It was into an atmosphere highly charged, therefore, in which the lightning had scarcely ceased to play, and might at any moment dart its fires anew, that Mr. Fishwick was introduced. The lawyer did not know this; yet it was to be expected that without that knowledge he would bear himself but ill in the company in which he now found himself. But the task which he had come to perform raised him above himself; moreover, there is a point of depression at which timidity ceases, and he had reached this point. Admitted by Dr. Addington, he looked round, bowed stiffly to the physician, and lowly and with humility to Lord Chatham and her ladyship; then, taking his stand at the foot of the table, he produced his papers with an air of modest self-possession.
Lord Chatham did not look up, but he saw what was passing. 'We have no need of documents,' he said in the frigid tone which marked his dealings with all save a very few. 'Your client's suit is allowed, sir, so far as the trustees are concerned. That is all it boots me to say.'
'I humbly thank your lordship,' the attorney answered, speaking with an air of propriety which surprised Sir George. 'Yet I have with due submission to crave your lordship's leave to say somewhat.'
'There is no need,' the Earl answered, 'the claim being allowed, sir.'
'It is on that point, my lord.'
The Earl, his eyes smouldering, looked his displeasure, but controlled himself. 'What is it?' he said irritably.
'Some days ago, I made a singular discovery, my lord,' the attorney answered sorrowfully. 'I felt it necessary to communicate it to my client, and I am directed by her to convey it to your lordship and to all others concerned.' And the lawyer bowed slightly to Sir George Soane.
Lord Chatham raised his head, and for the first time since the attorney's entrance looked at him with a peevish attention. 'If we are to go into this, Dagge should be here,' he said impatiently. 'Or your lawyer, Sir George.' with a look as fretful in that direction. 'Well, man, what is it?'
'My lord,' Mr. Fish wick answered, 'I desire first to impress upon your lordship and Sir George Soane that this claim was set on foot in good faith on the part of my client, and on my part; and, as far as I was concerned, with no desire to promote useless litigation. That was the position up to Tuesday last, the day on which the lady was forcibly carried off. I repeat, my lord, that on that day I had no more doubt of the justice of our claim than I have to-day that the sky is above us. But on Wednesday I happened in a strange way--at Bristol, my lord, whither but for that abduction I might never have gone in my life--on a discovery, which by my client's direction I am here to communicate.'
'Do you mean, sir,' the Earl said with sudden acumen, a note of keen surprise in his voice, 'that you are here--to abandon your claim?'
'My client's claim,' the attorney answered with a sorrowful look. 'Yes, my lord, I am.'
For an instant there was profound silence in the room; the astonishment was as deep as it was general. At last, 'are the papers which were submitted to Mr. Dagge--are they forgeries then?' the Earl asked.
'No, my lord; the papers are genuine,' the attorney answered. 'But my client, although the identification seemed to be complete, is not the person indicated in them.' And succinctly, but with sufficient clearness, the attorney narrated his chance visit to the church, the discovery of the entry in the register, and the story told by the good woman at the 'Golden Bee.' 'Your lordship will perceive,' he concluded, 'that, apart from the exchange of the children, the claim was good. The identification of the infant whom the porter presented to his wife with the child handed to him by his late master three weeks earlier seemed to be placed beyond doubt by every argument from probability. But the child was not the child,' he added with a sigh. And, forgetting for the moment the presence in which he stood, Mr. Fishwick allowed the despondency he felt to appear in his face and figure.
There was a prolonged silence. 'Sir!' Lord Chatham said at last--Sir George Soane, with his eyes on the floor and a deep flush on his face, seemed to be thunderstruck by this sudden change of front--'it appears to me that you are a very honest man! Yet let me ask you. Did it never occur to you to conceal the fact?'
'Frankly, my lord, it did,' the attorney answered gloomily, 'for a day. Then I remembered a thing my father used to say to us, "Don't put molasses in the punch!" And I was afraid.'
'Don't put molasses in the punch!' his lordship ejaculated, with a lively expression of astonishment. 'Are you mad, sir?'
'No, my lord and gentlemen,' Mr. Fishwick answered hurriedly.' But it means--don't help Providence, which can very well help itself. The thing was too big for me, my lord, and my client too honest. I thought, if it came out afterwards, the last state might be worse than the first. And--I could not see my way to keep it from her; and that is the truth,' he added candidly.
The statesman nodded. Then,
'Dissimulare etiam sperasti, perfide tantumPosse nefas, tacitusque meam subducere terram?'
he muttered in low yet sonorous tones.
Mr. Fishwick stared. 'I beg your lordship's pardon,' he said. 'I do not quite understand.'
'There is no need. And that is the whole truth, sir, is it?'
'Yes, my lord, it is.'
'Very good. Very good,' Lord Chatham replied, pushing away the papers which the attorney in the heat of his argument had thrust before him. 'Then there is an end of the matter as far as the trustees are concerned. Sir George, you have nothing to say, I take it?'
'No, I thank you, my lord--nothing here,' Soane answered vaguely. His face continued to wear the dark flush which had overspread it a few minutes before. 'This, I need not say, is an absolute surprise to me,' he added.
'Just so. It is an extraordinary story. Well, good-morning, sir,' his lordship continued, addressing the attorney. 'I believe you have done your duty. I believe you have behaved very honestly. You will hear from me.'
Mr. Fishwick knew that he was dismissed, but after a glance aside, which showed him Sir George standing in a brown study, he lingered. 'If your lordship,' he said desperately, 'could see your way to do anything--for my client?'
'For your client? Why?' the Earl cried, with a sudden return of his gouty peevishness. 'Why, sir--why?'
'She has been drawn,' the lawyer muttered 'out of the position in which she lived, by an error, not her own, my lord.'
'Yours!'
'Yes, my lord.'
'And why drawn?' the Earl continued regarding him severely. 'I will tell you, sir. Because you were not content to await the result of investigation, but must needs thrust yourself in the public eye! You must needs assume a position before it was granted! No, sir, I allow you honest; I allow you to be well-meaning; but your conduct has been indiscreet, and your client must pay for it. Moreover, I am in the position of a trustee, and can do nothing. You may go, sir.'
After that Mr. Fishwick had no choice but to withdraw. He did so; and a moment later Sir George, after paying his respects, followed him. Dr. Addington was clear-sighted enough to fear that his friend had gone after the lawyer, and, as soon as he decently could, he went himself in pursuit. He was relieved to find Sir George alone, pacing the floor of the room they shared.
The physician took care to hide his real motive and his distrust of Soane's discretion under a show of heartiness. 'My dear Sir George, I congratulate you!' he cried, shaking the other effusively by the hand. 'Believe me, 'tis by far the completest way out of the difficulty; and though I am sorry for the--for the young lady, who seems to have behaved very honestly--well, time brings its repentances as well as its revenges. It is possible the match would have done tolerably well, assuming you to be equal in birth and fortune. But even then 'twas a risk; 'twas a risk, my dear sir! And now--'
'It is not to be thought of, I suppose?' Sir George said; and he looked at the other interrogatively.
'Good Lord, no!' the physician answered. 'No, no, no!' he added weightily.
Sir George nodded, and, turning, looked thoughtfully through the window. His face still wore a flush. 'Yet something must be done for her,' he said in a low voice. 'I can't let her here, read that.'
Dr. Addington took the open letter the other handed to him, and, eyeing it with a frown while he fixed his glasses, afterwards proceeded to peruse it.
'Sir,' it ran--it was pitifully short--'when I sought you I deemed myself other than I am. Were I to seek you now I should be other than I deem myself. We met abruptly, and can part after the same fashion. This from one who claims to be no more than your well-wisher.--JULIA.'
The doctor laid it down and took a pinch of snuff. 'Good girl!' he muttered. 'Good girl. That--that confirms me. You must do something for her, Sir George. Has she--how did you get that, by the way?'
'I found it on the table. I made inquiry, and heard that she left Marlboro' an hour gone.'
'For?'
'I could not learn.'
'Good girl! Good girl! Yes, certainly you must do something for her.'
'You think so?' Sir George said, with a sudden queer look at the doctor, 'Even you?'
'Even I! An allowance of--I was going to suggest fifty guineas a year,' Dr. Addington continued impulsively. 'Now, after reading that letter, I say a hundred. It is not too much, Sir George! 'Fore Gad, it is not too much. But--'
'But what?'
The physician paused to take an elaborate pinch of snuff. 'You'll forgive me,' he answered. 'But before this about her birth came out, I fancied that you were doing, or going about to do the girl no good. Now, my dear Sir George, I am not strait-laced,' the doctor continued, dusting the snuff from the lappets of his coat, 'and I know very well what your friend, my Lord March, would do in the circumstances. And you have lived much, with him, and think yourself, I dare swear, no better. But you are, my dear sir--you are, though you may not know it. You are wondering what I am at? Inclined to take offence, eh? Well, she's a good girl, Sir George'--he tapped the letter, which lay on the table beside him--'too good for that! And you'll not lay it on your conscience, I hope.'
'I will not,' Sir George said quietly.
'Good lad!' Dr. Addington muttered, in the tone Lord Chatham had used; for it is hard to be much with the great without trying on their shoes. 'Good lad! Good lad!'
Soane did not appear to notice the tone. 'You think an allowance of a hundred guineas enough?' he said, and looked at the other.
'I think it very handsome,' the doctor answered. 'D----d handsome.'
'Good!' Sir George rejoined. 'Then she shall have that allowance;' and after staring awhile at the table he nodded assent to his thoughts and went out.
The physician might not have deemed his friend so sensible--or so insensible--had he known that the young man proposed to make the offer of that allowance in person. Nor to Sir George Soane himself, when he alighted five days later before The George Inn at Wallingford, did the offer seem the light and easy thing,
'Of smiles and tears compact,'
it had appeared at Marlborough. He recalled old clashes of wit, and here and there a spark struck out between them, that, alighting on the flesh, had burned him. Meanwhile the arrival of so fine a gentleman, travelling in a post-chaise and four, drew a crowd about the inn. To give the idlers time to disperse, as well as to remove the stains of the road, he entered the house, and, having bespoken dinner and the best rooms, inquired the way to Mr. Fishwick the attorney's. By this time his servant had blabbed his name; and the story of the duel at Oxford being known, with some faint savour of his fashion, the landlord was his most obedient, and would fain have guided his honour to the place cap in hand.
Rid of him, and informed that the house he sought was neighbour on the farther side, of the Three Tuns, near the bridge, Sir George strolled down the long clean street that leads past Blackstone's Church, then in the building, to the river; Sinodun Hill and the Berkshire Downs, speaking evening peace, behind him. He paused before a dozen neat houses with brass knockers and painted shutters, and took each in turn for the lawyer's. But when he came to the real Mr. Fishwick's, and found it a mere cottage, white and decent, but no more than a cottage, he thought that he was mistaken. Then the name of 'Mr. Peter Fishwick, Attorney-at-Law,' not in the glory of brass, but painted in white letters on the green door, undeceived him; and, opening the wicket of the tiny garden, he knocked with the head of his cane on the door.
The appearance of a stately gentleman in a laced coat and a sword, waiting outside Fishwick's, opened half the doors in the street; but not that one at which Sir George stood. He had to knock again and again before he heard voices whispering inside. At last a step came tapping down the bricked passage, a bolt was withdrawn, and an old woman, in a coarse brown dress and a starched mob, looked out. She betrayed no surprise on seeing so grand a gentleman, but told his honour, before he could speak, that the lawyer was not at home.
'It is not Mr. Fishwick I want to see,' Sir George answered civilly. Through the brick passage he had a glimpse, as through a funnel, of green leaves climbing on a tiny treillage, and of a broken urn on a scrap of sward. 'You have a young lady staying here?' he continued.
The old woman's stiff grey eyebrows grew together. 'No!' she said sharply. 'Nothing of the kind!'
'A Miss Masterson.'
'No' she snapped, her face more and more forbidding. 'We have no Misses here, and no baggages for fine gentlemen! You have come to the wrong house!' And she tried to shut the door in his face.
He was puzzled and a little affronted; but he set his foot between the door and the post, and balked her. 'One moment, my good woman,' he said. 'This is Mr. Fishwick's, is it not?'
'Ay, 'tis,' she answered, breathing hard with indignation. 'But if it is him your honour wants to see, you must come when he is at home. He is not at home to-day.'
'I don't want to see him,' Sir George said. 'I want to speak to the young lady who is staying here.'
'And I tell you that there is no young lady staying here!' she retorted wrathfully. 'There is no soul in the house but me and my serving girl, and she's at the wash-tub. It is more like the Three Tuns you want! There's a flaunting gipsy-girl there if you like--but the less said about her the better.'
Sir George stood and stared at the woman. At last, on a sudden suspicion, 'Is your servant from Oxford?' he said.
She seemed to consider him before she answered. 'Well, if she is?' she said grudgingly. 'What then?'
'Is her name Masterson?'
Again she seemed to hesitate. At last, 'May be and may be not!' she snapped, with a sniff of contempt.
He saw that it was, and for an instant the hesitation was on his side. Then, 'Let me come in!' he said abruptly. 'You are doing your son's client little good by this!' And when she had slowly and grudgingly made way for him to enter, and the door was shut behind him, 'Where is she?' he asked almost savagely. 'Take me to her!'
The old dame muttered something unintelligible. Then, 'She's in the back part,' she said, 'but she'll not wish to see you. Don't blame me if she pins a clout to your skirts.'
Yet she moved aside, and the way lay open--down the brick passage. It must be confessed that for an instant, just one instant, Sir George wavered, his face hot; for the third part of a second the dread of the ridiculous, the temptation to turn and go as he had come were on him. Nor need he, for this, forfeit our sympathies, or cease to be a hero. It was the age, be it remembered, of the artificial. Nature, swathed in perukes and ruffles, powder and patches, and stifled under a hundred studied airs and grimaces, had much ado to breathe. Yet it did breathe; and Sir George, after that brief hesitation, did go on. Three steps carried him down the passage. Another, and the broken urn and tiny treillage brought him up short, but on the greensward, in the sunlight, with the air of heaven fanning his brow. The garden was a very duodecimo; a single glance showed him its whole extent--and Julia.
She was not at the wash-tub, as the old lady had said; but on her knees, scouring a step that led to a side-door, her drugget gown pinned up about her. She raised her head as he appeared, and met his gaze defiantly, her face flushing red with shame or some kindred feeling. He was struck by a strange likeness between her hard look and the frown with which the old woman at the door had received him; and this, or something in the misfit of her gown, or the glimpse he had of a stocking grotesquely fine in comparison of the stuff from which it peeped--or perhaps the cleanliness of the step she was scouring, since he seemed to instant, just one instant, Sir George wavered, his face hot; for the third part of a second the dread of the ridiculous, the temptation to turn and go as he had come were on him. Nor need he, for this, forfeit our sympathies, or cease to be a hero. It was the age, be it remembered, of the artificial. Nature, swathed in perukes and ruffles, powder and patches, and stifled under a hundred studied airs and grimaces, had much ado to breathe. Yet it did breathe; and Sir George, after that brief hesitation, did go on. Three steps carried him down the passage. Another, and the broken urn and tiny treillage brought him up short, but on the greensward, in the sunlight, with the air of heaven fanning his brow. The garden was a very duodecimo; a single glance showed him its whole extent--and Julia.
She was not at the wash-tub, as the old lady had said; but on her knees, scouring a step that led to a side-door, her drugget gown pinned up about her. She raised her head as he appeared, and met his gaze defiantly, her face flushing red with shame or some kindred feeling. He was struck by a strange likeness between her hard look and the frown with which the old woman at the door had received him; and this, or something in the misfit of her gown, or the glimpse he had of a stocking grotesquely fine in comparison of the stuff from which it peeped--or perhaps the cleanliness of the step she was scouring, since he seemed to see everything without looking at it--put an idea into his head. He checked the exclamation that sprang to his lips; and as she rose to her feet he saluted her with an easy smile. 'I have found you, child,' he said. 'Did you think you had hidden yourself?'
She met his gaze sullenly. 'You have found me to no purpose,' she said. Her tone matched her look.
The look and the words together awoke an odd pang in his heart. He had seen her arch, pitiful, wrathful, contemptuous, even kind; but never sullen. The new mood gave him the measure of her heart; but his tone lost nothing of its airiness. 'I hope not,' he said, 'for we think you have behaved vastly well in the matter, child. Remarkably well! And that, let me tell you, is not only my own sentiment, but the opinion of my friends who perfectly approve of the arrangement I have come to propose. You may accept it, therefore, without the least scruple.'
'Arrangement?' she muttered. Her cheeks, darkly red a moment before, began to fade.
'Yes,' he said. 'I hope you will think it not ungenerous. It will rid you of the need to do this--sort of thing, and put you--put you in a comfortable position. Of course, you know,' he continued in a tone of patronage, under which her heart burned if her cheeks did not, 'that a good deal of water has run under the bridge since we talked in the garden at Marlborough? That things are changed.'
Her eyelids quivered under the cruel stroke. But her only answer was, 'They are.' Yet she wondered how and why; for if she had thought herself an heiress, he had not--then.
'You admit it, I am sure?' he persisted.
'Yes,' she answered resolutely.
'And that to--to resume, in fact, the old terms would be--impossible,'
'Quite impossible.' Her tone was as hard as his was easy.
'I thought so,' Sir George continued complacently. 'Still, I could not, of course, leave you here, child. As I have said, my friends think that something should be done for you; and I am only too happy to do it. I have consulted them, and we have talked the matter over. By the way,' with a look round, 'perhaps your mother should be here--Mrs. Masterson, I mean? Is she in the house?'
'No,' she answered, her face flaming scarlet; for pride had conquered pain. She hated him. Oh, how she hated him and the hideous dress which in her foolish dream--when, hearing him at the door, she had looked for something very different--she had hurriedly put on; and the loose tangle of hair which she had dragged with trembling fingers from its club so that it now hung sluttishly over her ear. She longed, as she had never longed before, to confront him in all her beauty; to be able to say to him, 'Choose where you will, can you buy form or face like this?' Instead she stood before him, prisoned in this shapeless dress, a slattern, a drab, a thing whereat to curl the lip.
'Well, I am sorry she is not here,' he resumed. 'It would have given a--a kind of legality to the offer,' he continued with an easy laugh. 'To tell you the truth, the amount was not fixed by me, but by my friend, Dr. Addington, who interested himself in your behalf. He thought that an allowance of a hundred guineas a year, child, properly secured, would place you in comfort, and--and obviate all this,' with a negligent wave of the hand that took in the garden and the half-scoured stone, 'at the same time,' he added, 'that it would not be unworthy of the donor.' And he bowed, smiling.
'A hundred guineas?' she said slowly. 'A year?'
'Yes.'
'Properly secured?'
'To be sure, child.'
'On your word?' with a sudden glance at him. 'Of course, I could not ask better security! Surely, sir, there's but one thing to be said. 'Tis too generous, too handsome!'
'Tut-tut!' he answered, wondering at her way of taking it.
'Far too handsome--seeing that I have no claim on you, Sir George, and have only put you to great expense.'
'Pooh! Pooh!'
'And--trouble. A vast deal of trouble,' she repeated in an odd tone of raillery, while her eyes, grown hard and mocking, raked him mercilessly. 'So much for so little! I could not--I could not accept it. A hundred guineas a year, Sir George, from one in your position to one in mine, would only lay me open to the tongue of slander. You had better say--fifty.'
'Oh, no!'
'Or--thirty, I am sure thirty were ample! Say thirty guineas a year, dear sir; and leave me my character.'
'Nonsense,' he answered, a trifle discomfited. Strange, she was seizing her old position. The weapon he had wrought for her punishment was being turned against himself.
'Or, I don't know that thirty is not too much!' she continued, her eyes unnaturally bright, her voice keen as a razor.' 'Twould have been enough if offered through your lawyers. But at your own mouth, Sir George, ten shillings a week should do, and handsomely! Which reminds me--it was a kind thought to come yourself to see me; I wonder why you did.'
'Well,' he said, 'to be frank, it was Dr. Addington--'
'Oh, Dr. Addington--Dr. Addington suggested it! Because I fancied--it could not give you pleasure to see me like this?' she continued with a flashing eye, her passion for a brief moment breaking forth. 'Or to go back a month or two and call me child? Or to speak to me as to your chambermaid? Or even to give me ten shillings a week?'
'No,' he said gravely; 'perhaps not, my dear.'
She winced and her eyes flashed; but she controlled herself. 'Still, I shall take your ten shillings a week,' she said. 'And--and is that all? Or is there anything else?'
'Only this,' he said firmly. 'You'll please to remember that the ten shillings a week is of your own choosing. You'll do me that justice at least. A hundred guineas a year was the allowance I proposed. And--I bet a guinea you ask for it, my dear, before the year is out!'
She was like a tigress outraged; she writhed under the insult. And yet, because to give vent to her rage were also to bare her heart to his eyes, she had to restrain herself, and endure even this with a scarlet cheek. She had thought to shame him by accepting the money he offered; by accepting it in the barest form. The shame was hers; it did not seem to touch him a whit. At last, 'You are mistaken,' she answered, in a voice she strove to render steady. 'I shall not! And now, if there is nothing more, sir--'
'There is,' he said. 'Are you sufficiently punished?'
She looked at him wildly--suddenly, irresistibly compelled to do so by a new tone in his voice. 'Punished!' she stammered, almost inaudibly. 'For what?'
'Do you not know?'
'No,' she muttered, her heart fluttering strangely.
'For this travesty,' he answered; and coolly, as he stood before her, he twitched the sleeve of her shapeless gown, looking masterfully down at her the while, so that her eyes fell before his. 'Did you think it kind to me or fair to me,' he continued, almost sternly, 'to make that difficult, Julia, which my honour required, and which you knew that my honour required? Which, if I had not come to do, you would have despised me in your heart, and presently with your lips? Did you think it fair to widen the distance between us by this--this piece of play-acting? Give me your hand.'
She obeyed, trembling, tongue-tied. He held it an instant, looked at it, and dropped it almost contemptuously. 'It has not cleaned that step before,' he said. 'Now put up your hair.'
She did so with shaking fingers, her cheeks pale, tears oozing from under her lowered eyelashes. He devoured her with his gaze.
'Now go to your room,' he said. 'Take off that rag and come to me properly dressed.'
'How?' she whispered.
'As my wife.'
'It is impossible,' she cried with a gesture of despair; 'It is impossible.'
'Is that the answer you would have given me at Manton Corner?'
'Oh no, no!' she cried. 'But everything is changed.'
'Nothing is changed.'
'You said so,' she retorted feverishly. 'You said that it was changed!'
'And have you, too, told the whole truth?' he retorted. 'Go, silly child! If you are determined to play Pamela to the end, at least you shall play it in other guise than this. 'Tis impossible to touch you! And yet, if you stand long and tempt me, I vow, sweet, I shall fall!'
To his astonishment she burst into hysterical laughter. 'I thought men wooed--with promises!' she cried. 'Why don't you tell me I shall have my jewels; and my box at the Opera and the King's House? And go to Vauxhall and the Masquerades? And have my frolic in the pit with the best? And keep my own woman as ugly as I please? He did; and I said Yes to him! Why don't you say the same?'
Sir George was prepared for almost anything, but not for that. His face grew dark. 'He did? Who did?' he asked grimly, his eyes on her face.
'Lord Almeric! And I said Yes to him--for three hours.'
'Lord Almeric?'
'Yes! For three hours,' she answered with a laugh, half hysterical, half despairing. 'If you must know, I thought you had carried me off to--to get rid of my claim--and me! I thought--I thought you had only been playing with me,' she continued, involuntarily betraying by her tone how deep had been her misery. 'I was only Pamela, and 'twas cheaper, I thought, to send me to the Plantations than to marry me.'
'And Lord Almeric offered you marriage?'
'I might have been my lady,' she cried in bitter abasement. 'Yes.'
'And you accepted him?'
'Yes! Yes, I accepted him.'
'And then--'Pon honour, ma'am, you are good at surprises. I fear I don't follow the course of events,' Sir George said icily.
'Then I changed my mind--the same day,' she replied. She was shaking on her feet with emotion; but in his jealousy he had no pity on her weakness. 'You know, a woman may change her mind once, Sir George,' she added with a feeble smile.
'I find that I don't know as much about women--as I thought I did,' Sir George answered grimly. 'You seem, ma'am, to be much sought after. One man can hardly hope to own you. Pray have you any other affairs to confess?'
'I have told you--all,' she said.
His face dark, he hung a moment between love and anger; looking at her. Then, 'Did he kiss you?' he said between his teeth. 'No!' she cried fiercely.
'You swear it?'
She flashed a look at him.
But he had no mercy. 'Why not?' he persisted, moving a step nearer her. 'You were betrothed to him. You engaged yourself to him, ma'am. Why not?'
'Because--I did not love him,' she answered so faintly he scarcely heard.
He drew a deep breath. 'May I kiss you?' he said.
She looked long at him, her face quivering between tears and smiles, a great joy dawning in the depths of her eyes. 'If my lord wills,' she said at last, 'when I have done his bidding and--and changed--and dressed as--'
But he did not wait.
When Sir George left the house, an hour later, it happened that the first person he met in the street was Mr. Fishwick. For a day or two after the conference at the Castle Inn the attorney had gone about, his ears on the stretch to catch the coming footstep. The air round him quivered with expectation. Something would happen. Sir George would do something. But with each day that passed eventless, the hope and expectation grew weaker; the care with which the attorney avoided his guest's eyes, more marked; until by noon of this day he had made up his mind that if Sir George came at all, it would be as the wolf and not as the sheep-dog. While Julia, proud and mute, was resolving that if her lover came she would save him from himself by showing him how far he had to stoop, the attorney in the sourness of defeat and a barren prospect--for he scarcely knew which way to turn for a guinea--was resolving that the ewe-lamb must be guarded and all precautions taken to that end.
When he saw the gentleman issue from his door therefore, still more when Sir George with a kindly smile held out his hand, a condescension which the attorney could not remember that he had ever extended to him before, Mr. Fishwick's prudence took fright. 'Too much honoured, Sir George,' he said, bowing low. Then stiffly, and looking from his visitor to the house and back again, 'But, pardon me, sir, if there is any matter of business, any offer to be made to my client, it were well, I think--if it were made through me.'
I thank you,' Sir George answered. 'I do not think that there is anything more to be done. I have made my offer.'
'Oh!' the lawyer cried.
'And it has been accepted,' Soane continued, smiling at his dismay. 'I believe that you have been a good friend to your client, Mr. Fishwick. I shall be obliged if you will allow her to remain under your roof until to-morrow, when she has consented to honour me by becoming my wife.'
'Your wife?' Mr. Fishwick ejaculated, his face a picture of surprise. 'To-morrow?'
'I brought a licence with me,' Sir George answered. 'I am now on my way to secure the services of a clergyman.'
The tears stood in Mr. Fishwick's eyes, and his voice shook. 'I felicitate you, sir,' he said, taking off his hat. 'God bless you, sir. Sir George, you are a very noble gentleman!' And then, remembering himself, he hastened to beg the gentleman's pardon for the liberty he had taken.
Sir George nodded kindly. 'There is a letter for you in the house, Mr. Fishwick,' he said, 'which I was asked to convey to you. For the present, good-day.'
Mr. Fishwick stood and watched him go with eyes wide with astonishment; nor was it until he had passed from sight that the lawyer turned and went into his house. On a bench in the passage he found a letter. It was formally directed after the fashion of those days 'To Mr. Peter Fishwick, Attorney at Law, at Wallingford in Berkshire, by favour of Sir George Soane of Estcombe, Baronet.'
'Lord save us, 'tis an honour,' the attorney muttered. 'What is it?' and with shaking hands he cut the thread that confined the packet. The letter, penned by Dr. Addington, was to this effect:
'Sir,--I am directed by the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham, Lord Keeper of His Majesty's Privy Seal, to convey to you his lordship's approbation of the conduct displayed by you in a late transaction. His lordship, acknowledging no higher claim to employment than probity, nor any more important duty in the disposition of patronage than the reward of integrity, desires me to intimate that the office of Clerk of the Leases in the Forest of Dean, which is vacant and has been placed at his command, is open for your acceptance. He is informed that the emoluments of the office arising from fees amount in good years to five hundred pounds, and in bad years seldom fall below four hundred.
His lordship has made me the channel of this communication, that I may take the opportunity of expressing my regret that a misunderstanding at one time arose between us. Accept, sir, this friendly assurance of a change of sentiment, and allow me to
'Have the honour to be, sir,'Your obedient servant,'J. Addington.'
'Clerk of the Leases--in the Forest of Dean--have been known in bad years--to fall to four hundred!' Mr. Fishwick ejaculated, his eyes like saucers. 'Oh, Lord, I am dreaming! I must be dreaming! If I don't get my cravat untied, I shall have a lit! Four hundred in bad years! It's a--oh, it's incredible! They'll not believe it! I vow they'll not believe it!'
But when he turned to seek them, he saw that they had stolen a march on him, that they knew it already and believed it! Between him and the tiny plot of grass, the urn, and the espalier, which, still caught the last beams of the setting sun, he surprised two happy faces spying on his joy--the one beaming through a hundred puckers with a mother's tearful pride; the other, the most beautiful in the world, and now softened and elevated by every happy emotion.
Mr. Dunborough stood his trial at the next Salisbury assizes, and, being acquitted of the murder of Mr. Pomeroy, was found guilty of manslaughter. He pleaded his clergy, went through the formality of being branded in the hand with a cold iron, and was discharged on payment of his fees. He lived to be the fifth Viscount Dunborough, a man neither much worse nor much better than his neighbours; and dying at a moderate age--in his bed, of gout in the stomach--escaped the misfortune which awaited some of his friends; who, living beyond the common span, found themselves shunned by a world which could find no worse to say of them than that they lived in their age as all men of fashion had lived in their youth.
Mr. Thomasson was less fortunate. Bully Pomeroy's dying words and the evidence of the man Tamplin were not enough to bring the crime home to him. But representations were made to his college, and steps were taken to compel him to resign his Fellowship. Before these came to an issue, he was arrested for debt, and thrown into the Fleet. There he lingered for a time, sinking into a lower and lower state of degradation, and making ever more and more piteous appeals to the noble pupils who owed so much of their knowledge of the world to his guidance. Beyond this point his career is not to be traced, but it is improbable that it was either creditable to him or edifying to his friends.
To-day the old Bath road is silent, or echoes only the fierce note of the cyclist's bell. The coaches and curricles, wigs and hoops, bolstered saddles and carriers' waggons are gone with the beaux and fine ladies and gentlemen's gentlemen whose environment they were; and the Castle Inn is no longer an inn. Under the wide eaves that sheltered the love passages of Sir George and Julia, in the panelled halls that echoed the steps of Dutch William and Duke Chandos, through the noble rooms that a Seymour built that Seymours might be born and die under their frescoed ceilings, the voices of boys and tutors now sound. The boys are divided from the men of that day by four generations, the tutors from the man we have depicted, by a moral gulf infinitely greater. Yet is the change in a sense outward only; for where the heart of youth beats, there, and not behind fans or masks, the 'Stand!' of the highwayman, or the 'Charge!' of the hero, lurks the high romance.
Nor on the outside is all changed at the Castle Inn. Those who in this quiet lap of the Wiltshire Downs are busy moulding the life of the future are reverent of the past. The old house stands stately, high-roofed, almost unaltered, its great pillared portico before it; hard by are the Druids' Mound, and Preshute Church in the lap of trees. Much water has run under the bridge that spans the Kennet since Sir George and Julia sat on the parapet and watched the Salisbury coach come in; the bridge that was of wood is of brick--but there it is, and the Kennet still flows under it, watering the lawns and flowering shrubs that Lady Hertford loved. Still can we trace in fancy the sweet-briar hedge and the border of pinks which she planted by the trim canal; and a bowshot from the great school can lose all knowledge of the present in the crowding memories which the Duelling Green and the Bowling Alley, trodden by the men and women of a past generation, awaken in the mind.