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Title: He that will not when he may; vol. I

Author: Mrs. Oliphant

Release date: March 10, 2021 [eBook #64777]

Language: English

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY; VOL. I ***




                     HE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY




                           HE THAT WILL NOT
                              WHEN HE MAY

                                  BY

                             MRS. OLIPHANT


                          _IN THREE VOLUMES_

                               VOLUME I.


                                London
                           MACMILLAN AND CO.
                                 1880

        _The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved_




                                LONDON:
                      R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
                          BREAD STREET HILL.




CONTENTS.


                                                                    PAGE

CHAPTER I.                                                             1

CHAPTER II.                                                           19

CHAPTER III.                                                          38

CHAPTER IV.                                                           55

CHAPTER V.                                                            76

CHAPTER VI.                                                           90

CHAPTER VII.                                                         109

CHAPTER VIII.                                                        123

CHAPTER IX.                                                          144

CHAPTER X.                                                           165

CHAPTER XI.                                                          187

CHAPTER XII.                                                         204

CHAPTER XIII.                                                        219

CHAPTER XIV.                                                         235

CHAPTER XV.                                                          257




HE THAT WILL NOT WHEN HE MAY.




CHAPTER I.


The Easter holidays were drawing near an end, and the family at Markham
Chase had fallen into a state of existence somewhat different from its
usual dignified completeness of life. When I say that the head of the
house was Sir William Markham, once Under-Secretary for the Colonies,
once President of the Board of Trade, and still, though in opposition, a
distinguished member of his party and an important public personage, it
is scarcely necessary to add that his house was one of the chief houses
in the county, and that “the best people” were to be found there,
especially at those times when fashionable gatherings take place in the
country. At Easter the party was of the best kind, sprinkled with great
personages, a party such as we should all have liked to be asked to
meet. But these fine people had melted away; they had gone on to other
great houses, they had got on the wing for town, where, indeed, the
Markhams themselves were going early, like most Parliamentary people.
Sir William too was away. He was visiting the head of his party in one
of the midland counties, helping to settle the programme of enlightened
and patriotic opposition for the rest of the session, some untoward
events having deranged the system previously decided upon. To say that
Sir William’s absence was a relief would be untrue; for though he was
somewhat punctilious and overwhelming in his orderliness he was greatly
admired by his family, and loved--as much as was respectful and proper.
But when he went away, and when all the fine people went away, the house
without any demonstration slid smoothly, as it were down an easy slope
of transition, into a kind of nursery life, delightful to those who were
left behind. The family consisted, to begin at the wrong end, of two
schoolboys, and two little girls who were in the hands of a governess.
But mademoiselle was away too. There was nobody left at home but mamma
and Alice--imagine the rapture of the children thus permitted to be
paramount! There was a general dinner for everybody at two o’clock; and
in the afternoon, as often as not, Lady Markham herself would be
persuaded to go out to their picnic teas in the woods, and all kinds of
juvenile dissipations. The nursery meals were superseded altogether. Old
Nurse might groan, but she dared not say a word, for was not mamma the
ringleader in everything? There was no authority but hers in the house,
and all the servants looked on benignant. In the evening when it was
impossible to stay out any longer, they would dance, Alice “pretending”
to be the dancing mistress, which was far better fun than _real_
dancing. There was no need to run away, or to keep quiet for fear of
disturbing papa. In short, a mild Carnival was going on in the house,
only dashed by the terrible thought that in a week the holidays would be
over. In a week the boys would go back to school, the girls to their
governess. The budding woods would become to the one and the other only
a recollection, or a sight coldly seen during the course of an orderly
walk. Then the boys would have the best of it. They would go away among
all their friends, with the delights of boating and cricket, whereas the
little girls would relapse into blue sashes and a correct appearance at
dessert, followed, alas, in no small time, by complete loneliness when
mamma went to London, and everybody was away.

“Don’t let us think about it,” said little Bell; “it will be bad enough
when it comes. Oh, mamma, come and play the _Tempête_. Alice is going to
teach us. Harry, you be my partner, you dance a great deal the best.”

This produced a cry of indignant protestation from Mary, whom they all
called Marie with a very decided emphasis on the last syllable. “I
pulled Roland about all last night,” she said, “when he was thinking of
something else all the time; it is my turn to have Harry now.”

“Don’t you see,” said Alice, “that Roland is much more your size? It
doesn’t do to have a little one and a big one in the _Tempête_. He
mustn’t think of anything else. Don’t you know Rol, if you don’t take a
little trouble you will never learn to dance, and then no one will ask
you out when you grow up. I should not like, for my part, when all the
others went out to be always left moping at home.”

“Much I’d mind,” said Roland with a precocious scorn of society. But
just then the music struck up, and the lesson began. Roland was
generally thinking of something else, but Harry threw himself into the
dance with all the simple devotion of a predestined guardsman. That was
to be a great part of his duty in life, and he gave himself up to it
dutifully. The drawing-room was very large, partially divided by two
pillars, which supported a roof painted with clouds and goddesses in the
taste of the seventeenth century. The outer half was but partially
lighted, while in the inner part all was bright. In the right-hand
corner, behind Lady Markham, was a third room at right angles to this,
like the transept crossing a long nave, divided from the drawing-room by
curtains half-drawn, and faintly lighted too by a silver lamp. Thus the
brilliant interior where the children were dancing was thrown up by two
dimnesses; the girls in their light frocks, the bright faces and curls,
the abundant light which showed the pictures on the walls, and all the
details of the furniture, were thus doubly gay and bright in
consequence. The children moving back and forward, Alice now here, now
there, with one side and another as necessity demanded, flitting among
them in all her softer grace of young womanhood; and the beautiful
mother, the most beautiful of all, smiling on them from the piano,
turning round to criticise and encourage, while her hands flashed over
the keys, made the prettiest picture. There was an _abandon_ of innocent
gaiety in the scene, an absence of every harsh tone and suggestion which
made it perfect. Was there really no evil and trouble in the place
lighted up by the soft pleasure of the women, the mirth of the children?
You would have said so--but that just then, though she did not stop
smiling, Lady Markham sighed. Her children were in pairs, Harry and
Bell, Roland and Marie--but where was Alice’s brother? “Ah, my Paul!”
she said within herself, but played on. Thus there was one note out of
harmony--one, if no more.

Almost exactly coincident with this sigh the door of the drawing-room
opened far down in the dim outer part, and two men came in. The house
was so entirely given up to this innocent sway of youth, that there was
no reason why they should particularly note the opening of the door. It
could not be papa coming in, who was liable to be disturbed by such a
trifle as a dance, or any serious visitor, or even the elder brother,
who would, when he was at home, occasionally frown down the revels.
Accordingly, their ears being quickened by no alarm, no one heard the
opening of the door, and the two strangers came in unobserved. One was
quite young, not much more than a youth, slim, and, though not very
tall, looking taller than he was; the other was of a short, thick-set
figure, neither graceful nor handsome, who followed his companion with a
mixture of reluctance and defiance, strange enough in such a scene. As
they came towards the light this became still more noticeable. The
second stranger did not seem to have any affinity with the place in
which he found himself, and he had the air of being angry to find
himself here. They had the full advantage of the pretty scene as they
approached, for their steps were inaudible on the thick carpet, and the
merry little company was absorbed in its own proceedings. All at once,
however, the music ceased with a kind of shriek on a high note, the
dancers, alarmed, stopped short, and Lady Markham left the piano and
flew forward, holding out her hands. “Paul!” she cried, “Paul!”

“Paul!” cried Alice, following her mother, and “Paul!” in various tones
echoed the little girls and boys. The strange man who had come in with
Paul had time to remark them while the other was receiving the greeting
of his mother and sister.

“I thought some one would be sure to come and spoil the fun,” Roland
said, taking the opportunity to get far from the little ring of
performers.

“Now we shall get no more good of mamma,” said his little partner with a
disconsolate face; but what was this to the joy of the mother and elder
sister, whose faces where lighted up with a sudden happiness, infinitely
warmer than the innocent pleasure which the new-comers had disturbed!

“We thought you were not coming,” said Lady Markham. “Oh, Paul, you have
been hard upon us not to write! but no, my dear, I am not going to scold
you. I am too happy to have you at last. Have you had any dinner? Alice,
ring the bell, and order something for your brother.”

“You do not see that I am not alone, mother,” said Paul, with a tone so
solemn that both the ladies were startled, not knowing what it could
mean. “I have brought with me a very particular friend, who I hope will
stay for a little.” It was then for the first time that Lady Markham
perceived her son’s companion.

“You know,” she said, “how glad I always am to see your friends; but you
must tell me his name,” she added with a smile, holding out her hand,
“this is a very imperfect introduction.” The sweetness of her look as
she turned to the stranger dazzled him. There was a moment’s confusion
on the part of both the men, as this beautiful, smiling lady put her
delicate fingers into a rough hand brought forth with a certain
reluctance and shamefacedness. She too changed colour a little, and a
look of surprise came into her face on a closer view of her son’s
friend.

“I thank you for your kind reception of me, my lady,” said the man; “but
Markham, you had better explain to your mother who I am. I go nowhere
under false pretences.”

Now that the light was full upon him the difference showed all the more.
His rough looks, his dress, not shabby, still less dirty, but uncared
for, his coarse boots, the general aspect of his figure, which was
neither disorderly nor disreputable, but unquestionably not that of a
gentleman, seemed to communicate a sort of electric shock to the little
company. The boys pressed forward with a simultaneous idea that Paul was
in custody for something or other, and heroic intentions of pouncing
upon the intruder and rescuing their brother. Alice gazed at him
appalled, with some fancy of the same kind passing through her mind.
Only Lady Markham, though she had grown pale, preserved her composure.

“I cannot be anything but glad to see a friend of my boy’s,” she said,
faltering slightly; but there passed through her mind a silent
thanksgiving: Thank Heaven, his father was away!

“This is Spears,” said Paul, curtly. “You needn’t be so fastidious; my
mother is not that sort. Mamma, this is a man to whom I owe more than
all the dons put together. You ought to be proud to see him in your
house. No, we haven’t dined, and we’ve had a long journey. Let them get
us something as soon as possible. Hallo, Brown, put this gentleman’s
things into the greenroom--I suppose we may have the greenroom?--and
tell Mrs. Fry, as soon as she can manage it, to send us something to
eat.”

“I took the liberty to order something directly, as soon as I saw Mr.
Markham, my lady,” said Brown. There was a look of mingled benevolence
and anxiety in this functionary’s face. He was glad to see his young
master come back, but he did not conceal his concern at the company in
which he was. “The greenroom, my lady?”

“The greenroom is quite a small room,” said Lady Markham, faltering. She
looked at the stranger with a doubtful air. He was not a boy to be put
into such a small place; but then, on the other hand----

“A small room is no matter to me,” said Spears. “I’m not used to
anything different. In such a career as mine we’re glad to get shelter
anywhere.” He laughed as he spoke of his career. What was his career? He
looked as if he expected her to know. Lady Markham concealed her
perplexity by a little bow, and turned to Brown, who was waiting her
orders with a half-ludicrous sentimental air of sympathy with his
mistress.

“Put Mr. Spears into the chintz-room in the east wing; it is a better
room,” she said. Then she led the way into the brightness, on the verge
of which they had been standing. “It is almost too warm for fires,” she
said, “but you may like to come nearer to it after your journey. Where
have you come from, Paul? Children, now that you have seen Paul, you had
better go up stairs to bed.”

“I knew how it would be,” said Marie; “no one cares for us now Paul has
come.”

“No one will so much as see mamma as long as he is here,” said Bell;
while the boys, withdrawing reluctantly, stopping to whisper, and throw
black looks back upon the stranger as they strolled away, wondered
almost audibly what sort of fellow Paul had got with him. “A bailiff,
_I_ think,” said Roland; “just the sort of fellow that comes after the
men in _Harry Lorrequer_.” “Or he’s done something, and it’s a turnkey,”
said Harry. Elder brothers were in the way of getting into trouble in
the works with which these young heroes were familiar. Thus at Paul’s
appearance the pretty picture broke up and faded away like a
phantasmagoria. Childhood and innocence disappeared, and care came back.
The aspect of the very room changed where now there was the young man,
peremptory and authoritative, and the two ladies tremulous with the
happiness of his return, yet watching him with breathless anxiety,
reading, or trying to read, every change in his face.

“Your last letter was from Yorkshire, Paul; what have you been doing? We
tried to make out, but we could not. You are so unsatisfactory, you
boys; you never will give details of anything. Did you go to see the
Normantons? or were you----”

“I was nowhere--that you know of, at least,” said Paul. “I was with
Spears, holding meetings. We went from one end of the county to another.
I can’t tell you where we went; it would be harder to say where we
didn’t go.”

Lady Markham looked at her son’s companion with a bewildered smile. “Mr.
Spears, then, Paul--I suppose--knows a great many people in Yorkshire?”
She had not a notion what was meant by holding meetings. He did not
indeed look much like a man who would know many “people” in Yorkshire.
“People” meant not the country folks, you may be sure, but the great
county people, the Yorkshire gentry, the only class which to Lady
Markham told in a county. This was no fault of hers, but only because
the others were beyond her range of vision. No, he did not look like a
man who would know many people in Yorkshire; but, short of that, what
could Paul mean? Lady Markham did not know what significance there
really was in what Paul said.

“We saw a great many Yorkshire people; but I go where I am called,” said
the stranger, “not only where there are people I know.”

Seen in the full light, there was nothing repulsive or disagreeable
about the man. He looked like one of the men who came now and then to
the Chase to put something in order; some clock that had gone wrong, or
something about the decorations. He sat a little uneasily upon the sofa
where he had placed himself. His speech was unembarrassed, but nothing
else about him. He was out of place. To see him there in the midst of
this family it was as if he had dropped from another planet; he did not
seem to belong to the same species. But his speech was easy enough,
though nothing else; he had a fine melodious voice, and he seemed to
like to use it.

“I hope we did good work there,” he said; “not perhaps of a kind that
you would admire, my lady: but from my point of view, excellent work;
and Markham, though he is a young aristocrat, was of great use. An
enthusiast is always a valuable auxiliary. I do not know when I have
made a more successful round. It has taken us just a week.”

Lady Markham bowed in bewildered assent, not knowing what to say. She
smiled out of sheer politeness, attending to every word, though she
could not form an idea of what he meant. She did not care, indeed, to
know what Mr. Spears had been doing. It was her son she wanted to know
about; but the laws of politeness were imperative. Meanwhile Paul walked
about uneasily, placing himself for one moment in front of the expiring
fire, then moving from spot to spot, looking intently at some picture or
knick-knack he had seen a thousand times before. “You have been getting
some new china,” he burst forth, after various suppressed signs of
impatience. Now that he had brought his friend here, he did not seem
desirous that his mother should attend so closely to all he said.

“New china! my dear boy, you have known it all your life,” said Lady
Markham. “We have only shifted it from one cabinet to another. It is the
same old _Sèvres_. Perhaps Mr. Spears takes an interest in china. Show
it to him, Paul. It is a valuable cup; it is supposed to have been made
for Madame du Barry.”

“No,” said the strange visitor, “I know nothing about it. What makes it
valuable, I wonder? I don’t understand putting such a price on things
that if you were to let them drop would be smashed into a thousand
pieces.”

“But you must not let it drop,” said Lady Markham, with a little alarm.
“I daresay it is quite a fictitious kind of value. Still, I like my
_Sèvres_. It is a very pretty ornament.”

“Just so,” said Spears, with a certain patronage in his tone. “In a
luxurious house like this decoration is necessary--and I don’t say that
it has not a very good effect. But in the places I am used to, a common
teacup would be far more useful. Still, I do not deny the grace of
ornament,” he added, with a smile. “Life can go on very well without it,
but it would be stupid to go against it here.”

Lady Markham once more made him a little bow. He spoke as if he
intended a compliment; but what did the man mean? And Paul set down the
cup roughly as if he would have liked to bring the whole _étagère_ to
the ground. Altogether it was a confusion, almost a pain, to have him
here and yet not to have him. There were so many things she wanted to
ask and to know. She gave her son a wistful look. But just then Brown
came in to say that the hasty meal which had been prepared was ready.
Lady Markham rose. She put out her hand to take her son’s arm.

“Were you coming, mother? Don’t take so much trouble; it would only be a
bore to you,” said Paul. “Spears and I will get on very well by
ourselves without bothering you.”

The tears started into Lady Markham’s eyes. She turned a wondering look
upon Alice as Paul and his companion went away down the dim length of
the room, disappearing from them. Alice had been hovering about her
brother, trying to say a word to him now and then, but Paul was too much
intent upon what was going on between his friend and his mother to pay
any attention. The look of dismay and wonder and blank disappointment
that passed between them could not be described. Had Paul been alone
they would both have gone with him to the dining-room: they would have
sent away Brown and waited on him--his mother carving for him, Alice
flitting about to get anything he wanted. They would have asked a
hundred questions, and given him a hundred details of home events, and
made the whole atmosphere bright with tender happiness and soft laughter
and love. Now they stood and looked at each other listening to the
footsteps as they crossed the hall.

“It is all this man whom he has brought with him,” Lady Markham said.




CHAPTER II.


The children were all open-eyed and open-mouthed next morning to see
Paul’s friend. As for the boys, they did not feel at all sure what might
have been going on during the night, or whether Paul’s friend would be
visible in the morning. “It is money those sort of fellows want,” Roland
said; and then the question arose whether papa being away mamma would
have money enough to satisfy such a claimant. The little girls besieged
Alice with questions. Who was that strange man? He looked exactly like
the man that came to wind the clocks.

“He is a friend of Paul’s; hush--hush!” said Alice; “you must all be
very polite and not stare at him.”

“But how can he be a friend?” demanded Bell.

“He is a bailiff,” said Roland. “In _Harry Lorrequer_ there is somebody
exactly like that.”

“Oh, hush, children, for mamma’s sake! he will come in directly. He is
Paul’s friend. Grown-up people do not go by appearances like children.
Paul says he has done him more good than all the dons. Most likely he is
a very learned man--or an author or something,” Alice said.

“Oh, an author! they’re a queer lot,” said Harry, with relief. At all
events, an author was less objectionable than a bailiff.

Lady Markham came in before these questions were over. She was not all
so bright as usual. Though she smiled upon them as they all came round
her, it was not her own natural smile; and she had a cap on, a thing
which she only wore when she was out of sorts, a kind of signal of
distress. The family were divided as to this cap. Some of them were in
favour of it, some against it. The little girls thought it made their
mother look old, whereas Alice was of opinion that it imparted dignity
to her appearance.

“I don’t want to have a mother just as young and a great deal prettier
than I am,” she said. But Bell and Marie called out, “Oh, that odious
cap!”

“Why should mamma, only because she is mamma, cover up all her pretty
hair? It is such pretty hair! mine is just the same colour,” said Bell,
who was inclined to vanity.

Lady Markham smiled upon this charming nonsense, but it was not her own
smile. “Has any one seen Paul this morning?” she said, with a sigh.

What a change there was in everything! Paul had not come into his
mother’s dressing-room last night to talk over all he had been doing and
meant to do, as had always been his habit when he came home. And when
Lady Markham went to her boy’s room on her way down stairs, thinking of
nothing but the little laughing lecture she was wont to administer on
finding him not yet out of bed--which was the usual state of
affairs--what was her surprise to find Paul out of his room, already
dressed, and “gone for a walk.” Brown meeting her in the hall told her
this with a subdued voice and mingled wonder and sympathy in his face.

“Mr. Markham is turning over a new leaf, my lady,” he said, with the
license of an old servant, who had seen Paul born, so to speak.

“I am very glad to hear it--it is so much better for him,” Lady Markham
said. So it was, no doubt; but this change, even of the bad habit which
was familiar to her, gave her a little shock. Therefore it was with a
failure of her usual bright cheerfulness that she took her place at the
breakfast-table.

“Has any one seen Paul?” she said.

“Oh, fancy seeing Paul already!” cried the little girls. “He will come
in when we have all done breakfast, and Brown will bring him everything
quite hot, after we have waited and waited. Brown makes dreadful
favourites, don’t you think so? He does not mind what he does for Paul.”

“Paul has gone out for a walk,” said Lady Markham, not without
solemnity.

There was a cry of astonishment all round the table. Roland gave Harry a
little nod of intelligence. (“He will have found it was no use, and he
will have taken him away.”) Alice had looked up into her mother’s face
with consternation; but as she was Paul’s unhesitating partisan through
everything, she recovered herself at once.

“He must be showing Mr. Spears the Park,” she said. “What a good thing
if he will take to getting up early.”

And nobody could say anything against that. Getting up early was a
virtue in which Paul had been sadly deficient, as everybody was aware.

However, this was long enough to have been occupied about Paul, and the
children, tired of the subject, had already plunged into their own
affairs, when their elder brother suddenly appeared, ushering in Mr.
Spears--who in the morning light looked more out of place than
ever--through the great bow window which opened on the lawn. The
stranger had his hat in his hand, and made an awkward sort of bow.

“I am afraid it is a liberty, my lady,” he said, stepping in with shoes
all wet from the dewy grass. He did not know what to do with his hat,
and ended by putting it under his chair when he got to the table. But by
that time his embarrassment had disappeared, and his face grew benignant
as he looked round, before sitting down, upon the girls and boys. “The
sight of children is a benediction,” he said with that softening which
mothers know by instinct. He was very like the man who wound up the
clocks, who was a most respectable country tradesman; but this look
reconciled Lady Markham to him more than anything else which had
happened yet.

“You are fond of children?” she said.

“I ought to be. I have had six of my own; but they had hard times after
my wife died, and there are but three left.”

“Ah!” Lady Markham cried out of the depths of her heart. She looked
round upon her own children, and the tears came to her eyes. “I am very,
very sorry. There can be nothing in the world so dreadful.”

“It is a pull,” said her visitor. “Yes, it is a pull. A man does not
know what it is till he has gone through it. Often you think, poor
things, it is better for them; you would never have been able to rear
them as you ought; but when it comes it is a pull; though you may have
no bread to give them, it is hard to part with them.”

He had begun to eat his breakfast very composedly, notwithstanding this.
The way he held his fork was a wonder to Marie who had but recently
acquired full mastery of her own, and Harry had watched with great
gravity and interest the passage of the stranger’s knife to his mouth.
But Lady Markham no longer noticed these things. She forgot that he was
like the man that wound up the clocks.

“I always feel,” she said, “when I hear of losses like yours as if I
ought to go down on my knees and beg your pardon for being so much
better off--thank God!”

Spears looked up at her suddenly, putting down his knife and fork. Here
was a strange thing; while all the rest were so conscious of the
difference between them, the two chief persons had forgotten it. But he
did not make any immediate reply. He looked at her wondering, grateful,
understanding; and that piece of silent conversation was more effective
than anything that could be said.

“There are not many people that feel like you,” he said at length;
“those that are better off than their neighbours are apt to look as if
it sprang from some virtue of theirs. They are more likely to crow over
us than to beg our pardon. And just as well too, Markham,” he said with
a laugh. “If they were all like your mother, they’d cut the ground from
under our feet.”

“I do not see that,” said Paul. “The principle is unaltered, however
well-intentioned those may be who are in the position of unjust
superiority; that makes no difference so far as I can see.”

All the Markham family were roused to attention when Paul spoke. The
children looked at him, stopping their private chatter, and Lady Markham
cast a wondering, reproachful look at her boy. Was she in a position of
unjust superiority because all her children were living, and another
parent had lost the half of his? She felt wounded by this strange
speech.

“Ah,” said Spears, with a twinkle in his eyes, “there is nothing like a
recruit from the other side for going the whole----. You have a
beautiful family, and you have a beautiful park, my lady. You have got a
great deal more than the most of your fellow-creatures have. I can do
nothing but stand and wonder at it for my part. Everything you see,
everything you touch, is beautiful. You ought to be very sorry for all
the others, so many of them, who are not so well off as you.”

“Indeed I am, Mr. Spears,” said Lady Markham, simply; but then she
added, after a pause, “for those who have not the things that give
happiness; but there are a great many things that are of no importance
to happiness. Everybody, of course, cannot have a beautiful park, as you
say, and a nice house; but----”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” She looked up surprised. “Ah, I see! You are all for
equality, like Paul.”

“Like _Paul_! I taught him everything he knows. He had not an idea on
the subject before I opened his eyes to the horrible injustice of the
present state of affairs. He is my disciple, and I am his master. Now
you know who I am. I cannot be in any house under false pretences,” said
Spears, pushing his chair a little away from the table.

The children all looked at him aghast; and he had himself the air of
having made a great and dangerous revelation, probably to be followed by
his dismissal from the house as a dangerous person. “Now you know who I
am.” The climax was melodramatic in its form; but there was nothing
theatrical in it so far as the revolutionary was concerned. He was
perfectly sincere. He felt the importance of his own position; and
feeling it, could entertain no doubt as to the knowledge of him as their
fellest enemy, and the horror of him which must be felt in every house
like this throughout the country. He had not wished to come; he had been
disappointed to find that Sir William was not there, who (he felt sure)
would have refused him admittance. And he would not take advantage of my
lady, who was certainly a woman to whom any man might submit himself.
Had she rung the bell instantly for her menials to turn him out; had she
expressed her horror at the contamination which her family had sustained
by sitting down at the same table with him--he would not have been
surprised. He pushed his chair gently from the table, and waited to see
what she would order; though he was a revolutionary, he had unbounded
respect for the mistress of this house.

Lady Markham looked at her strange visitor with bewildered eyes. She
made a rapid telegraphic appeal to her son for explanation. “Now you
know who I am,” but she did not in the least know who he was. He was
famous enough in his way, and he thought himself more famous than he
was; but Lady Markham had never heard of him. When she saw that no
assistance could be afforded her by her children in this dilemma, she
collected her thoughts with a desperate effort. She was one of the women
who would rather die than be rude to any one. To speak to a man at her
own table, under her own roof, with less than the most perfect courtesy
was impossible to her. Besides, she did not really understand what he
meant. She was annoyed and affronted that he should speak of her boy as
Paul, but in the confusion of the moment that was all her mind took up,
and as for openly resenting _that_, how was it possible? One time or
another no doubt she would give the stranger a little return blow, a
reminder of his over-familiarity, when it could be done with perfect
politeness, but not now. She was startled by his solemnity; and it was
very clear that he was not a man of what she called “our own class,” but
Lady Markham’s high breeding was above all pettiness.

“Was it really you,” she said, “who taught my son (she would not call
him Paul again) all the nonsense he has been talking to us? Yes, indeed
it is great nonsense, Mr. Spears--you must let me say so. We are doing
no one injustice. My husband says all young men are Radicals one time or
other; but I should have expected you, a man with children of your own,
to know better. Oh no, I don’t want to argue. I am not clever enough for
that. Let me give you another cup of tea.”

The demagogue stared at the beautiful lady as if he could not believe
his ears. Partly he was humiliated, seeing that she was not in the least
afraid of him, and even did not realise at all what was the terrible
disclosure he had made. This gave him that sense of having made himself
ridiculous which is so intolerable to those who are unaccustomed to the
world. He cast a jealous look round the table to see if he could detect
any laughter.

Paul caught him by the arm at this critical moment.

“Eat your breakfast,” he said, in a wrathful undertone. “Do you hear,
Spears? Do you think _she_ knows? Have some of this fish, for Heaven’s
sake, and shut up. What on earth do they care if you taught me or not?
Do you think she goes into all that?”

Nobody heard this but Harry, who was listening both with ears and eyes.
And Mr. Spears returned to his breakfast as commanded. He was abashed,
and he was astonished, but still he made a very hearty meal when all was
said. And by and by his spirit rose again; in the eyes of this lady, who
had so completely got the better of him, far more than if she had turned
him out, there was no way of redeeming himself, but by “bringing her
over.” That would be a triumph. He immediately addressed himself to it
with every art at his command. He had an extremely prepossessing and
melodious voice, and he spoke with what the ladies thought a kind of
old-fashioned grace. The somewhat stiff, stilted phraseology of the
self-educated has always more or less a whiff of the formality of an
older age. And he made observations which interested them, in spite of
themselves. Lady Markham was very polite to her son’s friend.

When the children reminded her of her promise to go with them on a
long-planned expedition into the woods, she put them off. “You know I
cannot leave when I have visitors,” she said.

“Perhaps Mr. Spears would come too?” said Alice. And before he knew what
was going to happen, he found himself pushed into the front seat of the
carriage, which was like a Noah’s ark, with hampers and children. Never
had this man of the people, this popular orator, occupied so strange a
position. He had never known before what it was to roll luxuriously
along the roads, to share in the ease and dignity of wealth. He took
notes of it, like a man in a foreign country, and observed keenly all
that took place--the manners of the people for whom the world was made:
that was how they seemed to take it. The world was made for them. It was
not a subject of arrogant satisfaction on their part, or pride in their
universal dominion; they took it quite easily, gently, as a matter of
course. My lady gave her orders with a gentle confidence in the
obedience of everybody she addressed. It was all wonderful to the man
who knew only the other side of the question. He asked about
everything--the game (with an eye to the poachers); the great extent of
the park (as bearing upon one of his favourite points--the abstraction
from the public of so many acres which might have cultivation); and was
answered with a perfect absence of all sense of guilt, which was very
strange to him. They did not know they were doing wrong, these rich
people. They told him all about it, simply, smilingly, as if it was the
most natural thing in the world. All this went against his preconceived
notions, just as the manners of a foreign country so often go against
the idea you have formed of them. He had all his senses keenly about
him, and yet everything was so novel and surprising that he felt
scarcely able to trust to his own impressions. It was the strangest
position surely in which a popular agitator, a preacher of democracy and
revolution, a special pleader against the rich, ever was.

“We have not many neighbours,” Lady Markham said. “That is Lord
Westland’s property beyond the church. You can see Westland Towers from
the turn of the road. And there are the Trevors on the other side of the
parish.”

“A whole parish,” said Spears, “divided amongst three families.”

“The Trevors have very little,” said Lady Markham. “Sir William is the
chief proprietor. But they are a very good family. Admiral Trevor--you
must have heard of him--was once a popular hero. He did a great many
daring things I have heard, but fame gets forgotten like other things.
He lives very quietly now, an old man----”

“The oldest man that ever was,” said Alice. “Fancy, it was in Napoleon’s
time he was so famous--the great Napoleon--before even _old_ people were
born.”

“Before I was born,” said Lady Markham, with her soft laugh; “that is
something like saying before the Flood. Then there is the vicar, of
course, and a few people of less importance. It is easy to go over a
country neighbourhood.”

“And what do you call the people in all these cottages, my lady? The
world was not made for them as it is for you. These would be the
neighbours I should think of. When I hear of your three families in the
parish, I wonder what all these roofs mean. Are they not flesh and blood
too? Don’t they live and have things happen to them as well as you fine
folks? If they were cleared away out of the place, what would become of
your parish, my lady? Could you get on all the same without them that
you make no account of them? These are the houses where I should feel
at home, among the poor cottagers whom you don’t even know about----”

“Mamma--not know about them!” cried Alice. “Why, it is our own village!
Do you think because it is a mile away that makes any difference? Why,
it is our own village, Mr. Spears.”

“I dare say,” said the revolutionary--“your own village. Perhaps they
pay you rent for suffering them to live there, and allowing them to do
all the work of the world and keep everything going----”

“Hush, Alice,” said Lady Markham. “Perhaps Mr. Spears does not
understand a little country village. They are often not at all fond of
doing the work, and they do not much like to pay their rent; but we know
them very well for that matter. I could tell you all about them, every
house. To be sure we have not the same kind of intercourse with them as
with our equals.”

“Ah, that is the whole question, Lady Markham. Pardon me; I am not your
equal, and yet you let me sit in your fine carriage and talk to you. No,
I am not a bit humble; I feel myself the equal of any man. There is
nobody in the world whom I will acknowledge my superior--in my dignity
as a man.”

Lady Markham made him a little bow; it was her way when she did not know
what to say. “One does not need to be told,” she said, “that you are a
very superior man, Mr. Spears; quite equal to talk with anybody, were it
the greatest philosopher.” Here she stopped short in a little
embarrassment. “But we are all very simple, ignorant country people,”
she added with a smile, “about here.”

“Ah, you are very clever, my lady. You beg the question.”

“Do I?” said Lady Markham. “I wonder what that means. But now we are
just arriving at the place for the pic-nic. When my boy comes up, I will
make him take you to the most beautiful point of view. There is a
waterfall which we are very proud of, and now when everything is in the
first green of spring---- Paul!” she cried, “come and get your
directions. I want Mr. Spears to see the view.”

“Your mother is something I don’t understand Markham,” said the
demagogue. “I never came across that kind of woman before.”

“Didn’t you?” said Paul. He was ready to be taught on other points, but
not on this. “You see the bondage we live in,” said the young man.
“Luxury, people call it; to me it seems slavery. Oh, to be free of all
this folly and finery--to feel one’s self a man among men, earning one’s
bread, shaping one’s own life----”

“Ah!----” said Spears, drawing a long breath. He could not be unaffected
by what was an echo of his own eloquence. “But there’s a deal to say,
too, for the other side.”




CHAPTER III.


The Markhams of the Chase were one of the most important families in the
county, as has been already intimated. They owned three parts at least
of the parish (for my Lord Westland was a new man, who had bought, not
inherited, that property, and all that the Trevors had was their house
and park and a few fields that did not count), and a great deal more
besides. It was generally said that they had risen into importance as a
family only at the time of the Commonwealth, but their pedigree extended
far beyond that. In the former generation the family had not been
fortunate. Sir William Markham himself had been born the third son, and
in his youth he had been absent from England, and had “knocked about the
world,” as people say, in a way which had no doubt enlarged his
experiences and made him perhaps more fit for the responsibilities of
public life in which he had been so fortunate. He had succeeded, on the
death of his second brother, when he was over thirty, and it was not
till ten years later that he married.

It had occasioned some surprise in the neighbourhood when Isabel
Fleetwood, who was a great beauty, and had made quite a sensation, it
was said, in her first season, accepted the middle-aged and extremely
sedate and serious little baronet. He was not handsome;--he had no
sympathy with the gay life into which she had been plunged by her
brother and aunt, who were her only guardians; and the world, always
pleased to believe that interested motives are involved, and fond of
prophesying badly of a marriage, concluded almost with one voice that it
was the ambitious aunt and the extravagant brother who had made it up,
and that the poor girl was sacrificed. But this was as great a mistake
as the world ever made. Perhaps it would be wrong to assert that the
marriage was a romantic one, and that the beautiful girl under twenty
was passionately in love with her little statesman. Perhaps her modest,
tranquil disposition, her dislike to the monotonous whirl of fashion,
and her sense of the precarious tenure by which she held her position in
her brother’s house, her only home (he married immediately after she
did, as everybody knows, and did not conceal the fact that it was
necessary to get rid of his sister before venturing upon a wife), had
something to do with her decision. But she had never shown any signs of
regretting it through all these years. Sir William was neither young nor
handsome, but he was a man whose opinion was listened to wherever it was
given, whose voice commanded the attention of the country, whose name
was known over Europe. And this in some cases affects a young
imagination as much as the finest moustache in the world, or the most
distinguished stature. She was not clever, but she was a woman of that
gracious nature, courteous, tolerant, and sympathetic, which is more
perfect without the sharpness of intellect. Nothing that was unkind was
possible to her. She had no particular imagination in the common sense
of the word, but she had a higher gift, the moral imagination (so to
speak) which gave her an exquisite understanding of other people’s
feelings, and made her incapable of any injury to them. This made Lady
Markham the very ideal of a great lady. As for Sir William, he held his
place more firmly than ever with such a partner by his side. They were
the happiest couple in the county, as well as the most important. Not
only did you meet the best of company at their house, but the sight of a
husband and wife so devoted to each other was good for you, everybody
said. They were proud of each other, as they had good reason to be: she
listened to him as to an oracle, and his tender consideration for her
was an example to all. Everything had gone well with the Markhams. They
were rich, and naturally inheritances and legacies and successions of
all kinds fell to them, which made them richer. Their children were the
healthiest and most thriving children that had ever been seen. Alice
promised to be almost as pretty as her mother, and Paul was _not_ short
like Sir William. Thus fortune had favoured them on every side.

About a year before the date of this history, a cloud--like that famous
cloud no bigger than a man’s hand--had floated up upon the clear sky,
almost too clear in unshadowed well-being, over this prosperous house.
It was nothing--a thing which most people would have laughed at, a mere
reminder that even the Markhams were not to have everything their own
way. It was that Paul, a model boy at school, had suddenly become--wild?
Oh no! not wild, that was not the word: indeed it was difficult to know
what word to use. He had begun as soon as he went to Oxford by having
opinions. He had not been six months there before he was known at the
Union and had plunged into all the politico-philosophical questions
afloat in that atmosphere of the absolute. This was nothing but what
ought to have been in the son of a statesman; but unfortunately to
everything his father believed and trusted, Paul took the opposite side.
He took up the highest republican principles, the most absolute views as
to the equality of the human race. That, though it somewhat horrified
his mother and sister, produced at first very little effect upon Sir
William, who laughed and informed his family that Johnny Shotover had
held precisely the same views when he was an undergraduate, though now
he was Lord Rightabout’s secretary and as sound a politician as it was
possible to desire. “It is the same as the measles,” Sir William said.
Paul, however, had a theoretical mind and an obstinate temper: he was
too logical for life. As soon as he had come to the conviction that all
men are equal, he took the further step which costs a great deal more,
and decided that there ought to be equality of property as well as of
right. This made Sir William half angry, though it amused him. He bade
his son not to be a fool.

“What would become of you,” he cried, “you young idiot!” using language
not at all parliamentary, “if there was a re-distribution of property?
How much do you think would fall to your share?”

“As much as I have any right to, sir,” the young revolutionary said.

And then Lady Markham interposed, and assured Paul that he was talking
nonsense.

“Why should you take such foolish notions into your head? No one of your
family ever did so before. And can you really imagine,” she asked with
gentle severity, “that you are a better judge of such matters than your
papa?” but neither did this powerful argument convince the unreasonable
boy.

There was one member of the family, however, who was affected by Paul’s
arguments, and this was his sister. Alice was dazzled at once by the
magnanimity of his sentiments and by his eloquence. Altogether
independent of this, she was, as a matter of course, his natural
partisan and defender, always standing up for Paul, with a noble
disregard for the right or the wrong in question, which is a
characteristic of girls and sisters. (For, Alice justly argued, if he
was wrong, he had all the more need for some one to stand up for him.)
But in this case her mind was, if not convinced, at least dazzled and
imposed upon by the grandeur of this new way of thinking. She would not
admit it to Paul, and indeed maintained with him a pretence of serious
opposition, arguing very feebly for the most part, though sometimes
dealing now and then, all unaware of its weight, a sudden blow under
which the adversary staggered, and in the success of which Alice
rejoiced without seeing very clearly how it was that one argument should
tell so much more than another. But at heart she was profoundly touched
by the generosity and nobleness of her brother’s views. Such a sweeping
revolution would not be pleasant. To be brought down from her own
delightful place, to be no longer Miss Markham of the Chase, but only a
little girl on the same level with her maid, was a thing she could not
endure to think of, and which brought the indignant blood to her cheek.
“_That_ you could never do,” she cried; “you might take away our money,
but you could never make gentlefolk into common people.” This was one of
the hits which found out a joint in Paul’s armour, but unaware of that
Alice went on still more confidently. “You _know_ good blood makes all
the difference--you cannot take that from us. People who have ancestors
as we have can never be made into nobodies.” At which her brother
scoffed and laughed, and bade her remember that old Brown had quite as
many grandfathers as they, and was descended from Adam as certainly as
the Queen was. “And Harry Fleetwood,” said this defiler of his own nest,
“do you call him an example of the excellence of blood?” Poor Alice was
inclined to cry when her disreputable cousin was thus thrown in her
teeth. She clung to her flag and fought for her caste like a little
heroine. But when Paul was gone, she owned to her mother that there was
a great deal in what he said. It was very noble as Paul stated it. When
he asked with lofty indignation, “What have I done to deserve all I have
got? I have taken the trouble to be born,”--Alice felt in her heart that
there was no answer to this plea.

“My dear,” Lady Markham said, “think how foolish it all is; does he know
better than your papa and all the men that have considered the subject
before him?”

“It may be silly,” said Alice, changing her argument, “but it is very
different from other young men. They all seem to think the world was
made for them; and if Paul is wrong, it is finer than being right like
_that_.”

This was a fanciful plea which moved Lady Markham, and to which she
could make no reply. She shook her head and repeated her remark about
Paul’s presumption in thinking himself wiser than papa; but she too was
affected by the generosity and magnanimity which seemed the leading
influences of the creed so warmly adopted by her boy.

This was the state of semi-warfare, not serious enough to have caused
real pain, but yet a little disquieting in respect to Paul’s future,
when the event occurred which has been recorded in the two last
chapters. The ladies saw more of the strange companion whom Paul had
brought with him than they generally saw of ordinary visitors. He had no
letters to write, nor calls to make, nor private occupations of any
kind; neither had he sufficient understanding of the rules of society
to know that guests are expected to amuse themselves, and not to oppress
with their perpetual presence the ladies of the house. What he wanted,
being as it were a traveller in an undiscovered country, was to study
the ways of the house, and the women of it, and the manner of their
life. And as he was so original as not to know anybody they knew, Lady
Markham in her politeness was led to invent all kinds of subjects of
conversation, upon which, without exception, Mr. Spears found something
to say. He assailed them on all points with the utmost frankness. He sat
(on the edge of his chair) and watched Lady Markham at her worsted work,
and found fault even with that.

“You spend a great deal of time over it,” he said; “and what do you mean
to do with it?”

This was the second evening, and they had become quite accustomed to
Spears.

“I am not quite sure, to tell the truth. It is for a cushion--probably I
shall put it on that sofa, or it will do for a window-seat somewhere,
or----”

“There are three cushions on the sofa already, and all the window-seats
are as soft as down-beds. You are doing something that will not be of
any use when it is done, and that, excuse me, is not very pretty, and
takes up a great deal of your time.”

“Show Mr. Spears your work, Alice; he will like that better. Everybody
is severe now upon these poor abandoned Berlin wools. Now, Mr. Spears,
that pattern came from the School of Art Needlework. It was drawn by
somebody very distinguished indeed. It is intended to elevate the mind
as well as to occupy the fingers. You cannot but be pleased with that.”

“What is it for?” said the critic.

“I--scarcely know; for a screen I think--part of a screen you know, Mr.
Spears, to keep off the fire----”

“Ah!--no, I don’t know. Among the people I belong to, Miss Alice, there
is no need of expedients to keep off the fire. Sometimes there is no
fire to have even a look at. I’ve known poor creatures wandering into
the streets when the gas was lighted, because it was warm there. The gas
in the shop-windows was all the fire they had a chance of. Did you ever
see a little wretched room all black of a winter’s night? Black--there’s
no blackness like that; it is blacker than the crape you all put on when
your people die.”

“No; she has never seen it,” cried Lady Markham. “I did once in our
village at home before I was married. Oh, Mr. Spears, I know! it made me
cold for years after. No, thank God, Alice has never seen it. We take
care there is nothing like that here----. But,” she added after a
pause--“I don’t like to say anything unkind; but, Mr. Spears, after all,
it was their own fault.”

“Ah, my lady! you that make screens to keep off the fire, do you never
do what is wrong? you that are cushioned at every angle, and never know
what a hard seat is, or a hard-bed, or a harsh look, or a nip of frost,
or a pinch of hunger--do you always do what is right? You ought to. You
are like angels, with everything beautiful round you; and you look like
angels, and you ought to be what they are said to be; but, if instead of
all this pretty nonsense you had misery and toil around you, and
ugliness, and discord, and quarrelling, would it be wonderful if you
went astray sometimes, and gave the other people, the warm, wealthy,
well-clothed people, reason to say it was your own fault? Great God!”
cried the orator, jumping up. “Why should we be sitting here in this
luxury, with everything that caprice can want, and waste our lives
working impossible flowers upon linen rags, while they are starving, and
perishing, and sinning for want, trying for the hardest work, and not
getting it? Why should there be such differences in life?”

“This is not a place to ask such a question, Spears,” said Paul. “You
forget that we are the very people who are taking the bread out of the
mouths of our brothers. We, and such as we----”

“Hold your tongue, Markham,” said the orator. “Do you think it is as
easy as that? Don’t take any notice of him, my lady. He’s young, and he
knows no better. He thinks that if he were able to give up all your
estates to the people, justice would be done. That is all he knows.
Stuff! we could do it all by a rising if it were as easy as that. You
young ass,” the man continued, filling the ladies with resentment more
warm than when he had denounced them all, “don’t you see it’s a deal
better in the hands of your father and mother, that take some thought of
the people, than with a beast of a shoddy millionaire, who cares for
nothing on this earth but money? I beg your pardon,” he added, with a
smile, “for introducing such a subject at all; but sometimes it gets
too much for me. I remember the things I’ve seen. I would not treat
lilies in that way, Miss Alice, if I were putting them on wood.”

“Oh!” cried Alice with tears in her eyes; “how can you care about a
pattern after what you have been saying?” His eloquence had moved her so
much that she felt disposed to fling her pattern away. “What can one do?
How can one help it?” she said, below her breath, appealing to him with
her heart in her eyes.

“I don’t like the pattern,” said Spears. “If I were going to put it on
wood, I’d treat it so--and so.” To illustrate his meaning, he made lines
with his thumb nail upon her satin. “I’d turn the leaves this way, and
the bud _so_. They should not be so stiff--or else they should be
stiffer.”

“They are conventionally treated, Mr. Spears,” said Lady Markham, “and
you don’t treat anything conventionally, neither our patterns nor your
friends.”

She had not forgotten that he had called her son Paul, and “you young
ass” was still tingling in her ears. Paul took it, however, with the
greatest composure as a matter of course.

Spears burst into a great good-humoured laugh.

“I beg your pardon, my lady. We don’t mind how we talk to young fellows.
I’d have it as conventional, or more, Miss Alice. This falls between two
stools. The lily’s a glorious thing when you enter into it. Look at the
ribs of it, as strong as steel, though they are all sheathed in
something smoother than satin. And every curl of the petal is full of
vigour and life. I used to think till you drew it or carved it, you
never could understand what that means--‘Consider the lilies of the
field.’ There they stand, nobody taking any trouble about them, and come
out of the earth built like a tower, or a ship, anything that’s strong
and full of grand curves and sweeping lines. Now the fault I find with
_that_ is, that you never would come to understand it a bit better if
you worked a hundred of them. If I had a knife and a bit of wood----”

“Do you carve wood, Mr. Spears?”

“Do I carve wood?” he laughed as Lord Lytton might have laughed had he
been asked whether he wrote novels. Did not all the world know it? The
ignorance of this pretty little lady was not insulting but amusing,
showing how far she was out of the world, and how little in this silent
country house they knew what was going on. “Yes--a little,” he said,
with again a laugh. It tickled him. Her mother had not known who Spears
was--Spears the orator--the reformer--the enemy of her order--and now
here was this girl who asked with that inimitable innocence, “Do you
carve wood?” He was amused beyond measure. “But I could not bring a lily
like that out of the softest deal,” he said; “it would break its back
and lie flat--it has no anatomy. If I had a pencil----”

Alice, who was full of curiosity and interest, here put the desired
pencil into his hand, and he sat down at the nearest table, and with
many contortions of his limbs and contractions of his lips, as if all
his body was drawing, produced in bold black lines a tall lily with a
twist of bindweed hanging about its lovely powerful stalk, like strength
and weakness combined. “That is as near nature as you can do it without
seeing it,” he said, pleased with the admiration his drawing called
forth. “But if I were to treat it conventionally, I’d split the lily,
and lay it flat, without light and shadow at all. I should not make a
thing which is neither one nor the other, like your pattern there.”

This was the way in which the man talked, assailing them on every side,
interesting them, making them angry, keeping them in commotion and
amusement. Lady Markham said that it had never cost her so much to be
civil to any one; but she was very civil to him, polite, and sometimes
even gracious. He stayed three days, and though she uttered a heartfelt
thanksgiving when the dog-cart in which Paul drove him to the railway
disappeared down the avenue, “Thank heaven he is gone, and your papa
only comes back to-morrow!” Lady Markham herself did not deny their
strange visitor justice. “But,” she said, “now he is gone, let as little
as possible be said about him. I do not want to conceal anything from
your papa, but I am sure he will not be pleased when he hears of it. For
Paul’s sake, let as little as possible be said. I will mention it, of
course, but I will not dwell upon it. It is much better that little
should be said.”




CHAPTER IV.


Sir William did not come home for two days, but when he did return there
was a line between his eyebrows which everybody knew did not come there
for nothing. The first glimpse of him made the whole family certain
_that he knew_: and that he was angry; but he did not say anything until
dinner was over and the children gone to bed. By that time the ladies
began to hope with trembling, either that they had been mistaken, or
that nothing was going to be said. “I will tell him this evening, but I
will choose my time,” Lady Markham whispered to Alice as Sir William
stood up in front of the fireplace and took his coffee after dinner. He
was not a man who sat long after dinner, and he liked to have his coffee
in the drawing-room, when all the boys and girls had said good-night.
He was a little man of very neat and precise appearance, always
carefully dressed, always dignified and stately. Perhaps this had been
put on at first as a necessary balance to his insignificant stature; but
it was part of himself now. His family could not but look up to a man
who so thoroughly respected himself. He had a fine head, with abundant
hair, though it was growing white, and very penetrating, keen blue eyes;
but to see him standing thus against the carved marble of the
mantelpiece with the faint glimmer of an unnecessary fire throwing up
now and then a feeble flash behind him, it was not difficult to
understand that his family were afraid of his displeasure. The
conversation they maintained was of the most feeble, disjointed
description, while he stood there not saying a word. Paul stood about
too, helplessly, as men do in a drawing-room, unoccupied, and prepared
to resent anything that might be said to him. If only he could be got
away Lady Markham felt that she would have courage to dare everything,
and tell her husband, as was her wont, all that had occurred since he
went away.

“The Westlands called on Tuesday. They were not more amusing than usual.
He wanted to tell you of some great discovery he has made about the
state of the law. Paul, will you go and fetch me that law-book I told
you of, out of the library? I want to show something in it to papa.”

“I don’t know what you mean by a law-book,” said Paul. He saw that it
was intended as a pretext to send him away, and he would not budge.

“And I had a long talk with the vicar about the new cottages. He thinks
only those should be allowed to get them who have been very well behaved
in the old ones. Paul, by the way, that reminds me I promised to send
down the Mudie books to the vicarage. Will you go and see after them,
and tell Brown to send them away?”

“Presently,” said Paul. He drank his coffee with the most elaborate
tediousness. The more his mother tried to get rid of him, the more
determined he was not to go.

“Except the vicar and the Westlands we have seen--scarcely anybody. But
I want those books to go to-night, Paul.”

“You are very anxious to get Paul out of the way,” said Sir William.
“What does ‘scarcely anybody’ mean? Is it true that a man called
Spears, a trades-unionist, a paid agitator----?”

“He is nothing of the sort,” said Paul, with a sudden burst of passion.
“If he is an agitator, it is for the right against the wrong, not for
payment; anybody who knows him will tell you so.”

“I have heard it from people who know him,” said Sir William. “Is it
possible that you took advantage of my absence, Paul, to bring such a
man here--to lodge such a person in my house?”

“Such a person!” Paul, who had felt it coming ever since his father’s
arrival, stood to his arms at once. “He is the best man I know,” he
said, indignantly. “There is no house in the country that might not be
proud to receive him; and as for taking advantage of your absence,
sir----”

“Indeed,” said Lady Markham, holding up her head, though she had grown
pale, “you must not say so, William; he did not know you were away; and
as for Mr. Spears, I was just about to tell you. He is not a man to be
afraid of. It is true he is not--in society, perhaps--he has not quite
the air of a person in society--has he, Alice?” This was said with
scarcely a tremble. “But his manners were perfectly good, and his
appearance, though it was quite simple--I think you must be making some
mistake. I saw no harm in him.”

Will it be believed that Paul, instead of showing gratitude, was
indignant at this mild approval? “Saw no harm in him,” he cried; “his
manners, his appearance. Are you mad, mother? He is a man who is worthy
to be a king, if merit made kings; or if any man worth the name would
accept an office which has been soiled by such ignoble use!”

“Hold your tongue, sir,” said Sir William. “It is you who are mad. A
stump-orator, a fellow who does much mischief in England! My house is
not to be made a shelter for such _canaille_. Your mother should have
turned him to the door; and so she would have done, I don’t doubt--her
instincts are too fine not to have seen the kind of creature he was--but
for her foolish devotion to you.”

“Paul, Paul! Oh, don’t speak--don’t say anything,” cried Alice in an
agony, in her brother’s ear.

“Let him say what he pleases,” said Sir William. “This must be put a
stop to. When the house is his, he can dishonour it if he likes, but in
the meantime the house is mine.”

“Certainly the house is yours, sir,” cried his son; “I make no claim on
it. I feel no right to it. Let me alone, Alice! Do I want the house, or
the land, or the money which we steal from the poor to make ourselves
splendid, while our fellow-creatures are starving? I am ready to give it
up at a moment’s notice. It wounds my conscience, it restrains my
action. I want nothing with your house, sir. If I may not bring one
honest man into it, you may hand it over to any one you please; it is no
home for me.”

“Paul, Paul!” cried his mother in tones of alarm. Sir William only
laughed that laugh of anger which frightens a household.

“Let him rave--let him rave,” he cried, throwing himself into a chair.
“A boy who speaks so of his home does not deserve one. He does not
deserve the position Providence has given him--a good name, a good
fortune, honourable ancestors, all thrown away.”

“I acknowledge no honour in the ancestors that robbed the poor to make
me rich,” cried the hot-headed youth. And the end of all was that his
mother and sister had much ado to keep him from leaving the house at
once, late as it was, in the heat of passion. Never before had such a
storm--or indeed any storm at all--arisen in the peaceful house. It
marked the ending of that idyllic age in which the rulers of a family
are supreme, and where no new-developed will confronts them within their
sacred walls. Raised voices and faces aglow with anger are terrible
things in such an inclosure. It seemed to Lady Markham that she would
die with shame when she met the look of subdued wonder, curiosity, and
sympathy in old Brown’s eyes; when, after the storm was over, after a
decent interval, he came in, taking great precautions to make himself
audible as he approached. It was the first time since she entered the
house that her servants had occasion to be sorry for Lady Markham, and
this consciousness went to her heart. By the time Brown came in,
however, all was very quiet. Sir William had gone away to his library,
and Paul, breathing indignation at every pore, was walking about the
room with his hands in his pockets, now and then launching an arrow at
his mother or sister. A truce had been patched up. He had consented, as
a great matter, not to plunge out of the house into the darkness, but
to wait till to-morrow. This was a concession for which they were as
grateful as if it had been the noblest gift; it was for their sake he
did it; nothing else, he declared, would have made him remain an hour
under the same roof.

“Oh hush, Paul--hush! I forbid you to say another word,” cried his
mother; and then all was silent, as they heard Brown cough before he
opened the door.

“Tell Lewis to have the dog-cart ready for Mr. Markham for the first
train,” she said, not raising her eyes. But all the same she saw the
pity in the face of old Brown. He asked no question; he did not express
his sorrow to hear of Mr. Markham’s sudden departure, as on previous
occasions he would have done, exercising the right of his old service;
he said, “Certainly, my lady,” in a tone which went to Lady Markham’s
heart. Even Brown perceived that there was no more to be said.

That was in other ways a notable year for the Markhams. For one thing
Alice “came out.” She was eighteen: she had not been prematurely
introduced as an eldest daughter very often is. And in consequence Lady
Markham stayed in London longer and went more into society. This moment,
so exciting to the _débutante_, was clouded over to Alice and to her
mother by the fact that Paul was in disgrace. They were still in London
when the Oxford term ended, and it had been their hope that he would
join them there. It is true that this prospect was not altogether an
unmingled delight, for a certain alarm was involved in their joy. How
would his father and he “get on” after this first quarrel? Would Paul be
as submissive, would Sir William be as forgiving, as they ought? All the
little triumphs of Alice, her _succès_, the admiration she had excited
were made of no account by this doubt and fear about her brother. But
when, just before the long vacation began, a letter arrived from Paul,
announcing that he did not mean to join them at all, but was going to
“stay up and read,” with a party of other “men” who entertained that
virtuous intention, the revulsion of feeling in the minds of the mother
and sister was very painful. They forgot that they had ever entertained
any fear about his coming, and cried over his letter with the bitterest
pangs of disappointment.

“It is all papa’s fault,” Alice cried in mournful wrath; and though
Lady Markham checked her daughter, saying, “Hush! surely your papa knows
better than you do,” yet there was a little rebellion in her heart too
against the head of the house. Had he been less hard, Paul would have
been more docile.

Sir William, however, as it happened, was rather mollified than offended
by this intimation. The authorities of Paul’s college had been finding
fault. High hopes had been entertained of the young man at first. It had
been believed that he would bring distinction to his college, which, who
can doubt? is the first thing to be considered. But that hope had proved
delusive; he had not “gone in for” half so much as he ought, and of all
those things he had “gone in for” he had not been successful in one.
This made him to be looked upon coldly by eyes which at first winked
with benevolence at the blunders and idleness of a statesman’s son. Now
that they were aware that he was not likely to bring them any honour,
the dons grew querulous with Paul. He was not a duke or a duke’s son
that he should ride roughshod over the habitudes of the university and
its inviolable order. They had not of late shown that delight in him
which parents love to see. He had not excited parental feelings in
their academical bosoms. He was visionary, he was Radical; and it was
whispered that he received visitors in his rooms who were not of a
character to be received there. Fortunately this last accusation had not
reached Lady Markham’s ears. Had she known, how could she ever have
borne that “staying up to read,” which at present seemed a proof of
Paul’s innate virtue? But Sir William was of tougher fibre. He was not
displeased to be free of personal contact with his son at this crisis.
It is not expedient that there should be quarrels in a family. All that
nonsense would blow over. Paul’s intellectual measles might be severe,
but they were only measles after all, a malady of youth which a young
man of marked character took more seriously than a frivolous boy, but
which would pass away. “It will be all the better for his degree,” his
father said with that simplicity of confidence in the noble purpose of
“staying up to read” which it is so touching to see. And what could the
women say? If it was good for him, was it their part to complain? They
were cruelly disappointed, and yet perhaps they were relieved as well.
They wrote letters full of the former feeling, but they did not say
anything about the latter--not even to each other. How could they allow
even to themselves that it was better for Paul to stay away?

However this disappointment seriously interfered with the glories of her
first season to Alice. She did not wish to stay longer in town than Lady
Markham’s usual time. She longed for the country, when the summer
reached its very crown of brightness, and the park looked baked and the
streets scorching. They went home as they were in the habit of doing, in
the end of June, leaving Sir William to toil through the end of the
session by himself; and though it was still more melancholy to be
without Paul in the quietness of home, yet there were compensations.
They had their usual work to occupy them, and that routine of ordinary
living which is the best prop and support of the anxious mind; and Alice
was young enough, and her mother scarcely too old to forget, by times
altogether, that there were troubles in the world. Nothing very dreadful
had happened after all. If Paul did not write very often, were not all
boys the same? Thus they kept their anxieties subdued, and were not
unhappy--except perhaps for half an hour now and then.

Thus the summer went on. The holidays came once more. The boys came
home, the girls were delivered from their governess, and the reign of
innocence recommenced. Not to last long this time, for everybody knew
that in the second week in August papa was coming home. The children,
however, took the good of the fortnight they had all to themselves. The
sunshine, the harvest, the woods, how delightful they are in August,
with no lessons, no governess, and mamma all to themselves! From morning
till night the house was full of laughter and commotion, except when it
lay all open and silent with the whole family out of it, gone
pic-nicking, gone upon excursions, making simple holiday.

“My lady is the biggest baby of them all,” Mrs. Fry said with indulgent
disapproval, shaking her head, “if she wasn’t thinking all the time of
Mr. Paul.”

“Bless you there ain’t a minute as that boy is out of her head,” said
Brown. Brown was too respectful to say anything but Mr. Markham in
public, but he said Mr. Paul, or even Paul _tout court_, when he was in
the housekeeper’s room. While these pranks were going on, the house lay
like an enchanted palace, all its doors and windows open to the sweet
summer air, the rooms full of flowers and sweetness, but nobody there.
There were too many servants about for any fear of robbers, but it is
doubtful whether Sir William would have thought it decorous had he seen
the openness and vacancy of this summer palace, waiting all garnished
and bright for the return of the revellers, for the rush of light feet,
the smiles, the voices, the chattering and laughter, the gaiety and glee
that in a moment would flood it through and through. But to the
spectator whose dignity was not involved, these changes were pretty and
pleasant to see, and it was not to be wondered at perhaps if Brown and
the army under his charge took holiday too.

One day very shortly before that on which Sir William was expected, a
stranger walked slowly up the avenue and came to the great open door.
Everything was open as usual. He saw into the great hall as he came
gradually up, and saw that it was empty and still. It was a warm day,
and he was weighted with a little valise, which he carried, shifting it
from one hand to the other with some appearance of fatigue. He was a
tall man, very thin and very brown, with the unmistakable look of an
old soldier in his well-squared shoulders, even though his figure
drooped a little with fatigue and heat, and slightly with age. When he
reached the door, he looked round him, and seeing nobody there went in
and placed himself in a great chair which was near the open door. “He’s
come into my house without knocking many’s the day,” he said to himself.
It was hot, and he was tired, and the coolness and shade inside
completed what the glare without had done. He put his valise down by his
side and leaned back, and felt himself very comfortable; then quite
tranquilly and pleasantly closed his eyes and rested; had there been
anything to drink all would have been perfect. But even without this it
was very comfortable. The house was perfectly still, but outside a
little breeze was getting up, making a murmuring cadence among the
trees. There was a sound of bees in the air close at hand, and of birds
further off among the branches--everything was sweet and summery and
reposeful. The new-comer lay back in his chair in the mood which makes
fatigue an accessory of enjoyment. Something of the vagabond was in his
appearance which yet scarcely marred his air of gentleman. Poor he was
without doubt, growing old, very tired, dusty, and travel-worn. He was
not fastidious about his accommodation, and could have slept as well on
a grassy bank, had it been needful, but the chair was very comfortable
and pleasant. He fell asleep, or rather went to sleep, quite
voluntarily. It was afternoon, near the time when the party might be
expected to return, but up to this moment nobody had made any
preparation for them, and the new-comer took possession without
challenge of all the comfort of the vacant place.

Roland had been allowed that day to drive the dog-cart, the carriage
being full, and he and Marie had so urged the stout cob Primrose, which
was the steed specially given up to the uses of the schoolroom, that he
flew like the wind and got home before the carriage. The little pair
burst into the stable-yard like a flash of lightning, and tossed the
reins to the first astonished groom they encountered.

“Let’s rush in the back way and pretend we have been here for an hour,”
cried Marie.

They flew rather than walked round by the flower-garden, and through the
open window of the drawing-room. There was the carriage turning in at
the gate, a quarter of a mile off; there was plenty of time. But the
fact that there was plenty of time did not make them move quietly. They
proceeded into the hall, making themselves audible by the chatter of
their childish voices and laughter.

“Won’t mamma be surprised!” cried Marie.

But, on the contrary, it was herself that was surprised. She gave a
lengthened “Oh!” of wonder, alarm, and consternation, as they came in
sight of the stranger in the hall. She turned round and clutched at
Roland, and like a little coward put him first. He was twelve, not an
age to be frightened, and Marie was but eleven. Roland said “Oh!” too,
but with a different tone, and, dropping back a little upon her,
confronted and gazed at the sleeper in the easy chair. His looks were
not of the kind that children fly. The heavy moustache drooping over his
mouth seemed to add to the appearance of complete, yet pleasant
weariness, in which the shabby figure was wrapped. Here was a thing to
encounter when one got home: a man, a gentleman, whom one had never seen
before, fast asleep in the great chair in the hall!

“Will he not wake?” whispered Marie. “Oh, Roland! are you frightened?
Shall I run and tell Brown?”

“Frightened!--likely,” said Roland; but he kept hold of her frock, not
that she could have been of any real assistance to him, but “for
company.”

The two children stood transfixed before this strange apparition,
watching if he would move. At the first stir, Marie most likely would
have run away with a shriek; but after all what was there to fear? Mamma
had certainly turned into the avenue, and might arrive any moment, and
Brown with his army of men and maids was somewhere in the background
within call, so there was no real reason to fear. Nevertheless, when the
arms that rested on the arms of the chair began to stretch themselves,
and the intent gaze of the children drew the tired eyes open, Marie’s
best efforts to command herself could not restrain a tremulous cry,
which quite completed the stranger’s awakening.

“Bless me, I’ve been asleep!” he said, opening his eyes. Then when he
saw the two little figures before him, his eyelids opened wider, and a
smile came out from underneath them. “Little folks, who are you?”

“It’s you to tell us,” cried Roland with spirit. “This is our house, but
it isn’t yours.”

“That’s true, my little man. I’ve been asleep, more shame to me. It was
hot, and I’ve had a long walk.”

“If you are very tired, poor gentleman,” said Marie, coming in now that
there seemed nothing to be afraid of, “I--don’t think mamma will mind.
Oh, Rol, here she is! come and tell her,” the little girl cried. They
forgot their triumph of being first, in the excitement of this strange
piece of news, and flew bursting with it to the door of the carriage
which swept up at the moment, filling the stillness with echoes, and
waking up the whole silent house. Brown and the footman on duty appeared
as by magic, and the whole enchanted palace came to life. The stranger
sat still and watched it all with a smile on his face. He saw pretty
Alice and her beautiful mother descend from the carriage, and a curious
light broke over his countenance.

“Lucky little beggar,” he said.

He repeated this phrase two or three times to himself before he was
altogether roused from the half-dream, half-languor, he was still in, by
the sight of Lady Markham’s eyes fixed upon him, and the alarmed,
guilty, nervous inspection of old Brown.

“You must get out of here, sir--you must get out of here, sir--heaven
knows how you got into it; this must have been your fault, Charles. I
can’t let you stay here, though I don’t want to be uncivil. My lady’s
coming this way.”

“It’s your lady I want, my friend,” said the intruder, rising languidly.
He made Lady Markham a fine bow as she approached, with surprise in her
face. “I must be my own godfather, and present myself to my old friend’s
family,” he said. “I am Colonel Lenny, of the 50th West India Regiment.
St. John Lenny at your service, my dear madam, once Will Markham’s
closest friend.”

Lady Markham made him a curtsey in return for his bow.

“Sir William is not at home,” she said. If she had not already suffered
for her hospitality, his reception would have been less cold; but she
had never heard of Colonel Lenny, and what could she say?

“He must have talked to you about me and mine. I married a
Gaveston--Katey. You must have heard him speak of her. No? That is very
strange. Then perhaps you will think me an intruder, my Lady Markham. I
beg your pardon. I thought I was sure of a welcome; and I was so done
with the heat, though I used not to mind the heat, that I fell asleep in
your nice, pleasant hall, in this big chair.”

Lady Markham inclined her head in assent. What was she to do? who was
Colonel Lenny? She cast a glance at Alice, seeking counsel; but how
could Alice advise?

“Will you come in now and take a cup of tea with us?” she said.




CHAPTER V.


Colonel Lenny left his valise in the hall, where, when he rose, it was
very visible, a dusty object upon the soft carpet. Lady Markham looked
at it with alarm. Did it mean that he intended to stay? Was she to be
punished for having received one unsuitable visitor by being forced to
be rude to another? She led the way into the drawing-room in great
perplexity and trouble. As for Brown and Charles, they both went and
looked at the valise with curiosity as a natural phenomenon.

“Is all the beggars coming on visits?” said the footman; “I ain’t agoing
to wait on another, not if my wages was doubled.”

“Hold your tongue,” said Brown; “you’ll do what I tell you if you want
to go from here with a character. So mind your business, and keep your
silly remarks to yourself.”

But when Charles disappeared muttering, Brown turned over the dusty,
humble portmanteau with his foot, with serious disgust. “My lady hasn’t
the heart to say no to nobody,” he said to himself. He felt perfectly
convinced that this miserable representation of a gentleman’s luggage
would sooner or later have to be carried up stairs.

The stranger followed Lady Markham into the drawing-room, at which he
gazed with wonder and admiration. “This is something like a house,” he
said. “Little we thought when I used to know Will Markham that he would
ever come to this honour and glory. It was in the year--bless me, not
any year you can recollect--forty years ago if it is a day. His brothers
were living, and he was nearly as poor as the rest of us. I married
Katey. He must have spoken of the Gavestons, though he might not mention
his old friend Lenny. Ah, well, maybe no--to be sure I am not taking
everything into consideration. Did your father ever tell you, my boys,
of the West Indies, and the insurrection, and all the stirring times we
had there?”

Harry and Roland looked at each other with eyes brightening, yet
confused. Papa was not a man who told stories of anything,--and Lady
Markham interposed. “I think you must be making a mistake,” she said. “I
am sure Sir William has never been in the West Indies. You must be
thinking of some one else of the same name.”

The old soldier looked at her with bewildered surprise. “A mistake!” he
said. “_I_ make a mistake about Will Markham? I have known all about
him, and the name of his place, his family, and all his belongings for
the last forty years! Why, I--I am his----” Then he paused and looked at
Lady Markham, and added slowly, “One of his very oldest friends, be the
other who he may.”

“I beg your pardon,” she said, concealing her embarrassment over the
tea-table.

Colonel Lenny was not particularly fond of tea: he would have liked, he
thought, something else instead of it, something that foamed and
sparkled; yet the tea was better than nothing. He gave her his pardon
very easily, not dwelling upon the offence.

“Ah,” he said, “I can tell you stories that will make your hair stand
on end. When those niggers broke out, it was not preaching that would do
much. That was in the old time, you know, when land meant something in
the islands, before emancipation. Did you ever hear about the
emancipation? I’ll tell you a story about the times before that. We had
to get the women and children stowed away--the devils would have thought
no more of cutting them to pieces--we were after them in the woods night
and day sometimes. Once your father was with us--he was not in the
service, as we were, but he was very plucky though he was always
small--he joined as a volunteer.”

“Where was that? and when was that?” cried the boys; and the girls too
drew near, much attracted by the promise of a story. Colonel Lenny waved
his long brown hand to them, and went on--

“I’ll tell you all about that presently; but I must ask you to let me
know, my dear lady, when Markham is expected home. I’ve got business to
talk over--business that is more his than mine. He’ll know all about it
as soon as he hears my name. It is a long time since we met--and perhaps
the notion would never have struck me to seek him out but for--things
that have happened. It is more his business than mine.”

“I am not sure whether he will return to-morrow or next day--next day at
the latest,” said Lady Markham, faltering.

She could not make up her mind what to do. On the occasion of her former
mistake, Paul in person had been present to answer for his friend, but
there was no one to guarantee this second stranger--this new claimant on
her hospitality. If he should be an impostor! but he did not look like
an impostor; or, if it should be a mistake after all, and his Will
Markham quite a different man? Will Markham! it seemed incredible to
Lady Markham that any one should ever have addressed her husband with so
much familiarity. These, and a hundred other thoughts, ran through her
mind as she poured out the tea.

Meantime, Colonel Lenny made great friends with the children. He began
to tell them the most exciting stories. He was not ill at ease as Spears
had been, but sat luxuriously thrown back into a luxurious chair, his
long limbs stretched out, his long brown hands giving animation to his
narrative. Lady Markham managed to escape while this was going on, and
got _Burke_ down from the bookshelves in the hall, and anxiously looked
up its various lists. There was no Sir William Markham except her
husband, no William Markham at all among the county gentry. When Brown,
become suspicious by his past experiences, came into the hall at the
sound of her foot, she put back the book again guiltily.

The old butler came forward with an expression of concern and trouble on
his countenance. “What does your ladyship intend,” he asked, solemnly,
“that I should do with this?” touching with his foot as he spoke the
dusty valise--the old soldier’s luggage, which lay very humbly as if
ashamed of itself half under the big chair.

Lady Markham could have laughed and she could have cried. “I don’t know
what to do, Brown,” she said.

Brown was very much tempted to give his mistress the benefit of his
advice. He forbore, however, exercising a wise discretion, for Lady
Markham, though very gracious, was proud; but he was not self-denying
enough to divest himself of a general air of anxiety--the air of one who
could say a great deal if he would--shaking his head slightly, and
looking at the offending article which seemed to try to withdraw itself
out of notice under the shadow of the chair. He could have said a great
deal if he had dared. He would have bidden his mistress beware who she
took into her house, Sir William wasn’t best pleased before, and if it
happens again---- Perhaps Lady Markham read something of this in Brown’s
eyes; and she did not like the butler’s advice, which was more or less
disapproval, as all effective advice is. The result was however that
before dinner the poor little valise was carried up, to the great scorn
of the domestics, to a bedroom, and that Colonel Lenny, after keeping
the children suspended on his lips all the evening, withdrew early,
leaving the mother and daughter to an anxious consultation over him.
Alice, too, had consulted a book, but it was an _Army List_ that was the
subject of her studies. She came to her mother triumphantly with this
volume open in her hand.

“Here he is, mamma. John St. John Lenny, 50th West India Regiment. I am
so glad I have found it. He is delightful. There never could be any
doubt about such a thorough old soldier.”

“You thought Mr. Spears interesting, Alice,” said Lady Markham, feebly.

“Mamma! and so did you. He was very interesting. I have his lily that he
drew for me, and it is beautiful. But he was not a gentleman. He did not
know how to sit on his chair, nor how to stand, nor what to say to you
or even me. He called me Miss Alice, and you my lady. But Colonel Lenny
is entirely different. He is just the same as everybody else, only more
amusing than most people. Did you hear the story he was telling
about----?”

“Oh, my dear, I was a great deal too anxious to be able to attend to any
story. What if he should turn out some agitator too? what if he were a
spy to see what kind of life we lead, or an impostor, or some one who
has made a mistake, and takes your papa for some other Markham? If I
have taken in some one else whom I ought not to have taken in, I think I
shall die of shame.”

“How can he be an impostor, when he is here in the _Army List_?”

“Let me see it,” Lady Markham said. She read out the name word by word,
and her mind was a little relieved. “I suppose there cannot be any
mistake since he is here,” she said, with a sigh of relief. But, as a
matter of fact, Lady Markham sat up in her dressing-gown half the night,
afraid of she knew not what, and listening anxiously to all the vague
mystical noises that arise in a sleeping house in the middle of the
night. She did not know what it was of which she was afraid. How could
he be an impostor when his name was in the _Army List_, and when he had
that kind brown face? But then, on the other hand, a man from the West
Indies, who called her husband Will Markham, was an incredible person.
She sat up till the blue summer daylight came silently in at all the
windows, putting her suspicious candles to shame, when she, too, became
ashamed of herself for her suspicions, and crept very quietly to bed.

Sir William did not come next day, but Colonel Lenny stayed on, and as
it is always the _premier pas que coûte_, Lady Markham’s doubts were
lulled to rest, and she neither frowned nor watched the second night.
And on the third Sir William came. It was Alice who went to meet him at
the station, in a pretty little pony carriage which he had given her.
Everything was done instinctively by the ladies to disarm any
displeasure papa might feel, and to prepare him to receive this second
visitor with a friendly countenance. If there was anything that moved
Sir William’s heart with a momentary impulse of unreasoning pride and
foolish fondness, it was supposed by his wife to be the sight of his
pretty daughter, with her pretty ponies. These ponies had been named
To-to and Ta-ta before Alice had them--after, it was understood, two
naughty personages in a play--and as the ponies were very naughty the
names were retained. There were no such mischievous and troublesome
individuals about the house, and Alice was very proud of the fact that
it was she with her light hand who managed them best. Sir William was
not fond of wild animals, and yet all the household knew that he liked
to be brought home by his daughter in her little carriage, with the
ponies skimming over the roads as if they were flying. It was the one
piece of dash and daring in which he delighted.

Lady Markham, who was not fond of risking her daughter, came out to the
door to entreat her to take care.

“And you will explain everything?” she said; “how it happened, and how
very uneasy we have been; but my darling, above all, take care of
yourself. Do not let those wicked little things run away with you. Give
George the reins if you feel them too strong for your wrist. And make
him understand, Alice, how nice, how really nice, and kind, and
agreeable he is. George, you must never take your eye off the ponies,
and see that Miss Markham takes care.”

“I hope they know my hand better than George’s,” said Alice, scornfully,
“better than any one else’s. Nobody can interfere between them and me.”

“Pretty creatures! I don’t know which is the prettiest,” said Colonel
Lenny, coming up. He had all the children in a cluster round him. “They
are three beauties; that is all there is to be said. If you were not so
little I could tell you now about a great number of pretty girls in a
family, that were called the pride of Barbadoes. I married one of them,
and my friend Markham--why, my friend Markham knew them very well, my
dear madam,” the Colonel said. It did not seem to be the conclusion
which he intended to give to his description. However, he added, with a
smile, “But as you’re so little I won’t tell you about young ladies.
I’ll tell you about the Oboe men, and the harm they do among the poor
niggers.”

“Oh,” cried Bell and Marie, in one breath, “we should like to hear about
the young ladies best.”

“Bosh!” cried the boys; “what is the good of stories about a pack of
girls? I hate stories that are full of love and all that stupid stuff.”

“Then here goes for the Oboe men,” said the old soldier. He seated
himself under the great portico, in a large Indian bamboo chair that
stood there in summer, and the children perched about him like a flight
of birds.

Lady Markham looked at this group for a moment, with a softening of all
the anxious lines that had got into her face. She was not afraid of her
husband, who had always been so good to her, but she was afraid of
disapproval, and the Spears’ affair was fresh in her mind. But then, in
all the circumstances, that was so different!

She left the pretty group round the door, and went slowly down the
avenue, that she might be the first to meet her husband. Now that the
critical moment arrived, she began for the first time to think what the
business could be which Colonel Lenny was waiting to discuss. “More his
business than mine.” What was it? This question rose in her mind, giving
a little, a very little additional anxiety to her former disquietude.
And then, being anxious anyhow, what wonder that her mind should glide
on to the subject of Paul and what he was doing. That was a subject that
was never long out of her thoughts. Would he come home when the shooting
began? He could not stay up to read for ever. Would his father and he
meet as father and son ought to meet? Would it be possible to reason or
laugh the boy out of his foolish notions, and bring him back to right
views, to the disposition which ought to belong to his father’s son?
This was a wide sea of troubles to be launched upon, all starting from
the tiny rivulet of alarm lest Sir William should dislike the new
visitor. She went slowly down the avenue, under the nickers of sunshine
and shade, under the murmuring of the leaves, catching now and then the
sound of the colonel’s voice in the distance, and the exclamations of
the children. Ah, at their age how simple it all was--no complication of
opposed wills, no unknown friends or influences to contend with! She
sighed, poor lady, with happiness, and with pain. It is easy even for a
mother to dismiss from her thoughts those who are happy; but how can she
forget the one who perhaps is not happy, who is absent, who is among
unknown elements, not good or innocent? Thus Lady Markham’s thoughts,
however occupied with other subjects, came back like the doves to their
windows, always to Paul.




CHAPTER VI.


“Has anything happened, papa? You are so late--nearly an hour. To-to has
been almost mad with waiting--has there been an accident? We were all
beginning to get frightened here.”

“No accident that I know of,” said Sir William. He cast a look of
pleasure at the pretty equipage and the pretty charioteer--a look of
proud proprietorship and paternal pride. Alice was his favourite, they
all said. But notwithstanding, he would not join her till he had seen
that all his portmanteaus had been got out and carefully packed on the
dog-cart which had come for them. Sir William’s own gentleman, Mr.
Roberts, a most careful and responsible person, whose special charge
these portmanteaus were, superintended the operation; but this did not
satisfy his master. He stood by the pony-carriage, talking to his
daughter, but he kept his eyes upon his luggage. There were
despatch-boxes, no doubt freighted with the interests of the kingdom,
and too important to be left to the care of a valet, however
conscientious, and a railway porter. It was only when they were all
collected and safe that he took his place by the side of Alice.

“You may be sure, my dear,” he said, “that unless you take similar
precautions you will always be losing something.” The ponies had gone
off with such a start of delight the moment they were set free, that Sir
William’s remark was jerked out of his mouth.

“It would be quite a novelty if that happened to you--it would be rather
nice, showing that you were human, like the rest of us. Did you really
never, never, lose anything, papa?”

“Never,” he said; and you had only to look at him to see that this was
no exaggeration. Such a perfectly precise and orderly person was never
seen; from the top of his hat to the tip of his well-brushed boots there
was nothing out of order about him, notwithstanding his journey. His
clothes fitted him perfectly; they were just of the cut and the colour
that suited his age, his importance and position. That he would ever
have neglected any duty, or forgotten any necessary precaution, seemed
impossible. “However,” he added, “I must not say too much; when I was
young I have no doubt accidents happened. What I object to is that the
present generation seems to think it a privilege to be forgetful. I was
taught to be ashamed of it in my day.”

“Oh yes, papa, we are very silly,” said Alice; “though mamma says I am a
little old maid and never forget. I take after you, that is what they
all say.”

Sir William looked at her with a benevolent smile. There is no more
subtle flattery that a child can address to a parent than this of
“taking after” him, though why it should please us so it would be hard
to say. He leaned back in his seat with a sense of well-deserved repose,
while the impatient ponies flew along, tossing their pretty heads, their
bells jingling, their hasty little hoofs beating time over the dry
summer road. “This is very pleasant,” he said. It was a perfect summer
evening, cool after a hot day, and the road lay through a tranquil,
wealthy country, so fresh after the burnt-up parks, yet full of harvest
wealth; the sheaves standing in the fields, some golden breadths of corn
still uncut, and the heavy richness of the full foliage throwing deep
shadows eastward. The ponies flew like the wind, and Alice, holding them
with firm little vigorous hands, turned her soft face to him, all lit up
with pleasure at his return. A conscientious statesman, a man who has
been broiling in the service of his country, sitting on committees,
listening to endless wearisome discussions and all the bothers of the
end of the session, it may be supposed what a pleasant relief it was to
step into this little fairy carriage and be carried swiftly and softly
through the happy autumn fields to his home. “All well?” he said. But a
man who has a daily bulletin from his wife asks such a question
tranquilly, without any anxiety for the reply.

“I wonder who that lady was in the pink bonnet,” said Alice. “Strangers
so seldom come out at our station. I wonder who she is going to. Perhaps
it is somebody for the vicarage. Oh, yes, they are all quite well. The
boys came home on Friday week, and they have never been out of mischief
ever since. They are in the woods all day; and the girls have begun
their holidays too. Mademoiselle has gone. We wanted only you, papa,
you--and Paul. But who could that lady with the pink bonnet be?”

This second expression of curiosity was added artificially to cover the
allusion to Paul. Sir William did not take any notice of either one or
the other. “So Mademoiselle has gone?” he said. “I hope you keep order,
and that mamma does not let them be too irregular. They will be far
happier for a little wholesome restraint.”

“I suppose so,” said Alice, dubiously. “Anyhow,” she added, “they have
had nearly a fortnight all to themselves. We have all been idle; but we
will settle down into right laws and proper habits now we have got you,
papa.”

“That will be quite necessary,” he said; then, with a slightly impatient
tone, “You spoke of Paul--what is your last news of Paul?”

To-to had a very sensitive mouth. At this moment he so resented some
imperceptible pull of the reins, that he got into the air altogether,
capering with all his four feet, and called for Alice’s complete
attention. In the midst of this little excitement she said, “Paul is
still at Oxford, papa. He does not write very often. Oh, you bad To-to,
what do you mean by this?”

“He has got very fond of Oxford all at once.”

“He has all his friends there--at least some of his friends. Papa,”
cried Alice, with an impulse of alarm, “I wonder who that lady can be.
She is coming after us in the village fly. I saw her bonnet just now
through the window, when To-to made that bolt.”

“My dear, it is quite unimportant who she is--unless you think she is
one of your brother’s friends. Considering who his associates are, one
could never be astonished at any arrival. It may be a lady lecturer,
perhaps, on Female Suffrage and Universal Equality.”

“Oh, papa! because he knows one man like that! But I have something to
tell you--something that makes mamma and me a little uneasy. A gentleman
came on Monday--oh, not a common person at all, a _gentleman_, and very
nice. We could not tell what to do, but at last, after many
consultations, we made up our minds to invite him to stay.”

“My dear Alice!” cried Sir William, “what do you and your mother mean?
Is my house to be made into an hotel? What is the meaning of it? Am I
to understand that you have taken in another nameless person, another
disreputable acquaintance of Paul’s? Good heavens! is your mother mad?
But I will not put up with it. My house shall not be made a refuge for
adventurers, a den of----”

“For that matter,” said Alice growing pale, “I suppose it is mamma’s
house too.”

There are opinions that get into the air and spread in sentiment when
most opposed to principle. Nobody could have been more horrified than
Lady Markham at any claim for her of woman’s rights; but when her little
daughter, generously bred, found herself suddenly confronted by this
undoubted claim of proprietorship, a chord was struck within her which
had perhaps only learned to vibrate of recent days. She looked her
father in the face with sudden defiance. She had not intended it--on the
contrary, the object of her mission, the chief thing in her thoughts,
had been to conciliate him in respect to this visitor, and soften his
probable displeasure. But a girl’s mind is a delicate machine, and there
is nothing that so easily changes its balance by a sudden touch. A whole
claim of rights, a whole code of natural justice, blazed up in her blue
eyes. She forgot To-to in her sudden indignation, looking with all the
severity of logical youth in her father’s face.

Sir William was altogether taken aback. He returned her look with a kind
of consternation.

“You little----” But then he stopped. A man sometimes remembers (though
not always) that when he is speaking to his children of their mother it
is necessary to do so with respect. Unquestionably it was expedient that
a girl should have full faith in her mother. Besides (it gleamed upon
Sir William) Alice was not a child. She was a reasonable little
creature, able, after all, more or less, to form an opinion for herself.
Perhaps he was more disposed to grant this privilege to the girl who was
not likely to make any extravagant use of it, than to the boy; or
perhaps his ill success in respect to the boy had taught him a lesson.
Anyhow he paused. “Of course,” he said, “it is also, as you say, your
mamma’s house. A friend of hers, I need not tell you, would be as
welcome to me as a friend of my own. Do I ever attempt to settle without
her who is to be asked? but with your sense, Alice, you must be aware
there is a difference. I must interfere to prevent your excellent
mother, who is only too good and kind, from being imposed upon by those
disreputable acquaintances of Paul.”

“I beg your pardon, papa,” said Alice, who had been waiting breathless
for the end of his address to make her eager apologies. “But,” she
added, not unwilling to bring him down summarily from his elevation,
“the gentleman I have been speaking of declares that he is your friend,
and not Paul’s.”

“_My_ friend! Then I daresay it is quite simple,” said Sir William,
relapsing into his previous state of perfect repose and calm. “My
friends are your mother’s friends too.”

“Ah, but this is different. (Papa, I am certain that woman is following
us.) This is quite different. It is an _old_ friend, whom none of us
ever heard of. If we had known even his name we should not have been
afraid. But do not be frightened, he is very nice. We all like him. He
says he knew you in the West Indies, and the thing that alarmed us was
that none of us, not even mamma, ever knew you had been there at all.”

“The West Indies!” Was it possible that Sir William started so much as
to shake the pony carriage in which he sat? A cloud came suddenly over
his serene countenance. He did not say, as Alice fancied he would, “I
know nothing about the West Indies.” On the contrary, he paused, cleared
his throat, and asked in a curiously restrained, yet agitated voice,
“What does he--call himself?--what is his name?”

Alice was half alarmed by the effect she had produced. She did not
understand it. She wanted to soften and do away with any disagreeable
impression.

“Oh, he is very nice,” she said. “It is not any one you will mind, papa.
And he is all right; he is in the _Army List_; we looked him up at once;
we took every precaution; and there he was, just as he said, J. St. John
Lenny, 50th West India Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel. After that, of
course, and when he said he had known you so well, we could not hesitate
any more.”

“Lenny!” Sir William said. It was with a tone of relief. He drew a long
breath “as if he had expected something much worse,” Alice said
afterwards. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. To be
sure it was a warm evening. But there was something very strange to the
girl in her father’s agitation. She did not understand it--he who was
always so calm, who never allowed anything to put him out.

“Then were you really in the West Indies, papa?”

“I was in a great many places in my youth,” he said. “I was not taken
care of as my boys have been. I was the youngest, and I did pretty much
as I liked--a bad thing,” he added, after a pause; “a very bad thing,
though you children never understand it. It led me into places and among
people whose very names I seem to have forgotten now.”

There was a pause. Alice was very curious, but she did not venture to
say more. She did not like even to look at her father who was so
unusually disturbed. What could make him so unlike himself? The idea
that there might be a mystery in Sir William’s life was more than
impossible, it was ludicrous. She tried to fix her attention upon the
ponies, who were going so beautifully. Then her ear was caught by the
steady roll of wheels coming after them. Certainly it was the fly from
the village; and certainly it was following on to the gates of the Chase
which were now in sight. This was not the way to the vicarage or to any
other house to which a stranger who had stopped at the station of
Markham Royal could be going. She had not really believed it possible
that the lady in the pink bonnet could be coming to the Chase; but now
it seemed almost certain. What could be the meaning of it? Her heart
jumped up into sudden excitement. She nourished her whip and touched the
ponies till they flew. She could not bear the heavy rolling of that fly,
a long way behind, yet always following with the steadiness of fate.
This distracted her thoughts at once from her father, and a thousand
conjectures rushed into the girl’s head. Could it be somebody from Paul?
The fly came pounding heavily along, nothing stopping it. What could she
do to stop it or conjure its passenger away? If it was bad news that was
coming in it, what doubt that it would arrive quite safely? Paul! what
could a woman in a pink bonnet have to do with Paul? Could he be ill?
Could he be going to marry somebody, to do something foolish? Alice
became herself so excited that she could not think of her father. And
her father for his part took little notice of Alice. His mind was full
of thoughts that would have been very incomprehensible, very startling
to her. The stranger’s name had fallen upon him in his tranquillity as a
stone falls into still waters. The calm surface of his mind was all
broken, filled with widening and ever-widening circles of recollection.
He felt dizzy like a man in a dream. The past was so long past, that,
thus suddenly recalled to him, after such an interval of years, Sir
William had a moment of giddy uncertainty as to whether it had actually
existed at all, whether it was not a mere fable, something he had read
in a book. Forty years ago--is a man responsible for things he did forty
years ago? Can he be blamed if he forgets them? Can he be expected to
remember? He who was so systematic, so careful, who never lost anything,
who had for years been in a position to set every one else right: was it
possible that he had once been foolish as other men? He himself did not
understand it. He could not believe it. Lenny? Yes, he remembered there
had been a man--the West Indies--ah, yes! things had passed there which
he would not care now to talk about, which had been forgotten, which
were to him as if they had never been. Had they ever been? he could
scarcely tell. The ponies skimmed along the road, the bells jingled, the
gates of the house were in sight, another minute and they would have
reached the avenue. And then--instead of his gentle wife, and his
innocent children, and universal respect, service, comfort, and worship
of every kind, would it be the past in bodily presence that would have
to be encountered, painful explanations, revelations, which might make a
sudden rending asunder of the beauty and the happiness of life? Sir
William wiped his forehead again as they turned in at the gate to the
shelter of the familiar trees.

And still there was the dull rumbling of the fly behind. He did not so
much as hear it, having been swept away on this torrent of thought. But
Alice cast a troubled glance behind as she turned round to go in at the
open gate, and made sure that it was coming after her. The girl’s head
was buzzing and her heart throbbing with mingled fear and excitement.
“Would you mind driving up the avenue yourself, papa? I have something
to say to Mrs. Lowry at the gate,” she said, faltering. Her father
scarcely seemed to hear her; he said, “Go on, go on,” with an impatient
wave of his hand. She knew nothing about his alarms, nor he about hers.
Perhaps, after all, the anxious desire of Alice to intercept what her
hasty imagination had concluded to be a messenger of evil had something
in it of that eager youthful curiosity which burns to forestall every
new event. But if so disappointment was her fate. The little carriage
flashed on under the trees and through the slanting lines of sunshine in
a breathless silence, both its occupants being far too much absorbed to
speak. Half way up the avenue two figures were visible advancing towards
them. Lady Markham had been joined by Colonel Lenny a few minutes
before. They stood aside, one on each side of the road as the
pony-carriage came up. And here on every other occasion Sir William had
got down and walked back with his wife to the house. It was part of the
formula of his return, which was never omitted. This time, however, when
Alice drew up her impatient ponies, he greeted his wife without moving
from the carriage.

“We have had a very tedious, dusty journey,” he said. “I will go home at
once, my love, pardon me, and shake my dust off.”

Lady Markham, in the midst of her anxiety, grew pale with surprise at
this unusual proceeding. She pressed close to the side of the little
carriage--“William,” she said, “do you know who it is that is with me?”

The baronet turned round to the long brown figure on the other side.
“Alice has told me,” he said. “Lenny, is it possible? I did not think I
could have recognised you after all these years.”

“Nor I you, my fine fellow,” said the Colonel. “I’d have passed you if I
had met you in Bond Street, Markham; but meeting you here, and knowing
it’s you, makes a great deal of difference. We’ve both of us altered in
forty years.”

“Is it as long as that?” Sir William said. There was no pleasure in his
face such as, these innocent ladies thought, should always attend a
meeting with an old friend. But on the other hand he cast no doubt upon
Colonel Lenny (as indeed how could he, seeing the Colonel’s name was in
the _Army List_?), but addressed him unhesitatingly, and acknowledged
him, which set the worst of Lady Markham’s fears at rest. “Go on,” he
said, in an undertone to his daughter, then waved his hand to the
pedestrians. “In ten minutes I shall be with, you,” he cried.

The rumbling of the fly had stopped; had it gone further contrary to all
Alice’s anticipations? This idea gave her a little relief, but she was
in so nervous a mood that the sudden jerk with which she urged the
ponies forward once more upset To-to’s temper, who was his mistress’s
favourite. He darted on through the lines of trees like a mad thing,
wild with the jar to his delicate mouth and the vicinity of his stables.

“Do you want to break your own neck and mine?” Sir William said; “that
pony will not bear the whip.”

“Why shouldn’t he bear it as well as Ta-ta?” said Alice; “is he to be
humoured because he is the naughty one? It should be the other way.”

“It seldom is the other way,” said Sir William, moralising with a
self-reference, though Alice did not understand it. “You spoke a greater
truth than you are aware of. It is not the best people who are humoured
in life. It is the naughty ones who get their way. If you make the worst
of everything circumstances will yield to you: but act anxiously for the
best and all the burden falls on your shoulders.”

“Papa! that is like Thackeray; it is cynical. I never heard you speak so
before.”

“Nevertheless it is true,” said Sir William. His straight and placid
brow was ruffled with care. “One does everything one can to be secure
from evil, and evil comes.”

Could he be thinking about Paul? She turned her ponies (to their great
disappointment) as soon as Sir William had stept out of the carriage.
Charles indeed had to come to To-to’s head and lead him round, so
unwilling was that little Turk to turn away from his comfortable stable
again. “I will go back and bring mamma home, she was looking tired,” the
girl said. She was impatient to make sure about the fly that had
followed from the station, and the lady in the pink bonnet, and to be in
the midst of it, at least, if anything were going to happen. Her mother
was still a long way down the avenue. But Alice had scarcely turned when
she perceived that there were three figures instead of two in the group
she had so lately left. Three figures--and a brilliant speck of colour
making itself apparent like a flag at the head of the little procession.
Alice felt her heart rush to the scene of action more quickly than the
ponies, which still resisted, tossing their little wicked heads. The
lady with the pink bonnet had fallen into the advancing rank. She was
tall, and that oriflamme towered over Lady Markham’s hat with its soft
gray feathers. But their pace was quite moderate, unexcited, showing no
sign of trouble. Lady Markham moved along with no appearance of
agitation. Perhaps, after all, this new-comer, whoever she might be, had
nothing to do with the absent brother, and was no messenger of evil
tidings after all.




CHAPTER VII.


“My dear, this is Mrs. Lenny,” said Lady Markham. “She has kindly taken
us on her way to the north.”

“How do you do, my dear young lady? The Colonel wrote me word about you
all, praising you up, one more than another, and I thought I’d like to
come and see. But, Lenny, you never told me how like she was to her
father at her age. I think I see him before me, as handsome a boy----”

“Mrs. Lenny!” cried Alice, in consternation, yet relief. She turned to
her mother a pair of questioning, wondering eyes. But Lady Markham could
make no answer. She slightly shrugged, so to speak, not her shoulders,
but her eyebrows. She was very polite and very hospitable, but this
second arrival was almost too much for her. “I thought you looked
tired, mamma,” Alice continued. “I came back to drive you home.”

Lady Markham shook her head. She was almost cross--as near that
unpleasant state as it was possible for her to be. “Perhaps Mrs. Lenny
would like to drive, Alice? She has had a long journey. I am not at all
tired. I will wait and meet your papa.”

“How cool it is under these delicious trees,” said the lady of the pink
bonnet. “Yes, indeed, if the young lady will have me, it will be a treat
to be behind those beautiful ponies. Pretty creatures! like their
mistress. I have not seen anything so pretty, Lenny, since we left the
regiment. Ah, that was a foolish step. But one never knows when one is
well off. ‘_Lay mew_,’ as the French say, is the enemy of ‘_lay bieng_.’
Thank you, my dear. Now this _is_ delightful! I wish, instead of being
within sight, we were three or four miles from the house.”

“Take Mrs. Lenny round by the fishpond,” said Lady Markham. She sighed
with relief at getting rid of this new claimant upon her attention,
though she was so polite. Mrs. Lenny was tall like her husband, and like
him, brown and soldierly. She made the light little carriage bend on
one side as she got in. Her brown face within the pink shade of the
bonnet was wreathed with smiles. She was delighted like a child with the
pretty equipage, and the promised drive--much more delighted than Alice
was, who, though relieved of her terrors about Paul, drove off in no
very happy state of mind. Yet she could not help taking a little
pleasure in her own discrimination.

“I knew you were coming here the first moment I saw you,” she said. “I
kept asking papa who you were. But he had not seen you--he did not know
you; he never knows any one--not even, if he were to see us at a
distance, mamma or me.”

“Nor I,” said Mrs. Lenny. “I should no more have known him! for you may
be sure I took a good stare at the station, seeing it was somebody of
consequence. He is so changed--oh, not for the worse, my dear; but when
you see a nice little old gentleman instead of a pretty young one, it’s
a shock, that can’t be denied. You have to count up and think back how
many years it is. Somehow one never feels old one’s self. You think the
world has stood still with you, though it goes so fast with all the
rest.”

“I don’t feel at all like that,” said Alice. “Sometimes I feel so
old--older a great deal, I am sure, than mamma.”

This statement was received by her companion with laughter, which
disconcerted Alice. She drew herself up. She was not so polite as her
mother.

“I don’t see what there is to laugh at,” she said. “Age does not go only
by years--when you have a great deal to think of----”

“You darling!” cried Mrs. Lenny. “Did the old woman laugh? But I’d laugh
just the same if your dear mamma herself was to talk of feeling old.
There’s what I call a lovely woman! Lenny never told me half what a dear
she was. Old! but don’t you gloom at me, my pretty pet; I was once
seventeen myself, though you wouldn’t think it. The birds now on the
trees, I daresay they feel old between one Valentine’s day and another.
It is not years that does it, as you say. When we come to my time of
life the days go on one after another as fast as they can pelt: they’re
all flyin’, flyin’, like the echoes in the song. But at your age they’re
longer--they pass more slow--and when there’s much to think about did
you say? Ah, but that’s true! When I was your age I had a great deal to
think about. We were a large family, six girls of us, and not a penny
among the lot. We were just ruined with the emancipation in the West
Indies, and all that our parents said to us was, ‘Get married! There’s
the officers,’ they said, ‘a set of simpletons! What’s the good of them
but to marry the poor girls that know how to play their cards.’ Ah! I
thought when I was after Lenny that to be married meant to be well off,
and have everything that heart could desire. And so we all thought. We
weren’t bad girls, don’t you think it; but that was how were brought up.
Get married! and you’ll be well off directly. You never had anything
like that said to you to make you old with thinking--”

“Oh, no, no,” said Alice, horrified. She scarcely knew whether to be
offended by the familiarity of the stranger or interested in her talk.
It was an experience altogether different from anything Alice knew of
life.

“No, I should think not,” said the lady of the pink bonnet, nodding that
article vigorously. “Just figure to yourself, my dear, what you would
feel if you had to leave this beautiful place, and live down in a house
in the town, and have _that_ said to you. You would be shocked, wouldn’t
you? But it did not shock us. That was how we were brought up. We had to
marry by hook or by crook; and we all did marry. Well, there’s Lenny, he
has made me a very good husband; but marrying him wasn’t like coming
into a fortune, was it now?--though we’ve always been the best of
friends. It was lucky in one way that we never had any children; it left
us free to look after ourselves. Nowadays we live a great deal among our
friends. We don’t interfere with each other, but we’re always glad to
come together again. When I’m comfortable anywhere I send him word, and
when he’s comfortable he sends me word. You mustn’t think my coming
means more than that, and you must tell your dear mamma so. We’ve not
come to do her any harm or her pretty family. Your papa is startled to
see us, but he won’t mind in the end. I daresay you have often heard him
talk of Barbadoes and the Gavestons? We were six handsome girls, though
I say it that shouldn’t. You must have heard of us by name.”

Alice, whom this speech had filled with wonder, shook her head. “I
never heard the name in my life,” she said.

“Well, that is odd,” said Mrs. Lenny. “I couldn’t believe it even though
Lenny said so. That’s thorough,” she added, with a little laugh. A flush
came over her brown cheek. “Never mind, my dear, it is not your fault,”
she said.

Alice was more and more mystified. She could not imagine what this
strange woman could mean. If she had been at first disposed to resent
her familiarity, that offence had altogether evaporated. Mrs. Lenny
looked and spoke as if she had something to do with the family; her eyes
and her tone were full of kindness even when she evidently resented the
fact that Alice had never heard of her. She spoke of herself without any
kind of effort, as if it were natural that the girl should be
interested; and Alice could not but wish to hear more. It was like a new
story, original and out of the common. The momentary pause that ensued
alarmed her lest it should be coming to an end.

“Did you all marry officers?” she asked at last.

“Did we all marry officers? We did that, every one--except the one that
one that married---- Ah! I mean Gussy, that was the youngest. She
married--a civilian--and died, poor girl. The rest of us all took the
shilling. Ah! some of the girls are dead, and the rest are
scattered--one in Australia, two out in India, me, wandering about the
world as you see me, Lenny and I; most likely I’ll never see one of them
again. We had but one brother; all the little the family had, he got it.
It was he that took Gussy’s boy--did I tell you she left a boy? Poor
Gussy! she died at twenty. It is like as if she never had married or
been more than a child. When I think of the past it’s always she that
comes uppermost--the little one, you know, the pet--and she never lived
to get parted from us like the rest.”

Alice looked vaguely interested. It seemed to her that she was hearing
the prologue of a novel. She did not draw any moral from it, or ask
herself whether her own brothers and sisters might ever be dispersed
like this about the world; but she wanted to hear more.

“Have the others no children?” she asked.

“Dozens, my dear,” said Mrs. Lenny, “here, and there, and everywhere.
I’ve nephews in the service in every country under the sun, and nieces,
all married in the army; it runs in our blood. But Gussy’s boy is the
one I think of most. He’s not a boy now. He’s five-and-thirty if he’s a
day, and my brother is dead that adopted him, and the property has gone
from bad to worse, and I don’t know what is to be done. Lenny’s head is
full of him. Perhaps if I were to speak a good word to your papa----”

“Could papa help him?” cried Alice, eagerly; “then you may be sure,
quite sure, that he will do it. I will speak to him myself. They all say
he always listens to me.”

“Will you?” said Mrs. Lenny. She grasped suddenly at the firm little
hand in which Alice held the reins, and put down her head as if to kiss
it, then looked up with a nervous laugh, winking her eyes rapidly to
cast off some tears. “You are a dear little angel!” she cried. “But
Lenny will do that, and I’ll do it. I won’t ask it of you, my pretty
darling. It would be more than was right.”

Alice was somewhat affronted at this rejection of her proposal. She was
bewildered by her companion’s demeanour altogether. Why should she cry?
and then refuse her assistance when she could have been of real use?
But that was, of course, as Mrs. Lenny pleased.

“This is the fishpond,” she said, more coldly. “It is very old, and
there are some carp in it that are supposed to be very old too.”

The fishpond was a piece of clear and beautiful water embosomed in the
richest wood. It was the very centre of all the beauties of the Chase to
the Markhams. A little brook trickled into it over a little fall which
made music in the silence, itself unseen, mingling a more liquid silvery
tone with all the songs of the birds and the murmur of the trees. A
little path wandered along by one side, the others were sloping banks of
greensward. The trees on all sides stooped as if leaning over each
other’s shoulders to see themselves in that fairy mirror, where they all
fluttered and trembled in reflection between the glimmer of the water
and the blue circle of sky, which filled up all the middle with blueness
and light. Some light and graceful birches upon the bank seemed to have
pressed further forward like advanced posts to get nearest the pool; a
great cluster of waterlilies filled up one corner. Even the impatient
ponies stood still in this soft coolness and shadow; perhaps they had
caught a glimpse of their pretty tossing heads and arched necks. Mrs.
Lenny’s bonnet shone in that mirror like an exotic bird, poised over it,
and her exclamation of delight broke the quiet with something of the
same effect.

“What a lovely place!” she said; “and it’s I that would live long if I
were a fish in such a sweet spot. Dear, dear, if one lived here it would
be a tug to die at all. And you have been here, my darling, all your
life?”

“Oh, yes,” said Alice, with a little laugh at the ignorance of the
question. “This is home, where else could I be? This is only the second
season I have ever been to town. I went for a little while last year
though I was not out. This summer I have been introduced,” she said,
with a little innocent ostentation. “I am out now. I go wherever mamma
goes.”

“Introduced?” said Mrs. Lenny, with a little awe, “to her Majesty--her
very self? Tell me how she looked, and all about her. Dear lady! what
I’d give to hear a word out of her mouth!”

“I did not mean that,” said Alice, feeling important and splendid;
“introduced means going out into society. I was presented too--of
course I had to be presented. Oh, there are the children down that
opening--do you see them? It is holiday time, and they are all
together.”

Mrs. Lenny looked round with eager interest, again swaying the little
carriage to one side.

“Are you the eldest?” she said; “and you have two little brothers?--only
these two?”

She looked quite anxiously in Alice’s face.

“Only these two--except Paul--and we are three girls--just the same
number of each.”

“Who is Paul?”

“Who is Paul?” said Alice, laughing; “that is the strangest question
here. Paul is the eldest of all--he is my brother. We all come in pairs.
There is Harry and Bell, Roland and Marie--and Paul is mine. He is not
very much at home now,” she said, her face clouding with the
recollection. “He is grown up--he is at Oxford. In the holidays he does
not always come home like the little ones. No one could expect him to be
like the little ones. He is a man.”

To a cooler observer Alice’s eager explanations would have betrayed the
family anxiety, of which Paul was the object. But Mrs. Lenny had other
thoughts in her mind. She clasped her hands together in her lap, and
said, “Dear me, dear, dear me!” with suppressed dismay. This suddenly
reawakened all the girl’s fears. Had it been a mistake, a pretence after
all? Was it no old connection, nothing to do with papa’s business? (what
could papa’s business matter, it would not go to any one’s heart like
the other) but after all some new evil that was threatening Paul?

“Mrs. Lenny,” she cried, “oh tell me first, for I can bear it; is it
about Paul? Has he got into any trouble? Is it something about _him_ you
have really come to tell us! Oh, tell me, tell me! and keep it from
mamma.”

“My dear,” cried Mrs. Lenny, confused, “what do I know about your
brother? I never heard of him before, and oh, I wish I had not heard of
him now. Do you think I would harm him if I had the power to help it?
Not I--not I! if there was anything in my power!”

And with this the good woman let fall upon her gloves, which were green,
a few tears. Why should she cry because of Paul if she did not know him?
Fortunately for Alice the ponies at that moment gave her no small
trouble. She had been thinking of other things and they took the
advantage. They wanted to take her home the back way into the stables.
Greedy little brutes! as if they had not everything that heart of pony
could desire--plenty of corn, plenty of ease, and the prettiest stable
with enamelled mangers and everything handsome about them. She stopped
them as they began to twist round in the wrong direction, tossing their
heads aloft. If they thought to take Alice unawares they were mistaken.
Thus she was obliged to withdraw her attention altogether from Mrs.
Lenny and fix it upon this rebellious pair, getting them past the
dangerous byway and bringing them up with a sweep and dash to the steps
of the great door.




CHAPTER VIII.


Meanwhile Sir William Markham had been strangely employed. He came home
to get himself brushed free of the dust of his journey; but when he got
to the house he thought of that errand no more. He asked for his letters
as if these were all that he was thinking of. And you may suppose that
in a house which knew the importance of letters, and was aware of all
the momentous issues of neglect in that particular, Sir William’s
letters were carefully arranged on the table in the library. He asked
for them, which was unnecessary, and looked so full of business and
importance, that Brown found “a screw loose” in his master too. This was
not his usual aspect when he came home. Then the busy statesman allowed
himself a holiday. Even when he was in office (much more being in
opposition), he had put off his burden of official cares, and had
strolled up the avenue with his wife without caring for his letters.
When Brown answered respectfully, “They are in the library, Sir
William;” within himself that functionary shook his head and said,
“There is something wrong.” Sir William went into the library, which was
large and dim and cool, the very home of quiet leisure and comfort--and
closed the door after him with a sense of relief. His letters were all
laid out on the table, but he did not so much as look at them. He sat
down in his usual chair, and leaned his head in his hands, and gazed
into the blank air before him. Was this all he had come for? Certainly
he did nothing more: gazed out straight before him and saw nothing; sat
motionless doing nothing; paused altogether body and soul. He was not
aware yet of the second visitor who had arrived; but he was in no doubt
about the first. He did not require to ask himself what his old
friend,--whose name had tingled through and through him, though he had
professed that he scarcely remembered it--wanted of him. That early
chapter of his life which he had put away entirely, which he had
honestly forgotten as if it had not been, came back to him in a moment,
no longer capable of being forgotten as he sat by his daughter’s side in
the little pony carriage. He had not meant any harm in putting it so
entirely from him. But nothing is ever lost in this tenacious world.
Bury a secret in the deepest earth, and some chance digger, thinking of
other things, will bring it up without intending it. Exercise even the
most innocent reticence about your own affairs, matters in which you
have a perfect right to judge for yourself, and some time or other even
this will come up against you like a crime. What harm had he done by
burying in his own heart a little inconsequent chapter of his life, an
episode that had come to an end so soon, that had left so few results
behind? What results had it left? The only one had been promptly and
conclusively taken off his hands. He had never felt it; he had never
been conscious of any responsibility in respect to it. But that which
had seemed to him nothing but a broken thread at twenty-five, was it to
reappear against him at sixty like a web of fate perplexing and
entangling his feet? A cold dew came out upon his forehead when he
thought of his wife. Were she to hear it, were she to know, how could he
ever again look her in the face? And yet he had done her no wrong.
There had been no harm, no evil intention in his mind. Half
inadvertence, and half a dislike to return to a matter which was an
irritation to his orderly mind, as well as a recollection of pain--an
incident that had come to nothing, a false beginning in life--were the
causes of his original silence about his own youth and all that was in
it. A man who marries at forty, is it necessary that he should unfold
everything that happened to him at twenty-five? and he had been done
with it all; had closed the chapter altogether so very long ago. That it
should be re-opened now was intolerable. But yet Sir William knew that
he must bear it; he must subdue all signs of annoyance, he must receive
his unwelcome visitor as if he were pleased to see him, and ascertain
what he wanted, and steal, if possible, his weapons out of his hands.

These were the thoughts in his mind as he sat alone and pondered,
arranging his ideas. He had known what it was to be much troubled by
public business in his day, but he had experienced little trouble with
his own. All was orderly and well regulated in his private affairs: no
skeletons in the cupboards, nothing anywhere that could not meet the
eye of day. This was the very sting of the present occurrence to him. A
secret! That _he_ should be convicted of a hidden chapter of early
indiscretion, of having taken a foolish step which might have coloured
all his life! Though it was no wrong to her, his wife could scarcely
fail to think it a wrong, and he could not but suffer in the estimation
of everybody who heard of it. Already, was he not humiliated in his own
eyes? But for this pause which enabled him to rearrange his thoughts, to
settle his plan of operations, he felt that he must have been
overwhelmed altogether. At last, with a sigh, he got up and prepared
himself to issue forth out of his sanctuary, and meet the dangers that
threatened him; he to be threatened with dangers of such a sort!--It was
intolerable--yet it had to be borne. He went out to meet the party which
he could hear coming up the avenue. Brown looked at him with suspicious
eyes as he came into the hall. Could Brown know anything? did everybody
know? Even Lady Markham, he thought, looked at him strangely, almost
with alarm. But it is unnecessary to say that this was all in Sir
William’s imagination. No one had as yet associated any idea of mystery
with him. His wife only thought he was weary with the work of the
session, and looking pale. She was standing talking to Colonel Lenny,
waiting till Alice should draw up at the door. Sir William, with a faint
gleam of returning pleasure, stood on the top of the steps and waited
too; but then he was confronted by the vision of the pink bonnet by his
daughter’s side. A pink bonnet! who had been talking of a pink bonnet?
He came down slowly, half afraid of this and everything else that was
new.

“In good time, Markham,” said Colonel Lenny, waving his hand; “here is
another old friend come to see you. She is changed more than you are.
From a girl, and a pretty one, she has grown an old woman, and that’s
not a thing to be permitted; but an old friend, my dear fellow, and more
than an old friend. Can’t you see it’s Katey? Katey, my wife?”

“Katey!” Even Sir William’s steady nerves gave way a little. His eyes
seemed to give a startled leap of alarm in their sockets. For a moment
the impulse in his mind was to turn and fly. Lenny was bad, but his wife
was a hundred times worse; and she looked at him, leaning out of the
pony carriage and holding out her hands as if she meant to kiss him;
but that was more than flesh and blood could bear. “Katey!” he said; “I
cannot believe my eyes. Is it Katey Gaveston after all these years? I
know I’ve grown an old man, and everything has changed, but----”

“You never thought to see the like of me such an old woman? Ah, Will,
but it’s true. I am Katey Gaveston, as sure as you stand there. I came
after him, to stop him from making mischief. He don’t mean it--we know
that; but he’s just as simple as ever. He blurts everything out.”

This speech went through and through Sir William. The light seemed to
fail from his eyes for a moment; but when he looked round all was as
before--Lady Markham talking to Brown, and Alice to the groom, who had
come for the pony carriage.

“Hush!” he said, instinctively, with a shudder, giving her his hand to
help her to step out. “Hush!” Then, making a little effort over himself,
he added, “We are to have time, I hope, to talk over old stories
quietly--at our leisure--no need to go back in a moment from the present
to the past.”

“Nearly forty years--it’s a long way to go back,” she said. “We’ve
grown old folks; but it’s better to take our time and talk it all over
quietly, as you say. Yes, yes, quietly; that is by far the best way.”

Mrs. Lenny nodded till her bonnet seemed to fill all the atmosphere with
pink mists of reflection, and laughed, filling the air with
reverberations of sound, just as her bonnet did with flickering of
coloured light; but she did not throw her arms round him in sisterly
salutation; this was something saved at least.

Then he led her in ceremoniously to the great drawing-room, which was
carefully shaded and cool and luxurious after the blaze outside. It was
sweet with great bowls of late roses, full of flowers of every kind--a
stately room such as Mrs. Lenny was not accustomed to see. She stopped
short with a cry of admiration.

“What a lovely place! What a beautiful--beautiful house!” Then she put
her handkerchief to her eyes. “To think, poor dear, who might have been
the mistress of it all!” she said.

Sir William cast an alarmed glance behind him, but his wife was too far
off to hear.

“You must recollect,” he said, “that _then_ I had no house at all--no
place to make--any one the mistress of. I never expected then to be
master here.”

Mrs. Lenny sat down and wiped her eyes.

“It is a beautiful house,” she said. “I’ve been into the park, and seen
a great deal; and when I think of all that’s come and gone, when I
remember that you were nothing but a poor man, Will Markham, just as
poor as all the rest of us--and to see you now, like a prince, with your
lovely wife, and her sweet family--oh! I know you’ll forgive me, my dear
lady; if your heart is as sweet as your face, you’ll forgive me; but I
can’t help thinking that what is given to one is taken from another; and
of them that never had a chance of happiness--them that are dead and
gone--and the place where they might have been--remembers them no more.”

Lady Markham, who could not shut her heart to any distress, came and sat
down by her and took her hand.

“I know what you mean,” she said. “When I have any sorrow it always
comes upon me afresh in a new place.”

How far she was from knowing what her visitor meant!

Mrs. Lenny looked up surprised. Then two big honest tears burst out of
her eyes, and her whole face lighted up with a smile.

“You are a darling,” she said, seizing Lady Markham’s soft hand in both
of hers, “with a heart as feeling! But I am not crying for anything in
particular, my dear--only out of excitement, and the strangeness of
everything. You must not be so sorry for me.”

Here Colonel Lenny interposed, and pointed out to Lady Markham the
tea-table which was awaiting her.

“Give her a big cup, my dear lady; that is what makes Katey happy,” he
said. “What would she be without her tea? We men take something
stronger, I don’t deny it; but we’re not so dependent upon anything. I
could live without my smoke, and I could live without my drink--times
have been when I’ve lived without eating too; but I can’t fancy my wife
without a tea-pot.”

“Not altogether without eating, I hope. Take some cake now,” said Lady
Markham, smiling, “to make amends.”

“I will have the cake,--but yes, altogether without eating--for as long
as it lasted--that was two days; the time is apt to feel long when
you’ve nothing to eat. I’ve always thought the more of breakfast and
dinner and all the little bits of ornamental eating and drinking that we
make no account of, since then. Oh I’ve told all about it to the boys.
I’m getting to an end of my stories,” said the colonel. “Roland begins
to know them better than I; he says, ‘That’s not how you told it
before.’ That boy is as sharp as a needle; he’s the one you should make
a lawyer of, my dear lady. Now Harry’s a born soldier; he’s up to
everything that wants doing with the hands. Put him before a lion, and
he’ll face it, that little fellow; and he takes in every word you say to
him. But Roland by Jove, cross-examines you as if you were in a
witness-box: ‘You said so-and-so before,’ or ‘How could you do that when
you had just done so-and-so?’ He’s as keen as an east wind.”

“That is a very biting metaphor,” said Lady Markham; but it did not
occur to her that the colonel was talking against time to beguile her
attention and keep the conversation which was going on at the other side
of the room undisturbed. There it was Sir William who was serving Mrs.
Lenny with the tea his wife had poured out.

“She knows nothing,” he said, in a low tone. “I did not think it was
worth while telling her. For God’s sake do not let her surmise it now.”

“I wouldn’t if I could help it, Will; but the boy--there’s the boy.”

“What boy? You mean Philip’s boy?”

Mrs. Lenny put out her hand and grasped his.

“Haven’t you heard? Philip’s dead, and the property all sold up, and
nothing left for one belonging to him. He never learnt, like the rest of
us, to scrape and save. It’s all gone--every penny. There was not so
much to begin with, when you think upon it; and there he is, without a
son.”

“My God!” said Sir William under his breath. He was not a man given to
oaths, but he was suddenly overwhelmed by the danger that over-shadowed
him which he had not thought of before. The evil he had feared was as
nothing in comparison. He grew pale to his very finger-nails. “This is
why you have come to me?” he said.

“Nothing but that--do I want to bother you? but _he_ must be thought of,
too. Will, the boy must not lose his rights.”

“He must be provided for,” said the baronet, gloomily; “but he has no
rights.”

“Will! do you mean to bring his mother out of her grave? No rights! We
came in friendship, but we’ll go in anger if there is any meaning in you
to disown the boy.”

“I cannot say any more now,” said Sir William, hastily. “I will talk to
Lenny to-night.”

“I don’t put my faith in Lenny for that matter. Will, you must satisfy
_me_.”

“I will, I will, Katey! For God’s sake no more.”

Alice had come up to them in her easy grace of youth. She heard, if not
the words, yet the tone in which they were said; and her father got up
hastily and got behind the stranger to whom he was speaking so
seriously, but who smiled upon the girl from her great chair.

“Come and talk to me, my pretty,” Mrs. Lenny said. “Your father and I
have been reminding each other of things we had both forgotten, and
they’re not such pleasant things as you. Come and cheer us up, my bonnie
dear.”

Lady Markham was very well content to see the close conversation that
was going on between her husband and this new guest. It took a great
burden off her mind. This time she had made no mistake--the claim of the
old friendship was real. No suspicion of any kind entered her thoughts.
She leaned back in her chair with a grateful sense of relief, and felt
glad that she had sent orders by Brown that Mrs. Lenny was to be put
into one of the best rooms, thus promoting the colonel too. There
remained only one little difficulty: Mrs. Lenny’s pink bonnet was a very
fine article indeed, but she could not come to dinner in it. Where was
she to find a toilette for the evening, since all her luggage, Lady
Markham knew, consisted of a bag which she had left with the
lodge-keeper? Lady Markham herself was somewhat particular about dress.
She wondered privately what it would be best to do, as she leant back in
her chair and listened to the colonel talking of Roland and Harry. She
must put on, she concluded, the plainest article in her wardrobe, that
Mrs. Lenny might not feel uncomfortable, and she must give Alice a hint
to do the same. Thus the alarming sensations aroused by this meeting
subsided, to all appearance.

“Yes, you did quite right; they are old friends, very old friends,” Sir
William said from his dressing-room, in answer to his wife’s question.
“Did I never tell you I spent two years in Barbadoes? Indeed I suppose I
had almost forgotten myself. My uncle had left some property there, and
not being of much consequence then I was sent out to look after it. It
came to nothing, like most West Indian property. The Gavestons were a
family of handsome girls. I--saw a good deal of them; most of the young
Englishmen who were there frequented their house. Lenny among the rest.
I scarcely recollected his name; but Katey Gaveston of course I was
bound to know.”

“She implied, I think, that there once had been some--flirtation between
you,” said Lady Markham, with a smile.

“Ah!” said Sir William--his voice sounded harsher than usual, though he
was painfully civil and ready to explain--“perhaps there might have
been--something. It is nearly forty years ago--it is not of much
consequence to any one now.”

“No--you don’t think I mind,” she said, this time with a soft laugh. But
he did not respond. He had not finished dressing, and _he_ was very
particular in his attire. His wife had taken a slight liberty, she felt,
in disturbing him. Did she not know that he liked perfect tranquillity
in that moment of preparation for dinner? It would not have occurred to
him to put on a black neck-tie, or change the usual solemn dignity of
his appearance on account of any visitor. Lady Markham was glad that her
own very simple dress escaped notice, at least.

The other pair meanwhile were comparing notes in their rooms, where Mrs.
Lenny’s preparations for dinner were by no means so simple as Lady
Markham had supposed. The bag, on being opened, had proved to contain
what she called “an evening body,” much trimmed with lace and ribbons.
She regarded this article with great complacency as she pinned the
ribbons across her bosom.

“I hope you don’t feel that you’ve any call to be ashamed of your wife,
Lenny,” she said. “I hope I’m fit to sit down with my lady, or the Queen
herself if she were to think of asking us. There’s the good of a real,
excellent black silk, it does for anything; in the morning it’s one
dress, in the evening it’s another. My Lady Markham will think I have
trunks full when she sees me. She’s a sweet woman; I thought so before,
but I think so more than ever now, to see the handsome room she’s put us
in. That proves her sense. She can see I’m not one of the common sort.
She doesn’t know anything about the connection, and she sha’n’t know it
through me, to vex her, the pretty dear. She doesn’t even know he was
ever in the island. After all, it’s a long time ago. She shall never
hear a word of it through me.”

“That would be all very well,” said the colonel, “if there was only you
and I; but you forget there’s another to think of.”

“I don’t forget; but there’s a deal more to think of than I supposed.
Why shouldn’t he stay where he is? It’s the life he’s used to. And what
would he do here? Money will never be wanting; and a little money would
make him a great man where he is. Don’t interrupt me with your reasons,
Lenny. He’s my flesh and blood, not yours; and I won’t do it, I haven’t
the heart to do it. A lovely woman, and a pretty family as you could
see. Don’t you know there’s the heir grown up--Paul they call him? If it
had been but a small boy I shouldn’t have minded. And the other, what
does he know about it? It can’t hurt him, what he doesn’t know. And he
isn’t at an age to change his habits. He’s no lad--he’s a man as old as
you or I.”

“Twenty years younger, and more.”

“What’s twenty years?” said Mrs. Lenny, indignantly. “He’s not an old
man, if you please, but neither is he young. He’s a man at his best--or
his worst, perhaps. We haven’t seen him since he was a boy. All’s fixed
and settled about him. And to change his country, and his condition, and
his way of living all in a moment!--who could do that? scarcely the best
man that ever was. He wouldn’t know how to behave; he wouldn’t
understand what was expected of him. He’d be miserable--and so would the
others too.”

“I can’t argue with you, Katey,” said her husband; “you’re so used to
having your own way. I won’t attempt to argue with you; but I know
what’s justice--and justice must surely be the best.”

“Oh, justice!” cried the colonel’s wife, “where do you find it in this
world? Is it justice that you’re only lieutenant-colonel of a West India
regiment, when you ought to have been a general in the army? Don’t speak
to me. I know you better than any one else does, and when I say that’s
what you’re fit for you may be sure I’m not flattering. Does a man get
flattery from his wife? We may get justice in another world, and I for
one hope for it; but not here. And here’s just a case where justice
would do more harm than good. It would do harm to both sides, and punish
everybody. It would be real injustice and cruelty, and all that’s bad;
and would you be the one to force it--and I to recommend it? No, no; I
tell you no!”

“I can’t argue with you, Katey,” her husband repeated. “Have it your own
way. It’s not my flesh and blood, as you say, but yours. But if it turns
out badly, and you repent after----”

“Bless us all,” cried Mrs. Lenny, starting to her feet, “there’s the
dinner bell!”

“I would advise you to put your cap on straight,” was all the colonel
said.

When this couple entered the dining-room, Mrs. Lenny felt proudly that
she had achieved one of the successes of her life. Lady Markham looking
up at her as she marched in on her husband’s arm, with flowers rustling
on her cap and lace on her shoulders, gave one look of bewildered
admiration, Mrs. Lenny thought, then glanced at Alice to communicate her
wonder. (“I knew she’d think I’d brought my whole wardrobe,” she said to
the colonel after, “and for that matter, that is fit to be seen, so I
have.”) The “evening body,” the lace, and the ribbons took Lady Markham
altogether by surprise; and it cannot be said that her own simple toilet
was appreciated by her visitor. But Mrs. Lenny was very kind after
dinner, and explained the simple artifice to her hostess, by way of
giving a lesson to one of the best dressed of women.

“You look very nice in your muslin, my dear,” she said, “and so does
that pretty darling, that would look well in anything; but when you come
to my time of life it makes a difference; and roaming about from place
to place how could I have room for muslins? not to say that washing is
a ruination. I have one evening body made with good black silk. It costs
a little more at the time, but what does that matter? And there you are,
both for morning and evening, quite set up.”

“It is a very admirable plan, I am sure,” Lady Markham said, with great
seriousness, checking with a look the laugh that was in Alice’s eyes.
The children were in the drawing-room, all four of them, very ready to
make friends with their beloved colonel’s wife.

“I feel as if I had something to do with them. I feel as if I were their
grandmother, though I never had a child of my own,” she said. Thus
everything went harmoniously in the drawing-room, though the ladies were
all a little curious to know what kept the gentlemen so long over their
wine. Sir William’s coffee grew cold; he had never been known to be so
late before.




CHAPTER IX.


“They’re talking over old days,” Mrs. Lenny had said three or four times
before the gentlemen appeared. What could be more natural? No doubt they
had gone from recollection to recollection: “Do you remember” this and
that, and “what happened to” so-and-so? It was very easy to imagine what
they were talking about, and how they got led on from one subject to
another. They were heard talking, when they at last appeared, all the
way up the long drawing-room, pausing at the door.

“All died out, I believe,” Colonel Lenny was saying. “The last son lost
his children one after another, and died himself at the last
broken-hearted, poor man! The daughters were all scattered--but Katey
knows more about them than I do.”

“I am really afraid to ask any more questions,” Sir William said. What
more natural?

“Yes, my dear lady,” Colonel Lenny resumed, taking his old place beside
Lady Markham; “we have been making the most of our time; for it is very
likely we may have letters to-morrow, my wife and I, summoning us away.
I don’t like it, and neither will she, and perhaps we may have another
day, but I scarcely think it likely. I don’t know how we’re to drag
ourselves away. You have been kinder than any one ever was; and the
children have got a hold of my old heart, bless them!”

The colonel had genuine tears in his eyes.

“Lenny will tell you what I propose,” said Sir William on the other
side. “It is not an easy position. I have always thought myself quite
safe--quite free of responsibility; and now to be pulled up all at once;
and when I think of my own boys----”

“Your own boys?” said Mrs. Lenny, raising herself very erect in her
chair. “Oh, I feel for you--I feel for you, Will! but if you put the
least bit of a slur on my sister or her child----

“Don’t make it worse,” he said, throwing up his hands. “_I_ throw a
slur! You know I never thought of anything so impossible--it _is_
impossible; but how could I think of him as mine? Adoption has its
rights--but Lenny will tell you what I propose.”

A short time after there were affectionate good-nights between the
ladies. Lady Markham accompanied Mrs. Lenny to her room to see that she
had everything she could desire.

“I am so sorry you must go to-morrow,” she said, half out of politeness,
but with a little mixture of truth, for there was something in the
genial warmth of the strange couple which touched her heart.

“My dear, it’s just possible we may have another day,” said the old
campaigner.

The mother and daughter had a harmless little laugh together over Mrs.
Lenny’s “evening body,” but they agreed that “papa’s old friends” were
real friends, and adopted them with cordiality though amusement.

“She asked me a great deal about the family and about Paul,” Alice said
as they separated.

“No letter again to-day,” said Lady Markham, with a sigh.

That name subdued their smiles. To think he should be the best beloved,
yet so careless of their happiness!

“He is so forgetful,” they both said.

And with this so common family sigh, not any present or pressing
trouble, only a fear, an anticipation, a doubt what to-morrow might
bring forth, the doors of the peaceful chambers closed, and night and
quiet settled down on the silent house.

No one knew, however, that the night was not so silent as it appeared.
Sir William, of course, was left in his library when all the rest of the
world went to bed. It was his habit. He wrote his letters, or he “got
up” those questions which were always arising, and which every statesman
has to know; or perhaps he only dozed in his great chair; but anyhow, it
was his habit to sit up later than all the rest of the household,
putting out his lamp himself when he went to bed. This night, however,
after midnight when all was still, there was a mysterious conference
held in the library. Mrs. Lenny came down the great staircase in her
stockings not to make a noise. “I wouldn’t disturb that pretty creature,
not for the world,” she said. “I wouldn’t let her know there was a
mystery, not for anything you could give me.” And she spoke in a whisper
during the course of the prolonged discussion, though Lady Markham was
on the upper floor on the other side of the house, and safe in bed. It
was Colonel Lenny who was the most stubborn of the conspirators. He
spoke of right and justice with such eloquence that his wife was proud
of him, even though it was she eventually who put him down, and stopped
his argument. It was almost morning--a faint blueness of the new day
striking in through all the windows and betraying them, when the Lennys
with their shoes in their hands stole up stairs to bed. It would have
been strange indeed if some conscientious domestic had not seen this
very strange proceeding in the middle of the night; but if they did so,
they kept the fact to themselves. Sir William took no such precautions.
He shut the heavy door of the library almost ostentatiously, awaking all
the silent echoes, and went up the great staircase with his candle in
his hand. The rising dawn, however, cast a strange, almost ghastly look
upon his face, doing away with the candle. He had told his wife that he
had brought some papers from town that had to be attended to, and which
had to be sent back to London by next morning’s post.

Next morning the Lennys appeared at the breakfast-table in
travelling-garb, ready to go away. Mrs. Lenny had put on her pink bonnet
not to lose time.

“Have you had your letters?” Lady Markham said, astonished.

“No, my dear, we have had no letters; that was to be the sign if we were
wanted,” Mrs. Lenny explained. Sir William did not say a word. He did
not join in the regret expressed by all the rest, or in the invitations
proffered. “You must come back--promise us that you will come back,” the
children cried; but their father maintained a steady silence which
discouraged his wife.

The whole family accompanied the travellers to the door to see them
drive away.

“I hope we shall see you again,” Lady Markham said; then added,
oppressed by her husband’s silence, “when you come this way.”

“My dear lady,” said the colonel, kissing her hand like a Frenchman, “I
shall never forget your kindness, nor my wife either; but most likely we
shall never pass this way again. There is nothing in the world I should
like better; but I don’t know if it is to be desired.”

“God bless you!” said Mrs. Lenny, taking both Lady Markham’s hands,
“it’s not at all to be desired. Once for old friendship’s sake is very
well. But if I ever come here again it will not be as an old friend, but
for love of you.”

“That is the best reason of all,” Lady Markham said, with her beautiful
smile. And she stood there waving her pretty hand to the strange couple
as they drove down the avenue. Mrs. Lenny’s pink bonnet made a dotted
line of colour all the way as she bobbed it out of the carriage window
in perpetual farewells. This made the young ones laugh, though they had
been near crying. Sir William alone said nothing. He had gone in again
at once when the carriage left the door.

It was that very evening, however, that the letters arrived which cast
the family into so great a commotion and obliterated all recollection of
the Lennys. It had pleased Lady Markham that her husband, of himself,
had begun to speak of Paul the next time they met after the departure of
their guests. There was a certain tenderness in his tone, a something
which was quite unusual. “Have you heard from him lately?” he asked
with some anxiety, “poor boy!” This was so unusual that Lady Markham
would not spoil so excellent a disposition by any complaint of Paul’s
irregularity in correspondence. She replied that she had heard--not very
long ago; that he was still in Oxford; that she hoped he would return
for Alice’s birthday, which was approaching. Sir William did not say any
more then, but he spoke of Paul again at luncheon, saying--“Poor
fellow!” this time. “He has very good abilities if he would only make
the right use of them,” he said.

“Oh, William!” cried Lady Markham, “he is still so young; why should not
he make very good use of them yet? We were not so very wise at his age.”

“That is true. I was not at all wise at his age: poor Paul!” his father
said.

The ladies were quite cheered by this exhibition of interest in Paul,
who had not been, they felt, so good or submissive to his father as it
was right for a young man to be. “He is letting his heart speak at
last,” Lady Markham said when she was alone with her daughter; “he is
longing to see his boy; and oh, Alice! so am I.”

“May I write to him,” cried Alice, eagerly, “and tell him he is to come
home?”

They talked this over all the afternoon. Paul had not listened to any of
their previous entreaties, but perhaps now, if he were told how his
father had melted, if he knew how everybody was longing for him! There
were two letters written that afternoon, full of tenderness, full of
entreaties. “If your reading is so important I will not say a word, you
shall go back, you shall be left quite free; but oh, my dearest boy!
surely you can spare us a week or two,” Lady Markham wrote. Their
spirits rose after these letters had been despatched. It did not seem
possible that Paul could turn a deaf ear to such entreaties; and by this
time surely he, too, must be longing for home. The future had not seemed
so bright to them since first these discords began. Now, surely, if Paul
would but respond as became an affectionate son, everything would be
right.

Markham Chase was situated in one of those districts where the post
comes in at night--a very bad thing, as is well known for the digestion,
and a great enemy to sleep and comfort. No one, however, had the
philosophy to do without his or her letters on that account. The ladies
naturally never took it in consideration at all, and Sir William’s
official correspondence did not affect his nerves. Lady Markham and her
daughter came early into the drawing-room that evening, while it was
still daylight, though evening was advancing rapidly. The children, who
felt severely the loss of Colonel Lenny and his stories, and were low
spirited and out of temper in consequence, went soon to bed. Lady
Markham retired into her favourite room--the large recess which made a
sort of transept to the great drawing-room. It was filled at the further
end by a large Elizabethan window, the upper part of which was composed
of quarries of old painted glass in soft tints of greenish white and
yellow; and which caught the very last rays of daylight--the lingering
glories of the west. Soft mossy velvet curtains framed in, but did not
shade the window, for Lady Markham was fond of light--and shrouded the
entrance dividing this from the great drawing-room beyond. The fireplace
all glimmering with tiles below and bits of mirror above, with shelves
of delicate china and pet ornaments, filled the great part of one side,
while the other was clothed with bookcases below and pictures above,
closely set. One of Raphael’s early Madonnas (or a copy--there was no
certainty on the subject, Lady Markham holding to its authenticity with
more fervour than any other article of faith, but disinterested critics
holding the latter opinion) presided over the whole; and there were some
pretty landscapes, and a great many portraits--the true household gods
of its mistress. There she had seated herself in the soft waning light
of the evening. Alice just outside the velvet curtains was playing
softly, now an old stately minuet, now an old-fashioned, quaint gavotte,
now a snatch of a languid, dreamy valse--music which did not mean much,
but which breathed echoes of soft pleasures past into the quiet. The
soft summer twilight fading slowly out of the great window, the cool
breathing of the dews and night air from the garden, the dreamy
music--all lulled the mind to rest. Lady Markham made not even a
pretence at occupation. What was she thinking of? When a woman has her
boys out in the world--those strange, unknown, yet so familiar creatures
whom she knows by heart yet knows nothing of, who have dipped into a
thousand things incomprehensible to her, filling her with vague fears
and aches of anxiety--of what but of them is she likely to be thinking?
She was groping vaguely after her Paul in strange places which her
imagination scarcely took in. When the other boys were away they too had
their share in her thoughts; but they were still in the age of innocence
at school, not young men abroad in the world. Where was he now? She
tried to figure to herself a scene of youthful gaiety--one of the
college parties she had read of in novels. She was the more bold to
think of this, as she felt that her appeal to Paul just despatched would
surely detach him, for a time at least, from all such noisy scenes. Lady
Markham’s imagination was not her strong point. She was floating vaguely
in a maze of fancies rather than forming for herself any definite
picture, when Brown came into the room with the letters. The music
stopped instantly, and Alice, rushing at them, uttered a tremulous cry
which made the mother at once aware what had happened. Only Paul could
have called forth that cry of trembling satisfaction, delight, and
alarm. Lady Markham got up at once and held out her hands for the
letters, while Alice ran to light the candles. “I can see, I can see,”
Lady Markham said. The mere fact that the letter was Paul’s made it more
or less luminous in itself and helped the fading light.

Sir William, seated in his library by himself, had been thinking, with a
difference, much the same thoughts. With a compunction and compassion
indescribable, he had been thinking of his son. Paul, with all his
foolish democratical notions, was yet the most aristocratic, the most
imperious of young men, knowing nothing of the evils he was so ready to
take upon him, generous in giving, but to whom it would be bitterness
itself to receive. Would Paul ever turn upon him, upbraid him, curse
him? A shiver came over his father at the thought--and along with this a
horrible sense of the position in which this haughty young heir would
find himself, if---- How was it that such a possibility had altogether
escaped his mind? He could not tell: he did not know how to answer
himself. Forty years is a large slice out of a man’s life. Even had it
been some one fully known and loved, it would be unlikely that you
should think of him with any persistency of reference after a separation
of forty years--and a child, an infant, a thing with no personality at
all! But still, he asked himself, had he never thought when Paul was
born of the former time, far away in the morning haze of youth, when a
young mother and a child had called forth his interest? Yes, he had
thought of it; he had thought with alarm of what had happened then; he
had been more anxious about his young wife than young husbands usually
are--but no more. It had never occurred to him that his child had
anything to do with the other. Strange blindness in a man so accurate!
He said to himself, “It will come to nothing; it will be arranged; all
will be well:” but in the same breath he said, “Poor Paul! God help him!
What would happen to Paul, if----”

He had not been able to do anything all day for thinking of this: he had
kept his blue-book before him, but he had made nothing of it. Sir
William, whose understood creed it was that public affairs went before
everything, could pay no attention to these public affairs. When the
letters came in, in the evening, he received them languidly, not feeling
that there was anything there which could interest him so much as his
own thoughts. When he saw Paul’s handwriting an unusual stir arose in
his elderly bosom. But he put it down, and took up a letter from his
chief, which would be no doubt of far more importance to the country,
with a last attempt to conquer himself. But the words of his chiefs
letter had no sense to him; he could not understand what there was to be
so anxious about. Smith’s candidature for Bannockshire--what did it
matter? He made a rapid and novel reflection to himself about the
trifling character of the incidents which people made so much of; then
laid down the solemn sheet with its coronet, and took up the letter of
his boy.

A few minutes after he walked into his wife’s sitting-room, the letter
open in his hand. Lady Markham was seated close to the great window
against the dying light, with a candle flaring melancholy on a table
beside her, reading her letter. Alice, behind her, read it too, over her
mother’s shoulder: surprise and trouble were on their faces. Alice had
begun to cry. Lady Markham in her wonder and distress, was repeating a
few words here and there aloud. “I can no longer hope for anything in
this country of prejudice.” “Going away to a new world.” They were both
so absorbed that they did not hear Sir William’s entrance till he
suddenly appeared, holding out his letter. “What is the meaning,” he
asked, “of this, Isabel? What is the meaning of it?” The indignation of
the head of the house, which seemed to be directed against themselves,
brought the two ladies with a sudden shock out of their own private
dismay, and gave them a new part to play. Their hearts still quivering
with the sudden blow which Paul’s disclosure had given them, they still
turned in a moment into apologists and defenders of Paul.

“What is it?--from Paul, William? he has written to you _too_,” said
Lady Markham, with trembling lips.

“What does it mean?” cried Sir William. “He is going off, he
says--away--to Australia or New Zealand, or somewhere. What does it
mean? No doubt he takes you into his confidence. If you have known of
this intention long you ought to have let me know.”

“I am as much overwhelmed as you can be, William. I have just got a
letter.” Lady Markham stopped, her lips trembling. “Oh, Paul, my boy! He
cannot mean it,” she said. “It must be some fancy of the moment. At his
age everything is exaggerated. William, William, something must be done.
We must go to him and save him.”

“Save him! from what are we to save him?” Sir William began to pace up
and down with impatience and perplexity. He was not so angry (they
thought) as they had feared. He was anxious, unhappy, as they were,
though querulous too. “What is the meaning of it? Follies like this do
not spring up all at once. You must have seen it coming on. You must
know what it means. What has he been writing to you about lately? Is
there--any woman----?”

“William!” cried his wife.

“Well!--Alice, run away; we can discuss this better without you.--Well!
it need not be anything criminal or vicious, though of course that is
what at once you imagine it to be. Has he spoken of any one? Has he
ever---- No, he would not do that. He is a fool,” cried the anxious
father; “he is capable of any nonsense. But it need not necessarily be
anything that is vicious--from your point of view.”

Alice had not gone away. She shrank behind her mother into the dim
corner, yet to her own consciousness stood confronting her brother’s
accuser with a resolute countenance, from which the colour had all gone
out. Her blue eyes were open wide with horror yet denial. Whatever Paul
might have done she was ready to defend him; although the possibility of
any such wrongdoing went through her like a sword of fire. The light of
the candle flickered upon her faintly, showing scarcely anything but her
attitude, partially relieved against the lightness of the window--a
slim, straight, indignant figure drawn up and set in defence.

“He has not written often lately,” said Lady Markham, faltering; “but
oh, William, it is not possible; he is not capable----”

“What do you know about it” cried Sir William, almost roughly. “How can
you tell what he is capable of? A young man will go from a house like
this, from his mother’s side, and will find pleasure--actual
pleasure--in the society of creatures bred upon the streets; in their
noisy talk, in their bad manners, in all that is most unlike you. God
knows how it is; but so it is. Paul may be no better than the rest.
Alice, I tell you, run away.”

Lady Markham grew red and then deadly pale. She rose trembling to her
feet. “Can we go to-night? Can we go at once?” she cried. “Oh, William,
let us not lose an hour!”

“You know as well as I do there is no train after eight o’clock. Compose
yourself,” said Sir William. “Nothing more than what has already
happened can happen to him to-night.”

“We might get the express at Bluntwood--the train papa generally goes
by--if we were to start at once” cried Alice, with her hand on the bell,
her eyes turning from her father to her mother. The eager women on each
side of him made the greatest contrast to the head of the house. Had
Paul been dying instead of simply in a problematical danger, Sir William
Markham would not have consented to leave his home in this headlong way,
or take any step upon which he had not reflected. He waved his hand
impatiently.

“You had much better go to bed,” he said, “and don’t worry yourself
about a matter in which for the present none of us can do anything. I
will go to-morrow. Sit down, Alice! Do you think Paul would thank you if
you arrived breathless in the middle of the night? Try to look at the
matter coolly. Excitement never does any good. I will go and see if he
will listen to reason--to-morrow.”

To-morrow! It seemed to both mother and sister as if a thousand
calamities, too terrible to think of, might be happening, might have
happened, before to-morrow; and on the other hand, how, they asked each
other with a pitiful interchange of looks, were they themselves to live
through the night? No feeling of this description moved Sir William. He
was very much disturbed and annoyed, but certainly it would do no good
to any one were he to render himself unfit for action by foolish
anxiety. Nor did he feel any of that vague horror of apprehension which
filled their minds. He was a great deal more angry and much less alarmed
about his son’s well-being. On the other hand, he was less sanguine; for
he did not hope that Paul would listen to reason, as they hoped that by
their entreaties, by their tears, by the sight of the misery his
resolution would bring them, Paul might relent and give way. After a
while Sir William returned to his library and to his blue-books, and the
official letter which he had only half-read, which he had suffered
himself to be so much influenced by parental feeling as to leave in the
middle; and though he paused now and then to frown and sigh, and give a
thought aside to the troubles of paternity, yet he went on with his
work, and gave all the attention that was necessary to the public
business, until his usual hour for going to bed.

Lady Markham and Alice spent their evening in a very different way; they
read their letter over twenty times at least; they found new meanings in
every sentence of it. Hidden things seemed to be brought out, emotions,
penitences, relentings, by every new perusal. Sometimes these
discoveries plunged them into deeper trouble--sometimes raised them to
sudden hope. How little Paul was conscious of the subtle shades of
meaning they attributed to him! They were like commentators in all ages;
they found a thousand ideas he had never dreamed of lurking in every
line of their author; and with all these different readings in their
heads spent a sleepless night.




CHAPTER X.


Paul Markham was not in his rooms. The porter at the college gate looked
curiously upon the party of people who asked after him. It was not the
time of year when college authorities interfere with undergraduates;
neither was a virtuous young man “staying up to read” likely to call
forth their censures. The porter could not give them any information as
to where to find Paul; the party (he thought) looked anxious, just as he
had seen people look whose son had got into trouble: the father with
wrinkles in his forehead, but an air of business and anxious
determination to look as if there was nothing particular in it--nothing
but an ordinary visit; the mother with a redness about her eyes, but a
smile, very courteous, even conciliatory, to the porter himself, and so
sorry to give him trouble; and an eager young sister clinging to the
mother, looking anxiously about, staring at every figure she saw
approaching.

“Here’s a gentleman, sir, as can tell you, if any one can,” the porter
said. All three turned round simultaneously to look at the person thus
indicated. He was a young man of not very distinguished appearance, who
came carelessly across the quadrangle in a rough coloured suit, with a
pipe in his mouth. He came along swinging his cane, smoking his pipe,
not thinking of what awaited him. However, those three pairs of eyes
affected him unawares. He looked up and saw the little group, and
instinctively withdrew his pipe from his mouth. He had just slipped it
quickly into the pocket of his loose jacket, and was trying to steal
through the party under cover of a messenger who was passing, when Sir
William stepped forward and addressed him--

“This man tells me,” he said, “that you are a friend of my son, Paul
Markham, and can perhaps give us some information where to find him.”

While the father spoke, the two ladies looked at the young man with eyes
half-investigating, half-imploring. He felt that they were making notes
of his rough clothes, his pipe, which alas! they had seen going into
his pocket, and of a general aspect which was not very decorous, and
forming opinions unfavourable, not only to himself, but to Paul; while,
at the same time, they were entreating him with soft looks to tell them
where Paul was, and somehow--they could not tell how--to reassure them
on his account.

Young Fairfax, who was not perhaps a very elevated member of society in
general, was of a sympathetic nature at least. He was greatly
embarrassed by their looks, and confused between the two sides, giving
the attention of his eyes to the ladies on the one hand, and that of his
ears to Sir William on the other. He felt himself blush at the thought
of his own unsatisfactory appearance--his worst clothes (for who
expected to meet ladies _in August_?) and the pipe, which both literally
and metaphorically burnt his pocket. Lady Markham and Alice took the
redness which overspread the stranger’s face, not as referring to the
state of his own appearance (though they were keenly sensible of that),
but as a sign that he had nothing that was comforting or satisfactory to
say of Paul--and their hearts sank.

Young Fairfax coughed and cleared his throat.

“Markham?” he said. “I will go and see if he is in his rooms.”

“He is not in his rooms,” they said all together, a fact which the other
knew very well.

When Fairfax found this little expedient of his to gain time did not
answer, he ventured on a bolder step. “If you will go to Markham’s
rooms,” he said, “I think I can find him for you. I know where he will
be; that is to say I know two or three men’s rooms--where he is very
likely to be.”

“Could not we go with this gentleman?” said Lady Markham, looking at
him, though it was to her husband she spoke--and Alice looked at him too
with a supplicating look which went to the young good-for-nothing’s
heart. He gave the ladies a look in return which he felt was apologetic,
and yet full of a protest and appeal to their sense of justice. What can
I do? I cannot make him all that you wish him to be; was what he felt
his look said; and this was really the sentiment in his mind, though he
would have laughed at himself for it. They understood him well enough,
and their hearts sank a little too.

“Impossible!” said Sir William, “how could you go to--a man’s rooms?
perhaps into the midst of a---- party” he was going to have said riotous
party, but forbore for the sake of the girl. “No, you had better take
this--young gentleman’s advice--”

“My name is Fairfax” said the youth, taking off his hat. He blushed
again, having kept that engaging weakness, though it is not by any means
sure that he had kept the modest grace of which it is the sign: and a
smile crept about his lips. The hearts of the two women rose a little.
If things had been very bad with Paul he would not, they reasoned, have
had the heart to smile.

“Mr. Fairfax’s advice,” said Sir William; “go to Paul’s room and wait
there, and I will go with Mr. Fairfax to find him. That is much the best
thing to do.”

“I may have to run about to one place and another,” said the young man
alarmed; “it is a pity to give you so much trouble. Would not you, sir,
wait with the ladies? I promise you to find him with as little delay--”

“I will go with you,” said Sir William, in his cold way, which admitted
of no appeal; “you know the way, Isabel, to Paul’s rooms.” And thus they
parted, the young man looking at the ladies again with a kind of
dismayed protest: can I help it? He was very much dismayed to have Sir
William with him. Fairfax had not much doubt as to where Paul was, and
he did not think it was a place which would please his father. He felt
already that he had established an understanding with the others which
justified his glance of dismay. Lady Markham and her daughter turned
very reluctantly away. They went across the quadrangle with drooping
heads. Everything lay vacant in the sunshine, no cheerful bustle about,
the windows all black, no voices, no footsteps, no lounging figures
under the trees. Slowly they went across the light with their heads
close together. “He knows where Paul is,” said Lady Markham, with a
sigh. “But he did not want papa to go,” said Alice with another. They
crept up the silent staircase and went into the vacant room, and sat
down timidly, not venturing to look at anything. They were afraid of
seeing something, even a book, which in Paul’s absence would betray
Paul. His mother glanced furtively, pitifully about her. She was more
bound by honour here in her son’s room, more determined to make no
discoveries, than if her boy had been her enemy; and who can tell how
the consciousness of this sank like a stone into her heart! A few years
ago everything would have been so lightly reviewed, so gaily
discussed--but now! The fringes of her cloak swept some papers off a
side-table, and she let them lie, not venturing to touch them. Paul
should not suppose that his mother had come to pry into his secrets. God
forbid! He should be allowed to explain himself, to say the best he
could for himself.

“Mr. Fairfax looked as if he knew everything. Did not you think so,
mamma?”

“Oh, my darling, what can I say? He looked, I think, as if he were fond
of Paul.”

“That I am sure he did. He was not very nice looking, nor well dressed;
but these young men are very careless, are they not, when they are
living alone?”

“I should not think anything of that, dear,” said Lady Markham,
decidedly; “I think, too, though he was careless of his appearance, that
he had an innocent look. He met your eye; there was nothing
down-looking about him; and he blushed; that is always a good sign, and
smiled at me, like a boy who has got a mother.”

“And he did not look at all frightened to see us; as he would have done
had there been anything very wrong. I think he was rather pleased--it
was papa he was afraid of. Now it is clear that if Paul had
been--wicked, as papa said--(oh, Paul, Paul, I beg your pardon dear, I
never thought it!)--it would have been you and me, mamma, don’t you
think, that they would have been afraid of? They could not have borne to
look us in the face if _that_ had been true; whereas,” said Alice, in a
tingle of logic, the tears starting into her eyes, “it was papa Mr.
Fairfax was afraid of, not you or me.”

“That is true,” said Lady Markham, brightening slowly, but she did not
take all the comfort from this potent argument that Alice expected.
“Unless they are very intimate, he is not likely to know all that Paul
is doing” she said, shaking her head. Paul’s room was far from orderly.
Once upon a time he had been very fond of knick-knacks, and had
cultivated china and hung plates about the walls. All that was gone
now. Lady Markham looked at the bareness of the room with a pang. Would
he have neglected it so if everything had been going well with him?
Perhaps had it been much decorated she would have asked herself whether
these meritricious ornaments did not indicate a mind given up to
frivolity; but at this moment it seemed a curious and significant fact
that the ornaments had all disappeared from his walls.

In the meantime young Fairfax was hurrying Sir William at a pace which
scarcely befitted his dignity, or his years, along the streets. Probably
the young man forgot that his companion was likely to suffer from this
rapid progress; and when he remembered, he was not without hope of
tiring the angry (as he supposed) father. But Sir William was a
statesman and trained to exertion. He puffed a little and got very hot,
but he did not flinch. Fairfax it was evident knew very well where he
was going. He made a cunning attempt to deceive his companion by
pretending to pause and wonder at the first corner; then he smote his
thigh, and declared that of course he knew where Paul would be at this
hour--not in any man’s lodgings--with the man who was teaching
him--what was it? He could not recollect what it was--wood-carving, or
something of that sort. “It is a good way off; would it not be better to
let me fetch him?” he said, making a last attempt. “Let us get a cab,”
said Sir William. “Oh, it is not so far as that,” said his guide, with a
blush. Sir William had a half-suspicion that he was being led round and
round about to make him think the way longer than it really was; but
that part of Oxford had changed since his time, and he was not quite
sure of the way. At last, however, when no further delay was possible,
he found himself at the door of a little grimy house, the ground floor
of which seemed to be occupied as some kind of workshop, where a man sat
working. The place smelt of varnish and the window was full of small
picture-frames, gilt and ungilt, and other very simple articles, carved
workboxes and book-shelves. “Oh, Spears! has Markham been here?” the
young man cried with a certain relief in his tone, evidently pleased not
to see the person of whom he was in search. The workman looked up from
his work. He was busy with a glue-pot, and the varnish which smelt so
badly. He did not rise from his bench in honour of the gentleman, or
remove his cap from his head. He said shortly, but in a voice of unusual
sweetness and refinement--

“He is here still. He has gone up stairs, to wash his hands I suppose.”

“Ah!” said Fairfax. It was not a syllable, it was a sigh. He had hoped
to have escaped easily; but it was not to be so. He went to the foot of
the stairs, which led directly out of the workshop. “Markham!” he cried,
“are you there? Come down at once; you are wanted.” How could he throw
special significance into his voice? It sounded to himself just as
careless as usual, though he had meant to make it very serious.
“Markham, I say, there’s some one wants you--important! Come at once!”
he added, going up a few steps.

Sir William stood stiffly down below, watching with the utmost
attention, while the workman upon his bench eyed him with suspicious
eyes.

Then Paul’s voice came still more lightly from above, striking strangely
upon the ear of his father, who had never heard that tone in it before.

“Confound you, what’s the hurry?” Paul said. “If it’s a dun you ought
to know better than to bring him here. I’ll come when I’m ready.”

“Markham! I tell you it’s of the first importance,” said the young man,
going a step or two higher, but still quite audible to Sir William.

Then there came a burst of laughter from above, seconded by what sounded
to Sir William’s suspicious ears like feminine voices.

“Is it the Vice-chancellor?” said Paul; “or the Provost? Say the word,
and I’ll get out over the leads or through the window--”

The next moment he appeared, rubbing his hands in a towel, and without
his coat, with a face more full of laughter than, Sir William thought,
he had ever seen it before; and this time he felt certain that he heard
women laughing up stairs. He was standing with his back to the light,
and his son did not see him for the moment.

Paul came down stairs, gradually emerging, always rubbing his hands. He
called out--

“Who is it, Spears? What is this fellow making a fuss about?”

“I cannot tell who it is,” said the workman; “it is some one who has
come into my house without taking the trouble to notice me. I presume
therefore that it must be what is called a gentleman.”

The sound of the man’s voice was so pleasant that Sir William did not at
first realise the offence in it; and at that moment he was too much
absorbed in watching the changes of his son’s countenance to think of
anything else.

Paul emerged from the shadow of the staircase, which was like a ladder,
his face full of amusement and brightness, entirely at his ease, and
familiar with all about him. His hat was on and his coat was off, but
that evidently made no difference; neither did he cease to dry his hands
with the towel as he came leisurely down stairs. It was clear that he
expected no one whose appearance could require any more regard to the
decorum of formal life.

When he first caught sight of his father a cloud came over him. Sir
William’s face was not visible, but Sir William’s figure and voice were
scarcely to be mistaken. The father looked on while the first shadow of
fear came over his son’s face; then saw it lighten with a desperate
effort not to believe what was too apparent; then darken suddenly and
completely with the sense of discovery and of the fate which had
overtaken him. To see your child’s bright countenance cloud over at the
sight of you, to see the struggle of hope that this may not be you, and
despair to find that it is you, what mortal parent can bear this
unmoved? It would have half killed Lady Markham.

Sir William was of tougher stuff, and less entirely moved by the
affections; but yet he felt it. He saw the same line come into his son’s
forehead which all the family knew so well in his own, and that
expression of angry displeasure, impatience and gloom, came over his
face. This made him too angry, in spite of himself. He said, harshly--

“Yes, Paul, it is I. I am the last person you expected, or evidently
wished to see here.”

Paul came down the remaining steps, the very sound of his foot changing;
he threw away his towel and took off his hat, and assumed an air of
punctilious politeness.

“I do not deny that I am much surprised to see you, sir,” he said,
darting a glance aside of annoyed reproach at Fairfax. He had flushed a
gloomy red, of shame and annoyance, feeling his very shirt-sleeves to
be evidence against him--and looked round for his coat with an
inclination to be angry with everybody.

“I had just gone to wash my hands after my work,” he said, with a
confused apology. Confronted thus suddenly with his father in all the
solemnity of authority and parental displeasure, how could he help
feeling himself at a disadvantage? He forgot everything but that his
father had found him in circumstances which to him would seem equivocal,
perhaps disgraceful; but he was not allowed to forget.

“If you require to apologise, Markham, for being found in my shop or my
house, you had better not return here,” said the master of the place,
eyeing him over his shoulder from his bench, “any more.”

“I beg your pardon, Spears. My father--does not think with me. It is by
no will of mine that he has come here----”

“If you can’t be civil, and introduce him civilly--and if he can’t be
civil, and doesn’t know how to treat a man in his own house,” said
Spears, busy with his glue-pot, “you had better take him away.”

“This is the man you brought to my house--in my absence,” said Sir
William, “imposing upon your mother. I suppose the well-known”--(he was
going to say demagogue, but paused, after looking at the person in
question)--“orator and leader of Trades Unions----”

“Yes, that is I,” said the master of the shop. “I am quite ready to
answer any question on my own account. But I beg your pardon, whoever
you may be. Markham did not impose upon his mother, nor did I. He
introduced me as his friend, and I lost no time in telling the lady that
I was a working man. Lady Markham has the manners of a queen. She was
perfectly polite to me, as I hope I am capable of being to any one who
comes in the same way into my house.”

Sir William gave his son’s friend another look. He had no desire to make
a personal enemy of this demagogue. A public man must think of
expediency in public matters, even where his own affections are
concerned.

“You will excuse me,” he said, coldly. “My business is with my son. I
should not have intruded myself into your house had I known it. Paul,
your mother is at your rooms, waiting for you. I must ask you to come
there with me at once.”

Paul’s countenance fell still more.

“My mother!--here!”

“Good morning,” said Sir William, taking off his hat with much
solemnity. “I am sorry to have invaded Mr. Spears’s privacy even for a
moment. I will wait for you, Paul, outside.”

The workman got up and took off his cap, bowing ceremoniously in answer
to Sir William’s salutation. He had not moved till his name was
mentioned.

“There!” he cried, with comical discomfiture, “dash the little
aristocrat! He has the last word--that’s the worst, or the best of them.
They have their senses always about them. No flurry--no feeling. Well,
Paul, aren’t you going? Be off with you and explain, like a good boy, to
your mamma and your papa.”

“What is it all about?” said a girl’s voice from the top of the stairs;
and first one, then another, fair, curly, somewhat unkempt head appeared
peeping down upon the group below. “And who is the little old gentleman?
Father, may we come down stairs?”

“Go back to your work, on the instant,” said Spears; “I want no girls
here. Well, Markham, why don’t you go? Is your father to wait for you
all day--and I too?”

“I shall go when I am ready,” said Paul, gloomily.

He took a long time to put on that coat. He was not of a temper to be
cowed or frightened, and for a moment he was undecided whether to defy
his father directly and deny all jurisdiction or control on his part, or
to take the more difficult part of extending to Sir William that
courtesy which his teacher had instructed him was due from all men to
each other--from rebellious sons to fathers as well as in every other
relation of life--hearing what he had to say with politeness as he would
have heard any other opponent in argument. But the fact is that an
argument between father and son on their reciprocal duties is a thing
more difficult to maintain with perfect temper and politeness than any
argument that ever took place in the Union or perhaps in Parliament
itself. And Paul was bitterly angry that his father should have invaded
this place, and dismayed to hear that his mother had come, and that he
should have her entreaties to meet. He had not anticipated anything of
the kind, strangely enough. He had expected letters of all kinds--angry,
reproachful, entreating--but it had not occurred to him that his father
would come in person, much less any other of the family. He was dismayed
and he was angry; his heart failed him in spite of all his courage.
Pride and temper forbade him to run away, yet he would have escaped if
he could. He took a long time to put on his coat; he said nothing to
either of the two men that stood by, and pushed Fairfax aside when he
tried to help him. Spears had given up his work altogether, and stood
watching his pupil with a smile upon his face.

“When does that fellow mean to go?” he said. “What is he waiting for? I
like the looks of the little old gentleman, as the girls call him.
There’s stuff in that man. But for him and such as him the people would
have had their rights long ago; but I respect the man for all that.
Markham, what do you mean by keeping him kicking his heels outside my
shop in the sun? That is not the respect due from one man to another.
He’s an older man than you are, and merits more consideration. What are
you frightened for, man alive? Can’t you go?”

“Frightened!” cried Paul, with an indignant curl of his lip.

“Yes, frightened, nothing else; or you wouldn’t take so long a time
about going. Ah, that’s driven him out at last! Do you know those
people, Fairfax, or how did you come to bring the father here?”

“I know them? I am not half grand enough. How should I know a man who is
a Right Honourable? I met them by chance. Spears, you may say what you
like, but even a little rank, however it may go against reason, has an
effect--”

“Do you think I need you to tell me that? If it hadn’t an effect what
would be the use of all we’re doing? ‘Why stand I in peril every day?’
as that fine democrat Paul says somewhere. To be sure there’s something
in it. I once lived three days in that man’s house. I didn’t know he was
absent, as he says he was. I should have liked to have stood up to him
and stated my way of thinking, and seen what he had to say for himself.
It was the first sneaking thing I ever knew in Markham to take me there
while his father was away. Life goes on wheels in those houses,” said
Spears, taking his seat again upon his bench. “It was all one could do
after a day or two to keep one’s moral consciousness awake. A footman
waited upon me hand and foot, and I never spoke to him--not as I ought
to have done--about the unnatural folly of his position, till the last
day. I couldn’t do it; a fortnight in that place would have demoralised
even me. The mother--ah, there it is! We can’t build up women like that.
I don’t know how you’re to do it without their conditions. We have good
women, and brave women, and pure women, but nothing like that. You have
to see it,” said Spears, shaking his head, “even to know what it is.”

“So long as it’s only a fine lady--” said the young man.

“Don’t talk of what you don’t understand,” said the other. “I’d have the
best of everything in my Republic. I’d have that little old man’s pluck
and self-command; and the lady--I don’t see my way to anything like the
lady.”

“I have always told you, Spears, that the old society which you condemn
has everything that is good in it, if you would have patience and--”

“_You_ have always told me!” said Spears in his melodious voice.

He returned to his work without further argument, as if this were enough
reply. He was finishing a number of little carved frames, of which his
window was full. There was a bill in the window on which “Selling off”
was printed in large letters. The shop was full of wood and bits of
carving all done up in bundles, and everything about showed marks of an
approaching departure or breaking-up. The master of the house put on his
cap again and gave himself up to his work. It was not of a kind which
impressed the spectator. But the man who worked was not commonplace in
appearance. He was not much taller than Sir William, but had a large
massive head, covered with a crop of dusky hair. The softness of his
eyes corresponded with that of his voice, but the lines of the face were
not soft. He took no further notice of Fairfax, who, for his part, took
his neglect quite calmly. The young man took his pipe out of his pocket,
where he had put it stealthily when he first caught sight of the ladies,
for one moment paused, and looked at it with a look of half-comic
half-serious uncertainty. Should he keep it as a memento of that
interview? He looked at it again and laughed, then pulled out of another
pocket a little box of matches and lighted his pipe. He, like Paul, was
quite familiar and at his ease in the workman’s shop.




CHAPTER XI.


“You have kept me a long time waiting,” said Sir William. “I should have
thought elaborate leave-takings unnecessary in a place where you seem so
much at home.”

“I took no leave,” said Paul; “it was quite unnecessary. I shall see
Spears again to-night.”

Sir William turned round upon his son with quick impatience; then
paused. This was not a case to be treated hastily, and patience was the
best. “You and I differ in a great many points,” he said; “therefore it
is not wonderful perhaps that I should think you have made a curious
choice of a trade to learn: for I suppose you are by way of learning a
trade. Don’t you think a certain amount of civilisation is necessary
before picture-frames will become remunerative? I don’t think you could
live by them in the bush.”

Paul coloured high with that acute sense of being open to ridicule which
is so terrible to youth. “Spears is selling off his stock,” he said. “I
do not know if it is a sign of high civilisation, but he sells his
picture-frames and lives by them. Most men of genius have been reduced
to make their livelihood by some inferior branch of their work.”

“And what then do you call his highest work?” Sir William asked
carelessly. Paul, astonished, but willing to believe that his father had
taken an interest in Spears and that all was about to go as he wished,
fell into the trap, as any other unsuspicious nature would have done.

“His carvings are wonderful,” he said, with all the fervour of
enthusiasm. “When he has a congenial subject he is equal to Gibbons or
any one. He ought to have been a great sculptor. If you saw some of the
things he has done you would see what bitter satire it is that _he_
should live by those wretched little picture-frames.”

“Is it so, indeed?” said Sir William. “Then it is the higher branch of
wood-carving and not picture-frames that you are learning, I suppose?
Do you mean then to carry high art, Paul, into the bush?”

“I cannot see what this has to do with the bush, sir,” said Paul,
impatiently. “One must live there by one’s hands, and to know how to use
them in any special way cannot be a disadvantage in any other way. That
is Spears’s view of the subject, and mine too.”

“I doubt if wood-carving will help you much in felling trees or making
them into huts,” said Sir William, with a great air of candour. “What do
you suppose the advantage is likely to be of changing from a state of
society where everything that is beautiful has its value, to one where
you will live by your hands, as you say, and where the highest skill
will only not do you any harm? I should like to know the reasoning by
which you have arrived at your present convictions--the ideas expressed
in the letter I got last night.”

“You have received my letter then?” Paul said, with dignity. “You know
what my settled determination is. I hope you do not mean, and that my
mother does not mean, to attempt to turn me from a plan which I have not
decided on without great thought.”

“I don’t know what your mother may mean to do, my boy,” said Sir
William, quietly. “She will act according to her own standards of duty,
not mine; but I know what I intend myself, and the first thing is to
understand your reasons for the extraordinary step you propose. You, the
heir of a fine property----” Sir William made a stumble before the word
_heir_, which, notwithstanding that Paul was about to abjure everything,
led him to make a rapid calculation of his father’s power in this
matter. The Markham property was not all entailed. Did the father mean
to disinherit his lawful successor? Paul felt a flush of indignation go
over him, though he was about to declare his intention of giving up all.

“The heir of a fine property,” said Sir William, “and an influential
position. At this moment, young as you are, you might make a start in
public life, and have a hand in the government of your country, which is
as high an ambition as a man can entertain. How have you managed to
persuade yourself that to go out into a half savage country and
encounter the first difficulties of savage life is better or more
honourable than this? To live by your hands instead of your head,” he
continued, growing warm, “to surround yourself with beggarly elements
of living instead of the highest developments of civilisation--to make
yourself of no more account than any ploughboy----”

Here Paul felt himself touch the ground. There had stolen over him a
chill of alarm as to how he was to answer such a question, but this last
clause brought him back to the superficial polemics with which he was
familiar enough. “Why should I be of more account than any ploughboy?”
he said; “that is the whole question. Why is there this immense gulf
between the ploughboy and me? Is he less a man than I am? Are not my
advantages a shame to me in the face of manhood? What right have I to
humiliate him for my advancement?”

“What right have you to be a fool?” said Sir William, bitterly. “I don’t
know: your mother is not a fool, though she is not clever. If your
ploughboy had been educated as you have been, your argument might have
had some show of reason. Do you mean to tell me that education is
nothing--that a lad from the fields ought to be of as much use in the
world as you are? This is to despise not only rank, which I know is your
favourite type of injustice, but breeding, culture, everything you have
acquired by your work. How do you justify yourself in throwing away
_that_? There is no question of humiliating the ploughboy; the ploughboy
will be of ten times as much use as you are in the bush.”

This view of the question was not pleasant to Paul. He held himself up
with great stateliness, and did not deign to look at his father. “That
remains to be seen, sir,” he said.

“What remains to be seen?--that a man brought up to farming will make a
better farmer than you--or your friend the wood-carver? Suppose we
consider the question from his point of view,” said Sir William. “He is
a skilled workman, you tell me.”

“I said a man of genius.”

“All the better for my argument. Your man of genius,” Sir William went
on with a barely perceptible smile, “may be--appreciated, let us say, in
a country like this, where art is known: but who will care for his art
where he is going?”

“More than here,” cried Paul hotly, interrupting his father. “Here,
because he has no money, nor position to make him known, and no
impudence to push him into favour, his beautiful work is taken no
notice of, and he lives by making picture-frames. Ploughing and digging
is better than that. The earth at least is grateful for what is done for
her.”

“Not always,” said Sir William. “I thought you had heard enough about
farming to know better. However, the advantage of emigrating to
your--friend, will be, not the gain of anything, but the giving up of
his work, and the sacrifice of what you call his genius. No, I do not
scoff at his genius. I know nothing about it. I take it on your word.
Your man of genius will throw away his chief distinction on your own
showing; and _you_ will throw away what as yet are your only
distinctions, the position you derive from your ancestors, the education
which you have got (partially) by your own exertions--for what? to
attempt to do clumsily what two ploughmen could do much better than
you.---- Ah! who is that?”

Paul’s eye had been caught some moments before by a lady coming towards
them, at sight of whom a sudden flush came over his face. A lady! was
she a lady? She was dressed very simply in a black alpaca gown, the
long plain lines of which harmonised and gave elegance to a tall,
well-developed figure. The dress was well made and graceful, such as any
lady might have worn; but the little hat upon the young woman’s head was
doubtful. Even Sir William, who looked somewhat anxiously at her, seeing
the flush on his son’s face, felt that it was doubtful. The faded brown
velvet and scrubby little feather did not suit the rest of the dress.
She walked well, as she came towards them, but when she perceived Paul
and his companion, an air of embarrassment which was half fright came
over her face. When Paul, all red and glowing with a mixture of feelings
which Sir William could not fathom, took off his hat, she gave him an
alarmed, inquiring look, blushed fiercely, and replied to his salutation
with a hurried nod of her head, which made the question of her position
more uncertain than ever. Still she was a handsome young woman: before
she had seen Paul, Sir William himself had remarked her stately carriage
and figure. “Who is that?” he repeated, suspicious, as a parent
naturally is of a young man’s unknown female friends, yet not unprepared
to hear that it was somebody not unworthy to be known by Sir William
Markham’s son; for it might well be that ladies in a learned community,
fearless of misconception, were not always so particular as could be
desired about their hats. He turned half round and gave a glance after
her as she continued her way, which, as she had just done the same, was
somewhat awkward. But Paul marched straight forward and took no notice.
“Who is that?” Sir William repeated, sharply, determined this time to
have a reply.

Paul’s blush and discomfiture, and his marked and ceremonious
recognition of the stranger, meant several things. They meant that he
felt himself certain to be misconstrued, yet was too proud and too
sincere to take any means of avoiding misconstruction; that he was
annoyed by the encounter, alarmed by the new idea which his father would
certainly take up in consequence; yet forced by this alarm and annoyance
to show a more marked and excessive courtesy to the person (oh, had she
but gone down another street and kept out of the way!) whose appearance
plunged him into so much confusion, and would, he felt sure, complicate
everything. Whether this sudden liveliness of consciousness did not mean
that there was cause for alarm is another matter. In the meantime all
that Paul felt was that the girl’s name once mentioned must add tenfold
to the difficulty of his position.

“Who is it? It is Spears’s eldest daughter,” he said curtly, with a new
and brilliant suffusion of colour over all his face.

“Oh!” was all Sir William said. What more was necessary? The young man
felt, with a sensation of intolerable impatience that he was judged and
condemned on the spot; but he could not protest against a conclusion
which was not put into words. If he said anything, would not his guilt
be considered doubly proved? Silence seemed his only policy; and no more
was said. The discussion, which had been so serious, came to a dead
stop. They walked on together without saying another word. Sir William,
who had been so bent upon convincing his son, dropped his argument all
at once. Paul did not look at him, but yet he was aware that the line on
his forehead, the pucker that meant trouble, had deepened. The young man
felt himself suddenly in the grip of despair. He felt himself judged,
the question settled, everything changed. His whole conduct had assumed
a new light in his father’s eyes, and it was a false light. Instead of
respecting him as the logical if rash devotee of certain fixed
principles, his father evidently concluded him to be the victim of a
commonplace love affair. How was Paul to overcome this hasty and false
judgment? Pride and prudence alike made it necessary that he should take
no notice of it. He held his head higher in the air than ever, and
walked on with a certain protestation and appeal against the injustice
done him in every step he took. Sir William, on his side, dropped the
argument with a mixture of despair and contempt. This was how it
was--far more easy to understand than democratic ideas or communistic
principles in the heir to a great property, here was an inducement which
was plain to the meanest capacity: a fine, handsome, young woman! This
was how it was! Sir William felt angry with himself for being duped, and
for having really for a moment believed in the revolutionary sentiments
which had been assumed (he had no doubt) in order to carry on this other
pursuit. How foolish he had been to allow himself to be thus deceived!
He gave up his argument with an abruptness which had impatience in it,
and for the moment he could not say anything to the boy who had thus
succeeded in deceiving him, and added the feeling of shame for his own
gullibility to that of anger. He had taken the trouble to attempt to
convince him, to believe in an intellectual error, which, however
exasperating, was not discreditable--and this was how it was!

What was to be done? It was all a mistake, but Paul could not say so,
for his father did not condescend to make any accusation. Thus they
walked on, fuming both with indignation and impatience. Now and then the
young man eyed his father as if he could have taken him by the shoulders
and shaken him, an undutiful form of the mutual exasperation. But Sir
William was beyond this. What was the good? He would save his breath, he
thought, for better purposes. Why should he talk himself hoarse while
Paul laughed in his sleeve, not caring a straw for his arguments,
meaning perhaps to laugh with the girl the next time they met over the
ease with which his father had fallen into the snare. No, the fellow was
not worthy of argument; he who was capable of masking an unworthy
entanglement in this way. Let his mother try her hand upon him, the
father thought, indignantly. She might do something. A woman’s tears
and suffering are sometimes more effectual than reason. Sir William felt
in his indignant disgust that to let his own beautiful and perfect wife
enter the lists against this--hussy--yes, he was coarse in his vexation
and distress--to let Lady Markham, the pride of the county, a woman whom
it was a glory for a man to have won--to let her come down from her
pedestal and humble herself to the pleadings and the tears of an anxious
mother for a boy so little worthy of her as to be capable of such a
connection--was a disgrace. But then he knew that was not how she would
feel it. She would not think of her own dignity. And she would get it
all out of him--women can; they do not disdain to return and return to
the inquiry, to ask question after question; he would not be able to
elude her examination. She would get it all out of him--how far it had
gone, all about it. And then some strong step must be taken--something
must be done--though, for the moment, he could not think what that
something should be.

“I see them at last,” said Alice from the window. “Oh, Paul! Papa is
coming along quite quietly, not scolding him. He is looking--not so
angry. It is so natural to see them walking along--quite friendly. He is
not scolding----”

“Oh, my dear! do not use such a word. Scold! we might scold Harry for
climbing trees: but this is too serious, far too serious. How is my poor
boy looking? Oh, I hope--I hope your papa has not been hard upon him.
Men forget that they were once young and foolish too.’

“That was what I meant,” said Alice. “I wonder---- they are not saying
anything to each other, mamma.”

Lady Markham had come to the window and was looking out too, over her
child’s shoulder, while the father and the son came along the street
together, silent, separated by so much that was real, and something that
was mistaken. The mother and daughter looked out together with but one
heart. Not a breath had ever come between these two: they knew each
other absolutely as no one else knew either. How could it be possible
for them to misunderstand each other, to fall apart, to experience ever
whatever might happen, the chill distance and severance which was
between Sir William and his son? Lady Markham leant upon her child’s
shoulder.

“Not a word,” she said; “not a word. Oh, my boy--my boy! Your father
must have given it up; he must think there is nothing more to be said.”

“But we will never give him up!” cried the girl. “How could we give him
up? That is impossible. You could as soon give up _me_!”

“Not Paul, dear--never Paul: but the attempt to turn him from his own
way. If he will not listen to your papa, Alice, what attention will he
pay to me and you?”

Alice had no answer to make to this question, so intent was she,
watching the expression of Paul’s face as he crossed the street and
disappeared under the gateway. She read in it, or thought she read in
it, the conclusion of a stormy argument, the opposition to all that
could be said to him, the determination to have his own way which was
natural to Paul. And she too, with a sigh, recognised the futility of
argument.

“He never would listen to papa,” she said. “Papa proves you so in the
wrong that you can’t help going on with it. But he will not be cruel to
you and me. Oh, when he knows it will break our hearts!” said Alice.

And then they were silent, hearing the steps come up the staircase,
turning two pairs of anxious eyes towards the door. Sir William came in
first with a kind of stern introduction of the culprit.

“Here is Paul,” he said. And then without any words, with a certain
half-protest against their presence there at all, Paul submitted to be
kissed by his mother and sister. They stood all together in a confused
group for a moment, not knowing what to do or say, for it is difficult
to rush into such a subject as this which was in all their thoughts in a
company of four. Lady Markham held her boy by the hand, and looked at
him pathetically with an unspoken appeal which made his heart ache, but
felt that she must have him to herself, must be free of all spectators,
before she could say all she had to say to him. “We had better go back
to the inn and get some luncheon,” said Sir William, breaking the spell
with practical simplicity. He took his wife by the arm as they went down
stairs. “The democracy is a pretence, and so is the fancy for a new
world,” he half-whispered, hissing into her ear. “It is a woman, as I
thought.”

Lady Markham started so that she almost lost her footing, and her
parasol fell out of her hand.

“A woman?” she said, with a scarlet blush of trouble and shame. The
first intrusion of this possibility daunts and terrifies a mother. A
woman! what does that mean?--not the pure and delicate love with which
all her thoughts would be in sympathy; something very different. The
shock of separation between the boy, the heir of all her hopes, and a
man half-known, who is no longer the child of her bosom, was almost more
than she could bear. The cry she gave echoed low but bitter through the
empty passages, where many such have echoed, audible or inaudible,
before.




CHAPTER XII.


“I cannot move him one step from his resolution,” said Lady Markham,
pressing her hands over her eyes. They were aching with tears, with the
sleeplessness of the past night, and that burning of anxiety which is
worse than either. “He does not seem to care for what I say to him. His
mind is made up, he declares. God help us! William, our eldest boy! And
he used to be so good, so affectionate; but now he will not listen to a
word I say.”

They were in a room in the hotel, one of those bare and loveless rooms,
denuded of everything that is warm or homelike, in which so often the
bitterest scenes of the tragedy of our life take place. Lady Markham sat
by the bare table; Sir William paced up and down between that and the
door. Outside was all the commotion of one of those big caravanserai
which have become so common in England, echoes of noisy parties below,
and a constant passage up and down of many feet. Trouble itself is made
harder vulgarised by such contact. They were far too much absorbed to
think of this, yet it made them a little more miserable unawares.

“Does he mean to marry her?” Sir William said.

“Oh!” cried Lady Markham, with a start as if she had received a blow; “I
cannot think it is that. He will not allow it is that. It is, what he
has always said, those new principles, those revolutionary ideas, I do
not know what those men are worthy of who fill a boy’s head with
ridiculous theories, who teach him to despise his home.”

“There are few who are much harmed by that. Isabel you must not be
squeamish. You must forget you are a delicate lady, and speak plainly. I
know what a young man is at Paul’s age; they can hold the wildest
theories without feeling any necessity to act upon them. It is a
privilege of youth; but against that other kind of influence, they are
helpless. And a woman like you does not understand the arts and the
wiles of these others. And he does not know how important it is,” said
Sir William, with a piteous tone in his voice; “he does not know----”

“He knows very well what he is to me and to you,” Lady Markham said. In
this particular she spoke with perfect calm, not fearing anything. “How
should he not know? I have not hidden it from him that a great part of
the happiness of my life hangs upon his. It seems ungrateful when one
has so many blessings; but, oh! if _one_ is in trouble, how can you be
comforted though all the others are well? All your heart goes to the
one. It is not that you love the others less, but _him_ more--_him_
more.”

Sir William listened to this outburst without a word. They were bearing
one burden between them, and yet each had a separate burden to bear. His
heart would not be racked like hers by the desertion of the boy. He
would not concentrate his whole soul on Paul because Paul was in
trouble. But on the other hand, she was altogether unaware of what was
in his thoughts, the doubtful position in which perhaps Paul might one
day find himself; the need there was that his future should be within
his own power to shape and form. Also Sir William was aware of the
disappointment and misery awaiting those who compromise their whole
lives in one fit of foolish passion, and secure their own misery by a
hasty marriage. These were the things he was thinking of. He saw his son
waking up to the realities of a life very different from anything he had
dreamed--and encumbered, he, so fastidious, so fantastical, with an
uneducated woman and all the miseries of premature fatherhood. He
groaned as this picture arose in his mind.

“Trouble,” he said. “Yes, I suppose if a young man allows himself to get
entangled, there is trouble involved in the breaking of the tie; but not
half so much trouble as will come after, when his life is dragged down
by association with a woman like that,--when he has a wretched home, a
sordid life, a hundred miserable necessities to provide for,--you don’t
know what it is, you can’t know what it is----”

He broke off abruptly. Would she perhaps suspect him--_him_, her
husband--of having learned by experience what these horrors were?

But no such notion entered Lady Markham’s mind. “No,” she said; “I think
you are wrong, William. I think it is not _that_ that is in my boy’s
mind. Oh, if one could know--if one could feel sure, that his heart was
open as it used to be!”

Here she paused; and there was silence between the two, Sir William
walking slowly up and down, with his head forward, and she sitting
wistful gazing into the dark air; her eyes enlarged with anxiety and
pain. They were such prosperous, happy people--so well off, so full of
everything that can make life smooth and sweet, that the silence of
their trouble was all the more impressive--so many things that harm
poorer people would have passed innocently over them. They had such a
stock (people might have said) of comfort and happiness to fall back
upon. Nevertheless, this blow was so skilfully dealt, that it found out
the weak places in their armour at once. To Sir William, indeed, it came
as a sort of retribution! but what had his wife done to have her
gladness thus stolen away from her? Fortunately those who suffer thus
innocently are not those who ask such questions. She shed her tears
silently, with many prayers for him who was the cause; but she did not
complain of the pain which was laid upon her for no fault of hers. They
had talked it all over in every possible aspect, and now they were
silent, saying nothing. What was there to say? They could do nothing,
however they might toil or struggle. It was not in their power to change
the circumstances. Even Sir William, though he was a man of much
influence, a great personage, of importance in Europe--capable perhaps
of stopping revolutions, of transforming the face of a country, and
modifying the fortunes of a race by the advice he might give--was
powerless before his boy. He could not turn Paul from the way he had
chosen, nor persuade him to think differently. He might be able to
destroy old corporations, to raise up new cities, to disestablish a
church, or disturb an empire; but he could not make a change in the
fancies of his son--whether it was in his opinions, or in his
inclinations; that was altogether beyond his power. He sighed heavily as
he went and came from the dull green-painted wall, to the dull table
covered with a green cloth. The Queen might listen to him, and the
country; but Paul would not listen. What wonder that his wife covering
her hot eyes with her hand, and knowing that Paul’s contumacy would
steal all the pleasure out of her life, should feel herself powerless
too?

There was one thing however that threw a little light on Lady Markham’s
thoughts--one person to whom she could still appeal. She did not speak
of this to her husband, who might, she felt, oppose her purpose. But she
told Alice, with whom her consultations were still more confidential and
detailed.

“He was made welcome in our house,” she said; “he was received as well
as if he had been--any one else; and he is not a man without sense or
feeling. If it is put before him as it ought, he will understand. I will
go and speak to Mr. Spears----”

“About--his daughter?” Alice faltered.

Lady Markham did not make any reply. She would not say anything about
the chief object of her mission. What she wanted above all things was to
test the truthfulness of her son’s assertion that this daughter was
nothing to him. Sir William put no faith in these assertions; but Paul’s
mother believed in him with trembling, even while she feared, and longed
for some indirect testimony which would convince her husband. She
thought over it all night, while she lay awake listening to the clocks
answering each other with hour after hour.

Paul had not responded to his mother’s inquiries, as they had all hoped.
He had resisted her questions proudly, and he had not attempted to
explain.

“You have made up your mind, you and my father, that I have not spoken
the truth,” he said. “Why should I repeat what you will not believe? I
have nothing to say but what I have said.”

“Oh, Paul, look in my face, and tell me--tell me!” she said. “I will not
doubt you.” But he was obdurate.

“I have told you,” he said, “and you have doubted.”

There was something even in this pride and indignant resistance of her
entreaties which moved his mother to believe in him; but Sir William was
of a different opinion. Her heart was torn asunder with doubt and fear;
and here was the one way in which she could know. Her husband might
think of Spears as a dangerous demagogue, but to her he was a man whose
face had brightened at the sight of her children, a man to whom she had
given her own ready sympathy--a human creature, whom she knew. Had she
not a right to go to him, to appeal to him to relinquish his hold on her
boy? Whether it was by his arguments, or by something less abstract, he
had, it seemed, power which was almost absolute over her boy. Lady
Markham did not mean to say anything to him about his daughter, to ask
of him whether it was love for her which was leading Paul away; but
could any one doubt that she would discover the truth if she could see
him, and speak to him without any one to interfere between them? She
could not endure the doubts of Paul which rose in her own mind, nor to
be obliged to listen to his father’s doubts of him, and say no word in
his defence.

Notwithstanding her sleepless night, she got up very early in the
morning, full of this idea, and stole out of the inn unperceived. It was
not till the morning air blowing in her face, and the looks of the
passers-by, which, like any one unaccustomed to go about alone, she
thought specially directed to her, had fully roused her out of the mist
of thought in which she was enveloped, that she remembered that she did
not know where Spears was to be found. What was she to do? She went
along vaguely, unwilling to return, past Paul’s college, with all its
vacant windows twinkling in the sun, by the way which her husband had
taken when he went to seek Paul the day before. Her heart gave a little
leap as she passed the gate to see some one come out whose face seemed
familiar to her. Was it Paul so early? Had he changed his habits like
everything else? But she saw very well it was not Paul; it was his
friend who had guided Sir William in search of him on the previous day.

Young Fairfax took off his hat respectfully, and would have passed, but
she stopped and beckoned to him to come to her. Here, too, Providence
had thrown in her way a witness who might corroborate Paul. She was out
of breath with agitation when he came across the street.

“Can I--be of any use, Lady Markham?” the young man said.

“If it will not detain you--if it is not out of your way,” she said,
with anxious politeness, “would you show me where Mr. Spears lives--Mr.
Spears--I think my husband said you knew him--the--the public
speaker--the--very great Radical--he whom my son knows?”

Fairfax was puzzled for the moment by this respectful description.

“Oh, Spears!” he cried at last, suddenly waking to intelligence; he had
not heard him called Mr. Spears before. A laugh woke about the corners
of his mouth. He was apt to laugh at most things, and it amused him to
hear the softening politeness with which the great lady spoke of the
demagogue. But the next moment the wistful anxiety in Lady Markham’s
eyes made him ashamed of his smile.

“I will show you the place if you will let me go with you,” he said.

It seemed some strange negligence on the part of the race generally that
such a woman should be unattended wherever she might choose to go. He
was a democrat too, mildly, with less devotion to Spears than Paul, yet
with some interest in his teaching; but Paul’s mother roused within him
a natural loyalty and respect which was not in accordance with these
principles--loyalty in which a subtle unexpressed regard for her rank
mingled with reverence for herself. It was not as a mere woman and his
friend’s mother, but also as a lady--the kind that queens are made
of--that she affected his mind. The idea of her required an attendant, a
servant, a retainer. He put himself into the vacant place hastily, to
repair the neglect of the world.

Lady Markham took an unfair advantage of this devotion. She plied him
with questions--subtle and skilful--not always about Paul, but coming
back to Paul with many a wily twist and turn. She threw herself with the
warmest pretence of interest into his own career--what he was doing, how
his studies were being directed, what his future was to be? Was it a
pretence? No, it was not altogether a pretence. She could not but be
polite, and true politeness cannot but be interested. She was pleased
that he should tell her about himself, and a kind of shadow of an
anxiety that he too should do well came into her mind--a shadow faint
and vague of her great anxiety and longing that Paul should do well,
better than any one had ever done before. And like a lark descending in
circles of cautious approach to her home, she came back to Paul when her
young companion was off his guard, when she had beguiled him to babble
of himself.

“Ah!” she said, “I fear you are both idle, both Paul and you,” when
Fairfax had been making confession of sundry shortcomings.

“No, Markham is not like me,” he said. “Markham puts more of himself
into everything; he does not take things lightly as I do. He is a more
serious fellow altogether. That makes me rather fear Spears’s influence
over him, if you will let me say so.”

“Indeed I will let you say so,” Paul’s mother replied. “That is just
what makes me unhappy. He is a great deal with Mr. Spears?”

“One time and another--yes, they have seen a great deal of each other,”
Fairfax said. “Perhaps you don’t know, Spears is the most entertaining
fellow. He has his own opinion about everything. I think myself he is
wrong just as often as he is right; but he has his own way of looking at
things. I don’t go with him in half he says, but I like to hear him
talk----”

“And his house is a pleasant place to go to?” said the anxious mother.
“Excuse me if I don’t quite know. He is not in any kind of society, but
he has a family? It is a pleasant house?”

Fairfax stared and then he laughed.

“It is not a house at all, in the way you think of,” he said. “I don’t
suppose you can form any idea--we go and talk to him in his workshop.
There is no sort of ceremony. He will hold forth for the hour when he is
in the vein, and he is very entertaining--but as for what you understand
by a pleasant house----”

Lady Markham’s heart grew lighter every moment.

“But he has a family?” she said.

“Oh, yes--there are girls, I believe,” said Fairfax. Was he on his
guard? She almost feared the directness of this question had put him on
his guard. “One sees them sometimes running out and in, but that has
nothing to do with it,” he added, carelessly. “In his class it is not at
all the same as in other ranks of life.”

Here there was a pause. Not an inference was there in all this of any
other influence than that of the political visionary--the influence
which Paul acknowledged. Lady Markham’s heart had given a leap of
pleasure. Oh, if Sir William had but heard this careless, impartial
witness, every word of whose evidence supported that of Paul! But then a
chill breath of suspicion came over her. What if he were less
unconscious than she thought, skilfully arranging his replies so as to
back up Paul’s assertions? This discouraged and silenced her, in spite
of herself. How easy it is to learn the miserable alphabet of suspicion!
She went along with him doubtfully, sick at heart, asking no more
questions, not knowing whether there was anything in the whole matter
to which she could trust.

“There is Spears’s shop. You will find him at work already; he is always
early. May I come back again for you, Lady Markham, in case you should
miss the way to the hotel?”

“You are very kind,” she said; but the sight of the place where Paul had
spent so much of his time raised again a sick flutter in her bosom. She
waved her hand to him without any further reply, with a smile which went
to his heart; and then crossed over, dismissing him thus, and went
direct to the fountain-head of information--to Spears’s open door.




CHAPTER XIII.


Spears was seated on his bench, with his tools and his glue-pot, as Sir
William had seen him on the previous day, when Lady Markham entered the
shop. He had never ceased to be industrious at his work, though he had
so many other things to do. Indeed, the many other things he had to do
made it incumbent upon him to work early and late, in order to keep, as
he called it, “the pot boiling.” For he was not a paid agitator. The man
was proud, as men will be in all stations; and, moreover, he was
uncertain--not to be calculated upon as a supporter of all kinds of
measures which might be proved good for “the trade,” and therefore not
half so serviceable an implement as many who were much less powerful.
Like the independent member who cannot be trusted always to vote with
one party, he was looked upon with doubt even by those who took the
greatest advantage of his gifts. His influence had never done himself
any good. He had acquired it by exhausting labour, which had taken him
away from the work by which he made his bread, without supplying any
bread in the interval to nourish those who were dependent upon him; and
the consequence was that he had to work at other times early and late,
and was saved from all possibility of the idle life which a stump orator
may be so easily led into. His shop itself was swept and clean, the
boards freshly watered in large damp circles still marked upon the wood,
and a great bundle of large flowers--sunflowers and dahlias--stuck into
a large jug, stood in the window among the picture-frames. Some
brilliant gladiolas, in the brightest tints of colour, lay neglected on
the floor, and a great magnificent stalk of foxglove nodded on the table
at which he was working. These floral decorations, unexpected in such a
place, made the shop cheerful; and so did a stray ray of morning sun,
which got in through a break in the houses opposite, and fell across it,
dividing it as with a line of gold. The door stood open; the air, even
though laden with varnish, retained some freshness. Lady Markham came
in softly, and stood, her heart beating, not knowing well how to open
this important interview, in the middle of the sunshine. Her breath came
quick. Now that she had arrived at the point for which she had been
aiming, a sudden alarm seized her. Might it not have been better, she
asked herself, hurriedly, to remain in ignorance--not to seek to be
convinced? There are things which it is better not to know.

Spears, who was whistling over his work, did not hear the light footstep
coming in; but he noted, with the quick sense of a man to whom daylight
is indispensable, the shadow that had come across the sunshine. He
paused and looked up. A doubt--a question came over his face. Was it
possible he did not know her? Then he rose and came forward, holding out
to Lady Markham a hand not free from stains of the varnish which
perfumed the shop.

“Is it you, my lady?” he cried. His face beamed over with a smile of
welcome, but showed no surprise or alarm at the appearance of such an
inquisitor. He drew forth a rough wooden seat without any back, and
placed it in the centre of the vacant space.

“I am very glad to see you in my poor place,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Lady Markham. She glanced round her with a little
perturbation. She did not know how to begin. “Mr. Spears!” she said,
faltering a little, “I was very glad to see you in _my_ house.”

“Were you, my lady?” He stood before her with a good-humoured smile upon
his face, but slightly shook his head. “Never mind, you were as kind as
if you had been glad to see me, and that says more. But your husband
upbraided me for coming to his house in his absence, which you know was
your son’s fault, and not mine.”

“It is of my son I want to speak to you,” said Lady Markham, seizing
this easy means of introducing her subject. “Mr. Spears, you know
something of what he is to me--my eldest boy, the one who should be the
prop of the family: to whom his brothers and sisters will look hereafter
as the head of the family.”

“Ay, that’s just it,” said the revolutionary. “Why should they look to
him? What is there so creditable in being the eldest son? It was no
thanks to him. He was not born first for any merit of his. Far better
to teach them to depend on themselves--to give them their just share--to
make no eldest sons.”

“As if that were possible,” Lady Markham said, with a soft smile at this
theoretical folly. “One must be the eldest, whatever you say; and if any
harm were to happen to us,” she added, after a pause, raising her
beautiful head, “I have no fear that Paul would give up his position
then. If we were to become poor, to lose all we have--such things have
happened, Mr. Spears--my boy would not find it hard to remember to take
up his duties as the eldest son!”

“Ah!” said Spears in involuntary sympathy. Then he added with again the
same good-humoured smile, “There now, that is how you get the better of
us, you aristocrats. You are terribly cunning in argument, my lady. You
get over us by a suggestion of generosity when we are talking of
justice. The thing will never happen, of course--not in our day, more’s
the pity--your money and your land will never be taken from you.”

“Do you think that is a pity, Mr. Spears?”

“Well, yes,” he said, laughing, “from our point of view; but it will
never happen, not in our time. And even if it did happen, don’t you
think it would be far better to live each man for himself, and not a
whole family casting themselves on the shoulders of your son Paul?”

“My son Paul,” said Lady Markham, in a low voice, looking at him through
the tears in her eyes, “will be far away from us--will not be at hand to
be of use or consolation in case anything should happen to us, if you
and he have your will, Mr. Spears. He will be far away where he will be
of no use to his family. Such a thing might happen, though God forbid
it! as that I might be left to struggle alone for my children; and Paul,
my eldest, my natural help, far away, lost to me, as if he had never
been.”

Spears turned away while she was speaking, and returned to his bench. He
cleared his throat; his face flushed; he was as much embarrassed as she
had been at the beginning, and did not know how to reply.

“My lady,” he said, “this is too bad; I think it is too bad. After all a
man has more things to think of in this world than whether his family
has need of him, or if he can be of use to his mamma.”

He said the last word with a semitone of ridicule, then blushed for
himself as he caught her eye. Lady Markham saw her advantage. She would
not let him escape.

“Are there then many things in this world that are better than being of
use to your family, and helping in a hard task your mother? Do you think
so, Mr. Spears? Ah, no! I am certain you don’t. You are talking _au bout
des lèvres_, not from your heart. If we should ever need him, Paul will
be--who can tell?--thousands and thousands of miles away; and for what?
Why do you want him to go with you? Why are you going? I do not know the
reason. Because you are impatient, and do not like the manner in which
things are arranged at home?”

“We will not enter into that, my lady,” said Spears; “we will not enter
into that.”

He said this, half in contempt of her intelligence, which did not rise
to his lofty view, half because (and this really meant the same thing)
it was very difficult to explain why he thought it expedient to go away.
Many motives were mingled in his resolution which he did not dwell upon
even to himself. He was tired of poor work and poor pay, and the
struggle of living; tired of having to manufacture pictures-frames for
bread when he could have done something so much better: and disgusted
that his higher work got no real appreciation from any one. And he was
tired too even of his agitation, the speeches and popular applause which
were all very well for the moment, but neither seemed to convince any
one, nor to affect the world at all. All this was going on day after
day, week after week, but never came to anything. Often speakers whom he
knew to be much inferior to himself were more warmly applauded; and some
whom he considered (as other people considered him) to be stump orators
and noisy demagogues, got elevated and salaried, and swaggered about in
all the importance of delegates and representatives of the people, while
he received no such distinction. Though this was partly his own fault
through the pride and love of independence which characterised him, yet
Spears felt it. It soured him, in spite of himself. All this, however,
lay in his heart undivulged, except by a bitter word now and then; and
what he said to himself was that the old country was thoroughly corrupt
and hopeless, but that in a new country, under better conditions, life
would be more worth having. Did this fine lady, who knew nothing about
it, divine what was secretly shut up in his mind? He grew half afraid of
her, simple and ignorant as she had seemed to him a little while before.

“Ah, Mr. Spears, let us speak of it! You forget how important it is to
me. But for you, I should not run any risk of losing my boy.”

“I did not propose that he should come with me. You will do me the
justice to believe, Lady Markham, that I never attempted to bias him.”

“To bias him,” she said--“what is it then? Is it not all your doing?
Why, should Paul go away, but for you? He has got these notions which
you have taught him into his head--”

“On the contrary,” said the workman, “I have told him that were I in his
place I should certainly stay in England. This is no place for a poor
man who thinks--but for a man who is not poor, who has a position like
his, why, it is the ideal place. There is no aristocracy so solid as in
England. I have told him so a hundred times.”

Lady Markham’s face grew whiter and whiter. It did not occur to her
that this very advice might be conveyed in a tone which would make Paul
wildly indignant at the supposed immunity and privileged condition with
which his friend credited him. Such an explanation did not occur to her.
Dismay stole over her heart; it was then as Sir William thought--Paul
was not telling them the truth. The cause of his wild project was not
philosophy and foolish opinions, since even his leader disowned it. It
was something else. Her heart sank within her, she lost the control of
her better sense. “If it is not you,” she said, “who is it then--who is
it, Mr. Spears? You have--a daughter?” This seemed to come from her in
spite of herself.

“A daughter--I have three,” he said, “but what have they--” here he
stopped, and getting up from his bench gave vent to a low whistle of
astonishment and perplexity. He was as much surprised as she could be,
and not much more pleased. He gazed at her a moment speechless. “Can
that be so?” he said.

Impossible to sink lower than Lady Markham’s heart sank--it seemed to
melt away altogether in humiliation and disappointment. She looked at
him piteously, the tears so gathering into her eyes that she could
scarcely see his face.

“Oh, Mr. Spears,” she cried, “you know what such a connection always
comes to; disappointment on both sides--the woman’s as well as the
man’s. Whatever his feelings may be now, he would soon find out that she
was not--like the women he had been used to; and she would find herself
among--habits that were not congenial to her. Oh, Mr. Spears, for both
their sakes--you that Paul thinks so much of, you whose opinion he
follows so meekly--oh, will you not exert your authority, and forbid
it--forbid it altogether?”

Lady Markham lost control of the words she was saying. She did not think
whether this was likely to be a mode of entreaty that would be grateful
to him. She lost her own fine sense of what was fit and seemly, in the
eagerness of the appeal which might save her boy.

He stood over her, looking at her, changed she could not tell how. His
face clouded over before her eyes. At first this seemed only the effect
of the tears that blinded her, but when these latter fell she became
aware that the countenance which had been so good-humoured and friendly
was full now of a very different sentiment. The man seemed to have
expanded even in outline as he stood between her and the light.

“Forbid it, forbid it altogether!” he repeated, with a smile that seemed
to freeze her. “Why?” She felt herself tremble before him as he fixed
his eyes upon her. “My lady,” he said, “you forget where you are, and
you forget your politeness for once. How do you know my girl is not like
the women he has been used to? By God! she’s better than most he’ll meet
with among your depraved and worn-out race. _My_ girl! if it is true,
and she likes him, do you think I would forbid it, to save your fine
blood from pollution, and keep your Paul for some fine lady of the kind
he’s been used to? No, not for a million of mothers--not for all the
soft-spoken insults in the world.”

Lady Markharn made no reply; she could not, her agitation was so great;
but indignation began to steady her nerves, and give back her forces.
What had she said to call for this? How dared he speak of insult, the
man whom she felt she had honoured by coming to him, by appealing to
him? She was not an angel, though she was a good woman, and
instinctively she began to call together her faculties, to range
herself, as it were, on her own side.

Apparently, however, after this outburst, Spears felt ashamed of
himself. A fine sense of courtesy was in the man, almost finer than her
own. He began to be ashamed of having thus violated hospitality, of
having so addressed her in his own house. He turned away from her to
recover himself, turning his back upon her, then came back with again a
changed aspect. “I beg your pardon,” he said; “I ought to have more
control of myself in my own place. I don’t believe it’s true what you
think. No, my lady, I don’t mean you’re saying what you don’t believe--I
think you’re deceived. I won’t ask who’s told you, or how it’s come into
your head; I’ll put it to a better test. I’ll ask the girl herself.”

“Mr. Spears,” said Lady Markham, “you have been very rude to me; I have
not insulted you, nor did I mean to do so. It never occurred to me,” she
added, with a fine sting in her words which penetrated through all his
armour, “that I need fear anything from _you_ which I should not have
encountered in--another rank of life. But I do not wish to make
reprisals,” she said, with a faint smile, rising from her seat. “If you
question your daughter on such a subject it ought not to be before me.”

“My lady,” cried Spears, his face full of passion, “unless it is to be
open war between us it shall be before you. If there’s love between them
there should be no shame in it. My girl is one that can hold up her head
before any on the face of the earth. It is not my beginning, but it
shall be settled and cleared up on the spot. Janet! come down here, I
want you,” he called at the foot of the stairs.

Even in the midst of her agitation, Lady Markham had been conscious of
sounds above, footsteps and young voices, one of which indeed had been
persistently singing all the time, some trivial song of the moment in a
clear little sweet voice, like the trill of a bird. The insignificant
tune had run through all this exciting interview, and worked itself into
Lady Markham’s head, and in spite of herself she stood still, not
resisting any longer, turning towards the stairs involuntarily, watching
for the appearance of the girl who (perhaps) was dearer to her boy than
anything else, who, perhaps, was his motive for relinquishing
everything else, including his mother’s happiness and the comfort of his
family. What woman could remain unmoved under such circumstances? Once
more her heart began to beat as she turned her face towards the dingy
stairs. Was it some beautiful apparition which was to appear from it,
some creature such as exists in poetry, some woman for whom it would be
comprehensible that a man should give up all? Lady Markham had romance
enough in her to feel that this was possible, almost to wish it, while
she feared it. If it were so, it would be more easy to forgive Paul. Ah,
forgive him!--that was never hard; that was not the question. Our
forgiveness, like a weeping angel, is it not always hovering,
forestalling even the evil to be forgiven, over our children’s wayward
ways? But to get it out of her mind, out of her memory, that he had
deceived her, that was not so easy. She, who had come in search of
evidence to exonerate Paul, can any one wonder that she stood trembling,
scarcely seeing, scarcely hearing, yet all eyes and ears, to receive the
testimony of this indisputable witness, against whom there could be no
appeal? But when the girl’s foot sounded on the stair it seemed to Lady
Markham that she had already given up all hope that Paul was
true--provided only that this woman for whom he had compromised the
honour of his word, might at least afford some justification for the
sacrifice.




CHAPTER XIV.


“What is it, father? do you want me?”

The girl spoke to her father, but her eyes were caught instantly by the
unusual apparition of the lady in the shop. Who was she? not an ordinary
customer, not anybody with an order for picture frames. A flutter awoke
in Janet’s breast. Was it perhaps somebody sent from the shop to offer
that situation which was the dream of her fancy? a situation, she did
not quite know what, varying as her hopes and sense of self-importance
varied from that of a companion (which, the forewoman of the shop had
told her, her manners and look were equal to--not to speak of her
education) to that of a lady’s maid. Emigration was not an idea which
pleased Janet. She was afraid of the sea, afraid of the unknown, and not
at all desirous of being always at home, shut up within the circle of
family duties and companionship. She wanted to see the world, as all
young people had, she thought, a right to do. To go into the wilds had
no charm for her. She had grown up in the close presence of all her
father’s theories without being affected by one of them. She had heard
him speak by the hour and had paid no attention. All his moral
independence, the haughtiness of his determination to be his own master,
and stand under subjection to no man, affected his child no more than to
make her wish the more fervently for that “situation,” which would
deliver her from the monotony of these “holdings forth.” Janet’s ideal
of a happy existence was that of a large “establishment” where there
would be a crowd of servants, elegant valets and splendid butlers at the
feet of the pretty maid whom nobody would be able to tell from a
lady--or perhaps a chance of catching the eye of the master of one of
these fine gentlemen, who would make her a lady in earnest, with
servants of her own. Nobody knew of these secret dreams which occupied
her fancy, and grew and flourished in the atmosphere of the shop; but
when her father called her suddenly, and she came down to see Lady
Markham standing so exactly like (she thought) a lady whom the forewoman
might have sent with the offer of a situation, her heart began to beat,
and her head to turn round with excitement--excitement only not so great
as that of the woman who stood gazing at her with wistful eyes, asking
herself if this was the woman whom Paul preferred to all the world.

Janet was tall, and possessed what the people at the shop called “a
lovely figure;” the mantles and jackets never looked so well as upon
her. The habit of putting these garments on, and making a little parade
in front of the glass to show them, which was her daily duty, had given
a certain ease of carriage not usual in her class. When you are
accustomed to be gazed at, whether for yourself, or what you carry on
your shoulders, it takes away the native embarrassment of the
self-conscious creature. She was dressed in that gown of black alpaca
which is the uniform of the shops, and which did full justice to the
fine lines of her form. These were not the mere slim outlines of a
girlish figure which might turn to anything, but really beautiful,
finely proportioned, and imposing. She came down into her father’s
shop, into the line of sunshine that crossed it, with the air of a young
queen. Her face, however, was not so fine. She was pale, her nose not
quite so delicate, her mouth not so small as beauty demanded. Her hair
was fair, with little colour in it, and affording but little relief to
the forehead upon which it clustered in a wild but careful disorder,
according to the fashion of the time. Lady Markham took in every line
and every feature as the girl advanced: far more critically than if she
had been, as Janet thought, an intending employer did she examine this
new unknown being who (was it possible?) had Paul’s future in her hands.
They gazed at each other, forgetting the man who stood by watching their
mutual interest with what would have been amusement had he been less
indignant and curious. Men and women are always so strange to each
other. He looked at these two with a half-despairing, half-comic
(notwithstanding his seriousness) consciousness that the ideas that were
going through their minds were to him a sealed book. He did not know,
poor man, that the lady, who was a stranger, was the one of the two that
was comprehensible to him, and that stranger than all Greek or Latin,
more mysterious than philosophy, would have been to him, had he been
able to see them, the thoughts in the mind of his own child.

“I want to ask you a question, Janet. Don’t be alarmed, it is not
anything to frighten you,” he said. “In the first place this is Lady
Markham, the mother of Mr. Markham whom you have so often seen here.”

Janet made a curtsey to the lady, uttering a little confused “Oh!” of
wonder, and opening her eyes, and even her mouth, in surprise. Could Mr.
Markham have recommended her? _Mr. Markham!_ She did not know what to
think. Why should he wish her to be under his mother’s care? Thought
goes quick at all times, quickest of all in such a crisis, when the next
word may change all your prospects in life. Her mind plunged forward in
a moment into a world of possibilities, while her eyelids quivered with
that expression, and her mouth kept the form of the “Oh!” tremulous and
astonished. The quiver communicated itself to her whole frame--what
might come next?

“You must understand,” said Lady Markham quickly, “that I have nothing
to do with the question your father is going to ask you. It is not put
in consequence of anything I have told him--nor is it put at my
desire.”

Spears gave a little laugh, elevating his eyebrows. Yes, this was the
sort of thing to be expected. She had led him on to it, and now she
protested that she had nothing to do with it--was not this the kind of
tactics pursued by her class in all ages? To push the frank and honest
man of the people into a corner and then to disown him. He laughed,
though he had not much inclination to laugh.

“Quite right, quite true,” he said; “it is for my own satisfaction
entirely. Janet, nobody has ever come between you and me,” the man added
with a certain pathos. He looked at his daughter with a mist of honest
affection and trust in his eyes, and without an idea, without a
suspicion, that between him and her lay a whole world of difference,
indescribable by ordinary words. “I have been father and mother both to
you. Answer me, my girl, without any fear. Mr. Markham has told his
family that he is going with us to Queensland. Janet, answer me plainly,
is it out of love for you?”

“Father!” Janet, whose face was turned towards him, gave a sudden cry.
In a moment a flame of colour went over her. She opened her eyes still
wider, and her mouth, with dismay. “Oh, father! father!” she cried, in a
tone of warning and alarm.

It seemed to Lady Markham that nothing more was necessary. Her limbs
refused to support her any longer. She sank upon the seat which she had
abandoned. The girl was afraid to speak the truth before her; but yet
what doubt could there be of the meaning in her voice.

“I ask you to tell me plainly--to speak out as between you and me,” said
Spears. He was not slow to perceive what her tone implied, and the
warning in it made him angry. “There is no reason why you should
hesitate to say it. If so it is, there is nothing wrong in it as far as
I can see. Blush you must, I suppose--girls cannot help it; but tell me,
like an innocent creature as you are, tell me the truth. I tell you
there is nothing to be ashamed of. Is it out of love for you?”

Her thoughts rushed, tumbling over each other in a wild dance, a
feverish Bacchic procession, through Janet’s head. She did not mean to
say, or even to imply what was not true. But such questioning could
only mean one thing, that Mr. Markham had confessed to his mother that
he was “in love” for her--that unthought-of, bewildering promotion was
within her reach. She did not mean to tell a lie. She blushed more hotly
than ever.

“Oh, father, how can you ask me such a thing--before a lady?” she said.

“Then it is true?”

Janet did not make any reply; she dropped her head with a modest grace,
twisting her fingers together nervously, her whole frame quivering. It
was not she that had told them anything: they had told her. Ah! she
remembered now a score of little nothings. Had not he picked up her
thimble for her when she let it fall? Had not he opened the door for her
when she came and went? How often she had wondered how he could come
night after night and day after day--for what?--to talk to father, to
listen to father! Many and many a time she had wondered at, and in her
heart despised, her father’s disciples. It was “bosh” that he was
saying, and yet these others would sit round him and take it all in.
But here was something altogether different. That a young man should
only have pretended to listen to father, should have come for herself
all the time, was quite comprehensible to Janet. There was nothing
strange even--nothing out of the way in it. It was what lovers had done
from the beginning of time.

“Is that all you have got to say?” said her father. “Can’t you give us
any more satisfaction? Speak out when I tell you, Janet. All this time
that he has been coming here, not saying a word to you, pretending to be
my disciple--” A little sting of wounded vanity was in Spears too. He
did not quite like to feel that he had been deceived, that his most
fervent follower was nothing but the lover of his daughter. “All this
time,” he repeated, “has it been for you he has been coming? That is
what we want to know.”

Still Janet said nothing. She stood with her eyes cast down, interlacing
her fingers in and out, out and in--her mind in such a sudden heat of
active operation that she had not leisure to speak. It was not the first
time that the idea had presented itself to her. She had thought of it as
a very desirable thing that Mr. Markham (or one of the others) should
fall in love with her. But up to this moment she had not been able to
see any likelihood of her desire realising itself. However, her mind
leaped into instant action, supporting with a whole array of proof the
suggestion so suddenly placed before her, of the truth of which she did
not entertain a moment’s doubt. How could she doubt it? If he had told
his mother, certainly it must be true; and the other facts adapted
themselves as by magic to this great central fact. As soon as she had
got possession of that as a foundation, the details seemed to come at a
wish, and a whole superstructure of blessedness sprang upwards towards
the skies.

“I don’t know what you wish me to say, father,” she answered, at last,
after another peremptory call. She spoke with all the modesty of
conviction, for she felt now that every word was true. “There are things
as a girl cannot speak about. There are a deal of things as are nothing
in themselves; but still a girl knows what they mean.”

These modest words gave an indescribable pang to both her hearers. As
for Spears, it was all he could do not to cry out with anger and pain.
To think that at this great crisis, at a moment when so much depended
upon it, she should speak with such disregard of grammar,
notwithstanding all the care he had taken of her education.

“There are things as a girl cannot speak about.”

He knew that this would catch Lady Markham’s ears, and he felt himself
humbled before her--not because of the fact, which there was no harm in,
which was indeed natural enough; but that his girl should tell it in
such grammar occupied Spears to the exclusion of deeper sentiment. He
turned to his visitor with a conciliatory tone, and a look of
deprecation as if asking her pardon.

“Well!” he said, “my lady! there does not seem to be much doubt on that
point. We will have to make up our minds to it, though it is not what I
could have wished, any more than you.”

The very light seemed darkened in Lady Markham’s eyes, the room went
round with her, and she saw nothing clearly. Oh, why had she come here
to make sure! Why had she not let it alone, all vague as it was! An hour
ago she had thought anything better than uncertainty--but now
uncertainty itself would have been a boon. She looked at Spears,
catching the tone of deprecation in his voice, which seemed so natural,
and made a sudden appeal to him.

“Make up, our minds to it,” she cried. “How is that possible? Oh, Mr.
Spears, I have always thought you so superior to anything of the kind.
You would not take advantage of the confidence placed in you; you would
not allow my boy, because of his admiration for your talents, to ruin
himself, to compromise his position, to disappoint all our hopes!”

She rose up and put out her hands, appealing--in the forgetfulness of
personal despair--to his generosity, though it was against himself and
his own child. The most courteous, the most considerate person will
forget when it is their own dearest interests which are concerned.

His fantastic distress about the grammar went out of the man’s mind. His
forehead contracted, a gleam of anger came from his eyes. But he had no
doubt as to having right on his side, and he answered with dignity.
“Madam,” he said, “we had better understand each other. I don’t want
your son any more than you want my daughter; but they have their rights,
and if they like each other I will not interfere.”

She was driven almost wild by this reply. “Sir William will never
consent--he will never consent to it,” she cried.

“That’s none of my business--nor my child’s,” said Spears. He forgot the
respect with which she had inspired him. “Here’s the difference between
your class and mine, my lady,” he said with some scorn. “I consider the
one thing needful in a marriage is love--on both sides. In our rank of
life we don’t consider much more. We don’t ask questions about a girl’s
ancestors or her fortune. Most likely there’s none of either sort, as in
this case--but where there is love, what more is wanting? You will never
persuade me to interfere.”

“Marriage!” she repeated, in a voice of dismay. Of course that was what
it must come to. She cast a look of dismay and almost horror at the girl
who would, if this were so, take her own place, and hold her position in
the world. She rose up suddenly from her rude seat, feeling that her
limbs still failed her, but that in any case she could stay no longer
here. “Oh, there is a great deal more wanting--a great deal more,” she
cried. “Life is not so simple for us. A woman should know what she
undertakes--what weight she will have on her shoulders. There are other
things to be taken into consideration in such a life as ours.”

“You think so,” said Spears. What he intended to be a superior smile
dwindled into something like a sneer. He did not like this assertion,
which he could not contradict. After all, it was true enough that his
own existence was far more elementary and primitive than the other, and
he did not like the thought.

“You do not know,” said Lady Markham, “you cannot understand the
difficulties of people who are looked up to by a whole district, who
have the comfort of others, the very life of many in their hands. But
why should I speak of this?” she said. “I thought you understood, but
you do not understand. Now it is war between us, as you said. I want to
harm no one, but I must do what I can for my boy.”

She made them a curtsey which (for she could not be uncivil) included
both father and daughter, then drew down her veil with a trembling hand
and hurried away.

Spears went after her to the door. He was furious at this calm assertion
of something higher, larger, and more elevated in her different rank;
yet he could not help a certain reverence, an unwilling worship of the
lady, of whom he had once said regretfully that nothing like her was
ever produced in his own. He went to the door, and gazed after her as
she went along, her steps still hurried and agitated, but her natural
grace coming back to her. “Looked up to by a whole district--the comfort
of others, their very life in her hands.” Ah! there might be something
in that after all. He felt in his own veins a fulness, a swell of rising
blood as of a man able to bear others upon his shoulders, and fearing no
responsibility. That should come in the new world to which he was bound.
There he too would cease to be a single unit among other isolated
individuals, and would become a head also, a leader, the first of a
community. He felt as if she had dared him to it, and he would achieve
it. But as he stood there half-angry, half-stimulated, he was aware of
his daughter behind him, straining on tiptoe to look over his
shoulder--and turned round, looking at her with a new principle of
judgment and discrimination in his eyes.

“Was it really Lady Markham? Is she Mr. Markham’s mother?” said Janet,
breathless with excitement. “Oh, how pretty she must have been, father!
She’s not a bit nicely dressed, not what I would call equal to her
situation. But she looks a real lady. Don’t you think you would know she
was a real lady, whatever she had on?”

“I don’t know what you mean by a real lady. You are quite as silly as
the rest, you little fool.”

“Oh, but you do know,” cried Janet. “Miss Stichel puts on lovely things,
but she never has that look. Was that the lady that was so kind to you
in the country?--in that beautiful grand house?”

“Did I say she was kind to me?” said Spears, melting a little. “Well,
yes, I suppose she was.”

“And was it really,” said Janet, drooping her head, after she had cast
one keen glance at her father’s face, “really--about nothing but Mr.
Markham’s nonsense that she came here?”

“Janet,” said her father, taking her by the hand--his mind had wandered
from the great question of the moment, but her words brought it suddenly
back. He looked tenderly and anxiously into the girl’s face, which sank
before his gaze, but only with an easy blush and pleasant embarrassment.
“I don’t want to be inquisitorial. I don’t want to pry into what is
perhaps too delicate for a man’s ear. But tell me if you can what you
mean by Mr. Markham’s nonsense? He has always seemed very serious to me.
Try and tell me if you can--try and speak to me as you would have spoken
if your mother had been here.”

This touched her heart, for she was not a bad girl. She began to cry a
little. “She would not have asked me--she would have understood,” she
said. “Oh, father, what can I tell you beyond what I have told you?
Besides, what does it matter what I say? He must have spoke himself, or
what brought the lady here?”

This seemed conclusive to Spears too. It did not occur to him that “Mr.
Markham’s nonsense” must mean something more than what Paul had said to
his mother. He put his arm round his child, and drew her close to him.
“You should not say ‘he must have spoke,’ Janet--though it would seem
indeed as if he had said something. She wanted me to order him off. Tell
me, my girl, are you really--fond of this young fellow?” he said, with
persuasive tenderness. “Don’t turn your face away, there is nothing to
be ashamed of. I thought you were but a child, and lo! you are a woman
with lovers after you,” he went on, with a smile that was pathetic. “I
can’t say I like it, but it’s nature, and I won’t complain.”

“Oh don’t, father,” said Janet, drawing herself away. “Don’t! How can I
tell you--or any one?” There was just enough of feeling to give a
natural air of pretty reserve and delicacy to the girlish shrinking, the
quick movement she made to conceal her face from his eyes. Her voice was
tremulous, her cheeks suffused with the blush of excitement and pleasant
confusion. After a pause she turned half round and asked, as if avoiding
a more difficult question, “Is it a very grand house? Will it come to
him after? Will he be a _Sir_ too?”

“If it lasts till his time,” said the revolutionary, “which let us hope
it will not. The chances are, that all these detestable distinctions
will be swept away long before, and the wrongs of the poor be made an
end of. The country will not bear it much longer.”

“Oh!” cried Janet, forgetting her bashfulness, and turning upon him a
face full of eager vehemence and indignation. “I am sick of hearing of
the country! What harm does it do the country? Will they have a penny
the more for taking away his money? Why shouldn’t I be a lady as well
as any one else? To have a grand house, and a man in livery to walk
behind me is what I should like above everything! I hope it will last
till our time. I don’t believe there will be any difference. Oh, father,
won’t you just give up making speeches and holding meetings, and let
things be?”

“Janet!” he cried, with a flash of anger; but it seemed ludicrous, after
all, to attach any importance to what such a child said. He laughed a
confused and disconcerted laugh. “That doesn’t come well from my
daughter! And what do you know about such things? You are a little
goose, and that is all about it. Besides, what does it matter? We are
all going to Queensland--he, too. There will not be many grand houses,
or men in livery, you baby! to be found there.”

“Oh!” cried Janet, growing pale with disappointment and dismay; “but you
don’t think he will have to go there _now_?”

“Why not _now_? There is more reason than ever now, it appears to me.”

“Oh!” cried Janet again--that stock English monosyllable expressing a
whole gamut of dissatisfaction and surprise. “I thought that would only
be because he thought his people would object, and didn’t know what
we--I--would say. He would rather go than be separated--rather than
lose--us; it is easy to understand. But when he’s been and told, and
when his mother has come here, and when it’s all in the way of being
settled--Oh!” cried Janet again, with natural vehemence, “what in all
the world should he go for now? Would any one go that could help it? and
him that has everything he can set his face to, and sure to come into a
fortune, and all made easy for him. What in all the world should he go
for _now_?”

Spears stood and looked at her with a confusion that was almost
stupidity. He was indeed stupefied by this extraordinary speech. Was it
really what it seemed to be, a revelation of an unknown character, a new
creation altogether--or was it merely the silly babble of a child?

“My girl,” he said, with a tone of severity, yet still keeping the half
of his smile, so confused and uncertain was he, not knowing what to
think; “what is this you are saying? It is not like a child of mine.
What if I were to say--as I have a good right--he _shall_ come to
Queensland or he shall not have you?”

“You would not have any right to say such a thing,” said Janet, with
decision. “Don’t you tell us we’ve all got the right, both men and
girls, to do what is best for ourselves and to judge for ourselves? and
would you be the tyrant to take that from us? Oh, no, father, no! I
never would have said a word but for this. Many a one has said to me,
‘What are you going for? I wouldn’t go a step in your place. I’d take a
situation, and stay where all my friends are.’ That’s been said to
me--times and times; and I’ve always said ‘No. Where father goes I must
go.’ But, all the same, I always hated going. For one thing, I know I
should be ill all the way. I hate a ship; and I hate living in the
country, where you would never see so much as a street-lamp, nor hear
anything but cows mooing, and sheep baaing; but I would have gone and
never said a word. Only now,” cried Janet, with rising vehemence, “what
_would_ be the good of me going, or of _him_ going? If I was married I
shouldn’t be of no use to you; and what in all the world should take
_him_ there, if it wasn’t following after me?”

Her father stood and gazed at her stupefied. His very jaw dropped with
wonder. She had never made so long a speech in her life; but now that
she had spoken, it was all as clear, as definitely settled and arranged,
as pitiless in its reasonableness, as if, instead of a girl of twenty,
she had been a philosopher laying down the law. All her timidity was
gone. She looked him full in the face while she ended her lengthened
argument. As for Spears, the very power of speech seemed to be taken
from him. A sound like a laugh, harsh and jarring, came from him when
she ended.

“So that’s how it is?” he said, and turned and went back to his bench
like a man who did not know what he was doing. Janet was glad enough to
be thus released. She who had known her own sentiments all along was not
startled by them as he was; but she felt that it was best now she had
uttered them to let them have time and quiet to work their necessary
effect. She turned to the eight-day clock, which had been ticking
solemnly all this time in the corner, with a half shriek.

“Good gracious!” she cried, “it’s past nine, and me still here. Whatever
will Miss Stichel say?”




CHAPTER XV.


Lady Markham walked away quickly, tingling in every nerve. She felt
herself insulted and betrayed. She had gone to this poor man as if he
had been a gentleman, with full confidence in him, and he had not
justified her faith. A poor gentleman would have felt the impossibility,
would have seen that a girl of no importance, without money, or rank, or
connections, could not expect to marry Paul Markham, the heir of all the
family honours. A person of any cultivation would have felt this, had
there been the best blood in England in his veins. But this clown did
not feel it; this common workman, wood-carver, tradesman, he did not see
it. He ventured to look her in the face and tell her that they must make
up their minds to it.

Lady Markham was angry; she could not help it. And there was an
additional sting in the situation from the fact that she felt she had
brought it upon herself. She had taken an injudicious step. In her
desire to relieve her own mind, she had compromised Paul. Her own
alarms, her suspicion and doubt, had realised themselves. She blamed
Spears all the more bitterly that in her heart she wanted not to be
obliged to blame herself. But by and by the needle veered round to that
point of the moral compass which in a candid mind it is so ready to stop
at, self-accusation. Why did she give this man the occasion of insulting
her, and the girl the occasion of defying her? It was her own fault. She
ought not, above all, to have compromised her son. This became the most
terrible thought of all as she dwelt upon it. Instead of doing good she
had done harm; instead of relieving Paul from the influence of the
demagogue, she had riveted and strengthened his connection with the
demagogue’s family who were worse, much worse than himself. Was it
possible that Paul, _her_ son, the brother of Alice, could have chosen
from all the world such a girl as Janet Spears? Her heart thrilled with
the wonder of it, the disappointment of it. Was that all he could find
in woman? and she herself had helped to cement the tie between them.
How could she ever forgive herself? She walked along quickly, recovering
her outward composure, but more and more troubled in mind as she thought
upon what she had done. Why did she go? how, she asked herself, being,
like most women, ready to distrust herself and give in to the common
opinion on the subject whenever anything went wrong with her--how could
she forget that it was always dangerous for a woman to interfere? She
was in the very deepest of these painful thoughts, angry with herself,
and deeply distressed by the apparent consequences of her ill-advised
mission, when, turning the corner of the little street which brought her
into one of the larger thoroughfares, she suddenly, without any warning,
found herself face to face with Paul. The surprise was so great that she
had no time to put on any defences, to prepare for questions and
astonishment on his side. They met without a moment’s warning, the two
people who might have been supposed least likely to encounter each other
at such a time and place.

“Paul!” she cried, with a sensation of fright. And he stopped, looked at
her sternly, and cast a jealous inquiring look along the street by which
she had so evidently come.

“Mother! what are you doing here?” he said.

“I came out--to take a walk, as it was so fine a morning,” she said,
forcing a smile. Then Lady Markham came to herself and perceived the
folly of false pretences. “No--I will not try to deceive you, Paul. I
have been visiting Mr. Spears,” she said.

“Visiting Spears!”

“Yes; what is there wonderful in that?--you brought him to visit me.
Other people may blame me for it, but I don’t see how you can. I had a
kind of faith in him.”

“You _had_; has it been disappointed then, mother, your faith?”

“Yes,” she said with a sigh. “No doubt it was foolish. A man of his
class--must feel like his class no doubt. It was foolish on my part.”

“What was there,” said Paul, with a sort of contempt which he hid under
exaggerated politeness, “that Lady Markham could want with a man of his
class--with a demagogue and Radical?”

“Paul,” she said, her voice faltering a little, “it does not become you,
however wise and superior you may feel yourself, to assume this tone to
your mother. This is to change our positions altogether. I have done a
thing which has proved ill-advised and may turn out badly, but I did it
for the best. I will not hide it from you who are the chief person
concerned. I went to ask him to use his influence with you, my own
having failed, to induce you to think a little of your actual duties to
your family. He did not take the same view of it as I do, which perhaps
was natural; and I saw, though without wishing it,” she added, in a
still more tremulous tone, “the--young woman----”

“What young woman?” His voice was angry, almost threatening. He came a
step nearer, and stood over her with a cloud upon his face. “What young
woman is it? whom do you mean?”

“It is a poor thing to make a mystery of it when it has gone so far. I
confess my mistake, and why should you conceal your intentions on your
side? This can only have the effect of making everything worse. I was
made to see her against my will, and to hear from her own lips----”

“Mother!” cried Paul, violently, stopping her. Then he said,
endeavouring again to calm himself, “I have heard often that it is only
women who can be thoroughly cruel to other women.”

“Then you have heard what is false, Paul, what is entirely and cruelly
false; though you boys toss about such accusations at your pleasure,
insulting the women who bear with you, and suffer for you. I tell you
because I feel it would have been wiser had I taken no part in the
matter; had I kept away; said nothing, and done nothing.”

“And I tell you--” cried Paul, in vehement indignation; then he stopped
short and cried out with an anxious voice, “Mother, what is it you have
done?”

“Everything that is unwise,” she said. “I have been rebuffed by your
friend. I will tell you the truth, Paul. When he said that he had no
wish to have you as a fellow emigrant, I, in my folly, asked, Was it his
daughter? And she was not so reticent as you are. She owned that it was
so. She was more frank than you are; and to do him justice I will allow
that her father looked as much surprised as I.”

“She owned it was so!” Paul’s face became ghastly in the morning light.
Then after a minute’s blank silence, he said, with a harsh laugh,
“Surprised? Yes, her father might be surprised; but why you? You seem to
have been the only person who knew all about it, who had got it all cut
and dry to be produced at a moment’s notice. Oh, mother!” he cried,
bitterly, “your morning’s work will cost me dear--it will cost me dear!”

Lady Markham stood with bowed head to receive her son’s reproaches. “I
was wrong,” she said; “I was wrong. Oh, Paul, my dearest boy, come home
with me; let us talk it all over; let us think of everything! If you
knew how hard it is for me to oppose you! and all the more when your
heart is engaged. Am I one to set myself against love?” She blushed as
she looked at him with a woman’s reverence for the centre of all
affections, and a mother’s shamefacedness in opening such a subject with
her son. “But, Paul, there are so many things--oh, so many things to
think of! and you are so young--and----”

“Mother, stop!” he said, “your arguments have nothing to do with me;
they are wrong altogether. If my life is spoiled, it will be your doing;
not mine, but yours--not mine, but yours.”

Lady Markham lifted her head with the surprise and something of the
indignation of a person unjustly accused. “This is going too far,” she
said. “I have been wrong, but to throw the total blame upon me is
unreasonable. In this, as in other things, nobody could harm you; nobody
could make your position worse, if you had not risked and lost it
yourself.”

There were few passengers in the streets, silent and semi-deserted as
always in summer, and yet more because it was still so early. The two
figures which stood there together breaking the sunshine were almost the
only people visible, and the closeness of the discussion between them
had hitherto been witnessed by nobody; just at this point, however, some
one issued suddenly from the gate of one of the colleges near, and came
down the steps into the street. They were scared by the appearance of
any one in this dreary city, and it was not expedient that the warmth of
their conversation should be apparent to others.

“Walk along with me,” she said. “Do not let us stand here.”

Paul looked round him for a moment on either hand. On one side was the
narrow street in which Spears lived, the line of colleges and better
houses on the other. Lady Markham’s face was turned towards the better
side. This was enough to decide him, foolish as he was. He turned the
other way.

“What is the good of discussing--of talking over? All the harm is done
that can be done,” he said, with a wave of his hand. Then he crossed the
road quite suddenly, leaving his mother standing looking after him. Very
miserable was the young man as he went away. He went down Spears’
street, but he had no intention of going to see Spears. Everything
seemed, against him. The best thing for him to do, he thought, would be
to get out of sight of everybody--to fly from the evils of fate that
were gathering round his feet. What had he done to be caught like this
in a tangle which he had not himself sought, from which indeed he had
always done his best to keep free? It was no doing of his: chance and
his parents had done it, and the detestable conventionalities of
society, which made it impossible for a man to be civil to a girl out of
his own class without laying himself open to remark. If he had not met
her here, yesterday, so innocently, without premeditation! Already, by
the folly of everybody concerned, this girl had got to be _her_ to the
young man; no name needed to distinguish the creature in whose hands
some blind hazard seemed to have placed his life. Blind hazard--aided by
his father and mother. How bitter were his thoughts as he went on. What
was he to do? She had owned to it. Half he hated her for being so
foolishly deceived, half his heart melted to her for the deception which
only some latent tenderness could have produced. Must he wring the
girl’s heart by making it all plain to her, and humble her in her own
eyes? or must he accept a position he had not sought, which he no more
desired than they desired it, and of which he saw all the
inappropriateness, all the disadvantages? As he went on with that cruel
question in his mind, there rose out of the morning air, appearing not
much less suddenly than his mother had done, running towards him, the
figure of the girl of whom he was thinking. To Paul it was as if his
thoughts had taken shape. She came towards him, not seeing him, with all
the ease of motion which unconsciousness gives--tall and graceful in her
plain black gown. The girl’s head was full of a subdued triumph, but for
the moment all she was consciously thinking of was how to get to her
shop as quickly as possible. She ran like another Atalanta, skimming
along the unlovely street, her feet scarcely seeming to touch the
ground. This sudden apparition filled Paul with excitement. She had
changed to him altogether since yesterday, when she was nothing but
Spears’ daughter. Now she was suddenly identified, separated from all
the world, and become herself. How could he help but be interested in
her? She had owned to it. To what had she owned? It seemed for the
moment almost a relief, bitterly as he resented her introduction into
his life, to turn to her, who knew none of the complications involved,
who was unaware of his fury and indignation against everybody round
him--to turn to her, whose mind must be entirely single and simple, torn
by no conflict. He did not know why he wanted to speak to her, what he
wanted to say to her; but he stepped into her way with a certain
imperiousness, making her stop short in her rapid career. Janet, thus
arrested, gave a sudden cry. She stopped, the breath coming quick on her
lips, and put her hand to her breast; her heart gave a sudden leap, the
colour flew over her face in a sudden wave of crimson.

“Oh, Mr. Markham!” she said.

“Where are you going so fast?” Somehow it seemed to him, with a
half-consolatory sense of proprietorship, that here was a creature who
belonged to him, who would find no fault with him as the others did,
who was his. He put himself in her way, stopping her--not as if by
accident, but of set purpose--assuming the right which she for her part
never resisted. There were troubles and difficulties with every one
else; but with her no difficulties, no troubles. She acknowledged his
sway at once, stopped herself, blushed, and drooped her head. There was
no question of approving or disapproving here. She answered his voice
instantly, like a slave. There are many people who only see a thing in
its best aspect when it becomes their own. For the moment Paul Markham
became one of those. He had never thought her so handsome before;
perhaps indeed in all her life she had never been so handsome as when
she stopped all blushing and glowing at his call, acknowledging in her
every look the proprietorship which it gave him a sort of pleasure to
claim. “Where are you going so fast?” he said.

“Oh, Mr. Markham, I am in a great hurry! I don’t know what Miss Stichel
will say: I never was so late before in my life!”

“What has kept you so late?”

He was far more imperious in his tone than he had ever been when she
was nothing to him. Then he had been courtly and polite, frightening the
girl with a courtesy which she did not understand. She liked this
roughness much better. It meant--it would be impossible to tell all it
meant.

“I was kept by--visitors. Oh, Mr. Markham! don’t keep me any longer now.
I don’t know what Miss Stichel will say to me. She will be so angry.”

“She must not be angry. How does she dare to show her anger to you? You
had visitors. I know: my mother.”

“Oh, Mr. Markham!” Janet said again, faintly, drooping her head; and
then there was a momentary pause.

“I know,” he said.

He did not know, and could not tell afterwards by what impulse he did
it. Some infatuation took possession of him. He took her hand in the
middle of the street, in sight of any one that might be looking. There
was nobody looking, which vexed Janet, but he did it without thought of
that. It would have made no difference if all the world had been there.

“That is how it is, I suppose,” he said, holding her hand. And then he
added, somewhat drearily, “If there is anything wrong in it, it is
their own doing, there is always that to be said.”

This somewhat chilled Janet, who expected a warmer address; but she
reflected that the street was scarcely a place for love-making; and Miss
Stichel, though not so important as usual, had still to be considered.

“Let me go, please, Mr. Markham,” she said; “I mustn’t be late: for
whatever may happen afterwards I am still their servant at the shop.”

He dropped her hand as if it burnt him, and grew red with anger and
uneasy shame.

“This must not be,” he said. “I will go and speak to Spears.”

Though he was so firm in his democratic principles, the idea that any
one connected with himself should be under the orders of a mistress
galled him beyond bearing. It was a thing that could not be.

“It will not be for long,” Janet said, cheerfully.

She, for her part, rather liked the shop. It was more cheerful than the
other shop which was home.

“I cannot suffer it,” he said, “for another day. I will speak to
Spears.”

This was all he said, but he kept standing there looking at her with
eyes which were more investigating than admiring. If he had nothing more
to say than this, why should he keep her standing there and expose her
to Miss Stichel’s scolding? But she did not like to burst away as she
would have done from a less stately wooer. She was much intimidated by a
lover like Paul, though very proud of him. She stood with her eyes cast
down, waiting till he should let her go free. The thing that would have
made Janet most happy would have been that he should walk to the shop
with her, showing that he was not ashamed of her, and give her the pride
and glory of being seen by the other young ladies in company with the
gentleman she was going to marry, the gentleman who had vowed that she
should not remain there--not another day. This would have been the
natural thing to do, Janet thought. But it did not seem to occur to Paul
in the same light. He looked at her, examining her appearance with
anxious and critical, yet with very sober and calm inspection. They were
neither of them so happily fluttered, so excited as they might have
been. She was not exacting, did not ask too much; and he was critical
with the discrimination of a superior, a judge whose powers of judgment
were biassed by no glamour of partiality.

“We shall see each other later in the evening. I will not detain you
longer,” he said, in a tone of gentle politeness.

He even gave a little sigh of relief as he turned away. Janet, not
knowing whether she was more sorry or glad to be liberated, cast more
than one furtive glance behind her at his departing figure. But it did
not seem to have occurred to Paul to look after her. He walked on
stately and straight, turning neither to one side nor the other, towards
Spears’s shop. He had not meant to go, but neither had he intended any
of the other things that had come to pass. Fate seemed to have got
possession of him. He walked into the shop with the same straightforward
steady tread, not as usual, that was impossible. Most likely there would
have to be something said--but for that, too, he felt himself ready, if
need were.

Spears was no longer working at the simple work of his picture-frames.
He had thrown them into a heap--all the little bits of carved work which
he had been glueing and fitting into each other--and with a large sheet
of paper on the table before him was drawing with much intentness and
preoccupation. He had set the plume of the foxglove upright before him,
and was bending his brows and contorting both limbs and features over
his drawing as he had done over the lily he had designed for Alice. The
handful of coloured gladiolus which had been lying on the table he had
pushed impatiently aside, and they lay at his feet, here and there,
scattered under the table and about the floor like things rejected,
while he drew in the foxglove boldly with a blue pencil. All his soul
seemed to be in his drawing. He scarcely took any notice of Paul--a half
glance up, a hurried nod, and that was all. Presently, however, he took
up one of the gladiolus stalks and laid it tentatively across the
foxglove; then with a pshaw! of angry impatience tossed it away again.

“That won’t do,” he said, half to himself, “none o’ that. Nature will
not stand it. The free-growing, wild thing is grand, but that poor
stiff, conventional rubbish, manufactured out of some gardener’s brains,
out of his bad dreams, is good for nothing; and it’s everywhere the
same, so far as I can see. Things must be wedded after their kind.”

“Do you mean that for me, Spears?”

“Do I mean that for you? Which are you? the grand tower of the foxglove
that’s good for everything--strength and continuance and beauty--or that
poor spiky trash? I don’t know. I mean nothing that I don’t understand.”

Then there was silence once more. Paul took up some of the bits of
uncompleted work and fixed them together. He would not open the subject,
but he knew Spears well enough to know that it must have been some great
agitation which had driven him away from his pot-boiling to the work of
designing. That was not a work that would ever “pay.” The frames
answered the purpose of daily bread; but the designs into which all the
rude artist’s soul was thrown were not profitable. A few of the young
men who were his friends had bought some plaques and panels of his finer
original work; but such purchasers were few and far between; and to
spend a whole morning making a design for one of these delicate
unprofitable carvings showed that the workman had certainly for the
moment lost command of himself.

After a few minutes, during which he measured the little lathes together
and fitted them carelessly, Paul went quietly to the back of the room,
and taking an old coat which hung there put it on and sat down to do
the work which the other had left undone. This was not a kind of work he
had ever attempted before. He had been a student of carving, not because
of any natural impulse towards the art, but partly for Spears’s company,
partly in order to be able to aid in some small way his struggle for a
living. This eventful morning brought him a new impulse. While his
master laboured impetuously at his drawing, Paul took the humbler work
in hand. After all the distraction that had been in his mind, there was
something in this homely effort that soothed him. Cast upon it on all
hands, in all ways, it was a sort of relief to him to identify himself
altogether with this other sphere, which he had chosen and sought out,
yet into which he had never cast himself so completely, so fully, as his
own family had cast him. He smiled at this within himself, as he began
to work at Spears’s everyday vulgar work. Well! if they would have it
so, so be it! He had played with the notion of equality, of democratic
simplicity, with the doctrine that it was every man’s duty to earn his
own living, and give up to humanity the full enjoyment of the land and
accumulations of money, which no individual had a right to retain. All
this he had held hotly in theory; but in the meantime had lived in his
college rooms, and according to his natural position--an anomaly which
only now appeared to him in its full vividness. Yes, now he saw it. He
smiled to himself, no longer with bitterness, with a lofty disdain of
his own past, of all his traditions, of his family, which by way of
opposition and resistance to his purpose and principles had pushed him
over the verge on which he had been hesitating. Perhaps but for them he
might still have hesitated before he took the final step. It was they
who had decided it, who had given him the last impulse. He smiled with a
sense of the weakness of efforts which thus naturally balked themselves,
feeling superior in his calm certainty of decision to all these
agitations. Yes, it was over; there was no longer any question of what
might or might not be. His fate was settled; he was a member of Spears’s
family, not of Sir William Markham’s. That sense of calm which follows a
great decision, and at the same time of proud resignation which succeeds
a sacrifice exacted, calmed his mind. Somehow, Paul could not have told
how, he felt himself a sort of sacrificial offering to justice and
nature, making the most eloquent of protests against wrong, tyranny,
injustice, and everything that was evil in society. With the dignity of
a noble victim, and with a consciousness of innate, inborn, but most
illogical superiority to fate, he drew the glue-pot and the tools
towards him, and began to do the workman’s work. Nothing could have been
more illogical; for the superiority of labour was one of the first
principles of his creed, and to make pictures-frames was a respectable
occupation by which a man might live. Yet it was with a smile of
unspeakable superiority that he began his first day’s real work,
enjoying the sensation of voluntary humility, of doing what it was
beneath him to do.

Thus they went on in silence for some time: Paul working clumsily
enough, with a sense of the humour implied in his adoption of the trade,
which made it amusing in its novelty and inappropriateness, but which
was most unlike the steady devotion of a man who felt this work to be
his duty; while Spears pursued his with a fury of invention which
denoted the perturbation of his mind. He flung the drooping bells of the
foxglove upon his paper and erected its splendid stalk with an energy
and force which was like a defiance, holding the somewhat coarse blue
pencil in his hand like a sword, screwing his mouth and putting his
limbs into every contortion possible, as he sat, with his stool pushed
as far as might be from the table, and all the upper part of his person
overhanging it. If it had been an eagle or a lion he was drawing the
force and expression of his whole figure would have been more
appropriate. As it was, the foxglove bristled with a kind of scornful
defiance, yet drooped with something of melancholy, as an eagle might
have done in all its pride of strength, yet with the pathos of all
speechless creatures in its eyes. In this particular, though he was an
actor, he was speechless as the eagle or the wildly noble flower. He had
seen a sight which had taken all speech out of him, as it might have
done from Shakespeare. He had seen a something unknown, a small, vulgar,
incomprehensible spirit, to him unrecognisable, a thing out of his
cognisance, looking at him through the eyes of his child. What could he
say to such a revelation? Nothing. It took his voice from him and almost
his breath. He had not been able to endure the placid work which left
him free for thought. Say that his designing did not reach a very
ethereal point of art; but it was the highest exercise of skill to him.
He flung himself upon the paper, thrusting away all the painful
enlightenments and contradictions of his life as he thrust away the
gay-coloured spike of the gladiolus. He would have crushed them under
foot if he had been able, but this he could not do. They would not
disappear from his memory as the others did from his table. Thus he
worked on, with a fervour which was almost savage, while Paul, with a
proud smile on his face, handled the glue-pot. After a while the mere
sense of companionship mollified the elder man. He was wounded, and
wanted just such soothing as the sight of his disciple sitting quietly
by gave him. His work grew less firm, his hand less rigid; the great
pencil ceased to dig into the paper with its violent lines. Insensibly
the softening went on. First, he threw a hasty glance from beneath his
bushy eyebrows at the young man tranquilly seated near him. Then his
fiery inspiration slackened; he paused to look at his model, to devise
the next line, and doing so let his eyes rest upon Paul with a growing
softness. At last he got up, threw down his pencil, and coming up to his
companion struck him on the shoulder.

“Well!” he said. “Boy! So that was how it was. You listened to the
father--old fool! but your thoughts were with the girl. That was how it
was.” This was not the thing that gnawed at Spears’s heart, but he put
it forward by way perhaps of persuading himself, as we all do
sometimes, that it was the lesser matter that hurt him most.

Paul paused in his work, and looked up. His face was very serious, with
none of that glow of happiness in it which belongs to an accepted
lover--as the man beside him, who had been a true lover himself, was
quick to see.

“Who said that? Not I, Spears--not I.”

“Who said it? Well, I cannot tell you. The women among them; they have
their own way of looking at things.”

And then the two men paused, looking at each other. This was the moment
in which it was natural that Janet’s lover should make his own
explanation to the father of the girl whom he loved. The whole life of
two people at least, and of many more in a secondary point of view, hung
upon Paul’s lips, to be decided by the next impulse that might move him,
by the next fantastic words which, out of the mist of unreal fact in
which he had got himself enveloped, he might be moved to say.

                            END OF VOL. I.

             LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.



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