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LAND AT LAST.

A Novel.



BY
EDMUND YATES,
AUTHOR OF "FORLORN HOPE," "BLACK SHEEP," "RUNNING THE GAUNTLET,"
ETC., ETC.



"Post tenebras lux."



THIRD EDITION.




LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1868.






CONTENTS.


BOOK I.

        I. IN THE STREETS.
       II. THE BRETHREN OF THE BRUSH.
      III. BLOTTED OUT.
       IV. ON THE DOORSTEP.
        V. THE LETTER.
       VI. THE FIRST VISIT.
      VII. CHEZ POTTS.
     VIII. THROWING THE FLY.
       IX. SUNSHINE IN THE SHADE.
        X. YOUR WILLIAM.
       XI. PLAYING THE FISH.
      XII. UNDER THE HARROW.
     XIII. AT THE PRIVATE VIEW.
      XIV. THOSE TWAIN ONE FLESH.


BOOK II.

        I. NEW RELATIONS.
       II. MARGARET.
      III. ANNIE.
       IV. ALGY BARFORD'S NEWS.
        V. SETTLING DOWN.
       VI. AT HOME.
      VII. WHAT THEIR FRIENDS THOUGHT.
     VIII. MARGARET AND ANNIE.
       IX. MR. AMPTHILL'S WILL.
        X. LADY BEAUPORT'S PLOT.
       XI. CONJECTURES.
      XII. GATHERING CLOUDS.
     XIII. MR. STOMPFF'S DOUBTS.
      XIV. THREATENING.
       XV. LADY BEAUFORT'S PLOT COLLAPSES.


BOOK III.

        I. THE WHOLE TRUTH.
       II. THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL.
      III. GONE TO HIS REST.
       IV. THE PROTRACTED SEARCH.
        V. DISMAY.
       VI. A CLUE.
      VII. TRACKED.
     VIII. IN THE DEEP SHADOW.
       IX. CLOSING IN.
        X. AFTER THE WRECK.
       XI. LAND AT LAST.






LAND AT LAST.





Book the First.




CHAPTER I.
IN THE STREETS.


It was between nine and ten oclock on a January night, and the London
streets were in a state of slush. During the previous night snow had
fallen heavily, and the respectable portion of the community, which,
according to regular custom, had retired to bed at eleven oclock,
had been astonished, on peering out from behind a corner of the
window-curtain when they arose, to find the roads and the neighbouring
housetops covered with a thick white incrustation. The pavements
were already showing dank dabs of footmarks, which even the snow
then falling failed to fill up; and the roadway speedily lost its
winter-garment and became sticky with congealed mud. Then the snow
ceased, and a sickly straggling bit of winter-sunlight, a mere parody
on the real thing, half light and half warmth, came lurking out between
the dun clouds; and under its influence the black-specked covering of
the roofs melted, and the water-pipes ran with cold black liquid filth.
The pavement had given it up long ago, and resumed its normal winter
state of sticky slippery grease--grease which clung to the boots and
roused the wildest rage of foot-passengers by causing them to slip
backward when they wanted to make progress, and which accumulated
in the direst manner on the landing-places and street corners,--the
first bits of refuge after the perils of the crossing,--where it
heaped itself in aggravating lumps and shiny rings under the heels of
foot passengers just arrived, having been shaken and stamped off the
soles of passengers who had just preceded them. So it had continued
all day; but towards the afternoon the air had grown colder, and a
whisper had run round that it froze again. Cutlers who had been gazing
with a melancholy air on the placards "Skates" in their window, and
had determined on removing them, as a bad joke against themselves,
decided on letting them remain. Boys who had been delighted in the
morning at the sight of the snow, and proportionately chopfallen
towards middle-day at the sight of the thaw, had plucked up again and
seen visions of snowballing matches, slides on the gutters, and, most
delicious of all, omnibus-horses both down at once on the slippery
road. Homeward-bound City-clerks, their day's work over, shivered in
the omnibuses, and told each other how they were afraid it had come at
last, and reminded each other of what the newspapers had said about
the flocks of wild-geese and other signs of a hard winter, and moaned
lugubriously about the advanced price of coals and the difficulties of
locomotion certain to be consequent on the frost.

But when the cruel black night had set regularly in, a dim sleek soft
drizzle began to fall, and all hopes or fears of frost were at an end.
Slowly and gently it came down, wrapping the streets as with a damp
pall; stealing quietly in under umbrellas; eating its way through the
thickest broadcloth, matting the hair and hanging in dank, unwholesome
beads on the beards of all unlucky enough to be exposed to it. It
meant mischief, this drizzle, and it carried out its intention.
Omnibus-drivers and cabmen knew it at once from long experience, donned
their heavy tarpaulin-capes, and made up their minds for the worst.
The professional beggars knew it too. The pavement-chalking tramp, who
had selected a tolerably dry spot under the lee of a wall, no sooner
felt its first damp breath than he blew out his paper-lantern, put the
candle into his pocket, stamped out as much of the mackerel and the
ship at sea as he had already stencilled, and made off. The man in
the exemplary shirt-collar and apron, who had planted himself before
the chemist's window to procure an extra death-tinge from the light
reflected from the blue bottle, packed up his linen and decamped,
fearing lest his stock-in-trade--his virtue and his lucifers--might be
injured by damp. The brass bands which had been playing outside the
public-houses shouldered their instruments and went inside; the vendors
of secondhand books covered their openly-displayed stock with strips of
baize and dismissed their watchful boys, conscious that no petty thief
would risk the weather for so small a prey. The hot-potato men blew
fiercer jets of steam out of their tin kitchens, as though calling on
the public to defy dull care and comfort themselves with an antidote to
the general wretchedness; and the policemen stamped solemnly and slowly
round their beats, as men impressed with the full knowledge that, as
there was not the remotest chance of their being relieved from their
miserable fate until the morning, they might as well bear themselves
with as much dignity as possible under the circumstances.

It was bad everywhere; but in no place at the West-end of London was
it so bad as at the Regent Circus. There the great tide of humanity
had been ebbing and flowing all day; there hapless females in shoals
had struggled across the roaring sea of Oxford Street, some conveyed
by the crossing-sweeper, some drifting helplessly under the poles of
omnibuses and the wheels of hansom cabs. There the umbrellas of the
expectant omnibus-seekers jostled each other with extra virulence;
and there the edges of the pavements were thick with dark alluvial
deposits kicked hither and thither by the feet of thousands. All day
there had been a bustle and a roar round this spot; and at ten o'clock
at night it had but little diminished. Omnibus-conductors, like kites
and vultures, clawed and wrangled over the bodies of their victims, who
in a miserable little flock huddled together in a corner, and dashed
out helplessly and without purpose as each lumbering vehicle drew
up. Intermingled with these were several vagabond boys, whose animal
spirits no amount of wet or misery could quell, and who constituted
themselves a kind of vedette or outpost-guard, giving warning of the
approach of the different omnibuses in much pleasantly familiar speech,
"Now, guv'nor, for Bayswater! Hatlas comin' up! Ready now for Nottin'
'Ill!"

At the back of the little crowd, sheltering herself under the lee of
the houses, stood a slight female figure, a mere slight slip of a
girl, dressed only in a clinging gown and a miserable tightly-drawn
shawl. Her worn bonnet was pulled over her face, her arms were
clasped before her, and she stood in a doorway almost motionless. The
policeman tramping leisurely by had at first imagined her to be an
omnibus-passenger waiting for a vehicle; but some twenty minutes after
he had first noticed her, finding her still in the same position,
he took advantage of a pretended trial of the security of various
street-doors to scrutinise her appearance. To the man versed in such
matters the miserable garb told its own tale--its wearer was a pauper;
and a beggar the man in office surmised, although the girl had made no
plaint, had uttered no word, had remained immovable and statue-like,
gazing blankly before her. The policeman had been long enough in the
force to know that the girl's presence in the doorway was an offence
in the eyes of the law; but he was a kindly-hearted Somersetshire man,
and he performed his duty in as pleasant a way as he could, by gently
pulling a corner of the drabbled shawl, and saying, "You musn't stand
here, lass; you must move on, please." The shawl-wearer never looked up
or spoke but shivering slightly, stepped out into the dank mist, and
floated, phantom-like, across the road.

Gliding up the upper part of Regent Street, keeping close to the
houses, and walking with her head bent down and her arms always folded
tightly across her breast, she struck off into a bystreet to the right,
and, crossing Oxford Market, seemed hesitating which way to turn. For
an instant she stopped before the window of an eating-house, where
thick columns of steam were yet playing round the attenuated remains
of joints, or casting a greasy halo round slabs of pudding. As the
girl gazed at these wretched remnants of a wretched feast, she raised
her head, her eyes glistened, her pinched nostrils dilated, and for an
instant her breath came thick and fast; then, drawing her shawl more
tightly round her, and bending her head to avoid as much as possible
the rain, which came thickly scudding on the rising wind, she hurried
on, and only stopped for shelter under the outstretched blind of a
little chandler's shop--a wretched shelter, for the blind was soaked
through, and the rain dripped from it in little pools, and the wind
shook it in its frame, and eddied underneath it with a wet and gusty
whirl; but there was something of comfort to the girl in the warm look
of the gaslit shop, in the smug rotund appearance of the chandler,
in the distant glimmer of the fire on the glazed door of the parlour
at the back. Staring vacantly before him while mechanically patting
a conical lump of lard, not unlike the bald cranium of an elderly
gentleman, the chandler became aware of the girl's face at the window;
and seeing Want legibly inscribed by Nature's never-erring hand on
every feature of that face, and being a humane man, he was groping in
the till for some small coin to bestow in charity, when from the back
room came a sharp shrill voice, "Jim, time to shut up!" and at the
sound of the voice the chandler hastily retreated, and, a small boy
suddenly appearing, pulled up the overhanging blind, and having lost
its shelter, the girl set forth again.

But her course was nearly at an end. To avoid a troop of boys who,
arm-in-arm, came breasting up the street singing the burden of a
negro-song, she turned off again into the main thoroughfare, and had
barely gained the broad shadow of the sharp-steepled church in Langham
Place, when she felt her legs sinking under her, her brain reeling,
her heart throbbing in her breast like a ball of fire. She tottered
and clung to the church-railing for support. In the next instant she
was surrounded by a little crowd, in which she had a vision of painted
faces and glistening silks, a dream of faint words of commiseration
overborne by mocking laughter and ribald oaths, oaths made more fearful
still by being uttered in foreign accents, of bitter jests and broad
hints of drunkenness and shame; finally, of the strident voice of
the policeman telling her again to "move on!" The dead faintness,
consequent on cold and wet and weariness and starvation, passed away
for the time, and she obeyed the mandate. Passively she crept away a
few steps up a deserted bystreet until her tormentors had left her
quite alone; then she sunk down, shivering, on a doorstep, and burying
her face in her tattered shawl, felt that her end was come.

There she remained, the dead damp cold striking through her lower
limbs and chilling them to stone, while her head was one blazing
fire. Gradually her limbs became numbed and lost to all sensation, a
sickening empty pain was round her heart, a dead apathy settling down
over her mind and brain. The tramping of feet was close upon her, the
noise of loud voices, the ringing shouts of loud laughter, were in her
ears; but she never raised her head from the tattered shawl, nor by
speech or motion did she give the smallest sign of life. Men passed her
constantly, all making for one goal, the portico next to that in which
she had sunk down helpless--men with kindly hearts attuned to charity,
who, had they known the state of the wretched wayfarer, would have
exerted themselves bravely in her succour, but whom a London life had
so inured to spectacles of casual misery and vice, that a few only cast
a passing glance on the stricken woman and passed on. They came singly
and in twos and threes; but none spoke to her, none noticed her save by
a glance and a shoulder shrug.

Then, as the icy hands of Cold and Want gradually stealing over her
seemed to settle round the region of her heart, the girl gave one low
faint cry, "God help me! it's come at last--God help me!" and fell back
in a dead swoon.




CHAPTER II.
THE BRETHREN OF THE BRUSH.


The house to which all the jovial fellows who passed the girl on the
doorstep with such carelessness were wending their way was almost
unique in the metropolis. The rumour ran that it had originally
been designed for stables, and indeed there was a certain mews-ish
appearance about its architectural elevation; it had the squat,
squabby, square look of those buildings from whose upper-floors
clothes-lines stretch diagonally across stable-yards; and you were at
first surprised at finding an imposing portico with an imposing bell
in a position where you looked for the folding-doors of a coach-house.
Whether there had been any truth in the report or not, it is certain
that the owner of the property speedily saw his way to more money
than he could have gained by the ignoble pursuit of stabling horses,
and made alterations in his building, which converted it into several
sets of spacious, roomy, and comfortable, if not elegant chambers. The
upper rooms were duly let, and speedily became famous--thus-wise. When
Parmegiano Wilkins made his first great success with his picture of
"Boadicea at Breakfast,"--connoisseurs and art-critics will recollect
the marvellous manner in which the chip in the porridge of the Queen
of the Iceni was rendered,--Mr. Caniche, the great picture-dealer, to
whom Wilkins had mortgaged himself body and soul for three years, felt
it necessary that his next works should be submitted to the private
inspection of the newspaper-writers and the _cognoscenti_ previous
to their going into the Academy Exhibition. On receiving a letter
to this effect from Caniche, Wilkins was at his wits' end. He was
living, for privacy's sake, in a little cottage on the outskirts of
Epping Forest, and having made a success, had naturally alienated all
his friends whose rooms in town would otherwise have been available
for the display of his pictures; he thought--and there the astute
picture-dealer agreed with him--that it would be unwise to send them
to Caniche's shop (it was before such places were called "galleries"),
as tending to make public the connection between them; and Wilkins did
not know what to do. Then Caniche came to his rescue. Little Jimmy
Dabb, who had been Gold-Medallist and Travelling-Student at the Academy
three years beforehand, and who, for sheer sake of bread-winning, had
settled down as one of Caniche's Labourers, had a big studio in the
stable-like edifice near Langham Church. In it he painted those bits
of domestic life,--dying children on beds, weeping mothers, small
table with cut-orange, Bible and physic by bedside, and pitying angel
dimly hovering between mantelpiece and ceiling,--which, originally
in oil, and subsequently in engravings, had such a vast sale, and
brought so much ready money to Caniche's exchequer. The situation was
central; why not utilise it? No sooner thought of than done: a red
cotton-velvet coverlet was spread over Jimmy Dabb's bed in the corner;
a Dutch carpet, red with black flecks, was, at Caniche's expense,
spread over the floor, paint-smeared and burnt with tobacco-ash; two
gorgeous easels, on which were displayed Wilkins's two pictures, "The
Bird in the Hand"--every feather in the bird and the dirt in the
nails of the ploughboy's hand marvellously delineated--and "Crumbs of
Comfort," each crumb separate, and the loaf in the background so real,
that the Dowager-Countess of Rundall, a celebrated household manager,
declared it at once to be a "slack-baked quartern." Invitation-cards,
wonderfully illuminated in Old-English characters, and utterly
illegible, were sent forth to rank, fashion, and talent, who duly
attended. Crowds of gay carriages choked up the little street: Dabb
in his Sunday-clothes did the honours; Caniche, bland, smiling, and
polyglot, flitted here and there, his clerk took down orders for
proof copies, and the fortune of the chambers was made. They were so
original, so artistic, so convenient, they were just the place for a
painter. Smudge, R.A., who painted portraits of the aristocracy, who
wore a velvet-coat, and whose name was seen in the tail-end of the list
of fashionables at evening-parties, took a vacant set at once; and
Clement Walkinshaw of the Foreign Office, who passed such spare time
as his country could afford him in illuminating missals, in preparing
designs for stained glass, and in hanging about art-circles generally,
secured the remainder of the upper-floor, and converted it into a
Wardour-Street Paradise, with hanging velvet _portières_, old oak
cabinets, Venetian-glass, marqueterie tables, Sèvres china, escutcheons
of armour, and Viennese porcelain pipes.

Meanwhile, utterly uncaring for and utterly independent of what went
on upstairs, the denizens of the lower story kept quietly on. Who
were the denizens of the lower story? who but the well-known Titian
Sketching-Club! How many men who, after struggling through Suffolk
Street and the Portland Gallery, have won their way to fame and
fortune, have made their _coup d'essai_ on the walls of the chambers
rented by the Titian Sketching-Club! Outsiders, who professed great
love for art, but who only knew the two or three exhibitions of the
season and only recognised the score of names in each vouchsafed for
by the newspaper-critics, would have been astonished to learn the
amount of canvas covered, pains taken, and skill brought to bear upon
the work of the Members of the Titian. There are guilds, and companies
of Freemasons, and brotherhoods by the score in London; but I know
of none where the grand spirit of Camaraderie is so carried out as
in this. It is the nearest thing to the _Vie de Bohème_ of Paris of
Henri Murger that we can show; there is more liberty of speech and
thought and action, less reticence, more friendship,--when friendship
is understood by purse-sharing, by sick-bedside-watching, by absence of
envy, jealousy, hatred, and all uncharitableness,--more singleness of
purpose, more contempt for shams and impostures and the dismal fetters
of conventionality, than in any other circle of English Society with
which I am acquainted.

It was a grand night with the Titians; no model was carefully posed
on the "throne" that evening; no intelligent class was grouped round
on the rising benches, copying from the "draped" or the "nude;"
none of the wardrobe or properties of the club (and it is rich in
both),--none of the coats of mail or suits of armour, hauberks and
broadswords, buff boots, dinted breastplates, carved ebony crucifixes,
ivory-hafted daggers, Louis-Onze caps, friars' gowns and rosaries, nor
other portions of the stock-in-trade, were on view. The "sending-in"
day for the approaching Exhibition of the British Institution was at
hand; and the discoloured smoky old walls of the Titians, the rickety
easels piled round the room, all available ledges and nooks, were
covered with the works of the members of the club, which they fully
intended to submit for exhibition. A very Babel, in a thick fog of
tobacco-smoke, through which loomed the red face of Flexor the famous
model, like the sun in November, greeted you on your entrance. Flexor
pretended to take the hats, but the visitors seemed to know him too
well, and contented themselves with nodding at him in a friendly
manner, and retaining their property. Then you passed into the rooms,
where you found yourself wedged up amongst a crowd of perhaps the most
extraordinary-looking beings you ever encountered. Little men with big
heads and long beards, big men with bald heads and shaved cheeks, and
enormous moustaches and glowering spectacles; tall thin straggling men,
who seemed all profile, and whose full face you could never catch;
dirty shaggy little men, with heads of hair like red mops, and no
apparent faces underneath, whose eyes flashed through their elf-locks,
and who were explaining their pictures with singular pantomimic power
of their sinewy hands, and notably of their ever-flashing thumbs;
moon-faced solemn didactic men prosing away on their views of art to
dreary discontented listeners; and foppish, smart little fellows,
standing a-tiptoe to get particular lights, shading their eyes with
their hands, and backing against the company generally. Moving here
and there among the guests was the Titians' president, honest old Tom
Wrigley, who had been "at it," as he used to say, for thirty years;
without making any great mark in his profession, but who was cordially
beloved for his kind-heartedness and _bonhomie_, and who had a word and
a joke for all. As he elbowed his way through the room he spoke right
and left.

"Hallo, Tom Rogers!--hallo, Tom! That's an improvement, Tom, my boy!
Got rid of the heavy browns, eh? weren't good, those heavy browns;
specially for a Venetian atmosphere, eh, Tom? Much better, this.--How
are you, Jukes? Old story, Jukes?--hen and chickens, ducks in the pond,
horse looking over the gate? Quite right, Jukes; stick to that, if it
pays. Much better than the death of J. Caesar on a twenty-foot canvas,
which nobody would be fool enough to buy. Stick to the ducks, Jukes,
old fellow.--What's the matter, George? Why so savage, my son?"

"Here's Scumble!" said the young man addressed, in an undertone.

"And what of that, George? Mr. Scumble is a Royal Academician, it
is true; and consequently a mark for your scorn and hatred, George.
But it's not _his_ fault; he never did anything to aspire to such a
dignity. It's your British public, George, which is such an insensate
jackass as to buy Scumble's pictures, and to tell him he's a genius."

"He was on the Hanging-Committee last year, and--"

"Ah, so he was; and your 'Aristides' was kicked out, and so was my
'Hope Deferred,' which was a deuced sight better than your big picture,
Master George; but see how I shall treat him.--How do you do, Mr.
Scumble? You're very welcome here, sir."

Mr. Scumble, R.A., who had a head like a tin-loaf, and a face without
any earthly expression, bowed his acknowledgments and threw as much
warmth into his manner as he possibly could, apparently labouring
under a notion that he was marked out for speedy assassination. "This
is indeed a char-ming collection! Great talent among the ri-sing men,
Mr.--pardon me--President! This now, for instance, a most charming
landscape!"

"Yes, old boy; you may say that," said a square-built man smoking
a clay-pipe, and leaning with his elbows on the easel on which the
picture was placed. "I mean the real thing,--not this; which ain't bad
though, is it? Not that I should say so; 'cause for why; which I did
it!" and here the square-built man removed one of his elbows from the
easel, and dug it into the sacred ribs of Scumble, R.A.

"Bad, sir!" said Scumble, recoiling from the thrust, and still with
the notion of a secret dagger hidden behind the square-built man's
waistcoat; "it's magnificent, superb, Mr.----!"

"Meaning me? Potts!" said the square-built man "Charley Potts, artist,
U.E., or unsuccessful exhibitor at every daub-show in London. That's
the Via Mala, that is. I was there last autumn with Geoffrey Ludlow
and Tom Bleistift. 'Show me a finer view than that,' I said to those
fellows, when it burst upon us. 'If you'd a Scotchman with you,' said
Tom, 'he'd say it wasn't so fine as the approach to Edinburgh.' 'Would
he?'said I. 'If he said anything of that sort, I'd show him that view,
and--and rub his nose in it!'"

Mr. Scumble, R.A., smiled in a sickly manner, bowed feebly, and passed
on. Old Tom Wrigley laughed a great boisterous "Ha, ha!" and went
on his way. Charley Potts remained before his picture, turning his
back on it, and puffing out great volumes of smoke. He seemed to know
everybody in the room, and to be known to and greeted by most of them.
Some slapped him on the back, some poked him in the ribs, others laid
their forefingers alongside their noses and winked; but all called him
"Charley," and all had some pleasant word for him; and to all he had
something to say in return.

"Hallo, Fred Snitterfield!" he called out to a fat man in a suit of
shepherd's-plaid dittoes. "Halloa, Fred! how's your brother Bill?
What's he been doing? Not here to-night, of course?"

"No; he wasn't very well," said the man addressed. "He's got--"

"Yes, yes; I know, Fred!" said Charley Potts. "Wife won't let him!
That's it, isn't it, old boy? He only dined out once in his life
without leave, and then he sent home a telegram to say he was engaged;
and when his wife received the telegram she would not believe it,
because she said it wasn't his handwriting! Poor old Bill! Did he sell
that 'Revenge' to what's-his-name--that Manchester man--Prebble?"

"Lord, no! Haven't you heard? Prebble's smashed up,--all his property
gone to the devil!"

"Ah, then Prebble will find it again some day, no doubt. Look out!
here's Bowie!"

Mr. Bowie was the art-critic of a great daily journal. In early life
he had courted art himself; but lacking executive power, he had mixed
up a few theories and quaint conceits which he had learned with a
great deal of acrid bile, with which he had been gifted by nature, and
wrote the most pungent and malevolent art-notices of the day. A tall,
light-haired, vacant-looking man, like a light-house without any light
in it, peering uncomfortably over his stiff white cravat, and fumbling
nervously at his watch-chain. Clinging close to him, and pointing out
to him various pictures as they passed them by, was quite another style
of man,--Caniche, the great picture dealer,--an under-sized lively
Gascon, black-bearded from his chin, round which it was closely cut, to
his beady black eyes, faultlessly dressed, sparkling in speech, affable
in manner, at home with all.

"Ah, ah!" said he, stopping before the easel, "the Via Mala! Not
bad--not at all bad!" he continued, with scarcely a trace of a foreign
accent. "Yours, Charley Potts? yours, _mon brave?_ De-caidedly an
improvement, Charley! You go on that way, mai boy, and some day--"

"Some day you'll give me twenty pound, and sell me for a hundred! won't
you, Caniche?--generous buffalo!" growled Charley, over his pipe.

The men round laughed, but Caniche was not a bit offended. "Of course,"
he said, simply, "I will, indeed; that is my trade! And if you could
find a man who would give you thirty, you would throw me over in what
you call a brace of shakes! _N'est-ce pas?_ Meanwhile, find the man to
give you thirty. He is not here; I mean coming now.--How do you do,
Herr Stompff?"

Mr. Caniche (popularly known as Cannish among the artists) winced as he
said this, for Herr Stompff was his great rival and bitterest enemy.

A short, bald-headed, gray-bearded man was Mr. Stompff,--a
Hamburger,--who, on his first arrival in England, had been an importer
of piping bullfinches at Hull; then a tobacconist in St Mary Axe; and
who finally had taken up picture-selling, and did an enormous business.
No one could tell that he was not an Englishman from his talk, and an
Englishman with a marvellous fluency in the vernacular. He had every
slang saying as soon as it was out, and by this used to triumph over
his rival Caniche, who never could follow his phraseology.

"Hallo, Caniche!" he said; "how are you? What's up?--running the rig
on the boys here! telling Charley Potts his daubs are first-rate?
Pickles!--We know all that game, don't we, Charley? What do you want
for it, Charley?--How are you, Mr. Bowie? what's fresh with you,
sir? Too proud to come and have a cut of mutton with me and Mrs. S.
a-Sunday, I suppose? Some good fellows coming, too; Mugger from the
Cracksideum, and Talboys and Sir Paul Potter--leastways I've asked him.
Well, Charley, what's the figure for this lot, eh?"

"I'll trouble you not to 'Charley' me, Mr. Stump, or whatever your
infernal name is!" said Potts, folding his arms and puffing out
his smoke savagely. "I don't want any Havannah cigars, nor silk
handkerchiefs, nor painted canaries, nor anything else in your line,
sir; and I want your confounded patronage least of all!"

"Good boy, Charley! very good boy!" said Stompff, calmly pulling his
whisker through his teeth--"shouldn't lose his temper, though. Come and
dine a-Sunday, Charley." Mr. Potts said something, which the historian
is not bound to repeat, turned on his heel, and walked away.

Mr. Stompff was not a bit disconcerted at this treatment. He merely
stuck his tongue in his cheek, and looking at the men standing round,
said, "He's on the high ropes, is Master Charley! Some of you fellows
have been lending him half-a-crown, or that fool Caniche has bought one
of his pictures for seven-and-six! Now, has anybody anything new to
show, eh?" Of course everybody had something new to show to the great
Stompff, the enterprising Stompff, the liberal Stompff, whose cheques
were as good as notes of the Bank of England. How they watched his
progress, and how their hearts beat as he loitered before their works!
Jupp, who had a bed-ridden wife, a dear pretty little woman recovering
from rheumatic fever at, Adalbert Villa, Elgiva Road, St. John's
Wood; Smethurst, who had a 25_l_. bill coming due in a fortnight,
and had three-and-sevenpence wherewith to: Vogelstadt, who had been
beguiled into leaving Dusseldorf for London on the rumours of English
riches and English patronage, and whose capital studies of birds
in the snow, and _treibe-jagd's_, and boar-hunts, had called forth
universal laudation, but had not as yet entrapped a single purchaser,
so that Vogelstadt, who had come down not discontentedly to living on
bread-and-milk, had notions of mortgaging his ancestral thumb-ring
to procure even those trifling necessaries,--how they al glared with
expectation as the ex-singing-bird-importer passed their pictures in
review! That worthy took matters very easily, strolling along with
his hands in his pockets, glancing at the easels and along the walls,
occasionally nodding his head in approval, or shrugging his shoulders
in depreciation, but never saying a word until he stopped opposite a
well-placed figure-subject to which he devoted a two-minutes' close
scrutiny, and then uttered this frank though _argot_-tinged criticism
"That'll hit 'em up! that'll open their eyelids, by Jove! Whose is it?"

The picture represented a modern ballroom, in a corner of which a man
of middle age, his arms tightly folded across his breast, was intently
watching the movements of a young girl, just starting off in a _valse_
with a handsome dashing young partner. The expressions in the two faces
were admirably defined: in the man's was a deep earnest devotion not
unmingled with passion and with jealousy, his tightly-clenched mouth,
his deep-set earnest eyes, settled in rapt adoration on the girl,
showed the earnestness of his feeling, SO did the rigidly-fixed arms,
and the _pose_ of the figure, which, originally careless, had become
hardened and angular through intensity of feeling. The contrast was
well marked; in the girl's face which was turned toward the man while
her eyes were fixed on him, was a bright saucy triumph, brightening
her eyes, inflating her little nostrils, curving the corners of her
mouth, while her figure was light and airy, just obedient to the first
notes of the _valse_, balancing itself as it were on the arm of her
partner before starting off down the dance. All the accessories were
admirable: the dreary wallflowers ranged round the room, the chaperons
nidnodding together on the rout-seats, paterfamilias despondingly
consulting his watch, the wearied hostess, and the somnolently-inclined
musicians,--all were there, portrayed not merely by a facile hand but
by a man conversant with society. The title of the picture, "Sic vos
non vobis," was written on a bit of paper stuck into the frame, on
the other corner of which was a card bearing the words "Mr. Geoffrey
Ludlow."

"Ah!" said Stompff, who, after carefully scanning the picture close and
then from a distance, had read the card--"at last! Geoffrey Ludlow's
going to fulfil the promise which he's been showing this ten years! A
late birth, but a fine babby now it's born! That's the real thing and
no flies! That's about as near a good thing as I've seen this long
time--that; come, you'll say the same! That's a good picture, Mr.
Wrigley!"

"Ah!" said old Tom, coming up at the moment, "you've made another
lucky hit if you've bought that, Mr. Stompff! Geoff is so confoundedly
undecided, so horribly weak in all things, that he's been all this time
making up his mind whether he really would paint a good picture or not.
But he's decided at last, and he has painted a clipper."

"Ye-es!" said Stompff, whose first enthusiasm had by no means died
away--on the contrary, he thought so well of the picture that he had
within himself determined to purchase it; but his business caution was
coming over him strongly. "Yes! it's a clipper, as you say, Wrigley;
but it's a picture which would take all a fellow knew to work it. Throw
that into the market--where are you! Pouf! gone I no one thinking of
it. Judicious advertisement, judicious squaring of those confounded
fellows of the press; a little dinner at the Albion or the Star and
Garter to two or three whom we know; and then the wonderful grasp of
modern life, the singular manner in which the great natural feelings
are rendered, the microscopic observation, and the power of detail--"

"Yes, yes," said Tom Wrigley; "for which, see _Catalogue of Stompff's
Gallery of Modern Painters_, price 6_d_. Spare yourself, you unselfish
encourager of talent, and spare Geoff's blushes; for here he is.--Did
you hear what Stompff was saying on, Geoff?"

As he spoke, there came slouching up, shouldering his way through the
crowd, a big, heavily-built man of about forty years of age, standing
over six feet, and striking in appearance if not prepossessing.
Striking in appearance from his height, which was even increased
by his great shock head of dark-brown hair standing upright on his
forehead, but curling in tight crisp waves round the back and poll of
his head; from his great prominent brown eyes, which, firmly set in
their large thickly-carved lids, flashed from under an overhanging
pair of brows; from his large heavy nose, thick and fleshy, yet with
lithe sensitive nostrils; from his short upper and protruding thick
under lip; from the length of his chin and the massive heaviness of
his jaw, though the heavy beard greatly concealed the formation of
the lower portion of his face. A face which at once evoked attention,
which no one passed by without noticing, which people at first called
"odd," and "singular," and "queer," according to their vocabulary;
then, following the same rule, pronounced "ugly," or "hideous," or
"grotesque,"--allowing all the time that there "was something very
curious in it." But a face which, when seen in animation or excitement,
in reflex of the soul within, whose every thought was legibly portrayed
in its every expression, in light or shade, with earnest watchful
eyes, and knit brows and quivering nostrils and working lips; or, on
the other hand, with its mouth full of sound big white teeth gleaming
between its ruddy lips, and its eyes sparkling with pure merriment
or mischief;--then a face to be preferred to all the dolly inanities
of the Household Brigade, or even the matchless toga-draped dummies
in Mr. Truefitt's window. This was Geoffrey Ludlow, whom everybody
liked, but who was esteemed to be so weak and vacillating, so infirm
of purpose, so incapable of succeeding in his art or in his life, as
to have been always regarded as an object of pity rather than envy; as
a man who was his own worst enemy, and of whom nothing could be said.
He had apparently caught some words of the conversation, for when he
arrived at the group a smile lit up his homely features, and his teeth
glistened again in the gaslight.

"What are you fellows joking about?" he asked, while he roared with
laughter, as if with an anticipatory relish of the fun. "Some chaff at
my expense, eh? Something about my not having made up my mind to do
something or not; the usual nonsense, I suppose?"

"Not at all Geoff," said Tom Wrigley. "The question asked by Mr.
Stompff here was--whether you wished to sell this picture, and what you
asked for it."

"Ah!" said Geoffrey Ludlow, his lips closing and the fun dying out
of his eyes. "Well, you see it's of course a compliment for you,
Mr. Stompff, to ask the question; but I've scarcely made up my
mind--whether--and indeed as to the price--"

"Stuff, Geoff! What rubbish you talk!" said Charley Potts, who had
rejoined the group. "You know well enough that you painted the picture
for sale. You know equally well that the price is two hundred guineas.
Are you answered, Mr. Stump?"

Ludlow started forward with a look of annoyance, but Stompff merely
grinned, and said quietly, "I take it at the price, and as many more as
Mr. Ludlow will paint of the same sort; stock, lock, and barrel, I'll
have the whole bilin'. Must change the title though, Ludlow, my boy.
None of your Sic wos non thingummy; none of your Hebrew classics for
the British public. 'The Vow,' or 'the Last Farewell,' or something in
that line.--Very neatly done of you, Charley, my boy; very neat bit
of dealing, I call it. I ought to deduct four-and-nine from the next
fifteen shillin' commission you get; but I'll make it up to you this
way,--you've evidently all the qualities of a salesman; come and be my
clerk, and I'll stand thirty shillings a-week and a commission on the
catalogues."

Charley Potts was too delighted at his friend's success to feel
annoyance at these remarks; he merely shook his fist laughingly, and
was passing on, with his arm through Ludlow's; but the vivacious
dealer, who had rapidly calculated where he could plant his
newly-acquired purchase, and what percentage he could make on it, was
not to be thus balked.

"Look here!" said he; "a bargain's a bargain, ain't it? People say your
word's as good as your bond, and all that. Pickles! You drop down to
my office to-morrow, Ludlow, and there'll be an agreement for you to
sign--all straight and reg'lar, you know. And come and cut your mutton
with me and Mrs. S. at Velasquez Villa, Nottin' 'Ill, on Sunday, at
six. No sayin' no, because I won't hear it. We'll wet our connection in
a glass of Sham. And bring Charley with you, if his dress-coat ain't
up! You know, Charley! Tar, Tar!" And highly delighted with himself,
and with the full conviction that he had rendered himself thoroughly
delightful to his hearers, the great man waddled off his brougham.

Meanwhile the news of the purchase had spread through the rooms,
and men were hurrying up on all sides to congratulate Ludlow on his
success. The fortunate man seemed, however, a little dazed with his
triumph; he shook all the outstretched hands cordially, and said a few
commonplaces of thanks, intermingled with doubts as to whether he had
not been too well treated; but on the first convenient opportunity he
slipped away, and sliding a shilling into the palm of Flexor the model,
who, being by this time very drunk, had arranged his hair in a curl
on his forehead, and was sitting on the bench in the hall after his
famous rendering of George the Fourth of blessed memory, Geoff seized
his hat and coat and let himself out. The fresh night-air revived him
wonderfully, and he was about starting off at his usual headstrong
pace, when he heard a low dismal moan, and looking round, he saw a
female figure cowering in a doorway. The next instant he was kneeling
by her side.




CHAPTER III.
BLOTTED OUT.


THE strange caprices of Fashion were never more strangely illustrated
than by her fixing upon St. Barnabas Square as one of her favourite
localities. There are men yet living among us whose mothers had
been robbed on their way from Ranelagh in crossing the spot, then a
dreary swampy marsh, on which now stands the city of palaces known as
Cubittopolis. For years on years it remained in its dismal condition,
until an enterprising builder, seeing the army of civilisation
advancing with grand strides south-westward, and perceiving at a glance
the immediate realisation of an enormous profit on his outlay, bought
up the entire estate, had it thoroughly cleansed and drained, and
proceeded to erect thereon a series of terraces, places, and squares,
each vying with the other in size, perfection of finish, and, let it be
said, general ghastliness. The houses in St. Barnabas Square resemble
those in Chasuble Crescent, and scarcely differ in any particular
from the eligible residences in Reredos Road: they are all very
tall, and rather thin; they have all enormous porticoes, over which
are little conservatories, railed in with ecclesiastical ironwork;
dismal little back-rooms no bigger than warm-baths, but described as
"libraries" by the house-agents; gaunt drawing-rooms connected by an
arch; vast landings, leading on to other little conservatories, where
"blacks," old flower-pots, and a few geranium stumps, are principally
conserved; and a series of gaunt towny bedrooms. In front they have
Mr. Swiveller's prospect,--a delightful view of over-the-way; across
the bit of square enclosure like a green pocket-handkerchief; while
at the back they look immediately on to the back-premises of other
eligible residences. The enterprising builder has done his best for his
neighbourhood, but he has been unable to neutralise the effects of the
neighbouring Thames; and the consequence is, that during the winter
months a chronic fog drifts up from the pleasant Kentish marshes,
and finding ample room and verge enough, settles permanently down in
the St. Barnabas district; while in the summer, the new roads which
intersect the locality, being mostly composed of a chalky foundation,
peel off under every passing wheel, and emit enormous clouds of dust,
which are generally drifting on the summer wind into the eyes and
mouths of stray passengers, and in at the doors and windows of regular
residents. Yet this is one of Fashion's chosen spots here in this
stronghold of stucco reside scores of those whose names and doings the
courtly journalist delighteth to chronicle; hither do county magnates
bring, to furnished houses, their wives and daughters, leaving them
to entertain those of the proper set during the three summer months,
while they, the county magnates themselves, are sleeping the sleep of
the just on the benches of the House of Commons, or nobly discharging
their duty to their country by smoking cigars on the terrace; here
reside men high up in the great West-end public offices, commissioners
and secretaries, anxious to imbue themselves with the scent of the
rose, and _vivre près d'elle_, City magnates, judges of the land, and
counsel learned in the law. The situation is near to Westminster for
the lawyers and politicians; and the address has quite enough of the
true ring about it to make it much sought after by all those who go-in
for a fashionable neighbourhood.

A few hours before the events described in the preceding chapters
took place, a brougham, perfectly appointed, and drawn by a splendid
horse, came dashing through the fog and driving mist, and pulled up
before one of the largest houses in St. Barnabas Square. The footman
jumped from the box, and was running to the door, when, in obedience
to a sharp voice, he stopped, and the occupant of the vehicle, who had
descended, crossed the pavement with rapid strides, and opened the door
with a pass-key. He strode quickly through the hall, up the staircase,
and into the drawing-room, round which he took a rapid glance. The
room was empty; the gas was lit, and a fire burned brightly on the
hearth; while an open piano, covered with music, on the one side of the
fireplace, and a book turned down with open leaves, showed that the
occupants had but recently left. The newcomer, finding himself alone,
walked to the mantelpiece, and leaning his back against it, passed his
hands rapidly across his forehead; then plunging both of them into his
pockets, seemed lost in thought. The gaslight showed him to be a man
of about sixty years of age, tall, wiry, well-proportioned; his head
was bald, with a fringe of grayish hair, his forehead broad, his eyes
deep-set, his mouth thin-lipped, and ascetic; he wore two little strips
of whisker, but his chin was closely shaved. He was dressed in high
stiff shirt-collars, a blue-silk neckerchief with white dots, in which
gleamed a carbuncle pin; a gray overcoat, under which was a cutaway
riding-coat, high waistcoat with onyx buttons, and tight-fitting
cord-trousers. This was George Brakespere, third Earl Beauport, of whom
and of whose family it behoves one to speak in detail.

They were _novi homines_, the Brakesperes, though they always claimed
to be sprung from ancient Norman blood. Only seventy years ago old
Martin Brakespere was a wool-stapler in Uttoxeter; and though highly
respected for the wealth he was reported to have amassed, was very much
jeered at privately, and with bated breath, for keeping an apocryphal
genealogical tree hanging up in his back-shop, and for invariably
boasting, after his second glass of grog at the Greyhound, about his
lineage. But when, after old Martin had been some score years quietly
resting in Uttoxeter churchyard, his son Sir Richard Brakespere, who
had been successively solicitor and attorney general, was raised to
the peerage, and took his seat on the woolsack as Baron Beauport, Lord
High Chancellor of England, the Herald's College, and all the rest of
the genealogical authorities, said that the line was thoroughly made
out and received the revival of the ancient title with the greatest
laudation. A wiry, fox-headed, thin chip of a lawyer, the first Baron
Beauport, as knowing as a ferret, and not unlike one in the face. He
administered the laws of his country very well, and he lent some of the
money he had inherited from his father to the sovereign of his country
and the first gentleman in Europe at a very high rate of interest, it
is said. Rumour reports that he did not get all his money back again,
taking instead thereof an increase in rank, and dying, at an advanced
age, as Earl Beauport, succeeded in his title and estates by his only
son, Theodore Brakespere, by courtesy Viscount Caterham.

When his father died, Lord Caterham, the second Earl Beauport, was
nearly fifty years old, a prim little gentleman who loved music and
wore a wig; a dried-up chip of a little man, who lived in a little
house in Hans Place with an old servant, a big violoncello, and a
special and peculiar breed of pug-dogs. To walk out with the pug-dogs
in the morning, to be carefully dressed and tittivated and buckled and
curled by the old servant in the afternoon, and either to play the
violoncello in a Beethoven or Mozart selection with some other old
amateur fogies, or to be present at a performance of chamber-music, or
philharmonics, or oratorio-rehearsals in the evening, constituted the
sole pleasure of the second Earl Beauport's life. He never married; and
at his death, some fifteen years after his father's, the title and,
with the exception of a few legacies to musical charities, the estates
passed to his cousin George Brakespere, Fellow of Lincoln College,
Oxon, and then of Little Milman Street, Bedford Row, and the Northern
Circuit, briefless barrister.

Just in the very nick of time came the peerage and the estates to
George Brakespere, for he was surrounded by duns, and over head and
ears in love. With all his hard work at Oxford, and he had worked hard,
he had the reputation of being the best bowler at Bullingdon, and the
hardest rider after hounds; of having the best old port and the finest
cigars (it was before the days of claret and short pipes), and the best
old oak furniture, library of books, and before-letter proofs in the
University. All these could not be paid for out of an undergraduate's
income; and the large remainder of unpaid bills hung round him and
plagued him heavily long after he had left Oxford and been called to
the bar. It was horribly up-hill work getting a connection among the
attorneys; he tried writing for reviews, and succeeded, but earned
very little money. And then, on circuit, at an assize-ball, he fell in
love with Gertrude Carrington, a haughty county beauty, only daughter
of Sir Joshua Carrington, Chairman of Quarter Sessions; and that
nearly finished him. Gertrude Carrington was very haughty and very
wilful; she admired the clever face and the bold bearing of the young
barrister; but in all probability she would have thought no more of
him, had not the eminent Sir Joshua, who kept his eyes very sharply
about him, marked the flirtation, and immediately expressed his total
disapproval of it. That was enough for Gertrude, and she at once went
in for George Brakespere, heart and soul. She made no objection to
a clandestine correspondence, and responded regularly and warmly to
George's passionate letters. She gave him two or three secret meetings
under an old oak in a secluded part of her father's park,--Homershams
was a five-hours' journey from town,--and these assignations always
involved George's sleeping at an inn, and put him to large expense; and
when she came up to stay with her cousins in town, she let him know
all the parties to which they were going, and rendered him a mendicant
for invitations. When the change of fortune came, and George succeeded
to the title, Sir Joshua succumbed at once, and became anxious for
the match. Had George inherited money only, it is probable that from
sheer wilfulness Gertrude would have thrown him over; but the notion of
being a countess, of taking precedence and pas of all the neighbouring
gentry, had its influence, and they were married. Two sons were born
to them,--Viscount Caterham and the Hon. Lionel Brakespere,--and a
daughter, who only survived her birth a few weeks. As Earl Beauport,
George Brakespere retained the energy and activity of mind and body,
the love of exercise and field-sports, the clear brain and singleness
of purpose, which had distinguished him as a commoner: but there was
a skeleton in his house, whose bony fingers touched his heart in his
gayest moments, numbed his energies, and warped his usefulness; whose
dread presence he could not escape from, whose chilling influence nor
wine, nor work, nor medicine, nor gaiety, could palliate. It was ever
present in a tangible shape; he knew his weakness and wickedness in
permitting it to conquer him,--he strove against it, but vainly; and
in the dead watches of the night often he lay broad awake railing
against the fate which had mingled so bitter an ingredient in his cup
of happiness.

The door swung open and the Countess entered, a woman nearly fifty
now, but not looking her age by at least eight years. A tall handsome
woman, with the charms of her former beauty mellowed but not impaired;
the face was more full, but the firm chiselling of the nose and lips,
the brightness of the eyes, the luxurious dark gloss of the hair, were
there still. As she entered, her husband advanced to meet her; and as
he touched her forehead with his lips, she laid her hand on his, and
asked "What news?"

He shook his head sadly, and said, "The worst."

"The worst!" she repeated, faintly; "he's not dead? Beauport, you--you
would not say it in that way--he's not dead?"

"I wish to God he were!" said Lord Beauport through his teeth. "I wish
it had pleased God to take him years and years ago! No! he's not dead."
Then throwing himself into a chair, and staring vacantly at the fire,
he repeated, "I wish to God he were!"

"Anything but that!" said the Countess, with a sense of immense relief;
"anything but that! whatever he has done may be atoned for, and
repented, and--But what has he done? where is he? have you seen Mr.
Farquhar?"

"I have--and I know all. Gertrude, Lionel is a scoundrel and a
criminal--no, don't interrupt me! I myself have prosecuted and
transported men for less crimes than he has committed; years ago he
would have been hanged. He is a forger!"

"A forger!"

"He has forged the names of two of his friends--old brother officers;
Lord Hinchenbrook is one, and young Latham the other--to bills for five
thousand pounds. I've had the bills in my hands, and seen letters from
the men denying their signatures to-night, and--"

"But Lionel--where is he? in prison?"

"No; he saw the crash coming, and fled from it. Farquhar showed me a
blotted letter from him, written from Liverpool, saying in a few lines
that he had disgraced us all, that he was on the point of sailing under
a feigned name for Australia, and that we should never see him again."

"Never see him again! my boy, my own darling boy!" and Lady Beauport
burst into an agony of tears.

"Gertrude," said her husband, when the first wild storm of grief had
subsided, "calm yourself for one instant."

He rang the bell, and to the servant answering it, said:

"Tell Lord Caterham I wish to speak to him, and beg Miss Maurice to be
good enough to step here."

Lady Beauport was about to speak, but the Earl said coldly:

"I wish it, if you please;" and reiterated his commands to the servant,
who left the room. "I have fully decided, Gertrude, on the step I am
about to take. To-morrow those forged bills will be mine. I saw young
Latham at Farquhar's, and he said--" Lord Beauport's voice shook
here--"said everything that was kind and noble; and Hinchenbrook has
said the same to Farquhar. It--it cannot be kept quiet, of course.
Every club is probably ringing with it now; but they will let me have
the bills. And from this moment, Gertrude, that boy's name must never
be uttered, save in our prayers--in our prayers for his forgiveness
and--and repentance--by you, his mother; by me his father,--nor by any
one in this house. He is dead to us for ever!"

"Beauport, for Heaven's sake--"

"I swear it, Gertrude, I swear it! and most solemnly will keep the
oath. I have sent for Caterham, who must know, of course; his good
sense will approve what I have done; and for Annie, she is part of our
household now, and must be told. Dead to us all henceforth; dead to us
all!"

He sank into a chair opposite the fire and buried his face in his
hands, but roused himself at advancing footsteps. The door opened, and
a servant entered, pushing before him a library-chair fitted on large
wheels, in which sat a man of about thirty, of slight spare frame, with
long arms and thin womanly hands--a delicately-handsome man, with a
small head, soft grey eyes, and an almost feminine mouth; a man whom
Nature had intended for an Apollo, whom fortune had marked for her
sport, blighting his childhood with some mysterious disease for which
the doctors could find neither name nor cure, sapping his marrow and
causing his legs to wither into the shrunken and useless members which
now hung loosely before him utterly without strength, almost without
shape, incapable of bearing his weight, and rendering him maimed,
crippled, blasted for life. This was Viscount Caterham, Earl Beauport's
eldest son, and heir to his title and estates. His father cast one
short, rapid glance at him as he entered, and then turned to the person
who immediately followed him.

This was a tall girl of two-and-twenty, of rounded form and winning
expression. Her features were by no means regular; her eyes were brown
and sleepy; she had a pert inquisitive nose; and when she smiled, in
her decidedly large mouth gleamed two rows of strong white teeth. Her
dark-brown hair was simply and precisely arranged; for she had but a
humble opinion of her own charms, and objected to any appearance of
coquetry. She was dressed in a tight-fitting black silk, with linen
collar and cuffs, and her hands and feet were small and perfectly
shaped. Darling Annie Maurice, orphan daughter of a second cousin of
my lord's, transplanted from a suburban curacy to be companion and
humble friend of my lady, the one bright bit of sunshine and reality in
that palace of ghastly stucco and sham. Even now, as she came in, Lord
Beauport seemed to feel the cheering influence of her presence, and his
brow relaxed for an instant as he stepped forward and offered his hand;
after taking which, she, with a bow to the Countess, glided round and
stood by Lord Caterham's chair.

Lord Caterham was the first to speak.

"You sent for us--for Annie and me, sir," he said in a low tremulous
voice; "I trust you have no bad news of Lionel."

Lady Beauport hid her face in her hands; but the Earl, who had resumed
his position against the mantelpiece, spoke firmly.

"I sent for you, Caterham, and for you, Annie, as members of my family,
to tell you that Lionel Brakespere's name must never more be mentioned
in this house. He has disgraced himself, and us through him; and though
we cannot wipe away that disgrace, we must strive as far as possible to
blot him out from our memories and our lives. You know, both of you--at
least you, Caterham, know well enough,--what he has been to me--the
love I had for him--the--yes, my God, the pride I had in him!"

His voice broke here, and he passed his hand across his eyes. In the
momentary pause Annie Maurice glanced up at Lord Caterham, and marked
his face distorted as with pain, and his head reclining on his chest.
Then, gulping down the knot rising in his throat, the Earl continued:

"All that is over now; he has left the country, and the chances are
that we shall never see nor even hear from him again." A moan from
the Countess shook his voice for a second, but he proceeded: "It was
to tell you this that I sent for you. You and I, Caterham, will have
to enter upon this subject once more to-morrow, when some business
arrangements have to be made. On all other occasions, recollect, it is
tabooed. Let his name be blotted out from our memories, and let him be
as if he had never lived."

As Earl Beauport ceased speaking he gathered himself together and
walked towards the door, never trusting himself to look for an instant
towards where his wife sat cowering in grief, lest his firmness should
desert him. Down the stairs he went, until entering his library he shut
the door behind him, locked it, and throwing himself into his chair,
leant his head on the desk, and covering it with his hands gave way
to a passion of sobs which shook his strong frame as though he were
convulsed. Then rising, he went to the book-case, and taking out a
large volume, opened it, and turned to the page immediately succeeding
the cover. It was a big old-fashioned Bible, bound in calf, with a
hideous ancient woodcut as a frontispiece representing the Adoration
of the Wise Men; but the page to which Lord Beauport turned, yellow
with age, was inscribed in various-coloured inks, many dim and faded,
with the names of the old Brakespere family, and the dates of their
births, marriages, and deaths. Old Martin Brakespere's headed the list;
then came his son's, with "created Baron Beauport" in the lawyer's
own skimpy little hand, in which also was entered the name of the
musical-amateur peer, his son; then came George Brakespere's bold entry
of his own name and his wife's, and of the names of their two sons.
Over the last entry Lord Beauport paused for a few minutes, glaring at
it with eyes which did not see it, but which had before them a chubby
child, a bright handsome Eton boy, a dashing guardsman, a "swell"
loved and petted by all, a fugitive skulking in an assumed name in the
cabin of a sea-tossed ship; then he took up a pen and ran it through
the entry backwards and forwards until the name was completely blotted
out; and then he fell again into his train of thought. The family
dinner-hour was long since passed; the table was laid, all was ready,
and the French cook and the grave butler were in despair: but Lord
Beauport still sat alone in his library with old Martin Brakespere's
Bible open before him.




CHAPTER IV.
ON THE DOORSTEP.


It is cheap philosophy to moralise on the importance of events led up
to by the merest trifles; but the subject comes so frequently before
us as to furnish innumerable pegs whereon the week-day preacher may
hang up his little garland of reflections, his little wreath of homely
truisms. If Ned Waldron had not been crossing into the Park at the
exact moment when the shortsighted Godalming banker was knocked down
by the hansom at the Corner, he would have still been enjoying eighty
pounds a-year as a temporary extra-clerk at Whitehall, instead of
groaning over the villanous extortion of the malt-tax, as a landed
proprietor of some thousands of inherited acres. If Dr. Weston's
red-lamp over the surgery-door had been blown out when the servant
rushed off for medical advice for Master Percy Buckmaster's ear-ache,
the eminent apothecary would never have had the chance of which he
so skilfully availed himself--of paying dutiful attention to Mrs.
Buckmaster, and finally stepping into the shoes of her late husband,
the wealthy Indian indigo-planter.

If Geoffrey Ludlow, dashing impetuously onward in his career, had not
heard that long low heart-breaking moan, he might have gone on leading
his easy, shiftless, drifting life, with no break greater than the
excitement consequent on the sale of a picture or the accomplishment
of a resolution. But he _did_ hear it, and, rare thing in him, acting
at once on his first impulse, he dropped on his knees just in time to
catch the fainting form in his outstretched arms. That same instant
he would have shrunk back if he could; but it was too late; that same
instant there came across him a horrible feeling of the ludicrousness
of his position: there at midnight in a London thoroughfare holding
in his arms--what! a drunken tramp, perhaps; a vagrant well known to
the Mendicity Society; a gin-sodden streetwalker, who might requite
his good Samaritanism with a leer and a laugh, or an oath and a
blow. And yet the groan seemed to come from the lowest depths of a
wrung and suffering heart; and the appearance--no, there could be no
mistake about that. That thin, almost emaciated, figure; those pinched
features; drawn, haggard, colourless cheeks; that brow, half hidden by
the thick, damp, matted hair, yet in its deep lines and indentations
revealing the bitter workings of the mind; the small thin bony hands
now hanging flaccid and motionless--all these, if there were anything
real in this life, were outward semblances such as mere imposters could
not have brought forward in the way of trade.

Not one of them was lost on Geoffrey Ludlow, who, leaning over the
prostrate figure, narrowly scanned its every feature, bent his face
towards the mouth, placed his hands on the heart, and then, thoroughly
alarmed, looked round and called for aid. Perhaps his excitement had
something to do with it, but Geoff's voice fell flat and limp on the
thick damp air, and there was no response, though he shouted again and
again. But presently the door whence he had issued opened widely, and
in the midst of a gush of tobacco smoke a man came out, humming a song,
twirling a stick, and striding down the street. Again Geoffrey Ludlow
shouted, and this time with success, for the newcomer stopped suddenly,
took his pipe from his mouth, and turning hist-doo head towards the
spot whence the voice proceeded, he called out, simply but earnestly,
"Hallo there! what's the row?"

Ludlow recognised the speaker at once. It was Charley Potts, and
Geoffrey hailed him by name.

"All right!" said Charley in return. "You've picked up my name fast
enough, my pippin; but that don't go far. Better known than trusted is
your obedient servant, C. P. Hallo, Geoff, old man, is it you? Why,
what the deuce have you got there? an 'omeless poor, that won't move
on, or a----- By George, Geoff, this is a bad case!" He had leant over
the girl's prostrate body, and had rapidly felt her pulse and listened
at her heart. "This woman's dying of inanition and prostration. I know
it, for I was in the red-bottle and Plaster-of-Paris-horse line before
I went in for Art. She must be looked to at once, or she'll slip off
the hooks while we're standing by her. You hold on here, old man, while
I run back and fetch the brandy out of Dabb's room; I know where he
keeps it. Chafe her hands, will you, Geoff? I shan't be a second."

Charley Potts rushed off, and left Geoffrey still kneeling by the
girl's side. In obedience to his friend's instructions, he began
mechanically to chafe her thin worn hands; but as he rubbed his own
over them to and fro, to and fro, he peered into her face, and wondered
dreamily what kind of eyes were hidden behind the drooped lids, and
what was the colour of the hair hanging in dank thick masses over the
pallid brow. Even now there began to spring in his mind a feeling of
wonder not unmixed with alarm, as to what would be thought of him,
were he discovered in his then position; whether his motives would be
rightly construed; whether he were not acting somewhat indiscreetly
in so far committing himself: for Geoffrey Ludlow had been brought up
in the strict school of dire respectability, where a lively terror
of rendering yourself liable to Mrs. Grundy's remarks is amongst the
doctrines most religiously inculcated. But a glance at the form before
him gave him fresh assurance; and when Charley Potts returned he found
his friend rubbing away with all his energy.

"Here it is," said Charley; "Dabb's particular. I know it's first-rate,
for Dabb only keeps it medicinally, taking Sir Felix Booth Bart. as his
ordinary tipple. I know this water-of-life-of-cognac of old, sir, and
always have internal qualms of conscience when I go to see Dabb, which
will not be allayed until I have had what Caniche calls a suspicion.
Hold her head for a second, Geoff, while I put the flask to her mouth.
There! Once more, Geoff. Ah! I thought so. Her pulse is moving now, old
fellow, and she'll rouse in a bit; but it was very nearly a case of
Walker."

"Look at her eyes--they're unclosing."

"Not much wonder in that, is there, my boy? though it is odd, perhaps.
A glass of brandy has made many people shut their eyes before now; but
as to opening them--Hallo! steady there!"

He said this as the girl, her eyes glaring straight before her,
attempted to raise herself into an erect position, but after a faint
struggle dropped back, exclaiming feebly:

"I cannot, I cannot."

"Of course you can't, my dear," said Charley Potts, not unkindly; "of
course you can't. You musn't think of attempting it either. I say,
Geoff,"--(this was said in a lower tone)--"look out for the policeman
when he comes round, and give him a hail. Our young friend here must
be looked after at once, and he'd better take her in a cab to the
workhouse."

As he said the last words, Geoffrey Ludlow felt the girl's hand which
he held thrill between his, and, bending down, thought he saw her lips
move.

"What's the matter?" said Charley Potts.

"It's very strange," replied Geoffrey; "I could swear I heard her say
'Not there!' and yet--"

"Likely enough been there before, and knows the treatment. However, we
must get her off at once, or she'll go to grief; so let us--"

"Look here, Charley: I don't like the notion of this woman's going to
a workhouse, specially as she seems to--object, eh? Couldn't we--isn't
there any one where we could--where she could lodge for a night or two,
until--the doctor, you know--one might see? Confound it all, Charley,
you know I never can explain exactly; can't you help me, eh?"

"What a stammering old idiot it is!" said Charley Potts, laughing.
"Yes, I see what you mean--there's Flexor's wife lives close by, in
Little Flotsam Street--keeps a lodging-house. If she's not full, this
young party can go in there. She's all right now so far as stepping
it is concerned, but she'll want a deal of looking after yet. O, by
Jove! I left Rollit in at the Titians, the army-doctor, you know, who
sketches so well. Let's get her into Flexor's, and I'll fetch Rollit to
look at her. Easy now! Up!"

They raised her to her feet, and half-supported, half-carried her round
the church and across the broad road, and down a little bystreet on
the other side. There Charley Potts stopped at a door, and knocking at
it, was soon confronted by a buxom middle-aged woman, who started with
surprise at seeing the group.

"Lor, Mr. Potts! what can have brought you 'ere, sir? Flexor's not come
in, sir, yet--at them nasty Titiums, he is, and joy go with him. If
you're wanting him, sir, you'd better--"

"No, Mrs. Flexor, we don't want your husband just now. Here's Mr.
Ludlow, who--"

"Lord, and so it is! but seeing nothing but the nape of your neck, sir,
I did not recognise--"

"All right, Mrs. Flexor," said Geoffrey; "we want to know if your
house is full. If not, here is a poor woman for whom we--at least Mr.
Potts--and I myself, for the matter of that--"

"Stuttering again, Geoff! What stuff! Here, Mrs. Flexor, we want a room
for this young woman to sleep in; and just help us in with her at once
into your parlour, will you? and let us put her down there while I run
round for the doctor."

It is probable that Mrs. Flexor might have raised objections to this
proposition; but Charley Potts was a favourite with her, and Geoffrey
Ludlow was a certain source of income to her husband; so she stepped
back while the men caught up their burden, who all this time had been
resting, half-fainting, on Geoffrey's shoulder, and carried her into
the parlour. Here they placed her in a big, frayed, ragged easy-chair,
with all its cushion-stuffing gone, and palpable bits of shaggy wool
peering through its arms and back; and after dragging this in front of
the expiring fire, and bidding Mrs. Flexor at once prepare some hot
gruel, Charley Potts rushed away to catch Dr. Rollit.

And now Geoffrey Ludlow, left to himself once more (for the girl was
lying back in the chair, still with unclosing eyes, and had apparently
relapsed into a state of stupor), began to turn the events of the
past hour in his mind, and to wonder very much at the position in
which he found himself. Here he was in a room in a house which he had
never before entered, shut up with a girl of whose name or condition
he was as yet entirely ignorant, of whose very existence he had only
just known; he, who had always shirked anything which afforded the
smallest chance of adventure, was actually taking part in a romance.
And yet--nonsense! here was a starving wanderer, whom he and his friend
had rescued from the street; an ordinary every-day case, familiar in a
thousand phases to the relieving-officers and the poor-law guardians,
who, after her certain allowance of warmth, and food, and physic, would
start off to go--no matter where, and do--no matter what. And yet he
certainly had not been deceived in thinking of her faint protest when
Charley proposed to send her to the workhouse. She had spoken then; and
though the words were so few and the tone so low, there was something
in the latter which suggested education and refinement. Her hands too,
her poor thin hands, were long and well-shaped, with tapering fingers
and filbert-nails, and bore no traces of hard work: and her face--ah,
he should be better able to see her face now.

He turned, and taking the flaring candle from the table, held it above
her head. Her eyes were still closed; but as he moved, they opened
wide, and fixed themselves on him. Such large, deep-violet eyes, with
long sweeping lashes! such a long, solemn, stedfast gaze, in which his
own eyes were caught fast, and remained motionless. Then on to his
hand, leaning on the arm of the chair, came the cold clammy pressure
of feeble fingers; and in his ear, bent and listening, as he saw a
fluttering motion of her lips, murmured very feebly the words, "Bless
you!--saved me!" twice repeated. As her breath fanned his cheek,
Geoffrey Ludlow's heart beat fast and audibly, his hand shook beneath
the light touch of the lithe fingers; but the next instant the eyelids
dropped, the touch relaxed, and a tremulousness seized on the ashy
lips. Geoffrey glanced at her for an instant, and was rushing in alarm
to the door, when it opened, and Charley Potts entered, followed by a
tall grave man, in a long black beard, whom Potts introduced as Dr.
Rollit.

"You're just in time," said Geoffrey; "I was just going to call for
help. She--"

"Pardon me, please," said the doctor, calmly pushing him on one side.
"Permit me to--ah!" he continued, after a glance--"I must trouble you
to leave the room, Potts, please, and take your friend with you. And
just send the woman of the house to me, will you? There is a woman, I
suppose?"

"O yes, there is a woman, of course.--Here, Mrs. Flexor, just step up,
will you?--Now, Geoff, what are you staring at, man? Do you think the
doctor's going to eat the girl? Come on old fellow; we'll sit on the
kitchen-stairs, and catch blackbeetles to pass the time. Come on!"

Geoff roused himself at his friend's touch, and went with him, but in
a dreamy sullen manner. When they got into the passage, he remained
with outstretched ear, listening eagerly; and when Charley spoke, he
savagely bade him hold his tongue. Mr. Potts was so utterly astonished
at this conduct, that he continued staring and motionless, and merely
gave vent to his feelings in one short low whistle. When the door
was opened, Geoffrey Ludlow strode down the passage at once, and
confronting the doctor, asked him what news. Dr. Rollit looked his
questioner steadily in the eyes for a moment; and when he spoke his
tone was softer, his manner less abrupt than before. "There is no
special danger, Mr. Ludlow," said he; "though the girl has had a narrow
escape. She has been fighting with cold and want of proper nourishment
for days, so far as I can tell."

"Did she say so?"

"She said nothing; she has not spoken a word." Dr. Rollit did not fail
to notice that here Geoffrey Ludlow gave a sigh of relief. "I but judge
from her appearance and symptoms. I have told this good person what to
do; and I will look round early in the morning. I live close by. Now,
goodnight."

"You are sure as to the absence of danger?"

"Certain."

"Goodnight; a thousand thanks!--Mrs. Flexor, mind that your patient has
every thing wanted, and that I settle with you.--Now, Charley, come;
what are you waiting for?"

"Eh?" said Charley. "Well, I thought that, after this little
excitement, perhaps a glass out of that black bottle which I know Mrs.
Flexor keeps on the second shelf in the right-hand cupboard--"

"Get along with you, Mr. Potts!" said Mrs. Flexor, grinning.

"You know you do Mrs. F.--a glass of that might cheer and not
inebriate.--What do you say, Geoff?"

"I say no! You've had quite enough; and all Mrs. Flexor's attention is
required elsewhere.--Goodnight, Mrs. Flexor; and"--by this time they
were in the street--"goodnight, Charley."

Mr. Potts, engaged in extracting a short-pipe from the breast-pocket of
his pea-jacket, looked up with an abstracted air, and said, "I beg your
pardon."

"Goodnight, Charley."

"Oh, certainly, if you wish it. Goodnight, Geoffrey Ludlow, Esquire;
and permit me to add, Hey no nonny! Not a very lucid remark, perhaps,
but one which exactly illustrates my state of mind." And Charley Potts
filled his pipe, lit it, and remained leaning against the wall, and
smoking with much deliberation until his friend was out of sight.

Geoffrey Ludlow strode down the street, the pavement ringing
under his firm tread, his head erect, his step elastic, his whole
bearing sensibly different even to himself. As he swung along he
tried to examine himself as to what was the cause of his sudden
light-heartedness; and at first he ascribed it to the sale of his
picture, and to the warm promises of support he had received at
the hands of Mr. Stompff. But these, though a few hours since they
had really afforded him the greatest delight, now paled before the
transient glance of two deep-violet eyes, and the scarcely-heard murmur
of a feeble voice. "'Bless you!--saved me!' that's what she said!"
exclaimed Geoff, halting for a second and reflecting. "And then the
touch of her hand, and the--ah! Charley was right! Hey no nonny is the
only language for such an ass as I'm making of myself." So home through
the quiet streets, and into his studio, thinking he would smoke one
quiet pipe before turning in. There, restlessness, inability to settle
to any thing, mad desire to sketch a certain face with large eyes, a
certain fragile helpless figure, now prostrate, now half-reclining on
a bit of manly shoulder; a carrying-out of this desire with a bit of
crayon on the studio-wall, several attempts, constant failure, and
consequent disgust. A feeling that ought to have been pleasure, and
yet had a strong tinge of pain at his heart, and a constant ringing of
one phrase, "'Bless you!--saved me!" in his ears. So to bed; where he
dreamt he saw his name, Geoffrey Ludlow, in big black letters at the
bottom of a gold frame, the picture in which was Keat's "Lamia;" and
lo! the Lamia had the deep-violet eyes of the wanderer in the streets.




CHAPTER V.
THE LETTER.


The houses in St. Barnabas Square have an advantage over most
other London residences in the possession of a "third room" on the
ground-floor. Most people who, purposing to change their domicile,
have gone in for a study of the _Times_ Supplement or the mendacious
catalogues of house-agents, have read of the "noble dining-room, snug
breakfast-room, and library," and have found the said breakfast-room
to be about the size and depth of a warm-bath, and the "library" a
soul-depressing hole just beyond the glazed top of the kitchen-stairs,
to which are eventually relegated your old boots, the bust of the
friend with whom since he presented it you have had a deadly quarrel,
some odd numbers of magazines, and the framework of a shower-bath
which, in a moment of madness, you bought at a sale and never have been
able to fit together.

But the houses in St. Barnabas Square have each, built over what in
other neighbourhoods is called "leads,"--a ghastly space where the
cats creep stealthily about in the daytime, and whence at night they
yowl with preternatural pertinacity,--a fine large room, devoted in
most instances to the purposes of billiards, but at Lord Beauport's
given up entirely to Lord Caterham. It had been selected originally
from its situation on the ground-floor giving the poor crippled lad
easy means of exit and entrance, and preventing any necessity for his
being carried--for walking was utterly impossible to him--up and down
stairs. It was _his_ room; and there, and there alone, he was absolute
master; there he was allowed to carry out what his mother spoke of
as his "fads," what his father called "poor Caterham's odd ways."
His brother, Lionel Brakespere, had been in the habit of dropping in
there twice or three times a-week, smoking his cigar, turning over
the "rum things" on the table, asking advice which he never took, and
lounging round the room, reading the backs of the books which he did
not understand, and criticising the pictures which he knew nothing
about. It would have been impossible to tell to what manner of man the
room belonged from a cursory survey of its contents. Three-fourths of
the walls were covered with large bookcases filled with a heterogeneous
assemblage of books. Here a row of poets, a big quarto Shakespeare in
six volumes, followed by _Youatt on the Horse, Philip Van Artevelde_,
and Stanhope's _Christian Martyr_. In the next shelf Voltaire, all
the Tennysons, _Mr. Sponge's Sporting-Tour_, a work on Farriery,
and _Blunt on the Pentateuch_. So the _mélange_ ran throughout the
bookshelves; and on the fourth wall, where hung the pictures, it was
not much better. For in the centre were Landseer's "Midsummer-Night's
Dream," where that lovely Titania, unfairy-like if you please, but
one of the most glorious specimens of pictured womanhood, pillows her
fair face under the shadow of that magnificent ass's head; and Frith's
"Coming of Age," and Delaroche's "Execution of Lady Jane Grey," and
three or four splendid proof-engravings of untouchable Sir Joshua;
and among them, dotted here and there, hunting-sketches by Alken, and
coaching bits from Fores. Scattered about on tables were pieces of lava
from Vesuvius, photographs from Pompeii, a collection of weeds and
grasses from the Arctic regions (all duly labelled in the most precise
handwriting), a horse's shoe specially adapted for ice-travelling,
specimens of egg-shell china, a box of gleaming carpenter's tools,
boxes of Tunbridge ware, furs of Indian manufacture, caricature
statuettes by Danton, a case of shells, and another of geological
specimens. Here stood an easel bearing a half-finished picture, in one
corner was a sheaf of walking-sticks, against the wall a rack of whips.
Before the fire was a carved-oak writing-desk, and on it, beside the
ordinary blotting and writing materials, wee an aneroid barometer, a
small skeleton clock, and a silver handbell. And at it sat Viscount
Caterham, his head drooping, his face pale, his hands idly clasped
before him.

Not an unusual position this with him, not unusual by any means when
he was alone. In such society as he forced himself to keep--for with
him it was more than effort to determine occasionally to shake off
his love of solitude, to be present amongst his father's guests, and
to receive some few special favourites in his own rooms--he was more
than pleasant, he was brilliant and amusing. Big, heavy, good-natured
guardsmen, who had contributed nothing to the "go" of the evening,
and had nearly tugged off their tawny beards in the vain endeavour to
extract something to say, would go away, and growl in deep bas voices
over their cigars about "that strordinary fler Caterham. Knows a lot,
you know, that f'ler, 'bout all sorts things. Can't 'ceive where picks
it all up; and as jolly as old boots, by Jove!"

Old friends of Lord Beauport's, now gradually dropping into fogiedom,
and clutching year by 672 year more tightly the conventional prejudices
instilled into them in early life, listened with elevated eyebrows
and dropping jaws to Lord Caterham's outspoken opinions, now clothed
in brilliant tropes, now crackling with smart antithesis, but always
fresh, earnest, liberal, and vigorous; and when they talked him over
in club-windows, these old boys would say that "there was something in
that deformed fellow of Beauport's, but that he was all wrong; his mind
as warped as his body, by George!" And women,--ah, that was the worst
of all,--women would sit and listen to him on such rare occasions as he
spoke before them, sit many of them steadfast-eyed and ear-attentive,
and would give him smiles and encouraging glances, and then would float
away and talk to their next dancing-partner of the strange little man
who had such odd ideas, and spoke so--so unlike most people, you know.

He knew it all, this fragile, colourless, delicate cripple, bound for
life to his wheelchair, dependent for mere motion on the assistance
of others; a something apart and almost without parallel, helpless
as a little child, and yet with the brain, the heart, the passions
of a man. No keener observer of outward show, no clearer reader of
character than he. From out his deep-set melancholy eyes he saw the
stare of astonishment, sometimes the look of disgust, which usually
marked a first introduction to him; his quick ear caught the would-be
compassionate inflection of the voice addressing him on the simplest
matters; he knew what the old fogies were thinking of as they shifted
uneasily in their chairs as he spoke; and he interpreted clearly enough
the straying glances and occasional interjections of the women. He knew
it all, and bore it--bore it as the cross is rarely borne.

Only three times in his life had there gone up from his lips a wail
to the Father of mercies, a passionate outpouring of his heart, a
wild inquiry as to why such affliction had been cast upon him. But
three times, and the first of these was when he was a lad of eighteen.
Lord Beauport had been educated at Charterhouse, where, as every one
knows, Founder's Day is kept with annual rejoicings. To one of these
celebrations Lord Beauport had gone, taking Lord Caterham with him. The
speeches and recitations were over, and the crowd of spectators were
filing out into the quadrangle, when Lord Caterham, whose chair was
being wheeled by a servant close by his father's side, heard a cheery
voice say, "What, Brakespere! Gad, Lord Beauport, I mean! I forgot.
Well, how are you, my dear fellow? I haven't seen you since we sat on
the same form in that old place." Lord Caterham looked up and saw his
father shaking hands with a jolly-looking middle-aged man, who rattled
on--"Well, and you've been in luck and are a great gun! I'm delighted
to hear it. You're just the fellow to bear your honours bravely. O
yes, I'm wonderfully well, thank God. And I've got my boy here at the
old shop, doing just as we used to do, Brakespere--Beauport, I mean.
I'll introduce you. Here, Charley!" calling to him a fine handsome
lad; "this is Lord Beauport, an old schoolfellow of mine. And you,
Beauport,--you've got children, eh?"

"O yes," said Lord Beauport--"two boys."

"Ah! that's right. I wish they'd been here; I should have liked to have
seen them." The man rattled on, but Lord Caterham heard no more. He had
heard enough. He knew that his father was ashamed to acknowledge his
maimed and crippled child--ashamed of a comparison between the stalwart
son of his old schoolfellow and his own blighted lad; and that night
Lord Caterham's pillow was wet with tears, and he prayed to God that
his life might be taken from him.

Twice since then the same feelings had been violently excited; but
the sense of his position, the knowledge that he was a perpetual
grief and affliction to his parents, was ever present, and pervaded
his very being. To tell truth, neither his father nor his mother ever
outwardly manifested their disappointment or their sorrow at the
hopeless physical state of their firstborn son; but Lord Caterham read
his father's trouble in thousands of covert glances thrown towards the
occupant of the wheeled chair, which the elder man thought were all
unmarked, in short self-suppressed sighs, in sudden shiftings of the
conversation when any subject involving a question of physical activity
or muscular force happened to be touched upon, in the persistent way
in which his father excluded him from those regular solemn festivities
of the season, held at certain special times, and at which he by right
should certainly have been present.

No man knew better than Lord Beauport the horrible injustice he was
committing; he felt that he was mutely rebelling against the decrees of
Providence, and adding to the affliction already mysteriously dispensed
to his unfortunate son by his treatment. He fought against it, but
without avail; he could not bow his head and kiss the rod by which he
had been smitten. Had his heir been brainless, dissipated, even bad,
he could have forgiven him. He did in his heart forgive his second son
when he became all three; but that he, George Brakespere, handsome
Brakespere, one of the best athletes of the day, should have to own
that poor misshapen man as his son and heir!--it was too much. He tried
to persuade himself that he loved his son; but he never looked at him
without a shudder, never spoke of him with unflushed cheeks.

As for Lady Beauport, from the time that the child's malady first was
proclaimed incurable, she never took the smallest interest in him, but
devoted herself, as much as devotion was compatible with perpetual
attendance at ball, concert, and theatre, to her second son. As a
child, Lord Caterham had, by her express commands, been studiously kept
out of her sight; and now that he was a man, she saw very much less of
him than of many strangers. A dozen times in the year she would enter
his room and remain a few minutes, asking for his taste in a matter of
fancy-costume, or something of the kind; and then she would brush his
forehead with her lips, and rustle away perfectly satisfied with her
manner of discharging the duties of maternity.

And Lord Caterham knew all this; read it as in a book; and suffered,
and was strong. Who know most of life, discern character most readily,
and read it most deeply? We who what we call "mix in the world," hurry
hither and thither, buffeting our way through friends and foes, taking
the rough and the smooth, smiling here, frowning there, but ever
pushing onward? Or the quiet ones, who lie by in the nooks and lanes,
and look on at the strife, and mark the quality and effect of the blows
struck; who see not merely how, but why the battle has been undertaken;
who can trace the strong and weak points of the attack and defence, see
the skirmishers thrown out here, the feigned retreat there, the mine
ready prepared in the far distance? How many years had that crippled
man looked on at life, standing as it were at the gates and peering
in at the antics and dalliances, the bowings and scrapings, the mad
moppings and idiotic mowings of the puppets performing? And had he not
arrived during this period at a perfect knowledge of how the wires were
pulled, and what was the result?

Among them but not of them, in the midst of the whirl of London but
as isolated as a hermit, with keen analytical powers, and leisure and
opportunity to give them full swing, Lord Caterham passed his life
in studying the lives of other people, in taking off the padding and
the drapery, the paint and the tinsel, in looking behind the grins,
and studying the motives for the sneers. Ah, what a life for a man to
pass! situated as Lord Caterham was, he must under such circumstances
have become either a Quilp or an angel. The natural tendency is to the
former: but Providence had been kind in one instance to Lord Caterham,
and he, like Mr. Disraeli, went in for the angel.

His flow of spirits was generally, to say the least of it, equable.
When the dark hour was on him he suffered dreadfully; but this morning
he was more than usually low, for he had been pondering over his
brother's insane downfall, and it was with something like real pleasure
that he heard his servant announce "Mr. Barford," and gave orders for
that gentleman's admittance.

The Honourable Algernon Barford by prescriptive right, but "Algy
Barford" to any one after two days' acquaintance with him, was one of
those men whom it is impossible not to call by their Christian names;
whom it is impossible not to like as an acquaintance; whom it is
difficult to take into intimate friendship; but with whom no one ever
quarrelled. A big, broad-chested, broad-faced, light-whiskered man,
perfectly dressed, with an easy rolling walk, a pleasant presence, a
way of enarming and "old boy-ing" you, without the least appearance of
undue familiarity; on the contrary, with a sense of real delight in
your society; with a voice which, without being in the least affected,
or in the remotest degree resembling the tone of the stage-nobleman,
had the real swell ring and roll in it; a kindly, sunny, chirpy,
world-citizen, who, with what was supposed to be a very small income,
lived in the best society, never borrowed or owed a sovereign, and
was nearly always in good temper. Algy Barford was the very man to
visit you when you were out of spirits. A glance at him was cheering;
it revived one at once to look at his shiny bald forehead fringed
with thin golden hair, at his saucy blue eyes, his big grinning mouth
furnished with sparkling teeth; and when he spoke, his voice came
ringing out with a cheery music of its own.

"Hallo, Caterham!" said he, coming up to the chair and placing one of
his big hands on the occupant's small shoulder; "how goes it, my boy?
Wanted to see you, and have a chat. How are you, old fellow, eh? Where
does one put one's hat, by the way, dear old boy? Can't put it under my
seat, you know, or I should think I was in church; and there's no place
in this den of yours; and--ah, that'll do, on that lady's head. Who is
it? O, Pallas Athené; ah, very well then, _non invitâ Minervâ_, she'll
support my castor for me. Fancy my recollecting Latin, eh? but I think
I must have seen it on somebody's crest. Well, and now, old boy, how
are you?"

"Well, not very brilliant this morning, Algy. I--"

"Ah, like me, got rats, haven't you?"

"Rats?"

"Yes; whenever I'm out of spirits I think I've got rats--sometimes
boiled rats. Oh, it's all very well for you to laugh, Caterham; but you
know, though I'm generally pretty jolly, sometimes I have a regular
file-gnawing time of it. I think I'll take a peg, dear old boy--a
sherry peg--just to keep me up."

"To be sure. Just ring for Stevens, will you? he'll--"

"Not at all; I recollect where the sherry is and where the glasses
live. _Nourri dans le sérail, j'en connais les detours_. Here they are.
Have a peg, Caterham?"

"No, thanks, Algy; the doctor forbids me that sort of thing. I take no
exercise to carry it off, you know; but I thought some one told me you
had turned teetotaller."

"Gad, how extraordinarily things get wind, don't you know! So I did,
honour!--kept to it all strictly, give you my word, for--ay, for a
fortnight; but then I thought I might as well die a natural death,
so I took to it again. This is the second peg I've had to-day--took
number one at the Foreign Office, with my cousin Jack Lambert. You know
Jack?--little fellow, short and dirty, like a winter's day."

"I know him," said Caterham, smiling; "a sharp fellow."

"O yes, deuced cute little dog--knows every thing. I wanted him to
recommend me a new servant--obliged to send my man away--couldn't stand
him any longer--always worrying me."

"I thought he was a capital servant?"

"Ye-es; knew too much though, and went to too many
evening-parties--never would give me a chance of wearing my own black
bags and dress-boots--kept 'em in constant requisition, by Jove! A
greedy fellow too. I used to let him get just outside the door with
the breakfast-things, and then suddenly call him back; and he never
showed up without his mouth full of kidney, or whatever it was. And
he always would read my letters--before I'd done with them, I mean.
I'm shortsighted, you know, and obliged to get close to the light: he
was in such a hurry to find out what they were about, that he used to
peep in through the window, and read them over my shoulder. I found
this out; and this morning I was ready for him with my fist neatly
doubled-up in a thick towel. I saw his shadow come stealing across the
paper, and then I turned round and let out at him slap through the
glass. It was a gentle hint that I had spotted his game; and so he
came in when he had got his face right, and begged me to suit myself
in a month, as he had heard of a place which he thought he should like
better. Now, can you tell me of any handy fellow, Caterham?"

"Not I; I'm all unlikely to know of such people. Stay, there was a man
that--"

"Yes; and then you stop. Gad, you are like the rest of the world, old
fellow: you have an _arrière pensée_ which prevents your telling a
fellow a good thing."

"No, not that, Algy. I was going to say that there was a man who was
Lionel's servant. I don't know whether he has got another place; but
Lionel, you know--" and Lord Caterham stopped with a knot in his throat
and burning cheeks.

"I know, dear old boy," said Algy Barford, rising from his seat and
again placing his hand on Caterham's shoulder; "of course I know.
You're too much a man of the world"--(Heaven help us! Caterham a man
of the world! But this was Algy Barford's pleasant way of putting
it)--"not to know that the clubs rang with the whole story last night.
Don't shrink, old boy. It's a bad business; but I never heard such
tremendous sympathy expressed for a--for a buffer--as for Lionel. Every
body says he must have been no end cornered before he--before he--well,
there's no use talking of it. But what I wanted to say to you is
this,--and I'm deuced glad you mentioned Lionel's name, old fellow, for
I've been thinking all the time I've been here how I could bring it in.
Look here! he and I were no end chums, you know; I was much older than
he; but we took to each other like any thing, and--and I got a letter
from him from Liverpool with--with an enclosure for you, old boy."

Algy Barford unbuttoned his coat as he said these last words, took a
long breath, and seemed immensely relieved, though he still looked
anxiously towards his friend.

"An enclosure for me?" said Lord Caterham, turning deadly white; "no
further trouble--no further misery for--"

"On my honour, Caterham, I don't know what it is," said Algy Barford;
"he doesn't hint it in his letter to me. He simply says, 'Let the
enclosed be given to Caterham, and given by your own hand.' He
underlines that last sentence; and so I brought it on. I'm a bungling
jackass, or I should have found means to explain it myself, by Jove!
But as you have helped me, so much the better."

"Have you it with you?"

"O yes; brought it on purpose," said Algy, rising and taking his coat
from a chair, and his hat from the head of Pallas Athené; "here it is.
I don't suppose anything from poor Lionel can be very brilliant just
now; but still, I know nothing. Goodby, Caterham, old fellow; can't
help me to a servant-man, eh? See you next week; meantime,--and this
earnest, old boy,--if there's anything I can do to help Lionel in any
shape, you'll let me know, won't you, old fellow?"

And Algy Barford handed Lord Caterham the letter, kissed his hand, and
departed in his usual airy, cheery fashion.

That night Lord Caterham did not appear at the dinner-table; and his
servant, on being asked, said that his master "had been more than usual
queer-like," and had gone to bed very early.




CHAPTER VI.
THE FIRST VISIT.


Geoffrey Ludlow was in his way a recognisant and a grateful man,
grateful for such mercies as he knew he enjoyed; but from never
having experienced its loss, he was not sufficiently appreciative
of one of the greatest of life's blessings, the faculty of sleep at
will. He could have slept, had he so willed it, under the tremendous
cannonading, the _feu-d'enfer_, before Sebastopol, or while Mr.
Gladstone was speaking his best speech, or Mr. Tennyson was reading
aloud his own poetry; whenever and wherever he chose he could sleep
the calm peaceful sleep of an infant. Some people tell you they are
too tired to sleep--that was never the case with Geoffrey; others that
their minds are too full, that they are too excited, that the weather
is too hot or too cold, that there is too much noise, or that the very
silence is too oppressive. But, excited or comatose, hot or cold, in
the rumble of London streets or the dead silence of--well, he had never
tried the Desert, but let us say Walton-on-the-Naze, Geoffrey Ludlow
no sooner laid his head on the pillow than he went off into a sound,
glorious, healthy sleep--steady, calm, and peaceful; not one of your
stertorous, heavy, growling slumbers, nor your starting, fly-catching,
open-mouthed, moaning states, but a placid, regular sleep, so quiet and
undisturbed that he scarcely seemed to breathe; and often as a child
had caused his mother to examine with anxiety whether the motionless
figure stretched upon the little bed was only sleeping naturally, or
whether the last long sleep had not fallen on it.

Dreams he had, no doubt; but they by no means disturbed the refreshing,
invigorating character of his repose. On the night of his adventure
in the streets, he dreamt the Lamia dream without its in the least
affecting his slumber; and when he opened his eyes the next morning,
with the recollection of where he was, and what day it was, and what he
had to do--those post-waking thoughts which come to all of us--there
came upon him an indefinable sensation of something pleasurable and
happy, of something bright and sunshiny, of something which made his
heart feel light within him, and caused him to open his eyes and
grapple with the day at once.

Some one surely must long ere this have remarked how our manner of
waking from slumber is affected by our state of mind. The instant that
consciousness comes upon us, the dominant object of our thoughts,
be it pleasant or horrible, is before us: the absurd quarrel with
the man in the black beard last night, about--what _was_ it about?
the acceptance which Smith holds, which must be met, and can't be
renewed; the proposal in the conservatory to Emily Fairbairn, while
she was flushed with the first _valse_ after supper, and we with Mrs.
Tresillian's champagne;--or, _per contra_, as they say in the City, the
thrilling pressure of Flora Maitland's hand, and the low whisper in
which she gave us rendezvous at the Botanical Fête this afternoon the
lawyer's letter informing us of our godfather's handsome legacy;--all
these, whether for good or ill, come before us with the first unclosing
of our eyelids. If agreeable we rouse ourselves at once, and lie
simultaneously chewing the cud of pleasant thoughts and enjoying the
calm haven of our bed; if objectionable, we try and shut them out yet
for a little while, and turning round court sleep once more.

What was the first thought that flashed across Geoffrey Ludlow's brain
immediately on his waking, and filled him with hope and joy? Not the
remembrance of the purchase of his picture by Mr. Stompff, though
that certainly occurred to him, with Stompff's promises of future
employment, and the kind words of his old friends at the Titians, all
floating simultaneously across his mind. But with these thoughts came
the recollection of a fragile form, and a thin hand with long lithe
fingers wound round his own, and a low feeble voice whispering the
words "Bless you!--saved me!" in his listening ear.

Beneath the flickering gas-lamps, or in the dim half-light of Mrs.
Flexor's room, he had been unable to make out the colour of the eyes,
or of the thick hair which hung in heavy masses over her cheeks; it
was a spiritual recollection of her at the best; but he would soon
change that into a material inspection. So, after settling in his own
mind--that mind which coincides so readily with our wishes--that it was
benevolence which prompted his every action, and which roused in him
the desire to know how the patient of the previous night was getting
on, he sprang from his bed, and pulled the string of his shower-bath
with an energy which not even the knowledge of the water's probable
temperature could mitigate. But he had not proceeded half-way through
his toilet, when the old spirit of irresolution began to exercise its
dominion over him. Was it not somewhat of a Quixotic adventure in which
he was engaging? To succour a starving frozen girl on a wet night was
merely charitable and humane; there was no man of anything like decent
feeling but would have acted as he had done, and--by George!--here the
hair-brushes were suspended in mid-air, just threatening a descent one
on either side of his bushy head--wouldn't it have been better to have
accepted Charley Pott's suggestion, and let the policeman take her to
the workhouse? There she would have had every attention and--bah! every
attention! the truckle-bed in a gaunt bare room, surrounded by disease
in every shape; the perfunctory visits of the parish-doctor; the--O no!
and, moreover, had he not heard, or at all events imagined he heard,
the pallid lips mutter "Not there!" No! there was something in her
which--which--at all events--well, _ruat caelum_, it was done, and he
must take the consequences; and down came the two hair-brushes like two
avalanches, and worried his unresisting scalp like two steam-harrows.
The recollection of the fragile frame, and the thin hands, and the
broken voice, supported by the benevolent theory, had it all their own
way from that time out, until he had finished dressing, and sent him
downstairs in a happy mood, pleased with what he had done, more pleased
still with the notion of what he was about to do. He entered the room
briskly, and striding up to an old lady sitting at the head of the
breakfast-table, gave her a sounding kiss.

"Goodmorning, dearest mother.--How do, Til, dear?" turning to a young
woman who was engaged in pouring out the tea. "I'm late again, I see."

"Always on sausage mornings, I notice, Geoffrey," said Mrs. Ludlow,
with a little asperity. "It does not so much matter with haddock,
though it becomes leathery; or eggs, for you like them hard; but
sausages should be eaten hot, or not at all; and to-day, when
I'd sent specially for these, knowing that nasty herb-stuffing
is indigestible--let them deny it if they can--it does seem hard
that--well, never mind--"

Mrs. Ludlow was a very good old lady, with one great failing: she was
under the notion that she had to bear what she called "a cross," a most
uncomfortable typical object, which caused all her friends the greatest
annoyance, but in which, though outwardly mournful, she secretly
rejoiced, as giving her a peculiar status in her circle. This cross
intruded itself into all the social and domestic details of her life,
and was lugged out metaphorically on all possible occasions.

"Don't mind me, mother," said Geoff; "the sausages will do splendidly.
I overslept myself; I was a little late last night."

"O, at those everlasting Titians.--I declare I forgot," said the young
woman who had been addressed as "Til," and who was Geoffrey's only
sister. "Ah, poor fellow! studying his art till two this morning,
wasn't he?" And Miss Til made a comic sympathetic _moue_, which made
Geoff laugh.

"Two!" said Mrs. Ludlow; "nearer three, Matilda. I ought to know, for I
had water running down my back all night, and my feet as cold as stone;
and I had a perfect recollection of having left the key of the linen
closet in the door, owing to my having been hurried down to luncheon
yesterday when I was giving Martha out the clean pillowcases. However,
if burglars do break into that linen-closet, it won't be for my not
having mentioned it, as I call you to witness, Matilda."

"All right, mother," said Geoffrey; "we'll run the risk of that. I'm
very sorry I disturbed the house, but I _was_ late, I confess; but I
did some good, though."

"O yes, Geoffrey, we know," said Matilda. "Got some new notions for a
subject, or heard some aesthetic criticism; or met some wonderful lion,
who's going to astonish the world, and of whom no one ever hears again!
You always have done something extraordinary when you're out very late,
I find."

"Well, I did something really extraordinary last night. I sold my
picture the 'Ballroom,' you know; and for what do you think?--two
hundred pounds."

"O, Geoff, you dear, darling old Geoff! I am so glad! Two hundred
pounds! O, Geoff, Geoff! You dear, lucky old fellow!" and Miss Till
flung her arms round her brother's neck and hugged him with delight.
Mrs. Ludlow said never a word; but her cross melted away momentarily,
her eyes filled with tears, and her lips quivered. Geoffrey noticed
this, and so soon as he had returned his sister's hearty embrace, he
went up to his mother, and kneeling by her side, put up his face for
her kiss.

"God bless you, my son!" said the old lady reverently, as she gave it;
"God bless you! This is brave news, indeed. I knew it would come in
time; but--"

"Yes; but tell us all about it, Geoff. How did it come about? and
however did you pluck up courage, you dear, bashful, nervous old thing,
to ask such a price?"

"I--why, Til, you know that I--and you, dear mother, you know too
that--not that I am bashful, as Til says; but still there's something.
O, I should never have sold the picture, I believe, if I'd been let
alone. It was Charley Potts sold it for me."

"Charles Potts! That ridiculous young man! Well, I should never have
thought it," said Mrs. Ludlow.

Miss Matilda said nothing, but a faint flush rose on her neck and
cheeks, and died away again as quickly as it came.

"O, he's a capital man of business--for anybody else, that's to say.
He don't do much good for himself. He sold the picture for me, and
prevented my saying a word in the whole affair. And who do you think
has bought it? Mr. Stompff, the great dealer, who tells me he'll take
as many more of the same style as I like to paint."

"This is great news, indeed, my boy," said the old lady. "You've only
to persevere, and your fortune's made. Only one thing, Geoffrey,--never
paint on Sunday, or you'll never become a great man."

"Well but, mother," said Geoff, smiling, "Sir Joshua Reynolds painted
always on Sundays until Johnson's death and he was a great man."

"Ah, well, my dear," replied his mother forcibly, if not logically,
"that's nothing to do with it."

Then Geoffrey, who had been hurrying through his sausage, and towards
the last began to grow nervous and fidgety--accounted for by his
mother and sister from his anxiety to go and see Mr. Stompff, and at
once fling himself on to fresh canvases--finished his breakfast, and
went out to get his hat. Mrs. Ludlow, with her "cross" rapidly coming
upon her, sat down to "do the books,"--an inspection of the household
brigade of tradesmen's accounts which she carried on weekly with the
sternest rigour; and Matilda, who was by no means either a romantic
or a strong-minded woman commenced to darn a basketful of Geoffrey's
socks. Then the sock-destroyer put his head in at the door, his mouth
ornamented with a large cigar, and calling out "Goodbye," departed on
his way.

The fragile form, the thin hands, and the soft low voice had it all
their own way with Geoffrey Ludlow now. He was going to see their
owner; in less than an hour he should know the colour of the eyes and
the hair; and figuratively Geoffrey walked upon air; literally, he
strode along with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, swinging his stick,
and, but for the necessity of clenching his cigar between his teeth,
inclined to hum a tune aloud. He scarcely noticed any of the people he
met; but such as he did casually glance at he pitied from the bottom
of his soul: there were no thin hands or soft voices waiting for them.
And it must be owned that the passers-by who noticed him returned his
pity. The clerks on the omnibuses, sucking solemnly at their briar-root
pipes, or immersed in their newspapers, solemn staid men going in "to
business," on their regular daily routine, looked up with wonder on
this buoyant figure, with its black wideawake hat and long floating
beard, its jerky walk, its swinging stick, and its general air of
light-hearted happiness. The cynical clerks, men with large families,
whom nothing but an increase of salary could rouse, interchanged
shoulder-shrugs of contempt, and the omnibus-conductor, likewise a
cynic, after taking a long stare at Geoffrey, called out to his driver,
"'Appy cove that! looks as if he'd found a fourpennypiece, don't he?"

Entirely ignorant of the attention he was attracting, Geoff blithely
pursued his way. He lived at Brompton, and he was bound for the
neighbourhood of Portland Place; so he turned in at the Albert Gate,
and crossing the enclosure and the Row, made for Grosvenor Gate. In the
Park he was equally the object of remark: the nurse-girls called their
charges to come "to heel" out of the way of that "nasty ugly big man;"
the valetudinarians taking their constitutional in the Row loathed
him for swinging his stick and making their horses shy as he passed;
the park-keepers watched him narrowly, as one probably with felonious
intent to the plants or the ducks.

Still, utterly unconscious, Geoffrey went swinging along across
Grosvenor Square, down Brook Street; and not until he turned into Bond
Street did he begin to realise entirely the step he was about to take.
Then he wavered, in mind and in gait; he thought he would turn back:
he did turn back, irresolute, doubtful. Better have nothing more to
do with it; nip it in the bud; send Charley Potts with a couple of
sovereigns to Mrs. Flexor's, and tell her to set the girl on her way
again, and wish her God-speed. But what if she were still ill, unable
to move? people didn't gain sufficient strength in twelve hours; and
Charley, though kind-hearted, was rather _brusque_; and then the low
voice, with the "Bless you!--saved me!" came murmuring in his ear; and
Geoffrey, like Whittington, turned again, and strode on towards Little
Flotsam Street.

When he got near Flexor's door, he faltered again, and very nearly
gave in: but looking up, saw Mrs. Flexor standing on the pavement; and
perceiving by her manner that his advent had been noticed, proceeded,
and was soon alongside that matron.

"Good morning, Mrs. Flexor."

"Good momin', sir; thought you'd be over early, though not lookin'
for you now, but for Reg'las, my youngest plague, so called after Mr.
Scumble's Wictory of the Carthageniums, who has gone for milk for
some posset for our dear; who is much better this momin', the Lord a
mussy! Dr. Rollix have been, and says we may sit up a little, if taking
nourishment prescribed; and pleased to see you we shall be. A pretty
creetur, Mr. Ludlow, though thin as thin and low as low: but what can
we expect?"

"She is better, then?"

"A deal better, more herself like; though not knowing what she was
before, I can't exactly say. Flexor was fine and buffy when he came
home last night, after you was gone, sir. Them nasty Titiums, he always
gets upset there. And now he's gone to sit to Mr. Potts for--ah, well,
some Roman party whose name I never can remember."

"Is your patient up, Mrs. Flexor?"

"Gettin'. We shall be ready to see you in five minutes, sir. I'll go
and see to her at once."

Mrs. Flexor retired, and Geoffrey was left to himself for a quarter of
an hour standing in the street, during which time he amused himself
as most people would under similar circumstances. That is to say, he
stared at the houses opposite and at the people who passed; and then
he beat his stick against his leg, and then he whistled a tune, and
then, having looked at his watch five times, he looked at it for the
sixth. Then he walked up the street, taking care to place his foot on
the round iron of every coal-shoot; and then he walked down the street,
carrying out a determination to step in the exact centre of every
flagstone; and then, after he had pulled his beard a dozen times, and
lifted his wideawake hat as many, that the air might blow upon his hot
forehead, he saw Mrs. Flexor's head protrude from the doorway, and he
felt very much inclined to run away. But he checked himself in time,
and entered the house, and, after a ghostly admonition from Mrs. Flexor
"not to hagitate her," he opened the parlour-door, which Mrs. Flexor
duly shut behind him, and entered the room.

Little light ever groped its way between the closely-packed rows of
houses in Little Flotsam Street, even on the brightest summer day;
and on a dark and dreary winter's morning Mrs. Flexor's little front
parlour was horribly dark. The worthy landlady had some wild notion,
whence derived no one knew, that an immense amount of gentility was
derived from keeping the light out; and consequently the bottom parts
of her windows were fitted with dwarf wire-blinds, and the top parts
with long linen-blinds, and across both were drawn curtains made
of a kind of white fishing-net; so that even so little daylight as
Little Flotsam Street enjoyed was greatly diluted in the Flexorian
establishment.

But Geoffrey Ludlow saw stretched out on a miserable black horsehair
sofa before him there this fragile form which had been haunting his
brain for the last twelve hours. Ah, how thin and fragile it was;
how small it looked, even in, its worn draggled black-merino dress!
As he advanced noiselessly, he saw that the patient slept; her head
was thrown back, her delicate white hands (and almost involuntarily
Geoffrey remarked that she wore no wedding-ring) were clasped across
her breast, and her hair, put off her dead-white face, fell in thick
clusters over her shoulders.

With a professional eye Geoffrey saw at once that whatever trouble she
might have taken, she could not have been more artistically posed than
in this natural attitude. The expression of her eyes was wanting; and,
as he sunk into a chair at her feet, her eyes opened upon him. Then he
saw her face in its entirety; saw large deep-violet eyes, with dark
lashes and eyebrows; a thin, slightly aquiline nose; small thin close
lips, and a little chin; a complexion of the deadest white, without the
smallest colour and hair, long thick rich luxuriant hair, of a deep,
red-god colour--not the poetic "auburn," not the vulgar "carrots;"
a rich metallic red, unmistakable, admitting of no compromise, no
darkening by grease or confining by fixature--a great mass of deep-red
hair, strange, weird, and oddly beautiful. The deep-violet eyes,
opening slowly, fixed their regard on his face without a tremor, and
with a somewhat languid gaze; then brightening slowly, while the hands
were unclasped, and the voice--how well Geoff remembered its tones, and
how they thrilled him again!--murmured faintly, "It is you!"

What is that wonderful something in the human voice which at once
proclaims the social status of the speaker? The proletary and the
_roturier_, Nature willing, can have as good features, grow as flowing
beards, be as good in stature, grace, and agility, as the noblest
patrician, or the man in whose veins flows the purest _sangre azul_;
but they fail generally in hands, always in voice. Geoffrey Ludlow, all
his weakness and irresolution notwithstanding, was necessarily by his
art a student of life and character; and no sooner did he hear those
three little words spoken in that tone, than all his floating ideas
of shamming tramp or hypocritical streetwalker, as connected with the
recipient of his last night's charity, died away, and he recognised at
once the soft modulations of education, if not of birth.

But those three words, spoken in deep low quivering tones, while they
set the blood dancing in Geoffrey Ludlow's veins, made him at the same
time very uncomfortable. He had a dread of anything romantic; and there
flashed through his mind an idea that he could only answer this remark
by exclaiming, "Tis I!" or "Ay, indeed!" or something else equally
absurd and ridiculous. So he contented himself with bowing his head and
putting out his hand--into which the long lithe fingers came fluttering
instantly. Then with burning cheeks Geoffrey bent forward, and said,
"You are better to-day?"

"Oh, so much--so much better! thanks to you, thanks to you!"

"Your doctor has been?" She bowed her head in reply.

"And you have everything you wish for?" She bowed again, this time
glancing up--with, O, such a light in the deep-violet eyes--into
Geoffrey's face!

"Then--then I will leave you now," said he, awkwardly enough. The
glance fell as he said this; but flashed again full and earnest in
an instant; the lithe fingers wound round his wrist, and the voice,
even lower and more tremulously than before, whispered, "You'll come
to-morrow?"

Geoff flushed again, stammered, "Yes, O, by all means!" made a clumsy
bow, and went out.

Now this was a short, and not a particularly satisfactory, interview;
but the smallest detail of it remained in Geoffrey Ludlow's mind, and
was reproduced throughout the remainder of that day and the first
portion of the succeeding night, for him to ponder over. He felt the
clasp of her fingers yet on his wrist, and he heard the soft voice,
"You'll come to-morrow?" It must be a long distance, he thought, that
he would not go to gaze into those eyes, to touch that hand, to hear
that voice again!




CHAPTER VII.
CHEZ POTTS.


Mr. Potts lived in Berners Street, on the second floor of a rambling
big old-fashioned house, which in its palmy days had been inhabited by
people of distinction; and in which it was rumoured in the art-world
that the great Mr. Fuseli had once lived, and painted those horrors
which sprung from the nightmare consequent on heavy suppers of
pork-chops. But these were the days of its decadence, and each of its
floors had now a separate and distinct tenant. The ground-floor was
a kind of half showroom, half shop, held by Mr. Lectern, the great
church-upholsterer. Specimens of stained-glass windows, croziers,
and brass instruments like exaggerated beadles'-staves, gilt sets of
communion-service, and splendidly-worked altar-cloths, occupied the
walls; the visitor walked up to the desk at which Mr. Lectern presided
between groves of elaborately-carved pulpits and reading-desks, and
brazen eagles were extending their wings in every available corner. On
the first-floor Mdlle. Stetti gave lessons to the nobility, gentry,
and the public in general in the fashionable dances of the day, and
in the Magyar sceptre-exercises for opening the chest and improving
the figure. Mdlle. Stetti had a very large connection; and as many
of her pupils were adults who had never learned to dance while they
were supple and tender, and as, under the persevering tuition of
their little instructress, they gambolled in a cumbrous and rather
elephantine manner, they earned for themselves many hearty anathemas
from Mr. Potts, who found it impossible to work with anything like a
steady hand while the whole house was rocking under the influence of a
stout stockbroker doing the "changes," or while the walls trembled at
every bound of the fourteen-stone lady from Islington, who was being
initiated into the mysteries of the gavotte. But Charley Potts' pipe
was the only confidant of his growled anathemas, and on the whole
he got on remarkably well with his neighbours; for Mr. Lectern had
lent him bits of oak furniture to paint from; and once, when he was
ill, Mdlle. Stetti, who was the dearest, cheeriest, hardest-working,
best-tempered little creature in existence, had made him broths and
"goodies" with her own hand, and when he was well, had always a kind
word and a smile for him--and, indeed, revelled in the practical
humour and buffoonery of "_ce farceur_ Pott." For Mr. Potts was
nothing if not funny; the staircase leading to his rooms began to be
decorated immediately after you had passed Mdlle. Stetti's apartments;
an enormous hand, sketched in crayon, with an outstretched finger,
directed attention to an inscription--"To the halls of Potts!" Just
above the little landing you were confronted by a big beef-eater's
head, out of the mouth of which floated a balloon-like legend--"Walk
up, walk up, and see the great Potts!" The aperture of the letter-box
in the door formed the mouth in a capital caricatured head of Charley
himself; and instead of a bell-handle there hung a hare's-foot, beneath
which was gummed a paper label with a written inscription "Tug the
trotter."

Three days after the gathering at the Titian Sketching-Club, Mr.
Potts sat in his studio, smoking a pipe, and glaring vacantly at a
picture on an easel in front of him. It was not a comfortable room;
its owner's warmest friend could not have asserted that. There was
no carpet, and the floor was begrimed with the dirt of ages, and
with spilt tobacco and trodden-in cigar-ash. The big window was half
stopped-up, and had no curtain. An old oak-cabinet against the wall,
surmounted by the inevitable plaster torso, and studies of hands
and arms, had lost one of its supporting feet, and looked as though
momentarily about to topple forward. A table in the middle of the room
was crowded with litter, amongst which a pewter-pot reared itself
conspicuously. Over an old sofa were thrown a big rough Inverness-cape,
a wideawake hat, and a thick stick; while on a broken, ragged, but
theatrically-tawdry arm-chair, by the easel, were a big palette already
"set," a colour-box, and a sheaf of brushes. Mr. Potts was dressed in
a shepherd's-plaid shooting coat, adorned here and there with dabs of
paint, and with semi-burnt brown patches, the result of the incautious
dropping of incandescent tobacco and vesuvians. He had on a pair of
loose rough trousers, red-morocco slippers without heels, and he wore
no neckcloth; but his big turned-down shirt-collar was open at the
throat. He wore no beard, but had a large sweeping Austrian moustache,
which curled fiercely at the ends; had thin brown hair, light blue
eyes, and the freshest and healthiest of complexions. No amount of
late hours, of drinking and smoking, could apparently have any effect
on this baby-skin; and under the influence of cold water and yellow
soap, both of which he used in large quantities, he seemed destined
to remain--so far as his complexion was concerned--"beautiful for
ever,"--or at least until long after Madame Rachel's clients had seen
the worthlessness of pigments. Looking at him as he sat there--his
back bent nearly double, his eyes fixed on his picture, his pipe fixed
stiffly between his teeth, and his big bony hands clasped in front
of him--there was no mistaking him for anything but a gentleman;
ill-dressed, slatternly, if you like; but a true gentleman, every inch
of him.

The "trotter" outside being tugged with tremendous violence, roused
him from his reverie, and he got up and opened the door, saying, as
he did so, "Why didn't you ring? I would, if I'd been you. You're in
the bell-hanging line, I should think, by the way you jerked my wire.
Hollo, Bowker, my boy! is it you? What's the matter? Are you chivied by
a dun on the staircase, or fainting for a pull at the pewter, that you
come with such a ring as that? Bring your body in, old man; there's a
wind here enough to shave you."

Mr. Bowker preceded his friend into the room, looked into the
pewter-pot, drained it, wiped his beard with a handkerchief; which
he took out of his hat, and said, in a solemn deep voice: "Potts, my
pipkin, how goes it?"

"Pretty well, old man, pretty well--considering the weather. And you?"

"Your William _se porte bien_. Hallo!" glancing at the easel, while
he took a pipe from his pocket and filled it from a jar on the table;
"hallo! something new! What's the subject? Who is the Spanish party in
tights? and what's the venerable buffer in the clerical get-up of the
period putting out his hand about?"

"Oh, it's a scene from _Gil Blas_, where the Archbishop of Grenada
discharges him, you know."

"No, I don't, and I don't want to hear; your William, dear boy, has
discovered that life is too short to have anything explained to him:
if he don't see it at first, he let's it pass. The young party's right
leg is out of drawing, my chick; just give your William a bit of chalk.
There--not being a patient at the Orthopaedic Hospital--that's where
his foot would come to. The crimson of the reverend gent's gown is
about as bad as anything Ive seen for a long time, dear boy. Hand over
the palette and brushes for two minutes. Your William is a rum old
skittle; but if there's one thing he knows about, it is colour." And
Charley, who knew that, with all his eccentricity, Mr. Bowker, or "your
William," as he always spoke of himself; was a thorough master of his
art, handed him what he required, and sat by watching him.

A fat bald-headed man with a grizzled beard, a large paunch and flat
splay feet, badly dressed and not too clean, Mr. Bowker did not give
one the idea of ever having been an "object of interest" to any one
save the waiter at the tavern where he dined, or the tobacconist where
he bought his Cavendish. But yet there had been a day when bright eyes
grew brighter at his approach, tiny ears latticed with chestnut-hair
had eagerly drunk in the music of his voice, gentle hands had thrilled
beneath his touch. He had bright blue eyes himself then, and long
hair, and a slim figure. He was young Mr. Bowker, whose first pictures
exhibited at Somerset House had made such a sensation, and who was so
much noticed by Sir David Wilkie, and for whom Mr. Northcote prophesied
such a future, and whom Mr. Fuseli called a "coot prave poy!" He was
the young Mr. Bowker who was recommended by Sir Thomas Lawrence as
drawing-master to the lovely young wife of old Mr. Van Den Bosch,
the Dutch banker and financier long resident in London. He was "that
scoundrel Bowker, sir," who, being wildly romantic, fell head-over-ears
in love with his pupil; and finding that she was cruelly ill-treated by
the old ruffian her husband, ran away with her to Spain, and by that
rash act smashed-up his career and finally settled himself for ever.
Old Van Den Bosch got a divorce, and died, leaving all his money to
his nephews; and then William Bowker and the woman he had eloped with
returned to England, to find himself universally shunned and condemned.
His art was as good, nay a thousand times better than ever; but they
would not hear of him at the Royal Academy now; would not receive his
pictures; would not allow the mention of his name. Patrons turned their
backs on him, debts accumulated, the woman for whom he had sacrificed
everything died,--penitent so far as she herself was concerned, but
adoring her lover to the last, and calling down blessings on him with
her latest breath. And then William Bowker strove no more, but accepted
his position and sunk into what he was, a kindly, jolly, graceless
vagabond, doing no harm, but very little good. He had a little private
money on which he lived; and as time progressed, some of his patrons,
who found he painted splendidly and cheaply, came back to him and gave
him commissions; but he never again attempted to regain his status;
and so long as he had enough to supply his simple daily wants, seemed
content. He was a great favourite with some half-dozen young men of
Charley Potts's set, who had a real love and regard for him, and was
never so happy as when helping them with advice and manual assistance.

Charley watched him at his work, and saw with delight the archbishop's
robe gradually growing all a-glow beneath the master's touch; and then,
to keep him in good-humour and amused, began to talk, telling him a
score of anecdotes, and finally asking him if he'd heard anything of
Tommy Smalt.

"Tommy Smalt, sir?" cried Bowker, in his cheery voice; "Tommy Smalt,
sir, is in clover! Your William has been able to put Tommy on to
a revenue of at least thirty shillings a-week. Tommy is now the
right-hand man of Jacobs of Newman Street; and the best judges say that
there are no Ostades, Jan Steens, or Gerard Dows like Tommy's."

"What do you mean?--copies?"

"Copies! no, sir: originals."

"Originals!"

"Certainly! original Tenierses, of boors drinking; Wouvermanns,
not forgetting the white horse; or Jan Steens, with the
never-failing episode;--all carefully painted by Tommy Smalt and his
fellow-labourers! Ah, Jacobs is a wonderful man! There never was such
a fellow; he sticks at nothing; and when he finds a man who can do his
particular work, he keeps him in constant employment."

"Well, but is the imposition never detected? Don't the pictures look
new?"

"Oh, most verdant of youths, of course not! The painting is clobbered
with liquorice-water; and the varnish is so prepared that it cracks at
once; and the signature in the corner is always authentic; and there's
a genuine look of cloudy vacancy and hopeless bankruptcy about the
whole that stamps it at once to the connoisseur as the real thing.
Tommy's doing a 'Youth's Head' by Rembrandt now, which ought to get him
higher pay; it ought indeed. It's for a Manchester man. They're very
hot about Rembrandts at Manchester."

"Well, you've put me up to a new wrinkle. And Jacobs lives by this?"

"Lives by it! ay, and lives like a prince too. Mrs. J. to fetch him
every day in an open barouche, and coachman and footman in skyblue
livery, and all the little J.'s hanging over the carriage-doors,
rendering Newman Street dark with the shadow of their noses. Lives by
it! ay, and why not? There will always be fools in the world, thank
Heaven!--or how should you and I get on, Charley, my boy?--and so
long as people will spend money on what they know nothing about, for
the sake of cutting-out their friends, gaining a spurious reputation
for taste, or cutting a swell as 'patrons of the fine-arts,'--patrons
indeed! that word nearly chokes me!--it's quite right that they should
be pillaged and done. No man can love art in the same manner that he
can love pancakes. He must know something about it, and have some
appreciation of it. Now no man with the smallest knowledge would go
to Jacobs; and so I say that the lords and railway-men and cotton-men
who go there simply as a piece of duff--to buy pictures as they would
carpets--are deuced well served out. There! your William has not talked
so much as that in one breath for many a long day. The pewter's empty.
Send for some more beer, and let's have a damp; my throat's as dry as a
lime-burner's wig."

Charley Potts took up the pewter-measure, and going on to the
landing outside the door, threw open the staircase-window, and gave
a shrill whistle. This twice repeated had some effect! for a very
much-be-ribboned young lady in the bar of the opposite public-house
looked up, and nodded with great complaisance; and then Charley,
having made a solemn bow, waved the empty quart-pot three times
round his head. Two minutes afterwards a bare-headed youth, with his
shirt-sleeves rolled up to his shoulders, crossed the road, carefully
bearing a pasteboard hat-box, with which he entered the house, and
which he delivered into Mr. Potts' hands.

"Good boy, Richard I never forget the hat-box; come for it this
evening, and take back both the empty pewters in it.--It would never
do, Bowker, my boy, to have beer--vulgar beer, sir--in its native
pewter come into a respectable house like this. The pious parties, who
buy their rattletraps and properties of old Lectern down below, would
be scandalised; and poor little Mossoo woman Stetti would lose her
swell connection. So Caroline and I--that's Caroline in the bar, with
the puce-coloured ribbons--arranged this little dodge; and it answers
first-rate."

"Ha--a!" said Mr. Bowker, putting down the tankard half-empty, and
drawing a long breath; "beer is to your William what what's-his-name
is to thingummy; which, being interpreted, means that he can't get on
without it. I never take a big pull at a pewter without thinking of our
Geoff. How is our Geoff?"

"Our Geoff is--hush! some one coming up stairs. What's to-day? Friday.
The day I told the tailor to call. Hush!"

The footsteps came creaking up the stairs until they stopped outside
Charley Potts' door, on which three peculiar blows were struck,--one
very loud, then two in rapid succession.

"A friend!" said Charley, going to the door and opening it. "Pass,
friend, and give the countersign! Hallo, Flexor! is it you? I forgot
our appointment for this morning. Come in."

It was, indeed, the great model, who, fresh-shaved, and with his hair
neatly poodled under his curly-brimmed hat, entered the room with a
swagger, which, when he perceived a stranger, he allowed to subside
into an elaborate bow.

"Now then, Flexor, get to work! we won't mind my friend here; he knows
all this sort of game of old," said Charley; while Flexor began to
arrange himself into the position of the expelled secretary of the
archbishop.

"Ay, and I know M. Flexor of old, that's another thing!" said Bowker,
with a deep chuckle, expelling a huge puff of smoke.

"Do you, sir?" said Flexor, still rigid in the Gil-Bias position, and
never turning his head; "maybe, sir; many gents knows Flexor."

"Yes; but many gents didn't know Flexor five-and-twenty years ago, when
he stood for Mercutio discoursing of Queen Mab."

"Lor' a mussy!" cried Flexor, forgetting all about his duty, parting
the smoke with his hand and bending down to look into William's face.
"It's Mr. Bowker, and I ought to have knowed him by the voice. And how
are you, sir? hearty you look, though you'yve got a paucity of nobthatch,
and what ''ir you 'ave is that gray, you might be your own grandfather.
Why, I haven't seen you since you was gold-medallist at the 'cademy,
'cept once when you come with Mrs.----"

"There, that'll do, Flexor! I'm alive still, you see; and so I see are
you. And your wife, is she alive?"

"O yes, sir; but, Lord, how different from what you know'd her! None
of your Wenuses, nor Dalilys, nor Nell Gwyns now! she's growed stout
and cumbersome, and never sits 'cept some gent wants a Mrs. Primrose
in that everlastin' Wicar, or a old woman a-scoldin' a gal because she
wants to marry a poor cove, or somethin' in that line; and then I says,
'Well, Jane, you may as well earn a shillin' an hour as any one else,'
I says."

"And you've been a model all these years, Flexor?"

"Well, no sir--off and on; but Ive always come back to it. I was
a actor for three years; did Grecian stators,--Ajax defyin' the
lightnin'; Slave a-listenin' to conspirators; Boy a-sharpenin' his
knife, and that game, you know, in a cirkiss. But I didn't like it;
they're a low lot, them actors, with no feelin' for art. And then Iwas
a gentleman's servant; but that wouldn't do; they do dam' and cuss
their servants so, the gentlemen do, as I couldn't stand it; and I was
a mute."

"A mute!--what, a funeral mute?"

"Yes, sir; black-job business; and wery good that is,--plenty of
pleasant comp'ny and agreeable talk, and nice rides in the summer time
on the 'earses to all the pleasant simmetries in the suburbs! But in
the winter it's frightful! and my last job I was nearly killed. We had
a job at 'Ampstead, in the debth of snow; and it was frightful cold on
the top of the 'Eath. It was the party's good lady as was going to be
interred, and the party himself were frightful near; in fact, a reg'lar
screw. Well, me and my mate had been standin' outside the 'ouse-door
with the banners in our 'ands for an hour, until we was so froze we
could scarcely hold the banners. So I says, I won't stand no longer, I
says; and I gev a soft rap, and told the servant we must have a drop
of somethin' short, or we should be killed with cold. The servant goes
and tells her master, and what do you think he says? 'Drink!' he says.
'Nonsense!' he says; '_if they're cold, let 'em jump about and warm
'emselves_,' he says. Fancy a couple of mutes with their banners in
their 'ands a-jumpin' about outside the door just before the party was
brought out. So that disgusted me, and I gev it up, and come back to
the old game agen."

"Now, Flexor," said Charley, "if you've finished your biography, get
back again."

"All right, sir!" and again Flexor became rigid, as the student of
Santillane.

"What were we talking of when Flexor arrived? O, I remember; I was
asking you about Geoff Ludlow. What of him?"

"Well, sir, Geoff Ludlow has made a thundering _coup_ at last. The
other night at the Titians he sold a picture to Stompff for two hundred
pounds; more than that, Stompff promised him no end of commissions."

"That's first-rate! Your William pledges him!" and Mr. Bowker finished
the stout.

"He'll want all he can make, gentlemen," said Flexor, who, seeing the
pewter emptied, became cynical; "he'll want all he can make, if he goes
on as he's doin' now."

"What do you mean?" asked Bowker.

"He's in love, Mr. Ludlow is; that's wot I mean. That party--you know,
Mr. Potts--as you brought to our place that night--he's been to see
her every day, he has; and my missis says, from what she 'ave seen and
'eard--well, that's neither 'ere nor there," said Flexor, checking
himself abruptly as he remembered that the keyhole was the place whence
Mrs. Flexor's information had been derived.

Charley Potts gave a loud whistle, and said, "The devil!" then turning
to Bowker, he was about to tell the story of the wet night's adventure,
but William putting up his finger warningly, grunted out "_Nachher!_"
and Charley, who understood German, ceased his chatter and went on with
his painting.

When the sitting was over, and Flexor had departed, William Bowker
returned to the subject, saying, "Now, Charley, tell your William all
about this story of Geoff and his adventure."

Charley Potts narrated it circumstantially, Bowker sitting grimly by
and puffing his pipe the while. When he had finished, Bowker never
spoke for full five minutes; but his brow was knit, and his teeth
clenched round his pipe. At length he said, "This is a bad business, so
far as I see; a devilish bad business! If the girl were in Geoff's own
station or if he were younger, it wouldn't so much matter; but Geoff
must be forty now, and at that age a man's deuced hard to turn from any
thing he gets into his head. Well, we must wait and see. I'd rather it
were you, Charley, by a mile; one might have some chance then. But you
never think of any thing of that sort, eh?"

What made Charley Potts colour as he said, "Welt--not in Geoff's line,
at all events?"

William Bowker noticed the flush, and said ruefully, "Ah, I see! Always
the way! Now let's go and get some beef or something to eat: I'm
hungry."




CHAPTER VIII.
THROWING THE FLY.


Mr. Flexor was by nature mendacious; indeed his employers used
pleasantly to remark, that when he did not lie, it was simply by
accident; but in what he had mentioned to Charley Potts about Geoffrey
Ludlow's visits to the nameless female then resident in his, Flexor's,
house, he had merely spoken the truth. To be sure there had been an
_arrière pensée_ in his remark; the fact being that Flexor objected
to matrimony as an institute amongst his patrons. He found that by an
artist in a celibate state beer was oftener sent for, donations of
cigars were more frequent, cupboards were more constantly unlocked, and
irregularities of attendance on his part, consequent on the frivolities
of the preceding night, were more easily overlooked, than when there
was a lady to share confidence and keys, and to regard all models, both
male and female, as "horrid creatures." But although Mr. Flexor had
spoken somewhat disparagingly of Geoffrey's frequent visits, and had
by his hints roused up a certain amount of suspicion in the breasts of
Charley Potts and that grim old cynic William Bowker, he was himself
far from knowing what real ground for apprehension existed, or how far
matters had progressed, at least with one of the parties concerned.

For Geoffrey Ludlow was hard hit! In vain he attempted to argue with
himself that all he had done, was doing, and might do, was but prompted
by benevolence. A secret voice within him told him that his attempts at
self-deceit were of the feeblest, and that, did he but dare to confess
it, he knew that there was in this woman whom he had rescued from
starvation an attraction more potent than he had ever yet submitted to.
It was, it may be said, his duty to call and see how she was getting
on, to learn that she wanted for nothing, to hear from her own lips
that his orders for her comfort had been obeyed; but it was not his
duty to sit watching jealously every glance of her eye, every turn of
her head, every motion of her lithe fingers. It was _not_ his duty to
bear away with him recollections of how she sat when she said this or
answered that; of the manner in which, following a habit of hers, she
would push back the thick masses of her gleaming hair, and tuck them
away behind her pretty ears; or, following another habit, she would
drum petulantly on the floor with her little foot, when talking of
any thing that annoyed her--as, for instance, Mrs. Flexor's prying
curiosity.

What was it that caused him to lie awake at night, tossing from side
to side on his hot pillow, ever before him the deep-violet eyes, the
pallid face set in masses of deep-red hair, the slight frail figure?
What was it that made his heart beat loudly, his breath come thickly,
his whole being tingle with a strange sensation--now ecstatic delight,
now dull blank misery? Not philanthropy, I trow. The superintendents
of boys' reformatories and refuges for the houseless poor may, in
thinking over what good they have achieved, enjoy a comfortable amount
of self-satisfaction and proper pride; but I doubt if the feeling
ever rises to this level of excitement. Not much wonder if Geoffrey
himself, suffering acutely under the disease, knew not, or refused to
avow to himself, any knowledge of the symptoms. Your darling child,
peacefully sleeping in his little bed, shall show here and there an
angry skin-spot, which you think heat or cold, or any thing else,
until the experienced doctor arrives, and with a glance pronounces it
scarlet-fever. Let us be thankful, in such a case, that the prostrate
patient is young. Geoffrey's was as dire a malady, and one which,
coming on at forty years of age, usually places the sufferer in a
perilous state. It was called Love; not the ordinary sober inclination
of a middle-aged man, not that thin line of fire quivering amongst a
heap of ashes which betokens the faded passion of the worn and sated
voluptuary; this was boy-love, calf-love, mad-spooniness--any thing
by which you can express the silliest, wildest, pleasantest, most
miserable phase of human existence. It never comes but once to any
one. The _caprices_ of the voluptuary are as like to each other as
peas or grains of sand; the platonic attachments or the sentimental
_liaisons_ indulged in by foolish persons of both sexes with nothing to
do may have some slight shade of distinction, but are equally wanting
in backbone and _vis_. Not to man or woman is it given to be ever
twice "in love"--a simple phrase, which means every thing, but needs
very little explanation. My readers will comprehend what I want to
convey, and will not require my feeble efforts in depicting the state.
Suffice it to say, that Geoffrey Ludlow, who had hitherto gone through
life scot-free, not because he was case-hardened, not because he was
infection-proof, or that he had run no risks, but simply from the
merest chance,--now fell a victim to the disease, and dropped powerless
before its attack.

He did not even strive to make head against it much. A little of his
constitutional wavering and doubtfulness came into play for a short
time, suggesting that this passion--for such he must allow it--was
decidedly an unworthy one; that at present he knew nothing of the
girl's antecedents; and that her actual state did not promise much for
all she had to tell of what had gone before. At certain times too,
when things present themselves in their least roseate garb, notably on
waking in the morning, for instance, he allowed, to himself, that he
was making a fool of himself; but the confidence extended no farther.
And then, as the day grew, and the sun came out, and he touched up his
picture, and thought of the commissions Mr. Stompff had promised him,
he became brighter and more hopeful, and he allowed his thoughts to
feast on the figure then awaiting him in Little Flotsam Street, and he
put by his sheaf of brushes and his palette, and went up and examined
himself in the glass over the mantelpiece. He had caught himself doing
this very frequently within the last few days, and, half-chuckling
inwardly, had acknowledged that it was a bad sign. But though he
laughed, he tweaked out the most prominent gray hairs in his beard,
and gave his necktie a more knowing twist, and removed the dabs of
stray paint from his shooting-coat. Straws thrown up show which way the
wind blows, and even such little sacrifices to vanity as these were in
Geoffrey Ludlow very strong signs indeed.

He had paid three visits to Little Flotsam Street; and on the
fourth morning, after a very poor pretence of work, he was at the
looking-glass settling himself preparatory to again setting out. Ever
since that midnight adventure after the Titians meeting, Geoffrey had
felt it impossible to take his usual daily spell at the easel, had not
done five-pounds' worth of real work in the whole time, had sketched-in
and taken out, and pottered, and smoked over his canvas, perfectly
conscious that he was doing no good, utterly unable to do any better.
On this fourth morning he had been even more unsuccessful than usual;
he was highly nervous; he could not even set his palette properly, and
by no manner of means could he apply his thoughts to his work. He had
had a bad night; that is, he had woke with a feeling that this kind
of penny-journal romance, wherein a man finds a starving girl in the
streets and falls desperately in love with her, could go on no longer
in London and in the nineteenth century. She was better now, probably
strong enough to get about; he would learn her history, so much of it
at least as she liked to tell; and putting her in some way of earning
an honest livelihood, take his leave of her, and dismiss her from his
thoughts.

He arrived at this determination in his studio; he kept it as he
walked through the streets; he wavered horribly when he came within
sight of the door; and by the time he knocked he had resolved to let
matters take their chance, and to act as occasion might suggest.
It was not Mrs. Flexor who opened the door to him, but that worthy
woman's youngest plague, Reg'las, who, with a brown eruption
produced by liquorice round his lips, nodded his head, and calmly
invited the visitor, as he would have done any one else, to "go up
'tairs." Geoffrey entered, patted the boy's head, and stopped at the
parlour-door, at which he gave a low rap, and immediately turning the
handle, walked in.

She was lying as usual on the sofa, immediately opposite the door; but,
what he had never seen before, her hair was freed from the confining
comb, and was hanging in full luxuriance over her shoulders. Great
heavens, how beautiful she looked! There had been a certain piquancy
and _chic_ in her appearance when her hair had been taken saucily off
her face and behind her ears; but they were nothing as compared to the
profound expression of calm holy resignation in that dead-white face
set in that deep dead-gold frame of hair. Geoff started when he saw
it; was it a Madonna of Raphael's, or a St. Teresa of Guido's, which
flashed across his mind? And as he looked she raised her eyes, and a
soft rosy flush spread over her face, and melted as quickly as it came.
He seated himself on a chair by her side as usual, and took her hand as
usual, the blood tingling in his fingers as he touched hers--as usual.
She was the first to speak.

"You are very early this morning. I scarcely expected you so soon--as
you may see;" and with a renewed flush she took up the ends of her
hair, and was about to twist them up, when Geoffrey stopped her.

"Leave it as it is," said he in a low tone; "it could not be better;
leave it as it is."

She looked at him as he spoke; not a full straight glance, but through
half-closed lids; a prolonged gaze,--half-dreamy, half-intense; then
released her hair, and let it again fall over her shoulders in a rich
red cloud.

"You are much better?"

"Thanks to you, very much; thanks to you!" and her little hand came out
frankly, and was speedily swallowed up in his big palm.

"No thanks at all; that is--well, you know. Let us change the subject.
I came to say--that--that--"

"You hesitate because you are afraid of hurting my feelings. I think I
can understand. I have learnt the world--God knows in no easy school;
you came to say that I had been long enough a pensioner on your
charity, and now must make my own way. Isn't that it?"

"No, indeed; not, that is not entirely what I meant. You see--our
meeting--so strange--"

"Strange enough for London and this present day. You found me starving,
dying, and you took care of me; and you knew nothing of me--not even my
name--not even my appearance."

There was a something harsh and bitter in her tone which Geoffrey had
never remarked before. It jarred on his ear; but he did not further
notice it. His eyes dropped a little as he said, "No, I didn't; I do
not know your name."

She looked up at him from under her eyelids; and the harshness had all
faded out of her voice as she said, "My name is Margaret Dacre." She
stopped, and looked at him; but his face only wore its grave honest
smile. Then she suddenly raised herself on the sofa, and looking
straight into his face, said hurriedly, "You are a kind man, Mr.
Ludlow; a kind, generous, honourable man; there are many men would have
given me food and shelter--there are very few who would have done it
unquestioning, as you have."

"You were my guest, Miss Dacre, and that was enough, though the
temptation was strong. How one evidently born and bred a lady could
have--"

"Ah, now," said she, smiling fainting, "you are throwing off your
bonds, and all man's curiosity is at work."

"No, on my honour; but--I don't know whether you know, but any one
acquainted with the world would see that--gad! I scarcely know how to
put it--but--fact is, that--people would scarcely understand--you must
excuse me, but--but the position, Miss Dacre!" and Geoff pushed his
hands through his hair, and knew that his cheeks were flaming.

"I see what you mean," said she, "and you are only explaining what I
have for the last day or two felt myself; that the--the position must
be altered. But you have so far been my friend, Mr. Ludlow--for I
suppose the preserver of one's life is to be looked upon as a friend,
at all events as one actuated by friendly motives--that I must ask you
to advise me how to support it."

"It would be impossible to advise unless--I mean, unless one knew, or
had some idea--what, in fact, one had been accustomed to."

The girl sat up on the sofa, and this time looked him steadily in the
face for a minute or so. Then she said, in a calm unbroken voice, "You
are coming to what I knew must arise, to what is always asked, but what
I hitherto have always refused to tell. You, however, have a claim to
know--what I suppose people would call my history." Her thin lips were
tightly pressed and her nostrils curved in scorn as she said these
words. Geoffrey marked the change, and spoke out at once, all his usual
hesitation succumbing before his earnestness of purpose.

"I have asked nothing," said he; "please to remember that; and further,
I wish to hear nothing. You are my guest for so long as it pleases
you to remain in that position. When you wish to go, you will do so,
regretted but certainly unquestioned." If Geoffrey Ludlow ever looked
handsome, it was at this moment. He was a little nettled at being
suspected of patronage, and the annoyance flushed his cheek and fired
his eyes.

"Then I am to be a kind of heroine of a German fairytale; to appear,
to sojourn for a while--then to fade away and never to be heard of
ever after, save by the good fortune which I leave behind me to him
who had entertained an angel unawares. Not the last part of the story,
I fear, Mr. Ludlow; nor indeed any part of it. I have accepted your
kindness; I am grateful--God knows how grateful for it--and now, being
strong again--you need not raise your eyebrows; I am strong, am I not,
compared with the feeble creature you found in the streets?--I will
fade away, leaving gratitude and blessings behind me."

"But what do you intend to do?"

"Ah! there you probe me beyond any possibility of reply. I shall--"

"I--I have a notion, Miss Dacre, just come upon me. It was seeing you
with your hair down--at least, I think it was--suggested it; but I'm
sure it's a good one. To sit, you know, as a model--of course I mean
your face, you know, and hair, and all that sort of thing, so much in
vogue just now; and so many fellows would be delighted to get studies
of you--the pre-Raphaelite fellows, you know; and it isn't much--the
pay, you know: but when one gets a connexion--and I'm sure that I could
recommend--O, no end of fellows." It was not that this was rather a
longer speech than usual that made Geoffrey terminate it abruptly; it
was the expression in Margaret Dacre's gray eyes.

"Do you think I could become a model, Mr. Ludlow--at the beck and call
of every man who chose to offer me so much per hour? Would you wish
to see me thus?" and as she said the last words she knit her brows,
leaning forward and looking straight at him under her drooping lids.

Geoffrey's eyes fell before that peculiar glance, and he pushed his
hands through his hair in sheer doubtful desperation.

"No!" he said, after a minute's pause "it wouldn't do. I hadn't thought
of that. You see, I--O by Jove, another idea! You play? Yes, I knew you
did by the look of your hands! and talk French and German, I daresay?
Ah, I thought so! Well, you know, I give lessons in some capital
families--drawing and water-colour sketching--and I'm constantly asked
if I know of governesses. Now what's to prevent my recommending you?"

"What, indeed? You have known me so long! You are so thoroughly
acquainted with my capabilities--so persuaded of my respectability!"

The curved lips, the petulant nostril, the harsh bitter voice again!
Geoff winced under them. "I think you are a little prejudiced," he
began. "A little--"

"A little nothing! Listen, Mr. Ludlow! You have saved me from death,
and you are kind enough to wish me, under your auspices, to begin life
again. Hear, first, what was my former life. Hear it, and then see the
soundness of your well-intentioned plans. My father was an infantry
captain, who was killed in the Crimea. After the news came of his
death, my mother's friends, wealthy tradespeople, raised a subscription
to pay her an annuity of 150_l_, on condition of her never troubling
them again. She accepted this, and she and I went to live for cheapness
at Tenby in Wales. There was no break in my life until two years since,
when I was eighteen years old. Up to that time, school, constant
practice at home (for I determined to be well educated), and attendance
on my mother, an invalid, formed my life. Then came the usual
character--without which the drama of woman's life is incomplete--a
man!"

She hesitated for a moment, and looked up as Geoffrey Ludlow leaned
forward, breathing thickly through his nostrils; then she continued--

"This one was a soldier, and claimed acquaintance with a dead comrade's
widow; had his claim allowed, and came to us morning, noon, and night.
A man of the world, they called him; could sit and talk with my mother
of her husband's virtues and still-remembered name, and press my hand,
and gaze into my eyes, and whisper in my ear whenever her head was
turned."

"And you?"

"And I! What would a girl do, brought up at a sleepy watering-place,
and seeing nobody but the curate or the doctor? I listened to his every
word, I believed his every look; and when he said to me, 'On such a
night fly with me,' I fled with him without remorse."

Geoffrey Ludlow must have anticipated something of this kind, and yet
when he heard it, he dropped his head and shook it, as though under the
effect of a staggering blow. The action was not unnoticed by Margaret.

"Ah," said she, in low tones and with a sad smile, "I saw how your
schemes would melt away before my story."

This time it was his hand that came out and caught hers in its grip.

"Ah, wait until you have heard the end, now very close at hand. The
old, old story: a coming marriage, which never came, protracted and
deferred now for one excuse, now for another--the fear of friends, the
waiting for promotion, the--ah, every note in the whole gamut of lies!
And then--"

"Spare yourself and me--I know enough!"

"No; hear it out! It is due to you, it is due to me. A sojourn in
Italy, a sojourn in England--gradual coolness, final flight. But such
flight! One line to say that he was ruined, and would not drag me
down in his degradation--no hope of a future meeting--no provision
for present want. I lived for a time by the sale of what he had given
me,--first jewels, then luxuries, then--clothes. And then, just as I
dropped into death's jaws, you found me."

"Thank God!" said Geoffrey earnestly, still retaining the little hand
within his own; "thank God! I can hear no more to-day--yes; one thing,
his name?"

"His name," said she, with fixed eyes, "I have never mentioned to
mortal; but to you I will tell it. His name was Leonard Brookfield."

"Leonard Brookfield," repeated Geoffrey. "I shall not forget it. Now
adieu! We shall meet to-morrow."

He bowed over her hand and pressed it to his lips, then was gone; but
as his figure passed the window, she raised herself upright, and ere
he vanished from her sight, from between her compressed lips came the
words, "At last! at last!"




CHAPTER IX.
SUNSHINE IN THE SHADE.


What is a dull life? In what does the enjoyment of existence consist?
It is a comparative matter, after all, I fancy. A Londoner, cantering
homeward down the Row, will lift his hat as he passes three horsemen
abreast, the middle one of whom, comely, stout, and pleasant-looking,
bows in return; or, looking after an olive-coloured brougham with a
white horse, out of the window of which looms a lined leery-looking
face, will say, "How well Pam holds out!" and will go home to dinner
without bestowing another thought on the subject; whereas the mere fact
of having seen the Prince of Wales or Lord Palmerston would give a
countryman matter for reflection and conversation for a couple of days.
There are even Londoners who look upon a performance of chamber-music,
or a visit to the Polytechnic Institute as an excitement; while in a
provincial town to attend a lecture on "Mnemonics," or the dinner of
the farmers' club, is the acme of dissipation. Some lives are passed
in such a whirl that even the occasional advent among their kindred
of the great date-marker, Death, is scarcely noticed; others dwindle
away with such unvarying pulsations that the purchase of a new bonnet,
the lameness of an old horse, the doctor's visit, the curate's cough,
are all duly set down as notabilia worthy to be recorded. Who does not
recollect the awe and reverence with which one regarded the Bishop
of Bosphorus, when, a benevolent seraph in a wig (they wore wigs in
those days) and lawn sleeves, he arrived at the parish church for the
confirmation-service? It was exciting to see him; it was almost too
much to hear his voice; but now, if you are a member of the Athenaeum
Club, you may see him, and two or three other prelates, reading the
evening papers, or drinking their pint of sherry with the joint, and
speaking to the waiters in voices akin to those of ordinary mortals;
may even see him sitting next to Belmont the poet, whose _Twilight
Musings_ so delighted your youth, but whom you now find to be a fat man
with a red face and a tendency to growl if there be not enough schalot
sent up with his steak.

If there were ever a man who should have felt the influence of a dull
life, it was Lord Caterham, who never repined. And yet it would be
difficult to imagine any thing more terribly lonely than was that man's
existence. Dressed by his servant, his breakfast over, and he wheeled
up to his library-table, there was the long day before him; how was
he to get through it? Who would come to see him? His father, perhaps,
for five minutes, with a talk about the leading topic treated of in
the _Times_, a remark about the change in the weather, a hope that his
son would "get out into the sunshine," and as speedy a departure as
could be decently managed. His mother, very rarely, and then only for a
frosty peck at his cheek, and a tittered hope that he was better. His
brother Lionel, when in town, when not else engaged, when not too seedy
after "a night of it,"--his brother Lionel, who would throw himself
into an easy-chair, and, kicking out his slippered feet, tell Caterham
what a "rum fellow" he, Lionel, thought him; what a "close file;" what
a "reserved, oyster-like kind of a cove!" Other visitors occasionally.
Algy Barford, genial, jolly, and quaint; always welcome for his bright
sunshiny face, his equable temper, his odd salted remarks on men and
things. A bustling apothecary, with telescopic shoulders and twinkling
eyelids, who peered down Lord Caterham's throat like a magpie looking
into a bone, and who listened to the wheezings of Lord Caterham's chest
with as much intentness as a foreigner in the Opera-pit to the prayer
in _Der Freischütz_. Two or three lounging youths, fresh from school
or college, who were pleased to go away afterwards and talk of their
having been with him, partly because he was a lord, partly because
he was a man whose name was known in town, and one with whom it was
rather _kudos_ to be thought intimate. There are people who, under such
circumstances, would have taken their servants into their confidence;
but Lord Caterham was not one of these. Kindly and courteous to all,
he yet kept his servant at the greatest distance; and the man knew
that to take the slightest liberty was more than his place was worth.
There were no women to talk with this exile from his species; there
were none on sufficiently intimate footing to call on him and sit with
him, to talk frankly and unreservedly that pleasant chatter which
gives us the keynote to their characters; and for this at least Lord
and Lady Beauport were unfeignedly thankful. Lord Beauport's knowledge
of the world told him that there were women against whom his son's
deformity and isolated state would be no defence, to whom his rank and
position would be indefinable attractions, by whom he would probably
be assailed, and with whom he had no chance of coping. Not bad women,
not _intrigantes_,--such would have set forth their charms and wasted
their dalliances in vain,--but clever heartless girls, brought up by
matchmaking mothers, graduates in the great school of life, skilled
in the deft and dexterous use of all aggressive weapons, unscrupulous
as to the mode of warfare so long as victory was to be the result.
In preventing Lord Caterham from making the acquaintance of any such
persons, Lord Beauport took greater pains than he had ever bestowed on
anything in connection with his eldest son; and, aided by the astute
generalship of his wife, he had succeeded wonderfully.

Only once did there seem a chance of an enemy's scaling the walls
and entering the citadel, and then the case was really serious. It
was at an Eton and Harrow match at Lord's that Lord Caterham first
saw Carry Chesterton. She came up hanging on the arm of her brother,
Con Chesterton, the gentleman farmer, who had the ground outside
Homershams, Lady Beauport's family place, and who begged to present his
sister to Lord Caterham, of whom she had heard so much. A sallow-faced
girl, with deep black eyes, arched brows, and raven hair in broad
bands, with a high forehead and a chiselled nose and tight thin lips,
was Carry Chesterton; and as she bent over Lord Caterham's chair and
expressed her delight at the introduction, she shot a glance that went
through Caterham's eyes, and into his very soul.

"She was a poetess, was Carry, and all that sort of thing," said
honest Con; "and had come up to town to try and get some of her
writings printed, you know, and that sort of thing; and your lordship's
reputation as a man of taste, you know, and that sort of thing,--if
you'd only look at the stuff and give your opinion, and that sort of
thing."

"That sort of thing," _i.e_. the compulsory conversion into a
Mecaenas, Lord Caterham had had tried-on before; but only in the case
of moon-struck men, never from such a pair of eyes. Never had he had
the request indorsed in such a deep-toned thrilling voice; and so he
acquiesced, and a meeting was arranged for the morrow, when Con was to
bring Carry to St. Barnabas Square; and that night Lord Caterham lay
in a pleasant state of fevered excitement, thinking of his expected
visitor. Carry came next day, but not Con. Con had some arrangements to
make about that dreadful yeomanry which took up so much of his time, to
see Major Latchford or Lord Spurrier, the colonel, and arrange about
their horrid evolutions; but Carry came, and brought her manuscript
book of poems. Would she read them? she could, and did, in a deep low
_traînante_ voice, with wonderful art and pathos, illustrating them
with elevations of her thick brows and with fervid glances from her
black eyes. They were above the average of women's verse, had nothing
namby-pamby in them, and were not merely flowing and musical, but
strong and fervid; they were full of passion, which was not merely
a Byronic _refrain_, but had a warmth and novelty of its own. Lord
Caterham was charmed with the verses, was charmed with the writer; he
might suggest certain improvements in them, none in her. He pointed out
certain lines which might be altered; and as he pointed them out, their
hands met, touched but for an instant, and on looking up, his eyes lost
themselves in hers.

Ah, those hand-touches and eye-glances! The oldest worldling has some
pleasure in them yet, and can recall the wild ecstatic thrill which
ran through him when he first experienced them in his salad-days.
But we can conceive nothing of their effect on a man who, under
peculiar circumstances, had lived a reserved self-contained life until
five-and-twenty years of age,--a man with keen imagination and warm
passions, who had "never felt the kiss of love, nor maiden's hand in
his," until his whole being glowed and tingled under the fluttering
touch of Carry Chesterton's lithe fingers, and in the fiery gaze of
her black eyes. She came again and again; and after every visit Lord
Caterham's passion increased. She was a clever woman with a purpose,
to the fulfilment of which her every word, her every action, tended.
Softly, delicately, and with the greatest _finesse_, she held up to
him the blank dreariness of his life, and showed him how it might be
cheered and consoled. In a pitying rather than an accusing spirit, she
pointed out the shortcomings of his own relatives, and indicated how,
to a person in his position, there could be but one who should be all
in all. This was all done with the utmost tact and refinement; a sharp
word, an appearance of eagerness, the slightest showing of the cards,
and the game would have been spoilt; but Carry Chesterton knew her
work, and did it well. She had been duly presented by Lord Caterham to
his father and mother, and had duly evoked first their suspicion, then
their rage. At first it was thought that by short resolute measures
the evil might be got rid of. So Lord Beauport spoke seriously to
his son, and Lady Beauport spoke warningly; but all in vain. For the
first time in his life Lord Caterham rebelled, and in his rebellion
spoke his mind; and in speaking his mind he poured forth all that
bitterness of spirit which had been collecting and fermenting so long.
To the crippled man's heartwrung wail of contempt and neglect, to his
passionate appeal for some one to love and to be loved by, the parents
had no reply. They knew that he had bitter cause for complaint; but
they also knew that he was now in pursuit of a shadow; that he was
about to assuage his thirst for love with Dead-Sea apples; that the
"set gray life and apathetic end" were better than the wild fierce
conflict and the warming of a viper in the fires of one's heart. Lady
Beauport read Carry Chesterton like a book, saw her ends and aims, and
told Lord Caterham plainly what they were. "This girl is attracted by
your title and position, Caterham,--nothing else," she said, in her
hard dry voice; "and the natural result has ensued." But that voice had
never been softened by any infusion of maternal love. Her opinions had
no weight with her son. He made no answer, and the subject dropped.

Lionel Brakespere, duly apprised by his mother of what was going on,
and urged to put a stop to it, took his turn at his brother, and spoke
with his usual mess-room frankness, and in his usual engaging language.
"Every body knew Carry Chesterton," he said, "all the fellows at the
Rag knew her; at least all who'd been quartered in the neighbourhood
of Flockborough, where she was a regular garrison hack, and had been
engaged to Spoonbill of the 18th Hussars, and jilted by Slummer of the
160th Rifles, and was as well known as the town-clock, by Jove; and
Caterham was a fiat and a spoon, and he'd be dashed if he'd see the
fam'ly degraded; and I say, why the doose didn't Caterham listen to
reason!" So far Captain the Honourable Lionel Brakespere; who, utterly
failing in his purpose and intent, and having any further access to
Lord Caterham's rooms strictly denied him by Lord Caterham's orders,
sought out Algy Barford and confided to him the whole story, and "put
him on" to save the fam'ly credit, and stop Caterham's rediklous
'fatuation.

Now if the infatuation in question had been legitimate, and likely to
lead to good results, Algy Barford would have been the very last man on
earth to attempt to put a stop to it, or to interfere in any way save
for its advancement. But this airy, laughing philosopher, with all his
apparent carelessness, was a man of the world and a shrewd reader of
human character; and he had made certain inquiries, the result of which
proved that Carry Chesterton was, if not all that Lionel Brakespere had
made her out, at all events a heartless coquette and fortune-huntress,
always rising at the largest fly. Quite recently jilted by that
charming creature Captain Slummer of the Rifles, she had been heard to
declare she would not merely retrieve the position hereby lost, but
achieve a much greater one; and she had been weak enough to boast of
her influence over Lord Caterham, and her determination to marry him
in spite of all his family's opposition. Then Algy Barford joined the
ranks of the conspirators, and brought his thoroughly practical worldly
knowledge to their camp. It was at a council held in Lady Beauport's
boudoir that he first spoke on the subject, his face radiant with good
humour, his teeth gleaming in the light, and his attention impartially
divided between the matter under discussion and the vagaries of a big
rough terrier which accompanied him every where.

"You must pardon me, dear Lady Beauport," said he; "but you've all
been harking forward on the wrong scent.--Down, Tinker! Don't let him
jump on your mother, Lionel; his fleas, give you my honour, big as
lobsters!--on the wrong scent! Dear old Caterham, best fellow in the
world; but frets at the curb, don't you know? Put him a couple of links
higher up than usual, and he rides rusty and jibs--jibs, by Jove! And
that's what you've been doing now. Dear old Caterham! not much to amuse
him in life, don't you know? goes on like a blessed old martyr; but at
last finds something which he likes, and you don't. Quite right, dear
Lady Beauport; _I_ see it fast enough, because I'm an old lad, and have
seen men and cities; but dear Caterham, who is all milk and rusks and
green peas, and every thing that is innocent, don't you know, don't
see it at all. And then you try to shake him by the shoulder and rouse
him out of his dream, and tell him that he's not in fairyland, not in
Aladdin's palace, not in a two-pair back in Craven Street, Strand.
Great mistake that, Lionel, dear boy. Dear Lady Beauport, surely your
experience teaches you that it is a great mistake to cross a person
when they're in that state?"

"But, Mr. Barford, what is to be done?"

"Put the helm about, Lady Beauport, and--Tinker! you atrocious
desperado, you shameless caitiff! will you get down?--put the helm
about, and try the other tack. Weve failed with dear old Caterham: now
let's try the lady. Caterham is the biggest fish she's seen yet; but
my notion is that if a perch came in her way, and seemed likely to
bite, she'd forget she'd ever seen a gudgeon. Now my brother Windermere
came to town last week, and he's an earl, you know, and just the sort
of fellow who likes nothing so much as a flirtation, and is all the
time thunderingly well able to take care of himself. I think if Miss
Chesterton were introduced to Windermere, she'd soon drop poor dear
Caterham."

Both Lionel and his mother agreed in this notion, and an early
opportunity was taken for the presentation of Lord Windermere to Miss
Chesterton. An acknowledged _parti_; a man of thews and sinews; frank,
generous, and affable: apparently candid and unsuspecting in the
highest degree, he seemed the very prize for which that accomplished
fortune-huntress had long been waiting; and forgetting the old fable of
the shadow and the substance she at once turned a decided cold shoulder
upon poor Lord Caterham, ceased visiting him, showed him no more
poetry, and within a week of her making Lord Windermere's acquaintance,
cut her old friend dead in Kensington Gardens, whither he had been
wheeled in the hope of seeing her. Ah, in how few weeks, having
discovered the sandy foundation on which she had been building, did
she come back, crouching and fawning and trying all the old devices,
to find the fire faded out of Caterham's eyes and the hope out of his
breast, and the prospect of any love or companionship as distant from
him as ever!

Yes, that was Lord Caterham's one experience of love; and after its
lame and impotent conclusion he determined he would never have another.
We have all of us determined that in our time; but few of us have kept
to our resolution so rigidly as did Lord Caterham, possibly because
opportunities have not been so wanting to us as to him. It is all that
horrible opportunity which saps our strongest resolutions; it is the
close proximity of the magnum of "something special" in claret which
leads to the big drink; it is the shaded walk, and the setting sun
behind the deep bank of purple clouds, and the solemn stillness, and
the upturned eyes and the provoking mouth, which lead to all sorts
of horrible mistakes. Opportunity after the Chesterton _escapade_
was denied to Lord Caterham both by himself and his parents. He shut
himself up in solitude: he would see no one save the apothecary and
Algy Barford, who indeed came constantly, feeling all the while
horribly treacherous and shamefaced. And then by degrees--by that
blessed process of Time against which we rail so much, but which is so
beneficial, of Time the anodyne and comforter, he fell back into his
old ways of life; and all that little storm and commotion was as though
it had never been. It left no marks of its fury on Caterham; he kept
no relics of its bright burning days: all letters had been destroyed.
There was not a glove nor a flower in his drawers--nothing for him
to muse and shake his head over. So soon as his passion had spent
itself--so soon as he could look calmly upon the doings of the few
previous months, he saw how unworthy they had been, and blotted them
from his memory for ever.

So until Annie Maurice had come to take up her position as his mother's
companion, Lord Caterham had been entirely without female society, and
since her advent he had first learned the advantages of associating
with a pure, genuine healthy woman. Like Carry Chesterton, she seemed
to take to the crippled man from her first introduction to him; but ah,
how unlike that siren did sweet Annie Maurice show her regard! There
was no more romance in her composition, so she would have told you
herself, than in the statue at Charing Cross; no eyebrow elevations, no
glances, no palpable demonstrations of interest. In quite a household
and domestic manner did this good fairy discharge her duties. She was
not the Elf, the Wili, the Giselle; in book-muslin and star-sprent
hair; she was the ordinary "Brownie," the honest Troll, which shows
its presence in help rather than ornament. Ever since Miss Maurice had
been an inmate of the house in Barnabas Square, Caterham's books had
been dusted, his books and papers arranged, his diurnal calendar set,
his desk freshened with a glass of newly-gathered flowers. Never before
had his personal wants been so readily understood, so deftly attended
to. No one smoothed his pillows so softly, wheeled his chair so easily,
his every look so quickly comprehended. To all that dreary household
Annie Maurice was a sunbeam; but on no one did she shine so brightly
as on that darkened spirit. The Earl felt the beaming influence of
her bright nature; the Countess could not deny her meed of respect to
one who was always "in her place;" the servants, horribly tenacious
of interference, could find no fault with Miss Maurice; but to none
appeared she in so bright a light as to Lord Caterham.

It was the morning after the receipt of the letter which Algy Barford
had left with him, and which had seemingly so much upset him, that
Caterham was sitting in his room, his hands clasped idly before him,
his looks bent, not on the book lying open on the desk, but on the
vacant space beyond it. So delicately constituted was his frame, that
any mental jar was immediately succeeded by acute bodily suffering; he
was hurt, not merely in spirit but in body; the machinery of his being
was shaken and put out of gear, and it took comparatively some length
of time for all to get into working order again. The strain on this
occasion had evidently been great, his head throbbed, his eyes were
surrounded with bistre rings, and the nervous tension of his clasped
fingers showed the unrest of his mind. Then came a gentle tap on the
door, a sound apparently instantly recognisable, for Lord Caterham
raised his head, and bade the visitor "Come in." It was Annie Maurice.
No one else opened the door so quickly and closed it so quietly behind
her, no one came with so light and yet so firm a step, no one else
would have seen that the sun was pouring in through the window on to
the desk, and would have crossed the room and arranged the blind before
coming up to the chair. Caterham knew her without raising his eyes, and
had said, "Ah, Annie dear!" before she reached him.

"I feared you were ill, my lord," she commenced; but a deep growl
from Caterham stopped her. "I feared you were ill, Arthur," she then
said; "you did not show at dinner last night, nor in the evening; but
I thought you might be disinclined for society--the Gervises were
here, you know, and the Scrimgeours, and I know you don't care for
our classical music, which is invariable on such occasions; but I met
Stephens on the staircase, and he gave me such a desponding account,
that I really feared you were ill."

"Only a passing dull fit, Annie; only a passing dull fit of extra
heaviness, and consequently extra duration! Stephens is a croaker, you
know; and having, I believe, an odd sort of Newfoundland-dog attachment
to me, is frightened if I have a finger-ache. But I'm very glad you've
come in, Annie, for I'm not really very bright even now, and you always
help to set me straight. Well, and how goes it with you, young lady?"

"Oh, very well, Arthur, very well."

"You feel happier than you did on your first coming among us? You feel
as though you were settling down into your home?"

"I should be worse than foolish if I did not, for every one tries to be
kind to me."

"I did not ask you for moral sentiments, Annie, I asked you for facts.
Do you feel settling down into your home?" And as Caterham said this,
he shot a keen scrutinising glance at the girl.

She paused for a moment ere she answered, and when she spoke she looked
at him straight out of her big brown eyes.

"Do I feel as if I were settling down into my home, Arthur? No; in all
honesty, no. I have no home, as you know well enough; but I feel that--"

"Why no home?" he interrupted; "isn't--No, I understand."

"No, you do not understand; and it is for that reason I speak. You
do not understand me, Lord--Arthur. You have notions which I want to
combat, and set right at once, please. I know you have, for Ive heard
hints of them in something you've said before. It all rises out of your
gentlemanly and chivalrous feeling, I know; but, believe me, you're
wrong. I fill the position of your mother's companion here, and you
have fallen into the conventional notion that I'm not well treated, put
upon, and all that kind of thing. On my honour, that is utterly wrong.
No two people could be kinder, after their lights, than Lord and Lady
Beauport are to me. Of your own conduct I need say no word. From the
servants I have perfect respect; and yet--"

"And yet?"

"Well, simply you choose the wrong word; there's no homey feeling about
it, and I should be false were I to pretend there were."

"But pardon me for thus pursuing the subject into detail,--my interest
in you must be my excuse,--what 'homey feeling,' as you call it, had
you at Ricksborough Vicarage, whence you came to us? The people there
are no closer blood-relations than we are; nor did they, as far as I
know--"

"Nor did they try more to make me happy. No, indeed, they could not
have tried more in that way than you do. But I was much younger
when I first went there, Arthur--quite a little child--and had all
sorts of childish reminiscences of cow-milking, and haymaking,
and harvest-homes, and all kinds of ruralities, with that great
balloon-shaped shadow of St. Paul's ever present on the horizon keeping
watch over the City, where dear old uncle Frank told me I should have
to get my living after he was gone. Its home-influence gained on me
even from the sorrow which I saw and partook of in it; from the sight
of my aunt's deathbed and my uncle's meek resignation overcoming his
desperate grief; from the holy comfort inspired in him by the discharge
of his holy calling; by the respect and esteem in which he was held by
all around, and which was never so much shown as when he wanted it most
acutely. These things, among many others, made that place home to me."

"Yes," said Lord Caterham, in a harsh dry voice; "I understand easily
enough. After such innocence and goodness I can fully comprehend what
it must be to you to read blue-books to my father, to listen to my
mother's _fade_ nonsense about balls, operas, and dresses, or to attend
to the hypochondriacal fancies of a valetudinarian like myself--"

"Lord Caterham! I don't think that even you have a right to insult me
in this way!"

"_Even_ I! thank you for the compliment, which implies--Bah! what a
brute I am! You'll forgive me, Annie, won't you? I'm horribly hipped
and low. Ive not been out for two days; and the mere fact of being a
prisoner to the house always fills my veins with bile instead of blood.
Ah, you won't keep that knit brow and those tightened lips any longer,
will you? No one sees more plainly than I do that your life here wants
certain--"

"Pray say no more, I--"

"Ah, Annie, for Heaven's sake don't pursue this miserable growl of
mine. Have some pity for my ill-health. But I want to see you with
as many surroundings natural to your age and taste as we can find in
this--hospital. There's music: you play and sing very sweetly; but you
can't--I know you can't--sit down with any ease or comfort to that
great furniture-van of a grand-piano in that gaunt drawing-room; that's
only fit for those long-haired foreigners who let off their fireworks
on Lady Beauport's reception-nights. You must have a good piano of your
own, in your own room or here, or somewhere where you can practise
quietly. I'll see about that. And drawing--for you have a great natural
talent for that; but you should have some lessons: you must keep it up;
you must have a master. There's a man goes to Lady Lilford's, a capital
fellow, whom I know; you must have him. What's his name? Ludlow--"

"What, Geoffrey Ludlow! dear old Geoff! He used to be papa's greatest
friend when we were at Willesden, you know,--and before that dreadful
bankruptcy, you know, Mr. Ludlow was always there. Ive sat on his knee
a thousand times; and he used to sketch me, and call me his little elf.
Oh yes, dear Arthur, I should like that,--I should like to have lessons
from Mr. Ludlow! I should so like to see him again!"

"Well, Annie, you shall. I'll get his address from the Lilfords and
write to him, and settle about his coming. And now, Annie, leave me,
dear; I'm a little tired, and want rest."

He was tired, and wanted rest; but he did not get it just then. Long
after Annie left the room he sat pondering, pondering, with a strange
feeling for which he himself could not account, but which had its
keynote in this: How strongly she spoke of the man Ludlow; how he
disliked her earnestness on the subject; and what would he not have
given, could he have thought she would have spoken so strongly of him.




CHAPTER X.
YOUR WILLIAM.


When you feel yourself gradually becoming enthralled, falling a
victim to a fascination all-potent, but scarcely all-satisfactory,
be it melancholy, or gambling, or drink, or love, there is nothing
so counteracting to the horrible influence as to brace your nerves
together, and go in for a grand spell of work. That remedy is always
efficacious, of course. It never fails, as Geoffrey Ludlow knew
very well; and that was the reason why, on the morning after his
last-described interview with Margaret Dacre, he dragged out from
behind a screen, where it had been turned with its face to the wall,
his half-finished picture intended for the Academy, and commenced
working on it with wonderful earnestness. It was a large canvas with
three principal figures: a young man, a "swell" of modern days, turning
away from the bold and eager glances of a somewhat brazen coquette,
and suddenly struck by the modest bashful beauty of a girl of the
governess-order seated at a piano. "Scylla and Charybdis" Geoff had
intended calling it, with the usual _Incidit in &c_. motto; and when
the idea first struck him he had taken pains with his composition,
had sketched his figures carefully, and had painted-in the flirt and
the man very successfully. The governess had as yet been a failure;
he had had no ideal to work from; the model who had sat to him was a
little coarse and clumsy, and irritated at not being able to carry
out his notion, he had put the picture by. But he now felt that work
was required of him, not merely as a distraction from thought, but as
an absolute duty which he owed to himself; and as this was a subject
likely to be appreciated by Mr. Stompff, he determined to work at it
again, and to have it ready for submission to the Hanging Committee of
the Academy. He boggled over it a little at first; he smoked two pipes,
staring at the canvas, occasionally shading his eyes with one hand, and
waving the other in a dreamy possessed manner in front of him. Then he
took up a brush and began to lay on a bit of colour, stepping back from
time to time to note the effect; and then the spirit came upon him, and
he went to work with all his soul.

What a gift is that of the painter, whose whole story can be read at
one glance, who puts what we require three thick volumes to narrate
into a few feet of canvas, who with one touch of his brush gives an
expression which we pen-and-ink workers should take pages to convey,
and even then could never hope to do it half so happily!--who sees his
work grow beneath his hand, and can himself judge of its effect on
others;--who can sit with his pipe in his mouth, and chirp away merrily
to his friend, the while his right hand is gaining him wealth and
honour and fame!

The spirit was on Geoffrey Ludlow, and the result came out splendidly.
He hoped to gain a good place on the Academy walls, he hoped to do
justice to the commissions which Mr. Stompff had given him; but there
was something beyond these two incentives which spurred his industry
and nerved his touch. After all his previous failures, it seemed
as though Scylla the governess would have the best of it at last.
Charybdis was a splendid creature, a bold, black-eyed, raven-haired
charmer, with her hair falling in thick masses over her shoulders, and
with a gorgeous passion-flower hanging voluptuously among her tresses;
a goddess amongst big Guardsmen, who would sit and suck their yellow
moustaches and express their admiration in fragmentary ejaculations,
or amongst youths from the Universities, with fluff instead of hair,
and blushes in place of _aplomb_. But in his later work the artist's
heart seemed to have gone with Scylla, who was to her rival as is a
proof after Sir Joshua to a French print, as a glass of Amontillado
to a _petit verre_ of Chartreuse,--a slight delicate creature, with
violet eyes and pallid complexion, and deep-red hair brought down in
thick braids, and tucked away behind such dainty little ears; her
modest gray dress contrasting, in its quaker-like simplicity, with the
brilliant-hued robe and rich laces of her rival. His morning's work
must have been successful, for--rare thing with him--Geoff himself was
pleased with it; no doubt of the inspiration now, he tried to deny it
to himself, but could not--the likeness came out so wonderfully. So he
gave way to the charm, and as he sat before the canvas, thoughtfully
gazing at it, he let his imagination run riot, and gave his pleasant
memories full play.

He had worked well and manfully, and had tolerably satisfied himself,
and was sitting resting, looking at what he had done, and thinking over
what had prompted his work, when there came a tap at the door, and his
sister Til crept noiselessly in. She entered softly, as was her wont
when her brother was engaged, and took up her position behind him. But
Miss Til was demonstrative by nature, and after a minute's glance could
not contain herself.

"Oh, you dear old Geoff; that is charming! oh, Geoff, how you have got
on! But I say, Geoff; the governess--what do you call her? I never can
recollect those Latin names, or Greek is it?--you know, and it does
not matter; but she is--you know, Geoff, I know you don't like me to
say so, but I can't find any other word--she is stunning! Not that
I think--I don't know, you know, of course, because we don't mix in
that sort of society--not that--that I think that people who--well, I
declare, I don't know any other word for them I--I mean swells--would
allow their governess to have her hair done in that style; but she
is de-licious! you've got a new model, Geoff; at least you've never
attempted any thing in that style before and I declare you've made a
regular hit. You don't speak, Geoff; don't you like what I'm saying?"

"My dear child, you don't give me the chance of saying any thing. You
rattle on with 'I know' and 'you know' and 'don't you know,' till I
can scarcely tell where I am. One thing I do manage to glean, however,
and that is that you are pleased with the picture, which is the very
best news that I could have. For though you're a most horrible little
rattletrap, and talk nineteen to the dozen, there is some sense in what
you say and always a great deal of truth."

"Specially when what I say is complimentary, eh, Geoff? Not that I
think I have ever said much in any other strain to you. But you haven't
told me about your new model, Geoff. Where did she come from?"

"My new model?"

"Yes, yes, for the governess, you know. That's new--I mean that hair
and eyes, and all that. You've never painted any thing like that before.
Where did she come from?"

There were few things that Geoffrey Ludlow would have kept from his
sister, but this was one of them; so he merely said:

"O, a model, Til dear--one of the usual shilling-an-hour victims."

"Sent you by Mr. Charles Potts, I suppose," said Miss Til, with unusual
asperity; "sent you for--" But here a knock at the door cut short the
young lady's remarks. "O, but if that is Mr. Potts," she resumed,
"don't say a word about what I said just now; don't, Geoff, there's a
dear."

It was not Mr. Potts who responded to Geoffrey Ludlow's "Come in." It
was Mr. Bowkees head which was thrust through the small space made
by the opening of the door; and it was Mr. Bowker's deep voice which
exclaimed:

"Engaged, eh? Your William will look in again."

But Til, with whom Mr. Bowker was a special favourite, from his strange
unconventional manners and rough _bonhomie_, called out at once: "Mr.
Bowker, it's only I--Geoff's sister Til;" and Geoff himself roaring out
that "Bowker was growing modest in his old age," that gentleman was
persuaded to come in; and closing the door lightly behind him, he went
up to the young lady, and bending over her hand, made her a bow such as
any _preux chevalier_ might have envied. A meeting with a lady was a
rare oasis in the desert of William Bowkees wasted life; but whenever
he had the chance he showed that he had been something more than the
mere pot-walloping boon-companion which most men thought him.

"Geoff's sister Til!" he repeated, looking at the tall handsome girl
before him,--"Geoff's sister Til! Ah, then it's perfectly right that
I should have lost all my hair, and that my beard should be grizzled,
and that I have a general notion of the omnipresence of old age. I
was inclined to grumble; but if 'Geoff's sister Til,' who I thought
was still a little child, is to come up and greet me in this guise, I
recant: Time is right; and your William is the only old fool in the
matter."

"It is your own fault, Mr. Bowker, that you don't know the changes that
take place in us. You know we are always glad to see you, and that
mamma is always sending you messages by Geoff."

"You are all very good, and--well, I suppose it is my fault; let's
say it is, at all events. What! going? There, you see the effect my
presence has when I come up on a chance visit."

"Not at all," said Til; "I should have gone five minutes ago if you
had not come in. I'll make a confidant of you, Mr. Bowker, and let you
into a secret. Those perpetual irritable pulls at the bell are the
tradespeople waiting for orders; and I must go and settle about dinner
and all sorts of things. Now goodbye." She shook hands with him, nodded
brightly at her brother, and was gone.

"That's a nice girl," said William Bowker, as the door closed after
her; "a regular nice girl--modest, ladylike, and true; none of your
infernal fal-lal affectations--honest as the day; you can see that in
her eyes and in every word she says. Where do you keep your tobacco?
All right. Your pipes want looking after, Geoff. Ive tried three, and
each is as foul as a chimney. Ah, this will do at last; now I'm all
right, and can look at your work. H--m! that seems good stuff. You must
tone-down that background a little, and put a touch of light here and
there on the dress, which is infernally heavy and Hamlet-like. Hallo,
Geoff, are you going in for the P.-R.-B. business?"

"Not I. What do you mean?"

"What do _you_ mean by this red-haired party, my boy? This is a new
style for you, Geoff, and one which no one would have thought of your
taking up. You weren't brought up to consider this the right style of
thing in old Sassoon's academy, Geoff. If the old boy could rise from
his grave, and see his favourite pupil painting a frizzy, red-haired,
sallow-faced woman as the realisation of beauty, I think he'd be glad
he'd been called away before such awful times."

There was a hesitation in Geoff's voice, and a hollowness in his smile,
as he answered:

"P.-R.-B. nonsense! Old Sassoon couldn't teach everything; and as for
his ideas of beauty, look how often he made us paint Mrs. S. and the
Miss S.'s, who, Heaven knows, were anything but reproductions of the
Venus Calipyge. The simple question, as I take it, is this--is the
thing a good thing or a bad one? Tell me that."

"As a work of art?"

"Of course; as you see it. What else could I mean?"

"As a work of art, it's good--undeniably good, in tone, and treatment,
and conception; as a work of prudence, it's infernally bad."

Geoff looked at him sharply for a minute, and William Bowker, calmly
puffing at his pipe, did not shrink from his friend's glance. Then,
with a flush, Geoff said:

"It strikes me that it is as a work of art you have to regard it. As to
what you say about a work of prudence, you have the advantage of me. I
don't understand you."

"Don't you?" said William. "I'm sorry for you. What model did you paint
that head from?"

"From no model."

"From life?"

"N-no; from memory--from--Upon my soul, Bowker, I don't see what right
you have to cross-question me in this way."

"Don't you?" said Bowker. "Give your William something to drink,
please; he can't talk when he's dry. What is that? B. and soda. Yes,
that'll do. Look here, Geoffrey Ludlow, when you were little more than
a boy, grinding away in the Life-School, and only too pleased if the
Visitor gave you an encouraging word, your William, who is ten years
your senior, had done work which made him be looked upon as the coming
man. He had the ball at his foot, and he had merely to kick it to send
it where he chose. He does not say this out of brag--you know it?"

Geoffrey Ludlow inclined his head in acquiescence.

"Your William didn't kick the bail; something interfered just as his
foot was lifted to send it flying to the goal--a woman."

Again Geoffrey Ludlow nodded in acquiescence.

"You have heard the story. Every body in town knew it, and each had
his peculiar version; but I will tell you the whole truth myself. You
don't know how I struggled on against that infatuation;--no, you may
think you do, but I am a much stronger man than you--am, or was--and
I saw what I was losing by giving way. I gave way. I knocked down the
whole fabric which, from the time I had had a man's thoughts, a man's
mind, a man's energy and power, I had striven to raise. I kicked it all
down, as Alnaschar did his basket of eggs, and almost as soon found how
vain had been my castle-building. I need scarcely go into detail with
you about that story: it was published in the Sunday newspapers of the
time; it echoed in every club-room; it has remained lingering about
art-circles, and in them is doubtless told with great gusto at the
present day, should ever my name be mentioned. I fell in love with a
woman who was married to a man of more than double her age,--a woman of
education, taste, and refinement; of singular beauty too--and that to a
young artist was not her least charm--tied for life to an old heartless
scoundrel. My passion for her sprung from the day of my first seeing
her; but I choked it down. I saw as plainly as I see this glass before
me now what would be the consequence of any absurd escapade on my part;
how it would crush me, how, infinitely more, it would drag _her_ down.
I knew what was working in each of us; and, so help me Heaven! I tried
to spare us both. I tried--and failed, dismally enough. It was for no
want of arguing with myself--from no want of forethought of all the
consequences that might ensue. I looked at all point-blank; for though
I was young and mad with passion, I loved that woman so that I could
even have crushed my own selfishness lest it should be harm to her.
I could have done this: I did it until--until one night I saw a blue
livid mark on her shoulder. God knows how many years that is ago, but I
have the whole scene before me at this moment. It was at some fine ball
(I went into what is called 'society' then), and we were standing in a
conservatory, when I noticed this mark. I asked her about it, and she
hesitated; I taxed her with the truth, which she first feebly denied,
then admitted. He had struck her, the hound! in a fit of jealous
rage,--had struck her with his clenched fist! Even as she told me this,
I could see him within a few yards of us, pretending to be rapt in
conversation, but obviously noting our conduct. I suppose he guessed
that she had told me of what had occurred. I suppose he guessed it
from my manner and the expression of my face, for a deadly pallor came
over his grinning cheeks; and as we passed out of the conservatory, he
whispered to her--not so low but that I caught the words--'You shall
pay for this, madam--you shall pay for this!' That determined me, and
that night we fled.--Give me some more brandy and soda, Geoff. Merely
to tell this story drags the heart out of my breast."

Geoff pushed the bottle over to his friend, and after a gulp Bowker
proceeded:

"We went to Spain, and remained there many months; and there it was
all very well. That slumbering country is even now but little haunted
by your infernal British tourist; but then scarcely any Englishman
came there. Such as we came across were all bachelors, your fine lad
can't stand the mule-travelling and the roughing it in the posadas; and
they either had not heard the story, or didn't see the propriety of
standing on any squeamishness, more especially when the acquaintance
was all to their advantage, and we got on capitally. Nelly had seen
nothing, poor child, having left school to be married; and all the
travel, and the picturesque old towns, and the peasantry, and the
Alhambra, and all the rest of it, made a sort of romantic dream for
her. But then old Van den Bosch got his divorce; and so soon as I had
heard of that, like a madman as I was, I determined to come back to
England. The money was running short, to be sure; but I had made no
end of sketches, and I might have sent them over and sold them; but I
wanted to get back. A man can't live on love alone; and I wanted to be
amongst my old set again, for the old gossip and the old _camaraderie_;
and so back we came. I took a little place out at Ealing, and then I
went into the old haunts, and saw the old fellows, and--for the first
time--so help me Heaven! for the first time I saw what I had done.
They cut me, sir, right and left! There were some of them--blackguards
who would have hobnobbed with Greenacre, if he'd stood the drink--who
accepted my invitations, and came Sunday after Sunday, and would have
eaten and drunk me out of house and home, if I'd have stood it; but
the best--the fellows I really cared about--pretty generally gave me
the cold shoulder. Some of them had married during my absence, and
of course they couldn't come; others were making their way in their
art, working under the patronage of big swells in the Academy, and
hoping for election there, and they daren't be mixed up with such a
notoriously black sheep as your William. I felt this, Geoff, old boy.
By George, it cut me to the heart; it took all the change out of me; it
made me low and hipped, and, I fear, sometimes savage. And I suppose I
showed it at home; for poor Nell seemed to change and wither from the
day of our return. She had her own troubles, poor darling, though she
thought she kept them to herself. In a case like that, Geoff, the women
get it much hotter than we do. There were no friends for her, no one
to whom she could tell her troubles. And then the story got known, and
people used to stare and nudge each other, and whisper as she passed.
The parson called when we first came, and was a good pleasant fellow;
but a fortnight afterwards he'd heard all about it, and grew purple
in the face as he looked straight over our heads when we met him. And
once a butcher, who had to be spoken to for cheating, cheeked her and
alluded to her story; but I think what I did to him prevented any
repetition of that kind of conduct. But I couldn't silence the whole
world by thrashing it, old fellow; and Nell drooped and withered under
all the misery--drooped and--died! And I--well, I became the graceless,
purposeless, spiritless brute you see me now!"

Mr. Bowker stopped and rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, and
gave a great cough before finishing his drink; and then Geoffrey patted
him on the shoulder and said, "But you know how we all love you, old
friend; how that Charley Potts, and I, and Markham, and Wallis, and all
the fellows, would do anything for you."

Mr. Bowker gave his friend's hand a tight grip as he said, "I know,
Geoff; I know you boys are fond of your William but it wasn't to parade
my grief, or to cadge for sympathy from them, that I told you that
story. I had another motive."

"And that was--"

"To set myself up as an example and a warning to--any one who might
be going to take a similar step. You named yourself just now, Geoff,
amongst those who cared for me. Your William is a bit of a fogy, he
knows; but some of you do care for him, and you amongst them."

"Of course. You know that well enough."

"Then why not show your regard for your William, dear boy?

"Show my regard--how shall I show it?"

"By confiding in him, Geoff; by talking to him about yourself; telling
him your hopes and plans; asking him for some of that advice which
seeing a great many men and cities, and being a remarkably downy old
skittle, qualifies him to give. Why not confide in him, Geoff?"

"Confide in you? About what? Why on earth not speak out plainly at
once?"

"Well, well, I won't beat about the bush any longer. I daresay there's
nothing in it; but people talk and cackle so confoundedly, and, by
George, men--some men, at least--are quite as bad as women in that
line; and they say you're in love, Geoff; regularly hard hit--no chance
of recovery!"

"Do they?" said Geoff, flushing very red--"do they? Who are 'they,' by
the way?--not that it matters, a pack of gabbling fools! But suppose I
am, what then?"

"What then! Why, nothing then--only it's rather odd that you've never
told your William, whom you've known so long and so intimately, any
thing about it. Is that" (pointing to the picture) "a portrait of the
lady?"

"There--there is a reminiscence of her--her head and general style."

"Then your William would think that her head and general style must be
doosid good. Any sisters?"

"I--I think not."

"Are her people pleasant--do you get on with them?"

"I don't know them."

"Ah, Geoff, Geoff, why make me go on in this way? Don't you know me
well enough to be certain that I'm not asking all these questions for
impertinence and idle curiosity? Don't you see that I'm dragging bit by
bit out of you because I'm coming to the only point any of your friends
can care about? Is this girl a good girl; is she respectable; is she in
your own sphere of life; can you bring her home and tell the old lady
to throw her arms round her neck, and welcome her as a daughter? Can
you introduce her to that sweet sister of yours who was here when I
came in?"

There came over Geoffrey Ludlow's face a dark shadow such as William
Bowker had never seen there before. He did not speak nor turn his eyes,
but sat fixed and rigid as a statue.

"For God's sake think of all this, Geoff! Ive told you a thousand times
that you ought to be married; that there was no man more calculated to
make a woman happy, or to have his own happiness increased by a woman's
love. But then she must be of your own degree in life, and one of whom
you could be every where proud. I would not have you married to an ugly
woman or a drabby woman, or any thing that wasn't very nice; how much
less, then, to any one whom you would feel ashamed of, or who could
not be received by your dear ones at home! Geoff, dear old Geoff, for
heaven's sake think of all this before it is too late! Take warning by
my fatal error, and see what misery you would prepare for both of you."

Geoffrey Ludlow still sat in the same attitude. He made no reply for
some minutes; then he said, dreamily, "Yes--yes, you're quite right, of
course,--quite right. But I don't think we'll continue the conversation
now. Another time, Bowker, please--another time." Then he ceased, and
Mr. Bowker rose and pressed his hand, and took his departure. As he
closed the door behind him, that worthy said to himself: "Well, I've
done my duty, and I know I've done right; but it's very little of
Geoff's mutton that your William will cut, and very little of Geoff's
wine that your William will drink, if that marriage comes off. For of
course he'll tell her all I've said, and _won't_ she love your William!"

And for hours Geoffrey Ludlow sat before his easel, gazing at the
Scylla head, and revolving all the detail of Mr. Bowker's story in his
mind.




CHAPTER XI.
PLAYING THE FISH.


When did the giver of good, sound, unpalatable, wholesome advice
ever receive his due? Who does not possess, amongst the multitude of
acquaintances, a friend who says, "Such and such are my difficulties:
I come to you because I want advice;" and who, after having heard all
that, after a long struggle with yourself, you bring yourself to say,
wrings your hand, goes away thinking what an impertinent idiot you
are, and does exactly the opposite of all you have suggested? All men,
even the most self-opinionated and practical, are eager for advice.
None, even the most hesitating and diffident, take it, unless it agrees
with their own preconceived ideas. There are, of course, exceptions
by which this rule is proved; but there are two subjects on which no
man was ever yet known to take advice, and they are horses and women.
Depreciate your friend's purchase as delicately as Agag came unto
Saul; give every possible encomium to make and shape and breeding; but
hint, _per contra_, that the animal is scarcely up to his weight, or
that that cramped action looks like a possible blunder; suggest that
a little more slope in the shoulder, a little less cowiness in the
general build, might be desirable for riding purposes, and your friend
will smile, and shake his head, and canter away, convinced of the utter
shallowness of your equine knowledge. In the other matter it is much
worse. You must be very much indeed a man's friend if you can venture
to hint to him, even after his iterated requests for your honest candid
opinion, that the lady of his love is any thing but what he thinks
her. And though you iterate and reiterate, moralise as shrewdly as
Ecclesiasticus, bring chapter and verse to support your text, he must
be more or less than a man, and cast in very different clay from that
of which we poor ordinary mortals are composed, if he accepts one of
your arguments or gives way one atom before your elucidations.

Did William Bowker's forlorn story, commingled with his earnest
passionate appeal, weigh one scruple with Geoffrey Ludlow? Not one.
Geoff was taken aback by the story. There was a grand human interest
in that laying bare before him of a man's heart, and of two persons'
wasted lives, which aroused his interest and his sympathy, made him
ponder over what might have been, had the principal actors in the
drama been kept asunder, and sent him into a fine drowsy state of
metaphysical dubiety. But while Bowker was pointing his moral, Geoff
was merely turning over the various salient points which had adorned
his tale.

He certainly heard Bowker drawing a parallel between his own unhappy
passion and Geoff's regard for the original owner of that "Scylla
head;" but as the eminent speaker was arguing on hypothetical facts,
and drawing deductions from things of which he knew absolutely
nothing, too much reliance was not to be placed on his arguments. In
Bowker's case there had been a public scandal, a certain betrayal of
trust, which was the worst feature in the whole affair, a trial and
an _exposé_, and a denunciation of the--well, the world used hard
words--the seducer; which--though Bowker was the best fellow in the
world, and had obviously a dreadful time of it--was only according
to English custom. Now, in his own case, Margaret (he had already
accustomed himself to think of her as Margaret) had been victimised by
a scoundrel, and the blame--for he supposed blame would, at least in
the minds of very strait-laced people, attach to her--was mitigated
by the facts. Besides--and here was his great thought--nothing would
be known of her former history. Her life, so far as any one in his
set could possibly know any thing about it, began on the night when
he and Charley Potts found her in the street. She was destitute and
starving, granted; but there was nothing criminal in destitution and
starvation, which indeed would, in the eyes of a great many weak and
good-natured (the terms are synonymous) persons, bind a kind of romance
to the story. And as to all that had gone before, what of that? How was
any thing of that love ever to become known? This Leonard Brookfield,
an army swell, a man who, under any circumstances, was never likely
to come across them, or to be mixed up in Geoff's artist-circle, had
vanished, and with him vanished the whole dark part of the story.
Vanished for ever and aye! Margaret's life would begin to date from the
time when she became his wife, when he brought her home to----Ah, by
the way, what was that Bowker said about her worthiness to associate
with his mother and sister? Why not? He would tell them all about it.
They were good women, who fully appreciated the grand doctrine of
forgiveness; and yet--He hesitated; he knew his mother to be a most
excellent church-going woman, bearing her "cross" womanfully, not to
say rather flaunting it than otherwise; but he doubted whether she
would appreciate an introduction to a Magdalen, however penitent. To
subscribe to a charity for "those poor creatures;" to talk pleasantly
and condescendingly to them, and to leave them a tract on visiting
a "Home" or a "Refuge," is one thing; to take them to your heart as
daughters-in-law is another. And his sister! Well, young girls didn't
understand this kind of thing, and would put a false construction on
it, and were always chattering, and a great deal of harm might be done
by Til's want of reticence; and so, perhaps, the best thing to be done
was to hold his tongue, decline to answer any questions about former
life, and leave matters to take their course. He had already arrived
at that state of mind that he felt, if any disagreements arose, he
was perfectly ready to leave mother and sister, and cleave to his
wife--that was to be.

So Geoffrey Ludlow, tossing like a reed upon the waters, but ever, like
the same reed, drifting with the resistless current of his will, made
up his mind; and all the sage experience of William Bowker, illustrated
by the story of his life, failed in altering his determination. It is
questionable whether a younger man might not have been swayed by, or
frightened at, the council given to him. Youth is impressible in all
ways; and however people may talk of the headstrong passion of youth,
it is clear that--nowadays at least--there is a certain amount of
selfish forethought mingled with the heat and fervour; that love--like
the measles--though innocuo us in youth, is very dangerous when
taken in middle life; and Geoffrey Ludlow was as weak, and withal as
stubborn, an in-patient, as ever caught the disease.

And yet?--and yet?--was the chain so strong, were the links already
so well riveted, as to defy every effort to break them? Or, in truth,
was it that the effort was wanting? An infatuation for a woman had
been painted in very black shadows by William Bowker; but it was a
great question to Geoff whether there was not infinite pleasure in the
mere fact of being infatuated. Since he had seen Margaret Dacre--at
all events, since he had been fascinated by her--not merely was he a
different man, so far as she was concerned, but all life was to him a
different and infinitely more pleasurable thing. That strange doubting
and hesitation which had been his bane through life seemed, if not
to have entirely vanished, at all events to be greatly modified; and
he had recently, in one or two matters, shown a decision which had
astonished the members of his little household. He felt that he had
at last--what he had wanted all through his life--a purpose; he felt
that there was something for him to live for; that by his love he had
learned something that he had never known before; that his soul was
opened, and the whole aspect of nature intensified and beautified; that
he might have said with Maud's lover in that exquisite poem of the
Laureate's, which so few really appreciate--


"It seems that I am happy, that to me A livelier emerald twinkles in
the grass, A purer sapphire melts into the sea."


Then he sat down at his easel again, and worked away at the Scylla
head, which came out grandly, and soon grew all a-glow with Margaret
Dacre's peculiar expression; and then, after contemplating it long and
lovingly, the desire to see the original came madly upon him, and he
threw down his palette and brushes, and went out.

He walked straight to Mrs. Flexor's, and, on his knocking, the door was
opened to him by that worthy dame, who announced to him, with awful
solemnity, that he'd "find a change upstairs."

"A change!" cried Geoffrey, his heart thumping audibly, and his cheek
blanched; "a change!"

"O, nothin' serious, Mr. Ludlows; but she have been a worritin'
herself, poor lamb, and a cryin' her very eyes out. But what it is I
can't make out, though statin' put your trust in one where trust is
doo, continual."

"I don't follow you yet, Mrs. Flexor. Your lodger has been in low
spirits--is that it?"

"Sperrits isn't the name for it, Mr. Ludlows, when downer than dumps is
what one would express. As queer as Dick's hatband have she been ever
since you went away yesterday; and I says to her at tea last evening--"

"I can see her, I suppose?"

"Of course you can, sir; which all I was doing was to prepare you
for the--" but here Mrs. Flexor, who had apparently taken something
stronger than usual with her dinner, broke down and became inarticulate.

Geoffrey pushed past her, and, knocking at the parlour-door, entered
at once. He found Margaret standing, with her arms on the mantelshelf,
surveying herself in the wretched little scrap of looking-glass which
adorned the wall. Her hair was arranged in two large full bands, her
eyes were swollen, and her face was blurred and marked by tears. She
did not turn round at the opening of the door, nor, indeed, until she
had raised her head and seen in the glass Geoff's reflection; even then
she moved languidly, as though in pain, and her hand, when she placed
it in his, was dry with burning heat.

"That chattering idiot down stairs was right after all," said Geoff,
looking alarmedly at her; "you are ill?"

"No," she said, with a faint smile; "not ill, at all events not now.
I have been rather weak and silly; but I did not expect you yet. I
intended to remove all traces of such folly by the time you came. It
was fit I should, as I want to talk to you most seriously and soberly."

"Do we not always talk so? did we not the last time I was
here--yesterday?"

"Well, generally, perhaps; but not the last time--not yesterday. If I
could have thought so, I should have spared myself a night of agony and
a morning of remorse."

Geoff's face grew clouded.

"I am sorry for your agony, but much more sorry for your remorse, Miss
Dacre," said he.

"Ah, Mr. Ludlow," cried Margaret, passionately, "don't _you_ be angry
with me; don't _you_ speak to me harshly, or I shall give way all
together! O, I watched every change of your face; and I saw what you
thought at once; but indeed, indeed it is not so. My remorse is not
for having told you all that I did yesterday; for what else could I do
to you who had been to me what you had? My remorse was for what I had
done--not for what I had said--for the wretched folly which prompted me
to yield to a wheedling tongue, and so ruin myself for ever."

Her tears burst forth again as she said this, and she stamped her foot
upon the ground.

"Ruin you for ever, Margaret!" said Geoffrey, stealing his arm round
her waist as she still stood by the mantelshelf; "O no, not ruin you,
dearest Margaret--"

"Ah, Mr. Ludlow," she interrupted, neither withdrawing from nor
yielding to his arm, "have I not reason to say ruin? Can I fail to see
that you have taken an interest in me which--which--"

"Which nothing you have told me can alter--which I shall preserve,
please God," said Geoff, in all simplicity and sincerity, "to the end
of my life."

She looked at him as he said these words with a fixed regard, half of
wonder, half of real unfeigned earnest admiration.

"I--I'm a very bad hand at talking, Margaret, and know I ought to say a
great deal for which I can't find words. You see," he continued, with a
grave smile, "I'm not a young man now, and I suppose one finds it more
difficult to express oneself about--about such matters. But I'm going
to ask you--to--to share my lot--to be my wife!"

Her heart gave one great bound within her breast, and her face was
paler than ever, as she said:

"Your wife! your wife! Do you know what you are saying, Mr. Ludlow? or
is it I who, as the worldling, must point out to you--"

"I know all," said Geoffrey, raising his hand deprecatingly; but she
would not be silenced.

"I must point out to you what you would bring upon yourself--what you
would have to endure. The story of my life is known to you and to you
alone; not another living soul has ever heard it. My mother died while
I was in Italy; and of--the other person--nothing has ever been heard
since his flight. So far, then, I do not fear that my--my shame--we
will use the accepted term--would be flung in your teeth, or that you
would be made to wince under any thing that might be said about me. But
you would know the facts yourself; you could not hide them from your
own heart; they would be ever present to you; and in introducing me to
your friends, your relatives, if you have any, you would feel that--"

"I don't think we need go into that, Margaret. I see how right and how
honourable are your motives for saying all this; but I have thought it
over, and do not attach one grain of importance to it. If you say 'yes'
to me, we shall live for ourselves, and with a very few friends who
will appreciate us for ourselves. Ah, I was going to say that to you.
I'm not rich, Margaret, and your life would, I'm afraid, be dull. A
small income and a small house, and--"

"It would be my home, and I should have you;" and for the first time
during the interview she gave him one of her long dreamy looks out of
her half-shut eyes.

"Then you will say 'yes,' dearest?" asked Geoff passionately.

"Ah, how can I refuse! how can I deny myself such happiness as you hold
out to me after the misery I have zone through!"

"Ah, darling, you shall forget that--"

"But you must not act rashly--must not do in a moment what you would
repent your life long. Take a week for consideration. Go over every
thing in your mind, and then come back to me and tell me the result."

"I know it now. O, don't hesitate, Margaret; don't let me wait the
horrid week!"

"It is right, and so we will do it. It will be more tedious to me than
to you, my--my Geoffrey."

Ah, how caressingly she spoke, and what a look of love and passion
glowed in her deep-violet eyes!

"And I am not to see you during this week?"

"No; you shall be free from whatever little influence my presence may
possess. You shall go now. Goodbye."

"God bless you, my darling!" He bent down and kissed her upturned
mouth, then was gone. She looked after him wistfully; then after some
time said softly to herself: "I did not believe there lived so good a
man."




CHAPTER XII.
UNDER THE HARROW.


Mr. Bowker was not the only one of Geoffrey Ludlow's friends to whom
that gentleman's intentions towards the lodger at Flexor's occasioned
much troubled thought. Charley Potts regarded his friend's intimacy
in that quarter with any thing but satisfaction; and an enormous
amount of bird's-eye tobacco was consumed by that rising young artist
in solemn cogitation over what was best to be done in the matter.
For though Geoffrey had reposed no confidence in his friend, and,
indeed, had never called upon him, and abstained as much as possible
from meeting him since the night of the adventure outside the Titian
Sketching-Club, yet Mr. Potts was pretty accurately informed of the
state of affairs, through the medium of Mr. Flexor, then perpetually
sitting for the final touches to Gil Bias; and having a tolerable
acquaintance with human nature,--or being, as he metaphorically
expressed it, "able to reckon how many blue beans made five,"--Mr.
Potts was enabled to arrive at a pretty accurate idea of how affairs
stood in Little Flotsam Street. And affairs, as they existed in Little
Flotsam Street, were by no means satisfactory to Mr. Charles Potts.
Had it been a year ago, he would have cared but little about it. A
man of the world, accustomed to take things as they were, without the
remotest idea of ever setting himself up to correct abuses, or protest
against a habitude of being not strictly in accordance with the views
of the most strait-laced, Charley Potts had floated down the stream
of life objecting to nothing, objected to by none. There were fifty
ladies of his acquaintance, passing as the wives of fifty men of his
acquaintance, pleasant genial creatures, capital punch-mixers,--women
in whose presence you might wear your hat, smoke, talk slang, chaff,
and sing; women who knew all the art-gossip, and entered into it;
whom one could take to the Derby, or who would be delighted with a
cheap-veal-and-ham-pie, beer-in-a-stone-jar, and bottle-of-hot-sherry
picnic in Bushey Park,--the copy of whose marriage-licenses Charley
never expected to see. It was nothing to him, he used to say. It might
or it might not be; but he didn't think that Joe's punch would be any
the stronger, or Tom's weeds any the better, or Bill's barytone voice
one atom more tuneful and chirpy, if the Archbishop of Canterbury had
given out the bans and performed the ceremony for the lot. There was
in it, he thought, a glorious phase of the _vie de Bohême_, a scorn of
the respectable conventionalities of society, a freedom of thought and
action possessing a peculiar charm of their own; and he looked upon the
persons who married and settled, and paid taxes and tradesmen's bills,
and had children, and went to bed before morning, and didn't smoke clay
pipes and sit in their shirt-sleeves, with that softened pity with
which the man bound for Epsom Downs regards the City clerk going to
business on the Clapham omnibus.

But within the last few months Mr. Potts's ideas had very considerably
changed. It was not because he had attained the venerable age of
thirty, though he was at first inclined to ascribe the alteration to
that; it was not that his appetite for fun and pleasure had lost any
of its keenness, nor that he had become "awakened," or "enlightened,"
or subjected to any of the preposterous revival influences of the
day. It was simply that he had, in the course of his intimacy with
Geoffrey Ludlow, seen a great deal of Geoffrey Ludlow's sister, Til;
and that the result of his acquaintance with that young lady was the
entire change of his ideas on various most important points. It was
astonishing, its effect on him: how, after an evening at Mrs. Ludlow's
tea-table--presided over, of course, by Miss Til--Charley Potts, going
somewhere out to supper among his old set, suddenly had his eyes
opened to Louie's blackened eyelids and Bella's painted cheeks; how
Georgie's _h_-slips smote with tenfold horror on his ear, and Carry's
cigarette-smoking made him wince with disgust. He had seen all these
things before, and rather liked them; it was the contrast that induced
the new feeling. Ah, those preachers and pedants,--well-meaning,
right-thinking men,--how utterly futile are the means which they use
for compassing their ends! In these sceptical times, their pulpit
denunciations, their frightful stories of wrath to come, are received
with polite shoulder-shrugs and grins of incredulity; their twopence
coloured pictures of the Scarlet Woman, their time-worn renderings of
the street-wanderer, are sneered at as utterly fictitious and untrue;
and meanwhile detached villas in St. John's Wood, and first-floors
in quiet Pimlico streets, command the most preposterous rents. Young
men will of course be young men; but the period of young-man-ism in
that sense narrows and contracts every year. The ranks of her Scarlet
Ladyship's army are now filled with very young boys who do not know
any better, or elderly men who cannot get into the new groove, and
who still think that to be gentlemanly it is necessary to be immoral.
Those writers who complain of the "levelling" tone of society, and
the "fast" manners of our young ladies, scarcely reflect upon the
improved morality of the age. Our girls--all the outcry about fastness
and selling themselves for money notwithstanding--are as good and as
domestic as when formed under the literary auspices of Mrs. Chapone;
and--granting the existence of Casinos and Anonymas--our young men are
infinitely more wholesome than the class for whose instruction Philip
Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, penned his delicious letters.

So Mr. Charles Potts, glowing with newly-awakened ideas of
respectability, began to think that, after all, the _vie de Bohême_ was
perhaps a mistake, and not equal, in the average amount of happiness
derived from it, to the _vie de_ Camden Town. He began to think that to
pay rent and taxes and tradesmen's bills was very likely no dearer, and
certainly more satisfactory, than to invest in pensions for cast-off
mistresses and provisions for illegitimate children. He began to think,
in fact, that a snug little house in the suburbs, with his own Lares
and Penates about him, and Miss Matilda Ludlow, now looking over his
shoulder and encouraging him at his work, now confronting him at the
domestic dinner-table, was about the pleasantest thing which his fancy
could conjure up in his then frame of mind.

Thinking all this, devoutly hoping it might so fall out, and being,
like most converts, infinitely more rabid in the cause of Virtue than
those who had served her with tolerable fidelity for a series of years,
Mr. Charley Potts heard with a dreadful amount of alarm and amazement
of Geoffrey Ludlow's close connection with a person whose antecedents
were not comeatable and siftable by a local committee of Grundys. A
year ago, and Charley would have laughed the whole business to scorn;
insisted that every man had a right to do as he liked; slashed at
the doubters; mocked their shaking heads and raised shoulders and
taken no heed of any thing that might have been sad. But matters were
different now. Not merely was Charley a recruit in the Grundy ranks,
having pinned the Grundy colours in his coat, and subscribed to the
Grundy oath; but the person about to be brought before the Grundy
_Fehmgericht_, or court-marshal, was one in whom, should his hopes be
realised, he would have the greatest interest. Though he had never
dared to express his hopes, though he had not the smallest actual
foundation for his little air-castle, Charles Potts naturally and
honestly regarded Matilda Ludlow as the purest and most honourable of
her sex--as does every young fellow regard the girl he loves; and the
idea that she should be associated, or intimately connected, with any
one under a moral taint, was to him terrible and loathsome.

The moral taint, mind, was all hypothetical. Charles Potts had not
heard one syllable of Margaret Dacre's history, had been told nothing
about it, knew nothing of her except that he and Geoffrey had saved her
from starvation in the streets. But when people go in for the public
profession of virtue, it is astonishing to find how quickly they listen
to reports of the shortcomings and backslidings of those who are not
professedly in the same category. It seemed a bit of fatalism too,
that this acquaintance should have occurred immediately on Geoffrey's
selling his picture for a large sum to Mr. Stompff. Had he not done
this, there is no doubt that the other thing would have been heard
of by few, noticed by none; but in art, as in literature, and indeed
in most other professions, no crime is so heavily visited as that of
being successful. It is the sale of your picture, or the success of
your novel, that first makes people find out how you steal from other
people, how your characters are mere reproductions of your own personal
friends,--for which you ought to be shunned,--how laboured is your
pathos, and how poor your jokes. It is the repetition of your success
that induces the criticism; not merely that you are a singular instance
of the badness of the public taste, but that you have a red nose, a
decided cast in one eye, and that undoubtedly your grandmother had
hard labour for stealing a clock. Geoff Ludlow the struggling might
have done as he liked without comment; on Geoff Ludlow the possessor
of unlimited commissions from the great Stompff it was meet that every
vial of virtuous wrath should be poured.

Although Charles Potts knew the loquacity of Mr. Flexor,--the story
of Geoff's adventure and fascination had gone the round of the
studios,--he did not think how much of what had occurred, or what was
likely to occur, was actually known, inasmuch as that most men, knowing
the close intimacy existing between him and Ludlow, had the decency to
hold their tongues in his presence. But one day he heard a good deal
more than every thing. He was painting on a fancy head which he called
"Diana Vernon," but which, in truth, was merely a portrait of Miss
Matilda Ludlow very slightly idealised (the "Gil Blas" had been sent
for acceptance or rejection by the Academy Committee), and Bowker was
sitting by smoking a sympathetic pipe, when there came a sharp tug at
the bell, and Bowker, getting up to open the door, returned with a very
rueful countenance, closely followed by little Tidd. Now little Tidd,
though small in stature, was a great ruffian. A soured, disappointed
little wretch himself, he made it the business of his life to go about
maligning every one who was successful, and endeavouring, when he
came across them personally, to put them out of conceit by hints and
innuendoes. He was a nasty-looking little man, with an always grimy
face and hands, a bald head, and a frizzled beard. He had a great
savage mouth with yellow tusks at either end of it; and he gave you,
generally, the sort of notion of a man that you would rather not drink
after. He had been contemporary with Geoffrey Ludlow at the Academy,
and had been used to say very frankly to him and others, "When I become
a great man, as I'm sure to do, I shall cut all you chaps;" and he
meant it. But years had passed, and Tidd had not become a great man
yet; on the contrary, he had subsided from yards of high-art canvas
into portrait-painting, and at that he seemed likely to remain.

"Well, how do _you_ do, Potts?" said Mr. Tidd. "I said 'How do you
do?' to our friend Mr. Bowker at the door. Looks well, don't he? His
troubles seem to sit lightly on him." Here Mr. Bowker growled a bad
word, and seemed as if about to spring upon the speaker.

"And what's this you're doing, Potts? A charming head! acharming--n-no!
not quite so charming when you get close to it; nose a little out of
drawing, and--rather spotty, eh? What do you say, Mr. Bowker?"

"I say, Mr. Tidd, that if you could paint like that, you'd give one of
your ears."

"Ah, yes--well, that's not complimentary, but--soured, poor man; sad
affair! Yes, well! you've sent your Gil Blas to the Academy, I suppose,
Potts?"

"O yes; he's there, sir; very likely at this moment being held up by a
carpenter before the Fatal Three."

"Ah! don't be surprised at its being kicked out."

"I don't intend to be."

"That's right; they're sending them back in shoals this year, I'm
told--in shoals. Have you heard any thing about the pictures?"

"Nothing, except that Landseer's got something stunning."

"Landseer, ah!" said Mr. Tidd. "When I think of that man, and the
prices he gets, my blood boils, sir--boils! That the British public
should care about and pay for a lot of stupid horses and cattle-pieces,
and be indifferent to real art, is--well, never mind!" and Mr. Tidd
gave himself a great blow in the chest, and asked, "What else?"

"Nothing else--O yes! I heard from Rushworth, who's on the Council,
you know, that they had been tremendously struck by Geoff Ludlow's
pictures, and that one or two more of the same sort are safe to make
him an Associate."

"What!" said Mr. Tidd, eagerly biting his nails. "What!--an Associate!
Geoffrey Ludlow an Associate!"

"Ah, that seems strange to you, don't it, Tidd?" said Bowker, speaking
for the first time. "I recollect you and Geoff together drawing from
the life. You were going to do every thing in those days, Tidd; and old
Geoff was as quiet and as modest as--as he is now. It's the old case of
the hare and the tortoise; and you're the hare, Tidd;--though, to look
at you," added Mr. Bowker under his breath, "you're a d--d sight more
like the tortoise, by Jove!"

"Geoffrey Ludlow an Associate!" repeated Mr. Tidd, ignoring Mr.
Bowker's remark, and still greedily biting his nails. "Well, I should
hardly have thought that; though you can't tell what they won't do down
in that infernal place in Trafalgar Square. Theyve treated me badly
enough; and it's quite like them to make a pet of him."

"How have they treated you badly, Tidd?" asked Potts, in the hope of
turning the conversation away from Ludlow and his doings.

"How!" screamed Tidd; "in a thousand ways! Theyve a personal hatred
of me, sir--that's what they have! Ive tried every dodge and painted
in every school, and they won't have me. The year after Smith made a
hit with that miserable picture 'Measuring Heights,' from the _Vicar
of Wakefield_, I sent in 'Mr. Burchell cries Fudge!'--kicked out!
The year after, Mr. Ford got great praise for his wretched daub of
'Dr. Johnson reading Goldsmith's Manuscript.' I sent in 'Goldsmith,
Johnson, and Bozzy at the Mitre Tavern'--kicked out!--a glorious bit
of humour, in which I'd represented all three in different stages of
drunkenness--kicked out!"

"I suppose you've not been used worse than most of us, Tidd," growled
Mr. Bowker. "She's an unjust stepmother, is the R.A. of A. But she
snubs pretty nearly every body alike."

"Not at all!" said Tidd. "Here's this Ludlow--"

"What of him?" interposed Potts quickly.

"Can any one say that his painting is--ah, well! poor devil! it's no
good saying any thing more about him; he'll have quite enough to bear
on his own shoulders soon."

"What, when he's an Associate!" said Bowker, who inwardly was highly
delighted at Tidd's evident rage.

"Associate!--stuff! I mean when he's married."

"Married? Is Ludlow going to be married?"

"Of course he is. Haven't you heard it? it's all over town." And indeed
it would have been strange if the story had not permeated all those
parts of the town which Mr. Tidd visited, as he himself had laboured
energetically for its circulation. "It's all over town--O, a horrible
thing! horrible thing!"

Bowker looked across at Charley Potts, who said, "What do you mean by a
horrible thing, Tidd? Speak out and tell us; don't be hinting in that
way."

"Well, then, Ludlow's going to marry some dreadful bad woman. O, it's a
fact; I know all about it. Ludlow was coming home from a dinner-party
one night, and he saw this woman, who was drunk, nearly run over by an
omnibus at the Regent Circus. He rushed into the road, and pulled her
out; and finding she was so drunk she couldn't speak, he got a room for
her at Flexor's and took her there, and has been to see her every day
since; and at last he's so madly in love with her that he's going to
marry her."

"Ah!" said Mr. Bowker; "who is she? Where did she come from?"

"Nobody knows where she came from; but she's a reg'lar bad 'un,--as
common as dirt. Pity too, ain't it? for Ive heard Ludlow's mother is a
nice old lady, and Ive seen his sister, who's stunnin'!" and Mr. Tidd
winked his eye.

This last proceeding finished Charley Potts, and caused his wrath,
which had been long simmering, to boil over. "Look here, Mr. Tidd!" he
burst forth; "that story about Geoff Ludlow is all lies--all lies, do
you hear! And if I find that you're going about spreading it, or if you
ever mention Miss Ludlow as you did just now, I'll break your infernal
neck for you!"

"Mr. Potts!" said Tidd,--"Mr. Potts, such language! Mr. Bowker, did you
hear what he said?"

"I did," growled old Bowker over his pipe; "and from what I know of
him, I should think he was deuced likely to do it."

Mr. Tidd seemed to be of the same opinion, for he moved towards the
door, and slunk out, muttering ominously.

"There's a scoundrel for you!" said Charley, when the door shut
behind the retreating Tidd; "there's a ruffian for you! Ive not the
least doubt that vagabond got a sort of foundation smattering from
that blabbing Flexor, and invented all that about the omnibus and the
drunken state and the rest of it himself. If that story gets noised
about, it will do Geoff harm."

"Of course it will," said Bowker; "and that's just what Tidd wants.
However, I think your threat of breaking his neck has stopped that
little brute's tongue. There are some fellows, by Jove! who'll go
on lying and libelling you, and who are only checked by the idea of
getting a licking, when they shut up like telescopes. I don't know
what's to be done about Geoff. He seems thoroughly determined and
infatuated."

"I can't understand it."

"_I_ can," said old Bowker, sadly; "if she's any thing like the head
he's painted in his second picture--and I think from his manner it must
be deuced like her--I can understand a man's doing any thing for such a
woman. Did she strike you as being very lovely?"

"I couldn't see much of her that night, and she was deadly white and
ill; but I didn't think her as good-looking as--some that I know."

"Geoff ought to know about this story that's afloat."

"I think he ought," said Charley. "I'll walk up to his place in a day
or two, and see him about it."

"See _him?_" said Bowker. "Ah, all right! Yesterday was not your
William's natal day."




CHAPTER XIII.
AT THE PRIVATE VIEW.


The grand epoch of the artistic year had arrived; the tremendous
Fehmgericht--appointed to decide on the merits of some hundreds of
struggling men, to stamp their efforts with approval or to blight them
with rejection--had issued their sentence. The Hanging-Committee had
gone through their labours and eaten their dinners; every inch of space
on the walls in Trafalgar Square was duly covered; the successful men
had received intimation of the "varnishing day," and to the rejected
had been despatched a comforting missive, stating that the amount
of space at the command of the Academy was so small, that, sooner
than place their works in an objectionable position, the Council had
determined to ask for their withdrawal. Out of this ordeal Geoffrey
Ludlow had come splendidly. There had always been a notion that he
would "do something;" but he had delayed so long--near the mark, but
never reaching it--that the original belief in his talents had nearly
faded out. Now, when realisation came, it came with tenfold force. The
old boys--men of accepted name and fame--rejoiced with extra delight
in his success because it was one in their own line, and without any
giving in to the doctrines of the new school, which they hated with all
their hearts. They liked the "Sic vos non vobis" best (for Geoffrey had
sternly held to his title, and refused all Mr. Stompff's entreaties
to give it a more popular character); they looked upon it as a more
thoroughly legitimate piece of work. They allowed the excellences of
the "Scylla and Charybdis," and, indeed, some of them were honest
enough to prefer it, as a bit of real excellence in painting; but
others objected to the pre-Raphaelite tendency to exalt the white face
and the dead-gold hair into a realisation of beauty. But all were
agreed that Geoffrey Ludlow had taken the grand step which was always
anticipated from him, and that he was, out and away, the most promising
man of the day: So Geoff was hung on the line, and received letters
from half-a-dozen great names congratulating him on his success, and
was in the seventh heaven of happiness, principally from the fact that
in all this he saw a prospect of excellent revenue, of the acquisition
of money and honour to be shared with a person then resident in Mr.
Flexor's lodgings, soon to be mistress of his own home.

The kind Fates had also been propitious to Mr. Charles Potts, whose
picture of "Gil Blas and the Archbishop" had been well placed in the
North Room. Mr. Tidd's "Boadicea in her Chariot," ten feet by six, had
been rejected; but his portrait of W. Bagglehole, Esq., vestry-clerk of
St. Wabash, Little Britain, looked down from the ceiling of the large
room and terrified the beholders.

So at length arrived that grand day of the year to the Academicians,
when they bid certain privileged persons to the private view of the
pictures previous to their public exhibition. The _profanum vulgus_,
who are odi'd and arceo'd, pine in vain hope of obtaining a ticket for
this great occasion. The public press, the members of the Legislature
carefully sifted, a set of old dowagers who never bought a sketch, and
who scarcely know a picture from a pipkin, and a few distinguished
artists,--these are the happy persons who are invited to enter the
sacred precincts on this eventful day. Geoffrey Ludlow never had been
inside the walls on such an occasion--never expected to be; but on
the evening before, as he was sitting in his studio smoking a pipe
and thinking that within twenty-four hours he would have Margaret's
final decision, looking back over his short acquaintance with her in
wonder, looking forward to his future life with her in hope, when a
mail-phaeton dashed up to the door, and in the strident tones, "Catch
hold, young 'un," shouted to the groom, Geoff recognised the voice of
Mr. Stompff, and looking out saw that great capitalist descending from
the vehicle.

"Hallo, Ludlow!" said Mr. Stompff, entering the studio; "how are you?
Quiet pipe after the day's grind? That's your sort! What will I take,
you were going to say? Well, I think a little drop of sherry, if you've
got it pale and dry,--as, being a man of taste, of course you have.
Well, those duffers at the Academy have hung you well, you see! Of
course they have. You know how that's done, of course?"

"I had hoped that the--" Geoff began to stutter directly it became a
personal question with him--"that the--I was going to say that the
pictures were good enough to--"

"Pictures good enough!--all stuff! pickles! The pictures are good--no
use in denying that, and it would be deuced stupid in me, whove
bought 'em! But that's not why they're so well hung. My men all on
the Hanging-Committee--_twiggez-vous?_ Last year there were two of
Caniche's men, and a horrible fellow who paints religious dodges, which
no one buys: not one of my men on the line, and half of them turned out
I determined to set that right this year, and Ive done it. Just you
look where Caniche's men are to-morrow, that's all!"

"To-morrow?"

"O, ah! that's what brought me here; I forgot to tell you. Here's a
ticket for the private view. I think you ought to be there,--show
yourself, you know, and that kind of thing. And look here: if you see
me pointing you out to people, don't you be offended. Ive lived longer
in the world than you, and I know what's what. Besides, you're part
of my establishment just now, and I know the way to work the oracle.
So don't mind it, that's all. Very decent glass of sherry, Ludlow! I
say--excuse me, but if you _could_ wear a white waistcoat to-morrow, I
think I should like it. English gentleman, you know, and all that! Some
of Caniche's fellows are very seedy-looking duffers."

Geoff smiled, took the ticket, and promised to come, terribly
uncomfortable at the prospect of notoriety which Mr. Stompff had opened
for him. But that worthy had not done with him yet.

"After it's all over," said he, "you must come and dine with me at
Blackwall. Regular business of mine, sir. I take down my men and two
or three of the newspaper chaps, after the private view, and give 'em
as good a dinner as money can buy. No stint! I say to Lovegrove, 'You
know me! The best, and damn the expense!' and Lovegrove does it, and
it's all right! It would be difficult for a fellow to pitch into any
of my men with a recollection of my Moselle about him, and a hope that
it'll come again next year, eh? Well--won't detain you now; see you
to-morrow; and don't forget the dinner."

Do you not know this kind of man, and does he not permeate English
society?--this coarse ruffian, whose apparent good-nature disarms your
nascent wrath, and yet whose good-nature you know to be merely vulgar
ostentatious self-assertion under the guise of _bonhomie_. I take the
character I have drawn, but I declare he belongs to all classes. I
have seen him as publisher to author, as attorney to young barrister,
as patron to struggler generally. Geoffrey Ludlow shrank before him,
but shrank in his old feeble hesitating way; he had not the pluck to
shake off the yoke, and bid his employer go to the devil. It was a new
phase of life for him--a phase which promised competence at a time
when competence was required; which, moreover, rid him of any doubt or
anxiety about the destination of his labour, which to a man of Ludlow's
temperament was all in all. How many of us are there who will sell such
wares as Providence has given us the power of producing at a much less
rate than we could otherwise obtain for them, and to most objectionable
people, so long as we are enabled to look for and to get a certain
price, and are absorbed from the ignominy of haggling, even though by
that haggling we should be tenfold enriched! So Geoffrey Ludlow took
Mr. Stompff's ticket, and gave him his pale sherry, and promised to
dine with him, and bowed him out; and then went back into his studio
and lit a fresh pipe and sat down to think calmly over all that was
about to befall him.

What came into his mind first? His love, of course. There is no man,
as yet unanchored in the calm haven of marriage, who amidst contending
perplexities does not first think of what storms and shoals beset his
progress in that course. And who, so long as there he can see a bit
of blue sky, a tolerably clear passage, does not, to a great extent,
ignore the black clouds which he sees banking up to windward, the
heavy swell crested with a thin, dangerous, white line of wave, which
threatens his fortunes in another direction. Here Geoffrey Ludlow
thought himself tolerably secure. Margaret had told him all her story,
had made the worst of it, and had left him to act on her confession.
Did she love him? That was a difficult question for a man of Geoff's
diffidence to judge. But he thought he might unhesitatingly answer it
in the affirmative. It was her own proposition that nothing should be
done hurriedly; that he should take the week to calmly reflect over the
position, and see whether he held by his first avowal. And to-morrow
the week would be at an end, and he would have the right to ask for her
decision.

That decision, if favourable, would at once settle his plans, and
necessitate an immediate communication to his mother. This was a phase
of the subject which Geoffrey characteristically had ignored, put by,
and refrained from thinking of as long as possible. But now there was
no help for it. Under any circumstances he would have endeavoured, on
marrying, to set up a separate establishment for himself; but situated
as he was, with Margaret Dacre as his intended wife, he saw that such
a step was inevitable. For though he loved his mother with all his
heart, he was not blind to her weaknesses and he knew that the "cross"
would never be more triumphantly brought forward, or more loudly
complained of, than when it took the form of a daughter-in-law,--a
daughter-in-law, moreover, whose antecedents were not held up for
the old lady's scrutinising inspection. And here, perhaps, was the
greatest tribute to the weird influence of the dead-gold hair, the
pallid face, and the deep-violet eyes. A year ago, and Geoff Ludlow
would have told you that nothing could ever have made him alter his
then style of life. It had continued too long, he would have told you;
he had settled down into a certain state of routine, living with the
old lady and Til: they understood his ways and wishes, and he thought
he should never change. And Mrs. Ludlow used to say that Geoffrey would
never marry now; he did not care for young chits of girls, who were
all giggle and nonsense, my dear; a man at his time of life looked
for something more than that, and where it was to come from she, for
one, did not know. Miss Matilda had indeed different views on the
subject; she thought that dear old Geoff would marry, but that it
would probably come about in this way. Some lovely female member of
the aristocracy, to whom Geoff had given drawing-lessons, or who had
seen his pictures, and become imbued with the spirit of poetry in them,
would say to her father, the haughty earl, "I pine for him; I cannot
live without him;" and to save his darling child's health, the earl
would give his consent, and bestow upon the happy couple estates of the
annual value of twenty thousand pounds. But then you see Miss Matilda
Ludlow was given to novel-reading, and though perfectly practical and
unromantic as regards herself and her career, was apt to look upon all
appertaining to her brother, whom she adored, through a surrounding
halo of circulating-library.

How this great intelligence would, then, be received by his
home-tenants set Geoff thinking after Stompff's departure, and between
the puff of his pipe he turned the subject hither and thither in
his mind, and proposed to himself all kinds of ways for meeting the
difficulty; none of which, on reconsideration, appearing practicable
or judicious, he reverted to an old and favourite plan of his, that of
postponing any further deliberation until the next day, when, as he
argued with himself; he would have "slept upon it"--a most valuable
result when the subject is systematically ignored up to the time of
going to sleep, and after the hour of waking--he would have been to the
private view at the Academy--which had, of course, an immense deal to
do with it--and he would have received the final decision from Margaret
Dacre. O yes, it was useless to think any more of it that night. And
fully persuaded of this, Geoff turned in and fell fast asleep.


"And there won't be a more gentlemanly-looking man in the rooms than
our dear old Geoff!"

"Stuff, Til! don't be absurd!"

"No, I mean it; and you know it too, you vain old thing; else why are
you perpetually looking in the glass?"

"No, but--Til, nonsense!--I suppose I'm all right, eh?"

"All right!--you're charming, Geoff! I never saw you such a--I can't
help it you know--swell before! Don't frown, Geoff; there's no other
word that expresses it. One would think you were going to meet a lady
there. Does the Queen go, or any of the young princesses?"

"How can you be so ridiculous, Til! Now, goodbye;" and Geoff gave his
sister a hearty kiss, and started off. Miss Matilda was right; he did
look perfectly gentlemanly in his dark-blue coat, white waistcoat, and
small-check trousers. Nature, which certainly had denied him personal
beauty or regularity of feature, had given him two or three marks
of distinction: his height, his bright earnest eyes, and a certain
indefinable odd expression, different from the ordinary ruck of
people--an expression which attracted attention, and invariably made
people ask who he was.

It was three o'clock before Geoff arrived at the Academy, and the
rooms were crowded. The scene was new to him, and he stared round in
astonishment at the brilliancy of the _toilettes_, and what Charley
Potts would have called the "air of swelldom" which pervaded the place.
It is scarcely necessary to say that his first act was to glance at
the Catalogue to see where his pictures were placed; his second, to
proceed to them to see how they looked on the walls. Round each was a
little host of eager inspectors, and from what Geoff caught of their
conversation, the verdict was entirely favourable. But he was not long
left in doubt. As he was looking on, his arm was seized by Mr. Stompff,
who, scarcely waiting to carry him out of earshot, began, "Well! you've
done it up brown this time, my man, and no flies! Your pictures have
woke 'em up. They're talking of nothing else. Ive sold 'em both. Lord
Everton--that's him over there: little man with a double eyeglass,
brown coat and high velvet collar--he's bought the 'sic wos;' and Mr.
Shirtings of Manchester's got the other. The price has been good, sir;
I'm not above denyin' it. There's six dozen of Sham ready to go into
your cellar whenever you say the word: I ain't mean with my men like
some people. Power of nobs here to-day. There's the Prime Minister,
and the Chancellor of the Exchequer--that's him in the dirty white
hat and rumpled coat--and no end of bishops and old ladies of title.
That's Shirtings, that fat man in the black satin waistcoat. Wonderful
man, sir,--factory-boy in Manchester! Saved his shillin' a-week, and
is now worth two hundred thousand. Fine modern collection he's got!
That little man in the turn-down collar, with the gold pencil-case in
his hand, is Scrunch, the art-critic of the _Scourge_. A bitter little
beast; but Ive squared him. I gave him five-and-twenty pounds to write
a short account of the Punic War, which was given away with Bliff's
picture of 'Regulus,' and he's never pitched into any of my people
since. He's comin' to dinner to-day. O, by the bye, don't be late! I'll
drive you down."

"Thank you," said Geoff; "I--Ive got somewhere to go to. I'll find my
own way to Blackwall."

"Ha!" said Stompff, "then it is true, is it? Never mind; mum's the
word! I'm tiled! Look here: don't you mind me if you see me doing any
thing particular. It's all good for business."

It may have been so, but it was undoubtedly trying. During the next two
hours Geoff was conscious of Mr. Stompff's perpetually hovering round
him, always acting as cicerone to some different man, to whom he would
point out Geoff with his forefinger, then whisper in his companion's
ear, indicate one of Geoff's pictures with his elbow, and finish by
promenading his friend just under Geoff's nose; the stranger making a
feeble pretence of looking at some highly-hung portrait, but obviously
swallowing Geoff with his eyes, from his hair to his boots.

But he had also far more pleasurable experiences of his success. Three
or four of the leading members of the Academy, men of world-wide
fame, whom he had known by sight, and envied--so far as envy lay in
his gentle disposition--for years, came up to him, and introducing
themselves, spoke warmly of his picture, and complimented him in most
flattering terms. By one of these, the greatest of them all, Lord
Everton was subsequently brought up; and the kind old man, with that
courtesy which belongs only to the highest breeding, shook hands with
him, and expressed his delight at being the fortunate possessor of Mr.
Ludlow's admirable picture, and hoped to have the pleasure of receiving
him at Everton house, and showing him the gallery of old masters, in
whose footsteps he, Mr. Ludlow, was so swiftly following.

And then, as Geoffrey was bowing his acknowledgments, he heard his name
pronounced, and turning round found himself close by Lord Caterham's
wheelchair, and had a hearty greeting from its occupant.

"How do you do, Mr. Ludlow? You will recollect meeting me at Lady
Lilford's, I daresay. I have just been looking at your pictures, and I
congratulate you most earnestly upon them. No, I never flatter. They
appear to me very remarkable things, especially the evening-party
scene, where you seem to have given an actual spirit of motion to the
dancers in the background, so different from the ordinary stiff and
angular representation.--You can leave the chair here for a minute,
Stephens.--In such a crowd as this, Mr. Ludlow, it's refreshing--is it
not?--to get a long look at that sheltered pool surrounded by waving
trees, which Creswick has painted so charmingly. The young lady who
came with me has gone roving away to search for some favourite, whose
name she saw in the Catalogue; but if you don't mind waiting with me
a minute, she will be back, and I know she will be glad to see you,
as--ah! here she is!"

As Geoffrey looked round, a tall young lady with brown eyes, a pert
inquisitive nose, an undulating figure, and a bright laughing mouth,
came hurriedly up, and without noticing Geoffrey, bent over Lord
Caterham's chair, and said, "I was quite right, Arthur; it is--"
then, in obedience to a glance from her companion, she looked up and
exclaimed, "What, Geoffrey!--Mr. Ludlow, I mean--O, how _do_ you do?
Why, you don't mean to say you don't recollect me?"

Geoff was a bad courtier at any time, and now the expression of his
face at the warmth of this salutation showed how utterly he was puzzled.

"You _have_ forgotten, then? And you don't recollect those days when--"

"Stop!" he exclaimed, a sudden light breaking upon him; "little Annie
Maurice that used to live at Willesden Priory! My little fairy, that
I have sketched a thousand times. Well, I ought not to have forgotten
you, Miss Maurice, for I have studied your features often enough to
have impressed them on my memory. But how could I recognise my little
elf in such a dashing young lady?"

Lord Caterham looked up at them out of the corners of his eyes as they
stood warmly shaking hands, and for a moment his face wore a pained
expression; but it passed away directly, and his voice was as cheery as
usual as he said, "_Et nos mutamur in illis_, eh, Mr. Ludlow? Little
fays grow into dashing young ladies, and indolent young sketchers
become the favourites of the Academy."

"Ay," said Annie; "and the dear old Priory let to other people, and
many of those who made those times so pleasant are dead and gone. O,
Geoffrey--Mr. Ludlow, I mean--"

"Yes," said Geoff, interrupting her; "and Geoffrey turned into Mr.
Ludlow, and Annie into Miss Maurice: there's another result of the
flight of time, and one which I, for my part, heartily object to."

"Ah, but, Mr. Ludlow, I must bespeak a proper amount of veneration for
you on the part of this young lady," said Lord Caterham; "for I am
about to ask you to do me a personal favour in which she is involved."

Geoff bowed absently; he was already thinking it was time for him to go
to Margaret.

"Miss Maurice is good enough to stay with my family for the present,
Mr. Ludlow; and I am very anxious that she should avail herself of the
opportunity of cultivating a talent for drawing which she undoubtedly
possesses."

"She used to sketch very nicely years ago," said Geoff, turning to her
with a smile; and her face was radiant with good humour as she said:

"O, Geoffrey, do you recollect my attempts at cows?"

"So, in order to give her this chance, and in the hope of making her
attempt at cows more creditable than it seems they used to be, I am
going to ask you, Mr. Ludlow, to undertake Miss Maurice's artistic
education, to give her as much of your time as you can spare, and, in
fact, to give what I think I may call her genius the right inclination."

Geoffrey hesitated of course--it was his normal state--and he said
doubtingly: "You're very good; but I--I'm almost afraid--"

"You are not bashful, I trust, Mr. Ludlow," said Lord Caterham; "I
have seen plenty of your work at Lady Lilford's, and I know you to be
perfectly competent."

"It was scarcely that, my lord; I rather think that--" but when he got
thus far he looked up and saw Annie Maurice's brown eyes lifted to his
in such an appealing glance that he finished his sentence by saying:
"Well, I shall be very happy indeed to do all that I can--for old
acquaintance-sake, Annie;" and he held out his hand frankly to her.

"You are both very good," she said; "and it will be a real pleasure to
me to recommence my lessons, and to try to prove to you, Geoffrey, that
I'm not so impatient or so stupid as I was. When shall we begin?"

"The sooner the better, don't you think, Mr. Ludlow?" said Lord
Caterham.

Geoff felt his face flush as he said: "I--I expect to be going out
of town for a week or two; but when I return I shall be delighted to
commence."

"When you return we shall be delighted to see you. I can fully
understand how you long for a little rest and change after your hard
work, Mr. Ludlow. Now goodbye to you; I hope this is but the beginning
of an intimate acquaintance." And Lord Caterham, nodding to Geoffrey,
called Stephens and was wheeled away.

"I like that man, Annie," said he, when they were out of earshot; "he
has a thoroughly good face, and the truth and honesty of his eyes
overbalance the weakness of the mouth, which is undecided, but not
shifty. His manner is honest, too; don't you think so?"

He waited an instant for an answer, but Annie did not speak.

"Didn't you hear sue, Annie? or am I not worth a reply?"

"I--I beg your pardon, Arthur. I heard you perfectly; but I was
thinking. O yes, I should think Mr. Ludlow was as honest as the day."

"But what made you _distraite?_ What were you thinking of?"

"I was thinking what a wonderful difference a few years made. I was
thinking of my old ideas of Mr. Ludlow when he used to come out to dine
with papa, and sleep at our house; how he had long dark hair, which he
used to toss off his face, and poor papa used to laugh at him and call
him an enthusiast. I saw hundreds of silver threads in his hair just
now, and he seemed--well, I don't know--so much more constrained and
conventional than I recollect him."

"You seem to forget that you had frocks and trousers and trundled a
hoop in those days, Annie. You were a little fay then; you are a Venus
now: in a few years you will be married, and then you must sit to Mr.
Ludlow for a Juno. It is only your pretty flowers that change so much;
your hollies and yews keep pretty much the same throughout the year."

From the tone of voice in which Lord Caterham made this last remark,
Annie knew very well that he was in one of those bitter humours which,
when his malady was considered, came surprisingly seldom upon him, and
she knew that a reply would only have aggravated his temper, so she
forbore and walked silently by his side.

No sooner did he find himself free than Geoffrey Ludlow hurried from
the Academy, and jumping into a cab, drove off at once to Little
Flotsam Street. Never since Margaret Dacre had been denizened at
Flexor's had Geoff approached the neighbourhood without a fluttering
at his heart, a sinking of his spirits, a general notion of fright and
something about to happen. But now, whether it was that his success
at the Academy and the kind words he had had from all his friends had
given him courage, it is impossible to say, but he certainly jumped out
of the hansom without the faintest feeling of disquietude, and walked
hurriedly perhaps, but by no means nervously, up to Flexor's door.

Margaret was in, of course. He found her, the very perfection of
neatness, watering some flowers in her window which he had sent her.
She had on a tight-fitting cotton dress of a very small pattern, and
her hair was neatly braided over her ears. He had seen her look more
voluptuous, never more _piquante_ and irresistible. She came across the
room to him with outstretched hand and raised eyebrows.

"You have come!" she said; "that's good of you, for I scarcely expected
you."

Geoff stopped suddenly. "Scarcely expected me! Yet you must know that
to-day the week is ended."

"I knew that well enough; but I heard from the woman of the house here
that to-day is the private view of the Academy, and I knew how much you
would be engaged."

"And did you think that I should suffer any thing to keep me from
coming to you to-day?"

She paused a minute, then looked him full in the face. "No; frankly and
honestly I did not. I was using conventionalisms and talking society to
you. I never will do so again. I knew you would come, and--and I longed
for your coming, to tell you my delight at what I hear is your glorious
success."

"My greatest triumph is in your appreciation of it," said Geoff.
"Having said to you what I did a week ago, you must know perfectly that
the end and aim of all I think, of all I undertake, is connected with
you. And you must not keep me in suspense, Margaret, please. You must
tell me your decision."

"My decision! Now did we not part, at my suggestion, for a week's
adjournment, during which you should turn over in your mind certain
positions which I had placed before you? And now, the week ended, you
ask for my decision! Surely rather I ought to put the question."

"A week ago I said to you, 'Margaret, be my wife.' It was not very
romantically put, I confess; but I'm not a very romantic person. You
told me to wait a week, to think over all the circumstances of our
acquaintance, and to see whether my determination held good. The week
is over; Ive done all you said; and Ive come again to say, Margaret, be
my wife."

It was rather a long speech this for Geoff; and as he uttered it his
dear old face glowed with honest fervour.

"You have thoroughly made up your mind, considered every thing, and
decided?"

"I have."

"Mind, in telling you the story of my past life, I spoke out freely,
regardless of my own feelings and of yours. You owe me an equal
candour. You have thought of all?"

"Of all."

"And you still--"

"I still repeat that one demand."

"Then I say 'Yes,' frankly and freely. Geoffrey Ludlow, I will be your
wife; and by Heaven's help I will make your life happy, and atone for
my past. I--"

And she did not say any more just then, for Geoff stopped her lips with
a kiss.


"What _can_ have become of Ludlow?" said Mr. Stompff for about the
twentieth time, as he came back into the dining-room, after craning
over the balcony and looking all round.

"Giving himself airs on account of his success," said genial Mr. Bowie,
the art-critic. "I wouldn't wait any longer for him, Stompff."

"I won't," said Stompff. "Dinner!"

The dinner was excellent, the wine good and plentiful, the guests well
assorted, and the conversation as racy and salted as it usually is
when a hecatomb of absent friends is duly slaughtered by the company.
Each man said the direst things he could about his own personal
enemies; and there were but very few cases in which the rest of the
_convives_ did not join in chorus. It was during a pause in this kind
of conversation--much later in the evening, when the windows had been
thrown open, and most of the men were smoking in the balcony--that
little Tommy Smalt, who had done full justice to the claret, took his
cigar from his mouth, leaned lazily back, and looking up at the moonlit
sky, felt in such a happy state of repletion and tobacco as to be
momentarily charitable--the which feeling induced him to say:

"I wish Ludlow had been with us!"

"His own fault that he's not," said Mr. Stompff; "his own fault
entirely. However, he's missed a pleasant evening. I rather think we've
had the pull of him."

Had Geoff missed a pleasant evening? He thought otherwise. He thought
he had, never had such an evening in his life; for the same cold
steel-blue rays of the early spring moon which fell upon the topers in
the Blackwall balcony came gleaming in through Mr. Flexor's first-floor
window, lighting up a pallid face set in a frame of dead-gold hair and
pillowed on Geoffrey Ludlow's breast.




CHAPTER XIV.
THOSE TWAIN ONE FLESH.


So it was a settled thing between Margaret Dacre and Geoffrey Ludlow.
She had acceded to his earnest demand--demand thrice repeated--after
due consideration and delay, and she was to become his wife forthwith.
Indeed, their colloquy on that delicious moonlight evening would have
been brought to a conclusion much sooner than it was, had not Geoff
stalwartly declared and manfully held to his determination, spite of
every protest, not to go until they had settled upon a day on which to
be married. He did not see the use of waiting, he said; it would get
buzzed about by the Flexors; and all sorts of impertinent remarks and
congratulations would be made, which they could very well do without.
Of course, as regarded herself, Margaret would want a--what do you call
it?--outfit, _trousseau_, that was the word. But it appeared to him
that all he had to do was to give her the money, And all she had to do
was to go out and get the things she wanted, and that need not take any
time, or hinder them from naming a day--well, let us say in next week.
He himself had certain little arrangements to make; but he could very
well get through them all in that time. And what did Margaret say?

Margaret did not say very much. She had been lying perfectly tranquil
in Geoffrey's arms; a position which, she said, first gave her
assurance that her new life had indeed begun. She should be able to
realise it more fully, she thought, when she commenced in a home of
her own, and in a fresh atmosphere; and as the prying curiosity of the
Flexors daily increased, and as Little Flotsam Street, with its normal
pavement of refuse and its high grim house-rows scarcely admitting any
light, was an objectionable residence, she could urge no reason for
delay. So a day at the end of the ensuing week was fixed upon; and
no sooner had it been finally determined than Geoff, looking round
at preparations which were absolutely necessary, was amazed at their
number and magnitude.

He should be away a fortnight, he calculated, perhaps longer; and it
was necessary to apprise the families and the one or two "ladies'
colleges" in which he taught drawing of his absence. He would also let
Stompff know that he would not find him in his studio during the next
few days (for it was the habit of this great _entrepreneur_ to pay
frequent visits to his _protégés_, just to "give 'em a look-up," as
he said; but in reality to see that they were not doing work for any
opposition dealer); but he should simply tell Stompff that he was going
out of town for a little change, leaving that worthy to imagine that
he wanted rest after his hard work. And then came a point at which he
hitched up at once, and was metaphorically thrown on his beam-ends.
What was he to say to his mother and sister and to his intimate friends?

To the last, of course, there was no actual necessity to say any thing,
save that he knew he must have some one to "give away" the bride, and
he would have preferred one of his old friends, even at the risk of
an explanation, to Flexor, hired for five shillings, and duly got up
in the costume of the old English gentleman. But to his mother and
sister it was absolutely necessary that some kind of notice should be
given. It was necessary they should know that the little household,
which, despite various small interruptions, had been carried on so
long in amity and affection, would be broken up, so far as he was
concerned; also necessary that they should know that his contribution
to the household income would remain exactly the same as though he
still partook of its benefits. He had to say all this; and he was as
frightened as a child. He thought of writing at first, and of leaving
a letter to be given to his mother after the ceremony was over; of
giving a bare history in a letter, and an amount of affection in the
postscript which would melt the stoniest maternal heart. But a little
reflection caused him to think better of this notion, and determined
him to seek an interview with his mother. It was due to her, and he
would go through with it.

So one morning, when he had watched his sister Til safe off into a
prolonged diplomatic controversy with the cook, involving the reception
of divers ambassadors from the butcher and other tradespeople, Geoff
made his way into his mother's room, and found her knitting something
which might have been either an antimacassar for a giant or a
counterpane for a child, and at once intimated his pleasure at finding
her alone, as he had "something to say to her."

This was an ominous beginning in Mrs. Ludlow's ears, and her "cross"
at once stood out visibly before her; Constantine himself had never
seen it plainer. The mere pronunciation of the phrase made her nervous;
she ought to have "dropped one and taken up two;" but her hands got
complicated, and she stopped with a knitting-needle in mid-air.

"If you're alluding to the butcher's book, Geoffrey," she said, "I
hold myself blameless. It was understood, thoroughly understood, that
it should be eightpence a pound all round; and if Smithers chooses
to charge ninepence-halfpenny for lamb, and you allow it, I don't
hold myself responsible. I said to your sister at the time--I said,
'Matilda, I'm sure Geoffrey--'"

"It's not that, mother, I want to talk to you about," said Geoff, with
a half-smile "it's a bigger subject than the price of butcher's meat. I
want to talk to you about myself--about my future life."

"Very well, Geoffrey; that does not come upon me unawares. I am a
woman of the world. I ought to be, considering the time I had with
your poor father; and I suppose that now you're making a name, you'll
find it necessary to entertain. He did, poor fellow, though it's
little enough name or money he ever made! But if you want to see your
friends round you, there must be help in the kitchen. There are certain
things--jellies, and that like--that must come from the pastry-cook's;
but all the rest we can do very well at home with a little help in the
kitchen."

"You don't comprehend me yet, mother. I--I'm going to leave you."

"To leave us!--O, to live away! Very well, Geoffrey," said the old
lady, bridling up; "if you've grown too grand to live with your mother,
I can only say I'm sorry for you. Though I never saw my name in print
in the _Times_ newspaper, except among the marriages; and if that's to
be the effect it has upon me, I hope I never shall."

"My dear mother, how _can_ you imagine any thing so absurd! The truth
is--"

"O yes, Geoffrey, I understand. Ive not lived or sixty years in the
world for nothing. Not that there's been ever the least word said
about your friends coming pipe-smoking at all times of the night, or
hot water required for spirits when Emma was that dead with sleep she
could scarcely move; nor about young persons--female models you call
them--trolloping misses I say."

It is worthy of remark that in all business matters Mrs. Ludlow was
accustomed to treat her son as a cipher, forgetting that two-thirds of
the income by which the house was supported were contributed by him.
There was no thought of this, however, in honest old Geoff's mind as he
said,

"Mother, you won't hear me out! The fact is, I'm going to be married."

"To be married, Geoffrey!" said the old lady, in a voice that was much
softer and rather tremulous; "to be married, my dear boy! Well, that is
news!" Her hands trembled as she laid them on his big shoulders and put
up her face to kiss him. "Well, well, to be sure! I never thought you'd
marry now, Geoffrey. I looked upon you as a confirmed old bachelor. And
who is it that has caught you at last? Not Miss Sanders, is it?"

Geoffrey shook his head.

"I thought not. No, that would never do. Nice kind of girl too; but
if we're to hold our heads so high when all our money comes out of
sugar-hogsheads in Thames Street, why where will be the end of it, I
should like to know? It isn't Miss Hall?"

Geoffrey repeated his shake.

"Well, I'm glad of it; not but what I'm very fond of Emily Hall; but
that half-pay father of hers! I shouldn't like some of the people about
here to know that we were related to a half-pay captain with a wooden
leg; and he'd be always clumping about the house, and be horrible
for the carpets! Well, if it isn't Minnie Beverley, I'll give it up;
for you'd never go marrying that tall Dickenson, who's more like a
dromedary than a woman!"

"It is not Minnie Beverley, nor the young lady who's like a dromedary,"
said Geoff, laughing. "The young lady I am going to marry is a stranger
to you; you have never even seen her."

"Never seen her! O Geoff!" cried the old lady, with horror in her face,
"you're never going to marry one of those trolloping models, and bring
her home to live with us?"

"No, no, mother; you need be under no alarm. This young lady, who is
from the country, is thoroughly ladylike and well educated. But I shall
not bring her home to you; we shall have a house of our own."

"And what shall we do, Til and I? O, Geoffrey, I shall never have to go
into lodgings at my time of life, shall I, and after having kept house
and had my own plate and linen for so many years?"

"Mother, do you imagine I should increase my own happiness at
the expense of yours? Of course you'll keep this house, and all
arrangements will go on just the same as usual, except that I sha'n't
be here to worry you."

"You never worried me, my dear," said the old lady, as all his
generosity and noble unselfishness rose before her mind; "you never
worried me, but have been always the best of sons; and pray God that
you may be happy, for you deserve it." She put her arms round his neck
and kissed him fondly, while the tears trickled down her cheeks. "Ah,
here's Til," she continued, drying her eyes; "it would never do to let
her see me being so silly."

"O, here you are at last!" said Miss Til, who, as they both noticed,
had a very high colour and was generally suffused about the face and
neck; "what have you been conspiring about? The Mater looks as guilty
as possible, doesn't she, Geoff? and you're not much better, sir. What
is the matter?"

"I suspect you're simply attempting the authoritative to cover your own
confusion, Til. There's something--"

"No, no! I won't be put off in that manner! What _is_ the matter?"

"There's nothing the matter, my dear," said Mrs. Ludlow, who by this
time had recovered her composure; "though there is some great news.
Geoffrey's going to be married!"

"What!" exclaimed Miss Til, and then made one spring into his arms. "O,
you darling old Geoff, you don't say so? O, how quiet you have kept it,
you horrible hypocrite, seeing us day after day and never breathing a
word about it! Now, who is it, at once? Stop, shall I guess? Is it any
one I know?"

"No one that you know."

"O, I am so glad! Do you know, I think I hate most people I
know--girls, I mean; and I'm sure none of them are nice enough for my
Geoff. Now, what's she like, Geoff?"

"O, I don't know."

"That's what men always say--so tiresome! Is she dark or fair?"

"Well, fair, I suppose."

"And what coloured hair and eyes?"

"Eh? well, her hair is red, I think."

"Red! Lor, Geoff! what they call carrots?"

"No; deep-red, like red gold--"

"O, Geoff, I know, I know! Like the Scylla in the picture. O, you worse
than fox, to deceive me in that way, telling me it was a model, and all
the rest of it. Well, if she's like that, she must be wonderful to look
at, and I'm dying to see her. What's her name?"

"Margaret."

"Margaret! That's very nice; I like Margaret very much. Of course
you'll never let yourself be sufficiently childishly spoony to let
it drop into Peggy, which is atrocious. I'm very glad she's got a
nice name; for, do all I could, I'm certain I never could like a
sister-in-law who was called Belinda or Keziah, or any thing dreadful."

"Have you fixed your wedding-day, Geoffrey?"

"Yes, mother; for Thursday next."

"Thursday!" exclaimed Miss Til. "Thursday next? why there'll be no time
for me to get anything ready; for I suppose, as your sister, Geoff, I'm
to be one of the bridesmaids?"

"There will be no bridesmaids, dear Til," said Geoffrey; "no company,
no breakfast. I have always thought that, if ever I married, I should
like to walk into the church with my bride, have the service gone
through, and walk out again, without the least attempt at show; and I'm
glad to find that Margaret thoroughly coincides with me."

"But surely, Geoffrey," said Mrs. Ludlow, "your friends will--"

"O my! Talking of friends," interrupted Miss Til, "I quite forgot
in all this flurry to tell you that Mr. Charles Potts is in the
drawing-room, waiting to see you, Geoffrey."

"Dear me! is he indeed? ah, that accounts for a flushed face--"

"Don't be absurd, Geoff! Shall I tell him to come here?"

"You may if you like; but don't come back with him, as I want five
minutes' quiet talk with him."

So Mrs. Ludlow and her daughter left the studio, and in a few minutes
Charley Potts arrived. As he walked up to Geoffrey and wrung his hand,
both men seemed under some little constraint. Geoff spoke first.

"I'm glad you're here, Charley. I should have gone up to your place
if you hadn't looked in to-day. I have something to tell you, and
something to ask of you."

"Tell away, old boy; and as for the asking, look upon it as
done,--unless it's tin, by the way; and there I'm no good just now."

"Charley, I'm going to be married next Thursday to Margaret Dacre--the
girl we found fainting in the streets that night of the Titians."

Geoff expected some exclamation, but his friend only nodded his head.

"She has told me her whole life: insisted upon my hearing it before I
said a word to her; made me wait a week after I had asked her to be my
wife, on the chance that I should repent; behaved in the noblest way."

Geoffrey again paused, and Mr. Potts again nodded.

"We shall be married very quietly at the parish-church here; and there
will be nobody present but you. I want you to come; will you?"

"Will I? Why, old man, we've been like brothers for years; and to think
that I'd desert you at a time like this! I--I didn't quite mean that,
you know; but if not, why not? You know what I do mean."

"Thanks, Charley. One thing more: don't talk about it until after it's
over. I'm an awkward subject for chaff, particularly such chaff as this
would give rise to. You may tell old Bowker, if you like; but no one
else."

And Mr. Potts went away without delivering that tremendous philippic
with which he had come charged. Perhaps it was his conversation with
Miss Til in the drawing-room which had softened his manners and
prevented him from being brutal.

They were married on the following Thursday; Margaret looking perfectly
lovely in her brown-silk dress and white bonnet Charley Potts could not
believe her to be the haggard creature in whose rescue he had assisted;
and simple old William Bowker, peering out from between the curtains
of a high pew, was amazed at her strange weird beauty. The ceremony
was over; and Geoff, happy and proud, was leading his wife down the
steps of the church to the fly waiting for them, when a procession of
carriages, coachmen and footmen with white favours, and gaily-clad
company, all betokening another wedding, drove up to the door. The
bride and her bridesmaids had alighted, and the bridegroom's best-man,
who with his friend had just jumped out of his cabriolet, was bowing to
the bridesmaids as Geoff and Margaret passed. He was a pleasant airy
fellow, and seeing a pretty woman coming down the steps, he looked hard
at her. Their eyes met, and there was something in Margaret's glance
which stopped him in the act of raising his hand to his hat. Geoffrey
saw nothing of this; he was waving his hand to Bowker, who was standing
by; and they passed on to the fly.

"Come on, Algy!" called out the impatient intended bridegroom; "they'll
be waiting for us in the church. What on earth are you staring at?"

"Nothing, dear old boy!" said Algy Barford, who was the best man just
named,--"nothing but a resurrection!--only a resurrection; by Jove,
that's all!"





Book the Second.




CHAPTER I.
NEW RELATIONS.


The fact of her having a daughter-in-law whom she had never seen, of
whose connections and antecedents she knew positively nothing, weighed
a good deal on Mrs. Ludlow's mind. "If she had been an Indian, my
dear," she said to her daughter Matilda, "at least, I don't mean an
Indian, not black you know; of course not--ridiculous; but one of
those young women who are sent out to India by their friends to pick
up husbands,--it would be a different matter. Of course, then I could
not have seen her until she came over to England; and as Geoff has
never been in India, I don't quite see how it could have happened; but
you know what I mean. But to think that she should have been living
in London, within the bills of thingummy--mortality, and Geoff never
to bring her to see me, is most extraordinary--most extraordinary!
However, it only goes to prove what Ive said--that I have a cross
to bear; and now my son's marrying himself in a most mysterious and
Arabian-nights-like manner is added to the short-weight which we always
get from the baker, and to the exceeding forwardness shown by that
young man with the pomatumed hair and the steel heart stuck into his
apron, whenever you go into the grocer's shop."

And although Miss Matilda combated this idea with great resolution,
albeit by no means comfortable in her own mind as to Geoffrey's
proceedings, the old lady continued in a state of mind in which
indignation at a sense of what she imagined the slight put upon her
was only exceeded by her curiosity to catch a glimpse of her son's
intended: under the influence of which latter feeling she even proposed
to Til that they should attend the church on the occasion of the
marriage-ceremony. "I can put on my Maltese-lace veil, you know, my
dear: and if we gave the pew-opener sixpence, she'd put us into a place
in the gallery where we could hide behind a pillar, and be unseen
spectators of the proceedings." But this suggestion was received with
so much disfavour by her daughter that the old lady was compelled to
abandon it, together with an idea, which she subsequently broached, of
having Mr. Potts to supper,--giving him sprats, or tripe, or some of
those odd things that men like; and then, when he was having a glass
of spirits-and-water and smoking a pipe, getting him to tell us all
about it, and how it went off. So Mrs. Ludlow was obliged to content
herself with a line from Geoffrey,--received two or three days after
his marriage, saying that he was well and happy, and that his Margaret
sent her love ("She might have written that herself, I think!" said the
old lady; "it would have been only respectful; but perhaps she can't
write. Lord, Lord! to think we should have come to this!"),--and with a
short report from Mr. Potts, whom Til had met, accidentally of course,
walking one morning near the house, and who said that all had gone off
capitally, and that the bride had looked perfectly lovely.

But there was balm in Gilead; and consolation came to old Mrs. Ludlow
in the shape of a letter from Geoffrey at the end of the first week of
his absence, requesting his mother and sister to see to the arrangement
of his new house, the furniture of which was all ordered, and would
be sent in on a certain day, when he wished Til and his mother to be
present. Now the taking of this new house, and all in connection with
it, had been a source of great disquietude and much conversation to
the old lady, who had speculated upon its situation, its size, shape,
conveniences, &c., with every one of her little circle of acquaintance.
"Might be in the moon, my dear, for all we know about it," she used to
say; "one would think that one's own son would mention where he was
going to live--to his mother, at least: but Geoff is that tenacious,
that--well, I suppose it's part of the cross of my life." But the
information had come at last, and the old lady was to have a hand,
however subordinate, in the arrangements; and she was proportionately
pleased. "And now, Til, where is it, once more! Just read the letter
again, will you?--for we're to be there the first thing to-morrow
morning, Geoff says. What?--O, the vans will be there the first thing
to-morrow morning! Yes, I know what the vans' first thing is--eleven
o'clock or thereabouts; and then the men to go out for dinner at
twelve, and not come back till half-past two, if somebody isn't there
to hunt them up! The Elm Lodge, Lowbar! Lowbar! Why, that's Holloway
and Whittington, and all that turn-again nonsense about the bells!
Well, I'm sure! Talk about the poles being asunder, my dear; they're
not more asunder than Brompton and Lowbar. O, of course that's done
that he needn't see more of us than he chooses, though there was no
occasion for that, I'm sure, at least so far as I'm concerned; I know
when I'm wanted fast enough, and act accordingly."

"I don't think there was any such idea in Geoff's mind, mamma," said
Til; "he always had a wish to go to the other side of town, as he found
this too relaxing."

"Other side of town, indeed, my dear?--other side of England, you mean!
This side has always been good enough for me; but then, you see, I
never was a public character. However, if we are to go, we'd better
have Brown's fly; it's no good our trapesing about in omnibuses that
distance, and perhaps taking the wrong one, and I don't know what."

But the old lady's wrath (which, indeed, did not deserve the name of
wrath, but would be better described as a kind of perpetual grumble,
in which she delighted) melted away when, on the following morning,
Brown's fly, striking off to the left soon after it commenced ascending
the rise of Lowbar Hill, turned into a pretty country road, and
stopped before a charming little house, bearing the name "Elm Lodge"
on its gate-pillars. The house, which stood on a small eminence, was
approached by a little carriage-sweep; had a little lawn in front, on
which it opened from French windows, covered by a veranda, nestling
under climbing clematis and jasmine; had the prettiest little rustic
portico, floored with porcelain tiles; a cosy dining-room, a pretty
little drawing-room with the French windows before named, and a capital
painting-room. From the windows you had a splendid view over broad
fields leading to Hampstead, with Harrow church fringing the distant
horizon. Nobody could deny that it was a charming little place; and
Mrs. Ludlow admitted the fact at once.

"Very nice, very nice indeed, my dear Til!" said she; "Geoffrey has
inherited my taste--that I will say for him. Rather earwiggy, I should
think, all that green stuff over the balcony; too much so for me;
however, I'm not going to live here, so it don't matter. Oh! the vans
have arrived! Well, my stars! all in suites! Walnut and green silk for
the drawing room, black oak and dark-brown velvet for the dining-room,
did you say, man? It's never--no, my dear, I thought not; it's _not_
real velvet,--Utrecht, my dear; I just felt it. I thought Geoff would
never be so insane as to have real; though, as it is, it must have
cost a pretty penny. Well, he never gave us any thing of this sort at
Brompton; of course not."

"O, mother, how can you talk so!" said Til; "Geoff has always been
nobly generous; but recollect he's only just beginning to make money."

"Quite true, my dear, quite true; and he's been the best of sons. Only
I should have liked for once to have had the chance of showing my taste
in such matters. In your poor father's time every thing was so heavy
and clumsy compared to what it is nowadays, and--there! I would have
had none of your rubbishing Cupids like that, holding up those stupid
baskets."

So the old lady chattered on, by no means allowing her energy to relax
by reason of her talk, but bustling about with determined vigour.
When she had tucked up her dress, and got a duster into her hand, she
was happy, flying at looking-glasses and picture-frames, and rubbing
off infinitesimal atoms of dirt; planting herself resolutely in every
body's way, and hunting up, or, as she termed it "hinching," the
upholsterer's men in the most determined manner.

"I know 'em, my dear; a pack of lazy carpet-caps; do nothing unless you
hinch 'em;" and so she worried and nagged and hustled and drove the
men, until the pointed inquiry of one of them as to "who _was_ that
_h_old cat?" suggested to Miss Til the propriety of withdrawing her
mother from the scene of action. But she had done an immense deal of
good, and caused such progress to be made, that before they left, the
rooms had begun to assume something like a habitable appearance. They
went to take one more look round the house before getting into Brown's
fly; and it was while they were upstairs that Mrs. Ludlow opened a
door which she had not seen before--a door leading into a charming
little room, with light chintz paper and chintz hangings, with a maple
writing-table in the window, and a cosy lounge-chair and a _prie-dieu_;
and niches on either side the fireplace occupied by little bookcases,
into which the foreman of the upholsterers was placing a number of
handsomely-bound books, which he took from a box on the floor.

"Why, good Lord! what's this?" said the old lady, as soon as she
recovered her breath.

"This is the budwaw, mum," said the foreman, thinking he had been
addressed.

"The what, man? What does he say, Matilda?"

"The budwaw, mum; Mrs. Ludlow's own room as is to be. Mr. Ludlow was
most partickler about this room, mum; saw all the furniture for it
before he went away, mum; and give special directions as to where it
was to be put."

"Ah, well, it's all right, I daresay. Come along, my dear."

But Brown's horse had scarcely been persuaded by his driver to
comprehend that he was required to start off homewards with Brown's
fly, when the old lady turned round to her daughter, and said solemnly:

"You mark my words, Matilda, and after I'm dead and gone don't you
forget 'em--your brother's going to make a fool of himself with this
wife of his. I don't care if she were an angel, he'd spoil her.
Boudoir, indeed!--room all to herself, with such a light chintz as
that, and maple too; there's not one woman in ten thousand could stand
it; and Geoffrey's building up a pretty nest for himself, you mark my
words."

Two days later a letter was received from Geoffrey to say that they
had arrived home, and that by the end of the week the house would
be sufficiently in order, and Margaret sufficiently rested from her
fatigue, to receive them, if they would come over to Elm Lodge to
lunch. As the note was read aloud by Til, this last word struck upon
old Mrs. Ludlow's ear, and roused her in an instant.

"To what, my dear?" she asked. "I beg your pardon, I didn't catch the
word."

"To lunch, mamma."

"O, indeed; then I did catch the word, and it wasn't your mumbling tone
that deceived me. To lunch, eh? Well, upon my word! I know I'm a stupid
old woman, and I begin to think I live in heathenish times; but I know
in my day that a son would no more have thought of asking his mother to
lunch than--well, it's good enough for us, I suppose."

"Mamma, how _can_ you say such things! They're scarcely settled yet,
and don't know any thing about their cook; and no doubt Margaret's a
little frightened at first--I'm sure I should be, going into such a
house as that."

"Well, my dear, different people are differently constituted. I
shouldn't feel frightened to walk into Buckingham Palace as mistress
to-morrow. However, I daresay you're right;" and then Mrs. Ludlow
went into the momentous question of "what she was to go in." It was
lucky that in this matter she had Til at her elbow; for whatever the
old lady's taste may have been in houses and furniture, it was very
curious in dress, leaning towards wild stripes and checks and large
green leaves, with veins like caterpillars, spread over brown grounds;
towards portentous bonnets, bearing cockades and bows of ribbon where
such things were never seen before; to puce-coloured gloves, and
parasols rescued at an alarming sacrifice from a cheap draper's sale.
But under Til's supervision Mrs. Ludlow was relegated to a black-silk
dress, and the bonnet which Geoffrey had presented to her on her
birthday, and which Til had chosen; and to a pair of lavender gloves
which fitted her exactly, and had not those caverns at the tips of the
fingers and that wrinkled bagginess in the thumbs which were usually
to be found in the old lady's hand-coverings; and as she took her seat
in Brown's fly, the neighbours on either side, with their noses firmly
pressed against their parlour-windows, were envious of her personal
appearance, though both of them declared afterwards that she wanted a
"little more lighting-up."

When the fly was nearing its destination, Mrs. Ludlow began to grow
very nervous, a state which was exhibited by her continually tugging at
her bonnet-strings and shaking out the skirt of her dress, requesting
to be informed whether she was "quite straight," and endeavouring to
catch the reflection of herself in the front glasses of the fly. These
performances were scarcely over before the fly stopped at the gate, and
Mrs. Ludlow descending was received into her son's strong arms. The
old lady's maternal feelings were strongly excited at that moment, for
she never uttered a word of complaint or remonstrance, though Geoff
squeezed up all the silk skirt which she had taken such pains to shake
out, and hugged her until her bonnet was all displaced. Then, after
giving Til a hearty embrace, Geoff took his mother's hand and led her
across the little lawn to the French window, at which Margaret was
waiting to receive her.

Naturally enough, old Mrs. Ludlow had thought very much over this
interview, and had pictured it to herself in anticipation a score of
times. She had never taken any notice of the allusions to the likeness
between her daughter-in-law that was to be and the Scylla-head which
Geoff had painted; but had drawn entirely upon her own imagination for
the sort of person who was to be presented to her. This ideal personage
had at various times undergone a good deal of change. At one time she
would appear as a slight girl with long fair hair and blue eyes ("what
I call a wax-doll beauty," the old lady would think); then she would
have large black eyes, long black hair, and languishing manners; then
she would be rather plain, but with a finely-developed figure, Mrs.
Ludlow having a theory that most artists thought of figure more than
face; but in any case she would be some little chit of a girl, just the
one to catch such a man as our Geoff, who stuck to his paintings, and
had seen so little of the world.

So much for Mrs. Ludlow's ideal; the realisation was this. On the step
immediately outside the window stood Margaret, a slight rose-flush
tinting her usually pale cheeks just under her eyes; her deep-violet
eyes wider open than usual, but still soft and dreamy; her red-gold
hair in bands round her face, but twisted up at the back into one
large knot at the top of her head. She was dressed in a bright-blue
cambric dress, which fell naturally and gracefully round her, neither
bulging out with excess of crinoline, nor sticking limply to her like a
bathing-gown; across her shoulders was a large white muslin-cape, such
as that which Marie Antoinette is represented as wearing in Delaroche's
splendid picture; muslin-cuffs and a muslin-apron. A gleam of sun shone
upon her, bathing her in light; and as the old lady stood staring at
her in amazement, a recollection came across her of something which she
had not seen for more than forty years, nor ever thought of since,--a
reminiscence of a stained-glass figure of the Virgin in some old
Belgian cathedral, pointed out to her by her husband in her honeymoon.

As this idea passed through her mind, the tears rose into Mrs.
Ludlow's eyes. She was an excitable old lady and easily touched; and
simultaneously with the painted figure she thought of the husband
pointing it out,--the young husband then so brave and handsome, now
for so many years at rest,--and she only dimly saw Margaret coming
forward to meet her. But remembering that tears would be a bad omen
for such an introduction, she brushed them hastily away, and looked up
in undisguised admiration at the handsome creature moving gracefully
towards her. Geoffrey, in a whirl of stuttering doubt, said, "My
mother, Margaret; mother, this is--Margaret--my wife;" and each woman
moved forward a little, and neither knew what to do. Should they
shake hands or kiss? and from whom should the suggestion come? It
came eventually from the old lady, who said simply, "I'm glad to see
you, my dear;" and putting one hand on Margaret's shoulder, kissed
her affectionately. There was no need of introduction between the
others. Til's bright eyes were sparkling with admiration and delight;
and Margaret, seeing the expression in them, reciprocated it at once,
saying, "And this is Til!" and then they embraced, as warmly as girls
under such circumstances always do. Then they went into the house, Mrs.
Ludlow leaning on her son's arm, and Til and Margaret following.

"Now, mother," said Geoff, as they passed through the little hall,
"Margaret will take you upstairs. You'll find things much more settled
than when you were here last." And upstairs the women went accordingly.

When they were in the bedroom, Mrs. Ludlow seated herself comfortably
in a chair, with her back to the light, and said to Margaret:

"Now, my dear, come here and let me have a quiet look at you. Ive
thought of you a thousand times, and wondered what you were like; but I
never thought of any thing like this."

"You--you are not disappointed, I hope," said Margaret. She knew it was
a dull remark, and she made it in a constrained manner. But what else
was she to say?

"Disappointed! no, indeed, my dear. But I won't flatter you; you'll
have quite enough of that from Geoffrey. I shall always think of you
in future as a saint; you're so like the pictures of the saints in the
churches abroad."

"You see you flatter me at once."

"No, my dear, I don't. For you are like them, I'm sure; not that you're
to wear horsehair next your skin, or be chopped up into little pieces,
or made to walk on hot iron, or any thing of that sort, you know; but I
can see by your face that you're a good girl, and will make my Geoff a
good wife."

"I will try to do so, Mrs. Ludlow," said Margaret, earnestly.

"And you'll succeed, my dear. I knew I could always trust Geoff for
that; he might marry a silly girl, one that hadn't any proper notions
of keeping house or managing those nuisances of servants but I knew he
would choose a good one. And don't call me 'Mrs. Ludlow,' please, my
dear. I'm your mother now; and with such a daughter-in-law I'm proud of
the title!" This little speech was sealed with a kiss, which drove away
the cloud that was gathering on Margaret's brow, and they all went down
to lunch together. The meal passed off without any particular incident
to be recorded. Margaret was self-possessed, and did the honours of
her table gracefully, paying particular attention to her guests, and
generally conducting herself infinitely better than Geoff, who was in
a flurry of nervous excitement, and was called to order by his mother
several times for jumping up to fetch things when he ought to have rung
the bell. "A habit that I trust you'll soon break him of, Margaret, my
dear; for nothing goes to spoil a servant so quickly; and calling over
the bannisters for what he wants is another trick, as though servants'
legs weren't given them to answer bells." But Mrs. Ludlow did not
talk much, being engaged, during the intervals of eating, in mentally
appraising the articles on the table, in quietly trying the weight of
the spoons, and in administering interrogative taps to the cow on the
top of the butter-dish to find if she were silver or plated, in private
speculations as to which quality of Romford ale Geoffrey had ordered
and what he paid for it, and various other little domestic whereto
her experience as a household manager prompted her. Geoffrey too was
silent; but the conversation, though not loud, was very brisk between
Margaret and Til, who seemed, to Geoff's intense delight, to have taken
a great fancy for each other.

It was not until late in the afternoon, when the hour at which Brown's
fly had been ordered was rapidly approaching, and they were all seated
in the veranda enjoying the distant view, the calm stillness, and the
fresh air, that the old lady, who had been looking with a full heart at
Geoffrey--who, seated close behind Margaret, was playing with the ends
of her hair as she still kept up her conversation with Til--said:

"Well, Geoffrey, I don't think I ought to leave you to-night without
saying how much I am pleased with my new daughter. O, I don't mind her
hearing me; she's too good a girl to be upset by a little truthful
praise--ain't you, my dear? Come and sit by me for a minute and give
me your hand, Margaret; and you, Geoff, on the other side. God bless
you both, my children, and make you happy in one another! You're
strange to one another, and you'll have some little worries at first;
but you'll soon settle down into happiness. And that's the blessing of
your both being young and fresh. I'm very glad you didn't marry poor
Joe Telford's widow, Geoff, as we thought you would, ten years ago.
I don't think, if I had been a man, I should have liked marrying a
widow. Of course every one has their little love-affairs before they
marry, but that's nothing; but with a widow it's different, you know;
and she'd be always comparing you with the other one, and perhaps the
comparison might not be flattering. No; it's much better to begin life
both together, with no past memories to--why, Geoffrey, how your hand
shakes, my dear! What's the matter? it can't be the cold, for Margaret
is as steady as a rock."

Geoffrey muttered something about "a sudden shiver," and just at
that moment the fly appeared at the gate So they parted with renewed
embraces and promises of meeting again very shortly; Geoffrey was to
bring Margaret over to Brompton, and the next time they came to Elm
Lodge they must spend a long day, and perhaps sleep there; and it was
not until Brown's fly turned the corner which shut the house out of
sight that Mrs. Ludlow ceased stretching her head out of the window and
nodding violently. Then she burst out at once with her long-pent-up
questioning.

"Well, Matilda, and what do you think of your new relation? I'm sure
you've been as quiet as quiet; there's been no getting a word out of
you. But I suppose you don't mind telling your mother. What _do_ you
think of her?"

"She is very handsome, mamma, and seems very kind, and very fond of
Geoff."

"Handsome, my dear! She's really splendid! There's a kind of _je ne
sais quoi_ about her that--and tall too, like a duchess! Well, I don't
think the Wilkinsons in the Crescent will crow any longer. Why, that
girl that Alfred Wilkinson married the other day, and that they all
went on so about, isn't a patch upon Margaret. Did you notice her cape
and cuffs, Matilda? Rather Frenchified, I thought; rather like that
nurse that the Dixons brought from Boulogne last year, but very pretty.
I hope she'll wear them when she comes to spend the day with us, and
that some of those odious people in the Crescent will come to call.
Their cook seems to have a light hand at pie-crust; and _did_ you taste
the jelly, my dear? I wonder if it was made at home; if so, the cook's
a treasure, and dirt-cheap at seventeen and every thing found except
beer, which Margaret tells me is all she gives! I see they didn't like
my arrangement of the furniture; theyve pulled the grand-piano away
from the wall, and put the ottoman in its place: nice for the people
who sit on it to rub the new paper with their greasy heads!"

And so the old lady chattered on until she felt sleepy, and stumbled
out at her own door in an exhausted state, from which the delicious
refreshment of a little cold brandy-and-water and a particularly hard
and raspy biscuit did not rouse her. But just as Til was stepping into
bed her mother came into the room, perfectly bright and preternaturally
sharp, to say, "Do you know, my dear, I think, after all, Geoffrey was
very fond of Joe Telford's widow? You were too young then to recollect
her; for when I was speaking about her to-night, and saying how much
better it was that both husband and wife should come fresh to each
other, Geoff s hand shook like an aspen-leaf, and his face was as pale
as death."




CHAPTER II.
MARGARET.


Margaret had carried out what she knew would be the first part of the
new programme of her life. During their short honeymoon, Geoffrey had
talked so much of his mother and sister, and of his anxiety that they
should be favourably impressed with her, that she had determined to
put forth all the strength and tact she had to make that first meeting
an agreeable one to them. That she had done so, that she had succeeded
in her self-imposed task, was evident. Mrs. Ludlow, in her parting
words, had expressed herself delighted with her new daughter-in-law;
but by her manner, much more than by any thing she had said, Geoff knew
that his mother's strong sympathies had been enlisted, if her heart
had not been entirely won. For though the old lady so far gave in to
the prejudices of the world as to observe a decent reticence towards
objects of her displeasure--though she never compromised herself by
outraging social decency in verbal attacks or disparaging remarks--a
long experience had given her son a thorough appreciation of, and power
of translating, certain bits of facial pantomime of a depreciatory
nature, which never varied; notably among them, the uplifted eyebrow
of astonishment, the prolonged stare of "wonder at her insolence,"
the shoulder-shrug of "I don't understand such things," and the sniff
of unmitigated disgust. All these Geoff had seen brought to bear
on various subjects quite often enough to rate them at their exact
value; and it was, therefore, with genuine pleasure that he found them
conspicuous by their absence on the occasion of his mother's first
visit to Elm Lodge.

For although Geoff was not particularly apt as a student of human
nature,--his want of self-confidence, and the quiet life he had
pursued, being great obstacles to any such study,--he must,
nevertheless, have had something of the faculty originally implanted
in him, inasmuch as he had contrived completely, and almost without
knowing it himself, to make himself master of the key to the characters
of the two people with whom his life had been passed. It was this
knowledge of his mother that made him originally propose that the
first meeting between her and Margaret should take place at Brompton,
where he could take his wife over as a visitor. He thought that very
likely any little latent jealousy which the old lady might feel by
reason of her deposition, not merely from the foremost place in her
son's affections, but from the head of his table and the rulership
of his house,--and it is undeniable that with the very best women
these latter items jar quite as unpleasantly as the former,--whatever
little jealousy Mrs. Ludlow may have felt on these accounts would be
heightened by the sight of the new house and furniture in which it had
pleased Geoff to have his new divinity enshrined. There is a point
at which the female nature rebels; and though Geoff neither knew,
nor professed to know, much about female nature, he was perfectly
certain that as a young woman is naturally more likely to "take up
with" another who is her inferior in personal attractions, so Mrs.
Ludlow would undoubtedly be more likely to look favourably on a
daughter-in-law whose _status_, artificially or otherwise, should
not appear greater than her own. It was Margaret who dissuaded Geoff
from his original intention, pitting against her husband's special
acquaintance with his mother's foibles her ordinary woman's cleverness,
which told her that, properly managed, the new house and furniture, and
all their little luxury, could be utilised for, instead of against,
them with the old lady, making her part and parcel of themselves, and
speaking of all the surroundings as component parts of a common stock,
in which with them she had a common interest. This scheme, talked over
in a long desultory lovers' ramble over the green cliffs at Niton
in the ever-lovely Isle of Wight, resulted in the letter requesting
Mrs. Ludlow to superintend the furniture-people, of which mention has
already been made, and in the meeting taking place at Elm Lodge, as
just described.

This first successful stroke, which Geoff perhaps unduly appreciated
(but any thing in which his mother was involved had great weight with
him), originated by Margaret and carried out by her aid, had great
effect on Geoffrey Ludlow, and brought the woman whom he had married
before him in quite a new light. The phrase "the woman he had married"
is purposely chosen, because the fact of having a wife, in its largest
and most legitimate sense, had not yet dawned upon him. We read in
works of fiction of how men weigh and balance before committing
matrimony,--carefully calculate this recommendation, calmly dissect
that defect; we have essay-writers, political economists, and others,
who are good enough to explain these calculations, and to show us
why it ought to be, and how it is to be done; but, spite of certain
of my brother-fictionists and these last-named social teachers, I
maintain that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, a man who is a
man, "with blood, bones, passion, marrow, feeling," as Byron says,
marries a girl because he is smitten with the charms either of her
person or her manner--because there is something _simpatico_, as the
Italians call it, between them--because he is "in love with her," as
the good old English phrase runs; but without having paid any thing
but the most cursory attention to her disposition and idiosyncrasy.
Is it so, or is it not? Such a state of things leads, I am perfectly
aware, to the acceptance of stone for bread and scorpions for fish;
but it exists, hath existed, and will continue to exist. Brown now
helplessly acknowledges Mrs. B.'s "devil of a temper;" but even if he
had had proof positive of it, he would have laughed it away merrily
enough that summer at Margate, when Mrs. B. was Emily Clark, and he was
under the thrall of her black eyes. Jones suffers under his wife's "low
fits," and Robinson under Mrs. Robinson's religion, which she takes
very hot and strong, with a great deal of groaning and anathematising;
but though these peculiarities of both ladies might have been learned
"on application" to any of the various swains who had been rejected
by them, no inquiry was ever made by the more fortunate men who took
them honestly on trust, and on account of their visible personal
attractions: And though these instances seem drawn from a lower class
of life, I contend that the axiom holds good in all states of society,
save, of course, in the case of purely mercenary marriages, which,
however, are by no means so common in occurrence, or at all events so
fatal in their results, as many of our novel-writers wish us to believe.

It was undoubtedly the case with Geoffrey Ludlow. He was a man as free
from gross passions, as unlikely to take a sudden caprice, or to give
the reins to his will, as any of his kind. His intimates would as soon
have thought of the bronze statue of Achilles "committing" itself as
Geoff Ludlow; and yet it was for the dead-gold hair, the deep-violet
eyes, and the pallid face, that he had married Margaret Dacre; and on
her mental attributes he had not bestowed one single thought. He had
not had much time, certainly; but however long his courtship might
have been, I doubt whether he would have penetrated very far into
the mysteries of her idiosyncrasy. He had a certain theory that she
was "artistic;" a word which, with him, took the place of "romantic"
with other people, as opposed to "practical." Geoff hated "practical"
people; perhaps because he had suffered from an over-dose of
practicality in his own home. He would far sooner that his wife should
_not_ have been able to make pies and puddings, and cut-out baby-linen,
than that she should have excelled in those notable domestic virtues.
But none of these things had entered his head when he asked Margaret
Dacre to join her lot with his,--save, perhaps, an undefined notion
that no woman with such hair and such eyes could be so constituted. You
would have looked in vain in Guinevere for the characteristics of Mrs.
Rundell, or Miss Acton.

He had thought of her as his peerless beauty, as his realisation
of a thousand waking dreams; and that for the time was enough. But
when he found her entering into and giving shape and colour to his
schemes, he regarded her with worship increased a hundredfold.
Constitutionally inert and adverse to thinking and deciding for
himself,--with a wholesome doubt, moreover, of the efficacy of his
own powers of judgment,--it was only the wide diversity of opinion
which on nearly every subject existed between his mother and himself
that had prevented him from long ago giving himself up entirely to
the old lady's direction. But he now saw, readily enough, that he had
found one whose guiding hand he could accept, who satisfied both his
inclinations and his judgment; and he surrendered himself with more
than resignation--with delight, to Margaret's control.

And she? It is paying her no great compliment to say that she was
equal to the task; it is making no strong accusation against her to
say that she had expected and accepted the position from the first.
I am at a loss how exactly to set forth this woman's character as I
feel it, fearful of enlarging on defects without showing something
in their palliation--more fearful of omitting some mental ingredient
which might serve to explain the twofold workings of her mind. When
she left her home it was under the influence of love and pride; wild
girlish adoration of the "swell:" the man with the thick moustache,
the white hands, the soft voice, the well-made boots; the man so
different in every respect from any thing she had previously known;
and girlish pride in enslaving one in social rank far beyond the
railway-clerks, merchants' book-keepers, and Custom-House agents, who
were marked down as game by her friends and compeers. The step once
taken, she was a girl no more; her own natural hardihood came to her
aid, and enabled her to hold her own wherever she went. The man her
companion,--a man of society simply from mixing with society, but
naturally sheepish and stupid,--was amazed at her wondrous calmness and
self-possession under all sorts of circumstances. It was an odd sort of
_camaraderie_ in which they mixed, both at home and abroad; one where
the _laissez-aller_ spirit was always predominant, and where those who
said and did as they liked were generally most appreciated; but there
was a something in Margaret Dacre which compelled a kind of respect
even from the wildest. Where she was, the drink never degenerated into
an orgie; and though the _cancans_ and _doubles entendres_ might ring
round the room, all outward signs of decency were preserved. In the
wild crew with which she was mixed she stood apart, sometimes riding
the whirlwind with them, but always directing the storm; and while
invariably showing herself the superior, so tempering her superiority
as to gain the obedience and respect, if not the regard, of all those
among whom she was thrown. How did this come about? Hear it in one
sentence--that she was as cold as ice, and as heartless as a stone.
She loved the man who had betrayed her with all the passion which had
been vouchsafed to her. She loved him, as I have said, at first, from
his difference to all her hitherto surroundings; then she loved him
for having made her love him and yield to him. She had not sufficient
mental power to analyse her own feelings; but she recognised that
she had not much heart, was not easily moved; and therefore she gave
extraordinary credit, which he did not deserve, to him who had had the
power to turn her as he listed.

But still, on him, her whole powers of loving stopped--spent, used-up.
Her devotion to him--inexplicable to herself--was spaniel-like in
its nature. She took his reproaches, his threats, at the last his
desertion, and loved him still. During the time they were together she
had temptation on every side; but not merely did she continue faithful,
but her fidelity was never shaken even in thought. Although in that
shady _demi-monde_ there is a queer kind of honour-code extant among
the Lovelaces and the Juans, far stricter than they think themselves
called upon to exercise when out of their own territory, there are of
course exceptions, who hold the temptation of their friend's mistress
but little less _piquante_ than the seduction of their friend's wife;
but none of these had the smallest chance with Margaret. What in such
circles is systematically known by the name of a _caprice_ never
entered her mind. Even at the last, when she found herself deserted,
penniless, she knew that a word would restore her to a position
equivalent, apparently, to that she had occupied; but she would not
have spoken that word to have saved her from the death which she was so
nearly meeting.

In those very jaws of death, from which she had just been rescued,
a new feeling dawned upon her. As she lay back in the arm-chair in
Flexor's parlour, dimly sounding in her ears, at first like the
monotonous surging of the waves, afterwards shaping itself into words,
but always calm and grave and kind, came Geoff's voice. She could
scarcely make out what was said, but she knew what was meant from the
modulation and the tone. Then, when Mr. Potts had gone to fetch Dr.
Rollit, she knew that she was left alone with the owner of the voice,
and she brought all her strength together to raise her eyelids and
look at him. She saw the quiet earnest face, she marked the intense
gaze, and she let her light fingers fall on the outstretched hand,
and muttered her "Bless you!--saved me!" with a gratitude which was
not merely an expression of grateful feeling for his rescuing her
from death, but partook more of the cynic's definition of the word--a
recognition of benefits to come.

It sprung up in her mind like a flame. It did more towards effecting
her cure, even in the outset, than all the stimulants and nourishment
which Dr. Rollit administered. It was with her while consciousness
remained, and flashed across her the instant consciousness returned. A
home, the chances of a home--nothing but that--somewhere, with walls,
and a fire, and a roof to keep off the pelting of the bitter rain.
Walls with pictures and a floor with carpets; not a workhouse, not such
places as she had spent the night in on her weary desolate tramp; but
such as she had been accustomed to. And some one to care for her--no
low whisperings, and pressed hands, and averted glances, and flight;
but a shoulder to rest her head against, a strong arm round her to
save her from--O God!--those awful black pitiless streets. Rest, only
rest,--that was her craving. Let her once more be restored to ordinary
strength, and then let her rest until she died. Ah, had she not had
more than the ordinary share of trouble and disquietude, and could not
a haven be found for her at last? She recollected how, in the first
flush of her wildness, she had pitied all her old companions soberly
settling down in life; and now how gladly would she change lots with
them! Was it come? was the chance at hand? Had she drifted through the
storm long enough, and was the sun now breaking through the clouds?
She thought so, even as she lay nearer death than life, and through
the shimmering of her eyelids caught a fleeting glimpse of Geoff
Ludlow's face, and heard his voice as in a dream; she knew so after the
second time of his calling on her in her convalescence; knew she might
tell him the story of her life, which would only bind a man of his
disposition more strongly to her; knew that such a feeling engendered
in such a man at his time of life was deep and true and lasting, and
that once taken to his heart, her position was secure for ever.

And what was her feeling for him who thus rose up out of the darkness,
and was to give her all for which her soul had been pining? Love? Not
one particle. She had no love left. She had not been by any means
bounteously provided with that article at the outset, and all that she
had she had expended on one person. Of love, of what we know by love,
of love as he himself understood it, she had not one particle for
Geoffrey. But there was a feeling which she could hardly explain to
herself. It would have been respect, respect for his noble heart, his
thorough uprightness, and strict sense of honour; but this respect was
diluted by an appreciation of his dubiety, his vacillation, his utter
impotency of saying a harsh word or doing a harsh thing; and diluted in
a way which invested the cold feeling of respect with a warmer hue, and
rendered him, if less perfect, certainly more interesting in her eyes.
Never, even for an instant, had she thought of him with love-passion;
not when she gazed dreamily at him out of the voluptuous depths of her
deep-violet eyes; not when, on that night when all had been arranged
between them, she had lain on his breast in the steel-blue rays of the
spring moon. She had--well, feigned it, if you like,--though she would
scarcely avow that, deeming rather that she had accepted the devotion
which he had offered her without repelling it. _Il y a toujours l'un
qui baise, l'autre qui tend la joue_. That axiom, unromantic, but
true in most cases, was strictly fulfilled in the present instance.
Margaret proffered no love, but accepted, if not willingly, at least
with a thorough show of graciousness, all that was proffered to her.
And in the heartfelt worship of Geoffrey Ludlow there was something
inexplicably attractive to her. Attractive, probably, because of its
entire novelty and utter unselfishness. She could compare it with
nothing she had ever seen or known. To her first lover there had been
the attraction of enchaining the first love of a very young girl, the
romance of stolen meetings and secret interviews, the enchantment of
an elopement, which was looked upon as a great sin by those whom he
scorned, and a great triumph by those whose applause he envied; the
gratification of creating the jealousy of his compeers, and of being
talked about as an example to be shunned by those whom he despised. He
had the satisfaction of flaunting her beauty through the world, and of
gaining that world's applause for his success in having made it succumb
to him. But how was it with Geoffrey? The very opposite, in every
way. At the very best her early history must be shrouded in doubt and
obscurity. If known it might act prejudicially against her husband with
his patrons, and those on whom he was dependent for his livelihood.
Even her beauty could not afford him much source of gratification, save
to himself; he could seldom or never enjoy that reflected pleasure
which a sensible man feels at the world's admiration of his wife; for
had he not himself told her that their life would be of the quietest,
and that they would mix with very few people?

No! if ever earnest, true, and unselfish love existed in the world, it
was now, she felt, bestowed upon her. What in the depths of her despair
she had faintly hoped for, had come to her with treble measure. Her
course lay plain and straight before her. It was not a very brilliant
course, but it was quiet and peaceful and safe. So away all thoughts of
the past! drop the curtain on the feverish excitement, the wild dream
of hectic pleasure! Shut it out; and with it the dead dull heartache,
the keen sense of wrong, the desperate struggle for bare life.

So Margaret dropped that curtain on her wedding-day, with the full
intention of never raising it again.




CHAPTER III.
ANNIE.


Lord Caterham's suggestion that Annie Maurice should cultivate her
drawing-talent was made after due reflection. He saw, with his usual
quickness of perception, that the girl's life was fretting away within
her; that the conventional round of duties which fell to her lot as his
mother's companion was discharged honestly enough, but without interest
or concern. He never knew why Lady Beauport wanted a companion. So long
as he had powers of judging character, he had never known her have
an intimate friend; and when, at the death of the old clergyman with
whom Annie had so long been domesticated, it was proposed to receive
her into the mansion at St. Barnabas Square, Lord Caterham had been
struck with astonishment, and could not possibly imagine what duties
she would be called upon to fulfil. He heard that the lady henceforth
to form a part of their establishment was young, and that mere fact
was in itself a cause for wonder. There was no youth there, and it
was a quality which was generally openly tabooed. Lady Beauport's
woman was about fifty, a thorough mistress of her art, an artist in
complexion before whom Madame Rachel might have bowed; a cunning and
skilled labourer in all matters appertaining to the hair; a person
whose anatomical knowledge exceeded that of many medical students, and
who produced effects undreamt of by the most daring sculptors. There
were no nephews or nieces to come on visits, to break up the usual
solemnity reigning throughout the house, with young voices and such
laughter as is only heard in youth, to tempt the old people into a
temporary forgetfulness of self, and into a remembrance of days when
they had hopes and fears and human interest in matters passing around
them. There were sons--yes! Caterham himself, who had never had one
youthful thought or one youthful aspiration, whose playmate had been
the physician, whose toys the wheelchair in which he sat and the irons
by which his wrecked frame was supported, who had been precocious at
six and a man at twelve; and Lionel--but though of the family, Lionel
was not of the house; he never used to enter it when he could make any
possible excuse; and long before his final disappearance his visits had
been restricted to those occasions when he thought his father could be
bled or his mother cajoled. What was a girl of two-and-twenty to do in
such a household, Caterham asked; but got no answer. It had been Lady
Beauport's plan, who knew that Lord Beauport had been in the habit of
contributing a yearly something towards Miss Maurice's support; and
she thought that it would be at least no extra expense to have the
young woman in the house, where she might make herself useful with her
needle, and could generally sit with Mrs. Parkins the housekeeper.

But Lord Beauport would not have this. Treated as a lady, as a member
of his own family in his house, or properly provided for out of it,
should Annie Maurice be: my lady's companion, but my cousin always. No
companionship with Mrs. Parkins, no set task or suggested assistance.
Her own room, her invariable presence when the rest of the family meet
together, if you please. Lady Beauport did not please at first; but
Lord Beauport was firm, firm as George Brakespere used to be in the old
days; and Lady Beauport succumbed with a good grace, and was glad of it
ever after. For Annie Maurice not merely had the sweetest temper and
the most winning ways,--not merely read in the softest voice, and had
the taste to choose the most charming "bits," over which Lady Beauport
would hum first with approval and then with sleep,--not merely played
and sung delightfully, without ever being hoarse or disinclined,--not
merely could ride with her back to the horses, and dress for the Park
exactly as Lady Beauport wished--neither dowdy nor swell,--but she
brought old-fashioned receipts for quaint country dishes with which
she won Mrs. Parkins's heart, and she taught Hodgson, Lady Beauport's
maid, a new way of _gauffreing_ which broke down all that Abigail's
icy spleen. Her bright eyes, her white teeth, her sunny smile, did all
the rest for her throughout the household: the big footmen moved more
quickly for her than for their mistress; the coachman, with whom she
must have interchanged confidential communications, told the groom
she "knowed the p'ints of an 'oss as well as he did--spotted them
wind-galls in Jack's off 'ind leg, and says, 'a cold-water bandage
for them,' she says;" the women-servants, more likely than any of the
others to take offence, were won by the silence of her bell and her
independence of toilette assistance.

Lord Caterham saw all this, and understood her popularity; but he saw
too that with it all Annie Maurice was any thing but happy. Reiteration
of conventionality,--the reception of the callers and the paying of the
calls, the morning concerts and afternoon botanical promenades, the
occasional Opera-goings, and the set dinner-parties at home,--these
weighed heavily on her. She felt that her life was artificial, that she
had nothing in common with the people with whom it was passed, save
when she escaped to Lord Caterham's room. He was at least natural; she
need talk or act no conventionality with him; might read, or work, or
chat with him as she liked. But she wanted some purpose in life--that
Caterham saw, and saw almost with horror; for that purpose might tend
to take her away; and if she left him, he felt as though the only
bright portion of his life would leave him too.

Yes; he had begun to acknowledge this to himself. He had fought against
the idea, tried to laugh it off, but it had always recurred to him.
For the first time in his life, he had moments of happy expectancy
of an interview that was to come, hours of happy reflection over an
interview that was past. Of course the Carry-Chesterton times came
up in his mind; but these were very different. Then he was in a wild
state of excitement and tremor, of flushed cheeks and beating heart
and trembling lips; he thrilled at the sound of her voice; his blood,
usually so calm, coursed through his veins at the touch of her hand;
his passion was a delirium as alarming as it was intoxicating. The
love of to-day had nothing in common with that bygone time. There was
no similarity between Carry Chesterton's dash and _aplomb_ and Annie
Maurice's quiet domestic ways. The one scorched him with a glance;
the other soothed him with a word. How sweet it was to lie back in
his chair with half-shut eyes, as in a dream, and watch her moving
quietly about, setting every thing in order, putting fresh flowers in
his vases, dusting his writing-table, laughingly upbraiding the absent
Algy Barford, and taxing him with the delinquency of a half-smoked
cigar on the mantelpiece, and a pile of cigar-ash on the carpet.
Then he would bid her finish her house-work, and she would wheel his
chair to the table and read the newspapers to him, and listen to his
quaint, shrewd, generally sarcastic comments on all she read. And he
would sit, listening to the music of her voice, looking at the quiet
charms of her simply-banded glossy dark-brown hair, at the play of
feature illustrating every thing she read. It was a brother's love
he told himself at first, and fully believed it; a brother's love
for a favourite sister. He thought so until he pictured to himself
her departure to some friend's or other, until he imagined the house
without her, himself without her, and--and she with some one else. And
then Lord Caterham confessed to himself that he loved Annie Maurice
with all his soul, and simultaneously swore that by no act or word of
his should she or any one else ever know it.

The Carry-Chesterton love-fever had been so sharp in its symptoms,
and so prostrating in its results, that this second attack fell with
comparative mildness on the sufferer. He had no night-watches now, no
long feverish tossings to and fro waiting for the daylight, no wild
remembrance of parting words and farewell hand-clasps. She was there;
her "goodnight" had rung out sweetly and steadily without a break in
the situation; her sweet smile had lit up her face; her last words
had been of some projected reading or work for the morrow. It was all
friend and friend or brother and sister to every one but him. The very
first night after Miss Chesterton had been presented to Lady Beauport,
the latter, seeing with a woman's quickness the position of affairs,
had spoken of the young lady from Homersham as "that dreadful person,"
"that terribly-forward young woman," and thereby goaded Lord Caterham
into worse love-madness. Now both father and mother were perpetually
congratulating themselves and him on having found some one who seemed
to be able to enter into and appreciate their eldest son's "odd ways."
This immunity from parental worry and supervision was pleasant,
doubtless; but did it not prove that to eyes that were not blinded by
love-passion there was nothing in Miss Maurice's regard for her cousin
more than was compatible with cousinly affection, and with pity for one
so circumstanced? So Lord Caterham had it; and who shall say that his
extreme sensitiveness had deceived him?

It was the height of the London season, and Lady Beauport was fairly
in the whirl. So was Annie Maurice, whose position was already as
clearly defined amongst the set as if she had been duly ticketed
with birth, parentage, education, and present employment. Hitherto
her experience had decidedly been pleasant, and she had found that
all the companion-life, as set forth in fashionable novels, had been
ridiculously exaggerated. From no one had she received any thing
approaching a slight, any thing approaching an insult. The great ladies
mostly ignored her, though some made a point of special politeness;
the men received her as a gentlewoman, with whom flirtation might
be possible on an emergency, though unremunerative as a rule. Her
perpetual attendance on Lady Beauport had prevented her seeing as much
as usual of Lord Caterham; and it was with a sense of relief that she
found a morning at her disposal, and sent Stephens to intimate her
coming to his master.

She found him as usual, sitting listlessly in his wheelchair, the
newspaper folded ready to his hand, but unfolded and unread. He
looked up, and smiled as she entered the room, and said: "At last,
Annie at last! Ah, I knew such a nice little girl who came here
from Ricksborough, and lightened my solitary hours; but we've had a
fashionable lady here lately, who is always at concerts or operas, or
eating ices at Gunter's, or crushing into horticultural marquees, or--"

"Arthur, you ought to be ashamed of yourself! You know, however, I
won't stoop to argue with you, sir. I'll only say that the little girl
from Ricksborough has come back again, and that the fashionable lady
has got a holiday and gone away."

"That's good; but I say, just stand in the light, Annie."

"Well, what's the matter now?"

"What has the little girl from Ricksborough done with all her colour?
Where's the brightness of her eyes?"

"Ah, you don't expect every thing at once, do you, sir? Her natural
colour has gone; but she has ordered a box from Bond Street; and as for
the brightness of her eyes--"

"O, there's enough left; there is indeed, especially when she fires up
in that way. But you're not looking well, Annie. I'm afraid my lady's
doing too much with you."

"She's very kind, and wishes me to be always with her."

"Yes; but she forgets that the vicarage of Ricksborough was scarcely
good training-ground for the races in which she has entered you,
however kindly you take to the running." He paused a minute as he
caught Annie's upturned gaze, and said: "I don't mean that, dear Annie.
I know well enough you hate it all; and I was only trying to put the
best face on the matter. What else can I do?"

"I know that, Arthur; nor is it Lady Beauport's fault that she does
not exactly comprehend how a series of gaieties can be any thing but
agreeable to a country-bred young woman. There are hundreds of girls
who would give any thing to be 'brought out' under such chaperonage and
in such a manner."

"You are very sweet and good to say so, Annie, and to look at it
in that light, but I would give any thing to get you more time to
yourself."

"That proves more plainly than any thing, Arthur, that you don't
consider me one of the aristocracy; for their greatest object in life
appears to me to prevent their having any time to themselves."

"Miss Maurice," said Lord Caterham with an assumption of gravity,
"these sentiments are really horrible. I thought I missed my _Mill
on Liberty_ from the bookshelves. I am afraid, madame, you have been
studying the doctrines of a man who has had the frightful audacity to
think for himself."

"No, indeed, Arthur; nothing of the sort. I did take down the
book--though of course you had never missed it; but it seemed a dreary
old thing, and so I put it back again. No, I haven't a radical thought
or feeling in me--except sometimes."

"And when is the malignant influence at work, pray?"

"When I see those footmen dressed up in that ridiculous costume,
with powder in their heads, I confess then to being struck with
wonder at a society which permits such monstrosity, and degrades its
fellow-creatures to such a level."

"O, for a stump!" cried Caterham, shaking in his chair and with the
tears running down his cheeks; "this display of virtuous indignation is
quite a new and hitherto undiscovered feature in the little girl from
Ricksborough; though of course you are quite wrong in your logic. Your
fault should be found with the creatures who permit themselves to be so
reduced. That 'dreary old thing,' Mr. Mill, would tell you that if the
supply ceased, the demand would cease likewise. But don't let us talk
about politics, for heaven's sake, even in fun. Let us revert to our
original topic."

"What was that?"

"What was that! Why you, of course! Don't you recollect that we decided
that you should have some drawing-lessons?"

"I recollect you were good enough to--"

"Annie! Annie! I thought it was fully understood that my goodness was
a tabooed subject. No; you remember we arranged, on the private-view
day of the Exhibition, with that man who had those two capital
pictures--what's his name?--Ludlow, to give you some lessons."

"Yes; but Mr. Ludlow himself told us that he could not come for some
little time; he was going out of town."

"Ive had a letter from him this morning, explaining the continuance of
his absence. What do you think is the reason?"

"He was knocked up, and wanted rest?"

"N-no; apparently not."

"He's not ill? O, Arthur, he's not ill?"

"Not in the least, Annie,--there's not the least occasion for you to
manifest any uneasiness." Lord Caterham's voice was becoming very hard
and his face very rigid. "Mr. Ludlow's return to town was delayed in
order that he might enjoy the pleasures of his honeymoon in the Isle of
Wight."

"His what?"

"His honeymoon; he informs me that he is just married."

"Married? Geoff married? Who to? What a very extraordinary thing! Who
is he married to?"

"He has not reposed sufficient confidence in me to acquaint me with
the lady's name, probably guessing rightly that I was not in the least
curious upon the point, and that to know it would not have afforded me
the slightest satisfaction."

"No, of course not; how very odd!" That was all Annie Maurice said, her
chin resting on her hand, her eyes looking straight before her.

"What is very odd?" said Caterham, in a harsh voice. "That Mr. Ludlow
should get married? Upon my honour I can't see the eccentricity. It is
not, surely, his extreme youth that should provoke astonishment, nor
his advanced age, for the matter of that. He's not endowed with more
wisdom than most of us to prevent his making a fool of himself. What
there is odd about the fact of his marriage I cannot understand."

"No, Arthur," said Annie, very quietly, utterly ignoring the querulous
tone of Caterham's remarks; "very likely you can't understand it,
because Mr. Ludlow is a stranger to you, and you judge him as you would
any other stranger. But if you'd known him in the old days when he used
to come up to us at Willesden, and papa was always teasing him about
being in love with the French teacher at Minerva House, a tall old
lady with a moustache; or with the vicar's daughter, a sandy-haired
girl in spectacles; and then poor papa would laugh,--O, how he would
laugh!--and declare that Mr. Ludlow would be a bachelor to the end of
his days. And now he's married, you say? How very, very strange!"

If Lord Caterham had been going to make any further unpleasant remark,
he checked himself abruptly, and looking into Annie's upturned
pondering face, said, in his usual tone,

"Well, married or not married, he won't throw us over; he will hold to
his engagement with us. His letter tells me he will be back in town at
the end of the week, and will then settle times with us; so that we
shall have our drawing-lessons after all."

But Annie, evidently thoroughly preoccupied, only answered
methodically, "Yes--of course--thank you--yes." So Lord Caterham was
left to chew the cud of his own reflections, which, from the manner in
which he frowned to himself, and sat blankly drumming with his fingers
on the desk before him, was evidently no pleasant mental pabulum. So
that he was not displeased when there came a sonorous tap at the door,
to which, recognising it at once, he called out, "Come in!"




CHAPTER IV.
ALGY BARFORD'S NEWS.


It was the Honourable Algy Barford who opened the door, and came in
with his usual light and airy swing, stopping the minute he saw a lady
present, to remove his hat and to give an easy bow. He recognised Annie
at once, and, as she and he were great allies, he went up to her and
shook hands.

"Charmed to see you, Miss Maurice. This is delightful--give
you my word! Come to see this dear old boy here--how are you,
Caterham, my dear fellow?--and find you in his den, lighting it up
like--like--like--I'm regularly basketed, by Jove! You know what you
light it up like, Miss Maurice."

Annie laughed as she said, "O, of course I know, Mr. Barford; but I'm
sorry to say the illumination is about immediately to be extinguished,
as I must run away. So goodbye; goodbye, Arthur. I shall see you
to-morrow." And she waved her hand, and tripped lightly away.

"Gad, what a good-natured charming girl that is!" said Algy Barford,
looking after her. "I always fancy that if ever I could have settled
down--but I never could--impossible! I'm without exception the most
horrible scoundrel that--what's the matter, Caterham, dear old boy? you
seem very down this morning, floundered, by Jove, so far as flatness is
concerned. What is it?"

"I--oh, I don't know, Algy; a little bored, perhaps, this
morning--hipped, you know."

"Know! I should think I did. I'm up to my watch-guard myself--think
I'll take a sherry peg, just to keep myself up. This is a dull world,
sir; a very wearying orb. Gad, sometimes I think my cousin, poor Jack
Hamilton, was right, after all."

"What did he say?" asked Caterham, not caring a bit, but for the sake
of keeping up the conversation.

"Say! well, not much; he wasn't a talker, poor Jack; but what he
did say was to the purpose. He was a very lazy kind of bird, and
frightfully easily bored; so one day he got up, and then he wrote a
letter saying that he'd lived for thirty years, and that the trouble of
dressing himself every morning and undressing himself every night was
so infernal that le couldn't stand it any longer; and then he blew his
brains out."

"Ah," said Lord Caterham; "he got tired of himself, you see; and when
you once do that, there's nobody you get so tired of."

"I daresay, dear old boy, though it's a terrific notion. Can't say I'm
tired of myself quite yet, though there are times when I have a very
low opinion of myself, and think seriously of cutting myself the next
time we meet. What's the news with you, my dear Caterham?"

"News! what should be the news with me, Algy? Shut up in this place,
like a rat in a cage, scarcely seeing any one but the doctor."

"Couldn't see a better fellow for news, my dear old boy. Doctors were
always the fellows for news,--and barbers!--Figaro hé and Figaro la,
and all that infernal rubbish that people laugh at when Ronconi sings
it, always makes me deuced melancholy, by Jove. Well, since you've no
news for me, let me think what I heard at the Club. Deuced nice club
we've got now; best we've ever had since that dear old Velvet Cushion was
done up."

"What's it called?"

"The Pelham; nothing to do with the Newcastle people or any thing of
that sort; called after some fellow who wrote a book about swells; or
was the hero of a book about swells, or something. Deuced nice place,
snug and cosy; a little overdone with Aldershot, perhaps, and, to a
critical mind, there might be a thought too much Plunger; but I can
stand the animal tolerably well."

"I know it; at least Ive heard of it," said Caterham. "They play very
high, don't they?"

"O, of course you've heard it, I forgot; dear old Lionel belonged to
it. Play! n-no, I don't think so. You can if you like, you know, of
course. For instance, Lampeter--Lamb Lampeter they call him; he's such
a mild-looking party--won two thousand of Westonhanger the night before
last at _écarté_--two thousand pounds, sir, in crisp bank-notes All
fair and above board too. They had a corner table at first; but when
Westonhanger was dropping his money and began doubling the stakes,
Lampeter said, 'All right, my lord; I'm with you as far as you like to
go; but when so much money's in question, it perhaps might be advisable
to take one of the tables in the middle of the room, where any one can
stand round and see the play.' They did, and Westonhanger's estate is
worse by two thou'."

"As you say, that does not look at all as if they played there."

"What I meant was that I didn't think dear old Lionel ever dropped
much there. I don't know, though; I rather think Gamson had him one
night. Wonderful little fellow, Gamson!--tremendously good-looking
boy!--temporary extra-clerk at two guineas a-week in the Check and
Countercheck Office; hasn't got another regular rap in the world
besides his pay, and plays any stakes you like to name. Seems to keep
luck in a tube, like you do scent, and squeezes it out whenever he
wants it. I am not a playing man myself; but I don't fancy it's very
hard to win at the Pelham. These Plungers and fellows up from the Camp,
they always will play; and as theyve had a very heavy dinner and a big
drink afterwards, it stands to reason that any fellow with a clear head
and a knowledge of the game can pick them up at once, without any sharp
practice."

"Yes," said Lord Caterham, "it seems a very charming place. I suppose
wheelchairs are not admitted? How sorry I am! I should have so enjoyed
mixing with the delightful society which you describe, Algy. And what
news had Mr. Gamson and the other gentlemen?"

"Tell you what it is, Caterham, old boy, you've got a regular
wire-drawing fit on to-day. Let's see; what news had I to tell
you?--not from Gamson, of course, or any of those hairy Yahoos from
Aldershot, who are always tumbling about the place. O, I know! Dick
French has just come up from Denne,--the next place, you know, to
Eversfield, your old uncle Ampthill's house; and he says the old boy's
frightfully ill--clear case of hooks, you know; and I thought it might
be advisable that your people should know, in case any thing might be
done towards working the testamentary oracle. The old gentleman used to
be very spoony on Lionel, years ago, I think Ive heard him say."

"Well, what then?"

"Gad, you catch a fellow up like the Snapping-Turtle, Caterham. I
don't know what then; but I thought if the thing were properly put to
him--if there was any body to go down to Eversfield and square it with
old Ampthill, he might leave his money--and there's no end of it, I
hear--or some of it at least, to poor old Lionel."

"And suppose he did. Do you think, Algy Barford, after what has
happened, that Lionel Brakespere could show his face in town? Do you
think that a man of Lionel's spirit could face-out the cutting which
he'd receive from every one?--and rightly too; I'm not denying that. I
only ask you if you think he could do it?"

"My dear old Caterham, you are a perfect child!--coral and bells and
blue sash, and all that sort of thing, by Jove! If Lionel came back
at this instant, there are very few men who'd remember his escapade,
unless he stood in their way; then, I grant you, they would bring it
up as unpleasantly as they could. But if he were to appear in society
as old Ampthill's heir, there's not a man in his old set that wouldn't
welcome him; no, by George, not a woman of his acquaintance that
wouldn't try and hook him for self or daughter, as the case might be."

"I'm sorry to hear it," was all Caterham said in reply.


What did Lord Caterham think of when his friend was gone? What effect
had the communication about Mr. Ampthill's probable legacy had on him?
But one thing crossed his mind. If Lionel returned free, prosperous,
and happy, would he not fall in love with Annie Maurice? His experience
in such matters had been but limited; but judging by his own feelings,
Lord Caterham could imagine nothing more likely.




CHAPTER V.
SETTLING DOWN.


It was not likely that a man of Geoffrey Ludlow's temperament would
for long keep himself from falling into what was to be the ordinary
tenor of his life, even had his newly-espoused wife been the most
exacting of brides, and delighted in showing her power by keeping him
in perpetual attendance upon her. It is almost needless to say that
Margaret was guilty of no weakness of this kind. If the dread truth
must be told, she took far too little interest in the life to which
she had devoted herself to busy herself about it in detail. She had a
general notion that her whole future was to be intensely respectable;
and in the minds of all those persons with whom she had hitherto been
associated, respectability meant duless of the most appalling kind;
meant two-o'clock-shoulder-of-mutton-and-weak-Romford-ale dinner, five
o'clock tea, knitting, prayers and a glass of cold water before going
to bed; meant district-visiting and tract-distributing, poke bonnets
and limp skirts, a class on Sunday afternoons, and a visit to the
Crystal Palace with the school-children on a summer's day. She did not
think it would be quite as bad as this in her case; indeed, she had
several times been amused--so far as it lay in her now to be amused--by
hearing Geoffrey speak of himself, with a kind of elephantine
liveliness, as a roisterer and a Bohemian. But she was perfectly
prepared to accept whatever happened; and when Geoff told her, the day
after his mother's visit, that he must begin work again and go on as
usual, she took it as a matter of course.

So Geoff arranged his new studio, and found out his best light, and got
his easel into position; and Flexor arrived with the lay-figure which
had been passing its vacation in Little Flotsam Street; and the great
model recognised Mrs. Geoffrey Ludlow, who happened to look in, with a
deferential bow, and, with what seemed best under the circumstances, a
look of extreme astonishment, as though he had never seen her before,
and expected to find quite a different person.

Gradually and one by one all the old accessories of Geoff's daily life
seemed closing round him. A feeble ring, heard while he and his wife
were at breakfast, would be followed by the servant's announcement
of "the young person, sir, a-waitin' in the stujo;" and the young
person--a model--would be found objurgating the distance from town, and
yet appreciative of the beauty of the spot when arrived at.

And Mr. Stompff had come; of course he had. No sooner did he get
Geoff's letter announcing his return than he put himself into a hansom
cab, and went up to Elm Lodge. For Mr. Stompff was a man of business.
His weak point was, that he judged other men by his own standard;
and knowing perfectly well that if any other man had had the success
which Geoffrey Ludlow had achieved that year, he (Stompff) would have
worked heaven and earth to get him into his clutches, he fancied that
Caniche, and all the other dealers, would be equally voracious, and
that the best thing he could do would be to strike the iron while it
was hot, and secure Ludlow for himself. He thought too that this was
rather a good opportunity for such a proceeding, as Ludlow's exchequer
was likely to be low, and he could the more easily be won over. So the
hansom made its way to Elm Lodge; and its fare, under the title of "a
strange gentleman, sir!" was ushered into Geoff's studio.

"Well, and how are you, Ludlow! What did she say, 'a strange
gentleman'? Yes, Mary, my love! I am a strange gentleman, as you'll
find out before I've done with you." Mr. Stompff laid his finger to
his nose, and winked with exquisite facetiousness. "Well, and how are
you? safe and sound, and all the rest of it! And how's Mrs. L.? Must
introduce me before I go. And what are you about now, eh? What's this?"

He stopped before the canvas on the easel, and began examining it
attentively.

"That's nothing!" said Geoffrey; "merely an outline of a notion I
had of the Esplanade at Brighton. I don't think it would make a bad
subject. You see, here I get the invalids in Bath-chairs, the regular
London swells promenading it, the boatmen; the Indian-Mutiny man,
with his bandaged foot and his arm in a sling and his big beard; some
excursionists with their baskets and bottles; some Jews, and--"

"Capital! nothing could be better! Hits the taste of the day, my boy;
shoots folly, and no flies, as the man said. That's your ticket! Any
body else seen that!"

"Well, literally not a soul. It's only just begun, and no one has been
here since I returned."

"That's all right! Now what's the figure? You're going to open your
mouth, I know; you fellows always do when you've made a little success."

"Well, you see," began old Geoff, in his usual hesitating diffident
manner, "it's a larger canvas than I've worked on hitherto, and there
are a good many more figures, and--"

"Will five hundred suit you?"

"Ye-es! Five hundred would be a good price, for--"

"All right! shake hands on it! I'll give you five hundred for the
copyright--right and away, mind!--sketch, picture, and right of
engraving. We'll get it to some winter-gallery, and you'll have another
ready for the Academy. Nothing like that, my boy! I know the world,
and you don't. What the public likes, you give them as much of as you
can. Don't you believe in over-stocking the market with Ludlows; that's
all stuff! Let 'em have the Ludlows while they want 'em. In a year or
two they'll fight like devils to get a Jones or a Robinson, and wonder
how the deuce any body could have spent their money on such a dauber
as Ludlow. Don't you be offended, my boy; I'm only speakin' the truth.
I buy you because the public wants you; and I turn an honest penny in
sellin' you again; not that I'm any peculiar nuts on you myself, either
one way or t'other. Come, let's wet this bargain, Ludlow, my boy; some
of that dry sherry you pulled out when I saw you last at Brompton, eh?"

Geoffrey rang the bell; the sherry was produced, and Mr. Stompff
enjoyed it with great gusto.

"Very neat glass of sherry as ever I drank. Well, Ludlow, success to
our bargain! Give it a good name, mind; that's half the battle; and, I
say, I wouldn't do too much about the Jews, eh? You know what I mean;
none of that d--d nose-trick, you know. There's first-rate customers
among the Jews, though they know more about pictures than most people,
and won't be palmed off like your Manchester coves but when they do
like a thing, they will have it; and tough they always insist upon
discount, yet even then, with the price one asks for a picture, it
pays. Well, you'll be able to finish that and two others--O, how do you
do, mam?"

This last to Margaret, who, not knowing that her husband had any one
with him was entering the studio. She bowed, and was about to withdraw;
but Geoff called her back, and presented Mr. Stompff to her.

"Very glad to make your acquaintance, mam," said that worthy, seizing
her hand; "heard of you often, and recognise the picture of Scyllum
and Something in an instant. Enjoyed yourself in the country, I 'ope.
That's all right. But nothing like London; that's the place to pick up
the dibs. I've been telling our friend here he must stick to it, now
he's a wife to provide for; for we know what's what, don't we, Mrs.
Ludlow? Three pictures a year, my boy, and good-sized 'uns too; no
small canvases: that's what we must have out of you."

Geoffrey laughed as he said, "Well, no; not quite so much as that.
Recollect, I intend to take my wife out occasionally; and besides, I've
promised to give some drawing lessons."

"What!" shrieked Mr. Stompff; "drawing-lessons! a man in your position
give drawing-lessons! I never heard such madness! You musn't do that,
Ludlow."

The words were spoken so decidedly that Margaret bit her lips, and
turned to look at her husband, whose face flushed a deep red, and whose
voice stuttered tremendously as he gasped out, "B-but I shall! D-don't
you say 'must,' please, to me, Mr. Stompff; because I don't like it;
and I don't know what the d-deuce you mean by using such a word!"

Mr. Stompff glanced at Margaret, whose face expressed the deepest
disgust; so clearly perceiving the mistake he had made, he said, "Well,
of course I only spoke as a friend; and when one does that he needn't
be in much doubt as to his reward. When I said 'must,' which seems to
have riled you so, Ludlow, I said it for your own sake. However, you
and I sha'n't fall out about that. Don't you give your pictures to any
one else, and we shall keep square enough. Where are you going to give
drawing-lessons, if one may be bold enough to ask?"

"In St. Barnabas Square, to a young lady, a very old friend of mine,
and a _protégée_ of Lord Caterham's," said Geoffrey, whose momentary
ire had died out.

"O, Lord Caterham's! that queer little deformed chap. Good little
fellow, too, they say he is; sharp, and all that kind of thing. Well,
there's no harm in that. I thought you were going on the philanthropic
dodge--to schools and working-men, and that lay. There's one rule in
life,--you never lose any thing by being civil to a bigwig; and this
little chap, I daresay, has influence in his way. By the way, you might
ask him to give a look in at my gallery, if he's passing by. Never does
any harm, that kind of thing. Well, I can't stay here all day. Men of
business must always be pushing on, Mrs. Ludlow. Good day to you; and,
I say, when--hem! there's any thing to renounce the world, the flesh,
and the--hey, you understand? any body wanted to promise and vow,
you know,--I'm ready; send for me. I've got my eye on a silver thug
already. Goodbye, Ludlow; see you next week. Three before next May,
recollect, and all for me. Ta-ta!" and Mr. Stompff stepped into his
cab, and drove off, kissing his fat pudgy little hands, with a great
belief in Geoffrey Ludlow and a holy horror of his wife.


In the course of the next few days Geoffrey wrote to Lord Caterham,
telling him that he was quite ready to commence Miss Maurice's
instruction; and shortly afterwards received an answer naming a day for
the lessons to commence. On arriving at the house Geoff was shown into
Lord Caterham's room, and there found Annie waiting to receive him.
Geoff advanced, and shook hands warmly; but he thought Miss Maurice's
manner was a little more reserved than on the last occasion of their
meeting.

"Lord Caterham bade me make his excuses to you, Mr. Ludlow," said she.
"He hopes to see you before you go; but he is not very well just now,
and does not leave his room till later in the day."

Geoff was a little hurt at the "Mr. Ludlow." Like all shy men, he
was absurdly sensitive; and at once thought that he saw in this mode
of address a desire on Annie's part to show him his position as
drawing-master. So he merely said he was "sorry for the cause of Lord
Caterham's absence;" and they proceeded at once to Work.

But the ice on either side very soon melted away. Geoff had brought
with him an old sketch-book, filled with scraps of landscape and
figures, quaint _bizarre_ caricatures, and little bits of every-day
life, all drawn at Willesden Priory or in its neighbourhood, all having
some little history of their own appealing to Annie's love of those
old days and that happy home. And as she looked over them, she began
to talk about the old times; and very speedily it was, "O, Geoff,
don't you remember?" and "O, Geoff, will you ever forget?" and so on;
and they went on sketching and talking until, to Annie at least, the
present and the intervening time faded away, and she was again the
petted little romp, and he was dear old Geoff, her best playmate, her
earliest friend, whom she used to drive round the gravel-paths in her
skipping-rope harness, and whose great shock head of hair used to cause
her such infinite wonder and amusement.

As she sat watching him bending over the drawing, she remembered with
what anxiety she used to await his coming at the Priory, and with
what perfect good-humour he bore all her childish whims and vagaries.
She remembered how he had always been her champion when her papa had
been _brusque_ or angry with her, saying, "Fairy was too small to be
scolded;" how when just before that horrible bankruptcy took place and
all the household were busy with their own cares she, suffering under
some little childish illness, was nursed by Geoff, then staying in
the house with a vague idea of being able to help Mr. Maurice in his
trouble; how he carried her in his arms to and fro, to and fro, during
the whole of one long night, and hushed her to sleep with the soft
tenderness of a woman. She had thought of him often and often during
her life at Ricksborough Vicarage, always with the same feelings of
clinging regard and perfect trust; and now she had found him. Well, no,
not him exactly; she doubted very much whether Mr. Ludlow the rising
artist was the same as the "dear old Geoff" of the Willesden-Priory
days. There was--and then, as she was thinking all this, Geoff raised
his eyes from the drawing, and smiled his dear old happy smile, and
put his pencil between his teeth, and slowly rubbed his hands while
he looked over his sketch, so exactly as he used to do fifteen years
before that she felt more than ever annoyed at that news which Arthur
had told tier a few days ago about Mr. Ludlow being married.

Yes, it was annoyance she felt! there was no other word for it. In the
old days he had belonged entirely to her, and why should he not now?
Her papa had always said that it was impossible Geoff could ever be any
thing but an old bachelor, and an old bachelor he should have remained.
What a ridiculous thing for a man at his time of life to import a new
element into it by marriage! It would have been so pleasant to have
had him then, just in the old way; to have talked to him and teased
him, and looked up to him just as she used to do, and now--O, no! it
could not be the same! no married man is ever the same with the friends
of his bachelorhood, especially female friends, as he was before. And
Mrs. Ludlow, what was she like? what could have induced Geoff to marry
her? While Geoff's head was bent over the drawing, Annie revolved all
this rapidly in her mind, and came to the conclusion that it must have
been for money that Geoff plunged into matrimony, and that Mrs. Ludlow
was either a widow with a comfortable jointure, in which case Annie
pictured her to herself as short, stout, and red-faced, with black
hair in bands and a perpetual black-silk dress; or a small heiress of
uncertain age, thin, with hollow cheeks and a pointed nose, ringlets of
dust-coloured hair, a pinched waist, and a soured temper. And to think
of Geoff's going and throwing away the rest of his life on a person of
this sort, when he might have been so happy in his old bachelor way!

The more she thought of this the more she hated it. Why had he not
announced to them that he was going to be married, when she first met
him after that long lapse of years? To be sure, the rooms at the Royal
Academy were scarcely the place in which to enter on such a matter; but
then--who could she be? what was she like? It was so long since Geoff
had been intimate with any one; she knew that of course his range of
acquaintance might have been changed a hundred times and she not know
one of them. How very strange that he did not say any thing about it
now! He had been here an hour sketching and pottering about, and yet
had not breathed a word about it. O, she would soon settle that!

So the next time Geoff looked up from his sketch, she said to him:
"Are you longing to be gone, Geoffrey? Getting fearfully bored? Is a
horrible _heimweh_ settling down upon your soul? I suppose under the
circumstances it ought to be, if it isn't."

"Under what circumstances, Annie? I'm not bored a bit, nor longing to
be gone. What makes you think so?"

"Only my knowledge of a fact which I've learned, though not from
you--your marriage, Geoffrey."

"Not from me! Pardon me, Annie; I begged Lord Caterham, to whom I
announced it, specially to name it to you. And, if you must know,
little child, I wondered you had said nothing to me about it."

He looked at her earnestly as he said this; and there was a dash of
disappointment in his honest eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Geoff--so sorry! But I didn't understand it so; really I
didn't," said Annie, already half-penitent. "Lord Caterham told me of
the fact, but as from himself; not from you; and--and I thought it odd
that, considering all our old intimacy, you hadn't--"

"Odd! why, God bless my soul! Annie, you don't think that I shouldn't;
but, you see, it was all so--At all events, I'm certain I told Lord
Caterham to tell you."

Geoff was in a fix here. His best chance of repudiating the idea that
he had willfully neglected informing Annie of his intended marriage
was the true reason, that the marriage itself was, up to within the
shortest time of its fulfilment, so unlooked for; but this would throw
a kind of slur on his wife; at all events, would prompt inquiries; so
he got through it as best he could with the stuttering excuses above
recorded.

They seemed to avail with Annie Maurice; for she only said, "O, yes;
I daresay it was some bungle of yours. You always used to make the
most horrible mistakes, Geoff, I've heard poor papa say a thousand
times, and get out of it in the lamest manner." Then, after a moment,
she said, "You must introduce me to your wife, Geoffrey;" and, almost
against her inclination, added, "What is she like?"

"Introduce you, little child? Why, of course I will, and tell her
how long I have known you, and how you used to sit on my knee, and
be my little pet," said old Geoff, in a transport of delight. "O, I
think you'll like her, Annie. She is--yes, I may say so--she is very
beautiful, and--and very quiet and good."

Geoff's ignorance of the world is painfully manifested in this speech.
No Woman could possibly be pleased to hear of her husband having been
in the habit Of having any little pet on his knee; and in advancing her
being "very beautiful" as a reason for liking his wife, Geoff showed
innocence which was absolutely refreshing.

Very beautiful! Was that mere conjugal blindness or real fact? Taken in
conjunction with "very quiet and good," it looked like the former; but
then where beauty was concerned Geoff had always been a stern judge;
and it was scarcely likely that he would suffer his judgment, founded
on the strictest abstract principles to be warped by any whim or fancy.
Very beautiful!--the quietude and goodness came into account,--very
beautiful!

"O, yes; I must come and see Mrs. Ludlow, please. You will name a day
before you go?"

"Name a day! What for, Annie?"

Lord Caterham was the speaker, sitting in his chair, and being wheeled
in from his bedroom by Stephens. Ins tone was a little harsh; his
temper a little sharp. He had all along determined that Annie and Geoff
should not be left alone together on the occasion of her first lesson.
But _l'homme propose et Dieu dispose_; and Caterham had been unable to
raise his head from his pillow, with one of those fearful neuralgic
headaches which occasionally affected him.

"What for! Why, to be introduced to Mrs. Ludlow! By the way, you seem
to have left your eyes in the other room, Arthur. You have not seen Mr.
Ludlow before, have you?"

"I beg Mr. Ludlow a thousand pardons!" said Caterham, who had
forgotten the announcement of Geoffrey's marriage, and who hailed the
recalling of the past with intense gratification. "I'm delighted to
see you, Mr. Ludlow; and very grateful to you for coming to fill up so
agreeably some of our young lady's blank time. If I thought you were
a conventional man, I should make you a pretty Conventional speech of
gratulation on your marriage; but as I'm sure you're something much
better, I leave that to be inferred."

"You are very good," said Geoff. "Annie was just saying that I should
introduce My wife to her, and--"

"Of course, of course!" said Caterham, a little dashed by the
familiarity of the "Annie." "I hope, to see Mrs. Ludlow here; not
merely as a visitor to a wretched bachelor like myself; but I'm sure my
mother would be very pleased to welcome her, and will, if you please,
do herself the honour of calling on Mrs. Ludlow.

"Thank you, Arthur; you are very kind, and I appreciate it," said
Annie, in a low voice, crossing to his chair; "but my going will be a
different thing; I mean, as an old friend of Geoff's, _I_ may go and
see his wife."

An old friend of Geoff's! Still the same bond between them, in which he
had no part--an intimacy with which he had nothing to do.

"Of course," said he; "nothing could be more natural."


"Little Annie coming to be introduced to Margaret!" thought Geoff, as
he walked homeward, the lesson over. This, then, was to be Margaret's
first introduction to his old friend. Not much fear of their not
getting on together. And yet, on reflection, Geoff was not so sure of
that, after all.




CHAPTER VI.
AT HOME.


The people of Lowbar, lusty citizens with suburban residences--lawyers,
proctors, and merchants, all warm people in money matters--did
not think much of the advent into their midst of a man following
an unrecognised profession, which had no ledger-and-day-book
responsibility, employed no clerks, and ministered to no absolute want.
It was not the first time indeed that they had heard of an artist being
encamped among them; for in the summer several brethren of the brush
were tempted to make a temporary sojourn in the immediate vicinity
of the broad meadows and suburban prettinesses. But these were mere
birds of passage, who took lodgings over some shop in the High Street,
and who were never seen save by marauding schoolboys or wandering
lovers, who would come suddenly upon a bearded man smoking a pipe, and
sketching away under the shade of a big white umbrella. To wear a beard
and, in addition to that enormity, to smoke a pipe, were in themselves
sufficient, in the eyes of the worthy inhabitants of Lowbar, to prove
that a man was on the high-road to destruction; but they consoled
themselves with the reflection that the evil-doer was but a sojourner
amongst them. Now, however, had arrived a man in the person of Geoffrey
Ludlow, who not merely wore a beard and smoked a pipe, but further flew
in the face of all decently-constituted society by having a beautiful
wife. And this man had not come into lodgings, but had regularly
established himself in poor Mrs. Pierce's house, which he had had all
done up and painted and papered and furnished in a manner--so at least
Mr. Brandram the doctor said--that might be described as gorgeous.

Now, as the pretty suburb of Lowbar is still a good score of years
behind the world, its inhabitants could not understand this at all,
and the majority of them were rather scandalised than otherwise, when
they found that the vicar and his wife had called on the newcomers.
Mr. Brandram the doctor had called too; but that was natural. He was
a pushing man was Brandram, and a worldly man, so unlike Priestley,
the other doctor, who was a retiring gentleman. So at least said
Priestley's friends and Brandram's enemies. Brandram was a little man
of between fifty and sixty, neat, and a little horsy in his dress,
cheerful in his manner, fond of recommending good living, and fond of
taking his own prescription. He was a little "fast" for Lowbar, going
to the theatre once or twice in the year, and insisting upon having
novels for the Book-Society; whereas Priestley's greatest dissipation
was attending a "humorous lecture" at the Mechanics' Institute, and his
lightest reading a book of Antipodean travel. Brandram called at Elm
Lodge, of course, and saw both Geoff and Margaret, and talked of the
Academy pictures,--which he had carefully got up from the catalogue
and the newspaper-notices,--and on going away, left Mrs. Brandram's
card. For three weeks afterwards, that visit supplied the doctor
with interesting discourse for his patients: he described all the
alterations which had been made in the house since Mrs. Pierce's death;
he knew the patterns of the carpets, the colours of the curtains, the
style of the furniture. Finally, he pronounced upon the newcomers;
described Geoff as a healthy man of a sanguineous temperament, not much
cut out for the Lowbar folk; and his wife as a beautiful woman, but
lymphatic.

These last were scarcely the details which the Lowbar folk wanted to
know. They wanted to know all about the _ménage_; in what style the
newcomers lived; whether they kept much or any company; whether they
agreed well together. This last was a point of special curiosity; for,
in common with numberless other worthy, commonplace, stupid people, the
Lowbar folk imagined that the private lives of "odd persons"--under
which heading they included all professors of literature and art of any
kind--were passed in dissipation and wrangling. How the information was
to be obtained was the great point, for they knew that nothing would
be extracted from the vicar, even if he had been brimful of remarks
upon his new parishioners, which, indeed, he was not, as they neither
of them happened to be at home when he called. It would be something
to be well assured about their personal appearance, especially _her_
personal appearance; to see whether there were really any grounds for
this boast of beauty which Dr. Brandram went talking about in such a
ridiculous way. The church was the first happy hunting-ground pitched
upon; and during the first Sunday after Geoff's and Margaret's arrival
the excitement during divine service was intense; the worshippers in
the middle and side aisles, whose pews all faced the pulpit, and whose
backs were consequently turned to the entrance-door, regarding with
intense envy their friends whose pews confronted each other between
the pulpit and the altar, and who, consequently, while chanting the
responses or listening to the lesson, could steal furtive glances on
every occasion of the door's opening, without outraging propriety. But
when it was found that the newcomers did not attend either morning
or evening service,--and unquestionably a great many members of the
congregation had their dinner of cold meat and salad (it was considered
sinful in Lowbar to have hot dinners on Sunday) at an abnormally early
hour for the purpose of attending evening service on the chance of
seeing the new arrivals,--it was considered necessary to take more
urgent measures; and so the little Misses Coverdale--two dried-up
little chips of spinsters with corkscrew ringlets and black-lace
mittens, who kept house for their brother, old Coverdale, the
red-faced, white-headed proctor, Geoffrey's next-door neighbour--had
quite a little gathering the next day, the supposed object of which
was to take tea and walk in the garden, but the real object to peep
furtively over the wall and try and catch a glimpse of her who was
already sarcastically known as "Dr. Brandram's beauty." Some of the
visitors, acquainted with the peculiarities of the garden, knowing
what mound to stand on and what position to take up, were successful
in catching a glimpse of the top of Margaret's hair--"all taken off
her face like a schoolgirl's, and leaving her cheeks as bare as bare,"
as they afterwards reported--as she wandered listlessly round the
garden, stooping now and then to smell or gather a flower. One or
two others were also rewarded by the sight of Geoffrey in his velvet
painting-coat; among them, Letty Coverdale, who pronounced him a
splendid man, and, O, so romantic-looking! for all ideas of matrimony
had not yet left Miss Letty Coverdale, and the noun-substantive Man
yet caused her heart to beat with an extra throb in her flat little
chest; whereas Miss Matty Coverdale, who had a face like a horse, and
who loudly boasted that she had never had an offer of marriage in her
life, snorted out her wonder that Geoff did not wear a surtout like a
Christian and her belief that he'd be all the cleaner after a visit to
Mr. Ball, who was the Lowbar barber.

But bit by bit the personal appearance of both of them grew
sufficiently familiar to many of the inhabitants, some of the most
courageous of whom had actually screwed themselves up to that pitch of
boldness necessary for the accomplishment of calling and leaving cards
on strangers pursuing a profession unnamed in the _Directory_, and
certainly not one of the three described in _Mangnall's Questions_. The
calls were returned, and in some cases were succeeded by invitations
to dinner. But Geoffrey cared little for these, and Margaret earnestly
begged they might be declined. If she found her life insupportably
dull and slow, this was not the kind of relief for which she prayed.
A suburban dinner-party would be but a dull parody on what she had
known; would give her trouble to dress for, without the smallest
compensating amusement; would leave her at the mercy of stupid people,
among whom she would probably be the only stranger, the only resource
for staring eyes and questioning tongues. That they would have stared
and questioned, there is little doubt; but they certainly intended
hospitality. The "odd" feeling about the Ludlows prevalent on their
first coming had worn off, and now the tide seemed setting the other
way. Whether it was that the tradesmen's books were regularly paid,
that the lights at Elm Lodge were seldom or never burning after eleven
o'clock, that Geoffrey's name had been seen in the _Times_, as having
been present at a dinner given by Lord Everton, a very grand dinner,
where he was the only untitled man among the company, or for whatever
other reason, there was a decided disposition to be civil to them.
No doubt Margaret's beauty had a great deal to do with it, so far as
the men were concerned. Old Mr. Coverdale, who had been portentously
respectable for half a century, but concerning whom there was a
floating legend of "Jolly dog-ism" In his youth, declared he had seen
nothing like her since the Princess Charlotte; and Abbott, known as
Captain Abbott, from having once been in the Commissariat, who always
wore a chin-tip and a tightly-buttoned blue frock-coat and pipe-clayed
buckskin gloves, made an especial point of walking past Elm Lodge
every afternoon, and bestowing on Margaret, whenever he saw her, a
peculiar leer which had done frightful execution amongst the nursemaids
of Islington. Mrs. Abbott, a mild meek little woman, who practised
potichomanie, delcomanie the art of making wax-flowers, any thing
whereby to make money to pay the tradespeople and supply varnish for
her husband's boots and pocket-money for his _menus plaisirs_, was not,
it is needless to say, informed of these vagaries on the captain's part.

They were discussed every where: at the Ladies' Clothing-Club, where
one need scarcely say that the opinions concerning Margaret's beauty
were a little less fervid in expression; and at the Gentlemen's
Book-Society, where a proposition to invite Geoff to be of their
number, started by the vicar and seconded by old Mr. Coverdale, was
opposed by Mr. Bryant (of Bryant and Martin, coach-builders, Long
Acre), On the ground that the first Of the rules stated that this
should be an association of gentlemen; and who could I say what would
be done next if artists was to be received? The discussion on this
point waxed very warm, and during it Mr. Cremer the curate incurred Mr.
Bryant's deepest hatred for calling out to him, on his again attempting
to address the meeting, "Spoke, spoke!" which Mr. Bryant looked upon
as a sneer at his trade, and remembered bitterly when the subscription
was got up in the parish for presenting Mr. Cremer with the silver
teapot and two hundred sovereigns, with which (the teapot at least)
he proceeded to the rectory of Steeple Bumstead, in a distant part of
the country. They were discussed by the regulars in the nine-o'clock
omnibus, most of whom, as they passed by Elm Lodge and saw Geoff
through the big window just commencing to set his palette, pitied him
for having to work at home, and rejoiced in their own freedom from the
possibility of conjugal inroad; or, catching a glimpse of Margaret,
poked each other in the ribs and told each other what a fine woman
she was. They were discussed by the schoolboys going to school, who
had a low opinion of art, and for the most part confined the remarks
about Geoffrey to his having a "stunnin' beard," and about Margaret
to her being a "regular carrots," the youthful taste being strongly
anti-pre-Raffaellitic, and worshipping the raven tresses and straight
noses so dear to the old romancers.

And while all these discussions and speculations were rife, the persons
speculated on and discussed were leading their lives without a thought
of what people were saying of them. Geoff knew that he was doing good
work; he felt that intuitively as every man does feel it, quite as
intuitively as when he is producing rubbish; and he knew it further
from the not-too-laudatorily-inclined Mr. Stompff, who came up from
time to time, and could not refuse his commendation to the progress
of the pictures. And then Geoff was happy--at least, well, Margaret
might have been a little more lively perhaps; but then--O, no; he was
thoroughly happy! and Margaret--existed! The curtain had dropped on her
wedding-day, and she had been groping in darkness ever since.


Time went on, as he does to all of us, whatever our appreciation of
him may be, according to the mood we may happen to be in: swiftly to
the happy and the old, slowly to the young and the wearied. There is
that blessed compensation which pervades all human things, even in the
flight of time. No matter how pleasant, how varied, how completely
filled is the time of the young, it hangs on them somehow; they do
not feel it rush past them nor melt away, the hours swallowed up in
days, the days in years, as do the elder people, who have no special
excitement, no particular delight. The fact still remains that the
young want time to fly, the old want him to crawl; and that, fulfilling
the wishes of neither, he speeds on _aquo pale_, grumbled at by both.

The time went on. So Margaret knew by the rising and setting of the
sun, by the usual meals, her own getting up and going to bed, and all
the usual domestic routine. But by what else? Nothing. She had been
married now nearly six months, and from that experience she thought
she might deduce something like an epitome of her life. What was it?
She had a husband who doated on her; who lavished on her comforts,
superfluities, luxuries; who seemed never so happy as when toiling at
his easel, and who brought the products of his work to her to dispose
of as she pleased. A husband who up to that hour of her thought had
never in the smallest degree failed to fulfil her earliest expectations
of him,--generous to a degree, kind-hearted, weak, and easily led.
Weak! weak as water.--Yes, and O yes! What you, like, my dear! What
you think best, my child! That is for your decision, Margaret. I--I
don't know; I scarcely like to give an opinion. Don't you think you had
better settle it? I'll leave it all to you, please, dearest.--Good God!
if he would only say _something_--as opposed to her ideas as possible,
the more opposed the better--some assertion of self, some trumpet-note
of argument, some sign of his having a will of his own, or at least
an idea from which a will might spring. Here was the man who in his
own art was working out the most admirable genius, showing that he had
within him more of the divine afflatus than is given to nine hundred
and ninety-nine in every thousand amongst us--a man who was rapidly
lifting his name for the wonder and the envy of the best portion of
the civilised world, incapable of saying "no" even to a proposition of
hashed mutton for dinner, shirking the responsibility of a decision on
the question of the proper place for a chair.

Indeed, I fear that, so far as I have stated, the sympathies of women
will go against old Geoff, who must, I fancy, have been what they are
in the habit of calling "very trying." You see he brought with him to
the altar a big generous old heart, full of love and adoration of his
intended wife, full of resolution, in his old blunt way, to stand by
her through evil and good report, and to do his duty by her in all
honour and affection. He was any thing but a self-reliant man; but he
knew that his love was sterling coin, truly unalloyed; and he thought
that it might be taken as compensation for numerous deficiencies, the
existence of which he readily allowed. You see he discovered his power
of loving simultaneously almost with his power of painting; and I think
that this may perhaps account for a kind of feeling that, as the latter
was accepted by the world, so would the former be by the person to whom
it was addressed. When he sent out the picture which first attracted
Mr. Stompff's attention, he had no idea that it was better than a
score others which he had painted, during the course of his life; when
he first saw Margaret Dacre, he could not tell that the instinctive
admiration would lead to any thing more than the admiration which he
had already silently paid to half-a-hundred pretty faces. But both had
come to a successful issue; and he was only to paint his pictures with
all the talent of his head and hand, and to love his wife with all the
affection of his heart, to discharge his duty in life.

He did this; he worshipped her with all his heart. Whatever she did
was right, whatever ought to have been discussed she was called upon
to settle. They were very small affairs, as I have said,--of hashed
mutton and jams of the colour of a ribbon, or the fashion of a bonnet.
Was there never to be any thing further than this? Was life to consist
in her getting up and struggling through the day and going to bed at
Elm Lodge? The short breakfast, when Geoff was evidently dying to be
off into the painting-room; the long, long day,--composed of servants
instruction, newspaper, lunch, sleep, little walk, toilette, dinner,
utterly feeble conversation, yawns and head-droppings, and finally
bed. She had pictured to herself something quiet, tranquil, without
excitement, without much change; but nothing like this.

Friends?--relations? O yes! old Mrs. Ludlow came to see her now and
then; and she had been several times to Brompton. The old lady was
very kind in her pottering stupid way, and her daughter Matilda was
kind also, but as once gushing and prudish; so Margaret thought.
And they both treated her as if she were a girl; the old lady
perpetually haranguing her with good advice and feeble suggestion, and
Matilda--who, of course, like all girls, had, it was perfectly evident,
some silly love-affair on with some youth who had not as yet declared
himself--wanting to make her half-confidences, and half-asking for
advice, which she never intended to take. A girl? O yes, of course, she
must play out that farce, and support that terribly vague story which
old Geoff; pushed into a corner on a sudden, and without any one to
help him at the instant, had fabricated concerning her parentage and
belongings. And she must listen to the old lady's praises of Geoff,
and how she thought it not improbable, if things went on as they were
going, that the happiest dream of her life would be fulfilled--that she
should ride in her son's carriage. "It would be yours, of course, my
dear; I know that well enough; but you'd let me ride in it sometimes,
just for the honour and glory of the thing." And they talked like
this to her: the old lady of the glory of a carriage; Matilda of some
hawbuck wretch for whom she had a liking;--to her! who had sat on the
box-seat of a drag a score of times, with half-a-score of the best men
in England sitting behind her, all eager for a word or a smile.

She saw them now, frequently, whenever she came over to Brompton,--all
the actors in that bygone drama of her life, save the hero himself.
It was the play of _Hamlet_ with Hamlet left out, indeed. But what
vast proportions did she then assume compared to what she had been
lately! There were Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,--the one in his
mail-phaeton, the other on his matchless hack; there was old Polonius
in the high-collared bottle-green coat of thirty years back, guiding
his clever cob in and out among the courtiers; there was the Honourable
Osric, simpering and fooling among the fops. She hurried across the
Drive or the Row on her way to or from Brompton, and stood up, a little
distance off, gazing at these comrades of old times. She would press
her hands to her head, and wonder whether it was all true or a dream
whether she was going back to the dull solemnity of Elm Lodge, when a
dozen words would put her into that mail-phaeton--on to that horse!
How often had Rosencrantz ogled! and was it not Guildenstern's billet
that, after reading, she tore up and threw in his face? It was an awful
temptation; and she was obliged, as an antidote, to picture to herself
the tortures she had suffered from cold and want and starvation, to
bring her round at all to a sensible line of thought.

Some one else had called upon her two or three times. O yes, a Miss
Maurice, who came in a coroneted carriage, and to whom she had taken a
peculiar detestation; not from any airs she had given herself--O no;
there was nothing of that kind about her. She was one of those persons,
don't you know, who have known your husband before his marriage, and
take an interest in him, and must like you for his sake; one of those
persons who are so open and honest and above-board, that you take an
immediate distrust of them at first sight, which you never get over. O
no, Margaret was perfectly certain she should never like Annie Maurice.

Music she had, and books; but she was not very fond of the first,
and only played desultorily. Geoff was most passionately fond of
music; and sometimes after dinner he would ask for "a tune," and then
Margaret would sit down at the piano and let her fingers wander over
the keys, gradually finding them straying into some of the brilliant
dance-music of Auber and Musard, of Jullien and Koenig, with which
she had been familiarised during her Continental experience. And
as she played, the forms familiarly associated with the music came
trooping out of the mist--Henri, so grand in the _Cavalier seul_, Jules
and Eulalie, so unapproachable in the _En avant deux_. There they
whirled in the hot summer evenings; the _parterre_, illuminated with
a thousand lamps glittering like fireflies, the sensuous strains of
the orchestra soaring up to the great yellow-faced moon looking down
upon it; and then the cosy little supper, the sparkling iced drink,
the--"Time for bed, eh, dear?" from old Geoff, already nodding with
premature sleep; and away flew the bright vision at the rattle of the
chamber-candlestick.

Books! yes, no lack of them. Geoff subscribed for her to the library,
and every week came the due supply of novels. These Margasightret read,
some in wonder, some in scorn. There was a great run upon the Magdalen
just then in that style of literature; writers were beginning to be
what is called "outspoken;" and young ladies familiarised with the
outward life of the species, as exhibited in the Park and at the Opera,
read with avidity of their diamonds and their ponies, of the interior
of the _ménage_, and of their spirited conversations with the cream
of the male aristocracy. A deference to British virtue, and a desire
to stand well with the librarian's subscribers, compelled an amount
of repentance in the third volume which Margaret scarcely believed
to be in accordance with truth. The remembrance of childhood's days,
which made the ponies pall, and rendered the diamonds disgusting,--the
inherent natural goodness, which took to eschewing of crinoline
and the adoption of serge, which swamped the colonel in a storm of
virtuous indignation, and brought the curate safely riding over the
billows,--were agreeable incidents, but scarcely, she thought, founded
on fact. Her own experience at least had taught her otherwise; but it
might be so after all.

So her life wore drearily on. Would there never be any change in it?
Yes, one change at least Time brought in his flight. Dr. Brandram's
visits were now regular; and one morning a shrill cry resounded through
the house, and the doctor placed in its father's arms a strong healthy
boy.




CHAPTER VII.
WHAT THEIR FRIENDS THOUGHT.


Geoffrey Ludlow had married and settled himself in a not-too-accessible
suburb, but he had not given up such of his old companions as were on
a footing of undeniable intimacy with him. These were few in number;
for although Geoff was a general favourite from his urbanity and the
absence of any thing like pretentiousness in his disposition, he was
considered slow by most of the bolder spirits among the artist-band.
He was older than many of them certainly, but that was scarcely the
reason; for there were jolly old dogs whose presence never caused the
smallest reticence of song or story--gray and bald-headed old boys,
who held their own in scurrility and slang, and were among the latest
sitters and the deepest drinkers of the set. It is needless to say that
in all their popularity--and they were popular after a fashion--there
was not mingled one single grain of respect; while Geoffrey was
respected as much as he was liked. But his shyness, his quiet domestic
habits, and his perpetual hard work gave him little time for the
cultivation of acquaintance, and he had only two really intimate
friends, who were Charley Potts and William Bowker.

Charley Potts had been "best man" at the marriage, and Geoffrey had
caught a glimpse of old Bowker in hiding behind a pillar of the church.
It was meet, then, that they--old companions of his former life--should
see him under his altered circumstances, should know and be received
by his wife, and should have the opportunity, if they wished for it,
of keeping up at least a portion of the _camaraderie_ of old days.
Therefore after his return to London, and when he and his wife were
settled down in Elm Lodge, Geoffrey wrote to each of his old friends,
and said how glad he would be to see them in his new house.

This note found Mr. Charles Potts intent upon a representation of
Mr. Tennyson's "Dora," sitting with the child in the cornfield, a
commission which he had received from Mr. Caniche, and which was to
be paid for by no less a sum than a hundred and fifty pounds. The
"Gil Bias" had proved a great success in the Academy, and had been
purchased by a country rector, who had won a hundred-pound prize in
the Art-Union; so that Charley was altogether in very high feather and
pecuniary triumph. He had not made much alteration in the style of his
living or in the furniture of his apartment; but he had cleared off a
long score for beer and grog standing against him in the books kept
by Caroline of signal fame; he had presented Caroline herself with a
cheap black-lace shawl, which had produced something like an effect at
Rosherville Gardens! and he had sent a ten-pound note to the old aunt
who had taken care of him after his mother's death, and who wept tears
of gratified joy on its receipt, and told all Sevenoaks of the talent
and the goodness of her nephew. He had paid off some other debts also,
and lent a pound or two here and there among his friends, and was even
after that a capitalist to the extent of having some twenty pounds in
the stomach of a china sailor, originally intended as a receptacle for
tobacco. His success had taken effect on Charley. He had begun to think
that there was really something in him, after all; that life was, as
the working-man observed, "not all beer and skittles;" and that if he
worked honestly on, he might yet be able to realise a vision which had
occasionally loomed through clouds of tobacco-smoke curling round his
head; a vision of a pleasant cottage out at Kilburn, or better still
at Cricklewood; with a bit of green lawn and a little conservatory,
and two or three healthy children tumbling about; while their mother,
uncommonly like Matilda Ludlow, looked on from the ivy-covered porch;
and their father, uncommonly like himself, was finishing in the studio
that great work which was to necessitate his election into the Academy.
This vision had a peculiar charm for him; he worked away like a horse;
the telegraphic signals to Caroline and the consequent supply of beer
became far less frequent; he began to eschew late nights, which he
found led to late mornings; and the "Dora" was growing under his hand
day by day.

He was hard at work and had apparently worked himself into a knot, for
he was standing a little distance from his easel, gazing vacantly at
the picture and twirling his moustache with great vigour,--a sure sign
of worry with him,--when the "tugging, of the trotter" was heard, and
on his opening the door, Mr. Bowker presented himself and walked in.

"'Tis I! Bowker the undaunted! Ha, Ha!" and Mr. Bowker gave two short
stamps, and lunged with his walking-stick at his friend. "Give your
William drink; he is athirst. What! nothing of a damp nature about?
Potts, virtue and industry are good things; and your William has been
glad to observe that of late you have been endeavouring to practise
both; but industry is not incompatible with pale ale, and nimble
fingers are oft allied to a dry palate. That sounds like one of the
headings of the pages from Maunders' _Treasury of Knowledge_.--Send for
some beer!"

The usual pantomime was gone through by Mr. Potts, and while it was in
process, Bowker filled a pipe and walked towards the easel. "Very good,
Charley; very good indeed. Nice fresh look in that gal--not the usual
burnt-umber rusticity; but something--not quite--like the real ruddy
peasant bronze. Child not bad either; looks as if it had got its feet
in boxing-gloves, though; you must alter that; and don't make its eyes
quite so much like willow-pattern saucers. What's that on the child's
head?"

"Hair, of course."

"And what stuff's that the girl's sitting in?"

"Corn! cornfield--wheat, you know, and that kind of stuff. What do you
mean? why do you ask?"

"Only because it seems to your William that both substances are exactly
alike. If it's hair, then the girl is sitting in a hair-field; if it's
corn, then the child has got corn growing on its head."

"It'll have it growing on its feet some day, I suppose," growled Mr.
Potts, with a grin. "You're quite right, though, old man; we'll alter
that at once.--Well, what's new with you?"

"New? Nothing! I hear nothing, see nothing, and know nobody. I might be
a hermit-crab, only I shall never creep into any body else's shell; my
own--five feet ten by two feet six--will be ready quite soon enough for
me. Stop! what stuff I'm talking! I very nearly forgot the object of my
coming round to you this morning. Your William is asked into society!
Look; here's a letter I received last night from our Geoff, asking me
to come up to see his new house and be introduced to his wife."

"I had a similar one this morning."

"I thought that was on the cards, so I came round to see what you were
going to do."

"Do? I shall go, of course. So will you, won't you?"

"Well, Charley, I don't know. I'm a queer old skittle, that has been
knocked about in all manner of ways, and that has had no women's
society for many years. So much the better, perhaps. I'm not pretty to
look at; and I couldn't talk the stuff women like to have talked to
them, and I should be horribly bored if I had to listen to it. So--and
yet--God forgive me for growling so!--there are times when I'd give
any thing for a word of counsel and comfort in a woman's voice, for
the knowledge that there was any woman--good woman, mind!--no matter
what--mother, sister, wife--who had an interest in what I did. There!
never mind that."

Mr. Bowker stopped abruptly. Charley Potts waited for a minute; then
putting his hand affectionately on his friend's shoulder, said: "But
our William will make an exception for our Geoff. You've known him so
long, and you're so fond of him."

"Fond of him! God bless him! No one could know Geoff without loving
him, at least no one whose love was worth having. But you see there's
the wife to be taken into account now."

"You surely wouldn't doubt your reception by her? The mere fact of your
being an old friend of her husband's would be sufficient to make you
welcome."

"O, Mr. Potts, Mr. Potts! you are as innocent as a sucking-dove, dear
Mr. Potts, though you have painted a decent picture! To have known
a man before his marriage is to be the natural enemy of his wife.
However, I'll chance that, and go and see our Geoff."

"So shall I," said Potts, "though I'm rather doubtful about _my_
reception. You see I was with Geoff that night,--you know, when we met
the--his wife, you know."

"So you were. Haven't you seen her since?"

"Only at the wedding, and that all in a hurry--just an introduction;
that was all."

"Did she seem at all confused when she recognised you?"

"She couldn't have recognised me, because when we found her she was
senseless, and hadn't come-to when we left. But of course Geoff had
told her who I was, and she didn't seem in the least confused."

"Not she, if there's any truth in physiognomy," muttered old Bowker;
"well, if she showed no annoyance at first meeting you, she's not
likely to do so now, and you'll be received sweetly enough, no doubt.
We may as well go together, eh?"

To this proposition Mr. Potts consented with great alacrity, for though
a leader of men in his own set, he was marvellously timid, silent,
and ill at ease in the society of ladies. The mere notion of having
to spend a portion of time, however short, in company with members of
the other sex above the rank of Caroline, and with whom he could not
exchange that free and pleasant _badinage_ of which he was so great a
master, inflicted torture on him sufficient to render him an object of
compassion. So on a day agreed upon, the artistic pair set out to pay
their visit to Mrs. Geoffrey Ludlow.

Their visit took place at about the time when public opinion in Lowbar
was unsettled as to the propriety of knowing the Ludlows; and the
dilatoriness of some of the inhabitants in accepting the position of
the newcomers may probably be ascribed to the fact of the visitors
having been encountered in the village. It is undeniable that the
appearance of Mr. Potts and of Mr. Bowker was not calculated to impress
the beholder with a feeling of respect, or a sense of their position
in society. Holding this to be a gala-day, Mr. Potts had extracted a
bank-note from the stomach of the china sailor, and expended it at
the "emporium" of an outfitter in Oxford Street, in the purchase of a
striking, but particularly ill-fitting, suit of checked clothes--coat,
waistcoat, and trousers to match. His boots, of an unyielding leather,
had very thick clump soles, which emitted curious wheezings and
groanings as he walked; and his puce-coloured gloves were baggy at all
the fingers' ends, and utterly impenetrable as regarded the thumbs. His
white hat was a little on one side, and his moustaches were twisted
with a ferocity which, however fascinating to the maid-servants at the
kitchen-windows, failed to please the ruralising cits and citizenesses,
who were accustomed to regard a white hat as the distinctive badge
of card-sharpers, and a moustache as the outward and visible sign
of swindling. Mr. Bowker had made little difference in his ordinary
attire. He wore a loose shapeless brown garment which was more like a
cloth dressing-gown than a paletot; a black waistcoat frayed at the
pockets from constant contact with his pipe-stem, and so much too short
that the ends of his white-cotton braces were in full view; also a
pair of gray trousers of the cut which had been in fashion when their
owner was in fashion--made very full over the boot, and having broad
leather straps. Mr. Bowker also wore a soft black wideawake hat, and
perfumed the fragrant air with strong cavendish tobacco, fragments of
which decorated his beard. The two created a sensation as they strode
up the quiet High Street; and when they rang at Elm Lodge Geoffrey's
pretty servant-maid was ready to drop between admiration at Mr. Potts's
appearance and a sudden apprehension that Mr. Bowker had come after the
plate.

She had, however, little time for the indulgence of either feeling;
for Geoffrey, who had been expecting the arrival of hi friends, with a
degree of nervousness unintelligible to himself, no sooner heard the
bell than he rushed out from his studio and received his old comrades
with great cordiality. He shook hands heartily with Charley Potts; but
a certain hesitation mingled with the warmth of his greeting of Bowker;
and his talk rattled on from broken sentence to broken sentence, as
though he were desirous of preventing his friend from speaking until he
himself had had his say.

"How d'ye do, Charley? so glad to see you; and you, Bowker, my good
old friend: it is thoroughly kind of you to come out here; and--long
way, you know, and out of your usual beat, I know. Well, so you see
Ive joined the noble army of martyrs,--not that I mean that of course;
but--eh, you didn't expect I would do it, did you? I couldn't say, like
the girl in the Scotch song, 'I'm owre young to marry yet,' could I?
However, thank God, I think you'll say my wife is--what a fellow I am!
keeping you fellows out here in this broiling sun; and you haven't--at
least you, Bowker, haven't been introduced to her. Come along--come in!"

He preceded them to the drawing-room, where Margaret was waiting to
receive them. It was a hot staring day in the middle of a hot staring
summer. The turf was burnt brown; the fields spreading between Elm
Lodge and Hampstead, usually so cool and verdant, were now arid wastes;
the outside blinds of the house were closed to exclude the scorching
light, and there was no sound save the loud chirping of grasshoppers.
A great weariness was on Margaret that day; she had tried to rouse
herself, but found it impossible, so had sat all through the morning
staring vacantly before her, busy with old memories. Between her past
and her present life there was so little in common, that these memories
were seldom roused by associations. The dull never-changing domestic
day, and the pretty respectability of Elm Lodge, did not recal the wild
Parisian revels, the rough pleasant Bohemianism of garrison-lodgings,
the sumptuous luxury of the Florentine villa. But there was something
in the weather to-day--in the bright fierce glare of the sun, in the
solemn utterly-unbroken stillness--which brought back to her mind one
when she and Leonard and some others were cruising off the Devonshire
coast in Tom Marshall's yacht; a day on which, with scarcely a breath
of air to be felt, they lay becalmed in Babbicombe Bay; under an
awning, of course, over which the men from time to time worked the
fire-hose; and how absurdly funny Tom Marshall was when the ice ran
short. Leonard said--The gate-bell rang, and her husband's voice was
heard in hearty welcome of his friends.

In welcome of his friends! Yes, there at least she could do her duty;
there she could give pleasure to her husband. She could not give him
her love; she had tried, and found it utterly impossible; but equally
impossible was it to withhold from him her respect. Day by day she
honoured him more and more; as she watched his patient honesty, his
indomitable energy, his thorough helplessness; as she learned--in spite
of herself as it were--more of himself; for Geoff had always thought
one of the chiefest pleasures of matrimony must be to have some one
capable of receiving all one's confidences. As she, with a certain
love of psychological analysis possessed by some women went through
his character, and discovered loyalty and truth in every thought and
every deed, she felt half angry with herself for her inability to
regard him with that love which his qualities ought to have inspired.
She had been accustomed to tell herself, and half-believed, that she
had no conscience; but this theory, which she had maintained during
nearly all the earlier portion of her life vanished as she learned to
know and to appreciate her husband. She had a conscience, and she felt
it; under its influence she made some struggles, ineffectual indeed,
but greater than she at one time would have attempted. What was it
that prevented her from giving this man his due, her heart's love? His
appearance? No he was not a "girl's man" certainly, not the delicious
military vision which sets throbbing the hearts of sweet seventeen:
by no means romantic-looking, but a thoroughly manly gentleman--big,
strong, and well-mannered. Had he been dwarfed or deformed, vulgar,
dirty--and even in the present days of tubbing and Turkish baths,
there are men who possess genius and are afraid it may come off in hot
water,--had he been "common," an expressive word meaning something
almost as bad as dirt and vulgarity,--Margaret could have satisfied her
newly-found conscience, or at least accounted for her feelings. But he
was none of these, and she admitted it; and so at the conclusion of her
self-examination fell back, not without a feeling of semi-complacency,
to the conviction that it was not he, but she herself who was in fault;
that she did not give him her heart simply because she had no heart to
give; that she had lived and loved, but that, however long she might
yet live, she could never love again.

These thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, not for the first, nor
even for the hundredth time, as she sat down upon the sofa and took
up the first book which came to hand, not even making a pretence of
reading it, but allowing it to lie listlessly on her lap. Geoffrey came
first, closely followed by Charley Potts, who advanced in a sheepish
way, holding out his hand. Margaret smiled slightly and gave him her
hand with no particular expression, a little dignified perhaps, but
even that scarcely noticeable. Then Bowker, who had kept his keen eyes
upon her from the moment he entered the room, and whom she had seen and
examined while exchanging civilities with Potts, was brought forward
by Geoffrey, and introduced as "one of my oldest and dearest friends."
Margaret advanced as Bowker approached, her face flushed a little, and
her eyes wore their most earnest expression, as she said, "I am very
glad to see you, Mr. Bowker. I have heard of you from Geoffrey. I am
sure we shall be very good friends." She gripped his hand and looked
him straight in the face as she said this, and in that instant William
Bowker divined that Margaret had heard of, and knew and sympathised
with, the story of his life.

She seemed tacitly to acknowledge that there was a bond of union
between them. She was as polite as could be expected of her to
Charley Potts; but she addressed herself especially to Bowker when
any point for discussion arose. These were not very frequent, for the
conversation carried on was of a very ordinary kind. How they liked
their new house, and whether they had seen much of the people of
the neighbourhood; how they had enjoyed their honeymoon in the Isle
of Wight; and trivialities of a similar character. Charley Potts,
prevented by force of circumstances from indulging in his peculiar
humour, and incapable from sheer ignorance of bearing his share of
general conversation when a lady was present, had several times
attempted to introduce the one subject, which, in any society, he could
discuss at his ease, art--"shop;" but on each occasion had found his
proposition rigorously ignored both by Margaret and Bowker, who seemed
to consider it out of place, and who were sufficiently interested
in their own talk. So Charley fell back Upon Geoff, who, although
delighted at seeing how well his wife was getting on with his friend,
yet had sufficient kindness of heart to step in to Charley's rescue,
and to discuss with him the impossibility of accounting for the high
price obtained by Smudge; the certainty that Scumble's popularity
would be merely evanescent; the disgraceful favouritism displayed by
certain men "on the council;" in short, all that kind of talk which
is so popular and so unfailing in the simple kindly members of the
art-world. So on throughout lunch; and, indeed, until the mention of
Geoffrey's pictures then in progress necessitated the generalising
of the conversation, and they went away (Margaret with them) to the
studio. Arrived within those walls, Mr. Potts, temporarily oblivious
of the presence of a lady, became himself again. The mingled smell of
turpentine and tobacco, the sight of the pictures on the easels, and
Of Geoff's pipe-rack on the wall, a general air of carelessness and
discomfort, all came gratefully to Mr. Potts who opened his chest,
spread out his arms, shook himself as does a dog just emerged from
the water--probably in his case to get rid of any clinging vestige of
respectability--and said in a very hungry tone:

"Now, Geoff, let's have a smoke, old boy."

"You might as well wait until you knew whether Mrs. Ludlow made any
objection, Charley," said Bowker, in a low tone.

"I beg Mrs. Ludlow's pardon," said Potts, scarlet all over; "I had no
notion that she--"

"Pray don't apologise, Mr. Potts; I am thoroughly accustomed to smoke;
have been for--"

"Yes, of course; ever since you married Geoff you have been thoroughly
smoke-dried," interrupted Bowker, at whom Margaret shot a short quick
glance, half of interrogation, half of gratitude.

They said no more on the smoke subject just then, but proceeded to a
thorough examination of the picture which Charley Potts pronounced
"regularly stunning," and which Mr. Bowker criticised in a much less
explosive manner. He praised the drawing, the painting, the general
arrangement; he allowed that Geoffrey was doing every thing requisite
to obtain for himself name, fame, and wealth in the present day; but
he very much doubted whether that was all that was needed. With the
French judge he would very much have doubted the necessity of living,
if to live implied the abnegation of the first grand principles of art,
its humanising and elevated influence. Bowker saw no trace of these
in the undeniable cleverness of the Brighton Esplanade; and though
he was by no means sparing of his praise, his lack of enthusiasm, as
compared with the full-flavoured ecstasy of Charley Potts, struck upon
Margaret's ear. Shortly afterwards, while Geoffrey and Potts were deep
in a discussion on colour, she turned to Mr. Bowker, and said abruptly:

"You are not satisfied with Geoffrey's picture?"

He smiled somewhat grimly as he said, "Satisfied is a very strong word,
Mrs. Ludlow. There are some of us in the world who have sufficient good
sense not to be satisfied with what we do ourselves--"

"That's true, Heaven knows," she interrupted involuntarily.

"And are consequently not particularly likely to be content with what's
done by other people. I think Geoff's picture good, very good of its
sort; but I don't--I candidly confess--like its sort. He is a man full
of appreciation of nature, character, and sentiment; a min who, in the
expression of his own art, is as capable of rendering poetic feeling
as--By Jove, now why didn't he think of that subject that Charley Potts
has got under weigh just now? That would have suited Geoff exactly."

"What is it?"

"Dora--Tennyson's Dora, you know." Margaret bowed in acquiescence.
"There's a fine subject, if you like. Charley's painting it very well,
so far as it goes; but he doesn't feel it. Now Geoff would. A man must
have something more than facile manipulation; he must have the soul of
a poet before he could depict the expression which must necessarily be
on such a face. There are few who could understand, fewer still who
could interpret to others, such heart-feelings of that most beautiful
of Tennyson's creations as would undoubtedly show themselves in her
face; the patient endurance of unrequited love, which 'loves on through
all ills, and loves on till she dies;' which neither the contempt nor
the death of its object can extinguish, but which then flows, in as
pure, if not as strong, a current towards his widow and his child."

Margaret had spoken at first, partly for the sake of saying something,
partly because her feeling for her husband admitted of great pride in
his talent, which she thought Bowker had somewhat slighted. But now
she was thoroughly roused, her eyes bright, her hair pushed back off
her face, listening intently to him. When he ceased, she looked up
strangely, and said:

"Do you believe in the existence of such love?"

"O yes," he replied; "it's rare, of course. Especially rare is the
faculty of loving hopelessly without the least chance of return--loving
stedfastly and honestly as Dora did, I mean. With most people
unrequited love turns into particularly bitter hatred, or into that
sentimental maudlin state of 'broken heart,' which is so comforting
to its possessor and so wearying to his friends. But there _are_
exceptional cases where such love exists, and in these, no matter how
fought against, it can never be extinguished."

"I suppose you are right," said Margaret; "there must be such
instances."

Bowker looked hard at her, but she had risen from her seat and was
rejoining the others.


"What's your opinion of Mrs. Ludlow, William?" asked Charley Potts,
as they walked away puffing their pipes in the calm summer night air.
"Handsome woman, isn't she?"

"Very handsome!" replied Bowker; "wondrously handsome!" Then
reflectively--"It's a long time since your William has seen any thing
like that. All in all--face, figure, manner--wondrously perfect! She
walks like a Spaniard, and--"

"Yes, Geoff's in luck; at least I suppose he is. There's something
about her which is not quite to my taste. I think I like a British
element, which is not to be found in her. I don't know what it is--only
something--well, something less of the duchess about her. I don't think
she's quite in our line--is she, Bowker, old boy?"

"That's because you're very young in the world's ways, Charley,
and also because Geoff's wife is not very like Geoff's sister, I'm
thinking." Whereat Mr. Potts grew very red, told his friend to "shut
up!" and changed the subject.

"That night Mr. Bowker sat on the edge of his truckle-bed in his garret
in Hart Street, Bloomsbury, holding in his left hand a faded portrait
in a worn morocco case. He looked at it long and earnestly, while his
right hand wafted aside the thick clouds of tobacco-smoke pouring over
it from his pipe. He knew every line of it, every touch of colour in
it; but he sat gazing at it this night as though it were an entire
novelty, studying it with a new interest.

"Yes," said he at length, "she's very like you, my darling, very like
you,--hair, eyes, shape, all alike; and she seems to have that same
clinging, undying love which you had, my darling--that same resistless,
unquenchable, undying love. But that love is not for Geoff; God help
him, dear fellow! that love is not for Geoff!"




CHAPTER VIII.
MARGARET AND ANNIE.


The meeting between Margaret and Annie Maurice, which Geoffrey had so
anxiously desired, had taken place, but could scarcely be said to have
been successful in its result. With the best intention possible, and
indeed with a very earnest wish that these two women should like each
other very much, Geoff had said so much about the other to each, as
to beget a mutual distrust and dislike before they became acquainted.
Margaret could not be jealous of Geoffrey; her regard for him was not
sufficiently acute to admit any such feeling. But she rebelled secretly
against the constant encomiastic mention of Annie, and grew wearied at
and annoyed with the perpetually-iterated stories of Miss Maurice's
goodness with which Geoffrey regaled her. A good daughter! Well,
what of that? She herself had been a good daughter until temptation
assailed her, and probably Miss Maurice had never been tempted.--So
simple, honest, and straightforward! Yes, she detested women of that
kind; behind the mask of innocence and virtue they frequently carried
on the most daring schemes. Annie in her turn thought she had heard
quite enough about Mrs. Ludlow's hair and eyes, and wondered Geoff had
never said any thing about his wife's character or disposition. It
was quite right, of course, that he, an artist, should marry a pretty
person; but he was essentially a man who would require something more
than mere beauty in his life's companion, and as yet he had not hinted
at any accomplishments which his wife possessed. There was a something
in Lord Caterham's tone, when speaking to and of Geoffrey Ludlow,
which had often jarred upon Annie's ear, and which she now called to
mind in connection with these thoughts--a certain tinge of pity more
akin to contempt than to love. Annie had noticed that Caterham never
assumed this tone when he was talking to Geoffrey about his art; then
he listened deferentially or argued with spirit; but when matters of
ordinary life formed the topics of conversation her cousin seemed to
regard Geoffrey as a kind of large-hearted boy, very generous very
impulsive, but thoroughly inexperienced. Could Arthur Caterham's
reading of Geoffrey Ludlow's character be the correct one? Was he,
out of his art, so weak, vacillating, and easily led? and had he been
caught by mere beauty of face? and had he settled himself down to pass
his life with a woman of whose disposition he knew nothing? Annie
Maurice put this question to herself with a full conviction that she
would be able to answer it after her introduction to Mrs. Ludlow.

About a week after Geoffrey had given his first drawing-lesson in St.
Barnabas Square, Annie drove off one afternoon to Elm Lodge in Lady
Beauport's barouche. She had begged hard to be allowed to go in a cab,
but Lord Caterham would not hear of it; and as Lady Beauport had had
a touch of neuralgia (there were very few illnesses she permitted to
attack her, and those only of an aristocratic nature), and had been
confined to the house, no objection was made. So the barouche, with
the curly-wigged coachman and silver-headed footmen on the box, went
spinning through Camden and Kentish Towns, where the coachman pointed
with his whip to rows of small houses bordering the roadside, and
wondered what sort of people could live "in such little 'oles;" and
the footman expressed his belief that the denizens were "clerks and
poor coves of that kind," The children of the neighbourhood ran out in
admiration of the whole turn-out, and especially of the footman's hair,
which afforded them subject-matter for discussion during the evening,
some contending that his head had been snowed upon; some insisting
that it "grew so;" and others propounding a belief that he was a very
old man, and that his white hair was merely natural. When the carriage
dashed up to the gates of Elm Lodge, the Misses Coverdale next door
were, as they afterwards described themselves, "in a perfect twitter of
excitement;" because, though good carriages and handsome horses were by
no means rare in the pretty suburb, no one had as yet ventured to ask
his servant to wear hair-powder; and the coronet, immediately spied on
the panels, had a wonderful effect.

The visit was not unexpected by either Margaret or Geoffrey; but the
latter was at the moment closely engaged with Mr. Stompff, who had
come up to make an apparently advantageous proposition; so that when
Annie Maurice was shown into the drawing-room, she found Margaret there
alone. At sight of her, Annie paused in sheer admiration. Margaret was
dressed in a light striped muslin; her hair taken off her face and
twisted into a large roll behind; her only ornaments a pair of long
gold earrings. At the announcement of Miss Maurice's name, a slight
flush came across her face, heightening its beauty. She rose without
the smallest sign of hurry, grandly and calmly, and advanced a few
paces. She saw the effect she had produced and did not intend that it
should be lessened. It was Annie who spoke first, and Annie's hand was
the first outstretched.

"I must introduce myself, Mrs. Ludlow," said she, "though I suppose you
have heard of me from your husband. He and I are very old friends."

"O, Miss Maurice?" said Margaret, as though half doubtful to whom she
was talking. "O yes; Geoffrey has mentioned your name several times.
Pray sit down."

All this in the coldest tone and with the stiffest manner. Prejudiced
originally, Margaret, in rising, had caught a glimpse through the
blinds of the carriage, and regarded it as an assertion of dignity and
superiority on her visitor's part, which must be at once counteracted.

"I should have come to see you long before, Mrs. Ludlow, but my time is
not my own, as you probably know; and--"

"Yes, Mr. Ludlow told me you were Lady Beauport's companion." A hit at
the carriage there.

"Yes," continued Annie with perfect composure, though she felt the
blow, "I am Lady Beauport's companion, and consequently not a free
agent, or, as I said, I should have called on you long ago."

Margaret had expected a hit in exchange for her own, which she saw had
taken effect. A little mollified by her adversary's tolerance, she said:

"I should have been very glad to see you, Miss Maurice; and in saying
so I pay no compliment; for I should have been very glad to see any
body to break this fearful monotony."

"You find it dull here?"

"I find it dreary in the extreme."

"And I was only thinking how perfectly charming it is. This sense of
thorough quiet is of all things the most pleasant to me. It reminds
me of the place where the happiest days in my life have been passed;
and now, after the fever and excitement of London, it seems doubly
grateful. But perhaps you have been accustomed to gaiety."

"Yes; at least, if not to gaiety, to excitement; to having every hour
of the day filled up with something to do; to finding the time flown
before I scarcely knew it had arrived, instead of watching the clock
and wondering that it was not later in the day."

"Ah, then of course you feel the change very greatly at first; but I
think you will find it wear off. One's views of life alter so after
we have tried the new phase for a little time. It seems strange my
speaking to you in this way, Mrs. Ludlow; but I have had a certain
amount of experience. There was my own dear home; and then I lived with
my uncle at a little country parsonage, and kept house for him; and
then I became--Lady Beauport's companion."

A bright red patch burned on Margaret's cheek as Annie said these
words. Was it shame? Was the quiet earnestness, the simple courtesy and
candour of this frank, bright-eyed girl getting over her?

"That was very difficult at first, I confess," Annie continued; "every
thing was so strange to me, just as it may be to you here, but I had
come from the quietude to the gaiety; and I thought at one time it
would be impossible for me to continue there. But I held on, and I
manage to get on quite comfortably now. They are all very kind to me;
and the sight of Mr. Ludlow occasionally insures my never forgetting
the old days."

"It would be strange if they were not kind to you," said Margaret,
looking fixedly at her. "I understand now what Geoffrey has told me
about you. We shall be friends, shall we not?" suddenly extending her
hand.

"The very best of friends!" said Annie, returning the pressure; "and,
dear Mrs. Ludlow, you will soon get over this feeling of dulness. These
horrible household duties, which are so annoying at first, become a
regular part of the day's business, and, unconsciously to ourselves, we
owe a great deal to them for helping us through the day. And then you
must come out with me whenever I can get the carriage,--O, Ive brought
Lady Beaupores card, and she is coming herself as soon as she gets out
again,--and we'll go for a drive in the Park. I can quite picture to
myself the sensation you would make."

Margaret smiled--a strange hard smile--but said nothing.

"And then you must be fond of reading; and I don't know whether Mr.
Ludlow has changed, but there was nothing he used to like so much as
being read to while he was at work. Whenever he came to the Priory,
papa and I used to sit in the little room where he painted and take it
in turns to read to him. I daresay he hasn't liked to ask you, fearing
it might bore you; and you haven't liked to suggest it, from an idea
that you might interrupt his work."

"O yes, Ive no doubt it will come right," said Margaret, indisposed
to enter into detail; "and I know I can rely on your help; only one
thing--don't mention what I have said to Geoffrey, please; it might
annoy him; and he is so good, that I would not do that for the world."

"He will not hear a word of it from me. It would annoy him dreadfully,
I know. He is so thoroughly wrapped up in you, that to think you were
not completely happy would cause him great pain. Yes, he is good. Papa
used to say he did not know so good a man, and--"

The door opened as she spoke, and Geoff entered the room. His eyes
brightened as he saw the two women together in close conversation; and
he said with a gay laugh:

"Well, little Annie you've managed to find us out, have you?--come away
from the marble halls, and brought 'vassals and serfs by your side,'
and all the king's horses and all the king's men, up to our little
hut. And you introduced yourself to Margaret, and you're beginning to
understand one another, eh?"

"I think we understand each other perfectly; and what nonsense you talk
about the vassals and king's horses, and all that! They would make me
have the carriage; and no one but a horrible democrat like you would
see any harm in using it."

"Democrat?--I?--the stanchest supporter of our aristocracy and our
old institutions. I intend to have a card printed, with 'Instruction
in drawing to the youthful nobility and gentry. References kindly
permitted to the Earl of B., Lord C., &c.'--Well, my child," turning
to Margaret, "you'll think your husband more venerable than ever after
seeing this young lady; and remembering that he used to nurse her in
his arms."

"I have been telling Miss Maurice that now I have seen her, I can fully
understand all you have said about her; and she has promised to come
and see me often, and to take me out with her."

"That's all right," said Geoffrey; "nothing will please me
better.--It's dull for her here, Annie, all alone; and I'm tied to my
easel all day."

"O, that will be all right, and we shall get on capitally together,
shall we not, Annie?"

And the women kissed one another, and followed Geoffrey into the garden.

That was the brightest afternoon Margaret had spent for many a day.
The carriage was dismissed to the inn, there to be the admiration
of the ostlers and idlers while the coachman and footman, after
beer, condescended to play skittles and to receive the undisguised
compliments of the village boys. Geoffrey went back to his work; and
Margaret and Annie had a long talk, in which, though it was not very
serious, Annie's good sense perpetually made itself felt, and at the
end of which Margaret felt calmer, happier, and more hopeful than
she had felt since her marriage. After the carriage had driven away,
she sat pondering over all that had been said. This, then, was the
Miss Maurice against whom she had conceived such a prejudice, and
whom "she was sure she could never like?" And now, here, at their
very first meeting, she had given her her confidence, and listened
to her as though she had been her sister! What a calm quiet winning
way she had! with what thorough good sense she talked! Margaret had
expected to find her a prim old-maidish kind of person, younger, of
course, but very much of the same type as the Miss Coverdales next
door, utterly different from the fresh pretty-looking girl full of
spirits and cheerfulness. How admirably she would have suited Geoff as
a wife! and yet what was there in her that she (Margaret) could not
acquire? It all rested with herself; her husband's heart was hers,
firmly and undoubtedly, and she only needed to look her lot resolutely
in the face, to conform to the ordinary domestic routine, as Annie had
suggested, and all would be well. O, if she could but lay the ghosts
of that past which haunted her so incessantly, if she could but forget
_him_, and all the associations connected with him, her life might yet
be thoroughly happy!

And Annie, what did she think of her new acquaintance? Whatever her
sentiments were, she kept them to herself, merely saying in answer
to questions that Mrs. Geoffrey Ludlow was the most beautiful woman
she had ever seen; that she could say with perfect truth and in all
sincerity; but as to the rest, she did not know--she could scarcely
make up her mind. During the first five minutes of their interview
she hated her, at least regarded her with that feeling which Annie
imagined was hate, but which was really only a mild dislike. There were
few women, Annie supposed, who could in cold blood, and without the
slightest provocation, have committed such an outrage as that taunt
about her position in Lady Beauport's household; but then again there
were few who would have so promptly though silently acknowledged the
fault and endeavoured to make reparation for it. How openly she spoke!
how bitterly she bemoaned the dulness of her life That did not argue
well for Geoffrey's happiness; but doubtless Mrs. Ludlow had reason
to feel dull, as have most brides taken from their home and friends,
and left to spend the day by themselves; but if she had really loved
her husband, she would have hesitated before thus complaining to a
stranger--would for his sake have either endeavoured to throw some
explanatory gloss over the subject, or remained silent about it. She
did not seem, so far as Annie saw, to have made any attempt to please
her husband, or indeed to care to do so. How different she was from
what Annie had expected! how different from all her previous experience
of young married women, who indeed generally "gushed" dreadfully, and
were painfully extravagant in their laudations of their husbands when
they were absent, and in their connubialities when they were present.
Geoffrey's large eloquent eyes had melted into tenderness as he looked
at her; but she had not returned the glance, had not interchanged with
him one term of endearment, one chance pressure of the hand. What did
it all mean? What was that past gaiety and excitement to which she
said she had been accustomed? What were her antecedents? In the whole
of her long talk with Annie, Margaret had spoken always of the future,
never of the past. It was of what she should do that she asked counsel;
never mentioning what she had done; never alluding to any person,
place, or circumstance connected with her existence previously to her
having become Geoffrey Ludlow's wife. What were her antecedents? Once
or twice during their talk she had used an odd word, a strange phrase,
which grated on Annie's ear; but her manner was that of a well-bred
gentlewoman; and in all the outward and visible signs of race, she
might have been the purest aristocrat.

Meantime her beauty was undeniable, was overwhelming. Such hair and
eyes Annie had dreamed of, but had never seen. She raved about them
until Caterham declared she must puzzle her brain to find some excuse
for his going to Elm Lodge to see this wonderful woman. She described
Margaret to Lady Beauport, who was good enough to express a desire to
see "the young person." She mentioned her to Algy Barford, who listened
and then said, "Nice! nice! Caterham, dear old boy! you and I will
take our slates and go up to--what's the name of the place?--to learn
drawing. Must learn on slates, dear boy. Don't you recollect the house
of our childhood with the singular perspective and an enormous amount
of smoke, like wool, coming out of the chimneys? Must have been a
brewery by the amount of smoke, by Jove! And the man in the cocked-hat,
with no stomach to speak of, and both his arms very thin with round
blobs at the end growing out of one side. Delicious reminiscences of
one's childhood, by Jove!"

And then Annie took to sketching after-memory portraits of Margaret,
first mere pencil outlines, then more elaborate shaded attempts and
finally a water-colour reminiscence, which was anything but bad. This
she showed to Lord Caterham, who was immensely pleased with it, and
who insisted that Barford should see it. So one morning when that
pleasantest of laughing philosophers was smoking his after-breakfast
cigar (at about noon) in Caterham's room, mooning about amongst the
nick-nacks, and trotting out his little scraps of news in his own odd
quaint fashion, Annie, who had heard from Stephens of his arrival, came
in, bringing the portrait with her.

"Enter, Miss Maurice!" said Algy; "always welcome, but more especially
welcome when she brings some delicious little novelty, such as I
see she now holds under her arm. What would the world be without
novelty?--Shakespeare. At least, if that delightful person did not make
that remark, it was simply because he forgot it; for it's just one of
those sort of things which he put so nicely. And what is Miss Maurice's
novelty?"

"O! it's no novelty at all, Mr. Barford. Only a sketch of Mrs. Geoffrey
Ludlow, of whom I spoke to you the other day. You recollect?"

"Recollect! the Muse of painting! Terps--Clio--no matter! a charming
person from whom we were to have instruction in drawing, and who lives
at some utterly unsearchable place! Of course I recollect! And you
have a sketch of her there? Now, my dear Miss Maurice, don't keep me
in suspense any longer, but let me look at it at once." But when the
sketch was unrolled and placed before him, it had the very singular
effect of reducing Algy Barford to a state of quietude. Beyond giving
one long whistle he never uttered a sound, but sat with parted lips and
uplifted eyebrows gazing at the picture for full five minutes. Then he
said, "This is like, of course, Miss Maurice?"

"Well, I really think I may say it is. It is far inferior to the
original in beauty, of course; but I think I have preserved her most
delicate features."

"Just so. Her hair is of that peculiar colour, and her eyes a curious
violet, eh?"

"Yes."

"This sketch gives one the notion of a tall woman with a full figure."

"Yes; she is taller than I, and her figure is thoroughly rounded and
graceful."

"Ye-es; a very charming sketch, Miss Maurice; and your friend must be
very lovely if she at all resembles it."

Shortly after, when Mr. Algy Barford had taken his leave, he stopped on
the flags in St. Barnabas Square, thus soliloquising: "All right, my
dear old boy, my dear old Algy! it's coming on fast--a little sooner
than you thought; but that's no matter. Colney Hatch, my dear boy, and
a padded room looking out over the railway. That's it; that's your
hotel, dear boy! If you ever drank, it might be _del. trem_., and would
pass off; but you don't. No, no; to see twice within six months, first
the woman herself; and then the portrait of the woman--just married and
known to credible witnesses--whom you have firmly believed to be lying
in Kensal Green! Colney Hatch, dear old boy; that is the apartment, and
nothing else!"




CHAPTER IX.
MR. AMPTHILL'S WILL.


The acquaintance between Margaret and Annie, which commenced so
auspiciously, scarcely ripened into intimacy. When Lady Beauport's
neuralgia passed away,--and her convalescence was much hurried by the
near approach of a specially-grand entertainment given in honour of
certain Serene Transparencies then visiting London,--she found that she
could not spare Miss Maurice to go so long a distance, to be absent
from her and her work for such a length of time. As to calling at Elm
Lodge in person, Lady Beauport never gave the project another thought.
With the neuralgia had passed away her desire to see that "pretty young
person," Mrs. Geoffrey Ludlow; and in sending her card by Annie, Lady
Beauport thought she had more than fulfilled any promises and vows of
politeness which might have been made by her son in her name.

Lord Caterham had driven out once to Elm Lodge with Annie, and had been
introduced to Margaret, whom he admired very much, but about whom he
shook his head alarmingly when he and Annie were driving towards home.
"That's an unhappy woman!" he said; "an unhappy woman, with something
on her mind--something which she does not give way to and groan about,
but against which she frets and fights and struggles with as with a
chain. When she's not spoken to, when she's not supposed to be _en
evidence_ there's a strange, half-weary, half-savage gleam in those
wondrous eyes, such as I have noticed only once before, and then among
the patients of a lunatic asylum. There's evidently something strange
in the history of that marriage. Did you notice Ludlow's devotion to
her, how he watched her every movement? Did you see what hard work
it was for her to keep up with the conversation, not from want of
power,--for, from one or two things she said, I should imagine her to
be a naturally clever as well as an educated woman,--but from want of
will? How utterly worn and wearied and _distraite_ she looked, standing
by us in Ludlow's studio, while we talked about his pictures, and
how she only seemed to rouse into life when I compared that Brighton
Esplanade with the Drive in the Park, and talked about some of the
frequenters of each. She listened to all the fashionable nonsense as
eagerly as any country miss, and yet--She's a strange study, that
woman, Annie. I shall take an early opportunity of driving out to see
her again; but I'm glad that the distance will prevent her being very
intimate with you."

The opportunity of repeating his visit did not, however, speedily
occur. The fierce neuralgic headaches from which Lord Caterham suffered
had become much more frequent of late, and worse in their effect. After
hours of actual torture, unable to raise his head or scarcely to lift
his eyes, he would fall into a state of prostration, which lasted two
or three days. In this state he would be dressed by his servant and
carried to his sofa, where he would lie with half-closed eyes dreaming
the time away,-comparatively happy in being free from pain, quite
happy if; as frequently happened, on looking up he saw Annie Maurice
moving noiselessly about the room dusting his books, arranging his
desk, bringing fresh flowers for his glasses. Looking round at him from
time to time, and finding he had noticed her presence, she would lay
her finger on her lip enjoining silence, and then refresh his burning
forehead and hands with eau-de-cologne, turn and smooth his pillows,
and wheel his sofa to a cooler position. On the second day after an
attack she would read to him for hours in her clear musical voice from
his favourite authors; or, if she found him able to bear it, would
sit down at the cabinet-piano, which he had bought expressly for her,
and sing to him the songs he loved so well--quiet English ballads,
sparkling little French _chansons_, and some of the most pathetic music
of the Italian operas; but every thing for his taste must be soft and
low: all roulades and execution, all the fireworks of music, he held in
utter detestation.

Then Annie would be called away to write notes for Lady Beauport, or
to go out with her or for her, and Caterham would be left alone again.
Pleasanter his thoughts now: there were the flowers she had gathered
and placed close by him, the books she had read from, the ivory keys
which her dear fingers had so recently touched! Her cheerful voice
still rung in his ear, the touch of her hand seemed yet to linger on
his forehead. O angel of light and almost of hope to this wretched
frame, O sole realisation of womanly love and tenderness and sweet
sympathy to this crushed spirit, wilt thou ever know it all? Yes, he
felt that there would come a time, and that without long delay, when he
should be able to tell her all the secret longings of his soul, to tell
her in a few short words, and then--ay, then!

Meanwhile it was pleasant to lie in a half-dreamy state, thinking of
her, picturing her to his fancy. He would lie on that sofa, his poor
warped useless limbs stretched out before him, but hidden from his
sight by a light silk _couvrette_ of Annie's embroidering, his eyes
closed, his whole frame n a state of repose. Through the double windows
came deadened sounds of the world outside--the roll of carriages, the
clanging of knockers, the busy hum of life. From the Square-garden
came the glad voices of children, and now and then--solitary fragment
of rusticity--the sound of the Square-gardener whetting his scythe.
And Caterham lay day by day dreaming through it all, unroused even by
the repetition of Czerny's pianoforte-exercises by the children in the
next house; dreaming of his past, his present, and his future. Dreaming
of the old farmhouse where they had sent him when a child to try and
get strength--the quaint red-faced old house with its gable ends and
mullioned windows, and its eternal and omnipresent smell of apples; of
the sluggish black pool where the cattle stood knee-deep; the names of
the fields--the home-croft, and the lea pasture, and the forty acres;
the harvest-home, and the songs that they sung then, and to which he
had listened in wonder sitting on the farmer's knee. He had not thought
of all this from that day forth; but he remembered it vividly now, and
could almost hear the loud ticking of the farmer's silver watch which
fitted so tightly into his fob. The lodgings at Brighton, where he
went with some old lady, never recollected but in connection with that
one occasion, and called Miss Macraw,--the little lodgings with the
bow-windowed room looking sideways over the sea; the happiness of that
time, when the old lady perpetually talked to and amused him, when he
was not left alone as he was at home, and when he had such delicious
tea-cakes which he toasted for himself. The doctors who came to see him
there; one a tall white-haired old man in a long black coat reaching
to his heels, and another a jolly bald-headed man, who, they said, was
surgeon to the King. The King--ay, he had seen him too, a red-faced
man in a blue coat, walking in the Pavilion Gardens. Dreaming of the
private tutor, a master at Charter House, who came on Wednesday and
Saturday afternoons, and who struggled so hard and with such little
success to conceal his hatred to Homer, Virgil, and the other classic
poets, and his longing to be in the cricket-field, on the river, any
where, to shake off that horrible conventional toil of tutorship, and
to be a man and not a teaching-machine. Other recollections he had, of
Lionel's pony and Lionel's Eton school-fellows, who came to see him in
the holidays, and who stared in mute wonder at his wheelchair and his
poor crippled limbs. Recollections of his father and mother passing
down the staircase in full dress on their way to some court-ball, and
of his hearing the servants say what a noble-looking man his father
was, and what a pity that Master Lionel had not been the eldest son.
Recollections of the utter blankness of his life until she came--ah,
until she came! The past faded away, and the present dawned. She was
there, his star, his hope, his love! He was still a cripple, maimed and
blighted; still worse than an invalid, the prey of acute and torturing
disease; but he would be content--content to remain even as he was so
that he could have her near him, could see her, hear her voice, touch
her hand. But that could not be. She would marry, would leave him, and
then--ah then!--Let that future which he believed to be close upon him
come at once. Until he had known hope, his life, though blank enough,
had been supportable; now hope had fled; "the sooner it's over the
sooner to sleep." Let there be an end of it!

There were but few days that Algy Barford did not come; bright, airy,
and cheerful, bringing sunshine into the sick-room; never noisy or
obtrusive, always taking a cheery view of affairs, and never failing
to tell the invalid that he looked infinitely better than the last
time he had seen him, and that this illness was "evidently a kind
of clearing-up shower before the storm, dear old boy," and was the
precursor of such excellent health as he had never had before. Lord
Caterham, of course, never believed any of this; he had an internal
monitor which told him very different truths; but he knew the feelings
which prompted Algy Barford's hopeful predictions, and no man's visits
were so agreeable to Caterham as were Algy's.

One day he came in earlier than usual, and looking less serenely happy
than his wont. Lord Caterham, lying on his sofa, observed this, but
said nothing, waiting until Algy should allude to it, as he was certain
to do, for he had not the smallest power of reticence.

"Caterham, my dear old boy, how goes it this morning? I am seedy,
my friend! The sage counsel given by the convivial bagman, that the
evening's diversion should bear the morning's reflection, has not been
followed by me. Does the cognac live in its usual corner, and is there
yet soda-water in the land?"

"You'll find both in the sideboard, Algy. What were you doing last
night to render them necessary?"

"Last night, my dear Caterham, I did what England expected me to do--my
duty, and a most horrible nuisance that doing one's duty is. I dined
with an old fellow named Huskisson, a friend of my governor's, who
nearly poisoned me with bad wine. The wine, sir, was simply infamous;
but it was a very hot night, and I was dreadfully thirsty, so what
could I do but drink a great deal of it? I had some very fiery sherry
with my soup, and some hock. Yes; 'nor did my drooping memory shun the
foaming grape of eastern France;' only this was the foaming gooseberry
of Fulham Fields. And old Huskisson, with great pomp, told his butler
to bring 'the Hermitage.' What an awful swindle!"

"What was it like?"

"Well, dear old boy, minds innocent and quiet may take that for a
Hermitage if they like; but I, who have drunk as much wine, good and
bad, as most men, immediately recognised the familiar Beaujolais which
we get at the club for a shilling a pint. So that altogether I'm very
nearly poisoned; and I think I shouldn't have come out if I had not
wanted to see you particularly."

"What is it, Algy? Some of that tremendously important business which
always takes up so much of your time?"

"No, no; now you're chaffing, Caterham. 'Pon my word I really do a
great deal in the course of the day, walking about, and talking to
fellows, and that sort of thing: there are very few fellows who think
what a lot I get through; but I know myself."

"Do you? then you've learned a great thing--'know thyself' one of the
great secrets of life;" and Caterham sighed.

"Yes, dear old boy," said Algy "'know thyself, but never introduce
a friend;' that I believe to be sterling philosophy. This is a
confoundedly back-slapping age; every body is a deuced sight too fond
of every body else; there is an amount of philanthropy about which is
quite terrible."

"Yes, and you're about the largest-hearted and most genial
philanthropist in the world; you know you are."

"I, dear old boy? I am Richard Crookback; I am the uncle of the Babes
in the Wood; I am Timon the Tartar of Athens, or whatever his name was;
I am a ruthless hater of all my species, when I have the _vin triste_,
as I have this morning. O, that reminds me--the business I came to see
you about. What a fellow you are, Caterham! always putting things out
of fellows' heads!"

"Well, what is it now?"

"Why, old Ampthill is dead at last. Died last night; his man told my
man this morning."

"Well, what then?"

"What then? Why, don't you recollect what we talked about? about his
leaving his money to dear old Lionel?"

"Yes," said Caterham, looking grave, "I recollect that."

"I wonder whether any good came of it? It would be a tremendously jolly
thing to get dear old Lionel back, with plenty of money, and in his old
position, wouldn't it?"

"Look here, my dear Algy," said Lord Caterham; "let us understand
each other once for all on this point. You and I are of course likely
to differ materially on such a subject. You are a man of the world,
going constantly into the world, with your own admirable good sense
influenced by and impressed with the opinions of society. Society, as
you tell me, is pleased to think my brother's--well, crime--there's no
other word!--my brother's crime a venial one, and will be content to
receive him back again, and to instal him in his former position if he
comes back prepared to sacrifice to Society by spending his time and
money on it!"

"Pardon me, my dear old Caterham,--just two words!" interrupted Algy.
"Society--people, you know, I mean--would shake their heads at poor old
Lionel, and wouldn't have him back perhaps, and all that sort of thing,
if they knew exactly what he'd done. But they don't. It's been kept
wonderfully quiet, poor dear old fellow."

"That may or may not be; at all events, such are Society's views, are
they not?" Barford inclined his head. "Now, you see, mine are entirely
different. This sofa, the bed in the next room, that wheelchair, form
my world; and these," pointing to his bookshelves, "my society. There
is no one else on earth to whom I would say this; but you know that
what I say is true. Lionel Brakespere never was a brother to me never
had the slightest affection or regard for me, never had the slightest
patience with me. As a boy, he used to mock at my deformity; as a man,
he has perseveringly scorned me, and scarcely troubled himself to hide
his anxiety for my death, that he might be Lord Beauport's heir--"

"Caterham! I say, my dear, dear old boy Arthur--" and Algy Barford put
one hand on the back of Lord Caterham's chair, and rubbed his own eyes
very hard with the other.

"You know it, Algy, old friend. He did all this; and God knows I tried
to love him through it all, and think I succeeded. All his scorn, all
his insult, all his want of affection, I forgave. When he committed the
forgery which forced him to fly the country, I tried to intercede with
my father; for I knew the awful strait to which Lionel must have been
reduced before he committed such an act: but when I read his letter,
which you brought me, and the contents of which it said you knew, I
recognised at last that Lionel was a thoroughly heartless scoundrel,
and I thanked God that there was no chance of his further disgracing
our name in a place where it had been known and respected. So you now
see, Algy, why I am not enchanted at the idea of his coming back to us."

"Of course, of course, I understand you, dear fellow;
and--hem!--confoundedly husky; that filthy wine of old Huskisson's!
better in a minute--there!" and Algy cleared his throat and rubbed his
eyes again. "About that letter, dear old boy! I was going to speak to
you two or three times about that. Most mysterious circumstance, by
Jove, sir! The fact is that--"

He was interrupted by the opening of the door and the entrance of
Stephens, Lord Caterham's servant, who said that Lady Beauport would be
glad to know if his master could receive her.

It was a bad day for Caterham to receive any one except his most
intimate friends, and assuredly his mother was not included in that
category. He was any thing but well bodily, and the conversation about
Lionel had thoroughly unstrung his nerves; so that he was just about to
say he must ask for a postponement of the visit, when Stephens said,
"Her ladyship asked me if Mr. Barford wasn't here, my lord, and seemed
particularly anxious to see him." Lord Caterham felt the colour flush
in his cheeks as the cause of his mother's visit was thus innocently
explained by Stephens; but the moment after he smiled, and sent to beg
that she would come whenever she pleased.

In a very few minutes Lady Beauport sailed into the room, and, after
shaking hands with Algy Barford in, for her, quite a cordial manner,
she touched her son's forehead with her lips and dropped into the chair
which Stephens had placed for her near the sofa.

"How are you, Arthur, to day?" she commenced. "You are looking quite
rosy and well, I declare. I am always obliged to come myself when I
want to know about your health; for they bring me the most preposterous
reports. That man of yours is a dreadful kill-joy, and seems to have
inoculated the whole household with his melancholy, where you are
concerned. Even Miss Maurice, who is really quite a cheerful person,
and quite pleasant to have about one,--equable spirits, and that sort
of thing, you know, Mr. Barford; so much more agreeable than those
moping creatures who are always thinking about their families and their
fortunes, you know,--even Miss Maurice can scarcely be trusted for what
I call a reliable report of Caterham."

"It's the interest we take in him, dear Lady Beauport, that keeps us
constantly on the _qui vive_. He's such a tremendously lovable old
fellow, that we're all specially careful about him;" and Algy's hand
went round to the back of Caterham's sofa and his eyes glistened as
before.

"Of course," said Lady Beauport, still in her hard dry voice.
"With care, every thing may be done. There's Alice Wentworth, Lady
Broughton's grand-daughter, was sent away in the autumn to Torquay, and
they all declared she could not live. And I saw her last night at the
French embassy, well and strong, and dancing away as hard as any girl
in the room. It's a great pity you couldn't have gone to the embassy
last night, Arthur; you'd have enjoyed it very much."

"Do you think so, mother?" said Caterham with a sad smile. "I scarcely
think it would have amused me, or that they would have cared much to
have me there."

"O, I don't know; the Duchess de St. Lazare asked after you very
kindly, and so did the Viscomte, who is--" and Lady Beauport stopped
short.

"Yes, I know--who is a cripple also," said Caterham quietly. "But he
is only lame; he can get about by himself. But if I had gone, I should
have wanted Algy here to carry me on his back."

"Gad, dear old boy, if carrying you on my back would do you any good,
or help you to get about to any place you wanted to go to, I'd do it
fast enough; give you a regular Derby canter over any course you like
to name."

"I know you would, Algy, old friend. You see every one is very kind,
and I am doing very well indeed, though I'm scarcely in condition for
a ball at the French embassy.--By the way, mother, did you not want to
speak to Barford about something?"

"I did, indeed," said Lady Beauport. "I have heard just now, Mr.
Barford, that old Mr. Ampthill died last night?"

"Perfectly true, Lady Beauport. I myself had the same information."

"But you heard nothing further?"

"Nothing at all, except that the poor old gentleman, after a curious
eccentric life, made a quiet commonplace end, dying peacefully and
happily."

"Yes, yes; but you heard nothing about the way in which his property is
left, I suppose?"

"Not one syllable. He was very wealthy, was he not?"

"My husband says that the Boxwood property was worth from twelve
to fifteen thousand a-year; but I imagine this is rather an
under-estimate. I wonder whether there is any chance for--what I talked
to you about the other day."

"Impossible to say, dear Lady Beauport," said Algy, with an awkward
glance at Caterham, which Lady Beauport observed.

"O, you needn't mind Caterham one bit, Mr. Barford. Any thing which
would do good to poor Lionel I'm sure you'd be glad of wouldn't you,
Arthur?"

"Any thing that would do him good, yes."

"Of course; and to be Mr. Ampthill's heir would do him a great deal
of good. It is that Mr. Barford and I are discussing. Mr. Barford was
good enough to speak to me some time ago, when it was first expected
that Mr. Ampthill's illness would prove dangerous, and to suggest that,
as poor Lionel had always been a favourite with the old gentleman,
something might be done for him, perhaps, there being so few relations.
I spoke to your father, who called two or three times in Curzon Street,
and always found Mr. Ampthill very civil and polite, but he never
mentioned Lionel's name.

"That did not look particularly satisfactory, did it?" asked Algy.

"Well, it would have looked bad in any one else; but with such an
extremely eccentric person as Mr. Ampthill, I really cannot say I
think so. He was just one of those oddities who would carefully
refrain from mentioning the person about whom their thoughts were most
occupied.--I cannot talk to your father about this matter, Arthur; he
is so dreadfully set against poor Lionel, that he will not listen to
a word.--But I need not tell you, Mr. Barford, I myself am horribly
anxious."

Perfectly appreciating Lord Beauport's anger; conscious that it was
fully shared by Caterham; with tender recollections of Lionel, whom he
had known from childhood; and with a desire to say something pleasant
to Lady Beauport, all Algy Barford could ejaculate was, "Of course, of
course."

"I hear that old Mr. Trivett the lawyer was with him two or three times
about a month ago, which looks as if he had been making his will. I met
Mr. Trivett at the Dunsinanes in the autumn, and at Beauport's request
was civil to him. I would not mind asking him to dine here one day this
week, if I thought it would be of any use."

Caterham looked very grave; but Algy Barford gave a great laugh, and
seemed immensely amused. "How do you mean 'of any use,' Lady Beauport?
You don't think you would get any information out of old Trivett, do
you? He's the deadest hand at a secret in the world. He never lets
out any thing. If you ask him what it is o'clock, you have to dig the
information out of him with a ripping-chisel. O, no; it's not the
smallest use trying to learn anything from Mr. Trivett."

"Is there, then, no means of finding out what the will contains?"

"No, mother," interrupted Caterham; "none at all. You must wait until
the will is read, after the funeral; or perhaps till you see a _résumé_
of it in the illustrated papers."

"You are very odd, Arthur," said Lady Beauport; "really sometimes you
would seem to have forgotten the usages of society.--I appeal to you,
Mr. Barford. Is what Lord Caterham says correct? Is there no other way
of learning what I want to know?"

"Dear Lady Beauport, I fear there is none."

"Very well, then; I must be patient and wait. But there's no harm in
speculating how the money could be left. Who did Mr. Ampthill know now?
There was Mrs. Macraw, widow of a dissenting minister, who used to read
to him; and there was his physician, Sir Charles Dumfunk: I shouldn't
wonder if he had a legacy."

"And there was Algernon Barford, commonly known as the Honourable
Algernon Barford, who used to dine with the old gentleman half-a-dozen
times every season, and who had the honour of being called a very good
fellow by him."

"O, Algy, I hope he has left you his fortune," said Caterham warmly.
"There's no one in the world would spend it to better purpose."

"Well," said Lady Beauport, "I will leave you now.--I know I may depend
upon you, Mr. Barford, to give me the very first news on this important
subject."

Algy Barford bowed, rose, and opened the door to let Lady Beauport pass
out. As she walked by him, she gave him a look which made him follow
her and close the door behind him.

"I didn't like to say any thing before Caterham," she said, "who is,
you know, very odd and queer, and seems to have taken quite a singular
view of poor Lionel's conduct. But the fact is, that, after the last
time you spoke to me, I--I thought it best to write to Lionel, to tell
him that--" and she hesitated.

"To tell him what, Lady Beauport?" asked Algy, resolutely determined
not to help her in the least.

"To tell him to come back to us--to me--to his mother!" said Lady
Beauport, with a sudden access of passion. "I cannot live any longer
without my darling son! I have told Beauport this. What does it signify
that he has been unfortunate--wicked if you will! How many others have
been the same! And our influence could get him something somewhere,
even if this inheritance should not be his. O my God! only to see him
again! My darling boy! my own darling handsome boy!"

Ah, how many years since Gertrude, Countess of Beauport, had allowed
real, natural, hot, blinding tears to course down her cheeks! The
society people, who only knew her as the calmest, most collected, most
imperious woman amongst them, would hardly recognise this palpitating
frame, those tear-blurred features. The sight completely finishes
Algy Barford, already very much upset by the news which Lady Beauport
has communicated, and he can only proffer a seat, and suggest that he
should fetch a glass of sherry. Lady Beauport, her burst of passion
over, recovers all her usual dignity, presses Algy's hand, lays her
finger on her lip to enjoin silence, and sails along as unbending
as before. Algy Barford, still dazed by the tidings he has heard,
goes back to Caterham's room, to find his friend lying with his
eyes half-closed, meditating over the recent discussion. Caterham
scarcely seemed to have noticed Algy's absence; for he said, as if in
continuance of the conversation: "And do _you_ think this money will
come to Lionel, Algy?"

"I can scarcely tell, dear old boy. It's on the cards, but the betting
is heavily against it. However, we shall know in a very few days."


In a very few days they did know. The funeral, to which Earl Beauport
and Algy Barford were invited, and which they attended, was over and
Mr. Trivett had requested them to return with him in the mourning-coach
to Curzon Street. There, in the jolly little dining-room, which had so
often enshrined the hospitality of the quaint, eccentric, warm-hearted
old gentleman whose earthly remains they had left behind them at
Kensal Green, after some cake and wine, old Mr. Trivett took from a
blue bag, which had been left there for him by his clerk, the will
of the deceased, and putting on his blue-steel spectacles, commenced
reading it aloud. The executors appointed were George Earl Beauport
and Algernon Barford, and to each of them was bequeathed a legacy of a
thousand pounds. To Algernon Barford, "a good fellow, who, I know, will
spend it like a gentleman," was also left a thousand pounds. There were
legacies of five hundred pounds each "to John Saunders, my faithful
valet, and to Rebecca, his wife, my cook and housekeeper." There was a
legacy of one hundred pounds to the librarian of the Minerva Club, "to
whom I have given much trouble." The library of books, the statues,
pictures, and curios were bequeathed to "my cousin Arthur, Viscount
Caterham, the only member of my family who can appreciate them;" and
"the entire residue of my fortune, my estate at Boxwood, money standing
in the funds and other securities, plate, wines, carriages, horses, and
all my property, to Anna, only daughter of my second cousin, the late
Ralph Ampthill Maurice, Esq., formerly of the Priory, Willesden, whom I
name my residuary legatee."




CHAPTER X.
LADY BEAUPORT'S PLOT.


Yes; little Annie Maurice, Lady Beauport's companion, was the heiress
of the rich and eccentric Mr. Ampthill, so long known in society. The
fact was a grand thing for the paragraph-mongers and the diners-out,
all of whom distorted it in every possible way, and told the most
inconceivable lies about it. That Annie was Mr. Ampthill's natural
daughter, and had been left on a doorstep, and was adopted by Lady
Beauport, who had found her in an orphan-asylum; that Mr. Ampthill
had suddenly determined upon leaving all his property to the first
person he might meet on a certain day, and that Annie Maurice was the
fortunate individual; that the will had been made purposely to spite
Lady Beauport, with whom Mr. Ampthill, when a young man, had been
madly in love--all these rumours went the round of the gossip-columns
of the journals and of Society's dinner-parties. Other stories there
were, perhaps a little nearer to truth, which explained that it was not
until after Lionel Brakespere's last escapade he had been disinherited;
indeed, that Parkinson of Thavies Inn and Scadgers of Berners Street
had looked upon his inheritance as such a certainty, that they had made
considerable advances on the strength of it, and would be heavily hit:
while a rumour, traceable to the old gentleman's housekeeper, stated
that Annie Maurice was the only one of Mr. Ampthill's connections who
had never fawned on him, flattered him, or in any way intrigued for his
favour.

Be this as it might, the fact remained that Annie was now the possessor
of a large fortune, and consequently a person of great importance
to all her friends and acquaintance--a limited number, but quite
sufficient to discuss her rise in life with every kind of asperity.
They wondered how she would bear it; whether she would give herself
airs; how soon, and to what member of the peerage, she would be
married. How _did_ she bear it? When Lord Beauport sent for her to his
study, after Mr. Ampthill's funeral, and told her what he had heard,
she burst into tears; which was weak, but not unnatural. Then, with her
usual straightforward common-sense, she set about forming her plans.
She had never seen her benefactor, so that even Mrs. Grundy herself
could scarcely have called on Annie to affect sorrow for his loss; and
indeed remarks were made by Mr. Ampthill's old butler and housekeeper
(who, being provided with mourning out of the estate, were as black and
as shiny as a couple of old rooks) about the very mitigated grief which
Annie chose to exhibit in her attire.

Then as to her mode of life. For the present, at least, she determined
to make no change in it. She said so at once to Lord Beauport,
expressing an earnest hope that she should be allowed to remain under
his roof, where she had been so happy, until she had settled how and
where she should live; and Lord Beauport replied that it would give
him--and he was sure he might speak for Lady Beauport the greatest
pleasure to have Miss Maurice with them. He brought a message to that
effect from Lady Beauport, who had one of her dreadful neuralgic
attacks, and could see no one, but who sent her kind love to Miss
Maurice, and her heartiest congratulations, and hoped that Miss Maurice
would remain with them as long as she pleased. The servants of the
house, who heard of the good fortune of "the young lady," rejoiced
greatly at it, and suggested that miss would go hout of this at once,
and leave my lady to grump about in that hold carriage by herself. They
were greatly astonished, therefore, the next morning to find Annie
seated at the nine-o'clock breakfast-table, preparing Lady Beauport's
chocolate, and dressed just as usual. They had expected that the
first sign of her independence would be lying in bed till noon, and
then appearing in a gorgeous wrapper, such as the ladies in the penny
romances always wore in the mornings; and they could only account for
her conduct by supposing that she had to give a month's warning and
must work out her time. Lady Beauport herself was astonished when, the
necessity for the neuralgic attack being over, she found Annie coming
to ask her, as usual, what letters she required written, and whether
she should pay any calls for her ladyship. Lady Beauport delicately
remonstrated; but Annie declared that she would infinitely prefer doing
exactly as she had been accustomed to, so long as she should remain in
the house.

So long as she should remain in the house! That was exactly the point
on which Lady Beauport was filled with hope and dread. Her ladyship
had been cruelly disappointed in Mr. Ampthill's will. She had suffered
herself to hope against hope, and to shut her eyes to all unfavourable
symptoms. The old gentleman had taken so much notice of Lionel when
a boy, had spoken so warmly of him, had made so much of him, that he
could not fail to make him his heir. In vain had Lord Beauport spoken
to her more plainly than was his wont, pointing out that Lionel's was
no venial crime; that Mr. Ampthill probably had heard of it, inasmuch
as he never afterwards mentioned the young man's name; that however
his son's position might be reinstated before the world, the act could
never be forgotten. In vain Algy Barford shook his head, and Caterham
preserved a gloomy silence worse than any speech. Lady Beauport's hopes
did not desert her until she heard the actual and final announcement.
Almost simultaneously with this came Lord Beauport with Annie's request
that she should be permitted to continue an inmate of the house; and
immediately Lady Beauport conceived and struck out a new plan of
action. The heritage was lost to Lionel; but the heiress was Annie
Maurice, a girl domiciled with them, clinging to them; unlikely, at
least for the few ensuing months, to go into the world, to give the
least chance to any designing fortune-hunter. And Lionel was coming
home! His mother was certain that the letter which she had written
to him on the first news of Mr. Ampthill's illness would induce him,
already sick of exile, to start for England. He would arrive soon, and
then the season would be over; they would all go away to Homershams,
or one of Beauport's places; they would not have any company for some
time, and Lionel would be thrown into Annie Maurice's society; and it
would be hard if he, with his handsome face, his fascinating manners,
and his experience of women and the world, were not able to make an
easy conquest of this simple quiet young girl, and thus to secure the
fortune which his mother had originally expected for him.

Such was Lady Beauport's day-dream now, and to its realisation she gave
up every thought, in reference to it she planned every action. It has
already been stated that she had always treated Annie with respect,
and even with regard: so that the idea of patronage, the notion of
behaving to her companion in any thing but the spirit of a lady, had
never entered her mind. But now there was an amount of affectionate
interest mingled with her regard which Annie could not fail to perceive
and to be gratified with. All was done in the most delicate manner.
Lady Beauport never forgot the lady in the _intrigante_; her advances
were of the subtlest kind; her hints were given and allusions were
made in the most guarded manner. She accepted Annie's assistance as
her amanuensis, and she left to her the usual colloquies on domestic
matters with the housekeeper, because she saw that Annie wished it to
be so; and she still drove out with her in the carriage, only insisting
that Annie should sit by her side instead of opposite on the back-seat.
And instead of the dignified silence of the employer, only speaking
when requiring an answer, Lady Beauport would keep up a perpetual
conversation, constantly recurring to the satisfaction it gave her to
have Annie still with her. "I declare I don't know what I should have
done if you had left me, Annie!" she would say. "I'm sure it was the
mere thought of having to lie left by myself, or to the tender mercies
of somebody who knew nothing about me, that gave me that last frightful
attack of neuralgia. You see I am an old woman now; and though the
Carringtons are proverbially strong and long-lived, yet I have lost
all my elasticity of spirit, and feel I could not shape myself to any
person's way now. And poor Caterham too! I cannot think how he would
ever get on without you. You seem now to be an essential part of his
life. Poor Caterham! Ah, how I wish you had seen my other son, my boy
Lionel! Such a splendid fellow; so handsome! Ah, Lord Beauport was
dreadfully severe on him, poor fellow, that night,--you recollect, when
he had you and Caterham in to tell you about poor Lionel; as though
young men would not be always young men. Poor Lionel!" Poor Lionel!
that was the text of Lady Beauport's discourse whenever she addressed
herself to Annie Maurice.

It was not to be supposed that Annie's change of fortune had not a
great effect upon Lord Caterham. When he first heard of it--from Algy
Barford, who came direct to him from the reading of the will--he
rejoiced that at least her future was secure; that, come what might
to him or his parents, there would be a provision for her; that no
chance of her being reduced to want, or of her having to consult the
prejudices of other people, and to perform a kind of genteel servitude
with any who could not appreciate her worth could now arise. But with
this feeling another soon mingled. Up to that time she had been all in
all to him--to him; simply because to the outside world she was nobody,
merely Lady Beauport's companion, about whom none troubled themselves;
now she was Miss Maurice the heiress, and in a very different position.
They could not hope to keep her to themselves; they could not hope to
keep her free from the crowd of mercenary adorers always looking out
for every woman with money whom they might devour. In her own common
sense lay her strongest safeguard; and that, although reliable on all
ordinary occasions, had never been exposed to so severe a trial as
flattery and success. Were not the schemers already plotting? even
within the citadel was there not a traitor? Algy Barford had kept his
trust, and had not betrayed one word of what Lady Beauport had told
him; but from stray expressions dropped now and again, and from the
general tenor of his mother's behaviour, Lord Caterham saw plainly
what she was endeavouring to bring about. On that subject his mind was
made up. He had such thorough confidence in Annie's goodness, in her
power of discrimination between right and wrong, that he felt certain
that she could never bring herself to love his brother Lionel, however
handsome his face, however specious his manner; but if, woman-like, she
should give way and follow her inclination rather than her reason, then
he determined to talk to her plainly and openly, and to do every thing
in his power to prevent the result on which his mother had set her
heart.

There was not a scrap of selfishness in all this. However deeply
Arthur Caterham loved Annie Maurice, the hope of making her his had
never for an instant arisen in his breast. He knew too well that a
mysterious decree of Providence had shut him out from the roll of those
who are loved by woman, save in pity or sympathy; and it was with a
feeling of relief, rather than regret, that of late--within the last
few months--he had felt an inward presentiment that his commerce with
Life was almost at an end, that his connection with that Vanity Fair,
through which he had been wheeled as a spectator, but in the occupation
or amusement of which he had never participated, was about to cease. He
loved her so dearly, that the thought of her future was always before
him, and caused him infinite anxiety. Worst of all, there was no one of
whom he could make a confidant amongst his acquaintance. Algy Barford
would do any thing; but he was a bachelor, which would incapacitate
him, and by far too easy-going, trouble-hating, and unimpressive. Who
else was there? Ah, a good thought!--that man Ludlow, the artist; an
old friend of Annie's, for whom she had so great a regard. He was not
particularly strong-minded out of his profession; but his devotion to
his child-friend was undoubted; and besides, he was a man of education
and common sense, rising, too, to a position which would insure his
being heard. He would talk with Ludlow about Annie's future; so he
wrote off to Geoffrey by the next post, begging him to come and see him
as soon as possible. Yes, he could look at it all quite steadily now.
Heaven knows, life to him had been no such happiness as to make its
surrender painful or difficult It was only as he neared his journey's
end, he thought, that any light had been shed upon his path, and when
that should be extinguished he would have no heart to go further. No:
let the end come, as he knew it was coming, swiftly and surely; only
let him think that _her_ future was secured, and he could die more than
contented--happy.

Her future secured! ah, that he should not live to see! It could not,
must not be by a marriage with Lionel. His mother had never broached
that subject openly to him, and therefore he had hitherto felt a
delicacy in alluding to it in conversation with her; but he would
before--well, he would in time. Not that he had much fear of Annie's
succumbing to his brother's fascinations; he rated her too highly for
that. It was not--and he took up a photographic album which lay on his
table, as the idea passed through his mind--it was not that careless
reckless expression, that easy insolent pose, which would have any
effect on Annie Maurice's mental constitution. Those who imagine that
women are enslaved through their eyes--true women--women worth winning
at least--are horribly mistaken, he thought, and--And then at that
instant he turned the page and came upon a photograph of himself, in
which the artist had done his best so far as arrangement went, but
which was so fatally truthful in its display of his deformity, that
Lord Caterham closed the book with a shudder, and sunk back on his
couch.

His painful reverie was broken by the entrance of Stephens, who
announced that Mr. and Mrs. Ludlow were waiting to see his master.
Caterham, who was unprepared for a visit from Mrs. Ludlow, gave orders
that they should be at once admitted. Mrs. Ludlow came in leaning on
her husband's arm, and looking so pale and interesting, that Caterham
at once recollected the event he had seen announced in the _Times_, and
began to apologise.

"My dear Mrs. Ludlow, what a horrible wretch I am to have asked your
husband to come and see me, when of course he was fully occupied at
home attending to you and the baby!" Then they both laughed; and Geoff
said:

"This is her first day out, Lord Caterham; but I had promised to take
her for a drive; and as you wanted to see me, I thought that--"

"That the air of St. Barnabas Square, the fresh breezes from the
Thames, and the cheerful noise of the embankment-people, would be about
the best thing for an invalid, eh?"

"Well--scarcely! but that as it was only stated that my wife should go
for a quiet drive, I, who have neither the time nor the opportunity for
such things, might utilise the occasion by complying with the request
of a gentleman who has proved himself deserving of my respect."

"A hit! a very palpable hit, Mr. Ludlow!" said Caterham. "I bow,
and--as the common phrase goes--am sorry I spoke. But we must not talk
business when you have brought Mrs. Ludlow out for amusement."

"O, pray don't think of me, Lord Caterham," said Margaret; "I can
always amuse myself."

"O, of course; the mere recollection of baby would keep you
sufficiently employed--at least, so you would have us believe. But
I'm an old bachelor, and discredit such things. So there's a book of
photographs for you to amuse yourself with while we talk.--Now, Mr.
Ludlow, for our conversation. Since we met, your old friend Annie
Maurice has inherited a very large property."

"So I have heard, to my great surprise and delight. But I live so much
out of the world that I scarcely knew whether it was true, and had
determined to ask you the first time I should see you."

"O, it's thoroughly true. She is the heiress of old Mr. Ampthill,
who was a second cousin of her father's. But it was about her future
career, as heiress of all this property, that I wanted to speak to you,
you see.--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Ludlow, what did you say?"

Her face was dead white, her lips trembled, and it was with great
difficulty she said any thing at all; but she did gasp out, "Who is
this?"

"That," said Lord Caterham, bending over the book; "O, that is the
portrait of my younger brother, Lionel Brakespere; he--" but Caterham
stopped short in his explanation, for Mrs. Ludlow fell backward in a
swoon.

And every one afterwards said that it was very thoughtless of her to
take such a long drive so soon after her confinement.




CHAPTER XI.
CONJECTURES.


Miss Maurice was not in the house when Geoffrey Ludlow and his wife
made that visit to Lord Caterham which had so plainly manifested
Margaret's imprudence and inexperience. The housekeeper and one of the
housemaids had come to the assistance of the gentlemen, both equally
alarmed and one at least calculated to be, of all men living, the most
helpless under the circumstances. Geoffrey was "awfully frightened," as
he told her afterwards, when Margaret fainted.

"I shall never forget the whiteness of your face, my darling, and the
dreadful sealed look of your eyelids. I thought in a moment that was
how you would look if you were dead; and what should I do if I ever had
to see _that_ sight!"

This loving speech Geoffrey made to his wife as they drove
homewards,--she pale, silent, and coldly abstracted; he full of tender
anxiety for her comfort and apprehension for her health,--sentiments
which rendered him, to say the truth, rather a trying companion in a
carriage; for he was constantly pulling the glasses up and down, fixing
them a button-hole higher or lower, rearranging the blinds, and giving
the coachman contradictory orders. These proceedings were productive of
no apparent annoyance to Margaret, who lay back against the cushions
with eyes open and moody, and her underlip caught beneath her teeth.
She maintained unbroken silence until they reached home, and then
briefly telling Geoffrey that she was going to her room to lie down,
she left him.

"She's not strong," said Geoffrey, as he proceeded to
disembarrass himself of his outdoor attire, and to don his
"working-clothes,"--"she's not strong; and it's very odd she's not more
cheerful. I thought the child would have made it all right; but perhaps
it will when she's stronger." And Geoff sighed as he went to his work,
and sighed again once or twice as he pursued it.

Meanwhile Lord Caterham was thinking over the startling incident which
had just occurred. He was an observant man naturally, and the enforced
inaction of his life had increased this tendency; while his long
and deep experience of physical suffering and weakness had rendered
him acutely alive to any manifestations of a similar kind in other
people. Mrs. Ludlow's fainting-fit puzzled him. She had been looking
so remarkably well when she came in; there had been nothing feverish,
nothing suggestive of fictitious strength or over-exertion in her
appearance; no feebleness in her manner or languor in the tone of her
voice. The suddenness and completeness of the swoon were strange,--were
so much beyond the ordinary faintness which a drive undertaken a
little too soon might be supposed to produce,--and the expression of
Margaret's face, when she had recovered her consciousness, was so
remarkable, that Lord Caterham felt instinctively the true origin of
her illness had not been that assigned to it.

"She looked half-a-dozen years older," he thought; "and the few words
she said were spoken as if she were in a dream. I must be more mistaken
than I have ever been, or there is something very wrong about that
woman. And what a good fellow he is!--what a simple-hearted blundering
kind fellow! How wonderful his blindness is! I saw in a moment how he
loved her, how utterly uninterested she is in him and his affairs. I
hope there may be nothing worse than lack of interest; but I am afraid,
very much afraid for Ludlow."

And then Lord Caterham's thoughts wandered away from the artist and his
beautiful wife to that other subject which occupied them so constantly,
and with which every other cogitation or contemplation contrived to
mingle itself in an unaccountable manner, on which he did not care
to reason, and against which he did not attempt to strive. What did
it matter now? He might be ever so much engrossed, and no effort at
self-control or self-conquest would be called for; the feelings he
cherished unchecked could not harm any one--could not harm himself now.
There was great relief; great peace in that thought,--no strife for him
to enter on, no struggle in which his suffering body and weary mind
must engage. The end would be soon with him now; and while he waited
for it, he might love this bright young girl with all the power of his
heart.

So Lord Caterham lay quite still upon the couch on which they had
placed Margaret when she fainted, and thought over all he had intended
to say to Geoffrey, and must now seek another opportunity of saying,
and turned over in his mind sundry difficulties which he began to
foresee in the way of his cherished plan, and which would probably
arise in the direction of Mrs. Ludlow. Annie and Margaret had not
hitherto seen much of each other, as has already appeared; and there
was something ominous in the occurrence of that morning which troubled
Lord Caterham's mind and disturbed his preconcerted arrangements. If
trouble--trouble of some unknown kind, but, as he intuitively felt,
of a serious nature--were hanging over Geoffrey Ludlow's head, what
was to become of his guardianship of Annie in the future,--that future
which Lord Caterham felt was drawing so near; that future which would
find her without a friend, and would leave her exposed to countless
flatterers. He was pondering upon these things when Annie entered the
room, bright and blooming, after her drive in the balmy summer air, and
carrying a gorgeous bouquet of crimson roses.

She was followed by Stephens, carrying two tall Venetian glasses. He
placed them on a table, and then withdrew.

"Look, Arthur," said Annie; "we've been to Fulham, and I got these fresh
cut, all for your own self, at the nursery-gardens. None of those
horrid formal tied-up bouquets for you, or for me either, with the
buds stuck on with wires, and nasty fluffy bits of cotton sticking to
the leaves. I went round with the man, and made him cut each rose as I
pointed it out; and they're such beauties, Arthur! Here's one for you
to wear and smell and spoil; but the others I'm going to keep fresh for
ever so long."

She went over to the couch and gave him the rose, a rich crimson
full-formed flower, gorgeous in colour and exquisite in perfume. He
took it with a smile and held it in his hand.

"Why don't you put it in your button-hole, Lord Caterham?" said Annie,
with a pretty air of pettishness which became her well.

"Why?" said Lord Caterham. "Do you think I am exactly the style of
man to wear posies and breast-knots, little Annie?" His tone was sad
through its playfulness.

"Nonsense, Arthur," she began; "you--" Then she looked at him, and
stopped suddenly, and her face changed. "Have you been worse to-day?
You look very pale. Have you been in pain? Did you want me?"

"No, no, my child," said Lord Caterham; "I am just as usual. Go on
with your flowers, Annie,--settle them up, lest they fade. They are
beautiful indeed, and we'll keep them as long as we can."

She was not reassured, and she still stood and gazed earnestly at him.

"I am all right, Annie,--I am indeed. My head is even easier than
usual. But some one has been ill, if I haven't. Your friends the
Ludlows were here to-day. Did no one tell you as you came in?"

"No, I did not see any one; I left my bonnet in the ante-room and
came straight in here. I only called to Stephens to bring the
flower-glasses. Was Mrs. Ludlow ill, Arthur? Did she come to see me?"

"I don't think so--she only came, I think, because I wanted to see
Ludlow, and he took advantage of the circumstance to have a drive with
her. Have you seen her since the child was born?"

"No, I called, but only to inquire. But was she ill? What happened?"

"Well, she was ill--she fainted. Ludlow and I were just beginning to
talk, and, at her own request, leaving her to amuse herself with the
photographs and things lying about--and she had just asked me some
trifling question, something about Lionel's portrait--whose it was, I
think--when she suddenly fainted. I don't think there could be a more
complete swoon; she really looked as though she were dead."

"What did you do? was Geoffrey frightened?"

"Yes, we were both frightened. Stephens came, and two of the women.
Ludlow was terrified; but she soon recovered, and she would persist in
going home, though I tried to persuade her to wait until you returned.
But she would not listen to it, and went away with Ludlow in a dreadful
state of mind; he thinks he made her take the drive too soon, and is
frightfully penitent."

"Well but, Arthur," said Annie, seriously and anxiously, "I suppose he
did. It must have been that which knocked her up. She has no mother or
sister with her, you know, to tell her about these things."

"My dear Annie," said Lord Caterham, "she has a doctor and a nurse,
I suppose; and she has common-sense, and knows how she feels,
herself--does she not? She looked perfectly well when she came in, and
handsomer than when I saw her before--and I don't believe the drive had
any thing to do with the fainting-fit."

Miss Maurice looked at Lord Caterham in great surprise. His manner and
tone were serious, and her feelings, easily roused when her old friend
was concerned, were excited now to apprehension. She left off arranging
the roses; she dried her finger-tips on her handkerchief, and placing
a chair close beside Caterham's couch, she sat down and asked him
anxiously to explain his meaning.

"I can't do that very well, Annie," he said, "for I am not certain
of what it is; but of this I am certain, my first impression of Mrs.
Ludlow is correct. There is something wrong about her, and Ludlow is
ignorant of it. All I said to you that day is more fully confirmed in
my mind now. There is some dark secret in the past of her life, and the
secret in the present is, that she lives in that past, and does not
love her husband."

"Poor Geoffrey," said Annie, in whose eyes tears were standing--"poor
Geoffrey, and how dearly he loves her!"

"Yes," said Lord Caterham, "that's the worst of it; that, and his
unsuspiciousness,--he does not see what the most casual visitor to
their house sees; he does not perceive the weariness of spirit that
is the first thing, next to her beauty, which every one with common
perception must recognise. She takes no pains--she does not make the
least attempt to hide it. Why, to-day, when she recovered, when her
eyes opened--such gloomy eyes they were!--and Ludlow was kneeling
here,"--he pointed down beside the couch he lay on--"bending over
her,--did she look up at him?--did she meet the gaze fixed on her and
smile, or try to smile, to comfort and reassure him? Not she: I was
watching her; she just opened her eyes and let them wander round,
turned her head from him, and let it fall against the side of the couch
as if she never cared to lift it more."

"Poor Geoffrey!" said Annie again; this time with a sob.

"Yes, indeed, Annie," he went on; "I pity him, as much as I mistrust
her. He has never told you any thing about her antecedents, has
he?--and I suppose she has not been more communicative?"

"No," replied Annie; "I know nothing more than I have told you. She has
always been the same when I have seen her--trying, I thought, to seem
and be happier than at first, but very languid still. Geoffrey said
sometimes that she was rather out of spirits, but he seemed to think it
was only delicate health--and I hoped so too, though I could not help
fearing you were right in all you said that day. O, Arthur, isn't it
hard to think of Geoffrey loving her so much, and working so hard, and
getting so poor a return?"

"It is indeed, Annie," said Lord Caterham, with a strange wistful
look at her; "it is very hard. But I fear there are harder things
than that in store for Ludlow. He is not conscious of the extent of
his misfortune, if even he knows of its existence at all. I fear the
time is coming when he must know all there is to be known, whatever
it may be. That woman has a terrible secret in her life, Annie, and
the desperate weariness within her--how she let it show when she was
recovering from the swoon!--will force it into the light of day before
long. Her dreary quietude is the calm before the storm."

"I suppose I had better write this evening and inquire for her," said
Annie, after a pause; "and propose to call on her. It will gratify
Geoffrey."

"Do so," said Lord Caterham; "I will write to Ludlow myself."

Annie wrote her kind little letter, and duly received a reply. Mrs.
Ludlow was much better, but still rather weak, and did not feel quite
able to receive Miss Maurice's kindly-proffered visit just at present.

"I am very glad indeed of that, Annie," said Lord Caterham, to whom she
showed the note; "you cannot possibly do Ludlow any good, my child; and
something tells me that the less you see of her the better."

For some days following that on which the incident and the conversation
just recorded took place, Lord Caterham was unable to make his intended
request to Geoffrey Ludlow that the latter would call upon him, that
they might renew their interrupted conversation. One of those crises in
the long struggle which he maintained with disease and pain, in which
entire prostration produced a kind of truce, had come upon him; and
silence, complete inaction, and almost a suspension of his faculties,
marked its duration. The few members of the household who had access
to him were familiar with this phase of his condition; and on this
occasion it attracted no more notice than usual, except from Annie, who
remarked additional gravity in the manner of the physician, and who
perceived that the state of exhaustion of the patient lasted longer,
and when he rallied was succeeded by less complete restoration to even
his customary condition than before. She mentioned these results of
her close observation to Lady Beauport; but the countess paid very
little attention to the matter, assuring Annie that she knew Caterham
much too well to be frightened; that he would do very well if there
were no particular fuss made about him; and that all doctors were
alarmists, and said dreadful things to increase their own importance.
Annie would have called her attention to the extenuating circumstance
that Lord Caterham's medical attendant had not said any thing at all,
and that she had merely interpreted his looks; but Lady Beauport was so
anxious to tell her something illustrative of "poor Lionel's" beauty,
grace, daring, or dash--no matter which or what--that Annie found it
impossible to get in another word.

A day or two later, when Lord Caterham had rallied a good deal, and
was able to listen to Annie as she read to him, and while she was so
engaged, and he was looking at her with the concentrated earnestness
she remarked so frequently in his gaze of late,--Algy Barford was
announced. Algy had been constantly at the house to inquire for Lord
Caterham; but to-day Stephens had felt sure his master would be able
and glad to see Algy. Every body liked that genial soul, and servants
in particular--a wonderful test of popularity and its desert. He came
in very quietly, and he and Annie exchanged greetings cordially. She
liked him also. After he had spoken cheerily to Caterham, and called
him "dear old boy" at least a dozen times in as many sentences, the
conversation was chiefly maintained between him and Miss Maurice. She
did not think much talking would do for Arthur just then, and she made
no movement towards leaving the room, as was her usual custom. Algy was
a little subdued in tone and spirits: it was impossible even to him to
avoid seeing that Caterham was looking much more worn and pale than
usual; and he was a bad hand at disguising a painful impression, so
that he was less fluent and discursive than was his wont, and decidedly
ill at ease.

"How is your painting getting on, Miss Maurice?" he said, when a pause
became portentous.

"She has been neglecting it in my favour," said Lord Caterham. "She has
not even finished the portrait you admired so much, Algy."

"O!--ah!--'The Muse of Painting,' wasn't it? It is a pity not to finish
it, Miss Maurice. I think you would never succeed better than in that
case,--you admire the original so much."

"Yes," said Annie, with rather an uneasy glance towards Caterham, "she
is really beautiful. Arthur thinks her quite as wonderful as I do;
but I have not seen her lately--she has been ill. By the bye, Arthur,
Geoffrey Ludlow wrote to me yesterday inquiring for you; and only think
what he says!--'I hope my wife's illness did not upset Lord Caterham;
but I am afraid it did." Annie had taken a note from the pocket of her
apron, andread these words in a laughing voice.

"Hopes his wife's illness did not upset Lord Caterham!" repeated Algy
Barford in a tone of whimsical amazement. "What may that mean, dear
old boy? Why are you supposed to be upset by the peerless lady of the
unspeakable eyes and the unapproachable hair?"

Annie laughed, and Caterham smiled as he replied, "Only because Mrs.
Ludlow fainted here in this room very suddenly, and very 'dead,' one
day lately; and as Mrs. Ludlow's fainting was a terrible shock to
Ludlow, he concludes that it was also a terrible shock to me,--that's
all."

"Well, but," said Algy, apparently seized with an unaccountable access
of curiosity, "why did Mrs. Ludlow faint? and what brought her here to
faint in your room?"

"It was inconsiderate, I confess," said Caterham, still smiling; "but I
don't think she meant it. The fact is, I had asked Ludlow to come and
see me; and he brought his wife; and--and she has not been well, and
the drive was too much for her, I suppose. At all events, Ludlow and I
were talking, and not minding her particularly, when she said something
to me, and I turned round and saw her looking deadly pale, and before I
could answer her she fainted."

"Right off?" asked Algy, with an expression of dismay so ludicrous that
Annie could not resist it, and laughed outright.

"Right off, indeed," answered Caterham; "down went the photograph-book
on the floor, and down she would have gone if Ludlow had been a second
later, or an inch farther away! Yes; it was a desperate case, I assure
you. How glad you must feel that you wer'n't here, Algy,--eh? What
would you have done now? Resorted to the bellows, like the Artful
Dodger, or twisted her thumbs, according to the famous prescription of
Mrs. Gamp?"

But Algy did not laugh, much to Lord Caterham's amusement, who believed
him to be overwhelmed by the horrid picture his imagination conjured up
of the position of the two gentlemen under the circumstances.

"But," said Algy, with perfect gravity, "why did she faint? What did
she say? People don't tumble down in a dead faint because they're a
little tired, dear old boy--do they?"

"Perhaps not in general, Algy, but it looks like it in Mrs. Ludlow's
case. All I can tell you is that the faint was perfectly genuine and
particularly 'dead,' and that there was no cause for it, beyond the
drive and the fatigue of looking over the photographs in that book. I
am very tired of photographs myself, and I suppose most people are the
same, but I haven't quite come to fainting over them yet."

Algy Barford's stupefaction had quite a rousing effect on Lord
Caterham, and Annie Maurice liked him and his odd ways more than ever.
He made some trifling remark in reply to Caterham's speech, and took an
early opportunity of minutely inspecting the photograph-book which he
had mentioned.

"So," said Algy to himself, as he walked slowly down St. Barnabas
Square; "she goes to see Caterham, and faints at sight of dear
old Lionel's portrait, does she? Ah, it's all coming out, Algy;
and the best thing you can do, on the whole is to keep your own
counsel,--that's about it, dear old boy!"




CHAPTER XII.
GATHERING CLOUDS.


"My younger brother Lionel Brakespere;" those were Lord Caterham's
words. Margaret had heard them distinctly before consciousness left
her; there was no mistake, no confusion in her mind,--"my younger
brother Lionel Brakespere." All unconsciously, then, she had been for
months acquainted and in occasional communication with _his_ nearest
relatives! Only that day she had been in the house where he had lived;
had sat in a room all the associations of which were doubtless familiar
to him; had gazed upon the portrait of that face for the sight of which
her heart yearned with such a desperate restless longing!

Lord Caterham's brother! Brother to that poor sickly cripple, in whom
life's flame seemed not to shine, but to flicker merely,--her Lionel,
so bright and active and handsome! Son of that proud, haughty Lady
Beauport--yes, she could understand that; it was from his mother that
he inherited the cool bearing, the easy assurance, the never-absent
_hauteur_ which rendered him conspicuous even in a set of men where all
these qualities were prized and imitated. She had not had the smallest
suspicion the name she had known him by was assumed, or that he had
an earl for his father and a viscount for his brother. He had been
accustomed to speak of "the governor--a good old boy;" but his mother
and his brother he never mentioned.

They knew him there, knew him as she had never known him--free,
unrestrained, without that mask which, to a certain extent, he had
necessarily worn in her presence. In his intercourse with them he had
been untrammelled, with no lurking fear of what might happen some day;
no dodging demon at his side suggesting the end, the separation that he
knew must unavoidably come. And she had sat by, ignorant of all that
was consuming their hearts' cores, which, had she been able to discuss
it with them, would have proved to be her own deepest, most cherished,
most pertinacious source of thought. They?--who were they? How many of
them had known her Lionel?--how many of them had cared for him? Lady
Beauport and Lord Caterham, of course--but of the others? Geoffrey
himself had never known him. No; thank God for that! The comparison
between her old lover and her husband which she had so often drawn in
her own mind had never, could never have occurred to him. Geoffrey's
only connection with the Beauport family had been through Annie
Maurice. Ah! Annie Maurice!--the heiress now, whose sudden acquisition
of wealth and position they were all talking of--she had not seen
Lionel in the old days; and even if she had, it had been slight matter.
But Margaret's knowledge of the world was wide and ample, and it needed
very little experience--far less indeed than she had had--to show her
what might have been the effect had those two met under the existent
different circumstances.

For Margaret knew Lionel Brakespere, and read him like a book. All her
wild infatuation about him,--and her infatuation about him was wilder,
madder than it had ever been before--all the length of time since she
lost him,--all the long, weary, deadening separation, had not had the
smallest effect on her calm matured judgment. She knew that he was at
heart a scoundrel; she knew that he had no stability of heart, no depth
of affection. Had not her own experience of him taught her that? had
not the easy, indifferent, heartless way in which he had slipped out
of her knotted arms, leaving her to pine and fret and die, for all he
cared, shown her that? She had a thorough appreciation of his worship
of the rising sun,--she knew how perfectly he would have sold himself
for wealth and position; and yet she loved him, loved him through all!

This was her one consolation in the thought of his absence--his exile.
Had he been in England, how readily would he have fallen into those
machinations which she guessed his mother would have been only too
ready to plot! She knew he was thousands of miles away; and the thought
that she was freed from rivalry in a great measure reconciled her to
his absence. She could hold him in her heart of hearts as her own only
love; there was no one, in her thoughts, to dispute her power over him.
He was hers,--hers alone. And he had obtained an additional interest in
her eyes since she had discovered his identity. Now she would cultivate
that acquaintance with his people,--all unknowingly she should be able
to ally herself more closely to him. Casual questions would bring
direct answers--all bearing on the topic nearest her heart: without in
the smallest degree betraying her own secret, she would be able to feed
her own love-flame,--to hear of, to talk of him for whom every pulse of
her heart throbbed and yearned.

Did it never occur to her to catechise that heart, to endeavour
to portray vividly to herself the abyss on the brink of which she
was standing,--to ask herself whether she was prepared to abnegate
all sense of gratitude and duty, and to persevere in the course
which--not recklessly, not in a moment of passion, but calmly and
unswervingly--she had begun to tread? Yes; she had catechised herself
often, had ruthlessly probed her own heart, had acknowledged her
baseness and ingratitude, yet had found it impossible to struggle
against the pervading thrall. Worse than all, the sight of the man
to whom she owed every thing--comfort, respectability, almost life
itself,--the sight of him patiently labouring for her sake had become
oppressive to her; from calmly suffering it, she had come to loathe and
rebel against it. Ah, what a contrast between the present dull, dreary,
weary round and the bright old days of the past! To her, and to her
alone, was the time then dedicated. She would not then have been left
to sit alone, occupying her time as best she might, but every instant
would have been devoted to her; and let come what might on the morrow,
that time would have been spent in gaiety.

Was there no element of rest in the new era of her life? Did not the
child which lay upon her bosom bring some alleviating influence,
some new sphere for the absorption of her energies, some new hope,
in the indulgence in which she might have found at least temporary
forgetfulness of self? Alas, none! She had accepted her maternity
as she had accepted her wifehood,--calmly, quietly, without even a
pretence of that delicious folly, that pardonable self-satisfaction,
that silly, lovable, incontrovertible, charming pride which nearly
always accompanies the first experience of motherhood. Old Geoff was
mad about his firstborn--would leave his easel and come crooning and
peering up into the nursery,--would enter that sacred domain in a
half-sheepish manner, as though acknowledging his intrusion, but on
the score of parental love hoping for forgiveness,--would say a few
words of politeness to the nurse, who, inexorable to most men, was won
over by his genuine devotion and his evident humility,--would take
up the precious bundle, at length confided to him, in the awkwardest
manner, and would sit chirrupping to the little putty face, or swing
the shapeless mass to and fro, singing meanwhile the dismallest of
apparently Indian dirges, and all the while be experiencing the
most acute enjoyment. Geoff was by nature a heavy sleeper; but the
slightest cry of the child in the adjoining chamber would rouse him;
the inevitable infantile maladies expressed in the inevitable peevish
whine, so marvellously imitated by the toy-baby manufacturers, would
fill him with horror and fright, causing him to lie awake in an agony
of suspense, resting on his elbow and listening with nervous anxiety
for their cessation or their increase; while Margaret, wearied out in
mental anxiety, either slept tranquilly by his side or remained awake,
her eyes closed, her mind abstracted from all that was going on around
her, painfully occupied with retrospect of the past or anticipation of
the future. She did not care for her baby? No--plainly no! She accepted
its existence as she had accepted the other necessary corollaries of
her marriage; but the grand secret of maternal love was as far removed
from her as though she had never suffered her travail and brought a
man-child into the world. That she would do her duty by her baby she
had determined,--much in the same spirit that she had decided upon
the strict performance of her conjugal duty; but n question of love
influenced her. She did not dislike the child,--she was willing to
give herself up to the inconveniences which its nurture, its care, its
necessities occasioned her; but that was all.

If Margaret did not "make a fuss" with the child, there were plenty who
did; numberless people to come and call; numberless eyes to watch all
that happened,--to note the _insouciance_ which existed, instead of
the solicitude which should have prevailed; numberless tongues to talk
and chatter and gossip,--to express wonderment, to declare that their
owners "had never seen the like," and so on. Little Dr. Brandmm found
it more difficult than ever to get away from his lady-patients. After
all their own disorders had been discussed and remedies suggested, the
conversation was immediately turned to his patient at Elm Lodge; and
the little medico had to endure and answer a sharp fire of questions
of all kinds. Was it really a fine child? and was it true that Mrs.
Ludlow did not care about it? She was nursing it herself; yes: that
proved nothing; every decent woman would do that, rather than have one
of those dreadful creatures in the house--pints of porter every hour,
and doing nothing but sit down and abuse every one, and wanting so
much waiting on, as though they were duchesses. But was it true? Now,
doctor, you must know all these stories about her not caring for the
child? Caring!--well, you ought to know, with all your experience, what
the phrase meant. People would talk, you know, and that was what they
said; and all the doctor's other patients wanted to know was whether
it was really true. He did his best, the little doctor--for he was a
kindly-hearted little creature, and Margaret's beauty had had its usual
effect upon him,--he did his best to endow the facts with a roseate
hue; but he had a hard struggle, and only partially succeeded. If there
was one thing on which the ladies of Lowbar prided themselves, it was
on their fulfilment of their maternal duties; if there was one bond of
union between them, it was a sort of tacitly recognised consent to talk
of and listen to each other's discussion of their children, either in
existence or in prospect. It was noticed now that Margaret had always
shirked this inviting subject; and it was generally agreed that it
was no wonder, since common report averred that she had no pride in
her firstborn. A healthy child too, according to Dr. Brandram--a fine
healthy well-formed child. Why, even poor Mrs. Ricketts, whose baby had
spinal complaint, loved it, and made the most of it; and Mrs. Moule,
whose little Sarah had been blind from her birth, thought her offspring
unmatchable in the village, and nursed and tended it night and day. No
wonder that in a colony where these sentiments prevailed, Margaret's
reputation, hardly won, was speedily on the decline. It may be easily
imagined too that to old Mrs. Ludlow's observant eyes Margaret's want
of affection for her child did not pass unnoticed. By no one was the
child's advent into the world more anxiously expected than by its
grandmother, who indeed looked forward to deriving an increased social
status from the event, and who had already discussed it with her most
intimate friends. Mrs. Ludlow had been prepared for a great contest for
supremacy when the child was born--a period at which she intended to
assert her right of taking possession of her son's house and remaining
its mistress until her daughter-in-law was able to resume her position.
She had expected that in this act she would have received all the
passive opposition of which Margaret was capable--opposition with
which Geoff, being indoctrinated, might have been in a great measure
successful. But, to her intense surprise, no opposition was made.
Margaret received the announcement of Mrs. Ludlow's intended visit
and Mrs. Ludlow's actual arrival with perfect unconcern; and after
her baby had been born, and she had bestowed on it a very calm kiss,
she suffered it to be removed by her mother-in-law with an expression
which told even more of satisfaction than resignation. This behaviour
was so far different from any thing Mrs. Ludlow had expected, that the
old lady did not know what to make of it; and her daughter-in-law's
subsequent conduct increased her astonishment. This astonishment she at
first tried to keep to herself; but that was impossible. The feeling
gradually vented itself in sniffs and starts, in eyebrow-upliftings for
the edification of the nurse, in suggestive exclamations of "Well, my
dear?" and "Don't you think, my love?" and such old-lady phraseology.
Further than these little ebullitions Mrs. Ludlow made no sign until
her daughter came to see her; and then she could no longer contain
herself, but spoke out roundly.

"What it is, my dear, I can't tell for the life of me; but there's
something the matter with Margaret. She takes no more notice of the
child than if it were a chair or a table;--just a kiss, and how do you
do? and nothing more."

"It's because this is her first child, mother. She's strange to it, you
know, and--"

"Strange to it, my dear! Nonsense! Nothing of the sort. You're a young
girl, and can't understand these things. But not only that,--one would
think, at such a time, she would be more than ever fond of her husband.
I'm sure when Geoff was born I put up with more from your father than
ever I did before or since. His 'gander-month,' he called it; and he
used to go gandering about with a parcel of fellows, and come home
at all hours of the night--I used to hear him, though he did creep
upstairs with his boots off--but he never had cross word or look from
me."

"Well, but surely, mother, Geoff has not had either cross words or
cross looks from Margaret?"

"How provoking you are, Matilda! That seems to be my my fate, that no
one can understand me. I never said he had, did I? though it would be
a good thing for him if he had, poor fellow, I should say--any thing
better than what he has to endure now."

"Don't be angry at my worrying you, dear mother; but for Heaven's sake
tell me what you mean--what Geoff has to endure?"

"I am not angry, Til; though it seems to be my luck to be imagined
angry when there's nothing further from my thoughts. I'm not angry, my
dear--not in the least."

"What about Geoff, mother?"

"O, my dear, that's enough to make one's blood boil! Ive never said a
word to you before about this, Matilda--being one of those persons who
keep pretty much to themselves, though I see a great deal more than
people think for,--Ive never said a word to you before about this; for,
as I said to myself, what good could it do? But I'm perfectly certain
that there's something wrong with Margaret."

"How do you mean, mother? Something wrong!--is she ill?"

"Now, my dear Matilda, as though a woman would be likely to be well
when she's just had----. Bless my soul, the young women of the present
day are very silly! I wasn't speaking of her health, of course."

"Of what then, mother?" said Til, with resignation.

"Well, then, my dear, haven't you noticed,--but I suppose not: no one
appears to notice these things in the way that I do,--but you might
have noticed that for the last few weeks Margaret has seemed full of
thought, dreamy, and not caring for any thing that went on. If Ive
pointed out once to her about the mite of a cap that that Harriet
wears, and all her hair flying about her ears, and a crinoline as wide
as wide, Ive spoken a dozen times; but she's taken no notice; and now
the girl sets me at defiance, and tells me I'm not her mistress, and
never shall be I That's one thing; but there are plenty of others. I
was sure Geoffrey's linen could not be properly aired--the colds he
caught were so awful; and I spoke to Margaret about it, but she took no
notice; and yesterday, when the clothes came home from the laundress,
I felt them myself, and you might have wrung the water out of them in
pints. There are many other little things too that Ive noticed; and
I'll tell you what it is, Matilda--I'm certain she has got something on
her mind."

"O, I hope not, poor girl, poor dear Margaret!"

"Poor dear fiddlestick! What nonsense you talk, Matilda! If there's any
one to be pitied, it's Geoffrey, I should say; though what he could
have expected, taking a girl for his wife that he'd known so little of,
and not having any wedding-breakfast, or any thing regular, I don't
know!"

"But why is Geoffrey to be pitied, mother?"

"Why? Why, because his wife doesn't love him, my dear! Now you know it!"

"O, mother, for Heaven's sake don't say such a thing! You know
you're--you won't mind what I say, dearest mother,--but you're a little
apt to jump at conclusions, and--"

"O yes, I know, my dear; I know I'm a perfect fool!--I know that well
enough; and if I don't, it's not for want of being reminded of it by my
own daughter. But I know I'm right in what I say; and what's more, my
son shall know it before long."

"O, mother, you would never tell Geoff!--you would never--"

"If a man's eyes are not open naturally, my dear, they must be opened
for him. I shall tell Geoffrey my opinion about his wife; and let him
know it in pretty plain terms, I can tell you!"




CHAPTER XIII.
MR. STOMPFF'S DOUBTS.


It is not to be supposed that because Geoffrey Ludlow's married life
offered no very striking points for criticism, it was left uncriticised
by his friends. Those, be they married or single, quiet or boisterous,
convivial or misanthropical, who do not receive discussion at the
hands of their acquaintance, are very few in number. There can be
nothing more charmingly delightful, nothing more characteristic of
this chivalrous age, than the manner in which friends speak of each
other behind, as the phrase goes, "each other's backs." To two sets
of people, having a third for common acquaintance, this pastime
affords almost inexpressible delight, more especially if the two
sets present have been made acquainted with each other through the
medium of the absent third. It is rather dangerous ground at first,
because neither of the two sets present can tell whether the other may
not have some absurd scruples as to the propriety of canvassing the
merits or demerits of their absent friend; but a little tact, a little
cautious dealing with the subject, a few advances made as tentatively
as those of the elephant on the timber bridge, soon show that the
discussion will not be merely endured, but will be heartily welcome;
and straightway it is plunged into with the deepest interest. How they
manage to keep that carriage,--that's what we've always wanted to know!
O, you've noticed it too. Well, is it rouge, or enamel, or what? That's
what Ive always said to George--how that poor man can go on slaving
and slaving as he does, and all the money going in finery for her, is
what I can't understand! What a compliment to our opinion of our powers
of character-reading to find all our notions indorsed by others, more
especially when those notions have been derogatory to those with whom
we have for some time been living on terms of intimacy! To be sure
there is another side to the medal, when we find that those who have
known our dear absents a much shorter time than we have, claim credit
for being far more sharp-sighted than we. They marked at once, they
say, all the shortcomings which we had taken so long to discover; and
they lead the chorus of depreciation, in which we only take inferior
parts.

It was not often that Mr. Stompff busied himself with the domestic
concerns of the artists who formed his staff: It was generally quite
enough for him provided they "came up to time," as he called it, did
their work well, and did not want too much money in advance. But in
Geoffrey Ludlow Mr. Stompff took a special interest, regarding him as
a man out of whom, if properly worked, great profit and fame were to
be made. He had paid several visits to Elm Lodge, ostensibly for the
purpose of seeing how the Brighton-Esplanade picture was progressing;
but with this he combined the opportunity of inspecting the domestic
arrangements and noting whether they were such as were likely to "suit
his book." No man more readily understood the dispiriting influence of
a slattern wife or a disorderly home upon the work that was to be done.

"Ive seen 'em," he used to say, "chock-full of promise, and all go to
the bad just because of cold meat for dinner, or the house full of
steam on washing-days. They'd rush away, and go off--public-house or
any where--and then goodbye to my work and the money theyve had of me!
What I like best 's a regular expensive woman,--fond of her dress and
going about, and all that,--who makes a man stick to it to keep her
going. That's when you get the work out of a cove. So I'll just look-up
Ludlow, and see how he's goin' on."

He did "look-up" Ludlow several times; and his sharp eyes soon
discovered a great deal of which he did not approve, and which did not
seem likely to coincide with his notions of business. He had taken a
dislike to Margaret the first time he had seen her, and his dislike
increased on each subsequent visit. There was something about her which
he could scarcely explain to himself,--a "cold stand-offishness,"
he phrased it,--which he hated. Margaret thought Mr. Stompff simply
detestable, and spite of Geoff's half-hints, took no pains to disguise
her feelings. Not that she was ever demonstrative--it was her calm
quiet _insouciance_ that roused Mr. Stompff's wrath. "I can't tell what
to make of that woman," he would say; "she never gives Ludlow a word
of encouragement, but sits there yea-nay, by G--, lookin' as though
she didn't know he was grindin' his fingers off to earn money for her!
She don't seem to take any notice of what's goin' on; but sits moonin'
there, lookin' straight before her, and treatin'me and her husband
as if we was dirt! Who's she, I should like to know, to give herself
airs and graces like that? It was all very well when Ludlow wanted a
model for that Skyllar picture; but there's no occasion for a man to
marry his models, that Ive heard of--leastways it ain't generally done.
She don't seem to know that it's from me all the money comes, by the
way she treats me. She don't seem to think that that pretty house and
furniture, and all the nice things which she has, are paid for by my
money. She's never a decent word to say to me. Damme, I hate her!"

And Mr. Stompff did not content himself by exploding in this manner.
He let off this safety-valve of self-communion to keep himself from
boiling over; but all the cause for his wrath still remained, and he
referred to it, mentally, not unfrequently. He knew that Geoffrey
Ludlow was one of his greatest cards; he knew that he had obtained a
certain mastery over him at a very cheap rate; but he also knew that
Ludlow was a man impressible to the highest degree, and that if he
were preoccupied or annoyed, say by domestic trouble for instance--and
there was nothing in a man of Geoffrey's temperament more destructive
to work than domestic trouble--he would be incapable of earning his
money properly. Why should there be domestic trouble at Elm Lodge?
Mr. Stompff had his ears wider open than most men, and had heard a
certain something which had been rumoured about at the time of Geoff's
marriage; but he had not paid much attention to it. There were many
_ateliers_ which he was in the habit of frequenting,--and the occupants
of which turned out capital pictures for him,--where he saw ladies
playing the hostess's part whose names had probably never appeared in a
marriage-register; but that was nothing to him. Most of them accepted
Mr. Stompff's compliments, and made themselves agreeable to the great
_entrepreneur_, and laughed at his coarse story and his full-flavoured
joke, and were only too delighted to get them, in conjunction with
his cheque. But this wife of Ludlow's was a woman of a totally
different stamp; and her treatment of him so worried Mr. Stompff that
he determined to find out more about her. Charley Potts was the most
intimate friend of Ludlow's available to Mr. Stompff, and to Charley
Potts Mr. Stompff determined to go.

It chanced that on the morning which the great picture-dealer had
selected to pay his visit, Mr. Bowker had strolled into Charley
Potts's rooms, and found their proprietor hard at work. Mr. Bowker's
object, though prompted by very different motives from those of Mr.
Stompff, was identically the same. Old William had heard some of those
irrepressible rumours which, originating no one knows how, gather
force and strength from circulation, and had come to talk to Mr. Potts
about them. "Dora in the Cornfield" had progressed so admirably since
Bowker's last visit, that after filling his pipe he stood motionless
before it, with the unlighted lucifer in his hand.

"'Pon my soul, I think you'll do something some day, young 'un!" were
his cheering words. "That's the real thing! Wonderful improvement since
I saw it; got rid of the hay-headed child, and come out no end. Don't
think the sunlight's _quite_ that colour, is it? and perhaps no reason
why those reaping-parties shouldn't have noses and mouths as well as
eyes and chins. Don't try scamping, Charley,--you're not big enough for
that; wait till you're made an R.A., and then the critics will point
out the beauties of your outline; at present you must copy nature. And
now"--lighting his pipe--"how are you?"

"O, I'm all right, William," responded Mr. Potts; "all right, and
working like any number of steam-engines. Orson, sir--if I may so
describe myself--Orson is endowed with reason. Orson has begun to find
out that life is different from what he imagined, and has gone in for
something different."

"Ha!" said old Bowker, eyeing the young man kindly as he puffed at his
pipe; "it's not very difficult to discover what's up now, then.

"O, I don't want to make any mystery about it," said Charley. "The
simple fact is, that having seen the folly of what is called a life of
pleasure--"

"At thirty years of age!" interrupted Bowker.

"Well, what then?--at thirty years of age! One does not want to be a
Methuselah like you before one discovers the vanity, the emptiness, the
heartlessness of life."

"Of course not, Charley?" said Bowker, greatly delighted. "Go on!"

"And I intend to--to----to cut it, Bowker, and go in for something
better. It's something, sir, to have something to work for. I have an
end in view, to--"

"Well, but you've always had that. I thought that your ideas were
concentrated on being President of the Academy, and returning thanks
for your health, proposed by the Prime Minister."

"Bowker, you are a ribald. No, sir; there is a spur to my ambition
far beyond the flabby presidentship of that collection of dreary old
parties--"

"Yes, I know and the spur is marked with the initials M.L. That it,
Master Charley?"

"It may be, Bowker, and it may be not. Meanwhile, my newly-formed but
unalterable resolutions do not forbid the discussion of malt-liquor,
and Caroline yet understands the signal-code."

With these words, Mr. Potts proceeded to make his ordinary pantomimic
demonstration at the window, and, when the beer arrived, condescended
to give up work for a time; and, lighting a pipe and seating himself in
his easy-chair, he entered into conversation with his friend.

"And suppose the spur were marked with M.L.," said he, reverting to the
former topic, after a little desultory conversation,--"suppose the spur
were marked with M. L., what would be the harm of that, Bowker?"

"Harm!" growled old Bowker; "you don't imagine when you begin to speak
seriously of such a thing that I, of all people, should say there was
any harm in it? I thought you were chaffing at first, and so I chaffed;
but I'm about the last man in the world to dissuade a young fellow with
the intention and the power to work from settling himself in life with
a girl such as I know this one to be. So far as I have seen of her, she
has all our Geoff's sweetness of disposition combined with an amount of
common-sense and knowledge of the world which Geoff never had and never
will have."

"She's A1, old boy, and that's all about it; but we're going a-head
rather too quickly. Ive not said a word to her yet, and I scarcely know
whether--"

"Nonsense, Chancy! A man who is worth any thing knows right well
whether a woman cares for him or not; and knows in what way she cares
for him too. On this point I go back to my old ground again, and say
that Geoffrey Ludlow's sister could not be dishonest enough to flirt
and flatter and play the deuce with a man. There's too much honesty
about the family; and you would be in a very different state of mind,
young fellow, if you thought there was any doubt as to how your remarks
would be received in that quarter, when you chose to speak."

Mr. Potts smiled, and pulled his moustache, triumphantly now, not
doubtfully as was his wont. Then his face settled into seriousness, as
he said:

"You're right, William, I think. I hope so, please God! Ive never said
so much as this to any one, as you may guess; but I love that girl with
all my heart and soul, and if only the dealers will stick by me, I
intend to tell her that same very shortly. But what you just said has
turned my thoughts into another channel--our Geoff."

"Well, what about our Geoff?" asked Mr. Bowker, twisting round on his
seat, and looking hard at his friend.

"You must have noticed, Bowker--probably much more than I have, for
you're more accustomed to that sort of thing--that our Geoff's not
right lately. There's something wrong up there at Elm Lodge, that I
can't make out,--that I daren't think, of. You remember our talks both
before and after Geoff's marriage? Well, I must hark back upon them.
He's not happy, William--there, you have the long and the short of it!
I'm a bad hand at explaining these matters, but Geoff's not happy. He's
made a mistake; and though I don't think he sees it himself--or if he
does, he would die sooner than own it--there can be no doubt about it.
Mrs. Ludlow does not understand,--does not appreciate him; and our
Geoff's no more like our crony of old days than I'm like Raffaelle.
There, that's it, as clear as I can put it!"

Bowker waited for an instant, and then he said:

"Ive tried hard enough, God knows!--hard enough to prevent myself from
thinking as you think, Charley; but all to no purpose. There is a cloud
over Geoff's life, and I fear it springs from----Some one knocking.
Keep 'em out, if possible; we don't want any one boring in here just
now."

But the knocker, whoever he was, seemed by no means inclined to be
kept out. He not only obeyed the regular directions and "tugged the
trotter," but he afterwards gave three distinct and loud raps with his
fist on the door, which was the signal to the initiated; and when the
door was opened and the knocker appeared in the person of Mr. Stompff,
further resistance was useless.

The great man entered the room with a light and airy step and a light
and airy address. "Well, Charley, how are you? Come to give you a
look-up, you see. Hallo! who's this?--Mr. Bowker, how do you do,
sir?" in a tone which meant, "What the devil do you do here?"--"how
are you, sir?--Well, Charley, what are you at? Going to the bad, you
villain,--going to the bad!"

"Not quite that, I hope, Mr. Stompff--"

"Working for Caniche, eh? That's the same thing, just the same thing!
Ive heard all about it. You've let that miserable Belgian get old of
you, eh? This is it, is it? Gal in a cornfield and mowers? what you
call 'em--reapers? That's it! reapers, and a little child. Some story,
eh? O, ah! Tennyson; I don't know him--not bad, by Jove! not half bad
it's Caniche's?"

"Yes; that's Caniche's commission."

"Give you fifty more than he's given to make it over to me. You won't,
of course not, you silly feller! it's only my joke. But look here,
mind you give me the refusal of the next. I can do better for you than
Caniche. He's a poor paltry chap. I go in for great things,--that's my
way, Mr. Bowker."

"Is it?" growled old William over his pipe; "then you go in also for
great pay, Mr. Stompff, I suppose?"

"Ask your friend Ludlow about that. He'll tell you whether I pay
handsomely or not, sir.--By the way, how is your friend Ludlow Potts?"

"He's all right, I believe."

"And his wife, how's she?"

There was something in his tone and in the expression of his eyes which
made Mr. Potts say:

"Mrs. Ludlow is going on very well, I believe," in a tone of
seriousness very unusual with Charley.

"That's all right," said Mr. Stompff. "Going on very well, eh? Every
body will be glad to hear that, and Ludlow in partickler. Going on very
well--in a regular domestic quiet manner, eh? That's all right. Hasn't
been much used to the domestic style before her marriage, I should
think, eh?"

"Whatever you may think, I should advise you not to say much, Mr.
Stompff," said Bowker. "I don't think Geoff would much like hearing
those things said of his wife; I'm sure I should not of mine."

"N-no; but you have not a wife; I--I mean living, Mr. Bowker," said
Stompff with a sneer.

William Bowker swallowed down a great lump rising in his throat, and
forcibly restrained the involuntary clenching of his fists, as he
replied, "No, you're right there, Mr. Stompff; but still I repeat my
advice."

"O, I shall say nothing. People will talk, you know, Whether I'm silent
or not, and people will want to know who Mrs. Ludlow was before she
married Ludlow, and why she's so silent and preoccupied, and why she
never goes into society, and why she faints away when she looks at
photograph-books, and so on. But I didn't come here to talk of Mrs.
Ludlow. Now, Potts, _mon brave_, let us discuss business."

When the great man took his departure, after proposing handsome terms
to Charley Potts for a three years' engagement, Bowker said; "There's
more in what we were saying when that blatant ruffian came in than I
thought for, Charley. The news of Geoff's domestic trouble has got
wind."

"I'm afraid so. But what did Stompff mean about the fainting and the
photograph-book?"

"God knows! probably an invention and a lie. But when people like
Stompff begin to talk in that way, it's bad for those they talk about,
depend upon it."




CHAPTER XIV.
THREATENING.


Geoffrey Ludlow felt considerable anxiety about his wife after the day
of their inauspicious visit to Lord Caterham; and as anxiety was quite
a foreign element in Geoff's placid temperament, it did not sit well
upon him, and it rendered him idle and desultory. He could not make
up his mind as to the true source of his anxiety,--the real spring
of his discomfort. Margaret's health was very good; her naturally
fine physique shook off illness easily and rapidly, and her rare
beauty was once more irradiated with the glow of health and strength.
Yet Geoffrey's inquietude was not lessened. He loved this strange
woman--this woman who compelled admiration, indeed, from others, but
won love only from him with passionate and intense devotion. But he
was ill at ease with her, and he began to acknowledge to himself that
it was so. He knew, he felt, that there was some new element, some
impalpable power in their lives, which was putting asunder those who
had never been very closely united in real bonds of sympathy and
confidence, with an irresistible, remorseless hand,--invisible and sure
as that of Death.

There are no words to tell what this good fellow suffered in his
kindly, unselfish, simple way, as day by day the conviction forced
itself upon him that the woman he had so loved, the woman for whom he
lived, and worked, and thought, and hoped, was more and more divided
from him by some barrier--all the more impassable because he could
not point to it and demand an explanation of its presence, or utter a
plea for its removal. He would sit in his painting-room quite idle,
and with a moody brow--unlike the Geoff Ludlow of old times--and think
and puzzle himself about his wife; he would sometimes work, in short
desultory fits of industry, desperately, as though putting thought
from him by main force; and then he would meet Margaret, at meals or
other times of association, with so indifferent an assumption of being
just as usual, that it was wonderful she did not notice the change in
her husband. But Geoffrey did not interest her, and Margaret did not
observe him with any curiosity. The state of mind of this ill-assorted
pair at this time was very curious, had there been any one to
understand and analyse it.

"What can it be?" Geoffrey would ask himself. "I cannot make it out.
She does not take any interest in any thing. I thought all women loved
their children at least, and the coldest warmed to their infants; but
she does not."

Geoffrey had ceased to wonder at Margaret's coldness to him. She had
always been cold, and latterly her reserve and silence had increased.
She made no effort to hide the _ennui_ which wholly possessed her; she
made no attempt to simulate the interest in his occupations which she
had never felt in more than a lukewarm degree. His perceptions were not
very quick; but when he did see a thing, he was apt to understand and
reason upon it, and he reasoned upon this now; he pondered upon it and
upon his marriage, and he wondered when he remembered the joy and hope
with which he had entered upon the pretty, comfortable new home and the
quiet industrious life. What had come to it all? What had changed it,
and yet left it the same? He had not failed in any duty to this woman;
he had not given her less, but more than he had promised; for he was
much better off than he had hoped to be, and she had the command of
every shilling he earned. Never had an unkind word, a negligent act,
a failure in the tenderest of household kindnesses, recorded itself
in her memory against this man, who was her preserver, her protector,
her husband. Surprise, trouble, vague apprehension, above all, the
bewilderment of inexplicable wrong, were in Geoffrey's mind; but not a
touch of bitterness against her. He remembered the story she had told
him, and the promise he had pledged to her, and his generous heart
rested in the assurance she had then given him, and sought no farther.
His was not the nature which would count up the items in the bargain
between them, and set down the large balance that really existed on
his side. What had he given her? To answer this question aright,
knowledge must have been had of her whole life and all its depths of
suffering, of actual physical want sounded; all her love of luxury,
all her incapacity to bear privation, all her indolence, her artistic
sensuousness, her cultivated power of enjoyment, must have been known
and weighed.

He had given her ease, security, respectability,--a name, a home
which was comfortable to the verge of luxury, which included all
that any woman could reasonably desire who had voluntarily accepted
a life upon the scale which it implied--a home to which his industry
and his love constantly added new comforts and decorations. Geoffrey
never thought of these things,--he did not appraise them; nor did
his generous heart dwell upon the sacrifice he had made, the risk
he had incurred, in short, upon the extraordinary imprudence of
his marriage. His nature was too magnanimous, and not sufficiently
practical for such considerations he thought of nothing but the love
he had given her,--the love she did not seem to understand, to care
for,--and he wondered, in his simple way, why such love, so deep and
quiet, so satisfied with home and her, could not make her more happy
and cheerful. Poor Geoffrey, calm and peace were the conditions of
life in which alone he could find or imagine happiness, and they were
just those which were detestable to Margaret. It is possible that,
had she been caught from the depths of her degradation and despair
in the grasp of a nature stronger and more violent than her own, the
old thrall might have fallen from her, and she might have been swayed
by the mingled charm and authority, the fierceness, the delight, the
fear of a great passion, so preoccupying that she would have had no
time for retrospect, so entrancing that she would have been forced to
live in the present. But the hand that had raised her from the abyss
was only gentle and tender; it lacked the force which would have wrung
submission from her afterwards, the power to imply that it could wound
as well as caress,--and its touch had no potency for that perverted
nature. What had she given him? Just her beauty,--nothing more. She
was his wife, and she cared for him no more than she cared for the
furniture of her rooms and the trinkets in her jewel-case (poor things,
she thought, which once would have been unworthy of her wearing, but
chosen with all Geoff's humble science, and bought with the guerdon of
many a day of Geoff's hard work); he was her child's father; and the
child bored her a little more unendurably than all the rest. Indeed,
all the rest was quiet--which at least was something--but the child was
not quiet; and Geoffrey made a fuss about it--a circumstance which lent
a touch of impatience to her distaste. He talked about the infant,--he
wanted to know if she thought her boy's eyes were like her own? and
whether she would like him to be an artist like his father? He talked
about the boy's eyes, and Lionel's electric glances were haunting her
troubled soul; he babbled about the boy's future, when she was enduring
the tortures of Tantalus in her terrible longing for the past.

The child throve, and Geoffrey loved the little creature with a
vigilant affection curious and beautiful to see. When he felt that the
hopes he had built upon the infant, as a new and strong tie between
himself and Margaret, as a fresh source of interest, something to
awaken her from her torpidity, were not destined to be realised, he
turned, in the intensity of his disappointment and discomfiture, to the
child itself; and sought--unconsciously it may be, at least unavowedly
to himself--to fill up the void in his heart, to restore the warmth to
his home, through the innocent medium of the baby. The child did not
resemble his mother, even after the difficult-to-be-discovered fashion
of likenesses in babyhood. When he opened his eyes, in the solemn and
deliberate way in which young children look out upon the mysterious
world, they did not disclose violet tints nor oval-shaped heavy lids;
they were big brown eyes, like Geoffrey's, and the soft rings of downy
hair, which the nurse declared to be "the beautifullest curls she ever
see on an 'ead at 'is age," were not golden but dark brown. Geoffrey
held numerous conferences with the nurse about her charge, and might be
found many times in the day making his way with elaborate caution, and
the noiseless step which is a characteristic of big men, up the nursery
stair; and seen by the curious, had there been any to come there,
gazing at the infant lying in his cradle, or on his nurse's knee, with
a wistful rueful expression, and his hands buried in the pockets of his
painting-coat.

He never found Margaret in the nursery on any of these occasions, and
she never evinced the slightest interest in the nursery government,
or responded to any of his ebullitions of feeling on the subject. Of
course the servants were not slow to notice the indifference of the
mother, and to comment upon it with unreserved severity. Margaret
was not a favourite at any time--"master" being perfection in their
minds--and her cold reserve and apathy impressing the domestics, who
could not conceive that "a good home" could be despicable in even the
most beautiful eyes, very unfavourably.

Margaret was arraigned before the domestic tribunal, unknown to
herself; though, had she known it, the circumstance would have made no
impression upon her. Her cold pride would at all times have rendered
her indifferent to opinion; and now that indifference, weariness,
and distaste had entire possession of her, she had not even cared to
hide the dreary truth from her husband's mother and sister. What had
become of her resolutions with regard to them? Where were her first
impulses of gratitude? Gone--sunk in the Dead Sea of her overmastering
passion--utterly lost beneath the tide of her conscienceless
selfishness. She could not strive, she could not pretend, she could not
play any part longer. Why should she, to whom such talk was twaddle
of the trashiest description, try to appear interested because she
had given birth to Geoffrey's child? Well, there was the child; let
them make much of it, and talk nonsense to it and about it. What was
Geoffrey's child to her, or Geoffrey's mother, or--she had gone very
near to saying Geoffrey himself either, but something dimly resembling
a pang of conscience stopped her. He was very good, very honest, very
kind; and she was almost sorry for him,--as nearly sorry as she could
be for any but herself; and then the tide of that sorrow for herself
dashed over and swept all these trifling scraps of vague regret, of
perhaps elementary remorse, away on its tumultuous waves.

She was cursed with such keen memory, she was haunted with such a
terrible sense of contrast! Had it been more dreadful, more agonising,
when she was a wanderer in the pitiless streets,--starving, homeless,
dying of sheer want; when the bodily suffering she endured was so great
that it benumbed her mind, and deadened it to all but craving for food
and shelter? The time of this terrible experience lay so far in the
past now, that she had begun to forget the reality of the torture;
she had begun to undervalue its intensity, and to think that she had
purchased rescue too dear. Too dead--she, whose glance could not fall
around her without resting on some memorial of the love she had won;
she, whose daily life was sheltered from every breath of ill and care!
She had always been weary; now she was growing enraged. Like the
imprisoned creatures of the desert and the jungle, in whom long spells
of graceful apathetic repose are succeeded by fierce fits of rebellious
struggle, she strove and fought with the gentle merciful fate which
had brought her into this pretty prison and supplied her with dainty
daily fare. It had all been bearable--at least until now--and she had
borne it well, and never turned upon her keeper. But the wind had set
from the lands of sun and fragrance, from the desert whose sands were
golden, whose wells were the sparkling waters of life and love, and she
had scented the old perfume in the breeze. All the former instincts
revived, the slight chain of formal uncongenial habit fell away, and
in the strength of passion and beauty she rebelled against her fate.
Perhaps the man she loved and longed for, as the sick long for health
or the shipwrecked for a sail, had never seen her look so beautiful
as she looked one day, when, after Mrs. Ludlow and her daughter, who
had come to lunch at Elm Lodge, had gone away, and Geoffrey, puzzled
and mortified more than ever, had returned to his painting-room, she
stood by the long window of the drawing-room, gazing out over the trim
little space which bloomed with flowers and glowed in the sunshine,
with eyes which seemed indeed as if their vision cleft distance and
disdained space. Her cheeks, usually colourless, were touched with
a faint rose-tinge; and the hurry and excitement of her thoughts
seemed to pervade her whole frame, which was lighted by the rays of
the afternoon sun, from the rich coils of her red-gold hair to the
restless foot which tapped the carpet angrily. As she stood, varying
expressions flitted over her face like clouds; but in them all there
was an intensity new to it, and which would have told an observer that
the woman who looked so was taking a resolution.

Suddenly she lifted her hands above her head to the full extent of her
arms, then tore the twisted fingers asunder with a moan, as if of pain
or hunger, and letting them fall by her side, flung herself into a
chair.

"Have you heard any thing of Lord Caterham lately?" asked Mrs. Geoffrey
Ludlow of her husband, a few days after his mother's visit, just as
Geoffrey, having breakfasted, was about to retire to his painting-room.
She asked the question in the most careless possible manner, and
without removing her eyes from the _Times_, which she was reading; but
Geoffrey was pleased that she should have asked it at all,--any sign of
interest on Margaret's part in any one for whom he cared being still
precious to Geoffrey, and becoming rarer and more rare.

"No, dear," he replied; "Annie said she would write as soon as Lord
Caterham should be well enough to see me. I suppose I may tell her,
then, that she may come and see you. You are quite well now, Margaret?"

"O yes, quite well," she replied; and then added, with the faintest
flicker of colour on her cheek, "Lord Caterham's brother is not at
home, I believe. Have you ever seen him?"

"Captain Brakespere? No, net I. There's something wrong about him. I
don't understand the story, but Annie just mentioned that Lord Caterham
had been in great distress about him. Well, Margaret, I'm off now to
the Esplanade."

He looked wistfully at her; but she did not speak or lift up her eyes,
and he went out of the room.

If there was trouble of the silent and secret kind in Geoffrey's
home, there was also discontent of the outspoken sort at his mother's
cheerful house in Brompton.

Mrs. Ludlow was wholly unprepared to find that Margaret cared so little
for her child. It was with no small indignation that she commented upon
Margaret's demeanour, as she and her daughter sat together; and deeper
than her indignation lay her anxiety, and a vague apprehension of evil
in store for her darling son.

"She is sulky and discontented,--that's what she is," repeated Mrs.
Ludlow; "and what she can want or wish for that she has not got passes
my comprehension."

Miss Ludlow said that perhaps it was only accidental. She would be
sorry to think Margaret had such faults of temper to any confirmed
degree. It would be dreadful for dear old Geoff, who was so
sweet-tempered himself, and who never could understand unamiable
persons. But she added she did not think Geoff perceived it. She was
sure he would never think that Margaret was not fond of the child.

"O yes, he does perceive it," said Mrs. Ludlow; "I can see that very
plainly; I saw it in his face when he came up to the nursery with us,
and she never offered to stir; and did you not notice, Til, that when I
asked her what the doctor said about vaccinating baby, she looked at me
quite vacantly, and Geoffrey answered? Ah, no; he knows it well enough,
poor fellow; and how ever he is to get through life with a woman with a
bad temper and no heart, I'm sure I can't tell."

Geoffrey had never relaxed in his attention to his mother. In the
early days of his marriage, when he had persuaded himself that there
was nothing in the least disappointing in Margaret's manner, and that
he was perfectly happy; in those days to which he looked back now, in
the chill dread and discomfort of the present, as to vanished hours
of Paradise, he had visited his mother, sent her presents, written
short cheery notes to her and Til, and done every thing in his power
to lesson their sense of the inevitable separation which his marriage
had brought about. His love and his happiness had had no hardening
or narrowing effect upon Geoffrey Ludlow. They had quickened his
perceptions and added delicacy to his sympathies. But there was a
difference now. Geoffrey felt unwilling to see his mother and sister;
he felt that their perception of Margaret's conduct had been distinct,
and their disapproval complete; and he shrank from an interview which
must include avoidance of the subject occupying all their minds. He
would not willingly have had Margaret blamed, even by implication by
others; though there was something more like anger than he had ever
felt or thought he could feel towards her in his gentle heart, as he
yielded to the conviction that she had no love for her child.

Thus it happened that Geoffrey did not see his mother and sister for a
week just at this time, during which interval there was no change in
the state of affairs at home. He wrote, indeed, to Til, and made cheery
mention of the boy and of his picture, which was getting on splendidly,
and at which he was working so hard that he could not manage to get
so far as Brompton for a day or two yet, but would go very soon; and
Margaret sent her love. So Geoffrey made out a letter which might have
been written by a blundering schoolboy--a letter over which his mother
bent sad and boding looks, and Til had a "good cry." Though Geoffrey
had not visited them lately, the ladies had not been altogether
deprived of the society of men and artists. The constancy with which
Charley Potts paid his respects was quite remarkable; and it fell
out that, seeing Matilda rather out of spirits, and discerning that
something was going wrong, Charley very soon extracted from Til what
that something was, and they proceeded to exchange confidences on the
subject of Geoffrey and his beautiful wife. Charley informed Matilda
that none of "our fellows" who had been introduced to Mrs. Geoffrey
liked her; and as for Stompff, "he hates her all out, you know," said
the plain-spoken Charley; "but I don't mind that, for she's a lady, and
Stompff--he--he's a beast, you know."

When Geoffrey could no longer defer a visit to his mother without the
risk of bringing about questions and expostulations which must make the
state of things at home openly known, and place him in the embarrassing
position of being obliged to avow an estrangement for which he could
assign no cause, he went to Brompton. The visit was not a pleasant
one, though the mother and sister were even more demonstrative in
their affectionate greeting than usual, and though they studiously
avoided any reference to the subject in their minds and in his. But
this was just what he dreaded; they did studiously avoid it; and by
doing so they confirmed all his suspicions, they realised all his
fears. Geoffrey did not even then say to himself that his marriage was
a mistake, and his mother and sister had discovered it; but had his
thoughts, his misgivings been put into words, they must have taken
some such shape. They talked energetically about the child, and asked
Geoff all sorts of feminine questions, which it would have affected
a male listener rather oddly to have heard Geoff answer with perfect
seriousness, and a thorough acquaintance with details. He had several
little bits of news for them; how Mr. Stompff, reminiscent of his
rather obtrusive promise, had sent the clumsiest, stumpiest, ugliest
lump of a silver mug procurable in London as a present to the child,
but had not presented himself at Elm Lodge; how Miss Maurice had been
so delighted with the little fellow, and had given him a beautiful
embroidered frock, and on Lord Caterham's behalf endowed him with a
salver "big enough to serve himself up upon, mother," said Geoff, with
his jolly laugh: "I put him on it, and carried him round the room for
Annie to see."

Beyond the inevitable inquiries, there was no mention made of Margaret;
but when his mother kissed him at parting, and when Til lingered a
moment longer than usual, with her arms round his neck, at the door,
Geoffrey felt the depth and bitterness of the trouble that had come
into his life more keenly, more chillingly than he had felt it yet.

"This shall not last," he said, as he walked slowly towards home, his
head bent downwards, and all his features clouded with the gloom that
had settled upon him. "This shall not last any longer. I have done all
I can; if she is unhappy, it is not my fault; but I must know why. I
cannot bear it; I have not deserved it. I will keep silence no longer.
She must explain what it means."




CHAPTER XV.
LADY BEAUPORT'S PLOT COLLAPSES.


Although the flame of life, at its best a feeble flicker, now
brightened by a little gust of hope, now deadened by an access of
despair,--had begun steadily to lessen in Lord Caterham's breast,
and he felt, with that consciousness which never betrays, that his
interest in this world, small as it had been, was daily growing less,
he had determined to prevent the execution of one act which he knew
would be terribly antagonistic to the welfare of her whom his heart
held dearest. We, fighting the daily battle of life, going forth each
morning to the encounter, returning each eve with fresh dints on our
harness, new notches in our swords, and able to reckon up the cost and
the advantages gained by the day's combat, are unable to appreciate the
anxieties and heart-burnings, the longings and the patience of those
whom we leave behind us as a _corps de reserve_, apparently inactive,
but in reality partaking of all the worst of the contest without the
excitement of sharing it. The conflict that was raging amongst the
Beauport family was patent to Caterham; he saw the positions taken
up by the contending parties, had his own shrewd opinion as to their
being tenable or the reverse, calmly criticised the various points of
strategy, and laid his plans accordingly. In this it was an advantage
to him that he was out of the din and the shouting and the turmoil of
the battle; nobody thought of him, any more than any one in the middle
of an action thinks of the minister in his office at home, by whom the
despatches are written, and who in reality pulls the strings by which
the man in scarlet uniform and gold-laced cocked-hat is guided, and to
whom he is responsible. Lord Caterham was physically unfitted for the
conduct of strategic operations, but he was mentally qualified for the
exercise of diplomacy in the highest degree; and diplomacy was required
in the present juncture.

In his solitary hours he had been accustomed to recal his past life in
its apparently insignificant, but to him important ramifications;--the
red south wall is the world to the snail that has never known
other resting-place;--and in these days of illness and languor he
reverted more and more to his old means of passing the time. A dull
retrospect--a weary going over and over again of solitude, depression,
and pain. Thoughts long since forgotten recurred to him as in the
silence of the night he passed in review the petty incidents of his
uneventful career. He recollected the burning shame which had first
possessed him at the knowledge of his own deformity; the half envy,
half wonder, with which he had gazed at other lads of his own age; the
hope that had dawned upon him that his parents and friends might feel
for him something of the special love with which Tiny Tim was regarded
in that heartfullest of all stories, _The Christmas Carol_; how that
wondrous book had charmed him, when, a boy of ten or twelve years old,
he had first read it; how, long before it had been seen by either his
father or mother, he had studied and wept over it; how, prompted by a
feeling which he could not analyse, he had induced Lord Beauport to
read it, how he knew--intuitively, he was never told--that it had been
shown to his mother; and how that Christmastide he had been treated
with consideration and affection never before accorded to him--had
been indeed preferred to Lionel, greatly to that young gentleman's
astonishment and disgust. It did not last long, that halcyon time; the
spells of the romancer held the practical father and the fashionable
mother in no lengthened thrall; and when they were dissipated, there
was merely a crippled, deformed, blighted lad as their eldest hope
and the heir to their honours. Tiny Tim borne aloft on his capering
father's shoulders; Tiny Tim in his grave,--these were images to wring
the heart not unpleasantly, and to fill the eyes with tears of which
one was rather proud, as proof of how easily the heart was wrung: but
for a handsome couple--one known as a _beau garçon_, the other as a
beauty--to have to face the stern fact that their eldest son was a
cripple was any thing but agreeable.

Untrusted--that was it. Never from his earliest days could he recollect
what it was to have trust reposed in him. He knew--he could not help
knowing--how superior he was in ability and common-sense to any in
that household; he knew that his father at least was perfectly aware
of this; and yet that Lord Beauport could not disconnect the idea of
bodily decrepitude and mental weakness; and therefore looked upon his
eldest son as little more than a child in mind. As for Caterham's
mother, the want of any feeling in common between them, the utter
absence of any maternal tenderness, the manifest distaste with which
she regarded him, and the half-wearied, half-contemptuous manner in
which she put aside the attempts he made towards a better understanding
between them, had long since begun to tell upon him. There was a time
when, smarting under her lifelong neglect, and overcome by the utter
sense of desolation weighing him down, he had regarded his mother
with a feeling bordering on aversion; then her presence, occasionally
bestowed upon him--always for her own purposes---awakened in him
something very like disgust. But he had long since conquered that: he
had long since argued himself out of that frame of mind. Self-commune
had done its work; the long, long days and nights of patient reflexion
and self-examination, aided by an inexplicable sense of an overhanging
great change, had softened and subdued all that had been temporarily
hard and harsh in Lord Caterham's nature; and there was no child,
kneeling at its little bedside, whose "God bless dear papa and mamma!"
was more tenderly earnest than the blessing which the crippled man
constantly invoked on his parents.

He loved them in a grave, steady, reverential, dutiful way--loved them
even with greater warmth, with more complete fondness than he had done
for years; but his love never touched his instinct of justice--never
warped his sense of what was right. He remembered how, years before,
he had been present, a mere boy, sitting perched up in his wheelchair,
apparently forgotten, in an obscure corner of his father's study at
Homershams, while Lord Beauport administered a terrific "wigging,"
ending in threats of gaols and magistrates, to an unlucky wretch
accused of poaching by the head-keeper; and he recollected how, when
the man had been dismissed with a severe warning, he had talked to
and argued with his father, first on the offence, and then on Lord
Beauport's administration of justice, with an air of grave and earnest
wisdom which had amused his father exceedingly. He had held the same
sentiments throughout his dreary life--he held them now. He knew that
a plot was formed by his mother to bring his brother Lionel back to
England, with a view to his marriage with Annie Maurice, and he was
determined that that plot should not succeed. Why? He had his reasons,
as they had theirs. To his own heart he confessed that he loved Annie
with all the depth of his soul; but that was not what prompted him in
this matter. He should be far removed from the troubling before that;
but he had his reason, and he should keep it to himself. They had not
trusted in him, though they had been compelled to take allies from the
outside--dear old Algy Barford, for instance--but they had not trusted
him, and he would not reveal his secret. Was Lionel to marry Annie
Maurice, eh? No; that should never be. He might not be there himself
to prevent it; but he would leave behind him instructions with some
one, which would--Ah! he had hit upon the some one at once,--Geoffrey
Ludlow, Annie's oldest and dearest friend, honest as the day, brave
and disinterested; not a clever business man perhaps, but one who,
armed with what he could arm him with, must, with his sheer singleness
of purpose, carry all before him. So far, so good; but there would
be a first step which they would take perhaps before he could bring
that weapon into play. His mother would contrive to get Lionel into
the house, on his return, to live with them, so that he might have
constant opportunities of access to Annie. That was a point in which,
as he gleaned, she placed the greatest confidence. If her Lionel
had not lost all the fascinating qualities which had previously so
distinguished him; if he preserved his looks and his address, this
young girl--so inexperienced in the world's ways, so warm-hearted and
impressible--would have no choice but to succumb.

Caterham would see about that at once. Lionel should never remain
_en permanence_ in that house again. Lady Beauport would object of
course. She had, when she had set her mind upon an object, a steady
perseverance in its accomplishment; but neither her patience nor her
diplomacy were comparable to his, when he was equally resolved, as she
should find. No; on that point at least he was determined. His darling,
his treasure, should not even be compelled to run the gauntlet of such
a sin-stained courtship as his brother Lionel's must necessarily be.
What might be awaiting her in the future, God alone knew: temptations
innumerable; pursuit by fortune-hunters: all those trials which beset
a girl who, besides being pretty and rich, has no blood-relative on
whom to reckon for counsel and aid. He would do his best to remedy
this deficiency; he would leave the fullest instructions, the warmest
adjurations to good Geoffrey Ludlow--ah! what a pity it was that
Ludlow's wife was not more heartful and reliable!--and he would
certainly place a veto upon the notion that Lionel, on his return,
should become an inmate of the house. He knew that this must be done
quickly, and he determined to take the first opportunity that presented
itself. That opportunity was not long in coining; within ten days after
Margaret's fainting-fit, Lady. Beauport paid one of her rare maternal
visits, and Lord Caterham saw that his chance had arrived.

There was an extra glow of geniality in Lady Beauport's manner that
morning, and the frosty peck which she had made at her son's cheek
had perhaps a trifle more warmth in it than usual. She seated herself
instead of standing, as was her wont, and chatted pleasantly.

"What is this I hear about your having a lady fainting in your room,
Arthur?" said she, with one of her shiniest smiles. (What calumny
they spread about enamel! Lady Beauport smiled perpetually, and her
complexion never cracked in the slightest degree.) "You must not bring
down scandal on our extremely proper house. She did faint, didn't she?"

"O, yes, mother, she did faint undoubtedly--went what you call
regularly 'off,' I believe."

"Ah! so Stephens told Timpson. Well, sir, don't you think that is
reprehensible enough? A lady comes to call on a bachelor, and is
discovered fainting! Why? Heaven knows--" and her ladyship gave an
unpleasantly knowing chuckle.

"Well, I must admit that no one knows, or ever will know why, save that
the lady was probably over-fatigued, having only just recovered from a
serious illness. But then, you know, the lady's husband was with her,
so that--"

"O, yes, I heard all about that. You are a most prudent swain,
Caterham! The lady's husband with her, indeed! Most prudent! You always
remind me of the play--I don't know what it's called--something about a
French milliner and a screen--"

"'The School for Scandal,' you mean?"

"Very likely. Ive forgotten the name, but I know I recollect seeing
Farren and Miss Foote and all of them in it. And I so often think of
the two brothers: you so quiet and reserved, like one; and the other
so rackety and buoyant, so full of high spirits and gaiety, like our
Lionel. Ah me!" and Lady Beauport heaved a deep sigh and clasped her
hands sadly in front of her.

Caterham smiled--rather a sad dreary smile--as he said, "Let us trust
that quiet and reserve don't always have the effect which they produced
on the gentleman to whom you are alluding, mother. But I may as well
let you know the real story of Mrs. Ludlow's fainting-fit, which seems
to have become rather warped in its journey. I had asked her husband
to call upon me on a matter of business; and he foolishly brought
her--only just out of her confinement--with him. The consequence
was, that, as we were talking, and she was looking through a book of
photographs, she fainted away."

"Ay! I heard something of that sort. She must be a curious person to be
so easily affected, or it was thoughtless of her husband to bring her
out too soon. He is an odd kind of man though, is he not? Absent, and
that kind of thing?"

"Ye-es; his heart is in his work, and he is generally thinking about
it."

"So I had imagined. What odd people you know, Arthur! Your
acquaintances all seem such strange people--so different from your
father's and mine!"

"Yes, mother," said Caterham, with a repetition of the sad smile;
"perhaps you're right generally. Your friends would scarcely care for
me, and I am sure I do not care for them. But Geoffrey Ludlow became
known to me through his old intimacy with Annie--our Annie."

"Ye-es. I scarcely know why 'our Annie,' though. You see, both your
father and I have many blood-relations, more or less distant, on either
side; and it would not be particularly convenient if the mere fact
of their being blood-relations compelled us to acknowledge them as
'ours.' Not that Ive any thing to say against Miss Maurice, though;
on the contrary, she's a very charming girl. At one time I thought
that--However, let that pass. She holds quite a different position now;
and I think every one will allow that my treatment of her is what it
should be."

"Of course, mother. No one would dream of doubting it."

"Well, perhaps not, Arthur; but you're such a recluse, you know, that
you're scarcely a judge of these things--one does not know what people
won't say. The world is so full of envy and jealousy, and all that, I'm
sure my position in regard to the matter is any thing but an agreeable
one. Here I am, having to act _chaperon_ to this girl, who is known
now as an heiress; and all kinds of men paying her attention, simply
on account of her wealth. What I suffer when we're out together, you
can't conceive. Every night, wherever we may be, there is a certain set
of men always hanging about her, waiting for an introduction--persons
whose acquaintance cannot do her the slightest good, and with whom she
is yet quite as willing to talk or to dance as she is with he most
available _parti_ in London."

Caterham smiled again. "You forget, mother, that she's not accustomed
to the kind of life--"

"No; I don't forget anything of the kind, Arthur. It is her not being
accustomed to it that is my greatest trouble. She is as raw as a child
of seventeen Aft her first drawing-room. If she had any _savoir faire_,
any knowledge of society, I should be perfectly at ease. A girl of any
appreciation would know how to treat these people in an instant. Why,
I know myself, that when I was far younger than Miss Maurice, I should
have felt a kind of instinctive warning against two-thirds of the men
with whom Annie Maurice is as talkative and as pleasant as though they
were really persons whose acquaintance it was most desirable that she
should make."

"And yet Annie is decidedly a clever girl."

"So much the worse, Arthur,--so much the worse. The more reason that
she is utterly unlikely to possess or to be able readily to acquire the
peculiar knowledge which would fit her to act under the circumstances
of which I am speaking. Your clever people--such at least as are called
clever by you and those whom you cultivate--are precisely the people
who act idiotically in worldly affairs, who either know nothing or who
set at defiance the _convenances_ of society, and of whom nothing can
be made. That man--no, let me give you an example--that man who dined
here last Thursday on your invitation--Professor Somebody, wasn't
he?--Ive heard of him at that place where they give the scientific
lectures in Albemarle Street--was any thing ever seen like his cravat,
or his shoes, or the way in which he ate his soup?--he trod on my dress
twice in going down to dinner, and I heard perfectly plainly what Lady
Clanronald said to that odious Mr. Beauchamp Hogg about him."

"My father spoke to me in the highest terms about--"

"Of course he did; that's just it. Your father knows nothing about this
sort of thing. It all falls upon me. If Annie Maurice were to make a
_mésalliance_, or, without going so far as that, were to permit herself
to be engaged to some penniless fortune-hunter, and were to refuse--as
she very likely would, for she has an amount of obstinacy in her
composition, I am inclined to think, which one very seldom finds--to
listen to the remonstrances of those whose opinion ought to have weight
with her, it is I, not your father, who would be blamed by the world."

"Your troubles certainly seem greater, mother, than I, in my bachelor
ignorance, could have imagined."

"They are not comprehensible, even after my explanation, Arthur, by
those who have not to undergo them. There is scarcely any thing in my
married life which has given me such pleasure as the thought that,
having no daughters, I should be relieved of all duties of chaperonage;
that I should not be compelled to go to certain places unless I wished;
and that I should be able to leave others at what hours I liked. And
now I find this very duty incumbent upon me."

"Well, but, my dear mother, surely Annie is the very last girl in the
world for whom it is necessary to make any such sacrifices. She does
not care about going out; and when out, she seems, from all she says to
me, to have only one anxiety, and that is--to get home again as soon as
possible."

"Ay, from all she says to you, Arthur; but then you know, as Ive
said before, you are a regular old bachelor, without the power of
comprehending these things, and to whom a girl certainly would not be
likely to show her real feelings. No; there's only one way to relieve
me from my responsibility."

"And that is--"

"And that is by getting her married."

"A-ah!" Caterham drew a long breath--it was coming now.

"Married," continued Lady Beauport, "to some one whom we know, and in
whom we could trust; some one who would keep her near us, so that we
could still keep up an interest in her; and you--for I know how very
much attached you are to her, Arthur--could see her constantly, without
trouble to yourself. That is the only manner in which I can see a
conclusion to my anxiety on Annie's account."

Lady Beauport endeavoured to speak in the same tone in which she had
commenced the conversation; but there was a quiver in her voice and a
tremulous motion in her hands which showed Caterham plainly that she
was ill at ease.

"And do you think that such a husband would be easily found for Annie,
mother?" said he, looking up at her with one of his steady piercing
glances from under his eyebrows.

"Not easily, of course; but still to be found, Arthur."

"From your manner, you seem to have already given the subject some
attention. May I ask if you have any one in prospect who would fulfil
all the conditions you have laid down in the first place, and in the
second would be likely to be acceptable to Annie?"

"How very singular you are, Arthur! You speak in a solemn tone, as if
this were the most important matter in the world."

"It is sufficiently important to Annie at least. Would you mind
answering me?"

Lady Beauport saw that it was useless fighting off the explanation
any further. Her project must be disclosed now, however it might be
received by her eldest son; and she determined to bring her stateliest
and most dignified manner to its disclosure: so she composed her face
to its usual cold statuesque calmness, folded her wandering hands
before her, and in a voice in which there was neither break nor tremor,
said:

"No: I will answer you quite straightforwardly. I think that it would
be an admirable thing for all parties if a marriage could be arranged
between Annie Maurice and your brother Lionel. Lionel has position,
and is a distinguished-looking man, of whom any woman might be proud;
and the fortune which Mr. Ampthill so oddly left to Miss Maurice will
enable him to hold his own before the world, and--how strangely you
look, Caterham!--what is the matter?--what were you about to say?"

"Only one thing, mother--that marriage must never be."

"Must never be!"

"Never. Hear me out. I have kept accurate account of all you have said,
and will judge you in the first place simply out of your own mouth.
Your first point was that Miss Maurice should be married to some one
whom we knew, and whom we could trust. Could we trust Lionel? Could we
trust the man whose father's head was bowed to the dust, whose mother's
eyes were filled with tears at the mere recital of his deeds of sin
and shame? Could we trust the man who was false to his friend, and
who dragged down into the dirt not merely himself, but all who bore
his name? You spoke of his position--what is that, may I ask? Are we
to plume ourselves on our relationship with an outcast? or are we to
hold out as an inducement to the heiress the fact that her intended
husband's liberty is at the mercy of those whom he has swindled and
defrauded?"

"Caterham! Arthur! you are mad--you--"

"No, mother, I am simply speaking the truth. I should not even have
insisted on that in all its bitterness, had I not been goaded to it by
your words. You talk of devoting the fortune which Annie Maurice has
inherited to setting Lionel right before the world, and you expect me
to sit quietly by! Why, the merest instincts of justice would have made
me cry out against such a monstrous proposition, even if Lionel had not
long since forfeited, as Annie has long since won, all my love."

"A-h!" said Lady Beauport, suddenly pausing in her tears, and looking
up at him,--"long since won all your love, eh? I have often suspected
that, Caterham; and now you have betrayed yourself. It is jealousy
then,--mere personal jealousy,--by which all your hatred of your
younger brother is actuated!"

Once more the dreary smile came over Lord Caterham's face. "No,
mother," said he, "it is not that. I love Annie Maurice as I love the
sun, as I love health, as I love rest from pain and weariness; and with
about as much hope of winning either. You could confer on me no greater
happiness than by showing me the man deserving of her love; and the
thought that her future would have a chance of being a happy one would
relieve my life of its heaviest anxiety. But marry Lionel she shall
not; nay, more, she shall not be exposed to the chance of communication
with him, so long as I can prevent it."

"You forget yourself, Lord Caterham! You forget not merely whose house
you are in, but to whom you are speaking."

"I trust not, mother. I trust I shall never--certainly not now, at
this time--forget my duty to you and to my father; but I know more
than I can ever divulge even to you. Take for granted what I tell you;
let what you know of Lionel's ways and conduct suffice to prove that
a marriage between him and Annie is impossible,--that you would be
culpable in lending yourselves to such a scheme."

"I have not the least idea of what you are talking about, Arthur," said
Lady Beauport after a minute's pause. "You appear to have conceived
some ridiculous idea about your brother Lionel, into the discussion
of which you must really excuse my following you. Besides, even if
you had good grounds for all you say, you are too late in making the
remonstrance. Lionel arrived in England the day before yesterday."

Lord Caterham started, and by the help of his stick raised himself for
a moment.

"Lionel returned! Lionel in England, mother! After all his promises,
after the strict conditions on which my father purchased for him
immunity from the penalties of his crime! How is this? Does Lord
Beauport know it?"

Lady Beauport hesitated. She had been betrayed by her vexation into
saying more than she had intended, and had placed Lionel in his
brother's power. Lord Caterham, she had hoped, would have received
her confidence in a different spirit,--perhaps she had calculated
on his being flattered by its novelty,--and would assist her in
breaking the fact of the prodigal's return to his father, and winning
him over to her way of thinking. She had by no means forgotten the
painful solemnity with which the Earl had renounced Lionel, and the
formal sentence of exclusion which had been passed against him; but
Lady Beauport understood her husband well, and had managed him with
tolerable success for many years. He had forbidden all mention of their
son to her, as to every other member of the family; but Lady Beauport
had been in the habit of insinuating an occasional mention of him for
some time past; and it had not been badly received. Perhaps neither
the father nor the mother would have acknowledged to themselves or
to each other the share in this change of feeling which belonged to
the unmistakable daily decline of Lord Caterham's health. They never
alluded to the future, but they saw it, and it influenced them both.
Lady Beauport had not looked for Lionel's return so soon; she had
expected more patience--it might have been appropriately called more
decency--from him; she had thought her difficulties would be much
lessened before his return; but he had neglected her injunctions,
and forestalled her instructions: he had arrived,--there was no
help for it; she must meet the difficulty now. She had been meeting
difficulties, originating from the same source, for many years; and
though Caterham's manner annoyed her deeply, she kept her courage up.
Her first instinct was to evade her son's last question, by assuming an
injured tone in reference to his first. So she said,

"O, it's all very well to talk about his promises, Arthur; but, really,
how you could expect Lionel to remain in Australia I cannot understand."

"I did not, and I do not, form any expectations whatever concerning
Lionel, mother," her son replied, in a steady voice, and without
releasing her from his gaze; "that is beside the question. Lionel has
broken his pledged word to my father by returning here,--you know he
has,--and he has not given any career a fair trial. I can guess the
expectations with which he has returned," he continued in a bitter
tone; "and God knows I trust they are not unfounded. But my place is
not vacant _yet_; and he has forfeited his own. You cannot restore it
to him. Why has he returned?"

Lady Beauport did not dare to say, "Because I wrote to him, and told
him to come home, and marry Annie Maurice, and buy the world's fickle
favour over again with her money, while waiting for yours;" but her
silence said it for her; and Caterham let his eyes drop from her face
in disgust, as he coldly said,

"Once more, madam, I ask you, is my father aware that Lionel is in
London?"

"No," she replied boldly, seeing things were at the worst; "he is
not. I tell you, Caterham, if you tell him, before I have time and
opportunity to break it to him, and set your father against him, and on
keeping his word just as a point of pride, I will never forgive you.
What good could it do you? What harm has Lionel done you? How could he
stay in that horrid place? He's not a tradesman, I should think; and
what could he _do_ there? nor an Irishman, I hope; so what could he
_be_ there? The poor boy was perfectly miserable; and when I told him
to come lit, me, I thought you'd help me, Arthur,--I did indeed."

A grave sad smile passed over Lord Caterham's worn face. Here was his
proud mother trying to cajole him for the sake of the profligate son
who had never felt either affection or respect for her. Had a less
object been at stake he might have yielded to the weakness which he
rather pitied than despised; yielded all the more readily that it would
not be for long. But Annie's peace, Annie's welfare was in danger, and
his mother's weakness could meet with no toleration at his hands.

"Listen to me, mother," he said; "and let this be no more mentioned
between us. I am much exhausted to-day, and have little strength at
any time; but my resolve is unshaken. I will not inform my father of
Lionel's return, if you think you can manage to tell him, and to induce
him to take it without anger more successfully than I can. But while I
live Lionel Brakespere shall never live in the same house with Annie
Maurice; and whether I am living or dead, I will prevent his ever
making her his wife. This is her proper home; and I will do my best
to secure her remaining in it; but how long do you suppose she would
stay, if she heard the plans you have formed?" Lady Beauport attempted
to speak, but he stopped her. "One moment more, mother," he said,
"and I have done. Let me advise you to deceive my father no more for
Lionel. He is easily managed, I have no doubt, by those whom he loves
and admires; but he is impatient of deceit, being very loyal himself.
Tell him without delay what you have done; but do not, if even he takes
it better than you hope, and that you think such a suggestion would
be safe,--do not suggest that Lionel should come here. Let me, for my
little time, be kept from any collision with my father. I ask this
of you, mother." O, how the feeble voice softened, and the light in
the eyes deepened! "And my requests are neither frequent nor hard to
fulfil, I think."

He had completely fathomed her purpose; he had seen the projects she
had formed, even while he was speaking the first sentences; and had
defeated them. By a violent effort she controlled her temper,--perhaps
she had never made so violent an effort, even for Lionel, before,--and
answered,--

"I hardly understand you, Arthur; but perhaps you are right. At all
events, you agree to say nothing to your father,--to leave it to me?"

"Certainly," said Caterham. He had won the day; but his mother's manner
had no sign of defeat about it, no more than it had sign of softening.
She rose, and bade him goodmorning. He held her hand for a moment, and
his eyes followed her wistfully, as she went out of his room.

As she passed through the passage, just outside her son's door she saw
a stout keen-looking man sitting on the bench, who rose and bowed as
she passed.

When Stephens answered the bell, he found his master lying back,
bloodless and almost fainting. After he had administered the usual
restoratives, and when life seemed flowing back again, the valet said,

"Inspector Blackett, my lord, outside."

Lord Caterham made a sign with his hand, and the stout man entered.

"The usual story, Blackett, I suppose?"

"Sorry to say so, my lord. No news. Two of my men tried Maidstone again
yesterday, and Canterbury, thinking they were on the scent there; but
no signs of her."

"Very good, Blackett," said Caterham faintly; "don't give in yet."

Then, as the door closed behind the inspector, the poor sufferer looked
up heavenward and muttered, "O Lord, how long--how long?"





Book the Third.




CHAPTER I.
THE WHOLE TRUTH.


No one who knew Geoffrey Ludlow would have recognised him in the
round-shouldered man with the prone head, the earth-seeking eyes, the
hands plunged deeply in his pockets, plodding home on that day on which
he had determined that Margaret should give him an explanation of her
conduct towards him. Although Geoff had never been a roisterer, had
never enlisted in that army of artists whose members hear "the chimes
o'midnight," had always been considered more or less slow and steady,
and was looked upon as one of the most respectable representatives of
the community, yet his happy disposition had rendered him a general
favourite even amongst those ribalds, and his equable temper and kindly
geniality were proverbial among all the brethren of the brush. Ah, that
equable temper, that kindly geniality,--where were they now? Those
expanded nostrils, those closed lips, spoke of very different feelings;
that long steady stride was very different from the joyous step which
had provoked the cynicism of the City-bound clerks; that puckered
brow, those haggard cheeks, could not be recognised as the facial
presentments of the Geoffrey Ludlow of a few short months since.

In good sooth he was very much altered. The mental worrying so long
striven against in silence had begun to tell upon his appearance; the
big broad shoulders had become rounded; the gait had lost its springy
elasticity, the face was lined, and the dark-brown hair round the
temples and the long full beard were dashed with streaks of silver.
These changes troubled him but little. Never, save perhaps during the
brief period of his courtship of Margaret, had he given the smallest
thought to his personal appearance; yellow soap and cold water had
been his cosmetics, and his greatest sacrifice to vanity had been to
place himself at rare intervals under the hairdresser's scissors.
But there were other changes to which, try as he might, he could not
blind himself. He knew that the very source and fount of his delight
was troubled, if not sullied; he knew that all his happiness, so long
wished for, so lately attained, was trembling in the balance; he felt
that indefinable, indescribable sensation of something impending,
something which would shatter his roof-tree and break up that home
so recently established. As he plunged onward through the seething
streets, looking neither to the right nor to the left, he thought
vaguely of the events of the last few months of his life--thought of
them, regarding them as a dream. How long was it since he was so happy
at home with his old mother and with Til? when the monthly meeting
of the Titians caused his greatest excitement, and when his hopes of
fame were yet visionary and indistinct? How long was it since he had
met _her_ that fearful night, and had drunk of the beauty and the
witchery which had had such results? He was a man now before the world
with a name which people knew and respected, with a wife whose beauty
people admired; but, ah! where was the quietude, the calm unpretending
happiness of those old days?

What could it mean? Had she a wish ungratified? He taxed his mind to
run through all the expressions of her idle fancy, but could think of
none with which he had not complied. Was she ill? He had made that
excuse for her before her baby was born; but now, not merely the
medical testimony, but his own anxious scrutiny told him that she
was in the finest possible health. There was an odd something about
her sometimes which he could not make out--an odd way of listening
vacantly, and not replying to direct questions, which he had noticed
lately, and only lately; but that might be a part of her idiosyncrasy.
Her appetite too was scarcely as good as it used to be; but in all
other respects she seemed perfectly well. There might have been some
difficulty with his mother and sister, he had at first imagined; but
the old lady had been wonderfully complaisant; and Til and Margaret,
when they met, seemed to get on excellently together. To be sure
his mother had assumed the reins of government during Margaret's
confinement, and held them until the last moment compatible with
decency; but her _régime_ had been over long since; and Margaret was
the last person to struggle for power so long as all trouble was taken
off her hands. Had the neighbours slighted her, she might have had
some cause for complaint; but the neighbours were every thing that was
polite, and indeed at the time of her illness had shown her attention
meriting a warmer term. What could it mean? Was there-- No; he crushed
out the idea as soon as it arose in his mind. There could not be any
question about--any one else--preying on her spirits? The man, her
destroyer--who had abandoned and deserted her--was far away; and she
was much too practical a woman not to estimate all his conduct at its
proper worth. No amount of girlish romance could survive the cruel
schooling which his villany had subjected her to; and there was no
one else whom she had seen who could have had any influence over her.
Besides, at the first, when he had made his humble proffer of love, she
had only to have told him that it could not be, and he would have taken
care that her future was provided for--if not as it had been, at all
events far beyond the reach of want. O, no, that could not be.

So argued Geoff with himself--brave, honest, simple old Geoff, with
the heart of a man and the guilelessness of a child. So he argued,
determining at the same time that he would pluck out the heart of the
mystery at once, whatever might be at its root; any thing would be
better than this suspense preying on him daily, preventing him from
doing his work, and rendering him moody and miserable.

But before he reached his home his resolution failed, and his heart
sunk within him. What if Margaret were silent and preoccupied? what
if the occasional gloom upon her face became more and more permanent?
Had not her life been full of sorrow? and was it wonderful that the
remembrance of it from time to time came over her? She had fearlessly
confided her whole story to him; she had given him time to reflect
on it before committing himself to her; and would it be generous,
would it be even just, to call her to account now for freaks of
behaviour engendered doubtless in the memory of that bygone time?
After all, what was the accusation against her? None. Had there been
the smallest trace of levity in her conduct, how many eyebrows were
there ready to be lifted--how many shoulders waiting to be shrugged!
But there was nothing of the kind; all that could be said about her
was that,--all that could be said about her--now he thought it over,
nothing was said about her; all that was hinted was that her manner
was cold and impassable; that she took no interest in what was going
on around her, and that therefore there must be something wrong.
There is always something to be complained of. If her manner had been
light and easy, they would have called her a flirt, and pitied him
for having married a woman so utterly ill-suited to his staid habits.
He knew so little of her when he married her, that he ran every kind
of risk as to what she might really prove to be; and on reflection
he thought he had been exceedingly lucky. She might have been giddy,
vulgar, loud, presuming, extravagant; whereas she was simply reserved
and undemonstrative,--nothing more. He had been a fool in thinking
of her as he had done during the last few weeks; he had,--without
her intending it doubtless, for she was an excellent woman,--he had
taken his tone in this matter from his mother, with whom Margaret was
evidently no favourite, and--there, never mind--it was at an end now.
She was his own darling wife, his lovely companion, merely to sit and
look at whom was rapturous delight to a man of his keen appreciation of
the beauty of form and colour; and as to her coldness and reserve, it
was but a temporary mannerism, which would soon pass away.

So argued Geoffrey Ludlow with himself,--brave, honest, simple old
Geoff, with the heart of a man, and the guilelessness of a child.

So happy was he under the influence of his last thought, that he longed
to take Margaret to his heart at once, and without delay to make trial
of his scheme for dissipating her gloom; but when he reached home,
the servant told him that her mistress had gone out very soon after
he himself had left that morning, and had not yet returned. So he
went through into the studio, intending to work at his picture; but
when he got there he sunk down into a chair, staring vacantly at the
lay-figure, arranged as usual in a preposterous attitude, and thinking
about Margaret. Rousing himself, he found his palette, and commenced
to set it; but while in the midst of this task, he suddenly fell
a-thinking again, and stood there mooning, until the hope of doing any
work was past, and the evening shadows were falling on the landscape.
Then he put up his palette and his brushes, and went into the
dining-room. He walked to the window, but had scarcely reached it, when
he saw a cab drive up. The man opened the door, and Margaret descended,
said a few hasty words to the driver, who touched his hat and fastened
on his horse's nosebag, and approached the house with rapid steps.

From his position in the window, he had noticed a strange light in her
eyes which he had never before seen there, a bright hectic flush on
her cheek, a tight compression of her lips. When she entered the room
he saw that in his first hasty glance he had not been deceived; that
the whole expression of her face had changed from its usual state of
statuesque repose, and was now stern, hard, and defiant.

He was standing in the shadow of the window-curtain, and she did not
see him at first; but throwing her parasol on the table, commenced
pacing the room. The lamp was as yet unlit, and the flickering
firelight--now glowing a deep dull red, now leaping into yellow
flame--gave an additional weirdness to the set intensity of her
beautiful face. Gazing at her mechanically walking to and fro, her head
supported by one hand, her eyes gleaming, her hair pushed back off her
face, Geoffrey again felt that indescribable sinking at his heart; and
there was something of terror in the tone in which, stepping forward,
he uttered her name--"Margaret!"

In an instant she stopped in her walk, and turning towards the place
whence the voice came, said, "You there, Geoffrey?"

"Yes, darling,--who else? I was standing at the window when the cab
drove up, and saw you get out. By the way, you've not sent away the cab,
love; is he paid?"

"No, not yet,--he will--let him stay a little."

"Well, but why keep him up here, my child, where there is no chance of
his getting a return-fare? Better pay him and let him go. I'll go and
pay him!" and he was leaving the room.

"Let him stay, please," said Margaret in her coldest tones; and
Geoffrey turned back at once. But as he turned he saw a thrill run
through her, and marked the manner in which she steadied her hand on
the mantelpiece on which she was leaning. In an instant he was by her
side.

"You are ill, my darling?" he exclaimed. "You have done too much again,
and are over-fatigued----"

"I am perfectly well," she said; "it was nothing--or whatever it was,
it has passed. I did not know you had returned. I was going to write to
you."

"To write to me!" said Geoff in a hollow voice,--"to write to me!"

"To write to you. I had something to tell you--and--and I did not know
whether I should ever see you again!"

For an instant the table against which Geoffrey Ludlow stood seemed
to spin away under his touch, and the whole room reeled. A deadly
faintness crept over him, but he shook it off with one great effort,
and said in a very low tone, "I scarcely understand you--please
explain."

She must have had the nature of a fiend to look upon that large-souled
loving fellow, stricken down by her words as by a sudden blow, and with
his heart all bleeding, waiting to hear the rest of her sentence. She
had the nature of a fiend, for through her set teeth she said calmly
and deliberately:

"I say I did not know whether I should ever see you again. That cab is
detained by me to take me away from this house, to which I ought never
to have come--which I shall never enter again."

Geoff had sunk into a chair, and clutching the corner of the table with
both hands, was looking up at her with a helpless gaze.

"You don't speak!" she continued; "and I can understand why you are
silent. This decision has come upon you unexpectedly, and you can
scarcely realise its meaning or its origin. I am prepared to explain
both to you. I had intended doing so in a letter, which I should have
left behind me; but since you are here, it is better that I should
speak."

The table was laid for dinner, and there was a small decanter of sherry
close by Geoff's hand. He filled a glass from it and drank it eagerly.
Apparently involuntarily, Margaret extended her hand towards the
decanter; but she instantly withdrew it, and resumed:

"You know well, Geoffrey Ludlow, that when you asked me to become your
wife, I declined to give you any answer until you had heard the story
of my former life. When I noticed your growing interest in me--and
I noticed it from its very first germ--I determined that before you
pledged yourself to me--for my wits had been sharpened in the school
of adversity, and I read plainly enough that love from such a man as
you had but one meaning and one result,--I determined that before you
pledged yourself to me you should learn as much as it was necessary
for you to know of my previous history. Although my early life had
been spent in places far away from London, and among persons whom it
was almost certain I should never see again, it was, I thought, due to
you to explain all to you, lest the gossiping fools of the world might
some day vex your generous heart with stories of your wife's previous
career, which she had kept from you. Do you follow me?"

Geoffrey bowed his head, but did not speak.

"In that story I told you plainly that I had been deceived by a
man under promise of marriage; that I had lived with him as his
wife for many months; that he had basely deserted me and left me to
starve,--left me to die--as I should have died had you not rescued me.
You follow me still?"

She could not see his face now,--it was buried in his hands; but there
was a motion of his head, and she proceeded:

"That man betrayed me when I trusted him, used me while I amused him,
deserted me when I palled upon him. He ruined, you restored me; he
left me to die, you brought me back to life; he strove to drag me to
perdition, you to raise me to repute. I respected, I honoured you; but
I loved him! yes, from first to last I loved him; infatuated, mad as I
knew it to be, I loved him throughout! Had I died in those streets from
which you rescued me, I should have found strength to bless him with my
last breath. When I recovered consciousness, my first unspoken thought
was of him. It was that I would live, that I would make every exertion
to hold on to life, that I might have the chance of seeing him again.
Then dimly, and as in a dream, I saw you and heard your voice, and
knew that you were to be a portion of my fate. Ever since, the image
of that man has been always present before me; his soft words of love
have been always ringing in my ears; his gracious presence has been
always at my side. I have striven and striven against the infatuation.
Before Heaven I swear to you that I have prayed night after night that
I might not be led into that awful temptation of retrospect which beset
me; that I might be strengthened to love you as you should be loved, to
do my duty towards you as it should be done. All in vain, all in vain!
That one fatal passion has sapped my being, and rendered me utterly
incapable of any other love in any other shape. I know what you have
done for me--more than that, I know what you have suffered for me. You
have said nothing; but do you think I have not seen how my weariness,
my coldness, the impossibility of my taking interest in all the little
schemes you have laid for my diversion, have irked and pained you? Do
you think I do not know what it is for a full heart to beat itself into
quiet against a stone? I know it all; and if I could have spared you
one pang, I swear I would have done so. But I loved this man; ah, how
I loved him! He was but a memory to me then; but that memory was far,
far dearer than all reality! He is more than a memory to me now; for he
lives, and he is in London and I have seen him!"

Out Of Geoffrey Ludlow's hands came, raised up suddenly, a dead
white face with puckered lips, knit brows, and odd red streaks and
indentations round the eyes.

"Yes, Geoffrey Ludlow," she continued, not heeding the apparition,
"I have seen him,--now, within this hour,--seen him, bright, well,
and handsome--O, so handsome!--as when I saw him first; and that has
determined me. While I thought of him as perhaps dead; while I knew
him to be thousands of miles away, I could bear to sit here, to drone
out the dull monotonous life, striving to condone the vagrancy of
my thoughts by the propriety of my conduct,--heart-sick, weary, and
remorseful. Yes, remorseful, so far as you are concerned; for you are
a true and noble man, Geoffrey. But now that he is here, close to me,
I could not rest another hour,--I must go to him at once. Do you hear,
Geoffrey,--at once?"

He tried to speak, but his lips were parched and dry, and he only made
an inarticulate sound. There was no mistaking the flash of his eyes,
however. In them Margaret had never seen such baleful light; so that
she was scarcely astonished when, his voice returning, he hissed out "I
know him!"

"You know him?"

"Yes; just come back from Australia--Lord Caterham's brother! I had a
letter from Lord Caterham to-day,--his brother--Lionel Brakespere!"

"Well," she exclaimed, "what then? Suppose it be Lionel Brakespere,
what then, I ask--what then?"

"Then!" said Geoffrey, poising his big sinewy arm--"then, let him look
to himself; for, by the Lord, I'll kill him!"

"What!" and in an instant she had left her position against the
mantelpiece, and was leaning over the table at the corner where he
sat, her face close to his, her eyes on his eyes, her hot breath
on his cheeks--"You dare to talk of killing him, of doing him the
slightest injury! You dare to lift your hand against my Lionel! Look
here, Geoffrey Ludlow: you have been good and kind and generous to
me,--have loved me, in your fashion--deeply, I know; and I would let us
part friends; but I swear that if you attempt to wreak your vengeance
on Lionel Brakespere, who has done you no harm--how has he injured
you?--I will be revenged on you in a manner of which you little dream,
but which shall break your heart and spirit, and humble your pride to
the dust. Think of all this, Geoffrey Ludlow--think of it. Do nothing
rashly, take no step that will madden me, and drive me to do something
that will prevent your ever thinking of me with regret, when I am far
away."

There was a softness in her voice which touched a chord in Geoffrey
Ludlow's breast. The fire faded out of his eyes; his hands, which had
been tight-clenched, relaxed, and spread out before him in entreaty;
he looked up at Margaret through blinding tears, and in a broken voice
said,

"When you are far away! O, my darling, my darling, you are not going to
leave me? It cannot be,--it is some horrible dream. To leave me, who
live but for you, whose existence is bound up in yours! It cannot be.
What have I done?--what can you charge me with? Want of affection, of
devotion to you? O God, it is hard that I should have to suffer in this
way! But you won't go, Margaret darling? Tell me that--only tell me
that."

She shrank farther away from him, and seemed for a moment to cower
before the vehemence and anguish of his appeal; but the next her face
darkened and hardened, and as she answered him, the passion in her
voice was dashed with a tone of contempt.

"Yes, I will leave you," she said,--"of course I will leave you. Do you
not hear me? Do you not understand me? I have seen him, I tell you, and
every thing which is not him has faded out of my life. What should I do
here, or any where, where he is not? The mere idea is absurd. I have
only half lived since I lost him, and I could not live at all now that
I have seen him again. Stay here! not leave _you!_ stay _here!_" She
looked round the room with a glance of aversion and avoidance, and went
on with increasing rapidity: "You have never understood me. How should
you? But the time has come now when you must try to understand me, for
your own sake; for mine it does no matter--nothing matters now."

She was standing within arm's-length of him, and her face was turned
full upon him: but she did not seem to see him. She went on as though
reckoning with herself, and Geoffrey gazed upon her in stupefied
amazement; his momentary rage quenched in the bewilderment of his
anguish.

"I don't deny your goodness--I don't dispute it--I don't think about it
at all; it is all done with, all past and gone; and I have no thought
for it or you, beyond these moments in which I am speaking to you for
the last time. I have suffered in this house torments which your slow
nature could neither suffer nor comprehend--torments wholly impossible
to endure longer. I have raged and rebelled against the dainty life of
dulness and dawdling, the narrow hopes and the tame pleasures which
have sufficed for you. I must have so raged and rebelled under any
circumstances; but I might have gone on conquering the revolts, if I
had not seen him. Now, I tell you, it is no longer possible, and I
break with it at once and for ever. Let me go quietly, and in such
peace as may be possible: for go I must and I will. You could as soon
hold a hurricane by force or a wave of the sea by entreaty."

Geoffrey Ludlow covered his face with his hands, and groaned. Once
again she looked at him--this time as if she saw him--and went on:

"Let me speak to you, while I can, of yourself--while I can, I say,
for his face is rising between me and all the world beside, and I can
hardly force myself to remember any thing, to calculate any thing, to
realise any thing which is not him. You ask me not to leave you; you
would have me stay! Are you mad, Geoffrey Ludlow? Have you lived among
your canvases and your colours until you have ceased to understand
what men and women are, and to see facts? Do you know that I love
him, though he left me to what you saved me from, so that all that
you have done for me and given me has been burdensome and hateful to
me, because these things had no connection with him, but marked the
interval in which he was lost to me? Do you know that I love him so,
that I have sickened and pined in this house, even as I sickened and
pined for hunger in the streets you took me from, for the most careless
word he ever spoke and the coldest look he ever gave me? Do you know
the agonised longing which has been mine, the frantic weariness, the
unspeakable loathing of every thing that set my life apart from the
time when my life was his? No, you don't know these things! Again I
say, how should you? Well, I tell them to you now, and I ask you, are
you mad that you say, 'Don't leave me'? Would you have me stay with
_you_ to think of _him_ all the weary hours of the day, all the wakeful
hours of the night? Would you have me stay with you to feel, and make
you know that I feel, the tie between us an intolerable and hideous
bondage, and that with every pang of love for him came a throb of
loathing for you? No, no! you are nothing to me now,--nothing, nothing!
My thoughts hurry away from you while I speak; but if any thing so
preposterous as my staying with you could be possible, you would be the
most hateful object on this earth to me."

"My God!" gasped Geoffrey. That was all The utter, unspeakable horror
with which her words, poured out in a hard ringing voice, which
never faltered, filled him overpowered all remonstrance. A strange
feeling, which was akin to fear of this beautiful unmasked demon, came
over him. It was Margaret, his wife, who spoke thus! The knowledge
and its fullest agony were in his heart; and yet a sense of utter
strangeness and impossibility were there too. The whirl within him
was not to be correctly termed thought; but there was in it something
of the past, a puzzled remembrance of her strange quietude, her
listlessness, her acquiescent, graceful, wearied, compliant ways; and
this was she,--this woman whose eyes burned with flames of passion and
desperate purpose--on those ordinarily pale cheeks two spots of crimson
glowed,--whose lithe frame trembled with the intense fervour of the
love which she was declaring for another man! Yes, this was she! It
seemed impossible; but it was true.

"I waste words," she said; "I am talking of things beside the question,
and I don't want to lie to you. Why should I? There has been nothing in
my life worth having but him, nothing bearable since I lost him, and
there is nothing else since I have found him again. I say, I must leave
you for your sake, and it is true; but I would leave you just the same
if it was not true. There is nothing henceforth in my life but him."

She moved towards the door as she spoke, and the action seemed to rouse
Geoffrey from the stupefaction which had fallen upon him. She had her
hand upon the door-handle though, before he spoke.

"You are surely mad!" he said "I think so.--I hope so; but even mad
women remember that they are mothers. Have you forgotten your child,
that you rave thus of leaving your home?"

She took her hand from the door and leaned back against it--her head
held up, and her eyes turned upon him, the dark eyebrows shadowing them
with a stern frown.

"I am not mad," she said; "but I don't wonder you think me so. Continue
to think so, if you needs must remember me at all. Love is madness to
such as you; but it is life, and sense, and wisdom, and wealth to such
as I and the man I love. At all events it is all the sanity I ask for
or want. As for the child--" she paused for one moment, and waved her
hand impatiently.

"Yes," repeated Geoffrey hoarsely,--"the child!"

"I will tell you then, Geoffrey Ludlow," she said, in a more deliberate
tone than she had yet commanded,--"I care nothing for the child! Ay,
look at me with abhorrence now; so much the better for _you_, and not
a jot the worse for me. What is your abhorrence to me?--what was your
love? There are women to whom their children are all in all. I am not
of their number; I never could have been. They are not women who love
as I love. Where a child has power to sway and fill a woman's heart,
to shake her resolution, and determine her life, love is not supreme.
There is a proper and virtuous resemblance to it, no doubt, but not
love--no, no, not love. I tell you I care nothing for the child.
Geoffrey Ludlow, if I had loved you, I should have cared for him almost
as little; if the man I love had been his father, I should have cared
for him no more, if I know any thing of myself. The child does not need
me. I suppose I am not without the brute instinct which would lead me
to shelter and feed and clothe him, if he did; but what has he ever
needed from me? If I could say without a lie that any thought of him
weighs with me--but I cannot--I would say to you, for the child's sake,
if for no other reason, I must go. The child is the last and feeblest
argument you can use with me--with whom indeed there are none strong or
availing."

She turned abruptly, and once more laid her hand upon the door-handle.
Her last words had roused Geoffrey from the inaction caused by his
amazement. As she coldly and deliberately avowed her indifference
to the child, furious anger once more awoke within him. He strode
hastily towards her and sternly grasped her by the left arm. She made
a momentary effort to shake off his hold; but he held her firmly at
arm's-length from him, and said through his closed teeth:

"You are a base and unnatural woman--more base and unnatural than I
believed any woman could be. As for me, I can keep silence on your
conduct to myself; perhaps I deserved it, seeing where and how I
found you." She started and winced. "As for the child, he is better
motherless than with such a mother; but I took you from shame and
sin, when I found you in the street, and married you; and you shall
not return to them if any effort of mine can prevent it. You have no
feeling, you have no conscience, you have no pride; you glory in a
passion for a man who flung you away to starve! Woman, have you no
sense of decency left, that you can talk of resuming your life of
infamy and shame?"

The husband and wife formed a group which would have been awful to
look upon, had there been any one to witness that terrible interview,
as they stood confronting one another, while Geoffrey spoke. As his
words came slowly forth, a storm of passion shook Margaret's frame.
Every gleam of colour forsook her face; she was transformed into a
fixed image of unspeakable wrath. A moment she stood silent, breathing
quickly, her white lips dry and parted. Then, as a faint movement,
something like a ghastly smile, crept over her face, she said:

"You are mistaken, Geoffrey Ludlow; I leave my life of infamy and shame
in leaving _you!_"

"In leaving me! Again you are mad!"

"Again I speak the words of sanity and truth. If what I am going to
tell you fills you with horror, I would have spared you; you have
yourself to thank. I intended to have spared you this final blow,--I
intended to have left you in happy ignorance of the fact--which you
blindly urge me to declare by your taunts. What did I say at the
commencement of this interview? That I wanted us to part friends. But
you will not have that. You reproach me with ingratitude; you taunt me
with being an unnatural mother; finally, you fling at me my life of
infamy and shame; I repeat that no infamy, no shame could attach to me
until I became--your mistress!"

The bolt had shot home at last. Geoffrey leapt to his feet, and stood
erect before her; but his strength must have failed him in that
instant; for he could only gasp, "My mistress!"

"Your mistress. That is all I have been to you, so help me Heaven!"

"My wife! my own--married--lawful wife!"

"No, Geoffrey Ludlow, no! In that wretched lodging to which you had
me conveyed, and where you pleaded your love, I told you--the truth
indeed, but not the whole truth. Had you known me better then,--had you
known me as you--as you know me now, you might have guessed that I was
not one of those trusting creatures who are betrayed and ruined by fair
words and beaming glances, come they from ever so handsome a man. One
fact I concealed from you, thinking, as my Lionel had deserted me, and
would probably never be seen again, that its revelation would prevent
me from accepting the position which you were about to offer me; but
the day that I fled from my home at Tenby I was married to Lionel
Brakespere; and at this moment I am his wife, not merely in the sight
of God, but by the laws of man!"

For some instants he did not speak, he did not move from the chair into
which he had again fallen heavily during her speech: he sat gazing at
her, his breathing thickened, impeded, gasping. At length he said:

"You're--you're speaking truth?"

"I am speaking gospel-truth, Geoffrey Ludlow. You brought it upon
yourself: I would have saved you from the knowledge of it if I could,
but you brought it upon yourself."

"Yes--as you say--on myself;" still sitting gazing vacantly before him,
muttering to himself rather than addressing her. Suddenly, with a wild
shriek, "The child! O God, the child!"

"For the child's sake, no less than for your own, you will hold your
tongue on this matter," said Margaret, in her calm, cold, never-varying
tone. "In this instance at least you will have sense enough to perceive
the course you ought to take. What I have told you is known to none but
you and me, and one other--who can be left with me to deal with. Let it
be your care that the secret remains with us."

"But the child is a----"

"Silence, man!" she exclaimed, seizing his arm,--"silence now,--for
a few moments at all events. When I am gone, proclaim your child's
illegitimacy and your own position if you will, but wait till then. Now
I can remain here no longer. Such things as I absolutely require I will
send for. Goodbye, Geoffrey Ludlow."

She gathered her shawl around her, and moved towards the door. In an
instant his lethargy left him; he sprang up, rushed before her, and
stood erect and defiant.

"You don't leave me in this way, Margaret. You shall not leave me thus.
I swear you shall not pass!"

She looked at him for a moment with a half-compassionate,
half-interested face. This assumption of spirit and authority she had
never seen in him before, and it pleased her momentarily. Then she said
quietly:

"O yes, I shall. I am sure, Mr. Ludlow, you will not prevent my going
to my husband!"

When the servant, after waiting more than an hour for dinner to be rung
for, came into the room to see what was the cause of the protracted
delay, she found her master prostrate on the hearth-rug, tossing and
raving incoherently. The frightened girl summoned assistance; and when
Dr. Brandram arrived, he announced Mr. Ludlow to be in the incipient
stage of a very sharp attack of brain-fever.




CHAPTER II.
THE REVERSE OF THE MEDAL.


It was one of those cheerless days not unfrequent at the end of
September, which first tell us that such fine weather as we have had
has taken its departure, and that the long dreary winter is close at
hand. The air was moist and "muggy;" there was no freshening wind to
blow away the heavy dun clouds which lay banked up thick, and had
seemed almost motionless for days; there was a dead faint depression
over all things, which weighed heavily on the spirits, impeded the
respiration, and relaxed the muscles. It was weather which dashed and
cowed even the lightest-hearted, and caused the careworn and the broken
to think self-destruction less extraordinary than they had hitherto
considered it.

About noon a man was looking out of one of the upper-windows of
Long's Hotel on the dreary desert of Bond Street. He was a tall man;
who with straight-cut features, shapely beard, curling light hair,
and clear complexion, would have been generally considered more than
good-looking, notwithstanding that his eyes were comparatively small
and his mouth was decidedly sensual. That he was a man of breeding
and society one could have told in an instant--could have told it by
the colour and shape of his hands, by his bearing, by the very manner
in which he, leaving the window from time to time, lounged round the
room, his hands plunged in his pockets or pulling at his tawny beard.
You could have told it despite of his dress, the like of which had
surely never been seen before on any visitor to that select hostelry;
for he wore a thick jacket and trousers of blue pilot-cloth, a blue
flannel-shirt, with a red-silk handkerchief knotted round the collar,
and ankle jack-boots. When he jumped out of the cab at the door on
the previous day, he had on a round tarpaulin-hat, and carried over
his arm an enormous pea-jacket with horn buttons; and as he brought
no luggage with him save a small valise, and had altogether the
appearance of the bold smugglers who surreptitiously vend cigars and
silk-handkerchiefs, the hall-porter at first refused him admittance;
and it was not until the proprietor had been summoned, and after a
close scrutiny and a whispered name had recognised his old customer,
that the strange-looking visitor was ushered upstairs. He would have a
private room, he said; and he did not want it known that he was back
just yet--did Jubber understand? If any body called, that was another
matter: he expected his mother and one or two others; but he did not
want it put in the papers, or any thing of that kind. Jubber did
understand, and left Captain Lionel Brakespere to himself.

Captain Lionel Brakespere, just at that time, could have had no worse
company. He had been bored to death by the terrible monotony of a
long sea-voyage, and had found on landing in England that his boredom
was by no means at an end. He had heard from his mother that "that
awkward business had all been squared," as he phrased it; and that it
was desirable he should return home at once, where there was a chance
of a marriage by which "a big something was to be pulled off," as he
phrased it again. So he had come back, and there he was at Long's; but
as yet he was by no means happy. He was doubtful as to his position in
society, as to how much of his escapade was known, as to whether he
would be all right with his former set, or whether he would get the
cold shoulder, and perhaps be cut. He could only learn this by seeing
Algy Barford, or some other fellow of the _clique_; and every fellow
was of course out of town at that infernal time of year. He must wait,
at all events, until he had seen his mother, to whom he had sent word
of his arrival. He might be able to learn something of all this from
her. Meantime he had taken a private room; not that there was much
chance of his meeting any one in the coffee-room, but some fellow
might perhaps stop there for the night on his way through town; and he
had sent for the tailor, and the hair-cutter fellow, and that sort of
thing, and was going to be made like a Christian again--not like the
cad he'd looked like in that infernal place out there.

He lounged round the room, and pulled his beard and yawned as he
looked out of the window; pulling himself together afterwards by
stretching out his hands and arms, and shrugging his shoulders and
shaking himself, as if endeavouring to shake off depression. He _was_
depressed; there was no doubt about it. Out there it was well enough.
He had been out there just long enough to have begun to settle down
into his new life, to have forgotten old ties and old feelings; but
here every thing jarred upon him. He was back in England certainly, but
back in England in a condition which he had never known before. In the
old days, at this time of year, he would have been staying down at some
country-house, or away in some fellow's yacht, enjoying himself to the
utmost; thoroughly appreciated and highly thought of,--a king among
men and a favourite among women. Now he was cooped up in this deserted
beastly place, which every one decent had fled from, not daring even
to go out and see whether some old comrade, haply retained in town by
duty, were not to be picked up, from whom he could learn the news, with
whom he might have a game of billiards, or something to get through the
infernally dragging wearisome time. He expected his mother. She was
his truest and stanchest friend, after all, and had behaved splendidly
to him all through this terrible business. It was better that she
should come down there, and let him know exactly how the land lay. He
would have gone home, but he did not know what sort of a reception
he might have met with from the governor; and from all he could make
out from his mother's letters, it was very likely that Caterham might
cut up rough, and say or do something confoundedly unpleasant. It
was an infernal shame of Caterham, and just like his straightlaced
nonsense--that it was. Was not he the eldest son, and what did he want
more? It was all deuced well for him to preach and moralise, and all
that sort of thing; but his position had kept him out of temptation,
else he might not be any better than other poor beggars, who had fallen
through and come to grief.

So he reasoned with himself as he lounged round and round the room; and
at last began to consider that he was a remarkably ill-used person.
He began to hate the room and its furniture, altered the position of
the light and elegant little couch, flung himself into the arm-chair,
drumming his heels upon the floor, and rose from itleaving the chintz
covering all tumbled, and the antimacassar all awry, drummed upon
the window, stared at the prints already inspected--the "Hero and
his Horse," which led him into reminiscences of seeing the old Duke
with his white duck trousers and his white cravat, with the silver
buckle gleaming at the back of his bowed head, at Eton on Montem
days--glanced with stupid wonderment at Ward's "Dr. Johnson reading
the Manuscript of the _Vicar of Wakefield_," which conveyed to him
no idea whatsoever--looked at a proof of "Hogarth painting the Muse
of Comedy," and wondered "who was the old cock with the fat legs,
drawing." He watched the few people passing through the streets, the
very few hansom-cabs with drivers listlessly creeping up and down, as
though conscious that the chances of their being hired were dismally
remote, the occasional four-wheelers with perambulators and sand-spades
on the top, and bronzed children leaning out of the windows, talking of
the brief holiday over and the work-a-day life about to recommence--he
watched all this, and, watching, worked himself up to such a pitch
of desperation that he had almost determined to brave all chances of
recognition, and sally forth into the streets, when the door opened and
a waiter entering, told him that a lady was waiting to speak with him.

His mother had come at last, then? Let her be shown up directly.

Of all things Lionel Brakespere abhorred a "scene;" and this was likely
to be an uncommonly unpleasant meeting. The Mater was full of feeling
and that sort of thing, and would probably fling herself into his arms
as soon as the waiter was gone, and cry, and sob, and all that sort of
thing, and moan over him--make a fellow look so confoundedly foolish
and absurd, by Jove! Must get that over as soon as possible--all
the hugging and that--and then find out how matters really stood.
So he took up his position close to the door; and as the footsteps
approached, was a little astonished to hear his heart thumping so
loudly.

The door opened, and passing the bowing waiter, who closed it behind
her, a lady entered. Though her veil was down, Lionel saw instantly
that it was not his mother. A taller, younger woman, with step graceful
though hurried, an eager air, a strange nervous manner. As the door
closed, she threw up her veil and stood revealed--Margaret!

He fell back a pace or two, and the blood rushed to his heart, leaving
his face as pale as hers. Then, recovering himself, he caught hold of
the table, and glaring at her, said hoarsely, "You here!"

There was something in his tone which jarred upon her instantly. She
made a step forward, and held out her hand appealingly--"Lionel," she
said, quite softly, "Lionel, you know me?"

"Know you?" he repeated. "O yes--I--I have that honour. I know you fast
enough--though what you do here I _don't_ know. What do you do here?"

"I came to see you."

"Devilish polite, I'm sure. But--now you have seen me--" he hesitated
and smiled. Not a pleasant smile by any means: one of those smiles in
which the teeth are never shown. A very grim smile, which slightly
wrinkled the lips, but left the eyes hard and defiant; a smile which
Margaret knew of old, the sight of which recalled the commencement of
scenes of violent passion and bitter upbraiding in the old times; a
smile at sight of which Margaret's heart sank within her, only leaving
her strength enough to say: "Well!"

"Well!" he repeated--"having seen me--having fulfilled the intention of
your visit--had you not better--go?"

"Go!" she exclaimed--"leave you at once, without a look, without a
word! Go! after all the long weary waiting, this hungering to see and
speak with you to pillow my head on your breast, and twine my arms
round you as I used to do in the dear old days! Go! in the moment
when I am repaid for O such misery as you, Lionel, I am sure, cannot
imagine I have endured--the misery of absence from you; the misery of
not knowing how or where you were--whether even you were dead or alive;
misery made all the keener by recollection of joy which I had known and
shared with you. Go! Lionel, dearest Lionel, you cannot mean it! Don't
try me now, Lionel; the delight at seeing you again has made me weak
and faint. I am not so strong as I used to be. Lionel, dearest, don't
try me too much."

Never had she looked more beautiful than now. Her arms were stretched
out in entreaty, the rich tones of her voice were broken, tears stood
in her deep-violet eyes, and the dead-gold hair was pushed off the
dead-white brow. Her whole frame quivered with emotion--emotion which
she made no attempt to conceal.

Lionel Brakespere had seated himself on the corner of the table, and
was looking at her with curiosity. He comprehended the beauty of the
picture before him, but he regarded it as a picture. On most other men
in his position such an appeal from such a woman would have caused at
least a temporary rekindling of the old passion; on him it had not the
slightest effect, beyond giving him a kind of idea that the situation
was somewhat ridiculous and slightly annoying. After a minute's
interval he said, with his hands in his pockets, and his legs swinging
to and fro:

"It's deuced kind of you to say such civil things about me, and I
appreciate them--appreciate them, I assure you. But, you see the fact
of the matter is, that I'm expecting my mother every minute, and if she
were to find you here, I should be rather awkwardly situated."

"O," cried Margaret, "you don't think I would compromise you, Lionel?
You know me too well for that. You know too well how I always submitted
to be kept in the background--only too happy to live on your smiles, to
know that you were feted and made much of."

"O, yes," said Lionel, simply; "you were always a deuced sensible
little woman."

"And I sha'n't be in the way, and I sha'n't bore you. They need know
nothing of my existence, if you don't wish it, any more than they used.
And we shall lead again the dear old life--eh, Lionel?"

"Eh!" repeated he in rather a high key,--"the dear old life!"

"Ah, how happy I was!" said Margaret. "You, whose intervening time has
been passed in action, can scarcely imagine how I have looked back on
those days,--how eagerly I have longed for the time to come when I
might have them again."

"Gad!" said he, "I don't exactly know about my time being passed
in action. It's been horribly ghastly and melancholy, and deuced
unpleasant, if you mean that."

"Then we will both console ourselves for it now, Lionel, We will forget
all the misery we have suffered, and--"

"Y-es!" said he, interrupting her, swinging his leg a little more
slowly, and looking quietly up into her face; "I don't exactly follow
you in all this."

"You don't follow me?"

"N-no! I scarcely think we can be on the same tack, somehow."

"In what way?"

"In all this about leading again the old life, and living the days over
again, and consoling ourselves, and that kind of thing."

"You don't understand it?"

"Well, I don't know about understanding it. All I mean to say is, I'm
not going to have it."

But for something in his tone, Margaret might not have entirely
comprehended what he sought to convey in his words, so enraptured was
she at seeing him again. But in his voice, in his look, there was a
bravado that was unmistakable. She clasped her hands together in front
of her; and her voice was very low and tremulous, as she said,

"Lionel, what do you mean?"

"What do I mean? Well, it's a devilish awkward thing to say--I can't
conceive how it came about--all through your coming here, and that sort
of thing; but it appears to me that, as I said before, you're on the
wrong tack. You don't seem to see the position."

"I don't indeed. For God's sake speak out!"

"There, you see!--that's just it; like all women, taking the thing so
much in earnest, and--"

"So much in earnest? Is what would influence one's whole life a thing
to be lightly discussed or laughed over? Is--"

"There you are again! That's exactly what I complain of. What have I to
do with influencing your life?"

"All--every thing!"

"I did not know it, then, by Jove,--that's all Ive got to say. You're
best out of it, let me tell you. My influence is a deuced bad one, at
least for myself."

Once again the tone, reckless and defiant, struck harshly on her ear.
He continued, "I was saying you did not seem to see the position. You
and I were very good friends once upon a time, and got on very well
together; but that would never do now."

She turned faint, sick, and closed her eyes; but remained silent.

"Wouldn't do a bit," he continued. "You know Ive been a tremendous
cropper--must have thought deuced badly of me for cutting off in that
way; but it was my only chance, by Jove; and now Ive come back to try
and make all square. But I must keep deuced quiet and mind my p's and
q's, or I shall go to grief again, like a bird."

She waited for a moment, and then she said faintly and slowly, "I
understand you thoroughly now. You mean that it would be better for us
to remain apart for some time yet?"

"For some time?--yes. Confound it all, Margaret!--you won't take a
hint, and you make a fellow speak out and seem cruel and unkind, and
all that kind of thing, that he does not want to. Look here. You ought
never to have come here at all. It's impossible we can ever meet again."

She started convulsively; but even then she seemed unable to grasp
the truth. Her earnestness brought the colour flying to her cheeks as
she said hurriedly, "Why impossible, Lionel,--why impossible? If you
are in trouble, who has such a right to be near you as I? If you want
assistance and solace, who should give it you before me? That is the
mistake you made, Lionel. When you were in your last trouble you should
have confided in me: my woman's wit might have helped you through it;
or at the worst, my woman's love would have consoled you in it."

She was creeping closer to him, but stopped as she saw his face darken
and his arms clasp themselves across his breast.

"D--n it all!" said he petulantly; "you won't understand, I think. This
sort of thing is impossible. Any sort of love, or friendship, or trust
is impossible. Ive come back to set myself straight, and to pull out of
all the infernal scrapes I got myself into before I left; and there's
only one way to do it."

"And that is--"

"Well, if you will have it, you must. And that is--by making a good
marriage."

She uttered a short sharp cry, followed by a prolonged wail, such as a
stricken hare gives. Lionel Brakespere looked up at her; but his face
never relaxed, and his arms still remained tightly folded across his
breast. Then she spoke, very quietly and very sadly:

"By making a good marriage! Ah! then I see it all. That is why you are
annoyed at my having come to you. That is why you dread the sight of
me, because it reminds you that I am in the way; reminds you of the
existence of the clog round your neck that prevents your taking up
this position for which you long; because it reminds you that you once
sacrificed self to sentiment, and permitted yourself to be guided by
love instead of ambition. That is what you mean?"

His face was darker than ever as he said, "No such d--d nonsense. I
don't know what you're talking about; no more do you I should think, by
the way in which you are going on. What _are_ you talking about?"

He spoke very fiercely; but she was not cowed or dashed one whit. In
the same quiet voice she said: "I am talking about myself--your wife!"

Lionel Brakespere sprung from the corner of the table on which he had
been sitting, and stood upright, confronting her.

"O, that's it, is it?" in a hard low voice. "That's your game, eh? I
thought it was coming to that. Now, look here," shaking his fist at
her,--"drop that for good and all; drop it, I tell you, or it will be
the worse for you. Let me hear of your saying a word about your being
my wife, and, so help me God, I'll be the death of you! That's plain,
isn't it? You understand that?"

She never winced; she never moved. She sat quietly under the storm of
his rage; and when he had finished speaking, she said:

"You can kill me, if you like,--you very nearly did, just before you
left me,--but so long as I am alive I shall be your wife!"

"Will you, by George?--not if there's law in the land, I can tell
you. What have you been doing all this time? How have you been living
since Ive been away? How do you come here, dressed like a swell as you
are, when I left you without money? I shall want to know all that;
and I'll find out, you may take your oath. There are heaps of ways of
discovering those things now, and places where a fellow has only to pay
for it, and he may know any thing that goes on about any body. I don't
think you would particularly care to have those inquiries made about
_you_, eh?"

She was silent. He waited a minute; then, thinking from her silence
that he had made a point, went on:

"You understand me at last, don't you? You see pretty plainly, I should
think, that being quiet and holding your tongue is your best plan
don't you? If you're wise you'll do it; and then, when I'm settled, I
may make you some allowance--if you want it, that's to say,--if your
friends whove been so kind to you while Ive been away don't do it. But
if you open your mouth on this matter, if you once hint that you've any
claim on me, or send to me, or write to me, or annoy me at all, I'll
go right in at once, find out all you've been doing, and then see what
they'll say to you in the Divorce Court. You hear?"

Still she sat perfectly silent. He was apparently pleased with his
eloquence and its effect, for he proceeded:

"This is all your pretended love for me, is it? This is what you call
gratitude to a fellow, and all that kind of thing? Turning up exactly
when you're not wanted, and coolly declaring that you're going in to
spoil the only game that can put me right and bring me home! And this
is the woman who used to declare in the old days that she'd die for me,
and all that! I declare I didn't think it of you, Madge!"

"Don't call me by that name!" she screamed, roused at last;
"don't allude to the old days, in God's name, or I shall go mad!
The recollection of them, the hope of their renewal, has been my
consolation in all sorts of misery and pain. I thought that to hear
them spoken of by you would have been sufficient recompense for all my
troubles: now to hear them mentioned by your lips agonises and maddens
me; I--"

"This is the old story," he interrupted; "you haven't forgotten that
business, I see. This is what you used to do before, when you got into
one of these states. It frightened me at first, but I got used to it;
and Ive seen a great deal too much of such things to care for it now, I
can tell you. If you make this row, I'll ring the bell--upon my soul I
will!"

"O, Lionel, Lionel!" said Margaret, stretching out her hands in
entreaty towards him--"don't speak so cruelly! You don't know all I
have gone through for you--you don't know how weak and ill I am. But it
is nothing to what I will do. You don't know how I love you, Lionel, my
darling! how I have yearned for you; how I will worship and slave for
you, so that I may only be with you. I don't want to be seen, or heard
of, or known, so long as I am near you. Only try me and trust me, only
let me be your own once more."

"I tell you it's impossible," said he petulantly. "Woman, can't you
understand? I'm ruined, done, shut up, cornered, and the only chance
of my getting through is by my marriage with some rich woman, who will
give me her money in exchange for--There, d--n it all,--it's no use
talking any more about it. If you can't see the position, I can't show
it you any stronger; and there's an end of it. Only, look here!--keep
your mouth shut, or it will be the worse for you. You understand
that?--the worse for you."

"Lionel!" She sprang towards him and clasped her hands round his arm.
He shook her off roughly, and moved towards the door.

"No more foolery," he said in a low deep voice. "Take my warning now,
and go. In a fortnight's time you can write to me at the Club, and say
whether you are prepared to accept the conditions I have named. Now,
go."

He held the door open, and she passed by him and went out. She did
not shrink, or faint, or fall. Somehow, she knew not how, she went
down the stairs and into the street. Not until she had hailed a cab,
and seated herself in it, and was being driven off, did she give way.
Then she covered her face with her hands, and burst into a passionate
fit of weeping, rocking herself to and fro, and exclaiming, "And it
is for this that I have exiled myself from my home, and trampled upon
a loving heart! O my God! my God; if I could only have loved Geoffrey
Ludlow!--O, to love as I do, such a man as this!"




CHAPTER III.
GONE TO HIS REST.


The last-mentioned interview between Lord Caterham and his mother,
though productive of good in a certain way--for Lady Beauport, however
bravely she succeeded in bearing herself at the time, was in reality
not a little frightened at her son's determination--had a visibly bad
effect on Caterham's health. The excitement had been too much for him.
The physician had enjoined perfect rest, and an absence of all mental
effort, in the same way in which they prescribe wine and nourishing
food to the pauper, or Turkish baths to the cripple on the outskirts
of Salisbury Plain. Perfect rest and absence of all mental effort were
utterly impossible to Caterham, whose mind was on the rack, who knew
that he had pitted himself against time for the accomplishment of his
heart's desire, and who felt that he must either fulfil his earnest
intention, or give up it and life simultaneously. Life was so thin and
faint and feeble within him, that he needed all of it he could command
to bear him up merely through "the fever called living,"--to keep him
together sufficiently to get through the ordinary quiet routine of his
ever-dull day. When there was an exceptional occasion--such as the
interview with his mother, for instance, where he had gone through a
vast amount of excitement--it left him exhausted, powerless, incapable
of action or even of thought, to an extent that those accustomed only
to ordinary people could never have imagined.

The next day he was too ill to leave his bed; but that made little
difference to the rest of the household. Lord Beauport was away in
Wales looking after some mines on one of his estates, which had
suddenly promised to be specially productive. Lady Beauport, detained
in town for the due carrying out of her plans with respect to Lionel,
sent down her usual message of inquiry by Timpson, her maid, who
communicated with Stephens, and gave the reply to her mistress. Lady
Beauport repeated the message, "Very unwell indeed, eh?" and adding,
"this weather is so horribly depressing," proceeded with her toilette.
Miss Maurice sent grapes and flowers and some new perfume to the
invalid; and--it revived him more than any thing else--a little hurried
note, bidding him not give way to depression, but rouse sufficiently to
get into his easy-chair by the morrow, and she would spend all the day
with him, and read to him, and play to him whatever he wanted.

He had strength enough to raise that little note to his lips so soon as
he heard the door shut behind the outgoing Stephens; to kiss it over
and over again, and to place it beneath his pillow ere he sunk into
such imitation of rest as was vouchsafed to him. A want of sleep was
one of the worst symptoms of his malady, and the doctors had all agreed
that if they could only superinduce something like natural sleep, it
might aid greatly in repairing the little strength which had been given
to him originally, and which was so gradually and imperceptibly, and
yet so surely, wearing away. But that seemed to be impossible. When he
was first assisted to bed he was in a sufficiently drowsy state, partly
from the fatigue of the day, partly from the effect of the wine, of
which the doctors insisted on his taking a quantity which would have
been nothing to an ordinary man, but was much to one feeble in frame,
and unable to take any exercise to carry off its strength. Then, after
a short slumber--heavy, stertorous, and disturbed--he would wake,
bright and staring, without the smallest sign of sleep in his head or
in his eye. In vain would he toss from side to side, and try all the
known recipes for somnolence--none were of the slightest avail. He
could not sleep, he could not compose himself in the least degree, he
could not empty his mind as it were; and the mind must be, or at all
events must seem, empty before sleep will take possession of it. Lord
Caterham's mind in the dead silence of the night was even more active
than it was in the daytime. Before him rose up all the difficulties
which he had to surmount, the dangers which he had to avoid, the hopes
and fears and triumphs and vexations which made up the sum of his
bitter life. They were not many now,--they never had been diffuse at
any time; so little had Caterham been a citizen of the world, that all
his aspirations had lain within a very small compass, and now they
centred in one person--Annie Maurice. To provide for her safety when
he was not there to look after it in person; to leave such records as
would show what action he had taken in her behalf, and on what grounds
that action had been undertaken; to arm some competent and willing
person so thoroughly to bestir himself at the necessary juncture as
to prevent the chance of the conspiracy against Annie's future being
carried into effect:--these were the night-thoughts which haunted
Caterham's couch, and rendered him sleepless.

Sleeplessness had its usual effect. The following day he was quite
worn out in mind and body,--felt it, knew it, could not deny the fact
when it was suggested to him mildly by Stephens, more firmly by his
doctors,--but yet persevered in his intention of getting up. He was
sure he should be so much better out of bed; he was certain that a
change--were it only to his easy-chair--would do him so much good. He
could be very positive--"obstinate" was the phrase by which the doctors
distinguished it, "arbitrary" was Stephen's phrase--when he chose; and
so they let him have his way, wondering why he preferred to leave the
calm seclusion of his bed. They little knew that the contents of that
little note which the valet had seen protruding from the corner of his
master's pillow when he went in to call him in the morning had worked
that charm; they did not know that she had promised to spend the day
with him and read and play to him. But he did; and had he died for it,
he could not have denied himself that afternoon of delight.

So he was dressed, and wheeled into his sitting-room, and placed by
his desk and among his books. He had twice nearly fainted during the
process and Stephens, who knew his every look, and was as regardful of
his master's health as the just appreciation of a highly-paid place
could make him, had urged Lord Caterham to desist and return to his
bed. But Caterham was obstinate; and the toilette was performed and the
sitting-room gained, and then he desired that Miss Maurice might be
told he was anxious to see her.

She came in an instant. Ah, how radiant and fresh she looked as
she entered the room! Since the end of the season, she had so far
assumed her heiress position as to have a carriage of her own and a
saddle-horse; and instead of accompanying Lady Beauport in her set
round of "airing," Annie had taken long drives into country regions,
where she had alighted and walked in the fresh air, duly followed by
the carriage; or on horseback, and attended by her groom, had galloped
off to Hampstead and Highgate and Willesden and Ealing in the early
morning, long before Lady Beauport had thought of unclosing her eyes.
It was this glorious exercise, this enjoyment of heaven's light and air
and sun, that had given the rose to Annie's cheeks and the brilliance
to her eyes. She was freckled here and there; and there was a bit
of a brown mark on her forehead, showing exactly how much was left
unshaded by her hat. These were things which would have distressed
most well-regulated Belgravian damsels; but they troubled Annie not
one whit; and as she stood close by his chair, with her bright eyes
and her pushed-off brown hair, and the big teeth gleaming in her fresh
wholesome mouth, Caterham thought he had never seen her look more
charming, and felt that the distance between her, brimming over with
health, and him, gradually succumbing to disease, was greater than ever.

Annie Maurice was a little shocked when she first glanced at Caterham.
The few days which had intervened since she had been to his room had
made a great difference in his appearance. His colour had not left
him--on the contrary, it had rather increased--but there was a tight
look about the skin, a dull glassiness in his eyes, and a pinched
appearance in the other features, which were unmistakable. Of course
she took no notice of this: but coming in, greeted him in her usual
affectionate manner. Nor was there any perceptible difference in his
voice as he said:

"You see I have kept you to your word, Annie. You promised, if I were
in my easy-chair, that you would play and read to me; and here I am."

"And here I am to do your bidding, Arthur! and too delighted to do it,
and to see you sufficiently well to be here. You're not trying too
much, are you, Arthur?"

"In what, Annie?"

"In sitting up and coming into this room. Are you strong enough to
leave your bed?"

"Ah, I am so weary and wretched alone, Annie. I long so for
companionship, for--" he checked himself and said, "for some one to
talk, to read, to keep me company in all the long hours of the day. I'm
not very bright just now, and even I have been stronger--which seems
almost ridiculous--but I could keep away no longer, knowing you would
come to lighten my dreariness."

Though his voice was lower and more faint than usual, there was an
impassioned tone in it which she had never heard before, and which
jarred ever so slightly on her ear. So she rose from her seat, and
laughingly saying that she would go at once and perform part of her
engagement, sat down at the piano, and played and sang such favourite
pieces of his as he had often been in the habit of asking for. They
were simple ballads,--some of Moore's melodies, Handel's "Harmonious
Blacksmith," and some of Mendelssohn's _Lieder ohne Wörte_,--all calm,
soft, soothing music, such as Caterham loved; and when Annie had been
playing for some time he said:

"You don't know how I love to hear you, Annie! you're getting tired
now, child."

"Not in the least degree, Arthur. I could go on singing all day, if it
amused you."

"It does more than amuse me, Annie. I cannot describe to you the
feeling that comes over me in listening to your singing; nothing else
has such a calm, holy, sanctifying influence on me. Listening to you,
all the petty annoyances, the carking cares of this world fade away,
and--"

He ceased speaking suddenly; and Annie looking round, saw the tears on
his cheek. She was about to run to him, but he motioned her to keep her
seat, and said: "Annie dear, you recollect a hymn that I heard you sing
one night when you first came here?--one Sunday night when they were
out, and you and I sat alone in the twilight in the drawing-room? Ah, I
scarcely knew you then, but that hymn made a great impression on me."

"You mean--
     'Abide with me! fast falls the eventide
      The darkness deepens: Lord, with me abide!'"


"Yes, that is it. How lovely it is!--both words and music, I think."

"Yes, it is lovely. It was written by a Mr. Lyte, when he was--"

She checked herself, but he finished the sentence for her,--"When he
was dying. Yes; I recollect your telling me so that night. Sing it for
me, dear."

She turned to the piano at once, and in an instant the rich deep tones
of her voice were ringing through the room. Annie Maurice sang ballads
sweetly, but she sang hymns magnificently. There was not the slightest
attempt at ornamentation or _bravura_ in her performance, but she threw
her whole soul into her singing; and the result was rich and solemn
melody. As she sang, she seemed to embody the spirit of the composer,
and her voice vibrated and shook with the fervour which animated her.

Half leaning on his stick, half reclining in his chair, Caterham
watched her in rapt delight; then when she had finished, and ere
the thrilling music of her voice had died away, he said: "Thanks,
dear--again a thousand thanks! Now, once more a request, Annie. I shall
not worry you much more, my child."

"Arthur,"--and in an instant she was by his side,--"if you speak like
that, I declare I will not sing to you."

"O yes, you will, Annie dear!---O yes, you will. You know as well
as I do that--Well, then"--obedient to a forefinger uplifted in
warning--"I'll say no more on that point. But I want you now to sing
me the old-fashioned Evening Hymn. Ive a very ancient love for dear
old Bishop Ken, and I don't like to think of his being set aside
for any modern hymnologist,--even for such a specimen as that you
have just sung. Sing me 'Glory to Thee,' Annie,--that is, if you are
old-fashioned enough to know it."

She smiled, and sang. When she ceased, finding that he remained
speechless and motionless, she went up to him, fearing that he had
fainted. He was lying back in his chair perfectly quiet, with his eyes
closed. When she touched him, he opened them dreamily, saying, "'That
I may dread the grave as little as my bed.' Yes, yes!--Ah, Annie dear,
you've finished!--and to think that you, a modern young lady, should be
able to sing old Bishop Ken without book! Where did you learn him?"

"When I was a very little child,--at the Priory, Arthur. Geoffrey
Ludlow--as Ive told you, I think--used to come out to us every Sunday;
and in the evening after dinner, before I went to bed, he used to ask
for his little wife to sing to him. And then poor papa used to tell me
to sit on Geoff's knee, and I used to sing the Evening Hymn."

"Ay," said Caterham in an absent manner, "Geoffrey Ludlow's little
wife! Geoffrey Ludlow's little wife!--ay, ay! 'That so I may, rise
glorious at Thine awful day!' In Thy mercy, in Thy mercy!" and saying
this, he fainted away.

That evening Algy Barford, at Lord Dropmore's in Lincolnshire, on his
return from shooting, found a telegram on his dressing-room table. It
was from Annie Maurice, and begged his immediate return to town.

Lord Caterham was better the next day. Though still very weak,
he insisted on being dressed and wheeled into his sitting-room.
Once there, he had his despatch-box placed before him, and the
writing-materials put ready to his hand. Of late he had occasionally
been in the habit of employing an amanuensis. Annie Maurice had
frequently written from his dictation; and when she had been engaged, a
son of the old housekeeper, who was employed at a law-stationer's, and
who wrote a hand which was almost illegible from its very clearness,
had sometimes been pressed into the service. But now Lord Caterham
preferred writing for himself. Annie had sent to beg him to rest; and
in reply he had scrawled two lines, saying that he was ever so much
better, and that he had something to do which must be done, and which
when done would leave him much happier and easier in mind. So they left
him to himself; and Stephens, looking in from time to time, as was his
wont, reported to the servants'-hall that his master was "at it as hard
as ever--still a-writin'!" They wondered what could thus occupy him,
those curious domestics. They knew exactly the state in which he was,
the feeble hold that he had on life;--what do they not know, those
London servants?--and they thought that he was making his will, and
speculated freely among themselves as to what would be the amount of
Stephens's inheritance; and whether it would be a sum of money "down,"
or an annuity; and whether Stephens would invest it after the usual
fashion of their kind--in a public-house, or whether, from excessive
gentility, he was not "a cut above that." Lord Caterham would not hold
out much longer, they opined; and then Mr. Lionel would come in for
his title; and who Mr. Lionel was--inquired about by the new servants,
and the description of Mr. Lionel by the old servants--and mysterious
hints as to how, in the matter of Mr. Lionel, there had been a "screw
loose" and a "peg out;" how he was a "regular out-and-out fast lot,"
and had had to "cut it;"--all this occasioned plenty of talk in the
servants'-hall, and made the dreary autumn-day pass quite pleasantly.
And still the sick man sat at his desk, plying his pen, with but rare
intervals of rest--intervals during which he would clasp his poor
aching head, and lift his shrivelled attenuated hands in earnest silent
prayer.


The Beauport household was sunk in repose the next morning, when a
sharp ring at the bell, again and again repeated, aroused the young
lady who as kitchen-maid was on her preferment, and whose dreams
of being strangled by the cook for the heaviness of her hand in an
omelette were scared by the shrill clanging of the bell which hung
immediately over her head. The first notion of "fire" had calmed
down into an idea of "sweeps" by the time that she had covered her
night-attire with a dingy calico robe known to her as her "gownd;" and
she was tottering blindly down stairs before she recollected that no
sweeps had been ordered, and thought that it was probably a "runaway."
But lured perhaps by a faint idea that it might be the policeman, she
descended; and after an enormous amount of unbolting and unchaining,
found herself face-to-face with a fresh-coloured, light-bearded, cheery
gentleman, who wore a Glengarry cap, had a travelling-rug in his hand,
was smoking a cigar, and had evidently just alighted from a hansom-cab
which was standing at the door, and the driver of which was just
visible behind a big portmanteau and a gun-case. The fresh-coloured
gentleman was apparently rather startled at the apparition of the
kitchen-maid, and exclaimed, apparently involuntarily, "Gad!" in
a very high key. Recovering himself instantly, he asked how Lord
Caterham was. Utterly taken aback at discovering that the visitor was
not the policeman, the kitchen-maid was floundering about heavily for
an answer, when she was more than ever disconcerted at seeing the
fresh-coloured gentleman tear off his Glengarry-cap and advance up
the steps with outsretched hand. These demonstrations were not made in
honour of kitchen-maid, but of Annie Maurice, who had been aroused from
her usual light sleep by the ring, and who, guessing at the visitor,
had come down in her dressing-gown to see him.

They passed into the dining-room, and then he took her hand and
said: "I only got your telegram at dinner-time last night, my dear
Miss Maurice, and came off just as I was. Dropmore--deuced civil of
him--drove me over to the station himself hard as he could go, by Jove!
just caught mail-train, and came on from King's Cross in a cab. It's
about Caterham, of course. Bad news,--ay, ay, ay! He--poor--I can't
say it--he's in danger, he--" And brave old Algy stopped, his handsome
jolly features all tightened and pinched in his anxiety.

"He is very, very ill, dear Mr. Barford,--very ill; and I wanted you to
see him. I don't know--I can't tell why--but I think he may possibly
have something on his mind--something which he would not like to tell
me, but which he might feel a relief in confiding to some one else; and
as you, I know, are a very dear and valued friend of his, I think we
should all like you to be that some one. That was what made me send for
you."

"I'm--I'm not a very good hand at eloquence, Miss Maurice--might put
pebbles in my mouth and shout at the sea-shore and all that kind of
thing, like the--the celebrated Greek person, you know--and wouldn't
help me in getting out a word; but though I can't explain, I feel very
grateful to you for sending for me, to see--dear old boy!" The knot
which had been rising in Algy Barford's throat during this speech
had grown nearly insurmountable by this time, and there were two big
tears running down his waistcoat. He tried to pull himself together as
he said: "If he has any thing to say, which he would like to say to
me--of course--I shall--any thing that would--God bless him, my dear
old boy!--good, patient, dear darling old boy, God bless him!" The
thought of losing his old friend flashed across him in all its dread
heart-wringing dreariness, and Algy Barford fairly broke down and wept
like a child. Recovering himself after a moment, he seized Annie's
hand, and muttering something to the effect that he would be back as
soon as he had made himself a little less like an Esquimaux, he dashed
into the cab and was whirled away.

You would scarcely have thought that Algy Barford had had what is
called sleep, but what really is a mixture of nightmare and cramp in
a railway-carriage, had you seen him at eleven o'clock, when he next
made his appearance at St. Barnabas Square, so bright and fresh and
radiant was he. He found Annie Maurice awaiting his arrival, and had
with her a short earnest conversation as to Caterham's state. From that
he learned all. The doctors had a very bad opinion of their patient's
state: it was--hum--ha!--Yes--you know!--general depression--a want of
vitality, which--just now--looking at his normal lack of force, of what
we call professionally _vis vita_, might--eh? Yes, no doubt, serious
result. Could not be positively stated whether he would not so far
recover--pull through, as it is called--rally, as we say, as to--remain
with us yet some time; but in these cases there was always--well, yes,
it must be called a risk. This was the decision which the doctors
had given to Annie, and which she, in other words, imparted to Algy
Barford, who, coupling it with his experience of the guarded manner
in which fashionable physicians usually announced their opinions,
felt utterly hopeless, and shook his head mournfully. He tried to
be himself; to resume his old smile and old confident buoyant way;
he told his dear Miss Maurice that she must hope for the best; that
these doctor-fellows, by Jove, generally knew nothing; half of them
died suddenly themselves, without even having anticipated their own
ailments; "physician, heal thyself," and all that sort of thing; that
probably Caterham wanted a little rousing, dear old boy; which rousing
he would go in and give him. But Annie marked the drooping head and the
sad despondent manner in which he shrugged his shoulders and plunged
his hands into his pockets when he thought she had retired--marked also
how he strove to throw elasticity into his step and light into his face
as he approached the door of Caterham's room.

It had been arranged between Algy and Annie Maurice that his was to
have the appearance of a chance visit, so that when Stephens had
announced him, and Lord Caterham had raised his head in wonder, Algy,
who had by this time pulled himself together sufficiently, said: "Ah,
ha Caterham!--dear old boy!--thought you had got rid of us all out of
town, eh?--and were going to have it all to yourself! Not a bit of
it, dear boy! These doctor-fellows tell you one can't get on without
ozone. Don't know what that is--daresay they're right. All I know
is, I can't get on without a certain amount of chimney-pot. Country,
delicious fresh air, turf; heather, peat-bog, stubble, partridge,
snipe, grouse--all deuced good! cows and pigs, and that kind of thing;
get up early, and go to bed and snore; get red face and double-chin
and awful weight--then chimney-pot required. I always know, bless you!
Too much London season, get my liver as big as Strasburg goose's, you
know--_foie gras_ and feet nailed to a board, and that kind of thing;
too much country, tight waistcoat, red face--awfully British, in point
of fact. Then, chimney-pot. I'm in that state now; and Ive come back
to have a week's chimney-pot and blacks and generally cabbage-stalky
street--and then I shall go away much better."

"You keep your spirits, Algy, wherever you are." The thin faint voice
struck on Algy Barford's ear like a knell. He paused a minute and
took a short quick gulp, and then said: "O yes, still the same stock
on hand, Caterham. I could execute country orders, or supply colonial
agencies even, with promptitude and despatch, I think. And you,
Arthur--how goes it with you?"

"Very quietly, Algy,--very, very quietly, thank God! Ive had no return
of my old pain for some time, and the headache seems to have left me."

"Well, that's brave! We shall see you in your chair out on the lawn at
the hunt-breakfast at Homershams again this winter, Arthur. We shall--"

"Well, I scarcely think that. I mean, not perhaps as you interpret me;
but--I scarcely think--However, there's time enough to think of that.
Let's talk of nearer subjects. I'm so glad you chanced to come to town,
Algy--so very glad. Your coming seems predestined; for it was only
yesterday I was wishing I had you here."

"Tremendously glad I came, dear old boy! Chimney-pot attack fell in
handy this time, at all events. What did you want, Arthur, old fellow?
Not got a new leaning towards dogginess, and want me to go up to Bill
George's? Do you recollect that Irish deerhound I got for you?"

"I recollect him well--poor old Connor. No, not a dog now. I want you
to--just raise me a bit, Algy, will you?--a little bit: I am scarcely
strong enough to--that's it. Ah, Algy, old fellow, how often in the
long years that we have been chums have you lifted this poor wretched
frame in your strong arms!"

It was a trial for a man of Algy Barford's big heart; but he made head
against it even then, and said in a voice harder and drier than usual
from the struggle, "How often have I brought my bemuddled old brains
for you to take them out and pick them to pieces and clean them, and
put them back into my head in a state to be of some use to me!--that's
the question, dear old boy. How often have you supplied the match to
light the tow inside my head--Ive got deuced little outside now--and
sent me away with some idea of what I ought to do when I was in a deuce
of a knot! Why, I recollect once when Lionel and I--what is it, dear
old boy?"

"You remind me--the mention of that name--I want to say something to
you Algy, which oddly enough had--just reach me that bottle, Algy;
thanks!--which--"

"Rest a minute, dear old boy; rest. You've been exerting yourself too
much."

"No; I'm better now--only faint for a minute. What was I saying?--O,
about Lionel. You recollect a letter which--" his voice was growing
again so faint that Algy took up the sentence.

"Which I brought to you; a letter from Lionel, after he had, you know,
dear old boy--board ship and that kind of thing?"

"Yes, that is the letter I mean. You--you knew its contents, Algy?"

"Well, Arthur, I think I did--I--you know Lionel was very fond of me,
and--used to be about with him, you know, and that kind of thing--"

"You knew his--his wife?"

"Wife, Gad, did he say?--Jove! Knew you were--dear me!--charming
person--lady. Very beautiful--great friend of Lionel's; but not his
wife, dear old boy--somebody else's wife."

"Somebody else's wife?"

"Yes; wonderful story. Ive wanted to tell you, and, most extraordinary
thing, something always interrupted. Friend of yours too; tall woman
red hair, violet eyes--wife of painter-man--Good God, Arthur!"

Well might he start; for Lord Caterham threw his hands wildly above
his head, then let them fall helplessly by his side. By the time Algy
Barford had sprung to his chair, and passed his arms around him, the
dying man's head had drooped on to his right shoulder, and his eyes
were glazing fast.

"Arthur! dear Arthur! one instant! Let me call for help."

"No, Algy; leave us so; no one else. Only one who could--and
she--better not--bless her! better not. Take my hand, Algy, old
friend--tried, trusted, dear old friend--always thoughtful, always
affectionate--God bless you--Algy! Yes, kiss my forehead again. Ah, so
happy! where the wicked cease from troubling and the--Yes, Lord, with
me abide, with me abide!--the darkness deepens: Lord, with me abide!"

And as the last words fell faintly on Algy Barford's ears, the slight
form which was lying in Algy Barford's arms, and on which the strong
man's tears were falling like rain, slipped gradually out of his
grasp--dead.




CHAPTER IV.
THE PROTRACTED SEARCH.


Annie Maurice was aroused from the brooding loneliness in which she
had sought refuge, in the first bewilderment and stupefaction of her
grief, by a communication from Lord Beauport. All was over now; the
last sad ceremonial had taken place; and the place which had known
Arthur, in his patient suffering, in his little-appreciated gentleness
and goodness, should know him no more for ever. The crippled form
was gone, and the invalid-chair which had for so long supported it
had been removed, by order of the housekeeper, to a receptacle for
discarded articles of use or ornament. Lord and Lady Beauport were
not likely to notice the circumstance, or to object to it if they
did. The blinds were decorously drawn; the rooms were scrupulously
arranged; every thing in them in its place, as though never to be used
or handled any more. The books, the objects of art, the curious things
which the dead man alone of all the house had understood and valued,
had a staring lifeless look about them in the unaccustomed precision
of their distribution; the last flowers which Annie ha placed in the
Venetian glasses had withered, and been thrown away by the notable
housemaids. A ray of sunlight crept in at one side of the blind, and
streamed upon the spot where Arthur's head had fallen back upon his
friend's arm,--ah, how short a time ago!--and yet all looked strange
and changed, not only as if he had gone away for ever, but as if he had
never been there at all. Annie had not gone into the rooms since he had
left them for the last time; she had an instinctive feeling of how it
would be, and she could not bear it yet; she knew that in nothing would
there be so sharp a pang as in seeing the familiar things which had
been so like him, grown so unlike. So, when her maid told her that Lord
Beauport wished to see her immediately, she asked nervously where he
was.

"In the library, Miss Annie," said her maid, and looked very pityingly
at the purple eyelids and white face.

"Alone?"

No, his lordship was not alone; one of the lawyer gentlemen and her
ladyship were with him.

Annie went slowly and reluctantly to the library. She did not think
for a moment that Lord and Lady Beauport were indifferent to the
death of their eldest son; on the contrary, she knew that the event
had come upon them with a mighty shock, and that they had felt it, if
not deeply, at least violently and keenly. But she had the faculty
of vivid perception, and she used it intuitively; and in this case
it told her that shame, self-detection, and remorse,--the vague
uneasiness which besets all who cannot reckon with themselves to the
full in the daylight of conscience, but, like the debtor called to
an account, kept something back,--mingled largely with their grief.
It was not wholehearted, lavish, sacred, like hers; it was not the
grief which takes the spontaneous form of prayer, and chastens itself
into submission, elevating  and sanctifying the mind and character of
the mourner. Annie knew, by that keen unreasoning instinct of hers,
that while her sole and earnest desire was to keep the memory of her
dead cousin green, recalling his words, his counsels, his
wishes,--dwelling on his views of life and its duties, and
preserving him in her faithful heart, for ever near her, as a living
friend,--while her chosen thoughts would be of him, and her best
consolation in memory,--his father and mother would forget him if
they could. They mourned for him, but it was with captious impatient
grief; there was a sting in every remembrance, every association, which
they could not yet escape from, but would have put away if they had had
the power. To them, sorrow for the dead was as a haunting enemy, to
be outwitted and left behind as speedily as might be; to her it was a
friend, cherished and dear, solemnly greeted, and piously entertained.

When Annie entered the library, she found that the "lawyer gentleman,"
whom her maid had mentioned, was the family solicitor, Mr. Knevitt,
who was well known to her, and for whom Caterham had had much liking
and respect. Lord Beauport and he were standing together beside a long
table, strewn with papers, and on which stood a large despatch-box
open, and, as she saw while she walked up the room, also full of
papers. At some distance from the table, and in the shade, Lady
Beauport was seated, her hands clasped together in her lap, and her
figure leaning completely back in the deep arm-chair she occupied. She
looked very pale and worn, and her deep mourning was not becoming to
her. Sharp contention of thought and feeling was going on under that
calm exterior,--bitter pangs, in which vexation had a large share, as
well as regret, and a sense that she was to be baffled in the future
as she had been defeated in the past. Ay, the future,--she had begun
to think of it already, or rather she had begun (when had she ever
ceased?) to think of _him_. Lionel was the future to her. What if there
were more trouble and opposition in store for her? What if Arthur (ah,
poor fellow! he had never understood young men different from himself,
and he was always hard on Lionel) had left any communication for his
father, had written any thing touching the particulars of Lionel's
career which he knew, and had warned her not to ask? Hitherto nothing
of the sort had been found in the examination of Lord Caterham's
papers instituted by Lord Beauport and Mr. Knevitt. There was a packet
for Annie Maurice, indeed; they had found it an hour ago, and Lord
Beauport had just sent for Annie in order to hand it over to her. Lady
Beauport had, however, no apprehensions connected with this matter;
the virtues of the dead and the vices of the living son (though she
would not have given them their true name) secured her from feeling
any. Whatever Lionel had done she felt convinced was not of a nature
to be communicated to Annie, and Caterham would have guarded her
with the utmost caution from hearing any thing unfit for her ears.
No, no; there was no danger in that quarter. Had she not felt sure,
before this "dreadful thing"--as she called Lord Caterham's death to
herself--happened, that the scrupulous delicacy of her son, where
Annie was concerned, would be her best aid and defence against his
defeat of her projects? The letter, the packet--whatever it might be
called--was probably an effusion of feeling, a moral lecture on life,
or a posthumous guide to studies, in which Arthur had desired to see
his gentle and interesting cousin proficient.

So Lady Beauport looked at the packet as it lay on the table, close to
the despatch-box, without the least anxiety, and fixed her impatient
attention on the further investigation of the papers, continued by Lord
Beauport and Mr. Knevitt. It was not until they had concluded as much
of their melancholy task as they proposed to undertake that day, that
the Earl sent the summons which brought Annie to the library.

He took up the packet as she drew near, and said, very sadly:

"This is for you my dear."

"From--from Arthur?" she asked, in a trembling voice. "Yes, Annie,--we
found it among his papers."

She took it from him, looked at it, and sat down in a chair beside the
table, but made no attempt to break the seal. Lady Beauport did not
speak. The Earl resumed his conversation with Mr. Knevitt, and Annie
sat still and silent for a few minutes, Then she interrupted Lord
Beauport by asking him if he required her for any thing further.

"No, my dear," he said kindly; "you may go away if you like. How weary
you look!" he added, with a deep sigh. Still Lady Beauport spoke no
word; but her keen unsympathetic eyes followed the girl's graceful
figure and drooping head as she left the library.

Arrived at her own room, Annie opened the packet, which she felt was
a sacred thing. Her departed friend had written to her, then, words
which he intended her to read only when he should be no more; solemn
counsel, very precious affection, a priceless legacy from the dead
would no doubt be in the letter, whose folds felt so thick and heavy
in her hand. She removed the outer cover, placing it carefully by her
side, and found an enclosure directed to Geoffrey Ludlow, and merely a
few lines to herself, in which the writer simply directed her to place
the accompanying letter in Geoffrey's hands _herself_, and privately,
as soon after it came into hers as possible.

Surprise and disappointment were Annie's first feelings. She looked
forlornly enough at the meagre scrap of writing that was her share,
and with some wonder at the letter--no doubt voluminous--which was
Geoffrey's. What could it be about? Arthur and Ludlow had been good
friends, it is true, and had entertained strong mutual respect; but she
could not account for this solemn communication, implying so strange
and absolute a confidence. She turned the letter over in her hands, she
scrutinised the address, the paper, the seal; then she rose and locked
it carefully away, together with the note to herself in which it had
been: enclosed. "Give this letter _privately_ to Ludlow," were Arthur's
words; then, if he did not wish its delivery to be known, it was plain
he wished to conceal its existence. If Lady Beauport should question
her as to the contents of the packet? Well, she must either give an
evasive answer, or refuse to answer at all; the alternative should
be decided by the terms of the question. She could venture to refuse
an answer to a question of Lady Beauport's now; her heiress-ship had
secured her many immunities, that one among the rest.

Lord Beauport was right; Annie was weary, and looking so. The sickness
and dreariness of a great grief were upon her, and she was worn out.
The stillness of the great house was oppressive to her; and yet
she shrank from the knowledge that that stillness was soon to pass
away, that life would resume its accustomed course, and the dead be
forgotten. By all but her; to her his memory should be ever precious,
and his least wish sacred. Then she debated within herself how she
should fulfil his last request. There were difficulties in the way.
She could not tell Geoffrey to call on her yet, nor could she go to
his house. Then she remembered that he had not written to her. She had
forgotten, until then, that there had been no answer to the letter in
which she told Geoffrey Ludlow of Caterham's death. Could a letter have
come, and been overlooked? She rang for her maid and questioned her,
but she was positive no letter had been mislaid or forgotten. Several
papers lay on her writing-table; she turned them over, to satisfy
herself, though nothing could be more improbable than that she should
have overlooked a letter from her dear old friend. There was no such
thing. Puzzled and vaguely distressed, Annie stood looking at the heap
of notes, with her hands pressed on her throbbing temples; and her
maid entreated her to lie down and rest, commenting, as Lord Beauport
had done, upon her appearance. Annie complied; and the girl carefully
darkened the room and left her. For a while she lay still, thinking how
she was to convey the letter to Geoffrey, without delay, "as soon as
possible," Arthur had said; but she soon dropped into the dull heavy
sleep of grief and exhaustion.

It was late in the evening when she awoke, and she again eagerly
inquired for letters. There were none, and Annie's surprise grew into
uneasiness. She resolved to write to Ludlow again, to tell him that
she had something of importance to communicate, without indicating
its character. "He may tell Margaret, or not, as he pleases," she
thought "that is for him to decide. I daresay, if she sees my note,
she will not feel any curiosity or interest about it. Poor Geoffrey!"
And then the girl recalled all that Arthur had said of his suspicion
and distrust of Ludlow's beautiful wife, and thought sorrowfully how
large was his share in the loss they had sustained of such a friend.
Something must be wrong, she thought, or Geoffrey would surely have
written. In her sore grief she yearned for the true and ready sympathy
which she should have from him, and him alone. Stay; she would not only
write, she would send her maid to inquire for Geoffrey, and Margaret,
and the child. She could go early next morning in a cab, and be back
before breakfast-hour. So Annie made this arrangement, wrote her note,
got through a short hour or two in the great dreary drawing-room as
best she could, and once more cried herself to the merciful sleep which
in some degree strengthened her for the intelligence which awaited her
in the morning.

She was aroused by her maid, who came hurriedly to her bedside, holding
in her hand Annie's note to Ludlow. She started up, confused, yet
sufficiently awake to be startled at the look in the girl's face.

"What is it?" she said faintly.

"O Miss Annie, dreadful, dreadful news Mrs. Ludlow has gone away,
nobody knows where, and Mr. Ludlow is raving mad, in brain-fever!"


Lord Caterham's letter lay for many days undisturbed in the receptacle
in which Annie Maurice had placed it. Not yet was the confidence of
the dead to be imparted to the living. He was to read that letter in
time, and to learn from it much that the writer had never dreamed it
could convey. Little had the two, who had lived in so near and pleasant
an intimacy, dreamed of the fatal link which really, though unseen,
connected them. This was the letter which, in due time, Annie Maurice
deposited in Geoffrey's hands:


"MY DEAR LUDLOW,--I have felt for some time that for me 'the long
disease called life' is wearing toward its cure. Under this conviction
I am 'setting my house in order;' and to do so thoroughly, and enjoy
peace of mind for the brief space which will remain to me when that is
done, I must have recourse to your honest and trusty friendship. I have
to bequeath to you two services to be done for me, and one confidence
to be kept, until your discretion shall judge it expedient that it
should be divulged. These two services are distinct, but cognate; and
they concern one who is the dearest of all living creatures to me, and
for whom I know you entertain a sincere and warm affection--I allude
to Annie Maurice. The confidence concerns my unworthy brother, Lionel
Brakespere.

"In the fortune left her by Mr. Ampthill, Annie has security against
material ills, and is safe from the position of dependence, in which
I never could bear to feel she must remain. This is an immense relief
to my mind; but it has substituted a source of uneasiness, though of
considerably less dimensions, for that which it has removed. When
I wrote to you lately, asking you to come to me, it was with the
intention of speaking to you on this subject; but as our interview has
been accidentally prevented, I made up my mind to act in the matter
myself, as long as I live, and to bequeath action after my death to
you, as I am now doing. My brother is as worthless a man as there is on
the face of the earth--heartless, depraved, unprincipled to an almost
incredible degree, considering his early association with men and women
of character. You have, I daresay, heard vaguely of certain disgraceful
circumstances which forced him to leave the country, and which brought
immeasurable distress upon us all.

"I need not enter into these matters: they have little to do with
the thing that is pressing on my mind. If Lionel's vices had been
hidden from society ever so discreetly, I was sufficiently aware of
their existence to have shrunk with as much horror as I feel now from
the idea of his becoming Annie's husband. Let me preface what I am
about to say by assuring you that I do not entertain any such fear.
I know Annie; and I am perfectly assured that for her pure, upright,
intelligent, and remarkably clear-sighted nature such a man as
Lionel,--whose profound and cynical selfishness is not to be hidden by
external polish, and whose many vices have left upon him the _cachet_
which every pure woman feels instinctively, even though she does not
understand theoretically,--will never have any attraction. She knows
the nature of the transaction which drove him from England; and such a
knowledge would be sufficient protection for her, without the repulsion
which I am satisfied will be the result of association with him. I
would protect her from such association if I could, and while I live
I do not doubt my power to do so. It will be painful to me to use it;
but I do not mind pain for Annie's benefit. A sad estrangement always
existed between Lionel and me; an estrangement increased on his side by
contempt and dislike--which he expressed in no measured terms--but on
my part merely passive. The power which I possess to hinder his return
to this house was put into my hands by himself--more, I believe, to
wound me, and in the wanton malice and daring of his evil nature, than
for the reason he assigned; but it is effectual, and I shall use it,
as I can, without explanation. When I am gone, it needs be, some one
must be enabled to use this power in my stead; and that person, my dear
Ludlow, is you. I choose you for Annie's sake, for yours, and for my
own. My mother designs to marry Lionel to Annie, and thus secure to him
by marriage the fortune which his misconduct lost him by inheritance.
With this purpose in view, she has summoned Lionel to England, and she
proposes that he should return to this house. She and I have had a
painful explanation, and I have positively declared that it cannot and
shall not be. In order to convince her of the necessity of yielding
the point, I have told her that I am in possession of particulars of
Lionel's conduct, unknown to her and my father, which perfectly justify
me in my declaration; and I have entreated her, for the sake of her own
peace of mind, not to force me, by an attempt which can have no issue
but failure, to communicate the disgraceful particulars. Lady Beauport
has been forced to appear satisfied for the present; and matters are in
a state of suspense.

"But this cannot last, and with my life it will come to an end.
Lionel will return here, in my place, and bearing my name--the heir
to an earldom; and the follies and crimes of the younger son will be
forgotten. Still Annie Maurice will be no less a brilliant match, and
my mother will be no less anxious to bring about a marriage. I foresee
misery to Annie--genteel persecution and utter friendlessness--unless
you, Ludlow, come to her aid. With all its drawbacks, this is her
fitting home; and you must not propose that she should leave it without
very grave cause. But you must be in a position to preserve her from
Lionel; you must hold the secret in your hand, as I hold it, which
makes all schemes for such an accursed marriage vain--the secret which
will keep the house she will adorn free from the pollution of his
presence. When you hear that Lionel Brakespere is paying attention to
Annie under his father's roof, go to Lord Beauport, and tell him that
Lionel Brakespere is a married man.

"And now, my dear Ludlow, you know one of the services you are to do me
when I am gone; and you are in possession of the confidence I desire to
repose in you. To explain the other, I must give you particulars. When
my brother left England, he sent me, by the hands of a common friend, a
letter which he had written at Liverpool, and which, when I have made
you acquainted with its contents, I shall destroy. I do not desire to
leave its low ribaldry, its coarse contempt, its cynical wickedness, to
shock my poor father's eyes, or to testify against my brother when I am
gone.

"I enable you to expose him, in order to prevent unhappiness to one
dear to us both; but I have no vindictive feeling towards him, and
no eyes but mine must see the words in which he taunts me with the
physical afflictions to which he chooses to assign my 'notions of
morality' and 'superiority to temptation.' Enough--the facts which the
letter contains are these: As nearly as I can make out, four years
ago he met and tried to seduce a young lady, only eighteen years old,
at Tenby. Her virtue, I hope--he says her ambition--foiled him, and
he ran away with the girl and married her. He called himself Leonard
Brookfield; and she never knew his name or real position. He took her
abroad for a time; then brought her to London, where she passed for
his mistress among the men to whom he introduced her, and who were
aware that she had no knowledge of his identity. He had left the army
then, or of course she would have discovered it. When the crash came,
he had left her, and he coolly told me, as he had next to nothing for
himself, he had nothing for her. His purpose in writing to me was
to inform me, as especially interested in the preservation of the
family, that not only was there a wife in the case, but, to the best
of his belief, child also, to be born very soon; and as no one could
say what would become of him, it might be as well to ascertain where
the heir of the Beauports might be found, if necessary. He supposed I
would keep the matter a secret, until it should become advisable, if
ever, to reveal it. Mrs. Brakespere had no knowledge of her rights,
and could not, therefore, make herself obnoxious by claiming them.
If I chose to give her some help, I should probably be rewarded by
the consciousness of charity; but he advised me to keep the secret of
our relationship for my own sake: she was perfectly well known as his
mistress; and as they were both under a cloud at present, the whole
thing had better be kept as dark as possible. I read this letter with
the deepest disgust; the personal impertinence to myself I could afford
to disregard, and was accustomed to; but the utter baseness and villany
of it sickened me. This was the man who was to bear my father's name
and fill my father's place. I determined at once to afford assistance
to the wretched forsaken wife, and to wait and consider when and how
it would be advisable to bring about the acknowledgment of the truth
and her recognition. I thought of course only of simple justice. The
circumstances of the marriage were too much against the girl to enable
me to form any favourable opinion of her. I turned to the letter to
find her name and address; they were not given: of course this was only
an oversight; he must have intended to subjoin them. My perplexity was
extreme. How was I to discover this unhappy woman? I knew too well the
code of honour, as it is called, among men, to hope for help from any
of his dissolute friends; they would keep his evil secret--as they
believed it--faithfully.

"Algy Barford had brought me the letter, and on that occasion had
referred to his being 'no end chums' with Lionel. But he had also
declared that he knew nothing whatever of the contents of the letter.
Still he might know something of her. I put a question or two to him,
and found he did not. He had known a woman who lived with Lionel
for a short time, he believed, but she was dead. Clearly this was
another person. Then I determined to have recourse to the professional
finders-out of secrets, and I sent for Blackett. You have often seen
him leaving me as you came in, or waiting for me as you went out. The
day Mrs. Ludlow fainted, you remember, he was in the hall as you took
her to the carriage, and he asked me so many questions about her, that
I was quite amused at the idea of a detective being so enthusiastic.
The materials he had to work on were sparing indeed, and the absence of
all clue by name was very embarrassing. He went to work skilfully, I
am sure, though he failed. He went to Tenby, and there he ascertained
the name of the girl who had deserted her widowed mother for Leonard
Brookfield. The mother had been many months dead. This was little help,
for she had doubtless discarded the Christian name; and the personal
description was probably coloured by the indignation her conduct had
excited. Blackett learned that she was handsome, with red hair and blue
eyes,--some said black. He could get no certain information on that
point.

"But I need not linger over these details. No efforts were spared, yet
our search proved vain. When some time had elapsed, their direction
changed, and a woman and child were sought for: in every part of
London where destitution hides, in all the abodes of flaunting sin, in
hospitals, in refuges, in charitable institutions,--in vain. Sometimes
Blackett suggested that she might have taken another protector and
gone abroad; he made all possible inquiry. She had never communicated
with her home, or with any one who had formerly known her. I began to
despair of finding her; and I had almost made up my mind to relinquish
the search, when Blackett came to me one day, in great excitement for
him, and told me he was confident of finding her in a day or two at
the farthest. 'And the child?' I asked. No, he knew nothing of the
child; the woman he had traced, and whom he believed to be my brother's
deserted wife, had no child, had never had one, within the knowledge
of the people from whom he had got his information; nevertheless he
felt sure he was right this time, and the child might have died before
she came across them. She must have suffered terribly. Then he told
me his information came through a pawnbroker, of whom he had frequent
occasion to make inquiries. This man had shown him a gold locket, which
had evidently held a miniature, on the inside of which was engraved
'From Leonard to Clara,' and which had been pawned by a very poor but
respectable person, whose address, in a miserable lane at Islington,
he now gave to Blackett. He went to the place at once and questioned
the woman, who was only too anxious to give all the information in her
power in order to clear herself. She had received the locket in the
presence of two persons, from a young woman who had lodged with her,
and who had no other means of paying her. The young woman had gone away
a week before, she did not know where; she had no money, and only a
little bundle of clothes--a handkerchief full. She had no child, and
had never said any thing about one. The woman did not know her name.
She had taken a picture out of the locket She had red hair and dark
eyes. This was all. I shall never forget the wretched feeling which
came over me as I thought of the suffering this brief story implied,
and of what the wretched woman might since have undergone. I remember
so well, it was in January,--a dirty, wet, horrible day,--when Blackett
told me all this; and I was haunted with the idea of the woman dying
of cold and want in the dreadful streets. Blackett had no doubt of
finding her now; she had evidently fallen to the veriest pauperism,
and out of the lowest depths she would be drawn up, no doubt. So he
set to work at once, but all in vain. Dead or living, no trace of her
has ever been found; and the continuous search has been abandoned.
Blackett only 'bears it in mind' now. Once he suggested to me, that as
she was no doubt handsome, and not over particular, she might have got
a living by sitting to the painters, and 'I'll try that lay,' he said;
but nothing came of that either. I thought of it the day Annie and I
met you f, at the Private View, and if I had had the opportunity, would
have asked you if you knew such a face as the one we were only guessing
at, after all; but you were hurried, and the occasion passed; and when
we met again, Blackett had exhausted all sources of information in that
direction, and there was nothing to be learned.

"This is the story I had to tell you, Ludlow, and to leave to your
discretion to use when the time comes. Within the last week Blackett
has made further attempts, and has again failed. Lionel is in London;
but while I live he does not enter this house. I shall, after a while,
when I am able, which I am not now, let him know that search has been
unsuccessfully made for his wife, and demand that he shall furnish
me with any clue in his possession, under the threat of immediate
exposure. This, and every other plan, may be at any moment rendered
impossible by my death; therefore I write this, and entreat you to
continue the search until this woman be found, dead or living. So only
can Annie's home be made happy and reputable for her when I shall have
left it for ever. You will receive this from Annie's hands; a packet
addressed to her will not be neglected or thrown aside; and if it
becomes necessary for you to act for her, she will have the knowledge
of the confidence I repose in you to support her in her acceptance of
your interference and obedience to your advice. I confide her to you,
my dear Ludlow--as I said before--as the dearest living thing in all
the world to me.--Yours ever,

"CATERHAM."




CHAPTER V.
DISMAY.


Mrs. Ludlow and Til had concluded the meal which is so generally
advanced to a position of unnatural importance in a household devoid of
the masculine element _en permanence_; and, the tea-things having been
removed, the old lady, according to the established order, was provided
with a book, over which she was expected to fall comfortably asleep.
But she did not adhere to the rule of her harmless and placid life on
this particular occasion. The "cross" was there--no doubt about it; and
it was no longer indefinite in its nature, but very real, and beginning
to be very heavy. Under the pressure of its weight Geoffrey's mother
was growing indifferent to, even unobservant of, the small worries
which had formerly occupied her mind, and furnished the subject-matter
of her pardonable little querulousness and complaints--a grievance
in no way connected with the tradespeople, and uninfluenced by the
"greatest plagues in life"--which no reduction of duties involving
cheap groceries, and no sumptuary laws restraining servant-gal-ism
within limits of propriety in respect of curls and crinoline, had any
power to assuage,--had taken possession of her now, and she fidgeted
and fumed no longer, but was haunted by apprehension and sorely
troubled.

A somewhat forced liveliness on Til's part, and a marked avoidance of
the subject of Geoffrey, of whom, as he had just left them, it would
have been natural that the mother and daughter should talk, bore
witness to the embarrassment she felt, and increased Mrs. Ludlow's
depression. She sat in her accustomed arm-chair, but her head drooped
forward and her fingers tapped the arms in an absent manner, which
showed her pre-occupation of mind. Til at length took her needle-work,
and sat down opposite her mother, in a silence which was interrupted
after a considerable interval by the arrival of Charley Potts, who
had not altogether ceased to offer clumsy and violently-improbable
explanations of his visits, though such were rapidly coming to be
unnecessary.

On the present occasion Charley floundered through the preliminaries
with more than his usual impulsive awkwardness, and there was that in
his manner which caused Til (a quick observer, and especially so in his
case) to divine that he had something particular to say to her. If she
were right in her conjecture, it was clear that the opportunity must be
waited for,--until the nap, in which Mrs. Ludlow invariably indulged in
the evening, should have set in. The sooner the conversation settled
into sequence, the sooner this desirable event might be expected to
take place; so Til talked vigorously, and Charley seconded her efforts.
Mrs. Ludlow said little, until, just as Charley began to think the nap
was certainly coming, she asked him abruptly if he had seen Geoffrey
lately. Miss Til happened to be looking at Charley as the question was
put to him, and saw in a moment that the matter he had come to speak to
her about concerned her brother.

"No, ma'am," said Chancy; "none of us have seen Geoff lately. Bowker
and I have planned a state visit to him; he's as hard to get at as a
swell in the Government--with things to give away--what do you call
it?--patronage; but we're not going to stand it. We can't do without
Geoff. By the bye, how's the youngster, ma'am?"

"The child is very well, I believe," said Mrs. Ludlow, with a shake of
the head, which Charley Potts had learned to recognise in connection
with the "cross," but which he saw with regret on the present occasion.
"I'm afraid theyve heard something," he thought. "But," continued the
old lady querulously, "I see little of him, or of Geoffrey either.
Things are changed; I suppose it's all right, but it's not easy for
a mother to see it; and I don't think any mother would like to be
a mere visitor at her own son's house,--not that I am even much of
that now, Mr. Potts; for I am sure it's a month 'or more since ever I
have darkened the doors of Elm Lodge,--and I shouldn't so much mind
it, I hope, if it was for Geoffrey's good; but I can't think it's
that--" Here the old lady's voice gave way, and she left off with a
kind of sob, which went to Charley's soft heart and filled him with
inexpressible confusion. Til was also much taken aback, though she saw
at once that her mother had been glad of the opportunity of saying her
little say, under the influence of the mortification she had felt at
Geoffrey's silence on the subject of her future visits to Elm Lodge. He
had, as we have seen, made himself as delightful as possible in every
other respect; but he had been strictly reticent about Margaret, and
he had not invited his mother and sister to his house. She had been
longing to say all this to Til; and now she had got it out, in the
presence of a third party, who would "see fair" between her justifiable
annoyance and Til's unreasonable defence of her brother. Til covered
Charley's embarrassment by saying promptly, in a tone of extreme
satisfaction,

"Geoffrey was here to-day; he paid us quite a long visit."

"Did he?" said Charley; "and is he all right?"

"O yes," said Til, "he is very well; and he told us all about his
pictures; and, do you know, he's going to put baby and the nurse into
a corner group, among the people on the Esplanade,--only he must wait
till baby's back is stronger, and his neck leaves off waggling, so
as to paint him properly, sitting up nice and straight in nurse's
arms." And then Miss Til ran on with a great deal of desultory talk,
concerning Geoffrey, and his description of the presents, and what he
had said about Lord Caterham and Annie Maurice. Charley listened to her
with more seriousness than he usually displayed; and Mrs. Ludlow sighed
and shook her head at intervals, until, as the conversation settled
into a dialogue, she gradually dropped asleep. Then Til's manner
changed, and she lowered her voice, and asked Charley anxiously if he
had come to tell her any bad news.

"If you have," she said, "aid that it can be kept from mamma, tell it
at once, and let me keep it from her."

With much true delicacy and deep sympathy, Charley then related to
Til the scene which had taken place between himself, Bowker, and
Stompff,--and told her that Bowker had talked the matter over with
him and they had agreed that it was not acting fairly by Geoffrey to
allow him to remain in ignorance of the floating rumours, injurious
to his wife's character, which were rife among their friends. How
Stompff had heard of Margaret's having fainted in Lord Caterham's
room, Charley could not tell; that he had heard it, and had heard a
mysterious cause assigned to it, he knew. That he could have known
any thing about an incident apparently so trivial proved that the
talk had become tolerably general, and was tending to the injury of
Geoffrey, not only in his self...respect and in his feelings, but in
his prospects. Charley was much more alarmed and uneasy, and much more
grieved for Geoffrey, than even Bowker; for he had reason to fear that
no supposition derogatory to Margaret's antecedents could surpass the
reality. He alone knew where and how the acquaintance between Geoffrey
and Margaret had begun, and he was therefore prepared to estimate the
calamity of such a marriage correctly. He did not exactly know what
he had intended to say to Matilda Ludlow; he had come to the house
with a vague idea that something ought to be done;--that Til ought to
speak to her sister-in-law,--a notion which in itself proved Charley
Potts to be any thing but a wise man,--ought to point out to her
that her indifference to her husband was at once ungrateful to him
and shortsighted to her own interest; and that people, notably his
employer, were talking about it. Charley Potts was not exactly an adept
in reading character, and the real Margaret was a being such as he
could neither have understood nor believed in; therefore the crudity,
wildness, and inapplicability of this scheme were to be excused.

A very few words on his part served to open the susceptible heart
of Miss Til, especially as they had spoken on the subject, though
generally, before; and they were soon deep in the exchange of mutual
confidences. Til cried quietly, so as not to wake her mother; and it
distressed Charley very keenly to see her tears and to hear her declare
that her sister-in-law had not the slightest regard for her opinion;
that though perfectly civil to her, Margaret had met all her attempts
at sisterly intimacy with most forbidding coldness; and that she felt
sure any attempt to put their relation on a more familiar footing would
be useless.

"She must have been very badly brought up, I am sure," said Til. "We
don't know anything about her family; but I am sure she never learned
what the duties of a wife and mother are."

Charley looked admirably at Til as she sadly uttered this remark, and
his mind was divided between a vision of Til realising in the most
perfect manner the highest ideal of conjugal and maternal duty, and
speculating upon what might have been the polite fiction presented by
Geoffrey to his mother and sister as an authentic history of Margaret's
parentage and antecedents.

"Did Geoffrey seem cheerful and happy to-day?" he asked, escaping off
the dangerous ground of questions which he could have answered only too
completely.

"Well," replied Til, "I can't say he did. He talked and laughed, and
all that; but I could see that he was uneasy and unhappy. How much
happier he was when we were all together, in the days which seem so far
off now!"

At this point the conversation became decidedly sentimental; for
Charley, while carefully maintaining that true happiness was only
to be found in the married state, was equally careful to state his
opinion that separation from Til must involve a perfectly incomparable
condition of misery; and altogether matters were evidently reaching
a climax. Matilda Ludlow was an unaffected honest girl: she knew
perfectly well that Charley loved her, and she had no particular
objection to his selecting this particular occasion on which to tell
her so. But Til and Charley were not to part that evening in the
character of affianced lovers; for in one of those significant pauses
which precede important words, cab-wheels rolled rapidly up to the
little gate, hurried footsteps ran along the flagged path, and a loud
knock and ring at the door impatiently demanded attention.

Mrs. Ludlow awoke with a violent start: Charley and Til looked at each
other. The door was opened, and a moment later the cook from Elm Lodge
was in the room, and had replied to Charley's hurried question by the
statement that her master was very ill, and she had been sent to fetch
Miss Ludlow.

"Very ill! has any accident happened?" they all questioned the woman,
who showed much feeling--all his dependents loved Geoffrey--and the
confusion was so great, that it was some minutes before they succeeded
in learning what actually had happened. That Geoffrey had returned home
as usual; had gone to the nursery, and played with the child and talked
to the nurse as usual; had gone to his painting-room; and had not again
been seen by the servants, until the housemaid had found him lying on
the hearth-rug an hour before, when they had sent for Dr. Brandram, and
that gentleman had despatched the cook to bring Miss Ludlow.

"Did Mrs. Ludlow tell you to come?" asked Til.

To this question the woman replied that her mistress was not at home.
She had been out the greater part of the day, had returned home some
time later than Mr. Ludlow, and had kept the cab waiting for an hour;
then she had gone away again, and had not returned when the cook had
been sent on her errand. Charley Potts exchanged looks of undisguised
alarm with Til at this portion of the woman's narrative, and, seeing
that reserve would now be wholly misplaced, he questioned her closely
concerning Mrs. Ludlow. She had nothing to tell, however, beyond that
the housemaid had said her master and mistress had been together in the
dining-room, and, surprised that dinner had not been ordered up, she
had gone thither; but hearing her mistress speaking "rather strangely,"
she had not knocked at the door. The servants had wondered at the
delay, she said, not understanding why their master should go without
his dinner because Mrs. Ludlow was not at home, and had at length found
him as she described.

"Did Mrs. Ludlow often go out in this way?" asked Mr. Potts.

"No, sir, never," said the woman. "I never knew my mistress leave my
master alone before, sir; and I am afraid something has took place
between them."

The distress and bewilderment of the little party were extreme.
Manifestly there was but one thing to be done; Til must obey the
doctor's summons, and repair immediately to her brother's house. He was
very ill indeed, the cook said, and quite "off his head;" he did not
talk much, but what he did say was all nonsense; and Dr. Brandram had
said it was the beginning of brain-fever. Charley and Til were both
surprised at the firmness and collectedness manifested by Mrs. Ludlow
under this unexpected trial. She was very pale and she trembled very
much, but she was quite calm and quiet when she told Til that she must
put up such articles of clothing as she would require for a few days,
as it was her intention to go to her son and to remain with him.

"I am the fittest person, my dear," said the old lady. "If it be only
illness that ails him, I know more about it than you do; if it is
sorrow also, and sorrow of the kind I suspect, I am fitter to hear it
and act in it than you."

It was finally agreed that they should both go to Geoffrey's house
and that Til should return home in the morning; for even in this
crisis Mrs. Ludlow could not quite forget her household gods, and to
contemplate them bereft at once of her own care and that of Til would
have been too grievous; so they started--the three women in the cab,
and Charley Potts on the box, very silent, very gloomy, and not even in
his inmost thoughts approaching the subject of a pipe.

It was past ten when Geoffrey Ludlow's mother and sister reached the
house which had seen such terrible events since they had visited it
last. Already the dreary neglected air which settles over every room
in a dwelling invaded by serious illness, except the one which is the
scene of suffering, had come upon it. Four hours earlier all was bright
and cheerful, well cared for and orderly; now, though the disarray was
not material, it was most expressive. Mrs. Geoffrey Ludlow had not
returned; the doctor had gone away, but was coming back as soon as
possible, having left one of the servants by Geoffrey's bedside, with
orders to apply wet linen to his temples without intermission. Geoffrey
was quiet now--almost insensible, they thought. Mrs. Ludlow and Til
went to the sick-room at once, and Charley Potts turned disconsolately
into the dining-room, where the cloth was still laid, and the chairs
stood about in disorder--one, which Geoffrey had knocked down, lay
unheeded on the ground. Charley picked it up, sat down upon it, and
leaned his elbows disconsolately on the table.

"It's all up, I'm afraid," said he to himself; "and she's off with the
other fellow, whoever he is. Well, well, it will either kill Geoff
outright or break his heart for the rest of his life. At all events,
there couldn't have been much good in her if she didn't like Til."

After some time Dr. Brandram arrived, and Charley heard him ask the
servant whether Mrs. Ludlow had returned, and heard her reply that her
mistress was still absent, but Mrs. Ludlow and her daughter had come,
and were in her master's room. The doctor went upstairs immediately,
and Charley still waited in the parlour, determined to waylay him has
he came down.

Geoffrey was dangerously ill, there was no doubt of that, though his
mother's terror magnified danger into hopelessness, and refused to be
comforted by Dr. Brandram's assurance that no living man for certain
could tell how things would be. She met the doctor's inquiry about
Margaret with quiet reserve: she did not expect her daughter-in-law's
return that evening, she said; but she and Miss Ludlow were prepared
to remain. It was very essential that they should do so, Dr. Brandram
assured her; and on the following day he would procure a professional
nurse. Then he made a final examination of his patient, gave the ladies
their instructions, observed with satisfaction the absence of fuss, and
the quiet self-subduing alacrity of Til, and went downstairs, shaking
his head and wondering, to be pounced upon in the little hall by the
impulsive Charley, who drew him into the dining-room, and poured out a
torrent of questions. Dr. Brandram was disposed to be a little reserved
at first, but unbent when Charley assured him that he and Geoffrey
were the most intimate friends--"Brothers almost," said Mr. Potts in
a conscious tone, which did not strike the doctor. Then he told his
anxious interlocutor that Geoffrey was suffering from brain-fever,
which he supposed to be the result of a violent shock, but of what kind
he could form no idea; and then he said something, in a hesitating sort
of way, about "domestic affairs."

"It is altogether on the mind, then," said Charley. "In that case, no
one can explain any thing but himself."

"Precisely so," said Dr. Brandram; "and it may, it most probably
will, be a considerable time before he will be able to give us any
explanation of any thing, and before it would be safe to ask him for
any. In the mean time,--but no doubt Mrs. Ludlow will return, and--"

"I don't think she will do any thing of the kind," said Charley Potts
in a decisive tone; "and, in fact, doctor, I think it would be well to
say as little as possible about her."

Dr. Brandram looked at Mr. Potts with an expression intended to be
knowing, but which was in reality only puzzled, and assuring him of his
inviolable discretion, departed. Charley remained at Elm Lodge until
after midnight, and then, finding that he could be of no service to the
watchers, sorrowfully wended his way back to town on foot.

Wearily dragged on the days in the sick man's room, where he lay racked
and tormented by fever, and vaguely oppressed in mind. His mother and
sister tended him with unwearied assiduity, and Dr. Brandram called
in further medical advice. Geoffrey's life hung in the balance for
many days--days during which the terror his mother and Til experienced
are not to be told. The desolate air of he house deepened; the
sitting-rooms were quite deserted now. All the bright pretty furniture
which Geoff had bought for the delectation of his bride, all the little
articles of use and ornament peculiarly associated with Margaret,
were dust-covered, and had a ghostly seeming. Charley Potts--who
passed a great deal of his time moping about Elm Lodge, too thankful
to be permitted on the premises, and occasionally to catch a glimpse
of Til's figure, as she glided noiselessly from the sick-room to the
lower regions in search of some of the innumerable things which are
always being wanted in illness and are never near at hand--occasionally
strolled into the painting-room, and lifting the cover which had been
thrown over it, looked sadly at "The Esplanade at Brighton," and
wondered whether dear old Geoff would ever paint baby's portrait among
that group in the left-hand corner.

The only member of the household who pursued his usual course of
existence was this same baby. Unconscious alike of the flight of his
mother and the illness, nigh unto death, of his father, the child
throve apace, and sometimes the sound of his cooing, crowing voice,
coming through the open doors into the room where his grandmother sat
and looked into the wan haunted face of her son, caused her unspeakable
pangs of sorrow and compassion. The child "took to" Til wonderfully,
and it is impossible to tell the admiration with which the soul of
Charley Potts was filled, as he saw the motherly ways of the young lady
towards the little fellow, happily unconscious that he did not possess
a mother's love.

Of Margaret nothing was heard. Mrs. Ludlow and Til were utterly
confounded by the mystery which surrounded them. She made no sign from
the time she left the house. Their ignorance of the circumstances
of her departure was so complete, that they could not tell whether
to expect her to do so or not. Her dresses and ornaments were all
undisturbed in the drawers in the room where poor Geoffrey lay, and
they did not know whether to remove them or not. She had said to
Geoffrey, "Whatever I actually require I will send for;" but they
did not know this, and she never had sent. The centre of the little
system--the chief person in the household--the idolised wife--she had
disappeared as utterly as if her existence had been only a dream. The
only person who could throw any light on the mystery was, perhaps,
dying--at all events, incapable of recollection, thought, or speech. It
"got about" in the neighbourhood that Mr. Ludlow was dangerously ill,
and that his mother and sister were with him, but his beautiful wife
was not; whereat the neighbourhood, feeling profoundly puzzled, merely
looked unutterably wise, and had always thought there was something
odd in that quarter. Then the neighbourhood called to enquire and to
condole, and was very pointed in its hopes that Mrs. Geoffrey Ludlow
was "bearing up well," and very much astonished to receive for answer,
"Thank you ma'am; but missis is not at home." Mrs. Ludlow knew nothing
of all this, and Til, who did know, cared nothing; but it annoyed
Charley Potts, who beard and saw a good deal from his post of vantage
in the dining-room window, and who relieved his feelings by swearing
under his breath, and making depreciatory comments upon the personal
appearance of the ladies as they approached the house, with their faces
duly arranged to the sympathetic pattern.

It chanced that, on one occasion, when Geoffrey had been about ten
days ill, Til came down to the dining-room to speak to the faithful
Charley, carrying the baby on one arm, and in her other hand a bundle
of letters. Charley took the child from her as a matter of course; and
the youthful autocrat graciously sanctioning the arrangement, the two
began to talk eagerly of Geoffrey. Til was looking very pale and weary,
and Charley was much moved by her appearance.

"I tell you what it is," he said, "you'll kill yourself, whether
Geoffrey lives or dies." He spoke in a tone suggestive of feeling
himself personally injured, and Til was not too far gone to blush and
smile faintly as she perceived it.

"O no, I sha'n't," she said. "I'm going to lie down all this afternoon
in the night-nursery. Mamma is asleep now, and Geoffrey is quite quiet,
though the nurse says she sees no change for the better, no real change
of any kind indeed. And so I came down to ask you what you think I
had better do about these letters." She laid them on the table as she
spoke. "I don't think they are business letters, because you have taken
care to let all Geoffrey's professional friends know, haven't you,
Charley?"

Charley thrilled; she had dropped unconsciously, in the intimacy of a
common sorrow, into calling him by his Christian name, but the pleasure
it gave him had by no means worn off yet.

"Yes," he said; "and you have no notion what a state they are all in
about dear old Geoff. I assure you they all envy me immensely, because
I can be of some little use to you. They don't come here, you know,
because that would be no use--only making a row with the door-bell,
and taking up the servants' time; but every day they come down to my
place, or write me notes, or scribble their names on the door, with
fat notes of interrogation after them, if I'm not at home. That means,
'How's dear old Geoff? send word at once.' Why, there's Stompff--I told
you he was a beast, didn't I? Well, he's not half a beast, I assure
you; he is in such a way about Geoff; and, upon my word, I don't think
it's all because he is worth no end of money to him,--I don't indeed.
He is mercenary, of course, but not always and not altogether; and he
really quite got over me yesterday by the way he talked of Geoffrey,
and wanted to know if there was any thing in the world he could do. Any
thing in the world, according to Stompff, meant any thing in the way of
money, I suppose; an advance upon the 'Esplanade,' or something of that
sort."

"Yes, I suppose it did," said Til; "but we don't want money. Mamma has
plenty to go on with until--" here her lipquivered,--"until Geoffrey
can understand and explain things. It's very kind of Mr. Stompff,
however, and I'm glad he's not quite a beast," said the young lady
simply. "But, Charley, about these letters; what should I do?"

At this point the baby objected to be any longer unnoticed, and was
transferred to Til, who walked up and down the room with the injured
innocent, while Charley turned over the letters, and looked at their
superscriptions.

"You are sure there is no letter from his wife among these?" said
Charley.

"O no!" replied Til; "I know Margaret's hand well; and I have examined
all the letters carefully every day. There has never been one from her."

"Here are two with the same monogram, and the West-end district mark; I
think they must be from Miss Maurice. If these letters can be made out
to mean any thing, they are A.M. And see, one is plain, and one has a
deep black edge."

Til hurried up to the table. "I hope Lord Caterham is not dead," she
said! "I have heard Geoffrey speak of him with great regard; and only
the day he was taken ill, he said he feared the poor fellow was going
fast."

"I think we had better break the seal and see," said Charley; "Geoff
would not like any neglect in that quarter."

He broke the seal as he spoke, and read the melancholy note which Annie
had written to Geoffrey when Arthur died, and which had never received
an answer.

Charley Potts and Til were much shocked and affected at the
intelligence which the note contained.

"I haven't cared about the papers since Geoff has been ill, or I
suppose I should have seen the announcement of Lord Caterham's death,
though I don't particularly care for reading about the swells at any
time," said Charley. "But how nicely she writes to Geoffrey, poor girl!
I am sure she will be shocked to hear of his illness, and you must
write to her,--h'm,--Til. What do you say to writing, and letting me
take your letter to-morrow myself? Then she can ask me any questions
she likes, and you need not enter into any painful explanations."

Til was eminently grateful for this suggestion which she knew was
dictated by the sincerest and most disinterested wish to spare her; for
to Charley the idea of approaching the grandeur of St. Barnabas Square,
and the powdered pomposity of the lordly flunkeys, was, as she well
knew, wholly detestable. So it was arranged that Charley should fulfil
this mission early on the following day, before he presented himself at
Elm Lodge. The baby was sent upstairs, Til wrote her note, and Charley
departed very reluctantly, stipulating that Til should at once fulfil
her promise of lying down in the nursery.

When, on the ensuing morning, Miss Maurice's maid reached Elm Lodge,
the servants communicated to her the startling intelligence, which she
roused Annie from her sleep to impart to her, without any reference
to Mrs. Ludlow and Til, who were not aware for some time that Miss
Maurice had sent to make inquiries. On his arrival at St. Barnabas
Square, Charley Potts was immediately admitted to Annie's presence,
and the result of the interview was that she arrived at Elm Lodge
escorted by that gentleman, whose embarrassment under the distinguished
circumstances was extreme, before noon. She knew from Charley's report
that it would be quite in vain to take Caterham's letter with her; that
it must be long ere it should meet the eyes for which it was written,
if ever it were to do so, and it remained still undisturbed in her
charge. So Annie Maurice shared the sorrow and the fear of Geoffrey's
mother and sister, and discussed the mystery that surrounded the
calamities which had befallen them, perfectly unconscious that within
reach of her own hand lay the key to the enigma.




CHAPTER VI.
A CLUE.


Written by a dying hand, the letter addressed by Lord Caterham
to Geoffrey Ludlow was read when the doctors would scarcely have
pronounced its recipient out of the jaws of death. Gaunt, wan, hectic;
with great bistre-rings round his big eyes, now more prominent than
ever; with his shapely white hands now almost transparent in their
thinness; with his bushy beard dashed here and there with gray patches;
and with O such a sense of weariness and weakness,--old Geoff,
stretched supine on his bed, demanded news of Margaret. They had none
to give him: told him so--at first gently, then reiterated it plainly;
but he would not believe it. They must know something of her movements;
some one must have been there to tell him where she was; something must
have been heard of her. To all these questions negative answers. Then,
as his brain cleared and his strength increased--for, except under both
of these conditions, such a question would not have occurred to him--he
asked whether, during his illness, there had been any communication
from Lord Beauport's house. A mystery then--a desire to leave it over,
until Miss Maurice's next call, which happened the next day, when
Caterham's letter, intact, was handed to him.

That letter lay on a chair by Geoffrey's bedside the whole of that
afternoon. To clutch it, to look at it, to hold it, with its seal yet
unbroken, before his eyes, he had employed such relics of strength as
remained to him; but he dared not open it. He felt that he could give
no explanation of his feelings; but he felt that if he broke that seal,
and read what was contained in that letter, all his recent tortures
would return with tenfold virulence: the mocking demons that had sat
on his bed and sneered at him; the fiery serpents that had uncoiled
themselves between him and the easel on which stood the picture which
urgent necessity compelled him to work at; the pale fair form, misty
and uncertain generally, yet sometimes with Margaret's hair and eyes,
that so constantly floated across his vision, and as constantly eluded
his outstretched arms,--all these phantasms of his fevered brain
would return again. And yet, in it, in that sheet of paper lying so
temptingly near to his pillow, there was news of her! He had but to
stretch out his hand, and he should learn how far, at least, her story
was known to the relatives of him who---- The thought in itself was too
much; and Geoffrey swooned off. When he recovered, his first thought
was of the letter; his first look to assure himself that it had not
been removed. No, there it lay I He could resist the temptation no
longer; and, raising himself on his elbow, he opened and read it.

The effect of the perusal of that letter on Geoffrey Ludlow none
knew but himself. The doctors found him "not quite so well" for the
succeeding day or two, and thought that his "tone" was scarcely so good
as they had been led to anticipate; certain it was that he made no
effort to rouse himself, and that, save occasionally, when spoken to
by Til, he remained silent and preoccupied. On the third day he asked
Til to write to Bowker, and beg him to come to him at once. Within
twenty-four hours that worthy presented himself at Elm Lodge.

After a few words with Til downstairs, Mr. Bowker was shown up to
Geoffrey's room, the door of which Til opened, and, when Mr. Bowker
had entered, shut it behind him. The noise of the closing door roused
Geoffrey, and he turned in his bed, and, looking up, revealed such a
worn and haggard face, that old Bowker stopped involuntarily, and drew
a long breath, as he gazed on the miserable appearance of his friend.
There must have been something comical in the rueful expression of
Bowker's face, for old Geoff smiled feebly, as he said,

"Come in, William; come in, old friend! Ive had a hard bout of it, old
fellow, since you saw me; but there's no danger now--no infection, I
mean, or any thing of that kind."

Geoff spoke haphazard; but what he had said was the best thing to
restore Mr. Bowker to himself.

"Your William's fever-proof;" he growled out in reply, "and don't fear
any nonsense of that kind; and if he did, it's not that would keep
him away from a friend's bedside. I should have been here--that is,
if you'd have let me; and, oddly enough, though I'm such a rough old
brute in general, I'm handy and quiet in times of sickness,--at least
so Ive been told;" and here Bowker stifled a great sigh. "But the first
I heard of your illness was from your sister's letter, which I only got
this morning."

"Give me your hand, William; I know that fast enough. But I didn't
need any additional nursing. Til and the old lady--God bless
them!--have pulled me through splendidly, and--But I'm beyond nursing
now, William; what I want is--" and Geoff's voice failed him, and he
stopped.

Old Bowker eyed him with tear-blurred vision for a moment, and then
said, "What you want is--"

"Don't mind me just now, William; I'm horribly weak, and girlish, and
trembling, but I shall get to it in time. What I want is, some man,
some friend, to whom I can talk openly and unreservedly,--whose advice
and aid I can seek, in such wretchedness as, I trust, but few have
experienced."

It was a good thing that Geoffrey's strength had in some degree
returned, for Bowker clutched his hand in an iron grip, as in a dull
low voice, he said, "Do you remember my telling you the story of my
life? Why did I tell you that? Not for sympathy, but for example. I saw
the rock on to which you were drifting, and hoped to keep you clear. I
exposed the sadness of my life to you when the game was played out and
there was no possibility of redemption. I can't tell what strait you
may be in; but if I can help you out of it, there is no mortal thing I
will not do to aid you."

As well as he could Geoff returned the pressure; then, after a moment's
pause, said, "You know, of course, that my wife has left me?"

Bowker bowed in acquiescence.

"You know the circumstances?"

"I know nothing, Geoff, beyond the mere fact. Whatever talk there may
be among such of the boys as I drop in upon now and then, if it turned
upon you and your affairs, save in the matter of praising your art, it
would be certain to be hushed as soon as I stepped in amongst them.
They knew our intimacy, and they are by far too good fellows to say any
thing that would pain me. So that beyond the mere fact which you have
just stated, I know nothing."

Then in a low weak voice, occasionally growing full and powerful under
excitement, and subsiding again into its faint tone, Geoffrey Ludlow
told to William Bowker the whole history of his married life, beginning
with his finding Margaret on the doorstep, and ending by placing in
his friend's hands the posthumous letter of Lord Caterham. Throughout
old Bowker listened with rapt attention to the story, and when he came
back from the window, to which he had stepped for the perusal of the
letter, Geoffrey noticed that there were big tears rolling down his
cheeks. He was silent for a minute or two after he had laid the letter
on Geoffrey's bed; when he spoke, he said, "We're a dull lot, the
whole race of us; and that's the truth. We pore over our own twopenny
sorrows, and think that the whole army of martyrs could not show such a
specimen as ourselves. Why, Geoff, dear old man, what was my punishment
to yours! What was,--but, however, I need not talk of that. You want my
services--say how."

"I want your advice first, William. I want to know how to--how to find
my wife--for, O, to me she is my wife; how to find Margaret. You'll
blame me probably, and tell me that I am mad--that I ought to cast her
off altogether, and to--But I cannot do that, William; I cannot do
that; for I love her--O my God, how I love her still!" And Geoffrey
Ludlow hid his face in his arms, and wept like a child.

"I shan't blame you, Geoff, nor tell you any thing of the kind,"
said old Bowker, in a deep low voice. "I should have been very much
surprised if--However, that's neither here nor there. What we want is
to find her now. You say there's not been the slightest clue to her
since she left this house?"

"Not the slightest."

"She has not sent for any thing--clothes, or any thing?"

"For nothing, as I understand."

"She has not sent,--you see, one must understand these things, Geoff;
all our actions will be guided by them,--she has not sent to ask about
the child?"

Geoff shuddered for an instant, then said, "She has not."

"That simplifies our plans," said Bowker. "It is plain now that we have
only one chance of discovering her whereabouts."

"And that is--"

"Through Blackett the detective, the man mentioned in Lord Caterham's
letter. He must be a sharp fellow; for through the sheer pursuance of
his trade, and without the smallest help, he must have been close upon
her trail, even up to the night when you met her and withdrew her from
the range of his search. If he could learn so much unaided, he will
doubtless be able to strike again upon her track with the information
we can give him."

"There's no chance of this man--this Captain Brakespere, having--I
mean--now he's back, you know--having taken means to hide her
somewhere--where--one couldn't find her, you know?" said Geoffrey,
hesitatingly.

"If your William knows any thing of the world," replied Bowker,
"there's no chance of Captain Thingummy having taken the least trouble
about her. However, I'll go down to Scotland Yard and see what is to be
made of our friend Inspector Blackett. God bless you, old boy! You know
if she is to be found, I'll do it."

They are accustomed to odd visitors in Scotland Yard; but the
police-constables congregated in the little stone hall stared the next
day when Mr. Bowker pushed open the swing-door, and calmly planting
himself among them, ejaculated "Blackett." Looking at his beard, his
singular garb, and listening to his deep voice, the sergeant to whom he
was referred at first thought he was a member of some foreign branch
of the force; then glancing at the general wildness of his demeanour,
had a notion that he was one of the self-accused criminals who are so
constantly forcing themselves into the grasp of justice, and who are
so impatient of release; and finally, comprehending what he wanted,
sent him, under convoy of a constable, through various long corridors,
into a cocoa-nut-matted room furnished with a long green-baize-covered
table, on which were spread a few sheets of blotting-paper, and a
leaden inkstand, and the walls of which were adorned with a printed
tablet detailing the disposition of the various divisions of the
police-force, and the situation of the fire-escapes in the metropolis,
and a fly-blown Stationers' Almanac. Left to himself, Mr. Bowker had
scarcely taken stock of these various articles, when the door opened,
and Mr. Inspector Blackett, edging his portly person through the very
small aperture which he had allowed himself for ingress, entered the
room, and closed the door stealthily behind him.

"Servant, sir," said he, with a respectful bow, and a glance at
Bowker, which took in the baldness of his head, the thickness of his
beard, the slovenliness of his apparel, and the very shape of his
boots,--"servant, sir. You asked for me?"

"I did, Mr. Blackett. Ive come to ask your advice and assistance in
a rather delicate manner, in which you've already been engaged--Lord
Caterham's inquiry."

"O, beg pardon, sir. Quite right. Friend of his lordship's, may I ask,
sir?"

"Lord Caterham is dead, Mr.--"

"Quite right, sir; all right, sir. Right to be cautious in these
matters; don't know who you are, sir. If you had not known that fact,
must have ordered you out, sir. Imposter, of course. All on the square,
Mr.--beg pardon; didn't mention your name, sir."

"My name is Bowker. To a friend of mine, too ill now to follow the
matter himself; Lord Caterham on his deathbed wrote a letter, detailing
the circumstances under which he had employed you in tracing a young
woman. That friend has himself been very ill, or he would have pursued
this matter sooner. He now sends me to ask whether you have any news?"

"Beg pardon, sir; can't be too cautious in this matter. What may be the
name of that friend?"

"Ludlow--Mr. Geoffrey Ludlow."

"Right you are, sir! Know the name well; have seen Mr. Ludlow at his
lordship's; a pleasant gentleman too, sir, though not given me the
idea of one to take much interest in such a business as this. However,
I see we're all square on that point, sir; and I'll report to you as
exactly as I would to my lord, if he'd been alive--feeling, of course,
that a gentleman's a gentleman, and that an officer's trouble will be
remunerated--"

"You need not doubt that, Mr. Blackett."

"I don't doubt it, sir; more especially when you hear what I have got
to tell. It's been a wearing business, Mr. Bowker, and that I don't
deny; there have been many cases which I have tumbled-to quicker, and
have been able to lay my finger upon parties quicker but this has been
a long chase; and though other members of the force has chaffed me, as
it were, wanting to know when I shall be free for any thing else, and
that sort of thing, there's been that excitement in it that Ive never
regretted the time bestowed, and felt sure I should hit at it last. My
ideas has not been wrong in that partic'ler, Mr. Bowker; I _have_ hit
it at last!"

"The devil you have!"

"I have indeed, sir; and hit it, as has cur'ously happened in my best
cases, by a fluke. It was by the merest fluke that I was at Radley's
Hotel in Southampton and nobbled Mr. Sampson Hepworth, the absconding
banker of Lombard Street, after Daniel Forester and all the city-men
had been after him for six weeks. It was all a fluke that I was
eatin' a Bath-bun at Swindon when the clerk that did them Post-office
robberies tried to pass one of the notes to the refreshment gal. It was
all a fluke that I was turning out of Grafton Street, after a chat with
the porter of the Westminster Club,--which is an old officer of the G's
and a pal of mine,--into Bond Street, when I saw a lady that I'd swear
to, if description's any use, though I never see her before, comin' out
of Long's Hotel."

"A lady!--Long's Hotel!"

"A lady a-comin' out of Long's Hotel. A lady with--not to put too
fine a point upon it--red hair and fine eyes and a good figure; the
very moral of the description I got at Tenby and them other places. I
twigged all this before she got her veil down and I said to myself,
Blackett, that's your bird, for a hundred pound."

"And were you right? Was it--"

"Wait a minute, sir: let's take the things in the order in which they
naturally present themselves. She hailed a cab and jumped in, all of
a tremble like, as I could see. I hailed another--hansom mine was;
and I give the driver the office, which he tumbled-to at once--most
of the West-enders knows me; and we follows the other until he turned
up a little street in Nottin' 'Ill, and I, marking where she got out,
stopped at the end of it. When she'd got inside, I walked up and took
stock of the house, which was a litle milliner's and stay-shop. It was
cur'ous, wasn't, it, sir," said Mr. Blackett, with a grave professional
smile, "that my good lady should want a little job in the millinery
line done for her just then, and that she should look round into that
very shop that evening, and get friendly with the missis, which was a
communicative kind of woman, and should pay her a trifle in advance,
and should get altogether so thick as to be asked in to take a cup
of tea in the back-parlour, and get a-talking about the lodger? Once
in, I'll back my old lady against any ferret that was ever showed at
Jemmy Welsh's. She hadn't had one cup of tea before she know'd all
about the lodger; how she was the real lady, but dull and lonesome
like; how she'd sit cryin' and mopin' all day; how she'd no visitors
and no letters; and how her name was Lambert, and her linen all marked
M. L. She'd only been there a day ortwo then, and as she'd scarcely
any luggage, the milliner was doubtful about her money. My good lady
came back that night, and told me all this, and I was certain our bird
was caged. So I put one of our men regular to sweep a crossin' during
the daytime, and I communicated with the sergeant of the division to
keep the house looked after at night. But, Lor' bless you, she's no
intention of goin' away. Couldn't manage it, I think, if she had; for
my missis, who's been up several times since, says the milliner says
her lodger's in a queer way, she thinks."

"How do you mean in a queer way?" interrupted Bowker; "ill?"

"Well, not exactly ill, I think, sir. I can't say exactly how, for
the milliner's rather a stupid woman; and it wouldn't do for my
missis--though she'd find it out in a minute--to see the lady. As far
as I can make out, it's a kind of fits, and she seems to have had 'em
pretty bad--off her head for hours at a time, you know. It's rather
cornered me, that has, as I don't exactly know how to act in the case;
and I went round to the Square to tell his lordship, and then found out
what had happened. I was thinking of asking to see the Hearl--"

"The what, Mr. Blackett?"

"The Hearl--Hearl Beauport, his lordship's father. But now you've come,
sir, you'll know what to do, and what orders to give me."

"Yes, quite right," said Bowker, after a moment's consideration.
"You must not see Lord Beauport; he's in a sad state of mind still,
and any further worry might be dangerous. You've done admirably, Mr.
Blackett,--admirably indeed; and your reward shall be proportionate,
you may take my word for that; but I think it will be best to leave
matters as they are until--at all events, until I have spoken to my
friend. The name was Lambert, I think you said; and what was the
address?"

"No. 102, Thompson Street, just beyond Nottin'-'Ill Gate; milliner's
shop, name of Chapman. Beg your pardon, sir, but this is a pretty case,
and one as has been neatly worked up; you won't let it be spoilt by any
amatoors?"

"Eh?--by what? I don't think I understand you."

"You won't let any one go makin' inquiries on their own hook? So many
of our best cases is spoilt by amatoors shovin' their oars in."

"You may depend on that, Mr. Blackett; the whole credit of the
discovery is justly due to you, and you shall have it. Now good day to
you; I shall find you here, I suppose, when next I want you?"

Mr. Blackett bowed, and conducted his visitor through the
hollow-sounding corridors, and bade him a respectful farewell at the
door. Then, when William Bowker was alone, he stopped, and shook his
head sorrowfully, muttering, "A bad job, a bad job! God help you,
Geoff, my poor fellow! there's more trouble in store for you--more
trouble in store!"




CHAPTER VII.
TRACKED.


The news which Mr. William Bowker had heard from Inspector Blackett
troubled its recipient considerably, and it was not until he had
thought it over deeply and consumed a large quantity of tobacco in
the process, that he arrived at any settled determination as to what
was the right course to be pursued by him. His first idea was to make
Geoffrey Ludlow acquainted with the whole story, and let him act as he
thought best; but a little subsequent reflection changed his opinion on
this point. Geoff was very weak in health, certainly in no fit state to
leave his bed; and yet if he heard that Margaret was found, that her
address was known, above all that she was ill, Bowker knew him well
enough to be aware that nothing would prevent him at once setting out
to see her, and probably to use every effort to induce her to return
with him. Such a course would be bad in every way, but in the last
respect it would be fatal. For one certain reason Bowker had almost
hoped that nothing more might ever be heard of the wretched woman who
had fallen like a curse upon his friend's life. He knew Geoffrey Ludlow
root and branch, knew how thoroughly weak he was, and felt certain
that, no matter how grievous the injury which Margaret had done him, he
had but to see her again--to see her more especially in sickness and
misfortune--to take her back to his heart and to his hearth, and defy
the counsel of his friends and the opinion of the world. That would
never do. Geoff had been sufficiently dragged down by this unfortunate
infatuation; but he had a future which should be independent of her,
undimmed by any tarnish accruing to him from those wondrous misspent
days. So old Bowker firmly believed; and to accomplish that end he
determined that none of Inspector Blackett's news should find its way
to Geoffrey's ears, at all events until he, Bowker, had personally made
himself acquainted with the state of affairs.

It must have been an impulse of the strongest friendship and love for
Geoff that induced William Bowker to undertake this duty; for it was
one which inspired him with aversion, not to say horror. At first
he had some thoughts of asking Charley Potts to do it; but then he
bethought him that Charley, headstrong, earnest, and impulsive as he
was, was scarcely the man to be intrusted with such a delicate mission.
And he remembered, moreover, that Charley was now to a great extent
_lié_ with Geoff's family, that he had been present at Geoff's first
meeting with Margaret, that he had always spoken against her, and that
now, imbued as he was likely to be with some of the strong feelings of
old Mrs. Ludlow, he would be certain to make a mess of the mission,
and, without the least intention of being offensive, would hurt some
one's feelings in an unmistakable and unpardonable manner. No; he must
go himself, horribly painful as it would be to him. His had been a set
gray life for who should say how many years; he had not been mixed up
with any woman's follies or griefs in ever so slight a degree, he had
heard no woman's voice in plaintive appeal or earnest confession, he
had seen no woman's tears or hung upon no woman's smile, since--since
when? Since the days spent with _her_. Ah, how the remembrance shut
out the present and opened up the long, long vistas of the past! He
was no longer the bald-headed, grizzle-bearded, stout elderly man;
he was young Bowker, from whom so much was expected; and the common
tavern-parlour in which he was seated, with its beer-stained tables and
its tobacco-reek faded away, and the long dusty roads of Andalusia,
the tinkling bells of the mules, the cheery shouts of the sunburnt
_arrieros_, the hard-earned pull at the _bota_, and the loved presence,
now vanished for ever, rose in his memory.

When his musings were put to flight by the entrance of the waiter,
he paid his score, and summoning up his resolution he went out into
the noisy street, and mounting the first omnibus was borne away to
his destination. He found the place indicated to him by Blackett--a
small but clean and decent street--and soon arrived at Mrs. Chapman's
house. There, at the door, he stopped, undecided what to do. He had not
thought of any excuse for demanding an interview with Mrs. Chapman's
lodger, and, on turning the subject over in his mind, he could not
imagine any at all likely to be readily received. See Margaret he must;
and to do that, he thought he must take her unprepared and on a sudden:
if he sent up his name, he would certainly be refused admittance. His
personal appearance was far too Bohemian in its character to enable
him to pass himself off as her lawyer, or any friend of her family;
his only hope was to put a bold front on it, to mention her name, and
to walk straight on to her room, leaving it to chance to favour his
efforts.

He entered the shop--a dull dismal little place, with a pair of stays
lying helplessly in the window, and a staring black-eyed torso of a
female doll, for cap-making purposes, insanely smiling on the counter.
Such a heavy footfall as Mr. Bowker's was seldom heard in those vestal
halls; such a grizzly-bearded face as Mr. Bowker's was seldom seen in
such close proximity to the cap-making dummy; and little Mrs. Chapman
the milliner came out "all in a tremble," as she afterwards expressed
it, from her inner sanctum, which was about as big and as tepid as a
warm-bath, and in a quavering voice demanded the intruder's business.
She was a mild-eyed, flaxen-haired, quiet, frightened little woman, and
old Bowker's heart softened towards her, as he said, "You have a friend
of mine lodging with you, ma'am, I think--Mrs. Lambert?"

"O, dear; then, if you're a friend of Mrs. Lambert's, you're welcome
here, I can assure you, sir!" and the little woman looked more
frightened than ever, and held up her hands half in fear, half in
relief.

"Ah, she's been ill, I hear," said Bowker, wishing to have it
understood that he was thoroughly _en rapport_ with the lodger.

"Ill!--I'm thankful you've come, sir!--no one, unless they saw her,
would credit how ill she is--I mean to be up and about, and all that.
She's better to-day, and clearer; but what she have been these few
days past, mortal tongue cannot tell--all delirium-like, and full of
fancies, and talking of things which set Hannah--the girl who does
for me--and me nearly out of our wits with fright. So much so, that
six-and-sixpence a-week is--well, never mind, poor thing; it's worse
for her than for us; but I'm glad, at any rate, some friend has come to
see her."

"I'll go and do so at once, Mrs. Chapman," said Bowker. "I know my way;
the door straight opposite to the front of the stairs, isn't it? Thank
you; I'll find it;" and with the last words yet on his tongue, Mr.
Bowker had passed round the little counter, by the little milliner, and
was making the narrow staircase creak again with his weight.

He opened the door opposite to him, after having knocked and received
no answer, and peered cautiously in. The daylight was fading, and the
blind of the window was half down, and Bowker's eyesight was none of
the best now, so that he took some little time before he perceived the
outline of a figure stretched in the white dimity-covered easy-chair
by the little Pembroke table in the middle of the room. Although some
noise had been made by the opening of the door, the figure had not
moved; it never stirred when Bowker gave a little premonitory cough to
notify his advent; it remained in exactly The same position, without
stirring hand or foot, when Bowker said, "A friend has come to see you,
Mrs.--Lambert." Then a dim undefined sense of terror came upon William
Bowker, and he closed the door silently behind him, and advanced into
the room. Immediately he became aware of a faint sickly smell, a
cloying, percolating odour, which seemed to fill the place; but he had
little time to think of this, for immediately before him lay the form
of Margaret, her eyes closed, her features rigid, her long red hair
falling in all its wild luxuriance over her shoulders. At first William
thought she was dead; but, stooping close over her, he marked her slow
laboured breathing, and noticed that from time to time her hands were
unclenched, and then closed again as tightly as ever. He took a little
water from a tumbler on the table and sprinkled it on her face, and
laid his finger on her pulse; after a minute or two she opened her
eyes, closing them again immediately, but after a time opening them
again, and fixing them on Bowker's face with a long wistful gaze.

"Are you one of them also?" she asked, in a deep hushed voice. "How
many more to come and gibber and point at me; or, worse than all, to
sit mutely staring at me with pitiless unforgiving eyes! How many more?
You are the latest. I have never seen you before."

"O yes you have," said Bowker quietly, with her hand in his, and his
eyes steadfastly fixed on hers--"O yes you have: you recollect me, my
dear Mrs. Ludlow."

He laid special stress on the name, and as he uttered the words,
Margaret started, a new light flashed into her beautiful eyes, and she
regarded him attentively.

"What was that you said?" she asked; "what name did you call me?"

"What name? Why, your own, of course; what else should I call you, my
dear Mrs. Ludlow?"

She started again at the repetition, then her eyes fell, and she said
dreamily,

"But that is not my name--that is not my name." Bowker waited for a
moment, and then said,

"You might as well pretend to have forgotten me and our talk at Elm
Lodge that day that I came up to see Geoffrey."

"Elm Lodge! Geoffrey!--ah, good God, now I remember all!" said
Margaret, in a kind of scream, raising herself in the chair, and
wringing Bowker's hand.

"Hush, my dear Madam; don't excite yourself; I thought you would
remember all; you--"

"You are Mr. Bowker!" said Margaret, pressing her hand to her head;
"Mr. Bowker, whose story Geoff told me: Geoff! ah, poor, good Geoff!
ah, dear, good Geoff! But why are you here? he hasn't sent you?
Geoffrey has not sent you?"

"Geoffrey does not know I am here. He has been very ill; too ill to be
told of all that has been going on; too ill to understand it, if he had
been told. I heard by accident that you were living here, and that you
had been ill; and I came to see if I could be of any service to you."

While he had been speaking, Margaret had sat with her head tightly
clasped between her hands. When he finished, she looked up with a
slightly dazed expression, and said, with an evident attempt at
controlling her voice, "I see all now; you must pardon me, Mr. Bowker,
for any incoherence or strangeness you may have noticed in my manner;
but I have been very ill, and I feel sure that at times my mind wanders
a little. I am better now. I was quite myself when you mentioned about
your having heard of my illness, and offering me service; and I thank
you very sincerely for your kindness."

Old William looked at her for a minute, and then said,

"I am a plain-spoken man, Mrs. Ludlow--for you are Mrs. Ludlow to
me--as I daresay you may have heard, if you have not noticed it
yourself; and I tell you plainly that it is out of no kindness to you
that I am here now, but only out of love for my dear old friend."

"I can understand that," said Margaret; "and only respect you the more
for it; and now you are here, Mr. Bowker, I shall be very glad to say
a few words to you,--the last I shall ever say regarding that portion
of my life which was passed in--at--You know what I would say; you have
heard the story of the commencement of my acquaintance with Geoffrey
Ludlow?"

Bowker bowed in acquiescence.

"You know how I left him--why I am here?"

Then William Bowker--the memory of all his friend's trouble and misery
and crushed hopes and wasted life rising up strongly within him--set
his face hard, and said, between his clenched teeth, "I know your
history from two sources. Yesterday, Geoffrey Ludlow, scarce able to
raise himself in his bed, so weak was he from the illness which your
conduct brought upon him, told me, as well as he could, of his first
meeting with you, his strange courtship, his marriage,--at which I
was present,--of his hopes and fears, and all the intricacies of his
married life; of the manner in which, finally, you revealed the history
of your previous life, and parted from him. Supplementing this story,
he gave me to read a letter from Lord Caterham, the brother of the
man you call your husband. This man, Captain Brakespere, flying from
the country, had written to his brother, informing him that he had
left behind him a woman who was called his mistress, but who was in
reality his wife. To find this woman Lord Caterham made his care. He
set the detectives to work, and had her tracked from place to place;
continually getting news of, but never finding her. While he lived,
Lord Caterham never slackened from the pursuit; finding his end
approaching--"

"His end approaching!--the end of his life do you mean?"

"He is dead. But before he died, he delegated the duty of pursuit, of
all men in the world, to Geoffrey Ludlow,--to Geoffrey Ludlow, who, in
his blind ignorance, had stumbled upon the very woman a year before,
had saved her from a miserable death, and, all unknowingly, had fondly
imagined he had made her his loving wife."

"Ah, my God, this is too much! And Geoffrey Ludlow knows all this?"

"From Geoffrey Ludlow's lips I heard it not twenty-four hours since."

Margaret uttered a deep groan and buried her face in her hands. When
she raised her head her eyes were tear-blurred, and her voice faltered
as she said, "I acknowledge my sin, and--so far as Geoffrey Ludlow is
concerned--I deeply, earnestly repent my conduct. It was prompted by
despair; it ended in desperation. Have those who condemned me--and I
know naturally enough I am condemned by all his friends--have those
who condemned me ever known the pangs of starvation, the grim tortures
of houselessness in the streets? Have they ever known what it is to
have the iron of want and penury eating into their souls, and then to
be offered a comfortable home and an honest man's love? If they have,
I doubt very much whether they would have refused it. I do not say
this to excuse myself. I have done Geoffrey Ludlow deadly wrong; but
when I listened to his proffered protestations, I gave him time for
reflection; when I said 'Yes' to his repeated vows, I thought that the
dead past had buried its dead, and that no ghost from it would arise
to trouble the future. I vowed to myself that I would be true to that
man who had so befriended me; and I was true to him. The life I led
was inexpressibly irksome and painful to me; the dead solemn monotony
of it goaded me almost to madness at times; but I bore it--bore it
all out of gratitude to him--would have borne it till now if _he_ had
not come back to lure me to destruction. I do not say I did my duty;
I am naturally undomestic and unfitted for household management; but
I brought no slur on Geoffrey Ludlow's name in thought or deed until
that man returned. I have seen him, Mr. Bowker; I have spoken to him,
and he spurned me from him; and yet I love him as I loved him years
ago. He need only raise his finger, and I would fly to him and fawn
upon him, and be grateful if he but smiled upon me in return. They
cannot understand this--they cannot understand my disregard of the
respectabilities by flinging away the position and the name and the
repute, and all that which they had fitted to me, and which clung
to me, ah, so irritatingly; but if all I have heard be true you can
understand it, Mr. Bowker,--you can.--Is Geoffrey out of danger?"

The sudden change in the tone of her voice, as she uttered the last
sentence, struck on Bowker's ear, and looking up, he noticed a strange
light in her eyes.

"Geoffrey is out of danger," he replied; "but he is still very weak,
and requires the greatest care."

"And requires the greatest care!" she repeated. "Well, he'll get it,
I suppose; but not from me. And to think that I shall never see him
again! Poor Geoffrey! poor, good Geoffrey! How good he was, and how
grave!--with those large earnest eyes of his, and his great head, and
rough curling brown hair, and--the cruel cold, the pitiless rain, the
cruel, cruel cold!" As she said these words, she crept back shivering
into her chair, and wrapped her dress round her. William Bowker bent
down and gazed at her steadily; but after an instant she averted her
face, and hid it in the chair. Bowker took her hand, and it fell
passively into his own; he noticed that it was burning.

"This will not do, Mrs. Ludlow!" he exclaimed; "you have over-excited
yourself lately. You want rest and looking after--you must--" he
stopped; for she had turned her head to him again and was rocking
herself backwards and forwards in her chair, weeping meanwhile as
though her heart would break. The sight was too much for William to
bear unaided, and he opened the door and called Mrs. Chapman.

"Ah, sir," said the good little woman when she entered the room, "she's
off again, I see. I knew she was, for I heard that awful sobbing as I
was coming up the stairs. O, that awful sobbing that Ive laid awake
night after night listening to, and that never seemed to stop till
daylight, when she was fairly wore out. But that's nothing, sir,
compared to the talk when she's beside herself. Then she'd go on and
say--"

"Yes, yes, no doubt, Mrs. Chapman," interrupted Bowker, who did
not particularly wish to be further distressed by the narration of
Margaret's sadness; "but this faintness, these weeping fits, are quite
enough to demand the instant attention of a medical man. If you'll
kindly look to her now, I'll go off and fetch a doctor; and if there's
a nurse required--as Ive little doubt there will be--you won't mind me
intruding further upon you? No; I knew you'd say so. Mrs. Lambert's
friends will ever be grateful to you; and here's something just to
carry you on, you know, Mrs. Chapman--rent and money paid on her
account, and that sort of thing." The something was two sovereigns,
which had lain in a lucifer-match box used by Mr. Bowker as his bank,
and kept by him in his only locked drawer for six weeks past, and which
had been put aside for the purchase of a "tweed wrapper" for winter
wear.

Deliberating within himself to what physician of eminence he should
apply, and grievously hampered by the fact that he was unable to pay
any fee in advance, Bowker suddenly bethought him of Dr. Rollit, whose
great love of art and its professors led him, "in the fallow leisure
of his life," to constitute himself a kind of honorary physician to
the brotherhood of the brush. To him Bowker hastened, and, without
divulging Margaret's identity, explained the case, and implored the
doctor to see her at once. The doctor hesitated for a moment, for he
was at his easel and in a knot. He had "got something that would not
come right," and he scarcely seemed inclined to move until he had
conquered his difficulty; but after explaining the urgency of the case,
old Bowker took the palette and sheaf of brushes from the physician's
hand and said, "I think we can help each other at this moment, doctor:
go you and see the patient, and leave me to deal with this difficulty.
You'll find me here when you come back, and you shall then look at your
canvas."

But when Dr. Rollit, after a couple of hours' absence, returned, he
did not look at his picture--at least on his first entry. He looked so
grave and earnest that William Bowker, moving towards him to ask the
result of his visit, was frightened, and stopped.

"What is the matter?" he asked; "you seem--"

"I'm a little taken aback--that's all, old friend," said the doctor;
"you did not prepare me to find in my patient an old acquaintance--you
did not know it, perhaps?"

"By Jove! I remember now: Charley Potts said--What an old ass I am!"

"I was called in by Potts and Ludlow, or rather called out of
a gathering of the Titians, to attend Mrs. Lambert, as the
landlady called her, nearly two years ago. She is not much
altered--outwardly--since I left her convalescent."

"You lay a stress on 'outwardly'--what is the inner difference?"

"Simply that her health is gone, my good fellow; her whole constitution
utterly shattered; her life not worth a week's purchase."

"Surely you're wrong, doctor. Up to within the last few weeks her
health has been excellent."

"My dear William Bowker, I, as an amateur, meddle with your
professional work; but what I do is on the surface, and the mistakes
I make are so glaring, that they are recognisable instantly. You
might meddle, as an amateur, with mine, and go pottering on until
you'd killed half a parish, without any body suspecting you. The
disease I attended Mrs.----- there! it's absurd our beating about the
bush any longer--Mrs. Ludlow for was rheumatic fever, caught from
exposure to cold and damp. The attack I now find left behind it, as it
generally does, a strong predisposition to heart-disease, which, from
what I learn from her, seems to have displayed itself in spasms and
palpitations very shortly afterwards."

"From what you learn from her? She was sensible, then, when you saw
her?"

"She was sensible before I left her; ay, and that's the deuce of it.
Partly to deaden the pain of these attacks, partly, as she said herself
just now, to escape from thought, she has had recourse to a sedative,
morphia, which she has taken in large quantities. I smelt it the
instant I entered her room, and found the bottle by her side. Under
this influence she is deadened and comatose; but when the reaction
comes--Poor creature! poor creature!" and the kind-hearted doctor shook
his head sadly.

"Do you consider her in absolute danger?" asked Bowker, after a pause.

"My dear fellow it is impossible to say how long she may last;
but--though I suppose that's out of the question now, eh?--people will
talk, you know, and Ive heard rumours;--but if her husband wished to
see her, I should say fetch him at once."


"If her husband wished to see her!" said old Bowker to himself, as
he walked away towards his lodgings,--"if her husband wished to see
her! He don't--at least the real one don't, I imagine; and Geoff
mustn't; though, if he knew it, nothing would keep him away. But that
other--Captain Brakespere--he ought to know the danger she's in; he
ought to have the chance of saying a kind word to her before--He must
be a damned villain!" said old William, stopping for an instant, and
pondering over the heads of the story; "but he deserves that chance,
and he shall have it."

Pursuant to his determination, Mr. Bowker presented himself the next
day at Long's Hotel, where he recollected Mr. Blackett had informed him
that Captain Brakespere was stopping. The porter, immediately divining
from Mr. Bowker's outward appearance that he meditated a raid upon
coats, hats, or any thing that might be lying about the coffee-room,
barricaded the entrance with his waistcoat, and parleyed with the
visitor in the hall. Inquiring for Captain Brakespere, Mr. Bowker
was corrected by the porter, who opined "he meant Lord Catrum." The
correction allowed and the inquiry repeated, the porter replied that
his "lordship had leff," and referred the inquirer to St. Barnabas
Square.

To St. Barnabas Square Mr. Bowker adjourned, but there learned that
Lord Caterham had left town with Mr. Barford, and would not be back for
some days.

And meanwhile the time was wearing by, and Margaret's hold on life was
loosening day by day. Would it fail altogether before she saw the man
who had deceived her so cruelly? would it fail altogether before she
saw the man whom she had so cruelly deceived?




CHAPTER VIII.
IN THE DEEP SHADOW.


In the presence of the double sorrow which had fallen upon her, Annie
Maurice's girlhood died out. Arthur was gone, and Geoffrey in so
suffering a condition of body and mind that it would have been easier
to the tender-hearted girl to know that he was at rest, even though
she had to face all the loneliness which would then have been her lot.
Her position was very trying in all its aspects at this time; for
there was little sympathy with her new sorrow at the great house which
she still called home, and where she was regarded as decidedly "odd."
Lady Beauport considered that Caterham had infected her with some of
his strange notions, and that her fancy for associating with "queer"
people, removed from her own sphere not more by her heiress-ship than
by her residence in an earl's house and her recognition as a member of
a noble family, was chargeable to the eccentric notions of her son.
Annie came and went as she pleased, free from comment, though not from
observation; but she was of a sensitive nature; she could not assert
herself; and she suffered from the consciousness that her grief, her
anxiety, and her constant visits to Lowbar were regarded with mingled
censure and contempt. Her pre-occupation of mind prevented her noticing
many things which otherwise could not have escaped her attention;
but when Geoffrey's illness ceased to be actively dangerous, and the
bulletin brought her each morning from Til by the hands of the faithful
Charley contained more tranquillising but still sad accounts of the
patient, she began to observe an air of mystery and preparation in
the household. The few hours which she forced herself to pass daily
in the society of Lady Beauport had been very irksome to her since
Arthur died, and she had been glad when they were curtailed by Lady
Beauport's frequent plea of "business" in the evenings, and her leaving
the drawing-room for her own apartments. Every afternoon she went to
Elm Lodge, and her presence was eagerly hailed by Mrs. Ludlow and Til.
She had seen Geoffrey frequently during the height of the fever; but
since the letter she had kept in such faithful custody had reached his
hands she had not seen him. Though far from even the vaguest conjecture
of the nature of its contents, she had dreaded the effect of receiving
a communication from his dead friend on Geoffrey Ludlow, and had been
much relieved when his mother told her, on the following day, that he
was very calm and quiet, but did not wish to see any one for a few
days. Bowker and he had fully felt the embarrassment of the position
in which Lord Caterham's revelation had placed Geoffrey with regard to
Annie Maurice, and the difficulties which the complications produced
by Margaret's identity with Lionel Brakespere's wife added to Ludlow's
fulfilment of Caterham's trust. They had agreed--or rather Bowker had
suggested, and Geoffrey had acquiesced, with the languid assent of a
mind too much enfeebled by illness and sorrow to be capable of facing
any difficulty but the inevitable, immediate, and pressing--that Annie
need know nothing for the present.

"She could hardly come here from the Beauports, Geoff," Bowker had
said; "it's all nonsense, of course, to men like you and me, who look
at the real, and know how its bitterness takes all the meaning out of
the rubbish they call rules of society; but the strongest woman is no
freer than Gulliver in his fetters of packthread, in the conventional
world she lives in. We need not fret her sooner than it must be done,
and you had better not see her for the present."

So Annie came and went for two or three days and did not see Geoffrey.
Mrs. Ludlow, having recovered from the sudden shock of her son's
illness and the protracted terror of his danger, had leisure to feel a
little affronted at his desire for seclusion, and to wonder audibly why
_she_ should be supposed to do him more harm than Mr. Bowker.

"A big blundering fellow like that, Til," she said; "and I do assure
you, Miss Maurice, he quite forgot the time for the draught when he was
shut up there with him the other day--and talk of _he's_ doing Geoffrey
no harm! All I can say is, if Geoffrey had not been crying when I went
into his room, and wasn't trembling all over in his bed, I never was so
mistaken before."

Then Til and Annie looked blankly at each other, in mute wonder at this
incomprehensible sorrow--for the women knew nothing but that Margaret
had fled with a former lover--so much had been necessarily told them,
under Bowker's instructions, by Charley Potts; and Annie, after a
little, went sorrowfully away.

That day at dinner Lord Beauport was more than usually kind in his
manner to her; and Annie considered it due to him, and a fitting return
for some inquiries he had made for "her friend," which had more of
warmth and less of condescension than usual in their tone, to rouse
herself into greater cheerfulness than she had yet been able to assume.
Lady Beauport rose sooner than usual; and the two ladies had hardly
seated themselves in the dreary drawing-room when the Earl joined them.
There was an air of preparation in Lord Beauport's manner, and Annie
felt that something had happened.

The thing which had happened was this--Lady Beauport had not
miscalculated her experienced power of managing her husband. She
had skilfully availed herself of an admission made by him that
Lionel's absence, at so great a distance just then was an unfortunate
complication; that the necessary communications were rendered difficult
and tedious; and that he wished his "rustication" had been nearer home.
The Countess caught at the word 'rustication:' then not expulsion,
not banishment, was in her husband's mind. Here was a commutation
of her darling's sentence; a free pardon would follow, if she only
set about procuring it in the right way. So she resorted to several
little expedients by which the inconvenience of the heir's absence
was made more and more apparent: having once mentioned his name, Lord
Beauport continued to do so;--perhaps he was in his secret heart as
much relieved by the breaking of the ban as the mother herself;--and
at length, on the same day which witnessed William Bowker's visit
to Lionel Brakespere's deserted wife, Lady Beauport acknowledged to
her husband that their son was then in London, and that she had seen
him. The Earl received her communication in frowning silence; but she
affected not to observe his manner, and expatiated, with volubility
very unusual to her, upon the fortunate concurrence of circumstances
which had brought Lionel to England just as his improved position made
it more than ever probable he would be perfectly well received.

"That dear Mr. Barford," she said--and her face never changed at
the name of the man in whose arms her son had died so short a time
before--"assures me that every one is delighted to see him. And really,
George, he mustn't stay at Long's, you know--it looks so bad--for every
one knows he's in town; and if we don't receive him properly, that will
be just the way to rake up old stories. I'm sure they're old enough to
be forgotten; and many a young man has done worse than Lionel, and--"

"Stop, Gertrude," said Lord Beauport sternly; "stick to the truth,
if you please. I hope very few young men in our son's position have
disgraced it and themselves as he has done. The truth is, that we
have to make the best of a misfortune. He has returned; and by
so doing has added to the rest a fresh rascality by breaking his
pledged word. Circumstances oblige me to acquiesce,--luck is on his
side,--his brother's death--" Lord Beauport paused for a moment, and
an expression, hitherto unfamiliar, but which his wife frequently saw
in the future, flitted over his face--"his brother's death leaves me
no choice. Let us say as little as possible on this subject. He had
better come here, for every reason. For appearances' sake it is well;
and he will probably be under some restraint in this house." Here the
Earl turned to leave the room, and said slowly as he walked towards
the door, "Something tells me, Gertrude, that in Arthur's death, which
we dreaded too little and mourn too lightly, we have seen only the
beginning of evils."

Lady Beauport sat very still and felt very cold after he left her.
Conscience smote her dumbly,--in days to come it would find a voice in
which to speak,--and fear fell upon her. "I will never say any thing to
him about Annie Maurice," she said to herself, as the first effect of
her husband's words began to pass away; "I do believe he would be as
hard on Lionel as poor Arthur himself, and warn the girl against him."

How relieved she felt as she despatched a note to Lionel Brakespere,
telling him she had fulfilled her task, and inviting him to return to
his father's house when he pleased!

Assuredly the star of the new heir was in the ascendant; his brother
was dead, his place restored to him, and society ready to condone all
his "follies,"--which is the fashionable synonym for the crimes of the
rich and the great. If Lionel Brakespere could have seen "that cursed
woman"--as in his brutal anger he called his wife a hundred times over,
as he fretted and fumed over the remembrance of their interview--as
William Bowker saw her that day,--he would have esteemed himself a
luckier fellow still than he did when he lighted his cigar with his
mother's note, and thought how soon he would change that "infernal dull
old hole" from what it was in Caterham's time, and how he would have
every thing his own way now.

Such, as far as his knowledge of them extended, and without any comment
or expression of opinion of his own, were the circumstances which
Lord Beauport narrated to Annie. She received his information with an
indescribable pang, compounded of a thousand loving remembrances of
Arthur and a keen resuscitation by her memory of the scene of Lionel's
disgrace, to which she and her lost friend had been witnesses. She
could hardly believe, hardly understand it all; and the clearest
thought which arose above the surging troubled sea within her breast
was, that the place which knew Arthur no more would be doubly empty and
desolate when Lionel should fill it.

The tone in which Lord Beauport had spoken was grave and sad, and he
had confined himself to the barest announcement. Annie had listened in
respectful silence; but though she had not looked directly at her, she
was conscious of Lady Beauport's reproachful glances, addressed to her
husband, as he concluded by saying coldly,

"You were present, Annie, by my desire, when I declared that that which
is now about to happen should never be, and I have thought it necessary
to explain to you a course of conduct on my part which without
explanation would have appeared very weak and inconsistent. As a member
of _my_ family you are entitled to such an explanation; and indeed, as
an inmate of this house, you are entitled to an apology."

"Thank you, my lord," said Annie, in a voice which, though lower than
usual, was very firm.

This was more than Lady Beauport's pride could bear. She began,
fiercely enough,

"Really, Lord Beauport, I cannot see--"

But at that moment a servant opened the door and announced

"Lord Caterham."

The group by the fireside stood motionless for a moment, as Lionel,
dressed in deep mourning, advanced towards them with well-bred ease and
perfect unconcern. Then Lady Beauport threw herself into his arms; and
Annie, hardly noticing that Lord Beauport had by an almost involuntary
movement stretched out his hand to the handsome prodigal, glided past
the three, hurried to her own room, and, having locked the door, sank
down on her knees beside her bed in an agony of grief.

Three days elapsed, during which events marched with a steady pace at
Elm Lodge and at the lodging were the woman who had brought such wreck
and ruin within that tranquil-looking abode was lying contending with
grief and disease, dying the death of despair and exhaustion. When
Bowker returned from his unsuccessful quest for Lionel Brakespere, he
found that she had passed into another phase of her malady,--was quiet,
dreamy, and apparently forgetful of the excitement she had undergone.
She was lying quite still on her bed, her eyes half closed, and a faint
unmeaning smile was on her lips.

"I have seen her so for hours and hours, sir," said the gentle little
landlady; "and it's my belief it's what she takes as does it."

So Bowker concluded that Margaret had found means to avail herself
of the fatal drug from which she had sought relief so often and so
long, in the interval of depression which had succeeded the delirium
he had witnessed. He was much embarrassed now to know how to proceed.
She required better accommodation and careful nursing, and he was
determined she should have both,--but how that was to be managed was
the question; and Bowker, the most helpless man in the world in such
matters, was powerless to answer it. He had never imagined, as he
had turned the probabilities over and over in his mind, that such a
complication as severe physical illness would arise; and it routed all
his plans, besides engaging all his most active sympathies. William
Bowker had an extreme dread, indeed a positive terror, of witnessing
bodily suffering in women and children; and had his anger and repulsion
towards Margaret been far greater than they were, they would have
yielded to pain and pity as he gazed upon the rigid lines of the pale
weary face, from which the beauty was beginning to fade and drop away
in some mysterious manner of vanishing, terrible to see and feel, but
impossible to describe. He made the best provisional arrangements
within his power, and went away, promising Mrs. Chapman that he would
return on the following day to meet the doctor, and turned his steps in
much mental bewilderment towards the abode of Charley Potts, purposing
to consult him in the emergency, previous to their proceeding together
to Lowbar.

"I can't help it now," he thought; "the women cannot possibly be kept
out of the business any longer. If she were let to want any thing, and
had not every care taken of her, dear old Geoff would never forgive
any of us; and it could not be hidden from him. I am sure she's dying;
and--I'm glad of it: glad for her sake, poor wretched creature; and
O so glad for his! He will recover her death--he _must_; but I doubt
whether he would recover her life. He would be for ever hankering after
her, for ever remembering the past, and throwing away the remainder of
his life, as he has thrown away too much of it already. No, no, dear
old Geoff, this shall not be, if your William can save you. I know what
a wasted life means; and you shall put yours out at good interest,
Geoff, please God."

Charley was at home; and he received Mr. Bowker's communication with
uncommon gravity, and immediately bestowed his best attention upon
considering what was to be done. He was not in the least offended by
discovering that it had not been his William's intention to tell him
any thing about it. "Quite right too," he observed. "I should have
been of no use, if every thing had not been capsized by her illness;
and I don't like to know any thing I'm not to tell to Til. Not that
she's in the least inquisitive, you know,--don't make any mistake about
that,--but things are in such an infernally mysterious mess; and then
they only know enough to make them want to know more; and I shouldn't
like, under these circumstances--it would seem hypocritical, don't you
see--and every thing must come out sometime, eh?"

"O yes, I see," said Bowker drily; "but I have to tell you _now_,
Charley; for what the devil's to be done? You can't bring her here and
nurse her; and I can't bring her to my place and nurse her,--yet she
must be taken somewhere and nursed; and we must be prepared with a
satisfactory account of every thing we have done, when Geoff gets well;
and what are we to do?"

Mr. Potts did not answer for a few moments, but handed over the beer
in an absent manner to Mr. Bowker; then, starting up from the table on
which he had been sitting, he exclaimed,

"I have it, William. Let's tell the women--Til, I mean, and Miss
Maurice. They'll know all about it, bless you," said Charley, whose
confidence in female resources was unbounded. "It's all nonsense trying
to keep things dark, when theyve got to such a pass as this. If Mrs.
Ludlow's in the state you say, she will not live long; and then Geoff's
difficulty, if not his trouble, will be over. Her illness alters every
thing. Come on, Bowker; let's get on to Elm Lodge; tell Til, and Miss
Maurice, if she's there; and let them make proper arrangements."

"But, Charley," said Bowker, much relieved, in spite of his misgivings,
by the suggestion, "you forget one important point. Miss Maurice is
Brakespere's cousin, and she lives in his father's house. It won't do
to bring her in."

"Never you mind that, William," replied the impetuous Charley. "Til
can't act alone; and old Mrs. Ludlow is nervous, and would not know
what to do, and must not be told; and I am sure Miss Maurice doesn't
care a rap about her cousin--the ruffian--why should she? And I know
she would do any thing in the world, no matter how painful to herself,
and no matter whether he ever came to know it or not, that would serve
or please Geoff."

"Indeed!" said Bowker, in a tone half of inquiry, half of surprise, and
looking very hard at Charley; "and how do you know that, eh, Charley?"

"O, bother," answered that gentleman, "I don't know how I know it;
but I do know it; and I am sure the sooner we act on my knowledge the
better. So come along."

So saying, Mr. Potts made his simple outdoor toilet; and the two
gentlemen went out, and took their way towards the resort of omnibuses,
eagerly discussing the matter in hand as they went, and Mr. Bowker
finding himself unexpectedly transformed from the active into the
passive party.

It was agreed between them that Geoffrey should not be informed of
Bowker's presence in the house, as he would naturally be impatient to
learn the result of the mission with which he had intrusted him; and
that result it was their present object to conceal.

Fortune favoured the wishes of Bowker and Charley. Mrs. Ludlow was
with her son; and in the drawing-room, which was resuming somewhat of
its former orderly and pleasant appearance, they found Miss Maurice
and Til. The two girls were looking sad and weary, and Til was hardly
brightened up by Charley's entrance, for he looked so much more grave
than usual, that she guessed at once he had heard something new and
important. The little party were too vitally interested in Geoffrey
and his fortunes, and the occasion was too solemn for any thing of
ceremony; and when Charley Potts had briefly introduced Bowker to Annie
Maurice, he took Til's hand in his, and said,

"Til, Geoffrey's wife has been found--alone, and very ill--dying, as we
believe!"


"You are quite sure, William?"

"I am quite sure, Geoffrey. Do you think I would deceive you, or take
any thing for granted myself, without seeing and hearing what is so
important to you? She is well cared for in every respect. Your own
care, when she needed it before, was not more tender or more effective.
Be satisfied, dear old Geoff; be content."

"You saw her--you really saw her; and she spoke kindly of me?" asked
Geoffrey with a pitiable eagerness which pained Bowker to witness.

"I did. Yes, have I not told you again and again--" Then there was
a moment's silence and Bowker thought, if she were not dying, how
terrible this tenderness towards her would be, how inexplicable to all
the world but him, how ruinous to Geoffrey; but as it was, it did not
matter: it would soon be only the tenderness of memory, the pardon of
the grave.

Geoffrey was sitting in an arm-chair by the bedroom window which
overlooked the pretty flower-garden and the lawn. He was very weak
still, but health was returning, and with it the power of acute mental
suffering, which severe bodily illness mercifully deadens. This had
been a dreadful day to him. When he was able to sit up and look around
the room from which all the graceful suggestive traces of a woman's
presence had been carefully removed; when he saw the old home look
upon every thing before his eyes (for whom the idea of home was for
ever desecrated and destroyed), the truth presented itself to him as
it had never before done, in equal horror and intensity, since the day
the woman he loved had struck him a blow by her words which had nearly
proved mortal. Would it had been so! he thought, as his large brown
eyes gazed wearily out upon the lawn and the flower-beds, and then
were turned upon the familiar objects in the chamber, and closed with
a shudder. His large frame look gaunt and worn, and his hands rested
listlessly upon the sides of his chair. He had requested them to leave
him alone for a little, that he might rest previous to seeing Bowker.

From the window at which Geoffrey sat he could see the nurse walking
monotonously up and down the gravel-walk which bounded his little
demesne with the child in her arms. Sometimes she stopped to pluck a
flower and give it to the baby, who would laugh with delight and then
throw it from him. Geoffrey watched the pair for a little, and then
turned his head wearily away and put his question to Bowker, who was
seated beside him, and who looked at him furtively with glances of the
deepest concern.

"You shall hear how she is, Geoff,--how circumstanced, how cared for,
and by whom, from one who can tell you the story better than I can.
Your confidence has not been misplaced." Geoffrey turned upon him the
nervous anxious gaze which is so touching to see in the eyes of one who
has lately neared the grave, and still seems to hover about its brink.
William Bowker proceeded: "You have not asked for Miss Maurice lately.
I daresay you felt too much oppressed by the information in Lord
Caterham's letter, too uncertain of the future, too completely unable
to make up your mind what was to be done about her, to care or wish
to see her. She has been here as usual, making herself as useful as
possible, and helping your mother and sister in every conceivable way.
But she has done more for you than that, Geoff; and if you are able to
see her now, I think you had better hear it all from herself."

With these words Bowker hurried out of the room; and in a few minutes
Annie Maurice, pale, quiet, and self-possessed, came in, and took her
seat beside Geoffrey.

What had she come to tell him? What had she been doing for the help
and service of her early friend,--she, this young girl so unskilled in
the world's ways, so lonely, so dependent hitherto,--who now looked so
womanly and sedate,--in whose brown eyes he saw such serious thought,
such infinite sweetness and pity,--whose deep mourning dress clothed
her slender figure with a sombre dignity new to it, and on whom a
nameless change had passed, which Geoffrey had eyes to see now, and
recognised even in that moment of painful emotion with wonder.

Calmly, carefully subduing every trace of embarrassment for his sake,
and in a business-like tone which precluded the necessity for any
preliminary explanation, Annie told Geoffrey Ludlow that she had been
made aware of the circumstances which had preceded and caused his
illness. She touched lightly upon her sorrow and her sympathy, but
passed on to the subject of Caterham's letter. Geoffrey listened to her
in silence, his head turned away and his eyes covered with his hand.
Annie went on:

"I little thought, Geoffrey, when I was so glad to find that you
were well enough to read Arthur's letter, and when I only thought
of fulfilling so urgent a request as soon as I could, and perhaps
diverting your mind into thoughts of our dear dead friend, that I was
to be the means of making all this misery plain and intelligible.
But it was so, Geoffrey; and I now see that it was well. Why Arthur
should have selected you to take up the search after his death I
cannot tell,--I suppose he knew instinctively your fidelity and
trueheartedness; but the accident was very fortunate, for it identified
your interests and mine, it made the fulfilment of his trust a sacred
duty to me, and enabled me to do with propriety what no one else could
have done, and what she--what Margaret--would not have accepted from
another."

Geoffrey started, let his hand fall from his face, and caught hers. "Is
it you, then, Annie?"

"Yes, yes," she said, "it is I, Geoffrey; do not agitate yourself, but
listen to me. When Mr. Bowker found Margaret, as you know he did, she
was very ill, and--she had no protector and no money. What could he do?
He did the best thing; he told me, to whom Arthur's wishes were sacred,
who would have done the same had you never existed--you know I am rich
and free; and I made all the needful arrangements for her at once. When
all was ready for her reception--it is a pretty house at Sydenham,
Geoffrey, and she is as well cared for as any one can be--I went to
her, and told her I was come to take her home."

"And she--Margaret--did she consent? Did she think it was I who--"

"Who sent me?" interrupted Annie. "No,--she would not have consented;
for her feeling is that she has so wronged you that she must owe
nothing to you any more. In this I know she is quite wrong; for to
know that she was in any want or suffering would be still worse grief
to you,--but that can never be,--and I did not need to contradict
her. I told her I came to her in a double character that of her own
friend--though she had not had much friendship for me, Geoffrey; but
that is beside the question--and--and--" here she hesitated for a
moment, but then took courage and went on, "that of her husband's
cousin." Geoffrey ground his teeth, but said never a word. She
continued, with deepening light in her eyes and growing tenderness
in her voice, "I told her how Arthur, whom I loved, had sought for
her,--how a strange fatality had brought them in contact, neither
knowing how near an interest each had in the other. She knew it the day
she fainted in his room, but he died without knowing it, and so dying
left her, as I told her I felt she was, a legacy to me. She softened
then, Geoffrey, and she came with me."

Here Annie paused, as if expecting he would speak, but he did not. She
glanced at him, but his face was set and rigid, and his eyes were fixed
upon the walk, where the nurse and child still were.

"She is very ill, Geoffrey," Annie went on; "very weak and worn, and
weary of life. I am constantly with her, but sometimes she is unable or
unwilling to speak to me. She is gloomy and reserved, and suffers as
much in mind as in body, I am sure."

Geoffrey said slowly, "Does she ever speak to you of me?"

Annie replied, "Not often. When she does, it is always with the
greatest sorrow for your sorrow, and the deepest sense of the injury
she has done you. I am going to her to-day, Geoffrey, and I should like
to take to her an assurance of your forgiveness. May I tell Margaret
that you forgive her?"

He turned hastily, and said with a great gasp, "O Annie, tell her that
I love her!"

"I will tell her that," the girl said gently and sadly, and an
expression of pain crossed her face. She thought of the love that had
been wasted, and the life that had been blighted.

"What is she going to do?" asked Geoffrey; "how is it to be in the
future?" This was a difficult question for Annie to answer: she knew
well what lay in the future; but she dreaded to tell Geoffrey, even
while she felt that the wisest, the easiest, the best, and the most
merciful solution of the terrible dilemma in which a woman's ungoverned
passion had placed so many innocent persons was surely and not slowly
approaching.

"I don't know, Geoffrey," she said; "I cannot tell you. Nothing can be
decided upon until she is better, and you are well enough to advise and
direct us. Try and rest satisfied for the present. She is safe, no harm
can come to her; and I am able and willing to befriend her now as you
did before. Take comfort, Geoffrey; it is all dreadful; but if we had
not found her, how much worse it would have been!"

At this moment the nurse carried her charge out of their sight, as she
came towards the house, and Annie, thinking of the more than motherless
child, wondered at the no-meaning of her own words, and how any thing
could have been worse than what had occurred.

She and Geoffrey had spoken very calmly to each other, and there had
been no demonstration of gratitude to her on his part; but it would be
impossible to tell the thankfulness which filled his heart. It was a
feeling of respite which possessed him. The dreadful misfortune which
had fallen upon him was as real and as great as ever; but he could
rest from the thought of it, from its constant torture, now that he
knew that she was safe from actual physical harm; now that no awful
vision of a repetition of the destitution and misery from which he had
once rescued her, could come to appal him. Like a man who, knowing
that the morrow will bring him a laborious task to do, straining his
powers to the utmost, inexorable and inevitable in its claims, covets
the deep rest of the hours which intervene between the present and the
hour which must summon him to his toil, Geoffrey, in the lassitude of
recent illness, in the weakness of early convalescence, rested from
the contemplation of his misery. He had taken Annie's communication
very quietly; he had a sort of feeling that it ought to surprise him
very much, that the circumstances were extraordinary, that the chain
of events was a strangely-wrought one--but he felt little surprise; it
was lurking somewhere in his mind, he would feel it all by and by, no
doubt; but nothing beyond relief was very evident to him in his present
state. He wondered, indeed, how it was with Annie herself; how the
brave, devoted, and unselfish girl had been able, trammelled as she
was by the rules and restrictions of a great house, to carry out her
benevolent designs, and dispose of her own time after her own fashion.
There was another part of the subject which Geoffrey did not approach
even in his thoughts. Bowker had not told him of Margaret's entreaties
that she might see Lionel Brakespere; he had not told him that the
young man had returned to his father's house; and he made no reference
to him in his consideration of Annie's position. He had no notion that
the circumstances in which Lord Caterham had entreated his protection
for Annie had already arisen.

"How is it that you can do all this unquestioned, Annie?" he asked;
"how can you be so much away from home?"

She answered him with some embarrassment. "It was difficult--a
little--but I knew I was right, and I did not suffer interference. When
you are quite well, Geoffrey, I want your advice for myself. I have
none else, you know, since Arthur died."

"He knew that, Annie; and the purport of the letter which told me such
a terrible story was to ask me in all things to protect and guide you.
He little knew that he had the most effectual safeguard in his own
hands; for, Annie, the danger he most dreaded for you was association
with his brother."

"That can never be," she said vehemently. "No matter what your future
course of action may be, Geoffrey, whether you expose him or not--in
which, of course, you will consider Margaret only--I will never live
under the same roof with him. I must find another home, Geoffrey, let
what will come of it, and let them say what they will."

"Caterham would have been much easier in his mind, Annie," said
Geoffrey, with a sad smile, "if he had known how baseless were his
fears that his brother would one day win your heart."

"There never could have been any danger of that, Geoffrey," said Annie,
with a crimson blush, which had not subsided when she took her leave of
him.




CHAPTER IX.
CLOSING IN.


The porter at Lord Beauport's mansion in St. Barnabas Square became
so familiarised with Mr. Bowker's frequent visits as at length to
express no surprise at the sight of the "hold cove," who daily arrived
to inquire whether any tidings of Lord Caterham had been received.
Although the porter's experience of life had been confined to London,
his knowledge of the ways of men was great; and he was perfectly
certain that this pertinacious inquirer was no dun, no tradesman with
an overdue account, no begging letter-writer or imposter of any kind.
What he was the porter could not tell; mentioned, in casual chat with
the footman waiting for the carriage to come round, that he could not
"put a name" to him, but thought from his "rum get-up" that he was
either in the picture-selling or the money-lending line.

Undeterred by, because ignorant of, the curiosity which his presence
excited--and indeed it may be assumed that, had he been aware of it,
his actions would have been very little influenced thereby--old William
Bowker attended regularly every day at the St. Barnabas-Square mansion,
and having asked his question and received his answer, adjourned to
the nearest tavern for his lunch of bread-and-cheese and beer, and
then puffing a big meerschaum pipe, scaled the omnibus which conveyed
him to London Bridge, whence he took the train for the little house
at Sydenham. They were always glad to see him there, even though he
brought no news; and old Mrs. Ludlow especially found the greatest
comfort in pouring into his open ears the details of the latest
experience of her "cross." William Bowker to such recitals was a
splendid listener; that is to say, he could nod his head and throw in
an "Indeed!" or a "Really!" exactly at the proper moment, while all the
time his thoughts were far away, occupied with some important matter.
He saw Til occasionally, and sometimes had flying snatches of talk with
Annie Maurice in the intervals of her attendance on the invalid. Bowker
did not meet Charley Potts very frequently, although that gentleman
was a regular visitor at Sydenham whenever Mrs. Ludlow and Til were
there; but it was not until the evening that Mr. Potts came, for he
was diligently working away at his commissions and growing into great
favour with Mr. Caniche; and besides, he had no particular interest
in Miss Maurice; and so long as he arrived in time to escort Miss Til
and her mother back to London Bridge and to put them into the Lowbar
omnibus, he was content, and was especially grateful for the refreshing
sleep which always came upon old Mrs. Ludlow in the train.

At length, when many weary days had worn themselves away, and Geoffrey
was beginning to feel his old strength returning to him, and with it
the aching void which he had experienced on regaining consciousness
daily increasing in intensity, and when Margaret's hold on life had
grown very weak indeed, old William Bowker, making his daily inquiry of
Lord Beauport's porter, was informed that Lord Caterham had returned
the previous afternoon, and was at that moment at breakfast. Then, with
great deliberation, Mr. Bowker unbuttoned his coat and from an inner
breast-pocket produced an old leather pocket-book, from which, among
bits of sketches and old envelopes, he took a card, and pencilling his
name thereon, requested the porter to give it to Lord Caterham.

The porter looked at the card, and then said jocosely, "You ain't wrote
your business on it, then? 'Spose you couldn't do that, eh? Well, you
are a plucked 'un, you are, and I like you for it, never givin' in
and comin' so reg'lar; and I'll let him have your card just for that
reason." He disappeared as he said these words, but came back speedily,
remarking, "He'll see you, he says, though he don't know the name. Do
you know the way? Same rooms which his brother used to have,--straight
afore you. Here, I'll show you."

The friendly porter, preceding Mr. Bowker down the passage, opened the
door of what had been poor Arthur's sitting-room, and ushered in the
visitor. The bookcases, the desk, the pictures and nicnacks, were all
as they had been in the old days; but there was a table in the middle
of the room, at which was seated the new Lord Caterham finishing late
breakfast. Bowker had never seen the Lionel Brakespere of former days;
if he had, he would have noticed the change in the man before him,--the
boldness of bearing, the calm unflinching regard, the steadiness of
voice, the assurance of manner,--all of which, though characteristic
of Lionel Brakespere in his earliest days, had deserted him, only to
reappear with his title.

"You wished to see me, Mr. ----. I don't know your name," said Lionel,
stiffly returning the stiff bow which Bowker gave him on entering.

"You have my card, my lord," said old Bowker quietly.

"Ah, yes, by the way, I have your card," said Lionel, taking it up.
"Mr. Bowker--Mr.--Bowker! Now that does not convey to me any idea
whatever?"

"I daresay not. You never heard it before--you never saw me before; and
you would not see me now, if I did not come on business of the greatest
importance."

"Business of the greatest importance! Dear me, that's what they all
come on. Of the greatest importance to yourself, of course?"

"Of the greatest importance to you. Except in a very minor degree, Ive
nothing to do in the matter."

"Of the greatest importance to me! O, of course--else it would not have
been worth while your coming, would it? Now, as my time is valuable, be
good enough to let me know what this business is."

"You shall know in as few words as I can tell you. I come to you from a
woman--"

Lionel interrupted him with a cynical laugh.

"The deuce you do!" he said. "From a woman? Well, I thought it was
cigars, or a blue diamond, or a portrait of some old swell whom you had
made out to be an ancestor of mine, or--"

"I would advise you not to be funny on the subject until you've heard it
explained, Lord Caterham," said Mr. Bowker grimly. "I scarcely imagine
you'll find it so humorous before I'm done."

"Sha'n't I? Well, at all events, give me the chance of hearing," said
Lionel. He was in a splendid temper. He had come back, after a pleasant
run with Algy Barford, to enjoy all the advantages of his new position.
On the previous night he and his mother had had a long talk about Miss
Maurice--this heiress whom he was to captivate so easily. The world lay
straight and bright before him, and he could spare a few minutes to
this old fellow--who was either a lunatic or a swindler--for his own
amusement.

"I come to you Lord Caterham, from a woman who claims to be your wife."

In an instant the colour died out of Lionel's face; his brows were
knit, and his mouth set and rigid. "O, ho!" said he through his
clenched teeth, after a moment's pause; "you do, do you? You come to me
from _that_ woman? That's your line of country, is it? O yes--I guessed
wrong about you, certainly--you don't look a bit like a bully!"

"A bully!" echoed William Bowker, looking very white.

"A bully!" repeated Lionel--"the woman's father, brother, former
husband--any thing that will give you a claim to put in an appearance
for her. And now look here. This game won't do with me--I'm up to it;
so you had better drop it at once, and get out."

Old Bowker waited for a minute with set teeth and clenched fists, all
the gray hair round his mouth bristling with fury. Only for a minute.
Then he resumed the seat which he had quitted, and said,

"I'm not quite so certain of myself nowadays, as Ive been a long time
out of practice; but it strikes me that during your long career of
gentlemanly vice, my Lord Caterham, you never were nearer getting
a sound drubbing than you have been within the last five minutes.
However, let that pass. You have been good enough to accuse me of
being a bully, by which term I imagine you mean a man sent here by the
unfortunate lady of whom we have spoken to assert her rights. I may as
well start by telling you that she is utterly ignorant of my intention
to call on you."

"Of course--O yes, of course. Didn't give you my address, did she?"

"She did not."

"She didn't? O, then you've come on your own hook, being some relation
or friend of hers, to see what you could bounce me out of."

"I am no relation of hers. I have not seen her half a dozen times in
the course of my life."

"Then what the deuce brings you here?"

"I'll tell you as shortly as I can. When you deserted this woman--not
caring what became of her; leaving her to sink or swim as best she
might--she slipped from one point of wretchedness to another, until, at
the bottom of her descent, she was discovered by a very old friend of
mime perishing of cold and hunger--dying in the streets!"

Lionel, whose face when Bowker commenced speaking had been averted,
turned here, and gave a short sharp shudder, fixing his eyes on Bowker
as he proceeded.

"Dying in the streets! My friend rescued her from this fate, had
her nursed and attended, and finally--ignorant of the chief fact of
her life, though she had confided to him a certain portion of her
story--fell so desperately in love with her as to ask her to become his
wife."

"To become his wife!" cried Lionel; "and she consented?"

"She did."

"And they were married?"

"They were. I was present."

"_Bravissimo!_" said Lionel in a low voice. "you've done me a greater
service than you think for, Mr.--what's-your-name. She'll never trouble
me again."

"Only once more, my lord," said old Bowker solemnly.

"What the devil do you mean, sir?"

"Simply this, my lord. I understand your exclamation of delight at
seeing your way legally to rid yourself of this woman, who is now
nothing to you but an incumbrance. But you need not fear; you will not
even have the trouble of consulting your lawyer in the matter. There is
one who breaks up marriage-ties more effectually even than the Divorce
Court, and that one is--Death!"

"Death!"

"Death. The woman of whom we have been speaking lies in the jaws of
death. Her recovery, according to all human experience, is impossible.
Dying,--and knowing herself to be dying,--she wishes to see you."

"To see me!" said Lionel scornfully; "O no, thank you; I won't
interfere in the family party. The gentleman who has married her might
object to my coming."

"The gentleman who married her in all noble trust and honour, she
deserted directly she heard of your return. Overwhelmed by her cruelty,
and by the full details of her story, which he heard from your brother,
the then Lord Caterham, at the same time, he fell, smitten with an
illness from which he is barely recovering. She is in another house far
away from his, and on her deathbed she calls for you."

"She may call," said Lionel, after a moment's pause, frowning,
thrusting his hands into his pockets, and settling himself back into
his chair; "she may call; I shall not go."

"You will not?"

"I will not--why should I?"

"If you can't answer that question for yourself, Lord Caterham, upon
my soul I can't for you," said Bowker gruffly. "If you think you owe
no reparation to the woman, your wife, whom you left to be rescued by
strangers' charity from starvation, I cannot convince you of it: if you
decline to accede to her dying request, I cannot enforce it."

"Why does not the--the gentleman who was so desperately in love with
her, and whom she--she accepted--why does not he go to her?" said
Lionel. He did not care for Margaret himself, but the thought that she
had been something to any one else grated upon his pride.

"Ah, my God," said old Bowker, "how willingly would he; but it is not
for him she asks--it is for you. You boast of your experience of women,
and yet you know so little of them as to expect gratitude of them.
Gratitude from a woman--gratitude--and yet, God knows, I ought not to
say that--I ought not to say that."

"You seem to have had a singular experience, Mr. Bowker," said Lionel,
"and one on which you can scarcely make up your mind. Where is this
lady whom you wish me to see?"

"At Sydenham--within an hour's drive."

Lionel rang the bell. "Tell them to get the brougham round," said he to
the servant who answered it. "Now, look here, Mr. Bowker; I am going
with you thoroughly depending on your having told me the exact truth."

"You may depend on it," said old Bowker simply. And they started
together.

That was a strange ride. At starting Lionel lit a cigar, and puffed
fiercely out of the window; idly looking at the Parliament-houses
and other familiar objects which met his gaze as they drove over
Westminster Bridge, the passing populace, the hoardings blazing with
placards, the ordinary bustle and turmoil of every-day life. He was
angry and savage; savage with Margaret for the annoyance she had
brought upon him, savage with Bowker for having found him out, savage
with himself for having allowed himself, in the impulse of a moment,
to be betrayed into this expedition. Then, as the houses became fewer,
and the open spaces more frequent; as they left behind them the solid
blocks of streets and rows and terraces, dull wretched habitations for
ninth-rate clerks, solemn old two-storied edifices where the shipping
agents and Baltic merchants of a past generation yet lingered in their
retirement, frowsy dirty little shops with a plentiful sprinkling of
dirtier and frowsier taverns, imbued as was the whole neighbourhood
with a not-to-be explained maritime flavour,--as they slipped by these
and came into the broad road fringed by pretty gardens, in which
stood trim villas stuccoed and plate-glassed, with the "coach-house
of gentility" and every other sign of ease and wealth; then leaving
these behind, emerged into country lanes with wide-spreading meadows
on either side, green uplands, swelling valleys, brown shorn fields
whence the harvest had been carried,--as they passed through all these
the cruel thoughts in Lionel's mind softened, and he began to think
of the scene to which he was being hastened, and of his own share in
bringing about that scene. As he flung away the butt-end of his cigar,
there rose in his mind a vision of Margaret as he had first seen her,
walking on the Castle Hill at Tenby with some of her young companions,
and looking over the low parapet at the boiling sea raging round
Catherine's Rock. How lovely she looked, glowing with youth and health!
What a perfectly aristocratic air and _tournure_ she had, visible in
the careless grace of her hat, the sweeping elegance of her shawl, the
fit of her boots and gloves! How completely he had been taken aback by
the apparition! how he had raved about her! had never rested until he
had obtained an introduction, and--ah, he remembered at that moment
distinctly the quivering of her eyelids, the fluttering of her young
bosom under its simple gauze, her half hesitating timid speech. That
was comparatively a short time ago--and now in what condition was he to
find her? He was not all bad, this man--who is?--and the best part of
him was awakened now. He crossed his arms, leaned back in the carriage,
and was nearer repentance than he had been since his childhood.

And old William Bowker, what was he thinking of? Indeed, he had fallen
into his usual day-dream. The comparison between Margaret and his own
lost love, made when he first saw her, had always haunted him; and he
was then turning in his mind how, if such a complication as they were
experiencing at that moment had been possible, it would have affected
her and him. From this his thoughts glided to the impending interview,
and he wondered whether he had done right in bringing it about. He
doubted whether Margaret would have the physical strength to endure
it; and even if she had, whether any good--even so far as the arousing
even a transient good in his companion--would result from it. As he was
pondering upon these things, Lionel turned quietly upon him and said in
a hoarse voice,

"You said she was very ill?"

"Very ill; could hardly be worse--to be alive."

"It's--" and here he seemed to pull himself together, and nerve himself
to hear the worst--"it's consumption, I suppose, caught from--damn it
all, how my lip trembles!--brought on by--want, and that."

"It originated in rheumatic fever, produced by cold and exposure,
resulting in heart-disease and a complication of disorders."

"Has she had proper advice?--the best, I mean, that can be procured?"

"Yes; she has been seen twice by ---- and ----" said Bowker, naming two
celebrated physicians, "and her own doctor sees her every day."

"And their opinions agree?"

"They all agree in saying that--"

"Hush," said Lionel, seizing him by the arm; "your face is quite
enough. I'd rather not hear it again, please." And he plunged his hands
into his pockets, and sunk back shuddering into the corner of the
brougham.

Bowker was silent; and they drove on without interchanging a word until
William stopped the coachman at a small gate in a high garden-wall.
Then Lionel looked up with a strange frightened glance, and asked, "Is
this the place?"

"It is," said Bowker; "she has been here for some little time now. You
had better let me go in first, I think, and prepare for your coming."

And all Lionel answered was, "As you please," as he shrunk back into
his corner again. He was under a totally new experience. For the first
time in his life he found himself suffering under a conscience-pang;
felt disposed to allow that he had acted badly towards this woman now
lying so stricken and so helpless; had a kind of dim hope that she
would recover, in order that he might--vaguely, he knew not how--make
her atonement. He felt uncomfortable and fidgetty. Bowker had gone, and
the sun-blistered damp-stained garden-door had been closed behind him,
and Lionel sat gazing at the door, and wondering what was on the other
side of it, and what kind of a house it was, and where she was, and
who was with her. He never thought he should have felt like this. He
had thought of her--half a dozen times--when he was out there; but he
knew she was a clever girl, and he always had a notion that she would
fall upon her legs, and outgrow that first girlish smite, and settle
down comfortably, and all that kind of thing. And so she would now.
They were probably a pack of nervous old women about her--like this
fellow who had brought him here--and they exaggerated danger, and made
mountains of mole-hills. She was ill--he had little doubt of that; but
she would get better, and then he'd see what could be done. Gad! it was
a wonderful thing to find any woman caring for a fellow so; he might go
through life without meeting another; and after all, what the deuce did
it matter? He was his own master, wasn't he? and as for money--well,
he should be sure to have plenty some day: things were all altered
now, since poor old Arthur's death; and-- And at that moment the door
opened; and behind William Bowker, who was pale and very grave, Lionel
saw the house with all its blinds drawn down. And then he knew that his
better resolutions had come too late, and that Margaret was dead.


Yes, she was dead; had died early that morning. On the previous day
she had been more than usually restless and uncomfortable, and towards
evening had alarmed the nurse who thought she was asleep, and who
herself was dozing--by breaking out into a shrill cry, followed by a
deep long-drawn lamentation. Annie Maurice at the sound rushed hastily
into the room, and never left it again until all was over. She found
Margaret dreadfully excited. She had had a horrible dream, she said--a
dream in which she went through all the miseries of her days of penury
and starvation, with the added horror of feeling that they were a just
punishment on her for her ingratitude to Geoffrey Ludlow. When she was
a little quieted, she motioned Annie to sit by her; and holding her
hand, asked her news of Geoffrey. Annie started, for this was the first
time that, in her calm senses, Margaret had mentioned him. In her long
ravings of delirium his name was constantly on her lips, always coupled
with some terms of pity and self-scornful compassion; but hitherto,
during her brief intervals of reason, she had talked only of Lionel,
and of her earnest desire to see and speak to him once again. So Annie,
pleased and astonished, said,

"He is getting better, Margaret; much better, we trust."

"Getting better! Has he been ill, then?"

"He has been very ill--so ill that we at one time feared for his life.
But he is out of danger now, thank God."

"Thank God!" repeated Margaret. "I am grateful indeed that his death
is not to be charged to my account; that would have been but a bad
return for his preservation of my life; and if he had died, I know
his death would have been occasioned by my wickedness. Tell me, Miss
Maurice--Annie--tell me, has he ever mentioned my name?"

"Ah, Margaret," said Annie, her eyes filling with tears, "his talk is
only of you."

"Is it?" said Margaret, with flushing cheeks and brightening eyes; "is
it? That's good to hear---O how good! And tell me, Annie--he knows I
shall not trouble him long--has he, has he forgiven me?"

"Not that alone," said Annie quietly. "Only yesterday he said, with
tears in his eyes, how he loved you still."

There was silence for a moment, as Margaret covered her eyes with her
hands. Then, raising her head, in a voice choked with sobs she said,
with a blinding rush of tears, "O Annie, Annie, I can't be _all_ bad,
or I should never have won the love of that brave, true-hearted man."

She spoke but little after this; and Lionel's name never passed her
lips--she seemed to have forgotten all about him and her desire to
see him. From time to time she mentioned Geoffrey--no longer, as in
her delirium, with pity, but with a kind of reverential fondness, as
one speaks of the dead. As the night deepened, she became restless
again, tossing to and fro, and muttering to herself; and bending down,
Annie heard her, as she had often heard her before, engaged in deep
and fervent prayer. Then she slept; and, worn out with watching, Annie
slept also.

It was about four o'clock in the morning when Annie felt her arm
touched; and at once unclosing her eyes, saw Margaret striving to raise
herself on her elbow. There was a bright weird look in her face that
was unmistakable.

"It's coming, Annie," she said, in short thick gasps; "it's coming,
dear--the rest, the peace, the home! I don't fear it, Annie. Ive--Ive
had that one line running in my brain, 'What though my lamp was lighted
late, there's One will let me in.' I trust in His mercy, Annie, who
pardoned Magdalen; and--God bless you, dear; God in His goodness
reward you for all your love and care of me; and say to Geoffrey that
I blessed him too, and that I thanked him for all his--your hand,
Annie--so bless you both!--lighted late, there's One will--"

And the wanderer was at rest.




CHAPTER X.
AFTER THE WRECK.


They looked to Bowker to break the news to Geoffrey; at least so
Charley Potts said, after a hurried conference with Til and her mother,
at which Annie Maurice, overwhelmed by the reaction from excessive
excitement, had not been present. They looked to Bowker to perform this
sad duty--to tell Geoffrey Ludlow that the prize which had been so long
in coming, and which he had held in his arms for so short a time, was
snatched from him for ever. "For ever," said old William: "that's it.
He bore up wonderfully, so long as he thought there was any chance of
seeing her again. He hoped against hope, and strove against what he
knew to be right and just, and would have made any sacrifice--ay, to
the extent of bowing his head to his own shame, and taking her back to
his home and his heart. If she had recovered; and even if she would
have shown herself willing to come back--which she never would--I could
have faced Geoff, and told him what his duty was, and fought it out
with him to the last. It would have rather done me good, such a turn as
that; but I can't bear this job;--I can't bear to see my old friend,
to have to tell him that it's all over, that the light of his life has
died out, that-- Upon my soul," said old William energetically, "I
think they might have got some one else to do this. And yet I don't
know," said he, after a moment's pause: "the women couldn't be expected
to do it. As for Charley, he'd have bungled it, safe. No, I'll go and
do it myself; but I'll wait till to-morrow, I think: there's no good
adding another day's anguish to the dear fellow's life."

This was on the second day after Margaret's death, and Bowker yet
postponed the execution of his task. On the third day, however, he set
out for Elm Lodge and found Geoffrey in the dining-room. The servant
who admitted Mr. Bowker said, in reply to his inquiry, that "master
was better certainly, but poor and peaky; did not take much notice of
what went on, and were quite off his food." Geoffrey's looks certainly
bore out the handmaiden's account. His cheeks were thin and hollow;
there were great circles round his eyes; his flesh was tight and
yellow; his hands so fallen away that they looked like mere anatomical
preparations. He looked up as Bowker entered, and the ghost of his old
smile hovered round his lips.

"So you've come at last, William, after failing in your troth these
three days, eh?" said he. "What kept you, old friend?"

Bowker was not prepared for any questions. He had gone through all this
scene in his mind more than once; but in his rehearsal it was always he
who commenced the subject; and this order not being followed, he was
rather taken aback.

"I have been particularly engaged," he said. "You know, Geoff, that I
should not have missed coming to you otherwise; but--it was impossible."

"Was it?" said Geoffrey, raising his head quietly, and stedfastly
regarding him with his bright eyes; "was it on my business that you
were engaged?"

"It was," said Bowker. He knew at that moment that his friend had
guessed the truth.

"Then," said Geoffrey, "Margaret is dead!" He said it without altering
the inflection of his voice, without removing his eyes from his
friend's face. Scarcely inquiringly he said it, apparently convinced of
the fact; and he took Bowker's silence for an affirmative, and rose and
walked towards the window, supporting himself by the wall as he went.
Bowker left him there by himself for a few minutes, and then, going
up to him and laying his hand affectionately on his shoulder, said,
"Geoff!"

Geoff's head was averted, but his hand sought Bowker's, and pressed it
warmly.

"Geoff, dear old Geoff,--my old friend of many happy years,--you must
bear up in this hour of trial. Think of it, dear old fellow. God knows,
I'm one of the worst in the world to preach content and submission, and
all that; but think of it: it is the--you know I wouldn't hurt your
feelings Geoff--the best thing that, under all the circumstances, could
have occurred."

"Ive lost her, William--lost her whom I loved better than my heart's
blood, whom I so prized and cherished and worshipped--lost her for
ever--ah, my God, for ever!" And the strong man writhed in his agony,
and burying his head in his arms, burst into tears.

"But, Geoff," said old Bowker, with a great gulp, "you could never have
been any thing to her again you have nothing to reproach yourself with
in your conduct to her. It was her misfortune, poor soul, that she did
not value you as she should have done; and yet before she died she
spoke very, very affectionately of you, and your name was the last on
her lips."

"Tell me about that, William," said Geoffrey, raising his head; "tell
me what she said about me." He was comparatively calm even then, and
sat quite quietly to listen to the details which Bowker had heard from
Annie Maurice, and which he now poured into Geoff's eager ears. When he
had finished, Geoff thanked him, and said he felt much easier and more
relieved than he had been for some days past, but that he was tired
out, and would ask Bowker to excuse him then, and by all means to come
the next day. Honest William, glad to have accomplished his mission
under such apparently favourable circumstances, and with so little of a
"scene," took his leave.

But the next day, when he arrived at Elm Lodge, he found Dr. Brandram's
gig at the gate, and on entering the house was met by Dr. Brandram
himself in the hall. "And a very fortunate man I esteem myself in
meeting you, my dear Mr. Boucher--beg pardon, Bowker! Boucher--name
of old friend of mine in Norfolk--very fortunate indeed. Let's step
into the dining-room, eh?--no need to stand in the draught, eh? You
see I speak without the least professional feeling--ha, ha." And the
little doctor laughed, but very softly. "Now look here, my dear sir,"
he continued; "our friend upstairs--I advised his remaining upstairs
to-day--this _won't do_, my dear sir--this _won't_ do."

"I know it, doctor, almost as well as you," said old William gruffly;
"but what I don't know, and what I suppose you do, is--what will?"

"Change, my dear sir--thorough and entire change; not merely of air
and scene, but of thought, life, habits, surroundings. He has a
splendid constitution, our friend; but if he remains much longer in
this cage, from which all the--all the joys have flown--he'll beat
himself to death against the bars." This was a favourite simile with
Dr. Brandram; and after he had uttered it he leant back, as was his
wont, and balanced himself on his heels, and looked up into the eyes of
his interlocutor to see its effect. On this occasion he was not much
gratified, for old Bowker had not troubled himself about the poetical
setting, but was thinking over the sense of the doctor's remark.

"Change," he repeated, "thorough change; have you told him that
yourself, doctor?"

"Fifty times, my dear sir; repeated it with all the weight of medical
authority."

"And what does he say?"

"Always the same thing--that his duty keeps him here. He's an
extraordinary man, our friend, a most estimable man; but it would be
an excellent thing for him,--in fact, make all the difference in the
length of his life,--if his duty would take him abroad for six months."

"It shall," said old Bowker, putting on his hat, and driving it down
hard down on his head. "Leave that to me. I'll take care of that." And
with these words he nodded at the doctor and departed, leaving the
little medico more astonished at the "odd ways" of artists than ever.

When Mr. Bowker had once made up his mind to carry any thing out, he
never rested until it was achieved; so that on quitting Elm Lodge he at
once made his way to Mr. Stompff's "gallery of modern masters," which
he entered, greatly to the surprise of the proprietor, who was hovering
about the room like a great spider on the watch for flies. There had
never been any thing like cordiality between the great _entrepreneur_
and the rough old artist; and the former opened his eyes to their
widest extent, and pulled his whisker through his teeth, as he bowed
somewhat sarcastically and said, "This is an honour and no flies?"
But before his visitor left, Mr. Stompff had occasion to rub his eyes
very hard with a bright silk pocket-handkerchief, and to resort to
a cupboard under the desk on which the catalogues stood, whence he
produced a tapering flask, from which he and Mr. Bowker refreshed
themselves--his last words being, as Mr. Bowker took his departure,
"You leave it to me, old fellow--you leave it to me."

Carrying out apparently the arrangement herein entered upon, the next
day the great Mr. Stompff's brougham stopped at Elm Lodge, and the
great Mr. Stompff himself descended therefrom, exhibiting far less than
his usual self-sufficiency, swagger, and noise. To the servant who
opened the door in answer to his modest ring he gave a note which he
had prepared; and Geoffrey coming down into the dining-room found him
waiting there, apparently deep in a photographic album. He rose, as the
door opened, and caught Geoffrey warmly by the hand.

"How are you, Ludlow? How are you, my dear fellow? It must have
been pressing business that brought me here just now, worrying you
when you're only just recovered from your illness, my boy; pressing
business, you may take your oath of that." And all the time Mr. Stompff
held Geoffrey's hand between his own, and looked into his eyes with a
wavering unsettled glance.

"I'm better, thank you, Mr. Stompff, much better; so much better that I
hope soon to be at work again," said Geoff nervously.

"That's right; that's the best hearing possible. Nothing like getting
back to work to set a man straight and bring him to his bearings."

"You were getting nervous about the 'Esplanade,'" said Geoff with a
sickly smile--"as well indeed you might, for it's been a long time
about. But you need not be frightened about that; Ive managed to finish
it."

"Have you?" said Stompff, very dry and husky in the throat.

"Yes; if you'll step into the studio, I'll show it you." They went down
the little steps which Margaret had traversed so oft; and Geoffrey, as
he pulled the big easel round into the light, said, "It's not quite
what I wished. I--circumstances, you know, were against me--and but--it
can be altered, you know; altered in any manner you wish."

"Altered be--hanged!" cried Stompff, very nearly relapsing into the
vernacular; "altered!" he repeated, gazing at it with delight; now
approaching closely to the canvas, now stepping away and looking at it
under the shade of his hand; "why, that's first chop, that is. You've
done it up brown! you've made reg'ler ten-strike, as the Yankees say.
Altered! I wouldn't have a brush laid upon that for a fifty-pun' note
By George, Ludlow, well or ill, you lick the lot in your own line.
There's none of 'em can touch you, d'ye hear? Altered!--damme it's
splendid."

"I'm very glad you like it," said Geoff wearily, "ye glad; more
especially as it may be a long time before paint again."

"What's that you say?" said Mr. Stompff, turning upon him sharply.
"What's that you say?" he repeated in a gentler tone, laying his hand
softly upon Geoffrey Ludlow's shoulder--"a long time before you paint
again? Why, nonsense my good fellow; you don't know what nonsense
you're talking."

"No nonsense, Mr. Stompff, but plain, honest, simple fact. I seem to
have lost all zest for my art; my spirit is broken, and--"

"Of course, my good fellow; I understand all that well enough; too much
England,--that's what it is. Home of the free, and ruling the waves and
all that. Pickles! Capital place to sell pictures; deuced bad place to
paint 'em. Now look here. You've been good enough to say more than once
that Ive been your friend, eh? Not that Ive ever done more than give a
good price for good work, though that's more than some people do--some
people, eh? we know who--never mind. Now, I want you to do _me_ a turn,
and I am sure you will."

Geoffrey bowed his head and said, "So long as you don't require a
picture from me--"

"Picture! O no; of course not. A steam engine, or a hansom cab, or a
stilton cheese--that's what I look for from you naturally, isn't it?
Ludlow, my dear fellow, how can you talk such stuff? Now listen. The
British public, sir, has had a sickener of British subjects. Little
Dab and his crew have pretty nearly used up all the sentimental
domesticity; and we've had such a lot of fancy fairs, and Hyde Parks,
and noble volunteers, and archery fêtes, and gals playing at croky,
that the B.P. won't stand it any longer. There'll be a reaction, you'll
see; and the 'Cademy will be choke full of Charles the Seconds, and
Nell Gwynns, and coves in wigs, and women in powder and patches, and
all that business, just because the modern every-day gaff has been
done to death. I shall have to give in to this; and I shall give in of
course. There's lots of coves can do that trick for me well enough to
sell. But I look for more from you;--and this is what I propose. You go
straight away out of this; where, I don't care--so long as you remain
away a year or so, and keep your eyes about you. You'll work hard
enough,--I don't fear that; and whatever you do, send it home to me and
I'll take it. Lor' bless you, there's rigs that the B.P. knows nothing
about, and that would make stunnin' objects for you--a _table-d'hôte_
on the Rhine, a students' _kneipe_ at Heidelberg, a _schützenfest_ in
Switzerland; and then you've never been to Italy yet, and though that
game's been worked pretty often, yet any thing Italian from you would
sell like mad." He paused for a moment and looked up at Geoffrey, whose
eyes were fixed intently on him, and who seemed eager and excited.

"It's all one to me," said he; "I scarcely know what to say; it's very
kind of you. I know you mean it well; but do you think I can do it? Do
you really think so?"

"Think so! I know so," said Mr. Stompff. "See here! I never take up a
thing of this sort without carrying it through. We said five hundred
for the 'Esplanade,' didn't we? you've had three on account--that's
right! Now here's the other two; and if you're as well pleased with the
bargain as me, no knife shall cut our love in two, as the song says.
Now you must leave this money behind for the old lady and the little
'un, and that nice sister of yours---O yes, by the way, what makes
Charley Potts paint her head in all his pictures, and why don't he sell
to me instead of Caniche?--and here's a hundred in circular notes. I
went round to my bank and got 'em this morning on purpose for you to go
abroad with. When they're done, you know where to send for some more."

"You are very kind, Mr. Stompff, but--"

"No, I ain't. I'm a man of business, I am; and there ain't many as is
very fond of me. But I know what the B.P. wants, and I know a good
fellow when I see one; and when I do see one, I don't often laacklet him
slide. I ain't a polished sort of cove," said Mr. Stompff reflectively;
"I leave that to Caniche, with his paw-paw bowins and scrapins; but I
ain't quite so black as  some of the artists paint me. However, this is
a matter of business that I'm rather eager about; and I should be glad to
know if I may look upon it as settled."

"Look here, Mr. Stompff," said Geoffrey Ludlow, turning to his
companion, and speaking in an earnest voice; "you have behaved
generously to me, and you deserve that I should speak frankly with
you. I should immensely like to get away from this place for a while,
to shake off the memory of all that has passed within the last few
months--so far as it is possible for me to shake it off--to get into
new scenes, and to receive fresh impressions. But I very much doubt
whether I shall be able to undertake what you wish. I feel as if all
the little power I ever had were gone; as if my brain were as barren to
conceive as I know my hand is impotent to execute; I feel--"

"I know," interrupted Mr. Stompff; "regularly sewed up; feel as if
you'd like somebody to unscrew your head, take your brains out and
clean 'em, and then put 'em back; feel as if you didn't care for the
world, and would like to try the hermit dodge and eat roots and drink
water, and cut society, eh? Ah, Ive felt like that sometimes; and then
Ive heard of some pictures that was comin' to the hammer, and Ive just
looked in at Christie's, and, Lord, as soon as I heard the lots a-goin'
up, and felt myself reg'ler in the swing of competition, Ive given up
all them foolish notions, and gone home and enjoyed a roast fowl and a
glass of sham and Mrs. S.'s comp'ny, like a Christian! And so will you,
Ludlow, my boy; you'll pull through, I'll pound it. You work just when
you feel inclined, and draw upon me when you want the ready; I'll stand
the racket, never fear."

The conspiracy between Mr. Stompff and old William Bowker had been
carried out minutely in detail; one of the points insisted on being
that, the position once carried, Geoff should have no time for retreat.
Accordingly, while Mr. Stompff was proceeding to Elm Lodge, Mr. Bowker
was indoctrinating the ladies (whom he knew he should find at Sydenham)
as to the tenour of their advice; and scarcely had Mr. Stompff quitted
Geoffrey when Mr. Bowker was announced. To his old friend, Geoffrey,
now in a very excited state, told the whole story of Stompff's visit
and of the proposition which he had made; and old William--whom no one
would have given credit for possessing such control over his face--sat
looking on with the greatest apparent interest. When Geoffrey came to
an end of his narration, and asked his friend whether he had done right
in partially acceding to what had been offered him, or whether--it
was not too late--he should retract, Mr. Bowker was extremely
vehement--more so than he had ever known himself to be--in insisting
that it was the very best thing that could possibly have happened. When
Mrs. Ludlow and Til returned, they unhesitatingly pronounced the same
opinion; and so Geoff's departure was decided on.

He had a great deal to attend to before he could leave; and the mere
bustle and activity of business seemed to do him good at once. Mrs.
Ludlow was thoroughly happy in preparing his clothes for his journey;
Mr. Bowker and Charley Potts were constantly at Elm Lodge, the latter
gentleman finding his assistance usually required by Miss Til; and
on the day before that fixed for Geoffrey's departure, Annie Maurice
called to take farewell. It was an interview which had been dreaded
by both of them, and was as brief as possible. Annie expressed her
satisfaction at his having been persuaded to seek change, by which she
was sure he would benefit, and extended her hand in "goodbye."

Geoff took her hand, and holding it tenderly in his, said:

"Annie, some day I may be able--I am very far from being able now--to
tell you how the knowledge of your kindness to--to one whom I have
lost--has sustained me under my bitter sorrow. God bless you, my more
than sister! God bless you, my good angel!" And Geoffrey touched her
forehead with his lips, and hurried from the room.


The authorities at the South-Eastern terminus at London Bridge thought
that some distinguished exile must be about returning to France that
night, there were so many curiously-hatted and bearded gentlemen
gathered round the mail-train. But they were only some of our old
friends of the Titians come to say "God speed" to Geoffrey Ludlow,
whose departure had been made known to them by Mr. Stompff. That worthy
was there in great force, and old Bowker, and Charley Potts, and little
Dabb, and old Tom Wrigley, and many others; and as the train wound out
of the station, bearing Geoff along with it, there were rising tears
and swelling knots in eyes and throats that were very unused to such
manifestations of weakness.




CHAPTER XI.
LAND AT LAST.


The calm had come after the storm; the great, hurrying, thundering
waves had stilled into silence, and lay quiet over the shattered wreck
of home, and happiness, and hope. The winter rain had beaten upon the
pretty house, and the light snow had fallen and lain a while, and had
then melted away upon the garden ground and the smooth green turf,
within the walls which had made a prison to the restless spirit of
Margaret, even as the rain had beaten and the snow had fallen upon her
grave in Norwood Cemetery. Now the spring odours were abroad in the
air, and the trees were breaking into leaf, and Elm Lodge was looking
the very perfection of tranquillity, of well-ordered, tasteful comfort
and domesticity; an appearance in which there was all the sadness of a
great contrast, a terrible retrospect, and an irremediable loss. Yet
this appearance was not altogether deceptive; for within the house
which had witnessed so much misery, peace and resignation now reigned.
Mrs. Ludlow's unacknowledged desire was now realised; she was the
mistress of her son's house, of all the modest splendour which had come
with poor Geoff's improved fortunes; she ruled now where she had been
subordinate before, and in the nursery, where at best she had only
enjoyed toleration, she found herself supreme. To be sure, the great
element of enjoyment, her son's presence, was wanting; but she knew
that Geoffrey was doing the best thing in his power to do, was taking
the most effectual means for the establishment of his health and the
alleviation of his sorrow; and the old lady--on whom the supineness
which comes with years, and which takes the edge off the sword of
grief and the bitterness out of its cup, was beginning to steal--was
satisfied. Much that had occurred was only imperfectly known to her;
and indeed she would have been unfitted, by the safe routine and
happy inexperience of evil passions which had marked her own life, to
understand the storm and conflict which had raged around her. That her
son's beautiful wife had been utterly unworthy of him, and that she had
deceived and left him, Mrs. Ludlow knew; but Margaret's death had come
so soon to terminate the terrible and mysterious dilemma in which her
conduct had placed them all, that it had imposed upon them the silence
of compassion, and filled them with the sense of merciful relief; so
that by mutual consent her name had snot been mentioned in the house
where she had been mistress for so long. Her son's illness, and the
danger of losing him, had impressed Mrs. Ludlow much more vividly than
his domestic calamity; and she had settled down with surprising ease
and readiness to the routine of life at Elm Lodge.

That routine included a good deal of the society of Mr. Charley Potts;
and as Mrs. Ludlow was almost as much attached to that warm-hearted and
hot-headed gentleman as Miss Til herself, she acquiesced with perfect
willingness in the state of affairs which brought him to Elm Lodge
with regularity equalled only by that of the postman. The household
was a quiet one; and the simple and unpretending women who walked
along the shady paths at Lowbar in their deep-mourning dresses, or
played with the little child upon the lawn, furnished but scanty food
for the curiosity of the neighbourhood. Popular feeling was indeed
somewhat excited on the subject of Charley Potts; but Dr. Brandram--a
gallant gentleman in his way--set that matter at rest very quickly
by announcing that Charley and Miss Ludlow were engaged, and were
shortly to be married--information which was graciously received; as
indeed the most distant tidings of a prospective wedding always are
received by small communities in which the female element predominates.
Dr. Brandram had done Geoffrey good service too, by his half-made,
half-withheld communications respecting the beautiful mistress of Elm
Lodge, whose disappearance had been so sudden. She had not recovered
her confinement so well as he had hoped: the nervous system had been
greatly shaken. He had ordered change: a temporary removal from home
was frequently of great benefit. Yes, there had been a terrible scene
with Mr. Ludlow--that was quite true: the non-medical mind was hard
to convince in these matters sometimes; and Mr. Ludlow had been hard
to manage. But a quarrel between _them!_--O dear no: quite a mistake.
Mrs. Ludlow left home by herself?--O dear no: by her own consent,
certainly. She perfectly comprehended the necessity of the change, and
was ready to submit; while Ludlow could not be brought to see it--that
was all. "I assure you, my dear madam," the doctor would say to each
of his female catechists, "I never had a more interesting patient; and
I never pitied a man more than Ludlow when she sank so rapidly and
unexpectedly. I really feared for _his_ reason then, and of course
I sent _him_ away immediately. A little change, my dear madam,--a
littlechange in these cases produces a wonderful effect--quite
wonderful!"

"But, doctor," the anxious inquirer would probably say, "Mr. Ludlow
never saw her again after she was removed, did he?"

"Well, indeed, my dear madam,--you see I am telling professional
secrets; but you are not like other women: you are so far above any
vulgar curiosity, and I know I may rely so entirely on your discretion,
that I make an exception in your case,--they never did meet. You see
these cases are so uncertain; and cerebral disease developes itself
so rapidly, that before any favourable change took place, the patient
sunk."

"Dear me, how very sad! It was at an asylum, I suppose?"

"Well, my dear madam, it was under private care--under the very best
circumstances, I assure you; but--you'll excuse me; this is entirely
confidential. And now to return to your dear little boy."

So did kind-hearted Dr. Brandram lend his aid to the laying of the
ghost of scandal at Elm Lodge; and gradually it became accepted that
Mrs. Ludlow had died under the circumstances hinted at by Dr. Brandram.

"It is rather a disadvantage to the dear child, Charley, I fear,"
sapiently remarked Miss Til to the docile Mr. Potts as he was attending
her on a gardening expedition, holding a basket while she snipped and
weeded, and looking as if pipes and beer had never crossed the path of
his knowledge or the disc of his imagination; "people will talk about
his mother having died in a lunatic-asylum."

"Suppose they do?" asked Charley in reply. "That sort of thing does
not harm a man; and"--here the honest fellow's face darkened and his
voice fell--"it is better they should say that than the truth. I think
that can always be hidden, Til. The poor woman's death has saved us
all much; but it has been the greatest boon to her child; for now no
one need ever know, and least of all the child himself, that he has no
right to bear his father's name."

"It is well Geoff is not a rich man, with a great estate to leave to
an eldest son," said Til, pulling at an obstinate tuft of groundsel,
and very anxious to prevent any suspicion that her lover's words had
brought tears to her eyes.

"Well," said Charley, with rather a gloomy smile, "I'm not so certain
of that, Til: it's a matter of opinion; but I'm clear that it's a good
thing he's not a great man--in the 'nob' sense of the word I mean--and
that the world can afford to let him alone. Here comes the young
shaver--let's go and talk to him." And Charley, secretly pining to get
rid of the basket, laid down that obnoxious burden, and went across the
grass-plat towards the nurse, just then making her appearance from the
house.

"Charley is always right," said Til to herself as she eradicated
the last obstinate weed in the flower-bed under inspection and
rejoined Mr. Potts; from which observation it is to be hoped that
the fitness of Miss Til for undertaking that most solemn of human
engagements--matrimony--will be fully recognised. There are women who
practically apply to their husbands the injunctions of the Church
Catechism, in which duty to God is defined; who "believe in, fear,
trust, and love" them "with all their hearts, with all their minds,
with all their souls, and with all their strength;" and Matilda Ludlow,
though a remarkably sensible girl, and likely enough to estimate other
people at their precise value, was rapidly being reduced to this state
of mind about Charley, who was at all events much less unworthy than
most male objects of female devoteeism.

Mrs. Ludlow and her daughter heard pretty regularly from Geoff.
Of course his letters were unsatisfactory; men's letters always
are, except they be love-letters when their meaning is tempered
by their exclusiveness. He was eager for news of the child; but
he never referred to the past in any other respect, and he said
little in anticipation of the future. He described his travels,
reported the state of his health, and expressed his anxiety for his
mother's comfort; and that was about the sum-total of these literary
productions, which no doubt were highly penitential performances to
poor Geoffrey.

Spring was well advanced when Charley and Til began to discuss the
propriety of naming a time for their marriage. The house at Brompton
was still "on their hands," as Mrs. Ludlow was fond of saying, while
in her secret heart she would have deeply regretted the turning-up of
an eligible tenant; for who could answer for the habits and manners
of strangers, or tell what damage her sacred furniture might receive?
Charley proposed to Til that they should become her mother's tenants,
and urged that young lady to consent to a speedy marriage, from the
most laudable economic principles, on the ground that under present
circumstances he was idling dreadfully, but that he confidently
expected that marriage would "settle his mind." The recent date of the
family calamity Charley could not be brought to regard as a reasonable
obstacle to his wishes.

"Look here, Til," he said; "it isn't as if we were swells, you
know, with our names, ages, and weights in the _Morning Post_, and
our addresses in the _Red Book_. What need we care, if Geoff don't
mind?--and he won't, God bless him!--the happier we are, the sooner
he'll cease to be miserable; and who's to know or to care whether it's
so many months sooner or later after that poor woman's death? Besides,
consider this, Til; if we wait until Geoff comes home, a wedding and
all that won't be pleasant for him: will it, now? Painful associations
you know, and all that. I really think, for Geoff's sake, we had better
get it over."

"Do you indeed, Master Charley?" said Til, with a smile full of pert
drollery, which rendered her exasperatingly pretty. "How wonderfully
considerate you are of Geoff; and how marvellously polite to describe
marrying me as 'getting it over' No, no, Charley," she continued,
seriously; "it cannot be. I could not leave mamma to the responsibility
of the house and the child--at least not yet. Don't ask me; it would
not be right towards Geoff, or fair to my mother. You must wait, sir."

And the crestfallen Charley knew that he must wait, and acquiesced with
a very bad grace; not but that Miss Til would have been horribly vexed
had it been better.

An unexpected auxiliary was about this time being driven by fate
towards Charley Potts in the person of Annie Maurice. She had been
constant and regular in her visits to Elm Lodge, affectionate and
respectful in her demeanour to Mrs. Ludlow, and sisterly in her
confidence towards Til. The hour that had united the two girls in a
tie of common responsibility towards Geoff and Margaret had witnessed
the formation of a strong and lasting friendship; and though Annie's
superior refinement and higher education raised her above the level of
Matilda Ludlow, she was not more than her equal in true womanly worth.
They passed many happy hours together in converse which had now become
cheerful, and their companionship was strengthened by the bond of their
common interest in Til's absent brother. Miss Ludlow, perhaps, did an
unfair proportion of the talking on these occasions; for she was of
the gushing order of girls, though she did not border even remotely
on silliness. By common consent they did not speak of Margaret, and
Til had never known Arthur; so that Annie rarely talked of him, always
sacredly loved and remembered in her faithful heart, preserved as her
friend and monitor--dead, yet speaking. Annie had been more silent than
usual lately, and had looked sad and troubled; and it chanced that on
the day following that which witnessed Charley's luckless proposition,
Miss Maurice arrived at Elm Lodge at an earlier hour than usual;
and having gained a private audience of Til, made to her a somewhat
startling revelation.

The conference between the girls lasted long, and its object took Til
completely by surprise. Annie Maurice had resolved upon leaving Lord
Beauport's house, and she had come to ask Mrs. Ludlow to receive her.
She told Til her reasons, simply, honestly, and plainly.

"I cannot live in the house with Lionel Brakespere," she said; "and I
have no friends but you. Geoffrey and I were always friends, and my
dear Arthur trusted him, and knew he would befriend me. I am sure if
he were living now, he would counsel me to do what I am doing. I have
often thought if he had had any idea that the end was so near, he would
have told me, if any difficulty came in my way, to apply for aid to
Geoffrey, and I am clear that I am doing right now. I have no friends,
Til, though I am rich," Annie repeated, with a more bitter smile than
had ever flitted over her bright face in former days; "and I have no
'position' to keep up. I cannot go and live in a big house by myself,
or in a small one either, for that matter, and I want your mother to
let me come and live with her while Geoffrey is away."

Til hesitated before she replied. She saw difficulties in the way of
such an arrangement which Annie did not; difficulties arising from the
difference in the social position of the friends Annie wished to leave,
and those she wished to come to.

"I am sure, as far as we are concerned, every thing might be as you
wish," she said; "but--Lady Beauport might not think it quite the
thing."

"Lady Beauport knows I will not remain in her house, Til; and she will
soon see as plainly as I do that it is well I should not. The choice
is between me and her son, and the selection is not difficult. Lionel
Brakespere (I cannot call him by Arthur's familiar name) and I are not
on speaking terms. He knows that I am acquainted with his crimes; not
only those known to his family, but those which he thought death had
assisted him to hide. I might have concealed my knowledge from him had
he not dared to insult me by an odious pretence of admiration, which I
resented with all my heart and soul. A few words made him understand
that the safest course he could pursue was to abandon such a pretence,
and the revelation filled him with such wrath and hatred as only such
a nature could feel. Why he has adopted a line of behaviour which can
only be described as down-right savage rudeness--so evidently intended
to drive me out of the house, that Lord and Lady Beauport themselves
see it in that light--I am unable to comprehend. I have sometimes
fancied that he and his mother have quarrelled on the matter; but if
so, he has had the best of it. However, there is no use in discussing
it, Til; my home is broken up and gone from me; and if your mother will
not take me under her charge until Geoffrey comes home, and advises me
for the future, I must only set up somewhere with a companion and a
cat."

Annie smiled, but very sadly; then she continued:

"And now, Til, I'll tell you how we will manage. First, we will get the
mother's leave, and I will invite myself on a visit here, to act as
your bridesmaid, you see, and--"

"Charley has been talking to you, Annie!" exclaimed Miss Til, starting
up in mingled indignation and amusement: "I see it all now--you have
been playing into each other's hands."

"No, indeed, Charley never said a word to me about it," replied Annie
seriously; "though I am sure if he had, I should have done any thing he
asked; but, Til, do let us be earnest,--I am serious in this. I don't
want to make a scandal and a misery of this business of my removal from
Lord Beauport's; and if I can come here to be your bridesmaid, in a
quiet way, and remain with your mother when you have left her, it will
seem a natural sort of arrangement, and I shall very soon, heiress
though I am, drop out of the memory of the set in which I have lately
moved. I am sure Geoffrey will be pleased; and you know that dear
little Arthur is quite fond of me already."

It is unnecessary to report the conversation between the two girls in
fuller detail. Mrs. Maurice carried her point; the consent of Mrs.
Ludlow to the proposed arrangement was easily gained; and one day the
fine carriage with the fine coronets, which had excited the admiration
of the neighbourhood when Miss Maurice paid her first visit to Geoffrey
Ludlow's bride, deposited that young lady and her maid at Elm Lodge. A
few days later a more modest equipage bore away Mr. and Mrs. Potts on
the first stage of their journey of life.

"And so, my dear Annie," wrote Geoffrey to his ex-pupil, "you are
established in the quiet house in which I dreamed dreams once on a
time. I continue the children's phrase, and say 'a long time ago.' I
am glad to think of you there with my mother and my poor little child.
If you were any one but Annie Maurice, I might fear that you would
weary of the confined sphere to which you have gone; but, then, it is
because you _are_ Annie Maurice that you are there. Sometimes I wonder
whether I shall ever see the place again which, if ever I do see it,
I must look upon with such altered eyes. God knows: it will be long
first--for I am wofully weak still. But enough of me. My picture goes
on splendidly. When it is finished and sent home to Stompff, I shall
start for Egypt. I suppose many a one before me has tried to find the
waters of Lethe between the banks of Nile."


Charley Potts and Til were comfortably settled in the house at
Brompton, where Til guarded the household gods with pious care, and
made Charley uncommonly comfortable and abnormally orderly. Mrs.
Ludlow and her young guest led a tranquil life at Elm Lodge. Annie
devoted herself to the old lady and the child with a skilful tenderness
partly natural to her and partly acquired by the experiences of her
life in her rural home, and within the scene of Caterham's lengthened
and patient suffering. The child loved her and throve under her
charge; and the old lady seemed to find her "cross" considerably less
troublesome within the influence of Annie's tranquil cheerfulness,
strong sense, and accommodating disposition. The neighbourhood had
taken to calling vigorously and pertinaciously on Mrs. Ludlow and
Miss Maurice. It approved highly of those ladies; for the younger was
very pleasant, not alarmingly beautiful, reputed to be very rich, and
acknowledged not to "give herself airs;" while the elder was intensely
respectable--after the fashion dear to the heart of Lowbar; and both
went to church with scrupulous regularity. Dr. Brandram was even more
cordial in his appreciation of Annie than he had been in his admiration
of Margaret; and the star of Elm Lodge was quite in the ascendant. A
few of the members of the great world whom she had met in the celestial
sphere of St. Barnabas Square found Annie out even at Elm Lodge, and
the apparition of other coronets than that of the Beauports was not
unknown in the salubrious suburb. Lady Beauport visited Miss Maurice
but rarely, and her advent seldom gave Annie pleasure. The girl's
affectionate and generous heart was pained by the alteration which she
marked more and more distinctly each time that she saw the cold and
haughty Countess, on whose face care was fast making marks which time
had failed to impress.

Sometimes she would be almost silent during her short visits, on which
occasions Mrs. Ludlow was wont to disappear as soon as possible;
sometimes she would find querulous fault with Annie--with her
appearance and her dress, and her "throwing herself away." Sometimes
Annie felt that she was endeavouring to turn the conversation in the
direction of Lionel; but that she invariably resisted. It chanced one
day, however, that she could not succeed in preventing Lady Beauport
from talking of him. Time had travelled on since Annie had taken up her
abode at Elm Lodge, and the summer was waning; the legislative labours
of the Houses had come to an end, and Lord and Lady Beauport were
about to leave town. This time the Countess had come to say goodbye to
Annie, whom she found engaged in preparations for a general flitting
of the Elm-Lodge household to the seaside for the autumn. Annie was in
blooming health, and her usual agreeable spirits--a strong contrast to
the faded, jaded, cross-looking woman who said to her complainingly,

"Really, Annie, I think you might have come with us, and left your
friends here to find their autumnal amusements for themselves; you know
how much Lord Beauport and I wished it."

"Yes," said Annie gently, "I know you are both very kind; but it cannot
be. You saw that yourself, dear Lady Beauport, and consented to my
entering on so different a life. You see I could not combine the two;
and I have new duties now--"

"Nonsense, Annie!" said Lady Beauport angrily. "You will not come
because of Lionel,--that is the truth. Well, he is not to be at home at
all; he is going away to a number of places: he likes any place better
than home, I think. I cannot understand why you and he should disagree
so much; but if it must be so, I suppose it must. However, you will not
meet him now." And Lady Beauport actually condescended to reiterate
her request; but she had no success. Annie had resolutely broken with
the old life, which had never suited her fresh, genial, simple tastes;
and she was determined not to renew the tie. She knew that she was
not in any true sense necessary to Lady Beauport's happiness; she was
not ungrateful for such kindness as she had received; but she was a
sensible girl, and she made no mistake about her own value, and the
true direction in which her duty, her vocation lay. So she steadily
declined; but so gently that no offence was taken; and made inquiry
for Lord Beauport. The worried expression which had gradually marred
the high-bred repose of Lady Beauport's face increased as she replied,
and there was a kind of involuntary confidence in her manner which
struck Annie with a new and painful surprise. Lord Beauport was well,
she said; but he was not in good spirits. Things seemed to be wrong
with them somehow and out of joint. Then the elder lady, seeing in
the face of her young listener such true sympathy, thawed suddenly
from her habitual proud reserve, and poured out the bitterness of her
disappointment and vain regret. There was a tone of reproach against
Annie mingled with her compliant, which the girl pityingly passed
over. If Annie had but liked Lionel; if she would but have tried to
attract him, and keep him at home, all might have been well: but
Annie had imbibed poor Arthur's prejudices; and surely never were
parents so unfortunate as she and the Earl in the mutual dislike which
existed between their children. Lady Beauport did not want to justify
Lionel entirely--of course not: but she thought he might have had a
better chance given him in the first instance. Now he had greatly
deteriorated--she saw that: she could not deny it; and her "granted
prayer" for his return had not brought her happiness.

Annie listened to all this with a swelling heart. A vision floated
before her tearful eyes of the lost son, who had been so little
loved, so lightly prized; whose place the brother preferred before
him had taken and disgraced; and a terrible sense of retribution
came into her mind. Too late the father and mother were learning how
true his judgment had been, and how valuable his silent influence.
Time could only engrave that lesson more and more deeply on their
hearts; experience could only embitter it--its sting was never to be
withdrawn. They had chosen between the two, and their choice, like
Esau's, was "profane." Lady Beauport spoke more and more bitterly as
she proceeded. The softening touch of grief was not upon her--only
the rankling of disappointment and mortification; only the sting of a
son's ingratitude, of discovering that in return for the sacrifice of
principle, self-respect, and dignity to which she had consented for
Lionel's sake, she had not received even the poor return of a semblance
of affection or consideration.

The hardness of Lionel's nature was shown in every thing his mother
said of him--the utter want of feeling, the deadness of soul. Annie
felt very sad as she listened to Lady Beauport's melancholy account of
the life they had fallen into at the great house. She was oppressed by
the sense of the strangeness of the events which had befallen, and in
which the Countess had, all unconsciously, so deep an interest. It was
very sad and strange to remember that she was detailing the conduct
of the man whose baseness had enabled Margaret to lay Geoffrey's
life in ruins under Geoffrey's own roof. It was terrible to Annie to
feel that in her knowledge there was a secret which might so easily
have been divulged at any moment, and which would have afflicted the
vexed and mortified woman before her more deeply than any thing that
had occurred. Lady Beauport was not tender-hearted; but she was a
high-minded gentlewoman, and would have been shamed and stricken to
the soul had she discovered the baseness of her son in this particular
instance. She had fondly flattered herself into a belief that the crime
which had been so inadequately punished was only a folly; but there
was no possibility of such a reading of this one, and Annie was glad
to think that at least the pang of this knowledge was spared to Lady
Beauport. She could say nothing to comfort her. In her inmost heart she
had an uneasy, unexplained sense that it was all the just retribution
for the conduct of Arthur's parents towards him, and hopelessness for
the future of a family of which Lionel formed a member took possession
of her.

"He is so disagreeable, so selfish, Annie," continued Lady Beauport,
"and O so slangy; and you know how his father hates that sort of thing."

"It is better that he should be away, then, for a little," said Annie,
trying to be soothing, and failing lamentably.

"Well, perhaps it is," said Lady Beauport; "and yet that seems hard
too, when I longed so much for his return, and when now he has every
thing he wants. Of course, when he was only a second son, he had
excuses for discontent; but now he has none, and yet he is never
satisfied. I sometimes think he is ill at ease, and fancies people are
thinking about the past, who don't even know any thing about it, and
would not trouble themselves to resent it if they did. But his father
does not agree with me, Annie: he will not give Lionel credit for any
thing good. I cannot make out Lord Beauport: he is much more cold and
stern towards Lionel than he need be, for he is not so careless and
inconsiderate towards his father as he is towards me. He seems to have
taken up poor Arthur's notions now, and to judge Lionel as severely
as he did. He does not say much; but things are uncomfortable between
them, and Lord Beauport is altered in every way. He is silent and
dispirited; and do you know, Annie, I think he grieves for Arthur more
than he did at first?"

Distress and perplexity were in Lady Beauport's face and voice, and
they went to Annie's gentle heart.

"Try not to think so much of it," she said; "circumstances may alter
considerably when Lionel gets more settled at home, and Lord Beauport
has had time to get over the irritation which his return occasioned
him."

"He resents your having left us more bitterly than any thing, Annie. He
constantly speaks of you in the highest terms of praise, and wishes you
back with us. And so do I, my dear, so do I."

Annie was amazed. Tears were in Lady Beauport's eyes, and a tremble in
her voice. During all the period of Annie's residence in her house,
the Countess had never shown so much feeling towards her, had never
suffered her to feel herself of so much importance. The sterling merit
of the girl, her self-denial, her companionable qualities, had never
before met with so much recognition; and a thrill of gratification
passed through her as she felt that she was missed and valued in the
home whence Lionel's conduct had driven her.

"I am very glad," she said, "that Lord Beauport thinks and speaks so
kindly of me--indeed, he was always kind to me, and I am very grateful
to him and you."

"Then why will you not come to us, Annie? Why do you prefer these new
friends to us?"

"I do not," she answered; "but as things have been, as they are, it is
better I should not be in a position possibly to estrange the father
and son still more. If I were in the house, it would only furnish him
with an excuse to remain away, and cause Lord Beauport additional
anxiety."

Annie knew that she must appear strangely obstinate to Lady Beauport;
but it could not be helped; it was impossible that she could explain.
The visit of the Countess was a long one; and Annie gathered from
her further confidences that her dissatisfaction with Lionel was not
her only trouble. The future was not bright before Lady Beauport.
The charms of the world were fading in her estimation; society was
losing its allurements, not under the chastening of a wholesome grief;
but under the corroding, disenchanting influence of bitterness and
disappointment. She looked aged and wearied; and before she and Annie
parted that day, she had acknowledged to the girl that she dreaded the
prospect before her, and had no confidence in her only son, or in his
line of conduct towards her in the event of Lord Beauport's death. The
Earl's words to his wife had been prophetic,--in Caterham's death there
had been but the beginning of sorrow.

Annie stood sadly at the house-door, and watched the carriage as it
rolled away and bore Lady Beauport out of her sight, as it bears her
out of this history.

"This is the man," she thought, "whom she would have remorselessly
made me marry, and been insensible to the cruel wrong she would have
done to me. What a wonderful thing is that boundless, blind egotism of
mothers! In one breath she confesses that he makes her miserable, and
admits his contemptible, wretched nature, though she knows little of
its real evil; in the next she complains that I did not tie myself to
the miserable destiny of being his wife!"

Then Annie turned into the drawing-room, and went over to the window,
through whose panes Margaret's wistful, weary gaze had been so often
and so long directed. She leaned one round fair arm against the glass,
and laid her sleek brown head upon it, musingly:

"I wonder when _home_ will really come for me," she thought. "I wonder
where I shall go to, and what I shall do, when I must leave this. I
wonder if little Arthur will miss me very much when I go away, after
Geoffrey comes back."

Geoffrey Ludlow's letters to his mother and sister were neither
numerous nor voluminous, but they were explicit; and the anxious hearts
at home gradually began to feel more at rest about the absent one so
dear to them all. He had written with much kindness and sympathy on the
occasion of Til's marriage, and they had all felt what a testimony to
his unselfish nature and his generous heart his letter was. With what
pangs of memory,--what keen revivals of vain longing love and cruel
grief for the beautiful woman who had gone down into her grave with the
full ardour of his passionate devotion still clinging around her,--what
desperate struggles against the weariness of spirit which made every
thing a burden to him,--Geoffrey had written the warm frank letter
over which Til had cried, and Charley had glowed with pleasure, the
recipients never knew. There was one who guessed them,--one who seemed
to herself intuitively to realise them all, to weigh and measure every
movement of the strong heart which had so much ado to keep itself from
breaking, far away in the distant countries, until time should have
had sufficient space in which to work its inevitable cure. Mrs. Potts
showed her brother's letter to Annie Maurice with infinite delight, on
that memorable day when she made her first visit, as a married woman,
to Elm Lodge. The flutter and excitement of so special an occasion
makes itself felt amid all the other flutters and excitements of that
period which is the great epoch in a woman's life. The delights of
"a home of one's own" are never so truly realised as when the bride
returns, as a guest, to the home she has left for ever as an inmate. It
may be much more luxurious, much more important, much more wealthy; but
it is not hers, and, above all, it is not "his;" and the little sense
of strangeness is felt to be an exquisite and a new pleasure. Til was
just the sort of girl to feel this to the fullest, though her "own"
house was actually her "old" home, and she had never been a resident at
Elm Lodge: but the house at Brompton had a thousand charms now which
Til had never found in it before, and on which she expatiated eagerly
to Mrs. Ludlow, while Annie Maurice was reading Geoffrey's letter. She
was very pale when she handed it back to Til, and there were large
tears standing in her full brown eyes.

"Isn't it a delightful letter, Annie?" asked Mrs. Potts; "so kind and
genial; so exactly like dear old Geoff."

"Yes," Annie replied, very softly; "it is indeed, Til; it is very like
Geoffrey."

Then Annie went to look after little Arthur, and left the mother and
daughter to their delightful confidential talk.

When the party from Elm Lodge were at the seaside, after Til's
marriage, Annie began to write pretty regularly to Geoffrey, who was
then in Egypt. She was always thinking of him, and of how his mind was
to be roused from its grief; and once more interested in life. She felt
that he was labouring at his art for money, and because he desired
to secure the future of those dear to him, in the sense of duty, but
that for him the fame which he was rapidly winning was very little
worth, and the glory was quite gone out of life,--gone down, with the
golden hair and the violet eyes, into the dust which was lying upon
them. Annie, who had never known a similar grief; understood his in
all its intricacies of suffering, with the intuitive comprehension of
the heart, which happily stands many a woman instead of intellectual
gifts and the learning of experience; and knowing this, the girl,
whose unselfish spirit read the heart of her early friend, but never
questioned her own, sought with all her simple and earnest zeal how to
"cure him of his cruel wound." His picture had been one of the gems
of the Academy, one of the great successes of the year, and Annie had
written to him enthusiastically about it, as his mother had also done;
but she counted nothing upon this. Geoffrey was wearily pleased that
they were pleased and gratified, but that was all. His hand did its
work, but the soul was not there; and as he was now working amid the
ruins of a dead world, and a nation passed away in the early youth of
time, his mood was congenial to it, and he grew to like the select
lapse of the sultry desert life, and to rebel less and less against
his fate, in the distant land where every thing was strange, and there
was no fear of a touch upon the torturing nerves of association. All
this Annie Maurice divined, and turned constantly in her mind; and
amidst the numerous duties to which she devoted herself with the quiet
steadiness which was one of her strongest characteristics, she thought
incessantly of Geoffrey, and of how the cloud was to be lifted from
him. Her life was a busy one, for all the real cares of the household
rested upon her. Mrs. Ludlow had been an admirable manager of her own
house, and in her own sphere, but she did not understand the scale on
which Elm Lodge had been maintained even in Margaret's time, and that
which Miss Maurice established was altogether beyond her reach. The
old lady was very happy; that was quite evident. She and Annie agreed
admirably. The younger lady studied her peculiarities with the utmost
care and forbearance, and the "cross" sat lightly now. She was growing
old; and what she did not see she had lost the faculty of grieving for;
and Geoffrey was well, and winning fame and money. It seemed a long
time ago now since she had regarded her daughter-in-law's furniture and
dress with envy, and speculated upon the remote possibility of some day
driving in her son's carriage.

Mrs. Ludlow had a carriage always at her service now, and the most
cheerful of companions in her daily drive; for she, Annie, and the
child made country excursions every afternoon, and the only time
the girl kept for her exclusive enjoyment was that devoted to her
early-morning rides. Some of the earliest among the loungers by the
sad sea-waves grew accustomed to observe, with a sense of admiration
and pleasure, the fresh fair face of Annie Maurice, as, flushed with
exercise and blooming like a rose in the morning air, she would
dismount at the door of her "marine villa," where a wee toddling child
always awaited her coming, who was immediately lifted to her saddle,
and indulged with a few gentle pacings up and down before the windows,
whence an old lady would watch the group with grave delight. Mrs.
Ludlow wrote all these and many more particulars of her happy life to
her absent son; and sometimes Annie wondered whether those cheerful
garrulous letters, in which the unconscious mother showed Geoffrey
so plainly how little she realised his state of mind, increased his
sense of loneliness. Then she bethought her of writing to Geoffrey
constantly about the child. She knew how he had loved the baby in
happier times, and she never wronged the heart she knew so well by a
suspicion that the disgrace and calamity which had befallen him had
changed this deep-dwelling sentiment, or included the motherless child
in its fatal gloom. She had not spoken of little Arthur in her earlier
letters more than cursorily, assuring his father that the child was
well and thriving; but now that time was going over, and the little
boy's intellect was unfolding, she caught at the legitimate source of
interest for Geoffrey, and consulted him eagerly and continuously about
her little _protégé_ and pupil.

The autumn passed and the winter came; and Mrs. Ludlow, her grandchild,
and Annie Maurice were settled at Elm Lodge. Annie had taken anew to
her painting, and Geoffrey's deserted studio had again an inmate.
Hither would come Charley Potts--a genial gentleman still, but with
much added steadiness and scrupulously-neat attire. The wholesome
subjugation of a happy marriage was agreeing wonderfully with
Charley, and his faith in Til was perfectly unbounded. He was a
model of punctuality now; and when he "did a turn" for Annie in the
painting-room, he brushed his coat before encountering the unartistic
world outside with a careful scrupulousness, at which, in the days of
Caroline and the beer-signals, he would have derisively mocked. Another
visitor was not infrequent there, though he had needed much coaxing to
induce him to come, and had winced from the sight of Geoff's ghostly
easel on his first visit with keen and perceptible pain.

A strong mutual liking existed between William Bowker and Annie
Maurice. Each had recognised the sterling value of the other on the
memorable occasion of their first meeting; and the rough exterior of
Bowker being less perceptible then than under ordinary circumstances,
it had never jarred with Annie's taste or offended against her
sensibilities. So it came to pass that these two incongruous persons
became great friends; and William Bowker--always a gentleman in the
presence of any woman in whom he recognised the soul of a lady--passed
many hours such as he had never thought life could again give him in
his dear old friend's deserted home. Miss Maurice had no inadequate
idea of the social duties which her wealth imposed upon her, and she
discharged them with the conscientiousness which lent her character
its combined firmness and sweetness. But all her delight was in her
adopted home, and in the child, for whom she thought and planned with
almost maternal foresight and quite maternal affection. William Bowker
also delighted in the boy, and would have expended an altogether
unreasonable portion of his slender substance upon indigestible
eatables and curiously-ingenious and destructible toys but for Annie's
prohibition, to which he yielded loyal obedience. Many a talk had the
strangely-assorted pair of friends as they watched the child's play;
and they generally ran on Geoffrey or if they rambled off from him for
a while, returned to him through strange and tortuous ways. Not one
of Geoff's friends forgot him, or ceased to miss him, and to wish him
back among them. Not one of "the boys" but had grieved in his simple
uncultivated way over the only half-understood domestic calamity which
had fallen upon "old Geoff;" but time has passed, and they had begun
to talk more of his pictures and less of himself. It was otherwise
with Bowker, whose actual associates were few, though his spirit of
_camaraderie_ was unbounded. He had always loved Geoffrey Ludlow with a
peculiar affection, in which there had been an unexplained foreboding;
and its full and terrible realisation had been a great epoch in the
life of William Bowker. It had broken up the sealed fountains of
feeling; it had driven him away from the grave of the past; it had
brought his strong sympathies and strong sense into action, and had
effected a moral revolution in the lonely man, who had been soured by
trouble only in appearance, but in whom the pure sweet springs of the
life of the heart still existed. Now he began to weary for Geoffrey. He
dreaded to see his friend sinking into the listlessness and dreariness
which had wasted his own life; and Geoffrey's material prosperity,
strongly as it contrasted with the poverty and neglect which had
been his own lot, did not enter into Bowker's calculations with any
reassuring effect.

"Does Geoffrey never fix any time for his return?" asked William
Bowker of Miss Maurice one summer evening when they were slowly pacing
about the lawn at Elm Lodge, after the important ceremonial of little
Arthur's _coucher_ had been performed.

"No," said Annie, with a quick and painful blush.

"I wish he would, then," said Bowker. "He has been away quite long
enough now; and he ought to come home and face his duties like a man,
and thank God that he has a home, and duties which don't all centre
in himself. If they did, the less he observed them the better." This
with a touch of the old bitterness, rarely apparent now. Annie did not
answer, and Bowker went on:

"His mother wants him, his child wants him, and for that matter Mrs.
Potts's child wants him too. Charley talks some nonsense about waiting
to baptize the little girl until Geoff comes home 'with water from the
Jordan,' said Master Charley, being uncertain in his geography, and
having some confused notion about some sacred river. However, if we
could only get him home, he might bottle a little of the Nile for us
instead. I really wish he'd come. I want to know how far he has really
lived down his trouble; I can't bear to think that it may conquer and
spoil him."

"It has not done that; it won't do that--no fear of it," said Annie
eagerly; "I can tell from his letters that Geoffrey is a strong man
again,--stronger than he has ever been before."

"He needs to be, Miss Maurice," said William, with a short, kind,
sounding laugh, "for Geoffrey's nature is not strong. I don't think I
ever knew a weaker man but one--"

He paused, but Annie made no remark. Presently he fell to talking of
the child and his likeness to Geoffrey, which was very strong and very
striking.

"There is not a trace of the poor mother in him," said Bowker; "I am
glad of it. The less there is before Geoffrey's eyes when he returns to
remind him of the past the better."

"And yet," said Annie in a low voice, and with something troubled in
her manner, "I have often thought if he returned, and I saw his meeting
with the child, how dreadful it would be to watch him looking for a
trace of the dead in little Arthur's face, and not finding it, to know
that he felt the world doubly empty."

Her face was half averted from Bowker as she spoke, and he looked at
her curiously and long. He marked the sudden flush and pallor of her
cheek, and the hurry in her words; and a bright unusual light came into
William Bowker's eyes. He only said,

"Ay--that would indeed be a pang the more." And a few minutes later he
took his leave.

"Charley," said Mr. Bowker to Mr. Potts, three or four Gays afterwards,
as he stood before that gentleman's easel, criticising the performance
upon it with his accustomed science and freedom, "why don't you get
your wife to write to Geoffrey, and make him come home? He ought to
come, you know, and it's not for you or me to remonstrate with him.
Women do these things better than men; they can handle sores without
hurting them, and pull at heartstrings without making them crack.
There's his mother, growing old, you know, and wanting to see him;
and the child's a fine young shaver now, and his father ought to know
something of him, eh, Charley, what do you think?"

"You're about right, old fellow, that's what I think. Til often talks
about it, particularly since the baby was born, and wonders how
Geoffrey can stay away; but I suppose if his own child won't bring him
home, ours can't be expected to do it; eh, William? Til doesn't think
of that, you see."

"I see," said Mr. Bowker, with a smile. "But, Charley, do you just get
Til to write to Geoffrey, and tell him his mother is not as strong as
she used to be, and that the care of her and the child is rather too
much of a responsibility to rest upon Miss Maurice's shoulders, and I
think Geoffrey will see the matter in the true light, and come home at
once."

Charley promised to obey Mr. Bowker's injunction, premising that he
must first "talk it over with Til." William made no objection to
this perfectly proper arrangement, and felt no uneasiness respecting
the result of the conjugal discussion. He walked away smiling,
congratulating himself on having done "rather a deep thing," and
full of visions in which Geoffrey played a part which would have
considerably astonished him, had its nature been revealed to him.

Six weeks after the conversation between Mr. Bowker and Mr. Potts,
a foreign letter in Geoffrey's hand reached Mrs. Ludlow. She hardly
gave herself time to read it through, before she sought to impart its
tidings to Annie. The young 114 was not in the painting-room, not in
the drawing-room, not in the house. The footman thought he had seen
her on the lawn with the child, going towards the swing. Thither Mrs.
Ludlow proceeded, and there she found Annie; her hat flung off; her
brown hair falling about her shoulders, and her graceful arms extended
to their full length as she swung the delighted child, who shouted
"higher, higher!" after the fashion of children.

"Geoffrey's coming home, Annie!" said Mrs. Ludlow, as soon as she
reached the side of the almost breathless girl. "He's coming home
immediately,--by the next mail. Is not that good news?"

The rope had dropped from Annie's hand at the first sentence. Now she
stooped, picked up her hat, and put it on; and turning to lift the
child from his seat, she said,

"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Ludlow, it is; but very sudden. Has any thing
happened?"

"Nothing whatever, my dear. Geoffrey only says--stay, here's his
letter; read for yourself. He merely says he feels it is time to come
home; he has got all the good out of his captivity in Egypt in every
way that he is likely to get--though why he should call it captivit
when he went there of his own accord, and could have come away at any
moment he liked, is more than I can understand. Well, well, Geoffrey
always had queer sayings; but what matter, now that he is coming
home!--Papa is coming home, Arty;--we shall see him soon."

"Shall we?" said the child. "Let me go, Annie; you are making my hand
cold with yours;" and he slipped his little hand from her grasp, and
ran on to the house, where he imparted the news to the household with
an air of vast importance.


"Annie," said Geoffrey Ludlow one day when he had been about three
weeks at home, and after he had passed some time in examining Miss
Maurice's art-performances, "what has become of the drawing I once made
of you, long ago, when you were a little girl? Don't you remember you
laughed at it, and said, 'Grandmamma, grandmamma, what big eyes you've
got!' to it? and the dear old Rector was so dreadfully frightened lest
I should be offended."

"Yes, I remember," answered Annie; "and I have the picture. Why?"

"Because I want it, Annie. If you will let me have it, I will paint a
full-length portrait of you for the next Academy, in which every one
shall recognise a striking likeness of the beautiful and accomplished
Miss Maurice."

"Don't, Geoffrey," said Annie gravely. "I am not in the least more
beautiful now than I was when you took my likeness long ago; but you
shall have the drawing, and you shall paint the picture, and it shall
belong to Arthur, to remind him of me when I am gone abroad."

"Gone abroad!" said Geoffrey, starting up from his chair and
approaching her. "You--gone abroad!"

"Yes," she said, with a very faint smile. "Is no one to see men and
cities, and sand and sphinxes, and mummies and Nile boatmen, except
yourself? Don't you remember how Caterham always wished me to travel
and improve my mind?"

"I remember," said Geoff moodily; "but I don't think your mind wants
improving, Annie. How selfish I am! I really had a kind of fancy that
this was your home; different as it is from such as you might, as you
may command, it was your own choice once. You see what creatures we
men are. A woman like you sacrifices herself for one of us, to do him
good in his adversity, and he takes it as a matter of course that the
sacrifice is to continue--" Geoffrey turned to the window, and looked
wearily out. From the dim corner in which she sat, Annie looked timidly
at his tall figure--a true image of manliness and vigour. She could see
the bronzed cheek, the full rich brown eye, the bushy beard with its
mingled lines of brown and gray. There was far more strength in the
face than in former days, and far more refinement, a deeper tenderness,
and a loftier meaning. She thought so as she looked at him, and her
heart beat hard and fast.

"It was no sacrifice to me, Geoffrey," she said in a very low tone.
"You know I could not bear the life I was leading. I have been very
happy here. Every one has been very good to me, and I have been very
happy; but--"

Geoffrey turned abruptly, and looked at her--looked at the graceful
head, the blushing cheek, the faltering lips--and went straight up to
her. She shrunk just a little at his approach; but when he laid his
hand upon her shoulder, and bent his head down towards hers, she raised
her sweet candid face and looked at him.

"Annie," he said eagerly, with the quick earnestness of a man whose
soul is in his words, "will you forgive all my mistakes,--I have found
them out now,--and take the truest love that ever a man offered to the
most perfect of women? Annie, can you love me?--will you stay with me?
My darling, say yes!"

His strong arms were round her now, and her sleek brown head lay upon
his breast. She raised it to look at him; then folded her hands and
laid them upon his shoulder, and with her crystal-clear eyes uplifted,
said, "I will stay with you, Geoffrey. I have always loved you."


The storm had blown itself out now--its last mutterings had died away;
and through all its fury and despair, through all its rude buffets and
threatening of doom, Geoffrey Ludlow had reached LAND AT LAST!




THE END.





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Smith & Son, 188, Strand, Loudon.