05/03/2008

Wilkie Collins

Short Stories

Table of Contents

The Twin Sisters: A True Story

A Passage in the Life of Mr. Perugino Potts

Nine O’clock

The Devil’s Spectacles

Fie! Fie! or the Fair Physician

Love’s Random Shot

The Poetry Did It

A Sad Death and a Brave Life

Farmer Fairweather

The First Officer’s Confession

Sources

The Twin Sisters: A True Story

AMONG THOSE who attended the first of the King’s levées, during the London season of 18—, was an unmarried gentleman of large fortune, named Streatfield. While his carriage was proceeding slowly down St. James’s Street, he naturally sought such amusement and occupation as he could find in looking on the brilliant scene around him. The day was unusually fine; crowds of spectators thronged the street and the balconies of the houses on either side of it, all gazing at the different equipages with as eager a curiosity and interest, as if fine vehicles and fine people inside them were the rarest objects of contemplation in the whole metropolis. Proceeding at a slower and slower pace, Mr Streatfield’s carriage had just arrived at the middle of the street, when a longer stoppage than usual occurred. He looked carelessly up at the nearest balcony; and there, among some eight or ten ladies, all strangers to him, he saw one face that riveted his attention immediately.

He had never beheld anything so beautiful, anything which struck him with such strange, mingled, and sudden sensations, as this face. He gazed and gazed on it, hardly knowing where he was, or what he was doing, until the line of vehicles began again to move on. Then—after first ascertaining the number of the house—he flung himself back in the carriage, and tried to examine his feelings, to reason himself into self-possession; but it was all in vain. He was seized with that amiable form of social monomania, called ‘love at first sight.’

He entered the palace, greeted his friends, and performed all the necessary Court ceremonies, feeling the whole time like a man in a trance. He spoke mechanically, and moved mechanically—the lovely face in the balcony occupied his thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. On his return home, he had engagements for the afternoon and evening—he forgot and broke them all; and walked back to St. James’s Street as soon as he had changed his dress.

The balcony was empty; the sight-seers who had filled it but a few hours before, had departed—but obstacles of all sorts now tended only to stimulate Mr Streatfield; he was determined to ascertain the parentage of the young lady, determined to look on the lovely face again—the thermometer of his heart had risen already to Fever Heat! Without loss of time, the shopkeeper to whom the house belonged was bribed to loquacity by a purchase. All that he could tell, in answer to inquiries, was that he had let his lodgings to an elderly gentleman and his wife, from the country, who had asked some friends into their balcony to see the carriages go to the levée. Nothing daunted, Mr Streatfield questioned and questioned again. What was the old gentleman’s name?—Dimsdale.—Could he see Mr Dimsdale’s servant?—The obsequious shopkeeper had no doubt that he could: Mr Dimsdale’s servant should be sent for immediately.

In a few minutes the servant, the all-important link in the chain of Love’s evidence, made his appearance. He was a pompous, portly man, who listened with solemn attention, with a stern judicial calmness, to Mr Streatfield’s rapid and somewhat confused inquiries, which were accompanied by a minute description of the young lady, and by several explanatory statements, all very fictitious, and all very plausible. Stupid as the servant was, and suspicious as all stupid people are, he had nevertheless sense enough to perceive that he was addressed by a gentleman, and gratitude enough to feel considerably mollified by the handsome douceur which was quietly slipped into his hand. After much pondering and doubting, he at last arrived at the conclusion that the fair object of Mr Streatfield’s inquiries was a Miss Langley, who joined the party in the balcony that morning, with her sister; and who was the daughter of Mr Langley, of Langley Hall, in—shire. The family were now staying in London, at—Street. More information than this, the servant stated that he could not afford—he was certain that he had made no mistake, for the Miss Langleys were the only very young ladies in the house that morning—however, if Mr Streatfield wished to speak to his master, he was ready to carry any message with which he might be charged.

But Mr Streatfield had already heard enough for his purpose, and departed at once for his club, determined to discover some means of being introduced in due form to Miss Langley, before he slept that night—though he should travel round the whole circle of his acquaintance—high and low, rich and poor—on making the attempt. Arrived at the club, he began to inquire resolutely, in all directions, for a friend who knew Mr Langley, of Langley Hall. He disturbed gastronomic gentlemen at their dinner; he interrupted agricultural gentlemen who were deep in the moaning over the prospects of the harvest; he startled literary gentlemen who were deep in the critical mysteries of the last Review; he invaded billiard-room, dressing-room, smoking-room; he was more like a frantic ministerial whipper-in, hunting up stray members for a division than an ordinary man; and the oftener he was defeated in his object, the more determined he was to succeed. At last, just as he had vainly inquired of everybody that he knew, just as he was standing in the hall of the club-house thinking where he should go next, a friend entered, who at once relieved him of all his difficulties—a precious, an inestimable man, who was on intimate terms with Mr Langley, and had been lately staying at Langley Hall. To this friend all the lover’s cares and anxieties were at once confided; and a fitter depositary for such secrets of the heart could hardly have been found. He made no jokes—for he was not a bachelor; he abstained from shaking his head and recommending prudence—for he was not a seasoned husband, or an experienced widower; what he really did, was to enter heart and soul into his friend’s projects—for he was precisely in that position, the only position, in which the male sex generally take a proper interest in match-making: he was a newly married man.

Two days after, Mr Streatfield was the happiest of mortals—he was introduced to the lady of his love, to Miss Jane Langley. He really enjoyed the priceless privilege of looking once more on the face in the balcony, and looking on it almost as often as he wished. It was perfect Elysium. Mr and Mrs Langley saw little, or no company—Miss Jane was always accessible, never monopolised—the light of her beauty shone, day after day, for her adorer alone; and his love blossomed in it, fast as flowers in a hot-house. Passing quickly by all the minor details of the wooing to arrive the sooner at the grand fact of the winning, let us simply relate that Mr Streatfield’s object in seeking an introduction to Mr Langley was soon explained, and was indeed visible enough long before the explanation. He was a handsome man, an accomplished man, and a rich man. His first two qualifications conquered the daughter, and his third the father. In six weeks Mr Streatfield was the accepted suitor of Miss Jane Langley.

The wedding-day was fixed—it was arranged that the marriage should take place at Langley Hall, whither the family proceeded, leaving the unwilling lover in London, a prey to all the inexorable business formalities of the occasion. For ten days did the ruthless lawyers—those dead weights that burden the back of Hymen—keep their victim imprisoned in the metropolis, occupied over settlements that never seemed likely to be settled. But even the long march of the Law has its end like other mortal things: at the expiration of the ten days all was completed, and Mr Streatfield found himself at liberty to start for Langley Hall.

A large party was assembled at the house to grace the approaching nuptials. There were to be tableaux, charades, boating-trips, riding-excursions, amusements of all sorts—the whole to conclude (in the play-bill phrase) with the grand climax of the wedding. Mr Streatfield arrived late; dinner was ready; he had barely time to dress, and then the bustle into the drawing-room, just as the guests were leaving it, to offer his arm to Miss Jane—all greetings with friends and introductions to strangers being postponed till the party met round the dining-table.

Grace had been said; the covers were taken off; the loud cheerful hum of conversation was just beginning, when Mr Streatfield’s eyes met the eyes of a young lady who was seated opposite, at the table. The guests near him, observing at the same moment, that he continued standing after every one else had been placed, glanced at him inquiringly. To their astonishment and alarm, they observed that his face had suddenly become deadly pale—his rigid features looked struck in paralysis. Several of his friends spoke to him; but for the first few moments he returned no answer. Then, still fixing his eyes upon the young lady opposite, he abruptly exclaimed in a voice, the altered tones of which startled every one who heard him: ‘That is the face I saw in the balcony!—that woman is the only woman I can ever marry!’ The next instant, without a word more either of explanation or apology, he hurried from the room.

One or two of the guests mechanically started up, as if to follow him; the rest remained at the table, looking on each other in speechless surprise. But, before any one could either act or speak, almost at the moment when the door closed on Mr Streatfield, the attention of all was painfully directed to Jane Langley. She had fainted. Her mother and sisters removed her from the room immediately, aided by the servants. As they disappeared, a dead silence again sank down over the company—they all looked round with one accord to the master of the house.

Mr Langley’s face and manner sufficiently revealed the suffering and suspense that he was secretly enduring. But he was a man of the world—neither by word nor action did he betray what was passing within him. He resumed his place at the table, and begged his guests to do the same. He affected to make light of what had happened; entreated every one to forget it, or, if they remembered it at all, to remember it only as a mere accident which would no doubt be satisfactorily explained. Perhaps it was only a jest on Mr Streatfield’s part—rather too serious a one, he must own. At any rate, whatever was the cause of the interruption to the dinner which had just happened, it was not important enough to require everybody to fast around the table of the feast. He asked it as a favour to himself, that no further notice might be taken of what had occurred. While Mr Langley was speaking thus, he hastily wrote a few lines on a piece of paper, and gave it to one of the servants. The note was directed to Mr Streatfield; the lines contained only these words: ‘Two hours hence, I shall expect to see you alone in the library.’

The dinner proceeded; the places occupied by the female members of the Langley family, and by the young lady who had attracted Mr Streatfield’s notice in so extraordinary a manner, being left vacant. Every one present endeavoured to follow Mr Langley’s advice, and go through the business of the dinner, as if nothing had occurred; but the attempt failed miserably. Long, blank pauses occurred in the conversation; general topics were started, but never pursued; it was more like an assembly of strangers, than a meeting of friends; people neither ate nor drank, as they were accustomed to eat and drink; they talked in altered voices, and sat with unusual stillness, even in the same positions. Relatives, friends, and acquaintances, all alike perceived that some great domestic catastrophe had happened; all foreboded that some serious, if not fatal, explanation of Mr Streatfield’s conduct would ensue: and it was vain and hopeless—a very mockery of self-possession—to attempt to shake off the sinister and chilling influences that recent events had left behind them, and resume at will the thoughtlessness and hilarity of ordinary life.

Still, however, Mr Langley persisted in doing the honours of his table, in proceeding doggedly through all the festive ceremonies of the hour, until the ladies rose and retired. Then, after looking at his watch, he beckoned to one of his sons to take his place; and quietly left the room. He only stopped once, as he crossed the hall, to ask news of his daughter from one of the servants. The reply was, that she had had a hysterical fit; that the medical attendant of the family had been sent for; and that since his arrival she had become more composed. When the man had spoken, Mr Langley made no remark, but proceeded at once to the library. He locked the door behind him, as soon as he entered the room.

Mr Streatfield was already waiting there—he was seated at the table, endeavouring to maintain an appearance of composure, by mechanically turning over the leaves of the books before him. Mr Langley drew a chair near him; and in low, but very firm tones, began the conversation thus:

‘I have given you two hours, Sir, to collect yourself, to consider your position fully—I presume, therefore, that you are now prepared to favour me with an explanation of your conduct at my table, to-day.’

‘What explanation can I make?—what can I say, or think of this most terrible of fatalities?’ exclaimed Mr Streatfield, speaking faintly and confusedly; and still not looking up—‘There has been an unexampled error committed!—a fatal mistake, which I could never have anticipated, and over which I had no control!’

‘Enough, sir, of the language of romance,’ interrupted Mr Langley, coldly; ‘I am neither of an age nor a disposition to appreciate it. I come here to ask plain questions honestly, and I insist, as my right, on receiving answers in the same spirit. You, Mr Streatfield, sought an introduction to me—you professed attached to my daughter Jane—your proposals were (I fear unhappily for us) accepted—your wedding-day was fixed—and now, after all this, when you happen to observe my daughter’s twin-sister sitting opposite to you—’

‘Her twin-sister!’ exclaimed Mr Streatfield; and his trembling hand crumpled the leaves of the book, which he still held while he spoke. ‘Why is it, intimate as I have been with your family, that I now know for the first time that Miss Jane Langley has a twin-sister?’

‘Do you descend, sir, to a subterfuge, when I ask you for an explanation?’ returned Mr Langley, angrily. ‘You must have heard, over and over again, that my children, Jane and Clara, were twins.’

‘On my word and honour, I declare that—’

‘Spare me all appeals to your word or your honour, sir; I am beginning to doubt both.’

‘I will not make the unhappy situation in which we are all placed, still worse, by answering your last words, as I might, at other times, feel inclined to answer them,’ said Mr Streatfield, assuming a calmer demeanour than he had hitherto displayed. ‘I tell you the truth, when I tell you that, before to-day, I never knew that any of your children were twins. Your daughter, Jane, has frequently spoken to me of her absent sister, Clara, but never spoke of her as her twin-sister. Until to-day, I have had no opportunity of discovering the truth; for until to-day, I have never met Miss Clara Langley since I saw her in the balcony of the house in St. James’s Street. The only one of your children who was never present during my intercourse with your family, in London, was your daughter Clara—the daughter whom I now know, for the first time, as the young lady who really arrested my attention on my way to the levée—whose affections it was really my object to win in seeking an introduction to you. To me, the resemblance between the twin-sisters has been a fatal resemblance; the long absence of one, a fatal absence.’

There was a momentary pause, as Mr Streatfield sadly and calmly pronounced the last words. Mr Langley appeared to be absorbed in thought. At length he proceeded, speaking to himself:

‘It is strange! I remember that Clara left London on the day of the levée, to set out on a visit to her aunt; and only returned here two days since, to be present at her sister’s marriage. Well, sir,’ he continued, addressing Mr Streatfield, ‘granting what you say, granting that we all mentioned my absent daughter to you, as we are accustomed to mention her among ourselves, simply as “Clara,” you have still not excused your conduct in my eyes. Remarkable as the resemblance is between the sisters, more remarkable even, I am willing to admit, than the resemblance usually is between twins, there is yet a difference, which, slight, indescribable though it may be, is nevertheless discernible to all their relations and to all their friends. How is it that you, who represent yourself as so vividly impressed by your first sight of my daughter Clara, did not discover the error when you were introduced to her sister Jane, as the lady who had so much attracted you?’

‘You forget, sir,’ rejoined Mr Streatfield, ‘that I have never beheld the sisters together until to-day. Though both were in the balcony when I first looked up at it, it was Miss Clara Langley alone who attracted my attention. Had I only received the smallest hint that the absent sister of Miss Jane Langley was her twin-sister, I would have seen her, at any sacrifice, before making my proposals. For it is my duty to confess to you, Mr Langley (with the candour which is your undoubted due), that when I was first introduced to your daughter Jane, I felt an unaccountable impression that she was the same as, and yet different from, the lady whom I had seen in the balcony. Soon, however, this impression wore off. Under the circumstances, could I regard it as anything but a mere caprice, a lover’s wayward fancy? I dismissed it from my mind; it ceased to affect me, until to-day, when I first discovered that it was a warning which I had most unhappily disregarded; that a terrible error had been committed, for which no one of us was to blame, but which was fraught with misery, undeserved misery, to us all!’

‘These, Mr Streatfield, are explanations which may satisfy you,’ said Mr Langley, in a milder tone, ‘but they cannot satisfy me; they will not satisfy the world. You have repudiated, in the most public and most abrupt manner, an engagement, in the fulfilment of which the honour and the happiness of my family are concerned. You have given me reasons for your conduct, it is true; but will those reasons restore to my daughter the tranquillity which she has lost, perhaps for ever? Will they stop the whisperings of calumny? Will they carry conviction to those strangers to me, or enemies of mine, whose pleasure it may be to disbelieve them? You have placed both yourself and me, sir, in a position of embarrassment—nay, a position of danger and disgrace, from which the strongest reasons and the best excuses cannot extricate us.’

‘I entreat you to believe,’ replied Mr Streatfield, ‘that I deplore from my heart the error—the fault, if you will—of which I have been unconsciously guilty. I implore your pardon, both for what I said and did at your table to-day; but I cannot do more. I cannot and I dare not pronounce the marriage vows to your daughter, with my lips, when I know that neither my conscience nor my heart can ratify them. The commonest justice, and the commonest respect towards a young lady who deserves both, and more than both, from every one who approaches her, strengthen me to persevere in the only course which it is consistent with honour and integrity for me to take.’

‘You appear to forget,’ said Mr Langley, ‘that it is not merely your own honour, but the honour of others, that is to be considered in the course of conduct which you are now to pursue.’

‘I have by no means forgotten what is due to you,’ continued Mr Streatfield, ‘or what responsibilities I have incurred from the nature of my intercourse with your family. Do I put too much trust in your forbearance, if I now assure you, candidly and unreservedly, that I still place all my hopes of happiness in the prospect of becoming connected by marriage with a daughter of yours? Miss Clara Langley—’

Here the speaker paused. His position was becoming a delicate and a dangerous one; but he made no effort to withdraw from it. Almost bewildered by the pressing and perilous emergency of the moment, harassed by such a tumult of conflicting emotions within him as he had never known before, he risked the worst, with all the blind-fold desperation of love. The angry flush was rising on Mr Langley’s cheek; it was evidently costing him a severe struggle to retain his assumed self-possession; but he did not speak. After an interval, Mr Streatfield proceeded thus:

‘However unfortunately I may express myself, I am sure you will do me the justice to believe that I am now speaking from my heart on a subject (to me) of the most vital importance. Place yourself in my situation, consider all that has happened, consider that this may be, for aught I know to the contrary, the last opportunity I may have of pleading my cause; and then say whether it is possible for me to conceal from you that I can only look to your forbearance and sympathy for permission to retrieve my error, to—to—Mr Langley! I cannot choose expressions at such a moment as this. I can only tell you that the feeling with which I regarded your daughter Clara, when I first saw her, still remains what it was. I cannot analyse it; I cannot reconcile its apparent inconsistencies and contradictions; I cannot explain how, while I may seem to you and to every one to have varied and vacillated with insolent caprice, I have really remained, in my own heart and to my own conscience, true to my first sensations and my first convictions. I can only implore you not to condemn me to a life of disappointment and misery, by judging me with hasty irritation. Favour me, so far at least, as to relate the conversation which has passed between us to your two daughters. Let me hear how it affects each of them towards me. Let me know what they are willing to think and ready to do under such unparalleled circumstances as have now occurred. I will wait your time, and their time; I will abide by your decision and their decision, pronounced after the first poignant distress and irritation of this day’s events have passed over.’

Still Mr Langley remained silent; the angry word was on his tongue; the contemptuous rejection of what he regarded for the moment as a proposition equally ill-timed and insolent, seemed bursting to his lips; but once more he restrained himself. He rose from his seat, and walked slowly backwards and forwards, deep in thought. Mr Streatfield was too much overcome by his own agitation to plead his cause further by another word. There was a silence in the room now, which lasted for some time.

We have said that Mr Langley was a man of the world. He was strongly attached to his children; but he had a little of the selfishness and much of the reverence for wealth of a man of the world. As he now endeavoured to determine mentally on his proper course of action—to disentangle the whole case from all its mysterious intricacies—to view it, extraordinary as it was, in its proper bearings, his thoughts began gradually to assume what is called, ‘a practical turn.’ He reflected that he had another daughter, besides the twin-sisters, to provide for; and that he had two sons to settle in life. He was not rich enough to portion three daughters; and he had not interest enough to start his sons favourably in a career of eminence. Mr Streatfield, on the contrary, was a man of great wealth, and of great ‘connections’ among people in power. Was such a son-in-law to be rejected, even after all that had happened, without at least consulting his wife and daughters first? He thought not. Had not Mr Streatfield, in truth, been the victim of a remarkable fatality, of an incredible accident, and were no allowances, under such circumstances, to be made for him? He began to think there were. Reflecting thus, he determined at length to proceed with moderation and caution at all hazards; and regained composure enough to continue the conversation in a cold, but still in a polite tone.

‘I will commit myself, sir, to no agreement or promise whatever,’ he began, ‘nor will I consider this interview in any respect as a conclusive one, either on your side or mine; but if I think, on consideration, that it is desirable that our conversation should be repeated to my wife and daughters, I will make them acquainted with it, and will let you know the result. In the meantime, I think you will agree with me, that it is most fit that the next communications between us should take place by letter alone.’

Mr Streatfield was not slow in taking the hint conveyed by Mr Langley’s last words. After what had occurred, and until something was definitely settled, he felt that the suffering and suspense which he was already enduring would be increased tenfold if he remained longer in the same house with the twin-sisters—the betrothed of one, the lover of the other! Murmuring a few inaudible words of acquiescence in the arrangements which had just been proposed to him, he left the room. The same evening he quitted Langley Hall.

The next morning the remainder of the guests departed, their curiosity to know all the particulars of what had happened remaining ungratified. They were simply informed that an extraordinary and unexpected obstacle had arisen to delay the wedding; that no blame attached to any one in the matter; and that as soon as everything had been finally determined, everything would be explained. Until then, it was not considered necessary to enter in any way into particulars. By the middle of the day every visitor had left the house; and a strange and melancholy spectacle it presented when they were all gone. Rooms were now empty and silent, which the day before had been filled with animated groups, and had echoed with merry laughter. In one apartment, the fittings for the series of ‘Tableaux’ which had been proposed, remained half completed: the dresses that were to have been worn, lay scattered on the floor; the carpenter who had come to proceed with his work, gathered up his tools in ominous silence, and departed as quickly as he could. Here lay books still open at the last page read; there was an album, with the drawing of the day before unfinished, and the colour-box unclosed by its side. On the deserted billiard-table, the positions of the ‘cues’ and balls showed traces of an interrupted game. Flowers were scattered on the rustic tables in the garden, half-made into nosegays, and beginning to wither already. The very dogs wandered in a moody, unsettled way about the house, missing the friendly hands that had fondled and fed them for so many days past, and whining impatiently in the deserted drawing-rooms. The social desolation of the scene was miserably complete in all its aspects.

Immediately after the departure of his guests, Mr Langley had a long interview with his wife. He repeated to her the conversation which had taken place between Mr Streatfield and himself, and received from her in return such an account of the conduct of his daughter, under the trial that had befallen her, as filled him with equal astonishment and admiration. It was a new revelation to him of the character of his own child.

‘As soon as the violent symptoms had subsided,’ said Mrs Langley, in answer to her husband’s first inquiries, ‘as soon as the hysterical fit was subdued, Jane seemed suddenly to assume a new character, to become another person. She begged that the doctor might be released from his attendance, and that she might be left alone with me and with her sister Clara. When every one else had quitted the room, she continued to sit in the easy chair where we had at first placed her, covering her face with her hands. She entreated us not to speak to her for a short time, and, except that she shuddered occasionally, sat quite still and silent. When she at last looked up, we were shocked to see the deadly paleness of her face, and the strange alteration that had come over her expression; but she spoke to us so coherently, so solemnly even, that we were amazed; we knew not what to think or what to do; it hardly seemed to be our Jane who was now speaking to us.’

‘What did she say?’ asked Mr Langley, eagerly.

‘She said that the first feeling of her heart, at that moment, was gratitude on her own account. She thanked God that the terrible discovery had not been made too late, when her married life might have been a life of estrangement and misery. Up to the moment when Mr Streatfield had uttered that one fatal exclamation, she had loved him, she told us, fondly and fervently; now, no explanation, no repentance (if either were tendered), no earthly persuasion or command (in case Mr Streatfield should think himself bound, as a matter of atonement, to hold to his rash engagement), could ever induce her to become his wife.’

‘Mr Streatfield will not test her resolution,’ said Mr Langley, bitterly; ‘he deliberately repeated his repudiation of his engagement in this room; nay, more, he—’

‘I have something important to say to you from Jane on this point,’ interrupted Mrs Langley. ‘After she had spoken the first few words which I have already repeated to you, she told us that she had been thinking—thinking more calmly perhaps than we could imagine—on all that had happened; on what Mr Streatfield had said at the dinner-table; on the momentary glance of recognition which she had seen pass between him and her sister Clara, whose accidental absence, during the whole period of Mr Streatfield’s intercourse with us in London, she now remembered and reminded me of. The cause of the fatal error, and the manner in which it had occurred, seemed to be already known to her, as if by intuition. We entreated her to refrain from speaking on the subject for the present; but she answered that it was her duty to speak on it—her duty to propose something which should alleviate the suspense and distress we were all enduring on her account. No words can describe to you her fortitude, her noble endurance—’ Mrs Langley’s voice faltered as she pronounced the last words. It was some minutes ere she became sufficiently composed to proceed thus:

‘I am charged with a message to you from Jane—I should say, charged with her entreaties, that you will not suspend our intercourse with Mr Streatfield, or view his conduct in any other than a merciful light—as conduct for which accident and circumstances are alone to blame. After she had given me this message to you, she turned to Clara, who sat weeping by her side, completely overcome; and kissing her, said that they were to blame, if anyone was to be blamed in the matter, for being so much alike as to make all who saw them apart doubt which was Clara and which was Jane. She said this with a faint smile, and an effort to speak playfully, which touched us to the heart. Then, in a tone and manner which I can never forget, she asked her sister—charging her, on their mutual affection and mutual confidence, to answer sincerely—if she had noticed Mr Streatfield on the day of the levée, and afterwards remembered him at the dinner-table, as he had noticed and remembered her? It was only after Jane had repeated this appeal, still more earnestly and affectionately, that Clara summoned courage and composure enough to confess that she had noticed Mr Streatfield on the day of the levée, had thought of him afterwards during her absence from London, and had recognised him at our table, as he had recognised her.’

‘Is it possible! I own I had not anticipated—not thought for one moment of that,’ said Mr Langley.

‘Perhaps,’ continued his wife, ‘it is best that you should see Jane now, and judge for yourself. For my part, her noble resignation under this great trial, has so astonished and impressed me, that I only feel competent to advise as she advises, to act as she thinks fit. I begin to think that it is not we who are to guide her, but she who is to guide us.’

Mr Langley lingered irresolute for a few minutes; then quitted the room, and proceeded alone to Jane Langley’s apartment.

When he knocked at the door, it was opened by Clara. There was an expression partly of confusion, partly of sorrow on her face; and when her father stopped as if to speak to her, she merely pointed into the room, and hurried away without uttering a word.

Mr Langley had been prepared by his wife for the change that had taken place in his daughter since the day before; but he felt startled, almost overwhelmed, as he now looked on her. One of the poor girl’s most prominent attractions, from her earliest years, had been the beauty of her complexion; and now, the freshness and the bloom had entirely departed from her face; it seemed absolutely colourless. Her expression, too, appeared to Mr Langley’s eyes, to have undergone a melancholy alteration; to have lost its youthfulness suddenly; to have assumed a strange character of firmness and thoughtfulness, which he had never observed in it before. She was sitting by an open window, commanding a lovely view of wide, sunny landscape; a Bible which her mother had given her, lay open on her knees; she was reading it as her father entered. For the first time in his life, he paused, speechless, as he approached to speak to one of his own children.

‘I am afraid I look very ill,’ she said, holding out her hand to him; ‘but I am better than I look; I shall be quite well in a day or two. Have you heard my message, father? Have you been told?’

‘My love, we will not speak of it yet; we will wait a few days,’ said Mr Langley.

‘You have always been so kind to me,’ she continued, in less steady tones, ‘that I am sure you will let me go on. I have very little to say, but that little must be said now, and then we need never recur to it again. Will you consider all that has happened, as something forgotten? You have heard already what it is I entreat you to do; will you let him—Mr Streatfield—’ (She stopped, her voice failed for a moment, but she recovered herself again almost immediately.) ‘Will you let Mr Streatfield remain here, or recall him if he is gone, and give him an opportunity of explaining himself to my sister? If poor Clara should refuse to see him for my sake, pray do not listen to her. I am sure this is what ought to be done; I have been thinking of it very calmly, and I feel that it is right. And there is something more I have to beg of you, father; it is, that, while Mr Streatfield is here, you will allow me to go and stay with my aunt. You know how fond she is of me. Her house is not a day’s journey from home. It is best for everybody (much the best for me) that I should not remain here at present; and—and—dear father! I have always been your spoiled child; and I know you will indulge me still. If you do what I ask you, I shall soon get over this heavy trial. I shall be well again if I am away at my aunt’s—if—’

She paused; and putting one trembling arm around her father’s neck, hid her face on his breast. For some minutes, Mr Langley could not trust himself to answer her. There was something, not deeply touching only, but impressive and sublime, about the moral heroism of this young girl, whose heart and mind—hitherto wholly inexperienced in the harder and darker emergencies of life—now rose in the strength of their native purity superior to the bitterest, cruellest trial that either could undergo; whose patience and resignation, called forth for the first time by a calamity which suddenly thwarted the purposes and paralysed the affections that had been destined to endure for a life, could thus appear at once in the fullest maturity of virtue and beauty. As the father thought on these things; as he vaguely and imperfectly estimated the extent of the daughter’s sacrifice; as he reflected on the nature of the affliction that had befallen her—which combined in itself a fatality that none could have foreseen, a fault that could neither be repaired nor resented, a judgement against which there was no appeal—and then remembered how this affliction had been borne, with what words and what actions it had been met, he felt that it would be almost a profanation to judge the touching petition just addressed to him, by the criterion of his worldly doubts and his worldly wisdom. His eye fell on the Bible, still open beneath it; he remembered the little child who was set in the midst of the disciples, as teacher and example to all; and when at length he spoke in answer to his daughter, it was not to direct or to advise, but to comfort and comply.

They delayed her removal for a few days, to see if she faltered in her resolution, if her bodily weakness increased; but she never wavered; nothing in her appearance changed, either for better or for worse. A week after the startling scene at the dinner-table, she was living in the strictest retirement in the house of her aunt.

About the period of her departure, a letter was received from Mr Streatfield. It was little more than a recapitulation of what he had already said to Mr Langley—expressed, however, on this occasion, in stronger and, at the same time, in more respectful terms. The letter was answered briefly; he was informed that nothing had, as yet, been determined on, but that the next communication would bring him a final reply.

Two months passed. During that time, Jane Langley was frequently visited at her aunt’s house, by her father and mother. She still remained calm and resolved; still looked pale and thoughtful, as at first. Doctors were consulted: they talked of a shock to the nervous system; of great hope from time, and their patient’s strength of mind; and of the necessity of acceding to her wishes in all things. Then, the advice of the aunt was sought. She was a woman of an eccentric, masculine character, who had herself experienced a love-disappointment in early life, and had never married. She gave her opinion unreservedly and abruptly, as she always gave it. ‘Do as Jane tells you!’ said the old lady, severely; ‘that poor child has more moral courage and determination than all the rest of you put together! I know better than anybody what a sacrifice she has had to make; but she has made it; and made it nobly—like a heroine, as some people would say; like a good, high-minded, courageous girl, as I say! Do as she tells you! Let that poor, selfish fool of a man have his way, and marry her sister—he has made one mistake already about a face—see if he doesn’t find out, some day, that he has made another, about a wife! Let him!—Jane is too good for him, or for any man! Leave her to me; let her stop here; she shan’t lose by what has happened! You know this place is mine—I mean it to be hers, when I’m dead. You know I’ve got some money—I shall leave it to her. I’ve made my will: it’s all done and settled! Go back home; send for the man, and tell Clara to marry him without any more fuss! You wanted my opinion—there it is for you!’

At last Mr Langley decided. The important letter was written, which recalled Mr Streatfield to Langley Hall. As Jane had foreseen, Clara at first refused to hold any communication with him; but a letter from her sister, and the remonstrances of her father, soon changed her resolution. There was nothing in common between the twin-sisters but their personal resemblance. Clara had been guided all her life by the opinions of others, and she was guided by them now.

Once permitted the opportunity of pleading his cause, Mr Streatfield did not neglect his own interests. It would be little to our purpose to describe the doubts and difficulties which delayed at first the progress of his second courtship—pursued as it was under circumstances, not only extraordinary, but unprecedented. It is no longer, with him, or with Clara Langley, that the interest of our story is connected. Suffice it to say, that he ultimately overcame all the young lady’s scruples; and that, a few months afterwards, some of Mr Langley’s intimate friends found themselves again assembled round his table as wedding-guests, and congratulating Mr Streatfield on his approaching union with Clara, as they had already congratulated him, scarcely a year back, on his approaching union with Jane!

The social ceremonies of the wedding-day were performed soberly—almost sadly. Some of the guests (especially the unmarried ladies) thought that Miss Clara had allowed herself to be won too easily—others were picturing to themselves the situation of the poor girl who was absent; and contributed little towards the gaiety of the party. On this occasion, however, nothing occurred to interrupt the proceedings; the marriage took place; and, immediately after it, Mr Streatfield and his bride started for a tour on the Continent.

On their departure, Jane Langley returned home. She made no reference whatever to her sister’s marriage; and no one mentioned it in her presence. Still the colour did not return to her cheek, or the old gaiety to her manner. The shock that she had suffered had left its traces on her for life. But there was no evidence that she was sinking under the remembrances which neither time nor resolution could banish. The strong, pure heart had undergone a change, but not a deterioration. All that had been brilliant in her character was gone; but all that was noble in it remained. Never had her intercourse with her family and her friends been so affectionate and so kindly as it was now.

When, after a long absence, Mr Streatfield and his wife returned to England, it was observed, at her first meeting with them, that the momentary confusion and embarrassment were on their side, not on hers. During their stay at Langley Hall, she showed not the slightest disposition to avoid them. No member of the family welcomed them more cordially; entered into all their plans and projects more readily; or bade them farewell with a kinder or better grace, when they departed for their own home.

Our tale is nearly ended: what remains of it, must comprise the history of many years in the compass of a few words.

Time passed on; and Death and Change told of its lapse among the family at Langley Hall. Five years after the events above related, Mr Langley died; and was followed to the grave, shortly afterwards, by his wife. Of their two sons, the eldest was rising into good practice at the bar; the youngest had become attaché to a foreign embassy. Their third daughter was married, and living at the family seat of her husband, in Scotland. Mr and Mrs Streatfield had children of their own, now, to occupy their time and absorb their care. The career of life was over for some—the purposes of life had altered for others—Jane Langley alone, still remained unchanged.

She now lived entirely with her aunt. At intervals—as their worldly duties and worldly avocations permitted them—the other members of her family, or one or two intimate friends, came to the house. Offers of marriage were made to her, but were all declined. The first, last love of her girlish days—abandoned as a hope, and crushed as a passion; living only as a quiet grief, as a pure remembrance—still kept its watch, as guardian and defender, over her heart. Years passed on and worked no change in the sad uniformity of her life, until the death of her aunt left her mistress of the house in which she had hitherto been a guest. Then it was observed that she made fewer and fewer efforts to vary the tenor of existence, to forget her old remembrances for awhile in the society of others. Such invitations as reached her from relations and friends were more frequently declined than accepted. She was growing old herself now; and, with each advancing year, the busy pageant of the outer world presented less and less that could attract her eye.

So she began to surround herself, in her solitude, with the favourite books that she had studied, with the favourite music that she had played, in the days of her hopes and her happiness. Everything that was associated, however slightly, with that past period, now acquired a character of inestimable value in her eyes, as aiding her mind to seclude itself more and more strictly in the sanctuary of its early recollections. Was it weakness in her to live thus; to abandon the world and the world’s interests, as one who had no hope, or part in either? Had she earned the right, by the magnitude and resolution of her sacrifice, thus to indulge in the sad luxury of fruitless remembrance? Who shall say!—who shall presume to decide that cannot think with her thoughts, and look back with her recollections!

Thus she lived—alone, and yet not lonely; without hope, but with no despair; separate and apart from the world around her, except when she approached it by her charities to the poor, and her succour to the afflicted; by her occasional interviews with the surviving members of her family and a few old friends, when they sought her in her calm retreat; and by little presents which she constantly sent to brothers’ and sisters’ children, who worshipped, as their invisible good genius, ‘the kind lady’ whom most of them had never seen. Such was her existence throughout the closing years of her life: such did it continue—calm and blameless—to the last.

Reader, when you are told, that what is impressive and pathetic in the Drama of Human Life has passed with a past age of Chivalry and Romance, remember Jane Langley, and quote in contradiction the story of the TWIN SISTERS!

A Passage in the Life of Mr. Perugino Potts

December 7th, 18—I have just been one week in Rome, and have determined to keep a journal. Most men in my situation would proceed to execute such a resolution as this, by writing about the antiquities of the ‘Eternal City’: I shall do nothing of the sort; I shall write about a much more interesting subject—myself.

I may be wrong, but my impression is that, as an Historical Painter, my biography will be written some of these days: personal particulars of me will then be wanted. I have great faith in the affectionate remembrance of any surviving friends I may leave behind me; but, upon the whole, I would rather provide these particulars myself. My future biographer shall have P.P. sketched by P.P. I paint my own pictures; why should I not paint my own character? The commencement of a new journal offers the opportunity of doing this—let me take it!

I was destined to be an artist from my cradle; my father was a great connoisseur, and a great collector of pictures; he christened me ‘Perugino,’ after the name of his favourite master, left me five hundred a-year, and told me with his last breath to be Potts, R.A., or perish in the attempt. I determined to obey him; but, though I have hitherto signally failed in becoming an R.A., I have not the slightest intention even of so much as beginning to perish, in compliance with the alternative suggested to me by my late lamented parent. Let the Royal Academy perish first! I mean to exist for the express purpose of testifying against that miserably managed institution as long as I possibly can.

This may be thought strong language: I will justify it by facts. For seven years I have vainly sought a place in the annual exhibition—for seven years has modest genius knocked for admission at the door of the Royal Academy, and invariably the answer of the Royal Academicians has been, ‘not at home!’ The first year I painted, ‘the Smothering of the Princes in the Tower,’ muscular murderers, flabby children, florid colouring; quite in the Rubens’ style—turned out! The second year I tried the devotional and severe, ‘the Wise and Foolish Virgins’; ten angular women, in impossible attitudes, with a landscape background, painted from the anti-perspective point of view—turned out! The third year I changed to the sentimental and pathetic; it was Sterne’s ‘Maria,’ this time, with her goat; Maria was crying, the goat was crying, Sterne himself (in the background) was crying, with his face buried in a white cambric pocket-handkerchief, wet through with tears—turned out! The fourth year I fell back on the domestic and familiar; a young Housemaid in the kitchen, plighting her troth, at midnight, to a private in the Grenadier Guards, while the policeman of the neighbourhood, a prey to jealousy and despair, flashed his ‘bull’s-eye’ on them through the window, from the area railings above—turned out! The fifth year I gave up figures, and threw my whole soul into landscape,—classical landscape. I sent in a picture of three ruined columns, five pine-trees, a lake, a temple, distant mountains, and a gorgeous sun-set, the whole enlivened by a dance of nymphs in Roman togas, in front of the ruined columns to be sold for the ludicrously small price of fifty guineas—turned out! The sixth year, I resolved to turn mercenary in self-defence; and, abandoning high art, to take to portraiture. I produced a ‘portrait of a lady’ (she was a professional model, who sat at a shilling an hour—but no matter); I depicted her captivatingly clothed in white satin, and grinning serenely; in the background appeared a red curtain, gorgeously bound books on a round table, and thunder-storm clouds—turned out! The seventh year I humbly resigned myself to circumstances, and sank at once to ‘still life,’ represented on the smallest possible scale. A modest canvas, six inches long by four inches broad, containing striking likenesses of a pot of porter, a pipe, and a plate of bread and cheese, and touchingly entitled, ‘the Labourer’s best Friends,’ was my last modest offering; and this—even this! the poor artist’s one little ewe-lamb of a picture, was—turned out! The eighth year was the year when I started in disgust to seek nobler fields for pictorial ambition in the regions of Italian Art! The eighth year has brought me to Rome—here I am!—I, Perugino Potts! vowed to grapple with Raphael and Michael-Angelo on their own ground! Grand idea!

Personally (when I have my high-heeled boots on) I stand five feet, three inches high. Let me at once acknowledge—for I have no concealments from posterity—that I am, outwardly, what is termed a little man. I have nothing great about me but my mustachios and my intellect; I am of the light-complexioned order of handsome fellows, and have hitherto discovered nothing that I can conscientiously blame in my temper and general disposition. The fire of artistic ambition that burns within me, shoots upward with a lambent glow—in a word, I am a good-humoured man of genius. This is much to say, but I could add yet more; were I not unhappily writing with an Italian pen on Italian paper: the pen splutters inveterately; the paper absorbs my watery ink like a blotting-book—human patience can stand it no longer: I give up for the day, in despair!

8th—Intended to proceed with my interesting autobiographical particulars, but was suddenly stopped at the very outset by an idea for a new picture. Subject: The primitive Father Polycarp, writing his Epistles; to be treated in the sublime style of Michael Angelo’s Prophets, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Polycarp to be several sizes larger than life, and well developed about the beard and muscles.

9th—Made inquiries for a good model, and found the very man I wanted. When I entered his humble abode, he was preparing his breakfast; the meal was characterised by a primitive simplicity and a strong smell. He first pulled out his stiletto knife, and cut off a large crust of bread: the outside of this crust he rubbed with garlic till it shone like a walnut-wood table in an English farm-house; the inside he saturated with oil and vinegar. By the time he had done that, the whole crust looked like a cold poultice in a polished calf-leather saucer. He ate this remarkable compound with voracious enjoyment, while I looked at him. I found him a rather difficult man to estimate in a physiognomical point of view; nothing was to be seen of his face but two goggle eyes and a hook nose, peering out of a forest of hair—such hair! just the iron-grey sort of thing I wanted. Such a beard! the most devotional I ever saw. I engaged him on the spot, and jocosely christened him Polycarp the Second, in allusion to the character he was to represent on my canvas.

10th—Polycarp the Second came to sit; he was polite, talkative, and apparently somewhat infested by fleas. I had an explanation with him on the last-mentioned of his personal characteristics. He asserted consolingly, that the fleas were not likely to leave him to go to me—they patriotically preferred Italian to English pasturage. Trusting he was right, I changed the subject and asked about his history. His answer tended to show that he had been ill-used and misunderstood by everybody from his cradle. His father, his mother, his relations, the priests, the police, the high populace and the low populace, throughout every degree—they had all maltreated, persecuted, falsely accused, and unrelentingly pursued Polycarp the Second. He attributed this miserable state of things partly to the invincible piety and honesty of his character, which, of course, exposed him to the malice of the world; and partly to his strong and disinterested attachment to the English nation, which lowered him in the eyes of his prejudiced countrymen. He wept as he said this—his beard became a disconsolate beard with the tears that trickled down it. Excellent-hearted Polycarp! I sympathise with him already in spite of the fleas.

11th—Another sitting from my worthy model. The colossal figure is, by this time (so rapid a workman am I) entirely sketched in. My physical exertions are tremendous. My canvas is fourteen feet high; and Polycarp reaches from top to bottom. I can only pursue my labour by incessantly getting up and down a pair of steps; by condemning myself heroically to a sort of pictorial treadmill. Already, however, I have tasted the compensating sweets of triumph. My model is in raptures with my design—he was so profoundly affected that he cried over it, just as he cried over his own history. What taste these Italians naturally possess! What impressibility! What untaught sympathies with genius! How delightfully different their disposition from the matter-of-fact English character! How stolid is a British Royal Academician, compared to Polycarp the Second!

12th—Model again. Crying again. Previous history again. Raptures again. I wish he would not smell quite so strong of garlic. At present he repels my nose as powerfully as he attracts my heart. Sent him on an errand, to buy me lamp-black and flake-white: I mean to lay it on rather thick when I come to Polycarp’s beard. Gave him the money to pay for the paint—about fourpence English. The honest creature showed himself worthy of my confidence, by bringing me back one halfpenny of change with the colours. Poor Polycarp! Poor persecuted, lost sheep! the malicious world has singed the wool off your innocent back: be it mine to see it grow again under the British artist’s fostering care!

13th, 14th, 15th, 16th—Too much occupied to make regular entries in my journal. I must have been up and down several miles of steps, during my four days’ labour on my fourteen feet of canvas. The quantity of paint I am obliged to use is so enormous that it quite overpowers all Polycarp’s garlic, and will, I imagine, in process of time poison all Polycarp’s fleas. I feel fatigued, especially in the calves of my legs; but with such a design as I am producing, to cheer me on; and with such a model as I have got, to appreciate my genius and run my errands, fatigue itself becomes an enjoyment. Physically as well as intellectually, I feel the Samson of High Art!

17th—Horror! humiliation! disenchantment! despair!—Polycarp the Second is off with my watch, chain, and purse containing Roman money to the amount of five pounds English. I feel the most forlorn, deluded, miserable ass under the canopy of Heaven! I have been the dupe of a hypocritical, whimpering scoundrel! The scent of his garlic still floats aggravatingly on the atmosphere of my studio, outraging my nose and my feelings both together. But I can write no more on this disastrous day: I must either go mad, or go to dinner immediately. Let me embrace the latter alternative, while it is still within my power. Away! away to forget myself in the national Roman dish of kid’s flesh and pistachio nuts!

18th—The national Roman dish has disagreed with me: I sit bilious before my fourteen canvas feet of thickly-painted but still unfinished Polycarp. This is an opportunity for relating in a proper spirit of lamentation the history of my discomfiture. It happened thus: Powerfully as my legs are made, they gave way under me on the morning of the 17th, after I had been three hours engaged in incessantly getting up the steps to put hairs on Polycarp’s beard, and incessantly getting down again to go to the other end of the room and look at the effect of them. I told my perfidious model that he might take a rest, and set him the example by taking a rest myself. Overpowered by weariness, and the pressure of ideas, I fell asleep—unaccountably and barbarously fell asleep in my chair—before my own picture. The toil-worn British artist innocently reposed; and the whimpering Italian scoundrel took advantage of his slumbers! The bearded villain must have coolly taken my chain off my neck, my watch out of my waistcoat, my purse out of my pocket, while I was asleep. When I awoke it was dusk: I yawned loudly—no notice taken of it: I called out more loudly—no answer: I struck a light—no chain, no watch, no purse, no Polycarp. After a moment of bewilderment and horror, I rushed to the traitor’s dwelling. The people of the house knew nothing about him, except that he was not home. I proclaimed my wrongs furiously to the rest of the lodgers. Another bearded man among them threatened me with assassination if I did not immediately hold my tongue: I held it. The bearded man’s mother recommended me to go home (ominously swinging a saucepan full of dirty water towards me, while she spoke): I took her advice. When I am in a den of thieves I do not find the courageous part of my character quite so fully developed as I could wish.

19th—Sought redress and restitution from the Police. They appeared to consider my application first as a joke, and then as an insult. Could they not catch Polycarp the Second? (I asked.)—Yes; they might possibly catch him in the process of time. Then, why not set about his capture at once?—in the sacred name of Justice, why not? Because it was of no use: he must have sold the watch and chain, and spent the money by this time. Besides, suppose him caught, it would be inconvenient to punish him, for the prisons were all full—there was no room for him anywhere. I was an Englishman, therefore rich, and therefore able to put up with my loss. Surely I had better go away, and not make a fuss about the business in bad Italian. Shade of Brutus! can this be Roman justice?

20th—A visit from a brother artist—a German who chirps his national songs all day; paints in the severs style; and lives on an income of forty ponds a year. This esteemed fellow-labourer gave me some advice, on hearing of my disaster. He assured me that I should get no assistance from the police without bribing them handsomely to do their work. Supposing they really took decisive steps, after that; it was more than probable that Polycarp, or some of his friends, would put me out of their way in the night, by sticking an inch or two of stiletto into my ribs. I had better not move in the matter, if I valued either my pocket or my life. ‘This,’ said the German student, lighting his pipe, ‘this, O Anglo-Saxon brother, is not thy fatherland. At Rome, the mind-and-body-comforting virtues they practise not—they grant no justice, and they quaff no beer.’

21st—After mature consideration, arrived at the conclusion that I had better leave Rome. To go on with my picture, after what has happened, is impossible. The train of thought in which it originated, is broken up for ever. Moreover, envious fellow-students are already beginning to make a joke of my disaster; and, for aught I know to the contrary, Polycarp the Second may be lying in wait for my life, every night, at the corner of the street. Pursued by ridicule, and threatened by assassination, no course is left me but dignified retreat. Rome farewell! Romans! one more master spirit that dwelt among ye has now been outraged and proscribed! CORIOLANUS—POTTS.

22nd—Early in the morning, took my canvas off the stretcher; rolled it up, and deposited it in the studio of my friend, the German artist. He promises to complete my design, as soon as he can afford paint enough to cover so colossal a canvas. I wrung his hand in silence, and left him my lamp-black, as a stock-in-trade f colours to begin with. Half an hour afterwards I was on the road to Florence, hastening to seek intellectual consolation at the feet of the Venus de Medici.

24th—Arrived at the Tuscan capital in the late evening. Rain, hail, snow, wind rising to a hurricane. People who praise the climate of Italy must be the paid agents of Italian innkeepers. I have never suffered such cold as this in England in my life.

25th—Called on an Italian gentleman, to whom I had a letter of introduction, for the purpose of inquiring about lodgings. Told him I only wanted a bedroom and a studio. He informed me that I could get both (the studio fifty feet long, if I liked it), at the palace of the Marchesa—. ‘Lodgings at a palace!’ cried I. ‘Yes, and very cheap, too,’ answered my new friend. Cheap! Can a Marchioness drive bargains? Readily. The Marchioness has not fifty pounds of your money for her whole yearly income. ‘Has she any children?’ ‘One unmarried daughter, the Marchesina.’ ‘What’s that?’ ‘A diminutive term of endearment; it means, the little Marchioness, my dear sir, in your language.’ This last reply decided me. Serene visions re Marchesina Potts swam benignant before my eyes. In an evil hour, and little thinking into what fatal embarrassments I was plunging myself, I asked for the address of the palace, and determined to lodge with the Marchioness. (Christmas-day; and no roast-beef or plum-pudding. I wish I was back in England, in spite of my brilliant prospects with the Italian aristocracy.)

26th—Went to my noble landlady’s, having dreamt all night of Polycarp the Second. (Is this a warning that I am to see that miscreant again?) Found the palace situated in a back street; an enormous building in a very deficient state of repair. The flag-stones of the courtyard grass-grown; the fountain in the middle throwing up no water, and entirely surrounded by weeds and puddles; the staircase rugged with hard dirt—but for thinking of the Marchesina, I should have run away at my first external view of my future lodgings. Saw the Marchesa. Where does all the flesh of all the old women in Italy go to? What substance absorbs, what grave receives it? Why is there no such thing as a fat lady of sixty in the whole Peninsula? Oh, what a thoroughly Italian old woman was this Marchesa! She was little, crooked, fleshless; her yellow skin had shrivelled up tight over her bones; her nose looked preternaturally aquiline, without an atom of cheek to relieve it; her hair was white; her eyes were blazing black; and to crown all, she was as stealthily civil as any watering-place landlady in England that I ever met with. She must have exercised some hideous fascination over me, for I fell into her toils, and chartered a bedroom and studio before I had been in her presence ten minutes. The bedroom was comparatively small for a palace, only about thirty feet long by twenty broad. The studio was a vasty mausoleum of a drawing-room: sixty feet by forty of marble floor, without a fire-place or a single article of furniture on any part of it, do not look comfortable in the month of February, when the snow is falling out of doors. I shall have to sit and paint in a sentry-box!

27th—Removed to my dungeon—I can call it nothing else… I have just seen the Marchesina, and feel faint and giddy after the sight. ‘The little Marchioness’—to use my friend’s translation of her name—stands five feet eleven in her slippers; her hair and eyes are as black as ink; her arm is as thick as my leg; her complexion is sallow. She is as fleshy a subject as I ever remember to have met with. I know where all the old woman’s fat has gone now; it has gone to the Marchesina. My first intuitive resolve, on being introduced to this magnificent aristocrat, was as follows: ‘I must make friends with you, madam, for I see that you can thrash me!’

28th—The domestic life of the two noble ladies exhibits some peculiarities. I have observed that neither of them appears to possess such a thing as a gown; they are both swaddled in quantities of shapeless, dark-coloured robes, wrapped about them in a very mysterious manner. They appear to live exclusively on salad. They make salads not only of every kind of vegetable, but of bread, nuts and sponge-cakes. If the Marchesina by any accident ever set herself on fire, I feel assured that she would blaze like a beacon, from the quantity of oil she imbibes. Both the ladies keep me company in my studio, because I have got a chafing-dish of charcoal in it to preserve me from freezing, and they like to be economical in point of fire. But, besides my fire, they have their own, which they carry in their laps. An earthenware pipkin a-piece, with an arched handle, and with a small provision of burning charcoal in it, is the extraordinary portable fire that they hold on their knees all day long. I suspect the Marchesina of having a second pipkin full of live charcoal, under her robes, for the purpose of warming her feet and so forth. But of this I am not yet certain.

29th—The mighty Marchesina has proposed a subject to me to paint—a life-size portrait of herself in the character of a Sibyl. Ah, merciful Heaven! I must have another huge canvas for this! It will be another ‘Polycarp,’ in female form! More getting up and down steps! More gallons of black paint! But I must submit. The Marchesina has been hitherto very kind, sometimes even alarmingly affectionate. Nevertheless, if I oppose, or neglect her, I feel perfectly certain that she is capable of knocking me down!—Why! why did I ever come to Italy?

January 1st—I mark this day’s entry with red ink. The new year has begun for me with one of the most outstanding adventures that ever happened to anybody—Baron Munchausen included. Let me note it down in these pages.

I had just begun this morning to make a sketch for the future Sibyl picture, when the Sibyl herself burst into my studio in a great hurry. She had her bonnet on; and was dressed for the first time, since I had seen her, in something which really looked like a petticoat.

‘Industrious little man,’ said the Marchesina, with an air of jocular authority, ‘put on your hat, and come out with me.’

Of course I obeyed directly. We were going to the nunnery church of Santa So-and-so (I am afraid of being prosecuted for libel if I write the real name), to see the live object of the last new miracle, which had set all Florence in an uproar of astonishment and admiration. This object was a poor man who had been miraculously restored from blindness, by praying to a certain statue of the Madonna. He had only pursued his devotions for two days, when he was ‘cured in an instant,’ like the man with the toothache, on the outside cover of a certain quack medicine bottle, that I remember in England. Besides gaining his sight, he gained a great deal of money, subscribed for him by the devout rich. He was exhibited every day in the church; and it was the great sight of Florence to go and see him.

Well! we got to the church. Such a scene inside! Crowds of people; soldiers in full uniform to keep order; the organ thundering sublimely; the choir singing hosannas; clouds of incense floating through the church; devotees, some kneeling, some prostrate on their faces, wherever they could find room,—all the magnificence of the magnificent Roman Catholic worship, was displayed before us in its grandest festival garb. My companion was right, this was a sight worth seeing indeed.

The Marchesina being a person of some weight, both in respect of physical formation and social standing, made her way victoriously through the crowd, dragging me after her in triumph. At the inner extremity of the church we saw the wonder-working statue of the Madonna, raised on high, and profusely decorated with the jewels presented to it by the faithful. To get a view of the man on whom the miracle had been wrought was, however, by no means easy. He was closely surrounded by a circle of gazers five deep. ere, long, however, the indomitable Marchesina contrived to force her way and mine through every obstacle. We reached the front row, I looked eagerly under a tall man’s elbow; and saw—

Portentous powers of scoundrelism and hypocrisy! It was—yes! there was no mistaking him—it was POLYCARP THE SECOND!!!

I never really knew what it was to doubt my own eyes before; and yet there was no doubt here. There, kneeling beneath the statue of the Madonna, in an elegant pose of adoration, was my wide-awake miscreant of a model, changed to the hero of the most fashionable miracle of the day. The tears were trickling over his villainous beard, exactly as they trickled in my studio; I just detected the smell of garlic faintly predominant over the smell of incense, as I used to detect it at Rome. My sham model had turned sham blind man to all Florence, sham miracle-subject to a convent of illustrious nuns. The fellow had reached the sublime acme of rascality at a single stride.

The shock of my first recognition of him deprived me of my presence of mind. I forgot where I was, forgot all the people present, and unconsciously uttered aloud our national English ejaculation of astonishment, ‘Hullo!’ The spectators in my neighbourhood all turned round upon me immediately. A priest among the number beckoned to a soldier standing near, and said, ‘Remove the British heretic.’ This was rather too violent a proceeding to be patiently borne. I was determined to serve the cause of truth, and avenge myself on Polycarp the Second at the same time.

‘Sir,’ said I to the priest, ‘before I am taken away, I should like to speak in private to the lady abbess of this convent.’

‘Remove the heretic!’ reiterated the furious bigot.

‘Remove the heretic!’ echoed the indignant congregation.

‘If you do remove me,’ I continued resolutely, ‘without first granting what I ask, I will publicly proclaim, before you can get me out at the door of the church, a certain fact which you would give the best jewel on that statue up there to keep concealed. Will you let me see the abbess, or will you not?’

My naturally limpid and benevolent eye must have flashed lightnings of wrath as I spoke, my usually calm and mellow voice must have sounded like a clarion of defiance; for the priest suddenly changed his tactics. He signed to the soldier to let me go.

‘The Englishman is mad; and must be managed by persuasion, not force,’ said the wily churchman to the congregation.

‘He is not mad,—he is only a genius,’ exclaimed my gigantic and generous Marchesina, taking my part.

‘Leave him to me, and hold your peace, all of you,’ said the priest, taking my arm, and leading me quickly out of the crowd.

He showed me into a little room behind the body of the church: shut the door carefully, and turning quickly and fiercely on me, said:

‘Now, you fanatic of an Englishman, what do you want?’

‘Bigot of an Italian!’ I answered in rage, ‘I want to prove your miracle man there, to be a thief and impostor. I know him. He was no more blind, when he came to Florence, than I am.’

The priest turned ghastly with rage, and opened his mouth to speak again, when, by a second door at the other end of the room, in came the abbess herself.

She tried at first the same plan as the priest. I never saw a fiercer, leaner, sharper old woman in my life. But bullying me would not do. I knew I was right: and stuck manfully to my point. After stating the whole of the great Polycarp robbery case, I wound up brilliantly by announcing my intention of sending to Rome for witnesses who could prove the identity of my thief of a model, and their sham of a miracle man, beyond the possibility of refutation. This threat conquered; the abbess got frightened in real earnest, and came to terms; or, in other words, began to humbug me on the spot.

In the course of my life I have known a great many wily old women. The tart-seller at school was a wily old woman; a maternal aunt of mine, who wheedled my father out of a special legacy, was a wily old woman; the laundress I employed in London was a wily old woman; the Marchioness I now lodge with is a wily old woman; but the abbess was wilier than all four put together. She flattered and cringed, lamented and shed tears, prayed for me and to me, all in a breath. Even the magnificent depths of humbug displayed by Polycarp the Second, looked shallow and transparent by contrast with the unfathomable profundities of artifice exhibited by the lady abbess!

Of course, the petitions that the abbess now poured on me in torrents were all directed towards the one object of getting me to hold my tongue for ever on the subject of Signor Polycarp’s assumed blindness. Of course, her defence of the miracle-exhibition going on in her church was, that she and the whole nunnery (officiating priests included) had been imposed on by the vagabond stranger who had come to them from Rome. Whether this was true or not I really cannot say. I had a faint consciousness all the time the abbess was speaking that she was making a fool of me; and yet, for the life of me, I could not help believing some of the things she said; I could not refrain from helplessly granting her all that she asked. In return for this docility on my part, she gratefully promised that Polycarp should be ignominiously turned out of the church, without receiving a single farthing of the sums collected for him; which happened to be still remaining in the convent cash-box. Thus avenged on my pickpocket model, I felt perfectly satisfied, and politely assured the abbess (who undertook to account satisfactorily to the public for the disappearance of the miracle-man) that whatever her story was, I would not contradict it. This done, the pious old lady gave me her blessing; the priest ‘followed on the same side,’ and I left them writing down my name, to be prayed for among the convent list of personages of high rank, who were all benefited by the abbess’s interest with Heaven! Rather different this from being removed as a heretic in the custody of a soldier!

2nd—A quiet day at home, after yesterday’s excitement. The behaviour of the Marchesina begins to give me serious uneasiness. Gracious powers!—does she mean to fall in love with me? It seems awfully like it. On returning to the palace yesterday she actually embraced me! I was half suffocated by her congratulatory hug. The hug over, she playfully pinned me into a corner, till she made me tell her the whole of my adventure in the church. And, worse than all! not half an hour since, she coolly desired me to pull the foot-warming pipkin from under her robes—I was right about her having one there), to poke the embers, and then to put it back again; speaking just as composedly as if she were only asking me to help her on with her shawl! This looks very bad. What had I better do?—run away?

3rd—Another adventure! A fearful, life-and-death adventure this time. This evening somebody gave the Marchesina a box at the opera. She took me with her. Confound the woman, she will take me with her everywhere! Being a beautiful moonlight night, we walked home. As we were crossing the ‘Piazza’ I became aware that a man was following us, and proposed to the Marchesina that we should mend our pace. ‘Never!’ exclaimed that redoubtable woman. ‘None of my family have ever known what fear was a worthy daughter of the house, and I don’t know! Courage, Signor Potts, and keep step with me!’

This was all very well, but my house was the house of Potts, and every member had, at one time or other, known fear quite intimately. My position was dreadful. The resolute Marchesina kept tight hold of my arm, and positively slackened her pace rather than otherwise! The man still followed us, always at the same distance, evidently bent on robbery or assassination, or perhaps both. I would gladly have given the Marchesina five pounds to forget her family dignity and run.

On looking over my shoulder for about the five hundredth time, just as we entered the back street where the palace stood, I missed the mysterious stranger, to my infinite relief. The next moment, to my unutterable horror, I beheld him before us, evidently waiting to intercept our progress. We came up with him in the moonshine. Death and destruction! Polycarp the Second again!

‘I know you!’ growled the ruffian, grinding his teeth at me. ‘You got me turned out of the church! Body of Bacchus! I’ll be revenged on you for that!’

He thrust his hand into his waistcoat. Before I could utter even the faintest cry for help, the heroic Marchesina had caught him fast by the beard and wrist, and had pinned him helpless against the wall. ‘Pass on, Signor Potts!’ said this lioness of a woman, quite complacently. ‘Pass on; there’s plenty of room now.’ Just as I passed on I heard the sound of a kick behind me, and, turning round, saw Polycarp the Second prostrate in the kennel. ‘La, la, la-la-la-la-la—la!’ sang the Marchesina from ‘Suoni la Tromba’ (which we had just heard at the Opera), as she took my arm once more, and led me safely up the palace stairs—‘La, la, la-la—la! We’ll have a salad for supper to-night, Signor Potts!’ Majestic, Roman matron-minded woman! She could kick an assassin and talk of a salad both at the same moment!

4th—A very bad night’s rest: dreams of gleaming stilettos and midnight assassination. The fact is, my life is no longer safe in Florence. I can’t take the Marchesina about with me everywhere as a body-guard (she is a great deal too affectionate already); and yet, without my Amazonian protectress what potent interposition is to preserve my life from the blood-thirsty Polycarp, when he next attempts it? I begin to be afraid that I am not quite so brave a man as I have been accustomed to think myself. Why have I not the courage Marchesina and her mother warning, and so leave Florence? Oh, Lord! here comes the tall woman to sit for the Sibyl picture! She will embrace me again, I know she will! She’s got into the habit of doing it; she takes an unfair advantage of her size and strength. Why can’t she practise fair play, and embrace a man of her own weight and inches?

5th—Another mess! I shall be dead soon; killed by getting into perpetual scrapes; if I am not killed by a stiletto! I’ve been stabbing an innocent man now; and have had to pay something like three pounds of compensation-money. This was how the thing happened: Yesterday I got away from the Marchesina (she hugged me, just as I foretold she would) about dusk, and immediately went and bought a sword-stick, as a defence against Polycarp. I don’t mind confessing that I was afraid to return to the palace at night without a weapon of some sort. They never shut the court-yard door till everybody is ready to go to bed; the great staircase is perfectly dark all the way up, and affords some capital positions for assassination on every landing-place. Knowing this, I drew my new sword (a murderous-looking steel skewer, about three feet long) out of the stick, as I advanced towards home, and began or Polycarp in the darkness, the moment I mounted the first stair. Up I went, stabbing every inch of my way before me, in the most scientific and complete manner; spitting invisible assassins like larks for supper. I was just exploring the corners of the second landing-place on this peculiar defensive system of my own, when my sword-point encountered a soft substance, and my ears were instantly greeted by a yell of human agony. In the fright of the moment, I echoed the yell, and fell down flat on my back. The Marchesina rushed out on the stairs at the noise, with a lamp in her hand. I sat up and looked round in desperation. There was the miserable old porter of the palace, bleeding and blubbering in a corner, and there was my deadly skewer of a sword stuck in a piece of tough Italian beef by his side! The meat must have attracted the skewer, like a magnet; and it saved the porter’s life. He was not much hurt; the beef (stolen property with which he was escaping to his lodge, when my avenging sword-point met him) acted like a shield, and was much the worse wounded of the two. The Marchesina found this out directly; and began to upbraid the porter for thieving. The porter upbraided me for stabbing, and I, having nobody else to upbraid, upbraided Destiny for leading me into a fresh scrape. The uproar we made was something quite indescribable; we three outscreamed all Billingsgate-market in the olden time. At last I calmed the storm by giving the porter every farthing I had about me, and asking the Marchesina to accept the sword part of my sword stick as a new spit to adorn the kitchen department of the palace. She called me ‘an angel;’ and hugged me furiously on the spot. If this hugging is not stopped by to-morrow I shall put myself under the protection of the British ambassador—I will, or my name isn’t Potts!

6th—No protection is henceforth available! No British ambassador can now defend my rights! No threats of assassination from Polycarp the Second can terrify me more!—All my other calamities are now merged in one enormous misfortune that will last for the rest of my life: the Marchesina has declared her intention of marrying me!

It was done at supper last night, after I had pinked the porter. We sat round the inevitable, invariable salad, on which we were condemned to graze—the Nebuchadnezzars of modern life—in this accursed gazebo of a palace. My stomach began to ache beforehand as I saw the Marchesina pouring in the vinegar, and heard her, at the same time, dropping certain hints in my direction—frightfully broad hints, with which she has terrified and bewildered me for the last three or four days. I sat silent. In England I should have rushed to the window and screamed for the police; but I was in Florence, defenceless and a stranger, before an Amazon who was fast ogling me into terrified submission to my fate. She soon got beyond even the ogling. When we were all three helped to salad, just at the pause before eating, the Marchesina looked round at her fleshless, yellow old parent.

‘Mother,’ says she, ‘shall I have him?’

‘Beloved angel,’ was the answer, ‘you are of age, I leave your choice to yourself; pick where you like?’

‘Very well then,’ pursued the Amazonian daughter, ‘very well! Potts! here is my hand.’ She held out her mighty fist towards me, with a diabolical grin. I felt I must either take it or have my head broken. I now sincerely wish I had preferred the latter alternative; but an unlucky emotion of terror misled me into accepting the former. I received an amorous squeeze that made the bones of my fingers crack again.

‘You are a little man, and not noble,’ observed the Marchesina, critically looking me over, as if I had been a piece of meat that she was purchasing in the market, ‘but you get both size and rank in getting me. Let us therefore be perfectly happy, and proceed with our salad.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said I, faintly shivering all over in a sort of cold horror, ‘I beg your pardon; but really—’

‘Come, come!’ interrupted the Marchesina, crushing my hand with another squeeze; ‘too much diffidence is a fault; you have genius and wealth to offer in exchange for all I confer on you, you have, you modest little cherub of a man! As for the day, my venerated mother!’ she continued, turning towards the old woman; ‘shall we say this day week?’

‘Certainly, this day week,’ said mamma, looking yellower than ever, as she mopped up all the oil and vinegar in her plate with a large spoon. The next minute I received the old woman’s blessing; I was ordered to kiss the Marchesina’s hand; I was wished good night,—and then found myself alone with three empty salad plates; ‘left for execution’ that very day week; left without the slightest chance of a reprieve!

I write these lines at the dead of night,—myself, more dead than alive. I am in my bed-room; the door is locked and barricaded against the possible entrance of the Marchesina and her mamma. I am covered from head to foot with a cold perspiration, but am nevertheless firm in my resolution to run away to-morrow. I must leave all my luggage behind me, and resort to stratagem or I shall not get off. Tomorrow, the moment the palace gate is opened, I shall take to my heels, carrying with me nothing but my purse, my passport, and my nightcap. Hush! a stealthy breathing sounds outside the door—an eye is at the key-hole—it is the old woman watching me! Hark! a footstep in the street outside—Polycarp the Second, with his stiletto lying in wait before the house! I shall be followed, I know I shall, however cunningly and secretly I get away to-morrow! Marriage and murder—murder and marriage, will alternately threaten me for the remainder of my life! Art, farewell! henceforth the rest of my existence is dedicated to perpetual flight!

[Note by the Editor of the Foregoing Fragments]

With the ominous word ‘flight,’ the journal of Mr Potts abruptly ends. I became possessed of the manuscript in this manner: The other day, while I was quietly sitting in my study in London, the door of the room was flung violently open, and the ill-fated Potts himself rushed in, his eyes glaring, his hair dishevelled.

‘Print that!’ cried my gifted, but unhappy friend; ‘enlist for me the sympathies, procure for me the protection, of the British public! The Marchesina is after me—she has followed me to England—she is at the bottom of the street! Farewell, farewell, for ever!’

‘Who is the Marchesina? Where are you going to?’ I exclaimed, aghast.

‘To Scotland! To hide myself in the inaccessible caverns of the most desolate island I can find among the Hebrides!’ cried Potts, dashing out of the room like a madman. I ran to my window, which opens on the street, just in time to see my friend fly past, at the top of his speed. The next passenger proceeding in the same direction was a woman of gigantic stature, striding over the pavement in a manner awful to behold. Could that be the Marchesina? For my friend’s sake I devoutly hope not.

Nine O’clock

THE NIGHT OF the 30th of June, 1793, is memorable in the prison annals of Paris, as the last night in confinement of the leaders of the famous Girondin party in the first French revolution. On the morning of the 31st, the twenty-one deputies who represented the department of the Gironde, were guillotined to make way for Robespierre and the Reign of Terror.

With these men fell the last revolutionists of that period who shrank from founding a republic on massacre; who recoiled from substituting for a monarchy of corruption, a monarchy of bloodshed. The elements of their defeat lay as much in themselves, as in the events of their time. They were not, as a party, true to their own convictions; they temporized; they fatally attempted to take a middle course amid the terrible emergencies of a terrible epoch, and they fell—fell before worse men, because those men were in earnest.

Condemned to die, the Girondins submitted nobly to their fate; their great glory was the glory of their deaths. The speech of one of them on hearing his sentence pronounced, was a prophecy of the future, fulfilled to the letter.

‘I die,’ he said to the Jacobin judges, the creatures of Robespierre, who tried him. ‘I die at a time when the people have lost their reason; you will die on the day when they recover it.’ Valazé was the only member of the condemned party who displayed a momentary weakness; he stabbed himself on hearing his sentence pronounced. But the blow was not mortal—he died on the scaffold, and died bravely with the rest.

On the night of the 30th the Girondins held their famous banquet in the prison; celebrated, with the ferocious stoicism of the time, their last social meeting before the morning on which they were to die. Other men, besides the twenty-one, were present at this supper of the condemned. They were prisoners who held Girondin opinions, but whose names were not illustrious enough for history to preserve. Though sentenced to confinement they were not sentenced to death. Some of their number, who had protested most boldly against the condemnation of the deputies, were ordered to witness the execution on the morrow, as a timely example to terrify them into submission. More than this, Robespierre and his colleagues did not, as yet, venture to attempt: the Reign of Terror was a cautious reign at starting.

The supper-table of the prison was spread; the guests, twenty-one of their number stamped already with the seal of death, were congregated at the last Girondin banquet; toast followed toast; the Marseillaise was sung; the desperate triumph of the feast was rising fast to its climax, when a new and ominous subject of conversation was started at the lower end of the table, and spread electrically, almost in a moment, to the top.

This subject (by whom originated no one knew) was simply a question as to the hour in the morning at which the execution was to take place. Every one of the prisoners appeared to be in ignorance on this point; and the gaolers either could not, or would not, enlighten them. Until the cart for the condemned rolled into the prison-yard, not one of the Girondins could tell whether he was to be called out to the guillotine soon after sunrise, or not till near noon.

This uncertainty was made a topic for discussion, or for jesting on all sides. It was eagerly seized on as a pretext for raising to the highest pitch the ghastly animation and hilarity of the evening. In some quarters, the recognised hour of former executions was quoted as precedent sure to be followed by the executioners of the morrow; in others, it was asserted that Robespierre and his party would purposely depart from established customs in this, as in previous instances. Dozens of wild schemes were suggested for guessing the hour by fortune-telling rules on the cards; bets were offered and accepted among the prisoners who were not condemned to death, and witnessed in stoical mockery by the prisoners who were. Jests were exchanged about early rising and hurried toilets; in short, every man contributed an assertion, with one solitary exception. That exception was the Girondin, Duprat, one of the deputies who was sentenced to die by the guillotine.

He was a younger man than the majority of his brethren, and was personally remarkable by his pale, handsome, melancholy face, and his reserved yet gentle manners. Throughout the evening, he had spoken but rarely; there was something of the silence and serenity of a martyr in his demeanour. That he feared death as little as any of his companions was plainly visible in his bright, steady eye; in his unchanging complexion; in his firm, calm voice, when he occasionally addressed those who happened to be near him. But he was evidently out of place at the banquet; his temperament was reflective, his disposition serious; feasts were at no time a sphere in which he was calculated to shine.

His taciturnity, while the hour of the execution was under discussion, had separated him from most of those with whom he sat, at the lower end of the table. They edged up towards the top, where the conversation was most general and most animated. One of his friends, however, still kept his place by Duprat’s side, and thus questioned him anxiously, but in low tones, on the cause of his immovable silence:

‘Are you the only man of the company, Duprat, who has neither a guess nor a joke to make about the time of the execution?’

‘I never joke, Marginy,’ was the answer, given with a slight smile which had something of the sarcastic in it; ‘and as for guessing at the time of the execution, I never guess at things which I know.’

‘Know! You know the hour of the execution! Then why not communicate your knowledge to your friends around you?’

‘Because not one of them would believe what I said.’

‘But, surely, you could prove it. Somebody must have told you.’

‘Nobody has told me.’

‘You have seen some private letter, then; or you have managed to get sight of the execution-order; or—’

‘Spare your conjectures, Marginy. I have not read, as I have not been told, what is the hour at which we are to die to-morrow.’

‘Then how on earth can you possibly know it?’

‘I do not know when the execution will begin, or when it will end. I only know that it will be going on at nine o’clock to-morrow morning. Out of the twenty-one who are to suffer death, one will be guillotined exactly at that hour. Whether he will be the first whose head falls, or the last, I cannot tell.’

‘And pray who may this man be, who is going to die exactly at nine o’clock? Of course, prophetically knowing so much, you know that!’

‘I do know it. I am the man whose death by the guillotine will take place exactly at the hour I have mentioned.’

‘You said just now, Duprat, that you never joked. Do you expect me to believe that what you have just spoken is spoken in earnest?’

‘I repeat that I never joke; and I answer that I expect you to believe me. I know the hour at which my death will take place tomorrow, just as certainly as I know the fact of my own existence tonight.’

‘But how? My dear friend, can you really lay claim to supernatural intuition, in this eighteenth century of the world, in this renowned Age of reason?’

‘No two men, Marginy, understand that word, supernatural, exactly in the same sense; you and I differ about its meaning, or, in other words, differ about the real distinction between the doubtful and the true. We will not discuss the subject: I wish to be understood, at the outset, as laying claim to no superior intuitions whatever; but I tell you, at the same time, that even in this Age of Reason, I have reason for what I have said. My father and my brother both died at nine o’clock in the morning, and were both warned very strangely of their deaths. I am the last of my family; I was warned last night, as they were warned; and I shall die by the guillotine, as they died in their beds, at the fatal hour of nine.’

‘But, Duprat, why have I never heard of this before? As your oldest and, I am sure, your dearest friend, I thought you had long since trusted me with all your secrets.’

‘And you shall know this secret; I only kept it from you till the time when I would be certain that my death would substantiate my words, to the very letter. Come! you are as bad supper-company as I am; let us slip away from the table unperceived, while our friends are all engaged in conversation. Yonder end of the hall is dark and quiet—we can speak there uninterruptedly, for some hours to come,’

He led the way from the supper-table, followed by Marginy. Arrived at one of the darkest and most retired corners of the great hall of the prison, Duprat spoke again:

‘I believe, Marginy,’ he said, ‘that you are one of those who have been ordered by our tyrants to witness my execution, and the execution of my brethren, as a warning spectacle for an enemy to the Jacobin cause?’

‘My dear, dear friend! it is too true; I am ordered to witness the butchery which I cannot prevent—our last awful parting will be at the foot of the scaffold. I am among the victims who are spared—mercilessly spared—for a little while yet.’

‘Say the martyrs! We die as martyrs, calmly, hopefully, innocently. When I am placed under the guillotine to-morrow morning, listen, my friend, for the striking of the church clocks; listen for the hour while you look your last on me. Until that time, suspend your judgement on the strange chapter of family history which I am now about to relate.’

Marginy took his friend’s hand, and promised compliance with the request. Duprat then began as follows:

‘You knew my brother Alfred, when he was quite a youth, and you knew something of what people flippantly termed, the eccentricities of his character. He was three years my junior; but from childhood, he showed far less of a child’s innate levity and happiness than his elder brother. He was noted for his seriousness and thoughtfulness as a boy; showed little inclination for a boy’s usual lessons, and less still for a boy’s usual recreations,—in short, he was considered by everybody (my father included) as deficient in intellect; as a vacant dreamer, and an inveterate idler, whom it was hopeless to improve. our tutor tried to lead him to various studies, and tried in vain. It was the same when the cultivation of his mind was given up, and the cultivation of his body was next attempted. The fencing-master could make nothing of him; and the dancing-master, after the first three lessons, resigned in despair. Seeing that it was useless to set others to teach him, my father made a virtue of necessity, and left him, if he chose, to teach himself.

‘To the astonishment of every one, he had not been long consigned to his own guidance, when he was discovered in the library, reading every old treatise on astrology which he could lay his hands on. He had rejected all useful knowledge for the most obsolete of obsolete sciences—the old, abandoned delusion of divination by stars! My father laughed heartily over the strange study to which his idle son had at last applied himself, but made no attempt to oppose his new caprice, and sarcastically presented him with a telescope on his next birthday. I should remind you here, of what you may perhaps have forgotten, that my father was a philosopher of the Voltaire school, who believed that the summit of human wisdom was to arrive at the power of sneering at all enthusiasms, and doubting of all truths. Apart from his philosophy, he was a kind-hearted, easy man, of quick, rather than profound intelligence. He could see nothing in my brother’s new occupation, but the evidence of a new idleness, a fresh caprice which would be abandoned in a few months. My father was not the man to appreciate those yearnings towards the poetical and the spiritual, which were part of Alfred’s temperament, and which gave to his peculiar studies of the stars and their influences, a certain charm altogether unconnected with the more practical attractions of scientific investigation.

‘This idle caprice of my brother’s, as my father insisted on terming it, had lasted more than a twelvemonth, when there occurred the first of a series of mysterious and—as I consider them—supernatural events, with all of which Alfred was very remarkably connected. I was myself a witness of the strange circumstance, which I am now about to relate to you.

‘One day—my brother being then sixteen years of age—I happened to go into my father’s study, during his absence, and found Alfred there, standing close to a window, which looked into the garden. I walked up to him, and observed a curious expression of vacancy and rigidity in his face, especially in his eyes. Although I knew him to be subject to what are called fits of absence, I still thought it rather extraordinary that he never moved, and never noticed me when I was close to him. I took his hand, and asked if he was unwell. his flesh felt quite cold; neither my touch nor my voice produced the smallest sensation in him. Almost at the same moment when I noticed this, I happened to be looking accidentally towards the garden. There was my father walking along one of the paths, and there, by his side, walking with him, was another Alfred!—Another, yet exactly the same as the Alfred by whose side I was standing, whose hand I still held in mine!

‘Thoroughly panic-stricken, I dropped his hand, and uttered a cry of terror. At the loud sound of my voice, the statue-like presence before me immediately began to show signs of animation. I looked round again at the garden. The figure of my brother, which I had beheld there, was gone, and I saw to my horror, that my father was looking for it—looking in all directions for the companion (spectre, or human being?) of his walk!

‘When I turned towards Alfred once more, he had (if I may so express it) come to life again, and was asking, with his usual gentleness of manner and kindness of voice, why I was looking so pale? I evaded the question by making some excuse, and in my turn inquired of him, how long he had been in my father’s study.

‘“Surely you ought to know best,” he answered with a laugh, “for you must have been here before me. It is not many minutes ago since I was walking in the garden with—”

‘Before he could complete the sentence my father entered the room.

‘“Oh! here you are, Master Alfred,” said he. “May I ask for what purpose you took it into your wise head to vanish in that extraordinary manner? Why you slipped away from me in an instant, while I was picking a flower! On my word, sir, you’re a better player at hide-and-seek than your brother,—he would only have run into the shrubbery, you have managed to run in here, though how you did it in the time passes my poor comprehension. I was not a moment picking the flower, yet in that moment you were gone!”

‘Alfred glanced suddenly and searchingly at me; his face became deadly pale, and, without speaking a word, he hurried from the room.

‘“Can you explain this?” said my father, looking very much astonished.

‘I hesitated a moment, and then told him what I had seen. He took a pinch of snuff—a favourite habit with him when he was going to be sarcastic, in imitation of Voltaire.

‘“One visionary in a family is enough,” said he; “I recommend you not to turn yourself into a bad imitation of your brother Alfred! Send your ghost after me, my good boy! I am going back into the garden, and should like to see him again!”

‘Ridicule, even much sharper than this, would have had little effect on me. If I was certain of anything in the world, I was certain that I had seen my brother in the study—nay, more, had touched him,—and equally certain that I had seen his double—his exact similitude, in the garden. As far as any man could know that he was in possession of his own senses, I knew myself to be in possession of mine. Left alone to think over what I had beheld, I felt a supernatural terror creeping through me—a terror which increased, when I recollected that, on one or two occasions friends had said they had seen Alfred out of doors, when we all knew him to be at home. These statements, which my father had laughed at, and had taught me to laugh at, either as a trick, or a delusion on the part of others, now recurred to my memory as startling corroborations of what I had just seen myself. The solitude of the study oppressed me in a manner which I cannot describe. I left the apartment to seek Alfred, determined to question him, with all possible caution, on the subject of his strange trance, and his sensations at the moment when I had awakened him from it.

‘I found him in his bed-room, still pale, and now very thoughtful. As the first words in reference to the scene in the study passed my lips, he started violently, and entreated me, with very unusual warmth of speech and manner, never to speak to him on that subject again,—never, if I had any love or regard for him! Of course, I complied with his request. The mystery, however, was not destined to end here.

‘About two months after the event which I have just related, we had arranged, one evening, to go to the theatre. My father had insisted that Alfred should be of the party, otherwise he would certainly have declined accompanying us; for he had no inclination whatever for public amusements of any kind. However, with his usual docility, he prepared to obey my father’s desire, by going up-stairs to put on his evening dress. It was winter-time, so he was obliged to take a candle with him.

‘We waited in the drawing-room for his return a very long time, so long, that my father was on the point of sending up-stairs to remind him of the lateness of the hour, when Alfred reappeared without the candle which he had taken with him from the room. The ghostly alteration over his face—the hideous, death-look that distorted his features I shall never forget,—I shall see it to-morrow on the scaffold!

‘Before either my father or I could utter a word, my brother said: “I have been taken suddenly ill; but I am better now. Do you still wish me to go to the theatre?”

‘“Certainly not, my dear Alfred,” answered my father; “we must send for the doctor immediately.”

‘“Pray do not call in the doctor, sir; he would be of no use. I will tell you why, if you will let me speak to you alone.”

‘My father, looking seriously alarmed, signed to me to leave the room. For more than half an hour I remained absent, suffering almost unendurable suspense and anxiety on my brother’s account. When I was recalled, I observed that Alfred was quite calm, though still deadly pale. My father’s manner displayed an agitation which I had never observed in it before. He rose from his chair when I re-entered the room, and left me alone with my brother.

‘“Promise me,” said Alfred, in answer to my entreaties to know what had happened, “promise that you will not ask me to tell you more than my father has permitted me to tell. It is his desire that I should keep certain things a secret from you.”

‘I gave the required promise, but gave it most unwillingly. Alfred then proceeded.

‘“When I left you to go and dress for the theatre, I felt a sense of oppression all over me, which I cannot describe. As soon as I was alone, it seemed as if some part of the life within me was slowly wasting away. I could hardly breathe the air around me, big drops of perspiration burst out on my forehead, and then a feeling of terror seized me which I was utterly unable to control. Some of those strange fancies of seeing my mother’s spirit, which used to influence me at the time of her death, came back again to my mind. I ascended the stairs slowly and painfully, not daring to look behind me, for I heard—yes, heard!—something following me. When I got into my room, and had shut the door, I began to recover my self-possession a little. But the sense of oppression was still as heavy on me as ever, when I approached the wardrobe to get out my clothes. Just as I stretched forth my hand to turn the key, I saw, to my horror, the two doors of the wardrobe opening of themselves, opening slowly and silently. The candle went out at the same moment, and the whole inside of the wardrobe became to me like a great mirror, with a bright light shining in the middle of it. Out of that light there came a figure, the exact counterpart of myself. Over its breast hung an open scroll, and on that I read the warning of my own death, and a revelation of the destinies of my father and his race. Do not ask me what were the words on the scroll, I have given my promise not to tell you. I may only say that, as soon as I had read all, the room grew dark, and the vision disappeared.”

‘Forgetful of my promise, I entreated Alfred to repeat to me the words on the scroll. He smiled sadly, and refused to speak on the subject any more. I next sought out my father, and begged him to divulge the secret. Still sceptical to the last, he answered that one diseased imagination in the family was enough, and that he would not permit me to run the risk of being infected by Alfred’s mental malady. I passed the whole of that day and the next in a state of agitation and alarm which nothing could tranquilise. The sight I had seen in the study gave a terrible significance to the little that my brother had told me. I was uneasy if he was a moment out of my sight. There was something in his expression,—calm and even cheerful as it was,—which made me dread the worst.

‘On the morning of the third day after the occurrence I have just related, I rose very early, after a sleepless night, and went into Alfred’s bedroom. He was awake, and welcomed me with more than usual affection and kindness. As I drew a chair to his bedside, he asked me to get pen, ink, and paper, and write down something from his dictation. I obeyed, and found to my terror and distress, that the idea of death was more present to his imagination than ever. He employed me in writing a statement of his wishes in regard to the disposal of all his own little possessions, as keepsakes to be given, after he was no more, to my father, myself, the house-servants, and one or two of his own most intimate friends. Over and over again I entreated him to tell me whether he really believed that his death was near. He invariably replied that I should soon know, and then led the conversation to indifferent topics. As the morning advanced, he asked to see my father, who came, accompanied by the doctor, the latter having been in attendance for the last two days.

‘Alfred took my father’s hand, and begged his forgiveness of any offence, any disobedience of which he had ever been guilty. Then, reaching out his other hand, and taking mine, as I stood on the opposite side of the bed, he asked what the time was. A clock was placed on the mantel-piece of the room, but not in a position in which he could see it, as he now lay. I turned round to look at the dial, and answered that, it was just on the stroke of nine.

‘“Farewell!” said Alfred, calmly; “in this world, farewell for ever!”

‘The next instant the clock struck. I felt his fingers tremble in mine, then grow quite still. The doctor seized a hand-mirror that lay on the table, and held it over his lips. He was dead—dead, as the last chime of the hour echoed through the awful silence of the room!

‘I pass over the first days of our affliction. You, who have suffered the loss of a beloved sister, can well imagine their misery. I pass over these days, and pause for a moment at the time when we could speak with some calmness and resignation on the subject of our bereavement. On the arrival of that period, I ventured, in conversation with my father, to refer to the vision which had been seen by our dear Alfred in his bedroom, and to the prophecy which he described himself as having read upon the supernatural scroll.

‘Even yet my father persisted in his scepticism; but now, as it seemed to me, more because he was afraid, than because he was unwilling, to believe. I again recalled to his memory what I myself had seen in the study. I asked him to recollect how certain Alfred had been beforehand, and how fatally right, about the day and hour of his death. Still I could get but one answer; my brother had died of a nervous disorder (the doctor said so); his imagination had been diseased from his childhood; there was only one way of treating the vision which he described himself as having seen, and that was, not to speak of it again between ourselves; never to speak of it at all to our friends.

‘We were sitting in the study during this conversation. It was evening. As my father uttered the last words of his reply to me, I saw his eye turn suddenly and uneasily towards the further end of the room. In dead silence, I looked in the same direction, and saw the door opening of itself. the vacant space beyond was filled with a bright, steady glow, which hid all outer objects in the hall, and which I cannot describe to you by likening it to any light that we are accustomed to behold either by day or night. In my terror, I caught my father by the arm, and asked him, in a whisper, whether he did not see something extraordinary in the direction of the doorway?

‘“Yes,” he answered, in tones as low as mine, “I see, or fancy I see, a strange light. the subject on which we have been speaking has impressed our feelings as it should not. Our nerves are still unstrung by the shock of the bereavement we have suffered: our senses are deluding us. Let us look away towards the garden.”

‘“But the opening of the door, father; remember the opening of the door!”

‘“Ours is not the first door which has accidentally flown open of itself.”

‘“Then why not shut it again?”

‘“Why not, indeed. I will close it at once.” He rose, advanced a few paces, then stopped, and came back to his place. “It is a warm evening,” he said, avoiding my eyes, which were eagerly fixed on him, “the room will be all the cooler, if the door is suffered to remain open.”

‘His face grew quite pale as he spoke. The light lasted for a few minutes longer, then suddenly disappeared. For the rest of the evening my father’s manner was very much altered. He was silent and thoughtful, and complained of a feeling of oppression and languor, which he tried to persuade himself was produced by the heat of the weather. At an unusually hour he retired to his room.

‘The next morning, when I got down stairs, I found, to my astonishment, that the servants were engaged in preparations for the departure of somebody from the house. I made inquiries of one of them who was hurriedly packing a trunk. “My master, sir, starts for Lyons the first thing this morning,” was the reply. I immediately repaired to my father’s room, and found him there with an open letter in his hand, which he was reading. His face, as he looked up at me on my entrance, expressed the most violent emotions of apprehension and despair.

‘“I hardly know whether I am awake or dreaming; whether I am the dupe of a terrible delusion, or the victim of a supernatural reality more terrible still,” he said in low awe-struck tones as I approached him. “One of the prophecies which Alfred told me in private that he had read upon the scroll, has come true! He predicted the loss of the bulk of my fortune—here is the letter, which informs me that the merchant at Lyons in whose hands my money was placed, has become bankrupt. Can the occurrence of this ruinous calamity be the chance fulfilment of a mere guess? Or was the doom of my family really revealed to my dead son? I go to Lyons immediately to know the truth: this letter may have been written under false information; it may be the work of an impostor. And yet, Alfred’s prediction—I shudder to think of it!”

‘“The light, father!” I exclaimed, “the light we saw last night in the study!”

‘“Hush! don’t speak of it! Alfred said that I should be warned of the truth of the prophecy, and of its immediate fulfilment, by the shining of the same supernatural light that he had seen—I tried to disbelieve what I beheld last night—I hardly know whether I dare believe it even now! This prophecy is not the last: there are others yet to be fulfilled—but let us not speak, let us not think of them! I must start at once for Lyons; I must be on the spot, if this horrible news is true, to save what I can from the wreck. The letter—give me back the letter!—I must go directly!”

‘He hurried back from the room. I followed him; and, with some difficulty, obtained permission to be the companion of his momentous journey. When we arrived at Lyons, we found that the statement in the letter was true. My father’s fortune was gone: a mere pittance, derived from a small estate that had belonged to my mother, was all that was left to us.

‘My father’s health gave way under this misfortune. He never referred again to Alfred’s prediction, and I was afraid to mention the subject; but I saw that it was affecting his mind quite as painfully as the loss of his property. Over, and over again, he checked himself very strangely when he was on the point of speaking to me about my brother. I saw that there was some secret pressing heavily on his mind, which he was afraid to disclose to me. It was useless to ask for his confidence. His temper had become irritable under disaster; perhaps, also, under the dread uncertainties which were now evidently tormenting him in secret. My situation was a very sad, and a very dreary one, at that time: I had no remembrances of the past that were not mournful and affrighting remembrances; I had no hopes for the future that were not darkened by a vague presentiment of troubles and perils to come; and I was expressly forbidden by my father to say a word about the terrible events which had cast an unnatural gloom over my youthful career, to any of the friends (yourself included) whose counsel and whose sympathy might have guided and sustained me in the day of trial.

‘We returned to Paris; sold our house there; and retired to live on the small estate, to which I have referred, as the last possession left us. We had not been many days in our new abode, when my father imprudently exposed himself to a heavy shower of rain, and suffered in consequence from a violent attack of cold. This temporary malady was not dreaded by the medical attendant; but it was soon aggravated by a fever, produced as much by the anxiety and distress of mind from which he continued to suffer, as by any other cause. Still the doctor gave hope; but still he grew daily worse—so much worse, that I removed my bed into his room, and never quitted him night or day.

‘One night I had fallen asleep, overpowered by fatigue and anxiety, when I was awakened by a cry from my father. I instantly trimmed the light, and ran to his side. He was sitting up in bed, with his eyes fixed on the door, which had been left ajar to ventilate the room. I saw nothing in that direction, and asked what was the matter. He murmured some expressions of affection towards me, and begged me to sit by his bedside till the morning; but gave no definite answer to my question. Once or twice, I thought he wandered a little; and I observed that he occasionally moved his hand under the pillow, as if searching for something there. However, when the morning came, he appeared to be calm and self-possessed. The doctor arrived; and pronouncing him to be better, retired to the dressing-room to write a prescription. The moment his back was turned, my father laid his weak hand on my arm, and whispered faintly: “Last night I saw the supernatural light again—the second prediction—true, true—my death this time—the same hour as Alfred’s—nine—nine o’clock, this morning.” He paused a moment through weakness; then added: “Take that sealed paper—under the pillow—when I am dead, read it—now go into the dressing-room—my watch is there—I have heard the church clock strike eight; let me see how long it is now till nine—go—go quickly!”

‘Horror-stricken, moving and acting like a man in a trance, I silently obeyed him. The doctor was still in the dressing-room: despair made me catch eagerly at any chance of saving my father; I told his medical attendant what I had just heard, and entreated advice and assistance without delay.

‘“He is a little delirious,” said the doctor—“don’t be alarmed: we can cheat him out of his dangerous idea, and so perhaps save his life. Where is the watch?” (I produced it)—“See: it is ten minutes to nine. I will put back the hands one hour; that will give good time for a composing draught to operate. There! take him the watch, and let him see the false time with his own eyes. He will be comfortably asleep before the hour hand gets round again to nine.”

‘I went back with the watch to my father’s bed-side. “Too slow,” he murmured, as he looked at the dial—“too slow by an hour—the church clock—I counted eight.”

‘“Father! dear father! you are mistaken,” I cried, “I counted also: it was only seven.”

‘“Only seven!” he echoed faintly, “another hour then—another hour to live!” He evidently believed what I had said to him. In spite of the fatal experiences of the past, I now ventured to hope the best for our stratagem, as I resumed my place by his side.

‘The doctor came in; but my father never noticed him. He kept his eyes fixed on the watch, which lay between us, on the coverlid. When the minute hand was within a few seconds of indicating the false hour of eight, he looked round at me, murmured very feebly and doubtingly, “another hour to live!” and then gently closed his eyes. I looked at the watch, and saw that it was just eight o’clock, according to our alteration of the right time. At the same moment, I heard the doctor, whose hand had been on my father’s pulse, exclaim, “My God! it’s stopped! He has died at nine o’clock!”

‘The fatality, which no human stratagem or human science could turn aside, was accomplished! I was alone in the world!

‘In the solitude of our little cottage, on the day of my father’s burial, I opened the sealed letter, which he had told me to take from the pillow of his death-bed. In preparing to read it, I knew that I was preparing for the knowledge of my own doom; but I neither trembled nor wept. I was beyond grief: despair such as mine was then, is calm and self-possessed to the last.

‘The letter ran thus: “After your father and brother have fallen under the fatality that pursues our house, it is right, my dear son, that you should be warned how you are included in the last of the predictions which still remains unaccomplished. Know then, that the final lines read by our dear Alfred on the scroll, prophesied that you should die, as we have died, at the fatal hour of nine; but by a bloody and violent death, the day of which was not foretold. My beloved boy! you know not, you never will know, what I suffered in the possession of this terrible secret, as the truth of the former prophecies forced itself more and more plainly on my mind! Even now, as I write, I hope against all hope; believe vainly and desperately against all experience, that this last, worst doom may be avoided. Be cautious; be patient; look well before you at each step of your career. The fatality by which you are threatened is terrible; but there is a Power above fatality; and before that Power my spirit and my child’s spirit now pray for you. Remember this when your heart is heavy, your path through life grows dark. Remember that the better world is still before you, the world where we shall all meet! Farewell!”

‘When I first read those lines, I read them with the gloomy, immovable resignation of the Eastern fatalists; and that resignation never left me afterwards. Here, in this prison, I feel it, calm as ever. I bowed patiently to my doom, when it was only predicted: I bow to it as patiently now, when it is on the eve of accomplishment. You have often wondered, my friend, at the tranquil, equable sadness of my manner: after what I have just told you, can you wonder any longer?

‘But let me return for a moment to the past. Though I had no hope of escaping the fatality which had overtaken my father and my brother, my life, after my double bereavement, was the existence of all others which might seem most likely to evade the accomplishment of my predicted doom. Yourself and one other friend excepted, I saw no society; my walks were limited to the cottage garden and the neighbouring fields, and my every-day, unvarying occupation was confined to that hard and resolute course of study, by which alone I could hope to prevent my mind from dwelling on what I had suffered in the past, or on what I might still be condemned to suffer in the future. Never was there a life more quiet and more uneventful than mine!

‘You know how I awoke to an ambition, which irresistibly impelled me to change this mode of existence. News from Paris penetrated even to my obscure retreat, and disturbed my self-imposed tranquillity. I heard of the last errors and weaknesses of Louis the Sixteenth; I heard of the assembling of the States-General; and I knew that the French Revolution had begun. The tremendous emergencies of that epoch drew men of all characters from private to public pursuits, and made politics the necessity rather than the choice of every Frenchman’s life. The great change preparing for the country acted universally on individuals, even to the humblest, and it acted on me.

‘I was elected a deputy, more for the sake of the name I bore, than on account of any little influence which my acquirements and my character might have exercised in the neighbourhood of my country abode. I removed to Paris, and took my seat in the Chamber, little thinking at that time, of the crime and the bloodshed to which our revolution, so moderate in its beginning, would lead; little thinking that I had taken the first, irretrievable steps towards the bloody and violent death which was lying in store for me.

‘Need I go on? You know how warmly I joined the Girondin party; you know how we have been sacrificed; you know what the death is which I and my brethren are to suffer to-morrow. On now ending, I repeat what I said at beginning: Judge not of my narrative till you have seen with your own eyes what really takes place in the morning. I have carefully abstained from all comment, I have simply related events as they happened, forbearing to add my own views of their significance, my own ideas on the explanation of which they admit. You may believe us to have been a family of nervous visionaries, witnesses of certain remarkable contingencies; victims of curious, but not impossible chances, which we have fancifully and falsely interpreted into supernatural events. I leave you undisturbed in this conviction (if you really feel it); to-morrow you will think differently; to-morrow you will be an altered man. In the mean time, remember what I now say, as you would remember my dying words: Last night I saw the supernatural radiance which warned my father and my brother; and which warns me, that, whatever the time when the execution begins, whatever the order in which the twenty-one Girondins are chosen for death, I shall be the man who kneels under the guillotine, as the clock strikes nine!’

It was morning. Of the ghastly festivities of the night no sign remained. The prison-hall wore an altered look, as the twenty-one condemned men (followed by those who were ordered to witness their execution) were marched out to the carts appointed to take them from the dungeon to the scaffold.

The sky was cloudless, the sun warm and brilliant, as the Girondin leaders and their companions were drawn slowly through the streets to the place of execution. Duprat and Marginy were placed in separate vehicles: the contrast in their demeanour at that awful moment was strongly marked. The features of the doomed man still preserved their noble and melancholy repose; his glance was steady; his colour never changed. The face of Marginy, on the contrary, displayed the strongest agitation; he was pale even to his lips. The terrible narrative he had heard, the anticipation of the final and appalling proof by which its truth was now to be tested, had robbed him, for the first time in his life, of all his self-possession. Duprat had predicted truly; the morrow had come, and he was an altered man already.

The carts drew up at the foot of the scaffold which was soon to be stained with the blood of twenty-one human beings. The condemned deputies mounted it; and ranged themselves at the end opposite the guillotine. The prisoners who were to behold the execution remained in their cart. Before Duprat ascended the steps, he friend’s hand for the last time: ‘Farewell!’ he said, calmly. ‘Farewell! I go to my father, and my brother! Remember my words of last night.’

With straining eyes, and bloodless cheeks, Marginy saw Duprat take his position in the middle row of his companions, who stood in three ranks of seven each. Then the awful spectacle of the execution began. After the first seven deputies had suffered there was a pause; the horrible traces of the judicial massacre were being removed. When the execution proceeded, Duprat was the third taken from the middle rank of the condemned. As he came forward, he stood for an instant erect under the guillotine, he looked with a smile on his friend, and repeated in a clear voice the word, ‘Remember!’—then bowed himself on the block. The blood stood still at Marginy’s heart, as he looked and listened, during the moment of silence that followed. That moment past, the church clocks of Paris struck. He dropped down in the cart, and covered his face with his hands; for through the heavy beat of the hour he heard the fall of the fatal steel.

‘Pray, sir, was it nine or ten that struck just now?’ said one of Marginy’s fellow-prisoners to an officer of the guard who stood near the cart.

The person addressed referred to his watch, and answered—

‘NINE O’CLOCK!’

The Devil’s Spectacles

I. Memoirs of an Arctic Voyager

He says, sir, he thinks he’s nigh to his latter end, and he would like, if convenient, to see you before he goes.’

‘Do you mean before he dies?’

‘That’s about it, sir.’

I was in no humour (for reasons to be hereafter mentioned) for seeing anybody, under disastrous circumstances of any sort; but the person who had sent me word that he was ‘nigh to his latter end’ had special claims on my consideration.

He was an old sailor, who had first seen blue water under the protection of my father, then a post-captain in the navy. Born on our estate, and the only male survivor of our head gamekeeper’s family of seven children, he had received a good education through my father’s kindness, and he ought to have got on well in the world; but he was one of those born vagabonds who set education at defiance. His term of service having expired, he disappeared for many years. During part of the time he was supposed to have been employed in the merchant navy. At the end of that long interval he turned up one day at our country house, an invalided man, without a penny in his pocket. My good father, then nearing the end of his life, was invalided too. Whether he had a fellow-feeling for the helpless creature whom he had once befriended, or whether he only took counsel of his own generous nature, it is now needless to inquire. He appointed Septimus Notman to be lodge-keeper at the second of our two park gates, and he recommended Septimus to my personal care on his deathbed. ‘I’m afraid he’s an old scoundrel,’ my father confessed; ‘but somebody must look after him as long as he lasts, and if you don’t take his part, Alfred, nobody else will.’ After this Septimus kept his place at the gate while we were in the country. When we returned to our London house the second gate was closed. The old sailor was lodged (by a strong exertion of my influence) in a room over a disused stable, which our coachman had proposed to turn into a hayloft. Everybody disliked Septimus Notman. He was said to be mad; to be a liar, a hypocrite, a vicious wretch, and a disagreeable brute. There were people who even reported that he had been a pirate during the time when we lost sight of him and who declared, when they were asked for their proof, that his crimes were written in his face. He was not in the least affected by the opinions of his neighbours; he chewed his tobacco and drank his grog, and, in the words of the old song, ‘He cared for nobody, no, not he!’ Well had my poor father said, that I didn’t take his part nobody else would. And shall I tell you a secret? Though I strictly carried out my father’s wishes, and though Septimus was disposed in his own rough way to be grateful to me, I didn’t like him either.

So I went to the room over the stables (we were in London at the time) with dry eyes and I sat down by his bed and cut up a cake of tobacco for him, and said, ‘Well, what’s the matter?’ as coolly as if he had sent me word that he thought he had caught a cold in the head. ‘I’m called away.’ Septimus answered, ‘and before I go I’ve got a confession to make, and something useful to offer you. It’s reported among the servants, Mr Alfred, that you’re in trouble just now between two ladies. You may see your way clear in that matter, sir, if death spares me long enough to say a few last words.’

‘Never mind me, Septimus. Has a doctor seen you?’

‘The doctor knows no more about me than I know myself. The doctor be—!’

‘Have you any last wishes I can attend to?’

‘None, sir.’

‘Shall I send for a clergyman?’

Septimus Notman looked at me as directly as he could—he was afflicted with a terrible squint. Otherwise he was a fine, stoutly-built man, with a ruddy face profusely encircled by white hair and whiskers, a hoarse, heavy voice, and the biggest hands I ever saw. He put one of these enormous hands under his pillow before he answered me.

‘If you think,’ he said, ‘that a clergyman will come to a man who has got the Devil’s Spectacles here, under his pillow, and who has only to put those Spectacles on to see through that clergyman’s clothes, flesh, and what not, and read everything that’s written in his secret mind as plain as print, fetch him, Master Alfred—fetch him!’

I thought the clergyman might not like this, and withdrew my suggestion accordingly. The least I could do, as a matter of common politeness, after giving up the clergyman, was to ask if I might look at the Devil’s Spectacles.

‘Hear how I came by them first!’ said Septimus.

‘Will it take long?’ I inquired.

‘It will take long, and it will make your flesh creep.’

I remembered my promise to my father, and placed myself and my flesh at the mercy of Septimus Notman. But he was not ready to begin yet.

‘Do you see that white jug?’ he said, pointing to the wash-stand.

‘Yes. Do you want water?’

‘I want grog. There’s grog in the white jug. And there’s a pewter mug on the chimney-piece. I must be strung up, Master Alfred—I must be strung up.’

The white jug contained at least half a gallon of rum and water, roughly calculated. I strung him up. In the case of any other dying person I might have hesitated. But a man who possessed the Devil’s Spectacles was surely an exception to ordinary rules, and might finish his career and finish his grog at one and the same time.

‘Now I’m ready,’ he said, ‘What do you think I was up to in the time when you all lost sight of me? The latter part of that time, I mean?’

‘They say you were a pirate,’ I replied.

‘Worse than that. Guess again.’

‘I tried to persuade myself that there might be such a human anomaly as a merciful pirate, and guessed once more.

‘A murderer,’ I suggested.

‘Worse than that. Guess again.’

I declined to guess again. ‘Tell me yourself what you have been,’ I said.

He answered without the least appearance of discomposure, ‘I’ve been a Cannibal.’

Perhaps it was weak of me—but I did certainly start to my feet and make for the door.

‘Hear the circumstances,’ said Septimus. ‘You know the proverb, sir? Circumstances alter cases.’

There was no disputing the proverb. I sat down again. I was a young and tender man, which, in my present position, was certainly against me. But I had very little flesh on my bones and that was in my favour.

‘It happened when I went out with the Arctic expedition,’ Septimus proceeded. ‘I’ve forgotten all my learning, and lost my memory for dates. The year escapes me, and the latitude and longitude escape me. But I can tell you the rest of it. We were an exploring party, you must know, with sledges. It was getting close to the end of the summer months in those parts, and we were higher than any of them have ever got since to the North Pole. We should have found our way there—don’t you doubt it—but for three of our best men who fell sick of the scurvy. The second lieutenant, who was in command, called a halt, as the soldiers say. “With this loss of strength,” says he, “it’s my duty to take you back to the ships. We must let the North Pole be, and pray God that we may have no more invalided men to carry. I give you half an hour’s rest before we turn back.” The carpenter was one of our sound men. He spoke next. He reported one of the two sledges not fit for service. “How long will you be making it fit?” says the lieutenant. “In a decent climate,” says the carpenter, “I should say two or three hours, sir. Here, double that time, at least.” You may say why not do without the sledge? I’ll tell you why. On account of the sick men to be carried. “Be as quick about it as you can,” says the lieutenant: “time means life in our predicament.” Most of the men were glad enough to rest. Only two of us murmured at not going on. One was a boatswain’s mate; t’other was me. “Do you think the North Pole’s the other side of that rising ground there?” says the lieutenant. The boatswain’s mate was young and self-conceited. “I should like to try, sir,” he says, “if any other man has pluck enough to go along with me.” He looked at me when he said that. I wasn’t going to have my courage called in question publicly by a slip of a lad; and, moreover, I had a fancy to try for the North Pole, too. I volunteered to go along with him. Our notion, you will understand, was to take a compass and some grub with us; to try what we could find in a couple hours’ march forward; and to get back in good time for our duty on the return journey. The lieutenant wouldn’t hear of it. “I’m responsible for every man in my charge,” says he. “You’re a couple of fools. Stay where you are.” We were a couple of fools. We watched our opportunity, while they were all unloading the broken-down sledge; and slipped off to try our luck, and get the reward for discovering the North Pole.’

There he stopped, and pointed to the grog. ‘Dry-work, talking,’ he said. ‘Give us a drop more.’

I filled the pewter mug again. And again Septimus Notman emptied it.

‘We set our course northwest by north,’ he went on; ‘and after a while (seeing the ground favoured us) we altered it again to due north. I can’t tell you how long we walked (we neither of us had watches)—but this I’ll swear to. Just as the last of the daylight was dying out, we got to the top of a hillock; and there we saw the glimmer of the open Polar Sea! No! not the Sound that enters Kennedy’s Channel, which has been mistaken for it, I know—but the real thing, the still and lonesome Polar Sea! What would you have done in our place? I’ll tell you what we did. We sat down on some nice dry snow, and took out our biscuits and grog. Freezing work, do you say? You’ll find it in the books, if you don’t believe me—the further north you get in those parts, the less cold there is, and the more open water you find. Ask Captain M’Clure what sort of a bed he slept upon, on the night of October thirtieth, ‘fifty-one. Well, and what do you think we did when we had eaten and drunk? Lit our pipes. And what next? Fell fast asleep, after our long walk, on our nice dry snow. And what sort of prospect met us when we woke? Darkness and drizzle and mist. I had the compass, and I tried to set our course on the way back. I could no more see the compass than if I had been blind. We had no means of striking a light, except my match-box. I had left it on the snow by my side when I fell asleep. Not a match would light. As for help of any sort, it was not to be thought of. We couldn’t have been less than five miles distant from the place where we had left our messmates. So there we were, the boatswain’s mate and me, alone in the desert, lost at the North Pole.’

I began to feel interested. ‘You tried to get back, I suppose, dark as it was?’ I said.

‘We walked till we dropped,’ Septimus answered; ‘and then we yelled and shouted till we had no voices left; and then we hollowed out a hole in the snow, and waited for daylight.’

‘What did you expect when daylight came?’

‘I expected nothing, Master Alfred. The boatswain’s mate (beginning to get a little light-headed, you know) expected the lieutenant to send in search of us, or wait till we returned. A likely thing for an officer in charge to do, with the lives of the sledging party depending on his getting them back to the ships, and only two men missing, who had broken orders and deserted their duty. A good riddance of bad rubbish—that’s what he said of us when we were reported missing, I’ll be bound. When the light came we tried to get back; and we did set our course cleverly enough. But, bless you, we had nothing left to eat or drink! When the light failed us again we were done up. We dropped on the snow, under the lee of a rock, and gave out. The boatswain’s mate said his prayers, and I said Amen. Not the least use! On the contrary, as the night advanced it got colder and colder. We were both close together, to keep each other warm. I don’t know how long it was, I only know it was still pitch dark, when I heard the boatswain’s mate give a little flutter of a sigh, and no more. I opened his clothes, and put my hand on his heart. Dead, of cold and exhaustion, and no mistake. I shouldn’t have been long after him but for my own presence of mind.’

‘Your presence of mind? What did you do?’

‘Stripped every rag of clothes off him, and put them all on myself. What are you shivering about? He Couldn’t feel it, could he? I tell you, he’d have been frozen stiff before the next day’s light came—but for my presence of mind again. As well as my failing strength would let me, I buried him under the snow. Virtue, they say, Master Alfred, is its own reward. That good action proved to be the saving of my life.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Didn’t I tell you I buried him?’

‘Well!’

‘Well, in that freezing air, the burying of him kept him eatable. Don’t you see?’

‘You wretch!’

‘Put yourself in my place, and don’t call names. I held out till I was mad with hunger. And then I did open my knife with my teeth. And I did burrow down in the snow till I felt him—.’

I could hear no more of it. ‘Get on to the end! I said. ‘Why didn’t you die at the North Pole?’

‘Because somebody helped me to get away.’

‘Who helped you?’

‘The Devil.’

He showed his yellow old teeth in a horrible grin. I could draw but one conclusion—his mind was failing him before death. Anything that spared me his hideous confession of cannibalism was welcome. I asked how the supernatural rescue happened.

‘More grog first,’ he said. ‘The horrors come on me when I think of it.’ He was evidently sinking. Without the grog I doubt if he could have said much more.

‘I can’t tell you how many days passed,’ he went on; ‘I only know that the time was nigh when it was all dark and no light. The darker it got, the deeper I scooped the sort of cavern I’d made for myself under the snow. Whether it was night, or whether it was day I know no more than you do. On a sudden, in the awful silence and solitude, I heard a voice, high up, as it were, on the rock behind me. It was a cheering and a pleasant voice, and it said, “Well, Septimus Notman, is there much left of the boatswain’s mate by this time? Did he eat short while he lasted?” I cried out in fright, “Who the devil—?” The voice stopped me before I could say the rest. “You’ve hit it,” says the voice, “I am that person; and it’s about time the Devil helped you out of this.” “No,” says I, “I’d rather perish by cold than fire any day.” “Make your mind easy,” says he, taking the point, “I don’t want you in my place yet. I expect you to do a deal more in the way of degrading your humanity before you come to me, and I offer you a safe passage back to the nearest settlement. Friend Septimus, you’re a man after my own heart.” “As how, sir?” says I. “Because you’re such a complete beast,” says he. “A human being who elevates himself, and rises higher and higher to his immortal destiny, is a creature I hate. He gets above me, even in his earthly lifetime. But you have dropped—you dear good fellow—to the level of a famished wolf. You have gobbled up your dead companion; and if you ever had such a thing as a soul—ha, Septimus!—it parted company with you at the first morsel you tasted of the Boatswain’s mate. Do you think I’ll leave such a prime specimen of the Animal Man as you are, deserted at the North Pole? No, no; I grant you a free pass by my railway; darkness and distance are no obstacles to Me. Are you ready?” You may not believe me; but I felt myself being lifted up, as it were, against my own will. “Give us a light,” I says, “I can’t travel in the dark.” “Take my spectacles,” says he, “they’ll help you to see more than you bargain for. Look through them at your fellow mortals, and you’ll see the inmost thoughts of their hearts as plain as I do, and, considering your nature, Septimus, that will drop you even below the level of a wolf.” “Suppose I don’t want to look,” says I, “may I throw the spectacles away?” “They’ll come back to you,” says he. “May I smash them up?” “They’ll put themselves together again.” “What am I to do with them?” “Give them to another man. Now then! One, two, three—and away!” You may not believe me again; I lost my senses, Master Alfred. Hold me up; I’m losing them now. More grog—that’s right—more grog. I came to myself at Upernavik, with the Devil’s Spectacles in my pocket. Take them, sir. And read those two ladies’ hearts. And act accordingly. Hush! I hear him speaking to me again. Behind my pillow. Just as he spoke on the rock. Most polite and cheering. Calling to me, as it were, “Come, Cannibal—come!” Like a song, isn’t it? “Come, Cannibal—come!”’

He sang the last words faintly, and died with a smile on his face. Delirium or lies? With the Spectacles actually in my hands, I was inclined to think lies. They were of the old-fashioned sort, with big, circular glasses, and stout tortoise-shell frames; they smelt musty, but not sulphurous. I possess a sense of humour, I am happy to say. When they were thoroughly cleaned, I determined to try the Devil’s Spectacles on the two ladies, and submit to the consequences, whatever they might be.”

II. Memoirs of Myself

Who were the two ladies?

They were both young and unmarried. As a matter of delicacy, I ask permission to mention them by their Christian names only. Zilla, aged seventeen. Cecilia, aged two and twenty.

And what was my position between them?

I was the same age as Cecilia. She was my mother’s companion and reader; handsome, well-born and poor. I had made her a proposal, and had been accepted. There were no money difficulties in the way of our marriage, in spite of my sweetheart’s empty purse. I was an only child, and I had inherited, excepting my mother’s jointure, the whole of the large property that my father left at his death. In social rank Cecilia was more than my equal; we were therefore not ill-matched from the worldly point of view. Nevertheless, there was an obstacle to our union, and a person interested in making the most of it. The obstacle was Zilla. The person interested was my mother. Zilla was her niece—her elder brother’s daughter. The girl’s parents had died in India, and she had been sent to school in England, under the care of her uncle and guardian. I had never seen her, and had hardly heard of her, until there was a question of her spending the Christmas holidays (in the year when Septimus Notman died) at our house.

‘Her uncle has no objection,’ my mother said; ‘and I shall be more than glad to see her. A most interesting creature, as I hear. So lovely, and so good, that they call her The Angel, at school. I say nothing about her nice little fortune or the high military rank that her poor father possessed. You don’t care for these things. But, oh, Alfred, it would make me so happy if you fell in love with Zilla and married her!’

Three days before, I had made my proposal to Cecilia, and had been accepted—subject to my mother’s approval. I thought this a good opportunity of stating my case plainly; and I spoke out. Never before had I seen my mother so outraged and disappointed—enraged with Cecilia; disappointed with me. “A woman without a farthing of a dowry; a woman who was as old as I was; a woman who had taken advantage of her position in the house to mislead and delude me!’ and so on. Cecilia would certainly have been sent away if I had not declared that I should feel it my duty, in that event, to marry her immediately. My mother knew my temper, and refrained from giving Cecilia any cause of offence. Cecilia, on her side, showed what is called a proper pride; she declined to become my wife until my mother approved of her. She considered herself to be a martyr; and I considered myself to be an abominably treated man. Between us, I am afraid we made our good mother’s life unendurable—she was obliged to be the first who gave way. It was understood that we were to be married in the spring. It was also understood that Zilla was bitterly disappointed at having her holiday visit to us put off. ‘She was so anxious to see you, poor child,’ my mother said to me; ‘but I really daren’t ask her here under present circumstances. She is so fresh, so innocent, so infinitely superior in personal attractions to Cecilia, that I don’t know what might happen if you saw her now. You are the soul of honour, Alfred; but you and Zilla had better remain strangers to each other—you might repent your rash engagement.’ After this, it is needless to say that I was dying to see Zilla; while, at the same time, I never for an instant swerved from my fidelity to Cecilia.

Such was my position, on the memorable day when Septimus Notman died, leaving me possessor of the Devil’s Spectacles.

III. The Test of the Spectacles

The first person whom I encountered on returning to the house was the butler. He met me in the hall, with a receipted account in his hand which I had sent him to pay. The amount was close on a hundred pounds, and I had paid it immediately. ‘Is there no discount?’ I asked, looking at the receipt.

‘The parties expect cash, sir, and charge accordingly.’

He looked so respectable when he made this answer, he had served us for so many years, that I felt an irresistible temptation to try the Devil’s Spectacles on the butler, before I ventured to look through them at the ladies of my family. Our honest old servant would be such an excellent test.

‘I am afraid my sight is failing me,’ I said.

With this exceedingly simple explanation I put on the spectacles and looked at the butler.

The hall whirled round with me; on my word of honour I tremble and turn cold while I write of it now. Septimus Notman had spoken the truth!

In an instant the butler’s heart became hideously visible—a fat organ seen through the medium of the infernal glasses. The thought in him was plainly legible to me in these words: ‘Does my master think I’m going to give him the five per cent off the bill? Beastly meanness, interfering with the butler’s perquisites.’

I took off my spectacles and put them in my pocket.

‘You are a thief,’ I said to the butler. ‘You have got the discount money on this bill—five pounds all but a shilling or two—in your pocket. Send in your accounts; you leave my service.’

‘To-morrow, sir, if you like!’ answered the butler, indignantly. ‘After serving your family for five-and-twenty years, to be called a thief for only taking my perquisites is an insult, Mr Alfred, that I have not deserved.’ He put his handkerchief to his eyes and left me.

It was true that he had served us for a quarter of a century; it was also true that he had taken his perquisite and told a fib about it. But he had his compensating virtues. When I was a child he had given me many a ride on his knee and many a stolen drink of wine and water. His cellar-book had always been honestly kept; and his wife herself admitted that he was a model husband. At other times I should have remembered this, I should have felt that I had been hasty, and have asked his pardon. At this time I failed to feel the slightest compassion for him, and never faltered for a moment in my resolution to send him away. What change had passed over me?

The library door opened, and an old schoolfellow and college friend of mine looked out. ‘I thought I heard your voice in the hall,’ he said; ‘I have been waiting an hour for you.’

‘Anything very important,’ I asked, leading the way back to the library.

‘Nothing of the least importance to you,’ he replied, modestly.

I wanted no further explanation. More than once already I had lent him money, and, sooner or later, he had always repaid me. ‘Another little loan?’ I inquired, smiling pleasantly.

‘I am really ashamed to ask you again, Alfred. But if you could lend me fifty pounds—just look at that letter?

He made some joke, suggested by the quaint appearance of the Spectacles. I was too closely occupied to appreciate his sense of humour. What had he just said to me? He had said. ‘I am ashamed to ask you again.’ And what had he thought while he was speaking? He had thought. ‘When one has a milch cow at one’s disposal, who but a fool would fail to take advantage of it?’

I handed him back the letter (from a lawyer, threatening ‘proceedings’) and I said, in my hardest tones, ‘It’s not convenient to oblige you this time.’

He stared at me like a man thunderstruck. ‘Is this a joke, Alfred?’ he asked.

‘Do I look as if I was joking?’

He took up his hat. ‘There is but one excuse for you,’ he said. ‘Your social position is too much for your weak brain—your money has got into your head. Good morning.’

I had been indebted to him for all sorts of kind services at school and college. He was an honourable man, and a faithful friend. If the galling sense of his own narrow means made him unjustly contemptuous towards rich people, it was a fault (in my case, an exasperating fault), no doubt. But who is perfect? And what are fifty pounds to me? This is what I should once have felt, before he could have found time enough to get to the door. As things were, I let him go, and thought myself well rid of a mean hanger-on who only valued me for my money.

Being now free to visit the ladies, I rang the bell and asked if my mother was at home. She was in her boudoir. And where was Miss Cecilia? In the boudoir, too.

On entering the room I found visitors in the way, and put off the trial of the Spectacles until they had taken their leave. Just as they were going a thundering knock at the door announced more visitors. This time, fortunately, we escaped with no worse consequences than the delivery of cards. We actually had two minutes to ourselves. I seized the opportunity of reminding my mother that I was constitutionally inaccessible to the claims of Society, and that I thought we might as well have our house to ourselves for half an hour or so. ‘Send word down stairs,’ I said, ‘that you are not at home.’

My mother—magnificent in her old lace, her admirably-dressed grey hair, and her finely falling robe of purple-silk—looked across the fireplace at Cecilia—tall, and lazy, and beautiful, with lovely brown eyes, luxuriant black hair, a warmly-pale complexion, and an amber-coloured dress—and said to me, ‘You forget Cecilia. She likes Society.’

Cecilia looked at my mother with an air of languid surprise. ‘What an extraordinary mistake! she answered. ‘I hate Society.’

My mother smiled—rang the bell—and gave the order—Not at home. I produced my spectacles. There was an outcry at the hideous ugliness of them. I laid blame on ‘my oculist,’ and waited for what was to follow between the two ladies. My mother spoke. Consequently I looked at my mother.

[I present her words first, and her thoughts next, in parenthesis.]

‘So you hate society, my dear? Surely you have changed your opinion lately?’ (‘She doesn’t mind how she lies as long as she can curry favour with Alfred. False creature.’)

[I report Cecilia’s answer on the same plan.]

‘Pardon me; I haven’t in the least changed my opinion—I was only afraid to express it. I hope I have not given offence by expressing it now.’ (‘She can’t exist without gossip, and then she tries to lay it on me. Worldly old wretch!’)

What I began to think of my mother, I am ashamed to record. What I thought of Cecilia may be stated in two words. I was more eager than ever to see ‘The Angel of the school,’ the good and lovely Zilla.

My mother stopped the further progress of my investigations. ‘Take off those hideous Spectacles, Alfred, or leave us to our visitors. I don’t say your sight may not be failing; I only say change your oculist.’

I took off the Spectacles, all the more willingly that I began to be really afraid of them. The talk between the ladies went on.

‘Yours is a strange confession, my dear,’ my mother said to Cecilia. ‘May I ask what motive so young a lady can have for hating Society?’

‘Only the motive of wanting to improve myself,’ Cecilia answered. ‘If I knew a little more of modern languages, and if I could be something better than a feeble amateur when I paint in water colours, you might think me worthier to be Alfred’s wife. But Society is always in the way when I open my book or take up my brushes. In London I have no time to myself, and, I really can’t disguise it, the frivolous life I lead is not to my taste.’

I thought this—(my Spectacles being in my pocket, remember)—very well and very prettily said. My mother looked at me. ‘I quite agree with Cecilia,’ I said, answering the look. ‘We cannot count on having five minutes to ourselves in London from morning to night.’ Another knock at the street door contributed its noisy support to my views as I spoke. ‘We daren’t even look out of the window,’ I remarked, ‘for fear Society may look up at the same moment, and see that we are at home.’

My mother smiled. ‘You are certainly two remarkable young people,’ she said, with an air of satirical indulgence—and paused for a moment, as if an idea had occurred to her which was more than usually worthy of consideration. If her eye had not been on me at the moment, I believe I should have taken my Spectacles out of my pocket. ‘You are both so thoroughly agreed in disliking Society and despising London,’ she resumed, ‘that I feel it my duty, as a good mother, to make your lives a little more in harmony with your tastes, if I can. You complain, Alfred, that you can never count on having five minutes to yourself with Cecilia, Cecilia complains that she is perpetually interrupted in the laudable effort to improve her mind. I offer you both the whole day to yourselves, week after week, for the next three months. We will spend the winter at Long Fallas.’

Long Fallas was our country seat. There was no hunting; the shooting was let; the place was seven miles from Timbercombe town and station; and our nearest neighbour was a young Ritualistic clergyman, popularly reported in the village to be starving himself to death. I declined my mother’s extraordinary proposal without a moment’s hesitation. Cecilia, with the readiest and sweetest submission, accepted it.

This was our first open difference of opinion. Even without the Spectacles I could see that my mother hailed it as a good sign. She had consented to our marriage in the spring, without in the least altering her opinion that the angelic Zilla was the right wife for me. ‘Settle it between yourselves, my dears,’ she said, and left her chair to look for her work. Cecilia rose immediately to save her the trouble.

The instant their backs were turned on me I put on the terrible glasses. Is there such a thing in anatomy as a back view of the heart? There is such a thing assuredly when you look through the Devil’s Spectacles. My mother’s private sentiments presented themselves to me, as follows: ‘If they don’t get thoroughly sick of each other in a winter at Long Fallas I give up all knowledge of human nature. He shall marry Zilla yet.’ Cecilia’s motives asserted themselves with transparent simplicity in these words, ‘His mother fully expects me to say “No.” Horrible as the prospect is, I’ll disappoint her by saying “Yes.”’

‘Horrible as the prospect is’ was to my mind a very revolting expression, considering that I was personally included in the prospect. My mother’s mischievous test of our affection for each other now presented itself to me in the light of a sensible proceeding. In the solitude of Long Fallas, I should surely discover whether Cecilia was about to marry me for my money or for myself. I concealed my Spectacles, and said nothing at the time. But later, when my mother entered the drawing-room dressed to go out for dinner, I waylaid her, quite willing to go to Long Fallas. Cecilia came in dressed for dinner also. She had never looked so irresistibly lovely as when she was informed of my change of opinion. ‘What a happy time we shall have,’ she said, and smiled as if she really meant it?

They went away to their party. I was in the library when they returned. Hearing the carriage stop at the door I went out into the hall, and was suddenly checked on my way to the ladies by the sound of a man’s voice: ‘Many thanks; I am close at home now.’ My mother’s voice followed: ‘I will let you know if we go to the country, Sir John. You will ride over and see us?’ ‘With thee greatest pleasure. Good-night, Miss Cecilia.’ There was no mistaking the tone in which those last four words were spoken. Sir John’s accent expressed indescribable tenderness. I retired again to the library.

My mother came in, followed by her charming companion.

‘Here is a new complication,’ she said. ‘Cecilia doesn’t want to go to Long Fallas.’ I asked why. Cecilia answered, without looking at me, ‘Oh, I have changed my mind.’  She turned aside to relieve my mother of her fur cloak. I instantly consulted my Spectacles, and obtained my information in these mysterious terms: ‘Sir John goes to Timbercombe.’

Very short, and yet suggestive of more than one interpretation. A little inquiry made the facts more clear. Sir John had been one of the guests at the dinner, and he and Cecilia had shaken hands like old friends. At my mother’s request, he had been presented to her. He had produced such an excellent impression that she had taken him in her carriage part of his way home. She had also discovered that he was about to visit a relative living at Timbercombe (already mentioned, I think, as our nearest town). Another momentary opportunity with the Spectacles completed my discoveries. Sir John had proposed marriage (unsuccessfully) to Cecilia, and being still persistently in love with her, only wanted a favourable opportunity to propose again. The excellent impression which he had produced on my mother was perfectly intelligible now.

In feeling reluctant to give her rejected lover that other opportunity, was Cecilia afraid of Sir John, or afraid of herself? My Spectacles informed me that she deliberately declined to face that question, even in her thoughts.

Under these circumstances, the test of a dreary winter residence at Long Fallas became, to my mind, more valuable than ever. Single-handed, Cecilia might successfully keep up appearances and deceive other people, though she might not deceive me. But, in combination with Sir John, there was a chance that she might openly betray the true state of her feelings. If I was really the favoured man, she would, of course, be dearer to me than ever. If not (with more producible proof than the Devil’s Spectacles to justify me), I need not hesitate to break off the engagement.

‘Second thoughts are not always best, dear Cecilia,’ I said. ‘Do me a favour. Let us try Long Fallas, and if we find the place quite unendurable, let us return to London.’

Cecilia looked at me and hesitated—looked at my mother, and submitted to Long Fallas in the sweetest manner. The more they were secretly at variance, the better the two ladies appeared to understand each other.

We did not start for the country until three days afterward. The packing up was a serious matter to begin with, and my mother prolonged the delay by paying a visit to her niece at the school in the country. She kept the visit a secret from Cecilia, of course. But even when we were alone, and when I asked about Zilla, I was only favoured with a very brief reply. She merely lifted her eyes to Heaven, and said, ‘Perfectly charming!’

IV. The Test of Long Fallas

We had had a week of it. If we had told each other the truth we should have said, ‘Let us go back to London.’

Thus far there had been no signs of Sir John. The Spectacles informed me that he had arrived at Timbercombe, and that Cecilia had written to him. But, strangely enough, they failed to disclose what she had said. Has she forgotten it already, or was there some defect, hitherto unsuspected, in my supernatural glasses?

Christmas Day was near at hand. The weather was, so far, almost invariably misty and wet. Cecilia began to yawn over her favourite intellectual resources. My mother waited with superhuman patience for events. As for myself, having literally nothing else to amuse me, I took to gratifying an improper curiosity in the outlying regions of the family circle. In plain English, I discovered a nice little needle-woman, who was employed at Long Fallas. Her name was Miss Peskey. When nobody was looking, I amused myself with Miss Peskey.

Let no person of strict principles be alarmed. It was an innocent flirtation, on my side; and the nice little needle-woman rigidly refused to give me the smallest encouragement. Quite a young girl, Miss Peskey had the self-possession of a mature woman. She allowed me time to see that she had a trim little figure, soft blue eyes, and glossy golden hair; and then, in the sweetest of voices, respectfully requested me to leave her to her work. If I tried to persuade her to let me stay a little longer, she rose meekly, and said ‘I shall, most unwillingly, be compelled to place myself under the protection of the housekeeper.’ Once I attempted to take her hand. She put her handkerchief to her eyes and said, ‘Is it manly, sir, to insult a defenceless girl?’ In one word, Miss Peskey foiled me at every point. For the first week I never even got the chance of looking at her through the Devil’s Spectacles.

On the first day of the new week the weather cleared up wonderfully; spring seemed to have come to us in the middle of winter.

Cecilia and I went out riding. On our return, having nothing better to do, I accompanied the horses back to the stables, and naturally offended the groom, who thought I was ‘watching him.’ Returning toward the house, I passed the window of the ground-floor room, at the back of the building, devoted to the needlewoman. A railed yard kept me at a respectful distance, but at the same time gave me a view of the interior of the room. Miss Peskey was not alone; my mother was with her. They were evidently talking, but not a word reached my ears. It mattered nothing. While I could see them through my Spectacles, their thoughts were visible to me before they found their way into words.

My mother was speaking—‘Well, my dear, have you formed your opinion of him yet?’

Miss Peskey replied, ‘Not quite yet.’

‘You are wonderfully cautious in arriving at a conclusion. How much longer is this clever contrivance of yours to last?’

‘Give me two days more, dear madam; I can’t decide until Sir John helps me.’

‘Is Sir John really coming here?’

‘I think so.’

‘And have you managed it?’

‘If you will kindly excuse me, I would rather not answer just yet.’

The housekeeper entered the room, and called my mother away on some domestic business. As she walked to the door, I had time to read her thought before she went out—‘Very extraordinary to find such resources of clever invention in such a young girl!’

Miss Peskey, left in maiden meditation with her work on her lap, smiled to herself. I turned the glasses on her, and made a discovery that petrified me. To put it plainly, the charming needlewoman was deceiving us all (with the one exception of my mother) under an assumed name and vocation in life. Miss Peskey was no other than my cousin Zilla, ‘the Angel of the school!’

Let me do my poor mother justice. She was guilty of the consenting to the deception, and of no more. The invention of the trick, and the entire responsibility of carrying it out, rested wholly and exclusively with Miss Zilla, aged seventeen.

I followed the train of thought which my mother’s questions had set going in the mind of this young person. To justify my own conduct, I must report the result as briefly as I can. Have you heard of ‘fasting’ girls? have you heard of ‘mesmeric’ girls? have you heard of girls (in the newspapers) who have invented the most infamous charges against innocent men? Then don’t accuse my Spectacles of seeing impossible sights!

My report of Miss Zilla’s thoughts, as they succeeded each other, begins as follows:

First Thought: ‘My small fortune is all very well; but I want to be mistress of a great establishment, and get away from school. Alfred, dear fellow, is reported to have fifteen thousand a year. Is his mother’s companion to be allowed to catch this rich fish, without the least opposition? Not if I know it!’

Second Thought: ‘How very simple old people are! His mother visits me, invites me to Long Fallas, and expects me to cut out Cecilia. Men are such fools (the writing master has fallen in love with me) that she would only have to burst out crying, and keep him to herself. I have proposed a better way than fair fighting for Alfred, suggested by a play I read the other day. The old mother consents, with conditions. “I am sure you will do nothing, my dear, unbecoming to a young lady. Win him, as Miss Hardcastle won Mr Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer, if you like; but do nothing to forfeit your self-respect.” What astonishing simplicity! Where did she go to school when she was young?’

Third Thought: ‘How amazingly lucky that Cecilia’s maid is lazy, and that the needlewoman dines in the servants’ hall! The maid had the prospect of getting up before six in the morning, to be ready to go in the chaise-car with the servant who does the household errands at Timbercombe—and for what? To take a note from her mistress to Sir John, and wait for an answer. The good little needlewoman hears this, smiles, and says, “I don’t mind how early I get up; I’ll take it for you, and bring back the answer.”’

Fourth Thought: ‘What a blessing it is to have blue eyes and golden hair! Sir John was quite struck with me. I thought at the time he would do instead of Alfred. Fortunately I have since asked the simple old mother about him. He is a poor baronet. Not to be thought of for an instant. “My Lady”—without a corresponding establishment! Too dreadful! But I didn’t throw away my fascinations. I saw him wince when he read the letter. “No bad news, I hope, sir,” I ventured to say. He shook his head solemnly. “Your mistress” (he took me, of course, for Cecilia’s maid) forbids me to call at Long Fallas.” I thought to myself what a hypocrite Cecilia must be, and I said modestly to Sir John, to keep up appearances. Our private arrangement is that he is to ride over to Long Fallas to-morrow, and wait in the shrubbery at half-past two. If it rains or snows he is to try the next fine day. In either case the poor needlewoman will ask for a half holiday, and will induce Miss Cecilia to take a little walk in the right direction. Sir John gave me two sovereigns and a kiss at parting. I accepted both tributes with the most becoming humility. He shall have his money’s worth, though he is a poor baronet; he shall meet his young lady in the shrubbery. And I may catch the rich fish, after all!’

Fifth Thought: ‘Bother this horrid work! It is all very well to be clever with one’s needle, but how it disfigures one’s forefinger! No matter, I must play my part while it lasts, or I shall be reported lazy by the most detestable woman I ever met with—the housekeeper at Long Fallas.’

She threaded her needle, and I put my Spectacles in my pocket.

I don’t think I suspected it at the time; but I am now well aware that Septimus Notman’s diabolical gift was exerting an influence over me. I was wickedly cool, under circumstances which would have roused my righteous indignation in the days before my Spectacles. Sir John and the Angel; my mother and her family interests; Cecilia and her unacknowledged lover—what a network of conspiracy and deception was wound about me! and what a perfectly fiendish pleasure I felt in planning to match them on their own ground! The method of obtaining this object presented itself to me in the simplest form. I had only to take my mother for a walk in the near neighbourhood of the shrubbery—and the exposure would be complete! That night I studied the barometer with unutterable anxiety. The prospect of the weather was all that I could wish.

V. The Truth in the Shrubbery

On the next day, the friendly sun shone, the balmy air invited everybody to go out. I made no further use of the Spectacles that morning: my purpose was to keep them in my pocket until the interview in the shrubbery was over. Shall I own the motive? It was simply fear—fear of making further discoveries, and of losing the masterly self-control on which the whole success of my project depended.

We lunched at one o’clock. Had Cecilia and Zilla come to a private understanding on the subject of the interview in the shrubbery? By way of ascertaining this, I asked Cecilia if she would like to go out riding in the afternoon. She declined the proposal—she wanted to finish a sketch. I was sufficiently answered.

‘Cecilia complains that your manner has grown cold toward her lately,’ mother said, when we were left together.

My mind was dwelling on Cecilia’s letter to Sir John. Would any man have so easily adopted Zilla’s suggestion not to take Cecilia on her word, unless there had been something to encourage him? I could only trust myself to answer my mother very briefly. ‘Cecilia is changed towards me’—was all my reply.

My mother was evidently gratified by this prospect of a misunderstanding between us. ‘Ah!’ she said, ‘if Cecilia only had Zilla’s sweet temper.’

This was a little too much to endure—but I did endure it. ‘Will you come out with me, mamma, for a walk in the grounds?’ I asked.

My mother accepted the invitation so gladly, that I really think I should have felt ashamed of myself—if I had not had the contaminating Spectacles in my pocket. We had just settled to start soon after two o’clock, when there was a timid knock at the door. The angelic needlewoman appeared to ask for her half holiday. My mother actually blushed! Old habits will cling to the members of the past generation. ‘What is it?’ she said, in low uncertain tones. ‘Might I go to the village, ma’am, to buy some little things?’ ‘Certainly.’ The door closed again. ‘Now for the shrubbery!’ I thought. ‘Make haste, mamma,’ I said, ‘the best of the day is going. And mind one thing—put on your thickest boots!’

On one side of the shrubbery were the gardens. The other side was bounded by a wooden fence. A footpath, running part of the way beside the fence, crossed the grass beyond, and made a short cut between the nearest park gate and the servants’ offices. This was the safe place that I had chosen. We could hear perfectly—though the closely-planted evergreens might prevent the exercise of sight. I had recommended ‘thick boots’ because there was no help but to muffle the sound of our footsteps by walking on the wet grass. At its further end, the shrubbery joined the carriage road up to the house.

My mother’s surprise at the place that I had chosen for our walk would have been expressed in words, as well as by looks, if I had not stopped her by a whispered warning. ‘Keep perfectly quiet,’ I said, ‘‘and listen. I have a motive for bringing you here.’

The words had hardly passed my lips, before we heard the voices of Cecilia and the needlewoman in the shrubbery.

‘Wait a minute,’ said Cecilia; ‘you must be a little more explicit, before I consent to go any farther. How came you to take my letter to Sir John, instead of my maid?’

‘Only to oblige her, Miss. She was not very well, and she didn’t fancy going all the way to Timbercombe. I can buy no good needles in the village, and I was glad of the opportunity of getting to the town.’

There was a pause. Cecilia was reflecting, as I supposed. My mother began to turn pale.

Cecilia resumed. ‘There is nothing in Sir John’s answer to my letter,’ she said, ‘ that leads me to suppose he can be guilty of an act of rudeness. I have always believed him to be a gentleman. No gentleman would force his way into my presence, when I wrote expressly to ask him to spare me. Pray how did you know he was determined only to take his dismissal from my lips?’

‘Gentlemen’s feelings sometimes get the better of them, Miss. Sir John was very much distressed—’

Cecilia interrupted her. ‘There was nothing in my letter to distress him,’ she said.

‘He was distressed, Miss; and he did say, “I cannot take my answer this way—I must and will see her.” And then he asked me to get you to walk out to-day, and to say nothing so that he might take you by surprise. He is so madly in love with you, Miss, that he is all but beside himself. I am really afraid of what might happen, if you don’t soften his disappointment to him in some way. How any lady can treat such a handsome gentleman so cruelly, passes my poor judgement!’

Cecilia instantly resented the familiarity implied in those last words. ‘You are not called upon to exercise your judgement,’ she said. ‘You can go back to the house.’

‘Hadn’t I better see Sir John first, Miss?’

‘Certainly not! You and Sir John have seen quite enough of each other already.’

There was another pause. My mother stood holding by my arm, pale and trembling. We could neither of us speak. My own mind was strangely agitated. Either Cecilia was a monster of deceit, or she had thus far spoken and acted as became a true and highly-bred woman. The distant sound of horses’ hoofs on the park road, told us both that the critical moment was at hand. In another minute, the sound ceased. Sir John had probably dismounted, and tied up his horse at the entrance of the shrubbery. After an interval, we heard Cecilia’s voice again, farther away from us. We followed the voice. The interview which was to decide my future destiny in life had begun.

‘No, Sir John; I must have my question answered first. Is there anything in my letter—was there anything in my conduct, when we met in London—which justifies this?’

‘Love justifies everything, Cecilia!’

‘You are not to call me Cecilia, if you please. Have you no plainer answer to give me?’

‘Have you no mercy on a man, who cannot live without you? Is there really nothing in myself and my title to set against the perfectly obscure person, to whom you have so rashly engaged yourself? It would be an insult to suppose that his wealth has tempted you. What can be his merit in your eyes? His own friends can say no more in his favour than that he is a good-natured fool. I don’t blame you; women often drift into engagements that they repent of afterwards. Do yourself justice! Be true to the nobility of character—and be the angel who makes our two lives happy, before it is too late!’

‘Have you done, Sir John?’

There was a moment of silence. It was impossible to mistake her tone—Sir John’s flow of eloquence came to a full stop.

‘Before I answer you,’ Cecilia proceeded, ‘I have something to say first. The girl who took my letter to you, was not my maid, as you may have supposed. She is a stranger to me; and I suspect her of being a false creature with some purpose of her own to serve. I find a difficulty in attributing to a person in your rank of life the mean deceit which answers my letter in terms that lead me to trust you, and then takes me by surprise in this way. My messenger (as I believe) is quite insolent enough to have suggested this course to you. Am I right? I expect a reply, Sir John, that is worthy in its entire truthfulness of you and your title. Am I right?’

‘You are right, Miss Cecilia. Pray don’t despise me. The temptation to plead with you once more—’

‘I will speak to you, Sir John, as candidly as you have spoken to me. You are entirely wrong in supposing it possible for me to repent of my marriage engagement. The man, whose false friends have depreciated him in your estimation, is the only man I love, and the only man I will marry. And I beg you to understand, if he lost the whole of his fortune to-morrow, I would marry him the next day, if he asked me. Must I say more? or will you treat me with the delicacy of a gentleman, and take your leave?’

I don’t remember whether he said anything or not, before he left her. I only know that they parted. Don’t ask me to confess what I felt. Don’t ask me to describe what my mother felt. Let the scene be changed, and the narrative be resumed at a later hour of the day.

VI. The End of the Spectacles

I asked myself a question, which I beg to repeat here. What did I owe to the Devil’s Spectacles?

In the first place, I was indebted to my glasses for seeing all the faults, and none of the merits, in the persons about me. In the second place, I arrived at the discovery that, if we are to live usefully and happily with our fellow-creatures, we must take them at their best, and not at their worst. Having reached these conclusions, I trusted my own unassisted insight, and set myself to ascertain what the Devil had not helped me to discover in the two persons who were dearest to me—my mother and Cecilia.

I began with Cecilia, leaving my mother time to recover after the shock that had fallen on her.

It was impossible to acknowledge what I had seen through the Spectacles, or what I had heard at the shrubbery fence. In speaking to Cecilia, I could only attribute my coldness of manner to jealousy of the mere name of ‘Sir John,’ and ask to be pardoned for even a momentary distrust of the most constant and charming of women. There was something, I suppose, in my contrite consciousness of having wronged her, that expressed itself in my looks and in my tones. We were sitting together on the sofa. For the first time since our engagement, she put her arm around my neck, and kissed me, without waiting to be kissed first.

I am not very demonstrative,’ she said, softly; ‘and I don’t think, Alfred, you have ever known how fond I am of you. My dear, when Sir John and I met again at that dinner party, I was too faithful to you to even allow myself to think of him. Your poor mother irritated me by seeming to doubt whether I could trust myself within reach of Timbercombe, or I should never have consented to go to Long Fallas. You remember that she invited Sir John to ride over and see us. I wrote to him, informing him of my engagement to you, and telling him, in the plainest words, that if he did call at this house, nothing would induce me to see him. I had every reason to suppose that he would understand and respect my motives—’

She paused. The rich colour rose in her lovely face. I refused to let her distress herself by saying a word of what had happened in the shrubbery. Look back, if you have forgotten it, and see how completely the Spectacles failed to show me the higher and nobler motives that had animated her. The little superficial irritabilities and distrusts, they exhibited to perfection; but the true regard for each other, hidden below the surface in my mother and in my promised wife, was completely beyond them.

‘Shall we go back to London, to-morrow?’ I asked.

‘Are you tired of being here with me, Alfred?’

‘I am tired of waiting till the spring, my angel. I will live with you wherever you like, if you will only consent to hasten the transformation which makes you my wife. Will you consent?’

‘If your mother asks me. Don’t hurry her, Alfred.’

But I did hurry her. After what we had heard in the shrubbery I could look into my mother’s heart (without assistance), and feel sure that the nobler part of her nature would justify my confidence in it. She was not only ready to ‘ask Cecilia,’ then and there—she was eager, poor soul, to confess how completely she had been mislaid by her natural interest in her brother’s child. Being firmly resolved to keep the secret of my discovery of her niece, I refused to hear her, as I had refused to hear Cecilia. Did I not know, without being told, what child’s play it would be to Zilla to dazzle and delude my innocent mother? I merely asked if ‘the needlewoman was still in the house.’ The answer was thoroughly explicit: ‘She is at the railway station by this time, and she will never enter any house of mine again.’

We returned to London the next morning.

I had a moment’s private talk with the station-master at Timbercombe. Sir John had left his friends at the town, on the previous day. He and Zilla had met on the platform, waiting for the London train. She had followed him into the smoking-carriage. Just as the station-master was going to start the train, Sir John opened the door, with a strong expression of disgust, and took refuge in another carriage. She had tried the baronet as a last resource, and he had slipped through her fingers too. What did it matter to Zilla? She had plenty of time before her, and she belonged to the order of persons who never fail to make the most of her advantages. The other day I saw the announcement of her marriage to a great ironmaster, a man worth millions of money, with establishments to correspond. Bravo, Zilla! No need to look for your nobler motives with the naked eye.

A few days before I became a married man I was a guest at the dinner table of a bachelor friend, and I met Sir John. It would have been ridiculous to leave the room; I merely charged my host to keep my name concealed. I sat next to the baronet, and he doesn’t know, to this day, who his ‘very agreeable neighbour’ was.

Instead of spending our honeymoon abroad, Cecilia and I went back to Long Fallas. We found the place delightful, even in the winter time.

Did I take the Devil’s Spectacles back with me?

No.

Did I throw them away or smash them into small morsels?

Neither. I remembered what Septimus Notman had told me. The one way of getting rid of them was to give them to some other man.

And to what other man did I give them?

I had not forgotten what my rival had said of me in the shrubbery. I gave the Devil’s Spectacles to Sir John.

VII. Between the Reader and the Editor

Are we to have no satisfactory explanation of the supernatural element in the story? How did it come into the Editor’s hands? Was there neither name or address on the manuscript?

There was an address, if you must know. But I decline to mention it.

Suppose I guess that the address was at a lunatic asylum? What would you say to that?

I should say I suspected you of being a critic, and I should have the honour of wishing you good morning.

Fie! Fie! or the Fair Physician

I

On Christmas Eve, Mrs Crossmichael made an interesting announcement in her family circle. She said, ‘I am positively determined to write an account of it; I shall furnish the raw material, and an editor shall manufacture the narrative.’

Whatever is said of Mrs Crossmichael’s family in these pages must be said from Mrs Crossmichael’s point of view. The editor would prefer his own point of view; but he knows his lady, and uses his pen cautiously when he mentions her father, her mother, and her unmarried sister. A profound scholar and a handsome old man; a venerable lady with grand remains of beauty; a sweet girl, who is also an accomplished musician—named respectively Reverend and Mrs Skirton, and Miss Salome Slirton—comprise the audience addressed by Mrs Crossmichael, when she expressed her resolution to produce the present narrative.

‘My mind being quite made up,’ she said, ‘I am now ready to hear what you think of it.’ Her husband came in at the moment; but she took no notice of him.

Mrs Skirton smiled over her knitting, and made no remark. In the cases of some rare persons, silent smiles have a meaning of their own: Mrs Skirton’s smile meant gentle encouragement. Reverend Mr Skirton expressed himself in words. ‘Have it privately printed, my dear, and it cannot fail to be productive of advantage to others.’ Miss Salome modestly exhibited her father’s view in detail. ‘It will be productive,’ she said ‘of a warning to young ladies.’ Nobody consulted Mr Crossmichael, sitting modestly in a corner. Like the present Editor (but with infinitely superior opportunities), he knew his lady, and he kept his opinions to himself. Had he not promised at the altar (as Mrs Crossmichael frequently reminded him) to love, honour, and obey his wife? They were the happiest married couple in all England.

Venerable and learned and charming as they were, the family had failed, nevertheless, to penetrate the object which Mrs Crossmichael had in view. It was not to please her excellent mother; it was not to ‘prove of advantage to others;’ it was not to ‘offer a warning to young ladies,’ that she had determined to take up her pen. Her one motive for favouring the Editor with his ‘raw material’ shall be stated in the lady’s own words:—

‘I hate her.’

Who was she? And why did Mrs Crossmichael hate her?

Here, again, the expressive brevity of ‘the raw material’ may be quoted with advantage. The instructions run as follows: ‘Say the worst you can of her at starting; and condemn her unheard by means of her own visiting card.’

Here it is:

Sophia Pillico, M.D.

Is M.D. sufficiently intelligible? Let no hasty persons answer, ‘Of course!’ There are full-grown inhabitants of the civilised universe who have never heard of Julius Caesar, Oliver Cromwell, or Napoleon the Great. There may be other inhabitants, who are not aware that we have invented fair physicians in these latter days. M.D. (let it be known to these benighted brethren) means that Sophia has passed her examination, and has taken her Doctor’s degree. Mrs Crossmichael is further willing to admit that Miss Pillico is sufficiently young, and—we all know there is no accounting for tastes—passably pretty. (NOTE, attached to the instructions: ‘We are not on oath, and we may be allowed our own merciful reserves. Never mind her figure—oh dear no, never mind her figure: Men-doctors get on very well with clumsy legs and no waists. Why should women doctors not do the same? Equal justice to the two sexes, Sophia, was the subject of your last lecture—I was present, and heard you say it!’)

The second question still remains unanswered. Why did Mrs Crossmichael hate her?

For three good reasons. Because she delivered lectures on the rights of women in our Assembly Room. Because she set herself up in medical practice, and in our south-eastern suburb of London, and within five minutes walk of our house. Because she became acquainted with our next-door neighbours, and to my sister Salome. The Editor can bear witness to this. (He bears witness with pleasure.) The Editor can describe our next-door neighbours. (No: he is not sufficiently well acquainted with them. He knows a lady who can take the story, at the present stage of it, out of his hands—and to that lady he makes his bow, and offers his pen.)

Mrs Crossmichael abhors flattery, and considers descriptions to be the bane of literature. If she is to accept the pen, it must be on one condition. The next-door neighbours shall describe themselves.

II

Our suburb possesses the most convenient detached houses in all England. The gardens are worthy of the houses—and the rents are frightful. A sudden death, and an executor in a hurry, offered the lease of the next house a bargain. Alderman Sir John Dowager took it on speculation, and is waiting to dispose of it on his own outrageous terms. In the meantime, he and his family occupy the premises. Sir John is stingy; his wife is deaf; his daughter is sour, his son is sulky. The one other member of this detestable family is an interesting exception to the rest: he is Lady Dowager’s son, by her first husband. Let this gentleman wait a little while, and be introduced presently by himself.

Our new neighbours took possession during an excessively hot summer. On the first day, they were occupied in settling themselves in their house. On the second day, they enjoyed their garden. We were sitting on our lawn; and they were sitting on their lawn. In consideration of Lady Dowager’s deafness, they talked loud enough (especially the daughter, Miss Bess, and the son, Young John) to be heard all over our grounds. This said, let them describe their own characters in an extract from their conversation. I am the reporter. And I own I peeped over the wall.

Stingy Sir John.—I gave orders, my dear, about those two pieces of bread that were left yesterday; and I find nobody can give any account of them. Is this the manner in which I am to be treated by my own servants?

Deaf Lady Dowager(addressing her daughter).—What does your papa say, Bess?

Sour Bess.—Pa’s abusing the servants; and all about two bits of bread.

Sir John.—I’ll thank you, miss, not to misrepresent me to my own face. You do it on purpose.

Sulky Young John.—She does everything on purpose.

Miss Bess.—That’s a lie.

Lady Dowager.—What is it? I can’t hear. What is it?

Sir John.—My dear, your deafness is certainly growing on you.

Young John.—And a good thing too, in such a family as ours.

Sir John.—That is a most improper observation to make.

Miss Bess.—He looked at me when he made it.

Lady Dowager.—Who’s speaking now? Bess! what is the matter?

Miss Bess.—Papa and John are quarrelling with me as usual.

Sir John.—How dare you speak in that way of your father? Over and over again, Miss Elizabeth, I have had occasion to remark—

Young John.—It’s a perfect misery to live in the same house with her.

Sir John.—What do you mean, sir, by interrupting me?

Lady Dowager.—I think it’s rather hard on me that nobody speaks loud enough to be heard. I shall go into the house.

Sir John (looking after his wife).—Her temper gets more irritable every day.

Bess (looking at Young John)} No wonder!

Young John (looking at Bess)} No wonder!

There are our next-door neighbours presented by themselves. Why do I introduce such people into these pages? Alas! I am not able to keep them out. They are mixed up, by the inscrutable decrees of Providence, with Sophia Pillico wickedness, and with my sister Salome’s dearest hopes in life. Does my sister’s Christian name sound disagreeably? Let me mention the associations; and no reasonable person will object to it. She was called Salome, and I was called Lois, after my father’s two maiden sisters. Excellent women! They lived in the West of England—they left us their money—and they went to Heaven. (Instructions to the Editor: Now go on.)

III

The Editor introduces Mr and Mrs Wholebrook; directors of the famous Hydropathic Establishment at Cosgrove.

As man and wife, they were naturally accustomed to talk over the affairs of the day, in bed. One night, they held an especially interesting conversation. Both agreed—they had not been very long married—in lamenting the departure of a retiring member of the household; registered in the books by the odd name of, ‘Otto Fitzmark.’

‘Why should he leave us?’ Mr Wholebrook asked. ‘He has not gone through the cure; and, when I inquired if he had any complaint to make, he spoke in the most gratifying manner of the comfort of the house, and the excellence of the cooking.’

‘My dear, if you knew him as well as I do—’

‘What do you mean, Louisa? Has Mr Fitzmark been—?’

‘Don’t be a fool, James. Mr Fitzmark is a ladies’ man; young and handsome, and in delicate health. He likes to confide in women, poor fellow; especially when they happen to be—there! that will do; I forgive you: don’t interrupt me again. And understand this: I, who am in Mr Otto’s confidence, expected him to say he was going back to London, at least a week since.’

‘Is it business, my dear?’

‘Business! Mr Fitzmark has absolutely nothing to do. His valet is a treasure; and he has a comfortable income left him by his father.’

‘His father was a foreigner, wasn’t he?

‘Good Heavens! what has that got to do with it?’

‘I only spoke. If I am to be taken up short because I only speak, we’ll say good night.’

‘Don’t be angry, darling! Won’t you forgive me? won’t you? won’t you?’

‘What were we talking about, dear?’

‘What indeed! Wasn’t it Mr Fitzmark’s father? You were quite right about him: he was sort of half foreigner. He settled in England, and married an Englishwoman; she led him a horrid life. Mr Otto—you don’t mind my calling him by his Christian name? I like manly men, James, like you; I only pity Mr Otto. Always delicate, brought up at home, indulged in everything. His stupid mother married again; and he didn’t get on with the new family; and he had a private tutor; and he and the tutor went abroad; and there he had it all his own way, and was flattered by everybody. Are you going to sleep, dear?’

‘No! No!’

‘You see I want you to understand that Mr Otto has his whim and caprices—and soon gets tired when the novelty of a thing wears off. But, there’s another reason for his leaving our place; there’s a lady in the case. He hasn’t mentioned her name to me: she lives in London or in the neighbourhood, I’m not sure which. Plays divinely on the piano, and is lovely and elegant, and all that. He hasn’t openly avowed his admiration—not having made up his mind yet about her family. She has a married sister, who rather frightens him; clever, and a will of her own, and so on. However, to come to the point, his main reason for trying our place—What? his main reason must be his health? Nothing of the sort, you dear simple creature! He never expects to be well again. Not that he disbelieves in the cold water cure; but what he really wanted was to try if absence from the young lady would weaken the impression—or, as he put it, rather funnily, if deluges of cold water could drown his memory of a charming girl. She’s not to be disposed of, James, in that way. Wet sheets won’t pack her out; and ten tumblers of cold water a day only make her more lively than ever. Well, it’s past a joke; he is really going back to her to-morrow. Love—ah, We know it, don’t we?—love is a wonderful thing! What? Asleep? He is asleep. Snoring, positively snoring. And kicking me. Brute! brute!’

IV

Mr Otto Fitzmark reached London, late in the evening.

He was so fatigued by the journey, that he went straight to the rooms prepared for him in Sir John’s house. On those occasions when he visited his mother, his step-father arranged—with absolute shamelessness peculiar to misers—to receive compensation privately for trouble and expense. When Lady Dowager sometimes complained that her son treated the house as if it were an hotel, she little thought what a defence of his conduct lay hidden in Sir John’s guilty pocket.

The next morning, the valet—a grave, ponderous, and respectable English servant—came in with coffee and the news, as usual.

‘I have had a wretched night, Frederick. Sir John must have got his beastly bed a bargain. What’s the news? The last time I was here I was driven away by a row in the family. Any more quarrels this time?’

‘The worst row I remember, sir (if I may be allowed to say so), in all our experience,’ Frederick answered.

‘Is my mother in it?’

‘It’s said to be Lady Dowager’s doing, sir.’

‘The devil it is! Give me some more sugar. Did you make this coffee yourself?’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘Go to the place in Piccadilly, and buy something that really is coffee: this is muck. Well? what’s the new row about?’

‘About a woman, sir.’

‘You don’t mean to say Sir John—’

‘I beg your pardon, sir, I ought to have expressed myself more correctly. The woman in question is a She-Doctor.’

‘No wonder there’s a row! The fair physician is a bony old wretch with a wig and spectacles, of course?’

‘That’s not the account given to me, sir, by the footman. Except Miss Salome, next door, Sir John’s man says she’s the prettiest young woman he’s seen for many a long day past.’

Otto stared at the valet in astonishment. Frederick went steadily on with his story.

‘The lady has lately set up in practice, in the neighbourhood. And, what with her good looks and her lectures, she’s turned the people’s heads hereabouts, already. The resident medical man has got a red nose, and is suspected of drinking. He’s losing his lady-patients as fast as he can. They say Miss Pillico—’

‘Miss—who?’

‘The lady’s name, sir, is Miss Sophia Pillico.’

‘I pity Sophia with all my heart. The sooner she changes her name the better.’

‘That’s the joke among the women downstairs, sir. I was about to say that Miss Pillico is not content to doctor her own sex only. She considers it a part of the Rights of Women to doctor the men; and she has begun with Sir John—’

Here Frederick incomprehensibly checked himself, and prepared for shaving his master by sharpening the razor.

‘Why don’t you go on?’ said Otto. ‘Sophia means to doctor the men; and she’s beginning with Sir John—’

He suddenly checked himself, and started up in the bed. His next question seemed to burst out of him irrepressibly. ‘You don’t mean to say, Frederick, that my mother is jealous?’

The valet, still sharpening the razor, looked up. ‘That’s the row, sir,’ he answered as gravely as ever.

Otto fell back on the bed, and pulled the clothes over his face. Deaf Lady Dowager owned to having arrived at sixty years of age. Sir John’s biography (in the past time when he had been Lord Mayor of London) fixed the date of his birth at a period of seventy-four years since. The bedclothes heaved, and the bed shook; violent emotion of some kind was overwhelming Lady Dowager’s son. Not the ghost of a smile—though he was at liberty to indulge his sense of humour as things were now—appeared on the wooden face of Frederick. He laid out his shaving materials, and waited until Mr Fitzmark’s beard was ready for him.

Otto rose again above the horizon of the bedclothes. He looked completely exhausted—but that was all. The altar of appearances, waiting for the sacrifice, claimed and received the necessary recognition. Having first got out of bed—by way of separating himself from irreverent associations possibly lurking in the mind of his valet—Otto posed, as the French say, in an attitude of severe propriety.

‘Drop the subject,’ he said.

Frederick gently lathered his master’s chin, and answered, ‘Just so, sir.’

V

Otto breakfasted in his own room.

His mother’s maid brought word that her ladyship was ill in bed, with a sick headache: she would see Mr Fitzmark towards luncheon time. The valet not being present to draw his own conclusions, Otto privately extracted information from the maid. Miss Doctor Pillico would professionally visit Sir John, at her usual hour—two o’clock. And in what part of the house would Sir John receive her? He looked at himself in the glass when he put that question. The maid began to understand the nature of his interest in the medical young woman. She took the liberty of smiling, and answered, ‘In the library, sir.’

Towards two o’clock, Otto called for his hat and cane, and said he would take a turn in the garden.

Before he went downstairs he once more surveyed himself in the glass. Yes: he could not have been more becomingly dressed—and he looked, in his own delicate way, surprisingly well. His auburn hair and whiskers; his fair complexion; his sensitive mouth, and his long white hands were in perfect order. In the garden he met Young John, sulkily smoking.

‘How is Bess?’ he asked indulgently. Young John answered, ‘I don’t know; I’ve not been on speaking terms with my sister since yesterday.’ ‘And how is your father?’ Young John answered, ‘I don’t care. He told me last week I was a sulky lout, and he has not apologised yet; I don’t speak to him, either.’ Otto left his half-brother, cordially agreeing with his half-brother’s father.

The library opened, by means of French windows, on the terrace. He picked a flower for his button-hole, and sauntered that way. The windows being open, he entered the room in a genial impulsive manner. ‘Ha, Sir John, how are you? Oh, I beg your pardon!’

Sir John was seated bolt upright in his chair, looking at vacancy, and drawing in and puffing out his breath in a highly elaborate manner. A finely-developed young woman, with brown hair and eyes, and warm rosy cheeks, dressed to perfection in a style of severe simplicity, was sitting close by him. Her arm was around his neck, and her ear was at his breast. So absorbed was this charming creature in listening that she held up a pretty plump little hand, in mute entreaty for silence. ‘Yes,’ she said, in clear, positive tones, ‘you confirm my diagnosis, Sir John; I persist in saying that your medical attendant has mistaken the case.’ Her bright resolute eyes, turning towards Otto, softened as they rested on his beautiful hair and his sensitive lips: a little increase of colour deepened the delicately ruddy tint of her cheeks. ‘Pray excuse me,’ she resumed, with a captivating smile; ‘I am, in a professional point of view, naturally interested in Sir John. His life is public property: if I make any mistake here, I disgrace myself—and my cause!—in the eyes of the nation.’ Otto’s countenance preserved a gravity worthy of his valet. ‘Permit me to introduce myself,’ he said, ‘before I renew my apologies. I am Sir John’s step-son, Otto Fitzmark.’ The charming Doctor bowed with a look of modest interest. Sir John did what he had done from the first—he sat in solemn silence, looking foolish. It was not everybody who remembered that he had once been Lord Mayor of London, and who attended to him as a famous personage. It was also the first occasion (for at least forty years past) on which he had felt the arm of a handsome young woman round his neck, and the head of a handsome young woman on his breast. Add that the fair physician had said, on the first day of her attendance, ‘It is a rule of mine never to accept fees from public characters’—and the catalogue of Sir John’s overwhelming emotions will be complete.

‘I can only atone for my intrusion in one way,’ Otto proceeded. ‘Permit me to hope for an early opportunity of improving our acquaintance—and to return to the garden.’

‘Not on my account, Mr Fitzmark! In any other case, my visit would be at an end. But I am perhaps morbidly anxious to “make assurance doubly sure” (the words of Shakespeare, I think?) in the case of Sir John. Besides, I have the prejudice of the world against me; always on the look-out for an opportunity of asserting that a woman is not fit to be a doctor.’

This seemed to be the right place for a burst of enthusiasm: Otto did it with perfect tact and dexterity. ‘Miss Pillico, I sincerely sympathise with you in the battle you are fighting against ignorance and stupidity. The Woman-Movement, in all its departments, has my heartfelt admiration and good wishes!’ His heavenly blue eyes became irresistible as this expression of generous feeling escaped him.

Sophia was too proud and too grateful to be able to reply in words. She rewarded the friend of the Women by a look—and turned with a sigh to business and Sir John.

‘May I try once more before I write my prescription?’ she asked. ‘No, my dear sir, your back this time. Lean well forward—so—and now draw a long breath.’ Her pretty hand grasped his shoulder, and her little rosy ear pressed (medically pressed) Sir John’s broad back.

At this interesting moment the library door opened. Lady Dowager appeared—and paused indignantly on the threshold. Otto advanced to salute his mother. Her ladyship waved him back with one hand, and pointed to the Doctor and the patient with the other. Sir John visibly trembled. Sophia kept her ear at his back as composedly as if nothing had happened.

‘Look at her!’ said Lady Dowager, addressing Otto in the muffled monotonous tones peculiar to the deaf. ‘Hugging my husband before my face—and he seventy-four years old, last birthday. You unnatural hussy, let go of him. You a doctor indeed? I know what you are. Fie! fie!’

‘My dear mother!’

‘I can’t hear you, Otto.’

‘My dear mother!’

‘Yes, yes; I’ll kiss you directly. Look at that old fool, your step-father! He a knight; he an alderman? Ha! ha! a nasty, mangy, rusty old Tom-cat. I won’t live with him any longer. You’re a witness, Otto—you see what’s going on in that chair—I’ll have a divorce. Ha! look at her hair,’ said Lady Dowager, as Sir John’s physician quietly lifted her head from Sir John’s back—‘look at her hair, all rumpled with her horrid passions. I blush for my sex. Fie, Miss Pillico—fie!’

Sophia sat down at the desk, and wrote her prescription. ‘Two tablespoonfuls, Sir John, by measure glass, three times in the twenty-four hours. Your lungs are as sound as mine. Suppressed gout—that’s what is the matter with you—suppressed gout.’

She put on her bonnet (laid aside in the interests of auscultation), and held out her hand to Otto, with modest frankness. ‘A friend to my cause, Mr Fitzmark, is my friend. Your excellent mother,’ she continued, encountering the furious eyes of Lady Dowager with a little pleasant smile, ‘is naturally prejudiced against me. Early education—on the narrow stand-point of fifty years since—has much to answer for. I am sorry to have made this excellent lady angry; and I heartily forgive the heard words she has said to me. On the day after to-morrow, Sir John, I will look in, and see what my prescription has done for you. Thank you, Mr Fitzmark, I have no carriage to call; I am not rich enough to keep a carriage. Besides, my next visit is only next door. Ah, you know the Skirtons? The daughter is indeed a sweet girl. And the dear old father,’ Miss Pillico added, demurely announcing the medical conquest of another elderly gentleman, ‘is my patient. Neuralgia, ignorantly treated as pure rheumatism. Good morning, my lady.’

She bowed respectfully to the formidable enemy of the Rights of Women—posted at the doorway, and following her with glaring eyes as she glided out.

‘Ha! she’s going to the other old fool now,’ said Lady Dowager. ‘Susannah and the Elders! Do you hear, Miss Pillico? I call you Susannah and the Elders!’ She turned to her guilty husband (rising to retreat), with a look which threw him back into his chair. ‘Now, Sir John!’

Otto was too wise to remain in the room. He slipped into the garden.

After taking a turn or two, reflection convinced him that it was his duty to pay a visit next door. He had an opportunity of comparing two different orders of beauty, as represented by Sophia and Salome, which it would be injudicious on his part to neglect. A man of his tastes would be naturally interested in comparing the two girls together. At the same time, he had not ceased to feel the attraction that had lured him back to London: he was true to his young lady. When he entered Mr Skirton’s house, it was with loyal conviction that Salome’s superiority would be proved by comparison.

VI

In ten day’s time events had made a great advance. Miss Pillico’s patients felt the powerful influence of Miss Pillico treatment. Sir John’s improved health bore witness to the capacity of his new doctor; Mr Skirton was well enough to give a small musical party at his house; Mr Otto Fitzmark, false to Mrs Wholebrook and Hydropathy, was entered triumphantly on Miss Pillico’s sick list. Last, but by no means least, Lady Dowager had anticipated her divorce by retiring to the seaside.

The case of Mr Fitzmark was not sufficiently formidable, in the opinion of his new physician, to seclude him from the pleasures of Society. He was allowed to accept an invitation to Mr and Mrs Skirton’s musical entertainment—and, by a happy combination of circumstances, he and his medical adviser entered the drawing-room together.

The primitive little party began at eight o’clock. By half-past eleven, the guests had retired, the master and mistress of the house has gone to bed—and Mr and Mrs Crossmichael and Salome were left together in an empty room.

Mrs Crossmichael issued her orders to her husband. ‘Go to the club, and return in half-an-hour. You needn’t come in again. Wait for me in the cab.’

The one person in the way having been disposed of, the conference between the sisters began.

‘Now, Salome, we can have a little talk. You have been wretchedly out of spirits all the evening.’

‘You would have been out of spirits, Lois, in my place, if you had seen them come into the room together as if they were man and wife already!’

‘Aggravating,’ Mrs Crossmichael admitted; ‘but you might have controlled yourself when you went to the piano; I never heard you play so badly. Let us get back to Mr Fitzmark. My opinion of him doesn’t matter—I may, and do, think him a poor effeminate creature, quite unworthy of such a girl as you are. The question is, what do you think? Are you, or are you not, seriously in love with him?’

‘I know it’s weak of me,’ Salome answered piteously; ‘and I haven’t got any reasons to give. Oh, Lois, I do love him!’

‘Stop!’ said Mrs Crossmichael. ‘If you begin to cry, I leave you to your fate. Stop it! stop it! I won’t have your eyes dim; I won’t have your nose red. I want your eyes, and I want your nose, for my argument.’

This extraordinary announcement effectually controlled the flow of Salome’s tears.

‘Now look at me,’ the resolute lady resumed. ‘Yes, you will do. You see the glass, at the other end of the room. Go, and look at yourself. I mean what I say. Go!’

Salome obeyed, and contemplated the style of beauty, immortalised by Byron in one line: ‘A kind of sleepy Venus was Dudu.’ The glass drew a pretty picture, presenting soft drowsy languishing grey eyes—plentiful hair, bright with the true golden colour, as distinguished from the hideous counterfeit—a pure pale complexion, a mild smile, and a weak little chin, made to be fondled and kissed. A more complete contrast to the brown and brisk beauty of Sophia Pillico could not have been found, through the whole range of female humanity.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Crossmichael, ‘are you quite satisfied that you have no reason to be afraid of Sophia, on personal grounds? Yes! yes! I know it’s his opinion that is of importance to us—but I want you to be confident. Sophia is confident; and humility is thrown away upon the molly-coddle who has taken your foolish fancy. Come, and sit by me. There was a fat guest in my way, when Mr Fitzmark said good night. Did he squeeze your hand; and did he look at you—like this?’

Mrs Crossmichael’s eyes assumed an amorous expression.

Salome blushed, and said, ‘Yes, he did.’

‘Now another question. When you got up from the piano (Chopin would have twisted your neck, and you would have deserved it, for murdering his music) Mr Fitzmark followed you into a corner. I saw that he was tender and confidential—did he come to the point? How stupid you are, Salome! Did he make a proposal?’

‘Not exactly, in words, dear. But if you had seen how he looked at me—’

‘Nonsense! He must be made to speak out—and I will help you to do it. I want a perfect bonnet for the flower-show next month; and I have ordered my husband to take me to Paris. For you sake, I will put it off for a week; and we will come and stay here, instead—so that I may be ready on the spot for anything that happens. No; you needn’t kiss me—you will do infinitely better if you listen to what I have too say. I have been carefully watching Sophia and your young man, and I have arrived at the conclusion that his doctor is certainly in love with him. (Haven’t I told you to listen? Then why don’t you let me go on?) I am equally certain, Salome, that he is not in love with her. (Will you listen?) But she flatters his conceit—and many a woman has caught her man in that way. Besides this danger, she has one terrible advantage over you: she is his doctor. And she has the devil’s own luck—I am too excited to choose my language—with papa and Sir John. Otto is disposed to believe in her; and papa and that wretched Alderman just get well enough to encourage him. Did you notice, at supper, that she ordered him to take this, and forbade him to take that—and treated the poor creature like a child? Oh, I can tell you, we have no time to lose!’

‘What are we to do, Lois?’

‘Will you listen? This is the second of the month. Give my love to the dear old people upstairs, and say that we must have another party, a garden-party, on the fifth. It is the safest way of getting at Pillico. If I call on her, she’s quite sharp enough to suspect that I have a reason for it. What’s the matter now?’

Salome looked towards the door. ‘Don’t I hear the cab? Oh, dear, your husband has come back already!’

‘Haven’t I told him to wait? They say marriage strengthens girls’ minds—and I sincerely hope they are right! In all probability Mr Fitzmark will call to-morrow, to make polite inquiries. You must not be at home. What do you mean by saying, “Oh!” If you don’t take my advice, I shall go to Paris.’

‘I beg your pardon, Lois: I’ll do whatever you tell me.’

Mrs Crossmichael rose, and rang for her cloak. ‘There’s on e thing more you must do—provoke his jealousy. The mother of that other young fellow who is dangling after you is just the person you want for the purpose. I heard her ask you to fix a day for visiting them at Windsor. You promised to write. Write to-morrow; and propose the day after, for your visit—returning the next morning, of course, for the garden-party. Leave word where you have gone, when the beautiful Otto calls again. In the language of Miss Pillico, my dear, he wants a stimulant. I know what I am about. Good night.’

VII

Mr Fitzmark called the next day, as Mrs Crossmichael had anticipated, and returned to his quarters at Sir John’s a disappointed man. An hour later his doctor arrived, and found him in the garden, consoling himself with a cigarette. She took it out of his mouth with a fascinating familiarity, and threw it away.

‘I find I must speak seriously, Mr Fitzmark. There’s nobody in the garden. Suppose we sit down in the summer-house?’

They took their chairs, and Miss Pillico produced her stethoscope.

‘Open your waistcoat, please. Thank you—that will do.’ She used her stethoscope, and then she used her ear; and then she took his hand. Not to press it! Only to put him into the right position to have his pulse felt. ‘I have already told you that there is really no danger,’ she said. ‘The action of your heart is irregular—and I find I have underrated the necessity of taking certain precautions. But I have no doubt of being able to restore you to health, if—’ she let go of his hand, and looked at him tenderly—‘if you will believe in your doctor, and do your best to help me.’

Otto only waited for his instructions. ‘I am careful about my diet,’ he said; ‘I never hurry myself in going upstairs; and, now I know you object to it, I won’t smoke. Is there anything more?’

‘One thing more,’ said Sophia softly. ‘After what I saw last night, I cannot conceal from myself that Society is bad for you. You were excited—oh, you were! Your doctor thought of your heart, and had her eye on you when you were talking to that lovely girl. Of course you are invited to the garden-party? Do me a favour (in my medical capacity)—help your poor heart; write an excuse.’

Otto consented, not very willingly, to make a sacrifice to the necessities, as distinguished from the inclinations, of his heart. Sophia’s pretty brown eyes stole a look at him—a gentle, appealing look. ‘I am afraid you hate me for keeping you away from Miss Salome,’ she said.

This demand on Otto’s gallantry only admitted of one reply. ‘Miss Pillico, the man doesn’t live who could hate you.’

The Doctor blushed. ‘I wonder whether I may put a bold question,’ she murmured—‘entirely in the interest of your health?’ She hesitated, and toyed confusedly with her stethoscope. ‘I hardly know how to put it. Pray remember what I have already told you about your heart! Pleasurable excitement is just as bad for it as painful excitement. Bear that in mind, and let me suppose something quite likely—an event in which all your friends must feel the deepest interest. Let me suppose (professionally) that you are going to be married.’

Otto denied it, without stopping to think first. The effect he produced on Miss Pillico rather alarmed him. She clasped her hands, and exclaimed fervently, ‘What a relief!’

She was a strong-minded woman, and she followed a man’s profession. Would she take a man’s privilege, and make him an offer of marriage? Otto’s weak heart began to flutter. Sophia still played with her stethoscope.

‘I was thinking of my medical responsibility,’ she explained. ‘Please let me listen again.’

Otto submitted. There was a prolonged examination. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘under present conditions there can be no doubt of it. You mustn’t! Indeed, you mustn’t!’

‘Mustn’t—what?’ Otto asked.

‘Marry!’ Miss Pillico answered sternly.

‘Never?’ Otto persisted piteously.

Sophia informed him that it depended on the treatment. ‘What I have said to you,’ she proceeded, not unmindful of the future in her own interests, ‘refers to the present time. If you had been engaged to marry some young lady, for instance, I should have said, Put it off. Or, if you only contemplated such a thing, I should say, Pause. In one word, we have an interval to pass: long or short, is more than I can yet tell.’ She rose, and laid her hand persuasively on his arm. ‘Pray be regular with your medicine,’ she pleaded, ‘and let me know directly if you feel any change in your heart.’ They passed a flower-bed on their way back to the house. Miss Pillico admired the roses. Otto instantly presented her with a rose. She put it in her bosom—and sighed—and gave him a farewell look. For the first time he left the look unreturned. He had accidentally picked the rose which bore Salome’s favourite colour—he was thinking of the grey-eyed girl with golden hair. Before Sophia could win back his attention to herself, Young John, with his pipe in his mouth, appeared at a turn in the path. The Doctor took her leave in depressed spirits.

Otto hesitated about giving up the garden-party. It was only on the next day that he decided on staying at home. He wrote his excuses to Salome.

In the meanwhile Young John advanced lazily towards the summer-house, and discovered his sister in ambush at the back of the building. Sour Bess was in such a state of excitement that she actually forgot her quarrel with her brother. ‘I’ve heard every word they said to each other!’ she burst out. ‘That hateful wretch is sweet on Otto, and means to make him marry her. Oh, Johnny! how can I stop it? Who can I speak to first?’

Young John’s sympathy with his sister—when she happened to be in an especially malicious mood—expressed itself in a broad grin. United by their mutual interest in making mischief, these amiable young people met, in reconciliation, on common ground. ‘It’s no use speaking to Otto,’ Johnny remarked, ‘he’s such a fool. And, as for my father, he’d sooner believe Pillico than either of us. The girl next door is fond of Otto. How would it be if you told her?’

Bess refused even to consider the suggestion. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it might be doing a service to Salome, and we are not on speaking terms.’

Young John, under these circumstances, counselled patience. ‘Don’t throw away a good chance, Bess, by being in a hurry. It won’t hurt to wait for Skirton’s garden-party. Miss Pillico will be there; she’ll give you another opportunity.’

Bess was struck by his last suggestion. ‘I didn’t intend to go to the party,’ she said. ‘You’re quite right; I’ll accept the invitation.’

VIII

The servant who had delivered Otto’s written excuses came back with a message. His letter would be given to Miss Salome on her return from Windsor.

This announcement at once proved Mrs Crossmichael’s calculations to be correct. Otto was at no loss to interpret the meaning of Salome’s absence at Windsor. She was visiting the mother of his rival, at a time when her son was staying in the house. In other words, she was indirectly encouraging a man who was reported to have already made her an unsuccessful offer of marriage, and to be prepared to try again. Otto sent the servant back to ascertain the exact time at which Miss Salome was expected to return. The reply informed him that she was to travel by an early train, and that she would be at home on the morning of the garden-party by twelve o’clock. A second letter was thereupon despatched, asking for an interview soon after that time. Jealousy had determined Otto to take the gloomiest view of the state of his heart. Instead of asking Salome to make loving allowance for the formidable revelations of the stethoscope, he proposed to retire from the field in favour of the ‘fortunate gentleman whom she preferred.’ Such was the vindictive feeling with which this otherwise inoffensive young man regarded his sweetheart’s visit to Windsor; and so had Mrs Crossmichael’s clever calculations defeated themselves.

At two o’clock on the day of the party, Salome’s devoted sister performed her promise.

She and her husband arrived, to occupy the room which was always reserved for them in Mr Skirton’s house. Asking at once for her sister, she was informed that Salome was behaving very strangely; she had locked herself up in her room, and would open the door to nobody. Mrs Crossmichael applied for admission, with the energy peculiar to herself. ‘You know that my husband invariably obeys my orders, and that he is one of the biggest men in England. If you don’t let me in, I shall call him up, and say, Burst open that door.’ Salome gave way. Her eyes were red, her cheeks were stained with tears. ‘You’re the worst enemy I have!’ she cried passionately, as her sister entered the room; ‘I’ll never forgive you for sending me to Windsor.’

‘A row with Otto?’ Mrs Crossmichael asked quietly.

‘Otto has given me up! Otto leave the other man (whom I hate and detest) free to marry me! That’s what comes of taking your advice.’

Mrs Crossmichael preserved her temper. ‘Had he any other reason to give,’ she continued, ‘besides jealousy of the other man? If that was his only motive, you will have reason to be grateful to me, Salome, as long as you live.’

‘He had another reason—a dreadful reason—a mysterious reason. Marriage is forbidden to him. And, when I wanted to know why, he looked the picture of despair, and said, “Ask no more!”’

‘Is he coming to the party?’

‘Of course not!’

‘What’s his excuse?’

‘Ill-health.’

‘Wait here, Salome, till I come back.’

Mrs Crossmichael immediately presented herself at the next house. Mr Fitzmark was not well enough to see her. the message was positive; and the wooden-faced valet was impenetrable. Not daunted yet, the obstinate visitor asked for Miss Pillico. Miss Pillico was not in the house. Mrs Crossmichael returned, defeated, but not discouraged yet.

She appeared to be quite satisfied when Salome told her that the fair physician would be present at the garden-party.

The guests began to arrive; and Sophia was among them.

Her two faithful patients, Sir John and Mr Skirton, noticed that she was serious and silent. Mr Skirton asked if she had visited Otto that day. No; she had not thought it necessary, and he had not sent to say that he wanted her. Mrs Crossmichael, waiting her opportunity, got into conversation with Sophia, in a quiet part of the grounds. Salome waylaid her sister, when the interview was over: ‘What have you found out?’ Mrs Crossmichael whispered back, ‘Pillico was not born yesterday. She has some reason for being discontented with Otto—that’s all I can discover so far. Hush! don’t turn round too suddenly. Do you see that cat?’

The ‘cat’ was Sir John’s daughter. She had just met Miss Pillico on the lawn, and had only been noticed by a formal bow. Sour Bess looked after the lady-doctor with an expression of devilish malice which was not lost on Mrs Crossmichael. ‘An enemy to Sophia!’ she whispered to her sister. ‘Ah, Miss Dowager, it’s a long time since we have seen each other. You’re looking remarkably well. Have you, too, been consulting Miss Pillico?’ She took Bess’s arm in the friendliest manner, and walked away with her to the farther end of the garden.

IX

‘Well Lois!’

‘Don’t come near me, or you will spoil everything! One word. Did that man make you another offer when you were at Windsor?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you refused him again?’

‘Certainly!’

‘And you still think Otto is worth having?’

‘I can’t live without him!’

‘Otto is yours.’

‘Half an hour afterwards, Mr Fitzmark received a letter, marked Private: ‘After such conduct as yours no young lady, in my sister’s position, could condescend to explain herself. I think it right, however, to inform you—merely to remove a false impression from your mind—that the gentleman who has excited your jealousy (and no wonder, for he is in every way your superior) has made her a proposal of marriage, and has, to my sincere regret, been refused. It is needless to add that you will not be received, if you venture to call again at my father’s house.—L. C.’

The despatch of this letter was followed by a bolder experiment still.

When the garden-party had come to an end, and the guests were at home again, Miss Pillico received Mrs Crossmichael’s visiting card—with a line on it in pencil: ‘I should be glad to say two words, if quite convenient.’ Mrs Crossmichael had produced a favourable impression in the garden—the interview was immediately granted.

‘You are naturally surprised to see me again, after I have already had the pleasure of meeting you. Events have happened—no! I had better not trouble you with the events, except on condition. The condition is, that you will kindly reply to a question which I must ask first.’ So Salome’s sister opened fire on the enemy. The enemy only bowed.

‘A lady possessed of your personal advantages, who follows your profession,’ Mrs Crossmichael proceeded, ‘excites admiration (especially among the men) for other qualities besides her medical ability—’

‘I don’t desire such admiration,’ Miss Pillico interposed; ‘and I never notice it.’

‘Not even in the case of one of your most ardent admirers—Mr Otto Fitzmark?’

‘Certainly not!’

‘Allow me to beg your pardon, Miss Pillico, for an intrusion which has, now, no excuse. I came here—without Mr Fitzmark’s knowledge—to make a very painful communication (so far as our family is concerned), in which, as I foolishly imagined, a duty—a friendly duty—might be involved towards yourself. Pray accept my excuses. Good evening.’

‘Stop, Mrs Crossmichael! Did you say duty was involved?’

‘I did, Miss Pillico.’

‘An act of duty is too serious to be trifled with. Will it help you if we suppose that I have noticed the feeling of admiration to which you refer?’

‘Thank you—it will help very much.’

‘Pray go on.’

‘I trust to your honour, Miss Pillico, to keep what I am about to say, a profound secret. Before Mr Fitzmark had the honour of becoming acquainted with you, his attentions to my sister were a subject of general remark among our friends. He called this morning in a state of indescribable confusion and distress, to inform her that his sentiments had undergone a change; the attractions of some other lady, as I strongly suspect, being answerable for this result. I have merely to add (speaking from my own experience) that he is an exceedingly shy man. He is also—according to his own account of it—subject to some extraordinary delusion, which persuades him that he can never marry. My own idea is, that this is a mere excuse; a stupid falsehood invented to palliate his conduct to my sister. As I think, she is well out of it. I have no opinion of Mr Fitzmark; and I should consider it my duty,’ Mrs Crossmichael proceeded, with an expression of undisguised malignity—‘my bounden duty to warn any lady, in whom I was interested, against encouraging the addresses of such a false and fickle man. If you ask how you are interested in hearing this, I can only own that, like other foolish women, I act on impulse, and often regret it too late. Once more, good evening.’

Salome was waiting at home, eager to know how the interview had ended. Mrs Crossmichael described it in these words:

‘I have assumed the character, my dear, of your vindictive sister; eager to lower the man who has jilted you, in Sophia’s estimation. The trap is set—thanks to that charming girl, Sir John’s daughter. To-morrow will show if Pillico walks into it.’

X

To-morrow did show. Mrs Crossmichael received a reply to her letter, from Mr Fitzmark.

‘I entreat you to intercede for me. No words can tell how ashamed I am of my conduct, and how I regret the inexcusable jealousy which led to it. Salome—no! I dare not speak of her in that familiar way—Miss Salome is too good and too noble not to forgive a sincerely penitent man. I know how utterly unworthy of her I am; and I dare not hope to obtain more than my pardon. May she be happy!—is the only wish I can now presume to form.

‘One word more, relating to myself, before I close these lines.

‘I was foolish enough, when I made that ever-to-be-regretted visit, to hint at an obstacle to my entering the marriage state. It all originated in a mistaken view, taken by Miss Sophia Pillico, of the state of my heart. She called medically this morning, and applied the stethoscope as before: the result seemed to surprise her. She asked how many times I had taken my medicine,—I said, Twice. Digitalis, she thereupon remarked, was a wonderful remedy. She also said that she might, in her anxiety, have taken an exaggerated view of my case, and have alarmed me without reason. Her conduct, after this, was so extraordinary that I cannot pretend to describe it. She waited, after the examination was over, and seemed to expect me to say something more. I waited, on my side, for a word of explanation. She flew into a rage, and told me to provide myself with another doctor. What does it mean?

‘Being naturally interested in finding out whether there was anything the matter with me or not, I called on the resident medical man in this neighbourhood. He took great pains with me; and he admitted that I had an overburdened heart.

‘God knows that this is true enough! But the cause assigned makes me blush while I write. It seems that I eat too much—and my full stomach presses against my heart, “Live moderately, and take a long walk every day,” the doctor said; “and there isn’t an Office in London that won’t be glad to insure your life.”

‘Do me one last favour. Pray don’t let Miss Salome know about my stomach!’

Private Note by the Editor—When Mrs Crossmichael showed this letter to her sister, she said, ‘Now I have bowled Pillico out at last!’ Quite a mistake. Sophia publicly alluded to her brief professional connection with Mr Fitzmark, in these terms: ‘Other women view the approach of age with horror—I look to it myself with impatience and hope. At my present time of life, stupid male patients persist in falling in love with me. Mr Fitzmark was a particularly offensive instance of this. No words can say what a relief it is to me to hear, that he is going to marry Miss Salome Skirton.’

Love’s Random Shot

I

The scene is a famous city in Scotland.

The chief personage is the best police-officer we had in the time when I served the office of Sheriff.

He was an old man, about to retire on a well-earned pension at the period of his life to which my narrative refers. A theft of a priceless picture, which had escaped discovery by the other members of our police force, roused old Benjamin Parley to exert himself for the last time. The money motive was not the motive that mainly influenced him, although the large reward originally offered for the recovery of the picture had been doubled. ‘If the rest of you can’t find the thief,’ he said, ‘I must take the case in hand, for the honour of Scotland.’

Having arrived at this decision, Parley presented himself at my house. I gave him a letter of introduction to the proprietor of the picture—then on the point of applying for help to London.

You have heard of Lord Dalton’s famous gallery. A Madonna, by Raphael, was the gem of the collection. Early one morning the servants discovered the empty frame, without finding a trace of the means by which the audacious robbery had been committed. Having allowed our veteran officer to make his own preliminary investigations, my lord (a man of rare ability and of marked originality of character) was at once impressed by the startling novelty of the conclusion at which Parley arrived, and by the daring nature of the plan that he devised for solving the mystery of the theft.

Lord Dalton pointed to a letter on his library table, addressed to the Chief of the London Detective Police Force.

‘I will delay posting this for a week,’ he said. ‘If, at the end of the time, you send me a sufficiently encouraging first report, the case shall be left unreservedly in your hands.’

At the end of the week the report was sent in. Lord Dalton first destroyed his letter to London, and then spoke to Parley on the subject of the reward.

‘As a well-informed police-officer,’ he said, ‘you are no doubt aware that I am one of the three richest men in Scotland. Have you also heard that I am a stingy man?’

‘I have heard exactly the contrary, my lord,’ Parley answered, with perfect truth.

‘Very good. You will be inclined to believe me, when I tell you that the money value of my picture (large as it may be) is the least part of its value in my estimation. The sheriff tells me that you have a wife and two daughters at home, and that you were about to retire on a pension when you offered your services. At your age, I must take that circumstance into consideration. Do you mind telling me what income you have to look forward to; adding your other pecuniary resources (if you have any) to your pension?’

Parley answered the question without hesitation, and without reserve. Ha was not an easy man to astonish; but Lord Dalton’s next words literally struck him speechless.

‘Put my Raphael back in the frame, within a month from this day,’ said his lordship, ‘and I will treble your income, and secure it to your widow and children after you.’

In less than three weeks from that date, Benjamin Parley (just arrived from Brussels) walked into the picture gallery, and put the Raphael back into the frame with his own hands. He refused to say how he had recovered the picture. But he announced, with an appearance of self-reproach which entirely failed to deceive Lord Dalton, the disastrous escape of his prisoner on the journey to Scotland. At a later period, scandal whispered that this same prisoner was a vagabond member of my lord’s family, and that Parley’s success had been due, in the first instance, to his wise courage in daring to suspect a nobleman’s relative. I don’t know what your experience may be. For my own part, I have now and then found scandal building on a well-secured foundation.

II

In relating the circumstances which made the generous nobleman and the skilled police-officer acquainted with each other, I have borne in mind certain results, the importance of which you have yet to estimate. The day on which Benjamin Parley received his magnificent reward proved to be the fatal day in his life.

He had originally planned to retire to the village in Perthshire in which he had been born. Being now possessed of an income which enabled him to indulge the ambition of his wife and daughters, it was decided that he should fix his residence in one of the suburbs of the city. Mrs Parley and her two girls, established in ‘a genteel villa,’ assumed the position of ‘ladies’; and old Benjamin, when time hung heavy on his hands, was within half an hour’s walk of his colleagues in the police force. ‘But for my lord’s generosity,’ his wife remarked, ‘he would not have had the resource. If we had gone to Perthshire, he would never, in all likelihood, have seen our city again.’

To give you some idea of this poor fellow’s excellent character, and of the high estimation in which he was deservedly held, I may mention that his retirement was celebrated by the presentation of a testimonial. It assumed the quaint form of a receipted bill, representing the expenses incurred in furnishing his new house. I took the chair at the meeting. The landed gentry, the lawyers, and the merchants were present in large numbers; all equally desirous of showing their respect for a man who, in a position beset by temptations, had set an example of incorruptible integrity from first to last.

Some family troubles of mine, at that time, obliged me to apply for leave of absence. For two months my duties were performed by deputy.

Examining the letters and cards which covered the study-table on my return, I found a morsel of paper with some lines of writing on it in pencil, signed by Parley’s wife. ‘When you can spare a little time, sir, pray be so good as to let me say a word to you—at your house.’

The handwriting showed plain signs of agitation; and the last three words were underlined. Was the good woman burdened with a domestic secret? and were her husband and children not admitted to her confidence?

I was so busily occupied, after my absence, that I could only make an appointment to see Mrs Parley at my breakfast time. The hour was so early that she would be sure to find me alone.

The moment she entered the room I saw a change in her, which prepared me for something serious. It may be, perhaps, desirable to add, by way explaining a certain tendency to excitement and exaggeration in Mrs Parley’s ways of thinking and speaking, that she was a Welsh woman.

‘Is there anything wrong at home?’ I asked.

She began to cry. ‘You know how proud I was, sir, of our grand house, and our splendid income. I wish we had gone where we first thought of going—hundred, of miles away from this place! I wish Parley had never seen his lordship, and never earned the great reward!’

‘You don’t mean to tell me,’ I said, ‘that you and your husband have quarrelled?’

‘Worse, sir,—worse than that. Parley is so changed that my own husband is like a stranger to me. For God’s sake, don’t mention it! In your old age, after sleeping together for thirty years and more, I’m cast off. Parley has his bedroom, and I have mine!’ She looked at me—and blushed. At nearly sixty years of age, the poor creature blushed like a young girl!

It is needless to say that the famous question of the French philosopher was on the tip of my tongue: ‘Who is she?’ But I owed it to Parley’s unblemished reputation to hesitate before I committed myself to a positive opinion. The question of the beds was clearly beyond the reach of my interference. ‘In what other ways does Parley seem to be changed?’ I inquired.

‘Seem?’ she repeated. ‘Why even the girls notice it! They their father doesn’t care about them now. And it’s true! In our present prosperity, we can afford to pay a governess; and when we first settled in the new house, Parley agreed with me that the poor things ought to be better educated. He has lost all interest in their welfare. If I only mention the matter now, he says, “Oh! bother!” and discourages me in that way. You know, sir, he always dressed respectably, according to his station and time of life. That’s all altered now. He has gone to a new tailor; he wears smart cutaway coats, like the young men; I found an elastic belt among his clothes—the sort of thing they advertise to keep down fat, and preserve the figure. You were so kind as to give him a snuff-box, on his last birthday. It’s of no more use to him now. Benjamin has given up taking snuff.’

Here I thought it desirable, in the interests of good Mrs Parley herself, to bring the recital of her grievances to a close. The domestic situation (to speak the language of the stage) was more than sufficiently revealed to me. After an exemplary life, the model husband and father had fallen in the way of one of those temptations which are especially associated with the streets of a great city—and had yielded at the end of his career. A disastrous downfall; not altogether without precedent in the history of frail humanity, even at the wintry period of life! I was sorry, truly sorry; but in my position what could I do?

‘I am at your service,’ I said, ‘if you will only tell me how I can advise you.’

‘Some hussy has got hold of Benjamin!’ cried the poor woman. ‘And I don’t know where to find her. What am I to do? Benjamin’s too deep for me—I believe I shall go mad!’

She fell back on her chair, and began to beat her hands on her lap. If I permitted this hysterical agitation to proceed in its usual course of development, the household would be alarmed by an outburst of screaming. There was but one way of composing Mrs Parley, and I took it.

‘Suppose I speak to your husband?’ I suggested.

‘Oh, Mr Sheriff—!’

In Mrs Parley’s excitable Welsh nature even gratitude threatened to express itself hysterically. I checked the new outbreak by putting some necessary questions. The few facts which I succeeded in eliciting did not present my coming interview with the husband in an encouraging light.

After moving into the new house, Parley had found some difficulty (naturally enough) in reconciling himself to the change in his life. From time to time (as his wife had suggested) he looked in at the police office, and had offered the benefit of his experience to his colleagues when they were in need of advice. For a while these visits to the city produced the good results which had been anticipated. Then followed the very complete and very suspicious change in him, already related to me. While the husband and wife still occupied the same room at night, Mrs Parley discovered that Benjamin was disturbed by dreams. For the first time in all her experience, she heard him talking in his sleep. Here and there, words escaped him which seemed to allude to a woman—a woman whom he called ‘my dear’—a woman who had apparently placed some agitating confidence in him. Sensible enough under other circumstances, Mrs Parley’s jealousy had hurried her into an act of folly. She woke her husband and insisted on an explanation. The result had been the institution of separate bedrooms—on the pretence that Parley’s sense of conjugal duty would not permit him to be the means of disturbing his wife’s rest. Arriving, correctly enough, at the conclusion that he was afraid of betraying himself, Mrs Parley had tried the desperate experiment of following him privately when he next left the house. A police-officer of forty years’ experience, with a secret to keep, sees before him and behind him, and on his right hand and his left, at one and the same time. Poor Mrs Parley, discovered as a spy, felt the look that her husband gave her (to use her own expression) ‘in the marrow of her bones.’ His language had been equally alarming. ‘Try it again,’ he said, ‘and you will have seen the last of me.’ She had naturally been afraid to try it again; and there she was, at my breakfast table, with but one hope left—the hope that the Sheriff would assist her!

III

Such was my interview with the wife. My interview with the husband produced one result, for which I was in some degree prepared. It satisfied me that any interference on my part would be worse than useless.

I had certain claims on Parley’s gratitude and respect, which he had hitherto recognised with heartfelt sincerity. When we now stood face to face—before a word had passed between us—I saw one ting clearly: my hold over him was lost.

For Mrs Parley’s sake I could not allow myself to be discouraged at the outset.

‘Your wife was with me yesterday,’ I said, ‘in great distress.’

His voice told me that he had suffered—and was still suffering—keenly. I also noticed that the lines marked by age in his face had deepened. He evidently felt that he stood before me a man self-degraded in his old age. On the other hand, it was just as plain that he was determined to deceive me if I attempted to penetrate his secret.

My one chance of producing the right impression was to appeal to his sense of self-respect, if any such sense was still left in him.

‘Don’t suppose that I presume to interfere between you and your wife,’ I resumed. ‘In what little I have now to say to you, I shall bear in mind the high character that you have always maintained, not only among your own friends, but among persons like myself, who are placed above you by the accidents of birth and position.’

‘You are very good, sir. I assure you I feel—’

He paused. I waited to let him go on. His eyes dropped before mine. He seemed to be afraid to follow the good impulse that I had roused in him. I tried again.

‘Without repeating what Mrs Parley has said to me,’ I proceeded, ‘I may tell you at what conclusion I have myself arrived. It is only doing you justice to suppose that your wife has been mislaid by false appearances. Will you go back to her, and satisfy that she has been mistaken?’

‘She wouldn’t believe me, sir.’

‘Will you at least, try the experiment?’

He shook his head doggedly. ‘Quite useless,’ he answered. ‘My wife’s temper—’

I stopped him there.

‘Make some allowance for your wife’s temper,’ I said, ‘and don’t forget that you owe some consideration to your daughters. Spare them the shame and distress of seeing their father and mother at enmity.’

His manner changed: I had said something which appeared to give him confidence.

‘Did my wife say anything to you about our girls?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She thought you neglectful of your daughters.’

‘Anything else, sir?’

‘She said you had, at one time, acknowledged that the girls ought to have a good governess; but she now finds you indifferent to the best interests of your children.’

He lifted one of his hands, with a theatrical exaggeration of gesture, quite new in my experience of him.

‘She said that, did she? Now, Mr Sheriff, judge for yourself what my wife’s complaints of me are worth! I have this day engaged a governess for my children.’

I looked at him.

Once more his eyes dropped before mine.

‘Does Mrs Parley know what you have done?’ I inquired.

‘She shall know,’ he answered loudly, almost insolently, ‘when I return home.’

‘I am obliged to you for coming here, Mr Parley. Don’t let me detain you any longer.’

‘Does that mean, sir, that you disapprove of what I have done?’

‘I pronounce no opinion.’

‘Does it mean that you doubt the governess’s character?’

‘It means that I regret having troubled you to come here—and that I have no more to say.’

He walked to the door—opened it—hesitated—and came back to me.

‘I ask your pardon, sir, if I have been in any way rough in speaking to you. You will understand perhaps that I am a little troubled in my mind.’ He considered with himself, and took from his pocket the snuff-box to which his wife had alluded. ‘I’ve given up the habit, sir, of taking snuff. It’s slovenly, and—and not good for the health. But I don’t feel the less honoured by your gift. I shall prize it gratefully, as long as I live.’

He turned his head away—but not quickly enough to hide the tears that filled his eyes. For a moment all that was best and truest in the nature of Benjamin Parley had forced its way to expression. But the devil in possession of him was not to be cast out. He became basely ashamed of the good impulse that did him honour. ‘The sun is very bright this morning,’ he muttered confusedly; ‘my eyes are rather weak, sir. I wish you good morning.’

IV

Left by myself I rang the bell, and gave the servant his instructions. If Mr or Mrs Parley called again at the house they were to be told that I was not able to see them.

Was this a harsh act on my part? Let us look the matter fairly in the face and see.

It is possible that some persons, not having had my experience of the worst aspects of human nature, might have been inclined to attribute Mrs Parley’s suspicions to her jealous temper, and might have been not unwilling to believe that her husband had engaged a governess for his children in perfect good faith. No such merciful view of the matter presented itself to my mind. Nothing could be plainer to me than that Parley was an instrument in the hands of a bold and wicked woman; who had induced him, for reasons of her own, to commit an act which was nothing less than an outrage on his wife. To what purpose could I interfere? The one person who could help poor Mrs Parley must be armed with the authority of a relation. And, even in this case, what good result could be anticipated if the woman played her part as governess discreetly, and if Parley held firm? A more hopeless domestic prospect, so far, had never presented itself to my view. It vexed and humiliated me to find myself waiting helplessly for events. What else could I do?

On the next day Mrs Parley called, and the servant followed his instructions.

On the day after (with the pardonable pertinacity of a woman in despair), she wrote to me.

The letter has been long since destroyed; but the substance of it remains in my memory. It informed me that the governess was actually established in the house; and described her, it is needless to say, as the most shameless wretch that had ever breathed the breath of life. Asked if he had obtained a reference to her character, Parley had replied that he was old enough to know how to engage a governess: that he refused to answer impertinent questions; and that he had instructed ‘Miss Beaumont’ (this was the lady’s well-sounding name) to follow his example. She had already contrived to steal her way into the confidence of her two innocent pupils, and to produce a favourable impression on a visitor who had called at the house that morning. In one word, Mrs Parley’s position was, on her own showing, beyond the reach of help. As I had anticipated, the false governess played her part with discretion, and the infatuated husband asserted his authority.

Ten days later, I happened to be driving through the suburb of our city, and I discovered Mrs Parley in close conversation with one of the younger members of the detective police force, named Butler. They were walking slowly along a retired path which led out of the high-road; so interested apparently in what they had to say to each other that they failed to notice me, though I passed close by them.

The next morning Butler presented himself at my office, and asked leave to speak to me. Being busy that day, I sent a message back, inquiring if the matter was of any importance. The answer was, ‘Of most serious importance.’ He was immediately admitted to my private room.

V

The little I had heard of this young police officer represented him to be ‘a rising man,’ resolute and clever, and not very scrupulous in finding his way to his own ends. ‘Thoroughly useful, but wants looking after.’ There was the superintendent’s brief description of Mr Butler.

I warned him at the outset that I had but little time to spare. ‘Say what is necessary, but put it in few words. What is your business with me?’

‘My business relates, sir, to something that has happened in the house of Benjamin Parley. He has got himself into a serious scrape.’

I should have made a bad detective policeman. When I hear anything that interests or excites me, my face has got a habit of owning it. Butler had merely to look at me, and to see that he might pass over certain explanations which he had been prepared to offer.

‘Mrs Parley told me, sir, that you had permitted her husband to speak to you. May I take it for granted that you have heard of the governess? Parley met the woman in the street. He was struck by her personal appearance; he got into conversation with her; he took her into a restaurant, and gave her a dinner; he heard her interesting story; he fell in love with her, like an infernal old fool—oh, I beg your pardon!’

‘Quite needless to apologise, Mr Butler. When he permitted the woman to be governess to his children, he behaved like a scoundrel, as well as a fool. Go on. You have discovered, of course, what object she has in establishing herself in Parley’s house?’

‘I will ask leave to tell you first, sir, how I made the discovery.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you won’t believe who the woman really is, unless I convince you beforehand that I have committed no mistake.’

‘Is she a person of celebrity?’

‘She is known wherever there is a newspaper published.’

‘And conceals herself, of course,’ I said, ‘under an assumed name?’

‘And what is more, sir, she would never have been found out—but for the wife’s jealousy. Everybody but that old woman was wheedled into liking Miss Beaumont. Mrs Parley believed the charming governess to be an impostor, and, being determined to expose her, applied to me for advice. The one morsel of evidence that induced me to look into the matter, came from the servant girl. Miss Beaumont’s bedroom was at the back of the house. One night the servant heard her softly open her window, and saw her empty her wash-hand basin into the garden. The customary means of emptying her basin, were, of course, ready and waiting in her room. Have you ever dropped into an actor’s dressing-room, sir, when he has done his work on the stage?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Have you accidentally looked at the basin when he washes his face before he goes home?’

‘Not that I remember.’

‘In such cases, sir, the actor often leaves, what you may call, a tinge of his complexion in the water; and the colour might strike an observant person. If I had not begun life on the stage, it would never have occurred to me that Miss Beaumont’s reason for privately emptying her basin might be connected with a false complexion—occasionally removed, you know, at night, and put on again the next morning. A mere guess, you will say, and more likely to be wrong than right. I don’t dispute it; I only say that my guess encouraged me to make one or two inquiries. It’s needless to trouble you, sir, by speaking of the difficulties that I found in my way. Let me only say that I contrived to get the better of them. Last night, after old Parley was safe in bed, his wife and his servant and I invaded the sanctuary of Miss Beaumont’s room. We were not at all afraid of waking the lady, having taken the precaution (at supper time) of giving her—let us say, the blessing of a good night’s rest. She had seemingly been a little irritable and restless before she went to sleep. At any rate, her wig was thrown on the floor. We passed by that, and went to the bed. She lay on her back; her mouth was open, and her arms were flung out on either side of her. Her own pretty fair hair was not very long; and her false colour (she was disguised, sir, as a dark lady in public) was left that night on her face and neck and hands. So far, we had only discovered that she was, what Mrs Parley believed her to be—an impostor, unknown. It was left for me to find out who the woman really was. The fastening of her night-dress round the throat had given way. Her bosom was exposed. Upon my soul I was terrified when the truth burst on me! There it was, sir, and no mistake—there, on the right side, under the right breast—’

I started out of my chair. On my writing-table lay a handbill, which I had read and re-read till I knew it by heart. It had been distributed by the London authorities throughout the United Kingdom; and it contained the description of a woman suspected of a terrible crime, who had baffled the pursuit of the police. I looked at the handbill; I looked at the man who was speaking to me.

‘Good God!’ I cried, ‘did you see the scar?’

‘I saw it, Mr Sheriff, as plainly as I see you.’

‘And the false eye-tooth on the left side of her mouth?’

‘Yes, sir—with the gold fastening to speak for it.’

Years have passed since the conversation took place which I have just related. But some persons must remember a famous criminal trail in London—and would recognise, if I felt myself at liberty to mention it, the name of the most atrocious murderess of modern times.

VI

The warrant was issued for the woman’s arrest. Competent witnesses identified her, and the preliminaries of the law took their course.

To me, the serious part of the discovery was the part which cast suspicion on the unfortunate Benjamin Parley. Appearances were indisputably against him. He was not only suspected; he was actually charged with assisting the murderess to escape from justice. For the trouble that had now fallen on him, I could be of some use in assisting Parley, and in comforting his unhappy family.

You will hardly believe the assertion, but I declare it to be true, the man’s infatuation kept its hold on him more firmly than ever. His own interests were of no sort of importance to him; he seemed to be but little affected even by the distress of his wife and family; his one over-whelming anxiety was for the prisoner. ‘I believe in her innocence,’ he actually said to me, ‘as I believe in my religion. She is falsely accused, sir, of that horrible crime.’ He was incapable of resenting, he was even incapable of appreciating the cruel deception that she had practised on him. In one word, he was more devotedly in love with her than ever.

And, mind, there was no madness in this! I can answer for it, from my own experience; he was in perfect possession of his faculties.

The order came to have the woman removed to London, to be tried at the Central Criminal Court. Parley had heard of it. In the most moving terms he entreated me to have him set at liberty, and to trust him with the duty of taking charge of the prisoner!

It was my business to see her placed in the railway carriage, under proper guard. The train started in the morning. She refused to leave her bed. As a matter of course, I was sent for in this emergency.

The murderess was not a beautiful woman; she was not even a pretty woman. But she had a voluptuous smile, a singularly musical voice, a fine figure, and a supreme confidence in herself. The moment I entered the room, the horrible creature tried her powers of fascination on the Sheriff—she assumed the character of an innocent victim, overwhelmed by suffering of body and mind. I looked at my watch, and told her she had no time to lose. Not in the least disconcerted, she shifted to a new character; she took me, gayly and cynically, into her confidence. ‘My dear sir, you would never have caught me,’ she said, ‘if I had not made one mistake. As governess in the family of an ex-police-officer I should have been safe from discovery if I had not taken for granted that I could twist Parley’s old woman round my little finger, like the rest of them. Who would have thought she could have been jealous of an ugly old husband at her time of life? Wouldn’t you have said yourself, “All that sort of thing must have been over long ago, when a woman is sixty years old and more?” Can there be jealousy without love? And do we love when we are hideously flabby creatures covered with wrinkles? Oh, fie! fie!’

I took out my watch once more.

‘If I don’t hear that you are up and dressed in ten minutes,’ I said, ‘I will have you wrapped in a blanket and taken to the railway by main force.’

With that warning I left the room. The women in charge of her told me afterward that her language was too terrible to be repeated. But she was quick enough to see that I was in earnest; and she was up and dressed in time for the train.

VII

When I tell you that Parley was one of the witnesses examined at the trial, you will understand that we had relieved him from the serious charge of being (in the legal phrase) ‘an accessory after the fact.’ He went to London as firmly convinced of her innocence as ever. She was found guilty on irresistible evidence, and sentenced to death.

On the conclusion of the trial, Parley had not returned to his family; he had not even written. His wife followed him to London. He seemed hardly to know her again.

The one idea in possession of him was the hopeless idea of obtaining a reprieve. He was absolutely indifferent to every other earthly consideration. Ignorant people thought him mad. He wrote to the newspapers; he haunted the Government offices; he forced his way into the house of the judge who had presided at the trial. An eminent medical man was consulted. After careful examination he pronounced the patient to be perfectly sane.

Through the influence of friends in London, who were known to the city authorities, the poor wretch gained admittance to the prison, while the criminal was waiting for execution. His wife heard what happened at the interview; but was never able to repeat it; to me or to any one. The same miserable cry always escaped her if she was pressed on the subject. ‘Oh don’t ask me! Don’t ask me!’

On the evening before the execution, he burst into a fit of hysterical crying. That outbreak of violent emotion was followed by a cataleptic seizure. More than eight and forty hours passed before consciousness returned. They feared the loss of reason when he had gained the capacity to feel and suffer. No such result attended his recovery.

On the same day he spoke of her to others for the first and last time. He said, very quietly, with a remarkable stillness in his face, ‘Is she dead?’ They answered, Yes. He said no more.

The next morning his wife asked if he would go back to Scotland with her. He was quite ready to do anything that she wished. Two or three days after their return I saw him. His grey hair had become perfectly white; his manner was subdued; his face, full of vivid expression in past days, seemed to have fallen into a state of changeless repose. That was all.

After an interval, I asked his wife and children if they noticed any change for the worse in him. Except that he was very silent, they noticed no change for the worse. He was once more the good husband and kind father of their past happy experience. Did he ever speak of the woman? Never.

I was not quite satisfied. A month later Mrs Parley asked me if I thought a friend of mine, who was one of our greatest living physicians, could do Benjamin any good. I asked what was the matter with him. ‘He seems to be getting weak,’ was the only reply.

The same day I took my friend with me to Parley’s house. After looking at the patient, and putting some questions, he asked to be allowed to make a complete examination. The two retired. When they returned, Mrs Parley was naturally a little alarmed. ‘Is there anything that’s wrong, sir?’ she asked. And to my astonishment, the doctor answered, ‘Nothing that I can find out.’

When we had left the house, I put the question to him, ‘What does this mean?’

‘It means,’ he answered, ‘that the old man is dying; and I can’t find out why.’

Once in every week the great physician visited Parley, always refusing to take his fee; but now and then asking permission to bring a medical friend with him. One day he called on me, and said, ‘If you want to say “good-bye” to the old police-officer, you have no time to lose.’ I went to the house the same day. Parley was asleep. I returned some hours later. Parley was dead. I asked what he had died of, and the doctor said, ‘We have obtained the widow’s permission to make a post mortem examination. Wait a little.’

I waited until the funeral was over, and then returned to the subject.

‘What discoveries did you make at the post-mortem examination?’

‘We made no discoveries.’

‘But there must have been some cause for his death?’

‘I called it “decay of nature” on the certificate,’ my friend answered. ‘A mere pretence! The man’s constitution was sound; and he had not reached seventy years of age. A registrar of deaths has nothing to do with questions of sentiment. A doctor’s certificate is bound to deal with facts, otherwise—’

He paused, and drew me out of hearing of the mourners lingering in the churchyard.

‘Don’t mention it among my colleagues,’ he said. ‘If there really is such a thing—Benjamin Parley has died of a broken heart.’

The Poetry Did It

An Event in the life of Major Evergreen

I

An employment which he enjoyed represented the bright side, and an enemy whom he abhorred personified the dark side, of Major Evergreen’s life. He had plenty of money, excellent health, and a hare-brained little niece who might have caused some anxiety to other men in his position. The major’s constitutional tranquillity accepted responsibilities of all sorts with a good-humoured indifference which set them at defiance. If Miss Mabel had eloped with the footman, he would have said: ‘Well, I hope they may be happy.’ If she had come down one morning to breakfast, and had announced that she felt a vocation to be a nun, he would have answered: ‘You know best, my dear; I only beg you won’t trouble me to find the convent.’

Persons who wished to see Major Evergreen in earnest—terribly in earnest—had only to look at him when he had pen, ink, and paper before him, and was writing poetry.

This was the employment that he enjoyed; this was the occupation of every day in his life. He must have written hundreds of thousands of lines, without a single thought in them which was not unconsciously borrowed from somebody else. Every form that poetry can take was equally easy and delightful to him. Blank verse and rhyming verse; epic poems and sonnets; tragedies, satires, epigrams; passionate poetry in the manner of Byron; narrative poetry in the manner of Scott; philosophical poetry in the manner of Wordsworth; poetry of the modern type which gets into the pulpit, and reminds us of our moral duties—this wonderful man was equal to every imaginable effort in verse; and, more deplorable still, being rich, he published his works. They appeared in volumes (first edition), and disappeared as waste paper—and appeared again (second edition), and disappeared as before. The printing was perfection; the paper was expressly manufactured to make it worthy of the printing; and the happy major, closing his eyes on facts, firmly believed in his own popularity.

One day, towards the end of summer, the poet had laid down his pen, and was considering whether he should write a few hundred lines more, when his niece looked over his shoulder, and asked if she might speak to him.

Miss Mabel was little and dark, and slim and active; her brightly restless eyes were never in repose, except when she was asleep; her voice was cheerful, her manner was brisk, and her figure was plump. She was further entitled to claim general admiration by a system of dress which was the perfection of elegance, and by possessing a fortune of eighty thousand pounds. And last, not least on the list of her virtues, she read Major Evergreen’s poetry.

‘Well, Mabel, what is it?’

‘It’s about my marriage, uncle.’

‘Marry anybody you like, my dear.’

‘Even your ugly old publisher?’

‘Yes, if you prefer him.’

‘Or anybody else!’

‘Certainly, if you like him better.’

‘The fact is, uncle, you don’t care what becomes of me.’

‘I am of your way of thinking, my dear.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Do you care what becomes of you?’

‘Of course I do!’

‘Then I care too.’

There was an interval of silence. Mabel was considering what she should say next. She decided on speaking plainly, come what might of it.

‘This is serious,’ she resumed.

The major was glad to hear it.

‘I’m only afraid of one thing—I’m afraid I shall offend you.’

The major declared that it was impossible to offend him.

‘Remember what you have said, uncle! I have just had an offer of marriage.’

‘From my ugly publisher?’

‘No; from Sir John Bosworth.’

Major Evergreen—usually the laziest of men—jumped out of his chair, and walked up and down the room, transformed from a pleasant uncle who wrote poetry to a disagreeable old bachelor who was angry with his niece.

And for what reason? For this excellent reason: she had mentioned the name of the enemy whom he abhorred.

Sir John Bosworth was a gentleman who indulged in the hazardous speculations of modern life. He owned racehorses, and he built theatres; he was also proprietor of a weekly journal. In that newspaper had appeared the only review of Major Evergreen’s poems which had ever noticed them at any length. Of the tone adopted by the critic, it is merely necessary to say that it hurried away the easy-tempered major to his lawyer’s office, to bring an action for libel against Sir John Bosworth. The wise lawyer pronounced the article to be simply inhuman, but not libellous. Sir John (already under the influence of Mabel) expressed his regret in the handsomest manner; and declared that the article had been published by his editor without his knowledge. Major Evergreen submitted to circumstances—recovered his customary good spirits—and went on writing poetry more industriously than ever. But what author has succeeded in forgetting an inhuman review? To mention the name of the proprietor of the paper was to wound the poet in his tenderest place. When Sir John Bosworth paid visits to the charming niece, the unforgiving uncle was never in his way. Major Evergreen was ‘engaged in his study.’

‘I couldn’t help mentioning the name, uncle,’ Mabel pleaded. ‘I was obliged to tell you who it was that had asked me to marry him.’

The major received this apology with a word of serious advice. ‘You might have spared me the name, my dear—you might have said, That Man. I should have known whom you meant.’

Mabel accepted the suggestion. ‘I wished to tell you that I didn’t engage to marry That Man,’ she proceeded; ‘I only said I wanted time to consider. I don’t think I like him. I rather believe I want to get away from him, before he calls again.’

The major returned quietly to his chair.

‘Very right indeed,’ he said—and looked at his pen and ink. He was longing to get rid of his niece and go back to his poetry.

‘This is about the time of year,’ Mabel persisted, ‘when we go to the country.’

The major was quite willing. ‘Just as you please; they’re ready for us at Stillbrook.’

‘Stillbrook won’t do, uncle. If we go to your country house That Man will follow us. Suppose we take refuge at Oakapple Hall?’

‘With all my heart.’

‘Then I may write to Mrs Corydon?’

‘Certainly.’

Mabel went away to write a letter; and Mabel’s uncle remained, to write poetry.

II

A widow of mild and retiring character, married late in life; and possessed of one son who exactly resembled her in disposition: there is the briefly sufficient description of Mrs Corydon.

Arriving at Oakapple Hall, Major Evergreen and his niece encountered a surprise held in reserve for them by their amiable hostess. They were received at the house-door by Mrs Corydon’s son. On the last two occasions when they had enjoyed the widow’s hospitality, Mr Cyril Corydon had been absent, pursuing his studies at Oxford. Mabel had not seen him since he had left school.

Cyril had greatly improved in the interval. Still modest and a little reserved, he was no longer awkward; he kept his hands out of his pockets, and his nails exhibited no black rims; his fair complexion was without pimples; his vacant smile of former days had meaning in it now; and, to complete the transformation, Mabel saw a slim young man who fed delicately, in place of a devouring fat boy who approached his dinner as a pig approaches a trough. She also noticed his pretty little flaxen moustache, and shy tenderness in the expression of his gentle blue eyes. Upon the whole, he reminded her of a description of a Troubadour, in one of her uncle’s poems.

Oakapple Hall, in one respect, resembled the famous abbey described by Rabelais—the inhabitants did as they pleased. When luncheon was over Major Evergreen retired to his room and his pen and ink. Mrs Corydon resumed work on an immense embroidered counterpane, which had already occupied her patient fingers for the greater part of her life. The two young people took a walk in the park: Cyril offered his arm, and Mabel started the conversation.

‘Have you really left Oxford for good?’ she began. ‘And are you sorry for it?’

‘I was sorry for it, until to-day.’

Cyril laid a strong emphasis on the last three words, and ventured on a look which sent his artful compliment straight to its right address. Mabel acknowledged the look by an innocent little question: ‘Do you think I am improved, since you saw me last?’

Cyril burst into an exclamation. Expressed in letters, it was only, ‘Oh!’ The manner and the tone made it eloquent, and ought to be described. But description requires appropriate words. Where, in this case, are the words? Mabel’s innocence, requiring no description, pursued its artless way: ‘Mr Corydon, you mustn’t flatter me.’ Mr Corydon immediately proceeded to flatter her.

‘Don’t call me “Mr!” You used to call me “Cyril,” in the days when I was insensible to that honour and happiness. My one ambition is to hear you call me “Cyril” now.’

‘You were a boy then, Mr Corydon: you are a young man now. I am afraid it wouldn’t be quite right.’

Cyril hit on a poetical allusion which might have fallen from the lips of the major himself. ‘Juliet didn’t hesitate,’ he remarked, ‘to call Romeo by his Christian name.’

This—for a shy man—was, as Mabel thought, getting on at rather too rapid a rate. She turned the talk back into the prosaic channels of modern life. ‘I thought your mother and you were serious people,’ she said. ‘Have you really been to the play?’

‘Only to Shakespeare,’ Cyril reminded her. ‘I was taken to the theatre, in the last vacation, by a man of high position, and large experience, whom I am proud to call my friend. His younger brother read with me under the same tutor—and I first came to know him in that way.’

‘Who is this remarkable gentleman?’

‘Sir John Bosworth.’

Mabel stood stock-still, and looked at the unsuspecting heir of Oakapple Hall. That good fellow was honestly pleased. ‘Sir John’s fame has reached you,’ he said. ‘And perhaps you may have met him in society?’

Mabel acknowledged that she had met him, and said no more. Cyril sang his praises.

‘What a man! He builds places of public amusement, he wins money on racecourses, he sits on the throne of the Press and dictates the policy of Europe—and, only think, he is My Friend!’

But Mabel’s thoughts were otherwise employed. A young person, hitherto free from any weak leanings towards superstition, she now dimly perceived the hand of Fate, mysteriously pointing to Sir John, at the very time when she had determined to dismiss him from her mind and from her list of visitors. What would be the next event? Would he discover Oakapple Hall? Preceded by his celebrity, would he obtain an introduction to Mrs Corydon, and renew his offer of marriage? With the ready inconsistency of her sex and age, Mabel began to feel a certain reluctant interest in Sir John. He assumed romantic proportions in his absence. She had left him a shadowy figure disappearing, as it were, in the background. And here he was in the front of the picture again; presenting himself through the innocent medium of this nice boy—so proud of him, so grateful to him! Her curiosity was excited by the very man whom she had despised not three days since. She encouraged poor Cyril to talk of Sir John. One of Eve’s daughters—there is nothing else to be said for her: one of Eve’s daughters.

The course of their walk had brought them back, by this time, to the house. Cyril suddenly made an apology.

‘Excuse me for one moment; I have something to show you.’ He ran into the house, and ran out again with the local newspaper in his hand.

‘Nothing that I can say of our gifted friend will be as interesting to you as this,’ he announced, and pointed to the column of the newspaper filled by the London correspondent with news from the fashionable world. There was Sir John again! ‘A brilliant circle had assembled’ at the country seat of a great nobleman, situated within an hour’s drive of Oakapple Hall—and in two days more Sir John Bosworth was expected as a welcome addition to the number of his lordship’s guests.

Mabel made the first excuse that occurred to her, and escaped from Cyril to the solitude of her own room. It was high time to consider what she had better do next.

III

Decision of character is, generally speaking, a plant of slow growth, in the human constitution. When the age is seventeen, the sex female, and the question: What am I to do next?—perplexing circumstances wait for an answer, and seldom get it. Mabel could not venture to consult her uncle—and if Mrs Corydon had an amiable weakness, it took the form of habitual reliance on other people’s advice. In this emergency, Mabel’s temper escaped from control; and Cyril’s position in the estimation of his charming friend receded, without any reason for that deplorable event which it was possible to discover. Ignorant of the ways of women—in love, with the ready in flammability of a young man who has led an innocent life—Cyril was foolish enough to ask if he had offended Mabel. He made the mistake with the utmost humility of manner and language—and was received with a toss of the head, and a reply which expressed surprise that a member of an English University should prove to be an ill-bred man.

Three days passed. Sir John Bosworth (if the newspaper could be trusted) was already established as a guest at the country seat of his noble friend. In sheer despair of recovering the ground that he had lost by any effort of his own, Cyril decided on asking the advice of the one competent and trustworthy person within his reach.

Sir John was in the house; Sir John hurried into the room in which Cyril was waiting for him, and shook hands with a cordial squeeze. This inestimable friend of Cyril’s was a tall finely-made man, rather dark than light in complexion, and a little bald; otherwise remarkable for bushy eyebrows, a strong Roman nose, and magnificent whiskers; eyes bright and striking in themselves, but a little shifty in expression at times: in one word, a most agreeable person—with a false nature, concealed from the mass of mankind under a surface of easy humour and hearty good spirits.

‘My dear boy, how glad I am to see you! You are one of us, of course? and you have come to luncheon? No? You are not invited by my lord? Come along and see him. Between ourselves, he’s a bit of a bore—and a bright young fellow like you will be a perfect godsend to the rest of us. You won’t? Now I look at you again, I see signs of something wrong. Am I rushing at rash conclusions if I suspect that my young friend is in a scrape? No explanations! At your age there is only one scrape—a woman.’

‘The loveliest girl in the world, Sir John. I am in sore need of your advice. Can we speak here without interruption?’

‘Of course we can!’

He rang the bell as he replied, and gave his orders to the servant as coolly as if he had been in his own house. He was obsequiously obeyed. The servant knew him to be the proprietor of a newspaper; and, like his betters (including some of the highest personages in the land) the footman was afraid of the Press.

Sir John administered his first dose of advice. ‘Sit down, my good fellow—take a cigar—and out with it!’

Cyril told his melancholy story. ‘She treats me cruelly,’ he said, by way of conclusion. ‘And I assure you, on my word of honour, I haven’t observed it.’

Sir John administered the second dose. ‘Exactly my case,’ he remarked coolly. ‘I am devoted to the loveliest girl in the world, and she treats me cruelly. Would you believe it?—she has left London to avoid me, and I don’t know where to find her. Do as I do: take it easy.’

‘I’m too fond of her, Sir John, to take it easy.’

‘Oh, if you come to that, I’m broken-hearted. At the same time, I don’t disguise from myself that we are both rowing in the same boat. You’re the favourite plaything of one coquette; and I the favourite plaything of another. There it is in a nutshell.’

This off-hand way of speaking of the beloved object shocked Cyril. ‘You may be right about your lady,’ he answered. ‘Excuse me for saying that you are wrong about mine.’

Sir John laughed. ‘I was as innocent once as you are,’ he said. ‘Let’s get at the facts first. Mine is quite a young one. Is yours quite a young one too?’

‘In the first lovely bloom of youth!’

‘You curious boy! Your imagination is misleading you—and you don’t know it. All girls are alike.’

Cyril indignantly struck his fist on the table. ‘There isn’t another girl in the world like my Mabel!’

Sir John suddenly became serious.

‘Mabel?’ he repeated. ‘There’s something in that name which sounds familiar to me. Not the niece of Major Evergreen, surely?’

‘Yes!’ cried simple Cyril, ‘the same. How stupid of me not to have thought of it before! She has met you in society; and she is naturally interested in a celebrated man like yourself.You would have some influence over her. Oh, Sir John, if you would only see Mabel, and say a word to her in my interests, how truly obliged to you I should be!’

The impenetrable face of the man of the world expressed nothing but perfect readiness to make himself useful. Far more experienced eyes than Cyril’s would have discovered nothing in Sir John Bosworth’s manner even remotely suggesting that the two lovers had been, all this time, talking of the same lady.

‘With pleasure!’ cried Sir John. ‘But where shall we find her?’

Cyril seized his hand. ‘You good friend!’ he exclaimed, with tears in his eyes. ‘She’s staying with my mother at our house—only a short ride from this place. When will you let me introduce you to my mother?’

‘Whenever you like.’

‘At once?’

And that excellent man smiled, and cheerfully echoed the words: ‘At once!’

IV

The two gentlemen discovered Miss Mabel walking up and down the garden terrace in front of Oakapple Hall, reading a book. Good girl! It was a volume of her uncle’s poetry.

‘I felt sure you would be glad to meet Sir John Bosworth again,’ Cyril began.

His manner was a great deal too humble. Before he could get any farther, Sir John spoke for himself.

‘The happiness is all mine,’ he said in his easy way. ‘If I happen, however, to be intruding, pray don’t scruple to say so.’

Mabel raised her eyes from her book. She had only to look at Cyril, and to see what had happened. Angry, perplexed, flattered, amused—in this conflict of small emotions she was completely at a loss how to assert herself to the best advantage; and she took refuge in a cold composure which, for the time being at least, committed her to nothing. ‘I was certainly engaged in reading,’ she replied—and put a mark in her book with a sigh of resignation.

Impenetrable Sir John received the blow without flinching. ‘You led me to hope for the honour of being introduced to Mrs Corydon,’ he said to Cyril. ‘Shall we find her at home?’

He took Cyril’s arm and led him to the house. ‘That’s the way to manage her,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll bet you five to one she’s vexed at our leaving her—and ten to one that she receives us more civilly when she sees us again. Don’t look back! You’re a lost man if she discovers that you’re thinking of her. Which is the way to the drawing-room?’

Sir John Bosworth effected the conquest of Mrs Corydon at the first interview. She treated him as she was accustomed to treat her best friends. In other words, she offered to show him over the house. Oakapple Hall was a place of great age and celebrity. In the upper regions two Kings of England had slept, and the ground floor still showed traces of the passage of Oliver Cromwell and his men. Sir John made his excuses for that day. Having heard that Mabel’s uncle was in the house, he was courteously unwilling to disturb the major in the agonies of poetical composition. When he had taken his leave he whispered to Cyril, on his way to the house door: ‘I’ll lay you another wager, if you like—we shall see Miss Mabel still on the terrace.’ And they did see her.

She was seated, with her closed book on her lap, deep in thought.

Hesitating between her two lovers, she had decided at first in favour of Cyril: he had youth on his side, he was handsome, he was modest and amiable. If he had happened to appear on the terrace, at that moment, he would have been the man preferred. But he was indoors, in attendance on his friend; and he left Mabel time to remember that there was a weak side to his character. In Cyril’s place would Sir John have consulted another man, and have brought him to visit her, without once suspecting that he might be a rival in disguise? Mabel was already leaning to the side of Sir John, when she heard footsteps on the walk—and, looking up, saw the man himself approaching her, alone.

In the present state of her inclinations, she was disposed, as an accomplished flirt, to begin by trifling with him. He saw her intention in the bright malice of her eyes, and put an obstacle in her way. Taking the book off her lap, he assumed to be interested in her reading.

‘Tired of poetry, Miss Mabel?’

‘Never tired of it, Sir John.’

‘You read a great deal of poetry.’

‘I believe I have read all the English poets.’

‘Including the major. Do you find him equal to the others?’

‘My uncle reminds me of the others—always pleasantly.’

Sir John opened the book, at that part of it in which a mark had been left, and read the title of the poem: The Rival Minstrels: a Contest in Verse.

‘Is it very interesting?’

His tone irritated Mabel. ‘It is perfectly charming,’ she answered—‘and reminds me of Walter Scott. Two minstrels are in love with the same fair lady; she challenges them to an exhibition of their art; they are each to address her in verse; and she offers her hand to the poet whose lines she most admires. Ah, what a position women occupied in those days!’

‘You would like to have been that fair lady, I suppose?’

‘I should indeed! Especially,’ she added with a saucy smile, ‘if you were a minstrel.’

‘I never wrote anything in my life—except letters. A proprietor of a newspaper, Miss Mabel, leaves prose and verse to his editor and his contributors. Are you looking for anything?’

‘I am looking for Mr Corydon. Where is he?’ Mabel asked, with an appearance of deepest interest.

Sir John determined to stop the coming flirtation in another way.

‘Staying in the house,’ he answered gravely, ‘by my advice.’

‘And why does he want your advice?’

‘Because he is under my protection. I feel the truest regard for him, and the sincerest sympathy with him in his present trying situation.’

Sir John knew his young lady well. His object was to puzzle her by presenting himself in an angry and jealous character entirely new to her experience—to keep her flighty mind by this means employed in trying to understand him, when he was obliged to leave her—to return the next day, and, by means of humble excuses and ardent entreaties for a reconciliation, to place poor Cyril’s mild and modest fidelity in a light of comparison which it would be little likely to endure.

Thus far he had succeeded. Mabel listened, and looked at him, and said, ‘I don’t understand you.’

‘I will make myself understood,’ Sir John rejoined. ‘Have you forgotten the offer of marriage which I ventured to address to you in London? You didn’t say No; you told me you wished for time to consider. I called again, to hear what your decision might be; and I found that you had not only gone away into the country, without a word of apology, but had left strict instructions that the place of your retreat was not to be mentioned to anybody. If this was not a deliberate insult, it was something extremely like it. When I told you just now that Mr Corydon was under my protection, I meant that I would not allow that excellent young man to be treated as you have treated me.’

Mabel’s indignation was equal to the one possible reply to this.

‘Make your mind easy,’ she said; ‘Mr Corydon is in no danger of being treated as I have treated you.’

‘I sincerely hope for my young friend’s sake,’ Sir John answered, ‘that you really mean what you say.’

Mabel got more and more angry. ‘Mr Corydon is charming!’ she burst out. ‘Mr Corydon is a young man whom I esteem and admire!’

‘Allow me to thank you, Miss Mabel, for your candour. You relieve me from the anxiety that I have been feeling on my friend’s account. If you will only say to him what you have just said to me I shall retire, happy in the conviction that my intercession in Mr Corydon’s favour has been crowned with success. Good morning.’

V

Left by herself, Mabel felt the composing influence of solitude. Little by little, her cheeks recovered their every-day delicacy of colour; her eyebrows took their proper places on her forehead; and her pulse returned to the customary moderation of its beat. She was able to listen to the gentle promptings of her own vanity; and, as a matter of course, she began to look at Sir John’s insolence from a new point of view. He, the self-possessed man of the world, had completely forgotten himself, and there could be but one reason for it. ‘Mad with jealousy,’ she concluded complacently. ‘How fond he must be of me!’

Who was this, approaching slowly from the house with steps that hesitated? This was the fatal young man who was under Sir John’s protection, and who had repaid the obligation by rousing emotions of jealous rage in Sir John’s breast. Mabel was not sure whether she despised him or pitied him. In this difficulty, she took a middle course, and only said, ‘What do you want?’

‘May I not have the happiness of speaking to you?’

‘It depends, Mr Corydon, on what you have to say. I forbid you to speak of Sir John Bosworth; I won’t hear you if you speak of yourself; and I shall retire to my room if you speak to me. Have you any harmless remarks to make? Suppose you try the weather?’

Humble Cyril looked up at the sky. ‘Beautiful weather,’ he said submissively.

‘Or politics?’ Miss Mabel continued.

‘Conservative,’ Cyril answered, as if he was saying his catechism.

‘Or literature?’

‘I haven’t got any.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean, I wish I was as well read as you are. Oh, Miss Mabel, don’t be so hard on a poor fellow who loves you with all his heart. I didn’t mean any harm when I asked Sir John—’

‘Be quiet!’

‘If there is any sort of atonement that I can make—if you could only tell me what a young lady wants—I mean, what she looks for in a young man—’

‘She looks, Mr Corydon, for what she doesn’t find in you.’

‘May I ask what that is?’

‘May I ask if you object to the form of vulgarity which is called—Slang?’

‘I object to nothing from You. Pray tell me in what I am deficient.’

‘Pluck!’

She looked at him with a moment’s saucy attention—bowed, and returned to the house. Even Cyril discovered that she was not positively angry this time.

VI

Sir John Bosworth appeared again on the next day—with an excellent reason for returning so soon. He had not yet been shown over Oakapple Hall.

On this occasion, the servant conducted him to the music-room. Mabel was at the piano; and Cyril was turning the leaves of the music for her. Sir John had only to look at them, and to suspect that his modest young friend had been gaining ground in his absence. He approached the piano with his genial smile, and examined the music. ‘Maiden Musings’ was the title; and, in one respect at least, the composer had deserved well of the public of the present day—he had given them plenty of notes for their money. ‘Go on, please,’ said the amiable visitor. Mabel went on. Notes that thundered, notes that shrieked, notes in cataracts of sound represented the maiden’s musings. ‘What were those remarks,’ Sir John asked when it was over, ‘that Mozart made on the subject of melody? Cyril, my dear fellow, have you got Kelly’s Reminiscences in the library? Kelly was Mozart’s pupil. Do try to find the book.’

Before he complied with this request, Cyril looked at Mabel, and received a look in return. Then, and only then, he left the room. Sir John saw that he had not a moment to lose. The door was barely closed on his young rival, before he possessed himself of Mabel’s hand, and said, ‘Oh, forgive me!’

She released her hand, and assumed an icy composure. ‘I confess I am a little surprised to see you again,’ she remarked.

‘You see a man crushed by sorrow and shame,’ Sir John proceeded. ‘Some devil must have possessed me when I spoke to you yesterday. I have not had one quiet moment since. You are literally the one hope of my life. Try, pray try to imagine what I felt, when I had every reason to fear that I had lost you—and to what a man!’

‘A very agreeable man, Sir John.’

‘Torture me, if you like; I have deserved it. But don’t tell me that you—with your bright intelligence, your tact and delicacy, your superiority to the little weaknesses and vanities of ordinary women—can feel a serious attachment to such a person as Cyril Corydon. No! Despise me as you may, Mabel; destroy all the hopes that I have centred in you; doom me to be a wretched man for the rest of my life—there is one thing you can not do: I defy you to lower yourself in my estimation. You have been the one woman in the world to me since I first saw you; and the one woman you will remain to the day of my death!’

He caught her by the hand again: it trembled in his hand; her ready tongue had literally nothing to say. The power of nonsense, in every form which it can take, is one of the great moral forces to which humanity instinctively submits. When Cyril returned (without having discovered the book) Sir John’s nonsense, admirably spoken, had answered Sir John’s purpose. Placed between her two admirers, Mabel was not able to determine which she really preferred.

‘There’s no such book in the library,’ Cyril announced. ‘If he wanted to get rid of me, don’t you think, Miss Mabel, he might have said so plainly?’

For the moment Sir John was thunderstruck. Was this the same confiding helpless young gentleman who had brought him to Oakapple Hall? He recovered himself directly.

‘My dear boy, is there gout in your family?’ he asked. ‘I am at a loss to understand this extraordinary outbreak of temper—unless there is a first fit coming on, at an unusually early age.’

Cyril passed this question over without notice. His fair complexion reddened with anger. Never had love wrought such a transformation in a man since the time of Cymon.

‘I saw you take Miss Mabel’s hand just now, when I came in,’ he declared stoutly. ‘I consider that to be a liberty.’

Sir John’s satirical composure was not disturbed even by this. ‘May I inquire, merely as a matter of curiosity, whether you claim a right of property in this young lady’s hand?’

‘Yes, I do! I have reason to hope that this young lady will do me the honour of marrying me.’

‘So have I!’

‘I have a prior claim on her, Sir John.’

‘Nothing of the sort. I asked Miss Mabel to marry me last week.’

Cyril turned indignantly to Mabel. ‘Is that true?’

Sir John cautioned her. ‘You’re not bound to answer,’ he said.

‘She is bound!’

‘No, Cyril—no.’

‘Do you hear him, Mabel?’

Sir John pointed to Cyril’s flaming cheeks. ‘Do you see him, Mabel?’

She burst out laughing. This disconcerted both the men: there was an awful pause. ‘Must I decide between you,’ she asked, ‘without any time to think first?’ Neither the one nor the other offered her time to think first. Mabel’s eyes suddenly brightened: a new idea had occurred to her. She turned to Sir John.

‘I see a way out of the difficulty,’ she said. ‘Do you remember my uncle’s poem—the Contest of the Minstrels? Suppose you and Mr Corydon each address me in a little poem of your own composing—and suppose I imitate the fair lady of the ballad, and choose the minstrel whose verse I like best?’

Cyril was reduced to silence. Even Sir John could only say: ‘You’re joking.’

She was joking. But the consternation visible in the faces of the two men roused the spirit of mischief in her. ‘I’m quite in earnest,’ she answered. ‘If you wish me to decide between you, you have heard the only terms on which I consent. The day is before you: do your best.’

As she opened the door to leave them, Mrs Corydon came in. The amiable old lady said she was at Sir John’s service when he wished to see the house.

VII

Major Evergreen proved to be useless, on this occasion, as a means for making an excuse; he had gone out for a walk. All the rooms to Oakapple Hall were open to Sir John. He heard how the two Kings had slept in the house, how Oliver Cromwell had battered the house, how one part of it was built in one century, and another part in another. He was not even spared the interesting spectacle of Major Evergreen’s study. ‘So characteristic of a poet,’ Mrs Corydon said; ‘look at the manuscripts all scattered about!’ Sir John looked at the manuscripts. Mrs Corydon left him, and led the way to the window. ‘And now look at the view!’ Sir John looked at the view.

Released at last, he had leisure to consider whether he should humour Mabel’s absurd caprice, or decline to make himself ridiculous, and leave her to recover her senses. He was a man greedy for money, as well as a man in love. Remembering that she had a handsome fortune, and that a rival younger than himself was also courting her, he made his way to the library.

At one of the writing-tables, Cyril was sitting forlorn, surrounded by morsels of torn paper. ‘What have you done?’ the elder minstrel asked of the younger. The melancholy answer was, ‘Nothing!’ Cyril’s voice sounded as if he was a child again, and was ready to cry.

Sir John sat down at a second table, in a distant part of the room, and began to write. The quiet in the library was only disturbed, now and then, by the heavy sighs of Cyril, and the sound of paper being torn up.

VIII

There was a knock at the door. A fresh young voice asked gaily: ‘May I come in?’

‘Don’t let me disturb you,’ said Mabel. ‘The fair ladies of past times were remarkable for their patience—especially with minstrels. I can wait.’

She looked at Cyril, who was seated nearest to her. Too cruelly mortified to speak, he took her hand, and put it on his hot forehead: he pointed to the mass of torn paper all round him. The tears rose in his eyes—he opened the door and went out.

Mabel’s face lost its expression of malicious enjoyment. She looked ashamed of herself; and she said softly: ‘Poor fellow!’

Sir John crossed the room, with a smile of conscious superiority. He was not a man who did anything by halves. Having decided on humouring the young lady, he presented his poetic offering with chivalrous humility, dropping on one knee.

Mabel read his verses. They had one great merit—there were very few of them.

They say she’s dark; yes, like the night

Whose beauty shines from starry skies:

Oh, my sweet saint, how darkly bright

The mellow radiance of those eyes!

I love in you the tender light—

The light the gaudy day denies.

‘Very pretty,’ Mabel said—‘and reminds me of Byron. Did you ever read his Hebrew Melodies?’

‘Never!’ Sir John declared fervently. ‘Allow me, my angel, to kiss your hand, and claim your promise.’

At that critical moment, Major Evergreen returned from his walk, and entered the library in search of a book. He stood petrified at the sight of the enemy whom he abhorred. ‘That Man!’ he cried—and ran out of the room with a furious look at his niece.

She ran out after him. Sir John followed on tiptoe, and listened at the half-opened door.

‘There’s more excuse for me, uncle, than you think,’ Mabel pleaded. ‘Sir John Bosworth has one merit which you really ought to allow. He is a poet like yourself—he has just written this.’

She began to read the verses:

They say she’s dark; yes, like the night

Whose beauty shines from starry skies—

Her uncle snatched the paper out of her hand. ‘My Poetry!’ he shouted.

Before his niece could stop him, he was back again in the library. ‘Thief!’ he called out at the top of his voice.

Mabel made a vain attempt to quiet him. She had forgotten the inhuman review. Not so the major. Even at that trying moment he could have repeated the most atrocious insults inflicted on him in the newspaper without missing a word.

‘The scoundrel has been among My Manuscripts!’ cried the infuriated poet. ‘I’ve longed to murder him for the last six months. And now I’ll do it!’

It was useless to search the room. Sir John Bosworth had made his escape.

At a later period, when Mabel was asked why she had married Cyril instead of Sir John, she used to answer—

‘The Poetry did it.’

A Sad Death and a Brave Life

AT THAT MEMORABLE period in the early history of the United States when American citizens resented the tyranny of George the Third and his Parliament by destroying a cargo of taxed tea, a Bristol trader arrived in the harbour of Boston, having one passenger on board. This person was a young English woman, named Esther Calvert, daughter of a shopkeeper at Cheltenham, and niece of the captain of the ship.

Some years before her departure from England, Esther had suffered an affliction—associated with a deplorable public event—which had shaken her attachment to her native land. Free, at a later period, to choose for herself, she resolved on leaving England, as soon as employment could be found for her in another country. After a weary interval of expectation, the sea-captain had obtained a situation for his niece, as housekeeper in the family of Mrs Anderkin—a widow lady living in Boston.

Esther had been well practised in domestic duties during the long illness of her mother. Intelligent, modest and sweet-tempered, she soon became a favourite with Mrs Anderkin and the members of her young family. The children found but one fault with the new housekeeper; she dressed invariably in dismal black; and it was impossible to prevail upon her to give the cause. It was known that she was an orphan, and she acknowledged that no relation of hers had recently died—and yet she persisted in wearing mourning. Some great grief had evidently overshadowed the life of the gentle English housekeeper.

In her intervals of leisure, she soon became the chosen friend of Mrs Anderkin’s children; always ready to teach them new games, clever at dressing the girls’ dolls and at mending the boys’ toys, Esther was in one respect only not in sympathy with her young friends—she never laughed. One day, they boldly put the question to her: ‘When we are all laughing, why don’t you laugh too?’

Esther took the right way to silence children whose earliest lessons had taught them the golden rule: Do unto others as you would they should do unto you. She only replied in these words:

‘I shall think it kind of you if you won’t ask me that question again.’

The young people deserved her confidence in them: they never mentioned the subject from that time forth.

But there was another member of the family, whose desire to know something of the housekeeper’s history was, from motives of delicacy, concealed from Esther herself. This was the governess—Mrs Anderkin’s well-loved friend, as well as the teacher of her children.

On the day before he sailed on his homeward voyage, the sea-captain called to take leave of his niece—and then asked if he could also pay his respects to Mrs Anderkin. He was informed that the lady of the house had gone out, but that the governess would be happy to receive him. At the interview which followed they talked of Esther, and agreed so well in their good opinion of her, that the captain paid a long visit. The governess had persuaded him to tell the story of his niece’s wasted life.

But he insisted on one condition.

‘If we had been in England,’ he said, ‘I should have kept the matter secret, for the sake of the family. Here, in America, Esther is a stranger—here she will stay—and no slur will be cast on the family name at home. But mind one thing! I trust to your honour to take no one into your confidence—excepting only the mistress of the house.’

More than one hundred years have passed since those words were spoken.

Esther’s sad story may be harmlessly told now. In the year 1762, a young man named John Jennings, employed as a waiter at a Yorkshire inn, astonished his master by announcing that he was engaged to be married, and that he proposed retiring from service on next quarter-day.

Further inquiry showed that the young woman’s name was Esther Calvert, and that Jennings was greatly inferior in social rank. Her father’s consent to the marriage depended on her lover’s success in rising in the world. Friends with money were inclined to trust Jennings, and to help him to start a business of his own, if Miss Calvert’s father would do something for the young people on his side. He made no objection, and the marriage engagement was sanctioned accordingly.

One evening, when the last days of Jennings’ service were drawing to an end, a gentleman on horseback stopped at the inn. In a state of great agitation, he informed the landlady that he was on his way to Hull, but that he had been so frightened as to make it impossible for him to continue his journey. A highwayman had robbed him of a purse containing twenty guineas. The thief’s face (as usual in those days) was concealed by a mask; and there was but one chance of bringing him to justice. It was the traveller’s custom to place a private mark on every gold piece that he carried with him on a journey: and the stolen guineas might possibly be traced in that way.

The landlord (one Mr Brunell) attended on his guest at supper. His wife had only that moment told him of the robbery; and he had a circumstance to mention which might lead to the discovery of the thief. In the first place, however, he wished to ask at what time the crime had been committed. The traveller answered that he had been robbed late in the evening, just as it was beginning to get dark. On hearing this, Mr Brunell looked very much distressed.

‘I have got a waiter here, named Jennings,’ he said; ‘a man superior to his station in life—good manners and a fair education—in fact, a general favourite. But for some little time past I have observed that he has been rather free with his money and that habits of drinking have grown on him. I am afraid he is not worthy of the good opinion entertained of him by myself and by other persons. This evening I sent him out to get some small silver for me; giving him a guinea to change. He came back intoxicated, telling me that change was not to be had. I ordered him to bed—and then happened to look at the guinea which he had brought back. Unfortunately I had not at that time, heard of the robbery; and I paid the guinea away with some other money, in settlement of a tradesman’s account. But this I am sure of—there was a mark on the guinea which Jennings gave back to me. It is, of course, possible that there might have been a mark (which escaped my notice) on the guinea which I took out of my purse when I sent for change.’

‘Or,’ the traveller suggested, ‘it may have been one of my stolen guineas, given back by mistake by this drunken waiter of yours instead of the guinea handed to him by yourself. Do you think he is asleep?’

‘Sure to be asleep, sir, in his condition.’

‘Do you object, Mr Brunell, after what you have told me, to setting this matter at rest by searching the man’s clothes?’

The landlord hesitated.

‘It seems hard on Jennings,’ he said, ‘if we prove to have been suspicious of him without a cause. Can you speak positively, sir, to the mark which you put on your money?’

The traveller declared that he could swear to his mark. Mr Brunell yielded. The two went up together to the waiter’s room.

Jennings was fast asleep. At the very outset of the search they found the stolen bag of money in his pocket. The guineas—nineteen in umber—had a mark on each one of them, and that mark the traveller identified After this discovery there was but one course to take. The waiter’s protestations of innocence, when they woke him and accused him of the robbery, were words flatly contradicted by facts. He was charged before a magistrate with the theft of the money, and, as a matter of course, was committed for trial.

The circumstances were so strongly against him that his own friends recommended Jennings to plead guilty, and appeal to the mercy of the Court. He refused to follow their advice, and he was bravely encouraged to persist in that decision by the poor girl, who believed in his innocence with her whole heart. At that dreadful crisis in her life she secured the best legal assistance, and took from her little dowry the money that paid the expenses.

At the next assizes the case was tried. The proceedings before the judge were a repetition (at great length and with more solemnity) of the proceedings before the magistrate. No skill in cross-examination could shake the direct statement of the witnesses. The evidence was made absolutely complete by the appearance of the tradesman to whom Mr Brunell had paid the marked guinea. The coin (so marked) was a curiosity: the man had kept it, and he now produced it in court.

The judge summed up, finding literally nothing that he could say, as an honest man, in favour of the prisoner. The jury returned a verdict of guilty, after a consultation which was a mere matter of form. Clearer circumstantial evidence of guilt had never been produced, in the opinion of every person—but one—who was present at the trial. The sentence on Jennings for highway robbery was, by the law of those days, death on the scaffold.

Friends were found to help Esther in the last effort that the faithful creature could now make—the attempt to obtain a commutation of the sentence. She was admitted to an interview with the Home Secretary, and her petition was presented to the king. Here, again, the indisputable evidence forbade the exercise of mercy. Esther’s betrothed husband was hanged at Hull. His last words declared his innocence—with the rope round his neck.

Before a year had passed the one poor consolation that she could hope for in this world found Esther in her misery. The proof that Jennings had died a martyr to the fallibility of human justice was made public by the confession of the guilty man.

Another criminal trial took place at the assizes. The landlord of an inn was found guilty of having stolen the property of a person staying in his house. It was stated in evidence that this was not his first offence. He had been habitually a robber on the highway, and his name was Brunell.

The wretch confessed that he was the masked highwayman who had stolen the bag of guineas. Riding, by a nearer way than was known to the traveller, he had reached the inn first. There he found a person in trade waiting by appointment for the settlement of a bill. Not having enough money of his own about him to pay the whole amount, Brunell had made use of one of the stolen guineas, and had only heard the traveller declare that his money was marked after the tradesman had left the house. To ask for the return of the fatal guinea was more than he dared to attempt. But one other alternative presented itself. The merciless villain ensured his own safety by the sacrifice of an innocent man.

After the time when the sea-captain had paid his visit at Mrs Anderkin’s house, Esther’s position became subject to certain changes. One little domestic privilege followed another, so gradually and so modestly that the housekeeper found herself a loved and honoured member of the family, without being able to trace by what succession of events she had risen to the new place that she occupied. The secret confided to the two ladies had been strictly preserved; Esther never even suspected that they knew the deplorable story of her lover’s death. Her life, after what she had suffered, was not prolonged to a great age. She died, peacefully unconscious of the terrors of death. Her last words were spoken with a smile. She looked at the loving friends assembled round her bed, and said to them, ‘My dear one is waiting for me. Good-bye.’

Farmer Fairweather

I AM THE last surviving witness who appeared at the trial, and unless I reduce to writing what I happen to know, there will be no record of the true particulars left after my death.

In the town of Betminster, and round about it for many a good English mile, I am known as Dame Roundwood. I have never been married, and at my present age, I never shall be. My one living relative, at the past time of which I now write, was my sister—married to a man named Morcom. He was settled in France, as a breeder of horses. Now and then he crossed over to England on his business, and went back again.?

I took such a dislike to Morcom that I refused to be present at the wedding. This led, of course, to a quarrel. Nephews and nieces, if there had been any, might perhaps have reconciled me with my sister. As it was, we never wrote to each other after she went to France with her husband. And I never saw her again until she lay on her deathbed. So much about myself, to begin with.

Circumstances, which it is neither needful nor pleasant to dwell on in this place, occasioned the loss of my income, while I was still in the prime of my life. I had no choice but to make the best of a bad bargain, and to earn my bread by going out to service.

Having provided myself with good recommendations, I applied for the vacant place of housekeeper to Farmer Fairweather. I had heard of him as a well-to-do old bachelor, cultivating his land nigh on five miles in a northerly direction beyond Betminster. But I positively declare that I had never been in his house, or exchanged a word with him, on the day when I set forth for the farm.

The door was opened to me by a nice little girl. I noticed that her manners were pretty, and her voice was a remarkably strong one for her age. She had, I may also mention, the finest blue eyes I ever saw in any young creature’s face. When she looked at you, there was just a cast, as they call it, in her left eye, barely noticeable, and not a deformity in any sense of the word. The one drawback that I could find in this otherwise pleasing young person was that she had a rather sullen look, and that she seemed to be depressed in her spirits.

But, like most people the girl was ready enough to talk about herself. I found that her name was Dina Coomb, and that she had lost both her parents. Farmer Fairweather was her guardian, as well as her uncle, and held a fortune of ten thousand pounds ready and waiting for her when she came of age.

What would become of the money if she died in her youth, was more than Dina could tell me. Her mother’s timepiece had already been given to her, by directions in her mother’s will. It looked of great value to my eyes, and it flattered her vanity to see how I admired her grand gold watch.

‘I hope you are coming to stay here,’ she said to me.

This seemed, as I thought, rather a sudden fancy to take to a stranger. ‘Why do you want me to stay with you?’ I asked.

And she hung her head, and had nothing to say. The farmer came in from his fields, and I entered on my business with him. At the same time I noticed, with some surprise, that Dina slipped out of the room by one door when her uncle came in by the other.

He was pleased with my recommendations, and he civilly offered me sufficient wages. Moreover, he was still fair to look upon, and not (as some farmers are) slovenly in his dress. So far from being an enemy to this miserable man, as has been falsely asserted, I gladly engaged to take my place at the farm on the next day at twelve o’clock, noon.

A friendly neighbour at Betminster, one Master Gouch, gave me a cast in his gig. We arrived true to the appointed time. While Master Gouch waited to bring my box after me, I opened the garden gate and rang the bell at the door. There was no answer. I had just rung once more, when I heard a scream in the house. There were words that followed the scream, in a voice which I recognised as the voice of Dina Coomb:

‘Oh, uncle, don’t kill me!’

I was too frightened to know what to do. Master Gouch, having heard that dreadful cry as I did, jumped out of the gig and tried the door. It was not fastened inside. Just as he was stepping over the threshold, the farmer bounced out of a room that opened into the passage, and asked what he did there.

My good neighbour answered, ‘Here, sir, is Dame Roundwood, come to your house by your own appointment.’

Thereupon Farmer Fairweather said he had changed his mind, and meant to do without a housekeeper. He spoke in an angry manner, and he took the door in his hand, as if he meant to shut us out. But before he could do this, we heard a moaning in the room that he had just come out of. Says my neighbour,

‘There’s somebody hurt, I’m afraid.’

Says I, ‘Is it your niece, sir?’

The farmer slammed the door in our faces, and then locked it against us. There was no help for it after this but to go back to Betminster.

Master Gouch, a cautious man in all things, recommended that we should wait awhile before we spoke of what had happened, on the chance of receiving an explanation and apology from the farmer when he recovered his temper. I agreed to this. But there! I am a woman, and I did take a lady (a particular friend of mine) into my confidence. The next day it was all over the town. Inquiries were made; some of the labourers on the farm said strange things; the mayor and aldermen heard of what was going on. When I next saw Farmer Fairweather he was charged with the murder of his niece, and I was called, along with Master Gouch and the labourers, as witnesses against him.

The ins and outs of the law are altogether beyond me. I can only report that Dina Coomb was certainly missing, and this, taken with what Master Gouch and I had heard and seen, was (as the lawyers said) the case against the farmer. His defence was that Dina was a bad girl. He found it necessary, standing towards her in the place of her father, to correct his niece with a leather strap from time to time; and we upset his temper by trying to get into his house when strangers were not welcome, and might misinterpret his actions. As for the disappearance of Dina, he could only conclude that she had run away, and where she had gone to was more than he had been able to discover.

To this the law answered, ‘You have friends to help you, and you are rich enough to pay the expense of a strict search. Find Dina Coomb, and produce her here to prove what you have said. We will give you reasonable time. Make the best use of it.’

Ten days passed, and we, the witnesses, were summoned again. How it came out I don’t know. Everybody in Betminster was talking of it; Farmer Fairweather’s niece had been found.

The girl told her story, and the people who had discovered her told their story. It was all plain and straightforward, and I had just begun to wonder what I was wanted for, when up got the lawyer who had the farmer’s interests in charge, and asked that the witnesses might be ordered to leave the court. We were turned out under the care of an usher; and we were sent for as the authorities wanted us, to speak to the identity of Dina, one at a time. The parson of Farmer Fairweather’s parish church was the first witness called. Then came the turn of the labourers. I was sent for last.

When I had been sworn, and when the girl and I were, for the first time, set close together face to face, a most extraordinary interest seemed to be felt in my evidence. How I first came to be in Dina’s company, and how long a time had passed while I was talking with her, were questions which I answered as I had answered them once already, ten days since.

When a voice warned me to be careful and to take my time, and another said. ‘Is that Dina Coomb?’ I was too much excited—I may even say, too much frightened—to turn my head and see who was speaking to me. The longer I looked at the girl, the more certain I felt that I was not looking at Dina.

What could I do? As an honest woman giving evidence on her oath I was bound, come what might of it, to tell the truth. To the voice which had asked me if that was Dina Coomb, I answered positively, ‘No.’

My reasons when given, were two in number. First, both this girl’s eyes were as straight as straight could be—not so much as the vestige of a cast could I see in her left eye. Secondly, she was fatter than Dina in the face, and fatter in the neck and arms, and rounder in the shoulders. I owned, when the lawyer put the question to me, that she was the same height as Dina, and had the same complexion and the same fine blue colour in her eyes. But I stuck fast to the differences I had noticed—and they said I turned the scale against the prisoner.

As I afterwards discovered, we witnesses had not been agreed. The labourers declared that the girl was Dina. The parson, who had seen Dina hundreds of times at his school, said exactly what I had said. Other competent witnesses were sought for and found the next day. Their testimony was our testimony repeated again and again. Later still, the abominable father and mother who had sold their child for purposes of deception were discovered, and were afterwards punished, along with the people who had paid the money.

Driven to the wall, the prisoner owned that he had failed to find his runaway niece; and that, in terror of being condemned to die on the scaffold for murder, he had made this desperate attempt to get himself acquitted by deceiving the law. His confession availed him nothing; his solemn assertion of innocence availed him nothing. Farmer Fairweather was hanged. [1]

With the passing away of time the memory of things passes away too. I was beginning to be an old woman, and the trial was only remembered by elderly people like myself, when I got a letter relating to my sister. It was written for her by the English consul at the French town in which she lived. he informed me that she had been a widow for some years past; and he summoned me instantly to her bedside if I wished to see her again before she died.

I was just in time to find her living. She was past speaking to me but, thank God, she understood what I meant when I kissed her and asked her to forgive me. Towards evening the poor soul passed away quietly, with her head resting on my breast.

The consul had written down what she had wanted to say to me. I leave the persons who may read this to judge what my feelings were when I discovered that my sister’s husband was the wretch who had assisted the escape of Dina Coomb, and who had thus been the means of condemning an innocent man to death on the scaffold.

On one of those visits on business to England of which I have already spoken, he had met a little girl sitting under a hedge at the side of the high road, lost, footsore, and frightened, and had spoken to her. She owned that she had run away from home after a most severe beating. She showed the marks. A worthy man would have put her under the protection of the nearest magistrate.

My rascally brother-in-law noticed her valuable watch, and, suspecting that she might be connected with wealthy people, he encouraged her to talk. When he was well assured of her expectations, and of the use to which he might put them in her friendless situation, he offered to adopt her, and he took her away with him to France.

My sister, having no child of her own took a liking to Dina, and readily believed what her husband chose to tell her. For three years the girl lived with them. She cared little for the good woman who was always kind to her, but she was most unreasonably fond of the villain who had kidnapped her.

After his death this runaway creature—then aged fifteen—was missing again. She left a farewell letter to my sister, saying that she had found another friend: and from that time forth nothing more had been heard of her, for years on years. This had weighed on my sister’s mind, and this was what she had wanted to tell me on her deathbed. Knowing nothing of the trial, she was aware that Dina belonged to the neighbourhood of Betminster, and she thought in her ignorance that I might communicate with Dina’s friends, if such persons existed.

On my return to England I thought it a duty to show to the Mayor of Betminster what the consul had written from my sister’s dictation. He read it and heard what I had to tell him. Then he reckoned up the years that had passed. says he, ‘The girl must be of age by this time: I shall cause inquiries to be made in London.’

In a week more we did hear of Dina Coomb. She had returned to her own country, with a French husband at her heels, had proved her claim, and had got her money.

Note

[1] This terrible miscarriage of justice happened before the time when trials were reported in the newspapers, and led to one valuable result: Since that time it has been a first and foremost condition of a trial for murder that the body of the slain person shall have been discovered and identified.—W. C.

The First Officer’s Confession

I

She is at the present time, as I have every reason to believe, the most distinguished woman in England—she has never written a novel.

I first saw her on board of our steamship, bound from New York to Liverpool. She was accompanied by her dog; and there occurred a little difference of opinion between the commander of the vessel and herself.

The captain began it with his customary politeness:

‘Excuse me, Miss: I must beg you to submit to a little disappointment. You can’t have your dog with you in the saloon. Dogs are not allowed, on board our ships, among the passengers.’

To this the young lady answered: ‘And pray, sir,—if these tyrannical regulations are to be carried out—where is my dog to go?’

‘Your dog is to go Miss, to the butcher.’

‘You brute!’

I declare it on my word of honour, she did actually express her opinion in those terms to the only absolute despot now to be found on the face of the earth—the commander of a ship, afloat on his own vessel. What an ill-natured man might have done under these circumstances I hardly like to guess. Our captain’s sweet temper saw the humorous side of the insult offered to him; he burst out laughing. I stepped up, before the lady’s answer could express itself in stronger language still, and tried the effect of polite explanation.

‘The butcher at sea.’ I said, ‘is like the butcher on shore. In spite of his calling, Miss, he is not, generally speaking, of a bloodthirsty disposition. Our man here is accustomed to take care of passenger’s dogs. He will let you see your dog whenever you please; and the one risk you pet will be likely to run is the risk of being too well fed. May I be allowed to lead you to the forward part of the vessel, so that you can judge for yourself?’

We were rolling, at the time, as usual in all well-regulated Atlantic steam ships. I took the greatest care of our charming passenger; and she took the greatest care of her dog. The captain gave me a look as we passed him. I was sacrificing some of the precious time included in my turn of rest below. He attributed this act of folly (as he afterwards told me) to the influence of love at first sight. Having suffered, as will be presently seen, from concealment of the truth by other persons, I am all the readier to speak frankly of myself. The captain’s interpretation of my conduct was undeniably correct. While the young lady, the butcher, and the dog were all three in course of arriving at a friendly understanding, I reached a conclusion in my own private mind. ‘Whether she is above me, or whether she is below me,’ I said to myself, ‘is something which remains to be discovered. But this I know already. Either I have found my wife, or I shall live and die an unmarried man.’

Who am I? And who is she?

I am Evan Fencote, first officer of the ship, and third son of a country gentleman; left a widower at my birth. He spent all his money in a great lawsuit, and died leaving barely enough to pay his debts and to bury him. I had to get my own living, and I got it at sea. My stature is five feet ten inches; my age is thirty-two; my temper is considered impetuous—and that is all I have to say for myself on the present occasion.

My young lady is Miss Mira Ringmore, daughter of an Englishman established in business in the United States. Her father had recently married for the second time. The new wife hated Miss Ringmore and Miss Ringmore hated the new wife. Being of age, and having her own little income (inherited from her mother), she had nothing to do but to please herself. Happening to notice our ship in the harbour—dressed in flags in honour of the captain’s birthday—she took a fancy to our pretty colours; felt an impulse to go back to the old country with us; and followed the lead of her own feelings at a day’s notice. Having friends on the other side—I mean in England—she purposed to visit them, beginning with her maternal aunt, a single lady whose kindness she remembered with gratitude in the time when she was a child.

As for her personal appearance. I can call it delicious. Her colour is dark; her stature is (I say it thankfully) not remarkable in the matter of height, and not encumbered by what I particularly dislike in a young woman, excess of flesh. Her manner I may describe as modestly irresistible. And I sum up the list of her perfections when I declare that she is not sick at sea.

II

How other men pay their addresses to women, and pave the way for favourable consideration of a proposal of marriage, I have not contrived to discover. Never yet has a friend come in my way who could tell me how he made himself acceptable, in the days of his courtship, to his wife. The obstacles to success, in the case of my own love-affair, raised perpetually by my professional duties on board, would, I am inclined to believe, have disheartened and defeated me if I had been left to contend against them single-handed. Let me be permitted to thank my stars for having provided me with two powerful friends, whose generous assistance was rendered to me in my hour of need.

One of them was the captain; and the other was the dog.

‘He is so kind, he is so attentive, and he offers us the great advantage of being a steady married man.’ Hundreds of times I have heard these words spoken of my commanding officer by fathers, husbands and brothers when circumstances compelled them to let their female relatives cross the Atlantic alone. As a guardian of the fair sex, afloat, our captain was, I firmly believe, without an equal in the honourable profession to which he belonged. He made kind inquiries, through their cabin doors, when the ladies were ill below; his gallant arm was ready for them when they got well enough to promenade the deck: and he exercised a fascinating influence over their timid appetites, when they ventured to appear at the dinner table for the first time. His experience of the sex, obtained in this way, (and in other ways not so well known to me) was ready for any emergency that might call on it. I was myself indebted to his instructions for precious private interviews with Miss Ringmore; and, let me add, it was not the captain’s fault that consequences followed which the most cautious man in existence must have failed to foresee.

Never neglecting his own duties, our commander never permitted neglect on the part of his subordinates. After waiting a day, and satisfying himself that his chief officer attended to the service of the ship as devotedly as ever, he favoured me, in private, with invaluable advice.

‘If I was in love with that young lady,’ he said, ‘do you know how I should recommend myself to her favourable notice?’

‘I can’t say I do, sir.’

‘In your place, Evan, I should begin by making a friend of the dog.’

From the lips of Solomon himself wiser words than those never dropped. I at once relieved the butcher of the trouble of feeding the dog. He was a clever little smooth haired terrier of the English breed. Miss Mira found her favourite pleased and flattered, when she saw us together, and was naturally pleased and flattered herself. A common ground of sympathy was, in this way, established between us. I stole time from my sleep and stole time from my meals, and made the most of my opportunities. To crown all, the captain favoured me with another offering from his stores of good advice:

‘The art of making love, my friend, has one great merit—it succeeds by simple means. Are you acquainted with the means?’

‘I am afraid not, sir.’

‘Then listen to me. Bear in mind, Evan, that the sex (excepting the blackguard members, of course) hates violence. In making your advances, gain ground by fine degrees; never let a loud word or sudden action escape you. The serpentine way succeeded with the first woman, in the Garden of Eden; and it has succeeded with her posterity from that time to this.’

I followed the serpentine way as cleverly as I could. But the truth is, I was too fond of her to prove myself worthy of my instructions. If I try to put on record the various steps by which I advanced to my end, I may possibly produce a sort of guide book to the art of making love at sea. How useful it may be to passengers crossing the Atlantic!

First Day: The dog is the subject of conversation. Miss Mira tells anecdotes of his affectionate disposition and his rare intelligence. I listen with interest. A message arrives which informs me that the first officer is wanted. The little terrier whines when I get up to go. His mistress caresses him, and looks at me with approving smiles. ‘He is almost as fond of you as he is of me,’ she says.—First step forward in Miss Mira’s affections.

Second Day: The story of my life forms the new subject of conversation. I tell it as shortly as possible. Miss Mira is interested when she hears that I am the son of a ruined father, who was once a country gentleman. She puts an intelligent question: ‘Why do I follow an arduous profession, which exposes me to be drowned, when my father’s surviving friends must be persons with influence who might do something better for me?’ I can only reply that a man, like myself, who is alone in the world, feels no interest in improving his position. We look at each other. Miss Mira’s attention devotes itself, with some appearance of confusion, to the dog on her lap.—Second step forward.

Third Day: The story of my young lady’s life came, next. She begins, however, by noticing (with a woman’s nicety of observation) that there is a change in my dress. I have just been relieved from my watch on deck; and I happen to be wearing a warmer waistcoat than usual, knitted in bright-coloured wool. ‘You made your waistcoat, Mr Fencote?’ ‘Mrs Jennet made it.’ ‘And who is Mrs Jennet?’ ‘A grateful woman, Miss Ringmore.’ ‘A young woman?’ ‘No: an old woman.’ ‘And why was she grateful to you?’ There is but one way in which I can answer this last question. I am obliged to mention a common place event in the life of every good swimmer employed on board ship. One of our boys, being in danger of drowning, I happen to save his life. He mentions the circumstance to a grateful old grandmother, and my waistcoat ends the story. With some difficulty, I induce Miss Ringmore to drop the subject and talk of herself. Her social prospects are not very brilliant; she can only hope to be kindly received by her good aunt. Name of the aunt, Miss Urban; station in life, mistress of a ladies’ school since the death of her elder sister who founded the establishment; address, Lewk-Bircot, West Riding, Yorkshire; attractions of Lewk-Bircot, beautiful scenery in the neighbourhood. The first officer is eager to visit the scenery; and the fair passenger would be pleased to show it to him, as a means of expressing her sense of his kindness.—Third step.

Fourth Day: A gentle breeze, a fine sun, a bright sea. She comes on deck at the time when we are passing a large merchantman, under all sail. Impressed by that fine sight, she encourages me to tell her the names of the ship’s masts and sails. After the first few moments her attention begins to wander: she listens absently. I express the fear that she must be getting tired of the voyage. Answer, ‘If I could feel tired of the voyage, I should be ungrateful indeed to You.’—Fourth step.

Fifth Day: A dreadful blank. She has got a nervous headache, and the doctor keeps her in her cabin. But she is good enough to correspond with me. That is to say, she sends me a slip of paper with a line written on it in pencil. ‘Pray take care of my little dog.’—Fifth step.

Sixth Day: Perfect recovery of the invalid. The dog is still an invaluable friend to me; the care I have taken of him is gratefully acknowledged. Beyond this circumstance my recollections of the sixth day do not carry me. In whatever way I may have gained my next step in advance, it ceases to be of any importance by comparison with the great, I may say final, event which made a new man of me in four and twenty hours more.

Seventh Day: When we meet on this grand occasion she notices that I am not in good spirits. I own that my mind is ill at ease. Our voyage is coming to an end. On the next evening the ship will probably be passing the Fastnet light, off the Irish Coast. ‘I hope you won’t be offended.’ I venture to say: ‘my spirits sink, Miss Ringmore, at the prospect of bidding you goodbye.’ She makes no reply in words; her eyes rest on me for a moment and then look away again. I find it quite impossible to explain the effect which she produces on me. The captain’s excellent advice loses its hold on my mind. I forget the importance of making my advances by fine degrees. I become incapable of taking the serpentine way with this charming creature which once succeeded with Mother Eve in the Garden of Eden. What I intend to say is, that the happiness of my life depends on persuading Miss Mira to let me be her husband. What I actually do say, it is impossible for me to relate. She understands me, although I am incapable of understanding myself. There is one private place of retreat, and one only, on the deck of an ocean steamship in the day time. Between the after end of the vessel, called the taff rail, and the stout little wooden house which shelters the man at the helm, lucky lovers may sometimes find an unoccupied and unobserved interval of space. There I receive my reply: and there we register her favourable decision in our first kiss. My own impression is that the dog, at the other end of the ship, sees (or smells) reason to be jealous of me. He howls furiously. We have no alternative but to hurry to the butcher’s quarters and comfort him. Who is the author of the remark, that serious things and comic things tread close on each other’s heels? What a first officer that great observer would have made!

III

Mira’s interests were my interests now.

Her sudden departure from New York had rendered it impossible to communicate by letter with her aunt. When the vessel reached Liverpool, my first proceeding was to send a telegraphic message, in her name, to Miss Urban: ‘Expect me by the afternoon train; explanations when we meet.’ I begged hard to be allowed to travel with her. In this case I deserved a refusal, and I got what I deserved.

‘It is quite bad enough,’ Mira said, ‘for me to take Miss Urban by surprise. I must not venture to bring a stranger with me, until I have secured a welcome for him by telling my aunt of our marriage engagement. When she has heard all that I can say in your favour, expect a letter from me with an invitation.’

‘May I hope for your letter to-morrow?’

She smiled at my impatience. ‘I will do all I can,’ she said kindly, ‘to hurry my aunt.’

Some people, as I have heard, feel presentiments of evil when unexpected troubles are lying in wait for them. No such forebodings weighed on Mira’s mind or on mine. When I put her into the railway carriage, she asked if I had any message for her aunt. I sent my love. She laughed over my audacious familiarity, as gaily as a child.

The next day came, and brought with it no letter. I tried to quiet my impatience by anticipating the arrival of a telegram. The day wore on to evening, and no telegram appeared.

My first impulse was to follow Mira, without waiting for a formal invitation from her aunt. On reflection, however, I felt that such a headlong proceeding as this might perhaps injure me in Miss Urban’s estimation. There was nothing for it but to practise self-restraint, and hope to find myself rewarded on the next morning.

I was up and ready at the door of the lodging to take my expected letter from the postman’s hand. There were letters for other people in the house—nothing had arrived for me. For two hours more I waited on the chance of getting a telegram, and still waited in vain. My suspense and anxiety were no longer to be trifled with. Come what might of it, I resolved to follow Mira to her aunt’s house.

There was no difficulty in discovering Miss Urban. Everybody at Lewk-Bircot knew the schoolmistress’s spacious and handsome establishment for young ladies. The fear had come to me, in the railway, that Mira might not have met with the reception which she had anticipated, and might have left her aunt, under a sense of injury only too natural in a high-spirited young woman. In horrid doubt, I asked if Miss Ringmore was at home. When the man servant said ‘Yes, sir,’ so great was my sense of relief that I protest I could have hugged him.

I was shown into a little drawing-room, while the servant took my card upstairs. The window looked out on a garden. It was the hour of recreation: the young ladies were amusing themselves. They failed to interest me. The one object I cared to look at was the door of the room. At last it was opened; suddenly, violently opened. Mira came in with such an altered expression in her face, such a singular mingling in her eyes and confusion in her manner, that I stood like a fool, looking at her in silence. She was the first to speak.

‘Why have you come here?’ That was what she said to me.

A man of my temper, finding himself treated in this way by any woman—and especially when she is a woman whom he adores—feels the serious necessity of preserving his self-control. Instead of complaining of the ungracious welcome that I had received, I told her how I had waited, and what I had suffered: and I said in conclusion: ‘Surely, you might make some allowance for the anxieties of a man who loves you, left without news of you.’

You might have been content with writing to me,’ she answered.

‘I couldn’t have waited for the reply.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because your silence alarmed me. Come, come, Mira! speak as plainly to me as I have spoken to you. I appear to have arrived at an unfortunate time. Is your aunt ill?’

‘No.’

‘Does she object to your marrying me?’

‘She is too kind and too just to object to a person whom she has never seen.’

That something had gone wrong nevertheless, and that there were reasons for not letting me know what it was, admitted by this time of no doubt. I took Mira’s hand, led her to the sofa, and made her sit down by me. Then I ventured on one more inquiry, the last.

‘Have you changed your mind?’ I asked her. ‘Are you sorry you promised to be my wife?’

All her own pretty self came back in an instant. She put her arm round my neck, and rested her head on my shoulder, and began to cry. How would a landsman have taken such an answer as this? A sailor received it with gratitude; repaid it with kisses; and then remembered what was due to his dear’s peace of mind.

‘It’s plain to me,’ I said, ‘that I ought not to have come here without first asking leave. Let me set that right. My heart’s at ease about you now: I’ll go back again at once, and wait for our next meeting till you allow of it.’ She looked at me, surprised to find that I was such a biddable man. I said: ‘My darling, I will do anything to please you; and whether you choose to tell me your secrets, or whether you prefer keeping them to yourself, will make no difference to me. I shall believe in you all the same.’

She came close to me, and laid her hands on my shoulders. her hands trembled.

‘Suppose,’ she said, ‘that you see things and hear things which you don’t understand, will your confidence in me take my good faith for granted, without asking for an explanation?’

‘I won’t even wish for an explanation.’

Somewhere or other, I have read of the language of flowers. Mira stood up on tiptoe, and thanked me in the language of kisses. I had my hat in my hand ready to go. She took it away.

‘You are to stay here with me,’ she said, ‘and be introduced to my aunt?’

Was this pleasant change of purpose a reward? It was that and something more; it proved to be the first of many tests to which my sincerity was submitted. No fear of this troubled me at the time! I was too happy to think of consequences.

IV

The door of the room was opened again. A tall, elegant woman came in, looking neither old nor young. She was dressed plainly in dark coloured garments; there were furrows on her handsome face, and tinges of grey in her fine thick hair, which gave me the idea of a person who had seen troubled days in the course of her life. She had a slip of paper in her hand and gave it to Mira with these words:

‘Here is a list of invitations to the party, my dear. If you will write on the cards we can send them round to my friends this evening.’ As she laid the cards on the writing-table she noticed me. ‘Who is this gentleman?’

‘I have already spoken of him, aunt. He is the gentleman to whom I am engaged. Evan, let me present you to Miss Urban.’

The grand schoolmistress shook hands with me civilly enough. She was a little majestic in offering her congratulations; but I had heard of the manners of the old school and took it for granted that I saw them now. I made my apologies for having presumed to present myself without a formal invitation.

Miss Urban’s lofty courtesy paid me a compliment, in reply: ‘Excuses are quite needless, Mr Fencote. You might have been sure of your welcome from Mrs Motherwell and from me.’

I looked round the room. No other lady was to be seen. ‘Where is Mrs Motherwell?’ I asked.

Miss Urban lifted her hand—a large strong hand that looked capable of boxing little girls’ ears—and smiling sweetly, waved it towards Mira.

There is Mrs Motherwell,’ she said. Mira heard her, and never denied it. I looked backwards and forwards from the aunt to the niece and from the niece to the aunt. In the infernal confusion of the moment I presumed to correct the schoolmistress, I said:

‘No. Miss Ringmore.’

Miss Urban assumed the duties of correction on her side.

‘Mrs Motherwell, formerly Miss Ringmore,’ she reminded me. ‘Are you doing me the honour, sir, of attending to what I say?’

I was not attending. My eyes and my mind were both fixed on Mira. To my dismay, she kept her back turned on me—afraid, evidently afraid, to let me see her face. A second opportunity had been offered to her of denying that she was a married woman—and again she was silent, when silence meant a confession of guilt. It is all very well to say that a man is bound to restrain himself, no matter how angry he may be, in the presence of a woman. There are occasions on which it is useless to expect a man to restrain himself. I was certainly loud, I dare say I was fierce.

‘You have infamously deceived me.’ I called out: ‘I loved you. I trusted you. You are a heartless woman!’

Instead of looking at me, she looked at her aunt. I saw reproach in her eyes; I saw anger in the flush of her face. I heard her say to herself: ‘Cruel! cruel!’

The schoolmistress—Lord! how I hated her—interfered directly. ‘I can’t allow you, Mr Fencote, to frighten my niece. Control yourself, or I must ask you to leave the room.’

In justice to myself, I took the woman’s advice. The most stupid thing I could possibly do would be to give her an excuse for turning me out. Besides, I now had an object in view, in which I was especially interested. I may have been a brute, or I may have been a fool. The prospect of avenging my wrongs on Mira’s husband presented the first ray of comfort which had dawned on me yet.

‘Is Mr Motherwell in the house?’ I inquired.

To this the schoolmistress replied mysteriously.

‘Mr Motherwell is in the last house of all.’

‘What do you mean, ma’am?’

‘I mean the churchyard.’

‘A widow?’ I burst out.

‘What else should she be, sir?’

I was determined to have it, in words—and from Mira’s own lips. ‘Are you a widow?’ I asked.

She turned round, and faced me. What thoughts had been in her mind, up to that time, it was impossible for me to divine. I could only see that she was mistress of herself again—a little pale perhaps: and (I did really think) a little sorry for me.

‘Evan,’ she began gently, ‘what did we say to each other, before my aunt came in?’

She was my charming girl, before her aunt came in. She was my deceitful widow now. I remembered that, and remembered nothing more. ‘I don’t understand you,’ I said.

My face no doubt showed some perplexity. It seemed to amuse her; she smiled. What are women made of? Oh, if my father had only sent me to be educated in a monastery and brought up to the business (whatever it may be) of a monk! She remembered everything: ‘I led you to suppose, Evan, that things might happen here for which you were not at all prepared, and I asked you if your confidence in me would take my good faith for granted, without wanting an explanation. And how did you answer me? You even went beyond what I had expected. You declared that you would not even wish for an explanation. Has my memory misled me?’

‘No.’

‘Did you mean what you said?’

‘I did.’

‘Will you be as good as your word?’

The aunt and niece looked at each other. I am not skilled in interpreting looks which pass between women—and it is, I dare say, natural to be suspicious of what we cannot understand. Anyway, I found myself making a cautious reply.

‘You have put me to a hard trial,’ I said. ‘All through our voyage, you have kept back the truth. You even accepted my proposal of marriage, without taking me into your confidence. After the discoveries that I have made in this room, how can I engage to be as good as my word, when I don’t know what confessions may be coming next. I can promise to try—and that’s all.’

‘It’s all that I have a right to expect.’ Saying that, Mira turned away to the window.

Miss Urban consulted her watch. A deep-toned bell was rung at the same time in the lower part of the house. The schoolmistress begged me to excuse her. ‘Our young ladies,’ she explained, ‘are returning to their studies; my duties are waiting for me.’ Passing her niece, on her way out of the room, she whispered something. I could only hear Mira’s reply: ‘I can’t do it! I won’t do it!’ Her aunt considered a little, and came back to me.

‘Mr Fencote,’ she said, ‘do you like little boys?’

I had got so distrustful of both of them, that I made another cautious reply to this effect:

‘Suppose I say Yes, or suppose I say No, what difference does it make?’

‘Ask my niece.’

Only three words! Having spoken them, Miss Urban attempted to leave the room. I stopped her; my dull mind was beginning to be enlightened by something like a gleam of truth.

‘You began it,’ I told her: ‘I shall not ask your niece to explain what you mean—I shall ask you. What am I to understand by your talking of little boys?’

‘I ought to have mentioned one little boy, Mr Fencote.’

‘Who is he?’

She pointed to Mira, still standing at the window.

‘Mrs Motherwell’s little boy,’ she answered; ‘the sweetest child I ever met with.’

I had been holding the schoolmistress by the arm, to prevent her from leaving me. My hand dropped. She must have made her way out; I neither saw her, nor heard her.

Having already suffered the shock of discovering that Mira had been a married woman, it would seem likely to most people that I might have been prepared to hear next of the existence of her child. I was not prepared; I felt the revelation of the child—why, God only knows—more keenly than I had felt the revelation of her husband. At that horrid moment, not a word would pass my lips. In the silence that had now fallen on us, Mira confronted me once more. Something in my face—I am afraid, something cruel—appeared to strike her with terror. She burst, poor soul, into wild entreaties:

‘Evan! don’t look at me like that. Try, dear, to do me justice. If you only knew what my position is! Believe me you are wrong to trust to appearances. I love you, my darling. I love you with all my heart and soul. Oh, he doesn’t believe me! There’s no enduring this. Come what may of it, I don’t care; I’ll tell you—’

‘Tell me nothing more,’ I said, ‘I have heard enough.’

It was beyond what I could bear, to see what I saw at that moment; I made for the door. She called me back with a cry of misery:

‘You’re not going to leave me?’

When I look back now at that miserable time, I thank God that my heart was moved with pity for her, and that I gave her my promise to return. I could do no more. My head was in a whirl; my longing for solitude and quiet was not to be told in words. I ran down the stairs. At one end of the hall, a glass door led into the garden; not a creature was to be seen there. The bright flowers, the fine old trees looked like glimpses of Heaven after what I had gone through. In a minute more, I was breathing the fresh air: I was sheltered under the peaceful shade.

V

As for the state of my mind, I can say no more about it than I have said already.

If I can trust my memory I may, however, mention that my thoughts were now more busy with Miss Urban than with her niece. I had turned a deaf ear to Mira’s entreaties at the time; but they had their own irresistible influence when I found myself alone; and they led me to the conviction that the schoolmistress must be answerable for what had befallen me since I entered her house. How was she answerable? To find the right reply to this, was the one obstacle that no effort of mine could overcome. There was a provocation in constantly trying, and constantly failing, to hit on a reasonable interpretation of what Mira had said, which ended in making me too restless to remain in my place of repose. I left the pleasant shade, and wandered away; still battling with my difficulties, and neither knowing nor caring whither I went.

On a sudden, I found myself called back to present things, oddly enough, by a pull at my coat-tail.

Looking around, I discovered a little boy who seemed to be about five or six years of age—a really pretty child, with bright merry eyes and beautiful dark red hair. Here no doubt was the fatal creature who had caused me such suffering when I heard who his mother was. If he had not spoken first, I am afraid I should have gone on without taking any notice of him.

‘Do come, sir, and see my garden.’

He took hold of my hand as he preferred that request, and he looked up in my face with a smile, so innocent and so pretty, that Herod himself must have felt the charm of it.

We took the way to his garden, ‘My little man,’ I said, ‘suppose you tell me your name?’

‘The boys call me Blazes—because of my red hair.’

‘Have you no other name besides that?’

‘Yes; I’m Kit.’

‘Well, Kit, and who do you belong to?’

‘I belong to Aunt Urban.’

‘Have you got no father and mother?’

‘I don’t know that I’ve got a father. They tell me mother lives far away, somewhere.’

‘Have you any playfellows?’

The child shook his head: ‘I’m left to play by myself. Here’s my garden.’

It was a barren little spot in a corner between two walls. Kit’s pride in his few sickly-looking flowers, and his small crookedly directed walks, might have made some people laugh; it made me feel readier to cry.

‘I hope you like my garden?’ the boy said.

‘Indeed I do like it.’

‘And you call me a good boy?’

‘Yes, certainly.’

‘I like to be praised—I don’t get much of it,’ poor little Kit confessed. He took up his small toy spade. ‘I want to make a new walk. You’re a good-natured fellow. Will you help me?’

I marked out the course of a new path, and left him hard at work on it. The sooner we separated the better it would be for me: the poor boy innocently embittered my mind against the mother who had deserted him—who had ignored his existence at the very time when she had promised to be my wife. I was afraid to go back to her until I had mastered my own indignation by the help of time.

Walking straight on, and still failing to compose myself, experience reminded me of the comforting and companionable friend of man through the journey of life. In a moment more, my pipe and pouch were in my hand—but I had lost or mislaid the means of lighting the tobacco. While I was still vainly searching my pockets, I noticed a thin blue column of smoke rising through a clump of trees on my left hand. Advancing in that direction, I reached the limit of the grounds and discovered a gate with the customary Lodge by the side of it.

An old woman was knitting at an open window. I asked her if she would kindly give me a light for my pipe.

‘Surely, sir,’ was the cheerful reply. ‘Please come round to the door.’

She was waiting for me on the threshold. When I approached her, she lifted her withered brown hands in amazement. Her brightening face made her look ten years younger directly. ‘Lord bless us and save us, Mr Fencote, don’t you know me?’

I was near enough to her now to make a likely guess. ‘Not Mrs Jennet?’ I said.

‘Come in, sir! come in! Who but Mrs Jennet should it be?’ She insisted on placing me in her own arm chair; and she spoke of her grandson, ‘thriving and married and happy, when he might have been dead at the bottom of the sea, sir, but for you.’ I listened with every appearance of interest that I could command, and flattered myself that I had concealed the state of my mind from the good old soul who was so honestly glad to see me. It soon appeared that I was mistaken.

‘You don’t look like your own bright and cheery self, sir. Has anything happened to trouble you at the school-house?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘something has happened to trouble me.’

Why I suddenly changed my mind, and owned the truth in this offhand way, I hardly know. People sometimes act on impulses which they are not themselves able to explain. That I had no distinct purpose in view, I am quite sure; the result that I produced took me completely by surprise.

My old friend eyed me attentively. ‘Any misunderstanding, sir, between my mistress and you?’ she asked. ‘I make no doubt you’re a friend of Miss Urban’s, or why should you be here in the grounds?’

‘I can’t call myself a friend of Miss Urban,’ I said; ‘I was only introduced to her about an hour ago.’

The temperature of Mrs Jennet’s curiosity rose a little higher.

‘Will it be considered a liberty,’ she went on, ‘if I ask who made you and Miss Urban known to one another?’

Now, when it was probably too late, prudence suggested the necessity of speaking with reserve. I refrained from mentioning Mira’s name.

‘The person who introduced me,’ I answered, ‘was a young lady.’

Mrs Jennet’s eyes fastened on me with an expression of dismay; Mrs Jennet’s voice sank to a whisper.

‘Miss Urban’s niece?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps some relation of yours?’

‘She may be.’

‘May be? What does that mean?’

‘It means that she may be a very near relation of mine—if I marry her.’

That reply put an end to all further hesitation, on Mrs Jennet’s side and on mine. ‘I know what has happened now,’ she said; ‘as well as if I had seen you and heard you. Mr Fencote, I warned my mistress, at the time, that she might expect to meet with some such ill-luck as the misfortune that has fallen on her now. When that telegram surprised us with the news that her niece was coming, I resisted temptation; I didn’t say “I told you so”—I only thought it. Ha! I don’t doubt that you have been hardly dealt with. But there’s another person—you know who she is!—whom I pity more than I pity you. No! you mustn’t tempt me to enter into particulars. What am I to do,’ the poor woman asked, ‘between you who saved my grandson’s life, and my mistress who trusts me after thirty years spent in her service? Why don’t you ask the young lady to tell you that miserable story?’

‘I don’t want to distress the young lady,’ I said. ‘My temper is quieter by this time. I find I’m too fond of my darling to desert her. Whether you take me into your confidence, or whether you don’t—I’ll marry her all the same.’

Mrs Jennet seemed to be strongly impressed by this.

‘Upon you soul, sir?’ she said solemnly.

‘Upon my soul,’ I answered.

What had I done to make the good old dame as reckless of consequences as I was, let others find out. ‘Light your pipe,’ she said; ‘and I’ll tell you all about it.’

VI

‘A great deal of mischief is sometimes done, sir,’ Mrs Jennet began, ‘among pleasure parties who go to enjoy themselves at the seaside. It was in the Midsummer holidays, six or seven years ago (I don’t rightly recollect which), that we went wrong. When I say We I only mean the eldest Miss Urban, who was then alive—the youngest Miss Urban, now mistress of the school—and my old self, in past days lady’s maid, and afterwards keeper of the gate. My health was not as good in those days as it is now. So the two Misses Urban, as good creatures as ever lived, took me with them to the seaside. We had been about a fortnight in comfortable lodgings, when Miss Esther, (who was the eldest one) says to me: “I’m afraid my sister is going to do a very foolish thing.” You will not be surprised to hear, sir, that a man was at the bottom of it. Also, that he was thought to be a perfect gentleman. Also, that he was handsome and clever and reputed to be well born. Also, that Miss Arabella (that is to say the present Miss Urban) was determined to marry him—and did marry him.’

‘And they are now separated,’ I ventured to guess. ‘And Miss Arabella has returned to her maiden name?’

‘Worse than that, Mr Fencote. She never was married at all. A lady—a perfect lady if ever there was one yet—heard where the newly-married couple had gone for their honeymoon. She says to my mistress, breaking it very kindly to her: ‘I am his victim, and you are his victim; look at my marriage certificate.” You will ask if he was caught and punished. Not he! Early in the morning, the wretch said he was going out for a walk. He never came back, and has never been heard of since. It all happened within the six weeks of the Midsummer holidays; a hundred miles, and more, away from this place. We were saved, owing to those circumstances, from a scandal that might have ruined the school; and, like foolish women, we thought ourselves well out of it. Who could have foreseen, sir, that more misfortunes were going to fall on us? The first of them was the death of the eldest Miss Urban. The second—well some people might blame me for calling it a misfortune. What else is it, I should be glad to know, when a single lady, left sole mistress of a thriving school for girls, finds herself in a way to be a mother—cheated out of her lawful marriage by a villain who went to church with her, the husband of another woman?’

I thought of the little lovable boy whom I had left at work in his garden. But I had not courage enough to speak of him; remembering with shame how cruelly my headlong anger had injured Mira in my thoughts.

‘There’s but little more for me to say,’ Mrs Jennet resumed. ‘You don’t need to be told that a time came when the “health” of the mistress obliged her to leave the management of the school, for a few weeks, to the teachers, and that I was the servant who attended her. But please notice this: I am not to blame for the story which Miss Urban’s cleverness made up (when the child was put out at nurse) to save her reputation. From first to last, I was against that story. Miss Mira was then settled in America with her father and mother, and there was no prospect of the parents or the daughter returning to the old country. What does my mistress do but turn her niece into “Mrs Motherwell, a widow,’ living abroad, and obliged by circumstances to confide her little boy to the care of her aunt in England. That lie succeeded very well. But I have had a good education, Mr Fencote; and I was taught to observe things, before family troubles forced me to take to domestic service. This I have noticed, that lies turn traitors, in the long run, against the very people whom they have served. Miss Urban found this to be true, when your young lady unexpectedly returned to England. Ah, sir, I see what you are thinking of!’

I was thinking of the first interview between the aunt and the niece—and of how my intrusion must have complicated their deplorable position towards each other.

These were Mrs Jennet’s last words:

‘Miss Urban sent for me to bear witness, before her niece, to the cruel deception by which she had suffered. It was the only excuse she could offer by way of appeasing Miss Mira’s indignation—natural indignation, just indignation, I say! The next thing was to offer atonement, so far as it could be done. My mistress proposed to retire from the school, and to sell the business; and to live out her life (with her boy) among strangers. Until this could be done, she threw herself, as the saying is, on Miss Mira’s mercy. “It rests with you,” she said, going down on her knees, “to promise to keep up the deception for a few weeks, or to ruin me for life.” You know how it ended. In having the chance of getting that noble young woman for your wife, I consider you, sir, to be the luckiest man I ever set eyes on. And remember this, if you had not said that your mind was made up to marry her—or, to put it more plainly still, if you had not shown yourself ready to trust her, when you were quite ignorant of what had really happened—not one word of all that I have said to you would have passed my lips. Now I have spoken my mind—and there is an end of it.’

Postscript

There is an end of it also, so far as this narrative is concerned.

It is plainly needless to describe what happened when I got back to the house. Results alone are important enough to deserve notice. Mrs Jennet paid the penalty of taking me into her confidence by the loss of her situation, and entered my service on the spot. She accompanied Mira when we went back to Liverpool to be married. Miss Urban, safe in our silence on the subject of her private affairs, was left in possession of her school, her reputation, and her (adopted) son. At the time when I write my confession—offering it as a valuable lesson to my children, and inventing nothing in it but names of persons and places—my wife and I are old people; little Kit has become a fine man and a thorough sailor; our aunt and our good housekeeper have long since been reconciled in death; and I have been, for a quarter of a century past, the happiest man that ever drew a prize in the lottery of marriage.

Sources

1.

The Twin Sisters: A True Story

First published Bentley’s Miscellany March 1851.

2.

A Passage in the Life of Mr. Perugino Potts

First published in Bentley’s Miscellany February 1852.

3.

Nine O’clock

First published in Bentley’s Miscellany August 1852.

4.

The Devil’s Spectacles

First published in The Spirit of the Times [New York] 20 December 1879 as ‘The Magic Spectacles’. Reprinted in The Seaside Library [New York] in June 1880. In the UK it appeared under the title ‘The Devil’s Spectacles’ in various local newspapers in 1879.

5.

Fie! Fie! or the Fair Physician

First published in. The Spirit of the Times [New York] 23 December 1882 also in The Pictorial World Christmas Supplement,  [London] December 1882. Reprinted in The Seaside Library [New York] in April 1883.

6.

Love’s Random Shot

First published in a French translation in the 1883 Christmas edition of Le Figaro Illustré and in the Christmas edition 1883 of The Pictorial World [London]. Reprinted in The Seaside Library [New York] and later appeared in Love’s Random Shot and Other Stories by Wilkie Collins [New York: George Munro’s Sons, 1894].

7.

The Poetry Did It: An Event in the life of Major Evergreen

First published in The Spirit of the Times December 1885. Reprinted in The English Illustrated Magazine January 1886.

8.

A Sad Death and a Brave Life

First published in Boston, USA in The Youth’s Companion 19 August 1886. Reprinted in London in The Boy’s Own Paper, 23 October 1886.

9.

Farmer Fairweather

First published in Boston USA in The Youth’s Companion 16 December 1886 Reprinted in London in The Boy’s Own Paper, 26 February 1887.

10.

The First Officer’s Confession

First published The Spirit of the Times December 1887.

This file was created with

BookDesigner program

bookdesigner@the-ebook.org

05/03/2008

Date:

05/03/2008