Mrs. Powler and Mrs. Jupp were by no means the only persons in Beachborough to whom Mrs. Stothard's position in the household at the Tower afforded subject-matter for gossip. It may be safely asserted that there never was a tea-drinking, followed--as was usually the case among the better classes in that hospitable neighbourhood--by a consumption of alcohol "hot with," at which Mrs. Stothard was not served up as a toothsome morsel, and forthwith torn into shreds, if not by the teeth, at least by the tongues of the assembled company. To those simple minds, all social standing was fixed and unalterable--one must either be mistress or servant; the lines of demarcation were strongly defined; they knew of no softening gradations; and they could not understand Mrs. Stothard. "She hev' her dinner by herself, and her own teapot allays brought to her own room--leastways, 'cept when she do fetch it herself, Miss Annette bein' sleepy or out of sorts, and not likin' to be disturbed by the servants." Such was the report which Nancy Wickstead, who had gone to live as nursemaid up at the Tower soon after the arrival of the family, brought down about this redoubtable woman. The villagers only knew her by report, by crumbs and fragments of rumours dropped by Nancy Wickstead when she came down among her old familiars for an "evening out," or by the tradesmen who called at the house, and who drew largely on their own imagination for the stories which they told. They had only caught fleeting glimpses of Mrs. Stothard as she passed along the corridor or crossed from room to room, but even those cursory glances entitled them to swagger before their fellow-villagers who had never seen her at all--never. Many of them tried to think they had, and after renewed descriptions of her firmly believed that they had; but it was all an exercitation of their imagination, for they never went to the Tower, and Mrs. Stothard never left it--never, under any pretence. In the two years during which the family had resided at the Tower, Mrs. Stothard had never passed through the entrance-gate. She took exercise sometimes in the grounds; even that but rarely; but she never left them. Young Dobbs, the grocer, a bright spirit, once took it into his head to chaff about her with the servants, to ask who was the "female hermit," and what duties she performed in the house; a flight of fancy not very humorous in itself, and unfortunate in its result. The next day Mrs. Derinzy called on Dobbs senior, asked him for his bill, paid it, and removed the family custom to Sandwith of Bedminster.
Once seen, a woman not easily to be forgotten, from her physical appearance. About eight-and-forty years of age, tall and very strongly built, with broad shoulders and big wrists, knuckles both of wrists and hands very prominent, great frontal development, but low forehead, a penthouse for deep-set gray eyes. Light hair, thin, dull, and colourless; thin and colourless cheeks; thin lips, closing tightly over rows of small, gleaming dog's-teeth; big, square, massive jaw; cold, taciturn, and watchful, with eyes and ears of wonderful quickness, wits always ready, hands always active and strong. She came to Mrs. Derinzy on Dr. Wainwright's recommendation as "exactly the person to suit her," and she fulfilled her mission most exactly. What that mission was we shall learn; what her previous career had been we will state.
She was the only daughter of one Robert Hall, a verger of Canterbury Cathedral, a clever, drunken dog, whose vergership was in constant peril, but who contrived to hoodwink the cathedral dignitaries as a general rule, and who on special occasions of outbreak invariably found some influential friend to plead his cause. He was a bookbinder as well as a verger, and in his trade showed not merely skilful manipulation, but rare taste, taste which was apparently inherited by his daughter Martha, who, at seventeen years of age, had produced some illuminated work which was pronounced by thecognoscentiin such matters to be very superior indeed. The cathedral dignitaries patronised Martha Hall's illuminations, and displayed them in their drawing-rooms at those pleasant evening gatherings, so decorous and so dull, and where the bearers of the sword mingle with the wearers of the gown, yawn away a couple of hours in looking over photograph-albums and listening to sonatas, and after a sandwich and a glass of sherry, lounge away to begin the night with devilled biscuits, billiards, and brandy-and-soda-water. The military, to whom these illuminations were thus introduced, thought it would be the "correct thing" to buy some of them; they would look "deuced well" in their rooms; so that the front parlour of the verger's little house in the precincts was speedily re-echoing to clanking sabres and jingling spurs, the owners of which were none the less ready to come again because the originator and vendor of the wares was a "doosid nice girl, don't you know?--not exactly pretty, but something doosid nice about her!" Martha Hall's handiwork was seen everywhere in barracks, and "many a holy text around she strewed," and had them hung up in subalterns' rooms between portraits of Mdlle. Joliejambe and the Blisworth Bruiser.
The sabres clanked so often and the spurs jingled so much in the verger's front parlour, that the neighbours--instigated, perhaps, less by their friendly feelings and their virtue than their jealousy--thought it time to speak to Robert Hall about it, and to ask him if he knew what he was doing, and what seed he was sowing, to be reaped in shame and disgrace. Wybrow, the mourning jeweller--who made very tasty little designs of yews and willows out of dead people's hair--declared that his shop was never so full as his neighbour's; but then either the officers had no dead relations, or did not care for such melancholysouvenirs. Heelball, who had compiled a neat little handbook of the cathedral, and who furnished anyone who wanted them with "rubbings" of the crusaders' tombs, declared that the "milingtary" never patronised him; "perhaps," he added, "because I ain't young and pretty," therein decidedly speaking the truth, as he was sixty and deformed. Stothard, the tombstone sculptor, said nothing. He was supposed to be madly in love with Martha Hall, and it was noticed that when the young officers went clanking by his yard he took up his heaviest mallet and punished the stone under treatment fearfully. The hints and remonstrances had but little effect on Robert Hall. Not that he was careless about his daughter. "Happy-go-lucky" in other matters, he would have resented deeply any slight or insult offered to her. But he knew her better than anyone else, knew her passionless, calculating, ambitious nature, and had every confidence in it.
That confidence was not misplaced. Martha was polite to all who visited her as customers; talked and joked with them within bounds, displayed her handiwork, and sold it to the best advantage; taking care always to have ready money before she parted with it ("Can't think how she does it, 'pon my soul I can't!" was the cry in barracks. "Screwed two quid out of me for this d--d thing, down on the nail, by Jove! First thing I've had in the place that hasn't been chalked up, give you my word!") but never allowed any approach to undue familiarity. She was declared by her military customers to be "capital fun;" but it was perfectly understood amongst them that she "wouldn't stand any nonsense." So the shop was filled, and her trade throve, and her enemies and neighbours, however much they might hint and whisper in her detraction, had nothing tangible to narrate against her.
While Martha Hall's popularity was at its fullest height, there came to the depot of the hussar regiment--to which he had just been gazetted as cornet--a young gentleman of prepossessing appearance, pleasant manners, good position, and apparently plenty of money. He was well received by his brother officers, and after being introduced to the various delights which Canterbury affords, he was in due course taken to Martha Hall's shop, and presented to the young lady therein presiding. It was evident to his companions that the susceptibilities of their new comrade were very keenly aroused at the sight of Miss Hall; and it was no less palpable to Miss Hall herself. She laughingly told her father that night that she had made a fresh conquest; and her father grinned, advised her to set to work on some new texts, with which she could "stick" the new-comer, and repeated his never-failing assertion of thorough confidence in her.
The new-comer, whose name was Derinzy, quickly showed that he was not merely influenced by first impressions. He visited the shop constantly, he bought all the illuminations that Martha Hall could produce; and within a very short time he not merely fell violently in love with her, but told her so; and told her that if she would accept him, he would go to her father, and propose to marry her. To such a suggestion from any other of the score of officers in the habit of frequenting the shop, Martha Hall would have replied by a laugh, or, had it been pressed, by a declaration that she was flattered by the compliment, but that she knew the difference between their stations in life was an insuperable barrier, &c. But she said nothing of this kind to Alexis Derinzy. Why? Because she was in love with him. Perhaps her natural keenness of perception had enabled her to judge between the "spooniness" springing from a desire to bridge-overennui, and to fill up the wearisome hours of a garrison life, which prompted the advances of her other admirers, and the unmistakable passion which this boy betrayed. Perhaps she admired his fair, picturesque face, and well-cut features, and slight form in contradistinction to the more robust and athletic proportions of the other youth then resident in barracks. Perhaps the rumours of the wealth of the Derinzys had reached those calm cloisters, and Martha might have thought that the fact that they were themselves in trade might induce them to overlook what to the scion of any noble house would be an undoubtedmésalliance. No one knew, for Martha, reticent in everything, was scarcely likely to gossip of her love-affairs; but the fact remained the same, and she loved him. She told him as much, at the same moment that she suggested that the consideration of the marriage question should be deferred for a few months, until he was of age. Mr. Derinzy agreed to this, as he would have agreed to anything his heart's charmer proposed, but stipulated that Martha should consider herself as engaged to him, and that the flirtations with "the other fellows" should be at once discontinued. Martha consented, and acted up both to the spirit and the letter of the agreement; but flirtation with Martha Hall had become such a habit with the officers quartered at Canterbury that it could not be given up all of a sudden; no matter how little the maiden might respond, the gallant youths still frequented the shop, and still paid their court in their usual clumsy but unmistakably marked manner. Alexis Derinzy, worried at this, and also feeling it uncommonly hard that he should not be able to boast of having secured the heart and the proximate chance of the hand of the most sought-after girl in Canterbury, mentioned his engagement, in the strictest confidence, to three or four of his brother officers, who, under the same seal, mentioned it to three or four more. Thus it happened that in a few days the story came to the ears of the adjutant of the depôt, who was a great friend of the Derinzy family, and at whose instigation it was that Alexis had been placed in the army.
Captain Branscombe was still a young man, but he had had ripe experience of life, and he knew that it would be as truly useless, under the circumstances, to reason with the love-stricken cornet, as to make application anywhere but to the highest domestic authorities. To these, therefore, he represented the state of affairs--the result of his representation being that Mr. Paul Derinzy, the elder brother of the cornet, came down to Canterbury by the coach the next day, and straightway sought an interview with the Dean. Then Robert Hall was summoned to the diaconal presence, out of which he came swearing strange oaths, and looking very flushed and fierce. Later in the afternoon he was waited upon at his own house in the precincts by Mr. Paul Derinzy, who had a very stormy ten minutes with Martha, and then made his way to the barracks. Mr. Paul Derinzy remained in Canterbury for two days, during every hour of which, save those which he passed in bed, he was actively employed. The results of the mission did credit to his diplomatic talents. Alexis Derinzy sent in an application for sick leave, which being promptly granted, he quitted Canterbury without seeing Martha Hall, though he tried hard to do so; and did not rejoin until the regiment, safely arrived from India, was quartered at Hounslow. When Mr. Paul Derinzy was staying in Canterbury, it had been noticed by the neighbours that he had called once or twice on Stothard the stonemason, who has already been described as having been madly in love with Martha Hall; and Stothard had returned the visit at Paul's hotel. In the course of a few weeks after the "London gentleman's" departure, Stothard announced that he had inherited a legacy of a couple of hundred pounds from an old aunt. No one had ever heard any previous mention of this relative, nor did Stothard enter into any particulars whatever; he did not go to her funeral, and the only mourning he assumed was a crape band to his Sunday beaver. But there was no mistake about the two hundred pounds; that sum was paid in to his credit at the County Bank by their London agent, and he took the pass-book up with him when he went to Robert Hall's to propose for Martha. Folks said he was a fool for his pains; the kindest remarked that she would never stoop to him; the unkindest expressed their contempt for anybody as could take anybody else's leaving. But despite of both, Martha Hall accepted Stothard the stonemason, and they were married.
You must not think that all this little drama had been enacted without its due effect on one of the principal performers. You must not think that Martha Hall had lost Alexis Derinzy without fierce heartburning and deep regret, and intense hatred for those who robbed her of him. She knew that it was not the boy's own fault, she guessed what kind of pressure had been brought to bear upon him; but she thought he ought to have made a better fight of it. She had loved him, and if he had only been true to her and to their joint cause, they might have been triumphant. In a few months he would have been of age, and then he could have gone up and seen his mother--he was always her favourite--and she would have persuaded his father, and all would have been straight. He always said he hated his brother Paul--how, then, had he suffered himself to be persuaded by him? Ah, other influences must have been brought to bear by Paul Derinzy! Paul Derinzy--how she hated him! She would register that name in her heart; and if ever she came across his path, let him look to himself. When Stothard came with his proposal, she made her acceptance of him conditional on his leaving Canterbury. The money which he had inherited, and the little sum which she had saved, would enable them to commence business afresh somewhere else--say, in London; but she must leave Canterbury. She could not stand the neighbours' looks and remarks, or, what was worse, their pity, any longer. She must go, she said; she was sick of the place. Robert Hall indorsed his daughter's desire; he was becoming more and more confirmed in his selfishness, and wanted to be allowed to drink himself to death without any ridiculous remonstrances. Stothard agreed--he would have agreed to anything then--and they were married; and Stothard bought a business in a London suburb, and for a time--during which time a daughter was born to them--they flourished.
For a time only; then Stothard took to drinking, and late hours; his hand lost its cunning; his customers dropped off one by one; the garnered money had long since been spent, and things looked bad. Stothard drank harder than before, had delirium tremens, and died. His widow could not go back to her old home, for her father had carried out his intention, and drank himself to death very soon after her marriage; and she was too proud to made her appearance among her old acquaintances under her adverse circumstances. As luck would have it, the doctor who had attended her husband, and who had been much struck by the manner in which she had nursed him in his delirium, was physician to a great hospital. He proposed to Mrs. Stothard that she should become a professional nurse, offering her his patronage and recommendation. She agreed, and at once commenced practice in the hospital; but she soon became famous among the physicians and surgeons, and they were anxious to secure her for their private patients, where her services would be well paid. In a few years she had gotten together quite a large connection, and she was in constant demand. The money which she received she applied to giving her daughter a good education. They met but seldom, Mrs. Stothard being so much engaged; but she perceived in her daughter early signs of worldly wisdom, and a disposition to make use of her fellow-creatures, which gladdened her mother's soured spirit. She should be no weak fool, as her mother had been; she should not be made a puppet to be set up and knocked down at a rich man's caprice; she was sharp, she promised to be pretty, and she should be well-educated. Then, thoroughly warned as to what men were, she should be placed in some good commercial position, and left to see whether she could not contrive to make a rich and respectable marriage for herself.
One day when Mrs. Stothard was at St. Vitus's Hospital, where she was now regarded as a great personage, and where, when she paid an occasional visit, she was taken into the stewards' room, and regaled with the best port wine, Dr. Wainwright--who, though not attached to St. Vitus's, had a very great reputation in London, and was considered the leading man in his line--looked into the room. Seeing Mrs. Stothard, he entered, told her he had come expressly, learning she was there, and that he wanted to know if she would undertake a permanent situation. He entered into detail as to the case, mentioned the remuneration, which was very large, and stated that he knew no one who would be so satisfactory in the position; and added: "Indeed, 'if we do not get Mrs. Stothard, I don't know what we shall do,' were the last words I uttered to Mrs. Derinzy."
Mrs. Stothard, albeit a calm and composed woman in general, literally jumped. A quarter of a century rolled up like a mist, and she saw herself selling illuminated scrolls in the little shop in the precincts of Canterbury, and the slim, handsome little cornet leaning over the counter, and devouring her with his bright black eyes.
"What name did you say, sir?" she asked when she recovered herself.
"Derinzy. Odd name, isn't it? De-rin-zy. The lady's husband is a retired military man, and the family consists of themselves and the young lady I was speaking of just now," said the doctor.
"Is she their daughter?" asked Mrs. Stothard.
"Oh no; they have no daughter, only a son, who lives in London. This young lady is their niece, daughter of--why, God bless my soul! you must have heard of him--Mr. Paul Derinzy, the merchant, the millionaire, who died some time ago. Ah! I forgot, though; millionaires--real ones, I mean--are not much in your line," added Dr. Wainwright, with a laugh. "You see plenty who fancy that----"
"Oh, and so Mr. Paul Derinzy is dead," interrupted Mrs. Stothard; "and this young lady is his daughter? I think, Dr. Wainwright, I must decline the situation."
Decline the situation! Dr. Wainwright had never heard of such a thing, never in the whole course of his professional experience. Decline the situation! Had Mrs. Stothard understood him correctly about the terms? Yes! And she talked of declining the situation after that! And for a permanency, too. And he had thought it would have been exactly the thing to suit her. Well, if she would not accept, she must not decline--at once, that was to say. She must think over it; she must indeed.
She did; and accepted it. Partly out of a desire for revenge. She had a long, long pondering over the past; and all the bitterness of bygone years had revived in her heart. She thought that something--luck she called it (she was little given to ascribe things to Providence)--had placed her enemies in her hands, and that she might use her power over the man who had given her up, and over the daughter of the man who had compelled him to do so. Partly for money. The salary proposed was very large, and her daughter's education was expensive, and the girl would soon have to be apprenticed to a house of business where a heavy premium must be paid. So she accepted. There was no doubt about her getting the place. Dr. Wainwright's recommendation was all-sufficient, and Mrs. Derinzy was only too anxious to secure her services. Captain Derinzy had forgotten all about Stothard the stonemason, and the two hundred pounds which had been paid to him, even if he ever knew of the transaction. He did not recognise the name, and for the first few minutes after he saw her he did not recognise in the hard-featured, cold, impassive, middle-aged woman his bright boyish love of so many years before. When he did recognise her he started, and seemed as though he would have spoken; but she made him a slight sign, and he waited for an opportunity of their being alone. When that came, it was Mrs. Stothard who spoke. She told him there was no necessity for ever referring to the past, it was all forgotten by them both; they would never be brought in contact; she knew the position she held in his house, and she should fulfil it; it was better on all accounts that Mrs. Derinzy should be kept in ignorance of their former acquaintance--did he not think so? He did; and as he left her he grinned quietly.
"What the doose did she think?" he said to himself. "Gad! not likely that I should want to renew the acquaintance of an old horse-godmother like that. What a pretty gal she was, too! and how changed! by George, so that her own mother wouldn't know her! Wonder whether I'm as much changed as all that? Often look in the glass and wonder. Different in a man: he don't wear a cap, and that kind of thing; and my hair's lasted wonderful, considerin'. Martha Hall, eh? and those dam things--text things--that she used to paint in those colours--got some of 'em still, I think, somewhere in my old bullock-trunk; saw 'em the other day. Martha Hall!--Oh Lord!"
So Mrs. Stothard accepted office with the Derinzys, and was with them when, shortly afterwards, they gave up the house at Brompton where they had lived so long, and removed to Beachborough. The change affected Mrs. Stothard but very little; it mattered scarcely at all to her where she was, her time was very much employed in her duties, and what little leisure she found she passed in reading, or in writing to her daughter. She knew perfectly well that she was the subject of an immense amount of curiosity in Beachborough village, and of talk at the village tea-tables; but it did not trouble her one whit. She knew that she was said to be a poor relation of the Derinzy family, and she did not discourage the idea. Thinking over the past, and what might have been, she found a kind of grim humour in the combination which suited her thoroughly. They might say what they liked, she thought, so long as her money was regularly paid, and so long as she found herself able to carry out the one scheme of her life--that of making a good marriage for her daughter Fanny.
Fanny then, under the name of Miss Stafford, was apprenticed to Madame Clarisse, the great court milliner, in London, and lived, when she was at home--and that was not often, poor child! for she slaved like a horse--in one little room in a house in South Molton Street, a lodging-house kept by an old sister-nurse of Mrs. Stothard's at St. Vitus's, a most respectable motherly woman, who would look after Fanny, and would at once let her mother know if there was "anything wrong." Not that there was any chance of that. Fanny Stafford acted up too strictly to her mother's teaching, and remembered too well the doctrine which had been inculcated in her girlhood, ever to make that mistake. She had been told that to marry a man considerably above her in pecuniary and social position was her mission in life; to that end she might use all her charms, all her arts; but that end must be marriage--nothing less. This she understood, and daily experience made her more and more impressed with the wisdom of her mother's determination. She had not much heart, she thought; she did not think she had any passion; and she knew that she had keen discrimination and accurate perception of character; so she thought she ought to succeed. Mrs. Stothard was acquainted with the peculiarities of her daughter's character, and thought so too.
At the very time when Captain Derinzy was lying stretched out on the headland overlooking Beachborough Bay, and making those cynical remarks on the place and its population, Mrs. Stothard was preparing to read a letter from her daughter Fanny. It had arrived in the morning; but Mrs. Stothard had been very busy all day, and it was not until the evening that she found time to read it. Her occupation had confined her to the house, so that now, being for a few minutes free, she was glad to escape into the grounds. She chose that portion of the flower-garden which was farthest removed from the side of the house which she principally inhabited; and as she paced up and down the soft turf path between two rows of espaliers, she took the letter from her pocket and commenced to read it. It was written in a small delicate hand, and Mrs. Stothard had to hold it close to her eyes in the fading light. She read as follows:
"London, Sunday.
MY DEAR MOTHER,--You will have been expecting to hear from me for some time, and, indeed, you ought to have had a letter, but the truth is I am so tired and sleepy when I get back here that I am glad to go straight to bed. We are just now in the height of the season, and are so busy that I scarcely ever have time to sit down. I told you, I think, that I was likely to be in the showroom this season. I was right. Madame asked me if I should like to be there, and when I said 'Yes,' she seemed pleased; and I have been there since April. I think I have made myself even more useful than she expected; for many of the customers know me now, and ask to see me in preference to Madame herself. I suppose she does not quite like that, but it is not my fault. I know I am neat and handy, and that there is no one in the house with so much education or so much manner, and these are both points which are noticed by customers. Nevertheless, I think I am winning my way into Madame's good graces; for when she goes out--and she is now out a great deal, at the French plays, at the Opera, and in private society; you have no notion what an immense amount of reception goes on amongst the Frenchcoiffeursandmodistesin London--she invariably leaves me to see the parcels sent off and the business of the day wound up. She has no forewoman, as I have told you, and I think I might aspire to that important post with reasonable hope of success if I wished it, but I don't.
"No, dear mother; it would give me no pleasure to have my name on as big a brass plate as Madame Clarisse's, on as handsome a door in as eligible a situation. I should derive no satisfaction even if I could combine her connection with Madame Augustine's, her great rival. (Augustine'sclientèleis richer than ours, I think, but we have by far thebestpeople.) I long sometimes, when I see a wretched old creature nodding under a wreath when she ought to be concealing her bald pate or her gray hairs under an honest mob-cap, or when I am helping a stout middle-aged matron to struggle into a gown of a style and pattern suitable for her youngest daughter, to throw all my chances of success in business to the winds, and tell the people then under my hands plainly and openly what I think of them. I cannot stand--or rather I could not, were it for a permanence; I can well enough for a time--this wretched ko-tooing existence, this perpetual grinning and curtsying and false-compliment paying, this utter abnegation of one's own opinion, one's own feelings, one's own self! You must not be surprised at these expressions, dear mother, recollecting how you have had me brought up, and how you yourself have always inculcated in me a strong desire to better my position, and by a good marriage to raise myself into a class superior to this.
"Mother, I think I'm going to do it. I think that I have a chance of freeing myself from this servitude, which is galling to me, and of winning a station in life such as you yourself would be proud to see me holding. You remember how you used to talk to me about this when I was much younger, and how I used then to laugh at your earnestness, and tell you your hopes and aspirations were but dreams? I declare now I think there is some chance of their being realised.
"Now you are all impatience, and dying to know all I have to tell! I can see you--I suppose you are not much changed since we last parted; I often wonder--I can see you skimming over the paper in your eager anxiety to get at the details. I will not keep you in suspense, dear mother--here they are! A month ago, I was returning to Mrs. Gillott's late at night. We had been hard at work until nearly twelve o'clock, getting out a large wedding order, and Madame thought it important enough to superintend the packing and sending out of the various things. I had remained till the last, and the church-clock opposite struck twelve as the door closed behind me. The streets were almost deserted; but I had not gone far before I perceived that a man was following me. I could not make out what kind of a man he was, as he persistently kept in the shade, walking at first on the opposite side of the way, then crossing behind me, but ever constantly following. I knew this from the sound of his footsteps, which echoed in the stillness of the night. When I crossed Bond Street he came abreast of me, and then I saw that he was a common man in his working dress. I was frightened then, I confess. You don't know what they are sometimes, mother, these working men. I would sooner meet any gentleman, however loose, any what they call 'gent,' than some of those! It isn't their conduct, it's what they say! They seem to delight in using the most awful language, the foulest terms, to unprotected girls; merely, apparently, for the sake of insulting them. This man was a bad specimen of his class. There was no one near, and he stepped up to my side after we had crossed Bond Street, and said to me things--I don't know what, for I hurried on without looking towards him. I knew well enough what he said next, he took care that there should be no mistake about that, for he prefaced his remark with a short laugh of scorn and defiance, and then--he made his speech. I was not surprised; no girl compelled to walk alone in London, and especially at night, could be surprised at anything that might be said to her; but I was disgusted and frightened, and tried to run. The man ran by my side--I saw then that he was drunk--and tried to catch hold of me. I was in a dreadful fright, and I suppose I looked so, for a gentleman who was coming out of the hotel at the corner of South Molton Street stepped hurriedly out, and said, 'I beg your pardon--is this person annoying you?' Before I could reply, the man said something--too horrible--about me and himself, and the next moment he was lying in the road; the gentleman had taken him by the collar and flung him there. He got up, and rushed at the gentleman; but by this time a policeman who had seen it all crossed the street, and made him go away. Then the gentleman took off his hat, and begged leave to see me to my door. I allowed him to do so--it was foolish, I know, mother, but I was all unnerved, and scarcely knew what I did; and when we arrived at Mrs. Gillott's I thanked him, and bade him Goodnight. He took off his hat again, and left me at once.
"He found out who I was--how, I don't know--for next day I had a polite note, hoping I had quite recovered from my alarm, expressed in the most gentlemanly manner, and signed 'Paul Douglas.' I have met him several times since, always in the street, and have walked and talked with him. He is always most polite and respectful, but of course professes himself to be madly in love. Yesterday, for the first time, I found out who he is. He has an appointment in a Government office, the 'Stannaries' they call it, and his family live somewhere in the West of England. They are evidently well off, and he, Paul, is what they call a 'swell.' Very good-looking, slight and dark, about five-and-twenty, and always beautifully dressed.
"You don't fear me, mother? You have sufficient reliance on me to know that I would never discredit your training. You will want to know whether I am in love with this young man. I think I am--so far. And you need not be afraid. He vows--everything, of course; but he is too much of a gentleman, in the first place, to offer to insult me, and in the second--well, to speak plainly, he knows it would be of no use. Is this the chance that you taught me to look for? I think it is. But we shall soon know. Meanwhile believe in the thorough discretion of your loving daughter
FANNY."
Up and down the soft turf path paced Mrs. Stothard in the glorious summer evening, with the open letter in her hand, deep in cogitation. Her head was bent upon her breast, and occasionally raised as she referred to the paper. Suddenly a light gleamed in her face; she hurriedly re-perused the letter, folding it so as only to make herself thorough mistress of a certain portion of its contents, and then she smiled a hard grim smile, and said to herself in a hard bitter voice:
"Of course, of course! What an idiot I was not to see it at once! The mention of the Stannaries Office might have convinced me, if all my senses had not been blunted by my wretched work in this wretched place! Douglas, indeed! Paul Douglas is Paul Derinzy; slight, dark, handsome--none but he! Family in the West of England, too--no doubt of it! And in love with my Fan! Oh, my dear friends, I'll spoil your game yet! I'm so blind. Quiet and seclusion for dear Annette's health; no other reason, oh no! Not to keep her out of the way of fortune-hunters, and save her up for our son, oh dear no! That shall never be! Our son shall marry my Fan! What is it? 'The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children.' I never believed much in that sort of thing; but in this instance it really looks as though there were something in it."
Those persons to whom London is a home--a place to be lived in all the year round, save on the occasion of the two months' holiday, when one rushes off to the North, or to the sea, or to the Continent, returning with a renewed stock of health, and a pleasurable sense of having enjoyed yourself, but with a still more pleasurable sense of being back again in town--are very much amused at a notion prevalent amongst many worthy people who arrive at their own or at a hired house in the month of March, stay there till the end of the month of June, and go away fancying that they know London. Know London! A lifetime's earnest devotion does not suffice for that study, and those people who talk thus have not even the merest smattering of its topography. Their London used to be bounded on the west by the Knightsbridge Barracks--even now they acknowledge nothing beyond Princes Terrace. On the south-west they have penetrated as far as Onslow Square; the territory beyond that might be full of tiger-lairs and hiding-places for dragons, for all they know about it. Of the suburbs, beyond such knowledge as they derive from an occasional visit to the Star and Garter at Richmond, they know absolutely nothing. They do not know, and it would not make the smallest difference to them if they did, that if, instead of cantering up and down that ghastly, treeless, sun-scorched mile of gravel, the Row, they chose to turn their horses' heads north-westward, they could find shade in the green Willesden lanes and air on the breezy Hendon heights. They do not know that within a very short distance of Hyde Park there are shady lanes half hidden in greenery, dotted here and there with quaint old-fashioned houses standing in the midst of large grounds--some with gardens sloping away towards the river; others with enormous trees overhanging them, blotting out all view or vista; and others again with such an expanse of what the auctioneers are pleased to term "park-like grounds" visible from their windows, that you would have no idea of the immediate proximity of London, save for the never-varying presence of the smoke-wreath hanging over the horizon, and the never-ceasing, save on Sundays, dull rumble of distant traffic, which grinds on the ear like the monotonous surging of the waves upon the shore.
In one of these metropolitan suburbs, no matter which, stood and stands the house which at the period of our story was George Wainwright's home, the residence of his father, Dr. Wainwright. It was a big, long, rambling, red-faced old house, with an enormous number of rooms, some large and some small, standing in the midst of a large garden. Tradition said that it had been a favourite residence of Cromwell's; but it was generally believed, and the belief was not ill-founded, that it had been given by the Lord Protector to the husband of his favourite daughter, and that he himself had frequently been in the habit of staying there. At the end of the first quarter of the present century it had a very different occupant from the grim old Ironsides leader, being rented by the Countess Delia Crusca, the wittiest, the most beautiful, the most extravagant, the most fascinating woman of her day. Old Knaves of Clubs stillraffolentabout the Delia Crusca, her eyes and her poems, her bust and her repartees. She had a husband?--Oh yes! the Count Delia Crusca, ex-officer of Bersaglieri and one of the first naturalists of his day, corresponding member of all the principal European societies, and perfectly devoted to his favourite pursuit; so devoted, that he was invariably away in some distant foreign country, engaged in hunting for specimens. The Countess was an Englishwoman, daughter of Captain Ramus, half-pay, educated at a convent in Paris, under the guidance of her maternal aunt, Miss Coghlan, of Letterkenney in Ireland. Immediately on issuing from the convent she eloped with Count Della Crusca, whose acquaintance she had made in a casual manner in thecoupéof one of the diligences belonging to Messrs. Lafitte, Caillard et Cie. A very short time served to prove to them that they had no tastes in common. Madame la Comtesse did not care for natural history, which the Count loved, and she did care for England, which the Count loathed. So he went his way, in pursuit of specimens, and she went hers to England. She arrived in London, and Marston Moor House being to let, she took it.
Some of us are yet alive who recollect the little saccharine poems, the plaintive little sonnets, the--well, yes, to speak the truth--the washy three-volume novels which were composed in that sturdy old building and dated thence. Sturdy outside, but lovely within. Such furniture: white satin and gold, black satin and red trimming; such pictures, and statues, and busts; such looking-glasses let into the walls at every conceivable place; such hanging baskets and ormolu clocks, and Dresden and Sèvres china; such Chinese fans, and Indian screens, and Turkish yataghans and Malay creeses; such books--at least, such bindings; such a satinwood desk, at which the Countess penned her inspirations; such a solemn-sounding library clock, which had belonged to Marie Antoinette; such lion-skins and leopard-skins for rugs; such despatch-boxes with the Della Cruscan coronet and cipher; such waste-paper baskets always littered with proof-sheets! The garden! never was anything seen like that! It was not much more than half an acre, but Smiff, the great landscape gardener, made it look more like a square mile. Delightfully rustic and English here, quaintly Dutch there, Italian terraced a little lower down, small avenue, vista broken by the fountain; might be a thousand miles away from London, so everyone said. Everyone said so, because everyone came there. Who was everyone? Well, the Grand-Duke of Schweinerei was someone, at all events. Ex-Grand-Duke, I should have said, recollecting that some years before, the people of Schweinerei, although by no means a strait-laced people, grew so disgusted at the "goings-on" of their reigning potentate, that they rose in revolt, and incontinently kicked him out. Then he came to England, where he has remained ever since, dwelling in a big house, and occupying his spare time with fighting newspapers for libelling him in a very blackguard and un-English manner. His highness is an elderly, short, fat man, with admirably-fitting wig and whiskers of the Tyrian purple. He has dull bleary eyes, pendulous cheeks, and a great fat double chin. He is covered all over with diamonds: his studs are diamonds; he wears a butterfly diamond brooch on the knot of his white cravat; his waistcoat-buttons are diamonds; his sleeve-links are diamonds; and he resembles the old woman of Banbury Cross in having (diamond) rings on his fingers, and probably, for all the historian knows to the contrary, on his toes.
Who else came there? A tall, thin, dark man, with a long face like a sheep's head, a full dull eye, a long nose, a very long upper lip, arid a retreating chin. Prince Bernadotte of the Lipari Isles, also an exile, but one who has since been recalled to his kingdom. Nobody thought much of Prince Bernadotte in those days. He lived in cheap chambers in London, and used to play billiards withcoiffeursandagents de changeandcommis voyageursfrom the hotels in Leicester Square; and who went into a very little English society, where he always sat silent and reserved, and where they thought very little of him. He must have been marvellously misunderstood then, or must have grown into quite a different kind of man when he sat smoking his cigar with his feet on the fender in the Elysée, and to all inquiries made but the one reply, "Qu'on exécute mes orders!"--those "ordres" being fulfilled in the massacre of the Boulevards.
Who else?Savans, philosophers, barristers, poets, newspaper-writers, novelists, caricaturists, eminent physicians and surgeons, fiddlers, foreigners, anybody who had done anything which had given him the merest temporary notoriety was welcome, so long as he came at the time. And they never failed to do that. The society was so delightful, the welcome was so warm, the eating and drinking were so good, that there was never any chance of an invitation to Marston Moor House being refused. Thither came Fermez, the operaimpresario, driving down a couple of lords in his phaeton; and Tom Gilks, the scene-painter of Covent Garden, who arrived per omnibus; and Whiston, who had just written that tremendous pamphlet on the religious controversy of the day; and Rupert Robinson, who had sat up all the previous night to finish his burlesque, and who was so enchanted with the personal appearance of the Grand-Duke of Schweinerei, that he wanted to carry him off bodily--rings, diamonds, wig, whiskers, and all--to Madame Tussaud's Exhibition. Dinners and balls, conversazioni and fêtes--with the garden illuminated with Italian lamps, and supper served in extemporised pavilions--two royal dukes, in addition to standard celebrities, and foreign princes in town for the season--without end.
Vain transitory splendour! could not all Retain the tott'ring mansion from its fall?
Vain transitory splendour! could not all Retain the tott'ring mansion from its fall?
Apparently not. One morning the servants at Marston Moor House got up, to find their mistress had risen before them, or rather had not been to bed at all, having decamped during the night with the plate and all the portable valuables, and left an enormous army of creditors behind her. There was weeping and wailing round the neighbourhood for months; but tears and outcries did not pay the defrauded tradespeople, and they never had any money. Nobody ever knew who received the money realised by the sale of the furniture, &c, though that ought to have been something considerable, for there never was a sale so tremendously attended, or at which things fetched such high prices. All the ladies of high rank who combined frightful stupidity with rigid virtue, and who would as soon have thought of walking into Tophet as of crossing Madame Della Crusca's threshold, rushed to Marston Moor House so soon as its proprietress had fled, and bought eagerly at the sale. The large looking-glass which formed the back of the alcove in which Madame Delia Crusca's bed was placed now figures in the boudoir, or, as it is generally called, the work-room, of the Countess of Textborough, and is scarcely so happy in its reflections as in former days. The satinwood desk fell to the nod of Mrs. Quisby, who used to follow the Queen's hounds in a deep-pink jacket and a short skirt, and who now holds forth on Sunday afternoons at the infant schools in Badger's Buildings, Mayfair, and is especially hard on the Scarlet Woman. Many of the oldhabituésattended, and bought well-remembered scraps forsouvenirs. Finally everything, down to the kitchen pots and pans, the stable buckets and the gardeners' implements, were cleared off, and a big painted board frowned in the great courtyard, informing the British public that that eligible mansion was to let.
Not for long did that black-and-white board blossom in that flinty soil. Within three weeks of the sale a rumour ran through London that anal-frescoplace of entertainment on a magnificent scale was about to be opened on what had been the Della-Cruscan property, and that Wuff, the great Wuff, the most enterprising man of his day, was at the back of it. Straightway the board was pulled down, and an army of painters, and decorators, and plumbers, and builders, and Irish gentlemen in flannel jackets, and Italian gentlemen in slouch wideawakes and paint-stained gaberdines, took possession of the place. Big rooms were converted into supper and dining-rooms, and small rooms intocabinets particuliers; a row of supper-boxes on the old Vauxhall pattern sprang up in the grounds, which, moreover, were tastefully planted with gas-lamps, with plaster-of-Paris statues, with two or three sham fountains, and with grottos made of slag and shiny-faced bricks. Then, on an Easter Monday, the place was opened with a ballet, with dancing on the circular platform, with Signor Simioso's performing monkeys, and with a grand display of fireworks. Very good, all this; but somehow it didn't draw. The great Wuff did all he could; sent an enormous power of legs into the ballet; engaged the most excruciatingly funny comic singers, put silver rosettes into the button-holes and silver-gilt wands into the hands of all the masters of the ceremonies on the circular platform; and had Guffino il Diavolo flying from the top of the pasteboard Leaning Tower of Pisa into the canvas Lake of Geneva, down a wire, with a squib in his cap, and one in each of his heels--and yet the public would not come. The great Wuff tried it for two seasons, and then gave it up in despair.
Up went the black-and-white board again; to be taken down at the bidding of Mrs. Trimmer, who, having a very good boarding-school for young ladies at Highgate, thought she might increase her connection by establishing herself in a more eligible neighbourhood. The board had been up so long, that the proprietor of the house was willing, not merely to take a reduced rent, but to pull up the gas-lamps, and pull down the supper-boxes, and restore the garden, not indeed to its original state of beauty, but to decency and order. The rooms were repapered (it must be owned that Wuff's taste in decoration had been loud), and the name of the house changed from Marston Moor to Cornelia. Then Mrs. Trimmer took possession, and brought her young friends with her, and they throve and multiplied exceedingly; and all went well until Mrs. Trimmer died, and there was no one to carry on the business; and the board went up, and remained up longer than ever.
No one knew exactly when or how the house was taken again. The proprietor, hoping to get another school-keeper for a tenant, the house being too large for ordinary domestic purposes, had bought Mrs. Trimmer's furniture--the iron bedsteads and school fittings--for a song, and had placed an old woman in charge. One day this old woman put her luggage, consisting of a blue bundle, and herself into a cab, and went away. A few carpenters had arrived from town in the morning, and had occupied themselves in fitting iron bars to the interior of some of the windows. During the greater portion of that night carriages were heard rolling up the lane in which the back entrance to the house was situated, and the next day smoke was seen issuing from the chimneys; a big brass plate with the name of "Dr. Bulph" was screwed on to the iron gates of the carriage-drive, and two or three strong-built men were noticed going in and out of the premises. Gradually it became known that Dr. Bulph was a physician celebrated for his treatment of the insane, a "mad-doctor," as the neighbours called him; and women and children used to skurry past the old red garden-walls as though they thought the inmates were climbing over to get at them. But the house was so thoroughly well-conducted, so quietly and with such excellent discipline, that people soon thought nothing of it, any more than of any other of the big mansions in the neighbourhood; and when Dr. Bulph retired, and Dr. Wainwright succeeded him, the door-plate had actually been changed for some days before the neighbours noticed it.
Dr. Wainwright made many changes in the establishment. He was a man of great fame for several specialities, and was constantly being called away to patients in the country. He considerably enlarged the old house, and brought to it a better and wealthier class of patients, who were attended, under his supervision, by two resident surgeons. Dr. Wainwright did not live in the house. In addition to his practice he worked very hard with his pen, contributing largely to the principal medical Scientific reviews and journals, and corresponding with many continentalsavans. For all this work he required solitude and silence; and, as he was a widower, he was able to enjoy both in a set of chambers in the Albany, where he could go in and out as he liked, and where no unwelcome visitor could get at him. He had consulting-rooms in Grosvenor Square; and when in town, was to be found there between ten and one; but after those hours it was impossible to know where to catch him.
But George Wainwright lived at the old house, or rather in an outbuilding in the grounds, sole remainder of Mr. Wuff's erections; which had been converted to his use, and which yielded him a large, high-roofed, roomy studio, and a capital bedroom, both on the ground floor. The studio was no misnomer for the living-room; for, in addition to his Civil-Service work, George followed art with deep and earnest devotion, and was known and recognised as one of the best amateurs of the day. Men whose names stood very high in the art-world were his friends; and on winter nights the studio would be filled with members of that pleasant Bohemian society, discussing their craft and its members and such cognate subjects. George was a great reader also, and had a goodly store of books littering the tables or ranged on common shelves, disputing possession of the walls with choice bits of his friends' painting or half-finished attempts of his own. In the middle of the room stood a quaintly-carved old black-oak desk, ink-blotted and penknife-hacked, with some pages of manuscript and some slips of proof lying on it--for George, who had been educated in Germany, was in the habit of contributing essays on abstruse questions of German philosophy and metaphysics to a monthly review of very portentous weight--and in the corner was a cabinet piano, covered with loose leaves of music, scraps from oratorios,studenten-lieder, bits of Bach and Glück, glees of Purcell and Arne, and even ballads by Claribel. Some of George's painter friends had formed themselves into a singing-club and sang very sweetly; and the greatest treat that could be offered to the inmates of the house was these fellows' musical performances. The young swells of the Stannaries Office wondered why George Wainwright was never seen at casino, singing and supper-houses, or other of those resorts which they specially affected. They looked upon him as somewhat of a fogey, and could not understand what a bright, genial, jolly fellow like Paul Derinzy could see to like in him. He was kind and good-natured and all that, they owned, as indeed they had often proved by loans of "sovs" and "fivers," when the end of the quarter had left them dry; but he was an uncomfortable sort of chap, they said, and was always by himself.
He was by himself the evening of the day after that on which he had seen Paul Derinzy walking with Daisy in Kensington Gardens. He had had a light dinner at his club, and thence walked straight away home, where, on his arrival at his den, he had lit a big pipe and thrown himself into an easy-chair, and sat watching the blue smoke curling above his head, and pondering over the present and the future of his friend. George Wainwright had a stronger feeling than mere liking for Paul; there was a touch of romance in the regard which the good-looking, bright, easy-going young man had aroused in his steady, sober, practical senior. George was too much a man of the world to thrill with horror because he had seen his friend in the company of a pretty girl, and come across what was evidently a lovers' meeting. But his knowledge of Paul's character was large and well-founded; in the mere glance which he had got of the pair as they stood together in the act of saying adieu, he had caught an expression in his friend's face which intuitively led him to feel that the woman who could call up such a look of intense earnest devotion was no mere passing light-o'-love; and as George thought over the scene, and reproduced it, time after time, from the storehouse of his memory, he puffed fiercer blasts from his pipe, and shook his head in an unsettled, not to say desponding manner.
While he was thus occupied he heard steps on the gravel-walk outside, then a tap at the door. Opening it, Paul Derinzy stood before him.
"Just the man I was thinking about, and come exactly in the nick of time!Alma quies optata, veni!Not that you can be calledalma quies, you restless bird of the night! What's the matter? what are you making signs about?" asked George.
"That idiot, Billy Dunlop, is with me," replied Paul, grinning; "he is doing some of his pantomime nonsense outside;" and, indeed, George Wainwright, peering out in the darkness, could make out a stout figure approaching with cautious gestures, which, when it emerged into the lamplight, proved to be Mr. Dunlop.
"Hallo, Billy! what are you at? Come in, man; light a pipe, and be happy."
But Mr. Dunlop, true to his character of comic man, did not enter the room quietly, but came in with a little rush, and then, his knees knocking together in simulated abject terror, asked:
"Am I safe? Can none of them get at me?"
"None of whom?"
"None of the patients. I was in such a fright coming up that garden, I could scarcely speak. I thought I saw eyes behind every laurestinus; and--I suppose the staff of keepers is adequate, in case any of 'emshouldprove rampagious?"
"Oh yes, it's all right. Have you never been here before?"
"Never, sir; and I don't think, provided I get safe away this time, that I'm ever likely to come again."
"You're complimentary; but now you are here, sit down and have a drink. Spirits there in that stand, soda-water here in the window-seat, ice in that refrigerator by the door. Or stay, let me make you the new Yankee drink that has just come up--a cobbler. There are plenty of straws somewhere about."
"I should think so," said Billy, in a stage-whisper to Paul. "He gets 'em out of the patients' heads. Lunatics always stick straws in their heads, vide the dramapassim. I say, Wainwright, while you're mixing the grog, may I run out and have a look at the night-watch?"
"The what?" asked George, raising his head.
"The night-watch, you know;" and Mr. Dunlop sat down at the piano, squared his elbows, contorted his face, and with much ludicrous exaggeration burst forth:
"Hush-sh-sh-sh! 'tis the NIGHT-WATCH!! he gy-ards my lonely cell!
"Now don't you say that he doesn't, you know, because I've Mr. Henry Russell's authority that he does. So produce your night-watch!"
"Don't make such a row, Billy!" cried Paul; "there's no night-watch, or anything else of the sort."
"What! do you mean to say that I did not see her dancing in the hall? that I am not cold, bitter cold? that his glimmering lamp no more I see? and that no, no, by hav-vens, I am not ma-a-ad?" With these words, uttered in the wildest tones, Mr. Dunlop cast himself at full length on the sofa, whence arising immediately with a placid countenance, he said: "Gentlemen, if you wish thus to uproot and destroy the tenderest associations of childhood, I shall be happy, when I have finished my drink, to wish you a good-evening, and return home."
"I can't think what the deuce you came for," said Paul, with a smile. "He looked in at the club where I was dining, hoping to meet you, and where I heard you had been and gone, and asked me whether I wasn't going to evening service. When I told him 'yes,' he said he would come with me; and all the way along he has done nothing but growl at the pace I was walking, and the length of the way."
"Don't mind me, Mr. Wainwright," said Billy, politely; "pray let the gentleman go on. I am not the Stannaries Stag, sir, and I never laid claim to the title; consequently it's no degradation to me to avow that I can't keep on heeling and toeing it at the rate of seven miles an hour for long. As it happens, I have a friend in the neighbourhood, a fisherman, who has managed to combine a snack-bend with a Kirby hook in a manner which he assures me--pardon me, dear sirs, those imbecile grins remind me that I am speaking to men who don't know a stone-fly from a gentle; that I have been throwing my--I needn't finish the sentence. I have finished the drink. Mr. Wainwright, have the goodness to see me off the premises, and, in the words of the distraught Ophelia--to whom, by-the-way, I daresay your talented father would have been called in, had he happened to live in Denmark at the time--'let out the maid who'--goodnight!"
When George Wainwright returned, alone, he found Paul, who had lighted a cigar, walking up and down the room, his hands plunged in his pockets, his chin down upon his chest. George went up to him, and putting his hand affectionately on his shoulder, said:
"What brought you down here to-night, young 'un? The last rats must have deserted the sinking ship of Fashion and Season when you clear out of it to come down to Diogenes in his tub. Not but that I'm delighted to see you; all I want to know is why?"
"I was nervous and restless, George; a little tired of fools and frippery, and--and myself. I wanted you to blow a little of the ozone of common sense into me, you know!"
"Oh yes, I know," said George Wainwright; but he uttered the words in such deep solemn tones that Paul turned upon him suddenly, saying:
"You know? Well, what do you know?"
"I know why you could not play tennis, or come to the Oval, or walk to Hendon with me yesterday afternoon."
"The deuce you do! And why?"
"For a very sufficient reason to a young fellow of five-and-twenty!" said George, with a rather melancholy grin. "Look here, Paul; I don't think you'll imagine I'm a spy, or a meddling, impertinent busybody, and I'm sure you'll believe it was by the merest accident that I was crossing Kensington Gardens last evening, and there saw a friend of mine in deep conversation with a very handsome young lady."
"The deuce you did!" cried Paul, turning very red. "What then?"
"Ah!" said George, filling his pipe, "that's exactly the point--what then?"
"What a provoking old beggar you are! Why do you echo me? Why don't you go on?"
"It's for you to go on, my boy! What are your relations--or what are they to be--with this handsome girl?"
"She is handsome, is she not?"
"Beautiful!"
"'Gad! she must be to strike fire out of an old flint like you, George!" cried Paul. "What are my relations with her? Strictly proper, I give you my word."
"And you intend to marry her?"
"How the man jumps at an idea! Well, no; I don't know at all that I intend that."
"Not the--the other thing, Paul? No; you're, to say the least of it, too much of a gentleman. You don't intend that."
"I don't intend anything, I tell you. Can't a man talk to a pretty girl without 'intention'?"
"I don't know, Paul. I'm quite incompetent to pronounce any opinion on such matters; only--only see here: I look on you as on a younger brother, and, prompted by my regard for you, I may say many things which you may dislike."
"Well, say away, old George; you won't offend me."
"Well, then, if this is a good honest girl, and you don't intend to marry her, you ought not to be meeting her, and walking with her, and leading her to believe that she will attain to a position through you which she never would otherwise; and if she isn't an honest girl you ought never to have spoken to her."
Paul Derinzy laughed, the quiet easy chuckle of a man of the world, as he replied to his simple senior:
"Sheisa good, honest girl, no doubt of that. But suppose the question of marriage had never risen between us, and she still liked to meet me and to walk with me, what then? In the gravel paths of Kensington Gardens, Pamela herself might have strolled with Captain Lovelace himself without fear. Why should not I with--with this young lady?"
"Because, though you don't know it, you're deceiving yourself and deceiving her; because the whole thing is incongruous and won't fit, however you may try to make it do so; because it's wrong, however much you may slur it over. Look here, Paul; suppose, just for the sake of argument, that you wanted to marry this girl--you're as weak as water, and there's no accounting for what you might wish--you know your people would oppose it in the very strongest way, and----"
"Oh, if I chose it, my 'people,' as you call them, must have it, or leave it alone, which would be quite immaterial to me."
"Yes, yes, no doubt; but still----"
"Look here, George; let's bring this question to a practical issue. I'm ten times more a man of the world than you, though you are an old fogey, and clever and sensible and all that. What you are aiming it is that I must give up this girl. Well, then, shortly, I won't!"
"And why won't you?"
"For a reason you can't understand, you old mole, burrowed down here under your paintings, and your fugues, and your dreary old German philosophers--because I love her; because I think of her from morning till night, and from night till morning again; because her bright face and her gay creamy skin come between me and those beastly old minutes and memoranda that we have to write at the shop; and when I'm lying awake in Hanover Street, or even sitting surrounded by a lot of gabbling idiots in the smoking-room of the club, I can see her gray eyes looking at me, and----"
"Oh Lord!" said George Wainwright, with a piteous smile; "I had no idea I'd let myself in for this!"
"You have, my dear old George, and for a lot more at a future time. Just now I came out to you because I was horribly restless, and Billy fastened himself on to me at the club, and I could not shake him off. But I want to talk to you about it seriously, George--seriously, you understand!"
"Whenever you like, Paul; but I expect you'll only get one scrap of advice out of me, repeated, as I fear,ad nauseam."
"And that is?"
"Give her up! give her up! give her up! Cato's powers of iteration in thedelenda est Carthagobusiness will prove weak as compared to mine in this."
"You'll find me stubborn, George."
"Buffon gives stubbornness as a characteristic of your class, Paul. Goodnight, old man."
"Goodnight, God bless you! To-morrow as per usual, I suppose?" and he was gone.
Alone once more, George Wainwright threw himself again into the easy-chair and renewed his pipe; but he shook his head more than ever, and when he did speak, it was only to mutter to himself: "Worse than I thought! Don't see the way out of that. Must look into this, and take care that Paul does not make a fool of himself."
When the clock struck midnight he rose, yawned, stretched, and seemed more than half inclined to turn towards his cosy bedroom, which opened from the studio; but he shook himself together, and saying, "Poor dear, she would not sleep if I did not say goodnight to her, I suppose!" lit a lamp, and took his way across the garden to the house.