat restricted language for a man in his position.
Ehzabeth made some remark about the beauty of the scene —
80 much better than any drawing-room — and he answered her
mechanically, and that was all that was said by either until they
came to the river terrace, by which time Mrs. Chevenix and her
companion, vfho had walked briskly, were at some distance from
them.
" Stop a bit. Miss Luttrell," said Lord Paulyn, coming to a
Budden standstill by the stone balustrade that guarded a flight
Strangcrs and Pilgrims. 18i
of steps leading down to the water. " Don't be in such a hurry
to overtake those two ; they'll get on well enough without us.
I want to talk to you — about — about something very particular."
Elizabeth's heart sank at this ominous prelude. She felt that
it was coming, that crisis which of late she had done her utter-
most to avert.
" I can't imagine what you can have to say to me," she said,
with an airy little laugh and a very fair assumption of careless-
ness.
Lord Paulyn leant upon the balustrade, with his elbow planted
on the etone, looking up at her with a resolute scrutiny.
" Can't you ? " he asked somewhat bitterly. " And yet I
should think it was easy enough for you to guess what I'm
going to say to you in plain words to-night. I've been saying
it in a hundred ways for the last six weeks — saying it plain
enough for any one to understand, I should have thought — any
one in their senses, at least, and there doesn't seem room for
much doubt aljout yours. I love you, Elizabeth — that's what I
have to say — and I mean you to be my wife."
'* You mean me," cried Elizabeth, with inexpressible scorn,
and a laugh that stung her lover as sharply as a blow — " you
7nean me to be your wife ! Upon my honour, Lord Paulyn, you
have quite an oriental idea of a woman's position. You are to
fling your handkerchief to your favourite slave, and she is to
pick it up and bring it to you with a curtsey."
" You never look so handsome as when you are angry," said
the Viscount undismayed, and smiling at her wrath. " But
don't be angry with me ; I didn't intend to offend you. I
should have said the same if you had been a princess of the
blood royal. I only tell you what I swore to myself last
November, the day I tirst saw your face in Hawleigh church :
That's the woman I'll have for my wife. I never yet set my
heart upon anything that I didn't win it. 1 know how cleverly
you've played me for the last five weeks, keeping me on by
keeping me off, eh? But we may as well drop all that sort of
thing now, Elizabeth. You are the only woman in this world
£"11 ever make a viscountess of; and of course you've known
that all along, or you wouldn't have given me the encourage-
ment you have given me, in your ofiliand way. Don't try
to humbug me. I'm a man of the world, and I've known from
the first that it was a settled thing between you and the old
woman — I beg your pardon, Mrs. Chevenix."
"Encouragement!" cried Elizabeth, aghast; "I give yoti
encouragement, Lord Paulyn ! Why, I've done everything in
the world to show you my indiff'erence."
" 0, yes ; I know aJl about that. You've been uncivil enough,
I grant you, and many a man in my position would have beea
184 Strangers and Pilgrimg.
cliolied off; but I'm not that kind of fellow. You've given me
as much of your society as circumstances allowed — that's the
grand point — and you must have known that every day made
me more desperately in love with you. You're not going to
round upon me and pretend indifference after that. It would
be rather too bad."
Elizabeth was silent for a brief space, conscience-stricken.
She had deemed this lordang of so shallow a nature that it
could matter little how she tritied with him. He had his grmcde
'passion, no doubt, every season — hovered butterfly-like around
some particular flower in the fashionable parterre, and flew off
unscathed when London began to grow empty. That she could
inflict any wrong upon him by suffering his attentions had
never occurred to her. She had thought at one time even that
it would be rather nice to bring him to her feet, and astound
him by a cool refusal. And even now, though she was not a
little perplexed by a kind of rough earnestness and intensity in
his speech and manner, she did feel a faint thrill of triumph
in the idea of his subjugation. It would be something to tell
Gertrude and Diana— those representatives of her little world,
who had sneered at the humble end of all her grand ideas :
there would be not a little satisfaction to her pride in being able
to tell them that Lord Paulyn had actually proposed to her.
The coronet of the Paulyns, tha airy round and top of
Bovereignty, floated before her vision for a moment, as she
looked across the moonlit river, phantom-wise, like Macbeth's
dagger. If she had not loved that other one above the sordid
splendours of the world, what a brilliant fortune might have been
hers ! And Eeginald was not positively obnoxious to her. He
was good-looking, seemed good-natured, had been the veriest
Blave of her every whim, and she had grown accustomed to his
society. She had no doubt that he would have made a very
tolerable husband; and as the inexhaustible source of carriages,
horses, opera-boxes, diamonds, yachts, and riverside villas, she
must needs have regarded him with a certain grateful fondness,
had she been free to accept him. But she was bound to a man
whom she loved to distraction, and not to be an empress would
she have loosened that dear bondage.
" It's all my aunt's fault," she said, after that brief pause;
" I begged her— she ought to have told you that I am engaged
to be married."
"Engaged!" cried the Viscount; "engaged! Not since
you've cume to town ! Why, I know almost every fellow that
has been hanging about you, and they have had precious little
chance, unless it's some one you've met at those confounded
parties on the other side of Hyde-park."
" I was engaged before I came to London."
Strangera and Pilgnns. 185
•' What, to some fellow in Hawleigh ! And you let me
dance attendance upon you, and spend three mornings a week
in Eaton-]ilace, and follow you about to every infernal picture-
gallery till the greens and blues in their confoundod laud-
Bcapes gave me the vertigo, and to every twopenny-halfpenny
flower-show, staring at azaleas and rhododendrons ; and then
you turn round and tell me you're engaged ! By , Misa
Luttrell, if you mean what you say, you're the most brazen-
faced flirt it was ever my bad luck to meet with in half-a-dozeu
London seasons!"
Elizabeth drew herself up, trembling with anger. What, did
he dare insult her ? And had she really been guilty ? Con-
science was slow to answer that question.
"How dare you talk to me like that? " she exclaimed. " I —
I will never speak to you again as long as I Hve, Lord Paulyn."
A woman's favourite threat in moments of extremity, and
generally the prelude to a toiTent of words.
" By the right you've given me every day for the last
six weeks. By the right which the world has assumed when it
couples our names, as they are coupled by every one who
knowp us. Throw me over, if you like; but it will be the
worse for you if you do, for every one will say it was I
who jilted you. A woman can't carry on as you've carried on,
and then turn round and say, 0. I beg your pardon, it was all
a mistake ; I'm engaged to somebody else." And then sud-
denly, with a still hercer flash of anger, he demanded, " Who is
he ? Who is the man ? "
" The gentleman to whom I have the honour to be engaged ia
Mr. Forde, my father's curate. Perhaps it would be better for
you to make your complaint about my conduct to him."
" Egad, I should think he'd be rather astonished if I did en-
lighten him a little on that score! Your father's curate ? So
it's for the sake of a beggarly curate you are going to throw me
over the bridge."
" You are at liberty to insult me. Lord Paulyn, but I must
insist upon your refraining from any insolent mention of my
future husband. And now, perhaps, as we quite understand
each other, you will be good enough to let me go to my aunt."
" Don't be in such a hurry. Miss Luttrell," said the Viscount,
white with anger. That he, Reginald Paulyn, should be
rejected by any woman living, least of all by a country vicar'a
daaghter, and in favour of a country curate ! It was not to be
e^idnred. But of course she was not in earnest; this pretended
jefusal was only an elaborate coquetry. " I'm — I'm not a bad-
tempered man, that I'm aware," he went on, after struggling
with his i-ising ire; "but there are some things beyond any
a.aa s lorbearar*ce ; and after leading me on aa 3'ou have dona—
186 Strangers and Pilgrims.
that you can look me in the face and tell me you're going tu
marry another man ! I won't believe it of you ; no, not from
your own lips. Come, Elizabeth, be reasonable ; drop all this
nonsense. Never mind if there has been some kind of flirtation
between you and Forde ; let bygones be byc^ones ; I won't
quarrel with the past. But give me a straight answer, like
a woman of the world. Remember, there's nothing you care
for in this world that I can't give you ; you were made to
occupy a brilliant position, and I love you better than I ever
loved any human creature."
He took her hand, which she did not withdraw from him;
she let him hold it in his strong grasp, a poor little icy-cold un-
resisting hand. For the first time it dawned upon her that she
had done him a great wrong.
" Do you really care for me ? " she asked with a serious won-
dering air. " I am so sorry, and begin to see that I have done
wrong ; I ought to have been more candid. But indeed, Lord
Paulyn, it is my aunt's fault. I begged her to tell you of my
engagement. I would have told you myself even, only," with a
feeble little laugh, " I could hardly volunteer such a piece of
information ; it would have been so presumptuous to suppose
that you were in any danger from our brotherly and sisterly
acquaintance."
"Brotherly and sisterly be hanged!" said the Yiscount;
" you must have known that I doated on you. God knows
I've let you see it plain enough. I've never hid my light under
a bushel."
After this there came another brief silence. Elizabeth
looking thoughtfully at the rippHng water, Lord Paulyn
waiching her face with a gloomy air.
"Come," he said at last, "what is it to be? Are you going
to throw me over for the sake of this curate fellow? Are y<>u
going to bury yourself :-'Jive in a country parsonage, teaclimg
a pack of snivellirg- children psalm-singing? You've tasted
blood; you know something of what hfe is. Come, Lizzio, be
just to yourself and me. Write this Forde fello"- «> "-^II letter
telling him you've changed your mind."
" Not for Egypt," said Elizabeth, turning ner flashing eyes
upon him — eyes which a moment before had been gazing
dreamily at the river. " You do not know how I love him.
Yes, I love the world too," she went on, as if answering that
Bordid jjlea by which the Viscount had endeavoured to sustain
his suit; " I do love the world. Its pleasures are all so new to
me, and I have enjoyed my life unspeakably since I've been in
London, yes, in spite of being parted from him. But I could
no mora give him up than I could cut my heart out of my
body, and live. I aoi quite willing to admit that I have done
Strangers and Pilgrims. 187
wtong; " — this with an air of proud hnniilitf wliich waa very
rare in Elizabeth liuttrell — " I beg yoi;r pardon, Lord Paulyu ;
I entreat you to forgive me, and accept rcy friendship instead of
my love. You have been very kind to me, verjr indulgent to all
my caprices and tempers, and believe me I am not ungrateful.
"Forgive you! "be echoed, with a harsh laugh; "be your
friend, when I had made up my mind to be your husband ! Eather
hard lines. However, I suppose friendship must count for
something ; and as you prefer the notion of psalm-singing and
three sermons a Sunday to a house in ]\Iayfair, a yacht at
Cowe«, a racing-box at Newmarket, and stables in Yorkshire —
I should have liked to show you my Yorkshire stables and stud
farm," with a dreamy fondness — " as you have made your
choice, I suppose I must abide by it. And we'll be friends,
Lizzie. I may call you Lizzie, mayn't I ? It's onlj one of
the privileges of friendsliip."
" You may call me anything you like, if you'll only pro nise
never to renew this subject, and to forgive me for having un-
wittingly deceived you."
The Viscount clasped her hand in both of his, then touched
it with his lips for the first time. And as he kissed the little
vrhite hand, with a fond lingering pressure, he vowed a vow;
but whether of friendship and fealty, or of passionate,
treacherous, selfish love, was a secret hidden in the soul of the
Viscount himself
Elizabeth accepted the kiss as a pledge of fidelity, and anon
began to talk of indifferent subjects with a somewhat forced
gaiety, as if she would have made believe that there had been
no love-scene between Lord Paulyn and herself. They left the
landing-place, and strolled slowly on to join the Major and aunt
Chevenix, who were both sorely weary of their enforced
meanderings. The matron smiled upon Ehzabeth with the
smile of triumph; she had seen wiose two motionless figures
from atar as she paced the other end of the long terrace with
her companion, and assured herself that the Viscount had come
to the point.
Now, as they came towards her walking side by side with a
friendly air, she told herself that all was well. Elizabeth had
renounced the ways of foolishness, and had accepted that high
fortune which a bounteous destiny had reserved for her.
" I said it when she was still in pinafores," thought Mrs,
Chevenix ; *' that girl was bom to be a peeresa."
-jc^is; iiirangers and FiJgrims,
CHAPTER IV.
** The company is ' mix'd ' (the phrase I quote io
As much as saying, they're below your notice);
For a ' mix'd ' company implies that, save
Yourself and friends, and half a hundred more,
Whom you may bow to without looking grave,
The rest are but a vulgar set, the bore
Of public places, where they basely brave
The fashionable stare of twenty score
Of well-bred persons, call'd 'The World;' but I,
Although I know them, really don't know why."
Bitter, with unutterable bitterness, was tbe disappointment of
aunt Chevenix, when at breakfast next morning she was made
acquainted with the actual state of affairs. Lord Paulyn had
verily proposed, and had been rejected.
" To say that you are mad, Elizabeth, is to say nothing," ex-
claimed Mrs. Chevenix, casting herself back in her chair, and
regarding her niece with a stony gaze, egg-spoon in hand ; "you
were that when you accepted Mr. Forde. But this is a besotted
idiotcy for which even your previous folly had not prepared me."
" You surely did not think that I should jilt Mr. Forde ?"
" I surely did not think you would refuse Lord Paulyn,"
echoed her aunt; " a girl of your tastes — the very last of young
women to marry a person in Mr. Forde's position. Upon my
word, Elizabeth, it is too bad, positively cruel, after the pride I
have felt in you, the money I have spent upon you even, though
I am above alluding to that. Your conduct is a death-blow to
all my hopes." And here Mrs. Chevenix wept real tears, which
she wiped despondently from her powdered cheeks.
" Pray don't cry, auntie. I am something like a man in thai
respect ; 1 can't bear the sight of tears. I am very sorry for
having disappointed you, but it would be hardly a fair thing to
Lord Paulyn to marry him while my heart belongs entirely to
some one else, to say nothing of Malcolm himself "
" Malcolm !" exclaimed Mrs. Chevenix, with profound disgust.
"To think that I should have a niece — my favourite niece too —
capable of marrying a man called Malcolm."
"I'm sorry you don't like his name, auntie. To my ear it is
music."
" Yes, like the Scotch bagpipes, I suppose," said the elder
lady, in accents of withering scorn.
" And now, dearest auntie, let there be no quarrelling between
us," pleaded Elizabeth. " I daresay it is disappointing to you
for me to settle down into a country clergyman's wife, after all
my grand talk about marrying well, and riding through the
world in my own barouche, over people's bodies, as it wp'*» like
Strangers and Pilyrims. 189
the lady in Koman history. I did not know my own heart when
I talked like that. I di i uot think that I should ever be weak
enough to love anybody fifty times better than carriages and
horses. Please let us be friends," she went on, coaxingly, and
kneeling down by the offended matron. " Lord Paulyn has for-
given me, and he and I are to be excellent friends for the rest of
our lives. Perhaps he will give Malcolm a living ; I daresay he
has three or four handsome benefices among his possessions."
" Friends indeed !" cried Mrs. Chevenix, contemptuously; "I'm
snre I thought last night that it was all settled, and even began
to think of your trousseau. I never in my life had such a dis-
appointment,"
Little by little, however, the matron's indignation, or the out-
ward show of that passion, abated, and she permitted her
wounded spirits to be soothed by Elizabeth's caresses. Happily
for the damsel, the business of life, that business of pleasure
which sometimes involves more wear and tear of mind and body
than the most serious pursuit of wealth or fame, must needs go
on. Once in the whirlpool of Mrs. Cinqmars' set, and there waa
no escape for EUzabeth and her chaperon ; all their other en-
gagements were as nothing to that lady's demands upon their
time, and Mrs Chevenix, for some unexplained reason, had
entered upon a close alliance with the mistress of the Rancho.
" I did not think Mrs. Cinqmars was at all your style, auntie,"
Elizabeth said, wondering that this new-fledged friendship should
be so strong upon the wing.
" Mrs. Cinqmars' style may not be faultless, but she is one of
the best-natured little women I ever met, and has the art of
making her house most delightful," replied Mrs. Chevenix de-
cisively.
" I think we ought to take our brass bedsteads out to Fulham,
and camp under the trees, now the warm weather has set in.
We almost live there, as it is," said Elizabeth.
There was some foundation for this remark in the fact that
Mrs. Chevenix and her niece were oftener at the Rancho than
anywhere else. Mrs. Cinqmars devoted all the forces of her
being to the pursuit of pleasure; aUvi as the.se gaieties and hos-
pitalities assisted Mr. Cinqmars not a little in the pursuit of
giiin, the lady was allowed the free exercise of her talents in the
art of making people forget that life was meant for anything
trraver or loitier than a perpetual talkinsr of small-talk, and
quaffing of iced cups in the summer sunshine, now under the
striped awning of a barge gliding up the sunlit river, anon in
the cool glades of some primasval forest, like Windsor or Burn-
ham Beeches. If the destiny of mankind began and ended in
picnics, water-parties, kettledrums, and private theatricals, Mm.
Cinqmars wonld have been among the leaders f>f the world; but.
190 Strangers and JPilgrimg.
unfortunately for the lady, those delights are fleeting as the
bubbles on the river, and, however wide their circle spreads,
make bnt brief impressions, and are forgotten after a season or
two. Mr. and Mrs. Cinqmars might have commemorated them-
selves in a pyramid as high as Pharoah's, built out of empty
champagne bottles ; but so ungrateful are the butterfly race
they fed, that almost the only record of their hospitality at the
end of a season was a yard full of empty bottles, and the cases,
which an odd man chopped up for firewood.
While the season lasted, however, Mrs. Cinqmars drank freely
of pleasure's sparkling cup, and found no bitterness even in the
lees thereof. She rarely left a blank day in her programme.
Every week brought its water-party or its picnic. Every morn-
ing found her breakfast-tray — she did not leave her room till the
business of the day began — piled high with notes of acceptance
or refusal in answer to her coquettish little notes of invitation.
She was not a person who sent meaningless cards " requesting,"
but wrote dainty little letters on monogram-emblazoned paper,
full of familiar nothings, breathing the warmest friendship.
" The season is so short," she used to say pensively, " one
cannot do too much while the fine weather lasts."
After that day at Epsom Mrs. Cinqmars made no party to
which she did not invite her dearest Miss Luttrell. She was
eager for the society of her dearest Mrs. Chevenix at all her
dinners and afternoons ; but there were picnics and water-partiea
which might be too fatiguing for that dearest friend, on which
occasions she begged to be intrusted with the care of her sweet
Miss Luttrell — a privilege the matron was not slow to accord.
Dinners and dances in Tyburnia were declined with ruthlessnesg
in favour of Mrs. Cinqmars — ay, even a dinner in Eaton-square,
at the abode of a millionaire baronet, in the iron trade.
" Upon my word, auntie, I don't care about going so much to
Mrs. Cinqmars'," Elizabeth remonstrated. "I certainly do
enjoy myself more at her parties than anywhere else, but I
hardly think Malcolm would like me to spend so much time in
that kind of society."
" Yon had better send a statement of all your engagements to
Mr. Forde, and allow him to direct your movements," replied
Mr?. Chevenix; and mingled feelings, the fear of ridicule, and
her OH-n inclination, which drew her strongly towards Henley
and Virginia Water, kept Elizabeth silent.
Mr. Forde's remonstrances about the length of her visit had
abated of late, for the Curate had been summoned to Scotland,
to attend the sick bed of one of his few remaining kindred, hig
father's only brother, an old man to whom he was warmly
attached. His letters came now from the North, and were only
brief records of 8ufi"erings from which there seemed no hope of
Strangers and Pilgrimt. 191
other relief than death. He had no time to write at length to
his betrothed, and no spirits for letter-writincr. " I don't want
to sadden yon, dearest," he wrote, " and therefore make my
letters of the briefest, for my mind is full of our patient, and
the quiet fortitude with which he endures this protracted trial,
too full even for those happy thoughts of the future, which have
brightened my life of late. But I do look fonvard to our meet-
ing, Lizzie ; whatever sorrow may he between this hour and that.
And I hope to hear speedily of your return to the West."
" Do you know if this uncle is likely to leave him any money ? "
Mrs. Chevenix inquired, with a languid interest, when she was
informed of Mi-. Forde's movements. A few hundreds a year
could make little difference in that poverty-stricken career which
Elizabeth had chosen for herself. It would be but as a grain of
sand, when weighed agamst a viscount's coronet and half-a-
dozen estates.
" I beheve Malcolm will be richer, auntie. There is a small
estate in Scotland that must come to him."
" A small estate in Scotkud, where land rents at ten shillings
an acre, I suppose. Or perhaps it is all waste, mere sand and
heather. But what does it matter ? You have chosen to go
through life a pauper. It is only a question of a crust of bread
more or less."
There was hardly a necessity for Elizabeth to hurry back to
Hawleigh, to the untimely cutting off of all these summer de-
hghts, when Mr. Forde was away. She thought how dreary the
place would seem without him. Gertrude, Diana, Blanche,
with their stock phrases and their perennial commonplaces and
their insignificant scraps of gossip about the Hawleigh gentry ;
the dull old High-street ; the shop-windows she had looked at
so often, till she knew every item of the merchandise. She
thought of going over all the old gronnd again with a shudder.
" Life in a convent would be gayer," she thought ; " the nuns
could not all be Gertrudes and Dianas."
So she wrote a dutiful letter to her betrothed, full of sympathy
with his sorrow, and informing him that she was beginning to
grow a little tired of London, and would go back to the West
directly she heard of his return. " Don't ask me to go any sooner,
Malcolm," she said ; " the place would seem horrible to me with-
out you. I want your face to be the first to welcome me home. I
think sometimes of the days when we shall have our own home,
and I shall stand at the gate watching for you."
The Derby-day was a thing of the remote past, and Henley
Tegatta was over, before Elizabeth received notice of Mr. Forde's
return. She had seen Lord Paulyn almost daily during the
interval, and his friendship had never wavered. He was still
her devoted a^ave, still patient under her scornful uoewihes, still
192 Strangera and Pilgrims.
eager to gratify her smallest caprice, still a kind of barrier be»
tween her and all other worship. Serene in the consciousness
of having done her duty, of having, with a fortitude uukiiowu
to the common order of womankind, rejected all the advantages
of wealth and rank, she saw no peril to herself or her admirer
in that frivolous kind of intimacy which she permitted to him.
It was an understood thing that she was to be another man's
wife — that the end of the season was to be her everlasting fare-
well to worldly pleasures. Lord Paulyn appeared to accept his
position with gentlemanlike resignation. He would even speak
of his happier rival sometimes, with but little bitterness, with
a good-humoured contempt, as of an inferior order of being.
Elizabeth thought he was cured.
Henley regatta and the longest day were over, but the sum-
mer was yet in its prime — the nights knew not darkness, only a
etarry twilight betwixt sundown and sunrise.
" How tired the sun must be by the end of the season," said
Elizabeth, " keeping such late hours, and always glaring down
upon races and regattas and flower-shows and garden-parties! '*
" Don't pity him : he's such a lazy beggar, and so fond of
skulking behind the clouds on rainy days," answered Lord
Paulyn. " I wish we could shuffle out of our engagements as
easily as he shirks his."
Mrs. Cinqmars, who was never happy without some grand
event in preparation, ha'd hardly given herself time to breathe
after her water-party at Henley — a luncheon for five-and-twenty
people on board a gilded barge, towed up the river from Maiden-
head — when she was up to her eyes in the arrangement of pri-
vate theatricals for the tenth of July — a festivity which was to
mark the close of her hospitalities.
" We start for Hombourg on the twelfth," she said, with a
sigh ; " and as I've been going up like a rocket all the season,
I don't want to come down like a stick at the last. So, you see,
our theatricals must be a success. Lord Paulyn. It's not to be
a common drawing-room business, you know, but a regular
affair, for the benetit of the Asylum for the Widows of Indi-
gent Stockbrokers. Tickets a guinea each. A few reserved
fauteuils at two guineas."
" Do you mean to say you're going to let a herd of strangers
mto your house ? " inquired the Viscount with amazement.
" Why, you'll have the swell-mob after your plate 1 "
" The tickets will be only disposed of by our friends, yon ob-
tuse creature," said Mrs. Cinqmars ; " but it's not half so much
fun acting before a lot of people you see every day, as doing it
In real earnest for a benevolent purpose. I shall expect you to
sell something like fifty-pounds worth of tickets, and to bring
all the hoavy swells vou can scrape together. I want the affiiir
Strangert and Pilgrimt. 193
to be really brilliant. But this is not the point we have to dis'
cuss to-day. Before we can print our programmes or stir a step
in the business, we must definitively settle our pieces, and cast
them."
This speech was uttered in a friendly little gathering beneath
the umbrage of perfumed limes, the river flashing in the fore-
ground, a few of Mrs. Cinqmars' dearest friends, of both stxes —
the Viscount, Major Rolding, a young man in the War OfBce
with a tenor voice and light hair parted in the middle, the young
lady with raven ringlets, a fair and dumpy young person whose
husband was in America, and Elizabeth Luttrell — seated in
friendly conclave round a rustic table, provided with pens, ink,
and paper ; for it is quite impossible to achieve an arrangement
of this kind without an immense waste of penmanship and
letter-i)aper. There was the usual confusion of tongues, every-
body thinking he or she knew more about private theatricals
than any one else — Major Bolding, because the fellows in his
regiment had once got up something at Aldershott ; the dumpy
voung person, because she had acted charades with her sisters
in the nursery when she was " a mite ; " the tenor in the War
Office, because his father had known Charles Mathews the
elder; the contralto, because she had gone to school with a
niece of Mrs. Charles Kean's. Only Elizabeth acknowledged
her ignorance. " I know nothing about plays," she said, " ex-
cept that I doat upon them."
" AVhatever play we choose, Lizzie, I mean you to be in it,"
said Mrs. Cinqmars, and Elizabeth did not protest against the
arrangement. She Avas enraptui-ed at the thought of acting in
a play — of Uving for one brief night the dazzhug hfe of that
fairy stage-world which was so new to her.
About a hundred plays were suggested, briefly discussed, and
rejected. Mrs. Cinqmars seemed to know every dramatic work
that had been written. Every one, except Elizabeth and Mr.
Cinqmars, had his or her one idea, by which he or she stuck
resolutely. Lord Paulyn voted for Box and Cox, and could not
be persuaded to extend his ideas beyond that masterpi'^ce. The
tenor proposed To ohlif/e Benson, because he knew some people
who had acted it last Christmas down in Hertfordshire ; " and
I'm told it went off remarkably well, you know," he said ; " and
people laughed a good deal, except one old gentleman in the
front row, who went to sleep and snored."
" You stupid people ! " cried Mrs. Cinqmars ; *' don't go on
harping upon one string. Those are mere insignificant farces,
and I want a grand piece that will play two hours and a half."
After this came a string of suggestions, all alike useless.
" I only wish our men were a little better," said Mrs. Cinq-
mnxn, with a despondent survey of her forces. " There is a piece
194 Strangers and Pilgrinns.
which I should like above all others ; but it wants good acting.
jDhere are not too many people in it, and no troublesome scenery,
I mean Masks and Faces."
Every one knew Masks and Faces, every one admired the
play ; but the gentlemen were doubtful as to their capacity for
the characters.
" I'll play nothing but Box," said Lord Paulyn ; " I think I
could do that."
" I don't mind what I do, as long as it's something to make
the i^eople laugh," said Major Bolding.
" Then you'd better try tragedy," suggested Mr. Hartley, the
tenor.
•' They're playing the piece at the Adelphi, Lizzie," said Mrs.
Cinqmars, intent upon her own deliberations, and ignoring trivial
interruptions. " We'll all go to see it this evening. You shall
play Peg Woffington. Major Bolding will do pretty well for
Vane. Oh yes, you must do it ; I'll coach you. Cinqmars and
Mr. Hartley can play Triplet and CoUey Gibber ; you, Flory " —
to the dumpy young person — "will make a capital Kitty Clive;
and you, Lord Paulyn, must play Sir Charles Pomander, the vil-
lain. I can get a couple of newsjjaper men for Snarl and
Soaper, the two critics. No remonstrances. I know you are all
sticks ; but we know what great things can be done by a bundle of
sticks. Yoa'U all learn your words perfectly without an hour's
delay. Never mind the acting. We'll arrange that at rehearsal.
The words and the dresses are the two great points. You must
all look as if you had walked out of a picture by Ward or Frith.
You'll call at the Adelphi this afternoon, Major, and engage
half-a-dozen stalls for the rest of the week ; and mind, I shall
expect to see them occupied every night before the curtain goes
up."
After this came a great deal of discussion. Major Bolding
declared his incapacity for sentimental comedy; Lord Paulyn in-
sisted that he could soar no higher than Box.
" I don't think I should break down in that business with the
mutton-chop and rasher ; and if I had plaid trousers with big
checks, and a red wig, I think I might make them laugh a little,"
he said ; " but my attempting a stage villain is too absurd. Why,
I should have to scowl, shouldn't I, and cork my eyebrows, and
drag one foot beliind the other when I walked ? "
" Nothing of the kind. Sir Charles is a hght-comedy villain ;
only a slight modification of your own haw-haw style. You have
only to see the piece acted half-a-dozen times or so. You shall
have a wig and costume that will almost play the part for you."
Lord Paulyn groaned aloud. " Sit in a stiflin' hot theatre six
nights runniu' to see the same fellers in the same play ! " he re-
monstrated.
Strangers and Pilgrimg. 195
" Only a small sacrifice to dramatic art and the indigent
etockbrokers' widows," said Mrs. Cinqmars, soothingly.
She was a determined little woman: and once having taken up
the business, carried it through with unflagging energy.
The programmes were printed forthwith, on lace-bordered
paper of palest rose colour, perfumed to distraction by the art of
flimmol.
At the RANcno, Fuluam (the Rivekside Villa or
H, DU C. DE ClNQMAIlS, EsQ.),
FOR THE
BENEFIT OF THE WIDOWS OF INDIGENT STOCKBROKERS
{Members of the Hoiise alone eligible).
MASKS AND FACES.
A Comedy by Charlbs Reade and Tom Tayloe.
Sir Charles Pomander
Mr. Vane
Colley Gibber
Triplet
James Quin .
Soaper | ^'''^''*
Mrs. Vaue .
Kate Cllve . ,
Peg Woffington
Lord Paultn,
Major BoLDiNQ.
Mr. Haktley.
Mr. UU GUATELET DB CiNQMARS.
Mr. Beaumont.
Mr. Slasher,
Mr. Slater.
Mrs. DU GUATELET BV ClKQMARa.
Mrs. Desborough.
Miss Elizabeth Luttrell,
llckets to be obtained only from the Committee, One Guinea.
A limited Number of Reserved Fauteuils at Two Guineas.
Performance to commence at nine precisely. Carriages may be ordered
for half -past eleven.
For five consecutive nights did Mrs. Cinqmars and her
devoted slaves occupy the stalls of the Adelphi, gazing upon and
listening to the performance of Mrs. Stirling, Mr. Benjamin
Webster, and other accomplished masters of the dramatic art.
The blood in the veins of the gallant Major ran cold, as the fast-
congealing water-drops of an Alpine stream among the frozen
mountain tops, when he watched the movements and listened to
the words of Mr. Vane, and considered that he, after his feeble
fashion, must needs reflect the image of that skilful actor who
sustained the part. But by diligent perusal of the comedy in the
solitude of their own apartments, and by force of seeing the
play five times running, and being urged to attention onu iutt
196 Strangers and Pilgrimt.
rest by the energetic little stage-manageress who eat between
them, the Major on the one side and the Viscount on the other,
did ultimately arrive at some idea of what they were expected to
do; and when the first rehearsal took place at the Rancho, after
the completion of these nit^htly studies, Mrs. Cinqmars pro-
nounced herself very well satisfied x^h her company. She had
beaten up recruits here and there in the meantime, and had
filled her programme. The tickets had been selling furiously.
Almost everyone had heard of the Eancho ; and aspiring middle-
class people who did not know Mrs. Cinqmars were glad of this
opportunity of placing themselves upon a level with people who
did. There was no rush of those lofty personages whom Mrs.
Cinqmars had spoken of as " heavy swells." A good deal of
solicitation would have been needed to bring these to share the
free-and-easy hospitalities of the river-side villa ; but society on
the lower ranges parted freely with their guineas for gilt-edged
tickets of delicate rose-coloured pasteboard, entitling them to
behold the mysteries of that notorious abode. Lord Paulyn,
hard pressed by the energetic Flora, did contrive to enlist the
sympathies of various horsey noblemen in the cause of the stock-
brokers' widows — men who were curious, in their own word8»
to see "how big a fool Paulyn would make of himself " — but
stately dowagers or patrician beauties he could gather none.
Major Bolding, however, beat up the quarters of wealthy mer-
chants and shipowners, and secured a handsome attendance of
diamonds and millinery for the limited number of fauteuils; and
although the aspiring soul of Mrs. Cinqmars languished for a
more aristocratic assembly, she was tolerably cou tented with
the idea of a gathering which would fill her spacious room, and
in outward show would equal the best.
" If one has not what one loves, one must love what one has,"
said the little woman, flinging back her flowing raven locks with
a sigh of resignation. " We've sold all the tickets, and that's a
grand point, and we shall have at least a hundred pounds for
the widows; odious snuffy old creatures, I daresay, and not
worth half the trouble we are taking for them. A thousand
thanks, Major, for your exertions in Tyburnia, and to you, Lord
Paulyn, for your labours at TattersaU's. I really think we shall
make a success. Miss LuttreU is a magnificent Wotfina^ton."
" Egad, she'd be magnificent in anything," said the Viscount
rapturously, "I always think, if there ever was such a person
as Helen, she must have been like Elizabeth Luttrell. She's
pnch an out-and-out beauty. Don't you know in Homer, when
she came out on the ramparts where the old men were sitting,
though I dare say they'd been abusing her like old boots before
the showed up, the moment they saw her they knocked under,
and thought a ten years' war was hardly too much to have paid
Strangers and Filgrimt. 197
for the privilege of looking at her. Elizabeth is just that kind
of woman. It's no matter how she carries on, a man must adore
her."
" I say ditto to Mr. Burke," said the Major.
"It's a i^ity she should marry a country parson, isn't it^ "
asked Mrs. Cinqmars, who had been made acquainted with
Elizabeth's engagement by the damsel herself, in a moment of
confidence.
"Fifty to one against that marriage ever coming off," said the
Major ; " a pretty girl always begins with a detrimental, just to
get her hand in. I daresay those Gunning sisters in King
George's time were engaged to some needy beggars before they
came up to London, and took the town by storm. I can't fancy
Miss Luttrell setthng down to the goody-goody kind of Ufe,
with a sanctimonious fellow in a white choker."
" No, by Jove! " cried Lord Paulyn, " I can fancy anything
sooner than that. But she's just the sort of girl to do anything,
however preposterous, if she once sets her mind upon it."
This was a fragment of confidential talk in Mrs, Cinqmars'
boudoir, which at this period was littered with court swords,
three-cornered hats, flowing periwigs, and other such parapher-
naha. The important night came at last, in an interval of
tropical weather, the thermometer at eighty-six in the shade, all
the greensward in the parks burnt to a dismal tawny hue, arid
as a simoom-blasted desert. Heavy insupportable weather, at
which Anglo-Indians and other travellers in distant climes, from
China to Peru, grumbled sorely, declaring that they had en-
countered nothing so oppressive as this sultry English heat in
Bengal, or Japan, or Lima, or Honolulu, as the case might be.
A damp, penetrating heat, as of a gigantic hot-house. London
and her wide-spreading suburbs were wrapped in a dim shroud
of summer mist, pale and inipal]iable as the ghost of some dead-
and-gone November fog, and all the denizens of the vast city
seemed visibly dissolving, as in a Turkish bath. Threatenirg
weather, with the perpetual menace of a thunderstorm impend-
ing in the leaden sky.
_ " It would be rather too bad if the storm were to come to-
night," said Mrs. Cinqmars, as she leaned against the embrasure
of an open window languidly, after the last rehearsal, which had
been prolonged to within a couj^le of hours of the performance.
" But I shouldn't at all wonder if it did. Hark at those horrible
little birds twittering, as if they were saying, ' O yes, it will
eome soon ; it can't keep off much longer ; I feel it coming.'
And how the laurel leaves shiver."
" We've sold the tickets," said the Major philosophically ;
"the indigent widows wiU bo none the worse ofl' if it raina
bucketfuls aU the eveniug."
198 Strangers and Pilp'ims.
u '
'Do you think that will reconcile me to our play being a
failui-e?" cried the lady indignantly. " Aa if those snuflFy old
things were the first consideration ! "
" But you do it for their sakes, you know."
" For their sakes ! Do you suppose I pay Madame Noire \in-
heard-of prices for my dresses for their sakes ? I shall die of
vexation if we've any empty benches."
" We'd better send a whip round to the clubs," said Major
Dolding.
"I don't want a herd of men," exclaimed the aggrieved
manageress ; " I want a brilliant-looking audience, — those Man-
chester and Liverpool women with their emeralds and diamonds.
However, we'd better disperse at once, and begin to think of
dressing. Two hours is not too much for putting on Pompa-
dour costumes. Lizzie, you and I will have some tea and cold
chicken in my room, if we can manage to eat ; and as for you,
gentlemen, there will be dinner in half-an-hour in Mr. Cinqniars*
study. All the other rooms are confiscated to the interests of
the widows."
" Are the widows to see us act P " inquired Mr. Hartley.
" They ought, I think, in order to aj^preciate the effort we are
making for them at its just value. It would be rather a clever
move, by the way, a row of old women in black bonnets. Mrs.
Cinqmars could point to them when she speaks her little epi-
logue : ' Behold, kind friends, the recipients of your bounty.' "
" It will be quite enough to speak of them. And now,
gentlemen, if you really mean to be dressed by nine o'clock,
you'd better go to your rooms. Du Chatelet, be sure you come
to me at a quai-ter to nine to go over your scenes for the very-
last time."
Du Chatelet groaned. He was the Triplet of the piece, and
had sorely toiled in his laudable desire to reproduce the looks
and tones of Mr. Webster. He had even sacrificed a handsome
black moustache, which he felt to be a costly off'eriug, on the
ehrine of Art.
It was nine o'clock, and the storm was still impending — still
spreading its dark curtain between earth and the stars. But it
had not come, and carriage after carriage, the chariots of
Tyburnia and Ecclestonia, rolled round the gravel sweep before
the broad portico of the Rancho. The /oyer filled rapidly, with
n pleasant rustling of silks and satins, a fluttering of plumes,
and flashing of jewels, until the half-dozen rows of luxurious
seats became a very flower-garden, the brilliant colours of the
more costly sex only agreeably toned by the puritan garb of man.
The billiard-room had been fitted up as an auditorium, and by
a skilful removal of the vast window which filled one end of th«
room, and opened on the garden, the apartment had been ex-
Strangers and Pilgrims. 1^^
tended into a temporary slied beyond, This shed, with gently-
Blopincj floor and sunk foot-lights, was the stage. The frame of
the window, wreathed with flowering creepers which see/ned to
have grown up after the fashion of the famous beanstalk, formed
the proscenium.
The brilUant light in the auditorium sank gently to a semi-
darkness as the band, hidden in a little ofF-room, attacked the
overture to Masaniello. People had just time enough to look
about them before the lights went down, the women surveying
one another's dresses, the men looking about for people they
knew. Mrs. Ciiiqmars beheld her audience through a hole in
the curtain, which Major Bolding had made with his penknife
for her convenience, and was satisfied.
"They look very well, don't they?]' she asked. "You'd
hardly think they wer» not the real thing — not hall-marked —
only electro-plated."
Mrs. Chf venix occupied one of the fauteuils, in a cool and
somewhat Juvenile costume of pale-gray silk and areophane,
with pink ribbons, and a blonde Marie-Stuart cap surmounted
with pink marabouts, pink marabouts edging her fan, pink
swansdown on her gloves. Her own dress was new and had
cost money, but the cost thereof was as nothing compared with
the expense of Elizabeth's satin train and point-lace-flounced
petticoat, and the powdered wig which was to make her look
like Madame de Pompadour in Boucher's famous picture. Yet
all this expenditure had the devoted axint borne without
grumbling, or only an occasional faint and plaintive sigh.
If there were sufficient recomjjense for this outlay in Eliza-
beth's triumph, Mrs. Chevenix received such recompense with-
out stint. From the first moment to the last of that perform-
ance the girl was triumphant, resplendent with beauty and
genius, giving her whole heart and soul to the magic of the
stage, living, breathing, thinking, as Peg Woffington. The
mediocrity of her fellow-actors mattered nothing to her. They
6]X)ke the words they had to speak, so that no hitch arose in
the stage business, and that was all she needed to sustain the
illusion of the scene. There was jjassion enough and force
enough in her own soul to have animated a theatre ; there was
an electricity as subtle as the electricity in the overcharged
atmosphere, a magnetic force which inspired and excited, instead
of depressing.
Mrs. Cinqmars revelled in the sentimentahties of Mabel
Vane; rolled her large eyes and flung about her superb hair —
she would wear no wig to conceal that natural abundance — to
her heart's content, and made a graceful little heroine of the
lachrymose school. But Elizabeth was the very creature one
could fancy Margaret Woffington in her prime — the generous,
200 Strangers and Pilgrimt.
reckless, audacious beauty, proud of her power over the hearts
of men, brimming over with life and genius, but with unfathom-
able depths of tenderness lurking beneath that brilliant surface.
Tyburnia and Ecclestonia, and all the men about town who
formed the staple of Mr. and Mrs. Cinqmars' set, applauded
with a unanimity that for once in a way came from the heart.
They felt that this was verily dramatic art, hardly the lesa
finished because it was the fruit of only a fortnight's study.
The actress had picked up the technicalities of her part during
those studious nights in the theatre ; inspiration and a fresh and
ardent love of art had done the rest, and the impersonation was
as perfect as any amateur performance can possibly be, with all
the added charm of freshness and sincerity which can hardly
accompany the profound experience of professional training.
An actress who had trodden the beaten round of the drama,
more or less like a horse in a mill, could surely never fling her-
self with such passionate feeling into one part as this girl, to
whom the magic of the stage was new.
Mr. Cinqmars quavered and sniffed and snivelled in the
character of Triplet, with an abject senility which would have
been senile in a great-grandfather of ninety, but copied the
stage business with some dexterity, and won his share of ap-
plause. Lord Paulyn and Major Bolding were dressed superbly,
and managed to get through their work with credit to themselves
and the stage-manageress ; and as coffee and Neapolitan ices
were lavishly administered between the two acts, without any
toll being exacted thereupon for the widows, the aristocracy of
commerce in the two-guinea fauteuils were inclined to think
they had received fair value for their money. As for the herd
of young men who blocked the back of the auditorium, where
there was little more than standing room, they were simply in
ecstasies. The girl's beauty and genius fired their souls. They
protested vehemently that she ought to go on the stage, that
she would take the town by storm, and much more to the same
effect; forgetting that this flame which burned so brilliantly to-
night might be only a meteoric light, and that although a clever
young woman, with an ardent nature, may for once in her life
fling herself heart and soul into a stage-play, and by a kind of
inspiration dispense with the comprehension and experience
that can only come from professional training, it is no reason
she should be able to repeat her triumph, and to go on repeating
it ad libitum. Never again in Elizabeth Luttrell's existence
was she to live the delicious life of the stage, to lose the sense
of her personality in the playwright's creation., to act and think
and be glad and sorry with an imaginary creature, the centre
of an imaginary world.
Among the crowd of white neckties and swallow-tailed coati
Strangers and Pilgrims. 201
at the end of tlie room, there was one gentleman who stood near
tho door, with his back against the wall, a tall immovable
figare, and who seemed to know nobody. He was taller by half
a liead than the majority of the men standing in the crowded
Bfiace behind the lust row of seats, and he was able to survey
the stage across the carefully-parted hair of the gentleman in
fro'it of him. This gentleman had a good deal to say about
Elizabeth Lnttrcll, to which the stranger listened intently, with
a bomewhat moody countenance.
" Yes," said this fopling to his friend, n the interval between
the second and third act — the stranger had only entered the
room towards the close of the second — "yes, it's a great match
for her, of course; only a country parson's daughter, without a
sixpence, except anything she may get from her aunt, Mrs.
Chevenix, the widow of a man who was a bishop, or a judge, or
something "
" Is it a settled thing?" asked the other.
" Of course it is. Why, they go everywhere together. I was
introduced to her at the Derby ; he drove her down in his drag,
with Mrs. Cinqmars to play Propriety, on the obscurum facere
•per ohscurius principle, I suppose. And you'll find him here
continually, dancing attendance upon Miss Luttrell, and spoon-
ing to an extent that is humiliating to one's sense of manhood."
" I didn't think that was in Paulyn's line; I thought he went
in for race-horses and prize yachts, and tliat kind of thing."
" Yes ; there's the rub. This is his first appearance in the
character of a love-sick swain ; and like a patient who takes
the measles late in life, he exhibits the disease in its most
aggravated form."
" There's not much in him at the best of times," said the
other, with the air of a man whose own intellectual gifts were of
the highest order, and who therefore surveyed mankind from an
altitude. " Do you think she likes him ?"
" Do I think she is in full possession of her senses ?"' an-
Bwared his friend, laughing ; " and that, being so, she would be
likely to turn up her nose at such a position as he can give her ?
There's hardly a richer man than Paulyn about town — bar tha
Marquis of Westminster. The love of money is an hereditary
vice in his family, and his ancestors have scraped and hoarded
from generation to generation. He is one of the few gentlemen
who con trive to make money on the turf. The bookmen hate
him like poison. He's a lamb they seldom have the privilege of
skinning. There isn't a deeper card out ; and I can't say I envy
that lovely girl the life she's likely to lead with him, when she's
his own property and he gets tired of spooning. But for all that
T don't beheve there's a girl in London would have refused
him."
102 Strangers and Pilgrime.
Tleasant intelligence this for the tall stranger, whose name
was Malcoliu Forde.
CHAPTER V.
" Et je songeais comme la femme onblie,
Et je sentais un lambeau de ma vie
Qui se dechirait lentement."
Mr. Fordk had come np from Scotland on the tenth of July,
intending to surprise Elizabeth by his nnexpected appearance in
Eaton-place. He had fancied her bright look of rapture as she
came into the room and saw him, after having been told only
that a gentleman from Hawleigh wished to see her — the look
she had given him so many times during the brief happy
fortnight that followed their betrothal; those happy days in
which they had enjoyed for but too short a space the privileges
of plighted lovers, had walked alone together on the dull March
afternoon, when the Curate's labours allowed him such a blessed
interval, and had talked of the future they were to share — a
lowly destiny, but with the light of true love shining upon it.
Thus had he thought of his betrothed during the tedious
journey from the North, tedious though he travelled express for
the greater part of the way. He came fresh from the perform-
ance of a mournful duty, for only two days ago he had read the
funeral service above the remain« of his father's brother, the
bachelor uncle who had been almost a second father to him. He
had not even written to tell Elizabeth of his uncle's death. It
would be easier to tell her when they met. He had made all his
plans. He meant to stay in London for a few days, while
Elizabeth wound up her visit, and then to take her back
to Devonshire with him. And then it would be time to think
of their wedding-day. He was richer by some four hundred a
year since his uncle's death, and he had lately received the offer
of a very fair living in the north of England. Since he had
surrendered his old heroic idea of his ministry, and had deter-
mined that his hues were to be cast in pleasant places, there was
really nothmg to hinder the realisation of his wishes.
Only when he was rattling along in a cab between Euston-
square and Eaton-place did he bethink himself that Elizabeth
would, in all probability, be out. It was nearly nine o'clock,
and she went out so much, as her letters inforiaed him. He
could hardly hope to be so fortunate as to find her at home.
And then he reproached himself for this childish foolishness
of his in wishing to surprise her, instead of telegraphing the
announcement of his advent, as a sensible man would have done.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 203
*• Do love and folly always go hand in hand? " he wondered.
His forebodings of disappointment were fully realised. " Not
at home," said Mrs. Chevenix's single-handed indoor servant, a
man whose pompous bearing might have impressed strangers
with the idea that he had an under-butler and a staff of
accomplished footmen for his vassals, " Not erpected home till
late this evening."
Mr. Forde had alighted from his cab, and stood in the stnocoed
porch despondent.
" Have you any idea where they're gone?" he asked.
Any idea indeed! Why, the butler was as familiar with his
mistress's engagements as that lady herself.
" They are gone to the hamachure theatricals at the Rancho,
Mr. Cinkmarsh's place, at Fulham."
" Amateur theatricals!" repeated Malcolm hopelessly.
" Yes, replied the butler, who was of a communicative dispo-
sition; "my missus's niece, Miss Luttrell, hacks the principal
character; and my missus's maid, as has seen her rehearsalling,
and has gone down to dress her this evening, says she do hack
wonderful, jest like the regular thing, only not so low. It's a
pity you didn't buy a ticket, sir, as you're a friend of the
fambly."
Private theatricals, and his wife-elect the centre of observa-
tion ! He was not strait-laced or puritanical in his ideas, but
this performance hardly seemed to him in harmony with the
part she had elected to play in the drama of life. But she had
been minded to taste the cup of pleasure, and she was evidently
drinking its strongest waters. She had told him nothing of
these amateur theatricals — a curious reticence.
" Buy a ticket," he repeated, echoing the friendly butler. " Do
you mean that tickets have been sold ? It iB a public business,
then?"
" Well, sir, it is and it isn't, aa you may say. The perform-
ance is for the benefick of a charitable institooshun — the
hindignant widows, and Mrs. Cinkmarsh have kindly lent her
'ouse for the occasion, and the tickets have been only sold by
th(j committee, so you see it's public from one pint of view, and
private from the other."
"Where could I get a ticket?" asked the Curate moodily.
This public exhibition, this playing at charity, was just the very
last thing he could have desired for his future wife, just the very
tiling he would have forbidden at any cost had he been afforded
the opportunity of forbidding it.
" And to keep it hidden from me," he thought ; " 2 bad be-
ginning for that perfect trust which was to reign between us."
" I d'.ni't know as you could get one anywhere's to-night, sir,"
replied the butLir thc-ughtfully, " unless I was to get it fc- yoiu
204 Strangerg and Pilgrim*.
My missus is on the committee, and I know she had a lot (h
tickets to sell, and kep 'era up to yesterday in a china basket in
the drawring-room. If they're there still, I might take the
liberty of gettin' one for yon ; bein' for a charitable purpose, I
don't think missus would objeck to my disposin' of one."
" Get me one, then, like a good fellow."
" The tickets are a guinea heach," said the butler doubtfnll}',
thinking this eag^r gentleman might ask for credit.
Mr. Forde took a handful of loose money from his pocket.
"Here are thirty shillings," he said; " a guinea for the ticketj
and the balance for your trouble."
The man was gratified by this donation, for in these degenerate
days vails are an uncertain quantity. He produced the ticket
speedily, instructed Mr. Forde as to the nearest way to the
Rancho, guarded the wheel of the hansom as he got into it, and
delivered the Curate's address to the charioteer with as grand an
air as if he had been instructing the coachman of an archbishop.
" British Hotel, Cockspur-street," he said, and thither Mr.
Forde was driven by way of Belgrave-square and Birdcage-
walk. A nota bene on the gilt-edged ticket informed him that
full dress was indispensable.
He dined hastily in the deserted coffee-room — a sorry dinner,
for he was in that frame of mind in which dining is the most
dismal mockery — a mere sacrifice to the conventionalities — dined,
and then went to his room and dressed hurriedly, with his
thoughts strangely disturbed by this trivial business of the
private theatricals.
But it -vas not trivial — for Elizabeth's reticence had been a
tacit deception — it was not trivial — for unless she had been ut-
terly wanting in love's truthful instinct, she must have known
that this public exhibition of herself would be of all things the
moat hateful to him.
He was not a tyrant — he had never meant to tyrannise over
this fair young creature who had madehim lovelier, in very spite of
his own will. But he had meant to mould her into the shape of
his still fairer ideal — the woman whose claim to manly worship
was something higher than the splendour of her eyes or the
golden glory of her hair — the perfect woman, nobly planned.
He had fondly hoped that in Elizabeth there was the material
for Kuch a woman— that he had only to play the sculptor in
order to develop undrearct-of graces from this peerless block of
marble.
There were some letters waiting for him at the British —
letters which had been sent on from Lenorgie, where they
arrived after his departure. He had spent the day and niglit
after the funeral with a friend in Edinburgh, where he ha4
business to transact.
iStrangcrs and Pilgrims. 205
Two were mere business epistles; the third was in a hand that
was strange to him — rather a singular hand, with straight up
and down letters, but of an angular scratchy type, which he felt
must be feminine. It bore the post-mark of Hawleigh. It waa
that snake in the grass, an anonymous letter.
«
'Mr. Forde will be perhaps surprised to learn that Miss
Luttrell has given much encouragement to an aristocratic
admirer during her stay in London. She has laeen seen on the
front seat of Lord Paulyu's four-in-hand, returning from Epsom
races : a circumstance which has occasioned some talk among the
strait-laced inhabitants of Hawleigh. This friendly hint is sent
by a sincere well-wisher.
"Hawleigh, July 7th."
" An aristocratic admirer — Lord Paulyn ! She has suffered
her name to be associated with his so much as to give an excuse
for this venomous scrawl ! I will not believe it. The venom is
self-engendered. This vile letter is from some envious woman
who hates her for all the gifts that render her so much more
charming than other women."
He crushed the venomous scrawl in his strong hand, and
thrust it into the depths of a remote pocket. Yet, however mean
the spirit of the anonymous slanderer, however contemptible the
slander, it stung him not the less, as such venom does sting, in
spite of himself.
" I shall see her face to face," he thought, " in an hour or
two — shall be able to scold her for her folly, and take her to my
heart for her penitence ; and be angry with her, and forgive her,
and adore her in the space of a minute ; and I shall see the scorn
in her proud eyes when I tell her she has been accused of
encouraging my rival."
The drive to the Rancho gave Mr. ForJe ample leisure for
thought ; for going over and over the same ground with an
agonising repetition of the same ideas ; for the amplification of
those vague doubts, those httle clouds in love's heaven, no
bigger than a man's hand, until they grew wide enough to
darken all the horizon. The shades of Fulham seemed endless.
He stopped the driver more than once to ask if he were not
going wrong; but the man told him No: he knew Bishop's-
lane well enough, close agen Putney-bridge ; and the locality of
the Rancho, as indicated by Mr. Forde's ticket, was Bishop's-lane
They drove into the lane at last, a dismal by-road oetween
high walls, just wide enough for a couple of carriages to pass
each other, with imminent peril of grazing the wheels or the
horses against a wall. One could hardly have expected to find
i suburban paradise in such a neigh bo uthood ; and in spite of
206 Strangerg and PilgritM.
his preoccnpation, Mr. Forde looked about him with surprise ai
the hansom dashed in at an open gateway, made a swift circuit
of a dark sk rubbery of almost tropical luxuriance, and anon drew
up before a long low house, lighted like a fairy palace.
He gave his ticket to a functionary who looked like a profes-
sional boxkeeper. and was admitted to a spacious chamber filled
to overflowing with a fashionable-looking audience. The play
was more than half over — there was only standing-room — and
the central figure of the group on the brilliantly-lighted stage,
the focus of every eye, was the girl he loved — the perfect woman,
nob!y planned, &c.
He was but mortal, so he could not withhold his admiration of
her grace and beauty, and was half-inclined to forgive her
because she was so lovely and gracious a creature. Then the
curtain fell at the close of the second act, and the men in front
of him began to talk of her, and he heard what the world
thought of Elizabeth Luttrell
The blow almost stunned him. He heard much more than
has been recorded : heard how men talked of his perfect woman;
heard Mrs. Chevenix's manoeuvres freely discussed, and EUza-
beth's co-operation in all the matron's schemes spoken of as an
established fact. His first and almost irresistible impulse was
to knock the slanderers down. He felt as unregenerately-
minded upon this point as if he had come fresh from the mess-
table, his brain fired with wine and laughter. But he conquered
the inclination, and stood quietly by, and heard from the lips of
some half-dozen speakers what the world thought of the woman
he loved. It was pot that anything specially ill-natured was
said ; the men hardly knew that their remarks were derogatory
to womanly dignity. It was their way of discussing such
topics. But for Malcolm Forde it meant the ruin of that new
scheme of life which he had made for himself. The airy fabric
built by hope and love perished, like an enchanted city that
melts into thin air at the breaking of a spell. He did not for a
moment suspend his judgment, did not stay his wrath to con-
sider how much or how httle justification thers might be for this
careless talk.
These men spoke of facts — spoke of Elizabeth's engagement
to the Viscount as a fact concerning which there could be no
doubt. And she had doubtless given them ample justification
for this idea. She had been constantly seen in his society. He
" spooning " — odious worJ ! — in a manner that made his passion
obvious to the eyes of all men.
Could he take this woman — her purity for ever tarnished by
such contact — home to his heart P Was such a woman — who,
with her faith plighted to him, could surrender herself to all the
follies of the town, and link her name with yonder profligate — •
Strangers and Pilgrimt. 207
was Buch a woman worthy of the sacrifice he had been prepared
to make for her — the sacrifice of the entire scheme of his life ;
theory and practice alike abandoned for her sake?
"She would have made me a sensuous fool," he thought;
" content to dawdle through life as her father has done, living
at my ease, and making coals and beef and blankets the substi-
tute for earnest labour among my flock. What might she not
have made of me if my eyes had not been opened in time ? I
loved her so weakly."
He put his passion already in the past tense. He had no
thought of the jDOssibility of his forgiving the woman who had
deceived him so basely.
" Of course she meant all the time to marry Lord Paulyn, if
he proposed to her. But in the mean while, for the mere amuse-
ment of an idle hour, she made love to me," he thought bitterly,
remembering that nothing had been farther from his thoughts
than proposing to Elizabeth when she laid in wait for him that
March night, and cut ojT his retreat for ever with the fatal magic
of her beauty, and the tones and looks that went straight to his
heart.
He must see her as soon as the play was over, must cast her
out of his life at once and for ever, must make a swift sudden
end of every link between them.
" I might write to her," he thouylifc ; " but perhaps it would
be better for us to meet once more face to face. If it is possible
for her to justify herself she shall not be without the opportu-
nity for such justification. But I know that it is impossible."
When the curtain had fallen for the last time^ and Elizabeth
had curtseyed her acknowledgment of a shower of bouquets,
and the enthusiasm in the parterre was still at its apogee, IM.r.
Forde departed. Not to-night would he break in upon her new
existence. Let her taste all the deUglits of her triumph. To-
morrow would be time enough for the few quiet words that were
needed for his eternal severance from the woman he had loved.
CHAPTER VI.
** Since there's no help, come, let ua kiss acd part *.
liay, I have done ; you get no more of me ;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free ;
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain."
Elizabeth was sitting alone in the shady back drawing-room on
the morning after her triumph, carelessly robed in white muslin.
208 Strangers and Pilgrims.
pale, exhausted, languid as the lady in Hogarth's " Marriaj^e S
la Mode." Mrs. Chevenix was recruiting her forces, mental and
physical, by prolonged and placid slumbers; but Elizabeth was
not of the order of being who can sleep off the fumes of dissipa-
tion so easily. Her brief night had been a perpetual fever ; the
voice of adulation still in her ears; the lights, the faces of the
crowd, still before her dazzled eyes ; the passion and feeling of
Peg Woffington still racking her heart. " I wonder actresses
don't all die young," she thought, as she tossed her weary head
from side to side, vainly seeking slumber's calm haven.
Now she was lying on the sofa, prostrate, an unread novel in
her hand, a cup of tea on a tiny table by her side, a fan and
scent-bottle close at h^nd, for she had taken to her aunt's man-
ner of sustaining life in its feebler moments.
She threw aside her novel presently, and unfurled her fan.
" I wish I were really an actress," she thought ; " that would
be a life worth living : to hear that thunder of applause every
night, to see every eye fixed upon one, a vast audience Ustening
with a breathless air : and to move in a strange world — a world
of dreams — and to love, and suffer, and despair, and rejoice,
within the compass of a couple of hours. Yes, that is life ! "
She smiled to herself as she wondered what her lover would
think of such a life.
" I shall tell him all aboi.t it now that it is over," she said to
herself. " If I had told him before he would have given his veto
against the whole business, I daresay. But he can hardly be
very angry when I make a full confession of my misdemeanour,
especially as it was for a charity. And I think he will be a Uttle
proud of my success, in spite of himself."
There had been a dance at the Eancho after the general public
had dispersed, and Elizabeth had been the star of the evening,
the object of everybody's outspoken admiration. All the per-
formers had been praised, of course — Mr. Cinqmars for his life-
like rendering of Triplet, in which personation he was declared
by some enthusiastic friends to nave rivalled Webster and
Leraaitre ; Mrs. Cinqmars for her pathos and charming appear-
ance as Mabel Vane; Lord Paulyn and the Major for their
"leveral merits; but no one attempted to disc^uise the fact that
Elizabeth's had been the crowning triumph. Enthusiastic young
men told her that she ought to go on the stage, that she would
take the town by storm, and make ten thousand a year, and so
on. Lord Paulyn told her — but that was only a repetition of
what he had told her before.
" You promised you would never apeak of that subject again,"
she said.
It was in a waltz, as they were whirling round to the Soldaten
Lieder.
Strangers and Pilgrims, 20&
" I shall speak of it till my dying day," he said. " Yes, if it
wakes you ever so angry. Eemember what I told you. I Bwore
an oath the day I saw you first."
" I will never dance with you again."
" O yes, you will. But I tell you what you will never do :
you will never marry that parson fellow. It isn't possible that,
after having seen what the world is, and your own capacity for
shining in it, you could lead such a life as you'd have to lead
with him."
" Ah, that's because you don't know how much I love him,"
the girl answered, with a radiant look. " I'd rather be shut up
in a convent, like Heloise, and exist upon an occasional letter
from him, than have all the pleaeuresof the world without him."
" Bosh ! " said the Viscount bluntly. "A week of the con-
vent would make 3'ou tell another story. Your fancy for thia
man is one of your capi-ices : and Heaven knows you are about
the most capricious woman in the world. You like him because
every one is opposed to your marrying hira — because it's about
the maddest, most suicidal thing you could do."
"I'm tired," said Elizabeth; "take me to a seat, please."
And having once released herself from him, she took care that
Lord Paulyn should have no farther speech with her that night.
She thought of his impertinences this morning, as she lay on
the sofa listlessly fanning herself; thought of his obstinate pur-
suit of her; and thought — with some touch of pride in her own
superiority to sordid considerations — how very few young women
in her position would have held out against such a siege.
She was in the midst of a half-stifled yawn when the pompous
Sutler opened the door in his grand sweeping way, and an-
nounced, "Mr. Forde."
She sprang to her feet, her heart beating violently, her tired
eyes brightening with sudden joy, and seemed as if, forgetful of
the scarcely departed butler, she would have flung herself into
her lover's arms.
Her lover ! Alas, was that a lover whose grave eyes met hers
with so cold a gaze ? She drew back, appalled by that strange
look.
" Malcolm ! " she cried, " what is the matter ?"
" There is so much the matter, Miss Luttrell, ihct I havt
hesitated this morning as to whether I should write you a brie4
Dote of farewell, or come here to bid you my last good-bye in
person.'^
The girl drew herself up with her queenliest air, TremWing
with a strange inward shiver, sick at heart, cold as death, she
,-et faced him resolutely ; ready to see the ship that carried all
er freight of hope and gladness go down to the bottom of the
occuu w iiliout one cry of despair.
I
210 Stra.igers and Pilgriim.
" It was at least polite to call," she said, loftily. " May I aak
wliat lias caused this abrupt change in your plans ? "
" I think it is scarcely needful for you to inquire. But I have
no wish to be otherwise than outspoken. I was at your friend'a
house last night, and saw you."
" I hope you were not very much shocked by what you saw."
Not for worlds would she now have apologised for her conduct,
or explained that she had intended to tell him all about the
amateur performance at the Rancho when it was over.
"I might have forgiven what I saw; though, if you had
known my mind in the least, you must have known how un-
welcome euch an exhibition would be to me."
" Did I play my part so very badly, then ?" she asked, with
a Httle offended laugh, womanly vanity asserting itself even
in the midst of her anguish. " Did I make so great a fool of
myself?"
He took no notice of the inquiry, but went on, with suppressed
passion, standing before her, his broad muscular hand grasping
the back of one of Mrs. Chevenix's fragile chairs, which trem-
bled under the pressure.
" I heard your attractions, your opportunities, your future,
discussed very freely between the acts of your comedy. I heard
of your engagement to Lord Paulyn."
"My engagement to Lord Paulyn !" she cried, staring at him
with widening eyes.
" Yes ; a fact which I found confirmed this morning by one ol
the newspapers in the coffee-room where I breakfasted."
He gave her a copy of the Court Journal.
" You will see your name there among the announcements of
impending marriages in high life. ' A marriage is on the ta2n3
between Lord Paulyn and Miss Luttrell, daughter of the Rev
Wilmot Luttrell, vicar of Hawleigh.' It was rather hard that
you should allow the court newsman to be wiser than I."
Eager words of denial trembled on her lips, but, before they
could be spoken, pride silenced her. What ! he came to her il
this ruthless fashion, came with his course resolved, and resigned
her as coolly as if she were a prize not worth contesting.
"You have come here to — to give me up," she said.
" I have resigned myself to circumstances. But would it not
have been as well to be off with the old love before you were on
with the new? It is a matter of little consequence, i:)erhap8,
to the new love; but it is not quite fair to the old."
" You have not taken the trouble to think that this para-
^aph might be a newsmonger's unlicensed gossip, as meaning-
less as the talk you may have heard last night."
He looked at her earnestly. No, there was neither penitence
nor love in that cold beautiful face, only pride and anger. Waa
Strangers and Pilgrims. 211
it tlie same face that had looked at him passionately in the
moonlight four months ago ? Was this the woman who had
almost oflfered him her love ?
" Even if this announcement is somewhat premature, I have
learned enough to know that it is only premature, that it must
come in due course, unless, indeed, you are more reckless of your
reputation than I could have supposed it possible for your
father's daughter to be. Your name has been too long asso-
ciated with Lord Paulyn's to admit of any termination but one
to your acquaintance. For your own sake, 1 recommend you to
marry him."
" I am hardly likely to despise such generous advice. If you
had ever loved me," with a sudden burst of passion, "you could
not talk to me like this."
"I have loved you well enough to falsify the whole scheme of
my Ufe, to sacrifice the dearest wish of my mind "
" But it was such an unwilHng sacrifice," exclaimed Eliza-
beth, bitterly. " God forbid that I should profit by it !'[
" God only knows how much I have loved you, Elizabeth ;
for He alone knows the strength of my temptation, and the
weakness of my soul. But you — you were only playing at love;
and the romantic ardour which you assumed, with so fatal a
charm, was so factitious a sentiment that it could not weigh
for a single hour against your love of pleasure, or stand between
your ambition and its object for a single day. Let it pass, with
that dead past to which it belongs. The dream was sweet enough
while it lasted ; but it was only a dream, and it has gone ' like
the chaflF of the summer threshing-floors.' "
She stood like a statue, hardening her heart against him.
What, when all the world — the world as represented by Lord
Paulyn and society at the Rancho — was at her feet, did he cast
her off so lightly, without allowing her any fair opportunity
of justifying herself? For it was hardly to be supposed that
she would kiss the dust beneath liis feet, as it were, confessing
oer sins, and supplicating his pardon.
What had she done ? Only enjoyed her life for this one brief
summer-time, holding his image in her heart of hearts all the
while. Yes, in the very whirlpool of pleasure looking upward
at him, as at a star seen from the depths of a storm-darkened
sea. And she had refused Park -lane, Cowee, Ashcombe, and
two more country-seats for his sake.
Should she tell him of her rejection of Lord Paulyn — tell him
that one incontrovertible fact which must reinstate her at once
and for ever in his esteem ? What, tell him this when he spoke
of his love as a thing of the past, a dream that he had dreamed
and done with, a snare which he had happily escaped, regaining
his liberty of election, his freedom for that grander life im which
212 Strangers and Filgrims.
human love had no part ? What, sue again for his love, lay
bare her passionate heart, again overstep the boundary line of
womanly modesty, remind him how she had been the first to
love, almost the first to declare her love? Had he not this
moment reminded her, inferentially, of that most humiliating
factP
Thus argued pride, and sealed her lips. Hope spoke still
louder. Let him talk as he might, he loved her, and could no
more live without her than she could exist, a reasonable crea-
ture, without him. Let him leave her ; let him renounce her.
He would come back again, would be at her feet pleading for for-
giveness, himself the acknowledged sinner, his the humiliation.
In that brief happy courtship, in those twiUt rambles on the
outskirts of Hawleigh, when for one delicious hour in the day
they had been all the world to each other, Malcolm had laid hia
heart bare before her, had confessed all the anguish that his
efforts not to adore her had cost him.
" I have heard of men making as strong a stand against in-
fidelity," he said ; " but I doubt if any man ever before fought
so hard a fight against a sinless love."
" I must be very horrid," the girl answered, in her frivolous
way, " or you would scarcely have taken so much trouble to shut
the door of your heart against me."
" You are all that is lovely and adorable," he said; "but I
had made up my mind to be a Francis Xavier on a small scale,
and you came between me and my cherished dreams."
She remembered these things to-day, as she stood, with locked
lips and cold scornful eyes, confronting him, resolved that from
iiim alone should come the first attempt at reconciliation.
'• Having renounced me," she said at last, after a pause, in
which he had waited. Heaven knows ^vlth what passionate eager-
ness, for any denial or supplication from her, "in so deliberate
and decisive a manner, I conclude you have nothing more to say
— except, indeed, to tell me to what address I shall send your
letters and presents."
This home-thrust she fancied must needs bring him to his
senses.
"Destroy them all!" he cried savagely. "They are the
memorials of a most miserable infatuation."
" As you please," she answered coolly, preserving that out-
ward semblance of an unshaken spirit to the last, acting her
Eart of indifference and disdain far better than he played his.
[ad she not Lor experience of last night to help her ? This
morning's interview was no whit the less a scenic display — an
actress's representation of supreme calm, with the strong tide of
a woman's passion swelUng and beating in her stormy breast all
the while.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 213
" Then there is nothing more," he said quietly, but with the
quietness of suppi'essed passion, and with no attempt to conceal
bis emotion, only trying to carry himself manfully in spite
thereof, " except for us to say good-bye. Let it be a friendly
farewell, Elizabeth, for it is likely to be a long one."
She looked at him curiously. That was hardly the tone of a
man who meant to retrace Lis steps — to leave her in anger
to-day, only to come back to her repentant to-morrow. No,
there was no room to doubt his earnestness. He did mean thin
farewell to be irrevocable — this parting for ever and ever. It
was only when he had turned his back upon her — when the door
was shut between them — that he would discover how impossible
it was for them to live apart.
" There must be some reciprocity in these things," she
thought; "he could not be so much to me— a part of my
very life— and I nothing to him. He must come back to me."
He held out his hand, and she gave him hers, and suffered it
to remain helpless, unresisting, in his strong grasp, while he
spoke to her.
" Elizabeth," he said, " there are some things very hard to
forgive. It is hard for me to forgive you the delusive joys of the
last few months — the deep delight I felt that March night when
for the first time in my life passionate love had full mastery
over my heart, and all the world seemed to begin and. end in
you. It is bitter to look back upon that hour to-day, an 1 know
that I was the veriest slave of a delusion — the blindest fool of a
woman's idle fancy. But I did not come here to reproach you.
The dream is past. You might have spared me the sharpness
of this sudden waking ; but even that I will try to forgive you.
Good-bye."
He looked at her with a sad strange smile, the firm lips set in
their old resolute curve, but with an unwonted tenderness in the
earnest eyes.
" Good-bye," he repeated; "let me kiss you once more at
parting, even if I kiss Lord Paulyn's plighted wife."
He took her in his arms, she coldly submissive, with an
almost apathetic air. Was it not time for her to sj^eak, to
'ustify herself, to declare that there was no stranger in all that
vide city farther from her heart than Reginald Paulyn ? No,
answered pride; it would be time enough to enlighten him
)fhen he came back to her to-morrow and sued for pardon. She
f/ould not defend herself — she would not stoop to be forgiven.
pad she not humiliated herself too much already for his sake,
when she gave him the love he had never asked ?
"This time I will hold my own agamst him," she thought;
'I will not be for ever humbling myself in the very dust at his
feet. From the becinninpf I have loved hiin with too slavish a love."
214 Strangers and Pilgrimt.
He touched her forehead with his lips — the passionless kiss of
forgiveness for a great wrong. It was the ruin of his air-built
castle of earthly hope for which he pardoned her in that last
kiss. Before him, wide and far-reaching as the summer sc^a
that he had looked upon a few days ago from a grassy peak
among the Pentlands, stretched a nobler prospect, a grander
future than her love could ever have helped him to win, and
hopes that were not earth-bound. Surely he was resigning very
little in this surrender of the one woman he had loved with a
love beyond control. And yet the parting tore his heart-strings
as they had never been strained before — not even when he stood
by the death-bed of Alice Fraser.
" I am not destined to be fortunate in my loves," he said
bitterly, the memory of that older anguish mingling curiously
with his pain to-day ; " let me try to hope that I have a better
destiny than mere earthly happiness."
The qualifying adjective jarred a little upon her ear. He had
always set her so low; he had always loved her grudgingly,
with a reservation of his better self, giving her only half his
heart at best.
" You have been a great deal too good for me," she said with
exceeding bitterness, " and you have taken care '-.^t I should
feel your superiority. It is not given to every woman to be like
your first love — 'simply perfect;' and I have some reason to be
grateful to those worldly-minded people who are willing to
accept me for what I am."
" Lord Paulyn, for instance," said Mr. Forde, becoming very
worldly-minded in a momen1;( his eyes lighting up angrily — ■
" Lord Paulyn, who has made his adoration of you a fact
nok)rious to all the world."
" It is something to have one constant admirer. Lord Paulyn
is at least not ashamed of admiring me. He does not fight
against the sentiment, as a weakness unworthy of his manhood,
"^ie does not feel himself degraded by his attachment."
This sounded like a direct avowal of the Viscount's affection,
and of her acceptance thereof; surely no woman would speak
in this manner except of an accepted lover. If Malcolm Forde
had fondly hoped for denial — for a tardy attempt at justifica-
tion — this unqualified admission was sufiicient to enlighten
him.
" I did not come here to bandy words. Miss Luttrell," he said,
drawing himself up stifily ; " but I will not leave you without
repeating a warning I gave you once before. If you set any
value upon your peace on earth, or your fitness for heaven,
since a woman is in some measure the slave of her surround-
ings, do not marry Lord Paulyn. I am not apt to go in the way
of scandal, but I have heard enough of his career to justify me
Strangers and Filgrirm. 215
in declaring that union with him would be the quickest road
that you could take to life-long misery."
" Yet you advised me just now to marry hira. Eather incon-
Bistent, is it not?"
" Anger is always inconsistent. It was passion that spoke
then, it is reason that pleads now. Do not let foolish friends
persuade you to your ruin, Miss Luttrell. Your beauty may
win as good a position as Lord Paulyn can give you from a
much better man, if you are patient, and wait a little while for
that brilliant establishment which you have no doubt been
taught to consider the summit of earthly felicity."
" Your advice is as insulting as — as every word you have said
this morning," cried Elizabeth, in a burst of passion.
" Forgive me," he said with extreme gentleness. " I did
•wrong to speak bitterly. It is not your fault if you have been
schooled by worldly teachers. Believe me, it was of your own
welfare, your future on this earth and in the world beyond, I
was thinking. Elizabeth, I know that it is in your power to
become a good woman ; that it is in your nature to be pure and
noble. It is only your surroundings that are false. Let my
last memory of you be one of peace and friendship, and let your
memory of me be of one who once dearly loved you, and to the
last had your happiness at heart."
His softened tone set her heart beating with a new hope.
That phrase, " once loved you," froze it again, and held her silent
as death. A dull blank shadow crept over her face ; she stood
looking at the ground only just able to stand. When she looked
up, with a blmding mist before her eyes, he was gone. And dimly
perceiving the empty space which he had filled, and feeling in a
momont that he had vanished out of her life for ever, the numb-
ness of despair came over her, and she fell senseless across the
spot where he had stood.
I
CHAPTER Vn.
" The good explore,
For peace, those realms where guilt can never soar;
The proud, the wayward, who have fix'd below
Their joy, and find this earth enough for woe,
Lose in that one their all — perchance a mite—
But who in patience parts with all delight ? "
Mrs. Chevenix, descending to her drawinfj-room in state, — after
the restorative effects of a leisurely breakfast in bed, and a
gradual and easy toilet; her dress prepared for the leception of
216 Strangers and Pilgrims.
jnorniDg callers; her complexion refreshed with violet powder,—
was horrified at finding her niece prostrate on the threshold oi
the back drawing-room. But when Mrs. Chevenix and her maid
had administered the usual remedies with a good deal of rushing
to and fro, aud the girl's haggard eyes reopened on the outer
world, her first care was to assure them that the fainting fit was
of no importance. She had been a little over-fatigued last night,
that was all.
"I^can't imagine what made you get up so preposterously
early this morning, child," said Mrs. Chevenix rather impa-
tiently, " instead of trying to recruit your strength, as any
sensible young woman would have done. How can you expect
your complexion to last, if you go on in this way ? You are as
dark under the eyes as if you had not slept an hour for the last
fortnight. Good looks are very well in their way, Elizabeth ;
but they won't stand such treatment as this. Go up to your
room and lie down for an hour or two, and let Mason give you
one of my globules."
Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders impatiently; globules for
the cure of her disease ! Infinitesimal doses for the healing of
that great agony ! How foolish a thing this second childishness
of comfortable emotionless middle age is ; this fools' paradise of
pet poodles and homoeopathy ; this empty senile existence, which
remains for some men and women, when feeling and passion are
dead and gone !
"You know I don't beheve in homoeopathic medicine," she
said, turning her tired head aside upon the pillow of the sofa
where they had laid her, with a look of utter weariness and dis-
gust ; " or in any other medicines indeed. I was never ill in my
life, that I can remember, and I am not ill now. Let me lie
here ; I feel as if I could never get ip again as long as I live."
" A natural consequence of over-excitement," said Mrs.
Chevenix. " Shut the folding-doors. Mason, in case any one
should call ; and bring Miss Luttrell the couvre-pied from the
Bofa in my bedroom. You shall have a mutton-chop and a pint
of Moselle for your luncheon, Lizzie ; and if Lord Paulyn should
come before luncheon, I shan't allow him to see you."
" Lord Paulyn ! " cried the girl, with a shiver, " let me
never hear his name again as long as I live. He has broken
my heart."
Mrs. Chevenix received this wild assertion with the stony stare
of bewilderment.
" My dearest Lizzie, what are you dreaming of? " she ex-
claimed ; pleased to think that Mason had departed, in quest of
Ihe couvre-pied, before this strange utterance. " I am sure that
poor young man is perfectly devoted to you."
" Who w^its his devotion P " cried Elizabeth impatiently.
Strangers and Pilgrims. -VI
"Has he ever been anything Lut a torment tc me? 0, yes, I
know what you are going to say," she exclaimed, interrupting
aunt Chevenix's half-uttered exclamation. " In that case, why
did I encourage his attentions P If I did so, I hardly knew that
1 was encouraging them. It was rather pleasant to feel that
other people thought a great deal more of me on account of his
Billy infatuation ; and he is not the kind of man who would ever
be much tlie worse for any disappointment in that way. It would
be too preposterous to suppose that he has a heart capable of
feeling deeply about anything except his racehorses."
This was said half listlessly, yet with an air which implied
that the speaker was trying to justify herself, and was half
doubtful of the force of her own reasoning.
" No heart! " ejaculated Mrs. Chevenix indignantly, "why, I
do beheve that young man is all heart. I'm sure the warmth of
his attachment to you is a very strong proof of it. _ ISTo heart,
indeed. If you had spoken of your tall curate now, with his rigid
puritanical expression of countenance (just the look of an iconu —
what's his name — a man who would chop the noses off the saints
on the carved doors of a cathedral — I should think), if you had
talked of his having no heart, I might have agreed with you."
"Aunt Chevenix," said Elizabeth, starting up from her pillow,
"if you ever dare to say one word in disparagement of Malcolm.
Forde, I shall hate you. I am almost tempted to hate you as it
is, for being at the root of all my misery. Don't put your finger
upon an open wound. You have no occasion to run him down now;
he is nothing more to me. He came here this morning, not an
hour ago, to give me up. I meant to tell you nothing about
this ; but you would have found it out somehow, I daresay, be-
fore long, and it is just as well you should know at once. He
came to give me up, of his own accord. Our dream of happiness
was very short, was it not? and he has ended it of his own free
will. It would hardly have seemed so strange if I had been
tempted away from him; for, so far as the otter of a brilliant
position in this world can tempt a penniless parson's daughter,
I have been tempted. Yet Heaven knows my faith never
wavered for a moment. But he had heard something about
Lord Paulyn and me; had seen some silly paragraph in a, iiews-
l)aper, and came to give me up. Even if 1 had been inclined to
exculpate myself, he gave me no opportunity ; he would hardly
lot me speak. And it was not for me to suppUcate for a hearing ;
so I let him go, without an effort to detain him, almost as coldly
as he renounced me."
" And you acted like a woman of spirit in so doing," cried Mrs.
Chevenix triumphantly; indeed, nothing could be more delightful
to her than this intelligence. " Sue to him, indeed— exculpate
yourself to him ! — that would be rather too much. I congratu-
218 Strangers and Pilgrintg.
late you, my dear girl, upon having released yourself from 2
lost unfortunate and mistaken engagement."
" It may have been all that," said the girl, shrinking from her
aunt's soothing caress with a shiver ; " but, unluckily, I loved
the man. ' I loved you once,' " she repeated dreamily, going
back to her interview with Malcolm Forde. " God, that I
should live to hear him say that ! ' I loved you once.' "
" My dearest child, it was not in human nature that such an en-
gagement as that could endure. You, handsome, accomplished,
admired, with peculiar opportunities of social success ; " this with
a swelling pride in that dainty little establishment in Eaton-place-
south, and in herself as the sole source of these opportunities. "He,
an obscure provincial curate ; a man who, entering the Church
somewhat late in life, has actually started at a disadvantage; not
even a particularly agreeable or good-looking person ; and I feel
sure that when reason and experience have come to your aid,
Lizzie, you will confess the baselessness of your infatuation."
" When experience has made me a hard, worldly old woman,
like Lady Paulyn, I may begin to see things in that
hght," said Elizabeth, bitterly ; " but please don't talk to me
any more about Mr. Forde. Respect his name as you would if
he were dead. As if he were dead," she repeated. " Could I be
any more unhappy if he were lying in his grave ? "
" Do not be afraid that I shall talk of the man," exclaimed
Mrs. Chevenix indignantly. " I am too much disgusted with
his conduct. To choose the very time in which his prospects be-
gan to improve — as I conclude this uncle has ^ft, him something
— to throw you off ! However, 1 thank Pro'7iuence that your
future may be fifty times more briUiant than any position which
he could offer you at his best ! "
Elizabeth said nothing; but sat with fixed eyes staring at
empty space. Could it be that he was indeed dead to her ; that
he would not come back ? 0, surely not. That parting could
not be final. It was not possible that he could pluck her from
bis heart so easily ; she, who on her side felt as "if she were
verily a part of himself, a mere subordinate being that could
have no existence without him. She felt all this in spite of
her season of independent pleasure ; in spite of these last few
months in which he had had no share in h«r life. Her lowot
instincts had been gratified by those vanities and dissipations ;
the nobler half of her being belonged to him, and held itself
apart from all the world besides.
" He will come back to me," she said to herself. " If I had
not thought that, I could never have let him go. I should have
grovelled at his feet, thrown myself between him and the door,
clung to him as a shipwrecked sailor clings to a floating spar,
rather than let him leave me for ever."
Strangers and Filyrims. 219
Buoyed up by this belief, Elizabeth supported her esislence
with a tolerable show of calm ; was even able to go to a dinner-
party that evening— a dinner in Montague-square — at which
there was no fear of meeting Lord Paulyn ; looked very lovely,
in spite of her pallor, if not her best; sang, and talked, and
laughed, with that low melodious lau^^h which was one of her
fascinations ; and altogether delighted Mrs. Chevenix, who had
expected to see her niece stricken down utterly for a day or two,
" He will come back to me," the girl was saying to herself all
the evening. " There will be a letter, perhaps, waiting for mo
"hen we go home."
All that day she had been expecting his return, or at the least
Bome tender remorseful letter ; but the day had passed and he
had made no sign. Then she told herself that his anger could
hardly cool all at once ; he had been very angry, no doubt,
though he had borne himself like a rock. Not aU at once could
he discover how essential she was to his life.
How eager she was for the re+um to Eaton-place ! how more
tnan usually wearisome seemed that endless small talk about
flower-shows and picture galleries, and opera singers and classical
music ! She fancied how the letter would be handed to her by
her aunt's serving-man ; the dear letter with its superscription
in that noble hand. How she woidd snatch it from the salver,
and run up to her own room to devour its contents in happy
solitude ! She could almost fancy hew it would begin :
" My dearest, — Forgive me ! "
They were at home at last ; but the serving-man, who looked
sleepy, brought her no salver.
" Any letters, Plomber? " she asked, with well-assumed care-
lessness.
"No, ma'am."
" Did you expect anythingparticnlar?" Mrs. Chevenix inquired.
" No ; only I thought there might have been one from — from
Gerty or Di."
" What can people at Hawleigh have to write about P " said
her aunt contemptuously.
The girl went straight to her room, heart-sick.
" He will come back to me to-morrow," she said.
To-morrow came, but brought no tidings of i\ralcolm Forde —
a dreary day, the longest Elizabeth ever remembered in her life
— which had contained many days that were dull enough and
Hank enough in all conscience.
Lord Paulyn came, as he had come on the previous afternoon;
but he was not allowed to see Miss Luttrell. She was ill, Mrs.
Chevenix t-old him, really prostrate; such a sensitive nature,
dear Lord Paulyn, so much imagination. The excitement of that
220 tSlrangers and FiJt/riTne.
play was too much for her. I'm afraid I must take her dowE
to Brighton for change of air."
The Viscount departed unwillingly, displeased at this interrup-
tion of his smaller pleasures, the trifling talk and tea-drinking,
in the hour he had been wont of old to devote to more masculine
diversions — horsey talk at a horsey club, or a lounge at
Tattersall's.
But although he was thus banished by the diplomatic matron,
Elizabeth was not really ill. She was only white and wan, with
blank tearless eyes, the living image of despair. Not in a con-
dition to be seen by a young nobleman who aspired to decorate
her brow with a coronet. A lifeless creature, whose tenure of
happiness hung on a thread. Would he come or write ? Would
he forgive her, and take her back to his heart P
" Why did I ever come to London ? " she asked herself, with
a curious wonder at her own folly.
The cup of pleasure, being drained to the dregs, had left an
after flavour of exceeding bitterness. She looked back to those
Bweet peaceful days at Hawleigh, to that spring-time of life and
love, when her heart had been exultant with a girl's triumph in
her first important conquest, and remembered how averse Mal-
colm Forde had been to the idea of this visit. And for such
empty trifles, for the vapid pleasures of a London season, a few
balls, a few picnics — at best only the old Hawleigh dances and
picnics upon a larger scale — she had jeopardised that dearest
treasure ; for so childish a vanity as seeing this unknown world
of good society, she had imperilled and lost the confidence of
her lover !
Other to-morrows came and faded, and still there was no sign
of relenting on the part of Malcolm Forde. And still the girl's
white face and absent manner forbade the admission of visitors.
Lord Paulyn was impatient, sullen even, with a sense of injury,
as if he had Ijeen an accepted lover unduly kept at bay. Upon
one particular afternoon, feeling his disappointment acutely — he
had brought a fresh bouquet "jf stephanotis and maiden-hair
every afternoon, waxen blossoms which had bloomed and lan»
guished unheeded by Elizabeth's dull eyes — he gave free utter-
ance to his vexation, and in a communicative mood poured
his griefs into the maternal bosom of Mrs. Chevenix. It was
uncommonly hard, he urged, that after all he had put np with
and gone through — the amoimt of nonsense he had stood from
Miss Luttrell — she should throw him over the bridge for a par-
eon fellow like that man at Hawleigh.
" My dear Lord Paulyn," replied Mrs. Chevenix, with a con-
fidential air, bending her head a little nearer to tlie young man,
as he sat a cheval on his favourite fovff. and by that gracious
movement besprinkling him lightly with poudre de Marechale,
Strangers and I*ilg7'ms. 231
*• that engagement is one wliicli I have a secret convictiou cannot
be enduring. If I had not entertained such an opinion, 1 should
never have encouraged — I will go farther, and say I would never
have sanctioned — your frequent presence in this house. No,''
this with a lofty air, as of sublimest virtue, " I have too much
regard for what is duo to myself, as well as to you. I am no
Blave of rank or wealth. If I did not think that you were emi-
nently suited to my niece, and Mr. Forde as eminently unsuited
to her, I should not have lent my support to an intimacy which
could have but one result. Elizabeth is a girl whom to know is
to love."
" I'm not sure about that," said the young man, not deeply
moved by this solemn address. " She's rather a queer girl, take
her altogether ; fools a man to the top of his bent one day, and
snnbs him the next ; gives herself no end of airs, as if the world
and everybody in it hiid been made to order for her. But she's
the handsomest woman in London, and she has a peculiar way
of her own that no man could stapd against. I hadn't known
her a fortnight before I made up my mind I'd marry her. But
I didn't go to work rashly for all that ; I left Hawleigh without
committing myself; gave myself time to find out if it was a
iJerious case with me."
Mrs. Chevenix gave a little impatient sigh.
" If you had been a shade less cautious, and had spoken oilt
at once, you might have prevented this foolish affair with Mr.
Forde," she said.
" Yes, but I pride myself upon knowing what I'm about — not
putting my horse at a fence unless I know what's on the other
side of it. And the worst of this Forde business is, that she's
desperately fond of him, has owned as much to me, and gloried
in owning it."
"A girl's delusion," said Mrs. Chevenix soothingly; "the
romance of an hour, which wiU vanish like a summer cloud when
the charm of novelty is gone. She has some foolish exalted
idea of Mr. Forde's character, a half-religious hallucination that
is not likely to last long."
*• I hope not," rejilied the Viscount in his matter-of-fact way.
" At any rate, I mean to stand my ground ; only it's rather
wearing for a man's temper. I wanted the whole busines settled
and done with by the end of the season. I've all manner of en-
gagements for my yachts and stable. I must be at Goodwood
at the end of this month, and I've a sailing-match at Havre the
first week in August ; then come German steeplechases. I've
wasted more time than I ever wasted in my life before upon this
affair."
"Be assured of my entire sympathy," murmured Mrs. Chevenix.
' t^ 'v*s, of course, I know you are all there," answered the
?22 Strangers and Pilgrims.
Japless lover, carelessly. "I've known all along you'd be on
jny side. It isn't likely you'd back that plater," — by which
contemptuous epithet he described his rival. " But I should
like to see the wind-up of this engagement, or," almost savagely,
" I should like to get Elizabeth Luttrell out of my head, and be
my own man again."
Mrs. Chevenix shuddered. This hint of a sudden wrench, a
violent effort to emancipate himself, on the part of the Viscount,
filled her soul with consternation.
" I'm doing very wrong," she exclaimed, with a sudden gush
of friendship. " It is a breach of confidence for which I shall
hardly be able to forgive myself, but I can't bear to see you
suffer, and to withhold knowledge that might be consolatory. I
have reason to believe that the engagement between my nieca
and Mr. Forde is at an end."
" What !" cried Eeginald Paulyn ; " she has thrown him off.
She has served him as she serves everybody else, blown hot one
day and cold the next."
" I have reason to believe that they have quarrelled," Mrs.
Chevenix said mysteriously.
" AYhat, has she seen him lately?"
" She has ; and since I have gone so far, — on the impulse of
the moment, prompted only by my sympathy with your depth
of feeling, — I must still go farther. The quarrel was about you.
Mr. Forde had seen some paragraph associating your names — a
marriage in high life — something absurd of that kind."
"Yes, I know; Cinqmars showed me the newspaper. It was
his doing, I fancy. Mrs. Cinqmars has taken me under her wing,
and no doubt inspired the paragraph, with the notion that it
might bring matters to a crisis."
" It has produced a crisis," said Mrs. Chevenix, solemnly,
" and a very painful one for EHzabeth. Ttie poor girl is utterly
crushed."
" She was so fond of that beggar," muttered Lord Paulyn,
gloomily.
" Perhaps not bo much on that account as for the humiliation
involved in such an idea. To be accused of having played fast
and loose, of having encouraged your attentions while she was
engaged to him. And now, between you both, she finds herself
abandoned, standing alone in the world, perhaps the mark for
slander."
•' Abandoned ! standing alone !" cried Lord Paulyn, starting
up from his low chair as if he would have rushed off at once in
quest of a marriage license. " Why, she must know that I am
ready to marry her to-morrow !"
This was just the point at which Mrs. Chevenix could afford
to leave Vim.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 223
" My dear young friend," she exclaimed, " moderate your feel-
ings, I entreat. She is not a girl to be taken by storm. Let
her recover from the shock she has received; then, while her heart
is still sore, wounded, weary with a sense of i-ts own emptiness,
then urge your suit once more, ai>d I have little doubt that yotl
will conquer; that the contrast between your generous all-con-
fiding affection and Mr. Forde'a jealous tyranny will awaken the
purest and truest emotions of her heart."
Tliis was a more exalted style of language than Reginald
Paulyn cared about — a kind of thing which, in his own simple
and forcible vocabulary, ho denominated " humbug " — but the
main fact was pleasing to him. Elijzabeth had dismissed, or had
been deserted by, her plighted lover. The ground was cleared
for himself.
CHAPTER VIIL
" She weeps alone for pleasures not to be ;
Sorely she wept until the night came on,
And then, instead of love, misery !
She brooded o'er the luxury alone :
His image in the dusk she seem'd to see,
And to the silence made a gentle moan,
Spreading her perfect arms upon the air,
And on her couch low murmuring, 'Where? where?"
No flicker of colour brightened the palUd cheeks, no ray of their
accustomed light shone in the dull ej^es, and yet Elizabeth waa
not ill. She was only intensely miserable,
" I only wish I were ill," she said, impatiently, when her aunt
urged the necessity of medical advice, change of air — some
speedy means by which blanched cheeks and heavy eyes might
be cured. " For in that case there might be some hope that I
should die. But I am not ill; I don't believe my pulse beats
half-a-dozen times more in a minute since Malcolm Forde re-
nounced me. I eat and drink, and sleep even, more or less.
There are a good many hours in every night in which I lie awake
stparir g at the wall ; but before the maid comes to get my bath
ready, I do manage to sleep, somehow. And I dream that
Malcolm and I are happy, walking on the common just beyond
our house at Hawleigh. I never dream of our quarrel ; only
that I am with him, and utterly happy. I think the \mu. of
waking from one of those lying dreams, and finding that it is
only a dream, is sharper agony than the worst vision of his uu-
kindness with which sleep could torture me. To dream that he
iu all my own, to feel his hand locked in mine, and to wake aud
remember that I have lost him — yes, that is misery."
224 Strangers and Pilgrimts.
Whereupon Mrs. Chcvenix would dilate upon the child ishnnss
of such regrets, and would set forth the numerous deprivatiuua
which her niece would have had to endure as Mr. Forde's wife ;
how she could never have kept her carriage, or at best only a
pony-chaise or one-horse wagonette, the hollowest mockery or
phantasm of a carriage, infinitely worse than none, as impljdng
the desire for an equipage without the ability to maintain one
— a thing that would be spoken of timorously as a "conveyance ;"
how, as a clergyman's wife, she could not hope to be on a level
with the county families ; how all her natural aspirations for
" style " and " society " would be nipped in the bud ; while such
means as her husband could command would be devoted to the
relief of tiresome old women, and the maintenance of an expen-
sive choir. From this dreary picture Mrs. Chevenix branched
ff to Lord Paulyn. his generosity, his self-abnegation, his chi-
valry, his thousand virtues, and his three country seats.
" If I could be talked into marrying a man I don't care a
straw about, while I love another with all my- heart and soul,
your eloquence might ultimately unite me to Lord Paulyn,"
Elizabeth said, with a sneer ; " but I am not quite weak enough
for that. I daresay it sounds very ungrateful, after all the
money you have spent upon me, and all the trouble you have
taken about me; but 0, aunt Chevenix, how I wish Iliad
never come to London ! The beginning of my visit to you was
the beginning of my quarrel with Malcolm. How could I
shght a wish of his I I loved him hopelessly for a long year
before I won him, and I only kept his love a few short weeks.
Was there ever such folly since the world began ?"
Mrs. Chevenix uri>ed Brighton as the universal healer of cock-
ney griefs. What Londoner does not believe in the curative
powers of Brighton for all ailments of the mind and body? The
pleasant treadmill tramp up and down the King's-road, inter-
changing affectionate greetings with people you met yesterday
in Bond-street; the agreeable monotony of the pier; the per-
vading flavour of l^ondon which mingles \iith the salt breath of
the sea. Mrs. Chevenix declared that in that cheerful atmo-
sphere Elizabeth would forget her griefs.
" It is not the season for Brighton, I admit," she confessed,
l^eluctantly, " but there are always plenty of nice people there
in the Goodwood week ; or we might even stay at Chichester, if
you preferred it."
" You are very good to trouble yourself so much about me," said
Ehzabeth, trying to be grati^ful, yet with an air of extreme weari-
ness; " but I assure you there is nothing the matter — nothing
but a sorrow that must wear itself out somehow — as all sorrows
do, I euppose, when people are young and strong as I am, and
Strangers and Pilgrims, 225
not of the stuff that grief can destroy. The best place foi* me
is home. I shall not give any one trouble there. I can just
lire my own life ; visit the poor, pei-haps, a little again," with a
faint choking sob; "or teach in the Sunday school; and no one
will take any notice of me. I am not at all tit for society. I
don't hear what people are saying, and I am always in danger
of answering at random ; and I don't want people to talk about
the worm in the bud, or to sit like Patience on a monument,
and all that kind of thing. Let me take my sorrow home to
Hawleigh, auntie, and dig a decent grave for it there."
" Go back to Hawleigh ! Yes ; to meet that man again, I
suppose, and begin over again."
" No fear of that. I had a letter from Gertrude this morning ;
I'll read you what she says about him, if you like."
She took out a closely-written letter ; that wondrous compo-
sition, a lady's letter, utterly devoid of intelligence likely to
intci-est the human mind, yet crossed and bracketed and inter-
polated, as if brimming over with matter.
" We have all been surprised by Mr. Forde's sudden desertion
of Hawleigh, and can only imagine that things are ended be-
tween you and him ; and that you have returned to your old
idea about Lord Paulyn. I know auntie had set her heart upon
that match, and I never thought your engagement to Mr. Forde
would survive your visit to Eaton-place."
" Other people could see my peril," said Elizabeth bitterly, as
she folded the letter. " It was only I who was blind."
" Other people are blessed with common sense, and would
naturally foresee the tei-mination of so ill-advised an angage-
ment," Mrs. Chevenix replied shai-ply. She was fast losing
patience with this favourite niece of hers, who had fortune at
her feet, and spurned it. " The day will come when you will
repent this folly," she said, " at a time when it may be too late
to retrace your steps. Even Lord Paulyn's infatuation will not
last for ever; you have trifled with him too long already."
"Trifled with him!" echoed Elizabeth scornfuUjr ; "I
have only one wish about him, — that I may never see his fact
again."
Mrs. Cinqmara called in Eaton-place a day or two after the
private theatricals, and was full of anxiety about her sweet
Elizabeth; entreating to be allowed to see her, if only for
a few minutes. But this privilege Miss Luttrell refused
obstinately.
" I detest the whole set, and will never see any of thom again,"
she said fretfully, when her aunt brought her that lady's mes-
sage. Nor did Mrs. Chevenix press the point; she did not care
to expose her niece's faded couuteuance to the shnrp ey^s o{
226 Strangers and JPilgrims.
Mrs, Cinqmara. She did not want the Rancho world to kno\f
that Elizabeth had been deserted by her lover, and had taken
that desertion so deeply to heart.
After about a week of anxiety, during which she had hoped
every d.ay to see the girl's dull face brighten, and her spirits
rewve with the natural elasticity of youth, Mrs. Chevenix lost
heart; and hearing of some particular friends who were just
returning to Torquay, she consented to Elizabeth's return under
their wing. They would take her to Exeter, where her father
could meet her on the arrival of the down train; so that the
proprieties should be in no manner outraged by her journey.
The girl seemed so utterly broken down, that it was hopeless to
expect her speedy revival. All Mrs. Chevenix's ambitious
dreams must be held in suspense till next year ; unless destiny
interposed in some beneficent manner during the hunting season,
when Lord Panlyn might reappear at the Vicaragt, and find
this wretched girl cured of her folly.
So Elizabeth had her wish, and went home ; went home to
bury her misery in the dull quiet of the old life, glad to be
released from that brighter world which had now become odious
to her. It is possible that some lurking hope, some expectation
she would scarcely confess to herself, was at the root of her
eager desire for that homeward journey.
She went over that brief sentence in Gertrude's letter again and
a^ain ; " they had been surprised by Mr. Forde's sudden desertion
of Hawleigh." What did that mean ? Had he returned to his
duties and announced the approaching termination of them ? or
was the " desei-tion " of which her sister wrote an accomplished
fact ? Had he bidden them farewell, and departed to some new
field of usefulness ? Had he shifted the scene of that laborious
career which Mother Church reserves for her children ?
" I shall be enlightened to-night," she said to herself, as she
bade her aunt good-bye at Paddington, in the brilliant summer
noontide. The departure platform was crowded with holiday
travellers, people who appeai-ed to be serene in a fixed belief that
this life was intended for the pursuit of frivolous pleasures.
She sat in the corner of the railway-carriage, with half-closed
eyes, during the greater part of the journey, pretending to be
asleep, as a means of escaping the benevolent officiousness of
her aunt's particular friends ; but she was conscious of every
feature in the landscape that flashed past the window, and the
journey seemed of an almost intolerable length to her weary
spirit. Her father's mild face peering in at the window, when
the train entered Exeter's stately terminus, struck her with an
emotion that was almost pain. She had thought of him so
litlle during the last few months ; had lived her own life — a life
of pleasure and vanity — with so supreme a selfishness. Sha
Strangers and Pilgrims. 227
clung to him for a moment, aa he kissed her, with a remorseful
tenderness.
" Why, Lizzie, my dear, how ill you look ! " he said, startled
by the settled pallor of the face, that looked at him with such a
new tenderness ; " Maria told me nothing in her last letter,"
"There was nothing to tell, papa," said Elizabeth; "I am
not ill, only very tired."
" That foolish theatrical performance, I'm afraid, my love ; or
— or -" looking at her anxiously, " you may have been unhappy
about something — some misunderstanding. I have seen Forde."
They were alone together in a deserted waiting-room ; the
South Devon train having whisked Mrs. Chevenix's particular
friends off to Torquay.
" Then you know all, papa," with a feeble attempt to appear
supremely indifferent ; " that he and I did not suit each other,
and have agreed to differ, as some one says somewhere."
" Something to that effect, my dear. But Forde fully exone-
rated you. He took all the blame upon himself"
"Very generous," with her old scornful laugh; "but the
usual thing in sucja '^ases, I believe. Are you very angry with
me for coming back to you in this forlorn condition ? "
" Angry with you, my love ! How can you imagine such a
thing ! Forde is an excellent fellow, but could never have been
a good match for you. I am not the kind of man to intefere
with my children's wishes ; but your aunt had inspired me with
more ambitious ideas about you.'and I confess I was disappointed."
" Tlien you may be quite happy, papa ; Mr. Forde and I have
parted for ever."
" He tuni'd him right and round about,
Upon the Irish shore ;
And gae his bridle-reins a shake.
With adieu for ever more, my dear,
With adieu for ever more ! ' "
CHAPTER IX.
" Can we, whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,
Can we to men benighted
The lamp of life deny ?
Salvation ! salvation !
The joyful sound proclaim,
Till each remotest nation
Has learnt Messiah's name."
It was a dismal coming home after all the glories of that Lon-
dwj season. There was a suppressed triumph in Gertrudcr'/j
228 Strangers and Fivgrimt.
manner, wbich Elizabeth felt, but coulrl hardly take objection
to. Diana was indifferent, shrugged her shoulders, and observed
that Mrs. Chevenix's London seasons were not astounding iu
their results. " We are like Somebody and his men," she said;
" we all ride up tl* hill, and then ride down again." The beauty of
the family had not endeared herself infinitely to these elder
sisters. Blanche clung about her tenderly, and sighed, and
mutely sympathised, not daring to speak of her sister's woes?
but evidently brimming over with compassion. The caresses an(L
unspoken compassion were a great deal more tiresome to Eliza-
beth than the spiteful exultation of the elders.
" I almost wish I had come back engaged to Lord Paulyn,"
she said to herself. " It would be better to marry a man one
despised than to put up with this kind of thing."
Mr, Forde's name was evidently tabooed in the domestic
circle, as a delicate attention to herself; but she had made her
father tell her all he knew about her lost lover during the jour-
ney from Exeter.
" Yes, my dear, he is going to put his old idea into execution ;
he is going to the South- Sea Islands as a missionary. It is a
kind of craze of his, poor fellow ; and upon my word, Lizzie, I
think you are happily released from your engagement to a man
with such a notion. Rely upon it, the old idea would have got
the better of him sooner or later, however comfortably settled he
might have been in England ; and he would have wanted to drag
you off to some savage country with him."
" Very likely," said Elizabeth, with a little sigh.
She was thinking what happiness it would have seemed to
her to have gone with him ; to have shared his perils, to have
lightened his labours, to have been verily the other half of hia
mind and soul. What matter how desolate the region so long
as they two had been together ; to have watched his slumbers in
those long silent nights, with no sound save the distant cry of
some beast of prey ; to have died even, clasped to his breast,
beneath a rain of poisoned arrows ; or done to death by a savage's
stone hatchet !
" When does he go ? " she asked presently.
" Immediately. He has bidden us all good-bye. He preacher
his farewell sermon in St. Clement's to-morrow evening."
" Her heart gave a wild leap at this. She would hear his
voice once more. He would see her sitting in her accustomed
corner in the old square pew below the pulpit — could not help
seeing her all through his sermon ; who could tell if the sight of
her face might not melt him ?
" But his heart is made of stone," she thought, " or it would
have softened towards me before this. He has only a heart for
the heathen ; not for common human sorrows, not for the io"t«
Rgonies of a love like mine." ^
Strangers and Pilgrima. 229
" 1 sappose if I had any proper pride, I sbcnld not go to hear
him preach to-morrow night," she said to herself; " but I think
my stock of pride was exliausted the day he came to me in
Eaton-place. If that interview were to come over again I would
grovel in the dust at his feet. What is there that 1 would nol
do to win him back ? "
Home hardly seemed such a peaceful shelter as she had fancied
it when she turned with disgust from the frivolities of Eaton-
place. It would have been very well without her sisters; but
she had an uncomfortable consciousness that six watchful eyes
were upon her, and that three active minds were occui)ied in the
consideration of her affairs. She had not even the comfort of
solitude in the night season, for her tower was shared by
Blanche, and she could not sigh or sob in her sleep without
arousing that sympathetic young person, who was unhappily a
light sleeper. She heard soothing murmurs of " poor Lizzie,"
' poor darling," amidst her fitful slumber; and turned angrily
upon her pillow, with her face to the wall, like king David in the
day of his sorrow.
She looked desperately ill next morning when the July sun
ehone into the tower chamber, and the skylark sent up his
orisons from his wicker cage outside the arched casement. The
excitement of her return, vague hopes that lightened her despair,
had brightened her face with a faint semblance of the old bright-
ness yesterday evening; but to-day Blanche beheld the wreck
that one season's joys and soitows had made of her sister.
" I'll bring you your breakfast, darling," she said, in her
caressing way. "Of course you won't think of going to church
to-day."
" Did you ever kno^v /ne stop away from church on a Sunday
morning ? " Elisabeth answered impatiently ; " that is one of
the penalties of our position."
" But if you are really ill, darling." _
" I am not really ill ; there is nothing the matter with me.
You needn't stare at me in that disconsolate way. I can't
help it if I am pale : a London season is not calculated to
improve one's complexion. You can send me up a cup of tea
presently, if you like ; I always had an early cup of tea in Lon-
don. And if you'll be kind enough to go on dressing and
take no notice of me, I may be able to get half-an-hour's sleep."
That half-hour's sleep seemed to have done a good deal for
Elizabeth ; for when she came downstairs, after a cold bath and
a careful toilette, when the bells began to ring gaily out from
the ponderous square tower of St. Clement's, she was looking
something Hke her old self. She had put on her prettiest bonnet,
and had dressed herself in white; the dress Malcolm had always
praised. If the charm of a bonnet or a dress could only touch
230 Stranger* and Fllgrims.
his heart, and keep him from cocoa-nut groves, and savage
women in scanty raiment, and other horrors !
What a strange thing it seemed to hear his voice once more in
the gray old church ! — to hear it and to know that this day was
the last upon which she could ever hope to hear it; for beyond
that dismal mission who would dare to look P She tried to realise
the fact of his speedy departure, but it was difficult. His pre-
sence in the old famihar church was such a natural thing — a
fact that had been going on all her life, it seemed to her ; for
she could hardly bring herself to look behind those days, to the
blank era of ciirates who counted for nothing in her existence.
And the church would be there still, a dreary immutability ; the
voice of a stranger echoing along the same aisle, and she com-
pelled to sit and listen : while her miserable lonely soul tried to
follow that beloved wanderer across unknown seas, to a land
that was more strange than a fairy tale.
His presence there to-day, considered in the light of that near
future, had a phantasmal aspect, as if the spirit of the newly-
dead had been with them for a brief space, looking at them with
kind and mournful eyes. Was he not like the very dead; called
away to a land distant and inaccessible as the regions of death ?
Was there any stronger hoj^e of seeing him again than if he had
indeed been numbered with the dead ?
He, too, had changed since that day in Eaton-place. He was
paler than usual, and his eyes had a haggard look, as with
prolonged sleeplessness. But Elizabeth dared not appropriate
to herself these signs of deep feeling. Was there not enough in
his parting with these people, in the thoughts of the new Ufe
that lay before him, to move him strangely ?
Not once throughout that morning service did their eyes
meet. He read the prayers and lessons in his grave firm voice,
with no sign of faltering, every tone strong and penetrating as
of old, no fragments of sentences going astray among the
echoes, every word clear, resonant as a deep-toned bell.
The interval between the two services was a dreary blank for
Elizabeth. The monotonous machinery of home, which had
been so wearisome before her departure, seemed still more weari-
some now. She shuddered at the thought that her life was to
go on for ever and ever hke this; every Sunday an exact
repetition of other Sundays. The mid-day luncheon, enhvened
by an occasional dropper-in ; the afternoon dawdled away some-
how ; the evening service, in the mournful summer dusk ; the
all-pervading sense that life was an objectless business. How
was she to endure these things until the end of her days ?
Evening came at last : the bells ringing with a soft^i sound
in the balmy air. The old church was more crowded than
Elizabeth ever remembered to have boca it before, crowded with
Strangers and Pilgrims. 231
people who very eeldom came to church, crowded with those for
whom Mr. Forde had worked with an unflagging zeal — tLa very
prior.
Mr. Luttrell read prayers, prayers which Elizabeth heard un-
conscious of their meaning ; while Gertrude prayed and responded
in her usual business-like way, with the air of an ancient
mother assisting at the sacrifice of her son. Very long those
prayers seemed to Elizabeth, but they came to an end at last, and
ui the deepening dusk Mr. Forde went slowly up to the pulpit.
Then, as he adjusted the newly-lighted wax-candles on each
side of him, needing the light very little for his own convenience,
since his sermons were chiefly extempore, he looked thoughtfully
downwards, and, Elizabeth looking up from her corner in the
old pew, their eyes met for the first time; his so grave and
ejnritual in their expression, with a far-away look, as of a man
whose thoughts dwell in worlds remote from this comujon
earth ; hers yearning, imploring, despairing.
Brief was the moment of those looks meeting. He unrolled
his little black-covered volume of notes, and began the last
Bermon he was ever to preach in Hawleigh.
Wanting the fire of the speaker's voice and manner, the dei)th
of pathos in some passages) the passion of faith in others, a
barren transcript of that farewell address might seem common-
place enough. The things he had to say to them were things
that have been said very often before at such partings ; it was
only the man who was exceptional : exceptional in his earnest-
ness, exceptional in a certain grandeur of face and manner,
which, to that regretful assembly, made him God-like. He told
them simply, but with a fervour in those simple phrases, a
warmth in those subdued tones, how he had laboured for them
and loved them; with what happy results, with a love that had
been returned to him sevenfold, with experiences that had been
unutterably sweet to him. He told them how he dared to
believe that much of his labour among them would be per-
manent ; that it was work which, done once, was done for ever ;
that the seed would remain and yield a plenteous harvest, when
he the sower was far away, labouring to redeem waste lands
where no seed had ever been scattered, where no sheaves had
ever been gathered for the Master's barns. Then, with a sudden
change from mournful tenderness to supreme enthusiasm, he
told them what he was going to do. How this mission service
was the realisation of a hope and a dream that had been with
him more or less from the beginning, that had swelled his heart
long go, wlien he was a boy at his mother's knee, hearing from
her dear h])3 sad stories of that far-away world where the light
of revelation had never cloven the thick darkness, where man
lived and died without God.
232 Strangers and Pirgn'ms.
Of possible dangers to he enconntered he spoke not at all
He showed them only the brighter side of a missionary's career;
the grandeur of his privileges as a bearer of glad tidings, the vast
hopes that he carried with him as the regenerator of a people lost
to their God, as the very agent and lieutenant of Christ himself.
He dwelt with a picturesque fancy on the natural splendour of
that remote world amidst the southern sea. He spoke of those
groves where the breadfruit-tree spreads its stalwart branches
wide as those of patriarchal oak or elm in pleasant England;
where the leafy woods in nature's calm decay are glorious with
an ever-changing splendour of hue unknown in colder climes ;
where here and there in quiet valleys men and women live in an
almost Arcadian simplicity; yet in their utter ignorance of
good and evil have no such words in their vocabulary as honour,
truth, or virtue; while in other isles, perchance as fair to look
upon, vice and crime walk rampant, and superstition too dark
for words to paint holds mankind in its unholy thrall. He told
them how those islands to which he was going, discovered
nearly three hundred years ago by a Spanish navigator,, had
been suffered to languish in outer darkness until now, and how
it was his hope and prayer to be their earliest evangelist. He
told them briefly of the far greater men who had gone before
him, of the saints of old time, who had undertaken such missions
in ages when their peril was tenfold, and then lightly touched
upon the history of later missions, from the sailing of the- Duff
downwards.
At the close of that farewell address, there was scarcely one
among his hearers, except the miserable girl who loved him with
a too earthly love, whose heart was not warmed with some
touch of his own heroic passion, and who would not have felt
ashamed of a selfish desire to detain him. He seemed created
to fulfil the mission he had chosen for himself; God's fitting
instrument for the noblest work that was ever given unto man
to do.
Upon Elizabeth's ear the solemn close of that leavetaking
Bounded like a funeral knell. Would she ever hear his voi'ce
again — ever, in all the dreary days to come, feel her heart
stirred by those deep-toned accents — ever again look upward to
that earnest face, which to-night had a grandeur that was not
of the earth, earthy?
Now, perhaps for the first time, she utterly despaired of his
relenting — of his turning back to take her to his heart again.
He did not need her or her human love. He had so wide a Ufa
without her, and beyond her — a life which she could never have
shared, since she lacked all the gifts that were needed to open the
door of that divine city >vhere he dwelt in an atmosphere of light
supernal. Could her feeble aspirations towards things celestiali
Strangers and Pilgrims. 233
her wavering faith, have ever enabled her to tread the path he
frod ? Alas, no ! To-night she felt how vast was the distance
that divided them ; and that, ii he had suffered her to attach
herself to his career, she would have been nothing but a clog
and a hindrance for him. And she felt with exceeding bitterness
how easy it was for him to renounce her— for him, whose soul
was lifted to the very gates of heaven by those splendid dreams
with which she had no sympathy. She thought with miserable
self-scorn of her fancy that he would have lound his life unen-
durable without her ; that she must needs be as necessary to his
existence ar tie was to hers. Poor deluded fool! she had
taken no aujount of his one supreme ambition when she made
that calculation; she had thought of him only as a weak
creature like herself, the slave of an earthly passion.
Throughout that eloquent sermon she had hardly taken her
eyes from his face ; but not often had his glance shot downwards/
to the dusky comer where she sat, a white still figure, phantom-
like in the uncertain hght. His gaze, for the most part, was
directed far beyond her, to the mass of shabbily-dressed listeners
who crowded the other end of the church, his peculiar flock,
those English heathens he had found in the lanes and byways
of Hawleigh and its neighbouring villages, some of whom had
walked half-a-dozen miles to hear his farewell.
There had been a good deal of quiet crying among the women,
but no dramatic or oratorical display of emotion on the part of
the preacher. Yet every one felt that he was deeply moved ;
that it was not without profound sorrow he bade them such a
long good-bye. There was a solemn hush as he came down from
the pulpit, and for some breathless moments the people stood
motionless, looking after him. Then came a favourite hymn,
" From Greenland's Icy Mountains," a hymn which the congre-
gation sang with faltering voice; tremulous sopranos among the
young-ladyhood of Hawleigh testifying to the esteem in which
the Curate had been held. No sound of Elizabeth's voice min-
gled with that psalmody; Gertnide sang in a high soprano,
with a tremolo which she affected at all times, and the air of a
martyr making melody as she marched towards the stake; and
it seemed as if that shrill peal drew Mr. Forde'a attention to
the Vicar's pew. He looked that way, and saw Elizabeth stand-
ing like a statue, with a face as white as her gown.
234 Strangers and Pilgrir/Vi,
CHAPTER X.
" last love ! first love !
My love with the true, true heart !
To think I have come to this your home,
And yet we are apart."
A SLEEPLESS night ; a night of tossing to and fro, and mental
fever, and doubt, and uncertainty, half-formed resolves, a long
struggle between love and pride ; and the early summer light
shines on a pale eager face and tired eyes that have been watch-
ing for the dawn.
When that laggard morning comes, Elizabeth Luttrell hag
made up her mind to do something very desperate, very mad,
perhaps ; she does not shrink from confessing as much to her-
self; but something without doing which s»o feels she cannot
endure her life.
She will see him once more, face to face ; hear his voice speak-
ing to her, and her only, once more in their lives ; touch his
hand, perchance, in friendly farewell, and then resign herself to
their inevitable parting.
Of the reversal of that decree, or that any influence she can
bring to bear can make him waver in his purpose, she cherishes
no hope. There was that in his speech and manner last night
which spoke of a resolve no earthly forces could shake. AVhat
could her selfish passion, her narrow love, do against a purpose
so high, a scheme that involved the eternal welfare of millions ?
For who shall assign the natural Umits of the missionarj-'s work,
or gauge the width of that new world over which his influence
shall extend ?
No; she deluded herself with no hope that he might be turned
aside even at the last moment, by the witchery of her smiles, by
the pathos of her tears. She knew now that his world was not
her world ; that wide as the east is from the west were his
thoughts from her thoughts. She hoped nothing, except that
he would hear her patiently when she sought to exonerate her-
self from the charge of inconstancy, or any flagrant wrong
against him ; hear her while she tofd him the true history of
her acquaintance with Lord Paulyn ; hear and believe her, and
carry away with him at least the memory of a woman who had
loved him dearly, and had never wronged him by so much as a
thought.
And then they would shake hands calmly, and he would giv«
her his blessing, the blessing of a possible saint and martyr;
and so he would fade for ever from her bodily eyes, leaving
only that image of him which she must carry in her heart to the
grave.
Strangers and Pilqrims. 235
"I have no pride where he is concerned," she thought, as
flhe paused to consider how vast an outrage against the con-
ventionaUties she was about to perpetrate.
The up-train by which most London-bound travellers of the
superior or first-class rank were accustomed to depart from
Hawleigh was a nine-o'clock express. She thought it more
than probable that Mr. Forde would go to London as the pre-
liminary stage of his journey, and it was just possible that he
miirht go by that train. If she called at his lodgings at eight
o'clock, she would secure her desired interview ; she knew his
early habits, and that he had generally breakfasted and begun
his day's work by that hour. Of what Mrs. Humphreys, the
carpenter's wife, might say about this untimely visit, she
thought nothing; being, indeed, at all times too impetuous for
profound consideration of consequences.
She dressed herself quietly while Blanche was still asleep.
They had a slip of a bath-room, converted from the oratory of
some mediaeval chatelaine, on one side of their tower; here
Elizabeth made her toilette, and then crept softly out of the
bed-chamber without awakening her sister from halcyon dreams
of new curates yet hidden behind the curtain of fate. She went
down the narrow winding stair, and out by the lobby door, unseen
by so much as a servant ; and walked, by field-paths and lanes
that skirted the town, towards the tranquil domicile of Mr.
Humphreys. She recalled that other summer morning nearly a
year ago — good heavens ! what a long year ! — when she had
gone by the same road to make the same kind of un-
authorised visit, half in sport andhalf in earnest, defiant, reckless,
eager to do something that would bring light and colour into
her monotonous life, and desperately in love with the man she
pretended to hold so lightly. Then she had gone to him with a
proud sense of her power to conquer and bring him to her feet,
as she had sworn to do the night before in the passion of
wounded pride. Now she went humbled to the dust, convinced
of her insignificance in the plan of his life ; only anxious that
he should not go away thinking worse of her than she deserved.
The street-door of the Humphreys' abode — radiant in the
Bplendour of newly-polished brass-plate and handle — was stand-
ing open as she approached. Mrs. Humphreys, engaged in con-
ference with the butcher, occupied the threshold, and paused
from her discourse with an astonished air at seeing Miss Luttrell.
That air, that look of surprise, awakened the girl to a sense of
the singularity of her untimely visit ; the peril of petty gossip
and small rustic scandal in which she stood. She made a feeble
attempt to protect herself from this hazard.
" Good morning, Mrs. Humphreys," she said with a friendly
air. " I have been for a before-breakfast walk round by the
236 Strangers and Pilgtimt.
common. It is so nice after London. I have a message fo> Ms.
Forde from papa. Do you think lie would come downstair s for
a few minutes and hear all about it P I know he is a very eurly
riser."
" 0, Miss Luttrell, what a pity ! leastways if it's anything
very particular. Mr. Forde went away by the mail-train last
night."
" He went last night ! " Elizabeth repeated helplessly.
" Yes, miss. It wasn't like him to travel of a Sunday evening
— after that moving sermon too ; there wasn't a dry eye in the
church, I do believe. But the ship he sails in— the Columbius
—leaves Liverpool this afternoon, and there was no help for it.
I do hope he'll have nice weather, poor dear gentleman ! " added
Mrs. Humphreys with a hopeful air, as if he had been about to
cross the Straits of Dover.
^ This was a death-blow. He had gone away, and carried with
him to the other end of the world the conviction of her faithless-
ness.
She went slowly homewards, wondering vaguely what she
should do with the remnant of her life : how she was to live on
for an indefinite number of years, and eat and drink and sleep,
and pretend to be happy, now that he had vanished out of her
existence for ever. Then a new anger against him was slowly
kindled in her breast. How could he have been so hard, so cruel,
as to leave her thus : without one last word of compassion and
forgiveness, without a line of farewell ?
" He saw me in the church last night," she thought, " and yet
could leave me without one touch of pity. He can boast of
the grandeur of his own prospects, the splendour of his own
hopes, and he has not one thought for my broken life ; he cares
nothing what becomes of me."
She brooded over this unkindness with deep resentment.
What right had he to take possession of her soul, and then cast
her off coldly to this " beggarly divorcement" ?
" What does he imagine will become of me ? " she said to her-
Belf._ " I suppose he thinks I shall marry Lord Paulyn in spite
of his warning, and be miserable for ever afterwards. Or does
he think I shall repent my sins and join some Protestant sister-
nood ; OT die broken-hearted because of his unkindness ? 0, if
I could only die! He might be sorry, perhaps, for that; if the
news of my death ever reached his distant world ; or if he were
to come back to this place some day, and find my grave in the
churchyard, and discover at last that I loved him well enough
to die of his desertion."
SKD OF BOOK TU£ SSCONO.
btrangers and Pilgrims. 237
ISooft ttiP Zl)ixi.
CHAPTER I.
" I am weary of my part. .
My torch is out, and the world stands before mo
Like a black desert."
TnRiCB liaB the com ripened on the hillsides and in the valleyt
round Hawleigh ; thrice have come and gone all the pleasant
eights and sweet sounds of summer — dog-roses blooming out
their bright brief life in the tangled hedgerows ; honeysuckle
scenting the mild air of early autumn, and lingering late as if
loth to leave the earth it adorned. Thrice have come the snows
and rains Jiad general discomforts of winter — the conventional
jovialities of Christmas, church decorations, charity dinners,
infant-school festivities, the annual cakes and ale, the slow-
passing Lent, while the chilly new-fledged spring flutters its
weak wings timidly, like a tender bird too soon expelled from its
nest into a bleak world. All the seasons, with their unvarying
duties — the same things to be done over and over again every
year — have come and gone three times, and still Gertrude
trudges to and fro among her poor, scattering leaflets of consola-
tion in the shape of small gray-paper-covered tracts; and still
Diana embroiders a little and sketches a little, and yawns and
indulges her constitutional headache a great deal, and laments
languidly that the Luttrells are not a particularly fortunate
family ; and still Blanche, the pert and livel}', demands of the
unanswering skies when Providence is going to do something for
the Luttrells.
There have been changes, however, at Hawleigh. One, a
dismal change from the warmth and brightness of a comfortable
easy-going life to the darkness and blankness of the grave. That
good easy man, Wilmot Luttrell, has slipped out of existence almost
as easily as he slipped through it. His daughters found him in his
etudy one dark November morning, two years ago, stricken with
paralysis and a partial death, I'rom which he was never to recover.
He lingered long in this doubtful state, helpless, patient, mild aa
he had evei been ; was tenderly nursed by the four girls, who
had at least agreed in loving tlieir father dearly at the last — had
lingered and been conscious of their love and care, until a
second stroke made all a blank. From this he never revived,
but expired in that dull sleep, unconscious of the end ; so closing
a life which had been as gentle and harmless as a child's.
This loss — a profound affliction itself — was made all the
heavier by the fact that it left the four girls a difiicult problem
238 Strangers and Pilgrims.
to solve in the one all-important question how they were to liva
The entire fortune which their father left behind him amounted
to at -jut three hundred a year, exclusive of the Vicarage furni-
ture, which, in its decrepitude and shabbiness, may have been
worth something less than a hundred pounds, and the Vicarage
plate, worth a hundred more. With this income, and these ha-
ngings, the girls had to begin life for themselves. Aunt
d'hevenix came to the rescue with an oflFer of a hundred a year
fiom her owi; purse, and advised that Elizabeth should come to
live with her, and the three other girls go abroad somewhere, say
Brussels or the south of France, where they could live genteelly
and improve their minds, thereby escajang the loss of caste in-
volved in any alteration of their style of Kving at Hawleigh.
But to this they all objected. Elizabeth thanked her aunt for
tht! offer of a home in Eaton-place, but preferred to remain
•V7,'^ere she was. " You would "oon grow tired of me," she wrote,
" '/hen you discover how dreary a companion I now am. And
forgive me for saying it, auntie, but your house was unlucky to
me. I could not re-enter it without a feeling of horror."
Gertrude expressed her gratitude somewhat stiffly ; declined
to entertain the idea of lifelong banishment for the sake of gen-
tility ; hoped that she could more profitably improve her mind
by the performance of her duties at Hawleigh than by the culti-
vation of any new accomplishments at Brussels or Lyons ; was
not ashamed of any diminution of style or luxury which their
altered circumstances might call for ; thanked Heaven she could
live as contentedly beneath the humblest roof as beneath the
loftiest ; and farther informed her aunt that, with the consent
of her sisters, she had decided on taking one of the small
semi-detached villas, with bay-windows and nice little gardens,
in the Boroughbridge-road. The furniture from the Vicarage,
such of it as was adaj>ted to this new abode, they would retain ;
also the tea-kettle, which was so touching a memorial of all
they had lost.
Mrs. Chevenix shuddered as she read these two letters. Her
nieces in a semi-detached villa, at thirty-tive pounds a year, in a
row of other semi-detached villas of the same pattern ! What
a change from the fine old Vicarage, with its ins and outs and
ups and downs, sunny bow windows, magnolia and myrtle
shrouded walls, its quaint old tower, everlasting memorial of
ancient splendour, its wide flower-garden and grassy orchard,
sloping to the setting sun. What a change ! And Gertrude
wrote of it as coolly as if it were nothing.
" I think my poor brother might have left me the tea-kettle,"
thought Mrs. Chevenix-. "it would have been very useful for
afternoon tea, and it would have gone back to the girls after-
wards."
Strangers and Filgrims. 239
She pondered upon Elizabeth's letter with a deep sigh.
"Yes," she said, "it is nothing but the truth; the girl is
sadly changed. I hardly know if 1 should be able to do any-
thing for her now. All her animation is gone ; and she has
acquired a proud reserved manner that would repel any one who
was ever so much inclined to admire her. She is handsome
rtill ; but she certainly has contrived to render herself as unattrac-
tive as it is possible for a handsome young woman to be. Did
ever any girl throw away such chances as she has had P "
This meditation was the result of a retrospective glance at
affairs during ]\Irs. Chevenix's last visit to Hawleigh, in the
autumn before her brother's death. Lord Paulyn had been at
Ashccmbe during that time, and had come frequently to the
Vicarage, and done his best to renew his old intimacy with
Elizabeth Luttrell. But to all these friendly endeavours the
girl had opposed a dead blank wall of coldness and reserve. Mrs.
Chevenix tried to gloss over this uncomfortable aspect of affairs,
and to convince the lover that his suit was not yet hopeless;
but it was in vain for the wily matron to soothe and argue. The
young man answered her with smothered anger.
"There's no use in talking nonsense, Mi-s. Chevenix," he said ;
" she has not forgetten that parson fellow yet, ^nd I suppose
Bhe never means to forget him. What a pity you didn't let her
have her own way and go out with him, and devote herself to
the evangelisation of South-Sea Islanders! I wish with all my
heart she had gone ; for then I couldn't have made a fool of
myself hanging auoni, iiere, and exposing myself to the sneers
of Hilda Disney and my mother."
" I cannot see that the affair is any business of Miss Disney's,"
Mrs. Chevenix remarked with some hauteur. How dared that
independent young person to cross the woof of her schemes !
" Aliss Disney has so little business of her own, that she's
obliged to think of somebody else's," replied the Viscount
moodily. "Why don't you bring her to London, ma'am?"
meaning Elizabeth, and not Miss Disney. "You might cure
her of this wretched infatuation there. I suppose she has the
fellow's photograph, and kisses and cries over it every night."
" She has a great deal too much self-respect for that kind of
thing," said Mrs. Chevenix, as if she had been inside Elizabeth's
brain, and inspected its cellular arrangements.
It is possible that this suggestion of Lord Paulyn's may have
had some intluence with Mrs. Chevenix when she offered Eliza-
beth a permanent shelter in Eaton-place. That offer being
rejected, she could only shrug her shoulders and resign herself
to circumstances. The luxurious ease of her own existence, the
cscent-bottle and green fan, made a power'"ul armour against the
elings and arrows of other people's bad fortune If her favourite
240 Strangers and Pilgrims.
niece preferred obscure poverty to rank and wealth, she must
needs indulge her humour.
"After all, it makes no real difference to me," she said to her-
self. " I only lose the indirect advantage of connection with
the peerage. Such an alliance must have given me the entrep-
to the very best society; and I feel that I could have been of
the greatest use to a young woman suddenly elevated to such a
position. But it is idle to regret the decrees of Providence."
So Mrs. Chevenix resigned herself to the inevitable, thanked
Heaven that she possessed a good cook and a faultless dress-
maker, and went her way calmly rejoicing, knowing no weariness
of that unvarying round of tea-drinkings and dinner-eatings
and at homes which she called good society. But she seldom
omitted to search her Morning Post for any small record of
Lord Paulyn's existence that might perchance adorn its columns,
and she even went so far as to subscribe to a fashionable sporting
newspaper which was more frequently graced by his lordship'a
name.
Life seemed new and strange to Elizabeth in the semi-detatched
villa on the Boroughbridge-road, strange with a bitter strange-
ness. A lofty soul should be, doubtless, independent of its
eai-thly dwelling-place. "My mind to me a kingdom is;"
" Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage." Very
noble sentiments in their way, but not given to the common
herd of humanity. Elizabeth's soul was not so lofty as to rise
superior to the influences of her habitation. She felt the change
of tenement sorely, felt like some lost creature in the squara
bandboxical rooms, the prim narrow passage with its pert gas-
lamp, the steep straight stairs smelling of copal varnish ; almost
as ill at ease as some wild denizen of the forest that had been
shifted, from the vast cavern where he roamed and rolled at large,
to some straitened den in a zoological garden.
And the Vicarage furniture, objects which, from old associa-
tion, these girls loved dearly, how mean and shabby and wobe-
gone that poor old furniture looked in the new smart rooms, with
their cheap modern paj^jer-hanging, and trumpery cornices, and
sprawling plaster roses in the centre of their ceilings ! The
old cracked Chelsea shepherd and shepherdesss, which had
seemed the natural ornaments of the tall narrow wooden mantel-
shelf in the Vicarage drawing-room, had the forlornest air upon
the polished marble slab in the new house. Diana's grand
piano filled the small back drawing-room, the big old cane-
seatcd sofa blocked the bay-window in the front drawing-room.
Nothing fitted into an embrasure, or adapted itself to the shape
of the rooms; and it was only when Gertrude brought that
inestimable quality which she called her common scHse, and
Strangers and Pilf/rims. 241
which Bfanche called her domineering way, to bear upon the
subject, and by banishing this article and shifting the other,
reduced the rooms to something like order, that they became
simply habitable. Graceful, or elegant, or picturesque they
never would be. Had the new tenants been able to buy bright
modern furniture, on a toyshop scale, they might have endued
the rooms with a certain doU's-house prettiness ; but the salvage
from the Vicarage looked what it was, the poor remnant of
departed fortune.
There was a room downstairs, under the back drawing-room,
half sunk in the earth, but provided with a small bay-window
and a sham marble mantelpiece, and described by the house
agent as a breakfast-room. This the Miss Luttrells made their
refectory.
" Of course, in a decent house it would be the housekeeper's
room," said Blanche, the aay she first dined in this earthy
chamber. " I shall always feel as if we were cheating the ser-
vants out of their natural rights by occupying it "
Thus began their new lives. Every one caiied upon them,
and admired their new abode, and discussed the new Vicar, and
sympathised and approved and consoled. And Gertrude pro-
nounced with satisfaction that their social status remained
firm as a rock. They had two servants, one an irreproachable
parlour-maid, who was never seen without a starched muslin
apron, and everything was done in the nicest manner. They
had a garden which might have been covered by a good- sized
turkey carpet, but which was laid out in the last approved
style : liower-beds of the tesselated-pavement pattern ; scrolls
and parallelograms, and open-tart designs done in plants of the
housejeek and mouse-ear tribes; jam-tart patterns in scarlet
geranium and brown leafage, lobelia and petunia, after the m.an-
ner of the Duchess of Wiltshire's parterre at the Cottage near
Havistock. It is astonishing what great effects may be pro-
duced in the area of a turkey carpet by a young lady of Gertrude
Luttrell's temperament.
" There is no one more ready to make sacrifices," she said
complacently, " But whatever I have must be of the best."
To say that Elizabeth lived in this circumscribed home
K-ould be to say too much. She existed — as toads have been
believed to exist locked in marble, or comfortably niched in a
block of coal. Yet not so patiently as these quiescent reptiles
did she bear her fate. Her Hps were mute, it is true, for she
had a scornful impatience of sisterly consolation, but her soul
complained perpetually. Like Job, she remonstrated with her
Maker, and demanded why she was not permitted to die. All
the anguish of this slow dull year had not been enough even to
undermine Uer vigorous young life. There was scarcely the
242 Strangers an^ Pilgrims.
depression of a muscle in the firm round white arms, no
cavernous hollows spoiled her oval cheeks. She was paler than
of old ; that fugitive colour which had come and gone in such
flashes of brightness two years ago was rarely seen now ; her
eyelids had a heavy look that hinted of sleepless nights ; but
these were all the outward changes that had been wrought by
Malcolm Forde's abandonment and her father's death.
" I never could have believed I loved my father so much,"
she said to herself sadly, one dismal December afternoon,
when she had taken a lonely walk as far as the road before the
Vicarage, and had seen the fire-glow shining through the old-
fashioned casement of her father's study. She had stood
for a little while looking across the lawn at that cheery glow,
with an aching heart, a heart that seemed to ache from very
emptiness.
" My Uttle world has vanished like a dream," she thought,
" the waters have swept over it, and left me standing on a
Darren rock in a great pathless sea. If I could only die, like
papa, and make an end of it ! "
Among those pleasing testimonies of the world's esteem
which were ofTered to the sisters at this sad juncture was a
ceremonious call from Lady Paulyn and Hilda Disney. The
two ladies drove over from Ashcombe one afternoon in the
ancient chariot, conducted by a postilion, who had the aspect of
a farm-labourer in disguise, but at the same time looked more
imposing than a coachman.
Hilda had her customary air of ladylike indiff'erence, but the
dowager peered and pryed, and expressed profoundest interest
in the afi'airs of the four sisters.
" And you really think of remaining in this pretty little
house," she said with a gracious wonder, peering at them keenly
from under her shaggy old eyebrows all the while, and peering
especially at Elizabeth. " Do you know I'm rather surprised
at that. 1 5BTonld have thought this pokey old town would
have been insutierable to you all alter your loss, and that some
nice place abroad would have suited you better, where you could
have had a little pleasant English societ}'- in the nice inexpen-
sive continental stjde — Bruges for instance, or Courtrai — I've
heard there are English people at both those towns ; or Dijon, or
some retired little German town where things are cheap."
" I have duties and pleasures at Hawleigh which I could
never have in a Roman Catholic town," said Gertrude.
" There seems to be a prevailing idea that transportation for
life is the only remedy for our grief," said Elizabeth, not a little
contemptuously. " I wonder our friends don't suggest Nor-
folk Island or Botany Bay at once. Or, since transportation ia
abolished, the government ought to erect a special building at
Strangers and Pilgrms. 243
Portland (jt Dartmoor for young women who are left alone in
the world "
The dowager vouchsafed no reply to these impertinent
observations, but she gave Elizabeth a look from beneath
those bristling penthouses which was not one of supreme
aflPection.
" You hiiven't asked after my sou, Miss Luttrell," she said,
turning sharply upon Gertrude, after rather an awkward pause,
daring which Miss Disney had looked straight out of the win-
dow with an absent air, as if she had been assisting at a visit
to cottagers in whose spiritual or temi^oral welfare she had no
personal interest.
" I beg your pardon." stammered Gertrude, confused by thia
sharp attack. " I hope Lord Paulyn is well."
" He is very well, and I hope he is on the high road to being
very happy."
Blanche, having nothing particular to do, and not feeling
herself called upon to sustain any part in the conversation,
happened to be amusing herself by the contemplation of Misa
Disney. She saw the fair cold face flush, and the thin lips con-
tract themselves ever so little at this moment.
" I suppose that means that he is going to be married," said
Diana; " if one may be allowed to hazard a guess."
" How quick you young ladies are when marriage is in ques-
tion ! " replied the dowager graciously. " Yes, I have every
reason to hope that Reginald has at last made up his mind
to settle. It will be such a happiness to me if he can
only be induced to give up that horrid racing stud, his place
near Newmarket, and his dreadfully expensive stables in l^ork-
shire ; but if he can't be persuaded to so wise a step, he will at
any rate be better able to afford to ruin himself The young
lady to whom he is almost engaged is one of the richest
heiresses in England. She has not rank, I admit; but the
oppression of the income-tax has long since stamped out my
Conservative proclivities. I have no prejudices. Miss Luttrell,
ond can appreciate the grandeur of position attained by a
man who began hfe by wheeling barrows, and could now write
a cheque for a hundred thousand pouuds without feeling him-
self any poorer when it had been cleared. That is what I call
true nobility."
" The barrowB or the cheque-book, Lady Paulyn P " asked
Elizabeth.
" The upward progress from one point to the other," replied
the dowager with dignity. " I am told that Mr. Ramsay, the
great contractor, eats peas with his knife, and is somewhat the
slave of habit in the matter of not cleaning his nails. But I
hope I have a soul above such trivialities. Nothing would give
244 Strangers and Pilgrims.
me greater pleasure than to welcome Mr. Ramsay's only cliilsi
as my daugliter."
Having made tliis announcement, and even deigned to re-
fresh herself with macaroons and cherry brandy (made two
summers ago with the dear old Vicarage cherries from the
orchard Eh/i' eth loved), Lady Paulyn departed. But not
before she had again expressed her wonder that the Miss Lut-
trells should prefer Hawleigh to a delightful Belgian town, with
canals and stiff little avenues, where they might pace to and
fro, and sit on benches, unjostled by a;^y vulgar crowd; or such
a place as Dijon, which must surely be a most agreeable town
for English residents, since the very name had quite a romantio
sound. The dowager Hngered so long to discuss these points
after she had risen to take her departure, that it was dusk when
the chariot went jingling off, to the delight of the adjacent
villas.
" It was really very good of her to come," said Gertrude,
watching the departing equipage complacently from the bay-
window. " What a noise that postilion makes ! It is a satis-
faction to let our new neighbours see we are on visiting terms
with the best county people. I trust I am above attaching an
undue value to these things : but I do not pretend to be igno-
rant of their influence."
" Good of her, indeed ! " cried Blanche indignantly. " Horrid
old thing ! Anybody could see that she came to crow over
Lizzie. Wicked old sne-miser ! I do verily believe she would
like her son to marry the only daughter of Beelzebub if she
had plenty of money."
" What a pity you didn't many him when you had the op-
portunity, and keep mamma's pearl necklace, Lizzie!" Diana
said, with a yawn. " It would have been advancement for all
of us. And here we are screwed up for life, I suppose, in this
pokey little house, instead of having the run of half-a-dozen
splendid places. — Ring for tea, Blanche, please. If it were not
for the comfort of our early cup of tea, I should be almost tired
of life."
" Almost tired ! I hnve hardly ever ceased to be tired of it
eince I was seventeen," exclaimed Elizabeth with infinite scorn.
" Only for one brief bright summer time of love and hope,"
she thought, by way of rider to that contemptuous speech.
She was silent for the rest of that evening, silting idle in a
shadowy corner apart, while the other three clustered round
the lamp; Diana and Blanche engaged in elaborate fancy-work,
which gave occasion for perjietual discussions about jioint de
Venise, and Sorrento bars; Gertrude absorbed in a pious bio-
graphy, from which she read stray passages now and then for
the edification of her sisters. It was not a lively evening, any
Strangers and Pilgrims. 21-5
more than the rest of the evenings which these young women
ppent together in the nnfamiliar drawing-room, with its linger-
ing odour of size and plaster-of- Paris ; but tlicir manner of life
seemed to Elizabeth just a little more dreary than usual to-night.
She was meditating upon all she had lost — in love and am-
bition alike bankrupt; of all the dreams that she had dreamed,
from her early visions of pomp and pleasure with some unknown
being who should arise out of space, like king Cophetua, at the
right moment, and lift her up to the high places of the earth,
to her later and more womanly dream of sweet sacrifices made
for the man she loved. And she had lost all. Of these much-
cherished dreams there had come no fulfilment; and being older
and wiser now, and having lost the faculty of dreaming, there
was nothing left her but the dull realities of the waking world
as represented by a trim little newly-built villa in the Borough-
bridge-road.
" If I had been wiser, I suppose I should have fallen back
upon my old ideas of life when JMalcolm Forde flung me off,
and married Lord Paulyn," she thought. " A word would have
brought him back to me. But now even that miserable alterna-
tive is lost, and there is nothing left for me but life for ever and
ever shut up in this nan-ow den with my sisters. I might go
and live with aunt Chevenix, certainly ; but that would be just
a little worse. I have lost all taste for the kind of society my
aunt is so fond of, and I should have less liberty there than
I have here."
She thought a good deal about Lord Paulyn that night —
not 30 much of him individually as of all that he could
have given her — the grandeur, the independence, the power;
that strong wine of pleasure which, if not happiness, was at
least intoxication ; that ideal existence among beautiful scenes,
or surrounded with all the graces of art and luxury, the
very dream of which had been fair enough to brighten her life
in days gone by. He had offered her all these things, and she
had rejected them, without a pang, for the love of Malcolm Forde.
" Aiid how noble a return he made me for my constancy!"
she thought bitterly, with more anger against her lost lover than
flhe had felt for a long time.
After this, she thought very often about the brilliant position
she had rejected, and for the first time thought of it with
a vague regret. It was in her nature to hol-d a treasure lightly
so long as it lay at hor feet, and to appreciate it when it was
lost to her. She had scorned the idea of a marriage with Lord
Paulyn, while that faithful admirer had shown himself eager
And devoted. She wondered a little at her own foolishness now
that he was about to unite himself with some one else.
There may have been more excuse, perhaps, for these sordid
246 Strangers and TiJgrim$.
thoughts in the joylessness of her present existence. Her life
was so utterly barren — every morning the beginning of a day
which must needs be the repetition of yesterday — the to-
moiTows stretching before her blank as the pages of an unused
memorandum-book.
It is true that she might have occupied herself, like Gertrude,
in visiting the sick and poor, since she was gifted with the
power of winning their confidence and even their aifection.
But she avoided this natural source of lonely spinsterhood with
an obstinate aversion. What ! go among these people whom
she had served for his sake? Ally herself with the last new
curate, a pale-faced slip of a man with sandy whiskers ?
Descend to all the trivialities of the district-visiting community
now that Ms godhke form no longer moved among that com-
mon herd ? This was what she could not do.
Even the grave old churches, in which she had sat from her
youth upwards, were distasteful to her. Their aspect reminded
her too keenly of all she had lost — the good harmless father — ■
the lover she had loved so madly. She seemed to hear the echo
of voices that sounded in those stony aisles no more.
The new Vicar was a pompous red-faced man, who very
rarely fatigued himself with the litany or lessons, and who read
the communion service in a fat voice, as if he had taken
the ten commandments under his especial protection, and
preached sermons on abstruse doctrinal points over the heads of
his flock. The Vicar's wife was young and fashionable, and
put the simple Hawleigh folks to shame by the elegance of her
attire. She had essayed to patronise the Miss Luttrells, and
had told them about the changes she meant to make by-and-by
in that dreadful barn the Vicarage, and had congratulated
them on their transference from that ancient tenement to
a modern habitation. Diana and this lady got on very well
together, but between the Vicaress and Elizabeth there prevailed
a quiet antipathy.
It was, douotless, her own fault that Elizabeth was lonely.
Her sisters had their little batches of dear friends, and visited
a good deal in a quiet way soon after their father's death,
and entertained their acquaintance with afternoon tea; but
jRlizabeth's soul rebelled against this humdrum sociality ; her
footsteps refused to tread this beaten track of every-day pro-
vincial life. She preferred lonely wanderings in the very teeth
of January's north-easters, on the common and in the tamiliar
lanes where she had walked so joyously with her lover in
the brief sweet days of courtship.
If she had cherished the faintest hope of his return to her,
she might have been patient, she might have endured the
weariness of the present, cheered by a fair vision of the future.
Strangers and Pilgrims. " 247
But she deluded herself with no such hope. She had, on the
contrary, a settled conviction that, once having put his hand to
the plough, for Malcolm Forde there would be no turning back-
ward. She had lured him for a little while out of his chosen
path ; but having broken loose from her feeble snare, he was the
very last of men to return to the net.
" He was always soiTy that he loved me," she thought, " and
there was a look of rapture on his face when he preached
his farewell sermon, hke the joy of a man who has escaped from
a great peril."
Thej heard no more of Lord Paulyn's approaching marriage,
standing almost alone, so far as Hawleigh proper went, in the
proud i^rivilege of the dowager's acquaintance; but Gertrude
and Diana were not slow to retail the news in their morning
calls and five-o'clock teas. ]\liss Ramsay and her possessions
were enlarged upon — the husbands and brothers referred to as
authorities upon the commercial world — every one having his
f)et theory as to which Eamsay was the great Eamsay, who
lad begun by wheeling barrows; one party clinging tenaciously
to a certain Peter Ramsay, Son, and Bilge, proprietors of the
famous Red Cross steam-packet line ; and another pinning its
faith to Alexander Ramsay, the great contractor. Fashionable
newspapers were watched, but shed no light ^\pon the subject,
nor did the local journals give tongue.
" 1 don't believe there's a syllable of truth in the whole
^tory," exclaimed the outspoken Blanche during one of these
discussions, from which Elizabeth was absent. "I daresay it's
all that nasty old woman's invention. Lord Paulyn was
desperately in love with my sister Lizzie, and made her ever
so many otfers. And she, wicked old thing, wants us all to go
and bury ourselves in some dead-and-alive Belgian town, where
we should be driven mad by the carillon ringing every half-
hour from the rickety old church-towers."
Miss Luttrell reproved her sister severely for the impropriety
of these remarks, and the company generally looked incredulous.
It was not to be supposed that any reasonable being would
believe in Elizabeth's rejection of the Lord of Ashcombe. He
might have hung about her a good deal — compromising her by
his attentions, to the rui:)tnre of that foolish engagement with
dear Mr. Forde ; but to suppose that he had laid his coronet at
her feet — that he had said to her, " Be mistress of Ashcombe
in Devon, and Harberry Castle in Yorkshire, the Grange near
Newmarket, and the old family mansion in St. James's-square "
— and that she had deliberately rejected him — to believe this
was too much for the imaginative power of Hawleigh.
Yet the day came before very long when the eyes of HawIeigJi
were opened, and the eyebrows of Hawleigh lifted ji. STirpassing
TOPder-
248 Strangers and JPilgrmt.
CHAPTER II.
" 0, the 'ittle more, and how much it is,
And rhe little less, and what worlds away 1 "
The four sisters had inhabited the smart little box on the
Boroughbridge-road about four months, when Elizabeth's scanty
stock of patience came to an end. Gertrude's small despotism,
Diana's languors and aflectations and headaches, she could
abide no longer. She was brought so much closer to these evils
in that circumscribed abode. She had no hillside orchard
whither to flee at any hour of the day or evening, even on cold
spring nights, when the young moon was sailing through the
clouds, and when Hawleigh had shut its shutters and lighted its
lamps for the night, and it would have been an outrage of all
the proprieties to go out for a walk ; no airy turret, half bed-
chamber and half sitting-room, where she could read or muse
in solitude; only a neat little square bedroom, divided from
Gertrude's by so fragile a partition that its inmates were wont
to whisper like conspirators in their vesper talk.
The Vicar's death, too, had given Gertrude a new position in
the home circle. She assumed the responsibility of their future
life. She had chosen and taken the house, and selected the
furniture they were to keep ; and regulated the mode and man-
ner of their new life, which friends and acquaintances of the
past they were chiefly to cherish, and which they were gently
and graciously to let drop. Gertrude kept the purse and the
keys, regiilated the expenditure, and held possession of the
narrow store closets. The younger sisters could hardly order
an extra cup of tea without permission, or breakfast in bed per-
chance on a bleak winter mornincr without inventinof some ail-
ment as an excuse for that indulgence. Diana submitted from
^heer laziness.
" I must live with some one who will order my dinner and
pour out my tea for me," she said ; " and it may as well be Ger-
trude as rvuy one else. I daresay if I were rich enough to have
a confidential maid, she would tyrannise over me."
One day, towards the end of March, Elizabeth astonished her
eisters by declaring her intention of going abroad straightway.
" I shall go over to Dieppe," she said, " and wander through
Normandy, and then make my way somehow to Belgium — my
geographical ideas are the vaguest, but I shall find out every-
thing when I am there — ^and then perhaps I shall go up the
Rhine ; and I don't think I sliall come back till the winter. I
have been reading up a foreign Bradshaw, and making tre»
Strangers and Pil(jrim9. 249
iiit-ticlous caJcnlations about ways and means. 0, by the bye,
Grertrn ',d^ iww nrucli have wc each to live upon ? I know I can
manage •vAt\v it, for I mean to do things in a strong-minded
economical way — travelling third-class, and even walking from
one town to another when the distances are short ; and third-
class travelling is dirt-cheap on the Continent. I shall wear no
fine washing dresses, nothing more expensive than a Unsey gown
and a waterproof cloak."
Until this moment Gertrude had only been able to stare.
Even the languid Diana dropped her novel, and looked her
astonishment at this wild proposition.
"Are you mad, Elizabeth? " exclaimed the eldest sister
sternly ; " or do you mean this for a joke ? "
" I am not mad, not a wee bit wud, as the Scotch say " —
Bhe had read a httle of Burns with her lover — " and I have long
left off joking. Pray don't look so unutterably shocked, Gerty.
I really mean what I say. What is the use of all this talk
about women's rights if one is to be pent up all one's life in a
f)lace like this in order to do homage to the jDroprieties ? Haw-
eigh is killing me by inches. I shouldn't at all mind dying, but
I don't want to die of slow poison ; and my present life is poison
to me — worse than infinitesimal doses of antimony."
" Very flattering to the relatives you live with," suggested
Gertrude with dignity.
" 0, I don't mean you ; but this house, Hawleigh, everything.
Old Lady Paulyn was right ; we ought to have gone on the
Continent. Not to settle down in some prosy old place, as she
suggested, but to wander about. People do not half live who
live in one place."
" The roving existence you talk of may be very well for per-
sons of your impatient temperament," said Gertrude ; " but for
. my own part, I could not live without a settled home; and I
believe that Diana and Blanche share my feelings on that
point."
" I'm not quite s" re of that, Gerty," said the intractable
Blanche. " Hawleigh is very well in its way, and we know
plenty of people, attd are sure to bc^ asked to ever so many
croquet-parties in the summer. But x should dearly love roam-
ing about the world with Lizzie."
" In a hnsey gown and a waterproof? " cried Diana incredu-
lously. " What would you do with all the time you spend before
your looking-^ass in that case ? "
" I could get on without a looking-glass if there was some-
thing worth living for," said the damsel.
" Do not let us descend to pueriHties," observed Gertrude,
with her air of practical wisdom. " Such a mode of life as
Ehzabetb suggests is quite out of the question. Imaginf- mj
2,jO Strangers and Pilgrimi.
sister wanderiug about alone, in third-class carriages, stopping
at second-rate inns, exposing herself to insult from underbred
foreigners."
" That is only your insular prejudice," said Elizabeth. " Re-
member all the nice books we've read about lady-travellers —
' From Ostendto the Tyrol for a Five-pound Note;' ' Third-
class Passengers to the Jungfrau ;' ' Meat- teas and Glaciers ; or
a Maiden Aunt's Adventures in Savoy ;' and so on. Those
books seem all to be written by unprotected females of limited
means. Why shouldn't I get on just as well as other unpro-
tected females ? "
•' If you were forty years of age, the idea might be somewhat
less preposterous."
" Would it ? I am sure I feel as if I were sixty. But how-
ever that may be, I must positively get away from Hawleigh.
The air of the Boroughbridge-road disagrees with me. You
must give me my share of our income, Gerty "
" Which would be about seventy-five jDounds."
" Is it really so much as that P I should feel immensely ricli
on the Continent with thirty shilUngs a week."
" You appear to forget that this house was taken with a view
to joint occupation."
" You cau keep ten pounds a year for my share of the rent
and taxes."
Gertrude argued for an hour, and even Diana took the trouble
to remonstrate. But it was in vain that both ladies endeavoured
to demonstrate the actual impossibility of such a life as EUzabeth
proposed to lead. The girl was inflexible.
" I am of age," she said ; " and no one has the faintest right
to curtail my liberty. I have set my heart upon getting away
from Hawleigh. Blanche can go with me if she likes. She and
I have always got on very well together; but if she doesn't like,
I shall go alone."
" I suppose you forgot that you have expectations from aunt
Chevenix," said Gertrude, as a final argument ; " and that such
a step as you contemplate is likely to alienate her affection for
ever."
" I have never allowed expectations to stand in my way,"
answered Elizabeth scornfully ; " and as I can live upon a pound
a week, I can afford to be independent of aunt Chevenix."
Remonstrance being useless, the two elder sisters bewailed
their sister's folly in secret. It was a complete disruption of the
small household. Blanche elected to follow the fortunes of
Elizabeth, agrtieing to pay her share of the rent during her ab-
sence. The most melancholy point in the whole affair was the
diminution of state which this severance would necessitate.
Ono of the two servants — the irreproachable parlour-maid, who
Strangers and Pilgrims. 251
•rot^^atmslin aprons — would have to be dismissed, now that the
W«t or her maintenance could be no longer shared by the four
sisters. Thts fact nioved both Gertrude and Diana more deeply
than the loss of their younger and wilder sisters.
Providence, however, had a care for their interests ; and an
event was looming in the future which was destined to alter
Elizabeth's views, or rather to present her with a more bi'illiant
opportunity of escape from the life that had become obnoxious
to her.
She was walking aloue one gusty afternoon, about a week after
the first discussion of her foreign wanderings, and had rambled
farther than usual on the road between Hawleigh and Ash-
conibe — a road that was little better than a winding lane that
meandered through a long valley at the foot of the moor, follow-
ing the course of a stream that brawled and babbled over ita
rocky bed, in the winter swollen to the dimensions of a river, and
in dry summers vanished altogether from the eye of man,
leaving its bare stony bed to bleach in the sun. The deep banks
of the lane were thickly clothed with greenest ferns in the late
summer time ; but at this season there were only a few violets
nestling in the mOtl^y tnrf, through which the red rich soil of the
West peeped here and there in ruddy patches.
This lane was a favourite walk of Elizabeth's. Young oaks
and older Scotch firs rose like a forest on one side ; the steep
shoulder of the moor shut it in on the other. A solitary dark-
some place, in the chill March dusk, gloomy with Nature's pen-
sive gloom — a very cloister in which to meditate upon *he faults
and follies of her blighted life.
The boundary of her longest rambles was an old stone bridge
about three miles from Hawleigh, at a point where the stream
widened and made a sharp curve across the road ; a very
ancient bridge, covered with gray old mosses and pale sea-green
lichens ; and supposed to have been built by those indefatigable
road-makers the Romans.
Here she lingered this afternoon, resting a little, with her
folded arms upon the parapet, watching the faint pale moon
driven wildly through a cloudy gray sky.
" I don't suppose I shall be any happier abroad than I am
here," she said to herself, ruminating upon her new scheme of
life ; " but I shall at least have something to do, and I shall not
have so much time for thought if I keep jogging on from one
place to another."
This was the result of all her meditations that afternoon.
She looked forward to the change in her existenca not with
actual pleasure, only with a vague hope of relief.
She had been standing on the bridge about ten minutes, now
tollowing the moon till she v/ae lost in a sea of '-'^jds, now
252 Strangers and Pilgrims.
^patching the water gurgling over the stones, when she heai"d .t'n
approach of p. horseman in the quiet lane; some farmer, no
doubt. She did not trouble herself to look round ; but waited
tiiriie should pass before beginning her homeward walk.
He rode briskly enough up to the hedge, then slackened his
pace, and rode slowly across ; then to her surprise drew rein
suddenly on the other side, sprang from his horse, and came
towards her.
" Miss Luttrell, is it really you ? "
She turned quickly, her pale face flushing in the twilight. It
was the first time she had ever blushed at his coming.
" Lord Paulyn ! " she exclaimed ; as much surprised by his
appearance as if she had been a thousand miles from his domains.
" I thought I could not be mistaken," he cried, holding out
both his hands, but only receiving one of hers, and that one
given with a reluctant air ; " but I should never have expected to
find you in this wretched lane — alone, too. I — 1 haven't seen
you since the Vicar's death, and I ought to have written, I dare-
say, but I'm not a dab — I mean, I'm a poor hand at penman-
ship. I should have telegraphed to you to say how sorry I was,
only I knew my mother would do all that kind of thing."
" Thanks. I don't think anybody's condolence is of much use
in such cases, however well meant. One loses all one has to love
in the world, and one's friends write polite letters, with quotations
from Sci'ipture, which are usually incorrect."
This with a faint attempt at carelessness, but with tears rising
unbidden to her eyes.
" But you haven't lost all you love," seizing upon the small
black-gloved hand, and possessing himself of it in spite of her —
" at least not all who love you ; that is to say, there is one
foolish beggar I can vouch for who still loves vou to distraction."
" I am not at all aware of any such person's existence. Let
go my hand, please. Lord Paulyn ; you are pressing the rings
into my fingers."
" I beg your pardon," unwillingly releasing it. " But don't
pretend not to know, Elizabeth ; that is too bad. I dare say
other fellows have made themselves foolish about you ; but you
know who I mean when I talk of loving you to distraction.
You know that there never was any man so infatuated as I have
been— as I still am, worse luck ! "
" About Miss Eamsay, I presume; " with a chilUng air.
" Come, now, Lizzie, don't be absurd. Has my mother been
letting out any of her fine schemes for getting me to marry
Sarah Ramsay? — a young woman of thirty, with freckles and
sandy hair, and about as much figure as a broomstick. She's to
have something like half a milHon of money, I believe, for her
marriage portion ; and a million or two when her father departs
Strangers and Pilgrims. 253
this life. My motlier picked her up at Torquay in the aatumn,
and has been trying it on ever since, but without effect. I'm the
kind of horse that may be brought to the water, but I don't
driiik unless I'm thirsty."
" Lady Paulyn told me that you were going to be married to
Mi?s Kamsay; that it was a settled thing."
" Then she told you an infernal lie."
A little thrill of pleasure stirred Elizabeth's heart at this
unfilial observation. It was not that she hked Lord Paulyn, or
that she was proud of his constancy, or grateful for his affec-
tion, or that she had at that moment any idea of marrying him.
She was merely pleased to discover that she had not been
Buperseded ; that she still retained her dominion over him, still
held him in her thrall ; that she could go home to her sisters,
and tell them how egregiously they had been duped by the
dowager's diplomatic falsehoods.
" No, Lizzie, I never cared for any one but you," the young
man went on, after he had muttered his indignation at the
dowager's attempt to deceive ; " and I suppose I ahall go on
caring for you till the end of my days. It's the mc^t miserable
infatuation. Do you know that I am tolerably safe to win the
Derby this year, with a horse I bred myself; bis sire was one
of the old Dutchman's stock, and his dam was sister to St^n-iax,
who won the Two Thousand six years ago, and the Chester Cup
the year after ? Yes, Lizzie, I think the Derby's a safe thing
this year; and yet I set no more value upon it than if it was
nothing. Think of that, Lizzie — the blue ribbon of the turf.
I've been winning no end of things lately; yacht races and so on
last year, and a cup at Newmarket the other day. It's the old
adage, you know : unlucky in love But I'd rather win you
for my wife than half-a-dozen consecutive Derbies. Come now,
Liz, it's all off with that other fellow ; he's off the course, the
Lord knows whore. What is there to stand between us ?"
" [Merely the fact that Mr. Forde is the only man I ever
loved, and I am not quite sure I don't love him still. I owe
you at least candour. It is a very humiliating confession to
make; but I do not mind telhng you that I loved him very
dearly, and that my heart was almost broken by his deser-
tion."
" Confounded snob !" said the Yiscount ; " but I'm very glad
be did make himself scarce. It would have been a most un«
euitable match: a splendid girl hke you, born to adorn a
coronet and all that kind of thing. But I say, Lizzie "
" Who gave you leave to call me by my Christian name ? "
she asked, looking round at him indignantly. She had been
Btaring at the little river hurrying over its rugged bed, hardly
eeemiiif to listen to Lord Paulyn's discourse. He had his
254 Strangere and Pilgrims.
horse's bridle on his arm, and found some hindrance to eloquence
in the restlessness of that animal.
" O, come now. It's not much of a privilege to ask, after
standing all I've stood for you, and being laughed at by my
friends into the bargain. But I say, Elizabeth, I want to talk
to you seriously. I only ran down from London by last night'a
limited mail ; and the chief motive that brought me here waa
the thought that I might find you a little better disposed
towards me, when the edge of your feelings about that parson
fellow had worn off. You've had time to grow wiser since we
last met, and to find out that there's something more in the
world than sentimental parsons. By Jove, I should think
Hawleigh was a favourable place for reflection ; a regular
Hervey*s-Meditations-araong-the-Tombs kind of a place. You've
had time to think it all over, Lizzie ; and I hope you've made
up your mind you might be happier knocking about the world
with me than moping alone here. Be my wife, Lizzie. I've
been constant to you all this time, though you always treated
me badly. You can't be so hard-hearted as to refuse me now ? "
She was slow to answer him, stUl watching the swift-flowing
river, as if she were seeking some augury in the gurgle of the
waters. Even when she did speak, it was with her eyes still
bent upon the stream.
" I know that I am supremely miserable here," she said, " and
that is all I know about myself."
" But you might be hajjpier in the world, Lizzie, with me.
Who could be anything but miserable moping in such a hole as
this ? " demanded Lord Paulyn, with a contemptuous glance at
the darkening moorland, as if it had been the meanest thing in
nature.
She scarcely heeded the manner of his speech or the words
that composed it. She was debating a solemn question ; hold-
ing counsel with herself. Should she astonish all her friends — ■
prove that she, the rejected of Malcolm Forde, could mount to
dazzling worlds beyond their ken .P The days of her humiliation
had been very bitter to her ; she had eaten ashes for bread, and
moistened them with angry tears. The fact that she cared
nothing for this man, that her chief feeling about him was a
sentiment verging upon contempt, hardly entered into her
thoughts to-night ; they were too exclusively selfish. Self was
the very centre of her little world. Her own humiliation, hex
own disapiDointments, made up the sum-total of her universe.
Whatever was womanly, or true, or noble in her nature had
begun and ended with her love for Malcolm Forde.
An hour ago and she had believed Lordfaulyn as completely
lost to her as her father's curate, and she had begun to regrel
the folly that had cost her all the splendours of that brighter
Strangers and Pilgrimg. 255
world which had seemed so very fair to her two years ago.
And behold! hero was the constant lover again at her side, again
oflerintr her his rank und wealth, not from the haughty altitude
of a King Cophetua to his beggar-maid, but urging his plea
iike a condemned felon beseeching the reversal of his doom.
Busy thoughts of what her life might be in the years to come
if she accepted him— busy thoughts of the dull blank it needa
must be if she rejected him — crowded her brain. Selfishness,
ambition, pride— all the worst vices of her nature — won the
victory. She turned to her lover at last, with a face that was
very pale in the dim light, and said slowly,
" If you really wish it, if you are content to take me without
any profession of love or sentiment on my side — I made an end
of those when I quarrelled with my first lover — if you can be
satisfied with such an indifferent bargain "
" If!" cried the young man with sudden energy, putting hia
disengaged arm round her reluctant figure, which recoiled in-
voluntarily from that token of appropriation ; _ " that meana
Yes, and you've made me the happiest fellow in Devonshire.
The horse that can stay is the winner after all. I always said I'd
have you for my wife, Lizzie, and now I shall keep my word."
From that moment her doom was sealed. There was no look-
ing backward. Lord Paulyn took possession of his prize with
the iron hand of some lawless sea-ranger swooping upon a
disabled merchantman that had drifted across his track. From
that hour Elizabeth Luttrell had a master.
CHAPTER III.
" Lorsqu'un horame s'ennuie et qu'il sent qu'il est las
De trainer le boulet au bagne d'ici bas,
Des qu'il se fait sauter, qu'importe la maniere ? "
Elizabeth's manner that evening was just a little colder and
quieter than usual. No unwonted flutter of her spirits betrayed
the fact that the current of her life had been suddenly turned
into a new channel. She had suffered her lover to accomjiany
her to the edge of that suburb in which the Boroughbridge-
road was situated, and had there dismissed him.
" I may come to see you to-morrow, mayn't I ?" he pleaded.
He had been trying to make her fix an early date for their mar-
riage all the way along the dusky lane.
" We must be married and have our wedding-tour over before
the Derby, you know," he said persuasively. " You don't care
much about the tourmg business, do you ? I'm sure I don't.
I never could understand why newly-man-ied people should be
256 Strangers and Vilgrims.
eent to start at mountains, and do penance in musty old cathe*
(Irals, as if they'd done something wicked, and were obliged to
worlc it out somehow before they could get absolution. A week
at Malvern would be about our figure : or if we had tolerable
weather, I could take you as far as Malta in the Pixy."
_" You are in a great hurry to settle matters; but when I pro-
mised to marry you, just now, I said nr^thing about the date of
our marriage."
'' But that goes without saying. I've served my apprentice-
ship. You're not going to turn round upon nie like Laban,
and offer me one of your sisters, or make me work seven years
longer. And if you have made up your mind to marry me, it
can't matter to you whether it's soon or late."
" What will Lady Paulyn say ?" asked Elizabeth, with a little
laugh. There was something pleasant in the idea of that wily
matron's mortification.
" My mother will be rabid," said the dutiful son ; " but so she
woiild whomsoever I married, unless it was for bullion. It was
a good joke her coming to try and choke you off with that story
about Sarah Ramsay. Yes ; my lOother will be riled."
"And Miss Disney .P do you think she will be pleased?"
The Viscount was not so prompt in his answer this time.
" Hilda," he said meditatively ; " well, I don't know. But 1
suppose she'll be rather glad. It'll give her a home, you see,
by and by, when my mother goes off the hooks. She couldn't
have lived with me if I'd been single."
" Of course not. We shall have Miss Disney to live with us,
then, by and by?"
" In the natural course of events, yes ; my mother can't go
on nursing the Ashcombe estate till the Day of Judgment,
though I've no doubt she'd like very much to do it. And when
phe's dead, and all that kind of thing," continiied his lordship
pleasantly, " Hilda can have an attic and a knife and fork with
us, unless she marries in the interim, and I don't think that's
likely."
" She looks rather like a person who has had what peopb
call ' a disappointment,' " suo-gested Elizabeth, wincing a little
as she remembered her own disappointment.
" She came into the world with a disappointment," replied
Lord Paulyn. " Her mother ate the sour grapes, and her teeth
were set on edge. Her father. Colonel Disney, was heir-pre-
sumptive to a great estate, when my aunt Sybilla married him ;
but when his uncle died, six months after the Colouel's mar-
riage, a claimant sprang up with a rigmarole story of a Scotch
marriage, and no end of documentary evidence, the upahot of
which was, that after a good deal of Scotch law, and pursuing
and defending and ao on. thfi claimant — a black-muzzled lad
Strangers and Pilgrims. 257
with a dip of the tar-brush — walked over the course, and Hilda'a
father was left with a large fortune in the hands of the Jews,
in the shajse of post-obits and accommodation bills. He ran
away with a French opera-dancer soon afterwards, in a fit of
disgust with society. My aunt and Hilda were left to drag on
somehow upon a pittance which my grandfather, a stingy old
beggar, had settled upon his daughter when she married. When
my aunt died, Hilda came to live with my mother, and has had
a very pleasant time of it ever since, I make no doubt."
They parted at the beginning of the villas that were dotted
along the first half mile or so of the Boroughbridge-road, giving
a trim suburban aspect to^this side of Hawleigh. There were
even gas-lamps, macadam,' and a general aspect of inhabited-
ness very difierent from the narrow lanes and rugged common
on the other side of the town. This new neighbourhood was
the west-end of Hawleigh.
" I shall come to see you to-morrow," repeated Lord Paulyn,
reluctant to depart. " And mind, everything must be over and
done with before May. Do you remember the first Derby we
were at together, nearly two years ago ? Jolly, wasn't it ? I've
got a new team for the drag, spankers. I've set my heart upon
your seeing Young Englander win. Hadn't you better write
to Mrs. Chevenix? She's the woman to do our business. If
you trust everything to your sisters, they'll be a twelvemonth
muddling about it."
" We have plenty of time for discussing these arrangements,
without standing in the high-road to do so," said Elizabeth im-
patiently. " If I had known you were going to worry me, I
should never have said what I did just now. After all, it was
only said on the impulse of the moment. I may change my
mind to-morrow morning."
" no, you won't. I won't stand anything of that kind. I
am not hke that parson fellow. Once having got you, I mean
to keep you. I think I deserve some reward for holding on as
I've done. You mustn't talk any more about throwing me over;
that's past and done with."
" Then you mustn't worry me," said Elizabeth, with a faint
eigh of utter weariness. " So now good night for the last time.
It is past seven o'clock, and my sisters will think I am lost. I
almost wonder they haven't sent the bellman after me."
And thus they parted, without the kiss of betrothal, which
Miss Luttrell would not consent to receive in the high-road.
But he had kissed her once in the lane ; passionate lips pressed
against unwilUng lips, typical of that union which was to be
no union ; only self-intereist and selfish short-lived passion going
hand in hand.
" 0, dear," thought Ehzabeth, as she went in at the Httla
25P Strangers and Pilgrims.
garden gate, and knocked witli the doll's-house knocker on the
doll's-house door ; " what a tiresome thing it is to be engaged ! "
She had thought very differently two years ago, when her
wiUing head rested for the first time on Malcolm Forde's breast,
and a supreme contentment, which seemed more of heaven than
of earth, descended on her soul — a perfect restfulness, like the
serene stillness of a rescued i'essel that lies at anchor in som?
sheltered harbour after long battling with wind and waves.
" How he begins to worry me already," she thought of hef
new master. " I foresee that he will make me do whatever
he likes, unless he goes too far, and rouses the spirit of oppo-
sition in me. But Gertrude and Diana will not be able to
crow over me any longer, that is one comfort. And I have
done with small rooms and a small income, that is another."
Her sisters had drunk tea, and dismissed the urn and tea-pot,
and a cold and somewhat sloj^py cup of their favourite beverage
had been set aside for her on a little tray. She smiled in-
voluntarily, as she threw off her hat, and sat down in a corner to
sip the cold tea, thinking how, in a very short time, pompous
Berving-men would hasten to administer to her wants, and her
coming in and going out would be an affair of importance to a
vast household. She sat in her corner looking listlessly at her
sisters, grouped round the larajD, and engaged in their usual
avocations, and could not helj) feeling that it was really very
good of her to endure these small surroundings, even for the
moment.
" Where have you been all this time, Lizzie ? " exclaimed
Blanche, looking up from the construction of some futility in
bead-work. "At the Melvin's, I suppose, kettle-drumming? "
"No; I went for a longer walk than usual, and forgot how
late it was."
" And have been roaming about alone after dark," said Ger-
trude, with a horrified look. " Really, Elizabeth, if you must
indulge your eccentric taste for solitary rambles, you might at
least respect the opinion of the world so far as to gratify your
strange taste within reasonable hours."
" I have no respect for the opinion of the world. I have out-
raged it once, and perhaps may outrage it again."
" Which way did you go ? " asked the pacific Blanche, anxious
to change the subject.
" Towards Ashcombe."
" I wonder when Lord Paulyn is to be married ? " said Diana,
contemplating some grand effect in a square inch of point lace.
" Rather soon, I believe."
" Where did you hear that ? Come now, you must have been
calling somewhere, or you would not have heard the news."
" I have not been calhnjf anywhere, but I have reason to
Strangers and Filgrims. 259
believe Lord Paulyn is going to be married, and rather
soon."
" There's nothing new in that," said Diana; "the dowager
told us as much."
" Would you like to be bridesmaids on the occasion, all of
you? " asked Elizabeth.
" What, bridesmaids to that horrid Miss Ramsay P " cried
Blanche.
" No, not to Miss Ramsay — but to me."
The youngest and most energetic of the Luttrells sprang from
her seat, very nearly overturning the nv)derator-lamp in her
excitement.
" To you ! 0, you darling, you have been cheating us all this
time, and are you really going to be a great lady, and present us
all at court, and give no end of balls and parties ? It's too good
to be true."
" And as we had no ground for such an idea yesterday, when
you were full of your continental wanderings, I really can't
understand why we are to believe in such a thing to-night," ob-
served Gertrude the jsragmatical, with a spiteful look.
" Can't you ? There are some people in whose lives great
changes seem to happen by accident. The accident of a wicked
anonymous letter helped to break off my engagement with Mr.
Forde," with a keen glance at her eldest sister. " A chance
meeting with Lord Paulyn this evening on the Roman bridge
has altered my plans for going to Normandy. He made me an
offer again to-night, for the third time in his life, and "
" And you accepted him," said Diana. " You must have been
nearer idiotcy than I should think a Luttrell could be, if you
rejected him."
" But there is such a thing as constancy even to an idea," said
Gertrude. " I should have thought Elizabeth would have cared
more for the memory of Malcolm Forde than for worldly advan-
tages."
"No," answered Elizabeth defiantly, " I am not so slavish as
to go on breaking my heart about a man for ever. And living
screwed up in this box of a house has taught me the value of
Burroundings."
" You will go to live at Ashcombe, I suppose," suggested Ger-
trude, " with the dowager and Miss Disney ? I can fancy how
nice that will be for you."
" I shall do nothing of the kind. I mean to hve in the world,
in the very centre of the great whirlpool — to go spinning
round perpetually in the fashionable maelstrom."
" A hazardous life for the welfare of an immortal soul," said
Gertrude,
"I have ceased to care for mj soul since Malcolm gave me up.
260 Strangers and Pilgrims.
Indeed, I have a suspicion that my soul ceased to exist when h,
went away, leaving only some kind of mechanism in its place."
CHAPTER rV.
*^ Hoyden. This very morning my lord told me I should have twc
hundred a year to buy pins. Now, nurse, if he gives me two hundred
a year to buy pins, what do you think he'll give me to buy line petti-
coats ?
Nurse. 0, my dearest, he deceives thee foully, and he's no Letter
than a rogue for his pains. These Londoners have got a gibberish with
'em would confound a gipsy. That which they call pin-money is to buy
their wives everything in the varsal world, down to their very shoe-ties."
Unbounde 3 was the rapture of Mrs. Chevenix when she received
the unlooked-for tidings of Elizabeth's engagement. She wrote
at once urging that the wedding should take place in Lon.lon.
" It will be just the height of the season," she said, " and every-
body in town. Gertrude, Di, and Blanche can come up with
you. I will stretch a point, and find rooms for all of you. You
could not possibly be married from that footy little house in the
Boroughbridge-road. And there will be your trousseau, you
know, dear, a most serious question ; for of course everything
must be in the highest style, and I really doubt whether Cerise
— whose real name, by the bye, I have lately discovered to be
Jones — is quite up to the mark for this occasion. She suits me
very well, but I have lately discovered a want of originality in
her style ; so I think the better way would be to order your
superior dinner and evening dresses from Paris, and give Cerise
only the secondary ones. Believe me, my dear child, I shall not
shrink from exjDense ; but we will not fall into that foolish trick
of ordering more dresses than you could wear in six months,
ignoring the almost hourly changes of fashion. As Lord Paulyn's
wife, you will, of course, have unlimited means. By the way, as
you have really no responsible male relative, the arrangement
of settlements will devolve upon me. My lawyers, Messrs.
Pringle and Scrupress, are well up in that kind of work, and
will, I am sure, protect your interests as carefully as if you were
the daughter of their oldest and most important client."
This subject, thus mooted for the first time in Mrs. Chevenix's
letter, was destined to cause a good deal of argument and un-
pleasantness between the aunt and niece.
" I will have no settlement," said Elizabeth resolutely. " 1
take nothing to him, except sixty or seventy pounds a year, and
he shall not be asfced to settle ever so many hundreds upon me.
I will not quite sell myself. Of course, he will give me fine
Strangero and Fili/rime. 2G1
dresses and all I can want to make a brilliant figure in Lis own
world. He has been patient enough and devoted enough for me
to trust my interests to him. It stands to reason that I shall
always have as much money as I can spend. He is overflowing
with riches, and as his wife I shall have a right to my share of
them. But I will not allow any one to ask him to name the price
that he is willing to give for me. It shall not be quite a matter
01 buying and selling."
" Very high-flown notions, and worthy of the most self-willed
unreasonable young woman that ever lived," exclaimed Mrs.
Chevenix in a rage. " But I suppose you would hardly wish
your children to starve. You will not object to their interests
being provided for by people who know a little more about life
than you do, self-opinionated as you may be."
"My children!" said Elizabeth, turning very pale. Could
there be children, the very sanctiflcation and justiflcation of
marriage, for her and for Reginald Paulyu, who in marriage
sought only the gratification of their own selfish and sordid
desires ? My children ! I can hardly fancy that I shall ever
hear a voice call me mother. I seem so unfit to have little
children loving me and trusting in me, in their blind childish
way," she added dreamily; and then, with a more practical air:
" Do what you please to protect their interests, auntie, in case
Lord Paulyn should gamble away all his wealth on the race-
course ; but remember, for me myself not a penny."
Nor was this an idle protest. She took care to give the
family sohcitors the same injunctions; and as Lord Paulyn was
not a man to insist on extreme generosity in the preliminary
arrangements of his marriage, he did not dispute her will. So
certain estates were settled upon such younger sons as Elizabeth
might hereafter bring to her husband, and certain smaller pro-
perties were charged with the maintenance of daughters; but
the wife herself was left subject to the husband's liberality.
Mrs. Chevenix shook her head ominously.
" Was there ever anything so foolish ? After what we have
seen of that old woman too i " she added, with somewhat dis-
respectful mention of her niece's future mother-in-law."
Their knowledge of the dowajer was certainly not calculated
to inspire any exalted hope of the son's g'^nerosity. _ Yet, in that
foolish period which went before his marriage, Reginald Paulyn
showed himself lavish in the gifts which he showered upon hia
mistress. Did she but frown, he propitiated her with an
emerald bracelet ; was she angry with him without reason, she
had her reward in a triplet of rings, red, white, and green, like
the Italian flag. The Paulyn diamonds, which had lain perdu
since the dowager's last appearance at court, were dug out of
th« bank, and sent to be reset at a famous West-end jeweller's.
2G2 Strangers and Pilgrims.
Elizabeth beheld their far-darting rays with dazzlfe<:{ eyes, and a
mind that was almost bewildered by this fulfilment of all her
childish dreams. It was like the story of Cinderella ; nor does
one know by any means that Cinderella cared very much about
the Prince. The old fairy tale is hardly a love story, but rather
a romance of horses and carriages, and other worldly splendour,
and swift transition from a kitchen to a palace.
" After all, it was perhaps very lucky that Mr. Forde jilted
me," Elizabeth thought in her worldly-minded moments, when
she was taken to look at the carriages which Lord Paulyn had
chosen for her. The graceful shell-shaped barouche, the dainty
brougham, with innumerable patent inventions for the comfort
of its occupant.
There had been no Paulyn town-house since the reign of
George III., when Beginald's grandfather had inhabited a
^aunt and dismal mansion out Manchester-square way, the
freehold of which had been settled upon a younger son, and had,
in due course, been forwarded to a money-lender. The dowager,
in her day, had preferred living in furnished lodgings during
her residences in the capital. So Elizabeth had the delight of
choosing an abode at the West-end, and finally, after exploring
all the more fashionable quarters, selected a corner house in
Park -lane, aU balconies and verandahs, with a certain pleasing
rusticity.
" You must build me a huge conservatory on the top of that
hideous pile of stabling and kitchens at the back," she said to
her lover, to whom she issued her orders somewhat unceremonji-
ously at tliis period of their lives ; " and I must have a fernery
or two somewhere."
The selection of furniture for this balconied abode was an
agreeable amusement for Miss Luttrell's mornings during the
few weeks she spent in Eaton-place, and was not without its
efl^ect upon the balance Lord Paulyn kept at his bank, which
was an unusually s-mall one for so wealthy a customer. The
young lady showed a marvellous appreciation of the beautiful in
art, and an aristocratic contempts for all questions of cost. She
had her pet forms and colours, her caprices upon every subject,
the gratification whereof was apt to be expensive.
" She's like Lady Teazle, by Jove," grumbled the Yiscount,
opening his heart to a friend in the smoking-room of his fa-
vourite club, after a lo.ng morning at Kaliko's, the crack uphol-
terer; "spends a fellow's money like water; and, by Jove, I
feel sometimes inclined to growl, like the old buffer in the play."
" Shaw to be so," said his friend, "if a feller marries a poor
man's daughter. They always make the money fly like old
boots; haven't been used to it, and like to see it spin; just like
a child that spins a sovereign on a table."
Strangers and Pilgrims. 263
" If she were always to go on like tliis, she would be the ruin
of me," murmured Eeginald ruefully; " but of course it's only
a spirt ; and if she were inclined to do it by and by, I shouldn't
let her."
" Of course not. You'll be able to put on a stiffish curb
when once she's in harness."
This capacity for extravagance exhibited by his future wife
gave Lord Paulyn subject for some serious thought. Even that
refusal of a settlement, which, at the first glance, seemed so
generous an imjiulse upon the part of Elizabeth, now assumed an
alarming as])ect. Might she not have refused any stated pin-
money simply because she intended to put no limit upon her
expenditure ? She meant to range at will over the whole
extent of his pastures, not to be relegated to an allotted acreage,
however liberal. She meant, in fact, to do her best to ruin him.
" But that's a matter which will easily adjust itself after we
are married," he said to himself, shaking ofi" the sense of wild
fjarra which for the moment had possessed him. " I won't
have my income made ducks and drakes of even to please the
handsomest woman in Europe. A town-house once bought and
furnished is bought and furnished for our lifetime, and for our
children and grandchildren after us ; so a little extravagance in
that line can't do much harm. And as to milliners and all that
kind of thing, I shall let her know as soon as possible that if
her bills go beyond a certain figure, she and I will quarrel ; and
so, with a little judicious management, I daresay I shall soon
establish matters on a comfortable footing."
So for these few weeks, her last of liberty, Lord Paulyn
Bufi"ered his betrothed to have her own way — to have her fling,
as he called it himself. Whatever her eye desired, as she roved
at large in Kaliko's treasure-chambers, was instantly booked
against her future lord. The rarest Sevres ; the most ex-
quisitely-carved ebony cabinets, inlaid with plaques of choice
old Wedgwood ; easy-chairs and sofas, in which the designer's
imagination had run riot ; fairy-like cofiee-tables ; inimitable
what-nots ; bedroom furniture in the ecclesiastical gothic style,
unpolished oak, with antique brazen clamps and plates— furni-
ture that might have been made for Mary Stuart, only that it
was much handsomer than anything ever provided for that
hapless lady's accommodation, as witness the rickety old oaken
bedstead at Holyrood, and King James's baby-basket ; carpets
from Elizabeth's own designs, where all the fairy ferns and
wild-flowers that flourish in Devonian woods bestrewed a ground
of russet velvet pile.
Of such mere sensuous pleasure, the rapture of choosing
pretty things for her own possession, Elizabeth had enough in
the days before her marriage. She was almost grateful to the
264> Strangers and Pilgrims.
man whose purse prcrided these delights. Perhaps if she could
nave quite put Malcolm Forde out of her thoughts, exiled his
image from her mind for ever and ever, she might have been
actually grateful, and even happy, in the realisation of her pet
day-dream.
She had asked after her old friends of the Rancho when she
first came to London, but found that hospitable mansion had
disappeared, like Aladdin's palace when the Emperor of China
looked out of the window and beheld only empty space where
his parvenu son-in-law's residence had stood. The Cinqmars
had been ruined somehow ; no one — at any rate not any one iu
Mrs. Chevenix's circle — seemed to understand how. Mr. Cinq«-
mars had been bankrupt, his name in the papers as journalist,
stockbroker, theatrical manager, wine merchant — goodness
knows what; and the Rancho estate had been sold by auction,
the house pulled down, the umbrageous groves on the landward
side ravaged by the axe, the ground cut up into shabby little
roads of semi-detached villas leading to nowhere. The lawn and
terrace by the river had been preserved, and were still in the
market at a fabulous price.
"And what became of Mr. and Mrs. Cinqmars?" asked
Elizabeth, sorry for people who had been kind to her, and sur-
prised to find every one more interested in the fate of the domain
than in its late tenants.
Mrs. Chevenix shrugged her shoulders.
" Goodness knows. I have heard that they went to America;
that they are living in a cheap quarter of Paris, Mr. Cinqmars
speculating on the Bourse ; that they are in Italy, Mrs. Cinq-
mars studying for the operatic stage. There are ever so many
difi'erent stories afloat about them, but I have never troubled
myself to consider which of the reports is most likely to be cor-
rect. You know they never were friends of my own choosing.
It was Lord Paulyn's whim that we should know them."
" But they were very kind and hospitable, auntie."
" Ye-es. They had their own views, no doubt, however.
Their interest was not in Ehzabeth Luttrell, but in the future
Lady Paulyn. The best thing you can do, Lizzie, is to forget
that you ever knew them."
This was not a very difficiilt achievement for Elizabeth,
whose thoughts rarely roamed beyond the focus of self, except
in one sohtary instance.
[Jpon the details of Elizabeth's wedding it ia needless to dwell.
She was not married before the Derby-day, anxious as Lord
Paulyn had been to anticipate that great British festival, but
early in the flowery mouth of June, when the roses were just
beginning to blow in the poor old A''icarage garden — as Ehzabeth
Strangers and Pilgrims. 265
thought with a sudden pang when she saw the exotics that
decked her wedding breakfast. The marriage was, as other
marriages, duly recorded in fashionable newspapers, and Mrs.
Chevenix took care that etiquette should not be outraged by the
neglect of the minutest detail, by so much as a quarter of an
inch on the wrong side in the depth of the bride's Honiton
flounces, or a hackneyed dish among the entrees at the breakfast.
So these two were made one, and went oiF together in the con-
ventional carriage-and-fonr from Eaton-place to Paddingtcn
Station, en route for the Malvern Hills, where they were to moou
away a fortnight as best they might, and then come back to
town in time for Ascot races.
Now — these chapters being purely retrospective— comes the
autumn of the fifth year after Mr. Forde'a farewell to Hawleigh.
CHAPTER V.
** I strive to number o'er what daya
Kemembrance can discover,
VHiich all that life or earth displays
Would lure me to live over.
There rose no day, there roll'd no hoTir
Of pleasure unembitter'd ;
And not a trapping deck'd my power
That gall'd not while it glitter'd."
They were at Slogh-na-Dyack, in Argyleshire, where, at the
foot of a heather-clothed mountain that ran up almost perpen-
dicialarly to meet the skies. Lord Paulyn had bought for himself
a palatial abode, in that Norman-Gothic style which pervades
the mansions of the North — a massive pile of buildings flanked
by sugar-loaf towers, with one tall turret dominating the rest, as
a look-out for the lord of the castle when it was his fancy to
sweep the waters with his falcon gaze. It is almost impossible
to imagine a more delicious habitation, sheltered front and rear
by those lofty hills, the blue waters of the Kyles of Bute lap-
ping against its garden terrace ; a climate equal to Torquay ;
long ranges of orchard houses where peaches and nectarines ^^
ripened as under Italian skies ; orangeries, vineries, iwneriea ;
stabling of unlimited capacity, but chiefly devoted to such
sturdy ponies as could best tread those rugged mountain roads ;
verily, all that the soul of a Solomon himself, in the plenitude
of his power and riches, could desire ; in the golden autumn,
when the grain was still ripening for the late northern harvest,
making patches of vivid yellow here and there upon the gentler
cslopes at the base of the opposite hills, when the pu^pie'
2G0 Strangers and ^Pilgrims.
Jeather, like a Eoman Emperor's mantle, was spread over the
ajountain.
The Norman castle was none of Lord Paulyn's building. Not
in those mediaeval fancies of keep and donjon, not in those
architectural caprices of machicolated battlements and elabo-
rately-cai'ved mullions, did the heir of all the Paulyns squander
that wealth which the dowager had accumulated by unheard-of
scrapings and pinchings anfl. self-denials during his long
minority. The chateau of Slogh-na-Dyack had been erected at
the cost of a millionaii-e Glasgow manufacturer, who had made
jiis money out of knife-powder and scoiiring-paper, and who,
when he had built for himself this lordly dwelling-house, had the
mortification of discovering that neither his wife nor children
would consent to abide there. The heather-clad mountain, the
blue water, the wide bosom of Loch Fyne stretching away in the
distance, the wild denizens of that mountain region, the flutter
of whose strong wings gladdened the heart of the sportsman,
might be all very well ; and to three cr four weeks at Rothesay
or Colintrave in the bathing season the lady and her daughters
had no objection; but a fixed residence, six months out of the
twelve, on that lonely shore, they steadfastly refused to endure. So
the scouring-paper and knife-powder manufacturer, to whom the
cost of a Norman castle more or less was a mere bagatelle, gave hia
Bgent orders to dispose of the chateau at the earliest opportunity,
and resigned himself to the sacrifice involved in such a sale. The
house and its appurtenances had cost him five-and-twenty thou-
sand, the land five. He sold the whole to Lord Paulyn — after
prolonged hagghng, in which at last the Glasgow manufacturer
showed himself unequal to the English nobleman — for seventeen
thousand, and went home, after signing the contract, to his
•mansion by the West Park, rejoiced to be rid of his useless toy.
Lord Paulyn had been chiefly attracted to the place by its
peculiar capacities for the abode of a yachting man. Slogh-na-
Dyack stood on the edge of a bay, where there was anchorage
for lialfa-dozen yachts of the largest calibre; while on one side
of the mansion there was a narrow inlet to a secondary harbour,
a bay within a bay, a little basin hollowed out of the hills,
where, when tempests were raging, the frailest bark might ride
Bccure, so perfect was the shelter, so lofty the natural screen that
fenced it from the witids. It was a harbour for fairies, a calm
lakelet in which, on moonlit nights, one would have scarcely
been surprised to find Titania and her company sporting with
the silvern spray.
Hither Reginald Paulyn brought his wife after they had been
married about two years and a half It was her fir-st visit, ex-
cept for a flying glimpse of those mountain slopes from her hus-
band's yacht, to Scotland — Ida land, her first lover's native land.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 2G7
The thought thrilled her even now, when the remembrance of the
days in which he had loved her was like the memory of a dream.
She had been married two years and a half; years in which
she had drained the cup of worldly pleasure, and of womanly
sorrow also, to the very lees. She had run riot in fashionable
extravagances ; given some of the most popular parties in
London, in the house with the many balconies ; won for herself
the brilliant distinction that attends social success ; queened i\
over all compeers by the insolence of her beauty, the dash and
sparkle of her manner. For a little while — so long as the
glamour lasted, and selfishness was subjugated by the intoxica-
tion of novelty — she had ruled her husband; then had come
disputes, in which she had been for the chief part triumphant ;
then later disputes, in which his dogged strength of will had
conquered; then coldness, severance, estrangement, each tug-
ging at the chain, eager to go his or her own way. But before
the world — that world for which Elizabeth had chosen to live —
Lord and Lady Paulyn appeared still a very happy young
couple, a delightful example of that most delightful fact in
natural history — a love match.
Their quarrels at the worst, and they had been exceedingly
bitter, had hardly been about the most serious things upon
which men and women could disagree. Money matters, my
lady's extravagance, had been the chief disturbing influence.
The breast of neither husband nor wife had been troubled with
the pangs of jealousy. Elizabeth's conduct as a matron was
irreproachable. In the very vortex of fashionable frivolity no
transient breath of suspicion had ever tarnished the brightness
of her name. The Yiscount, in his unquestionable liberty, had
ample room and verge enough for any sin against his marriage
vow were he inclined to be a sinner, but as yet Elizabeth had
never stooped to suspect. Their estrangement therefore had
not its root in those soul-consuming jealousies which sunder
some, unions. Their disputes were of a more sordid nature, the
wranglings of two worldly-minded beings bent on their own
selfish pleasures.
Eighteen months after their marriage there came the one real
affliction of Elizabeth's womanhood. A son had been, born to
her, fair as the first offspring of youth and beauty, a noble soul
— or so it seemed to her — looking out of those clear childish
eyes, a child who had the inspired seraphic look of the holy
Babe in a picture by Raffaelle, and whose budding nature gave
promise of a glorious manhood. He was only a few months
old — a few months which made up the one pure and perfect
episode in Elizabeth's life — when he was taken away from her,
not lost without bitterest struggles, vainest fondest hopes,
deepest deapair. For a little while after his death the mother'i
2C8 Strangers and Pilgrims.
liife also tung in the balance, reason tottered, dai-kness and
honor shut out the light. Dragged through this tangle of
mind and body, no one seeming to know very clearly which waa
out of joint, by physic which seemed to hinder or nature which
finally healed, the bereaved mother went back to the world, and
tried to strangle grief in the endless coil of pleasure ; worked
harder than a horse at a mill, and smiled sometimes with a
heart that ached to agony; had brief flashes of excitement that
seemed like happiness ; defied memory ; tried to extinguish
regret for the tender being she had loved in a more exclusiv i
devotion to self; grew day by day harder and more worldly ;
lost even the power to compassionate the distress of others, say-
ing to herself in a rebellious spirit, " Is there any sorrow like
unto my sorrow ? "
To Lord Paulyn the loss of his first-born had been a blow,
but not an exceeding heavy one. He had considered the baby
a fine little fellow, had caressed him, and tossed him in the air
occasionally, at somewhat remote intervals, after the approved
fashion of fathers, while smirking nurses marvelled at his lord-
ship's condescension ; but he was not broken down by the loss
of him. He was a young man, and was not in a desperate
hurry for an heir. He had something of that feeling which
monarchs have been said to entertain upon the subject of theii
eldest sons, an inclination to regard the heir-apparent as a
memento mori.
" By Jove, you know, it isn't the liveliest thing to look for-
ward to," he had said to his friends when arguing upon the
subject in the abstract; "a young fellow who'll go and dip
himself up to the hilt with a pack of money-lenders, and borrow
on post-obits, and play old gooseberry with his father's estate
by the time he is twenty-one, and perhaps make a finish by
marrying a ballet-girl before he's twenty-two."
It was after a season of surpassing brilliancy, an unbroken
round of gaieties, involving the expenditure of so much money
that Lord Paulyn groaned and gnashed his teeth when the
butler brought in the midsummer bills — a season which had
ended in the most serious quarrel Elizabeth and her husband
had ever had — that the Viscount brought his wife _ to this
Norman chateau, not in love but in anger, intending this
banishment to the coast of Argyle as a means of bringing the
lady to a due sense of her iniquities and a meek submission to
his will.
" She'll find it rather difficult to get rid of money there,'' he
eaid to himself, with a sardonic grin, " and I shall take care to
fill the house with visitors of ray own choosing. There'll be
Hilda, too, to look after my interest. Yes, I think I shall have
the upper hand at Slofh-na-Dyack."
Strangers and Pilgrinis. 269
This was another change which the last year had brought to
pass. Just at the end of the London season — happening so
opportunely after the last ball at Buckingham Palace, as
Madame Passementerie, the French milliner, ventured to
remark to Lady Paulyn's maid, Gimp — the noble house of
Paulyn had been thrown into mourning by the demise of the
dowager.
" The noble lady had led a life of extreme seclusion through-
out a prolonged widowhood," said the obituary notice in a
fashionable journal ; " thus offering the most touching tribute
which affection can pay to those it has cherished while on
earth, and still fondly mourns when transferred to a higher
sphere. Honoured and beloved alike by equals and dependants,
Bhe was the centre and source of all good to those who came
within her peaceful circle, and she was followed to her last
resting-place in the family vault in old Ashcombe church by a
train of friends, tenants, and retainers, in which long procession
of mourners there was not one who did not lament the loss of a
valued friend or an honoured benefactress." The notice had
been written for another patrician widow, but served very well
for Lady Paulyn, about whom the editors of newspapers knew
little or nothing. _ She had lived a retired life in the depths of
the country, and it was argued that she must of necessity have
been benevolent and beloved.
Her death, at the age of seventy-four, had been occasioned by
an accident. Sitting up one night in her dressing-room after
the household had retired, poring over her agent's last accounts,
she had set fire to her cap, an elaborate construction of blonde
and ribbons, and had been a good deal burnt about the head
and face before Hilda, who slept in an adjacent room, and was
promptly awakened by her screams, could rush to her rescue.
Her constitution, vigorous to the last, held out for a little
while against grim death, but the shock proved too much for
the aged frame, whose sap and muscle had been wasted by the
asceticism of economy. The dowager died a few hours after
telegrams and express trains had brought her son to her bed-
side.
As she had only consented to be just barely civil to Elizabeth in
their unfrequent intercourse, it was not to be supposed that hei
departure from this world could be a profound affliction to the
reigning Viscountess. She was sorry that her mother-in-law's
death should have been a painful one, and perhaps that was
all.
" What a pity old people can't die like that person in Mrs.
Thrak's Three Warnings!" she said afterwards. " Death ought
to come quietly to fetch them, without any unnecessary
Buffering ; only a natural surprise and annoyance at being taeen
5
270 Strangen and Filgrhns.
away against one's will, like a cHld that is fetclied home from a
nursery ball."
The Viscount contemplated his bereavement chiefly from a
business-like point of view.
"I am afniicl the Devonshire estates will go to pot now my
poor mother's gone," he said dolefully. " I shall never get any
one to screw the tenants as she did. That agent fellow, Lawson,
was only a cipher. It was the old woman who really did the
work, and kept them up to collar. I shall feel the difference
now she's gone, poor old soul!"
" I suppose Miss Disney will go into lodgings at Torquay or
somewhere, and live upon her private means," said Elizabeth,
hardly looking up from the pages of a new novel she was skim-
ming, seated luxuriously in one of the Park-lane balconies, in a
very bower of summer blossoms, kept in perennial bloom by the
minions of the nurseryman.
This sounded as if she had forgotten a certain conversation in
a Devonshire lane one dusky March evening.
" I thought I told you that Hilda had no means," answered
the Viscount rather gloomily. " She must come to Hve with
ns, of course."
•' "What, in our house, where we live ! Won't that be rather
like that strange person who lives over somewhere beyond the
Rocky Mountains, and has ever so many wives ? I'm sure, if
Miss Disney is to live with us, I shall feel myself a number two."
" I wish you wouldn't talk such confounded nonsense, Eliza-
beth. I suppose you pick up that sort of thing from your
friends, who all seem to talk the same jargon, turning up their
noses at everybody in creation."
" No, but seriously, can't Miss Disney go on living at Ash-
combe? I should think she ought to be able to screw the
tenants ; she must have learnt your poor mother's ways."
" Miss Disney will have a home in my house wherever it is.
And I think you ought to be uncommonly glad to get hold of a
sensible young woman for a companion. As to my keeping up
a. separate establishment at Ashcombe for one person's accom-
modation, that's too preposterous an idea to be entertained for a
moment. I shall try and let the place as it stands. You'U be
thankful enough for her society, I daresay, at Slogh-na-Dyack."
" I shall have the hills and the sea," said Elizabeth ; " they
■will be better company for me than Miss Disney."
She had seen the chateau in the course of a yachting expedi-
tion in the autumn of last year, when the Viscount, sorely
alarmed by the nature of the illness that had followed the loss
of her boy, had taken her to roam the blue waters in quest of
health and spirits. Health and spirits had come, in some measure
— health that was fitful, spirits that were apt to be forced and
Strangers and Pilgrims. 271
spurious, a laugli that had a false ring in it, mirtli •wliic'h soundftd
sweet enough at one time, but jangled, out of tune, and harsh
at another.
So the Viscount wrote to inform Hilda Disney that hence-
forth her life was to be spent in his household — wrote as briefly
and unceremoniously as he might have written to a housemaid ^
— and a week later Miss Disney came to Park-lane, covered with %
crape, pale, placid, impenetrable. Elizabeth made a great effort
over herself in order to receive this new-comer with some faint
show of kindness.
"I hope you two mean to get on well together," said the
Viscount, in a little speech that sounded like a command.
"I have no doubt we shall get on remarkably well — if we
don't interfere with each other," answered Elizabeth. " I
believe that is the secret of a harmonious household."
This was an intimation designed to give Miss Disney a correct
idea of her position, a hint which that young lady fully com-
prehended.
She accepted this position with a certain quiet grace which
might have won the heart of any one who had a heart to be won.
Elizabeth's had been given away twice over, once to Malcolm
Forde, once to her lost baby. Her small stock of love had been
spent on these two. There was no room in her cold weary heart
for anything but the ashes of that old fire — certainly no admis-
sion for Hilda Disney. But as at this stage of affairs that
young person appeared content to be a cipher in her new home,
Elizabeth's languid indifference was not kindled into active
dislike. She tolerated the intruder, but at the same time
avoided her. This was the position of affairs when Lord
Paulyn and a few chosen friends began Hfe and grouse-shooting
on the moors ai-ound Slogh-na-Dyack.
To Elizabeth's jaded spirits, worn out by the small excite-
ments of society, the change was at first a welcome one. It
was pleasant uo nnd herself mistress of a new domain, which
differed widely from her other dominions. Very pleasant to be
remote from the region of racehorses and trainers, and trial
gallops and experimental exercise of rival two-year olds, in thft
'jewy dawn of autumnal mornings ; trials in which, out of mere
politeness, she had been obliged sometimes to affect an interest.
The novelty of the Norman castle and its surroundings de-
lighted her ; nor was she discouraged by its seclusion, or par-
ticularly afflicted by the usurpation of the limited number of
epare bedrooms by her husband's sporting cronies, whereby she
was deprived of the society of half-a-dozen or so of her own
dearest friends, whose reception she had planned as one of the
amusements of her Scottish home. The architect whose
InedifBval mind had designed Slogh-'*"-Dyack had refused to
272 Strangers and Pilgrims,
fritter away iiis space upon spais bedrooms, reserving his re«
sources for sugar-loaf turrets, donjons, keeps, gothic balconies,
perforated battlements, picture-galleries, a banqoeting-ball with
a groined roof and a musicians' gallery, a tennis-court, and a
cloistered walk under the drawing-room floor.
" You will have to build me a new wing next year, Reginald,"
Jjady Paulyn observed, after expressing her general approval of
the chateau. " It is all very well for us to exist in this benighted
manner — for I don't count your shooting people as visitors — for
once in a way, but we couldn't possibly exist here another yeat
without a dozen or so more rooms."
" Couldn't we ? " said the Viscount, putting on his sullen air,
which meant war to the knife. " I chose Slogh-na-Dyack
just because it was a little out of the beaten track — not much
though, for people go to Oban nowadays just as they used to
go to Brighton— and because it has precious little accommoda-
tion for your cackling brood of dear friends, no stowage for
French waiting-maids and such rubbish — a place where I could
feel myself master, and where I might expect you would even
take the trouble to devote a Uttle time to my society."
EUzabeth yawned.
" To hear you talk about shooting innocent birds, and of what
your horses are going to do next year, and what they ought to
nave done, but did not do, this year. What a pity there should
be such a sameness in domestic conversation ! "
" I suppose you would like it better if I could talk about con-
verting the heathen," snarled the Yiscount. It was not the
first time he had tried to sting his wife with an allusion to the
lover who jilted her.
" I should like it better if you had a mind wide enough to be
interested in human beings, instead of in dogs and horses," she
answered, flashing out at him passionately.
Miss Disney was a mute witness of this little scene, but a
msre cipher, whose presence had no restraining influence.
" I shall not think of coming here next year unless there are
some more rooms built," Elizabeth remarked decisively, after a
little more skirmishing.
" We needn't talk about coming next year until we have quite
made up our minds to go away. This place has a famous
winter climate," said the Viscount, looking into a huge sealskia
case, as if in search of some rare species of cigar, the selection
whereof was a work of time. He had a knack of looking down
when he said disagreeable things.
" I could not endure the place for more than two months,"
replied his wife, " and I have made engagements for December."
" That's a pity ; for I have invited some feUowa here for
Christmas."
strangers and Pilgrims. 273
" I am sure you are at liberty to entei'tain them — with Miss
Disney's assistance. I shall resign all my privileges as chate-
laine at the end of November."
" We'll see about that," said Lord Paulyn darlcly. But as he
had often uttered this mystic threat, and nothing had ever come
of it, except that Elizabeth had always had her own way, in
spite of him, the lady was not appalled by his dark speech.
It is not to be supposed that Lady Paulyn was always
uncivil to her husband, that she flouted him in season and out
of season. She had her intervals of sunshine and sweetness ;
smiled upon him as she did upon society, and with almost
as empty a smile; bewitched him even with something of the
old witchery ; for, despite his numerous aggi'avations, he still
admired her, and still fondly beUeved her the handsomest
woman in Europe.
This was the state of affairs when Hilda Disney first entered
their household ; but their domestic Ufe underwent a gradual
change after her coming. It was as if by some subtle influence she
widened the gulf between them, without design, without malice,
but only by her presence. If she had been a statue, she could
scarcely have seemed more innocent of evil intention, more un-
conscious of the harm she did ; yet she parted them irrevocably.
She offended the wife by no demonstrative affection for
the husband; yet, by an unobtrusive concern for his comfort,
a perpetual soHcitude, an unsleeping care of his well-being,
shown in the veriest trifles, but shown almost hourly, she made
his wife's indifference a thousand times more obvious than
it had ever been before. By her interest in his conversation, by
her appreciation of his vapid jokes, her acute perception of the
smallest matters in which his prosperity or success was involved,
she reminded him of his wife's utter apathy about all these
things. One of the grievances of his married life was the fact that
he had never been able to interest EUzabeth in the details of his
racing stud, those narrow chances and hairbreadth failures
which make or mar the fortunes of the year. She liked Epsom
and Ascot and Newmarket and Goodwood and Doncaster
and York well enough as scenes of gaiety and excitement —
festivals in which her beauty made her a kind of queen. She
could even admire a winmng horse as a grand and famous
creature ; but she had not a mathematical brain, and could not
by any means comprehend that intricate process of calculation
by which great results are sometimes arrived at in the racing
world, and by which the Napoleons of the turf accumulate
their colossal fortunes.
In this she was the very reverse of Hilda, whose arithmetical
powers had been trained to extreme acnteness in the service of
the late dowager, and who, without any natural fondness
274 Strangers and Pilgrimg.
for horses, could enter into all the complications of a betting-
book ; could even, on some rare occasion, give a wrinkle to the
Viscount himself, as that gentleman remarked with supreme
astonishment.
" Upon ray word, you know, Hilda, you're the downiest bird
— I beg your pardon, the cleverest woman I ever met with. If
mv wife had ocly your brains "
" With her own beauty ! That would be too much. 'Soi.
that my Irams are anything to boast of, but I have been
trained in a rather severe school."
" I should think yoii have indeed ; my mother was an out-and-
outer. I don't believe there was ever such a screw, you know,
before her time, or ever will be after it. There ought to be
somethir.g of the kind put up in Ashcombe church, by Jove.
It would look well in Latin — that quotation of Burke's, for
instance : Magnutn vectigal est famimonia. But you have got
a wider way of looking at this than my mother. And as
for looks, if you're not as handsome as Elizabeth, who really is
the finest woman in Europe, you've no reason to complain
of your share of good looks ; and you know there was a day
when I used to say a good deal more than that."
A faint colour came into Hilda's fair face.
" We were children then," she said.
" 0, hang it ; I was at Oxford, and in the University eight.
There wasn't much of the child about me, Hilda."
"Except in a childish want of judgment — not knowing your
own mind, in short," she answered, looking down at a flimsy
printed catalogue of racehorses which they had been studying
together when this conversation began.
" 0, well, we settled all that ever so long ago. Let bygones
be bygones, Hilda."
" Was it I who recalled the past ? "
" I'm sure it wasn't I," answered Lord Paulyn hastily, " and
J don't want to recall it. I don't forget what a temper you had
in those days, Hilda. Children indeed ! You were a child
who knew how to call a fellow over the coals like anything,
['ve a very keen recollection of some of our shindies. However,
all that was so long ago, and I'm an old married man now; so
I thought we should be able to get on very well together. And
I must say you're wonderfully improved; ten years' more
grinding in my mother's mill has made a diflfcrence, hasn't it?"
" I hope I have conquered my evil tempers, and everything
else that was foolish in me," said Hilda meekly.
That little demure speech of Miss Disney's set the Viscount
thinking. Ten years ago there had been certain love-passagea
between himself and his cousin — a pretty little pastoral
flirtation, which filled the intervals of his field sports plcasantlf
Strangers and Pilgrims. 275
«nougli — but which, begun for the amusement of long dull
eutumnal afternoons in a dreary old house, ended somewhat
ceriously. The girl had been serious from the beginning. Her
cousin, Eeginald, was the only man whose society had ever
brightened the dismalities of her joyless home. He was young,
good-looking, energetic, and possessed that superfluity of
physical strength which gives a kind of dash and swagger
to a man's manner of doing things— a dash and swagger
that, in the eyes of inexperienced girlhood, pass for couraga
and chivalry. He rode well, shot superbly, talked the last
Oxonian slang, the novelty of which language w«s agreeable
after the dowager's dull grumblings and perpetual prosingupon
small worries. In a word, he was the only thing Hilda Disney
had to love, and she loved him, hiding more intensity than he
could have suspected under her placid demeanour.
For a short time— a long vacation and a Christmas visit
— he reciprocated her passion. The fair still face seemed
to him the perfection of patrician beauty — a wonderful rehef
after certain sirens of the barmaid order with whose lighter eon-
verse he was wont to soften the asperities of classic learning.
He had vague thoughts of a future in which Hilda should be
his wife ; and was severely rated by his widowed parent upon
the folly of his course. Marry Hilda, indeed, without a
sixpence, or a rag to her back that was not supplied by charity.
He had better pick up a beggar girl in the street at once,
and then his next-of-kin would, at least, have the satisfaction of
taking out a statute of lunacy on his behalf.
But the passion passed — as passions were apt to pass with
the Viscount. A barmaid flirtation — more in earnest than pre-
vious barmaid flirtations — blotted out the milder charms of his
cousin. When he came to Ashcombe in the next long vacation,
he thought her looking pale and faded. Nor was her temper
improved. She perceived his indiff"erence, and taxed him with
it. Then came bitter litt<b speeches, sudden bursts of tears,
angry rushes from the room, hangings of doors, and all the
varieties of squabbling that compose lovers' quarrels; until at
last, with a praiseworthy candour, the Viscount confessed that
he had for some time past ceased to care for his cousin, except
in the most cousinly way.
" If ever you're in want of a friend, you know, Hilda, you can
eome to me; and wherever I Uve, by and by, when my mother
gots off the hooks— my house will be your home, if you haven't
one of your own."
She acknowledged this offer with some dignity, but with a
very white face and Hps that quivered faintly in spite of her
firmness, and expressed the hope that she might never intrude
upon hia hospitality.
276 Strangers and Pilgrims.
" Well, I hope you'll make a good match, Hilda," he said,
rather awkwardly, " and then, of course, you'll be independent
of me and mine ; but I shall never forget you, and how fond I
was of you, and all that. O, by the way, you may as well give
me back the letters I wrote you from Oxford. One never knows
when that sort of rubbish may fall into dangerous hands, and
make no end of mischief. Hunt 'em all up, will you, Hilda ? and
we'll amuse ourselves with a bonfire this wet morning."
Hilda informed him, after a few moments' hesitation, that she
had made the bonfire already.
" I burnt them one by one as they came, after I had read
them once or twice," she said. " It was safer on account of my
aunt. The surest way of preventing them from falling into
dangerous hands."
" What a deep card you ar^ ! — as deep as Garrick, upon my
word. You're quite sure you buiTit them ?"
" Quite sure. Don't be alarmed, Eeginald. There will be no
action for breach of promise."
" 0, it isn't that, you know. 'No girl with a hap'orth of self-
yespect would go in for that sort of thing ; much less such a
girl as you. Only old letters are the deuce and all for creating
trouble in a man's life. I'm glad you burnt 'em."
Never since these juvenile love-passages, which left a somewhat
unpleasant flavour in Lord Paulyn's mouth — a flavour of remorse,
perhaps — had he liked Hilda so well as he liked her now, in
their quiet life at Slogh-na-Dyack. She was of so much use to
him — so able a counsellor, so ready a confidante. He gave her
a pile of his house-steward's bills to look over, and she charmed
him at once by suggesting that he should, in future, pay ready
money for all household supplies — or make weekly payments, to
be ranked as ready money — and claim a discount of ten percent
n all such accounts.
"No doubt the tradesmen pay your people five per cent
already," she said. " They would willingly pay you ten for the
sake of getting ready money. Your discounts ought to pay
the wages of half your household, instead of going into the
servants' pockets."
By such brilliant flashes of genius did Hilda charm her
cousin. He groaned aloud as he compared this skilled econo-
mist with his wife, whose extravagances still rankled in his mind,
and whose refusal of a settled allowance he had not ceased to
consider an artful stroke of business, whereby she had reserved
to herself the right of unlimited expenditure.
" If ever I let her leave Slogh-na-Dyack, I shall restrict her
to an allowance of five hundred a year," he said to himself.
But there were times when the spirit of anger against his wife
burnt so fiercely within him, that he had serious thoughts of
strangers and Filjrims. 277
making tier spend the rest of her life in Arfryleshire, with only
Buch change of scene as his yacht might atford her — a cruise
in the iSIediterranean now and then, or a ran to Madeira or
St. Michael's.
" It'll snit me well enough for six months of the year. I can
always run up from Glasgow when there are any races on,"
reflected Lord Paulyn, who, after the manner of racing men,
thought nothing of spending his night in railway carriages,
speeding at express rate over the face of the country.
Elizabeth perceived the harmony that reigned between her
husband and his cousin; perceived that he no longer troubled
himself with the futile endeavour to impart his perplexities to
her non-mathematicai brain. She saw all this, and without
being absolutely jealous — was jealousy possible where love was
absent? — was keenly stung by this preference. She had been
accustomed to think of her husband as her slave— a refractory
slave sometimes — but never able to put off his bondage; a
creature to be made glad by her smile; to be subdued into
submission by her frown. She had felt the sense of her power
over him all the more keenly because in the society of other
women he was, for the most part, morose or indifferent —
wrapped up in his own thoughts about his ovro. amusements or
speculations — slow to comply with the exigencies of poUte life ;
a man who, if he had not been the rich Lord Paulyn, might
have been called a boor. To her own chosen friends he had been
habitually uncivil— beauty, except her own, seemed to have no
charm for him ; wit and vivacity only bored him. All the graces
of feminine costume were a dead letter.
" I think she wore cherry colour, with blue sleeves," he
answered once, when his wife questioned him upon a fashionable
toilette; "or was it Lord Zetland's colours, white and red?
Upon my soul I don't know which."
She beheld him now for the first time interested in the society
of another woman, and beheld with wonder that woman's capa-
city for understanding him and sympathising with him. Morti-
fied by this discovery, she avenged herself at first by reducing
the "Viscount's sporting friends to a state of abject slavery; but
speedily wearying of this shallow amusement, grew sullen, shut
herself up in her own rooms — the best in the house, occupying
the whole front of the second story, and sweeping the waters of
the strait, and the purple hills on the opposite side — read,
sketched, and brooded; or roamed alone upon the mountain-
side, and thought of her dead-and-gone youth, and the lover she
had loved and lost. His image haunted her in this lonely
region — in this tranquil, empty life — more than _ it had ever
daunted her since she knelt down upon her bridal eve and
prayed to God for strength to forget him. She was in hia
278 Strangers and Pilgrims.
native country for the first time in her life, and tliat she should
think of him seemed only a natural association of ideas. Noi
was this all ; she felt herself injured by her husband's evident
liking for his cousin's society, and so opened the doors of her
heart to fatal memories ; Hved again as in a dream, her brief
summertide of joy and sorrow ; gave up her thoughts to sad
musings u])on that foolish past. Sometimes she varied the
burden of that sorrow by thinking of her dead baby — alas ! ho\^
often in her dreams had she felt those little arms clasped about
her neck, those sweet soft breathings on her cheek, and red lips
like opening fiowers pressed warm against her own ! She thought
of what that romantic home might have been to her, still blessed
with her boy ; fancied the sunny noontide on the grassy slope
above the blue water, or the terrace sheltered from northern
winds by a grove of pinasters ; or in the flower-garden behind
the house, a fertile hollow at the foot of the mountain ; wander-
ing on the mountain top with her darling in her arms, the sum-
mer air noisy with loud humming of bees, and the sweet west
wind blowing round them. Not for her these tender pleasures,
only loneliness and regret ; the bitter memory of things that
had once been sweet.
Pride stifled all expression of anger at her husband's defection.
Not by word or look did she betray her displeasure at the posi-
tion which Hilda Disney was fast assuming in the household.
On the contrary, she sufi'ered the reins to slip from her hands aa
if weary of the burden of government. Her old languor and
dislike of exertion, except in pursuit of some novel pleasure, re-
turned to her. Life at Slogh-na-Dyack was vci-y much like Ufe
at Hawleigh Vicarage ; there was only a d'iff'erence of detail.
Trained serving-men in place of a parlour-maid ; a certain state
and splendour in all the machinery of the household. The even-
ings in the long drawing-room, with its media3val oak furniture,
modern French tapestries, and Brummagem armoury, all mada
on purpose for the chateau at the cost of the Glasgow knife-
powder maker, were just as dull as the evenings in the old days,
when she had yawned over a novel in the society of her three
sisters. Lord Paulyn and his guests congregated in the smoking-
room, or paced the wide stone hall, a spacious vaulted chamber
always odorous with tobacco, or strolled on the terrace, staring
at the moonlit water, and talking of their day's work among the
birds. They were men who walked thirty miles or so between
breakfast and dinner, and who, after devoting a couple of hours
o their evening gorge, retired within themselves like boa-con-
^rictors, and were in no manner dependent upon feminine
Jociety. So when Elizabeth, weary of their vapid comphments,
and despising the petty triumph afforded by the subjugation of
such small deer, ceased to be particularly civil to then. , they
Strangers and Pilgrhnt. Q79
deserted tbe drawing-room almost entirely, and solaced tliem«
selves witli smoke and billiards, or placid slumbers, stretched at
ease upon morocco-covered divans, lulled by the ripple of the
wavelets that lapped against the beach.
Once in ten days or so Lord Paulyn sped southward for a
day's racing, generally accompanied by a chosen friend, and re-
turned, depressed or elated as the case might be, to talk over all
liis proceedings — his triumphs or his failures — with his cousin
Hilda. These confabulations, which took place openly enough
in some snug corner of the drawing-room, wounded Elizabeth to
the quick. She began to think that all those vapid men saw
the slight thus put upon her, and discussed it in their smoking-
room conclaves. She began to fancy that her very servants
were losing some touch of their old reverence ; that her maid had
a compassionate air.
" Shall I live to be pitied P " she asked herself, remembering
that she had sold herself to the bondage of a loveless marriage
for the sake of being envied.
One day she determined upon sending for Blanche, in order
to bring some new force to bear upon Miss Disney ; but upon
the next day altered her mind. She would not endure that her
Bister — even her best-loved, most-trusted sister — should see that
there was an influence in her husband's house stronger than her
own.
" Blanche woi;ld go on so," she said to herself, " and I feel too
weak and tired to bear fuss of any kind. And after all what
dues it matter if my husband has found somebody to be inte-
rested in his racing talk ? It never interested me ; only I be-
lieve that Hilda's sympathy is all put on. No woman could be
interested in handicapping and Chester Cups for ever and ever.
So Lady Paulyn made no struggle to maintain her authority.
She allowed Hilda to drive her pony-carriage, and make friends
with the few families scattered in pretty white villas here anc" .
there upon the coast. She left to Hilda the trouble of dispens-
ing tea and coffee at the eight-o'clock breakfast ; the gentlemen
were early at Slogh-na-Dyack, and over the hills and far away
before ten. She suffered Hilda to receive the sportsmen when
they came straggling up from the boat, with the dogs at their
heels, and she rarely appeared herself in the public rooms of the
chateau till a quarter of an hour before the eight-o'clock dinner.
She had the long days to herself, and roamed alone where she
would, making her companions of the hills and the blue sea.
Sometimes, when she looked from the hill-tops towards the
Mull of Cantyre, her soul yearned to escape by that rock-bound
point, to sail away to the South-Sea isles, and toil, for God'a
sake, by the side of the man she loved. 0, how easy, hovf
Bweet, how smooth it s^'^^ied to her now, that better life whici
280 Strangers and Pilgrims.
she had cast away ! " How easy it would have been for me to
do good for his sake," she said ; "to be srhooled by him, to be-
tome anything that he could make me — a saint almost — by his
pure influence!"
Then from that distant seaward opening, from that dream-like
gaze towards an unknown world far away, her tired eyes would
sink downward to the towers and pinnacles of Slogh-na-Dyack,
like a fair/ palace dimly seen through the misty atmosphere.
Was it not verily the fairy palace of her dreams, symbol of the
Cinderella's triumph she had fancied for herself in her childish
visions?
"I wonder whether Cinderella was happy," she said to herself,
" or if she ever wished herself back among the cinders, and hated
her fairy godmother for having made her a i^rincess. She found
rich husbands for her sisters at any rate, and that is "more than
I have done. I have been no use in the world to any one but
myself."
On quiet Sundays, and the Sabbath at Slogh-na-Dyack was
very quiet, the sound of the bells ringing through the soft
summer air brought back the thought of Hawleigh and the
grave old church, its massive clustered columns and lofty arches,
shadowy aisles sonorous with the fresh young voices of the choir,
and sometimes with his voice alone, reading the lessons of the
day, with a tender earnestness that gave familiar words a new
meaning. Here in the little Episcopalian chapel the sacred rites
were sorely stinted; no white-robed choristers trooping in
through the vestry-door, no decorated altar-cloths or floral
festivals, but the same dull round from year's end to year's end ;
a harmonium grumbling an accompaniment of common chords
to the dullest selection of hymns extant, and one elderly incum-
bent prosing his feeble Httle sermons, and doing his best to
maintain the dignity of his Church single-handed.
Elizabeth and Miss Disney were regular in their attendance
at this small temple, which was an unpretentious edifice of
corrugated iron, like a gigantic Dutch oven, until at last, after
about half-a-dozen Sundays, Lady Paulyn wearied of the elderly
incumbent.
" There's another Episcopalian chapel at Dunallen," she said ;
"areal stone pretty little gothic building, which can hardly be
so intolerably hot as this oven. I shall take the pony-carriage
this afternoon and go over there."
She did not invite Miss Disney to join her in this expedition ;
BO that young lady, who made a point of holding herself aloof
from all intercourse to which she was not specially invited, and
who had certainly received no inducement to abandon this re-
serve, went her own ways to the little iron church in the island,
while Lady Paulyn drove to Dunallen. It was a calm sunless
Strangers and Pilgrims. 281
afternoon, with an atmosj^liere that seems made on purpose for
Sundays — a day on which the birds foi-get to sinjT, and the
rabbits lie asleep in their holes. The Kyles of Bute looked smooth
as an Italian lake, but there was no Italian sky above them,
only the uniform gray of Scottish heavens, unbroken save by
the white mist-wreaths on the hill-tops.
The Viscount and his friends, after having spent all the law-
ful days of the week in perambulating the moors, lunching on
the mountain-top upon savoury stews cooked in a travelling
kitchener, washed down with Glenlivat, were not sorry for the
day of rest, which they devoted to lying full-length on the
divans in the smoking-room, or sauntering in the garden and
hot-houses, talking Newmarket and Tattersall's. Going to
church was not among their accomplishments.
Dunallen was a hamlet among the hills, round which sundry
white-stone villas had scattered themselves, a hamlet on a
winding hill-side road looking downward across an undulating
tract of fertile meadow and cornfield to the blue bosom of the
loch. Lady Paulyn had marked the spot, and the little gothic
Episcopalian church, lately erected at the cost of a landowner
in the neighbourhood, in the course of her lonely rambles. The
village was within thi-ee miles of Slogh-na-Dyack, and one of
her favourite walks was in the moorland above it.
The bells were ringing with a sweet solemn sound in the still
air, as the little carriage drove round the curve of the hill, and
up to the pretty gothic doorway of Dunallen chapel. The
Presbyterian church stood a few paces off, a gaunt edifice of
fifty years ago, grim and uncompromising; as who should say.
Here you will get only plain substantial fare, and no foreign
kickshaws ; something to bite at, in the way of theology. Be-
hind the Episcopalian chapel, with its dainty, dandified air,
there rose a little grove of firs upon the green slope of the hill,
crowning the gothic pinnacles with their dark verdure, and in
front of the fir-grove, a few yards from the chapel, stood a tiny
manse, a miniature Tudor villa, in which a young newly- wedded
incumbent might have found life very picturesque and pleasant,
but in which there would have hardly been breathing room tor
a pastor with a large family.
Lady Paulyn was one of the first to enter the small church,
and was speedily conducted to a comfortable seat by an obse-
quious pew-opener, who had marked the arrival of the carriage.
The light within was softened by painted windows from Munich;
the open seats were of dark oak; the small temjjle had the
look of a labour of love.
The service was conducted in the usual unomamental style;
a Httle stout man with sandy whiskers read prayers at a
hand gallop to a sparse congregation, who afterwards joined
2S2 Strangers and Pilgrims.
tlieir vinegar voices in a shrill hymn, not one of those Hymns
Ancient and Modem, -which Elizabeth loved so well, but a dry-
as-dust composition, which would never have given wings to
any heavenward-soaring soul. Elizabeth thought these minis-
trations but a small improvement on the services of the corru-
gated iron chapel at Slogh-na-Dyack. She had fallen into a
drowsy absent-minded condition by the time the shrill singiiifj
was finished, and did not take the trouble to look np to see the
little stout man trot up the I'ulpit-stairs.
She sat looking down at the loosely-clasped hands in her lap,
•when another voice, without any preliminary prayer, gave out
the text ; and lifting her eyes with a wild stare, in which rap-
ture and surprise were strangely blended, saw a tall figure in a
surplice in the place where the httle man might have stood — the
figure of Malcolm Forde.
No cry broke from her lips, though her heart beat as it had
never beaten before. She sat dumbly looking at him, white as
death, with fixed dilated eyes. The dead newly risen from the
grave could not have moved her more deeply. Great Heaven,
how she loved him! It seemed to her as if in that moment
only she realised the overwhelmiiig force of her love. A new
world, a new life, were contained in his presence. To see him
there, only to see and hear him — whatsoever gulf yawned be-
tween them — was new life to her ; renovated youth, hope, joy,
enthusiasm, aspiration for higher things.
" O God, if 1 can only hear his voice every Sunday," she
thought, " I will worship him, and live for him, and be
good and pure for his sake, and never strive to lessen the dis-
tance that divides us. AVhat more joy can I desire than to
know that he lives, and is well and happy, and breathes the
same air I breathe, and looks out across the same sea, and is
near me unawares. 0, thank God for the chance that brought
me to Slogh-na-Dyack ! Thank God for my bonnie Scottish
home!"
His sermon to-day was like his old sermons, full of life and
fire and quiet force and supreme tenderness, the sermon of a
man speaking to a cherished flock out of a heart overflowing
with love. Yet she fancied that his tones had lost somethinif
in mere physical power; that deep-toned voice was weaker than
of old. Once he stopped, exhausted, at the close of a sentence
with an appearance of fatigue that she had never seen in hiiu
at Hawleigh, and his face looked very pale in the cold light
from a northern window.
The thought of this change touched her heart with a sud-
den sense of fear. That spii-itual countenance turned to the
northern light, those deep hollow eyes, all the lines of the face
more 8harY)ly chiselled than of old, something that was not
Strangers and Pilgrims. 283
Bge, but rather an indication of hard wear and tear that stood
in the place of age^these were the tokens of his late labours,
the seal that his mission had set upon him.
" If he should die," she said to herself, ajopalled; " whUe I,
who seem made of some hard common clay, too tough to be
broken by sorrow, go on living."
The sermon was not a long one. There was no hymn after-
wards, only the clink-clink of shillings and sixpences into the
bowl, which a grim-looking Scotchman carried round the little
church. The service altogether had been of the briefest; and
Donald the groom, who perhaps took his measure from a fami-
liarity with the Presbyterian office, had not arrived with the
pony-carriage when Lady Paulyn came out of the church.
she looked round her with something like terror at finding
herself standing almost alone by the church-door, knowing that
Malcolm Forde was so near; might come through that open
door at any moment, and meet her face to face, for tlie first time
since he had cast her from his heart with cruel deUberate re*
pudiation.
She thought of the morning on which she had gone to his
lodgings in quest of him ; gone with a determination to humble
herself, to ask for his forgiveness and his blessing before he left
her for ever. And behold, that bitter jDarting, that loss of
something which had seemed to her the very life of her life,
had not been for ever. The world which seemed so wide was
narrow enough to bring these two face to face again.
" If I had seen him that morning, and he had forgiven me, I
should never have married Lord Paulyn," she said to herself.
" If he had left me only a few words of kindness or forgive-
ness, I would have been true to his memory all my life ; but his
coldness drove me mad. I had no memory of the past to con-
sole me; I had no hope in the future to sustain me."
Still no sign of Donald and the ponies. The scanty congre-
gation had dispersed; the mountain road was empty. She
stood watching the curve round which the ponies must in due
tijne appear, half dreading, half hoping that Malcolm Forde
might come that way.
She had been waiting about ten minutes or a quaitter of an
hour — a period Avhich seemed almost interminable — when she
heard the shutting of a distant door, and the sound of foot-
steps approaching her. She had gone a little way along the
road, in the opposite direction to the vicarage. The incumbent
and his friend would be likely to return thither when the ser-
vice was ended. She had not flung herself purposely in the
path of her old lover.
She heard the footsteps drawing nearer, and the voices of two
men converf4iig. One, the thin reedy uipe of the incumbent ;
284 Strangers and Pilgrims.
tlie other that deep graver organ, whose every tone she knew so
well.
They had gone a little way past her, when the short stout
gentleman, who had been apprised by the appearance of a stray
sovereign in the alms-basin that some important member of
hi? flock, or perchance some illustrious stranger, had been
among the congregation, turned himself about to behold her,
pirouetting in an airy manner, as if admiring the beauties of
the landscape.
" Lady Paulyn, I declare," he murmured to his companion,
after a brief survey
His companion stared at him for a< moment with a look of
sheer amazement, and stopped short.
" What Lady Paulyn ? Do you mean an old woman, Lord
Paulyn's mother ? "
•• No, a young woman, and a very handsome one. The Dow-
ager Lady Paulyn died a few months ago."
They were walking on again. Malcolm Fordehad not looked
backward. Was it verily Elizabeth, the woman he had loved,
the woman whose image had followed him in his farthest wan-
derings, the shadowy face looking into his, the spirit voice
speaking with him, in spite of his prayer for forgetfulness, in
spite of his manhood and his reason ? In dreams, walking and
eleeping, she had been with him. Thoughts of her had intruded
themselves ujjon his most solemn meditations ; never, even at
his best, had he been free from those olden fetters, the fatal
bondage of earthly love.
And yet he had passed her unawares, upon that mountain
road, and would not for all the world go back to speak to her.
A few yards farther on they met the pony-carringe, the small
cream-coloured ponies with bells upon their harness, the little
shell-shaped carriage with its bearskin and scarlet rug.
Mr. Forde smiled his bitterest smile at the sight of that
dainty equipage. Was it not for pomps and vanities such as
these she had sold herself?
" How does she happen to be hene ? " he asked his com-
panion.
" You know her ! ** exclaimed Mr. Mackenzie, the incumbent,
turning upon him sharply.
" Yes, 1 know her."
" But won't you speak to her P Let us go back. It must
seem so rude to have passed her like that. And you can intro-
iluce me. I should really have liked to coll on her wlien she
first came to Slogh-ua-Dyack, but she would naturally attend
the Episcopalian church down thei'c, I thought, and I hate the
idea of seeming intrusive, Let us go back and speak to her
before she drives off."
Strangers and Pilgrims. 285
"No, Mackenzie. My acquaintance with her began and
ended a long time ago. I will not renew it. You must get
some one else to present you, or call upon her and present your-
Belf."
" "Was she Lady Paulyn when you knew her ? "
" No."
" Quite a nobody, I've been told, before her marriage P " in-
quisitively.
" I don't know your exact definition of a nobody. Her father
was my vicar — a man of old family ; and she was one of the
loveliest girls, or I will say the loveliest, I ever saw."
" No doubt — no doubt ; she's a splendid woman now. But it
was a great match for a country clergyman's daughter. I wish
iny daughters may marry half as well when they grow up.
Their complexions at present have a tendency to run to freckles ;
but I daresay they'll grow out of that."
The pony-carriage Hashed rapidly by at this moment; Eliza-
beth driving, and looking neither to the right nor left.
*' How do they come to be here ? " asked Malcolm.
** What, didn't I tell you yesterday, when I took you for that
long round ? No, by the bye, we did not go near Slogh-na-
Dyack. Lord Paulyn has lately bought a place on the coast
here ; a charming place, which he got a dead bargain. We'll go
over and call to-morrow, if you like."
" Haven't I told you that I don't want to renew my acquain-
tance with Lady Paulyn ? "
" That sounds so ungracious ; your old vicar's daughter too.
However, I suppose you have your own reasons."
" I have. It's best to tell you the plain truth, perhaps ; only
mind it goes no farther, not even to Mrs. Mackenzie. Miss
Luttrell and I were engaged to be married, and she flung me
over for Lord Paulyn. That's the whole story. It's a thing of
the remote past; a folly on both sides, no doubt; since she was
created by nature to adorn the position she now occupies, and
I had other hopes which I was willing to abandon for her sake.
Do not think that I cherish any ill-feeling against her; only —
only it might pain us both to meet."
Mr. Mackenzie held his peace after this, and the tw9 men
made a circuit of the hill-side, and returned to the manse to
dine '>ji a cold roast of beef, as Mrs. Mackenzie called it, and a
salatT, in clerical fashion ; content to consume their viands cold
on the day of rest. But Mr. Mackenzie had a budget of news
for his wife that night when they retired to their *wn chamber,
and dutifully poured into her listening ear the etory of Malcolm
Forde's love-affair.
286 Strangers and Pilgrims.
CHAPTER VI.
" Quel mortel ne sait pas, dans le sein des oragea,
Oii reposer sa tete, a Tabri des naufrages ?
Et moi, jouet des flots, seul avec mes douleurs,
Aucun navire ami ne vient frapper ma vue,
Aucun, sur cette mei* oil ma barque est perdue,
Ne porte mes couleurs."
TmiEE months before the Sunday on which Elizabeth went to
the little Episcopal church among the hills, Malcolm Forde had
come home, a very shadow of his former self, to renew the
strength that he had spent in the fatiguing service of his mis-
sion. Not disheartened or disgusted with his work did he
journey homeward, only intent upon returning to that beloved
labour in a little while, with a frame made vigorous by the cool
breezes o ihis native land, and mental powers that shonld have
gained new force from a brief season of rest. Infinitely had
God blest his endeavours in that distant world, and infinite were
his hopes of future achievement. He had not mistaken his
mission upon this earth ; tlie work prospered under his hand.
He was of that stamp of men who are by nature formed to be
leaders of their fellow-men ; created to convince, to subjugate,
to rule the weaker clay which makes the mass of humanity.
He came home to Scotland in no manner depressed, though
ho felt that his health was shaken ; that he had laboured just a
little longer than prudential considerations would have war-
ranted ; not cast down, although he fancied sometimes, as the
good ship sailed homewards, that he should never again cross
those blue waters, never finish the work so well begun.
" If not I, some other one," he said to himself, in tranquil
resignation. " I cannot believe that labourers will be wanted
for so fair a vineyard. Let me be content if I have been
suffered to see the beginning of that glorious end ivhich I know
must come in God's good time, before that wonderful day when
the dead shall arise from their graves, and Ahce Fraser and
1 shall see each ether again."
He thought of his first love, whose bridal robe had been her
winding-sheet, whose undefiled image rose before him, pure and
Btainless as an angel's; and then, with unspeakable bitterness,
he thought of that other love, so much more fatally beloved,
who had stained her soul with the deep shame of a loveluss
marriaf^e; who had bartered purity and truth and honour, her
life's liberty, her soul's independence, for the pomps and
vanities of tK's world.
Strangers cmd Pilgrims. 287
He went back to Lenorgie. Those he had best loved were
sleeping their quiet sleep in the old churchyard among the
hills ; but there were old friends still left to give him cordial
welcome, and he spent the drowsy summer time pleasantly
r-nough in the restful calm of his native place. His small estate
^as let to strangers, even the house in which he was born ; but
he found a comfortable lodging in one of the farmhouses on his
own land. He had just sufficient society to make life agreeable,
and ample leisure for making himself acquainted with the
better part of that mass of literature which had been produced
during his absence ; literature whereof very little had reached
him on the other side of the Pacific.
In this manner he spent a couple of months ; then finding
his health in some manner restored, started on a walking tour
from Loch Eannoch to Loch Lomond, resting wherever the
fancy seized him; sometimes spending half a week at some
quiet out-of-the-way inn, where the herd of summer tourists
came not; fishing a little, readinof and thinkinsr a great deal,
. Ill ^ OO '
with hope that grew stronger as his physical strength revived :
taking the business of pedestrianism altogether quietly, and
varying his work according to the humour of the hour. Thus,
after the best part of a month spent upon ground which the
British tourist scours in a couple of days, he came to Dunallen,
where he had an old High-School and college comrade of days
gone by, in the person of the Kev. Peter Mackenzie, whose duty
he had promised to take upon his own hands for a couple of
months, while Mr. Mackenzie and his family enjoyed a holiday
in Belgium.
For the first week of Mr. Forde's residence the Eev. Peter
was to remain at Dunallen, in order to introduce his friend to
his new duties, and make him feel at home in the snug little
gothic mause on the hill-side, which was a great deal too small
for the Mackenzie olive-branches, but was so arranged, with
infinite management on the part of Mrs. Mackenzie, as to
contain a permanent spare bedroom. The juvenile Mackenziea
inhabited certain dovecot-like chambers in the gables, which
might have been rather large for a pigeon, but were a good deal
too small for a child, except upon the principle that nature will
adapt itself to anything in the way of surroundings. The little
Mackenzics might have can-ied their bedrooms on their back
like snails without being very heavily burdened; but they
thrived and flourished notwithstanding, and whooped and gam-
bolled like young scions of the Macgregor family in that clear
■mountain air. In this hospitable abode, where he was almost
tilled, as Juliet proposed to slay Romeo, with much cherishing,
Mr. Forde intended to repose himself for seven or eight weeks,
counting the light duties of this small parish as the next thiner
288 Strangers and Pilgrims.
to idleness, before returning to his labours at the other end ot
the world. He hoped to start in November, and thus escape
the severities of a British winter, which he felt himself ill
prepared to face.
It did indeed seem to Elizabeth, as she drove homeward at a
recljess pace that Sunday afternoon, as if life and the world
were new again, as if a new force had set the warm blood racing
through her veins, as if the very air she breathed had a magical
Sower, and the landscape she looked upon was glorious in the
ght of a new sun. It was only a little burst of afternoon
Bunlight, a sudden break in the dull gray sky that beautified the
hills, but to her it seemed no common radiance in the skies, no
common loveUness in the landscape.
" I would be content to live on just like this for ever," she
thought, " if I could hear him preach every Sunday."
Lord Paulyn was enjoying the tardy sunshine before the
Gothic porch of Slogh-na-Dyack as his wife drove her ponies uj?
to the chief door of the cahteau. He was smoking a meditative
cigar, but not in solitude. His friend Mr. Lampton, a turf mag-
nate, who had exchanged speculation in Manchester soft goods
for the more hazardous operations of tlie turf, was lounging on
an adjacent rustic bench, and his toady-in-cliief, Mr. Ferdinand
Spink, a gentleman who combined a taste for literature witli a
genius for billiards, supported himself against an angle of the
porch, in a state of supreme exhaustion ; while seated in a
Glastonbury chair within the shelter of the porch appeared the
graceful figure of Hilda Disney. It was altogether a pi-etty
domestic picture — the Viscount planted on the threshold of his
mansion, his cousin close at hand, his friend and flatterer on
either side, like the supporters in the family arms.
" And how little I am wanted here ! " thought Elizabeth, with
the old feeling of dislike and suspicion about Hilda.
" Been to church ? " asked Lord Paulyn coolly.
"Yes."
•' Been doing goody-goody for the lot of us. I'm glad you
Btick to that sort of thing. It's ballast for the rest of the
family."
" I thought you were going to afternoon church," said Ehza-
beth, turning to Hilda, with a faint suspicion in her look.
" She changed her mind, and stayed at home to talk some-
thing over with me," answered the Viscount. " She's worth
half-a-dozen stewards. I go to Hilda when I want a wrinkle
about the managemeat of my estate. She didn't live the best
part of her life with such a jolly old screw as my mother fur
nothing, I can tell you."
Hilda made no acknowledgment of this dubious compliment.
Strangers and JPilgrims. 289
** Did you like the churcli at Dunallen?" she asked.
" It is much better than that cast-iron oven."
Elizabeth's face flamed crimson for a moment as she spoke,
the old transient flush like the reflection of evening sunlight.
Miss Disney marked the vivid colour, and wondered what there
could be in a strange church to call for blushes.
" You had a good sermon, I hope, as a reward for your six
miles' drive ? "
" Yes," answered Elizabeth curtly.
She went into the house, passing her husband without so
much as a look.
He had Hilda — Hilda's counsel ; Hilda, trained in that sordid
school at Ashcombe ; Hilda, whose genius was to suggest thft
saving of money. Her bosom swelled with anger and contempt
— anger against both, contempt for both.
" Why did he not marry his cousin, and leave me to my lonely
life, leave me to be true to the memory of Malcolm Forde ? "
She went up to her own room, the room with the stone balcony
looking over the water, the soft blue-gray wavelets which flowed
beneath the hills that hid Dunallen. How strange, how sweet,
how sad to know he was so near her — he from whom she was
parted for ever !
" If I had been constant to him, if I had been content to live
my blank miserable life in that wretched little house at Haw-
leigh, to be dragooned by Gertrude, to creep on my dull way
like a snail that has never been outside the walls of some dismal
old kitchen-garden, — if I had spent all these years in thinking
about him and grieving for the loss of his love, would Heaven
have rewarded my patience, and brought him back to me at last ?
Could I by only a little self-denial, only a few years' patience,
have been so blessed at last ? No ; I will not believe it. To
think that would drive me mad."
She sat in the balcony, looking down at the water dreamily,
with folded arms resting on the broad stone balustrade, sat living
old days over again in a mournful reverie that was not altogether
bitter — nay rather perilously sweet, for it brought back the past
and the feelings that belonged to the past with a strange reality.
Memory opened the gates of a paradise, like that Swedenborgian
heaven in which all fairest earthly things have their shadow
types. And from the things that had been, her thoughts wan-
dered to the things that might have been — the life she might
have lived, had she been true to Malcolm Forde.
" He would have made me a good woman," she thought ; " and
what have I been without him ? "
Her newly-awakened conscience reviewed her past hfe, a
career of frivolity and selfishness unleavened by one charitable
thought or noble act. She had Uved for herself and to please
290 Strangers and Filgrims.
herself, and Heaven, as if in anger, had snatched from her the
chosen delight of her selfish soul — the child whose influence
might have redeemed her useless life, drawn her world-stained
Boul heavenward.
Dark was the picture of her life to look back upon; darker
BtiU her vision of the future r growing estrangement between
her husband and herself — her power lessening daily as her
beauty decayed ; sinister influences at work to divide them, and
on her own part an apathy and disgust which made her shrink
from any attempt to retain her hold upon his affection.
The booming of the great gong in the hall below reminded
her of the common business of life, but hardly awakened her
from her day-dream. She hurried to her dressing-room, and suf-
fered herself to be arrayed for the evening, and went down to
the drawing-room, where the Viscount and his friends were dis-
persed upon the ottomans in all manner of attitudes exjDressive
of extreme prostration, feebly pretending to read newspapers, or
look at the pictures in magazines, while they sustained muttered
discussions about the odds against this horse, or the chances in
favour of that. They made a little pretence of picking them-
selves up, and drawing themselves together, at the entrance of
Lady Paulyn. Mr. Spink, the literary gentleman, said some-
thing funny, in the Saittr<iay-Beuiet<;-and- water style, about
Scotch Sabbaths, but, not receiving the faintest encourage-
ment, returned to the study of JielVs Life in a state of
collapse.
" I don't know what's the matter with her ladyship this even-
ing," he said afterwards in a burst of confidence, "but she looks
as if she were walking in lier sleep."
Never was sleep-walker less conscious of her surroundings
than Elizabeth that night. She performed the duties of her
position mechanically ; made very fair answers to the inanities
■which were addressed to her ; smiled a faint cold smile now and
then ; turned the leaves of the book she pretended to read alter
dinner ; caressed the privileged hound, who stretched his long
limbs beside her chair and laid his head among the silken fold's
of her dress, her favourite companion at times, and fondly
devoted to her always.
If the strangeness of her manner were evident to the careless
eyes of Mr. Spink — a gentleman who considered the universe a
clever contrivance designed as a setting for that jewel Spink — it
was much more obvious to the eyes of Hilda Disney, eyes that
were sharpened by a jealousy which had never slept since the
day when Reginald Paulyn first betrayed his admu-ation for the
Yicar's daughter.
What could have happened within the last few hours to bring
about so marked a change P That pale set face, those dreary
Strangers and Pilgrims. 291
awe-stricken eyes, as of one who had held converse with the
very dead — what could these denote P
It was not an edifying Sunday evening by any means. The
Scottish underhngs of the household shivered as the cUck of the
billiard-balls made itself heard in the servants' hall an hour or
two after dinner — but how could the Viscount and his friends
have lived through the day without billiards ?
Elizabeth looked up from her book after a long reverie, to find
herself alone with Hilda in the great empty drawing-room ; only
they two, sitting ever so far apart, like shipwrecked mariners who
had been cast ashore on some desert island, and who were not
on speaking terms.
" I hope there is nothing the matter, Lady Paulyn ? " said
Hilda ; " you are looking so ^^nhke yourself to-night."
Elizabeth stared at her for a moment doubtfully, with that
almost vacant look which had startled Mr. Spink.
" There is nothing the matter — only — only that I am tired of
this i)lace ! "
"Already? Why, we've been here only a few weeks, and
Reginald likes the life so much."
" That does not oblige me to hve here. The place would kill
me. I can't endure the solitude. It makes me think too much.
I should go mad if I stayed here."
This from her, who a few hours ago had thanked God for her
Scottish home, had deemed it joy and jDcace unspeakable to
breathe the air that was breathed by Malcolm Forde, to live from
the beginning to the end of every week cradled in the hope of
seeing him for a little while on Sunday ! Yes, she had thought
all this, but conscience had awakened with much thinking, and
phe began to feel that even in this delight, which involved no
hope of meeting him face to face, of being forgiven, of hearing
him speak her name with something of the old tenderness — even
in this there was sin. Danger, in the common sense of the
word, there could be none, for was not Malcolm Forde as a rock,
against whose calm breast the waves of passion beat in vain ?
But she knew thei'e was peril to her soul in this vicinity ; she
knew it by the passionate yearning that filled her heart as she
sat by this joyless hearth and thought of the life that might
have been had she held by her treasure when it was hers to hold,
if she had not, at least for a little while, loved earthly pomps
and vanities better than Malcolm Forde.
" I can quite imagine that the exertion of thinking must be a
new sensation after your life in Park-lane," said Miss Disney,
with her icy sneer ; " but wouldn't it be as well to encourage the
habit ? The world will hardly be big enough for you if you
always run away from thought. And as you grow older you
would find tlie exercise useful as a way of getting rid of winter
292 Strangers and Filgrimg.
evenings. You remember what Talleyrand said to the young
man who couldn't play whist ? " What a melancholy old age
you are preparing for yourpolf ! "
Elizabeth did not trouble herself to dispute the justice of
these observations. She started up from her seat, went over to
one of the windows, and flung it open with a sharp decisive
action that indicated a mind overwrought. Innumerable stars
were shining in the deep dark sky ; stars that shone upon him
too, she thought, as she looked up at them, with that old, old
thought which has thrilled the soul of every man and woman
who ever lived, at least once in a lifetime. " Did he recognise
me to-day as I drove past himp does he know that I am near?
Does he think of me, and pity me, and regret the fooUshness that
parted us ? 0, no ; to regret would be sin, and he never sins."
Lord Paulyn came into the room while his wife was standing
at the open window, listening idly to the slow ripple of the
waves, looking idly at the glory of the stars, lost in thought;
quite unconscious of anything that happened in the room behind
her.
He came in alone, languidly yawning. Miss Disney beckoned
him over to her, with a somewhat mysterious air.
" What's the matter, Hilda? How confoundedly solemn you
look ! " ,
" I am afraid Lady Paiilyn is not well."
" Bosh ! She was well enough at dinner. She's been giving
herself airs, I suppose. Let her alone, as I do, and she'll come
round fast enough."
" Ko, no, it's not that. Bat I really think there is something
strange about her. Did you not notice something in the expres-
sion of her face at dinner ? "
" I have left off watching her looks. I know she's a remark-
ably handsome woman, and she knows it; and has given herself
no end of airs on the strength of her good looks. But there are
limits to a man's patience, and my stock of that commodity ia
very neai-ly exhausted."
" Do you remember what you told me about her illness,
after the death of your son?"
The Viscount started, frowned, and looked at his cousin with
cuppressed anger.
" Do you remember telling me that there was a time when the
doctors feared that her mind would never recover from that
shock?"
" I told you what the doctors said ; but the doctors are hum-
bugs. They had a good case, and wanted to make the most of
it. I never thought anything of the kind myself. But why
the do you bring this up to-night ?"
Strangers and TUgrima. 293
** Don't be angry. I am only anxious for yonr sake as well
as hers. There is something very strange in her manner to-
night. Of course it may mean nothing, only it is my duty to
warn you."
" O, hang duty !" cried Lord Paulyn impatiently. " I never
knew duty urge any one to do anything pleasant. The
moment any one mentions duty, I know that I'm in for it."
He turned iipon his heel, paced the room two or thi-ee times
in an angry mood, and then went out to the balcony, where his
wife was standing.
"What are you doing out here star-gazing .P " he asked.
The reply came in a softer tone than he was accustomed to
hear from Elizabeth's lips.
" I have been thinking a great deal this evening, Reginald
and I am going to ask you a favour. Please don't call m'
capricious^ or be angry with me for asking it ; and if you car
possibly grant it, pray do."
"What the deuce do you want?" he asked ungraciously ;
*" more money, I suppose. Tou didn't make a clean breast of
it the other day when you gave me your bills — though they
were heavy enough, in conscience' name."
" It isn't anything about money. I want you to take me
away from this place. I know it is very beautiful. I thought
at first I should never be tired of the mountains and the loch,
and the sea that lies beyond; but the solitude is killing me.
Do let us go away, Reginald, anywhere. I should be happier
anywhere than here."
"I thought as much," cried Lord Paulyn, with a hard laugh.
"I thought there was some plot hatching between you and
Hilda. You'd both like to spread your wings, I daresay. You'd
like to go to Paris, or Baden-Baden, or Hombourg, or Brighton.
Some nice crowded place, where you could spend money like
water. No, my dear Elizabeth, when I brought you here, I
brought you here to stay. I know Slogh-na-Dyack isn't lively,
but it's healthy, as the doctors all acknowledge, and for the
time being it suits me very well indeed. I came here to diminish
my expenses, and I mean to stick here till I've filled the hole
you dug in my bank balance by your extravagance last season."
" What ! " cried Elizabeth, with inefiable disdain. " You are
here for the sake of hoarding your money ! You bring me to
this oiit-of-the-way place in order that I may cost you less !
Why don't j'ou send me away altogether? You could save
more money that way. I could live upon a hundred a year."
" Then I am sorry you have never tried the experiment since
you have been my wife."
" Give me back my hberty. Let me go and live somewhere
abroad — under a feigned name — alone, my own mistress, free to
294 Strangers and Pilgrims.
think my own thouglits, away from this wretched artificial life,
which at its best seems to me like acting a part in a stage play.
Let me do that, and I will not ask you for a farthing. I will live
on the pittance that belongs to me."
" A very safe offer — even if you meant it, which you don't,"
answered Lord Paulyn coolly. " No, I married you because I
was fool enough to be fond of you, and I'm fool enough to be
fond of you still. But there comes an end to the period in
which a man rather enjoys being twisted round his wife's little
finger, I've been pliable enough. I've let you have your full
swing. I half suspected when you refused to have anything
settled upon you that you meant to spend my money all the
more freely, that you didn't want to be limited to a few hundreds,
but meant to make ducks and drakes of thousands. I think
I've borne with your extragavance pretty well. From this time
forward, however, I mean to pull up, and nurse my income, as my
mother nursed the Ash combe estates for me. The three years
of my married life have cost me about six times as much as the
same amount of time in my bachelor life; and yet I didn't
Btint myself of any reasonable indulgence, I can assure you."
"What if I had some special reason for asking you to take
me away from this place?" pleaded Elizabeth, without noticing
her lord's harangue.
" A woman always has a special reason for wanting her own
way," answered Lord Paulyn, with a sneering laugh.
" So be it," she said, raising her drooping head and looking at
him with flashing eyes. " I will stay here, then. But remember
always that I begged you to take me away, and that you refused
me that favour. I will stay here, since you insist upon it, and
be happy in my own way."
" Be happy any way you please, so long as you don't worry
me with this kind of thing. Come, now, Lizzie, be reasonable,
you know. Let us retrench this year, and I'll give you a month
or two in Park-lane in the spring. Of course I'm proud of you,
and all that sort of thing, and I like to show you off. Only
you've contrived to make it so confoundedly expensive."
" What other happiness do you suppose I expected when I
married you, except the pleasure of spending money?" she re-
torted, in her coldest, hardest tone.
"Upon my soul, you're too bad," he cried angrily. "You're
not the first woman that has married for money, by a long way,
but I should think you're about the first that would look a man
in the face and tell him as much without blushing."
And with this reproach he left her, to go back to his frienda
and smoke a moody cigar in their congenial society.
Strangers and JPilgrmg. 296
CHAPTER VII.
'• Henceforth I fly not death, nor would prolong
Life much, bent rather how I may be quit
Fairest and easiest of this cumbrous charge,
Which I must keep till my appointed day
Of rendering up, and patiently attend
My dissolution."
A STUANGE unrest came Tipon Elizabeth after that Sunday
evening, a slow consuming fever of the mind, which in due
course had its effect upon the body. The knowledge of Malcolm
Forde's vicinity quickened the beating of her heart by day and
jiight. Her sleep was broken by troubled dreams of their meet-
ing; her days were made anxious by the perpetual question,
How soon would accident bring them face to face ? Or would
he come of his own accord to see her ? deeming the past burieci
deeper than the uttermost deep of a fine lady's memory ; com*
to visit her in his sacred ofiice of priest ; come to solicit help
for his poor, support for this or that benevolent object ; come
to make a ceremonious professional call upon the lady of Slogh-
na-Dyack.
The days went by and he did not come, and she told herself
that she was glad. Yet she kept count of all visitors with a
strange watchfulness, and was fluttered by every sound of the
bell at the chief doorway. In her walks and drives the same
fatal thought pursued her. At every shadow that fell suddenly
upon her pathway, at every approaching footstep, she would
look up, trembling lest she should see his tall figure between
her and the sunlight. Was it a hope that buoyed her up from
day to day, or a fear that troubled her ? She scarcely dared to
ask herself that question.
Sometimes she stayed indoors all day, seized with a con-
viction or a presentiment that he would come upon that parti-
cular day. He would call upon her, and speak gently of that
poor dead past, and assure her of his forgiveness, and give her
good counsel for the guidance of her life, and teach her how
wisely to tread the dangerous path she had chosen. But that
day dragged itself slowly out like all the rest, and he did not
come.
So passed a week. On Sunday she ordered her pony-carriage,
and went to Dunallen, dreading that Miss Disney might offer
to accompany her. But the discreet damsel forbore from any
such intrusion. She had made her inquiries during il^e week,
296 Birangerg and Pilgrims.
B.nd knew perfectly who was officiating, in the absence of the
incumbent, at Dunallen Church.
" Your preacher at Dunallen must be much better than onrs
here," she said, standing in the porch as Elizabeth passed by to
her pony-carriage, " to tempt you to violate the Scottish Sabbath
on two consecutive Sundays."
'" I do not think it any more wicked to drive on a Sunday in
Scotland than in Devonshire," answered Elizabeth.
" Nor I. I was only thinldng of the custom of the country.
I know at Ashcombe we had a strong inducement to make a
long journey to hear your father's curate — that Mr. Forde, who
preached such splendid sermons, and seemed always so terribly
in earnest He went to some outlandish place as a missionary,
did he not P"
" Yes."
" What a pity ! " ,
" You need not bewail the fact. He has returned, and is in
Scotland. I am going to hear him preach to-day. You can
come with me if you like, answered Elizabeth, with a splendid
look of defiance, as much as to say. Whatever sins may stain
my soul, they shall not be the paltry sins of deceit and suppres-
sion.
"No, thanks. I will come some other Sunday," said Miss
Disney, curiously discomfited by this unexpected candour. She
had taken so much trouble, in a secret way, to ascertain the
fact which Elizabeth declared so recklessly ; not carelessly or
indifferently — for her eyes sparkled, and her lips quivered, and
the fever fiush that had come and gone so often of late reddened
her cheek.
Miss Disney had a spare half-hour before the morning service
at the iron chapel, leisure in which to pace slowly to and fro
upon the lawn before the Norman-gothic porch, thinking of her
cousin and her cousin's wife.
Did she seriously mean to injure either of them, or deliberately
plot the ruin of her fortunate rival ? No. Nor had she any
thought of a day when death might sweep that rival from her
path, and she herself be Lady Paulyn. She knew her cousin
Reginald too well to hope for that ; knew that his brief fancy
for her had never been more than an idle man's caprice, and
had perished utterly ten years ago ; knew that whatever wealth
of aft'ection he had to bestow he had squandered upon his wife ;
knew that there was no farther outcome of feeling to be hoped
for from his selfish soul— that whatever love he could feel, what-
ever self-sacrifice he was capable of, love and sacrifice alike
would be wasted upon Elizabeth. She hoped nothing therefore,
had no scheme, no dream ; only stood by like the Chorus in aa
old tragedy, or prophesied to herself, like a mute Cassandra.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 2&7
But she had loved her cousin — had in that distant, nn for-
gotten day cherished her golden dream of a happy prosperous
existence to be spent by his side — and she could not see him
quite as he really was, in all the utter commonness of hia nature.
As for her feelings towards EUzabeth — well, it was hardly
to be supposed that she should love the woman who had stolen
from her that crown of life which she herself had hoped to wear
— the woman who, after having robbed her of this treasure,
scarcely took the trouble to be civil to her. No, she did not
love her cousin's wife.
"What shall I do ? " she thought, as she walked to and fro ;
" I can understand the change in her now — the change which
only began last Sunday afternoon. It was the shock of seeing
this man again. And she goes to-day to hear him preach, and
will contrive to see him perhaps after the service. What ought
I to do ? Warn my cousin that his wife's old lover is Hving
within a few miles of him, or hold my tongue and let him make
the discovery for himself? He is sure to make it, sooner or
later, and I do not owe him so much devotion that I need put
myself in a false position to save him a little trouble."
So Miss Disney did nothing, and suffered matters to take
their course, contemplating the situation in a cynical spirit,
prepared for anything that might happen. It seemed as if the
old dowager's gloomy i^rophecies — and she had prophesied about
the various evils to come of her son's marriage with the con-
vulsive fury of a pythoness on her tripod — were in a fair way
to be realised.
" It really seems hardh^ wortli while to hate anybody actively,"
mused Miss Disney, " for the people one dislikes generally manage
to do themselves the worst injury tliat malice could wish them,
sooner or later."
This Sunday was finer than the last. The autumn sun shone
with rare splendour, the little church at Dunallen was full to
overflowing. The word had gone forth throughout the neigh-
bourhood that Mr. Mackenzie's substitute was a fine preacher,
a man who had done good service as a missionary, too. People
had come from a long distance to hear him. Elizabeth felt her-
self a unit among the crowd. There was no fear that he would
be disturbed by the sight of her, she thought ; yet she had a
ieat tolerably near the pulpit — the pew-opener having been
eager to do her honour — a seat at the end of an open bench in a
diagonal fine with the preacher.
How sweet a sound had the familiar prayers when he read
them ! what a sound of long ago ! — full of old sad memories ot
the churches at Hawleigh, and her dead father's kindly face.
They filled her soul with tenderness and remorse. How wicked
(he had been all her life ! how hard, how selfish ! She was no^
298 Strangers and Pilgrims.
fit to worship among his ilock. How many and many a time,
Sunday after Sunday, her lips had gabbled those prayers
mechanically, while her worldly thoughts were wandering far
away from the fane where she knelt ! It seemed as if his voice
gave a new meaning to the old words ; stirred her soul to its
profoundest depth, as the pool was troubled at Siloam. Not
for a long while — hardly since her girlhood, when she had had
fitful moments of religious enthusiasm in the midst of her
frivolity — had she felt the same fervour, blended with such deep
humility. All the fever and excitement of the last week was
lulled to rest in the solemn quiet of that little church among
the hills. Again she felt that it was enough for her to be near
this saintly teacher, whom she had once loved with but too
earthly a passion ; enough to be near him, and that she might
be good for his sake — a better wife even.
"I will try to do my duty to my husband," she said to herself,
as she sat listening to the sermon, her eyes bent on the open
book in her lap, not daring to look up, lest his eyes should meet
hers ; strangely dreading that first direct look — the stern
recognising gaze of those dark eyes of his — after this gap of
time.
His sermon was upon duty. A straight and simple discourse,
adorned by no florid eloquence, but made touching by many a
tender allusion to that lovely life which is the type and pattern
of all human excellence. He spoke of the duties which belong
to every relation of life ; of children and of parents, of husbands
and of wives. It was a sermon after the apostolic model ; friendly
counsel to his new friends, here among remote Scottish hills, far
away from the falsehoods and artificialities of crowded cities; a
simple pastoral address to the people of this small Arcadia.
" If I could only obey him ! " Elizabeth thought ; at this
moment a different creature from the brilliant mistress of the
house with the many balconies — the presiding genius of crowded
afternoon tea-drinkings, the connoisseur in ceramic ware, who
would melt down a small fortune into a service of eggshell
Sevres, or Vienna, or Carl Theodore cups and saucers, and
cream-jugs and tea-canisters, for the mere amusement of an
idle morning ; a widely different being from her whose last ball
had astonished the town by its reckless extravagance ; whose
milliner's bill would have been formidable for Miss Killraajisegg,
By natsre a creature of impulse, carried away by every vain,
wind of doctrine, she was at least accessible to good influences
as well as evil, and was for this one brief hour exalted, purified
in sj^irit by the power of her old lover's pleading — pleading not
as her lover, only as one who loved all weak and erring human
creatures, and had compassion unawares for her.
" Does he know P " she wondered ; " does he know that J
Strangers and Pilgrims. 299
hoar him P Surely he must have cast one of his penetrating
glances this way."
Nothing in his tone or manner indicated the surprise or emo-
tion which might have accompanied such a recognition. If he
had seen her the sight had not moved him, the memories which
shook her soul to its centre had no power to touch him. He was
hke rock. She remembered the old bitter cry that had gone up
from her lips in those dreary days when she had waited for his
coming back to her —
" His heart is stone ! "
Strange that a heart should be so tender for all mankind, yet
80 hard for her.
" There was a time when I thought my love was worth any
man's having, just because they told me I was prettier than
other women. Yet /is has shown me that he could live without
it, that he could have it and hold it, and let it go without a
pang."
Not once during the half-hour in which he spoke to his
listening Hock had she dared lift her eyes to his face. Sweet
though it was to hear him, it was almost a relief when the
sermon ended. She breathed more freely, stole one little look at
the pulpit where he knelt, saw the dark head and strong hands
clasped before it, and wondered again if he knew that she was
80 near. Then came the chink-chink of the sixpences, the
gradual melting away of the congregation, and she was standing
efore the gotliic doorway. This time Donald did not keep her
waiting. The carriage was ready for her. She drove home very
slowly, stm wondering.
CHAPTER VIII.
•* !rhou hear'st the winter wind and weet,
Nae star blinks throui^li the driving sleet J
Tak' pity on my weary feet,
And shield me frae the rain, jo.
The bitter blast that round me blawB !•
Unheeded howls, unheeded fa's :
The cauldness o' thy heart's the cause
Of a' my gnief and pain, jo."
Lord Paulyn left Scotland in the following week, to go to
Liverpool, where there were races being run in the early autumn,
and his friends departed with him, to be replaced by a relay of
other friends when he returned to Slogh-na-Dyack — a return
300 Strangers and I'ilgrims.
which was at present problematical. There were a good many
races crowded together at this " back end " of the year : a late
regatta at Havre, where LordPaulyn had jjledged himself to sail
his yacht, the Pixy ; races at Newmarket, at Pontefract, at the
Curragh of Kildare, in all which ev ents his lordship was more
or less interested.
So the two ladies were left alone in the Norman chateau, to
sit in the long tapestried drawing-room, with its modern anti-
quities, a kind of Brummagem Abbotsford collection, which
Jiad filled the soul of the knife-powder manufacturer with pride
during his brief occupation of his castle. They were alone, and
were fain to stay indoors for the greater part of the week,
week, during which period there was rain ; such rain as does at
times bedew Scotia's fair countenance ; rain persevering, rain
incessant, cloud above cloud piled Pelion-upon-Ossa-wise on the
mountain-top, and discharging torrents of water. Every tiny
watercourse upon the hill- side, a narrow thread of silver in fair
seasons, was broadened to a small cataract ; every lowland river
overflowed its rugged banks, and brawled and blustered over its
stony bed, with a turbulent air, as if some long-imprisoned
spirit of the stream had broken suddenly loose and were eager
to make havoc of the country-side.
Very long and dreary seemed those rainy autumn days to the
mistress of the chateau and her uncongenial companion. Eliza-
beth secluded herself in her own rooms, and tried to read, or
tried to draw, or tried to find a tranquillising influence in her
piano, — a Broadwood, with a sweet human tone in its music; a
tone that answered to the touch of the player, and was not all
things to all men, after the I'ashion of some newer and moro
brilliant instruments. She played for hours at a time — played
out her sorrows, her brief flashes of joy, which were at most the
I'oys of memory, her moments of exaltation, her intervals of
despair — played and was comforted, or laid her head upon the
piano and wept soothing tears. She had nothing human on this
earth to love ; the life that she had chosen for herself left her
outside those small tepid loves or Likings which are i\iQ pis-aller
of less self-contained spirits. Even the thought of Blanche, her
favourite sister, in these moments of despair, inspired only a
shudder. She loved her dog better than anything else in the
world — except that one person of whom only to think was a sin
— and the dog, being dumb, seemed to sympathise with her, or
at least never uttered trite commonplaces in the way of consola-
tion, but looked up at her with dark solemn loving eyes, and
seemed to be moved with human pity, when she wept upon hig
broad honest head.
At last there came a break in the sky ; the clouds upon the
l>Ul-top3 rolled away, and disclosed the blue heaven whose face
Strangers and Pilgrims. 301
they had veiled so long ; the cheerful sunshine brightened tho
waters; cornfields and green pastures on the shores of Bute
ceased to be blotted out by the inexorable rain. The world was
born again, as when Noah's ark came aground on the topmost
peak of Ararat. The occasional fine days of a Scotch summer
are apt to be very fine, and this last glimpse of summer's splen-
dour crowning the brow of autumn was bright and glorious.
Ehzabeth was somewhat cheered by this change in the wea-
ther. It gave her at least liberty.
Nor was she slow to avail herself of this recovered freedom.
Long before noon she was on the hills beyond sight of Slogh-
na-Dyack. Those heathery slopes and narrow footpaths by
"vhich she went were swampy after the long rains, and wide
water-pools lay in every hollow, like poUshed steel mirrors re-
flecting the high blue sky ; but it is no longer one of thecharac
teristics of a fine lady to take her walks abroad shod in satiii
slippers, and Elizabeth stepped through mud and swamp with
a fearless tread, in her comfortable mountain boots. O sweet
autumn breezes, lovely world ! if one could only be satisfied
with the delight of mountain scenery, and wide blue lakes sleep-
ing in the rare sunshine !
That week of rain seemed actually to have exhausted the
evil propensities of the Caledonian atmosphere; one fine day
succeeded another, days whose serenity was only disturbed by
half-a-dozen or so of showers, or an occasional tempest of had ;
and Ehzabeth, who defied brief showers, and even transient
hailstorms, or the sudden obscuring of the heavens behind a
curtain of black clouds, presage of a passing hurricane — wan-
dered about the mountains in delicious freedom, and seemed
almost to walk down the demon of despondency and the sharp
stings of remorse. She rarely drove, for she could hardly use her
pony-carriage without ofi"ering Miss Disney the spare seat at her
side, and she loved best to be alone, quite alone, without even
Donald the gillie seated behind her, open-mouthed and empty-
headed, staring vacantly at the sky.
She liked to cUmb the hill- side alone, to wander alone among
the sheep, who were seldom scared by her light footstep, or to
sit npon some craggy bank, where fragments of primaeval rock \
seemed to be mixed up with the heather and the short mountain
grass, as if this part of the world had but just emerged, in- v^
choate and unfinished, from chaos. She loved to sit here alone,
her sealskin jacket drawn tightly across her chest, defying the
autumnal winds, in whose sweet freshness there was a sharp
sting now and then, like a faint prophecy of coming winter.
Here she had time for sad thoughts, time to repent the fooUsh-
ness of all her hfe gone by, and to long, with how vain a long-
ing, that the past could be undone.
802 Strangers and Pilgrimi
Sometimes, as she walked homeward in the beginning of the
dusk, foolish fancies would steal into her mind at sight of the
white towers and pinnacles of Slogh-na-Dyack rising above the
evening mists at the base of the mountain — the thought of what
her life would have been if she and Malcolm Forde had inhabited
that northern chatcin; how every room in that great house
would have been briybtened and glorified by domestic love; how
sweet to go huiae from her walks to be welcomed by him ; how
sweet to stand in the porch at eventide watching for his coming
— vain, useless fancies, which consumed her heart; fancies which
fihe knew to be sinful even, but could not put out of her mind.
Thus passed the second week of Lord Paulyn's absence, and
there was as yet no hint of his return. Elizabeth was still free
to hve her own Hfe, a life of utter loneliness, the hfe of a woman
who Uved in the past rather than in the j^resent ; free to wander
among those sohtary hills, with the dog Gregarach for her only
companion.
Wide and varied as had been her wanderings, she had never
yet crossed the path of Malcolm Forde. She had almost left
off hoping for or dreading any such encounter. Had she chosen
to put herself in his way, to take the village of Dunallen in the
course of her rambles, or to loiter among the outlying cottages
that sprinkled the hill-side just around the village, she would
have been very sure to meet him. But this was just the one
thing which Elizabeth, in her right mind, could not do. Nor,
had she languished to behold him as the fever-parched wayfarer
in a dry land languishes for a draught of cold water, could
she have deHberately waylaid him. She knew that to think
of him was wrong, yet she thought of him by day and by
night, having long lost the empire over her thoughts. But she
was still the mistress of her actions, and could keep them
pure.
She made the most of the fine weather, however, without
coming too near Dunallen ; and even when there came threaten-
ings of a change, menacing clouds again brooding over the
mountain peaks, she was not alarmed, and left Slogh-na-
Dyack as usual, immediately after breakfast, with the faithful
Gregarach at her side.
" You arc not going out to-day, surely," said Miss Disney,
who had come down to the hall to consult the barometer ; " the
glass has gone back to much rain."
" I thought we ought to have screwed the hand to that par-
ticular point the week before last," answered Elizabeth ; " much
rain seemed to be the normal condition of Scotland. Yes, I
am going for my constitutional. I daresay I shall have a
ehower, but I'm used to that."
" I'm afraid you'll have a storm, and there's not much chance
Strangers and Pilgrims. 303
of shelter among those hills. It's really very wrong of you to
run such risks."
"The risk of catching cold, for instance," said Elizabeth
contemptuously. " I never catch cold. I sometimes think I
have a charmed life, unassailable by the elements."
" You are very lucky, in that particular as well as in so
many others. I can scarcely put my head out of doors on a
damp day without paying for my imprudence with neuralgia
or influenza."
" How disagi-eeable !" said EHzabeth, looking at her absently.
" Come, Gregarach."
She walked rapidly away, under the dull threatening sky,
leaving Hilda in the porch, looking after her thoughtfully.
" What a miserable restless creature she is, in spite of her
prosperity," she said to herself. " One ought hardly to envy
her. Does she ever meet her old lover on those lonely hills, I
wonder? No, I scarcely think that. He is not the kind of
man to run any hazard of scorching his wings at the old flame,
and she — well, no, I do not believe she is bad enough for that.
She only wanders about because she is discontented, and still
madly in love with the man who jilted her."
Two hours later those ominous clouds upon the mountain
resolved themselves to rain, a dense driving rain that came
down like a sheet of water, and threatened to extinguish the
landscape in watery darkness. Miss Disney stood at one of
the drawing-room windows watching the deluge.
" Good heavens, if she is without shelter in such rain as this !"
she thought, not without compassion. "What is to become
of her?" And then, with a cynical bitterness, "If she were
to catch her death of cold it would be very little advantage to
me. What is that some poet says? — 'Even in their ashes
lurk their wonted fires.' But some ashes are quite cold.
Nothing would rekindle them."
On the hill-tops that blinding rain made a worse darkness, a
confusion of sound as it came sweeping down with a shrill
whistling noise, like the wind shrieking in the shrouds at sea,
while ever and anon came the hoarse roar of distant thunder,
shaking, or seeming to sliake, even those deep-rooted hills.
Elizabeth stood beneath the tempest, looking helplessly about
her, the dog cowering at her side, wondering what she should
do. She was very indifferent to small inconreniences in the
way of weather, but this was a tempest which threatened to
sweep her off the mountain-side, to whirl her into the teeth of
the welkin, unsubstantial and helpless as a tuft of thistledown.
Even Gregarach, the deerhound, who sliould have been accus-
tomed to this war of the elements, shuddered and was afrrjd.
804 Strangeri and Pilgrims.
" If there were a cave, or anything of that kind, handy," she
eaid to herself, trying to look throtigh the rain. She might aa
Tvell have tried to pierce the curtain of futurity itself. The
world was a thing expunged ; there was nothing left but herself,
her dog, and the deluge.
" The barometer was right for once in a way," she said.
" This is ' much rain.' But I thought barometers were things
one ought to read backwards, Hke gipsy women's fortune-
telling."
Happily she was not unfamiliar with her surroundings, and
could hardly go astray or topple over a precipice unawares.
She had roamed the mountain too often for that in her two
months of residence at Slogh-na-Dyack. She stood quite still,
pondering, while the pitiless rain drenched her garments, re-
ducing even the comfortable sealskin to a black shiny-looking
substance, from which the water ran, not as from a duck's back,
but soaking the fabric thoroughly as it trickled slowly down.
What should she do ? where seek her nearest shelter ? Yes,
she bethought herself at last of a place of refuge at the base of
the lonely hill-side on which she stood, a refuge so insignificant
that it had hardly impressed its image on her memory, though she
had looked down upon it many a time from this very spot ; an
object which, in her dire distress to-day, came back to her indis-
tinctly, with a kind of uncertainty, as a thing which might be
real or only an invention of her own fancy.
" Yes," she thought, " I do believe there is one solitary
cottage down there, at the very foot of this hill. I have a vague
recollection of seeing it, and a thin thread of smoke curling up
from its poor little chimney, a miserable shanty of a place, with
grass growing ever so high on the roof; but O, what a comfort
it would be to find myself under a roof of any kind just now !
Come, Gregarach, old fellow, we'll make for the cottage."
It was hard work getting down the steep mountain-side in
that blinding rain. She had held up her little silk umbrella aa
well as she could against the violence of the wind — she had now
to furl it and make it her staff. Her feet slipped upon the
sodden grass more than once during her slow descent, and for
the moment she fancied it was all over with her, and she must
roll down to the valley, bruised and beaten to death in her swift
course. " Such a nasty dirty death ! " she thought, with a
shudder.
But the firm light feet kept their vantage-ground, the slender
figure held itself erect against the buffeting of the wind and the
force of the raindrift, and Lady Paulyn arrived finally, only
half-drowned, in the narrow road at the base of the mountain—
a lonely cheerless road, at the best of times, skirted by a rocky
bank, beneath which ran a deep narrow stream, now swollen t<r
Strangers and Pilgrims. 305
the •width of a small river — a spot that was eminently un-
attractive except from the artistic and Salvator-Rosa point of
view — a region of sterility and gloom, which hopeless grief
might choose for its abode, where nature seemed in unison with
man's despair, where the braes never bloomed and the birds
never sang.
Yes, there was the cottage, "just a but and a ben;" grass
growing high upon, the steeply sloping roof, the tiny squara
window obscured by a handful of hay stuffed into one broken
pane and a fragment of linsey-woolsey in another. The very
abode of desolation, but still a roof to cover one, EUzabeth
thought gladly.
The door was shut. She knocked, but no one came ; then tried
the latch, and opened the door and peered in, an action which
even in that moment of extremity brought back the thought of
the old days at Hawleigh, when she had stood at cottage doors
with so hght a heart, so full of vague hope and unacknowledged
love.
" May I come in?" she asked gently, unable to see whether
the place was occupied, so profound was the obscurity within.
Her dog emphasised the question by a fortissimo bark.
Even that loud inquiry brought no reply. " The place must
be empty," thought Elizabeth, and made bold to enter, Grega-
rach going before her with loud sniffings and a suspicious air.
The little wretched room was unoccupied, but there was some
poor apology for furniture in it. A chest of drawers — article
most dear to the Scottish mind — a battered old table and one
chair, a few odds and ends of crockery on a shelf in a corner,
and a good deal of dirt. There were signs of occui^ation, too ; a
strugghng turf fire on the hearth, and beside the fire an old
black saucepan containing some herby decoction, from which
came a faintly aromatic odour.
" Odd," thought Elizabeth, " but I suppose the people are out
at work. Poor creatures, I wonder what work they can find to
do in such weather as this."
She took off her jacket, which seemed a mere mass of brown
pulp ; took off her hat, also sealskin, reduced to the same pulpy
condition ; and tried to shake off a little of the water which
hung in every fold of her garments. She tried to put a little
moBe life into the turf fire, to get something hke heat out of it
if possible, but it was only a lukewarm fire, and she looked
about the room in vain for more turf or a fagot of wood.
" What a wretched place !" she said to herself; " and to think
that some poor creature will come here for comfort by and by
when his work is done — is thinking of it now, perhaps, and
longing for it, and calling it home."
She thought of Slogh-na-Dyack, her own suite of rooms, with
306 Strangers and Pilgrima,
their many windows looking over the water, the infinite InxnTy,
the triumph of man's inventiveness exemplified in every con-
trivance that can make life pleasant; she thought of the dismal
contrast between this home and hers, and of her own discon-
tented mind, to which that costly chateau had seemed no betti
than a splendid pi'ison.
" Why cannot fine scenery and handsome furniture satisfy
one's heart ? " she said to herself. " Why must one always long
for something else, for some one whose mere presence would
make such a shelter as this tolerable, for some one in whose
company one would have no thought of worldly wealth or
worldly pleasure ? "
She looked round the darksome little room — looked up at the
low broken ceiling, which was rain-bKstered and stained — looked
roimd with a sad smile.
" If Malcolm had married me, and poverty had reduced us to
Buch place as this, I would have been happy with him," she
thought. " I would have tucked up my sleeves and scrubbed
and toiled, and tried to make this wretched hovel bright and
comfortable for him. It would have been my pride to bear
deiDrivation, misery even, for his safe. I could then have said
to him, * Tou doubted me once, Malcolm, but is not this real
loveP'"
She had seated herself in the solitary chair close by the low
open hearth, trying to get a little warmth out of the fading fire,
trying not to shiver very much with that wretched sensation of
cold and dampness which had crept over her since she had
found shelter in the cottage. She had opened the door two or
three times and looked out, with a faint hope of seeing some
indication of fair weather, or at least some lessening of the ruin ;
but the water-drops came down with a sullen persistence — came
down as she had seen them fall day after day from her window,
without a break in the watery monotony.
" I wonder if I shall have to stay here two or three days," she
thought, " while all the Slogh-na-Dyack people are searching the
country for me, and a private detective watching all outward-
bound vessels that leave the Clyde, lest I should have taken it
in my head to run away to America ? It really seems as if I
should have to choose between staying here all day and all night,
or walking home in the wet. If I could only see a stray boy —
a native boy inured to rain — I might send him home for a
carriage."
But looking for stray boys seemed almost as hopeless aa
watching for the ending of the rain ; so Elizabeth shut the door,
and went back to tlie dismal hearth, which became every minute
colder and more dismal, and to her own sad useless thoughts.
She was startled from her reverie presently by a sudden
Strangers and Pilgrims. 307
idctivity on tlie part of Gregarach, who had been quiet enough
hitherto, having stretched himself among the ashes, in the hope
of getting warm, where he had lain until now, dozing fitfully,
and looking up at his mistress wistfully ever and anon, as who
should say, " We might surely have found better quarters."
Now he started to his feet, gave his short bark, like tht
sergeant's cry of " Attention ! " and ran to the door communi*
eating with the other chamber of the cottage ; a darksome little
den, into which Elizabeth had looked when she first took
shelter ; a room which had seemed to her utterly empty. The
door was a little way ajar ; the dog pushed it open with his nose,
and rushed in.
Elizabeth started np, not frightened — fear and Elizabeth Lut-
trell had ever been strangers — only anxious ; while there flashed
across her brain old stories of Scottish shelters, and faithful
dogs, whose sagacity had protected their masters from
murder.
" I have my watch and purse," she thought, " and all these
foolish diamond rings, which I put on my fingters every morning
trom sheer habit, just as a red Indian tricks himself out with
beads and wampum. I should be rather a valuable booty. And
this cottage has an uncanny look at the best of times, standing
alone, under the shadow of the hill, and with that deep dark
river running yonder, ready to swallow up murdered travellers."
She was not frightened, though it was not beyond the scope
of possibility that this vision, conjured up half in jest, might be
realised in hideous earnest. That sad and bitter smil^ so fre-
quent on her lips of late, lighted up her face just now, as she
tiiought how such things have been, and how lives more precious
than hers had come to dark and terrible ending.
How well that swift river could keep a secret ! It would be
so easy a matter to dispose of her. The dog might give a little
trouble, perhaps, but a knock on the head would make an end of
him, and what resistance could site ofler ? Then would follow
along and tedious quest; rewards offered, heaven and earth
moved, as it were, on behalf of a lady of quality, but the
mystery for ever unsolved. Dark scandals invented perhaps ;
her reputation tarnished by foul imaginations. Some people
preferring the belief that she was living a shameful seci'et life
somewhere, to the simpler theory of her untimely death.
She could almost fancy what society would say of her in
years to come, when her husband had married again and for-
gotten her.
" 0, there was another Lady Paulyn, you know, who disap-
peared in a curious manner. No one knows whether she is alivo
or dead : but Lord Paulyn married again, all the same — his
cuusin, a IMiss Disney, a mu^h more suitable match. The first
308 '(Strangers and Pilgrims.
wife was a very pretty woman, gave capital parties, and so oik\
bat they did not live happily together."
And he would hear of her dark fate, and wonder, and be
sorry. Yes, surely even his stony heart would be moved by
her dismal end ; that most horrible of all dooms, at least to
the minds of the survivors, the fate about which there is un-
certainty.
She had time for aU these thoughts while Gregarach was snif-
fing about the inner room.
Presently he set up a piteous whine ; whereupon Elizabeth,
with a calm fixed face, as of one who goes to her doom, pushed
the door open again — it had swung to behind the dog — and went
boldly into the gloomy den, where murder perchance lurked in
the shadow of the sloping roof.
The dog was standing with his forepaws upon a miserable
little bed; a bed she had not observed in her first inspection r-
the chamber ; a bed set into the wall, cupboard fashion, after the
manner of some Scottish beds, the lower end inclosed by a
wooden shutter, the head sheltered by a checked blue curtain,
limp and ragged.
A withered skinny hand grasped this meagre drapery,—
hardly the hand of a stalwart assassin; a hand of a dirty waxen
hue, wasted by age or sickness, — and a feeble voice entreated
plaintively, " Tak' awa' the dog."
Elizabeth ran to the bed. "Don't be frightened, he won't
hurt you," she said. " Down, Gregarach ; down, old fellow.
Indeed you needn't be afraid of him ; he's a sensible aflpec-
tionate fellow."
The dog licked his mistress's hand, as if in grateful ac-
knowledgment of this praise. She had as yet seen no more of
the occupant of the bed than that skinny hand clutching the
curtain; but the curtain was drawn back now, reveaUng a
ghastly figure ; a woman, old, or made prematurely old by toil
and care and sickness ; a face haggard as death itself, under a
tumbled nightcap ; dim eyes staring at the intruder with vague
wonder.
" Something to drink," gasped this helpless creature ; " for
God's sake give mw something — the stuff that auld Becky made."
Ehzabeth looked round her heljilessly. She could see no siga
of a cooling draught for those pale parched lips; not even a
pitcher of water, much less the stuff concocted by old Becky,
whoever that person might be.
" 0, where shall I find you something ? " she said. " Poor
soul, I'll do anything in the world for you, if you'll tell me how."
" The stuff by the fire," said the woman ; " but dinna leave
yon doggie with me."
The stuff by the fire; that dark concoction in the saucepan.
StrangerH and Pilgrims. 309
The recollection of it flashed upon Elizabeth. She called her
dog, and went back to the outer room ; found a cracked mug,
poured some of the dark-looking drink into it, and carried
it back to the sick woman, and held it gently to the dry lips,
supporting the weary head upon her arm, with a touch of that
natural tenderness which had endeared her to the cottagers at
Eawleigh.
"Have you been long ill ? " she asked.
** Three weary weeks. I've keepit my bed three weeks, but I
was bad before ; all my Hmbs aching, and a weight on my head.
I ccnld hardly keep about to do for myself and my son ; he's a
faria labourer, beyond Dunallen; and then I was forced to give
up, and tak' to my bed. The fever's been mickle bad about
th ese parts."
" The fever ! " repeated Elizabeth, with a faint shiver, but
not any shrinking motion of the arm that supported the sick
woman's head.
" Yes, it's been verra bad ; maybe you shouldna be in here ;
some folks call it catching, but I dinna ken. The Lord knows
where I could have caught it, for there's few folks come my way
to bring me so much as a fever, except the new minister. I
Buppose you are the minister's wife ? "
Elizabeth smiled at the question. "No," she said, "I'm
not the minister's wife. It was only selfishness that brought
me here ; I was caught in the storm, and came to your cottage
for shelter. But now I am here I may be able to help to get
you veil. I cr.n send you wine, and tea, jelly, broth, all kinds
of things to strengthen you. And a doctor, too, if you've had
no doctor."
" I've had auld Becky, she kens as much as ony doctor ; and
the new minister, he knows a deal. And he brings me wine
and things, but it's very httle that I can tak' the noo, I'm so
low. There's some wine in yon cupboard ; you might gie me
a drappie."
" Let me settle your pillow more comfortably first."
She arranged the pillow, fever- tainted perhaps; the whole
chamber had a faint foetid odour that tried her sorely. But
fear of death, even in this den, where lurked a foe scarce lesa
deadly than the assassin of her imagination, she had none.
The day was past when her Ufe had been worth cherish-
ing. She placed the pillow under the weary head, wiped
the damp brow with her handkerchief, murmured a few
comforting words, phrases she had learned in the brief period
of her ministrations, and then went to the cupboard, a little
hutch in the corner, to seek for the wine.
The new minister ; that was he, no doubt. She touched the
bottle almost reverently, thinking that his hand had sanctified
310 Strangers and PilgrirM.
it. The woman hardly put her lips to the cup ; it was only by
gentle entveatings that Elizabeth could induce her to take a few
spoonfuls of the wine. Not all the vintages of Oporto could
have brought back life or vigour to that worn-out habitation of
clay, in which the soul fluttered feebly, before departing for ever.
There was a Bible on a chair by the shuttered end of the bed.
" Will you read me a chapter ? " asked the woman, after an
interval of feeble groanings and muttered lamentations.
Elizabeth opened the book immediately, chose that chapter of
chapters, that tender farewell address of Christ to his Apostles,
the fourteenth of St. John, and began to read in her low earnest
voice, as she had read many a time in the sunny cottages
at Hawleigh, with the bees humming in the mvrtle-bushea
outside the window, the green trees waving gently under the
summer sky. This gloomy hovel in the shadow of the moun-
tain seemed a bit of another world.
She read on till the patient sank into an uneasy slumber,
breathing heavily. And then, seeing her to all appearance fast
asleep, Elizabeth laid the book down, and looked at her watch.
It was nearly five o'clock ; the day, which had been dark at
two, was gi-owing darker ; the rain, which she could just
see through the cloudy glass of the narrow casement, was still
coming down steadily, with no symptom of abatement.
" It is clear I shall have no alternative between walking
home in the rain or staying here all night," thought EUzabeth.
" Or, stay : this poor soul spoke of her son ; he will come home
by-and-by, pei"haps, and he might fetch the carriage for me."
There was comfort in this hope. Though not afraid of the
fever, she was not a little desirous to escape from that tainted
atmosphere, in which tc breathe was discomfort. And yet it
seemed cruel to leave that helpless creature, perhaps to die alone.
" I must try to find a nurse for her, somehow," she thought;
" I'll ask her about this old Becky when she wakes. It seema
almost inhuman to let her lie here alone."
She wondered that Malcolm Forde had not done more for this
stricken creature. But there were doubtless many such in his
flock, and he had done his utmost in bringing her wine and
coming to see her now and then.
The woman had been asleep about half-an-hour, while
Elizabeth sat and watched her, thinking her own sad thoughts,
when the outer door was opened. It was the son returning
from his work, no doubt. Elizabeth rose, and went to meet
him, anxious to have tidings of her whereabouts conveyed to
Slogh-na-Dyack before nightfall.
She had her hand upon the door between the two rooms,
when another hand pushed it gently open. Drawing back a
little, she found herself face to face with Malcolm Forde.
Strangers and Pilgrims, 311
She could see, plainly enough, that for the first few moments
he failed to recognise her in the half-light of that dismal
chamber. He looked at her, first in simple wonder, then with
eager scrutiny.
" Good God," he cried at last, " is it you ? "
" Yes," she answered, with a feeble attempt to take things
lightly. "Did you not know we were such near neighbours?
Strange, isn't it, how people are drawn together from all
the ends of the earth, Parthians and Medes and Elamites,
and the dwellers in Mesopotamia? "
He seemed hardly to hear her. He was looking at the bed
■with an expression of unspeakable horror.
" Come mto the next room," he sajd, drawing her quickly
across the threshold, and shutting the door upon the sick
chamber. " What brought you to this place ? "
" Accident. I came here to find shelter from the rain."
" You had better have stayed in the rain. But God grant
that yon may have taken no harm! I come here daily, and
stay beside that poor creature's bed for aji hour at a time. But
I believe custom has made me fever-proof You must get
home instantly, Lady Paulyn ; and take all possible precautions
against infection. That woman has a fever which may be —
— which I fear is — contagious ; but I trust in God that your
superb health may defy contagion, if you are only reasonably
carefuh"
He opened the outer door to its widest extent. "Let us
have as much air as we can, even if we have some rain with
it," he said. "It is too wet for you to go home on foot.
I must find some one to run to Slogh-na-Dyack and fetch your
carriage."
" You know where I hve, then ? " with a wounded air. It
seemed so stony-hearted of him to be quite familiar with the
fact of her vicinity, and yet never to have brolceu down the
barriers of reserve, never to have approached her in his sacred
character. To be careful for all the rest of his fiock, for all the
other sinners in this world — Fiji islanders even — and to have not
one thought, not one care, no touch of pity for her !
" Yes," he answered, in his cool grave way, imperturbable as
the very rock, looking at his watch thoughtfully. " The young
man will not be home till seven perhaps. I must go to Slogh-
na-Dyack myself
" What, through this rain ! 0, please don't, you'll catch your
death of cold."
" I came here through this rain, and I am very well pro-
tected," he said, glancing at his macintosh. " Yes, that is the
only way. Promise me that you will stand at this open door till
your carriage comes for you.*
312 Strangers and Pilgrims.
" But if that poor soul should call me, if she should be thirsty
again, I can't refuse to attend to her, can I, Mr. Forde? "
" What, you have been attending to her — hanging over her to
give her drink ? " with a look of intense pain.
" Yes , I have been arranging her bed a little, and giving her
some wine you brought, and doing what I could to make her
comfortable. It reminds me of — of the old time at Hawleigh,
when I had a short attack of benevolence. O, please don't look
so anxions. I am sure not to catch the fever. What is that
line of somebody's ? — ' Death shuns the wretch who fain the
blow would meet.' I am just the kind of useless person who
never dies of anything but extreme old age. Tou will see me
creeping round Hyde Park, forty years hence, in a yellow chariot
and a poke bonnet, with pug dogs and a vinegar-faced com-
panion."
"You have not left off your old random talk," he said, regret-
fully. I cannot forbid you to obey the dictates of humanity. If
the poor old woman should ask you for anything, you must give
it. But do not bend over her more than you can help, and do
not stay in that room longer than is absolutely necessary. I
have arranged with a woman at Dunallen to come and nurse
her. She will be here to-night."
" I am glad of that, and I shall be stiU more glad if you wiU
let me contribute to your poor. May I send you a cheque to-
morrow ? "
" You may send me as many cheques as you like. And now,
good-bye. The carriage will be here before I can return."
He gave her his hand, with an air so frank and friendly that
it stung her almost as if it had been an insult, pressed the httle
ice-cold hand she gave him in hi« friendly grasp, and went out
into the rain.
" He never, never, never could have loved me," she said to her-
self, looking after him with a piteous face, and bursting into a
passion of tears. What had she expected? That he, Malcolm
Forde, the man who had given his life to God's service, would
fall on his knees at the feet of Lord Paulyn's wife, in the sur-
prise of that sudden meeting, and tell her how she had bvolvcu
his heart five years ago, and how she was still much more dear
to him than honour, or the love of God P
" He looked frightened at the idea of my having caught the
fever," she thought, when she had recovered from that foolish
burst of passionate anger, bitter disappointment, unreasoning
and unreasonable love. "But that was only from a philan-
thropic point of view; just as a family doctor would have done.
Was there ever any one so impenetrable ? One would think wa
had never been more than the most commonplace acquaintance»
and had only parted from each other a week ago."
Strangers and Pilgrims. 313
She stood leaning against the door-post, looking at the dreary
waste of sodden turf, the fast-flowing river, the mountain on the
other side of the valley, which was hke a twin brother of the
mountain behind the cottage.
She stood thus, lost in gloomy thought, thought that was
more gloomy than the landscape, more monotonous than the
rain, when a footstep sounded a little way off. She looked up,
and saw Mr. Forde coming back to her.
" I met a lad who was able to carry the message faster than I
could," he said, " so I have returned to prevent your running
any risk by ministering to that poor soul yonder."
He looked into the other room ; the woman was still asleep.
He waited a little by the bed-side, and then came back to the
doorway where Elizabeth stood looking out at the turbid water.
" How long is it since you were caught in the rain ? " he
asked — a foolish question, perhaps, inasmuch as it had rained
without ceasing for the last four hours.
" I hardly know ; it seems an age. I was wandering about the
mountain for ever so long, not knowing what to do, till I hap-
pened tiO remember this cottage, and then we came down, my
poor drenched dog and I, and I crept in here for refuge. And I
seem to have been here half a hfetime."
Half a hfetime, more than a lifetime, she thought ; for were
not the joys and sorrows of any common existence concentrated
in this meeting with him ? The dog was licking his hand, with
abject affection, as if he too had known this man years ago, and
been parted from him, and loved him passionately throughout
that severance; but strange creatures of the dog-tribe had a
habit of attaching themselves to Mr. Forde.
" And you have been in your wet clothes all this time," he
eaid anxiously, with the pastor's grave solicitude, not the lover's
alarm. " I fear you may suffer for this unfortunate business."
" Rheumatism, or sciatica, or lumbago, or something of that
kind," she said ; " those seem such old women's complaints. I
daresay I shall have a fearful attack of rheumatism, and my
doctor and I will call it neuralgia, out of politeness. No one on
the right side of thirty would own to rheumatism." This, with
her lightest good-society manner.
" I should recommend you to send for your doctor directly you
get home, and take precautionary measures."
" I have no doctor," she answered, a little impatiently. " I
hate doctors. They could not save the child I loved — and "
Her lip quivered, and the dark beautiful eyes filled, but she
brushed away the tears quickly, deeply ashamed of that confes-
sion of weakness.
" You have lost a child ? " said Mr. Forde. " I heard nothing
of that. I know very little of the history of my old friends «ince
314 Strangers mid Pilgrims.
I left England. I did hear of your dear father's death, and was
deeply grieved, but I have heard little more of those I knew at
Hawleigh."
Not a word of her marriage ; but he had heard of that, no
doubt ; had heard and had felt no surprise, taking it for granted
^hat she was engaged to Lord Paulyn when he set forth upon
ois mission.
" I am sincerely sorry to hear you have lost one so dear to
you. But God, who saw fit to take your little one away, may,
in his good time "
" Please do not say that to me. I know what you are going
to say; it has been said to me so often, and it only makes me
more miserable. I could never love another child as I loved
him, the one who was snatched away from me just when he
was growing brighter and lovelier every day. I could never
trust myself to love another child. I would keep it a stranger
to my heart. I would take pains to keep it at a distance from
me. I should think it a dishonour to my dead boy to love any
other child. But don't let us speak of him. I have been for-
bidden ever to speak or to think of him."
"Forbidden? By whom?"
" By the doctors. I don't know what made me speak
of him just now. It is hke letting loose a flood of poisoned
waters."
He looked at her gravely, wonderingly, with a look of un-
speakable sorrow. Was it for this she had broken faith with
him ? Had all the splendours and vanities of the world brought
her so little joy ? The wan and sunken cheek, the too brilUant
eye, told of a heart ill at ease, of a life that was not peace.
"Let us talk of yourself," she said, in an eager hurried
manner. "I hope you found the life — about which you had
dreamed so long — a realisation of your brightest visions ?"
" Yes," he answered with a far-oiF look, which of old had
always suggested to Elizabeth that she was of very small
account in his Hfe. " Yes, I have not been disappointed ; God
has been very good to me. I go back to my work at the close
of this year, and to work in a wider field."
" You go back again, back again to that strange world !" with
a faint shudder. " How little you can care for your hfe, and for
all that makes life worth having !"
" For life itself, for the bare privilege of existence in this par-
ticular world, I do not care very much ; but I should like to be
permitted to finish my work, so far as one man can finish his
allotted portion of so vast a work."
" And the savages," said Ehzabeth, "did they never try to
kill you?"
" No," he answered, smiling at her look of terror. " Before
Slrangeri and Pilgrims. 315
tkey could quite make up their minds to do that, I had taught
them to love me."
" And you will go out to them again, and die there ! For if
they spare you, fever will strike you down, perhaps, or the sea
swallow you up alive in some horrible shipwreck. How can yo«
be so cruel — to yourself?"
" Cruel to myself in choosing a pathway that has already led
me to happiness, or at least to supreme content !"
" Supreme content ! What, you had nothing to regret in that
dreary, dreary world ? O, I know that it is full of flowers and
splendid tropical foliage, and roofed over with blue skies, and
lighted by larger stars, and washed by greener waves, than we
ever see here; but it must be so dreary — twelve thousand miles
from everything."
" From Bond-street, and the Burlington-arcade, and the Eoyal
Academy, and the opera-houses," said Mr. Forde, as if he had
been talking to a wayward child.
" Do you think I am not tired enough of those things and
this world?" she cried passionately. "Why do you speak to
jne as if I were a baby that had never cut open the parchment
of its toy-drum to find out where the noise came from? I
asked you a question just now. Had you nothing to regret in
your South-Sea islands?"
" Nothing, except my own worldly nature, which still clung
to the things of earth."
She looked at him curiously, wondering whether she was one
of those things of earth for which his weak soul had hankered.
His perfect coolness was beyond measure exasperating to her.
It was not that she for one moment ignored the fact that for
those two there could be no such thing as friendship — no swee<
communion of soul with soul, secure from all peril of earthly
passion, in that calm region where love has never entered. She
knew that this accidental meeting was a thing not to be repeated
without hazard to her peace in this world and the next, or to
such poor semblance of peace as was still hers. Yet she was
angry with him for his placid smile, his friendly anxiety for her
welfare, the quiet tones that had never faltered since he first
erected her, the grave eyes that looked at her with such passion-
less kindliness. If he had said to her, " Elizabeth, I have
never ceased to love you — we must meet no more upon this
earth " — she would have been content ; but, as it was, she stood
looking moodily down at the angry river, dyed red with the
clay from its rugged banks, telling herself over and over
again that he had never loved her, that he was altogether
adamant.
Being a woman, and not a woman strong in the power of
Belf-goyernment, she could not long devour her heart iu silence.
316 Strangers and PilgHms,
The wayward reckless spirit eought a relief in words, howevej
foolish.
" You do not even ask me if I am happy," she said, " or how
I prospered after your desertion of me."
"Desertion!" he echoed, with a short laugh; "women have
a curious way of misstating facts. My desertion of you ! De-
sertion is a good word. Forgive me for not having inquired
after your happiness, Lady Paulyn. I had a right to suppose
that you were as happy as every woman ought to be who has
deliberately chosen her own lot in life. I trust the choice in
your case was a fortunate one."
" I had no choice," she answered, in a dull despairing tone,
looking at the river, not daring to look at him. " I had no
choice. I went the way Fate drifted me, as helpless or as in-
different as that tangle of weeds yonder, carried headlong down
the stream. I was miserable at home with my sisters; so,
thinking any kind of life must be better than the life I led with
them, I married. I have no right to complain of my marriage;
it has given me all the things I used to fancy I cared about,
long ago, when I was a vain silly girl; nor have I any right to
complain of my husband, for he has been much better to me
than I have ever been to him."
" Why do you palter with the truth ?" he cried sternly, turn-
ing upon her with an angrier look than she had seen in his
face, even on the day when they parted. " "VVhy do you try to
disguise plain facts, and to deceive me, even now ? What plea-
sure can it give you to fool me just once more ? What do you
mean by being drifted into your marriage, or why pretend that
you married Lord Paulyn because you were miserable at home ?
You were engaged to him before you left your aunt's house.
You were married to him as soon as my back was turned."
" That is false !" cried Elizabeth. " I was not engaged to him
till you had left England."
" What, he was not your accepted lover when I saw you in
Eaton-place — when I showed you that newspaper?"
" He was not. The newspaper and you were both wrong. I
had refused Lord Paulyn twice. The last rejection took place
the night before that morning, the night of the private theatri-
cals at the Rancho."
She held her head high now, the sweet lips curved in a scorn-
ful smile, proud of her folly — proud, even though she had
wrecked her own life, and had perchance shadowed his, by that
very foolishness.
" And you suffered me to think you the basest of women — to
surrender that which was dearer to me than my very life — only
because you were too proud to tell me the truth 1 "
" Would you have believed if I had told you ? I don't think
Strangers and Pilgrims, 317
yon would. You had judged me beforehand. You would
iiardly let me speak. You believed a printed lie rather than
my piteous looks — the love that had almost offered itself to you
unasked that night at Hawleigh. You could think that a
woman who loved you like that would change in two little
months — could be tempted away from you by the love cf rank
and money. I never thought that you could leave me Uke that.
I was sure that you would come back to me. O God, how I
waited and watched for your coming ! how I hated those fine
sunshiny rooms in Eaton-place which saw my misery ! And
then when I went back to Hawleigh, thinking I might see j^u
again, perhaps, and you might forgive me, I was just in time
to hear your farewell sermon. And when I went to your
lodgings the next morning, to beg for your forgiveness — yes, I
wanted you to forgive me before you left us all for ever — I waa
just too late to see you. Fate was adverse once more. The
train had carried you away."
' You went to my lodgings ! " he exclaimed, with breathless
intensity. " You would have asked me to forgive you, me, the
blind besotted fool who had been duped by his own passion !
You loved me well enough to have done that, Ehzabeth ! "
" I would have kissed the dust at your feet. There is no
humiliation I could have deemed too great if I could have only
won your forgiveness; not won your love back again — the hope
of that had no place in my heart."
" My love ! " he said, with a bitter smile. " When did that
ever cease to be yours ? "
Her whole face changed as he spoke, glorified by the great-
ness of her joy. He had loved her once — and that once had
been for ever !
But not long did passion hold Malcolm Forde in its thrall.
He felt the foolishness of his words so soon as they had been
uttered.
" It is worse than idle to speak of these things now," he
said. " If I wronged you by a groundless accusation, you
wronged me still more deeply by withholding the truth. That
day changed the colour of our lives. Of my life I can only say
that it is the life to which I had long aspired, which I would
have sacrificed for no lesser reason than my love for you. It
has fully satisfied my desires. I will not say there have beeu
no thorns in my path, only that it is a path from which no
earthly temptation could now withdraw me. For yourself,
Lady Paulyn, I can only trust — as I shall pray iu many a
prayer in the days to come, when we two shall be on oj^posita
eides of the world — that your Hfe may be filled with all the
blessings which Heaven reserves for those who strive to maka
|iie best use of earthly advantages."
818 Strangers and Pilgrim*.
"You mean that having made a wretched mistake in my
marriage, and having lost the child who made life bright fof
me, I am to console myself by church-going and district-
visiting, and by seeing my name in the subscription Hst of every
charity."
" The field is very wide," he said, every trace of passion gone
from voice and manner. " You need not be restricted to a con-
ventional role. There are innumerable modes of helping one's
fellow-creatures, and no one need despair of originaUty in well-
doing."
" It is not in me," she answered wearily. " And if I were
ever so inchned to help my fellow-creatures, my opportunities
henceforward are likely to be limited. I have been guilty of
culpable extravagance ; it is so difficult to calculate the expense
of what one does in society, and I never was good at mental
arithmetic. In plain words, I have made my husband angry by
the amount of my bills, and I shall henceforward have very
httle money at my command."
" I should have supposed that Lady Paulyn's pin-money
would be ample fund for benevolence, which need not always
be costly," said Mr. Forde, conceiving this self-abasement to be
merely a mode of excusing her disinclination for a fife of useful-
ness.
" I have no pin-money," she answered carelessly. " I refused to
have a settlement. "When a woman marries as much above her
as I did, there is always an idea of sale and barter. I would
not have the price set down in the bond."
" Your husband will no doubt remember that generous refusal
when he has recovered from any vexation your unthinking
extravagance may have caused him."
" I don't know. We have a knack of saying disagreeable
things to each other. I have not much indulgence to expect
from him. Do you ever pass our house at Slogh-na-Dyack ? "
" Sometimes."
" Sometimes," she thought, with exceeding bitterness ; and he
had never been tempted to cross the threshold, never con-
strained, in his own despite, as passion would constrain a man
who could feel, to enter the house in which she lived, to see with
his own eyes whether she was happy or miserable.
"And yet he talks of having never ceased to love me," she
said to herself.
Then resuming her old light tone — the tone that had so often
jarred upon his ear in the bygone time — she said,
" When next you pass Slogh-na-Dyack, think of me as a
prisoner inside those high white walls, a prisoner looking out at
the water, and envying the white-sailed ships that are sailing
round Cantyre, the sea-gulls flying over the hills. It is a very
Strangers and Pilgrims. 319
fine lionse, and I have everything in it that a reasonable woman
could desire ; but I feel that it is my prison, somehow."
" How do you mean ? "
" Lord Paulyn has brought me here to retrench. He is a
millionaire, I believe, but millionaires are not fond of spending
money, and, as I told you just now, I have spent his with both
hands. Pray don't think that I am complaining, only — only,
when you go past my house, think of me as a solitary pi-isoner
within its walls, and pity me if you can."
The assumed lightness was all gone now, and in its stead
came piteous tones of appeal.
'* Pity you ! " he cried passionately. " Are you trying to find
out the quickest way to break my heart ? You had always a
knack at playing with hearts, Elizabeth ; do not speak to me
any more. Pity me. I am weaker than water. Why do you
not tell me that you are happy — that the world, and the plea-
sures and triumphs of the world, are all-sufficient for you?
Why do you wish to distract my soul by these suggestions of
misery ? And to-night, perhaps, amongst your friends, you will
be all life and brightness — a creature of smiles and sunshine —
as you were in the play that night."
" I can act still," she said, with a faint laugh. " But it is
too much trouble to do that at Slogh-na-Dyack. I have no
friends there ; it is a hermitage, without the peace of mind that
can make a hermitage pleasant. Don't look at me so sorrow-
fully. I shall go back to London, I daresay, in the spring, if I
am good, and shall give parties, and spend more money, while
you are among your Fiji islanders."
Malcolm Forde answered nothing, but stood with a gloomy
brow staring at the rushing water. What a shallow nature it
seemed, this soul of the girl he had loved once and for ever ;
what a childish perversity and capriciousness, and yet what
dreary suggestions there were in all her talk of a depth of misery
lurking below this seeming lightness ! Ah, what torture to part
from her thus, knowing nothing of what her life was like in the
present, what it might become in the future ; knowing only that
it was nob peace, and that all those loftier hopes and nobler
dreams which had sustained him in the darkest hours of his
existence were to her a dead letter !
They kept silence, both watching the dark and turbid river,
clmost as if it had been that river in the under world by which
they must each stand one day, waiting for the grim ferryman.
But in a little while the somid of wheels mingled with the noise
of the water — wheels and horses' feet approaching swiftly on
the wet mountain road.
"Thank God!" said Mr. Forde; "the carriage at last.
How you shiver ! I must beg of you to remember what I have
320 Strangers and Pilgrims.
said al3ont taking prompt means to ward off the cold, and it
would be as well to take some precautionary steps against in-
fection : not that I fear any danger from that," he added hope-
fully. Then, looking at her with undisguised tenderness — for
was it not, as he believed, his very last look ? — " Elizabeth, I
shall pray for you all my life. If the prayers of any other than
yourself can give yoa peace and good thoughts and a happy
life, you will never lack those blessings. Good-bye."
He held her hand for a little while, looking at her with those
dark searching eyes which she had feared even before she loved
him; looking through her very soul, trying to pierce the thin
veil of pretence, to fathom the mystery within. But even at
the last she was a mystery too deep for his plummet-line.
" Good-bye," she said, and not one word more, remembering
that other parting, when, if speech could have come out of her
stubborn lips, she might have kept him all her life. What
could she say now, except good-bye ?
He put her into the dainty little brougham, wrapped her in
the soft folds of a fur-lined carriage-rug, gave the coachman strict
injunctions to drive home as fast as his horses would safely
carry him, and then stood bare-headed at the cottage-door
watching her departure.
CHAPTER IX.
** My God ! I never knew what the maJ felt
Before ; for I am mad beyond all doubt!
No, I am dead! These putrifying limbs
Shut round and sepulchre the panting soul,
Which would burst forth into the wandering air.
What hideous thought was that I had e'en now!
'Tis gone ; and yet its burden remains here,
O'er these dull eyes — upon this weary heart!
world ! life ! day ! misery !
******
She is the madhouse nurse who tends on me.
It is a piteous office."
"WiTETnEK a careful compliance with Mr. Forde's behest would
have saved Elizabeth from the evil consequences of that one
wet day, it is impossible to say. She took no precautions ; she
was utterly reckless of her own safety, hating doctors and all
medical appliances with a childish hatred, and never from her
childhood upwards having cared to take any trouble about lier-
Strangers and Pilgrims. 321
eelf in the way of preserving her health. That health had hitherto
been a splendid inheritance which recklessness could hardly
reduce. She had run wild in the Devonian woods wet-fuoted
and caring no more for the damps of morass or brooklet than a
young fawn ; she had roamed the moor in the very teeth of the
e ,st wind, had lingered latest of all the household in the Vicar-
age garden when the heavy night-dews were falUng ; she had sat
up late into the nights reading her favourite books, had existed
for weeks at a time with the least possible allowance of sleej),
and had hardly known what it was to be ill.
" I almost wish I could set up a chronic headache like Diana's,"
she used to say in those days. " It is so convenient occasionally."
But after her boy's death had come an illness which concen-
trated into nine long weeks of anguish more than some_ feeble
souls suffer in a lifetime of weak murmurings and complainings,
rain-fever, it would have been called most likely, had the patient
been any one else than Lord Paulyn's wife ; but the specialists,
who met three times a week in solemn conclave to discuss the
diagnostics of the case, found occult names for the ailments of
a person of quality. That nameless fever of mind and body,
engendered of a wild and desperate grief, came and passed away ;
but not without severely trying the strength of the mind, which
had been the greater sufferer. The inexhaustible riches of a
superb constitution saved the body, but that weaker vessel the
mind foundered, and at one time was menaced with total shij)-
wreck.
Now fever again took possession of that lovely temple — the
lowest form of contagious fever — and rang its dismal changes
from gastric to typhus, from typhus to typhoid. Wet garments,
tainted air, did their fatal work. After a week or so of general
depression, occasional shivering fits, utter want of appetite, and
continued sleeplessness, the fever-fiend revealed himself in a
more definite form ; and the local surgeon — resident five miles
from the chateau — declared, with infinite hesitation and un-
willingness, that in liis opinion Lady Paulyn was suffering from
a mild form — a very mild form, and entirely without danger —
of the low fever that had been hanging about the neighbourhood
this year.
This declaration was made, in the most cautious and concili-
ating manner, to Lady Paulyn herself, in the presence of Hilda
Disney ; the disagreeable fact disgiiised with an excessive show
of confidence and hopefulness on the doctor's part, just as he
^^ntrived to conceal the flavour of aloes or rhubarb in his
silvered pills.
Elizabeth turned her haggard fever-bright eyes to him with a
Bti'ange look. She had been sitting in a moody attitude till
now, staring fixedly at the ground.
822 Strangers and Pilgrims.
" I have had fever before," she said ; " and that time my mind
went. I could not believe it for long afterwards, but I know
now that it did go. I hope that is not going to happen to
me again."
" My dear lady," — Elizabeth shuddered ; the specialists, or in
other words mad-doctors, had always called her " dear lady," — •
"there is not the smallest cause for such an apprehension. In
fever there is occasionally a shght delirium, puiiely attributable
to physieal causes. But I trust that with care there may bo
nothing of the kind in. your case."
"With care!" repeated Ehzabeth. " Yes, I remember they
eaid that when I was ill before. I heard them, as I lay there
helpless, repeating the same words every day like parrots. But
then I only wanted to die, and to go to my darling ; and I
don't know that it matters much more now. Only I don't want
to lose my mind, and yet go on living. If I am to die young,
let me die altogether, not like Dean Swift, first a-top."
The Scotch surgeon, an eminently practical man, shook hia
head a little at this, with a grave side-glance at Miss Disney ;
then murmured his directions: quiet — repose — the saline
draughts, which he would alter a little from those of yesterday
and the day before — and, above all, care. It would be as well to
send to Glasgow for a professional nurse, lest the duties of the
sick-room might be beyond the scojoe of Miss Disney or Lady
Paulyn's maid. This was mentioned in confidence to Hilda
when she and the surgeon had left Elizabeth's room together.
" It is not going to be serious, I hope," said Hilda.
" I apprehend not. No ; I venture to think not. With youth,
and so fine a constitution — no organic disease — I have every
reason to imagine the fever will pass off in a few days, and a
complete restoration ensue. But the want of sleep and of ap-
petite are unpleasant symptoms, and her ladyship's mind is
more excited than I should wish. I think, as it is a case which
no doubt will inspire some anxiety in the mind of Lord Paulyn,
and as he is absent from home, it might be wise to fortify our-
selves with a second opinion." This was said with an air of
proud humility, as who should say, " I feel myself strong
enough to cope with the diseases of a nation, but usage must
be observed, according to the statute in such case made and
provided ; " for medicine has its unwritten laws, its unregistered
acts of an intangible parliament. " I should like Dr. Sauchie-
hall to see Lady Paulyn."
" Pray telegraph to him at once," said Hilda anxiously;
" and I will telegraph to my cousin."
With this understanding they parted. The doctor to drive
his neat gig to the little bathing-place five miles ofi", whence he
could send a telegram to Glasgow; Hilda to pace the terrace,
Strangerg and JPilf/rinis. 323
under a gray autumn sky, watcliing, or seeming to watcli, the
white rain mists rolling up from the mountain crests, and
meditating this new turn in afi'airs.
How Avould Reginald take his wife's illness? They had
parted with a palpable coolness; on her part indifference,
smothered anger on his. Would all his old selfish vehement love
rush back upon him with redoubled force if he found his wife in
jeopardy ? Such hours of peril, as it were the shadow of the
destroyer lurking on the threshold of a half-opened door, are
apt to awaken dormant affections; to rekindle passions that
seemed dead as death itself.
" I know that he loves her still," thought Hilda. " Those
flashes of anger spring from the same root as tender looks and
Bweet words : he loves her still, with quite as much real affec-
tion, and as near an approach to unselfishness as he is capable
of feeling. And if she were to die — he would never love any
one else; woiild marry again perhaps, but for money, no doubt,
the second time. And I — well, I should be always in the same
position, a miserable hanger-on, outside his life. God give me
patience to do my duty to both of them ; to the man who amused
a summer hohday by breaking my heart, and the woman who
has usurped my place in the world."
To communicate by telegraph or post with Lord Paulyn waa
no easy matter, or there was at least small security that a tele-
gram would find him. His address was fugitive ; at Newmar-
ket to-day, on board his yacht in Southampton Water, bound
for Havre, to- morrow. Hilda telegraphed to Newmarket and
Park-lane, trusting that one of the two messages might reach
him without delay. She also wrote him a letter, addressed to
Park-lane, in which she gave him a careful account of Eliza-
beth's symptoms, and the medical man's remarks upon them.
Having done this she felt that she had done her duty, and could
abide the issue of events with a complacent mind.
liut T, harder and more painful duty remained to be done;
the patient had to be watched and cared for, and that task Miss
Disney deemed herself, in a manner, bound to perform. A hor-
rible restlessness had taken possession of EUzabeth. Weak as
ehe was, she wanted to roam from room to room, out on to the
lonely walk even, under the dull gray sky ; and Mr. McKnockie,
the local surgeon, had especially directed that she should be kept
in perfect quiet, and in her own room — that she should straight-
way take to her bed, indeed, and, as jt were, prostrate herself at
the feet of the fever fiend.
Against this Elizabeth protested with all her might, declaring
that she was not ill, that she had nothing the matter with her
but cold and sore-throat, and that Mr. McKnockie was only
trying how long a bill he could rim up with his vapid tasteless
S24 Strangers and Pilgrims.
medicines. Air, fresh air, was all she required, she cned; and
ehe flung open the French window, and went out into the bal-
cony, in spite of Hilda.
" sea, sea, sea," she cried, looking away towards that open-
ing in the hills where the waters widened out into ocean, " if
you would only carry me away to some new world, a world of
dreams and shadows, where I should have done with the burden
of hfe ! "
Alas, she was only too near that world of dreams and sha-
dows ! Before nightfall she was delirious, watched over by hired
nurses, a prostrate wretch concerning whom the doctors Sau-
chiehall and McKnockie shook their heads almost despondently.
Fever of mind and body raged together with unabating violence.
She had entered the region of dreams and shadows ; and in that
long delirium, during which all things in the present were
blotted out, or only seen dimly athwart a thick cloud, her mind
went back to the past. She was a child again, following the
windings of the Tabar, or losing herself in the wood where the
anemones were like snow in April ; she was a girl again, her
childish unspoken love for Malcolm Forde ripening slowly, like
a bud that rijaens to a blossom under a gentle English sun,
until it bursts into bloom and beauty, the perfect flower of
woman's heart.
In that drama of the past which she lived over again, there
were not only scenes that had been, but scenes that had not
been. With the loss of sober reason and the perception of
surrounding things, invention was curiouly quickened. Memory,
which was beyond measure vivid, ran a race with imagination.
That brief sjjan of her springtide courtship, the few short
weeks of her engagement to ]\Ialcolm Forde, were spun out by
innumerable fancies of the distracted brain. She recalled
walks that they had never walked, long wanderings over the
moor ; wild poetic talk ; the converse of spirits which had issued
forth from the doors of this solid world into a vast cloudland, a
place of dim unfinished thoughts and broken fancies.
It was distracting to hear her talk of these things; it was a
madness almost maddening to watch or listen to. The hired
nurses made light enough of the business ; haled their patient
about with their coarse hands, tied her even with bonds when
she was too restless for their endurance ; ate, drank, slejit, and
regoiced, while she lay there in her dream-world, entreating
Malcolm to loosen those cruel cords, to take her away out of
the stifling atmosphere that was killing her.
Miss Disney made a point of spending some hours of the day
or night in the sick-room; and in these hours Elizabeth fared
a little better than at other times. The tying process was at
any rate not attempted in Hilda's presence. But consciousness
Strangers and Pilgrims. 325
of all immediate events being in abeyance, the "hapless patient
knew not that she was being protected by this quiet figure in a
black-silk gown, which sat statue-like by the hearth, and she was
exceedingly tormented by the sight of it. In her more despe-
rate moods she even accused Miss Disney of keeping her a
prisoner in that horrible room, and separating her from her
phghted lover. . .
Here was one of the mental obliquities which made a part of
her disorder. Her husband and her married life, even her lost
child, were forgotten ; were as things that had never been. No-
thing stood between her and her first lover, except the bondage
that kept her to that hated room. He was at all times close at
hand, waiting for her, calling to her even, only she could not go
to him. Every creature who held her back from_ him was her
enemy ; and chief among these, the despotic mistress of her
prison-house, the arbiter of her fate, was Hilda Disney.
Matters were in this state when Lord Paulyn came back to
Slogh-na-Dyack, tardily apprised of his wife's illness by the
telegrams, which had followed him from stage to stage of his
wandering existence. He found the doctors at sea, only able to
give stately utterance to the feeblest opinions, but by a curious
fatality issuing orders which in every minutest detail were
opposed to the desires of the patient.
In her more lucid intervals she had languished for the sight
of old faces, the sound of old voices. She had entreated them
to send for the old servant who had nursed her, the old Vicarage
servant who had been part-and-parcel of her home in the happy
childish days before her mother's death, before she had begun to
be proud of her beauty and to grow indifferent to the common-
place present in selfish dreams of a much brighter future. She
epoke of the woman by her name, remembering all about her
with a singular precision, at which the doctors looked at each
other, and wondered ; " Memory extraordinarily clear,"_ they
remarked, like heaven-gifted seers divining a fact which it was
not within the power of common perception to discover.
Then came a longing for her sisters, above all for Blanche,
the young frivolous creature who had loved her better than she
had ever loved in return. Piteonsly, in her most reasonable
moments, she implored that Blanche might be summoned.
" She would amuse me," she said, "and I want so much to be
amused ; all is so dull here, such an awful quiet, hke a house
tinder a spelL For Heaven's sake, if there is any one in this
place who loves me, or pities me, let them send for my sister
Blanche."
Miss Disney, faithful to her duties iu a semi-mechanical waj,
informed ^he medical men of this wish.
••Would it not be well to send for Miss Luttrell?"
326 Strangers and Filgrhm,
No, they said. Isolation — perfect isolation — offered the only
chance of recovery. Lady Paulyn was to see no one except the
persons who nursed her. No old I'amiliar faces — inspiring
violent emotions, agitating thoughts — were to approach her.
Even_ Miss Disney, who might be permitted to take her turn
occasionally in the patient's room, must he careful not to talk to
her — not to encourage anything like conversation. Soothing
silence must pervade the chamber — sepulchral as the room
where the mighty dead he in state. When Lord Paulyn came,
he mightsee his wife, but with such precautions as must reduce
any ineeting between them to a nullity. The dismal monotony
of a sick-room was to be Ehzabeth's cure ; the hard cruel visages
of hireling nurses were to woo her back to reason and jjeace :
BO said Dr. Sauchiehall, Mr. McKnockie, as in duty bound.
Agreeing.
Lord Paulyn came at a time when mere bodily illness had
been well-nigh subjugated, and that nicer mechanism, the mind,
alone remained out of gear. He was allowed to stand for a few
minutes in the shadow of the curtains that draped his wife's
bed; and having the misfortune to come in an unlucky hour,
heard her rave about her first lover, and upbraid the tyrants
who had severed them. He turned upon his heel, and left the
room without a word ; nor did he enter again until, upon a
terrible occasion, some weeks later, when the malady had in-
creased—even under those favourable circumstances of utter
isolation and the care of hirehng nurses — and he was summoned
to his wife's room to prevent her flinging herself out of the
window by the sheer force of his strong arm.
She was clinging to the long French window when he went
into the room — an awful white-robed figure with streaming hair
and flashing passionate eyes, the two nurses trying to drag her
back, but vainly striving against the unnatural strength that
■»vaits upon a mind distraught.
•' Why do you keep me back from him ? " she cried. " He is
down yonder by the water waiting for me, as he has waited
always. I heard his voice just now. You shall not keep me
back. Do you think lam afraid of the danger? At the worst
it is only death. Let me go ? "
Lord Paulyn's strong arm thrust the nurses aside, grasped
the frail figure, whose convulsive force was strangled in that
muscular grip. She struggled with him, and was hurt in the
struggle — hurt by the grasp of that broad hand, which seemed
so brutal in its strength. She looked at him with her wild
fiever-bright eyes.
" I know you now," she said ; " you are my husband. The
other was a sweet sad dream. You arc the bitter reality ! "
He liung her into the arms of the head nurse — a virago six
Strangers and Pilgrims. 327
feet high. " If you cannot take better care of 3 our patient, I
must have her put where they will know how to look after her
without boring me," he said ; and left the room without another
look at the only woman he had ever loved. There are some
flames that burn themselves out very soon, the fierce love of
selfish souls among them. The warmth of Lord Paulyn'w
aftection for his wife had long been on the wane. Her extra-
vagances had tried his temper, touching him deeply where he
was most susceptible, in his love of money. Her illness had
annoyed him, for he detested the fuss and trouble of domestic
afiliction. This second calamity struck a final blow to his self-
love, with which was bound up whatever yet remained of
that other love. That her wandering mind should set up "that
parson fellow" in his rightful place — should erase him, Reginald
Paulyn, from the story of her life — harking back to that old
foolish sentimental story of her girlhood, was too deep an ofience.
He sat by his lonely hearth, and brooded over his wrongs — his
wife's base ingratitude, his childlessness — hardly daring to look
forward to the future, in which he saw the creature he had once
loved menaced with the direst affliction humanity can suffer.
He summoned the mad-doctors — the men who had taken out a
kind of patent for the manipulation of the distraught mind —
the men who had called Elizabeth " dear lady," a year ago, in
Park-lane. They came, and agreed in polite language, which
shirked the actual word, that Lady Paulyn was very mad; they
feared hopelessly, permanently mad. Nature, of course, had
vast resources, they added, sagely ]n-oviding for the event of her
recovery — there was no knowing what heahng balm she might
ultimately produce from her inexhaustible storehouse — but in
the meantime there could be no doubt of the main fact, that her
ladyship was suff'ering from acute mania, and must be placed
tinder fitting restraint.
There was a little discussion as to which of the doctors should
have the privilege of ministering to this amiable sufferer. Oue
had a charming place — an old-fashioned mansion of the Grange
order in Surrey ; the other a handsome establishment on the
north side of London. They debated this little matter between
themselves, hke pohte vultures haggling about a piece of carrion,
perhaps drew lots for the patient, and finally arranged every*
thing with an air of agreeable cordiality. The physician whose
house was in the north had won the day.
" You must contrive to get me through any formalities that
may be necessary as easily as you can," said Lord Paulyn,
" It's a horrible "business, and tiio sooner it's over the better.
Poor thing! She was the loveliest woman in England, bar
none, when I married hor. 1 fool aa if we were committing «
murder."
328 Strangers and Pilgrims.
" Be assured, my dear sir, that tlie dear lady could not be
more happily placed than with our good friend Dr. Cameron,"
said Ur. Turnam, the gentleman who had resigned the prey to
his brother patentee. " If skill and care can restore her, rely
upon it they will not be wanting."
The Viscount sighed, and went back to his solitary smoking-
room, breathing muttered curses against destiny. She had
worn out his love ; but to think of her hauded over to this doctor
— consigned, perhaps, to a life-long imprisonment — that waa
hard. What should he do with himself, when she who had made
the glory of his life was walled up in that living grave ? He had
Newmarket still, and his stables ; and at his best he had given
more of his life to the stable than to Bhzabeth. But he felt not
the less that his life was broken — that he could never again be
the man that he had been; that even the hoarse roar of the ring
and the public when his colours came to the front in a great
race would henceforth fall flat upon his ear.
CHAPTEE X.
*' Yes, it was love, if thoughts of tenderness
Tried in temptation, strongest by distress,
Unmov'd by absence, firm in every clime.
And yet, ! more than all!— untir'd by time ;
Which naught remov'd, nor menac'd to remove—
If there be love in mortals, this was love."
A OTiOOTvr fell upon the spirit of Malcolm Forde after that meet-
ing in the sick woman's cottage. The thoughts of his old life.
his old hopes, bright dreams of union with the woman he fondly
loved, pleasant visions of a simple pastoral English life among
people it would be his happiness to render happy, a fair jirospect
which he had cherished for a little while, only to lose it by
and by in bitterness and disappointment — the htoughts of these
things came back to him and took the sweetness out of his plea-
sant existence, and made all the future barren.
It was hard to know that he had his own imiietuosity to blame
for the ruin of his earthly happiness ; harder to be content re-
membering how he had been permitted to realise that other
and unselfish dream of carrying light to those that sat in dark-
ness ; hard to say, " Lord, I thank Thee ; Thou knowest best
what is good for me; Thou hast given me far more than I
deserye."
Strangers and Pilgrims. 3213
Not yet could his spirit soar into this holy region of perpetual
peace ; a region where sorrows are not, only mild chastenings o!
a heavenly Master, who leavens every affliction with the leaven
of faith and hope. His thoughts were of the earth, earthy. Hi;
mind went back to that day in Eaton-place, and he hated him-
Belf for his unreasoning anger, for the false pride which would not
let him court an explanation ; for his blind passion, which had
taken the show of things for their reality.
He thought of what might have been if, instead of casting
away this flower of his life on the first indignant impulse of his
jealous mind, he had sho\vn a little patience, a little tenderness.
But he had seemed incapable of patience on that odious day ;
with his own angry foot he had kicked down the air-built castle
which it had been so sweet to him to raise.
If he had found her happy, serene in the glory of her high
position, secure in the sympathy and affection of a worthy hus-
band, he would not have felt his own loss so keenly ; he could
have borne even to know that she had never loved him better
tlnin in that luckless hour when he renounced her. But to know
that her life had been shipwrecked by his mad anger — to look
into her haggard face, with its sad mocking smile, and know that
she was miserable— to read the old love in those lovely eyes, the
old love cherished always, confessed too late by unconscious
looks that pierced his very soul — these things were indeed
bitter.
For a while he forgot his profession ; forgot what he was, and
the work that still remained for him to do ; sank from his lofty
level of self- renouncement to the lowest depths of a too human
despair. If the image of his lost love had haunted him in that
strange romantic world amid the waters of the Pacific, how much
more did that sad shade pursue him now, when the woman he
still loved was near at hand, when from the hill-side which he
had daily need to pass he could see the white walls of the house
she had called her prison !
Never more might his eyes search the secrets of that altered
face — the face which he remembered in all the pride of its girlish
beauty. Never any more might those two meet. To all other
world-weary souls he might carry consolation, might breathe
words of promise and of hope; but not to her. Between them
rose the barrier of a mighty love, unconquered and unconquer- '
able.
He went his quiet way with that great sorrow in his heart.
Had he not carried almost as great a sorrow even in the islands
of the southern sea? only that he had then regarded his loss as
inevitable, while he now lamented it as the wretched fruit of hia
ftwn fatuity. He went his quiet way and did the little there was
to be done in that scantily-peopled district, visited the sick.
330 Strangers and Pilgrims.
comforted the dying ; but the work he did just now was done in
a semi-mechanical way, for his heart was elsewhither.
It would have been a relief to him if he could only have heard
of her ; if there had been any one who could tell him how she
fared. He looked at the white walls, the conical towers, long-
ingly, yet would not go near them. To enter there would be to
enter the gates of hell. But he would have risked much to hear
of her.
His eyes searched the little chapel at every service, but saw
her not. Yet this might augur nothing except that she instinc-
tively avoided him, with an avoidance he must needs approve.
Weeks passed, and he heard nothing; and that mountain
scene seemed strangely blank to him, as if that one figure, met
only once, had filled the whole landscape. Then came a day on
which duty took him near Slogh-na-Dyack. He went to see a
sick child in a cottage within half-a-mile of the chateau ; and
here, a»lmost by accident, he first heard of Lady Paulyn's illness-
He had asked the boy's mother if she had everything necessary
for him ; everything the doctor had ordered. Yes, she told him,
tliey got everything from the big house where the poor lady was
BO ill.
He had been bending tenderly over the fever-stricken child,
but he looked suddenly upward at these words.
" What house ? what lady ? " he asked quickly.
" The house with the peaky lums," the woman answered.
*' Lady Paulyn, who took the fever, and is lying ill with it still ;
near death, some folks say."
He laid the sick boy gently down upon his pillow, and then
questioned the woman closely. She could tell him no more than
she had told him in that one sentence. The lady at Slogh-na-
Dyack had been dangerously ill ; the doctors came there every
day : a doctor from Glasgow, and another doctor from Ellens-
bridge. Some said she was dying ; but she had lain sick so long,
and hadn't died, so there was hopes of her getting well. The
fever had been quicker with poor bodies like hersen. It was a
good many weeks now since Lady Paulyn had been took.
What could he do? He left the cottage, and walked
straight to Slogh-na-Dyack, with no definite idea as to what
he should do, only that he would at least discover for himself
how far the woman at the cottage had been right. Those
people always exaggerate; pick up wild versions of common
facts. Elizabeth might have been ill, perhaps, but not
dangerously. He tried to persuade himself this as he walked
Bwittly along the misty road.
He did not stop to consider his right, or want of right,
to approach her. Such an hour as this made an end to all
Buch questions. If she were dying, it was his duty to be near
Strangers and Pilgrims. 331
her; to sustain that poor weak soul, of whose mystery he
knew more than any other man on earth. By his right aa
a minister of God's word and her dead father's friend, he would
claim the privilege of being near her at the last dark hour.
The land in front of the chateau looked gray and gloomy in
the twilight, the darkness only broken by the red light of a
wood fire in the hall. A pompous butler, imported from Park-
lane, and sorely averse to this Northern establishment, was
basking in a Glastonbury chair before the cavernous fireplace,
yesterday's Times lying across his knees, to-day's Scotsman
and Edinburgh Daily Review crumpled into the corner of the
chair; the seneschal having dropped comfortably off to sleep
after exhausting the news of the day.
Disturbed by the entrance of Malcolm Forde, this function-
ary rose from his slumbers, and imperiously commanded an
underUng to light the gas, " which is about the honly con-
venience we 'av in this detestable barracks of a place," he
was wont to say, " and 'av to make it ourselves in the
kitchen-garding, at the risk of being blowed out of our beds."
Questioned by Mr. Forde, this personage affirmed that Lady
Paulyn was ill, very ill ; but not in any danger. She had been
in danger three weeks ago, when the fever was at its height ;
but there was no danger now.
" Yet you say that she \a still very ill."
" Very ill, sir ; leastways, she keeps her own room ; but is,
I believe, progressing towards convoluscence. Would you wish
to see Miss Disney, sir ? Lord Paulyn have gone to Hinvernesa
for a few days' deer stalking, but Miss Disney is at home."
"No; if you can assure me that Lady Paulyn is out of
danger, I need not trouble Miss Disney. Bat in the event of
danger, I should be very glad if that lady would send for me.
You can give her my card. I am an old friend of Lady
Paulyn's family."
He gave the butler his card, and went away relieved, but still
uneasy.
How gloomy the house looked ! The dark oak staircase,
with its mediaeval newels; the Scottish lion rampant, sup-
porting the shield of the knife-powder manufacturer, whose
conventional quarterings Lord Paulyn had not taken the
trouble to efi'ace; the vaulted roof, with its bosses and corbels
in carton pierre, and gloomy as the ancient woodwook from
which they had been modelled ; the black and white marble
lloor, with skins of savage beasts laid here and there ; the suits
of mail glimmering in the firelight, the underling not yet
having brought his taper : a dismal Udolpho-likc j^laoe it looked
at this hour, in spite of the chief butler's portly presence.
"A parson,.! suppose," mused the butlen when the figure ^
332 Strangers and Pilgrims.
Malcolm Forde had vanished from the porch, beneath whose
ehadow he had lingered a few moments to look back into the
house, wondering whether amidst all this pomp slie was loved
and well cared for. " A parson, I make no doubt. What
a rum lot they are, to be sure ! as bad as ravens— hanging
about a house where there's any one dying. One would think
they went pardners with the undertaker. Let's have a look at
his pasteboard," he continued aloud, while the gas was being
lighted. " The Keverend Malcolm Forde. Why, I'm blest if that
isn't the chap she was engaged to before we married her ! Fancy
his coming area-sneaking here whilehis Ludship'sout of the way."
For about a fortnight after that evening Mr. Forde sent a
messenger to Slogh-na-Dyack, at intervals of twoor three days,
to inquire about Lady Paulyn ; and the reply being always to
the effect that her ladyship was progressing favourably, he
comforted himself with the idea that all danger was past, and
finally told the messenger he need go no more. His^ own
residence at Dunallen was drawing to a close ; Mr. McKenzie
writing cheerily from divers Belgian towns, where he and his
family were enjoying the glories and pleasures of continental
travel, on an economical scale ; but writing still more cheerily
of his approaching return to the home-nest.
"After all, my dear Forde, there's no place like our own wee
parlour ; and there's nothing in the way of foreign kickshaws,
partridges with stewed pears, and the Lord knows what, that I
rehsh as much as a sheep's-head or a few broth. And I think
my wife's potato-soup beats your potage a Vltalienne or your
puree aux iwis hollow. The hills about Spa are a poor
business compared with Argyleshire; and if it wasn't for being
covered with iirs, v.ould be paltry beyond comparison. As it
doesn't do for a white choker to adorn the gaming-table, I had
rather a dull time of it, and was glad when we got back to
Liege, where the churches and gun factories are unapproach-
able. I saw some wood-carving about the clioir stalls that
would have set your ritualistic mouth watering, only that, now
you've given yourself up to foreign missions, you've turned
your back ujoon that kind of thing."
Malcolm Forde's time at Dunallen was nearly ended; thank
God the peril had passed ! He could leave her with a heart
that was almost at peace ; for by this time he had schooled
himself to accept his fate — the lot out of God's hand — and to
pray in humiUty and hope for her ultimate happiness.
Thus came the last day but one of his service at Dunallen.
He had been at work from early in the morning, going from
dwelHng to dwelling — dwellings which were chiedy of the
cottage order— taking leave of pcocle to whom he had made
Strangers and Pilgrms. 333
himself fear in the short space of nis ministration among
them ; promising to remember them at the other end of the
world, in compliance with their desire tliat he would sometimes
think of them when he was far away. He answered them with
a somewhat mournful smile, thinking of that other memory
which would cleave to him for the rest of his life.
There was weeping and wailing in all these humble habita-
tions at the prospect of his departure. Mr. McKenzie was a
good man and a kind, they all protested warmly ; and Mrs,
McKenzie's potato-soup and honest barley-broth kept soul and
body together in many a household through the bleak long
winter; but Mr. McKenzie wasn't like Mr. Forde. He had a
little dry way of talking to folks, and didn't enter into the very
thoughts of poor bodies like his substitute. Nor could he
preach so fine a sermon as Mr. Forde; a strong jjoint with
these critical Caledonians.
His day's labours were ended at last. He had trodden the
heather-clad hills he loved so well for the last time; had taken
his last look at Slogh-na-Dyack's white towers ; and he sat by
his solitary hearth thinking how very soon he should have left
this well-known land to resume his work among a strange people.
Not unhopefully did he look forward to new toil, new
anxieties. The eager thirst of conquest, which urges the
missionary as it urges the Avarrior, had grown somewhat
languid with him of late; he could not feel quite the old
enthusiasm. " I go to reclaim the lost among a strange people,"
he thought, " while the soul that I love best on earth may
be perishing ; the soul that I might have trained to such a
high destiny."
He had letters to write — much still to do before leaving
Scotland; but he sat by the lonely fireside in the gloaming, lost
in melancholy thought. Tlie neat little maid-servant came to
ask if she should bring the lamp ; but he told her no, he
liked the firelight. "It is a pleasant light for thinking by,
Meg," he said.
A pleasant light, perhaps ; but his thoughts were not plea-
Bant. He tried to confine them to the actual lousiness of his
life, the work that lay before him in the future ; but they would
not be directed. They clung with a passionate regret to the
Bcene he was about to leave. They hung around the white-
walled chateau ; they wandered in and out of those unknown
chambers where Elizabeth lived; they would not be diverted
from her.
" If she were well and happy it would be different," he said
to himself, in self-exciilpation.
_ He sat on till the chapel clock had struck nine. The October
night was blusterous, -ssild gusts ratthug the window-frames,
Z2^ iSlrangers and Pilgrims.
and rustling the ivy witli a gruesome and gliostly sonnd, as of
disembodied souls striving for admittance. The moou was up,
and by fits and starts emerged from a stormy sea of blackest
clouds, lighting up the wild landscape, the water at the foot of
the hill. It was during one of these sudden bursts of moon-
light that Mr. Forde, happening suddenly to look up, saw a
Btrange figure outside his window; a face white as the moon-
Ught, peering in at him through the glass. For a moment he
iooked at it in dumb wonder, taking it for the embodiment of
his own troubled fancies, a mere visionary creature ; as if that
melancholy sound of the ivy leaves against the glass had made
itself a shape out of the shadows.
It was very real, however. A hand tapped upon the pane,
with a hurried imperious tapping. He got up from his chair,
and went over to the window.
Great Heaven ! it was that one woman whose image absorbed
his every thought ; it was Elizabeth !
" Let me in !" she cried piteously, intones that seemed strange
to him ; stranger even than her presence in that spot. He
opened the window softly.
" I will come round to the door and let you in," he said ; " for
Heaven's sake what has hai^pened.P"
" Only that I have cheated them all at last," she said, look-
ing at him with wild beseeching eyes ; " I have broken loose
from my bondage. Malcolm, you will not let them take me
back again p"
Something— an unutterable indefinable something — in her
tones and looks struck him with a sharper j^ain than he had
felt even yet ; though almost all his thoughts of her had been
pain. He rushed across the room, and the tiny hall beyond it,
to the door, only a few paces from the window by which she
Btood. He opened it quickly, went out into the wintiy night,
and found her still rapping impatiently upon the pane, as if
ehe had not heard or comprehended what he said to her.
She was clad in some loose long garment of the dressing-
gown species, and had a shawl flung carelessly over her shoul-
ders ; but neither hat nor bonnet. Her long rippUng hair fell
loosely about her, mixed with the folds of her shawl.
" Dear Lady Paulyn," ho said very gently, " what could have
induced you to come here at such an hour ? Good heavens, you
have surely not walked ?" he added hastily : looking down
the long moonlit road, where there was no vastige of any
vehicle.
" Yes ; I have come all the way on toot, and alone. I was
afraid at first that I might not find you ; but there was some
instinct led me right, I think. Sometimes I saw you a little
way before me in the moonlight, and you turned, "ow and then.
Strangers and Filgrms. 835
and smiled and beckoned to me. Your smile drew me after
you. Why do you live so far off, Malcolm ? you were so much
nearer at Hawleigh. I remember that morning I came to see
you, only to find you gone — it seemed so short a walk ; but to-
night it was like walking on for ever and ever."
"Come into the house," he said, in a curious half-mufl3ed
voice, a deadly fear rending his heart. " Come into the warm
i-oom, Elizabeth; you are shivering."
"Not with cold," she said hastily; "with fear."
"Fear! of what?"
" That they'll follow me, and take me away from you. They'll
guess where I've come, you know ; as you and I are engaged
to be married. My horrible jailers will hunt me down, Mal-
colm ; Hilda at their head. Hilda, who is the worst of all —
not rough and cruel with her hands like the others — but
cruel with her cold watchful eyes, that are looking me into my
grave."
What was this P the delirium of fever ? He had been told
that the fever had passed, that she was almost well. They had
deceived him evidently ; they denied his right to know what pro-
gress she made towards recovery or towards death. They had
mocked him with their lying messages.
He put her shawl round her, and drew her into the house.
He could keep her here long enough for her to rest and refresh
herself, while a messenger went to Slogh-na-Dyack to fetch a
carriage to convey her home. This was obviously his duty. She
had talked wildly of her jailers; she had enti'eated him not to
deliver her up to them : yet his first act must needs be in a
manner to betray her. His duty was clearly to restore her into
the hands of her friends.
That wild horror of Hilda and of her nurses could but be the
raving of delirium. They were doubtless kind enough in their
way — even if it were not the kindest way — only hired service, or
the task-work imposed by duty. It was common for these poor
fever-distracted souls to exhibit a horror of their best friends — '■
to fly from them even as she had fled. No, there was nothing
for him to do but restore her to her own home — to that lonely
pile which had seemed to him so darksome and gloomy a habi-
tation that autumn twilight when he crossed its threshold for
the first time.
He led her into the parlour, where pine-logs and sea-coal were
burning cheerily, led her into the ruddy home-like light, her
weary head resting on his shoulder ; as it had never rested since
the night when he asked her to be his wife, and let all the
Bcheme of his existence drift away from him upon the floodtide
of passion. He placed her in the big^easy-cliair by the hearth,
removed her shawl, damp with the night dew, and then planted
336 Strangers and Pilgrims.
himself by the opposite side of the mantelpiece, watching her
with grave anxiety, thinking even in this sad moment how fair
a picture si.!*, made in the firelight, a sad forlorn face with
troubled eyes, a hstless figure half-shrouded in a veil of golden-
brown hair. If it were his duty, as he felt it was, to communi-
cate with her friends, there was time enough to dispatch his
messenger. He wanted her to speak a Uttle more clearly first,
to discover the full significance of her fear.
She sat for some minutes in silence staring absently at the
fire, with a half smile upon her face, as if exhausted by her
long walk, and feeling a physical satisfaction in m^ ''"e warmth
and rest. Then, after what seemed to Malcolm a ,ery long
pause, she looked slowly round the room, still smiling, and this
time with more meaning in her smile.
" How pretty your room looks in the firelight !" she said in
her old light tone, which smote him to the heart at such a time.
" Bat your rooms are always pretty, with books and things —
much prettier than my grand rooms, crowded with pictures, and
gilding, and finery, and a hundred colours that make my eyes
ache to look at them. I like this sober brown-looking parlour,
like an interior by Rembrandt. This is the first time that I
have been in any room of yours since I came to you that morn-
ing at Hawleigh. But we were not engaged to be married in
those days !" she added, smiling innocently up at him, as if
she were saying the most reasonable, the most natural thing in
this world.
"Our engagement! " he said gravely, "that is an auld sang,
and came to an end long ago. Let us talk of the future, Lady
Paulyn, not of the past."
She watched him as he spoke, with a curious look, as if she
saV him talking without hearing what he said.
" It was before we were engaged," she went on, pursuing her
own line of thought. " How soon are we to be married, Mal-
colm ? When we are married you can take me away from that
dreadful room," with a shudder, " that horrid room where I lie
awake night after night watching the candle burn slowly down
— O, how slowly it burns ! — and the reflection of the flame in
the shining oak panel. It was clever of me to find out that
about the candle, wasn't it ? They took away my watch, and
got tired of telling me what o'clock it was, or were too unkind
to do it ; and then I thought of King Alfred and the candles,
and knew by their burning when morning had nearly come."
Ho sighed — a heartbroken sigh — and sat down by her,
taking her hand gently. " Dear Lady Paulyn," he began, with
a stress upon the name, " I want to decide, with your help,
what we had better do. This long dreary walk must have tired
Tou so much. You have been very ill "
Strangers and Pilgrims. 337
She turned upon him sharply, with flashing eyes. " Do not sa>^
that to me," she cried angrily ; " that is what all the doctors saidi
'Dear lady, you have been very ill;' talking tc me in thei'
soothing sugary tones, as if they were reasoning with a baby ir
arms. I told them that I was not ill — that I was quite as well as
^ had ever been in my life — only that I wanted to be let out of
that hideous room, to go out upon the hills, to come to you,
Malcolm," with sudden tenderness.
" And you see I was right," she went on, after a little pause.
" If I were ill, do you suppose I could have walked ever so many
miles ? and I came along almost as fast as the wind. I ran
[)art of the way. Could I do that if I were ill, Malcolm P "
He was silent for a few moments, his head turned away fron.
lier and from the firelight, Ms face quite hidden. The first
sound that broke that silence was a smothered sob.
She looked at him wonderingly.
" Malcolm, why are you unhappy about me ? Don't yotl
understand that I am not ill ? What does it matter to us if all
those doctors talk nonsense? You can send them all awa]'
when we are married."
" Elizabeth," he said with tender earnestness, taking her thin
cold hand in his, and holding it while he spoke, — alas, there was
no sign of bodily fever in that poor little hand ! it was that
greater fever of the mind which he perceived here, with supreme
anguish, — " Elizabeth, there is a kind of illness in which the
mind is the cliief sufferer, an illness of which it seems to me
the best means of cure are in the hands of the patient, and not
the doctor. Patience and I'esignation, dear, are the means of
cure which God has given to us all. If anything has made you
unhappy, if anything has disturbed your peace of mind, pray
to Him for help, for consolation, for cure. They will come,
Elizabeth ; believe me, they will come."
She looked at him wonderingly for a few minutes, as if there
were something in his words that made her thoughtful. _He
was the first person who had ever spoken to her of her mind,
who had ever boldly told her that all was not well there. The
doctors had simpered at her, and tut-tuted and patted her gently
on the head, as if she had suddenly gone backward in years and
become a child of two. They had made pretty little affectionate
speeches of a sugar-plum fashion, never giving her a direct
answer to her eager questions, putting off everything blandly
till to-morrow, till she began to think the order of the universe
was changed, and time was all to-morrow. And then they left
her to lie on her bed and wonder from dawn to sunset, from
night till morning, and to weave strange romances in her ever-
working brain, for lack of any reality in her hfe except the
horrible reality of the room she hated and the nurses who ill-
338 Strangers and Pilgrims.
used lier. Bnt tliis was part-and-parcel of the magical process
of isolation wliereby she was to recover her wits.
"There is nothing the matter with my mind," she said
"What should there be the matter now that I am with you,
and happy P There never was anything the matter with me
except the silent hon-or of that room, and those rough-handed
women who stared at me, and worried me from morning till
night with medicines and messes, jelhes and beafteas and things,
making believe that I was ill. But you won't give me back to
them — you won't let them take me away from you P Promise
me that, Malcolm; mind, you must promise me that," half
rising from her chair and clinging to him.
" My dearest, do not ask me to make an impossible promise.
I have no alternative. It is my duty to restore you to your
friends. You cannot remain here ; and where can you so pro-
perly be as in your own house P Try to think, Elizabeth, what
the world would say if it knew that you wished to leave your
husband and your own proper home ! "
"My husband!" she repeated, with a cold laugh — "my hus-
band ! That is what Hilda said to me one day. The nurses
talk of viy delusions ; why, there can be no delusion so wild as
thai ! As if I could have any other husband than you, Malcolm,
after that night in the Vicarage garden when I almost asked you
to marry me. My husband ! Go back to my husband, go away
from you to my husband ! What, Malcolm, are you going to
talk nonsense like all the rest ? " she asked, looking round with a
helpless bewildered air. " I begin to think that every one in the
world is going mad except myself."
" Ehzabeth, if you would only try to remember. It is quite
true that old promise was made, dear, and you and I were to be
together all our lives. But Providence has ruled otherwise. A
foolish mistake of mine divided us, and then, after a little while,
vou found another lover whose constancy and devotion must
nave gained your gratitude and esteem, if not your love, for yon
married him. Remember, EHzabeth, you are the wife of Lord
Paulyn. You owe aifectiou, duty, obedience to him, and you
are bound to go back to the shelter of his roof. If it seems
dismal and strange to you Avhile you are so ill, dear, be assured
that fancy will pass away. Only pray for God's hel^^, pray to
Him to banish all evil fancies."
"Evil fancies!" shs cried, staring at him with wide-open
wondering eyes, and an expression that was half perplexity, half
contempt for his persistent folly. "You are like the rest.
Malcolm, mad, mad ! IIow dare you say that I am married ! how
dare you say that I have ever been false to you ! Good heavens,
have I not thought of ycu without ceasing since the first night
of our engageuient, that night when wc stood by the Vicaraije
Strangers and Pilgrims. 339
gate, Malcolm, and you confessed you loved me ? I did wring
that confession from yon at last ; and O, how proud it made
me, as if I had tamed a lion and made him lie down at my feet !"
She was silent for a few moments, looking down at the fire
with a happy smile, placidly happy in that supreme egotism,
that curious self-concentration, which is one of the charac-
teristics of lunacy, as if living over again that hour of trium-
t)hant love, the hour in which she had proved that passion may
)e stronger than princii^le even in a good man's breast.
" Why do you talk to me of husbands ! " she cried, with a
little burst of anger. " There is a man at Slogh-na-Dyack who
ill-treated me, hurt me with his strong cruel grasjD, dragged me
away from the window when I wanted to escajDC to you. He is
not my husband. You won't send me back to Mm, will you,
Malcolm? God, you could not be so cruel as that! If you
knew how I watched day after day, night after night, before
this chance came, before I could get away from that hateful
room ! They kept iny door locked in my own house — think of
that, Malcolm — the door locked upon me as if I had been a re-
fractory child ! I watched them to find out where they put the
keys of the two doors. But they would not let me see, and it
was only to-night for the first time that I cheated them. They
were both out of the room — no one there, not even Hilda, my
arch enemy, who has tried to poison me. Yes, Malcolm, you
will not believe, but I have seen it in her face — only I have
refused to eat, and bafiled her that way. I have refused to
touch anything for days, till they forced me to swallow their
abominable messes," with a look of unutterable disgust, " bend-
ing over me with their odious breath, and clutching me with
their great hot hands. Malcolm ! " starting up from her chair,
and appealing to him passionately, with outsti-etched hands,
" swear that you will not give me back into their power ! Kill
me if you like, if you have quite left off loving me, if I am no
use to the world or you — kill me, Malcolm ; death from your
hands would not be painful — but don't send me back to that
locked room ! Good heavens, why do you stand there looking
a "me like that? Are you afraid of them, afraid of Hilda
Disney, afraid of that stony cruel man you call my husband?"
" What am I to do ? " he cried, not yet able to master even
his own thoughts, at sea on a stormy ocean of doubt and pity
and love and honour. To see her thus, beautiful even in the
Titter wreck of reason, loving, humble, confiding, the pride that
had been her blemish extinguished for ever — to see her thus,
casting herself upon his love, appealing to his manhood, and
yet to feel himself powerless to help her in the smallest degree,
unable to stand for a moment between her and her sorrow — this
was an orJt'al lieyond the worst peril of his wanderings, beyond
340 Strangers and Pilgrims.
the circle of yelping savages, the fire kindled at his feet, which
he had considered among the jjossibilities of his career. He
constrained himself by a supreme eii'ort of his troubled mind to
contemplate the situation calmly, as if he had been interested
only in his priestly character, called upon, to advise or direct in
such an emergency.
"No," he exclaimed at last; "you snail not go back to
Slogh-na-Dyack, if I can prevent it."
She gave a cry of joy, a wild passionate cry, as of a soul
released from purgatory.
"Thank God!" she cried. " 0, 1 knew that you would not
send me back ! Let me stay with you, Malcolm ; let me follow
you in all your wanderings. Do you think I fear hardship, or
famine, or weariness, where you are ? Let me teach the little
children in those savage lands. Children have always loved me,
and I them. Eemember how I nursed the children at Haw-
leigh. Let me go with you, Malcolm. I will be anything you
order me to be, a slave to work for those wretched people," with
a faint shudder, as if she had not yet overcome her idea of the
general commonness of the missionary order. " I will endure
everything — toil, danger, death — if you will let me be with you."
He did not answer her, except with a long look of sorrowful
tenderness — parting the loose hair gently from her forehead
with a protecting touch, which was curiously different from the
patronising pattings of the faculty — contemijlating her with a
deploring tenderness. He could not answer her. To reason —
to attempt to awaken dormant memories — seemed useless. The
doors of her brain had shut up the story of her wedded life. It
was not in his power to recall her to a sense of her actual posi-
tion — to rend the veil which shut out the realities — leaving her
soul in a fool's paradise of dreams.
He had arranged his jjlan of action meanwhile. He rang for
the lamp, and the honest Scottish lassie, entering with the
lighted moderator, beheld with obvious consternation the figure
of a lady, with pale face and disordered hair, clad in a long
purple garment, slashed and faced with satin — a garment such
as Maggie the housemaid had never looked upon before, a gar-
ment fastened with cords and tassels, which the lady's restless
fingers knotted and unknotted again and again while Maggie
stared at her.
" Tell your brother to saddle Trim," said Mr. Forde, in hia
quietest manner: "I want a message taken to the railway
station at Ellensbridge."
He looked at his watch thoughttully. No, it would hardly be
too late to send a telegram from that small station.
" Ye'll no' be sending the night, Mr. Forde," said the girl,
« the Btation'll be shut."
Strangers and JPilgriim. 341
" No, it won't, Magofie. Tell your brother to get the pony
ready this minute. And then oome back to me for the
message."
He took the lamp to a desk on the other side of the room,
where he had the blank forms for telegrams and all business
appUances, and, without farther deliberation, wrote the follow-
ing message:
" Malcolm Forde, Dunallen, Argyleshire, to Gertrude Luttrell,
Hawleigh, Devon, England.
" Tour sister, Lady Paulyn, is dangerously ill. Come at
once to this place. A case of urgent necessity. Telegraph
reply."
He filled another form with almost the same words addressed
to Mrs. Chevenix, Eaton-place-south. And having delivered
these to Maggie, with strict instructions as to haste and care in
the manner of transmitting them, he began to consider how
Boon either of these women could reach that remote spot. It
was too late for Mrs. Chevenix to leave town by the limited
mail. She could only amve at Dunallen upon the following
night, just twenty-four hours after the sending of the telegram.
And during that interval how was he to protect Elizabeth fi-om
her natural protectors — from people who had an unassailable
right to the custody of this helpless creature ?
His only hope lay in the chance that they might not guess
•where she had gone ; yet he hardly dared hope as much as that,
when Miss Disney knew that he was in the neighbourhood, and
doubtless knew that he had once been Elizabeth's betrothed
husband. His first thought, the telegrams being despatched,
was to find her a fitting refuge. He had friends enough in the
cosy httle hill-side colony, friends who, in the common accepta-
tion of the phrase, would have gone through fire and water to
serve him, though they had only known him seven weeks. He
debated for a little while — a very little while — for moments were
precious, and he had already lost much time, an^i 'ohen decided
upon his plan of action. Two ancient maiden ladies, his devoted
admirers, lived in a snug little villa hardly five minutes' walk
from the manse — friendly Scotch bodies, upon whose kindness
and singleness of heart he could rely. With these two ladies he
might find the fittest shelter for the forlorn being who had cast
herself upon his care. Lodged safely here, she might, perhaps,
escape pursuit for a httle while — just long enough to bring the
friends of her girlhood round her, so that she might at least
have her sister by her side when she went back to Slogh-na-
Dyack.
" Wrap your shawl closely round you, Lady Paulyn," he said.
312 Strangers and Pilgrims.
" I am going to take you to a house where you can sleep to«
night — to friends who will take care of you."
" Friends! " she cried. " I have no friends in the world but
you. Let me stay here— with you. O, Malcolm, you are not
going to send me away after all P "
" I am not going to send you back to the people you fear — a3
I believe without reason. I am going to put you in the charge
of two good friends of mine — kind old Scotch women, who will
be very good to you."
" I want no one's goodness," she exclaimed impatiently.
*' Why can I not stay here with you ? "
" It is quite impossible."
" But why ? "
" Because you have a husband and a house of your own."
She shook her head angrily. " He is madder than the rest,"
she muttered.
" And I should do very wrong to detain you here. I fear that,
if I did my duty, I should at once communicate with your house-
hold at Slogh-na-Dyack."
" You will not do that ! " she cried, starting up, and clinging
to his ai'm.
"No, Elizabeth, I cannot do that — against your wish. I will
see you placed in safe hands, and perhaps to-morrow one of youi
sisters, or your aunt, may be here to protect you."
" One of my sisters," she rejoeated dreamily. " I should like
to have Blanche with me. I was always fond of Blanche."
" Come, then, the less time we lose the better."
He went out into the hall, she following him, and thence to
the garden in front of the manse. He gave her his arm as they
went out into the windy road, white in the moonlight, but they
had scarcely crossed the boundary when she gave a shrill scream
and darted back towards the house. Two women, one tall and
gaunt-looking, were standing in the road, a few paces from the
brougham, which seemed to be waiting for them.
The tall woman advanced to meet Mr. Forde, the other ran
back to the carriage, and exclaimed to some one inside,
"We've found her, Miss Disney, we've found her!"
"What do you want? " asked Malcolm, his heart sinking with
a sickness as of death itself. Vain had been his hope of putting
himself between her and the people to whom she belonged.
"That lady," said the female grenadier, pointing to Elizabeth,
who stood iu the porch watching them, " Jjady Paulyn. It was
Miss Disney told us to come here to look for her."
" Yes," said Hilda, who had alighted from the brougha-m,
"and if you had been hcmest enough to tell me of Lady Paulyn'a
escape at the time it occurred, instead of three hours afterwards,
I eliouiJ have been here ever so long ago. I daresay youremeni-
Strangerd and Pilgrims, 3-13
ber me, Mr. Forde," she added, turning to Malcolm. *' I met
you at luncheon one day at Hawleigh Vicarage. My name is
Disney. I am Lord Paulyn's cousin."
" I remember you perfectly, Miss Disney."
" I am sorry we should meet again under such lamentable
circumstances. You have of course perceived poor Lady Paulyn's
sad condition ? Has she been here long ? "
"A little more than an hour, I should think. What made
you suppose that she would come here ? "
Hilda hesitated a little before replying.
*' Because you are about the only person she kuows in thi?
neighbourhood."
" An isolated position for any woman to occupy," said Mal-
colm, " and I should imagine eminently calculated to depress
the spirits or even to unsettle the mind."
" Lady Paulyn had my society and her husband's, sir ; and
I do not believe- solitude has had anything to do with the melan-
choly state of her mind."
" She has a strange aversion to returning to Slogh-na-Dyack,"
said Mr. Forde, " and a horror of her nurses, perhaps a natural
feeling in her delirious state. Now, I have friends here ; two
simple-minded kindly old ladies who would be very glad to take
charge of her for a few days. You might remain with her, if
you pleased ; and you could by that means withdraw her from a
place about which she has such an unhappy feeling."
He did not want to give her up to them without a struggle,
3'et reason told him any struggle would be useless. Miss Disney'a
indexible face, looking at him sternly in the moonhght, was not
the face of a woman to be turned from her own set purpose by
an appeal that might be made to her compassion.
" I could not iDossibly sanction such an extraordinary proceed-
ing," she said. *' Lord Paulyn is away from home, and in his
absence I feel myself responsible for his wife's safety. I cannot
forgive the nurses for their shameful neglect this evening."
" There's no being up to the artfulness of 'em," said the tall
nurse. " This evening was the first time the key of that door
was ever out of my own keeping, owing to my having torn my
pocket, and not liking to trust to it, I jDut that blessed key
in a little chiny jar on the mantelpiece."
" Will you ask my cousin to come to the carriage, Mr. Forde P "
Baid Miss Disney with a business-like air; " we need not lose any
more time."
" You had better come into the house for a little while and
talk to her quietly. There ia no occasion to let her feel she is
taken back like a prisoner."
Hilda complied rather unwillingly, and Mr. Forde led the way
to the porch, where Elizabeth stood waiting the issue of events.
S4!4 Strangers and Pilgrimg.
" You are not going- to give me up, are you P " she asked.
" I have no power to detain you."
"Then you are a coward ! " she cried passionately. "Is this
what men have come to since the age of chivalry, when a man
would leap among lions to pick up a woman's glove ? You go
among the heathen ; you brave the rage of savages, their tor-
tures, their poisoned ai-rows, their flames ! Why, all that they
/lay you have done can be nothing but lies, when you are afraid
to oppose her," pointing contemptuously to Miss Disney.
" Elizabeth," he said earnestly, trying to pierce the confusion
of her mind, " there are social laws stronger than fire or sword,
and the law that gives a woman to her husband is the strongest
of them all, for it is a divine law as well as a social one. I dare
not come between you and those who have the best right to
protect you. But I can interfere to redress your wrongs if they
are false to their trust. I do not stand by unconcerned in this
matter. Wherever you are, at Slogh-na-Dyagk as well as in
this house, I shall be interested in your welfare ; at hand to
give you all the help I can give, counsel and consolation as
a minister of God's word, or advice as a man of the world.
I have telegrajihed to your sisters and your aunt, and I feel
little doubt they will be with you to-morrow night."
" A most uncalled-for interference," said Hilda disdainfully^
"The doctors have forbidden any intercourse between Lady
Paulyn and her relations."
" What, do the doctors choose the time when she has most
need of familiar friends and old associations to cut her oil
from them altogether ? Wise doctors, Miss Disney ! Common
eense and natural affection suggest a better system of cure
for a mind ill at ease."
"You may pretend to know more than scientific men who
have made this malady the study of their lives," replied
Hilda ; " but however that may be, I can only tell you that
should the Miss Luttrells be so foolish as to come to Lord
Paulyn's house uninvited by him, they will not be allowed
to see their sister."
" We will see about that when they are here."
Elizabeth stood between them silently. A vacant look had
stolen over the pale melancholy face. She uttered no farther
remonstrance, no farther upbraiding, but went with Hilda un-
resistingly, apathetic, or half unconscious where she was being
taken. The fitful fiame had died out into darkness. She was
a creature without a mind ; submissive, inditierent; to awaken
by and by to a sense of her imprisonment and tc vain anger
and fuiy, like a wild animal that has been netted while it slept.
Stranqers and PiJt/rims. ^5
CHAPTER XI.
" No joy from favourable fortnne
Can overweigh the anguish of this stroke."
The night that followed was the darkest Malcolm Forde had
ever known till now, darker even than that which followed Alice
Eraser's death; for are not the dead that are already dead
better than the living that are yet ahve ? And to the behever
death has no positive horror ; it is only the anguish of separa<
tion ; a human sorrow ; a human longing ; a sharp pain, tempered
always by that divine hope which makes this earthly Hfe verily
a pilgrimage leading to fair worlds beyond it.
But this death in Ufe called madness— this living death, which
may endure for the length of the longest life— is more bitter
than the coffin and the grave. To know hei miserable and help-
less in the hands of people she feared— linked to a husband she
had never even pretended to love— was to know her in a state as
much worse than death as waking agony is worse than dreani-
less sleep. Never until this hour, when he looked round his
empty room, the vacant chair where she had sat, the expiring
fire into which those lovely eyes had gazed with their far-off
dreaming look — never until now had he fully realised how he
loved her; how little the life he had lived and the work he
had done in five long years had served to divide him from her ;
how near and dear she was to him still.
Sleep, or even the semblance of rest, the miserable pretenco
of going to bed, was impossible to him that night. He walked
down to Slogh-na-Dyack, down to the little bay where the
troubled waters broke against the shore with a dismal moaning,
where the reflection of the moon was blotted out every now and
then by black wind-driven clouds. It was a dreary night, bleak
and wintry ; not a favourable season for midnight wanderings,
or patient vigil beneath the window of a beloved sleeper ; yet
Malcolm Forde paced the narrow strip of beach below Lord
Paulyn's garden ; a strip that was covered at high tide, until
the morning gray. That patient watch might be useless — was
useless no doubt — biit it was all that he could do ; the sole ser-
vice he could render to the woman he loved. He saw the lighted
windows on the chief upper Uoor — lights that never waned
through the weary night — and he felt very sure they belonged
to the rooms inhabited by EHzabeth. Had a cry of anguist
broken from those dear lips, it must have cierced the stillness
346 Strangers and Filgriim.
of tlie night when the wind was low, and reached him on his
beat. Sometimes, when the shrill blast shrieked in the moun-
tain gorge upon the opposite shore, he almost fancied the sound
of human anguish was mixed with the voice of the wind. It
was a sad unsatisfactory vigil ; but it was better to be there,
beneath her windows, than to be lying sleepless miles away,
beyond reach of her loudest cry. When day came, and the first
gray threads of smoke crept up from the gothic chimneys, he
went round to the chief entrance, rang the bell, and inquired of
the sleepj"" housemaid who answered it if Lady Paulyn had
passed a quiet night.
" Ask the head nurse," he said, as the girl stai-ed at him
vaguely, " and then come back and tell me exactly what she
says," emphasising his request with a donation.
The girl departed, and returned quickly enough.
" Much the same as usual, sir, Nurse Barber says, and would
you please leave your name ? "
" Give that to Miss Disney," he said, handing the girl his card,
on which he had written the date, and 7 a.m. He wanted Hilda
to know that he was vigilant, and was not to be deterred from
watchfulness by any fear of slander or of Lord Paulyn's dis-
pleasure.
This done, he went back to Dunallen, went back to the early
service in the chapel, and to another day's work in the quiet
little parish where he had made himself beloved. There was
nothing more for him to do, he thought, than to wait till the
arrival of the fast train from the South, which would not reach
the station at Ellensbi-idge till half-past nine o'clock at night,
'even if it were punctual ; an event not always to be counted as
a certainty on a Scotch railway.
He found two telegrams on his study-table when he went-
back to the manse after his morning's work. The first from
Gertrude, " I leave Hawleigh at 9 a.m. to-day, Thursday, and
shall leave London for Ellensbridge by the limited mail." Th(
second, a vague and helpless message from ]\Irs. Chevenix,
entreating for detailed information, and pleading indifferent
health as a reason for not coming to Scotland, if such a journey
might possibly be avoided. Mrs. Chevenix had squandered
three-and-sixpence worth of telegraphic communication in the
endeavour to represent herself ardently desii-ous of flying to her
beloved niece's sick-bed, yet unhappily obliged to remain in
Eaton-place-south.
Not till to-morrow therefore could Elizabeth's sad eyes be glad-
dened by the sight of a familiar face, not till to-morrow could
fiiflterly arms enibld that poor suffei-er. For many hours to come
Malcolm Forde nnr -j be content to leave her to the tender mercy
»f hired nurses apd Hilda Disney. He could do nothing for her
Strangers and Pilgrims. 347
except pray, and all his tbouglits in this bitter time were prayera
for her.
The railway to Ellensbridge was only a loop line, and that
fiteru adherence to the hours set down in time-tables which is
demanded by southern passengers on main lines was here t.n-
known. If a train came in an hour or so after time, no one
wondered. Railway officials jilacidly remarked that " she was
ioost a wee bittie late the dee," and that was all. Passengers
herded meekly together on the narrow platform and gazed up
and down the line, and saw other trains arrive and depart —
trains that seemed to have no place in the time-table — or watched
the leisurely shunting of a string of coal-trucks, and made no
murmur. The marvel would have been if a train at Ellensbridge
had ever come up to time.
Mr. Forde paced the platform with infinite impatience when
the hour had gone by at which the train with passengers from
the South should have arrived, waiting for the signal that
ehould announce Gertrude Luttrell's coming. There was nothing
doing at the station just at this time ; even the string of empty
coal-trucks stood idle, an unemployed engine on a siding puffed
and snorted lazily, while the stoker off duty amused himself
with the gymnastics of a disreputable-looking monkey. _ The
day was wet and depressing ; that fine straight rain, which to
the impatient tourist appears sometimes to be the normal
atmosphere of Scotland, filled the air ; the kind of day in which
Cockney travellers in theTrosachs stare hoj^elessly at Benvenue,
looming big throagh the gray mist, and think they might alrnost
as well be looking at the dome of St. Paul's from Blackfriars
Bridge.
The train came slowly in at last, serenely unconscious of
being three-quarters of an hour behind time, a diminutive train
of two carriages and an engine ; and out of one of the carriages
Gertrude Luttrell looked with a pale anxious face, a face which
Bent a thrill of pain through the heart of Malcolm Forde, for it
eeenied to him that in this wan and faded countenance he saw
a likeness of that altered beauty he had looked upon a little
while ago.
" What is the matter with my sister ? " she asked nervously,
directly she was on the platform. " O, Mr. Forde, am I too
late? Is "
She stopped, and burst into tears. He led her into the little
waiting-room, and reassured her there was no immediate
danger.
" Thank God ! " she cried, with a strange fervour. _ " 0, Mr.
Forde, it seems like a dream, seeing you here in this strange
{)Iace ; it seems like a dream to be here myself. I came without
OSS of an hour; I couldn't do any more than that, could I?
348 Strangers and Pilgrims.
Elizabetli has not been a good sisier to me, or indeed to any of
us. Her prosperity has made very httle difference to us ; we
went on living our old dull life just the same after her marriage,
and she did hardly anything to brighten it. Even long ago,
before you came to Hawleigh, she was always cold and unloving
towards me, sneered at my humble efforts to do right, set her-
self up against me in the strength of her beauty."
" It is hardly a time for complaints of this kind," said
Mr. Forde, with grave displeasure. " Your sister is in great
trouble."
" Have I not come? Am I not here to be with her? O,
why are you always so hard upon me, Mr. Forde P Just the
same after all these years. I would do anything in the world
for her. It is not my fault if her married life is unhappy."
" Do not let us waste time in purposeless talk. 1 have a
carriage ready to take you to your sister's house. I will telJ
you everything on the way."
In the carriage he told her the real nature of her sister's ill-
ness, the ruin that had befallen that bright reckless mind; told
her his hope of speedy cure in a case where there was no
hereditary taint, no shattered constitution, only the fever and
confusion of a mind ill at ease, a soul seeking peace where there
was no peace. He told her of his confidence in the happy
influence of a familiar presence, of old associations, sisterly
affection.
Gertrude was inexpressibly shocked ; a curious stillness crept
over her; she left off making vague attempts to explain her
own conduct in relation to her sister, which had never been
called into question by Mr. Forde ; ceased to make Httle sidelong
attacks upon Elizabeth ; but became mute, with the aspect of
one upon whom a heavy blow has fallen. Only when they were
near Slogh-na-Dyack did she speak.
" Can you say with confidence that you believe she will re-
cover? " she asked; " that you do not think she will be — mad
— allherhfe?"
" I can say nothing of the kind," he answered sadly. "1
can only say that I try to put my trust in God throughout thia
trial, as in others that have gone before it. But this seems
harder than the rest."
They were at Slogh-na-Dyack by this time ; but here bitter
disappointment, a disappointment near akin to despair, awaited
them, for upon Gertrude annonnoing herself as Lady Paulyn's
sister, and requesting to be takn-n straight to the invalid's
apartments, a vacant-looking flat-faced footman informed her
that her ladyship had left Slogh-na-Dyack for the South just
four-and twenty hours ago.
" What 1 " cried Mr. Forde, who was standing on the thres-
Strangers and Pilgrims. 31-9
hold of the door, while Gertrude stood a little way within,
staring helplessly at the blank face of the footman. " Do you
mean to tell me that Lady Paulyn was allowed to travel in her
etate of health ? "
•' Yes, sir. The London doctor and one of the nurses went
rath, her."
" They went with her, but where ? "
" To London, I believe, sir. As far as I could make out from
'jiat was said."
" Where is Miss Disney ? Let me see Misa Disney."
" Miss Disney have left also, sir."
" Then let me see some one who can tell me what all thia
means. This lady is your mistress's sister, who has travelled
five hundred miles to see her, only to be told that she is gone,
no one knows where. Is there any one else in the house who
can explain this business ? "
The footman shook his head despondingly.
" There's Colter the butler, sir," he said ; " he might know
something, and there's my lady's own maid."
"Let me see her," exclaimed Mr. Forde; whereupon the foot-
man, always with a despondent air, ushered them into the
library, a darksome but splendid apartment, which the Glasgow
manufacturer had furnished with antique carved shelves for
books that had never been supplied, a room in which literature
was represented by a waste-paper basket, a what-not crammed
with stale newspapers, a Ruff's Guide, Post and Paddoch, and
three or four numbers of Baih/s Magazine.
Here Malcolm Forde paced to and fro, his soul shaken to its
lowest deep, while Gertrude sat in a huge arm-chair, and cried
feebly. What had they done with Elizabeth ? What sinister
motive had they in this sudden flight ? ^Vhat had they done
with the helpless creature who had come to him for refuge,
casting herself upon his pity, entreating with heart-piercing ac-
cents for shelter and protection ? And he had refused to shelter
her. The fear of injuring her in the sight of the world, or of
widening the breach between her and her husband, had been
stronger with him than love and pity ; the anxious desire to do
his duty had triumphed over the voice of his heart, which
had said, " Claim a brother's right to protect her in her afflic-
tion, and defy the world."
He had done that which he had deemed the only thing pos-
sible for him to do. He had summoned her nearest of kin, the
sister who had a right to be by her side at such a time, even in
defiance of a husband. He had done this, and behold! it wa»
as if he had done nothing for her. Where had they taken hoi
— on what dismal journey had she gone — with a nurse and &
doctor? His heart sank as he brooded upon that question.
350 Strangers and Pilgrims.
There was only one answer that presented itself — an answer
that was horrible to think of.
The door was opened after some delay by Mr. Colter, the
butler, who had been enjoying the morning in a dressing-gown-
and-slipper condition, loitering over a late breakfast and making
the most of the family's absence, and had just made a hasty
toilet in order to come to the front and see what was meant by
Miss Luttrell's unlooked-for appearance on the scene. Behind
him came a young woman with a nervous air, and eyelids that
were reddened with weeping.
_" This young person is Lady Paulyn's maid, Sarah Todd,"
said the butler blandly. " I have sent for her to see you, sir,
as I was informed you had expressed a wish to that effect. But
there is no information she can give you about my lady as I
don't know as well as her. I'm sorry you should have made
such a long journey for nothink, ma'am," he added, turning to
Miss Luttrell, " but if you'd wrote, or telegraphed, the trouble
might have been avided."
" I want toknow all about this business, sir," said Malcolm
Forde with his sternest air. " At whose bidding and in whose
custody was Lady Paulyn removed from this house?"
" By the border of her medical adviser, sir, and under his pro-
tection, with a nurse halso in attendance upon her."
" Indeed ! Then Lord Paulyn was not with his wife?"
" No, sir. My lord is in Invernesshire."
" What! Then it was in his absence Lady Paulyn was re-
moved?"
" Certingly, sir — which the removal of her ladyship had been
arranged before his lordship left this house. It was his lord-
ship's wish to be away at the time — with a natural deUckisy
of feehng."
" Where has Lady Paulyn been taken ? To her house in
Park-lane?"
"No, sir."
Here Sarah Todd, the maid, dissolved into tears ; at which the
butler stared sternly at her, informing her that the lady and
gentleman wanted none of her snivelling.
" Pray do not scold her," said Mr. Forde. " I am glad to see
that she can feel for her mistress. And now perhaps you will
be good enough to tell me where Lady Paulyn has been taken
—if not to her town house?"
" That, sir, is a question which I do not feel myself at liberty
to hanswer."
"You need not stand upon punctilio. You can waive the
natural delicacy of mind wiuch you no doubt share with your
master. I can guess the worst you can tell me. Lady Paulyu
has been taken to a private K?dhouse."
Strangers and Pilgrims. 351
" I believe, sir, it is somethink in the way of an asylum.
Strictly private, of course, and everythink upon the footing of
a gentleman's 'ouse," replied the butler, softening, with a view
to a possible donation, slipped unobtrusively into his palm pre-
sently, when he was escorting these visitors back to their car-
riage.
" Can you give me the exact address of the house?"
" No, sir. Everythink was kep extraordinary close. I heard
it was somewheres near London. Even the nurse didn't know
where she was gone."
"One of the nurses went with Lady Paulyn, you say?
Which was she — the tall woman ?"
"Yes, sir."
" And what became of the other ?"
" She left by the same train, sir, to go back to her own
home."
" Do you know her addreae P"
" No, sir."
" Nor jOTi ?" turning to the maid.
"No, sir. But she came from an institution somewhere near
the Strand. You might hear of her perhaps there."
" Will you obUge me by writing down the names of both
nurses on a slip of paper?" said Mr. Forde.
There were an inkstand and portfolio on the table, and the
girl sat down immediately and wrote two names in a neat
Bchool-girl hand.
" ' Mrs. Barber,' that's the tall nurse who went with Lady
Paulyn, sir. ' Mrs. Gurbage,' that's the one who went home."
" Thanks. I must try to find Mrs. Gurbage. And now tell
this lady all you can. I'll leave you with her for a few minutes
while I talk to Mr. Colter in the hall. Tell her how Lady
Paulyn was when she left this place."
The girl shook her head sorrowfully. " There's very little I
can tell, sir, though I loved my lady dearly, for she was always
a. dear good mistress to me. A little hasty sometimes, but O,
80 generous and kind. But from the time she began to be so
ill they wouldn't let me go near her, though I know she used
to ask for me, for I've stood outside her door sometimes for half-
an-hour at a time and listened and heard her call me, and then
cry so pitifully, ' Let me have some one with me that I know —
for God's sake send me some one I know !' "
The girl remained with Miss Luttrell, while Mr. Forde and
the butler went out into the hall and waited for them. But
there was little more to be extracted either from man or maid.
They only knew that after the fever Lady Paulyn had gone
out of her mind. She had suffered an attack of the same kind
after her baby's death — only not so severe an attack. The
rtg2 Strangers and Pilffinms.
dottors had come backwards and forwards, and it had ended by
her ladyship being removed under the care of one of them—
whose very name the butler had never heard.
" Everythink was kep 80 close," he repeated; "and it would
have been as much as our places were worth to show any euros-
sity."
Thus, after a little while, they left Slogh-na-Dyack in darkest
ignorance, and Mr. Forde took Miss Luttrell to the manse, to
give her rest and refreshment before their next move, which must
be to London.
The woman he loved better than all things else in this lowei
world was hidden away from him in a madhouse. Hard trial
of his faith, who had made duty his rule of life. If he had
followed the dictates of his heart that night, he might have
found her some safe refuge — might have saved her from this
living grave. With a bitter pang he recalled that last con-
temptuous look which she had flung him when she accused him
of cowardice.
CHAPTER XIL
•• That -was my true love's voice. Where is he ? I heard him call. I
am free ! Nobody shall hinder me. I will fly to his neck, and lie on his
bosom. He called Margaret ! He stood upon the threshold, lu the
midst— through the howling and chattering of hell— through the grim,
devilish scoffing— I knew the sweet, the loving tone again."
A SPACIOUS old-fashioned mansion north of London, among the
green byroads between Barnet and Watford ; a noble old house,
red brick, of the Anne period, with centre and wings making
three sides of a quadrangle ; a stately old house, lying remote
from the high-road, and surrounded by pleasure-grounds and
park— the latter somewhat flat and dreary, but on a high level,
with ghmpses of a fine landscape here and there through a
break in the wood. The house had belonged to a law-lord of
the Augustan age of good Queen Anne; a once famous law-
lord, whose portrait in wig and state-robes looked down from
the panelled walls, and with divers other effigies of his wife and
ihildren went among the fixtures of the house, and was flung
into the bargain on very easy terms, among crystal chandeliers,
aniique fenders and fire-irona, shutter-bell*, and other conveni-
Strangers and Pilgrims. 353
ences of a bygone age. From the law-lord the mansion had
descended to a wholesale grocer of the Sir-Baal am type, who
thought " two puddings " luxuries, and rolled ponderously to
Mincing-lane every day in his glass coach. Then came an
Anglo-Indian colonel, enriched by the plunder of silver-gated
cities and Brahminical temples, who held high-jinks in the old
house, and ended by throwing himself from an upper window in
a fit of delirium tremens. This helped to give the house a bad
name, and together with its curiously isolated position, remote
from all modes of conveyance — an extreme inconvenience in an
age when everybody requires to be conveyed — tended to depress
its market value ; whereupon it was bought a dead bargain by a
speculative solicitor, who tried to let i'» for some years without
success, during which period the inhabitants of Hetheridge, a
little village half a mile distant, were confirmed in their convic-
tion that Hetheridge Hall, the mansion in question, was the
favourite resort of
" Hags, ghosts, and sprites
That haunts the night."
In due time, however, the place came under the notice of Dr.
Cameron, who, as his patients increased in number, required a
larger mansion than that in which his father had begun busi-
ness, and who, finding in Hetheridge and its hall a situation and
an abode at once eligible and inexpensive, made haste to secure
house and groiinds on a long lease, getting the portraits of the
law-lord and his olive-branches Hung in for an old song, as well
as grounds furnished with some of the finest specimens of the
fir tribe in the county of Herts.
So the noble music-room, where the bewigged and bepowdered
family of the law-lord smirked and simpered on the panelled
walls, and where the law-lord himself had entertained the elite
of the country-side with stately old-fashioned hospitality, was
now given up to the weekly junketings of ladies and gentlemen
of more or less disordered intellect ; ladies upon whose head-
gear, and gentlemen upon whose collars and cravats, eccentri-
city had set its seal. Here once a week throughout the slow
long winter the doctor's patients pranced and capered through
First Sets and Lancers and Caledonians ; while the younger
and more fashionable among them even essayed round dances.
Here, in full view of those stately effigies of the patch-and-
powder joeriod, mild refreshment in the way of white-wine negu»
and raspbeiry-jam tarts was dispensed between nine o'cLjck
and ten; when the junketers dispersed more or less unwillingly
to their several chambers, under close guard of nurses and
keepers, who drovti them along passages and up staircases Uke
a flock of sheep.
354 Strangers and Pilgrims.
The traveller, lingering a few moments by the park fence \a
look down the long straight avenue at the grim red facade of
Hetheridge Hall, was apt, knowing the stoi-y of the place, to
fancy dire scenes of horror within those solid old walls : secret
dungeon chambers underground, in which wretched creatures, for-
gotten by all the world except one brutal guardian, languished
in sempiternal darkness, chained to a damp black wall, against
which the slimy rats pushed noiselessly to fight for the madman's
scanty meal; dreary windowless rooms in the heart of the house,
approached by secret passages known of but by a few, where
pale white-haired women pined in a lifelong silence. But there
were neither robora nor piombi in Dr. Cameron's prosperous
and comfortable estabHshment ; and the only horrors within that
melancholy mansion were the gloomy thoughts of those among
its occupants who were not quite mad enough to be unconscious
of their state ; or the black despair of those in whom madness
was a thing of violence and terror, a ceaseless fever of the brain,
like a caldron for ever at boiling-point, full of fancies grim and
loathsome as the constituents of a witch's hell-broth.
Happily for the doctor there was a good deal of comfortable
easy-going lunacy in his establishment, patients who liked their
dinner, and kept up their spirits by quarrelling with each other
and reviling their nurses. Some of these custodians were amiable
young women enough, and really kind to their charges; but
there was another class of attendants who, finding life in an
asylum rather a dull business, took it out of the patients, and
acquired a diabolical skill in the administration of sly pinches
and invisible squeezes in iDublic ; while in private their mode of
remonstrance with a refractory or fretful patient took the more
open form of bangs and kicks. Any bruises or abrasions re-
sulting from this rough-and-ready style of argument were easily
accounted for as having been self-inflicted by the patient,
" poor thing." ^
The doctor was a man of considerable benevolence, who con-
ducted his house on a liberal scale, gave his patients airy rooms,
ample service, and good living ; and only failed to secure them
from the possibility of ill-usage for the simple reason that h©
was not ubiquitous. He did not live at Hetheridge, but drove
down from the West-end once or twice a week in his brougham,
saw a few particular cases, smiled his soothing smile upon the
victims of mental delusion, dexterously fenced those strange
direct questions which madness is apt to put to its guardian,
walked through the public rooms, made a good many inquiries,
looked about him in a general way, took a chop and a glass or
two of dry sherry with his subordinate — the medical sujierinten-
dent at Hetheridge— and then went back to his metropolitan
practice, which was a large one.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 355
In tliis strange abode Elizabeth awoke one morning from a
long troubled dream of swift journeying through tlie land, bcund
lilie a ca2:)tive in a corner of the railway carriage ; for had she
not resisted this transit, opposing her sudden removal from
Slogh-na-Dyack with what little force she had? whereby the
physician, kindly as his nature was, felt himself called upon
to exercise his authority with a certain severity of aspect, and
to treat Lady Paulyn as a naughty child requiring nursery
discipline.
Darker than the darkest dream that ever visited the couch of
fever was that rapid journey from north to south. The swiftness
of the transit was in itself an agony to that enfeebled brain ; the
perpetual monotonous thump of the engine, like the throbbing
of some giant heart beating itself to death ; the ceaseless shifting
of the landscape — moor and mountain, valley and wood Hitting
past behind the blinding rain, like shadows moving in a phantom
world ; all these things were torment to that distracted mind.
No Avarning of the impending journey had been given to the
patient, no hint of impending change in her mode of life ; for
doctors and nurses alike concurred in treating her as if she had
been a sick child. From the hour in which hallucination set in,
this infantine treatment had been religiously observed. The
possibility of a bright intellect struggling in an agony of per-
plexed thought behind the dim clouds that obscured it was
utterly ignored. Because the patient thought wrongly upon
some points, she was set down at once as incapable of reasonable
thought upon any point. Left in the dismal blankness of isola-
tion — no friendly word whispered in her ear, no tidings of the
outer world permitted to dispute the dominion of wild imagin-
ings — her weakened brain had been wearied by perpetual wonder
at her own state, and why she was thus cut off from all com-
munion with her kind.
On the morning of the journey she had been dressed Uke a
child who is taken for an airing, her travelling dress hustled
ujjon her by the nurse's impatient hands, dragged down the
stairs against her will — protesting vehemently, in wildest de-
spair, as if moved by some prophetic sense of impending doom.
Then came a dream-like apathy, in which thought was not, only
the acute agony of shattered nerves.
For some time after her arrival at Hetheridge Park, Lady
Paulyn was pronounced unfit for the social circle, as there re-
presented by a small assemblage of ladies and gentlemen of
various habits and opinions, whom the world, as represented by
doctors and commissioners of lunacy, had agreed in pronouncing
of unsound mind. They were not, on the whole, widely different
from other ladies and gentlemen, nor did their lunacy exhibit
those salient points which afforded material lor the pen of a
356 Strangers and PUgrimtt.
Warren or a Gilbert ; in fact, they did little to distinguisli them«
selves from the vulgar herd of the sane.
They were a shade more disagreeable than the outside world,
or exhibited their various ill-tempers more freely ; grumbled a
great deal upon every possible subject, and each pursued his or
her line of thought without reference to external circumstances,
with a harmless egotism not uncommon even in the outer world.
But to these specimens of the later stage of Dr. Cameron's
process, which were in a manner the bedded-out plants of his
collection, removed from the forcing-house or the hotbed of
solitary confinement into the open, Lady Paulyn was not yet
considered fit to be introduced. Such at least was the opinion
of Dr. Cameron and the house-surgeon, who took their opinions
from the nurses. Their own visits to Lady Paulyn's rooms only
showed them a motionless figure in an arm-chair, with pale de-
jected face, and loosened hair tossed back from a weary-looking
brow ; a haggard face, and wild tearless eyes which gazed at them
wonderingly out of a dream-world.
The system in this case was naturally the system usual in
all other cases ; what physician could chop and change his
treatment to suit the idiosyncrasies of every new patient .'' The
same smoothing smile which Dr. Cameron, hke the sun which
shines ahke upon the just and the unjust, shed upon a crazy
stockbroker whose mental balance had tottered in unison with
his balance at his banker's, under the cumulative burden of
contango, he shed also upon Lady Paulyn. The gentle gesture
with which he smoothed" the roughened locks of the wealthy
grocer's wife, who had succumbed to a too devoted attention
to the wine-and-spirit department of her husband's business,
was the same touch, half patronising, half caressing, which
he laid like a good man's blessing upon Elizabeth's fevered
forehead. He had even a httle sympathetic murmur, a faint
humming, as of a benevolent bee, which he bestowed alike
upon all first-class patients. He perhaps hummed a trifle less
for the second-class boarders, but even for them he had kindly
pitying smiles, but always as of a superior order of being, whose
brain had been constructed ujaon quite another model, and
was altogether a difi'erent kind of machine, not by any pos-
sibility to be disorganised.
Dr. Cameron, devoting five minutes twice a week or so to this
very interesting case, was greeted by the patient only with a
despairing silence and mute wondering looks from troubled
eye.s, — wonder at this period predominating over every other
sen&ation — wonder why she was in that place; why he, Mal-
colm, had so utterly deserted her; why all her surroundings
had undergone a change so sudden and complete that it seemed
to her as if she was an infant newly born into a new world—
Strangers and Pilyrims. 357
wonder wliich was mute, for -when she tried to speak strange
words came, and tlie power of language seemed to have left her,
except in spasmodic outbursts of complaint, complaint addressed
to the bare walls or to her adamantine nurses. Dr. Cameron
seeing her in this state, and being duly informed by loquacious
nurses that Lady Paulyn was violent and hysterical, began to
think the chances of speedy cure more than doubtful. The patient
talked to herself a great deal, her nurses told him, and ob-
Etinately refused to sleep, in which peculiar temj^er she was the
worst subject they had ever had to deal with.
" "We don't get wink of sleep for hours at a stretch," com-
plained nurse Barber, of the grenadier aspect. "Talking to
herself all night long, drumming with her fingers on the wall,
and that restless ! Turn and turn and toss and toss from side to
side, and sigh and moan in a way that goes to your very
marrow ! I think for troublesomeness she's about the worst
patient I ever laid eyes on."
"Does she ever speak of her husband nowP" asked the
doctor, inquiring for some token of awakening memory.
" Lord bless you, no, sir ; and if we say anything about him,
stands us out, up hill and down dale, that there's no such
person, and that she never was married. Once when I men-
tioned his name, thinkin' as that might bring her to reason, she
looked at me with a foolish smile, twisting and untwisting her
hair round her fingers all the time, and said 'Poor Lord Paulyn!
Yes, he was in love with me once, poor fellow ! But that's all
over. I was true to Malcolm.' As to the way she carries on
about that Malcolm, it's downright wicked."
" So Dr. Cameron looked kindly at the troublesome patient,
hummed and ha'd a little in his mild way, which meant that he
could make nothing of her, murmured something professional tc
himself about cerebral disturbance, like a clock which strikes in
an empty room from the mere habit of striking, and departed,
knowing just as much about that curious mystery the human
mind m this case as he knew in the case of the drunken grocer's
wife, or the demented stockjobber, prescribing almost exactly
the same treatment, with a little difference as to diet perhaps,
since this was a more delicate organisation — Roussillon instead
of bottled stout, the breast of a chicken instead of a rumpsteak
— departed, and loft Elizabeth in the utter darkness of a lonely
room and in the power of the nurses she abhorred.
The lottery of nurses is not unlike that lottery to which sonif
atrabilious misogynist has compared to marriage. It is lik^-
dipping for a single eel in a bag of snakes. Elizabeth's first
draw had resulted in snakes. Her two nurses were first the
grenadier woman, with the muscles of a gladiator, not a badly-
disposed person perhaps, could one have arrived at the motive
^^8 '" Strangers and Pilgrims.
principle of ber nature, but using her enormous strength half
unconsciouisly, and having a fixed opinion that physical force
was the only treatment for a mind askew ; secondly, a vain
pretty girl, who enjoyed a flirtation with a keeper or gentle-
manly lunatic on the high-road to recovery better than the
solitude of the patient's chamber, who had adopted the position
of madhouse nurse because it paid better than pleasanter modes
of industry, and who wreaked her disgust for her calling upon
the subject of her care. She was morally worse than the
grenadier, heartless and shallow beyond all measure, and mali-
ciously gi'atified at having a lady at her mercy.
Thus followed the long days and the longer nights ; nights
for the greater part utterly without sleep, long watches in the
dim light of the night-lamp, watches through which all the
imps and demons of madness held their horrid Sabbath in that
one unresting brain ; nights in which the patient's mind was
like a rudderless ship driven thousands of miles out of her
course, or like a star that has been loosed from its natural station
in heaven to reel tempest-driven through infinite space. Who
dare follow the thoughts of that distracted brain, the inextrica-
ble tangle of waking dreams and shreds of memory, going back
to childhood's cloudiest recollections of a world that seemed
sweeter than the world known in later years ? Nor were those
silent nights voiceless for her. Voices that she loved spoke to
her from the corridor outside her door, only divided from her by
that fatal locked door. Sometimes it was her mother's gentle
half-plaintive tone, as of one who had always found Ufe a thing
to grumble at; sometimes her baby's tiny voice calling with hia
first broken word, the tender cry she had been so proud to hear ;
sometimes her father's genial tones ; for in this long dream of
madnf &d death was not. But oftenest of all came the voice of
Malcolm Forde. He was always near her, shielding and con-
soling her. There were nights when he would not speak, but
she was not the less convinced of his presence. She knelt by
that cruei door ia the dead of the night — while the nurses,
stretched grimly on their truckle-beds, kept guai'd over her aa
they slept — and laid her head against the panel, and felt that
her loved ones were near her ; felt as if their very breath shed a
gentle warmth through the magnetic wood, and melted the ice
at her heavy heaii. She was as certain of their vicinity as she
has ever been of any fact in her life. She never doubted, never
questioned how they had come there, wondei-ed at nothing
except why she was separated from them, and this severanc*
she came by and by to ascribe to the settled enmity of her
nurses.
With the gray light of morning that dream would vanish, and
?ive place to another fancy, or sometimes to a period of dull
I Strangers and Pilgrims. .359
BpatTiy, an absolute blank, in which perhaps the brain rested
after its nightly fever. She was quiet enough in the day, the
nurses admitted to each other, whereby they contrived to steal
various hours for their own amusements, gossip or flirtation as
the case might be, while the patient sat alone and stared at the
fire, whose dangerous properties were guarded by a large wire
screen. Against this screen Elizabeth leant, and looked into
the fire, which seemed the most sympathic thing in her naiTow
world, and struck vsdld chords on the wires of the guard, and
imagined the music that should have answered to her touch,
and even played some simple melody of days gone by — " Vedrai
carino," or " Voi che sapete."
No one essayed to help her back to sense and memory. Thj
doctors came and looked at her, and patted her on the head,
and passed from before her sight like the shifting shadows of a
magic-lantern, and had about as much meaaing for her. No (sne
tried to awaken her senses from their long dream with books or
genial talk, with music, or pictures, or flowers, or any of those
familiar things that might have touched the mystic chords of
memory. There was a certain routine for all patients at
Hetheridge Hall, where madness was cured, or taken care of,
upon a wholesale system, not admitting of minute differences,
A comfortable open carriage was maintained for the use of the
first-class patients, and these, Avhen pronounced well enough
for such indulgence, were allowed to commune with nature daily
during an hour's drive, generally on the same turnpike-road.
A glimpse of the outer world which raised strange vague long-
ings in some distracted minds, whilst for other more sluggish
spirits the wide wintry landscape and the distant dome of
St. Paul's, seen dimly athwai-t a blue-gray cloud, seemed no
more than a picture flashed before their troubled eyes — a
picture of fields and hedgerows and sky and cloud dimly re-
membered in some former stage of existence.
During the first six weelcs of her residence at Hetheridge —
time of which the patient herself kept no count, but which
seemed rather a vast blank interval, a dismal pause wherein life
came to a standstill, than so many days and nights — Lady
Paulyn was pronounced too weak for out-of-door exercise of
any kind whatever, and in this period she scarcely saw the
sky. It was there certainly — the blue vault of heaven — visible
from the upper j^art of her window, the lower half being kept
closely shuttered lest she should do herself a mischief; for
Nurse Barber remembered and dwelt upon that little episode at
Slogh-na-Dyack when she had sought to force herself out of the
window. The sky was there, witliin reach of her dull eyes, and
she did not look up at it. Her brain was a medley of old
thoughts, a chaos of lu any-coloured scraps and shreds, like a
360 Strangers and Pilgrims.
good housekeeper's rag-bag. All her married life— with its
Bocial triumphs, its unbroken brilliancy, its splendour and
extravagance — was as if it had never been ; and young
memories, childish fancies, and the days when her first and
only love ripened into passion, usurped her mind. Madness,
which in its worst folly has a curious tendency to hit upon
universal truths, revealed the unquenchable power of a first
poetic love — a love which, pure as the vestal's sacred fire, burns
with its quiet light through all the storms of hfe, and grows
brighter as the pilgrim's path descends the valley where the
shadows thicken on the border-land of hfe and death.
CHAPTER XIII.
*• Hast thou no care of me ? Shall I abide
In this dull world, which in thy absence is
No better than a sty ? "
ToNGATABOO and Taheiti— or the Tongataboo and Taheiti of the
da.y — had to wait the return of their pastor. Savage chief-
tains, holding council in the domestic seclusion of their
matting with their wives and families, could but lament the
absence of that white- skinned teacher whom at his first
coming they had been disposed to treat as a god. That
autumn-tide did not see IMalcolm Forde's return to the South-
!Sea Islands. For a little while, at least, even duty must be iu
abeyance, his place must wait for him. The society for which
he had worked knew him well enough to know that he was
thoroughly in earnest— that he would return in due time, and
complete the labour he had begun, and widen the area of his
labours, and faint not until Death should say to him, " Thus far,
and no farther, shalt thou journey, O pilgrim and messenger!"
_ Meanwhile he stayed in England to do something very near
his heart, to watch and pray for the woman he loved, and
whom, as it seemed, all the world except himself had abandoned
tf] bitterest fate. But for him Gertrude Luttrell would have
yielded helplessly, nervelessly, almost placidly to the force of
circumstances — would have meekly accepted the fact that
her sister had been transferred to a lunatic asylum as a
melancholy necessity, against which there could be no appeal,
Strangers and Pilgrims. 3G1
beyond wliicli there could be but tbe smallest margin for
hope.
But Malcolme Ford was not inclined to take things so patiently.
He came straightway to London with Miss Luttrell, saw Mrs.
Chevenis, whose malady — chronic neuralgia — seemed hardly so
severe or tangible an affliction as to justify her refusal to cc/me
to her niece's rescue, and who, in this sad crisis of her favourite
niece's life, had little help of any kind to offer, and seemed
chieily tormented by a melancholy foreboding, that it, meaning
Elizabeth's madness, would get into the papers.
"Eveiything does get into the papers sooner or later," she
said despondently. " I'm sure there's no such thing as the
eanctity of private life for people of position. I shall never
take up my Moj-ning Post without a shudder from this time
forward."
" Had we not better think of how we are to save your niec(
from the anguish of her present situation rather than ot
keeping the fact out of the Morning Fost ? " said Mr. Forde.
" It might be necessary even for us to appeal to the Press for
help, if we found no other way of rescuing her."
" Mr. Forde ! " moaned "Mrs. Chevenix, applying herself
mechanically to her scent-bottle; "don't pray talk about the
anguish of her situation. We have no reason to suppose_ that
she is unhappy. With my nephew Lord Paulyn's splendid in-
come she would, of course, be sure of the very highest form of
treatment ; every advantage which wealth could provide."
"We will take that for granted, if you like. But she is in
the hands of strangers, and even her sister does not know
where or with whom. The fitful fever of the brain whiclr
succeeded fever of the body has been set down as madness, and
in that state of mental exaltation — every sense intensified, her
capacity for suffering increased twentyfold — she has been
handed over to strangers, whose interests will be best served by
her permanent estrangement. Say that they are conscientious
and will do their best to cure her, will the best they can do
counterbalance the horror of that sudden removal to an entirely
strange place, and the banishment of every human creature
and every object with which she was familiar ? Is not such a
Bhock eminently calculated to turn temporary hallucination
into life-long madness ? I am almost distracted when I think
of what h-is been done ! " cried Malcolm, starting from his
ehair, and pacing the Saton-place drawing-room — the room
ivhich seeiTied destined only to witness his misery. _
Mrs. Chev-'?nix sighed, and again sought relief from_ the
Bcent-bottle, .st from one end and then the other, as if in
aromatic vinegar tiiere might lurk a virtue that was not in sal
volatile-
3(52 Siranfjers and Tilgrima.
"The first thing to be done," said Malcolm, coming to H
standstill by the writing-table, at which Gertrude sat helpless,
those perpetual tears standing in her eyes — she had done
nothing but shed those two slow languid tears since she left
Slogh-ua-Dyack, as if, having produced these silent evidences
of feeling, she had done her duty to her sister, — "the first
thing to be done is for Miss Luttrell to write to Lord Paulyn,
requesting to be immediately informed of the place to which
her sister has been taken, and the people to whom she has been
intrusted. You had better write the letter in duplicate. Mis 3
Luttrell, and address one copy to Park-lane, and the other to
Slogh-na-Dyack."
Miss Luttrell endeavoured to obey, with a sheep-like meek-
ness, but finding her absolutely incapable of framing a sentence,
Mr. Forde himself dictated the letter, which was brief and
decisive, ending with the formal request, " Be good enough to
telegraph an immediate reply."
It was also at Mr. Forde's suggestion that Miss Luttrell took
up her abode in her aunt's house until such time as she should
be better informed about her sister's fate.
Having done this, and feeling, with supreme pain, that there
was little more he could do, Mr. Forde went to his solicitor in
Lincoln's-inn-fields, and took counsel with him upon the legal
aspect of Lady Paulyn's position. The lawyer's opinion was
not particularly cheering. Elizabeth's husband was her natural
guardian. With the sanction of the Commissioners in Lunacy,
he could place her in whatever licensed establishment he pleased.
Her sisters and her aunt counted for very little in her life.
No reply to Gertrude's letter came in the shape of a telegram ;
but three days after the letter had been sent — days of intolerable
length for Malcolm Forde — there came a curt scrawl from the
Viscount, informing his " Dear Miss Luttrell " that Lady
Paulyn had been placed in the care of Dr. Cameron, of Chester-
field-row, and Hetheridge Hall, Herts ; that it was quite imjjos-
sible she could be in better hands; and that, having already
sufiered so much trouble and annoyance from this unhappy
event, he must request that no further letters might be addressed
to him upon the subject. He was on the point of starting for
Home, where he meant to winter; his native country having
become obnoxious to him. The letter was full of his lordship's
personal grievance, and contained not one afiectionate or com-
passionate allusion to his wife.
It contained, however, all that Malcolm Forde wanted to
know, the name of the doctor and the madhouse.
He made Gertrude accompany him to Chesterfield-row within
half-an-hour of the receipt of the letter. He had taken up hia
quarters for a few daya with an old friend in Cadogan-place, in
atmngers and Pilgrims. 363
-der to be wthin five minutes' walk of Mrs. Chevenix's house,
and had stipulated that a messenger should bring him immediate
tidings of Lord Paulyn's reply. Thus it was that so little time
was lost between the arrival of the letter and their interview
with Lady Paulyn's physician.
Dr. Cameron was kindness itself; smiled his sweet smile
upon Gertrude and her clerical friend; pledged himself to do all
that he could do, in reason.
"But really what you ask for, Mr.— Mr. Forde," with a
glance at the cards that had been sent in to him, " is quite out
of the question. I can perfectly understand Miss Luttrell's
natural desire to see her sister. But an interview, in the pre-
sent stage of affairs, is simply impossible."
" Yet is it not just possible, Dr. Cameron, that the sight of some
one whom she has known and loved all her life— a famihar home-
face, bringing back old memories— might strike a chord "
" My dear sir," exclaimed the doctor in his blandest way,
"that is the very thing we want to avoid; there must be no
chords struck yet awhile, the instrument is not strong enough
to bear the shock. _ It is all very well on the stage or in a novel ;
we are told to beUeve that a favourite melody is played, a fami-
liar face is seen, and the patient gives a shriek, and recovers his
senses in a moment upon the sjiot. My dear sir, there is no
such thing possible. Mental aberration, without positive change
in the condition of the brain, is a thing of the rarest occurrence.
We have to cure the brain, which we can neither see nor handle,
just as we set a broken arm, which we can do what we i-':e with.
And the first and most essential step towards recovery is repose,
absolute rest. You will understand, therefore, my dear Miss
Luttrell, why I am compelled to forbid any intrusion upon the
tranquil soUtude in which our dear patient is now placed."
"How soon may I see her?" asked Gertrude.
" That is a question beyond my power to answer. All must
depend upon her progress towards recovery. If she recovers,
which I trust, which I may venture to say I believe, she ulti-
mately will, I shall be happy to let you see her directly I find
her mind strong enough to bear the emotion that must be caused
by such a meeting. I will not ask you to wait tiU she is really
well, for that naturally will be an affair of time, and at the
best rather a long time; but as soon as the brain begins to
regain its balance, concurrently with the return of bodily
strength, you shall be allowed to see her. Lord Paulyn, who
is na,turally as anxious as yourself, has resigned himself to the
inevitable, and submits to my judgment in this sad affair."
_ " He is so far resigned," said Mr. Forde with some touch of
bitterness, " that he contemplates going abroad, and. putting
the Channel between himself and hia afflicted wife."
3G1 Strangers and Pilgrims.
"A step I myself recommended," replied Dr. Cameron.
" Lord Paulyn has been rather severely shaken by this business,
and as he is of an excitable temperament, the consequences to
himself might not be -without peril."
The conversation lasted some time longer. Mr. Forde was
not easily satisfied. He tried to obtain some defiftite expres-
sion of the physician's opinion. But physicians are not given
to definite oj^inions. Dr. Cameron see-sawed the matter in his
most delicate way, said all that was kind about Lady Paulyn,
persuaded Miss Luttrell that the best thing she could possibly
do would be to go back to Devonshire, and there quietly wait
for tidings of her sister's recovery, and then pohtely dismissed
his visitors, who had really usurped a good deal of his valuable
morning, while patients with their fees neatly papered in their
waistcoat-pockets were yawning over a three-weeks-old JH-ws^ra^ed
Jjondon JVews, or a year-old Quarterly.
Gertrude left Chesterfield-row sorely dejected in mind, and
disposed to take the doctor's advice, and go straight back to
the little house in the Boroughbridge-road, where bright fenders
and fire-irons and polished tables would be going to rack and
ruin in the absence of her supervising eye. She, of old so
strong-minded, seemed to have become the weakest and most
helpless of womankind.
" It isn't as if I could be any good to Elizabeth," she said.
" If I could hrfp her in any way I shouldn't care what sacri-
fices I made. But Dr. Cameron says I may have to wait for
months before he can let me see her, and what will become of
the liouse all that time, with only Diana and Blanche, who have
no more idea of looking after things than if they were infants?
We shall all be ruined if I don't go back soon."
" And when you are gone back, if your sister were dying, and
Dr. Cameron at the last moment awoke to the idea that she
jhould have some one near her whom she had loved, you will
oe in Devonshire — too far to be summoned in time to be of any
use."
" But she is not going to die," cried Gertrude, with a fright-
ened look; " Dr. rv^meron said nothing about her dying."
" Not directly ; Uit he said she was in a very weak state ot
health, and a physician seldom says quite all he means. I
have seen her, remember, and the change I saw in her was
enough to put sad forebodings into my mind. God, to think
of her alone in a madhouse," he cried, with a httle burst of
passion, " the brightest creature that ever Lived upon this
earth!"
" But they wUl take the utmost care of her," said Gertrude
tremulously, and with a faint pang of envy, envying Elizabeth
even now because Malcolm Forde had loved her, still loved her.
S/raii//ers and Pllg^'ims. 3Cj
perhaps, for was not this keen anxiety more than simple Chris-
tian charity P " Dr. Cameron told lis that ; and she will have
every comfort — every luxury — a carriage at her disposal when
she is well enough to use it."
" Every comfort — every luxury ! Do you think your sistei
cares for comforts and luxuries in a prison ? Her proud free
spirit might have found hajipiness on a desert island. Bondage
has strangled it — the bondage of a fatal marriage — and now
the bondage of a madhouse. Gertrude, when I think of th^-
past I am almost mad. If I had not been the proudest fooi
Vhat ever lived, all this might have been prevented. My dar«
ling," he murmured £oftly, " that bright mind should never have
gone astray had I had the keeping of it."
He grew calmer presently, and discussed things quietly with
Gertrude, who, shamed out of her small worldhness by his
deeper feeling, agreed to remain in Eaton-place so long as
aunt Chevenix would shelter her there; or, if need were, to take
a modest lodging nearer her sister's prison-house, and to let
fenders, fire-irons, and even the family tea-kettle, enfolded in
baize and cunningly secreted under the best bed, take care of
themselves.
CHAPTER XIV.
•* Did I speak once angrily, all the drear days
You lived, you woman I loved so well,
Wbo married the other ? Blarue or praise,
Where was the use then ? Time would tell,
And the end declare what man for you,
What woman for me, was the choice of God."
TiiKOtrGH the dull days of November, into the dreary mid-
winter, Malcolm Forde lived in the little village of Hetheridge,
and in his lonely walks every day, and often twice a day, beheld
the walls that shut EUzabeth from all the outer world. Christ-
mas had come and gone — a strangely quiet Christmas — and he
had not yet seen Dr. Cameron's patient, though he had been
favoured with several brief interviews with the doctor, who had
cheered him lately with the int<-Uigence that all was going well ;
there had been lately decide^ t^gns of improvement ; the patient
had been allowed to mingle 8 little with the sanest among her
366 Strangers and Pilgrims.
fellow-patients, had assisted at their little weeklj dance, though
that modest festival had not appeared to make much impres-
sion upon her ; she had stared at the long lighted music-room
and the people dancing in smartened mornin^'-dreas and various-
coloured gloves wonderingly, and had asked if it were a servants*
ball. Bat she had latterly been more amenable to reason; the
nurses complained less of her violence ; she had been taken for
an airing m the grounds on fine days, and would go out in the
carriage as soon as the weather grew a little milder. Alto-
gelher, the account was cheering, and Mr. Forde was fain to be
satisfied, and to thank God for so much mercy in answer to hia
prayers.
He was not quite idle even at Hetheridge, but had made
friends with the incumbent of the little rustic church and helped
him with his duty, and made himself an awakening influence
even in this narrow circle. He visited the poor, and catechised
the children on Sunday afternoons, and very much lightened the
burden of the perpetual curate of Hetheridge, who was an elderly
man with a chronic asthma. This work, and long hours of quiet
study deep into the winter's night, made his life tolerable to him
— made it easy to wait and watch and hope for the hour of EUza-
beth's recovery.
And when she would have recovered — what then ?
Why, then she would go back to her husband, and to her old
worldly life, most likely, and grow weary of it again. 0, no, he
would not believe this. He would hope that by God's blessing
this dismal warning would not have been sent in vain,
that she would begin an entirely new life, a life of unselfishness
and good works, a life brightened by faith and prayer, a life
which should be her apprenticeship to Hhristianity, her educa-
tion for the world to come.
This was what he hoped for, this was the end to which he
looked forward, after that blessed day when she should stand
before him in her right mind.
This consummation seemed to be a little nearer by and by,
when Dr. Cameron said, that if Miss Luttrell would procure a
line from Lord Paulyn giving his consent to an interview with
the patient, he, the doctor, would sanction such an interview in
the course of the following week.
" Do you mean to say that it is necessary to obtain Lord
Paulyn's consent before his afflicted wife can be allowed to see
her own sister, her nearest surviving relative ? " asked Malcolm,
with a touch of indignation.
" Unquestionably, my dear sir," answered the doctor. " Lord
Paulyn placed thii dear lady in Tiy care, and I have no right
to permit her to see any one. evcL her nearest-of-kin, until I am
certain of his approval. The bond between man and wife, ray
Strangers and I^iJjrims. 867
dear sir — as I need hardly suggest to a gentleman of your
sacred callmg — is above all other ties."
"Yes; and as interpreted by the common law of England is
sometimes a curious bondage," said Mr. Forde bitterly ; " sepa-
rating a woman from all that was dear to her in the past, en-
compassing her life with a, boundary which no one shall cross — let
her suffer what she may — except her sufferings assume tliat
special shape which the makers of the divorce-law have taken
into consideration. Thus, a man may break his wife's heart, but
must not break her bones, in the presence of witnesses."
_" Lord Paulyn has been a most devoted husband, I beUeve,"
said Doctor Cameron, with a disapproving air.
" I have no reason to believe otherwise. Only it seems rather
hard that your patient cannot see her sister without her hus-
band's permission. It is taking no account of all her past life.
And there may be some delay in obtaining this consent, unless
you can give Miss Luttrell her brother-in-law's address."
" Lord Paulyn was in Rome when I last heard from him," re-
plied Dr. Cameron, with an agreeable recollection of his lordship's
communication, which had been merely an envelope enclosing a
cheque. " If it will save Miss Luttrell trouble, I shall be happy
to write to him myself. Of course such an appeal to his wishes
is a mere point of ceremony, but one which I feel myself bound
to observe."
" You are very good. Yes, if you will write I am sure Miss
Luttrell will be obliged to you."
It was settled therefore that Dr. Cameron should apply for
the required permission, and Gertrude must await the answer to
his letter, however tardily Lord Paulyn might reply.
The week spoken of by the 2)hysician came and went, and he
acknowledged that his patient was now well enough to see her
sister, but there was no answer from Eome.
The Viscount had gone elsewhither, perhaps, and the doctor's
letter was following by the slow foreign stages.
Tliis delay seemed a hard thing to Malcolm Forde, almost
harder to bear than the long period of doubt and fear, when at
each new visit to the physician he had dreaded to hear the
])atient pronounced incurable. Now when God had given her
back to them — for these first slow signs of improvement ho
accepted as the promise of speedy cure — man interposed with
his petty forms and ceremonies, and said, " She shall languish
alone ; the slow dawn of sense shall show her nothing but strange
faces ; the first glimmer of awakening reason shall find her in
lonehness and abandonment; the first thought her mind shall
shape shall be to think herself forgotten by all her little world,
put away from them like a leper, to live or die as God pleases,
without their love or their helis^"
868 Strangers and Pilgrims.
It was in vain that he pleaded with Dr. Cameron.
" I would i-ather wait for the letter," the kind-heaiied physi*
ciau said iu his mild gentlemanlike way. " A little delay
will do no harm. The mind is certainly recovering its balance,
and I hope great things from the return of mild weather. I have
given Lady Paulyn new apartments — those small changes are
sometimes beneficial — and a piano ; the exciting tendency of
music was a point to be avoided until now ; and I have changed
her nurses. Poor thing, she fancied the last were unkind ; the
merest delusion, as they were women of the highest character,
and peculiarly skilled in their avocation."
Another week went by, and there was still no communication
from Lord Paulyn. Dr. Cameron had written again, at Mr.
Forde's earnest request, and Gertrude had also written, but there
was no answer to either letter. Malcolm Forde paced the lonely
road outside the fences of Hetheridge Park for hours together iu
the dull February afternoons, saw the firelight shining from the
distant windows of the Hall, which looked a comfortable man-
sion as its many lattices shone out upon the wintry dusk ; a
mansion in which one could fancy happy home-like scenes ; the
patter of childish feet on polished oak staircases, fresh young
voices singing old ballads in the gloaming; lovers snatching
brief ghmpses of Paradise in shadowy corridors, from the light
touch of a Httle hand or the shy murmur of two rosy lips ; all
Bweet things that wait upon youth and hope and love, instead
of madmen's disjointed dreams, and the tramping to and fro of
weary feet that know not whither they would go.
He could only watch and wait and hope and pray, pray that
the return of reason might restore her to peace and a calmer
loftier frame of mind than she had ever known yet. For his
own part he had never even hinted a wish to see her. Indeed,
he did hardly desire to see that too lovely face again, most lovely
to him even in its decay. It would be enough for hira to hear
of her from Gertrude; enough for him to have secured her the
consolation of a sister's companionship ; and by and by, when
she was restored to health and released from her captivity — a
captivity which should not last an hour longer than was neces-
sary, Dr. Cameron assured him — he could go back to his distant
vineyard, with his soul at peace. In the meantime it was his
duty to watch for her and care for her, as a brother might have
done.
Strangers and Pilgrims. 3G9
CHAPTER XY.
•' Look on me ! There is an order
Of mortals on the earth, who do become
Old in their youth, and die ere middle age,
Without the violence of warlike death ;
Some perishing of pleasure — some of study —
Some worn with toil— some of mere wearineaa—
Some of disease — and some insanity —
And some of wither'd, or of broken hearts;
For this last is a malady which slays
More than are number'd in the lists of Fate,
Taking all shapes, and bearing many names."
Elizabeth was better. The time had come when she conia
Bhape her thoughts into words ; when Dr. Cameron's kind face,
Bmiling gently at her, had become something more than a pic-
ture ; when it had ceased also to recall to her first one person,
then another, faintly remembered among the hazy crowd of
former acquaintance, the people she had known in the Park-lane
period of her life. The time had come at last when she knew
nim as her custodian ; though why he should be so, she knew
not, nor yet the meaning of her imprisonment. But he seemed
to her a person in authority, and to him she appealed against
her nurses, telling him that they had been cruel to her, more
cruel than words could speak, especially her words, poor soul !
which came tremulously from the pale lips, and were a.pt to
shape disjointed phrases. The nurses strenuously denied the
truth of this accusation : whereupon Dr. Cameron gently shook
his head, as who would say, " Poor soul, poor soul ! we know
how much significance to attach to her complaints ; but we may
as well humour her." So Nurse Barber and Nurse Lucas were
passed on to another patient in the preUminary and violent
gtage, and Lady Paulyn was now so fortunate as to be com-
mitted to the care of a soft-hearted low-voiced little woman who
had none of the vices of the Gamp sisterhood. This change,
and a change in her apartments to rooms with a southern aspect,
looking out upon a flower-garden, produced a favourable effect.
The patient began to sleep a little at night, awoke from wild
dreams of the past, recognised the blank lonely present, and
knew that she was severed from all she had ever loved ; knew
that her dead were verily dead, and that the voices she had
heard in all those long winter nights had beea only dream
voices.
Memory was slow to return, and the power of consecutive
thought. Ideas flashed across her brain like lightning, and
370 Strangers ancd Pllgrimg.
ideas that were for tlie greater part false. Her mind was like a
diamond- cut crystal reflecting gleams of many-coloured light, or
like a kaleidoscope in whicli thought was for ever running from
one form into another. Her brain was never quiet. It thought
and thought, and invented and imagined, but rarely remem
bered, or only remembered the remote past ; and even in those
memories fact was mixed with fiction. Books that had impressed
her long ago were as much a portion of her life as the actual
events of the past ; and even in her broken memories of books,
imagination bewildered and deceived her. There were poems of
Byron's, the " Giaour," the " Prisoner of Chillon," which in her
girlhood she had been able to repeat from the first line to the
last. She could remember a line here and there now, and mur-
mured it to herself sadly, again and again. And out of this
grew a fancy that she had known Byron, that she had met him
in Italy and in Greece, had stood upon the sea- shore at Lerici
■when the white-sailed bark that held genius and Shelley
vanished from the storm-swept waters. This and a hundred
other such fancies filled her brain. She left off thinking of
Malcolm Forde, to think of beings she had never known, crea-
tures of her wild imagining.
Left to the companionship of a nurse whose ideas rarely
soared above the question of turning a last winter's gown, or
putting new ribbon on an old bonnet, invention supj^lied the
place of society. She conversed with phantoms, held mysterious
communion with shadows. Were there not people outside her
window for whom she had a secret code of signals ? Did she
not laugh to herself sometimes at the thought of how she
cheated her custodians?
Sometimes she was gay with a feverish gaiety, at other times
melancholy to despair, weeping a rain of tears without knowing
why she wept. Dr. Cameron being informed of these melan-
choly fits, suggested that she should mix more freely with the
other patients ; that she should spend an hour or two in the
drawing-room with the milder cases, and even attend the weekly
soirees, and derive gladness from the Lancers and Caledonians.
So one sunny morning, when the aspect of Nature, even in her
winter garment, was cheerful, Lady Paulyn's nurse led her
down to the drawing-room, and left her there alone on an otto-
man near the firejilace, while all the milder cases stared at her
with a dreamy indifierent stare, but not without some glimmer
of sane superciliousness.
The drawing-room was long and spacious, with a fireplace at
each end, oak panelling and family portraits, a room that did
really seem a little too good even for the milder cases, who were
hardly up to oak panelling or the Sir Joshua Reynolds' school
of portraiture. The windows were high and wide, and the sun
Slrangerg and Pilgrims. 371
elione in upon the scattered figures, not grouped about eitlier of
the fireplaces, but scattered about the length and breadth of the
room, each as remote as possible from her companions, and all
idle. There they sat, solitary among numbers, all staring
straight before them after that one brief survey of Elizabeth —
Bome talking to themselves in a dreary monotonous way, others
silent.
Elizabeth looked round her wonderingly. What were they ?
Guests in a country house? What a strange look they had,
dressed not unlike other people, with faces like the faces of the
rest of womankind so far as actual feature went, yet with so
curious a stamp upon every countenance and every figure, and
some minute eccentricity in every dress ! And then that low
sullen muttering — solitary-looking women complaining totliem-
sclves in a hopeless subdued manner ; then suddenly that low
sound of complaint swelled to a little Ixirst of clamour, half-a-
dozen shrill voices raised at the same instant, a discordant noise
as of cats quarrelling, which was hushed as suddenly at the
behest of a clever-looking little woman, dressed in black, who
walked quickly up and down the room remonstrating.
There was an open piano near the fii'eislace. Elizabeth sat
down before it presently and began to play — dreamily — as if
awakening reason found a vague voice in music. But she had
hardly j^layed a dozen bars when a tall gaunt-looking woman,
in brown and yellow, came up to her and pulled her away from
the piano.
" I'll have no more of your noise," she said ; " you're always
at it, and I won't stand it any longer."
" But I never saw you before to-day," pleaded Elizabeth,
looking at her with innocent wondering eyes — eyes that had
grown childlike in that long slumber of the mind. " I can't
have annoyed you before to-day."
" Stuff and nonsense! You have annoyed me; you're a
detestable nuisance. I won't have that piano touched. First
and foremost, it's my property "
" Come, come, ]\Irs. Sloper,'' said the little woman in black,
who occupied the onerous post of matron in this part of the
establishment. " You musn't be naughty. You've been very
naughtv all this morning, and I shall really have to complain
to Mr. Burley."
Mr. Burley was the resident medical man, a gentleman who
enjoyed the privilege of daily iatercourse with the cases, and
had to do a good deal of mild flirtation with the first-class lady
patients, each of whom fancied she had a peculiar right to the
doctor's attention.
Elizabeth wondered a little to hear a broad-shouldered female,
on the wrong side of forty, reproved for nauglrtinegs, in the kind
372 Strangers and Pilcjrims.
of tone msually addressed to a child of six. It was strange, but
no stranger than the rest of her new life. There were some books
on the table by the fireplace, the first books she had seen since
her illness. She seized upon them eagerly, and began to turn
the leaves, and look at the pictures. They seemed to speak tc
her, to be full of secret messages from some one she had loved.
Who was it she had once loved so dearly P She could not even
remember his name.
" mamma, mamma, mamma ! " moaned a lady in an arm-
chair on the opposite side of the hearth ; a middle-aged lady,
stout of build, with pepper-and-salt-coloured hair neatly plaited
and tied up with brown ribbons, in the street-door-knocker
style, like a school-girl's. " 0, mamma, mamma ! " she moaned,
lifting her voice with every repetition of her cry; "take me
home to my mamma."
" Miss Chiffinch," said the matron, " you really must not go
on so ; you disturb everybody, and it is exceedingly silly to talk
like that. Your mamma has been dead for the last twenty
years."
" You fool !" repHed Miss Chiffinch, with ineffable scorn, " as
if I didn't know that as well as you." And then resumed her
cuckoo cry, " 0, mamma, mamma! "
One young woman, with straight brown hair hanging down
her back, walked about the room in a meandering sort of way,
trying to fasten herself upon somebody, like the boy who wa.nted
the brute creation to play with him ; and, like that idle child,
was rejected by all. She came up to Elizabeth presently, as if
hoping to obtain sympathy from a new arrival.
" My sisters are so 'appy," she said; " so 'appy. They're
all at 'ome, and they do enjoy themselves so; they're as 'appy
as the day is long. Don't you think they'd let me go 'ome ? I
do want to go 'ome ; my «isters are so 'appy."
" Why don't you try to employ yourself. Miss Pocock," de-
manded the busy little matron, who was always knitting a
stocking, and whose needles flew as she walked up and down
the room or remonstrated with her charges. " You'd get well
as soon again if you'd try to do something ; I'll give you some
plain work, if you like ; anything would be better than roaming
about like that, worrying everybody."
" O, Mrs. Dawlings, do let me go 'ome," pleaded Miss Pocock,
In her drawling tone; " my sisters are so 'appy. 0, dear Mr.
Burley," this with a little gush as she espied the house doctor
entering by a door near at hand, " do let me go 'ome. I'll be
so grateful, and I'll be so good to father, and never be trouble-
some any more. My sisters are so 'appy ! "
" You should have behaved better when you were at home,"
said Mr. Burley, with friendly candour. " There, go along," as
Strangers and Pilgrims. 373
Misg Pocock hung upon his arm aflfectionately, " and try to get
well; get some needlework, and sit down and keep yourself
quiet." With this scientific advice Mr. Burley walked on and
looked at the other patients, with a cool cursory glance at each ;
as if they had been a flock of sheep, and he, their shepherd,
only wanted to assure himself he had the right number.
This was the ladies' drawing-room ; the gentlemen had their
own apartments in the east wing. The second-class patients,
male and female, had their apartments in the west wing ; and
there were private sitting-rooms in abundance for patients not
well enough or quiet enough for general society. The majority
of these drawing-room cases were old stagers, people who had
been in Dr. Cameron's care for years, and were likely to end
their lives, contentedly enough, perhaps, despite that chronic
moaning, under his roof. They were well fed, and Hving thus
publicly under the matron's eye were not much subject to the
dominion of cruel nurses. They had comfortable rooms, good
fires, weekly high-jinks in the winter, little dances on the lawn
in the summer, an annual pic-nic, and, in short, such small
solace as humanity could devise ; and the slow dull lives they
led here could hardly have been much slower or duller than
the lives which some people, in their right mind, lead by choice
in a country town.
Elizabeth looked at her fellow-patients in a dreamy way;
turned the leaves of the books — reading a few lines here and
there — the words always assuming a kind of hidden meaning
for her, as if they had been mystic messages intended for her
eye alone; but when the book was closed she had no memory of
anything she had read in it. She dined with the milder cases,
male and female, in the pubHc dining-room, at the request of
Mr. Burley, who wanted to see the effect of society, even such
society as that, as an awakening influence.
Here the cases behaved tolerably enough, though exhibiting
the selfishness of poor humanity with an amount of candour
which does not obtain in the outside world. There was a good
deal of grumbling about the viands, chiefly in an under tone,
and the patients were perpetually remonstrating with the
serving-man who administered to their wants, and who had
rather a hard time of it. There were even attempts at conver-
sation : Mr. Burley saying a few words in a brisk business-like
way now and then at his end of the table, and the matron
politely addressing her neighbours at her end. One elderly
gentleman, with a limp white cravat and watery blue eyes,
fixed upon EHzabeth, and favoured her with an exposition of
his theological views. " Ton have an intellectual countenance,
madam," he said, " and I think you are capable of appreciating
mv ideas. There is a sad want of intellectuality in people here!
374 Strangers and Pilgrims.
a profound indifference to those larger questions whicli No,
Dickson, I will not have a waxy potato; how many times must
I tell you that there is a conspiracy in this house to give me
waxy potatoes ! Take the plate away, sir ! I was about to
observe, madam, that you have an intellectual countenance, and
are, I doubt not " Here Dickson's arrival with his plate
again broke the thread of the elderly gentleman's discourse,
and he branched off into a complaint against the administration
for its unjust distribution of gravy ; and then began again, and
kept on beginning again with trifling variation of phrase till the
end of dinner.
After dinner Jane Howlet, the nurse, bore Elizabeth away to
her own apartment ; but here she had now a piano, on which
she played for hours together all the old dreamy Mendelssohn
and Chopin music which she had played long ago in those dull
days at the Vicarage when all her life had been a dream ol
Malcolm Forde. She played now as she had played then,
weaving her thoughts into the music; and slowly, slowly,
slowly the cui'tain was lifted, sense and memory came back,
until one day she remembered that she was Lord Paulyn's
wife, and that there was an impassable gulf between her and
the man she loved.
So one morning when Dr. Cameron, going his weekly round,
with Mr. Burley in attendance on him, asked her the old ques-
tion about her husljand in his gentle fatherly voice, she no
longer looked up at him with vague wonder in her eyes, but
looked downward with a sad smile, a smile in which there was
thought.
" My husband," she repeated slowly. " No, I do not want to
see him. Ours was not a happy marriage. He was always very
good to me — let me have my own way in most things — only I
couldn't be happy with him. I used to think that kind of life —
a fine lady's life — must be happiness, but I was punished for
my folly. It didn't make me happy."
This was by far the most reasonable speech she had uttered
since she had left Slogh-na-Dyack, but Dr. Cameron looked at
his assistant with a pensive smile. " Still very rambling," he
murmured, and then he patted Elizabeth's head with his gentle-
manly hand. " You must try to get well, my dear lady," he
said ; " compose yourself, and collect your thoughts, and don't
talk too much. And then I shall soon be able to write to your
good kind husband and tell him you are better. Don't you
tliink he'll be very pleased to hear that P"
" I don't know," answered Elizabeth moodily; "if he cared
very much he would hardly have left me here."
" My dear lady, your coming here was unavoidable. Ajid B§9
wJiQ.t good it hag done you I"
Sirangers and Pilgrims. 375
«
Good !" she cried, with a wild look, " You don't know what
I have suffered in the horrible room, locked in, with those
brutal women. Gcod ! Why, between them they drove me mad ! "
This speech cost EHzabeth a melancholy entry in the physi-
cian's note-book: "Very little improvement; ideas wild, delu-
sion about nurses continues."
The weekly festive gatherings, at which she :^as now per-
mitted to assist, were not enlivening to Lady Pa^-lyn's spirits.
She sat on a bench against the wall watching the dancers, who
really seemed to enjoy themselves in their divers manners,
except Miss Chiffinch, who was not tei'psichorean, and who sat
in her corner and moaned for her mamma; and Miss Pocock,
who, even in the midst of the Caledonians, buttonholed her
fellow-dancers in order to inform them that her sisters were
>>
so appy.'
Mr. Burley himself assisted at these weekly dances, in white-
kid gloves, and, as long as things went tolerably well, made
believe that the dancers were quite up to the mark, and on a
level with dancers in the outside world. Everything was done
ceremoniously. The orchestra consisted of a harp, fiddle and
clarionet, all plaj'cd by servants of the establislament. Mr.
Burlej^ danced with all the more distinguished ladies ; curious-
looking matrons in high caps and china-crape shawls, whose
gloves were too large for them, but this was a peculiarity of
everybody's gloves, being bought for them by the heads of the
house with no special reference to size. He asked Ehzabeth to
dance the First Set with him, but she declined.
" I never dance at servants' balls," she said ; " it is all very
well to look on for half-an-hour, but I should think they would
enjoy themselves more if one kept away altogether."
" But this is not a servants' ball."
" What is it, then ? "
Mr. Burley was rather at a loss for a reply.
" A — a friendly little dance," he said, " got up to amuse you
all."
•' But it doesn't amuse me at all. I don't know any of these
people, they have not been introduced to me. I thought it was
a servants' party."
'■■ 0, Mr. Burley, do i:)lease let me go 'ome," exclaimed Miss
Pocock, swooping down upon the superintendent. " I do so
want to go 'ome. My sisters are so 'a])py."
" I tell you what it is, Melinda" — Miss Pocock's name wag
]\Ielinda, and. being youthful she was usuiilly addressed by her
Christian name — " if you don't behave yourself properly, you
shall be sent to bed. Home indeed; why, you'll have to stop
here another twelvemonth if you go on bothering everybody like
this,'
876 Sfrnhj&rs and Pilfjrims.
" 0, Mr. Burley ! And my sisters are so 'appy. There'll be
tarts and negus presently, won't there?"
" Perhaps, if you behave yourself."
" Then I will. But my sisters are so 'appy."
Mr. Burley pushed her away with a friendly push, and she
was presently absorbed in the whirlpool of a set of Lancers, and
was informing people of her sisters' happiness to the tune of
" When the heart of a man is oppressed with care." The house
surgeon was more interested in Lady Paulyn than in Miss
Mehnda Pocock, who was the youngest daughter of an Essex
farmer, idle, selfish, greedy, and troublesome, and by no means
a profoundly interesting case.
He talked to Elizabeth for a Httle, talked seriously, and found
her answers grow more reasonable as he went on. Did she
remember Scotland, and her house there P Yes, she told him,
with a shudder. She hated the house, but she loved the
country, the hills, and the wide lakes, and the great sea beyond.
" I should hke to live out upon those hiUs alone, all the rest
of my life," she said.
" You must get well, and go back there in the summer."
" Not to that house ; to a cottage among the hills, a cottage
of my own, where I could live by myself. I will never go back
to that house and the people in it. But why do you all talk to
me about getting well ? There is nothing the matter with me,
or at least only my tiresome cough, which will be well soon
enough."
CHAPTER XYI.
" Peace to his soul, if God's good pleasure be ! "
i'HBEE weeks had gone by since Dr. Cameron had written to
Lord Paulyn, and Malcolm Forde still waited to hear the result
of that apphcation. He went on with his own particular work
quietly enough in the mean while, did the heaviest part of the
asthmatic curate's duty, read to all the bedridden cottagers
within six miles of Hetheridge, went up to London every now
and then to see his friends of the Gospel Society, and thus kept
himself acquainted with all that was being done for the progi-ess
of that great work to which he had given his life, and so lived a
not altogether empty or futile existence even during this period
of self-abnegation. He had to attend a meeting in town one
morning while still waiting for Lord Paulyn's letter, and finding
his business finished at one o'clock, went straight to Eato«i-
Slrangers and Pilgrims. ii77
place to cal). upon Miss Luttrell. He had heard from Dr.
Cameron a day or two before, to the effect that there had been
no answer from Lord Paulyn, but it was just possible Gertrude
herself might have received a letter that very morning. The
letter must come sooner or later, he thought, with some ex-
planation of the delay which seemed so heartless.
The Eaton-jjlace man-of-all-work — the man who had given
Mr. Forde the ticket for the amateur theatricals at the Rancho
— had rather a doubtful air when he asked to see Miss Luttrell.
Mrs. Chevenix and Miss Luttrell were at home, he said, but he
hardly thought they would see anybody.
" Miss Luttrell will not refuse to see me," said Mr. Forde,
giving the man his card.
" Oh, it's not that — I know you, sir, only I'm afraid there's
something wroag. But I'll take your name in."
He carried the card into the dining-room, and reappeared im-
mediately to usher Mr. Forde in after it.
Mrs. Chevenix and her eldest niece were at luncheon, that ia
to say, the usual array of edibles — the snug little hot- water dish
of cutlets, the imported pie in a crockery crast, the crisp pass-
over biscuits, Stilton cheese, dry sherry, silver chocolate pot, and
other vanities — had been duly set forth for Mrs. Chevenix's
delectation, but that lady sat gazing absently at these prepara-
tions, with consternation written upon her countenance. Ger-
trude, who also sat idle at the other end of the table, was in the
act of shedding tears.
" What is the matter?" Mr. Forde asked, with an alarmed
tone. Had there been ill news from Hetheridge in his absence ?
His heart sank at the thought. But surely that could not be.
He had inquired of the woman at the lodge that very morning,
and had heard a good account of the patient. He had made this
lodge-keeper his friend, bought her fidelity at a handsome price,
at the very beginning of things, and so had been able to obtaii"
tidings every day.
The two ladies sighed dolefully, but said nothing. There was
an open letter lying beside Gertrude's plate, a letter edged with
black. The letter from Lord Paulyn, he thought. That noble-
man must be still in mourning for his mother.
" Have you heard from Rome P " he asked Gertrude ; "and does
he forbid you seeing your sister? Can he be cruel enough,
wicked enough to do that ? "
" We have had no letter from Lord Panlyn, and I must
beg you not to speak in that impetuous way about my poor
nephew-in-law," said Mrs. Chevenix. " Lord Paulyn is in
heaven."
Malcolm Forde looked at her wonderingly ; the phrase seemed
almost meaningless at first.
378 Strartfjers and Pilgrims.
"Yes, it's very dreadful," said Gertrude, "but it's only loo
true. I'm sure it seems like a dream. He was not a kind
brother-in-law to me, and I had very little advantage from such
a splendid connection, except, perhaps, being more looked up to
and deferred to in Hawleigh society. The same people that
asked xis to spend the evening before Elizabeth's marriage asked
ns to dinner afterwards. Beyond that I had nothing to thanh.
Lord Paulyn for. But still it seems so dreadful to be snatched
away like that, and only thirty-four ; and I fear that after the
sadly worldly life he led here he'll find the change to a better
•world disappointing."
" What do you mean ? " asked Mr. Forde. " Is Lord Paulyn
dead?"
" Yes," sighed Gertrude ; " the letter came this morning from
his lawyer. He died at Rome last Thursday, after only a week's
illness. He had been hunting in the Campagna, his lawyer says,
and caught cold, but refused to stay in-doors and nurse himself, as
his valet wanted him to do, and the next morning he woke in a
high fever ; and the landlord of the hotel sent for a doctor, an
Italian, who bled him every other day to keep down the fever. But
he grew rapidly worse, and died on Thursday morning, just as
his servant began to get frightened and was going to call in an
English doctor. The lawyer is very angry, and says he must
have been murdered by that Italian doctor. It seems very
dreadful."
" It will be in the ilf or wz)if/ Post to-morrow," said Mrs. Cheve-
nix solemnly. " I shouldn't be surprised if they gave him half
a column edged with black, like a prime minister. I suppose it
would be a mockery to offer you luncheon, Mr. Forde," she went
on in a dreary voice ; " those cutlets a la souhise are sure to be
good. You won't ? Then we may as well go up to the drawing-
room. Give me a glass of sherry, Gertrude. I haven't touched
a morsel of anything since breakfast."
So they went upstairs to the drawing-room — that room whose
veriest trifles, the fernery, the celadon china, the lobsters and
other sea-vermin in modern majolica ware, reminded Malcolm
Forde of that bitter day when he had tried to cast Elizabeth
Luttrell out of his heart as entirely as he had banished her trow
his life.
"It seems like a dream," said Gertrude, wiping away a
tributary tear, and appeared to think that in this novel remark
she had expressed all that could possibly be said about Lord
Paulyn's untimely death.
" We shall all have to go into mourning," shewent on presently.
" So near Ashcombe, of course it would be impossible to avoid
it, and I don't suppose he has left us anything for mourning;
tlying 80 suddenly, he wouldn't be likely to think of it, and the
Strangers and Pilgrims. 379
»nmmer comii.g on too, with our dusty roads — positively ruinoaa
for mourning."
" He is to be brought home to Ashcombe," said Mrs. Chevenix ;
" and poor Elizabeth uot able to be at the funeral ! So sad I
And her absence so likely to be noticed in the papers ! " _
They babbled on about funerals and mourning, and will or no
will, while Malcolm' Sorde sat silent, really like one whose brain
is entangled in the mazes of some wild dream. Dead ! — the last,
remotest possibiUty he could have dreamed of — dead ! _ And
Ehzabeth set free, free foi- him to watch over, for him to
cherish, for him to win slowly back to reason and to love !
He thought of her that night at Dunallen, that bitter night,
in which temptation assailed him in the strongest form that ever
the tempter wore for erring man's destruction, when she had
stretched out her arms to him and pleaded " Keep me with you,
Malcolm, keep me with you !" and he had longed with a wild long-
ing to clasp her to his breast, and carry her away to some secure
haven of secresy and loneliness, and defy the world and heaven
and hell for her sake. Brief but sharp had been the struggle;
few the tears he had shed; but the tears a strong man sheds in
such a moment are tears of blood. And behold, now she was
free! He might say to her, "Dearest, I will keep you and
guard you for ever ; and even if the lost light never comes baek
again— if those sweet eyes must see me for ever dimly through a
cloud of troubled thoughts— I may still be your guardian, your
companion, your brother, your friend."
But she would recover— he had Dr. Cameron's assurance of
that. She would recover. God would give her back to life and
reason, and to him. How strange and new seemed that won-
drous prosj^ect of happiness ! like a sadden break in a leaden
storm-cloud Hooding all the world with sunshine ; like an opening
in a wood revealing a fair summer landscape new to the gaze of
the traveller, fairer than all that he had ever seen upon earth,
almost as lovely as his dreams of heaven.
He sat speechless in this wonderful crisis of his Ufe, not daring
to thank God for this blessing, since it came to him by so dread
a means, by the sudden cutting off of a man who had never
injured him, and for whose untimely death he should have felt
some natural Christianlike regret.
But he could not bring himself to consider his dead rival, he
could only think of his own new future — a future which would
give back to him all he had sun-endered — a future which would
recompense him a thousandfold, even in this lower life, for every
sacrifice of inclination, for every renunciation of self-interest,
that he had made. It was not his theory that a man's works
should be rewarded in this life ; but eartlily things are apt to bo
sweet even to a Christian, and k) Malcobn Fordo to-day it seemed
380 Strangers and Pilgrims.
that to win back the woman he had loved, to begin again from
that unforgotten starting-point when he had held her in his arms
under the March moonlight, the star-like eyes looking up at him
full of unspeakable love, to recommence existence thus was to be
young again, young in a world as new as Eden was to Adam
when he woke in the dewy morning and beheld his help-
meet.
And Tongataboo, and the infantine souls who had wanted to
worship him as their god, the dusky chiefs who made war
upon each other and roasted each other alive upon occasion,
only for the want of knowing better, and who were prompt to
confess that the God of the Christians, not exacting human
sacrifice or self-mutilation, must needs be " a good fellow ;"
what of these and all those other heathen in the unexplored
corners of the earth, to which he was to have carried the cross
of Christ ? Was he ready to renounce these at a breath, for
the sake of his earthly love ? No, a thousand times no ! Love
and duty should go haud-in-hand. His wife should go with
him — should help him in his sacred work. He would know how
to leave her in some secure shelter when the path he trod was
perilous — he would expose her to no danger — but she might be
near him always, and sometimes with him, and might help him
in his labours, might serve the great cause even by her beauty
and brightness — as birds and flowers, lovely, useless, things as
we may deem them, swell the universal hymn wherewith God's
creatures praise their Creator.
All these thoughts were in his mind, vistas of happiness to
come, stretching in dazzling vision far away into the distant
future, while he sat silent Uke a man spellbound, hearing and
yet not hearing the voice of Mrs. Chevenix as she held forth
at length uijon the difference between real property and per-
sonal property in relation to a widow's thirds, and the supreme
folly, the almost idiotcy — sad token of future derangement —
which Elizabeth had shown in objecting to a marriage settle-
ment.
" ' Heir-presumptive,' " said Mrs. Chevenix, referring to Burke,
whose crimson-bound volume lay open close at hand, " ' Cap-
tain Paulyn, E.N. ; born January, 1828; married, October, 1849,
Sarah Jane, third daughter of John Henry Towser, Esq., of
West Hackney, Middlesex.' Imagine a twopenny-halfpenny
naval man inheriting that vast wealth, and perhaps Elizabeth
left almost a pauper ! If that sweet child had only lived ! But
there has seemed a fate against that poor girl from the first.
What win be her feelings when she recovers her senses, poor
child, and is told she is only a dowager ! Even the diamonds,
I suppose, will have to go to Sarah Jane, third daughter of John
Henry Towser " (with meffable disgust).
Strangers and Pilgrims. uiil
"As her uearest relation you will now have the right to see
your sister without any one's permission," said Mi. Forde to
Gertrude, slowly awakening from that long dream. " She has
ceased to belong to any one — but you. Will you come xl\> to
Hetheridge to-morrow morning, Gertrude ?" He had called
her by her Christian name throughout this time of trouble, and
to-day it seemed as if she were already his sister. He wag
eager to think and act for her, to do everything that might
hasten the hour of Elizabeth's release.
" I will come if you like, only — there's the mourning ; we
oan't be too quick about that. They may ask us to the
funeral."
''They! Who? Your brother-in-law had no near relation i.
There will only be lawyers and the new Viscount interested in
this business. Let the dead bury their dead. You have your
sister to think of. Could you not send for Blanche? Your
sister expressed a desire to see Blanche. I have been thinking
tliat I might find you a furnished house at Hetheridge ; there
is a pretty little cottage on the outskirts of the village, which
I am told is usually let to strangers in summer. If I could get
that for you now, you would be close at hand, and could see
your sister daily. I have had a good deal of friendly talk with
Dr. Cameron, and I am sure that he will do all in his power
to hasten her recovery. May I try to secure the cottage for
you ?"
Gertrude looked at him curiously ; she was very pale, and the
eyes, which had once been handsome eyes, before time and
disappointment had dimmed their lustre, had brightened with
an unusual light — not a pleasant light.
" You think of no one but Elizabeth," she said, her voice
trembling a little. "It is hardly respectful to the dead."
" I think of the living whom i know more than of the dead
whom I only saw for an hour or so once in my life ; that is
hardly strange. If you are indifi'erent to your sister's welfare
at such a time as this, I will not trouble you about her. I
can write to Blanche; she will come, I daresay, if I ask
her."
Blanche would come, yes, at the first bidding. Had she noi
Ijeen pestering her elder sister with piteous letters, entreating
to be allowed to come to London and see her darling Lizzie,
whose madness she would never believe in. It was all a plot
of those horrid Paulyns. Gertrude knew very well that Blanche
would come.
" You can take the cottage," she said, " if it is not very
•expensive. Please remember that we are poor. You won't
mind my going away, will you, aunt, to be near Elizabeth? "
" My dear Gertrude, how can you ask such a question?" ox-
K B
8S2 Strangerg and Pilgrimg.
cUiimed Mrs. Clievenix expansively. "As if I should for a
moment allow any selfish desire of mine to stand between you
and poor Elizabeth."
She said this with real feeling ; for Gertrnde was not a viva-
cious companion, and her society had for some time been oppres-
sive to Mrs. Chevenix.
It is no small trial for an elderly lady with a highly- cultivated
selfishness to have to share her dainty little luncheons and care-
ful little dinners, her decanter of Manzanilla, and her cup of
choicest Mocha, with a person who is neither profitable nor
entertaining.
" Mr. Foljambe the lawyer, a person in Gray's-inn, promises
to call to-morrow," said Mrs. Chevenix presently. " I suppose
we shall hear all the sad particulars from him, and about the
will, if there is a will.'
In the question of the will Mr. Forde felt small interest.
Was he not rich enough for both, rich enough to go back to
those sunny isles in the Southern Sea with his sweet young
wife to bear him company ; rich enough to build her a pleasant
home in that land where before very long, if he so chose, he
might write himself down Bishop ? All his desires were bounded
by the hope of her speedy recovery and release. He could go to
Dr. Cameron now with a bolder front; could tell the kindly
physician that brief and common story which the doctor had
perhaps guessed at ere now; could venture to say to him, " I
have watched over and cared for her not only because I was
her father's friend, and remember her in her bright youth, but
because I have loved her as well as ever a woman was loved
Qpon this earth."
CHAPTER XVn.
"The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine.
And sees within my eyes the tears of two."
The cottage was hired ; a rustic little box of a place containing
four rooms and a kitchen, with a lean-to roof; a habitation just
redeemed from absolute commonness by a prettily-arranged
garden, a green porch, and one bow window ; but Gertrude, who
Sirauffers and I'ihjrims. i 83
came to Hetlieridge with hei- worldly goods in a cab, declared
the place charming, worthy of Mr. Forde's excellent taste. This
■\ve.g before noon of the day after Malcolm heard of Lord
Paulyn's death. He had lost no time, but had taken the
cottage, engaged the woman who kept it to act as servant, seen
Dr. Cameron, who had that morning received a letter from Mi.
Foljambe the lawyer, and was inexpressibly shocked at the
event which it announced, and had wrung from him a somewhat
reluctant consent to the sisters seeing each other on the follow-
ing day.
" There is a marked improvement ; yes, I may venture to say
a decided improvement ; but Lady Paulyn is hardly as well as
I could wish. The mind still wanders ; nor is the physical
health all I could desire. But that doubtless will be benefited
by milder weather."
" And freedom," said Malcolm Forde eagerly. " Elizabeth's
Boul is too wild a bird not to languish in a cage. Give her back
to the scenes of her youth and the free air of heaven, and I will
be responsible for the completion of her cure. You will not tell
her of her husband's death yet a while, I suppose ?"
" I think not. The shock might be too great in her present
weak condition."
Three o'clock in the afternoon was the hour Dr. Cameron
appointed for the interview, and at half-past two Mr. Forde
called at the cottage. He had promised to take Gertrude to
the park gate, and to meet her in the Hetheridge-road on her
return, so that he might have early tidings of the interview.
It was a balmy afternoon in early spring, the leaHess elms
faintly stirred by one of those mild west winds which March
sometimes steals from his younger brother April, an afternoon
of sunshine and promise, which cheats the too hopeful soul with
the fond delusion that summer was not very far otf, that equi-
noctial gales are done with, and the hawthorn l^lossom read}'^ to
burst through the russet brown of the hedgerows. Hetheridge
is a spot beautiful even in winter, essentially beautiful in spring,
when the Tindulating pastures that slojje away from the crest
of the hill down to the very edge of the distant city are clothed
in their freshest verdure, and dotted with wild purple crocuses,
which flourish in profusion on some of the Hetherido-e pastures.
Hetheridge has as yet escaped the builder; half-a-dozen coimtry
houses, for the most part of the Williamand-MaTy period, are
scattered along the rural-looking road, a few more clustered
near the green. Shops there are none; only a village inn, with
Bweet-smelling white-cxirtained bedchambers and humble sanded
jiarlours, and a row of cottages, an avenue of ancient elms, and
the village church to close the vista. At the church gates the
road makes a sudden wind, and descends the liill gently, still
884 Strangers and Pilgrims.
keeping high above the distant city and the broad valley
between, to the gates of Hetheridge Park.
" This bright afternoon seems a good omen," said Malcolm
Porde, as he and Gertrude came near this gate.
" O, dear Mr. Forde, surely you are not superstitious!"
exclaimed Gertrude with a shocked air.
" Superstitious, no ; but one is cheered by the sunshine. I
am glad the sun will shine on your first meeting with your sister.
Think of her, Gertrude, a prisoner on this lovely day !"
" But she is not a prisoner in the shghtest degree. Don't
you remember Dr. Cameron told us she was to have carriage
airings ? "
" Yes, to be driven out with other patients, I suppose, for a
stiff little drive. I don't think Elizabeth would mistake that for
liberty. This is the gate. I will leave you to find your own
way to the house. I have no permission to cross the boundary.
You will find me here when you come back."
He waited a long hour, his imagination following Gertrude
into that old red-brick mansion, his fancy seeing the face he
loved almost as vividly as he had seen it with his bodily eyes
that night at Dunallen. What would be the report? Would
she strike Gertrude strangely, as a changed creature, not the
sister she had known a year or two ago, but a being divided
from her by a great gulf, distant, unapproachable, strange as
the shadowy semblance of the very dead ? It was an hour of
nnspeakable anxiety. All his future life seemed now to hang upon
what Gertrude should tell him when she came out of that gate.
At first he had walked backwards and forwards, for a distance
©f about a quarter of a mile, by the park fence. Later he could
not do this, so eagerly did he expect Gertrude's return, but
stood on the opposite side of the road, with his back against a
stile, watching the gate.
She came out at last, walking slowly, with her veil down.
His watch told him that she had been just a few minutes more
than an hour ; his heart would have made him believe that he
had waited half a day. She did not see him, and was walking
towards the village, when he crossed the road and placed him-
self by her side.
" Well," he cried eagerly, " tell me everything, for God's
sake ! Did she know you ? Was she pleased to see you ? Did
she talk reasonably, hke her old self?"
Gertrude did not answer immediately. He repeated his ques-
tion. " For God's sake tell me !"
" Yes," she said, not looking up, " she knew me, and seemed
rather pleased, and talked of our old life at Hawleigh, and
poor papa, and was very reasonable. I don't think thera is
much the matter with her mind."
Strangers and Pilgrima. 385
" Thank God, thank God ! I knew He would be good to us
I knew He would listen to our prayers ! And she is better,
nearly well ! God bless that good Dr. Cameron ! I was in-
clined to hate him at first, and to think that he meant to lock
her up and hide her from us all the days of her life. But he
only did what was right, and he has cured her. Gertrude, why
do you keep your veil down like that, and jHjur head bent so
that I can't see your face? There is nothing to be unhappy
al)out now that she is so mucli better. If she knew you and
talked to you reasonably of the past, she must be very much
better. You should be as glad as I am, as grateful for God's
mercy to us."
He took hold of her arm, trying to look into her face, but she
turned away from him and burst into a passion of weei:»ing.
" She is dying !" she said at last; " I saw death in her face.
She is dying; and I have helped to kill her !"
" Dying ! Elizabeth dying ! " He uttered the words mecha-
nically, like a man half stunned by a terrible blow.
" She is dying!" Gertrude repeated with passionate persist-
ence. " Dr. Cameron may talk of her being only a little weak,
and getting well again when the mild weather comes, but she
will never live to see the summer. Those hollow checks, those
bright, bi'ight eyes, they pierced me to the heart. That was
how mamma looked, just like that, a few months before she
died. Just like Elizabeth, to-day. That little worrying cough,
those hot dry hands — all, all the dreadful signs I know so well.
O, Mr. Forde, for God's sake don't look at me like that, with
chat ireadful look in your face ! You make me hate myself
worse than ever, and I have hated myself bitterly enough ever
since **
" Ever since what? " he asked, with a sudden searching look
ill his eyes, his face white as the face of death. Had he not
iust received his death-blow, or the more cruel death-blow of all
his sweet new-born hojjes, his new life? " Ever since what? "
he repeated sternly.
She cowered and shrank before him, looking at the ground,
and trembling like some hunted animal. " Since I tried to part
you and Elizabeth," she said, " I suppose it was very wicked,
though I wrote only the truth. But everything has gone wrong
with us since then. It seemed as if I had let loose a legion of
troubles."
" You tried to part us — you wrote only the truth ! What !
Then the anonymous letter that sowed the seeds of my besotted
jealousy was your writing ? "
" It was the truth, word for word as I heard it from Frederick
Melvin."
" And you wrote an anonymous letter — the meanest, vilest
3SG Slranr/ers and Pihjriuis.
form which mahce ever chooses for its cowardly assault — to part
your sister and her lover ! May I ask, Miss Luttrell, what I
had done to deserve this from you ? "
" That I will never tell you," she said, looking up at him for
the first time doggedly.
" I will not trouble you for your reasons. You did what you
could to poison my life, and perhaps your sister's. And now
you tell me she is dying. But she shall not die," he cried
passionately, " if prayer aud love can save her. I will wrestle
for my darling, as Jacob wrestled with the angel. I will supplicate
day and night ; I will give her the best service of my heart and
biain. If science and care and limitless love can save her, she
shall be saved. But I think you had better go back to Devon-
shire, Miss Luttrell, and let me have your sister Blanche for my
ally. It was not your letter that parted us, however. I was
not quite weak enough to be frightened by any anonymous
slander. It was my own hot-headed folly, or your sister'* fatal
pride, that severed us. Only I should hardly like to ^-
about her after what you have told me. There would be^.- > i
thing too much of Judas in the business."
" O, Mr. Forde, how hard you are towards me ! And I acted
for the best," said Gertrude, whimpering. " I thought that I
was only doing my duty towards you. I felt so sure that you
and Elizabeth were unsuited to each other, that she could never
make you happy "
"Pray v^ho taught you to take the measure of my capacity
for happiness ? " cried Mr. Forde with sudden passion. " Your
sister was the only woman who ever made me happy — " he
checked himself, remembering that this was treason against
that gentler soul he had loved and lost — " the only woman who
ever made me forget everything in this world except herself.
The only woman who could have kept me a bond slave at her
feet, who could have put a distaff in my hand, and made me
false to every purpose of my life. But that is all past now, and
if God gives her back to me I will serve Him as truly as I love
her."
" Say that you forgive me, dear Mr. Forde/' pleaded Gertrude
in a feeble piteous voice. " You can't despise me more than 1
despise myself, and yet I acted with the belief that I was only
doing my duty. It seemed right for you to know. I used to
think it over in church even, and it seemed only right you should
know. Do say that you forgive me ! "
" Say that I forgive you ! " cried Mr. Forde bitterly. " What
is the good of my forgiveness ? Can it undo the great wrong
you did if that letter parted us, if it turned the scale by so much
as a feather's weight? I forgive you freely enough. I despise
you too much to be angry."
Strangers and Pilgrims. 387
" O, that is very cruel ! "
" Do you expect to gather grapes from the thorns you pkxntud f
Be content if the thorn has not stung you to death."
" But you'll let me stay, won't you, Mr. Forde, and see my
poor sister as often as Dr. Cameron will allow me ? Remembei-,
I was not obliged to confess this to you. I might have kept my
secret for ever. You would never have susi^ected me."
" Hardly. I knew it was a woman's work, but I could not
think it was a sister's."
" I told you of my own free will, blackened myyelf in your
eyes, and if you are so hard upon me, where can I exjject com-
passion ? Let me stay, and do what I cau to be a comfort to
Elizabeth."
" How can I be sure that you are sincere — that you really
wish her well? You may be planning another anonymous
letter. You may consider it your duty to come between us
again."
" What, with my sister on the brink of the grave ? " cried
Gertrude, bursting into tears — tears which seemed the outpour-
ing of a genuine grief.
" So be it then. You shall stay, and I will try to forget you
ever did that mean and wicked act."
" You forgive me ? "
" As I hope God has already forgiven yoa."
CHAPTER XYIII.
" Now three years since
This had not seemed so good an end for me ;
But in some wise all things wear round betimes
And wind up well."
Elizabeth has been nearly five months a widow. It is the end
of July. She is at Penarthur, a little Cornish town by the sea,
at the extreme western point of the land, a sheltered nook where
the climate is almost as mild as the south of France ; where
myrtles climb over all the cottages, and roses blossom among
the very chimney-pots; where the sea has the hues of a fine
opal or a peacock's breast, for ever changing from blue to
green. Penarthur is a combination of market-town and a
fashionable watering-place ; the town, with its narrow High-
street, and bank, and post-office, and market, and busy-looking
commercial inu, lying a little inland, the fashionable district
J3SS Strangers and Pilgrims.
consisting of a re w of white-walled houses and one huge many-
balconied hotel, six stones high, facing the Atlantic Ocean.
Among the white houses, there is one a little better than the
rest standing alone in a small garden, a garden full of roses and
carnations, mignonette and sweet-peas, and here they have
brought Elizabeth. They are all with her — Gertrude, Diana,
and Blanche ; Anne, the old Vicarage nurse, who has left her
comfortable retirement at Ilawleigh to wait upon her darling ; and
Malcolm Forde, who lodges in a cottage near at hand, but who
spends all his days with EUzabeth. With Elizabeth, for whom
alone he seems to live in those bitter-sweet hours of close com-
panionship ; with Elizabeth, who is never to be his wife. God
has restored her reason ; but acroes the path that might have
been so fair and free for these two to tread together there haa
crept the darkness of a shadow which forebodes the end of
earthly hope.
He has her all to himself in these soft summer days, in this
quiet haven by the sea, no touch of pride, no thought of con-
flicting duty to divide them ; but he knows full surely that he
will have her only for a little while ; that the sweet eyes which
look at him wnth love unspeakable ai'e slowly, slowly fadmg;
that the oval cheek, whose wasting line the drooi^ing hair
disguises, is growing more hollow day by day ; that nothing
love or science can do — and he has well-nigh exhausted the
resources of both in her service — can delay their parting. Not
upon this earth is he to reap the harvest of his labours ; not in
earthly happiness is he to find the fruition of his faith. The
darkest hour of his life lies before him, and he knows it ; sees the
bolt ready to descend, and has to smile and be cheerful, and be-
guile his dear one with an asjiect of unchanging serenity, lest
by any betrayal of his grief he should shorten the brief span in
which they may yet be together.
Physicians, the greatest in the land, have done their utter-
most. She had lived too fast. That shoi't reign of splendour in
Park-lane, perj^etual excitement, unceasing fatigue, unflagging
high spirits or the appearance of high spirits, the wild grief
that had followed her baby's death, the vain regrets that had
racked her soul even in the midst of her brilliant career, the
excitement and fever of an existence which was meant to be all
pleasure — these were among the causes of her decline. There
had been a complete exhaustion of vitality, though the araoiint
of vitality had been exceptional ; the ruin of a superb constitu-
tion, worn out untimely by sheer ill-usage.
" Men drink themselves to death very often," said one of the
doctors to Malcolm Forde ; " and women just as often wear
themselves to death. This lovely J'^oung woman has worn out a
constitution which oir'lit tn have la,..,t. J til! she wuy cii'.hty. Verv
Straiigers and Pilgrims. 389
eaa , a conipiete decline of vital force. The cough we might
get over, ija(.cli up the Jungs, or make the heart do their work ;
but the whole organisation is worn out."
Mr. Forde had questioned them as to the possibile advantages
of change of climate. He was ready to carry her to the other
end of the world, if Hope beckoned him.
" If she should live till October, you might take her to
Madeira," said liis counsellor, "though this climate is almost as
good. The voyage might be beneficial, or might not. With so
delicate an organisation to deal with, one can hardly tell."
That disease, which is of all maladies the most delusive,
allowed Elizabeth many hoars of ease and even hopetulncss.
She did not see the fatal shadow that walked by her side.
Never had the world seemed so fair to her or life so sweet. The
only creature she had ever deeply loved was restored to her; a
happy future waited for her. Her intervals of bodily suffering
she regarded as an ordeal through which she must pass
patiently, always cheered by that bright vision of the days to
come, when she was to be Malcolm's helpmeet and fellow
worker. The pain and weariness were hard to bear sometimes,
but she bore them heroically, as only a tiresome detail in the
great business of getting well ; and after a night of fever and
sleeplessness, would greet Malcolm's morning visit with a smile
full of hope and love.
She was very fond of talking to him of their future, the
strange world she was to see, the cxirious child-like people whose
little children she was to teach ; funny coloured children, with
eyes blacker than the sloes in the Devonshire lanes, and flash-
ing white teeth; children who would touch her white raiment
with inquisitive little paws, and think her a goddess, and wonder
why she did not spread her wings and soar away to the blue
sky. Her brain was singularly active; the apathy which had
been a distinguishing mark of her mental disorder a few months
ago, which had even continued for some time after she had left
Hetheridge Hall, had now given place to all the old vivacity.
She was full of schemes and fancies about that bright future;
planned every room in the one-story house, bungalow-shaped,
which Malcolm was to build for her; was never tired of
hearing him describe those sunny islands in the Southern
Sea.
They had been talking of these things one sultry afternoon,
in a favourite spot of Elizabeth's, a little curve of the shore
where there was a smooth stretch of sand, sheltered by a screen
of rocks. She could not walk so far, but was brought here in a
bath-chair, and sometimes, when weakest, reclined here on a
S90 Strangers and Pilgrims.
couch made of carriage-rugs and air pillows. This afternoon
they were alone. The three sisters had gone off on a pilgrimage
to Mordred Castle, and had left them to the delight of each
other's company.
" How nice it is to be with you like this !" Elizabeth said
softly, putting a wasted httle hand into Malcolm's broad palm,
a hand which seemed smaller to him every time he clasped it.
" I wish there was more castles for the others to see, only that
sounds ungrateful when they are so good to me. Do you know,
Malcolm, I lie awake at night often — the cough keeps me
awake a good deal, but it would be all the same if I had no
cough — I lie and wonder at our happiness, wonder to think that
God has given me all I ever desired ; even now, after I played
fast and loose with my treasure, and seemed to lose it utterly.
I hope I am not glad of poor Eeginald's death ; he was always
very good to me, you know, in his way ; and I was not at all
good to him in my way ; but I can't help being happy even
now, before the blackness has worn off my first mourning. It
seems dreadful for a woman in widow's weeds to be so happy
and planning a new life; but it is only going backwards. O,
Malcolm, why were you so hard upon me that day ? Think
how many years of happiness we have lost!"
He was sitting on the ground by the side of her heaped-up
pillows, but with his back almost turned upon her bed, his eyes
looking seaward, haggard and tearless.
" You might as well answer me, Malcolm. But I suppose
you do think me very wicked ; only remember it was you who
first spoke of our new life together."
" My darling, can I do anything but love you to distrac-
tion ? " he said in utter helplessness. The hour would come, alas
too soon, in which he must tell her the bitter truth ; that on
earth there was no such future for those two as the future she
dreamed of; that her pilgrimage must end untimely, leaving
liim to tread his darkened path alone, verily a stranger and a
pilgrim, with no abiding city, with nothing but the promise of
jL home on the farther shore of Death's chill river.
Would he meet her in that distant land ? Yes, with all liis
heart and mind he beUeved in such a meeting. That he should
see her as he saw her to-day, yet more lovely ; that he would
enter upon a new life, reunited with all he had loved on earth,
united by a more spiritual communion, held together in a
heavenly bondage, as fellow-subjects and servants of his Master.
But even with this assurance it was liard to part; man's earth ■
born nature clung to the hope of earthly bliss— to keep her with
him here, now for a few years. The clialice of eternal bliss waa
hardly sweet enough to set against the bitterness of this pre-
sent loss.
Strangers and Pilp'ims. HOi
He must tell her, and very soon. They had ofteu talked
together of serious things during these summer days by the
sea — talked long and earnestly; and Elizabeth's mind, which
had once been so careless of great subjects, had assumed a
gentle gravity ; a spirituality that tilled her lover with thank-
fulness and joy. But pure as he knew her soul to be, almost
thikllike in her unquestioning faith, full of penitence for the
Jianifold errors of her short life, he dared not leave her in igno-
mnce of the swift-coming change; dared not let her slip out of
life unawares like an infant that dies in its mother's arms. _
Should he tell her now; here in this sweet sunny loneliness,
by this untroubled sea, calm as that sea of glass before the
great white throne ? The hot passionate tears welled up to his
eyes at the very thought. How should he shajoe the words thac
should break her happy dream ?
*' Malcolm, what makes you so quiet this afternoon?" she
asked, lifting herself a little on her juUows, in the endeavour to
see his face, which he still kept steadily towards the sea. " Are
you beginning to change your miud about me ? Are you sorry
you promised to take me abroad with you, to make me a kind
of junior partner in your work ? You used to talk of our
future with such enthusiasm, and now it is only I who go
babbling on; and you sit silent staring at the sea-gulls, till I
am startled all at once by the sound of my own voice in the
utter stillness. Have you changed your mind, Malcolm ? Don't
be afraid to tell me the truth ; because I love you far too well
to be a hindrance to you. Perhaps you have reflected, and
have begun to think it would be troublesome to have a wifa
with you in your new mission."
" My dearest," he said, turning to her at last and holding her
in his arms, her tired head lying upon his shoulder, " my
dearest, I never cherished so sweet a hope as the hope of spend-
ing all my future life with you; but God seldom gives a man
■» that very blessing he longs for above all other things. It may
be that it is not well for a man to say, ' U])on that one object
I set all my earthly hope.' Our life here is only a journey ; we
have no right to desire it should be a paradise; it is not an inn,
out a hospital. Darling, God has been very good to us in
uniting us like this, even for a little while."
" For a Little while ! " she cried, with a frightened look
" Then you do mean to leave me ! "
" Never, dear love. I will never leave you."
" Why do you frighten me, then, by talking like that? "Why
do you let me build upon our future, till I can almost see the
tropical trees and flowers, and the very house we are to live
in, and then say that we are only to be together for a Uttle
while?"
392 Strangers and Pilf/rims.
" If you were to be called away, Elizabeth, to a brighter
world than that you dream of, leaving me to finish my pilgrim-
age alone? It has been too sweet a dream, dearest. I gave
my life to labour, and not to such supreme happiness; and
now, they tell me, I am not to take you with me yonder. I am
to have no such sweet companionship ; only the memory of your
love, and bitter lifelong regret."
At this he broke down utterly, and could speak no furt ler
word ; but still strove desperately to stifle his sobs, to hide hig
agony from those fond questioning eyes.
" You mean that I am going to die," she said very slowly, '
a curious wondering tone ; " the doctors have told you that. O
Malcolm, I am so sorry for you; and for myself, too. We
should have been so hapjiy ; for I think I am cured of all my
old faults, and should have gone on growing better for your
sake. And I meant to be very good, Malcolm — never to be tired
of trying to do good — so that some day you might have been
almost proud of me; might have looked back u]ion this time
and said, ' After all, I did not do an utterly foolish thing in
letting her love me.' "
" Might have been ; ** " should have been." The words smote
him to the heart.
" O my love," he cried, " live, live for my sake ! Defy your
doctors, and get well for my sake ! We will not accept their
doom. They have been false prophets before now ; prove them
false again. Come back to life and health, for my sake ! "
She gave a little feeble sigh, looking at him pityingly with
the too brilliant eyes.
"No," she said, "lam afraid they are right this time; J
have wondered a good deal to find that getting well was such a
painful business. I am afraid they are right, Malcolm; and
you will begin your new mission alone. It is better, perhaps,
for all intents and purposes, except just a little frivolous happi-
ness, which you can do without. You will have your great
work still ; God's blessing, and the praise of good men. What
have I been in your life? "
" All the world to me, darling ; all my world of earthly hope.
Elizabeth," in a voice that trembled ever so little, " I hav told
you this because I thought it my dut3^ It was not right that
you alone should be ignorant of our fears ; that if — if that last
great change were at hand, you should be in the smallest m a-
Bure unprejiared to meet it. But I do not despair; no, darlin^
our God may have pity upon us even yet, may grant our
human wishes, and give us a few short years to spend to-
gether."
" Strangers and pilgrims," she said in a thoughtful voice
" Pil'n-ims who hav(> no abiding city. T was very foolish to
strangers and FUgrims. 393
I It ink 80 much of our new life iu a new world. The world
where we shall meet is older than the stars."
CHAPTER XIX.
" Bnt dead ! Alls done with : wait who may,
Watch and wear and wonder who will.
0, my whole life that ends to-day !
0, my soul's sentence, sounding still ;
' The woman is dead, that was none of his ;
And the man, that was none of hers, may go ! ' "
No gloomy forebodings, no selfish repiniugs ever fell from the
lips of Elizabeth after that sad day by the sea. A gentle
thoughtfulness, a sweet serenity, lent a mournful charm to her
manner, and spiritualised her beauty. She was only sorry for
him, for that faithful lover from whose side relentless Death too
soon must call her away. Her own regrets had been of the
briefest. These few summer months spent wholly with Malcolm
Forde, in so perfect and complete a union, held enough happi-
ness for a common lifetime.
" It cannot matter very much if one spreads one's life over
years, or squanders it in a summer," she said with her old smile,
" so long as one lives. I don't supposfe all the rest of Cleopatra's
jewels ever gave her half so much pleasure as that one pearl she
melted in vinegar. And if I had been with you for twenty
summers, Malcolm, could we ever have had a happier one than
this ? "
" We have been very happy, darling. And if God spares
you we may have many another summer as sweet as this."
" If ! But you know that will not be. O Malcolm, don't
try to deceive me with false hopes, for fear you should end
by deceiving yourself. Let us make the best of our brief span,
without a thought beyond the pi-esent, except such thoughta
as you will teach me — my education for heaven."
The time came — alas, how swiftly ! — when it would have
been too bitter a mockery to speak of earthly hope, when these
two— living to themselves alone, as if unconscious of an ex-
ternal world — and those about them, knew that the end waa
very near. The shadow hovered ever at her side. At any
moment, like a sudden cloud that drifts across the sunlight.
Death's mystic veil might fall upon the face Malcolm Forde
loved, and leave them side by side, yet worlds asunder.
394 Strangers and Pilgrims.
She was very patient, enduring pain and weakness with a
gentle heroism that touched all around her.
" It IS not much to suffer pain," she said one day, when Mal-
colm had praised her patience, " lying here, in the air and sun-
shine, with my hand in yours, aftfr — after what I suffered last
winter, in silence and solitude, with cruel jailers who dragged
me about with their rough Lands, and with my mind full of
confused thoughts of you, thinking you were near me, that
in the next moment you would appear and rescue me, and
yet with a half consciousness of that being only a dream, and
3'ou far away. It seems very little to bear, this labouring
breath and this hacking cough, after that."
All his life was given up to her service, reading to her,
talking to her, watching her fitful slumbers; for as she grew
weaker her nights became still more wakeful, and she dozed
at intervals through the day. All his reading was from one
inspired volume ; he had offered to read other things, lest she
should weary of those divine pages, but she refused.
"I was not always religiously disposed," she said; "but
in my most degenerate days I always felt the sublimity of the
Bible."
At her special request he read her all the epistles of St.
Paul, lingering upon j^articular chapters; she, in her stronger
moments, questioning him earnestly about the great apostle.
" Do you know why my mind dwells so much upon St. Paul ?"
she asked him one day.
" There are a hundred reasons for your admiration of one who
was only second to his Divine Master."
"Tes, I have always appreciated his greatness in thought
and deed ; only there was another reason for my admiration —
his liken-ess to you."
" Elizabeth !" with a warning look, an old look which she re-
membered in the Hawleigh days, when his worshippers had
all confessed to being more or less afraid of him.
"Is it wrong to make such a comparison? After all, you
know, St. Paul was a human being before he was a saint. His
fearlessness, his untiring energy, his exultant spirit, so strong
in direst extremity, so great in the hour of peril, all remind mf
of you — or of what you seemed to me at Hawleigh. And yoi
will go on in the same road, Malcolm, when I am no longer a
stumbling-block and a hindrance in yoTir way. You will go
on, rejoicing through good and evil, with the great end always
Defore you, like that first apostle of the Gentiles, whose strong
right arm broke down the walls of heathendom And I — if
there were any thought or feeling in the grave — should be so
proud of having once been loved by you !"
" Malcolm, I have a good deal of money, have I not? " she
Slrangers and Pilgrima, -'05
asked him one day. " Aunt Chcvonix told rac I was left very
•wi'll otf, altliougli Lord Paulyn died without a will. I was to
have a third of his personal property, or eomething like
that."
" Yes, dearest."
" And does that come to very much ?"
"About seventy thousand pounds."
" Seventy thousand !" she repeated, opening her eyes very
wide; "and to think how poor papa used to grumble about
writing a cheque for four or five jDOunds. I wish I could have
had a little of my seventy thousand advanced to me then.
Ought I not to make a will, Malcolm p"
" It seems to me hardly necessary. Your sisters are your
natural heirs, and they are the only people who would in-
herit."
" They would have all my money, then ?"
" Among them — j^es."
She made no farther inquiries, and he was glad to change
the drift of their talk; but when he came at his usual hour
next morning, he met a little man in black, attended by an over-
grown youth with a blue bag, on the doorstep, and on the point
of departing.
" Congratulate me on my business-like habits, IMalcolm,"
Elizabeth said, smiling at him from her sofa by the window ; " I
have just made my will."
" My dearest, why trouble yourself to do that when we had
already settled that no will was necessary ?" he said, seating
himself in the chair beside her pillows, a chair which was kept
eacred to his use, the sisters yielding him the right to be
iearesttoher always at this time.
" I had not settled anything of the kind. Seventy thousand
would have been a great deal too much for my sisters ; it
would have turned their heads. I have left them thirty thou-
sand in — what do you call those things ? — Consols ; a sure three
hundred a year for each of them, the lawyer says; and 1 have
left five thousand to Hilda Disney, whom I always detested, but
who has next to nothing of her own, poor creature. And the
•est I have left to you — for your mission, JMalcolm."
He bent down to kiss the pale forehead, but words were slow
to come. "Let this be as you wish, dearest," he said at last;
" I need no such remembrance of you, but it will be my prwidest
labour to raise a fitting memorial of your love. In every one
of those islands I have told you about — God granting nie life
to complete the task — there shall be an English church dedi-
cated to St Elizabeth. Your name shall sound sweet in the eara
of my proselytes at the farther end of the world."
The end came soon after this. A sultry twilight, faint stars
396 Stra'dgers and Pilgriins.
far apart in a cloudlesa opal sky — the last splendour of the
sunset fading slowly along the edge of the western sea-line.
She was lying in her favourite spot by the open window, her
sisters grouped at one end of the sofa, Slalcolin in his place at
the other, his strong arm supporting her, his shoulder the pillow
lor her tired head.
" Malcolm, do you remember the day of our picnic at Law-
borough Beeches ? Centuries ago, it seems to me."
" Have I ever forgotten any day or hour we spent together ?
Yes, dear, I remember perfectly."
" And how we went down the Tabor in that big clumsy old
boat, and you told me the story of your first love ?"
" Yes, dear, I remember."
"You could never have guessed what a wicked creature I
was that day. But you did think me ill-tempered, didn't
you?"
" I feared I had grieved or offended you."
" It was not temper, or grief, or anything of the kind ; it
was sheer wickedness — wicked jealousy of that good girl who
died. I envied her, Malcolm — envied her the joy of dying in
your arms."
No answer, save a passionate kiss on the cold forehead.
" I did not think it would be my turn one day," she went
on slowly, looking up at him with those lovely eyes clouded
by death's awful shadow, — " I did not think that these dear
arms would hold me too in life's last hour; that the last
earthly sight my fading eyes should see would be the eyes I
love. No, ]\ralcolra, no; not with that look of pain! I am
quite happy."
THE END.
WILLIAM KlUER AXD SON, PRINTEUS. LO.NUO.V.
DATE DUE
CAVUORD
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