When Lavirotte returned to consciousness, the day after the encounter on the road, he seemed to have but a hazy notion of what had occurred, and yet to have known that caution was necessary. He found one of the women of the house seated in the room. He asked her had he been hurt, and how he had been hurt. She said: "I don't exactly know. Mr. O'Donnell and you came here together. He is hurt, too." "Much?" "His shoulder is cut, I believe. They tell me he is not very bad. Maybe you know something about it?" "My head is hurt," he said, "and I cannot remember well. There is no danger he will die, is there?" "The doctor says no, but that he'll want good caring." Then for a long time Lavirotte was silent. "What does Eugene say about it?" he asked at length. "Does he know how he was hurt or how I was hurt?" "They did not tell me. I do not know." "Will you take my compliments to Mr. O'Donnell, and ask him if he remembers what happened?" "I don't think I'd get much for my trouble if I did. The police have been here already trying to find out about the matter, and Mr. O'Donnell refused to tell them anything." "Refused to tell them anything! Dear Eugene! dearest Eugene. Most loyal of friends! I always loved him." Then there was another long interval of silence. "Who is with my dear friend Eugene?" "I don't know who is with him now. His father and mother were here early in the day. They have bad news I am told. Some great man in Dublin is closed." "Some great man in Dublin. Did you hear his name?" "No; but they say it will be very bad for old Mr. O'Donnell." "Will you ask Mr. Maher to come this way?" When the landlord entered, he said: "Who is the great man that has failed in Dublin?" "Mr. Vernon." "Ah, Mr. Vernon. So I guessed. This will be bad for the poor O'Donnells." "There are other things bad for the poor O'Donnells as well," said the landlord, bitterly. "I am sincerely sorry for my dear friends. You know, Mr. Maher, they are the dearest friends I have on earth." "Ah!" cried the other sarcastically. "I must telegraph to London. Someone must write the telegram for me." "I will," said the landlord, grudgingly. "You are always so kind," said the invalid; "always so kind! You Irish are, I believe, the kindest-hearted race in all the world." "And sometimes we get nice pay for our pains." Then the telegram to Dora Harrington was written. "Have Mr. and Mrs. O'Donnell left, or are they with their son yet?" "Mr. O'Donnell is gone back to Rathclare. Mrs. O'Donnell is with Mr. Eugene. It's a sorrowful business." "And nobody else?" "Eh?" "And there is nobody else with Mr. Eugene O'Donnell?" "I say it's a sorrowful business." "Dreadful. I am profoundly sorry." "Eh?" "A sorrowful business, I say, about the failure of the bank." "Eh?" "My dear Maher, you are growing deaf. You ought to see to this matter at once. Dr. O'Malley is a very clever man. You ought to mention the matter to him." "That'll do, now. You're bad, and I don't want to say anything to you. But my ears are wide enough to hear what they say." "Who aretheythatsay, and what dothey say?" "They saythat you stabbed Mr. Eugene O'Donnell, one of the pleasantest gentlemen that ever put a foot in Glengowra." "But he himself denies it." "He doesn't." "When the police came he would not tell them anything." "More fool he! But there, there--I won't say any more. This is against Dr. O'Malley's orders. He said you were not to be allowed to speak, or excite yourself. You may say what you like now, Mr. Lavirotte; I'll say no more. I'll obey Dr. O'Malley." "One more question and I have done. Is there anyone but Mrs. O'Donnell with Eugene?" "Yes, Miss Creagh." "Thanks; I am very much obliged to you. I will trouble you no more now." When the servant returned to the room, he said to her: "What a kind man your master is. Notwithstanding his belief that I made an attack upon Mr. Eugene O'Donnell, he was good enough to write a telegram for me, and to tell me some of the town gossip. I hear that Miss Creagh is in the sick room. I want you to do me a great favour, if you please. Take my compliments to Miss Creagh, and say I would feel greatly obliged if she would favour me with a few moments' conversation." The attendant drew herself up. "It's not likely," she said, "Miss Creagh would come near you. When I was coming up, Mr. Maher told me you were not to talk or excite yourself." "Do as I tell you, woman," he said sharply, "or I will get up out of this bed and dash myself out of the window, and you will be the cause of my death, and have to answer for it." The servant was cowed. She rose timidly and left the room. Almost immediately the door reopened, and Ellen Creagh entered, followed by the servant. Her pallor was now gone, and although her cheeks and lips had not the depth of bloom usually on them, she looked nearly her own self. She smiled faintly as she approached the bed on which Lavirotte lay. "You wish to speak to me, and I have come." "Yes," he said, "I wish to speak to you. May it be with you alone?" He looked at the servant in the doorway. She motioned the servant to withdraw, and then came close to the bed. "Miss Creagh," he said, "they tell me he will get better. They tell me he has given no account of what took place last night to--the police. Has he told you what occurred?" "He has," she said; "to me, and to me only. He said to his mother that the secret was one concerning three only." "He and I being two, and you the third?" "Yes," she said. "What do you wish me to do?" "First of all to forgive me, if you can." "I forgive you freely. He says you must have been mad." "I was," he said, "stark, raving mad. I was not responsible for what I did. I am in the most grievous despair about the matter." "He is sorry he injured you; but it was in self-defence." "Heinjure me! Not he. What put that into his mind?Iinjured him. I will not pain you by telling you what I did. It was not I did it; it was a maniac, a demon. You must tell him quickly he did not injure me. In self-defence, in trying to guard himself against an accursed madman, he sought to throw me. We both fell close to a rock at the end of the cove road, and my head struck the rock. You will tell him this, will you not, Miss Creagh? It will relieve his mind. It will relieve the mind of my dear friend, my dearest Eugene." "He will be glad to hear he did not do it, but sorry to know you are so much hurt. He does not blame you at all. He says his great anxiety to be up is that he may come to you and shake your hand." The tears stood in Lavirotte's eyes. "God bless my boy," he cried. "God bless my boy, Eugene. I am not worthy to know him. I am not worthy to know you. I am not worthy to live. I am not fit to die. I am an outcast from earth, from heaven, and from hell." "Just before I left him to come and see you"--the young girl's colour heightened slightly--"I took his hand to say good-bye to him, even for this little time," she smiled. "I took his hand in mine; in this hand," holding out her right. "He said to me, 'You will tell Lavirotte I am sorry I cannot shake his hand.'" She stretched out her right hand to his right hand lying on the counterpane. "If I take your hand now, it will be the nearest thing to touching his." "Yes," said Lavirotte eagerly, "it will be touching a hand that is dearer to him than his own." He took the warm white hand in his, and raised it to his lips reverentially. "Now, the favour I have to ask of you is this: it far exceeds in magnitude the one I first thought of asking you." "What is it?" she said, briskly. "I am sure I shall be able to grant it." "You will ask him to let me be his best man at your wedding." Again the young girl coloured. "I will, if you wish it, and I am sure he will consent." "Will you ask him, for then I shall have something to say to you?" She left the room and returned in a few minutes. "Nothing will give him greater pleasure. He is delighted at the notion. He would have asked you only----" Here she paused. "I understand," he said. "Only for what occurred once between you and me. I am told there is bad news, the worst news, of Vernon and Son to-day. Do you believe in fate?" "I do not believe in fate." "I do," he said, "implicitly. I believe it was fated that you and I should never be more than friends, and that you and he should be everything to one another. And now fate appears to me in a new aspect. There is a chance--a very slender one, I admit--nay, a wonderful, foolish chance that I may one day come into some money, not in the ordinary way of succession, but by a romantic event. I will be perfectly frank with you. I will make a confession to you which I have made to no one else here. It will damage me more in your opinion than it could in the opinion of anyone else living. When I said those words to you that day in the boat, I was engaged to be married to someone now in London." The girl started. "You--you were not serious that day, you know. You only meant to pay me a compliment." "No, no," the wounded man cried quickly. "I meant ten thousand times more than I said. But there--let us drop that subject for ever. I am only too glad to think of it no more. I offered you my hand when it was not mine to give, and when you promised to give yours to another I tried to kill him. No man could have been baser or more unworthy than I. And yet there is a use in my baseness, for has it not given him an opportunity of forgiving me--fine-hearted gentleman as he is--and you of showing me that you are the noblest as well as the most beautiful woman alive?" "You are too hard upon yourself, and too generous to--us," the girl said, colouring. "I must not stay if you will talk in this fashion." "Yes, stay by all means," he said, "for I have not done speaking yet. I will say no more on that topic. I have another secret to tell you. It will take some time. It is not unpleasant. It is, in fact, connected with the only property I own, and the possible consequence of my owning it. It is situated in London. It is only the tower of an old church--St. Prisca's, in Porter Street, by the Thames. I own that tower. It was built many hundred years ago. The rest of the church has been pulled down----" "Here is Dr. O'Malley," said the girl. "Miss Creagh," cried the doctor in astonishment. "You here!"
Mr. William Vernon was a venerable, benevolent-looking man of seventy years of age. His hair was white, his figure slightly stooped, his manner gentle, kindly, plausible. Until the crash came, everyone believed he was the most prosperous man in the city of Dublin. He had three fine private houses--one in Dublin, a seaside residence at Bray, and a castle in Monaghan. His income was believed to be somewhere between twenty and forty thousand a year, and it was believed that he lived well within it. His savings were said to be enormous, and the general conviction was that he could retire in splendour on his money, invested at home and abroad. Now all was confusion and dismay among those connected with him in business. So great was the excitement, two policemen had to be told off to guard the door of the bank. Men and women, too, who were depositors or shareholders, refused to believe the news, and came down to the bank to see with their own eyes confirmation of the report. There, sure enough, were the massive oak, iron-studded doors closed in their faces, never again to be opened. As the hours rolled on, the depth and breadth of the calamity increased steadily. People who were supposed to have had nothing whatever to do with the bank divulged, in the excitement of the moment, the secret that they were shareholders or depositors. The credit of the whole city was shaken. Who could be safe when the great house of Vernon and Son had collapsed? Before nightfall three other large houses had suspended payment. They had gone down into the vortex. Then it began to be realised that not only had the shareholders lost all their money invested in shares, but that every man who, as principal or trustee, held even one of these shares, was liable to the last shilling he had in the world. It had over and over again been suggested by outside shareholders that the business should be formed into a limited company. William Vernon always shook his head at this, and said that if you limit the responsibility you limit the enterprise, and so reduce the profits. They were paying twelve per cent. on capital--did they want to cut down the earnings to eight? He assured them it would cripple the whole concern seriously, and he, for one, would retire from any responsibility if such a course were urged upon him. It had been suggested to him, in advocacy of this scheme, that limiting the company would enormously diminish the risk of the shareholders in case disaster should overtake the bank. He had replied to this with a shrug of his shoulders, a smile of half pity, half amusement, and said: "If you have any fear, why not sell out? If you have any confidence in my word of honour, you need have no occasion for fear." Mr. William Vernon had the reputation of unblemished honour. He was, moreover, an exceedingly pious man, belonging to one of the most rigid forms of dissent. No one questioned his word; no one sold out; and now all were ruined. Mr. Vernon had married late in life. Mrs. Vernon was twenty-five years his junior. His elder daughter, Ruth, was now fifteen years of age; his younger, Miriam, twelve. He had but these two children. Mrs. Vernon was a large, florid, comely woman, who, twenty years ago, when she was married, had been considered a beauty. She was now no longer beautiful. She was a well-favoured matron of forty-five, with an exaggerated notion of the importance of her husband, her children, and herself. He was courteous, insinuating, with a dash of infallibility. She was dignified, not to say haughty, with a great notion of the high position she occupied in the social world. She was not harsh or cantankerous with servants, but she never for one moment allowed them to think they were anything but servants--that is to say, beings of an immeasurably inferior order. During the time Miss Creagh had been in Mrs. Vernon's house as resident governess to her two daughters, the mistress had shown the governess respect in the form of conscious condescension. She had never for a moment allowed anyone to slight Nellie, and even she herself had never slighted her. But, then, she never was by any means genial or cordial, or anything but rigidly polite; and rigid politeness is the perfection of rudeness. Nellie had not, however, been unhappy in that house. She had conceived a great respect for Mr. Vernon, and had grown to love the two children. Ruth was her favourite. The elder girl was flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, fair and pink, with a tendency to sentimental poetry and enthusiasm, and with a most excellent heart. Miriam, on the other hand, was a brunette, brown-haired, brown-eyed, vivacious, invincibly loquacious, with a thorough contempt for everything that was not material to comfort, and with a heart which beat so fast for its own excitements, that it rarely had time to concern itself with anything else. Mr. Vernon had that summer postponed their going to their house at Bray a month beyond the usual time. The crash had not come upon him unexpectedly. He and a few others knew for some time that it could not be avoided, but it might be put off. He was loath to leave Dublin; and as his family never went to Bray without him, he thought it better they should not go now, as if they did it might cause talk. Bray is but half-an-hour or so from Dublin; but he did not like to sleep so far away from the bank, for now important telegrams were coming at all hours of the day and night, and the delay of an hour might hasten the disaster. The immediate cause of the ruin was the failure of a trader in Belfast, who owed the bank considerable sums of money, and had been encouraged by Mr. Vernon to play a risky business on the chance of making large profits. In fact, the relation between the Belfast and Dublin houses would not bear the light of day, and the large profits which, it was said, enabled the Belfast house to pay a fancy price for money, had all been taken out of the capital lent by the bank. The Belfast house had, some years ago, an extraordinary stroke of luck. It legitimately doubled its income in a year. It depended almost wholly on its export trade. It sent most of its goods to India and the Colonies. During the good year it could not manufacture as quickly as it could sell. Then it borrowed in order to increase its manufacturing powers. It built and set up new machinery. It exported more than it had orders for and stored abroad. This went on for some years, the output being in excess of the demands of the prosperous year, the sales less than before the prosperous year. The result of this could be seen--bankruptcy. Nothing else was talked of in Dublin all that day, all that night, in the clubs, in the hotels, between the acts at the theatre, in the private houses, in the tramcars, in the streets. No class seemed to be unaffected by the gigantic catastrophe. Widows and orphans were ruined, trustees rendered penniless. Commercial fabrics which had cost generations to build up, were now tottering to the fall. All this dreadful day Mr. Vernon sat in his study, a large back room on the first floor of his Fitzwilliam Square house. He now fully realised his own position. He had directly ruined hundreds, and indirectly, through them, thousands. For years the bank had practically been in a bankrupt state. For years the fact had been kept secret by means of false balance-sheets. For years the pious, bland William Vernon had been the author of a gigantic fraud. What was coming now to him? An indictment? Imprisonment? Were a common prison and common prison diet coming to him in his seventieth year? All this time that he had been issuing false balance-sheets he had lived in splendour. He had kept his three houses, his horses, his domestic servants, his gardeners, his grooms, his coachmen. He had given dinners which were the talk, the admiration, the envy of Dublin. His wines were the finest. He had a French cook; he had footmen of the shapeliest forms and politest manners. Was he about to have, instead of his three stately houses--the city jail? Instead of his dining-room--a prison cell? Instead of his courteous footman--a gruff turnkey? Instead of cliquot--gruel? Instead of respect, honour, reverence--contumely, scorn, and curses? The present was bad enough. The future looked much worse. He did not allow himself to waste any of his energies in grieving for those who had lost through him. He said to himself: "They speculated and lost. They only lost money. I have lost all the money I once had, all the reputation, and now in my old age it is not unlikely I may lose my liberty. I have done the best I could. Had I reduced my establishment, suspicion would have been aroused at once, and the blow would have come much sooner. If I had earlier exposed the position of the bank, ruin would have come then just as now. If after the first loss in Belfast I sanctioned wild, mad speculation, it was in the desperate hope of recovering what had already been sunken. What I did, I did for the best. O'Donnell will, of course, be the heaviest sufferer, but he has had his twelve per cent. for many years. I dare say he will not be able to save a penny out of his whole fortune. Neither shall I out of mine." Just as he came to the end of these self-justification reflections, these comfortable sophisms, Mrs. Vernon entered the room, dressed for going out. "Going out, Jane?" he cried all in astonishment. "Yes," she said. "The house is so dull, I thought I'd take the brougham and call upon the Lawlors." "Take thebrougham," he cried, "and call upon the Lawlors! Don't you know the Lawlors are shareholders in the bank, and that they, too, are ruined?" "But," said Mrs. Vernon, drawing herself up, "the Lawlors were old friends of mine. I knew them before you did. We were children together. They will be glad to see me, although you have been unfortunate in business." "Glad to see you! Woman, they would thrust you out of doors with curses. When people are ruined they do not pay much heed to friendship, nor are they over nice in the way they express their anger. As to the brougham," he said, "I have been stupid not to tell you, but I cannot think of everything. We could never with decency use the brougham, or anything of the sort, again." He threw himself back in his chair and laughed harshly for a few seconds. "I see nothing to laugh at in this disgrace and worry," said his wife, who thought herself the most injured person of all. "I am sure I am very sorry for you, William, when I consider the respectable position, the eminent position you held. I am sure you cannot say I was extravagant, or that I brought up the children extravagantly. You told me yesterday that my five thousand pounds are secured by the marriage settlement. Why should I lose my old friends any more than the money my father gave me when we were married?" "Because," he said, laughing harshly again, "you married what the world will agree to call a fraudulent scoundrel. When I laughed a moment ago at the thought of the brougham, the idea which occurred to me was--it is rather painful. Shall I tell you?" "Yes, you had better tell me, I suppose.Everythingis painful now." "Well," he said, "I thought that the next member of the family likely to drive would be myself, and the next vehicle in which I was likely to drive would be a Black Maria." "Black Maria, William," she said. "I do not understand you." "Black Maria, my dear," he explained, "is slang for a prison van. What is the matter, Jane? You seem weak. Help, outside there, Mrs. Vernon has fainted." The door opened. A footman entered. "If you please, sir, the brougham is at the door." The old man started and looked up, became suddenly pallid. "What did you say, James?" "I said, sir, that the brougham was at the door." "Ha! ha! ha! As I live, James, I thought you said the Black Maria. Fetch Mrs. Vernon's maid instantly. The mistress has fainted."
When, on the night after the failure of Vernon and Son, Lionel Crawford heard from Dora Harrington the name of Dominique Lavirotte, and repeated it after her, he was filled with amazement. "This is the most extraordinary thing," he said, "that ever happened to me in all my life. Dominique Lavirotte," he repeated for the second time. "I am amazed!" "Do you know him?" the girl asked. "Well! Why, he owns the place I am taking you to. It isn't much of a place. It is only the tower of an old church. They are always talking of buying it from him and taking it down. But you see it isn't big enough to give room for building a warehouse or store on the ground it occupies, and it is impossible to take in any other building with it. But come, sweetheart," he said; "when did you eat last?" "I--I had some breakfast." "But breakfast is a long way since. You are young, and must be hungry. Here is the door of the tower." He took out a large key, and having turned the lock, thrust the door into the darkness. "Now," he said, leading her in, "be very careful; there is a hole here. Stand where you are until I find the lantern and matches." He groped about, and in a few seconds had lighted the candle in the lantern. Then he took the young girl by the hand, and said: "This way." By the light of the lantern she could see that they were walking on two planks, which together were not more than eighteen inches wide. Beyond the planks was a hole, the depth of which she could not guess. "Don't be afraid," he said. "Keep close to the wall and you are all right." The girl shuddered. She, who a few minutes ago was on her way to the river, now shrank from the notion of death. Had she not met someone who knew her lover, someone who knew Dominique, her darling Dominique? This was to get a new lease of life, a new interest in worldly things, a fresh-filled cup from the fountain of hope. She clung closely to the wall, and followed the old man through the gloom. They reached a corner, and here found a ladder. "Up this ladder," he said; adding, "What shall I call you? What is your name?" "Dora," she said. "Dora Harrington." "Then, Dora, my dear child," he said, "keep close to the wall on this ladder, too, for there is no hand-rail, as you see." They mounted the ladder. It ran along two sides of the tower. Then they found themselves on the first loft. The head of the ladder was unprotected by any rail. Two other lofts they reached in a similar manner, she clinging closely to the wall. "This is my sitting-room," he said, with a laugh. "It is not very wide or long, but it is lofty, airy, and, although there is not much furniture, and the little I have is the worse of the wear, it will have a great interest for you, for it belongs to him, Mr. Lavirotte. Sit down here, now, on this couch. The spring is not so good as it once was. You will have a cup of tea and some nice bread-and-butter. That little table over there is my kitchen. See," he said, "we do not take long to light the fire, and we shall have boiling water in a few minutes. Boiling water," he said, "and the prospect of a nice cup of tea is better for you, sweetheart, than the cold Thames. The prospect of--of--ugh! Let us forget that unpleasant folly of ours." He had kindled the lamp in a small oil-stove, and set the kettle on the stove. "And now," he said, "while the water is boiling you shall tell me as much as you please about yourself." She was very tired, and for the present the mere rest was food and drink to her. It was pleasant to sit there, half-tranced with fatigue, to sit upon this couch which belonged to him, in the presence of someone who knew him, and with the prospect of succour from a friendly hand. The furniture in the loft was not, indeed, handsome. It never had been. When Lavirotte lived in London he had furnished a couple of rooms, and upon leaving them found that he could get little or nothing for the furniture. So he carted it away to St. Prisca's Tower in Porter Street, and there it was when, at the request of Lionel Crawford, he let the tower to him. In the loft where Dora Harrington now found herself there were three ordinary chairs, one arm-chair, a couch, and two tables, besides the "kitchen." The walls were rough, unplastered brick. The roof of the loft was unceiled. Under the table was a small piece of carpet. "My own room," said the old man, "is above this, and this shall be yours for to-night, and as long as you wish after, until you get a better one, or until he comes for you." "How can I thank you for your kindness? May I ask your name?" "Lionel Crawford," said the old man. "I live in the room above this, because my business requires me to be near the roof by night." "Your business requires you," she said, "to be near the roof by night." By this time he had made the tea, and she had drunk a little, and begun to be refreshed. "Can it be you are an astronomer?" "No, no," he said. "I am no astronomer, and yet all the matters of weather interest me greatly. The rain to-night may be worth a fortune to me." "You are a farmer, perhaps," she said. "Or no, that cannot be; but you own land?" "Not a rood. Although I say I am much interested in the weather, I am neither interested in growing anything, nor in meteorology beyond the winds and the rains. By day I get as far away from the sun as I can, as close to the rich centre of the earth as I may. By night I aspire, I seek the highest point I can reach, and there I worship the clouds and the winds that they may befriend me." The old man was now sitting in the easy-chair, leaning forward, his eyes fixed on vacancy. He had a weird, possessed expression. He seemed to be looking at things far off, and yet clearly within the power of his vision. He seemed like one in a dream, and yet his words were as consequential and coherent as the reasoning in Euclid. His might have been the head of an alchemist, or of some other man who dwelt with unascertained potentialities, with mystic symbols and orders and rites, with things transcending the ken of vulgar flesh, with subtleties of matter known to few, rare drugs, rich spices, the virtues of gems, the portents of earth and air, the mystic language of the stars, the music of the spheres. "And when it is winter," asked the girl, "you wish, I suppose, for sunshine and calms?" "No," he said. "Never. Always for rain and wind; wind and rain. Wind in the daytime, and rain by night, winter and summer; all the year round." "And may I ask you," said the girl, timidly, "what you are?" "When I met you this evening," he said, in the same tone as he had employed since he became abstracted, "I was Giant Despair." "And now," she said, "what are you?" "The rain and you have come," he said. "I am now the humble Disciple of Hope." "And, sir, may I ask, have you no friends, no relatives?" "None that I know of," he said. "All my children are, I think, dead. My wife is dead. My best friends are the dead." "But surely, sir," she said, "there is among the living someone in whom you take an interest?" "No; no one. I am a client of the dead. If any good ever comes to me in life it will be out of the buried past. I doubt if good will ever come. I am too old and spent. I was too old and spent when I began my labours here. For years I had my great secret hidden in my breast. I nursed it, I fed it, I dreamed over it. For years I lived in this neighbourhood hoping some day or other to gain admission to this tower. I could not find out who owned it. It pays no rates or taxes. It is not registered in any name that I could ever find out. I had begun to think I should never get any nearer the goal, when one day as I was without the walls I saw a young man come up, thrust a key into the lock of the great door, and try in vain to move the rusty bolt. I watched him with consuming eagerness----" "This was some time ago?" "Years, two or three years. I drew up to the young man and said: 'I fear, sir, it is a tougher job than you bargained for.' I offered to get him a locksmith, and in less than an hour we got in. The young man told me he had come from abroad----" "What was the young man's name?" asked the girl. "Dominique Lavirotte," said the old man, in the voice of a seer busy with things remote. "My Dominique," she whispered; "my darling Dominique." The old man went on without heeding the interruption. He had forgotten the connection between the girl and the man. "The stranger told me," said old Crawford, "that although he had lived some time in England, he had now been for years abroad. This was all the property he had in the world, and he had never seen it before. He understood it was absolutely valueless, and he had merely come to see it now out of curiosity. 'For,' he said, 'is it not strange that in the City of London, where the rent of land is six shillings a square foot, I should own some for which I cannot get a penny the square yard? I wish I could get someone to buy it,' he said. "'You must not think of selling it,' said I. 'I have been waiting here years in the hope of meeting you.' "'Why?' he cried in astonishment. 'Do you want to buy?' "'No,' I said. 'May I speak to you a while in private?' The locksmith was standing by. Then I took this handsome young man aside, and having made him swear he would not reveal the matter to anyone----" "What?" cried the girl, leaning forward eagerly. "That ismysecret," said the old man.
Foe a while Dora Harrington and Lionel Crawford were silent, he still with the look of an enraptured visionary on his face, she perplexed, wondering, disturbed. What could this secret be which he, the man to whom she was engaged, never told her? One thing appeared plain to her, it was not a secret in which Dominique was directly concerned. It was the old man's secret, communicated by him to her lover. Yet it was not pleasant to think that Dominique, who seemed so candid, so outspoken, so open, should have something which he had concealed from her. The notion of a secret was cold and dire. He had one: he might have many, as he had never even told her that he owned this queer tower, standing all alone in those dark, forbidding ways by the river. Of late Dominique had not written to her as often or as affectionately as of old. True, he was not in good spirits about his worldly prospects. She had told him over and over again, when he asked her, that she would marry him on anything or nothing. Who or what was this old man, that he should be mixed up with Dominique's affairs long ago; that he should have stood between her and the Thames to-night? Was it possible this old man would tell her nothing more? He had excited in her curiosity, vague fears. Would he do nothing to allay either? Thus to be saved from the fate she intended for herself that night, to find in her protector a friend of his, and then to be confronted with a mystery in which Dominique had a part, were, surely, enough things to make this night ever memorable. "Mr. Crawford," said the girl, "I can never forget the service and the kindness you have done me. Will you not do me an additional favour by telling me something of this secret which affects him?" The girl had finished the tea and eaten some bread by this time. "Take off your hat," he said. "Lean back and rest yourself, and I will tell you something more. "Ten years ago I was as lonely a man as I am now. All my family had drifted away from me. Most of them were dead. Some of them had married, I know not whom. My studies always occupied me, and after the death of my wife, whom I tenderly loved, I went deeper than ever into my books. "Most of my children left me when they were young, and went abroad. I had six children in all. From time to time one left me until all were gone, and ten years ago I had no more clue to the whereabouts of any than I have to-day, except that I knew some were in the grave. "I was then better off than I am now; but I have still enough to live on, and to buy a book now and then. My books are all above. All my interest lies in one direction, all my books treat of the same subject--the history of the past, the history of the men and women and places of old times. My interest in the present closed with the death of my wife. But, somehow or other, since the time of which I speak, ten years ago, I think I have grown less exclusively devoted to my favourite pursuit than I was at the time of the dispersion of my family. "I do not often speak to anyone except to those of whom I want to buy; but I cannot help thinking there is a link between you and me, for are you not betrothed to him who owns this tower, and has not this tower for ten years been the chief object of my attention, of my solicitude? Was it not to him I first told the secret which I had carried with me eight years? Is he not now the only person who knows my secret, and when the time comes for divulging that secret to a few, are not you to be the first to hear it? "Well, ten years ago I was, as I have said, as much alone in the world as now. I had always a notion that something was to be discovered in connection with this Porter Street. Here and there in my books there were vague hints, misty statements, that in this street had taken place something of the greatest importance, something which might in the greatest degree excite the interest of an archaeologist. But you see, the street is long, a mile long, I dare say, and to search every inch of a street a mile long would be altogether out of the question. "At that time I was living close by. There were certain old book-shops, between Longacre and the Strand, which I visited almost daily. Here, one evening, I picked up a battered old volume for a few pence. It was dated 1625. It turned out to be of no great interest; but on bringing it home, I was struck by two facts--first, that the book, although battered, was complete; and, second, it contained some memoranda in manuscript, one bearing these startling words: 'A great fire has broken out, and is spreading towards us. There is not a minute to be lost. What can be removed is to be removed to Kensington.What cannot be removed is to be left where it now is.' "This memorandum was dated: 'Daybreak, 3rd September, 1666.' "It was, of course, in the spelling of the period. Underneath this memorandum appeared the words and figures: 'Speght's Chaucer, page 17, lines 17 to 27.' "I have told you already that I had something like a hint of what I wished to find out. I am not free to tell you why the first of these memoranda interested me profoundly, and shone before me like a revelation. I seemed to be on the point of a great discovery, a discovery of the utmost importance to me, a discovery which had fascinated my imagination for years. "I am free to tell you why the second memorandum filled me with despair. It was essential that the book referred to in memorandum number two should be found. The clue in my possession was absolutely of no value without a copy of Chaucer. Before giving way to despair, I had looked over the passage in the reference. I had read over twenty lines above and below without being able to find the slightest hint to a clue. It was evident from this fact that the text of the poet threw no light on the subject, and that the intention of the man who had written the memorandum was that reference should be made, not only to the particular edition specified, but to an individual copy of that edition. "My despair was all the greater because I seemed to be half-way towards success. I could not rest indoors. I wandered forth into the streets without any definite object in view. To the average student of history, the discovery of this volume containing a reference to the Great Fire, written at the very moment it was raging, would have been inestimable; but to one who was in quest of a particular object, and had come within a measurable distance of it, without being able to touch it, this book was a curse. "Before I knew where I was I found myself standing in front of the identical shop where I had bought the volume. I went listlessly over all the other books exposed for sale in front of the window. I saw nothing corresponding to the object of my search. "Then suddenly a thought struck me. The book I had bought was valueless. A copy of this particular edition of Chaucer would fetch money. I went inside, and asked the man if he had any other books belonging to the lot among which the one I had purchased was. "He told me he had several; that he bought the lot in an old, tumble-down house in Wych Street, where the books had lain for ever so long, and that they were reputed to be salvage from the Great Fire. "Imagine my excitement, my delight, when I found a copy of Speght's edition, and upon opening the volume, and referring to the passage indicated, I discovered writing on the margin. This writing was briefer than that in the former volume. It was simply: 'St. Prisca's Tower. See Mentor on Hawking, 1625.' This was the book I had bought a short time previously. The chain was now complete. The area of inquiry was absolutely limited to the ground upon which this tower now stands. In the Great Fire of Charles's reign the church and tower of St. Prisca had been attacked by the flames, and the church had been completely destroyed. The lower portion of the tower, however, was found by Wren to be sufficiently good for the purposes of rebuilding, and so, about ten feet above the ground of these walls belong to the old tower. Later on the modern church was pulled down; but for some reason, I cannot find out, the tower has never been interfered with since. "These books had evidently been carried away from the region of the fire to the fields where Kensington now stands; and then, when the fire was subdued, carried back to Wych Street, where they had remained until the bookseller who sold them to me had bought them about ten years ago." Here the old man finished his narrative, which had been delivered in a monotonous tone. His eyes were fixed, staring intently before him, and he seemed to be wholly oblivious of the fact that Dora was listening to him. He was not, however, unmindful of her presence; for no sooner had he concluded, than he looked at her directly and said: "I have told you all I can; all I may. Dominique Lavirotte and I are the only persons who know the rest, and you know more than anyone else in the world except him and me. You must be tired now. I never told this story before, and, in all likelihood, I never shall again." It was now close to two o'clock in the morning. To the opening words of the old man Dora had given little attention. In fact the events of that night, until she had begun to feel refreshed by the rest and tea, had left a very weak impression on her mind, and she would have found it hard to say whether the occurrences had been real or figments of her brain. As the story advanced, she had felt a more lively interest in it, and towards the end she found that she was listening with awakened curiosity. The old man said: "I will bring you down a rug, and then you must try and get a little sleep. I shall have to work a couple of hours yet in this welcome rain." He brought the rug and spread it over her, and then emerged once more upon the roof.
When Crawford reached the roof it was still dark. The intense darkness of a few hours ago had passed away, and it was possible on the roof to see dimly the figure of the old man, the parapet, and the lead. Towards each of the four corners of the lead the roof sloped gently, and in each corner was a shoot leading to a pipe. In each of the four corners, but so placed as not to obstruct the shoot wholly, and yet to impinge upon it, lay a heap of something. To each of those heaps the old man went in succession, moving the heaps so as to make them impinge a little more upon the gutter. When this was done he put down his spade, resting it against the parapet, and leaned out of one of the embrasures. All was still as death below. The darkest hour is the hour before the dawn; the most silent hour is the hour before the reawakening. It was raining heavily now. The old man did not heed the rain. His eyes were turned vacantly towards the east. He was watching for the dawn, not with eyes busily occupied on the dim outline of the huge stores and warehouses before him. His gaze was directed to the east simply because he knew that in the east the sun would rise, and that as the light grew broad, and the top of the tower was overpeered by lofty buildings on higher ground, he must, soon after daylight, intermit his work on the roof if he would keep his secret. When the gray had moved up in the east, the old man went his rounds once more, spade in hand. The rain still continued. When he had finished, he paused and leaned once more at the embrasure he had formerly occupied. "I always," he thought, "take care to keep the clay heaps about the same size. Rain is very good, no doubt. It works off more than wind, except the wind is very high. The worst of the rain is that when the clay gets soaked through and cakes, I have to take it down to dry the minute the weather gets fine, and bring up more sieved earth, for the wind would have no effect on the hardened clay. At first I thought of putting all I excavated on the lofts; but I found them so old, and weak and shaky, that I durst not trust them beyond a little each. There, I have put all the large stones too big to carry out and leave quietly here and there. There are tons and tons of stones upon the lofts, and I am afraid the floors will bear very little more. It would never do to overload the lofts and have the labour of my two years all undone. The rain has stopped. It will help me no more. Heaven send the wind. Here is the day." It was now bright enough to see that the roof of the tower was covered all over with a coating of thin mud, washed into streaks here and there by the rain. In each corner lay a heap of clay. There were a basket and a large pail also on the roof. The old man now began to work energetically. He filled the pail with the mud, and in four journeys down to the first loft, succeeded in removing all that had been on the roof. Then he carried up four large baskets of finely-sifted clay, and put one basket in each corner near the shoots, so that those who had seen the roof of the tower from afar off the previous day would notice very little, if any, difference, even with the aid of a glass; for the nearest building that overlooked the tower was a mile distant. It was now broad daylight, and as the old man stood, his work completed, all round him rose the muffled murmurs of awaking day. He was wet through, but he did not care for this. He was used to it. The rain and the wind were his great friends, and he hailed their advent with delight. It was plain what his object was. By day he worked in the base of the tower, at which the ground stood now twelve feet higher than at the time of the Great Fire, and twelve feet below this was the foundation of the tower. For two years Lionel Crawford had slaved in the daylight digging down towards the foundation. He had a pickaxe and shovel and sieve. When he had dug up some earth and rubbish, he sifted this on a piece of old carpet and carried the sittings up to the top loft, there to dry and become friable for the purpose of being got rid of on the roof. Everything that would not go through the sieve, he carried out with him, and dropped here and there as occasion offered, and the larger stones, which he never put on the sieve at all, he carried up to the lofts. When he had wind instead of rain he stood on the tower in the dark, and when all was quiet, threw away the sifted earth to leeward, handful by handful. So that although he might thus in a night get rid of several hundred pounds weight of earth, no trace whatever of it appeared below the tower. When he was not helped by rain or wind he could not dispose of more than fifty or sixty pounds weight a night, without drawing attention to his operations. This quantity he got rid of by throwing handful after handful out of the embrasure all round the tower. When he found himself on the loft where he slept he took off his wet clothes, hung them up, and then lay down and slept. It was late in the forenoon when he awoke. He dressed himself and went down to what may be called the sitting-room. Here he found Dora awake. "If it would amuse you, child," he said, "you may light the fire and make the tea. It may be a novelty to you, and it will surely be a novelty to me if you do." Dora arose with alacrity and busied herself about the simple preparations for breakfast. "It is a long time," said he, "since I had anyone--man, woman, or child--at a meal with me. Sometimes I go out and have my dinner or supper or breakfast in the poor eating-houses around here; but that is not often. I have learned to shift for myself as well as Robinson Crusoe did in his time." When the breakfast was ready, Dora said: "I am sure you will forgive me, but the excitement and confusion of last night have made me forget your name. Yet I remember that when you mentioned it, it seemed familiar to me." "Lionel Crawford, my dear; Lionel Crawford is my name." "Crawford," she said, musingly resting her chin upon her hand. "I do not know how I could have forgotten that name, for Crawford was my mother's name before her marriage. It is not a very uncommon name in England, is it?" "Not very," he said. "There are several families of the name in London alone." They were now sitting at breakfast. No contrast could be much stronger than that between the young, soft, gentle, beautiful girl and the leather-hued, gnarled-browed old man. The bright sunlight fell through two long, narrow windows high up in the thick walls of the tower. It tinged the white hand of the young girl lying listlessly on the table. It lit up from behind the rich curve of her cheek. It touched with gleaming, grave bronze the outline of her dark hair. The old man sat at the other side of the small table, looking with abstracted eyes at the partly illumined head of the young girl opposite. "Ay," said the old man, "Crawford is not an uncommon name. There were several of us brothers when I was young. I was the only one that married, and I believe all my children are dead by this time. Their mother was sickly. She was everything to me while she was alive. No, Crawford is not an uncommon name." "We used not to consider it a common name in Canada," the girl said. The sunlight was gradually encroaching upon the mass of dark hair. "Ah," he said, still with the abstracted air, "you were in Canada. One of my daughters when she was young, a child of fourteen or fifteen, went to the United States." "How strange," said Dora, shifting her position, and bringing all her head under the influence of the summer sunlight. "No," he said, "not very strange. A great lot of people from these parts go to the United States, and, as I tell you, Crawford is not an uncommon name." "What I meant," said the girl, with a somewhat puzzled look on her face, "was that it is strange your daughter, whose name was Crawford, should have gone to the United States when young. My mother went to the United States when young. She married there and then moved up to Canada." "And you tell me your name is Harrington, Dora Harrington? My girl's name was Dora, too, and I heard she married a man named Harrington. What was your mother's Christian name?" "Dora was her name," said the girl, rising. "What do you think, sir, of all this?" The girl was now standing, so that from crown to heel the full sunlight shone upon her. "It is extremely strange," said he, still in his absent-minded way, "for I heard that my daughter moved up after her marriage." Suddenly the old man's eyes fixed themselves upon the illuminated figure of the girl. "I had not a good look at you before, child, and my eyes are dim with overmuch study. Yes! As heaven hears me, there is a look of my dead wife about you, child. Did they ever tell you you were like your mother? Do you remember your mother?" "I remember her very little, sir. I was very young when she died. They told me I was not like her." "Ay, ay. That is all in favour of my hopes, my child, for Dora was not like my wife, and you are. Marvellously like! I seem to feel the coil of forty years falling away from me." His eyes once more took the abstracted, faraway look of the lions. "Forty years ago," he said, "I was young and blithe, strong-limbed, and not repulsive as I am now. I wooed my Dora then, not in smoky London, but amid the green fields, and when the primroses were fresh with the early spring weather, and all the air was sweet with moist dews and fresh songs of birds. The leaves were all unsheathed, and each pulse of the wind brought a new perfume of the season. My Dora!" "And you think me like her?" said the girl. "Oh, if it should be, sir!" Suddenly the old man lost his abstracted look. He rose and stretched out his arms towards her, looking keenly at her the while. "You are she," he cried. "You are my Dora, my dead darling's grand-daughter. For her own daughter, whose child you are, was like me, all said." "Oh, sir," cried the girl, "it is too much happiness for me to believe this true." "I want some happiness now, my child," said he, "and no happiness greater than this could come to me, for I am tired of loneliness. Come to me, Dora." The illuminated figure of the girl moved, passed out of the sunlight into the gloom of the room--into the gloom of the old man's arms.