CHAPTER I.

Produced by Charles Bowen

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THE ROCK AHEAD.

A NOVEL.

BY EDMUND YATES,

AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," ETC.

_COPYRIGHT EDITION_.

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LEIPZIG

BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ.

1868.

_The Right of Translation is reserved_.

To M. E--d. Forgues.

My dear Sir,

Although I have not the pleasure of your personal acquaintance, I

venture to ask you to accept the dedication of this book, in slight

acknowledgment of the admirable manner in which you have reproduced

two of my previous stories (_Broken to Harness_ and _The Forlorn Hope_)

in the pages of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, and of the flattering

way in which you have frequently referred to my writings in that

excellent periodical.

Faithfully yours,

EDMUND YATES.

_London, April 1868_.

CONTENTS

OF VOLUME I.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER

I. Whispered.

II. Pondered.

III. Proposed.

IV. Settled.

BOOK THE FIRST.

I. Rowley Court.

II. In Possession.

III. Carabas House.

IV. Breaking Cover.

V. Memory-haunted.

VI. Lloyd's Luck.

VII. The Linnet's Cage.

VIII. The Linnet's first Flight.

IX. Soaring.

BOOK THE SECOND.

I. Progress.

II. Integratio Amoris.

III. At the Crystal Palace.

THE ROCK AHEAD.

PROLOGUE.

CHAPTER I.

Whispered.

Hot in Brighton, very hot. The August sun reflected off white-chalk

cliff and red-brick pavement, and the sea shining and sparkling like a

sapphire; the statue of George the Fourth, in its robe of verdigris,

looking on in blighted perspiration at the cabmen at its base, as

though imploring a drink; the cabmen lolling undemonstratively on the

boxes of their vehicles, not seeking for employment, and--partly by

reason of the heat, but more, perhaps in consequence of the money

received recently at the races--rather annoyed than otherwise when

their services were called into requisition. For the Brighton races

had just taken place, and the town, always so full, had been more

crammed than ever. All the grand hotels had been filled with the upper

ten thousand, who moved easily over from Chichester and Worthing and

Bognor, where they had been staying for Goodwood, which immediately

precedes Brighton; and all the lodgings had been taken by the

betting-men and the turfites,--the "professionals," with whom the

whole affair is the strictest matter of business, and to whom it is of

no interest whether the race is run at Torquay or Wolverhampton, in

blazing sunshine or pouring hailstorm, so long as the right thing

"comes off," and they "land the winner."

It was all right for the bookmakers this time at Brighton: the

favourites, against which so much money had been staked, had been

beaten, and "dark" horses, scarcely heard of, and backed for nothing,

had carried off the principal prizes. So it followed that most of the

gentry of the betting-ring, instead of hurrying off to the scene of

their next trials of fortune, finding themselves with plenty of money

in their pockets, at a pleasant place in lovely weather, made up their

minds to remain there during the intervening Saturday and Sunday, and

to drop business so far as possible until the Monday morning, when

they would speed away by the early express-trains.

So far as possible, but not entirely. It is impossible for them to

drop business altogether even on this glorious Sunday afternoon, when

the whole face of Nature is blandly smiling. See the broad blue bosom

of the sea smooth and sparkling as glass, dotted here and there with

white-sailed pleasure-boats; see far away, beyond the encircling belt

of brick and stone, the broad shoulder of the bare and bushless downs,

over which the fresh air careering comes away laden with the delicious

scents of trodden turf and wild thyme and yellow gorse; see the

brown beach, where under the lee of the fishing-smacks, or making a

table of the large flukes of rusty anchors, sit groups of

excursionists,--pallid Londoners, exulting in the unwonted luxury of

escaping from the stony streets, and more excited by the brisk and

revivifying sea air than by the contents of the stone bottle which

stands in the midst of each group, and whose contents are so

perpetually going round from hand to hand in the little footless

glass; see the Esplanade thronged with its hundreds of foot

passengers, its scores of flies and carriages; see the Stock Exchange

in all its glory, and the children of Israel gorgeous in long

ringlets, thunder-and-lightning neckties, and shot-silk parasols; and

see the turf-men standing here and there in little knots, trying to be

interested in the scenes passing around them, but ever and again

turning to each other with some question of "odds," for some scrap of

"intelligence."

The ring is strongly represented this Sunday afternoon on Brighton

Parade, both in its highest and its lowest form. The short stout man

in the greasy suit of black, with the satin waistcoat frayed round the

pockets by the rubbing of his silver watch-guard, who is jotting down

memoranda with a fat cedar-pencil in his betting-book, enters freely

into conversation and is on an equality with the gentlemanly-looking

man whose only visible "horseyness" is expressed in his tightly-cut

trousers and his bird's-eye neckerchief with the horseshoe pin.

Patrons of the turf, owners of racehorses, commission-agents,

bookmakers, touts, tipsters, hangers-on of every kind to turf

speculations and turf iniquities, are here at Brighton on this lovely

Sunday afternoon.

There was one group, consisting of three people, planted on the

Esplanade, just in front of the Old Ship Hotel, the three component

members of which were recognised and saluted by nearly everyone who

passed. One of them was a short square-built man, with keen eyes

closely set and sunken, small red whiskers, and a sharp-pointed nose.

He was dressed in black, with a wonderfully neatly-tied long white

cravat, folded quite flat, with a dog's tooth set in gold for a pin;

and he wore a low-crowned hat. The other two were young men, dressed

in the best style of what is known as "horsey get-up." They had been

talking and laughing ever since they had taken up their position,

immediately after lunching at the hotel, out of which they had

strolled with cigars in their mouths; and it was obvious that any

respect which the elder man might receive was not paid to him on

account of his age, but rather in acknowledgment of the caustic

remarks with which he amused his companions. These remarks seemed at

last to have come to an end. There had been a long silence, which was

broken by the elder man asking,

"O, seen anything of Gore--Harvey Gore? Has he gone back, or what?"

"Don't know; haven't seen him since Thursday night," said the taller

of the young men.

"Won a pot of money on the Cup," said the other sententiously;

"regular hatful."

"What did his pal do?" asked the elder man. "Lloyd I mean. Did he pull

through?"

"Dropped his tin, Foxey dear. Held on like grim death to Gaslight, and

was put in the hole like the rest of us. He tells me he has been hit

for--"

"_He_ tells you!" interrupted the elder man; "He tells you! I've known

Gilbert Lloyd for two or three years, and anything _he_ tells me I

should take deuced good care not to believe."

"Very good, Foxey dear! very nice, you sweet old thing! only don't

halloo out _quite_ so loud, because here's G.L. coming across the road

to speak to us, and he mightn't--How do, Lloyd, old fellow?"

The new-comer was a man of about four-and-twenty, a little above the

middle height, and slightly but strongly built. His face would

generally have been considered handsome, though a physiognomist would

have read shiftiness and suspicion in the small and sunken blue eyes,

want of geniality in the tightly-closing mouth visible under the

slight fair moustache, and determination in the jaw. Though there was

a slight trace of the stable in his appearance, he was decidedly more

gentlemanly-looking than his companions, having a distinct stamp of

birth and breeding which they lacked. He smiled as he approached the

group, and waved a small stick which he carried in a jaunty manner;

but Foxey noticed a flushed appearance round his eyes, an eager worn

straining round his mouth, and said to his friend who had last spoken,

"You're right, Jack; Lloyd has had it hot and strong this time, and no

mistake."

The young man had by this time crossed the road and stood leaning over

the railing. In answer to a repetition of their salutes, he said:

"Not very bright. None of us are always up to the mark, save Foxey

here, who is perennial; and just now I'm worried and bothered. O, not

as you fellows imagine," he said hastily, as he saw a smile go round;

and as he said it his face darkened, and the clenching of his jaws

gave him a very savage expression,--"not from what I've dropped at

this meeting; that's neither here nor there: lightly come; lightly

gone; but the fact is that Gore, who is living with me over there, is

deuced seedy."

"Thought he looked pulled and done on Thursday," said Foxey. "Didn't

know whether it was backing Gaslight that had touched him up, or--"

"No," interrupted Lloyd hurriedly; "a good deal of champagne under a

tremendously hot sun; that's the cause, I believe. Harvey has a way of

turning up his little finger under excitement, and never will learn to

moderate his transports. He's overdone it this time, and I'm afraid is

really bad. I must send for a doctor; and now I'm off to the

telegraph-office, to send a message to my wife. Gore was to have

cleared out of this early this morning, to spend a day or two with

Sandcrack, the vet, at Shoreham; and my proprietress was coming down

here; but there's no room for her now, and I must put her off."

"Do you think Harvey Gore's really bad?" asked one of the younger men.

"Well, I _think_ he's got something like sunstroke, and I _know_

he's a little off his head," responded Lloyd. "He'll pull round, I

daresay--I've no doubt. But still he can't be moved just yet, and a

woman would only be in the way under such circumstances, let alone

it's not being very lively for her; so I'll just send her a message to

keep off. Ta-ta! I shall look into the smoking-room to-night at the

Ship, when Harvey's gone off to sleep." And with a nod and a smile,

Gilbert Lloyd started off.

"Queer customer that, Foxey."

"Queer indeed; which his golden number is Number One!" said Foxey

enigmatically.

"What's his wife like?"

"Never saw her," said Foxey; "but I should think she had a pleasant

time of it with that youth. It will be an awful disappointment to him,

her not coming down, won't it?"

"Foxey, you are an unbeliever of the deepest dye. Domestic happiness

in your eyes is--"

"Bosh! You never said a truer word. Now, let's have

half-a-crown's-worth of fly, and go up the cliff."

A short time after Gilbert Lloyd had left the house in which he had

taken lodgings, consisting of the parlour-floor and a bedroom

upstairs, Mrs. Bush, the landlady, whose mind was rather troubled,

partly because the servant, whose "Sunday out" it was, had not

yet returned from the Methodist chapel where she performed her

devotions--a delay which her mistress did not impute entirely to the

blandishments of the preacher--and partly for other reasons, took up

her position in the parlour-window, and began to look up and down the

street. Mrs. Bush was not a landlady of the jolly type; she was not

ruddy of complexion, or thin and trim of ankle, neither did she adorn

herself with numerous ribbons of florid hue. On the contrary, she was

a pale, anxious-faced woman, who looked as if she had had too much to

do, and quite enough to fret about, all her life. And now, as she

stood in the parlour-window on a hot Sunday, and contemplated the

few loungers who straggled through the street on their way to the

seashore, she assumed a piteous expression of countenance, and shook

her head monotonously.

"I wish I hadn't let 'em the rooms, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bush to

herself. "It's like my luck--and in the race-week too. If _he's_ able

to be up and away from this in a day or two, then _I_ know nothing of

sickness; and I've seen a good deal of it too in my time. No sign of

that girl! But who's this?"

Asking this, under the circumstances, unsatisfactory question, Mrs.

Bush drew still closer to the parlour-window, holding the inevitable

red-moreen curtain still farther back, and looked with mingled

curiosity and helplessness at a cab which stopped unmistakably at the

door of her house, and from the window of which a handsome young

female head protruded itself. Mrs. Bush could not doubt that the

intention of the lady in the cab was to get out of it and come into

her house; and that good-for-nothing Betsy had not come in, and there

was nobody to open the door but Mrs. Bush--a thing which, though a

meek-enough woman in general, she did not like doing. The lady gave

her very little time to consider whether she liked it or not; for she

descended rapidly from the cab, took a small travelling-bag from the

hand of the cabman, paid him, mounted the three steps which led to the

door, and knocked and rang with so determined a purpose of being

admitted that Mrs. Bush, without a moment's hesitation,--but with a

muttered "Mercy on us! Suppose he'd been asleep now!" which seemed to

imply that the lady's vehemence might probably damage somebody's

nerves,--crossed the hall and opened the door.

She found herself confronted by a very young lady, a girl of not more,

and possibly less, than nineteen years, in whose manner there was a

certain confidence strongly suggestive of her entertaining an idea

that the house which she was evidently about to enter was her own, and

not that of the quiet, but not well-pleased, looking person who asked

her civilly enough, yet not with any cordiality of tone, whom she

wished to see.

"Is Mr. Lloyd not at home? This is his address, I know," was the

enigmatical reply of the young lady.

"A Mr. Lloyd _is_ lodging here, miss," returned Mrs. Bush, with a

glance of anything but approbation at her questioner, and planting

herself rather demonstratively in the doorway; "but he isn't in. Did

you wish to see him?"

"I am Mrs. Lloyd," replied the young lady with a frown, and depositing

her little travelling-bag within the threshold; "did you not know I

was coming? Let me in, please."

And the next minute--Mrs. Bush could not tell exactly how it

happened--she found the hall-door shut, and she was standing in the

passage, while the young lady who had announced herself as Mrs. Lloyd

was calmly walking into the parlour. Mrs. Bush was confounded by the

sudden and unexpected nature of this occurrence; but the only thing

she could do was to follow the unlooked-for visitor into the parlour,

and she did it. The young lady had already seated herself on a small

hard sofa, covered with crimson moreen to match the window-curtains,

had put off her very becoming and fashionable bonnet, and was then

taking off her gloves. She looked annoyed, but not in the least

embarrassed.

"_That_ is Mr. Lloyd's room, I presume?" she said, as she pointed to

the folding-doors which connected the parlours, and which stood

slightly open.

"Yes, m'm; but--"

Mrs. Bush hesitated; but as the young lady rose, took up her bag, and

instantly pushed the door she had indicated quite open, and walked

into the apartment, Mrs. Bush felt that the case was getting

desperate. Though a depressed woman habitually, she was not by any

means a timid one, and had fought many scores of highly successful

battles with lodgers in her time. But this was quite a novel

experience, and Mrs. Bush was greatly at a loss how to act. Something

must be done, that was quite clear. Not so what that something was to

be; and more than ever did Mrs. Bush resent the tarrying of Betsy's

feet on her return from Beulah Chapel.

"_She_ would have shut the door in her face, and kept her out until I

saw how things really were," thought the aggrieved landlady; but she

said boldly enough, as she closely followed the intruder, and glanced

at her left hand, on which the symbol of lawful matrimony duly shone:

"If you please, m'm, you wasn't expected. Mr. Lloyd nor the other

gentleman never mentioned that there was a lady coming; and I don't in

general let my parlours to ladies."

"Indeed! that is very awkward," said the young lady, who had opened

her bag, taken out her combs and brushes, and was drawing a chair to

the dressing-table; "but it cannot be helped. Mr. Lloyd quite expected

me, I know; he arranged that I should come down to-morrow before he

left town; but it suited me better to come to-day. I can't think why

he did not tell you."

"I suppose he forgot it, m'm," said Mrs. Bush, utterly regardless of

the uncomplimentary nature of the suggestion, "on account of the sick

gentleman; but it's rather unfortunate, for I never _do_ take in

ladies, not in my parlours; and Mr. Lloyd not having mentioned it,

I--"

"Do you mean to say that I cannot remain here with my husband?" said

the young lady, turning an astonished glance upon Mrs. Bush.

"Well, m'm," said the nervous landlady, "as it's for a short time only

as Mr. Lloyd has taken the rooms, and as it's Sunday, I shall see,

when he conies in. You see, m'm, I've rather particular people in my

drawing-rooms, and it's different about ladies; and--" Here she

glanced once more at the light girlish figure, in the well-fitting,

fashionable dress, standing before the dressing-table, and at the

white hand adorned with the orthodox ring.

"I think I understand you," said the intruder gravely; "you did not

know Mr. Lloyd was married, and you are not sure that I am his wife.

It is a difficulty, and I really don't see how it is to be gotten

over. Will you take _his_ word?--at all events I may remain here until

he comes in presently?"

Something winning, something convincing, in the tone of her voice

caused a sudden revulsion of feeling in Mrs. Bush. The good woman--for

she was a good woman in the main--began to feel rather ashamed of

herself, and she commenced a bungling sort of apology. Of course the

lady could stay, but it _was_ awkward Mr. Lloyd not having told her;

and there was but one servant, a good-for-nothing hussy as ever

stepped--and over-staying her time now to that degree, that she

expected the "drawing-rooms" would not have their dinner till ever so

late; but at this point the young lady interrupted her.

"If I may stay for to-night," she said gently, and with a very frank

smile, which made Mrs. Bush feel indignant with herself, as well as

ashamed, "some other arrangement can be made to-morrow; and I require

no waiting-on. I shall give you no trouble, or as little as possible."

Mrs. Bush could not hold out any longer. She told the young lady she

could certainly stay for that day and night, and as for to-morrow, she

would "see about it;" and then, at the dreaded summons of the

impatient "drawing-rooms," bustled away, saying she would return

presently, and "see to" the stranger herself.

Pretty girls in pretty dresses are not rarities in the lodging-houses

of Brighton; indeed, it would perhaps be difficult to name any place

where they are to be seen more frequently, or in greater numbers; but

the toilet-glass on the table in the back bedroom of Mrs. Bush's

lodging-house, a heavy article of furniture, with a preponderance of

frame, had probably reflected few such faces as that of the lady

calling herself Mrs. Lloyd, who looked attentively into it when she

found herself alone, and decided that she was not so very dusty,

considering.

She was rather tall, and her figure was slight and girlish, but firm

and well-developed. She carried her head gracefully; and something in

her attitude and air suggested to the beholder that she was not more

commonplace in character than in appearance. Her complexion was very

fair and clear, but not either rosy or milky; very young as she was,

she looked as if she had thought too much and lived too much to retain

the ruddiness and whiteness of colouring which rarely coexist with

intellectual activity or sensitive feelings. Her features were

well-formed; but the face was one in which a charm existed different

from and superior to any which merely lies in regularity of feature.

It was to be found mainly in the eyes and mouth. The eyes were brown

in colour--the soft rich deep brown in which the pupil confounds

itself with the iris; and the curling lashes harmonised with both;

eyes not widely opened, but yet with nothing sly or hidden in their

semi-veiled habitual look--eyes which, when suddenly lifted up, and

opened in surprise, pleasure, anger, or any other emotion, instantly

convinced the person who received the glance that they were the most

beautiful he had ever seen. The eyebrows were dark and arched, and the

forehead, of that peculiar formation and width above the brow which

phrenologists hold to indicate a talent for music, was framed in

rippling bands of dark chestnut hair.

She was a beautiful and yet more a remarkable-looking young woman,

girlish in some points of her appearance, and in her light lithe

movements, but with something ungirlish, and even hard, in her

expression. This something was in the mouth: not small enough to be

silly, not large enough to be defective in point of proportion; the

line of the lips was sharp, decisive, and cold; richly coloured, as

befitted her youth, they were not young lips--they did not smile

spontaneously, or move above the small white teeth with every thought

and fancy, but moved deliberately, opening and closing at her will

only. What it was in Mrs. Lloyd's face which contradicted the general

expression of youth which it wore, would have been seen at once if she

had placed her hand across her eyes. The beaming brown eyes, the

faintly-tinted rounded cheeks, were the features of a girl--the

forehead and the mouth were the features of a woman who had left

girlhood a good way behind her, and travelled over some rough roads

and winding ways since she had lost sight of it.

When Mrs. Bush returned, she found the stranger in the front parlour,

but not standing at the window, looking out for the return of her

husband; on the contrary, she was seated at the prim round table,

listlessly turning over some newspapers and railway literature left

there by Gilbert Lloyd. Once again Mrs. Bush looked at her with sharp

suspicion; once again she was disarmed by her beauty, her composure,

and the sweetness of her smile.

"Mr. Lloyd is not in yet, m'm," began Mrs. Bush, "and you'll be

wanting your lunch."

"No, thank you," said Mrs. Lloyd; "I can wait. I suppose you don't

know when he is likely to be in?"

"He _said_ directly," replied Mrs. Bush; "and I wish he had kept to

it, for I can't think the sick gentleman is any better. I've been to

look at him, and he seems to me a deal worse since morning."

Mrs. Lloyd looked rather vacantly at Mrs. Bush. "Have you a lodger ill

in the house?" she asked. "That makes it still more inconvenient for

you to receive me."

Mrs. Bush felt uncomfortable at this question. How very odd that Mrs.

Lloyd should not know about her husband's friend! They are evidently

queer people, thought the landlady; and she answered rather stiffly:

"The only lodger ill in the house, m'm, is the gentleman as came with

Mr. Lloyd; and, in my opinion, he's very ill indeed."

"Came with Mr. Lloyd?" said the young lady in a tone of great

surprise. "Do you mean Mr. Gore? Can you possibly mean Mr. Gore?"

"Just him," answered Mrs. Bush succinctly. "Didn't you know he was

here with Mr. Lloyd?"

"I knew he was coming to Brighton with him, certainly," said Mrs.

Lloyd; "but I understood he was to leave immediately after the

races--before I came down. What made him stay?"

Mrs. Bush drew near the table, and, leaning her hands upon it, fell

into an easy tone of confidential chat with Mrs. Lloyd. That lady sat

still, looking thoughtfully before her, as the landlady began, but

after a little resting her head on her hand and covering her eyes:

"He stayed, m'm, because he was very ill, uncommon ill to be sure; I

never saw a gentleman iller, nor more stubborn. His portmanteau was

packed and ready when he went to the races, and he told Betsy he

shouldn't be five minutes here when he'd come back; and Mr. Lloyd said

to him in my hearing, 'Gore,' said he, 'how your digestion stands the

tricks you play with it, I can _not_ understand;' for they'd been

breakfasting, and he had eat unwholesome, I can't say otherwise. But

when they come from the races, they come in a cab, which wasn't usual;

and, not to offend you, m'm, Mr. Lloyd had had quite enough" (here she

paused for an expression of annoyance on the part of her hearer; but

no such manifestation was made); "but Mr. Gore, he _was_ far gone, and

a job we had to get him upstairs without disturbing the drawing-rooms,

I can assure you. And Mr. Lloyd told me he had been very ill all day

at the races, and wouldn't come home or let them fetch a doctor--there

were ever so many there--or anything, but would go on drinking, and

when he put him in the cab, he wanted to take him to a doctor's, but

he wouldn't go; and Mr. Lloyd did say, m'm, begging your pardon, that

Mr. Gore damned the doctors, and said all the medicine he ever took,

or ever would take, was in his portmanteau."

"Was there no doctor sent for, then? Has nothing been done for him?"

asked Mrs. Lloyd, with some uneasiness in her tone, removing her hand

from her eyes and looking full at Mrs. Bush.

"We've done--Betsy and me and Mr. Lloyd; for no one could be more

attentive--all we could; but Mr. Gore was quite sensible, and have a

doctor he _would not_; and what could we do? We gave him the medicine

out of the case in his portmanteau. I mixed it and all, and he told me

how, quite well; and this morning he was ever so much better."

"And is he worse now? Who is with him?" asked Mrs. Lloyd, rising.

"Well, m'm, _I_ think he looks a deal worse; and I wish Mr. Lloyd was

come in, because I think he ought to send for a doctor; I don't know

what to do."

"Who is with him?" repeated Mrs. Lloyd.

"No one," returned Mrs. Bush. "No one is with him. When Mr. Lloyd went

out, he told me Mr. Gore felt inclined to sleep; he had had some tea

and was better, and I was not to let him be disturbed. But when I was

upstairs just now, I heard him give a moan; and I knew he was not

asleep, so I went in; and he looks very bad, and I couldn't get a word

out of him but 'Where's Lloyd?'"

"Take me to his room at once," said Mrs. Lloyd, "and send for a doctor

instantly. We must not wait for anything."

But the incorrigible Betsy had not yet returned, and Mrs. Bush

explained to the stranger that she had no means of sending for a

doctor until she could send Betsy.

"Let me see Mr. Gore first, for a minute, and then I will fetch the

nearest doctor myself," said Mrs. Lloyd; and passing out of the room

as she spoke, she began to ascend the narrow staircase, followed by

the landlady, instructing her that the room in which the sick man was

to be found was the "two-pair front."

The room in which the sick man lay was airy, and tolerably large. As

Gertrude Lloyd softly turned the handle of the door, and entered, the

breeze, which bore with it a mingled flavour of the sea and the dust,

fluttered the scanty window-curtains of white dimity, and caused the

draperies of the bed to flap dismally. The sun streamed into the room,

but little impeded by the green blinds, which shed a sickly hue over

everything, and lent additional ghastliness to the face, which was

turned away from Gertrude when she entered the chamber. The bed, a

large structure of extraordinary height, stood in front of one of the

windows; the furniture of the room was of the usual lodging-house

quality; an open portmanteau, belching forth tumbled shirts and

rumpled pocket-handkerchiefs, gaped wide upon the floor; the top of

the chest of drawers was covered with bottles, principally of the

soda-water pattern, but of which one contained a modicum of brandy,

and another some fluid magnesia. Everything in the room was disorderly

and uncomfortable; and Gertrude's quick eye took in all this

discomfort and its details in a glance, while she stepped lightly

across the floor and approached the bed.

The sunlight was shining on Harvey Gore's face, and showed her how

worn and livid, how ghastly and distorted, it was. He lay quite still,

and took no notice of her presence. Instantly perceiving the effect of

the green blind, Gertrude went to the window and pulled it up, then

beckoned Mrs. Bush to her side, and once more drew near the bed.

"Mr. Gore," she said, "Mr. Gore! Do you not know me? Can you not look

at me? Can you not speak to me? I am Mrs. Lloyd."

The sick man answered her only with a groan. His face was an awful

ashen gray; his shoulders were so raised that the head seemed to be

sunken upon the chest; and his body lay upon the bed with unnatural

weight and stillness. One hand was hidden by the bedclothes, the other

clutched a corner of the pillow with cramped and rigid fingers. The

two women exchanged looks of alarm.

"Was he looking like this when you saw him last--since I came?" said

Mrs. Lloyd, speaking in a distinct low tone directed completely into

the ear of the listener.

"No, no; nothing like so bad as he looks now," said Mrs. Bush, whose

distended eyes were fixed upon the patient with an expression of

unmitigated dismay. "Did you ever see anyone die?" she whispered to

Gertrude Lloyd.

"No; never."

"Then you will see it, and soon."

"Do you really think he is dying?" and then she leaned over him, shook

him very gently by the shoulder, loosened his hold of the pillow, and

said again,

"Mr. Gore! Mr. Gore! Do you not know me? Can you not speak to me?"

Again he groaned, and then, feebly opening his eyes, so awfully glazed

and hollow that Gertrude recoiled with an irrepressible start, made a

movement with his head.

"He knows me," whispered Gertrude to Mrs. Bush; "for God's sake go for

a doctor without an instant's delay! I must stay with him."

The landlady, dreadfully frightened, was only too glad to escape from

the room.

For a few moments after she was left alone with the sick man Gertrude

stood beside him quite still and silent; then he moved uneasily, again

groaned, and made an ineffectual attempt to sit up in his bed.

Gertrude tried to assist him; she passed her arms round his shoulders,

and put all her strength to the effort to raise him, but in vain. The

large heavy frame slipped from her hold, and sunk down again with

ominous weight and inertness. Looking around in great fear, but still

preserving her calmness, she perceived the bottle in which some brandy

still remained. In an instant she had filled a wine-glass with the

spirit, lifted the sufferer's feeble head, and contrived to pour a

small quantity down his throat. The stimulant acted for a little upon

the dying man; he looked at her with eyes in which an intelligent

purpose pierced the dull glaze preceding the fast-coming darkness,

stretched his hand out to her, and drew her nearer, nearer. Gertrude

bent over him until her chestnut hair touched his wan livid temples,

and then, when her face was on a level with his own, he whispered in

her ear.

* * * * *

Mrs. Bush had not gone many steps away from her own hall-door when she

met Gilbert Lloyd. He was walking slowly, his hands thrust deep into

his pockets, his head bent, his eyes frowning and downcast, and his

under-lip firmly held by his white, sharp, even teeth. He did not see

Mrs. Bush until she came close up to him, and exclaimed,

"O, Mr. Lloyd, how thankful I am I've met you! The gentleman is very

bad indeed--just gone, sir,--and I was going for a doctor. There's not

a moment to lose."

Gilbert Lloyd's face turned perfectly white.

"Impossible, Mrs. Bush," he said; "you must be mistaken. He was much

better when I left him; besides, he was not seriously ill at all."

"I don't know about that, sir, and I can't stay to talk about it; I

must get the doctor at once."

"No, no," said Lloyd, rousing himself; "I will do that. Where is the

nearest? Tell me, and do you go back to him."

"First turn to the right, second door on the left," said Mrs. Bush,

with unusual promptitude. "Dr. Muxky's; he isn't long established, but

does a good business."

Gilbert Lloyd hurried away; and Mrs. Bush returned to the house,

thinking only when she had reached it, that she had forgotten to

mention his wife's arrival to Gilbert Lloyd.

* * * * *

When Lloyd entered the sick man's room, bringing with him Dr. Muxky,

as that sandy-haired and youthful general practitioner was called by

his not numerous clients, he saw a female figure bending over the bed.

It was not that of Mrs. Bush; he had passed her loitering on the

stairs,--ostensibly that she might conduct the gentlemen to the scene

of action, really because she dared not reënter the room unsupported

by a medical presence. The figure did not change its attitude as they

entered, and Dr. Muxky approached the patient with a professional

gliding step. He was followed by Lloyd; who, however, stopped abruptly

on the opposite side of the bed when he met the full unshrinking gaze

of his wife's bright, clear, threatening eyes.

"May I trouble you to stand aside for a moment?" said Dr. Muxky

courteously to Gertrude, who instantly moved, but only a very little

way, and again stood quite still and quite silent. Dr. Muxky stooped

over his patient, but only for a few seconds. Then he looked up at

Gilbert Lloyd, and said hastily,

"I have been called in too late, sir; I'm afraid your friend is dead."

"Yes," said Gertrude quietly, as if the doctor had spoken to her: "he

is dead. He has been dead some minutes."

Gilbert Lloyd looked at her, but did not speak; the doctor looked from

one to the other, but said nothing. Then Gertrude stretched out her

hand and laid her fingers heavily upon the dead man's eyelids, and

kept them there for several moments amid the silence. In a little

while she steadily withdrew her hand, and without a word left the

room.

On the drawing-room landing she found Mrs. Bush. That practised and

cautious landlady, mindful of the possible prejudice of her permanent

lodgers against serious illness and probable death in their immediate

vicinity, raised her finger, as a signal that a low tone of voice

would be advisable.

"Go upstairs; the doctor wants you," said Gertrude, and passed quickly

down to the parlour. A few moments more, and she had put on her bonnet

and shawl, opened the hall-door without noise, closed it softly, and

was walking swiftly down the street towards the shore.

CHAPTER II.

Pondered.

The sandy-haired slim young man, whose name was Muxky, who was a

member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and who amongst

the few poor people of Brighton that knew of his existence enjoyed the

brevet-rank of doctor, found himself in anything but a pleasant

position. The man to see whom he had been called in was dead; there

was no doubt of that. No pulsation in the heart, dropped jaw, fixed

eyes--all the usual appearances--ay, and rather more than the usual

appearances: "What we professionally call the _rigor mortis_--the

stiffness immediately succeeding death, my dear sir, is in this case

very peculiarly developed." Mr. Muxky, in the course of his attendance

at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, had seen many deathbeds, had inspected

in an easy and pleasant manner many dead bodies; but he had never seen

one which had presented such an extraordinary aspect of rigidity so

immediately after death. He approached the bed once more, turned back

the sheet which Mrs. Bush had drawn over the face, and kneeling by the

side of the bed, passed his hand over and under the body. As he moved,

Gilbert Lloyd moved too, taking up his position close behind him, and

watching him narrowly. For an instant a deep look of anxiety played

across Gilbert Lloyd's face, the lines round the mouth deepened and

darkened, the brows came down over the sunken eyes, and the under jaw,

relaxing, lost its aspect of determination; but as Mr. Muxky turned

from the bed and addressed him, Lloyd's glance was perfectly steady,

and his face expressed no emotions stronger than those which under the

circumstances every man would be expected to feel, and no man would

care to hide.

"This is rather an odd experience, my dear sir," said Mr. Muxky;

"called in to see our poor friend, who has, as it were, slipped his

cable before my arrival. Our poor friend, now, was a--well--man of the

world as you are--you will understand what I mean--our poor friend was

a--free liver."

Yes, Gilbert Lloyd thought that he was a man who ate and drank

heartily, and never stinted himself in anything.

"Nev-er stinted himself in anything!" repeated Mr. Muxky, who had by

this time added many years to his personal appearance, and entirely

prevented the bystanders from gleaning any expression from his eyes,

by the assumption of a pair of glasses of neutral tint--"nev-er

stinted himself in anything! Ah, a great deal may be ascribed to that,

my dear sir; a great deal may be ascribed to that!"

"Yes," said Gilbert Lloyd carelessly; "if a man will take as much

lobster-salad and Strasbourg pie as he can eat, with as much champagne

and moselle as he can carry; and if, in spite of the remonstrances of

his friends, he will sit without his hat on the top of a drag, with

the August sun beating down upon him--"

"Did he do that, my dear sir--did he do that?"

"He did, indeed! Several of us implored him to be careful; but you

might as well have spoken to the wind as to him, poor dear fellow. We

told him that he'd probably have a--a--what do you call it?"

"General derangement of the system? Flux of blood to the--"

"No, no; sunstroke--that's what I mean; sunstroke. Perigal, who was

out in India in the Punjaub business--he was on our drag when poor

Harvey was taken bad, and he said it was sunstroke all over--regular

case."

"Did he, indeed?" said Mr. Muxky. "Well, that's odd, very odd! From

the symptoms you have described, I imagined that it must have been

something of the kind:--brain overdone, system overtaxed. In this

railway age, Mr. Lloyd, we live such desperately rapid lives,

concentrate so much mental energy and bodily fibre into a few years,

that--"

"I'm glad you're satisfied, Mr. Muxky," said Gilbert Lloyd, pulling

out his purse. "It's a satisfaction in these melancholy cases to know

that everything has been done, and that there was no chance of saving

the poor fellow, even if--"

"I scarcely say that, Mr. Lloyd. A little bloodletting might, if taken

at the exact moment--_in tempore veni_; you recollect the old

quotation--might have been of some use. There's a prejudice just now

against the use of the lancet, I know; but still-- For me?" taking a

crisp hank-note which Lloyd handed to him. "O, thank you, thank you!

This is far too munifi--"

"The labourer, Mr. Muxky, is worthy of his hire," said Gilbert Lloyd:

"and it is our fault--not yours--that you were summoned too late. But,

as you just now remarked, it is impossible in these cases to know what

is impending, or how nigh may be the danger. I was very much struck by

that remark. And now good-afternoon, Mr. Muxky. I must go out and find

my poor wife, who is quite upset by this unfortunate affair.

Good-afternoon--not another word of thanks, I beg; and any of the

usual formalities in these matters---I don't know what they are--but

certificates, and that kind of thing, we may look to you to settle?

Thanks again. Good-day."

And Gilbert Lloyd shook hands with the overwhelmed Mr. Muxky, whose

eyes gleamed even through the neutral-tinted glasses, and whose pale

face burst into a pleased perspiration, as he crumpled the crisp

bank-note into his waistcoat-pocket, and followed Mrs. Bush down the

stairs.

"A sensible man that, Mrs. Bush," said he when he reached the first

landing; "a very sensible, kind-hearted, clear-headed man. Under all

the circumstances, you're very lucky in having had such a man in the

house. No fuss, no preposterous excitement--everything quite proper,

but thoroughly businesslike."

"You're right, Dr. Muxky," responded the sympathetic landlady. "When I

saw as clear as clear that that poor creature was going the way of all

flesh--which is grass, and also dust and ashes--and knew I'd got those

Miss Twillows in the drawing-rooms, you might have knocked me down

with a feather. Nervous is nothing to what the Miss Twillows is;

and coming regular from Peckham for the sea-bathing now five

years, regular as the month of July comes round; and giving no

trouble, through bringing their own maid; and stopping on all

September,--without perambulators in the passage, and children's

boots, which after being filled with sand will _not_ take the

polish,--their leaving would be a loss to me which--"

Mrs. Bush stopped suddenly in her harangue, as the drawing-room door,

by which they were standing, was cautiously opened, and an elderly

female head was slowly protruded. It was a large head, and yet it had

what is called a "skimpy" character. What little hair there was on it

was of a mixed pepper-and-salt kind of colour, and gathered into two

large roll-curls, one on either side of the head, in front, and into a

thin wisp behind. In this wisp was stuck a comb, pendent from which

was a little bit of black lace. The features could not be defined, as

the lower part of the face was entirely hidden in a handkerchief held

to the nose, exhaling pungent vinegar. Mr. Muxky stared a little at

this apparition--stared more when the head wagged and the mouth

opened, and the word "Doctor?" was uttered in interrogative accent.

Then Mr. Muxky, beginning to perceive how the land lay, said in his

softest tones: "Yes, my dear madam, I _am_ the doctor."

The head dropped again, and again the lips opened. "Fever?" was what

they said this time, while a skinny hand at the end of a skinny arm

made itself manifest, pointing upwards.

"Fever," repeated Mr. Muxky, "that has removed our poor friend

upstairs--nothing of the sort, my dear madam, I can assure you;

nothing but--"

"Not smallpox?--don't say it's smallpox!" This from another voice, the

owner of which was in the background, unseen. "O, Hannah, does he say

it's smallpox?"

"He don't say anything of the kind, Miss Twillow," interposed Mrs.

Bush; "knowing that in the midst of life we are in death, specially

sitting in hot suns without our hats on the tops of stage-coaches, and

to say nothing of too much to drink. You've never been inconvenienced

since you've been in this house, have you, m'm? and you won't be now.

It isn't my fault, I'm sure; nor yet Dr. Muxky's; and, considering all

things, not a great put-out, though doubtless upsetting to the

nerves."

"That's just the point, Mrs. Bush," said Mr. Muxky, who was not going

to lose the chance; "nothing to fear; but yet, some temperaments so

constituted that--like the Æolian harp--the--the slightest breath of

fright has an effect on them. If my poor services now could be of any

use--"

"Yes, now do," said Mrs. Bush, "Miss Twillow, Miss Hannah; just see

the doctor for a minute. You've had a shock, I'll allow, and it's

natural you should be upset; but the doctor will put you right in a

minute."

Thus Mr. Muxky secured two new patients; not a bad day's work.

While these matters were in progress in the house Gertrude had left,

and the subdued bustle inevitably attendant upon the necessary care

and the unavoidable household disorganisation which succeeds a death,

even when the dead is only a stranger in the house where the solution

of the enigma has come to him,--she was sitting on the shore close by

the foamy edge of the waves, and thinking.

Gertrude had gone down to the shore across the broad road, now crowded

with people out for the bright summer afternoon; with carriages and

gigs, with vehicles of the highest elegance, and with such as had no

pretence to anything but convenience; with pedestrians of every class,

assembled with all sorts of objects, hygiene and flirtation being

predominant. She had gone away down the slope, and on to the strip of

pebbly sand; and where one of the wooden barriers marked out a

measured space, she sat down on a seaweed-flecked heap of shingle, and

began to think. The long line of the horizon, where the blue sea met

the blue sky, parted only by a narrow verge of light, broken white

clouds, was before her--between it and her absent, troubled eyes lay

the wide expanse of sea. A short space only parted her from the

moving, restless, talking crowd upon the Esplanade; but her sense of

solitude was complete. The ridge of the slope hid her; the soft plash

of the sea, with its monotonous recurrence, soothed her ear, and

deadened the sound of wheels and the murmur of voices; her eyes met

only the great waters, across which sometimes a boat glided, on which

sometimes a sea-bird's wing rested for an instant. As Gertrude sat

there, with her arms extended and her hands tightly clasped together,

with her head bent forward and her eyes fixed upon the distant line of

the sea and sky, her thoughts obeyed her will, and formed themselves,

consecutive, complete, and purposeful. The girl--for she was but a

girl, after all--had brought thither a heavy trouble; to be taken out,

looked at, weighed, examined. She had brought there a half-developed

purpose, to be thought into maturity, to be fully fashioned and

resolved upon. Before she should leave that place she would have done

these things; and when she should leave it, a new phase in her life

would have begun. Ineffable sadness was in her brown eyes--grief and

dread, which did not seem newly born there, but constant dwellers,

only that to-day they had been suddenly awakened once again from

temporary repose. If there had been anyone to see Gertrude, as she sat

by the edge of the waves, and to note her face, with its concentrated

and yet varying expression, that person, if an acute observer, would

have been struck by the contrast between the eyes and the mouth. The

character of the look in the eyes shifted and varied; there was fear

in it, grief, weariness, disgust, sometimes even horror; and these

expressions passed like the lights and shadows over a fair landscape.

But the mouth did not vary; firm, closely shut,--so compressed that

its tightness produced a white line above the red of the upper lip,--

it expressed power and resolution, when that long process of

thinking--too purposeful to be called a reverie--commenced, and it

expressed power and resolution when at length Gertrude rose. Hours had

passed over her unheeded, as she sat by the sea; the afternoon had

lengthened into the evening; the crowd of loungers had dispersed. She

had heard, but not heeded, the church-bells ringing for evening

service; and now silence was all around her, and the red flush of

sunset was upon the sky and the sea. When she had risen from her seat

of shingle, Gertrude stood for some minutes and looked along the

shore, where her solitary figure seemed doubly lonely. Then she turned

and scanned the long line of the houses and the road, on which a few

scattered human beings only were moving. A strange reluctance to move

possessed her; but at length she shook it off, and with a slight

shudder turned her back upon the sea, fast becoming gray as the sun

went down, and walked steadily, though not quickly, back to the

lodging-house where she had left her husband.

As she drew near to the house, Gertrude looked up at the window of the

room in which she had seen Harvey Gore die. It was open; but the green

blind was closely drawn. Looking upwards at the window, she did not

perceive till she was close upon it that the house-door was slightly

ajar; but as she raised her hand to the knocker, the door was opened

widely by Mrs. Bush, and Gertrude, going into the passage, found

Gilbert Lloyd there. The sudden sight of him caused her to start for

an instant, but not perceptibly; and Mrs. Bush immediately addressed

her with voluble questions and regrets.

Where had she been all this time? She had gone out without her lunch,

and had she had nothing to eat? How uneasy she and Mr. Lloyd had been

about her! (Mr. Lloyd had evidently secured by this time a high place

in the good graces of Mrs. Bush.) Mr. Lloyd had been waiting and

watching for her ever so long; and she, Mrs. Bush, as soon as ever the

poor dear dead gentleman upstairs had been "put tidy,"--which was her

practical mode of expressing the performance of the toilet of the

dead,--had been also watching and waiting for Mrs. Lloyd's

reappearance. Suspicion and scanty civility had given place in the

manner of the worthy landlady--who was infinitely satisfied with the

proper sense of what was due to her in the unfortunate position of

affairs exhibited by Gilbert Lloyd--to anxiety for the comfort of the

young lady whom she had so unwillingly received.

During the colloquy between Mrs. Bush and Gertrude, Gilbert Lloyd had

been standing, awkwardly enough, in the passage, but without speaking.

But when a pause came, and Gertrude approached the parlour-door, he

spoke.

"Where have you been, Gertrude?" he asked sternly.

His wife stood still and answered, but did not look at him.

"I have been sitting by the seashore."

"You must be cold and hungry, I should think."

"I am neither."

"I suppose you know you cannot remain here?"

"Why?"

He seemed a little at a loss for an answer; but replied, after a

moment's pause:

"A death in the house is sufficient reason. Mrs. Bush can't attend to

a lady-lodger, under the circumstances. You can go back to town in the

morning; for to-night I shall take you to the nearest hotel."

"Very well."

She never looked at him; not by the most fleeting flicker of an

eyelash did she address her face to him, though he looked steadily at

her, trying to compel her glance. She went into the parlour, through

the folding-door into the bedroom, collected the few articles which

she had taken out of her travelling-bag, and returned, carrying it in

her hand. Evidently all arrangements had been made by Gilbert Lloyd

with Mrs. Bush: no more was said. Gertrude took a friendly leave of

the landlady, and went out of the house, walking silently by her

husband's side. He did not offer her his arm, and not a word was

spoken between them until the door of a private sitting-room at the

George had closed behind them. Then he turned savagely round upon her,

and said, in a thick low voice, "The meaning of this foolery?"

This time she looked at him--looked him straight in the face with the

utmost calmness. There was not the least flush of colour in her pale

face, not the slightest trembling of her lips, not the smallest

flutter of her hands,--by which in woman agitation is so often

betrayed,--as she said calmly, "You are polite, but mysterious. And I

suppose the journey, or something, has rendered me a little dull. I

don't quite follow you. What 'foolery' are you pleased to ask the

meaning of?"

She had the best of it so far. She stood erect, facing the light, her

head thrown back, her arm outstretched, with nothing of bravado, but

with a good deal of earnestness in her manner and air. Gilbert Lloyd's

head was sunk on his breast, his brow was knit over his frowning eyes,

his lips tightly set, and his under-jaw was clenched and rigid. His

hands were plunged into his pockets, and he had commenced to pace the

room; but at his wife's question he stopped, and said, "What foolery!

Why, the foolery of your conduct in those lodgings this day; the

foolery of your coming down, in the first place, when you weren't

wanted, and of your conduct once you came."

"I came," said Gertrude, in a perfectly calm voice, and still looking

him steadily in the face, "in pursuance of the arrangement between us.

It was your whim, when last I saw you, to wish for my company here;

and you settled the time at which I was to come. My 'foolery' so far

consists in having exactly obeyed you."

"Your obedience is very charming," said Gilbert Lloyd with a sneer;

"and no doubt I should have enjoyed your company as much as I

generally do. Few men are blessed with wives embodying all the

cardinal virtues. But circumstances have changed since we made that

arrangement. I couldn't tell this man was going to die, I suppose?"

She had purposely turned her face away when her husband began to sneer

at her, and was pretending to occupy herself with opening her

travelling-bag; but as these words fell upon her ear, she drew herself

to her full height, and again looking steadily at him, said, "I

suppose not."

"You suppose not! Why, of course not! By heavens, it's enough to drive

a man to desperation to be tied for life to a white-faced cat like

this, who stands opposite him repeating his words, and shows no more

interest in him than--By Jove," he exclaimed, shaking his clenched

fist at her, "I feel as if I could knock the life out of you!"

To have been struck by him would have been no novel experience on

Gertrude's part. More than once in these paroxysms of temper he had

seized her roughly by the arm or shoulder, leaving the livid imprint

of his hand on her delicate flesh; and she fully expected that he

would strike her now. But as he spoke he had been hastily pacing the

room; and it was not until he stopped to menace her that he looked in

her face, and saw there an expression such as he had never seen

before. Anger, terror, misery, obstinacy, contempt,--all these

passions he had often seen mirrored in Gertrude's features, but never

the aversion, the horror, the loathing which now appeared there. The

look seemed to paralyse him, for in it he divined the feelings of

which it was the reflex. His extended arm dropped by his side, and his

whole manner changed, as he said, "There! enough of that! It was hard

enough for me to have the trouble of poor Gore's illness to fight

against, without anything else; and when you did come, Gertrude, I

thought--well"--pulling himself together, as it were, he bent forward

towards her, and with a soft look in his eyes and an inexpressible

tenderness in his voice, whispered, "I thought you might have brought

a word of cheer and comfort and--and love--to your poor old Gilbert,

who--"

While speaking he gradually drew near to her, and advanced his hand

until it touched her waist. Gertrude no sooner felt his clasp than,

with a short sharp cry as if of bodily pain, she withdrew herself from

it.

"Don't touch me!" she exclaimed, in a voice half choked with sobs. Her

calmness was gone, and her whole system was quivering with emotion.

"For Heaven's sake keep off! Never lay your touch on me, in kindness

or in cruelty, again, or you will find that the 'white-faced cat' has

claws, and can use them."

Gilbert Lloyd stared for an instant in mute astonishment at his wife,

who stood confronting him, her eyes sparkling like glowing coals in

the midst of her pale face, her hair pushed back off her forehead, her

hands tightly clasped behind her head. He was cowed by this sudden

transformation, by this first act of overt rebellion on Gertrude's

part, and thought it best to temporise. So he said, "Why, Gertrude

darling, my little lady, what's all--"

"No more of that Gilbert," she interrupted, calming herself by a

strong effort, unlocking her hands, and again confronting him. "Those

pet names are things of the past now--of the past, which must be to us

even more dead and more forgotten than it is to most people."

The solemnity of her tone and of her look angered him, and he said

shortly, "Don't preach, please. Spare yourself that."

"I am not preaching, Gilbert, and I am not--as you sometimes tell

me--acting; but I have something to say which you must hear."

"Must, eh? Well, come down off your stilts, and say it."

"Gilbert Lloyd," said Gertrude, "this day you and I part for ever.

Don't interrupt me," she said, as he made a hasty gesture; "hear me

out. I knew that this would be the end of our hasty and ill-advised

marriage; but I did not think the end would come so soon. It _has_

come now, and no power on earth would induce me to alter my

determination."

"O, that's it, is it?" said Lloyd, after a minute's silence. "And this

is my wife, if you please; this is the young lady who promised to

love, honour, and obey! This woman, who now coolly talks about our

parting for ever, is one who has hung about my neck a thousand times

and--"

"No," exclaimed Gertrude, interrupting him, "no! This" (touching

herself lightly on the breast) "is your wife indeed--is the woman who

bears your name and has borne your caprices; but" (again touching

herself) "this is not the woman that left London this morning. I wish

to heaven I were--I wish to heaven I were!"

She uttered these last words in a low plaintive tone that was almost a

wail, and covered her face with her hands.

"This is mere foolery and nonsense," said Lloyd, after a momentary

pause. "You wish you were, indeed! If you're not the same woman, what

the devil has changed you?"

"Do you want to know?" she asked suddenly, looking up at him,--not

eagerly, boldly, or defiantly, but with the expression of horror and

loathing which he had previously noticed.

"No!" he replied with an oath; "why should I waste my time listening

to your string of querulous complaints? You want a separation, do you?

Well, I am not disposed to say 'no' to any reasonable request; but if

I agree to this, mind, it's not to be the usual business."

Finding he paused, Gertrude said, "I scarcely understand you."

"Well, I mean that 'parting for ever' does not mean coming together

again next month, to live in a fool's paradise for a week, and then

hate each other worse than ever. If we part, we part for ever, which

means that we never meet again on earth--or rather, that we begin life

afresh, with the recollection of the last few months completely

expunged. We have neither of us any relations to worry us with

attempts at reconciliation; not half-a-dozen men know of the fact of

my having been married, and none of them have ever seen you. So that

on both sides we start entirely free. It is not very likely that we

shall ever run across each other's path in the future; but if we do,

we meet as entire strangers, and the fact of our having been anything

to one another must never be brought forward to prejudice any scheme

in which either of us may be engaged. Do you follow me?"

"Perfectly."

"And does what I propose meet your views?"

"Entirely."

"That's right. Curious," said Lloyd, with a short, sharp

laugh,--"curious that just as we are about to part, we should begin to

agree. However, you're right, I suppose; we could not hit it; we were

always having tremendous rows, and now each of us can go our own way;

and," he added, under his breath, as he glanced at Gertrude's

expressive face and trim figure, "I don't think I've had the worst of

the bargain."

After a moment's silence, Lloyd said, "What do you propose to do?"

"I have no schemes at present," Gertrude replied; "and if I had, you

have no right to ask about them."

"You've not taken long to shake off your harness, by Jove!" said Lloyd

bitterly. "However, whatever you do hereafter, you must have something

to start with now." He took out a pocket-book, and counted from it

some bank-notes. "I've not done so badly as people thought," said he;

"and here are two hundred pounds, all my available capital. Yon shall

have half of this--here it is." He pushed a roll of notes towards her.

She took it without a word, and placed it in her travelling-bag.

"You'll sleep here to-night, I suppose; and had better clear out of

this place early to-morrow. I shall have to stay until after the

funeral. And now, I suppose, that's about all?"

"All," said Gertrude, taking up her travelling-bag and moving towards

the door.

"Won't you--won't you say 'good-bye'?" said Lloyd, putting out his

hand as she passed him.

Gertrude made him no reply; but she gathered her dress tightly round

her, as though to preserve it from his touch; and on glancing at her

face Gilbert Lloyd saw there the same look of horror and loathing

which had paralysed him even in the midst of his furious rage.

CHAPTER III.

Proposed.

When Gertrude left her husband's presence,--without giving him any

clue to her intentions for the future, something like bewilderment

fell upon her for a little. It was not grief--no such sentiment had

any place or share in the tumult of her mind. The arrangement which

had been made, the agreement that had been come to, was a distinct and

positive relief to her. It would have been a relief even before the

late occurrences which had brought things to a crisis, and Gertrude

neither denied nor lost sight of that fact. It had become a positive

necessity, not to be avoided, not to be deferred; and it was done.

When the door closed behind her, as she trod the narrow passage which

divided the sitting-room in which their last interview had taken place

from the bedroom in which she was to pass the night, Gertrude knew

that she was relieved--was even, in a dull, hardly-ascertained sort of

way, glad, and yet she was bewildered. There was more horror in her

mind than sorrow. For the hope and happiness of her own life, thus

early blighted in their first bloom, she had no sentimental pity; she

could not afford to think about them, even if she had had time, which

she had not. The circumstances of her life had aided the natural

disposition and habits of her mind, and brought her to look steadily

at facts rather than feelings, at results and actions rather than at

influences and illusions of the past. As a matter of fact, her life in

all its great meanings was past, and the best thing she could do was

to banish it from memory, to dismiss it from contemplation as

completely and as rapidly as possible.

Gertrude had been for many hours without food, and had undergone much

and various mental agitation. She was conscious that the bewilderment

which pervaded her mind was in a great degree referable to physical

exhaustion, and she resolved to postpone thought and action until the

morning. She rang a hell, ordered a slight meal to be served to her in

her room, and having eaten and drank, went to bed so completely

overpowered by the fatigue and restrained excitement of the day, that

she fell asleep immediately. The calm summer night, unvisited by

darkness, passed over, and witnessed only her unbroken rest--a grand

privilege of her youth.

Gilbert Lloyd remained for some time in the room where Gertrude had

left him, walking to and fro before the windows, lost in thought. The

passion and excitement of the day had not been without their effect on

him also, and certain components mingled with them in his case which

had no existence in the sum of Gertrude's suffering--doubt, dread,

suspense, uncertainty. What did Gertrude mean? What still remained

hidden, after that terrible interview in which so much had been

revealed? What was still unexplained, after all that dreary and

hopeless explanation? These questions, which he could not answer,

which it was his best hope might never be answered, troubled Gilbert

Lloyd sorely. That the agreement which had been made between him and

his wife was highly satisfactory to him he knew as clearly as Gertrude

knew it; but in the way in which it had been brought about, in the

manner of its decision, the advantage had been Gertrude's. Gilbert

Lloyd did not like that, though this parting was so utter and so final

that he might well have dismissed all such considerations, and turned

his back upon the past, as he had proposed to do in reality, and as he

did not entertain a doubt that Gertrude would do in downright real

earnest, never bestowing so much thought or memory on him again as to

produce the smallest practical effect upon her future life. He knew

that he had achieved a great success that day; that this final

separation between himself and Gertrude was an event in every way

desirable, and which he would have hailed with satisfaction at any

period since he had wearied of her and begun to regard marriage as the

very worst and stupidest of all mistakes;--a mental process which had

commenced surprisingly soon after he had made the blunder. But,

somehow, Gilbert Lloyd did not taste the flavour of success. It was

not sufficiently unmingled for the palate of a man of despotic

self-will, and the ultra intolerance of complete callousness and

scoundrelism. At length he checked himself in his monotonous walk, and

muttering, "Yes, I'll go back it's safest," he rang the bell.

His summons was not obeyed with remarkable alacrity--waiters and

chambermaids had had a bard time of it at the George of late; but a

waiter did at length present himself. By this time the news of a

"sporting gent's" death in the immediate vicinity had reached the

George, and the man looked at Lloyd with the irrational curiosity

invariably excited by the sight of anyone who has been recently in

close contact with crime, horror, or grief.

"I rang to tell you I shall send my traps down from Pavilion-place,

but I shall not sleep here," said Lloyd; "I shall come up to breakfast

in the morning, though."

"Very good, sir," said the man; and Gilbert Lloyd took up his hat and

walked out. He called for a minute at Pavilion-place, and spoke a few

words to Mrs. Bush, who gave him a latchkey, then went away again; and

the morning hours were well on when he let himself quietly into the

lodging-house and threw himself on the bed in the back parlour.

The window of the "two-pair front" was open, and the fresh breeze,

sea-scented, blew in through the aperture, and faintly stirred the

drapery of the bed. Presently the sun rose, and before long a bright

ray streamed through the green blind, and a wavering bar of light

shimmered fantastically across the sheet which decently veiled the

dead man's face.

Gertrude Lloyd went down to the railway station early on the following

morning, and before Gilbert had made his appearance at the George. She

had not passed unnoticed at that hostelry. In the first place, she was

too young and handsome to pass unnoticed anywhere during a sojourn of

sufficient duration to give people time to look at her, if so

disposed. In the second place, there was something odd about her. She

was evidently the wife of the gentleman who had brought her to the

hotel, and had then changed his mind about staying, and gone away so

abruptly. Here she was now going away without seeing him; calling for

her bill and paying it, "quite independent like," as a chambermaid,

with a very proper reverence for masculine superiority, remarked;

setting off alone, perfectly cool and comfortable. "There's been a

tiff, that's it, and more's the pity," was the conclusion arrived at

by the waiter and the chambermaid, who agreed that Gertrude was very

pretty, and "uncommon young, to be sure, to be so very off-handed."

Mrs. Bush, too, did not omit to inquire for the handsome young lady

who had got "the better" of her so very decidedly. "She's off to

London, first train in the morning," said Lloyd. "There was no good in

her staying here for all this sad affair. _I_ can't avoid it, of

course; but she is better out of it all." After which explanation,

Mrs. Bush thought, sagaciously, that leaving one's husband in an

unpleasant position, and getting safe out of it one's self, was not a

very affectionate proceeding; and that Mrs. Lloyd, if she really was

very fond of her husband, at all events did not make the fact

obtrusively evident.

But Gertrude Lloyd had not gone to London. Her mind had been actively

at work from an early hour in the morning, and strengthened and

refreshed by rest, she had been able to employ it to good purpose. Her

first resolve was not to go to the lodgings she and her husband had

occupied in London any more. She had no wish to embarrass his

proceedings in any way. She desired to carry out their contract in

both letter and spirit, and to disappear at once and completely from

his life. So she left a note for Gilbert Lloyd at the George,

containing the words: "Please have everything belonging to me sent to

Mrs. Bloxam's;" and then took her way to the station, and her place in

an early train for Worthing. Gertrude was alone in the carriage, and

she profited by the circumstance to tear up and throw out of window a

letter or two, and sundry bills on which her name, "Mrs. Lloyd,"

appeared. Her initials only were stamped on her travelling-bag. The

letters disposed of, she drew off her wedding-ring, and without an

instant's hesitation for sentimental regret, dropped it on to the

rails. Then she sat still and looked out at the landscape. Her face

was quite calm now, but the traces of past agitation were on it. The

first person to whom Gertrude Lloyd should speak to-day would not be

struck by the contrast between her assured, self-possessed manner and

her extreme youth, as Mrs. Bush had been impressed by it only

yesterday.

Arrived at Worthing, Gertrude had no difficulty in securing quiet and

respectable lodgings, away from the sea, and not far out of the town.

It was in a small house, forming one of a row of small houses, with

climbing roses about the windows, and common but fragrant flowers in a

Lilliputian strip of garden-plot on either side of the door. On the

opposite side of the road was a row of gardens corresponding to the

houses, remarkable for numerous arbours of curiously small dimensions

and great variety and ingenuity of construction; likewise for the

profusion and luxuriance with which they grew scarlet-runners and

nasturtiums. In one of these houses Gertrude engaged a sunny parlour

and bedroom for a week certain; and then, having explained to the

woman of the house that she was a governess, and was about to enter on

a new situation, but was not certain when she would be required to

proceed to the house of her employers, she set herself to the carrying

out of the plans she had formed that morning, and, as a first step,

wrote the following letter:

"7 Warwick-place, Worthing.

"Monday.

"My Dear Mrs. Bloxam,--You will probably be very much surprised to

receive a letter from me, and I am not less astonished to find myself

writing to you. Though you were kind to me, after a fashion, while I

lived at the Vale House, the circumstances under which I quitted your

protection, and the events which have since occurred, were of a nature

to render me unwilling to open up any communication with you, and to

make it extremely improbable that I should ever be called on to do so.

I retain some pleasant and grateful recollections of you and of my

childhood, when I was, on the whole, happy; and I remember in

particular, and with especial gratitude, that you put down, with the

high hand of authority, the very natural inclination of the other

girls to ridicule and oppress me, because I had no relations to give

me presents, take me out, and beg half-holidays for all the pupils on

the strength of their visits, and because my holidays were always

passed at school. You will wonder what I am coming to, and why, if it

be anything important, I should recall these seemingly trivial things

by the way; but I do so in order to remind myself, and to gain courage

in so doing, of the only protection and friendship I have ever

received from a woman,--now, when I need protection and friendship

very, very much, and am about to ask you to extend them to me.

"When I left you as I did, and married the man who had induced me to

deceive you as I did (do not suppose I want to extenuate my own share

in the matter, or throw the blame on him because I mention him thus),

you told me, in the only letter you ever addressed to me, that I had

made a bad mistake, and should inevitably find it out sooner or later.

You were distinctly and unerringly right. I did make a bad mistake--a

worse mistake than anyone but myself can ever know or guess; and I

have found it out sooner instead of later. I have known it for a long

time; but now circumstances have arisen which oblige me to act on my

knowledge, and a separation has taken place between my husband and

myself. Not a separation in the ordinary sense, with the tie

repudiated and yet retained; but a separation by which each has

undertaken to cease to exist for the other. I have no relations, so

far as I know. If I have any, you and you alone are aware of the fact,

and know who they are. I have no prejudices to offend, no position to

forfeit. Gilbert Lloyd and I have parted never to meet again, as we

both hope; never, under any circumstances, to recognise or interfere

with one another. I have no friends, except I may venture to call you

a friend; and to you alone can I now turn for assistance. I would say

for advice, but that the time for that is past. There is nothing to be

done now but to act upon the resolution which has been taken.

"My plan for the future is this: I have 100_l_., and a voice whose

quality you know, and which has improved since I was at the Vale

House; so that I know it to be of the best kind, and in the best

order, for concert-singing at least, perhaps ultimately for opera. I

intend to become a public singer; but I must have more teaching, and

the means of living in the mean time; so that the small sum in my

possession may be expended upon the teaching and training of my voice.

From many indications, which I perfectly remember, but need not enter

into here, I have reason to believe that I was a profitable pupil to

you; that from some source unknown to me you received sums of money

for my maintenance and education of an amount which was very well

worth having. I do not say this in any way to disparage the habitual

kindness with which you treated me, and which I have always

acknowledged gratefully, bat because I am about to propose a bargain

to you, and wish to assure myself that I have some grounds for doing

so, and for counting upon your acquiescence.

"Will you receive me at the Vale House for one year free of charge, in

the capacity of a teacher for the junior classes, and giving me

sufficient time to enable me to take music-lessons and practise

singing? If you will do this, and thus enable me, if I find my voice

fulfils my expectations, to earn a livelihood for myself in an

independent fashion, I will undertake to repay the cost out of my

earnings. Possessing, as you do, the knowledge, if not of my

parentage, at least of some person who became voluntarily responsible

for my support during several years, you may perhaps be able, unless I

am considered to have sacrificed all claim on my unknown connections

by my marriage, to procure from them a little more assistance for me;

but you must not make any attempt to do so if such an attempt should

involve the revelation of my secret. I presume, if anyone exists whom

it concerned, you made known my marriage. That circumstance is the

last to be known about me; henceforth Gertrude Lloyd has no more

existence than Gertrude Keith.

"If you should accede to my request, it will be necessary for me to

know whether any of the girls now under your charge were at the Vale

House when I left it, also whether you have any servants now likely to

recognise me. I shall await your answer with much anxiety. Should it

be unfavourable, I must endeavour to devise some other method of

carrying out the fixed purpose of my future life; and at present no

possible alternative presents itself to my mind. In conclusion, I beg

that you will decide quickly. I shall be here only one week; that

expired, if you do not answer me, or if you answer me unfavourably, I

must face the problem to which just now I see no solution. Address

Miss Grace Lambert.--Yours sincerely,

"Gertrude Lloyd."

CHAPTER IV.

Settled.

The Vale House, Hampstead, was admirably suited in point of size and

situation for a boarding-school or "establishment" for young ladies.

It stood in its own grounds, which, though not really extensive, had

been made the most of, and contrived to look as if there were a great

deal more of them than there really was; and it commanded an extensive

prospect from the upper windows, well elevated above the jealous walls

which guarded the youth and beauty committed to Mrs. Bloxam's charge

from contact with the outer world. Occasionally, or at least in one

instance, as will presently appear, the security had not been

altogether so inviolable as might have been desired; but, on the

whole, the "establishment" at Vale House maintained and deserved a

high character. A heavy, square, roomy, red-brick mansion, with its

windows cased in white stone, and a coat-of-arms sculptured in the

same material, but now nearly undecipherable, inserted over the heavy

mahogany hall-door,--the Vale House belonged to a period of

architecture when contract-building was unknown, when the art of

"running-up" houses was yet undiscovered, and a family mansion among

the middle-classes meant a house in which fathers and sons and

grandsons intended to live and die, unbeguiled by "splendid

opportunities" into constant migrations and rapid changes in their

style and manner of living.

The Vale House had, however, suffered from the changes and innovations

of the age; and the grandson of its last hereditary inhabitant now

dwelt in splendour in a west-end "place," forming an "annexe" to a

square of ultra-fashionable pretensions and performances, and looked

and spoke as though he had never even heard the name of a locality

more northern or more distant from the centre of civilisation than the

Marble Arch. If the Townleys were oblivious of the Vale House, so was

the Vale House of them. Except among such of the inhabitants of

Hampstead as were careful and religious conservators of tradition, the

origin and history of the Vale House had been forgotten; and a general

notion prevailed that it had always been a school. The pupils--with

the exception of such as were of a romantic turn of mind and given to

the association of all old houses having plenty of room in them with

the _Orphan of the Forest_ and the _Children of the Abbey_--hated the

place, and believed that it must always have witnessed the

incarceration of unoffending girlhood. The ancient and much-effaced

armorial bearings awakened no compassionate respect in the minds of

these haughty young creatures, but rather a lively scorn. "Old Bloxam

was only a sea-captain, and she was a governess in some old lord's

family, and they set her up in the school, and she gives herself airs

as if she was a lady," they would remark, under the influence of

irritation, arising from causes gastronomic or otherwise; and the

caricaturing of these armorial bearings was a favourite _jeu d'esprit_

among the livelier and cleverer section of Mrs. Bloxam's pupils.

The school at the Vale House had--been of late years a very prosperous

undertaking. Mrs. Bloxam's connection was among the rich and

respectable mercantile community, not the shop-keeping, be it known:

she observed with the utmost strictness the distinction between

wholesale and retail trades, and especially affected the learned

professions. In Gertrude's time, two daughters of a Scotch baronet had

effectively represented the real aristocracy; but they were "finished"

long since, and had returned to the land of their birth, having

learned to braid their sandy locks, and to tone down their hereditary

freckles, and equally hereditary accents, to the admiration of all

Glen Houlaghan. The real aristocracy was quite unrepresented at the

Vale House, but the "British-merchant" element flourished there. Mrs.

Bloxam had prospered of late years, and was now in circumstances

which permitted her to contemplate retiring from the labours of

school-keeping,--in which she had never pretended to herself to find a

congenial occupation,--as a not impossible, indeed not even a very

remote, contingency.

Mrs. Bloxam was not at all like the conventional schoolmistress; she

as little resembled the Pinkerton as the Monflathers type; and despite

the contemptuous comments of her pupils was very ladylike indeed, both

in appearance and manners. She was a tall slight woman, very fair of

hair and complexion, with blue eyes, which were a little hard in

expression, and a little shifty; with an inexpressive mouth, a

graceful figure, and a good deal of character and decision in her

voice, gestures, and movements. She had purchased the Vale House from

its former proprietor, a distant relative of her own and, like

herself, a schoolmistress, on highly advantageous terms, when she was

a new-made widow, and a very young woman; and now she hoped, after a

year or two, to dispose of it on terms by no means so advantageous to

the purchaser. But this hope Mrs. Bloxam had not spoken of to anyone.

She was of silent and secretive temperament, and liked to make up her

mind completely, and in every detail, to any plan of action which she

contemplated before making it known to any friend or acquaintance. Her

man of business was Mrs. Bloxam's sole confidant, and even he knew no

more of her affairs than was indispensable to their safe and

profitable conduct.

Mr. Dexter would have been as ignorant as any mere acquaintance of

Mrs. Bloxam's--as any of the young girls asleep in the white beds,

standing in long ranges in the "lofty and well-ventilated dormitories"

which formed so important a feature in the prospectus that eloquently

set forth the advantages of the Vale House "establishment"--of the

nature of the contents of a bundle of letters which Mrs. Bloxam set

herself to peruse, late on the same evening on which Gertrude Lloyd's

letter reached her well-shaped hands. Only one individual in the world

besides Mrs. Bloxam knew that the letters which she was now engaged in

reading had ever been written; and their writer would probably have

been surprised--as they did not contain any guarantees for the payment

of money--had he known that they were still in existence.

Gertrude's letter had reached Mrs. Bloxam just at the hour at which

the concluding ceremonial of the school-day routine was about to be

performed. She laid it aside until prayers and the formal leave-taking

for the night insisted upon at the Vale House as essential to the due

inculcation of good breeding had been gone through; and then, in the

welcome retirement and solitude of her own sitting-room, seated before

her own particular bureau, and with her own particular supper in

tempting perspective, Mrs. Bloxam read, not without sympathy mingling

with her astonishment, the letter of her quondam pupil.

Mrs. Bloxam read the letter once and laid it down, and thought very

profoundly for some minutes. Then she took it up and read it again,

and once more fell into a fit of musing. The bureau before which she

had seated herself had a number of small drawers at the side. One of

these Mrs. Bloxam opened, and selected from among its neatly-arranged

contents a packet, tied with green ribbon and docketed: "Lord S--,

from 185- to 186-." The parcel contained twenty letters, and Mrs.

Bloxam read them all through. The task did not occupy much time; the

writing was large and clear, her sight was strong and quick. When she

had read the letters, she replaced them in the order which she had

temporarily disturbed, retied the packet, and locked it away in the

drawer whence she had taken it. Then she arranged a sheet of paper on

the blotting-pad before her, took up a pen, and began to write with a

rapid hand what was evidently intended to be a long letter.

But in the middle of the third page Mrs. Bloxam changed her mind.

"Safer not, better not," she muttered to herself; "the written letter

remains. Witness these;" and she inclined her pen-handle towards the

drawer in which she had just replaced the packet of letters; "time

will show whether she had better know, or not know."

Then Mrs. Bloxam tore the sheet, the third page of which she had begun

to write on, into fragments sufficiently minute to defy the curiosity

and the ingenuity of the most prying and ingenious of housemaids, and

replaced it by another, on which she wrote the following words:

"The Vale House, Hampstead.

"Tuesday night.

"My Dear Gertrude,--I have your letter. I accede to your request, and

will make arrangements in reference to the proposal which you have

submitted to me. None of the girls now here have any recollection of

you. There are several younger members of the families whose older

girls were here; but your change of name prevents that being of any

consequence. The servants were all changed at the Easter Term. Let me

know when it will suit you to come here; and believe me yours

sincerely,

"Elinor Bloxam."

When she had read this brief note over, addressed it to Miss Grace

Lambert, and placed it in the appointed spot for all letters to be

despatched by the morning post, Mrs. Bloxam sat down to her solitary

supper with a well-satisfied expression of countenance.

It was nearly eleven years since Gertrude Keith, a handsome,

intelligent, and self-willed child of eight years old, had been

confided to the care of Mrs. Bloxam and the advantages, educational

and otherwise, of the Vale House. The letters which Mrs. Bloxam had

read, that summer night, formed the greater part of all the

correspondence which had--been addressed to her by the individual who

had placed the child under her protection, and whose confidence Mrs.

Bloxam had won, and to a certain extent undeniably deserved. It had

been stipulated that Gertrude Keith was to be kept in ignorance of her

parentage, and of the circumstances under which she had been placed in

Mrs. Bloxam's establishment; and this condition the schoolmistress had

conscientiously observed. Gertrude knew nothing of her own origin. She

was believed by her companions, and she believed herself, to be an

orphan girl, without any living relatives.

Gertrude Keith was the natural daughter of Lord Sandilands, a nobleman

whose wild youth had given place to a correct and irreproachable

middle age, which stage of life he had now passed, and was beginning

the downward descent. He had placed the child under the care of Mrs.

Bloxam, who had been formerly a governess in the family of his sister,

Lady Marchmont, and who retained the confidence and regard of her

former employers, after she had made the adventurous and unsuccessful

experiment of matrimony. Certain circumstances connected with the

little girl's birth and the early death of her ill-starred mother made

Lord Sandilands shrink from seeing her, with strange and strong

aversion; and one of the conditions to which he had required Mrs.

Bloxam's consent and adherence was, that his name was never to be

spoken to the child, and that, except in the event of her illness or

death, he was to be spared all communications respecting her, except

at certain stated intervals. These conditions had been scrupulously

observed; and Gertrude's childhood had been as happy as any childhood

passed under such exceptional conditions could be. She was a handsome,

healthy, brave, independent-spirited child, who did not give much

trouble, and who held her own against the envy, hatred, malice,

and all uncharitableness of that world in miniature--a girls'

boarding-school. As for Mrs. Bloxam, she liked the handsome, sturdy

child, and she liked the stylish graceful girl, who developed herself

so rapidly from that promising childhood. Then Gertrude was not a

troublesome, while she was a very lucrative, pupil; and there was an

agreeable certainty about the very liberal payments made on her

account by Lord Sandilands, and an equally agreeable uncertainty about

the period of the girl's removal from the Vale House, which formed an

exception to the rule in general cases; and Mrs. Bloxam highly

appreciated both these advantages. A portion of the correspondence

which Mrs. Bloxam had read on the evening on which she had received

Gertrude's letter referred to the time when she should have attained

to womanhood, and her schooldays should be over. It was Lord

Sandilands' wish that the arrangement made for her in her childhood

should continue; that Mrs. Bloxam should act as her protectress; that

the girl should remain with her, until she should feel indisposed to

stay at the Vale House any longer, or should decide upon some manner

of life for herself. "In any of these cases," said Gertrude's unknown

father in one of his letters, "on your communicating the facts to me,

I will make the best arrangement for Gertrude within my power."

It was not very long after this had been written, though much before

the time at which either her father or Mrs. Bloxam had contemplated

the probability of any change in Gertrude's life, or of the girl's

taking her destiny into her own hands, that an accident made her

acquainted with Gilbert Lloyd. She had not shared any of the early

romance and follies of her companions: the "young gentlemen" of Dr.

Waggle's "establishment" had had no charm, singly or collectively, for

her; the doctor, the chemist, the music and drawing masters, even the

Italian signor, who made singing-lessons a delight, and was so

fascinating, though he used his hair-brush sparingly, and his

nail-brush not at all,--each and all were perfectly without attraction

or danger for the young girl, who seemed to ignore or despise all the

petty flirtations and manoeuvrings of her schoolfellows.

Of and for not one of the young girls under her care head Mrs. Bloxam

less fear or anxiety. Gertrude was proud and stately, and though tall

for her seventeen years, and firm as well as graceful of outline, and

though she had made fair progress with her education, and in her

musical studies was notably in the van, there was something childlike

about her still, something which kept Mrs. Bloxam in a happy condition

of unsuspecting tranquillity.

But all Gertrude Keith's childlike peace and passionless calm vanished

when she met Gilbert Lloyd, at a house where Mrs. Bloxam was in the

habit of visiting during the vacations, and whither she brought

Gertrude, in order to avoid leaving her to the portentous solitude of

the Vale House, in the absence of her companions. The girl fell in

love with the young man--who paid her quiet, stealthy, underhand

attentions--with a suddenness and a vehemence which would have alarmed

anyone who loved her, for the future of a woman endowed with so

imaginative, sensitive, and passionate a nature. All the dormant

romance, of which no one had suspected the existence in Gertrude's

nature, whose awakening no one perceived, when the time came was

aroused into force and action, and the girl was transformed. Now was

the time at which the instinct, the care, the love, the caution of a

mother, would have been needed to guide, direct, and save Gertrude

from her own undisciplined fancy, from her own untaught impulses. But

Gertrude had no such aid extended to her. Mrs. Bloxam, a good woman in

her way, and of more than average intelligence, had no feelings

towards the girl which even bordered on the maternal; and the habitual

authority of the schoolmistress was naturally in some degree abrogated

by the fact that it was vacation-time. She was not of a very confiding

or unsuspicious disposition; but she had, unconsciously to herself, to

deal in Gilbert Lloyd with one who knew well how to lull suspicion,

and he in his turn found an apt pupil in Gertrude. They met again and

again; the girl's beauty, freshness, and daring had a strong charm for

a man like Lloyd; and for the first time since he had had to calculate

life's chances closely, and to rely upon himself for the indulgences

and luxuries which alone made life worth having to a man of his

temperament, he committed the blunder of gratifying feeling at the

expense of prudence. He did not fall in love with Gertrude quite so

precipitately or so violently as she fell in love with him, but the

second meeting did for him what the first had done for her; and in

Gilbert Lloyd's case, to form a desire was to resolve to achieve it,

at whatever cost to others, at whatever sacrifice of personal honour,

provided it did not entail public disgrace, such gratification might

necessitate or involve.

The vacation enjoyed by the pupils, and not less enjoyed by the

proprietor, of the Vale House, was within three days of its

expiration, when a housemaid belonging to the establishment reported

Miss Gertrude Keith "missing;" and the search and anxiety consequent

on the intelligence were terminated by a letter from the fugitive,

informing Mrs. Bloxam that she had been married that morning to

Gilbert Lloyd by special license, and was then about to start for a

short continental excursion.

Mrs. Bloxam was very much shocked, and very much annoyed, in the first

place, that the event should have happened at all; in the second, that

Gilbert Lloyd, of whom she knew something, and cordially disapproved

what she did know, should be the hero of an affair certain to bring

her into discredit with Lord Sandilands, and likely, if she did not

contrive to hide it very skilfully, to bring her school into discredit

with the public. She had no doubt as to the veracity of Gertrude's

story, no doubt that Lloyd had really married her--a copy of the

certificate of the marriage was enclosed in her letter; but she

bitterly regretted her own blindness and negligence, and, to do her

justice, felt not a little for the girl's probable fate.

Mrs. Bloxam rapidly perceived the advantage to be derived from the

circumstance that the untoward event of Gertrude's elopement had taken

place during the vacation. She summoned all the servants, informed

them that Miss Keith had left the Vale House under certain unpleasant

circumstances which it was not necessary to explain; that any

indiscreet reference to the circumstance made to the other pupils on

the reassembling of the school would be visited by condign punishment

in the forfeiture of the offender's place; and then dismissed them, to

assemble downstairs in their own domain and learn all the particulars

from the housemaid, who was in Gertrude's confidence, and had been

liberally bribed by Gilbert Lloyd to facilitate and connive at all the

preliminary meetings which had resulted in the elopement.

To this proceeding succeeded a period of reflection on the part of

Mrs. Bloxam. Should she inform Lord Sandilands of the events that had

taken place? Should she tell him how much sooner than she had

calculated upon, Gertrude had taken the decision of her fate into her

own hands? Should she tell him that the time to which she had looked

forward as an eventuality, which might come about in a couple of

years, had already taken place, and that now was the opportunity for

fulfilling the intentions which he had continuously, if vaguely,

expressed in his letters to her? Mrs. Bloxam debated this question

with herself, and self-interest loudly and persistently advised her to

silence. Lord Sandilands had never seen the girl, had never even

hinted at seeing her, had indeed distinctly disclaimed any intention

of ever seeing her. Nothing could be more improbable than that he

should find out what had occurred. If she should continue to apply to

his solicitor for the money which he was authorised to pay her at

certain intervals, no suspicion of any change in the state of affairs

could arise. And the money would be very welcome to her. By resorting

to the simple expedient of holding her tongue, she might avoid

scandal, avoid doing herself the injury which she most necessarily

inflict upon her school by the admission of an elopement having taken

place from within its walls, and secure a sum of money which would be

both useful and agreeable. To be sure, the day of reckoning must come,

but not yet; and if ever she should have it in her power to do any

service or kindness to the poor misguided girl, who would certainly

inevitably come, or she (Mrs. Bloxam) was much mistaken in Gilbert

Lloyd, to need service and kindness before much time should have gone

over her, she pledged herself, to herself, to show her all the

kindness in her power, unreservedly and heartily. Thus did Mrs. Bloxam

make the devil's bargain with herself; and very successfully did she

pursue the line of conduct which she had determined to follow, from

the period of Gertrude Keith's elopement to that evening on which she

had received the no-longer-deluded girl's letter, two years and a half

later. With the fatal facility which results from impunity, Mrs.

Bloxam had almost ceased to remember Gertrude, and had quite ceased to

feel uneasiness regarding the concealment she had practised towards

Lord Sandilands, and the appropriation of the sum of money which he

paid to her yearly. But with the perusal of Gertrude's letter the

subject again arose in her mind, and, as was Mrs. Bloxam's habit, she

faced it steadily and considered it maturely. Gertrude's proposition

was not an entirely pleasing one. There was a certain responsibility

attaching to assuming the charge of a young woman so strangely

situated; and the present acceptation of the trust might involve Mrs.

Bloxam in difficulties and dilemmas to which she was by no means blind

or insensible. But, on the other hand, she saw in Gertrude's return a

perfect security against the divulgement of her decidedly unpleasant

secret. Should Lord Sandilands now make any inquiry about Gertrude,

she should experience no difficulty in satisfying him or any

representative he might send. Even should the change of name become

known-a contingency which a little well-timed manoeuvring might

prevent--Mrs. Bloxam could afford to trust to her own ingenuity to

find a reason for that proceeding which should satisfy all querists.

Gertrude's own interest and safety were now concerned in preserving

the secret of her elopement, her marriage, and the duration of her

absence from the Vale House; while the offer of her services as

teacher to the junior classes was sufficiently valuable to leave Mrs.

Bloxam still a gainer to the full extent of the annual stipend, even

when Gertrude's maintenance and needful expenses should be taken into

account--a calculation which Mrs. Bloxam made very accurately and

minutely, and which was very much in her line. The result of the

cogitations to which Mrs. Bloxam gave herself up after she had read

Gertrude's letter has already appeared. On the following day she

received from Mrs. Lloyd a few brief lines of acknowledgment and

thanks; and the Saturday of the week which had begun with the death of

Harvey Gore and the final parting between Gilbert Lloyd and his young

wife witnessed the installation of a new inmate, holding an anomalous

position--partly parlour-boarder and partly pupil-teacher--at the Vale

House. This new inmate was known to her companions and pupils, in

short to all concerned, as Miss Grace Lambert.

END OF THE PROLOGUE.

BOOK THE FIRST.

CHAPTER I.

Rowley Court.

The traveller of thirty years ago, whom pleasure or business took

through the heart of Gloucestershire, and who had the satisfaction of

enjoying the box-seat of the admirably-appointed mail-coach which ran

through that district,--if he had an eye for the picturesque and a

proper appreciation of the beauties of nature, exhibiting themselves

in the freshest turf, the oldest trees, the loveliest natural

landscape-gardening combination of grassy upland, wooded knoll, and

silver stream,--seldom refrained from inquiring the name of the owner

of the property which was skirted by the well-kept road along which

they were bowling, and was invariably informed by the coachman that

all belonged "to the Challoners, of whom you've doubtless heerd; the

Challoners of Rowley Court." By his phrase, "of whom you've doubtless

heerd," the coachman expressed literally what he meant. He and his

compeers, born and bred in the county, were so impressed with the

seignorial dignities of the Challoners of Rowley Court, that they

ignored the possibility of the position of the family being unknown

throughout the length and breadth of the land. That they were, not

what they had been was indeed admitted, that the grand old estate had

some what diminished, that the family revenues had decreased, that the

present members of it were to a certain extent impoverished, that the

hand of poverty was one of the many objectionable hands which had an

unpleasant grip upon the old Squire,--all these were facts which were

tacitly admitted in privileged regions--such as the servants'-hall at

the Court, or the snuggery at the Challoners' Arms--but which were

never hinted at to passing strangers. So jealous, indeed, of the

honour of the family were its retainers--among whom the mail-driver

was to be classed, as he was doubtless connected with the tenantry by

family or marriage--that if "the box" ventured to comment on the

evident want of attention to the property, manifested in broken

hedges, unmended thatch, in undrained fen or unreclaimed common, he

received but a short answer, conveying an intimation that they knew

pretty well what was right down in those parts, the Challoners did; at

all events, as well as most cockneys: the biting sarcasm conveyed in

this retort having generally the effect of closing the conversation,

and reducing the fee given to the driver at the journey's end to

one-half the sum originally intended.

There are no mail-coaches now, and the traveller by rail has no chance

of getting a glimpse of Rowley Court, save a momentary one in the

short interval between a cutting and a tunnel which are on the extreme

border of the park. The Court itself stands towards the centre of the

park on low ground encircled by wooded hills, towards which, in the

good old times, avenues of stately oak, elm, and lime trees extended

in long vistas. But under the dire pressure of necessity the woodman's

axe has been frequently at work lately in these "cool colonnades," and

the avenues are consequently much shorn of their fair proportions. The

house is a big incongruous mass of two distinct styles of

architecture--a grafting of Inigo Jones's plain façade and Corinthian

pillars on a red-brick Elizabethan foundation, with projecting

mullioned windows, octagonal turrets, quaintly-carved cornices, and

ornamental doorways. Round the house runs a broad stone terrace

bounded by a low balustrade, and flanked at each of the corners by a

large stone vase, which, in the time of prosperity, had contained

choice flowers varying with the season, but which were now full of

cracks and fissures, and were overgrown with creeping weeds and common

parasites. The very stones of the terrace were chipped moss-edged, and

grass-fringed; the black-faced old clock in the stable-turret had lost

one of its hands, while several of its gilt numerals had become

effaced by time and tempest; the vane above it had only two points of

the compass remaining for the brass fox, whose bushy tail had gone in

the universal wreck, to point at; the pump in the stable-yard was dry;

the trough in front of it warped and blistered; a piece of dirty

oil-cloth had been roughly nailed over the kennel, in front of which

the big old mastiff lay blinking in the sunshine; and a couple of

cart-horses, a pair of superannuated carriage-horses, the Squire's old

roan cob, and "the pony" (a strong, rough, undersized, Welsh-bred

brute, with untiring energy and no mouth), were the sole tenants of

the stables which had once been occupied by the best-bred hacks, and

hunters of the county.

They were bad times now for the Challoners of Rowley Court--bad times

enough, Heaven knew; but they had been great people, and that was some

consolation for Mark Challoner, the old Squire, as he stiffly returned

the bow of Sir Thomas Walbrook, ex-Lord Mayor of London, carpet-maker,

and millionaire, who had recently built an Italian villa and laid out

an Italian garden on a three-hundred acre "lot" which he had purchased

from the Challoner estate. They had been the great lords of all that

district. Queen Elizabeth had lodged for some time at Rowley Court on

one of her progresses; and Charles the First and Henrietta Maria had

slept there, the royal pair finding "all the highways strewed with

roses and all manner of sweet flowers," as was recorded in a

worm-eaten parchment manuscript kept among the archives in the old

oak-chest in the library. There was no sign then of the evil days in

store; evil days which began in 1643, when Colonel Sands' troopers

pillaged the Court, and sent off five wagons loaded with spoil to

London.

It is the custom of the Challoners to say that then began that

decadence which has continued for ever since; and in truth, though

there have been many vicissitudes of fortune undergone by the old

family, the tendency has been for ever downward. The final blow to

their fortunes was dealt by Mark Challoner's immediate predecessor,

his brother Howard, who was one of the ornaments of the Prince

Regent's court, and who gambled and drank and diced and drabbed with

the very finest of those fine gentlemen. It was in his time that the

axe was laid to the root of the tree; that Sir Thomas Walbrook's

father, the old carpet-maker, made the first money advances which

resulted in his ultimate purchase on easy terms of the three hundred

acres; and that ultimate ruin began decidedly to establish and

proclaim itself at Rowley Court. When providence removed Howard

Challoner from this world by a timely attack of gout in the stomach,

long after his beloved king and patron had been gathered to his

fathers, it was felt that there was every chance of a beneficial

change in the family fortunes. The godless old bachelor was succeeded

by his brother Mark, then a clear-headed, energetic man in the prime

of life, a widower with two remarkably promising boys--the elder a

frank, free-hearted jovial fellow, fond of country sports, a good

shot, a bold rider, "a downright Englishman," as the tenantry

delighted to call him; the younger a retiring, shy lad, wanting in the

attributes of popularity, but said to be wondrous clever "with his

head," and to know more than people double his age, which in itself

was something bordering on the miraculous to the simple

Gloucestershire folk. And, for a time, all went very well. Mark

Challoner was his own steward, and almost his own bailiff; at all

events, he allowed no one on the property to be more thoroughly master

of its details than he. Without any undue amount of niggardliness he

devised and carried out unsparing retrenchments; thriftless tenants,

after warning, were got rid of, and energetic men introduced in their

places; a better style of farming was suggested, and all who adopted

it were helped by their landlord. The estate improved so greatly and

so rapidly that vacant farms were largely competed for, and rents were

rising, when suddenly Mark Challoner withdrew himself from the life

into which he had plunged with such eagerness, and in which he had

succeeded so well, and became a confirmed recluse, a querulous, moody,

silent man, loving solitude, hating companionship, shutting out from

him all human interest.

A sudden change this, and one which did not happen without exciting

remarks from all the little world round Rowley Court, both high and

low. The Walbrooks and their set (for during the few later years there

had been frequent irruptions of the plutocracy into the old county

families, and the Walbrooks were now the shining centre of a circle of

people with almost as much money and as little breeding as

themselves)--the Walbrooks and their set shook their heads and

shrugged their shoulders, and secretly rejoiced that the old man from

whom they never received anything but the sternest courtesy, and who

so pertinaciously repelled all attempts at familiar intercourse from

them, had at last come upon the evil days in store for him, and would

no longer twit them by his aristocratic presence and frigid behaviour.

The more humble classes--the old tenantry, who had been rejoicing at

the better turn which things on the estate had undoubtedly taken, and

who were looking forward to a long career of good management under the

reign of Mark Challoner and his sons--were wofully disappointed at the

change, and expressed their disappointment loudly amongst themselves,

while taking due care that it should never reach the master's ear. No

one, however, either among the neighbours or the dependents, seemed to

notice that the change in Mark Challoner's life--that his fading from

the hearty English squire into the premature old man, that his

abnegating the exercise of his tastes and pleasures, and giving up

everything in which he had hitherto felt the keenest interest--was

contemporaneous with the departure of his younger son, Geoffrey, from

the paternal roof. In that act there was nothing to create surprise:

it had always been known that Master Geoffrey's talents were destined

to find exercise in the great arena of London, and now that he was

eighteen years of age, it was natural that he should wish to bring

those talents into play; and though nothing had been said in or out of

the house about his going, until one morning when he told the coachman

to bring round the dogcart and to come with him to the station,

there was no expression, of surprise on the part of any of the

household--beings to whom the expression of anything they might feel

was of the rarest occurrence. The old butler, indeed, a relic of the

past, who had been Howard Challoner's body-servant in his later years,

and who was almost superannuated, remarked that the Squire sent for

his eldest son immediately after his younger son's departure; that the

two were closeted together for full two hours (a most unusual thing at

Rowley Court, where, in general, all matters were discussed before the

servants, or, indeed, before anyone that might be present); and that

"Master Miles" came out with pallid cheeks and red eyes, and in a

state which the narrator described as one of "flustration."

Seven years had passed since Geoffrey Challoner's departure,--seven

years, during which his name had never been mentioned by his father or

his brother; seven years, during which the old man, wrapped in the

reserve, the silence, and the moodiness which had become his second

nature, had been gradually, but surely, breaking in health, and

wending his way towards the trysting-place where the Shadow cloaked

from head to foot was in waiting for him. That meeting was very close

at hand just now. So thought the servants, as from the ivy-covered

windows of the office they peered occasionally at their master,

propped up by pillows in his bath-chair, which had been wheeled into a

corner of the stone terrace where the light spring sunshine fell

fullest; so thought Dr. Barford, the brightest, cheeriest, rosiest

little medico, on whom all within the Cotswold district pinned their

faith ungrudgingly, and who had just sent his dark green gig, drawn by

that flea-bitten gray mare, which was known within a circuit of fifty

miles round, to the stables, and who approached the invalid with a

brisk step and an inquiring, pleasant smile.

"Sitting in the sunshine," said the Doctor aloud (having previously

said, _sotto voce_, "Hem!--hem! much changed, by George!"), "sitting

in the sunshine, my dear old friend! And quite right too--

'The sunshine, broken in the rill,

Though turned astray, is sunshine still,'

as somebody says. Well, and how do we feel to-day?"

"Badly enough, Doctor; badly enough!" replied the Squire, in a low

thick voice. "I'm running down very fast, and there's very little more

sunshine for me--" here an attack of coughing interrupted him for a

moment; "so I'm making the most of it."

"O, you mustn't say that," said Dr. Barford cheerily. "While there's

life there's hope, you know; and you've gone through some baddish

bouts since we've known each other."

"None so bad as this," said Mark Challoner. "Your skill, under

Providence, has kept me alive hitherto; but though you're as skilful

as ever, and as kind--God bless you for it!--you've not got Providence

working with you now. I'm doomed, and I know it. What's more, I don't

repine, only I want to make the most of the time that's left me; and,

above all, I want to see Miles again."

"Miles? O, ay! He's staying in town, is he not?"

"Yes, with my old friend Sandilands, who loves him as if he were his

own son. Poor Miles, it's a shame to drag him away from his enjoyment

to come down to a poor, dull, dying old man."

"You would not hurt his feelings by saying that before him," said the

Doctor shortly, "and you've no right to say it now. Has he been sent

for?"

"Yes, they telegraphed for him this morning."

"Well, there can be no harm in that, though I won't have you give way

to this feeling of lowness that is coming over you."

"Coming over me!" the old man repeated wearily. "Ah, Barford, my dear

friend, you know how long it is since the light died out of my life,

and left me the mere shell and husk of man that I have been since; you

know, Doctor, how long it is ago, though you don't know the cause of

it."

"Nor ever sought to know it, Squire; bear me witness of that," said

the little Doctor. "It's no part of my business or of my nature to

seek confidences; and though perhaps if I had been aware of what was

troubling you--and at the first I knew perfectly well that _animo

magis quam corpore_ was the seat of your illness--and though, being

unable to 'minister to a mind diseased,' as somebody says, I was

labouring, as it were, at a disadvantage,--you will do me the justice

to say, that I never for a moment hinted that--hum! you understand?"

And Dr. Barford, who would have given the results of a week's practice

to know really what had first worked the change in the old man,

stopped short and looked at him with a confidence-inviting glance.

"Perfectly," said the Squire; "but it could never have been. My secret

must die with me; and when after my death the closet is broken open,

and people find the skeleton in it, they will merely come upon a lot

of old bones jumbled together, and, not having got the key of the

puzzle to fit them together, will wonder what I can have been afraid

of. Why do you stare so earnestly?"

"A skeleton, my dear Squire!" said the little Doctor, on tiptoe with

eagerness; "you said a skeleton in a closet, and a lot of old bones

jumbled together--"

A smile, the first seen for many a day, passed across Mark Challoner's

wan face as he said, "I was speaking metaphorically, Barford; that is

all. No belated traveller was ever robbed and murdered at Rowley

Court--in my time at least, believe me."

Dr. Barford laughed a short laugh, and shrugged his shoulders as

though deprecating a pursuance of the subject, but he evidently did

not place entire credence on his friend's assertion. However, he

plunged at once into a series of medical questions, and shortly

afterwards took his leave. As he passed the hall-door, which was open,

on his way to the stables, he saw a neatly-dressed middle-aged woman

pacing quietly up and down the hall; and recognising her as the nurse

from London, who for some time past had been in nightly attendance on

the old man, he beckoned her to him.

"Coming out to get a little breath of fresh air, nurse?" he said

pleasantly, as she approached. "You must need it, I should think."

"Well, sir, it is warm and close in the Squire's room now, there's no

denying; and what it'll be when the summer comes on I often dread to

think."

"No you don't, nurse," said the Doctor, eyeing her keenly. "You know

better than that, with all the practice and experience you've had. No

summer for the Squire, poor fellow, this side the grave."

"You think not, sir?"

"I _know_ it, nurse, and so do you, if you only chose to say so.

However, he's gone down so very rapidly since I was here last, and his

tone is altogether so very low and depressed, that I imagine the end

to be very close upon us; so close that I think you had better tell

Mr. Miles--the son that has been telegraphed for, you know, and who

will probably be down to-night--that if he has anything special to say

to his father he had better do so very shortly after his arrival.

What's that?" he asked, as a dull sound fell upon his ear.

"That's the Squire knocking for Barnard to fetch his chair, sir; see,

Barnard has heard, and is going to him."

"O, all right! Poor old Squire! poor good old fellow! Don't forget

about Mr. Miles, nurse. Goodnight;" and the little Doctor, casting a

kindly look towards the spot where the figure of the old man in the

chair loomed hazily in the dim distance, hurried away.

When Mark Challoner's servant had reached his master's chair, and,

obedient to the signal he had received, was about to wheel it towards

the house, he found that the old man had changed his intention, and

was desirous of remaining out on the terrace yet a few minutes. On

receiving this order Barnard looked over his shoulder at the nurse,

who was still standing at the hall-door; and as she made no sign to

him to hasten his movements, he concluded that his master's wish might

be obeyed, and so, after touching his hat respectfully, he returned to

the genial society of the gardener and the stable-lad. And Mark

Challoner was once more left alone. The fact in its broadest

significance seemed to become patent to him as he watched the

retreating figure of his servant, and two tears coursed down his wan

cheeks. Mark Challoner knew that his last illness was then upon him;

for weeks he had felt that he should never again shake off the

lassitude and weakness so stealthily yet so surely creeping over him;

but now, within the last few minutes, the conviction had flashed

across him that the end was close at hand--that he had arrived at the

final remnant of that originally grand strength and vitality which,

slowly decaying, had enabled him to make head against disease so long,

and that he was taking his last look at the fair fields which he had

inherited, and in the improvement of which he had at one time--ah, how

long ago!--found his delight. It was this thought that made him

dismiss Barnard. The old man, with the new-born consciousness of his

approaching end fresh in him, wanted to gaze once more at his

diminished possessions; and for the last time to experience the old

associations which a contemplation of them never failed to revive.

There, with the westering sun just gilding its topmost branches, was

the Home Copse, where he had shot his first pheasant, to his old

father's loudly-expressed delight. Just below it lay the Black Pool,

out of which, at the risk of his own life, he had pulled Charles

Gammock, a rosy-faced boy with fair hair--Charles Gammock! ay, ay,

they buried him a year ago, and his grandson now holds the land.

There, bare and attenuated now, but as he first remembered it young

and strong and full of promise, was the Regent's Plantation, so called

in honour of the illustrious personage who, staying for the night with

Howard Challoner, had honoured him by planting the first tree in it.

Beyond it, Dirck's land, now--and as that thought crossed him the

Squire's brow became furrowed, and his wan colour deepened into a

leaden hue, for Dirck was one of the moneyed interest, one of the

manufacturers who had come in Sir Thomas Walbrook's wake, and were

bent on the acquisition of all the county property which might come

into the market. Beyond it lay Thurston Gap, the surest place for

finding a fox in the whole county, old Tom Horniblow used to say. Old

Tom Horniblow! Why, there had been three or four huntsmen to the

Cotswold since him: he must have been dead these forty years, during

which time the Squire had not thought of him a dozen times; and yet

then, at that moment, the stout figure of the old huntsman mounted on

his famous black horse, just as he had seen him at the cover-side half

a century ago, rose before his eyes. This reminiscence turned Mark

Challoner's thoughts from places to people; and though his glance

still rested on the landscape, his mind was busy recalling the ghosts

of the past. His father, a squire indeed of the old type--hearty,

boisterous, and hot-headed: it was well--and a faint smile dawned on

Mark Challoner's cheek as the thought crossed his mind--it was as well

that his father had died before the irruption of the Walbrooks,

Dircks, and such-like; it would have been too much for him. His

brother, the dandy with the high cravat and the buckskin breeches and

hessian boots, ridiculed by his country neighbours, and regarding his

estate but as a means to supply his town dissipation. His wife--she

seemed more dim and ghost-like to him than any of the others; he had

known her so short a time, so much of his life had been passed since

her death; since the gentle little woman, whose wedding-ring he had

worn on his little finger until it had eaten into the flesh, glided

out of the world after having given birth to her second son. And, with

the train of thought awakened by the reminiscence of the career of

that second son, from his birth until the morning of his abrupt

departure from the ancestral home, surging round him, the old man's

head sunk upon his breast, a fresh access of feebleness seemed to come

over him; and when the watchful Barnard sallied from his retreat and

advanced towards the chair, he found his master in a state bordering

on collapse, and made the utmost haste to get him to his room, and

place him under the professional care of the nurse.

In the course of a very few minutes, however, the Squire, aided by

stimulants, revived; and his senses rapidly returning, he ordered his

desk to be brought to the side of the bed into which he had been

moved, and commenced listlessly sorting the papers therein. They were

few and unimportant; the old man's illness had not been sudden; he had

always been a thoroughly methodical man, and he had had plenty of time

and opportunity to attend to his correspondence. Propped up by the

pillows, he was leisurely looking through the orderly bundles of

letters, neatly tied together and scrupulously docketed, when the

sound of a horse's hoofs on the gravel outside, the grating of wheels,

the barking of the dogs in the stable-yard, and the almost

simultaneous ringing of the house-bell, gave warning of an arrival.

Mark Challoner had scarcely time to note these various occurrences

when the room-door was thrown open, and in the next instant the old

man's wavering and unsteady hands were fast in the grasp of his son

Miles.

A tall man, over six feet in height, with a bright red-and-white

complexion, large brown eyes, a straight nose too big for his face, a

large mouth full of sound white teeth, with dark brown hair curling

crisply at the sides of his head and over his poll, with long

moustache and flowing brown beard, with a strongly-knit but somewhat

ungainly figure, dressed in a well-made but loosely-fitting gray suit,

and with large, well-shaped, brown hands, which, after releasing the

first grip of the Squire's fingers, joined themselves together and

kept working in tortuous lissom twists: this was Miles Challoner. A

faint smile, half of pleasure, half of amusement--something odd in

Miles had always been remarked by his father--flitted over the

Squire's face, as he said, after the first greeting, "You've come in

time, Miles: you received the telegram?"

"And started off at once, sir. All I could do to prevent his lordship

from coming with me--wanted to come immensely; but I told him I

thought he'd better not. Even such an old friend as he is in the way

when one's seedy--don't you think I'm right, sir?"

"You're right enough, Miles; more especially when, as in the present

case, it's a question of something more than 'seediness,' as you call

it. My time," continued the Squire, in tones a little thickened by

emotion,--"my time has come, my boy. I'm only waiting for you, before,

like Hezekiah, I should 'turn my face unto the wall.' I have, I hope,

'set my house in order,' and I know that now 'I shall die, and not

live;' but I wanted to see you before--before I go."

The young man leaned quickly forward and looked earnestly in his

father's face, as he heard these words; then with a gesture of inquiry

elevated his eyebrows at the nurse, who was standing just inside the

door. Receiving for answer an affirmative nod, Miles Challoner's cheek

for an instant turned as pale as that of the invalid; but he speedily

recovered himself, and said in a voice which lacked the cheery ring

that should have accompanied the words: "You're a little down, sir,

and that's natural enough, considering your illness; but you'll make

head against it now, and we shall soon have you about as usual. It was

only yesterday Lord Sandilands was saying that though he's some

quarter of a century your junior, he should be very sorry to back

himself against you at 'anything British,' as he expressed

it--anything where strength and bottom were required."

The old man smiled again as he said: "Sandilands has been a townman

for so long that he's lost all condition, and has ruined his health

for want of air and exercise. But at least he lives; while I--I've

vegetated for the last few years, and now there's an end even to

that."

"Why didn't you send for me before, sir? If I'd had any idea you

thought yourself so ill, I'd have come long since."

"I know that, my dear boy, and that's the very reason why I didn't

send. Why should I fetch you from your friends and your gaiety to

potter about an old man's bedside? I would not have sent for you even

now, save that I have that inward feeling which is unmistakable, and

which tells me that I can't last many days, many hours more, and I

wanted, selfishly enough, to have you near me at the last." The old

man spoke these words with indescribable affection, and, half

involuntarily as it seemed, threw his arm round his son's neck. The

big strong frame of the young man shook with ill-repressed emotion as

he took the thin hand hanging round his shoulder, and pressed it

reverently to his lips. "Father!" he said; and as he said it, both the

men felt how many years had passed since he had chanced to use the

term "Father!"

"True, my boy," said Mark Challoner quietly,--"it is a pleasure,

though I fear a selfish one. 'On some fond breast the parting soul

relies,' you know, Miles; and you're all that's left to me in the

world. Besides, the tie between us has been such a happy one; as long

as I can recollect we've had no difference,--we were more like

brothers than father and son, Miles."

Miles answered only by a pressure of his father's hand. He dared not

trust himself to speak, he knew that his voice was thick and choked

with tears. His father looked at him for an instant, and then said:

"Now, boy, go and get some dinner. How thoughtless of me to keep you

so long fasting after your journey!--Nurse, take Mr. Miles away, and

see that he is properly attended to. Be as careful of him as you are

of me, that's all I ask;" and the old man, half-exhausted, sank back

on his pillow.

Miles Challoner left the room with the nurse, and when they were

alone, he took the first opportunity of asking her real opinion as to

his father's state. This she gave him frankly and fully, telling him

moreover what Dr. Barford had said as to the necessity of not delaying

anything which he might have to say to the Squire. Miles thanked her,

and then sat down to his cheerless meal. His thoughts were

preoccupied, and he ate and drank but little, pausing every now and

then, bestriding the room, reseating himself, and leaning his head on

his hand with a helpless puzzled air, as one to whom the process of

thought was unfamiliar. He could scarcely realise the fact that the

presiding spirit of the place, the man whose will had been law ever

since he could recollect, "the Squire," who, with diminished

possessions and failing fortunes, had commanded, partly through his

own style and manner, partly through the prestige attaching to the

family, more respect and esteem than all the members of the invading

calicocracy put together,--he could scarcely realise that this rural

autocrat's power was ebbing, and that he himself lay on his death-bed.

On his death-bed!--that was a curious thought: Miles Challoner had

never attempted to realise the position, and now; when vaguely he

attempted it, he failed. Only one thing came out clearly to him after

his attempted examination of the subject, and that was that it would

be most desirable to be at peace with all the world, and that any

enmity cherished to the last would probably have a most disturbing and

uncomfortable effect. Pondering all this he returned to the sick-room.

During his absence, the curtains had been closed and the night-lamp

lighted. The nurse sat nodding in a large easy-chair by the bedside,

and the Squire lay in a dozing state, half-waking now and again as his

head slipped off the high pillow on which it rested, or when the

heaviness of his breathing became specially oppressive. Miles seated

himself on a couch at the foot of the bed, and fatigued by his

journey, soon fell asleep. He seemed to have been unconscious only a

few minutes, but in reality had slept nearly an hour, when he was

awakened by a touch on the shoulder, and opening his eyes, saw the

nurse standing by him. "The Squire's calling for you," she said,

adding in a whisper, "he's going fast!" Miles roused himself, and

crept silently to the head of the bed, where he found his father

gasping for breath. The Squire's dim eyes recognised his son, and

between the paroxysms of laboured respiration he again threw his arm

round Miles's neck and touched the bowed forehead with his lips. Then

the thoughts that had been fermenting in Miles Challoner's heart for

so many years, and which had caused him such mental disturbance that

night, at length found vent in words. With his father's arm around

him, and with his face close to the old man's, Miles said: "Father!

one word, only one! You hear and understand me?" A pressure of the

hand on his cheeks--O, such a feeble pressure, but still a

recognition--answered him. "Father, what of Geoffrey?" A low moan

escaped the old man's lips; other sign made he none. "What of

Geoffrey?" continued Miles,--"years ago you forbade me ever to ask

what had become of him, why he had left us, even to mention his name.

I have obeyed you, as you know: but now, father, now--"

"Never!" said the old man in dull low accents. "Your brother Geoffrey

is, and must be for ever, dead to you. Miles, my boy, my own boy,

listen! Should you ever meet him, as you may do, shun him, I urge, I

command you! Think of what I say to you now, here, as I am--shun him,

fly from him, let nothing earthly induce you to know him or

acknowledge him."

"But, father, you will surely tell me why---"

The nurse touched Miles on the shoulder as he spoke, and pointed to

the Squire, whose swooning had been noticed by her observant eyes.

When he recovered himself he essayed again to speak, but his strength

failing him he laid his hand in his son's, and so peacefully passed

away.