CHAPTER I.

TWO YEARS AGO

[Illustration]

TWO YEARS AGO

BY CHARLES KINGSLEY

IN TWO VOLS.--VOL. I

1901

CONTENTS OF VOL.I.

CHAP

INTRODUCTORY

I POETRY AND PROSE

II STILL LIFE

III ANYTHING BUT STILL LIFE

IV FLOTSOM, JETSOM, AND LAGEND

V THE WAY TO WIN THEM

VI AN OLD FOE WITH A NEW FACE

VII LA CORDIFIAMMA

VIII TAKING ROOT

IX "AM I NOT A WOMAN AND A SISTER?"

X THE RECOGNITION

XI THE FIRST INSTALMENT OF AN OLD DEBT

XII A PEER IN TROUBLE

XIII L'HOMME INCOMPRIS

XIV THE DOCTOR AT BAY

TWO YEARS AGO.

INTRODUCTORY.

It may seem a somewhat Irish method of beginning the story of "Two

Years Ago" by a scene which happened but a month since. And yet, will

not the story be on that very account a better type of many a man's

own experiences! How few of us had learnt the meaning of "Two Years

Ago," until this late quiet autumn time; and till Christmas, too, with

its gaps in the old ring of friendly faces, never to be filled up

again on earth, began to teach us somewhat of its lesson.

Two years ago, while pestilence was hovering over us and ours; while

the battle-roar was ringing in our ears; who had time to think, to ask

what all that meant; to seek for the deep lesson which we knew must

lie beneath? Two years ago was the time for work; for men to do with

all their might whatsoever their hands found to do. But now the storm

has lulled once more; the air has cleared awhile, and we can talk

calmly over all the wonders of that sudden, strange, and sad "Two

years ago."

So felt, at least, two friends who went down, just one week before

Christmas-day, to Whitbury, in Berkshire. Two years ago had come to

one of them, as to thousands more, the crisis of his life; and he was

talking of it with his companion; and was on his way, too, to learn

more of that story, which this book contains, and in which he had

borne his part.

They were both of them men who would at first sight interest a

stranger. The shorter of the two he might have seen before--at picture

sales, Royal Academy meetings, dinner parties, evening parties,

anywhere and everywhere, in town; for Claude Mellot is a general

favourite, and a general guest.

He is a tiny, delicate-featured man, with a look of half-lazy

enthusiasm about his beautiful face, which reminds you much of

Shelley's portrait; only he has what Shelley had not, clustering

auburn curls, and a rich brown beard, soft as silk. You set him

down at once as a man of delicate susceptibility, sweetness,

thoughtfulness; probably (as he actually is) an artist.

His companion is a man of statelier stamp, tall, dark, and handsome,

with a very large forehead; if the face has a fault, it is that the

mouth is too small; that, and the expression of face too, and the

tone of voice, seem to indicate over-refinement, possibly a too

aristocratic exclusiveness. He is dressed like a very fine gentleman

indeed, and looks and talks like one. Aristocrat, however, in the

common sense of the word, he is not; for he is a native of the Model

Republic, and sleeping-partner in a great New York merchant firm.

He is chatting away to Claude Mellot, the artist, about Frémont's

election; and on that point seems to be earnest enough, though patient

and moderate.

"My dear Claude, our loss is gain. The delay of the next four years

was really necessary, that we might consolidate our party. And I leave

you to judge, if it has grown to its present size in but a few months,

what dimensions it will have attained before the next election. We

require the delay, too, to discover who are our really best men; not

merely as orators, but as workers; and you English ought to know

better than any nation, that the latter class of men are those whom

the world most needs--that though Aaron may be an altogether inspired

preacher, yet it is only slow-tongued practical Moses, whose spokesman

he is, who can deliver Israel from their taskmasters. Besides, my dear

fellow, we really want the next four years--'tell it not in Gath'--to

look about us and see what is to be done. Your wisest Englishmen

justly complain of us, that our 'platform' is as yet a merely negative

one; that we define what the South shall not do, but not what the

North shall. Ere four years be over, we will have a 'positive

platform,' at which you shall have no cause to grumble."

"I still think with Marie, that your 'positive platform' is already

made for you, plain as the sun in heaven, as the lightnings of Sinai.

Free those slaves at once and utterly!"

"Impatient idealist! By what means? By law, or by force? Leave us to

draw a _cordon sanitaire_ round the tainted States, and leave the

system to die a natural death, as it rapidly will if it be prevented

from enlarging its field. Don't fancy that a dream of mine. None know

it better than the Southerners themselves. What makes them ready

just now to risk honour, justice, even the common law of nations

and humanity, in the struggle for new slave territory? What but the

consciousness that without virgin soil, which will yield rapid and

enormous profit to slave labour, they and their institution must be

ruined!"

"The more reason for accelerating so desirable a consummation, by

freeing the slaves at once."

"Humph!" said Stangrave with a smile. "Who so cruel at times as your

too benevolent philanthropist? Did you ever count the meaning of those

words? Disruption of the Union, an invasion of the South by the North;

and an internecine war, aggravated by the horrors of a general rising

of the slaves, and such scenes as Hayti beheld sixty years ago. If you

have ever read them, you will pause ere you determine to repeat them

on a vaster scale."

"It is dreadful, Heaven knows, even in thought! But, Stangrave, can

any moderation on your part ward it off? Where there is crime, there

is vengeance; and without shedding of blood is no remission of sin."

"God knows! It may be true: but God forbid that I should ever do aught

to hasten what may come. Oh, Claude, do you fancy that I, of all men,

do not feel at moments the thirst for brute vengeance?"

Claude was silent.

"Judge for yourself, you who know all--what man among us Northerners

can feel, as I do, what those hapless men may have deserved?--I who

have day and night before me the brand of their cruelty, filling my

heart with fire? I need all my strength, all my reason, at times to

say to myself, as I say to others--'Are not these slaveholders men of

like passions with yourself? What have they done which you would not

have done in their place?' I have never read that key to Uncle Tom's

Cabin. I will not even read this Dred, admirable as I believe it to

be."

"Why should you?" said Claude. "Have you not a key to Uncle Tom's

Cabin, more pathetic than any word of man's or woman's?"

"But I do not mean that! I will not read them, because I have the key

to them in my own heart, Claude: because conscience has taught me to

feel for the Southerner as a brother, who is but what I might have

been; and to sigh over his misdirected courage and energy, not with

hatred, not with contempt: but with pity, all the more intense the

more he scorns that pity; to long, not merely for the slaves' sake,

but for the masters' sake, to see them--the once chivalrous gentlemen

of the South--delivered from the meshes of a net which they did not

spread for themselves, but which was round their feet, and round their

fathers', from the day that they were born. You ask me to destroy

these men. I long to save them from their certain doom!"

"You are right, and a better Christian than I am, I believe. Certainly

they do need pity, if any sinners do; for slavery seems to be--to

judge from Mr. Brooks's triumph--a great moral curse, and a heavier

degradation to the slaveholder himself, than it can ever be to the

slave."

"Then I would free them from that curse, that degradation. If the

negro asks, 'Am I not a man and a brother?' have they no right to ask

it also? Shall I, pretending to love my country, venture on any rash

step which may shut out the whole Southern white population from their

share in my country's future glory? No; have but patience with us, you

comfortable liberals of the Old World, who find freedom ready made to

your hands, and we will pay you all. Remember, we are but children

yet; our sins are the sins of youth,--greediness, intemperance,

petulance, self-conceit. When we are purged from our youthful sins,

England will not be ashamed of her child."

"Ashamed of you? I often wish I could make Americans understand the

feeling of England to you--the honest pride, as of a mother who has

brought into the world the biggest baby that ever this earth beheld,

and is rather proud of its stamping about and beating her in its

pretty pets. Only the old lady does get a little cross when she hears

you talk of the wrongs which you have endured from her, and teaching

your children to hate us as their ancient oppressors, on the ground of

a foolish war, of which every Englishman is utterly ashamed, and in

the result of which he glories really as much as you do."

"Don't talk of 'you,' Claude! You know well what I think on that

point. Never did one nation make the _amende honorable_ to another

more fully and nobly than you have to us; and those who try to keep up

the quarrel are--I won't say what. But the truth is, Claude, we

have had no real sorrows; and therefore we can afford to play with

imaginary ones. God grant that we may not have our real ones--that we

may not have to drink of the cup of which our great mother drank two

years ago!"

"It was a wholesome bitter for us; and it may be so for you likewise:

but we will have no sad forebodings on the eve of the blessed

Christmas-tide. He lives, He loves, He reigns; and all is well, for we

are His, and He is ours."

"Ah," said Stangrave, "when Emerson sneered at you English for

believing your Old Testament, he little thought that that was the

lesson which it had taught you; and that that same lesson was the

root of all your greatness. That that belief in God's being, in some

mysterious way, the living King of England and of Christendom, has

been the very idea which has kept you in peace and safety, now for

many a hundred years, moving slowly on from good to better, not

without many backslidings and many shortcomings, but still finding

out, quickly enough, when you were on the wrong road, and not ashamed

to retrace your steps, and to _reform_, as brave strong men should

dare to do; a people who have been for many an age in the vanguard

of all the nations, and the champions of sure and solid progress

throughout the world; because what is new among you is not patched

artificially on to the old, but grows organically out of it, with

a growth like that of your own English oak, whose every new-year's

leaf-crop is fed by roots which burrow deep in many a buried

generation, and the rich soil of full a thousand years."

"Stay!" said the little artist. "We are quite conceited enough

already, without your eloquent adulation, sir! But there is a truth

in your words. There is a better spirit roused among us, and that

not merely of two years ago. I knew this part of the country well in

1846-7-8, and since then, I can bear witness, a spirit of self-reform

has been awakened round here, in many a heart which I thought once

utterly frivolous. I find, in every circle of every class, men and

women asking to be taught their duty, that they may go and do it;

I find everywhere schools, libraries, and mechanics' institutes

springing up: and rich and poor meeting together more and more in the

faith that God has made them all. As for the outward and material

improvements--you know as well as I, that since free trade and

emigration, the labourers confess themselves better off than they

have been for fifty years; and though you will not see in the chalk

counties that rapid and enormous agricultural improvement which you

will in Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, or the Lothians, yet you shall see

enough to-day to settle for you the question whether we old-country

folk are in a state of decadence and decay. _Par exemple_--"

And Claude pointed to the clean large fields, with their neat

close-clipt hedge-rows, among which here and there stood cottages,

more than three-fourths of them new.

"Those well-drained fallow fields, ten years ago, were poor clay

pastures, fetlock deep in mire six months in the year, and accursed in

the eyes of my poor dear old friend, Squire Lavington; because they

were so full of old moles'-nests, that they threw all horses down. I

am no farmer: but they seem surely to be somewhat altered since then."

As he spoke, they turned off the main line of the rolling clays toward

the foot of the chalk hills, and began to brush through short cuttings

of blue gault and "green sand," so called by geologists, because its

usual colours are bright brown, snow-white, and crimson.

Soon they get glimpses of broad silver Whit, as she slides, with

divided streams, through bright water-meadows, and stately groves of

poplar, and abele, and pine; while, far aloft upon the left, the downs

rise steep, crowned with black fir spinnies, and dotted with dark box

and juniper.

Soon they pass old Whitford Priory, with its numberless gables,

nestling amid mighty elms, and the Nunpool flashing and roaring as of

old, and the broad shallow below sparkling and laughing in the low,

but bright December sun.

"So slides on the noble river, for ever changing, and yet for ever the

same--always fulfilling its errand, which yet is never fulfilled,"

said Stangrave,--he was given to half-mystic utterances, and

hankerings after Pagan mythology, learnt in the days when he

worshipped Emerson, and tried (but unsuccessfully) to worship Margaret

Fuller Ossoli,--"Those old Greeks had a deep insight into nature,

when they gave to each river not merely a name, but a semi-human

personality, a river-god of its own. It may be but a collection

of ever-changing atoms of water;--what is your body but a similar

collection of atoms, decaying and renewing every moment? Yet you are a

person; and is not the river, too, a person--a live thing? It has

an individual countenance which you love, which you would recognise

again, meet it where you will; it marks the whole landscape; it

determines probably the geography and the society of a whole district.

It draws you, too, to itself by an indefinable mesmeric attraction. If

you stop in a strange place, the first instinct of your idle

half-hour is, to lounge by the river. It is a person to you; you call

it--Scotchmen do, at least--she, and not it. How do you know that you

are not philosophically correct, and that the river has a spirit as

well as you?"

"Humph!" said Claude, who talks mysticism himself by the hour, but

snubs it in every one else. "It has trout, at least; and they stand,

I suppose, for its soul, as the raisins did for those of Jean Paul's

gingerbread bride and bridegroom and peradventure baby."

"Oh you materialist English! sporting-mad all of you, from the duke

who shooteth stags to the clod who poacheth rabbits!"

"And who therefore can fight Russians at Inkermann, duke and clod

alike, and side by side; never better (says the chronicler of old)

than in their first battle. I can neither fight nor fish, and on the

whole agree with you: but I think it proper to be as English as I can

in the presence of an American."

A whistle--a creak--a jar; and they stop at the little Whitford

station, where a cicerone for the vale, far better than Claude was,

made his appearance, in the person of Mark Armsworth, banker, railway

director, and _de facto_ king of Whitbury town, long since elected by

universal suffrage (his own vote included) as permanent _locum tenens_

of her gracious Majesty.

He hails Claude cheerfully from the platform, as he waddles about,

with a face as of the rising sun, radiant with good fun, good humour,

good deeds, good news, and good living. His coat was scarlet once; but

purple now. His leathers and boots were doubtless clean this morning;

but are now afflicted with elephantiasis, being three inches deep in

solid mud, which his old groom is scraping off as fast as he can. His

cap is duntled in; his back bears fresh stains of peat; a gentle rain

distils from the few angles of his person, and bedews the platform;

for Mark Armsworth has "been in Whit" to-day.

All porters and guards touch their hats to him; the station-master

rushes up and down frantically, shouting, "Where are those

horse-boxes? Now then, look alive!" for Mark is chairman of the line,

and everybody's friend beside; and as he stands there being scraped,

he finds time to inquire after every one of the officials by turns,

and after their wives, children, and sweethearts beside.

"What a fine specimen of your English squire!" says Stangrave.

"He is no squire; he is the Whitbury banker, of whom I told you."

"Armsworth!" said Stangrave, looking at the old man with interest.

"Mark Armsworth himself. He is acting as squire, though, now; for he

has hunted the Whitford Priors ever since poor old Lavington's death."

"Now then--those horse-boxes!"...

"Very sorry, sir; I telegraphed up, but we could get but one down."

"Put the horses into that, then; and there's an empty carriage! Jack,

put the hounds into it, and they shall all go second class, as sure as

I'm chairman!"

The grinning porters hand the strange passengers in, while Mark counts

the couples with his whip-point,--

"Ravager--Roysterer; Melody--Gay-lass; all right. Why, where's that

old thief of a Goodman?"

"Went over a gate as soon as he saw the couples; and wouldn't come

in at any price, sir," says the huntsman. "Gone home by himself, I

expect."

"Goodman, Goodman, boy!" And forthwith out of the station-room slips

the noble old hound, grey-nosed, grey-eyebrowed, who has hidden, for

purposes of his own, till he sees all the rest safe locked in.

Up he goes to Mark, and begins wriggling against his knees, and

looking up as only dogs can. "Oh, want to go first-class with me, eh?

Jump in, then!" And in jumps the hound, and Mark struggles after him.

"Hillo, sir! Come out! Here are your betters here before you," as he

sees Stangrave, and a fat old lady in the opposite corner.

"Oh, no; let the dog stay!" says Stangrave.

"I shall wet you, sir, I'm afraid."

"Oh, no."

And Mark settles himself, puffing, with the hound's head on his knees,

and begins talking fast and loud.

"Well, Mr. Mellot, you're a stranger here. Haven't seen you since poor

Miss Honour died. Ah, sweet angel she was! Thought my Mary would never

get over it. She's just such another, though I say it, barring the

beauty. Goodman, boy! You recollect old Goodman, son of Galloper, that

the old squire gave our old squire?"

Claude, of course, knows--as all do who know those parts--who The Old

Squire is; long may he live, patriarch of the chase! The genealogy he

does not.

"Ah, well--Miss Honour took to the pup, and used to walk him out; and

a prince of a hound he is; so now he's old we let him have his own

way, for her sake; and nobody'll ever bully _you_, will they, Goodman,

my boy?"

"I want to introduce you to a friend of mine."

"Proud to know any friend of yours, sir."

"Mr. Stangrave--Mr. Armsworth. Mr. Stangrave is an American gentleman,

who is anxious to see Whitbury and the neighbourhood."

"Well, I shall be happy to show it him, then--can't have a better

guide, though I say it--know everything by this time, and everybody,

man, woman, and child, as I hope Mr. Stangrave'll find when he gets to

know old Mark."

"You must not speak of getting to know you, my dear sir; I know

you intimately already, I assure you; and more, am under very deep

obligations to you, which, I regret to say, I can only repay by

thanks."

"Obligation to me, my dear sir?"

"Indeed I am: I will tell you all when we are alone." And Stangrave

glanced at the fat old woman, who seemed to be listening intently.

"Oh, never mind her," says Armsworth; "deaf as a post: very good

woman, but so deaf--ought to speak to her, though"--and, reaching

across, to the infinite amusement of his companions, he roared in the

fat woman's face, with a voice as of a speaking-trumpet--"Glad to see

you, Mrs. Grove! Got those dividends ready for you next time you come

into town."

"Yah!" screamed the hapless woman, who (as the rest saw) heard

perfectly well. "What do you mean, frightening a lady in that way?

Deaf, indeed!"

"Why," roared Mark again, "ain't you Mrs. Grove, of Drytown

Dirtywater?"

"No, nor no acquaintance! What business is it of your'n, sir, to go

hollering in ladies' faces at your age?"

"Well:--but I'll swear if you ain't her, you're somebody else. I know

you as well as the town clock"

"Me? If you must know, sir, I'm Mrs. Pettigrew's mother, the

Linendraper's establishment, sir; a-going down for Christmas, sir!"

"Humph!" says Mark: "you see--was sure I knew her--know everybody

here. As I said, if she wasn't Mrs. Grove, she was somebody else. Ever

in these parts before?"

"Never: but I have heard a good deal of them; and very much charmed

with them I am. I have seldom seen a more distinctive specimen of

English scenery."

"And how you are improving round here!" said Claude, who knew Mark's

weak points, and wanted to draw him out. "Your homesteads seem all

new; three fields have been thrown into one, I fancy, over half the

farms."

Mark broke out at once on his favourite topic,--"I believe you! I'm

making the mare go here in Whitford, without the money too, sometimes.

I'm steward now, bailiff--ha! ha! these four years past--to Mrs.

Lavington's Irish husband; I wanted him to have a regular agent, a

canny Scot, or Yorkshireman. Faith, the poor man couldn't afford it,

and so fell back on old Mark. Paddy loves a job, you know. So I've the

votes and the fishing, and send him his rents, and manage all the rest

pretty much, my own way."

When the name of Lavington was mentioned, Mark observed Stangrave

start; and an expression passed over his face difficult to be

defined--it seemed to Mark mingled pride and shame. He turned to

Claude, and said, in a low voice, but loud enough for Mark to hear,--

"Lavington? Is this their country also? As I am going to visit the

graves of my ancestors, I suppose I ought to visit those of hers."

Mark caught the words which he was not intended to.

"Eh? Sir, do you belong to these parts?"

"My family, I believe, lived in the neighbourhood of Whitbury, at a

place called Stangrave-end."

"To be sure! Old farm-house now; fine old oak carving in it, though;

fine old family it must have been; church full of their monuments.

Hum,--ha! Well! that's pleasant, now! I've often heard there were good

old families away there in New England; never thought that there were

Whitbury people among them. Hum--well! the world's not so big as

people think, after all. And you spoke of the Lavingtons? They are

great folks here--or were--" He was going to rattle on: but he saw a

pained expression on both the travellers' faces, and Stangrave stopped

him, somewhat drily--

"I know nothing of them, I assure you, or they of me. Your country

here is certainly charming, and shows little of those signs of decay

which some people in America impute to it."

"Decay!" Mark went off at score. "Decay be hanged? There's life in the

old dog yet, sir! and dead pigs are looking up since free trade and

emigration. Cheap bread and high wages now: and instead of lands

going out of cultivation, as they threatened--bosh! there's a greater

breadth down in wheat in the vale now than there ever was; and look

at the roots. Farmers must farm now, or sink; and by George! they are

farming, like sensible fellows: and a fig for that old turnip ghost of

Protection! There was a fellow came down from the Carlton--you know

what that is!" Stangrave bowed, and smiled assent. "From the Carlton,

sir, two years since, and tried it on, till he fell in with old Mark.

I told him a thing or two; among the rest, told him to his face that

he was a liar; for he wanted to make farmers believe they were ruined,

when he knew they were not; and that he'd get 'em back Protection,

when he knew that he couldn't--and, what's more, he didn't mean to. So

he cut up rough, and wanted to call me out."

"Did you go?" asked Stangrave, who was fast becoming amused with his

man,

"I told him that that wasn't my line, unless he'd try Eley's greens at

forty yards; and then I was his man: but if he laid a finger on me,

I'd give him as sound a horsewhipping, old as I am, as ever man had

in his life. And so I would." And Mark looked complacently at his own

broad shoulders. "And since then, my lord and I have had it all our

own way; and Minchampstead and Co. is the only firm in the vale."

"What's become of a Lord Vieuxbois, who used to live somewhere

hereabouts? I used to meet him at Rome."

"Rome?" said Mark solemnly. "Yes; he was too fond of Rome, awhile

back: can't see what people want running into foreign parts to look at

those poor idolators, and their Punch and Judy plays. Pray for 'em,

and keep clear of them, is the best rule:--but he has married my

lord's youngest daughter; and three pretty children he has,--ducks of

children. Always comes to see me in my shop, when he drives into town.

Oh!--he's doing pretty well.--One of these new between-the-stools,

Peelites they call them--hope they'll be as good as the name. However,

he's a freetrader, because he can't help it. So we have his votes; and

as to his Conservatism, let him conserve hips and haws if he chooses,

like a 'pothecary. After all, why pull down anything, before it's

tumbling on your head? By the by, sir, as you're a man of money,

there's that Stangrave-end farm in the market now. Pretty little

investment,--I'd see that you got it cheap; and my lord wouldn't bid

against you, of course, as you're a liberal--all Americans, are, I

suppose. And so you'd oblige us, as well as yourself, for it would

give us another vote for the county."

"Upon my word, you tempt me; but I do not think that this is just

the moment for an American to desert his own country, and settle in

England. I should not be here now, had I not this autumn done all I

could for America in America, and so crossed the sea to serve her, if

possible, in England."

"Well, perhaps not; especially if you're a Frémonter."

"I am, I assure you."

"Thought as much, by your looks. Don't see what else an honest man can

be just now."

Stangrave laughed. "I hope every one thinks so in England."

"Trust us for that, sir! We know a man when we see him here; I hope

they'll do the same across the water."

There was silence for a minute or two; and then Mark began again.

"Look!--there's the farm; that's my lord's. I should like to show

you the short-horns there, sir!--all my Lord Ducie's and Sir Edward

Knightley's stock; bought a bull-calf of him the other day myself for

a cool hundred, old fool that I am. Never mind, spreads the breed. And

here are mills--four pair of new stones. Old Whit don't know herself

again. But I dare say they look small enough to you, sir, after your

American water-power."

"What of that? It is just as honourable in you to make the most of a

small river, as in us to make the most of a large one."

"You speak like a book, sir. By the by, if you think of taking home a

calf or two, to improve your New England breed--there are a good many

gone across the sea in the last few years--I think we could find you

three or four beauties, not so very dear, considering the blood."

"Thanks; but I really am no farmer."

"Well--no offence, I hope: but I am like your Yankees in one thing,

you see;--always have an eye to a bit of business. If I didn't, I

shouldn't be here now."

"How very tasteful!--our own American shrubs! what a pity that they

are not in flower! What is this," asked Stangrave,--"one of your

noblemen's parks?"

And they began to run through the cutting in Minchampstead Park, where

the owner has concealed the banks of the rail for nearly half a mile,

in a thicket of azaleas, rhododendrons, and clambering roses.

"All!--isn't it pretty? His lordship let us have the land for a song;

only bargained that we should keep low, not to spoil his view; and so

we did; and he's planted our cutting for us. I call that a present to

the county, and a very pretty one too! Ah, give me these new brooms

that sweep clean!"

"Your old brooms, like Lord Vieuxbois, were new brooms once, and swept

well enough five hundred years ago," said Stangrave, who had that

filial reverence for English antiquity which sits so gracefully upon

many highly educated and far-sighted Americans.

"Worn to the stumps, now, too many of them, sir; and want new-hething,

as our broom-squires would say; and I doubt whether most of them are

worth the cost of a fresh bind. Not that I can say that of the young

lord. He's foremost in all that's good, if he had but money; and

when he hasn't, he gives brains. Gave a lecture, in our institute at

Whitford, last winter, on the four great Poets. Shot over my head a

little, and other people's too: but my Mary--my daughter, sir, thought

it beautiful; and there's nothing that she don't know."

"It is very hopeful, to see your aristocracy joining in the general

movement, and bringing their taste and knowledge to bear on the lower

classes."

"Yes, sir! We're going all right now, in the old country. Only have

to steer straight, and not put on too much steam. But give me the

new-comers, after all. They may be close men of business;--how else

could one live? But when it comes to giving, I'll back them against

the old ones for generosity, or taste either. They've their proper

pride, when they get hold of the land; and they like to show it, and

quite right they. You must see my little place too. It's not in such

bad order, though I say it, and am but a country banker: but I'll back

my flowers against half the squires round--my Mary's, that is--and my

fruit too.--See, there! There's my lord's new schools, and his model

cottages, with more comforts in them, saving the size, than my

father's house had; and there's his barrack, as he calls it, for the

unmarried men--reading-room, and dining-room, in common; and a library

of books, and a sleeping-room for each."

"It seems strange to complain of prosperity," said Stangrave; "but I

sometimes regret that in America there is so little room for the very

highest virtues; all are so well off, that one never needs to give;

and what a man does here for others, they do for themselves."

"So much the better for them. There are other ways of being generous

besides putting your hand in your pocket, sir! By Jove! there'll be

room enough (if you'll excuse me) for an American to do fine things,

as long as those poor negro slaves--"

"I know it; I know it," said Stangrave, in the tone of a man who had

already made up his mind on a painful subject, and wished to hear no

more of it. "You will excuse me; but I am come here to learn what I

can of England. Of my own country I know enough, I trust, to do my

duty in it when I return."

Mark was silent, seeing that he had touched a tender place; and

pointed out one object of interest after another, as they ran through

the flat park, past the great house with its Doric façade, which

the eighteenth century had raised above the quiet cell of the

Minchampstead recluses.

"It is very ugly," said Stangrave; and truly.

"Comfortable enough, though; and, as somebody said, people live inside

their houses, and not outside 'em. You should see the pictures there,

though, while you're in the country. I can show you one or two, too, I

hope. Never grudge money for good pictures. The pleasantest furniture

in the world, as long as you keep them; and if you're tired of them,

always fetch double their price."

After Minchampstead, the rail leaves the sands and clays, and turns up

between the chalk hills, along the barge river which it has rendered

useless, save as a supernumerary trout-stream; and then along Whit,

now flowing clearer and clearer, as we approach its springs amid the

lofty clowns. On through more water-meadows, and rows of pollard

willow, and peat-pits crested with tall golden reeds, and still

dykes,--each in summer a floating flower-bed; while Stangrave looks

out of the window, his face lighting up with curiosity.

"How perfectly English! At least, how perfectly un-American! It is

just Tennyson's beautiful dream--"

'On either side the river lie

Long fields, of barley and of rye,

Which clothe the wold and meet the sky,

And through the field the stream runs by,

To many towered Camelot.'

"Why, what is this?" as they stop again at a station, where the board

bears, in large letters, "Shalott."

"Shalott? Where are the

'Four grey walls, and four grey towers,'

which overlook a space of flowers?"

There, upon the little island, are the castle-ruins, now converted

into a useful bone-mill. "And the lady?--is that she?"

It was only the miller's daughter, fresh from a boarding-school,

gardening in a broad straw-hat.

"At least," said Claude, "she is tending far prettier flowers than

ever the lady saw; while the lady herself, instead of weaving and

dreaming, is reading Miss Young's novels, and becoming all the wiser

thereby, and teaching poor children in Hemmelford National School."

"And where is her fairy knight," asked Stangrave, "whom one half hopes

to see riding down from that grand old house which sulks there

above among the beech-woods as if frowning on all the change and

civilisation below!"

"You do old Sidricstone injustice. Vieuxbois descends from thence,

now-a-days, to lecture at mechanics' institutes, instead of the fairy

knight, toiling along in the blazing summer weather, sweating in

burning metal, like poor Perillus in his own bull."

"Then the fairy knight is extinct in England!" asked Stangrave,

smiling.

"No man less; only he (not Vieuxbois, but his younger brother) has

found a wide-awake cooler than an iron kettle, and travels by rail

when he is at home; and when he was in the Crimea, rode a shaggy pony,

and smoked cavendish all through the battle of Inkermann."

"He showed himself the old Sir Lancelot there," said Stangrave,

"He did. Wherefore the lady married him when the Guards came home; and

he will breed prize pigs; and sit at the board of guardians; and take

in the Times; clothed, and in his right mind; for the old Berserk

spirit is gone out of him; and he is become respectable, in a

respectable age, and is nevertheless just as brave a fellow as ever."

"And so all things are changed, except the river; where still--

'Willows whiten, aspens quiver.

Little breezes dash and shiver

On the stream that runneth ever.'"

"And," said Claude, smiling, "the descendants of mediaeval trout snap

at the descendants of mediaeval flies, spinning about upon just the

same sized and coloured wings on which their forefathers spun a

thousand years ago; having become, in all that while, neither bigger

nor wiser."

"But is it not a grand thought," asked Stangrave,--"the silence and

permanence of nature amid the perpetual flux and noise of human

life?--a grand thought that one generation goeth and another cometh,

and the earth abideth for ever?"

"At least it is so much the worse for the poor old earth, if her doom

is to stand still, while man improves and progresses from age to age."

"May I ask one question, sir?" said Stangrave, who saw that their

conversation was puzzling their jolly companion. "Have you heard any

news yet of Mr. Thurnall!"

Mark looked him full in the face.

"Do you know him?"

"I did, in past years, most intimately."

"Then you knew the finest fellow, sir, that ever walked mortal earth."

"I have discovered that, sir, as well as you. I am under obligations

to that man which my heart's blood will not repay. I shall make no

secret of telling you what they are at a fit time."

Mark held out his broad red hand, and grasped Stangrave's till the

joints cracked: his face grew as red as a turkey-cock's; his eyes

filled with tears.

"His father must hear that! Hang it; his father must hear that! And

Grace too!"

"Grace!" said Claude: "and is she with you?"

"With the old man, the angel! tending him night and day."

"And as beautiful as ever?"

"Sir!" said Mark solemnly, "when any one's soul is as beautiful as

hers is, one never thinks about her face."

"Who is Grace?" asked Stangrave.

"A saint and a heroine!" said Claude. "You shall know all; for you

ought to know. But you have no news of Tom; and I have none either. I

am losing all hope now."

"I'm not, sir!" said Mark fiercely. "Sir, that boy's not dead; he

can't be. He has more lives than a cat, and if you know anything of

him, you ought to know that."

"I have good reason to know it, none more: but--"

"But, sir! But what? Harm come to him, sir? The Lord wouldn't harm him

for his father's sake; and as for the devil!--I tell you, sir, if he

tried to fly away with him, he'd have to drop him before he'd gone a

mile!" And Mark began blowing his nose violently, and getting so red

that he seemed on the point of going into a fit.

"Tell you what it is, gentlemen," said he at last, "you come and stay

with me, and see his father. It will comfort the old man--and--and

comfort me too; for I get down-hearted about him at times."

"Strange attraction there was about that man," says Stangrave, _sotto

voce_ to Claude.

"He was like a son to him--"

"Now, gentlemen. Mr. Mellot, you don't hunt?"

"No, thank you," said Claude.

"Mr. Stangrave does, I'll warrant."

"I have at various times, both in England and in Virginia."

"Ah! Do they keep up the real sport there, eh? Well that's the best

thing I've heard of them, sir!--My horses are yours!--A friend of that

boy, sir, is welcome to lame the whole lot, and I won't grumble. Three

days a week, sir. Breakfast at eight, dinner at 5.30--none of your

late London hours for me, sir; and after it the best bottle of port,

though I say it, short of my friend S----'s, at Reading."

"You must accept," whispered Claude, "or he will be angry."

So Stangrave accepted; and all the more readily because he wanted to

hear from the good banker many things about the lost Tom Thurnall.

* * * * *

"Here we are," cries Mark. "Now, you must excuse me: see to

yourselves. I see to the puppies. Dinner at 5.30, mind! Come along,

Goodman, boy!"

"Is this Whitbury?" asks Stangrave.

It was Whitbury, indeed. Pleasant old town, which slopes down the

hill-side to the old church,--just "restored," though by Lords

Minchampstead and Vieuxbois, not without Mark Armsworth's help, to its

ancient beauty of grey flint and white clunch chequer-work, and quaint

wooden spire. Pleasant churchyard round it, where the dead lie looking

up to the bright southern sun, among huge black yews, upon their knoll

of white chalk above the ancient stream. Pleasant white wooden bridge,

with its row of urchins dropping flints upon the noses of elephantine

trout, or fishing over the rail with crooked pins, while hapless

gudgeon come dangling upward between stream and sky, with a look

of sheepish surprise and shame, as of a school-boy caught stealing

apples, in their foolish visages. Pleasant new national schools at

the bridge end, whither the urchins scamper at the sound of the two

o'clock bell. Though it be an ugly pile enough of bright red brick, it

is doing its work, as Whitbury folk know well by now. Pleasant, too,

though still more ugly, those long red arms of new houses which

Whitbury is stretching out along its fine turnpikes,--especially up

to the railway station beyond the bridge, and to the smart new hotel,

which hopes (but hopes in vain) to outrival the ancient "Angler's

Rest." Away thither, and not to the Railway Hotel, they trundle in a

fly--leaving Mark Armsworth all but angry because they will not sleep,

as well as breakfast, lunch, and dine with him daily,--and settle

in the good old inn, with its three white gables overhanging the

pavement, and its long lattice window buried deep beneath them,

like--so Stangrave says--to a shrewd kindly eye under a bland white

forehead.

No, good old inn; not such shall be thy fate, as long as trout are

trout, and men have wit to catch them. For art thou not a sacred

house? Art thou not consecrate to the Whitbury brotherhood of anglers!

Is not the wainscot of that long low parlour inscribed with many a

famous name? Are not its walls hung with many a famous countenance?

Has not its oak-ribbed ceiling rung, for now a hundred years, to the

laughter of painters, sculptors, grave divines (unbending at least

there), great lawyers, statesmen, wits, even of Foote and Quin

themselves; while the sleek landlord wiped the cobwebs off another

magnum of that grand old port, and took in all the wisdom with a quiet

twinkle of his sleepy eye? He rests now, good old man, among the yews

beside his forefathers; and on his tomb his lengthy epitaph, writ by

himself; for Barker was a poet in his way.

Some people hold the same epitaph to be irreverent, because in a list

of Barker's many blessings occurs the profane word "trout:" but those

trout, and the custom which they brought him, had made the old man's

life comfortable, and enabled him to leave a competence for his

children; and why should not a man honestly thank Heaven for that

which he knows has done him good, even though it be but fish?

He is gone: but the Whit is not, nor the Whitbury club; nor will,

while old Mark Armsworth is king in Whitbury, and sits every evening

in the Mayfly season at the table head, retailing good stones of the

great anglers of his youth,--names which you, reader, have heard many

a time,--and who could do many things besides handling a blow-line.

But though the club is not what it was fifty years ago,--before Norway

and Scotland became easy of access,--yet it is still an important

institution of the town, to the members whereof all good subjects

touch their hats; for does not the club bring into the town good

money, and take out again only fish, which cost nothing in the

breeding? Did not the club present the Town-hall with a portrait of

the renowned fishing Sculptor? and did it not (only stipulating that

the school should be built beyond the bridge to avoid noise) give

fifty pounds to the said school but five years ago, in addition to

Mark's own hundred?

But enough of this:--only may the Whitbury club, in recompense for my

thus handing them down to immortality, give me another day next

year, as they gave me this: and may the Mayfly be strong on, and a

south-west gale blowing!

In the course of the next week, in many a conversation, the three men

compared notes as to the events of two years ago; and each supplied

the other with new facts, which shall be duly set forth in this tale,

saving and excepting, of course, the real reason why everybody did

everything. For--as everybody knows who has watched life--the true

springs of all human action are generally those which fools will not

see, which wise men will not mention; so that, in order to present

a readable tragedy of Hamlet, you must always "omit the part of

Hamlet,"--and probably the ghost and the queen into the bargain.

CHAPTER I.

POETRY AND PROSE.

Now, to tell my story--if not as it ought to be told, at least as I

can tell it,--I must go back sixteen years,--to the days when Whitbury

boasted of forty coaches per diem, instead of one railway,--and set

forth how, in its southern suburb, there stood two pleasant houses

side by side, with their gardens sloping down to the Whit, and parted

from each other only by the high brick fruit-wall, through which there

used to be a door of communication; for the two occupiers were fast

friends. In one of these two houses, sixteen years ago, lived our

friend Mark Armsworth, banker, solicitor, land-agent, churchwarden,

guardian of the poor, justice of the peace,--in a word, viceroy of

Whitbury town, and far more potent therein than her gracious majesty

Queen Victoria. In the other, lived Edward Thurnall, esquire, doctor

of medicine, and consulting physician of all the country round. These

two men were as brothers; and had been as brothers for now twenty

years, though no two men could be more different, save in the two

common virtues which bound them to each other; and that was, that they

both were honest and kind-hearted men. What Mark's character was, and

is, I have already shown, and enough of it, I hope, to make my readers

like the good old banker: as for Doctor Thurnall, a purer or gentler

soul never entered a sick-room, with patient wisdom in his brain, and

patient tenderness in his heart. Beloved and trusted by rich and poor,

he had made to himself a practice large enough to enable him to settle

two sons well in his own profession; the third and youngest was still

in Whitbury. He was something of a geologist, too, and a botanist, and

an antiquarian; and Mark Armsworth, who knew, and knows still, nothing

of science, looked up to the Doctor as an inspired sage, quoted him,

defended his opinion, right or wrong, and thrust him forward at public

meetings, and in all places and seasons, much to the modest Doctor's

discomfiture.

The good Doctor was sitting in his study on the morning on which my

tale begins; having just finished his breakfast, and settled to his

microscope in the bay-window opening on the lawn.

A beautiful October morning it was; one of those in which Dame Nature,

healthily tired with the revelry of summer, is composing herself, with

a quiet satisfied smile, for her winter's sleep. Sheets of dappled

cloud were sliding slowly from the west; long bars of hazy blue hung

over the southern chalk downs which gleamed pearly grey beneath the

low south-eastern sun. In the vale below, soft white flakes of mist

still hung over the water meadows, and barred the dark trunks of the

huge elms and poplars, whose fast-yellowing leaves came showering down

at the very rustle of the western breeze, spotting the grass below.

The river swirled along, glassy no more, but dingy grey with autumn

rains and rotten leaves. All beyond the garden told of autumn; bright

and peaceful, even in decay: but up the sunny slope of the garden

itself, and to the very window sill, summer still lingered. The beds

of red verbena and geranium were still brilliant, though choked with

fallen leaves of acacia and plane; the canary plant, still untouched

by frost, twined its delicate green leaves, and more delicate yellow

blossoms, through the crimson lacework of the Virginia-creeper; and

the great yellow noisette swung its long canes across the window,

filling all the air with fruity fragrance.

And the good Doctor, lifting his eyes from his microscope, looked out

upon it all with a quiet satisfaction, and though his lips did not

move, his eyes seemed to be thanking God for it all; and thanking Him,

too, perhaps, that he was still permitted to gaze upon that fair world

outside. For as he gazed, he started, as if with sudden pain, and

passed his hand across his eyes, with something like a sigh, and then

looked at the microscope no more, but sat, seemingly absorbed in

thought, while upon his delicate toil-worn features, and high, bland,

unwrinkled forehead, and the few soft grey locks which not time--for

he was scarcely fifty-five--but long labour of brain, had spared to

him, there lay a hopeful calm, as of a man who had nigh done his work,

and felt that he had not altogether done it ill;--an autumnal calm,

resigned, yet full of cheerfulness, which harmonised fitly with the

quiet beauty of the decaying landscape before him.

"I say, daddy, you must drop that microscope, and put on your shade.

You are ruining those dear old eyes of yours again, in spite of what

Alexander told you."

The Doctor took up the green shade which lay beside him, and replaced

it with a sigh and a smile.

"I must use the old things now and then, till you can take my place

at the microscope, Tom; or till we have, as we ought to have, a

first-rate analytical chemist settled in every county-town, and paid,

in part at least, out of the county rates."

The "Tom" who had spoken was one of two youths of eighteen, who stood

in opposite corners of the bay-window, gazing out upon the landscape,

but evidently with thoughts as different as were their complexions.

Tom was of that bull-terrier type so common in England; sturdy, and

yet not coarse; middle-sized, deep-chested, broad-shouldered; with

small, well-knit hands and feet, large jaw, bright grey eyes, crisp

brown hair, a heavy projecting brow; his face full of shrewdness and

good-nature, and of humour withal, which might be at whiles a little

saucy and sarcastic, to judge from the glances which he sent forth

from the corners of his wicked eyes at his companion on the other side

of the window. He was evidently prepared for a day's shooting, in

velveteen jacket and leather gaiters, and stood feeling about in

his pockets to see whether he had forgotten any of his tackle, and

muttering to himself amid his whistling,--"Capital day. How the birds

will lie. Where on earth is old Mark? Why must he wait to smoke his

cigar after breakfast? Couldn't he have had it in the trap, the

blessed old chimney that he is?"

The other lad was somewhat taller than Tom, awkwardly and plainly

dressed, but with a highly-developed Byronic turn-down collar, and

long black curling locks. He was certainly handsome, as far as the

form of his features and brow; and would have been very handsome,

but for the bad complexion which at his age so often accompanies a

sedentary life, and a melancholic temper. One glance at his face

was sufficient to tell that he was moody, shy, restless, perhaps

discontented, perhaps ambitious and vain. He held in his hand a volume

of Percy's Reliques, which he had just taken down from Thurnall's

shelves; yet he was looking not at it, but at the landscape.

Nevertheless, as he looked, one might have seen that he was thinking

not so much of it as of his own thoughts about it. His eye, which was

very large, dark, and beautiful, with heavy lids and long lashes,

had that dreamy look so common among men of the poetic temperament;

conscious of thought, if not conscious of self; and as his face

kindled, and his lips moved more and more earnestly, he began

muttering to himself half-aloud, till Tom Thurnall burst into an open

laugh.

"There's Jack at it again! making poetry, I'll bet my head to a China

orange."

"And why not?" said his father, looking up quietly, but reprovingly,

as Jack winced and blushed, and a dark shade of impatience passed

across his face.

"Oh! it's no concern of mine. Let everybody please themselves. The

country looks very pretty, no doubt, I can tell that; only my notion

is, that a wise man ought to go out and enjoy it--as I am going to

do--with a gun on his shoulder, instead of poking at home like a

yard-dog, and behowling oneself in po-o-oetry;" and Tom lifted up his

voice into a doleful mastiff's howl.

"Then be as good as your word, Tom, and let every one please

themselves," said the Doctor; but the dark youth broke out in sudden

passion.

"Mr. Thomas Thurnall! I will not endure this! Why are you always

making me your butt,--insulting me, sir, even in your father's house?

You do not understand me; and I do not care to understand you. If my

presence is disagreeable to you, I can easily relieve you of it!" and

the dark youth turned to go away like Naaman, in a rage.

"Stop, John," said the Doctor. "I think it would be the more courteous

plan for Tom to relieve you of his presence. Go and find Mark, Tom;

and please to remember that John Briggs is my guest, and that I will

not allow any rudeness to him in my house."

"I'll go, daddy, to the world's end, if you like, provided you won't

ask me to write poetry. But Jack takes offence so soon. Give us your

hand, old tinder-box! I meant no harm, and you know it."

John Briggs took the proffered hand sulkily enough; and Tom went out

of the glass door, whistling as merry as a cricket.

"My dear boy," said the Doctor, when they were alone, "you must try to

curb this temper of yours. Don't be angry with me, but--"

"I should be an ungrateful brute if I was, sir. I can bear anything

from you. I ought to, for I owe everything to you; but--"

"But, my dear boy--'better is he that ruleth his spirit, than he that

taketh a city.'"

John Briggs tapped his foot on the ground impatiently. "I cannot

help it, sir. It will drive me mad, I think at times,--this

contrast between what I might be, and what I am, I can bear it no

longer--mixing medicines here, when I might be educating myself,

distinguishing myself--for I can do it; have you not said as much

yourself to me again and again?"

"I have, of course; but--"

"But, sir, only hear me. It is in vain to ask me to command my temper

while I stay here. I am not fit for this work; not fit for the dull

country. I am not appreciated, not understood; and I shall never be,

till I can get to London,--till I can find congenial spirits, and take

my rightful place in the great parliament of mind. I am Pegasus in

harness, here!" cried the vain, discontented youth. "Let me but once

get there,--amid art, civilisation, intellect, and the company of men

like that old Mermaid Club, to hear and to answer--

'words,

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As one had put his whole soul in a jest;'--

and then you shall see whether Pegasus has not wings, and can use them

too!" And he stopped suddenly, choking with emotion, his nostril and

chest dilating, his foot stamping impatiently on the ground.

The Doctor watched him with a sad smile.

"Do you remember the devil's temptation of our Lord--'Cast thyself

down from hence; for, it is written, He shall give His angels charge

over thee?"

"I do; but what has that to do with me?"

"Throw away the safe station in which God has certainly put you, to

seek, by some desperate venture, a new, and, as you fancy, a grander

one for yourself? Look out of that window, lad; is there not poetry

enough, beauty and glory enough, in that sky, those fields,--ay, in

every fallen leaf,--to employ all your powers, considerable as I

believe them to be? Why spurn the pure, quiet, country life, in which

such men as Wordsworth have been content to live and grow old?"

The boy shook his head like an impatient horse. "Too slow--too slow

for me, to wait and wait, as Wordsworth did, through long years of

obscurity, misconception, ridicule. No. What I have, I must have

at once; and, if it must be, die like Chatterton--if only, like

Chatterton, I can have my little day of success, and make the world

confess that another priest of the beautiful has arisen among men."

Now, it can scarcely be denied, that the good Doctor was guilty of a

certain amount of weakness in listening patiently to all this rant.

Not that the rant was very blamable in a lad of eighteen; for have we

not all, while we are going through our course of Shelley, talked very

much the same abominable stuff, and thought ourselves the grandest

fellows upon earth on account of that very length of ear which was

patent to all the world save our precious selves; blinded by our

self-conceit, and wondering in wrath why everybody was laughing at us?

But the truth is, the Doctor was easy and indulgent to a fault, and

dreaded nothing so much, save telling a lie, as hurting people's

feelings; besides, as the acknowledged wise man of Whitbury, he was a

little proud of playing the Maecenas; and he had, and not unjustly,

a high, opinion of John Briggs's powers. So he had lent him books,

corrected his taste in many matters, and, by dint of petting and

humouring, had kept the wayward youth half-a-dozen times from running

away from his father, who was an apothecary in the town, and from the

general practitioner, Mr. Bolus, under whom John Briggs fulfilled the

office of co-assistant with Tom Thurnall. Plenty of trouble had

both the lads given the Doctor in the last five years, but of very

different kinds, Tom, though he was in everlasting hot water, as the

most incorrigible scapegrace for ten miles round, contrived to confine

his naughtiness strictly to play-hours, while he learnt everything

which was to be learnt with marvellous quickness, and so utterly

fulfilled the ideal of a bottle-boy (for of him, too, as of all

things, I presume, an ideal exists eternally in the supra-sensual

Platonic universe), that Bolus told his father,--"In hours, sir, he

takes care of my business as well as I could myself; but out of hours,

sir, I believe he is possessed by seven devils."

John Briggs, on the other hand, sinned in the very opposite direction.

Too proud to learn his business, and too proud also to play the

scapegrace as Tom did, he neglected alike work and amusement, for lazy

mooning over books, and the dreams which books called up. He made

perpetual mistakes in the shop; and then considered himself insulted

by an "inferior spirit," if poor Bolus called him to account for it.

Indeed, had it not been for many applications of that "precious oil of

unity," with which the good Doctor daily anointed the creaking wheels

of Whitbury society, John Briggs and his master would have long ago

"broken out of gear," and parted company in mutual wrath and fury.

And now, indeed, the critical moment seemed come at last; for the lad

began afresh to declare his deliberate intention of going to London to

seek his fortune, in spite of parents and all the world.

"To live on here, and never to rise, perhaps, above the post of

correspondent to a country newspaper!--To publish a volume of poems

by subscription and have to go round, hat in hand, begging

five shillings' worth of patronage from every stupid country

squire--intolerable! I must go! Shakespeare was never Shakespeare till

he fled from miserable Stratford, to become at once the friend of

Sidney and Southampton."

"But John Briggs will be John Briggs still, if he went to the moon,"

shouted Tom Thurnall, who had just come up to the window. "I advise

you to change that name of yours, Jack, to Sidney, or Percy, or Walker

if you like; anything but the illustrious surname of Briggs the

poisoner!"

"What do you mean, sir!" thundered John, while the Doctor himself

jumped up; for Tom was red with rage.

"What is this, Tom!"

"What's that?" screamed Tom, bursting, in spite of his passion into

roars of laughter. "What's that?"--and he held out a phial "Smell it!

taste it! Oh, if I had but a gallon of it to pour down your throat!

That's what you brought Mark Armsworth last night, instead of his

cough mixture, while your brains were wool-gathering after poetry!"

"What is it?" gasped John Briggs.

"Miss Twiddle's black dose;--strong enough to rive the gizard out of

an old cock!"

"It's not!"

"It is!" roared Mark Armsworth from behind as he rushed in, in

shooting-jacket and gaiters, his red face redder with fury, his red

whiskers standing on end with wrath like a tiger's, his left hand upon

his hapless hypogastric region, his right brandishing an empty glass,

which smelt strongly of brandy and water. "It is! And you've given me

the cholera, and spoilt my day's shooting; and if I don't serve you

out for it there's no law in England!"

"And spoilt my day's shooting, too; the last I shall get before I'm

off to Paris! To have a day in Lord Minchampstead's preserves, and to

be baulked of it in this way!"

John Briggs stood as one astonied.

"If I don't serve you out for this!" shouted Mark.

"If I don't serve you out for it! You shall never hear the last of

it!" shouted Tom. "I'll take to writing, after all I'll put it in the

papers. I'll make the name of Briggs the poisoner an abomination in

the land."

John Briggs turned and fled.

"Well!" said Mark, "I must spend my morning at home, I suppose. So I

shall just sit and chat with you, Doctor."

"And I shall go and play with Molly," said Tom, and walked off to

Armsworth's garden.

"I don't care for myself so much," said Mark; "but I'm sorry the boy's

lost his last day's shooting."

"Oh, you will be well enough by noon, and can go then; and as for the

boy, it is just as well for him not to grow too fond of sports in

which he can never indulge."

"Never indulge? Why not? He vows he'll go to the Rocky Mountains, and

shoot a grizzly bear; and he'll do it."

"He has a great deal to do before that, poor fellow; and a great deal

to learn."

"And he'll learn it. You're always down-hearted about the boy,

Doctor."

"I can't help feeling the parting with him: and for Paris, too:--such

a seat of temptation. But it is his own choice; and, after all, he

must see temptation, wherever he goes."

"Bless the man! if a boy means to go to the bad, he'll go just as

easily in Whitbury as in Paris. Give the lad his head, and never fear;

he'll fall on his legs like a cat, I'll warrant him, whatever happens.

He's as steady as old Time, I tell you; there's a grey head on green

shoulders there."

"Steady?" said the Doctor, with a smile and a shrug.

"Steady, I tell you at heart; as prudent as you or I; and never lost

you a farthing, that you know. Hang good boys! give me one who knows

how to be naughty in the right place; I wouldn't give sixpence for a

good boy; I never was one myself, and have no faith in them. Give me

the lad who has more steam up than he knows what to do with, and must

needs blow off a little in larks. When once he settles down on the

rail, it'll send him along as steady as a luggage train. Did you never

hear a locomotive puffing and roaring before it gets under way? well,

that's what your boy is doing. Look at him now, with my poor little

Molly."

Tom was cantering about the garden with a little weakly child of eight

in his arms. The little thing was looking up in his face with delight,

screaming at his jokes.

"You are right, Mark: the boy's heart cannot be in the wrong place

while he is so fond of little children."

"Poor Molly! How she'll miss him! Do you think she'll ever walk,

Doctor?"

"I do indeed."

"Hum! ah! well! if she grows up, Doctor, and don't go to join her poor

dear mother up there, I don't know that I'd wish her a better husband

than your boy."

"It would be a poor enough match for her."

"Tut! she'll have the money, and he the brains. Mark my words, Doctor,

that boy'll be a credit to you; he'll make a noise in the world, or I

know nothing. And if his fancy holds seven years hence, and he wants

still to turn traveller, let him. If he's minded to go round the

world, I'll back him to go, somehow or other, or I'll eat my head, Ned

Thurnall!"

The Doctor acquiesced in this hopeful theory, partly to save an

argument; for Mark's reverence for his opinion was confined to

scientific matters; and he made up to his own self-respect by

patronising the Doctor, and, indeed, taking him sometimes pretty

sharply to task on practical matters.

"Best fellow alive is Thurnall; but not a man of business, poor

fellow. None of your geniuses are. Don't know what he'd do without

me."

So Tom carried Mary about all the morning, and went to Minchampstead

in the afternoon, and got three hours' good shooting; but in the

evening he vanished; and his father went into Armsworth's to look for

him.

"Why do you want to know where he is?" replied Mark, looking sly.

"However, as you can't stop him now, I'll tell you. He is just about

this time sewing up Briggs's coat-sleeves, putting copperas into his

water jug, and powdered galls on his towel, and making various other

little returns for this morning's favour."

"I dislike practical jokes."

"So do I; especially when they come in the form of a black dose. Sit

down, old boy, and we'll have a game at cribbage."

In a few minutes Tom came in--"Here's a good riddance. The poisoner

has fabricated his pilgrim's staff, to speak scientifically, and

perambulated his calcareous strata."

"What!"

"Cut his stick, and walked his chalks; and is off to London."

"Poor boy," said the Doctor, much distressed.

"Don't cry, daddy; you can't bring him back again. He's been gone

these four hours. I went to his room, at Bolus's, about a little

business, and saw at once that he had packed up, and carried off all

he could. And, looking about, I found a letter directed to his father.

So to his father I took it; and really I was sorry for the poor

people. I left them all crying in chorus."

"I must go to them at once;" and up rose the Doctor.

"He's not worth the trouble you take for him--the addle-headed,

ill-tempered coxcomb," said Mark. "But it's just like your

soft-heartedness. Tom, sit down, and finish the game with me."

So vanished from Whitbury, with all his aspirations, poor John Briggs;

and save an occasional letter to his parents, telling them that he

was alive and well, no one heard anything of him for many a year. The

Doctor tried to find him out in London, again and again; but without

success. His letters had no address upon them, and no clue to his

whereabouts could be found.

And Tom Thurnall went to Paris, and became the best pistol-shot

and billiard-player in the Quartier Latin; and then went to St.

Mumpsimus's Hospital in London, and became the best boxer therein,

and captain of the eight-oar, besides winning prizes and certificates

without end, and becoming in due time the most popular house-surgeon

in the hospital: but nothing could keep him permanently at home. Stay

drudging in London he would not. Settle down in a country practice

he would not. Cost his father a farthing he would not. So he started

forth into the wide world with nothing but his wits and his science,

as anatomical professor to a new college in some South American

republic. Unfortunately, when he got there, he found that the annual

revolution had just taken place, and that the party who had founded

the college had been all shot the week before. Whereat he whistled,

and started off again, no man knew whither.

"Having got round half the world, daddy," he wrote home, "it's hard if

I don't get round the other half. So don't expect me till you see me;

and take care of your dear old eyes."

With which he vanished into infinite space, and was only heard of by

occasional letters dated from the Rocky Mountains (where he did shoot

a grizzly bear), the Spanish West Indies, Otahiti, Singapore, the

Falkland Islands, and all manner of unexpected places; sending

home valuable notes (sometimes accompanied by valuable specimens),

zoological and botanical; and informing his father that he was doing

very well; that work was plentiful, and that he always found two fresh

jobs before he had finished one old one.

His eldest brother, John, died meanwhile. His second brother, William,

was in good general practice in Manchester. His father's connections

supported him comfortably; and if the old Doctor ever longed for Tom

to come home, he never hinted it to the wanderer, but bade him go on

and prosper, and become (which he gave high promise of becoming) a

distinguished man of science. Nevertheless the old man's heart sank at

last, when month after month, and at last two full years, had passed

without any letter from Tom.

At last, when full four years were past and gone since Tom started

for South America, he descended from the box of the day-mail, with a

serene and healthful countenance; and with no more look of interest in

his face than if he had been away on a two days' visit, shouldered his

carpet-bag, and started for his father's house. He stopped, however;

as there appeared from the inside of the mail a face which he must

surely know. A second look told him that it was none other than

John Briggs. But how altered! He had grown up into a very handsome

man,--tall and delicate-featured, with long black curls, and a black

moustache. There was a slight stoop about his shoulders, as of a

man accustomed to too much sitting and writing; and he carried an

eye-glass, whether for fashion's sake, or for his eyes' sake, was

uncertain. He was wrapt in a long Spanish cloak, new and good; wore

well-cut trousers, and (what Tom, of course, examined carefully)

French boots, very neat, and very thin. Moreover, he had lavender

kid-gloves on. Tom looked and wondered, and walked half round him,

sniffing like a dog when he examines into the character of a fellow

dog.

"Hum!--his mark seems to be at present P.P.--prosperous party: so

there can be no harm in renewing our acquaintance. What trade on

earth does he live by, though? Editor of a newspaper? or keeper of a

gambling-table? Begging his pardon, he looks a good deal more like the

latter than the former. However--"

And he walked up and offered his hand, with "How d'e do, Briggs? Who

would have thought of our falling from the skies against each other in

this fashion?"

Mr. Briggs hesitated a moment, and then took coldly the offered hand.

"Excuse me; but the circumstances of my visit here are too painful to

allow me to wish for society."

And Mr. Briggs withdrew, evidently glad to escape.

"Has he vampoosed with the contents of a till, that he wishes so for

solitude?" asked Tom; and, shouldering his carpet-bag a second time,

with a grim inward laugh, he went to his father's house, and hung up

his hat in the hall, just as if he had come in from a walk, and walked

into the study; and not finding the old man, stepped through the

garden to Mark Armsworth's, and in at the drawing-room window,

frightening out of her wits a short, pale, ugly girl of seventeen,

whom he discovered to be his old playfellow, Mary. However, she soon

recovered her equanimity: he certainly never lost his.

"How d'e do, darling? How you are grown! and how well you look! How's

your father? I hadn't anything particular to do, so I thought I'd come

home and see you all, and get some fishing."

And Mary, who had longed to throw her arms round his neck, as of old,

and was restrained by the thought that she was grown a great girl now,

called in her father, and all the household; and after a while the old

Doctor came home, and the fatted calf was killed, and all made merry

over the return of this altogether unrepentant prodigal son, who,

whether from affectation, or from that blunted sensibility which often

comes by continual change and wandering, took all their affection and

delight with the most provoking coolness.

Nevertheless, though his feelings were not "demonstrative," as fine

ladies say now-a-days, he evidently had some left in some corner of

his heart; for after the fatted calf was eaten, and they were all

settled in the Doctor's study, it came out that his carpet-bag

contained little but presents, and those valuable ones--rare minerals

from the Ural for his father; a pair of Circassian pistols for

Mark; and for little Mary, to her astonishment, a Russian malachite

bracelet, at which Mary's eyes opened wide, and old Mark said--

"Pretty fellow you are, to go fooling your money away like that. What

did that gimcrack cost, pray, sir?"

"That is no concern of yours, sir, or mine either; for I didn't pay

for it."

"Oh!" said Mary, doubtingly.

"No, Mary. I killed a giant, who was carrying off a beautiful

princess; and this, you see, he wore as a ring on one of his fingers:

so I thought it would just suit your wrist."

"Oh, Tom--Mr. Thurnall--what nonsense!"

"Come, come," said his father: "instead of telling us these sort of

stories, you ought to give an account of yourself, as you seem quite

to forget that we have not heard from you for more than two years."

"Whew! I wrote," said Tom, "whenever I could. However, you can have

all my letters in one now."

So they sat round the fire, and Tom gave an account of himself;

while his father marked with pride that the young man had grown and

strengthened in body and in mind; and that under that nonchalant,

almost cynical outside, the heart still beat honest and kindly.

For before Tom began, he would needs draw his chair closer to his

father's, and half-whispered to him,--

"This is very jolly. I can't be sentimental, you know. Knocking about

the world has beat all that out of me: but it is very comfortable,

after all, to find oneself with a dear old daddy and a good coal

fire."

"Which of the two could you best do without?"

"Well, one takes things as one finds them. It don't do to look too

deeply into one's feelings. Like chemicals, the more you analyse them,

the worse they smell."

So Tom began his story.

"You heard from me at Bombay; after I'd been up to the Himalaya with

an old Mumpsimus friend?"

"Yes."

"Well, I worked my way to Suez on board a ship whose doctor had fallen

ill; and then I must needs see a little of Egypt; and there robbed was

I, and nearly murdered, too; but I take a good deal of killing."

"I'll warrant you do," said Mark, looking at him with pride.

"So I begged my way to Cairo; and there I picked up a Yankee--a New

Yorker, made of money, who had a yacht at Alexandria, and travelled

_en prince_; and nothing would serve him but I must go with him to

Constantinople; but there he and I quarrelled--more fools, both of us!

I wrote to you from Constantinople."

"We never got the letter."

"I can't help that; I wrote. But there I was on the wide world again.

So I took up with a Russian prince, whom I met at a gambling-table

in Pera,--a mere boy, but such a plucky one,--and went with him to

Circassia, and up to Astrakhan, and on to the Kirghis steppes; and

there I did see snakes."

"Snakes?" says Mary. "I should have thought you had seen plenty in

India already."

"Yes, Mary! but these were snakes spiritual and metaphorical. For,

poking about where we had no business, Mary, the Tartars caught us,

and tied us to their horses' tails, after giving me this scar across

the cheek, and taught us to drink mares' milk, and to do a good deal

of dirty work beside. So there we stayed with them six months, and

observed their manners, which were none, and their customs, which were

disgusting, as the midshipman said in his diary; and had the honour of

visiting a pleasant little place in No-man's Land, called Khiva, which

you may find in your atlas, Mary; and of very nearly being sold for

slaves into Persia, which would not have been pleasant; and at last,

Mary, we ran away--or rather, rode away, on two razor-backed Calmuc

ponies, and got back to Russia, _viâ_ Orenberg,--for which consult

your atlas again; so the young prince was restored to the bosom of his

afflicted family; and a good deal of trouble I had to get him safe

there, for the poor boy's health gave way. They wanted me to stay with

them, and offered to make my fortune."

"I'm so glad you didn't," said Mary.

"Well--I wanted to see little Mary again, and two worthy old gentlemen

beside, you see. However, those Russians are generous enough. They

filled my pockets, and heaped me with presents; that bracelet among

them. What's more, Mary, I've been introduced to old Nick himself,

and can testify, from personal experience, to the correctness of

Shakspeare's opinion that the prince of darkness is a gentleman."

"And now you are going to stay at home?" asked the Doctor.

"Well, if you'll take me in, daddy, I'll send for my traps from

London, and stay a month or so."

"A month!" cried the forlorn father.

"Well, daddy, you see, there is a chance of more fighting in Mexico,

and I shall see such practice there; beside meeting old friends who

were with me in Texas. And--and I've got a little commission, too,

down in Georgia, that I should like to go and do."

"What is that?"

"Well,--it's a long story and a sad one: but there was a poor Yankee

surgeon with the army in Circassia--a Southerner, and a very good

fellow; and he had taken a fancy to some coloured girl at home--poor

fellow, he used to go half mad about her sometimes, when he was

talking to me, for fear she should have been sold--sent to the New

Orleans market, or some other devilry; and what could I say to comfort

him? Well, he got his mittimus by one of Schamyl's bullets; and when

he was dying, he made me promise (I hadn't the heart to refuse) to

take all his savings, which he had been hoarding for years for no

other purpose, and see if I couldn't buy the girl, and get her away to

Canada. I was a fool for promising. It was no concern of mine; but the

poor fellow wouldn't die in peace else. So what must be, must."

"Oh, go! go!" said Mary. "You will let him go, Doctor Thurnall, and

see the poor girl free? Think how dreadful it must be to be a slave."

"I will, my little Miss Mary; and for more reasons than you think of.

Little do you know how dreadful it is to be a slave."

"Hum!" said Mark Armsworth. "That's a queer story. Tom, have you got

the poor fellow's money? Didn't lose it when you were taken by those

Tartars?"

"Not I. I wasn't so green as to carry it with me. It ought to have

been in England six months ago. My only fear is, it's not enough."

"Hum!" said Mark. "How much more do you think you'll want?"

"Heaven knows. There is a thousand dollars; but if she be half as

beautiful as poor Wyse used to swear she was, I may want more than

double that."

"If you do, pay it, and I'll pay you again. No, by George!" said Mark,

"no one shall say that while Mark Armsworth had a balance at his

bankers' he let a poor girl--" and, recollecting Mary's presence, he

finished his sentence by sundry stamps and thumps on the table.

"You would soon exhaust your balance, if you set to work to free all

poor girls who are in the same case in Georgia," said the Doctor.

"Well, what of that? Them I don't know of, and so I ain't responsible

for them; but this one I do know of, and so--there, I can't argue;

but, Tom, if you want the money, you know where to find it."

"Very good. By the by--I forgot it till this moment--who should come

down in the coach with me but the lost John Briggs."

"He is come too late, then," said the Doctor. "His poor father died

this morning."

"Ah! then Briggs knew that he was ill? That explains the Manfredic

mystery and gloom with which he greeted me."

"I cannot tell. He has written from time to time, but he has never

given any address; so that no one could write in return."

"He may have known. He looked very downcast. Perhaps that explains his

cutting me dead."

"Cut you?" cried Mark. "I dare say he's been doing something he's

ashamed of, and don't want to be recognised. That fellow has been

after no good all this while, I'll warrant. I always say he's

connected with the swell mob, or croupier at a gambling-table, or

something of that kind. Don't you think it's likely, now?"

Mark was in the habit of so saying for the purpose of tormenting the

Doctor, who held stoutly to his old belief, that John Briggs was

a very clever man, and would turn up some day as a distinguished

literary character.

"Well," said Tom, "honest or not, he's thriving; came down inside the

coach, dressed in the distinguished foreigner style, with lavender kid

gloves, and French boots."

"Just like a swell pickpocket," said Mark. "I always told you so,

Thurnall."

"He had the old Byron collar, and Raphael hair, though."

"Nasty, effeminate, un-English foppery," grumbled Mark; "so he may be

in the scribbling line after all."

"I'll go and see if I can find him," quoth the Doctor.

"Bother you," said Mark, "always running out o' nights after somebody

else's business, instead of having a jolly evening. You stay, Tom,

like a sensible fellow, and tell me and Mary some more travellers'

lies. Had much sporting, boy?"

"Hum! I've shot and hunted every beast, I think, shootable and

huntable, from a humming-bird to an elephant; and I had some splendid

fishing in Canada; but, after all, give me a Whitbury trout, on a

single-handed Chevalier. We'll at them to-morrow, Mr. Armsworth."

"We will, my boy! never so many fish in the river as this year, or in

season so early."

The good Doctor returned; but with no news which could throw light

on the history of the now mysterious Mr. John Briggs. He had locked

himself into the room with his father's corpse, evidently in great

excitement and grief; spent several hours in walking up and down there

alone; and had then gone to an attorney in the town, and settled

everything about the funeral "in the handsomest way," said the man of

law; "and was quite the gentleman in his manner, but not much of a man

of business; never had even thought of looking for his father's will;

and was quite surprised when I told him that there ought to be a fair

sum--eight hundred or a thousand, perhaps, to come in to him, if the

stock and business were properly disposed of. So he went off to London

by the evening mail, and told me to address him to the post-office in

some street off the Strand. Queer business, sir, isn't it?"

John Briggs did not reappear till a few minutes before his father's

funeral, witnessed the ceremony evidently with great sorrow, bowed off

silently all who attempted to speak to him, and returned to London

by the next coach--leaving matter for much babble among all Whitbury

gossips. One thing at least was plain, that he wished to be forgotten

in his native town; and forgotten he was, in due course of time.

Tom Thurnall stayed his month at home, and then went to America;

whence he wrote home, in about six months, a letter, of which only one

paragraph need interest us,

"Tell Mark I have no need for his dollars. I have done the deed; and,

thanks to the underground railway, done it nearly gratis; which was

both cheaper than buying her, and infinitely better for me; so that

she has all poor Wyse's dollars to start with afresh in Canada. I

write this from New York. I could accompany her no farther; for I must

get back to the South in time for the Mexican expedition."

Then came a long and anxious silence; and then a letter, not from

Mexico but from California,--one out of several which had been posted;

and then letters, more regularly from Australia. Sickened with

Californian life, he had crossed the Pacific once more, and was hard

at work in the diggings, doctoring and gold-finding by turns.

"A rolling stone gathers no moss," said his father.

"He has the pluck of a hound, and the cunning of a fox," said Mark;

"and he'll be a credit to you yet."

And Mary prayed every morning and night for her old playfellow; and so

the years slipped on till the autumn of 1853.

As no one has heard of Tom now for eight months and more (the pulse of

Australian postage being of a somewhat intermittent type), we may as

well go and look for him.

A sheet of dark rolling ground, quarried into a gigantic rabbit

burrow, with hundreds of tents and huts dotted about among the heaps

of rubbish; dark evergreen forests in the distance, and, above all,

the great volcanic mountain of Buninyong towering far aloft--these are

the "Black Hills of Ballarat;" and that windlass at that shaft's mouth

belongs in part to Thomas Thurnall.

At the windlass are standing two men, whom we may have seen in

past years, self-satisfied in countenance, and spotless in array,

sauntering down Piccadilly any July afternoon, or lounging in Haggis's

stable-yard at Cambridge any autumn morning. Alas! how changed from

the fast young undergraduates, with powers of enjoyment only equalled

by their powers of running into debt, are those two black-bearded and

mud-bespattered ruffians, who once were Smith and Brown of Trinity.

Yet who need pity them, as long as they have stouter limbs, healthier

stomachs, and clearer consciences, than they have had since they left

Eton at seventeen? Would Smith have been a happier man as a briefless

barrister in a dingy Inn of Law, peeping now and then into third-rate

London society, and scribbling for the daily press! Would Brown have

been a happier man had he been forced into those holy orders for which

he never felt the least vocation, to pay off his college debts out

of his curate's income, and settle down on his lees, at last, in the

family living of Nomansland-cum-Clayhole, and support a wife and five

children on five hundred a-year, exclusive of rates and taxes? Let

them dig, and be men.

The windlass rattles and the rope goes down. A shout from the bottom

of the shaft proclaims all right; and in due time, sitting in

the noose of the rope, up comes Thomas Thurnall, bare-footed and

bare-headed, in flannel trousers and red jersey, begrimed with slush

and mud; with a mahogany face, a brick-red neck, and a huge brown

beard, looking, to use his own expression, "as jolly as a sandboy."

"A letter for you, Doctor, from Europe."

Tom takes it, and his countenance falls; for it is black-edged and

black-sealed. The handwriting is Mary Armsworth's.

"I suppose the old lady who is going to leave me a fortune is dead,"

says he drily, and turns away to read.

"Bad luck, I suppose," he says to himself, "I have not had any for

full six months, so I suppose it is time for Dame Fortune to give me

a sly stab again. I only hope it is not my father; for, begging the

Dame's pardon, I can bear any trick of hers but that." And he sets his

teeth doggedly, and reads.

"My dear Mr. Thurnall,--My father would have written himself, but he

thought, I don't know why, that I could tell you better than he. Your

father is quite well in health,"--Thurnall breathes freely again--"but

he has had heavy trials since your poor brother William's death."

Tom opens his eyes and sets his teeth more firmly. "Willy dead? I

suppose there is a letter lost: better so; better to have the whole

list of troubles together, and so get them sooner over. Poor Will!"

"Your father caught the scarlet fever from him, while he was attending

him, and was very ill after he came back. He is quite well again now;

but if I must tell you the truth, the disease has affected his eyes.

You know how weak they always were, and how much worse they have grown

of late years; and the doctors are afraid that he has little chance of

recovering the sight, at least of the left eye."

"Recovering? He's blind, then." And Tom set his teeth more tightly

than ever. He felt a sob rise in his throat, but choked it down,

shaking his head like an impatient bull.

"Wait a bit, Tom," said he to himself, "before you have it out with

Dame Fortune. There's more behind, I'll warrant. News like this lies

in pockets, and not in single nuggets." And he read on--

"And--for it is better you should know all--something has happened

to the railroad in which he had invested so much. My father has lost

money in it also; but not much: but I fear that your poor dear father

is very much straitened. My father is dreadfully vexed about it, and

thinks it all his fault in not having watched the matter more closely,

and made your father sell out in time: and he wants your father to

come and live with us: but he will not hear of it. So he has given up

the old house, and taken one in Water Street, and, oh! I need not tell

you that we are there every day, and that I am trying to make him as

happy as I can--but what can I do? And then followed kind womanly

commonplaces, which Tom hurried over with fierce impatience.

"He wants you to come home; but my father has entreated him to let you

stay. You know, while we are here, he is safe; and my father begs

you not to come home, if you are succeeding as well as you have been

doing."

There was much more in the letter, which I need not repeat; and, after

all, a short postscript, by Mark himself, followed:--

"Stay where you are, boy, and keep up heart; while I have a pound,

your father shall have half of it; and you know Mark Armsworth."

He walked away slowly into the forest. He felt that the crisis of his

life was come; that he must turn his hand henceforth to quite new

work; and as he went he "took stock," as it were, of his own soul, to

see what point he had attained--what he could do.

Fifteen years of adventure had hardened into wrought metal a character

never very ductile. Tom was now, in his own way, an altogether

accomplished man of the world, who knew (at least in all companies and

places where he was likely to find himself) exactly what to say, to

do, to make, to seek, and to avoid. Shifty and thrifty as old Greek,

or modern Scot, there were few things he could not invent, and perhaps

nothing he could not endure. He had watched human nature under every

disguise, from the pomp of the ambassador to the war-paint of the

savage, and formed his own clear, hard, shallow, practical estimate

thereof. He looked on it as his raw material, which he had to work up

into subsistence and comfort for himself. He did not wish to live on

men, but live by them he must; and for that purpose he must study

them, and especially their weaknesses. He would not cheat them; for

there was in him an innate vein of honesty, so surly and explosive,

at times, as to give him much trouble. The severest part of his

self-education had been the repression of his dangerous inclination to

call a sham a sham on the spot, and to answer fools according to their

folly. That youthful rashness, however, was now well-nigh subdued,

and Tom could flatter and bully also, when it served his turn--as who

cannot? Let him that is without sin among my readers, cast the first

stone. Self-conscious he was, therefore, in every word and action; not

from morbid vanity, but a necessary consequence of his mode of life.

He had to use men, and therefore to watch how he used them; to watch

every word, gesture, tone of voice, and, in all times and places, do

the fitting thing. It was hard work: but necessary for a man who stood

alone and self-poised in the midst of the universe; fashioning for

himself everywhere, just as far as his arm could reach, some not

intolerable condition; depending on nothing but himself, and caring

for little but himself and the father whom, to do him justice, he

never forgot. If I wished to define Tom Thurnall by one epithet, I

should call him specially an ungodly man--were it not that scriptural

epithets have, now-a-days, such altogether conventional and official

meanings, that one fears to convey, in using them, some notion quite

foreign to the truth. Tom was certainly not one of those ungodly whom

David had to deal with of old, who robbed the widow, and put the

fatherless to death. His morality was as high as that of the average;

his sense of honour far higher. He was generous and kind-hearted. No

one ever heard him tell a lie; and he had a blunt honesty about him,

half real, because he liked to be honest, and yet half affected too,

because he found it pay in the long run, and because it threw off

their guard the people whom he intended to make his tools. But of

godliness in its true sense--of belief that any Being above cared for

him, and was helping him in the daily business of life--that it was

worth while asking that Being's advice, or that any advice would be

given if asked for; of any practical notion of a Heavenly Father, or

a Divine education--Tom was as ignorant as thousands of respectable

people who go to church every Sunday, and read good books, and believe

firmly that the Pope is Antichrist. He ought to have learnt it, no

doubt; for his father was a religious man: but he had not learnt

it--any more than thousands learn it, who have likewise religious

parents. He had been taught, of course, the common doctrines and

duties of religion; but early remembrances had been rubbed out, as off

a schoolboy's slate, by the mere current of new thoughts and objects,

in his continual wanderings. Disappointments he had had, and dangers

in plenty; but only such as rouse a brave and cheerful spirit to

bolder self-reliance and invention; not those deep sorrows of the

heart which leave a man helpless in the lowest pit, crying for help

from without, for there is none within. He had seen men of all creeds,

and had found in all alike (so he held) the many rogues, and the few

honest men. All religions were, in his eyes, equally true and equally

false. Superior morality was owing principally to the influences of

race and climate; and devotional experiences (to judge, at least, from

American camp-meetings and popish-cities) the results of a diseased

nervous system.

Upon a man so hard and strong this fearful blow had fallen, and, to do

him justice, he took it like a man. He wandered on and on for an hour

or more, up the hills, and into the forest, talking to himself.

"Poor old Willy! I should have liked to have looked into his honest

face before he went, if only to make sure that we were good friends.

I used to plague him sadly with my tricks. But what is the use of

wishing for what cannot be? I recollect I had just the same feeling

when John died; and yet I got over it after a time, and was as

cheerful as if he were alive again, or had never lived at all. And so

I shall get over this. Why should I give way to what I know will pass,

and is meant to pass? It is my father I feel for. But I couldn't be

there; and it is no fault of mine that I was not there. No one told me

what was going to happen; and no one could know: so again,--why grieve

over what can't be helped?"

And then, to give the lie to all his cool arguments, he sat down among

the fern, and burst into a violent fit of crying. "Oh, my poor dear

old daddy!"

Yes; beneath all the hard crust of years, that fountain of life still

lay pure as when it came down from heaven--love for his father.

"Come, come, this won't do; this is not the way to take stock of my

goods, either mental or worldly. I can't cry the dear old man out of

this scrape."

He looked up. The sun was setting. Beneath the dark roof of evergreens

the eucalyptus boles stood out, like basalt pillars, black against a

background of burning flame. The flying foxes shot from tree to tree,

and moths as big as sparrows whirred about the trunks, one moment

black against the glare beyond, and vanishing the next, like imps of

darkness, into their native gloom. There was no sound of living thing

around, save the ghastly rattle of the dead bark-tassels which swung

from every tree, and far away, the faint clicking of the diggers at

their work, like the rustle of a gigantic ant-hill. Was there one

among them all who cared for him? who would not forget him in a week

with--"Well, he was pleasant company, poor fellow," and go on digging

without a sigh? What, if it were his fate to die, as he had seen many

a stronger man, there in that lonely wilderness, and sleep for ever,

unhonoured and unknown, beneath that awful forest roof, while his

father looked for bread to others' hands?

No man was less sentimental, no man less superstitious than Thomas

Thurnall; but crushed and softened--all but terrified (as who would

not have been?)--by that day's news, he could not struggle against the

weight of loneliness which fell upon him. For the first and last time,

perhaps, in his life, he felt fear; a vague, awful dread of unseen and

inevitable possibilities. Why should not calamity fall on him, wave

after wave? Was it not falling on him already? Why should he not grow

sick to-morrow, break his leg, his neck--why not? What guarantee had

he in earth or heaven that he might not be "snuffed out silently," as

he had seen hundreds already, and die and leave no sign? And there

sprang up in him at once the intensest yearning after his father and

the haunts of his boyhood, and the wildest dread that he should never

see them. Might not his father be dead ere he could return?--if ever

he did return. That twelve thousand miles of sea looked to him a gulf

impassable. Oh, that he were safe at home! that he could start that

moment! And for one minute a helplessness, as of a lost child, came

over him.

Perhaps it had been well for him had he given that feeling vent,

and, confessing himself a lost child, cried out of the darkness to a

Father; but the next minute he had dashed it proudly away.

"Pretty baby I am, to get frightened, at my time of life, because

I find myself in a dark wood--and the sun shining all the while as

jollily as ever away there in the west! It is morning somewhere or

other now, and it will be morning here again to-morrow. 'Good times

and bad times, and all times pass over;'--I learnt that lesson out of

old Bewick's vignettes, and it has stood me in good stead this many

a year, and shall now. Die? Nonsense. I take more killing than that

comes to. So for one more bout with old Dame Fortune. If she throws me

again, why, I'll get up again, as I have any time these fifteen years.

Mark's right. I'll stay here and work till I make a hit, or luck

runs dry, and then home and settle; and, meanwhile, I'll go down to

Melbourne to-morrow, and send the dear old man two hundred pounds; and

then back again here, and to it again."

And with a fate-defiant smile, half bitter and half cheerful, Tom

rose and went down again to his mates, and stopped their inquiries

by--"What's done can't be mended, and needn't be mentioned; whining

won't make me work the harder, and harder than ever I must work."

Strange it is, how mortal man, "who cometh up and is cut down like the

flower," can thus harden himself into stoical security, and count on

the morrow, which may never come. Yet so it is; and, perhaps, if it

were not so, no work would get done on earth,--at least by the many

who know not that God is guiding them, while they fancy that they are

guiding themselves.