Volume Two—Chapter Two.

Volume Two—Chapter Two.Miss Heathery’s Offering.Nature, or rather the adaptation from Nature which we call civilisation, deals very hardly with unmarried ladies of twenty-five for the next ten or a dozen years. Then it seems to give them up, and we have arrived at what is politely known as the uncertain age. Very uncertain it is, for, from thirty-five to forty-five some ladies seem to stand still.Miss Heathery was one of these, and the mid-life stage seemed to have made her evergreen, for seven years’ lapse found her much the same, scarcely in any manner changed.Poor Miss Heathery! For twenty years she had been longing with all the intensity of a true woman to become somebody’s squaw. Her heart was an urn full of sweetness. Perhaps it was of rather a sickly cloying kind that many men would have turned from with disgust, but it was sweetness all the same, and for these long, long years she had been waiting to pour this honey of her nature like a blessing upon some one’s head, while only one man had been ready to say, “Pour on,” and held his head ready.That one would-be suitor was old Gemp, and when he said it, poor Miss Heathery recoiled, clasping her hands tightly upon the mouth of the urn and closing it. She could not pour it there, and the love of Gemp had turned into a bitter hate.If the curate in his disappointment would only have turned to her, she sighed to herself!“Ah!”And she went on thinking and working. What comforting fleecy undergarments she could have woven for him! What ornamental braces he should have worn; and, in the sanguine hopes of that swelling urn of sweets, she designed—she never began them—a set of slippers, a set of seven, all beautifully worked in wool and silks, and lined with velvet. Sunday: white with a gold sun; Monday: dominating with a pale lambent golden green, for it was moon’s day; Tuesday puzzled her, for it took her into the Scandinavian mythology, and there she was lost hopelessly for a time, but she waded out with an idea that Tuisco was Mars, so the slippers should be red. The Wednesday slippers brought in Mercury, so they were silvery. Thursday was another puzzle till the happy idea came of crossing Thor’s hammer, which would give the slippers quite a college look, black hammers on a red ground. Friday—Frèga, Venus—she would work a beauteous woman with golden hair on each. She felt rather doubtful about the woman’s face; but love would find out the way. Then there was Saturday.Just as she reached Saturday, she remembered having once heard that Sir Gordon had a set of razors for every day in the week, and the design halted.Ah! if Sir Gordon would only have looked at her with that sad melancholy air of tenderness, how happy she could have been! How she would have prompted him to keep on that fight of his against time! But he never smiled upon her; and though she paid in all her little sums of money at the bank herself, and changed all her cheques, Mr James Thickens—as he was always called, to distinguish him from a Mr Thickens of whom some one had once heard somewhere—made no step in advance. The bank counter was always between them, and it was very broad.“What could she do more to show her affection?” she asked herself. She had petitioned him to give her a “teeny weeny gold-fish, and a teeny weeny silver fish,” and he had responded at once; but he was close in his ways: he was not generous. He did not purchase a glass globe of iridescent tints and goodly form; he borrowed a small milk tin at the dairy and sent them in that, with his compliments.But there were the fish, and she purchased a beautiful globe herself, placed three Venus’s ear-shells in the bottom, filled it with clear water from the river carefully strained through three thicknesses of flannel, and there the fish lived till they died.Why they died so soon may have been from over-petting and too much food. For Miss Heathery secretly called the gold-fish James, and the silver fish Letitia, her own name, and she was never so happy as when feeding James and coaxing him to kiss the tips of her thin little fingers.Perhaps it was from over-feeding, perhaps from too much salt, for as Miss Heathery, after long waiting, had to content herself with the chaste salutes of the gold-fish, dissolved pearls distilled from her sad eyes, and fell in the water like sporadic drops of rain.Miss Heathery’s spirit was low, and yet it kept leaping up strangely, for she had been at the bank one morning to change a cheque, and with the full intention of asking Mr James Thickens to present her with a couple more fish from the store of which she had heard so much, but which she had never seen.That morning, as she noted how broad the pathway had grown from the forehead upwards, and had seen when he turned his back that it expanded into a circular walk round a bed of grizzle in the back of his crown, and was then continued to the nape, Mr James Thickens seemed to be extremely hard and cold. He looked certainly older too than he used; of that she was sure.He seemed extremely abrupt and impatient with her when she wished him a sweet and pensive good-morning, which was as near a blessing upon his getting-bald head as the words would allow.She said afterwards that it was a fine morning, a very fine morning, a fact that he did not deny, neither did he acknowledge, and so abstracted and strange did he seem that the gold-fish slipped out of her mind, and for a few moments she was agitated. She recovered though, and laying down a little bunch of violets beside her reticule, she went through her regular routine, received her change, and with a strange feeling of exultation at the artfulness of her procedure, she had reached the door after a most impressive “good-morning,” for Miss Heathery always kept up the fiction of dining late, though she partook of her main meal at half-past one.She had reached the door, when James Thickens spoke, his voice, the voice of her forlorn hope, thrilling her to the core. It was not a thrilling word, though it had that effect upon her, for it was only a summons—an arrest, a check, to her outward progress.“Hi!”That was all. “Hi!” but it did thrill her, and she stopped short with bounding pulses. It was abrupt, but still what of that! Gentlemen were not ladies; and if in their masterful, commanding way, they began their courtship by showing that they were the lords of women, why should she complain? He had only to order her to be his wife, and she was ready to become more—his very submissive slave.She stopped, and, after a moment’s hesitation, turned at that “Hi!” so full of hope to her thirsty soul. Her eyes were humid with pleasurable sensations, and but for that broad mahogany counter, she could have thrown herself at his feet. At that moment she was upon the dazzling pinnacle of joy; the next she was mentally sobbing despairingly in the vale of sorrow and despair into which she had fallen, for James Thickens said coldly:“Here, you’ve left something behind.”Her violets! Her sweet offering that she had laid upon the altar behind which her idol always stood. That bunch was gathered by her own fingers, tied up with her own hands, incensed with kisses, made dewy with tears. It was the result of loving and painful thought followed by an inventive flash. It meant an easy confession of her love, and after laying it upon the mahogany altar, her sanguine imagination painted James Thickens lifting it, kissing it, holding it to his breast, searching among the leaves for the note which was not there; and, lastly, wearing it home in his button-hole, placing it in water for a time, and then keeping it dried yet fragrant in a book of poetry—the present of his love.All that and more she had thought; and now James Thickens had called out, “Hi! you’ve left something behind.”She crept back to the counter, and said, “Thank you, Mr Thickens,” in a piteous voice, her eyes beneath her veil too much blinded by the gathering tears to see Mr Trampleasure passing through the bank, though she heard his words, “Good-day, Miss Heathery,” and bowed.It was all over: James Thickens was not a man, he was a rhinoceros with an impenetrable hide; and, taking up her bunch of flowers, she was about to leave the bank when Thickens spoke again.“Look here,” he said, “I want to talk to you. Can’t you ask me to tea?”The place seemed to spin round, and the mahogany counter to heave and fall like a wave, as she tried to speak but could not for a few moments. Then she mastered her emotion, and in a hurried, trembling, half-hysterical voice, she chirped out:“Yes; this evening, Mr Thickens, at six.”

Nature, or rather the adaptation from Nature which we call civilisation, deals very hardly with unmarried ladies of twenty-five for the next ten or a dozen years. Then it seems to give them up, and we have arrived at what is politely known as the uncertain age. Very uncertain it is, for, from thirty-five to forty-five some ladies seem to stand still.

Miss Heathery was one of these, and the mid-life stage seemed to have made her evergreen, for seven years’ lapse found her much the same, scarcely in any manner changed.

Poor Miss Heathery! For twenty years she had been longing with all the intensity of a true woman to become somebody’s squaw. Her heart was an urn full of sweetness. Perhaps it was of rather a sickly cloying kind that many men would have turned from with disgust, but it was sweetness all the same, and for these long, long years she had been waiting to pour this honey of her nature like a blessing upon some one’s head, while only one man had been ready to say, “Pour on,” and held his head ready.

That one would-be suitor was old Gemp, and when he said it, poor Miss Heathery recoiled, clasping her hands tightly upon the mouth of the urn and closing it. She could not pour it there, and the love of Gemp had turned into a bitter hate.

If the curate in his disappointment would only have turned to her, she sighed to herself!

“Ah!”

And she went on thinking and working. What comforting fleecy undergarments she could have woven for him! What ornamental braces he should have worn; and, in the sanguine hopes of that swelling urn of sweets, she designed—she never began them—a set of slippers, a set of seven, all beautifully worked in wool and silks, and lined with velvet. Sunday: white with a gold sun; Monday: dominating with a pale lambent golden green, for it was moon’s day; Tuesday puzzled her, for it took her into the Scandinavian mythology, and there she was lost hopelessly for a time, but she waded out with an idea that Tuisco was Mars, so the slippers should be red. The Wednesday slippers brought in Mercury, so they were silvery. Thursday was another puzzle till the happy idea came of crossing Thor’s hammer, which would give the slippers quite a college look, black hammers on a red ground. Friday—Frèga, Venus—she would work a beauteous woman with golden hair on each. She felt rather doubtful about the woman’s face; but love would find out the way. Then there was Saturday.

Just as she reached Saturday, she remembered having once heard that Sir Gordon had a set of razors for every day in the week, and the design halted.

Ah! if Sir Gordon would only have looked at her with that sad melancholy air of tenderness, how happy she could have been! How she would have prompted him to keep on that fight of his against time! But he never smiled upon her; and though she paid in all her little sums of money at the bank herself, and changed all her cheques, Mr James Thickens—as he was always called, to distinguish him from a Mr Thickens of whom some one had once heard somewhere—made no step in advance. The bank counter was always between them, and it was very broad.

“What could she do more to show her affection?” she asked herself. She had petitioned him to give her a “teeny weeny gold-fish, and a teeny weeny silver fish,” and he had responded at once; but he was close in his ways: he was not generous. He did not purchase a glass globe of iridescent tints and goodly form; he borrowed a small milk tin at the dairy and sent them in that, with his compliments.

But there were the fish, and she purchased a beautiful globe herself, placed three Venus’s ear-shells in the bottom, filled it with clear water from the river carefully strained through three thicknesses of flannel, and there the fish lived till they died.

Why they died so soon may have been from over-petting and too much food. For Miss Heathery secretly called the gold-fish James, and the silver fish Letitia, her own name, and she was never so happy as when feeding James and coaxing him to kiss the tips of her thin little fingers.

Perhaps it was from over-feeding, perhaps from too much salt, for as Miss Heathery, after long waiting, had to content herself with the chaste salutes of the gold-fish, dissolved pearls distilled from her sad eyes, and fell in the water like sporadic drops of rain.

Miss Heathery’s spirit was low, and yet it kept leaping up strangely, for she had been at the bank one morning to change a cheque, and with the full intention of asking Mr James Thickens to present her with a couple more fish from the store of which she had heard so much, but which she had never seen.

That morning, as she noted how broad the pathway had grown from the forehead upwards, and had seen when he turned his back that it expanded into a circular walk round a bed of grizzle in the back of his crown, and was then continued to the nape, Mr James Thickens seemed to be extremely hard and cold. He looked certainly older too than he used; of that she was sure.

He seemed extremely abrupt and impatient with her when she wished him a sweet and pensive good-morning, which was as near a blessing upon his getting-bald head as the words would allow.

She said afterwards that it was a fine morning, a very fine morning, a fact that he did not deny, neither did he acknowledge, and so abstracted and strange did he seem that the gold-fish slipped out of her mind, and for a few moments she was agitated. She recovered though, and laying down a little bunch of violets beside her reticule, she went through her regular routine, received her change, and with a strange feeling of exultation at the artfulness of her procedure, she had reached the door after a most impressive “good-morning,” for Miss Heathery always kept up the fiction of dining late, though she partook of her main meal at half-past one.

She had reached the door, when James Thickens spoke, his voice, the voice of her forlorn hope, thrilling her to the core. It was not a thrilling word, though it had that effect upon her, for it was only a summons—an arrest, a check, to her outward progress.

“Hi!”

That was all. “Hi!” but it did thrill her, and she stopped short with bounding pulses. It was abrupt, but still what of that! Gentlemen were not ladies; and if in their masterful, commanding way, they began their courtship by showing that they were the lords of women, why should she complain? He had only to order her to be his wife, and she was ready to become more—his very submissive slave.

She stopped, and, after a moment’s hesitation, turned at that “Hi!” so full of hope to her thirsty soul. Her eyes were humid with pleasurable sensations, and but for that broad mahogany counter, she could have thrown herself at his feet. At that moment she was upon the dazzling pinnacle of joy; the next she was mentally sobbing despairingly in the vale of sorrow and despair into which she had fallen, for James Thickens said coldly:

“Here, you’ve left something behind.”

Her violets! Her sweet offering that she had laid upon the altar behind which her idol always stood. That bunch was gathered by her own fingers, tied up with her own hands, incensed with kisses, made dewy with tears. It was the result of loving and painful thought followed by an inventive flash. It meant an easy confession of her love, and after laying it upon the mahogany altar, her sanguine imagination painted James Thickens lifting it, kissing it, holding it to his breast, searching among the leaves for the note which was not there; and, lastly, wearing it home in his button-hole, placing it in water for a time, and then keeping it dried yet fragrant in a book of poetry—the present of his love.

All that and more she had thought; and now James Thickens had called out, “Hi! you’ve left something behind.”

She crept back to the counter, and said, “Thank you, Mr Thickens,” in a piteous voice, her eyes beneath her veil too much blinded by the gathering tears to see Mr Trampleasure passing through the bank, though she heard his words, “Good-day, Miss Heathery,” and bowed.

It was all over: James Thickens was not a man, he was a rhinoceros with an impenetrable hide; and, taking up her bunch of flowers, she was about to leave the bank when Thickens spoke again.

“Look here,” he said, “I want to talk to you. Can’t you ask me to tea?”

The place seemed to spin round, and the mahogany counter to heave and fall like a wave, as she tried to speak but could not for a few moments. Then she mastered her emotion, and in a hurried, trembling, half-hysterical voice, she chirped out:

“Yes; this evening, Mr Thickens, at six.”

Volume Two—Chapter Three.James Thickens Takes Tea.“Rum little woman,” said Thickens to himself as he hurried out of the bank. “Wonder whether she’d like another couple of fish.”Some men would have gone home to smarten up before visiting a lady to take tea, but James Thickens was not of that sort. His idea of smartness was always to look like a clean, dry, drab leaf, and he was invariably, whenever seen, at that point of perfection.Punctually at six o’clock he rapped boldly at Miss Heathery’s door, turning round to stare hard at Gemp, who came out eagerly to look and learn, before going in to have a fit—of temper, and then moving round to stare at Mrs Pinet’s putty nose, rather a large one when flattened against the pane, as she strained to get a glimpse of such an unusual proceeding.Several other neighbours had a look, and then the green door was opened. The visitor passed in and was ushered into the neat little parlour where the tea was spread, and Miss Heathery welcomed him, trembling with gentle emotion, and admiring the firmness, under such circumstances, of the animal man.It was a delicious tea. There were Sally Lunns and toast biliously brimming in butter. Six spoonfuls of the best Bohea and Young Hyson were in the china pot. There was a new cottage loaf and a large pat of butter, with a raised cow grazing on a forest of parsley. There were thin slices of ham, and there were two glass dishes of preserve equal to that of which Mrs Luttrell was so proud; and then there was a cake from Frampton’s at the corner, where they sold the Sally Lunns.“I don’t often get a tea like this, Miss Heathery,” said Thickens, who was busy with his red and yellow bandanna handkerchief spread over his drab lap.“I hope you are enjoying it,” she said sweetly.“Never enjoyed one more. Another cup, if you please, and I’ll take a little more of that ham.”It was not a little that he took, and that qualifying adjective is of no value in describing the toast and Sally Lunns that he ate solidly and seriously, as if it were his duty to do justice to the meal.And all the while poor Miss Heathery was only playing with her tea-cup and saucer. The only food of which she could partake was mental, and as she sat there dispensing her dainties and blushing with pleasure, she kept on thinking in a flutter of delight that all the neighbours would know Mr Thickens was taking tea with her, and be talking about this wicked, daring escapade on the part of a single lady.He had not smiled, but he had seemed to besocontented,sohappy, and he had asked her whether she worked that framed sampler on the wall, and the black cat with gold-thread eyes, and the embroidered cushion.He had asked her if she liked poetry, and how long one of those rice-paper flowers took her to paint. He had admired, too, her poonah painting, and had at last sat back in his chair with one drab leg crossed over the other, and looking delightfully at home.Still he didn’t seem disposed to come to the point, and in the depth and subtlety of her cunning, Miss Heathery thought she would help him by leading the conversation towards matrimony.“Dr and Mrs Luttrell seem to age very much,” she said softly.“Ah! they do,” said Thickens tightening his lips and making a furrow across the lower part of his face. “Yes: trouble, ma’am, trouble.”“But they are a sweet couple, Mr Thickens.”“Models, madam, models,” said the visitor, who became very thoughtful, and made a noise that sounded like “Soop!” as there was a pause, during which Mr Thickens took some tea.“Have you seen Sir Gordon lately?” said Miss Heathery at last.“No, madam. Back soon, though, I hope.”“Ah!” sighed Miss Heathery, “do you think he will ever—ahem! marry now?”“Never, ma’am,” said Thickens emphatically. “Too old.”“Oh, no, Mr Thickens.”“Oh, yes, Miss Heathery.”There was another pause.“How beautiful Mrs Hallam grows! So pale, and sweet, and grave. She looks to me always, Mr Thickens, like some lovely lily. Dear Millicent, it seems only yesterday that she was married.”Thickens started and moved uneasily, sending a pang that must have had a jealous birth through Miss Heathery’s breast.“Seven years ago, Mr Thickens.”“Six years, eleven months, two weeks, ma’am.”“Ah, how exact you are, Mr Thickens!”“Obliged to be, ma’am. Interest to calculate.”“But she looks thin, and not so happy as I could wish.”“Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am,” said Thickens, paradoxically.Again there was an uneasy change, for Mr Thickens’s brow was puckered, and a couple of ridgy wrinkles ran across the top of his head.“And they make such a handsome pair.”Thickens nodded and frowned, but became placid the next moment as his hostess said softly:“That sweet child!”“Hah! Yes! Bless her!—Hah! Yes! Bless her!—Hah! Yes! Bless her!”Miss Heathery stared, for her guest fired these ejaculations and benedictions at intervals in a quick, eager way, smiling the while, and with his eyes brightening.She stared more the next minute, and trembled as she heard her visitor’s next utterance, and thought of a visit of his seven years ago when she was out, and which he had explained by saying that he had come to ask her if she would like a pair of gold-fish, that was all.For all at once Mr Thickens exclaimed with his eyes glittering:“If I had married I should have liked to have had a little girl like that.”There was a terrible pause here, terrible to only one though: and then, in a hesitating voice, Miss Heathery went on, with that word “marriage” buzzing in her ears, and making her feel giddy.“Do you—do you think it’s true, Mr Thickens?”“What, that I never married?” he said sharply.“No, no; oh, dear me, no!” cried Miss Heathery; “I mean that poor Mrs Hallam is terribly troubled about money matters, and that they are very much in debt?”“Don’t know, ma’am; can’t say, ma’am; not my business, ma’am.”“But they say the doctor is terribly pinched for money too.”“Very likely, ma’am. Every one is sometimes.”“How dreadful!” exclaimed Miss Heathery.“Very, ma’am. No: nothing more, thank you. Get these things taken away, I want to talk to you.”As the repast was cleared away, Miss Heathery felt that it was coming now, and as she grew more flushed, her head with its curls and great tortoise-shell comb trembled like a flower on its stalk. She got out her work, growing more and more agitated, but noticing that Thickens grew more cold and self-possessed.“The way of a great man,” she thought to herself as she felt that she had led up to what was coming, and that she had never before been so wicked and daring in the whole course of her life.“It was the violets,” she said to herself; and then she started, trembled more than ever, and felt quite faint, for James Thickens drew his chair a little nearer, spread his handkerchief carefully across his drab legs, and said suddenly:“Now then, let’s to business.”Business? Well yes, it was the great business of life, thought Miss Heathery, as she held her hands to her heart, ready to pour out the long pent-up sweetness with which it was charged.“Look here, Miss Heathery,” he went on, “I always liked you.”“Oh! Mr Thickens,” she sighed, but she could not “look here” at the visitor, who was playing dumb tunes upon the red and lavender check table-cover, as if it were a harpsichord.“I’ve always thought you were an extremely good little woman.”“At last,” said Miss Heathery to herself.“You’ve got a nice little bit of money in our bank, and also the deeds of this house.”“Don’t—don’t talk about money, Mr Thickens, please.”“Must,” he said abruptly. “I’m a money man. Now look here, you live on your little income we have in the bank.”“Yes, Mr Thickens,” sighed the lady.“Ah! yes, of course. Then look here. Dinham’s two houses are for sale next week.”“Yes; I saw the bill,” she sighed.“Let me buy them for you.”“Buy them? They would cost too much, Mr Thickens.”“Not they. You’ve got nearly enough, and the rest could stay on. They always let; dare say you could keep on the present tenants.”“But—”That “but” meant that she would not have those excuses for going to the bank.“You’ll get good interest for your money then, ma’am, and you get little now.”“But, Mr Thickens—”“I wish you to do it, ma’am, and I hope that you will.”“Oh! if you wish it, Mr Thickens, of course I will,” she said eagerly.“That’s right; I do wish it. May I buy them for you?”“Oh, certainly, Mr Thickens.”“All right, ma’am, then I will. Now I must get home and feed my fishes. Good evening.”He caught up his hat, shook hands, and was gone before his hostess had recovered from her surprise and chagrin.“But never mind,” she said, rubbing her hands and making two rings click.The contact of those two rings made her gaze down and then take and fondle one particular finger, while, in spite of the abruptness of her visitor, she gazed down dreamily at that finger, and sighed as she sank into a reverie full of golden dreams.“So odd and peculiar,” she sighed; “but so different to any one else I ever knew; and, ah me! how shocking it all is: so many people must have seen him come.”

“Rum little woman,” said Thickens to himself as he hurried out of the bank. “Wonder whether she’d like another couple of fish.”

Some men would have gone home to smarten up before visiting a lady to take tea, but James Thickens was not of that sort. His idea of smartness was always to look like a clean, dry, drab leaf, and he was invariably, whenever seen, at that point of perfection.

Punctually at six o’clock he rapped boldly at Miss Heathery’s door, turning round to stare hard at Gemp, who came out eagerly to look and learn, before going in to have a fit—of temper, and then moving round to stare at Mrs Pinet’s putty nose, rather a large one when flattened against the pane, as she strained to get a glimpse of such an unusual proceeding.

Several other neighbours had a look, and then the green door was opened. The visitor passed in and was ushered into the neat little parlour where the tea was spread, and Miss Heathery welcomed him, trembling with gentle emotion, and admiring the firmness, under such circumstances, of the animal man.

It was a delicious tea. There were Sally Lunns and toast biliously brimming in butter. Six spoonfuls of the best Bohea and Young Hyson were in the china pot. There was a new cottage loaf and a large pat of butter, with a raised cow grazing on a forest of parsley. There were thin slices of ham, and there were two glass dishes of preserve equal to that of which Mrs Luttrell was so proud; and then there was a cake from Frampton’s at the corner, where they sold the Sally Lunns.

“I don’t often get a tea like this, Miss Heathery,” said Thickens, who was busy with his red and yellow bandanna handkerchief spread over his drab lap.

“I hope you are enjoying it,” she said sweetly.

“Never enjoyed one more. Another cup, if you please, and I’ll take a little more of that ham.”

It was not a little that he took, and that qualifying adjective is of no value in describing the toast and Sally Lunns that he ate solidly and seriously, as if it were his duty to do justice to the meal.

And all the while poor Miss Heathery was only playing with her tea-cup and saucer. The only food of which she could partake was mental, and as she sat there dispensing her dainties and blushing with pleasure, she kept on thinking in a flutter of delight that all the neighbours would know Mr Thickens was taking tea with her, and be talking about this wicked, daring escapade on the part of a single lady.

He had not smiled, but he had seemed to besocontented,sohappy, and he had asked her whether she worked that framed sampler on the wall, and the black cat with gold-thread eyes, and the embroidered cushion.

He had asked her if she liked poetry, and how long one of those rice-paper flowers took her to paint. He had admired, too, her poonah painting, and had at last sat back in his chair with one drab leg crossed over the other, and looking delightfully at home.

Still he didn’t seem disposed to come to the point, and in the depth and subtlety of her cunning, Miss Heathery thought she would help him by leading the conversation towards matrimony.

“Dr and Mrs Luttrell seem to age very much,” she said softly.

“Ah! they do,” said Thickens tightening his lips and making a furrow across the lower part of his face. “Yes: trouble, ma’am, trouble.”

“But they are a sweet couple, Mr Thickens.”

“Models, madam, models,” said the visitor, who became very thoughtful, and made a noise that sounded like “Soop!” as there was a pause, during which Mr Thickens took some tea.

“Have you seen Sir Gordon lately?” said Miss Heathery at last.

“No, madam. Back soon, though, I hope.”

“Ah!” sighed Miss Heathery, “do you think he will ever—ahem! marry now?”

“Never, ma’am,” said Thickens emphatically. “Too old.”

“Oh, no, Mr Thickens.”

“Oh, yes, Miss Heathery.”

There was another pause.

“How beautiful Mrs Hallam grows! So pale, and sweet, and grave. She looks to me always, Mr Thickens, like some lovely lily. Dear Millicent, it seems only yesterday that she was married.”

Thickens started and moved uneasily, sending a pang that must have had a jealous birth through Miss Heathery’s breast.

“Seven years ago, Mr Thickens.”

“Six years, eleven months, two weeks, ma’am.”

“Ah, how exact you are, Mr Thickens!”

“Obliged to be, ma’am. Interest to calculate.”

“But she looks thin, and not so happy as I could wish.”

“Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am,” said Thickens, paradoxically.

Again there was an uneasy change, for Mr Thickens’s brow was puckered, and a couple of ridgy wrinkles ran across the top of his head.

“And they make such a handsome pair.”

Thickens nodded and frowned, but became placid the next moment as his hostess said softly:

“That sweet child!”

“Hah! Yes! Bless her!—Hah! Yes! Bless her!—Hah! Yes! Bless her!”

Miss Heathery stared, for her guest fired these ejaculations and benedictions at intervals in a quick, eager way, smiling the while, and with his eyes brightening.

She stared more the next minute, and trembled as she heard her visitor’s next utterance, and thought of a visit of his seven years ago when she was out, and which he had explained by saying that he had come to ask her if she would like a pair of gold-fish, that was all.

For all at once Mr Thickens exclaimed with his eyes glittering:

“If I had married I should have liked to have had a little girl like that.”

There was a terrible pause here, terrible to only one though: and then, in a hesitating voice, Miss Heathery went on, with that word “marriage” buzzing in her ears, and making her feel giddy.

“Do you—do you think it’s true, Mr Thickens?”

“What, that I never married?” he said sharply.

“No, no; oh, dear me, no!” cried Miss Heathery; “I mean that poor Mrs Hallam is terribly troubled about money matters, and that they are very much in debt?”

“Don’t know, ma’am; can’t say, ma’am; not my business, ma’am.”

“But they say the doctor is terribly pinched for money too.”

“Very likely, ma’am. Every one is sometimes.”

“How dreadful!” exclaimed Miss Heathery.

“Very, ma’am. No: nothing more, thank you. Get these things taken away, I want to talk to you.”

As the repast was cleared away, Miss Heathery felt that it was coming now, and as she grew more flushed, her head with its curls and great tortoise-shell comb trembled like a flower on its stalk. She got out her work, growing more and more agitated, but noticing that Thickens grew more cold and self-possessed.

“The way of a great man,” she thought to herself as she felt that she had led up to what was coming, and that she had never before been so wicked and daring in the whole course of her life.

“It was the violets,” she said to herself; and then she started, trembled more than ever, and felt quite faint, for James Thickens drew his chair a little nearer, spread his handkerchief carefully across his drab legs, and said suddenly:

“Now then, let’s to business.”

Business? Well yes, it was the great business of life, thought Miss Heathery, as she held her hands to her heart, ready to pour out the long pent-up sweetness with which it was charged.

“Look here, Miss Heathery,” he went on, “I always liked you.”

“Oh! Mr Thickens,” she sighed, but she could not “look here” at the visitor, who was playing dumb tunes upon the red and lavender check table-cover, as if it were a harpsichord.

“I’ve always thought you were an extremely good little woman.”

“At last,” said Miss Heathery to herself.

“You’ve got a nice little bit of money in our bank, and also the deeds of this house.”

“Don’t—don’t talk about money, Mr Thickens, please.”

“Must,” he said abruptly. “I’m a money man. Now look here, you live on your little income we have in the bank.”

“Yes, Mr Thickens,” sighed the lady.

“Ah! yes, of course. Then look here. Dinham’s two houses are for sale next week.”

“Yes; I saw the bill,” she sighed.

“Let me buy them for you.”

“Buy them? They would cost too much, Mr Thickens.”

“Not they. You’ve got nearly enough, and the rest could stay on. They always let; dare say you could keep on the present tenants.”

“But—”

That “but” meant that she would not have those excuses for going to the bank.

“You’ll get good interest for your money then, ma’am, and you get little now.”

“But, Mr Thickens—”

“I wish you to do it, ma’am, and I hope that you will.”

“Oh! if you wish it, Mr Thickens, of course I will,” she said eagerly.

“That’s right; I do wish it. May I buy them for you?”

“Oh, certainly, Mr Thickens.”

“All right, ma’am, then I will. Now I must get home and feed my fishes. Good evening.”

He caught up his hat, shook hands, and was gone before his hostess had recovered from her surprise and chagrin.

“But never mind,” she said, rubbing her hands and making two rings click.

The contact of those two rings made her gaze down and then take and fondle one particular finger, while, in spite of the abruptness of her visitor, she gazed down dreamily at that finger, and sighed as she sank into a reverie full of golden dreams.

“So odd and peculiar,” she sighed; “but so different to any one else I ever knew; and, ah me! how shocking it all is: so many people must have seen him come.”

Volume Two—Chapter Four.Dr Luttrell’s Troubles.Dr Luttrell had taken a rake, and gone down the garden, according to his custom, and, as soon as he had left the house, Mrs Luttrell went to the window and watched him; after which, with a sorrowful face, she walked back into the drawing-room, to sit down and weep silently for a few minutes.“It breaks my heart to see her poor sad face, and it’s breaking his, though he’s always laughing it off, and telling me it’s all my nonsense. Oh, dear me! oh, dear me! How is it all to end?”She sat rocking herself to and fro for a few minutes, and then jumped up hastily.“It’s dreadful, that it is!” she sighed; “but I can’t stop here alone. Yes! I thought so!” she cried, as she went to the window, where she could catch sight of the doctor, rake in hand, but not using it, according to his wont, for he was resting upon it, and thinking deeply.Mrs Luttrell snatched at a great grey ball of worsted and her needles, and went down the garden, making the doctor start as she reached his side.“Eh? What is it?” he exclaimed. “Anything wrong at the Manor?”“Wrong! what nonsense, dear!” said the old lady cheerily. “I’m sure, Joseph, you ought to take some medicine. You grow quite nervous!”“What made you come, then?” he cried, beginning to use his rake busily.“Why, I thought I’d come and chat while you worked, and—Joseph, my dear, don’t—don’t look like that!”“It’s of no use, old girl,” said the doctor with a sigh; “we may just as well look it boldly in the face. I’m sick of all this make-believe.”“And so am I, dear. Let us be open.”“Ah, well! I will. Who is a man to be open to if not to his old wife?”“There!” sobbed Mrs Luttrell, making a brave effort over herself, and speaking cheerfully. “I’m ready to face everything now.”“Even poverty, my dear?”“Even poverty! What does it matter to us? Is it so very bad, dear?”“It could not be worse. We must give up this house, and sell everything.”“But Hallam?”“Is a scoundrel!—no, no! I won’t say that of my child’s husband. But I cannot get a shilling of him; and when I saw him yesterday, and threatened to go to Sir Gordon—”“Well, dear?”“He told me to go if I dared.”“And did you go?”“Did I go, mother? Did I go?—with poor Milly’s white face before my eyes, to denounce her husband as a cheat and a rogue! He has had every penny I possessed for his speculations, and they seem all to have failed.”“But you shouldn’t have let him have it, dear!”“Not let him have it, wife! How could I refuse my own son-in-law? Well, there, our savings are gone, and we must eat humble pie for the future. I have not much practice now, and I don’t think my few patients will leave me because I live in a cottage.”“Do you think if I went and spoke to Robert it would do any good?”“It would make our poor darling miserable. She would be sure to know. As it is, she believes her husband to be one of the best of men. Am I, her father, to be the one who destroys that faith? Hush, here is some one coming!”For there was a quick, heavy step upon the gravel walk, and Christie Bayle appeared.“I thought I should find you,” he said, shaking hands warmly. “Well, doctor, how’s the garden? Why, Mrs Luttrell, what black currants! There! you may call me exacting, but tithe, ma’am, tithe—I put in my claim at once for two pots of black currant jam. Those you gave me last year were invaluable.”Mrs Luttrell held his hand still, and laughed gently.“Little bits of flattery for a very foolish old woman, my dear.”“Flattery! when I had such sore throats I could hardly speak, and yet had to preach! Not much flattery, eh, doctor?”“Flattery! No, no,” said the doctor, dreamily.He glanced at Mrs Luttrell, then at Bayle, who went on chatting pleasantly about the garden, and then checked him suddenly.“No one can hear us, Bayle. We want to talk to you—my wife and I.”“Certainly,” said Bayle; and his tone and manner changed. “Is it anything I can do for you?”“Wait a moment—let me think,” said the doctor sadly. “Here, let’s go and sit down under the yew hedge.”Bayle drew Mrs Luttrell’s hand through his arm, and patted it gently, as she looked up tenderly in his face, a tenderness mingled with pride, as if she had part and parcel in the sturdy, manly Englishman who led her to the pleasant old rustic seat in a nook of the great, green, closely-clipped wall, with its glorious prospect away over the fair country side.“I do love this old spot!” said Bayle, enthusiastically, for a glance at the doctor showed that he was nervous and hesitating, and he thought it well to give him time. “Mrs Luttrell, it is one of my sins that I cannot master envy. I always long for this old place and garden.”“Bayle!” cried the doctor, laying his hand upon the curate’s knee, and with his former hesitancy chased away by an eager look, “are you in earnest?”“In earnest, my dear sir? What about?”“About—about the old place—the garden.”“Earnest!—yes. But I am going to fight it down,” cried Bayle, laughing.“Don’t laugh, man. I am serious—things are serious with me.”“I was afraid so; but I dared not ask you. Come, come, Mrs Luttrell,” he continued gently, “don’t take it to heart. Troubles come to us all, and when they do there is their pleasant side, for then we learn the value of our friends, and I hope I am one.”“Friend, my dear!” said Mrs Luttrell, weeping gently, “I’m sure you have always seemed to me like a soil. Do: pray do, Joseph, tell him all.”“Be patient, wife, and I will—all that I can.”The doctor paused and cleared his throat, while Mrs Luttrell sat with her hand in the curate’s.“You have set me thinking,” said the doctor at last; “and what you said is like a ray of sunshine in my trouble.”“He’s always saying things that are like rays of sunshine to us in our trouble, Joseph,” said Mrs Luttrell, looking up through her tears at the earnest countenance at her side.“Bayle, I shall have to lose the old place—the wife’s old home, of which she is so proud—and my old garden. It’s a bitter blow at my time of life, but it must come.”“I was afraid there was something very wrong,” said Bayle; “but suppose we look the difficulties in the face. I’m a bit of a lawyer, you know, my dear doctor. Let’s see what can be done. I want to be delicate in my offer, but I must be blunt. I am not a poor man, my wants are very simple, and I spend so little—let me clear this difficulty away. There, we will not bother Mrs Luttrell about money matters. Consider it settled.”“No,” said the doctor firmly, “that will not do. I appreciate it all, my dear boy, truly; but there is only one way out of this difficulty—the old place must be sold.”“Oh, Joseph, Joseph!” sighed Mrs Luttrell, and the tears fell fast.“It must be, wife,” said the doctor firmly. “Bayle, after what you said, will you buy the old home? I could bear it better if it fell into your hands.”“Are you sure it must be sold?”“There is no other way out of the difficulty, Bayle. Will you buy it?”“If you tell me that there is certainly no other way out of the difficulty, and that it is your wish and Mrs Luttrell’s, I will buy the place.”“Just as it stands—furniture—everything?”“Just as it stands—furniture—everything.”“Ah!” ejaculated the doctor with a sigh of relief. “Thank God, Bayle!” he cried, shaking the curate’s hand energetically. “I have not felt so much at rest for months. Now I want, you to tell me a little about the town—about the people. What do they say?”“Say?”“Yes: say about us—about Hallam—about Millicent, about our darling?”“My dear doctor, I shall have to go and fetch old Gemp. He will point at game, and tell you more in half-an-hour than I shall be able to tell you in a year. Had we not better change the conversation?—here is Mrs Hallam with Julia.”As he spoke the garden gate clicked, and Millicent came into sight, with her child, the one grave and sad, the other all bright-eyed eagerness and excitement.“There they are, mamma—in the yew seat!” And the child raced across the lawn, bounded over a flowerbed, and leaped upon the doctor’s knee.“Dear old grandpa!” she cried, throwing her arms round his neck and kissing him effusively, but only to leap down and climb on Mrs Luttrell’s lap, clasping her neck, and laying her charming little face against the old lady’s cheek. “Dear, sweet old grandma!” she cried.Then, in all the excitement of her young life, she was down again to seize Bayle’s hand.“Come and get some fruit and flowers. We may, mayn’t we, grandpa?”“I’m sure we may,” said Bayle, laughing, “only I must go.”“Oh!” cried the child pouting, “don’t go, Mr Bayle! I do like being in the garden with you so very, very much!”Mrs Hallam turned her sweet, grave face to him.“Can you give her a few minutes? Julie will be so disappointed.”“There,” cried Bayle merrily, “you see, doctor, what a little tyrant she grows! She makes every one her slave!”“I don’t!” said the child, pouting. “Mamma always says a run in the garden does me so much good, and it will do Mr Bayle good too. Thibs says he works too hard.”“Come along, then,” he cried laughing; and the man seemed transformed, running off with the child to get a basket, while Millicent gazed after them, her countenance looking brighter, and the old people seemed to have forgotten their troubles, as they gazed smilingly after the pair.“Bless her!” said Mrs Luttrell, swaying herself softly to and fro, and passing her hands along her knees.“Yes, that’s the way, Milly. Give her plenty of fresh air, and laugh at me and my tribe.”Then quite an eager conversation ensued, Mrs Hallam brightening up; and on both sides every allusion to trouble was, by a pious kind of deception, kept out of sight, Millicent Hallam being in the fond belief that her parents did not even suspect that she was not thoroughly happy, while they were right in thinking that their child was ignorant of the straits to which they had been brought.“Why, we are quite gay this morning!” cried Mrs Luttrell; “or, no: perhaps he comes as a patient, he looks so serious. Ah, Sir Gordon, it is quite an age since you were here?”“Yes, madam; I’m growing old and gouty, and—your servant, Mrs Hallam,” he said, raising his hat. “Doctor, I wish I had your health. Ah, how peaceful and pleasant this garden looks! They told me—old Gemp told me—that I should find Bayle here. I called at his lodgings—bless my soul! how can a man with his income live in such a simple way! The woman said he was out visiting, and that old scoundrel said he was here. Egad! I believe the fellow lies in wait to hear everything. Eh? Ah, I’m right, I see!”Just then there was a silvery burst of childish laughter, followed by a deep voice shouting, “Stop thief! stop thief!” Then there was a scampering of feet, and Julia came racing along, with her dark curls flying, and Christie Bayle in full pursuit, right up to the group by the yew hedge.“She ran off with the basket!” cried Bayle. “Did you ever see—Ah, Sir Gordon!” he cried, holding out a currant-stained hand.“Humph!” cried Sir Gordon grimly, raising his glass to his eye, and looking at the big, brown, fruit-stained fingers; “mighty clerical, ’pon my honour, sir! Who do you think is coming to listen to a parson on Sundays who spends his weeks racing about gardens after little girls? No, I’m not going to spoil my gloves; they’re new.”“I—I don’t think you ought to speak to—to Mr Bayle like that, Sir Gordon!” cried Mrs Luttrell, flushing and ruffling up like a hen. “If you only knew him as we do—”“Oh, hush, mamma dear!” said Mrs Hallam, smiling tenderly, and laying her hand upon her mother’s arm.“Yes, my dear; but I cannot sit still and—”“Know him, ma’am!” said Sir Gordon sharply. “Oh, I know him by heart; read him through and through! He was never meant for a parson; he’s too rough!”“Really, Sir Gordon, I—”“Don’t defend me, Mrs Luttrell,” said Bayle merrily. “Sir Gordon doesn’t like me, and he makes this excuse for not coming to hear me preach.”“Well, little dark eyes!” cried Sir Gordon, taking Julia’s hand, and leading her to the seat. “Ah, that’s better! I do get tired so soon, doctor. Well, little dark eyes!” he continued, after seating himself, and drawing the child between his knees, after which he drew a clean, highly-scented, cambric handkerchief from his breast pocket, and leaned forward. “Open your mouth, little one,” he said.Julia obeyed, parting her scarlet lips.“Now put out your tongue.”“Is grandpa teaching you to be a doctor?” said the child innocently.“No; but I wish he would, my dear,” said Sir Gordon, “so that I could doctor one patient—myself. Out with your tongue.”The child obeyed, and the baronet gravely moistened his handkerchief thereon, and, taking the soft little chin in one gloved hand, carefully removed a tiny purple fruit-stain.“That’s better. Now you are fit to kiss.” He bent down, and kissed the child slowly. “Don’t like me much, do you, Julia?”“I don’t know,” said the child, looking up at him with her large serious eyes. “Sometimes I do, when you don’t talk crossly to me; but sometimes I don’t. I don’t like you half so well as I do Mr Bayle.”“But he’s always setting you hard lessons, and puzzling your brains, isn’t he?”“No,” said the child, shaking her head. “Oh, no! we have such fun over my lessons every morning! But I do like you too—a little.”“Come, that’s a comfort!” said Sir Gordon, rising again. “There, I must go. I want to carry off Mr Bayle—on business.”Mrs Hallam glanced sharply from one to the other, and then, to conceal her agitation, bent down over her child, and began to smooth her tangled curls.

Dr Luttrell had taken a rake, and gone down the garden, according to his custom, and, as soon as he had left the house, Mrs Luttrell went to the window and watched him; after which, with a sorrowful face, she walked back into the drawing-room, to sit down and weep silently for a few minutes.

“It breaks my heart to see her poor sad face, and it’s breaking his, though he’s always laughing it off, and telling me it’s all my nonsense. Oh, dear me! oh, dear me! How is it all to end?”

She sat rocking herself to and fro for a few minutes, and then jumped up hastily.

“It’s dreadful, that it is!” she sighed; “but I can’t stop here alone. Yes! I thought so!” she cried, as she went to the window, where she could catch sight of the doctor, rake in hand, but not using it, according to his wont, for he was resting upon it, and thinking deeply.

Mrs Luttrell snatched at a great grey ball of worsted and her needles, and went down the garden, making the doctor start as she reached his side.

“Eh? What is it?” he exclaimed. “Anything wrong at the Manor?”

“Wrong! what nonsense, dear!” said the old lady cheerily. “I’m sure, Joseph, you ought to take some medicine. You grow quite nervous!”

“What made you come, then?” he cried, beginning to use his rake busily.

“Why, I thought I’d come and chat while you worked, and—Joseph, my dear, don’t—don’t look like that!”

“It’s of no use, old girl,” said the doctor with a sigh; “we may just as well look it boldly in the face. I’m sick of all this make-believe.”

“And so am I, dear. Let us be open.”

“Ah, well! I will. Who is a man to be open to if not to his old wife?”

“There!” sobbed Mrs Luttrell, making a brave effort over herself, and speaking cheerfully. “I’m ready to face everything now.”

“Even poverty, my dear?”

“Even poverty! What does it matter to us? Is it so very bad, dear?”

“It could not be worse. We must give up this house, and sell everything.”

“But Hallam?”

“Is a scoundrel!—no, no! I won’t say that of my child’s husband. But I cannot get a shilling of him; and when I saw him yesterday, and threatened to go to Sir Gordon—”

“Well, dear?”

“He told me to go if I dared.”

“And did you go?”

“Did I go, mother? Did I go?—with poor Milly’s white face before my eyes, to denounce her husband as a cheat and a rogue! He has had every penny I possessed for his speculations, and they seem all to have failed.”

“But you shouldn’t have let him have it, dear!”

“Not let him have it, wife! How could I refuse my own son-in-law? Well, there, our savings are gone, and we must eat humble pie for the future. I have not much practice now, and I don’t think my few patients will leave me because I live in a cottage.”

“Do you think if I went and spoke to Robert it would do any good?”

“It would make our poor darling miserable. She would be sure to know. As it is, she believes her husband to be one of the best of men. Am I, her father, to be the one who destroys that faith? Hush, here is some one coming!”

For there was a quick, heavy step upon the gravel walk, and Christie Bayle appeared.

“I thought I should find you,” he said, shaking hands warmly. “Well, doctor, how’s the garden? Why, Mrs Luttrell, what black currants! There! you may call me exacting, but tithe, ma’am, tithe—I put in my claim at once for two pots of black currant jam. Those you gave me last year were invaluable.”

Mrs Luttrell held his hand still, and laughed gently.

“Little bits of flattery for a very foolish old woman, my dear.”

“Flattery! when I had such sore throats I could hardly speak, and yet had to preach! Not much flattery, eh, doctor?”

“Flattery! No, no,” said the doctor, dreamily.

He glanced at Mrs Luttrell, then at Bayle, who went on chatting pleasantly about the garden, and then checked him suddenly.

“No one can hear us, Bayle. We want to talk to you—my wife and I.”

“Certainly,” said Bayle; and his tone and manner changed. “Is it anything I can do for you?”

“Wait a moment—let me think,” said the doctor sadly. “Here, let’s go and sit down under the yew hedge.”

Bayle drew Mrs Luttrell’s hand through his arm, and patted it gently, as she looked up tenderly in his face, a tenderness mingled with pride, as if she had part and parcel in the sturdy, manly Englishman who led her to the pleasant old rustic seat in a nook of the great, green, closely-clipped wall, with its glorious prospect away over the fair country side.

“I do love this old spot!” said Bayle, enthusiastically, for a glance at the doctor showed that he was nervous and hesitating, and he thought it well to give him time. “Mrs Luttrell, it is one of my sins that I cannot master envy. I always long for this old place and garden.”

“Bayle!” cried the doctor, laying his hand upon the curate’s knee, and with his former hesitancy chased away by an eager look, “are you in earnest?”

“In earnest, my dear sir? What about?”

“About—about the old place—the garden.”

“Earnest!—yes. But I am going to fight it down,” cried Bayle, laughing.

“Don’t laugh, man. I am serious—things are serious with me.”

“I was afraid so; but I dared not ask you. Come, come, Mrs Luttrell,” he continued gently, “don’t take it to heart. Troubles come to us all, and when they do there is their pleasant side, for then we learn the value of our friends, and I hope I am one.”

“Friend, my dear!” said Mrs Luttrell, weeping gently, “I’m sure you have always seemed to me like a soil. Do: pray do, Joseph, tell him all.”

“Be patient, wife, and I will—all that I can.”

The doctor paused and cleared his throat, while Mrs Luttrell sat with her hand in the curate’s.

“You have set me thinking,” said the doctor at last; “and what you said is like a ray of sunshine in my trouble.”

“He’s always saying things that are like rays of sunshine to us in our trouble, Joseph,” said Mrs Luttrell, looking up through her tears at the earnest countenance at her side.

“Bayle, I shall have to lose the old place—the wife’s old home, of which she is so proud—and my old garden. It’s a bitter blow at my time of life, but it must come.”

“I was afraid there was something very wrong,” said Bayle; “but suppose we look the difficulties in the face. I’m a bit of a lawyer, you know, my dear doctor. Let’s see what can be done. I want to be delicate in my offer, but I must be blunt. I am not a poor man, my wants are very simple, and I spend so little—let me clear this difficulty away. There, we will not bother Mrs Luttrell about money matters. Consider it settled.”

“No,” said the doctor firmly, “that will not do. I appreciate it all, my dear boy, truly; but there is only one way out of this difficulty—the old place must be sold.”

“Oh, Joseph, Joseph!” sighed Mrs Luttrell, and the tears fell fast.

“It must be, wife,” said the doctor firmly. “Bayle, after what you said, will you buy the old home? I could bear it better if it fell into your hands.”

“Are you sure it must be sold?”

“There is no other way out of the difficulty, Bayle. Will you buy it?”

“If you tell me that there is certainly no other way out of the difficulty, and that it is your wish and Mrs Luttrell’s, I will buy the place.”

“Just as it stands—furniture—everything?”

“Just as it stands—furniture—everything.”

“Ah!” ejaculated the doctor with a sigh of relief. “Thank God, Bayle!” he cried, shaking the curate’s hand energetically. “I have not felt so much at rest for months. Now I want, you to tell me a little about the town—about the people. What do they say?”

“Say?”

“Yes: say about us—about Hallam—about Millicent, about our darling?”

“My dear doctor, I shall have to go and fetch old Gemp. He will point at game, and tell you more in half-an-hour than I shall be able to tell you in a year. Had we not better change the conversation?—here is Mrs Hallam with Julia.”

As he spoke the garden gate clicked, and Millicent came into sight, with her child, the one grave and sad, the other all bright-eyed eagerness and excitement.

“There they are, mamma—in the yew seat!” And the child raced across the lawn, bounded over a flowerbed, and leaped upon the doctor’s knee.

“Dear old grandpa!” she cried, throwing her arms round his neck and kissing him effusively, but only to leap down and climb on Mrs Luttrell’s lap, clasping her neck, and laying her charming little face against the old lady’s cheek. “Dear, sweet old grandma!” she cried.

Then, in all the excitement of her young life, she was down again to seize Bayle’s hand.

“Come and get some fruit and flowers. We may, mayn’t we, grandpa?”

“I’m sure we may,” said Bayle, laughing, “only I must go.”

“Oh!” cried the child pouting, “don’t go, Mr Bayle! I do like being in the garden with you so very, very much!”

Mrs Hallam turned her sweet, grave face to him.

“Can you give her a few minutes? Julie will be so disappointed.”

“There,” cried Bayle merrily, “you see, doctor, what a little tyrant she grows! She makes every one her slave!”

“I don’t!” said the child, pouting. “Mamma always says a run in the garden does me so much good, and it will do Mr Bayle good too. Thibs says he works too hard.”

“Come along, then,” he cried laughing; and the man seemed transformed, running off with the child to get a basket, while Millicent gazed after them, her countenance looking brighter, and the old people seemed to have forgotten their troubles, as they gazed smilingly after the pair.

“Bless her!” said Mrs Luttrell, swaying herself softly to and fro, and passing her hands along her knees.

“Yes, that’s the way, Milly. Give her plenty of fresh air, and laugh at me and my tribe.”

Then quite an eager conversation ensued, Mrs Hallam brightening up; and on both sides every allusion to trouble was, by a pious kind of deception, kept out of sight, Millicent Hallam being in the fond belief that her parents did not even suspect that she was not thoroughly happy, while they were right in thinking that their child was ignorant of the straits to which they had been brought.

“Why, we are quite gay this morning!” cried Mrs Luttrell; “or, no: perhaps he comes as a patient, he looks so serious. Ah, Sir Gordon, it is quite an age since you were here?”

“Yes, madam; I’m growing old and gouty, and—your servant, Mrs Hallam,” he said, raising his hat. “Doctor, I wish I had your health. Ah, how peaceful and pleasant this garden looks! They told me—old Gemp told me—that I should find Bayle here. I called at his lodgings—bless my soul! how can a man with his income live in such a simple way! The woman said he was out visiting, and that old scoundrel said he was here. Egad! I believe the fellow lies in wait to hear everything. Eh? Ah, I’m right, I see!”

Just then there was a silvery burst of childish laughter, followed by a deep voice shouting, “Stop thief! stop thief!” Then there was a scampering of feet, and Julia came racing along, with her dark curls flying, and Christie Bayle in full pursuit, right up to the group by the yew hedge.

“She ran off with the basket!” cried Bayle. “Did you ever see—Ah, Sir Gordon!” he cried, holding out a currant-stained hand.

“Humph!” cried Sir Gordon grimly, raising his glass to his eye, and looking at the big, brown, fruit-stained fingers; “mighty clerical, ’pon my honour, sir! Who do you think is coming to listen to a parson on Sundays who spends his weeks racing about gardens after little girls? No, I’m not going to spoil my gloves; they’re new.”

“I—I don’t think you ought to speak to—to Mr Bayle like that, Sir Gordon!” cried Mrs Luttrell, flushing and ruffling up like a hen. “If you only knew him as we do—”

“Oh, hush, mamma dear!” said Mrs Hallam, smiling tenderly, and laying her hand upon her mother’s arm.

“Yes, my dear; but I cannot sit still and—”

“Know him, ma’am!” said Sir Gordon sharply. “Oh, I know him by heart; read him through and through! He was never meant for a parson; he’s too rough!”

“Really, Sir Gordon, I—”

“Don’t defend me, Mrs Luttrell,” said Bayle merrily. “Sir Gordon doesn’t like me, and he makes this excuse for not coming to hear me preach.”

“Well, little dark eyes!” cried Sir Gordon, taking Julia’s hand, and leading her to the seat. “Ah, that’s better! I do get tired so soon, doctor. Well, little dark eyes!” he continued, after seating himself, and drawing the child between his knees, after which he drew a clean, highly-scented, cambric handkerchief from his breast pocket, and leaned forward. “Open your mouth, little one,” he said.

Julia obeyed, parting her scarlet lips.

“Now put out your tongue.”

“Is grandpa teaching you to be a doctor?” said the child innocently.

“No; but I wish he would, my dear,” said Sir Gordon, “so that I could doctor one patient—myself. Out with your tongue.”

The child obeyed, and the baronet gravely moistened his handkerchief thereon, and, taking the soft little chin in one gloved hand, carefully removed a tiny purple fruit-stain.

“That’s better. Now you are fit to kiss.” He bent down, and kissed the child slowly. “Don’t like me much, do you, Julia?”

“I don’t know,” said the child, looking up at him with her large serious eyes. “Sometimes I do, when you don’t talk crossly to me; but sometimes I don’t. I don’t like you half so well as I do Mr Bayle.”

“But he’s always setting you hard lessons, and puzzling your brains, isn’t he?”

“No,” said the child, shaking her head. “Oh, no! we have such fun over my lessons every morning! But I do like you too—a little.”

“Come, that’s a comfort!” said Sir Gordon, rising again. “There, I must go. I want to carry off Mr Bayle—on business.”

Mrs Hallam glanced sharply from one to the other, and then, to conceal her agitation, bent down over her child, and began to smooth her tangled curls.

Volume Two—Chapter Five.Sir Gordon Bourne Asks Questions.“I want a few words with you, Bayle,” said Sir Gordon, as the pair walked back towards the town.“Shall we talk here, or will you come to my rooms?” and he indicated Mrs Pinet’s house, to which he had moved when Hallam married.“Your rooms! No, man; I never feel as if I can breathe in your stuffy lodgings. How can you exist in them?”“I do, and very happily,” said Bayle, laughing. “Shall we go to your private room at the bank?”“Bless my soul! no, man!” cried Sir Gordon hastily. “The very last place. Let’s get out in the fields, and talk there. More room, and no tattling, inquisitive people about. No Gemps.”“Very good,” said Bayle, wondering, and very anxious at heart, for he knew the baronet’s proclivities.They turned off on to one of the footpaths, chatting upon indifferent matters, till all at once Sir Gordon exclaimed:“’Pon my honour, I don’t think I like you, Bayle.”“I’m very sorry, Sir Gordon, because I really do like you. I’ve always found you a true gentleman at heart, and—”“Stuff, sir! Silence, sir! Egad, sir, will you hold your tongue? Talking such nonsense to a confirmed valetudinarian with a soured life, and—pish! I don’t want to talk about myself. I was going to say that I did not like you.”“You did say so,” replied the curate, smiling.“Ah! well, it’s the truth. Why do you stop here?”“To annoy you, perhaps,” said Bayle laughing. “Well, no: I like my people, and I’m vain enough to think I am able to do a little good.”“You do, Bayle, you do,” said Sir Gordon, taking his arm and leaning upon him in a confidential way. “You’re a good fellow, Bayle; and Castor here would miss you horribly, if you left.”“Oh, nonsense!”“It is not nonsense, sir. Why, you do more good among the people in one year than I have done in all my life.”“Well, I think I have amerced you pretty well lately for my poor, Sir Gordon.”“Yes, man, but it was your doing. I shouldn’t have given a shilling. But look here, I was going to say, why is it that I come to you, and make such a confidant of you?”“Do you wish to confide something to me now?”“Yes, of course; one can’t go to one’s solicitor, and I’ve no friends. Plenty of club acquaintances: but no friends. There, don’t shake your head like that, man. Well, only a few. By-the-way, charming little girl that.”“What, little Julie?” cried Bayle, with his cheeks flushing with pleasure.“Yes; and your prime favourite, I see. I don’t like her, though. Too much of her father.”“She has his eyes and hair,” said Bayle thoughtfully; “but there is the sweet grave look in her face that her mother used to wear when I first came to Castor.”“Hush! Silence! Hold your tongue!” cried Sir Gordon impatiently. “Look here—her father—I want to talk about him.”“About Mr Hallam?”“Yes. What do you think of him now?”Bayle laid his hand upon Sir Gordon’s.“We are old friends, Sir Gordon; I know your little secret; you know mine. Don’t ask me that question.”“As a very old trusty friend I do ask you. Bayle, it is a duty. Look here, man; I hold an important trust in connection with that bank. I’m afraid I have not done my duty. It is irksome to me, a wealthy man, and I am so much away yachting. Let me see; you never have had dealings with us.”“No, Sir Gordon, never.”“Well, as I was saying, I am so much away. You are always feeling the pulses of the people. Now, as you are a great deal at Hallam’s, tell me as a friend in a peculiar position, what do you think of Hallam?”“Do you mean as a friend?”“I mean as a business man, as our manager. What do the people say?”“I cannot retail to you all their little tattle, Sir Gordon. Look here, sir, what do you mean? Speak out.”Sir Gordon grew red and was silent for a few minutes.“I will be plain, Bayle,” he said at last. “The fact is I am very uneasy.”“About Hallam?”“Yes. He occupies a position of great trust.”“But surely Mr Trampleasure shares it.”“Trampleasure shares nothing. He’s a mere dummy: a bank ornament. There, I don’t say I suspect Hallam, but I cannot help seeing that he is living far beyond his means.”“But you have the books—the statements?”“Yes; and everything is perfectly correct. I do know something about figures, and at our last audit there was not a penny wrong.”Bayle drew a breath full of relief.“Every security, every deed was in its place, and the bank was never in a more prosperous state.”“Then of what do you complain?”“That is what I do not know. All I know, Bayle, is that I am uneasy, and dissatisfied about him. Can you help me?”“How can I help you?”“Can you tell me something to set my mind at rest, and make me think that Hallam is a strictly honourable man, so that I can go off again yachting. I cannot exist away from the sea.”“I am afraid I can tell you nothing, Sir Gordon.”“Not from friend to friend?”“I am the trusted friend of the Hallams’. I am free of their house. They have entrusted a great deal of the education of their child to me!”“Well, tell me this. You know the people. What do they say of Hallam in the town?”“I have never heard an unkind word respecting him unless from disappointed people, to whom, I suppose from want of confidence in their securities, he has refused loans.”“That’s praising him,” said Sir Gordon. “Do the people seem to trust him?”“Oh! certainly.”“More praise. But do they approve of his way of living? Hasn’t he a lot of debts in the town?”Bayle was silent.“Ah! that pinches. Well, now does not that seem strange?”“I know nothing whatever of Mr Hallam’s private affairs. He may perhaps have lost his own money, and his indebtedness be due to his endeavours to recoup himself.”“Yes,” said Sir Gordon, dryly. “What a lovely day!”“It is delightful,” said the curate, with a sigh of relief, as they turned back.“I was going to start to-morrow for a run up the Norway fiords.”“Indeed; so soon?”“Yes,” said Sir Gordon, dryly; “but I am not going now.”They parted at the entrance of the town, and directly after the curate became aware of the fact that old Gemp was looking at him very intently.He forgot it the next moment as he entered his room, to be followed directly after by his landlady, who drew his attention to a note upon the chimney-piece in Thickens’s formal, clerkly hand.“One of the school children brought this, sir; and, begging your pardon,” cried the woman, colouring indignantly, “if it isn’t making too bold to ask such a thing of you, sir, don’t you think you might say a few words next Sunday about Poll-prying, and asking questions?”“Really,” said Bayle, smiling; “I’m afraid it would be very much out of place, Mrs Pinet.”“Well, I’m sorry you say so, sir, for the way that Gemp goes on gets to be beyond bearing. He actually stopped that child, took the letter from him, read the direction, and then asked the boy who it was from, and whether he was to wait for an answer.”“Never mind, Mrs Pinet; it is very complimentary of Mr Gemp to take so much interest in my affairs.”“It made me feel quite popped, sir,” cried the woman; “but of course it be no business of mine.”Bayle read the letter, and changed colour, as he connected it with Sir Gordon’s questions, for it was a request that the curate would come up and see Thickens that evening on very particular business.

“I want a few words with you, Bayle,” said Sir Gordon, as the pair walked back towards the town.

“Shall we talk here, or will you come to my rooms?” and he indicated Mrs Pinet’s house, to which he had moved when Hallam married.

“Your rooms! No, man; I never feel as if I can breathe in your stuffy lodgings. How can you exist in them?”

“I do, and very happily,” said Bayle, laughing. “Shall we go to your private room at the bank?”

“Bless my soul! no, man!” cried Sir Gordon hastily. “The very last place. Let’s get out in the fields, and talk there. More room, and no tattling, inquisitive people about. No Gemps.”

“Very good,” said Bayle, wondering, and very anxious at heart, for he knew the baronet’s proclivities.

They turned off on to one of the footpaths, chatting upon indifferent matters, till all at once Sir Gordon exclaimed:

“’Pon my honour, I don’t think I like you, Bayle.”

“I’m very sorry, Sir Gordon, because I really do like you. I’ve always found you a true gentleman at heart, and—”

“Stuff, sir! Silence, sir! Egad, sir, will you hold your tongue? Talking such nonsense to a confirmed valetudinarian with a soured life, and—pish! I don’t want to talk about myself. I was going to say that I did not like you.”

“You did say so,” replied the curate, smiling.

“Ah! well, it’s the truth. Why do you stop here?”

“To annoy you, perhaps,” said Bayle laughing. “Well, no: I like my people, and I’m vain enough to think I am able to do a little good.”

“You do, Bayle, you do,” said Sir Gordon, taking his arm and leaning upon him in a confidential way. “You’re a good fellow, Bayle; and Castor here would miss you horribly, if you left.”

“Oh, nonsense!”

“It is not nonsense, sir. Why, you do more good among the people in one year than I have done in all my life.”

“Well, I think I have amerced you pretty well lately for my poor, Sir Gordon.”

“Yes, man, but it was your doing. I shouldn’t have given a shilling. But look here, I was going to say, why is it that I come to you, and make such a confidant of you?”

“Do you wish to confide something to me now?”

“Yes, of course; one can’t go to one’s solicitor, and I’ve no friends. Plenty of club acquaintances: but no friends. There, don’t shake your head like that, man. Well, only a few. By-the-way, charming little girl that.”

“What, little Julie?” cried Bayle, with his cheeks flushing with pleasure.

“Yes; and your prime favourite, I see. I don’t like her, though. Too much of her father.”

“She has his eyes and hair,” said Bayle thoughtfully; “but there is the sweet grave look in her face that her mother used to wear when I first came to Castor.”

“Hush! Silence! Hold your tongue!” cried Sir Gordon impatiently. “Look here—her father—I want to talk about him.”

“About Mr Hallam?”

“Yes. What do you think of him now?”

Bayle laid his hand upon Sir Gordon’s.

“We are old friends, Sir Gordon; I know your little secret; you know mine. Don’t ask me that question.”

“As a very old trusty friend I do ask you. Bayle, it is a duty. Look here, man; I hold an important trust in connection with that bank. I’m afraid I have not done my duty. It is irksome to me, a wealthy man, and I am so much away yachting. Let me see; you never have had dealings with us.”

“No, Sir Gordon, never.”

“Well, as I was saying, I am so much away. You are always feeling the pulses of the people. Now, as you are a great deal at Hallam’s, tell me as a friend in a peculiar position, what do you think of Hallam?”

“Do you mean as a friend?”

“I mean as a business man, as our manager. What do the people say?”

“I cannot retail to you all their little tattle, Sir Gordon. Look here, sir, what do you mean? Speak out.”

Sir Gordon grew red and was silent for a few minutes.

“I will be plain, Bayle,” he said at last. “The fact is I am very uneasy.”

“About Hallam?”

“Yes. He occupies a position of great trust.”

“But surely Mr Trampleasure shares it.”

“Trampleasure shares nothing. He’s a mere dummy: a bank ornament. There, I don’t say I suspect Hallam, but I cannot help seeing that he is living far beyond his means.”

“But you have the books—the statements?”

“Yes; and everything is perfectly correct. I do know something about figures, and at our last audit there was not a penny wrong.”

Bayle drew a breath full of relief.

“Every security, every deed was in its place, and the bank was never in a more prosperous state.”

“Then of what do you complain?”

“That is what I do not know. All I know, Bayle, is that I am uneasy, and dissatisfied about him. Can you help me?”

“How can I help you?”

“Can you tell me something to set my mind at rest, and make me think that Hallam is a strictly honourable man, so that I can go off again yachting. I cannot exist away from the sea.”

“I am afraid I can tell you nothing, Sir Gordon.”

“Not from friend to friend?”

“I am the trusted friend of the Hallams’. I am free of their house. They have entrusted a great deal of the education of their child to me!”

“Well, tell me this. You know the people. What do they say of Hallam in the town?”

“I have never heard an unkind word respecting him unless from disappointed people, to whom, I suppose from want of confidence in their securities, he has refused loans.”

“That’s praising him,” said Sir Gordon. “Do the people seem to trust him?”

“Oh! certainly.”

“More praise. But do they approve of his way of living? Hasn’t he a lot of debts in the town?”

Bayle was silent.

“Ah! that pinches. Well, now does not that seem strange?”

“I know nothing whatever of Mr Hallam’s private affairs. He may perhaps have lost his own money, and his indebtedness be due to his endeavours to recoup himself.”

“Yes,” said Sir Gordon, dryly. “What a lovely day!”

“It is delightful,” said the curate, with a sigh of relief, as they turned back.

“I was going to start to-morrow for a run up the Norway fiords.”

“Indeed; so soon?”

“Yes,” said Sir Gordon, dryly; “but I am not going now.”

They parted at the entrance of the town, and directly after the curate became aware of the fact that old Gemp was looking at him very intently.

He forgot it the next moment as he entered his room, to be followed directly after by his landlady, who drew his attention to a note upon the chimney-piece in Thickens’s formal, clerkly hand.

“One of the school children brought this, sir; and, begging your pardon,” cried the woman, colouring indignantly, “if it isn’t making too bold to ask such a thing of you, sir, don’t you think you might say a few words next Sunday about Poll-prying, and asking questions?”

“Really,” said Bayle, smiling; “I’m afraid it would be very much out of place, Mrs Pinet.”

“Well, I’m sorry you say so, sir, for the way that Gemp goes on gets to be beyond bearing. He actually stopped that child, took the letter from him, read the direction, and then asked the boy who it was from, and whether he was to wait for an answer.”

“Never mind, Mrs Pinet; it is very complimentary of Mr Gemp to take so much interest in my affairs.”

“It made me feel quite popped, sir,” cried the woman; “but of course it be no business of mine.”

Bayle read the letter, and changed colour, as he connected it with Sir Gordon’s questions, for it was a request that the curate would come up and see Thickens that evening on very particular business.

Volume Two—Chapter Six.James Thickens Makes a Communication.“Master’s in the garden feeding his fish,” said the girl, as she admitted Bayle. “I’ll go and tell him you’re here, sir.”“No; let me go to him,” said Bayle quietly.The girl led the way down a red-bricked floored passage, and opened a door, through which the visitor passed, and then stood looking at the scene before him.There was not much garden, but James Thickens was proud of it, because it was his own. It was only a strip, divided into two beds by a narrow walk of red bricks—so many laid flat with others set on edge to keep the earth from falling over, and sullying the well-scrubbed path, which was so arranged by its master that the spigot of the rain-water butt could be turned on now and then and a birch broom brought into requisition to keep all clean.Each bed was a mass of roses—dwarf roses that crept along the ground by the path, and then others that grew taller till the red brick wall on either side was reached, and this was clambered, surmounted, and almost completely hidden by clusters of small blossoms. No other flower grew in this patch of a garden; but, save in the very inclement weather, there were always buds and blossoms to be picked, and James Thickens was content.From where Bayle stood he could just see Thickens at the hither side of the great bricked and cemented tank that extended across the bottom of his and the two adjoining gardens, while beyond was the steam-mill, where Mawson the miller had introduced that great power to work his machinery. He it was who had contrived the tank for some scheme in connection with the mill, and had then made some other plan after leading into it through a pipe the clear water of the dam on the other side of the mill, and arranging a proper exit when it should be too full. Then he had given it up as unnecessary, merely turning into it a steam-pipe, to get rid of the waste, and finally had let it to Thickens for his whim.There was a certain prettiness about the place seen from the bank clerk’s rose garden. Facing you was the quaintly-built mill, one mass of ivy from that point of view, while numberless strands ran riot along the stone edge of the tank, and hung down to kiss the water with their tips. To the left there was the great elder clump, that was a mass of creamy bloom in summer, and of clustering black berries in autumn, till the birds had cleared all off.As Bayle stood looking down, he could see the bank clerk upon his knees, bending over the edge of the pool, and holding his fingers in the water.Every now and then he took a few crumbs of broken well-boiled rice from a basin at his side, and scattered them over the pool, while, when he had done this, he held the tips of his fingers in the water.He was so intent upon his task, that he did not hear the visitor’s approach, so that when Bayle was close up, he could see the limpid water glowing with the bright scales of the golden-orange fish that were feeding eagerly in the soft evening light. Now quite a score of the brilliant metallic creatures would be making at the crumbs of rice. Then there would be as many—quite a little shoal—that were of a soft pearly silver, while mingled with them were others that seemed laced with sable velvet or purple bands.The secret of the hand-dipping was plain too, for, as Thickens softly placed his fingers to the surface, first one and then another would swim up and seem to kiss the ends, taking therefrom some snack of rice, to dart away directly with a flourish of the tail which set the water all a ripple, and made it flash in the evening light.Thickens was talking to his pets, calling them by many an endearing name as they swam up, kissed his finger tips, and darted away, till, becoming conscious of the presence of some one in the garden, he started to his feet, but stooped quickly again to pick up the basin, dip a little water, rinse out the vessel, and throw its contents far and wide.“I did not hear you come, Mr Bayle,” he said hastily.“I ought to have spoken,” replied the curate gravely. “How tame your fishes are!”“Yes, sir, yes. They’ve got to know people from being petted so. Dip your fingers in the water and they’ll come.”The visitor bent down and followed the example he had seen, with the result that fish after fish swam up, touched a white finger tip with its soft wet mouth, and then darted off.“Strange pets, Mr Thickens, are they not?”“Yes, sir, yes. But I like them,” said Thickens with a droll sidewise look at his visitor. “You see the water’s always gently warmed from the mill there, and that makes them thrive. They put one in mind of gold and silver, sir, and the bank. And they’re nice companions: they don’t talk.”He seemed then to have remembered something. A curious rigidity came over him, and though his visitor was disposed to linger by the pool where, in the evening light, the brightly-coloured fish glowed like dropped flakes of the sunset, Thickens drew back for him to pass, and then almost backed him into the house.“Sit down, please, Mr Bayle,” he said, rather huskily; and he placed a chair for his visitor. “You got my note, then?”“Yes, and I came on. You want my—”“Help and advice, sir; that’s it. I’m in a cleft stick, sir—fast.”“I am sorry,” said Bayle earnestly, for Thickens paused. “Is it anything serious?”Thickens nodded, sat down astride a Windsor chair, holding tightly by the curved back, and rested his upper teeth on the top, tapping the wood gently.Bayle waited a few moments for him to go on; but he only began rubbing at the top of the chair back, and stared at his visitor.“You say it is serious, Mr Thickens.”“Terribly, sir.”“Is it—is it a monetary question?”Thickens raised his head, nodded, and lowered it again till his teeth touched the chair back. “Some one in difficulties?”Thickens nodded.“Not you, Mr Thickens? You are too careful a man.”“No: not me, sir.”“Some friend?”Thickens shook his head, and there was silence for a few moments, only broken by the dull sound of the clerk’s teeth upon the chair.“Do you want me to advance some money to a person in distress?”Thickens raised his head quickly, and looked sharply in his visitor’s eye; but only to lower his head again.“No. No,” he said.“Then will you explain yourself?” said the curate gravely.“Yes. Give me time. It’s hard work. You don’t know.”Bayle looked at him curiously, and waited for some minutes before Thickens spoke again.“Yes,” he said suddenly and as if his words were the result of deep thought; “yes, I’ll tell you. I did think I wouldn’t speak after all; but it’s right, and I will. I can trust you, Mr Bayle?”“I hope so, Mr Thickens.”“Yes, I can trust you. I used to think you were too young and boyish, but you’re older much, and I didn’t understand you then as I do now.”“I was very young when I first came, Mr Thickens,” said Bayle smiling. “It was almost presumption for me to undertake such a duty. Well, what is your trouble?”“Give me time, man; give me time,” said Thickens fiercely. “You don’t know what it is to be in my place. I am a confidential clerk, and it is like being torn up by the roots to have to speak as I want to speak.”“If it is a matter of confidence ought you to speak to me, Mr Thickens?” said Bayle gravely. “Do I understand you to say it is a bank matter?”“That’s it, sir.”“Then why not go to Mr Dixon?”Thickens shook his head.“Mr Trampleasure? or Sir Gordon Bourne?”“They’ll know soon enough,” said Thickens grimly. A curious feeling of horror came over Bayle, as he heard these words, the cold, damp dew gathered on his brow, his hands felt moist, and his heart began to beat heavily.He could not have told why this was, only that a vague sense of some terrible horror oppressed him. He felt that he was about to receive some blow, and that he was weak, unnerved, and unprepared for the shock, just when he required all his faculties to be at their strongest and best.And yet the clerk had said so little—nothing that could be considered as leading up to the horror the hearer foresaw. All the same though, Bayle’s imagination seized upon the few scant words—those few dry bones of utterance, clothed them with flesh, and made of them giants of terror before whose presence he shook and felt cowed.“Tell me,” he said at last, and his voice sounded strange to him, “tell me all.”There was another pause, and then Thickens, who looked singularly troubled and grey, sat up.“Yes,” he said, “I’ll tell you all. I can trust you, Mr Bayle. I don’t come to you because you are a priest, but because you are a man—a gentleman who will help me, and I want to do what’s right.”“I know—I believe you do, Thickens,” said the curate huskily, and he looked at him almost reproachfully, as if blaming him for the pain that he was about to give.He felt all this. He could not have explained why, but as plainly as if he had been forewarned, he knew that some terrible blow was about to fall.Thickens sat staring straight before him now, gnawing hard at one of his nails, and looking like a man having a hard struggle with himself.It was a very plainly-furnished but pleasant little room, whose wide, low window had a broad sill upon which some half-dozen flowers bloomed, and just then, as the two men sat facing each other, the last glow of evening lit up the curate’s troubled face, and left that of Thickens more and more in the shade.“That’s better,” he said with a half laugh. “I wish I had left it till it was dark. Look here, Mr Bayle, I’ve been in trouble these five years past.”“You?”“Yes, sir. I say it again: I’ve been in trouble these six or seven years past, and it’s been a trouble that began like a little cloud as you’d say—no bigger than a man’s hand; and it grew slowly bigger and bigger, till it’s got to be a great, thick, black darkness, covering everything before the storm bursts.”“Don’t talk riddles, man; speak out.”“Parables, Mr Bayle, sir, parables. Give me time, sir, give me time. You don’t know what it is to a man who has trained himself from a boy to be close and keep secrets, to have to bring them out of himself and lay them all bare.”“I’ll be patient; but you are torturing me. Go on.”“I felt it would, and that’s one of the things that’s kept me back, sir; but I’m going to speak now.”“Go on.”“Well, sir, a bank clerk is trained to be suspicious. Every new customer who comes to the place is an object of suspicion to a man like me. He may want to cheat us. Every cheque that’s drawn is an object of suspicion because it may be a forgery, or the drawer may not have a balance to meet it. Then money—the number of bad coins I’ve detected, sir, would fill a big chest full of sham gold and silver, so that one grows to doubt and suspect every sovereign one handles. Then, sir, there’s men in general, and even your own people. It’s a bad life, sir, a bad life, a bank clerk’s, for you grow at last so that you even begin to doubt yourself.”“Ah! but that is a morbid feeling, Thickens.”“No, sir, it’s a true one. I’ve had such a fight as you couldn’t believe, doubting myself and whether I was right: but I think I am.”“Well,” said the curate, smiling a faint, dejected smile; “but you are still keeping me in the dark.”“It will be light directly,” said Thickens fiercely, “light that is blinding. I dread almost to speak and let you hear.”“Go on, man; go on.”“I will, sir. Well, for years past I’ve been in doubt about our bank.”“Dixons’, that every one trusts?”“Yes, sir, that’s it. Dixons’ has been trusted by everybody. Dixons’, after a hundred years’ trial, has grown to be looked upon as the truth in commerce. It has been like a sort of money mill set going a hundred years ago, and once set going it has gone on of itself, always grinding coin.”“But you don’t mean to tell me that the bank is unsafe? Man, man, it means ruin to hundreds of our friends!”He spoke in an impassioned way, but at the same time he felt more himself; the vague horror had grown less.“Hear me out, sir; hear me out,” said Thickens slowly. “Years ago, sir, I began to doubt, and then I doubted myself, and then I doubted again, but even then I couldn’t believe. Doubts are no use to a man like me, sir; he must have figures, and figures I couldn’t get to prove it, sir. I must be able to balance a couple of pages, and then if the balance is on the wrong side there’s something to go upon. It has taken years to get these figures, but I’ve got them now.”“Thickens, you are torturing me with this slow preamble.”“For a few minutes, sir,” said the clerk pathetically, “for an hour. It has tortured me for years. Listen, sir. I began to doubt—not Dixons’ stability, but something else.”The vague horror began to increase again, and Christie Bayle’s hands grew more damp.“I have saved a little money, and that and my writings were in the bank. I withdrew everything. Cowardly? Dishonest? Perhaps it was; but I doubted, sir, and it was my little all. Then you’ll say, if I had these doubts I ought to have spoken. If I had been sure perhaps I might; but I tell you, sir, they were doubts. I couldn’t be false to my friends though, and where here and there they’ve consulted me about their little bits of money I’ve found out investments for them, or advised them to buy house property. A clergyman for whom I changed a cheque one day, said it would be convenient for him to have a little banking account with Dixons’, and I said if I had an account with a good bank in London I wouldn’t change it. Never change your banker, I said.”“Yes, Thickens, you did,” said the curate eagerly, “and I have followed your advice. But you are keeping me in suspense. Tell me, is there risk of Dixons’ having to close their doors?”“No, no, sir; it’s not so bad as that. Old Mr Dixon is very rich, and he’d give his last penny to put things straight. Sir Gordon Bourne is an honourable gentleman—one who would sacrifice his fortune so that he might hold up his head. But things are bad, sir, bad; how bad I don’t know.”“But, good heavens, man! your half-yearly balance-sheets—your books?”“All kept right, sir, and wonderfully correct. Everything looks well in the books.”“Then how is it?”“The securities, sir,” said Thickens, with his lip quivering. “I’ve done a scoundrelly thing.”“You, Thickens? You? I thought you were as honest a man as ever trod this earth!”“Me, sir?” said the clerk grimly. “Oh, no! oh, no!I’ma gambler, I am.”The vague horror was dissolving fast into thin mist. “You astound me!” cried Bayle, as he thought of Sir Gordon’s doubts of Hallam. “You, in your position of trust! What are you going to do?”The grim smile on James Thickens’s lips grew more saturnine as he said:“Make a clean breast of it, sir. That’s why I sent for you.”“But, my good man!—oh, for heaven’s sake! go with me at once to Sir Gordon and Mr Hallam. I ought not to listen to this alone.”“You’re going to hear it all alone,” said James Thickens, growing still more grim of aspect; “and when I’ve done you’re going to give me your advice.”Bayle gazed at him sternly, but with the strange oppression gone, and the shadow of the vague horror fading into nothingness.“I’m confessing to you, sir, just as if I were a Roman Catholic, and you were a priest.”“But I decline to receive your confession on such terms, James Thickens,” cried Bayle sternly. “I warn you that, if you make me the recipient of your confidence, I must be free to lay the case before your employers.”“Yes, of course,” said Thickens with the same grim smile. “Hear me out, Mr Bayle, sir. You’d never think it of me, who came regularly to church, and never missed—you’d never think I had false keys made to our safe; but I did. Two months ago, in London.”Bayle involuntarily drew back his chair, and Thickens laughed—a little hard, dry laugh.“Don’t be hard on the man, Mr Bayle, who advised you not to put your money and securities in at Dixons’.”“Go on, sir,” said the curate sternly.“Yes: I will go on!” cried Thickens, speaking now excitedly, in a low, harsh voice. “I can’t carry on that nonsense. Look here, sir,” he continued, shuffling his chair closer to his visitor, and getting hold of his sleeve, “you don’t know our habits at the bank. Everything is locked up in our strong-room, and Hallam keeps the key of that, and carefully too! I go in and out there often, but it’s always when he’s in the room, and when he is not there he always locks it, so that, though I tried for years to get in there, I never had a chance.”“Wretched man!” cried Bayle, trying to shake off his grip, but Thickens’s fingers closed upon his arm like a claw.“Yes, I was wretched, and that’s why I had the keys made, and altered again and again till I could get them to fit. Then one day I had my chance. Hallam went over to Lincoln, and I had a good examination of the different securities, shares, deeds—scrip of all kinds—that I had down on a paper, an abstract from my books.”“Well, sir?”“Well, sir? Half of them are not there. They’re dummies tied up and docketed.”“But the real deeds?”“Pledged for advances in all sorts of quarters. Money raised upon them at a dozen banks, perhaps, in town.”“But—I don’t understand you, Thickens; you do not mean that you—”“That I, Mr Bayle!” cried the clerk passionately. “Shame upon you!—do you think I could be such a scoundrel—such a thief?”“But these deeds, and this scrip, what are they all?”“Valuable securities placed in Dixons’ hands for safety.”“And they are gone?”“To an enormous amount.”“But, tell me,” panted Bayle, with the horror vague no longer, but seeming to have assumed form and substance, and to be crushing him down, “who has done this thing?”“Who had the care of them, sir?”“Thickens,” cried Bayle, starting from his chair, and catching at the mantelpiece, for the room seemed to swim round, and he swept an ornament from the shelf, which fell with a crash, “Thickens, for heaven’s sake, don’t say that.”“I must say it, sir. What am I to do? I’ve doubted him for years.”“But the money—he has lived extravagantly; but, oh! it is impossible. It can’t be much.”“Much, sir? It’s fifty thousand pounds if it’s a penny!”“But, Thickens, it means felony, criminal prosecution, a trial.”He spoke hoarsely, and his hands were trembling. “It means transportation for one-and-twenty years, sir—perhaps for life.”Bayle’s face was ashy, and with lips apart he stood gazing at the grim, quiet clerk.“Man, man!” he cried at last; “it can’t be true.”“Do you doubt too, sir? Well, it’s natural. I used to, and I tried to doubt it; a hundred times over when I was going to be sure that he was a villain, I used to say to myself as I went and fed my fish, it’s impossible, a man with a wife and child like—”“Hush! for God’s sake, hush!” cried Bayle passionately, and then with a burst of fury, he caught the clerk by the throat. “It is a lie; Robert Hallam could not be such a wretch as that!”“Mr Bayle, sir,” said Thickens calmly, and in an appealing tone; “can’t you see now, sir, why I sent to you? Do you think I don’t know how you loved that lady, and how much she and her bright little fairy of a child are to you? Why, sir, if it hadn’t been for them I should have gone straight to Sir Gordon, and before now that scoundrel would have been in Lincoln jail.”“But you are mistaken, Thickens. Man, man, think what you are saying. Such a charge would break her heart, would brand that poor innocent child as the daughter of a felon. Oh, it cannot be!” he cried excitedly. “Heaven would not suffer such a wrong.”“I’ve been years proving it, sir; years,” said Thickens slowly; “and until I was sure, I’ve been as silent as the dead. Fifty thousand pounds’ worth of securities at least have been taken from that safe, and dummies filled up the spaces. Why, sir, a score of times people wanted these deeds, and he has put them off for a few days till he could go up to London, raise money on others, and get those wanted from the banker’s hands.”“But you knew something of this, then?”“Yes, I knew it, sir—that is, I suspected it. Until I got the keys made, I was not sure.”“Does—does any one else know of this?”“Yes, sir.”“Ah!” ejaculated Bayle, with quite a moan.“Robert Hallam, sir.”“Ah!” ejaculated Bayle, drawing a breath full of relief. “You have not told a soul?”“No, sir. I said to myself there’s that sweet lady and her little child; and that stopped me. I said to myself, I must go to the trustiest friend they have, sir, and that was you. Now, sir, I have told you all. The simple truth. What am I to do?”Christie Bayle dropped into a chair, his eyes staring, his blanched face drawn, and his lips apart, as he conjured up the scene that must take place—the arrest, the wreck of Mrs Hallam’s life, the suffering that would be her lot. And at last, half maddened, he started up, and stood with clenched hands gazing fiercely at the man who had fired this train.“Well, sir,” said Thickens coldly, “will you get them and the old people away before the exposure comes?”“No,” cried Bayle fiercely, “this must not—shall not be. It must be some mistake. Mr Hallam could not do such a wrong. Man, man, do you not see that such a charge would break his wife’s heart?”“It was in the hope that you would do something for them, sir, that I told you all this first.”“But we must see Mr Dixon and Sir Gordon at once.”“And they will—you know what.”“Hah! the matter must be hushed up. It would kill her!” cried Bayle incoherently. “Mr Thickens, you stand there like this man’s judge; have you not made one mistake?”Thickens shook his head and tightened his lips to a thin line.“Do you not see what it would do? Have you no mercy?”“Mr Bayle, sir,” said Thickens slowly, “this has served you as it served me. It’s so stunning that it takes you off your head. Am I, the servant of my good masters, knowing what I do, to hide this from them till the crash comes first—the crash that is only a matter of time? Do you advise—do you wish me to do this?”Christie Bayle sat with his hands clasping his forehead, for the pain he suffered seemed greater than he could bear. He had known for long enough that Hallam was a harsh husband and a bad father; but it had never even entered his dreams that he was other than an honest man. And now he was asked to decide upon this momentous matter, when his decision must bring ruin, perhaps even death, to the woman he esteemed, and misery to the sweet, helpless child he had grown to love.It was to him as if he were being exposed to some temptation, for even though his love for Millicent had long been dead, to live again in another form for her child, Christie Bayle would have gone through any suffering for her sake. As he bent down there the struggle was almost greater than he could bear.And there for long he sat, crushed and stunned by the terrible stroke that had fallen upon him, and was about to fall upon the helpless wife and child. His mind seemed chaotic. His reasoning powers failed, and as he kept clinging to little scraps of hope, they seemed to be snatched away.It was with a heart full of grief mingled with rage that he started to his feet at last, and faced Thickens, for the clerk had again spoken in measured tones. “Mr Bayle, what am I to do?”The curate gazed at him piteously, as he essayed to speak; but the words seemed smothered as they struggled in his breast.Then, by a supreme effort, he mastered his emotion, and drew himself up.“Once more, sir, what am I to do?”“Your duty,” said Christie Bayle, and with throbbing brain he turned and left the house.

“Master’s in the garden feeding his fish,” said the girl, as she admitted Bayle. “I’ll go and tell him you’re here, sir.”

“No; let me go to him,” said Bayle quietly.

The girl led the way down a red-bricked floored passage, and opened a door, through which the visitor passed, and then stood looking at the scene before him.

There was not much garden, but James Thickens was proud of it, because it was his own. It was only a strip, divided into two beds by a narrow walk of red bricks—so many laid flat with others set on edge to keep the earth from falling over, and sullying the well-scrubbed path, which was so arranged by its master that the spigot of the rain-water butt could be turned on now and then and a birch broom brought into requisition to keep all clean.

Each bed was a mass of roses—dwarf roses that crept along the ground by the path, and then others that grew taller till the red brick wall on either side was reached, and this was clambered, surmounted, and almost completely hidden by clusters of small blossoms. No other flower grew in this patch of a garden; but, save in the very inclement weather, there were always buds and blossoms to be picked, and James Thickens was content.

From where Bayle stood he could just see Thickens at the hither side of the great bricked and cemented tank that extended across the bottom of his and the two adjoining gardens, while beyond was the steam-mill, where Mawson the miller had introduced that great power to work his machinery. He it was who had contrived the tank for some scheme in connection with the mill, and had then made some other plan after leading into it through a pipe the clear water of the dam on the other side of the mill, and arranging a proper exit when it should be too full. Then he had given it up as unnecessary, merely turning into it a steam-pipe, to get rid of the waste, and finally had let it to Thickens for his whim.

There was a certain prettiness about the place seen from the bank clerk’s rose garden. Facing you was the quaintly-built mill, one mass of ivy from that point of view, while numberless strands ran riot along the stone edge of the tank, and hung down to kiss the water with their tips. To the left there was the great elder clump, that was a mass of creamy bloom in summer, and of clustering black berries in autumn, till the birds had cleared all off.

As Bayle stood looking down, he could see the bank clerk upon his knees, bending over the edge of the pool, and holding his fingers in the water.

Every now and then he took a few crumbs of broken well-boiled rice from a basin at his side, and scattered them over the pool, while, when he had done this, he held the tips of his fingers in the water.

He was so intent upon his task, that he did not hear the visitor’s approach, so that when Bayle was close up, he could see the limpid water glowing with the bright scales of the golden-orange fish that were feeding eagerly in the soft evening light. Now quite a score of the brilliant metallic creatures would be making at the crumbs of rice. Then there would be as many—quite a little shoal—that were of a soft pearly silver, while mingled with them were others that seemed laced with sable velvet or purple bands.

The secret of the hand-dipping was plain too, for, as Thickens softly placed his fingers to the surface, first one and then another would swim up and seem to kiss the ends, taking therefrom some snack of rice, to dart away directly with a flourish of the tail which set the water all a ripple, and made it flash in the evening light.

Thickens was talking to his pets, calling them by many an endearing name as they swam up, kissed his finger tips, and darted away, till, becoming conscious of the presence of some one in the garden, he started to his feet, but stooped quickly again to pick up the basin, dip a little water, rinse out the vessel, and throw its contents far and wide.

“I did not hear you come, Mr Bayle,” he said hastily.

“I ought to have spoken,” replied the curate gravely. “How tame your fishes are!”

“Yes, sir, yes. They’ve got to know people from being petted so. Dip your fingers in the water and they’ll come.”

The visitor bent down and followed the example he had seen, with the result that fish after fish swam up, touched a white finger tip with its soft wet mouth, and then darted off.

“Strange pets, Mr Thickens, are they not?”

“Yes, sir, yes. But I like them,” said Thickens with a droll sidewise look at his visitor. “You see the water’s always gently warmed from the mill there, and that makes them thrive. They put one in mind of gold and silver, sir, and the bank. And they’re nice companions: they don’t talk.”

He seemed then to have remembered something. A curious rigidity came over him, and though his visitor was disposed to linger by the pool where, in the evening light, the brightly-coloured fish glowed like dropped flakes of the sunset, Thickens drew back for him to pass, and then almost backed him into the house.

“Sit down, please, Mr Bayle,” he said, rather huskily; and he placed a chair for his visitor. “You got my note, then?”

“Yes, and I came on. You want my—”

“Help and advice, sir; that’s it. I’m in a cleft stick, sir—fast.”

“I am sorry,” said Bayle earnestly, for Thickens paused. “Is it anything serious?”

Thickens nodded, sat down astride a Windsor chair, holding tightly by the curved back, and rested his upper teeth on the top, tapping the wood gently.

Bayle waited a few moments for him to go on; but he only began rubbing at the top of the chair back, and stared at his visitor.

“You say it is serious, Mr Thickens.”

“Terribly, sir.”

“Is it—is it a monetary question?”

Thickens raised his head, nodded, and lowered it again till his teeth touched the chair back. “Some one in difficulties?”

Thickens nodded.

“Not you, Mr Thickens? You are too careful a man.”

“No: not me, sir.”

“Some friend?”

Thickens shook his head, and there was silence for a few moments, only broken by the dull sound of the clerk’s teeth upon the chair.

“Do you want me to advance some money to a person in distress?”

Thickens raised his head quickly, and looked sharply in his visitor’s eye; but only to lower his head again.

“No. No,” he said.

“Then will you explain yourself?” said the curate gravely.

“Yes. Give me time. It’s hard work. You don’t know.”

Bayle looked at him curiously, and waited for some minutes before Thickens spoke again.

“Yes,” he said suddenly and as if his words were the result of deep thought; “yes, I’ll tell you. I did think I wouldn’t speak after all; but it’s right, and I will. I can trust you, Mr Bayle?”

“I hope so, Mr Thickens.”

“Yes, I can trust you. I used to think you were too young and boyish, but you’re older much, and I didn’t understand you then as I do now.”

“I was very young when I first came, Mr Thickens,” said Bayle smiling. “It was almost presumption for me to undertake such a duty. Well, what is your trouble?”

“Give me time, man; give me time,” said Thickens fiercely. “You don’t know what it is to be in my place. I am a confidential clerk, and it is like being torn up by the roots to have to speak as I want to speak.”

“If it is a matter of confidence ought you to speak to me, Mr Thickens?” said Bayle gravely. “Do I understand you to say it is a bank matter?”

“That’s it, sir.”

“Then why not go to Mr Dixon?”

Thickens shook his head.

“Mr Trampleasure? or Sir Gordon Bourne?”

“They’ll know soon enough,” said Thickens grimly. A curious feeling of horror came over Bayle, as he heard these words, the cold, damp dew gathered on his brow, his hands felt moist, and his heart began to beat heavily.

He could not have told why this was, only that a vague sense of some terrible horror oppressed him. He felt that he was about to receive some blow, and that he was weak, unnerved, and unprepared for the shock, just when he required all his faculties to be at their strongest and best.

And yet the clerk had said so little—nothing that could be considered as leading up to the horror the hearer foresaw. All the same though, Bayle’s imagination seized upon the few scant words—those few dry bones of utterance, clothed them with flesh, and made of them giants of terror before whose presence he shook and felt cowed.

“Tell me,” he said at last, and his voice sounded strange to him, “tell me all.”

There was another pause, and then Thickens, who looked singularly troubled and grey, sat up.

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll tell you all. I can trust you, Mr Bayle. I don’t come to you because you are a priest, but because you are a man—a gentleman who will help me, and I want to do what’s right.”

“I know—I believe you do, Thickens,” said the curate huskily, and he looked at him almost reproachfully, as if blaming him for the pain that he was about to give.

He felt all this. He could not have explained why, but as plainly as if he had been forewarned, he knew that some terrible blow was about to fall.

Thickens sat staring straight before him now, gnawing hard at one of his nails, and looking like a man having a hard struggle with himself.

It was a very plainly-furnished but pleasant little room, whose wide, low window had a broad sill upon which some half-dozen flowers bloomed, and just then, as the two men sat facing each other, the last glow of evening lit up the curate’s troubled face, and left that of Thickens more and more in the shade.

“That’s better,” he said with a half laugh. “I wish I had left it till it was dark. Look here, Mr Bayle, I’ve been in trouble these five years past.”

“You?”

“Yes, sir. I say it again: I’ve been in trouble these six or seven years past, and it’s been a trouble that began like a little cloud as you’d say—no bigger than a man’s hand; and it grew slowly bigger and bigger, till it’s got to be a great, thick, black darkness, covering everything before the storm bursts.”

“Don’t talk riddles, man; speak out.”

“Parables, Mr Bayle, sir, parables. Give me time, sir, give me time. You don’t know what it is to a man who has trained himself from a boy to be close and keep secrets, to have to bring them out of himself and lay them all bare.”

“I’ll be patient; but you are torturing me. Go on.”

“I felt it would, and that’s one of the things that’s kept me back, sir; but I’m going to speak now.”

“Go on.”

“Well, sir, a bank clerk is trained to be suspicious. Every new customer who comes to the place is an object of suspicion to a man like me. He may want to cheat us. Every cheque that’s drawn is an object of suspicion because it may be a forgery, or the drawer may not have a balance to meet it. Then money—the number of bad coins I’ve detected, sir, would fill a big chest full of sham gold and silver, so that one grows to doubt and suspect every sovereign one handles. Then, sir, there’s men in general, and even your own people. It’s a bad life, sir, a bad life, a bank clerk’s, for you grow at last so that you even begin to doubt yourself.”

“Ah! but that is a morbid feeling, Thickens.”

“No, sir, it’s a true one. I’ve had such a fight as you couldn’t believe, doubting myself and whether I was right: but I think I am.”

“Well,” said the curate, smiling a faint, dejected smile; “but you are still keeping me in the dark.”

“It will be light directly,” said Thickens fiercely, “light that is blinding. I dread almost to speak and let you hear.”

“Go on, man; go on.”

“I will, sir. Well, for years past I’ve been in doubt about our bank.”

“Dixons’, that every one trusts?”

“Yes, sir, that’s it. Dixons’ has been trusted by everybody. Dixons’, after a hundred years’ trial, has grown to be looked upon as the truth in commerce. It has been like a sort of money mill set going a hundred years ago, and once set going it has gone on of itself, always grinding coin.”

“But you don’t mean to tell me that the bank is unsafe? Man, man, it means ruin to hundreds of our friends!”

He spoke in an impassioned way, but at the same time he felt more himself; the vague horror had grown less.

“Hear me out, sir; hear me out,” said Thickens slowly. “Years ago, sir, I began to doubt, and then I doubted myself, and then I doubted again, but even then I couldn’t believe. Doubts are no use to a man like me, sir; he must have figures, and figures I couldn’t get to prove it, sir. I must be able to balance a couple of pages, and then if the balance is on the wrong side there’s something to go upon. It has taken years to get these figures, but I’ve got them now.”

“Thickens, you are torturing me with this slow preamble.”

“For a few minutes, sir,” said the clerk pathetically, “for an hour. It has tortured me for years. Listen, sir. I began to doubt—not Dixons’ stability, but something else.”

The vague horror began to increase again, and Christie Bayle’s hands grew more damp.

“I have saved a little money, and that and my writings were in the bank. I withdrew everything. Cowardly? Dishonest? Perhaps it was; but I doubted, sir, and it was my little all. Then you’ll say, if I had these doubts I ought to have spoken. If I had been sure perhaps I might; but I tell you, sir, they were doubts. I couldn’t be false to my friends though, and where here and there they’ve consulted me about their little bits of money I’ve found out investments for them, or advised them to buy house property. A clergyman for whom I changed a cheque one day, said it would be convenient for him to have a little banking account with Dixons’, and I said if I had an account with a good bank in London I wouldn’t change it. Never change your banker, I said.”

“Yes, Thickens, you did,” said the curate eagerly, “and I have followed your advice. But you are keeping me in suspense. Tell me, is there risk of Dixons’ having to close their doors?”

“No, no, sir; it’s not so bad as that. Old Mr Dixon is very rich, and he’d give his last penny to put things straight. Sir Gordon Bourne is an honourable gentleman—one who would sacrifice his fortune so that he might hold up his head. But things are bad, sir, bad; how bad I don’t know.”

“But, good heavens, man! your half-yearly balance-sheets—your books?”

“All kept right, sir, and wonderfully correct. Everything looks well in the books.”

“Then how is it?”

“The securities, sir,” said Thickens, with his lip quivering. “I’ve done a scoundrelly thing.”

“You, Thickens? You? I thought you were as honest a man as ever trod this earth!”

“Me, sir?” said the clerk grimly. “Oh, no! oh, no!I’ma gambler, I am.”

The vague horror was dissolving fast into thin mist. “You astound me!” cried Bayle, as he thought of Sir Gordon’s doubts of Hallam. “You, in your position of trust! What are you going to do?”

The grim smile on James Thickens’s lips grew more saturnine as he said:

“Make a clean breast of it, sir. That’s why I sent for you.”

“But, my good man!—oh, for heaven’s sake! go with me at once to Sir Gordon and Mr Hallam. I ought not to listen to this alone.”

“You’re going to hear it all alone,” said James Thickens, growing still more grim of aspect; “and when I’ve done you’re going to give me your advice.”

Bayle gazed at him sternly, but with the strange oppression gone, and the shadow of the vague horror fading into nothingness.

“I’m confessing to you, sir, just as if I were a Roman Catholic, and you were a priest.”

“But I decline to receive your confession on such terms, James Thickens,” cried Bayle sternly. “I warn you that, if you make me the recipient of your confidence, I must be free to lay the case before your employers.”

“Yes, of course,” said Thickens with the same grim smile. “Hear me out, Mr Bayle, sir. You’d never think it of me, who came regularly to church, and never missed—you’d never think I had false keys made to our safe; but I did. Two months ago, in London.”

Bayle involuntarily drew back his chair, and Thickens laughed—a little hard, dry laugh.

“Don’t be hard on the man, Mr Bayle, who advised you not to put your money and securities in at Dixons’.”

“Go on, sir,” said the curate sternly.

“Yes: I will go on!” cried Thickens, speaking now excitedly, in a low, harsh voice. “I can’t carry on that nonsense. Look here, sir,” he continued, shuffling his chair closer to his visitor, and getting hold of his sleeve, “you don’t know our habits at the bank. Everything is locked up in our strong-room, and Hallam keeps the key of that, and carefully too! I go in and out there often, but it’s always when he’s in the room, and when he is not there he always locks it, so that, though I tried for years to get in there, I never had a chance.”

“Wretched man!” cried Bayle, trying to shake off his grip, but Thickens’s fingers closed upon his arm like a claw.

“Yes, I was wretched, and that’s why I had the keys made, and altered again and again till I could get them to fit. Then one day I had my chance. Hallam went over to Lincoln, and I had a good examination of the different securities, shares, deeds—scrip of all kinds—that I had down on a paper, an abstract from my books.”

“Well, sir?”

“Well, sir? Half of them are not there. They’re dummies tied up and docketed.”

“But the real deeds?”

“Pledged for advances in all sorts of quarters. Money raised upon them at a dozen banks, perhaps, in town.”

“But—I don’t understand you, Thickens; you do not mean that you—”

“That I, Mr Bayle!” cried the clerk passionately. “Shame upon you!—do you think I could be such a scoundrel—such a thief?”

“But these deeds, and this scrip, what are they all?”

“Valuable securities placed in Dixons’ hands for safety.”

“And they are gone?”

“To an enormous amount.”

“But, tell me,” panted Bayle, with the horror vague no longer, but seeming to have assumed form and substance, and to be crushing him down, “who has done this thing?”

“Who had the care of them, sir?”

“Thickens,” cried Bayle, starting from his chair, and catching at the mantelpiece, for the room seemed to swim round, and he swept an ornament from the shelf, which fell with a crash, “Thickens, for heaven’s sake, don’t say that.”

“I must say it, sir. What am I to do? I’ve doubted him for years.”

“But the money—he has lived extravagantly; but, oh! it is impossible. It can’t be much.”

“Much, sir? It’s fifty thousand pounds if it’s a penny!”

“But, Thickens, it means felony, criminal prosecution, a trial.”

He spoke hoarsely, and his hands were trembling. “It means transportation for one-and-twenty years, sir—perhaps for life.”

Bayle’s face was ashy, and with lips apart he stood gazing at the grim, quiet clerk.

“Man, man!” he cried at last; “it can’t be true.”

“Do you doubt too, sir? Well, it’s natural. I used to, and I tried to doubt it; a hundred times over when I was going to be sure that he was a villain, I used to say to myself as I went and fed my fish, it’s impossible, a man with a wife and child like—”

“Hush! for God’s sake, hush!” cried Bayle passionately, and then with a burst of fury, he caught the clerk by the throat. “It is a lie; Robert Hallam could not be such a wretch as that!”

“Mr Bayle, sir,” said Thickens calmly, and in an appealing tone; “can’t you see now, sir, why I sent to you? Do you think I don’t know how you loved that lady, and how much she and her bright little fairy of a child are to you? Why, sir, if it hadn’t been for them I should have gone straight to Sir Gordon, and before now that scoundrel would have been in Lincoln jail.”

“But you are mistaken, Thickens. Man, man, think what you are saying. Such a charge would break her heart, would brand that poor innocent child as the daughter of a felon. Oh, it cannot be!” he cried excitedly. “Heaven would not suffer such a wrong.”

“I’ve been years proving it, sir; years,” said Thickens slowly; “and until I was sure, I’ve been as silent as the dead. Fifty thousand pounds’ worth of securities at least have been taken from that safe, and dummies filled up the spaces. Why, sir, a score of times people wanted these deeds, and he has put them off for a few days till he could go up to London, raise money on others, and get those wanted from the banker’s hands.”

“But you knew something of this, then?”

“Yes, I knew it, sir—that is, I suspected it. Until I got the keys made, I was not sure.”

“Does—does any one else know of this?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Bayle, with quite a moan.

“Robert Hallam, sir.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Bayle, drawing a breath full of relief. “You have not told a soul?”

“No, sir. I said to myself there’s that sweet lady and her little child; and that stopped me. I said to myself, I must go to the trustiest friend they have, sir, and that was you. Now, sir, I have told you all. The simple truth. What am I to do?”

Christie Bayle dropped into a chair, his eyes staring, his blanched face drawn, and his lips apart, as he conjured up the scene that must take place—the arrest, the wreck of Mrs Hallam’s life, the suffering that would be her lot. And at last, half maddened, he started up, and stood with clenched hands gazing fiercely at the man who had fired this train.

“Well, sir,” said Thickens coldly, “will you get them and the old people away before the exposure comes?”

“No,” cried Bayle fiercely, “this must not—shall not be. It must be some mistake. Mr Hallam could not do such a wrong. Man, man, do you not see that such a charge would break his wife’s heart?”

“It was in the hope that you would do something for them, sir, that I told you all this first.”

“But we must see Mr Dixon and Sir Gordon at once.”

“And they will—you know what.”

“Hah! the matter must be hushed up. It would kill her!” cried Bayle incoherently. “Mr Thickens, you stand there like this man’s judge; have you not made one mistake?”

Thickens shook his head and tightened his lips to a thin line.

“Do you not see what it would do? Have you no mercy?”

“Mr Bayle, sir,” said Thickens slowly, “this has served you as it served me. It’s so stunning that it takes you off your head. Am I, the servant of my good masters, knowing what I do, to hide this from them till the crash comes first—the crash that is only a matter of time? Do you advise—do you wish me to do this?”

Christie Bayle sat with his hands clasping his forehead, for the pain he suffered seemed greater than he could bear. He had known for long enough that Hallam was a harsh husband and a bad father; but it had never even entered his dreams that he was other than an honest man. And now he was asked to decide upon this momentous matter, when his decision must bring ruin, perhaps even death, to the woman he esteemed, and misery to the sweet, helpless child he had grown to love.

It was to him as if he were being exposed to some temptation, for even though his love for Millicent had long been dead, to live again in another form for her child, Christie Bayle would have gone through any suffering for her sake. As he bent down there the struggle was almost greater than he could bear.

And there for long he sat, crushed and stunned by the terrible stroke that had fallen upon him, and was about to fall upon the helpless wife and child. His mind seemed chaotic. His reasoning powers failed, and as he kept clinging to little scraps of hope, they seemed to be snatched away.

It was with a heart full of grief mingled with rage that he started to his feet at last, and faced Thickens, for the clerk had again spoken in measured tones. “Mr Bayle, what am I to do?”

The curate gazed at him piteously, as he essayed to speak; but the words seemed smothered as they struggled in his breast.

Then, by a supreme effort, he mastered his emotion, and drew himself up.

“Once more, sir, what am I to do?”

“Your duty,” said Christie Bayle, and with throbbing brain he turned and left the house.

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