"And you'll bring some of that to us in Tokenhouse-yard," said Routh eagerly. "You recollect what I showed you, that I--"
"O yes!" said Deane, again with the sinister smile. "You could talk a 'coon's hind leg off, you could, Routh. But I shall just keep my dollars in my desk for a few days. Tokenhouse-yard can wait a little, can't it? just to see how things eventuate, you know."
"As you please," said Routh. "One thing is certain, Deane; you need no Mentor in your business, whatever you may do in your pleasures."
"Flatter myself, need none in neither," said the young man, with a baleful grin. "Eh, look here, now: talking of pleasures, come and dine with me on Tuesday at Barton's, at five. I've asked Dallas, and we'll have a night of it. Tuesday, the 17th, mind. Sorry to take your husband away, Mrs. R., but I'll make up for it, some day. Perhaps you'll come and dine with me some day, Mis R., without R.?"
"Not I, Mr. Deane," said Harriet, with a laugh. "You're by far too dangerous a man."
Mr. Deane was gone; and again Stewart Routh sat over the table, scribbling figures on his blotting-pad.
"What are you doing, Stewart?"
"Five dollars to the pound--fifteen thousand," he said, "three thousand pounds! When did he say he would draw it?"
"On Tuesday, the--the day you dine with him."
"The day I dine with him! Keep it in his desk, he said, for a few days! He has grown very shy about Tokenhouse-yard. He hasn't been there for a week. The day I dine with him!" He had dropped his pen, and was slowly passing his hand over his chin.
"Stewart," said Harriet, going behind him and putting her arm round his neck--"Stewart, I know what thought you're busy with, but--"
"Do you, Harry?" said he, disengaging himself, but not unkindly--"do you? Then keep it to yourself, my girl, and get to bed. We must have that, Harry, in one way or another; we must have it."
She took up a candle, pressed her lips to his forehead, and went to her room without a word. But for full ten minutes she remained standing before the dressing-table buried in thought, and again she muttered to herself: "A great risk! A great risk!"
On the evening of the day appointed for the dinner, Mr. Philip Deane stood on the steps of Barton's restaurant in the Strand, in anything but a contented frame of mind. His face, never too frank or genial in its expression, was puckered and set in rigid lines; his right hand was perpetually diving into his waistcoat-pocket for his watch, to which he constantly referred; while with, a light stick which he carried in his left, he kept striking his leg in an irritable and irritating manner.
Mr. Deane had cause for annoyance; it was a quarter past seven, and neither of the guests whom he had invited had as yet appeared, though the dinner had been appointed for seven sharp. Crowds of men were pouring into and out of the restaurant, the first hungry and expectant, the last placid and replete; and Mr. Deane envied the first for what they were about to receive, and the last for what they had received. Moreover, the intended diners had in several cases pushed against him with scant ceremony, and Mr. Deane was not accustomed to be pushed against; while the people who had dined eyed him, as they stood on the steps lighting their cigars, with something like compassion, and Mr. Deane was unused to be pitied. So he stood there fretting and fuming, and biting his lips and flicking his legs, until his shoulder was grasped by George Dallas, who, with as much breath as he could command--not much, for he had been running--said:
"My dear Deane! a thousand apologies for being so late! Not my own fault, I protest!"
"Never is, of course," said Mr. Deane.
"Really it was not in this instance. I went round to theMercuryoffice to look at some proofs, and they kept me to do an article on a subject which I had had the handling of before, and which--"
"No one else could handle arter you, eh? Pretty tall opinion you newspaper-writin' fellows have of yourselves! And why didn't you bring Routh with you when you did come!"
"Routh! I haven't seen him for three days. Isn't he here!"
"Not he! I've been coolin' myself on this a'mighty old doorstep since seven o'clock, only once goin' inside just to look round the saloon, and I've not set eyes on him yet."
"How very odd!"
"So very odd, that I'll see him somethingest before I wait for him any longer! Come you in with me. I took a table right slick opposite the door, and we'll go and strike up at once."
He turned on his heel as he spoke, and walked up the passage into the large coffee-room of the restaurant. Dallas, who followed him closely, noticed him pause for an instant before one of the looking-glasses in the passage, put his hat a little more on one side, and throw open the folds of his fur-lined coat. Beneath this noticeable garment Mr. Deane wore a large baggy suit of black, an open-worked shirt-front with three large diamond studs in it, a heavy gold watch-chain. There was a large diamond ring on the little finger of each hand. Thus tastefully attired, Mr. Deane, swaggering easily up the centre of the coffee-room and slapping his leg with his stick as he went, at length stopped at a vacant table, and clinked a knife against a tumbler.
"Now, waiter! Just look smart and slippy, and bring up our dinner right away. One of my friends is here, and I'm not a-goin' to wait for the other. He must take his chance, he must; but bring up ours at once, d'ye hear? Why, what on airth isthis?"
"This" was a boy of about twelve years of age, with a dirty face and grimy hands, with an old peakless cap on its head, and a very shiny, greasy, ragged suit on its back. "This" seemed to have been running hard, and was out of breath, and was very hot and damp in the face. Following Mr. Deane's glance, the waiter's eyes lighted on "this," and that functionary immediately fell into wrathful vernacular.
"Hullo! what are you doing here?" said he. "Come, you get out of this, d'ye hear?"
"I hear," said the boy, without moving a muscle. "Don't you flurry yourself in that way often, or you'll bust! And what a go that'd be! You should think of your precious family, you should!"
"Will you--"
"No, I won't, and that's all about it. Here, guv'nor "--to Deane--"you're my pitch; I've brought this for you." As he said this, the boy produced from his pocket a bit of string, a pair of musical bones, and a crumpled note, and handed the latter to Deane, who stepped aside to the nearest gas-jet to read it. To the great indignation of the waiter, the boy sat himself down on the edge of a chair, and, kicking his legs to and fro, surveyed the assembled company with calm deliberation. He appeared to be taking stock generally of everything round him. Between his dirty finger and thumb he took up a corner of the table-cloth, then he passed his hand lightly over Dallas's overcoat, which was lying on an adjacent chair. This gave the waiter his chance of bursting out again.
"Leave that coat alone, can't you? Can't you keep your fingers off things that don't belong to you? Thought it was your own, perhaps, didn't you?" This last remark, in a highly sarcastic tone, as he lifted the coat from the chair and was about to carry it to a row of pegs by the door. "This ain't your mark, I believe? Your tailor don't live at Hamherst, does he?"
"Never mind my tailor, old cock! P'raps you'd like my card, but I've 'appened to come out without one. But you can have my name and address--they're very haristocratic, not such as you're used to. Jim Swain's my name--Strike-a-light Jim--60 Fullwood's-rents. Now, tell me who's your barber!" The waiter, who had a head as bald as a billiard-ball, was highly incensed at this remark (which sent some young men at an adjoining table into roars of laughter), and he would probably have found some means of venting his wrath, had not a sharp exclamation from Deane called off his attention.
"Get up dinner, waiter, at once, and clear off this third place, d'ye hear? The other gentleman ain't comin'. Now, boy, what are you waiting for?"
"No answer to go back, is there, guv'nor?"
"Answer? No; none."
"All right. Shall I take that sixpence of you now, or will you give it me to-morrow? Short reck'nings is my motter. So if you're goin' to give it, hand it over."
Unable to resist a smile, Deane took a small coin from his purse and handed it to the boy, who looked at it, put it in his pocket, nodded carelessly to Deane and Dallas, and departed, whistling loudly.
"Routh is not coming, I suppose?" said Dallas as they seated themselves at the table.
"No, he has defected, like a cussed skunk as he is, after giving me the trouble to order his dinner, which I shall have to pay for all the same. Regular riles me, that does, to be put in the hole for such a one-horse concern as Mr. Routh. He ought to know better than to play such tricks with me."
"Perhaps he is compelled to absent himself. I know--"
"Compelled! That might do with some people, but it won't nohow do with me. I allow no man to put a rudeness on me. Mr. Routh wants more of me than I do of him, as I'll show him before long. He wants me to come to his rooms to-morrow night--that's for his pleasure and profit, I guess, not mine--just depends on the humour I'm in. Now here's the dinner. Let's get at it at once. There's been no screwin' nor scrapin' in the ordering of it, and you can just give Routh a back-hander next time you see him by telling him how much you liked it."
Deane unfolded his table napkin with a flourish, and cleared a space in front of him for his plate. There was an evil expression on his face; a mordant, bitter, savage expression, which Dallas did not fail to remark. However, he took no notice of it, and the conversation during dinner was confined to ordinary commonplaces.
Mr. Deane had not boasted without reason; the dinner was excellent, the wines were choice and abundant, and with another kind of companion George Dallas would have enjoyed himself. But even in the discussion of the most ordinary topics there was a low coarseness in Deane's conversation, a vulgar self-sufficiency and delight at his own shrewdness, a miserable mistrust of every one, and a general arrogance and conceit which were highly nettling and repulsive. During dinner these amiable qualities displayed themselves in Mr. Deane's communication with the waiter; it was not until the cloth had been removed, and they were taking their first glass of port, that Deane reverted to what had annoyed him before they sat down.
"That Routh's what they call a mean cuss, t'other side the water," he commenced; "a mean cuss he is, and nothing else. Throwing me over in this way at the last minute, and never sending word before, so that I might have said we shall only be two instead of three, and saved paying for him! He thinks he's cruel wide awake, he does; but though he's been at it all his life, and it's not six months since I first caught sight of this little village nominated London, I don't think there's much he could put me up to now!"
He looked so expectant of a compliment, that Dallas felt bound to say: "You certainly seem to have made the most of your time!"
"Made the most of my time! I reckon I have! Why, there's no s'loon, oyster-cellar, dancing-shop, night-house of any name at all, where I'm not regular well known. 'Here's the Yankee,' they say, when I come in; not that I'm that, but I've told 'em I hail from the U-nited States, and that's why they call me the Yankee. They know me, and they know I pay my way as I go, and that I've got plenty of money. Help yourself--good port this, ain't it?--ought to be, for they charge eight shillings a bottle for it. Why people out t'other side the water, sir, they think I'm staying in titled country-houses, and dining in Portland-place, and going to hear oratorios. I've got letters of introduction in my desk which would do all that, and more. Never mind! I like to shake a loose leg, and, as I flatter myself I can pretty well take care of myself, I shake it!"
"Yes," said Dallas, in a slightly bitter tone, with a vivid recollection of his losses at cards to Deane; "yes, you can take care of yourself."
"Rather think so," repeated Deane, with a jarring laugh. "There are two things which are guiding principles with me--number one, never to lend a dollar to any man; number two, always to have the full value of every dollar I spend. If you do that, you'll generally find yourself not a loser in the end. We'll have another bottle of this eight-shilling port. I've had the value of this dinner out of you, recollect, so that I'm not straying from my principle. Here, waiter, another bottle of this eight-shilling wine!"
"You're a lucky fellow, Deane," said George Dallas, slowly finishing his second glass of the fresh bottle; "you're a lucky fellow, to have plenty of money and to be your own master, able to choose your own company, and do as you like. I wish I had the chance!" As Dallas spoke, he filled his glass again.
"Well, there are worse berths than mine in the ship, and that's a fact!" said Deane calmly. "I've often thought about you, Dallas, I have now, and I've often wondered when you'll be like the prodigal son, and go home to your father, and succeed the old man in the business."
"I have no father!"
"Hain't you though? But you've got some friends, I reckon, who are not over-delighted at your campin' out with the wild Injuns you're living among at present?"
"I have a mother."
"That's a step towards respectability. I suppose you'll go back to the old lady some day, and be welcomed with open arms?"
"There's some one else to have a say in that matter. My mother is--is married again. I have a stepfather."
"Not generally a pleasant relation, but no reason why you shouldn't help yourself to this eight-shilling wine. That's right; pass the bottle. A stepfather, eh? And he and you have collided more than once, I expect?"
"Have what?"
"Collided."
"Do you mean come into collision?"
"Expect I do," said Deane calmly. "I'm forbidden the house. I'm looked upon as a black sheep--a pest--a contamination."
"But the old gentleman wouldn't catch anything from you. They don't take contamination easy, after fifty!"
"Oh, it's not for himself that Mr. Carruthers is anxious; he is infection proof--he--What is the matter?"
"Matter? Nothing! What name did you say?"
"Carruthers--Capel Carruthers. County family down in Kent."
"Go ahead!" said Deane, tossing off his wine, refilling his glass, and pushing the bottle to his companion; "and this old, gentleman is not anxious about himself, you say; where is your bad influence likely to fall, then?"
"On his niece, who lives with them."
"What's her name?"
"Clare. Clare Carruthers! Isn't it a pretty name?"
"It is so, sir! And this niece. What's she like, now?"
George Dallas tried to throw a knowing gleam into his eyes, which the perpetual motion of the decanter had rendered somewhat bleared and vacant, as he looked across at his companion, and said with a half-laugh: "You seem to take a great interest in my family, Deane?"
Not one whit discomposed, Philip Deane replied: "Study of character as a citizen of the world, and a general desire to hear what all gals are like. Is Miss Clare pretty?"
"I've only seen her once, and that not too clearly. But she struck me as being lovely."
"Lovely, eh? And the old man won't have you at any price? That's awkward, that is!"
"Awkward!" said Dallas, in a thick voice, "it's more than awkward, as he shall find! I'll be even with him--I'll--Hallo! What do you want, intruding on gentlemen's conversation?"
"Beg pardon, sir," said the waiter, to whom this last remark was addressed; "no offence, gentlemen, but going to shut up now! We ain't a supper-'ouse, gentlemen, and it's going on for twelve o'clock."
Indeed, all the other tables were vacated, so Deane rose at once and paid the bill which the waiter had laid before him. Dallas rose too with a staggering step.
"Coat, sir," said the waiter, handing it to him; "other arm, sir, please; gently does it, sir; that's it!" And with some little difficulty he pulled the coat on: George Dallas cursing it, and the country tailor who had made it, as he stood rocking uneasily on his heels and glaring vacantly before him.
"Come along, old horse," said Deane; "you'll be fixed as firm as Washington Capitol when we get into the air. Come along, and we'll go and finish the night somewhere!"
So saying, he tucked his companion's arm firmly within his own, and they sallied forth.
George Dallas felt that his fortunes were in the ascendant, when he arose on the morning following the dinner with Deane, and found himself possessed of ten pounds, which he had been sufficiently sober to win at billiards the previous night, and consequently in a position to pay off his landlady, and turn his back upon the wretched lodging, which her temper, tyranny, and meanness had made more wretched. He lost no time in packing up the few articles he possessed--mainly consisting of books and drawing-materials--and these, together with his scanty wardrobe, he threw into a couple of trunks, which he himself carried down the steep dark staircase and deposited in a cab. The landlady stood at the door, in the gray morning, and watched her late lodger, as he strode down the shabby little street, followed by the luggage-laden cab. She watched him, wondering. She wondered where he had got the money he had just paid her. She wondered where he had got the money to pay an extra week's rent, in default of a week's notice. When she had dunned him yesterday, as rudely and mercilessly as usual, he had said nothing indicative of an expectation of an immediate supply of money. He had only said that he hoped to pay her soon. "Where did he get the money?" the old woman thought, as she watched him. "I hope he come by it honest. I wonder where he's going to. He did not tell the cabman, leastways so as I could hear him. Ah! It ain't no business of mine; I'll just turn the rooms out a bit, and put up the bill."
So Mrs. Gunther (for that was the lady's name) re-entered the shabby house, and a great activity accompanied by perpetual scolding pervaded it for some hours, during which the late tenant was journeying down to Amherst.
George Dallas strictly observed the directions contained in his mother's letter, and having started by an early train, reached Amherst at noon. Rightly supposing that at such an hour it would be useless to look for his mother in the little town, he crossed the railroad in a direction leading away from Amherst, struck into some fields, and wandered on by a rough footpath which led through a copse of beech-trees to a round bare hill. He sat down when he had reached this spot, from whence he could see the road to and from Poynings. A turnpike was at a little distance, and he saw a carriage stopped beside the gate, and a footman at the door receiving an order from a lady, whose bonnet he could just discern in the distance. He stood up and waited. The carriage approached, and he saw that the liveries were those of Mr. Carruthers. Then he struck away down the side of the little declivity, and crossing the railway at another point, attained the main street of the little town. It was market-day. He avoided the inn, and took up a position whence he could watch his mother's approach. There were so many strangers and what Mr. Deane would have called "loafers" about, some buying, some selling, and many honestly and unfeignedly doing nothing, that an idler more or less was certain to pass without any comment, and it was not even necessary to keep very wide of the inn. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking into the window of the one shop in Amherst devoted to the interests of literature, which was profusely decorated with out-of-date valentines, much criticised by flies, and with feebly embossed cards, setting forth the merits of local governesses. At that time prophetic representations of the International Exhibition of '62 were beginning to appeal to the patriotic soul in light blue drawings, with flags innumerable displayed wheresoever they could be put "handy." George Dallas calmly and gravely surveyed the stock-in-trade, rather distracted by the process of watching the inn door, between which and his position intervened a group of farmers, who were to a man chewing bits of whipcord, and examining samples of corn, which they extracted in a stealthy manner from their breeches-pocket, and displayed grudgingly on their broad palms. On the steps of the inn door were one or two busy groups, and not a man or woman of the number took any notice of Mrs. Carruthers's son. They took very considerable notice of Mrs. Carruthers herself, however, when her carriage stopped; and Mr. Page, the landlord, actually came out, quite in the old fashioned style, to open the lady's carriage, and escort her into the house. George watched his mother's tall and elegant figure, as long as she was in sight, with mingled feelings of pleasure, affection, something like real gratitude, and very real bitterness; then he turned, strolled past the inn where the carriage was being put up, and took his way down the main street, to the principal draper's shop, He went in, asked for some gloves, and turned over the packets set before him with slowness and indecision. Presently his mother entered, and took the seat which the shopman, a mild person in spectacles, handed her. She, too, asked for gloves, and, as the shopman turned his back to the counter, rapidly passed a slip of paper to her son. She had written on it, in pencil:
"At Davis's the dentist's, opposite, in ten minutes."
"These will do, thank you. I think you said three and sixpence?" said George to the shopman, who, having placed a number of gloves before Mrs. Carruthers for her selection, had now leisure to attend to his less important customer.
"Yes, sir, three and sixpence, sir. One pair, sir? You'll find them very good wear, sir."
"One pair will do, thank you," said George. He looked steadily at his mother, as he passed her on his way to the door, and once more anger arose, fierce and keen, in his heart--anger, not directed against her, but against his stepfather. "Curse him!" he muttered, as he crossed the street, "what right has he to treat me like a dog, and her like a slave? Nothing that I have done justifies--no, by Heaven, and nothing that I could do, would justify--such treatment."
Mr. Davis's house had the snug, cleanly, inflexible look peculiarly noticeable even amid the general snugness, cleanliness, and inflexibility of a country town, as attributes of the residences of surgeons and dentists, and gentlemen who combine both those fine arts. The clean servant who opened the door looked perfectly cheerful and content. It is rather aggravating, when one is going to be tortured, even for one's ultimate good, to be assured in a tone almost of glee:
"No, sir, master's not in, sir; but he'll be in directly, sir. In the waiting-room, sir." George Dallas not having come to be tortured, and not wishing to see Mr. Davis, bore the announcement with good humour equal to that of the servant, and sat down very contentedly on a high, hard, horsehair chair, to await events. Fortune again favoured him; the room had no other occupant; and in about five minutes he again heard the cheerful voice of the beaming girl at the door say,
"No, m'm, master's not in; but he'll be in d'rectly, m'm. In the waiting-room, m'm. There's one gentleman a-waitin', m'm, but master will attend on you first, of course, m'm."
The next moment his mother was in the room, her face shining on him, her arms round him, and the kind words of the truest friend any human being can be to another, poured into his ears.
"You are looking much better, George," she said, holding him back from her, and gazing fondly into his face. "You are looking brighter, my darling, and softer, and as if you were trying to keep your word to me."
"Pretty well, mother, and I am very thankful to you. But your letter puzzled me. What does it mean? Have you really got the money, and how did you manage to get it?"
"I have not got it, dear," she said quickly, and holding up her hand to keep him silent; "but it is only a short delay, not a disappointment. I shall have it in two or three days."
George's countenance had fallen at her first words, but the remainder of the sentence reassured him, and he listened eagerly as she continued:
"I am quite sure of getting it, George. If it does but set you free, I shall not regret the price I have paid for it."
"Tell me what it is mother," George asked eagerly. "Stay, you must not sit so close to me."
"I'm not sure that your voice ought to be heard either, speaking so familiarly,tête-à-têtewith the important Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings--a personage whose sayings and doings are things of note at Amherst," said Mrs. Carruthers with a smile, as he took a seat at a little distance, and placed one of the samples of periodical literature strewn about the table, after the fashion of dentists' and surgeons' waiting-rooms, ready to her hand, in case of interruption. Then she laid her clasped hands on the table, and leaned against them, with her clear dark eyes fixed upon her son's face, and her steady voice, still sweet and pure in its tones as in her youth, as she told him what she had done.
"Do you remember, George, that on that wretched night you spoke of my diamonds, and seemed to reproach me that I should wear jewels, while you wanted so urgently but a small portion of their price?"
"I remember, mother," returned George, frowning, "and a beast I was to hint such a thing to you, who gave me all that ever was your own! I hoped you had forgiven and forgotten it. Can it be possible that you have sold--But no; you said they were family jewels."
"I will tell you. When you had gone away that night, and I was in the ball-room, and later, when I was in my dressing-room alone, and could think of it all again, the remembrance of what you had said tormented me. The jewels you had seen me wearing were, indeed, as I had told you, not my own; nevertheless, the remembrance of all I had ever read about converting jewels into money occupied my mind that night, and occupied it after that night for days and days. One day Mr. Tatham came to Poynings, and in the evening being, as he always is, very entertaining, he related an extraordinary story of a client of his. The tale, as he told it, had many particulars, but one caught my attention. The client was a woman of large fortune, who married for love a man much younger than herself, a dissipated fellow who broke her fortune, and might have broken her heart, but for his getting killed in riding a steeple-chase. After his timely death it was discovered, among a variety of dishonourable transactions, that he had stolen his wife's diamonds, with the connivance of her maid; had had them imitated in mock stones by a famous French dealer in false jewelry; and had substituted the false for the real. No suspicion of the fact had ever crossed his wife's mind. The discovery was made by the jeweller's bill for the imitation being found among the papers. This led to inquiry of the dealer, who gave the required information. The moment I heard the story, I conceived the idea of getting you the money you wanted by a similar expedient."
"Oh, mother!"
She lifted one hand with a gesture of caution, and continued, in a voice still lower than before:
"Myjewels--at least those I have sold--were my own, George. Those I wore that night were, as I told you, family diamonds; but Mr. Carruthers gave me, when we were married, a diamond bracelet, and I understood then that it was very valuable. I shrank from such a deception. But it was for you, and I caught at it."
George Dallas sat with his hands over his face and no more interrupted her by a single word.
"By one or two questions I stimulated Mr. Carruthers's curiosity in the strange story, so that he asked Mr. Tatham several questions as to where the mock jewels were made, whether they cost much, and, in fact, procured for me all the information I required. That bracelet was the only thing I had of sufficient value for the purpose, because it is expensive to get an imitation of any ornament made of very fine stones, as my bracelet is, and richly set. If the act were still to do, I should do it, George--for you--and still I should feel, as I do most bitterly feel, that in doing it I shamefully deceive my husband!"
Still George Dallas did not speak. He felt keenly the degradation to which he had reduced his mother; but so great and pervading was his bitterness of feeling towards his mother's husband, that when the wrong to him presented itself to his consideration, he would not entertain it. He turned away, rose, and paced the room. His mother sighed heavily as she went on.
"George, you know this is not the first time I have suffered through and for you, and that this is the first time I have ever done an act which I dare not avow. I will say no more."
He was passing behind her chair as she spoke, and he paused in his restless walk to kneel down by her, clasp her in his arms, and kiss her. As he rose from his knees, she looked at him with a face made radiant with hope, and with a mother's love.
"This is how it was done, George," she continued. "I wrote to an old friend of mine in Paris, a French lady, once my schoolfellow. I told her I wanted my bracelet matched, in the best manner of imitation jewelry, as our English fashions required two, and I could not afford to purchase another made of real diamonds. I urged the strictest secrecy, and I know she will observe it; for she loves mystery only a little less than she loves dress. She undertook the commission with alacrity, and I expected to have had both the bracelets yesterday!"
"What a risk you would have run, mother, supposing an occasion for your wearing the bracelet had arisen!"
"Like Anne of Austria and the studs?" said his mother with a smile. "But there was no help for it. More deceit and falsehood must have followed the first. If the occasion had arisen, Mr. Carruthers would have questioned me, and I should have said I had sent it to be cleaned, when he would have been angry that I should have done so without consulting him."
"Tyrannical old brute!" was George's mental comment.
"All the meanness and all the falsehood was planned and ready, George; but it was needless. Mr. Carruthers was summoned to York, and is still there. It is much for me that the parcel should arrive during his absence. I heard from my friend the day before I wrote to you, that she was about to send it immediately, and I wrote to you at once. It is to be directed to Nurse Brookes."
"How did you explainthat, mother!" George asked quickly.
"More lies, more lies," she answered sadly, rejoicing in her heart the while to see how he writhed under the words. "I told her what was needful in the way of false explanation, and I made certain of having the bracelets to-day. So I must have done but for a second letter from my friend Madame de Haulleville, to the effect that, having a sudden opportunity of sending the packet to England by a private hand, she had availed herself of it, at the loss of (at most, she writes) a day or two."
"Confound her French parsimony!" said George; "think of the unnecessary risk she makes us run, when I come down here for nothing."
"It is not so much parsimony as precaution, George. And she could know nothing of any risk."
"What is to be done, then?" he asked, in a softer tone.
"Can you not remain at Amherst?" asked his mother. "Have you anything to do which will prevent your remaining here for a day or two? If not you will be as well here as in London, for there is no danger of Mr. Carruthers seeing you."
"Suppose he did?" George burst out. "Is he the lord and master of all England, including Amherst? Perhaps the sunshine belongs to him, and the fresh air? If I keep away from Poynings, that's enough for him, surely."
Mrs. Carruthers had risen, and looked appealingly at him.
"Remember, George, your misconduct would justify Mr. Carruthers in the eyes of the world, for the course he has taken towards you; or," here she moved near to him, and laid her hand on his arm, "if you refuse to considerthat, remember that Mr. Carruthers is my husband, and that I love him."
"I will, mother, I will," said George impetuously. "Graceless, ungrateful wretch that I am! I will never say another word against him. I will remain quietly here as you suggest. Shall I stay at the inn? Not under my own name; under my not very well known but some day of course widely to be famous pen-name--Paul Ward. Don't forget it, mother, write it down; stay, I'll write it for you. P-a-u-l W-a-r-d." He wrote the name slowly on a slip of paper, which Mrs. Carruthers placed between the leaves of her pocket-book.
"You must go now," she said to him; "it is impossible you can wait here longer. We have been singularly fortunate as it is. When I write, I will tellyou whether I can come to you here--in the town, I mean--or whether you shall come to me. I think you will have to come to me. Now go, my darling boy." She embraced him fondly.
"And you, mother?"
"I will remain here a little longer. I have really something to say to Mr. Davis."
He went. Black care went with him, and shame and remorse were busy at his heart. Would remorse deepen into repentance, and would repentance bear wholesome fruit of reformation? That was for the future to unravel. The present had acute stinging pain in it, which he longed to stifle, to crush out, to get away from, anyhow. He loved his mother, and her beautiful earnest face went with him along the dusty road; the unshed tears in her clear dark eyes seemed to drop in burning rain upon his heart; the pleading tones of her sorrowful voice filled all the air. How wicked and wretched, how vain, silly, and insipid, how worthless and vulgar, all his pleasures and pursuits seemed now! A new spirit arose in the wayworn, jaded man; a fresh ambition sprang up in his heart. "It's a wretched, low, mean way of getting free, but I have left myself no choice. Imusttake advantage of what she has done for me, and then I never will wrong her love and generosity again. I will do right, and not wrong; this is my resolution, and I will work it out,so help me God!"
He had unconsciously come to a stop at the noble old oak gates, flung hospitably open, of a wide-spreading park, through one of whose vistas a grand old mansion in the most elaborate manner of the Elizabethan style was visible. He looked up, and the beauty of the prospect struck him as if it had been created by an enchanter's wand. He looked back along the road by which he had come, and found that he had completely lost sight of Amherst.
He went a pace or two beyond the gate pillars. A hale old man was employed in nailing up a trailing branch of jessamine against the porch of the lodge.
"Good afternoon, old gentleman. This is a fine place, I fancy."
"Good afternoon, sir. It is a fine place. You'll not see many finer in Amherst. Would you like to walk through it, sir? You're quite welcome."
"Thank you. I should like to walk through it. I have never been down this way before. What is the name of this place, and to whom does it belong?"
"It is called the Sycamores, sir, and it belongs to Sir Thomas Boldero."
A fine avenue of beech-trees led from the gate through which George Dallas had passed, to the house which had attracted his admiration. These grandest and most beautiful of trees were not, however, the distinguishing feature of the place: not its chief pride. "The Sycamores" was so called in honour of a profusion of trees of that kind, said in the neighbourhood to have no rivals in all England. Be that as it might, the woodland scenery in Sir Thomas Boldero's noble park was beautiful in the highest degree, and of such beauty George Dallas was keenly and artistically appreciative. The tender loveliness of the spring was abroad throughout the land; its voices, its gladness, its perfumes, were around him everywhere, and as the young man strolled on under the shadow of the great branches, bearing their tender burden of bright, soft, green, half-unclosed buds, the weight and blackness of care seemed to be lifted off him, and his heart opened to fresh, pure, simple aspirations, long strangers to his jaded but not wholly vitiated character. He was very young, and the blessed influence of youth told upon him, its power of receiving impressions, its faculty of enjoyment, its susceptibility to external things--a blessing or a curse as it is used--its buoyancy, its hopefulness. As George Dallas turned from the broad smooth carriage-way, and went wandering over the green elastic turf of the carefully kept park, winding in and out through the boles of the grand old trees, treading now on a tender twig, again on a wild flower, now startling from her nest a brooding lark, anon stopping to listen to a burst of melody from some songster free from domestic cares, he was hardly recognizable as the man who had sat listening to Philip Deane's hard worldly talk at the Strand tavern the day before.
"Brighter and softer" his mother had said he was looking, and it was true. Brighter and softer still the hard, pleasure-wearied, joyless face became, as the minutes stole over him, among the sycamores and beeches. He had pursued his desultory path a mile or more, and had lost sight of the house and the avenue, when he came to a beautiful open glade, carpeted with turf of the softest green, and over-arched by forest trees. Looking down its long vista, he saw that it terminated with a brilliant flower-garden, and a portion of a noble stone terrace, lying beneath one side of the many-turreted house. He stood entranced by the beauty of the scene, and, after a few moments, felt in his pocket for pencil and paper, in order to sketch it. He found both, and looking round him, saw a piece of the trunk of a felled tree, not yet removed by the care of the forester.
"A capital place to sketch from," thought George, as he folded his coat, and laid it upon the convenient block, and immediately became absorbed in his occupation. He was proceeding rapidly with his sketch, and feeling rather disposed to get it finished as quickly as he could, in order that he might return to the inn and procure some food, of which he stood in considerable need, when he caught the sound of galloping upon the turf in the distance behind him. He raised his head and listened; there it was, the dull rapid thud of hoofs on the grass. Was there one rider, or were there more? He listened again--only one, he thought; and now the rapid noise ceased, and was succeeded by the slow, pattering sound of a horse ridden daintily and gently about and about, by a capricious fancy. Still George listened, and presently there came riding out of the shadowy distance into the full expanse of the glade, down which the declining sun sent golden rays, as if in salutation, a lady, who was, as his first glance showed him, young and beautiful. She was quite unconscious of his presence, for the piece of timber on which he had been sitting was out of the line of sight, and though he had risen, he was still standing beside it. She came towards him, her slight form swaying to the movements of her bright bay thorough-bred, as she put the animal through all sorts of fanciful paces, now checking him with the rein, now encouraging him with her clear sweet young voice, and patting his arched neck with her white-gloved hand. The young man looked out from his hiding-place, enraptured, as she came on, a vision of youth, beauty, and refinement, down the wide green glade, the sun shining on her, the birds singing, the flowers blooming for her, the proud walls of the old house rising grandly in the back-ground, as if in boast of the worthy shelter that awaited her. Nearer and nearer she came, and now George Dallas could see her face distinctly, and could hear the pretty words with which she coaxed her horse. It was a face to remember; a face to be the happier for having seen; a face whose beauty was blended of form and colour, of soul, feature, and expression; a face which had all that the earth has to give of its best and fairest, touched with the glory which is higher and better, which earth has not to bestow. It was the face of a girl of nineteen, whose clear eyes were of golden brown, whose cheeks bloomed with the purest, most varying flower-like colour, whose rich golden hair shone in the sunlight, as its braids rippled and turned about with the movement of her head, tossed childishly to the rhythmical measure of her horse's tread.
Half a dozen trees only intervened between her and the spot where George Dallas stood, greedily watching her every movement and glance, when she took her hat off, and pushed the heavy golden hair off her broad white forehead. At that moment her horse jerked the rein she held loosely, and pulled her slightly forward, the hat falling from her hand on the grass.
"Now see what you have done," she said, with a gay laugh, as the animal stood still and looked foolish. "I declare I'll make you pick it up with your mouth. There, sir, turn, I tell you; come, you know how." And she put the horse through all the pretty tricks of stooping and half kneeling, in which she evidently felt much more pleasure than he did. But she did not succeed: he obeyed touch and word readily; but he did not pick up the hat. At last she desisted, and said with a funny look of mock patience:
"Very well, Sir Lancelot, if you won't you won't, so I must get off." She had just gathered her skirt in her hand, and was about to spring from her saddle, when George Dallas stepped out from among the trees, picked up the hat, and handed it to her, with a bow.
The young lady looked at him in astonishment, but she thanked him with self-possession, which he was far from sharing, and put her hat on, while Sir Lancelot pawed impatiently.
"Thank you," she said; "I did not see any one near."
"I was sitting yonder," said George, pointing to the spot whence he had emerged, "on some fallen timber, and was just taking the liberty of sketching the view of the house, when you rode up."
She coloured, looked pleased and interested, and said, hesitatingly, having bidden Sir Lancelot "stand:" "You are an artist, sir?"
"No," he answered, "at least, only in a very small way; but this is such a beautiful place, I was tempted to make a little sketch. But I fear I am intruding; perhaps strangers are not admitted."
"Oh yes, they are," she replied hurriedly. "We have not many strangers in this neighbourhood; but they are all welcome to come into the park, if they like. Had you finished your sketch?" she asked timidly, with a look towards the sheet of paper, which had fallen when Dallas rose, and had been fluttered into sight by the gentle wind. George saw the look, and caught eagerly at any pretext for prolonging the interview a few moments.
"May I venture to show you my poor attempt?" he asked, and without awaiting her answer, he stepped quickly back to the place he had left. The girl walked her horse gently forward, and as he stooped for the paper, she was beside him, and, lifting his head, he caught for a moment the full placid gaze of her limpid eyes. He reddened under the look, full of gentleness and interest as it was, and a pang shot through his heart, with the swift thought, that once he might have met such a woman as this on equal terms, and might have striven with the highest and the proudest for her favour. That was all over now; but at least he, even he, might sun himself in the brief light of her presence. She laid the rein on Sir Lancelot's neck, and took the little drawing from his hand with a timid expression of thanks.
"I am no judge," she said, when she had looked at it, and he had looked at her, his whole soul in his eyes; "but I think it is very nicely done. Would you not like to finish it? Or perhaps there are some other points of view you would like to take? I am sure my uncle, Sir Thomas Boldero, would be delighted to give you every facility. He is very fond of art, and--and takes a great interest in artists."
"You are very kind," said Dallas. "I shall be at Amherst a day or two longer, and I will take the liberty of making a few sketches--that splendid group of sycamores, for instance."
"Ah, yes," she said, laughing, "I call them the godfathers and godmothers of the park. They would make a pretty picture. I tried to draw them once, myself, but you cannot imagine what a mess I made of it."
"Indeed," said Dallas, with a smile, "and why am I to be supposed unable to imagine a failure?"
"Because you are an artist," she said, with charming archness and simplicity, "and, of course, do everything well."
This simple exhibition of faith in artists amused Dallas, to whom this girl was a sort of revelation of the possibilities of beauty, innocence, andnaïveté.
"Of course," he replied gravely; "nevertheless I fear I shall not do justice to the sycamores."
And now came an inevitable pause, and he expected she would dismiss him and ride away, but she did not. It was not that she had any of the awkward want of manner which makes it difficult to terminate a chance interview, for she was perfectly graceful and self-possessed, and her manner was as far removed from clumsiness as from boldness. The girl was thinking, during the pause whose termination Dallas dreaded. After a little, she said:
"There is a very fine picture-gallery at the Sycamores, and I am sure it would give my uncle great pleasure to show it to you. Whenever any gentlemen from London are staying at Amherst, or passing through, Mr. Page at the inn tells them about the picture-gallery, and they come to see it, if they care about such things; perhaps it was he who told you?"
"No," said Dallas, "I am not indebted for the pleasure--for the happiness--of this day to Mr. Page. No one guided me here, but I happened to pass the gate, and a very civil old gentleman, who was doing some gardening at the lodge, asked me in."
His looks said more than his words dared to express, of the feelings with which his chance visit had inspired him. But the girl did not see his looks; she was idly playing with Sir Lancelot's mane, and thinking.
"Well," she said at last, settling herself in the saddle in a way unmistakably preliminary to departure, "if you would like to see the picture-gallery, and will walk round that way, through those trees, to the front of the house"--she pointed out the direction with the handle of her riding-whip--"I will go on before, and tell my uncle he is about to have a visitor to inspect his treasures."
"You are very kind," said Dallas earnestly, "and you offer me a very great pleasure. But Sir Thomas Boldero may be engaged--ay think it an intrusion."
"And a thousand other English reasons for not accepting at once a civility frankly offered," said the girl, with a delightful laugh. "I assure you, I could not gratify my uncle more than by picking up a stray connoisseur; or my aunt than by bringing to her a gentleman of sufficient taste to admire her trees and flowers."
"And her niece,Miss Carruthers," thought George Dallas.
"So pray go round to the house. Don't forget your coat. I see it upon the ground--there. It has got rubbed against the damp bark, and there's a great patch of green upon it."
"That's of no consequence," said George gaily; "it's only an Amherst coat, and no beauty."
"You must not make little of Amherst," said the girl, with mock gravity, as George stood rubbing the green stain off his coat with his handkerchief; "we regard the town here as a kind of metropolis, and have profound faith in the shops and all to be purchased therein. Did dear old Evans make that coat?"
"A venerable person of that name sold it me," returned George, who had now thrown the coat over his arm, and stood, hat in hand, beside her horse.
"The dear! I should not mind letting him make me a habit," she said. "Good-bye, for the present--that way," again she pointed with her whip, and then cantered easily off, leaving George in a state of mind which he would have found it very difficult to define, so conflicting where his thoughts and emotions. He looked after her, until the last flutter of her skirt was lost in the distance, and then he struck into the path which she had indicated, and pursued it, musing.
"And that is Clare Carruthers! I thought I had seen that head before, that graceful neck, that crown of golden hair. Yes, it is she; and little she thinks whom she is about to bring into her uncle's house--the outcast and exile from Poynings! I will see it out; why should I not? I owe nothing to Carruthers that I should avoid this fair, sweet girl, because he chooses to banish me from her presence. What a presence it is! What am I that I should come into it?" He paused a moment, and a bitter tide of remembrance and self-reproach rushed over him, almost overwhelming him. Then he went on more quickly, and with a flushed cheek and heated brow, for anger was again rising within him. "You are very clever as well as very obstinate, my worthy stepfather, but you are not omnipotent yet. Your darling niece, the beauty, the heiress, the great lady, the treasure of price to be kept from the sight of me, from the very knowledge of anything so vile and lost, has met me, in the light of day, not by any device of mine, and has spoken to me, not in strained, forced courtesy, but of her own free will. What would you think of that, I wonder, if you knew it! And my mother? If the girl should ask my name, and should tell my mother of her chance meeting with a wandering artist, one Paul Ward, what will my mother think?--my dear conscientious mother, who has done for me what wounds her conscience so severely, and who will feel as if it were wounded afresh by this accidental meeting, with which she has nothing in the world to do." He lifted his hat, and fanned his face with it. His eyes were gleaming, his colour had risen; he looked strong, daring, active, and handsome--a man whom an innocent girl, all unlearned in life and in the world's ways, might well exalt in her guileless fancy into a hero, and be pardoned her mistake by older, sadder, and wiser heads.
"How beautiful she is, how frank, how graceful, how unspeakably innocent and refined! She spoke to me with such an utter absence of conventional pretence, without a notion that she might possibly be wrong in speaking to a stranger, who had offered her a civility in her uncle's park. She told that man on the balcony that night that Sir Thomas Boldero was her uncle. I did not remember it when the old man mentioned the name. How long has she been here, I wonder? Is she as much here as at Poynings? How surprised she would be if she knew that I know who she is; that I have heard her voice before to-day; that in the pocket-book she held in her hand a few minutes ago there lies a withered flower, which she once touched and wore. Good God! What would a girl like that think of me, if she knew what I am--if she knew that I stole like a thief to the window of my mother's house, and looked in, shivering, a poverty-stricken wretch, come there to ask for alms, while she herself glittered among my mother's company, like the star of beauty and youth she is? How could she but despise me if she knew it! But she will never know it, or me, most likely. I shall try to get away andwork out all this, far away in a country where no memories of sin and shame and sorrow will rise up around me like ghosts. I am glad to have seen and spoken to Clare Carruthers; it must do me good to remember that such a woman really exists, and is no poet's or romancer's dream. I am glad to think of her as my mother's friend, companion, daughter almost. My mother, who never had a daughter, and has, God help her, no son but me! But I shall never see her again, most likely. When I reach the house, I shall find a pompous servant, no doubt, charged with Sir Thomas's compliments, and orders to show me round a gallery of spurious Dutch pictures, copies of Raphael and Carlo Dolce, and a lot of languishing Lelys and gluttony-suggesting Knellers."
"With these disparaging words in his thoughts, George Dallas reached the border of the park, and found himself in front of the house. The façade was even more imposing and beautiful than he had been led to expect by the distant view of it, and the wide arched doorway gave admittance to an extensive quadrangle beyond. A stone terrace stretched away at either side of the entrance, as at Poynings. Standing on the lower step, a tame peacock displaying his gaudy plumage by her side, he saw Miss Carruthers. She came forward to meet him with a heightened colour and an embarrassed manner, and said:
"I am very sorry, indeed, but Sir Thomas and my aunt are not at home. They had no intention of leaving home when I went out for my ride, but they have been gone for some time." She looked towards a servant who stood near, and added: "I am so sorry; nothing would have given my uncle more pleasure; but if you will allow me, I will send--"
George interrupted her, but with perfect politeness.
"Thank you very much, but, if you will allow me, I will take my leave, and hope to profit by Sir Thomas Boldero's kindness on a future occasion." He bowed deeply, and was turning away, when, seeing that she looked really distressed, he hesitated.
"I will show you the pictures myself, if you will come with me," she said, in a tone so frank, so kindly and engaging, that the sternest critic of manners in existence, supposing that critic to have been any other than an old maid, could not have condemned the spontaneous courtesy as forwardness. "I am an indifferent substitute for my uncle, as a cicerone, but I think I know the names of all the artists, and where all the pictures came from. Stephen,"--she spoke now to the servant,--"I am going to take this gentleman through the picture-gallery; go on before us if you please."
So George Dallas and Clare Carruthers entered the house together, and lingered over the old carvings in the hall, over their inspection of the sporting pictures which adorned it, and the dining-room, over the family portraits in the vestibule, the old china vases, and the rococo furniture. Every subject had an interest for them, and they did not think of asking themselves in what that interest originated and consisted. The girl did not know the young man's name, but his voice was full of the charm of sweet music for her, and in his face her fancy read strange and beautiful things. He was an artist, she knew already, which in sober language meant that she had seen a very tolerable sketch which he had made. He was a poet, she felt quite convinced; for did he not quote Tennyson, and Keats, and Coleridge, and even Herrick and Herbert, as they wandered among the really fine and valuable paintings which formed Sir Thomas Boldero's collection, so aptly and with such deep feeling and appreciation as could spring only from a poetic soul?
It was the old story, which has never been truly told, which shall never cease in the telling. Both were young, and one was beautiful; and though the present is an age which mocks at love at first sight, and indeed regards love at all, under any circumstances, with only decent toleration, not by any means amounting to favour, it actually witnesses it sometimes. The young man and the girl--the idle, dissolute, perverted young man; the beautiful, pure, innocent, proud, pious young girl--talked together that spring afternoon, as the hours wore on to evening, of art, of literature, of music, of travel, of the countless things over which their fancy rambled, and which had wondrous charms for her bright intellect and her secluded life, simple and ignorant in the midst of its luxury and refinement. All that was best and noblest in George's mind came out at the gentle bidding of the voice that sounded for him with a new, undreamed-of music; and the hard, cold, wicked world in which he lived, in which hitherto, with rare intervals of better impulses, he had taken delight, fell away from him, and was forgotten. The girl's grace and beauty, refinement and gentleness, were not more conspicuous than her bright intelligence and taste, cultivated, not indeed by travel or society, but by extensive and varied reading. Such was the influence which minute after minute was gaining upon George. And for her? Her fancy was busily at work too. She loved art; it filled her with wonder and reverence. Here was an artist, a young and handsome artist, of unexceptionable manners. She adored poetry, regarding it as a divine gift; and here was a poet--yes, a poet; for she had made Dallas confess that he very often wrote "verses;" but that was his modesty: she knew he wrote poetry--beautiful poetry. Would he ever let her see any of it?
"Yes, certainly," he had answered; "when I am famous, and there is a brisk competition for me among the publishers, I will send a copy of my poems to you."
"To me! But you do not know my name."
"O yes, I do. You are Miss Carruthers."
"I am; but who told you?"
The question disconcerted Dallas a little. He turned it off by saying, "Why, how can you suppose I could be at Amherst without learning that the niece of Sir Thomas Boldero, of the Sycamores, is Miss Carruthers?"
"Ah, true; I did not think of that," said Clare simply. "But I do not live here generally; I live with another uncle, my father's brother--Sir Thomas is my mother's--Mr. Capel Carruthers, at Poynings, seven miles from here. Have you heard of Poynings?"
Yes, Mr. Dallas had heard of Poynings; but now he must take his leave. It had long been too dark to look at the pictures, and the young people were standing in the great hall, near the open door, whence they could see the gate and the archway, and a cluster of servants idling about and looking out for the return of the carriage. Clare was suddenly awakened to a remembrance of the lateness of the hour, and at once received her visitor's farewell, gracefully reiterating her assurances that her uncle would gladly make him free of the park for sketching purposes. She would tell Sir Thomas of the pleasant occurrences of the day;--by the by, she had not the pleasure of knowing by what name she should mention him to her uncle.
"A very insignificant one, Miss Carruthers. My name is Paul Ward."
And so he left her, and, going slowly down the great avenue among the beeches, met a carriage containing a comely, good-humoured lady and an old gentleman, also comely and good-humoured who both bowed and smiled graciously as he lifted his hat to them.
"Sir Thomas and my lady, of course," thought George; "a much nicer class of relatives than Capel Carruthers, I should say."
He walked briskly towards the town. While he was in Clare's company he had forgotten how hungry he was, but now the remembrance returned with full vigour, and he remembered very clearly how many hours had elapsed since he had eaten. When he came in sight of the railway station, a train was in the act of coming in from London. As he struck into a little by-path leading to the inn, the passengers got out of the carriages, passed through the station gate, and began to straggle up in the same direction. He and they met where the by-path joined the road, and he reached the inn in the company of three of the passengers, who were about to remain at Amherst. Mr. Page was in the hall, and asked George if he would dine.
"Dine?" said George. "Certainly. Give me anything you like, so that you don't keep me waiting; that's the chief thing."
"Itislate, sir, indeed," remarked Mr. Page; "half-past seven, sir."
"So late?" said George carelessly, as he turned into the coffee-room.