CHAPTER I.

Transcriber’s Note

Italic text displayed as: _italic_

LUCIUS DAVOREN

OR

PUBLICANS AND SINNERS

A Novel

BY THE AUTHOR OF

‘LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET’

ETC. ETC. ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. II.

[Illustration]

LONDON

JOHN MAXWELL AND CO.

4 SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET

1873

[_All rights reserved_]

LONDON:

ROBSON AND SONS, PRINTERS, PANCRAS ROAD, N.W.

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

[Illustration]

Book the First.

(_Continued_).

CHAP. PAGE

XIV. GEOFFREY LEARNS THE WORST 1

XV. THE BEGINNING OF A MYSTERY 20

XVI. AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY 41

Book the Second.

I. GEOFFREY BEGINS A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY 64

II. LADY BAKER 82

III. LADY BAKER TELLS THE STORY OF THE PAST 91

IV. LUCIUS MAKES A CONFESSION 115

Book the Third.

I. A CHANGE CAME O’ER THE SPIRIT OF MY DREAM 132

II. LUCIUS IS PUZZLED 143

III. HOMER SIVEWRIGHT’S LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT 151

IV. WHAT LUCIUS SAW BETWIXT MIDNIGHT AND MORNING 171

V. LUCIUS AT FAULT 183

VI. THE PLUNDER OF THE MUNIMENT CHEST 191

VII. THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE 217

VIII. MR. OTRANTO PRONOUNCES AN OPINION 228

IX. THE MYSTERY OF LUCILLE’S PARENTAGE 237

X. MYSTIC MUSIC 256

XI. AT FAULT 264

XII. TROUBLES THICKEN 273

LUCIUS DAVOREN

Book the First.

CHAPTER XIV.

GEOFFREY LEARNS THE WORST.

They had dined, and the letter was written. A week-old moon shone

in the placid heaven; the tender night-stillness had descended upon

the always quiet town; lights twinkled gaily from the casements of

surrounding villas; like a string of jewels gleamed the lamps of the

empty High-street. The slow river wound his sinuous course between the

rushes and the willows with scarce a ripple. No sweeter air could have

breathed among the leaves, no calmer sky could have o’er-canopied this

earth on that night in Verona when young Romeo stole into Capulet’s

garden under the midnight stars. It was a night made for lovers.

The clock struck the half hour after nine as Geoffrey left the hotel,

with his friend’s letter in his pocket; assuredly a strange hour in

which to visit a lady who had forbidden him to visit her at all. But a

man who feels that he is taking a desperate step will hardly stop to

consider the details of time or place which may render it a little more

or less desperate.

To approach the woman he loved armed with a letter from another man; to

bring a stranger’s influence to bear upon her who had been deaf to his

most passionate pleading; to say to her, ‘I myself have failed to touch

your heart, but here is my bosom friend’s prayer in my behalf: will you

grant to his vicarious wooing the grace you have persistently denied to

me?’—what could seem madder, more utterly desperate, than such a course

as this?

Yet women are doubtless strange creatures—a fact which those classic

poets and satirists whose opinions it had been his pleasing task to

study had taken pains to impress on Mr. Hossack’s mind. He remembered

Mrs. Bertram’s agitation in that brief scene with Lucius, her exalted

sense of gratitude. It was just possible that she really might regard

him, even at this hour, as the preserver of her child’s life—second

only to Providence in that time of trouble. And if she thought of him

thus, his influence might have some weight.

‘Dear old fellow!’ thought Geoffrey affectionately; ‘he wouldn’t let me

see the letter. I daresay he has given me no end of a character,—like

other written characters, which are generally of the florid

order—praised me up to the skies. Will his eloquence move her to pity

me, I wonder? I fear not. And I feel odiously caddish, going to deliver

my own testimonials.’

If he could have faced Lucius with any grace, it is possible that he

would have turned back, even on the very threshold of Mrs. Bertram’s

tiny garden. But after bringing his friend down from London, could he

be so churlish as to reject his aid, let it be offered in what manner

so ever?

He plucked up his courage at sight of the lamp in her window—a gentle

light. The upper half of the casement was open, and he heard the dreamy

arpeggios of one of Mendelssohn’s Lieder played by the hand whose

touch even his untutored ear knew so well. In another minute he was

admitted by a neat little servant, who opened the door of the parlour

unhesitatingly, and ushered him straightway in, assured that he had

come to propose a new pupil, and regarding him as the harbinger of

fortune.

‘A gentleman, if you please ’m, to see you.’

Mrs. Bertram rose from the piano, the graceful figure he knew so well,

in the plain black dress, just as he had seen her the first time at the

morning concert in Manchester-square—a certain lofty pose of the head,

the dark eyes looking at him with a grave steady look, after just one

briefest flash of glad surprise, just one faint quiver of the perfect

lips.

‘Mr. Hossack!’

‘Yes, I know you have forbidden me to call upon you, and yet I dare to

come, at this unseasonable hour, in defiance of your command. Forgive

me, Mrs. Bertram, and for pity’s sake hear me. A man cannot go on

living for ever betwixt earth and heaven. A time has come when I feel

that I must either leave this place, and,’ with a faint tremble in his

voice, ‘all that makes it dear to me, or remain to be happier than I

am—happy, at least, in the possession of some sustaining hope. You

remember my friend Davoren—’

Remember him! Her cheek blanched even at the mention of his name.

‘The doctor who came down to see your daughter?’

‘Yes,’ she said, looking at him strangely; ‘I am not likely to forget

Mr. Davoren.’

‘You are too grateful for a trifling service. Well, Davoren, my dear

old friend, the best and truest friend I have, is here again.’

‘Here!’ she cried, looking towards the door as if she expected to see

it open to admit him. ‘O, I should so like to see him again.’

‘He will be only too proud to call upon you to-morrow; but in the mean

time he—Mrs. Bertram, you must forgive me for what I am going to say.

Remember, Davoren is my friend, as near and dear to me as ever brother

was to brother. I have told him the story of my hopeless love—’

‘O, pray, pray, not that subject!’ she said, with a little movement of

her hand, half in warning, half entreaty.

‘I have told him all,’ continued Geoffrey, undeterred by that

deprecating gesture, ‘and he has written to you, believing that his

influence might move you a little in my favour. You will not refuse

to read his letter, will you, Mrs. Bertram, or feel offended by his

interference?’

‘No,’ she said, holding out her hand to receive the letter; ‘I can

refuse him nothing.’

She betrayed neither surprise nor anger, but read the letter, which was

somewhat long, with deepest interest. Her countenance, as she read,

watched closely by her lover, betrayed stronger emotion than he had

ever yet seen in that inscrutable face. Tears gathered on her eyelids

ere she had finished, and at the end a half-stifled sob burst from that

proud bosom.

‘_His_ eloquence has more power than mine,’ said Geoffrey, with

kindling jealousy.

‘He pleads well,’ she answered, with a slow sad smile—‘pleads as few

men know how to plead for another. He urges me to be very frank with

you, Mr. Hossack; bids me remember the priceless worth of a heart as

true and noble as that you have offered me; entreats me, for the sake

of my own happiness and of yours, to tell you the wretched story of

my past life. And if, when all is told, wisdom or honour counsels you

to leave me, why,’ with a faint broken laugh, ‘you have but to bid me

good-bye, and go away, disenchanted and happy.’

‘Happy without you! Never; nor do I believe your power to disenchant

me.’

‘Do not promise too much. My—this letter bids me do what, of my own

free will, I never could have done—tell you the story of my life.

Perhaps I had better write to you; yet no, it might be still more

difficult. I will tell you all, at once. And then hate me or despise

me, as you will. You must at least remember that I have never courted

your love.’

‘I know that you have been the most cruel among women, the most

inexorable—’

‘I was not so once, but rather the weakest. Hear my story, as briefly,

as plainly as I can tell it. Years ago I was a guest at a great lady’s

house—a visitor among people who were above me in rank, but who were

pleased to take a fancy to me, as the phrase goes, because I had some

little talent for music. I sang and played well enough to amuse them

and their guests. The lady was an amateur, raved about music, and

delighted in bringing musical people about her. Among her favourites

when I visited her was one who had a rare genius—a man with whom

music was a second nature, whose whole being seemed to be absorbed

by his art. Violinist, pianist, organist, with a power of passionate

expression that gave a new magic even to the most familiar melodies, he

seemed the very genius of music. I heard him, and, like my patroness,

was enchanted. She was amused to see my delight; threw us much

together; wove a little romance out of our companionship; made us play

and sing together; and in a word, with the most innocent and kindly

intentions, prepared the way for my deepest misery.’

‘You loved this man!’ cried Geoffrey, ready to hate him on that ground.

‘Loved him! I thought so then. There are times when I believe I never

really loved him, that the glamour which he cast around me was only the

magic of his art. But for the time being my mind was utterly subjugated

by his influence; I had no thought but of him, and, fascinated by his

genius, deemed him worthy of a self-sacrificing love. He was a creature

of mystery—a mere waif and stray, admitted to the house where I met him

on no better recommendation than his genius. He had the manners and

education of a gentleman, the eccentricities of an artist. He asked me

to be his wife, disregarded my refusal, pursued me with an unwearying

persistence, and, aided by the wondrous power of his genius, triumphed

over every argument, conquered every opposition, wrung from me my

consent to a secret union. It would be useless to repeat his specious

statements—his pretended reasons for desiring a secret marriage. I was

weak enough, wicked enough, to consent to the arrangement he proposed;

but not until after many a bitter struggle.’

‘Why pain yourself by these wretched memories?’ exclaimed Geoffrey.

‘Tell me nothing except that you will be my wife. I will take all the

rest upon trust. There is no such thing as truth or purity in woman if

you are not worthy of an honest man’s love.’

‘You shall hear me to the end,’ she answered quietly, ‘and then

pronounce whether I am or not. The house in which we were visitors was

only two miles from a cathedral city. He of whom I have been speaking—’

‘Mr. Bertram.’

‘I will call him Bertram, although I am bound to tell you that name is

not the true one. Mr. Bertram proposed a marriage before the registrar

in the cathedral town. We both had been long enough resident in the

neighbourhood for the necessary notice. Indeed, that notice had been

given some days before I gave my most reluctant consent. At the last,

harassed by Mr. Bertram’s importunity, loving him with a girl’s first

romantic fancy, and believing that I was the object of a most devoted

love, without an adviser or friend at hand to whom I could appeal,

conscious that I was guilty of ingratitude and disobedience towards the

dearest and best of parents, I suffered myself to be hurried into this

wretched union. We walked across the park early one morning, and went

to the registrar’s office, where the brief form was gone through, and

my lover told me I was his wife. I went home that very day, for the

necessity of a fortnight’s notice to the registrar had deferred the

marriage to the last day of my visit. I went back to the parents who

loved and trusted me, weighed down by the burden of my guilty secret.’

‘Was Mr. Bertram’s rank superior to yours? and was that his reason for

secrecy?’ asked Geoffrey.

‘He made me believe as much. He told me that he hazarded position and

fortune by marrying me, and I believed him. I was not quite nineteen,

and had been brought up in a small country town, brought up by people

to whom falsehood was impossible. You may suppose that I was an easy

dupe. Some time after my return he appeared in our little town. I

implored him to tell my father and mother, or to let me tell them of

our marriage. He refused, giving me his reasons for that refusal; using

the same arguments he had employed before, and to which I was obliged

to submit, reluctantly enough, Heaven knows. But when he claimed me as

his wife, and reminded me that I was bound to follow his fortunes, I

refused to obey. I told him that the marriage before the registrar had

to me seemed no marriage at all, and that I would never leave home and

kindred for his sake until I had stood before God’s altar by his side.

This, which he called a mere school-girl prejudice, made him angry;

but after a time he gave way, and told me that I should be satisfied.

He would marry me in my father’s church, but our union must not the

less remain a secret. He had a friend, a curate in a London parish, who

would come down to perform the ceremony quietly one morning, without

witnesses. The marriage before the registrar was ample for all legal

purposes, he told me. This marriage in the church was to be only for

the satisfaction of my conscience, and it mattered not how informal it

might be. No witnesses would be wanted, no entry need be made in the

Register.’

‘Never shall I forget that day—the empty church wrapt in shadow, the

rain beating against the great window over the altar, the face of the

stranger who read the service, the dreary sense of loneliness and

helplessness that crept about my heart as I stood by the side of him

for whom I was now to forsake all I had loved. Never, surely, was there

a more mournful wedding. I felt guilty, miserable, despairing, my heart

at this last hour clinging most fondly to those from whom I was about

to sever myself, perhaps for life. When the service ended, the stranger

who had read it looked at me in a curious way and left the church,

after a little whispered talk with my husband. When he had gone,

Bertram went straight to the organ—that organ on which he had played

for many an hour during the last few weeks—and struck the opening

chords of the “Wedding March.”

“Come, Janet,” he cried, “let us have our triumphal music, if we have

no other item in the pageantry of a wedding.”

‘He played, as he always played, like a man who, for the time being,

lived only in music; but for my overburdened heart even that magic had

no soothing influence. I left the organ-loft, and went down-stairs

again. Here, in the dimly-lighted aisle, I almost stumbled against the

stranger who had read the marriage-service.

“I was anxious to see you,” he began, in a nervous hesitating way, and

very slowly—“anxious to be assured that all was right. You have been

already married before the registrar, your husband informs me, and

this ceremonial of to-day is merely for the satisfaction of your own

conscience; yet I am bound to inform you—”

‘The last notes of the “Wedding March” had pealed out from the old

organ before this, and I heard my husband’s footstep behind me as the

stranger spoke. He came quickly to the spot where we stood, and put my

arm through his.

“I thought I told you, Leslie, that my wife has had the whole business

fully explained to her,” he said.

‘The stranger muttered something which sounded like an apology, bowed

to me, wished my husband good-bye, and hurried away. If he had come

back to the church to give me friendly counsel or timely warning, he

quitted it with his intention unfulfilled.

‘I left my father’s house secretly at daybreak next morning, half

heartbroken. I have no excuse to plead for this wicked desertion of

parents who had loved me only too well; or only the common excuse that

I loved the man who tempted me away from them—loved him above duty,

honour, self-respect. I left the dear old home where I had been so

happy, conscious that I left it under a cloud. Only in the future could

I see myself reestablished in the love and confidence of my father and

mother; but Mr. Bertram assured me that future was not far off. Of the

bitter time that followed, I will speak as briefly as possible. Mine

was a wretched wandering life, linked with a man whom I discovered but

too soon to be utterly wanting in honour or principle; a life spent

with one whose only profession was to prey upon his fellow men; who

knew no scruple where his own advantage was in question; whom I soon

knew to be relentless, heartless, false to the very core. Heaven knows

it is hard to say all this of one I had so deeply loved, for whom I

had hazarded and lost so much. Enough that the day came when I could

no longer endure the dishonour of association with him; when I felt

that I would sooner go out into the bleak world of which I knew so

little, and commit my own fate and my child’s to the mercy of God, than

share the degradation of a life sustained by fraud. I told my husband

as much: that finding all my endeavours to persuade him to alter his

mode of life worse than useless, since they led only to bursts of

scornful anger on his part, I had resolved to leave him, and live as I

best might by my own industry, or, if God pleased, starve. He heard my

decision with supreme indifference, and turning to me with the bitter

smile I knew so well, said:

“I congratulate you on having arrived at so wise a decision. The

matrimonial fetters have galled us both. I thought you a clever woman,

and a fitting helpmeet for a man who has to live by his wits. I find

you a puling fool, with a mind cramped by the teaching of a country

parsonage. Our union has been a mistake for both; but I am happy

to inform you that it is not irrevocable. Our marriage before the

registrar and our marriage in the church are alike null and void; for

I had a wife living at the time, and, for aught I know, have still.”’

‘The consummate scoundrel,’ cried Geoffrey, with a smothered curse;

‘but why do you tell me these things? why torture yourself by recalling

them? However wronged by this villain, in my eyes you are purest among

the pure.’

‘I have little more to tell. He took the initiative, and left me with

my child in furnished lodgings in a garrison town, where he had found

profitable society among the officers of the regiment then quartered

there, and had distinguished himself by his skill at billiards. He left

me penniless, and at the mercy of the lodging-house-keeper, to whom

he owed a heavy bill. I will not trouble you with the details of my

life from this point. Happily for me, the woman was merciful. I freely

surrendered the few trinkets I possessed, and she suffered me to depart

unmolested with my own and my child’s small stock of clothes. I removed

to humbler lodgings, gave lessons in music and singing, struggled

on, paid my way, and after some time left the town with my child and

came straight to London, glad to be lost in that ocean of humanity.

I had heard before this of the death of both my parents—heard with a

remorseful grief which I shall continue to suffer till my dying day:

the sin of ingratitude such as mine entails a lifelong punishment.

I was therefore quite alone in the world. I think if it had not been

for my little girl I could hardly have survived so much misery, hardly

have faced a future so hopeless. But that one tie bound me to life—that

sweet companionship made sorrow endurable—lent a brightness even to my

darkest days. I have no more to tell; God has been very good to me. All

my efforts have prospered.’

‘I know not how to thank you for this confidence,’ said Geoffrey, ‘for

to my mind it removes every barrier between us, if you only can return,

in some small measure, the love I have given you, and which must be

yours till the end of my life.’

‘You forget,’ she said sadly, ‘he who is in my estimation my husband

still lives; or, at least, I have had no evidence of his death.’

‘What! you would hold yourself bound by a tie which he told you was

worthless?’

‘I swore before God’s altar, in my father’s church, to cleave to him

till death should part us. If he perjured himself, there is no reason

why I should break my vow. I left him because to live with him was to

participate in a life of fraud and dishonour, but I hold him not the

less my husband. If you have any doubt of the story I have told you,

the books of the registrar at Tyrrelhurst, in Hampshire, will confirm

my story.’

‘If I doubt you!’ cried Geoffrey. ‘I am as incapable of doubting you

as you are of falsehood. But for Heaven’s sake abandon this idea of

holding by a marriage which was from first to last a lie!’

Then followed passionate pleading, met by a resolution so calm, yet

so inflexible, that in the end Geoffrey Hossack felt his prayers were

idle, and farther persistence must needs degenerate into persecution.

‘Be it so!’ he exclaimed at last, angry and despairing; ‘you have been

consistently cruel from the first. Why did you suffer me to love you,

only to break my heart? Since it must be so, I bid you farewell, and

leave you to the satisfaction of remaining true to a scoundrel.’

He hurried from the room and from the house, not trusting himself

with a last look at the face which had wrought this fever in his

brain; rushed away through the tranquil summer night, neither knowing

nor caring where he went, but wandering on by the grassy banks that

followed the sinuous river, by farm and homestead, lock and weir, under

the shadow of hill and wood. It was nearly three hours after midnight

when the sleepy Boots admitted Mr. Hossack to the respectable family

hotel, and Lucius Davoren was waiting for him, full of anxiety and even

fear.

‘If I had known anything of this place, I should have come out in

search of you, Geoffrey,’ he said. ‘It isn’t the kindest thing in the

world to ask a man to come down here to see you, and then leave him

for five mortal hours under the apprehension that you have come to an

untimely end.’

Geoffrey wiped the travel stains from his forehead with a long-drawn

sigh.

‘I was too downhearted to come straight home,’ he said, ‘so I went for

a walk. I suppose I walked a little too far, but don’t be angry, old

fellow. I’m as nearly broken-hearted as a man can be.’

‘Did she tell you all?’

‘Everything; a dismal story, but one that proves her to be all I have

ever believed her—sinned against but sinless. And now, Lucius, can you

explain how it was that your letter could influence her to do what she

would have never done for my sake?’

‘Easily. You have proved yourself a true-hearted fellow, Geoffrey, and

I’ll trust you with a secret—Mrs. Bertram is my sister.’

‘Your sister?’ cried Geoffrey, with supreme astonishment.

‘Yes, the sister whose name I have not uttered for years, but whom I

have never ceased to love. My sister Janet, who left her home eight

years ago under a cloud of mystery, and whose wrongs I then swore to

avenge.’

‘How long have you known this—that my Mrs. Bertram and your sister were

one and the same person?’

‘Only since I came to Stillmington to see the little girl.’

‘Then this explains her emotion that night. Thank God! Dear old

Lucius—and now, as you love her, as you love me, your friend and

companion in the days of our youth—use your influence with her,

persuade her to abandon all memory of that villain, to blot him out of

her life as if he had never been.’

‘I have tried that already, and failed. I thought your love might

accomplish what my arguments could not achieve. I fear the case is

hopeless. But my duty as a brother remains, to find this man, if

possible, and ascertain for myself whether the marriage was legal or

not. He may have told Janet that story of another wife out of pure

malice.’

CHAPTER XV.

THE BEGINNING OF A MYSTERY.

Lucius had a long interview with Mrs. Bertram on the following morning,

and he and Geoffrey left Stillmington together in the afternoon; to the

despair of the proprietor of the family hotel, who had not had such a

customer as Mr. Hossack for many years, not even during that halcyon

period which he spoke of fondly as ‘our ’untin’ season.’ They travelled

to London by the same express-train, having a long and friendly talk on

the way, Geoffrey _en route_ for Christiana, with a view to shooting

grouse among the Norwegian hills, and if it were possible in some

measure to stifle the pangs of hopeless love in the keen joys of the

sportsman; Lucius to return to the beaten round of a parish doctor’s

life, brightened only by those happy hours which he spent in the old

house with Lucille.

It was too late to visit Cedar House on the evening of his return from

Stillmington, so Lucius and Geoffrey dined, or supped, together at the

Cosmopolitan, and had, what the latter called, ‘a gaudy night;’ a

night of prolonged and confidential talk rather than of deep drinking,

however; for Lucius was the most temperate of men, and with Geoffrey

pleasure never meant dissipation. They talked of the future; and hope

kindled in Geoffrey’s breast as they talked. Not always would Fate be

inexorable; not always would the woman he loved be inaccessible to his

prayers.

‘I could hardly bear my life if it were not for one fond hope,’ he

said; ‘and even that is, perhaps, a delusion. I believe that she loves

me.’

‘I know she does,’ replied Lucius; and the two men grasped hands across

the table.

‘She has told you!’ cried Geoffrey, rapture gleaming in his honest face.

‘She has told me. Yes, Geoffrey, a love such as yours deserves some

recompense. My sister confessed that you had made yourself only too

dear to her; that but for the tie which she deems binding until death

she would have been proud to become your wife.’

‘God bless her! Yes, I have been buoyed up by the belief in her love,

and that will sustain me still. Did she tell you nothing of that

wretch—her husband—nothing that may serve as a clue for you to hunt him

down?’

‘Very little; or very little more than I already knew. She gave me a

general description of the man; but she possesses no likeness of him,

so even that poor clue is wanting. The name he bore was doubtless an

assumed one, therefore that can help us little. But the strangest part

of all this strange story is—’

‘What, Lucius?’

‘That the description of this man, Vandeleur—that was the name

under which he married my sister—tallies in many respects with the

description of another man, whose fate I have pledged myself to

discover; a man who had the same genius for music, and was as complete

a scoundrel.’

Hereupon Lucius told his friend the story of his engagement to Lucille

Sivewright, and the condition attached to its fulfilment, to which

Geoffrey lent an attentive ear.

‘You say this man sailed for Spanish America in the year ’53. Your

sister was married in ’58. How, then, can you suppose that Lucille’s

father and the man calling himself Vandeleur are one and the same

person?’

‘There would have been ample time for Sivewright to have grown tired of

America between ’53 and ’58.’

‘So there might. Yet it seems altogether gratuitous to suppose any

identity between the two men. Musical genius is not so exceptional a

quality; nor is scoundrelism the most uncommon of attributes to be

found among the varieties of mankind.’

They discussed the subject at length in all its bearings. It was a

relief to Lucius to unburden his mind to the friend he loved and

trusted; the chosen companion of so many adventures; the man whose

shrewd sense he had never found wanting in the hour of difficulty.

They talked long and late, and Lucius slept at the Cosmopolitan, and

returned to the Shadrack district at an hour when the domestics of that

popular hotel were only just opening their weary eyelids on the summer

morning.

He spent his day in the accustomed round of toil; had double work

to do in consequence of his brief holiday; found the atmosphere

of the Shadrack-road heavy and oppressive in the sultry noontide,

after the clearer air and bluer skies of the hills and woods round

Stillmington. And that all-pervading aspect of poverty which marked

the streets and alleys of his parish struck him more keenly after

the smug respectability and prosperous trimness of Stillmington’s

dainty High-street and newly-erected villas. He travelled over the

beaten track somewhat wearily, and felt ever so little inclined to

envy Geoffrey, who was by this time hurrying across the face of the

sun-dappled country-side, in the Hull express, on the first stage to

Norway. But he was no whit less patient than usual in his attention to

the parish invalids; and when the long day was done he turned homeward

hopefully, to refresh himself after his labours before presenting

himself at Cedar Lodge.

It was dusk when Mrs. Wincher admitted him into the blossomless

courtyard. Mr. Sivewright had retired for the night, but Lucille was at

work in the parlour, Mrs. Wincher informed him, with her protecting air.

‘You never come anigh us yesterday, nor yet the day before, Dr.

Davory,’ she said, ‘and Mr. Sivewright was quite grumptious about

it—said as he began to feel you was neglecting of him. “It serves me

right,” he said, “for believin’ as any doctor would go on caring for

his patient without the hope of a fee;” but I took him up sharp enough,

and told him he ought to know you’d never looked at your attendance

here from a fanatical pint of view.’

‘Meaning financial, I suppose, Mrs. Wincher?’

‘O lor, yes, if you like it better pernounced that way. I gave it him

up-right and down-straight, you may be sure.’

‘It was very good of you to defend the absent. Nothing but absolute

necessity would have kept me away from this house even for two days.

Has Miss Sivewright been quite well?’

Mrs. Wincher hesitated before replying, and Lucius repeated his

question anxiously.

‘Well, yes; I can’t say as there’s been anythink amiss with her. Only

yesterday evening,’ here Mrs. Wincher dropped her voice, and came very

close to him, with a mysterious air, ‘between the lights—blind man’s

holiday, as my good gentleman calls it in his jocose way—she gave me

a bit of a turn. She’d been walking in the garden, and down by that

blessed old wharf, where there’s nothink better than stagnant mud and

strange cats for anybody to look at, and it might be just about as dark

as it is now, when she came past the window of the boothouse, where I

happened to be scouring my saucepans and such-like; for the work do get

behindhand in this great barrack of a place. You know the boothouse,

don’t you, Dr. Davory,—the little low building with the peaky roof,

just beyond the laundry?’

‘Yes, I know. Go on, pray.’

‘Well, she came past the window, looking so pale and strange, with her

hands clasped upon her forehead, as if she’d been struck all of a heap

by somethink as had frightened her. I bounced out upon her sudding,

and I suppose that scared her all the more; for she gave a little

skreek, and seemed as if she’d have dropped on the ground. “Lor, Miss

Lucille,” says I, “it’s only me. What in goodness name’s the matter?”

But she turned it off in her quiet way, and said she’d only felt a

little dull and lonesome-like without you. “Miss Lucille,” says I,

“you look for all the world as if you’d seen a ghost.” And she looks

at me with her quiet smile, and says, “People do see ghosts sometimes,

Wincher; but I’ve seen none to-night;” and then all of a sudding she

gives way, and busts out crying. “Astaricall,” says I; and I takes her

into the parlour, and makes her lie down on the sofa, and biles up the

kittle with half a bundle of wood, and makes her a cup of tea, and

after that she comes round again all right. You mustn’t let out to her

that I’ve told you about it, Dr. Davory; for she begged and prayed of

me not to say a word, only I thought it my bonding duty to tell you.’

‘And you were right, Mrs. Wincher. No, I’ll not betray you. This dismal

old house is enough to blight any life. How I wish I could take her to

a brighter home without delay!’

‘I’m sure I wish you could,’ answered Mrs. Wincher heartily; ‘for I

must say there never was a house that less repaid the trouble of

cleaning, or weighed heavier on the spirits.’

This little exchange of confidences had taken place in the forecourt,

where Mrs. Wincher had detained Mr. Davoren while she disburdened her

bosom of its weight.

Lucius went straight to the parlour, where Lucille was seated before

a formidable pile of household linen—table-cloths in the last stage

of attenuation, sheets worn threadbare, which she was darning with a

sublime patience. She looked up as Lucius entered the room, and a faint

flush lighted up the pale face at sight of her lover. Yet, despite

her pleasure at his return, he saw that she had changed for the worse

during his brief absence. The transient glow faded from her cheek, and

left her paler than of old; the hand Lucius held in both his own was

burning with a slow fever.

‘My dearest,’ he said anxiously, ‘has anything been amiss in my

absence?’

‘Was not your absence itself amiss?’ she asked, with the faintest

possible smile. ‘I have been very dull and very sad without you; that

is all.’

‘And you have fretted yourself into a fever. O, Lucille, end all

difficulties; make no impossible conditions, and let me take you

away from this great lonely house very soon. I cannot give you the

fair home we have talked about yet awhile—it may even be long before

prosperity comes to us; but all that patience and courage can do to

achieve fortune, I will do for your dear sake. I would not ask you to

share debt or poverty, Lucille; I would not urge you to link your fate

with mine if I did not see my way to a secure position, if I had not

already the means of providing a decent home for my sweet young bride.’

‘Do you think that the fear of poverty has ever influenced me? No,

Lucius, you must know me better than that. But I will not let you

burden yourself too soon with a wife. Believe me, I am more than

content. I am very happy in my present life, for I see you nearly every

day. And I would not leave my poor old grandfather in his declining

years. Let us think of our marriage as something still a long way

off—in that happy future which it is so sweet to talk and dream about.

Only, Lucius,’ she went on in a faltering tone, and with a downward

look in the eyes that were wont to meet his own so frankly, ‘you spoke

just now of my having imposed too hard a condition upon you—you meant,

of course, with regard to my father?’

‘Yes, dear.’

‘I have been thinking a great deal about this subject in your absence,

and have come to see it in a new light. The condition was too

difficult; forget that I ever imposed it. I am content to know no more

of my father’s fate than I know already.’

‘This change is very sudden, Lucille.’

‘No, it is not sudden. I have had ample time for thought in these two

long days. I had no right to ask so much of you. Let my father’s fate

be what it may, neither you nor I could have power to alter it.’

It happened somewhat strangely that this release was not altogether

welcome to Lucius. He had thought his mistress unreasonable before; he

thought her capricious now.

‘I have no desire in this business except to obey you,’ he said

somewhat coldly. ‘Am I to understand, then, that I am absolved from my

promise? I am to make no farther effort to discover Mr. Sivewright’s

fate.’

‘No farther effort. I renounce altogether the idea of tracing out my

father’s life.’

‘You are content to remain in utter ignorance of his fate—not to know

whether he is living or dead?’

‘He is in God’s hands. What could my feeble help do for him?’

‘And after cherishing the idea of finding him all these years, you

abandon the notion at once and for ever?’

‘Yes. You think me changeable—frivolous, perhaps?’ with a faint sigh.

‘Forgive me, Lucille. I cannot help thinking you just a little

capricious. I am naturally very glad to be released from the task you

imposed upon me, which I felt was almost impossible. Yet I can but

wonder that your opinions should undergo so complete a change. However,

I do not question the wisdom of your present decision. I have placed

the business in the hands of Mr. Otranto, the detective. You wish me to

withdraw it—to forbid farther inquiries on his part.’

‘Yes! It will be better so. He is not likely to discover the truth. He

would only raise false hopes, to end in bitter disappointment.’

‘His manner was certainly far from hopeful when I put the case before

him. But these men have an extraordinary power of hunting up evidence.

He might succeed.’

‘No, no, Lucius. He would only lure you on to spend all your

hardly-earned money, and fail at last. Tell him your inquiry is at an

end. And now let us say no more about this painful subject. You are

not angry with me Lucius, for having caused you so much trouble?’

‘It is impossible for me to be angry with you, Lucille,’ answered the

surgeon; and then followed the foolish lovers’ talk, at which Mrs.

Wincher (presently appearing with the supper tray, whereon was set

forth a banquet consisting of a plate of hard biscuits and a tumbler of

London milk, for Lucille’s refreshment), assisted in her capacity of

duenna and guardian angel, for half an hour of unalloyed bliss; after

which she escorted Lucius to the grim old gate, like a state prisoner

led across the garden of the Tower on his way to execution.

‘I shall come early to-morrow to see your grandfather,’ said Lucius to

Lucille at parting.

He went home lighter-hearted than usual. It was a relief to be rid of

that troublesome search for a man who seemed to have vanished utterly

from human ken. He wrote to Mr. Otranto, the detective, that very

night, bidding him abandon the inquiry about Ferdinand Sivewright.

Mr. Sivewright received his medical attendant with a somewhat fretful

air next morning, and Lucius was both shocked and surprised to discover

that a change for the worse had occurred in his patient during his

absence. There was a touch of fever that was new to the case—a nervous

depression, such as he had not found in the invalid for some time past.

But this change seemed the effect of mental excitement rather than of

physical weakness.

‘Why did you leave me so long?’ asked Mr. Sivewright peevishly. ‘But

I am a fool to ask such a question. I pay you nothing, and it is not

likely you would allow any consideration for my comfort to stand in the

way of your pleasures.’

‘I have not been taking pleasure,’ answered Lucius quietly, ‘nor

could I give you more honest service than I do now were you to pay me

five hundred a year for my attendance. Why are you always so ready to

suspect me of sordid motives?’

‘Because I have never found mankind governed by any other motives,’

replied the old man. ‘However, I daresay I wrong you. I like you,

and you have been very good to me; so good that I have come to lean

upon you as if you were indeed that staff of my age which I ought to

have found in a son. I am glad you have come back. Do you believe in

sinister influences, in presentiments of approaching misfortune? Do you

believe that Death casts a warning shadow across our path when he draws

near us?’

‘I believe that invalids are fanciful,’ answered Lucius lightly; ‘you

have been thinking too much during my absence.’

‘Fanciful!’ repeated Mr. Sivewright with a sigh, ‘yes, it may have

been nothing more than a sick man’s fancy. Yet I have seemed to feel a

shadowy presence in this house—the unseen presence of an enemy. There

have been strange sounds too in the long sleepless night—not last

night, all was quiet enough then—but on the previous night; sounds of

doors opening and shutting; stealthily opened, stealthily closed, but

not so quietly done as to cheat my wakeful ears. Once I could have

sworn that I heard voices; yet when I questioned both the Winchers next

morning they declared they had heard nothing.’

‘Did you say anything to Lucille about these noises?’

‘Not a word. Do you think I would scare that poor lonely child? No,

the house is dreary enough. I won’t put the notion of ghosts or other

midnight intruders into her head; girls’ brains are quick enough to

grow fancies.’

‘There was wisdom in that reserve,’ said Lucius; and then he went on

thoughtfully, ‘The noises you heard were natural enough, I have no

doubt. Old houses are fruitful of phantoms; doors loosely fastened,

old locks that have lost their spring; given a strong wind, and you

have a ghostly promenade.’

‘But there was no wind the night before last. The air was hot and

sultry. I had my window open all night.’

‘And you may therefore have imagined the noises in yonder road to

be sounds proceeding from the interior of this house. Nothing is so

deceptive as the sense of hearing, especially in nervous subjects.’

‘No, Davoren, I made no such mistake. Nothing you or any one else can

say will convince me that I did not hear the shutting of the heavy

outer door, a door in the back premises that opens upon the garden. I

should, perhaps, have thought less of this fact, strange and alarming

as it is in itself, were it not for my own feelings. From the hour

in which I heard those sounds I have had an overpowering sense of

approaching evil. I feel that something, or some influence inimical to

myself, is near at hand, overshadowing and surrounding my life with its

evil power. I feel almost as I felt twelve years ago, when I woke from

my drugged sleep to find that my son had robbed me.’

‘The delusion of an overwrought brain,’ said Lucius. ‘I must give you a

sedative that will insure better sleep.’

‘No, for pity’s sake,’ cried the old man eagerly, ‘no opiates. Let me

retain my natural sense to the last. If there is danger at hand I need

it all the more.’

‘There can be no such thing as danger,’ said Lucius; ‘but I will

examine the fastenings of that back door, and of all other external

doors, and, if necessary, have the locks and bolts made more secure.’

‘The locks and bolts are strong enough. You need waste no money on

them. I used to fasten all the doors myself every night before my

illness.’

‘You have every reason to trust the Winchers, I suppose?’

‘As much reason as I can have to trust any human being. They have

served me upwards of five-and-twenty years, and I have never yet found

them out in any attempt to cheat me. They may have been robbing me all

the time, nevertheless, as my son robbed me, and may wind up by cutting

my throat.’

‘A crime that would hardly repay them for their trouble, I imagine,’

said Lucius, with his thoughtful smile, ‘since you possess nothing but

your collection, and the assassins could hardly dispose of that.’

‘Perhaps not. But they may think that I am rich—in spite of all I have

ever told them of my poverty—just as you may think that I am rich, and

that the penniless girl you have chosen may turn out a prize by and by.’

‘I have no such thought,’ answered Lucius, meeting his patient’s

cunning look with the calm clear gaze of perfect truth; ‘wealth or

poverty can make no difference in my love for your granddaughter. For

her own sake I might wish that she were not altogether portionless; for

mine I can have no such desire. I value no fortune but such as I can

win for myself.’

‘You speak like a proud man, and a foolish one into the bargain. To

say you do not value money is about as wise as to say you do not value

the air you breathe; for one is almost as necessary to existence as

the other. What does it matter who makes the money, or how it is made,

so long as it finds its way to your pocket? Will a sovereign buy less

because it was scraped out of a gutter? Is wealth one whit the less

powerful though a man crawls through the dirt to win it? Let him

squeeze it from the sweat and toil of his fellow men, it carries no

stain of their labour. Let him cheat for it, lie for it, betray his

brother or abjure his God for it, his fellow men will honour him none

the less, so long as he has enough of it. The gold won on a racecourse

or at a gaming-table, though broken hearts and ruined homes went

along with it, has as true a ring as your honourable independence, by

whatever inspiration of genius or toil of brain you may earn it.’

‘You speak bitterly, like a man who has been accustomed to contemplate

humanity “the seamy side without,”’ said Lucius coldly; ‘but be assured

I have never calculated on being enriched by the fruits of your

industry.’

‘Not even upon finding yourself the inheritor of my collection?’

inquired Mr. Sivewright, his keen eyes peering into the surgeon’s face.

‘I have not even aspired to that honour,’ replied Lucius, with a

somewhat contemptuous glance at the outer shell of painted canvas,

inscribed with hieroglyphics, which encased the defunct Pharaoh.

‘So much the better,’ said the old man. ‘I should be sorry to think you

might be disappointed by and by, when this shrunken form is clay, and

you come to grope among my art treasures, thinking to find some hidden

hoard—the miser’s hoard of slowly-gathered wealth which he loved too

well to spend, and yet was obliged to leave behind him at the last.’

Lucius looked at the speaker curiously. The old man’s pale gray eyes

shone with a vivid light; his thin tremulous hands were spread above

the bedclothes, as if they had been stretched over a pile of gold,

protecting it from a possible assailant.

‘Yes,’ thought Lucius, ‘I have often fancied this man must be a miser;

I am sure of it now. Those words, that gesture, tell their own story.

In spite of all his declarations to the contrary, he is rich, and these

groundless fears spring from the thought of some concealed hoard which

he feels himself powerless to protect.’

He felt some pity, but more contempt, for the subject of these

thoughts, and no elation at the idea that this hoarded wealth might

possibly descend to him. He did his best to soothe the old man’s

excited nerves, and succeeded tolerably well. He had taken up his hat,

and was on the point of hurrying off to begin his daily round—delayed

considerably by the length of this interview—when Mr. Sivewright called

him back.

‘Will it trouble you to return here after your day’s work?’ he asked.

‘Trouble me? very far from it. I had counted on spending my evening

with Lucille—and you, if you are well enough to be plagued with my

company.’

‘You know I always like your company. But to-night I have something to

do; some papers that I want to look over, of no particular importance

either to myself or those that come after me; old documents connected

with my business career and what not. But I want to set my house in

order before I leave it for a narrower one. Now, Davoren, I want you

to hunt up some of these papers for me. I have sent that old fumbler,

Jacob Wincher, to look for them, but the man is purblind, I suppose,

for he did not succeed in finding them. They are in an old oak cabinet

in a loft where I keep the dregs of my collection. Lucille will show

you the place. Here is the key—the lock is a curious one—and the papers

are stowed away in odd corners of the cabinet; inner drawers which

brokers call secret, but which a child might discover at the first

glance. Bring me all the papers you find there.’

‘Do you wish me to make the search now, sir, or in the evening?’

‘In the evening, of course. It is a business to be done at your

leisure. But you must have daylight for it. Come back as early as you

can, like a good fellow; I have a fancy for looking over those papers

to-night. Heaven only knows how many days remain to me.’

‘The same doubt hangs over the lives of all of us,’ answered Lucius.

‘Your case is by no means alarming.’

‘I don’t know that. I have a presentiment of evil, an instinctive

apprehension of danger, like that which all nature feels before the

coming of a storm.’

CHAPTER XVI.

AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY.

The thought of this conversation with Mr. Sivewright followed Lucius

all through the day’s work. He meditated upon it in the intervals

of his toil, and that meditation only tended to confirm him in his

opinion as to the lonely old man. Soured and embittered by his son’s

ingratitude, Homer Sivewright had consoled himself by the indulgence

of that passion which is of all passions the most absorbing—the greed

of gain. As he beheld his profits accumulate he became more and more

parsimonious; surrendered without regret the pleasures for which he had

no taste; and having learned in his poverty to live a life of hardship

and deprivation, was contented to do without luxuries and even comforts

which had never become necessary to his existence. Thus the sole

delight of his days had been the accumulation of money, and who could

tell how far the usurer’s exorbitant profits had gone to swell the

tradesman’s honest gains? The art collection might have been little

more than a cover for the money-lender’s less reputable commerce.

Thus reasoned Lucius. He returned to Cedar House at about five in the

afternoon, having dined hastily at a coffee-house in the Shadrack-road,

in the midst of his day’s work.

He found the table in the spacious old parlour laid for tea, and drawn

into one of the open windows. Lucille had contrived, even with her

small means, to give a look of grace to the humble meal. There were a

few freshly-cut flowers in a Venetian goblet, and some fruit in an old

Derby dish; the brown loaf and butter and glass jar of marmalade had a

fresher and daintier look than anything Mrs. Babb the charwoman ever

set before her master. Lucius thought of the fair surroundings that

wealth could buy for the girl he loved; thought how easy their lives

would be if he were only rich enough to give her the home he dreamed

of, if there were no question of waiting and patience. True that he

might give her some kind of home—a home in the Shadrack district—at

once, but was it such a shelter as he would care to offer to his fair

young bride? Would it not be a dreary beginning of wedded life?

Yes, Mr. Sivewright’s hoarded wealth might give them much, but could

he, Lucius, as an honest man, feel any satisfaction in the possession

of a fortune gained in such crooked ways as the miser treads in his

ruthless pursuit of gold? He tried to put all thought of that possible

wealth out of his mind. That way lay temptation, perhaps dishonour; for

in his mind it was impossible to disassociate the miser’s wealth from

the means by which it had been amassed.

Lucille had the same pale troubled look which had alarmed him on the

previous evening, but this he ascribed to a natural anxiety about her

grandfather. He did his best to cheer her, as they drank tea together

at the little table by the open window, ministered to by the devoted

Wincher, whose bonnet hovered about them throughout the simple meal.

‘She’s fidgety about the old gentleman, poor child,’ said Mrs. Wincher.

‘I’m sure she’s been up and down that blessed old staircase twenty

times to-day, that restless she couldn’t settle to nothink. And he is

a bit cranky I’ll allow, not knowing his own mind about anythink, and

grumbling about as beautiful a basin of broth as was ever sent up to

a ninvalid. But sickness is sickness, as I tell our missy, and she

mustn’t be surprised if sick folks is contrairy.’

When Mrs. Wincher had departed with the teatray, Lucius told Lucille

of the search he had undertaken for Mr. Sivewright.

‘My grandfather told me about it,’ she said. ‘I am to show you the

cabinet in the loft. He would have sent me up to fetch the papers

alone, he said, only there is so much lumber crowded together that he

doubted if I should be able to get at the cabinet. We had better go at

once before the light begins to fade, for it is rather dark up there.’

‘I am ready, dear.’

Lucille produced a great bunch of rusty keys from the desk at which

Mr. Sivewright had been wont to transact the mysterious business of

his retirement, and they went up the old staircase side by side in the

afternoon sunlight, which had not yet begun to wane. The wide corridor

which led to the invalid’s room, with the doors of other rooms on

either side of it, was familiar enough to Lucius; but he had never yet

ascended above this story, and Lucille had told him that the upper

floor was a barren desert—the undisputed territory of mice and spiders.

She unlocked a door which opened on a narrow flight of stairs—the steep

steps worn by the tread of departed generations, and of various levels.

This staircase brought them to the topmost story, above which rose the

loft they had to explore. The ceiling of the landing on this upper

floor was low, blotched and swollen here and there with the rain of

many a winter, the dilapidated roof being in some parts little better

than a filter. There were curious old panelled doors on either side of

this landing, which was lighted by one melancholy window, across whose

narrow panes the spider had woven her cloudy tapestries.

‘Are all those rooms empty?’ asked Lucius, looking at the numerous

doors.

‘Yes,’ answered Lucille hurriedly. ‘My grandfather fancied the floors

unsafe, and would put nothing into them. Besides, he had room enough

down-stairs. The things he has stowed away in the roof are things upon

which he sets no value—mere rubbish which almost any one else would

have given away. Come, Lucius.’

There was a steep little staircase leading up to the loft, only

one degree better than a ladder. This they mounted cautiously in

semi-darkness, and then Lucius found himself in a vast substantially

floored chamber, just high enough in the clear to admit of his standing

upright, and amidst a forest of massive beams leaning this way and

that, evidently the roof of a house built to defy the grim destroyer

Time.

For some moments all was darkness; but while Lucius was striving to

pierce the gloom, Lucille raised a sloping shutter in the centre of

the roof, and let in a burst of western sunlight. Then he beheld the

contents of the place—a chaos of ancient lumber, the wreck of time. It

was like standing among the bruised and battered timbers of a sunken

vessel at the bottom of the sea.

The objects around him were evidently the merest waste and refuse of

a large and varied collection—broken armchairs, dilapidated buffets,

old oak-carving in every stage of decay, odd remnants of mildewed and

moth-eaten tapestry, fragments of shattered plaster casts; the head

of a Diana, crescent crowned, lying amidst the tattered remains of a

damask curtain; an armless Apollo, leaning lopsided and despondent of

aspect against an odd leaf of a Japanese screen; old pictures whose

subjects had long become inscrutable to the eye of man; stray cushions

covered with faded embroidery, which had once issued bright and

glowing from the fair hands that wrought it—on every side the relics

of perished splendour, the very dust and sweepings of goodly dwellings

that had long been empty. A melancholy picture, suggestive of man’s

decay.

Lucille peered into the shadows which filled the angles of the loft, in

quest of that oaken cabinet, of which she had but a faint remembrance.

‘It used to stand in the back-parlour in Bond-street when I was a

child,’ she said. ‘Yes, I remember, a curious old thing, with the

figures of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. There are little folding-doors

that open the gates of Eden, with the angel and his flaming sword.

There are carvings on each side; on one side the expulsion from

Paradise, on the other the death of Abel. See, there it is, behind that

pile of pictures.’

Lucius looked in the direction she indicated. In the extreme corner

of the loft he saw a clumsy cabinet of the early Dutch school, much

chipped and battered, with several old frameless canvases propped

against it. He clambered over some of the more bulky objects which

blockaded his way, cleared a path for Lucille, and after some minutes’

labour they both reached the corner where the cabinet stood.

The western light shone full upon this corner. The first task was to

remove the pictures, which were thickly coated with dust, and by no

means innocent of spiders. Lucille drew back with a shudder and a

little girlish scream at the sight of a black and bloated specimen of

that tribe.

Lucius put aside the pictures one by one. They were of the dingiest

school of art, old shopkeepers doubtless, for which Mr. Sivewright had

vainly striven to find a customer. Here and there an arm or a head

was faintly visible beneath the universal brown of the varnish, but

the rest was blank. It was, therefore, with considerable surprise that

Lucius perceived beneath this worthless lumber a picture in a frame,

and, by the appearance of the canvas, evidently modern. He turned it

gently to the light, and saw—What? The face of the man he killed in the

pine forest.

Happily for Lucius Davoren, he was kneeling on the ground, and with

his back to Lucille, when he made this discovery. A cry of surprise,

pleasure, terror, he knew not which, broke from her lips as he turned

that portrait to the light; but from his there came no sound.

For the moment the blow stunned him; he knelt there looking at the

too-well-remembered face—the face that had haunted him sleeping and

waking—the face that he would have given years of his life utterly to

forget.

It was the same face; on that point there could be no shadow of doubt.

The same face in the pride of youth, the bloom and freshness of early

manhood. The same keen eyes; the same hooked nose, with its suggestion

of affinity to the hawk and vulture tribe; the unmistakable form of the

low brow, with its strongly marked perceptives and deficiency in the

organs of thought; the black hair, growing downward in a little peak;

the somewhat angular brows.

‘My father’s portrait,’ said Lucille, recovering quickly from that

shock of surprise. ‘To think that my grandfather should have thrust it

out of sight, here amongst all this worthless rubbish. How bitterly he

must have hated his only son!’

_‘Your father!’_ cried Lucius, letting the picture drop from his

nerveless hands, and turning to Lucille with a face white as the

plaster head of Diana. ‘Do you mean to tell me that man was your

father?’

‘My dear father,’ the girl answered sadly; ‘my father, whom I shall

love to the end of my life, whom I love all the better for his

misfortunes, whom I pity with all my heart for the ill fate that

changed his father’s natural affection into a most unnatural hate.’

She took up the portrait, and carried it to a clearer spot, where she

laid it gently down upon an old curtain.

‘I will find a better place for it by and by,’ she said. ‘It was too

cruel of my grandfather to send it up here. And I have so often begged

him to show me a picture of my father.’

‘I wonder you can remember his face after so long an interval,’ said

Lucius, who had in some measure regained his self-possession, though

his brain seemed still full of strange confused thoughts, amidst which

the one horrible fact stood forth with hideous distinctness.

The man he had slain yonder was the father of the woman he loved. True

that the act had been a sacrifice, and not a murder; the execution

of ready-handed justice upon a criminal, and not an act of personal

revenge. But would Lucille ever believe that? She who, in spite of

all her grandfather’s dark hints and bitter speeches, still clung

with a fond belief to the father she had loved. She must never know

that fatal deed in the western wilderness; never learn what a wretch

man becomes when necessity degrades him to the level of the very

beasts against which he fights the desperate fight for life. Take from

man civilisation and Christianity, and who shall say how far he is

superior, either in the capacity to suffer or in kindliness of nature,

to the tiger he hunts in the Indian jungle, or the wolf he shoots in

the Canadian backwoods? And this was the man whose fate, until last

night, he had stood pledged to discover; the man whose lost footsteps

he was to have tracked through the wilderness of life. Little need of

inquiry. This man’s troubled history had been brought to an abrupt

ending, and by the seeker’s rash hand.

‘Come,’ said Lucille anxiously; ‘we must find those papers for my

grandfather. He will not rest unless he has them this evening.’

Lucius began his task without another word; he could not trust himself

to speak yet awhile. He unfastened the clumsy folding-doors of the

cabinet, with a hand that trembled a little in spite of his effort to

be calm, and opened the drawers one after another. They came out easily

enough, and rattled loosely in their frames, so shrunken was the wood.

Outer drawers and inner drawers, and papers in almost all of them—some

were mere scrappy memoranda, scrawled on half sheets or quarter sheets

of letter paper; other documents were in sealed envelopes; others were

little packets of letters, two or three together, tied with faded red

tape. Lucius examined all the drawers and minute cupboards, designed,

one would suppose, with a special view to the accumulation of rubbish;

emptied them of their contents, tied the papers all together in his

handkerchief, and gave them into the custody of Lucille. The light had

faded a little by the time this was done, and the corners of the loft

were wrapped in deepening shadow—a gruesome ghostly place to be left

alone in by this half-light. Lucille looked round her with a shudder as

she turned to leave it.

They were on the perilous staircase—Lucius in front, Lucille behind

him, half supported by his uplifted arm, both obliged to stoop to avoid

knocking their heads against the low sloping ceiling—when Lucius saw

and heard something sufficiently startling.

In the half dusk of the landing below them, he saw the door of one of

those empty rooms which Lucille had declared to be locked opened—ever

so little way—and then closed again quickly but softly, as if shut by a

careful hand. He distinctly saw the opening of the door; he distinctly

heard the noise of the lock.

‘Lucille,’ he said, in an eager whisper, ‘you are wrong. There is some

one in that room—the door exactly facing these stairs. Look.’

He pointed, and her eyes followed the direction of his finger. For a

few moments she stood speechless, looking at the door with a scared

face, and leaning upon him more heavily than before.

‘Nonsense, Lucius! you are dreaming. There can be no one there; the

rooms are empty; the doors are all locked.’

‘I am quite certain, dearest,’ he answered, still in a whisper, and

with his eyes fixed upon the door that had opened, or seemed to open.

‘Don’t be alarmed; it may be nothing wrong. It is only old Wincher

prowling about this floor, I daresay, just as he prowls about the

down-stair rooms. I’ll soon settle the question.’

‘I tell you, Lucius, the doors are all locked,’ cried Lucille, in a

tone far louder than her wonted accents—a voice of anger or of alarm.

Lucius tried the door with a strong and resolute hand—shook it till it

rattled in its time-worn frame. It was locked certainly, but locked on

the inside. The keyhole was darkened by the key.

‘It is locked on the inside, Lucille,’ he said; ‘there is some one in

the room.’

‘Impossible! Who should be there? No one ever comes up to this floor.

There is nothing here to tempt a thief, even if thieves ever troubled

this house. I keep the keys of all these rooms. Pray come down-stairs,

Lucius. My grandfather will be impatient about those papers.’

‘How can that door be locked on the inside if you have the key of it?’

‘I have not the key of that particular door. There is a door of

communication between that room and the next, and I keep one locked on

the inside. It saves trouble.’

‘Let me see the two rooms; let me satisfy myself that all is right,’ he

said, stretching out his hand for the keys.

‘I will not encourage any such folly,’ answered Lucille, moving quickly

towards the staircase leading to the lower story. ‘Pray bring those

papers, Lucius. I could not have imagined you were so weak-minded.’

‘Do you call it weak-minded to trust my own senses? And I have a

special reason for being anxious upon this point.’

She was on her way down-stairs by this time. Lucius lingered to listen

at the door, but no sound came from the room within. He tried all

the doors one after another: they were all locked. He knelt down to

look through the keyholes. Two of the rooms were darkened by closed

shutters, only faint gleams of light filtering through the narrow

spaces between them. One was lighter, and in this he saw an old

bedstead and some pieces of dilapidated furniture. It looked a room

which might have been used at some time for a servant’s bedroom.

After all, that opening and shutting of the door had been, perhaps, a

delusion of his overwrought mind. Only a few minutes before there had

been a noise like the spinning of a hundred Manchester cotton-looms in

his brain. The horror and anguish of that hideous discovery in the loft

still possessed him as he descended those stairs: what more likely than

that, in such a moment, his bewildered senses should cheat him?

And could he doubt Lucille’s positive assurance as to the condition of

those rooms? Could he doubt her whose truth was the sheet-anchor of his

life? Or could he mistrust her judgment whose calm good sense was one

of the finest qualities of her character?

Had it not been for Homer Sivewright’s strange story of noises heard

in the dead of the night, he could have dismissed the subject far more

easily. As it was he lingered for some time; listening for the faintest

sound that might reach his ear, and hearing nothing but the scamper of

a mouse within the wainscot, the fall of a dead fly from a spider’s web.

He found Lucille waiting for him in the corridor below, very pale, and

with an anxious look, which she tried to disguise by a faint smile.

‘Well,’ she asked, ‘you have kept me waiting long enough. Are you

satisfied now?’

‘Not quite. I should very much like to have the keys of yonder rooms.

Such a house as this is the very place to harbour a scoundrel.’

The girl shuddered, and drew back from him with a look of absolute

terror.

‘Don’t be frightened, Lucille. I daresay there is no one there; a

strange cat, perhaps, at most; yet cats don’t open and shut locked

doors. There may be no one; only in such a house as this, so poorly

occupied by two helpless women and two feeble old men, one cannot be

too careful. Some notion of your grandfather’s wealth may have arisen

in the neighbourhood. His secluded eccentric life might suggest the

idea that he is a miser, and that there is hoarded money in this

house. I want to be assured that all is secure, Lucille; that no

evil-intentioned wretch has crept under this roof. Give me your keys

and let me search those rooms. It will only be the work of a few

minutes.’

‘Forgive me for refusing you anything, Lucius,’ she said; ‘but my

grandfather told me never to part with those keys to any one. You

know his curious fancies. I promised to obey him, and cannot break my

promise.’

‘Not even for me?’

‘Not even for you. Especially as there is not the slightest cause for

this fancy of yours. That staircase door is kept always locked, the

keys locked up in my grandfather’s desk. It is impossible that any

living creature could go up to that attic-floor without my knowledge.

Nor is it possible for any one to get into the lower part of the house

unseen by me or by the Winchers.’

‘I don’t know about that. It would be easy enough for any one to get

from the wharf to the garden. There are half-a-dozen doors at the back

of the house, and more than a dozen places in the stables and outhouses

where a man might lie hidden, so as to slip into the house at any

convenient moment.’

‘You forget how carefully Mrs. Wincher turns all the keys, and draws

all the bolts at sunset. Pray be reasonable, Lucius, and dismiss this

absurd fancy from your mind. And instead of standing here with that

solemn face, arguing about impossibilities, come to my grandfather’s

room with those papers.’

Never had she spoken more lightly. Yet a minute ago her cheek had

been blanched, her eye dilated by terror. Lucius gave a little sigh

of resignation and followed her along the corridor. After all it was

a very foolish thing that he had been doing; raising fears, perhaps

groundless, in the breast of this lonely girl. Her grandfather had

studiously refrained from any mention of his suspicions lest he should

alarm Lucille. Yet he, the lover, had been so reckless as to suggest

terrors which might give a new pain to her solitary life.

Mr. Sivewright received the bundle of papers with evident satisfaction,

and turned them over with hands that trembled in their eagerness.

‘Documents of no moment,’ he said; ‘a few old records of my business

life, put away in that disused piece of lumber up-stairs, and half

forgotten. But when, at the gates of the tomb, a man reviews his past

life, it is a satisfaction to be able to try back by means of such poor

memorials as these. They serve to kindle the lamp of memory. He sees

his own words, his own thoughts written years ago, and they seem to him

like the thoughts and words of the dead.’

He thrust the papers into a desk which was drawn close to his bedside.

‘You have been better to-day, I hope?’ said Lucius, when Lucille had

left the room in quest of the old man’s evening meal.

‘No; not so well. I don’t like your new medicine.’

‘My new medicine is the medicine you have been taking for the last five

weeks—a mild tonic, as I told you. But you are tired of it, perhaps.

I’ll change it for something else.’

‘Do. I don’t like its effect upon me.’

And then he went on to state symptoms which seemed to indicate

increasing weakness, nausea, lassitude, and that unreasonable

depression of mind which was worse than any physical ailment.

‘It seems like a forecast of death,’ he said despondently.

Lucius was puzzled. For some time past there had been a marked

improvement, but this change boded no good. The thread of life had been

worn thin; any violent shock might snap it. But Lucius had believed

that in supreme rest and tranquillity lay the means of recovery.

He could not vanquish organic disease; but he might fortify even a

worn-out constitution, and make the sands of life drop somewhat slower

through the glass.

To the patient he made light of these symptoms, urged upon Mr.

Sivewright the necessity of taking things quietly, and above all of not

allowing himself to be worried by any groundless apprehensions.

‘If you have a notion that there is anything going wrong in this house,

let me sleep here for a few nights,’ said Lucius. ‘There are empty

rooms enough to provide lodgings for a small regiment. Let me take up

my quarters in one of them—the room next this one, for instance. I am

a light sleeper; and if there should be foul play of any kind, my ear

would be quick to discover the intruder.’

‘No,’ said the old man. ‘It is kind of you to propose such a thing, but

there’s no necessity. It was a nervous fancy of mine, I daresay; the

effect of physical weakness. Say no more about it.’

Lucius went home earlier than usual that evening, much to the amazement

of Mrs. Wincher, who begged him to give them a ‘toon’ before departing.

This request, however, was not supported by Lucille. She seemed anxious

and restless, and Lucius blamed his own folly as the cause of her

anxiety.

‘My dearest,’ he said tenderly, retaining the icy-cold hand which she

gave him at parting, ‘I fear those foolish suspicions of mine about

the rooms up-stairs have alarmed you. I was an idiot to suggest any

such idea. But if you have the faintest apprehension of danger, let me

stay here to-night and keep guard. I will stay in this room, and make

my round of the house at intervals all through the night. Let me stay,

Lucille. Who has so good a right to protect you?’

‘O no, no,’ she cried quickly, ‘on no account. There is not the

slightest occasion for such a thing. Why should you suppose that I am

frightened, Lucius?’

‘Your own manner makes me think so, darling. This poor little hand is

unnaturally cold, and you have not been yourself all this evening.’

‘I am a little anxious about my grandfather.’

‘All the more reason that I should remain here to-night. I can stay in

his room if you like, so as to be on the spot should he by any chance

grow suddenly worse, though I have no fear of that.’

‘If you do not fear that, there is nothing to fear. As to your stopping

here, that is out of the question. I know my grandfather wouldn’t like

it.’

Lucius could hardly dispute this, as Mr. Sivewright had actually

refused his offer to remain. There was nothing for him to do but to

take a lingering farewell of his betrothed, and depart, sorely troubled

in spirit.

He was not sorry when the old iron gate closed upon him. Never till

to-night had he left the house that sheltered Lucille without a pang

of regret, but to-night, after the discovery of the portrait in the

loft, he felt in sore need of solitude. He wanted to look his situation

straight in the face. This man—the man his hand had slain—was the

father of his promised wife. The hand that he was to give to Lucille

at the altar was red with her father’s blood. Most hideous thought,

most bitter fatality which had brought that villain across his path

out yonder in the trackless forest. Was this world so narrow that they

two must needs meet—that no hand save his could be found to wreak God’s

vengeance upon that relentless savage?

Her father! And in the veins of that gentle girl, who in her innocent

youth had seemed to him fair and pure as the snowdrop unfolding its

white bells from out a bed of newly-fallen snow, there ran the blood

of that most consummate scoundrel! All his old theories of hereditary

instincts were at fault here. From such a sire so sinless a child! The

thought tortured him. Could he ever look at that sweet pensive face

again without conjuring up the vision of that wild haggard visage he

had seen in the red glare of the pine-logs, those hungry savage eyes,

gleaming athwart elf-locks of shaggy hair, and trying to find a strange

distorted likeness between the two faces?

And this horrible secret he must keep to his dying day. One hint, one

whisper of the fatal truth, and he and Lucille would be sundered for

ever. Did honour counsel him to confess that deed of his in the forest?

Did honour oblige him to tell this girl that all her hopes of reunion

with the father she had loved so dearly were vain; that his hand had

made a sudden end of that guilty life, cut off the sinner in his

prime, without pause for repentance, without time even to utter one

wild appealing cry to his God? True that the man had declared himself

an infidel, that he was steeped to the lips in brutish selfishness,

grovelling, debased, hardened in sin. Who should dare say that

repentance was impossible, even for a wretch so fallen? Far as the

east is from the west are the ways of God from the ways of man, and

in His infinite power there are infinite possibilities of mercy and

forgiveness.

‘I was mad when I did that deed,’ thought Lucius; ‘mad as in the time

that followed when I lay raging in a brain fever; yet, Heaven knows,

I believed it was but stern justice. There was no tribunal yonder. We

were alone in the wilderness with God, and I deemed I did but right

when I made myself the instrument of His wrath. All that followed that

awful moment is darkness. Schanck never spoke of that villain’s fate,

nor did I. We instinctively avoided the hideous subject, and conspired

to hide the secret from Geoffrey. Poor, good-natured old Schanck!

I wonder whether he has found his way back from the Californian

gold-fields. If I had leisure for such a pilgrimage, I’d go down to

Battersea and inquire. I doubt if a rough life among gold-diggers would

suit him long.’

Book the Second.

CHAPTER I.

GEOFFREY BEGINS A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.

Not very far did Geoffrey Hossack proceed upon his Norwegian voyage.

At Hull he discovered that—perusing his Bradshaw with a too rapid

eye, and a somewhat disordered mind—he had mistaken the date of the

steamer’s departure, and must waste two entire days in that prosperous

port, waiting for the setting forth of that vessel. Even one day in

that thriving commercial town seemed to him intolerably long. He

perambulated King William-street and the market-place, Silver-street,

Myton-gate, Low-gate, and all the gates; stared at the shipping; lost

his way amidst a tangle of quays and dry docks and wet docks and

store-houses and moving bridges, which were for ever barring his way;

and exhausted the resources of Kingston-upon-Hull in the space of two

hours. Then, in very despair, he took rail to Withernsea, and dined at

a gigantic hotel, where he was ministered to by a London waiter, who

provided him with the regulation fried sole and cutlet. Having washed

down these too familiar viands with two or three glasses of Manzanilla,

he set forth in quest of a solitude where to smoke his cigar in

communion with that vast waste of waters—the German Ocean—and his own

melancholy thoughts.

Go to Norway; try to forget Janet Bertram amid those lonely hills,

with no companions save the two faithful lads who carried his guns,

and performed the rough services of life under canvas? Try to forget

her amidst the solitude of nature? Vain hope! An hour’s contemplation

of the subject on that lonely shore, remote from the parade and the

band and all the holiday traffic of a popular watering-place, was

enough to make a complete change in Mr. Hossack’s plans. He would not

go to Norway. Why should he put the North Sea betwixt himself and his

love? Who could tell what might happen in his absence, what changes

might come to pass involving all his chances of happiness, and he,

dolt and idiot, too far away to profit by their arising? No; he would

stay in England, within easy reach of his idol. He might write her a

little line now and then, just to remind her of the mere fact of his

existence, and to acquaint her with his abode. She had not forbidden

him to write. Decidedly, come what might, he would not leave England.

This decision arrived at, after profound cogitation, he breathed more

freely. He had been going forth like an exile—unwillingly, as if driven

by Nemesis, that golden-winged goddess who made such hard lines for the

Greeks. He had set forth in the first rush and tumult of his passion,

deeming that in the wild land of the Norse gods he might stifle his

grief, find a cure for his pain. He felt more at ease now that he had

allowed love to gain the victory. ‘It is a privilege to inhabit the

same country with her,’ he told himself.

Not long did he linger in Hull. The next morning’s express carried him

back to London, uncertain as to how he should spend his autumn; willing

even to let his guns rust so that he need not drag himself too far away

from Janet Bertram.

‘Janet,’ he repeated fondly, ‘a prettier name than Jane; a name made

for simplest tenderest verse. I’m glad I have learnt to think of her by

it.’

There were letters waiting for him at the Cosmopolitan, forwarded

from Stillmington, nearly a week’s arrears of correspondence; letters

feminine and masculine; the feminine bulky, ornamental as to

stationery, be-monogramed, redolent of rose and frangipani; cousinly

epistles which Geoffrey contemplated with a good-humoured indifference.

He looked over the addresses eagerly, lest by remotest chance—yet he

could not even hope so much—there might be a letter from Mrs. Bertram.

There was none; so he opened one of the cousinly epistles with a

profound sigh.

Hillersdon Grange, Hampshire. _Her_ county and his. He and Lucius

had been born and bred not twenty miles apart, and had begun their

friendship at Winchester School. Mr. Hossack’s people lived in

Hampshire, and were unwearying in their invitations, yet he had not

revisited his native place since his return from America.

‘I can’t understand why a man should be attached to the place where

he was born,’ he used to say in his careless fashion when his cousins

reproached him for his indifference. ‘In the first place, he doesn’t

remember the event of his birth; and in the second, the locality is

generally the most uninteresting in creation. Wherever you go, abroad

or at home, you are always dragged about to see where particular

people were born. You knock your head against the low timbers of

Shakespeare’s birthplace at Stratford; you go puffing and panting up

to a garret to see where Charlotte Corday was first admitted to the

mystery of existence; you drive through Devonshire lanes to stare at

the comfortable homestead where Kaleigh blinked at life’s morning sun;

you mount a hill to admire the native home of Fox; you go stages out of

your way to contemplate the cradle of Robespierre. And when all that

a man loved in his boyhood lies under the sod, and the home where he

spent his early life seems sadder than a mausoleum, people wonder that

he is not fond of those empty rooms, haunted by the phantoms of his

cherished dead, simply because he happened to be born in one of them.’

Thus had argued Mr. Hossack when his cousins reproached him with his

want of natural affection for the scenes of his childhood. Hillersdon

Grange was within three miles of Homefield, where Geoffrey’s father had

ended his quiet easy life about ten years ago, leaving his only son

orphaned but remarkably well provided for. Squire Hossack of Hillersdon

was the elder scion of the house, and owner of a handsome landed

estate, and the Miss Hossacks were those two musically-disposed damsels

whom it had been Geoffrey’s privilege to escort to various concerts and

matinees in the winter season last past.

The letter now in Geoffrey’s hand was from the elder of the damsels, a

hard-riding good-looking young woman of four-and-twenty, who kept her

father’s house, domineered over her younger sister, and would have had

no objection to rule Geoffrey himself with the same wise sway.

Her letter was a new version of the oft-repeated invitation. ‘Papa

says, if you don’t come to us this year, he shall think you have quite

left off caring about your relations, and declares he really never

will ask you again,’ she wrote. ‘It does seem a hard thing, Geoffrey,

that you can go scampering about the world, and living in all manner

of outlandish places—Stillmington, for instance, a place which I am

told is abominably dull out of the hunting season, and what you can

have found to amuse you all these months in such a place, I can’t

imagine—and yet, excuse the long parenthesis, can’t find time to come

to us, although we are so near dear old Homefield, which you must be

attached to, unless your heart is much harder than I should like to

suppose it. The birds are plentiful this year, and papa says there are

some snipe in Dingley marsh. Altogether he can promise you excellent

sport after the first of next month.

‘But if you want to oblige Jessie and me’ (Jessie was the younger

sister) ‘you will come at once, as there are to be grand doings at

Lady Baker’s next week; and eligible young men being scarce in this

neighbourhood, we should be glad to have a good-looking cousin to show

off. Papa escorts us, of course; but as he always contrives to get

among the old fogies who talk vestry and quarter-sessions, we might

almost as well be without any escort at all. So do come, dear Geoff,

and oblige your always affectionate cousin,

ARABELLA HOSSACK.

‘P.S. Please call at Cramer’s, Chappell’s, and a few more of the

publishers before you come, and bring us down anything they may

recommend. Jessie wants some really good songs, and I should like

Kalbé’s fantasias upon the newest Christy melodies.’

Lady Baker! Lucius had named this lady as one of the friends of his

sister Janet; one of the county people whose notice had been the

beginning of the fatal end. It was at Lady Baker’s house that Janet had

met the villain who blighted her life.

This was an all-sufficient reason for Geoffrey’s prompt acceptance

of his cousin’s invitation. It was only by trying back that he could

hope to discover the after-life of that man who had called himself

Vandeleur, only by going back to the very beginning that he could

hope to track his footsteps to the end. Could he but discover this

scoundrel’s later history, and find it end in a grave, what happiness

to carry the tidings of his discovery to Janet, and to say, ‘I bring

you your freedom, and I claim you for my own by the right of my

devotion!’

He knew that she loved him. That knowledge had power to comfort and

sustain him in all the pain of severance. True love can live for a long

time upon such nutriment as this.

He wrote to Lucius, telling him where he was going, and what he was

going to do, and started for Hillersdon next morning, laden with a

portmanteau full of new music for those daughters of the horseleech,

his cousins.

Hillersdon Grange was, as Geoffrey confessed with the placid approval

of a kinsman, ‘not half a bad place’ for an autumn visit. The house

was old, a fine specimen of domestic architecture in the days of the

Plantagenets. It had been expanded for the accommodation of modern

inhabitants; a ponderous and somewhat ugly annex added in the reign of

William the Third; a cloister turned into a drawing-room at a later

period—as the requirements of civilised people grew larger. The fine

old hall, with its open roof, once the living room of the mansion,

was now an armoury, in which casques that had been hacked at Cressy,

and hauberks that had been battered in the Wars of the Roses, were

diversified by antlers and stuffed stags’ heads, the trophies of the

hunting field in more pacific ages.

The Hossacks were not an old family. They could not boast that

identity with the soil which constitutes rural aristocracy. They had

been bankers and merchants in days gone by, and their younger sons

were still merchants, or bankers. Geoffrey’s father, and the Squire

of Hillersdon Grange, had succeeded, one to the patrimonial acres,

acquired a few years before his birth; the other to the counting-house

and its wider chances of wealth. Both had flourished. The Squire living

the life that pleased him best, farming a little in a vastly expensive

and vastly unprofitable fashion; writing a letter to the _Times_ now

and then about the prospects of the harvest, or the last discovery in

drainage; quoting Virgil, sitting at quarter-sessions, and laying down

parochial law in the vestry. The younger making most money, working

like a slave, and fancying himself the happier and the better man; to

be cut off in his prime by heart-disease or an overworked brain, while

Geoffrey was a lad at Winchester.

The grounds at Hillersdon were simply perfection. The place was on

the borders of the New Forest, and the Squire’s woods melted into that

wider domain. A river wound through the park, and washed the border of

the lawn; a river which had shadowy willow-sheltered bends where trout

abounded, rushy coves and creeks famous for jack, a river delightful

alike to the angler and to the landscape painter.

‘Not half a bad place,’ said Geoffrey, yawning and looking at his watch

on the first morning after his arrival; ‘and now, having breakfasted

copiously upon your rustic fare—that dish of cutlets _à la Soubise_ was

worthy of mention—may I ask what I am to do with myself? Just eleven!

Three hours before luncheon! Do you do anything in the country when you

are not eating or sleeping?’

This inquiry was addressed to the sisters Belle and Jessie—good-looking

young women, with fine complexions, ample figures, clear blue eyes,

light brown hair, and the freshest of morning toilets, in the nautical

style, as appropriate to the New Forest—wide blue collars flung back

from full white throats, straw hats bound with blue ribbon, blue serge

petticoats festooned coquettishly above neat little buckled shoes, with

honest thick soles for country walking; altogether damsels of the order

called ‘nice,’ but in no manner calculated to storm the heart of man.

Good daughters in the present, good wives and mothers, perhaps, in the

future, but not of the syren tribe.

‘I don’t suppose Hillersdon is much duller than the backwoods of

America,’ said Arabella, the elder, with some dignity; ‘and I hope you

may be able to endure life until the 1st with no better company than

ours.’

‘My dearest Belle, if you and Jessie had paid me a visit on the banks

of the Saskatchewan, I should have been unutterably happy, especially

if you had brought me a monstrous hamper of provisions—a ham like that

on the sideboard for instance, and a few trifles of that kind. I didn’t

mean to depreciate Hillersdon; the hour and a half or so I spent at

the breakfast table was positively delightful. But the worst of what

people call the pleasures of the table is that other pleasures are apt

to pall after them. Perhaps the best thing you could do would be to

drive me gently about the park in your pony carriage till luncheon. I

don’t suppose for a moment that I shall be able to eat any more at two

o’clock; but the country air _might_ have a revivifying effect. One can

but try.’

‘You lazy creature! drive you indeed!’ exclaimed Jessie. ‘We’ll do

nothing of the kind. But I tell you what you shall do if you like—and

of course you will like—you shall be coxswain of our boat, and we’ll

row you up to Dingley.’

‘_You’ll_ row? Ah, I might have known those blue collars meant

something rather desperate. However, steering a wherry isn’t wery hard

labour, as the burlesque writers would say. I’ll come.’

The sisters were delighted. A good-looking cousin to damsels in a rural

district is like water-brooks in a dry land. In their inmost hearts

these girls doated on Geoffrey, but artfully suppressed all outward

token of their affection. Many a night during the comfortable leisure

of hairbrushing, when their joint maid had been dismissed, had the

sisters speculated on their cousin’s life, wondering why he didn’t

marry, and whom he would marry, and so on; while the real consideration

paramount in the mind of each was, ‘Will he ever marry _me_?’

They strolled across the lawn (not a croquet lawn of a hundred and

twenty feet square, after the manner of ‘grounds’ attached to suburban

villas, but a wide undulating tract of greensward, shaded here and

there by groups of picturesque old trees—maple and copper beech, and

ancient hawthorns on which the berries were beginning to redden) to a

Swiss boathouse with pointed gables and thatched roof, ample room for

a small flotilla below, and a spacious apartment above—a room which,

had young men been dominant in the household, would doubtless have been

made a _tabagie_ or a billiard room, but which, under the gentler sway

of young ladies, had been gaily decorated with light chintz draperies

and fern cases, innocent-looking maple furniture, easels, piano, and

workbaskets.

That winding river reminded Geoffrey of the weedy ditch at Stillmington

on which he had spent many a summer afternoon, pulling against the

stream with disconsolate soul, thinking of his implacable divinity. He

gave a little sigh, and wished himself back in Stillmington; to suffer,

to hope, to despair—only to be near her.

‘I must make an end of this misery somehow,’ he said to himself, ‘or it

will make an end of me.’

‘What a sigh, Geoffrey; and how thoughtful you look!’ exclaimed Jessie,

who had an eye which marked every mote in the summer air.

‘Did I sigh? I may have eaten too much breakfast. Look here, Belle,

you’d better let me take a pair of sculls, while you and Jessie dabble

your hands in the water and talk of your last new dresses. It isn’t

good for a man to be idle. I shall have the blues if I sit still and

steer.’

‘What a strange young man you are!’ said Belle. ‘Ten minutes ago you

wanted to loll in a pony carriage and be driven.’

‘I might have endured the pony carriage, but I can’t endure the boat

unless I make myself useful. There, get in please, and sit down. What

a toyshop affair! and as broad as a house! I should think the man who

built Noah’s Ark must have designed this.’

The sisters exclaimed against this disparagement of their bark,

which a local boatbuilder had adorned with all the devices of his

art—cane-work, French polish and gilding, crimson damask-covered

cushions, dainty cord and tassels—all those prettinesses which the

Oxonian, who likes a boat that he can carry on his shoulder, regards

with ineffable contempt.

The stream was narrow but deep, and pleasantly sheltered, for the most

part, with leafage; the banks clothed in beauty, and every turn of the

river disclosing a new picture. But neither Geoffrey nor his companions

gave themselves up to the contemplation of this ever-varying landscape.

Geoffrey was thinking of Janet Bertram; the girls were wondering what

made their cousin so silent.

Mr. Hossack plied his sculls bravely, despite his abstraction, but

even in this was actuated less by a desire to gratify his cousins

than by a lurking design of his own. Six miles up this very stream

lay Mardenholme, the mansion of the Bakers. Lady Baker’s famous

gardens—gardens on which fabulous sums were annually lavished—sloped

down to the brim of this very river. If he could row as far as

Mardenholme, he might induce the girls to take him in to Lady Baker

forthwith, and thus obtain the interview he sighed for. To hope for any

confidential conversation with that lady on the day of a great garden

party seemed foolish in the extreme; nor did it suit his impatient

spirit to wait for the garden party.

‘When are these high-jinks to come off at Lady Baker’s?’ he inquired

presently, in his most careless manner.

‘Next Tuesday. It’s to be such a swell party, Geoffrey—croquet,

archery, a morning concert, a German tea, _tableaux vivants_, and a

dance to wind up with.’

‘_Tableaux vivants_,’ said Geoffrey with a yawn; ‘the Black Brunswicker

and the Huguenot, I suppose. We have grown too æsthetic for the Juan

and Haydee, and the Conrad and Medora of one’s youth. Are you two girls

in the tableaux?’

‘O dear no,’ exclaimed Belle, bridling a little. ‘We are not Lady

Baker’s last mania. We are neighbours, and she always invites us to her

large parties, and begs us to come to her Thursday kettledrum, and is

monstrously civil; but in her heart of hearts she doesn’t care a straw

for humdrum country people. She is always taking up artists and singers

and actors, and that kind of thing. She positively raves about _them_.’

‘Ah, I’ve heard something of that before,’ said Geoffrey thoughtfully.

‘She’s musical, isn’t she?’

‘She calls herself so—goes to the opera perpetually in the London

season, and patronises all the local concerts, and gives musical

parties—but nobody ever heard her play a note.’

‘Ah,’ said Geoffrey, ‘I don’t think people with a real passion for

music often do play. They look upon the murder of a fine sonata as a

species of sacrilege, and wisely refrain from the attempt, but not the

deed, which would confound them. By the way, talking of Lady Baker and

her protégées, did you ever hear of a Miss Davoren, who was rather

distinguished for her fine voice, some years ago?’

‘Yes,’ said Belle, ‘I have heard Lady Baker rave about her. She was a

clergyman’s daughter at Wykhamston. And I have heard other people say

that Lady Baker’s patronage was the ruin of her, and that she left her

home in some improper way, and broke her poor old father’s heart.’

This little speech sent a sharp pang through another heart, the honest

heart that loved the sinner so fondly.

‘You never saw Miss Davoren, I suppose?’

‘Of course not,’ cried Belle. ‘It was before I was out of the nursery.’

‘But you were not blind when you were in the nursery; you might have

seen her.’

‘How could I? I didn’t go to Lady Baker’s parties before I was out, and

papa doesn’t know many Wykhamston people.’

‘Ah, then you never saw her. Was she pretty?’

‘Perfectly lovely, according to Lady Baker; but all her geese are

swans.’

‘She must be a very enthusiastic person, this Lady Baker. Do you think

you could contrive to introduce me to her?—to-day, for instance. I can

row you down to Mardenholme by one o’clock.’

‘It would be so dreadfully early to call,’ said Jessie, ‘and then, you

see, Thursday is her day. But she’s always extremely kind, and pretends

to be glad to see us.’

‘Why pretends? She may be really glad.’

‘O, she can’t possibly be glad to see half the county. There must be

some make-believe about it. However, she gives herself up to that kind

of thing, and I suppose she likes it. What do you think, Belle? Would

it look very strange if we called with Geoffrey?’

‘We might risk it,’ said Belle, anxious to indulge the prodigal. ‘She’s

almost sure to be somewhere about the garden if she’s at home. She

spends half her life in the garden at Mardenholme.’

‘Then we’ll find her, and approach her without ceremony,’ replied

Geoffrey, sending the boat swiftly through the clear water. ‘Depend

upon it, _I_ shall make myself at home.’

‘We’re not afraid of that,’ answered Belle, who was much more disturbed

by the idea that this free-and-easy young man might forget the homage

due to a county magnate such as Lady Baker—a personage who in a manner

made the rain or fine weather in this part of Hampshire. A summer which

her ladyship did not spend at Mardenholme was regarded as a bad and

profitless season. People almost wondered that the harvest was not

backward, that the clover and vetches came up pretty much the same as

usual.

CHAPTER II.

LADY BAKER.

It was hardly one o’clock when they beheld the terraced gardens

of Mardenholme; gardens that were worth a day’s journey to see; a

thoroughly Italian picture, set in a thoroughly English landscape;

marble balustrades surmounting banks of flowers; tall spire-shaped

conifers ranged at intervals, tier above tier; marble steps and marble

basins, in every direction; and below this show-garden, sloping down

to the river, a lawn of softest verdure, bordered by vast shrubberies,

that to the stranger seemed pathless, yet where a fallen leaf could

hardly have been found, so exquisite was the order of the grounds.

Geoffrey tied his boat to the lower branch of a mighty willow which

dipped its green tresses in the stream, leaped out and landed his

cousins as coolly as if he had arrived at an hotel. No mortal was to

be seen for the first moment, but Jessie’s sharp eyes beheld a white

shirt-sleeve gleaming athwart a group of magnolias.

‘There’s a gardener over there,’ she said: ‘we’d better ask him if Lady

Baker is in the grounds.’

They made for the gardener, who, with the slow and philosophic air of

a man whose wages are not dependent on the amount of his labour, was

decapitating daisies that had been impertinent enough to lift their

vulgar heads in this patrician domain. This hireling informed them that

he had seen her ladyship somewheres about not ten minutes agone. She

was in the Chaney temple, perhaps, and he volunteered to show them the

way.

‘You needn’t trouble yourself,’ said Jessie. ‘I know the way.’

‘What does he mean by the Chaney temple?’ asked Geoffrey, as they

departed.

‘It is a garden-house Lady Baker has had sent over from China,’

answered Belle. ‘I know she’s fond of sitting there.’

They entered a darksome alley in the shrubbery, which wound along the

river-bank some little way, opening into a kind of wilderness; a very

tame wilderness, inhabited by water-fowl of various tribes, which

stretched out their necks and screamed vindictively at the intruders.

Here on the brink of the river was the garden-house, an edifice of

bamboo and lattice-work, adorned with bells, very much open to all the

winds of heaven, but a pleasant shelter on a sultry day in August. When

the breeze shook them, the numerous bells rang ever so faintly, and the

sound woke echoes on the farther bank of the stream.

Lady Baker was reclining in a bamboo-chair, reading, with a young lady

and gentleman, and a Japanese pug in attendance upon her.

‘Dear Lady Baker,’ cried Belle, anxious to make the best of her

unceremonious approach, ‘I hope you won’t think it very dreadful of us

to come into the gardens this way like burglars; but my cousin Geoffrey

was so anxious to be presented to you, that he insisted on rowing us

here this morning.’

‘I do think it extremely dreadful,’ replied the lady with a pleasant

laugh. ‘And so this is the cousin of whom I have heard so much. Welcome

to Mardenholme, Mr. Hossack. We ought to have known each other long

before this, since we are such near neighbours.’

‘I have the honour to possess a small estate not far from your

ladyship’s,’ answered Geoffrey; ‘but, being hitherto unacquainted

with the chief attraction of the neighbourhood in your person, I have

ignorantly given a lease of my place to a retired sugar-broker.’

‘That’s a pity, for I think we should have been good neighbours. Mr.

Hossack, Mrs. Wimple; Mr. Wimple, Mr. Hossack,’ murmured Lady Baker

in a parenthesis; at which introduction the young lady and the young

gentleman, newly married, and indifferent to the external world,

honoured Geoffrey with distant bows, and immediately withdrew to a

trellised balcony overhanging the river, to gaze upon that limpid

stream, or, in Geoffrey’s modern vocabulary, ‘to spoon.’ ‘You are a

wonderful traveller, I understand,’ continued her ladyship.

‘Hardly, in the modern sense of the word,’ said Geoffrey, with becoming

modesty. ‘I have hunted the bighorn on the Rocky Mountains, and shot

grouse in Norway; but I have neither discovered the source of a river,

nor found an unknown waterfall; in short, as a traveller, I am a very

insignificant individual. But as a rule I keep moving, locomotion being

about the only employment open to a man to whom Providence has denied

either talent or ambition.’

‘You are at any rate more modest than the generality of lions, Mr.

Hossack,’ Lady Baker replied graciously.

She was a little woman, sallow and thin, with a face which in any one

less than the mistress of Mardenholme would have been insignificant.

But she had fine eyes and teeth, and dressed with the exquisite taste

of a woman who studied the fitness of things and not the fashion-book.

She had a manner that was at once stately and caressing, and could

confer a favour with the air of a princess of the blood royal. She

had spent all her life in society, and, except when she slept, knew

not what it was to be alone. She could have had but scanty leisure

for reading, yet she knew, or seemed to know, everything that society

knew. Her detractors declared that she never read anything but the

newspapers, and thus, by a zealous study of the _Times_ and the

critical journals, kept herself far in advance of those stupid people

who wade through books. She skimmed the cream of other people’s

knowledge, shrugged her shoulders in mild depreciation of books she

had never read, and wore the newest shades of opinion as she wore the

newest colours. For the rest, she was of an uncertain age, had been in

society for about a quarter of a century, and looked five-and-thirty.

Her light-brown hair, which she wore with almost classic simplicity, as

yet revealed no tell-tale streak of silver. Perhaps, like Mr. Mivers in

_Kenelm Chillingly_, Lady Baker had begun her wig early.

Sir Horatio Veering Baker, the husband of this distinguished personage,

was rather an appanage of her state than an entity. She produced him

on ceremonial occasions, just as her butler produced the parcel-gilt

tankards and gigantic rosewater salvers on the buffet; and at other

times he retired, like the moon on those dark nights when earth knows

not her gentle splendour. He was a mild-faced old man, who devoted

his days to various ologies, in which no one but himself and his old

servant seemed to take the faintest interest—and the servant only

pretended. He inhabited, for the most part, a distant wing of the

mansion, where he had a vast area of glass cases for the display of

those specimens which illustrated his ologies, and represented the

labour of his life. Sometimes, but not always, he appeared at the

bottom of his dinner table; and when, among her ladyship’s guests, a

scientific man perchance appeared, Sir Horatio did him homage, and

carried him off after dinner for an inspection of the specimens. Lady

Baker was amiably tolerant of her husband’s hobbies. She received him

with unvarying graciousness when he hobbled into her drawing-room in

his dress-coat and antique tie, looking hardly less antediluvian than

the petrified jawbone of a megatherium, which was one of the gems in

his collection; and she was politely solicitous for his well-being when

he pronounced himself ‘a little fagged,’ and preferred to dine in his

study.

Geoffrey soon found himself on the friendliest terms with the mistress

of Mardenholme. Lady Baker liked good-looking young men who had no

unpleasant consciousness of their good looks, and liked the modern easy

manner of youth, provided the ease never degenerated into insolence.

She took Geoffrey under her wing immediately, walked nearly a mile with

him under the midday sun, protected by a huge, white silk umbrella,

to show him the lions of Mardenholme; that profound hypocrite, Mr.

Hossack, affecting an ardent admiration of ferneries and flower beds,

in the hope that this perambulatory exhibition might presently procure

him the opportunity for which his soul languished.

‘Let me once find myself alone with this nice old party,’ he said to

himself, ‘and I won’t let the chance slip. She shall tell me all she

knows about the villain who wronged Janet Davoren.’

To his infinite vexation, however, his cousins, who worshipped the

mistress of Mardenholme, followed close upon her footsteps throughout

the exposition, went into raptures with every novelty among the ferny

tribes, and made themselves altogether a nuisance. Geoffrey was

beginning to struggle with dreary yawns when the Mardenholme luncheon

gong relieved the situation.

‘And now that I’ve shown you my latest acquisition, let us go to

luncheon,’ said Lady Baker, who was never happier than when feeding a

new acquaintance. In fact, she liked her friends very much as she liked

her orchids and ferns—for the sake of their novelty.

Nobody ever refused an invitation from Lady Baker. It was almost the

same thing as a royal command. Jessie and Belle murmured something

about ‘papa,’ and the voice of duty which called them back to

Hillersdon. But Lady Baker waived the objection with that regal air of

hers, which implied that any one else’s inconvenience was a question of

smallest moment when her pleasure was at stake.

‘I should be positively unhappy if you went away,’ she said; ‘I have

only that Mr. and Mrs. Wimple, whom you just now saw in the garden

house. This is their first visit since their honeymoon, and their

exhibition of mutual affection is almost unendurable. But as it is a

match of my own making I am obliged to tolerate the infliction. They

are my only visitors until to-morrow. So if you don’t stop, I shall be

bored to death between this and dinner. I actually caught that absurd

child, Florence Wimple, in the very act of spelling “YOU DARLING”

in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet to that simpleton of a husband of hers

across the breakfast table this morning.’

Moved by this melancholy picture, Jessie and Belle consented to remain.

Geoffrey had meant to stay from the outset. Indeed, he had landed on

the greensward of Mardenholme determined to attain his object before he

left.

CHAPTER III.

LADY BAKER TELLS THE STORY OF THE PAST.

The luncheon party was gay enough, in spite of Mr. and Mrs. Wimple’s

infatuation for each other, which rendered them, as it were,

non-existing for the rest of the party. They gazed upon each other

with rapt admiring eyes, and handed each other creams and jellies, and

smiled at each other upon the smallest provocation. But to-day Lady

Baker suffered them to amuse themselves after their own fashion, and

gave all her attention to Geoffrey. If he was not distinguished in the

realms of art, he was at least an agreeable young man, who knew how to

flatter a lady of fashion on the wrong side of forty without indulging

in that florid colouring which awakens doubts of the flatterer’s good

faith. He improved his opportunities at luncheon to such good purpose,

that when that meal was over, and the devoted Mr. Wimple had been

carried off by his wife and the other two ladies to play croquet, Lady

Baker volunteered to show Geoffrey the Mardenholme picture-gallery—a

very fair collection of modern art, which had been acquired by her

ladyship’s father, a great Manchester man; for it was commerce in soft

goods which had created the wealth wherewith this lady had endowed

Sir Horatio Veering Baker, and whence had arisen all the splendours

of Mardenholme. This was the very thing Geoffrey desired, and for

which he had been scheming, with the _finesse_ of a Jesuit, during the

hospitable meal. He had affected an enthusiast’s love of art, declaring

how, from his earliest youth, he had languished to behold the treasures

of the Mardenholme gallery.

Lady Baker was delighted.

‘My father lived all his later life among artists,’ she said. ‘He made

his fortune in commerce, as I daresay you have heard; but in heart he

was an artist. I myself have painted a little.’ (What had Lady Baker

not done a little?) ‘But music is my grand passion. The pictures were

almost all bought off the easel—several of them inspired by my father’s

suggestions. He was full of imagination. Come, Mr. Hossack, while those

foolish people play croquet we will take a stroll in the gallery.’

She led the way through the wide marble-paved hall, whence ascended a

staircase of marble, like that noble one in the Duke of Buccleuch’s

palace at Dalkeith, and thence to the gallery, a spacious apartment

lighted from the roof. It was here Lady Baker gave her concerts and

musical kettledrums, to which half the county came to sip black coffee

and eat ices and stare at the pictures, while the lady’s latest

discovery in the world of harmony charmed or excruciated their ears, as

the case might be.

To-day this apartment looked delightfully cool and quiet after the

sunlit brightness of the other rooms. A striped canvas blind was drawn

over the glass roof, gentle zephyrs floated in through invisible

apertures, and a tender half-light prevailed which was pleasant for

tired eyes, if not the best possible light for seeing pictures.

‘I’ll have the blinds drawn up,’ said Lady Baker, ‘and you shall see

my gems. There is an Etty yonder that I would not part with if a good

fairy offered me five additional years of life in exchange for it.’

‘With so long a lease of life still in hand, five years more or less

can seem of no consequence,’ said Geoffrey gallantly; ‘but I think an

octogenarian would accept even a smaller bid for the picture.’

‘Flatterer!’ exclaimed Lady Baker. ‘If you wish to see pictures, you

must be good enough to ring that bell, in order that we may get a

little more light.’

‘A moment, dear Lady Baker,’ pleaded Geoffrey; ‘this half-light

is delightful, and my eyes are like a cat’s. I can see best in a

demi-obscurity like this. Yes, the Etty is charming. What modelling,

what chiaroscuro, what delicious colouring!’

‘You are looking at a Frost,’ said Lady Baker, with offended dignity.

‘A thousand pardons. I recognise the delicacy of his outlines, the

purity of his colour. But forgive me, Lady Baker, when I tell you that

my devotion to art is secondary to my desire to be alone with you!’

Lady Baker looked at him with a startled expression. Was it possible

that this young Oxonian had been seized with a sudden and desperate

passion for a woman old enough to be his mother? Young men are so

foolish; and Lady Baker was so accustomed to hear herself talked of

as a divinity, that she could hardly suppose herself inferior in

attractiveness to Cleopatra or Ninon de l’Enclos.

‘What do you mean, Mr. Hossack?’

‘Only that, presuming on your ladyship’s well-known nobility of

soul and goodness of heart, I am about to appeal to both. Women of

fashion have been called fickle, but I cannot think _you_ deserve that

reproach.’

‘I am not a woman of fashion,’ answered Lady Baker, still very much in

the dark; ‘I have lived for art—art the all-sufficing, the eternal—not

for the pretty frivolities which make up the sum of a London season.

If I have lived in the midst of a crowd, it is because I have sought

intellect and genius wherever they were to be found. I have striven to

surround myself with great souls. If sometimes I have discovered only

the empty husk where I had hoped to find the precious kernel, it is not

my fault.’

‘Would that the world could boast of more such women!’ exclaimed

Geoffrey, feeling that he had cleared an avenue to the subject he

wanted to arrive at. ‘Amongst your protégées of years gone by, Lady

Baker, there was one in whose fate I am profoundly interested. She is

the sister of my most valued friend. I speak of Janet Davoren.’

Lady Baker started, and a cloud came over her face, as if that name had

been suggestive of painful recollections.

‘O, Mr. Hossack, why do you mention that unfortunate girl’s name? I

have been so miserable about her—have even felt myself to blame for

her flight, and all the trouble it brought on that good old man her

father. He never would confess that she had run away from home; he

spoke of her always in the same words: “She is staying with friends in

London;” but every one knew there was some sad mystery connected with

her disappearance, and I was only too well able to guess the nature of

that mystery. But you speak of her as if you knew her—as if you could

enlighten me as to her present position. If it is in your power to do

that, I shall be beyond measure grateful to you; you will take a load

from my mind.’

‘I may be able to do that by and by,’ answered Geoffrey; ‘at present

I can say very little, except that the lady lives, and that her

brother is my friend. From you, Lady Baker, I venture to ask all the

information you can give me as to those circumstances which led to Miss

Davoren’s disappearance from Wykhamston.’

Lady Baker sighed and paused before she responded to this inquiry.

‘All I can tell you amounts to but little,’ she said; ‘and even that

little is, for the greater part, conjecture or mere guess-work. But

what I can tell shall be freely told, and if I can be of any service

to that poor girl, either now or in the future, she may rely on my

friendship; and, whatever the circumstances of her flight, she shall

have my compassion.’

‘Those circumstances reflect no shame upon her, Lady Baker,’ answered

Geoffrey with warmth. ‘She was a victim, but not a sinner.’

‘I am most thankful to hear that. And now sit down, Mr. Hossack,

and you shall hear my story. I think I can guess the nature of your

interest in this lady, in spite of your reserve; and if I can help you

towards any good result, I shall be delighted to do so. There are few

girls I ever met more worthy of admiration, and, I believe, of esteem,

than Janet Davoren.’

They sat down side by side in a recess at the end of the gallery; and

here Lady Baker began her story.

‘I first met Miss Davoren,’ she said, ‘at the Castle. The Marchioness

had taken her up on account of her fine voice; although Lady Guildford

had no more soul for music than a potato; but, like the rest of the

world, she likes to have attractive people about her; and so she had

taken up Miss Davoren. The dear girl was as beautiful as she was

gifted.’

‘She is so still!’ cried Geoffrey with enthusiasm.

‘Ah, I thought I was right!’ said Lady Baker; at which Geoffrey blushed

like a girl. ‘Yes, she was positively beautiful; and if she had sat

like a statue to be looked at and admired, she would have been an

attraction; but her talent and beauty together made her almost divine.

My heart was drawn to her at once. I called at Wykhamston vicarage next

day, and invited Mr. Davoren and his daughter to my next dinner-party;

and then I asked Janet to spend a long day with me alone—not a creature

to be allowed to disturb us—for, as I told her, I wanted really to know

her. We spent that day together in my boudoir, giving ourselves up to

the delight of music and intellectual conversation. I found Janet all

soul; full of imagination and poetry, romantic, enthusiastic, a poet’s

ideal heroine. I made her sing Mozart’s Masses to me until my soul was

steeped in melody. In a word, we discovered that there was perfect

sympathy between us, and I did not rest till I had persuaded Mr.

Davoren to let his daughter come to stay with me. He was averse from

this. He talked of the disparity in our modes of life, feared that the

luxury and gaiety of Mardenholme would make the girl’s home seem poor

and dull by comparison; but I overruled his objections, appealed to the

mother’s pride in her child, hinted at the great things which might

come of Janet’s introduction to society, and had my own way. Fatal

persistence! How often have I looked back to that day and regretted my

selfish pertinacity! But I really did think I might be the means of

getting the dear girl a good husband.’

‘And you succeeded in uniting her to a villain,’ said Geoffrey

bitterly; then remembering himself he added hastily, ‘Pray pardon my

impertinence, Lady Baker, but this is a subject upon which I feel

strongly.’

‘You foolish young man!’ exclaimed Lady Baker in her grand way, that

air of calm superiority with which she had gone through the world, the

proud serenity of mind which accompanies the possession of unlimited

means. ‘Do you think if I had not read your secret at the very first

that I should take the trouble to tell you all this? Well, the dear

girl came to stay with me. I was charmed with her. Sir Horatio even

liked her, although he rarely takes notice of any one unconnected

with ologies. He showed her his specimens, recommended her to study

geology—which he said would open her mind—and made himself remarkably

pleasant whenever he found her with me.’

Lady Baker paused, sighed thoughtfully, and then took up the thread of

her recollections.

‘How happy we were! I should weary you if I described our intercourse.

We were like girls together, for Janet’s society made me younger.

I felt I had discovered in this girl a mind equal to my own, and I

was not too proud to place myself on a level with her. I had very

few people with me when she first came, and we lived our own lives

in perfect freedom, wandering about the grounds—it was in early

summer—staying up till long after midnight listening to that dear

girl’s singing, and thoroughly enjoying ourselves. One afternoon I

drove Janet in my pony carriage to Hillsleigh, where I daresay you know

there is a fine old Gothic church, and a still finer organ.’

‘I can guess what is coming,’ said Geoffrey, frowning.

‘Yes, it was at Hillsleigh we first met the man whose baneful influence

destroyed that poor child’s life; and O, Mr. Hossack, I blame myself

for this business. If it had not been for my folly, he could never have

possessed himself of Janet’s mind as he did. I saw the evil when it was

too late to undo what I had done.’

‘Pray go on,’ said Geoffrey eagerly; ‘I want to know who and what that

man was.’

‘A mystery,’ answered Lady Baker. ‘And unhappily it was the mystery

which surrounded him that made him most attractive to a romantic girl.

Please let me tell the story my own way. How well I remember that June

afternoon, the soft warm air, the birds singing in the old churchyard!

We wandered about among the tombstones for a little while, reading the

epitaphs, and, I am afraid, sometimes laughing at them, until all at

once Janet caught hold of my arm and cried “Hark!” her face lighted up

with rapture. Through the open windows of the church there came such a

burst of melody, the opening of the _Agnus Dei_ in Mozart’s Twelfth,

played by a master-hand. “O,” whispered Janet, with a gasp of delight,

“isn’t that lovely?”’

‘It was that scoundrel!’ cried Geoffrey.

‘“I told you the Hillsleigh organ was worth hearing,” said I. “Yes,”

said Janet, “but you did not tell me that the organist was one of

the finest players in England. I’m sure that man must be.” “Why, my

dear,” said I, “when I was last here the man played the usual droning

voluntaries. This must be a new organist. Let’s go in and see him.”

“No,” said Janet, stopping me, “let us stay here till he has done

playing. He may leave off if we go in.” So we sat down upon one of the

crumbling old tombstones and listened to our hearts’ content. The man

played through a great part of the Mass, and then strayed off into

something else; wild strange music, which might or might not be sacred,

but which sounded to me like a musical version of the great Pandemonium

scene in _Paradise Lost_. Altogether this lasted nearly an hour, and

then we heard the church door open and saw the player come out.’

‘Pray describe him.’

‘He was tall and thin. I should think about five-and-thirty, with a

face that was at once handsome and peculiar; a narrow oval face with a

low forehead, an aquiline nose, a complexion pale to sallowness—like

ivory that has yellowed with age—and the blackest eyes I ever saw.’

‘And black hair that grew downward into a peak in the centre of the

forehead,’ cried Geoffrey breathlessly.

‘What, you know him, then?’ exclaimed Lady Baker.

‘I believe I met with him in the backwoods of America; your description

both of the man and of his style of music precisely fits the man I

am thinking of. That peculiarity about the form of the hair upon the

forehead seems too much for a coincidence. I wonder what became of that

man?’ he added, thinking aloud.

‘Let me finish my story, and then I will show you Mr. Vandeleur’s

photograph,’ said Lady Baker.

‘You have a photograph of him?’ cried Geoffrey; ‘how lucky!’

‘Yes; and my possession of that portrait arises from the merest

accident. I had a couple of photographers about the place at the time

of Mr. Vandeleur’s visits, photographing the gardens and ferneries

for me, and one afternoon I took it into my head to have my guests

photographed. We had been drinking tea in the river-garden, and I sent

for the men and told them to arrange us in a group for a photograph.

They pulled us about and moved and fidgeted us till we were all half

worn out; but they ultimately produced half-a-dozen very fair groups,

in a modern Watteau style, and Janet and Mr. Vandeleur are striking

figures in all the groups. But this is anticipating events. I’ll show

you the photos by and by.’

‘I await your ladyship’s pleasure,’ said Geoffrey, ‘and am calm as a

statue of Patience; but I would bet even money that this Vandeleur is

the self-same scoundrel Lucius Davoren and I fell in with in America.’

‘Extraordinary coincidences hardly surprise me. My life has been made

up of them,’ said Lady Baker. ‘Well, Mr. Hossack, enchanted with his

playing, I was foolish enough to introduce myself to this stranger,

whom I found a man of the world, and, as I believed, a gentleman. He

was on a walking tour through the south-west of England, he told us,

and having heard of the Hillsleigh church and the Hillsleigh organ, had

come out of his way to spend a day or two in the quiet village to which

the church belongs. His manners were conciliating and agreeable. I

asked him to breakfast at Mardenholme on the following day, promising

to show him my gardens and to let him hear some fine music. He came,

heard Janet play and sing after breakfast, and, at my request, stayed

all day. I daresay you would think me a very foolish woman if I were

to attempt to describe the influence this man soon began to exercise

over me. I knew nothing of him except what he chose to tell, and that

was rather hinted than told. But he contrived to make me believe that

he was the son of a man of position and of large wealth; that his

passion for music, and his somewhat Bohemian tendencies, had made

a breach between him and his father; and that he was determined to

live in freedom and independence upon a small income which he had

inherited from his mother rather than sacrifice his inclinations to the

prejudices of a tyrannical old man who wanted his son to make a figure

in the House of Commons.’

‘You made no attempt to discover who and what the man really was?’

‘No. It seemed painful to him to speak of his father; and I respected

his reserve. At the risk of being thought very foolish, I must confess

that I was fascinated by the air of romance, and even mystery, which

surrounded him; perhaps also somewhat fascinated by the man himself,

whose very eccentricities were attractive. He was so different from

other people; followed in no way the conventional model by which most

men shape themselves; took so little trouble to make himself agreeable.

Again, he entered my house only as a passing stranger. His genius, and

not the importance and respectability of his connections, gave him the

right of admission to my circle. If I tried to lure a butterfly into my

drawing-room for the sake of its brilliant colouring, I should hardly

trouble myself about the butterfly’s parentage or antecedents. So with

Mr. Vandeleur. I accepted him for what he was—an amateur musician of

exceptional powers. I daresay, if he had been a professional artist, I

should have taken more pains to find out who he was.’

‘I daresay,’ retorted Geoffrey bitterly, ‘if he had confessed to

getting his living by his talents, you would have been doubtful as to

the safety of your plate. But a fine gentleman, strolling through the

country for his own pleasure, is a different order of being.’

‘Mr. Hossack, I fear you are a democrat! That dreadful Oxford is the

cradle of advanced opinions. However,’ continued Lady Baker, ‘Mr.

Vandeleur took up his quarters at our village inn, and spent the

greater part of his time in this house. I take some credit to myself,

being by nature sadly impulsive, for not having asked him to stay here

altogether. For my own part, I had no doubt as to his respectability.

Vandeleur was a good name. True, it might be assumed; but then the

man himself had a superior air. I thought I could not be mistaken.

Mardenholme filled with visitors soon after Mr. Vandeleur’s appearance

among us. Every one seemed to like him. His genius astounded and

charmed the women. The men liked his conversation, and admired, and

even envied, him for his billiard playing, which I believe was _hors

ligne_. “The time I have not given to music I have given to billiards,”

he said when some one wondered at his skill. This must have been

exaggeration, however, for he had read enormously, and could talk upon

every possible subject.’

‘Yes,’ said Geoffrey thoughtfully, ‘the description tallies in every

detail—allowing for the difference between a man in the centre of

civilisation, and the same man run wild and savaged by semi-starvation.

I know this Vandeleur.’

‘You know where he is, and what he is doing?’ asked Lady Baker eagerly.

‘No. At a random guess I should think it probable that his skeleton

is peacefully mouldering under the pine-trees somewhere between the

Athabasca and the Pacific—unless he was as lucky as my party in falling

across better furnished travellers.’

Geoffrey had entertained her ladyship with a slight sketch of his

American adventures during luncheon, so she understood this allusion.

‘You must tell me all about your meeting with him by and by,’ she

said. ‘I have very little more to say. Those two, Janet and Mr.

Vandeleur, were brought very much together by their common genius. He

accompanied her songs, taught her new forms of expression, showed her

the mechanics of her art; and her improvement under this tuition, even

in a little less than three weeks, was marvellous. They sang together,

played concertante duets for violin and piano, and sometimes spent

hours together alone in this room, preparing some new surprise for the

evening. You will say that I ought to have considered the danger of

such companionship for a romantic inexperienced girl. I should have

done so, perhaps, had I not believed in this Mr. Vandeleur, and had

there not been lurking in my mind a dim idea that a marriage between

him and Janet would be the most natural thing in the world. True, that

according to his own showing his resources were small in the present;

yet there could be no doubt, I thought, that he would ultimately

be reconciled to his father, and restored to his proper position.

But remember, Mr. Hossack, this was only a vague notion, an idea of

something that might happen in the remote future, when we should have

become a great deal better acquainted with Mr. Vandeleur and his

surroundings. Of present danger I had not a thought.’

‘Strange blindness,’ said Geoffrey. ‘But then Fortune is blind, and in

this instance you were Fortune.’

‘Bear in mind,’ replied Lady Baker, ‘that this man was full fifteen

years Janet’s senior, that she was immensely admired by men who were

younger, and, in the ordinary sense of the word, far more attractive.

Why should I think this man would exercise so fatal an influence over

her? But towards the end of her visit my eyes were opened. I came into

this room one morning and found Janet in tears by yonder piano, while

Mr. Vandeleur bent over her, speaking in a low earnest voice. Both

started guiltily at sight of me. This, and numerous other trifling

indications, told me that there was mischief at work; and when Mr.

Davoren wrote to me a few days afterwards, urging his daughter’s

return, I was only too glad to let her go, believing that the end

of her visit would be the end of all danger. When she was gone, I

considered it my duty, as her friend, to ascertain the real state of

the case. I told Mr. Vandeleur my suspicions, and assured him of my

sympathy and my interest if he were, as I believed, anxious to win

Janet for his wife. But to my utter astonishment and indignation he

repudiated the idea; declared his profound esteem and admiration for

Miss Davoren, and talked of “fetters” the nature of which he did not

condescend to explain. “Yet I found you talking to that young lady in

a manner which had moved her to tears,” I said doubtfully. “My dear

madam, I had been telling her the troubles of my youth,” he answered

with perfect self-possession, “and that gentle heart was moved to

pity.” “A gentle heart, indeed,” I replied; “who would not hate the

scoundrel who could wound it?” I was by no means satisfied with this

conversation, and from that moment lowered my opinion of Mr. Vandeleur.

He may have perceived the change in my feelings; in any case, he

speedily announced his intention of travelling farther westward,

thanked me for my friendly reception, and bade me good-bye. Only a few

weeks after that I heard of Janet Davoren’s disappearance. You can

imagine, perhaps, what I suffered, blaming my own blindness, my foolish

neglect, as the primary cause of her ruin.’

‘There is a fate in these things,’ said Geoffrey gloomily.

‘I called upon Mr. Davoren, hinted at my fears, and entreated him to be

candid with me. But he evaded my questions with a proud reserve, which

I could but admire, and kept the secret of his daughter’s disgrace,

even though it was breaking his heart. Thus repulsed, what could I do?

And the claims upon my time are so incessant. Life is such a whirligig,

Mr. Hossack. If I had had more leisure for thinking, I should have been

perfectly miserable about that poor girl.’

‘You never obtained any clue to her fate?’

‘No. Yet at one moment the thread seemed almost in my hand, had I been

but in time to follow it. Three years after that fatal summer, a cousin

of Sir Horatio’s, a young lieutenant in the navy, who had been with us

at the time of Miss Davoren’s visit, came here for the shooting. “What

do you think, Lady Baker?” he drawled out at dinner the first day in

his stupid haw-haw manner, “I met that fellow Vandeleur last Christmas,

at Milford, in Dorsetshire. I was down there to look up my old uncle

Timberly—you remember old Timberly, Sir Horatio, the man from whom I’m

supposed to have expectations; revolting old fellow, who has gout in

his stomach twice a year and never seems any the worse for it. Well,

Lady Baker, I found a fellow I knew down at Milford, an ensign in the

regiment quartered there, and he was dooced civil, and asked me to

dine with him on their guest night, and there, large as life, I beheld

our friend Vandeleur. He seemed uncommonly popular in the mess, but he

wasn’t overpleased to see me; and my friend Lucas told me afterwards

that in his opinion the man was no better than an adventurer, and the

colonel was a fool to encourage him. He was always winning everybody’s

money, and never seemed to lose any of his own; altogether there

was something queer about him. There was an uncommonly pretty woman

with him—his wife, I suppose—but she never went anywhere, or visited

anybody, and she looked very unhappy, Lucas told me. I came back to

London next day, and I had a letter from Lucas a week afterwards to say

that there’d been an awful burst-up at Milford; that Vandeleur had been

caught in the act of cheating at whist—the stakes high, and so on—and

had been morally, if not physically, kicked out of the mess-room; after

which he had bolted, leaving the poor little wife and no end of debts

behind him.”’

‘Did you act upon this information, Lady Baker?’ asked Geoffrey.

‘I went to Milford next day, and with some difficulty found the house

in which the Vandeleurs had lodged; but Mrs. Vandeleur had left the

town within the last few weeks with her little girl, and no one could

tell me what had become of her. She was very good, very honourable,

very unhappy, the landlady told me; had lived in the humblest way, and

supported herself by teaching music after her husband left her. I made

the woman describe her to me, and the description exactly fitted Janet.’

‘You have not heard a Mrs. Bertram, a singer who appeared at a good

many concerts in London last winter?’

‘No. I spent last winter in Paris. Do you mean to tell me that this

Mrs. Bertram is Janet Davoren under an assumed name?’

‘I hardly feel myself at liberty to tell you even as much as that

without permission from the lady herself. But since you have been so

very good to me, Lady Baker, I cannot be churlish enough to affect

secrecy in anything that concerns myself alone. You have guessed

rightly. I am attached to this lady, and my dearest hope is that I may

win her for my wife; but to do this I must discover the fate of her

infamous husband, since she refuses to repudiate a tie which I have

strong reason to believe is illegal. And now, Lady Baker, pray show me

those photographs, and let me see if the man who ruined Janet Davoren’s

bright young life is really the man I met in the American backwoods.’

‘Come to my room,’ said Lady Baker, ‘and you shall see them.’

She led the way to a charming apartment on the upper story, and at

one end of the house, spacious, luxurious, with windows commanding

every angle of view—bow-windows overhanging the river on one side, an

oriel commanding the distant hills on another, long French windows

opening upon a broad balcony on the third. Here were scattered those

periodicals with which Lady Baker fortified her mind, and supplied

herself with the latest varieties in opinion; here were divers

davenports and writing-tables at which Lady Baker penned those

delightful epistles which were doubtless destined to form part of the

light literature of the next generation, printed on thickest paper, and

sumptuously bound, and adorned with portraits of her ladyship after

different painters, and at various stages of her distinguished career.

Here, on a massive stand, were numerous portfolios of photographs, one

of which was labelled ‘Personal Friends.’

‘You will find the groups in that, Mr. Hossack,’ she said, and looked

over Geoffrey’s shoulder while he went slowly through the photographs.

They came presently to a garden scene, a group of young men and women

against a background of sunlit lawn and river; light rustic chairs

scattered about, a framework of summer foliage, a tea table on one

side, a Blenheim spaniel and a Maltese terrier in the foreground.

Janet’s tall figure and noble face appeared conspicuously among figures

less perfect, faces more commonplace, and by her side stood the man

whom Geoffrey Hossack had seen in the flesh, wild, unkempt, haggard,

famished, savage, amidst the awful solitude of the pine-forest.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is the man.’

CHAPTER IV.

LUCIUS MAKES A CONFESSION.

It was nearly six o’clock when Geoffrey and his cousins left

Mardenholme. On descending from Lady Baker’s apartments in quest of

Belle and Jessie, Mr. Hossack had found those two damsels wandering

among the shrubberies in the forlornest manner, vainly striving to

stifle frequent yawns, so unentertaining had been the society of the

devoted Mr. and Mrs. Wimple, ‘who scarcely did anything but whisper

and titter to each other all the time we were with them,’ Belle said

afterwards.

‘I thought you were playing croquet,’ said Geoffrey, when he found this

straggling party in a grove of arbutus and magnolia.

‘We _have_ been playing croquet,’ answered Jessie, with some asperity;

‘but one can’t play croquet for ever. There’s nothing in Dante’s

infernal regions more dreadful than that would be. We played as long

as we could; Mr. and Mrs. Wimple were tired ever so long before we

finished.’

‘No, indeed,’ exclaimed the Wimples simultaneously.

‘What have you been doing all this time, Geoffrey?’ asked Belle.

‘Lady Baker has been so kind as to show me her pictures.’

‘Yes, of course; but you needn’t have been hours looking at them. We

must get back directly, or we shall be late for dinner. Ah, there is

Lady Baker,’ cried Belle, as her ladyship appeared on the terrace

before the drawing-room windows. ‘Come and say good-bye, Jessie, and

get the boat ready, Geoff. You’ll have to row us back in an hour.

Nothing vexes papa so much as any one being late for dinner. I don’t

think he would wait more than ten minutes for an archbishop.’

‘I’ll row like old boots,’ answered Geoffrey; whereupon the young

ladies ran off to take an affectionate leave of Lady Baker, while their

cousin sauntered down to the weeping willow to whose lowest branch he

had moored the wherry. In five minutes they had embarked, and the oars

were dipping in the smooth water.

They were at Hillersdon in time to dress, somewhat hurriedly, for

the all-important eight-o’clock dinner, which went off pleasantly

enough. All that evening cousin Geoffrey made himself particularly

agreeable—listened to Belle’s breakneck fantasias and Jessie’s newest

ballads with every appearance of rapture; played chess with Belle, and

bézique with Jessie, and allowed himself to be beaten by both.

‘What a delightful evening we have had!’ said Belle, as she wished him

good-night. ‘Why don’t you come to us oftener, Geoffrey?’

‘I mean to come very often in future,’ replied the impostor, hardly

knowing what he said.

At breakfast next morning there was no sign of Geoffrey; but just as

Belle had seated herself before the urn, the butler appeared with a

letter.

‘Mr. Geoffrey left this for you, ma’am,’ said the domestic, ‘when he

went away.’

‘Went away! My cousin, Mr. Hossack, gone!’ cried Belle, aghast, while

Jessie rushed to her sister’s side, and strove to possess herself of

the letter.

‘Yes, ma’am. Mr. Geoffrey left by the first train; Dawson drove him

over in the dog-cart. The letter would explain, Mr. Geoffrey said.’

‘Belle, read the letter, for goodness’ sake!’ cried Jessie impatiently;

‘and don’t sit staring like a figure in a hairdresser’s window.’

The butler lingered to give a finishing touch to the well-furnished

sideboard, and to hear the contents of Geoffrey’s letter.

It was brief, and, in the opinion of the sisters, unsatisfactory—the

style spasmodic, as of one accustomed to communicate his ideas by

electric telegraph, rather than in the more ornate form of a letter.

‘Dearest Belle,—Most unfortunate. Have received telegram summoning me

to town. Most particular business. Must go. Regret much. Thought I

was in for no end of fun down here. Hope to return shortly. Make my

excuses to my uncle, and be lenient yourself towards your affectionate

cousin

‘GEOFF.’

‘Was there ever anything so annoying?’ cried Belle, ‘and after Lady

Baker’s politeness to him yesterday! Particular business! What can he

have to do with business?’

‘I daresay it’s horse-racing or something dreadful,’ said Jessie. ‘I

saw a great change in him. He has such a wild look sometimes, and

hardly ever seems to know what one says to him.’

‘Jessie,’ exclaimed Belle with solemnity, ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if

Geoffrey were going to be married.’

‘O, Belle,’ cried Jessie with a gasp, ‘you don’t think he’d be mean

enough for that—to go and get engaged, and never say a word to us.’

‘I don’t know,’ answered her sister gloomily. ‘Men are capable of any

amount of meanness in that way.’

* * * * *

Geoffrey Hossack went up to London as fast as the South-Western Railway

would take him thither, and straightway upon his arrival transferred

himself to a hansom, bidding the driver convey him at full speed to the

Shadrack-road.

He reached that melancholy district before noon, and found the

shabby-genteel villa, with its fast-decaying stucco front, its rusty

iron railings, in which his friend Lucius Davoren had begun his

professional career. But, early as it was, Lucius had gone forth more

than two hours.

‘I must see him,’ said Geoffrey to the feeble little charwoman, whose

spirits were fluttered by the appearance of this rampant stranger, his

fiery impatience visible in his aspect. ‘Have you any idea where I can

find him?’

‘Lor, no, sir; he goes from place to place—in and out, and up and down.

It wouldn’t be the least bit of good tryin’ to foller him. You might

wait if you liked, on the chanc’t. He do sometimes come home betwigst

one and two to take a mossel of bread-and-cheese and a glass of ale, if

he’s going to make a extry long afternoon. But his general way is to

come home to a tea-dinner betwigst five and six.’

‘I’ll wait till two,’ said Geoffrey, ‘and if he’s not home by that

time, I’ll leave a letter for him.’

So Mr. Hossack dismissed the cab, and went into his friend’s small

parlour—such a dreary sitting-room as it seemed to eyes accustomed only

to brightness: furniture so sordid; walls so narrow; ceiling darkened

by the smoke of gas that had burned late into the long winter nights.

Geoffrey looked round with a shudder.

‘And Lucius really lives here,’ he said to himself, ‘and is contented

to work on, happy in the idea that he is a benefactor to his

species—watching the measles of infancy, administering to the asthmas

of old age. Thank God there are such men in the world,—and thank God I

am not one of them!’

He looked round the room in quest of that refuge of shallow minds,

the day’s paper; but newspaper there was none—only that poor little

collection of books on the rickety chiffonier: well-thumbed volumes,

wherewith Lucius had so often solaced his loneliness.

‘Shakespeare, Euripides, Montaigne, _Tristram Shandy_,’ muttered

Geoffrey, running over the titles contemptuously. ‘Musty old buffers!

Come out, old Shandy. I suppose you’re about the liveliest of the lot.’

He tried to settle himself on the feeble old sofa, too short and too

narrow for muscular young Oxford; stretched his legs this way and that;

read a few pages; smiled at a line here and there; yawned a good deal,

and then threw the book aside with an exclamation of impatience. Those

exuberant energies asked not repose; he wanted to be up and doing. His

mind was full of his interview with Lady Baker, full of anxious longing

thoughts about the woman he loved.

‘What became of that man we met in the forest?’ he asked of the

unresponsive atmosphere. ‘If I could but track him to his miserable

grave, and get a certificate of his death, what a happy fellow I should

be.’

He paced the little room, looked out of the window at the enlivening

traffic of the Shadrack-road; huge wagons laden with petroleum casks,

timber, iron, cotton bales, grinding slowly along the macadam; an

organ droning drearily on the other side of the way; a costermonger

crying whelks and hot eels, as appropriate refreshment in the sultry

August noontide; upon everything that faded, burnt-up aspect which

pervades London at the end of summer; a universal staleness, an odour

of doubtful fish and rotten fruit.

After the space of an hour and a half, which to Geoffrey’s weariness

had seemed interminable, a light step sounded on the little stone-paved

approach; a latchkey clicked in the door, and Lucius came into the

parlour.

There was surprise unbounded on the surgeon’s side.

‘Why, Geoff, I thought you were in Norway!’ he exclaimed.

‘I changed my mind about Norway,’ answered the other somewhat

sheepishly. ‘How could I be such a selfish scoundrel as to go and enjoy

myself shooting and fishing and so on, while she is lonely? No, Lucius,

I feel somehow that it is my destiny to win her, and that it will be

my own fault—_de mon tort_, as the lawyers say—if I lose my chance. So

when I got as far as Hull I turned tail, and came back to town, where

I found a letter from my cousin Belle Hossack offering me the very

opportunity I wanted.’

‘Your cousin Belle! the very opportunity! What do you mean? What could

your cousin Belle have to do with my sister?’

‘An introduction to Lady Baker. Don’t you see, Lucius? From Lady Baker

I might find out all about that villain who called himself Vandeleur.

Now, for heaven’s sake, old fellow, be calm and hear what I have to

tell you. I’ve travelled up from Hampshire post haste on purpose to

tell you all by word of mouth. I might have written, but I wanted to

talk the matter over with you. You may be able to throw some light upon

this business.’

‘Upon what business?’ asked Lucius, mystified by this hurried and

disjointed address.

‘You may be able to tell me what became of that wild fellow who came

in upon us in our log-hut out yonder—whether he is alive or dead. Why,

good heavens, Lucius, you’ve turned as white as a sheet of paper!

What’s the matter?’

‘I’m tired,’ said the surgeon, dropping slowly into a chair by the

table, and shading his face with his hand. ‘And your wild talk is

enough to bewilder any man; especially one who has just come in from

a harassing round amongst sickness and poverty. What do you mean? You

speak one minute of my sister and Lady Baker, and in the next of that

man we met yonder. What link can there be between subjects so wide

apart?’

‘A closer link than you could ever guess. The villain who married your

sister and that man yonder—’

‘Were one and the same!’ cried Lucius, almost with a shriek. ‘I

suspected it; I suspected it out yonder in the forest, as I sat and

watched that man’s face in the firelight. I have suspected it since

then many a time; have dreamt it oftener than I can count; for half my

dreams are haunted by the hateful shadow of that man. Was I right? For

God’s sake speak out, Geoffrey. Is that the man?’

‘It is.’

‘You know it?’

‘I have had indisputable proof of it. Lady Baker showed me a photograph

of the man who stole your sister from her home, and the face in that

photograph is the face of the man we let into our hut in the backwoods.’

‘Mysterious are Thy ways,’ cried Lucius, ‘and Thy paths past finding

out. Many a time have I fought against this idea. It seemed of all

things the most improbable; too wild, too strange for belief. I dared

not allow myself to think it. It was he, then. My hatred of him was a

natural instinct; my abhorrence hardly needed the proof of his infamy.

From the first moment in which our eyes met my soul cried aloud, “There

is thy natural enemy.”’

‘It is your turn to talk wildly now, Lucius,’ said Geoffrey, surprised

by the other’s passion, ‘but you have not answered my question. While

I lay delirious in the log-hut, not knowing anything that was going

on round me, did nothing happen to throw a light upon the fate of the

guide and that man Matchi, as we called him? They set out to try and

find the track; did they never return?’

‘The guide never returned,’ answered Lucius, looking downward with a

gloomy countenance, in deep thought. ‘Now, I’ll ask you a question,

Geoffrey. In all your talk with our German friend, Schanck, while _I_

was ill and unconscious, did he tell you nothing, hint nothing, about

that man?’

‘Nothing,’ replied the other unhesitatingly. ‘He was as close as the

grave. But had he anything to tell?’

‘Yes, if he had chosen to betray. He might have told you that I, your

friend—I, who had watched by your bed through those long dreary nights,

Death staring me in the face as I watched—that I, whom you would have

trusted in the direst extremity—was an assassin.’

‘Lucius,’ cried Geoffrey, starting up with a look of horror, ‘are you

mad?’

‘No, Geoff. I am reasonable enough now, Heaven knows; whatever I might

have been in that fatal time yonder. You want the truth, and you shall

have it, though it will sicken you as it sickens me to think of it. I

have kept the hideous secret from you; not because I had any fear of

the consequences of my act—not because that I am not ready to defend

the deed boldly before my fellow men—but because I thought the horrid

story might part us. We have been fast friends for so many years,

Geoff, and I could not bear to think your liking might be turned to

loathing.’

Tears, the agonising drops which intensest pain wrings from manhood,

were in his eyes. He covered his face with his clasped hands; as if he

would have shut out the very light which had witnessed that horror he

shuddered to recall.

‘Lucius,’ exclaimed Geoffrey, at once anxious and bewildered, ‘all this

is madness! You have been overworking your brain.’

‘Let me tell my story,’ said the other. ‘It will lighten my burden to

share it—even if the revelation makes you hate me.’

‘Even on your own showing I would not believe you guilty of any

baseness,’ answered Geoffrey. ‘I would sooner think your mind

distraught than that I had been mistaken in your character.’

‘It was no deliberate baseness,’ said Lucius quietly. He had in some

measure recovered his composure since that burst of passionate grief.

‘I did what at the moment appeared to me only an act of justice. I took

a life for a life.’

‘You, Lucius!’ cried the other, his eyes opening wide with horror. ‘You

took the life of a man—yonder—in America?’

‘Yes, Geoffrey. I killed the man who blighted my sister’s life.’

‘Good God! He is dead then—this scoundrel—and by your hand.’

‘He is. And if ever man deserved to die by the act of his fellow man

that man most fully merited his fate. But though in that awful hour,

when the deed of horror which I had discovered was burnt into my brain,

I took his life deliberately and advisedly, the memory of the act has

been a torment to me ever since. But let me tell you the secret of that

miserable time. It is not a long story, and I will tell it in as few

words as possible.’

Briefly, but with an unflinching truthfulness, he told of the night

scene in the forest; the ruffian’s attempt to enter the hut; and the

bullet which struck him down as he burst open the window.

‘You lay there, Geoffrey, unconscious; sleeping that blessed sleep

which Gods sends to those whose feet have trodden the border-land

betwixt life and death. Even to awaken you roughly might have been to

peril your chance of recovery. The firing of the gun might have done

it. But my first thought was that he, the assassin and traitor who had

slaughtered the faithful companion of our dangers and privation—that

he, brutal and merciless as any savage in the worst island of the

Pacific—should not be suffered to approach you in your helplessness.

I had warned him that if he attempted to cross our threshold I would

shoot him down with as little compunction as if he had been a mad dog.

I kept my word.’

‘But are you certain your bullet was fatal?’

‘Of what followed the firing of that shot I know nothing; but I have

never doubted its result. Even if the wound were not immediately fatal

the man must have speedily perished. The last I saw was the loosening

clutch of his lean hand as he dropped from the window; the last I heard

was a howl of pain. My brain, which had been kept on the rack for many

a dreary night of sleeplessness and fear, gave way all at once, and I

fell to the ground like a log. I have every reason to believe that what

I suffered at that moment was an apoplectic seizure, which might have

been fatal, but for Schanck’s promptitude in bleeding me. After the

shock came brain fever, from which, as you know, I was slow to recover.

When my senses did return, I seemed to enter upon a new world. Thought

and memory came back by degrees, and the vision of that scene in the

forest shaped itself slowly out of the confusion of my brain until it

became the vivid picture which has haunted me ever since.’

‘Had you met the man who betrayed your sister, would you have killed

him?’ asked Geoffrey.

‘In fair fight, yes.’

‘He who rules the destinies of us all decreed that you should meet him

unawares. You were the instrument of God’s vengeance upon a villain.’

‘“Vengeance is mine,”’ repeated Lucius thoughtfully. ‘Often, when

reproaching myself for that rash act, I have almost deemed the deed

a kind of blasphemy. What right had _I_ to forestall God’s day of

reckoning? For every crime there is an appointed punishment. The

assassin we hang to-day might pay a still heavier price for his sin

were we to leave him in the hands of God, or might be permitted to

repent and atone.’

‘Lucius,’ said Geoffrey, stretching out his hand to his friend, ‘in

my eyes you stand clear of all guilt. Was it not chiefly for my

defence you fired that shot? and for my own part I can assure you that

cold-blooded scoundrel would have had a short shrift had I been his

executioner. So let us dismiss all thought of him, with the memory of

the last murderer who swung at Newgate. One fact remains paramount—a

fact that for me changes earth to Paradise; your sister is free.’

Lucius started, and for the first time a look of absolute fear came

into his face.

‘What!’ he exclaimed. ‘You will tell her that her husband fell by my

hand? You forget, Geoffrey, that my confession must be sacred. If I did

not pledge you to secrecy, it was because I had so firm a faith in your

honour that I needed no promise of your silence.’

‘Let me tell her only of that man’s death.’

‘She will hardly be satisfied with a statement unsupported by proof,’

answered Lucius doubtfully.

‘What, will she doubt my honour?’

‘Love is apt to be desperate. The lover has a code of his own.’

‘Not if he is an honest man,’ cried Geoffrey.

‘But Janet has been once deceived, and will be slow to trust where she

loves. Put her to the test. Tell her that you know this man is dead,

and if she will believe you and if she will be your wife, there is no

one, not even yourself, who will be gladder than I. God knows it is a

grief for me to think of her lonely position, her lifelong penance for

the error of her youth. I have entreated her to share my home, humble

as it is, but she refuses. She is proud of her independence, and though

I know she loves me, she prefers to live aloof from me, with no other

society than her child’s.’

They talked long, Geoffrey full of mingled hope and fear. He left his

friend late in the afternoon, intending to go down to Stillmington by

the mail train, to try his fortunes once more. Lucius had told him he

was beloved; was not that sufficient ground for hope?

‘She will not be too exacting,’ he said to himself. ‘She will not

ask me for chapter and verse, for the doctor’s certificate, the

undertaker’s bill. If I say to her, “Upon my honour your husband is

dead,” she will surely believe me.’

Book the Third.

CHAPTER I.

A CHANGE CAME O’ER THE SPIRIT OF MY DREAM.

That calm delight which Lucius Davoren had hitherto felt in the society

of his betrothed, and his happy expectation of a prosperous future to

be shared with her, were now clouded over with new doubts and fears.

His mind had been weighed down by the burden of a dreadful secret,

from the moment of that discovery which had showed him that the man he

had killed and the father of the girl who loved him were one and the

same. Those calm clear eyes which looked at him so tenderly sometimes

wounded him as keenly as the bitterest reproach. Had she but known the

fatal truth—she who had always set the memory of her father above her

affection for himself—could he doubt the result of that knowledge?

Could he doubt that she would have turned from him with abhorrence,

that she would have shrunk with loathing from the lightest touch of his

blood-stained hand?

Vain would have been all argument, all attempt to justify his act, with

the daughter who clung with a romantic fondness to her lost father’s

image.

‘You killed him.’ She would have summed up all arguments in those three

words. ‘You killed him. If he was wicked, you gave him no time for

repentance; you cut him off in the midst of his sin. Who made you his

judge: who made you his executioner? He was a sinner like yourself, and

you thrust yourself between God and His infinite mercy. You did more

than slay his body; you robbed him of redemption for his sin.’

He could imagine that this girl, clinging with unreasonable love to

that dead sinner’s memory, would argue somewhat in this wise; and he

felt himself powerless to reply. These thoughts weighed him down, and

haunted him even in the company of his beloved. Yet, strange to say,

Lucille did not remark the difference in her lover, and it remained

for Lucius to perceive a change in her. His own preoccupation had

rendered him less observant than usual, and he was slow to mark this

alteration in Lucille’s manner, but the time came when he awakened to

the fact. There was a change, indefinable, indescribable, but a change

which he felt vaguely, and which seemed to grow stronger day by day.

The thought filled him with a sudden horror. Did she suspect? Had some

circumstance, unnoticed by him, led the way to the discovery he most

dreaded, to the revelation of that secret he hoped to hide from her for

ever? Surely no. Her hand did not shrink from his, the kiss he pressed

upon that pure young brow evoked no shudder. Whatever the trouble was

that had wrought this change in her, paled the fair cheek and saddened

the sweet eyes, the perplexity or the sorrow was in herself, and had no

reference to him.

‘Lucille,’ he said one evening, a few days after his interview with

Geoffrey Hossack, as they paced the garden together in the dusk, ‘it

seems to me that we are not quite so happy as we used to be. We do not

talk so hopefully of the future; we have not such pleasant thoughts and

fancies as we once had. Very often when I am speaking to you, I see

your eyes fixed with a strange far-off look; as if you were thinking of

something quite remote from the subject of our talk. Is there anything

that troubles you, dear? Are you uneasy about your grandfather?’

‘He does not seem so well as he did three weeks ago. He does not care

about coming down-stairs now; the old weakness seems to have returned.

And his appetite has fallen off again. I wish you would be a little

more candid, Lucius,’ she said, looking at him earnestly. ‘You used to

say he was improving steadily, and that you had great hopes of making

him quite himself again before very long; now you hardly say anything,

except to give me directions about diet.’

‘Do you wish me to speak quite plainly, Lucille,’ asked Lucius

seriously; ‘even if what I have to say should increase your anxiety?’

‘Yes, yes; pray treat me like a woman, and not like a child. Remember

what my life has been—how full of care and sorrow. I am not like a girl

who has lived only in the sunshine. Tell me the plain truth, Lucius,

however painful. You think my grandfather worse?’

‘I do, Lucille, very much worse than I thought him three weeks ago. And

what is more, I am obliged to confess myself puzzled by his present

condition. I can find no cause for this backward progress, and yet I

am watching the symptoms very closely. I have this case so deeply at

heart, that I do not believe any one could do more with it than I.

But if I do not see an improvement before many days are over, I shall

seek advice from wider experience than my own. I will bring one of the

greatest men in London to see your grandfather. A consultation may be

unnecessary or useless, but it will be for our mutual satisfaction.’

‘Yes,’ answered Lucille, ‘I have the strongest faith in your skill;

but, as you say, it might be better to have farther advice. Poor

grandpapa! It makes me wretched to see him suffer—to see him so weak

and weary and restless, if not in absolute pain, and to be able to do

so little for him.’

‘You do all that love and watchfulness can do, dearest. By the way,

you spoke of diet just now. That is a thing about which you cannot

be too careful. We have to restore exhausted nature, to renovate a

constitution almost worn out by hard usage. I should like to know

all about the preparation of the broths and jellies you give your

grandfather. Are they made by you, or by Mrs. Wincher?’

‘Wincher makes the broth and beef-tea in an earthenware jar in the

oven; I make the jellies with my own hands.’

‘Are you quite sure of Wincher’s cleanliness and care?’

‘Quite. I see her getting the jar ready every morning when I am in the

kitchen attending to other little things. I am not afraid of working in

the kitchen, you know, Lucius.’

‘I know that you are the most domestic and skilful among women, and

that you will make a model wife, darling,’ he answered tenderly.

‘For a poor man, perhaps,’ she answered, with the smile that had been

rare of late, ‘not for a rich one. I should not know how to spend

money, or to give dinner-parties, or to dress fashionably.’

‘That kind of knowledge would come with the occasion. When I am a

famous doctor you shall be a lady of fashion. But to return to the diet

question. You are assured that there is perfect cleanliness in the

preparation of your grandfather’s food—no neglected copper saucepans

used, for instance?’

‘There is not such a thing as a copper saucepan in the house. What made

you ask the question?’

‘Mr. Sivewright has complained lately of occasional attacks of nausea,

and I am unable to account for the symptom. That is what makes me

anxious about the preparation of his food.’

‘Would it be any satisfaction to you if I were to prepare everything

myself?’

‘A very great satisfaction.’

‘Then I will do it, Lucius. Wincher may feel a little offended, but I

will try and reconcile her to my interference. It was a great privilege

to be allowed to make the jellies.’

‘Never mind if she is vexed, darling; a few sweet words from you

will soon smooth her ruffled feathers. I shall be glad to know that

you prepare everything for the invalid. And I would not do it in the

kitchen, where Wincher might interfere. Have a fire in the little

dressing-room next your grandfather’s room, and have your saucepans and

beef-tea and so on up there. By that means you will be able to give him

what he wants at any moment, without delay.’

‘I will do so, Lucius. But I fear you think my grandfather in danger.’

‘Not exactly in danger, darling. But he is very ill, and I have been

thinking it might be better for you to have a nurse. I don’t say that

he requires any one to sit up at night with him. He is not ill enough

for that. I am only afraid that the care he requires may be too much

for you.’

‘It is not too much for me, Lucius,’ answered the girl eagerly.

‘I would not have a stranger about him for worlds. The sight of a

sick nurse would kill him.’

‘That is a foolish prejudice, Lucille.’

‘It may be; and when you find I nurse him badly, or neglect him,

you may bring a stranger. Till then I claim the right to wait upon

him, with Jacob Wincher’s assistance. He has been my grandfather’s

valet—giving the little help his master would ever accept—for the last

twenty years.’

‘And you have perfect confidence in Jacob Wincher?’

‘Confidence!’ exclaimed Lucille, with a wondering look. ‘I have known

him all my life, and seen his devotion to my grandfather. What reason

could I have to doubt him?’

‘Little apparent reason, I admit,’ answered Lucius thoughtfully. ‘Yet

it is sometimes from those we least suspect we suffer the deepest

wrongs. These Winchers may believe your grandfather to be very rich;

they may suppose that he has left them a good deal of money; and

might—mind, I am only suggesting a remote contingency—they _might_

desire to shorten his life. O, my dearest,’ he cried, pained by

Lucille’s whitening face, ‘remember I do not for a moment say that this

is likely; but—as I told you a few moments ago—there are symptoms in

the case that puzzle me, and we cannot be too careful.’

Lucille leaned upon him, trembling like a leaf, with her white face

turned towards him, a look of unspeakable horror in her eyes.

‘You don’t mean—’ she faltered; ‘you cannot mean that you suspect, that

you are afraid of my grandfather being poisoned?’

‘Lucille,’ he said tenderly, sustaining the almost-fainting girl, ‘the

truth is always best. You shall know all I can tell you. There are

diseases which baffle even experience; there are symptoms which may

mean one thing or another, may indicate such and such a state, or be

the effect of a condition exactly opposite; there are symptoms which

may arise alike from natural causes or from a slow and subtle poison.

This is why so many a victim has been done to death under the very eye

of his medical attendant, and only when too late the hideous truth has

dawned upon the doctor’s mind, and he has asked himself with bitter

self-reproach, “Why did I not make this discovery sooner?”’

‘Whom could you suspect?’ cried Lucille. ‘I am confident as to the

fidelity of Mr. and Mrs. Wincher. They have had it in their power to

rob my grandfather at any moment, if gain could have tempted them to

injure him. Why, after all these years of faithful servitude, should

they attempt to murder him?’

This was said in a low tremulous voice, terror still holding possession

of the girl’s distracted mind.

‘The thought is as horrible as it appears impossible,’ said Lucius,

whose apprehensions had as yet assumed only the vaguest form. He had

never meant to betray this shadowy fear, which had arisen only within

the last twenty-four hours; but he had been led on to say more than he

intended.

‘Let us speak no more of it, dearest,’ he said soothingly. ‘You attach

too much importance to my words. I have only suggested care; I have

only told you a well-known fact, namely, that the symptoms of slow

poisoning and of natural disease are sometimes exactly alike.’

‘You have filled me with fear and horror!’ cried Lucille, shuddering.

‘Let me bring a nurse into the house,’ pleaded Lucius, angry with

himself for his imprudence. ‘Her presence would at least give you

courage and confidence.’

‘No; I will not have my grandfather frightened to death. He shall take

nothing but what I prepare for him; no one shall go near him but I, or

without my being present.’

‘By the way,’ said Lucius thoughtfully, ‘you remember that noise I

heard the evening we went up to the loft together?’

‘I remember your fancy about a noise,’ Lucille answered carelessly.

‘My fancy, then, if you like. I suppose nothing has ever happened

since to throw a light upon that fancy of mine?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You are quite sure that no stranger could obtain admission to those

up-stairs rooms, or to any part of this house?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘In that case we may rest assured that all is safe, and you need think

no more of anything I have said.’

He tried with every art he knew to soothe away the fears which his

imprudent words had occasioned, but could not altogether succeed

in tranquillising her, though he brought the Amati violin into

requisition, and played some of his sweetest symphonies—melodies which,

to quote Mrs. Wincher, ‘might have drawed tears out of a deal board.’

Nothing could dispel the cloud which he had raised; and he left Cedar

House full of trouble and self-reproach, beyond measure angry with

himself for his folly.