“But I will first assume that it was knowledge of your wife’s guilt

which prompted your attack on me. I am well aware that she has declared

herself innocent, and that her father supports her declaration. By the

time you receive this letter (my injuries oblige me to allow myself

a whole fortnight to write it in), I shall have taken measures which

render further concealment unnecessary. Therefore, if my confession

avail you aught, you have it here:--She is guilty: _willingly_ guilty,

remember, whatever she may say to the contrary. You may believe this,

and believe all I write hereafter. Deception between us two is at an

end.

“I have told you Margaret Sherwin is guilty. Why was she guilty? What

was the secret of my influence over her?

“To make you comprehend what I have now to communicate, it is necessary

for me to speak of myself; and of my early life. To-morrow, I will

undertake this disclosure--to-day, I can neither hold the pen, nor see

the paper any longer. If you could look at my face, where I am now laid,

you would know why!”

*****

“When we met for the first time at North Villa, I had not been five

minutes in your presence before I detected your curiosity to know

something about me, and perceived that you doubted, from the first,

whether I was born and bred for such a situation as I held under Mr.

Sherwin. Failing--as I knew you would fail--to gain any information

about me from my employer or his family, you tried, at various times,

to draw me into familiarity, to get me to talk unreservedly to you; and

only gave up the attempt to penetrate my secret, whatever it might

be, when we parted after our interview at my house on the night of the

storm. On that night, I determined to baulk your curiosity, and yet to

gain your confidence; and I succeeded. You little thought, when you

bade me farewell at my own door, that you had given your hand and your

friendship to a man, who--long before you met with Margaret Sherwin--had

inherited the right to be the enemy of your father, and of every

descendant of your father’s house.

“Does this declaration surprise you? Read on, and you will understand

it.

“I am the son of a gentleman. My father’s means were miserably limited,

and his family was not an old family, like yours. Nevertheless, he was a

gentleman in anybody’s sense of the word; he knew it, and that knowledge

was his ruin. He was a weak, kind, careless man; a worshipper of

conventionalities; and a great respecter of the wide gaps which lay

between social stations in his time. Thus, he determined to live like

a gentleman, by following a gentleman’s pursuit--a profession, as

distinguished from a trade. Failing in this, he failed to follow out his

principle, and starve like a gentleman. He died the death of a felon;

leaving me no inheritance but the name of a felon’s son.

“While still a young man, he contrived to be introduced to a gentleman

of great family, great position, and great wealth. He interested, or

fancied he interested, this gentleman; and always looked on him as the

patron who was to make his fortune, by getting him the first government

sinecure (they were plenty enough in those days!) which might fall

vacant. In firm and foolish expectation of this, he lived far beyond his

little professional income--lived among rich people without the courage

to make use of them as a poor man. It was the old story: debts and

liabilities of all kinds pressed heavy on him--creditors refused to

wait--exposure and utter ruin threatened him--and the prospect of the

sinecure was still as far off as ever.

“Nevertheless he believed in the advent of this office; and all the more

resolutely now, because he looked to it as his salvation. He was quite

confident of the interest of his patron, and of its speedy exertion

in his behalf. Perhaps, that gentleman had overrated his own

political influence; perhaps, my father had been too sanguine, and had

misinterpreted polite general promises into special engagements. However

it was, the bailiffs came into his house one morning, while help from

a government situation, or any situation, was as unattainable as

ever--came to take him to prison: to seize everything, in execution,

even to the very bed on which my mother (then seriously ill) was lying.

The whole fabric of false prosperity which he had been building up

to make the world respect him, was menaced with instant and shameful

overthrow. He had not the courage to let it go; so he took refuge from

misfortune in a crime.

“He forged a bond, to prop up his credit for a little time longer.

The name he made use of was the name of his patron. In doing this, he

believed--as all men who commit crime believe--that he had the best

possible chance of escaping consequences. In the first place, he might

get the long-expected situation in time to repay the amount of the bond

before detection. In the second place, he had almost the certainty of a

legacy from a rich relative, old and in ill-health, whose death might

be fairly expected from day to day. If both these prospects failed (and

they _did_ fail), there was still a third chance--the chance that his

rich patron would rather pay the money than appear against him. In those

days they hung for forgery. My father believed it to be impossible that

a man at whose table he had sat, whose relatives and friends he had

amused and instructed by his talents, would be the man to give evidence

which should condemn him to be hanged on the public scaffold.

“He was wrong. The wealthy patron held strict principles of honour

which made no allowance for temptations and weaknesses; and was moreover

influenced by high-flown notions of his responsibilities as a legislator

(he was a member of Parliament) to the laws of his country. He appeared

accordingly, and gave evidence against the prisoner; who was found

guilty, and left for execution.

“Then, when it was too late, this man of pitiless honour thought himself

at last justified in leaning to the side of mercy, and employed his

utmost interest, in every direction, to obtain a mitigation of the

sentence to transportation for life. The application failed; even a

reprieve of a few days was denied. At the appointed time, my father died

on the scaffold by the hangman’s hand.

“Have you suspected, while reading this part of my letter, who the

high-born gentleman was whose evidence hung him? If you have not, I

will tell you. That gentleman was _your father._ You will now wonder

no longer how I could have inherited the right to be his enemy, and the

enemy of all who are of his blood.

“The shock of her husband’s horrible death deprived my mother of reason.

She lived a few months after his execution; but never recovered her

faculties. I was their only child; and was left penniless to begin life

as the son of a father who had been hanged, and of a mother who had died

in a public madhouse.

“More of myself to-morrow--my letter will be a long one: I must pause

often over it, as I pause to-day.”

*****

“Well: I started in life with the hangman’s mark on me--with the

parent’s shame for the son’s reputation. Wherever I went, whatever

friends I kept, whatever acquaintances I made--people knew how my father

had died: and showed that they knew it. Not so much by shunning or

staring at me (vile as human nature is, there were not many who did

that), as by insulting me with over-acted sympathy, and elaborate

anxiety to sham entire ignorance of my father’s fate. The gallows-brand

was on my forehead; but they were too benevolently blind to see it. The

gallows-infamy was my inheritance; but they were too resolutely generous

to discover it! This was hard to bear. However, I was strong-hearted

even then, when my sensations were quick, and my sympathies young: so I

bore it.

“My only weakness was my father’s weakness--the notion that I was born

to a station ready made for me, and that the great use of my life was to

live up to it. My station! I battled for that with the world for years

and years, before I discovered that the highest of all stations is the

station a man makes for himself: and the lowest, the station that is

made for him by others.

“At starting in life, your father wrote to make me offers of

assistance--assistance, after he had ruined me! Assistance to the child,

from hands which had tied the rope round the parent’s neck! I sent him

back his letter. He knew that I was his enemy, his son’s enemy, and his

son’s son’s enemy, as long as I lived. I never heard from him again.

“Trusting boldly to myself to carve out my own way, and to live down my

undeserved ignominy; resolving in the pride of my integrity to combat

openly and fairly with misfortune, I shrank, at first, from disowning my

parentage and abandoning my father’s name. Standing on my own character,

confiding in my intellect and my perseverance, I tried pursuit after

pursuit, and was beaten afresh at every new effort. Whichever way I

turned, the gallows still rose as the same immovable obstacle between me

and fortune, between me and station, between me and my fellowmen. I

was morbidly sensitive on this point. The slightest references to my

father’s fate, however remote or accidental, curdled my blood. I saw

open insult, or humiliating compassion, or forced forbearance, in the

look and manner of every man about me. So I broke off with old friends,

and tried new; and, in seeking fresh pursuits, sought fresh connections,

where my father’s infamy might be unknown. Wherever I went, the old

stain always broke out afresh, just at the moment when I had deceived

myself into the belief that it was utterly effaced. I had a warm heart

then--it was some time before it turned to stone, and felt nothing.

Those were the days when failure and humiliation could still draw tears

from me: that epoch in my life is marked in my memory as the epoch when

I could weep.

“At last, I gave way before difficulty, and conceded the first step to

the calamity which had stood front to front with me so long. I left the

neighbourhood where I was known, and assumed the name of a schoolfellow

who had died. For some time this succeeded; but the curse of my

father’s death followed me, though I saw it not. After various

employments--still, mind, the employments of a gentleman!--had first

supported, then failed me, I became an usher at a school. It was there

that my false name was detected, and my identity discovered again--I

never knew through whom. The exposure was effected by some enemy,

anonymously. For several days, I thought everybody in the school treated

me in an altered way. The cause came out, first in whispers, then in

reckless jests, while I was taking care of the boys in the playground.

In the fury of the moment I struck one of the most insolent, and the

eldest of them, and hurt him rather seriously. The parents heard of it,

and threatened me with prosecution; the whole neighbourhood was aroused.

I had to leave my situation secretly, by night, or the mob would have

pelted the felon’s son out of the parish.

“I went back to London, bearing another assumed name; and tried, as a

last resource to save me from starvation, the resource of writing. I

served my apprenticeship to literature as a hack-author of the lowest

degree. Knowing I had talents which might be turned to account, I tried

to vindicate them by writing an original work. But my experience of the

world had made me unfit to dress my thoughts in popular costume: I could

only tell bitter truths bitterly; I exposed licenced hypocrisies too

openly; I saw the vicious side of many respectabilities, and said I saw

it--in short, I called things by their right names; and no publisher

would treat with me. So I stuck to my low task-work; my penny-a lining

in third-class newspapers; my translating from Frenchmen and Germans,

and plagiarising from dead authors, to supply the raw material for

bookmongering by more accomplished bookmongers than I. In this life,

there was one advantage which compensated for much misery and meanness,

and bitter, biting disappointment: I could keep my identity securely

concealed. Character was of no consequence to me; nobody cared to know

who I was, or to inquire what I had been--the gallows-mark was smoothed

out at last!

“While I was living thus on the offal of literature, I met with a woman

of good birth, and fair fortune, whose sympathies or whose curiosity

I happened to interest. She and her father and mother received me

favourably, as a gentleman who had known better days, and an author

whom the public had undeservedly neglected. How I managed to gain their

confidence and esteem, without alluding to my parentage, it is not worth

while to stop to describe. That I did so you will easily imagine, when

I tell you that the woman to whom I refer, consented, with her father’s

full approval, to become my wife.

“The very day of the marriage was fixed. I believed I had successfully

parried all perilous inquiries--but I was wrong. A relation of the

family, whom I had never seen, came to town a short time before the

wedding. We disliked each other on our first introduction. He was a

clever, resolute man of the world, and privately inquired about me to

much better purpose in a few days, than his family had done in

several months. Accident favoured him strangely, everything was

discovered--literally everything--and I was contemptuously dismissed the

house. Could a lady of respectability marry a man (no matter how worthy

in _her_ eyes) whose father had been hanged, whose mother had died in a

madhouse, who had lived under assumed names, who had been driven from an

excellent country neighbourhood, for cruelty to a harmless school-boy?

Impossible!

“With this event, my long strife and struggle with the world ended.

“My eyes opened to a new view of life, and the purpose of life. My first

aspirations to live up to my birth-right position, in spite of adversity

and dishonour, to make my name sweet enough in men’s nostrils, to

cleanse away the infamy on my father’s, were now no more. The ambition

which--whether I was a hack-author, a travelling portrait-painter, or

an usher at a school--had once whispered to me: low down as you are in

dark, miry ways, you are on the path which leads upward to high places

in the sunshine afar-off; you are not working to scrape together wealth

for another man; you are independent, self-reliant, labouring in your

own cause--the daring ambition which had once counselled thus, sank

dead within me at last. The strong, stern spirit was beaten by spirits

stronger and sterner yet--Infamy and Want.

“I wrote to a man of character and wealth; one of my friends of early

days, who had ceased to hold communication with me, like other friends,

but, unlike them, had given me up in genuine sorrow: I wrote, and asked

him to meet me privately by night. I was too ragged to go to his house,

too sensitive still (even if I had gone and had been admitted) to risk

encountering people there, who either knew my father, or knew how he

had died. I wished to speak to my former friend, unseen, and made the

appointment accordingly. He kept it.

“When we met, I said to him:--I have a last favour to ask of you. When

we parted years ago, I had high hopes and brave resolutions--both are

worn out. I then believed that I could not only rise superior to my

misfortune, but could make that very misfortune the motive of my rise.

You told me I was too quick of temper, too morbidly sensitive about

the slightest reference to my father’s death, too fierce and changeable

under undeserved trial and disappointment. This might have been true

then; but I am altered now: pride and ambition have been persecuted and

starved out of me. An obscure, monotonous life, in which thought and

spirit may be laid asleep, never to wake again, is the only life I care

for. Help me to lead it. I ask you, first, as a beggar, to give me from

your superfluity, apparel decent enough to bear the daylight. I ask you

next, to help me to some occupation which will just give me my bread, my

shelter, and my hour or two of solitude in the evening. You have plenty

of influence to do this, and you know I am honest. You cannot choose me

too humble and obscure an employment; let me descend low enough to be

lost to sight beneath the world I have lived in; let me go among people

who want to know that I work honestly for them, and want to know nothing

more. Get me a mean hiding-place to conceal myself and my history in for

ever, and then neither attempt to see me nor communicate with me again.

If former friends chance to ask after me, tell them I am dead, or gone

into another country. The wisest life is the life the animals lead: I

want, like them, to serve my master for food, shelter, and liberty to

lie asleep now and then in the sunshine, without being driven away as a

pest or a trespasser. Do you believe in this resolution?--it is my last.

“He _did_ believe in it; and he granted what I asked. Through his

interference and recommendation, I entered the service of Mr. Sherwin.--

“I must stop here for to-day. To-morrow I shall come to disclosures of

vital interest to you. Have you been surprised that I, your enemy by

every cause of enmity that one man can have against another, should

write to you so fully about the secrets of my early life? I have done

so, because I wish the strife between us to be an open strife on my

side; because I desire that you should know thoroughly what you have

to expect from my character, after such a life as I have led. There

was purpose in my deceit, when I deceived you--there is purpose in my

frankness, when I now tell you all.”

*****

“I began in Mr. Sherwin’s employment, as the lowest clerk in his office.

Both the master and the men looked a little suspiciously on me, at

first. My account of myself was always the same--simple and credible;

I had entered the counting-house with the best possible recommendation,

and I acted up to it. These circumstances in my favour, joined to a

manner that never varied, and to a steadiness at my work that never

relaxed, soon produced their effect--all curiosity about me gradually

died away: I was left to pursue my avocations in peace. The friend who

had got me my situation, preserved my secret as I had desired him; of

all the people whom I had formerly known, pitiless enemies and lukewarm

adherents, not one ever suspected that my hiding-place was the back

office of a linen-draper’s shop. For the first time in my life, I felt

that the secret of my father’s misfortune was mine, and mine only; that

my security from exposure was at length complete.

“Before long, I rose to the chief place in the counting-house. It was no

very difficult matter for me to discover, that my new master’s character

had other elements besides that of the highest respectability. In plain

terms, I found him to be a pretty equal compound by nature, of the fool,

the tyrant, and the coward. There was only one direction in which what

grovelling sympathies he had, could be touched to some purpose. Save

him waste, or get him profit; and he was really grateful. I succeeded

in working both these marvels. His managing man cheated him; I found

it out; refused to be bribed to collusion; and exposed the fraud to Mr.

Sherwin. This got me his confidence, and the place of chief clerk. In

that position, I discovered a means, which had never occurred to my

employer, of greatly enlarging his business and its profits, with the

least possible risk. He tried my plan, and it succeeded. This gained me

his warmest admiration, an increase of salary, and a firm footing in his

family circle. My projects were more than fulfilled: I had money enough,

and leisure enough; and spent my obscure existence exactly as I had

proposed.

“But my life was still not destined to be altogether devoid of an

animating purpose. When I first knew Margaret Sherwin, she was just

changing from childhood to girlhood. I marked the promise of future

beauty in her face and figure; and secretly formed the resolution which

you afterwards came forward to thwart, but which I have executed, and

will execute, in spite of you.

“The thoughts out of which that resolution sprang, counselled me more

calmly than you can suppose. I said within myself: ‘The best years of my

life have been irrevocably wasted; misery and humiliation and disaster

have followed my steps from my youth; of all the pleasant draughts which

other men drink to sweeten existence, not one has passed my lips. I will

know happiness before I die; and this girl shall confer it. She shall

grow up to maturity for _me:_ I will imperceptibly gain such a hold on

her affections, while they are yet young and impressible, that, when the

time comes, and I speak the word--though my years more than double hers,

though I am dependent on her father for the bread I eat, though parents’

voice and lover’s voice unite to call her back--she shall still come to

my side, and of her own free will put her hand in mine, and follow me

wherever I go; my wife, my mistress, my servant, which I choose.

“This was my project. To execute it, time and opportunity were mine; and

I steadily and warily made use of them, hour by hour, day by day, year

by year. From first to last, the girl’s father never suspected me.

Besides the security which he felt in my age, he had judged me by his

own small commercial standard, and had found me a model of integrity.

A man who had saved him from being cheated, who had so enlarged and

consolidated his business as to place him among the top dignitaries of

the trade; who was the first to come to the desk in the morning, and the

last to remain there in the evening; who had not only never demanded,

but had absolutely refused to take, a single holiday--such a man as

this was, morally and intellectually, a man in ten thousand; a man to be

admired and trusted in every relation of life!

“His confidence in me knew no bounds. He was uneasy if I was not by to

advise him in the simplest matters. My ears were the first to which he

confided his insane ambition on the subject of his daughter--his anxiety

to see her marry above her station--his stupid resolution to give

her the false, flippant, fashionable education which she subsequently

received. I thwarted his plans in nothing, openly--counteracted them in

everything, secretly. The more I strengthened my sources of influence

over Margaret, the more pleased he was. He was delighted to hear her

constantly referring to me about her home-lessons; to see her coming to

me, evening after evening, to learn new occupations and amusements. He

suspected I had been a gentleman; he had been told I spoke pure English;

he felt sure I had received a first-rate education--I was nearly as good

for Margaret as good society itself! When she grew older, and went to

the fashionable school, as her father had declared she should, my offer

to keep up her lessons in the holidays, and to examine what progress she

had made, when she came home regularly every fortnight for the Sunday,

was accepted with greedy readiness, and acknowledged with servile

gratitude. At this time, Mr. Sherwin’s own estimate of me, among his

friends, was, that he had got me for half nothing, and that I was worth

more to him than a thousand a-year.

“But there was one member of the family who suspected my intentions from

the first. Mrs. Sherwin--the weak, timid, sickly woman, whose opinion

nobody regarded, whose character nobody understood--Mrs. Sherwin, of

all those who dwelt in the house, or came to the house, was the only one

whose looks, words, and manner kept me constantly on my guard. The very

first time we saw each other, that woman doubted _me,_ as I doubted

_her;_ and for ever afterwards, when we met, she was on the watch.

This mutual distrust, this antagonism of our two natures, never openly

proclaimed itself, and never wore away. My chance of security lay, not

so much in my own caution, and my perfect command of look and action

under all emergencies, as in the self-distrust and timidity of her

nature; in the helpless inferiority of position to which her husband’s

want of affection, and her daughter’s want of respect, condemned her

in her own house; and in the influence of repulsion--at times, even of

absolute terror--which my presence had the power of communicating to

her. Suspecting what I am assured she suspected--incapable as she was

of rendering her suspicions certainties--knowing beforehand, as she

must have known, that no words she could speak would gain the smallest

respect or credit from her husband or her child--that woman’s life,

while I was at North Villa, must have been a life of the direst mental

suffering to which any human being was ever condemned.

“As time passed, and Margaret grew older, her beauty both of face and

form approached nearer to perfection than I had foreseen, closely as I

watched her. But neither her mind nor her disposition kept pace with

her beauty. I studied her closely, with the same patient, penetrating

observation, which my experience of the world has made it a habit with

me to direct on every one with whom I am brought in contact--I studied

her, I say, intently; and found her worthy of nothing, not even of the

slave-destiny which I had in store for her.

“She had neither heart nor mind, in the higher sense of those words. She

had simply instincts--most of the bad instincts of an animal; none of

the good. The great motive power which really directed her, was

Deceit. I never met with any human being so inherently disingenuous,

so naturally incapable of candour even in the most trifling affairs of

life, as she was. The best training could never have wholly overcome

this vice in her: the education she actually got--an education under

false pretences--encouraged it. Everybody has read, some people

have known, of young girls who have committed the most extraordinary

impostures, or sustained the most infamous false accusations; their

chief motive being often the sheer enjoyment of practising deceit. Of

such characters was the character of Margaret Sherwin.

“She had strong passions, but not their frequent accompaniment--strong

will, and strong intellect. She had some obstinacy, but no firmness.

Appeal in the right way to her vanity, and you could make her do the

thing she had declared she would not do, the minute after she had

made the declaration. As for her mind, it was of the lowest schoolgirl

average. She had a certain knack at learning this thing, and remembering

that; but she understood nothing fairly, felt nothing deeply. If I had

not had my own motive in teaching her, I should have shut the books

again, the first time she and I opened them together, and have given her

up as a fool.

“All, however, that I discovered of bad in her character, never made

me pause in the prosecution of my design; I had carried it too far for

that, before I thoroughly knew her. Besides, what mattered her duplicity

to _me?_--I could see through it. Her strong passions?--I could control

them. Her obstinacy?--I could break it. Her poverty of intellect?--I

cared nothing about her intellect. What I wanted was youth and beauty;

she was young and beautiful and I was sure of her.

“Yes; sure. Her showy person, showy accomplishments, and showy manners

dazzled all eyes but mine--Of all the people about her, I alone found

out what she really was; and in that lay the main secret of my influence

over her. I dreaded no rivalry. Her father, prompted by his ambitious

hopes, kept most young men of her class away from the house; the few who

did come were not dangerous; _they_ were as incapable of inspiring, as

_she_ was of feeling, real love. Her mother still watched me, and

still discovered nothing; still suspected me behind my back, and still

trembled before my face. Months passed on monotonously, year succeeded

to year; and I bided my time as patiently, and kept my secret as

cautiously as at the first. No change occurred, nothing happened to

weaken or alter my influence at North Villa, until the day arrived when

Margaret left school and came home for good.

*****

“Exactly at the period to which I have referred, certain business

transactions of great importance required the presence of Mr. Sherwin,

or of some confidential person to represent him, at Lyons. Secretly

distrusting his own capabilities, he proposed to me to go; saying that

it would be a pleasant trip for me, and a good introduction to his

wealthy manufacturing correspondents. After some consideration, I

accepted his offer.

“I had never hinted a word of my intentions towards her to Margaret;

but she understood them well enough--I was certain of that, from many

indications which no man could mistake. For reasons which will presently

appear, I resolved not to explain myself until my return from Lyons. My

private object in going there, was to make interest secretly with Mr.

Sherwin’s correspondents for a situation in their house. I knew that

when I made my proposals to Margaret, I must be prepared to act on them

on the instant; I knew that her father’s fury when he discovered that I

had been helping to educate his daughter only for myself, would lead

him to any extremities; I knew that we must fly to some foreign country;

and, lastly, I knew the importance of securing a provision for our

maintenance, when we got there. I had saved money, it is true--nearly

two-thirds of my salary, every year--but had not saved enough for two.

Accordingly, I left England to push my own interests, as well as my

employer’s; left it, confident that my short absence would not weaken

the result of years of steady influence over Margaret. The sequel showed

that, cautious and calculating as I was, I had nevertheless overlooked

the chances against me, which my own experience of her vanity and

duplicity ought to have enabled me thoroughly to foresee.

“Well: I had been some time at Lyons; had managed my employer’s business

(from first to last, I was faithful, as I had engaged to be, to his

commercial interests); and had arranged my own affairs securely and

privately. Already, I was looking forward, with sensations of happiness

which were new to me, to my return and to the achievement of the

one success, the solitary triumph of my long life of humiliation and

disaster, when a letter arrived from Mr. Sherwin. It contained the news

of your private marriage, and of the extraordinary conditions that had

been attached to it with your consent.

“Other people were in the room with me when I read that letter; but my

manner betrayed nothing to them. My hand never trembled when I folded

the sheet of paper again; I was not a minute late in attending a

business engagement which I had accepted; the slightest duties of

other kinds which I had to do, I rigidly fulfilled. Never did I more

thoroughly and fairly earn the evening’s leisure by the morning’s work,

than I earned it that day.

“Leaving the town at the close of afternoon, I walked on till I came to

a solitary place on the bank of the great river which runs near Lyons.

There I opened the letter for the second time, and read it through again

slowly, with no necessity now for self-control, because no human being

was near to look at me. There I read your name, constantly repeated in

every line of writing; and knew that the man who, in my absence, had

stepped between me and my prize--the man who, in his insolence of youth,

and birth, and fortune, had snatched from me the one long-delayed reward

for twenty years of misery, just as my hands were stretched forth to

grasp it, was the son of that honourable and high-born gentleman who had

given my father to the gallows, and had made me the outcast of my social

privileges for life.

“The sun was setting when I looked up from the letter; flashes of

rose-light leapt on the leaping river; the birds were winging nestward

to the distant trees, and the ghostly stillness of night was sailing

solemnly over earth and sky, as the first thought of the vengeance I

would have on father and son began to burn fiercely at my heart, to move

like a new life within me, to whisper to my spirit--Wait: be patient;

they are both in your power; you can now foul the father’s name as the

father fouled yours--you can yet thwart the son, as the son has thwarted

_you._

“In the few minutes that passed, while I lingered in that lonely

place after reading the letter, I imagined the whole scheme which it

afterwards took a year to execute. I laid the whole plan against you and

your father, the first half of which, through the accident that led you

to your discovery, has alone been carried out. I believed then, as I

believe now, that I stood towards you both in the place of an injured

man, whose right it was, in self-defence and self-assertion, to injure

you. Judged by your ideas, this may read wickedly; but to me, after

having lived and suffered as I have, the modern common-places current

in the world are so many brazen images which society impudently

worships--like the Jews of old--in the face of living Truth.

*****

“Let us get back to England.

“That evening, when we met for the first time, did you observe that

Margaret was unusually agitated before I came in? I detected some

change, the moment I saw her. Did you notice that I avoided speaking

to her, or looking at her? it was because I was afraid to do so. I saw

that, with my return, my old influence over her was coming back: and

I still believe that, hypocritical and heartless though she was, and

blinded though you were by your passion for her, she would unconsciously

have betrayed everything to you on that evening, if I had not acted as

I did. Her mother, too! how her mother watched me from the moment when I

came in!

“Afterwards, while you were trying hard to open, undetected, the sealed

history of my early life, I was warily discovering from Margaret all

that I desired to know. I say ‘warily,’ but the word poorly expresses my

consummate caution and patience, at that time. I never put myself in her

power, never risked offending, or frightening, or revolting her;

never lost an opportunity of bringing her back to her old habits

of familiarity; and, more than all, never gave her mother a single

opportunity of detecting me. This was the sum of what I gathered up, bit

by bit, from secret and scattered investigations, persevered in through

many weeks.

“Her vanity had been hurt, her expectations disappointed, at my having

left her for Lyons, with no other parting words than such as I might

have spoken to any other woman whom I looked on merely as a friend. That

she felt any genuine love for me I never have believed, and never shall:

but I had that practical ability, that firmness of will, that obvious

personal ascendancy over most of those with whom I came in contact,

which extorts the respect and admiration of women of all characters,

and even of women of no character at all. As far as her senses, her

instincts, and her pride could take her, I had won her over to me but

no farther--because no farther could she go. I mention pride among her

motives, advisedly. She was proud of being the object of such attentions

as I had now paid to her for years, because she fancied that, through

those attentions, I, who, more or less, ruled everyone else in her

sphere, had yielded to her the power of ruling _me._ The manner of my

departure from England showed her too plainly that she had miscalculated

her influence, and that the power, in her case, as in the case of

others, was all on my side. Hence the wound to her vanity, to which I

have alluded.

“It was while this wound was still fresh that you met her, and appealed

to her self-esteem in a new direction. You must have seen clearly

enough, that such proposals as yours far exceeded the most ambitious

expectations formed by her father. No man’s alliance could have lifted

her much higher out of her own class: she knew this, and from that

knowledge married you--married you for your station, for your name,

for your great friends and connections, for your father’s money, and

carriages, and fine houses; for everything, in short, but yourself.

“Still, in spite of the temptations of youth, wealth, and birth which

your proposals held out to her, she accepted them at first (I made her

confess it herself) with a secret terror and misgiving, produced by

the remembrance of me. These sensations, however, she soon quelled,

or fancied she quelled; and these, it was now my last, best chance to

revive. I had a whole year for the work before me; and I felt certain of

success.

“On your side, you had immense advantages. You had social superiority;

you had her father’s full approbation; and you were married to her. If

she had loved you for yourself, loved you for anything besides her

own sensual interests, her vulgar ambition, her reckless vanity, every

effort I could have made against you would have been defeated from the

first. But, setting this out of the question, in spite of the utter

heartlessness of her attachment to you, if you had not consented to that

condition of waiting a year for her after marriage; or, consenting to

it, if you had broken it long before the year was out--knowing, as you

should have known, that in most women’s eyes a man is not dishonoured by

breaking his promise, so long as he breaks it for a woman’s sake--if,

I say, you had taken either of these courses, I should still have

been powerless against you. But you remained faithful to your promise,

faithful to the condition, faithful to the ill-directed modesty of your

love; and that very fidelity put you in my power. A pure-minded girl

would have loved you a thousand times better for acting as you did--but

Margaret Sherwin was not a pure-minded girl, not a maidenly girl: I have

looked into her thoughts, and I know it.

“Such were your chances against me; and such was the manner in which

you misused them. On _my_ side, I had indefatigable patience; personal

advantages equal, with the exception of birth and age, to yours:

long-established influence; freedom to be familiar; and more than all,

that stealthy, unflagging strength of purpose which only springs from

the desire of revenge. I first thoroughly tested your character, and

discovered on what points it was necessary for me to be on my guard

against you, when you took shelter under my roof from the storm. If your

father had been with you on that night, there were moments, while the

tempest was wrought to its full fury, when, if my voice could have

called the thunder down on the house to crush it and every one in it to

atoms, I would have spoken the word, and ended the strife for all of

us. The wind, the hail, and the lightning maddened my thoughts of your

father and you--I was nearly letting you see it, when that flash came

between us as we parted at my door.

“How I gained your confidence, you know; and you know also, how I

contrived to make you use me, afterwards, as the secret friend who

procured you privileges with Margaret which her father would not grant

at your own request. This, at the outset, secured me from suspicion

on your part; and I had only to leave it to your infatuation to do

the rest. With you my course was easy--with her it was beset by

difficulties; but I overcame them. Your fatal consent to wait through

a year of probation, furnished me with weapons against you, which I

employed to the most unscrupulous purpose. I can picture to myself what

would be your indignation and your horror, if I fully described the use

which I made of the position in which your compliance with her father’s

conditions placed you towards Margaret. I spare you this avowal--it

would be useless now. Consider me what you please; denounce my conduct

in any terms you like: my justification will always be the same. I

was the injured man, you were the aggressor; I was righting myself by

getting back a possession of which you had robbed me, and any means were

sanctified by such an end as that.

“But my success, so far, was of little avail, in itself; against the

all-powerful counter-attraction which you possessed. Contemptible, or

not, you still had this superiority over me--you could make a fine

lady of her. From that fact sprang the ambition which all my influence,

dating as it did from her childhood, could not destroy. There, was

fastened the main-spring which regulated her selfish devotion to you,

and which it was next to impossible to snap asunder. I never made the

attempt.

“The scheme which I proposed to her, when she was fully prepared to hear

it, and to conceal that she had heard it, left her free to enjoy all the

social advantages which your alliance could bestow--free to ride in her

carriage, and go into her father’s shop (that was one of her ambitions!)

as a new customer added to his aristocratic connection--free even to

become one of your family, unsuspected, in case your rash marriage was

forgiven. Your credulity rendered the execution of this scheme easy.

In what manner it was to be carried out, and what object I proposed to

myself in framing it, I abstain from avowing; for the simple reason that

the discovery at which you arrived by following us on the night of the

party, made my plan abortive, and has obliged me since to renounce it. I

need only say, in this place, that it threatened your father as well as

you, and that Margaret recoiled from it at first--not from any horror of

the proposal, but through fear of discovery. Gradually, I overcame her

apprehensions: very gradually, for I was not thoroughly secure of her

devotion to my purpose, until your year of probation was nearly out.

“Through all that year, daily visitor as you were at North Villa,

you never suspected either of us! And yet, had you been one whit less

infatuated, how many warnings you might have discovered, which, in

spite of her duplicity and my caution, would then have shown themselves

plainly enough to put you on your guard! Those abrupt changes in her

manner, those alternate fits of peevish silence and capricious gaiety,

which sometimes displayed themselves even in your presence, had every

one of them their meaning--though you could not discern it. Sometimes,

they meant fear of discovery, sometimes fear of me: now, they might be

traced back to hidden contempt; now, to passions swelling under fancied

outrage; now, to secret remembrance of disclosures I had just made, or

eager anticipation of disclosures I had yet to reveal. There were times

at which every step of the way along which I was advancing was marked,

faintly yet significantly, in her manner and her speech, could you only

have interpreted them aright. My first renewal of my old influence over

her, my first words that degraded you in her eyes, my first successful

pleading of my own cause against yours, my first appeal to those

passions in her which I knew how to move, my first proposal to her

of the whole scheme which I had matured in solitude, in the foreign

country, by the banks of the great river--all these separate and gradual

advances on my part towards the end which I was vowed to achieve, were

outwardly shadowed forth in her, consummate as were her capacities for

deceit, and consummately as she learnt to use them against you.

“Do you remember noticing, on your return from the country, how ill

Margaret looked, and how ill I looked? We had some interviews during

your absence, at which I spoke such words to her as would have left

their mark on the face of a Jezebel, or a Messalina. Have you forgotten

how often, during the latter days of your year of expectation, I

abruptly left the room after you had called me in to bear you company

in your evening readings? My pretext was sudden illness; and illness it

was, but not of the body. As the time approached, I felt less and less

secure of my own caution and patience. With you, indeed, I might still

have considered myself safe: it was the presence of Mrs. Sherwin that

drove me from the room. Under that woman’s fatal eye I shrank, when the

last days drew near--I, who had defied her detection, and stood firmly

on my guard against her sleepless, silent, deadly vigilance, for months

and months--gave way as the end approached! I knew that she had once

or twice spoken strangely to you, and I dreaded lest her wandering,

incoherent words might yet take in time a recognisable direction, a

palpable shape. They did not; the instinct of terror bound her tongue

to the last. Perhaps, even if she had spoken plainly, you would not have

believed her; you would have been still true to yourself and to your

confidence in Margaret. Enemy as I am to you, enemy as I will be to the

day of your death, I will do you justice for the past:--Your love for

that girl was a love which even the purest and best of women could never

have thoroughly deserved.

*****

“My letter is nearly done: my retrospect is finished. I have brought

it down to the date of events, about which you know as much as I do.

Accident conducted you to a discovery which, otherwise, you might not

have made, perhaps for months, perhaps not at all, until I had led you

to it of my own accord. I say accident, positively; knowing that from

first to last I trusted no third person. What you know, you knew by

accident alone.

“But for that chance discovery, you would have seen me bring her back to

North Villa at the appointed time, in my care, just as she went out. I

had no dread of her meeting you. But enough of her! I shall dispose of

her future, as I had resolved to dispose of it years ago; careless how

she may be affected when she first sees the hideous alteration which

your attack has wrought in me. Enough, I say, of the Sherwins--father,

mother, and daughter--your destiny lies not with _them,_ but with _me._

“Do you still exult in having deformed me in every feature, in having

given me a face to revolt every human being who looks at me? Do you

triumph in the remembrance of this atrocity, as you triumphed in the

acting of it--believing that you had destroyed my future with Margaret,

in destroying my very identity as a man? I tell you, that with the hour

when I leave this hospital your day of triumph will be over, and your

day of expiation will begin--never to end till the death of one of us.

You shall live--refined educated gentleman as you are--to wish, like a

ruffian, that you had killed me; and your father shall live to wish it

too.

“Am I trying to awe you with the fierce words of a boaster and a bully?

Test me, by looking back a little, and discovering what I have abstained

from for the sake of my purpose, since I have been here. A word or two

from my lips, in answer to the questions with which I have been baited,

day after day, by those about me, would have called you before a

magistrate to answer for an assault--a shocking and a savage assault,

even in this country, where hand to hand brutality is a marketable

commodity between the Prisoner and the Law. Your father’s name might

have been publicly coupled with your dishonour, if I had but spoken; and

I was silent. I kept the secret--kept it, because to avenge myself

on you by a paltry scandal, which you and your family (opposing to it

wealth, position, previous character, and general sympathy) would live

down in a few days, was not my revenge: because to be righted before

magistrates and judges by a beggarman’s exhibition of physical injury,

and a coward’s confession of physical defeat, was not my way of righting

myself. I have a lifelong retaliation in view, which laws and lawgivers

are powerless either to aid or to oppose--the retaliation which set a

mark upon Cain (as I will set a mark on you); and then made his life his

punishment (as I will make your life yours).

“How? Remember what my career has been; and know that I will make

your career like it. As my father’s death by the hangman affected _my_

existence, so the events of that night when you followed me shall affect

_yours._ Your father shall see you living the life to which his evidence

against _my_ father condemned _me_--shall see the foul stain of your

disaster clinging to you wherever you go. The infamy with which I am

determined to pursue you, shall be your own infamy that you cannot get

quit of--for you shall never get quit of me, never get quit of the wife

who has dishonoured you. You may leave your home, and leave England; you

may make new friends, and seek new employments; years and years may pass

away--and still, you shall not escape us: still, you shall never know

when we are near, or when we are distant; when we are ready to appear

before you, or when we are sure to keep out of your sight. My deformed

face and her fatal beauty shall hunt you through the world. The terrible

secret of your dishonour, and of the atrocity by which you avenged it,

shall ooze out through strange channels, in vague shapes, by tortuous

intangible processes; ever changing in the manner of its exposure,

never remediable by your own resistance, and always directed to the same

end--your isolation as a marked man, in every fresh sphere, among every

new community to which you retreat.

“Do you call this a very madness of malignity and revenge? It is the

only occupation in life for which your mutilation of me has left me

fit; and I accept it, as work worthy of my deformity. In the prospect of

watching how you bear this hunting through life, that never quite hunts

you down; how long you resist the poison-influence, as slow as it

is sure, of a crafty tongue that cannot be silenced, of a denouncing

presence that cannot be fled, of a damning secret torn from you and

exposed afresh each time you have hidden it--there is the promise of a

nameless delight which it sometimes fevers, sometimes chills my blood to

think of. Lying in this place at night, in those hours of darkness and

stillness when the surrounding atmosphere of human misery presses heavy

on me in my heavy sleep, prophecies of dread things to come between

us, trouble my spirit in dreams. At those times, I know, and shudder

in knowing, that there is something besides the motive of retaliation,

something less earthly and apparent than that, which urges me horribly

and supernaturally to link myself to you for life; which makes me feel

as the bearer of a curse that shall follow you; as the instrument of a

fatality pronounced against you long ere we met--a fatality beginning

before our fathers were parted by the hangman; perpetuating itself in

you and me; ending who shall say how, or when?

“Beware of comforting yourself with a false security, by despising my

words, as the wild words of a madman, dreaming of the perpetration of

impossible crimes. Throughout this letter I have warned you of what

you may expect; because I will not assail you at disadvantage, as you

assailed me; because it is my pleasure to ruin you, openly resisting

me at every step. I have given you fair play, as the huntsmen give fair

play at starting to the animal they are about to run down. Be warned

against seeking a false hope in the belief that my faculties are shaken,

and that my resolves are visionary--false, because such a hope is only

despair in disguise.

“I have done. The time is not far distant when my words will become

deeds. They cure fast in a public hospital: we shall meet soon!

“ROBERT MANNION.”

“We shall meet soon!”

How? Where? I looked back at the last page of writing. But my attention

wandered strangely; I confused one paragraph with another; the longer I

read, the less I was able to grasp the meaning, not of sentences merely,

but even of the simplest words.

From the first lines to the last, the letter had produced no distinct

impressions on my mind. So utterly was I worn out by the previous events

of the day, that even those earlier portions of Mannion’s confession,

which revealed the connection between my father and his, and the

terrible manner of their separation, hardly roused me to more than a

momentary astonishment. I just called to remembrance that I had never

heard the subject mentioned at home, except once or twice in vague hints

dropped mysteriously by an old servant, and little regarded by me at the

time, as referring to matters which had happened before I was born.

I just reflected thus briefly and languidly on the narrative at the

commencement of the letter; and then mechanically read on. Except the

passages which contained the exposure of Margaret’s real character,

and those which described the origin and progress of Mannion’s infamous

plot, nothing in the letter impressed me, as I was afterwards destined

to be impressed by it, on a second reading. The lethargy of all feeling

into which I had now sunk, seemed a very lethargy of death.

I tried to clear and concentrate my faculties by thinking of other

subjects; but without success. All that I had heard and seen since the

morning, now recurred to me more and more vaguely and confusedly. I

could form no plan either for the present or the future. I knew

as little how to meet Mr. Sherwin’s last threat of forcing me to

acknowledge his guilty daughter, as how to defend myself against the

life-long hostility with which I was menaced by Mannion. A feeling of

awe and apprehension, which I could trace to no distinct cause, stole

irresistibly and mysteriously over me. A horror of the searching

brightness of daylight, a suspicion of the loneliness of the place to

which I had retreated, a yearning to be among my fellow-creatures again,

to live where there was life--the busy life of London--overcame me. I

turned hastily, and walked back from the suburbs to the city.

It was growing towards evening as I gained one of the great

thoroughfares. Seeing some of the inhabitants of the houses, as I walked

along, sitting at their open windows to enjoy the evening air, the

thought came to me for the first time that day:--where shall I lay my

head tonight? Home I had none. Friends who would have gladly received me

were not wanting; but to go to them would oblige me to explain myself;

to disclose something of the secret of my calamity; and this I was

determined to keep concealed, as I had told my father I would keep

it. My last-left consolation was my knowledge of still preserving that

resolution, of still honourably holding by it at all hazards, cost what

it might.

So I thought no more of succour or sympathy from any one of my friends.

As a stranger I had been driven from my home, and as a stranger I was

resigned to live, until I had learnt how to conquer my misfortune by

my own vigour and endurance. Firm in this determination, though firm

in nothing else, I now looked around me for the first shelter I could

purchase from strangers--the humbler the better.

I happened to be in the poorest part, and on the poorest side of the

great street along which I was walking--among the inferior shops, and

the houses of few stories. A room to let was not hard to find here. I

took the first I saw; escaped questions about names and references

by paying my week’s rent in advance; and then found myself left in

possession of the one little room which I must be resigned to look on

for the future--perhaps for a long future!--as my home.

Home! A dear and a mournful remembrance was revived in the reflections

suggested by that simple word. Through the darkness that thickened over

my mind, there now passed one faint ray of light which gave promise of

the morning--the light of the calm face that I had last looked on when

it was resting on my father’s breast.

Clara! My parting words to her, when I had unclasped from my neck those

kind arms which would fain have held me to home for ever, had expressed

a promise that was yet unfulfilled. I trembled as I now thought on my

sister’s situation. Not knowing whither I had turned my steps on

leaving home; uncertain to what extremities my despair might hurry me;

absolutely ignorant even whether she might ever see me again--it was

terrible to reflect on the suspense under which she might be suffering,

at this very moment, on my account. My promise to write to her, was of

all promises the most vitally important, and the first that should be

fulfilled.

My letter was very short. I communicated to her the address of the

house in which I was living (well knowing that nothing but positive

information on this point would effectually relieve her anxiety)--I

asked her to write in reply, and let me hear some news of her, the best

that she could give--and I entreated her to believe implicitly in my

patience and courage under every disaster; and to feel assured that,

whatever happened, I should never lose the hope of soon meeting her

again. Of the perils that beset me, of the wrong and injury I might yet

be condemned to endure, I said nothing. Those were truths which I was

determined to conceal from her, to the last. She had suffered for me

more than I dared think of, already!

I sent my letter by hand, so as to ensure its immediate delivery. In

writing those few simple lines, I had no suspicion of the important

results which they were destined to produce. In thinking of to-morrow,

and of all the events which to-morrow might bring with it, I little

thought whose voice would be the first to greet me the next day, whose

hand would be held out to me as the helping hand of a friend.

VI.

It was still early in the morning, when a loud knock sounded at

the house-door, and I heard the landlady calling to the servant: “A

gentleman to see the gentleman who came in last night.” The moment the

words reached me, my thoughts recurred to the letter of yesterday--Had

Mannion found me out in my retreat? As the suspicion crossed my mind,

the door opened, and the visitor entered.

I looked at him in speechless astonishment. It was my elder brother! It

was Ralph himself who now walked into the room!

“Well, Basil! how are you?” he said, with his old off-hand manner and

hearty voice.

“Ralph! You in England!--you here!”

“I came back from Italy last night. Basil, how awfully you’re changed! I

hardly know you again.”

His manner altered as he spoke the last words. The look of sorrow and

alarm which he fixed on me, went to my heart. I thought of holiday-time,

when we were boys; of Ralph’s boisterous ways with me; of his

good-humoured school-frolics, at my expense; of the strong bond of union

between us, so strangely compounded of my weakness and his strength; of

my passive and of his active nature; I saw how little _he_ had changed

since that time, and knew, as I never knew before, how miserably _I_ was

altered. All the shame and grief of my banishment from home came back on

me, at sight of his friendly, familiar face. I struggled hard to keep my

self-possession, and tried to bid him welcome cheerfully; but the effort

was too much for me. I turned away my head, as I took his hand; for the

old school-boy feeling of not letting Ralph see that I was in tears,

influenced me still.

“Basil! Basil! what are you about? This won’t do. Look up, and listen

to me. I have promised Clara to pull you through this wretched mess; and

I’ll do it. Get a chair, and give me a light. I’m going to sit on your

bed, smoke a cigar, and have a long talk with you.”

While he was lighting his cigar, I looked more closely at him than

before. Though he was the same as ever in manner; though his expression

still preserved its reckless levity of former days, I now detected that

he had changed a little in some other respects. His features had become

coarser--dissipation had begun to mark them. His spare, active, muscular

figure had filled out; he was dressed rather carelessly; and of all

his trinkets and chains of early times, not one appeared about him now.

Ralph looked prematurely middle-aged, since I had seen him last.

“Well,” he began, “first of all, about my coming back. The fact is, the

morganatic Mrs. Ralph--” (he referred to his last mistress) “wanted to

see England, and I was tired of being abroad. So I brought her back

with me; and we’re going to live quietly, somewhere in the Brompton

neighbourhood. That woman has been my salvation--you must come and see

her. She has broke me of gaming altogether; I was going to the devil

as fast as I could, when she stopped me--but you know all about it, of

course. Well: we got to London yesterday afternoon; and in the evening

I left her at the hotel, and went to report myself at home. There, the

first thing I heard, was that you had cut me out of my old original

distinction of being the family scamp. Don’t look distressed, Basil; I’m

not laughing at you; I’ve come to do something better than that. Never

mind my talk: nothing in the world ever was serious to _me,_ and nothing

ever will be.”

He stopped to knock the ash off his cigar, and settle himself more

comfortably on my bed; then proceeded.

“It has been my ill-luck to see my father pretty seriously offended on

more than one occasion; but I never saw him so very quiet and so very

dangerous as last night when he was telling me about you. I remember

well enough how he spoke and looked, when he caught me putting away

my trout-flies in the pages of that family history of his; but it was

nothing to see him or hear him then, to what it is now. I can tell you

this, Basil--if I believed in what the poetical people call a broken

heart (which I don’t), I should be almost afraid that _he_ was

broken-hearted. I saw it was no use to say a word for you just yet, so

I sat quiet and listened to him till I got my dismissal for the evening.

My next proceeding was to go up-stairs, and see Clara. Upstairs, I give

you my word of honour, it was worse still. Clara was walking about the

room with your letter in her hand--just reach me the matches: my cigar’s

out. Some men can talk and smoke in equal proportions--I never could.

“You know as well as I do,” he continued when he had relit his cigar,

“that Clara is not usually demonstrative. I always thought her rather a

cold temperament--but the moment I put my head in at the door, I found

I’d been just as great a fool on that point as on most others. Basil,

the scream Clara gave when she first saw me, and the look in her eyes

when she talked about you, positively frightened me. I can’t describe

anything; and I hate descriptions by other men (most likely on that very

account): so I won’t describe what she said and did. I’ll only tell you

that it ended in my promising to come here the first thing this morning;

promising to get you out of the scrape; promising, in short, everything

she asked me. So here I am, ready for your business before my own. The

fair partner of my existence is at the hotel, half-frantic because I

won’t go lodging-hunting with her; but Clara is paramount, Clara is the

first thought. Somebody must be a good boy at home; and now you have

resigned, I’m going to try and succeed you, by way of a change!”

“Ralph! Ralph! can you mention Clara’s name, and that woman’s name, in

the same breath? Did you leave Clara quieter and better! For God’s sake

be serious about that, though serious about nothing else!”

“Gently, Basil! _Doucement mon ami!_ I did leave her quieter: my promise

made her look almost like herself again. As for what you say about

mentioning Clara and Mrs. Ralph in the same breath, I’ve been talking

and smoking till I have no second breaths left to devote to second-rate

virtue. There is an unanswerable reason for you, if you want one! And

now let us get to the business that brings me here. I don’t want to

worry you by raking up this miserable mess again, from beginning to end,

in your presence; but I must make sure at the same time that I have got

hold of the right story, or I can’t be of any use to you. My father

was a little obscure on certain points. He talked enough, and more than

enough, about consequences to the family, about his own affliction,

about his giving you up for ever; and, in short, about everything but

the case itself as it really stands against us. Now that is just what I

ought to be put up to, and must be put up to. Let me tell you in three

words what I was told last night.”

“Go on, Ralph: speak as you please.”

“Very good. First of all, I understand that you took a fancy to some

shopkeeper’s daughter--so far, mind, I don’t blame you: I’ve spent

time very pleasantly among the ladies of the counter myself. But in the

second place, I’m told that you actually married the girl! I don’t

wish to be hard upon you, my good fellow, but there was an unparalleled

insanity about that act, worthier of a patient in Bedlam than of my

brother. I am not quite sure whether I understand exactly what virtuous

behaviour is; but if _that_ was virtuous behaviour--there! there! don’t

look shocked. Let’s have done with the marriage, and get on. Well, you

made the girl your wife; and then innocently consented to a very

queer condition of waiting a year for her (virtuous behaviour again, I

suppose!) At the end of that time--don’t turn away your head, Basil! I

_may_ be a scamp; but I am not blackguard enough to make a joke--either

in your presence, or out of it--of this part of the story. I will pass

it over altogether, if you like; and only ask you a question or two. You

see, my father either could not or would not speak plainly of the worst

part of the business; and you know him well enough to know why. But

somebody must be a little explicit, or I can do nothing. About that man?

You found the scoundrel out? Did you get within arm’s length of him?”

I told my brother of the struggle with Mannion in the Square.

He heard me almost with his former schoolboy delight, when I had

succeeded, to his satisfaction, in a feat of strength or activity. He

jumped off the bed, and seized both my hands in his strong grasp; his

face radiant, his eyes sparkling. “Shake hands, Basil! Shake hands, as

we haven’t shaken hands yet: this makes amends for everything! One word

more, though, about that fellow; where is he now?”

“In the hospital.”

Ralph laughed heartily, and jumped back on the bed. I remembered

Mannion’s letter, and shuddered as I thought of it.

“The next question is about the girl,” said my brother. “What has become

of her? Where was she all the time of your illness?”

“At her father’s house; she is there still.”

“Ah, yes! I see; the old story; innocent, of course. And her father

backs her, doesn’t he? To be sure, that’s the old story too. I have got

at our difficulty now; we are threatened with an exposure, if you don’t

acknowledge her. Wait a minute! Have you any evidence against her,

besides your own?”

“I have a letter, a long letter from her accomplice, containing a

confession of his guilt and hers.”

“She is sure to call that confession a conspiracy. It’s of no use to us,

unless we dared to go to law--and we daren’t. We must hush the thing up

at any price; or it will be the death of my father. This is a case for

money, just as I thought it would be. Mr. and Miss Shopkeeper have got

a large assortment of silence to sell; and we must buy it of them, over

the domestic counter, at so much a yard. Have you been there yet, Basil,

to ask the price and strike the bargain?”

“I was at the house, yesterday.”

“The deuce you were! And who did you see?--The father? Did you bring him

to terms? did you do business with Mr. Shopkeeper?”

“His manner was brutal: his language, the language of a bully--?”

“So much the better. Those men are easiest dealt with: if he will only

fly into a passion with me, I engage for success beforehand. But the

end--how did it end?”

“As it began:--in threats on his part, in endurance on mine.”

“Ah! we’ll see how he likes my endurance next: he’ll find it rather a

different sort of endurance from yours. By-the-bye, Basil, what money

had you to offer him?”

“I made no offer to him then. Circumstances happened which rendered me

incapable of thinking of it. I intended to go there again, to-day; and

if money would bribe him to silence, and save my family from sharing the

dishonour which has fallen on _me,_ to abandon to him the only money I

have of my own--the little income left me by our mother.”

“Do you mean to say that your only resource is in that wretched trifle,

and that you ever really intend to let it go, and start in the world

without a rap? Do you mean to say that my father gave you up without

making the smallest provision for you, in such a mess as your’s? Hang

it! do him justice. He has been hard enough on you, I know; but he can’t

have coolly turned you over to ruin in that way.”

“He offered me money, at parting; but with such words of contempt and

insult that I would have died rather than take it. I told him that,

unaided by his purse, I would preserve him, and preserve his family from

the infamous consequences of my calamity--though I sacrificed my own

happiness and my own honour for ever in doing it. And I go to-day to

make that sacrifice. The loss of the little I have to depend on, is the

least part of it. He may not see his injustice in doubting me, till too

late; but he _shall_ see it.”

“I beg your pardon, Basil; but this is almost as great an insanity,

as the insanity of your marriage. I honour the independence of your

principle, my dear fellow; but, while I am to the fore, I’ll take good

care that you don’t ruin yourself gratuitously, for the sake of any

principles whatever! Just listen to me, now. In the first place,

remember that what my father said to you, he said in a moment of violent

exasperation. You had been trampling the pride of his life in the mud:

no man likes that--my father least of any. And, as for the offer of your

poor little morsel of an income to stop these people’s greedy mouths,

it isn’t a quarter enough for them. They know our family is a wealthy

family; and they will make their demand accordingly. Any other

sacrifice, even to taking the girl back (though you never could bring

yourself to do that!), would be of no earthly use. Nothing but money

will do; money cunningly doled out, under the strongest possible

stipulations. Now, I’m just the man to do that, and I have got the

money--or, rather, my father has, which comes to the same thing. Write

me the fellow’s name and address; there’s no time to be lost--I’m off to

see him at once!”

“I can’t allow you, Ralph, to ask my father for what I would not ask him

myself--”

“Give me the name and address, or you will sour my excellent temper for

the rest of my life. Your obstinacy won’t do with _me,_ Basil--it didn’t

at school, and it won’t now. I shall ask my father for money for myself;

and use as much of it as I think proper for your interests. He’ll

give me anything I want, now I have turned good boy. I don’t owe fifty

pounds, since my last debts were paid off--thanks to Mrs. Ralph, who

is the most managing woman in the world. By-the-bye, when you see her,

don’t seem surprised at her being older than I am. Oh! this is the

address, is it? Hollyoake Square? Where the devil’s that! Never mind,

I’ll take a cab, and shift the responsibility of finding the place on

the driver. Keep up your spirits, and wait here till I come back. You

shall have such news of Mr. Shopkeeper and his daughter as you little

expect! _Au revoir,_ my dear fellow--_au revoir._”

He left the room as rapidly as he had entered it. The minute afterwards,

I remembered that I ought to have warned him of the fatal illness of

Mrs. Sherwin. She might be dying--dead for aught I knew--when he reached

the house. I ran to the window, to call him back: it was too late. Ralph

was gone.

Even if he were admitted at North Villa, would he succeed? I was little

capable of estimating the chances. The unexpectedness of his visit; the

strange mixture of sympathy and levity in his manner, of worldly wisdom

and boyish folly in his conversation, appeared to be still confusing

me in his absence, just as they had confused me in his presence. My

thoughts imperceptibly wandered away from Ralph, and the mission he had

undertaken on my behalf, to a subject which seemed destined, for the

future, to steal on my attention, irresistibly and darkly, in all my

lonely hours. Already, the fatality denounced against me in Mannion’s

letter had begun to act: already, that terrible confession of past

misery and crime, that monstrous declaration of enmity which was to last

with the lasting of life, began to exercise its numbing influence on my

faculties, to cast its blighting shadow over my heart.

I opened the letter again, and re-read the threats against me at its

conclusion. One by one, the questions now arose in my mind: how can I

resist, or how escape the vengeance of this evil spirit? how shun the

dread deformity of that face, which is to appear before me in secret?

how silence that fiend’s tongue, or make harmless the poison which it

will pour drop by drop into my life? When should I first look for that

avenging presence?--now, or not till months hence? Where should I first

see it? in the house?--or in the street? At what time would it steal

to my side? by night--or by day? Should I show the letter to Ralph?--it

would be useless. What would avail any advice or assistance which his

reckless courage could give, against an enemy who combined the ferocious

vigilance of a savage with the far-sighted iniquity of a civilised man?

As this last thought crossed my mind, I hastily closed the letter;

determining (alas! how vainly!) never to open it again. Almost at the

same instant, I heard another knock at the house-door. Could Ralph have

returned already? impossible! Besides, the knock was very different from

his--it was only just loud enough to be audible where I now sat.

Mannion? But would he come thus? openly, fairly, in the broad daylight,

through the populous street?

A light, quick step ascended the stairs--my heart bounded; I started to

my feet. It was the same step which I used to listen for, and love to

hear, in my illness. I ran to the door, and opened it. My instinct had

not deceived me! it was my sister!

“Basil!” she exclaimed, before I could speak--“has Ralph been here?”

“Yes, love--yes.”

“Where has he gone? what has he done for you? He promised me--”

“And he has kept his promise nobly, Clara: he is away helping me now.”

“Thank God! thank God!”

She sank breathless into a chair, as she spoke. Oh, the pang of looking

at her at that moment, and seeing how she was changed!--seeing the

dimness and weariness of the gentle eyes; the fear and the sorrow that

had already overshadowed the bright young face!

“I shall be better directly,” she said, guessing from my expression what

I then felt--“but, seeing you in this strange place, after what happened

yesterday; and having come here so secretly, in terror of my father

finding it out--I can’t help feeling your altered position and mine a

little painfully at first. But we won’t complain, as long as I can get

here sometimes to see you: we will only think of the future now. What a

mercy, what a happiness it is that Ralph has come back! We have always

done him injustice; he is far kinder and far better than we ever thought

him. But, Basil, how worn and ill you are looking! Have you not told

Ralph everything? Are you in any danger?”

“None, Clara--none, indeed!”

“Don’t grieve too deeply about yesterday! Try and forget that horrible

parting, and all that brought it about. He has not spoken of it since,

except to tell me that I must never know more of your fault and your

misfortune, than the little--the very little--I know already. And I have

resolved not to think about it, as well as not to ask about it, for the

future. I have a hope already, Basil--very, very far off fulfilment--but

still a hope. Can you not think what it is?”

“Your hope is far off fulfilment, indeed, Clara, if it is hope from my

father!”

“Hush! don’t say so; I know better. Something occurred, even so soon as

last night--a very trifling event--but enough to show that he thinks of

you, already, in grief far more than in anger.”

“I wish I could believe it, love; but my remembrance of yesterday--”

“Don’t trust that remembrance; don’t recall it! I will tell you what

occurred. Some time after you had gone, and after I had recovered myself

a little in my own room, I went downstairs again to see my father; for

I was too terrified and too miserable at what had happened, to be alone.

He was not in his room when I got there. As I looked round me for a

moment, I saw the pieces of your page in the book about our family,

scattered on the floor; and the miniature likeness of you, when you were

a child, was lying among the other fragments. It had been torn out of

its setting in the paper, but not injured. I picked it up, Basil, and

put it on the table, at the place where he always sits; and laid my own

little locket, with your hair in it, by the side, so that he might know

that the miniature had not been accidentally taken up and put there by

the servant. Then, I gathered together the pieces of the page and took

them away with me, thinking it better that he should not see them again.

Just as I had got through the door that leads into the library, and was

about to close it, I heard the other door, by which you enter the study

from the hall, opening; and he came in, and went directly to the table.

His back was towards me, so I could look at him unperceived. He observed

the miniature directly and stood quite still with it in his hand; then

sighed--sighed so bitterly!--and then took the portrait of our dear

mother from one of the drawers of the table, opened the case in which

it is kept, and put your miniature inside, very gently and tenderly. I

could not trust myself to see any more, so I went up to my room again:

and shortly afterwards he came in with my locket, and gave it me back,

only saying--‘You left this on my table, Clara.’ But if you had seen his

face then, you would have hoped all things from him in the time to come,

as I hope now.”

“And as I _will_ hope, Clara, though it be from no stronger motive than

gratitude to you.”

“Before I left home,” she proceeded, after a moment’s silence, “I

thought of your loneliness in this strange place--knowing that I could

seldom come to see you, and then only by stealth; by committing a fault

which, if my father found it out--but we won’t speak of that! I thought

of your lonely hours here; and I have brought with me an old, forgotten

companion of yours, to bear you company, and to keep you from thinking

too constantly on what you have suffered. Look, Basil! won’t you welcome

this old friend again?”

She gave me a small roll of manuscript, with an effort to resume her

kind smile of former days, even while the tears stood thick in her eyes.

I untied the leaves, glanced at the handwriting, and saw before me, once

more, the first few chapters of my unfinished romance! Again I looked on

the patiently-laboured pages, familiar relics of that earliest and best

ambition which I had abandoned for love; too faithful records of the

tranquil, ennobling pleasures which I had lost for ever! Oh, for one

Thought-Flower now, from the dream-garden of the happy Past!

“I took more care of those leaves of writing, after you had thrown them

aside, than of anything else I had,” said Clara. “I always thought the

time would come, when you would return again to the occupation which it

was once your greatest pleasure to pursue, and my greatest pleasure to

watch. And surely that time has arrived. I am certain, Basil, your book

will help you to wait patiently for happier times, as nothing else can.

This place must seem very strange and lonely; but the sight of those

pages, and the sight of me sometimes (when I can come), may make it look

almost like home to you! The room is not--not very--”

She stopped suddenly. I saw her lip tremble, and her eyes grow dim

again, as she looked round her. When I tried to speak all the

gratitude I felt, she turned away quickly, and began to busy herself

in re-arranging the wretched furniture; in setting in order the glaring

ornaments on the chimney-piece; in hiding the holes in the ragged

window-curtains; in changing, as far as she could, all the tawdry

discomfort of my one miserable little room. She was still absorbed in

this occupation, when the church-clocks of the neighbourhood struck the

hour--the hour that warned her to stay no longer.

“I must go,” she said; “it is later than I thought. Don’t be afraid

about my getting home: old Martha came here with me, and is waiting

downstairs to go back (you know we can trust her). Write to me as often

as you can; I shall hear about you every day, from Ralph; but I should

like a letter sometimes, as well. Be as hopeful and as patient yourself,

dear, under misfortune, as you wish me to be; and I shall despair of

nothing. Don’t tell Ralph I have been here--he might be angry. I will

come again, the first opportunity. Good-bye, Basil! Let us try and part

happily, in the hope of better days. Good-bye, dear--good-bye, only for

the present!”

Her self-possession nearly failed her, as she kissed me, and then turned

to the door. She just signed to me not to follow her down-stairs, and,

without looking round again, hurried from the room.

It was well for the preservation of our secret, that she had so

resolutely refrained from delaying her departure. She had been gone but

for a few minutes--the lovely and consoling influence of her presence

was still fresh in my heart--I was still looking sadly over the once

precious pages of manuscript which she had restored to me--when Ralph

returned from North Villa. I heard him leaping, rather than running, up

the ricketty wooden stairs. He burst into my room more impetuously than

ever.

“All right!” he said, jumping back to his former place on the bed. “We

can buy Mr. Shopkeeper for anything we like--for nothing at all, if

we choose to be stingy. His innocent daughter has made the best of all

confessions, just at the right time. Basil, my boy, she has left her

father’s house!”

“What do you mean?”

“She has eloped to the hospital!”

“Mannion!”

“Yes, Mannion: I have got his letter to her. She is criminated by it,

even past her father’s contradiction--and he doesn’t stick at a trifle!

But I’ll begin at the beginning, and tell you everything. Hang it,

Basil, you look as if I’d brought you bad news instead of good!”

“Never mind how I look, Ralph--pray go on!”

“Well: the first thing I heard, on getting to the house, was that

Sherwin’s wife was dying. The servant took in my name: but I thought of

course I shouldn’t be admitted. No such thing! I was let in at once, and

the first words this fellow, Sherwin, said to me, were, that his wife

was only ill, that the servants were exaggerating, and that he was quite

ready to hear what Mr. Basil’s ‘highly-respected’ brother (fancy calling

_me_ ‘highly-respected!’) had to say to him. The fool, however, as

you see, was cunning enough to try civility to begin with. A more

ill-looking human mongrel I never set eyes on! I took the measure of

my man directly, and in two minutes told him exactly what I came for,

without softening a single word.”

“And how did he answer you?”

“As I anticipated, by beginning to bluster immediately. I took him down,

just as he swore his second oath. ‘Sir,’ I said very politely, ‘if you

mean to make a cursing and a swearing conference of this, I think it

only fair to inform you before-hand that you are likely to get the worst

of it. When the whole collection of British oaths is exhausted, I

can swear fluently in five foreign languages: I have always made it a

principle to pay back abuse at compound interest, and I don’t exaggerate

in saying, that I am quite capable of swearing you out of your senses,

if you persist in setting me the example. And now, if you like to go on,

pray do--I’m ready to hear you.’ While I was speaking, he stared at

me in a state of helpless astonishment; when I had done, he began to

bluster again--but it was a pompous, dignified, parliamentary sort of

bluster, now, ending in his pulling your unlucky marriage-certificate

out of his pocket, asserting for the fiftieth time, that the girl was

innocent, and declaring that he’d make you acknowledge her, if he went

before a magistrate to do it. That’s what he said when you saw him, I

suppose?”

“Yes: almost word for word.”

“I had my answer ready for him, before he could put the certificate back

in his pocket. ‘Now, Mr. Sherwin,’ I said, ‘have the goodness to listen

to me. My father has certain family prejudices and nervous delicacies,

which I do not inherit from him, and which I mean to take good care to

prevent you from working on. At the same time, I beg you to understand

that I have come here without his knowledge. I am not my father’s

ambassador, but my brother’s--who is unfit to deal with you, himself;

because he is not half hard-hearted, or half worldly enough. As my

brother’s envoy, therefore, and out of consideration for my father’s

peculiar feelings, I now offer you, from my own resources, a certain

annual sum of money, far more than sufficient for all your daughter’s

expenses--a sum payable quarterly, on condition that neither you nor she

shall molest us; that you shall never make use of our name anywhere;

and that the fact of my brother’s marriage (hitherto preserved a secret)

shall for the future be consigned to oblivion. _We_ keep our opinion of

your daughter’s guilt--_you_ keep your opinion of her innocence. _We_

have silence to buy, and _you_ have silence to sell, once a quarter; and

if either of us break our conditions, we both have our remedy--_your’s_

the easy remedy, _our’s_ the difficult. This arrangement--a very unfair

and dangerous for us; a very advantageous and safe one for you--I

understand that you finally refuse?’ ‘Sir,’ says he, solemnly, ‘I should

be unworthy the name of a father--’ ‘Thank you’--I remarked, feeling

that he was falling back on paternal sentiment--‘thank you; I quite

understand. We will get on, if you please, to the reverse side of the

question.’”

“The reverse side! What reverse side, Ralph? What could you possibly say

more?”

“You shall hear. ‘Being, on your part, thoroughly determined,’ I said,

‘to permit no compromise, and to make my brother (his family of course

included) acknowledge a woman, of whose guilt they entertain not the

slightest doubt, you think you can gain your object by threatening

an exposure. Don’t threaten any more! Make your exposure! Go to the

magistrate at once, if you like! Gibbet our names in the newspaper

report, as a family connected by marriage with Mr. Sherwin the

linen-draper’s daughter, whom they believe to have disgraced herself

as a woman and a wife for ever. Do your very worst; make public every

shameful particular that you can--what advantage will you get by it?

Revenge, I grant you. But will revenge put a halfpenny into your pocket?

Will revenge pay a farthing towards your daughter’s keep? Will revenge

make us receive her? Not a bit of it! We shall be driven into a corner;

we shall have no exposure to dread after you have exposed us; we

shall have no remedy left, but a desperate remedy, and we’ll go to

law--boldly, openly go to law, and get a divorce. We have written

evidence, which you know nothing about, and can call testimony which you

cannot gag. I am no lawyer, but I’ll bet you five hundred to one (quite

in a friendly way, my dear Sir!) that we get our case. What follows? We

send you back your daughter, without a shred of character left to cover

her; and we comfortably wash our hands of _you_ altogether.’”

“Ralph! Ralph! how could you--”

“Stop! hear the end of it. Of course I knew that we couldn’t carry out

this divorce-threat, without its being the death of my father; but

I thought a little quiet bullying on my part might do Mr. Shopkeeper

Sherwin some good. And I was right. You never saw a man sit sorer on the

sharp edges of a dilemma than he did. I stuck to my point in spite of

everything; silence and money, or exposure and divorce--just which

he pleased. ‘I deny every one of your infamous imputations,’ said he.

‘That’s not the question,’ said I. ‘I’ll go to your father,’ said he.

‘You won’t be let in,’ said I. ‘I’ll write to him,’ said he. ‘He won’t

receive your letter,’ said I. There we came to a pull-up. _He_ began

to stammer, and _I_ refreshed myself with a pinch of snuff. Finding it

wouldn’t do, he threw off the Roman at last, and resumed the Tradesman.

‘Even supposing I consented to this abominable compromise, what is to

become of my daughter?’ he asked. ‘Just what becomes of other people who

have comfortable annuities to live on,’ I answered. ‘Affection for my

deeply-wronged child half inclines me to consult her wishes, before we

settle anything--I’ll go up-stairs,’ said he. ‘And I’ll wait for you

down here,’ said I.”

“Did he object to that?”

“Not he. He went up-stairs, and in a few minutes ran down again, with

an open letter in his hand, looking as if the devil was after him before

his time. At the last three or four stairs, he tripped, caught at the

bannisters, dropped the letter over them in doing so, tumbled into the

passage in such a fury and fright that he looked like a madman, tore his

hat off a peg, and rushed out. I just heard him say his daughter should

come back, if he put a straight waistcoat on her, as he passed the door.

Between his tumble, his passion, and his hurry, he never thought of

coming back for the letter he had dropped over the bannisters. I picked

it up before I went away, suspecting it might be good evidence on our

side; and I was right. Read it yourself; Basil; you have every moral and

legal claim on the precious document--and here it is.”

I took the letter, and read (in Mannion’s handwriting) these words,

dated from the hospital:--

“I have received your last note, and cannot wonder that you are getting

impatient under restraint. But, remember, that if you had not acted as

I warned you beforehand to act in case of accidents--if you had not

protested innocence to your father, and preserved total silence towards

your mother; if you had not kept in close retirement, behaving like

a domestic martyr, and avoiding, in your character of a victim, all

voluntary mention of your husband’s name--your position might have been

a very awkward one. Not being able to help you, the only thing I could

do was to teach you how to help yourself. I gave you the lesson, and you

have been wise enough to profit by it.

“The time has now come for a change in my plans. I have suffered

a relapse; and the date of my discharge from this place is still

uncertain. I doubt the security, both on your account, and on mine, of

still leaving you at your father’s house, to await my cure. Come to

me here, therefore, to-morrow, at any hour when you can get away

unperceived. You will be let in as a visitor, and shown to my bedside,

if you ask for Mr. Turner--the name I have given to the hospital

authorities. Through the help of a friend outside these walls, I have

arranged for a lodging in which you can live undiscovered, until I am

discharged and can join you. You can come here twice a week, if you

like, and you had better do so, to accustom yourself to the sight of

my injuries. I told you in my first letter how and where they had

been inflicted--when you see them with your own eyes, you will be best

prepared to hear what my future purposes are, and how you can aid them.

“R. M.”

This was evidently the letter about which I had been consulted by the

servant at North Villa; the date corresponded with the date of Mannion’s

letter to me. I noticed that the envelope was missing, and asked Ralph

whether he had got it.

“No,” he replied; “Sherwin dropped the letter just in the state in which

I have given it to you. I suspect the girl took away the envelope with

her, thinking that the letter which she left behind her was inside.

But the loss of the envelope doesn’t matter. Look there: the fellow has

written her name at the bottom of the leaf; as coolly as if it was an

ordinary correspondence. She is identified with the letter, and that’s

all we want in our future dealings with her father.”

“But, Ralph, do you think--”

“Do I think her father will get her back? If he’s in time to catch her

at the hospital, he assuredly will. If not, we shall have some little

trouble on our side, I suspect. This seems to me to be how the matter

stands now, Basil:--After that letter, and her running away, Sherwin

will have nothing for it but to hold his tongue about her innocence; we

may consider _him_ as settled and done with. As for the other rascal,

Mannion, he certainly writes as if he meant to do something dangerous.

If he really does attempt to annoy us, we will mark him again (I’ll

do it next time, by way of a little change!); _he_ has no marriage

certificate to shake over our heads, at any rate. What’s the matter

now?--you’re looking pale again.”

I _felt_ that my colour was changing, while he spoke. There was

something ominous in the contrast which, at that moment, I could not

fail to draw between Mannion’s enmity, as Ralph ignorantly estimated it,

and as I really knew it. Already the first step towards the conspiracy

with which I was threatened, had been taken by the departure of

Sherwin’s daughter from her father’s house. Should I, at this earliest

warning of coming events, show my brother the letter I had received from

Mannion? No! such defence against the dangers threatened in it as Ralph

would be sure to counsel, and to put in practice, might only include

_him_ in the life-long persecution which menaced _me._ When he repeated

his remark about my sudden paleness, I merely accounted for it by some

common-place excuse, and begged him to proceed.

“I suppose, Basil,” he said, “the truth is, that you can’t help being a

little shocked--though you could expect nothing better from the girl--at

her boldly following this fellow Mannion, even to the hospital” (Ralph

was right; in spite of myself, this feeling was one among the many which

now influenced me.) “Setting that aside, however, we are quite ready, I

take it, to let her stick to her choice, and live just as she pleases,

so long as she doesn’t live under our name. There is the great fear and

great difficulty now! If Sherwin can’t find her, we must; otherwise, we

can never feel certain that she is not incurring all sorts of debts as

your wife. If her father gets her back, I shall be able to bring her

to terms at North Villa; if not, I must get speech of her, wherever she

happens to be hidden. She’s the only thorn in our side now, and we must

pull her out with gold pincers immediately. Don’t you see that, Basil?”

“I see it, Ralph!”

“Very well. Either to-night or to-morrow morning, I’ll communicate with

Sherwin, and find out whether he has laid hands on her. If he hasn’t,

we must go to the hospital, and see what we can discover for ourselves.

Don’t look miserable and downhearted, Basil, I’ll go with you: you

needn’t see her again, or the man either; but you must come with me,

for I may be obliged to make use of you. And now, I’m off for to-day, in

good earnest. I must get back to Mrs. Ralph (unfortunately she happens

to be one of the most sensitive women in the world), or she will be

sending to advertise me in the newspapers. We shall pull through this,

my dear fellow--you will see we shall! By the bye, you don’t know of a

nice little detached house in the Brompton neighbourhood, do you? Most

of my old theatrical friends live about there--a detached house, mind!

The fact is, I have taken to the violin lately (I wonder what I shall

take to next?); Mrs. Ralph accompanies me on the pianoforte; and we

might be an execrable nuisance to very near neighbours--that’s all! You

don’t know of a house? Never mind; I can go to an agent, or something of

that sort. Clara shall know to-night that we are moving prosperously,

if I can only give the worthiest creature in the world the slip: she’s a

little obstinate, but, I assure you, a really superior woman. Only think

of my dropping down to playing the fiddle, and paying rent and taxes

in a suburban villa! How are the fast men fallen! Good bye, Basil, good

bye!”

VII.

The next morning, Ralph never appeared--the day passed on, and I heard

nothing--at last, when it was evening, a letter came from him.

The letter informed me that my brother had written to Mr. Sherwin,

simply asking whether he had recovered his daughter. The answer to

this question did not arrive till late in the day; and was in the

negative--Mr. Sherwin had not found his daughter. She had left the

hospital before he got there; and no one could tell him whither she

had gone. His language and manner, as he himself admitted, had been so

violent that he was not allowed to enter the ward where Mannion lay.

When he returned home, he found his wife at the point of death; and on

the same evening she expired. Ralph described his letter, as the letter

of a man half out of his senses. He only mentioned his daughter, to

declare, in terms almost of fury, that he would accuse her before his

wife’s surviving relatives, of having been the cause of her mother’s

death; and called down the most terrible denunciations on his own head,

if he ever spoke to his child again, though he should see her starving

before him in the streets. In a postscript, Ralph informed me that he

would call the next morning, and concert measures for tracking Sherwin’s

daughter to her present retreat.

Every sentence in this letter bore warning of the crisis which was now

close at hand; yet I had as little of the desire as of the power to

prepare for it. A superstitious conviction that my actions were governed

by a fatality which no human foresight could alter or avoid, began to

strengthen within me. From this time forth, I awaited events with the

uninquiring patience, the helpless resignation of despair.

My brother came, punctual to his appointment. When he proposed that I

should at once accompany him to the hospital, I never hesitated at doing

as he desired. We reached our destination; and Ralph approached the

gates to make his first enquiries.

He was still speaking to the porter, when a gentleman advanced towards

them, on his way out of the hospital. I saw him recognise my brother,

and heard Ralph exclaim:

“Bernard! Jack Bernard! Have you come to England, of all the men in the

world!”

“Why not?” was the answer. “I got every surgical testimonial the _Hotel

Dieu_ could give me, six months ago; and couldn’t afford to stay

in Paris only for my pleasure. Do you remember calling me a ‘mute,

inglorious Liston,’ long ago, when we last met? Well, I have come to

England to soar out of my obscurity and blaze into a shining light of

the profession. Plenty of practice at the hospital, here--very little

anywhere else, I am sorry to say.”

“You don’t mean that you belong to _this_ hospital?”

“My dear fellow, I am regularly on the staff; I’m here every day of my

life.”

“You’re the very man to enlighten us. Here, Basil, cross over, and

let me introduce you to an old Paris friend of mine. Mr. Bernard--my

brother. You’ve often heard me talk, Basil, of a younger son of old Sir

William Bernard’s, who preferred a cure of bodies to a cure of souls;

and actually insisted on working in a hospital when he might have

idled in a family living. This is the man--the best of doctors and good

fellows.”

“Are you bringing your brother to the hospital to follow my mad

example?” asked Mr. Bernard, as he shook hands with me.

“Not exactly, Jack! But we really have an object in coming here. Can you

give us ten minutes’ talk, somewhere in private? We want to know about

one of your patients.”

He led us into an empty room, on the ground-floor of the building.

“Leave the matter in my hands,” whispered Ralph to me, as we sat down.

“I’ll find out everything.”

“Now, Bernard,” he said, “you have a man here, who calls himself Mr.

Turner?”

“Are _you_ a friend of that mysterious patient? Wonderful! The students

call him ‘The Great Mystery of London;’ and I begin to think the

students are right. Do you want to see him? When he has not got his

green shade on, he’s rather a startling sight, I can tell you, for

unprofessional eyes.”

“No, no--at least, not at present; my brother here, not at all. The fact

is, certain circumstances have happened which oblige us to look after

this man; and which I am sure you won’t inquire into, when I tell you

that it is our interest to keep them secret.”

“Certainly not!”

“Then, without any more words about it, our object here, to-day, is to

find out everything we can about Mr. Turner, and the people who have

been to see him. Did a woman come, the day before yesterday?”

“Yes; and behaved rather oddly, I believe. I was not here when she came,

but was told she asked for Turner, in a very agitated manner. She was

directed to the Victoria Ward, where he is; and when she got there,

looked excessively flurried and excited--seeing the Ward quite full,

and, perhaps, not being used to hospitals. However it was, though the

nurse pointed out the right bed to her, she ran in a mighty hurry to the

wrong one.”

“I understand,” said Ralph; “just as some women run into the wrong

omnibus, when the right one is straight before them.”

“Exactly. Well, she only discovered her mistake (the room being rather

dark), after she had stooped down close over the stranger, who was lying

with his head away from her. By that time, the nurse was at her side,

and led her to the right bed. There, I’m told, another scene happened.

At sight of the patient’s face, which is very frightfully disfigured,

she was on the point (as the nurse thought) of going into a fit; but

Turner stopped her in an instant. He just laid his hand on her arm, and

whispered something to her; and, though she turned as pale as ashes, she

was quiet directly. The next thing they say he did, was to give her a

slip of paper, coolly directing her to go to the address written on

it, and to come back to the hospital again, as soon as she could show a

little more resolution. She went away at once--nobody knows where.”

“Has nobody asked where?”

“Yes; a fellow who said he was her father, and who behaved like a

madman. He came here about an hour after she had left, and wouldn’t

believe that we knew nothing about her (how the deuce _should_ we know

anything!) He threatened Turner (whom, by the bye, he called Manning,

or some such name) in such an outrageous manner, that we were obliged

to refuse him admission. Turner himself will give no information on the

subject; but I suspect that his injuries are the result of a quarrel

with the father about the daughter--a pretty savage quarrel, I must say,

looking to the consequences--I beg your pardon, but your brother seems

ill! I’m afraid,” (turning to me), “you find the room rather close?”

“No, indeed; not at all. I have just recovered from a serious

illness--but pray go on.”

“I have very little more to say. The father went away in a fury, just

as he came; the daughter has not yet made her appearance a second time.

But, after what was reported to me of the first interview, I daresay she

_will_ come. She must, if she wants to see Turner; he won’t be out,

I suspect, for another fortnight. He has been making himself worse by

perpetually writing letters; we were rather afraid of erysipelas, but

he’ll get over that danger, I think.”

“About the woman,” said Ralph; “it is of the greatest importance that we

should know where she is now living. Is there any possibility (we will

pay well for it) of getting some sharp fellow to follow her home from

this place, the next time she comes here?”

Mr. Bernard hesitated a moment, and considered.

“I think I can manage it for you with the porter, after you are gone,”

he said, “provided you leave me free to give any remuneration I may

think necessary.”

“Anything in the world, my dear fellow. Have you got pen and ink? I’ll

write down my brother’s address; you can communicate results to him, as

soon as they occur.”

While Mr. Bernard went to the opposite end of the room, in search of

writing materials, Ralph whispered to me--

“If he wrote to _my_ address, Mrs. Ralph might see the letter. She is

the most amiable of her sex; but if written information of a woman’s

residence, directed to me, fell into her hands--you understand, Basil!

Besides, it will be easy to let me know, the moment you hear from Jack.

Look up, young one! It’s all right--we are sailing with wind and tide.”

Here Mr. Bernard brought us pen and ink. While Ralph was writing my

address, his friend said to me:

“I hope you will not suspect me of wishing to intrude on your secrets,

if (assuming your interest in Turner to be the reverse of a friendly

interest) I warn you to look sharply after him when he leaves the

hospital. Either there has been madness in his family, or his brain has

suffered from his external injuries. Legally, he may be quite fit to

be at large; for he will be able to maintain the appearance of perfect

self-possession in all the ordinary affairs of life. But, morally, I am

convinced that he is a dangerous monomaniac; his mania being connected

with some fixed idea which evidently never leaves him day or night. I

would lay a heavy wager that he dies in a prison or a madhouse.”

“And I’ll lay another wager, if he’s mad enough to annoy us, that we are

the people to shut him up,” said Ralph. “There is the address. And now,

we needn’t waste your time any longer. I have taken a little place at

Brompton, Jack,--you and Basil must come and dine with me, as soon as

the carpets are down.”

We left the room. As we crossed the hall, a gentleman came forward, and

spoke to Mr. Bernard.

“That man’s fever in the Victoria Ward has declared itself at last,” he

said. “This morning the new symptoms have appeared.”

“And what do they indicate?”

“Typhus of the most malignant character--not a doubt of it. Come up, and

look at him.”

I saw Mr. Bernard start, and glance quickly at my brother. Ralph fixed

his eyes searchingly on his friend’s face; exclaimed: “Victoria Ward!

why you mentioned that--;” and then stopped, with a very strange and

sudden alteration in his expression. The next moment he drew Mr. Bernard

aside, saying: “I want to ask you whether the bed in Victoria Ward,

occupied by this man whose fever has turned to typhus, is the same bed,

or near the bed which--” The rest of the sentence was lost to me as they

walked away.

After talking together in whispers for a few moments, they rejoined me.

Mr. Bernard was explaining the different theories of infection to Ralph.

_“My_ notion,” he said, “is, that infection is taken through the lungs;

one breath inhaled from the infected atmosphere hanging immediately

around the diseased person, and generally extending about a foot from

him, being enough to communicate his malady to the breather--provided

there exists, at the time, in the individual exposed to catch

the malady, a constitutional predisposition to infection. This

predisposition we know to be greatly increased by mental agitation, or

bodily weakness; but, in the case we have been talking of,” (he looked

at me,) “the chances of infection or non-infection may be equally

balanced. At any rate, I can predict nothing about them at this stage of

the discovery.”

“You will write the moment you hear anything?” said Ralph, shaking hands

with him.

“The very moment. I have your brother’s address safe in my pocket.”

We separated. Ralph was unusually silent and serious on our way back.

He took leave of me at the door of my lodging, very abruptly; without

referring again to our visit to the hospital.

A week passed away, and I heard nothing from Mr. Bernard. During this

interval, I saw little of my brother; he was occupied in moving into

his new house. Towards the latter part of the week, he came to inform

me that he was about to leave London for a few days. My father had asked

him to go to the family house, in the country, on business connected

with the local management of the estates. Ralph still retained all his

old dislike of the steward’s accounts and the lawyer’s consultations;

but he felt bound, out of gratitude for my father’s special kindness

to him since his return to England, to put a constraint on his own

inclinations, and go to the country as he was desired. He did not expect

to be absent more than two or three days; but earnestly charged me to

write to him, if I had any news from the hospital while he was away.

During the week, Clara came twice to see me--escaping from home by

stealth, as before. On each occasion, she showed the same affectionate

anxiety to set me an example of cheerfulness, and to sustain me in

hope. I saw, with a sorrow and apprehension which I could not altogether

conceal from her, that the weary look in her face had never changed,

never diminished since I had first observed it. Ralph had, from motives

of delicacy, avoided increasing the hidden anxieties which were but too

evidently preying upon her health, by keeping her in perfect ignorance

of our visit to the hospital, and, indeed, of the particulars of all our

proceedings since his return. I took care to preserve the same secrecy,

during her short interviews with me. She bade me farewell after her

third visit, with a sadness which she vainly endeavoured to hide. I

little thought, then, that the tones of her sweet, clear voice had

fallen on my ear for the last time, before I wandered to the far West of

England where I now write.

At the end of the week--it was on a Saturday, I remember--I left my

lodgings early in the morning, to go into the country; with no intention

of returning before evening. I had felt a sense of oppression, on

rising, which was almost unendurable. The perspiration stood thick on my

forehead, though the day was not unusually hot; the air of London grew

harder and harder to breathe, with every minute; my heart felt tightened

to bursting; my temples throbbed with fever-fury; my very life seemed to

depend on escaping into pure air, into some place where there was shade

from trees, and water that ran cool and refreshing to look on. So I set

forth, careless in what direction I went; and remained in the country

all day. Evening was changing into night as I got back to London.

I inquired of the servant at my lodging, when she let me in, whether any

letter had arrived for me. She answered, that one had come just after I

had gone out in the morning, and that it was lying on my table. My first

glance at it, showed me Mr. Bernard’s name written in the corner of the

envelope. I eagerly opened the letter, and read these words:

“Private.

“Friday.

“My DEAR SIR,

“On the enclosed slip of paper you will find the address of the young

woman, of whom your brother spoke to me when we met at the hospital.

I regret to say, that the circumstances under which I have obtained

information of her residence, are of the most melancholy nature.

“The plan which I arranged for discovering her abode, in accordance with

your brother’s suggestion, proved useless. The young woman never came to

the hospital a second time. Her address was given to me this morning, by

Turner himself; who begged that I would visit her professionally, as he

had no confidence in the medical man who was then in attendance on

her. Many circumstances combined to make my compliance with his request

anything but easy or desirable; but knowing that you--or your brother

I ought, perhaps, rather to say--were interested in the young woman,

I determined to take the very earliest opportunity of seeing her, and

consulting with her medical attendant. I could not get to her till late

in the afternoon. When I arrived, I found her suffering from one of the

worst attacks of Typhus I ever remember to have seen; and I think it

my duty to state candidly, that I believe her life to be in imminent

danger. At the same time, it is right to inform you that the gentleman

in attendance on her does not share my opinion: he still thinks there is

a good chance of saving her.