Of all fairy gifts, surely the most desirable in prospect, and the most embarrassing in practice, would be the magical telescope of Prince Ali, in the “Arabian Nights.” With his glass, it will be remembered, he could see whatever was happening on whatever part of the earth he chose, and, though absent, was always able to behold the face of his beloved. How often would one give Aladdin’s Lamp, and Fortunatus’ Purse, and the invisible Cap which was made of “a darkness that might befelt” to possess for one hour the Telescope of Fairyland!
Could Maitland and Barton have taken a peep through the tube, while they were pondering over the means of finding Margaret, their quest would have been aided, indeed, but they would scarcely have been reassured. Yet there was nothing very awful, nor squalid, nor alarming, as they might have expected, anticipated, and dreaded, in what the vision would have shown. Margaret was not in some foreign den of iniquity, nor, indeed, in a den at all.
The tube enchanted would have revealed to them Margaret, not very far off, not in Siberia nor Teheran, but simply in Victoria Square, Pimlico, S.W. There, in a bedroom, not more than commonly dingy, on the drawing-room floor, with the rattling old green Venetian blinds drawn down, Margaret would have been displayed. The testimony of a cloud of witnesses, in the form of phials and medical vessels, proved that she had for some time been an invalid. The pretty dusky red of health would have been seen to have faded from her cheeks, and the fun and daring had died out of her eyes. The cheeks were white and thin, the eyes were half-closed from sickness and fatigue, and Margaret, a while ago so ready of speech, did not even bestir herself to answer the question which a gentleman, who stood almost like a doctor, in an attitude of respectful inquiry, was putting as to her health.
He was a tall gentleman, dark, with a ripe kind of face, and full, red, sensitive, sensual lips, not without a trace of humor. Near the door, in a protesting kind of attitude, as if there against her will, was a remarkably handsome young person, attired plainly as a housekeeper, or upper-servant, The faces of some women appear to have been furnished by Nature, or informed by habit, with an aspect that seems to say (in fair members of the less educated classes), “I won’t put up with none of them goings on.” Such an expression this woman wears.
“I hope you feel better, my dear?” the dark gentleman asks again.
“She’s going on well enough,” interrupted the woman with the beautiful dissatisfied face. “What with peaches and grapes from Covent Garden, and tonics as you might bathe in—”
“Heaven forbid!”
“Sheoughtto get well,” the dissatisfied woman continued, as if the invalid were obstinately bent on remaining ill.
“I was not speaking, at the moment, to you, Mrs. Darling,” said the dark gentleman, with mockery in his politeness, “but to the young lady whom I have entrusted to your charge.”
“A pretty trust!” the woman replied, with a sniff
“Yes, as you kindly say, an extremely pretty trust. And now, Margaret, my dear—’—”
The fair woman walked to the window, and stared out of it with a trembling lip, and eyes that saw nothing.
“Now, Margaret, my dear, tell me for yourself, how do you feel?”
“You are very kind,” answered the girl at last. “I am sure I am better. I am not very strong yet. I hope I shall get up soon.”
“Is there anything you would like? Perhaps you are tired of peaches and grapes; may I send you some oranges?”
“Oh, thank you; you are very good. I am often thirsty when I waken, or rather when I leave off dreaming. I seem to dream, rather than sleep, just now.”
“Poor girl!” said the dark gentleman, in a pitying voice. “And what do you dream?”
“There seems to be a dreadful quiet, smooth, white place,” said the girl, slowly, “where I am; and something I feel—something, I don’t know what—drives me out of it. I cannot rest in it; and then I find myself on a dark plain, and a great black horror, a kind of blackness falling in drifts, like black snow in a wind, sweeps softly over me, till I feel mixed in the blackness; and there is always some one watching me, and chasing me in the dark—some one I can’t see. Then I slide into the smooth, white, horrible place again, and feel Imustget away from it. Oh, I don’t know which is worst! And they go and come all the while I’m asleep, I suppose.”
“I am waiting for the doctor to look in again; but allIcan do is to get you some Jaffa oranges, nice large ones, myself. You will oblige me, Mrs. Darling” (he turned to the housekeeper), “by placing them in Miss Burnside’s room, and then, perhaps, she will find them refreshing when she wakes. Good-by for the moment, Margaret.”
The fair woman said nothing, and the dark gentleman walked into the street, where a hansom cab waited for him. “Covent Garden,” he cried to the cabman.
We have not for some time seen, or rather we have for some time made believe not to recognize, the Hon. Thomas Cranley, whose acquaintance (a very compromising one) we achieved early in this narrative.
Mr. Cranley, “with his own substantial private purpose sun-clear before him” (as Mr. Carlyle would have said, in apologizing for some more celebrated villain), had enticed Margaret from school. Nor had this been, to a person of his experience and resources, a feat of very great difficulty. When he had once learned, by the simplest and readiest means, the nature of Maitland’s telegram to Miss Marlett, his course had been dear. The telegram which followed Maitland’s, and in which Cranley used Maitland’s name, had entirely deceived Miss Marlett, as we have seen. By the most obvious ruses he had prevented Maitland from following his track to London. His housekeeper had entered the “engaged” carriage at Westbourne Park, and shared, as far as the terminus, the compartment previously occupied by himself and Margaret alone. Between Westbourne Park and Paddington he had packed the notable bearskin coat in his portmanteau. The consequence was, that at Paddington no one noticed a gentleman in a bearskin coat, travelling alone with a young lady. A gentleman in a light ulster, travelling with two ladies, by no means answered to the description Maitland gave in his examination of the porters. They, moreover, had paid but a divided attention to Maitland’s inquiries.
The success of Cranley’s device was secured by its elementary simplicity. A gentleman who, for any reason, wishes to obliterate his trail, does wisely to wear some very notable, conspicuous, unmistakable garb at one point of his progress. He then becomes, in the minds of most who see him, “the man in the bearskin coat,” or “the man in the jack-boots,” or “the man with the white hat.” His identity is practically merged in that of the coat, or the boots, or the hat; and when he slips out of them, he seems to leave his personality behind, or to pack it up in his portmanteau, or with his rugs. By acting on this principle (which only requires to be stated to win the assent of pure reason), Mr. Cranley had successfully lost himself and Margaret in London.
With Margaret his task had been less difficult than it looked. She recognized him as an acquaintance of her father’s, and he represented to her that he had been an officer of the man-of-war in which her father had served; that he had lately encountered her father, and pitied his poverty—in poor Shields, an irremediable condition. The father, so he declared, had spoken to him often and anxiously about Margaret, and with dislike and distrust about Maitland. According to Mr. Cranley, Shield’s chief desire in life had been to see Margaret entirely free from Maitland’s guardianship. But he had been conscious that to take the girl away from school would be harmful to her prospects. Finally, with his latest breath, so Mr. Cranley declared, he had commended Margaret to his old officer, and had implored him to abstract her from the charge of the Fellow of St Gatien’s.
Margaret, as we know, did not entertain a very lively kindness for Maitland, nor had she ever heard her father speak of that unlucky young man with the respect which his kindness, his academic rank, and his position in society deserved. It must be remembered that, concerning the manner of her father’s death, she had shrunk from asking questions. She knew it had been sudden; she inferred that it had not been reputable. Often had she dreaded for him one of the accidents against which Providence does not invariably protect the drunkard. Now the accident had arrived, she was fain to be ignorant of the manner of it. Her new guardian, again, was obviously a gentleman; he treated her with perfect politeness and respect, and, from the evening of the day when she left school, she had been in the charge of that apparently correct chaperon, the handsome housekeeper with the disapproving countenance. Mr. Cranley had even given up to her his own rooms in Victoria Square, and had lodged elsewhere; his exact address Margaret did not know. The only really delicate point—Cranley’s assumption of the name of “Mr. Lithgow”—he frankly confessed to her as soon as they were well out of the Dovecot. He represented that, for the fulfilment of her father’s last wish, the ruse of the telegram and the assumed name had been necessary, though highly repugnant to the feelings of an officer and a gentleman. Poor Margaret had seen nothing of gentlemen, except as philanthropists, and (as we know) philanthropists permit themselves a license and discretion not customary in common society.
Finally, even had the girl’s suspicions been awakened, her illness prevented her from too closely reviewing the situation. She was with her father’s friend, an older man by far, and therefore a more acceptable guardian than Maitland. She was fulfilling her father’s wish, and hoped soon to be put in the way of independence, and of earning her own livelihood; and independence was Margaret’s ideal.
Her father’s friend, her own protector—in that light she regarded Cranley, when she was well enough to think consecutively. There could be no more complete hallucination. Cranley was one of those egotists who do undoubtedly exist, but whose existence, when they are discovered, is a perpetual surprise even to the selfish race of men. In him the instinct of self-preservation (without which the race could not have endured for a week) had remained absolutely unmodified, as it is modified in the rest of us, by thousands of years of inherited social experience. Cran-ley’s temper, in every juncture, was precisely that of the first human being who ever found himself and other human beings struggling in a flood for a floating log that will only support one of them. Everything must give way to his desire; he had literally never denied himself anything that he dared taka As certainly as the stone, once tossed up, obeys the only law it knows, and falls back to earth, so surely Cranley would obtain what he desired (if it seemed safe), though a human life, or a human soul, stood between him and his purpose.
Now, Margaret stood, at this moment, between him and the aims on which his greed was desperately bent. It was, therefore, necessary that she should vanish; and to that end he had got her into his power. Cranley’s original idea had been the obvious one of transporting the girl to the Continent, where, under the pretence that a suitable situation of some kind had been found for her, he would so arrange that England should never see her more, and that her place among honest women should be lost forever. But there were difficulties in the way of this tempting plan. For instance, the girl knew some French, and was no tame, unresisting fool; and then Margaret’s illness had occurred, and had caused delay, and given time for reflection.
“After all,” he thought, as he lit his cigar and examined his mustache in the mirror (kindly provided for that purpose in well-appointed hansoms)—“after all it is only, the dead who tell no tales, and make no inconvenient claims.”
For after turning over in his brain the various safe and easy ways of “removing” an inconvenient person, one devilish scheme had flashed across a not uninstructed intellect—a scheme which appeared open to the smallest number of objections.
“She shall take a turn for the worse,” he thought; “and the doctor will be an uncommonly clever man, and particularly well read in criminal jurisprudence, if he sees anything suspicious in it.”
Thus pondering, this astute miscreant stopped at Covent Garden, dismissed his cab, and purchased a basket of very fine Jaffa oranges. He then hailed another cab, and drove with his parcel to the shop of an eminent firm of chemists, again dismissing his cab. In the shop he asked for a certain substance, which it may be as well not to name, and got what he wanted in a small phial, markedpoison. Mr. Cranley then called a third cab, gave the direction of a surgical-instrument maker’s (also eminent), and amused his leisure during the drive in removing the label from the bottle. At the surgical-instrument maker’s he complained of neuralgia, and purchased a hypodermic syringe for injecting morphine or some such anodyne into his arm. À fourth cab took him back to the house in Victoria Square, where he let himself in with a key, entered the dining-room, and locked the door.
Nor was he satisfied with this precaution. After aimlessly moving chairs about for a few minutes, and prowling up and down the room, he paused and listened. What he heard induced him to stuff his pocket-handkerchief into the keyhole, and to lay the hearth-rug across the considerable chink which, as is usual, admitted a healthy draught under the bottom of the door. Then the Honorable Mr. Cranley drew down the blinds, and unpacked his various purchases. He set them out on the table in order—the oranges, the phial, and the hypodermic syringe.
Then he carefully examined the oranges, chose half a dozen of the best, and laid the others on a large dessert plate in the dining-room cupboard. One orange he ate, and left the skin on a plate on the table, in company with a biscuit or two.
When all this had been arranged to his mind, Mr. Cranley chose another orange, filled a wineglass with the liquid in the phial, and then drew off a quantity in the little syringe. Then he very delicately and carefully punctured the skin of one of the oranges, and injected into the fruit the contents of the syringe. This operation he elaborately completed in the case of each of the six chosen oranges, and then tenderly polished their coats with a portion of the skin of the fruit he had eaten. That portion of the skin he consumed to dust in the fire; and, observing that a strong odor remained in the room, he deliberately turned on the unlighted gas for a few minutes. After this he opened the window, sealed his own seal in red wax on paper a great many times, finally burning the collection, and lit a large cigar, which he smoked through with every appearance of enjoyment. While engaged on this portion of his task, he helped himself frequently to sherry from the glass, first carefully rinsed, into which he had poured the liquid from the now unlabelled phial. Lastly he put the phial in his pocket with the little syringe, stored the six oranges, wrapped in delicate paper, within the basket, and closed the window.
Next he unlocked the door, and, without opening it, remarked in a sweet voice:
“Now, Alice, you may come in!”
The handle turned, and the housekeeper entered.
“How is Miss Burnside?” he asked, in the same silvery accents. (He had told Margaret that she had better be known by that name, for the present at least.)
“She is asleep. I hope she may never waken. What do you want with her? Why are you keeping her in this house? What devil’s brew have you been making that smells of gas and sherry and sealing-wax?”
“My dear girl,” replied Mr. Cranley, “you put too many questions at once. As to your first pair of queries, my reasons for taking care of Miss Burnside are my own business, and do not concern you, as my housekeeper. As to the ‘devil’s brew’ which you indicate in a style worthy rather of the ages of Faith and of Alchemy, than of an epoch of positive science, did you never taste sherry and sealing-wax? If you did not, that is one of the very few alcoholic combinations in which you have never, to my knowledge, attempted experiments. Is there any other matter on which I can enlighten an intelligent and respectful curiosity?”
The fair woman’s blue eyes and white face seemed to glitter with anger, like a baleful lightning.
“I don’t understand your chaff,” she said, with a few ornamental epithets, which, in moments when she was deeply stirred, were apt to decorate her conversation.
“I grieve to be obscure,” he answered; “brevis esse laboro, the old story. But, as you say Miss Burnside is sleeping, and as, when she wakens, she may be feverish, will you kindly carry these oranges and leave them on a plate by her bedside? They are Jaffa oranges, and finer fruit, Alice, my dear, I have seldom tasted! After that, go to Cavendish Square, and leave this note at the doctor’s.”
“Oh, nothing’s too good forher!” growled the jealous woman, thinking of the fruit; to which he replied by offering her several of the oranges not used in his experiment.
Bearing these, she withdrew, throwing a spiteful glance and leaving the door unshut, so that her master distinctly heard her open Margaret’s door, come out again, and finally leave the house.
“Now, I’ll give her a quarter of an hour to waken,” said Mr. Cranley, and he took from his pocket a fresh copy of theTimes. He glanced rather anxiously at the second column of the outer sheet “Still advertising for him,” he said to himself; and he then turned to the sporting news. His calmness was extraordinary, but natural in him; for the reaction of terror at the possible detection of his villainy had not yet come on. When he had read all that interested him in theTimes, he looked hastily at his watch.
“Just twenty minutes gone,” he said. “Time she wakened—and tried those Jaffa oranges.”
Then he rose, went up stairs stealthily, paused a moment opposite Margaret’s door, and entered the drawing-room. Apparently he did not find any of the chairs in the dining-room comfortable enough; for he chose a large and heavyfauteuil, took it up in his arms, and began to carry it out In the passage, just opposite Margaret’s chamber, he stumbled so heavily that he fell, and the weighty piece of furniture was dashed against the door of the sick-room, making a terrible noise. He picked it up, and retired silently to the dining-room.
“That would have wakened the dead,” he whispered to himself, “and she is not dead—yet. She is certain to see the oranges, and take one of them, and then—”
The reflection did not seem to relieve him, as he sat, gnawing his mustache, in the chair he had brought down with him. Now the deed was being accomplished, even his craven heart awoke to a kind of criminal remorse. Now anxiety for the issue made him wish the act undone, or frustrated; now he asked himself if there were no more certain and less perilous way. So intent was his eagerness that a strange kind of lucidity possessed him. He felt as if he beheld and heard what was passing in the chamber of sickness, which he had made a chamber of Death.
She has wakened—she has looked round—she has seen the poisoned fruit—she has blessed him for his kindness in bringing it—she has tasted the oranges—she has turned to sleep again—and the unrelenting venom is at its work!
Oh, strange forces that are about us, all inevitably acting, each in his hour and his place, each fulfilling his law without turning aside to the right hand or to the left! The rain-drop running down the pane, the star revolving round the sun of the furthest undiscoverable system, the grains of sand sliding from the grasp, the poison gnawing and burning the tissues—each seems to move in his inevitable path, obedient to an unrelenting will. Innocence, youth, beauty—that will spares them not. The rock falls at its hour, whoever is under it. The deadly drug slays, though it be blended with the holy elements. It is a will that moves all things—mens agitat molem; and yet we can make that will a slave of our own, and turn this way and that the blind steadfast forces, to the accomplishment of our desires.
It was not, naturally, with these transcendental reflections that the intellect of Mr. Cranley was at this moment engaged. If he seemed actually to be present in Margaret’s chamber, watching every movement and hearing every heart-beat of the girl he had doomed, his blue lips and livid face, from which he kept wiping the cold drops, did not therefore speak of late ruth, or the beginning of remorse.
It was entirely on his own security and chances of escaping detection that he was musing.
“Now it’s done, it can’t be undone,” he said. “But is it so very safe, after all? The stuff is not beyond analysis, unluckily; but it’s much more hard to detect this way, mixed with the orange-juice, than any other way. And then there’s all the horrid fuss afterward. Even if there is not an inquest—as, of course, there won’t be—they’ll ask who the girl is, what the devil she was doing here. Perhaps they’ll, some of them, recognize Alice: she has been too much before the public, confound her. It may not be very hard to lie through all these inquiries, perhaps.”
And then he looked mechanically at his cold fingers, and bit his thumb-nail, and yawned.
“By gad! I wish I had not risked it,” he said to himself; and his complexion was now of a curious faint blue, and his heart began to flutter painfully in a manner not strange in his experience. He sunk back in his chair, with his hands all thrilling and pricking to the finger-tips. He took a large silver flask from his pocket, but he could scarcely unscrew the stopper, and had to manage it with his teeth. A long pull at the liquor restored him, and he began his round of reflections again.
“That French fellow who tried it this way in Scotland was found out,” he said; “and—” He did not like, even in his mind, to add that the “French fellow, consequently, suffered the extreme penalty of the law. But then he was a fool, and boasted beforehand, and bungled it infernally. Still, it’s not absolutely safe: the other plan I thought of first was better. By gad! I wish I could be sure she had not taken the stuff. Perhaps she hasn’t. Anyway, she must be asleep again now; and, besides, there are the other oranges to be substituted for those left in the room, if shehastaken it. Imustgo and see. I don’t like the job.”
He filled his pockets with five unpoisoned oranges, and the skin of a sixth, and so crept upstairs. His situation was, perhaps, rather novel. With murder in his remorseless heart, he yet hoped against hope, out of his very poltroonery, that murder had not been done. At the girl’s door he waited and listened, his face horribly agitated and shining wet. All was silent. His heart was sounding hoarsely within him, like a dry pump: he heard it, so noisy and so distinct that he almost feared it might wake the sleeper. If only, after all, she had not touched the fruit!
Then he took the door-handle in his clammy grasp; he had to cover it with a handkerchief to get a firm hold. He turned discreetly, and the door was pushed open in perfect stillness, except for that dreadful husky thumping of his own heart. At this moment the postman’s hard knock at the door nearly made him cry out aloud. Then he entered; a dreadful visitor, had anyone seen him. She did not see him; she was asleep, sound asleep; in the dirty brown twilight of a London winter day, he could make out that much. He did not dare draw close enough to observe her face minutely, or bend down and listen for her breath. And the oranges! Eagerly he looked at them. There were only five of them. Surely—no! a sixth had fallen on the floor, where it was lying. With a great sigh of relief he picked up all the six oranges, put them in his pockets, and, as shrinkingly as he had come-yet shaking his hand at the girl, and cursing his own cowardice under his breath—he stole down stairs, opened the dining-room door, and advanced into the blind, empty dusk.
“Now I’ll settle with you!” came a voice out of the dimness; and the start wrought so wildly on his nerves, excited to the utmost degree as they were, that he gave an inarticulate cry of alarm and despair. Was he trapped, and by whom?
In a moment he saw whence the voice came. It was only Alice Darling, in bonnet and cloak, and with a face flushed with something more than anger, that stood before him.
Not much used to shame, he was yet ashamed of his own alarm, and tried to dissemble it. He sat down at a writing-table facing her, and merely observed:
“Now that you have returned, Alice, will you kindly bring lights? I want to read.”
“What were you doing up-stairs just now?” she snarled. “Why did you send me off to the doctor’s, out of the way?”
“My good girl, I have again and again advised you to turn that invaluable curiosity of yours—curiosity, a quality which Mr. Matthew Arnold so justly views with high esteem—into wider and nobler channels. Disdain the merely personal; accept the calm facts of domestic life as you find them; approach the broader and less irritating problems of Sociology (pardon the term) or Metaphysics.”
It was cruel to see the enjoyment he got out of teasing this woman by an ironical jargon which mystified her into madness. This time he went too far. With an inarticulate snarl of passion she lifted a knife that lay on the dining-room table and made for him. But this time, being prepared, he was not alarmed; nay, he seemed to take leasure in the success of his plan of tormenting. The heavy escritoire at which he sat was a breastwork between him and the angry woman. He coolly opened a drawer; produced a revolver, and remarked:
“No; I did not ask for the carving-knife, Alice. I asked for lights; and you will be good enough to bring them. I am your master, you know, in every sense of the word; and you are aware that you had better both hold your tongue and keep your hands off me—and off drink. Fetch the lamp!”
She left the room cowed, like a beaten dog. She returned, set the lamp silently on the table, and was gone. Then he noticed a letter, which lay on the escritoire, and was addressed to him. It was a rather peculiar letter to look at, or rather the envelope was peculiar; for, though bordered with heavy black, it was stamped, where the seal should have been, with a strange device in gold and colors—a brown bun, in a glory of gilt rays.
“Mrs. St John Deloraine,” he said, taking it up. “How in the world didshefind me out? Well, she is indeed a friend that sticketh closer than a brother—a deal closer than Surbiton, anyhow.”
Lord Surbiton was the elder brother of Mr. Cranley, and bore the second title of the family.
“I don’t suppose there is another woman in London,” he thought to himself, “that has not heard all about the row at the Cockpit, and that would write to me.”
Then he tore the chromatic splendors of the device on the envelope, and read the following epistle:
“Early English Bunhouse,“Chelsea, Friday.“My dear Mr. Cranley,“Where are you hiding, or yachting, you wandering man? I canhear nothing of you from anyone—nothinggood, and youknow I never believe anythingelse. Do come and see me, atthe old Bunhouse here, and tell me aboutyourself”
—(“Shehasheard,” he muttered)
—“and help me in a little difficulty. Our housekeeper (youknow we are strictlyblue ribbon—a cordon bleu, I callher) has become engaged to aplumber, and she is leavingus.Canyou recommend me another? I know how interestedyou are (in spite of your wicked jokes) in our littleenterprise. And we also want a girl, to be under thehousekeeper, and keep the accounts. Surely you will come tosee me, whether you can advise me or not.“Yours very truly,“Mary St. John Deloraine”
“Idiot!” murmured Mr. Cranley, as he finished reading this document; and then he added, “By Jove! it’s lucky, too. I’ll put these two infernal women off onher, and Alice will soon do for the girl, if she once gets at the drink. She’s dangerous, by Jove, when she has been drinking. Then the Law will do for Alice, and all will be plain sailing in smooth waters.”
Mrs. St. John Deloraine, whose letter to Mr. Cranley we have been privileged to read, was no ordinary widow. As parts of her character and aspects of her conduct were not devoid of the kind of absurdity which is caused by virtues out of place, let it be said that a better, or kinder, or gentler, or merrier soul than that of Mrs. St. John Deloraine has seldom inhabited a very pleasing and pretty tenement of clay, and a house in Cheyne Walk.
The maiden name of this lady was by no means so euphonious as that which she had attained by marriage. Miss Widdicombe, of Chipping Carby, in the county of Somerset, was a very lively, good-hearted and agreeable young woman; but she was by no means favorably looked on by the ladies of the County Families. Now, in the district around Chipping Carby, the County Families are very County indeed, few more so. There is in their demeanor a kind ofmorgueso funereal and mournful, that it inevitably reminds the observer (who is not County) of an edifice in Paris, designed by Méryon, and celebrated by Mr. Robert Browning. The County Families near Chipping Carby are far, far from gay, and what pleasure they do take, they take entirely in the society of their equals. So determined are they to drink delight of tennis with their peers, and with nobody else, that even the Clergy are excluded,ex officio, and in their degrading capacity of ministers of Religion, from the County Lawn Tennis Club. As we all know how essential young curates fresh from college are to the very being of rural lawn-tennis, no finer proof can be given of the inaccessibility of the County people around Chipping Carby, and of the sacrifices which they are prepared to make to their position.
Now, born in the very purple, and indubitably (despite his profession) one of the gentlest born of men, was, some seven years ago, a certain Mr. St. John Deloraine. He held the sacrosanct position of a squarson, being at once Squire and Parson of the parish of Little Wentley. At the head of the quaint old village street stands, mirrored in a moat, girdled by beautiful gardens, and shadowy with trees, the Manor House and Parsonage (for it is both in one) of Wentley Deloraine.
To this desirable home and opulent share of earth’s good things did Mr. St. John Deloraine succeed in boyhood. He went to Oxford, he travelled a good deal, he was held in great favor and affection by the County matrons and the long-nosed young ladies of the County. Another, dwelling on such heights as he, might have become haughty; but there was in this young man a cheery naturalness and love of mirth which often drove him from the society of his equals, and took him into that of attorneys’ daughters. Fate drew him one day to an archery meeting at Chipping Carby, and there he beheld Miss Widdicombe. With her he paced the level turf, her “points” he counted, and he found that she, at least, could appreciate his somewhat apt quotation fromChastelard:
“Pray heaven, we make good Ends.”
Miss Widdicombedidmake good “Ends.” She vanquished Mrs. Struggles, the veteran lady champion of the shaft and bow, a sportswoman who was now on the verge of sixty. Why are ladies, who, almost professionally, “rejoice in arrows,” like the Homeric Artemis—why are they nearly always so well stricken in years? Was Maid Marion forty at least before her performances obtained for her a place in the well-known band of Hood, Tuck, Little John, and Co.?
This, however, is a digression. For our purpose it is enough that the contrast between Miss Widdicombe’s vivacity and the deadly stolidity of the County families, between her youth and the maturity of her vanquished competitors, entirely won the heart of Mr. St John Deloraine. He saw—he loved her—he was laughed at—he proposed—he was accepted—and, oh, shame! the County had to accept, more or less, Miss Widdicombe, the attorney’s daughter, aschâtelaine(delightful word, and dear to the author ofGuy Livingstone) of Wentley Deloraine.
When the early death of her husband threw Mrs. St John Deloraine almost alone on the world (for her family had, naturally, been offended by her good fortune), she left the gray old squarsonage, and went to town. In London, Mrs. St John Deloraine did not find people stiff, With a good name, an impulsive manner, a kind heart, a gentle tongue, and plenty of money, she was welcome almost everywhere, except at the big County dinners which the County people of her district give to each other when they come to town.
This lady, like many of us, had turned to charity and philanthropy in the earlier days of her bereavement; but, unlike most of us, her benevolence had not died out with the sharpest pangs of her sorrow. Never, surely, was there such a festive philanthropist as Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
She would go from a garden-party to a mothers’ meeting; she was great at taking children for a day in the country, and had the art of keeping them amused. She was on a dozen charitable committees, belonged to at least three clubs, at which gentlemen as well as ladies of fashion were eligible, and where music and minstrelsy enlivened the after-dinner hours.
So good and unsuspecting, unluckily, was Mrs. St. John Deloraine, that she made bosom friends for life, and contracted vows of eternal sympathy, wherever she went. At Aix, or on the Spanish frontier, she has been seen enjoying herself with acquaintances a little dubious, like Greek texts which, if not absolutely corrupt, yet stand greatly in need of explanation. It is needless to say that gentlemen of fortune, in the old sense—that is, gentlemen in quest of a fortune—pursued hotly or artfully after Mrs. St. John Deloraine. But as she never for a moment suspected their wiles, so these devices were entirely wasted on her, and her least warrantable admirers found that she insisted on accepting them as endowed with all the Christian virtues. Just as some amateurs of music are incapable of conceiving that there breathes a man who has no joy in popular concerts (we shall have popular conic sections next), so Mrs. St John Deloraine persevered in crediting all she met with a passion for virtue. Their speech might bewray them as worldlings of the world, but she insisted on interpreting their talk as a kind of harmless levity, as a mere cynical mask assumed by a tender and pious nature. Thus, no one ever combined a delight in good works with a taste for good things so successfully as Mrs. St John Deloraine.
At this moment the lady’s “favorite vanity,” in the matter of good works, wasThe Bunhouse. This really serviceable, though quaint, institution was not, in idea, quite unlike Maitland’s enterprise of the philanthropic public-house, theHit or Miss. In a slum of Chelsea there might have been observed a modest place of entertainment, in the coffee and bun line, with a highly elaborate Chelsea Bun painted on the sign. This piece of art, which gave its name to the establishment, was the work of one of Mrs. St John Deloraine’s friends, an artist of the highest promise, who fell an early victim to arrangements in haschisch and Irish whiskey. In spite of this ill-omened beginning,The Bunhousedid very useful work. It was a kind of unofficial club and home, not for Friendly Girls, nor the comparatively subdued and domesticated slavery of common life, but for the tameless tribes of young women of the metropolis. Those who disdain service, who turn up expressive features at sewing machines, and who decline to stand perpendicularly for fifteen hours a day in shops—all these young female outlaws, not professionally vicious, found inThe Bunhousea kind of charitable shelter and home.
They were amused, they were looked after, they were encouraged not to stand each other drinks, nor to rival the profanity of their brothers and fathers. “Places” were found for them, in the rare instances when they condescended to “places.” Sometimes they breakfasted atThe Bunhouse, sometimes went there to supper. Very often they came in a state of artificial cheerfulness, or ready for battle. Then there would arise such a disturbance as civilization seldom sees. Not otherwise than when boys, having tied two cats by the tails, hang them over the handle of a door—they then spit, and shriek, and swear, fur flies, and the clamor goes up to heaven: so did the street resound when the young patrons ofThe Bunhousewere in a warlike humor. Then the stern housekeeper would intervene, and check these motions of their minds,haec certamina tanta, turning the more persistent combatants into the street. Next day Mrs. St. John Deloraine would come in her carriage, and try to be very severe, and then would weep a little, and all the girls would shed tears, all would have a good cry together, and finally the Lady Mother (Mrs. St John Deloraine) would take a few of them for a drive in the Park. After that there would be peace for a while, and presently disturbances would come again.
For this establishment it was that Mrs. St. John Deloraine wanted a housekeeper and an assistant. The former housekeeper, as we have been told, had yielded to love, “which subdues the hearts of all female women, even of the prudent,” according to Homer, and was going to share the home and bear the children of a plumber. With her usual invincible innocence, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had chosen to regard the Hon. Thomas Cranley as a kind good Christian in disguise, and to him she appealed in her need of a housekeeper and assistant.
No application could possibly have suited that gentleman better.Hecould give his own servant an excellent character; and if once she was left to herself, to her passions, and the society of Margaret, that young lady’s earthly existence would shortly cease to embarrass Mr. Cranley. Probably there was not one other man among the motley herds of Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s acquaintance who would have used her unsuspicious kindness as an instrument in a plot of any sort. But Mr. Cranley had (when there was no personal danger to be run) the courage of his character.
“Shall I go and lunch with her?” he asked himself, as he twisted her note, with its characteristic black border and device of brown, and gold. “I haven’t shown anywhere I was likely to meet anyone I knew, not since—since I came back from Monte Carlo.”
Even to himself he did not like to mention that affair of the Cockpit The man in the story who boasted that he had committed every crime in the calendar withdrew his large words when asked “if he had ever cheated at cards.”
“Well,” Mr. Cranley went on, “I don’t know: I dare say it’s safe enough. She does know some of those Cockpit fellows; confound her, she knows all sorts of fellows. But none of them are likely to be up so early in the day—not up to luncheon anyhow. She says”—and he looked again at the note—“that she’ll be alone; but she won’t. Everyone she sees before lunch she asks to luncheon: everyone she meets before dinner she asks to dinner. I wish I had her money: it would be simpler and safer by a very long way than this kind of business. There really seems no end to it when once you begin. However, here goes,” said Mr. Cranley, sitting down to write a letter at the escritoire which had just served him as a bulwark and breastwork. “I’ll write and accept Probably she’ll have no one with her, but some girl from Chipping Carby, or some missionary from the Solomon Islands who never heard of a heathen like me.”
As a consequence of these reflections, Mr. Cranley arrived, when the clock was pointing to half-past one, at Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s house in Cheyne Walk. He had scarcely entered the drawing-room before that lady, in a costume which agreeably became her pleasant English style of beauty, rushed into the room, tumbling over a favorite Dandie Dinmont terrier, and holding out both her hands.
The terrier howled, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine had scarcely grasped the hand which Mr. Cranley extended with enthusiasm, when she knelt on the carpet and was consoling the Dandie.
“Love in which thy hound has part,” quoted Mr. Cranley. And the lady, rising with her face becomingly flushed beneath her fuzzy brown hair, smiled, and did not remark the sneer.
“Thank you so much for coming, Mr. Cranley,” she said; “and, as I have put off luncheon till two,dotell me that you know someone who will suit me for my dearBun-house. I know how much you have always been interested in our little project.”
Mr. Cranley assured her that, by a remarkable coincidence, he knew the very kind of people she wanted. Alice he briefly described as a respectable woman of great strength of character, “of body, too, I believe, which will not make her less fit for the position.”
“No,” said Mrs. St. John Deloraine, sadly; “the dear girls are sometimes a little tiresome. On Wednesday, Mrs. Carter, the housekeeper, you know, went to one of the exhibitions with herfiancé, and the girls broke all the windows and almost all the tea-things.”
“The woman whom I am happy to be able to recommend to you will not stand anything of that kind,” answered Mr. Cranley. “She is quiet, but extremely firm, and has been accustomed to deal with a very desperate character. At one time, I mean, she was engaged as the attendant of a person of treacherous and ungovernable disposition.”
This was true enough; and Mr. Cranley then began to give a more or less fanciful history of Margaret She had been left in his charge by her father, an early acquaintance, a man who had known better days, but had bequeathed her nothing, save an excellent schooling and the desire to earn her own livelihood.
So far, he knew he was safe enough; for Margaret was the last girl to tell the real tale of her life, and her desire to avoid Maitland was strong enough to keep her silent, even had she not been naturally proud and indisposed to make confidences.
“There is only one thing I must ask,” said Mr. Cranley, when he had quite persuaded the lady that Margaret would set a splendid example to her young friends. “How soon does your housekeeper leave you, and when do you need the services of the new-comers?”
“Well, the plumber is rather in a hurry. He really is a good man, and I like him better for it, though it seems rather selfish of him to want to rob me of Joan. He is; determined to be married before next Bank Holiday—in a fortnight that is—and then they will go on their honeymoon of three days to Yarmouth.”
Mr. Cranley blessed the luck that had not made the plumber a yet more impetuous wooer.
“No laggard in love,” he said, smiling. “Well, in a fortnight the two women will be quite ready for their new place. But I must ask you to remember that the younger is somewhat delicate, and has by no means recovered from the shock of her father’s sudden death—a very sad affair,” added Mr. Cranley, in a sympathetic voice.
“Poor dear girl!” cried Mrs. St. John Deloraine, with the ready tears in her eyes; for this lady spontaneously acted on the injunction to weep with those who weep, and also laugh with those who laugh.
Mr. Cranley, who was beginning to feel hungry, led her thoughts off to the latest farce in which Mr. Toole had amused the town; and when Mrs. St. John Deloraine had giggled till she wept again over her memories of this entertainment, she suddenly looked at her watch.
“Why, he’s very late,” she said; “and yet it is not far to come from theHit or Miss.”
“From theHit or Miss!” cried Mr. Cranley, much louder than he was aware.
“Yes; you may well wonder, if you don’t know about it, that I should have asked a gentleman from a public-house to meet you. But you will be quite in love with him; he is such a very good young man. Not handsome, nor very amusing; but people think a great deal too much of amusingness now. He is very, very good, and spends almost all his time among the poor. He is a Fellow of his College at Oxford.”
During this discourse Mr. Cranley was pretending to play with the terrier; but, stoop as he might, his face was livid, and he knew it.
“Did I tell you his name?” Mrs. St. John Deloraine ran on. “He is a—”
Here the door was opened, and the servant announced “Mr. Maitland.”
When Mrs. St. John Deloraine had welcomed her new guest, she turned, and found that Mr. Cranley was looking out of the window.
His position was indeed agonizing, and, in the circumstances, a stronger heart might have blanched at the encounter.
When Cranley last met Maitland, he had been the guest of that philanthropist, and he had gone from his table to swindle his fellow-revellers. What other things he had done—things in which Maitland was concerned—the reader knows, or at least suspects. But it was not these deeds which troubled Mr. Cranley, for these he knew were undetected. It was that affair of the baccarat which unmanned him.
There was nothing for it but to face Maitland and the situation.
“Let me introduce you—” said Mrs. St. John Deloraine.
“There is no need,” interrupted Maitland. “Mr. Cranley and I have known each other for some time. I don’t think we have met,” he added, looking at Cranley, “since you dined with me at the Olympic, and we are not likely to meet again, I’m afraid; for to-morrow, as I have come to tell Mrs. Si John Deloraine, I go to Paris on business of importance.”
Mr. Cranley breathed again; it was obvious that Maitland, living out of the world as he did, and concerned (as Cranley well knew him to be) with private affairs of an urgent character, had never been told of the trouble at the Cockpit, or had, in his absent fashion, never attended to what he might have heard with the hearing of the ear. As to Paris, he had the best reason for guessing why Maitland was bound thither, as he was the secret source of the information on which Maitland proposed to act.
At luncheon—which, like the dinner described by the American guest, was “luscious and abundant”—Mr. Cranley was more sparkling than the champagne, and made even Maitland laugh. He recounted little philanthropic misadventures of his own—cases in which he had been humorously misled by theCaptain Wraggsof this world, or beguiled by the authors of that polite correspondence—begging letters.
When luncheon was over, and when Maitland was obliged, reluctantly, to go (for he liked Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s company very much), Cranley, who had determined to see him out, shook hands in a very cordial way with the Fellow of St. Gatien’s.
“And when are we likely to meet again?” he asked.
“I really don’t know,” said Maitland. “I have business in Paris, and I cannot say how long I may be detained on the Continent.”
“No more can I,” said Mr. Cranley to himself; “but I hope you won’t return in time to bother me with your blundering inquiries, if ever you have the luck to return at all.”
But while he said this to himself, to Maitland he only wished a good voyage, and particularly recommended to him a comedy (and acomédienne) at the Palais Royal.