Whether the moneys, with a memorandum of
which the promoter so obligingly furnished him,
had ever come into his hands or not, Arthur Dudley
still felt a certain sense of having been cheated—of
having been made the cat’s-paw wherewith Mr.
Black’s chestnuts were drawn out of the fire. He
knew, although to the letter Mr. Black’s statements
might be correct, still that in the spirit he had
deceived him grossly.
He was perfectly well aware the meaning conveyed
to him by the Company “paying all,” was
that he, Arthur Dudley, should never have to meet
2a single bill, nor be a penny the worse for the money
he had advanced to float the Protector.
Bitterly now he remembered Nellie and his stock—the
latter sold at a considerable sacrifice. The
young bullocks and the fat beeves, the flocks of
sheep, and the lambs which ought to have been kept
over the winter, appeared again, and formed a sad
procession before his mind’s eye. Hay parted with
before the price rose at the turn of the year; wheat
threshed off and sent to market, when the markets
were falling instead of rising; straw disposed of at
rates which scarcely left a margin of profit, after
deducting cartage and expenses—these things recurred
to the Squire’s memory, and roused fresh
anger in his heart against the man who had led him
so grievously astray.
Now he recollected Mr. Stewart’s prophetic words,
and cursed that gentleman’s clear-sightedness as he
did so. Now he recalled those sentences—“I am
prepared to lose, and you are not;” “I can afford
to wait; you, perhaps, are differently situated;” and
they seemed to make his difficulty clear in a
moment. “He was not prepared to lose—he was
not able to wait.” He had stretched his arm out
3farther than he could draw it back; to lose, with
him meant ruin; to wait, meant anxiety and distress
unutterable.
What should he do? Looking back over the
events of the previous twelve months, Squire Dudley
lamented his own credulity and anathematized Mr.
Black. He did not regret joining the Protector, or
accepting the secretaryship, or leaving Berrie Down,
but he bit his nails and drummed upon the table,
and then, rising, kicked his chair over, and walked
up and down the room, while he called himself all
the names imaginable for having accepted bills and
spent money, and bought the house in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields.
He had been eager to buy that house the moment
Mr. Black said it was in the market. He would
scarcely take time to look over the premises before
closing with the owner, so fearful was he of another
purchaser forestalling him; but he forgot all this
now, and worked himself up into the belief that the
promoter had given him no rest till the deposit was
paid and the deeds were signed.
He had thought himself so clever, and, behold,
another hand stretched out beyond his, secured the
4prize. He had got nothing but a thousand a year
and his shares, and he had to work for his thousand
a year, do a vast amount more than “read the
Times, and talk to people.” He had to write
letters, at least dictate them, or else put down the
heads which were to be written, and then see that
his clerk filled them in properly, which the clerk
never did sufficiently well to satisfy Arthur, who,
on the whole, declared he found it easier to take
the correspondence himself, than “to try to hammer
the sense of what he wanted conveyed into any
other person’s stupid head.”
He had to be at the office for a certain number
of hours every day, and to see and discourse with
hundreds of “perfect idiots”—shareholders—who, it
is only fair to add, went away with the impression
that Mr. Dudley was far too fine a gentleman to
understand anything of the affairs of the Company
to which he was secretary.
Further, the directors expected him to know every
circumstance connected directly or indirectly with
the Protector, whether that circumstance were in his
department or not. Especially, there sat on the
board a General Sinclair, C.B., who was the very
5plague and torment of Arthur Dudley’s life; who
was always asking for information; eternally wanting
the secretary to “refer back,” continually reverting
to something which had occurred at the
very creation of the Company, and of which the
present secretary had no cognizance whatever.
A change this from Berrie Down Hollow; from
doing what he liked, as he liked, without question
asked by any one; a change this from coming and
going as he pleased; from refraining from work;
from wandering idly and purposelessly round the
farm.
He detested the work, but he liked the thousand
a year; he could not bear what he called the
drudgery of London life, but he delighted in London
gaiety, and in that gaiety he had expected to
participate without ever having to labour before he
enjoyed.
This life which he was leading; this life—and
one a hundred times more agreeable, Mr. Black
had told him, should be his—for the mere price of
Nellie advanced into the Protector, Limited; and
now it was no thanks to Mr. Black he was even in
London at all; Mr. Stewart had procured him this
6trashy appointment, which he would have spurned
excepting as a stepping-stone to something much
better. Everybody had made, and was making, a
fortune out of the Company excepting himself, and
it was his money which had floated it; his money
which had enabled Mr. Black to buy that place at
Ealing, and furnish it without a second thought as
to the cost!
But in this conclusion, Arthur Dudley—like all
people who, reasoning in a passion, reason illogically—chanced
to be wrong. His few thousands would
have made but a very poor figure when placed to
the credit of Mr. Black’s recent purchases; they
would have been a drop in the ocean, a blade of
grass on the prairie, a single crow amongst the
occupants of a rookery. Those poor thousands were
many for a poor man to lose; but even had he
pocketed every sixpence of the money for which
Arthur was responsible, the whole amount would not
have tided Mr. Black over three months’ expenditure.
For in those days he was “going in for the whole
thing.” He meant either to rise or to fall—so he
informed the Crossenhams. His companies were
now all floated; some of them, indeed, in course
7of winding up, and out of each, and all, the promoter
either had reaped, or was hoping to reap,
largely. He had a dozen irons in the fire. On
the strength of his connection with the Protector,
he had suddenly become a man “looked after” by
those who had a “good thing” in view.
As he had looked after Allan Stewart, so minor
promoters now began to look after and solicit him.
He dressed as Peter Black, Esquire, had never
dressed before. His light summer overcoat was a
work of art to be admired by clerks and porters as
a “West End cut;” his boots were articles of attire
to be envied; while his hats looked as though they
had been that moment taken out of silk paper, and
placed jauntily on his head. He had abundant
leisure now for attending to the adornment of his
outward man, and he did attend to it thoroughly.
The Hoxton days, when he shaved before a piece
of broken looking-glass, and performed the very
slight ablutions to which he treated his person in a
blue Delft washing-basin about six inches in diameter,
were left at a convenient distance; and Peter Black,
Esquire—quite another individual from the Mister
Black who inhabited those wretched lodgings in a
8street leading out of Pitfield Street, Hoxton—had
his house fitted up with hot and cold baths (which
he used), while his dressing-table was furnished with
as many oils, and scents, and pomades, as might
have sufficed to dress up an old beauty for her three
thousandth ball.
All of which things Arthur remembered, and was
wroth accordingly. Had his money not helped to
start the Protector? and had Mr. Black not promised
to go shares with him? Certainly he had
told him as plainly as he could speak that he should
have the half of that twenty or thirty thousand
pounds he expected to make out of the Company,
providing only he lent him in the first instance a
hundred pounds!
Arthur Dudley had neither sense enough nor
wit enough to perceive the absurdity of this climax.
He was awfully stupid, and he had implicitly believed,
and here was the result.
He had really thought he should, from one seed,
reap immediately a whole field of wheat; he had
really credited what a very clever and a very
plausible man implied to be the fact, and many a
reader will, I know, laugh at him for his credulity,
9or else scoff at me for drawing the portrait of an
impossibly confiding man.
We may presume, and we do presume, of
course, that ladies and gentlemen who subscribe to
Mudie’s would be much cleverer than all this comes
to, but still there are other ladies and gentlemen
who, taking in the daily papers and reading therein:
“Ten pounds wanted for one week; fifteen pounds
will be given for the above at the end of seven days;
ample security deposited,” see and believe just as
Arthur Dudley heard and believed likewise. Even
amongst the ladies and gentlemen who do subscribe
to Mudie’s, it is most probable there may have been
a few who, in times gone by, deluded by plausible
circulars, took shares in some of Mr. Black’s companies,
and, as a natural consequence, lost their
money; and—since there is no one who speaks so
loudly against the errors of his former religion as
an apostate—doubtless the individuals to whom I
refer will declare Arthur Dudley’s credulity to be
wicked, if not impossible.
Deferentially I stand aside, while the book is laid
down, and the suitable oration delivered, then with
all due respect I take up the thread of my story
10once again, and speak of things which are taking
place every day in the City, where fresh dupes come
hourly to be fleeced, and fresh shearers, no more
tender or scrupulous than Mr. Black, attend to
relieve the unsuspecting sheep of their superfluous
wool.
Arthur Dudley was to have had half!
Remembering this, which in the hurry and confusion
of his interview with Mr. Black he had forgotten,
the secretary took his hat, and walked
off to the City.
Sooner than his friend had expected he accepted
that gentleman’s invitation, and entering the offices
in Dowgate Hill, where another company—the
“Universal Law Stationery”—was in course of
formation, found the promoter up to his ears in business,
with half a dozen people waiting to see him.
“Tell Mr. Black I will not detain him five
minutes,” said Arthur, quite loud enough for the
whole congregation to hear, after, it may be remarked,
the pleasing fashion of country people in
London. “You know me, don’t you?” he added,
seeing the clerk hesitate, “I am the secretary of
the Protector Bread Company.”
11Thereupon the visitors each drew his own conclusion.
Some, very green indeed, thought what a
great man Mr. Dudley must be, thus to force himself
into the presence of the magnificent director;
others, less easily impressionable, decided that a
screw had got loose in the Protector, which Mr. Black
was expected to set right. At all events, they each
and all began working out the problem of what the
secretary could want with his principal, while Arthur
marched into the presence of the great man, and
found him not engaged with any individual, but
simply writing his letters for post.
“What’s up with you?” were his first words;
“has any one come for a million of shares? or is
there a fire at Stangate—or—or what the devil
brings you into the City at such a time of day as
this?”
“Our conversation this afternoon,” Arthur answered,
boldly. “I could not rest; it is not fair, Mr.
Black; you have not treated me as I should have
treated you. Do you remember what you said to
me that day when this matter was first mooted
between us?”
“Pray sit down,” said Mr. Black, magnificently,
12waving his visitor to a seat, “and explain your
meaning to me quietly, if you can. Do I remember
what? we said so many things that day it would be
impossible for me to recollect all, or indeed any, of
them, unless recalled to my memory.”
“Do you remember what you said about going
half profits with me?” Arthur asked.
“I can’t say that I do. Were there any profits
then to share?”
“Prospective profits,” the other answered. “You
said you expected twenty or thirty thousand pounds
out of the ‘Protector,’ and that whatever you got,
you would go shares with me.”
“Did I?” asked Mr. Black, innocently. “I wish,
Dudley, you had chosen any other time in the day
than this for coming to pester about by-gones,” he
added, “for I have no end of letters to write; but,
however, as you are here, say all you have got to
say.”
“I have nothing to say excepting what I have
already said,” answered Arthur, “namely, that
you promised to go shares with me in the Bread
Company.”
“Now, that is exactly the objection I have to
13doing business with a gentleman,” remarked Mr.
Black; “it is impossible to make him understand,
excepting literally, a sentence which would be plain
as a pikestaff to a boy in the London streets. Tell
me the construction you took out of that speech,
which, I confess, I never remember to have uttered.”
“You said you would have twenty or thirty thousand
out of this bakery affair, and were willing to
give me half.”
“Precisely! not willing to give you half of my
earnings, but willing to give you a chance of winning
fifteen thousand, which you would have done but for
that meddling idiot, Stewart. He has dished me,
too, you know. Deuce a thing I have had out of
the Company except trouble, my shares, and position.
It certainly has given me position. I meant
we should have made—you and I together—thousands
and thousands out of it, instead of which, when
I had served my gentleman’s turn, he bows me off
with, ‘The Company won’t bear this, and the Company
can’t afford that. Whatever houses and offices
we buy, must be bought on the mart. Our grain shall
not be supplied through any friend of yours. I shall
put in my own people to see you do not make sixpence
14out of that which owes its very existence to you.’
Damn him,” added Mr. Black, heartily; “the next
time I go praying and begging for a great man’s
name, I’ll get what I have got this time—insolence
instead of thanks—the door instead of money.”
There was no sham about Mr. Black’s manner
while he delivered himself of this sentence.
Clearly, Allan Stewart had rubbed his hair up the
wrong way, and hurt the promoter grievously in the
process. Arthur sat silent for a moment, surprised—wondering
what he had best say next, and, while
he meditated, Mr. Black opened his mouth again:
“And, on the top of all this, you come,” he proceeded;
“you come dissatisfied with what I have
done for you—indignant that I have failed to do
more. You are angry because I could not force the
Company to buy that cursed place of yours in
Lincoln’s Inn, which, I wish to Heaven, had never
been for sale, just as though Stewart did not serve me
the same trick about that shop in the Poultry. I
bought it on spec, pulled the old buildings down,
ran up a splendid new shop as far as the first floor,
and then offered it to the board. Do you think
they would have it? ‘Pooh, pooh!’ says Mr.
15Stewart; ‘what do we want with establishments in
the Poultry? Less expensive situations will do for
us;’ and the confounded thing was thrown upon my
hands. Had it not been for the ‘London and
Home Counties Bank,’ which had on its board a
man I knew, I should have been swamped—I tell
you fairly that I should, Dudley. As it was, I sold
my interest to the Company at a switching profit,
which enabled me to give my friend ten per cent. on
the purchase-money, and that pulled me through;
and there the bank is now as prosperous a concern
as any in London. Shares up to eight premium.”
It might all be true. With a terrible shock it
occurred to Squire Dudley that there were other
people besides himself in the world—other people
looking for their halves, and percentages, and paid up
shares also.
In a moment he seemed to understand that he had
taken a hand at a game of chances, in which no one,
not even those best experienced in the cards, could
ensure success. It was a lottery in which he had
embarked; and, although he might blame those who
had led him up to the wheel, still he felt he could
not complain when the man who had been most
16sanguine of success drew a blank also. He was a
gentleman. Even in his blackest hour of need,
Arthur, with all his faults, weaknesses, and sins,
never was untrue to his training and his ancestry.
He had been born—weak fool though he was—a
gentleman, bred one, remained one, and he could
not bandy words with this clever, plausible
swindler, who, seeing his companion’s hesitation,
continued:
“I have not much time to spare this afternoon,
for I have letters to write, and lots of people to see;
but as I perceive you are dissatisfied, Dudley, I’ll
tell you what I’ll do: transfer to you a couple of
hundred of my shares in the ‘Protector,’ paid up.
That’s two thousand pounds, at the worst; and if I
see I can do anything more for you, I will. Don’t
be in too great a hurry, old fellow. That is the
worst of all you country people—you think a fortune
is to be made just in a minute. I’ll stand by you, if
you stand by me. I swear it to you, Dudley;
there’s my hand upon it. Now, do not—do not, I
entreat of you, go and make yourself and that dear
wife of yours uncomfortable. If you have to raise a
few thousands on Berrie Down, what matter? Did
17Berrie Down ever do anything for you that you
should do anything for it? Stick to the Protector
and Allan Stewart—that’s my advice; and when you
are in any difficulty come to me—that is my advice
also. Now, good-bye—ta-ta—God bless you,
Dudley!”
And thus exit Squire Dudley without speaking
a word he had intended, but with a very strong
impression on his mind that Mr. Black, having been
making free with the contents of a certain bottle,
labelled “Martell,” ordinarily concealed in the
recesses of one of Tann’s “Reliance” safes, must,
therefore, have spoken the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth.
As though people did not tell worse fibs when
they are drunk than when they are sober, more especially
in London—as though “In vino veritas”
were not an exploded creed with the rising generation,
many of whom do not speak truth either in
their cups or out of them.
CHAPTER II. GREAT SUCCESSES.
18
While the events I have related were influencing,
more or less, the Dudley family history, the “Protector
Flour and Bread Company” was succeeding
to an extent which it is given to few companies in
our time to equal.
If a person be sufficiently interested in the prices
of miscellaneous companies’ shares, to run his eye
down a list of, say, a hundred and fifty of the new
Limited Liabilities, he will be surprised to find how
few out of the number are quoted as being at par, to
say nothing of at a premium. Dis., dis., dis., is the
encouraging legend attached to one after another;
but it was not thus with the Protector—steadily its
shares went up. It grew to be considered a good
investment. The ten pound shares (two pounds paid)
19were eagerly sought after; and, had an intending
investor gone, about that period, to any broker, and
expressed his desire of purchasing into the Protector
Bread Company, he would have been advised
he was acting wisely—that the shares were very good
property indeed.
And so every one believed. In all directions the
Company’s vans were to be encountered conveying
bread to the far-away depôts, or else returning
empty from the extremest ends of London. The
bread was good; the directors—greatly to the disgust
of their housekeepers and cooks, who were
thus cheated out of a legitimate perquisite in the
shape of commission—ate of the staff of life kneaded
at their own bakeries, and were satisfied.
If an inferior batch were produced, woe to the
master baker, on whom, straight away, General
Sinclair poured his vials of wrath. If the flour
were sour, as servants frequently declared it to be,
Mr. Bailey Crossenham’s ears tingled for a week.
Never was a company better managed; never a
staff more rigidly superintended.
Did Linnor, at the most easterly point of London,
running short of bread, borrow a few loaves from
20his neighbour, Mr. Bickley, and supply them as the
genuine product of the Protector, Limited, down
came a note from the Secretary’s office, informing
Mr. Linnor, by “order of the board,” that if such
dereliction from the paths of duty occurred again,
he, Mr. Linnor, would forthwith be dismissed from
the responsible position which he held.
Neither for those brilliant creatures, dressed in
orange and green, who conveyed the bread from
Stangate to all parts of the metropolis, was there
such a thing as liberty. Their carts were numbered,
and if, on the hottest day in summer, they stopped
at the “Spotted Stag,” in Mile End Road, or the
“White Hart,” in Newington, or the “Greyhound,”
in Fulham, or any other favourite house of call, for
a pot of beer, 16, or 48, or 33, or 27, was had up
the same evening before the yard superintendent,
and “cautioned” for all the world—so the men themselves
said—as if the “governor was a beak.”
If, after this caution, any one still preferred ale
to employment, he was paid his wages and discharged
on the spot.
Altogether, it was a very perfectly-managed Company,
and quite a credit to its directors.
21Great people, when the periodical philanthropic
fit attacked their ranks, were not above driving over
to Stangate, and inspecting the works; and, on the
occasion of such visits, the Times would come
out with a leader, concerning pure bread and the
adulteration of food, which always sent the shares
up on the Stock Exchange, and made the aristocracy
feel that they had conferred vast benefits on
the labouring classes.
It was nice to be associated with so excellent a
Company. Good people felt that the blessing of the
Almighty must rest upon an enterprise, undertaken
in so Christian a spirit (there was much mention of
the poor in the prospectus), and that He, who had
fed the Israelites with manna in the wilderness,
would likewise satisfactorily regulate the Protector’s
dividends; for which reason, and others too numerous
and varied to mention, both great people and good
people, and good and great combined in the same
people, bought shares in the Company, sincerely
believing that, since time began, there had never
been any creature born so deserving of universal
support and encouragement as Mr. Black’s baby,
which was now a great child able to run alone, and
22earn something for itself, and even repay its benefactors
a portion of the money advanced to start
it fairly in the world.
When the first half-yearly meeting was held, the
directors not merely announced a dividend at the
rate of fifteen per cent. per annum, but also stated
their conviction, that the close of another half year
would exhibit a much larger proportion of profit,
since the expenses of conducting such a business in
the first instance were necessarily greater than
would subsequently prove the case.
Moreover, it was resolved that no further call
should be made on the shareholders, except in the
event of larger mills and more extensive premises
being required, when, as a natural consequence,
higher dividends might confidently be expected.
The directors had pleasure in communicating
the existence of a large reserve fund; and in stating
that the mills at Stangate had been greatly increased
in size, that the machinery was the very best known
for the purposes required, that every modern improvement
in the grinding of wheat and manufacture
of flour was to be found on the premises, and that,
as regarded the bakehouse, it was decidedly the
23most spacious, convenient, and best ventilated in the
kingdom.
All this, and a vast amount more, being duly
reported in the daily and weekly papers, shares
(money at the time chancing to be cheap) went up
again.
Then, the magazine-writers got hold of the Protector
as a nucleus on which might be constructed a
few light and entertaining papers concerning breadmaking
from the beginning of time, tracing the
progress of the staff of life from the kneading-troughs
of the Israelites down to the works of the
new Company at Stangate.
There was no difficulty about inspecting the
Protector’s premises. A man, salaried on purpose,
received ordinary visitors at the gates, and escorted
them through the whole process from grinding to
kneading, that is, if they came at an hour when
kneading was in progress—as literary gentlemen
always did.
“Wheat, from the Ear to the Breakfast Table,”
was the exhaustive title of one paper. Another,
supposed to be written by the same author, appeared
as “Hot Rolls!” “Our Daily Bread” graced the
24columns of one of the religious periodicals; while,
“Adulteration Considered Morally and Socially,”
was universally attributed by the critics to the pen
of one of the most gifted and thoughtful authoresses
of the day.
With all these helps, was it any wonder that the
shares of the Protector should soon be at a premium?
that every one connected with the Company felt
himself to be to some extent a person of consequence;
that Arthur Dudley forgot his fears, and only remembered
his interest in the great concern; that even
the mortgaging of Berrie Down grew in time to be
a mere bagatelle—a trifle not worth fretting about?
What might the shares not ultimately touch!
Supposing the ten pound share, paid up, came in
time to be worth a hundred pounds, why, his income
would be enormous; and there was nothing to prevent
the shares going on rising, rising in value. If
they reached fifty, would he sell? Arthur could not
decide this point to his own satisfaction. If he
sold, he should then have no anxiety about loss;
but, on the other hand, would it be wise to sell
before they reached their maximum? Then, who
ever could tell when the maximum was reached?
25These were the questions which perplexed the
Squire, building his castles in the air, while pacing
on the calm summer evenings round and round
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, smoking the while such cigars
as never fall to the lot of any one, save secretaries
and others of the same ilk, who get all sorts of good
things given to them by all kinds of singular people.
Arthur, in the days of which I am now writing,
never bought a cigar by any chance. He had boxes
of the best Havannas sent him, which he was now
not too proud to accept.
The world had gone round since he strolled
a poor man through the fields at Berrie Down.
Accepting a favour did not, according to the new
code, mean placing himself under an obligation.
No; it rather meant conferring an obligation on
the donor.
What those donors expected Arthur Dudley
would be able to do for them, it is impossible even
to conjecture. Arthur himself never knew; and so,
with an untroubled conscience, he smoked his cigars
and dreamed his dreams.
At this time, Heather was away from home—away
at the sea-side with her children, whom she
26took down to Hastings, for a month, in the hope
that sea-air might do Lally more good than all
Dr. Chickton’s prescriptions.
Quite as tenderly as he had treated Master
Charles Hope, that renowned practitioner inquired
into Lally’s symptoms, and devoted himself to the
restoration of her health; but for all this care the
child proved ungrateful.
She did not get much better. All the tonics
Doctor Chickton could prescribe, and Heather
with difficulty persuade her to take, failed to restore
her health, to make the little feet patter, patter over
the floor as of old.
She could walk a short distance, certainly, without
much fatigue, and drive for an hour or so at a time,
but still she was not the Lally of a twelvemonth
previously.
“What’s the use of cramming the child with all
that physic?” Doctor Marsden inquired one day
when he called in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. “Chickton
ordered it, did he? of course he did. When
you go and pay a man a guinea, he must order you
something; but now, without a guinea at all, I will
give you my advice, which is none the worse for
27being gratuitous. Take her to the sea-side; let her
be out all day long; if she will bear bathing, bathe
her; if that don’t set her up, nothing will.”
Very heartily Heather wished she could have
told Doctor Marsden, that, considering his son was
the cause of Lally’s illness, she thought the least he
could do was to proffer his advice civilly; but advice
in any shape was not to be despised, and accordingly
she adopted his suggestion, and bore Lally off.
At Hastings, she met not merely Mr. and Mrs.
Compton Raidsford and family, but also Mr. Allan
Stewart; who, after a time, took rather kindly to
Lally, and became interested in her recovery.
Like all the rest of the world, he too had his
favourite medical man, whom he not merely counselled
Heather to consult, but to whom also he
wrote a letter of introduction, in which he described
her as his friend, Mrs. Dudley.
They had been the merest acquaintances in town;
but intimacy is of quick growth when people meet
every day, and fifty times a day, on the sands, on
the Parade, in the lodgings of mutual friends, standing
listening to the bands, and to the solitary
murmur of the sea as it flows in on the shore.
28From Mrs. Raidsford, Heather heard how admirably
Agnes was managing Berrie Down.
“What a wonderful creature she must be!” continued
the lady; and yet, Heather fancied there was
a tone of disparagement in Mrs. Raidsford’s remark,
for which she was at a loss to account, until informed
that “Miss Baldwin was never out of the house;”
“has taken to your sisters quite as if they were her
own.”
This was not exactly news to Heather, for she
had understood from Agnes that Miss Baldwin continued
very kind indeed; but why the fact should
irritate Mrs. Raidsford puzzled her, until one of the
Misses Raidsford, observing, “Yes, we are entirely
forgotten now—Miss Baldwin is fond of new faces,”
threw some light upon the subject.
That Miss Baldwin should ever have been fond of
the Misses Raidsford’s faces, surprised Heather not
a little; but still she knew that Kemms Park had
at one time patronized Moorlands, and was able to
comprehend now where the sting of the Berrie
Down acquaintanceship lay.
With all her heart she wished Miss Baldwin
would leave the girls alone. Beyond all things she
29dreaded their being exposed to jealous and envious
remarks. The blessed seclusion, the utter privacy
in which they had hitherto lived, must, she knew,
have quite unfitted them to bear unkind speeches,
or ill-natured inuendoes with equanimity.
Had she acted rightly in leaving them alone at
Berrie Down—alone to receive many visitors, and
to bear the brunt of such gossip as that in which
she perceived Mrs. Raidsford was not above indulging?
The new acquaintances, whom Heather
in her innocence had imagined would make the
country a pleasanter residence for the girls, might
only expose their conduct to misconstruction. She
had no fear of anything Agnes and Laura might
say or do, but she felt afraid of what might be said
of them. Lord Kemms, she knew, was now at the
Park, having at length returned from Austria; and
in one of her letters Agnes mentioned his having
called at Berrie Down with his aunt.
Could this be another thorn in Mrs. Raidsford’s
side? Small as was the amount of tittle-tattle which
reached Heather’s ears, still she had heard some
talk of an attachment between Lord Kemms and
one of the young ladies at Moorlands. And,
30although it never entered into her mind to imagine
her husband’s portionless sisters could prove rivals
to the great contractor’s daughters, she yet gradually
came to understand that Mrs. Raidsford was
of a different opinion, and felt Berrie Down to be
a stumbling-block in her path.
“There is some distinction come between Mr. R.
and his Lordship,” Mrs. Raidsford was kind enough
to explain to Mrs. Dudley; “we are not on the
same terms of equality with him that we used to
be. I must say, I think the coolness began on our
side, for Mr. R., as you, no doubt, have heard, has a
perfect maniac against companies of all kinds, just
as though people had not a right to make themselves
into companies if they like, and it seems his
Lordship told him he would have nothing to do with
that ‘Protective’ affair of yours—no offence, Mrs.
Dudley—after which he went away and becomes
one of the fundamental proprietors of it. So, when
his Lordship came home, Mr. R. put on his high and
mighty, and would not call at the Park—as if the
‘Protective’ was any business of his—and so, when
we meet, we only bow; and I am as satisfied as I can
be of anything that his Lordship knows no more than
31the babe unborn what the reason of our distance is.
Indeed, he was beginning to ask me at the station,
when we met him, only the train moved off before
he could complete his inquiry. I think I shall
write to his Lordship, and detail the matter. If
Mr. R. likes to disseparate himself from old friends,
that is no reason why we should—is it, Mrs.
Dudley?”
In answer to which appeal, Heather said she did
not know. She thought, however, she should not
like to be on friendly terms with any one to whose
acquaintance her husband objected.
“But, then, you are like nobody else,” retorted
Mrs. Raidsford.
This remark, intended to be both hurtful and
depreciating, failed of its effect, because Heather
mentally hoped she was not much like Mrs. Raidsford.
“A woman whom Raidsford ought to have been
pilloried for marrying,” observed Mr. Stewart; “apparently,
he is a very worthy fellow himself, but I
am quite satisfied there must be some terrible want
in the character of any person who could make such
a creature his wife. There ought to be a law against
those kind of marriages.”
32“Perhaps——,” began Heather, and then she
stopped, colouring a little.
“Pray, complete your sentence, Mrs. Dudley,”
said Mr. Stewart; “you have roused my curiosity,
and it is not fair to have it unsatisfied.”
“I only hesitated lest what rose to my mind might
sound ill-natured. I do not mean, however, any sneer
when I say, that perhaps Mrs. Raidsford may have
been very suitable to her husband when he married
her. It is so difficult to express an opinion like that
without appearing to reflect on a man’s origin,” she
added, getting into unutterable depths of confusion;
“but I often think about a speech, a very dear girl
I once knew made, concerning Mrs. Raidsford. She
said, ‘it was such a pity a man could not choose again
when he came to years of social discretion.’”
“She used to say also,” remarked Lucy Dudley,
“that if Mr. Raidsford could only have foreseen how
high he was to rise in the world, Mrs. Raidsford
would probably now have been wife to some mechanic—cooking
steaks for his one o’clock dinner, instead
of being mistress of Moorlands, and having servants
much more ladylike than herself under her. Bessie
never was weary of mimicking Mrs. Raidsford.”
33“Who was this clever young lady?” asked Mr.
Stewart, for whom the very bitterness of such a
speech had its peculiar charm.
“A cousin of ours,” Lucy answered.
“Married, or still eligible?” inquired the old
bachelor.
Lucy did not reply; she looked at Heather, who,
after a moment’s embarrassed pause, replied,—
“She was engaged to be married, when with us,
last winter; but we have not heard from her since
she left Berrie Down.”
“Some feminine quarrel,” thought Mr. Stewart;
and, looking out over the sea, he laughed softly to
himself at the idea that all women were alike,—that
no two women could agree; that, let them be young
or old, pretty or ugly, sweet or sour, they could still
jangle and dispute like the veriest viragoes.
And yet, this Mrs. Dudley puzzled him: if she
had a temper, she must, he thought, have it under
wonderful control; if there were any evil in her, she
must have an astonishing power of concealing its
existence. To sisters and children, to friends and
servants, she was alike, gentle and forbearing. Never
but once did Mr. Stewart see her eyes darken, and
34her face flush under the influence of any strong emotion;
and then it was a slight thing which caused the
tell-tale blood to rush to brow, and cheek, and neck.
“I expect my niece, Mrs. Croft, to-morrow,” he
said; “I am happy to think she will be able to
make your acquaintance.”
Then there came that look, which was not quite
pleasant, over Heather’s face,—that look which set
Mr. Stewart marvelling as to “what could be up”
between the two women? Not an early jealousy, he
decided; for Mrs. Croft was many a year older than
Mrs. Dudley. What could it be? He was an
especially inquisitive old gentleman, as sharp and
keen concerning matters of feeling, as he was about
matters of business, and so he went on,—
“You have never met her, I think?”
“Never,” Heather answered; “but my husband
knew Mrs. Croft very well indeed at one time, and
quite recently they renewed their former acquaintance
at Copt Hall.”
“Copt Hall—is not that Mr. Hope’s place? I
recollect now, Douglas and his wife were staying
there last autumn. Your husband is some relation
of the Essex Hopes, is he not?”
35“His mother was a Miss Hope,” Heather explained;
and shortly afterwards Mr. Stewart took his
leave, trying to remember something he had heard
about Miss Laxton having jilted a former suitor
when she married his nephew. “Was Dudley the
lucky fellow’s name?” he asked himself. “I’ll find
out all about it when madam comes.”
In due time, madam came, and her husband with
her; and from the hour of their arrival, Heather
commenced longing to return to town. Had it not
been, indeed, that Lally was decidedly gaining
strength, she would forthwith have packed up and
departed; but the child was better; she could run
about a little, and at times there was a colour in her
face which made the poor mother trust the health
and the gaiety of old was about to be restored
to her.
How Mrs. Croft ridiculed Heather’s anxiety
about the little girl; how scornfully she would listen
to Lally’s prattle; with what open contempt she
watched the child sometimes struggling into
Mr. Stewart’s arms, and beheld him fondling and
caressing her, were things to be seen, not described.
A stately woman, who looked born to rule a
36nation of slaves, and seemed to regard every one
with whom she came in contact, her husband included,
as so much dirt under feet; a woman who
would have been beautiful but for the expression of
habitual bad temper on her face; a woman who
made every creature she met uncomfortable; who
treated Heather with supercilious insolence, and at
length told her without the slightest reserve she had
instructed her child well. “She is playing her cards
quite as cleverly as you,” finished Mrs. Croft, in a
tone of suppressed fury, one day when she saw Lally
throw down her wooden spade, and run with outstretched
arms to meet Mr. Stewart. “Commend
me to a meek, quiet woman when underhand means
are to be employed, and a legacy is in question.”
“Do you imagine I am expecting a legacy from
any one?” asked Heather.
“Of course I do,” was the reply, spoken while
Mrs. Croft swept along the Marina with her dress
trailing about two yards on the ground behind her;
“of course I do,” and her dark eyes looked over
Heather scornfully; “people generally expect their
godfathers to leave them something, do they not? and
your godfather’s money is well worth finessing for.
37I commend your prudence; some persons might
not think such conduct quite honourable, but that
never seems to have occurred to you. Mr. Stewart
has hitherto treated Mr. Croft as his heir. Now,
however——”
“Mr. Stewart’s affairs have not the slightest
interest for me,” interrupted Heather, hastily.
“Good morning!” and, without giving her companion
time to utter another word, Mrs. Dudley
turned and walked back along the Parade to the
point where Lally was still engaged in animated
conversation with her two gentlemen friends.
“It is time for you to come in, my pet,” she said,
descending one of the flights of wooden steps, and
making her way with difficulty over the shingle to
the sands. “If you see my sister, Mr. Stewart,
would you kindly ask her to bring Leonard back? I
do not like him to be out in the heat of the day. I
do not think it is good for children to be on the
shore when the sun has so much power.”
“Now, they have had a quarrel,” decided Mr.
Stewart, glancing along the Parade, where he
descried Mrs. Aymescourt Croft wending her way
homewards, solitary and stately, haughty and
38defiant. “I should like immensely to know what it is
all about. There is something very decidedly amiss
between my amiable niece and Mrs. Dudley.”
“Your wife and our pretty friend do not seem
able to stable their horses comfortably together,” he
said to Mr. Croft, when Heather, who declined all
offers both of companionship and of assistance, had
borne Lally—bitterly protesting against such injustice—away.
“How is it, do you think?”
“My wife is jealous,” was the prompt reply.
“Does she fancy you are smitten?”
“No; but she thinks you are,” Mr. Croft answered.
“She considers that Mrs. Dudley stands
too good a chance of being favourably remembered
in your will, for much cordial feeling to exist
amongst us.”
“And why the devil should I leave Mrs. Dudley
sixpence?” asked Mr. Stewart. “What is she to me
that I should bequeath anything to her, more than
to the first stranger I meet on the Marina?”
“My charming wife,” replied Mr. Croft, in that
daring tone of off-hand recklessness which, as Mr.
Black had remarked, was one of his peculiarities,
“my charming wife, giving you credit for a vein of
39romance, and a depth of sensibility which, I confess,
I never noticed in your character, imagines that the
revival of old associations, the thoughts of ‘Auld Lang
Syne,’ in fact, which the sight of Mrs. Dudley must
naturally have awakened, may produce an undesirable
effect upon the ultimate disposal of your property.
For my part, I am delighted at the opportunity now
afforded of assuring you I would much rather you
left your money to Mrs. Dudley than to my wife.”
“What are you talking about, Douglas?” asked
his uncle. From the drawing-room window of the
house they occupied Mrs. Croft could, with the
aid of an opera-glass, see, not merely that Mr.
Stewart stopped as he put this question, but that
he looked excited and perplexed. “What is Mrs.
Douglas to me, I ask again, that I should leave her
sixpence? She is a sweet woman, and pretty, and
devoted to her blockhead of a husband, but I should
not care if I never saw her again. Does your wife
think I am in love with her? Does she imagine I
am so nearly doting as all that comes to?”
Douglas Croft looked steadily in his uncle’s face
for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“It really is too amusing,” he said. “Do you
40mean to tell me you do not know who Mrs. Dudley
was?”
“No; who the deuce was Mrs. Dudley?” inquired
the other, testily.
“And she never has enlightened you?” persisted
Mr. Croft.
“If she had enlightened me I should have known,
I suppose, and I do not know who or what she was,
excepting a simpleton to marry Dudley. As you
seem so well informed, tell me this wonderful secret.
Who was Mrs. Dudley?”
“Heather Bell,” answered Mr. Croft.
“You do not mean that?”
“I do, upon my honour. Miss Hope told me and
my wife, and explained that it was you who selected
the name which seems to suit her so admirably.”
Mr. Stewart did not take any direct notice of this
information; he only resumed his walk over the
sands, saying to himself,—
“And so that is Heather Bell—so that is Heather
Bell!”
“You understand now why my wife regards her
with but small favour,” continued Mr. Croft;
“indeed, there is another reason why, perhaps,
41mutually the two ladies dislike and distrust each
other. Years ago, Dudley and Miss Laxton were
engaged. I knew nothing of it when I met her—when
I proposed to her—when she accepted me;
but the engagement was a fact, nevertheless. I am
so devotedly attached to her now, that there can
be no indiscretion in merely alluding to her one
fault—a love of money. I am confident that
she liked Dudley better than she ever liked me;
but I, being the richer of the two, gained the prize.
Of course, it is not in a woman’s nature, at least
it is not in Arabella’s nature, to look kindly on the
wife whom the man she jilted afterwards married.
On the other hand, all the world knows Dudley does
not appreciate quite so highly the blessing he has
gained, as the blessing he has lost; and for that
reason I fancy poor Mrs. Dudley does not feel particularly
comfortable in my Arabella’s society.
Further, there may be a little mutual jealousy, both
being above the average in appearance. Now, you
have the exact state of the case, so far as I know it.”
Still Mr. Stewart made no reply; he only walked
on more swiftly over the sands, which were at this
point wet and disagreeable, while the waves came
42lapping in—lapping in; and the burden of his
reverie was, “So that is Heather Bell—that is
Heather Bell!”
There was a story in the man’s life, though no
one of his kith or kin suspected it. He had loved
once—once in his middle age, when the disease
always leaves traces behind—passionately!
and the woman he loved was Heather’s mother;
but the secret of his unrequited attachment had lain
between the two; and now she was dead, and here
was her child, and the child of the man who took
the best hope of his life away, thrown across his
path once more.
Heather Bell—Heather Bell, the waves seemed
to murmur the name as they stole upon the sands;
and the old man grew young again as the years
faded away; and he saw, reflected as in a mirror, the
bright glad face of the long, and long ago, when he
first, at Sir Wingrave Bell’s, met Lilian Gladwin,
who was even in those days engaged to the baronet’s
cousin, William, then a poor curate in London, and
afterwards the poor rector of Layford, Derbyshire.
CHAPTER III. “LIKE A MAN’S HAND.”
43
What a cruel world it is; what a hard, wicked,
misjudging, uncharitable, mercenary world! Thus
Heather Dudley reflected, while, without waiting
for Lucy or Leonard, she walked homewards with
Lally, the hot tears filling her eyes and coursing
down her cheeks as she recalled Mrs. Croft’s insulting
words, as she came gradually to comprehend
the full meaning of her insolent accusation.
She could not help crying; the world’s cruelty
and the world’s wickedness were new experiences
to her.
The maladies of being thought ill of, of having
her most innocent notions misconstrued, of hearing
intentions imputed to her which she was utterly
incapable of harbouring, had not fallen to her when
44young, and now taken in her maturer years they
seemed so severe that it was almost impossible for
her to endure them patiently.
To be accused of toadying any person; that it
should for a moment be supposed she could ever have
mentioned the name of her family to Mr. Stewart,
when, lest it might even seem as though she were
thereby preferring any claim to old acquaintanceship
on him, she had sedulously avoided all allusions to
her former home, or any of her early recollections.
“I—I—do such a thing!” she thought; “I pay
court to him for his money; I, who detest money;
I, who could live on the merest pittance anywhere
and be happy; and who would rather live on a
pittance than mix amongst hard, cruel, mercenary
people; and to imply that I was such a wretch as to
school my innocent child in deceit and affectation.
Ah!” she reflected, softening a little; “it is plain
she never was a mother; if she had been, she could
not have imputed trickery of that kind to me;”
which speech showed, not how much Heather knew
of mothers, but how little she knew of the world.
“It was cruel, though—” thus the mental strain
ran on—“cruel to imagine such a thing; cruel to
45express it;” and Heather would probably have continued
making these statements silently to her own
heart, whilst her tears flowed as fast as her thoughts,
had Lally not caused a diversion by stating:
“You walk too quick, ma; you tire me.” Then
Heather sat down upon one of the benches and
caught Lally to her; she was ashamed that even for
a moment her own anger should have made her
forget the child’s possible weariness. She had gone
on, dragging Lally after her, and the little one was
both warm and tired with the unwonted exercise.
“Are you hot, too, ma?” she asked, trying to
push up her mother’s veil, an attempt which Heather
strove too late to resist. “Oh! you’ve been crying,
ma; you’ve been vexed; was it tall wicked
lady? Never mind—Lally’s better—arn’t you glad
Lally’s nearly better as well? Do not cry, pease,
mamma—pease—pease.”
And the poor, little, eager face puckered itself up
to weep also; and the brown eyes—which had in
them at times a look of Heather—filled with tears,
and the thin arms twined themselves about her
mother’s neck, and Lally became altogether very
piteous on the subject of her mother’s grief.
46Looking out over the dancing sea, so bright, so
sunshiny, so smooth, clasping her first-born to her
heart, Heather felt that there was reason in the
child’s words; that, seeing Lally’s health even partially
restored, she had no right to weep or lament
over any mere worldly grievance.
What was Mrs. Croft to her, that she should
attach weight to her angry sentences, her slanderous
accusations? What were they all—Mr. Stewart,
and his nephew and niece? Nothing but people
whom she had met for a day or two, and should
perhaps meet again never more. Why should she
fret over a false and libellous charge? If she were
capable of such conduct as that whereof Mrs. Croft
had accused her, she might then weep, but not
otherwise.
She would endeavour for the future to avoid
St. Leonard’s. Her children should keep down by
the East Parade, or amuse themselves on the Castle
Hill, for the few days she purposed remaining at
Hastings. No one should say she put herself or
them in the way of rich people—at least, no one
should say so with even a shadow of a foundation
of truthfulness.
47She would not do what she had in the first smart
of the blow intended—pack up, and leave Hastings
by the next train—but she would never subject herself
to such an imputation again. She could, and
she would, be out for the future when Mr. Stewart
called, and she might walk at such hours and in
such directions as should separate her and hers
altogether from their more wealthy acquaintances.
It is quite unnecessary to add that she and Lucy
had a thoroughly comfortable and exhaustive conversation
on the subject that same evening after
the children were in bed; in the course of which
Lucy expressed her opinion, not merely that dear
Heather was quite right in her decision about Mr.
Stewart, but also concerning the girls at Berrie
Down.
“We should all be ever so much happier together
in town,” the young lady opined; “together anywhere.
Could not Arthur let Berrie Down, or
put in a care-taker, as Mr. Black has so often
suggested? not but that it would seem terrible to
leave the Hollow altogether; still, if we are not to
live there, what is the use of having it lying empty?”
In reply to which Heather could only answer:
48“There is no place in the world like Berrie Down.”
And then the pair had a little sympathetic cry, which
did them both a considerable amount of good.
After all, they had spent a very pleasant month
at Hastings; and though a cloud had towards the
last darkened their sky, still who can expect fair
weather to continue day after day?
Is not it the inevitable rule that storms must
come, if only to clear the air; that women should
shed tears in order that their eyes may be all
the brighter afterwards? What right had Mrs.
Dudley to look for a succession of sunshiny hours,
when Douglas Croft, who was popularly supposed to
be the most lucky fellow on earth, met with nothing
but contrary winds and heavy rains during the short
periods in the year he and his wife reluctantly spent
together?
If there were any state of life in which Mrs.
Douglas Croft would have been content, that state
had still to be discovered; if there were anything
her husband could have done to please her, he had
certainly never hit upon it.
Did he keep the windows shut, she wondered
what he was made of to sit in such a suffocating
49room; did he fling them wide open in the morning,
he knew she detested a draught, and the sight of
that glitter on the sea; did he wish to ride, she
thought he might have more consideration than to
propose his wife mounting a hired horse; did he
suggest driving, she wondered, if he were so fond of
seeing the country, he had not brought down his
servants and carriages, as other people did; did he
offer to walk with her, she was invariably tired;
did he even mention leaving the house without her,
she thought, “considering he favoured her with so
little of his society, he might remain indoors for half
an hour in the course of the day; did he go out in
a boat, she might as well have married a London
tradesman; did he finally ask her what the devil
she would have him do, since he had come to the
slowest place on earth to please her and not himself,
she replied, that if he had not sufficiently gentlemanly,
or even manly, feeling to know how to treat
his wife properly, it was a pity he ever married
any one higher in rank than some poor factory
girl.”
“I could not have married you, remember,” answered
Mr. Croft, “had you not first jilted Dudley;”
50whereupon she sighed, “Poor Arthur!” and declared
“he never would have broken a woman’s heart.”
“You would very soon have broken his,” retorted
her husband; “though, upon my honour, Dudley
is the only man I should not have pitied seeing
married to you.”
“Because you admire that creature with red hair,
whom he chose after me! after me by way of contrast,
I suppose. Oh! she has not red hair? I
confess I was under the delusion she had; but no
doubt your opportunities of judging have been
greater than mine. She is a very pretty woman,
you say; of course you think every woman pretty,
excepting your own wife. She is the kind of creature
some men do admire, and she has that manner—that
meek, mild, submissive, milk-and-water manner—which
always makes me long to strike her and
ask how she likes that. I do detest those amiable
hypocrites. It is a pity you cannot get rid of me,
and marry her.”
“If I were to marry all the women I admire, I
should have as many wives as Brigham Young,”
answered Mr. Croft; “besides, I am not quite certain
that Mrs. Dudley is my style. She has too
51much of the angel about her; certainly, ‘extremes
meet’; but still, after you, that change would be
almost too severe:” and so the pair were wont to
wrangle on, while Mr. Stewart sat calmly reading
the Times, or else remarked that he never so
much regretted his single condition as when he
witnessed his nephew’s connubial felicity.
“It is all his fault,” Mrs. Croft was in the habit
of asserting, to which Mr. Stewart invariably made
reply:
“I know that, my dear Arabella, perfectly well;
no wife ever is in fault.”
“Mrs. Dudley could not be, we may suppose,”
Mrs. Croft snapped back, on the day following her
quarrel with Heather.
“If she could, she must differ greatly from the
remainder of her sex,” answered Mr. Stewart, who
was, Mrs. Croft frequently assured those lady friends
that she honoured with her confidence, “one of the
most disagreeable, cynical old bores a woman ever
had to tolerate for the sake of his money.”
On the whole, visits from his niece were amongst
the number of those blessings with which Mr. Stewart
could very readily have dispensed. He liked his
52nephew, and he pitied him; but Mrs. Croft was
decidedly de trop in any house which held at the
same time Allan Stewart, Esquire, of Layford.
Very frequently, people wondered why uncle and
nephew kept up separate establishments, but then it
was remembered that more than once Mr. Stewart
had openly regretted the fact of his only near relation
having married a woman whom he never could
regard in the light of a daughter.
Of this fact Mrs. Croft was perfectly well aware,
and she felt madly jealous accordingly, when she
beheld the increasing intimacy between Heather and
her godfather.
“She will supplant you to a certainty, Douglas,”
the amiable wife remarked.
“Well, my love, if she do, I dare say we can
still, with economy, manage to exist,” answered
Mr. Croft. “Upon strict principles of justice,
indeed, I think Dudley ought to have my uncle’s
money; I won you from him, you remember; now,
it seems to me, he ought to have a turn. Do not
fret yourself about the matter, Arabella—I take it
philosophically—why cannot you do the same?”
“The same! I have no patience with such
53absurdity; but I think I have showed Mrs. Dudley
there is one of the family, at least, clever enough to
see what she is trying for.”
“Do you not think it possible for a woman to be
too clever, occasionally?” inquired her husband;
“because it occurs to my mind you have overshot
the mark by the merest trifle. My uncle did not
know the touching relation in which he stood to Mrs.
Dudley, until you quarrelled with her. Very possibly
he would never have known, had I not, in consequence
of that little flourish up the Marina, told him.”
“You—told him?”
“Yes, my love; I considered it was only right he
should know the great provocation you had received,
so that he might not think the slight coolness between
you and Mrs. Dudley originated in any fault
on your side. He quite understands your feelings,
and appreciates them fully.”
“Douglas, you are either mad or infatuated.”
“Do not moot the former idea before my uncle,
or he may cut me off with a shilling, and so deprive
you of all chance of ever managing his estates. For
myself, I do not care for more money; I am thinking
of going out to Australia, and taking a sheepfarm;
54of doing the Arcadian for a few years, during
which time you will marry some one else, and I
shall enjoy a bachelor’s existence by way of variety.
I am growing horribly tired of the monotony of
civilised life. I wonder if I could join a mission as
a muscular Christian, and go out to convert the
heathen. I should like to see how a fellow with a
lot of wives manages them. I should preach the
same doctrines as——”
But at this point Mrs. Croft swept out of the
room, and her husband took advantage of her
absence to seize his hat and leave the house, and
march away in a blazing sun to Hastings, where,
according to the programme she had sketched for
her own guidance, Heather was not at home.
“I am getting confoundedly tired of this,” Mr.
Croft remarked to his uncle next day, as they
lounged together along the Marina; “suppose we
swear business requires our immediate presence in
town; cannot we have letters by the five o’clock
post, compelling us to go up by the express to-morrow
morning? Madam in town is bad enough,
but madam at a watering-place, or in the country,
is scarcely to be borne.”
55“What a choice you made, Douglas!” said his
uncle, in a tone of plaintive rebuke.
“Did I choose at all? I doubt it,” was the
reply. “Since my marriage, I often should have
liked to choose; but perhaps, had power been given
me to do so, I might only have made a worse mess
of it. The best of a marriage like mine is, it makes
a man so philosophical. It leaves one nothing to
wish for, nothing to desire; jealousy, over-affection,
anxiety about the dear creature’s health; sleepless
nights if her finger aches; torturing doubts if another
fellow is over-zealous in finding her shawls—from
all these troubles I am exempt. My domestic life
leaves me nothing to fret about. Like that young
man in Longfellow’s poem,—
“‘Light-hearted and content,
I wander through the world;’
only I do not carry two locks of hair about with
me and sentimentalize concerning them, so that in
one respect I have an advantage over the widower.”
“If your wife were in heaven, I do not think you
would carry one of her curls done up in note-paper
in your left-hand waistcoat pocket, after the fashion
56of a man I once knew,” remarked Mr. Stewart a
little grimly.
“Well, now, do you know I think I should,” answered
Mr. Croft; “when a woman is so kind as to
die, it seems to me the least in common gratitude
her husband can do, is to use his handkerchief
freely, and publicly preserve little mementoes of
her—the stalk of the last bunch of grapes she
ate, for instance, her box of rouge, or the puff
wherewith she powdered her face. To me there is
something inexpressibly touching about relics; most
probably because they are useless. I always notice
people admire and reverence things which are utterly
useless, that is one reason I am so fond of my wife.
Oh! Arabella; oh, my beloved! there she stands at
the window awaiting my return. Signalling for it,
too, by all that’s wonderful; shall we go and ascertain
the cause of that waving cambric?” And Mr.
Stewart agreeing, the pair crossed the road and
entered the house, when they soon discovered the
reason of Mrs. Croft’s anxiety for their return in the
shape of a telegram for Mr. Stewart, which had
arrived about an hour previously.
“It is from Dudley,” said that gentleman, placing
57the paper in his nephew’s hand. “Nice kettle of
fish, is not it? We can catch the next train, I
suppose?”
“What is the matter; what has happened?”
inquired Mrs. Croft.
“Nothing, except that a gentleman on our board
will not be reasonable,” answered Mr. Stewart.
“He wants talking to, I think. Come, Douglas—that
is, if you are coming with me. Good-bye,
Arabella, we shall be down again to-morrow.”
“Good-bye, my dear,” repeated Mr. Croft.
“Comfort yourself, as I do, that the parting is not
for ever;” and the pair hurried off to St. Leonard’s
Station, talking as they went about the telegram,
which Mr. Stewart now tore up into little scraps,
and scattered to the wind.
“My mind always misgave me concerning him,”
said Mr. Stewart. “I asked Black specially if he
had authority for putting his name on the direction.”
“It is an old trick of Black’s, I believe, that of
using names without permission,” answered Mr.
Croft; “you will see Frank, I suppose, and try to
alter his purpose?”
58“Yes, that is why I am now going to town; and
I asked you to accompany me, thinking you would
be glad of a holiday.”
“You are very kind. I do not fancy I should
have much cared for a tête-à-tête with madam by the
sad sea waves; and Mrs. Dudley refuses to be at
home to me.”
“You can scarcely blame her for that,” remarked
his uncle.
“I am not blaming her, only I think it is carrying
the theory of husband and wife being one, a little
too far. However, if such be her will, I must resign
myself to it.”
They were standing on the platform at St.
Leonard’s as Mr. Croft spoke thus, and even as he
spoke, the train came out of the first tunnel and
stopped to take up its passengers.
“Why, good heavens, there is Mrs. Dudley,” exclaimed
Mr. Croft. “Can you make room for us?”
he asked, eagerly opening the door of the compartment
she occupied. “Are you all returning to
town? I had not the slightest expectation of meeting
you here.”
“We always meant to return to-day,” answered
59Heather, after she had spoken to Mr. Stewart, and
the two gentlemen were seated vis-à-vis. “But I
thought you were going to remain for some time
longer?”
“So we are, unhappily, I believe,” he replied,
putting up the window in order to keep the smoke
out of the carriage while passing through the second
tunnel. “I only wish,” he added, as they sped on
out into the sunshine again, “we were not going to
remain. I think St. Leonard’s the most wearisome
spot on the face of the whole earth.”
“And we have enjoyed our visit so much!” said
Heather.
“But then ladies have resources within themselves
of which we men know nothing,” he answered.
“I cannot agree with that,” Heather replied;
“we may have resources at home, but certainly not
in lodgings; and there is one thing you can do which
we cannot—smoke; Lucy and I, for instance, could
not have amused ourselves for a whole evening walking
up and down the Parade slowly puffing cigars,
as I have seen you and Mr. Stewart doing.”
“No, but you could let your dresses sweep the
ground,” answered Mr. Croft. “I often fancy that
60swish-swish of my wife’s train must produce the same
soothing effect upon her nerves as a cigar does on
mine. Now, Miss Lally, you have not spoken one
word to me for the last four days, and my heart is
broken in consequence. Will you be good and talk
to me now?” and Mr. Croft put out his hand to the
little girl, who came tumbling over from the opposite
corner to make up friends again with her old
admirer, who took her on his knee, and instituted
particular inquiries into the state of her health.
“Was she better—much better—able to run half
a mile without getting tired?”
“Yes,” she declared, “more than ’at; ’ook at
mine face; ma says it has got fat;” and she put up
her little hands to her cheeks, and so drew all the
flesh forward for Mr. Croft to contemplate.
“Fat, are you, little one?” broke in Mr. Stewart;
“not much of that, I fear; let me look at you.
She does seem considerably better,” he added,
addressing Mrs. Dudley. “You will take her to
see Mr. Henry, though, will you not?”
Heather answered that she certainly should,
whereupon Lally insisted on knowing exactly who
Mr. Henry was, and being informed a doctor, declared
61she would rather not see him. “Other
doctor gave me nasty stuff to drink, sour, and Lally
did not like him.”
“Very ungrateful on your part,” remarked Lucy,
“for Doctor Chickton was exceedingly kind to
you.”
“Didn’t like him,” repeated the child, determinedly;
“said sour stuff wasn’t bad to take, and
it was dre’ful; said it would make Lally well, and
it didn’t. He told ’tories, he did.”
“Are you glad you are going back to London?”
inquired Mr. Stewart.
“No,” said Lally, “don’t like it either. I’d like
to go home and see the chick-a-biddies, and Dash,
and Nip and Nep, and the ponies, and Ned;” and
so the child talked on, her eyes dancing with delight
as she spoke of the old home any other little
girl might almost have forgotten in the time, while
Mr. Stewart looked thoughtfully in her face flushed
with excitement, and wondered what value his friend,
Mr. Rymner Henry, might set on her chances of
life.
Mr. Croft delighted greatly in Lally. He encouraged
her to be what her mamma called naughty,
62to chatter away at express speed, to tell him all
about Berrie Down, and Aggy, and Laura, “and
then there used to be Bessie, you know,” added the
child. “Ah! Bessie was good to Lally. She
singed to her, and dressed the beau-ful-lest dolls;
but Lally will never see Bessie no more—no, never
no more;” and the little face began to twitch, and
the lips to tremble, and then the brown eyes filled
with tears, and finally Lally lifted up her voice and
wept.
“What is the matter?” inquired Mr. Stewart, who
had been engaged in a conversation with Lucy.
“What have you done, Douglas, to cause such
grief?”
“I want to see Bessie,” sobbed the child.
“And who is it that is so cruel as to prevent
your seeing her?” asked Mr. Stewart.
“She is not with us now,” explained Mrs. Dudley.
“She was staying at the Hollow for some months
before we left Hertfordshire, and Lally grew
very fond of her. I cannot imagine why she so
continually talks about her now, though; I do not
fancy other children have such tenacious memories.
Sometimes for weeks together she will never mention
63Bessie’s name, and then she breaks out as you see.
I wish she would not do it. It is very bad for her,
fretting so much after any one. Lally, my darling,
you must be patient; whenever Bessie can come to
see you, she will.”
“No,” moaned Lally, “no more. Bessie will come
to Lally back again, never no more.”
There was something terribly pathetic about the
child’s grief even to those who knew nothing whatever
of Bessie, or of the circumstances connected
with her departure.
“Can’t she come and see the child?” asked Mr.
Stewart, a little testily. “Surely, if she be at all
within reach, such a yearning as this might be
gratified.”
“Perhaps so,” Heather answered, “if we knew
where she was; but I have never heard from her
since she last left Berrie Down.”
“Did you part in anger then?” Mr. Stewart
inquired, true to his theory concerning women’s
quarrels.
“In anger!” Heather repeated in astonishment,
“when we all loved Bessie as though she had been
one of our own household! Why she does not write to
64me, I cannot tell, only I know she has some good
reason for her silence; and I would rather not talk
about her any more, or, perhaps, like Lally, I shall
begin to be foolish and cry too.” An explanation
necessitated by the fact that Mrs. Dudley was crying
partly because of her child’s grief, and partly
because she never could speak of Bessie without a
feeling of bitter sorrow.
After that there fell a sudden silence on the
party, during the continuance of which Heather
employed herself in adjusting Master Leonard’s
collar, which was crooked to an unimaginable
extent; Mr. Stewart read the newspaper; Lucy
looked at Heather; and Mr. Croft, his chin resting
on Lally’s head, gazed out of the window, his
thoughts wandering the while miles, and miles
away.
“Do you expect Mr. Dudley to meet you?” asked
Mr. Stewart, when the train had passed New Cross,
and was speeding on through Bermondsey.
“No,” Heather answered; “but his brother will
be at the station.”
“Oh! he has brothers.”
“Two,” Heather explained; and a few minutes
65afterwards she was introducing Alick to Mr. Stewart,
who looked on him not ungraciously, while Mr.
Croft stood a little apart, apparently by no means
desirous of making Mr. Alexander Dudley’s acquaintance.
“We are detaining you,” Heather said, at length,
to Mr. Stewart; who remarked, as he bade her
“Good-bye,” that he also was going to Lincoln’s
Inn Fields, and should probably arrive there
first.
Then she turned and looked for Mr. Croft, who,
unable longer to avoid the situation, now came
forward, and assisted her into a cab.
As he did so, Alick, with a sudden amazement,
recognised him.
“Who is that gentleman?” he asked Heather;
while the object of this inquiry followed Mr.
Stewart into a hansom, which immediately drove
off.
“Mr. Croft—Mr. Douglas Aymescourt Croft.
Why? Do you know him; have you ever seen him
before?”
“I think I have once,” Alick answered, remembering
for certain he had met that same individual
66rather more than twelve months previously, on the
Sunday afternoon when he walked across to North
Kemms church with Bessie, and she left her prayer-book
behind her in the pew.
CHAPTER IV. AT KEMMS PARK.
67
Lord Kemms’ attention “having,” at length, “been
called” (this was the gist of a letter his Lordship
wrote to the Times) to the fact of his name appearing
in the list of directors of the “Protector
Bread and Flour Company, Limited,” begged to
state, not merely that he had given no authority for
such use of his name, but that, when applied to for
permission by the promoter, Mr. Peter Black, he
had, in the most unequivocal terms, refused to have
anything whatever to do either with the “Protector”
or any other company. His Lordship added, that
“having failed to obtain a satisfactory explanation
of the circumstances under which his name was
placed upon the Direction, either from the secretary
of the Company or Mr. Black, he trusted the Editor
68of the Times would insert his letter, and thus give
him (Lord Kemms) an opportunity of setting himself
right with the general public.”
This letter was written after a somewhat stormy
interview with Arthur Dudley and Mr. Black, and
despatched to the Times’ office hours before Mr.
Stewart’s arrival in town. When that gentleman,
after touching en route at the offices in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields, did reach Lord Kemms’ town house, he
was informed his Lordship had left for Kemms Park
by the 5.8 express.
On receiving this intelligence, Mr. Stewart and
his nephew drove straight to King’s Cross, where
they caught the 7.15 to Palinsbridge, from which
place they proceeded in a fly, procured at the Plough
Hotel, to Kemms’ Park.
Arrived there, between ten and eleven o’clock at
night, Mr. Stewart bade the driver wait; and then,
following the butler, who stared to see visitors at
such an hour, was ushered into the drawing-room,
where were seated Miss Augusta Baldwin, Lord
Kemms, and Mr. Compton Raidsford.
“If I were inclined to quote Mr. Black,” remarked
Mr. Stewart, after exchanging greetings with his
69relations, “I should say, here we drop upon the
conspirators. Now, Frank, what is all this about
you and our Company? Nice dance you have led
me over it! Why could you not have stopped in
town till you had seen some of us, as any other
human being would, I think, excepting yourself?”
“Mr. Raidsford had kindly promised to dine with
me to-day.”
“Very good of Mr. Raidsford,” answered Mr.
Stewart, with a look towards that gentleman, which
seemed to say “I know all about it;” “and I suppose
you and Mr. Raidsford have been settling our concerns
for us over your claret. We stand at opposite
poles,” he added, addressing the contractor; “there
can be no doubt but that in some previous state of
existence you were bitten by a company, and have
had a kind of hydrophobic horror of Limited Liability
ever since. Now, Frank, tell me all your grievances;
what is this about your good name being taken
from you?”
“It has been used without my authority,” answered
his Lordship. “I told Mr. Black distinctly
I would have nothing to do with his venture, and
after that he coolly went and put my name on the
Direction.”
70“He quite understood, I think; that you had
given your consent?”
“I beg your pardon: the last interview I ever
had with Mr. Black, until to-day, was at Berrie
Down, and I then told him nothing should induce
me to lend my countenance to any undertaking of
the kind.”
“It was a pity Mr. Black did not take you at
your word, Frank,” said Mr. Douglas Croft; “we
could have done without you.”
“You will have to do without me now,” retorted
Lord Kemms. “I have written to the Times to say
that my name was used without my authority.”
“You are confoundedly touchy about your name,
if Miss Baldwin will excuse my saying so,” observed
Mr. Stewart; which remark Miss Baldwin apparently
took as a hint that the presence of ladies was undesired,
for she rose and left the room, stating, with
a gracious smile to Mr. Stewart, that she would not
remain, and so prevent his saying whatever he liked.
“I consider Frank has been very hasty,” she added,
glancing defiantly in the direction where Mr. Raidsford
sat; “but I profess to know nothing of business.”
“Then I wish, aunt, you would not interfere in
71mine,” answered Lord Kemms; “and, as for my
name,” he went on, addressing Mr. Stewart, “how
should you like yours to be put on any board of
direction without your authority?”
“I should not like it at all,” replied his visitor;
“but still I should not think it necessary to go perfectly
insane on the subject, as you appear to have
done. Dudley tells me you stormed at Mr. Black
to-day like a woman; that you would not listen to
a word of explanation; and that you dashed out of
the office without giving either of them an opportunity
of even attempting to arrange the matter
with you.”
“Because Black had the audacity to tell me I
did give him permission, and adhered to the statement.
He first insinuated I was trying to back out
of the affair, and then wished to know if some
pecuniary compromise could not be effected. The
insolent vagabond coolly told me, ‘that was always
the way with gentlemen,—that a merchant’s word
was as good as his bond, but that, unless you had
everything with a swell (the expression he used) in
black and white, there was no dependence to be
placed upon how matters might turn out.’”
72“Very foolish of Black to make such a speech,”
Mr. Stewart commented. “You must have put up
his temper by some means, Frank.”
“I made him confess he was a liar,” said Lord
Kemms.
“My dear fellow, how very vehement you are!”
expostulated his kinsman; “you could not express
your meaning more strongly if you were a costermonger!”
“I do not see why I should not employ the only
word which thoroughly expresses my meaning, even
though it be used by a costermonger also. Mr.
Black stated that I allowed my name to be put on
the Direction. I asked him when? He declared at
the time we were staying at Berrie Down. I reminded
him, that the last occasion on which we met
in Hertfordshire was one day I called at the Hollow,
when I told him, in Mr. Dudley’s presence, I would
have nothing to do with the Company. Then he
said, he had made a mistake—it was when he saw
me at my house in London. I told him he had
never seen me at my house in London—that, at the
time he inquired there for me, I was in Paris. Then
he declared it must have been at Palinsbridge
73station; at any rate, he knew I had promised to let
him have my name, and that it was too absurd for
me, after having seen myself advertised for twelve
months, to try to repudiate connection with the
‘Protector’ now.”
“And he was quite right there,” observed Mr.
Stewart.
“I regret to differ from you,” here put in Mr.
Raidsford; “but I cannot agree with that opinion.”
Mr. Stewart looked over at the speaker with an
expression which seemed to say, that it was a matter
of supreme indifference to him whether Mr. Raidsford
agreed or not, but still he condescended to
explain that “Lord Kemms had suffered judgment
to go by default.”
“Mr. Black’s very remark!” said Lord Kemms.
“He drew his shoulders up to his ears, and stuffed
his hands under the waistband of his trousers——”
“Really, Frank, you are needlessly descriptive,”
expostulated Mr. Stewart.
“And said,” proceeded Lord Kemms, unheeding
the interruption, “you know, my Lord, it is of no
sort of manner of use your kicking up an infernal
row about the matter now. You have suffered
74judgment to go by default; and whether you intended
your name to be on our board or not, cannot
make any difference at this time of day; so you had
better let us come to some arrangement. Speaking
on behalf of the other directors, I am certain the
Company will do what it can to meet your views.”
“Could a man have spoken any fairer than that?”
inquired Mr. Stewart.
“Fairer! I never heard anything so perfectly
cool and impertinent in my life!” exclaimed Lord
Kemms. “First, to use my name, and then dare to
say, ‘I need not try to set myself right with the
public!’”
“What do you suppose the public cares about
the affair?” asked Mr. Croft. “To whom, do you
imagine, it signifies in the least whether your name
is on the Direction or not?”
“It signifies to me,” replied his Lordship.
“Why?” demanded Mr. Stewart.
“Because I do not choose to be mixed up with
speculations of the kind; because I refused to be
associated with your Company; because I won’t be
overreached in this way; because other names may
have been used in the same manner, and it is time
75promoters were taught such liberties cannot be taken
with impunity.”
“Our Company is a good one—paying very
good dividends, and you have risked no money in
it,” suggested Mr. Croft.
“Your Company may be a good one, or it may
not,” replied Lord Kemms; “but, good or bad, I
won’t be mixed up with it. I will have nothing to
do with adventures or speculations of any kind.”
“It is a pity you were not always so particular
concerning the things you connected yourself with,
Frank,” remarked his cousin.
“Let by-gones be by-gones, Douglas,” interposed
Mr. Stewart, hastily; “because a man sees the folly
of his ways now, there is no justice in twitting him
with having been less far-sighted formerly. No
doubt, Frank is right as to the general principle;
but this is rather a special case, with some peculiarities
about it, which he will, doubtless, take into
consideration. In the first place,” he added, addressing
Lord Kemms, “we will admit there has
been some misunderstanding on the subject——”
“No,” was the reply, “I will admit nothing of
the kind. Black understood me perfectly——”
76“Well, granting that he did understand you, what
particular harm has his use of your name done? It
is associated not with obscure Cockneys or swindlers,
but with decently-respectable, solvent men, like
Douglas and myself, for example. Of course, we
know, we are not lords; but still, we have a fancy
we are honest, and possess some money. Our
venture is turning out very well. No doubt the
proper number of shares has been allotted to you.
You take no responsibility—you run no risk; by
making a fuss over the affair, you will do yourself
no good, and may do us considerable harm. You
will take time to think over the matter, and
you will, when you have cooled down a little,
decide to make no public scandal concerning the
affair.”
“I have already written to the Times,” answered
his Lordship.
“But not posted the letter, I hope. Bring it
here, Frank, and we will smoke a calumet of peace
over its ashes.”
“Impossible! I sent it to the Times’ office before
I left London.”
“If we had known that, we might have saved
77ourselves this agreeable journey,” said Mr. Croft;
while Mr. Stewart observed:
“Well, Frank, all I can say is, I am very sorry;
for now we shall have to fight you as best we
can. Once in the Times, it is war to the death, you
know.”
“It was not I who sought the war,” answered
Lord Kemms.
“After waiting nearly twelve months, you might
surely have waited another day.”
“It was only yesterday I knew anything about
the matter. I happened to be over at the Hollow
with my aunt, and on the drawing-room table I saw
one of the ‘Protector’ prospectuses. Glancing at
it, I knew for the first time the use Black had made
of my name.”
“It is singular your friend, Mr. Raidsford, did
not communicate the fact to you before,” observed
Mr. Stewart, with a slight sneer.
“There has been a coolness between me and Lord
Kemms for some time past,” interposed Mr. Raidsford,
“originating in this very affair. Lord Kemms
assured me he would have nothing to do with your
Company; and when, after that assurance, I saw
78his name amongst the directors, I confess I felt
both surprised and nettled.”
“And pray, sir, if the question be not indiscreet,
what interest was it of yours whether Lord Kemms
became a director of our Company or not?”
“It was no personal interest of mine,” answered
the contractor; “but believing, as I do, such companies
to be the curse of commerce—the very death
of legitimate trade—when I am asked for my poor
opinion, I do not hesitate about expressing it.”
“You consider capital, then, which employs
labour, which builds bridges, constructs railways,
digs canals, sends out vessels, the death of legitimate
trade?” inquired Mr. Stewart.
“Capital, no,” was the reply; “companies, yes—at
least, limited liability companies.”
“And yet the idea of the man who brought in,
and the majority which passed, the Limited Liability
Act, was, that, so far from killing trade, it would
foster and encourage commerce.”
“So we may conclude, or else it would never have
become law,” was the reply.
“Trade has always been crippled for want of
capital,” remarked Mr. Croft.
79“And trade always will be,” answered Mr.
Raidsford; “it is in the nature of trade to find whatever
capital it may have insufficient. In precise proportion
to the extent of his business are a man’s
outstanding debts; consequently, the larger his business
is, the greater are the number of his debtors.
His capital, in fact, goes into his books; and instead
of so much in the bank, he has so many hundreds of
people owing him money.”
“The idea of limited liability was to enable a man
to put a certain sum of money into a business, and
have no further responsibility,” said Mr. Stewart.
“Any man could have compassed the same object
by lending money into a business,” replied Mr.
Raidsford; “since the usury laws were repealed, he
might have taken what percentage he pleased, and
run no more risk than he does under the Limited
Liability Act; but the real mischief of the present
system, to my mind, is, not that large capitalists are
thereby enabled to advance money to small working
men, but that the large capitalists are thereby enabled
to combine together, and crush the small working
men. Precisely as you are doing at present: you are
ruining hundreds of respectable tradesmen, and when
80your crash comes, as come it will, those men will not
be benefited thereby; they have lost their capital,
small or great, as the case may be, and must content
themselves with situations for the remainder of
their lives.”
“You are extremely kind to prophesy such a pleasant
future for the Protector,” said Mr. Croft.
“Where there are many masters, there are bad
servants,” was the reply; “at least, such is my
opinion. My notion is, indeed, that in a company
there is no master at all; there is no one person
whose business and interest it is to see that things
are properly and economically conducted.”
“We have our manager,” suggested Mr. Stewart.
“You have an admirably efficient manager at
your works now, I do not doubt,” said Mr. Raidsford.
“What do you mean by that remark?” asked
Mr. Stewart.
“Simply, that I should not give Mr. Crossenham
sixpence a week for managing any concern of mine;
but, without question, he is perfectly competent to
fill the position he occupies with you.”
“Once again, Mr. Raidsford, I must ask you to
explain your meaning?”
81“Then, Mr. Stewart, you certainly will ask in
vain,” was the reply. “When, eight months since,
we met in Moorgate Street, you did me the honour
of asking my opinion about this Company,—and I
gave you that opinion to the best of my ability,—what
was your course of action? You certainly got
rid of Bayley Crossenham, but you put in his shoes
a man utterly incompetent to manage even his own
business, how much less yours; a man, who, though
perfectly honest himself, could never detect dishonesty
in others. I asked you then, if Lord
Kemms’ name had been really added to the Direction
by his authority? and it is now evident you took
no steps to ascertain the truth of the matter. I
counselled you to be exceedingly wary in dealing
with Mr. Black, and yet Mr. Black is now virtually
master of the ‘Protector,’ as he is of every other
company with which he is connected.”
“He is not master of the ‘Protector,’” answered
Mr. Stewart.
“He must be master of its funds, or he never
could have such an amount of money to spend, as is
the case at present,” was the reply.
“He is no such thing,” repeated Mr. Stewart.
82“I am happy to hear it, for the sake of the shareholders,”
answered Mr. Raidsford, coolly; “and
that brings me to another phase of limited liability,
viz., that this boasted union of capitalists, of which
we hear so much, is, in many cases, neither more
nor less than the accumulation of five and ten pounds
scraped from the savings of the lower middle class;
the money of people who, deluded by specious advertisements
and good names, send up their post-office
orders and receive their shares, and lose their cash,
and thereby afford a living to a class of men who
otherwise would be exercising their talents in some
very different mode indeed from that of ‘promoting’
public companies.”
“What a pity you do not go into Parliament, and
favour the nation with an exposition of your views!”
said Mr. Stewart.
“I should not be the first man to advance them,”
was the reply. “In both Houses somewhat similar
opinions have been expressed before now; of course,
my views may be wrong——”
“You do not mean, Mr. Raidsford, that you have
ever contemplated such a possibility?” interrupted
Mr. Stewart.
83“Yes, I have,” was the reply; “contemplated,
much more closely, the pros and cons of limited
liability, than you have the Protector’s chances of
ultimate success. The system is rotten, Mr. Stewart,
and you and such men as you, who derive profit
from these ventures without incurring one halfpenny
of risk, ought to be the first to confess that it
is so.”
“I have two thousand shares in the Protector
Bread Company on my own risk, at all events,” said
Mr. Stewart.
“I am delighted to hear it, in one way,” answered
Mr. Raidsford; “delighted, because it proves you
to be a thoroughly honest man; but sorry, because
if anything do go wrong with the Company, your
loss will be considerable.”
“But I am determined nothing shall go wrong
with the Company.”
“In that case, doubtless you devote a considerable
amount of attention to the mills!”
“Mr. Raidsford, have you any specific charge to
make against our manager?”
“If I had,” was the reply, “I should go before
the board and prefer it. I make no charge, but I
84recommend caution. I was right about Lord
Kemms, you perceive.”
“We do not admit that,” broke in Douglas
Croft; “we are his opponents now, and must fight
the matter out with him.”
“Or, rather, Mr. Black must,” added Mr. Stewart.
“He got us into this scrape, and he must get us out
of it; so, remember, Frank, you are in for a paper
war with one of the shrewdest men I know; you
and Mr. Raidsford will have to muster your forces
so as to come out of the struggle with éclat. I am
sorry it has so happened, I must confess; sorry that
Lord Kemms has been—I am obliged to use a harsh
word, Mr. Raidsford—so ill-advised. With the
best intentions, I feel confident, you have counselled
him to hurry into print (a course always to be
avoided, if possible), but still, you have led him
wrong. Had you left the matter in my hands,
Frank,” he added, “I should myself have stated
publicly that there had been some misunderstanding,
and so withdrawn your name, without any fuss or
anger. As it is—why it is—and there is no use in
further discussion. We must now do the best we can
for ourselves,” and Mr. Stewart rose to depart.
85“You are not thinking of going to-night?” exclaimed
Lord Kemms, in astonishment; “because
we differ in opinion, we are not, I trust, to swear
eternal enmity.”
“Not with my good-will,” replied Mr. Stewart;
“but because we have differed in opinion, I must get
back to town by the first train to-morrow morning.
Had your letter to the Times not been despatched I
would gladly have remained here, instead of returning
to Palinsbridge to-night; but needs must, you
know; and you, Frank, are our driver.”
“I am sorry for it, extremely sorry!” exclaimed
Lord Kemms.
“Sorry for having appealed to the god of English
breakfast-tables?” asked Mr. Stewart. “Come, I
am glad to see some signs of repentance about you.”
“I did not mean that; I am not sorry for having
written and despatched my letter, I only regret that
there should be any necessity for you to drive back
to Palinsbridge to-night. But, at least, you will
have something to eat before you start?”
“It appears to me we ought not to break bread
under your roof,” said his cousin; “but, considering
we have had nothing since we left Hastings, ten
86hours since, except a glass of sherry and seltzer
water at Palinsbridge, I think it would be carrying
animosity farther than human nature could endure,
to refuse your obliging though tardy offer.”
“For my part, I shall be very glad to accept it,”
declared Mr. Stewart; “worry always gives me an
appetite; and I should not care to be dependent on
the good offices of mine landlord at the Plough, for
supper. His seltzer water was as hot as though
drawn from one of the Geyser springs. And will
you let some of your people tell the fellow, who
brought us over, to give that poor devil of a horse
of his a feed? Nice creature it is; trots about three
miles an hour!”
“Will you allow my man to drive you back, Mr.
Stewart?” said the contractor. “I shall be very
happy if you will make use of my carriage.”
“Thank you, no,” was the reply; “the fly must
return, and so Douglas and I may as well go in it.
We are not exactly like man and wife, apt to
quarrel by the way. If he were my better half, I
would accept your offer at once; as it is, we will
return as we came—much obliged, nevertheless.”
Then Mr. Raidsford thought he must return home.
87“Good-night,” said Mr. Stewart; “though your
views differ from mine, I do not say but there is
much truth in them. That is the worst of our imperfect
state of existence, there is truth in everything.”
“Even in a promoter,” suggested Douglas Croft;
and then the three shook hands with Mr. Raidsford,
who drove back to Moorlands thinking to himself—
“These great people are very curious individuals.
If three men in my own rank of life had come together
under such circumstances, there would have
been hard words used, and a quarrel to a certainty.
Is it that they are not in earnest, or is it civilization?
One hears a great deal about civilization; is this
one of its fruits?” and thus pondering, Mr. Raidsford
returned home to the wife of his bosom, who,
back from Hastings, was conducting her household
on principles which seemed to the servants the
reverse either of Christian or civilized.
Perhaps this fact made the amicable warfare at
Kemms Park seem all the more astonishing to the
contractor, who had many things still to learn, though
he was so clever about business and business
matters.
88“If that be the way gentlemen quarrel,” he
thought, “I cannot wonder at their looking down
on us; I wonder now what they are thinking about
me?”
Had a little bird of the air carried what the trio
were saying about him to Mr. Raidsford, he need
not have covered his face and shut his eyes.
“Spite of his crotchets I really like Raidsford,”
remarked Mr. Croft. “What do you suppose he
meant, uncle, when he spoke about the Company
failing?”
“He meant,” answered Mr. Stewart, “what I have
often suspected myself,—that Black is too great a
rogue to be honest, even if honesty be to his interest.
Raidsford is a well-intentioned fellow, but he has
not much information outside his business. Still,
his ideas are worth consideration, and I shall consider
them, and look up Mr. Crossenham,” added
Mr. Stewart in a lower tone, as he went downstairs
to the dining-room, where a substantial supper was
already spread.
CHAPTER V. THE PAPER WAR.
89
The eight o’clock up express only stopped once
between Palinsbridge and Holloway; but on the
occasion of that one pause, Mr. Stewart procured a
copy of the morning’s Times, where, occupying
a prominent position, he found Lord Kemms’
letter.
“It is a mercy Frank is a Lord,” remarked Mr.
Croft, drily; “for I do not think he would ever have
got through the world in a subordinate capacity.
The longer I live, the more satisfied I feel Providence
orders these things a vast deal better than we
could do.”
“You think, I suppose, Providence made him a
Lord on the same principle as it makes so many poor
men inventors. If an individual have not five pounds
90in the world, he has a patent—the compensating
balance—is that what you mean, Douglas?”
“Something of that kind,” answered his nephew.
“I have often wondered how Frank would have
pushed his way had he been turned adrift at ten
years of age with half-a-crown in his pocket; one
cannot marvel at men like Raidsford being a little
elated at the contemplation of their own exploits,
when one thinks of how few people there really are
in the world with any brains at all. Now, unprincipled
though he may be, can you help admiring
Black? I confess, I have the very highest opinion
possible of that honest individual’s talent.”
“Much the same sort of talent as pickpockets
and burglars are made of,” answered Mr. Stewart.
“Oh! you are wrong there,” was the reply; “decidedly
wrong; Black’s is an administrative genius,
mental—not physical. The pickpocket’s cleverness
is merely highly-cultivated manual dexterity,
the same kind of thing that makes some women clever
at fancy work, at crochet, and netting, and those
fearful groups of flowers executed in Berlin wool,
which my Arabella’s soul delights in. A burglar,
again, is merely an advanced mechanic, but Black’s
91genius is of a very different order. He has ability
to conceive and impudence to execute; he has an
immense faculty of organization; he would have
made a good Chancellor of the Exchequer, I fancy;
his resources are inexhaustible; his power of construction
enormous. No undertaking is too large
for him to fear carrying through. He puts me often
in mind of those fellows at the Circus, who can ride
four horses at once. He could manage fifty companies.
I often think, when I am talking to Black,
about what judges sometimes say to criminals,
namely, that it is a pity to see such talents applied
to such purposes; in another walk of life, Black’s
genius ought to have carried him to eminence.”
“Don’t waste your regrets upon such an arrant
humbug,” Mr. Stewart replied. “Nature has fitted
him into the only hole he could by possibility have
filled. Black’s genius is a lying genius. Had it been
clothed by circumstances decently, externally apparelled
with honesty, and virtue, and truth, it would
soon have got rid of those incumbrances, and come
forth in its primitive nakedness. I tell you Black
has no talent, save for dishonesty; if that devil were
cast out of him, he would be strong no longer. As
92Samson’s strength lay in his hair, so Black’s lies in
his falsehood, his cunning, his impudence, and his
plausibility. Take these things from him and he
would be but as other ordinary men; honest, perhaps,
but weak; able to earn a living, but certainly
not to make a fortune. It is quite a mistake to
imagine because a man is clever in one walk, he
could be clever if he pleased in another. The walk
is dictated by his particular cleverness, and Black’s
talent, as I said before, is lying.
“Yet he professes to be weary of planning, and
scheming, and uncertainty——”
“And very possibly that profession is true. A
man may be weary of the devil which possesses him,
even though he be unable to get rid of it. At one
time, I confess, I thought Black was going to turn
over a new leaf, and content himself with the fine
things the Protector had in store for him, but now I
fear the old Adam is too strong in Black ever to give
him a chance of turning from the evil of his former
ways, and I am satisfied if he can ruin our Company
he will do it somehow. This business of Kemms’ is
bad too. How many shares have you, Douglas,
besides your qualification?”
93“Five hundred,” was the reply; “and I shall
give my broker instructions to sell them.”
“You do not mean that?”
“Indeed I do; I have no intention of losing sixpence,
if I can help it. I have never lost money by a
company yet, and I do not purpose beginning now.”
“But it is so confoundedly mean to desert a
failing cause.”
“I never made any pretension to Quixotism. The
moment Frank said he had written to the Times, I
made up my mind to sell; and, if you were wise,
you would sell also.”
“No; I shall not adopt that course,” said Mr.
Stewart; but he did not tell his nephew what course
he intended to adopt.
“It will be a bad business for Dudley, if anything
should go wrong with the Protector,” remarked Mr.
Croft, after an uncomfortable pause. “He has
mortgaged Berrie Down.”
“Surely not!” exclaimed Mr. Stewart.
“Surely yes,” was the reply. “Old Craddock
has advanced five thousand pounds upon it at four
and a half—good interest too, I call that, on security
good as the Bank of England.”
94“I wish I had heard of it.”
“So do I,” was the reply; “but my lawyer
knew nothing about the matter till it was all
settled.”
“What did he want the money for; do you
know?”
“Bills, I understand; and that the sum I have
mentioned will not meet the one-half of those he has
out. ’Pon my honour, I am very sorry for Dudley.
He will be a beggar before he is ten years older.”
“He is an awful fool,” observed Mr. Stewart.
“So he may be; but folly is not a sin, is it?”
“It is sin’s half-brother, or whole father, or something
of the kind, at any rate,” retorted Mr. Stewart;
“but here is King’s Cross, and now for Mr. Black,”
and so saying the old man sprang as lightly from
the compartment as his much younger companion;
and, bustling out of the station, hailed a cab, which
speedily conveyed the pair to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
“Where Mr. Black had already been,” Arthur
informed them. “He is gone on to Dowgate Hill,
where, he told me, any message would find him
until one o’clock. Shall I send and ask him to
come up?”
95“No,” Mr. Stewart decided; “we will follow him.”
“I saw Lord Kemms’ letter in this morning’s
Times,” Arthur remarked.
“Yes; his Lordship ought to have a straight
waistcoat, and bread-and-water diet for a week, to
teach him not to be so hasty,” answered Mr. Stewart.
“Black must answer him.”
“He said, he hoped you would leave him to do
so,” Arthur replied. “He does not seem to attach
much importance to the matter.”
“Does he not? I wish I could think it of no
consequence,” replied Mr. Stewart. “Now, Douglas,
are you ready?” and he again bustled out, and
seated himself in the hansom which had waited for
them.
“Mr. Croft!” it was Arthur, who, following the
younger man out, spoke now in a lowered tone of
voice, “do you think this will affect the Company?”
“There is no telling,” the other answered; “only,
if you have many shares, take my advice and get
rid of them—quietly, you know, quietly.”
“What was Dudley saying to you?” Mr. Stewart
inquired as they drove off in the direction of the
City.
96“Asking me how this would affect the Protector,
and I advised him to sell his shares.”
“He has not a share beyond those Black gave
him. A couple of hundred, paid up.”
“Then, what has he done with all the money for
which Berrie Down is mortgaged and to be mortgaged?”
“God knows! given it to Black, most probably.”
“Then he is virtually a ruined man.”
“Time will show,” answered Mr. Stewart, philosophically.
“I do not think he will get much
back from Black, at all events.”
“Those are the kind of men, then, Raidsford had
in his mind, when he was speaking about companies
last night.”
“Likely enough; but there were idiots in the
world before Limited Liability was thought of, and
there will be idiots in the world when Limited Liability
is no more.”
“Still, it does seem hard.”
“That if a man will rush into the flame he should
be burnt. Do you propose, Douglas, constituting
yourself a species of knight-errant to rescue distressed
gentlemen from the consequences of their
97folly? You could never prevent a man like Dudley
getting into trouble. By right, he was Black’s
natural prey, natural and legitimate. You do not
quarrel with a cat for catching a mouse; why
should you bemoan Dudley losing his money to
Black?”
“I pity his wife.”
“Ah! there I go with you; but she followed her
fancy in marrying him, and she must pay for the
indulgence of her fancy sooner or later. The best
thing which could happen for her ultimate happiness
would be for her husband to get a thorough sickening
of following his own courses. I consider him
one of the most conceited prigs I ever met. He
won’t take a hint from me on any subject.”
“On what sort of subject?” inquired Mr. Croft,
a little curiously.
“Why, you know he might learn a little of business,
fit himself for some more lucrative post, but
the moment I mentioned my idea he was up like a
rocket. ‘He did not intend to retain the secretaryship
an hour longer than he could advantageously
dispose of his shares. If I imagined he was going to
remain at the beck and call of every one who liked
98to call and beckon, I never was more mistaken in my
life.’ Whereupon,” added Mr. Stewart, “I, of course,
humbly apologised; and remarked that I had certainly
been under the delusion he wished to add to
his income, but I was happy to find I had been
mistaken; because, from my own limited experience
of the expenses of living in London, I felt satisfied
he could not long afford to live at the rate he was
doing on a thousand a year.”
“Was not that a little——”
“Impertinent, you would say,” finished Mr.
Stewart, as his nephew paused; “that is precisely
what I remarked to you a few moments since—knight-errantry
in the nineteenth century is always
impertinent; but still, if one sees a man walking
straight on to the brink of a precipice, involuntarily
one shouts out a warning to him. That is what I
did—and that is what I got for my pains. Now,
Mr. Dudley may go to the devil, for any trouble
I shall take to prevent his travelling that easy
road.”
“But his wife, and the children?”
“One of the children will happily never need a
marriage portion,” returned Mr. Stewart, “and the
99other is a boy. As for Mrs. Dudley, we have talked
that over before; and, speaking of her, Douglas,
may I inquire the reason of the special interest you
seem to feel about her? A charming lady, doubtless,
but still, a recent acquaintance. You are not
in love with her, I hope?”
“No,” Douglas Croft answered, “I do not love
her.”
“What is the link, then? for a link of some kind
there must be.”
“Perhaps that my wife dislikes her,” suggested
Mr. Croft; then he added, in a different tone: “I
have been a stupid ass and an awful sinner—that is
the reason I like Mrs. Dudley.”
“Complimentary to Mrs. Dudley.”
“True, nevertheless,” answered Mr. Croft; and
at this moment they arrived at Mr. Black’s offices
in Dowgate Hill, where they found that gentleman
thoroughly enjoying himself.
“So you are really going to leave his Lordship in
my hands for execution?” he said, when Mr. Stewart
had explained the purpose of their visit. “I am
delighted to hear it, for I was just sketching out a
letter in answer to his. May I read it to you?”
100“No,” answered Mr. Stewart, “I do not wish to
be mixed up with it in any way. The matter rests
between you and Lord Kemms, and we must decline
all interference. Fight it out yourselves. Whether
the letter ought to be answered at all, until after the
next board-day, is a question for you to decide.”
“I will take that responsibility on my own shoulders,”
remarked Mr. Black. “Of course, all this is
Mr. Raidsford’s doing, not Lord Kemms’. I only
wish it was Raidsford I had to answer, I would give
him a dose that ought to cure him of meddling for
a while again.”
“Could you not publish the formula?” asked Mr.
Croft; “it might be useful to the general public.”
“There are some medicines the success of which
depends as much on the person who administers
them as on the drugs they actually contain,” laughed
Mr. Black; “and I don’t think my physic would
do Mr. Raidsford much good, unless I gave it to
him with my own hands. Meddling humbug! what
the deuce does he know about companies?”
“I suppose it is true concerning things as well as
people—that we generally dislike that which we do
not know,” said Mr. Stewart.
101“And a vast number of both things and people
that we do,” added Mr. Black. Shortly after which
speech his visitors took their departure, leaving him
to finish his letter at his leisure.
Next day it appeared in the Times, and ran to
the following effect:—
“Sir,—In the Times of to-day I see (unlike his
Lordship, I read the papers) that Lord Kemms wishing,
for some inscrutable reason, to ‘set himself
straight with the general public,’ repudiates all
connection with the Protector Bread and Flour
Company (Limited). How such repudiation is to
effect the difficult task Lord Kemms has set himself,
he, perhaps, can explain; but as his letter is calculated
to injure our credit, I beg leave to state,
first—
“That Lord Kemms distinctly gave me permission
to place his name on our Direction.
“Secondly. That the terms on which his name
was to appear were fully settled between us.
“Thirdly. That the list of directors was published
in almost every respectable paper throughout the
kingdom, and daily for some weeks in the Times;
102and that, consequently, Lord Kemms must have been
perfectly well aware his name was placed on the
Direction.
“Fourthly. That Lord Kemms gave no opportunity,
either to myself or our secretary, Mr. Dudley,
of entering into the slightest explanation on the
subject. He called at the offices of the Company,
in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, but only for the purpose,
apparently, of indulging in a monologue, since,
when Mr. Dudley and I endeavoured to utter a few
words concerning the question in dispute, he indignantly
rushed out of the secretary’s room, declaring
he should write to the Times. Under the unfortunate
impression that the matter can have the slightest
interest for the general public, he has carried out
his threat, and I am therefore compelled to request
the insertion of this letter.
“I have not the remotest idea of the source of
Lord Kemms’ irritation, and can only say, that
nothing could be farther from the intention of any
person connected with the Company than to give his
Lordship the least cause of offence.
“Your obedient Servant,
“Peter Black.”
“Sept., 18—
103Next day but one appeared another letter from
Lord Kemms, stating that every “fact” contained
in Mr. Black’s letter was untrue—that he had never
given permission for his name to be published—that
he had never known it was so published, until some
time after his return from the Continent, when he
happened to meet with a prospectus of the “Protector
Bread and Flour Company (Limited),” and
then for the first time became aware of the use
which had been made of his name. He considered
that in the interests of the general public, he was
bound openly to state the nature of the fraud which
had been practised. He pointed confidently for
authentication of his statement, if authentication
were necessary, to the fact of his never having been
registered even as a shareholder; and he declared
he had given both Mr. Dudley and Mr. Black ample
opportunity of explaining the line of conduct which
had been pursued.
This epistle immediately elicited two in reply:
one from Arthur Dudley, to the effect that Lord
Kemms was mistaken in imagining he had afforded
an opportunity either for discussion or explanation.
“Not,” added Arthur, “that it would have been in
104my power to give his Lordship any information on
the subject, as I am in utter ignorance of the facts
of the case; but, had this been otherwise, I should
still have failed to obtain a hearing.”
Mr. Black followed suit by remarking, that a
nobleman who could consider seeing a prospectus
“having his attention called,” might reasonably be
supposed ignorant of the true meaning of words, and
through the whole of his letter gave his Lordship the
benefit of this doubt. Mr. Black stated that though
shares had been duly allotted, whilst Lord Kemms
was abroad, registration of course was difficult; that
his name, failing the legal qualifications, had remained
on the Direction as a matter of courtesy,
since, having failed to take any steps to constitute
himself a director, by attendance or otherwise, the
business of the Company had been conducted without
his presence or concurrence, to which circumstance,
Mr. Black adroitly more than hinted, Lord
Kemms’s ill-humour was attributable.
To these letters Lord Kemms replied in a singularly
confused epistle, which branched off from the
question really at issue, to vague statements concerning
companies in general, and limited liability
105in particular. Mr. Raidsford being a much cleverer
contractor than author, really did his Lordship an
immense deal of mischief over these letters, and,
although the editor of the Times kindly spared
the owner of Kemms Park nearly a column of small
type, and stated at the foot, “we can insert no
more letters on this subject,” thus leaving the ball
with his Lordship, still that general public, with
which Lord Kemms had been so eagerly anxious to
set himself right, was greatly divided in opinion,
and vexed in spirit as to who was to blame—whether
Lord Kemms, or Mr. Black, or both, or neither.
To settle the matter, there ensued a most voluminous
correspondence between the pair—a correspondence
which, unrestricted by any fear of the
Times’ editor, swelled out to sheet after sheet of
letter-paper closely written.
A few copies of that correspondence, printed at
the time for general circulation, and freely advertised
in the Times, are still extant, and may be
perused by the curious in such matters, when down
for a month at the seashore, or recovering from serious
illness, or at any other peculiarly leisure period.
The pamphlet was to be had gratis at the
106Company’s offices, Lincoln’s Inn Fields; it was forwarded
free by post to all parts of England; it was
made the subject of newspaper comment and private
criticism, until, in absolute despair, Lord Kemms
cursed the Protector, and Mr. Black, and all his
own kindred, and, under the shades of his ancestral
trees, vowed a vow that the next time he rushed
into print he might be pilloried, and pelted with
eggs, and bespattered with mud and dirt, as had
been the case latterly.
But he stuck to his point; and, although right is
not always might, in the hands even of a nobleman,
still Lord Kemms may have been pronounced the
victor, insomuch as he contrived to do the Protector
a vast deal of injury; to shake the Company to its
very foundation; to create an enormous amount of
alarm amongst the shareholders; and to cause the
directors much perplexity and annoyance.
After all, a company is very like a woman; once
blown upon, its credit is worth but little from that
time forth for ever. It may demean itself with the
extremest propriety; under circumstances of temptation
it may remain honest and fair dealing, it may
struggle for a livelihood, and earn one in the
107properest manner possible; and yet, when all these
things are placed to the credit side of the account,
they shall not outweigh the damning fact that a
shadow once fell over it; that it was “talked about;”
that there were diversities of opinion as to its conduct;
that there were doubts expressed as to its
perfect and immaculate purity.
Thus, at any rate, affairs turned out with the
Protector. By a curious feminine logic, ladies discovered
that the quality of the Company’s bread
was affected by the newspaper correspondence.
Heaven knows! perhaps the fair creatures were
weary of waging an unprofitable war with their
servants—those real chiefs of London households;
perhaps the entreaties—very humble and servile—of
Markby, round the corner, carried due weight
with the so-called mistresses of town mansions and
suburban villas; perhaps the “cash down” principles
of the Company were too strict to suit the
laxer views of people who had been accustomed to
the greater freedom of a “six months’ run;” perhaps—but
why go on multiplying suppositions, when the
actual result is all which need be stated?—customers
fell off in abundance; week after week a smaller
108quantity of bread required to be baked, a more
limited supply of flour was demanded; till at length
the directors began to look gloomily in each other’s
faces, and inquire “what business was coming to.”
The shares also decreased in value, and by the time
another half year came round, things had begun to
look, as Mr. Black declared, “very blue.”
As for Arthur Dudley, he had reluctantly renewed
those bills, for which Mr. Black was, he considered,
responsible, once again, and paid off the others out
of the money raised on Berrie Down.
He did not, so he conceived, owe a sixpence in
the world, and he had the property in Lincoln’s Inn,
his furniture and his salary, but still things were
“looking blue” with him also. When he came to
cast up his year’s expenditure, he discovered a
thousand pounds would nothing like see him
through it.
He was an honest man, as I have said before,
but he had gone on spending—spending—without a
thought of how all this spending was to be provided
for, until the gradual depreciation of the Protector’s
shares roused him from his dream of security, and
compelled him to look his position in the face.
109Then he realised to himself for the first time,
how much easier it is to be economical in the
country than in London; how much less chance
there is of a person living beyond his income amidst
green fields than amongst bricks and mortar. At
Berrie Down, he could have accounted for every
sixpence; in town, all he could clearly determine
was that the money had gone—where it was gone
he might have defied a conjuror accurately to tell.
Cabs here; expenses there; a luncheon with so-and-so,
a dinner with some one else; a picnic at Bushey;
Heather’s visit to Hastings; fees to Dr. Chickton.
It was but a guinea now, and ten pounds again, and
half a sovereign on such a date; and yet, these items
mounted up.
There are only ten hundred single pounds in a
thousand a year, and a five-pound note Arthur knew
had often not covered his daily expenditure.
If he dare have told Heather then—if he only
dare have left that miserable office of his, where he
kept poring over bills and cursing impatient
creditors—it would have been a comfort to the man;
but there had arisen a coolness between him and
Heather of late. She was either jealous or exacting—perhaps
110both; she objected, not by words,
which he might have combated, but by manner to
his excessive intimacy with Mrs. Croft.
And it was so perfectly ridiculous! jealousy in
the matter was so utterly uncalled for! There was
nothing wrong in his friendship for Mrs. Croft—nothing;
therefore ill-humour, even dissatisfaction,
was quite unreasonable.
If he had given his wife cause for anger, Arthur
could have understood her antagonism—but without
cause? Just as though a flirtation were not fifty
times harder to endure patiently than a liaison; as
though the external caution which the latter demands
were not preferable to the flaunting boldness of that
virtue which fearlessly laughs aloud while looking
down into the very pit of Vice.
Sin does not, as a rule, voluntarily walk on the
same pavement with injured wives, staring them out of
countenance; sin does not come to a woman’s house,
dressed out in the extreme of the fashion, trailing
its silks and satins over carpets which are trodden
by the feet of sorrowful and neglected women.
There is something to be urged against sin!
Injured husbands and wives have decidedly the best
111of the argument when once the seventh commandment
is broken and strange idols occupy the shrines
which once were consecrated to the household
deities; but against flirtation conjugal jealousy is
powerless: it can suspect all things, and confirm
none; it has no cause to bring openly, even into the
domestic court; it suffers and yet has no disease; it
feels the smart, yet can lay its hand on no open
wound.
Flirtation is like a shadow: it follows you about,
and still no man can lay a hand upon it; it may
dog your footsteps and disturb your peace, and yet,
if complaint be made of it, you are assured it is only
a fancy which is distressing you.
It is the person who complains in this case who is
in fault, not the person who offends; it is the exacting
wife or jealous husband, not the foolish man, or
forgetful woman, who is to blame if domestic unhappiness
accrue from an over-appreciation of Mr.
This, or Mrs. That.
What folly to strive to keep a husband eternally
at home! What absurdity to suppose a wife is
never to speak civilly to a male acquaintance! so
the defence runs, while it is not thought necessary
112even to keep the cause of offence discreetly in the
background. The whole affair is so moral, so strictly
proper, that it is never supposed possible dear John
can grow weary of seeing Alonzo, nor Mary become
tired of hearing Imogen’s praises sounded.
There is no sin—of course not—and therefore, no
harm being done, every one ought to be satisfied;
only when flirting Virtue becomes, as it does in such
cases, brazen-faced, the question arises whether Sin,
with averted head and downcast eyes, be not the
easier vanquished opponent of the two.
At all events, without for a moment insinuating
that Mrs. Douglas Croft was other than the most
discreet of British matrons, it is open to doubt
whether the most indiscreet of women could have
given Heather Dudley one-half so many heart-aches
as did that amiable and estimable wife.
Had Mrs. Dudley been wise and philosophic, she
would doubtless have reflected that Arthur, never
having been a peculiarly agreeable addition to the
family circle, was quite as well out of it; but then,
Heather, being neither wise nor philosophic, fretted
herself over her husband’s defection till she almost
lost her beauty. A great mistake!
113She had loved this poor, weak husband, borne with
him through the years, lightened his troubles, been
obedient to his slightest wish, and this was the
result;—that he deserted her whenever the woman
who had jilted him held up her finger to beckon
him back; that he forgot all his wife’s faith, and
truth, and tenderness, and remembered only he had
once been attached to this handsome virago, whose
preference flattered his vanity; who felt pleased to
have this old admirer following in her train.
Well! Heather had long known she did not possess
her husband’s heart; and if this were a fact, what
could it matter to whom he gave it?
Thus she strove to reason herself into contentment;
but a woman is not the most reasonable creature
in existence where her affections are interested,
and accordingly, perhaps, she was as Arthur decided,
a little wayward and exacting; a wife burdened at
that time with many anxieties, amongst which,
perhaps, the worst was—Lally.
For as the leaves fell, Lally had drooped, and
now, when Christmas was at hand once again, the
child drooped more and more.
There could be no question about the matter,
114Lally was very ill indeed; far more seriously ill
than when twelve months previously Bessie had
“kissed her to pieces” under the misletoe, and hung
up holly branches over her bed.
CHAPTER VI. FOR EVERMORE.
115
After her return from Hastings, Heather lost
no time in taking Lally and Mr. Stewart’s letter to
Mr. Rymner Henry.
That great man did not pay quite such devoted
attention to his new patient as Doctor Chickton had
considered necessary; on the contrary, Mrs. Dudley
thought him a little negligent. He asked few
questions; he did not “take much notice” of the
child; he was a little stand-off and ceremonious; he
was at no pains to win Lally’s heart. He expressed
no opinion on the case, and declined to say how long
he thought it might be before she was well.
The proximate cause of her delicacy did not
appear to interest him as it had done Dr. Chickton.
As a narrative, Heather’s story might have its
116merits, so his manner seemed to imply; but, in so
far as it afforded the slightest assistance to his comprehension
of the disease, she might have spared
herself the trouble of repeating it.
He wrote a prescription, against his will, Heather
imagined, and then he rose, signifying thereby that
the interview was terminated.
“What do you think of her?” Mrs. Dudley
ventured to inquire, as she laid the fee wrapped up
like the curl of which Mr. Stewart had spoken, in a
piece of note-paper on the table, guiltily, and as if
she had committed a sin, “what do you think
of her?”
“I should like to look at her again,” said Mr.
Henry. “No, you need not bring her here; I will
call some day when I am in your neighbourhood.
Have you seen Mr. Stewart lately?”
“Last week,” Heather answered.
“Was he quite well? Ah! glad to hear that;
wonderful man; astonishing energy; wonderful—wonderful!”
and, amidst these exclamations, Mr.
Henry cleverly manœuvred his visitors to the door of
his consulting-room, where he consigned them to the
care of an individual who, although he demeaned
117himself like an archbishop, and looked like a master
undertaker, was yet kind enough to see Mrs. Dudley
into her cab, and tell the driver to return to Lincoln’s
Inn Fields.
Before Heather expected him to do so, Mr.
Rymner Henry called. In her drawing-room, he
seemed a very different individual to the Mr. Henry
who had been so stiff and so stand-off in his own
domains.
He talked a good deal to Mrs. Dudley, and
some amenities were exchanged between him and
Lally, who preferred a petition on her own account
against any more medicine, “for I am well now,”
she assured him, “better as well.”
“What does she mean by that expression?” inquired
Mr. Henry.
“Better than well, I imagine,” Heather explained.
“I do not know where she heard the
phrase, but she adopted it during her first severe
illness, and has since continued to use it.”
“And you think you are too well to require
medicine?” he added, addressing the child.
“Iss.” Lally’s speaking was still, as Mrs. Ormson
declared, in a deplorably backward condition.
118“But if you do not take the medicine I order, you
may get ill again.”
Lally turned this view of the question over in her
mind, and then remarked, “it would be time enough
to have the medicine when she did get ill again.”
“Your mamma does not think so.”
“But then ma has not to take it.”
“Your mamma would not object to taking anything
I ordered, if she thought that would cure her
little girl,”—at which remark Heather held out her
arms to Lally, and the mother and child went through
one of those pantomimes which supply the place of
all assurance, as they elude all description.
Inexpressibly touching, too, become such pantomimes
when the spectator knows the time during
which they can be repeated is but short; when he is
quite well aware that the days are drawing near
on which the child so loved, so idolized, must be laid
in the arms of a colder and grimmer nurse to be
caressed and hushed to sleep, and pressed close to
her mother’s breast, never more, ah! never.
And of this fact Mr. Henry was only too confident.
The moment he looked in Lally’s face, he
knew for a certainty that which Mr. Stewart had
119vaguely comprehended. The temporary improvement
Heather talked of so thankfully, could not
deceive his experience. He understood the nature
of such varieties too well to be deceived by them;
he knew Lally was doomed, and the bright sunny
November day, spite of all its delusive light and
glitter, could not blind him to the fact that winter
was close at hand.
For which reason he wished Mr. Stewart had not
sent Mrs. Dudley to him. He was not a man to
delude with false hopes such as Dr. Chickton had
held out, and yet to tell this fond, foolish mother
that it was a mere question of time and cure, was
beyond his ability.
To refuse to treat the hopeless case, to decline
ordering vain remedies, would have been almost
barbarous, when the poor creature apparently believed
the very strength and might of her own love
could save her darling from the grasp of a foe too
terrible to mention.
“It will dawn upon her by degrees,” the surgeon
thought, “there is no need for me to tell her;” and so,
after a few minutes’ more conversation, he departed,
utterly ignoring the fee which Heather would have
120pressed upon him. He would not see, or feel, or
take it; and when at length he could not avoid
noticing the shy, puzzled look in her face, he said,—
“I do not come professionally, you know; I shall
only call when I am in your neighbourhood, and
have a quarter of an hour to spare. Good morning!”
and he was off, leaving Heather much surprised,
and perhaps, also, a little vexed.
For it occurred to her Mr. Stewart must have
arranged to pay Mr. Henry for his services. After
her experience of Dr. Chickton, and his guinea a
week, she never imagined any one would take the
trouble of attending even Lally gratuitously.
The child might be, as Dr. Chickton had remarked,
one of the most interesting little creatures he ever
beheld; but even supposing Mr. Henry to be of the
same opinion (and Heather with all her maternal
vanity and affection could not persuade herself the
surgeon was anything of the kind), still that opinion
need not prevent his taking a fee, since it had not
produced a similarly deterrent effect on Dr. Chickton.
Altogether, Mrs. Dudley thought she would write
to Mr. Stewart on the subject; and, while expressing
her obligations for his intended kindness, assure him he
121was depriving her of a pleasure in not suffering her to
pay for anything which might hasten Lally’s recovery.
She told him, truthfully enough, God knows, she
would rather save and economize in every possible
way, than that Lally should want for the best help
money could procure. She said, what also she believed
to be a literal fact, that her husband was perfectly
well able to afford Mr. Henry’s fees; and she
entreated him to allow her to send him whatever
sum he had placed in his friend’s hands for attending
Lally.
And then, almost against her will, but still of
necessity, because it was not in her nature to be
abrupt or ungracious, she added some words of
gratitude for all his kindness to her little girl, and
“remained his sincerely,—H. Dudley.”
She would not sign herself “Heather,” lest the
name should attract his attention, and Mr. Stewart
noticed the omission. He knew enough of women
to be aware that, when possessed of a pretty or uncommon
name, they always write it in full, and he
liked Mrs. Dudley too much to believe for a moment
she was superior to the little foibles and weaknesses
of her sex.
122“She is a good girl,” he thought, as he replaced
her note in its envelope; “I wish she had married
any other man than Dudley;” after which mental
remark he wrote her a few lines, saying she was
quite mistaken in her idea, “that he had not mentioned
the question of money in any way to Mr.
Henry, and explained that, very possibly, if fees
were forced upon his acceptance, the surgeon might
feel a delicacy in seeing Lally so frequently as
the child’s state of health required. Mr. Stewart
added, he trusted he should on his return to town
(the letter was dated from Careyby Castle) hear a
good account of his little friend.”
But, long before Mr. Stewart’s return to London,
the temporary improvement in Lally gave place to
increased weariness, to weakness worse than pain,
to peevish complainings of “being tired, ma, tired;”
and then, in despair, Heather looked upon Mr.
Henry’s now frequent visits as matters of course,
and began to watch his face and ponder his words
anxiously and fearfully.
She did not know exactly what she dreaded; she
could not bear to put it to her own soul that Lally
was in danger—that Lally was incurable.
123She would sit and think, poor weak heart, of those
bright sunshiny days at Hastings, when the progress
of her child’s disease had stood still, when it even
seemed to retrograde and allowed her to play on
the sands, and pick up shells among the shingle,
and run screaming with delight over the grass; and
while she thought, she would persuade herself that
change was all Lally needed, that health resided
wholly out of town, and sickness solely amongst
the wilderness of houses, the labyrinth of streets.
That brief reprieve made the subsequent relapse
seem all the harder to endure patiently; it was like
the hope of a fortune held out to a beggar and then
withdrawn, only to plunge him into a deeper and
blacker poverty than before.
Against her own fears, Heather fought madly;
she could not endure that any one should say Lally
looked ill, that Lally grew thinner; she could not
bear that Lally herself should complain of weariness.
Her love made her at times seem almost harsh;
her passionate struggle with the dread which would
not now be refused entrance, made her fiercely deny
the existence of danger. That which had at one
time only caused her anxiety, now rendered her
124nearly frantic. She grew irritable and impatient.
The sweet repose of old, gave place to a constant
desire to be up and doing. Could Mr. Henry give
Lally no different medicine? should he advise taking
her away? Mr. Dudley’s aunt was wintering in
the south of France, might it not be better to try a
total change of climate? She would go with her,
if Mr. Henry thought a different air would restore
her strength; but Mr. Henry declined to recommend
travelling at such a season. He said the child was
better at home; better in that warm town house,
with every comfort around her, than she could possibly
be elsewhere. And thus things went on, till
at length Lally had to be carried up and downstairs,
and lay most of the day on a sofa, drawn
close beside one of the drawing-room windows, from
which she could look out over the Square.
Even then Heather would not despair; she thought
when once the spring came, Lally was certain to get
better; she was always saying, that the moment mild
weather arrived she must take her child to the sea-side,
and the pair never wearied of planning the journey,
of picturing the waves rippling in upon the shore, of
gathering, in imagination, shells and pebbles and
125weed; of fancying how pleasant it would be to see
the sun shining upon the waters, as they used to do—as
they used—ah! Heaven.
Once again Lally took up her former cry of
“Will it be spring soon, mamma? Will it be
spring before very long?” And she would repeat
the same inquiry to Mr. Henry, with the addition
of—“And when the spring comes, shall I be well?”
The first time she put this question, Heather
looked swiftly and sharply towards the surgeon, but
she could read nothing from his face.
“Well,” he repeated, “are you not well now?”
“No;” and the poor little head was shaken in
confirmation of this hopeless negative.
“Tell me where you feel ill,” he said; but Lally
was incapable of this descriptive flight.
“Has she pain?” he asked; and Mrs. Dudley
answered, “Very rarely.”
She would have liked Mr. Henry to pursue the
subject and investigate it more thoroughly, but instead
of doing so, the surgeon only took up one of
Lally’s hands, and looked at it absently.
He knew, and had always known, that the malady
which was on the child, his skill, great though it
126might be, could never cure. He knew the disease
she had in her, call it by what other technical name
his profession might, was, in plain English, Death;
and the man who shall discover a cure for that
complaint has yet to be born.
He knew her body would grow more feeble, her
limbs more easily tired, her poor pinched little face
more pinched as the days went by.
He knew, that in the whole of the pharmacopœia,
there was not a drug which might give her even a
chance of life. He knew this, he had always known
it; and yet he could not bring himself to tell Heather
the naked truth. He saw the woman’s heart was bound
up in her child; he guessed, perhaps, that her husband
was not likely to be much stay or comfort to her when
the hour of trial came; and yet, at length, he decided
to speak to Arthur, to tell him his little girl was
dangerously ill—ill past all hope of recovery.
Which, of course, when communicated to him,
Arthur did not believe. He sent for further advice—for
lying prophets, who spoke of healing when
there was no chance of healing; and softly descended
the staircase, whispering peace in a house where
there could be no peace.
127And yet, what need was there for them to be
cruelly conscientious—unmercifully truthful? If
their words broke the force of the descending blow,
kept it suspended in Heather’s sight, without absolutely
crushing her heart, who may say that their
subterfuges were wrong—their suggestions useless?
The evil days when no telling should be required,
were drawing very nigh; and there was no one,
save Arthur, who remained quite blind to their
approach.
He had always preferred to ignore facts, if there
were any treacherous, illusive, pleasant hope that
his feeble nature could clutch. He was not one
likely to believe there was any actual danger to be
apprehended, so long as he could pay the veriest
quack to come and tell him the child’s life might
be saved. He hearkened to Mrs. Croft, when she
assured him all mothers were alike—so easily
frightened, so over-anxious, so wearisomely careful
about their petted darlings. Scoffingly, almost, she
would declare, that but for these “women’s fancies”
doctors never could earn a living; and she insinuated
that, so long as fees were to be had, it was not
likely they would pronounce Lally convalescent.
128Possibly, she did not herself believe the child’s
life was in absolute danger; but she did know, not
merely that Lally was very ill, but that, by keeping
Arthur so much from home, she was infusing another
drop of bitterness into Heather’s cup.
Had Mrs. Dudley remonstrated on the subject,
which she felt far too weary and broken-spirited to
attempt, there can be little question but that Mrs.
Croft would have retorted, she, at all events, had no
right to complain, “considering my husband is continually
in Lincoln’s Inn Fields,” which was true,
though, certainly, Heather could not be accused of
encouraging his visits.
Five times out of six she was “not at home,” and
yet he haunted the house. He never seemed tired
of bringing little luxuries for Lally. The fruit he
procured moistened the parched lips; the flowers he
sent lay on her pillow; the oldest wine in his cellars,
the choicest grapes from his uncle’s forcing-houses
at Layford, found their way to the sick room,
which Lally now never left.
He was fond of children, this man who was
childless, and Lally had twined herself into his
affections. He would have done anything to save
129her, and he importuned Mr. Henry about Lally till
that great man became perfectly sick of the sight of
his old friend’s nephew.
Well, it was down a lane bordered by roses she
went to her long home; soft hands tended her; a
loving breast pillowed her; friends bore her company
sorrowfully while she glided—glided adown
that road, the descent in which is, towards the last,
so steep and sudden.
Even Heather was deceived concerning the end,
which drew nearer day by day, and hour by hour.
It was so gradual, no one could say when the
change came—no one could tell exactly when
Hope finally left the house, closing the door behind
her. No one could remember when the child
ceased to make lamentations concerning her own
sickness, and grew patient; no one could quite
recollect when it was every person about the house,
save Arthur, commenced to realise that Lally—the
little Lally of a happier time—might never roam
again with tireless feet from parlour to dairy, from
garden to paddock, of that old home which they
seemed to have left so long and long ago.
There was very bitter sorrow in that London
130house; to their business Alick and Cuthbert went
daily with hearts which were heavy with grief for
the little plaything about to be taken from them for
ever; the girls up from Hertfordshire could not
settle to their usual occupations, but wandered idly
and purposelessly about the house; the servants
crept to their work, feeling the burden of a great
trouble oppressing them. Mrs. Piggott could neither
rest nor eat, and Priscilla Dobbin’s eyes were constantly
so red that Harry Marsden’s remark concerning
them was no longer applicable. Ned took
a dreary holiday to come and have a look at
“Missie,” but had to beat a hasty retreat downstairs,
where he sat in the kitchen and cried like a
child; but still death was slow about coming; and
still Heather kept her weary vigils, and still Arthur
would not comprehend.
One evening, utterly exhausted, she had thrown
herself on the sofa, leaving Agnes to keep watch
beside Lally, when the man who acted as messenger
to the company and footman to the Dudleys, entered
the room, where no candles were lighted, and nothing
dispelled the gloom except the fire burning not over
brightly, to inform Heather—
131“A young person wished to speak to her.”
“I cannot see any one,” Mrs. Dudley replied.
“I told her you could not, ma’am,” the man
replied. He was a very magnificent individual,
who impressed shareholders wonderfully, and certainly
considered himself a much more important
personage than the secretary; yet, notwithstanding
his superiority over every one else connected with
the “Protector,” he had always been graciously
affable towards Mrs. Dudley, and now, in her trouble,
he felt very sorry for her indeed. He had children
of his own, so he informed Mrs. Piggott, and “knew
what it was;” whereupon he had taken upon himself
to assure the stranger Mrs. Dudley could not possibly
be disturbed, and that he should decline delivering
any message whatever to her.
But the “young person” had been importunate—she
had resolutely refused to take “no” for an
answer—and she so persistently insisted on a note
she produced being given to Mrs. Dudley, that
Tifford at length wavered.
“If you give her that note,” the stranger asserted,
“she will see me; and if you do not give it to her,
she will be sorry hereafter to know it was kept from
132her. I will wait outside till she has read it.” And
so saying, she coolly stepped out into the night
through the open hall-door, whereat she had found
Mr. Tifford meditating, in the midst of a silence
which seemed, no doubt, to him, as great as that
Harvey found amongst the tombs.
Frequently, Mr. Tifford declared Lincoln’s Inn
Fields was as lively as a churchyard; and, at the
precise moment the young woman came up and
accosted him, he was thinking he might as well be
buried alive as shut up there.
“You can close the door,” she remarked, noticing
his hesitation; whereupon Mr. Tifford at once invited
her to “step inside” and sit down, while he
went upstairs to his mistress.
The stranger stepped inside as permitted, but did
not sit down; she stood on the mat, with her shawl
wrapped tightly around her and her thick veil tied
close under her chin, until Tifford returning bade
her follow him upstairs.
He ushered her into the dim drawing-room, and
then shut the door.
By the hearth stood Mrs. Dudley.
“You bring me news,” she said, “of——” But
133before she could finish her sentence the stranger
advanced out of the gloom, and flinging herself on
Heather’s neck, broke out into a passion of weeping.
It was the wanderer come home at last!—it was
Bessie, so long mourned, so long looked for, restored
at an hour when her advent was least expected.
To Heather it seemed almost as though one had
been given back to her from the grave, and for a
moment she drew out of it a vague augury of recovery
for Lally.
“Bessie! Bessie!” she exclaimed, clasping the
girl to her heart; “Bessie—dear Bessie!” And
then there were kisses, and sobs, and low-murmured
exclamations; they could not ask questions, they
were so moved—they could not talk, for very excess
of thronging words—they could not speak, because
they had so much to say.
At length they stepped back a pace or two, so
that each might look in her friend’s face.
They had been parted little more than a year,
and yet how changed were both!
“You have suffered, Heather,” Bessie said; and
then she took the dear face between her hands and
turned it so that the firelight might fall upon it.
134“Yes—Lally,” the other answered, and her tears
began to flow once more.
“It was hearing about her brought me to you. I
must see her, Heather, though she has forgotten me,
of course.”
“If she have, it must be very recently,” was the
reply. “How did you hear of her illness?”
“From Ned,” Bessie answered: “I did not
know anything about your having left the Hollow,
and went there, hoping to be able to see and speak
to you alone, but I found the place deserted—oh,
it did not seem like Berrie Down any longer!—and
then Ned told me Lally was very ill. So, as I could
not rest without looking in my child’s face—she was
almost mine, Heather——”
With a sob, Bessie broke off. The past came
back to her as she spoke—the past, with its sunshine,
its purity, its peace. She thought of the evening
Heather returned from London—the evening when
this poor story opened—when she and the child sat
upon the grass dividing their bonbons, and a glory
lay over the landscape—a glory wrought out of the
beams of the setting sun which sank to rest as she
and Heather walked slowly towards the house,
135talking of Gilbert Harcourt and her own future.
Counted by time, that evening did not lie so very
far back in the past—but computed by events, it
seemed to Bessie as though half a lifetime had
come and gone since then.
It was like looking back to childhood from the
confines of middle age; it was like recalling one’s
youth when tottering feebly to the grave. It was so
far away, and yet so near. It was as though for
years and years she had been climbing to the
summit of some steep hill, till suddenly she reached
a point where she was able to pause and glance
behind, and from whence she could see close to her,
and yet separated by all that lapse of time, by all
the toil and labour of the ascent, the happy valley
she had left. There, steeped in the sunshine of old,
were spread out before her the plains of her earthly
heaven. Once again she felt the breath of the
sweet west wind upon her cheek; she beheld the
westeria with its wealth of leaves; she saw the
windows of those pleasant rooms wreathed with
roses, festooned with honeysuckles. There was a
great peace in the air, and the woman whose face
had the sad forecasting expression walked beside her
over the sward.
136There had been a little jealousy between them
then; but that was gone and past—passed like
winter’s frosts, melted like December’s snow.
And this was how they met once more, with the
child dear to both of them so ill, that, had Bessie
returned but a few hours later, she might never have
looked upon her living again.
Quietly they passed upstairs together; with
silent feet they entered the room where Lally lay,
with Agnes still keeping watch beside her.
Heather, as they drew near the bed, put her
finger to her lips, as a warning for Agnes to utter
no exclamation of surprise.
“I do not want any one to know I am here,”
Bessie whispered in her ear; “but I could not rest
without seeing her. How is she now?”
“Very quiet,” Agnes answered.
Very quiet. Yes, too quiet, Bessie thought, as
she bent over the child, for the great change to be
far distant. Very quiet. Oh, woe! that the little
busy feet should ever have grown so idle—that the
restless body should ever have become so still!
Very quiet—too quiet, for Bessie had to stoop
down to hear if she still breathed. Quiet with the
137skin drawn tight over her face; with her hair, damp
and thin, pushed back from her forehead; with her
poor hands, which were now but skin and bone,
lying listlessly out upon the coverlet, with her eyes
closed and the fringed lashes sweeping her cheek;
with her mouth parted a little, Lally was indeed at
last very quiet—quiet enough to have contented any
one who had ever thought her too full of health,
and mirth, and spirits.
Silently Agnes gave place to Bessie. She took
her shawl away, and removed her bonnet, and
carried them to a distant sofa. With a glance
Bessie thanked her, and then she turned to the
child again—her child—whom she had loved, petted,
scolded, kissed, and teazed in the bright summer
weather, and loved, and nursed, and tended, and
left when the holly berries were shining above the
little bed—her child of whom she had been so fond—her
child who had been so fond of her, who had
made such moan for Bessie, and yet who had now
too nearly done with this world’s loves and pleasures
to be told her old playmate was returned and standing
close beside her.
There was a great silence in the room. Upon
138the threshold stood the universal Conqueror, and
already the child felt the chilling influence of his
presence. With her hand clasped in Bessie’s the
mother sat watching; with her head resting on the
pillow Bessie looked at Lally, never removing her
eyes from the child’s face.
On the other side of the bed stood Agnes, leaning
against the wall, weary and faint; but there was no
sound of weeping in the apartment; they would not
sob, they would not make lamentation to vex or
disturb the spirit hovering on the dark shores of
Eternity’s mighty ocean.
They hushed their grief, and they bowed their
heads in silent prayer, and the rustle of the angel’s
wings—the angel who was come to fetch their
darling—might almost have been heard through the
stillness which abode in the room.
All at once Bessie rose, and passing round the
bed, asked Agnes in a whisper,—
“Where is Arthur?”
“At Mr. Crofts’,” was the reply.
“Send for him,” said Bessie, and Agnes left the
room.
After a while the rest of the family came in one
139by one—Alick and Cuthbert, Lucy and Laura, and
the servants, Mrs. Piggott, and Prissy, and Jane;
but when the silence was thus broken, the child
grew restless, and then Heather motioned them to
go—all save Agnes, and Bessie, who, crouched up in
a dark corner, escaped observation. Time passed by,
and still there came no tidings of Arthur. Once
again Bessie spoke to Agnes, and again Agnes went
softly downstairs; when she returned, she whispered
that Alick was gone to fetch his brother.
With her anxious eyes Heather followed every
movement of the pair, and at length she asked
Bessie—“Is it so near?”
A silent pressure of her hand was Bessie’s only
answer.
“Would you send some one for Mr. Henry?”
the poor mother whispered.
“My darling, what good can he do?” Bessie
inquired; but Cuthbert was despatched for him,
nevertheless.
Before many minutes more, however, had elapsed,
the child began to move from side to side, and talk
wanderingly. She moaned gently, and tried to
raise herself in bed. Agnes put her arm behind
140the pillow, and lifted her a little. Involuntarily
Heather and Bessie stood up, as though they heard
and felt something approaching, and the former
murmured in the very extremity of her anguish,
“My child—my child!”
“Don’t, Heather—don’t?” Bessie said, in an
agony of entreaty.
At sound of her voice, Lally opened her eyes
wide and looked on the speaker with an expression
of recognition.
Almost immediately her moaning ceased, her
restlessness subsided; there came a glimmer into
her face of remembrance, and a smile—a very
ghost of the old whimsical smile—played about
her lips as she stretched out her little arms and
said,—
“Bessie carry me down among the blackberries,
and cover me with leaves?”
Oh Lord! in the days when that was their
pastime, who would have dreamed of so pitiful an
ending to the short story!
For a moment, for her—for the child—no doubt
the chamber was flooded with golden sunbeams—without
question she saw the landscape lying still
141and tranquil in the clear, calm, bright light of those
summer evenings which had been so happy and so
glad.
She beheld the trees gently waving their branches
in the soft breeze; she heard the light stirring of
the wind amongst the foliage; she saw the lawn
sloping away to the Hollow, the sheep dotting the
fields beyond; she was in her home—her own very
home—as she had often called it; the past was
present with her once again, and Bessie stood beside
her on the smooth green turf.
The mortal sickness was gone; the months of
feeble health were wiped out; the limbs felt tireless
as of old; pain was to her an unknown experience,
weakness a thing she had never felt; she was lithe,
and active, and strong; restless and insatiable for
movement, as ever; the game they had played at
so often was to be played once more; adown the
slope they were to go, swift, and happy, and free;
adown the slope, over the grass, under the trees,
into the Hollow, among the blackberry bushes, and
then——
Bessie lifted the child, and laying her in her
mother’s arms, said, “Take her, Heather.”
142That was all—a moment after in this world there
was no Lally, she had passed to the Eternal Shore.
Ah me! ah me! who in the days not so very long
departed would ever have thought that the little
comedy of Lally’s life should come to hold within it
so bitter a tragedy for Heather; who would ever
have fancied that the fair freckled face should wear
so worn and wasted a look, that the little hands
should be crossed and lie so motionless upon her
breast, that the eyes should never sparkle with glee
nor fill with tears again, that the sound of her laugh
should never be heard more?
No more, no more! it all came to Heather’s mind
as she laid her first-born on the bed—dead. No
more, no more! and then the torrent of her grief,
like a tide which has for a brief period been kept
back by a feeble barrier, broke bounds and swept
everything before it in a resistless flood.
No more, no more! never to part the laurels
again and peep forth from amongst the green leaves
gleefully, never to stand amidst the flowers, with
her little frock held up to receive the buds Bessie
showered into it, never to sit with Muff in her lap,
never to kneel on the sward hugging Nep’s great
143head, never to be in and out, out and in, never to go
to the sea-side as they had pictured, and gather
shell, and weed, and pebble, never to see the spring
come round again, and the primroses dot the copse.
No more—no more!
Never more either to grow older and to change,
never to be a grown-up daughter, never to be taught
anything, never to alter, never to be either sorrow
or comfort, curse or blessing in the future, never to
have a bitter memory attached to her; always to be
“little Lally,” always to be a child.
In the future there came consolation to the mother
from this thought, but that future was far off in the
hour when she knelt beside the bed weeping as
though her very heart would break.
Somehow they got her out of the room, and
Agnes stayed with Heather while Bessie dressed
“her child” for the last time, and left her, a smile
still hovering on her lips, to sleep the soundest sleep
even Lally had ever known.
Stealing softly down the stairs Bessie met Arthur.
She had her bonnet on and veil down, so as she
stood aside on one of the landings to let him pass,
he did so without recognising her.
144The man was white as his dead child, and
trembling like a leaf.
He had come too late! there was no Lally now
in the silent room; there would be no Lally in any
room which his feet might enter for evermore.
CHAPTER VII. IN BERRIE DOWN LANE.
145
It was all over! Skill could do nothing more for
her. Love itself was impotent now.
They brought flowers, and strewed them on her;
but their bright colours, their sweet perfume, could
delight the child no longer. They passed into the
room where she lay a score times a day; but Lally
never said, “Who’s ’at?” or weakly put out her
hand to welcome one of them.
Bessie might steal in at night to look once again,
and still once more, at the child she had loved so
much; but Lally needed no one to sing her to sleep
now—she had ceased wearying for her old playmate,
and tears for her loss could trickle down her little
white face no more.
Even Arthur, who stealthily and like a criminal
146watched his opportunity of visiting the chamber at
times when no one should witness his grief—even he,
with all his sorrow and contrition, could not win a
word from Lally, whom he had so persistently, until
the very end, indeed, declared to be in no danger.
Not from any evil intention, but merely because
his vanity and his weakness were great, he had
suffered himself to be led away by the still beautiful
woman who had been the love of his youth. He
had neglected Heather in days which he now understood
must have been very dark to her; he had
seen little of his child, who lay before him with her
formerly eager face cold and fixed, with her limbs
still, with her hands at rest, with the bright flowers
already fading on her breast, very quiet—oh! so
perfectly still.
What was Heather’s grief to his—her passionate
woman’s sorrow to his? She had sat with the
child, nursed her, heard every word the lips now so
mute had uttered, supplied every want the body,
which now needed nothing, had fretfully desired.
Her grief might be very terrible, very hard to bear,
but there was no remorse mingled with it. Her
tears might flow unceasingly, but there was no
147bitterness in them. She could talk of her lost one,
and receive sympathy from every person around;
but Arthur—he had rarely seen Lally—he had
been glad to forget her illness—he had listened to
false words of comfort, and now, when his eyes were
opened, it was only to look on—death.
An awful repentance had seized him when Alick,
having at length succeeded in tracing his brother to
one of the theatres, whither he was gone with Mr.
and Mrs. Croft to see a new piece which at the time
chanced to be creating a sensation, brought him out
of the building with one sentence—
“If you want to see Lally alive, come home
immediately!”
How he ever reached Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Arthur
did not know. He had some faint remembrance of
walking down steps, and entering a cab, and driving—it
might have been for miles, or only for a hundred
yards, so far as his recollection of the matter enlightened
him.
The blow Tifford dealt him at the door blotted
every antecedent event out of his memory.
“Too late, sir,” said that individual, in a low
tone to Alick. “It is all over!”
148“What is over?” Tifford subsequently informed
his friends, Mr. Dudley demanded, adding, “And
then, poor gentleman, I told him she was gone.”
Arthur was precisely the man to feel a shock of
this kind keenly; a stronger nature could never
have suffered itself to be so deluded; and the servants
about the house, the only people who noted his visit
to the close shut room, suspected that Mrs. Dudley’s
grief was less bitter than his; that her open lamentations,
her fast-flowing tears were preferable to this
silent sorrow—to this tardy repentance which kept
him haunting the death-chamber—dragging him
continually away both from business and from rest
to look on the face of the child he had only grown
to love much when she needed no more love from
any human being.
It has before been stated, that Arthur Dudley
always rated more highly the blessings he lacked
than the blessings he enjoyed, and this very peculiarity
of his temperament increased the grief
which his affection, and his repentance alike were
sure to produce when once affection and repentance
were useless.
Never before in his life had Arthur Dudley felt
149so lonely and so miserable as during the week
which succeeded Lally’s death. For some time
previously he had been gradually estranging himself
from every member of his family, and now there was
a restraint evident in their manner towards him—a
restraint and an awkwardness which neither he nor
they, knew exactly how to overcome.
In those days even Heather grew hard, and would
not of her own free will speak to him as she did to
others about their child, whom he had, as she fancied,
neglected.
“She was mine,” the poor mother repeated, when
Bessie would fain have had her talk to Arthur of
Lally, “she was mine, and mine only; he never
cared for her. Even strangers—even Mr. Croft
and Mr. Stewart, and Mr. Henry—were kinder to my
darling than her own father. No, Bessie, I am not
unfeeling—it is the truth. He was never with me
nor with her; always with that wicked, cruel woman—always—always.”
It is a curious anomaly to notice how harsh the
very excess of a woman’s sensibility frequently
renders her.
She feels one side of a question so deeply, that
150there is no room left in her nature for considering
even the possibility of there being another side at
all. And, in that hour of mortal sorrow, Heather
had no leisure to bestow a thought on any one
except her dead child. Even her love for Arthur
seemed blotted out in indignation at his neglect of
their first-born.
And yet the iron had entered very deep into the
man’s soul—so deep, that the day when he followed
Lally to her last resting-place was perhaps the
bitterest of his life.
They buried her at Fifield. Not so very far from
the old home—under the shadow of the grey church-tower—they
laid Heather’s darling down to sleep.
“Lilian, aged six years and four months”—that
was the legend her little coffin bore. “Lilian!” No
fear of offending the unities now, she was gone
where names do not convey much meaning.
“Six years and four months!” She was gone, also,
where age and time are not of much account either.
Poor Lally—nay, happy Lally—to have had a
life at once so bright and so short, so brimful of
everything which can be packed by possibility into
the longest span of human existence.
151Sunshine and mirth, and love and friendship, and
care and devotion.
What—though “finis” was written to the earthly
story after a few short chapters—say, friends, was
the story less round and perfect in its symmetry for
that?
Was the ending in Fifield churchyard all sorrow?
Nay, rather there came a time when Heather was
able to think, almost with thankfulness, of that child
face which should never grow old, nor changed, nor
wrinkled, nor careworn, nor other than innocent and
pure, waiting for her in that far-off land, where the
“ransomed of the Lord shall obtain joy and gladness,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
All who had been so kind to her in her first illness,
came to see the last they could of “poor little Lally
Dudley,” together with those who had grown fond
of the child towards the end.
Alick was glad there were so many round the
grave, for he felt that the presence of strangers
would exercise a beneficial influence on his brother,
who had been in such grief all the way down—in
such sore distress for the loss of the little one he
should never in this world see again.
152Returning on such an errand to the old place—which
he had left with high hopes of success, with
almost the certainty, as he thought, of conquering
fortune—would have been inexpressibly bitter to
Arthur, even without the reflection that his child
had died far from him—farther away than though
oceans and continents, mountains and rivers, had
divided them; and it needed all his strength to
carry him through the ordeal bravely, and with
good courage.
Mr. Croft was present; but from him, Alick
Dudley kept aloof. Even amongst the moss-grown
headstones in Fifield graveyard, he could not forget
what he had seen amidst the tombs at North
Kemms.
He would not break faith with Bessie; but he
could not be cordial to the man, although he had
been kind to Heather and fond of Lally.
Alick was able, perhaps, now to guess the reason
of his fancy for the child; but that did not soften
him much towards the offender.
Rather the reverse, possibly; young people are,
like most women, apt to be a trifle intolerant. They
are very ignorant, and they are very virtuous; their
153standard of right is happily high, their idea of sin
is, fortunately, that it is black as night. There are
two colours only for them in this world; of the
delicate shades of grey into which, as the years go
by, every human feeling seems ultimately to resolve
itself, they have no understanding. It is entire
innocence, or entire vice—it is either devil or angel.
What is the good of a man being a man, if he cannot
resist temptation? where is the boasted purity of a
woman, if she have ever even looked on sin?
Very nice sentiments, doubtless, and appropriate
to the season and state of life in which they are
generally expressed and believed. Too much
toleration in the young would prove as dangerous
as too many open windows in the spring; to the
fleshly mansions, doubtful winds of doctrine would
thus be permitted ingress. It is better for young
people to continue, as their charming fashion is, delightfully
bigoted, than to learn charity from practical
knowledge of those temptations which make older
persons question whether it be not possible for
virtue to drag her spotless robes through the mire, and
for vice to go through such an explanatory purification
as might almost make a blackamoor clean.
154And it was perfectly natural, considering his
age, his character, his education, and the circumstances
of the case so far as he knew them, that
Alick Dudley should take the worst view possible of
Mr. Croft’s conduct.
Had he not deliberately, and of malice aforethought,
come like a wolf in the night, and stolen
Bessie away—he with a wife living, too?
Well might Bessie not write to Heather (Alick
was not aware that Bessie had returned to the one
friend, of whose love and faithfulness she felt confident);
well might the guilty creature hold herself
aloof from all communication with relative or acquaintance.
That Bessie had been deceived, Alick
never imagined; that Mr. Croft had not jumped into
sin at a single leap, was an idea he would have
scouted. How easy, how gradual, how pleasant are
the slopes leading down into the valley where Vice
holds her court, this young Joshua had no conception.
He thought that every offender, every one who went
so far wrong as he felt confident Mr. Croft had
strayed, ought to be stoned like Achan, so that he
might trouble the peace of Israel no more.
Comfortable thoughts these, to fill the mind when
155standing beside an open grave; but they were Alick
Dudley’s thoughts, nevertheless, and they made him
hold himself aloof as far as possible from the man
who had, he believed, first stolen Bessie away, and
then striven to be kind to Lally, as a sort of offset
against the shame he had brought amongst them.
He was contemptible altogether, the lad decided,
too mean for him even to despise, and yet Alick
would have liked to fight this despicable individual—to
put some terrible affront on him—to do him a
serious bodily injury—to tell him, that although
Bessie was not worth fretting after, still the man
who had lured her away was worth punishing.
Nothing Mr. Croft could say or do, Alick kept
declaring to himself, should ever induce him to
grasp his hand in friendship; and when all was over,
when the body of the child who had never known of
her own experience the meaning of the word “loneliness,”
was left to lie solitary under the shadow of
that grey church-tower till the day of judgment,
Alick acted upon this decision, and drawing back from
the little group which clustered around Arthur, found
himself walking side by side with Lord Kemms.
Heaven knows what put such a thought into the
156young man’s mind at the moment; but, after they
had passed through the gates, Alick suddenly asked
his companion:
“How is Nellie?”
“Stone blind, as you said she would be,” was the
reply.
“And I have not yet made the fortune out of
which I was to repay you,” remarked Alick.
“I am sorry to hear it, though not for the reason
you mention,” Lord Kemms answered. “It would
have been better, however, perhaps, for all of you had
I never bought her. The money she fetched was
the first your brother advanced into the Protector.”
“Poor Arthur!” murmured the Squire’s brother;
“but it was not the Protector that brought us back
to Fifield to-day.”
“True,” rejoined his companion; “but, perhaps,
your brother’s child might have lived a little longer
had she never left Berrie Down.”
“You are wrong there, my Lord,” Alick replied;
“nothing could have saved her; she was dying
when she left here, and it was owing entirely to the
care and skill of the London doctors she stayed
with us so long. It is bad enough as it is, but we
157could scarcely have borne the loss had it been as
you supposed.”
Which view of the case happened to be perfectly
true, although Lord Kemms imagined the speaker
was mistaken.
Having had a hand in damaging the Protector,
his Lordship felt, naturally, anxious to prove that
Company the origin of all evil.
Since, in the course of a mysterious Providence,
Lally was to die, he would have felt happy to demonstrate
that the Protector had, directly or indirectly,
been instrumental in killing her.
Now, however, Alick Dudley cut the ground
from under his feet. If Lally’s short existence had
been prolonged, even for an hour, by the skill and
kindness of the London doctors, it was impossible
for Lord Kemms ever again to insinuate that residing
in town had hastened her death.
On that score, at all events, Arthur had no reason
to reproach himself, which was fortunate, since when
he returned to Berrie Down after the funeral, he
felt his burden was quite as heavy as he could bear.
He was pressed for money; his dreams of wealth
were vanishing away like mist wreaths; his shares
158he feared would never return him even a quarter of
the sum he had expected to make by them; the
half-yearly dividend had been unsatisfactory; his
directors were irritable, the shareholders discontented.
He knew he must shortly let the Hollow, in order
to rid himself of farming expenses, and to provide
certain funds for paying the interest of the money
for which Berrie Down was already mortgaged. He
had not merely lost money senselessly, but squandered
it foolishly; and to a man who had for so
many years of his life looked honestly after sixpences,
there was something very terrible in the
reflection that he had got himself into debt through
unthinkingly spending sovereigns.
In addition to all these causes for regret, Arthur
added that peculiarity of his own temperament,
which valued whatever was lost or in jeopardy far
above any secure or present possession; and the
feeling that the Hollow would soon to a great
extent cease to be his own property, caused him to
view every tree and shrub about it, every stick and
thorn, with an appreciative affection as novel as it
was painful.
159His love for wife, children, property, kindred lay
latent until some chance circumstance accidentally
revealed its existence to himself; and most probably
the first time he ever really placed a proper value
on Berrie Down was when he saw it in the dead of
winter, its evergreens bright and glossy as ever; its
lawn sloping away towards the west, the grand old
trees tossing their branches in the keen north blast,
all passing away from him and his; passing away
from the descendants of those who had held the
place for centuries.
He meant to remain at the Hollow for the night;
he had much to talk over with Ned, many arrangements
to make, fifty things to see to; and so he and
Cuthbert, and Mr. Croft, who had declined the hospitality
of Kemms’ Park, were all to stay in the
now deserted-looking rooms until the following
morning, while Alick returned to town by the latest
night-train from Palinsbridge.
It was necessary for him, if he wished to catch
this train, to start away from Berrie Down before
nine o’clock; and while the young man was out in
the yard impressing this fact on Ned’s comprehension,
Mr. Croft came and stood beside him.
160It was a moonlight night, stormy but still fine.
The wind blew great masses of clouds over the
moon’s face, and then swept it clean and bright
again.
“You will have rather a rough drive over,” Mr.
Croft remarked; and Alick, backing the pony into
the shafts, sulkily answered, “Yes, it looks like it.”
“Can Ned not harness the pony for you?” was
the next question.
“If he tried very hard, perhaps he might,” Alick
replied.
“Perhaps he will be good enough to try hard,
then,” said Mr. Croft; “and perhaps you would
have the kindness to walk a few yards with me down
the Lane. I want to speak to you.”
“To me?” repeated Alick, in surprise.
“Yes; to you, particularly,” was the reply.
“I will bid Arthur ‘good-night,’ and be with you
directly,” the other agreed; and accordingly in a
few minutes Mr. Croft and he were walking along
Berrie Down Lane, past the pond, and under the
elms and beeches that sheltered the road beyond.
“There is bad blood between us,” began the
elder man, after they had paced on for a short
161distance side by side in silence. “There is bad
blood between us, and I am sorry for it; but it is
natural that you should both dislike and distrust
me.”
“Was that what you brought me here to say?”
Alick inquired.
“No; consider it as my opening sentence,—the
stamp with which I have broken the conversational
ice; now I can go on. You remember, of course,
where you first saw me?”
“It is not likely I should soon forget such a
pleasure,” was the reply.
“You are satirical, but I am shot proof,” Mr.
Croft remarked; “you recollect, then, that Sunday
afternoon in North Kemms’ church, and the girl who
kept her eyes fixed so demurely on her prayer-book,
which I had afterwards the happiness of restoring
to her?”
“And in which you placed a letter,” added Alick.
“And in which I placed one of a series of letters,”
amended Mr. Croft; “good—you remember her?”
“As well as I remember you,” was the reply.
“Where is she now?”
The moon sailed out from behind a cloud, as
162suddenly and sharply Mr. Croft put this question,
looking full in Alick’s face while he did so.
“Where is she now?” the younger man repeated,
“why, do you not know?”
“If I did, I should not come to you for information.
Listen to me,” he rapidly proceeded, “I
would give my right hand to know where she is. I
would give a man anything almost he liked to ask,
if he only proved to me she were alive and well.
You were fond of her, were you not, boy? it vexes
you to hear that there is no one belonging to her, no
one on whom she has a claim—not even myself who
can say where she is, whether living or dead; but
what is your trouble to mine? When I looked in
your face a moment since, my last hope vanished. I
thought perhaps she might have gone to Heather—to
Mrs. Dudley, I mean.”
“Would you have me understand that she never
went off with you?” Alick interrupted. He stood
still in the very middle of Berrie Down Lane as he
spoke, and the shifting light gave a wild, curious
expression to his face. “Do you think I am so
simple as to believe——”
“My dear fellow, I do not think you simple, and
163it is immaterial to me what you believe; but I want
to know where your cousin is to be found. I desire,
at least, assurance of her safety, comfort, and—should
such a miracle be possible—happiness.”
“And by what right do you dare to ask anything
about her,” demanded Alick; “you a married man,
you who never ought to have written her a line, or
met her, or—or——”
“I did not beg you to walk on here with me to-night
in order to answer your questions,” Mr. Croft
interrupted; “my object was merely to put one or
two of my own. To my first, your face has already
replied. I see you know nothing of your cousin’s
whereabouts. If you should do so, will you at all
events let me know that you have heard from or
seen her, and that she is well?”
“No,” Alick Dudley replied, “I will not.”
“That settles my second question,” observed Mr.
Croft. “Now, the last point on which I desire information
is this: does Mrs. Dudley know we have
met before, and where?”
“She knows I have seen you,” was the answer;
“but I have not told her when, or where, or what
I suspect.”
164“That is to say, Mrs. Dudley does not in any
way connect me with your cousin’s disappearance?”
Mr. Croft remarked inquiringly; and when Alick
answered in the affirmative, he proceeded:
“Will you still respect my secret, so far as you
know it?”
“I shall make no promise,” Alick answered.
“At least, will you let me tell my story for myself?”
“There is nothing to prevent your doing that,”
the other replied, “any more than there is to prevent
my telling mine.”
“You are sternly uncompromising,” said Mr.
Croft.
“I should be sorry to compromise with a seducer
and a villain,” was the reply.
“You are talking at random, boy, on a matter
concerning which you know literally nothing,” the
person so politely addressed observed, sadly. “Had
I spoken to an older man, as I have spoken to you
to-night, I should not have been so repulsed.”
“Possibly not by an older man like yourself,”
retorted Alick, with a sneer.
“Good-night,” said Mr. Croft, “we will not
spoil our naturally sweet tempers by further argument.
165Here comes Ned. Shall we shake hands
over it? No; good-bye then, and pleasant thoughts
as you travel to town. Some day you will think
you have not been all in the right in your judgment
of me; but I do not quarrel with you for that
judgment. It is human to err, and your humanity
has erred, perhaps, on the safest side. On a safer
side than mine, certainly,” he muttered, as Alick,
jumping up beside Ned, took the reins, and, with a
cold farewell to Mr. Croft, drove off at a rattling
trot along Berrie Down Lane, and thence through
Fifield to Palinsbridge.
As they passed Fifield church, the moonlight fell
clear and cold on the mound of freshly-turned
mould, which was heaped over the spot where
Heather’s darling lay all alone, and the tears came
welling up into Alick’s eyes when he thought of the
dead child.
Any one might have imagined that such tears
must soften the heart, and render it for the time, at
least, pitiful and tender even to a sinner; but no
such change was wrought on Alick Dudley’s
mood.
All the way up to town, sitting in a corner of the
166compartment, he pondered over his interview with
Mr. Croft—pondered and wondered; but it never
once occurred to him that perhaps he had judged
the man harshly, that he had repulsed his semi-confidence
very rudely.
He was a sinner—he was all Alick had said; over
and over again the youth kept repeating these statements
to himself; over and over he found it necessary
to refresh his spirit with them, for his conscience
did not feel quite satisfied concerning the
interview.
Still he had done right, and though the right
might be unpleasant and ungracious, it was nevertheless
necessary to be performed. Young though
he might be, Alick Dudley knew enough of human
nature to be aware Mr. Croft was for some reason
or other in very grievous trouble: to be confident,
he never would have spoken to him had the subject
not been one, as he implied, of vital importance to
his peace; but what of that? If he were in trouble,
so much the better; if he were anxious and grieved,
it was nothing but what he deserved.
He had been kind to Lally, it is true; but, again,
what of that? In the eyes of Alick Dudley,
167Douglas Aymescourt Croft seemed the incarnation
of evil, of hypocrisy, of treachery, and of sin.
With all his heart and with all his soul, Alick
hated the man—hated him all the more, perhaps,
because he felt quite confident, if Mr. Croft once
told his tale to Heather, he would deceive her also
somehow, perhaps even move her to pity.
And Alick held in those days the pleasant creed,
that no human being who went wrong should ever
be pitied. Not even the look of Mr. Croft’s face, as
he stood eager and anxious, waiting for Alick’s
answer, had been able to soften the youth. Rather,
in his stern rectitude, he now blamed himself for
having been over-lenient, for having been unduly
tender to this wretch who had deceived Bessie, and
wrought for her perhaps such misery as he himself
was unable to contemplate calmly.
Out and away with him; on a gallows as high as
Haman’s, Alick would willingly have hung him;
and, after all, to come to me! thought this modern
Joshua—to come to me!
Ay, there was Mr. Croft’s mistake; perhaps he
never had been very young himself, or perhaps the
feelings of his youth lay so far back in the book of
168years, that he forgot how stern and hard young
people, who can be trusted, usually are in their
judgments. Be this as it may, the result of
the interview had proved different to what he expected,
and he returned to the Hollow, smiling a
little bitterly as he thought time would teach
Alick Dudley a different lesson; that possibly out
of his own experience he might after a while
acquire a little toleration in judging of others.
And in this idea, who may say Douglas Croft was
wrong?
True, it is only God who, knowing all about our
sins and our temptations, is ever entirely merciful;
but still, the more men learn of their own natures,
the more fully they come to comprehend how easy
it is to do wrong, and how difficult to do right; the
closer they form an acquaintance with that lore
which nothing except sorrow, and trial, and trouble,
and experience can teach, the greater is the toleration
with which they regard error; the greater is
the diffidence which they feel about affirming of any
human being, “In the sight of the Almighty, you
are a very grievous sinner.”
In precise proportion, as a man towards the close
169of his life is harsh and bitter, as he views with
loathing not the crime but the criminal, as he ventures
to pass severe judgments on his fellow-creatures,
so we may be certain his earthly education has been
wasted.
It is natural for the young to air their indignation;
natural and right, for they cannot conceive the
power and might of those temptations which are
strong enough to lead wiser people than themselves
astray; which meet poor humanity like an armed
man; which lurk like lions in the path, yea, are
“like lions roaring on their prey.”
In the young, it may reasonably be hoped that
intolerance is an outward and visible sign of inexperience
and innocence, but in the old and the
middle-aged it can be regarded but as a token of
folly, as a sign of a Pharasaic rather than a humble
spirit; of a mental constitution swift to forget personal
sins and to notice defects in others; of a
bigoted proneness to measure the corn of all men’s
lives out of one bushel; of a pompous giving thanks
to God for having made some people so much better
than that poor, low, wretched, tabooed publican; of
a disposition ready to find a mote in a brother’s
170eye, forgetful of the beam which was so utterly
displeasing in the sight of Him who has with his
own lips assured us, that “Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.”
CHAPTER VIII. WOMAN TO WOMAN.
171
Feminine curiosity, we may take it for granted, is
sometimes less keen than feminine grief. If it were
otherwise, in what way, I pray you, should any one
account for the fact, that some weeks passed
away, from the night of Lally’s death, without
Heather Dudley knowing all the particulars of
Bessie’s existence from the hour when she left Berrie
Down, till she reappeared in Lincoln’s Inn Fields?
In truth, the mother’s sorrow was very terrible;
so engrossing, that it nearly deadened all desire to
ascertain the particulars of another human being’s
life; besides which, there was a mystery about
Bessie—a mystery Heather, in the midst of her
grief, intuitively felt chary of intruding on. She
wished no one to hear of her return; she came at
172night to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and was admitted
privily by Tifford, whom probably she had bribed
to secrecy, for none of the other servants ever heard
of her visits. She wore a ring, a golden wedding-ring,
and yet her face was not the face of
a happy woman. She volunteered no particulars of
the events which had intervened between the time
when she stole away from the Hollow like a thief in
the night, till she returned to see Lally before she
died. She was sweeter than of old, but she was
also sadder, and her beauty, neither dimmed nor
diminished, was yet changed.
All these things Mrs. Dudley beholding, even
through her tears, might have marvelled at, though
she never inquired into them, until one day there
arrived a note from Bessie, saying, “I can tell you
no more, dear Heather, unless you will visit me.
Come to me once, at all events; I want to speak to
you, and I want to show you something.”
Dressed in her deep mourning, Heather repaired
to the address given—a first floor in Roscommon
Street, Pentonville.
What a mean street it was—what small, close
rooms that pretty Bessie had selected; and yet,
173when Heather came to sit down beside the fire, with
her old friend’s hand clasping hers, she forgot all the
words of remonstrance she had intended to speak,
and listened to Bessie’s sorrowful apologies.
“It is not exactly the kind of parlour I should
have liked to ask you to spend a day in, Heather,”
she said; “but beggars, you know, cannot be
choosers; and I wanted to talk to you so much—so
much—and to show you something, if you do not
mind.”
“If I do not mind!” Heather repeated, wonderingly.
“Yes, sweet—my child!” and, with the colour
mantling in her cheeks, Bessie went into the next
room, her bedchamber, and brought thence a baby—a
great, staring, fat baby—with pink feet, and arms
that looked as though cord had been tied tightly
round the wrists, so deep were the rolls and wrinkles
of flesh, so high the mountains and so deep the
intermediate valley.
Is it necessary for me to describe what followed
during the course of the next ten minutes?
What woman is there who does not know exactly
how Heather took the little fatuous-looking lump of
mortality to her heart and cried over it; who cannot
174conceive how Bessie, sitting on a low stool, gazed at
the meaningless features of her child, which cooed
and clung to Heather, and dabbed its fists in her
face, and crowed with delight at the sweet eyes bent
upon it, and kicked in an ecstasy of infantile excitement
at all the notice “mamma’s company” was
taking of mamma’s autocrat.
Of course there was weeping. Heather could
not so soon forget her own first-born as to forbear
shedding tears at sight of Bessie’s baby; and then
Bessie cried, and, finally, the autocrat yelled, which
ebullition of feeling did more towards restoring the
mental equilibrium of the two ladies than one of the
Church homilies or a charge from the Archbishop of
Canterbury could have done.
And still Heather asked no questions, while
Bessie, having brought in her boy’s cradle, sat
rocking him to sleep. Mrs. Dudley, spite of that
child, the mean lodgings, the tangible wedding-ring,
refrained from cross-examination. In an earlier
part of this story, it has been stated that Squire
Dudley’s wife knew when to keep a discreet silence,
but it has not been stated that she frequently did
not know when to speak.
175She was sensitive to a fault; and so now, though
she felt dying to know, and Bessie sat longing to
tell, there ensued a silence which the latter at length
broke with—
“Heather, why is it that you have never reproached
me? how does it happen you had not a
single hard word—nothing but love, and tears, and
kisses for me, who repaid your kindness with such
bitter ingratitude?”
“My darling! why should I reproach you?”
Heather answered. “What am I that I should be
hard upon you, however it may be?”
“And how do you think it is, Heather?” asked
her friend, turning from the child, now fast asleep;
“what is your opinion about the matter?”
“I would rather not form any,” was the reply.
“But you must, dear,” Bessie declared; “you
are thinking even now about me. What is the
conclusion at which you have arrived?”
“I was only marvelling!” Mrs. Dudley answered.
“If you are married, where is your husband—why
are you here? if you are not married—oh! Bessie,
sweet, forgive me!”
“Forgive you, Heather!” Bessie answered,
176“forgive you! If you think even the implication
of such a misfortune so hurtful to me, what will
the reality prove to you, Heather? I am not a
married woman, spite of this—and this”—she
pointed to ring and infant—“I am no more married
in the eye of the law, than I was when I left Berrie
Down!”
“God help you!” Heather murmured, softly.
“Ay, God help me, indeed!” Bessie repeated.
“Sometimes, sitting here alone, I think He has dealt
with me very hardly; but, then, I look at my child
and grow patient. I want to tell you my story, if it
will not weary you.”
“Weary me!” Heather exclaimed.
“You do not draw away from me—you do not
regard me as a pariah,” Bessie continued. “If I were
to go to my mother now, and tell her what I am
about to tell you, she would order me out of the
house, and address me for ever after with the doorchain
up. Do you understand me clearly, Heather
Dudley?” she said, almost impatiently. “I am not
a married woman, and yet I am a mother! Shall I
fetch your shawl and bonnet, and send for a cab, and
bid you farewell for ever? Don’t you hate to touch
177me? Is the room not oppressive in which I breathe
the same air with you?” and, as she spoke, Bessie
rose excitedly, and would have moved farther away
but that Heather caught and chid her for her want
of faith.
“I am your friend, love,” she said in the low tone
which had such a virtue of healing and leisure in it—“not
your judge. We are woman to woman now,
Bessie, tell me what you will.”
Then Bessie, flinging herself on her knees, buried
her face in the folds of Heather’s dress, and sobbed
aloud. “I have sinned,” she said, “I have sinned,
but not willingly; my greatest guilt was my deceitfulness,
my sly ingratitude.”
“You were deceitful,” Heather answered. “Oh!
Bessie, how could you, how was it possible for you,
to engage yourself to Gilbert Harcourt, caring, as
you must have done——”
“Heather, you are wrong,” broke in Bessie; “I
was engaged to Gilbert Harcourt before I ever saw
the—the—father of my child. You know what a
life I had at home; you know any life would have
seemed preferable to that. Across it in an unlucky
hour Mr. Harcourt walked. He fell in love with
178me—he was a good creature and a kindly, and so,
though I did not care for him in the least, I said
yes when he asked me to marry him—said yes,
prompted and badgered thereto by my mother, and
so became engaged.
“What is the idea of the world in such matters?
Is it not almost that a woman engaged is a woman
married? Such was my idea, at all events; but I
wearied of the tie before long; it is hard always to
remember one is engaged to a man for whom one
does not care two straws. That was my case with
Gilbert Harcourt. I tried hard to like him, but I
failed; my sin as regards him was ever promising
to become his wife, not in breaking my promise; is
it not better to part even at the altar-rails than to
take false vows before God? I played a double
game for months and months—there was my error;
but I was a coward, and I dare never have faced my
mother had I told her my repugnance to marrying
the suitor she favoured; besides, my other suitor
did not come forward. Oh! Heather, Heather, I
felt so miserable and so wicked down at the Hollow,
I felt so deceitful and false amongst you all. My
love, had you been my mother, I never should have
179been sitting here to-day, a wife, and yet no wife;
had you not been my friend, God only knows where
I should have been to-day, perhaps dead, perhaps
living in sin, certainly not here, struggling feebly
to do right, to atone for my transgression, striving
to forget the only man I ever loved, Heather, the
only man I ever loved.”
She put her hand to her head and moaned as she
spoke—moaned like one in some bodily pain.
“Bessie,” whispered Heather, bending low, “don’t
speak to me about your trouble, dear, if it pains you
to do so. I do not require to hear——”
“But I require to tell you,” Bessie broke in
vehemently. “We met, he and I, after I was engaged
to Gilbert, where do you think, Heather? in a
railway carriage, and he never spoke to me, and I
never spoke to him for forty miles while the train
rushed on to the lonely country place where I was
travelling to spend my Christmas—the Christmas
previous to that I passed with you. Mamma and I had
quarrelled that morning, and, in consequence of our
quarrel, I missed the train by which my friends expected
me; the result of this was, that when I
arrived at Thirkell no one met me, and there I was
180stranded at about nine o’clock of a winter’s night on
the platform of a lonely country station, where such
a luxury as a fly was unknown, and the parsonage
whither I was bound three miles off.
“Had it not been for the manner in which I
parted from my mother I should have returned to
town by the next train due at Thirkell, the station-master
informed me, at 10.25 P.M. As things were,
however, I decided on making the best of my way
to Holston Vicarage on foot, protected by a porter
six feet high, who declared his willingness to take
charge of me.
“All this time my travelling companion was
engaged in sending a telegram to town, to which he
said he should wait an answer, and ‘in the meanwhile,’
he added, turning to me, ‘if you are not
afraid of the cold, my man can drive you over to
Holston and be back here quite as soon as I shall
require him.’
“What should you have done under the circumstances,
Heather? dropped a pretty curtsey and answered—‘Thank
you, sir, but my mamma would not
be pleased if she heard of my accepting any civility at
your hands, and as I am a good child and like to do
181what my mamma tells me, I will walk, if you please,
all along the dirty lanes to Holston, and make myself
as uncomfortable as it is possible for a human being
to render herself?’
“That would have been proper, would it not,
man being woman’s natural enemy? I, however,
preferring impropriety to discomfort, accepted his
offer, was helped by him into a dog-cart, which
seemed to me about five storeys high, thanked him,
bade him good-night, and in twenty minutes was set
down at the door of Holston Parsonage, when, of
course, my friends had quite given me up. Oh! dear,”
Bessie sighed, “oh! dear, to think that so simple a
thing should be the beginning of so much trouble!”
“And after that——” Mrs. Dudley suggested.
“After that, how did we meet?” the girl replied;
“the first time it was on the road, and we bowed;
next time, we spoke. The people I was staying
with were old as the hills, and never took a walk by
any chance. I did, unhappily; and so at length it
came to pass that we—he and I, met on the downs,
in the lanes—sometimes here, sometimes there—but
still constantly. I think,” added Bessie, “we both
fought against our wish to see each other in those
182days—I know I did—I know I chose each morning
I went out a different path, but let me go which way
I would I met him.
“At last, I thought I had better return to town,
but he followed me to London. Can you fancy
what it was, Heather, to return to that horrible
engagement—to the sight of a man now grown
positively distasteful? No, you cannot, love, I
know; God forbid you should. What next? we
met in town, we met at the seashore; and still
I did try to avoid him. You believe me, Heather,
I did strive with all my heart to do my duty to
Gilbert and forget the other, but it was impossible;
I loved the last, I had grown absolutely to dislike
the first. It was no negative feeling I had for my
affianced husband then, it was active aversion. Oh!
Heather, then came the part of my life I hate to
look back upon. I was not honest, I was not open.
When in a fit of repentance, for such I know now it
must have been, he disappeared from Southend,
where we were then staying, I never told Gilbert I
was changed. I let him come on—on—I allowed
them all to talk about my marriage; and I meant
to marry him, loving the other all the time, and
183only angry at his having, as I considered, deserted
me.”
“Did he—did the one you were fond of know of
your engagement to Gilbert?” Mrs. Dudley replied.
“Ah! Heather, do you think there was anything
I kept from him?” Bessie answered; “and, if I had
not been the stupid goose I was, his manner might
have told me there must be something wrong. He
listened to me, and he thought the affair over, as it
seemed, in his mind; and then he begged me to give
Gilbert up, but he never said, ‘I will come forward
and shield you from the storm you dread.’ No, he
only said, ‘If you love me, you will have nothing to
do with him.’ But I was afraid, afraid of my mother,
afraid of being found out, afraid of our being
parted, and I had never seen any good in all my
life, and how could I be good and firm—how was
it possible?”
“My poor child! my poor darling!” Heather
murmured.
“You do not know Southend,” Bessie said, looking
up in the face which was bent down over her.
“You do not know Southend. People tell me it is
not a nice place, but it was as the kingdom of
184heaven to me. There are walks along the shore
to Leigh, and walks beyond Leigh to Hadleigh;
there is a way along the shore to Shoeburyness, and
there are delicious field-paths leading to farm-houses,
which seemed to me the very abodes of peace and
contentment. Oh! those days—those sunshiny
happy days! You are crying, love, what is it? Are
you sorry for me? I was a poor weak treacherous
girl; but so happy, darling, so blessed!”
And Bessie covered her face with her hands, and
the tears came trickling through her fingers. They
had indeed been happy days, but they were gone,
and she sat weeping for the bliss which had been;
whilst Heather, thinking of the sunshine and bliss
her own life had lacked, could not choose but weep
also.
“Then suddenly he went away,” Bessie resumed,
“and soon afterwards I came to stay with you; in
your house I learned that summer my alphabet of a
better life. Unconsciously, women like you, Heather,
mould and purify other women; you are as the salt
which salteth the earth—you are as the leaven hid in
the three measures of meal——”
“Stop, Bessie dearest,” entreated Heather. “Have
185not you, even you, said within this last fortnight, I
was hard to my husband, and I have been hard and
unsympathetic, and wrapped up in my own grief,
Lord pardon me?”
“But I did not mean that you were really hard,”
Bessie declared; “only that you were not quite
the Heather you used to be—the Heather who
thought of Arthur before she thought of any one
else—there, there—I must get on with my story or
I shall never finish it. Where was I?—growing
better—when he came after me once again, praying,
pleading, assuring me, both by word of mouth and by
letter, that it could not be right for me to marry a
man I disliked; that if I persisted in keeping to my
engagement I should be preparing misery for myself,
for Gilbert, and for him.
“But still, he never said, ‘I will come and claim
you from him’—never once.
“How I strove to keep my engagement you may,
perhaps, remember; but when he saw I was determined
to be true to my promise, he grew desperate,
and would have had me risk everything and go off
with him then. He explained that he was placed in
a difficult position in consequence of his father, on
186whom he was dependent, wishing him to marry a
rich widow; and, of course, I was not so selfish as to
desire that he should beggar himself for my sake;
so we parted again. Oh, Heather, I did not sink
without many a struggle, many a frantic effort to
touch secure ground. Everything he told me was
false, even to his name; for he assumed that of a
cousin the better to deceive me; but I loved him
then as I love him now; and then as now. I found
it hard to see a fault in him.
“At last I could bear it no longer, and left with
him as you know; we were married next morning at
a church in the City—he had been residing in the
parish for the requisite period—and, as we drove
away from the door, I saw my father walking along
the side path. I could have put out my hand and
touched his shoulder, but he prevented my speaking
to him. He would not let me write to you or any
one. He said some day he would avow our marriage,
and, till then, I must be patient; and I was
patient. I never wearied him. I never even felt
fretful; if he had asked me to go to Iceland with
him, I would have done it. I would have died for him.
“We were so happy,” she continued, after a
187pause; “we had the loveliest cottage you can
imagine in a distant county; and, though he said he
was poor, I never felt any shortness of money; we
never seemed to have anxiety about providing for
the morrow’s wants. My only trouble was his frequent
absences; but still, spite of these, he spent a
considerable part of his time with me, and he grew
to know you and Arthur, and Lally, and the girls,
as though you had all been members of his own
household.”
“You have more to tell me,” Heather said, as
Bessie paused.
“Yes,” was the reply; “I have, the end of my
story. One day, when we were out together, we met
a gentleman whom my husband greeted with a
certain annoyance and restraint. They seemed
very familiar and intimate; but, still, Maurice—I
always called him Maurice—did not introduce his
friend to me, nor invite him to our house. After he
left us, I asked his name.
“‘Oh, that is my rich cousin,’ Maurice said in
reply. ‘I hope he did not guess who you are.’
“‘Why, would he tell your father?’ I asked, and
he answered ‘No; he did not think so. He believed
188him to be a better fellow than all that came to; but
he is a canting idiot,’ he said, ‘and has got so many
strange ideas. If he should happen to call, you
must not see him; remember, you must not, Bessie!’
“I promised him that I would not, and I meant
to keep my promise; but a fortnight afterwards—when
my husband having gone up to London, I was
alone—this same man stepped, without any announcement
whatever, through one of the front
windows opening into the garden, and, after very
briefly apologising for his intrusion, and the fright
he had caused me, commenced one of the most
dreadful sermons you ever heard, Heather, and
wound up by inquiring ‘whether I had ever considered
I was going down into hell and dragging
his cousin there with me.’
“Thinking he was mad, I humoured him at first;
but, after a time, finding there was a wonderful
coherence in his discourse—that it was, in fact, too
stupid to be the speech of a madman—I asked him,
plainly, what he meant, entreating of him, in the
same sentence, not to tell Maurice’s father of his
son’s marriage; for that fear of bringing unhappiness
on my husband was the only grief I had.
189“Then it was his turn to look bewildered. ‘Father—son—husband—Maurice!’
he repeated in blank
astonishment. ‘My cousin’s name is not Maurice,
and has no father living. May I ask pardon if you
are married to my——the gentleman I——met
you with the other day?’
“‘Certainly,’ I answered; ‘do you think I should
be here if I were not?’
“‘Then,’ he said, ‘it is my duty to tell you my
cousin has most grossly deceived you. The marriage
is not, cannot be, a legal one; for, to my
knowledge, his wife is alive at the present moment.’
“After that,” proceeded Bessie, “there is a blank
in my memory—I suppose I fainted; it was a fearful
blow to receive, but the man who dealt it stayed
with me for nearly an hour, and was very kind and
thoughtful towards me. He did not call the servants;
he made no fuss; he threw a little water
on my face, and let me struggle back to consciousness
without drawing the attention of any
one to my trouble. When I was quite recovered
he begged my pardon for the mistake he had
made in the first instance, and assured me, I think
truly, that, had he guessed for a moment the
190depth of his cousin’s treachery, he never would have
been so abrupt.
“‘But I spoke to him in his own house about you
the other day,’ he added, ‘and he bade me mind
my own business, and not interfere with his—who
you were or what you were, he said, was his concern,
and his only. So then I determined that you should
not perish eternally for want of a word spoken in
time.’
“I let him go on for some minutes—I let him
preach to his heart’s content, and then I said:
“‘You have told me his faults—now show me his
excuse. He was forced to marry against his will.
His wife is old, ugly, ill-tempered. He never loved
her; it was a marriage of convenience, which he was
compelled into by others.’
“He knew what I was thinking of—he guessed I
was seeking an apology to stay with him. He had
sense enough to see I would have given life itself to
hear his wife was a hideous old shrew. He had not
human feeling sufficient to understand my mad
jealousy, but he could not help seeing it was not
accusations against my husband I wanted to hear.
Oh no! it was the defence I was panting for.
191“‘He married young,’ was the reply, ‘a lady of
equal age, well born, wealthy, beautiful, accomplished,
virtuous. They do not live happily, it is
true; but she was his own free choice. He was
rich and independent enough always to marry whomsoever
he pleased.’
“‘And his real name?’ I asked.
“Then he told me, and then only I fully understood
how cruelly I had been deceived—what a tissue of
falsehoods his story had been from first to last, from
beginning to end. He had passed himself off to me
as the man who now sat explaining the depth of my
misery to me. I showed him the certificate of my
marriage, and he said, ‘Yes; according to this the
bridegroom was myself. What shall you do now?
You will not, I trust, make the matter public, nor
think of prosecuting him.’
“Prosecuting him! I stared at him as I repeated
the words. Bring trouble to the man I loved!
What did he think I was made of, I wonder, to
expect I should turn in a moment like that?
Husband or no husband, he was still dearer to me
than anything on the face of God’s earth; and so I
told this bearer of bad tidings, who then seemed to
192fear I should fall, as he expressed it, into deeper
sin; that my beauty—he had the grace to admit I
was beautiful—should prove a worse snare than ever
to his cousin, a lure of the devil to trap him to
destruction.
“I could not bear any more after that. I asked
him if he were a clergyman, and he said no; that
the sect to which he belonged approved of lay
preachers, and that all men were ministers whom
the grace of God moved to speak His word.
“‘And do you imagine such lecturing will do
me any good?’ I said; ‘do you not know you
are taking the most likely means to make me
remain where I am? Do you consider it is a light
trouble which has befallen me? Do you expect
me to feel grateful to you for bringing news which
has utterly destroyed my happiness?’ for I was so
happy—so happy.
“‘Sinfully happy,’ he said.
“At that I fired up. Where was the sin, I asked,
when I knew nothing of it? Why could he not
have left me alone, now the thing was done and
past, and that no act of mine could undo it? Why
did he come there? I raved, I think I must have
193done, for at length he said he would leave me for a
season, and return the next day when I grew
calmer, and more willing to listen to the voice of
consolation.
“‘Meaning yours,’ I suggested.
“‘I will help you, if you permit me,’ he answered;
‘help you with advice—money to go back to your
friends.’
“‘No,’ I said, ‘you will not. You have done
what you consider your duty; and, if I do not thank
you for your misjudged kindness, it is only because
I find it difficult to speak ordinary words of courtesy
when my heart is broken. There is nothing more
you can do for me—all the rest lies between
him and me—between him and me and God, and
in the bitterness of our future no man shall
meddle.’
“‘As you wish,’ he answered; ‘only tell me one
thing more: have you friends to whom you can
apply for assistance? I only ask that I may feel
you are not quite desolate.’
“This touched me a little. ‘I have one friend,’
I said, ‘who would not, I know, turn from me in
any distress or difficulty.’
194“‘And that friend——’
“‘Is a woman,’ I finished, ‘and one not of my
own kindred nor of mine own house; but I shall not
go to her, and what I mean to do I shall not tell
you.’
“He turned and looked at me doubtfully; then he
said, ‘May I call to-morrow?’ to which I answered,
‘Yes,’ if he would only leave me then.
“Twice on his way to the window he stopped and
hesitated; and while he went down the garden, I
saw him clasp his hands as if praying.
“I longed to fling a book after him; but I was
wrong, Heather, I was wrong. I believe him to
have been a good man, though he did come and
take all the sunshine out of my life in a minute, for
it was such sunshine, and I was so happy.
“When he left me, then, for the first time I
realised my position. I will not tell you, Heather,
what I passed through during the hours that followed.
There was a time when I knew, if such a temptation
had been presented to me, I should have yielded to
it; but I thought of you, and that thought made
me strong. I seemed to hear your voice calling
me away. I fancied I could see your eyes pleading—pleading
195for me to leave; you saved me,
Heather. I should have stayed on, had I never
known you; I should have stayed on or drowned
myself—the temptation swayed now to sin, now to
suicide, and when I left his house, I do not think I
knew exactly whether it was to be life or death,—whether
I would end the struggle or endure it. I
believe I was mad.”
“And how long is it since all this happened?”
Mrs. Dudley inquired.
“Months and months ago,” was the reply.
“How far I walked that night, all through the
darkness, I should be afraid to say; for how many
days and nights I wandered purposelessly on, I could
not tell you: my mind took no account of time or
distance. It was in the autumn, and the weather
lovely. I kept to the field-paths and the lonely
lanes; I avoided high roads, and railway stations, and
towns. I had no object in view except to get a long
distance away from him; and where I should ultimately
have walked to, I cannot imagine, had my
strength been equal to my will; but it was not. I
dropped down one morning on a piece of green
sward under the shelter of some elm-trees, (the
196place reminded me of Berrie Down Lane,) and
I thought I was dying. I saw a house in the distance,
and strove to crawl on towards it, but failed
in the attempt. I do not remember anything after
that, until I found myself lying in a strange bed in
a strange room, with my baby beside me.
“English Samaritans dwelt in the house I had
seen amongst the trees, and some of them finding
me lying dead, as they thought, by the wayside,
carried me in. I was ill for months, and during
the whole of that time they never asked me who I
was, or whence I came. Voluntarily, however, I
told them my story, and then they would have had
me stay with them always, and teach their children,
and give such poor service as I could in exchange
for board and lodging.
“I agreed to do so; but, before I settled down, I
felt I must see you once more, and hear how Lally
was. So I made my way to the Hollow, where
learning from Ned that she was not expected to live,
I travelled straight on to London,—and you know
the rest. I will go back to my friends very shortly
now. I have written to tell them the reason why
I could not return before.”
197“But why not stay in London, Bessie?” inquired
Mrs. Dudley.
“Because I am poor,” was the reply, “and I
must now work for myself and my child; because I
shall be safe there from any fear of meeting him,—because
I have nothing to keep me in London,
excepting you; and you, Heather—will let me write
to you occasionally, will you not?”
“That was not the way in which you intended to
finish your sentence,” remarked Heather, with a
smile.
“No,” Bessie answered, frankly, “it was not.”
“You were going to say you could not come to
see me quite safely, because you thought I knew
something of the person who has brought you to
this, my child.”
“Don’t, Heather—don’t!” Bessie pleaded.
“I am to ask no questions, then? I am not to
inquire his name; but there is one thing I may do,
love, and that is tell you what his cousin would not,
that if it be the individual I suspect, he is one of the
most miserable men on earth.”
“And do you think he really loved me?”
“How should I be able to tell that?” Heather
198answered; “and you must talk of love no more in
connection with him, Bessie; for love becomes sin,
when it is impossible for it to produce other fruits
than shame and sorrow.”
After that the two women sat silent for a time,—Bessie
holding Heather’s hand, and Heather stroking
Bessie’s hair gently and thoughtfully.
Little more than twelve months before, Heather
had told Alick she did not know much about wickedness
herself, and behold, already she was coming dimly
to understand, that no human comprehension of life
can be perfect, the boundaries of which exclude from
sight, all evil, all passion, all temptation, all repentance,
all despair.
CHAPTER IX. DIFFICULTIES.
199
The new year brought with it no increase of business
to the Protector Bread and Flour Company.
On the contrary, several pairs of stones were standing
idle at Stangate, and night-work was now a thing
unheard of. Many men were discharged on account
of “slackness,” and the labour of those that remained
resulted rather in the accumulation of stock
than in the execution of orders.
Orders to be executed had become, in fact, few
and far between.
As for the bakehouse, it happened fortunately,
perhaps, that no gentlemen of the press desired to
see it in the later days of which I am writing, for it
had become like one of those places in Pompeii,
where, although the implements and utensils necessary
200for carrying on a trade still exist, the trade itself
is a memory. Six months in London being about
equivalent to six hundred years in Pompeii, the once
busy court-yard and works now resembled nothing so
much as a City of the Dead.
Over the Protector something worse than lava had
flowed; and, although there was stock everywhere,—stock,
and to spare—wheat in quantity, sacks and
sacks of flour, still every one looked gloomy,—every
one felt that “things were going queer.”
Half of the vans were now never pulled out of
the sheds; a large number of the horses—creatures
that, as we know, eat their heads off when standing
idle in the stable—were sent to Gower’s and sold
there by public auction; stripped of their fine
liveries, many of the “Company’s servants” were
now driving unornamental carts about the City,
thankful to earn their guinea a week and supplemental
pots of beer, wherever such terms were obtainable;
most of the Company’s depôts were
closed, and had large bills stuck upon the shutters,
signifying “that these desirable premises were TO
LET;” the rounds were shorter than of old, and
the men now stopped to get half-pints of ale
201anywhere they liked without reprimand or dismissal.
A cloud of general depression had settled down
upon the directors, the shareholders, and the employés
of the Company; there was nothing much
doing at Stangate, and there was less in Lincoln’s
Inn Fields. About the former establishment, Mr.
Robert Crossenham walked disconsolately with his
hands in his pockets; before the fire, in the latter,
Arthur Dudley read the Times diligently, and
smoked the last Havannas he was ever likely to
have presented to him free of charge.
In the outer office, the clerks consumed walnuts in
quantity, pelted each other with the shells, and
looked at their watches, or the clock half a dozen
times in the course of an hour.
Business was, in a word, as bad as the weather,
and that could not by any possibility have been
worse. The sky, as regarded the physical world,
was leaden; the streets, sloppy; the air, raw; east
winds prevalent; in the City, things were drooping;
stocks, heavy; rhubarb, a drug; indigo, blue;
shares, flat; corn, falling; sugars, depressed; money,
dear.
202The only branch of commerce, the vigour of which
did not seem impaired, was that of advertising.
People advertised their wares in despair, thinking, if
a smash were to come, they might as well be hung
for a sheep as a lamb,—as well face Basinghall Street
with a creditable list of debts as go through the
Court for a few hundreds.
It was sink, or swim, with a vast number of persons
during the earlier months of the year in question,
and yet the papers never were so full of advertisements.
The Times came out with daily supplements,
and the Telegraph with its extra sheet; the
Standard curtailed its usual quantity of letterpress,
and the weeklies raised their prices per line, and
would not guarantee immediate insertion. Not to
be out of the fashion, the Protector Bread Company,
Limited, announced each morning in the
columns of the daily papers, “that pure bread was
obtainable nowhere excepting at the depôts of the
Company;” and every now and then a copy of an
analysis from Daniel Smith, Esq., M.B., Ph.D.,
M.A., F.R.S., &c., Professor of Chemistry in the
College of the Home Counties’ Hospital, and
Medical Officer of Health for Belgravia, was appended,
203stating that he had found a loaf of the
Company’s bread to contain so much of so many
things, and to be perfectly free from a certain
number of other things; that all articles used were
of the best quality, and that he considered the process
of manufacture employed at the Stangate
Works, to be highly cleanly, and satisfactory.
But all this could not make the bread sell. The
tide of fortune had turned, and the waters of success
were ebbing away from the goodly ship
“Protector” more rapidly than they had ever
flowed in on the commercial shore, where that once
promising vessel now lay almost a wreck.
There was not a creature connected with it, however,
who would admit that the venture was even in
danger; and yet every person’s temper became, if
Arthur Dudley’s report were to be believed, unbearable.
His own temper, never the most pliable, was
severely tried; and now, instead of longing for each
morning to dawn, in order that the business of the
Protector might advance still further towards success,
he hated to see day break—hated leaving his
breakfast-room and going downstairs to meet those
204unpleasantnesses which had become of hourly, and
momentary occurrence in his life.
Between his principals and the public, in fact,
Arthur stood exposed to cross fires. He dreaded
seeing a stranger enter the office; he looked forward
to board-days with perfect horror.
His old enemy, General Sinclair, C.B., tormented
him beyond all powers of expression. He seemed
to think, that in Arthur’s hands lay the power of
making the Protector a failure or a success. He
frequently declared, their secretary was inefficient—his
business capabilities below contempt. When once
matters began to go a little wrong with the Protector,
he commenced laying all the blame at Mr.
Dudley’s door. He affirmed that Lord Kemms’
open repudiation of any connection with the Company,
was owing entirely to the secretary’s lack of
management; he called at the office, and told Mr.
Dudley he considered a person, endowed with even
the most moderate share of sense—an old friend and
neighbour, moreover, of his lordship—might have
arranged the affair without permitting it to be
brought under the notice of the public; and, in the
course of subsequent conversations, he more than
205once hinted his opinion, that, although the gentleman
he had the pleasure of addressing might be a gentleman,
he was not much better than a simpleton.
To which innuendo, delicately implied, Arthur,
with more spirit than might have been expected,
considering the state of his finances, replied, that
General Sinclair had ample reason for thinking
any person who relinquished his independence for
the sake of becoming servant to a dozen masters,
must be either foolish or mad.
“For my part,” added the secretary, “I believe
when I was persuaded into having anything to
do with the Protector, that I was both; and I can
very truthfully say, if I could only get back the
money I have lost by this confounded Company, I
would cut the whole concern to-morrow. Meantime,
sir, if you have any complaint to make of my
conduct, I would thank you to bring it under the
notice of the board. I am compelled to bear bullying
once a week, but I will not endure it oftener.”
Upon this, General Sinclair, boiling over with
rage, inquired if he (Mr. Dudley) knew to whom he
was speaking?
“Yes,” Arthur answered, “I do; to that one of
206the directors of the Protector Bread and Flour
Company, Limited, who took my place on the
board when I resigned; and, with all my heart and
soul, I wish I had never heard of the Protector,
nor advanced a penny-piece for the purpose of
bringing it before the public.”
And every word that Arthur said, he meant.
He was sick and weary of his thankless office; of
the preparation of unsatisfactory reports; of conversations
with disheartened shareholders; of entering
minutes of depressing proceedings.
Adversity, as has been stated, had not proved
beneficial to the tempers of his directors, and stormy
meetings were now the rule instead of the exception.
Every man looked angrily on his neighbour;
every orator believed the last speaker, and
the speakers who had preceded him, wrong—practically
and theoretically, root and branch;
every creature had his own pet plan for restoring
public confidence in the Company, and was wont to
return home full of dismal forebodings, of doleful
prophecies.
Mr. Black alone, perhaps, preserved his equanimity,
and assured his colleagues, that, if they
207would only have patience, the tide must turn. For
his part, he said, he had seen so many ebbs and
flows, that he did not care a snap of the fingers for
any temporary depression. People had not ceased
to eat bread; and, although they might for a time
have changed their baker, still the best article must
secure custom in the long run. He vehemently protested
against the closing of shops, and the reduction
of vans. “Better to have given the bread to the
nearest charity,” he said, “than to have adopted
such a course. Penny wise and pound foolish, he
declared the policy adopted had been. He had
advised putting on steam, instead of reducing the
pressure, and reminded his fellow-directors of the
fact; but of course,” he added, “they knew best;
their experience, no doubt, was greater than his;
there was no knowing, indeed, what the best plan to
pursue might be, till they found out which plan led
to fortune or failure.” For his part, however, he
thought it was always judicious in business, as at
whist, when doubtful to play a trump. He would
have played a trump, and if the game were to prove
a losing one, he would, at all events, have lost with
éclat; but, as he said before, he deferred to the
208superior wisdom of his colleagues, and only trusted
their wisdom might in the long run prove profitable
to all parties interested.
But the united wisdom of the directors of the
Protector did not prove profitable, and every board-day
more temper was exhibited, till at length the
papers began to take the matter up, and the very
journals who had written leaders concerning the
philanthropic and admirable construction of the
Company, now found spare corners which they filled
up with paragraphs, headed, “The Protector Bread
Company again;” or with letters from indignant
shareholders, who could not understand the gross
mismanagement which must exist somewhere in a
company, the directors of which declared a dividend
of fifteen per cent. per annum at the first half-yearly
meeting, and found their profits during the second
six months only enabled them to pay with difficulty
two and a half per cent.! Truth was, as Mr. Black—who
practically knew a vast deal more about the
mind of the British public than the rest of the
directors were likely ever to evolve out of their
internal consciousness—declared, the very honesty
of the board swamped the Company, or, at least,
209hastened its extinction. No subterfuges; no cooking
of accounts; no hints to the secretary, that at
the moderate expense of a bottle of good ink, a few
quires of paper, and a hundred of pens, things might
be made to look as pleasant as any body of shareholders
need desire to see them! it was all as
though a doctor, being called in to see a bad case,
were to lay the peril of his position before the
patient—to exhibit to him, in its appalling nakedness,
the poor chance he had of recovery.
“Enough to kill the man at once!” remarked the
promoter to Mr. Robert Crossenham; “and enough
to kill a company, if it had as many lives as a cat.
What the devil do we want with directors or any
board? If they would only find the money, I swear
I’d find the brains. It is such a mistake, having so
many masters. Well, if the ‘Protector’ goes smash,
I shall always say, one of the finest pots of broth ever
a man brought to boiling-point was spoiled by too
many cooks having a hand in dishing it.”
As for Mr. Stewart, he even, had his fits of irritability—his
hours when he came to Lincoln’s Inn
Fields, and treated Arthur to his opinions.
He said, he felt perfectly confident there was
210something radically wrong about the Company, and
he seemed to imagine Arthur could help him to discover
where the wrong existed, if the secretary would
only set his brains to work.
Some short time after Lally’s death, he remarked,
a little apologetically it is true,—
“I wish to Heaven, Dudley, you would bestir
yourself! Surely, it is as much your interest as
mine to find out what game Black is playing—for
that he is playing some game, I am satisfied.”
“If he be, I am ignorant of it,” Arthur answered.
“I presume you do not suspect me of playing into his
hands?”
“No, Mr. Dudley, I do not,” the director answered;
and from that day Mr. Stewart came seldom
to Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Whatever suspicions he might entertain concerning
Mr. Black’s immaculate honesty, he did not
again take Arthur into his confidence, but left the
secretary in undisturbed enjoyment of his office,
where he had at least the variety of seeing the
ship containing his fortunes sink a little lower, week
by week.
But trade was bad with every one—so Mr. Black
211declared—so even Mr. Raidsford stated on one occasion,
when he and Arthur, meeting in Lombard
Street, the pair commenced singing a mutual Jeremiad
over the state of things in the City.
“There is a general distrust,” remarked the contractor,
“for which I am quite at a loss to account,
and a pressure for money, even upon good houses,
which is unprecedented, at all events, in my experience.
No doubt, as the spring advances, business
will improve, and I most sincerely hope your
shares may then feel the effect of greater commercial
confidence.”
All of which was said in the City oracle style,
which, unwittingly, perhaps, Mr. Raidsford had contracted,
and which impressed country people with
the idea that he was a power in the state—a man
who had risen quite as much by talent as by industry;
and yet, spite of his mode of settling
everything which was to occur in the future, Mr.
Raidsford was more humble on that occasion than
Arthur had ever before seen him.
He had less of the “I am the people, and wisdom
shall die with me” manner, which had often angered
the Squire in days gone by, than formerly; indeed,
212if such an expression be not out of place in speaking
of so great a man, his tone was almost humble; and
while he sympathised heartily with Arthur’s anxiety,
he forbore reading him a lecture on the instability
of all human companies, and did not, even from the
heights of his own superior position, look down and
say—“I told you how it would be. I, of course,
who always see what is going to occur, told you;—don’t
blame me.”
No, instead of this, he remarked, “it was a wonder
the ‘Protector’ did not succeed, since the Company’s
bread was so good, and people must eat, you know.”
He added, “Certainly, however, a company, like an
individual, adopting, and strictly adhering to, the
system of ready cash, must be prepared to stand a
considerable amount of knocking about at first; but
I do hope things will brighten with you after a little—I
really do;” having finished which speech, Mr.
Raidsford went his way, and Arthur proceeded on
his, thinking he liked the contractor better during
that interview than he had ever done before, and
regretting to see his former neighbour looking so
thin, and anxious, and careworn.
Which facts, when, in due time, Arthur communicated
213them to Mr. Black, produced a careless
comment, to the effect, “that very probably his
Majesty had cause for uneasiness; people do say
things are going deucedly queer up there; but there
is no use talking,” added Mr. Black, “things are
queer with everybody. I never was so hard up in
my life; discount is a thing past praying for. If
you take a bill to the bank now, with, say, even my
Lord Mayor’s name on it, the manager looks at
you as if you were no better than a thief. It is
no good being down-hearted, though; if care killed
the cat, I still see no reason why care should kill
us. We shall find the ‘Protector’ looking up
yet, never fear, and the shares at a premium again.
Deuce a share is at a premium in the City, I think,
at this present minute of speaking. Where the money
gets to, every now and then, passes my understanding.
The parsons talk about riches taking unto themselves
legs or wings, and fleeing away, or something
of that kind, don’t they? If their reverences were
in my office for a month, they would find out there is
more truth in the statement than most of them
actually believe. Fly! by Jove! that’s no word to
express the pace they go at. Electricity is a fool to
214it;” and so Mr. Black rattled on, till Arthur,
utterly overwhelmed, bade him “Good-day,” feeling
much too dispirited to put the question he had
intended about those bills which would soon be
falling due once again.
For things had come to such a pass, that Squire
Dudley was compelled to cut down his expenditure
by every possible means. Even at Berrie Down he
never more scrupulously looked at a sovereign before
changing it than now, when it occurred to him not
merely as a possibility, but as a probability, that
there might be a terrible reverse to the speculative
picture to which, while the Protector was still a myth
of the promoter’s fancy, Mr. Black had acted as
travelling showman.
No more visions of wealth and position for Arthur—no
more dreams of standing for the county,
of re-establishing the Dudleys as great people—of
keeping up a certain state at Berrie Down—of
ease, and comfort, and competence.
His ideas in many respects were much changed
since he came to London; and had it only been
possible for him to see a way of ridding the
Hollow of all the encumbrances he had thrust
215upon it, the secretary would have been a happy
man.
Like the prodigal, he had gathered all together,
and travelled into a far country—a strange country,
where he met with those who helped him to waste
his substance and devour his living.
And now, behold, the days of famine were at hand,
when no man would give unto him; when he fell into
even a worse plight than the poor sinner who would
fain have satisfied his hunger with the husks the
swine did eat; for the prodigal had a home to which
he could return, while Arthur had none.
Longingly, sickeningly almost, his thoughts turned
back to Berrie Down as he walked through the
streets of the accursed City (so he styled London),
where he had come to seek his fortune.
If the past could only be restored to him, he
moaned in spirit, how differently he would act! If
he only could have foreseen his present strait—if he
only could have imagined such a termination to his
hopes!
If—if—if! So the impotent, feebly-repentant
strain ran on; if—if—if—although the measure of
his misery was as yet nothing like full.
216Berrie Down was still mortgaged for only half its
value. He had his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields—his
regularly paid salary—his shares, which might
yet bring him in some return.
He was not involved past hope of extrication.
Before his bills fell due again, Mr. Black would more
than probably be able to meet them. The future
did not lie shrouded in total darkness before him;
but as he had been unreasonably sanguine, so he
was now unreasonably depressed. He knew more
about business, too, than had formerly been the
case; he understood better that there were risks in
it as well as certainties—blanks as well as prizes,
and he could not blind himself to the truth that
Fortune had not hitherto favoured him with so
many smiles, as to justify his imagining she would
never dishearten him with her frowns.
Besides all this, he was for the first time since
his marriage wretched in his home. He could not
bear to see his wife’s sorrow—a sorrow in which she
gave him no chance of sharing.
The changed, worn face—the eyes heavy with
weeping, the weary, unelastic step—the silent grief
which found no relief in words—were so many tacit
217reproaches for the cold selfishness which had kept
them apart through the course of the years gone by.
Vaguely it began to dawn upon his understanding
that nothing earthly can live for ever—that there is
no plant so strong but the keenness of a prolonged
frost may kill it; that if men do not enjoy and prize
a blessing while it is blooming beside them, the day
will surely come when they shall sigh for its fragrance,
and its beauty all in vain.
He had neglected his wife’s love in the years
when that bright stream flowed through the fields of
his existence, nourishing and making green as it
poured its treasures on his unthankful heart; and
now the fountain gushed no longer; the spring was
dried up, the waters made no gladness in the land.
Where there had been life, there was lifelessness;
where there had been devotion, there was indifference;
where there had been championship, there
was resentment,—and Arthur did not know how to
put the wrong right. He had not strength sufficient
in his character to set about winning Heather
for the second time—wooing the woman as he had
wooed the girl.
She had no idea her husband was in such trouble;
218she was ignorant of his fears as she had been of his
hopes. No one told her Berrie Down was mortgaged—that
it must be let, in order to pay the interest—that
the Protector was tottering—that trade was
wretched, that money was almost an extinct currency.
Mr. Black was the only person, indeed, she ever
heard mention financial matters at all, and the
words he spoke conveyed very little meaning to her
understanding.
“Money,” said that gentleman to Arthur one day
when she chanced to be present—“money, what is
it like? Can you remember ever having seen the
article? The first five-pound note which comes my
way, I intend to frame and keep by me, lest I should
never behold another. Some people must be laying
up for themselves a lot of treasures; but who they
can be, puzzles my brain. According to his own
account, not a soul I meet has sixpence in his pocket
to keep the devil out of it. Do you happen to know
any one, Mrs. Dudley, who has money, for I do not?
As for me, I am thinking of applying for out-door
relief—sending Mrs. B. up to the workhouse for a
couple of loaves. We are coming to it, fast as we
can run.”
219“Some people have money, I suppose,” answered
Heather, remembering at that very moment she had
a good round sum locked up in one of her drawers—which
sum proved a perpetual plague to her—a
plague and yet a comfort.
It was not her own, it was trust-money; and how
the amount chanced to come into her hands, Heather
never told to any one for many a day afterwards—for
many and many a long day. And yet there was
no particular mystery about the matter. Heather
had the money from Mr. Douglas Croft, and it was
given to her in this fashion:—
After due time, he came to condole with her on
the death of Lally, and then his visits were repeated
and repeated until Heather, who could not avoid
guessing the nature of the feeling which drew him
towards any of Bessie’s kith or kin, began to grow
uncomfortable—to imagine she ought to cut short
the intimacy somehow, though it was beyond her
imagination to conceive how she ought, under the
circumstances, to do so.
Perhaps her manner showed her difficulty; perhaps
Mr. Croft fancied truly, as the days went by, there
was less cordiality in her smile, in the touch of her
220hand, in the tone of her voice! Anyhow, be that as
it will, he took courage one day, and made his confession.
He attempted no apology; he did not strive to
whiten the blackness of his sin to her. He did not
even speak the name of the woman he had wronged.
He merely said, “Some day she may come to you;
some day she may want money. Let me leave a
sufficient sum in your hands to keep her—if she be
living—from absolute poverty. Be to me my good
angel! do not believe my repentance insincere because
I cannot talk much about it. You are my last
hope. If it be impossible for me to reach her through
you, then indeed my case is desperate.”
Naked he laid his sin out before her—naked as
the new-born child, and yet he prayed her not to
look askance upon it, but to pity and forgive. Well
he understood—this man to whom the world and its
ways were roads he knew from beginning to end,
from the first chapter to the last—that to the woman
whom he addressed the book of sin was almost as a
dead letter, as a language unlearned, as a science
incomprehensible.
Passion died out in her presence, vice found no
221defence sustainable when pleaded before that calm,
impartial judge. She could not go with him in his
agony of love, of struggling virtue, of wicked
strategy, of unavailing repentance—she, whose life
had never known the rush and tumult of an overpowering
affection, who had never been adored,
idolized, wronged, by any man, as it was in Douglas
Croft’s nature to adore, idolize, and wrong,—she,
who was pure in thought and deed, pure almost as
one of God’s angels—how could he tell her of the
over-mastering love which had overleapt all boundaries
of prudence, all restraints of society, all divine
laws, all human restrictions?
But he could appeal to her pity, and to her
generosity. He could lay his future at her feet,
and pray her to do with it as she would; to give
him Bessie’s address, if it came to her knowledge,
or to withhold it; to mention his name to Bessie, or
to preserve silence concerning him; to say, if Bessie
ever wrote or came near, or to ignore her existence,
as she pleased—as she deemed best.
“I make no conditions, I ask no mercy, Mrs.
Dudley,” he said. “I place myself in your hands;
and I merely entreat that you will do whatever
222seems to you best, regardless of my feelings. If I
could only know she is living!” he added.
“She is living,” Heather interrupted.
“Then you have seen her!” he said, eagerly; “is
she in London?”
“You must not question me,” Mrs. Dudley replied.
“All I can tell you is—that—the girl,
whose future you have made so wretched, is
living. The greatest kindness you can do her now
is to forget that such a person ever existed. I will
keep this money, if you wish, in case she should
ever really be in want of it. At present, I know,
she would not take sixpence from you, and I cannot
wonder at, her feeling as she does towards
you.”
“Then you have seen her?” he inquired.
“Yes, and talked with her; and guessed who
stole her from us—stole her away to shame, and
grief, and suffering——”
At that point he interrupted her, vehemently,
“Why should she be ashamed,” he asked, “for
that which was no fault of hers? and was she not
better, as she lived with me, believing herself to be
a wife, than legally married to Harcourt—a man for
223whom she never cared two straws? Is not anything,
any sin, any disgrace, any suffering, preferable
to a loveless marriage? Answer me, truly,
Mrs. Dudley,” he persisted; “do you not believe
it is?”
With her cheeks on fire, Heather rose and answered
him—“Why do you put such a question to
me, Mr. Croft—to me, of all women living?” and
then she covered her face, and wept aloud—wept
for the life she could never live over again, and
which had been so poor a counterfeit of existence
that she might almost—but for her early training,
but for the conviction, that it is better to “suffer
affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the
pleasures of sin for a season”—have wished to
change places with Bessie, in order to experience
the sensation of being loved wildly and passionately,
even though it were sinfully, and so round off the
incompleted paragraph of her life; have the sad
seventh resolved into the legitimate chord.
Heaven help her! she felt very weak and very
miserable, surrounded by people, whose stories
seemed all more perfect than her own; and Douglas
Croft, listening to that unexpected outburst, felt in
224his soul there were more ways of deceiving a woman
than by a sham marriage; more means of breaking
a loving heart than by deceit, and falsehood, and
wrong.
“God pardon me,” he thought, as he walked slowly
home; “but yet, have I been worse than Dudley?
Is it more sinful to love and betray a woman, than
to marry her without love?” and, as is usual with all
such questions, he decided the matter in his own
favour—never reflecting that two wrongs cannot
make a right, that a volume of platitudes will never
patch up a woman’s reputation, nor enable her to
go back again through the years, and begin her life
anew.
CHAPTER X. THE BUBBLE BURSTS.
225
All this time the affairs of the Protector were falling
into a more hopeless state of confusion than ever.
No talk now of shares going up to a premium.
If a man had offered a handful of them to a beggar
in the street, they would scarcely have been accepted,
excepting for pipe-lights. On the Stock
Exchange, every person knew better than to touch
them. The Company was given over by commercial
doctors, and no one felt inclined to waste a
guinea on propping it up. If trade would only take
“a start,” the directors remarked; but then, unhappily,
trade did nothing of the kind.
Within eighteen months of the promising child’s
birth, one of the very objects for which Limited
Companies are ostensibly established, namely, to
226provide such a capital as shall enable a certain
number of traders to live through bad seasons, in
the hope of better days coming—this object, I say,
was utterly ignored.
To extend their business, the directors would not
have hesitated to make a further call upon the
shareholders; but to carry their business through a
time of extreme commercial distress they refused to
do anything of the kind. To have made a further
voyage, Mr. Black told them, they would have
crowded on all sail; but at sight of the first storm
their seamanship proved useless, their courage failed
them.
All in vain he and Mr. Stewart—united at
last—moved and seconded various courageous
resolutions; the other directors were cowardly, and
refused to acquiesce. Mr. Black was twitted with
the ill success of many of his bantlings; Mr. Stewart
was reminded of the fact that his nephew had been
the first to leave the ship.
“The very fust shares,” remarked Mr. Smithers,
the great miller at Plaistow, worth Heaven only
knew how much money, and likely, before he died,
to be worth a few hundreds of thousands more—“the
227very fust shares as was sold out of this here
Company below their aktual market value was the
property of your nephew, Mr. Stewart—your own
nephew, Mr. Aymescourt Croft.”
“Am I answerable for the misdeeds of my
nephew?” Mr. Stewart inquired; whereupon Mr.
Smithers declared he did not know; that perhaps,
Mr. Croft had very good reasons for acting as
he did, and that it might have been better for
all parties concerned if “everybody had sold
their shares,” when Lord Kemms repudiated the
Protector. Let the argument commence where it
would, it always ended in Lord Kemms—it always
reverted to the fact that Mr. Black had used his
name without authority, and that Mr. Stewart’s noble
relative had been the first to damage the Company,
as his nephew was the first to dispose of his shares.
The business men on the Direction attributed all
the disasters of the Protector to having so many
“nobs” on the Board; while the Sirs, and Generals,
and gentlemen possessed of landed property conceived
it was the City element which had militated
against the success of their enterprise.
One singular fact in connection with this subject
228may here be noted, namely, that the men who had
not paid for their shares at all, such, for example,
as Mr. Smithers, General Sinclair, &c., were much
more vehement concerning their disappointment
than those who really held a large pecuniary stake
in the Protector.
It is more difficult, perhaps, to bear with equanimity
the loss of hope than the loss of money, and
individuals who, like Arthur Dudley, had expected
to realise fortunes out of nothing, were much more
disheartened by the prospect of failure than persons
who, having “paid their shilling, took their risk.”
This remark applies only, however, to the directors.
The shareholders having, one and all, hoped
to realize their ten or twenty, or fifty or a hundred
per cent., were as virtuously indignant as those members
of the Board who had sold their names for
scrip. Speculators all—gamblers as much as the
man who stakes his last guinea on a throw of the
dice—they were yet neither to hold nor to bind
when the speculation turned out ill, when the throw
of the dice threatened to leave them minus the
money they had invested!
Truth is, shareholders have so long been commiserated
229instead of blamed; so long represented as
victims instead of wilful dupes, that when the crash
does come, they are for ever airing their grievances
and wearying the public with records of folly that
have now grown sickening, by reason of constant
repetition.
Any man who, in these days, chooses to invest
his savings in business, whether on his own sole
risk or in company with other adventurers, has no
right to ask for pity if the project fail—if the boat
sink. Ostensibly, he took his chance; if the result
be unfavourable to his hopes, he has no right to
claim either sympathy or help.
It is the greed of gain, the dislike of legitimate
work, the desire for usurious interest, the weak
senseless refusal to be guided by the experience of
others, which bring misery to families as to individuals.
If men are willing to listen to every pleasant
tale, to believe any lie which is put on paper, to
think that fortune will make an exception in their
favour, cause the sun to stand still, and suspend
all the ordinary laws of commerce for their benefit,
they must take the consequences.
No legislation can protect fools against the results
230of their own folly; no government is bound to find
brains for the governed. Shall we pity a man who
is deceived by a thimblerigger, or fleeced by his
chatty travelling acquaintance who, on the long
northern journey, produces a pack of cards, and proposes
a game merely to while away the time! And,
in like manner, shall we, at this age of the world,
pity those “clergymen and others,” without whose
post-office orders and almost illegibly-signed cheques
promoters and Limited Liability Companies would
soon have to die a death of sheer inanition, and
leave the commercial field open for honest labour—for
legitimate competition.
When a tradesman exposes his flannels, and cotton
prints, and stout calicos on the pavement, a magistrate
is reluctant to convict even the practised thief
who walks off with a convenient dress-length secreted
under her shawl; and, in like manner, when at this
time of the world, in spite of newspaper exposures,
notwithstanding warning “leaders” and magazine
articles, and the advice of those whose advice is
really worth following, people will risk their money
in speculative ventures, shall we be sorry for them?
shall we, like Mr. Raidsford, sing a doleful lamentation
231over the mites of widows, and the tithes of
clergymen; over the savings of governesses and the
rents of country gentlemen; nay, rather shall we
not say with Mr. Stewart, the mouse is the cat’s
legitimate prey, let promoters devour that substance
which is theirs by right.
There is an old saying, that a man is justified in
doing what he likes with his own; and, if a dupe
be the personal property of a rogue, why should
the rogue not fleece him, even though such a proceeding
be disagreeable to the dupe?
In business, the millionaire and the curate alike
must take his chance, only the curate is never
willing to do so; he never bears his pain in such dignified
silence as was the case with Compton Raidsford,
who, week after week, found that “pressure
for money” of which he had spoken to Arthur
Dudley, increase so much, that eventually he began
to tremble for Moorlands—to believe that the business
he had worked so hard to establish was tottering,
and that, before long, he should have to place
his books in the hands of Messrs. Byrne, Browne,
Byrne, and Company, accountants, Old Jewry.
He could not understand it. Never in all his
232experience before had money been so difficult to get
in—so necessary to pay. Houses that formerly
would have trusted him to any amount now absolutely
refused to draw upon him at four months.
Cash with order was requested in some cases; and
although, at first, Mr. Raidsford had treated such
refusals and demands as mere signs of the times, he
came before very long to the conclusion that somehow
his credit had got damaged—that there was
more than accident in the pecuniary pressure which
ultimately threatened to crush him to the earth.
In his distress he had no other confidant than
Lord Kemms—to no business man dare he have
confided his difficulties.
“I am perfectly solvent,” he repeated over and
over again. “My estate ought to pay 60s. in
the pound any day; and yet now, if you believe me,
my Lord, I find a difficulty in getting even a bill
discounted. If I could only trace the origin of this
universal distrust, I really should not despair; but
as it is, I feel I am fighting in the dark. That
there is something being urged against me I am
satisfied, but what that something may be I cannot
conjecture. I have not speculated; I have not
233taken any unprofitable contracts. I have sedulously
steered clear of railways for the last two years.
Even that branch which is proposed from South
Kemms to Palinsbridge, I have refused to touch.
I wonder if I can have been too cautious—if my
prudence have been misconstrued!”
Lord Kemms did not know, but professed himself
willing to lend Mr. Raidsford whatever amount
of money he might at the moment have at his
bankers, which offer the contractor declined.
“I do not think, my Lord,” he said, “you know
exactly into what sums our transactions run. No
amount of money almost could compensate me for
the loss of credit. If things go on for another
month as they have done for the last three, I shall
have to call a meeting. There is no use blinding
oneself in a case of this kind.”
No use, indeed, when one-half the City was already
talking of Mr. Raidsford’s suspension as imminent—when
he was spoken of on ’Change as shaky, and
words of wisdom were uttered in dingy back offices
concerning the fall of the great contractor.
It was while things were in this state, both with
the Protector, Limited, and Compton Raidsford,
234Unlimited, that one night, by the last post, Arthur
Dudley received a letter, which at the first glance
utterly astounded him. It was directed in Mr.
Black’s hand to Arthur Dudley, Esquire; but the
enclosure, in feigned writing, was addressed to
Messrs. Shields and Montgomery, Solar Foundry,
Wolverhampton.
Arthur had mastered the contents of this communication
before he comprehended it could not be
intended for him. He ran his eye over the few
lines it contained hastily, and then examined the
envelope; after that he read the letter again, and
then, placing letter and envelope together, compared
both at his leisure.
“What a d—— shame!” he at length broke out;
and he rose straight away, and taking his hat walked
forth into the night. He had the letter in his
pocket-book, and he strode on like a man who
distrusted the strength of his own resolution if he
stood still and deliberated about the thing he was
resolved to do.
Along Great Queen Street and Long Acre he proceeded
rapidly. Taking the most direct routes he
soon reached Regent Street, which he crossed; thence
235making his way to Bond Street, he commenced
threading through the maze of squares that lie in
that part of London till he came to the “Place” in
which Mr. Raidsford’s town house was situated.
He had chosen a most unseasonable hour at which
to pay a visit; but Arthur knew that if Mr. Raidsford
were at home he should gain admittance.
Lights flamed out across the pavement; the house
was illuminated as though for a royal marriage; carriages
containing merchant princes, their wives and
their daughters, were setting down as Mr. Dudley
drew near the house.
This was not quite what Arthur had anticipated;
but still he held to his resolution, and arrived at the
door which Lord Kemms was entering at the moment.
“My Lord,” he said; and at the words his former
neighbour turned and recognised him.
“You here, Dudley?” he exclaimed. “This is
an unexpected pleasure. Shall we go on? we are
stopping the way.”
“I am not a guest,” Arthur answered; “but I
want to see Mr. Raidsford particularly. I can wait
until he is at leisure, but I must see him. Will you
manage this for me?” he added, entreatingly, feeling,
236perhaps, that in his walking-dress amongst all
that gay company he should stand but a poor chance
of inducing any servant to carry his message. Good-natured
as ever, Lord Kemms readily consented to
do what was required.
“No bad news, I trust,” he whispered, as one
of the servants, in compliance with his request, was
showing Arthur to the library, there to wait Mr.
Raidsford’s advent.
“Not bad news, I hope,” Arthur answered;
“but, still, news he ought to hear at once.”
“I will tell him,” Lord Kemms said, and closing
the library door he left the secretary marvelling
whether such an entertainment could be considered
a sign of impending ruin—of pecuniary
difficulty.
There had been a time when Arthur would have
decided this question in the negative; but he was
wiser now, and knew that in London people feast on
the very brink of commercial death, that they gather
their friends and give elegant déjeûners, and eat
with an appetite and enjoy their repast, even though
they know next hour Jack Ketch is coming to
arrange the noose and hang them by the neck till
237all chance of return to respectable West end society
is past for ever.
To his country imagination, it was still a fearful
and a wonderful thing to see people spending, with
poverty stalking gauntly at the heels of pleasure;
but he had acquired sufficient knowledge of town to
be at the same time aware three or four hundred
pounds seem a mere bagatelle to a man whose
liabilities amount to hundreds of thousands.
With affairs going all cross in the City, Mrs.
Raidsford, triumphant in satins and jewellery, was
“at home” in Huntingdon Place.
If another chance were never to offer itself of
airing her bad grammar, and exhibiting her wonderful
taste in dress to her rich and grand acquaintances,
that was all the more reason why she should
avail herself of this opportunity, while opportunity
lasted. Only stupid, unsophisticated people like the
Dudleys thought of retrenchment before the final
crash; besides, Mrs. Raidsford meant to marry her
daughters off, if she could, and all the world knows
the best way to secure a desirable husband is
to ask a few hundred people to meet and make
themselves as uncomfortable as circumstances and
238the construction of modern London houses will
permit.
All this and much more to the same effect Arthur
Dudley had abundant leisure for considering before
the door opened and Mr. Raidsford appeared.
He made some hurried apology for his delay, and
then throwing himself into a chair opposite Arthur,
anxiously demanded his business.
Amongst his guests in the drawing-rooms, on the
staircase, in the hall, he had been a prosperous-looking,
smiling gentleman; now he flung the mask
off, and allowed the lines of care to appear in his
face, a tone of despairing trouble to lurk in his
voice.
“Don’t be afraid, man,” he said, almost brusquely.
“Lord Kemms told me your business concerned me;
out with it; I am not a child—I can face the worst—I
have seen it coming this many a day.”
“Mr. Raidsford,” began Arthur, “what you
have suffered from has been a loss of credit, I
understand; a pressure, as you yourself told me,
for money.”
“Yes,” was the reply; “and when this pressure
commenced, I believed my credit to be as good as
239that of any man in England; I believed it to be so
good, in fact, that I paid no attention to the pressure
for a considerable period—not, in fact, until it
became almost like a run on a bank.”
“And to what cause did you attribute that run?”
inquired Arthur.
“I have never been able to attribute it to any
cause,” was the reply; “I had no heavy losses; I
was engaged in no great ventures; I was perfectly
solvent; I am solvent, in fact, now; but still I
know I must stop; I have fought as long as
fighting seems of any use; now I must adopt
another plan.”
“If you were aware of the cause of your loss
of credit, would it help you to battle through?”
asked Arthur.
“That would depend entirely on the cause,” was
the reply.
“Supposing it were private malice,” Arthur suggested;
“suppose an enemy to have been at work.”
“I have not an enemy in the world,” Mr. Raidsford
answered.
“If you read that, perhaps you will alter your
opinion,” Arthur remarked, handing him the letter
240he had received. “Mr. Raidsford, I could not rest
till I had come to you; I feared my own purpose
might undergo a change before morning. I knew
it was right you should be told this thing, and yet I
hesitated about showing a letter which strictly is
none of my property. I shall speak to Black about
what I have done; you know now who has been
your enemy, and I trust it may not be too late for
you to repair the mischief he has caused.”
And with that Arthur left the room, and wended
his way back to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He had
never liked Mr. Raidsford, and he could not be
very cordial to him, even at the moment when he
was stretching out his hand to save the contractor
from ruin.
He had not done him this service out of good-will,
but because right was right, and justice, justice.
He had hasted to serve this man, whom he always
regarded with jealousy and distrust; but it was not
in Arthur’s nature to feel other than bitterly the
fact, that while he was able to serve Mr. Raidsford
he was unable to extricate himself; that though
Moorlands might be preserved, still Berrie Down
was heavily mortgaged.
241The very step he had taken, moreover, would, he
knew, make his own position more difficult. With
Mr. Black for an enemy, what troubles might he not
expect to have to face in the future—what about his
bills, what about Berrie Down, what about his means
of actual subsistence? If a man could, secretly and
anonymously, damage another’s credit, plot and
scheme to beggar a person against whom he had a
grudge, watch the growth of his plans through
months, and never flinch nor falter in the execution
of his purpose, what might Arthur not expect
at his hands, after having baulked him in his
design?
All that night Squire Dudley lay awake, thinking
in what words he should tell Mr. Black he had found
him out, exposed his scheme, and defeated his carefully-prepared
plot.
He knew exactly how the accident, which put him
in possession of Mr. Black’s secret, had occurred;
and he was well aware, in due time, the letter intended
for him would be returned by Messrs. Shields
and Montgomery to Dowgate Hill; but he resolved
not to wait for that dénouement—instead of doing
so, he started next morning, directly after breakfast,
242for the City, where Mr. Black received him with his
usual easy flow of language.
“Well, and how is the ‘Protector?’” was his
greeting; “anything new? I think things were a
shade better on the market yesterday, and I have
some applications this morning from parsons about
shares in the ‘Universal.’ Discount is down a half,
too. By-the-bye, you got my letter, I suppose?
There is no help for it, Dudley, we must renew those
confounded bills again. You noticed what I said
about knowing a fellow willing to do them?”
“I did not,” answered Arthur, “for the simple
reason that I suppose the letter you meant to send
to me is now at Wolverhampton.”
“What the devil do you mean?”
There was no sham about Mr. Black’s tone or
manner as he put this question. For the first time,
perhaps, during all the years he had known him,
Arthur beheld the actual man, and the actual man
was not pleasant to behold.
“Messrs. Shields and Montgomery’s letter came
in my envelope,” the secretary explained.
“Indeed! And what have you done with that
letter?”
243“I took it last night to Mr. Raidsford.”
For a moment Arthur thought his kinsman was
going to strike him. Mr. Black made a step forward
towards his visitor, and lifted his clenched hand, but
next instant he let it drop heavily on the table
while he asked—
“Pray, Mister Squire Dudley, was that your idea
of honour?”
“Yes, Mr. Black, it was, strictly,” Arthur replied.
“And how much did he give you for the information?—come
now, be frank. I would have outbid
him, had you played your cards well. What was the
figure? Did you go cheap? I’ll be sworn you did.
I’ll bet ten to one you sold yourself as well as me.
Oh! you won’t answer—you are sulky. You are
going to deprive me of the pleasure of your honourable,
and gentlemanly, and intellectual society!
Curse you!” added the promoter, suddenly changing
his sneering tone for one of the intensest fury, “curse
you, for a skulking, sneaking, timid fool, who has not
even sense enough to enjoy seeing a man who ruined
us ruined likewise! I’ll be even with you yet. I’ll
make you rue the day you meddled in my concerns,
and spoiled my game. Do you hear me, Dudley?”
244he shouted across the outer office; “look to yourself!”
“I intend,” was Arthur Dudley’s reply, as he
walked into the street, knowing he was a ruined
man.
He did not return to Lincoln’s Inn Fields for
some hours—not, in fact, until after he had seen a
solicitor, and laid the exact state of his affairs before
that gentleman.
Now the worst had come, he felt equal to face it.
He felt it was better to know the extent of his liabilities,
and to take immediate measures for breaking
off all dealings with the man who had led him so
terribly astray.
For every scrap of paper to which he had ever
attached his name, he was liable. His shares, he
knew, were not worth sixpence; the whole of his
property would barely suffice to pay his debts;
Berrie Down must go, and also the house in
Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This was the end of the
dreamer’s vision—this was the fortune he had come
to London to seek! Beggary!
His salary depended on the life of the “Protector,”
and that was scarcely expected to survive
245from day to day. Heather would have to be
told now—Heather, whose love he had grown to
value too late—Heather, whom he had thrust from
him that night when she knelt beside his chair,
pleading to be unto him an helpmeet! Would she
reproach him—would she ask if he had married her
to bring her to this? No!—he knew she never
could be so unlike the sweet Heather of old as to
taunt him with his misfortunes; but would she be
cold; would she be hard and unsympathetic; would
she merely bear and leave him to bear also? If
he only could have been sure of her, Arthur, walking
about the lanes and alleys of the City, thought he
should not have cared so much!
He had despised the crutch in his days of strength
and independence; and now, when he was lame, he
stretched forth his hand to touch some support in
vain.
When late in the afternoon he reached Lincoln’s
Inn, he found Mr. Stewart, Mr. Harcourt, and two
strangers in the office.
At a glance he knew something disagreeable had
happened, and, before five minutes were over, he
was informed the cashier, recommended by Mr.
246Stewart himself, had been embezzling the moneys
of the Company; that he, Mr. Black and Mr.
Robert Crossenham, and Mr. Bayley Crossenham,
the latter trading under the firm of “Stack and Son,
Corn Factors, Mark Lane,” had all been playing
into each other’s hands, buying wheat which never
was delivered, and dividing the proceeds.
“We want to look at the register, if you please,
Mr. Dudley,” said Mr. Stewart, with a terrible
politeness.
“There,” he remarked, turning to Mr. Harcourt,
when Arthur had produced the book required, “it
is as I thought; and now we shall not have even the
poor satisfaction of transporting him. Mr. Dudley, I
should have thought that even you might have concluded
there was something wrong when a clerk
bought shares in a sinking concern;” and, with this
remark, which was so much Hebrew to Arthur, Mr.
Stewart said, “good evening,” and went off with
the strangers he had brought with him.
“What is it all about?” Arthur asked of Mr.
Harcourt, when they were left alone.
“There has been wholesale robbery,” was the
reply, “and the Company will have to be wound up.”
247“And why can they not prosecute Graham?”
“Because, being a shareholder, he is a partner,
and a man cannot legally embezzle his own property.
It is a bad business, a very bad business!”
added Mr. Harcourt. “I am afraid Mr. Black is a
thorough-paced scoundrel.”
“I know he is,” said Arthur; but the fact of his
knowledge did not make matters any the better for
him or for the Protector.
After the clerks were gone, and Mr. Harcourt
had departed, Arthur still sate alone in his office,
looking his misery in the face. Twice Tifford had
been good enough to inform the secretary that
dinner was ready; Arthur took no notice of the
summons.
How to go upstairs and see Heather—how to
tell her the game was over, and that it had left him
a beggar, he could not imagine. What were his
dreamings in the old days, speeding down to Palinsbridge,
and planning to communicate the fact of a
thousand a year being added to their income, to this!
Coldness and doubt had not visited Heather; Mrs.
Croft had not aroused her jealousy; Lally was
still with her, and he had not then neglected his
248child. Poor Lally, poor little Lally! The man’s
heart must have been very heavy that night, for,
sitting in the firelight, the tears dropped down from
his eyes, one by one, as he sat thinking of his living
wife and his dead child.
If only the past could come back again, how differently
he would act! if only Heather would be to
him the wife of old, he might still make a struggle
and conquer Fortune yet.
Twice that day Arthur had found his level; had
seen in what estimation people held his talents; and,
in the years gone by, he had estranged from him the
woman who believed him perfect—who was unto
him, in the old, happy time at Berrie Down, though
he recked not then of his blessing, more than silver
or gold, Far above Rubies.
While he was thinking, Heather herself opened
the door, and glided up to where he sat. For
weeks previously she had been trying to draw nearer
to her husband, seeking for an opportunity to pray
for “forgiveness,” Lord help her, “for her selfish
sorrow;” and now, in the firelight, she came and
laying her hand on his shoulder, said,—
“Is anything the matter, Arthur? Are you ill?
249are you vexed? I have sent Tifford twice to tell
you dinner is ready.”
“I do not want any dinner,” he answered. “I
have had meals enough for one day—meals enough
to destroy any man’s appetite. The ‘Protector’ is
going to be wound up, Heather, and my salary will
be stopped, of course.”
She hesitated for a moment before replying, then
she said, “I am very sorry for your sake, dear, for
you hoped to make so much out of it. We must
return to the Hollow, I suppose.”
“I must sell the Hollow,” he answered; and
then, in a few hurried sentences, he told her all—his
folly, his credulity, his hopes, his ruin.
He kept nothing back; and when he had quite
finished, when there was nothing more to add to
the dreary recital of loss and misfortune, he paused,
listening for what she should say, for how she
should receive his confession.
For a moment there was silence—a silence so
great that the falling of the cinders on to the hearth
alone broke the stillness.
“Will she reproach me,” he wondered; “will she
be angry at best? will she say nothing, and refuse
250pity to me, though she can give it to every other
created being?”
“Have you not a word to speak to me, Heather?”
he asked at last; and then the tears she had been
striving to keep back burst forth, and flinging her
arms around his neck, she sobbed out,—
“Oh, my love, my love!” and as she lay on his
breast Arthur understood that he was to her, in that
hour of bitter distress, dearer than the lover of her
girlhood, than the husband of her youth.
CHAPTER XI. FORGOTTEN.
251
The “Protector” had been dead for two years. Its
very name was a memory. Lawyers who had assisted
in holding a legal inquest over its remains—directors
who had been badgered to death concerning its
failure—people who had lost money or made money
by it, recollected that there had once been such a
Company; but the grass was growing green above
its grave—in law courts and the Stock Exchange. So
many similar ventures had lived, and prospered, and
died in the time, that its history had become an
old, old tale, which was never now repeated save
here and there by one who had lost money
through it.
Summer was come once again, and in the close
streets round about Bethnal Green and Spitalfields
252the hot sultry air which met any adventurous explorer
who bravely pursued his way into those
almost unknown regions, seemed like the breath
issuing from the mouth of some sulphurous pestilent
volcano. The thousand and one smells of the East
of London assailed his nostrils, the sights and sounds
of that most wretched locality offended his eyes and
ears.
Few people who were not called thither by business
or necessity jostled the rightful inhabitants in the
streets; but it is to the east of Bishopsgate Street.
Without I must, nevertheless, with all due apology
for even hinting at the existence of such a neighbourhood,
conduct my reader to Silk Street, so
named, no doubt, in olden times, on account of the
number of silk-weavers who abode there.
It had once been a thoroughfare of no small importance;
but its glory had faded, its trade fallen
away, although the railway waggons thundered
through it, and the noise of passing carts and cabs
never stopped, never from morning till night. It was
a mean, poor street, composed principally of dilapidated-looking
three-storey houses, in the windows of
which were exhibited here fruit and vegetables, there
253drapery goods, and again furniture of the stalest,
poorest, commonest description. Towards the end of
the thoroughfare, however, there were erected some
new warehouses and stores.
Contrasting gloomily with their bright red-brick
fronts was the gateway which gave ingress to Mr.
Lukin’s silk-weaving factory.
A gloomy, disreputable gateway, affording admittance
up a narrow cart-road into a wider court-yard
beyond, one side of which was occupied by a packing-shed
and a carpenter’s shop; another by the weaving factory,
and a third by the dwelling of the manager;
the only picturesque things about the place being the
windlass and buckets belonging to a disused well.
We must pass in, if you please, for Arthur Dudley
is the manager, and this is his house.
There are high walls all round the court-yard;
high walls blackened with smoke, unrelieved by tree,
or ivy, or climbing Virginian creeper.
Heather is planning to cover them with greenery,
but her attempts have hitherto proved abortive; the
shrubs all die like the plants in her ghostly, little
garden, where she can get nothing but double red
daisies and stocks and pinks to grow.
254A change this from Berrie Down, you say! Certainly;
but life is full of changes, and Arthur
Dudley has still much to learn.
The world’s educational establishments are not
always pleasant places at which to reside; the playgrounds
are oftentimes contracted, and the diet not
suited to delicate palates; but the lessons taught in
those seminaries of practical learning prove oftentimes
much more useful than the pleasant tasks
conned beside the singing river, under the rustling
trees.
As for Heather, there is no life perfect; yet it
may be doubted whether she was very unhappy
in those days of pecuniary struggle, of pinching
economy. The high walls which seemed to be
closing her in were, perhaps, the most active trouble
of her life. Sometimes she felt as if she were in a
prison, as if she were a thousand miles from every
one, as if she should die for want of air, as though,
if a fire were to break out, she should never reach
the gates alive.
At all of which fancies Arthur laughed, and then
Heather laughed; and then the two, in the summer
evenings, would water their tiny bit of garden-ground,
255and talk about the far-away country, which it almost
seemed as though they were never to behold again.
Entirely owing to Arthur’s pride. Heather could
not blind herself to this fact, although she sedulously
refrained from touching upon it.
When Berrie Down was sold, the gentleman who
bought it offered Arthur two hundred and fifty
pounds a year and a free house, if he would take the
management of the farm, but Arthur refused.
There was a situation open for him, he said, of
five hundred a year in London, and he would never
be servant where he had been master; so the proprietor
took “no” for an answer, and passing on to
Alick secured his services for one-half the sum and
the use of Berrie Down House and farm produce,
till such time as the proprietor should require the
residence from him. Two of the girls resided
with the young steward, but Agnes remained with
Heather; Cuthbert had left the Messrs. Elser, and
was now receiving a good salary from Mr. Raidsford.
Altogether the family prospects were brighter than
of old, excepting as regarded Arthur, who had
steadily fallen from height to height, till at length
he found himself cashier and bookkeeper, and yardkeeper
256and general manager to Mr. Lukin, who
had great works in the North, and was reported to
be enormously rich.
If he were so, Arthur did not derive much benefit
from his wealth, for he had but two hundred a year;
while Simons, the actual though sub-manager,
thought himself fortunate to receive two pounds a
week.
Certainly Arthur’s duties were light—to take
money and pay it into the bank—to write a report
of how business progressed to his employer—to
keep the books, and see to things generally. There
was no great hardship or difficulty involved in these
and such like matters; and yet Arthur was now as
of old at Berrie Down, a wretched man.
He had a trouble dogging his footsteps, and that
trouble was debt. After paying off the most of his
liabilities, and leaving himself without a sixpence in
the world, he was still five hundred pounds deficient,
and five hundred pounds to a man who is trying to
live respectably on two hundred a year is, with a
pressing creditor, almost equivalent to utter bankruptcy.
His friends would have helped him had they
257known of his grievous strait; but Arthur’s was not a
temper to take help or pecuniary assistance from
any one on earth. With all his heart, Mr. Raidsford
desired to show his gratitude to the man who
had saved him from ruin; but when he came to
press offers of money, offers of situations, high salaries,
and so forth, on Arthur’s acceptance, the poor
gentleman drew himself up, and made the contractor
feel he had made a mistake—that Arthur Dudley of
Silk Street very much resembled Arthur Dudley
of Berrie Down, only that he was a degree prouder
than of old.
Mr. Croft, also, more earnestly desired to do something
for his friend; but he was repelled haughtily by
Arthur, and also, though more gently, by Heather.
As for Mr. Black, in answer to the solicitor who,
on Arthur’s behalf, waited on him concerning those
bills for which Squire Dudley was legally liable, he said
plainly, he never would find sixpence towards helping
Dudley out of the mess into which he had got himself.
“If he had stuck to me, I should have stuck to
him,” the promoter answered; “but he would go
fishing on his own hook, and if he have come to grief,
he has nobody to blame but himself.”
258Mrs. Ormson and the Marsdens, of course, ignored
the very existence of such people as the Dudleys;
and, when they were unhappily mentioned, laid the
blame of all Arthur’s misfortunes at the door of
the “woman he married.” As for Miss Hope, from
foreign parts, she was sympathetic, but necessarily
vague. She did not know in the least how low her
nephew had fallen, but hoped, she said, on her
return to England, to visit them in their little house,
which, spite of all Heather told her concerning its
limited accommodation, she had no doubt would be
charming, “dear Heather having such a taste in
arrangement.”
In brief, from all their old haunts, from all their
old acquaintances, from all their pursuits, and
thoughts, and ideas, the Dudleys had vanished
away.
From the former life they had fallen. As a stone
drops into the river’s depths, so they had sunk to that
wretched east-end street, and in the circles in which
they once mixed, they were forgotten as a dead man
out of mind.
The old servants, too, were gone; they were
unable to afford to keep any save Priscilla, and she
259after a long illness had come back almost from
death to serve her former mistress—never to leave her,
she declared to Bessie, who went to see her in the
hospital—never to leave her more.
“I always said to Mrs. Piggott, Miss Bessie,
I hoped I should die before crinoline went out of
fashion, and when there was a talk of them going to
be left off, I fell sick; but now I hear it was all
nonsense, so I mean to get better, if it was only for
the sake of Mrs. Dudley, who says she misses me,
Miss Bessie—misses me!”
As for Bessie, she too, unable to remain away
from her old friend, had returned from the country
farmhouse, and taken up her abode in a street not
very far away from that where Heather lived. She
was a good and tasteful needlewoman, and earned a
tolerable livelihood with her white, pretty fingers.
Many an hour she and Heather spent together
while Arthur was busy; but Arthur was not taken
into the secret. Even Heather doubted his discretion
in the matter, and there were ample reasons
why the girl’s whereabouts should be known to as
few persons as possible.
Ned and Mrs. Piggott were married and settled
260in a public-house on the road to South Kemms,
where, Alick informed Heather, they did a capital
business, and kept a most regular and respectable
tavern. “It is quite a little hotel, mother,” said
the young man, adding, “When shall I be able to
persuade you to come down to the Hollow and see
how lovely the place looks?” but, in reply, Heather
shook her head.
“Naturally, the very name of Berrie Down is
painful to Arthur,” she answered. “I should like
to please you, Alick, but I cannot bear to vex him.
His life has been a very hard one, and I ought not
to make it any harder.”
Then Alick had another project; he would take
a house at the sea-side for a month, and Heather,
and the girls, and Leonard should all go down and
stay there, and he, and Arthur, and Cuthbert would
spend their Sundays with them. “It will be like
the old times, for us all to be together again,”
finished the youth; “and, dear Heather, I do want
to see you looking a little better;” whereupon she
called him a foolish boy, and, drawing his face down
to hers, kissed it, saying, “people could be well and
happy anywhere, in London as in the country, if
261they would only try to be thankful and contented.”
But the “foolish boy” resolutely refusing to be
either contented or thankful, unless she would agree
to his plan, at length, when it was far on in the
summer, “between the crops” as he put it, Alick persuaded
Heather to make her preparations for leaving
home, which she did all the more readily, perhaps,
because Arthur agreed to come down on the Saturday
nights, and remain with them until the Monday
mornings.
“I think the change will do us all good,” he
said; but there was a look in his face which
Heather somehow mistrusted, and which caused
her to wonder what could be the matter with
Arthur; whether he had any fresh trouble he was
keeping from her, or whether he felt ill and would
not say so, for fear of spoiling her holiday.
Talking the matter over with Bessie, however,
that young person combated her friend’s fears successfully.
“If Arthur should be ill,” she said, “I
shall certainly hear of it from Morrison” (Morrison
was one of the workmen somewhat devoted to Priscilla,
in whom both Heather and Bessie trusted, and it
262is only fair to add, he deserved such trust, for the
notes they mutually exchanged were never chattered
about; the name of the young lady, whom
Mrs. Dudley went to see, was never mentioned to
any one); “and if I do hear of there being anything
the matter,” went on Bessie, “I shall certainly go
round to nurse him, and telegraph for you; so make
yourself happy concerning that dear husband, and
pack up your clothes at once.”
Which advice Heather followed in a divided
frame of mind; divided, because while she longed
to see the country, she hated leaving Arthur, who,
on the very Saturday of her departure, said he
should not be able to accompany her out of town
that week, because Mr. Lukin was coming to
London, and might be expected in Silk Street at
any moment.
“But you must go, dear,” he added, “and I will
run down through the week, if I possibly can.
Come now, get your bonnet on, or we shall be too
late at Waterloo;” and thus he hurried her on
till they were fairly in a cab, en route to the South
Western Railway Terminus.
There were Alick and Cuthbert, Lucy and
263Laura, all looking as bright and sunshiny as the
weather.
“Not coming, Arthur!” exclaimed his brother;
“what a shabby trick! I could not have believed
you would have served a fellow so!”
“It is not my fault, Alick,” was the reply; “but
Mr. Lukin is coming to town, and I must be on
the spot to receive him; you will take care of
Heather, Alick,” he added, in a lower and a different
tone, drawing his brother aside; “you will
promise me to take care of her?”
“Take care of Heather!” answered Alick, “I
like that; as though I should not take care of her.
Do you think I forget, Arthur—do you imagine I
could possibly forget, the years during which she
was our mother—the best mother ever any boys and
girls found?”
“Thank you, I shall be easier now,” Arthur
answered; and then he joined the others and kept
near his wife till it was time for the little party to
enter the compartment, which they quite filled. To
the last, Squire Dudley never took his eyes off his
wife’s face; and, when the moment of final parting
came, he kissed her two or three times over, saying
264“God bless you, Heather! think of me sometimes.”
When the train moved off, he stood on the platform,
looking after the carriage which contained his
wife; and as the speed increased, Heather saw a
look come over his countenance which filled her
with so terrible an alarm, that she cried out in a
moment, “Alick, I must go back to Arthur! there
is something the matter! I ought never to have
come!”
All in vain, they tried to combat her determination;
at the first station where the express stopped,
Heather alighted, resolved to return to town. She
would not hear of Alick travelling with her. “No,”
she said; “if he be in any trouble, I shall be better
to remain alone with him; if not, I will go down to
you by the first train on Monday morning. I promise,
Alick, faithfully! Do not try to prevent my
going home,” she pleaded; “remember, once before
I wanted to turn back, and Arthur would not let
me!”
Which last argument, proving unanswerable, with
heavy hearts they allowed her to have her own way,
and she went into the waiting-room, where she
265stopped for an hour, until the up express appeared
in sight, when she took her seat, together with some
other passengers, and was soon tearing back to
London, under the glare of the afternoon sun. At
the terminus she took a cab for Norton Folgate,
from whence she walked on to Silk Street. She had
no need to ring the bell, for one of the men coming
out at the moment, afforded her entrance, without
attracting, in any way, attention to her return.
“I fear I have done a very foolish thing,” she
thought, as she stepped inside the gateway, and
any one else might have thought the same, for Arthur
had complained of neither ache nor pain; he had been
in good spirits all the morning; he had faithfully
promised to come down through the week; and, but
for that expression of hopeless, helpless, blank
despair in his face as the train swept out of the
station, Heather would have gone away happy, and
Arthur’s fate proved different.
As it was, he had traversed the road back from
Waterloo a miserable and a wretched man.
He had brought much grief to Heather, he would
bring no more. He had been tempted, and he had
fallen; he had been pressed for money, and he
266had “borrowed”—that was the way he put it to
himself—a few hundreds from Mr. Lukin, and he
had vainly striven to replace those hundreds, and
now Mr. Lukin was coming to inspect the books,
and a worse thing than poverty—disgrace! was without
in the street, waiting to cross their threshold.
But Heather should never know this; no man,
nor no woman, should ever say a Dudley of Berrie
Down had committed a felony. There was one
way of escape, and his feeble mind clutched hold of
that poor straw eagerly: one way—he would take
care of himself, and Alick would take care of
Heather!
CHAPTER XII. THE BITTERNESS OF DEATH.
267
Once inside the house, Heather, all in a flutter,
ran up to her own room, and asked herself why she
had returned. Even now—even with the consciousness
on her that she had done a very foolish thing,
at which Arthur would be naturally vexed—she felt
she could not have gone on; that the journey, with,
that awful dread weighing her down, would have
been one of pain instead of pleasure; that it would
be far more a holiday to her—far and away more,
to stay behind with her husband—her poor, careworn,
miserable husband—than to travel through
the loveliest scenery on earth.
She had told Alick it was a feeling, a foolish
though uncontrollable feeling, which made her turn
back; but she would have spoken more correctly
268had she said it was the love of her heart—that love
which is stronger than death, more constant than
sorrow.
Yet she knew she never could make Arthur understand
this; knew she never could hope to impress
upon him how miserable she had felt after the farewell
at the station; how utterly impossible it was
for her to go on and be happy, while he remained
behind alone.
How should she tell him? With a vague desire
to break the fact of her return to others before
facing her husband, she went downstairs again, and
into the kitchen, meaning to tell Prissy, she feared
Mr. Dudley would be lonely, and so returned,
sending the rest of the family on. She meant to
have a comfortable chat with Prissy, for her heart
was very full, and she longed to have a good talk
with some one; but, when she entered the kitchen,
no Prissy was there; no Prissy was in the back-kitchen
either, nor in the washhouse, nor in the
larder, nor in the coal-cellar, for even into that last
hiding-place Heather peeped.
Then it suddenly occurred to Mrs. Dudley that
there was a terrible look of order about the kitchen;
269about the pots and pans, the plates and dishes;
everything was in its proper position; the chairs
were ranged against the wall, the table had no
crockery heaped upon it, there was not even a glass-cloth
flung carelessly aside.
What could it mean? Heather stood considering
this question, and all at once her heart gave a great
leap; not of joy, but fear. There was no fire; the
fact had not struck her at first—perhaps because she
was then intent on looking for Prissy—now, however,
it came home to her, not merely that there
was no fire, but that the wood, paper, and coals,
were laid ready for lighting; ready for lighting in
both kitchens. A woman must, like Heather, be a
practical housekeeper to understand the full significance
of such a spectacle.
Both fires out; both laid ready for lighting; that
bespoke premeditation.
Now, premeditation meant, not that Prissy had
gone upstairs to dress, and forgotten her fires; not
that Prissy had gone out shopping, and remained to
gossip; not that Prissy had met her lover, who made
time pass so pleasantly, that minutes and fuel were
alike forgotten; but that Prissy had gone out with
270leave to do so granted, and that she had conscientiously
waited to put the house into apple-pie
order before her departure.
One of Heather’s greatest comforts, in leaving
home, had been the idea that Prissy would see that
her husband wanted for nothing; that she would be
always on guard, always at hand to get him whatever
he wanted.
Mrs. Dudley had arranged that Prissy’s mother
was to come up by the late train that night, and
keep her company while the family were away; and
the very last words she spoke, before leaving home,
were, “Don’t forget, Prissy, to write to me often; and
if Mr. Dudley should be ill, I depend upon your
sending for me;” in answer to which Prissy said,
“I will see to everything, mum, as if you was at
home; and I’ll write every two days, and never be
out of the house till you come back.”
After that, to return and find the bird flown, was
rather disheartening. Mrs. Dudley could not
unravel the enigma, and she thereupon slowly ascended
the stairs, wondering as she went what it
all could mean.
She passed her own room, and wending her way
271up another flight of stairs, entered that belonging to
Prissy. There, on the foot of the bed, hung the
girl’s cotton gown, her apron, and various other
articles of apparel which Heather recognized at a
glance as her every-day habiliments.
With an awful creeping dread upon her, Heather
opened the door of the closet where Prissy hung up
her gown, and found, not the girl’s best dress,
bonnet, and shawl, but empty pegs—a fearful
vacancy.
What could it all mean? She looked again around
the apartment, and perceived Prissy’s box was gone.
Clearly, her trusty domestic had departed, not
merely for the afternoon but for a longer period.
With a sense of suffocation on her, Heather
walked to the small window which was partially
open, and stood there wondering what she should
do next.
The state of the house increased her difficulty as
to the best means of explaining her return to
Arthur. Supposing he had made any arrangement
with which her presence would interfere; supposing
it should seem as though she had come back to play
the part of a spy, to be a torment instead of a
272blessing; what could he say, what was there he
might not imagine?
That Prissy ever left the house of her own good-will, Heather’s understanding refused to credit; and
why Arthur should have sent her away, Heather
likewise could not comprehend.
If she had done anything wrong, and been discharged,
she would have taken all her clothes; if
she had not done anything wrong, why did Arthur
let her go? Over this question, Heather, still with
her bonnet on, stood puzzling; and, as she stood, she
saw the men leave off work and don their coats, and
pass out of the yard; at first, in gangs, afterwards
in twos and threes—finally, one by one.
There they went—foremen, overlookers, clerks,
sub-manager; finally, Arthur went down to the
gate, talking to Morrison as they walked.
At the gate Morrison paused and seemed impressing
something earnestly on Mr. Dudley, to which
the latter listened with an appearance of interest.
Then Arthur replied; and, at length satisfied, as it
seemed, Morrison touched his hat, and passed
through the gate, while Arthur looked after him.
As he came up the yard, Heather, from her post of
273observation, could see his face distinctly; that face
which had struck her girlish fancy, but which was
now so changed—so changed! oh, God!
As she looked at him, and remembered the first
day they had ever set eyes on one another, the tears
came welling up, and for a moment she could not
see him because of the mist which blinded her.
Poor Arthur! Poor Arthur! In the after days
it was a comfort to her to recollect that at that
moment there came no thought of selfish pity into
her mind for poor Heather. Poor Heather! changed
and broken too.
If he had suffered, had not she? if he had borne,
had not she? if he had found his cross almost
heavier than he could endure, had not hers also bowed
her to the very ground? had not she wept her tears,
and fought with her anguish? Yea, truly; and yet
Heather, looking at that pale, worn, haggard man,
who came slowly lounging up the yard, thought of
none of these things, but only of the blasted hopes,
of the proud, disappointed, broken heart of the
husband of her youth.
The sunlight, flaring down into the court-yard,
shone full upon his face as he walked back from the
274entrance gates, swinging the great key on his forefinger;
and Heather, sheltered from observation by
the window-curtain, looked down on the man she
had returned to comfort, not knowing exactly what
to do—in what terms to announce her change of
purpose.
The expression on his countenance, which had so
struck her while the train moved out of the station,
was on his countenance still. He was all alone, as
he thought, now; with no need to put on a mask,
with no necessity to smile, or speak, or deceive; and
as Heather, watching him, beheld that look of
misery deepen and deepen, while he walked so
slowly back, an awful dread took possession of
her—a dread of something being about to happen
which made her tremble as though in an ague-fit.
He was now beside the well—an old-fashioned
one, with rope and windlass, up which the men
had in former days drawn buckets of water, but
now neglected and disused. It had long been
covered over for fear of accidents, and though the
boards had shrunk one from another with the heat
of many summers, still the planking was secure
enough to render all fear of accident unnecessary.
275Beside this well, Arthur now paused for a moment,
apparently irresolute; then he stooped, and through
the stillness the sound of a splash, of something
falling down, and then touching water, ascended to
where Heather stood.
At that moment she could not have moved had it
been to save her life; but she could watch, and she
did, to see Arthur rise with a face from which even
despair was blotted out; for despair implies a certain
ability left to wrestle against, or, at all events,
to feel utter hopelessness; but now, the sun looked
down upon a man who had passed even that stage,
who had gone through his last struggle, cast his last
die.
It was with the expression of a person already
dead, Arthur turned from the well and walked
across the court-yard, with the key no longer swinging
on his forefinger.
What could he be intending to do? Heather
dropped on her knees beside the window, and
watched him enter the carpenter’s shop. She dared
not have met him then. There came upon her such
an access of terror when she heard that key splash
into the water, as swept everything else out of her
276heart for the time being, save the most unconquerable,
abject fear—a fear which prevented her even
thinking, which took away the power of putting two
and two together, and conceiving what project it
might be Arthur had in hand.
She was like one in a dream—with a great horror
on her, she fell on her knees and watched. Through
it all, there was a vague, night-mare kind of consciousness
that she and Arthur were locked up alone
together—that escape for either of them was not
possible—that if help were needed, help was now
unattainable.
In her despair she prayed—holding on by the
window-sill as if she were going to be torn from it,
she framed some sort of petition to God to help her.
Wearied and exhausted, frightened, and with that
awful, vague, nameless dread at length taking a
tangible form, it seemed to her as though, for a
moment, everything faded from her eyes—as though,
even while her lips were moving and her heart
uttering some terrified words of supplication, her
senses left her for a moment—the yard swam round,
the buildings went up and down before her sight,
the sunlight turned to darkness, and then——
277Then, as if, after having been swung out into
space for an immeasurable distance, she came back
to the same point again—and the mist melted away,
and the light was clear once more; and with a keen
vision, though still with a giddy and confused feeling
in her head, Heather beheld Arthur coming out of
the carpenter’s shop, dragging a bag of shavings
after him, which he shot out into one of the lower
floors of the silk factory.
Still she watched him. He piled shavings, sackful
after sackful, among the bales of raw silk—he
carried the old wrapperings and more shavings into
the counting-house—she saw him bring jars of oil
and turpentine and empty them on the heap he had
already collected.
“He has gone mad,” she decided, rising up;
“he has gone mad, and he is going to set the place
on fire; and we cannot get out, and there is no help
to be had.”
None, for they were locked in. She dared not
go downstairs and beat at the gates, for she felt
more afraid now of encountering Arthur than even
of remaining where she was.
Oh! those cruel walls, those dead, eyeless, earless
278walls, to which she might scream herself hoarse in
vain—this solitude in the midst of numbers—this
helplessness, with help within a few feet of her—this
prison without a gaoler—this cage in which they
were both about to be burned to death.
Well enough she knew that if once the factory
caught fire, no living creature could long breathe
within that confined space. It would be like trying
to exist in a brick oven with a furnace alight at the
one end. Already she seemed to feel the hot
tongues of flame licking her cheek—already the
struggle for life, dear life, appeared to have begun—already
the scorching heat was drying up her blood—already
she was beating against the closed gates,
beating with her clenched hands till they were
bruised and bleeding, while the fire raged behind,
and the air became hotter and hotter, the flames
fiercer and fiercer.
Already the horror she had often felt of fire in
that enclosed place seemed to have become a tangible
reality; and, with a low cry, Heather rushed from
the room, and down the staircase.
A moment before Arthur had come back across
the yard, instinctively she felt for matches. Another
279second and it would be too late; all fear of meeting
him was gone; all fear, save the dread of an awful
death for both; and so she flew down the stairs and
met him as he came out of his own apartment, with
a box of vestas in his hand.
She need not have feared meeting him; all the
dread she had felt was as nothing compared to the
terror which came into his face at sight of his wife.
They had changed places now, and it was she, not
he, who was strong and mad; in her frenzy, she
struck the box out of his hand, and it fell over the
banisters, the matches scattering on the floor-cloth
below. Then she threw herself upon him, and
asked if he knew what it was he had been about to
do. With passionate sobs she prayed him to stay
his hand, and to spare them both. Scarcely knowing
what she said, she asked what could have
tempted him to such a deed; if he were insane to
think of committing so great a sin. With her arms
twined around him, and her words flowing fast and
unpremeditated, she poured out all her dread, her
trouble, her horror, in a few hurried sentences.
She might as well have spared her remonstrances
and her entreaties. From the moment he beheld
280his wife, all hope of escape, honourable escape, even
by death, from the position in which he had placed
himself, vanished. He had laid his plans so well, as
he thought; and behold, in a moment, her love
overthrew them all! While she, clinging to him,
went on praying and pleading, weeping and sobbing,
all this passed through the man’s mind. For the
time, he had been stunned, cowed, as though he had
met a phantom; but now, pushing her from him,
with a sudden force which made her stagger and
reel, he disengaged himself from her, and backing
into the room he had just left, locked and bolted
the door behind him.
“Arthur!” she cried; but there came no answer.
“Arthur!” she only heard him walking across the
floor.
“Arthur!” she shook the handle, and put her
knee against the panel.
“Arthur! for God’s sake open the door, and let
me speak to you!” still no reply.
Would he drop out by the window, and so escape
and finish the work he had begun? She ran downstairs
and out of the house; but the sash was not
lifted. Would he try to fire the place from within?
281She returned to the door, and beat against it,
crying, “only a word, dear; only one word.”
And in reply there came something which sounded
like a gurgle and a sob, followed by a heavy fall,
which seemed to shake the house to its very foundation.
“Arthur!”—there was dead silence. “Arthur!”
there was not even a breath in answer; nothing but
silence—a silence which might be felt.
She knelt down and tried to look through the
keyhole, but could distinguish nothing. As she rose,
she chanced to look down at her light muslin dress,
and saw that there was blood upon it—blood
oozing under the door, trickling in a narrow stream
out upon the landing.
She ran back the whole width of the lobby, and
flung herself against the door; but of what avail
was her poor strength? Then she rushed out upon
the roof of the house, with a vague intention of
pulling up the ladder after her, and fleeing over
other roofs for help and succour; but the inexorable
walls rose high above;—there were no means of
escape, no chance of assistance.
Then she sped down the stairs once more—down
282the stairs and past the landing where there was
already a dark pool of blood forming outside the
door. She crossed the yard to the carpenter’s shop,
and, seizing a hammer, ran to the outer gates, and
struck blow after blow, striving to break the lock;
she called and cried, but the people sweeping by
never heard her, for the noise of passing conveyances
deadened a voice already hoarse with excitement,
exhausted with fear. She beat against the solid
wood, and her blows were but woman’s blows, faint,
and feeble, and weak; she screamed for help, but
there was no one to hear.
In her anguish, in that awful extremity of her
life, she looked once again round the yard; and, as
she did so, her eye fell on the factory bell, which
hung suspended on the highest point of the
building.
That was her last hope; desperately, almost,
she flung aside the useless hammer, and sprung to
the bell; she seized the rope with her soft, fair
hands, and clang, clang, clang, went the clapper—clang,
clang, clang.
Through the summer evening’s air, through the
gathering twilight, the bell rang out—clang, clang;
283cling, clang, clang; the arms never grew tired, the
hands never felt the blistering of the rope. Clang,
clang; Heather never ceased till she heard a
knocking at the gate, and the police inquiring what
was the matter?—“who’s inside?”
Thrice Heather tried to answer them, but her lips
refused to utter any articulate sound.
Then, “Break open the gate!” she at length
managed to reply. “Make haste!—make haste!”
They sent for picks and crowbars, and beat in the
wood-work; then a couple of policemen stepped inside,
whilst a couple more kept the crowd back.
“Come upstairs!” Heather said; and when they
reached the landing, she pointed to the floor, and
then to the room, where some tragedy, she knew,
had taken place.
“It is locked!” she replied. “My husband!”
One of the men put his shoulder to the door and
forced it open. He could not fling it wide, on
account of something which barred the entrance;
but, squeezing himself through the aperture, he
entered the room, and found Arthur lying on the
floor with his throat cut, and a razor beside him!
“Bear a hand here,” the man whispered to his
284fellow, “and don’t let her come in;” but Heather
was not to be kept back. She crept through the
opening likewise, and stood face to face with that,
the visible presence of the dread which had brought
her back miles and miles to preserve him from one
crime only—so it seemed to her—in order that he
might commit another!
Between them, the men lifted the body and placed
it on the bed; then one went for a doctor, and the
other stood waiting for Mrs. Dudley, who had gone
groping after a light.
She knew where there were matches, and she soon
found a candle; and when she had lighted it, she
returned, and, bravely enough, looked on the face of
the only man she ever loved.
“I don’t think he’s dead, ma’am,” said the policeman,
with a rough sympathy. “I have been trying
to stop the bleeding; and, if you will give me some
more handkerchiefs, I’ll see what we can do till the
doctor comes.”
Mechanically, almost, Heather gave him what he
asked for. Even in the midst of this tremendous
sorrow, she could not shut out the memory of all
those upheaped shavings, soaked in oil—of all, perhaps,
285those terrible men, now they were free of the
premises, might discover.
If he were dead, he had left it all—the shame, the
discovery, the punishment behind; but if he were
not dead, and that detection then took place?
Had it not been for the fact of the door being
secured inside, the man would have begun to suspect
strange things of Heather; her manner was so
singular, so wandering, so incomprehensible.
“Do you know how this happened?” he asked.
“He went mad, I think,” she answered. “I am
sure he was mad; he has been odd, and unlike himself
for some time;” and then she began to sob
convulsively.
“Come, come, ma’am, you must not give way like
this, you know,” said the doctor, who just then entered
the apartment. “Take charge of her, will you?” he
added, to a person who followed him in, “and don’t
allow her to come back here at present. There,
ma’am, pray go with this gentleman; we’ll see to
whatever is necessary; you will only be in our way.”
“That is quite true, Mrs. Dudley,” said a familiar
voice, tenderly and pityingly, and, at the sound of
it, Heather looked up.
286“Oh! Mr. Croft,” she cried, at sight of his dark
face, bent down towards her with an ineffable compassion;
“thank God—thank God for this!” and,
clinging to his arm, she rather took him, than he her;
out of the apartment, and into one of the lower
rooms, where her first prayer was that “he would
keep the people out—keep them away—till she had
told him everything—ev-e-ry thing!”
In a few minutes, Douglas Croft was in possession
of the facts of the case, so far as Heather herself
was cognisant of them, but his clear head saw farther
than she had been able to do. He understood there
must be some cause for this sudden freak of madness—some
reason why Arthur wished the place
destroyed.
“And we shall have to find out the reason before
morning,” he said. “Now, Mrs. Dudley, may I
depend upon your calmness—may I be certain of
your assistance? There has evidently been more
than life involved in this matter, and we must sift it
thoroughly to the bottom. I suppose I may examine
any papers I find upstairs? Pray remain here for
the present; I shall be back again directly.”
It was no very difficult undertaking for a man
287like Douglas Croft to satisfy the police that anything
which had happened in Lukin’s factory during the
course of the last few hours was perfectly correct,
and in the ordinary course of every-day events, and
that the only plan now to be adopted was to send
for a locksmith, have a new fastening put upon the
gates, and the needful repairs in the wood-work
effected without delay.
Neither did he experience any greater trouble in
making the doctor understand that there was something
which had preceded the attempt at suicide,
and which it was desirable on all accounts to attribute
to temporary insanity.
“Whether he live or die,” finished Mr. Croft,
“and, in my opinion, it matters very little which he
does, this freak must be regarded as that of a
lunatic. Meantime, if you have no objection to
meeting my friend Mr. Rymner Henry, I think it
might be a satisfaction to Mrs. Dudley to know you
have had a consultation.”
In reply to which speech, Doctor Milworth, bowing
low, expressed himself to the effect, that he had no
objection whatever to meeting Mr. Henry—that he
should like to meet him, in fact, which may seem
288the less astonishing, perhaps, when it is explained,
that during the entire time Doctor Milworth took
charge of the case, he was in the habit of going
about among his other patients, watch in hand, and
casually remarking he was rather in a hurry to-day,
because he had to meet Mr. Rymner Henry at a
quarter past two, or a quarter to five, or four precisely,
according to the hour mentioned by that
celebrated surgeon, “in consultation on a most important
case.”
Why Mr. Croft considered it necessary to send
for further advice, he himself perhaps could not very
clearly have told, for he knew that if Arthur
Dudley were to live, Dr. Milworth had done everything
which could be done towards compassing that
object. Possibly he might have some idea of thereby
winning the doctor’s greater confidence, ensuring
his greater secrecy, for already Douglas Croft held
in his hand a letter which he believed would prove
a clue to all this mystery.
It was from Mr. Lukin, stating that on the 23rd
he should be in London to inspect the books.
“That is the secret, then,” thought Douglas
Croft; “before you inspect the books, though, Mr.
289Lukin, I will take a look at them myself. I do not
think there will be much difficulty in unravelling the
skein; I am greatly mistaken if he possessed brains
sufficient to cook his accounts, and perhaps for that
very reason he may have got them into a confounded
mess.”
When Mr. Croft, however, tried to pass into the
office he failed to do so, by reason of the piles of
shavings and other combustible materials which
stopped the entrance.
“I want a reliable man, Mrs. Dudley,” he said,
returning to her; “a man who can be trusted to
hold his tongue, if he be paid for doing so. Is there
amongst the workpeople such a treasure to be found?”
“Yes,” she answered; “Morrison. I am certain
we may trust him.”
“Where is he to be found?” asked her friend.
“I do not know his address, though I could find
my way to his house. I will go and fetch him this
moment.”
“I will accompany you,” he said; but next moment,
remembering some one in the Dudley interest ought
to remain on the premises, he stood perplexed and
silent, while Heather said,—
290“I am not afraid of going. Do you think, after
to-night, any small thing will ever frighten me
again?”
“Poor child, poor child,” he murmured, “what a
life yours has been!”
“Don’t pity me,” she said; “do not, or my heart
will break; it feels almost breaking as it is, and a
kind word chokes me. I will go for Morrison; I
will go at once.”
There was no help for it; so he went with her as
far as the gate and watched her while she flitted
away along the street—watched her till she turned a
corner and was lost to view.
Then he went upstairs again to hear how the
patient was doing, and after a chat with the doctor
and nurse, for whom the doctor had sent, walked
down to the gates again, and waited till Heather
entered, bringing Morrison with her.
“A nice business this!” remarked Mr. Croft, when
Mrs. Dudley had left the two men standing together
in the yard; “a nice business it might have turned
out. Where could your eyes have been not to see
Mr. Dudley was as mad as a March hare when you
left off work? If it had not been for Mrs. Dudley,
291there would have been a fine bonfire here to-night.”
“Well, sir, my mind did misgive me,” was the
reply; “and more especially along of these here
shavings. I told Mr. Dudley they were not safe
stowed away in that there carpenter’s shop, with the
gas escaping like anything. I wanted to have them
cleared out, and offered to wait and see it properly
done, but he said he wanted to go out and could not
have them moved till Monday. He looked real down
wild when he said it, and my mind misgave me; but
I never thought of him trying such a start as this.”
“Mr. Lukin will be here on Monday, and you can
tell him all about it, just as it happened,” said Mr.
Croft; “but don’t let the men get hold of his
having tried to fire the place. It would not be
pleasant for poor Mrs. Dudley.”
“Which a real lady is,” finished Morrison; “many
a time I was sorry to see her here, so unsuitable it
seemed. Never fear, sir, nobody shall hear the story
from me, not even Mr. Lukin. I need not tell him
Mrs. Dudley came for me; and when we get these
things out of the way, and the place to rights a bit,
no one need be any the wiser.”
292“And, as I cannot find any of the keys, I will take
the books in for security, if you will hand them to
me,” said Mr. Croft. And so he had the books
carried across the yard and placed on the dining-room
table, where in five minutes he discovered the
deficiency.
“If I can only now open the safe, we may snap
our fingers at Mr. Lukin,” thought Heather’s friend,
as he closed the books and shut in the record of the
borrowed money which had almost overturned
Arthur’s reason.
Then he sought Mrs. Dudley, who was seated in
an arm-chair, resting her head on both hands. And
before her on the table lay a little locket, which Mr.
Croft recognised as having been taken from the poor
broken creature who, still hanging between life and
death, was quiet enough upstairs—quiet enough and
low enough to have contented his enemy, if he had
one.
“You are very ill, I fear,” Mr. Croft said, in that
almost caressing tone which had won its way to
Bessie’s heart in the sunshiny days that seemed now
so far—so far away. He had two natures, this man,
who had loved the girl so passionately and deceived
293her so grossly: one tender and compassionate, the
other reckless and cynical. “You are very ill, I
fear; in the press of other matters you have been
neglected. Let me see to you now a little—what is
there you can have, likely to do you any good?”
“I do not know,” she answered. “I have been
upstairs and seen him. Oh! Mr. Croft, what are
the chances of his recovery? tell me the truth. It is
not likely the doctor would be frank with me.”
“I think it greatly depends on his being kept
quiet; there is nothing now that ought to distress
or worry him. I have discovered the cause of all
this misery; it is a very trifling cause indeed which
has produced such results.”
“Is it?” she lifted her head for a moment as she
said this, and looked into Mr. Croft’s face, then her
glance wandered towards the locket. He could not
quite comprehend her.
“A mere trifle,” he repeated; and then he told her
all. He thought it best to do this—better that she
should understand the whole of the circumstances
clearly, so as to be able to comprehend exactly how
he intended setting the affair straight.
“And I had that money of yours in the house all
294the time,” Heather said, with that weary, weary look
in her face which seemed to Mr. Croft worse than
the most violent sorrow—“what you gave me, you
know, to keep—for—Bessie!”
The last word was spoken more like an exclamation
than as though it had belonged in any way to
the previous part of the sentence; and Mr. Croft,
following the direction of her eyes, beheld the door
closed hurriedly, and heard the rustle of a dress in
the passage.
In a moment he was out in the hall, and had
caught the retreating figure.
“Bessie!” he cried; “Bessie—Bessie! don’t go!
I will leave, if you object to my staying here, but we
can both help Mrs. Dudley. See, I will not follow
you in!”
She covered her face with the corner of her shawl,
covered it that he might not even look upon her, and
passed back into the parlour without a word.
“Heather, my darling, what is this?” she asked.
“Morrison came round for me, but could only give
the most confused account of what had happened.
Tell me, love—tell me all; don’t sit looking at me
like that, but speak, dear; what is it?” And she
295crouched down on the ground, and, winding her
arms round Heather’s neck, drew the dear face
close to her own. “What is this trouble, sweet?”
she persisted; but the only answer Heather could
make was—“Oh! Bessie—oh! Bessie,” as she held
the locket towards her, moaning, moaning all the
while.
“Do you wish me to open it?” Bessie inquired;
and Heather made a gesture of assent. She had
always been a little jealous, and now she was afraid
to reveal, with her own hands, the secret it contained.
And yet she longed to know—was it portrait or hair—was
it an old love token, or a more recent souvenir
which her husband had worn next his heart, next
where she ought to have been alone? God keep us
all from hard and hasty and suspicious judgments.
With the man upstairs hovering between life and
death, Heather still could not help misjudging
him. Worse than the whole of the long ordeal she
had passed through was the sight of that golden
trifle, which she dared not examine, which Bessie
first turned over and then opened, holding it up to
the light as she did so.
There was a scrap of hair in it—a tiny curl of
296golden red, and “Lally” engraved in black letters
round the edge.
“Where did you get this, Heather?” she inquired.
“He wore it,” Heather answered.
“He! Oh! poor—poor Arthur!” and the tears
poured from Bessie’s eyes as she looked upon the
trinket. She had never thought to like Arthur
greatly, or to be sorry for him over much; but now
it seemed to her, thinking of the tragedy which had
just been enacted, that no one had ever quite understood
him, ever imagined it possible Arthur should
find out his error, and try to repair it too late—too
late!
“Why do you say ‘Poor Arthur?’” Heather
broke forth, passionately; “why do you not pity
me, finding out, after all, he was wearing next his
heart a love token from that woman—that bad,
cruel——”
“Hush, Heather!—hush—hush!” and Bessie
put the open locket into her friend’s hand. “See
what it really is—not what you imagine at all.”
Incredulously almost, Heather did as she was
requested; then “Lally—Lally!” said the bereaved
297mother; “Lally, Lally!” and she covered the locket
with hungry kisses.
“I have passed through the bitterness of death
to-night, Bessie!” she exclaimed, at length. “I think
it must be near morning now.”
CHAPTER XIII. SUNSET AT BERRIE DOWN.
298
It was near morning; but before that new time,
full of hope, and joy, and promise, dawned upon her
life, there came a period of blessed unconsciousness,
during which Heather Dudley lay ignorant of all
passing events.
How Arthur came back from the valley of the
shadow—how the management of their affairs was
taken by stronger and abler hands than any which
had hitherto touched them—how everything was made
right with Mr. Lukin, and gossip silenced, and
ill-nature refuted, she did not know until the long
fever was over—until, seated again beside one of the
windows of that pleasant drawing-room at Berrie
Down, she could have fancied the events I have
tried in this story to chronicle were all parts
299and portions of some unpleasant dream—of some
weary attack of delirium.
For they were once more in the old house which
Mr. Croft had purchased when it was for sale, and
the management of which he had offered through his
agent first to Arthur, and then to Alick.
“And, had I known who my real master was,”
said that young gentleman, “I never would have
accepted the post.”
“Are you sorry you were ignorant?” asked Mr.
Croft, with a smile, glancing towards Heather.
“No—oh, no!” was the quick reply; for every
one now knew, that when Mr. Croft appeared
so opportunely in Silk Street, he was coming to
tell Mrs. Dudley of his wife’s death—coming
to say, that if Bessie would only accept him, he
would make reparation—he would prove his repentance.
There was not a relation he had in the world
who opposed his decision—not one who, hearing the
full details of that sad story, urged a word against
the girl whom he desired, after a due interval, to
make his wife.
All the reluctance was with Bessie—all the
300difficulty he experienced lay in her disinclination to
speak to him, or listen to his suit.
“Her child,” she said to Heather, “would be
looked down on.” Her child who, now chattering
his first intelligible sentences, ran through the
gardens at Berrie Down, making that sound of young
life about the place which is always so pleasant to
hear.
But there was hope for the suitor, nevertheless.
In due time, Heather promised to take up his cause.
“I will talk to her when I get strong,” she said
to Mr. Croft; and with that assurance he rested
satisfied.
As for Mrs. Poole Seymour, she was quite
enthusiastic about the affair.
“My dear,” she declared, “you must not be
cruel. You ought to be the first to forgive him,
since it was your pretty face led him so far astray;
and as for your child—the estate is not entailed—what
matter? besides, Mr. Stewart is so rich, and
has taken to you so immensely!”
Which was true. Mr. Stewart was delighted
with Bessie, and perhaps even more delighted with
her child—a fine, sturdy young fellow, who, riding
301on Nep, encountered Mr. Stewart one day in Berrie
Down.
“What is your name, my little man?” asked the
bachelor, stopping him and his nurse, Priscilla.
“Mamma says, I’m a young Turk,” was the
answer. “What’s yours?”
“Oh! I’m an old Turk!” replied Mr. Stewart;
whereupon the child burst out laughing; and, striking
Nep with his heels, the dog broke into a sling-trot
and bore Master Douglas off to Berrie Down.
“He only told you the truth, sir,” said Priscilla,
before she started off in pursuit; “he’s an awful
young Turk.”
In due time, Mr. Stewart reached the Hollow,
where he found Lord Kemms, who was decidedly
smitten by Agnes; and they all spent the evening
talking quietly together while the sun sank into the
west, and bathed the whole country lying exposed to
his beams in a glory of crimson and purple and
gold.
“I have brought you a little present, Heather,”
Mr. Stewart said, drawing near the sofa she occupied.
“It is the custom for godfathers to give their godchildren
little presents occasionally, and I fear I
302have been somewhat neglectful of you. Open it when
I am gone,” and he slipped a parcel into her hand.
But Heather, with a pretty wilfulness, opened it
at once, and drawing out the parchments it contained,
found them to be the title-deeds of Berrie Down.
“Yours, my dear,” said Mr. Stewart, “to have
and to hold for ever.”
“Arthur, Arthur!” she cried; and Arthur, look still
white and worn, came towards his wife, who
put the papers into his hand, saying, “See, love,
what Mr. Stewart has given me!”
“Only remember, Mr. Dudley, we must have no
speculating; you must keep it intact for your son,”
remarked Mr. Stewart, in answer to which Arthur
took his wife’s hand in his, murmuring, “So help
me God!”
Before the sun quite set, Heather drew a shawl
round her, and, leaving the pleasant company, passed
out on to the lawn, and wandered away towards the
Hollow.
“She is thinking of Lally,” Alick whispered to
Arthur; and Arthur, following his wife, prayed and
begged of her not to grieve for the child that was
no more.
303“Heather,” he said, humbly, “I have been but a
poor husband to you; but I will try in the future,
to be ‘better to you than many children.’ Do
not fret, love, do not fret.”
But Heather was not fretting. She felt now that
her darling was where she could see continually the
face of “Our Father which is in Heaven.”
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.