CHAPTER V.

[pg 39]CHAPTER V.Towards four o’clock on the following afternoon Mr Beveridge and Moggridge were walking leisurely down the long drive leading from the mansion of Clankwood to the gate that opened on the humdrum outer world. Finding that an inelastic matter of yards was all the tether he could hope for, Mr Beveridge thought it best to take the bull by the horns, and make a companion of this necessity. So he kept his attendant by his side, and regaled him for some time with a series of improbable reminiscences and tolerable cigars, till at last, round a bend of the avenue, a lady on horseback came into view. As she drew a little nearer he stopped with an air of great surprise and pleasure.“I believe, Moggridge, that must be Lady Alicia à Fyre!”he exclaimed.“It looks huncommon like her, sir,”replied Moggridge.“I must really speak to her. She was”—and Mr Beveridge assumed his inimitable air of manly sentiment—“she was one of my poor mother’s dearest friends. Do you mind, Moggridge, falling behind a little? In fact, if you could step behind a tree and wait here for me, it would be pleasanter for us both. We used to meet under happier circumstances, and, don’t you know, it might distress her to be reminded of my misfortunes.”Such a reasonable request, beseechingly put by so fine a gentleman, could scarcely be refused. Moggridge retired[pg 40]behind the trees that lined the avenue, and Mr Beveridge advanced alone to meet the Lady Alicia. She blushed very becomingly as he raised his hat.“I hardly expected to see you to-day, Mr Beveridge,”she began.“I, on the other hand, have been thinking of nothing else,”he replied.She blushed still deeper, but responded a little reprovingly,“It’s very polite of you to say so, but——”“Not a bit,”said he.“I have a dozen equally well-turned sentences at my disposal, and, they tell me, a most deluding way of saying them.”Suddenly out of her depth again, poor Lady Alicia could only strike out at random.“Who tell you?”she managed to say.“First, so far as my poor memory goes, my mother’s lady’s-maid informed me of the fact; then I think my sister’s governess,”he replied, ticking off his informants on his fingers with a half-abstracted air.“After that came a number of more or less reliable individuals, and lastly the Lady Alicia à Fyre.”“Me? I’m sure I never said——”“None of them eversaid,”he interrupted.“But what have I done, then?”she asked, tightening her reins, and making her horse fidget a foot or two farther away.“You have begun to be a most adorable friend to a most unfortunate man.”Still Lady Alicia looked at him a little dubiously, and only said,“I—I hope I’m not too friendly.”[pg 41]“There are no degrees in friendly,”he replied.“There are only aloofly, friendly, and more than friendly.”“I—I think I ought to be going on, Mr Beveridge.”That experienced diplomatist perceived that it was necessary to further embellish himself.“Are you fond of soldiers?”he asked, abruptly.“I beg your pardon?”she said in considerable bewilderment.“Does a red coat, a medal, and a brass band appeal to you? Are you apt to be interested in her Majesty’s army?”“I generally like soldiers,”she admitted, still much surprised at the turn the conversation had taken.“Then I was a soldier.”“But—really?”“I held a commission in one of the crackest cavalry regiments,”he began dramatically, and yet with a great air of sincerity.“I was considered one of the most promising officers in the mess. It nearly broke my heart to leave the service.”He turned away his head. Lady Alicia was visibly affected.“I am so sorry!”she murmured.Still keeping his face turned away, he held out his hand and she pressed it gently.“Sorrow cannot give me my freedom,”he said.“If there is anything I can do——”she began.“Dismount,”he said, looking up at her tenderly.Lady Alicia never quite knew how it happened, but certainly she found herself standing on the ground, and the next moment Mr Beveridge was in her place.[pg 42]“An old soldier,”he exclaimed, gaily;“I can’t resist the temptation of having a canter.”And with that he started at a gallop towards the gate.With a blasphemous ejaculation Moggridge sprang from behind his tree, and set off down the drive in hot pursuit.Lady Alicia screamed,“Stop! stop! Francis—I mean, Mr Beveridge; stop, please!”But the favorite of the crack regiment, despite the lady’s saddle, sat his steed well, and rapidly left cries and footsteps far behind. The lodge was nearly half a mile away, and as the avenue wound between palisades of old trees, the shouts became muffled, and when he looked over his shoulder he saw in the stretch behind him no sign of benefactress or pursuer. By continued exhortations and the point of his penknife he kept his horse at full stretch; round the next bend he knew he should see the gates.“Five to one on the blank things being shut,”he muttered.He swept round the curve, and there ahead of him he saw the gates grimly closed, and at the lodge door a dismounted groom, standing beside his horse.Only remarking“Damn!”he reined up, turned, and trotted quietly back again. Presently he met Moggridge, red in the face, muddy as to his trousers, and panting hard.“Nice little nag this, Moggridge,”he remarked, airily.“Nice sweat you’ve give me,”rejoined his attendant, wrathfully.[pg 43]“You don’t mean to say you ran after me?”“I does mean to say,”Moggridge replied grimly, seizing the reins.“Want to lead him? Very well—it makes us look quite like the Derby winner coming in.”“Derby loser you means, thanks to them gates bein’ shut.”“Gates shut? Were they? I didn’t happen to notice.”“No, o’ course not,”said Moggridge, sarcastically;“that there sunstroke you got in India prevented you, I suppose?”“Have a cigar?”To this overture Moggridge made no reply. Mr Beveridge laughed and continued lightly,“I had no idea you were so fond of exercise. I’d have given you a lead all round the park if I’d known.”“You’d ’ave given me a lead all round the county if them gates ’ad been open.”“It might have been difficult to stop this fiery animal,”Mr Beveridge admitted.“But now, Moggridge, the run is over. I think I can take Lady Alicia’s horse back to her myself.”Moggridge smiled grimly.“You won’t let go?”“No fears.”Mr Beveridge put his hand behind his back and silently drove the penknife a quarter of an inch into his mount’s hind quarters. In an instant his keeper felt himself being lifted nearly off his feet, and in another actually[pg 44]deposited on his face. Off went the accomplished horseman again at top speed, but this time back to Lady Alicia. He saw her standing by the side of the drive, her handkerchief to her eyes, a penitent and disconsolate little figure. When she heard him coming, she dried her eyes and looked up, but her face was still tearful.“Well, I am back from my ride,”he remarked in a perfectly usual voice, dismounting as he spoke.“The man!”she cried,“where is that dreadful man?”“What man?”he asked in some surprise.“The man who chased you.”Mr Beveridge laughed aloud, at which Lady Alicia took fresh refuge in her handkerchief.“He follows on foot,”he replied.“Did he catch you? Oh, why didn’t you escape altogether?”she sobbed.Mr Beveridge looked at her with growing interest.“I had begun to forget my petticoat psychology,”he reflected (aloud, after his unconventional fashion).“Oh, here he comes,”she shuddered.“All blood! Oh, what have you done to him?”“On my honour, nothing,—I merely haven’t washed his face.”By this time Moggridge was coming close upon them.“You won’t forget a poor soldier?”said Mr Beveridge in a lower voice.There was no reply.“Apoorsoldier,”he added, with a sigh, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.“So poor that even if I had got out, I could only have ridden till I dropped.”[pg 45]“Would you accept——?”she began, timidly.“What day?”he interrupted, hurriedly.“Tuesday,”she hesitated.“Four o’clock, again. Same place as before. When I whistle throw it over at once.”Before they had time to say more, Moggridge, blood- and gravel-stained, came up.“It’s all right, miss,”he said, coming between them;“I’ll see that he plays no more of ’is tricks. There’s nothin’ to be afrightened of.”“Stand back!”she cried;“don’t come near me!”Moggridge was too staggered at this outburst to say a word.“Stand away!”she said, and the bewildered attendant stood away. She turned to Mr Beveridge.“Now, will you help me up?”She mounted lightly, said a brief farewell, and, forgetting all about the call at Clankwood she had ostensibly come to pay, turned her horse’s head towards the lodge.“Well, I’m blowed!”said Moggridge.“They do blow one,”his patient assented.Naturally enough the story of this equestrian adventure soon ran through Clankwood. The exact particulars, however, were a little hard to collect, for while Moggridge supplied many minute and picturesque details, illustrating his own activity and presence of mind and the imminent peril of the Lady Alicia, Mr Beveridge recounted an equally vivid story of a runaway horse recovered by himself to its fair owner’s unbounded gratitude. Official opinion naturally accepted the official[pg 46]account, and for the next few days Mr Beveridge became an object of considerable anxiety and mistrust.“I can’t make the man out,”said Sherlaw to Escott.“I had begun to think there was nothing much the matter with him.”“No more there is,”replied Escott.“His memory seems to me to have suffered from something, and he simply supplies its place in conversation from his imagination, and in action from the inspiration of the moment. The methods of society are too orthodox for such an aberration, and as his friends doubtless pay a handsome fee to keep him here, old Congers labels him mad and locks the door on him.”A day or two afterwards official opinion was a little disturbed. Lady Alicia, in reply to anxious inquiries, gave a third version of the adventure, from which nothing in particular could be gathered except that nothing in particular had happened.“What do you make of this, Escott?”asked Dr Congleton, laying her note before his assistant.“Merely that a woman wrote it.”“Hum! I suppose thatisthe explanation.”Upon which the doctor looked profound and went to lunch.CHAPTER VI.“Two five-pound notes, half-a-sovereign, and seven and sixpence in silver,”said Mr Beveridge to himself.“Ah, and a card.”[pg 47]On the card was written,“From a friend, if you will accept it. A.”He was standing under the wall, in the secluded walk, holding a little lady’s purse in his hand, and listening to two different footsteps. One little pair of feet were hurrying away on the farther side of the high wall, another and larger were approaching him at a run.“Wot’s he bin up to now, I wonder,”Moggridge panted to himself—for the second pair of feet belonged to him.“Shamming nose-bleed and sending me in for an ’andkerchief, and then sneaking off here by ’isself!”“What a time you’ve been,”said Mr Beveridge, slipping the purse with its contents into his pocket.“I was so infernally cold I had to take a little walk. Got the handkerchief?”In silence and with a suspicious solemnity Moggridge handed him the handkerchief, and they turned back for the house.“Now for a balloon,”Mr Beveridge reflected.Certainly it was cold. The frost nipped sharp that night, and next morning there were ice gardens on the windows, and the park lay white all through the winter sunshine.By evening the private lake was reported to be bearing, and the next day it hummed under the first skaters. Hardly necessary to say Mr Beveridge was among the earliest of them, or that he was at once the object of general admiration and envy. He traced“vines”and“Q’s,”and performed wonderful feats on one leg all[pg 48]morning. At lunch he was in the best of spirits, and was off again at once to the ice.When he reached the lake in the afternoon the first person he spied was Lady Alicia, and five minutes afterwards they were sailing off together hand in hand.“I knew you would come to-day,”he remarked.“Howcouldyou have known? It was by the merest chance I happened to come.”“It has always been by the merest chance that any of them have ever come.”“Who have ever come?”she inquired, with a vague feeling that he had said something he ought not to have, and that she was doing the same.“Many things,”he smiled,“including purses. Which reminds me that I am eternally your debtor.”She blushed and said,“I hope you didn’t mind.”“Not much,”he answered, candidly.“In my present circumstances a five-pound note is more acceptable than a caress.”The Lady Alicia again remembered the maidenly proprieties, and tried to change the subject.“What beautiful ice!”she said.“The question now is,”he continued, paying no heed to this diversion,“what am I to do next?”“What do you mean?”she asked a little faintly, realising dimly that she was being regarded as a fellow-conspirator in some unlawful project.“The wall is high, there is bottle-glass on the top, and I shall find it hard to bring away a fresh pair of trousers, and probably draughty if I don’t. The gates are always[pg 49]kept closed, and it isn’t worth any one’s while to open them for £10, 17s. 6d., less the price of a first-class ticket up to town. What are we to do?”“We?”she gasped.“You and I,”he explained.“But—but I can’tpossiblydo anything.”“‘Can’t possibly’is a phrase I have learned to misunderstand.”“Really, Mr Beveridge, I mustn’t do anything.”“Mustn’t is an invariable preface to a sin. Never use it; it’s a temptation in itself.”“It wouldn’t be right,”she said, with quite a show of firmness.He looked at her a little curiously. For a moment he almost seemed puzzled. Then he pressed her hand and asked tenderly,“Why not?”And in a half-audible aside he added,“That’s the correct move, I think.”“What did you say?”she asked.“I said,‘Why not?’”he answered, with increasing tenderness.“But you said something else.”“I added a brief prayer for pity.”Lady Alicia sighed and repeated a little less firmly.“It wouldn’t be right of me, Mr Beveridge.”“But what would be wrong?”This was said with even more fervour.“My conscience—we are very particular, you know.”“Who are‘we’?”“Papa isverystrict High Church.”[pg 50]An idea seemed to strike Mr Beveridge, for he ruminated in silence.“I asked Mr Candles—our curate, you know,”Lady Alicia continued, with a heroic effort to make her position clear.“You told him!”he exclaimed.“Oh, I didn’t say who it was—I mean what it was I thought of doing—I mean the temptation—that is, the possibility. And he said it was very kind of me to think of it; but I mustn’t do anything, and he advised me to read a book he gave me, and—and I mustn’t think of it, really, Mr Beveridge.”To himself Mr Beveridge repeated under his breath,“Archbishops, bishops, deacons, curates, fast in Lent, and an anthem after the Creed. I think I remember enough to pass.”Then he assumed a very serious face, and said aloud,“Your scruples do your heart credit. They have given me an insight into your deep and sweet character, which emboldens me to make a confession.”He stopped skating, folded his arms, and continued unblushingly,“I was educated for the Church, but the prejudices of my parents, the immature scepticism of youth, and some uncertainty about obtaining my archbishopric, induced me in an unfortunate moment, which I never ceased to bitterly regret, to quit my orders.”“You are in orders?”she exclaimed.“I was in several. I cancelled them, and entered the Navy instead.”[pg 51]“The Navy?”she asked, excusably bewildered by these rapid changes of occupation.“For five years I was never ashore.”“But,”she hesitated—“but you said you were in the Army.”Mr Beveridge gave her a look full of benignant compassion that made her, she did not quite know why, feel terribly abashed.“My regiment was quartered at sea,”he condescended to explain.“But in time my conscience awoke. I announced my intention of resuming my charge. My uncle was furious. My enemies were many. I was seized, thrown into this prison-house, and now my only friend fails me.”They were both silent. She ventured once to glance up at his face, and it seemed to her that his eyes were moist—though perhaps it was that her own were a little dim.“Let us skate on,”he said abruptly, with a fine air of resignation.“By the way,”he suddenly added,“I was extremely High Church, in fact almost freezingly high.”For five minutes they skated in silence, then Lady Alicia began softly,“Supposing you—you went away——”“What is the use of talking of it?”he exclaimed, melodramatically.“Let me forget my short-lived hopes!”“Youhavea friend,”she said, slowly.“A friend who tantalises me by‘supposings’!”“But supposing you did, Mr Beveridge, would you go back to your—did you say you had a parish?”[pg 52]“I had: a large, populous, and happy parish. It is my one dream to sit once more on its council and direct my curate.”“Of course that makes a difference. Mr Candles didn’t know all this.”They had come by this time to the corner of a little island that lay not far from the shore; in the channel ahead a board labelled“Danger”marked a hidden spring; behind them the shining ice was almost bare of skaters, for all but Dr Escott seemed to be leaving; on the bank they could see Moggridge prowling about in the gathering dusk, a vigilant reminder of captivity. Mr Beveridge took the whole scene in with, it is to be feared, a militant rather than an episcopal eye. Then he suddenly asked,“Are you alone?”“Yes.”“You drive back?”“Ye—es.”He took out his watch and made a brief calculation.“Go now, call at Clankwood or do anything else you like, and pass down the drive again at a quarter to five.”This sudden pinning of her irresolution almost took Lady Alicia’s breath away.“But I never said——”she began.“My dear friend,”he interrupted,“in the hour of action only a fool ever says. Come on.”And while she still hesitated they were off again.“But——”she tried to expostulate.“My dearest friend,”he whispered,“and my dear old vicarage!”[pg 53]He gave her no time to protest. Her skates were off, she was on her way to her carriage, and he was striking out again for the middle of the lake before she had time to collect her wits.He took out his watch and looked at the time. It was nearly a quarter-past four. Then he came up to Escott, who by this time was the only other soul on the ice.“About time we were going in,”said Escott.“Give me half-an-hour more. I’ll show you how to do that vine you admired.”“All right,”assented the doctor.A minute or two later Mr Beveridge, as if struck by a sudden reflection, exclaimed,“By Jove, there’s that poor devil Moggridge freezing to death on shore. Can’t you manage to look after so dangerous a lunatic yourself? It is his tea-time, too.”“Hallo, so he is,”replied Escott;“I’ll send him up.”And so there were only left the two men on the ice.For a little the lesson went on, and presently, leaving the doctor to practise, Mr Beveridge skated away by himself. He first paused opposite a seat on the bank over which hung Dr Escott’s great fur coat. This spectacle appeared to afford him peculiar pleasure. Then he looked at his watch. It was half-past four. He shut the watch with a click, threw a glance at his pupil, and struck out for the island. If the doctor had been looking, he might have seen him round it in the gloaming.Dr Escott, leaning far on his outside edge, met him as he returned.[pg 54]“What’s that under your coat?”he asked.“A picture I intend to ask your opinion on presently,”replied Mr Beveridge; and he added, with his most charming air,“But now, before we go in, let me give you a ride on one of these chairs, doctor.”They started off, the pace growing faster and faster, and presently Dr Escott saw that they were going behind the island.“Look out for the spring!”he cried.“It must be bearing now,”replied Mr Beveridge, striking out harder than ever;“they have taken away the board.”“All right,”said the doctor,“on you go.”As he spoke he felt a violent push, and the chair, slewing round as it went, flew on its course unguided. Mr Beveridge’s skates rasped on the ice with a spray of white powder as he stopped himself suddenly. Ahead of him there was a rending crack, and Dr Escott and his chair disappeared. Mr Beveridge laughed cheerfully, and taking from under his coat a board with the legend“Danger”printed in large characters across its face, he placed it beside the jagged hole.“Here is the picture, doctor,”he said, as a dripping, gasping head came up for the second time.“I must ask a thousand pardons for this—shall I say, liberty? But, as you know, I’m off my head. Good night. Let me recommend a hot drink when you come out. There are only five feet of water, so you won’t drown.”And with that he skated rapidly away.Escott had a glimpse of him vanishing round the corner[pg 55]of the island, and then the ice broke again, and down he went. Four, five, six times he made a desperate effort to get out, and every time the thin ice tore under his hands, and he slipped back again. By the seventh attempt he had broken his way to the thicker sheet; he got one leg up, slipped, got it up again, and at last, half numbed and wholly breathless, he was crawling circumspectly away. When at last he ventured to rise to his feet, he skated with all the speed he could make to the seat where he had left his coat. A pair of skates lay there instead, but the coat had vanished. Dr Escott’s philosophical estimate of Mr Beveridge became considerably modified.“Thank the Lord, he can’t get out of the grounds,”he said to himself;“what a dangerous devil he is! But he’ll be sorry for this performance, or I’m mistaken.”When he arrived at the house his first inquiries were for his tutor in the art of vine-cutting, and he was rather surprised to hear that he had not yet returned, for he only imagined himself the victim of a peculiarly ill-timed practical joke.Men with lanterns were sent out to search the park; and still there was no sign of Mr Beveridge. Inquiries were made at the lodge, but the gatekeeper could swear that only a single carriage had passed through. Dr Congleton refused at first to believe that he could possibly have got out.“Our arrangements are perfect,—the thing’s absurd,”he said, peremptorily.“That there man, sir,”replied Moggridge, who had[pg 56]been summoned,“is the slipperiest customer as ever I seed. ’E’s hout, sir, I believe.”“We might at least try the stations,”suggested Escott, who had by this time changed, and indulged in the hot drink recommended.The doctor began to be a little shaken.“Well, well,”said he,“I’ll send a man to each of the three stations within walking distance; and whether he’s out or in, we’ll have him by to-morrow morning. I’ve always taken care that he had no money in his pockets.”But what is a doctor’s care against a woman’s heart? For many to-morrows Clankwood had to lament the loss of the gifted Francis Beveridge.CHAPTER VII.At sixteen minutes to five Mr Beveridge stood by the side of the Clankwood Avenue, comfortably wrapped in Dr Escort’s fur coat, and smoking with the greatest relish one of Dr Escott’s undeniable cigars.It was almost dark, the air bit keen, the dim park with its population of black trees was filled with a frosty, eager stillness. All round the invisible wall hemmed him in, the ten pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence lay useless in his pocket till that was past, and his one hope depended on a woman. But Mr Beveridge was an amateur in the sex, and he smiled complacently as he smoked.He had waited barely three minutes when the quick[pg 57]clatter of a pair of horses fell on his ears, and presently the lights of a carriage and pair, driving swiftly away from Clankwood, raked the drive on either side. As they rattled up to him he gave a shout to the coachman to stop, and stepped right in front of the horses. With something that sounded unlike a blessing, the pair were thrown almost on their haunches to check them in time. Never stopping to explain, he threw open the door and sprang in; the coachman, hearing no sound of protest, whipped up again, and Mr Beveridge found himself rolling through the park of Clankwood in the Countess of Grillyer’s carriage with a very timid little figure by his side. Even in that moment of triumphant excitement the excellence of his manners was remarkable: the first thing he said was,“Do you mind smoking?”In her confusion of mind Lady Alicia could only reply“Oh no,”and not till some time afterwards did she remember that the odour of a cigar was clinging and the Countess’s nose unusually sensitive.After this first remark he leaned back in silence, gradually filling the carriage with a blue-grey cloud, and looking out of the windows first on one side and then on the other. They passed quickly through the lines of trees and the open spaces of frosty park-land, they drew up at the lodge for a moment, he heard his prison gates swing open, the harness jingled and the hoofs began to clatter again, a swift vision of lighted windows and a man looking on them incuriously swept by, and then they were rolling over a country road between hedgerows and under the free stars.[pg 58]It was the Lady Alicia who spoke first.“I never thought you would really come,”she said.“I have been waiting for that remark,”he replied, with his most irresistible smile;“now for some more practical conversation.”As he did not immediately begin this conversation himself, her curiosity overcame her, and she asked,“How did you manage to get out?”“As my friend Dr Escott offered no opposition, I walked away.”“Did he really let you?”“He never even expostulated.”“Then—then it’s all right?”she said, with an inexplicable sensation of disappointment.“Perfectly—so far.”“But—didn’t they object?”“Not yet,”he replied;“objections to my movements are generally made after they have been performed.”Somehow she felt immensely relieved at this hint of opposition.“I’m so glad you got away,”she whispered, and then repented in a flutter.“Not more so than I am,”he answered, pressing her hand.“And now,”he added,“I should like to know how near Ashditch Junction you propose to take me.”“Where are you going to, Mr Beveridge?”The“Mr Beveridge”was thrown in as a corrective to the hand-pressure.“To London; where else, my Alicia? With £10,[pg 59]17s. 6d. in my pocket, I shall be able to eat at least three good dinners, and, by the third of them, if I haven’t fallen on my feet it will be the first time I have descended so unluckily.”“But,”she asked, considerably disconcerted,“I thought you were going back to your parish.”For a moment he too seemed a trifle put about. Then he replied readily,“So I am, as soon as I have purchased the necessary outfit, restocked my ecclesiastical library, and called on my bishop.”She felt greatly relieved at this justification of her share in the adventure.“Drop me at the nearest point to the station,”he said.“I am afraid,”she began—“I mean I think you had better get out soon. The first road on the right will take you straight there, and we had better not pass it.”“Then I must bid you farewell,”and he sighed most effectively.“Farewell, my benefactress, my dear Alicia! Shall I ever see you, shall I ever hear of you again?”“I might—I might just write once; if you will answer it: I mean if you would care to hear from such a——”She found it difficult to finish, and prudently stopped.“Thanks,”he replied cheerfully;“do,—I shall live in hopes. I’d better stop the carriage now.”He let down the window, when she said hastily,“But I don’t know your address.”He reflected for an instant.“Care of the Archbishop of York will always find me,”he replied; and as if unwilling to let his emotion be observed, he immediately[pg 60]put his head out of the window and called on the coachman to stop.“Good-bye,”he whispered, tenderly, squeezing her fingers with one hand and opening the door with the other.“Don’t quite forget me,”she whispered back.“Never!”he replied, and was in the act of getting out when he suddenly turned, and exclaimed,“I must be more out of practice than I thought; I had almost forgotten the protested salute.”And without further preamble the Lady Alicia found herself kissed at last.He jumped out and shut the door, and the carriage with its faint halo clattered into the darkness.“They are wonderfully alike,”he reflected.About twenty minutes later he walked leisurely into Ashditch Junction, and having singled out the station-master, he accosted him with an air of beneficient consideration and inquired how soon he could catch a train for London.It appeared that the up express was not due for nearly three-quarters of an hour.“A little too long to wait,”he said to himself, as he turned up the collar of his purloined fur coat to keep out the cold, and picked another cigar from its rightful owner’s case.By way of further defying the temperature and cementing his acquaintance with the station-master, he offered to regale that gratified official with such refreshments as the station bar provided. In the consumption of whiskies-and-sodas[pg 61](a beverage difficult to obtain in any quantity at Clankwood) Mr Beveridge showed himself as accomplished as in every other feat. In thirty-five minutes he had despatched no fewer than six, besides completely winning the station-master’s heart. As he had little more than five minutes now to wait, he bade a genial farewell to the lady behind the bar, and started to purchase his ticket.Hardly had he left the door of the refreshment-room when he perceived an uncomfortably familiar figure just arrived, breathless with running, on the opposite platform. The light of a lamp fell on his shining face: it was Moggridge!A stout heart might be forgiven for sinking at the sight, but Mr Beveridge merely turned to his now firm friends and said with his easiest air,“On the opposite platform I perceive one of my runaway lunatics. Bring a couple of stout porters as quickly as you can, for he is a person of much strength and address. My name,”he drew a card-case from the pocket of his fur coat,“is, as you see, Dr Escott of Clankwood.”Meanwhile Moggridge, after hurriedly investigating the platform he was on, suddenly spied a tall fur-coated figure on the opposite side. Without a moment’s hesitation he sprang on to the rails, and had just mounted the other side as the station-master and two porters appeared.Seeing his allies by his side Mr Beveridge never said a word, but, throwing off his hat, he lowered his head, charged his keeper, and picking him up by the knees[pg 62]threw him heavily on his back. Before he had a chance of recovering himself the other three were seated on his chest employed in winding a coil of rope round and round his prostrate form.Two minutes later Moggridge was sitting bound hand and foot in the booking office, addressing an amused audience in a strain of perhaps excusable exasperation, which however merely served to impress the Ashditch officials with a growing sense of their address in capturing so dangerous a lunatic. In the middle of this entertaining scene the London express steamed in, and Mr Beveridge, courteously thanking the station-master for his assistance, stepped into a first-class carriage.“I should be much obliged,”he said, leaning on the door of his compartment and blowing the smoke of Dr Escott’s last Havannah lightly from his lips,“if you would be kind enough to keep that poor fellow in the station till to-morrow. It is rather too late to send him back now. Good night, and many thanks.”He pressed a coin into the station-master’s hand, which thatdisappointedofficial only discovered on emptying his pockets at night to be an ordinary sixpence, the guard whistled, and one by one, smoothly and slowly and then in a bright stream, the station lamps slipped by. The last of them flitted into the night, and the train swung and rattled by a mile a minute nearer to London town and farther from the high stone wall. There was no other stop, and for a long hour the adventurer sat with his legs luxuriously stretched along the cushions looking out into a fainter duplicate of his carriage,[pg 63]pierced now and then by the glitter of brighter points as they whisked by some wayside village, or crossed by the black shadows of trees. The whole time he smiled contentedly, doubtless at the prospect of his parish work. All at once he seemed stirred, and, turning in his seat, laid his face upon the window, and pulled down the blind behind his head, so that he could see into the night. He had spied the first bright filaments of London. Quickly they spread into a twinkling network, and then as quickly were shut out by the first line of suburb houses; through the gaps they grew nearer and flared cheerfully; the train hooted over an archway, and in the road below he had a glimpse of shop windows and crowded pavements and moving omnibuses: he was in the world again, and at the foretaste of all this life he laughed like a delighted child. Last of all came the spread of shining rails and the red and yellow lights of many signals, and then the high glass roof and long lamp-lit platforms of St Euston’s Cross.Unencumbered by luggage or plans, Mr Francis Beveridge stuck his hands deep in his pockets and strolled aimlessly enough out of the station into the tideway of the Euston Road. For a little he stood stock-still on the pavement watching the throng of people and the perpetual buses and drays and the jingling hansoms picking their way through it all.“For a man of brains,”he moralised,“even though he be certified as insane, for probably the best of reasons, this London has surely fools enough to provide him with all he needs and more than he deserves. I shall set out[pg 64]with my lantern like a second Diogenes to look for a foolish man.”And so he strolled along again to the first opening southwards. That led him through a region of dingy enough brick by day, but decked now with its string of lamps and bright shop-windows here and there, and kept alive by passing buses and cabs going and coming from the station. Farther on the street grew gloomier, and a dark square with a grove of trees in the middle opened off one side; but, rattle or quiet, flaring shops or sad-looking lodgings, he found it all too fresh and amusing to hurry.“Back to my parish again,”he said to himself, smiling broadly at the drollery of the idea.“If I’m caught to-morrow, I’ll at least have one merry night in my wicked, humorous old charge.”He reached Holborn and turned west in the happiest and most enviable of moods; the very policemen seemed to cast a friendly eye on him; the frosty air, he thought, made the lights burn brighter and the crowd move more briskly than ever he had seen them. Suddenly the sight of a hairdresser’s saloon brought an inspiration. He stroked his beard, twisted his moustaches half regretfully, and then exclaiming,“Exit Mr Beveridge,”turned into the shop.

[pg 39]CHAPTER V.Towards four o’clock on the following afternoon Mr Beveridge and Moggridge were walking leisurely down the long drive leading from the mansion of Clankwood to the gate that opened on the humdrum outer world. Finding that an inelastic matter of yards was all the tether he could hope for, Mr Beveridge thought it best to take the bull by the horns, and make a companion of this necessity. So he kept his attendant by his side, and regaled him for some time with a series of improbable reminiscences and tolerable cigars, till at last, round a bend of the avenue, a lady on horseback came into view. As she drew a little nearer he stopped with an air of great surprise and pleasure.“I believe, Moggridge, that must be Lady Alicia à Fyre!”he exclaimed.“It looks huncommon like her, sir,”replied Moggridge.“I must really speak to her. She was”—and Mr Beveridge assumed his inimitable air of manly sentiment—“she was one of my poor mother’s dearest friends. Do you mind, Moggridge, falling behind a little? In fact, if you could step behind a tree and wait here for me, it would be pleasanter for us both. We used to meet under happier circumstances, and, don’t you know, it might distress her to be reminded of my misfortunes.”Such a reasonable request, beseechingly put by so fine a gentleman, could scarcely be refused. Moggridge retired[pg 40]behind the trees that lined the avenue, and Mr Beveridge advanced alone to meet the Lady Alicia. She blushed very becomingly as he raised his hat.“I hardly expected to see you to-day, Mr Beveridge,”she began.“I, on the other hand, have been thinking of nothing else,”he replied.She blushed still deeper, but responded a little reprovingly,“It’s very polite of you to say so, but——”“Not a bit,”said he.“I have a dozen equally well-turned sentences at my disposal, and, they tell me, a most deluding way of saying them.”Suddenly out of her depth again, poor Lady Alicia could only strike out at random.“Who tell you?”she managed to say.“First, so far as my poor memory goes, my mother’s lady’s-maid informed me of the fact; then I think my sister’s governess,”he replied, ticking off his informants on his fingers with a half-abstracted air.“After that came a number of more or less reliable individuals, and lastly the Lady Alicia à Fyre.”“Me? I’m sure I never said——”“None of them eversaid,”he interrupted.“But what have I done, then?”she asked, tightening her reins, and making her horse fidget a foot or two farther away.“You have begun to be a most adorable friend to a most unfortunate man.”Still Lady Alicia looked at him a little dubiously, and only said,“I—I hope I’m not too friendly.”[pg 41]“There are no degrees in friendly,”he replied.“There are only aloofly, friendly, and more than friendly.”“I—I think I ought to be going on, Mr Beveridge.”That experienced diplomatist perceived that it was necessary to further embellish himself.“Are you fond of soldiers?”he asked, abruptly.“I beg your pardon?”she said in considerable bewilderment.“Does a red coat, a medal, and a brass band appeal to you? Are you apt to be interested in her Majesty’s army?”“I generally like soldiers,”she admitted, still much surprised at the turn the conversation had taken.“Then I was a soldier.”“But—really?”“I held a commission in one of the crackest cavalry regiments,”he began dramatically, and yet with a great air of sincerity.“I was considered one of the most promising officers in the mess. It nearly broke my heart to leave the service.”He turned away his head. Lady Alicia was visibly affected.“I am so sorry!”she murmured.Still keeping his face turned away, he held out his hand and she pressed it gently.“Sorrow cannot give me my freedom,”he said.“If there is anything I can do——”she began.“Dismount,”he said, looking up at her tenderly.Lady Alicia never quite knew how it happened, but certainly she found herself standing on the ground, and the next moment Mr Beveridge was in her place.[pg 42]“An old soldier,”he exclaimed, gaily;“I can’t resist the temptation of having a canter.”And with that he started at a gallop towards the gate.With a blasphemous ejaculation Moggridge sprang from behind his tree, and set off down the drive in hot pursuit.Lady Alicia screamed,“Stop! stop! Francis—I mean, Mr Beveridge; stop, please!”But the favorite of the crack regiment, despite the lady’s saddle, sat his steed well, and rapidly left cries and footsteps far behind. The lodge was nearly half a mile away, and as the avenue wound between palisades of old trees, the shouts became muffled, and when he looked over his shoulder he saw in the stretch behind him no sign of benefactress or pursuer. By continued exhortations and the point of his penknife he kept his horse at full stretch; round the next bend he knew he should see the gates.“Five to one on the blank things being shut,”he muttered.He swept round the curve, and there ahead of him he saw the gates grimly closed, and at the lodge door a dismounted groom, standing beside his horse.Only remarking“Damn!”he reined up, turned, and trotted quietly back again. Presently he met Moggridge, red in the face, muddy as to his trousers, and panting hard.“Nice little nag this, Moggridge,”he remarked, airily.“Nice sweat you’ve give me,”rejoined his attendant, wrathfully.[pg 43]“You don’t mean to say you ran after me?”“I does mean to say,”Moggridge replied grimly, seizing the reins.“Want to lead him? Very well—it makes us look quite like the Derby winner coming in.”“Derby loser you means, thanks to them gates bein’ shut.”“Gates shut? Were they? I didn’t happen to notice.”“No, o’ course not,”said Moggridge, sarcastically;“that there sunstroke you got in India prevented you, I suppose?”“Have a cigar?”To this overture Moggridge made no reply. Mr Beveridge laughed and continued lightly,“I had no idea you were so fond of exercise. I’d have given you a lead all round the park if I’d known.”“You’d ’ave given me a lead all round the county if them gates ’ad been open.”“It might have been difficult to stop this fiery animal,”Mr Beveridge admitted.“But now, Moggridge, the run is over. I think I can take Lady Alicia’s horse back to her myself.”Moggridge smiled grimly.“You won’t let go?”“No fears.”Mr Beveridge put his hand behind his back and silently drove the penknife a quarter of an inch into his mount’s hind quarters. In an instant his keeper felt himself being lifted nearly off his feet, and in another actually[pg 44]deposited on his face. Off went the accomplished horseman again at top speed, but this time back to Lady Alicia. He saw her standing by the side of the drive, her handkerchief to her eyes, a penitent and disconsolate little figure. When she heard him coming, she dried her eyes and looked up, but her face was still tearful.“Well, I am back from my ride,”he remarked in a perfectly usual voice, dismounting as he spoke.“The man!”she cried,“where is that dreadful man?”“What man?”he asked in some surprise.“The man who chased you.”Mr Beveridge laughed aloud, at which Lady Alicia took fresh refuge in her handkerchief.“He follows on foot,”he replied.“Did he catch you? Oh, why didn’t you escape altogether?”she sobbed.Mr Beveridge looked at her with growing interest.“I had begun to forget my petticoat psychology,”he reflected (aloud, after his unconventional fashion).“Oh, here he comes,”she shuddered.“All blood! Oh, what have you done to him?”“On my honour, nothing,—I merely haven’t washed his face.”By this time Moggridge was coming close upon them.“You won’t forget a poor soldier?”said Mr Beveridge in a lower voice.There was no reply.“Apoorsoldier,”he added, with a sigh, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.“So poor that even if I had got out, I could only have ridden till I dropped.”[pg 45]“Would you accept——?”she began, timidly.“What day?”he interrupted, hurriedly.“Tuesday,”she hesitated.“Four o’clock, again. Same place as before. When I whistle throw it over at once.”Before they had time to say more, Moggridge, blood- and gravel-stained, came up.“It’s all right, miss,”he said, coming between them;“I’ll see that he plays no more of ’is tricks. There’s nothin’ to be afrightened of.”“Stand back!”she cried;“don’t come near me!”Moggridge was too staggered at this outburst to say a word.“Stand away!”she said, and the bewildered attendant stood away. She turned to Mr Beveridge.“Now, will you help me up?”She mounted lightly, said a brief farewell, and, forgetting all about the call at Clankwood she had ostensibly come to pay, turned her horse’s head towards the lodge.“Well, I’m blowed!”said Moggridge.“They do blow one,”his patient assented.Naturally enough the story of this equestrian adventure soon ran through Clankwood. The exact particulars, however, were a little hard to collect, for while Moggridge supplied many minute and picturesque details, illustrating his own activity and presence of mind and the imminent peril of the Lady Alicia, Mr Beveridge recounted an equally vivid story of a runaway horse recovered by himself to its fair owner’s unbounded gratitude. Official opinion naturally accepted the official[pg 46]account, and for the next few days Mr Beveridge became an object of considerable anxiety and mistrust.“I can’t make the man out,”said Sherlaw to Escott.“I had begun to think there was nothing much the matter with him.”“No more there is,”replied Escott.“His memory seems to me to have suffered from something, and he simply supplies its place in conversation from his imagination, and in action from the inspiration of the moment. The methods of society are too orthodox for such an aberration, and as his friends doubtless pay a handsome fee to keep him here, old Congers labels him mad and locks the door on him.”A day or two afterwards official opinion was a little disturbed. Lady Alicia, in reply to anxious inquiries, gave a third version of the adventure, from which nothing in particular could be gathered except that nothing in particular had happened.“What do you make of this, Escott?”asked Dr Congleton, laying her note before his assistant.“Merely that a woman wrote it.”“Hum! I suppose thatisthe explanation.”Upon which the doctor looked profound and went to lunch.CHAPTER VI.“Two five-pound notes, half-a-sovereign, and seven and sixpence in silver,”said Mr Beveridge to himself.“Ah, and a card.”[pg 47]On the card was written,“From a friend, if you will accept it. A.”He was standing under the wall, in the secluded walk, holding a little lady’s purse in his hand, and listening to two different footsteps. One little pair of feet were hurrying away on the farther side of the high wall, another and larger were approaching him at a run.“Wot’s he bin up to now, I wonder,”Moggridge panted to himself—for the second pair of feet belonged to him.“Shamming nose-bleed and sending me in for an ’andkerchief, and then sneaking off here by ’isself!”“What a time you’ve been,”said Mr Beveridge, slipping the purse with its contents into his pocket.“I was so infernally cold I had to take a little walk. Got the handkerchief?”In silence and with a suspicious solemnity Moggridge handed him the handkerchief, and they turned back for the house.“Now for a balloon,”Mr Beveridge reflected.Certainly it was cold. The frost nipped sharp that night, and next morning there were ice gardens on the windows, and the park lay white all through the winter sunshine.By evening the private lake was reported to be bearing, and the next day it hummed under the first skaters. Hardly necessary to say Mr Beveridge was among the earliest of them, or that he was at once the object of general admiration and envy. He traced“vines”and“Q’s,”and performed wonderful feats on one leg all[pg 48]morning. At lunch he was in the best of spirits, and was off again at once to the ice.When he reached the lake in the afternoon the first person he spied was Lady Alicia, and five minutes afterwards they were sailing off together hand in hand.“I knew you would come to-day,”he remarked.“Howcouldyou have known? It was by the merest chance I happened to come.”“It has always been by the merest chance that any of them have ever come.”“Who have ever come?”she inquired, with a vague feeling that he had said something he ought not to have, and that she was doing the same.“Many things,”he smiled,“including purses. Which reminds me that I am eternally your debtor.”She blushed and said,“I hope you didn’t mind.”“Not much,”he answered, candidly.“In my present circumstances a five-pound note is more acceptable than a caress.”The Lady Alicia again remembered the maidenly proprieties, and tried to change the subject.“What beautiful ice!”she said.“The question now is,”he continued, paying no heed to this diversion,“what am I to do next?”“What do you mean?”she asked a little faintly, realising dimly that she was being regarded as a fellow-conspirator in some unlawful project.“The wall is high, there is bottle-glass on the top, and I shall find it hard to bring away a fresh pair of trousers, and probably draughty if I don’t. The gates are always[pg 49]kept closed, and it isn’t worth any one’s while to open them for £10, 17s. 6d., less the price of a first-class ticket up to town. What are we to do?”“We?”she gasped.“You and I,”he explained.“But—but I can’tpossiblydo anything.”“‘Can’t possibly’is a phrase I have learned to misunderstand.”“Really, Mr Beveridge, I mustn’t do anything.”“Mustn’t is an invariable preface to a sin. Never use it; it’s a temptation in itself.”“It wouldn’t be right,”she said, with quite a show of firmness.He looked at her a little curiously. For a moment he almost seemed puzzled. Then he pressed her hand and asked tenderly,“Why not?”And in a half-audible aside he added,“That’s the correct move, I think.”“What did you say?”she asked.“I said,‘Why not?’”he answered, with increasing tenderness.“But you said something else.”“I added a brief prayer for pity.”Lady Alicia sighed and repeated a little less firmly.“It wouldn’t be right of me, Mr Beveridge.”“But what would be wrong?”This was said with even more fervour.“My conscience—we are very particular, you know.”“Who are‘we’?”“Papa isverystrict High Church.”[pg 50]An idea seemed to strike Mr Beveridge, for he ruminated in silence.“I asked Mr Candles—our curate, you know,”Lady Alicia continued, with a heroic effort to make her position clear.“You told him!”he exclaimed.“Oh, I didn’t say who it was—I mean what it was I thought of doing—I mean the temptation—that is, the possibility. And he said it was very kind of me to think of it; but I mustn’t do anything, and he advised me to read a book he gave me, and—and I mustn’t think of it, really, Mr Beveridge.”To himself Mr Beveridge repeated under his breath,“Archbishops, bishops, deacons, curates, fast in Lent, and an anthem after the Creed. I think I remember enough to pass.”Then he assumed a very serious face, and said aloud,“Your scruples do your heart credit. They have given me an insight into your deep and sweet character, which emboldens me to make a confession.”He stopped skating, folded his arms, and continued unblushingly,“I was educated for the Church, but the prejudices of my parents, the immature scepticism of youth, and some uncertainty about obtaining my archbishopric, induced me in an unfortunate moment, which I never ceased to bitterly regret, to quit my orders.”“You are in orders?”she exclaimed.“I was in several. I cancelled them, and entered the Navy instead.”[pg 51]“The Navy?”she asked, excusably bewildered by these rapid changes of occupation.“For five years I was never ashore.”“But,”she hesitated—“but you said you were in the Army.”Mr Beveridge gave her a look full of benignant compassion that made her, she did not quite know why, feel terribly abashed.“My regiment was quartered at sea,”he condescended to explain.“But in time my conscience awoke. I announced my intention of resuming my charge. My uncle was furious. My enemies were many. I was seized, thrown into this prison-house, and now my only friend fails me.”They were both silent. She ventured once to glance up at his face, and it seemed to her that his eyes were moist—though perhaps it was that her own were a little dim.“Let us skate on,”he said abruptly, with a fine air of resignation.“By the way,”he suddenly added,“I was extremely High Church, in fact almost freezingly high.”For five minutes they skated in silence, then Lady Alicia began softly,“Supposing you—you went away——”“What is the use of talking of it?”he exclaimed, melodramatically.“Let me forget my short-lived hopes!”“Youhavea friend,”she said, slowly.“A friend who tantalises me by‘supposings’!”“But supposing you did, Mr Beveridge, would you go back to your—did you say you had a parish?”[pg 52]“I had: a large, populous, and happy parish. It is my one dream to sit once more on its council and direct my curate.”“Of course that makes a difference. Mr Candles didn’t know all this.”They had come by this time to the corner of a little island that lay not far from the shore; in the channel ahead a board labelled“Danger”marked a hidden spring; behind them the shining ice was almost bare of skaters, for all but Dr Escott seemed to be leaving; on the bank they could see Moggridge prowling about in the gathering dusk, a vigilant reminder of captivity. Mr Beveridge took the whole scene in with, it is to be feared, a militant rather than an episcopal eye. Then he suddenly asked,“Are you alone?”“Yes.”“You drive back?”“Ye—es.”He took out his watch and made a brief calculation.“Go now, call at Clankwood or do anything else you like, and pass down the drive again at a quarter to five.”This sudden pinning of her irresolution almost took Lady Alicia’s breath away.“But I never said——”she began.“My dear friend,”he interrupted,“in the hour of action only a fool ever says. Come on.”And while she still hesitated they were off again.“But——”she tried to expostulate.“My dearest friend,”he whispered,“and my dear old vicarage!”[pg 53]He gave her no time to protest. Her skates were off, she was on her way to her carriage, and he was striking out again for the middle of the lake before she had time to collect her wits.He took out his watch and looked at the time. It was nearly a quarter-past four. Then he came up to Escott, who by this time was the only other soul on the ice.“About time we were going in,”said Escott.“Give me half-an-hour more. I’ll show you how to do that vine you admired.”“All right,”assented the doctor.A minute or two later Mr Beveridge, as if struck by a sudden reflection, exclaimed,“By Jove, there’s that poor devil Moggridge freezing to death on shore. Can’t you manage to look after so dangerous a lunatic yourself? It is his tea-time, too.”“Hallo, so he is,”replied Escott;“I’ll send him up.”And so there were only left the two men on the ice.For a little the lesson went on, and presently, leaving the doctor to practise, Mr Beveridge skated away by himself. He first paused opposite a seat on the bank over which hung Dr Escott’s great fur coat. This spectacle appeared to afford him peculiar pleasure. Then he looked at his watch. It was half-past four. He shut the watch with a click, threw a glance at his pupil, and struck out for the island. If the doctor had been looking, he might have seen him round it in the gloaming.Dr Escott, leaning far on his outside edge, met him as he returned.[pg 54]“What’s that under your coat?”he asked.“A picture I intend to ask your opinion on presently,”replied Mr Beveridge; and he added, with his most charming air,“But now, before we go in, let me give you a ride on one of these chairs, doctor.”They started off, the pace growing faster and faster, and presently Dr Escott saw that they were going behind the island.“Look out for the spring!”he cried.“It must be bearing now,”replied Mr Beveridge, striking out harder than ever;“they have taken away the board.”“All right,”said the doctor,“on you go.”As he spoke he felt a violent push, and the chair, slewing round as it went, flew on its course unguided. Mr Beveridge’s skates rasped on the ice with a spray of white powder as he stopped himself suddenly. Ahead of him there was a rending crack, and Dr Escott and his chair disappeared. Mr Beveridge laughed cheerfully, and taking from under his coat a board with the legend“Danger”printed in large characters across its face, he placed it beside the jagged hole.“Here is the picture, doctor,”he said, as a dripping, gasping head came up for the second time.“I must ask a thousand pardons for this—shall I say, liberty? But, as you know, I’m off my head. Good night. Let me recommend a hot drink when you come out. There are only five feet of water, so you won’t drown.”And with that he skated rapidly away.Escott had a glimpse of him vanishing round the corner[pg 55]of the island, and then the ice broke again, and down he went. Four, five, six times he made a desperate effort to get out, and every time the thin ice tore under his hands, and he slipped back again. By the seventh attempt he had broken his way to the thicker sheet; he got one leg up, slipped, got it up again, and at last, half numbed and wholly breathless, he was crawling circumspectly away. When at last he ventured to rise to his feet, he skated with all the speed he could make to the seat where he had left his coat. A pair of skates lay there instead, but the coat had vanished. Dr Escott’s philosophical estimate of Mr Beveridge became considerably modified.“Thank the Lord, he can’t get out of the grounds,”he said to himself;“what a dangerous devil he is! But he’ll be sorry for this performance, or I’m mistaken.”When he arrived at the house his first inquiries were for his tutor in the art of vine-cutting, and he was rather surprised to hear that he had not yet returned, for he only imagined himself the victim of a peculiarly ill-timed practical joke.Men with lanterns were sent out to search the park; and still there was no sign of Mr Beveridge. Inquiries were made at the lodge, but the gatekeeper could swear that only a single carriage had passed through. Dr Congleton refused at first to believe that he could possibly have got out.“Our arrangements are perfect,—the thing’s absurd,”he said, peremptorily.“That there man, sir,”replied Moggridge, who had[pg 56]been summoned,“is the slipperiest customer as ever I seed. ’E’s hout, sir, I believe.”“We might at least try the stations,”suggested Escott, who had by this time changed, and indulged in the hot drink recommended.The doctor began to be a little shaken.“Well, well,”said he,“I’ll send a man to each of the three stations within walking distance; and whether he’s out or in, we’ll have him by to-morrow morning. I’ve always taken care that he had no money in his pockets.”But what is a doctor’s care against a woman’s heart? For many to-morrows Clankwood had to lament the loss of the gifted Francis Beveridge.CHAPTER VII.At sixteen minutes to five Mr Beveridge stood by the side of the Clankwood Avenue, comfortably wrapped in Dr Escort’s fur coat, and smoking with the greatest relish one of Dr Escott’s undeniable cigars.It was almost dark, the air bit keen, the dim park with its population of black trees was filled with a frosty, eager stillness. All round the invisible wall hemmed him in, the ten pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence lay useless in his pocket till that was past, and his one hope depended on a woman. But Mr Beveridge was an amateur in the sex, and he smiled complacently as he smoked.He had waited barely three minutes when the quick[pg 57]clatter of a pair of horses fell on his ears, and presently the lights of a carriage and pair, driving swiftly away from Clankwood, raked the drive on either side. As they rattled up to him he gave a shout to the coachman to stop, and stepped right in front of the horses. With something that sounded unlike a blessing, the pair were thrown almost on their haunches to check them in time. Never stopping to explain, he threw open the door and sprang in; the coachman, hearing no sound of protest, whipped up again, and Mr Beveridge found himself rolling through the park of Clankwood in the Countess of Grillyer’s carriage with a very timid little figure by his side. Even in that moment of triumphant excitement the excellence of his manners was remarkable: the first thing he said was,“Do you mind smoking?”In her confusion of mind Lady Alicia could only reply“Oh no,”and not till some time afterwards did she remember that the odour of a cigar was clinging and the Countess’s nose unusually sensitive.After this first remark he leaned back in silence, gradually filling the carriage with a blue-grey cloud, and looking out of the windows first on one side and then on the other. They passed quickly through the lines of trees and the open spaces of frosty park-land, they drew up at the lodge for a moment, he heard his prison gates swing open, the harness jingled and the hoofs began to clatter again, a swift vision of lighted windows and a man looking on them incuriously swept by, and then they were rolling over a country road between hedgerows and under the free stars.[pg 58]It was the Lady Alicia who spoke first.“I never thought you would really come,”she said.“I have been waiting for that remark,”he replied, with his most irresistible smile;“now for some more practical conversation.”As he did not immediately begin this conversation himself, her curiosity overcame her, and she asked,“How did you manage to get out?”“As my friend Dr Escott offered no opposition, I walked away.”“Did he really let you?”“He never even expostulated.”“Then—then it’s all right?”she said, with an inexplicable sensation of disappointment.“Perfectly—so far.”“But—didn’t they object?”“Not yet,”he replied;“objections to my movements are generally made after they have been performed.”Somehow she felt immensely relieved at this hint of opposition.“I’m so glad you got away,”she whispered, and then repented in a flutter.“Not more so than I am,”he answered, pressing her hand.“And now,”he added,“I should like to know how near Ashditch Junction you propose to take me.”“Where are you going to, Mr Beveridge?”The“Mr Beveridge”was thrown in as a corrective to the hand-pressure.“To London; where else, my Alicia? With £10,[pg 59]17s. 6d. in my pocket, I shall be able to eat at least three good dinners, and, by the third of them, if I haven’t fallen on my feet it will be the first time I have descended so unluckily.”“But,”she asked, considerably disconcerted,“I thought you were going back to your parish.”For a moment he too seemed a trifle put about. Then he replied readily,“So I am, as soon as I have purchased the necessary outfit, restocked my ecclesiastical library, and called on my bishop.”She felt greatly relieved at this justification of her share in the adventure.“Drop me at the nearest point to the station,”he said.“I am afraid,”she began—“I mean I think you had better get out soon. The first road on the right will take you straight there, and we had better not pass it.”“Then I must bid you farewell,”and he sighed most effectively.“Farewell, my benefactress, my dear Alicia! Shall I ever see you, shall I ever hear of you again?”“I might—I might just write once; if you will answer it: I mean if you would care to hear from such a——”She found it difficult to finish, and prudently stopped.“Thanks,”he replied cheerfully;“do,—I shall live in hopes. I’d better stop the carriage now.”He let down the window, when she said hastily,“But I don’t know your address.”He reflected for an instant.“Care of the Archbishop of York will always find me,”he replied; and as if unwilling to let his emotion be observed, he immediately[pg 60]put his head out of the window and called on the coachman to stop.“Good-bye,”he whispered, tenderly, squeezing her fingers with one hand and opening the door with the other.“Don’t quite forget me,”she whispered back.“Never!”he replied, and was in the act of getting out when he suddenly turned, and exclaimed,“I must be more out of practice than I thought; I had almost forgotten the protested salute.”And without further preamble the Lady Alicia found herself kissed at last.He jumped out and shut the door, and the carriage with its faint halo clattered into the darkness.“They are wonderfully alike,”he reflected.About twenty minutes later he walked leisurely into Ashditch Junction, and having singled out the station-master, he accosted him with an air of beneficient consideration and inquired how soon he could catch a train for London.It appeared that the up express was not due for nearly three-quarters of an hour.“A little too long to wait,”he said to himself, as he turned up the collar of his purloined fur coat to keep out the cold, and picked another cigar from its rightful owner’s case.By way of further defying the temperature and cementing his acquaintance with the station-master, he offered to regale that gratified official with such refreshments as the station bar provided. In the consumption of whiskies-and-sodas[pg 61](a beverage difficult to obtain in any quantity at Clankwood) Mr Beveridge showed himself as accomplished as in every other feat. In thirty-five minutes he had despatched no fewer than six, besides completely winning the station-master’s heart. As he had little more than five minutes now to wait, he bade a genial farewell to the lady behind the bar, and started to purchase his ticket.Hardly had he left the door of the refreshment-room when he perceived an uncomfortably familiar figure just arrived, breathless with running, on the opposite platform. The light of a lamp fell on his shining face: it was Moggridge!A stout heart might be forgiven for sinking at the sight, but Mr Beveridge merely turned to his now firm friends and said with his easiest air,“On the opposite platform I perceive one of my runaway lunatics. Bring a couple of stout porters as quickly as you can, for he is a person of much strength and address. My name,”he drew a card-case from the pocket of his fur coat,“is, as you see, Dr Escott of Clankwood.”Meanwhile Moggridge, after hurriedly investigating the platform he was on, suddenly spied a tall fur-coated figure on the opposite side. Without a moment’s hesitation he sprang on to the rails, and had just mounted the other side as the station-master and two porters appeared.Seeing his allies by his side Mr Beveridge never said a word, but, throwing off his hat, he lowered his head, charged his keeper, and picking him up by the knees[pg 62]threw him heavily on his back. Before he had a chance of recovering himself the other three were seated on his chest employed in winding a coil of rope round and round his prostrate form.Two minutes later Moggridge was sitting bound hand and foot in the booking office, addressing an amused audience in a strain of perhaps excusable exasperation, which however merely served to impress the Ashditch officials with a growing sense of their address in capturing so dangerous a lunatic. In the middle of this entertaining scene the London express steamed in, and Mr Beveridge, courteously thanking the station-master for his assistance, stepped into a first-class carriage.“I should be much obliged,”he said, leaning on the door of his compartment and blowing the smoke of Dr Escott’s last Havannah lightly from his lips,“if you would be kind enough to keep that poor fellow in the station till to-morrow. It is rather too late to send him back now. Good night, and many thanks.”He pressed a coin into the station-master’s hand, which thatdisappointedofficial only discovered on emptying his pockets at night to be an ordinary sixpence, the guard whistled, and one by one, smoothly and slowly and then in a bright stream, the station lamps slipped by. The last of them flitted into the night, and the train swung and rattled by a mile a minute nearer to London town and farther from the high stone wall. There was no other stop, and for a long hour the adventurer sat with his legs luxuriously stretched along the cushions looking out into a fainter duplicate of his carriage,[pg 63]pierced now and then by the glitter of brighter points as they whisked by some wayside village, or crossed by the black shadows of trees. The whole time he smiled contentedly, doubtless at the prospect of his parish work. All at once he seemed stirred, and, turning in his seat, laid his face upon the window, and pulled down the blind behind his head, so that he could see into the night. He had spied the first bright filaments of London. Quickly they spread into a twinkling network, and then as quickly were shut out by the first line of suburb houses; through the gaps they grew nearer and flared cheerfully; the train hooted over an archway, and in the road below he had a glimpse of shop windows and crowded pavements and moving omnibuses: he was in the world again, and at the foretaste of all this life he laughed like a delighted child. Last of all came the spread of shining rails and the red and yellow lights of many signals, and then the high glass roof and long lamp-lit platforms of St Euston’s Cross.Unencumbered by luggage or plans, Mr Francis Beveridge stuck his hands deep in his pockets and strolled aimlessly enough out of the station into the tideway of the Euston Road. For a little he stood stock-still on the pavement watching the throng of people and the perpetual buses and drays and the jingling hansoms picking their way through it all.“For a man of brains,”he moralised,“even though he be certified as insane, for probably the best of reasons, this London has surely fools enough to provide him with all he needs and more than he deserves. I shall set out[pg 64]with my lantern like a second Diogenes to look for a foolish man.”And so he strolled along again to the first opening southwards. That led him through a region of dingy enough brick by day, but decked now with its string of lamps and bright shop-windows here and there, and kept alive by passing buses and cabs going and coming from the station. Farther on the street grew gloomier, and a dark square with a grove of trees in the middle opened off one side; but, rattle or quiet, flaring shops or sad-looking lodgings, he found it all too fresh and amusing to hurry.“Back to my parish again,”he said to himself, smiling broadly at the drollery of the idea.“If I’m caught to-morrow, I’ll at least have one merry night in my wicked, humorous old charge.”He reached Holborn and turned west in the happiest and most enviable of moods; the very policemen seemed to cast a friendly eye on him; the frosty air, he thought, made the lights burn brighter and the crowd move more briskly than ever he had seen them. Suddenly the sight of a hairdresser’s saloon brought an inspiration. He stroked his beard, twisted his moustaches half regretfully, and then exclaiming,“Exit Mr Beveridge,”turned into the shop.

[pg 39]CHAPTER V.Towards four o’clock on the following afternoon Mr Beveridge and Moggridge were walking leisurely down the long drive leading from the mansion of Clankwood to the gate that opened on the humdrum outer world. Finding that an inelastic matter of yards was all the tether he could hope for, Mr Beveridge thought it best to take the bull by the horns, and make a companion of this necessity. So he kept his attendant by his side, and regaled him for some time with a series of improbable reminiscences and tolerable cigars, till at last, round a bend of the avenue, a lady on horseback came into view. As she drew a little nearer he stopped with an air of great surprise and pleasure.“I believe, Moggridge, that must be Lady Alicia à Fyre!”he exclaimed.“It looks huncommon like her, sir,”replied Moggridge.“I must really speak to her. She was”—and Mr Beveridge assumed his inimitable air of manly sentiment—“she was one of my poor mother’s dearest friends. Do you mind, Moggridge, falling behind a little? In fact, if you could step behind a tree and wait here for me, it would be pleasanter for us both. We used to meet under happier circumstances, and, don’t you know, it might distress her to be reminded of my misfortunes.”Such a reasonable request, beseechingly put by so fine a gentleman, could scarcely be refused. Moggridge retired[pg 40]behind the trees that lined the avenue, and Mr Beveridge advanced alone to meet the Lady Alicia. She blushed very becomingly as he raised his hat.“I hardly expected to see you to-day, Mr Beveridge,”she began.“I, on the other hand, have been thinking of nothing else,”he replied.She blushed still deeper, but responded a little reprovingly,“It’s very polite of you to say so, but——”“Not a bit,”said he.“I have a dozen equally well-turned sentences at my disposal, and, they tell me, a most deluding way of saying them.”Suddenly out of her depth again, poor Lady Alicia could only strike out at random.“Who tell you?”she managed to say.“First, so far as my poor memory goes, my mother’s lady’s-maid informed me of the fact; then I think my sister’s governess,”he replied, ticking off his informants on his fingers with a half-abstracted air.“After that came a number of more or less reliable individuals, and lastly the Lady Alicia à Fyre.”“Me? I’m sure I never said——”“None of them eversaid,”he interrupted.“But what have I done, then?”she asked, tightening her reins, and making her horse fidget a foot or two farther away.“You have begun to be a most adorable friend to a most unfortunate man.”Still Lady Alicia looked at him a little dubiously, and only said,“I—I hope I’m not too friendly.”[pg 41]“There are no degrees in friendly,”he replied.“There are only aloofly, friendly, and more than friendly.”“I—I think I ought to be going on, Mr Beveridge.”That experienced diplomatist perceived that it was necessary to further embellish himself.“Are you fond of soldiers?”he asked, abruptly.“I beg your pardon?”she said in considerable bewilderment.“Does a red coat, a medal, and a brass band appeal to you? Are you apt to be interested in her Majesty’s army?”“I generally like soldiers,”she admitted, still much surprised at the turn the conversation had taken.“Then I was a soldier.”“But—really?”“I held a commission in one of the crackest cavalry regiments,”he began dramatically, and yet with a great air of sincerity.“I was considered one of the most promising officers in the mess. It nearly broke my heart to leave the service.”He turned away his head. Lady Alicia was visibly affected.“I am so sorry!”she murmured.Still keeping his face turned away, he held out his hand and she pressed it gently.“Sorrow cannot give me my freedom,”he said.“If there is anything I can do——”she began.“Dismount,”he said, looking up at her tenderly.Lady Alicia never quite knew how it happened, but certainly she found herself standing on the ground, and the next moment Mr Beveridge was in her place.[pg 42]“An old soldier,”he exclaimed, gaily;“I can’t resist the temptation of having a canter.”And with that he started at a gallop towards the gate.With a blasphemous ejaculation Moggridge sprang from behind his tree, and set off down the drive in hot pursuit.Lady Alicia screamed,“Stop! stop! Francis—I mean, Mr Beveridge; stop, please!”But the favorite of the crack regiment, despite the lady’s saddle, sat his steed well, and rapidly left cries and footsteps far behind. The lodge was nearly half a mile away, and as the avenue wound between palisades of old trees, the shouts became muffled, and when he looked over his shoulder he saw in the stretch behind him no sign of benefactress or pursuer. By continued exhortations and the point of his penknife he kept his horse at full stretch; round the next bend he knew he should see the gates.“Five to one on the blank things being shut,”he muttered.He swept round the curve, and there ahead of him he saw the gates grimly closed, and at the lodge door a dismounted groom, standing beside his horse.Only remarking“Damn!”he reined up, turned, and trotted quietly back again. Presently he met Moggridge, red in the face, muddy as to his trousers, and panting hard.“Nice little nag this, Moggridge,”he remarked, airily.“Nice sweat you’ve give me,”rejoined his attendant, wrathfully.[pg 43]“You don’t mean to say you ran after me?”“I does mean to say,”Moggridge replied grimly, seizing the reins.“Want to lead him? Very well—it makes us look quite like the Derby winner coming in.”“Derby loser you means, thanks to them gates bein’ shut.”“Gates shut? Were they? I didn’t happen to notice.”“No, o’ course not,”said Moggridge, sarcastically;“that there sunstroke you got in India prevented you, I suppose?”“Have a cigar?”To this overture Moggridge made no reply. Mr Beveridge laughed and continued lightly,“I had no idea you were so fond of exercise. I’d have given you a lead all round the park if I’d known.”“You’d ’ave given me a lead all round the county if them gates ’ad been open.”“It might have been difficult to stop this fiery animal,”Mr Beveridge admitted.“But now, Moggridge, the run is over. I think I can take Lady Alicia’s horse back to her myself.”Moggridge smiled grimly.“You won’t let go?”“No fears.”Mr Beveridge put his hand behind his back and silently drove the penknife a quarter of an inch into his mount’s hind quarters. In an instant his keeper felt himself being lifted nearly off his feet, and in another actually[pg 44]deposited on his face. Off went the accomplished horseman again at top speed, but this time back to Lady Alicia. He saw her standing by the side of the drive, her handkerchief to her eyes, a penitent and disconsolate little figure. When she heard him coming, she dried her eyes and looked up, but her face was still tearful.“Well, I am back from my ride,”he remarked in a perfectly usual voice, dismounting as he spoke.“The man!”she cried,“where is that dreadful man?”“What man?”he asked in some surprise.“The man who chased you.”Mr Beveridge laughed aloud, at which Lady Alicia took fresh refuge in her handkerchief.“He follows on foot,”he replied.“Did he catch you? Oh, why didn’t you escape altogether?”she sobbed.Mr Beveridge looked at her with growing interest.“I had begun to forget my petticoat psychology,”he reflected (aloud, after his unconventional fashion).“Oh, here he comes,”she shuddered.“All blood! Oh, what have you done to him?”“On my honour, nothing,—I merely haven’t washed his face.”By this time Moggridge was coming close upon them.“You won’t forget a poor soldier?”said Mr Beveridge in a lower voice.There was no reply.“Apoorsoldier,”he added, with a sigh, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.“So poor that even if I had got out, I could only have ridden till I dropped.”[pg 45]“Would you accept——?”she began, timidly.“What day?”he interrupted, hurriedly.“Tuesday,”she hesitated.“Four o’clock, again. Same place as before. When I whistle throw it over at once.”Before they had time to say more, Moggridge, blood- and gravel-stained, came up.“It’s all right, miss,”he said, coming between them;“I’ll see that he plays no more of ’is tricks. There’s nothin’ to be afrightened of.”“Stand back!”she cried;“don’t come near me!”Moggridge was too staggered at this outburst to say a word.“Stand away!”she said, and the bewildered attendant stood away. She turned to Mr Beveridge.“Now, will you help me up?”She mounted lightly, said a brief farewell, and, forgetting all about the call at Clankwood she had ostensibly come to pay, turned her horse’s head towards the lodge.“Well, I’m blowed!”said Moggridge.“They do blow one,”his patient assented.Naturally enough the story of this equestrian adventure soon ran through Clankwood. The exact particulars, however, were a little hard to collect, for while Moggridge supplied many minute and picturesque details, illustrating his own activity and presence of mind and the imminent peril of the Lady Alicia, Mr Beveridge recounted an equally vivid story of a runaway horse recovered by himself to its fair owner’s unbounded gratitude. Official opinion naturally accepted the official[pg 46]account, and for the next few days Mr Beveridge became an object of considerable anxiety and mistrust.“I can’t make the man out,”said Sherlaw to Escott.“I had begun to think there was nothing much the matter with him.”“No more there is,”replied Escott.“His memory seems to me to have suffered from something, and he simply supplies its place in conversation from his imagination, and in action from the inspiration of the moment. The methods of society are too orthodox for such an aberration, and as his friends doubtless pay a handsome fee to keep him here, old Congers labels him mad and locks the door on him.”A day or two afterwards official opinion was a little disturbed. Lady Alicia, in reply to anxious inquiries, gave a third version of the adventure, from which nothing in particular could be gathered except that nothing in particular had happened.“What do you make of this, Escott?”asked Dr Congleton, laying her note before his assistant.“Merely that a woman wrote it.”“Hum! I suppose thatisthe explanation.”Upon which the doctor looked profound and went to lunch.CHAPTER VI.“Two five-pound notes, half-a-sovereign, and seven and sixpence in silver,”said Mr Beveridge to himself.“Ah, and a card.”[pg 47]On the card was written,“From a friend, if you will accept it. A.”He was standing under the wall, in the secluded walk, holding a little lady’s purse in his hand, and listening to two different footsteps. One little pair of feet were hurrying away on the farther side of the high wall, another and larger were approaching him at a run.“Wot’s he bin up to now, I wonder,”Moggridge panted to himself—for the second pair of feet belonged to him.“Shamming nose-bleed and sending me in for an ’andkerchief, and then sneaking off here by ’isself!”“What a time you’ve been,”said Mr Beveridge, slipping the purse with its contents into his pocket.“I was so infernally cold I had to take a little walk. Got the handkerchief?”In silence and with a suspicious solemnity Moggridge handed him the handkerchief, and they turned back for the house.“Now for a balloon,”Mr Beveridge reflected.Certainly it was cold. The frost nipped sharp that night, and next morning there were ice gardens on the windows, and the park lay white all through the winter sunshine.By evening the private lake was reported to be bearing, and the next day it hummed under the first skaters. Hardly necessary to say Mr Beveridge was among the earliest of them, or that he was at once the object of general admiration and envy. He traced“vines”and“Q’s,”and performed wonderful feats on one leg all[pg 48]morning. At lunch he was in the best of spirits, and was off again at once to the ice.When he reached the lake in the afternoon the first person he spied was Lady Alicia, and five minutes afterwards they were sailing off together hand in hand.“I knew you would come to-day,”he remarked.“Howcouldyou have known? It was by the merest chance I happened to come.”“It has always been by the merest chance that any of them have ever come.”“Who have ever come?”she inquired, with a vague feeling that he had said something he ought not to have, and that she was doing the same.“Many things,”he smiled,“including purses. Which reminds me that I am eternally your debtor.”She blushed and said,“I hope you didn’t mind.”“Not much,”he answered, candidly.“In my present circumstances a five-pound note is more acceptable than a caress.”The Lady Alicia again remembered the maidenly proprieties, and tried to change the subject.“What beautiful ice!”she said.“The question now is,”he continued, paying no heed to this diversion,“what am I to do next?”“What do you mean?”she asked a little faintly, realising dimly that she was being regarded as a fellow-conspirator in some unlawful project.“The wall is high, there is bottle-glass on the top, and I shall find it hard to bring away a fresh pair of trousers, and probably draughty if I don’t. The gates are always[pg 49]kept closed, and it isn’t worth any one’s while to open them for £10, 17s. 6d., less the price of a first-class ticket up to town. What are we to do?”“We?”she gasped.“You and I,”he explained.“But—but I can’tpossiblydo anything.”“‘Can’t possibly’is a phrase I have learned to misunderstand.”“Really, Mr Beveridge, I mustn’t do anything.”“Mustn’t is an invariable preface to a sin. Never use it; it’s a temptation in itself.”“It wouldn’t be right,”she said, with quite a show of firmness.He looked at her a little curiously. For a moment he almost seemed puzzled. Then he pressed her hand and asked tenderly,“Why not?”And in a half-audible aside he added,“That’s the correct move, I think.”“What did you say?”she asked.“I said,‘Why not?’”he answered, with increasing tenderness.“But you said something else.”“I added a brief prayer for pity.”Lady Alicia sighed and repeated a little less firmly.“It wouldn’t be right of me, Mr Beveridge.”“But what would be wrong?”This was said with even more fervour.“My conscience—we are very particular, you know.”“Who are‘we’?”“Papa isverystrict High Church.”[pg 50]An idea seemed to strike Mr Beveridge, for he ruminated in silence.“I asked Mr Candles—our curate, you know,”Lady Alicia continued, with a heroic effort to make her position clear.“You told him!”he exclaimed.“Oh, I didn’t say who it was—I mean what it was I thought of doing—I mean the temptation—that is, the possibility. And he said it was very kind of me to think of it; but I mustn’t do anything, and he advised me to read a book he gave me, and—and I mustn’t think of it, really, Mr Beveridge.”To himself Mr Beveridge repeated under his breath,“Archbishops, bishops, deacons, curates, fast in Lent, and an anthem after the Creed. I think I remember enough to pass.”Then he assumed a very serious face, and said aloud,“Your scruples do your heart credit. They have given me an insight into your deep and sweet character, which emboldens me to make a confession.”He stopped skating, folded his arms, and continued unblushingly,“I was educated for the Church, but the prejudices of my parents, the immature scepticism of youth, and some uncertainty about obtaining my archbishopric, induced me in an unfortunate moment, which I never ceased to bitterly regret, to quit my orders.”“You are in orders?”she exclaimed.“I was in several. I cancelled them, and entered the Navy instead.”[pg 51]“The Navy?”she asked, excusably bewildered by these rapid changes of occupation.“For five years I was never ashore.”“But,”she hesitated—“but you said you were in the Army.”Mr Beveridge gave her a look full of benignant compassion that made her, she did not quite know why, feel terribly abashed.“My regiment was quartered at sea,”he condescended to explain.“But in time my conscience awoke. I announced my intention of resuming my charge. My uncle was furious. My enemies were many. I was seized, thrown into this prison-house, and now my only friend fails me.”They were both silent. She ventured once to glance up at his face, and it seemed to her that his eyes were moist—though perhaps it was that her own were a little dim.“Let us skate on,”he said abruptly, with a fine air of resignation.“By the way,”he suddenly added,“I was extremely High Church, in fact almost freezingly high.”For five minutes they skated in silence, then Lady Alicia began softly,“Supposing you—you went away——”“What is the use of talking of it?”he exclaimed, melodramatically.“Let me forget my short-lived hopes!”“Youhavea friend,”she said, slowly.“A friend who tantalises me by‘supposings’!”“But supposing you did, Mr Beveridge, would you go back to your—did you say you had a parish?”[pg 52]“I had: a large, populous, and happy parish. It is my one dream to sit once more on its council and direct my curate.”“Of course that makes a difference. Mr Candles didn’t know all this.”They had come by this time to the corner of a little island that lay not far from the shore; in the channel ahead a board labelled“Danger”marked a hidden spring; behind them the shining ice was almost bare of skaters, for all but Dr Escott seemed to be leaving; on the bank they could see Moggridge prowling about in the gathering dusk, a vigilant reminder of captivity. Mr Beveridge took the whole scene in with, it is to be feared, a militant rather than an episcopal eye. Then he suddenly asked,“Are you alone?”“Yes.”“You drive back?”“Ye—es.”He took out his watch and made a brief calculation.“Go now, call at Clankwood or do anything else you like, and pass down the drive again at a quarter to five.”This sudden pinning of her irresolution almost took Lady Alicia’s breath away.“But I never said——”she began.“My dear friend,”he interrupted,“in the hour of action only a fool ever says. Come on.”And while she still hesitated they were off again.“But——”she tried to expostulate.“My dearest friend,”he whispered,“and my dear old vicarage!”[pg 53]He gave her no time to protest. Her skates were off, she was on her way to her carriage, and he was striking out again for the middle of the lake before she had time to collect her wits.He took out his watch and looked at the time. It was nearly a quarter-past four. Then he came up to Escott, who by this time was the only other soul on the ice.“About time we were going in,”said Escott.“Give me half-an-hour more. I’ll show you how to do that vine you admired.”“All right,”assented the doctor.A minute or two later Mr Beveridge, as if struck by a sudden reflection, exclaimed,“By Jove, there’s that poor devil Moggridge freezing to death on shore. Can’t you manage to look after so dangerous a lunatic yourself? It is his tea-time, too.”“Hallo, so he is,”replied Escott;“I’ll send him up.”And so there were only left the two men on the ice.For a little the lesson went on, and presently, leaving the doctor to practise, Mr Beveridge skated away by himself. He first paused opposite a seat on the bank over which hung Dr Escott’s great fur coat. This spectacle appeared to afford him peculiar pleasure. Then he looked at his watch. It was half-past four. He shut the watch with a click, threw a glance at his pupil, and struck out for the island. If the doctor had been looking, he might have seen him round it in the gloaming.Dr Escott, leaning far on his outside edge, met him as he returned.[pg 54]“What’s that under your coat?”he asked.“A picture I intend to ask your opinion on presently,”replied Mr Beveridge; and he added, with his most charming air,“But now, before we go in, let me give you a ride on one of these chairs, doctor.”They started off, the pace growing faster and faster, and presently Dr Escott saw that they were going behind the island.“Look out for the spring!”he cried.“It must be bearing now,”replied Mr Beveridge, striking out harder than ever;“they have taken away the board.”“All right,”said the doctor,“on you go.”As he spoke he felt a violent push, and the chair, slewing round as it went, flew on its course unguided. Mr Beveridge’s skates rasped on the ice with a spray of white powder as he stopped himself suddenly. Ahead of him there was a rending crack, and Dr Escott and his chair disappeared. Mr Beveridge laughed cheerfully, and taking from under his coat a board with the legend“Danger”printed in large characters across its face, he placed it beside the jagged hole.“Here is the picture, doctor,”he said, as a dripping, gasping head came up for the second time.“I must ask a thousand pardons for this—shall I say, liberty? But, as you know, I’m off my head. Good night. Let me recommend a hot drink when you come out. There are only five feet of water, so you won’t drown.”And with that he skated rapidly away.Escott had a glimpse of him vanishing round the corner[pg 55]of the island, and then the ice broke again, and down he went. Four, five, six times he made a desperate effort to get out, and every time the thin ice tore under his hands, and he slipped back again. By the seventh attempt he had broken his way to the thicker sheet; he got one leg up, slipped, got it up again, and at last, half numbed and wholly breathless, he was crawling circumspectly away. When at last he ventured to rise to his feet, he skated with all the speed he could make to the seat where he had left his coat. A pair of skates lay there instead, but the coat had vanished. Dr Escott’s philosophical estimate of Mr Beveridge became considerably modified.“Thank the Lord, he can’t get out of the grounds,”he said to himself;“what a dangerous devil he is! But he’ll be sorry for this performance, or I’m mistaken.”When he arrived at the house his first inquiries were for his tutor in the art of vine-cutting, and he was rather surprised to hear that he had not yet returned, for he only imagined himself the victim of a peculiarly ill-timed practical joke.Men with lanterns were sent out to search the park; and still there was no sign of Mr Beveridge. Inquiries were made at the lodge, but the gatekeeper could swear that only a single carriage had passed through. Dr Congleton refused at first to believe that he could possibly have got out.“Our arrangements are perfect,—the thing’s absurd,”he said, peremptorily.“That there man, sir,”replied Moggridge, who had[pg 56]been summoned,“is the slipperiest customer as ever I seed. ’E’s hout, sir, I believe.”“We might at least try the stations,”suggested Escott, who had by this time changed, and indulged in the hot drink recommended.The doctor began to be a little shaken.“Well, well,”said he,“I’ll send a man to each of the three stations within walking distance; and whether he’s out or in, we’ll have him by to-morrow morning. I’ve always taken care that he had no money in his pockets.”But what is a doctor’s care against a woman’s heart? For many to-morrows Clankwood had to lament the loss of the gifted Francis Beveridge.CHAPTER VII.At sixteen minutes to five Mr Beveridge stood by the side of the Clankwood Avenue, comfortably wrapped in Dr Escort’s fur coat, and smoking with the greatest relish one of Dr Escott’s undeniable cigars.It was almost dark, the air bit keen, the dim park with its population of black trees was filled with a frosty, eager stillness. All round the invisible wall hemmed him in, the ten pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence lay useless in his pocket till that was past, and his one hope depended on a woman. But Mr Beveridge was an amateur in the sex, and he smiled complacently as he smoked.He had waited barely three minutes when the quick[pg 57]clatter of a pair of horses fell on his ears, and presently the lights of a carriage and pair, driving swiftly away from Clankwood, raked the drive on either side. As they rattled up to him he gave a shout to the coachman to stop, and stepped right in front of the horses. With something that sounded unlike a blessing, the pair were thrown almost on their haunches to check them in time. Never stopping to explain, he threw open the door and sprang in; the coachman, hearing no sound of protest, whipped up again, and Mr Beveridge found himself rolling through the park of Clankwood in the Countess of Grillyer’s carriage with a very timid little figure by his side. Even in that moment of triumphant excitement the excellence of his manners was remarkable: the first thing he said was,“Do you mind smoking?”In her confusion of mind Lady Alicia could only reply“Oh no,”and not till some time afterwards did she remember that the odour of a cigar was clinging and the Countess’s nose unusually sensitive.After this first remark he leaned back in silence, gradually filling the carriage with a blue-grey cloud, and looking out of the windows first on one side and then on the other. They passed quickly through the lines of trees and the open spaces of frosty park-land, they drew up at the lodge for a moment, he heard his prison gates swing open, the harness jingled and the hoofs began to clatter again, a swift vision of lighted windows and a man looking on them incuriously swept by, and then they were rolling over a country road between hedgerows and under the free stars.[pg 58]It was the Lady Alicia who spoke first.“I never thought you would really come,”she said.“I have been waiting for that remark,”he replied, with his most irresistible smile;“now for some more practical conversation.”As he did not immediately begin this conversation himself, her curiosity overcame her, and she asked,“How did you manage to get out?”“As my friend Dr Escott offered no opposition, I walked away.”“Did he really let you?”“He never even expostulated.”“Then—then it’s all right?”she said, with an inexplicable sensation of disappointment.“Perfectly—so far.”“But—didn’t they object?”“Not yet,”he replied;“objections to my movements are generally made after they have been performed.”Somehow she felt immensely relieved at this hint of opposition.“I’m so glad you got away,”she whispered, and then repented in a flutter.“Not more so than I am,”he answered, pressing her hand.“And now,”he added,“I should like to know how near Ashditch Junction you propose to take me.”“Where are you going to, Mr Beveridge?”The“Mr Beveridge”was thrown in as a corrective to the hand-pressure.“To London; where else, my Alicia? With £10,[pg 59]17s. 6d. in my pocket, I shall be able to eat at least three good dinners, and, by the third of them, if I haven’t fallen on my feet it will be the first time I have descended so unluckily.”“But,”she asked, considerably disconcerted,“I thought you were going back to your parish.”For a moment he too seemed a trifle put about. Then he replied readily,“So I am, as soon as I have purchased the necessary outfit, restocked my ecclesiastical library, and called on my bishop.”She felt greatly relieved at this justification of her share in the adventure.“Drop me at the nearest point to the station,”he said.“I am afraid,”she began—“I mean I think you had better get out soon. The first road on the right will take you straight there, and we had better not pass it.”“Then I must bid you farewell,”and he sighed most effectively.“Farewell, my benefactress, my dear Alicia! Shall I ever see you, shall I ever hear of you again?”“I might—I might just write once; if you will answer it: I mean if you would care to hear from such a——”She found it difficult to finish, and prudently stopped.“Thanks,”he replied cheerfully;“do,—I shall live in hopes. I’d better stop the carriage now.”He let down the window, when she said hastily,“But I don’t know your address.”He reflected for an instant.“Care of the Archbishop of York will always find me,”he replied; and as if unwilling to let his emotion be observed, he immediately[pg 60]put his head out of the window and called on the coachman to stop.“Good-bye,”he whispered, tenderly, squeezing her fingers with one hand and opening the door with the other.“Don’t quite forget me,”she whispered back.“Never!”he replied, and was in the act of getting out when he suddenly turned, and exclaimed,“I must be more out of practice than I thought; I had almost forgotten the protested salute.”And without further preamble the Lady Alicia found herself kissed at last.He jumped out and shut the door, and the carriage with its faint halo clattered into the darkness.“They are wonderfully alike,”he reflected.About twenty minutes later he walked leisurely into Ashditch Junction, and having singled out the station-master, he accosted him with an air of beneficient consideration and inquired how soon he could catch a train for London.It appeared that the up express was not due for nearly three-quarters of an hour.“A little too long to wait,”he said to himself, as he turned up the collar of his purloined fur coat to keep out the cold, and picked another cigar from its rightful owner’s case.By way of further defying the temperature and cementing his acquaintance with the station-master, he offered to regale that gratified official with such refreshments as the station bar provided. In the consumption of whiskies-and-sodas[pg 61](a beverage difficult to obtain in any quantity at Clankwood) Mr Beveridge showed himself as accomplished as in every other feat. In thirty-five minutes he had despatched no fewer than six, besides completely winning the station-master’s heart. As he had little more than five minutes now to wait, he bade a genial farewell to the lady behind the bar, and started to purchase his ticket.Hardly had he left the door of the refreshment-room when he perceived an uncomfortably familiar figure just arrived, breathless with running, on the opposite platform. The light of a lamp fell on his shining face: it was Moggridge!A stout heart might be forgiven for sinking at the sight, but Mr Beveridge merely turned to his now firm friends and said with his easiest air,“On the opposite platform I perceive one of my runaway lunatics. Bring a couple of stout porters as quickly as you can, for he is a person of much strength and address. My name,”he drew a card-case from the pocket of his fur coat,“is, as you see, Dr Escott of Clankwood.”Meanwhile Moggridge, after hurriedly investigating the platform he was on, suddenly spied a tall fur-coated figure on the opposite side. Without a moment’s hesitation he sprang on to the rails, and had just mounted the other side as the station-master and two porters appeared.Seeing his allies by his side Mr Beveridge never said a word, but, throwing off his hat, he lowered his head, charged his keeper, and picking him up by the knees[pg 62]threw him heavily on his back. Before he had a chance of recovering himself the other three were seated on his chest employed in winding a coil of rope round and round his prostrate form.Two minutes later Moggridge was sitting bound hand and foot in the booking office, addressing an amused audience in a strain of perhaps excusable exasperation, which however merely served to impress the Ashditch officials with a growing sense of their address in capturing so dangerous a lunatic. In the middle of this entertaining scene the London express steamed in, and Mr Beveridge, courteously thanking the station-master for his assistance, stepped into a first-class carriage.“I should be much obliged,”he said, leaning on the door of his compartment and blowing the smoke of Dr Escott’s last Havannah lightly from his lips,“if you would be kind enough to keep that poor fellow in the station till to-morrow. It is rather too late to send him back now. Good night, and many thanks.”He pressed a coin into the station-master’s hand, which thatdisappointedofficial only discovered on emptying his pockets at night to be an ordinary sixpence, the guard whistled, and one by one, smoothly and slowly and then in a bright stream, the station lamps slipped by. The last of them flitted into the night, and the train swung and rattled by a mile a minute nearer to London town and farther from the high stone wall. There was no other stop, and for a long hour the adventurer sat with his legs luxuriously stretched along the cushions looking out into a fainter duplicate of his carriage,[pg 63]pierced now and then by the glitter of brighter points as they whisked by some wayside village, or crossed by the black shadows of trees. The whole time he smiled contentedly, doubtless at the prospect of his parish work. All at once he seemed stirred, and, turning in his seat, laid his face upon the window, and pulled down the blind behind his head, so that he could see into the night. He had spied the first bright filaments of London. Quickly they spread into a twinkling network, and then as quickly were shut out by the first line of suburb houses; through the gaps they grew nearer and flared cheerfully; the train hooted over an archway, and in the road below he had a glimpse of shop windows and crowded pavements and moving omnibuses: he was in the world again, and at the foretaste of all this life he laughed like a delighted child. Last of all came the spread of shining rails and the red and yellow lights of many signals, and then the high glass roof and long lamp-lit platforms of St Euston’s Cross.Unencumbered by luggage or plans, Mr Francis Beveridge stuck his hands deep in his pockets and strolled aimlessly enough out of the station into the tideway of the Euston Road. For a little he stood stock-still on the pavement watching the throng of people and the perpetual buses and drays and the jingling hansoms picking their way through it all.“For a man of brains,”he moralised,“even though he be certified as insane, for probably the best of reasons, this London has surely fools enough to provide him with all he needs and more than he deserves. I shall set out[pg 64]with my lantern like a second Diogenes to look for a foolish man.”And so he strolled along again to the first opening southwards. That led him through a region of dingy enough brick by day, but decked now with its string of lamps and bright shop-windows here and there, and kept alive by passing buses and cabs going and coming from the station. Farther on the street grew gloomier, and a dark square with a grove of trees in the middle opened off one side; but, rattle or quiet, flaring shops or sad-looking lodgings, he found it all too fresh and amusing to hurry.“Back to my parish again,”he said to himself, smiling broadly at the drollery of the idea.“If I’m caught to-morrow, I’ll at least have one merry night in my wicked, humorous old charge.”He reached Holborn and turned west in the happiest and most enviable of moods; the very policemen seemed to cast a friendly eye on him; the frosty air, he thought, made the lights burn brighter and the crowd move more briskly than ever he had seen them. Suddenly the sight of a hairdresser’s saloon brought an inspiration. He stroked his beard, twisted his moustaches half regretfully, and then exclaiming,“Exit Mr Beveridge,”turned into the shop.

[pg 39]CHAPTER V.Towards four o’clock on the following afternoon Mr Beveridge and Moggridge were walking leisurely down the long drive leading from the mansion of Clankwood to the gate that opened on the humdrum outer world. Finding that an inelastic matter of yards was all the tether he could hope for, Mr Beveridge thought it best to take the bull by the horns, and make a companion of this necessity. So he kept his attendant by his side, and regaled him for some time with a series of improbable reminiscences and tolerable cigars, till at last, round a bend of the avenue, a lady on horseback came into view. As she drew a little nearer he stopped with an air of great surprise and pleasure.“I believe, Moggridge, that must be Lady Alicia à Fyre!”he exclaimed.“It looks huncommon like her, sir,”replied Moggridge.“I must really speak to her. She was”—and Mr Beveridge assumed his inimitable air of manly sentiment—“she was one of my poor mother’s dearest friends. Do you mind, Moggridge, falling behind a little? In fact, if you could step behind a tree and wait here for me, it would be pleasanter for us both. We used to meet under happier circumstances, and, don’t you know, it might distress her to be reminded of my misfortunes.”Such a reasonable request, beseechingly put by so fine a gentleman, could scarcely be refused. Moggridge retired[pg 40]behind the trees that lined the avenue, and Mr Beveridge advanced alone to meet the Lady Alicia. She blushed very becomingly as he raised his hat.“I hardly expected to see you to-day, Mr Beveridge,”she began.“I, on the other hand, have been thinking of nothing else,”he replied.She blushed still deeper, but responded a little reprovingly,“It’s very polite of you to say so, but——”“Not a bit,”said he.“I have a dozen equally well-turned sentences at my disposal, and, they tell me, a most deluding way of saying them.”Suddenly out of her depth again, poor Lady Alicia could only strike out at random.“Who tell you?”she managed to say.“First, so far as my poor memory goes, my mother’s lady’s-maid informed me of the fact; then I think my sister’s governess,”he replied, ticking off his informants on his fingers with a half-abstracted air.“After that came a number of more or less reliable individuals, and lastly the Lady Alicia à Fyre.”“Me? I’m sure I never said——”“None of them eversaid,”he interrupted.“But what have I done, then?”she asked, tightening her reins, and making her horse fidget a foot or two farther away.“You have begun to be a most adorable friend to a most unfortunate man.”Still Lady Alicia looked at him a little dubiously, and only said,“I—I hope I’m not too friendly.”[pg 41]“There are no degrees in friendly,”he replied.“There are only aloofly, friendly, and more than friendly.”“I—I think I ought to be going on, Mr Beveridge.”That experienced diplomatist perceived that it was necessary to further embellish himself.“Are you fond of soldiers?”he asked, abruptly.“I beg your pardon?”she said in considerable bewilderment.“Does a red coat, a medal, and a brass band appeal to you? Are you apt to be interested in her Majesty’s army?”“I generally like soldiers,”she admitted, still much surprised at the turn the conversation had taken.“Then I was a soldier.”“But—really?”“I held a commission in one of the crackest cavalry regiments,”he began dramatically, and yet with a great air of sincerity.“I was considered one of the most promising officers in the mess. It nearly broke my heart to leave the service.”He turned away his head. Lady Alicia was visibly affected.“I am so sorry!”she murmured.Still keeping his face turned away, he held out his hand and she pressed it gently.“Sorrow cannot give me my freedom,”he said.“If there is anything I can do——”she began.“Dismount,”he said, looking up at her tenderly.Lady Alicia never quite knew how it happened, but certainly she found herself standing on the ground, and the next moment Mr Beveridge was in her place.[pg 42]“An old soldier,”he exclaimed, gaily;“I can’t resist the temptation of having a canter.”And with that he started at a gallop towards the gate.With a blasphemous ejaculation Moggridge sprang from behind his tree, and set off down the drive in hot pursuit.Lady Alicia screamed,“Stop! stop! Francis—I mean, Mr Beveridge; stop, please!”But the favorite of the crack regiment, despite the lady’s saddle, sat his steed well, and rapidly left cries and footsteps far behind. The lodge was nearly half a mile away, and as the avenue wound between palisades of old trees, the shouts became muffled, and when he looked over his shoulder he saw in the stretch behind him no sign of benefactress or pursuer. By continued exhortations and the point of his penknife he kept his horse at full stretch; round the next bend he knew he should see the gates.“Five to one on the blank things being shut,”he muttered.He swept round the curve, and there ahead of him he saw the gates grimly closed, and at the lodge door a dismounted groom, standing beside his horse.Only remarking“Damn!”he reined up, turned, and trotted quietly back again. Presently he met Moggridge, red in the face, muddy as to his trousers, and panting hard.“Nice little nag this, Moggridge,”he remarked, airily.“Nice sweat you’ve give me,”rejoined his attendant, wrathfully.[pg 43]“You don’t mean to say you ran after me?”“I does mean to say,”Moggridge replied grimly, seizing the reins.“Want to lead him? Very well—it makes us look quite like the Derby winner coming in.”“Derby loser you means, thanks to them gates bein’ shut.”“Gates shut? Were they? I didn’t happen to notice.”“No, o’ course not,”said Moggridge, sarcastically;“that there sunstroke you got in India prevented you, I suppose?”“Have a cigar?”To this overture Moggridge made no reply. Mr Beveridge laughed and continued lightly,“I had no idea you were so fond of exercise. I’d have given you a lead all round the park if I’d known.”“You’d ’ave given me a lead all round the county if them gates ’ad been open.”“It might have been difficult to stop this fiery animal,”Mr Beveridge admitted.“But now, Moggridge, the run is over. I think I can take Lady Alicia’s horse back to her myself.”Moggridge smiled grimly.“You won’t let go?”“No fears.”Mr Beveridge put his hand behind his back and silently drove the penknife a quarter of an inch into his mount’s hind quarters. In an instant his keeper felt himself being lifted nearly off his feet, and in another actually[pg 44]deposited on his face. Off went the accomplished horseman again at top speed, but this time back to Lady Alicia. He saw her standing by the side of the drive, her handkerchief to her eyes, a penitent and disconsolate little figure. When she heard him coming, she dried her eyes and looked up, but her face was still tearful.“Well, I am back from my ride,”he remarked in a perfectly usual voice, dismounting as he spoke.“The man!”she cried,“where is that dreadful man?”“What man?”he asked in some surprise.“The man who chased you.”Mr Beveridge laughed aloud, at which Lady Alicia took fresh refuge in her handkerchief.“He follows on foot,”he replied.“Did he catch you? Oh, why didn’t you escape altogether?”she sobbed.Mr Beveridge looked at her with growing interest.“I had begun to forget my petticoat psychology,”he reflected (aloud, after his unconventional fashion).“Oh, here he comes,”she shuddered.“All blood! Oh, what have you done to him?”“On my honour, nothing,—I merely haven’t washed his face.”By this time Moggridge was coming close upon them.“You won’t forget a poor soldier?”said Mr Beveridge in a lower voice.There was no reply.“Apoorsoldier,”he added, with a sigh, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.“So poor that even if I had got out, I could only have ridden till I dropped.”[pg 45]“Would you accept——?”she began, timidly.“What day?”he interrupted, hurriedly.“Tuesday,”she hesitated.“Four o’clock, again. Same place as before. When I whistle throw it over at once.”Before they had time to say more, Moggridge, blood- and gravel-stained, came up.“It’s all right, miss,”he said, coming between them;“I’ll see that he plays no more of ’is tricks. There’s nothin’ to be afrightened of.”“Stand back!”she cried;“don’t come near me!”Moggridge was too staggered at this outburst to say a word.“Stand away!”she said, and the bewildered attendant stood away. She turned to Mr Beveridge.“Now, will you help me up?”She mounted lightly, said a brief farewell, and, forgetting all about the call at Clankwood she had ostensibly come to pay, turned her horse’s head towards the lodge.“Well, I’m blowed!”said Moggridge.“They do blow one,”his patient assented.Naturally enough the story of this equestrian adventure soon ran through Clankwood. The exact particulars, however, were a little hard to collect, for while Moggridge supplied many minute and picturesque details, illustrating his own activity and presence of mind and the imminent peril of the Lady Alicia, Mr Beveridge recounted an equally vivid story of a runaway horse recovered by himself to its fair owner’s unbounded gratitude. Official opinion naturally accepted the official[pg 46]account, and for the next few days Mr Beveridge became an object of considerable anxiety and mistrust.“I can’t make the man out,”said Sherlaw to Escott.“I had begun to think there was nothing much the matter with him.”“No more there is,”replied Escott.“His memory seems to me to have suffered from something, and he simply supplies its place in conversation from his imagination, and in action from the inspiration of the moment. The methods of society are too orthodox for such an aberration, and as his friends doubtless pay a handsome fee to keep him here, old Congers labels him mad and locks the door on him.”A day or two afterwards official opinion was a little disturbed. Lady Alicia, in reply to anxious inquiries, gave a third version of the adventure, from which nothing in particular could be gathered except that nothing in particular had happened.“What do you make of this, Escott?”asked Dr Congleton, laying her note before his assistant.“Merely that a woman wrote it.”“Hum! I suppose thatisthe explanation.”Upon which the doctor looked profound and went to lunch.

Towards four o’clock on the following afternoon Mr Beveridge and Moggridge were walking leisurely down the long drive leading from the mansion of Clankwood to the gate that opened on the humdrum outer world. Finding that an inelastic matter of yards was all the tether he could hope for, Mr Beveridge thought it best to take the bull by the horns, and make a companion of this necessity. So he kept his attendant by his side, and regaled him for some time with a series of improbable reminiscences and tolerable cigars, till at last, round a bend of the avenue, a lady on horseback came into view. As she drew a little nearer he stopped with an air of great surprise and pleasure.

“I believe, Moggridge, that must be Lady Alicia à Fyre!”he exclaimed.

“It looks huncommon like her, sir,”replied Moggridge.

“I must really speak to her. She was”—and Mr Beveridge assumed his inimitable air of manly sentiment—“she was one of my poor mother’s dearest friends. Do you mind, Moggridge, falling behind a little? In fact, if you could step behind a tree and wait here for me, it would be pleasanter for us both. We used to meet under happier circumstances, and, don’t you know, it might distress her to be reminded of my misfortunes.”

Such a reasonable request, beseechingly put by so fine a gentleman, could scarcely be refused. Moggridge retired[pg 40]behind the trees that lined the avenue, and Mr Beveridge advanced alone to meet the Lady Alicia. She blushed very becomingly as he raised his hat.

“I hardly expected to see you to-day, Mr Beveridge,”she began.

“I, on the other hand, have been thinking of nothing else,”he replied.

She blushed still deeper, but responded a little reprovingly,“It’s very polite of you to say so, but——”

“Not a bit,”said he.“I have a dozen equally well-turned sentences at my disposal, and, they tell me, a most deluding way of saying them.”

Suddenly out of her depth again, poor Lady Alicia could only strike out at random.

“Who tell you?”she managed to say.

“First, so far as my poor memory goes, my mother’s lady’s-maid informed me of the fact; then I think my sister’s governess,”he replied, ticking off his informants on his fingers with a half-abstracted air.“After that came a number of more or less reliable individuals, and lastly the Lady Alicia à Fyre.”

“Me? I’m sure I never said——”

“None of them eversaid,”he interrupted.

“But what have I done, then?”she asked, tightening her reins, and making her horse fidget a foot or two farther away.

“You have begun to be a most adorable friend to a most unfortunate man.”

Still Lady Alicia looked at him a little dubiously, and only said,“I—I hope I’m not too friendly.”

“There are no degrees in friendly,”he replied.“There are only aloofly, friendly, and more than friendly.”

“I—I think I ought to be going on, Mr Beveridge.”

That experienced diplomatist perceived that it was necessary to further embellish himself.

“Are you fond of soldiers?”he asked, abruptly.

“I beg your pardon?”she said in considerable bewilderment.

“Does a red coat, a medal, and a brass band appeal to you? Are you apt to be interested in her Majesty’s army?”

“I generally like soldiers,”she admitted, still much surprised at the turn the conversation had taken.

“Then I was a soldier.”

“But—really?”

“I held a commission in one of the crackest cavalry regiments,”he began dramatically, and yet with a great air of sincerity.“I was considered one of the most promising officers in the mess. It nearly broke my heart to leave the service.”

He turned away his head. Lady Alicia was visibly affected.

“I am so sorry!”she murmured.

Still keeping his face turned away, he held out his hand and she pressed it gently.

“Sorrow cannot give me my freedom,”he said.

“If there is anything I can do——”she began.

“Dismount,”he said, looking up at her tenderly.

Lady Alicia never quite knew how it happened, but certainly she found herself standing on the ground, and the next moment Mr Beveridge was in her place.

“An old soldier,”he exclaimed, gaily;“I can’t resist the temptation of having a canter.”And with that he started at a gallop towards the gate.

With a blasphemous ejaculation Moggridge sprang from behind his tree, and set off down the drive in hot pursuit.

Lady Alicia screamed,“Stop! stop! Francis—I mean, Mr Beveridge; stop, please!”

But the favorite of the crack regiment, despite the lady’s saddle, sat his steed well, and rapidly left cries and footsteps far behind. The lodge was nearly half a mile away, and as the avenue wound between palisades of old trees, the shouts became muffled, and when he looked over his shoulder he saw in the stretch behind him no sign of benefactress or pursuer. By continued exhortations and the point of his penknife he kept his horse at full stretch; round the next bend he knew he should see the gates.

“Five to one on the blank things being shut,”he muttered.

He swept round the curve, and there ahead of him he saw the gates grimly closed, and at the lodge door a dismounted groom, standing beside his horse.

Only remarking“Damn!”he reined up, turned, and trotted quietly back again. Presently he met Moggridge, red in the face, muddy as to his trousers, and panting hard.

“Nice little nag this, Moggridge,”he remarked, airily.

“Nice sweat you’ve give me,”rejoined his attendant, wrathfully.

“You don’t mean to say you ran after me?”

“I does mean to say,”Moggridge replied grimly, seizing the reins.

“Want to lead him? Very well—it makes us look quite like the Derby winner coming in.”

“Derby loser you means, thanks to them gates bein’ shut.”

“Gates shut? Were they? I didn’t happen to notice.”

“No, o’ course not,”said Moggridge, sarcastically;“that there sunstroke you got in India prevented you, I suppose?”

“Have a cigar?”

To this overture Moggridge made no reply. Mr Beveridge laughed and continued lightly,“I had no idea you were so fond of exercise. I’d have given you a lead all round the park if I’d known.”

“You’d ’ave given me a lead all round the county if them gates ’ad been open.”

“It might have been difficult to stop this fiery animal,”Mr Beveridge admitted.“But now, Moggridge, the run is over. I think I can take Lady Alicia’s horse back to her myself.”

Moggridge smiled grimly.

“You won’t let go?”

“No fears.”

Mr Beveridge put his hand behind his back and silently drove the penknife a quarter of an inch into his mount’s hind quarters. In an instant his keeper felt himself being lifted nearly off his feet, and in another actually[pg 44]deposited on his face. Off went the accomplished horseman again at top speed, but this time back to Lady Alicia. He saw her standing by the side of the drive, her handkerchief to her eyes, a penitent and disconsolate little figure. When she heard him coming, she dried her eyes and looked up, but her face was still tearful.

“Well, I am back from my ride,”he remarked in a perfectly usual voice, dismounting as he spoke.

“The man!”she cried,“where is that dreadful man?”

“What man?”he asked in some surprise.

“The man who chased you.”

Mr Beveridge laughed aloud, at which Lady Alicia took fresh refuge in her handkerchief.

“He follows on foot,”he replied.

“Did he catch you? Oh, why didn’t you escape altogether?”she sobbed.

Mr Beveridge looked at her with growing interest.

“I had begun to forget my petticoat psychology,”he reflected (aloud, after his unconventional fashion).

“Oh, here he comes,”she shuddered.“All blood! Oh, what have you done to him?”

“On my honour, nothing,—I merely haven’t washed his face.”

By this time Moggridge was coming close upon them.

“You won’t forget a poor soldier?”said Mr Beveridge in a lower voice.

There was no reply.

“Apoorsoldier,”he added, with a sigh, glancing at her from the corner of his eye.“So poor that even if I had got out, I could only have ridden till I dropped.”

“Would you accept——?”she began, timidly.

“What day?”he interrupted, hurriedly.

“Tuesday,”she hesitated.

“Four o’clock, again. Same place as before. When I whistle throw it over at once.”

Before they had time to say more, Moggridge, blood- and gravel-stained, came up.

“It’s all right, miss,”he said, coming between them;“I’ll see that he plays no more of ’is tricks. There’s nothin’ to be afrightened of.”

“Stand back!”she cried;“don’t come near me!”

Moggridge was too staggered at this outburst to say a word.

“Stand away!”she said, and the bewildered attendant stood away. She turned to Mr Beveridge.

“Now, will you help me up?”

She mounted lightly, said a brief farewell, and, forgetting all about the call at Clankwood she had ostensibly come to pay, turned her horse’s head towards the lodge.

“Well, I’m blowed!”said Moggridge.

“They do blow one,”his patient assented.

Naturally enough the story of this equestrian adventure soon ran through Clankwood. The exact particulars, however, were a little hard to collect, for while Moggridge supplied many minute and picturesque details, illustrating his own activity and presence of mind and the imminent peril of the Lady Alicia, Mr Beveridge recounted an equally vivid story of a runaway horse recovered by himself to its fair owner’s unbounded gratitude. Official opinion naturally accepted the official[pg 46]account, and for the next few days Mr Beveridge became an object of considerable anxiety and mistrust.

“I can’t make the man out,”said Sherlaw to Escott.“I had begun to think there was nothing much the matter with him.”

“No more there is,”replied Escott.“His memory seems to me to have suffered from something, and he simply supplies its place in conversation from his imagination, and in action from the inspiration of the moment. The methods of society are too orthodox for such an aberration, and as his friends doubtless pay a handsome fee to keep him here, old Congers labels him mad and locks the door on him.”

A day or two afterwards official opinion was a little disturbed. Lady Alicia, in reply to anxious inquiries, gave a third version of the adventure, from which nothing in particular could be gathered except that nothing in particular had happened.

“What do you make of this, Escott?”asked Dr Congleton, laying her note before his assistant.

“Merely that a woman wrote it.”

“Hum! I suppose thatisthe explanation.”

Upon which the doctor looked profound and went to lunch.

CHAPTER VI.“Two five-pound notes, half-a-sovereign, and seven and sixpence in silver,”said Mr Beveridge to himself.“Ah, and a card.”[pg 47]On the card was written,“From a friend, if you will accept it. A.”He was standing under the wall, in the secluded walk, holding a little lady’s purse in his hand, and listening to two different footsteps. One little pair of feet were hurrying away on the farther side of the high wall, another and larger were approaching him at a run.“Wot’s he bin up to now, I wonder,”Moggridge panted to himself—for the second pair of feet belonged to him.“Shamming nose-bleed and sending me in for an ’andkerchief, and then sneaking off here by ’isself!”“What a time you’ve been,”said Mr Beveridge, slipping the purse with its contents into his pocket.“I was so infernally cold I had to take a little walk. Got the handkerchief?”In silence and with a suspicious solemnity Moggridge handed him the handkerchief, and they turned back for the house.“Now for a balloon,”Mr Beveridge reflected.Certainly it was cold. The frost nipped sharp that night, and next morning there were ice gardens on the windows, and the park lay white all through the winter sunshine.By evening the private lake was reported to be bearing, and the next day it hummed under the first skaters. Hardly necessary to say Mr Beveridge was among the earliest of them, or that he was at once the object of general admiration and envy. He traced“vines”and“Q’s,”and performed wonderful feats on one leg all[pg 48]morning. At lunch he was in the best of spirits, and was off again at once to the ice.When he reached the lake in the afternoon the first person he spied was Lady Alicia, and five minutes afterwards they were sailing off together hand in hand.“I knew you would come to-day,”he remarked.“Howcouldyou have known? It was by the merest chance I happened to come.”“It has always been by the merest chance that any of them have ever come.”“Who have ever come?”she inquired, with a vague feeling that he had said something he ought not to have, and that she was doing the same.“Many things,”he smiled,“including purses. Which reminds me that I am eternally your debtor.”She blushed and said,“I hope you didn’t mind.”“Not much,”he answered, candidly.“In my present circumstances a five-pound note is more acceptable than a caress.”The Lady Alicia again remembered the maidenly proprieties, and tried to change the subject.“What beautiful ice!”she said.“The question now is,”he continued, paying no heed to this diversion,“what am I to do next?”“What do you mean?”she asked a little faintly, realising dimly that she was being regarded as a fellow-conspirator in some unlawful project.“The wall is high, there is bottle-glass on the top, and I shall find it hard to bring away a fresh pair of trousers, and probably draughty if I don’t. The gates are always[pg 49]kept closed, and it isn’t worth any one’s while to open them for £10, 17s. 6d., less the price of a first-class ticket up to town. What are we to do?”“We?”she gasped.“You and I,”he explained.“But—but I can’tpossiblydo anything.”“‘Can’t possibly’is a phrase I have learned to misunderstand.”“Really, Mr Beveridge, I mustn’t do anything.”“Mustn’t is an invariable preface to a sin. Never use it; it’s a temptation in itself.”“It wouldn’t be right,”she said, with quite a show of firmness.He looked at her a little curiously. For a moment he almost seemed puzzled. Then he pressed her hand and asked tenderly,“Why not?”And in a half-audible aside he added,“That’s the correct move, I think.”“What did you say?”she asked.“I said,‘Why not?’”he answered, with increasing tenderness.“But you said something else.”“I added a brief prayer for pity.”Lady Alicia sighed and repeated a little less firmly.“It wouldn’t be right of me, Mr Beveridge.”“But what would be wrong?”This was said with even more fervour.“My conscience—we are very particular, you know.”“Who are‘we’?”“Papa isverystrict High Church.”[pg 50]An idea seemed to strike Mr Beveridge, for he ruminated in silence.“I asked Mr Candles—our curate, you know,”Lady Alicia continued, with a heroic effort to make her position clear.“You told him!”he exclaimed.“Oh, I didn’t say who it was—I mean what it was I thought of doing—I mean the temptation—that is, the possibility. And he said it was very kind of me to think of it; but I mustn’t do anything, and he advised me to read a book he gave me, and—and I mustn’t think of it, really, Mr Beveridge.”To himself Mr Beveridge repeated under his breath,“Archbishops, bishops, deacons, curates, fast in Lent, and an anthem after the Creed. I think I remember enough to pass.”Then he assumed a very serious face, and said aloud,“Your scruples do your heart credit. They have given me an insight into your deep and sweet character, which emboldens me to make a confession.”He stopped skating, folded his arms, and continued unblushingly,“I was educated for the Church, but the prejudices of my parents, the immature scepticism of youth, and some uncertainty about obtaining my archbishopric, induced me in an unfortunate moment, which I never ceased to bitterly regret, to quit my orders.”“You are in orders?”she exclaimed.“I was in several. I cancelled them, and entered the Navy instead.”[pg 51]“The Navy?”she asked, excusably bewildered by these rapid changes of occupation.“For five years I was never ashore.”“But,”she hesitated—“but you said you were in the Army.”Mr Beveridge gave her a look full of benignant compassion that made her, she did not quite know why, feel terribly abashed.“My regiment was quartered at sea,”he condescended to explain.“But in time my conscience awoke. I announced my intention of resuming my charge. My uncle was furious. My enemies were many. I was seized, thrown into this prison-house, and now my only friend fails me.”They were both silent. She ventured once to glance up at his face, and it seemed to her that his eyes were moist—though perhaps it was that her own were a little dim.“Let us skate on,”he said abruptly, with a fine air of resignation.“By the way,”he suddenly added,“I was extremely High Church, in fact almost freezingly high.”For five minutes they skated in silence, then Lady Alicia began softly,“Supposing you—you went away——”“What is the use of talking of it?”he exclaimed, melodramatically.“Let me forget my short-lived hopes!”“Youhavea friend,”she said, slowly.“A friend who tantalises me by‘supposings’!”“But supposing you did, Mr Beveridge, would you go back to your—did you say you had a parish?”[pg 52]“I had: a large, populous, and happy parish. It is my one dream to sit once more on its council and direct my curate.”“Of course that makes a difference. Mr Candles didn’t know all this.”They had come by this time to the corner of a little island that lay not far from the shore; in the channel ahead a board labelled“Danger”marked a hidden spring; behind them the shining ice was almost bare of skaters, for all but Dr Escott seemed to be leaving; on the bank they could see Moggridge prowling about in the gathering dusk, a vigilant reminder of captivity. Mr Beveridge took the whole scene in with, it is to be feared, a militant rather than an episcopal eye. Then he suddenly asked,“Are you alone?”“Yes.”“You drive back?”“Ye—es.”He took out his watch and made a brief calculation.“Go now, call at Clankwood or do anything else you like, and pass down the drive again at a quarter to five.”This sudden pinning of her irresolution almost took Lady Alicia’s breath away.“But I never said——”she began.“My dear friend,”he interrupted,“in the hour of action only a fool ever says. Come on.”And while she still hesitated they were off again.“But——”she tried to expostulate.“My dearest friend,”he whispered,“and my dear old vicarage!”[pg 53]He gave her no time to protest. Her skates were off, she was on her way to her carriage, and he was striking out again for the middle of the lake before she had time to collect her wits.He took out his watch and looked at the time. It was nearly a quarter-past four. Then he came up to Escott, who by this time was the only other soul on the ice.“About time we were going in,”said Escott.“Give me half-an-hour more. I’ll show you how to do that vine you admired.”“All right,”assented the doctor.A minute or two later Mr Beveridge, as if struck by a sudden reflection, exclaimed,“By Jove, there’s that poor devil Moggridge freezing to death on shore. Can’t you manage to look after so dangerous a lunatic yourself? It is his tea-time, too.”“Hallo, so he is,”replied Escott;“I’ll send him up.”And so there were only left the two men on the ice.For a little the lesson went on, and presently, leaving the doctor to practise, Mr Beveridge skated away by himself. He first paused opposite a seat on the bank over which hung Dr Escott’s great fur coat. This spectacle appeared to afford him peculiar pleasure. Then he looked at his watch. It was half-past four. He shut the watch with a click, threw a glance at his pupil, and struck out for the island. If the doctor had been looking, he might have seen him round it in the gloaming.Dr Escott, leaning far on his outside edge, met him as he returned.[pg 54]“What’s that under your coat?”he asked.“A picture I intend to ask your opinion on presently,”replied Mr Beveridge; and he added, with his most charming air,“But now, before we go in, let me give you a ride on one of these chairs, doctor.”They started off, the pace growing faster and faster, and presently Dr Escott saw that they were going behind the island.“Look out for the spring!”he cried.“It must be bearing now,”replied Mr Beveridge, striking out harder than ever;“they have taken away the board.”“All right,”said the doctor,“on you go.”As he spoke he felt a violent push, and the chair, slewing round as it went, flew on its course unguided. Mr Beveridge’s skates rasped on the ice with a spray of white powder as he stopped himself suddenly. Ahead of him there was a rending crack, and Dr Escott and his chair disappeared. Mr Beveridge laughed cheerfully, and taking from under his coat a board with the legend“Danger”printed in large characters across its face, he placed it beside the jagged hole.“Here is the picture, doctor,”he said, as a dripping, gasping head came up for the second time.“I must ask a thousand pardons for this—shall I say, liberty? But, as you know, I’m off my head. Good night. Let me recommend a hot drink when you come out. There are only five feet of water, so you won’t drown.”And with that he skated rapidly away.Escott had a glimpse of him vanishing round the corner[pg 55]of the island, and then the ice broke again, and down he went. Four, five, six times he made a desperate effort to get out, and every time the thin ice tore under his hands, and he slipped back again. By the seventh attempt he had broken his way to the thicker sheet; he got one leg up, slipped, got it up again, and at last, half numbed and wholly breathless, he was crawling circumspectly away. When at last he ventured to rise to his feet, he skated with all the speed he could make to the seat where he had left his coat. A pair of skates lay there instead, but the coat had vanished. Dr Escott’s philosophical estimate of Mr Beveridge became considerably modified.“Thank the Lord, he can’t get out of the grounds,”he said to himself;“what a dangerous devil he is! But he’ll be sorry for this performance, or I’m mistaken.”When he arrived at the house his first inquiries were for his tutor in the art of vine-cutting, and he was rather surprised to hear that he had not yet returned, for he only imagined himself the victim of a peculiarly ill-timed practical joke.Men with lanterns were sent out to search the park; and still there was no sign of Mr Beveridge. Inquiries were made at the lodge, but the gatekeeper could swear that only a single carriage had passed through. Dr Congleton refused at first to believe that he could possibly have got out.“Our arrangements are perfect,—the thing’s absurd,”he said, peremptorily.“That there man, sir,”replied Moggridge, who had[pg 56]been summoned,“is the slipperiest customer as ever I seed. ’E’s hout, sir, I believe.”“We might at least try the stations,”suggested Escott, who had by this time changed, and indulged in the hot drink recommended.The doctor began to be a little shaken.“Well, well,”said he,“I’ll send a man to each of the three stations within walking distance; and whether he’s out or in, we’ll have him by to-morrow morning. I’ve always taken care that he had no money in his pockets.”But what is a doctor’s care against a woman’s heart? For many to-morrows Clankwood had to lament the loss of the gifted Francis Beveridge.

“Two five-pound notes, half-a-sovereign, and seven and sixpence in silver,”said Mr Beveridge to himself.“Ah, and a card.”

On the card was written,“From a friend, if you will accept it. A.”

He was standing under the wall, in the secluded walk, holding a little lady’s purse in his hand, and listening to two different footsteps. One little pair of feet were hurrying away on the farther side of the high wall, another and larger were approaching him at a run.

“Wot’s he bin up to now, I wonder,”Moggridge panted to himself—for the second pair of feet belonged to him.“Shamming nose-bleed and sending me in for an ’andkerchief, and then sneaking off here by ’isself!”

“What a time you’ve been,”said Mr Beveridge, slipping the purse with its contents into his pocket.“I was so infernally cold I had to take a little walk. Got the handkerchief?”

In silence and with a suspicious solemnity Moggridge handed him the handkerchief, and they turned back for the house.

“Now for a balloon,”Mr Beveridge reflected.

Certainly it was cold. The frost nipped sharp that night, and next morning there were ice gardens on the windows, and the park lay white all through the winter sunshine.

By evening the private lake was reported to be bearing, and the next day it hummed under the first skaters. Hardly necessary to say Mr Beveridge was among the earliest of them, or that he was at once the object of general admiration and envy. He traced“vines”and“Q’s,”and performed wonderful feats on one leg all[pg 48]morning. At lunch he was in the best of spirits, and was off again at once to the ice.

When he reached the lake in the afternoon the first person he spied was Lady Alicia, and five minutes afterwards they were sailing off together hand in hand.

“I knew you would come to-day,”he remarked.

“Howcouldyou have known? It was by the merest chance I happened to come.”

“It has always been by the merest chance that any of them have ever come.”

“Who have ever come?”she inquired, with a vague feeling that he had said something he ought not to have, and that she was doing the same.

“Many things,”he smiled,“including purses. Which reminds me that I am eternally your debtor.”

She blushed and said,“I hope you didn’t mind.”

“Not much,”he answered, candidly.“In my present circumstances a five-pound note is more acceptable than a caress.”

The Lady Alicia again remembered the maidenly proprieties, and tried to change the subject.

“What beautiful ice!”she said.

“The question now is,”he continued, paying no heed to this diversion,“what am I to do next?”

“What do you mean?”she asked a little faintly, realising dimly that she was being regarded as a fellow-conspirator in some unlawful project.

“The wall is high, there is bottle-glass on the top, and I shall find it hard to bring away a fresh pair of trousers, and probably draughty if I don’t. The gates are always[pg 49]kept closed, and it isn’t worth any one’s while to open them for £10, 17s. 6d., less the price of a first-class ticket up to town. What are we to do?”

“We?”she gasped.

“You and I,”he explained.

“But—but I can’tpossiblydo anything.”

“‘Can’t possibly’is a phrase I have learned to misunderstand.”

“Really, Mr Beveridge, I mustn’t do anything.”

“Mustn’t is an invariable preface to a sin. Never use it; it’s a temptation in itself.”

“It wouldn’t be right,”she said, with quite a show of firmness.

He looked at her a little curiously. For a moment he almost seemed puzzled. Then he pressed her hand and asked tenderly,“Why not?”

And in a half-audible aside he added,“That’s the correct move, I think.”

“What did you say?”she asked.

“I said,‘Why not?’”he answered, with increasing tenderness.

“But you said something else.”

“I added a brief prayer for pity.”

Lady Alicia sighed and repeated a little less firmly.“It wouldn’t be right of me, Mr Beveridge.”

“But what would be wrong?”

This was said with even more fervour.

“My conscience—we are very particular, you know.”

“Who are‘we’?”

“Papa isverystrict High Church.”

An idea seemed to strike Mr Beveridge, for he ruminated in silence.

“I asked Mr Candles—our curate, you know,”Lady Alicia continued, with a heroic effort to make her position clear.

“You told him!”he exclaimed.

“Oh, I didn’t say who it was—I mean what it was I thought of doing—I mean the temptation—that is, the possibility. And he said it was very kind of me to think of it; but I mustn’t do anything, and he advised me to read a book he gave me, and—and I mustn’t think of it, really, Mr Beveridge.”

To himself Mr Beveridge repeated under his breath,“Archbishops, bishops, deacons, curates, fast in Lent, and an anthem after the Creed. I think I remember enough to pass.”

Then he assumed a very serious face, and said aloud,“Your scruples do your heart credit. They have given me an insight into your deep and sweet character, which emboldens me to make a confession.”

He stopped skating, folded his arms, and continued unblushingly,“I was educated for the Church, but the prejudices of my parents, the immature scepticism of youth, and some uncertainty about obtaining my archbishopric, induced me in an unfortunate moment, which I never ceased to bitterly regret, to quit my orders.”

“You are in orders?”she exclaimed.

“I was in several. I cancelled them, and entered the Navy instead.”

“The Navy?”she asked, excusably bewildered by these rapid changes of occupation.

“For five years I was never ashore.”

“But,”she hesitated—“but you said you were in the Army.”

Mr Beveridge gave her a look full of benignant compassion that made her, she did not quite know why, feel terribly abashed.

“My regiment was quartered at sea,”he condescended to explain.“But in time my conscience awoke. I announced my intention of resuming my charge. My uncle was furious. My enemies were many. I was seized, thrown into this prison-house, and now my only friend fails me.”

They were both silent. She ventured once to glance up at his face, and it seemed to her that his eyes were moist—though perhaps it was that her own were a little dim.

“Let us skate on,”he said abruptly, with a fine air of resignation.

“By the way,”he suddenly added,“I was extremely High Church, in fact almost freezingly high.”

For five minutes they skated in silence, then Lady Alicia began softly,“Supposing you—you went away——”

“What is the use of talking of it?”he exclaimed, melodramatically.“Let me forget my short-lived hopes!”

“Youhavea friend,”she said, slowly.

“A friend who tantalises me by‘supposings’!”

“But supposing you did, Mr Beveridge, would you go back to your—did you say you had a parish?”

“I had: a large, populous, and happy parish. It is my one dream to sit once more on its council and direct my curate.”

“Of course that makes a difference. Mr Candles didn’t know all this.”

They had come by this time to the corner of a little island that lay not far from the shore; in the channel ahead a board labelled“Danger”marked a hidden spring; behind them the shining ice was almost bare of skaters, for all but Dr Escott seemed to be leaving; on the bank they could see Moggridge prowling about in the gathering dusk, a vigilant reminder of captivity. Mr Beveridge took the whole scene in with, it is to be feared, a militant rather than an episcopal eye. Then he suddenly asked,“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“You drive back?”

“Ye—es.”

He took out his watch and made a brief calculation.

“Go now, call at Clankwood or do anything else you like, and pass down the drive again at a quarter to five.”

This sudden pinning of her irresolution almost took Lady Alicia’s breath away.

“But I never said——”she began.

“My dear friend,”he interrupted,“in the hour of action only a fool ever says. Come on.”

And while she still hesitated they were off again.

“But——”she tried to expostulate.

“My dearest friend,”he whispered,“and my dear old vicarage!”

He gave her no time to protest. Her skates were off, she was on her way to her carriage, and he was striking out again for the middle of the lake before she had time to collect her wits.

He took out his watch and looked at the time. It was nearly a quarter-past four. Then he came up to Escott, who by this time was the only other soul on the ice.

“About time we were going in,”said Escott.

“Give me half-an-hour more. I’ll show you how to do that vine you admired.”

“All right,”assented the doctor.

A minute or two later Mr Beveridge, as if struck by a sudden reflection, exclaimed,“By Jove, there’s that poor devil Moggridge freezing to death on shore. Can’t you manage to look after so dangerous a lunatic yourself? It is his tea-time, too.”

“Hallo, so he is,”replied Escott;“I’ll send him up.”

And so there were only left the two men on the ice.

For a little the lesson went on, and presently, leaving the doctor to practise, Mr Beveridge skated away by himself. He first paused opposite a seat on the bank over which hung Dr Escott’s great fur coat. This spectacle appeared to afford him peculiar pleasure. Then he looked at his watch. It was half-past four. He shut the watch with a click, threw a glance at his pupil, and struck out for the island. If the doctor had been looking, he might have seen him round it in the gloaming.

Dr Escott, leaning far on his outside edge, met him as he returned.

“What’s that under your coat?”he asked.

“A picture I intend to ask your opinion on presently,”replied Mr Beveridge; and he added, with his most charming air,“But now, before we go in, let me give you a ride on one of these chairs, doctor.”

They started off, the pace growing faster and faster, and presently Dr Escott saw that they were going behind the island.

“Look out for the spring!”he cried.

“It must be bearing now,”replied Mr Beveridge, striking out harder than ever;“they have taken away the board.”

“All right,”said the doctor,“on you go.”

As he spoke he felt a violent push, and the chair, slewing round as it went, flew on its course unguided. Mr Beveridge’s skates rasped on the ice with a spray of white powder as he stopped himself suddenly. Ahead of him there was a rending crack, and Dr Escott and his chair disappeared. Mr Beveridge laughed cheerfully, and taking from under his coat a board with the legend“Danger”printed in large characters across its face, he placed it beside the jagged hole.

“Here is the picture, doctor,”he said, as a dripping, gasping head came up for the second time.“I must ask a thousand pardons for this—shall I say, liberty? But, as you know, I’m off my head. Good night. Let me recommend a hot drink when you come out. There are only five feet of water, so you won’t drown.”And with that he skated rapidly away.

Escott had a glimpse of him vanishing round the corner[pg 55]of the island, and then the ice broke again, and down he went. Four, five, six times he made a desperate effort to get out, and every time the thin ice tore under his hands, and he slipped back again. By the seventh attempt he had broken his way to the thicker sheet; he got one leg up, slipped, got it up again, and at last, half numbed and wholly breathless, he was crawling circumspectly away. When at last he ventured to rise to his feet, he skated with all the speed he could make to the seat where he had left his coat. A pair of skates lay there instead, but the coat had vanished. Dr Escott’s philosophical estimate of Mr Beveridge became considerably modified.

“Thank the Lord, he can’t get out of the grounds,”he said to himself;“what a dangerous devil he is! But he’ll be sorry for this performance, or I’m mistaken.”

When he arrived at the house his first inquiries were for his tutor in the art of vine-cutting, and he was rather surprised to hear that he had not yet returned, for he only imagined himself the victim of a peculiarly ill-timed practical joke.

Men with lanterns were sent out to search the park; and still there was no sign of Mr Beveridge. Inquiries were made at the lodge, but the gatekeeper could swear that only a single carriage had passed through. Dr Congleton refused at first to believe that he could possibly have got out.

“Our arrangements are perfect,—the thing’s absurd,”he said, peremptorily.

“That there man, sir,”replied Moggridge, who had[pg 56]been summoned,“is the slipperiest customer as ever I seed. ’E’s hout, sir, I believe.”

“We might at least try the stations,”suggested Escott, who had by this time changed, and indulged in the hot drink recommended.

The doctor began to be a little shaken.

“Well, well,”said he,“I’ll send a man to each of the three stations within walking distance; and whether he’s out or in, we’ll have him by to-morrow morning. I’ve always taken care that he had no money in his pockets.”

But what is a doctor’s care against a woman’s heart? For many to-morrows Clankwood had to lament the loss of the gifted Francis Beveridge.

CHAPTER VII.At sixteen minutes to five Mr Beveridge stood by the side of the Clankwood Avenue, comfortably wrapped in Dr Escort’s fur coat, and smoking with the greatest relish one of Dr Escott’s undeniable cigars.It was almost dark, the air bit keen, the dim park with its population of black trees was filled with a frosty, eager stillness. All round the invisible wall hemmed him in, the ten pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence lay useless in his pocket till that was past, and his one hope depended on a woman. But Mr Beveridge was an amateur in the sex, and he smiled complacently as he smoked.He had waited barely three minutes when the quick[pg 57]clatter of a pair of horses fell on his ears, and presently the lights of a carriage and pair, driving swiftly away from Clankwood, raked the drive on either side. As they rattled up to him he gave a shout to the coachman to stop, and stepped right in front of the horses. With something that sounded unlike a blessing, the pair were thrown almost on their haunches to check them in time. Never stopping to explain, he threw open the door and sprang in; the coachman, hearing no sound of protest, whipped up again, and Mr Beveridge found himself rolling through the park of Clankwood in the Countess of Grillyer’s carriage with a very timid little figure by his side. Even in that moment of triumphant excitement the excellence of his manners was remarkable: the first thing he said was,“Do you mind smoking?”In her confusion of mind Lady Alicia could only reply“Oh no,”and not till some time afterwards did she remember that the odour of a cigar was clinging and the Countess’s nose unusually sensitive.After this first remark he leaned back in silence, gradually filling the carriage with a blue-grey cloud, and looking out of the windows first on one side and then on the other. They passed quickly through the lines of trees and the open spaces of frosty park-land, they drew up at the lodge for a moment, he heard his prison gates swing open, the harness jingled and the hoofs began to clatter again, a swift vision of lighted windows and a man looking on them incuriously swept by, and then they were rolling over a country road between hedgerows and under the free stars.[pg 58]It was the Lady Alicia who spoke first.“I never thought you would really come,”she said.“I have been waiting for that remark,”he replied, with his most irresistible smile;“now for some more practical conversation.”As he did not immediately begin this conversation himself, her curiosity overcame her, and she asked,“How did you manage to get out?”“As my friend Dr Escott offered no opposition, I walked away.”“Did he really let you?”“He never even expostulated.”“Then—then it’s all right?”she said, with an inexplicable sensation of disappointment.“Perfectly—so far.”“But—didn’t they object?”“Not yet,”he replied;“objections to my movements are generally made after they have been performed.”Somehow she felt immensely relieved at this hint of opposition.“I’m so glad you got away,”she whispered, and then repented in a flutter.“Not more so than I am,”he answered, pressing her hand.“And now,”he added,“I should like to know how near Ashditch Junction you propose to take me.”“Where are you going to, Mr Beveridge?”The“Mr Beveridge”was thrown in as a corrective to the hand-pressure.“To London; where else, my Alicia? With £10,[pg 59]17s. 6d. in my pocket, I shall be able to eat at least three good dinners, and, by the third of them, if I haven’t fallen on my feet it will be the first time I have descended so unluckily.”“But,”she asked, considerably disconcerted,“I thought you were going back to your parish.”For a moment he too seemed a trifle put about. Then he replied readily,“So I am, as soon as I have purchased the necessary outfit, restocked my ecclesiastical library, and called on my bishop.”She felt greatly relieved at this justification of her share in the adventure.“Drop me at the nearest point to the station,”he said.“I am afraid,”she began—“I mean I think you had better get out soon. The first road on the right will take you straight there, and we had better not pass it.”“Then I must bid you farewell,”and he sighed most effectively.“Farewell, my benefactress, my dear Alicia! Shall I ever see you, shall I ever hear of you again?”“I might—I might just write once; if you will answer it: I mean if you would care to hear from such a——”She found it difficult to finish, and prudently stopped.“Thanks,”he replied cheerfully;“do,—I shall live in hopes. I’d better stop the carriage now.”He let down the window, when she said hastily,“But I don’t know your address.”He reflected for an instant.“Care of the Archbishop of York will always find me,”he replied; and as if unwilling to let his emotion be observed, he immediately[pg 60]put his head out of the window and called on the coachman to stop.“Good-bye,”he whispered, tenderly, squeezing her fingers with one hand and opening the door with the other.“Don’t quite forget me,”she whispered back.“Never!”he replied, and was in the act of getting out when he suddenly turned, and exclaimed,“I must be more out of practice than I thought; I had almost forgotten the protested salute.”And without further preamble the Lady Alicia found herself kissed at last.He jumped out and shut the door, and the carriage with its faint halo clattered into the darkness.“They are wonderfully alike,”he reflected.About twenty minutes later he walked leisurely into Ashditch Junction, and having singled out the station-master, he accosted him with an air of beneficient consideration and inquired how soon he could catch a train for London.It appeared that the up express was not due for nearly three-quarters of an hour.“A little too long to wait,”he said to himself, as he turned up the collar of his purloined fur coat to keep out the cold, and picked another cigar from its rightful owner’s case.By way of further defying the temperature and cementing his acquaintance with the station-master, he offered to regale that gratified official with such refreshments as the station bar provided. In the consumption of whiskies-and-sodas[pg 61](a beverage difficult to obtain in any quantity at Clankwood) Mr Beveridge showed himself as accomplished as in every other feat. In thirty-five minutes he had despatched no fewer than six, besides completely winning the station-master’s heart. As he had little more than five minutes now to wait, he bade a genial farewell to the lady behind the bar, and started to purchase his ticket.Hardly had he left the door of the refreshment-room when he perceived an uncomfortably familiar figure just arrived, breathless with running, on the opposite platform. The light of a lamp fell on his shining face: it was Moggridge!A stout heart might be forgiven for sinking at the sight, but Mr Beveridge merely turned to his now firm friends and said with his easiest air,“On the opposite platform I perceive one of my runaway lunatics. Bring a couple of stout porters as quickly as you can, for he is a person of much strength and address. My name,”he drew a card-case from the pocket of his fur coat,“is, as you see, Dr Escott of Clankwood.”Meanwhile Moggridge, after hurriedly investigating the platform he was on, suddenly spied a tall fur-coated figure on the opposite side. Without a moment’s hesitation he sprang on to the rails, and had just mounted the other side as the station-master and two porters appeared.Seeing his allies by his side Mr Beveridge never said a word, but, throwing off his hat, he lowered his head, charged his keeper, and picking him up by the knees[pg 62]threw him heavily on his back. Before he had a chance of recovering himself the other three were seated on his chest employed in winding a coil of rope round and round his prostrate form.Two minutes later Moggridge was sitting bound hand and foot in the booking office, addressing an amused audience in a strain of perhaps excusable exasperation, which however merely served to impress the Ashditch officials with a growing sense of their address in capturing so dangerous a lunatic. In the middle of this entertaining scene the London express steamed in, and Mr Beveridge, courteously thanking the station-master for his assistance, stepped into a first-class carriage.“I should be much obliged,”he said, leaning on the door of his compartment and blowing the smoke of Dr Escott’s last Havannah lightly from his lips,“if you would be kind enough to keep that poor fellow in the station till to-morrow. It is rather too late to send him back now. Good night, and many thanks.”He pressed a coin into the station-master’s hand, which thatdisappointedofficial only discovered on emptying his pockets at night to be an ordinary sixpence, the guard whistled, and one by one, smoothly and slowly and then in a bright stream, the station lamps slipped by. The last of them flitted into the night, and the train swung and rattled by a mile a minute nearer to London town and farther from the high stone wall. There was no other stop, and for a long hour the adventurer sat with his legs luxuriously stretched along the cushions looking out into a fainter duplicate of his carriage,[pg 63]pierced now and then by the glitter of brighter points as they whisked by some wayside village, or crossed by the black shadows of trees. The whole time he smiled contentedly, doubtless at the prospect of his parish work. All at once he seemed stirred, and, turning in his seat, laid his face upon the window, and pulled down the blind behind his head, so that he could see into the night. He had spied the first bright filaments of London. Quickly they spread into a twinkling network, and then as quickly were shut out by the first line of suburb houses; through the gaps they grew nearer and flared cheerfully; the train hooted over an archway, and in the road below he had a glimpse of shop windows and crowded pavements and moving omnibuses: he was in the world again, and at the foretaste of all this life he laughed like a delighted child. Last of all came the spread of shining rails and the red and yellow lights of many signals, and then the high glass roof and long lamp-lit platforms of St Euston’s Cross.Unencumbered by luggage or plans, Mr Francis Beveridge stuck his hands deep in his pockets and strolled aimlessly enough out of the station into the tideway of the Euston Road. For a little he stood stock-still on the pavement watching the throng of people and the perpetual buses and drays and the jingling hansoms picking their way through it all.“For a man of brains,”he moralised,“even though he be certified as insane, for probably the best of reasons, this London has surely fools enough to provide him with all he needs and more than he deserves. I shall set out[pg 64]with my lantern like a second Diogenes to look for a foolish man.”And so he strolled along again to the first opening southwards. That led him through a region of dingy enough brick by day, but decked now with its string of lamps and bright shop-windows here and there, and kept alive by passing buses and cabs going and coming from the station. Farther on the street grew gloomier, and a dark square with a grove of trees in the middle opened off one side; but, rattle or quiet, flaring shops or sad-looking lodgings, he found it all too fresh and amusing to hurry.“Back to my parish again,”he said to himself, smiling broadly at the drollery of the idea.“If I’m caught to-morrow, I’ll at least have one merry night in my wicked, humorous old charge.”He reached Holborn and turned west in the happiest and most enviable of moods; the very policemen seemed to cast a friendly eye on him; the frosty air, he thought, made the lights burn brighter and the crowd move more briskly than ever he had seen them. Suddenly the sight of a hairdresser’s saloon brought an inspiration. He stroked his beard, twisted his moustaches half regretfully, and then exclaiming,“Exit Mr Beveridge,”turned into the shop.

At sixteen minutes to five Mr Beveridge stood by the side of the Clankwood Avenue, comfortably wrapped in Dr Escort’s fur coat, and smoking with the greatest relish one of Dr Escott’s undeniable cigars.

It was almost dark, the air bit keen, the dim park with its population of black trees was filled with a frosty, eager stillness. All round the invisible wall hemmed him in, the ten pounds, seventeen shillings, and sixpence lay useless in his pocket till that was past, and his one hope depended on a woman. But Mr Beveridge was an amateur in the sex, and he smiled complacently as he smoked.

He had waited barely three minutes when the quick[pg 57]clatter of a pair of horses fell on his ears, and presently the lights of a carriage and pair, driving swiftly away from Clankwood, raked the drive on either side. As they rattled up to him he gave a shout to the coachman to stop, and stepped right in front of the horses. With something that sounded unlike a blessing, the pair were thrown almost on their haunches to check them in time. Never stopping to explain, he threw open the door and sprang in; the coachman, hearing no sound of protest, whipped up again, and Mr Beveridge found himself rolling through the park of Clankwood in the Countess of Grillyer’s carriage with a very timid little figure by his side. Even in that moment of triumphant excitement the excellence of his manners was remarkable: the first thing he said was,“Do you mind smoking?”

In her confusion of mind Lady Alicia could only reply“Oh no,”and not till some time afterwards did she remember that the odour of a cigar was clinging and the Countess’s nose unusually sensitive.

After this first remark he leaned back in silence, gradually filling the carriage with a blue-grey cloud, and looking out of the windows first on one side and then on the other. They passed quickly through the lines of trees and the open spaces of frosty park-land, they drew up at the lodge for a moment, he heard his prison gates swing open, the harness jingled and the hoofs began to clatter again, a swift vision of lighted windows and a man looking on them incuriously swept by, and then they were rolling over a country road between hedgerows and under the free stars.

It was the Lady Alicia who spoke first.

“I never thought you would really come,”she said.

“I have been waiting for that remark,”he replied, with his most irresistible smile;“now for some more practical conversation.”

As he did not immediately begin this conversation himself, her curiosity overcame her, and she asked,“How did you manage to get out?”

“As my friend Dr Escott offered no opposition, I walked away.”

“Did he really let you?”

“He never even expostulated.”

“Then—then it’s all right?”she said, with an inexplicable sensation of disappointment.

“Perfectly—so far.”

“But—didn’t they object?”

“Not yet,”he replied;“objections to my movements are generally made after they have been performed.”

Somehow she felt immensely relieved at this hint of opposition.

“I’m so glad you got away,”she whispered, and then repented in a flutter.

“Not more so than I am,”he answered, pressing her hand.

“And now,”he added,“I should like to know how near Ashditch Junction you propose to take me.”

“Where are you going to, Mr Beveridge?”

The“Mr Beveridge”was thrown in as a corrective to the hand-pressure.

“To London; where else, my Alicia? With £10,[pg 59]17s. 6d. in my pocket, I shall be able to eat at least three good dinners, and, by the third of them, if I haven’t fallen on my feet it will be the first time I have descended so unluckily.”

“But,”she asked, considerably disconcerted,“I thought you were going back to your parish.”

For a moment he too seemed a trifle put about. Then he replied readily,“So I am, as soon as I have purchased the necessary outfit, restocked my ecclesiastical library, and called on my bishop.”

She felt greatly relieved at this justification of her share in the adventure.

“Drop me at the nearest point to the station,”he said.

“I am afraid,”she began—“I mean I think you had better get out soon. The first road on the right will take you straight there, and we had better not pass it.”

“Then I must bid you farewell,”and he sighed most effectively.“Farewell, my benefactress, my dear Alicia! Shall I ever see you, shall I ever hear of you again?”

“I might—I might just write once; if you will answer it: I mean if you would care to hear from such a——”

She found it difficult to finish, and prudently stopped.

“Thanks,”he replied cheerfully;“do,—I shall live in hopes. I’d better stop the carriage now.”

He let down the window, when she said hastily,“But I don’t know your address.”

He reflected for an instant.“Care of the Archbishop of York will always find me,”he replied; and as if unwilling to let his emotion be observed, he immediately[pg 60]put his head out of the window and called on the coachman to stop.

“Good-bye,”he whispered, tenderly, squeezing her fingers with one hand and opening the door with the other.

“Don’t quite forget me,”she whispered back.

“Never!”he replied, and was in the act of getting out when he suddenly turned, and exclaimed,“I must be more out of practice than I thought; I had almost forgotten the protested salute.”

And without further preamble the Lady Alicia found herself kissed at last.

He jumped out and shut the door, and the carriage with its faint halo clattered into the darkness.

“They are wonderfully alike,”he reflected.

About twenty minutes later he walked leisurely into Ashditch Junction, and having singled out the station-master, he accosted him with an air of beneficient consideration and inquired how soon he could catch a train for London.

It appeared that the up express was not due for nearly three-quarters of an hour.

“A little too long to wait,”he said to himself, as he turned up the collar of his purloined fur coat to keep out the cold, and picked another cigar from its rightful owner’s case.

By way of further defying the temperature and cementing his acquaintance with the station-master, he offered to regale that gratified official with such refreshments as the station bar provided. In the consumption of whiskies-and-sodas[pg 61](a beverage difficult to obtain in any quantity at Clankwood) Mr Beveridge showed himself as accomplished as in every other feat. In thirty-five minutes he had despatched no fewer than six, besides completely winning the station-master’s heart. As he had little more than five minutes now to wait, he bade a genial farewell to the lady behind the bar, and started to purchase his ticket.

Hardly had he left the door of the refreshment-room when he perceived an uncomfortably familiar figure just arrived, breathless with running, on the opposite platform. The light of a lamp fell on his shining face: it was Moggridge!

A stout heart might be forgiven for sinking at the sight, but Mr Beveridge merely turned to his now firm friends and said with his easiest air,“On the opposite platform I perceive one of my runaway lunatics. Bring a couple of stout porters as quickly as you can, for he is a person of much strength and address. My name,”he drew a card-case from the pocket of his fur coat,“is, as you see, Dr Escott of Clankwood.”

Meanwhile Moggridge, after hurriedly investigating the platform he was on, suddenly spied a tall fur-coated figure on the opposite side. Without a moment’s hesitation he sprang on to the rails, and had just mounted the other side as the station-master and two porters appeared.

Seeing his allies by his side Mr Beveridge never said a word, but, throwing off his hat, he lowered his head, charged his keeper, and picking him up by the knees[pg 62]threw him heavily on his back. Before he had a chance of recovering himself the other three were seated on his chest employed in winding a coil of rope round and round his prostrate form.

Two minutes later Moggridge was sitting bound hand and foot in the booking office, addressing an amused audience in a strain of perhaps excusable exasperation, which however merely served to impress the Ashditch officials with a growing sense of their address in capturing so dangerous a lunatic. In the middle of this entertaining scene the London express steamed in, and Mr Beveridge, courteously thanking the station-master for his assistance, stepped into a first-class carriage.

“I should be much obliged,”he said, leaning on the door of his compartment and blowing the smoke of Dr Escott’s last Havannah lightly from his lips,“if you would be kind enough to keep that poor fellow in the station till to-morrow. It is rather too late to send him back now. Good night, and many thanks.”

He pressed a coin into the station-master’s hand, which thatdisappointedofficial only discovered on emptying his pockets at night to be an ordinary sixpence, the guard whistled, and one by one, smoothly and slowly and then in a bright stream, the station lamps slipped by. The last of them flitted into the night, and the train swung and rattled by a mile a minute nearer to London town and farther from the high stone wall. There was no other stop, and for a long hour the adventurer sat with his legs luxuriously stretched along the cushions looking out into a fainter duplicate of his carriage,[pg 63]pierced now and then by the glitter of brighter points as they whisked by some wayside village, or crossed by the black shadows of trees. The whole time he smiled contentedly, doubtless at the prospect of his parish work. All at once he seemed stirred, and, turning in his seat, laid his face upon the window, and pulled down the blind behind his head, so that he could see into the night. He had spied the first bright filaments of London. Quickly they spread into a twinkling network, and then as quickly were shut out by the first line of suburb houses; through the gaps they grew nearer and flared cheerfully; the train hooted over an archway, and in the road below he had a glimpse of shop windows and crowded pavements and moving omnibuses: he was in the world again, and at the foretaste of all this life he laughed like a delighted child. Last of all came the spread of shining rails and the red and yellow lights of many signals, and then the high glass roof and long lamp-lit platforms of St Euston’s Cross.

Unencumbered by luggage or plans, Mr Francis Beveridge stuck his hands deep in his pockets and strolled aimlessly enough out of the station into the tideway of the Euston Road. For a little he stood stock-still on the pavement watching the throng of people and the perpetual buses and drays and the jingling hansoms picking their way through it all.

“For a man of brains,”he moralised,“even though he be certified as insane, for probably the best of reasons, this London has surely fools enough to provide him with all he needs and more than he deserves. I shall set out[pg 64]with my lantern like a second Diogenes to look for a foolish man.”

And so he strolled along again to the first opening southwards. That led him through a region of dingy enough brick by day, but decked now with its string of lamps and bright shop-windows here and there, and kept alive by passing buses and cabs going and coming from the station. Farther on the street grew gloomier, and a dark square with a grove of trees in the middle opened off one side; but, rattle or quiet, flaring shops or sad-looking lodgings, he found it all too fresh and amusing to hurry.

“Back to my parish again,”he said to himself, smiling broadly at the drollery of the idea.“If I’m caught to-morrow, I’ll at least have one merry night in my wicked, humorous old charge.”

He reached Holborn and turned west in the happiest and most enviable of moods; the very policemen seemed to cast a friendly eye on him; the frosty air, he thought, made the lights burn brighter and the crowd move more briskly than ever he had seen them. Suddenly the sight of a hairdresser’s saloon brought an inspiration. He stroked his beard, twisted his moustaches half regretfully, and then exclaiming,“Exit Mr Beveridge,”turned into the shop.

Back to IndexNext