"I've had some very narrow escapes of being taken in and done for as neatly as you please. There are some artful dodgers, whose artful dodging the oldest hand can scarcely guard against; but I'm proud to say not one of those artful dodgers has ever yet been able to get the better of me. Perhaps my time is to come, and I shall be bamboozled in my old age."
Before replying to Honoria's inquiry, Andrew Larkspur studied her from head to foot, with eyes whose sharp scrutiny would have been very unpleasant to anyone who had occasion for concealment.
The result of the scrutiny seemed to be tolerably satisfactory, for Mr. Larkspur at last replied to his visitor's question in a tone which for him was extremely gracious.
"You want to know whether you can engage my services," he said; "that depends upon circumstances."
"Upon what circumstances?"
"Whether you will be able to pay me. My hands are very full just now, and I've about as much business as I can possibly get through."
"I shall want you to abandon all such business, and to devote yourself exclusively to my service," said Honoria.
"The deuce you will!" exclaimed Mr. Larkspur. "Do you happen to know what my time is worth?"
Mr. Larkspur looked positively outraged by the idea that any one could suppose they could secure a monopoly of his valuable services.
"That is a question with which I have no concern," answered Honoria, coolly. "The work which I require you to do will most likely occupy all your time, and entirely absorb your attention. I am quite prepared to pay you liberally for your services, and I shall leave you to name your own terms. I shall rely on your honour as a man of business that those terms will not be exorbitant, and I shall accede to them without further question."
"Humph!" muttered the suspicious Andrew. "Do you know, ma'am, that sounds almost too liberal? I'm an old stager, ma'am, and have seen a good deal of life, and I have generally found that people who are ready to promise so much beforehand, are apt not to give anything when their work has been done."
"The fact that you have been cheated by swindlers is no reason why should insult me," answered Honoria. "I wished to secure your services; but I cannot continue an interview in which I find my offers met by insolent objections. There are, no doubt, other people in London who can assist me in the business I have in hand. I will wish you good morning."
She rose, and was about to leave the room. Mr. Larkspur began to think that he had been rather too cautious; and that perhaps, this plainly-attired lady might be a very good customer.
"You must excuse me, ma'am," he said, "if I'm rather a suspicious old chap. You see, it's the nature of my business to make a man suspicious. If you can pay me for my time, I shall be willing to devote myself to your service; for I'd much rather give my whole mind to one business, than have ever so many odds and ends of affairs jostling each other in my brain. But the fact of it is, ladies very seldom have any idea what business is: however clever they may be in other matters—playing the piano, working bead-mats and worsted slippers, and such like. Now, I dare say you'll open your eyes uncommon wide when I tell you that my business is worth nigh upon sixteen pound a week to me, taking good with bad; and though you mayn't be aware of it, ma'am, having, no doubt, given your mind exclusive to Berlin wool, and such like, sixteen pound a week is eight hundred a year."
Mr. Larkspur, though not much given to surprise, was somewhat astonished to perceive that his lady-visitor did not open her eyes any wider on receiving this intelligence.
"If you have earned eight hundred a year by your profession," she returned, quietly, "I will give you twenty pounds a week for your exclusive services, and that will be a thousand and forty pounds a year."
This time, Andrew Larkspur was still more surprised, though he was so completely master of himself as to conceal the smallest evidence of his astonishment.
Here was a woman who had not devoted her mind to Berlin wool-work, and whose arithmetic was irreproachable!
"Humph!" he muttered, too cautious to betray any appearance of eagerness to accept an advantageous offer. "A thousand a year is very well in its way; but how long is it to last? If I turn my back upon this business here, it'll all tumble to pieces, and then, where shall I be when you have done with me?"
"I will engage you for one year, certain."
"That won't do, ma'am; you must make it three years, certain."
"Very well; I am willing to do that," answered Honoria. "I shall, in all probability, require your services for three years."
Mr. Larkspur regretted that he had not asked for an engagement of six years.
"Do you agree to those terms?" asked Honoria.
"Yes," answered the detective, with well-assumed indifference; "I suppose I may as well accept those terms, though I dare say I might make more money by leaving myself free to give my attention to anything that might turn up. And now, how am I to be paid? You see, you're quite a stranger to me."
"I am aware of that, and I do not ask you to trust me," repliedHonoria. "I will pay you eighty pounds a month."
"Eighty pounds a month of four weeks," interposed the cautious Larkspur; "eighty pounds for the lunar month. That makes a difference, you know, and it's just as well to be particular."
"Certainly!" answered Lady Eversleigh, with a half-contemptuous smile. "You shall not be cheated. You shall receive your payment monthly, in advance; and if you require security for the future, I can refer you to my bankers. My name is Mrs. Eden—Harriet Eden, and I bank with Messrs. Coutts."
The detective rubbed his hands with a air of gratification.
"Nothing could be more straightforward and business-like," he said."And when shall you require my services, Mrs. Eden?"
"Immediately. There is an apartment vacant in the house in which I lodge. I should wish you to occupy that apartment, as you would thus be always at hand when I had any communication to make to you. Would that be possible?"
"Well, yes, ma'am, it would certainly be possible," replied Mr. Larkspur, after the usual pause for reflection; "but I'm afraid I should be obliged to make that an extra."
"You shall be paid whatever you require."
"Thank you, ma'am. You see, when a person of my age has been accustomed to live in one place for a long time, it goes against him to change his habits. However, to oblige you, I'll get together my little traps, and shift my quarter to the lodging you speak of."
"Good. The house in question is No. 90, Percy Street, Tottenham CourtRoad."
Mr. Larkspur was surprised to find that a lady who could afford to offer him more than a thousand a year, was nevertheless contented to live in such a middle-class situation as Percy Street.
"Can you go to the new lodging to-morrow?" asked Honoria.
"Well, no, ma'am; you must give me a week, if you please. I must wind up some of the affairs I have been working upon, you see, and hand over my clients to other people; and I must set my books in order. I've a few very profitable affairs in hand, I assure you. There's one which might have turned out a great prize, if I had been only able to carry it through. But those sort of things all depend on time, you see, ma'am. They're very slow. I have been about this one, off and on, for over three years; and very little has come of it yet."
The detective was turning over one of his books mechanically as he said this. It was a large ledger, filled with entries, in a queer, cramped handwriting, dotted about, here and there, with mysterious marks in red and blue ink. Mr. Larkspur stopped suddenly, as he turned the leaves, his attention arrested by one particular page.
"Here it is," he said; "the very business I was speaking of. Five hundred pounds for the discovery of the murderer, or murderers, of Valentine Jernam, captain and owner of the 'Pizarro', whose body was found in the river, below Wapping, on the third of April, 1836. That's a very queer business, that is, and I've never had leisure to get very deep into the rights and wrongs of it yet."
Mr. Larkspur looked up presently, and saw that his visitor's face had grown white to the very lips.
"You knew Captain Jernam?" he said.
"No—yes, I knew him slightly; and the idea of his murder is very shocking to me," answered Honoria, struggling with her agitation. "Do you expect to discover the secret of that dreadful crime?"
"Well, I don't know about that," said Andrew Larkspur, with the careless and business-like tone of a man to whom a murder is an incident of trade. "You see, when these things have gone by for a long time, without anything being found out about them, the secret generally comes out by accident, if it ever comes out at all. There are cases in which the secret never does come out; but there are not many such cases. There's a deal in accident; and a man of my profession must be always on the look-out for accident, or he'll lose a great many chances. You see those red marks stuck here and there, among all that writing in blue ink. Those red marks are set against the facts that seem pretty clear and straightforward; the blue marks are set against facts that seem dark. You see, there's more blue marks than red. That means that it's a dark case."
Honoria Eversleigh bent over the old man's shoulder, and read a few fragmentary lines, here and there, in the page beneath her.
"Seen at the 'Jolly Tar', Ratcliff Highway, a low public-house frequented by sailors. Seen with two men, Dennis Wayman, landlord of the 'Jolly Tar,' and a man called Milson, or Milsom. The man Milson, or Milsom, has since disappeared. Is believed to have been transported, but is not to be heard of abroad."
A little below these entries was another, which seemed to HonoriaEversleigh to be inscribed in letters of fire:—
"Valentine Jernam was known to have fallen in love with a girl who sang at the 'Jolly Tar' public-house, and it is supposed that he was lured to his death by the agency of this girl. She is described as about seventeen years of age, very handsome, dark eyes, dark hair—"
Mr. Larkspur closed the volume before Lady Eversleigh could read further. She returned to her seat, still terribly pale, and with a sickening pain at her heart.
All the shame and anguish of her early life, the unspeakable horror of her girlhood, had been brought vividly back to her by the perusal of the memoranda in the detective's ledger.
"I mean to try my luck yet at getting at the bottom of the mystery," said Andrew Larkspur. "Five hundred pounds reward is worth working for. I—I've a notion that I shall lay my hands upon Valentine Jernam's murderer sooner or later."
"Who offers the reward?" asked Honoria.
"Government offers one hundred of it; George Jernam four hundred more."
"Who is George Jernam?"
"The captain's younger brother—a merchant-captain himself—the owner of several vessels, and, I believe, a rich man. He came here, accompanied by a queer-looking fellow, called Joyce Harker—a kind of clerk, I believe—who was very much attached to the murdered man."
"Yes—yes, I know," murmured Honoria.
She had been so terribly agitated by the mention of Valentine Jernam's name, that her presence of mind had entirely abandoned her.
"You knew that humpbacked clerk!" exclaimed Mr. Larkspur.
"I have heard of him," she faltered.
There was a pause, during which Lady Eversleigh recovered in some degree from the painful emotion caused by memories so unexpectedly evoked.
"I may as well give you some preliminary instructions to-day," she said, re-assuming her business-like tone, "and I will write you a cheque for the first month of your service."
Mr. Larkspur lost no time in providing his visitor with pen and ink. She took a cheque-book from her pocket, and filled in a cheque for eighty pounds in Andrew Larkspur's favour.
The cheque was signed "Harriet Eden."
"When you present that, you will be able to ascertain that your future payments will be secure," she said.
She handed the cheque to Mr. Larkspur, who looked at it with an air of assumed indifference, and slipped it carelessly into his waistcoat pocket.
"And now, ma'am," he said, "I am ready to receive your instructions."
"In the first place," said Honoria, "I must beg that you will on no occasion attempt to pry into my motives, whatever I may require of you."
"That, ma'am, is understood. I have nothing to do with the motives of my employers, and I care nothing about them."
"I am glad to hear that," replied Honoria. "The business in which I require your aid is a very strange one; and the time may come when you will be half-inclined to believe me mad. But, whatever I do, however mysterious my actions may be, think always that a deeply rooted purpose lies beneath them; and that every thought of my brain—every trivial act of my life, will shape itself to one end."
"I ask no questions, ma'am."
"And you will serve me faithfully—blindly?"
"Yes, ma'am; both faithfully and blindly."
"I think I may trust you," replied Honoria, very earnestly "And now I will speak freely. There are two men upon whose lives I desire to place a spy. I want to know every act of their lives, every word they speak, every secret of their hearts—I wish to be an unseen witness of their lonely hours, an impalpable guest at every gathering in which they mingle. I want to be near them always in spirit, if not in bodily presence. I want to track them step by step, let their ways be never so dark and winding. This is the purpose of my life; but I am a woman—powerless to act freely—bound and fettered as women only are fettered. Do you begin to understand now what I require of you."
"I think I do."
"Mr. Larkspur," continued Honoria, with energy. "I want you to be my second self. I want you to be the shadow of these two men. Wherever they go, you must follow—in some shape or other you must haunt them, by night and day. It is, of course, a difficult task which I demand of you. You have to decide whether it is impossible."
"Impossible! ma'am—not a bit of it. Nothing is impossible to a man who has served twenty years' apprenticeship as a Bow Street runner. You don't know what we old Bow Street hands can do when we're on our mettle. I've heard a deal of talk about Fooshay, that was at the head of Bonaparty's police—but bless your heart, ma'am, Fooshay was a fool to us. I've done as much and more than what you talk of before to-day. All you have to do is to give me the names and descriptions of the two men I am to watch, and leave all the rest to me."
"One of these two men is Sir Reginald Eversleigh, Baronet, a man of small fortune—a bachelor, occupying lodgings in Villiers Street. I have reason to believe that he is dissipated, a gamester, and a reprobate."
"Good," said Mr. Larkspur, who jotted down an occasional note in a greasy little pocket-book.
"The second person is a medical practitioner, called Victor Carrington—a Frenchman, but a perfect master of the English language, and a man whose youth has been spent in England. The two men are firm friends and constant associates. In keeping watch upon the actions of one, you cannot fail to see much of the other.
"Very good, ma'am; you may make your mind easy," answered the detective, as coolly as if he had just received the most common-place order.
He escorted Honoria to the door of his chambers, and left her to descend the dingy staircase as best as she might.
Valentine Jernam's younger brother, George, had journeyed to and fro on the high seas five years since the murder of the brave and generous-hearted sea-captain.
Things had gone well with Captain George Jernam, and in the whole of the trading navy there were few richer men than the owner of the 'Pizarro', 'Stormy Petrel', and 'Albatross'.
With these three vessels constantly afloat. George Jernam was on the high road to fortune.
His life had not been by any means uneventful since the death of his brother, though that mysterious calamity had taken away the zest from his success for many a day, and though he no longer cherished the same visions of a happy home in England, when his circumstances should have become so prosperous as to enable him to "settle down." This same process of settling down was one by no means congenial to George Jernam's disposition at any time; and he was far less likely to take to it kindly now, than when "dear old Val"—as he began to call his brother in his thoughts once more, when the horror of the murder had begun to wear off, and the lost friend seemed again familiar—had been the prospective sharer of the retirement which was to be so tranquil, so comfortable, and so well-earned. It had no attraction for George at all; for many a long day after Joyce Harker's letter had reached him he never dwelt upon it; he set his face hard against his grief, and worked on, as men must work, fortunately for them, under all chances and changes of this mortal life, until the last change of all. At first, the thirst for revenge upon his brother's murderers had been hot and strong upon George Jernam—almost as hot and strong as it had been, and continued to be, upon Joyce Harker; but the natures of the men differed materially. George Jernam had neither the dogged persistency nor the latent fierceness of his dead brother's friend and protégé; and the long, slow, untiring watching to which Harker devoted himself would have been a task so uncongenial as to be indeed impossible to the more open, more congenial temperament of the merchant-captain.
He had responded warmly to Harker's letters; he had more than sanctioned the outlay which he had made, in money paid and money promised, to the skilled detective to whom Harker had entrusted the investigation of the murder of Valentine Jernam. He had awaited every communication with anxious interest and suspense, and he had never landed after a voyage, and received the letters which awaited his arrival, without a keen revival of the first sharp pang that had smote him with the tidings of his brother's fate.
Happily George Jernam was a busy man, and his life was full of variety, adventure, and incident. In time he began, not to forget, indeed, but to remember less frequently and less painfully, the manner of his brother's death, and to regard the fixed purpose of Joyce Harker's life as more or less of a harmless delusion. A practical man in his own way, George Jernam had very vague ideas concerning the lives of the criminal classes, and the faculties and facilities of the science of detection; and the hope of finding out the secret of his brother's fate had long ago deserted him.
Only once had he and Joyce Harker met since the murder of Valentine Jernam. George had landed a cargo at Hamburg, and had given his brother's friend rendezvous there. Then the two men had talked of all that had been done so vainly, and all that remained to be done, Harker hoped, so effectively. Joyce had never been able to bring his suspicions concerning Black Milsom to the test of proof. Unwearied search had been made for the old man who had played the part of grandfather to the beautiful ballad-singer; but it had been wholly ineffectual. All that could be ascertained concerning him was, that he had died in a hospital, in a country town on the great northern road, and that the girl had wandered away from there, and never more been heard of. Of Black Milsom, Joyce Harker had never lost sight, until his career received a temporary check by the sentence of transportation, which had sent the ruffian out of the country. But all efforts of the faithful watcher had failed to discover the missing link in the evidence which connected Black Milsom with Valentine Jernam's death. All his watching and questioning—all his silent noting of the idle talk around him—all his eager endeavour to take Dennis Wayman unawares, failed to enable him to obtain evidence of that one fact of which he was convinced—the fact that Valentine Jernam had been at the public-house in Ratcliff Highway on the day of his death.
When the inutility of his endeavours became clear to Joyce Harker, he gave up his lodging in Wayman's house, and located himself in modest apartments at Poplar, where he transacted a great deal of business for George Jernam, and maintained a constant, though unprofitable, communication with the detective officer to whom he had confided the task of investigation, and who was no other than Mr. Andrew Larkspur.
In one of the earliest of the numerous letters which George Jernam addressed to Harker, after the death of Valentine, the merchant-captain had given his zealous friend and assistant certain instructions concerning the old aunt to whom the two desolate boys had owed so much in their ill-treated childhood, and whom they had so well and constantly requited in their prosperous manhood. These instructions included a request that Joyce Harker would visit Susan Jernam in person, and furnish George with details relative to that venerable lady's requirements, looks, health, and general circumstances.
"I should have seen the good old soul, you know," wrote George, "when I was to have seen poor Val; but it didn't please God that the one thing should come off any more than the other, and it can't be helped. But I should like you to run down to Allanbay and look her up, and let her know that she is neither neglected nor forgotten by her vagabond nephew."
So Joyce Harker went down to the Devonshire village, and introduced himself to George Jernam's aunt. The old lady was much altered since she had last welcomed a visitor to her pretty, cheerful cottage, and had listened with simple surprise and pleasure to her nephew Valentine's tales of the sea, and they had talked together over the troublous days of his unhappy childhood. The untimely and tragic death of the merchant-captain had afflicted her deeply, and had filled her mind with sentiments which, though they differed in degree, closely resembled in their nature those of Joyce Harker. The determination to be revenged upon the murderers of "her boy" which Harker expressed, found a ready echo in the breast of his hearer, and she thanked him warmly for his devotion to the master he had lost. Strong mutual liking grew up between these two, and when her visitor left her—after having carried out all George's wishes in respect to her, on the scale of liberality which the grateful nephew had dictated—Susan Jernam gave him a cordial invitation to pass any leisure time he might have at the cottage, though, as she remarked—
"I am not very lively company, Mr. Harker, for you or anybody, for I can't talk of anything but George and poor Valentine."
"And I don't care to talk of much else either, Mrs. Jernam," said Harker, in reply; "so, you see, we couldn't possibly be better company for each other."
Thus it happened that a second tie between George Jernam and Joyce Harker arose, in the person of the sole surviving relative of the former, and that Joyce had made three visits to the pretty sea-side village in which the childhood of his dead friend and his living patron had been passed, before he and George Jernam met again on English ground.
When at length that long-deferred meeting took place, Valentine Jernam's murder was a mystery rather more than five years old, and Mr. Andrew Larkspur had made no progress towards its solution. He had been obliged to acknowledge to Joyce Harker that he had not struck the right trail, and to confess that he had begun to despond. The disappearance of Black Milsom from among the congenial society of thieves and ruffians which he frequented was, of course, easily accounted for by Mr. Larkspur, and the absence of any, even the slightest, additional clue to the fate of Jernam, confirmed that astute person in the conviction, which he had reached early in the course of his confabulations with Harker, that the convict was the guilty man. There was, on this hypothesis, nothing for it but to wait until the worthy exile should have worked out his time and once more returned to grace his mother-country, and then to resume the close watch which, though hitherto ineffectual, might in time bring some of his former deeds to light.
Such was the state of affairs when Captain Duncombe bought the deserted house which had had such undesirable tenants, first in the person of old Screwton, the miser, and, secondly, of Black Milsom. Joyce Harker was aware of the transaction, and had watched with some interest the transformation of the dreary, dismal, doomed place, into the cheery, comfortable, middle-class residence it had now become. If he had known that the last hours of Valentine Jernam's life had been passed on that spot, that there his beloved master had met with a violent and cruel death, with what different feelings he would have watched the work! But though, as the former dwelling of Black Milsom, the cottage had a dreary attraction for him, he was far from imagining that within its walls lay hidden one infallible clue to the secret for which he had sought so long and so vainly.
The new occupant of River View Cottage was acquainted with Joyce Harker, and held the solitary old man in some esteem. Captain Joe Duncombe and theprotégéof the Jernams had nothing whatever in common in character, disposition, or manners, and the distance in the social scale which divided the prosperous merchant-captain from the poor, though clever, dependent, was considerable, even according to the not very strict standard of manners observed by persons of their respective classes. But Joe Duncombe knew and heartily liked George Jernam. He had been in England at the time of Valentine's murder, and he had then learned the faithful and active part played by Harker. He had lost sight of the man for some time, but when he had bought the cottage, and during the progress of the changes and improvements he had made in that unprepossessing dwelling, accident had thrown Harker in his way, and they had found much to discuss in George Jernam's prosperity, in his generous treatment of Harker, in the general condition of the merchant service, which the two men declared to be going to the dogs, after the manner of all professions, trades, and institutions of every age and every clime, when contemplated from a conversational point of view; and in the honest captain's plans, hopes, and prospects concerning his daughter.
Joyce Harker had seen Rosamond Duncombe occasionally, but had not taken much notice of her. Nor had Miss Duncombe been much impressed by that gentleman. Joyce was not a lady's man, and Rosamond, who entertained a rather disrespectful notion of her father's acquaintances in general, classing them collectively as "old fogies," contented herself with distinguishing Mr. Harker as the ugliest and grimmest of the lot. Joyce came and went, not very often indeed, but very freely to River View Cottage, and there was much confidence and good-fellowship between the bluff old seaman and the more acute, but not less honest, adventurer.
There was, however, one circumstance which Captain Duncombe never mentioned to Harker. That circumstance was the apparition of old Screwton's ghost. Joe Duncombe was, to tell the truth, a little ashamed of his credulity on that occasion. He entertained no doubt that he had been victimized by a clever practical joke, and while he chuckled over the recollection that it had been an expensive jest to the perpetrator, who had lost a valuable gold coin by the transaction, he had no fancy for exposing himself to any further ridicule on the occasion. So the bluff, imperious, soft-hearted captain issued an ukase commanding silence on the subject; and silence was observed, not in the least because Rosamond Duncombe or Susan Trott were afraid of him, but because Rosamond loved her father, and Susan Trott respected her master too much to disobey his lightest wish.
There was also one circumstance which Joyce Harker never mentioned to Captain Duncombe. This circumstance was the identity of the former occupant of the cottage with the man whom he believed to be the murderer of Valentine Jernam.
"It is bad enough to live in a place that's said to be haunted," said Harker to himself, when he visited the cottage for the first time; "without my telling him that he comes after a man who is certainly a convict, and probably a murderer."
* * * * *
Victor Carrington still lived in the little cottage on the outskirts of London. Here, with his mother for his only companion, he led a simple, studious life, which, to any one ignorant of his character, would have seemed the life of a good and honourable man.
The few neighbours who passed to and fro beneath the wall which surrounded the cottage, knew nothing of the inner life of its occupants. They knew only that of all the houses in the neighbourhood this was the quietest. Yet those who happened to pass the house late at night always saw a glimmer of light in an upper chamber, and the blue vapour of smoke rising from one particular chimney.
Those who had occasion to pass the house frequently after dark perceived that the smoke from this chimney was different from the common smoke of common chimneys. Sometimes vivid sparks glittered and flashed upon the darkness. At other times a semi-luminous, green vapour was seen to issue from the mouth of the chimney.
These facts were spoken about by the neighbours; and by and by people discovered that the smoke issued from the chimney of Victor Carrington's laboratory, where the surgeon was frequently employed, long after midnight, making experiments in the science of chemistry.
The nature of these experiments was known to no one. The few neighbours who had ever conversed with the French surgeon had heard him declare that he was a student of the mysteries of electricity. It was, therefore, supposed that all his experiments were in some manner connected with that wondrous science.
No one for a moment suspected evil of a young man whose life was sober, respectable, and laborious, and who went to the little Catholic chapel every Sunday, with his mother leaning on his arm.
Those who really knew Victor Carrington knew that he was without one ray of belief in a Divine Ruler, and that he laughed to scorn those terrors of heavenly vengeance which will sometimes restrain the hand of the most hardened criminal. He was a wretch who seemed to have been created without those natural qualities which, in some degree, redeem the worst of humanity. He was a creature without a conscience—without a heart.
And yet he seemed the most dutiful and devoted of sons.
Is it possible that filial love could hold any place in a soul so lost as his? It is difficult to solve this enigma.
Victor Carrington was ambitious; and to gain the object of his ambition he was willing to steep his soul in guilt. But he was also cautious and calculating, and he knew that to commit crime with impunity he must so shape his life as to escape suspicion.
He knew that a devoted and affectionate son is always respected by good men and women; and he had studied human nature too closely not to be aware that there is more goodness than wickedness in the world, base though some of earth's inhabitants may be.
The world is easily hoodwinked; and those who watched the life of the young surgeon were ready to declare that he was a most deserving young man.
He had his reward for this apparent excellence. Patients came to him without his seeking; and at the time of Honoria Eversleigh's arrival in London he had obtained a small but remunerative practice. The money earned thus enabled him to live. The money he won by his pen in the medical journals he was able to save.
He knew how necessary money was in all the turning-points of life, and he denied himself every pleasure and every luxury in order to save a sum which should serve him in time of need.
Matilda Carrington was one of those quiet women who seem to take no interest in the world around them, and to be happy without the pleasures which delight other women. She lived quite alone, without one female friend or acquaintance, and she saw little of her son, whose midnight studies and medical practice absorbed almost every hour of his existence.
Her life, therefore, was one long solitude, and but for the companionship of her birds and two Angora cats, she would have been almost as much alone as a prisoner in a condemned cell.
There was but one visitor who came often to the cottage, and that was Sir Reginald Eversleigh. The young baronet contrived to exist, somehow or other, upon his income of five hundred a year; but, as he had neither abandoned his old haunts, nor put aside his old vices, the income, which to a good man would have seemed a handsome competence, barely enabled him to stave off the demands of his most pressing creditors by occasional payments on account.
He lived a dark and strange existence, occupying a set of shabby-genteel apartments in a street leading out of the Strand; but spending a great part of his life in a house on the banks of the Thames—a house that stood amidst grounds of some extent, situated midway between Chelsea and Fulham.
The mistress of this house was a lady who called herself a widow, but of whose real position the world knew very little.
She was said to be of Austrian extraction, and the widow of an Austrian officer. Her name was Paulina Durski. She had bade farewell to the fresh bloom of early youth; for at her best she looked thirty years of age. But her beauty was of that brilliant order which does not need the charm of girlhood. She was a woman—a grand, queen-like creature. Those who admired her most compared her to a tall white lily, alike stately and graceful.
She was fair, with that snowy purity of complexion which is so rare a charm. Her hair was of the palest gold—darker than flaxen, lighter than auburn—hair that waved in sunny undulations on the broad white forehead, and imparted an unspeakable innocence to the beautiful face.
Such was Paulina Durski. One charm alone was wanting to render this woman as lovable as she was lovely, and that wan the charm of expression.
There was a lack of warmth in that perfect face. The bright blue eyes were hard; the rosy lips had been trained to smile on friend or foe, on stranger or kinsman, with the same artificial smile.
Hilton House was the name of the villa by the river-bank. It had belonged originally to a nobleman; but, on the decay of his fortunes, had fallen into the hands of a speculator, who intended to occupy it, but who failed almost immediately after becoming its owner. After this man's bankruptcy, the house had for a long time been tenantless. It was too expensive for some, too lonely for others; and when Madame Durski saw and took a fancy to the place, she was able to secure it for a moderate rent. The grounds and the house had been neglected. The rare and costly shrubs in the gardens were rank and overgrown; the exquisite decorations of the interior were spoiled by damp.
Madame Durski was a person who lived in a certain style; but it speedily became evident that she was very often at a loss for ready money. Her furniture arrived from Paris, and her household came also from that brilliant city. It was the household of a princess; but of a princess not unfamiliar with poverty.
There was a Spanish courier, one Carlo Toas—a strange, silent creature, whose stately and solemn movements seemed fitted for a courtly assembly, rather than for the unceremonious gatherings of modern society. The next person in importance in the household of Madame Durski was an elderly woman, who attended on the fair Austrian widow. She was a native of Paris, and her name was Sophie Elser. There were three other servants, all foreigners, and apparently devoted to their mistress.
The furniture was of a bygone fashion, costly and beautiful of its kind; but it was furniture which had seen better days. The draperies in every chamber were of satin or velvet; but the satin was worn and faded, the velvet threadbare. The pictures, china, plate, the bronzes and knick-knacks which adorned the rooms, all bore evidence of a refined and artistic taste. But much of the china was imperfect, and the plate was of very small extent.
The existence of Paulina Durski was one which might well excite curiosity in the minds of the few neighbours who had the opportunity of observing her mode of life.
This beautiful widow had no female acquaintances, save a humble friend who lived with her, an Englishwoman, who subsisted upon the charity of the lovely Paulina.
This person never quitted her benefactress. She was constant as her shadow; a faithful watch-dog, always at hand, yet never obtrusive. She was a creature who seemed to have been born without eyes and without ears; so careless was the widow of her presence, so reckless what secrets were disclosed in her hearing.
By daylight the life of Madame Durski and her companion, Miss Brewer, seemed the dullest existence ever endured by womankind. Paulina rarely left her own apartment until six in the evening; at which hour, she and Miss Brewer dined together in her boudoir.
They always dined alone. After dinner Paulina returned to her apartment to dress for the evening, while Miss Brewer retired to her own bedroom on the upper story, where she arrayed herself invariably in black velvet.
She had never been seen by the visitors at Hilton House in any other costume than this lustreless velvet. Her age was between thirty and forty. She might once have had some pretensions to beauty; but her face was pinched and careworn, and there was a sharp, greedy look in the small eyes, whose colour was that neutral, undecided tint, that seems sometimes a pale yellowish brown, anon a blueish green.
All day long the two women at Hilton House lived alone. No carriage approached the gates; no foot-passenger was seen to enter the grounds. Within and without all was silent and lifeless.
But with nightfall came a change. Lights shone in all the lower windows, music sounded on the still night air, many carriages rolled through the open gateway—broughams with flashing lamps dashed up to the marble portico, and hack cabs mingled with the more stylish equipages.
There were very few nights on which Paulina Durski's saloons were not enlivened by the presence of many guests. Her visitors were all gentlemen; but they treated the mistress of the house with as much respect as if she had been surrounded by women of the highest rank. Night after night the same men assembled in those faded saloons; night after night the carriages rolled along the avenue—the flashing lamps illuminated the darkness. Those who watched the proceedings of the Austrian widow had good reason to wonder what the attraction was which brought those visitors so constantly to Hilton House. Many speculations were formed, and the fair widow's reputation suffered much at the hands of her neighbours; but none guessed the real charm of those nightly receptions.
That secret was known only to those within the mansion; and from those it could not be hidden.
The charm which drew so many visitors to the saloons of Madame Durski was the fatal spell of the gaming-table. The beautiful Paulina opened a suite of three spacious chambers for the reception of her guests. In the outer apartment there was a piano; and it was here Paulina sat—with her constant companion, Matilda Brewer. In the second apartment were small green velvet-covered tables, devoted to whist andécarté. The third, and inner, apartment was much larger than either of the others, and in this room there was a table forrouge et noir.
The door of this inner apartment was papered so as to appear when closed like a portion of the wall. A heavy picture was securely fastened upon this papered surface, and the door was lined with iron. Once closed, this door was not easily to be discovered by the eye of a stranger; and, even when discovered, it was not easily to be opened.
It was secured with a spring lock, which fastened of itself as the door swung to.
This inner apartment had no windows. It was never used in the day-time. It was a secret chamber, hidden in the very centre of the house; and only an architect or a detective officer would have been likely to have discovered its existence. The walls were hung with red cloth, and Madame Durski always spoke of this apartment as the Red Drawing-room. Her servants were forbidden to mention the chamber in their conversation with the neighbours, and the members of the Austrian widow's household were too well trained to disobey any such orders.
By the laws of England, the existence of a table forrouge et noiris forbidden. All these precautions were therefore necessary to insure safety for the guests of Madame Durski.
Paulina, herself, never played. Sometimes she sat with Miss Brewer in the outer chamber, silent and abstracted, while her visitors amused themselves in the two other rooms; sometimes she seated herself at the piano, and played soft, plaintive German sonatas, orLeider ohne Worte, for an hour at a time; sometimes she moved slowly to and fro amongst the gamblers—now lingering for a few moments behind the chair of one, now glancing at the cards of another.
One of her most constant visitors was Reginald Eversleigh. Every night he drove down to Hilton House in a hack cab. He was generally the first to arrive and the last to depart.
It was also to be observed that almost all the men who assembled in the drawing-rooms of Hilton House were friends and acquaintances of Sir Reginald.
It was he who introduced them to the lovely widow. It was he who tempted them to come night after night, when prudence should have induced them to stay away.
* * * * *
The association between Reginald Eversleigh and Paulina Durski was no new alliance.
Immediately after the death of Sir Oswald Eversleigh, Reginald turned his back upon London, disgusted with the scene of his poverty and humiliation, eager to find forgetfulness of his bitter disappointments in the fever and excitement of a more brilliant city than any to be found in Great Britain. He went to Paris, that capital which he had shunned since the death of Mary Goodwin, but whither he returned eagerly now, thirsting for riot and excitement—any opiate by which he might lull to rest the bitter memories of the past month.
He was familiar with the wildest haunts of that city of dissipation, and he was speedily engulphed in the vortex of vice and folly. If he had been a rich man, this life might have gone on for ever; but without money a man counts for very little in such a circle as that wherein Reginald alone could find delight, and to the inhabitants of that region five hundred a year would seem a kind of pauperism.
Sir Reginald contrived to keep the actual amount of his income a secret locked in his own breast. His acquaintances and associates knew that he was not rich; but they knew no more.
At the French opera-house he saw Paulina Durski for the first time. She was seated in one of the smaller boxes, dressed in pure white, with white camellias in her hair. Her faithful companion, Matilda Brewer, was seated in the shadow of the curtains, and formed a foil for the beautiful Austrian.
Reginald Eversleigh entered the house with a dissipated and fashionable young Parisian—a man who, like his companion, had wasted youth, character, and fortune in the tainted atmosphere of disreputable haunts and midnight assemblies. The two young men took their places in the stalls, and amused themselves between the acts by a scrutiny of the occupants of the house.
Hector Leonce, the Parisian, was familiar with the inmates of every box.
"Do you see that beautiful, fair-haired woman, with the white camellias in her hair?" he said, after he had drawn the attention of the Englishman to several distinguished people. "That is Madame Durski, the young and wealthy widow of an Austrian officer, and one of the most celebrated beauties in Paris."
"She is very handsome," answered Reginald, carelessly; "but hers is a cold style of loveliness—too much like a face moulded out of wax."
"Wait till you see her animated," replied Hector Leonce. "We will go to her box presently."
When the curtain fell on the close of the following act the two men left the stalls, and made their way to Madame Durski's box.
She received them courteously, and Reginald Eversleigh speedily perceived that her beauty, fair and wax-like as it was, did not lack intellectual grace. She talked well, and her manner had the tone of good society. Reginald was surprised to see her attended only by the little Englishwoman, in her dress of threadbare black velvet.
After the opera Sir Reginald and Hector Leonce accompanied Madame Durski to her apartments in the Rue du Faubourg, St. Honoré; and there the baronet beheld higher play than he had ever seen before in a private house presided over by a woman. On this occasion the beautiful widow herself occupied a place at therouge et noirtable, and Reginald beheld enough to enlighten him as to her real character. He saw that with this woman the love of play was a passion: a profound and soul-absorbing delight. He saw the eyes which, in repose, seemed of so cold a brightness, emit vivid flashes of feverish light; he saw the fair blush-rose tinted cheek glow with a hectic crimson—he beheld the woman with her mask thrown aside, abandoned to the influence of her master-passion.
After this night, Reginald Eversleigh was a frequent visitor at the apartments of the Austrian widow. For him, as for her, the fierce excitement of the gaming-table was an irresistible temptation. In her elegantly appointed drawing-rooms he met rich men who were desperate players; but he met few men who were likely to be dupes. Here neither skill nor bribery availed him, and he was dependent on the caprices of chance. The balance was tolerably even, and he left Paris neither richer nor poorer for his acquaintance with Paulina Durski.
But that acquaintance exercised a very powerful influence over his destiny, nevertheless. There was a strange fascination in the society of the Austrian widow—a nameless, indefinable charm, which few were able to resist. A bitter experience of vice and folly had robbed Reginald Eversleigh's heart and mind of all youth's freshness and confidence, and for him this woman seemed only what she was, an adventuress, dangerous to all who approached her.
He knew this, and yet he yielded to the fascination of her presence.Night after night he haunted the rooms in the Rue du Faubourg, St.Honoré. He went there even when he was too poor to play, and could onlystand behind Paulina's chair, a patient and devoted cavalier.
For a long time she seemed to be scarcely aware of his devotion. She received him as she received her other guests. She met him always with the same cold smile; the same studied courtesy. But one evening, when he went to her apartments earlier than usual, he found her alone, and in a melancholy mood.
Then, for the first time, he became aware that the life she led was odious to her; that she loathed the hateful vice of which she was the slave. She was wont to be very silent about herself and her own feelings; but that night she cast aside all reserve, and spoke with a passionate earnestness, which made her seem doubly charming to Reginald Eversleigh.
"I am so degraded a creature that, perhaps, you have never troubled yourself to wonder how I became the thing I am," she said; "and yet you must surely have marvelled to see a woman of high birth fallen to the depths in which you find me; fallen so low as to be the companion of gamesters, a gamester myself. I will tell you the secret of my life."
Reginald Eversleigh lifted his hand with a deprecating gesture.
"Dear madame, tell me nothing, I implore you. I admire and respect you," he said. "To me, you must always appear the most beautiful of women, whatever may be the nature of your surroundings."
"Yes, the most beautiful!" echoed Paulina, with passionate scorn. "You men think that to praise a woman's beauty is to console her for every humiliation. I have long held that which you call my beauty as the poorest thing on earth, so little, happiness has its possession won for me. I will tell you the story of my life. It is the only justification I have."
"I am ready to listen. So long as you speak of yourself, your words must have the deepest interest for me."
"I was reared amongst gamesters, Reginald Eversleigh," continued Paulina Durski, with the same passionate intensity of manner, "My father was an incorrigible gambler; and before I had emerged from childhood to girlhood, the handsome fortune which should have been mine had been squandered. As a girl the rattle of the dice, the clamour of therouge et noirtable were the most familiar sounds to my ears. Night after night, night after night, I have kept watch at my own window, and have seen the lighted windows of my father's rooms, and have known that grim poverty was drawing nearer and nearer as the long hours of those sleepless nights went by."
"My poor Paulina!"
"My mother died young, exhausted by the perpetual fever of anxiety which the gambler's wife is doomed to suffer. She died, and I was left alone—a woman; beautiful if you will, and, as the world supposed, heiress to a large fortune; for none knew how entirely the wealth which should have been mine had melted away in those nights of dissipation and folly. People knew that my father played, and played desperately; but few knew the extent of his losses. After my mother's death, my father insisted on my doing the honours of his house. I received his friends; I stood by his chair as he playedécarté, or sat by his side and noted the progress of the game at therouge et noirtable. Then first I felt the fatal passion which I can but believe to be a taint in my very blood. Slowly and gradually the fascinating vice assumed its horrible mastery. I watched the progress of the play. I learned to understand that science which was the one all-absorbing pursuit of those around me. Then I played myself, first taking a hand atécartéwith some of the younger guests, half in sport, and then venturing a small golden coin at therouge et noirtable, while my admirers praised my daring, as if I had been some capricious child. In those assemblies I was always the only woman, except Matilda Brewer, who was then my governess. My father would have no female guests at these nightly orgies. The presence of women would have been a hindrance to the delights of the gaming-table. At first I felt all the bitterness of my position. I looked forward with unspeakable dread to the dreary future in which I should find destitution staring me in the face. But when once the gamester's madness had seized upon me, I thought no more of that dreary future; I became as reckless as my father and his guests; I forgot everything in the excitement of the moment. To be lucky at the gaming-table was to be happy; to lose was despair. Thus my youth went by, till the day when my father told me that Colonel Durski had offered me his hand and fortune, and that I had no alternative but to accept him."
"Oh, then, your first marriage was no love-match?" cried Reginald, eagerly.
"A love-match!" exclaimed Paulina, contemptuously. "No; it was a marriage of convenience, dictated by a father who set less value on his daughter's happiness than on a good hand of cards. My father told me I must choose between Leopold Durski and ruin. 'This house cannot shelter you much longer,' he said. 'For myself there is flight. I can go to America, and lose my identity in strange cities. I cannot remain in Vienna, to be pointed at as the beggared Count Veschi. But with you for my companion I should be tied hand and foot. As a wanderer and an adventurer, I may prosper alone; but as a wanderer, burdened with a helpless woman, failure would be certain. It is not a question of choice, Paulina,' he said, resolutely; 'there is no alternative. You must become the wife of Leopold Durski.'"
"And you consented?"
"I ask you, Reginald Eversleigh, could I refuse? For me, love was a word which had no meaning. Leopold Durski was more than double my age; but in outward seeming he was a gentleman. He was reported to be wealthy; he had a high position at the Austrian Court. I was so utterly helpless, so desolate, so despairing, that it is scarcely strange if I accepted the fate my father pressed upon me, careless as to a future which held no joy for me, beyond the pleasure of the gaming-table. I left the house of one gambler to ally myself to the fortunes of another, for Leopold Durski was my father's companion and friend, and the same master-passion swayed both. It was strange that my father, himself a ruined gamester, should have become the dupe of a man whose reported wealth was as great a sham as his own. But so it was. I exchanged poverty with one master for poverty with another master. My new life was an existence of perpetual falsehood and trickery. I occupied a splendid house in the most fashionable quarter of Vienna; but that house was maintained by my husband's winnings at the gaming-table; and it was my task to draw together the dupes whose money was to support the false semblance of grandeur which surrounded me. The dupes came. I had my little court of flatterers; but the courtiers paid dearly for their allegiance to their queen. I was the snare which was set to entrap the birds whose feathers my husband was to pluck. If I had been like other women, my position would have been utterly intolerable to me. I should have found some means of escape from a life so hateful—a degradation so shameful."
"And you made no attempt to escape?"
"None. I was a gambler; the vice which had degraded my husband had degraded me. We had both sunk to the same level, and I had no right to reproach him for infamy which I shared. We had little affection for each other. Colonel Durski had sought me only because I was fitted to adorn his reception-rooms, and attract the dupes who were to suffer by their acquaintance with him. But if there was little love between us, we at least never quarrelled. He treated me always with studied courtesy, and I never upbraided him for the deception by which he had obtained my hand. My father disappeared suddenly from Vienna, and only after his departure was it discovered that his fortune had long vanished, and that he had for several years been completely insolvent. His creditors tittered a cry of execration; but in great cities the cries of such victims are scarcely heard. My reception-rooms were still thronged by aristocratic guests, and no one cared to remember my father's infamy. This life had lasted three years, when my husband died and left me penniless. I sold my jewels, and came to this city, where for a year and a half I have lived, as my husband lived in Vienna, on the fortune of the gaming-table. I am growing weary of Paris, and it may be that Paris is growing weary of me. I suppose I shall go to London next. And next? Who knows? Ah, Reginald Eversleigh, believe me there are many moments of my life in which I think that the little walk from here to the river would cut the knot of all my difficulties. To-night I am surrounded with anxieties, steeped in degradation, hemmed in by obstacles that shut me out of all peaceful resting-places. To-morrow I might be lying very quietly in the Morgue."
"Paulina, for pity's sake—"
"Ah, me! these are idle words, are they not?" said Madame Durski, with a weary sigh. "And now I have told you my history, Reginald Eversleigh, and it is for you to judge whether there is any excuse for such a creature as I am."
Sir Reginald pitied this hopeless, friendless, woman as much as it was in him to pity any one except himself, and tried to utter some words of consolation.
She looked up at him, as he spoke to her, with a glance in which he saw a deeper feeling than gratitude.
Then it was that Reginald declared himself the devoted lover of the woman who had revealed to him the strange story of her life. He told her of the influence which she exercised over him, the fascination which he had sought in vain to resist. He declared himself attached to her by an affection which would know no change, come what might. But he did not offer this friendless woman the shelter of his name, the ostensible position which would have been hers had she become his wife.
Even when beneath the sway of a woman's fascination Reginald Eversleigh was cold and calculating. Paulina Durski was poor, and doubtless deeply in debt. She was a gambler, and the companion of gamblers. She was, therefore, no fitting wife for a man who looked upon marriage as a stepping-stone by which he might yet redeem his fallen fortunes.
Paulina received his declaration with an air of simulated coldness; but Reginald Eversleigh could perceive that it was only simulated, and that he had awakened a real affection in the heart of this desolate woman.
"Do not speak to me of love," she said; "to me such words can promise no happiness. My love could only bring shame and misery on the man to whom it was given. Let me tread my dreary pathway alone, Reginald—alone to the very end."
Much was said after this by Reginald and the woman who loved him, and who was yet too proud to confess her love. Paulina Durski was not an inexperienced girl, to be persuaded by romantic speeches. She had acquired knowledge of the world in a hard and bitter school. She could fully fathom the base selfishness of the man who pretended to love her, and she understood why it was that he shrank from offering her the only real pledge of his truth.
"I will speak frankly to you, Paulina," he said. "I am too poor to marry."
"Yes," she answered, bitterly; "I comprehend. You are too poor to marry a penniless wife."
"And I am not likely to find a rich one. But, believe me, that my love is none the less sincere because I shrink from asking you to ally yourself to misery."
"So be it, Sir Reginald. I am willing to accept your love for what it is—a wise and prudent affection—such as a man of the world may freely indulge in without fear that his folly may cost him too dearly. You will come to my house; I shall see you night after night amongst the reckless idlers who gather round me; you will pay me compliments all the year round, and bring me bon-bons on New Year's Day; and some day, when I have grown old and haggard, you will all at once forget the fact of our acquaintance, and I shall see you no more. Let it be so. It is pleasant for a woman to fancy herself beloved, however false the fancy may be. I will shut my eyes, and dream that you love me, Reginald."
And this was all. No more was ever said of love between these two; but from that hour Reginald was more constant than ever in his attendance on the beautiful widow. The time came when she grew weary of Paris, and when those who had lost money began to shun the seductive delights of her nightly receptions. Reginald Eversleigh was not slow to perceive that the brilliant throng grew thin—the most distinguished guests "conspicuous by their absence." He urged Paulina to leave Paris for London; and he himself selected the lonely villa on the banks of the Thames, in which he found a billiard-room, lighted from the roof, that was easily converted into a secret chamber.
It was by his advice that Paulina Durski altered her line of conduct on taking up her abode in England, and refrained altogether from any active share in the ruinous amusements for which men frequented her receptions.
"It was all very well for you to take a hand atécarté, or to take your place at therouge et noirtable, in Paris," Reginald said, when he discussed this question; "but here it will not do. The English are full of childish prejudices, and to see a woman at the gaming-table would shock these prejudices. Let me play for you. I will find the capital, and we will divide the profits of each night's speculation. For your part, you will have only to look beautiful, and to lure the golden-feathered birds into the net; and sometimes, perhaps, when I am playingécartéwith one of your admirers, behind whose chair you may happen to be standing, you may contrive to combine a flattering interest inhisplay with a substantial benefit tomine."
Paulina's eyelids fell, and a crimson flush dyed her face: but she uttered no exclamation of anger or disgust. And yet she understood only too well the meaning of Sir Reginald's words. She knew that he wished her to aid him in a deliberate system of cheating. She knew this, and she did not withdraw her friendship from this man.
Alas, no! she loved him. Not because she believed him to be good and honourable—not because she was blinded to the baseness of his nature. She loved him in spite of her knowledge of his real character—she yielded to the influence of an infatuation which she was so powerless to resist that she might almost be pardoned for believing herself the victim of a baleful destiny.
"It is my fate," she murmured to herself, after this last revelation of her lover's infamy. "It must needs be my fate, since women with less claim to be loved than I possess are so happy as to win the devotion of good and brave men. It is my fate to love a cheat and trickster, on whose constancy I have so poor a hold that a breath may sever the miserable bond that unites us."
Victor Carrington was one of the first persons whom Reginald Eversleigh introduced to Madame Durski after her arrival in England. She was pleased with the quiet and graceful manners of the Frenchman; but she was at a loss to understand Sir Reginald's intimate association with a man who was at once poor and obscure.
She told Sir Reginald as much the next time she saw him alone.
"I know that in most of your friendships convenience and self-interest reign paramount over what you call sentimentality; and yet you choose for your friend this Carrington, whom no one knows; and who is, you tell me, even poorer than yourself. You must have a hidden motive, Reginald; and a strong one."
A dark shade passed over the face of the baronet.
"I have my reasons," he said. "Victor Carrington was once useful to me—at least he endeavoured to be so. If he failed, the obligation is none the less; and he is a man who will have his bond."
The current of life flowed on at River View Cottage without so much as a ripple in the shape of an event, after the appalling midnight visit of Miser Screwton's ghost, until one summer evening, when Captain Duncombe came home in very high spirits, bringing with him an old friend, of whom Miss Duncombe had heard her father talk very often; but whom she had hitherto never seen.
This was no other than George Jernam, the captain of the "Albatross," and the owner of the "Stormy Petrel" and "Pizarro."
In London the captain of the "Albatross" found plenty of business to occupy him. He had just returned from an African cruise, and though he had not forgotten the circumstances which had made his last intended visit to England only a memorable and melancholy failure, he was in high spirits.
The first few days hardly sufficed for the talks between George Jernam and Joyce Harker, who aided him vigorously in the refitting of his vessel. He had been in London about a week before he fell in with honest Joe Duncombe. The two men had been fast friends ever since the day on which George, while still a youngster, had served as second-mate under the owner of the "Vixen."
They met accidentally in one of the streets about Wapping. Joseph Buncombe was delighted to encounter a sea-faring friend, and insisted on taking George Jernam down to River View Cottage to eat what he called a homely bit of dinner.
The homely bit of dinner turned out to be a very excellent repast; for Mrs. Mugby prided herself upon her powers as a cook and housekeeper, and to produce a good dinner at a short notice was a triumph she much enjoyed.
Susan Trott waited at table in her prettiest cotton gown and smartest cap.
Rosamond Duncombe sat by her father's side during the meal; and after dinner, when the curtains were drawn, and the lamp lighted, the captain of the "Vixen" set himself to brew a jorum of punch in a large old Japanese china bowl, the composition of which punch was his strong point.
Altogether that little dinner and cheerful evening entertainment seemed the perfection of home comfort. George Jernam had been too long a stranger to home and home pleasures not to feel the cheerful influence of that hospitable abode.
For Joseph Duncombe the companionship of his old friend was delightful. The society of the sailor was as invigorating to the nostrils of a seaman as the fresh breeze of ocean after a long residence inland.
"You don't know what a treat it is to me to have an old shipmate with me once more, George," he said. "My little Rosy and I live here pretty comfortably, though I keep a tight hand over her, I can tell you," he added, with pretended severity; "but it's dull work for a man who has lived the best part of his life on the sea to find himself amongst a pack of spooney landsmen. Never you marry a landsman, Rosy, if you don't want me to cut you off with a shilling," he cried, turning to his daughter.
Of course Miss Rosamond Duncombe blushed on hearing herself thus apostrophized, as young ladies of eighteen have a knack of blushing when the possibility of their falling in love is mentioned.
George Jernam saw the blush, and thought that Miss Duncombe was the prettiest girl he had ever seen.
George Jernam stayed late at the cottage, for its hospitable owner was loth to let his friend depart.
"How long do you stay in London, George?" he asked, as the young man was going away.
"A month, at least—perhaps two months."
"Then be sure you come down here very often. You can dine with us every Sunday, of course, for I know you haven't a creature belonging to you in London except Harker; and you can run down of an evening sometimes, and bring him with you, and smoke your cigar in my garden, with the bright water rippling past you, and all the ships in the Pool spreading their rigging against the calm grey sky; and I'll brew you a jorum of punch, and Rosy shall sing us a song while we drink it."
It is not to be supposed that George Jernam, who had a good deal of idle time on his hands, could refuse to oblige his old captain, or shrink from availing himself of hospitality so cordially pressed upon him.
He went very often in the autumn dusk to spend an hour or two at River View Cottage, where he always found a hearty welcome. He strolled in the garden with Captain Duncombe and Rosamond, talking of strange lands and stranger adventures.
Harker did not always accompany him; but sometimes he did, and on such occasions Rosamond seemed unaccountably glad to see him. Harker paid her no more attention than usual, and invariably devoted himself to Joe Duncombe, who was frequently lazy, and inclined to smoke his cigar in the comfortable parlour. On these occasions George Jernam and Rosamond Duncombe strolled side by side in the garden; and the sailor entertained his fair companion by the description of all the strangest scenes he had beheld, and the most romantic adventures he had been engaged in. It was like the talk of some sea-faring Othello; and never did Desdemona more "seriously incline" to hear her valiant Moor than did Miss Duncombe to hear her captain.
One of the windows of Joseph Duncombe's favourite sitting-room commanded the garden; and from this window the captain of the "Vixen" could see his daughter and the captain of the "Albatross" walking side by side upon the smoothly kept lawn. He used to look unutterably sly as he watched the two figures; and on one occasion went so far as to tap his nose significantly several times with his ponderous fore-finger.