Would she have been gratified if she could have seen the effect of her note? It was not at all with the sort of expression you would expect to see on the face of a man who had just received a dinner invitation transmitted through the lady of his heart from that lady's papa, that Richard Ferrier passed the note over to his brother next morning.
'Here you are,' he said. 'Bouquet de Nihilist, trebly distilled.'
'Well, don't let's go, then.'
'Why, I thought you were so fond of the Count. I wonder you don't jump at it. I thought it would please you.'
'So I do like him—he's a splendid speaker; but I didn't come to London to spend all my days and nights with him, any more than you did. Besides, I'm engaged for to-night.'
'Oh, are you? Well, I think I shall go.'
'You'd better leave it alone. You won't stand much chance beside a man with such a moustache as that. Besides, he sings, don't you know? and with all your solid and admirable qualities, Richard, you're not a nightingale.'
'Nor yet a runaway rebel.'
'I say, you'd better look a little bit after your epithets. Litvinoff doesn't look much of the running-away sort. According to what I heard last night, he can use a revolver with effect on occasion. By the way, Richard,' he went on, more seriously, 'I believe I saw a face at that club I knew, but it was only for a minute, and I lost sight of it, and I couldn't be sure.'
'Who did you think it was?'
'Little Alice.'
'Think—you think!' said his brother, turning fiercely on him. 'Do you mean to say you didn'tknow?'
'Know? Of course not, or I should say so. What the deuce do you mean?'
'I should like to ask you what the deuce you mean by even debating whether or no to accept that invitation when you know you've no earthly right to go near Miss Stanley—'
'You'd better mention your ideas to Mr Stanley. I don't in the least know what you're driving at—and I don't care;but since you choose to bringhername in, I shall throw over my other engagement and go to Morley's to-night.'
'You can go to the devil if you choose!' said Dick, who seemed to have entirely lost his self-control, and he flung out, slamming the door behind him.
Clare's note was bearing more fruit than she desired or anticipated in setting the brothers not so much against Litvinoff as against each other, for what but her letter could have stirred Dick's temper to this sudden and unpremeditated outbreak? What but her note and Dick's comments thereon could have ruffled Roland's ordinarily even nature in this way? It is always a mistake to play with fire; but people, girls especially, will not believe this until they have burned their own fingers, and,en passant, more of other people's valuables than they can ever estimate.
'I wish I had spoken to that girl yesterday,' said Count Litvinoff to himself; 'it would have saved my turning out this vile afternoon. If fate has given England freedom, she has taken care to accompany the gift with a fair share of fog. I wish I could help worrying about other people's troubles. It is very absurd, but I can't get on with my work for thinking of that poor tired little face. Hard up, she looked, too. Ah, well! so shall I be very soon, unless something very unexpected turns up. I'll go now, and earn an easy conscience for this evening.'
He threw down his pen and rose. The article on the Ethics of Revolution on which he was engaged had made but small progress that afternoon. He had felt ever since lunch that go out he must sooner or later, and the prospect was dispiriting. He glanced out of his window as he put on his fur-lined coat. From the windows of Morley's Hotel the view on a fine day is about as cheerful as any that London canpresent—though one may have one's private sentiments respecting the pepper-boxes which emphasise the bald ugliness of the National Gallery, and though one may sometimes wish that the slave of the lamp would bring St George's Hall from Liverpool and drop it on that splendid site. But this was not a fine day. It was a gloomy, damp, foggy, depressing, suicidal day. The fog had, with its usual adroitness, managed to hide the beauties of everything, and to magnify the uglinesses. Nelson was absolutely invisible, and the lions looked like half-drowned cats. Litvinoff shuddered as he lighted a large cigar and pulled his gloves on.
'This is a detestable climate,' he said, as he drew the first whiffs; 'but London is about the only place I know where good cigars can be had at a price to fit the pocket of an exile. I suppose I shall soon have to leave this palatial residence, and become one of the out-at-elbows gentlemen who make life hideous in Leicester Square and Soho.'
Like many men who have lived lonely lives, Michael Litvinoff had an inveterate habit of soliloquy. It had been strengthened by his life at the ancestral mansion on the Litvinoff estate, and had not grown less in his years of solitary wanderings.
His walk to-day was not a pleasant one, and more than once he felt inclined to turn back. But he persevered, and when he reached the house which he had seen her enter he asked a woman on the ground floor if Miss Hatfield lived there.
'There's a young person named Hatfield in the front attic,' was the reply, as the informant stared with all her eyes at the Count, who was certainly an unusual sort of apparition in Spray's Buildings.
As he strode up the dirty, rotten stairs, stumbling more than once, he thought to himself, as Dick had done, thatAlice did not make her new life profitable, whatever it was.
'Poor girl!' he thought; 'if she's of the same mind now as she was when I saw her last, I suppose I must find an opportunity of doing good by stealth.'
The house, though poor enough, did not seem to be one of those overcrowded dens of which we have heard so much lately, and which a Royal Commission is to set right, as a Royal Commission always does set everything right. Or perhaps the lodgers were birds of prey, who only came home to roost at uncertain hours; or beasts of burden, who were only stabled at midnight to be harnessed again at sunrise. At anyrate, the Count saw no one on the stairs, and he saw no one in the front attic either. Not only no one, but no thing. The door and window were both open. The room appeared to have been swept and garnished, but was absolutely empty of everything but fog. There was another door opposite, but it was closed and locked.
'She's evidently not here. We'll try lower down.' But before he had time to turn he heard a foot on the stairs, coming up with the light and springy tread which is the result of good and well-fitting boots, and which does not mark those who walk through life, from the cradle to the grave, shod in boots several sizes too large and several pounds too heavy.
He glanced over the broken banisters, and recoiled hastily.
'The gentle Roland, by all that's mysterious!' he said, 'Now, what on earth canhewant here? At anyrate, he'd better not seeme.'
The landing on which he stood was very dark, and there was a heap of lumber, old boxes, a hopelessly broken chair, a tub, and some boards. Litvinoff crept behind them, and in his black coat and the obscurity of the dusky landing and the dark afternoon he felt himself secure. He had hardly takenup this position when Roland Ferrier's head appeared above the top stair, to be followed cautiously by the rest of him. He cast a puzzled look round the empty attic, tried the closed door, and, turning, went downstairs again.
Litvinoff was just coming out of his not over savoury lurking-place when he heard a voice on the landing below, which was not Roland's.
'Parbleu!' he said to himself; 'it rains Ferriers here this afternoon. Here's the engaging Richard, and evidently not in the best of tempers.'
He evidently was not—if one might judge by his voice, which was icy with contempt as he said sneeringly, 'So this was the engagement you were going to put off, was it?'
'Yes, it was. At least I am here to put off an engagement; but I don't know what you know about it,' said Roland, 'and I don't know what you mean by following me about like this. What business haveyouhere? This isn't Aspinshaw, that you need dog my footsteps.'
'I came here to try and find out whether my father's son was a scoundrel or not, and you've answered the question for me by being here.'
'Upon my word,' said Roland's voice, 'I think you must be out of your mind.'
It isn't often that the thought which would restrain comes into one's mind at the moment when restraint is most needed; but just then Dickdidthink of his father and his dying wishes, and the remembrance helped him to speak more calmly than he would otherwise have done.
'Once for all, then, will you tell me why you are here, Roland?'
'Yes, I will, though I don't acknowledge your right to question me. I had an appointment, with that Frenchman we met last night, for this evening, but I've lost his address. Iknew it was in this court, and I was walking about on the chance of finding him, when I'm almost sure I saw Litvinoff come in here. I made after him, feeling sure he was going to the same place as I was.'
'And whereisLitvinoff?'
'He seems to have disappeared, or else I was mistaken. Now, what have you got to say?'
'This. You lie!'
It sounded hardly like Richard's voice, so hoarse and choked with passion was it; and so full of insult and scorn that Roland at last lost control of himself.
'Stand back, you raving maniac,' he said, 'and let me pass! The same roof mustn't cover us two any longer, and don't speak again to me this side of the grave.'
The listener, leaning forward eagerly to catch every word, heard Roland's foot dash down the staircase. There was a moment of perfect silence, and then came a long-drawn sigh from Richard Ferrier.
'Now then, young man, what's all this to-do about? I should like to know what you mean by quarrelling in places that don't belong to you, and terrifying respectable married women out of their seven senses.' It was a shrill woman's voice that spoke, and a door opened on the landing where young Ferrier stood.
'I'm very sorry, madam,' said Richard, in tones calm enough now. 'I didn't intend to disturb anyone. Will you kindly tell me if anyone lives here named Hatfield?'
'There was a young woman of that name in the front attic, but she left sudden this morning.'
'Do you know where she's gone?'
'No, I don't.'
'Does anyone in the house know?'
'No. I'm the landlady, and she'd have told me if she told anyone.'
'Thank you,' he said, and turned to pass down the staircase.
'Stay, though,' he said; 'have you any Frenchmen lodging here?'
'I don't want no dratted furriners here, and I haven't got none, thank God!'
'Of course not,' said Ferrier to himself, and strode downstairs.
'No foreigners here? Don't be too sure, my good woman,' Litvinoff muttered to himself, as he heard the landlady's door close to a continued accompaniment of reiterated objections in that lady's shrill treble. 'I'd better get out of this house of mystery at once. I trust that the outraged female proprietor of this staircase will not demand my blood. Well, whatever happens, I suppose we shall not see the amiable brothers to-night, and that will mean atête-à-tête,' he added, as he came out from his dusty retirement, and carefully removed all traces of the same from his clothes. When he found himself once more in the chill, foggy, outside air, he looked up and down the court, and smiled.
'The situation becomes interesting,' he said to himself, 'and demands another of these very excellent cigars.'
CHAPTER IX.
AT SPRAY'S BUILDINGS.
IT seemed a very long walk home to Alice Hatfield, after that Sunday evening lecture. She felt almost as though she could never reach her lodging. It was such weary work to keep putting one tired foot before the other. And somehow she was so much more easily tired now than she used to be in her Derbyshire home, where she had been used to breast the steepest hills without even a quickened breath. She wished she had not gone; she had derived no pleasure from the evening, and had only gained a sharper heartache from the sight of a certain face, which had been, and was still for that matter, the dearest face in the world to her. She felt re-awakened too in her a liking for a different life among different surroundings; the life she had given up of her own free will three months ago. She had been much alone in that other life, it is true, and her thoughts had not made solitude sweet; but she had seenhimsometimes, and now she was quite alone—always—save for the few slight acquaintances she had made in the house where she lived. In that other life, which now looked brighter than it had ever done when it was hers, she had been racked and tortured by her conscience, which had at last forced her to try and silence it by renouncingwhat she had sacrificed everything to gain, and by voluntarily adopting this strange, hard way of living. But now that that gloomy monitor was on her side, it failed to give that comfort and support which one is taught to expect from it.
'Be virtuous and you will be happy,' say the copy-books. A somewhat higher authority (Professor Huxley) thinks otherwise. 'Virtue is undoubtedly beneficent,' he says, 'but the man is to be envied to whom her ways seem in any wise playful; and though she may not talk much about suffering and self-denial, her silence on that topic may be accounted for on the principleça va sans dire. She is an awful goddess, whose ministers are the furies, and whose highest reward is peace.'
Alice Hatfield hadn't read Huxley, but if she had she would have agreed with him in this; and now it seemed as though the furies were driving her along the streets towards that miserable home of hers, where, so far, no dove of peace had folded its wings.
It is given to all of us, at one time or another, to repent—more or less—of the evil; but many of us also know what it is to look back, with something like remorse, on what we believe to have been the good. And good and evil, get so mixed up sometimes, when we have often heard the world's 'right' skilfully controverted and made to seem wrong, by the tongue whose eloquence once made wrong seem to us right.
Alice had to collect all her energies to enable her to climb the steep dark stairs which led to her room, and when she had gained it at last, and had lighted her little benzoline lamp, she sank down on her chair bedstead, exhausted and breathless. What a hateful room it was; how cold, and cheerless, and wretched. The few poor articles of furniture did not relieve its bareness in the least. There was no fire, of course, and her little lamp quite failed to light up the dark corners. Theremust be something wrong with that lamp—it was going out surely—the room was growing so dark; or was it her eyes from which the power of seeing was going? The room seemed to swim before her sight, and a feeling of deadly faintness came over her, a horrible sensation of going through the floor. She staggered to her feet and drank some water, which gave her strength to go unsteadily down to the floor below, and to knock at the landlady's door.
'Oh, I am so ill—so ill! I think I'm dying,' she said, holding out both hands as the woman appeared; 'help me.'
Then she knew no more. Her troubles, her tiredness, her regrets, her very self, all were swallowed up in the horror of great darkness that overwhelmed her.
'Here's a nice set out,' grumbled Mrs Fludger, as her lodger fell at her feet; 'as if one hadn't enough troubles o' one's own—what with Jenny being out o' work, and the master on the booze since Friday. Jenny!'
'Here I am.'
Miss Jenny Fludger, a muscular young woman, with her hair in a long beaded net, responded to the call, and lent her help in carrying Alice back to her room. Then the unsympathetic hands of the two women undressed the girl and laid her in her bed. Then they looked meaningly at each other.
'If she don't soon come round I'll send Joe for the doctor,' said the mother. 'You never knows what may happen.'
Then Mrs Fludger dashed cold water in the patient's face, slapped her hands with a vigour that would have brought tears to her eyes had she been conscious, and made a horrible smell with the benzoline lamp and a pigeon's feather hastily begged from a lodger who had leanings ornithological. Alice showing no signs of being affected by the application of these generally efficacious remedies, Mrs Fludger decided that this was a case of 'going off' quite beyond her experience, andfeeling the responsibility too much to be borne alone, she despatched her third son in quest of a doctor, regardless of Miss Jenny's opinion that the lodger was 'shamming.' Joe Fludger was not particularly pleased at being sent. He was busy just then shaking up a mangy kitten and a recently-acquired guinea-pig in a box, with a view of getting them to fight, which they showed no signs of doing, and he did not care to relinquish this enthralling pastime until he had compassed his end. He put his two 'pets' into one pocket, hoping that that position would urge them to fulfil their destiny and have it out, and as he met several friends, and felt it incumbent on him to exhibit his treasures to each of them, it was some time before he carried out his instructions, and brought medical science, as represented by Dr Moore, to 15 Spray's Buildings. But even when the doctor did at last stand by her bedside, Alice was still insensible.
He raised her eyelids, felt her pulse, asked one or two brief questions, and then stood holding her hand till she sighed, and moved slightly.
'She's coming round,' he said. 'Not married, I see,' he added, glancing at the hand he held, on which shone no golden circle, not even the brass substitute which takes its place occasionally, when times are very hard.
'Not as I ever heard of,' said Miss Jenny with a toss of the net, which drew down upon her a glance of disapproval from the old doctor, and a sharp recommendation from her mother to go downstairs. 'Give the girl air; there's too many of us here a'ready.'
Miss Fludger withdrew with a gesture expressive of a sovereign contempt for faints in general, and this collapse in particular.
'How does this poor thing get her living?' asked the doctor; 'she looks as if she got it honestly.' He, being an observant man, glanced as he spoke at the roughened forefinger of her left hand, and then round the bare, dreary attic.
'Lord! doctor, how should I know? Do you think I puts all my lodgers through their cataclysm before I takes 'em in?' said Mrs Fludger, with some general recollection of the days when she went to Sunday school. Mrs Fludger did not always manage to hit on the right word to express the meaning she intended to convey, but she always found a word something like the right one, and a word which really had a place in the English dictionary; she had a rare dexterity in the finding of such words, and a fine confidence in the use of them, which made them answer her purpose admirably.
'You're better now, aren't you?' said the doctor, as Alice opened her eyes. 'Here's a shilling, ma'am: can you send for some brandy?'
Mrs Fludger would go herself. Such an admirable opportunity for having 'two penn'orth' at the 'Hope' was not to be let slip.
'Don't be frightened,' he said, as the landlady left the room. 'It's only the doctor. You've been overdoing it—working too hard, and eating too little.'
'But I never felt like that before,' said Alice slowly and faintly. 'I thought I was going to die.'
'Haven't you anyone belonging to you? You ought to be with friends just now.'
'No. I'm quite alone, quite alone. Why just now?'
'My dear child, don't you know why?'
She did not answer, but looked at him with large, frightened, questioning eyes; and before Mrs Fludger returned with a shrunken shilling's-worth in a ginger-beer bottle, Alice had learned that that which she had feared, till a sort of hope had grown out of the very intensity of her fear—that which had seemed almost too terrible to be possible—was to be. She now had that certainty which is a spring of secret happiness to so many women, to some only a fresh care and anxiety,and to some, alas! the sign and token of social banishment—the warrant of disgrace and despair.
Doctor Moore spoke kindly, and with no note of censure in his voice. He had a naturally tender heart, and long years of practice in a poor neighbourhood had developed his sympathies, instead of blunting them, as, unfortunately, happens in too many cases. He was an old man now, and this was an old story to him; but his eyes were still sharp enough to see that the girl before him did not belong to that class of patients to whom such an announcement would have meant little more than a temporary inconvenience and a trifling subsequent expense. He thought to himself that he would look in in the morning and see the girl again. There had been a look in her eyes as she listened to him that made him feel that she wanted looking after.
'Give her some hot brandy-and-water, and let her go to sleep—that's the best thing for her,' he said to Mrs Fludger as he came away. The landlady accompanied him downstairs in a halo of apology for having 'such like' in her house, and when she had lighted him out she climbed once more, protesting, to the attic, and having administered the brandy as prescribed, came away, after bidding the girl 'good-night' not unkindly.
But, all the same, she made up her mind that Alice must go. If the girl had come there as 'Mrs' Anybody—and worn a ring, no questions would have been asked by Mrs Fludger. There would then have been the alternative of supposing that the Mr in the case was in the seafaring way, or was enjoying a holiday upon the breezy slopes of Dartmoor. But as she had chosen to neglect the payment of that slight tribute to the proprieties which even this neighbourhood demanded, there was no help for it—she must go. Besides, there might be difficulties about rent, and even a want of money for the necessaries oflife—and Mrs Fludger was afraid to trust her tender heart. Even forty years of being pinched and 'druv' had not quite dried up the milk of human kindness in her bosom, and she felt that she would rather not have a lodger who would excite her sympathy and possibly make demands upon her pocket. This habit of 'not trusting our tender hearts' is not confined to the class to which Mrs Fludger belonged. Others who have larger means of meeting probable drafts on their 'tenderness' have also a way of pushing misery out of sight, or handing it over to the emollient remedies of a Royal Commission, which, of course, goes thoroughly into the matter. Does it? The Royal Commissioners do not find their shoulders any easier under the burden we have shifted on to them than we found ours, and not being able to shift the weight again, they skilfully dissolve it, and give it us back in the solution of a wordy report. And for Mrs Fludger, who had to look sharp after every halfpenny, and who knew no higher morality than that taught in the precept, 'Take care of number one,' which to her meant the number nine, of whom Miss Jenny was the eldest, there was more excuse than there is for the theoretical philanthropists who wear purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day.
But the landlady was not required to make the announcement which she had proposed to herself, for when she went up to Alice's room the next morning, to say that she wished to have a few words with her (and when people say that, you may be sure the words are not going to be pleasant ones), she found the girl already dressed—with her little belongings arranged as for an immediate departure. So she changed her mind, and instead of that speech about the few words, she said simply,—
'Good morning. You're better, I see.'
'Yes, thanks,' said Alice, hurriedly; 'and I think I would like to leave this morning—and here is a week's money from last Saturday.'
Mrs Fludger rubbed her hands together in a little embarrassment.
'I don't say but you're in the right to go, and I hope you'll get on all right, and not let your trouble play upon your mind too much; but as for the money, never mind. It's only a couple of days, and I don't grudge that. An' if you'll take my advice you'll go home to your own folk, if you've got any. God-a'mighty knows it's hard lions with most of us.'
Which Alice, listening sadly, interpreted to mean 'hard lines.'
And so it happened that her worldly goods were taken away on a hand-barrow, she herself walking beside it—whither Mrs Fludger was careful not to inquire; and Dr Moore, coming at noon, received the comforting intelligence that the girl had gone home to her people; for Mrs Fludger, like so many others, thought that her advice once given could not fail to be taken.
CHAPTER X.
A SOCIALIST.
IT was a bright, perfectly clear, moonlight night, one of those nights in which there seems to be no atmosphere, in which the smallest architectural details of every building show with even a greater distinctness than in mid-sunshine. The great full moon and the vast unfathomable expanse overhead seemed to have cast a spell of their own peace over even London's unpeaceful heart. The streets were empty, for the night had worn itself away to the only hour at which they are really deserted.
The clocks had just expressed their different views on the subject of twoA.M.The night was so clear that Alice Hatfield, though her eyes were smarting and aching, thought she could see the hands on the big clock of St Paul's as she came on to Blackfriars' Bridge. She walked slowly, and when she reached the second arch she stopped and leaned her elbows on the parapet. How still the night was! The tide was high, and had just started on its journey seawards; it seemed to flow in one unbroken sheet save for the stir and fret that it made round the supports of the bridge. The lights along the Embankment, with their perfect reflections, might have seemed almost Venetian to anyone inclined to take a more rose-coloured view of things than she. To her they only brought a maddening remembrance of the time when she—not alone then—had firstseen them from the windows of the Arundel Hotel. The noise of the water against the bridge was very like the sound of the waters rushing round the stones in the Derbyshire streams—only those waters had always made a song that was to be enjoyed, not understood—and this dark tide, as it broke against the stone, seemed to be whispering constantly some message to her, which she as constantly, but vainly, tried to catch.
It made her shiver. She turned and leaned back against the parapet. The other side of the bridge was in the ruthless hands of the paviors, who had literally left no stone unturned in order to produce that utter chaos in which the heart of the contractor delighteth. The large slabs of paving-stones, standing and lying about in all sorts of positions, made the place look—ugh!—like a graveyard, and the displaced earth and heaps of sand looked like half-made graves, in which the spade and pick of the sexton had ceased to clink. There was a bright red spot of fire about a hundred yards from her—someone was comfortable beside it, she supposed—and somehow she hated that patch of red light more than anything else in the whole picture.
Alice had found a fresh lodging easily enough, and this time she had adopted the badge of marital servitude, and had taken another name. The new room struck her as cheerless and unwelcoming, and her poor possessions looked less friendly than they had done in the old attic at Spray's Buildings. Her bundle of work had been brought with the rest, but she seemed to have no heart to begin it, nor yet to get herself food, and she sat on there, hour after hour, till the sense of complete isolation grew too much for her. At Spray's Buildings she had had no friends, and had valued her few acquaintances but slightly, and she did not realise the amount of comfort that could be got out of a chance meeting with Miss Fludger on the stairs until such meetings were things of the past.
'I will go out,' she had said, rising at last with a feelingthat even in strange and unregarding faces there would be companionship of a kind. So she had left her room and had wandered about, passing more than one spot hung thickly round with memories of her short day of sunshine. Then when night fell she felt that shecould notgo back to that new inhospitable room of hers.
She pictured it dark, cheerless, and cold, shuddered as she thought of the broad streak of moonlight which would come through the uncurtained window, and lie on that bare floor. How dark the corners of the room would be. So she wandered on, and the people grew scarcer and scarcer, and she grew fainter and fainter. She would have been glad of food now, but all the shops were shut, and when she came to Blackfriars' Bridge she was too tired to go any further. And as she stood and looked at the river gleaming in the moonlight, the question came into her mind.
'Need she go further? Was not this the fitting end for such as she?'
A spasm of madness caught her. What an easy way out of all her troubles; what an obvious solution of all her difficulties!
She walked straight before her, stooping to pass under the protecting pole in the middle of the road, falling once over a block of stone and cutting her hands, she thought. She climbed the tomb-like stones, and in a moment was on her hands and knees partly on the parapet and partly on some stones that leaned against it. She looked over without changing her attitude for quite a minute. It made her giddy to look down. She could not stand up, as she had pictured herself doing when that madness first came upon her.
She could drop over, though, and she would. Courage! In another minute it would all be over.
She had made a movement to turn her feet towards thewater, when her shoulders were caught by two hands, and she was lifted bodily back on to the bridge.
'You little fool!' said the owner of the hands, which gave her a little shake before they loosened their hold of her. 'What do you want to go drinking of that poison for? It ain't fit to drown a cat in, let alone a human woman female.'
Alice's face was in her hands. She had sunk down against the stones on which she had climbed before. She shivered.
'Oh, I am so cold!' she said, almost in a whisper, without taking her hands away. The madness had died out of her completely.
'You'd have been colder if it hadn't been for me; and oh, the taste in your mouth would have been something dreadful. Come and have a drop of my missus's coffee, by my fire; it's a deal sweeter than wot you was after. The Government ought to take it up,' he said, sententiously, but whether he meant the river, the coffee, or the fire, he did not explain.
He helped her to rise, took her by the elbow in a sort of amateur-constable way, and led her over and round the snares and pitfalls which lay between them and that red eye which had seemed to watch them.
It was a sort of openwork iron pot, full of hot coals, and a species of shelter was contrived round it by means of a judicious arrangement of paving stones and tarpaulin. When he had made her sit down on an inverted basket placed in the warmest corner by the fire, she glanced at him for the first time. He was a big, burly, black-bearded man; he had a kindly expression, and merry eyes, with a sort of cast in one of them which made it difficult to be sure which way he was looking.
'Still cold?' he asked, with one eye on her and the other apparently on the pole star. 'Have this coat; I'm warm enough. I had to hurry up so to catch you, young woman.'
He threw a rough pea-jacket round her as she said, looking down,—
'How did you catch me? Where did you come from?'
'Where did I come from? Why, from here. Directly I saw you cross the road I knew what was up. I never would let anyone go into that ditch if I could help it. It ought to belong to the Commissioners of Sewers,' he ended, having apparently changed his mind concerning the administrative functions of 'Government.'
'The question is,' he went on, 'where did you come from, and what did you come for?'
'I've come from Gray's Inn Road,' she said.
'How lucky, now. I live that way. I shall be able to see you home in an hour or two, when my mate comes to take his turn. You'll just have time to get warm. Here, drink this coffee. Had any tea?'
She shook her head.
'Any dinner?'
'No.'
'Nor any breakfast neither, I'll back. I suppose you're hard up; that's enough to make anyone go anywhere but into that,' with a backward jerk of his thumb towards what seemed to be his pet aversion. He was a man whose occupation caused him to pass a good deal of his time on bridges, and he knew the river and the smells thereof.
'No,' said Alice, 'I'm not very hard up, and I'm in work, too; but I moved into a new place to-day, and I felt too lonely to bother about dinner or anything, and I expect going without made me a bit wild and soft like.'
'Have some of this,' was his answer, and soon Alice began to feel a returning sense of physical comfort steal through her, as she sat resting by the cheering fire, drinking the hot coffee from a tin mug, with a slice of bread and cheese on her knee, while her companion kept up a constant ripple of somewhatinconsequent talk, which was his notion of 'making conversation' for his guest. She took her part in the dialogue with an ease which surprised herself. It seems very strange that people should not be more affected than they generally are by having been face to face with death. The fact is, that it is so impossible to realise subjectively what death is, that people feel less awestruck at having been so near it than they do at having been within an ace of having their leg broken, or of being marked with small-pox. Perhaps this is why so many men sleep sound sleeps and eat hearty breakfasts just before execution.
It was a long time since anyone had thought it worth while to talk so much to Alice, and she felt so interested, and withal so comfortable, that it never occurred to her that this interlude of warmth and companionship must soon be over, and that then she would have to face the desolate streets and that cheerless room. Of seeking again the chill refuge from which her new acquaintance had saved her she certainly never thought. That madness was over.
Her black-bearded preserver was in the midst of an economic dissertation of a somewhat confused character on the reasons of hard times and bad wages, when a black shadow falling on a moonlit slab of stone close by them made them both look up.
'Why, if it isn't Mr Peter Hitch,' said the pavior. 'So you're out again, sir? Chilly night, ain't it? Come and have a warm. This young woman's had a warm, and she feels better for it, I'll be bound.'
The new-comer sat down on some boards near the fire with a graceful salutation towards Alice.
'Itiscold,' he said, with a distinctly foreign accent. 'You are the lucky one, Mr Toomey, with your warm fire.'
Alice glanced furtively at the stranger. He was tall, and was not dressed as she would have expected Mr Toomey's friends to be. He wore a grey military cloak with a highcollar, and a large soft felt hat. The brim was turned up in a rather unusual way in front, and leaving exposed as it did a broad, well-shaped forehead and piercing grey eyes, gave to the whole face a bold and daring look. He did not seem to look at Alice at all, and yet he had hardly been seated a minute before he turned to her and said,—
'Forgive me, but I feel as if you were a sort of acquaintance already. I sat just behind you at a lecture in Soho last night. I am not mistaken—you were there, weren't you?'
The introduction of a third person to the enjoyment of the fire and shelter had brought back to Alice the full consciousness of her position, but the new-comer spoke to her so deferentially, and treated her so exactly as if they had met in quite an ordinary way, and there were nothing unusual in the situation, that she felt herself grow a little more at ease again as she answered, 'Yes; I was there.'
'Why, I'm blest if I wasn't there, too,' broke in Toomey, 'and a rare good 'un he was as spoke. Countryman o' yours too, eh, Mr Peter Hitch? By the way,' he added, as the other nodded assent, 'I was wanting to have a word or two with you, if miss here will excuse us. It's on the subject as you knows on,' he explained, seeing the other's look of surprise, and embellishing his speech by sundry winks, to which his visual peculiarities imparted an unusually enigmatical character.
The two men stepped a few paces away, and then Toomey said,—
'I say, mister, I'm in rather a tight place, and perhaps you can tell me a way out of it. That there young woman' (here he lowered his voice) 'would have been down somewhere off Greenwich by this time if it hadn't been for me—the tide was just on the turn. I stopped her going over, and now I feel responsible, like. I did think of taking her home to the missus, but my Mary Jane, though she have the kindest heart, has asharp tongue, and I don't know quite how she might take it, nor what she might say in the first surprise, like, before she could be got to listen to reason, and that pore young thing's in trouble enough, I know, without being jawed at, and I can't abide jaw myself neither. And yet I don't like to lose sight of her just yet, and what am I to do?'
'I will charge myself with her,' said the other, without the slightest hesitation. 'You can trust her to me, friend Toomey, can you not?'
'I'd trust you with anything, sir,' said Toomey.
The other went straight back to the fire where Alice sat, already deep again in her own bitter thoughts.
'I am going home now, and as I go I will see you to your house. Come.'
She rose at once, and held out her hand to Mr Toomey.
'Thank you so much,' she said, 'for all your goodness. Good-bye.'
'Good-bye,' said Toomey, shaking her hand vigorously. 'This gentleman will take good care of you.'
'Take my arm,' said her escort, when they got on to the pavement. 'As you go to the Agora, I suppose we are interested in the same subjects, and perhaps know some of the same people. Do many of your friends go there?'
'I don't know anyone who goes there. I've never been there before myself.'
'Did you go by chance?'
'No.' She hesitated a moment. 'I wanted to hear the lecture.'
'Then we do take an interest in the same subjects. Which way do you go?' he asked, as they reached Ludgate Circus.
'Straight on; I am living near Gray's Inn Road.'
'Are you living with friends?'
'No, I am living alone.'
'Are your parents living?'
'Yes,' she answered. 'Oh, yes.'
From anyone else she could and would have resented such questioning, but there was something about this man that compelled her to answer him.
'Were they unkind to you?'
'No, no!' cried Alice. 'They have always been the best of the best to me.'
'Kind parents living,' he said musingly, 'and you are not with them. Our good friend yonder told me how he met you. Tell me—what does it all mean? It will be to your good to tell me.'
'What do you want to know?'
'Everything.' He laid his hand on the hand that was on his arm. 'I know you will tell me.'
And very much to her own bewilderment, she found herself telling him, not all, but enough for him to be able easily enough to guess all. She laid most stress upon the sense of desolation which had come over her in her new lodgings, and on the resistless impulse that had driven her out into the streets. When once she had begun to speak, she found a quite unexpected relief in the telling of this story which had never passed her lips before.
'It is the loneliness I mind now,' she ended; 'not the work, though that is hard enough.'
'The greater part of life is hard,' said her companion, 'and the best thing in it for some of us is to be able to make the lives of others a little less hard. I think it possible I may be able to make your life somewhat easier for you. At any rate I think I could manage to get you work which would be better paid for than your tailors' sewing.'
'Thank you,' was all Alice said. 'You are very kind.'
'I shall do that for you with much pleasure, but in return you must do something for me. I cannot part from you untilyou have promised me never again to attempt what you were prevented in to-night.'
'I cannot promise never to do it. All I can say is, I do not mean to now.'
'At any rate, promise that you will do nothing till you have seen me again.'
'Yes, I will promise that. I wonder whether the house door will be unlocked. We are close there now. If it is not, I must walk about till morning.'
'I must walk with you in that case, so we will see before I leave you whether it is or not.'
She looked at him, and for the first time realised that her companion was not of her own class.
'No; don't come further than here. I only came here to-day, you know, and I must not be seen walking with a—a—gentleman.'
'Am I a gentleman? I am afraid all your countrymen would not give me that title; men call me a Socialist. Ho-la—you've heard that name before? Does it frighten you?'
'No, I am not frightened.'
'I will wait here,' he said, 'till I see if your house receives you. If not, come back to me, and we will walk together till it can. I will come and see you to-morrow—or rather this—evening, and I hope to bring good news. Do not be down-hearted; things will look brighter this time to-morrow.'
'Oh, I must not forget to ask your name. Did Mr Toomey call you right?'
'Ah, no,' he said, smiling; 'our good Toomey is not a linguist. My name is Petrovitch. What is yours? I must know that, because of asking for you when I come. I will come in the evening.'
'My name is—Mrs—Mrs Litvinoff. Good-bye.'
'Good-bye,' he said, with a start and quite a new expression on his face. 'I will come atnoon.'
CHAPTER XI.
COUNT LITVINOFF IS SYMPATHETIC.
AT the moment when Mrs Fludger's sense of propriety was being outraged by what she termed, in a subsequent recital of her wrongs to her first-floor front, 'that shindy on the stairs,' Miss Stanley was lying on the sofa in the sitting-room at Morley's Hotel, reading the novel that had taken the last season by storm, and pushed everything else out of sight on the bookstalls. But even the thrilling interest of this work did not keep her from falling fast asleep in the middle of the fourth chapter; and she passed the next half hour in a dreamland more pleasant than Morley's Hotel; for that hostelry, especially when her father was, as usual, in the City, seemed to her to be deadly dull. She had just come back to the world of solid furniture and characterless window curtains; her first waking thought was that some tea would be worth anything to her just then—except the trouble of getting up to ring for it—and she wished dreamily that waiters could know by intuition when they were wanted. It almost seemed as if they did, for a tap came at the door, and she had to stop her reflections to say,—
'Come in.'
'Mr Richard Ferrier,' said the waiter who appeared. 'Are you at home, ma'am?'
'Oh, yes; show him up,' she said; and to herself, wonderingly, 'How funny of him to come at this time.' Then, as he entered, 'Good afternoon, Mr Ferrier. What a dreadful day! Papa has not come home yet.'
'I am very sorry to say,' said Richard, as he took her offered hand, 'that I shall not be able to come this evening.'
'Oh, I'm so sorry!' she said, cheerfully. 'I hope there's nothing wrong. Can't your brother come, either?'
'I don't know, Miss Stanley,' he answered, leaning one arm on the mantelpiece, and looking down, but not at her, though she had seated herself in a low chair near the fire, and was quite within easy visual range. 'I am not likely to know much more about my brother.'
'Not know much more about your brother, Mr Richard?' she said, opening her eyes very wide. 'What can you mean? Surely you haven't quarrelled?'
'I suppose we have quarrelled. At anyrate, my brother told me half an hour ago never to speak to him again on this side of the grave.'
Clare felt that this promised to be several degrees more interesting even than her book. She couldn't help wondering what they had quarrelled about. Was it perhaps—
'What did you say to him?'
'I said nothing—he went away, and I came here.' He spoke in that particularly even and monotonous voice which, with some people, is always the token of suppressed agitation.
'I mean what had you said to make him say that?'
'I told him the truth.'
'But perhaps you said the truth too sharply, and, besides, you ought to make it up with him—especially as you're the eldest. It's so terrible for brothers to quarrel.' She ended with a little didactic air which became her very well.
'I am afraid this is one of the quarrels that can't be made up. I can't alter facts; neither can he, unfortunately.'
'Is it so very serious?' she asked. 'Oh—papa will be so sorry. But you'll feel differently when you have had time to think it over.'
'Circumstances don't change by being thought over.'
'No, but our view of them does.'
'Well, I can say this, Miss Stanley; if ever I could change my opinion of my brother's conduct I should be only too glad, and I should be the first to make advances towards reconciliation.'
'Why, surely, Mr Roland's done nothing wrong?'
'You may be sure he has, in my opinion at least, or I should not have spoken to him as I did; knowing, too, all that it involved,' he added in a lower voice.
'Oh, yes,' said Clare in quite an awestruck tone—all that her father had told her about old Mr Ferrier's will coming into her mind with a rush. 'Why, I had forgotten that.'
'Yes,' said Richard, looking straight at her for the first time that afternoon, 'I shall lose my living, and more, the hope of my life; but at anyrate, thank God, I keep my honour, and he has lost even that.'
Clare returned his gaze steadily.
'You have no right to say that, unless you are quite, quite, quite sure,' she said rather haughtily.
She had no motive for that little speech, save a natural love for fair play, but he read in it a desire to champion his brother against his attack, and he was goaded to the point of indiscretion.
'I am so sure,' he answered bitterly, 'that sooner than touch hands in friendship with him again, I am giving up all my chances in life, and with them the hope of winning you. Don't say anything,' he went on, seeing that she was about to speak. 'I had no right to say that. I did not mean to annoy you with any hint of my vain devotion, but I couldn't helpsaying it. Consider it unsaid if you like, but don't be vexed with me. There is one thing I must ask you. I should be untrue to my love for you if I did not ask it. Do not let my brother win what his fault forbids me to try for.'
She rose.
'I have given you no right to talk in that way, nor to ask me any such promise, and I will promise nothing since I know nothing,' she said, indignantly.
'Then at least it shall not be my fault,' said Richard with equal fire, 'if you do not know what every woman he comes near ought to know. He is not free to offer love to any woman. He owes all the love he is capable of to a woman he has ruined and deserted.'
Miss Stanley looked at him coldly and contemptuously. He stood silent a moment, and in that moment felt the utter falseness of the step he had taken. She turned slightly away from him, and he knew that there were no more words to be said on either side.
'Good-bye,' he said; 'I shall not be at all likely to trouble you again.'
'Good afternoon,' she said, without moving; and he went out. Now, indeed, everything was over.
Clare, left to herself, sank down again in her low chair, and knitted her brows in annoyed meditation. Quarrels, separations, and crushing impertinent people with 'dynamic glances' were all very well in novels, but in real life it was much nicer to have things go smoothly. She could not quite foresee all the complications that this quarrel might lead to, but she knew that it would make a great difference at Firth Vale. Aspinshaw would be duller than ever. Would Roland come this evening? Could what Dick had said be true? If it was, she thought, he had no right to say it to her; and it was mean of him to say it to anyone behind his brother's back. CountLitvinoff would be sure to come, at anyrate. 'Let's hopehe'llbe entertaining,' she said to herself.
When a woman is bored, or tired, or vexed, or perplexed, or worried, after a quarrel, or before a journey, there is one resource to which she always flies. Miss Stanley rang for tea.
The waiter who announced Mr Ferrier had quite settled in his own mind that in so doing he was ushering in one of the chief characters in a love scene, but when he caught sight of the young man's face as he came from Miss Stanley's presence, he decided that the scene in which Mr Ferrier had just played his part, had not had much love-sweetness about it, at anyrate. Count Litvinoff, coming up the stairs a moment afterwards, met Dick going down, and thought so too.
'Ah! Mr Ferrier,' he said genially; 'we are to be fellow guests to-night, I believe.'
'I think not,' said Dick, shaking hands; 'I shall not be able to come.'
Litvinoff's face fell, and he looked quite naturally grieved.
'How unfortunate,' he said.
'I say,' said Richard, after a minute's pause, 'were you in a place called Spray's Buildings, a turning out of Porson Street, about an hour ago? You'll think it strange of me to ask, but I have a particular reason for wanting to know.'
'Porson Street—Porson Street. I've heard the name somewhere, but I certainly haven't been there this afternoon.'
The Court of St Petersburg had evidently missed a good diplomatist in Count Michael Litvinoff. The lie was admirably told.
'No,' said Richard, 'I didn't suppose you had, but I thought I'd just set my mind at rest about it.'
'May I ask,' said Litvinoff, leaning on the banisters and idly swinging his eyeglass by the guard, 'why your mind was disturbed concerning my incomings and outgoings?'
'You are quite right. It is no business of mine; but I asked, in order to verify or disprove a statement of my brother's.'
'So your brother, at anyrate, honours me with his interest, does he?'
'You'd better ask him—good afternoon.'
'A sweet disposition that,' observed Litvinoff, when, having watched the other out of sight, he turned towards his room. 'They ought to teach politeness at Cambridge, and put it down among the extras. By the way, there may be something to be got out of our brother. Things are getting too mixed to be pleasant. Wonder whether he'll turn up to-night?'
He did turn up, in such a state of depression as to promise to be a thorough wet blanket on all the fires of social gaiety. In fact, none of the little party which assembled round Mr Stanley's dinner-table were in a state of mind to make them what is called good company. Roland was thoroughly unhinged by the events of the afternoon, which to him had been so utterly unexpected, and were so completely unexplained. It needed a determined effort on his part to listen to Mr Stanley's commonplaces instead of thinking out some means of compassing a reconciliation with his brother. He felt sure that their quarrel hinged on a mistake, but what that mistake was, or what its subject was, he was at a loss to conjecture.
Clare was listless anddistraite. She was intensely annoyed by the remembrance of that little episode with Richard, and, though she told herself that she did not believe a word he had said, she found it hard to forget it and to treat Roland as usual. She had not had a chance of telling her father anything about Richard, for Litvinoff had been punctual, and Mr Stanley had come back from the City late, and cross as well as late; and the old gentleman's continued references to the absentee, and his regrets for the 'sudden business' which had prevented himfrom being present, made matters several degrees more uncomfortable than they would otherwise have been.
Litvinoff had his own reasons for not feeling very joyous on this occasion, but he had not had three years of wandering in exile among all sorts and conditions of men for nothing, and he was able to put his own personal feelings on one side, and to do what was exacted by the proprieties. No one could have told from his manner that he had a care in the world. More than this, he succeeded after a while in inspiring the others with some of his own powers of self-repression; and though they did not perhaps feel more festive, they made a successful effort to seem so, in order to be not out of harmony with what seemed to them to be his gaiety and light-heartedness.
During the earlier part of the evening he devoted himself entirely to Mr Stanley, a real act of self-abnegation in any young man, when Mr Stanley's daughter was in the room. But Mr Stanley was interested in the financial condition of United States railways, and Count Litvinoff—odd thing in an exile—knew absolutely everything that was to be known about the financial condition of United States railways, and, what was better, he had a friend who knew even more than that, and whose knowledge was quite at Mr Stanley's service. If during the long conference on these entrancing topics he cast occasional glances across the room to where Clare and young Ferrier sat talking, they were certainly not envious ones, for 'the gentle Roland' did not seem to be having a good time of it. Litvinoff took pity on him presently, and came to the rescue.
'Are we to have no music, Miss Stanley?' he asked, when the subject of the financial condition of the United States railways was exhausted for the time being, and his host showed decided symptoms of a desire to descant on the beauties of'our great Conservative institutions, sir,' and 'the glorious Constitution which,' etc.
Miss Stanley felt that singing to three people would be better than talking to one, and in the intervals between the songs that followed she and Litvinoff seemed to conspire to keep the conversation general.
'Penny Napoleon,' so often a refuge of the bored and the uncongenial, helped the long evening to its end, and though the last state of it was better than the first, everyone was glad to say good-night to everyone else.
The two young men, by the way, did not say good-night to each other when they left the Stanleys.
'Come and have a cigar,' said Litvinoff, precisely as he had done on the last occasion of their meeting there. And Roland, nothing loth to defer the moment of being alone again with his own perplexities, consented.
But even in the Count's comfortable little sitting-room his perplexities pursued him, and in more objectionable shape, too. For the first words his companion uttered, after he had supplied his guest with one of his special cigars and a tumbler of something unexceptionable, with lemon, hot, were—
'Your brother tells me you're taking an interest in my movements, Mr Ferrier.'
'How do you mean?'
'I had the felicity to meet him to-day, and he asked me—rather bluntly, perhaps—if I had been this afternoon in some street, the name of which escapes me at the moment—Morford Street, was it? I told him no, and begged to know the reason of his question. He then said he wished to verify (I think those were his exact words) a statement of yours. I asked him, did you take an interest in my movements? He then said, in a mannertant soit peuabrupt, 'You'd better ask him,' and vanished into the Ewigkeit.Voilà, Ihaveasked you.'
Roland took two or three puffs at his cigar, and surrounded himself with a little cloud of smoke. Then he rose and stood with his back to the fire, and in that attitude he looked, Litvinoff thought, uncommonly like his brother.
'Look here,' he said slowly, 'according to the laws of etiquette and all that sort of thing, I have known you far too short a time to think of talking to you about my relations with my brother, but I am horribly perplexed about him; and since he has let you know that there is something wrong between us, I may as well tell you all I know about it. I need hardly say that all I say to you is said in strict confidence.'
The Count bowed.
'For some time we have not been upon the very best of terms; but that's neither here nor there. There was nothing seriously wrong between us. This morning, without any apparent cause, he made a kind of veiled accusation against me, which I could not understand, and even went so far as to tell me I ought not to go near—'
He hesitated. Litvinoff made an interrogatory movement, which prevented his stopping short, as he seemed inclined to do.
'Miss Stanley,' he ended.
'Ah, so?' said the other, raising his eyebrows, and looking sympathetically interested.
'We had a sharp word; but I should not have thought much more of it if it hadn't been for what came later. This afternoon I was going to see a man you introduced me to the other night, Lenoir, who, I thought, I remembered lived in Porson Street.'
'Ah, yes, it was Porson Street your brother named,' interrupted Litvinoff.
'As I was looking about for him I fancied I caught sight ofyou, but it was foggy, and when I followed the man into a house, it turned out not to be you. At least, I suppose not.'
'No, no; it certainly was not I.'
'Well, as I was looking about, bewildered, on a staircase, I met my brother, who, I suppose, had followed me. He asked me what I wanted there. I told him. He said I was a scoundrel and a liar. Of course, I couldn't stand that, so I let out at him, and came away—and there the matter stands. What do you make of it?'
'Excuse me,' said the other, 'does your brother drink?'
'Certainly not; he's one of the most temperate men I know.'
'Could he have done it because—But ah, no, that is quite impossible.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'Is your brother in love with Miss Stanley?' said Litvinoff, slowly and directly.
'I think he is. What made you think so?'
'It was coming from her presence that I met him.'
'By God! That may account for her manner to-night,' said Roland in a low tone, but not so low but that Litvinoff heard him, and read his thought almost before he heard his word.
'No, no, that is quite impossible; dismiss that from your mind. He would never be so base as to traduce you to her. Besides, where is the motive, unless he fears you? Is there perhaps some other lady in the case?'
'No.'
'He told you you were not worthy to go near Miss Stanley,' said the other, lowering his voice deferentially at her name. 'That can only mean one thing.'
'It may mean that he is mad, or—by Jove!—it may mean one other thing. But of that other thing I am as innocent as you are.'
If he was as innocent as Count Litvinoff looked, he was innocent indeed.
'Perhaps it will arrange itself. Quarrels about ladies often adjust themselves—or rather the lady usually adjusts them.'
'This,' said Roland, 'is more serious than most quarrels for both of us, and more serious than I can tell you; but I think I've troubled you enough with our family affairs. I'll say good-night.'
Litvinoff came down to the door with him, and helped him on with his coat. As he did so, he said softly,—
'If it is any comfort to you, your brother did not seem to have prospered in his suit. He looked distressed, and, fancied, remorseful. Good-night. Ah, what a lovely night. The fog has quite cleared up. How lucky for you.Au revoir!'
CHAPTER XII.
SUCCESSFUL ANGLING.
THE only good thing about life is that it's interesting, but it's quite possible to have too much interest at once, and then it begins to be irritating and depressing, and the best sedative is tobacco, and the best stimulant is whisky.'
So said the Count when he returned to his room, and he accordingly acted on his convictions. But both whisky and tobacco seemed to fail of the effect expected of them. He sat looking broodingly at the fire for a moment or two; then he got up, paced the length of the room, and, turning sharply, stamped his foot on the ground, muttered a curse or two, and flung his hands out with a vigorous gesture of annoyance.
'So, these sons of the millowner—these playfellows of childhood, these friends of innocence—aremen, not ugly, not fools, and not better than their fellows. This Richard is apparently so much interested as to go nearly mad about her disappearance; and as for Roland, there must have been pretty strong grounds before his brother would have started that charming scene on the staircase. I wonder if conscience had as much to do with her conduct as I believed. As a rule, when a woman gives up the substantial goods of this life, it's as well to look for some more commonplace motive than conscientious scruples. Perhaps it was only a yearning towards the old love. Pardieu, though,' he added, with something like a laugh; 'the old love and conscience together don't provide very good quarters. It would be too much to believe that that little rustic had actually humbugged me. But it's not impossible, young man,' and he glanced mockingly at his reflection over the mantelpiece; 'and at present I should advise you to go to bed; you'll need all your senses about you to-morrow. The threads are lying loose round, as the Yankees say, and you must gather them up.'
He finished his glass of grog.
'I would have given a few hundred francs to have been present in spirit at that interview which depressed la belle Clare and crushed the unhappy Richard. But perhaps a little adroitness to-morrow will fill up the blanks of to-day. And as for the other matter, the future is more to me than the past—to conclude with a fine revolutionary sentiment.'
'I'm sorry I shall have to be out all the morning again,' said Mr Stanley next morning at breakfast, as he opened his letters. 'Would you like to come with me?'
'No, thanks, papa,' said Clare. She had been into the City with him before, and had a vivid recollection of draughty passages, steep staircases, and impertinent glances from junior clerks.
'What will you do with yourself all the time?' asked her father. 'You can't be always reading.'
'I'll run over to the National Gallery, I think, and spend an hour or two there.'
'Why, you've been there once with me.'
'It's no good going to a picture galleryonce.'
'I don't know that it's anygood, my dear, but it's quite enough for me. However, please yourself—please yourself.'To Mr Stanley's idea it was quite as safe to send a daughter alone to the National Gallery as to send her to church on a week day. The two places seemed to him to be the one as uninteresting as the other, and both of them as absolutely free from possible snares and pitfalls as any convent in the land. 'I meant to have given you lunch at the "Ship and Turtle,"' he went on.
'My dear papa, I'm not greedy. I'm not an alderman.'
'The aldermen of London are an essential—'
'An essential part of the British Constitution,' she interrupted, laughing. 'Yes, I know, dear, and I'm not an essential part. That's just the difference.'