WEmay assume, for the present, that Mr. Grant’s object in calling upon Sir Francis Bendibow was to make arrangements whereby the bank might charge itself with the investment and care of his property. Meanwhile we shall have time to review what had been happening during the previous week at Mrs. Lockhart’s. Philip Lancaster and Mr. Grant, having passed their first night at the “Plough and Harrow,” returned to the widow’s with their luggage the next morning. Their reception on this occasion was much more cordial and confident than it had been the day before. The chance which had brought Lancaster into relations with the family of the gallant old soldier, whose body he had rescued from an unmarked grave, gave him a lien upon the interest and gratitude of the two women such as he might not otherwise have acquired at all. The whole history of his acquaintance with Major Lockhart had to be told many times over to listeners who could never hear it often enough; and the narrator ransacked his memory to reproduce each trifling word and event that had belonged to their intercourse. The hearers, for their part, commented on and discussed the story with a minuteness so loving and unweariable as to move Lancaster to say privately to Mr. Grant, “Damme, sir, if it doesn’t make me wish that I had been the Major, and the Major me. I shall never have a widow and daughter to mourn me so!”
“It is one of the ills of this life,” Mr. Grant returned with a smile, “that while your mourners are your onlyhonest flatterers, their flattery always comes a day too late. If you had been the Major you would have missed hearing his praises. Being yourself, you miss the praises themselves; but upon the whole I think you have the best of it. The love of these good women for their departed father and husband is like yonder ray of sunshine which falls upon his portrait. It falls only there, but see how it brightens and warms the whole room—and your own countenance, I fancy, especially. In some measure, sir, you are heir of that wealth of affection which was the Major’s while he lived. Your news of him has partly made you his substitute in the eyes of those who loved him.Non omnis moriatur.”
“I wish you would take my poem in hand and put some poetry into it. ’Tis true the wreath of fame, as well as the brand of infamy, is laid only on dead brows. If a man could but return to life long enough to admire his own statue, or read his damnation in theQuarterly!”
“The damnation is swifter of foot than the statue, and sometimes overtakes us on this side of the grave,” said Mr. Grant. “But your aspiration may be realized. I have known the dead to come to life.”
“To find, probably, that the reality of dead features is less comely than the remembrance?”
“As for that, the dead man, if he be wise, will so disguise himself as to avoid recognition. He will renew his life only so far as to be a spectator, not a participant. So that, after all, he is not himself again, nor any other man either, and that is the same as to say that he is nobody, which is as much as a dead body has any right to be.”
“I’m not sure of that,” said Lancaster, folding his arms and leaning back his head. “There is a fellow in Weimar by the name of Goethe—you may have heard of him—who has written a poem called ‘Faust.’ Faust comes back to life, or to youth, which amounts to the same thing, and proves to be anything but a mere spectator.He gets caught in a love-scrape, and there is the devil to pay. There is something attractive in this human life which grapples us whether we will or no, and makes us dance to one tune or another. On second thoughts I withdraw my aspiration; one life is enough for me, and may be too much. To live again would be to wear the same old cap and bells, only jingling them to another measure. No man with any self-respect or sense of the ridiculous would do it.”
“I apprehend you may be familiar with an earlier work of M. Goethe’s, which I also have read, called the ‘Sorrows of Werther.’ But I question seriously whether mankind are really the poor puppet-show that you speak of. Life is unreal and bootless only so long as you make yourself the centre and hero of it. As soon as you begin to help on the others with their parts, both they and you cease to be puppets. For no man can live in himself, but only in his acts; and if his acts are just, so much the more fragrantly will they survive him.”
“I believe that theoretically; but practically I am persuaded that to fall passionately in love is the only way to become alive: and selfishness is the very essence of love.”
“Ha!” ejaculated Mr. Grant stroking his chin. “You have been in love no doubt?”
“I have been like other men, or as much worse than the average as my intellectual capacity may be superior to theirs. But—no; I have never been alive in the sense I speak of.”
“Too unselfish, eh?”
“Well—not quite selfish enough, I suppose; or too cautious to venture on a final plunge into the abyss. The puppet business is less arduous, and gives a man a better opinion of himself, by lowering his opinion of his fellow-actors.”
“Ha! and it’s too late to expect you to lose your caution, now, of course?”
“I have experimented too much!” replied Lancaster, getting up and going to the window.
Mr. Grant took a pinch of snuff and said nothing.
Things went on very quietly in the old brick house. Both the older and the younger man were regular in their habits, and gave their hostesses no trouble. In the mornings after breakfast, Lancaster, who was of an athletic complexion, took a walk of an hour or two along the London road, returning toward noon, and shutting himself up in his room, where he occupied himself in writing. Mr. Grant commonly spent the forenoon in-doors, either busying himself about his private affairs, or reading, or chatting intermittently with Mrs. Lockhart or Marion, as they passed in and out of the sitting-room. In the afternoon he sometimes walked out to get the air, and may occasionally have ridden a horse as far as London. But the after-dinner hours were the pleasantest of the day, from a social point of view. Neither Mr. Grant nor Lancaster were heavy drinkers, and seldom remained at table more than a quarter of an hour after the ladies had left it. Then the four remained together in the sitting-room till bed-time; sometimes playing cards, as was the custom of the time; sometimes content to entertain one another with conversation; sometimes having music, when Lancaster would second Marion’s soprano with his baritone. Mrs. Lockhart and Mr. Grant had most of the conversation between themselves; Lancaster, save upon the special topic of the Major, seldom doing more than to throw in an occasional remark or comment, generally of a witty or good-humoredly cynical tendency; Marion being the most uniformly silent of the four, though she possessed rare eloquence as a listener. At cards, Mrs. Lockhart and Lancaster were apt to be partners against Marion and Mr. Grant. The latter would then display a polished and charming gallantry toward his youngvis-à-vis, of a kind that belonged rather to the best fashion ofthe last century than to this; and which was all the pleasanter because it was more the reticence of a sincere and kindly disposition than the pretense of a cold and unsympathetic one. Marion reciprocated his advances with a certain arch cordiality which characterized her when her mind was at ease and her surroundings agreeable; and thus a species of chivalrous-playful courtship was established between the elderly gentleman and the young gentlewoman, which was a source of mild entertainment to everybody. The widow and Philip Lancaster, on the other hand, were unscrupulously romantic and informal in their intercourse; Philip paying rosy compliments to Mrs. Lockhart, with earnest gravity, and she expressing her affectionate admiration of him in a manner worthy of simple-hearted Fanny Pell. In a certain sense, this pairing-off was grounded upon a natural and genuine attraction between the respective partners. For there was a child-like element in Mrs. Lockhart which was absent from her daughter; and Mr. Grant had a boyish straightforwardness which was not apparent in Lancaster; and thus the balance was better preserved than had the two younger people contended against the two elder. The former were old where the latter were young. In another point of view, the normal sympathy of youth with youth, conditioned upon the lack of actual experience and the anticipation of an indefinite future, was not to be denied; so that what Lancaster said to Mrs. Lockhart may have had an oblique significance for Marion; and Marion’s replies to Mr. Grant could be construed as veiled rejoinders to Lancaster. At the same time it need not be inferred that anything serious was intended on the part of any of the four.
As regards success in card-playing, it commonly fell to Mrs. Lockhart and Lancaster. “And yet I may say, without vanity, that I was accounted a fair hand at it in
PULLING THEMSELVES TOGETHER AND DISCUSSING THE MAGNITUDE OF THEIR DISASTER.PULLING THEMSELVES TOGETHER AND DISCUSSING THE MAGNITUDE OF THEIR DISASTER.
my earlier days,” Mr. Grant once remarked apologetically to his partner.
“Cards are not played where you have been living?” Marion suggested.
“No; at least I devoted myself to other games, and my Hoyle was forgotten.”
“I think cards are less popular in society than they used to be five-and-twenty years ago,” remarked Mrs. Lockhart.
“Oh, it is in many ways a different England from that old one,” Mr. Grant said, stroking his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “A great rage for balloons at that time, I recollect. And for boxing—there was the Prince of Wales boxing with Lord Hervey one night after the opera. Dueling, too; why, in 1786 ’twas almost a distinction for a man not to have fought a duel; the point of honor was much oftener vindicated than the point of the argument. No wonder; to be drunk at a certain hour of the day was accounted a mark of breeding among gentlemen. Charles Fox was a terrible fellow for drinking and dicing; used to see him at Watthier’s.”
“Watthier’s? Mr. Tom Grantley used to go there a great deal,” said Mrs. Lockhart, blushing a little after she had spoken.
“Aye, so he was; I have seen him, too—a very handsome man. But I was still quite young when he died. You knew him, madam?”
“I believe mamma knew him very well,” put in Marion, with a touch of mischief. “He was to have danced at your wedding, was he not, mamma?”
“He was very kind to me when I was very young and foolish,” replied her mother, with quiet simplicity. “He was not in England when I married.”
“Grantley was a relative of mine—or would have been, if he had lived ten years longer,” Lancaster remarked. “My father and he both married daughters ofold Seabridge. By-the-by, didn’t he have a daughter who disappeared, or something of that sort?”
“It was a son. I believe he was a very promising young gentleman, but he came to a sad end. Probably you may have met him, Mr. Grant?”
“Never, madam.”
“What end was that?” Lancaster demanded.
“He was discovered in some crime about money—embezzlement, I think. He was a junior partner in the bank; Sir Francis Bendibow trusted him entirely. It almost broke his heart when Charles ran away. But Sir Francis behaved very nobly about it.”
“Ah! he had been recently ennobled, had he not?” inquired Mr. Grant in a dry tone. But if he intended any innuendo, Mrs. Lockhart did not perceive it.
“He made good the loss out of his own private property,” she went on; “and he supported Mrs. Grantley as long as she lived. Poor woman, she was his sister, and of course knew nothing about her husband’s wickedness.”
“ ’Tis indeed a romantic story,” said Mr. Grant thoughtfully. “Sir Francis, I presume, took all means to trace the fugitive?”
“I think he did all that he honestly could to let him escape. They had been such friends, you know. Besides, if the unfortunate young man had any feeling left, he must have been punished enough in losing his honor and his family.”
“Ha! no doubt. He has never been heard from since?”
“No; except that Sir Francis gave me to know that he died a few years afterwards.”
“I don’t believe that Sir Francis Bendibow was so wonderfully generous,” exclaimed Marion, who had been manifesting some signs of restiveness. “You always think a person is good if they say they are. I dare say the Bendibows were very grateful to Charles Grantley formarrying into their family; he had earls and barons for his kinsmen, and the Bendibows have always courted the great. As to Sir Francis, ’tis true his manners are very soft and courteous; but my father has told me he was very unsteady in his youth, and I think my father meant more than he said.”
“Yet, admitting that, still the defaulter would not be excused,” observed Mr. Grant.
“Since he was not brought to his trial, it cannot be said how much or how little he was a criminal,” returned Marion, turning her eyes upon the speaker and kindling with her cause. “He was the son of a man who had nothing ignoble in him, whatever else he may have had. You have told me that yourself, mother. And his mother was noble of birth, and I have heard, noble of nature, too.”
“I can confirm you in that,” said Lancaster. “My father used to say that if Edith Seabridge had been born a man instead of a woman, she would have made herself the foremost man in England. But it showed no less nobleness in her to give up everything to the love and service of her husband.”
“And the son of such a father and mother should not be judged a thief and coward except upon clear evidence,” Marion continued, acknowledging Lancaster’s support only by a heightened color. “He died before I was born, I suppose, but I have always thought that perhaps he was not so much to blame—not in any dastardly way, I mean. He was not a rake and a gambler as Sir Francis was; but a man who cared for learning, and for freedom, and the thoughts that make people better. ’Tis not that kind of man that would steal money for himself: if he committed a crime, I can only think it must have been for the good of some one he loved—not for his own good. You say he and Sir Francis were dear friends; perhaps it was for Sir Francis’ own sake that he did it—to help him through some strait. And then it would be no wonder that Sir Francis let him escape so easily!”
“But,” said Mr. Grant, who had listened with attention to Marion’s advocacy, with a curious smile occasionally glimmering across his face, “but, my dear, that is a doubtful cause that can be maintained only on the discredit of the other side. How could this man have embezzled for the benefit of Sir Francis if, as I am given to understand, he absconded with the proceeds of his robbery?”
“No one knows whether he had the money with him,” answered Marion, driven to bay. “All that is known is, that he disappeared, and that Sir Francis said the bank was robbed. You say that Sir Francis replaced the loss from his private purse; but perhaps his purse had first been filled for him by the very man he denounced as a defaulter!”
At this audacious hypothesis Mr. Grant laughed, though with so kindly an expression that Marion could not feel she was being ridiculed. “You go near to make me wish, my dear,” he said, “that I might be unjustly accused, if I might hope to have you for my defender.”
“How fortunate, then, was this questionable cousin of mine, to have made good his embezzlement and his escape, and withal to have found such a defender!” said Lancaster. “You see, Miss Lockhart, my cousinhood with him allows me the liberty of reviling him quietly if I choose. Whatever your cousin has done, you are liable to do yourself; so I am only whipping myself across my cousin’s back.”
“If you need whipping at all, why don’t you whip yourself directly?” Marion demanded, quick to resent whatever seemed to her patronizing or artificial in another’s tone.
“Oh, Marion!” exclaimed Mrs. Lockhart, under her breath.
“I only meant,” said Lancaster smiling, “that whenever I hear of a man committing a crime, I have a fellow-feeling for him: I believe there is the making of a capital criminal in me, if I am only given fair opportunities.”
It was not the first time Lancaster had spoken in this way, and Marion had not made up her mind how to understand him. She looked away and made no reply.
After a moment Mr. Grant said, “You spoke of Charles Grantley having left a family behind him; is one to infer from that there were children?”
“There was a daughter, I think,” said Mrs. Lockhart, relieved at the change of subject; “didn’t you know her, Marion?”
“She was at the same school with me for a little while; but she was much older than I; she was just leaving when I began. She was very pretty and very genteel; much more genteel than I ever thought of being. She never spoke to me but once, and then she told me to go up-stairs and fetch her slippers.”
“Did you obey?” asked Lancaster.
“No. At first she looked at me very indignantly; but soon she laughed and said, ‘You don’t mind me, because I am a woman; but the day will come when you will fetch a man’s slippers for him, and kiss them after he has put them on.’ She was not like any other girl I ever saw; but almost every one was fond of her; she could do so much—and yet she was always waited on.”
“I should like to know how she turned out. She evidently had a character,” remarked Lancaster.
“She married very well, I believe,” said Mrs. Lockhart.
“Yes; he was three times her age, and very rich, and so fond of her that he didn’t care whether her name was Bendibow or Grantley,” rejoined Marion, rather harshly. “She was always called Miss Bendibow, by the way, and she may have been Sir Francis’ real daughter for aught I know; she seemed to think so herself, and she certainlydidn’t speak of any other father. I suppose she didn’t much care who her father was. At any rate she became the Marquise Desmoines.”
Lancaster moved suddenly in his chair, and seemed about to speak, but checked himself.
Mr. Grant took snuff, and asked, after a pause, “You say he was very fond of her?”
“Yes, I am sure he was,” said Mrs. Lockhart; “he often talked to me about her—for he was a friend of ours, and used to visit us often; because my husband saved his life in France, when the Marquis could not have escaped but for his assistance and protection; and after that he lived in London, and was sometimes so poor as to be forced to give lessons in French and in music; for all this time his estates in France were in jeopardy, and he did not know whether he would ever recover them. But he did, at last; and then he entered society, though he was no longer a young man; and it was then that he met Perdita Bendibow, as she was called. He proposed to her and she accepted him; she could scarce have helped but like him, I am sure. After their marriage they went to France, but I have heard nothing of her since.”
“There is one thing you have forgotten, mamma,” said Marion; “it is another proof how much the Marquis cared for her. Sir Francis gave her no dowry. I suppose he thought it no more than just to save the money out of what her father had cost him.”
“It is not charitable to say so, Marion; and I am sure one could not expect that Sir Francis would give her a dowry, when her husband was so wealthy.”
“So the girl never knew her real father? Well, doubtless it was better so; doubtless he would have wished it so himself, if he retained any unselfish and noble feelings—as you, my dear child, have been charitable enough to imagine may have been the case. And perhaps Perdita’s lot was the one best suited to her—she being as you have described her. For my part, having once had a child of my own, I may hope that she is happy—and that she deserves to be.” Mr. Grant uttered all this in a musing tone, as though his mind was dwelling upon other things than those immediately under discussion; but there was much grave tenderness in the sort of benediction with which he concluded. It made Marion’s heart go out toward him. She felt sure that he had known some deep love, and grievous sorrow, in his day. Now he was a lonely old man, but she resolved to be in the place of a daughter to him. She leaned her cheek upon her hand, and fell into a revery, in the midst of which the clock struck eleven.
“Bless me! how late we are keeping you up, Mrs. Lockhart,” exclaimed Mr. Grant, shutting up his snuff-box and putting it in his pocket. “The truth is, I have been so long deprived of ladies’ society, that now I am prone to presume too much on my good fortune. In future, you must help me to keep myself within bounds. Good-night, madam—I am your most obedient servant. Good-night, my dear Miss Marion; your father must have been a good man; I wish I might have known him. Mr. Lancaster, do you go with me?” The old gentleman was always thus ceremonious in his leave-takings.
“Yes, I’m with you,” said Lancaster, breaking out of a brown study into which he had subsided, and getting briskly to his feet. “I have to thank you for a strange story—an interesting one, I mean.”
“Is there so much in it?” said Marion, as she gave him her hand.
“I fancy I see a good deal in it,” answered he; adding with a smile, “but then, you know, I call myself a poet!”
The ladies courtseyed; the gentlemen bowed, and went up-stairs together.
WHENPhilip Lancaster and Mr. Grant reached the landing at the head of the stairs, they faced each other for a moment; and then, by mutual impulse as it were, Grant tacitly extended, and Philip as tacitly accepted, an invitation to enter the former’s room. The mind resembles the heart in this, that it sometimes feels an instinctive and unexplained desire for the society of another mind. Cold and self-sufficient though the intellect is, it cannot always endure solitude and the corrosion of its unimparted thoughts. Therefore some of the most permanent, though not the most ardent friendships have been between men whose ground of meeting was exclusively intellectual. But men, for some reason, are not willing to admit this, and generally disguise the fact by a plausible obtrusion of other motives. So Mr. Grant, as he opened the door (after the tacit transaction abovementioned), said, “Step in, Lancaster, and help me through with a glass of that French cognac and water.”
“Thank you, I will,” Lancaster replied.
But when the tumblers were filled and tasted, and the liquor pronounced good, nothing more was said for some minutes. At last Lancaster got up from his chair and began to pace about the room.
“It could be worked up into a good story, that character of the Marquise Desmoines,” he said; “at least as I conceive it. If I were a story writer instead of a poet, I would attempt it. You would need the right sort of a man to bring into collision with her. While I was abroad, I knew a fellow who, I think, would do. Cameof good English stock, and had talent—perhaps genius. His father was a poor man, though of noble descent. Gave his son a good early training, followed up by the university curriculum, and then sent him abroad, with two or three hundred a year income. We’ll call him Yorke. The fellow’s idea at that time was to enter the Church; he had eloquence when he was moved, a good presence, and a sort of natural benevolence or humanity, the result of a healthy constitution and digestion, and radical ignorance of the wickedness of this world. The truth probably was that his benevolence was condescension, and his humanity, good nature. As for religion, he looked at it from the poetical side, saw that it was susceptible of a pleasant symbolism, that the theory of right and wrong gave plenty of scope for the philosophical subtlety and profundity in which he imagined himself proficient, and that all he would have to do, as the professional representative of religious ideas, would be to preach poetical sermons, be the expectancy and rose of his parishioners, the glass of goodness and the mould of self-complacency. He thought everybody would be led by him and glorify him, that his chief difficulty would be to keep their piety within practical bounds; and that the devil himself would go near to break his sinful old heart because he could not be numbered among the disciples of so inspired a young prig. It was a lovely conception, wasn’t it? but he never got so far with it as even to experience its idiocy. His first bout with theological and ecclesiastical lore was enough for him. He found himself the captive of a prison house of dogmas, superstitions, and traditions, instead of the lord of a palace of freedom, beauty and blank verse. If this was religion, he was made for something better; and he began to look about him in search of it. There were plenty of ideas masquerading about just then in the guise of freedom, and flaring the penny-dip of nationality in people’s faces;and this fellow—what’s his name?—Yorke, gave courteous entertainment to several of them. A German university is as good a place as another to indulge in that sort of dissipation. Freedom—that was the word; the right of a man to exploit his nature from the top to the bottom—and having arrived at the bottom, to sit down there and talk about the top. He had two or three years of this, and arrived at such proficiency that he could give a reason for everything, especially for those things that suited his inclination of the moment; and could prove to demonstration that the proper moral attitude of man was heels in the air and head downward. But unluckily human nature is not inexhaustible, at all events in the case of my single individual. The prospect may be large enough, but he only walks in such few paths as are comfortably accessible to him; and as time goes on, his round of exercise gets more and more contracted, until at last he does little more than turn round on one heel, in the muddiest corner of the whole estate. As Yorke, owing perhaps to the superior intellect and moral organization on which he prided himself, arrived at this corner rather more speedily than the majority of his associates, he was better able than they to recognize its muddiness: and since mud,quâmud, was not irresistibly delightful to him, and he was not as yet inextricably embedded in it, he thought it worth while to try and get out of it; and made shift tolerably well to do so, though no doubt carrying plenty of stains along with him. All this time he had been secretly giving way to attacks of poetry, more or less modeled upon the Byron and Shelley plan. One day he took these scraps out of the portfolio in which he had hidden them, read them over, thought there was genius in them here and there, and made up his mind to be a great poet. There are always poetasters enough; but of great poets, you know, there are never so many as not to leave room for one or two more.”
“Here, then,” observed Mr. Grant, who had followed this history with complete attention—indeed he was an excellent listener—“here, then, you and Mr. Yorke were on sympathetic ground. It was probably at this epoch that you formed his acquaintance.”
“I came to know him very well then, at all events,” replied Lancaster, taking a sip from his tumbler, and then resuming his walk up and down the room. “He had a curiously mixed character. It was difficult to help liking him at first sight. He was handsome, cheerful, many-sided, easy-natured; but though he loved his ease, both of mind and body, he was capable on occasion of great physical or mental exertion. He was more comprehensive than commanding; but perhaps he seemed less strong than he really was, because he doubted the essential expediency or virtue of any particular line of conduct; and would rather observe the leadership of others than lead himself. He had great intuitive insight into the moral constitution of other people, but was not so keen-eyed toward his own structure; in considering an event, he had the habit of taking it upon its artistic or symbolical side—it was a device to parry the touch of realities. But often he allowed his imagination to get him into real scrapes—imagine himself to be this or that person, for instance, and act the character into actual consequences. He had a quaint way with him, and shunned giving direct pain, or coming into hostile collision with anybody; but the reason of that was, not the generous humanity of a powerful spirit, but the knowledge of a secret weakness that was in him, and a fear of revealing it. His weakness was a passionate, violent temper, which, once he had given way to it, would strip him of dignity and self-restraint, and uncover all manner of hatreds, revenges, jealousies, burning envies, and remorseless cruelties. There was nothing noble in his rage: it was underhand, savage, and malignant. Infact, subtlety was at the very base of his nature: so that he would constantly be secret and stealthy when there was no reason for it: he would conceal a hundred things which he might more conveniently to himself have left open; he would give a false impression when he might more advantageously to himself have told the truth; though I never met a man who could upon occasion speak the naked truth more boldly and recklessly than he. I should say he was by instinct and organization a coward, but a brave man by determination. Back to a certain point he would yield and yield; but then he would leap out and fight like a mad tiger. He was liable to wicked conceptions: although, whether from constitution or caution, he commonly did what was right, and did not like to be suspected of acts of which he secretly knew himself either guilty or capable. In short, there was an ignoble, treacherous region, underlying his visible and better character, which he made use of that better character to disguise. The peril he stood in was, lest the baser nature should get the upper hand; and if he was saved from that, it was, I should say, by virtue of what may be called his genius. It was his good genius in more senses than one. It filled his imagination with lofty images: when his pen was in his hand no man was more pure-minded, well-balanced and upright than he. In those moods he was even reverential, which in practical affairs he never was. The custom of those moods influenced him like association with good men and women: or like some beneficent spell, which should suspend the action of a poison until either it lost its virulence, or he had recovered strength enough to disregard it. Have you heard enough about my friend Yorke?”
In putting this abrupt question, Lancaster stopped as abruptly in his walk, and fixed his eyes upon Mr. Grant, who lifted his face and met the look thoughtfully.
“ ’Tis a portrait not devoid of life and substance, anddoes credit to your discernment more than to your charity,” he replied. “But the features are so true as to be in a measure typical; I have met men who resembled him, and therefore I may modify your interpretation by my own. With all his sensitiveness to rebuke and his fair-seeming, was he not a man given to self-depreciation?”
“Sometimes—yes.”
“The issue of that kind of vanity which would simulate what is dark and terrible, to make the hearers stare. He would not do the evil that he uttered. Besides, he was aware of a certain softness or womanishness in his nature, which his masculine taste condemned, and which he sought to rectify at least in words.”
“But that would show a fear to let the truth about himself be known.”
“Aye; and a moral indifference to ill repute. On the other hand, I doubt not he often sinned in thought, when a physical or mental fastidiousness withheld him from fixing his thought in action. As to his genius, I grant you it was purgative to him; but less because it put him in noble company than because it gave vent through the imagination, and with artistic balance, to the wickedness which might else have forced a less harmless outlet. You say his general bearing was genial?”
“Yes; but his bearing was often much pleasanter than his feelings. He disliked to say or hear ugly words; though he could write savage letters, and could imagine himself being very stern in intercourse; but when he came to the point, he was apt to sweeten off—more, I think, from dread of being tempted to lose his temper than from natural kindliness.”
“You judge him too harshly, because too minutely. Every human motive has its shady side. He was a man—if I may hazard an opinion—who was never so gay and good-humored as under specially trying or perilous circumstances:upon slighter occasions he might be less agreeable.”
“You have chanced upon a truth there,” said Lancaster, apparently somewhat impressed by his interlocutor’s sagacity. “We were once in a boat together on the Lake of Geneva, and a storm put us in imminent danger of our lives for a couple of hours. He was laughing and jesting all the time—not cynically or mockingly, but from genuine light-heartedness. Perhaps you can explain that?”
“No further than to remind you that great or dangerous crises burn the pretense out of a man and leave him sincere: and then it will be known, to others as well as to himself, whether he be brave or craven. In the case of your friend Yorke, with his dread of being accused of fine feelings, imminent peril would annul that dread, because he would perceive that no one about him was likely to be in a state of mind serene enough to be critical: therefore his self-consciousness would leave him, and he would become his spontaneous self. The chief vice of your friend seems to me, indeed, to be that same self-consciousness. He would be for ever watching and speculating about himself. Pray, did you consider him of a fickle disposition?”
“He has given many instances of it, both in mind and heart.”
“Nevertheless,” rejoined Mr. Grant, taking a pinch of snuff between his fingers, and regarding Lancaster with a smile of quiet penetration, “nevertheless I will wager that he was, at bottom, no more fickle than you or I. His fickleness was of the surface merely; within, he was perhaps more constant than most men.”
“You speak confidently, sir.”
“Nay, I am no conjuror, nor no dogmatist either. Your friend’s character is, in reality, not quite so complex as it appears. What are its main elements? Powerful imagination, independence, affability, love of approbation,evidenced by the pride that veils it; a skeptical habit of conversation, to conceal a perhaps too credulous faith, unweariable spiritual curiosity, noble ideals; modesty, unless depreciated, sensitiveness to beauty, and docility unless opposed. That enumeration might be condensed, but let it pass. Here, then, we have a man open to an unusual variety of impressions, and fond of experimenting on himself; in the habit, therefore, of regarding himself as a third person. What more probable than that such a man should imagine changes in his beliefs or affections, and should amuse himself by acting as if those changes were actual? Yet, when it came to some vital matter, his deeper-rooted sense of right and justice would take the reins again, and curb the vagaries of his fancy.”
“But it might happen,” said Lancaster, “that some person became involved in this amusing experiment of his, who should mistake the experiment for earnest. What would my friend’s sense of right and justice have to say to that?”
“Nay, that lies between him and his conscience,” quoth Mr. Grant, applying the pinch of snuff to his nostrils, “and you and I have no concern with it.”
Lancaster took a couple of turns up and down the room, and then seated himself in a chair at the opposite side of the table. “Enough about my friend Yorke,” he said; “between your analysis and mine, he has grown too big for his share in the story. What I intended was to bring him into relations with a woman who should be a match for him: and this Marquise Desmoines, as I conceive her, will answer the purpose as well as another. Even while yet a girl at school, she had, as Marion’s anecdote showed, the instinct of woman’s power and conquest. She had already divided the human race into male and female, and had appraised the weapons available on her side. She had perceived that the weak pointof woman is the heart, and was resolved to fence her own with triple steel. To marry a rich foreign nobleman of more than thrice her age was precisely her affair. She would have the world before her, as well as at her feet. She was—I imagine her to have been—beautiful, dimpled, luxurious, skeptical, and witty. She was energetic by nature, selfish by philosophy, clever and worldly-wise by training. She could appreciate you like a friend, rally you like a critic, flatter and wheedle you like a mistress. She would caress you one moment, scoff at you the next, and put you in the wrong be your argument what it might. She could speak in double meaning, startle you, deceive you, and forgive you. She was fond of intrigue for its own sake, fertile in resources and expedients; she was willful and wayward from calculation, and dangerous at all times. She was indolently despotic, fond of playing with her sensations, and amusing herself with her passions. She was the heroine of a hundred perilous anecdotes, which showed rather the audacity of genius than commonplace impropriety. She could say with grace and charm things that no other woman could say at all. She could assume a fatal innocence and simplicity; and to have seen her blush was an unforgettable experience in a man’s life. Physical exercise, especially dancing and riding, were indispensable to her; her toilets, baths, clothes, and equipment were ideals of luxury. She was superstitious, because she believed in no religion; indifferent to inflicting suffering, because never suffering herself; but she loved the pleasure of pleasing, was kindly in disposition, mindful of benefits as well as of injuries; and in her loftier moods she could be royally or savagely generous, as well as fiercely implacable. She had a lawyer’s head for business; was a better companion for men than for women; was even capable of genuine friendship, and could give sound and honest advice: and it was at such times that the real power andmaturity of her understanding were revealed. That is the sort of woman that the plot of my story requires her to have been. When Yorke met her, she was the Circe of a distinguished company of noblemen, authors, actors, artists, abbés, soldiers, wits, and humorists; all of whom, by her magic, she could cause to assume the forms of turkey-cocks, magpies, poodles, monkeys, hogs, puppies, parrots, boa-constrictors, and other animals, according to their several dispositions. But Yorke was the Ulysses upon whom her spells had only so much effect as to incline him to spend most of his time in her company.”
Here Lancaster paused, and drank off the remains of his tumbler of brandy and water.
“Well?” said Mr. Grant, moving the bottle toward him.
“No more, thank you,” said Lancaster.
“You are not going to leave your drama just as the curtain is ready to go up?”
“I have come to the end of my invention.”
“Ah! I should scarce have thought you had begun upon it, as yet,” returned the other dryly.
Lancaster made no reply. At last Mr. Grant said, “Unless my genealogical inferences are at fault, you and Sir Francis Bendibow should be of kin.”
“It is one of the impertinences of human society,” said Lancaster, with a twitching of his eyebrows, “that whatever filibuster happens to marry the sister of your father has a right to call you nephew. It might as reasonably be decreed that because I happen to cut the throat of some hook-nosed old money-lender, his women and children would have the right to style themselves my cousins and aunts. That law might, to be sure, prove a beneficial one, for it would do more than hanging to put a stop to murder. But the other law makes marriage a nuisance, and one of these days the nephews will arise and compel its repeal at the sword’s point. MeanwhileI remain the baronet’s nephew and your humble servant.”
“You would abolish all but blood-relatives then?” said Mr. Grant, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair and interlacing his fingers.
“I would have no buts; abolish the whole of them!” exclaimed Lancaster—“even the rich uncles and the pretty cousins. Take a leaf from the book of animals, and let each human creature stand on his own basis and do the best he can with it. When I found a republic there shall be no genealogies and no families. So long as they exist we shall never know what we are really made of.”
“The Bendibow Bank is, however, a highly prosperous and trustworthy concern?”
“You must get my uncle to sing its eulogies for you; I know nothing. But I am of opinion that Miss Marion Lockhart has an intuition for detecting humbugs. That Charles Grantley affair ... is none of mine. But Sir Francis had two sides to him in his youth, and there may be some passages in his account book that he would deprecate publishing.”
“Ah! I had contemplated calling at the bank to-morrow—”
“Oh, don’t interpret my prejudices and antipathies as counsel!” interrupted the young man, throwing back his hair from his forehead and smiling. “The bank is as sound as the Great Pyramid, I doubt not. Bless your heart, everybody banks there! If they ruin you, you will have all the best folks in London for your fellow-bankrupts. I’m afraid I’ve bored you shamefully, but a little brandy goes a long way with me.”
“You have said nothing that has failed to interest me,” returned the old gentleman courteously. “As you may conceive, I find myself somewhat lonely. In twenty years such friends as may have been mine in Englandhave disappeared, and the circumstances in which those years have been passed—in India—have precluded my finding others. At your age one can afford to wish to abolish kindred, but by the time you have lived thirty years longer you may understand how I would rather wish to create new kindred in the place of those whom fate has abolished for me. Human beings need one another, Mr. Lancaster. God has no other way of ministering to us than through our fellow-creatures. I esteem myself fortunate, therefore, in having met with yourself and with these kind ladies. You cannot know me as the vanished friends I spoke of would know me—my origin, my early life, my ambitions, my failures; but you can know me as an inoffensive old gentleman whose ambition for the rest of his life is to make himself agreeable to somebody. If you and I had been young men together in London thirty years ago, doubtless we might have found ourselves in accord on many points of speculation and philosophy wherein now I should be disposed to challenge some of your conclusions. But intellectual agreement is not the highest basis of friendship between man and man. I, at all events, have been led by experience to value men for what I think they are, more than for what they think they are. I will make no other comment than that on the brilliant and ingenious ... confidence, shall I call it?—with which you have honored me to-night. If it should ever occur to you to present me to your friend Yorke, under his true name, I am sure that I should enjoy his acquaintance, and that I should recognize him from your description. Perhaps he might be able to reinforce your invention as to the Marquise Perdita. Well, well, I am detaining you. Good-night!”
Lancaster colored a little at the latter sentence and a cloud passed over his face, but in another moment his eyebrows lifted with a smile. “God knows what induces me to masquerade so,” he said. “I care to conceal myselfonly from those who can see nothing on any terms—which is certainly not your category. Let Yorke and Lancaster be one in future. As for Perdita ... there goes twelve o’clock! I was startled at hearing her name to-night; she has just returned to London in the capacity of widow. It only needed that ... however, what is that to you? Good-night.”
“Perdita, a pretty name, is it not?” said Mr. Grant musingly, as he followed the other to the door. “It makes one hope there may be some leaven of Shakspeare’s Perdita in her, after all.”
“ ’Tis an ominous name, though—too ominous in this case for even Shakspeare to save it, I’m afraid,” returned Lancaster. With that he went out and left Mr. Grant to his meditations.
THEnext day Mr. Grant hired a saddle-horse, and rode up to London, where, among other business, he made the call at Bendibow Bank, which has been already mentioned. His affair with that institution having been arranged, presumably to the satisfaction of both parties, Mr. Grant set out on his return home. As it was already six o’clock, however, he stopped at the “Holy Lands” hotel in the Strand, where he dined. By the time he was ready to resume his journey it was nearly dark, the rather as the night was moonless, and the sky was overlaid with heavy clouds. Partly by chance, partly because he fancied it would save him some distance, he took the northern or Uxbridge road, instead of that which goes through Kensington. After passing the northwest corner of Kensington Gardens, this road lay through a region which was, at that epoch, practically uninhabited. Mr. Grant rode easily along, absorbed in thought, and only occasionally taking note of his direction. He was a practiced horseman, and riding was as natural to him as walking. It was a very still night, though a storm might be brewing; and the only sounds audible to Mr. Grant’s ears were the steady tramp of his horse’s feet, the slight creaking of the saddle, and the rattle of the bit as the animal flung up his head. By-and-by, however, the rider fancied he heard the noise of another horse’s hoofs beating the road at a gallop, and coming up behind him. He drew his left rein a little, and glanced over his shoulder.
Meanwhile, at Mrs. Lockhart’s house in Hammersmith, dinner was ready at the usual time; but as Mr.Grant did not appear, it was resolved to wait for him. He had informed Mrs. Lockhart, previous to setting out, that it was his intention to go to London, and added that he might be detained some hours by business. No anxiety was felt, therefore: but, as Marion observed, dinner would not seem like dinner without Mr. Grant; and it was not worth while sitting down to table so long as any chance remained of his being present. Accordingly, the dishes were put to warm in front of the kitchen fire; and Marion and Lancaster went to the piano, and tried to set to music some words that the latter had written. But singing conduces to appetite; and appetite will get the better even of sentiment. When more than half an hour had added itself to the abyss of the past, it was generally admitted that Mr. Grant was hopelessly derelict, and neglectful of his social duties: the dishes were brought in from the kitchen, and the trio seated themselves at table, with Mr. Grant’s chair gaping vacantly at them all.
Now, whether a man be well or ill spoken of behind his back, depends not so much upon the man himself as upon those who speak of him; but probably the worst thing that can happen to him is not to be spoken of at all. Mr. Grant fared well in all respects; he was spoken of, he was well spoken of, he was well spoken of by honest people; and it may not be too much to add that he was not undeserving of having honest people speak well of him. The goodness of some good men is a long time in getting the recognition that it deserves; that of others is appreciated at once; nor does it follow that the latter’s virtues are necessarily shallower or less honorable than those of the former. Ten days ago, for example, Mr. Grant had been as good as non-existent to the three persons who were now discussing him with so much interest and even affection. There was something in his face, in his glance, in the gradual, kindly brightening of his smile, in the pleasant melody of his voice, in the manly reposeof his general walk and conversation, that inevitably inspired respect and liking in such persons as were disinterestedly susceptible of those sentiments. And yet Mr. Grant was far from being handsome either in face or figure; and no one knew what his life had been, what was his social position, whether he were rich or poor, or wherefore he was living in lodgings at Hammersmith; none of which subjects of inquiry are apt to be disregarded in the life of a country so compact and inquisitive as England. But even in England, sheer and naked individuality has vast weight, altogether unaccountable upon any general theory whatever: and Mr. Grant was in this way the passive subject of a special social dispensation.
“He told me last night,” remarked Lancaster, “that he had been living in India for the last twenty years. I had been puzzling myself whom he reminded me of—physically, I mean; and that enlightened me. You have probably seen the man I mean, Mrs. Lockhart. I saw him the year he was acquitted, when I was eight or nine years old; and I never forgot his face—Warren Hastings.”
Mrs. Lockhart replied that she had never seen Mr. Hastings, but she was sure Mr. Grant bore no resemblance to him in character. Mr. Hastings was a cruel and ambitious man; whereas Mr. Grant was the most humane man she had ever known, except the Major, and as simple as a child.
“There is mystery about him, too,” said Lancaster.
“Not the kind of mystery that makes you suspicious though,” said Marion. “I feel that what he hides would make us like him better if we knew it.”
“What I hide is of another color,” observed Lancaster.
“I’m sure it can be nothing bad,” said Mrs. Lockhart.
Marion broke out, “So am I! Mr. Lancaster thinks it would be picturesque and poetical to be wicked, and so he is always talking about it. If he had really done anything wicked, he would be too vain to make a mystery ofit; he could not help telling. But he has only been good so far, and he has not outgrown being ashamed of it. If he had committed more sins, the people in his poetry would have committed much fewer.”
When Marion struck, she struck with all her might, and reckless of consequences. Mrs. Lockhart sat appalled, and Lancaster winced a little; but he was able to say good-humoredly, “I shall give up being a hypocrite; everybody finds me out. If I were a whited sepulchre, detection would not humiliate me; but when a bottle labeled ‘Poison’ is found to contain nothing worse than otto of roses, it can never hold up its head again.”
“Anybody can say what they please,” rejoined Marion; “but what they do is all that amounts to anything.”
“That is to say you are deaf, but you have eyes.”
“That is a more poetical way of putting it, I suppose. But some words are as good as deeds, and I can hear those.”
“It is not your seeing or hearing that troubles me, but your being able to read. If I had only been born an Arab or an ancient Hebrew, I might have written without fear of your criticism.”
“I suppose you wish me to say that I would learn those languages for the express purpose of enjoying your poetry. But I think you are lucky in having to write in plain English. It is the most difficult of all languages to be wicked in—genteelly wicked, at least.”
“You convince me, however, that it must have been the original language spoken by Job’s wife, when she advised him to curse God and die. If she had been as much a mistress of it as you are, I think he would have done it.”
“If he had been a poet, ’tis very likely.”
“I hope,” said Mrs. Lockhart with gentle simplicity, “that nothing has happened to Mr. Grant.”
Lancaster and Marion both turned their faces toward the window, and then Lancaster got up from thetable—they had finished dinner—and looked out. “It has grown dark very suddenly,” he remarked. “I fear Mr. Grant will get wet if he does not return soon.”
Marion also arose and stood at the other side of the window. After a while she said, “I should like to be out in such a night as this.”
“I hate darkness,” returned Lancaster. “Come what come may, as long as I have a light to see it by.”
“I love darkness, because then I can see my mind. When father was alive, and I had more time to do what I wished, I used to lie awake at night as much as in the day-time.”
“Your mind must be fuller of light than most people’s, if you can see it only in the darkness.”
“I am light-minded—is that what you mean?”
“No, I am serious. You never are serious except when you are angry.”
“If I am never serious, I must be light-minded. Very likely I am light-headed, too, sometimes; mother has often told me so. I like to be out in the rain, and to get my feet wet and muddy. I should like to have been a soldier in my father’s regiment; he said I would make a good soldier.”
“And shoot Frenchmen?”
“I prefer killing with a sword. Washing dishes and marketing becomes tiresome after a while. I shall probably kill the baker or the greengrocer some day; I have a terrible tongue, and if I don’t let it have its way once in a while it will become worse. Hitherto I have only broken dishes; but that is not terrible enough.”
“I’ll be hanged if I can understand you,” said Lancaster, after a pause.
“You are such a handsome man you don’t need to understand people. The object of understanding people is to get the better of them; but when one is handsome, people open their doors at once.”
“Then why don’t you open yours?”
“If I don’t, it is as much on your account as on mine.”
“How is that?”
“When I tell you that, I shall have told you a great deal. But why didn’t you protest that you had no notion you were handsome, and that I was a flatterer?”
“I know I’m handsome, and I’m glad of it.”
“Do you often speak the truth like that?”
“You get more truth out of me than I suspected of being in me. But if, some day, you provoke me to some truth that I had better have kept to myself, it will be your fault.”
“I don’t think there is much danger. I like this first truth of yours. If I were handsome I should be glad of it, too. Ugly women are suspicious, designing and jealous. They talk about the charms of a cultivated intelligence being superior, in the long run, to beauty. But beauty does not wait for the long run—it wins at once, and lets the cultivated intelligence run on to Jericho, if it likes. I imagine most cultivated intelligences would be thankful to be fools, if they could afford it.”
“But beauty doesn’t always imply folly.”
“Oh, I am speaking of women!”
“Thank you. But, speaking of women, what have you to say to the Marquise Desmoines, for instance?”
“So you know her?”
“I heard you speak of her last night as being both beautiful and clever.”
“But you know her?”
“I ran across her abroad,” said Lancaster, with an indifferent air. But before saying it he had hesitated for a moment, and Marion had noticed the hesitation.
“How did you like the Marquis?” she inquired.
“He was a very distinguished old gentleman, very punctilious and very bilious. He always wore a red ribbon in his button-hole and sat in a large arm-chair,and four times a day he had a glass of absinthe. ’Tis a wonder he lived so long.”
“Oh, did he die?”
“He is dead.”
“What did you do then?”
“I did not know of it until a few days ago. He has been dead six months.”
“Then Perdita is in England!” said Marion rapidly, meeting Lancaster’s glance with her own. Except when she was angry, or for some other reason forgot herself, she habitually avoided another person’s glance. For she was of an extremely sensitive, nervous temperament, and the “personal equation” of those with whom she conversed affected her more than physical contact would affect other people.
At this point the dialogue was interrupted by a startling glare of lightning, succeeded almost immediately by a crash of thunder so loud and so heavy as to rattle the window in its frame and jar the floor on which they stood. Marion laughed, and opening the window leaned out. Mrs. Lockhart, who had fallen into a gentle doze in her chair, awoke with a little jump and an exclamation.
“Oh, Marion ... what has gone off? Mr. Grant? Why is the window open? Dear heart! is that the rain? He will be drenched to the skin, Mr. Lancaster.”
“So will you if you don’t shut the window,” said Lancaster to Marion.
She looked round and appeared to answer, but her words were inaudible in the thunderpeal that accompanied them. The rain drove straight downwards with such force and weight that the drops might have been liquid lead. The sky was black.
“I shall take an umbrella and go out and meet him,” Marion was now heard to say.
“Oh, my child, you are mad!” cried Mrs. Lockhart. “Do put down the window, Mr. Lancaster.”
Lancaster complied. Marion glanced at him with an odd, quizzical kind of a smile. He did not know what she meant; but he joined Mrs. Lockhart in denouncing Marion’s project as impossible.
“He would be as wet as he is capable of being before you found him,” he said; “besides, he couldn’t use an umbrella on horseback; and even if you knew where he was and which road he was coming by, it’s a hundred to one you’d miss him in a night like this.”
“La! what a regiment of reasons!” she answered, with her short, irregular laugh. “I only wanted a reason for going out. As to being of use to Mr. Grant, ’twould be but a chance, of course; but so is everything for that matter.”
She did not persist in her intention, however, but began to move carelessly about the room, and made no answer to several remarks that her mother and Lancaster addressed to her.
When nearly half an hour had passed away, her bearing and aspect suddenly changed; she went swiftly out of the room, shutting the door behind her. Then the outside door was heard to open, and Marion’s step going down to the gate, which was likewise flung back; then, after a minute’s silence, the sound of voices, and Lancaster, peering out of the window, saw, by the aid of an accommodating flash of lightning, Marion and Mr. Grant (who was without his hat) coming up the paved way to the porch.
“What a strange thing!” he exclaimed. “How could she possibly have known he was coming?”
“Marion has wonderful ears,” said Mrs. Lockhart with a sigh, as if the faculty were in some way deleterious to the possessor of it. But Lancaster thought that something else besides fine hearing was involved in this matter.
The girl now came in, her cheeks flushed, her hair, face and shoulders wet, conducting Mr. Grant, with herarm under his. He was splashed and smeared with mud and looked very pale; but he smiled and said with his usual courteousness: “I am not going to spoil your carpet and chairs, dear madam. I do but show you my plight, like a truant schoolboy who has tumbled into the gutter, and then I retire for repairs.”
“No: you shall sit down here,” said Marion determinedly but quietly; and in despite of himself she led him to the stuffed easy chair which her mother had just quitted, and forced him into it. “Mr. Grant has had some hurt,” she added to the others; and to Lancaster, “Go up to his room and bring down his dressing-gown. Mother, get some water heated in the kitchen. I will attend to him.”
Her manner to the old man was full of delicate and sympathetic tenderness; to the others, of self-possessed authority. Lancaster went on his errand with a submissive docility that surprised himself. He had seen a great deal of Marion in the last few hours; but he was not sure that he had seen into her very far.
When he returned with the dressing-gown, Marion had got Mr. Grant’s coat off, and was wiping the mud from a bruised place on his right hand with her wetted handkerchief. “Nothing dangerous, thank God!” she was saying, in a soothing undertone, as Lancaster approached.
“You got a fall?” asked the latter of the elder man, who nodded in reply.
Marion said brusquely, “Don’t you see that he is too exhausted to talk? Wait, and you will know everything.”
In truth, Mr. Grant appeared a good deal shaken, and for several minutes could do little more than accept passively the ministrations that were bestowed upon him. Marion continued to direct the operations, the others assisting with abundant good will. At last Mr. Grant said:
“It is very pleasant to find you all so kind—to be sowell taken care of. I fear I’m ruining your chair, Mrs. Lockhart. There was really no need for this. I am none the worse, except for the loss of a hat. Thank you, my dear; you are very good.”
“Have you had your dinner?” inquired Mrs. Lockhart.
“Yes, I am obliged to you, madam. I was belated, and.... But you must hear my adventure. I thought the highwaymen days were over in this neighborhood.”
“I wish I had been with you!” murmured Marion resentfully.
“Highwaymen? oh!” faltered Mrs. Lockhart.
“My highwayman was not so ceremonious as the best of the old-fashioned ones,” continued Mr. Grant smiling. “He came upon me just before the storm broke. I heard his horse overtaking me at a gallop, and I drew aside to let him pass. But he rode right against me—he was mounted on a very powerful animal—and nearly threw me down. As I turned toward him, he held a pistol in his hand, and fired at me. The ball knocked off my hat, and missed me. I had a heavy riding-whip, and I struck at him with it. I think I must have hit him across the wrist; at all events, he dropped the pistol. Neither of us had spoken a word. It was at that moment that the first flash of lightning came. It showed me that he was a large man, dressed in dark clothes; he put his arm across his face, as if to prevent my seeing it. The thunder was very loud, and my horse plunged and burst his girths; and I slipped to the ground. What with the rain and the noise, and the suddenness of it all, I was confused, and hardly knew what happened for a few moments. When I got on my feet again, I was alone; my highwayman had disappeared; and so had my horse, though I picked it up on the road later.”
“He may have thought, from your falling, that he had not missed his shot after all,” said Lancaster.
“It was the lightning that frightened him away,” saidMarion. “He counted on darkness, and dared not risk recognition.”
“How did you get home? did you have to walk?” asked Mrs. Lockhart.
“Only a short distance. A wagon happened to come along, and the driver gave me a lift as far as the corner. And there Marion met me. What spirit told you I was coming, my dear?”
Marion replied only by a smile.
“It seems singular,” remarked Lancaster “that he should have ridden at you and fired at once, instead of going through the customary formality of inquiring whether you preferred your life to your purse. Those fellows are usually more cautious for their own sakes.”
“He was as much afraid of having his voice heard as of having his face seen,” said Marion. “He wished to kill Mr. Grant more than to rob him. You didn’t have much money with you, did you?”
“Not much, as it happened, my dear; though, as I had been to the Bank, whoever had taken the trouble to follow my movements might have inferred that I did have.”
“The Bendibow Bank?” demanded Marion.
“Yes; I introduced myself to your friend Sir Francis.”
Lancaster chanced to be looking at Marion, and noticed a troubled expression pass across her face. She laid her hand lightly on Mr. Grant’s shoulder, and passed it down his arm; the action seemed at once affectionate and reproachful. “You disapprove of that, don’t you?” the young man said to her, smiling.
The question appeared to annoy her: “I am glad he got home,” she said coldly. Then she got up and went out of the room.