MR. WARDLAW went down to his son and nursed him. He kept the newspapers
from him, and, on his fever abating, had him conveyed by easy stages to
the seaside, and then sent him abroad.
The young man obeyed in gloomy silence. He never asked after Robert
Penfold, now; never mentioned his name. He seemed, somehow, thankful to
be controlled mind and body.
But, before he had been abroad a month, he wrote for leave to return home
and to throw himself into business. There was, for once, a nervous
impatience in his letters, and his father, who pitied him deeply, and was
more than ever inclined to reward and indulge him, yielded readily
enough; and, on his arrival, signed the partnership deed, and,
Polonius-like, gave him much good counsel; then retired to his country
seat.
At first he used to run up every three days, and examine the day-book and
ledger, and advise his junior; but these visits soon became fewer, and at
last he did little more than correspond occasionally.
Arthur Wardlaw held the reins, and easily paid his Oxford debts out of
the assets of the firm. Not being happy in his mind, he threw himself
into commerce with feverish zeal, and very soon extended the operations
of the house.
One of his first acts of authority was to send for Michael Penfold into
his room. Now poor old Michael, ever since his son's misfortune, as he
called it, had crept to his desk like a culprit, expecting every day to
be discharged. When he received this summons he gave a sigh and went
slowly to the young merchant.
Arthur Wardlaw looked up at his entrance, then looked down again, and
said coldly, "Mr. Penfold, you have been a faithful servant to us many
years; I raise your salary fifty pounds a year, and you will keep the
ledger."
The old man was dumfounded at first, and then began to give vent to his
surprise and gratitude; but Wardlaw cut him short, almost fiercely.
"There, there, there," said he, without raising his eyes, "let me hear no
more about it, and, above all, never speak to me of that cursed business.
It was no fault of yours, nor mine neither. There--go--I want no thanks.
Do you hear? leave me, Mr. Penfold, if you please."
The old man bowed low and retired, wondering much at his employer's
goodness, and a little at his irritability.
Wardlaw junior's whole soul was given to business night and day, and he
soon became known for a very ambitious and rising merchant. But, by and
by, ambition had to encounter a rival in his heart. He fell in love;
deeply in love; and with a worthy object.
The young lady was the daughter of a distinguished officer, whose merits
were universally recognized, but not rewarded in proportion. Wardlaw's
suit was favorably received by the father, and the daughter gradually
yielded to an attachment the warmth, sincerity and singleness of which
were manifest. And the pair would have been married but for the
circumstance that her father (partly through Wardlaw's influence, by the
by) had obtained a lucrative post abroad which it suited his means to
accept, at all events for a time. He was a widower, and his daughter
could not let him go alone.
This temporary separation, if it postponed a marriage, led naturally to a
solemn engagement; and Arthur Wardlaw enjoyed the happiness of writing
and receiving affectionate letters by every foreign post. Love, worthily
bestowed, shed its balm upon his heart, and, under its soft but powerful
charm, he grew tranquil and complacent, and his character and temper
seemed to improve. Such virtue is there in a pure attachment.
Meanwhile the extent of his operations alarmed old Penfold; but he soon
reasoned that worthy down with overpowering conclusions and superior
smiles.
He had been three years the ruling spirit of Wardlaw & Son, when some
curious events took place in another hemisphere; and in these events,
which we are now to relate, Arthur Wardlaw was more nearly interested
than may appear at first sight.
Robert Penfold, in due course, applied to Lieutenant-General Rolleston
for a ticket of leave. That functionary thought the application
premature, the crime being so grave. He complained that the system had
become too lax, and for his part he seldom gave a ticket-of-leave until
some suitable occupation was provided for the applicant. "Will anybody
take you as a clerk? If so, I'll see about it."
Robert Penfold could find nobody to take him into a post of confidence
all at once, and wrote the general an eloquent letter, begging hard to be
allowed to labor with his hands.
Fortunately, General Rolleston's gardener had just turned him off; so he
offered the post to his eloquent correspondent, remarking that he did not
much mind employing a ticket-of-leave man himself, though he was resolved
to protect his neighbors from their relapses.
The convict then came to General Rolleston, and begged leave to enter on
his duties under the name of James Seaton. At that General Rolleston
hem'd and haw'd, and took a note. But his final decision was as follows:
"If you really mean to change your character, why, the name you have
disgraced might hang round your neck. Well, I'll give you every chance.
But," said this old warrior, suddenly compressing his resolute lips just
a little, "if you go a yard off the straight path _now,_ look for no
mercy, Jemmy Seaton."
So the convict was re-christened at the tail of a threat, and let loose
among the warrior's tulips.
His appearance was changed as effectually as his name. Even before he was
Seatoned he had grown a silky mustache and beard of singular length and
beauty; and, what with these and his workingman's clothes, and his cheeks
and neck tanned by the sun, our readers would never have recognized in
this hale, bearded laborer the pale prisoner that had trembled, raged,
wept and submitted in the dock of the Central Criminal Court.
Our universities cure men of doing things by halves, be the things mental
or muscular; so Seaton gardened much more zealously than his plebeian
predecessor: up at five, and did not leave till eight.
But he was unpopular in the kitchen--because he was always out of it.
Taciturn and bitter, he shunned his fellow-servants.
Yet working among the flowers did him good; these his pretty companions
and nurslings had no vices.
One day, as he was rolling the grass upon the lawn, he heard a soft
rustle at some distance, and, looking round, saw a young lady on the
gravel path, whose calm but bright face, coming so suddenly, literally
dazzled him. She had a clear cheek blooming with exercise, rich brown
hair, smooth, glossy and abundant, and a very light hazel eye, of
singular beauty and serenity. She glided along, tranquil as a goddess,
smote him with beauty and perfume, and left him staring after her
receding figure, which was, in its way, as captivating as her face.
She was walking up and down for exercise, briskly, but without effort.
Once she passed within a few yards of him, and he touched his hat to her.
She inclined her head gently, but her eyes did not rest an instant on her
gardener; and so she passed and repassed, unconsciously sawing this
solitary heart with soft but penetrating thrills.
At last she went indoors to luncheon, and the lawn seemed to miss the
light music of her rustling dress, and the sunshine of her presence, and
there was a painful void; but that passed, and a certain sense of
happiness stole over James Seaton--an unreasonable joy, that often runs
before folly and trouble.
The young lady was Helen Rolleston, just returned home from a visit. She
walked in the garden every day, and Seaton watched her, and peeped at
her, unseen, behind trees and bushes. He fed his eyes and his heart upon
her, and, by degrees, she became the sun of his solitary existence. It
was madness; but its first effect was not unwholesome. The daily study of
this creature, who, though by no means the angel he took her for, was at
all events a pure and virtuous woman, soothed his sore heart, and
counteracted the demoralizing influence of his late companions. Every day
he drank deeper of an insane but purifying and elevating passion.
He avoided the kitchen still more; and that, by the by, was unlucky; for
there he could have learned something about Miss Helen Rolleston that
would have warned him to keep at the other end of the garden whenever
that charming face and form glided to and fro among the minor flowers.
A beautiful face fires our imagination, and we see higher virtue and
intelligence in it than we can detect in its owner's head or heart when
we descend to calm inspection. James Seaton gazed on Miss Rolleston day
after day, at so respectful a distance that she became his goddess. If a
day passed without his seeing her, he was dejected. When she was behind
her time, he was restless, anxious, and his work distasteful; and then,
when she came out at last, he thrilled all over, and the lawn, ay, the
world itself, seemed to fill with sunshine. His adoration, timid by its
own nature, was doubly so by reason of his fallen and hopeless condition.
He cut nosegays for her; but gave them to her maid Wilson for her. He had
not the courage to offer them to herself.
One evening, as he went home, a man addressed him familiarly, but in a
low voice. Seaton looked at him attentively, and recognized him at last.
It was a convict called Butt, who had come over in the ship with him. The
man offered him a glass of ale; Seaton declined it. Butt, a very clever
rogue, seemed hurt. So then Seaton assented reluctantly. Butt took him to
a public house in a narrow street, and into a private room. Seaton
started as soon as he entered, for there sat two repulsive ruffians, and,
by a look that passed rapidly between them and Butt, he saw plainly that
they were waiting for him. He felt nervous; the place was so uncouth and
dark, the faces so villainous.
However, they invited him to sit down, roughly, but with an air of good
fellowship; and very soon opened their business over their ale. We are
all bound to assist our fellow-creatures, when it can be done without
trouble; and what they asked of him was a simple act of courtesy, such as
in their opinion no man worthy of the name could deny to his fellow. It
was to give General Rolleston's watchdog a piece of prepared meat upon a
certain evening. And, in return for this trifling civility, they were
generous enough to offer him a full share of any light valuables they
might find in the general's house.
Seaton trembled, and put his face in his hands a moment. "I cannot do
it," said he.
"Why not?"
"He has been too good to me."
A coarse laugh of derision greeted this argument; it seemed so irrelevant
to these pure egotists. Seaton, however, persisted, and on that one of
the men got up and stood before the door, and drew his knife gently.
Seaton glanced his eyes round in search of a weapon, and turned pale.
"Do you mean to split on us, mate?" said one of the ruffians in front of
him.
"No, I don't. But I won't rob my benefactor. You shall kill me first."
And with that he darted to the fireplace, and in a moment the poker was
high in air, and the way he squared his shoulders and stood ready to hit
to the on, or cut to the off, was a caution.
"Come, drop that," said Butt, grimly; "and put up _your_ knife, Bob.
Can't a pal be out of a job, and yet not split on them that is in it!"
"Why should I split?" said Robert Penfold. "Has the law been a friend to
me? But I won't rob my benefactor--and his daughter."
"That is square enough," said Butt. "Why, pals, there are other cribs to
be cracked besides that old bloke's. Finish the ale, mate, and part
friends."
"If you will promise me to crack some other crib, and let that one
alone."
A sullen assent was given, and Seaton drank their healths, and walked
away. Butt followed him soon after, and affected to side with him, and
intimated that he himself was capable of not robbing a man's house who
had been good to him, or to a pal of his. Indeed this plausible person
said so much, and his sullen comrades had said so little, that Seaton,
rendered keen and anxious by love, invested his savings in a Colt's
revolver and ammunition.
He did not stop there; after the hint about the watch-dog, he would not
trust that faithful but too carnivorous animal; he brought his blankets
into the little tool-house, and lay there every night in a sort of dog's
sleep. This tool-house was erected in a little back garden, separated
from the lawn only by some young trees in single file. Now Miss
Rolleston's window looked out upon the lawn, so that Seaton's watchtower
was not many yards from it; then, as the tool-house was only lighted from
above, he bored a hole in the wooden structure, and through this he
watched, and slept, and watched. He used to sit studying theology by a
farthing rushlight till the lady's bedtime, and then he watched for her
shadow. If it appeared for a few moments on the blind, he gave a sigh of
content and went to sleep, but awaked every now and then to see that all
was well.
After a few nights, his alarms naturally ceased, but his love increased,
fed now from this new source, the sweet sense of being the secret
protector of her he adored.
Meantime, Miss Rolleston's lady's maid, Wilson, fell in love with him
after her fashion; she had taken a fancy to his face at once, and he had
encouraged her a little, unintentionally; for he brought the nosegays to
her, and listened complacently to her gossip, for the sake of the few
words she let fall now and then about her young mistress. As he never
exchanged two sentences at a time with any other servant, this flattered
Sarah Wilson, and she soon began to meet and accost him oftener, and in
cherrier-colored ribbons, than he could stand. So then he showed
impatience, and then she, reading him by herself, suspected some vulgar
rival.
Suspicion soon bred jealousy, jealousy vigilance, and vigilance
detection.
Her first discovery was that, so long as she talked of Miss Helen
Rolleston, she was always welcome; her second was, that Seaton slept in
the tool-house.
She was not romantic enough to connect her two discoveries together. They
lay apart in her mind, until circumstances we are about to relate
supplied a connecting link.
One Thursday evening James Seaton's goddess sat alone with her papa,
and--being a young lady of fair abilities, who had gone through her
course of music and other studies, taught brainlessly, and who was now
going through a course of monotonous pleasures, and had not accumulated
any great store of mental resources--she was listless and languid, and
would have yawned forty times in her papa's face, only she was too
well-bred. She always turned her head away, when it came, and either
suppressed it, or else hid it with a lovely white hand. At last, as she
was a good girl, she blushed at her behavior, and roused herself up, and
said she, "Papa, shall I play you the new quadrilles?"
Papa gave a start and a shake, and said, with well-feigned vehemence,
"Ay, do, my dear," and so composed himself--to listen; and Helen sat down
and played the quadrilles.
The composer had taken immortal melodies, some gay, some sad, and had
robbed them of their distinctive character and hashed them till they were
all one monotonous rattle. But General Rolleston was little the worse for
all this. As Apollo saved Horace from hearing a poetaster's rhymes, so
did Somnus, another beneficent little deity, rescue our warrior from his
daughter's music.
She was neither angry nor surprised. A delicious smile illumined her face
directly; she crept to him on tiptoe, and bestowed a kiss, light as a
zephyr, on his gray head. And, in truth, the bending attitude of this
supple figure, clad in snowy muslin, the virginal face and light hazel
eyes beaming love and reverence, and the airy kiss, had something
angelic.
She took her candle, and glided up to her bedroom. And, the moment she
got there, and could gratify her somnolence without offense, need we say
she became wide-awake? She sat down and wrote long letters to three other
young ladies, gushing affection, asking questions of the kind nobody
replies to, painting, with a young lady's colors, the male being to whom
she was shortly to be married, wishing her dear friends a like demigod,
if perchance earth contained two; and so to the last new bonnet and
preacher.
She sat over her paper till one o'clock, and Seaton watched and adored
her shadow.
When she had done writing, she opened her window and looked out upon the
night. She lifted those wonderful hazel eyes toward the stars, and her
watcher might well be pardoned if he saw in her a celestial being looking
up from an earthly resting place toward her native sky.
At two o'clock she was in bed, but not asleep. She lay calmly gazing at
the Southern Cross and other lovely stars shining with vivid but chaste
fire in the purple vault of heaven.
While thus employed she heard a slight sound outside that made her turn
her eyes toward a young tree near her window. Its top branches were
waving a good deal, though there was not a breath stirring. This struck
her as curious, very curious.
While she wondered, suddenly an arm and a hand came in sight, and after
them the whole figure of a man, going up the tree.
Helen sat up now, glaring with terror, and was so paralyzed she did not
utter a sound. About a foot below her window was a lead flat that roofed
the bay-window below. It covered an area of several feet, and the man
sprang on to it with perfect ease from the tree. Helen shrieked with
terror. At that very instant there was a flash, a pistol-shot, and the
man's arms went whirling, and he staggered and fell over the edge of the
flat, and struck the grass below with a heavy thud. Shots and blows
followed, and all the sounds of a bloody struggle rung in Helen's ears as
she flung herself screaming from the bed and darted to the door. She ran
and clung quivering to her sleepy maid, Wilson. The house was alarmed,
lights flashed, footsteps pattered, there was universal commotion.
General Rolleston soon learned his daughter's story from Wilson, and
aroused his male servants, one of whom was an old soldier. They searched
the house first; but no entrance had been effected; so they went out on
the lawn with blunderbuss and pistol.
They found a man lying on his back at the foot of the bay window.
They pounced on him, and, to their amazement, it was the gardener, James
Seaton. Insensible.
General Rolleston was quite taken aback for a moment. Then he was sorry.
But, after a little reflection, he said very sternly, "Carry the
blackguard indoors; and run for an officer."
Seaton was taken into the hall and laid flat on the floor.
All the servants gathered about him, brimful of curiosity, and the female
ones began to speak all together; but General Rolleston told them sharply
to hold their tongues, and to retire behind the man. "Somebody sprinkle
him with cold water," said he; "and be quiet, all of you, and keep out of
sight, while I examine him." He stood before the insensible figure with
his arms folded, amid a dead silence, broken only by the stifled sobs of
Sarah Wilson, and of a sociable housemaid who cried with her for company.
And now Seaton began to writhe and show signs of returning sense.
Next he moaned piteously, and sighed. But General Rolleston could not
pity him; he waited grimly for returning consciousness, to subject him to
a merciless interrogatory.
He waited just one second too long. He had to answer a question instead
of putting one.
The judgment is the last faculty a man recovers when emerging from
insensibility; and Seaton, seeing the general standing before him,
stretched out his hands, and said, in a faint, but earnest voice, before
eleven witnesses, "Is she safe? Oh, is she safe?"