MR. WARDLAW went down to his son and nursed him. He kept the newspapers from him, and, on his fever abating, had him conveyed by easy stages to the seaside, and then sent him abroad.
The young man obeyed in gloomy silence. He never asked after Robert Penfold, now; never mentioned his name. He seemed, somehow, thankful to be controlled mind and body.
But, before he had been abroad a month, he wrote for leave to return home and to throw himself into business. There was, for once, a nervous impatience in his letters, and his father, who pitied him deeply, and was more than ever inclined to reward and indulge him, yielded readily enough; and, on his arrival, signed the partnership deed, and, Polonius-like, gave him much good counsel; then retired to his country seat.
At first he used to run up every three days, and examine the day-book and ledger, and advise his junior; but these visits soon became fewer, and at last he did little more than correspond occasionally.
Arthur Wardlaw held the reins, and easily paid his Oxford debts out of the assets of the firm. Not being happy in his mind, he threw himself into commerce with feverish zeal, and very soon extended the operations of the house.
One of his first acts of authority was to send for Michael Penfold into his room. Now poor old Michael, ever since his son's misfortune, as he called it, had crept to his desk like a culprit, expecting every day to be discharged. When he received this summons he gave a sigh and went slowly to the young merchant.
Arthur Wardlaw looked up at his entrance, then looked down again, and said coldly, "Mr. Penfold, you have been a faithful servant to us many years; I raise your salary fifty pounds a year, and you will keep the ledger."
The old man was dumfounded at first, and then began to give vent to his surprise and gratitude; but Wardlaw cut him short, almost fiercely. "There, there, there," said he, without raising his eyes, "let me hear no more about it, and, above all, never speak to me of that cursed business. It was no fault of yours, nor mine neither. There—go—I want no thanks. Do you hear? leave me, Mr. Penfold, if you please."
The old man bowed low and retired, wondering much at his employer's goodness, and a little at his irritability.
Wardlaw junior's whole soul was given to business night and day, and he soon became known for a very ambitious and rising merchant. But, by and by, ambition had to encounter a rival in his heart. He fell in love; deeply in love; and with a worthy object.
The young lady was the daughter of a distinguished officer, whose merits were universally recognized, but not rewarded in proportion. Wardlaw's suit was favorably received by the father, and the daughter gradually yielded to an attachment the warmth, sincerity and singleness of which were manifest. And the pair would have been married but for the circumstance that her father (partly through Wardlaw's influence, by the by) had obtained a lucrative post abroad which it suited his means to accept, at all events for a time. He was a widower, and his daughter could not let him go alone.
This temporary separation, if it postponed a marriage, led naturally to a solemn engagement; and Arthur Wardlaw enjoyed the happiness of writing and receiving affectionate letters by every foreign post. Love, worthily bestowed, shed its balm upon his heart, and, under its soft but powerful charm, he grew tranquil and complacent, and his character and temper seemed to improve. Such virtue is there in a pure attachment.
Meanwhile the extent of his operations alarmed old Penfold; but he soon reasoned that worthy down with overpowering conclusions and superior smiles.
He had been three years the ruling spirit of Wardlaw & Son, when some curious events took place in another hemisphere; and in these events, which we are now to relate, Arthur Wardlaw was more nearly interested than may appear at first sight.
Robert Penfold, in due course, applied to Lieutenant-General Rolleston for a ticket of leave. That functionary thought the application premature, the crime being so grave. He complained that the system had become too lax, and for his part he seldom gave a ticket-of-leave until some suitable occupation was provided for the applicant. "Will anybody take you as a clerk? If so, I'll see about it."
Robert Penfold could find nobody to take him into a post of confidence all at once, and wrote the general an eloquent letter, begging hard to be allowed to labor with his hands.
Fortunately, General Rolleston's gardener had just turned him off; so he offered the post to his eloquent correspondent, remarking that he did not much mind employing a ticket-of-leave man himself, though he was resolved to protect his neighbors from their relapses.
The convict then came to General Rolleston, and begged leave to enter on his duties under the name of James Seaton. At that General Rolleston hem'd and haw'd, and took a note. But his final decision was as follows: "If you really mean to change your character, why, the name you have disgraced might hang round your neck. Well, I'll give you every chance. But," said this old warrior, suddenly compressing his resolute lips just a little, "if you go a yard off the straight pathnow,look for no mercy, Jemmy Seaton."
So the convict was re-christened at the tail of a threat, and let loose among the warrior's tulips.
His appearance was changed as effectually as his name. Even before he was Seatoned he had grown a silky mustache and beard of singular length and beauty; and, what with these and his workingman's clothes, and his cheeks and neck tanned by the sun, our readers would never have recognized in this hale, bearded laborer the pale prisoner that had trembled, raged, wept and submitted in the dock of the Central Criminal Court.
Our universities cure men of doing things by halves, be the things mental or muscular; so Seaton gardened much more zealously than his plebeian predecessor: up at five, and did not leave till eight.
But he was unpopular in the kitchen—because he was always out of it. Taciturn and bitter, he shunned his fellow-servants.
Yet working among the flowers did him good; these his pretty companions and nurslings had no vices.
One day, as he was rolling the grass upon the lawn, he heard a soft rustle at some distance, and, looking round, saw a young lady on the gravel path, whose calm but bright face, coming so suddenly, literally dazzled him. She had a clear cheek blooming with exercise, rich brown hair, smooth, glossy and abundant, and a very light hazel eye, of singular beauty and serenity. She glided along, tranquil as a goddess, smote him with beauty and perfume, and left him staring after her receding figure, which was, in its way, as captivating as her face.
She was walking up and down for exercise, briskly, but without effort. Once she passed within a few yards of him, and he touched his hat to her. She inclined her head gently, but her eyes did not rest an instant on her gardener; and so she passed and repassed, unconsciously sawing this solitary heart with soft but penetrating thrills.
At last she went indoors to luncheon, and the lawn seemed to miss the light music of her rustling dress, and the sunshine of her presence, and there was a painful void; but that passed, and a certain sense of happiness stole over James Seaton—an unreasonable joy, that often runs before folly and trouble.
The young lady was Helen Rolleston, just returned home from a visit. She walked in the garden every day, and Seaton watched her, and peeped at her, unseen, behind trees and bushes. He fed his eyes and his heart upon her, and, by degrees, she became the sun of his solitary existence. It was madness; but its first effect was not unwholesome. The daily study of this creature, who, though by no means the angel he took her for, was at all events a pure and virtuous woman, soothed his sore heart, and counteracted the demoralizing influence of his late companions. Every day he drank deeper of an insane but purifying and elevating passion.
He avoided the kitchen still more; and that, by the by, was unlucky; for there he could have learned something about Miss Helen Rolleston that would have warned him to keep at the other end of the garden whenever that charming face and form glided to and fro among the minor flowers.
A beautiful face fires our imagination, and we see higher virtue and intelligence in it than we can detect in its owner's head or heart when we descend to calm inspection. James Seaton gazed on Miss Rolleston day after day, at so respectful a distance that she became his goddess. If a day passed without his seeing her, he was dejected. When she was behind her time, he was restless, anxious, and his work distasteful; and then, when she came out at last, he thrilled all over, and the lawn, ay, the world itself, seemed to fill with sunshine. His adoration, timid by its own nature, was doubly so by reason of his fallen and hopeless condition. He cut nosegays for her; but gave them to her maid Wilson for her. He had not the courage to offer them to herself.
One evening, as he went home, a man addressed him familiarly, but in a low voice. Seaton looked at him attentively, and recognized him at last. It was a convict called Butt, who had come over in the ship with him. The man offered him a glass of ale; Seaton declined it. Butt, a very clever rogue, seemed hurt. So then Seaton assented reluctantly. Butt took him to a public house in a narrow street, and into a private room. Seaton started as soon as he entered, for there sat two repulsive ruffians, and, by a look that passed rapidly between them and Butt, he saw plainly that they were waiting for him. He felt nervous; the place was so uncouth and dark, the faces so villainous.
However, they invited him to sit down, roughly, but with an air of good fellowship; and very soon opened their business over their ale. We are all bound to assist our fellow-creatures, when it can be done without trouble; and what they asked of him was a simple act of courtesy, such as in their opinion no man worthy of the name could deny to his fellow. It was to give General Rolleston's watchdog a piece of prepared meat upon a certain evening. And, in return for this trifling civility, they were generous enough to offer him a full share of any light valuables they might find in the general's house.
Seaton trembled, and put his face in his hands a moment. "I cannot do it," said he.
"Why not?"
"He has been too good to me."
A coarse laugh of derision greeted this argument; it seemed so irrelevant to these pure egotists. Seaton, however, persisted, and on that one of the men got up and stood before the door, and drew his knife gently.
Seaton glanced his eyes round in search of a weapon, and turned pale.
"Do you mean to split on us, mate?" said one of the ruffians in front of him.
"No, I don't. But I won't rob my benefactor. You shall kill me first." And with that he darted to the fireplace, and in a moment the poker was high in air, and the way he squared his shoulders and stood ready to hit to the on, or cut to the off, was a caution.
"Come, drop that," said Butt, grimly; "and put upyourknife, Bob. Can't a pal be out of a job, and yet not split on them that is in it!"
"Why should I split?" said Robert Penfold. "Has the law been a friend to me? But I won't rob my benefactor—and his daughter."
"That is square enough," said Butt. "Why, pals, there are other cribs to be cracked besides that old bloke's. Finish the ale, mate, and part friends."
"If you will promise me to crack some other crib, and let that one alone."
A sullen assent was given, and Seaton drank their healths, and walked away. Butt followed him soon after, and affected to side with him, and intimated that he himself was capable of not robbing a man's house who had been good to him, or to a pal of his. Indeed this plausible person said so much, and his sullen comrades had said so little, that Seaton, rendered keen and anxious by love, invested his savings in a Colt's revolver and ammunition.
He did not stop there; after the hint about the watch-dog, he would not trust that faithful but too carnivorous animal; he brought his blankets into the little tool-house, and lay there every night in a sort of dog's sleep. This tool-house was erected in a little back garden, separated from the lawn only by some young trees in single file. Now Miss Rolleston's window looked out upon the lawn, so that Seaton's watchtower was not many yards from it; then, as the tool-house was only lighted from above, he bored a hole in the wooden structure, and through this he watched, and slept, and watched. He used to sit studying theology by a farthing rushlight till the lady's bedtime, and then he watched for her shadow. If it appeared for a few moments on the blind, he gave a sigh of content and went to sleep, but awaked every now and then to see that all was well.
After a few nights, his alarms naturally ceased, but his love increased, fed now from this new source, the sweet sense of being the secret protector of her he adored.
Meantime, Miss Rolleston's lady's maid, Wilson, fell in love with him after her fashion; she had taken a fancy to his face at once, and he had encouraged her a little, unintentionally; for he brought the nosegays to her, and listened complacently to her gossip, for the sake of the few words she let fall now and then about her young mistress. As he never exchanged two sentences at a time with any other servant, this flattered Sarah Wilson, and she soon began to meet and accost him oftener, and in cherrier-colored ribbons, than he could stand. So then he showed impatience, and then she, reading him by herself, suspected some vulgar rival.
Suspicion soon bred jealousy, jealousy vigilance, and vigilance detection.
Her first discovery was that, so long as she talked of Miss Helen Rolleston, she was always welcome; her second was, that Seaton slept in the tool-house.
She was not romantic enough to connect her two discoveries together. They lay apart in her mind, until circumstances we are about to relate supplied a connecting link.
One Thursday evening James Seaton's goddess sat alone with her papa, and—being a young lady of fair abilities, who had gone through her course of music and other studies, taught brainlessly, and who was now going through a course of monotonous pleasures, and had not accumulated any great store of mental resources—she was listless and languid, and would have yawned forty times in her papa's face, only she was too well-bred. She always turned her head away, when it came, and either suppressed it, or else hid it with a lovely white hand. At last, as she was a good girl, she blushed at her behavior, and roused herself up, and said she, "Papa, shall I play you the new quadrilles?"
Papa gave a start and a shake, and said, with well-feigned vehemence, "Ay, do, my dear," and so composed himself—to listen; and Helen sat down and played the quadrilles.
The composer had taken immortal melodies, some gay, some sad, and had robbed them of their distinctive character and hashed them till they were all one monotonous rattle. But General Rolleston was little the worse for all this. As Apollo saved Horace from hearing a poetaster's rhymes, so did Somnus, another beneficent little deity, rescue our warrior from his daughter's music.
She was neither angry nor surprised. A delicious smile illumined her face directly; she crept to him on tiptoe, and bestowed a kiss, light as a zephyr, on his gray head. And, in truth, the bending attitude of this supple figure, clad in snowy muslin, the virginal face and light hazel eyes beaming love and reverence, and the airy kiss, had something angelic.
She took her candle, and glided up to her bedroom. And, the moment she got there, and could gratify her somnolence without offense, need we say she became wide-awake? She sat down and wrote long letters to three other young ladies, gushing affection, asking questions of the kind nobody replies to, painting, with a young lady's colors, the male being to whom she was shortly to be married, wishing her dear friends a like demigod, if perchance earth contained two; and so to the last new bonnet and preacher.
She sat over her paper till one o'clock, and Seaton watched and adored her shadow.
When she had done writing, she opened her window and looked out upon the night. She lifted those wonderful hazel eyes toward the stars, and her watcher might well be pardoned if he saw in her a celestial being looking up from an earthly resting place toward her native sky.
At two o'clock she was in bed, but not asleep. She lay calmly gazing at the Southern Cross and other lovely stars shining with vivid but chaste fire in the purple vault of heaven.
While thus employed she heard a slight sound outside that made her turn her eyes toward a young tree near her window. Its top branches were waving a good deal, though there was not a breath stirring. This struck her as curious, very curious.
While she wondered, suddenly an arm and a hand came in sight, and after them the whole figure of a man, going up the tree.
Helen sat up now, glaring with terror, and was so paralyzed she did not utter a sound. About a foot below her window was a lead flat that roofed the bay-window below. It covered an area of several feet, and the man sprang on to it with perfect ease from the tree. Helen shrieked with terror. At that very instant there was a flash, a pistol-shot, and the man's arms went whirling, and he staggered and fell over the edge of the flat, and struck the grass below with a heavy thud. Shots and blows followed, and all the sounds of a bloody struggle rung in Helen's ears as she flung herself screaming from the bed and darted to the door. She ran and clung quivering to her sleepy maid, Wilson. The house was alarmed, lights flashed, footsteps pattered, there was universal commotion.
General Rolleston soon learned his daughter's story from Wilson, and aroused his male servants, one of whom was an old soldier. They searched the house first; but no entrance had been effected; so they went out on the lawn with blunderbuss and pistol.
They found a man lying on his back at the foot of the bay window.
They pounced on him, and, to their amazement, it was the gardener, James Seaton. Insensible.
General Rolleston was quite taken aback for a moment. Then he was sorry. But, after a little reflection, he said very sternly, "Carry the blackguard indoors; and run for an officer."
Seaton was taken into the hall and laid flat on the floor.
All the servants gathered about him, brimful of curiosity, and the female ones began to speak all together; but General Rolleston told them sharply to hold their tongues, and to retire behind the man. "Somebody sprinkle him with cold water," said he; "and be quiet, all of you, and keep out of sight, while I examine him." He stood before the insensible figure with his arms folded, amid a dead silence, broken only by the stifled sobs of Sarah Wilson, and of a sociable housemaid who cried with her for company.
And now Seaton began to writhe and show signs of returning sense.
Next he moaned piteously, and sighed. But General Rolleston could not pity him; he waited grimly for returning consciousness, to subject him to a merciless interrogatory.
He waited just one second too long. He had to answer a question instead of putting one.
The judgment is the last faculty a man recovers when emerging from insensibility; and Seaton, seeing the general standing before him, stretched out his hands, and said, in a faint, but earnest voice, before eleven witnesses, "Is she safe? Oh, is she safe?"
SARAH WILSON left off crying, and looked down on the ground with a very red face. General Rolleston was amazed.
"Is she safe? Is who safe?" said he. "He means my mistress," replied Wilson, rather brusquely; and flounced out of the hall.
"She is safe, no thanks to you," said General Rolleston. "What were you doing under her window at this time of night?" And the harsh tone in which this question was put showed Seaton he was suspected. This wounded him, and he replied doggedly, "Lucky for you all I was there."
"That is no answer to my question," said the general sternly.
"It is all the answer I shall give you."
"Then I shall hand you over to the officer without another word."
"Do, sir, do," said Seaton bitterly; but he added more gently, "you will be sorry for it when you come to your senses."
At this moment Wilson entered with a message. "If you please, sir, Miss Rolleston says the robber had no beard. Miss have never noticed Seaton's face, but his beard she have; and, oh, if you please, sir, she begged me to ask him—Was it you that fired the pistol and shot the robber?"
The delivery of this ungrammatical message, but rational query was like a ray of light streaming into a dark place. It changed the whole aspect of things. As for Seaton, he received it as if Heaven was speaking to him through Wilson. His sullen air relaxed, the water stood in his eyes, he smiled affectionately, and said in a low, tender voice, "Tell her I heard some bad characters talking about this house—that was a month ago—so ever since then I have slept in the tool-house to watch. Yes, I shot the robber with my revolver, and I marked one or two more; but they were three to one; I think I must have got a blow on the head; for I felt nothing—"
Here he was interrupted by a violent scream from Wilson. She pointed downward, with her eyes glaring; and a little blood was seen to be trickling slowly over Seaton's stocking and shoe.
"Wounded," said the general's servant, Tom, in the business-like accent of one who had seen a thousand wounds.
"Oh, never mind that," said Seaton. "It can't be very deep, for I don't feel it;" then, fixing his eyes on General Rolleston, he said, in a voice that broke down suddenly, "There stands the only man who has wounded me to-night, to hurt me."
The way General Rolleston received this point-blank reproach surprised some persons present, who had observed only the imperious and iron side of his character. He hung his head in silence a moment; then, being discontented with himself, he went into a passion with his servants for standing idle. "Run away, you women," said he roughly. "Now, Tom, if you are good for anything, strip the man and stanch his wound. Andrew, a bottle of port, quick!"
Then, leaving him for a while in friendly hands, he went to his daughter and asked her if she saw any objection to a bed being made up in the house for the wounded convict.
"Oh, papa," said she, "why, of course not. I am all gratitude. What is he like, Wilson? for it is a most provoking thing, I never noticed his face, only his beautiful beard glittering in the sunshine ever so far off. Poor young man! Oh, yes, papa! send him to bed directly, and we will all nurse him. I never did any good in the world yet, and so why not begin at once?"
General Rolleston laughed at this squirt of enthusiasm from his staid daughter, and went off to give the requisite orders.
But Wilson followed him immediately and stopped him in the passage.
"If you please, sir, I think you had better not. I have something to tell you."
She then communicated to him by degrees her suspicion that James Seaton was in love with his daughter. He treated this with due ridicule at first; but she gave him one reason after another till she staggered him, and he went downstairs in a most mixed and puzzled frame of mind, inclined to laugh, inclined to be angry, inclined to be sorry.
The officer had just arrived, and was looking over some photographs to see if James Seaton was "one of his birds." Such, alas! was his expression.
At sight of this, Rolleston colored up; but extricated himself from the double difficulty with some skill. "Hexham," said he, "this poor fellow has behaved like a man, and got himself wounded in my service. You are to take him to the infirmary; but, mind, they must treat him like my own son, and nothing he asks for be denied him."
Seaton walked with feeble steps, and leaning on two men, to the infirmary; and General Rolleston ordered a cup of coffee, lighted a cigar and sat cogitating over this strange business and asking himself how he could get rid of this young madman and yet befriend him. As for Sarah Wilson, she went to bed discontented and wondering at her own bad judgment. She saw too late that if she had held her tongue Seaton would have been her patient and her prisoner; and as for Miss Rolleston, when it came to the point, why, she would never have nursed him except by proxy, and the proxy would have been Sarah Wilson.
However, the blunder blind passion had led her into was partially repaired by Miss Rolleston herself. When she heard, next day, where Seaton was gone, she lifted up her hands in amazement. "Whatcouldpapa be thinking of to send our benefactor to a hospital?" And, after meditating awhile, she directed Wilson to cut a nosegay and carry it to Seaton. "He is a gardener;" said she innocently. "Of course he will miss his flowers sadly in that miserable place."
And she gave the same order every day, with a constancy that, you must know, formed part of this young lady's character. Soup, wine and jellies were sent from the kitchen every other day with equal pertinacity.
Wilson concealed the true donor of all those things and took the credit to herself. By this means she obtained the patient's gratitude, and he showed it so frankly she hoped to steal his love as well.
But no! his fancy and his heart remained true to the cold beauty he had served so well, and she had forgotten him, apparently.
This irritated Wilson at last, and she set to work to cure him with wholesome but bitter medicine. She sat down beside him one day, and said cheerfully, "We are all'on the keyfeet'just now. Miss Rolleston's beau is come on a visit."
The patient opened his eyes with astonishment.
"Miss Rolleston's beau?"
"Ay, her intended. What, didn't you know, she is engaged to be married?"
"She engaged to be married?" gasped Seaton.
Wilson watched him with a remorseless eye.
"Why, James," said she, after awhile, "did you think the likes of her would go through the world without a mate?"
Seaton made no reply but a moan, and lay back like one dead, utterly crushed by this cruel blow.
A buxom middle-aged nurse now came up and said, with a touch of severity, "Come, my good girl, no doubt you mean well, but you are doing ill. You had better leave him to us for the present."
On this hint Wilson bounced out and left the patient to his misery.
At her next visit she laid a nosegay on his bed and gossiped away, talking of everything in the world except Miss Rolleston.
At last she came to a pause, and Seaton laid his hand on her arm directly, and looking piteously in her face spoke his first word.
"Does she love him?"
"What, still harping onher?"said Wilson. "Well, she doesn't hate him, I suppose, or she would not marry him."
"For pity's sake don't trifle with me! Does she love him?"
"La, James, how can I tell? She mayn't love him quite as much as I could love a man that took my fancy" (here she cast a languishing glance on Seaton); "but I see no difference between her and other young ladies. Miss is very fond of her papa, for one thing; and he favors the match. Ay, and she likes her partner well enough. She is brighter like, now he is in the house, and she reads all her friends' letters to him ever so lovingly; and I do notice she leans on him out walking, a trifle more than there is any need for."
At this picture James Seaton writhed in his bed like some agonized creature under vivisection; but the woman, spurred by jealousy, and also by egotistical passion, had no mercy left for him.
"And why not?" continued she; "he is young and handsome and rich and he dotes on her. If you are really her friend you ought to be glad she is so well suited."
At this admonition the tears stood in Seaton's eyes, and after awhile he got strength to say, "I know I ought, I know it. If he is only worthy of her, as worthy as any man could be."
"That he is, James. Why, I'll be bound you have heard of him. It is young Mr. Wardlaw."
Seaton started up in bed. "Who? Wardlaw? what Wardlaw?"
"What Wardlaw? why, the great London merchant, his son. Leastways he manages the whole concern now, I hear; the old gentleman, he is retired by all accounts."
"CURSE HIM! CURSE HIM! CURSE HIM!" yelled James Seaton, with his eyes glaring fearfully and both hands beating the air.
Sarah Wilson recoiled with alarm.
"That angel marryhim!"shrieked Seaton. "Never, while I live. I'll throttle him with these hands first."
What more his ungovernable fury would have uttered was interrupted by a rush of nurses and attendants, and Wilson was bundled out of the place with little ceremony.
He contrived, however, to hurl a word after her, accompanied with a look of concentrated rage and resolution.
"NEVER, I TELL YOU—WHILE I LIVE."
At her next visit to the hospital Wilson was refused admission by order of the head surgeon. She left her flowers daily all the same.
After a few days she thought the matter might have cooled, and, having a piece of news to communicate to Seaton with respect to Arthur Wardlaw, she asked to see that patient.
"Left the hospital this morning," was the reply.
"What, cured?"
"Why not? We have cured worse cases than his."
"Where has he gone to? Pray tell me."
"Oh, certainly." And inquiry was made. But the reply was, "Left no address."
Sarah Wilson, like many other women of high and low degree, had swift misgivings of mischief to come. She was taken with a fit of trembling, and had to sit down in the hall.
And, to tell the truth, she had cause to tremble; for that tongue of hers had launched two wild beasts—Jealousy and Revenge.
When she got better she went home, and, coward-like, said not a word to living soul.
That day, Arthur Wardlaw dined with General Rolleston and Helen. They were to be alone for a certain reason; and he came half an hour before dinner. Helen thought he would, and was ready for him on the lawn.
They walked arm-in-arm, talking of the happiness before them, and regretting a temporary separation that was to intervene. He was her father's choice, and she loved her father devotedly; he was her male property; and young ladies like that sort of property, especially when they see nothing to dislike in it. He loved her passionately, and that was her due, and pleased her and drew a gentle affection, if not a passion, from her in return. Yes, that lovely forehead did come very near young Wardlaw's shoulder more than once or twice as they strolled slowly up and down on the soft mossy turf.
And, on the other side of the hedge that bounded the lawn, a man lay crouched in the ditch and saw it all with gleaming eyes.
Just before the affianced ones went in, Helen said, "I have a little favor to ask you, dear. The poor man, Seaton, who fought the robbers and was wounded—papa says he is a man of education, and wanted to be a clerk or something.Couldyou find him a place?"
"I think I can," said Wardlaw; "indeed, I am sure. A line to White & Co. will do it; they want a shipping clerk."
"Oh, how good you are!" said Helen; and lifted her face all beaming with thanks.
The opportunity was tempting; the lover fond. Two faces met for a single moment, and one of the two burned for five minutes after.
The basilisk eyes saw the soft collision; but the owner of those eyes did not hear the words that earned him that torture. He lay still and bided his time.
General Rolleston's house stood clear of the town at the end of a short but narrow and tortuous lane. This situation had tempted the burglars whom Seaton baffled; and now it tempted Seaton.
Wardlaw must pass that way on leaving General Rolleston's house.
At a bend of the lane two twin elms stood out a foot or two from the hedge. Seaton got behind these at about ten o'clock and watched for him with a patience and immobility that boded ill.
His preparations for this encounter were singular. He had a close-shutting inkstand and a pen, and one sheet of paper, at the top of which he had written "Sydney," and the day of the month and year, leaving the rest blank. And he had the revolver with which he had shot the robber at Helen Rolleston's window; and a barrel of that arm was loaded with swan shot.
THE moon went down; the stars shone out clearer.
Eleven o'clock boomed from a church clock in the town.
Wardlaw did not come, and Seaton did not move from his ambush.
Twelve o'clock boomed, and Wardlaw never came, and Seaton never moved.
Soon after midnight General Rolleston's hall door opened, and a figure appeared in a flood of light. Seaton's eye gleamed at the light, for it was young Wardlaw, with a footman at his back holding a lighted lamp.
Wardlaw, however, seemed in no hurry to leave the house, and the reason soon appeared; he was joined by Helen Rolleston, and she was equipped for walking. The watcher saw her serene face shine in the light. The general himself came next; and, as they left the door, out came Tom with a blunderbuss and brought up the rear. Seaton drew behind the trees, and postponed, but did not resign, his purpose.
Steps and murmurings came, and passed him, and receded.
The only words he caught distinctly came from Wardlaw, as he passed. "It is nearly high tide. I fear we must make haste."
Seaton followed the whole party at a short distance, feeling sure they would eventually separate and give him his opportunity with Wardlaw.
They went down to the harbor and took a boat; Seaton came nearer, and learned they were going on board the great steamer bound for England, that loomed so black, with monstrous eyes of fire.
They put off, and Seaton stood baffled.
Presently the black monster, with enormous eyes of fire, spouted her steam like a Leviathan, and then was still; next the smoke puffed, the heavy paddles revolved, and she rushed out of the harbor; and Seaton sat down upon the ground, and all seemed ended. Helen gone to England! Wardlaw gone with her! Love and revenge had alike eluded him. He looked up at the sky and played with the pebbles at his feet, stupidly, stupidly. He wondered why he was born; why he consented to live a single minute after this. His angel and his demon gone home together! And he left here!
He wrote a few lines on the paper he had intended for Wardlaw, sprinkled them with sand, and put them in his bosom, then stretched himself out with a weary moan, like a dying dog, to wait the flow of the tide, and, with it, Death. Whether or not his resolution or his madness could have carried him so far cannot be known, for even as the water rippled in, and, trickling under his back, chilled him to the bone, a silvery sound struck his ear. He started to his feet, and life and its joys rushed back upon him. It was the voice of the woman he loved so madly.
Helen Rolleston was on the water, coming ashore again in the little boat.
He crawled, like a lizard, among the boats ashore to catch a sight of her. He did see her, was near her, unseen himself. She landed with her father. So Wardlaw was gone to England without her. Seaton trembled with joy. Presently his goddess began to lament in the prettiest way. "Papa! papa!" she sighed, "why must friends part in this sad world? Poor Arthur is gone from me; and, by and by, I shall go from you, my own papa." And at that prospect she wept gently.
"Why, you foolish child!" said the old general tenderly, "what matters a little parting, when we are all to meet again in dear old England. Well then, there, have a cry; it will do you good." He patted her head tenderly as she clung to his warlike breast; and she took him at his word; the tears ran swiftly and glistened in the very starlight.
But, oh, how Seaton's heart yearned at all this!
What? mustn'thesay a word to comfort her; he who, at that moment, would have thought no more of dying to serve her or to please her than he would of throwing one of those pebbles into that slimy water.
Well, her pure tears somehow cooled his hot brain, and washed his soul, and left him wondering at himself and his misdeeds this night. His guardian angel seemed to go by and wave her dewy wings, and fan his hot passions as she passed.
He kneeled down and thanked God he had not met Arthur Wardlaw in that dark lane.
Then he went home to his humble lodgings, and there buried himself; and from that day seldom went out, except to seek employment. He soon obtained it as a copyist.
Meantime the police were on his track, employed by a person with a gentle disposition, but a tenacity of purpose truly remarkable.
Great was Seaton's uneasiness when one day he saw Hexham at the foot of his stair; greater still, when the officer's quick eye caught sight of him, and his light foot ascended the stairs directly. He felt sure Hexham had heard of his lurking about General Rolleston's premises. However, he prepared to defend himself to the uttermost.
Hexham came into his room without ceremony, and looking mighty grim. "Well, my lad, so we have got you, after all."
"What is my crime now?" asked Seaton sullenly.
"James," said the officer, very solemnly, "it is an unheard-of crime this time. You have been running away from a pretty girl. Now that is a mistake at all times; but, when she is as beautiful as an angel, and rich enough to slip a flyer into Dick Hexham's hands, and lay him on your track, whatisthe use? Letter foryou,my man."
Seaton took the letter, with a puzzled air. It was written in a clear but feminine hand, and slightly scented.
The writer, in a few polished lines, excused herself for taking extraordinary means to find Mr. Seaton; but hoped he would consider that he had laid her under a deep obligation, and that gratitude will sometimes be importunate. She had the pleasure to inform him that the office of shipping clerk at Messrs. White & Co.'s was at his service, and she hoped he would take it without an hour's further delay, for that she was assured that many persons had risen to wealth and consideration in the colony from such situations.
Then, as this wary but courteous young lady had no wish to enter into a correspondence with her ex-gardener, she added:
"Mr. Seaton need not trouble himself to reply to this note. A simple 'yes' to Mr. Hexham will be enough, and will give sincere pleasure to Mr. Seaton's"Obedient servant and well-wisher,"HELEN ANNE ROLLESTON."
Seaton bowed his head over this letter in silent but deep emotion.
Hexham respected that emotion, and watched him with a sort of vague sympathy.
Seaton lifted his head, and the tears stood thick in his eyes. Said he, in a voice of exquisite softness, scarce above a whisper, "Tell her, 'yes' and 'God bless her.' Good-by. I want to go on my knees, and pray God to bless her as she deserves. Good-by."
Hexham took the hint and retired softly.
WHITE & CO. stumbled on a treasure in James Seaton. Your colonial clerk is not so narrow and apathetic as your London clerk, whose two objects seem to be to learn one department only, and not to do too much in that; but Seaton, a gentleman and a scholar, eclipsed even colonial clerks in this, that he omitted no opportunity of learning the whole business of White & Co., and was also animated by a feverish zeal that now and then provoked laughter from clerks, but was agreeable as well as surprising to White & Co. Of that zeal his incurable passion was partly the cause. Fortunes had been made with great rapidity in Sydney; and Seaton now conceived a wild hope of acquiring one, by some lucky hit, before Wardlaw could return to Helen Rolleston. And yet his common sense said, if I was as rich as Croesus, how could she ever mate with me, a stained man? And yet his burning heart said, don't listen to reason; listen only to me. Try.
And so he worked double tides; and, in virtue of his university education, had no snobbish notions about never putting his hand to manual labor. He would lay down his pen at any moment and bear a hand to lift a chest or roll a cask. Old White saw him thus multiply himself, and was so pleased that he raised his salary one third.
He never saw Helen Rolleston, except on Sunday. On that day he went to her church, and sat half behind a pillar and feasted his eyes and his heart upon her. He lived sparingly, saved money, bought a strip of land by payment of ten pounds deposit, and sold it in forty hours for one hundred pounds profit, and watched keenly for similar opportunities on a larger scale; and all for her. Struggling with a mountain; hoping against reason, and the world.