And I swept out of the room, and through the side-door into my bed-room,

where I crouched in a corner, with both hands on my heart, and the whole

world gone away. "Mad!" I heard him cry, "yes, I must go mad at last!"

Away he rushed from the house, and I fell upon the bed, and lay in fits

till midnight.

CHAPTER V.

I believe that my heart would have burst, if they had not cut my stays;

and how I wished it had. When I came back to my unlucky self, there was

something shivery cold in the forehead wave of my hair. Was it Conrad's

finger? I put up my hand to dash it away, and caught a fine fat leech.

Dr. Franks was sitting by me, holding a basin and a sponge.

"That's the last of them, my dear child. Don't disturb him. He is

doing his duty by you."

"His duty! Was it his duty to say such fearful things? To break my

heart with every word! Ashamed of me--ashamed of my darling father!

Low and licentious! What have I done? what have I done? Oh, it I only

knew what harm I have ever done!"

"No harm, my poor dear, no harm in the world; let me bathe your pretty

face. Come now, you shan't cry another drop. What is to become of the

beautiful eyes I was so proud of saving?"

"Oh, I wish you hadn't, how I wish you hadn't. Dr. Franks, I have no

father, and no mother, and no one in all the world to love me, and I was

just getting so nice and happy again, so proud of myself, and so much

prouder of him, and I began to think how glad my own dear father would

be; and, Dr. Franks, I did love him so, with all my heart, perhaps it's

not very large, but with every morsel and atom of my heart--and now, now

I must hate him as much as ever I can. Oh let me go home, do let me go

home, where my father and mother are buried." And I rose in the bed to

start, and the candles glimmered in my eyes.

"Please to go out of the room, every one please to go; and don't let

Isola come. I can't bear the sight of her now. It won't take me long

to dress, and I don't want any luggage; and, Mrs. Shelfer, please to go

for a cab: and I shan't want the rooms any more, and it does not matter

a bit about any letters. I'll tell my father everything when I see him,

and then perhaps he'll tell me what harm it is I have done. Why don't

you go, when you see I want to get up?'

"Don't you see, my dear child, we are going? Only you must take this

glass of wine first, to prepare you for your long journey. Will you

take it now, while we fetch the cab?"

"Yes, anything, anything: I don't care what it is. Only let me get

ready."

And I drank, without even tasting it, a glass of some dark liquid, which

saved me from wandering further either in mind or body.

When I awoke, it was broad noon once more, and Dr. Franks was sitting by

me with one of my hands in his. "Magnificent constitution," I thought I

heard him mutter, "glorious constitution." What good was it to me? At

the foot of the bed, sat Isola crying terribly. Slowly I remembered all

my great disaster, but saw it only through a dull gray veil. The power

of the opiate was still upon my brain. But a cold dead pain lay heavy

on my heart, and always seemed to want a heavy hand upon it. After he

had given me a reviving draught, Dr. Franks perceived that I wished to

speak to Isola, and accordingly withdrew.

Poor Isola came slowly and sat beside my pillow, doubting whether she

should dare to take my hand. Therefore I took hers, drew her face

towards me, and covered it with kisses. Isola had done no harm to me

whatever, and I felt it something to have even her to love. She was

overcome with affectionate surprise.

"Oh, Clara dearest, I am so very glad to find you love me still. I

feared that you would never care for me again. What is it all about,

dear, if you are well enough to tell me, what is all this dreadful

misery about?"

"That is the very thing I want to learn from you, dear. Surely you must

know better far than I do."

I would not even ask her what had become of Conrad.

"No, I don't dear. I don't know at all. All I know is there must have

been some dreadful quarrel between you and Conrad. I must tell you,

dear, I was so anxious about something you can guess, that I stole up to

the door soon after he came in; and you were so intent upon the window,

that you never even saw me put the door ajar; and then I heard him tell

you how very much he loved you, and I was so glad. And then I thought it

was not quite fair of me, and I knew all I wanted, so I ran downstairs

again. And the next thing I heard was your bedroom door bang and then

Conny dashed out the house, and Judy came down to me looking very

sorrowful. And I ran up to you, and here I found you shrieking so, and

rolling, and clutching at the bedclothes, and I was so frightened I

could not even move. And then Judy came and made such a dreadful

howling, and Mrs. Shelfer ran straight off for the doctor, and I poured

the water in the decanter over you, and I can't tell any more."

"But surely, darling, you have been home since that?"

"Oh yes; when Dr. Franks came, and you were a little better, he would

make me go home, because he did not want two patients, he said; and his

eldest daughter, such a nice girl, came with me; and my papa didn't even

know that I had been out of the house. He was still upstairs, brooding

over his relics, and all the sixth form at the College had to go to

dinner without their lectures; but I do believe the stupid girls were

glad."

"And did you hear--no, it doesn't matter."

"No, I never heard what became of Conrad. No doubt he went back to his

favourite chip, chipping. He has got a splendid thing he is full of now,

and it prevents his sleeping; something or other very horrible from

Dante, and the leading figure is modelled after you. I have seen the

drawings, and he has got you exactly."

"How gratifying to be sure! I will ask you no more questions. Pray let

me know when I am for sale; though I should call it a work of

illegitimate art."

My eyes were on her face, but she showed no consciousness whatever,

which she must have done had she known the fact referred to, for she was

quick of perception, and open as the day. I was angry with myself for

the low and bootless sneer, which was pretty certain to be conveyed to

her brother.

"Now I will delay no longer. Let me speak to Dr. Franks. I shall go

this afternoon."

Poor Isola turned pale; she had looked upon the occurrence as only a

lover's quarrel, sure to be set right in a day or two. She could not

harbour any great resentment long, and forgot that I could.

"Don't talk so, dear; and you so very weak! it would be sure to kill

you. And what will Conny think? You must not go, at any rate, till you

have been to see him."

"I go to him! I hope to see him never more until I charge him in

another world with this bitter wrong. No, no more if you please; I will

not hear his name again. How can he be your brother? Darling Idols, I

never shall forget you. Take this, my pet, and think of me sometimes,

for you will never see me more."

I gave her an emerald ring, set with lovely pearls, small types of

herself. It was not the one I had reclaimed from her brother, that was

a plain keeper.

"Oh Clara, Clara, don't say that, whatever you do, because I know you

will keep to it, you are so shamefully obstinate. And I never loved any

one in the world like you; no, not even Conny."

"And not even your father or mother?"

"No, not half so much. I like Pappy very well when he is good and kind,

but that is not very often now"--the poor little thing's eyes filled

again with tears,--"and as for my mother, I never even saw her; she died

when I was born."

"And I love you too, my sweet, best of all the world--now.

Nevertheless, we must part."

"And never see each other? I don't call that loving. Tell me why: do

tell me why. There seems some horrid mystery about every one I love."

And she was overcome with grief. She had not been, like me, apprenticed

young to trouble.

"Darling, I will write to you sometimes. You can come here for the

letters. I will have no secrets any more from you; but you must never

attempt to write to me--only send your name on a bit of paper when my

letters go."

"But why on earth mayn't I write to you, Clara dear?"

"I can't tell you why. Only I cannot bear it." The truth was I could

never have borne to read about her brother. So all that was settled,

and I said good-bye with plenty of bitter crying. As for Balaam and

Balak, from whom I expected tidings, and George Cutting, whom I had

thought it right to send for--I had not the heart to attend to any of

them. Dr. Franks had done his utmost to oppose my sudden journey, but I

told him truly that I should go mad if I stopped there any longer. I

could not bear the mere sight of the room where I had been, in the

height of delicious joy, so trampled upon and outraged. My brain was

burning, and my heart was aching for the only spot on earth where true

love could be found, the spot where lay my father and my mother.

Seeing how the fever of the mind was kindling, the doctor, like a good

physician, knew that the best plan was to indulge, and so allay it. Yet

he begged me, if I had any regard for him, not to travel all alone while

in that dangerous state. With most unlooked-for and unmerited kindness,

he even sent his eldest daughter, at an hour's notice, to see me home in

safety.

The last farewell was said to Judy, whom I would not take away, greatly

as I loved him still; and he received most stringent orders first to

conduct dear Isola home, and then to go to his old quarters at the

livery stables. Apparently he acquiesced, though with wistful glances;

but at Paddington, as I was getting the tickets, to my amazement in he

rushed, upset a couple of porters, and demanded his ticket too. Under

the circumstances there was nothing for it, except to let him go with

us, or to lose the train. So his ticket was taken, and he dashed into

the dog-box with an enthusiasm which earned him a hard knock on the

head.

CHAPTER VI.

Annie Franks was exactly as Isola had described her, "such a nice girl."

Kind-hearted like her father, truthful, ladylike, and sensitive;

retiring too, and humble-minded, with a well of mute romance in the

shadow of her heart, a wave of which she would not for the world

display. The only vent she ever allowed this most expansive element was

novel-reading, or a little quiet hero-worship. Her greatest happiness

was to sit upon a lonely bank, and read a slashing curtel-axe and

gramercy romance, with lots of high-born ladies in it, and lots of

moonlight love. If history got hard thumps among them, and chronology,

like an unwound clock, was right but twice in twenty-four, simple Annie

smiled no less, so long as the summer sun flashed duly on pennon, helm,

and gonfalon, and she could see bright cavalcades winding through the

greenwood shade. In "coat and waistcoat" novels her soul took no

delight. Not a shilling would she squeeze from her little beaded purse

for all the quicksilver of Dickens, or the frosted gold[#] of Thackeray.

Yet she was not by any means what fast young ladies call a "spooney;"

she had plenty of common sense upon the things of daily life, plenty of

general information, and no lack of gentle self-respect.

[#] "Ice-tempered steel" I had written. But alas, the great author is

dead, and they say that his kind heart was grieved by nothing so much as

the charge of Cynicism. If he were a Cynic, would that we all were

dogs!--"[Greek: _Kynos ommat' echon, kradien d' elaphoio_.]"--C.V. 1864.

Now she was wending through an upland meet for gray-clad reverie, where

she might dream for days and days, and none but silly deer intrude. As

we passed along in the gloaming of the May, through bosomed lawn and

bosky dell, with lilac plumes for cavaliers, and hawthorn sweeps for

ladies' trains, the soft gray eyes of Annie ceased at last to watch me,

and her thoughts were in costume of Chevy Chase or Crecy.

By reason of the message sent the day before, no one in the house

expected me; so we stole in quietly, lest my uncle should be alarmed,

and I requested Gregory, tipsy Bob's successor, to bring Jane to meet

us, in my own little room. Annie being installed there, to her great

delight, and allowed free boot of "Marry, Sir knight," and "Now by my

halidame," I went to see my poor dear uncle, who by this time was

prepared for my visit. Very weak he seemed, and nervous, and more

rejoiced at my return than even I had expected. To me also it was warm

comfort in my cold pride-ailment to be with one of my own kin, whom none

could well disparage. There was a dignity about him, an air of lofty

birth, which my own darling father had been too genial to support. Soon

I perceived from my uncle's manner, that something had happened since my

departure to add to his uneasiness. But he offered no explanation and I

did not like to ask him. He in turn perceived the heavy dark

despondency, which, in spite of all my efforts, would at times betray

itself. Pride and indignation supported me, when I began to think, but

then I could not always think, whereas I could always feel. Moreover,

pride and indignation are, in almost every case, props that carry barbs.

In a word, though I would scorn the love-lorn maiden's part, it was sad

for me to know that I could never love again.

With a father's tenderness, he feebly drew my head to his trembling

breast, and asked me in a tearful whisper what had happened to me. But

I was too proud to tell him. Oh that I had not been! What misery might

have been spared to many. But all the time my head lay there, I was on

fire with shame and agony, thinking of the breast on which my hair had

last been shed.

"Now, good nurse Clara," he said at last with a poor attempt at

playfulness, "I shall have no more confidence in your professional

skill, unless you wheel me forth to-morrow with a cheerful face. You

are tired to-night, my love, and so should I have been, if you had not

come home. To-morrow you shall tell me why you came so suddenly and

saved me a day of longing. And to-morrow, if I am strong enough, I will

tell you a little history, which may be lost, like many a great one,

unless it is quickly told. Stop--one cup of tea, dear, and how proud I

am to pour it out for you--and then I will not keep you from a livelier

friend. To-morrow, you must introduce me. I still like pretty girls,

and you should have brought that lovely Isola with you. I can't think

why you didn't. She would have been most welcome."

"Come, uncle, I shall be jealous. The young lady I have brought is

quite pretty enough for you."

He sighed at some remembrance, and then asked abruptly,

"Do you mean to sleep, my darling, in the little room to-night?" His

voice shook so, while he asked this question, that I was quite certain

something had alarmed him. The little room was the one I had occupied

between the main corridor and his present bedroom. It was meant for an

ante-room, not a sleeping chamber; but I had brought my little iron

bedstead thither.

"To be sure I do, dear uncle; do you suppose, because I have been off

duty, that I mean to be cashiered? Only one thing I must tell you; I

have brought home with me one of the very best friends I ever had. You

have heard me talk of Giudice. I cannot bear the thought of parting

with him to-night, he will cry so dreadfully in the strange stables; and

in London he always slept on the mat outside my door. May I have him in

the lobby, uncle, you will never hear him move, and he never snores

except just after dinner?"

"To be sure, my pet; I would not part you for the world. God bless you,

my own child, and keep your true heart lighter."

If I had been really his own child, he could not have been more loving

to me, than he had now become.

After giving Annie Franks her tea, which she was far too deep in

tournament to drink, I paid a visit to Mrs. Fletcher's room, and learned

from her that nothing, so far as she knew, had happened to disturb my

uncle: Mrs. Daldy had not been near the house, and there was a rumour

afloat that she had been called to take part in a revival meeting near

Swansea. So after introducing Judy, who was a dreadful dog for jam, and

having him admired almost as much as he ought to be, I returned to

Annie, and found her in high delight with everything and everybody, and

most of all with her tapestry-writer. Leaving her at last under Tilly's

care, Judy and I were making off for our sleeping quarters, when truant

Matilda followed me down the passage hastily.

"Oh, Miss, please, Miss, I want to tell you something, and I did not

like to name it before that nice young lady, because I am sure she is

timid like."

Matilda looked not timid like, but terrified exceedingly, as she stared

on every side with her candle guttering.

"Hold your candle up, Matilda; and tell me what it is."

By this time we were in the main passage, "corridor" they called it, and

could see all down it by the faint light of some oil-lamps, to the oriel

window at the farther end, whereon the moon (now nearly full again) was

shining.

"Why, Miss, the ghost was walking last night, and the night before."

"Nonsense, Matilda. Don't be so absurd."

"It's true, Miss. True as you stand there. Pale gray it is this time,

and so tall, and the face as white as ashes." And a shiver ran through

Tilly, at her own description--"You know, Miss, it's the time of year,

and she always walks three nights together, from the big east window to

this end and back again. So please to lock your door, Miss, and bolt it

too inside."

"Well done, Tilly! Does any one intend to wait up for the ghost? What

time does it come?"

"One o'clock, Miss, as punctual as a time-piece. But could you suppose,

Miss, any one would dare to wait up and see it?"

"Then how have they seen it, in the name of folly?"

"Why, Miss, I'll tell you. One of the carriage-horses got an

inflammation in his eyes, and the farrier give orders to have it sponged

never more than three hours between, and so William Edwards, the

head-groom if you please, Miss"--Tilly curtseyed here, because this was

her legitimate sweetheart--"he stops up till one o'clock to see to it,

and then Job Leyson goes instead. So William come in, Miss, on Monday

night, to go to bed, please, Miss, and he took the short cut, not that

he were allowed, Miss, or would think of taking a liberty on no account

whatever, but he were that sleepy he didn't know the way to bed, so he

went across the corridor for the short cut from the kitchen gallery to

the servants' passage; and there he saw--he hadn't any light, Miss, and

the lamps all out--Goodness me! Whatever was that? Did you hear it,

Miss?"

"Yes, and see it, Tilly; it's a daddy in your candle. Go on, Tilly, will

you. Am I to stop here all night and get as bad as you are?"

"There William Edwards, a man who never swears or drinks, there he saw

all in the dark, coming so stately down the corridor, as if it hadn't

room enough, with one arm up like this, a tall pale melancholy ghost,

and he knew it was the lady who was wronged and killed, when the great

wars was, Miss, two hundred year agone."

"Well, Tilly, and did he speak to it?"

"He was that frightened, Miss, he could not move or speak; but he fell

again the wall in the side-passage, with his eyes coming out of his

head, and his hair up like my wicker-broom. And then she vanished away,

and he got to bed, and did perspire so, they was forced to wring the

blankets."

"Capital, Tilly! And who saw her the next night?"

"Why that nincompoop Job Leyson, Miss. Our William was a deal too wise

to go that way any more, but he tell Job Leyson, and he a foolish empty

fellow, perhaps you know, Miss. 'Ho,' says Job, 'I often hear tell of

her, to-night I'll have a peep.' So last night when William went to bed

on the servants' side, down comes Job and takes the front way, pretty

impudent of him I think. And, Miss, I don't know what he see, I never

says much to him; but there they found him in the saddle-room, at five

o'clock this morning, with his heels up on a rack, and his head down in

the bucket, and never a bit of sponge had come near the poor mare's

eye."

"Oh, thank you, Tilly. Perhaps you had better snuff your candle. No

ghost will have much chance that comes near my Judy." And with that I

went to bed, tired of such nonsense.

An hour of deep sleep from pure weariness both of mind and body, and I

awoke with every fibre full of nervous life. The moon was high in the

south-east, and three narrow stripes of lozenged light fell upon the old

oak floor. Although my uncle had left the gable where the windows faced

the setting sun, he still kept to the western wing. The house, which

was built in the reign of Henry the Eighth, covered the site and in some

parts embodied the relics of a much more ancient structure. The plan

was very simple, at least as regarded the upstair rooms. From east to

west ran one long corridor, crossed at right angles, in the centre and

near the ends, by three gable passages. Although there were so many

servants, not half the rooms were occupied: all the best bedrooms had

been empty many a year. No festivities had filled them since my

father's days. Gloom and terror still hung over the eastern part, where

he had been so foully murdered. In most of the downstair windows along

the front of the house, the rickety lattice of diamond panes had been

replaced by clear plate-glass, but the old hall, and the corridor, and

some of the gable windows still retained their gorgeous tints and

heraldry.

As the shadows of the mullions stole upon my counterpane, there began to

creep across my mind uneasy inklings of the ghost. A less imaginative

man than William Edwards, I who had often enjoyed his escort, knew well

there could not be. As for Job Leyson I could not tell with what

creative powers his mind might be endowed; but--to judge from

physiognomy--a light ring snaffle would hold them.

Thinking, with less and less complacence, of this apparition story, and

the red legend which lay beneath it, for the spectral lady was believed

to be a certain Beatrice Vaughan, daughter of the Cavalier who perceived

the moss-light, and heiress of the house 200 years ago--thinking of

this, I say, with more and more of flutter, I sat up in the bed and

listened. My uncle's thick irregular breathing, the play of an ivy-leaf

on the mullion, the half-hour struck by the turret-clock, were all the

sounds I heard; except that my heart, so listless and desponding, was

re-asserting some right to throb for its own safety. With my hand upon

it, I listened for another minute, resolving if I heard nothing more to

make a great nest in the pillows--I always want three at least--and shut

both ears to destiny. But there came, before the minute passed, a low,

long, hollow sound, an echo of trembling expectation. In a moment I

leaped from the bed; though I had never heard it before, I knew it could

only be the bloodhound's cautious warning.

I flung a long cloak round me, gathered close my hair, hurried velvet

slippers on, locked my uncle in, and quietly opened the outer door.

There stood Giudice in the moonlight, with his head towards the far east

window, his ears laid back, his crest erect, and in his throat a

gurgling sound, a growl suppressed by wonder. He never turned to look at

me, nor even wagged his tail, but watched and waited grimly. I laid my

hand upon him, and then glided down the corridor, avoiding the moonlight

patches. Giudice followed, like my shadow, never a foot behind me, his

tread as stealthy as a cat's. Before I reached the oriel window where

the broad light fell, something told me to draw aside and watch. I

withdrew, and Giudice with me, into the dark entrance to my father's

room. Here we would see what came. Scarcely had I been there ten

throbs of the heart, when between me and the central light, where the

moonbeams fell askance, rose a tall gray figure. I am not quite a

coward, for a woman at least, but every drop of blood within me at that

sight stood still. Even Giudice trembled, and his growl was hushed, and

every hair upon him bristled as he crouched into my cloak. Slowly the

form was rising, like a corpse raised from a coffin by the loose end of

the winding-sheet. I could not speak, I could not move, much less could

I think. With a silent stately walk, or glide--for no feet could I

see--the figure came towards the embrasure where we lurked. Ashy white

the face was, large the eyes and hollow, all the hair fell down the

back, the form was tall and graceful, one arm was lifted as in appeal,

to heaven, and the shroud drooped from it, the other lay across the

breast. The colour of the shroud was gray, pale, unearthly gray. For

one moment as it passed, I kept my teeth from chattering. Giudice

crawled one step before me, with his mind made up for death. Back the

blood leaped to my heart, as the apparition glided slowly down the

corridor without sigh or footfall.

What to do I knew not; my feet were now unrooted from the ground.

Should I fly into my father's death-room? No; I was afraid. To stay

where I was seemed best, but how could I see it come back, as I knew it

would? Another such suspension of my life, and all, I felt, would be

over.

Suddenly, while still the figure was receding in the distance, I saw a

great change in the bloodhound. He strode into the corridor, and began

to follow. At the same time, the deep gurgle in his throat revived. In

a moment, it flashed through me that he had smelt the ghost to be a

thing of flesh and blood. It might be my father's murderer. At any

rate it had entered as he must have done. Close behind the dog I stole

after the spectral figure. The supernatural horror fled; all my life

was in my veins. What became of me I cared not, I who was so wretched.

Almost to the end, that gliding form preceded us, then turned down a

flight of steps leading to the basement. Triple resolution gushed

through me at this; this was the spot where the ghost was known to turn,

and glide back through the corridor. When it had descended about

half-way down the staircase, where the steps were on the turn and

narrow, standing at the head I distinctly heard a flop, as of a

slipper-heel dropping from the foot, and then caught up again. What

ghost was likely to want slippers? And what mortal presence need I

fear, with Judy at my side? Keeping him behind me by a gentle touch, I

hurried down the stairs. Luckily, I stopped before I turned the corner,

for a gleam came up the passage; the ghost had struck a lucifer.

It was a dark and narrow passage, proof to any moon-light, and the

spectre lost no time in lighting a small lamp, to find the study door; I

mean my uncle's private study, where he kept his papers. The lamp was

of peculiar shape, very small, and fitted with three reflectors, to

throw the light in converging planes.

Still remaining in deep shadow, I saw the person--ghost no

longer--produce a key, open the study door and enter. Then an attempt

was made to lock the door from the inside, but--as I knew by the

sound--the false key would not work that way, and the door was only

closed. Whispering into Judy's ear, that if he dared to move--for his

honest wrath at these burglarious doings could scarcely be controlled--I

would make a ghost of him next day, I left him in the passage, and

softly followed the intruder. First I looked through the key-hole; the

room was very dark and full of heavy furniture; I could see nothing; but

must risk the chance. So I slipped in noiselessly and closed the door

behind me. With the ghostly apparel thrown aside, and a mask laid on an

ebony desk, stood intently occupied at the large bureau, which I had

once so longed to search, my arch-enemy, Mrs. Daldy. I was not at all

surprised, having felt long since that it could be no other. Sitting

upon a stiff-backed velvet chair, in the shadow of an oaken

bookcase--crouch I would not for her--I waited to see what she would do.

Already the folding-doors of the large bureau were open; their creaking

had drowned the noise of my entry. Before her was exposed a multitude

of drawers. All the visible doors she had probably explored on the

previous nights, as well as the other repositories of various kinds

which the room contained. Her search was narrowed now to one particular

part of this bureau.

The folding-doors were very large, and richly inlaid with arabesques and

scroll-work of satin-wood and ebony: all the inside was fitted and

adorned with ivory pillars, small alcoves containing baby mirrors,

flights of chequered steps, and other quaint devices, besides the more

business-like and useful sliding trays. With the lamp-light flashing on

it, it looked like a palace for the Queen of Dolls--a place for puppet

ceremony and pleasure. Every drawer was faced with marquetrie, every

little door had panels of shagreen. In short, the whole thing would

have been the pride of any shop in Wardour Street, when that street was

itself. Having never seen it open till now, I was quite astonished,

though I don't know how often my father had promised to show it to me on

my very next birthday, if I were good. Probably I was never good

enough.

Without any hesitation, Mrs. Daldy pressed a fan, or slide, of

cedar-wood, in the right corner of the cabinet; the slide sunk into a

groove, and disclosed two deep, but narrow drawers; these she pulled out

from their boxes, and laid aside; they were full of papers, which she no

doubt had already examined. Then she placed the diminutive lamp on one

of the doll steps, and produced from her pocket three or four little

tools. Before commencing with these, she probed and pressed the

partition between the sockets of those two drawers, in every imaginable

way--a last attempt to find the countersign of some private nook, which

had defied her the night before.

At length, with a low cry of impatience, she seized a small, thin

chisel, and a bottle of clear liquid: with the one she softened the buhl

veneer upon the partition's face, and with the other she removed it.

Then, after a little unscrewing, she carefully prized away the stop of

cedar-wood, while I admired her workman-like proceedings (so far as they

were visible to me), and the graceful action of the arms she was so

proud of. Her shoulder came rather in my way, but I got a glimpse of the

narrow, vertical opening, where the cedar-stop had been. She drew a

long breath of delight and pride, then thrust a wire-crook into this

opening, and hooked forth two thin and closely-fastened packets. Eagerly

she looked at them; they were what she wanted. No doubt she knew their

contents; her object was to get hold of them. Having placed them

carefully in her bosom, she prepared for a little more joiner's work, to

restore what she had dismantled. Her dexterity was so pleasing, that I

let her proceed for a while. She soon refixed the cedar-stop, tapping it

in the most knowing way with the handle of the screw-driver, then she

screwed it tightly, and spread the wood with some liquid cement to carry

the veneer. She had mislaid the narrow strip of tortoise-shell and

brass, and was looking for it on the chequered steps, when I called

aloud:

"Shall I show you where you put it, Mrs. Daldy? But where on earth did

you learn your trade?"

Never was amazement written more strongly on any human face. If the

ghost had frightened me, I now had my full revenge. She dropped the

bottle of cement, and it rolled on the cabinet steps; she turned, with

her face as white as the mask, and glared round the room, for I was

still concealed in the recess. I thought she would have blown out the

lamp, but she had not presence of mind enough: otherwise among all that

furniture it would not have been easy to catch her; and she knew nothing

of my sentinel at the door.

After some quiet enjoyment of her terror, I came forth, and met her

fairly.

"What, Clara Vaughan! Is it possible? I thought you were in London."

"Is it possible that I have found a Christian, so truly earnest about

her soul, so yearning over the unregenerate, committing a black robbery

in the dead of night? Is this what you call a wholesome conviction of

sin?"

Low exultation I confess: but the highest blood in the land, if it were

blood, could scarcely have forborne it: for how I abhorred that

hypocrite!

For a time she knew not what to do or say, but glared at me without much

Christian feeling. Then she tried to carry it off in a grandly superior

style. She drew herself up, and looked as if I were not worth reasoning

with.

"Perhaps you are young enough to imagine, that because appearances are

at this moment peculiar--"

"Thank you: there is no need to inquire into the state of my mind. Be

kind enough to restore those packets which you have stolen."

"Indeed! I am perfectly amazed at your audacity. What I have belongs to

me righteously, and a stronger hand than yours is required to rob me."

She grasped her chisel, and stood in a menacing attitude. I answered

her very quietly, and without approaching nearer.

"If I wish to see you torn in pieces, I have only to raise my hand.

Giudice!" And I gave a peculiar whistle thoroughly known to my dog. He

leaped against the door, forced the worn catch from the guard, and stood

at my side, with his great eyes flashing and his fangs laid bare. Mrs.

Daldy jumped to the other side of the table, and seized a heavy chair.

"My dear child, my dear girl, I believe you are right after all. It is

so hard to judge--for God's sake keep him back--so hard to judge when

one's own rights are in question. The old unregenerate tendencies--"

"Will lodge you in Gloucester jail to-morrow. Once more those

papers--or--" and I looked at Giudice and began to raise my hand. His

eyes were on it, and he gathered himself for the spring like a cannon

recoiling. In the height of her terror, she tore her dress open and

flung me the packets across the end of the table. I examined and fixed

them to Judy's collar. Then we both advanced, and penned her up in a

corner. It was so delightful to see her for once in her native

meanness, despoiled of her cant and phylactery, like a Pharisee under an

oil-press. She fell on her knees and implored me, in plain earnest

English for once, to let her go. She appealed to my self-interest, and

offered me partnership in her schemes; whereby alone I could regain the

birthright of which I had been so heinously robbed. I only asked if she

could reveal the mystery of my father's death. She could not tell me

anything, or she would have jumped at the chance. At last I promised to

let her go, if she would show me the secret entrance under the oriel

window. It was not for her own sake I released her, but to avoid the

scandal and painful excitement which her trial must have created. When

she departed, now thoroughly crestfallen, I followed her out of the

house by the secret passage, wherein she had stored a few of her

stage-properties. Giudice, whom, for fear of treachery, I kept at my

side all the time, showed his great teeth in the moonlight, and almost

challenged my right to let her go. After taking the packets from him, I

gave him a sheepskin mat under the window there, and left him on guard;

although there was little chance of another attempt being made, while

the papers were in my keeping. Her mask and spectral drapery remained

with me, as trophies of this my ghostly adventure.

CHAPTER VII.

Next day when I showed my uncle the two sealed packets which I had

rescued, and told him all that had happened, at first he was overcome

with terror and amazement. His illness seemed to have banished all his

satirical humour, and that disdainful apathy which is the negative form

of philosophy. He took the parcels with a trembling hand, and began to

examine the seals.

"All safe," he said at last, "all safe, to my surprise. Dear child, I

owe you more than life this time. You have defeated my worst enemy. To

your care only will I commit these papers, one of which, I hope will

soon be of little value. It is my will; and by it your father's estates

are restored to you, while the money which I have saved by my own care

and frugality is divided into two portions, one for you, and the other,

upon certain events, for that worthless Mrs. Daldy. This must be

altered at once. When you have heard my story, you may read the will,

if you like. Indeed I wish you to do so, because it will prove that in

spite of all our estrangement, I have meant all along to act justly

towards you. But that you may understand things properly, I will tell

you my strange history. Only one thing you must promise before I

begin."

"What is it, uncle dear?"

"That you will forgive me for my one great error. Although it was the

cause of your dear father's death."

I could not answer, for a minute. Then I took his hand and kissed it,

as he turned his face away.

"My darling, I am not quite strong enough now after all you have been

telling me. Although I had dark suspicions yesterday that some plot was

in action; for I had observed that things in the study were not as I had

left them; and I had other reasons too. But take me, my precious child,

to the sunny bank this afternoon, and please God, I will at least begin

my tale."

I begged him in vain to defer it: there was a weight upon his mind, he

said, which he must unload. So in the early afternoon, I wheeled him

gently to the sheltered nook. There, with the breezes way-lost among

new streets of verdure, tall laburnum dangling chains of gold around us,

and Giudice stretching out his paws in sunny yawns of glory, I listened

to my uncle's tale, and was too young to understand the sigh which

introduced it. How few may tell the story of their lives without

remembering how they played with life! Alas the die thrown once for

all, but left to roll unwatched, and lie uncounted!

Though I cannot tell the story in his impressive way, I will try to

repeat it, so far as my memory serves, in his words, and with his

feelings. Solemnly and sadly fell the history from his lips, for his

mind from first to last was burdened with the knowledge that the end was

nigh at hand, that nothing now remained, except to wait with resignation

the impending blow.

STORY OF EDGAR VAUGHAN.

"I have always been, as you know, of a roving unsocial nature. My

father being dead before I was born, and my mother having married again

before I could walk, there was little to counteract my centrifugal

tendencies. I seemed to belong to neither family; though I always clung

to the Vaughans, and disliked the Daldys. The trustees of my mother's

settlement were my virtual guardians; for all the Vaughan estates being

most strictly entailed, my father had nothing to dispose of, and

therefore had made no will. My mother's settlement comprised only

personal estate, for no power had been reserved under the entail to

create any charges upon the land. The mortgages, of which no doubt you

have heard, as paid off by your father, were encumbrances of long

standing.

"The estates, I need not tell you, were shamefully mismanaged, during

your father's long minority. An agent was appointed under the Court of

Chancery, and an indolent rogue he was. Meanwhile your father and

myself went through the usual course of education, no difference being

made in that respect between us. Although we were only half-brothers, we

were strongly attached to each other, especially after a thorough

drubbing which your good papa found it his duty to administer to me at

Eton. It did me a world of good; before that, I had rather despised him

for the gentleness of his nature. At Oxford, after your father had

left, I kept aloof both from the great convivial and from the thinly

peopled reading set, and lived very much by myself. Soon as the

humorous doings, whose humour culminates in the title 'lectures,' soon

as these were over, I was away from the freckled stones, punting lazily

on the Cherwell, with French and Italian novels; or lounging among the

gipseys on the steppes of Cowley. Hall I never frequented, but dined at

some distant tavern, and spent the evening, and often the night till

Tom-curfew, in riding through the lonely lanes towards Otmoor, Aston

Common, or Stanlake. It was strange that I never fell in love, for I

had plenty of small adventures, and fell in with several pretty girls,

but never one I cared for. Gazing on the wreck I am, it is no conceit

to say that in those times I was considered remarkably good-looking. Of

course I was not popular; that I never cared for; but nobody had reason

to dislike me. I affected no peculiarity, gave myself no airs, behaved

politely to all who took the trouble to address me; and the world, which

I neither defied nor courted, followed its custom in such cases, and let

me have my way.

"At Lincoln's Inn, my life was much the same, except that wherries

succeeded punts, and evening rides were exchanged for moonlight walks in

the park. It was reported at home, as it is of most men who are called

to the Bar, that I was likely to do great things. There never was a

chance of it. Setting aside the question of ability, I had no

application, no love of the law, no idea whatever of touting; and still

more fatal defect, my lonely habits were darkening into a shy dislike of

my species.

"You have heard that I was extravagant. As regards my early career, the

charge is quite untrue. Money, I confess, was never much in my

thoughts, nor did I ever attempt to buy things below their value; but my

wants were so few, and my mode of life so ungenial, that I never

exceeded the moderate sum allotted to me as a younger son. Afterwards

this was otherwise, and for excellent reasons.

"During the height of the London season I was always most restless and

misanthropic. Not that I looked with envy on the frivolous dust of

fashion, and clouds of sham around me; but that I felt myself lowered as

an Englishman by the cringing, the falsehood, the small babooneries,

which we call 'society.' I longed to be, if I could but afford it,

where men have more manly self-respect, and women more true womanhood.

"Your parents were married, my darling Clara, at the end of December,

1826, six years before your birth. Upon that occasion, your dear father,

the only man in the world for whom I cared a fig, made me a very

handsome present. In fact he gave me a thousand pounds. He would have

given me a much larger sum, for he was a most liberal man, but the

estates had suffered from long mismanagement, and were seriously

encumbered. I do not hesitate to say that the gross income of this

property is now double what it was when your father succeeded to it, and

the net income more than quadruple. During the four years which elapsed

between that event and his marriage, he had devoted all he could spare

to the clearance of encumbrances and therefore, as I said, the present

he made me was a most generous one. More than this, he invited and

pressed me to come and live on the estate, and offered to set me up in a

farm which I might hold from him on most advantageous terms. Upon my

refusal, he even begged me to accept, at a most liberal salary, the

stewardship of the property, and the superintendence of great

improvements, which he meant to effect. I remember, as if it were

yesterday, the very words he used. He took my hand in his, and with

that genial racy smile, which very few could resist,

"'Come, Ned,' he cried, 'there are but two of us; there's room for both

in the old nest; and you are big enough to thrash me now.'"

At the sweet recollection of his Eton drubbing, as he called it, my poor

uncle's eyes grew moist.

"So you see, my child, instead of grudging your father the property, I

had every reason to love and revere him. However, I refused this as

well as the other offer; but I accepted his present, and invested it

rather luckily. After spending a pleasant month at home--as I always

called it--I returned to London early in April, 1827. There are no two

minds alike, any more than there are two bodies; and yet how little

variety exists in polite society! Surely it were more reasonable to

wedge the infant face into a jelly-mould, to flute its ears and cheeks

like collared head, and grow the nose and lips and eyebrows into

rosettes and grapes and acorns, than to bow and cramp and squeeze a

million minds into one set model. Yet here I find men all alike, Dane

and Saxon, Celt and Norman, like those who walk where snow is deep, or

Alpine travellers lashed to a rope, trudging each in other's footprint,

swinging all their arms in time, looking neither right nor left, and so

on through life's pilgrimage, a file some million deep. Who went first

they do not know, why they follow they cannot tell, what it leads to

they never ask. I was marked and scorned at once, because I dared to

adopt a hat that did not scalp me in half-an hour, and a cravat that did

not throttle me; and even had the hardihood to dine when I felt hungry.

How often I longed for a land of freedom and common sense, where it is

no disgrace to carry a barrel of oysters, or shake hands with a

tradesman. I know what you are smiling at, Clara. You are thinking to

yourself, 'how different you are now, my good uncle; and wern't you a

little inconsistent in sanctioning all this livery humbug here?' Yes, I

am different now. I am older and wiser than to expect to wipe away with

my coat-sleeve the oxide of many centuries. As for the livery, it makes

them happy: it is an Englishman's uniform. And I have seen and suffered

so bitterly from the violence of an untamed race, that I admire less

what I used to call the unlassoed arch of the human neck. I have seen a

coarse line somewhere,

"'And freedom made a deal too free with me,'

which expresses briefly the moral of my life. However, at the time I

speak of, nursing perhaps a younger son's bias against the social laws,

and fresh from the true simplicity and unaffected warmth of your

father's character and the gentle sweetness of your mother's, I could

not sit on the spikes of fashion's hackney coach, as becomes a poor

Briton, till the driver whips behind. Finding of course that no one

cared whether I sat there or not, and that all I got at the side of the

road was pea-shots from cads in the dickey, I did what thousands have

done before me, and will probably do again, I voted my fellow-Britons a

parcel of drivelling slaves, and longed to be out of the gang. Perhaps

I should never have made my escape, for like most of my class, I spent

all my energy in small eccentricity, if it had not been for what we

idlers entitle the force of circumstances. At a time when my life was

flowing on calmly enough though babbling against its banks, it came

suddenly on an event which drove it into another and rougher channel.

"Early one afternoon in the month of April, 1829, I launched my little

boat from the Temple-stairs, where I kept it, and feeling more than

usually saturnine and moody, resolved on a long expedition. So I

victualled my ship like Robinson Crusoe, and took some wraps and

coverings. It was then slack water, just at the height of the flood. I

meant to have gone to Richmond, but being far too indolent to struggle

against the tide, I yielded to nature's good pleasure, and pulled away

down stream. In a few minutes a rapid ebb tide was running, and I made

up my mind to go with it as far as ever it chose, and to return with the

flood whenever that pleased to meet me.

"After rowing steadily for several hours, I found myself a long way past

my customary Cape Turn-again. With a strong ebb tide as well as a

land-fresh in the river, I had got beyond Barking Reach, and as far as

the Dagenham marshes. Here some muddy creeks, pills, and sluggish

channels wind and welter among the ooze-lands on the north side of the

Thames. All around them stretches and fades away a dreary flat

monotonous waste; no dot of a house, no jot of a tree, to vary the dead

expanse; except that by the river-side one or two low cabooses, more

like hoys than houses, are grounded among the slime. This, so far as my

memory serves, was the state of these Essex marshes in the year 1829:

how it is now I cannot say.

"It was high time for me to turn: row as I would, I could hardly get

back to my haven by midnight. Outrigger skiffs were not yet known; and

an oarsman could not glide along at the rate of ten miles an hour. Just

as I was working round, a steam packet, which had been moored a short

way below, crippled perhaps in her engines, now at the turn of the tide

passed up, and was quickly out of sight. As she passed me I hailed for

a tow-rope; but either they could not hear, or they did not choose to

notice me. There was nothing for it but to bend my back to the oars,

and keep a sharp look out. Presently the flood began to make strongly up

the river, and I gave way with a will, my paddles bending and the water

gleaming in the early starlight. It was a lonely and melancholy scene.

The gray mist returning from some marshy excursion, and hugging the warm

sea-water, floated along in dull folds, with a white flaw of steam here

and there curdling over the current. Not a ship, not a barge was in

sight; no voice of men or low of cattle broke the foggy silence: but the

wash of the stream on its sludgy marge, or on some honey-combed

mooring-post, surged every now and then betwixt the jerks of my

rowlocks. The loneliness and the sadness harmonised with my sombre

mind. All is transient, all is selfish, all is a flux of melancholy.

If we toss and dance we are only boats adrift; we are nothing more than

crazy tide-posts, if we be philosophers.

"Suddenly a clear loud cry broke my vacant musings. It startled me so

that I caught a crab, ceased rowing, and gazed around. At first I could

not tell whence it came, till my boat, with the way she had on her, shot

round a low spit of the Essex shore, which from the curve of the river I

was nearing rapidly. Louder and louder the cry was twice repeated, and

I heard in the still spring evening the oaths of men and the scuffling

of feet. Within fifty yards of me was an ill-looking house, made of

battens, and raised on piles above high water mark. A tattered sign

hung on a pole, and a causeway led to the steps. While I was

hesitating, two figures crossed a lattice window, as if in violent

struggle, and a heavy crash resounded. Three strong strokes of my oars,

and the keel grated on the causeway. Out I leaped with the boat-hook,

threw the painter over a post, and rushed up the slimy jetty, and the

narrow wooden steps. The door was fastened, I pushed it with all my

force, but in vain. One faint scream reached my ears, as of some one at

length overpowered. Swinging the boat-hook with both hands, I struck

the old door with the butt, and broke it open. In the lower room there

was no one, but a moaning and trampling sounded over head. Upstairs I

ran, and into the room where the villany was doing. A poor girl lay on

the floor at the last gasp of exhaustion. Two ruffians with a rope were

bending over her. Down went one, at a blow of my boat-hook, flat beside

his victim: the other leaped at my throat. I saw and soon felt that he

was a powerful man, but in those days I was no cripple. We were most

evenly matched. I wrenched his hand from my throat, but twice he got me

under him, twice I writhed from his grasp like a python from a tiger's

jaw. Clutched and locked in each other's arms, in vain we tugged to get

room for a blow. Throttle, and gripe, and roll--which should be first

insensible? An accident gave me the mastery. For a moment we lay face

to face, glaring at each other, drawing the strangled breath, loosing

the deadly grip, panting, throbbing, and watching. My boat-hook lay on

the floor, my enemy spied and made a sudden dash at it. Instead of

withholding, I jobbed him towards it with all my might, and as he raised

it, the point entered one of his eyes. With a yell of pain and fury, he

sank beneath me insensible. Shaking and quaking all over after the

desperate struggle, I bound him and his mate, hand and foot, with the

twisted tarry junk, which they had meant for the maiden.

"At length I had time to look round. On a low truckle bed at the end of

the long dark room, in which a ship-lamp was burning, there lay an

elderly lady in a perfect stupor of fright and illness. Upon the floor

with her head thrown back against the timbers, and her black eyes wide

open and fixed on me, sat a girl of remarkable beauty, though her cheeks

were as white as death. A magnificent ring, for which she had fought

most desperately, was wrenched from its place on her finger and hung

over the opal nail, for her hands were clenched, and her arms quite

stiff, in the swoon of utter exhaustion. Both ladies were in deep

mourning.

"For the rest a few words will suffice. The poor ladies revived at

last, after chafing of hands and sprinkling, and told me where to find

the woman of the house, who had been locked up in another room by her

husband and brother. There was no one else on the premises. How came

the ladies there, what was their destination, and why were they so

outraged? They were on their return to London from the Continent, being

called home by tidings of death, and had sailed from Antwerp two days

and a-half before, in the steamer which I had seen lying to. Steamers

were then heavy lumbering things, and all that time Mrs. Green and her

daughter had been knocking about on a pecky sea. No wonder that the

poor mother had cried out feebly, to be landed anywhere, anywhere in the

world, where things would leave off going round. And before they came

to that tedious halt in the river, fair Adelaide, who had enjoyed her

meals throughout, renewed and completed her poor mamma's excavation, by

inquiring calmly with her mouth full of pickled pork, where the

peas-pudding was. Now too Miss Adelaide soon recovered from her fearful

battle for honour and life. She was what is called now-a-days a girl of

"splendid organisation." If she had not been so, she would have lain

ere now with her mother at the bottom of Barking Reach. The two

scoundrels of that lonesome hostelry had been ordered to send to Barking

for a conveyance. But they only pretended to do so; for they had cast

foul covetous eyes on the wealth of their unknown guests and on brave

Adelaide's beauty. Beyond a doubt both ladies would have been murdered,

but for the gallant resistance, the vigour, and presence of mind of

Adelaide.

"Having restored their watches, and scattered trinkets, and led the poor

things from the scene of the combat, I was quite at a loss for means to

convey them home. Barking was a long way off, and the marshy track

unknown to me, and not likely to be found in the dark. Moreover, there

must be some hazard in leaving them still in that villanous den, no

matter how their cowardly foes might be bound. At last, and with great

difficulty, I embarked the two ladies in my shallop, and wrapped them

warmly from the night air; then after relashing my prisoners, and

locking them up in separate rooms, and the woman downstairs, I pulled

away stoutly for Woolwich. Here I obtained a carriage, and started my

convoy for London, and then returned with two policemen to the "Old Row

Barge," as the low caboose was called. But both our birds were flown,

as I was inclined to expect. Most likely the woman had contrived to get

out, and release them. At any rate the "Old Row Barge" had no crew, and

the deserters had set it on fire. The flames, as we rowed away, after

vainly searching the marshes, cast a lurid glow on the mud-banks, and on

the slackening tide; a true type it was of what soon befell me--the

burning of my caboose. The two men were caught long afterwards by the

Thames Police, and transported for life on a conviction for river

piracy. At least, I was told that they were the men."

"And of course, dear uncle, you fell deeply in love with the beautiful

Adelaide Green."

"Of course, my dear, a young lady would conclude so. But at present I

must not talk any more." I had several times tried to stop him. "And

what I have next to relate is matter of deeper feeling. By Jove, to

think how I battled with that strong man! And now your little fist,

Clara, would floor me altogether."

He sighed, and I sighed for him. Then I thought of Mr. Shelfer, and

gloried in my prowess, as I wheeled my uncle home.

CHAPTER VIII.

My uncle's tale, as repeated here, will no more be broken either by my

interruptions, which were frequent enough, or by his own pauses, but

will be presented in a continuous form.

STORY OF EDGAR VAUGHAN.

"On the following day, when I called at the house in Bloomsbury--then a

fashionable neighbourhood--to which I had been directed, I was met at

the threshold, with power and warmth, by Peter Green himself, an old

acquaintance of mine, who proved to be Adelaide's brother. My nature

had been too reserved for me to be friendly with him at College, but I

had liked him much better than any one else, because he was so decided

and straight-forward. The meeting rather surprised me, for Green is not

a rare name, and so it had never occurred to me to ask the weary

Adelaide whether she knew one Peter Green, a first-class man of

Christchurch. Peter, who was a most hearty fellow, and full, like his

sister, of animal life, overpowered me with the weight of his gratitude,

which I did not at all desire or deserve. As, in spite of your rash

conclusion, my romantic Clara, I did not fall in love with Adelaide, who

besides her pithsome health and vigour was in many respects astray from

my fair ideal, and more than all, was engaged long ago to the giver of

the sapphire ring, I need not enlarge upon my friendship with Peter

Green, whom I now began to like in real earnest.

Young as he was, his father's recent death had placed him at the head of

a leading mercantile house, Green, Vowler, and Green, of Little Distaff

Lane. And young as he was--not more than seven-and-twenty--his manners

were formed, and his character and opinions fixed, as if he had seen all

the ways, and taken stock of the sentiments of all the civilised world.

Present to him any complexity, any conflict of probabilities, any maze

whose ins and outs were abroad half over the universe, and if the

question were practical, he would see what to do in a moment; if it were

theoretical, he would quietly move it aside. I have known many learned

judges sum up a case most lucidly, blow away all the verbiage, sweep

aside all the false issues, balance the contradictions, illuminate all

the obscurities, and finally lift from its matrix, and lay in the

colourless sunlight the virgin truth, without either dross or polish.

All this Peter Green seemed to have done in a moment, without any

effort, without any reasoning process; not jumping at his conclusion,

but making it fly to him. He possessed what an ancient writer, once

highly esteemed at Oxford, entitles the "wit universal," which confers

and comprises the "wit of details." For this power when applied to a

practical purpose, a great historian employs a happy expression not

welcomed by our language; he calls it the power to "pontoon the

emergency." Excuse my harsh translation, perhaps it is better than

paraphrase.

With all these business qualities, my friend was as merry and

unpretentious a man as ever made a bad joke, or laughed at another

fellow's; liberal also, warm-hearted, and not sarcastic. In a word, he

was a genuine specimen of the noble English merchant, who has done more

to raise this country in the esteem of the world than would a thousand

Nelsons or Wellingtons.

Now this man discerned at a glance the wretched defects of my nature and

position. An active mind like his could never believe in the

possibility of being happy without occupation. And by occupation he

meant, not the chasing of butterflies, or maundering after foxes, but

real honest Anglo-Saxon work; work that strings the muscles, or knits

the hemispheres of the brain. And work he would himself, ay, and with

all his energies. Not the man was he to tap the table with his pipe,

and cry out, "Bravo, Altiora! A little more gin if you please, and

chalk it down to the Strike;" but he was the man to throw off his coat,

and pitch into the matter before him without many words, though with

plenty of thought. Now, this man, feeling deeply indebted to me, and

beginning to like me as my apathy and reserve went to pieces before his

energy, this man, I say, cast about for some method of making me useful

and happy. Wonderfully swift as he was in pouncing upon the right

thing, I believe it took him at least five minutes to find out the

proper course for an impracticable fellow like me. And when he had

found this out, it took even him a week to draw the snail out of his

hole. Years of agreeable indolence, and calm objective indifference,

seldom ruffled except at fashionable snobbery, had made of me not a

Sybarite, or a supercilious censor, much less a waiter on fortune, but a

contemplative islander, a Haytian who had been once to Spain, and would

henceforth be satisfied with the view of her caravels. But my

Adelantado was a man of gold and iron. Green, Vowler, and Green were

largely concerned in the oil and dried fruit business. They had

ransacked the olive districts of continental Europe, and found the price

going up and the quality going down, so they wanted now to open another

oil vein.

Peter Green observing my love of uncultured freedom, the only subject on

which I ever grew warm and rapturous, espied the way to relieve me of

some nonsense, give my slow life a fillip, and perhaps--oh climax--open

a lucrative connexion. He knew, for he seemed to know everything done

or undone by commerce, that there was a glorious island rich in jewels

and marble and every dower of nature, and above all teeming with olives,

lemons, and grapes, and citrons; and that this gifted island still

remained a stranger, through French and Genoese ignorance, to our London

trade. This was the island libelled by Seneca, idolised by its natives,

drenched with more blood than all the plains of Emathia, yet mother of

heroes and conquerors of the world--if that be any credit--in a single

word, Corsica. Once or twice indeed our countrymen have attempted to

shake hands with this noble race, so ruined by narrow tradition; and in

the end we shall doubtless succeed, as we always do; but the grain of

the Corsican is almost as stubborn as our own. In fact the staple is

much the same, the fabric is very different. Bold they are, and manly,

simple, generous, and most hospitable, lovers too of their country

beyond all other nations; but--oh fatal ignorance--industry to them is

drudgery; and labour is an outrage. Worse than all is the fiend of the

island, the cursed Blood-revenge.

"Just the place for you, Vaughan," said the indomitable Peter, "every

one there as dignified as an eagle after stealing a lamb. No

institutions to speak of, but the natural one of Vendetta, splendid

equality, majestic manhood, lots of true womanhood, and it does all the

work that is done, which isn't saying much. Why, my dear Quixotic, the

land of Sampiero and Paoli, and where Rousseau was to legislate, only he

proved too lazy,--is not that the jockey for you? After all these

levees and masquerades that you so much delight in--you need not scowl

like a bandit; it is only because they don't want you, you are just the

same as the rest, or why do you notice the nonsense?--after all this

London frippery, Monte Kotondo will be a fresh oyster after devil'd

biscuits."

"True enough, my friend: but an oyster to be swallowed shell and all."

"Well, is not that just what you want? Lime is good for squeamishness.

And more than that, you are just the man we want. You can talk Italian

with excellent opera style and sentiment; and you won't be long till you

fraternise with the Corsicans. Perhaps they will drive out the French,

who don't know what to do with it, and make you their king like Theodore

of Neuhoff; and then you proclaim free trade restricted to the navy of

Green, Vowler, and Green. But in sober earnest, think of it, my dear

Vaughan. Anything is better than this cynic indolence. Some of your

views will be corrected, and all enlarged by travel. A common

sentiment. Yes, the very thing you are short of. All your expenses we

pay of course, and give you an honest salary; and all we ask of you is

to explore more than a tourist would; and to send us a plain description

of everything. You have plenty of observation; make it useful instead

of a torment to you. We know well enough the great gifts of that

island, but we want to know how they lie, and how we may best get at

them."

"Then you would expect me to make commercial arrangements?"

Peter laughed outright. "I should rather fancy not. Somewhat queer ones

they would be. Platonic no doubt, and panisic, but not altogether

adapted to double entry."

"Then in fact I am to go as a committee of inquiry."

"I have told you all we want. If you make any friends all the better;

but that we leave to yourself. Perhaps you'll grow sociable there.

Though the Corsican does not sing, 'We won't go home till morning,' and

be going home all the time."

"And how long would my engagement last?"

"Till you have thoroughly traversed the country, if you stick to it so

long; and then if you quit yourself well, we should commission you for

Sardinia. What an opening for an idle man, though it would soon kill

me--so little to do. But you may cut it short when you like. Plenty of

our people would jump at such an offer; but for a country like that we

must have a thorough gentleman. A coarse-mannered bagman would very

soon secure the contents of a fusil. He would be kissing the Corsican

girls, who are wonderfully lovely they say, and their lovers amazingly

jealous; and every man carries a gun. A timid man they despise, an

insolent man they shoot; and most of our fellows are one or the other,

or both. But will you undertake it? Yes, or no, on the spot. And I

ask you to say 'yes' as a special favour to me."

"Then of course I say yes. When shall I go?"

"To-morrow, if you like. Next month if you prefer it. We can give you

introductions. There is no real danger for a thorough gentleman, or you

should not go for all the olives in Europe. Mind we want a particular

sort, very long and taper--Virgil's 'Ray,' in fact. You shall have a

sample of it. As yet we know but one district of Italy where it grows,

but have got scent of it in Corsica. Glorious fellows they are, if half

that I hear is true, glorious fellows but for their laziness, and that

---- Vendetta."

To be brief, I received very clear instructions in writing, and was off

for Bonifazio the following week, in a small swift yacht of my own, a

luxury to which I had always aspired, and which I could now for a time

afford. But before I went, your poor father, Clara, protested most

strongly against the scheme, and even came to London in the vain hope of

dissuading me. He had some deep presentiment that it would end darkly,

and so indeed it did.

"Ned," said he once more, "there are only two of us, and my dear wife is

very delicate. I have been at Genoa, where those islanders are well

known, and even there they are rarely spoken of but with a cold shudder.

They are a splendid race, I believe, great heroes and all that, but they

shoot a man with no more compunction than they shoot a muffro. I

implore you, my dear brother, not to risk the last of our family, where

blood flows as freely as water. And your temper, you know, is not the

best in the world. Don't go, my dear fellow, don't go. I shall have to

come and avenge you, and I don't understand Vendetta."

Ah, me! If I had only listened to him. And yet, I don't know. After a

pleasant voyage we reached the magnificent island, about the middle of

May. My intention was to skirt round it from the southern extremity,

taking the western side first, and touching at every anchorage, whence I

would make incursions, and return to my little cutter, as the most

convenient head-quarters. Of course I should have to rough it; but what

young man would think twice of that, with an adventurous life before

him?

I will not weary you, my dear child, with a long description of Corsica.

It is a land which combines all the softness and the majesty, all the

wealth and barrenness, all the smile and menace of all the world beside.

I could talk of it by the hour; but you want to know what I did, and was

done to, more than what I saw. From the awful rock of Bonifazio, the

streets where men should have no elbows, and the tower of Torrione,

along the fantastic coast which looks as if time were a giant rabbit, we

traced the blue and spur-vexed sea, now edged with white, and now with

gray, and now with glowing red, until we reached that paradise of

heaven, the garden of Balagna.

CHAPTER IX.

STORY OF EDGAR VAUGHAN.

Let me hold myself. Weak as I am and crippled by premature old age, not

the shortness of my breath, not the numbness of my heart, not even the

palsy of my frame, can quench or check the fire rekindled by the mere

name of that heavenly valley. To live there only half a minute is worth

a day of English life. Life--it is a space to measure, not by pendulum

or clock-hand, not by our own strides to and fro (the ordnance scale of

the million), not even by the rolling sun, and nature's hail and

farewell; but by the well-spring of ourselves, the fount of thought and

feeling. Every single breath I draw of this living air--air the bride of

earth our sire, wedded to him by God Creator, air whose mother-milk we

fight for in clusters baulking one another--every breath I draw dances

with a buoyant virtue, sucked, in any other land, but from mountain

nipples. Bright air of a rosy blue, where northern eyes are dazed with

beauty, where every flower cuts stars of light, and every cloud is

sunshine's step; can even lovers parted thus believe themselves divided?

Every rock has its myrtle favour, every tree its clematis wreath; under

the cistus and oleander hides the pink to lace its bodice, watched by

the pansy's sprightly eye. Lavishly, as children's bubbles, hover

overhead oranges, and citrons, lemons, almonds, figs, varied by the

blushing peach and the purpling grape. Far behind, and leaning forth

the swarthy bosom of the mountain, whose white head leans on the heaven,

are ranks on ranks of glaucous olive, giants of a green old age dashed

with silver gray. And oh, the fragrance under foot, the tribute of the

ground, which Corsica's great son--as we men measure greatness--pined

for in the barren isle, where the iron of his selfishness entered his

own soul.

These are said to be the largest olive-trees in the world, and of the

very best varieties. Heaps upon heaps the rich fruit lies at the foot

of the glorious tree; nature is too bountiful for man to heed her gifts.

For this district of Balagna, and that of Nebbio further north, my

attention had been especially bespoken by my shrewd and sagacious

friend. Therefore and by reason of the charms around me, here I

resolved to pass the summer; so my vessel was laid up at Calvi, and

being quartered in Belgodere at a little Inn--"locanda" it should be

called, but I hate interlarding--I addressed myself right heartily to

business and to pleasure.

First I had to study the grand Palladian gift. Unless old Seneca was,

as the Corsicans say, a great liar, he cannot have been the author of

that epigram which declares this land a stranger to the peaceful boon.

It is impossible to believe that a country so adapted to that tree, so

often colonized by cultured races, can have been so long ungifted with

its staff of life. The island itself in that same epigram is utterly

mis-described.

As regards the inhabitants, the first line of the well-known couplet is

verified by ages; to the second it does not plead guilty now, and

probably never did.

"Law the first revenge. Law the second to live by robbery.

Law the third to lie. The fourth to deny any Gods."

The Corsicans, on the contrary, have always been famous for candour,

whose very soul is truth, and for superstition, the wen or hump of

religion. For my own part, loving not that unprincipled[#] fellow hard

labour, towards whom these noble islanders entertain a like antipathy,

and loving much any freedom not hostile to my own, I got on with the

natives admirably, for a certain time. Time had reconciled me to their

custom of carrying, instead of cane or umbrella, long double-barrelled

guns, whose muzzle they afford the stranger full opportunity of

inspecting. First-rate marksmen are they, but they sling their guns at

hap-hazard on their backs, and cheek to jowl we come upon the cold metal

at the corner of the narrow streets. Tall and powerful men they are,

especially the mountaineers; with all the Spaniard's dignity and the

Italian's native grace. The women are lithe, erect, and beautifully

formed, with a swan-like carriage, and a free and courteous bearing,

such as very few of our high-born damsels own.

[#] "Labor improbus" of Virgil.

The olive-growers frankly gave me all their little information about

that tree whose typical virtues they have never cared to learn. The

variety chiefly grown, or rather which chiefly grows itself, is one they

call the Genoese. The owners afford them very little culture, and many

are too idle even to collect the fruit. There are said to be ten

million olive-trees in the island; at least they were reckoned up to

that number by order of the Government; then the enumerators grew tired,

and left off counting. Whatever number there is might easily be

tripled, if any one had the energy to graft the oleasters, with which

the hills are covered. There is also the Saracen olive, and the Sabine,

the latter perhaps the Regia of Columella, Raggiaria of Caesalpinus, and

Radius of Virgil. However, though not unlike my sample fruit, it was

not quite identical, and as my employers wanted a very special sort for

very special qualities, I was as far from my object as ever.

One magnificent summer evening, as I rode along the mountain side near

the village of Speloncato, suddenly the track turned sharply into a

wooded dingle. Steeped in the dream of nature's beauty, I was thinking

of nothing at all, as becomes a true Corsican, when I received a

sharpish knock in the eye. Something fell and lodged in my capacious

beard. Smarting from the pain. I caught it, and not being able to see

clearly, took it at first for a spent and dropping bullet. But when my

eyes had ceased to water, I found in my hand a half-grown olive of the

very kind I had so long been seeking. I drew forth some of my London

specimens which had been chemically treated to prevent their

shrivelling, and compared it narrowly. Yes, there could be no doubt;

the same pyriform curve, the same bulge near the peduncle, the same

violet lines in the skin, and when cut open, the same granulation and

nucleus. I was truly delighted, at length I should be of some real

service; at least if there were many trees here of this most rare

variety. By riding up the dingle, I soon ascertained that it was

planted with trees of this sort only, gray old trees of a different

habit from any other olive. Afterwards I found that it requires a

different soil, and a different aspect. Full speed I galloped back to

the hamlet of Speloncato, and inquired for the owner of this olive

Eldorado. Signor Dezio Della Croce, owner of all this lovely slope, and

of large estates extending as far as the road to Corte; in fact the

chief proprietor of the neighbourhood. He was, said the peasant with

some pride, a true descendant of the great race of Cinarca, foremost in

the island annals for a thousand years, and of whom was the famous

Giudice Della Rocca, Count and Judge of Corsica, six hundred years ago."

At the sound of his name, Giudice opened his great sleepy eyes, and

pricked his ears: I promised not to interrupt, but he gave no such

pledge.

"Let the Cinarchesi blood go for its full value; but it was worth

something to the Della Croce to be descended also from the Tuscan

Malaspina; for the lands of those great Marquises were now in the

possession of the Signor Dezio. And the Signor had such a daughter, a

young maiden. Ah, Madonna! The loveliest girl in Corsica. And the

vine-dresser crossed himself. As I listened to all this information, I

began to look through my unused credentials, which I always carried. It

struck me that this name of Della Croce was quite familiar to me, though

I knew not how, until a letter in the sprawling hand of young Laurence

Daldy fell out from among Peter's crabbed characters. Laurence Daldy,

my mother's younger son, was now in full career, as a pigeon and a

Guardsman, spending at full gallop his dead father's money. These

Daldys were of Italian origin, the true name being D'Aldis, which after

some years of English life they had naturalised into Daldy. And now I

recollected that when we Vaughan boys scorned them as ignoble sons of

commerce, they used to brag about their kinship to the ancient Della

Croce.

Riding up the forest hill, on whose western bluff stands boldly the gray

old tower of the Malaspinas, I began of course to make forecasts about

the character of my host. My host I knew he needs must be, for Corsica

is of all the world the most hospitable spot. Although by this time

well acquainted with the simple island habits, I could not but expect to

find a man of stateliness and surroundings, of stiffness and some

arrogance. Now the sun was setting, and the western fire from off the

sea glanced in spears of reddening gold into the solemn timeworn keep.

All things looked majestic, but a deal too lonely. Where was I to

apply, how was I to get in? The narrow doorway overhung with the wreck

of some portcullis, was blocked instead with a sort of mantlet like the

Roman Vinea; the loopholes on the ground-tier were boarded almost to the

top, the high windows, such as they were, had their rough shutters

closed. Everything betokened a state of siege and fear. Two or three

magnificent chesnuts, which must have commanded the front of the tower,

had been cut down and added to the defences of the approach. Over these

I managed at last to leap my horse, who was by no means a perfect

hunter; and there I halted at a loss how to proceed. I had been long

enough in Corsica to know, even without a certain ominous gleam from a

loophole, and the view in transverse section of a large double-barrelled

gun, that the owner of this old mansion was now in the pleasant state of

Vendetta.

Expecting every moment to be shot, and nothing said about it, I waved my

letter, as a white flag, furiously above my head. Presently that

frightful muzzle was withdrawn, and the slide pushed back, to

reconnoitre me at leisure. I tried, for the first time in my life, to

look like a real Briton; my Corsican ambition was already on the wane.

So I sat my horse, and waited; and what came was worth a thousand years

of waiting.

Round the bastion of the tower, under the rich magnolia bloom, towards

me glided through the rosy shadow the loveliest being that ever moved

outside the gates of heaven. She seemed not to walk but waft along,

like the pearly Nautilus. A pink mandile of lightest gauze lit the

sable of her clustering hair, and wreathing round her graceful head

deepened the tinge of the nestling cheeks. The lithe faldetta of white

cashmere, thrown hastily over the shoulders, half concealed the flowing

curves of the slender supple form, half betrayed them as it followed

every facile motion. But when she smiled--oh, Clara, I would have

leaped from her father's tower, or into the black caves of the

Restonica, for one smile of hers. The dark-fringed lustre of her eyes

seemed to dance with golden joy, trusting, hoping, loving all things,

pleasure pleased at pleasing. And the gleesome arch of her laughing

lips, that never shaped evil word! Oh, my Lily, my own Lily, I shall

see you soon again.

My dear Clara, I ought to know better. I am ashamed of myself. And

after so many years! But at the first glance of Fiordalisa, my fate was

fixed for this life and the other. I never had loved before. I never

had cared to look at a girl; in fact I despised them all. Now I paid

for that contemptuous folly. Loving at one glance, loving once, for

all, for ever, my heart stood still like the focus of a hurricane; my

speech and every power but that of vision failed me. I dared not try to

leave the saddle, such a trembling took me.

It was a visitation unknown in our foggy plains, scoffed at by our prosy

race, but known full well in Southern climes, as the sunstroke of love.

My own darling--I can call her nothing less--my own delicious darling

was quite startled at me. Whether she had a like visitation in a milder

form, is more than I can say; but I hope with all my heart she had; for

then, as the Southern tale recites, God placed her hand in mine.

How I got my horse tied up, how I followed her through the side

entrance, and returned her father's greeting, I have not the least idea;

all I know is that she smiled, and I wanted nothing more. But I could

not bear to see her in the true Homeric fashion still maintained in

Corsica, waiting on us like a common servant, with her beautiful arched

feet glancing under the brown pelone, and her tapering white arms laid

demurely on her bosom; then at her father's signal how she flew for the

purple grapes or the fragrant broccio! But do what she would, it seemed

to become her more than all she had done before. As that form of love

and elegance flitted through the simple room, and those lustrous

heavenly eyes beamed with hospitable warmth, Signor Dezio Della Croce,

careworn man with beard of snow, seemed at times no little proud of his

sweet and only child, but was too proud to show his pride. As for me,

he must have thought that I spoke very poor Italian.

END OF VOL. II.

LONDON

R. CLAY, SON AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS

BREAD STREET HILL