It was a part of Jin's character, on which she prided herself not a little, that come what might she was always "equal to the occasion." As Picard said of her long ago, soon after that form of marriage which the woman believed to have been an imposition, and the man considered no more binding than any other contract it suited his convenience to dissolve, "she could dive deeper, and come up drier" than most people. Notwithstanding the desperate nature of the plunge she was now contemplating, Jin had no misgivings but that she would reappear on the surface with plumage unruffled and confidence unimpaired.
Dismissing her fly at the gate of The Lilies, thereby leaving its driver to suppose that she was an upper servant belonging to that establishment, she took the well-remembered path leading to Mrs. Mole's cottage, limping along at a very fair pace over the open meadows, but availing herself of every leafy copse and thick luxuriant hedge that might hide her from the eyes of chance observers. No Indian "brave," on the war-path, could have been more cunning, more vigilant, more chary of leaving evidence where "the trail" had passed. At an angle of the road, within sight of the casket that held her jewel, an opportune hiding-place was formed by the intersection of two large strong fences, now tangled and impervious in a wealth of foliage, briars, and wild flowers. Here, in a nook concealing her from any passenger who did not pass directly in her front, Miss Ross disposed herself to wait and watch. A Berkshire farmer, slouching by in a tumble-down gig, was the only person who disturbed her solitude; and coming under his stolid gaze, she had presence of mind to pull a letter from her pocket and pretend to make a sketch. Watching his figure jogging drowsily down the road she shrank back in her hiding-place, for Picard was lifting the latch of Mrs. Mole's garden gate, and a little voice, in shrill accents that made her pulses leap, was bidding him welcome to the cottage. Jin's whole faculties seemed to concentrate themselves in her large wild shining eyes.
Would he never go? Did he mean to stay there all day? She looked at her watch again and again, while every quarter of an hour seemed lengthened to a week. With hungry jealousy she pictured him in the brick-floored kitchen, lifting her curly-haired darling on his knee, robbing her of the kiss, the smile, the simple prattle, the little endearments. She experienced a fierce desire to rush in and rescue her child by force. "What right has he to come between me and my boy?" thought she, clenching her hands with impatience. "I can understand what they mean now when they talk of the love a tigress bears for her cubs. Ah!Ishouldn't have got tired of you so soon, my little pet," she added, with characteristic inconsistency, when the click of the front-door latch announced Picard's departure, and she saw him waving back a succession of "farewells" to the child.
He had remained with it really less than an hour. To Miss Ross the time seemed interminable, yet now it was over, she blamed him that his visit had been so short.
She forced herself to wait till he had been gone full ten minutes by her watch. Then, abandoning disguise, she scudded down the road, and, with a hasty greeting to Mrs. Mole, caught Gustave in her arms and strained him to her breast, as if she feared he would be torn away from her on the spot. The little fellow seemed quite pleased to see her again, laying his curly head to her cheek, and crowing out those inarticulate murmurs of fondness which are so touching from the innocent affection of a child. Jin's eyes filled with tears, but she had to hide them from Mrs. Mole, who, congratulating herself on such good fortune as two opportunities for gossip in one day, was careful not to let the occasion pass away unimproved.
"He's growed, miss, ain't he now?" asked that good woman, in a tone pleasantly contrasting with the stiffness of her demeanour on Jin's first appearance at the cottage. "An' he's a-learnin' to be a good boy, as well as a big boy, ain't ye, Johnnie? Why, the gentleman said as he hardly knowed him again, if it wasn't for his curls. Strange enough, miss, the gentleman hadn't but just only left as you come in. An' Johnnie he was wondering this morning, in his little bed, when the dark lady was a-coming to see him again, and if she'd bring him a plaything. Ah! miss, there's greater sense in childer' than in grown-up folks—isn't there now? An' greater gratitude too—the more you make of 'em, the better they like you, but it's not so with men and women."
Abstaining from discussion on the question thus opened up, Miss Ross produced the toy she had bought the day before, and it is hard to say whether the women, old and young, or the child itself, seemed most delighted by the shouts of triumph with which this acquisition was greeted. Gustave, or Johnnie, as Mrs. Mole called him, shook it, rung its bells, undressed it, and dressed it up again, idealising it in turn as a soldier, a clergyman, a butter-churn, and, till checked by his careful guardian, a hearth-broom, with unbounded satisfaction, renewed at each fresh metamorphosis. And so the afternoon wore away till it was time for Miss Ross to prefer a long-considered petition, that she might take the child out for a walk.
But here a difficulty presented itself: Johnnie had a slight cold; the evening was clouding over, and threatened rain. It was only after long and earnest pleading that Mrs. Mole gave her consent for "one little turn" as far as the river and back, while she busied herself about some household matters that were more easily set to rights in the absence of her charge.
With a beating heart, Miss Ross led him down the pathway towards the river, the boy kicking out his feet and taking huge steps with his short legs in a state of high triumph and glee.
Presently, at the water's edge, he looked wistfully up in his companion's face and asked:
"Ain't we going back? Never going back—never—no more?"
"Would youlikenever to go back, darling?" said Jin, stooping to fold him in her arms.
"I want to go back to Moley!" answered Johnnie, now panic-stricken, and making up his face for a cry.
Heavy drops of rain began to fall, and at the same moment a boat, shooting suddenly round a bend in the river, grated its keel on the shallows under the bank.
The rower of this boat, whose back was necessarily turned to the shore, wore a pea-jacket, with its collar turned up to the brim of a black hat, such as is not usually affected by watermen, either professional or amateur. Through Jin's beating heart shot a sickening throb of misgiving and alarm. She turned cold and faint, catching up her boy and hugging him instinctively to her breast.
As the rower, obviously unused to an oarsman's exercise, rose, straightened himself, and turned round, he started with a violence that shot the boat back into deep water, her chain running out with a clang over her bows. Stupefied as it seemed by this apparition of the man whom she had watched from Mrs. Mole's door three hours ago, Jin's eyes dilated, her jaw dropped, while she gazed in Picard's face as if she had been turned to stone.
He was the first to recover himself, and burst into a laugh, not entirely forced.
"Who would ever have thought it?" said he, shoving the boat close in shore. "Of all reunions this is the most extraordinary, the most unlooked for. Jump in, Madame, there is no time to lose: in ten minutes it will rain like a water-spout. Great heavens, you are unaltered after all these years, and you have not a grey hair in your head!"
She obeyed mechanically in silence, folding Gustave beneath her shawl, who protested with energy against the embarkation, expressing a strong desire to return to "Old Moley" forthwith.
Once more in mid-stream, Picard laid on his oars as if doubtful whether to proceed. "What are you doing with that boy?" he asked.
She had recovered her presence of mind, though still confused and bewildered, as after some stunning blow.
"Youknowme, Achille," said she, bending on him the defiant, impracticable gaze he remembered so well. "Whatever happens, wherever we are bound, the child goes with me! Where are you taking us? What is the meaning of it all?"
Picard's face was not improved by the diabolical expression that swept over it. "The meaning is this," he answered in a hoarse whisper: "I am helping Captain Vanguard to run away with my own—bah!" he broke off abruptly, "there will be time enough for explanations between here and Windsor bridge: the question is now about the child. He must not go a yard farther—he'll be wet to the skin as it is. There are few things I wouldn't part with to—to—undo the wrongs between you and me; but I cannot, and will not, give up the boy!"
She would have been fiercer in all probability, but that Picard, accepting the heavy down-pour, which now commenced, in his thin summer waistcoat and shirt-sleeves, had stripped off his pea-coat, and was wrapping the boy carefully in its folds, without however removing him from his mother's embrace. The little fellow smiled, and tugged playfully at this rugged nurse's whiskers, obviously welcoming the face of a friend, but repeated his request to return to "Old Moley" as speedily as possible.
"I mean to have no discussions," said Jin, in tight, concentrated accents that denoted suppressed rage and inflexible resolution. "I never wished to see your face again, and I shall insist presently on knowing why you are here now; but in the mean time I desire to know what right you have to the child."
"I like that!" exclaimed Picard with a bitter laugh. "Rather, what right have you? I saved his life!"
"I gave him birth!" answered Jin collectedly. "This is the infant you deserted so gallantly and so generously when you left his mother. Enough! He has no claim on you, my precious; you belong solely and exclusively to me!"
Picard heeded not. Bending over that little bundle, folded so carefully in his pea-jacket, on its mother's knee, he kissed the soft brow tenderly, gently, almost reverently, while a tear hanging in the man's shaggy whiskers, dropped on the pure delicate cheek of the child.
"No wonder I loved you," he muttered. "I wish I had been a better man, for your sake."
Miss Ross was touched. "Allons!" said she; "you and I may come to an understanding, after all. Speak the truth and so will I. How did you find the boy, and where?"
Ashamed of his feelings, as such men usually are ashamed of any one redeeming point in a character saturated with evil, he had recovered his emotion, and was pulling leisurely down stream with the utmost composure.
"How and where?" he repeated. "Well, the story is simple enough, and there would be nothing extraordinary in it, but for what I have this moment learned, I give you my honour, for the first time. I happened to be at Lyons in one of the worst floods they had there for twenty years. The river rose incredibly during the night, and I was out at daybreak to—to see the fun, you know, and render any assistance I could afford. In the top room of a cottage, completely undermined and tottering, I saw a woman making signals of distress. Between us lay what looked like a canal: it may have been a street once for all I know, but a few defaced walls, five or six feet above the water-level, were alone left. Excepting the half-fallen cottage from which this woman waved her arms, not a tenement was standing for some score of yards on each side. I was already immersed to my waist, but I had to swim for it before I could reach the poor creature, who seemed out of her wits with terror. Treading water a few feet below, I implored her to plunge in at once, and trust to me. I thought she was coming, when 'Tiens!' she screamed out—I can hear her now—and threw, as I imagined, a linen bundle at my head. It fell beyond me, and sank immediately. I dived for it, and quickly too; but while I was under water the walls fell with a crash, and the whirl carried me several paces from where I had gone down, not, however, before I had succeeded in grasping the bundle, which I brought with me to the surface. As the rush subsided I found the stream encumbered with dust, beams, household furniture, but of the woman I could see nothing. Doubtless at the instant, perhaps from the very effort she made to consign me her burthen, its foundations gave way, and she fell among the ruins of her house, to be drowned without a chance of escape.
"The bundle contained a boy—living, unhurt, and very wet. I have taken care of him ever since. There he is. Do you think anything would tempt me to part from him now?"
The tears rose to Jin's eyes. "God bless you!" said she. "You saved my child!"
"I savedourchild," he answered; "and I am not going to give him up."
"Why are you here to-day?" she asked. "And where do you mean to put me ashore?"
She was meditating, even then, how she might escape him; if to reach Frank Vanguard, well and good; but, at any rate, to attain some refuge where she could be alone with her child.
He laughed, to cover a strong sense of embarrassment, even of shame.
"This is a strangerencontre," he said. "It must be Fate. You and I have never once met among all the amusements of a London season; and we meet now in the rain, on the lonely river, at a time when we ought most to forget and ignore each other's existence. Of all people in the world, I must be the last you would have wished to come across to-night."
"En effet," she muttered, "c'est un rencontre assez mal-à-propos."
Her coolness seemed contagious. He proceeded with asang-froidtoo complete to be perfectly natural:
"I came here to oblige my dearest friend, a man for whom I would make almost any sacrifice. That foreign prince at Windsor has taken a sudden fancy to inspect a regiment of Household Cavalry in their barracks. He is there at this moment, attended by every officer available for duty. My friend Captain Vanguard came to me in the greatest agitation. He had a rendezvous, he said, for this evening with a lady. It could not be put off. It was of the gravest importance. If he failed to appear, she was lost. He reposed entire confidence in my honour. He asked my advice. What was to be done? I considered. I remembered my obligations to him. I put myself in his place. In short, here I am,inhis place, pledged to conduct you safely to the Castle Hotel, there to wait till he is at leisure to join you, after which I am free to take whatever course I think due to my own character in this most awkward complication. I need not say that it never entered my head the Miss Ross I had heard of in society, or the lady whoseenlèvementI was to conduct for my friend, could be—well—could beyou! Madame, we have met in a manner that is creditable to neither of us—that is utterly ruinous to one. Can we not ignore this clumsycontretemps? Can we not agree to conceal it, and never meet again?"
Jin felt much reassured by this climax, though ready to sink with shame and vexation at the whole business.
"You know I am going to—tomarryCaptain Vanguard," she said, looking him straight in the face, though she hesitated a little in her sentence. "Will you promise to throw no impediment in my way—to keep your own counsel? In short, to let bygones be bygones, if, on my part, I consent to leave the past unscrutinised and unavenged?"
"It's a fair offer," he replied; "but I cannot give you up the boy."
"Then war to the knife!" she burst out recklessly. "I will lose husband, lover, home, character, everything—life itself—rather than part with Gustave for a day!"
Perhaps he knew what a desperate woman was. Perhaps—for, in his own way, he too loved little Gustave very dearly—he reflected that a child might safely be committed to a mother's tenderness, even were that mother the wildest and most wilful of her sex. In a couple of minutes his busy brain formed a thousand schemes, took in a thousand contingencies. Frank Vanguard was about to marry the woman who had once held a wife's place at his hearth. Well, to that he had no objection. He would at least be freed from an awkward claim, which might interfere with certain vague schemes of his own that had only recently begun to take a shape. In those schemes Frank's assistance, as a friend of Sir Henry Hallaton's, might be valuable. An intimacy with Vanguard, and the latter's good word, would vouch at least for his position and standing in society. Helen could no longer consider him a mere unknown adventurer. Some influence he might obtain over Frank through his wife, if, indeed, this wild, untoward marriage were to come off. His chief difficulty lay in that wife's inflexible and impracticable character; but surely he could bend her to his will through her affection for the boy.
"You cannot take him with you now," observed Picard, in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone. "Think of the travelling, and the weather, and the ridicule attached to the whole proceeding. You are not going to join your future husband, surely, with a ready-made child?"
"Iam!" she exclaimed, in high indignation. "Frank knows all about it, and takes us as we are!"
"Then I may explain everything," said he, pulling on faster, as if satisfied. "It makes it much easier for me as regards my duty to my friend."
She saw her false position, and felt she was now at his mercy.
"Let us make a bargain," she said. "I would not injureyou; I hope you would not injureme. I confess I have deceived Captain Vanguard in this matter. I told him about Gustave, but I said he was a sister's son. I cannot part with the child. I implore you to let me keep him! If you will consent so far, and abstain from crossing my path at this the turning-point of my whole life's happiness, I will swear to absolve you, formally and in writing, from any claim I may have on your property or your personal freedom; and if ever I can be of service to you, or advance your career in any way, so help my heaven, I will!"
Picard pondered. She had made the very proposal he would himself have broached; but he was too crafty to betray satisfaction, and, to do him justice, felt very loth to lose the child none the less that he had now discovered it was his own. Yet he could not but reflect that so long as Gustave remained with her by his consent, he had the mother at a disadvantage, and could drive her which way he would. Frank Vanguard's domestic happiness would thus be at his mercy, and it was strange if, with consummate knowledge of the world, and utter freedom from scruples, he could not turn such a power to good account.
"Agreed," said he, as they shot past the Brocas clump, and caught sight of Windsor Castle, looming gigantic through a leaden atmosphere of mist and rain. "Agreed. We are strangers again from henceforth as regards Vanguard—as regards the world. When we meet in society, that is to be clearly understood. But we arenotstrangers as regards our boy. Once a week you will write and tell me of his welfare. Once a month you will arrange that I shall see him, either with or without witnesses—I care not which. Stay! I have it. You shall tell Vanguard I am the father of your dead sister's child! Capital! I begin to think I have quite a genius for intrigue!"
"It is such a tissue of falsehood!" she groaned; "and Frank is so honest—so trustful!"
He ground his teeth; but forced himself to answer with unwavering accents and a smooth brow.
"I cannot enter into the sentiment of the thing. You know me of old. That is my ultimatum. Take it or leave it. I must run you ashore here, and I can show you the short cut to the hotel."
"Agreed!" she whispered, as he handed her along a quivering plank that let her reach the shore dry-shod. "Honour?"
"Even among thieves," he added, with a laugh; and thus was the contract ratified on both sides.
But short as was that by-way from the river to the Castle Hotel, heavily as the rain came down, enforcing the utmost attention to little Gustave—a perishable article indeed "to be kept dry, this side uppermost"—and fractious as was the deportment of that inexperienced traveller who, thoroughly bewildered with his situation, retained but the one idea of bewailing his lot aloud, while he held on manfully to the new toy, Jin found time to arrive at the noblest, the grandest, and the most important resolution she had ever made in her life.
It has always appeared to me there is one infallible criterion of that rare and mysterious affection which goes by the name of true love. "How manydollarsdo you like her?" asked a Yankee of the friend who expatiated on his devotion to a beloved object; thus gauging, as he considered, that devotion by a standard at once unerring, and not to be misconceived. The friend, "estimating" that he "liked her a thousand dollars," proved himself ten times more to be depended on than his rival, who only "liked her a hundred;" and, in my opinion, there was much knowledge of human nature in this Yankee's mode of valuing an attachment. If you own but five dollars in the world, and you "love your love five-dollars' worth," you are very much in love with her indeed, and have come triumphantly through that strongest test of sincerity which consists in self-sacrifice.
There must have been a spark of sacred fire under the lurid flame which Frank had kindled in her breast, or Miss Ross would have escaped a struggle that seemed to tear her heart in pieces during this short wet walk with all its accompanying annoyances—that made her unconscious of heavy rain, draggled garments, and unwelcome company—that, but for a mother's instinct, would have caused her to forget the necessity of sheltering her boy.
She stole a glance—it was well he did not observe it—at the hated form of the man by her side, and all the masculine part of her nature rebelled in the remembrance of its former thraldom. The thought of Frank Vanguard's open brow, of his loving eyes, his manly, kindly smile, and feminine instincts of tender generosity, rose strong within her as she turned scornfully from the suggestion that he, her own, who had chosen her so nobly, so chivalrously, should be at the mercy of such a man as Picard. "No!" thought Jin, walking on very fast, and hugging Gustave tighter than ever to her breast. "Better that I should never see him again, than fasten such a clog round his neck! Better that I should lose my one dear chance on earth, than ruin him, degrade him, drag him down to the level of such people as ourselves! I am not to be happy, it seems, in that way; but I have no right to complain since I have got my child. And yet, Frank, Frank, what will you think of me? You will never know the sacrifice I made for you! You will never know what it cost me! You will never know that I loved you better than my very life!"
While such thoughts were racking heart and brain, it was quite in accordance with Jin's character that her outward manner should be more than ordinarily composed and self-possessed. Arriving at the welcome shelter of the Castle Hotel, she desired a fire to be kindled immediately, and taking very little notice of Picard, busied herself with the child and its wet things. He was quiet enough now; but moaned at intervals as if uneasy in mind rather than in body; but it did not escape a mother's observation that the cheek he pressed against her own was hotter than usual, and though it made his dark eyes shine so beautifully, she would rather not have seen that brilliant colour so deep and strong. But it was a time for action, not for apprehension, and she turned to Picard with a quiet gesture of authority, such as she would have used towards a servant:
"Be so good as ring the bell," she said, "and tell them to get some bread and milk for this little boy. Order tea in an hour, and then go to the barracks and tell Captain Vanguard I am waiting here. I suppose I shall not see you again—good-bye."
He took the hand she held out, with something of admiration and respect.
"Well, youarea cool one!" he exclaimed. "I declare, you're cooler even thanme! In a matter like this, where there's interest in one scale and feeling in the other, I think I can trust you as I would myself!"
She only nodded, resuming the occupation, from which she had turned for a moment, of drying her child's wet socks at the lately-kindled fire. Picard caught the boy in his arms and smothered him with kisses; then replacing him in his mother's lap, took his departure without another word.
"Where's he going?" said Gustave, making a plunge, to land barefooted on the floor.
"He's going away, dear," answered Jin, much pre-occupied, and scorching the socks against the bars of the grate. "And we're going away too. Don't you want to go away from this nasty room?"
"I want to go to Moley," answered the boy, in a sing-song that frequent repetition on the river had rendered mechanical. "And I want my tupper," he added, brightening up at so happy an afterthought.
But he couldn't eat his supper when it came; and now that his things were dry, Miss Ross was glad to hush him off to rest in her arms.
When he was sound asleep she rang the bell gently. "I am going out for an hour," said she to the waiter. "If anybody calls, say that tea is ordered to be ready when I come back."
Then she walked away in the pouring rain, and beckoned a flyman from the stand.
"Drive to The Lilies," she said in a loud voice. "Shut those glasses, and make haste."
But as soon as they were clear of the town she reversed her sailing orders, and directed the man to proceed to Staines.
Arriving at the station, she found by a time-table that an up-train was due in five minutes. "What do you charge for waiting?" asked Miss Ross, as the driver let her out.
The man informed and overcharged her.
"Then wait here for the down-train in an hour," said she, paying him liberally. "If you don't get a fare you can then drive back to Windsor; but I shall desire the station-master to see that you remain here on the chance."
So, hushing Gustave, who, considering he seemed so sleepy, was strangely restless, Miss Ross took her place in the train, to be whirled to town with the comfortable reflection that, till her fly returned to Windsor, in two hours time, it would be impossible for Frank Vanguard to obtain any trace of her, while she herself would be in the labyrinth of London in forty minutes. She pulled the double veil from her pocket, and dropped it over her face, while she rocked the boy tenderly on her knee.
It was well for him to have this protection, for Gustave did not need another wetting, and his mother was crying as if her heart would break.
Thus it fell out that Frank, flying on the wings of love and a thorough-bred hack from his duty at the barracks to his affianced at the Castle Hotel, found nothing there but a black fire, an empty room, and a waiter's assurance that "the lady would be back in less than half-an-hour. She'd been gone longer nor that already."
Picard, of course, having fulfilled his mission, considered himself absolved from further attendance, and Frank had nothing more to do but walk up and down the cheerless apartment, fussing, fuming, wondering, and, I fear, at times unable to restrain an oath. The rain fell, the evening waned, the twilight turned to dark, and at length the waiter came in with candles, and asked "if he should bring in tea?"
Then Frank could stand it no longer, but rushed wildly out to make inquiries, invoking a hideous and totally undeserved fate on the waiter and the tea.
But Captain Vanguard was not the only person whom the inexplicable disappearance of Miss Ross overwhelmed with consternation and dismay. Picard, whom, of course, he consulted first, affected to treat the matter lightly, vowing there must have been some misconception of directions, some misunderstanding about the time, while in his heart he cursed the invincible wilfulness, the inflexible obstinacy that, he knew of old, would dare and endure anything rather than give way. He did his best, we may be sure, to help his friend, in hunting down the woman who had outwitted him; but the track of a fugitive is soon lost in London, and, with all his craft, Picard's best was done in vain. For Vanguard, he considered this disappointment the luckiest thing that could happen. For his own part, he never wanted to see Miss Ross again; but it was a sharp, keen pang, to think that every tie must now be cut off between himself and his boy. Even Jin would have pitied him, had she known how he suffered under this privation.
Poor old Mrs. Mole, too, nearly went distracted with alarm, anxiety, and remorse. After running in and out of her cottage all the evening, till, to use her own expression, "she hadn't a dry thread anywheres, an' the damp had fixed itself in her bones," she started off at dark to take counsel of the parish clerk, the turnpike-man, and a neighbouring cow-doctor; from none of whom, as may be supposed, did she gather much counsel or comfort. The clerk was "sure as the lad would be back afore mornin';" the turnpike-man opined "he'd runned away for aggravation; and if 'twas his'n,he'dsoon let him know not to trythemgames no more;" while the cow-doctor, not exactly sober, opined "he'd fell in o' the water, and drownded hisself, poor thing! and now the little varmint's gone to heaven, mayhap, and don't want to come back here no more."
The poor old woman, returning home from this futile expedition, to see Johnnie's little bed spread out, smooth and untumbled, as if waiting for the child, burst into a fit of crying, and sat all night through by the waning fire, with her apron thrown over her head.
On Uncle Joseph's feelings, when, calling at No. 40, he learned that Miss Ross had left her home without stating where she was going, or when she would return, I cannot take upon me to expatiate. Displeasure, perhaps, was the strongest sensation that affected him, but a fit of the gout arriving at this juncture to divert his attention from mental worry to bodily pain, he got through the ordeal altogether better than might have been expected.
Mrs. Lascelles, however, grew seriously alarmed and distressed, when the lapse of a second day brought no tidings of her inseparable companion and fast friend. She reproached herself bitterly for taking Jin to task about her conduct with Captain Vanguard. She contrasted her own comfortable home, all the luxuries that surrounded her, with a mental picture she chose to draw of Miss Ross, starving, in proud silence, on cold mutton, somewhere in a "second floor back," and felt painfully humiliated in the comparison. Then she wondered if it would be possible to track her by means of detectives, advertisements, "Pollaky's private inquiry office," or a heartrending appeal in the agony column of the "Times." Finally, woman-like, feeling she must have somebody to lean on, she bethought her of Goldthred, and wrote him a pretty little note, marked "Immediate," desiring him to come and see her without delay. Why not Sir Henry? Mrs. Lascelles asked herself that question more than once; and, while searching her heart for the answer, made a discovery which by no means increased her respect for her own stability in sentiment or discrimination of character.
"Sir Henry would laugh," she thought, "and murmur some cynical remarks, half good-natured, half contemptuous, on women's friendships and women's fancies. He would help me, I have no doubt, and very likely, if he could find Miss Ross, might make love to her on his own account, but he would not take the matter up as if it was life and death to him, like Mr. Goldthred. I do declare, if I asked that man to get me a China rose, he'd go to Chinaforit, rather than I should be disappointed. It must be very nice to believe in anybody as he believes in me. If I was only as good as he thinks I am! I wish I was! I wonder if I should be, supposing—supposing——Well, the first thing is to find out poor dear Jin, and implore her to come back, if I have to go for her on my bare knees!"
So her letter was written and posted, Mrs. Lascelles never doubting that the recipient would answer it in person ere three hours had elapsed. But when the clock struck again and again, when luncheon passed without his appearance, and the summer afternoon waned, bringing no Mr. Goldthred, Mrs. Lascelles could not decide whether she felt most hurt, vexed, angry, disappointed, or distressed.
No doubt, if he had known such a letter was coming, he would have ignored other business without scruple, and remained at home to receive it all day; but Goldthred had left his own house for the City directly after breakfast, having no intention of returning to dress for dinner, because he had cut out for himself some fifteen hours' work that he must get through in less than twelve.
Of this task, the hardest part, in his estimation, was the entertainment of a large and ratherloudparty he had invited to dine with him at Greenwich. From these friends he felt there would be no escape till eleven o'clock at night.
It will be remembered that Goldthred, in an hour of exuberant feeling, had tried to organise a pic-nic, which unfortunately fell through from the inability to attend of those he was most anxious to invite. In such cases, however, some responsibility is almost always incurred by the adhesion of a few less important guests, who must nevertheless be provided with food and amusement, though the others are unable to come.
For Goldthred, indeed, there was no difficulty in substituting with these makeweights a Greenwich dinner-party for a Maidenhead pic-nic. Stray men were soon recruited to fill up the necessary complement. Failing ladies of higher calibre, Mrs. Battersea and Kate Cremorne were persuaded to enliven the gathering with their beauty, their dresses, and their mirth. Picard, who was glad of any scheme to take him away from Frank Vanguard, in that officer's present state of perturbation, agreed to drive them all down on his coach; and thus it fell out that Goldthred, with his heart rather sore about Mrs. Lascelles, little dreaming a letter from her was at that moment lying on his table, found himself sitting, in a glare of sunshine, by an open window, overlooking the river, between Mrs. Battersea and Kate Cremorne.
Two or three hot waiters were bringing in as many dishes, with imposing covers, that would have served for a burlesque feast in a pantomime. Shawls, fans, hats, parasols, and overcoats, lay scattered about the room; men lounged and straddled in uncomfortabe attitudes, as not knowing how to dispose of their limbs and persons; a confusion of many tongues prevailed; and above the babble rose Mrs. Battersea's voice, clear, shrill, and dominant, like the steam-whistle of a railway through the puffing diapason of the engine and continuous roar of the advancing train.
"I vote against waiting," dictated that imperious lady, when the probability was hazarded of a fresh batch of guests arriving later. "Never wait dinner for anybody, particularly at Greenwich. Now, Mr. Goldthred, don't be shy, take the top of the table. I'll sit by you here. Kate, support him on the other side. Sir Henry, come next me. I won't have you by Kate. I know what you're going to say—you'd rather be close to me, and have her to look at. I'm so tired of those old compliments. I wish men would find out something new!Rangez vous, Messieurs! Le jeu est fait. Rien n'va plus!"
"Rouge gagne, et couleur," whispered Sir Henry Hallaton, with a glance at Mrs. Battersea's brilliant complexion and toilette to match, accompanied by a jerk of his elbow in his next neighbour's ribs. The latter, who had never been to Baden or Homburg, and whose French was that of "Stratford-atte-Bow," did not the least understand, so laughed heartily, and Sir Henry set him down in his own mind as "a pleasant young fellow, with a great idea of fun." The baronet had turned up at this gathering, as he generally did turn up wherever gaiety and absence of restraint were likely to prevail. Notwithstanding his better reason and his good resolutions, he was fast drifting down the stream of easy self-indulgence, which sooner or later carries a man so helplessly out to sea.
He had now struck up a close alliance with Picard, whereby that scheming adventurer hoped he might win his way into Helen's good graces, and so attain a certain standing-point in society, from which to push his fortunes with a daring energy that ought to command success. Sir Henry could not, or would not, see the false position in which he placed himself by affecting such terms of intimacy with such a man.
The dinner was good enough, and to Goldthred seemed almost interminable, although exerting himself to do his duty towards his guests; he reaped a reward by gradually sliding into amusement in their conversation, and before the devilled whitebait came on, began even to interest himself in their society. The latter sentiment was due to the good feeling of Miss Cremorne, who, guessing her host was somewhat overweighted by his company, and altogether depressed in spirits, exerted herself very successfully to cheer him up, and bring him, as she expressed it, "out of the downs."
Kate did not miscalculate her own powers; indeed few men could have long resisted her low pleasant tones, kindly glances, and soft, sympathising manner; for notwithstanding high spirits, high courage, high temper, and sometimes high words, she could be gentle on occasion, and when Katewasgentle, she became simply irresistible.
Neglecting a dandy on her right, who accepted that calamity with the utmost philosophy, she devoted herself to Goldthred, till they grew so confidential, that when dinner was over, he brought his coffee-cup and cigar to a little corner she had purposely reserved by her side on the balcony. She was so unused to shyness amongst men, there was something so different from all her previous experience of his sex in Goldthred's simple, honest nature, homely though courteous manner, and utter absence of pretension, that she positively felt interested in him, and Miss Cremorne was the last young person in the world to be ashamed of the sentiment, or afraid to exhibit it.
"Why don't you offer me a cigar?" said she, with a killing glance that would have finished any other man in the room on the spot.
"You shall have a dozen," he answered, pulling out a well-filled case in some confusion. "I really didn't know you smoked."
"No more I do," she replied, laughing, "except sometimes a very tiny cigarette. No; I don't want one now; but that's no reason you shouldn't offer it. Don't you know, Mr. Goldthred, that with ladies you should always take the initiative?"
"It's so difficult," he answered doubtfully, sliding into the corner by her side. "One is never sure how far one ought to go, and I have the greatest horror of being a bore."
"There you're wrong," decided Kate;—"womenlikebores. For the matter of that, so does everybody. Who are the people that get on in society? Bores. Who manage your clubs, your race-meetings, your amusements? Bores. Who make the best marriages, keep the best houses, and insist on having all the pleasant people to dance attendance on them? Bores—bores—bores! They are in the majority, they have the upper hand, and they mean to keep it. Shall I tell you why? A bore is always in earnest; the more in earnest the greater bore! Have I made out my case?"
"At least you have given me a claim to boreyou," said Goldthred laughing.
"Andwithoutbeing in earnest," she replied; "though I think you could be very much in earnest with some people. That's why I'm interested in you. That's why I'm going to give you a piece of advice. There is an English proverb I need not repeat about 'a faint heart.' There is a French one more to the purpose, I think in your case, 'il faut se faire valoir.' Now, you mustn't flirt with me any longer. You'll hear of it again if you do, and two of my admirers are looking as black as thunder already. Go and circulate among your guests, but don't forget my advice, and good luck to you!"
Il faut se faire valoir.The words rang in his ears all the evening—through the bustle of breaking up, the noisy departure, the chatter, and clatter, and hurry of the drive back to London—the very wheels seemed to tell it over and over in monotonous refrain, and ere Goldthred was set down at his own door, this sentence and its meaning seemed indelibly impressed on his brain.
Passing through the sitting-room, he found a letter in the well-known handwriting, lying on his table, and although a thrill went through every nerve in his body, I think even then Kate's advice was beginning to bear fruit. On reading the epistle, no doubt, there came a reaction, and his first impulse was to rush at once to No. 40, notwithstanding the hour, the occasion, and the proprieties; his second, to write an answer then and there, expressing love, worship, and devotion with an eloquence none the less burning from the convivialities of a Greenwich dinner-party; his third, and wisest, to let every thing stand over till to-morrow. And then, while he assisted her to the best of his abilities, to teach his scornful lady, quietly but distinctly, that he had learnt by heart this new maxim—Il faut se faire valoir!
So the London season drew towards its close, speeding merrily for some, dragging wearily for others, wearing on surely for all. It produced its usual crop of marriages, jiltings, slanders, and other embarrassments, but throughout the little circle of individuals, with whom we are concerned at present, the engrossing topic was still that mysterious disappearance of Miss Ross. No stone had been left unturned to find her out, and yet, so well did she take her measures, not a trace could be discovered. Two people, indeed, received tidings of the fugitive, but on each her letters impressed the hopelessness of a search, and the writer's determination to remain henceforth in complete seclusion. To Mrs. Mole, Miss Ross sent a long and consolatory epistle, containing earnest assurance of the boy's safety, and an account of his sayings and doings, not forgetting many messages to "his old Moley," which would have gladdened her heart exceedingly but for the one drawback, that the little fellow lay ill with a feverish cold, and did not get stronger so fast as could be wished. To Frank Vanguard she wrote a few short lines, telling him she was not fit to be his wife—the only good deed she had ever done in her life, she said, was that which seemed to him the most cruel, the most perfidious; and all endeavours to hunt her out would not only be sheer waste of time, but also considered so many insults and injuries directed against herself. Though it did not entirely suspend his exertions, Frank's zeal was somewhat damped by this communication, which he lost no time in imparting to the circle of friends whom Jin had left overwhelmed with anxiety on her behalf. Uncle Joseph's gout, converging favourably to the extremities, gave him little time to think of anybody but himself. It took him to Buxton, where the successive duties of drinking, driving, dressing, bathing, and dining at five o'clock, left not a moment of the day unoccupied, and where the constant contemplation of greater sufferers and more hopeless cripples afforded moral lessons every five minutes, tending to content and thankfulness that he was no worse.
Mrs. Lascelles did, indeed, get hold of some idle tale about Uncle Joseph's attentions to a fascinating widow, also gouty, and of a brisk flirtation carried on by the enamoured couple, each in a Bath chair. Her informant stated, with what degree of truth I cannot take upon me to affirm, that this promising affair only exploded from the indiscretion of Mr. Groves, who, possessing himself of the lady's hand in the warmth of his protestations, unadvisedly seized the gouty one, and inflicted such pain, that she called out loudly before the whole Parade. But as this piece of tittle-tattle was related to his kinswoman by a lady, who heard it from another lady, who had seen it in the letter of a third, I submit it is not evidence, neither has it anything to do with the present history. On Mrs. Lascelles herself the disappearance of so firm a friend and confederate produced an effect that rendered her more than usually open to sympathy, and eager for consolation. She felt less confidence than heretofore in herself and her own resources. Solitude was bad enough, and doubly dispiriting after the society of so lively a companion, but the sense of having been deceived with her eyes open was worse than all. Occasional twinges of remorse, too, tormented her sadly, reminding her that she had spoken out so freely to one whom she ought to have been very careful of offending as dependent on herself. Of course, too, she put off her trip to Brighton, and her London engagement-book, originally compiled by Jin, naturally got into confusion, when deprived of that lady's supervision. Altogether Mrs. Lascelles felt keenly the want of somebody to lean on, and caught herself more than once thinking of her loneliness and her staunch admirer, Mr. Goldthred, with tears in her eyes!
Notwithstanding his confidence in Kate Cremorne's knowledge of the world, I doubt whether this gentleman would have possessed strength of mind to follow her advice had he been a free agent at the present crisis; but it so happened that some trustee-business, with which he was mixed up, required his personal supervision at the other end of England, and Goldthred,nolens volens, was forced to absent himself temporarily from her vicinity, who made all the sunshine, and, it must be confessed, most of the shade, in his harmless, uneventful life. Nothing could be more opportune than this enforced separation for furtherance of the object on which, no doubt, his whole heart was fixed. Judicious contrast seems in all art the secret of effect. Surprise, which has been called the essence of wit, is also the prime element of interest. Gentleness from a rough, firmness from an effeminate nature, constancy where we had reason to expect change, but, above all, self-assertion from the slave too long incarcerated and kept down, rouse us, as it were, to a sense of our own shortsightedness in matters that most affect our welfare, and warn us that in the affections as in other affairs of humanity, there is no solid foundation, no security, no repose. Then we begin to value this bird, whose wings are grown, and spread already for a flight. Let her but soar away to disappear in the dim horizon, and all the gold of Arabia seems inadequate to buy her back into the cage once more. Alas! that the lightest feather from her wing should be more precious now we have lost her than was the whole of that gentle, winsome creature when she made her nest in our bosom, and pecked the sugar from our lips, and perched daily in saucy security on her owner's loving hand. Could Goldthred, closeted with lawyers and perusing deeds in a murky manufacturing town, have appeared suddenly before the woman who was never five minutes out of his mind, and asked in waking reality the question he was always asking in his dreams, I think he might have made himself secure, once for all, from the rivalry even of Sir Henry Hallaton.
That easy-going gentleman, notwithstanding his philosophy, his good humour, and the elastic nature of his conscience, was at present exceedingly pre-occupied and ill at ease. One may say that he had been dipped over head in the infernal river, as was Achilles; but like the son of Peleus, and every other hero I ever heard of, he retained his one vulnerable point, though it did not lie at his heel. To hit Sir Henry in a vital place it was necessary to aim at Helen. Alas! that the bow had not been drawn at random, nor had the arrow missed its mark!
She was composed as usual, and went about her daily occupations with the same calm manner, the same gentle methodical firmness as before, but to her father's loving eye there was something wanting, something amiss. As a practised musician detects the flat tones of an instrument not strung to concert-pitch, so the slightest discord jars on the senses of that true affection which renders all the perceptions painfully discerning and acute.
"You are not well, my child," said Sir Henry, one hot summer's morning soon after the mysterious disappearance of Miss Ross, which Helen connected instinctively with Captain Vanguard, though too proud to inquire how far that injudicious young officer was concerned in such a catastrophe. "You are not well, dear, and you hide it for fear of making your old father uncomfortable. You don't go out enough, or it's this cursed weather, or something. We must amuse you, my darling. You're getting hipped. I'm the same myself sometimes. Did you go to the Opera last night after all?"
"No, papa," was the answer; "I was too tired, and went to bed instead."
"Did you drive out yesterday? I met your aunt coming here to take you."
"No, papa—it was so hot."
"What are you going to do to-day?"
"Nothing, papa. I think——"
"Helen, Helen, this will never do," burst out Sir Henry, smoothing her hair with a caress habitual to him from her childhood, a caress that brought the tears into her large soft eyes. "You're moped, you're miserable, and I feel as if it was my fault for being papa instead of mamma. Itmustbe dull for you, boxed up here, dependent on your aunt to get over the threshold, and she always was the most unpunctual person in the world except myself. Why don't you tellmewhen you want to go anywhere? I'd give up every engagement, as you know. Let's do something after luncheon. The Botanical Gardens—the Ancient Masters—even the South Kensington Museum! There, I'm game for anything you like!"
She could not help smiling, but it was a sad, wan smile, while she replied,
"You're very good, dear, and I'm a spoiled girl, I know; but, indeed, I'd rather stay at home, and so I'm sure would you."
"What have you settled about the concert to-morrow?" asked her father.
"Sent an excuse."
He pondered for a moment, and an expression of considerable annoyance crossed his face.
"I must get you out of town, Helen," said he. "The worst of it is I can't leave London myself just now—at least, for more than a day. If I could we'd go abroad. Paris is empty and hot; but we might get into Normandy, have a week at Trouville, and come back by Dieppe. Would you likethat?"
"No, papa," she answered decidedly; but added, with hesitation, "if you could do without me, what I should like best would be to—to go back to Blackgrove at once."
"MydearHelen!" was all his astonishment allowed him to articulate. That a daughter of his should prefer the country to London, during the height of the season, seemed simply inexplicable.
"Mydearpapa!" repeated Helen, with another of those sad smiles. "I'll go to-morrow if you don't want me here. I wish I'd never come to London at all. The girls are so neglected when I'm away, and now we've no governess they get into all sorts of wild ways. I don't think they ought to be left so entirely to the servants. Lily writes me that she is up at five every morning to milk the cows. There's no harm in milking cows, but I think she would be better in bed, or learning her lessons. Indeed, papa, I should be much happier at Blackgrove than here. What do you think?"
Whatdidhe think? To a deeper mind than his it might have suggested itself that this yearning after home denoted some grievous injury, like that of a wounded animal making for its lair to lie down and die; but he took altogether a more practical and less romantic view of the case, attributing Helen's indisposition to stomach rather than heart.
"If youreallywish it," said he. "Perhaps you are right. Early hours, in country air, will soon set you up again, and, of course, it's a great thing for the girls to have you with them. What a trouble they are, to be sure!"
Sir Henry always called his eldest "my daughter," his other female children "the girls," and his boy "the young one," as if the latter were a two-year-old, just about to be broke.
"Then I may go to-morrow?" exclaimed Helen, almost joyfully.
"Certainly, my dear," was the answer. "I'll take you down myself, sleep at Blackgrove, and come back next day by an afternoon train. I wish I could stay with you, but I can't."
"Of course it would be very nice forme," responded Miss Helen dutifully. "But you're not so much wanted, you know, when I'm there. While we're both away, things do get dreadfully 'to wrongs.' Oh! papa, I should like to go back and never leave Blackgrove again!"
With this domestic sentiment, much to his distress, astonishment, and even alarm, she hid her face in his breast, and began to cry heartily, emerging in a minute or so with a poor pretence of laughter, and an excuse that the hot weather was too much for her; as if a grown woman, with sound common sense and unusual self-command, ever cried because she was too hot. Sir Henry felt extremely uneasy. His varied experience of her sex had no doubt accustomed him to these ebullitions, but he had got into the habit of considering Helen superior to the rest, and it discomfited him sadly to find that she, too, could be weak, nervous, and, as he firmly believed, unhappy without a cause. He tried hard to persuade her to go to the French play that night, but Helen, wisely enough in my opinion considering the temperature, resisted firmly, and retired at ten o'clock.
Probably never in his life, except in a case of illness, had her father gone to bed before midnight. Lighting a cigar, he walked into the street and reflected which of his haunts he should visit to get rid of a couple of hours and shake off this feeling of anxiety and depression that had come over him about his daughter.
He was too pre-occupied for whist, and, truth to tell, even in his brightest moments, looked on that noble pastime as a study rather than a recreation. So he sauntered to St. James's Street, and in one club after another sought the distraction he required in vain. There were men enough in each, but all seemed engrossed with their own interests, their own affairs; greeting him, indeed, with the utmost courtesy, but volunteering no confidences, and inviting none in return. Most of them were younger than himself, and of his few contemporaries, one was lame from gout, another crippled with rheumatism, while a third volunteered the disheartening opinion that "it was time for fellows ofourstanding, my boy, to be in bed," rolling off while he thus delivered himself, with a hoarse, asthmatic and unfeeling laugh. Sir Henry emerged on the pavement and shook his head.
"It's no use disguising it," he confided to his cigar, "I conclude I'm getting old; and the young ones are much more civil than they used to be, but not half so cordial. I liked them best when they slapped one on the back, asked one for a weed, and took all sorts of liberties. I suppose I must be an old fellow now, because nobody ever calls me one. It's 'Thank you, Sir Henry'—'With your permission, Sir Henry'—'Don't sit in the draught, Sir Henry;' and two years ago, they began to put me in the middle of the line partridge shooting, and to offer me a pony when the others walked the stubbles in the afternoon. I'm afraid I shall never hear a fellow say, 'Now then, Hal! Look alive, my boy!' again. If it's really come, there's no use in fighting against it. I've a great mind to give the whole thing up, and subside at once into an old fogie. I would, if it wasn't for Mrs. Lascelles—there's something taking about that woman, every now and then, she might almost make a fool of me still—I like her so the days she doesn't likeme—the days she does, I don't care about her; so after all, what's the use? But she's fond of Helen. So was that other little black-eyed devil, Miss Ross. I wonder what has become her; I wish I could find out. Everybody's fond of Helen. Ah! none of them are likeher. If I could but see her thoroughly well and in good spirits again, I shouldn't care for these cursed money matters nor anything else. This place seems full enough. May as well go in."
Thus ruminating on his daughter, Sir Henry's feet had carried him almost unconsciously to the door of Pratt's, which popular resort was indeed crowded to overflowing, so that several members had established a merry and somewhat noisy conclave in the street.
Amongst these Picard was holding forth loudly, dispensing as usual his excellent cigars with the utmost liberality. Catching sight of Sir Henry, he detached himself from the circle, and taking the baronet by the arm, walked him back a few steps into St. James's Street.
"I came here on purpose to find you," said he, "and I wondered you were so late. I've good news! glorious news! Our shares are down again! I was in the City all day!"
Sir Henry swore, not loud but deep.
"Good news!" he answered. "I wonder what you'd callbad!"
"Goodnews," repeated Picard. "Buy more—go into it up to your neck. I'm dipped over-head. Listen, Sir Henry, this is a real good thing—there's not another man in London I would 'put on' but yourself; I'd private information from the other side last week. When the mail comes in, these Colorados will run up fifty, ay, seventy per cent.! Don't waste a moment, but grab all you can. It will setmeon my legs, and I won't losemyfooting again in a hurry, not if I know it! Shall you be at home to-morrow about luncheon time?"
"To-morrow?" said the other absently. "Not to-morrow. Must be at Blackgrove to-morrow—the next day certainly."
"Miss Hallaton is quite well, I hope?" continued Picard, lifting his hat as if she were actually present.
"Quite well, thank you," answered Sir Henry, wishing him "good night;" but he was engrossed with his Colorados, and did not think of telling Picard that his daughter was going out of town.
The season, I have said, was wearing on, and, with waning summer, the heat increased to an intensity almost tropical. There are few parts of Europe where the atmosphere can be more suffocating than in London during dog-days, although while everybody goes about gasping, fainting, bewailing the temperature, nobody seems to dream of putting off ball, drum, dinner, or other festive gathering to a cooler date.
The July sun glared pitilessly down on square, street, and crescent, to be refracted with tenfold power from walls and pavements; the Park was a burnished waste, Mayfair an oven, and Belgravia a furnace. Cabmen plied in their shirt-sleeves, foot passengers put up their umbrellas, the water-carts disappeared altogether, and supply for once seemed inadequate to demand in the matter of beer.
If people drooped and languished in spacious drawing-rooms with sun-blinds, thorough draughts, fans, and all other appliances against the heat, what must that numerous class of our fellow-citizens have felt who live in stifling lodgings, stewing parlours over the kitchen and almost in the street, retired two-pair backs with eighteen inches of window, dusty carpets, heavy bed-furniture, and utter hopelessness of ventilation unaccompanied by showers of soot?
It is two o'clock in the day, the dinner-beer has been taken in and consumed, bare-armed artizans with short black pipes smoked out, are leaning and loitering at door-steps and window-ledge, doubtful whether to make holiday for the rest of the afternoon. A distant hum of children, like the drone of insects in a flower-garden, pervades the quarter; for the energy of childhood is irrepressible by atmospheric influences, but their hard-worked mothers are snatching a brief repose, and for a space, even their tongues are still. An omnibus has stopped at the corner public-house while the horses are watered, a costermonger is fast asleep in his barrow by the roadside, and a drowsy, dreary torpor seems to pervade one of those narrow, tortuous streets that wind in an easterly direction from the Marlborough Road, S.W.
In the second floor of a shabby little house, a window stands as wide open as it can be propped by a bit of wood, and from that window, with a weary sigh, speaking volumes of patience, suffering, and sorrow, turns Miss Ross, to take her seat once more by the side of a low sofa-bed, and watch a toss of black curls, a little wan, pinched face, with a dull aching pain about her heart, that grows and strengthens as hope fades, and dies out, day by day. Poor Jin's own face has turned very white and thin too. Her features are sharpened, and the black eyes seem large, out of all proportion; yet never in the days gone by, when they flashed with coquetry, or sparkled with wit, did they possess so rare a charm, as the soft and tender lustre that shines in them now.
"It's cooler, dear, isn't it?" said she, pushing those dark curls off the pale little brow. "And mamma wasn't going to leave her pet—was she? Did Gustave think mamma could fly out at the window?" She tried to speak lightly, anything to woo a smile from the sick child, but he only replied by turning pettishly away, and burrowing his face in the pillow, while he murmured, "Not leave Johnnie—Johnnie wants his shoes—wants to be dressed and taken away." As he got weaker, he resisted and entirely repudiated the name of Gustave, and although he had nearly forgotten Mrs. Mole, would only acknowledge his own identity as the "Johnnie" who had been so christened in the cottage by the river-side.
The boy caught cold on that eventful evening when Miss Ross carried him off, and had never regained strength. The cold turned to low fever, and hour by hour, in those long broiling summer's days, he seemed to get gradually but surely weaker. He was fractious, though naturally sweet-tempered, restless without being in pain; there seemed no tangible organic malady, such as could be watched, fought against, overcome, but he drooped like a flower, and so drooping, well-nigh broke his mother's heart.
She never forgave herself, that the child had been exposed to rain on the evening she took him away. Arriving in London she at once sought this obscure locality, renting, indeed, the best rooms in the house, and sparing no expense for the comfort and convenience of her boy. By degrees, in addition to fears for his life, she had to face the anxiety of a waning purse, and the terrible consideration of what was to become of them both when her money was gone. The most skilful doctor in the neighbourhood was called in at a guinea a visit; very often he wouldn't take his guinea; very often there would have been none forthcoming, had he wanted it. For a time, they lived on Jin's wardrobe, her watch, her jewels, by degrees the sources of supply began to fail. Then she moved herself and her boy up-stairs. First, she had the whole second floor, then she gave up the other room, and, inhabiting one small apartment with her sick child, devoted to him her time, her energies, her whole existence, as she often thought, with sad, cold forebodings, in vain.
She starved, she pinched, she denied herself every luxury, almost every necessary, of life; but she never regretted what she had done, and she never lost courage.
"If Gustave gets well," she used to think, "I can work for him and me as I did before. If I can only struggle on till then, how happy I shall be. I shall have saved my boy. How could he but have been ruined under the care of that bad man? I shall have saved myself, for it is this poor patient angel who makes me good. And Frank, dear Frank! I shall have savedyou!—you whom I loved better than myself! Ah! I have done well by you, and you will never know it.Qu'est que ça fait?It is finished, and there's an end of it. If my darling dies, what signifies anything? I shall soon die too! They will surely let me keep him in the next world. I who have had so little of him in this!"
Like the rest of us, she made for herself a future, all the brighter, no doubt, that the present seemed so cheerless and forlorn.
If the boy could only get well before her money was spent, if there was only enough left to defray the journey, she would carry him off with her to sunny France, there to live the old life, amongst the old scenes in the old familiar way.
Her voice was still fresh, clear, and more powerful than ever; she need not surely seek long for an engagement, and under a false name, in those great southern towns, how was she to be traced or identified? She might defy Picard, she might even baffle the inquiries of Frank Vanguard, if, indeed, he loved her well enough to try and seek her out. The tears would come thick to her eyes while she pictured his sorrow and anxiety on her behalf, but she never wavered in her determination of keeping up an eternal barrier between them, and of devoting her whole existence henceforth to her child. Had she known how Frank accepted her loss with an uncomplaining resignation, very far short of despair, waking up, as it were, from a dream, with a feeling that, after all, things might have been worse, it is possible she would have shown less resolution; but believinghimto be inconsolable, she felt herself impracticable and pitiless as adamant. Who shall say how far such dreams helped her to bear the nursing, the watching, the fatigue, the heavy anxious days, the long, weary hours of those sultry, sleepless nights?
Except to go for medicine, for arrowroot, or to summon the doctor on some fresh alarm, Jin never stirred across the threshold, nor drew a breath of fresher air than could be obtained at the window of the sick-chamber.
Amongst other womanly trinkets and trifles, she had a large fan left, of small money value, but admirably adapted to its purpose. Under the judicious application of this instrument, the child gradually became cooler and less feverish. At length, with a few drowsy murmurs, in which "Mamma" and "Moley" were mixed up unintelligibly, the empty phial that had served him for a toy dropped from his poor little wasted fingers, and he went to sleep. Then Jin, bethinking her that the phial must be refilled according to medical directions, sought out the prescription, caught up her bonnet and parasol, drew on her last pair of gloves, and stole down-stairs, leaving the door ajar, while impressing on the maid-of-all-work that she must peep in every five minutes to see if the little invalid were still asleep; she herself would not be gone a quarter of an hour.
I don't care how hard a woman is worked, I never knew one yet but could make time to look after a child. From the little girl of three, who carries a doll as big as herself, to the aged dame of threescore, who has been dandling children and children's children all her life, not one of the sex but handles an infant with instinctive dexterity, such as no amount of mere practice could insure. Even the sourest old maid may be intrusted with a baby; nor is there the slightest fear that she will crease it, drop it, or carry it upside down. The poor drudge who answered Jin's summons with grimy hands and unwashed face, would have liked nothing better than to tend Gustave morning, noon, and night. She only hoped Miss Ross would stay out the whole afternoon.
It was a relief to emerge from the narrow street, and, after five minutes' walk, to cross the Fulham Road. Even that suburban thoroughfare seemed to glitter with life and motion after the gloomy sick-room, and the dull monotony on which its single window looked out. But Jin had no time to spare, and was speedily in the chemist's shop waiting for her prescription to be made up.
The young man behind the counter, clean, curly, smug, and white-handed, was affable and considerate. "Take a seat, miss," said he, pointing to a high cane chair. "You seem fatigued like, and faint. The weather, miss, is uncommon hot this season. Very trying to some constitutions. Directly, miss. Certainly. Quite a simple prescription. Shall be made up in five minutes. Address on the phial, I see. Allow me to send it for you."
Poor Jin, faint and weak from watching and exhaustion, protested feebly against this arrangement; glad to sit down, nevertheless, for her knees knocked together, and she trembled from top to toe.
A dreadful misgiving came across her of what was to be done if she should fall ill too; but Jin was not a nervous person, and felt almost capable of keeping off bodily disorder by a strong effort of the will.
In the mean time, the young man, hiding his curly head first in one drawer, then in another, brayed certain mysterious compounds in a mortar, and, dissolving the nauseous mixture, poured it into a fresh bottle, packing the whole carefully in paper, with string and sealing-wax, not handing it to Miss Ross till, in spite of her impatience, he had copied, in fair and legible writing, the whole label attached to the discarded vessel. This last bore no name, but on it were minute directions as to how the draught must be taken, and the address at which it was to be left.
There was less to pay than she expected; but she had not intended to be absent from her boy so long, and, seizing the packet with impatience, dashed out of the shop to hurry home.
There was no shady side of the street. An afternoon sun beat fiercely on her raven hair, not in the least protected by the wisp of lace, with a leaf in it, that constituted her bonnet. She had slept but little in the last forty-eight hours, and eaten less. Crossing the Fulham Road, everything seemed to turn round with her; the roar, as of a thousand carriages, surged in her ears. She thought she was being run over, and, making an effort to reach the kerbstone, staggered, tripped, and fell.
A very handsome horse, with too much plating on his harness, was pulled hard on his haunches; a brougham, painted and varnished like a new toy, stood still with a jerk, and a woman's voice from the interior exclaimed, in high accents of condemnation and command:
"Why don't you stop, you infernal idiot? You've knocked the woman down, and now you want to drive over her!"
Kate Cremorne habitually jumped at conclusions. On the present occasion she jumped also out of her carriage, with exceeding promptitude, and lifted Miss Ross off the ground almost before the bystanders knew the latter had fallen. Glancing at the packet still clutched tightly in her hand, she summoned a benevolent drayman to the rescue, and, with the assistance of that worthy, who testified unqualified approval of the whole proceeding, and called both ladies "pretty dears" more than once during its performance, placed the poor drooping sufferer in the carriage, and directed her groom to drive without delay—"like smoke," I am afraid, was the expression she used—to the address she had so quickly mastered. Then, and not till then, she produced smelling-bottle, fan, and laced handkerchief to restore her charge to consciousness.
In Brompton, you see, as in Samaria of old, are to be found those who bear in mind the great parable that has made the name of Samaritan synonymous with the most Christian-like of all Christian virtues.
Had Kate "passed on, on the other side," she would not have spoiled an extremely expensive morning-dress; she would not have been too late for one of the fastest and liveliest of Richmond dinner-parties; she would not have missed the man of all others in London who most wished to meether. But to none of these did she give a thought nor a sigh while she bathed Jin's pale temples with eau-de-cologne, and rested the dark drooping head on her snowy bosom, pressing it to her own warm, wilful, reckless, restless heart.
It was not till they reached her remote and shabby refuge, that Miss Ross came thoroughly to herself; but even then she looked so white and ill, that Kate would not hear of leaving her, but insisted on helping her up-stairs, and taking command at once as superintendent, head-nurse, in short, captain-general of the whole establishment.
Living, so to speak, on the border-land between good and bad society, Kate Cremorne knew Miss Ross perfectly well by sight, though Miss Ross did not know Kate Cremorne. The shrewd, practical, world-experienced girl saw the whole affair at a glance. Through her keen intellect flashed a history of perfidy, sorrow, penury, a scrape, a scandal, a reduced lady, and a half-acted romance. She had sufficient delicacy to conceal her recognition of Miss Ross; but it was Kate's nature to take the lead in whatever position she was placed, and it would not have been her had she failed to make everything airy and comfortable about the sufferer in ten minutes.