CHAPTER XV.

DELIVERANCE.

Lady Jane had been for two months the solitary inhabitant of those two

rooms on the second floor. Yet not altogether solitary--Nurse Mordaunt

had been allowed to join her, and had been the faithful companion of her

captivity. She was a better companion than a younger maid would have

been, for she had been a kind of second mother to Lady Jane, and knew

all her life and everything that concerned her, besides being a person

of great and varied experience, who had anecdotes and tales to

illustrate every vicissitude of life. Nurse Mordaunt was acquainted

even with parallel instances to place beside Lady Jane’s own position.

She knew every kind of thing that had ever happened “in families,” by

which familiar expression she meant great families like those to which

she had been accustomed all her life. Little families without histories

she knew nothing of. The profound astonishment which overwhelmed Lady

Jane when she found herself a prisoner it would be impossible to

describe. She felt once more as she had felt when her father insulted

her womanly delicacy and sent the blood of shame tingling to her cheeks,

shame not so much for herself as for him. Was it possible that her

father, the head of so great a house, the descendant of so many noble

ancestors, and again her father, the man to whom she had looked up with

undoubting confidence and admiration all her life--that at the end he

was no true gentleman at all, but only a sham gentleman, the shadow

without any substance, the symbol, with all meaning gone out of it? Do

not suppose that Lady Jane put this deliberately into words. Ah, no! the

thoughts we put into words do not sting us like those that glance into

our souls like an arrow, darting, wounding before we have time to put up

any shield or defence to keep them out. Deeper even than her separation

at such a moment from her lover, more bitter than her thoughts of his

disappointment, of his rage and misery, was this empoisoned thought: her

father, a great peer, a noble gentleman--yet thus suddenly showing

himself not noble at all, not true, a tyrant, without any understanding

even of the creatures whom he could oppress. Lady Jane was sad enough on

her own account and on Winton’s, it may well be believed: but of this

last wound she felt that she never could be healed. Imagine those

traditions of her rank in which she had been brought up, her proud yet

so earnest and humble sense of its obligations, the martyrdom which in

her youth she had been so ready to accept--all come down to this, that

she was a prisoner in her father’s house, locked up like a naughty

child,--she who had been trained to be the princess royal, the

representative of an ideal race! Ah, if it had but been a revolution, a

rebellion, democracy rampant, such an imprisonment as she had once been

taught to think likely! but to sink down from the grandeur of that

conception to the pettiness and bathos of this! She tried to smile to

herself sometimes, in the long days which passed so slowly, at her own

ludicrous anticipations, and at the entire futility, after all, of this

suffering to which she was being exposed. But she had not a lively

sense of humour, and could not laugh at those young dreams, which, after

all, were the highest of her life. And somehow the sense that the

present troubles could produce no possible result of the kind intended,

made her almost more impatient of them than if they had been more

dangerous. That her father could think to subdue her by such means, that

he could expect to convince her by so miserable an argument, that he

could suppose it possible that she would change for this, abandon what

she had resolved upon at the expense of all her prejudices and so many

of her better feelings, because of being shut up in two rooms for two

months, or two years, or any time he might choose to keep her there! If

she had not thought her filial duty a sufficient reason, would she be

convinced by a lock and key? Lady Jane smiled with high and silent

disdain at so extraordinary a mistake. But it was unworthy, it was

lowering to her moral dignity to be exposed to so vexatious and petty an

ordeal. At a State prison, with the block at the end, she had been

prepared to smile serenely, carrying her high faith and constancy

through even the death ordeal. But confinement in her own room was

laughable, not heroic; it made her blush that she should be exercised in

so miserable a way--in a way so impossible to bring about any result.

Nurse Mordaunt was an excellent companion, but after a while she began

to droop and pine. She wanted the fresh air; she wanted to see her

grandchildren; she wanted, oh, imperiously beyond description! a talk, a

gossip, a little human intercourse with some one of her own kind. Lady

Jane was a darling--the sweetest of ladies; but it was a different

thing talking to that angel and chatting familiarly over things in

general with Mrs Jarvis. Nurse no more than other mortals could be kept

continuously on the higher level. She longed to unbend, to be at her

ease, to feel herself, as the French say, _chez elle_, in which

expression there is almost a more intimate well-being than in that of

being at home, which we English think so much superior. Her health

suffered, which Lady Jane would not allow that hers did; and at last,

Nurse Mordaunt made such strenuous representations on the subject to the

new servant, whose business it was to watch over the prisoners, that she

was allowed to go out. She was allowed to go out and the Duchess to come

in, two proceedings altogether contradictory of the spirit of the

confinement, and which were, indeed, a confession of failure, though the

Duke himself was unaware of it. This made a great change to the

prisoner, whose cheeks, though still pale, got a little tinge of colour

and hope in consequence. It did more for her than merely to bring her

her mother’s society, though that was much. It brought her also other

news of the outer world--news of Winton more definite than the distant

sight of him riding or walking through the Square, which he did

constantly. Now, at last, she received the budget of letters, of which

her mother’s hands were full. Lady Jane smiled and cried a little at the

entreaties her lover addressed to her to be steadfast--not to give him

up. “I wonder what they all think,” she said; “is this an argument

likely to convince one’s reason, mother, or to persuade one for love’s

sake?” She looked round upon her prison--her pretty chamber furnished

with every luxury--and laughed a little. “Is it my head or my heart

that is appealed to?” she said. This, perhaps, was too clear-sighted for

the angelic point of view from which the world in general expected Lady

Jane to view most matters. But, in fact, though she had more poetry in

her than her mother, Lady Jane had come into possession of part of her

mother’s fortune, so to speak, her sense; and that is a quality which

will assert itself. Now the Duchess, in the excitement of standing by

helpless while her daughter suffered, had come to regard the matter more

melodramatically than Lady Jane did, to suffer her feelings to get the

mastery, and to imagine a hundred sinkings of the heart and depressions

of the spirit to which the captive must be liable. She recognised the

change instinctively, for it was one which had taken place long ago in

herself. She, too, had been brought to see the paltriness of many

things that looked imposing, the futility of _les grands moyens_. Lady

Jane’s development had been slow. At twenty-eight she had been less

experienced than many a girl of eighteen. But now her eyes were opened.

Even her lover, who thought it possible that she might yield under such

persuasion, was subject to almost a passing shade of that high but

gentle disdain with which she contemplated the vulgar force to which she

was subjected; for it was vulgar, alas! though a duke was the

originator: and unspeakably weak though it was--what the French call

_brutal_--everything, in short, that a mode of action destined to affect

a sensitive, proud, and clear-seeing soul ought not to be.

The new _régime_ had continued but a short time when Nurse Mordaunt

returned one day from her walk with heightened colour and great

suppressed excitement. Something, it was evident, was in her mind quite

beyond the circle of her usual thoughts; but she talked less, not more,

than usual, and left her lady free to read over and over the last

letters, and to refresh her heart with all the raptures of her lover’s

delight in having again found the means of communicating with her after

the misery of six weeks of silence and complete separation. Something he

said of a speedy end of all difficulties, which Lady Jane took but

little thought of, being far more interested in the reunion with

himself, which his letters brought about. A speedy end: no doubt an end

would come some time; but at present the prisoner was not so sanguine as

those outside. She did not know the gallant stand which the ladies were

making, or the social state of siege which had been instituted in

respect to the Duke; and she sighed, but smiled, at Winton’s hope. All

went on as usual during the long, long evening. It was long, though it

was provided with everything calculated to make it bearable--books and

the means of writing, writing to _him_--which was far more amusing and

absorbing than any other kind of composition. Her fire was bright, her

room full of luxurious comfort--a piano in it, and materials for a dozen

of those amateur works with which time can be cheated out of its length.

But she sighed and wearied, as was natural, notwithstanding the

happiness of having her lover’s letters, and of having talked with her

mother, and of knowing as she did that some time or other this must come

to an end. “After all, nurse,” she said with a little laugh, as she

prepared for bed, “to be in prison is not desirable. I should like to

have a run in the woods at Billings, or even a walk in Rotten Row.”

“Yes, dear,” said nurse, leaning over her, “your ladyship shall do

better than that. Oh yes, my sweet, better days are coming. Don’t you

let down your dear heart.”

“No; that would not do much good,” Lady Jane said with a sigh: but she

did not remark, which was strange, that nurse was full of a secret, and

that a delightful secret, exultingly dwelt upon, and ready to burst out

at the least encouragement. Or perhaps she did perceive it, but was too

tired to draw it forth. And she gave no encouragement to further

disclosure, but went to her rest sighing, with a longing to be free,

such as since the first days of her imprisonment she had not felt

before. And she could not sleep that night. Lady Jane was not of a

restless nature. She did not toss about upon her pillows and make it

audible that she was sleepless: and she had much to occupy her thoughts,

so many things that were pleasant, as well as much that it hurt her to

contemplate. She put the hurtful things away and thought of the sweet,

and lay there in the darkness of the winter’s night, lighted and calmed

by sweet thought. When it was nearly morning, at the darkest and

chilliest moment of all, there came a rustling and soft movement, which,

however, did not alarm her, since it came from Nurse Mordaunt’s room.

Then she perceived dimly, in the faint light from an uncurtained window,

a muffled figure, with which indeed she was very familiar, being no

other than that of nurse herself in a dressing-gown and nightcap, with a

shawl huddled about her throat and shoulders, stealing round the room.

What was nurse doing at this mysterious hour? But Lady Jane was not

afraid. She was rather glad of the incident in the long monotony of the

night. She turned her head noiselessly upon her pillow to watch. But

the surprise of Lady Jane was great at the further operations of her

attendant. Nurse arranged carefully and noiselessly a small screen

between the door and the bed, then with great precaution struck a light

and began with much fumbling and awkwardness to operate upon the door.

What was she doing? The light, throwing a glimmer upward from behind the

screen, revealed her face full of anxiety, bent forward towards the lock

of the door, upon which many scratches and ineffectual jars as of tools

badly managed soon became audible. The candle threw a portentous waving

shadow, over the further wall and roof, of the old woman’s muffled

figure, and betrayed a succession of dabs and misses at the door which

Lady Jane for a long time could not understand. What did it mean? The

noise increased as nurse grew nervous over her failure. She hurt her

fingers, she pursed her mouth, she contracted her brows; it was work

that demanded knowledge and delicate handling, but she had neither. When

Lady Jane raised herself noiselessly on her arm, and said in her soft

voice, “What are you doing, nurse?” the poor woman dropped the tools

with a dull thump on the floor, and almost went down after them in her

vexation. “Oh, my lady, I can’t! I can’t do it, I’m that stupid!” She

wept so that Lady Jane could scarcely console her, or understand her

explanation. At last it came out by degrees that the tools had been

given her, with many injunctions and instructions, to break open the

lock of the door. “By whom?” Lady Jane demanded, with a deep blush and

sparkling eyes. Why she should have felt so keen a flash of indignation

at her lover for thinking of such an expedient is inscrutable, but at

the moment it seemed to her that she could never forgive Winton for such

an expedient. But it was Lady Germaine who was the offender, and Lady

Jane was pacified. She bound up nurse’s finger, and sent her off

summarily to bed. Then, it must be allowed, she herself looked upon the

tools long and anxiously with shining eyes. It seemed to her that it

would be fighting her father with his own weapons. It would be as

unworthy of her to get her freedom that way, as it was of him to make a

prisoner of her. Would it be so? Lady Jane’s heart began to beat, and

her brow to throb. Would it be so? The mere idea that she held her

freedom in her hand filled her whole being with excitement. She locked

them away into a little cabinet which stood near her bed. She was too

tremulous, too much excited by the mere possibility, to be able to think

at all.

That night had been a very exciting one for the Duke. Again he had been

the centre of a demonstration. It did not seem to him that he could turn

anywhere without hearing these words, “Half-married,” murmuring about.

This time it was at the house of the Lord Chancellor that the _émeute_

occurred. A very distinguished lady was the chief guest: not indeed the

most distinguished personage in the realm, but yet so near as to draw

inspiration from that fountain-head. She said, “We could not believe

it,” as Mrs Coningsby had said; but naturally with far more force. “I am

afraid you are not of your age, Duke.”

“There is little that is desirable in the age, madam, that any one

should be of it,” his Grace replied with dignity. Here he felt himself

on safe ground.

“Ah, but we cannot help belonging to it: and it is for persons of rank

to show that they can lead it, not to be driven back into antiquity.

All that is over,” said the gracious lady. The Duke bowed to the ground

as may be supposed. “Lady Jane I hope will appear at the Drawing-Room

_on her marriage_,” his distinguished monitress said as she passed on.

The emphasis was unmistakable. And how that silken company enjoyed it!

They had all gathered as close as possible, and lent their keenest ear.

And there was a whisper ran round that this was indeed the way in which

royalty should take its place in society. As for the Duke, he stumbled

out of these gilded halls, more confused and discomfited than ever duke

was. He did not sleep much more than Lady Jane did all that long and

dark night. What was he to do? Must he _Give In_? These words seemed to

be written upon the book of fate. Relinquish his prejudices, his

principles, all the traditions of his race--retrace his steps, own

himself in error, undo what he had done? No! no! no! a thousand times

no! But then there seemed to come round him again that rush of velvet

feet, that sheen of jewelled brows, the look with which the central

figure waved her lily hand---- The Duke felt his forehead bedewed with

drops of anguish. How could he stand out against that? he, the most

loyal of subjects, and one whose example went so far? If he set himself

in opposition, who could be expected to obey? He thought of nothing else

all night, and it was the first thing which occurred to him when he woke

in the morning. What to do? He was tired of it all, all, and tired of

other things too, if he could have been brought to confess it. His heart

was sore, and his soul fatigued beyond measure. He had not even his wife

to lean the weight of his cares upon, and everything was going wrong.

He could now at last feel the sweep of the current moving towards

Niagara. It bore him along, it carried him off his feet. Ruin at hand:

he would not allow himself even now to believe in it--but in his heart

was aware that it was ruin. And this other matter in the foreground,

occupying the thoughts which had so many other claims upon them! The

reader will feel with us that the subject is too sacred, otherwise there

is enough to fill a volume of the Duke’s self-communings, and perplexed,

distressful thoughts. He got up in the morning, still half-dazed, not

knowing what to do. But in his heart the Duke was aware he was beaten.

There was no more fight in him. He swallowed his breakfast dolefully,

and sat down in his vast, cheerless library by himself to settle what he

was to do, when--But for this we must go back a little in the record of

the family affairs.

Lady Jane had begun the day with a sense of underlying excitement, which

she covered with her usual calm, but which was not her usual calm. She

had the means of escape in her power. She said nothing to nurse, who,

subdued by her failure, and crushed by her lady’s first flash of

indignation, effaced herself as much as possible, and left Lady Jane in

the room which looked out upon the Square, which was her dressing-room

(nominally) and sitting-room, undisturbed. Lady Jane could not forget

that the tools were in that little carved cabinet, which, never in the

course of its existence, had held anything of such serious meaning

before. She could not keep them out of her mind. To use them might be

unworthy of her, a condescension, putting herself on the same level as

her tyrant; but after all, to think that the means were in her power!

Lady Jane was very well aware that, once outside that door, her

captivity was over. It was a thing that could not be repeated. Once upon

the staircase, in the passage, and all the world was free to her. When

you think of that after two months’ imprisonment, it is hard to keep the

excitement out of your pulses. At last it overcame her so much that she

got up, half-stealthily, timidly, and went to the door to examine the

lock, and see whether, by the light of nature, she could make out what

was to be done. It had been closed not long before to permit of the exit

of the maid who carried their meals to the prisoners. The tools were in

the cabinet, and in all likelihood Lady Jane would be as maladroit with

those poor small white hands of hers as nurse had been. She went to the

door and examined the lock closely. All at once something occurred to

her which made her heart jump. She took hold of the handle, it turned in

her hand. Another moment and she flung it open with a little cry of

terror and triumph. Open! and she free, out of her prison. It was but

one step, but that step was enough. Her amazement was so great that it

turned to something like consternation. She stepped out on to the

landing, which was somewhat dark on this February morning: and there she

paused. She was a woman born to be a heroine, one of the Quixotic race.

She paused a moment, holding her head high, and reflected. This must

have been an accident: for once the jailer had made a mistake, had slept

upon his post, had turned the key amiss. Was it good enough to take

advantage of a mistake, to save herself by the slip of a servant? She

hesitated, this spiritual descendant of the great Spanish cavalier,

that noblest knight. But then Lady Jane’s sense came in. She was aware

that now, at this moment, she was delivered,--that no force in the world

could put her again within that door. She gathered the long skirt of her

black gown in her hand, and slowly, stately, not like a fugitive, like

the princess she was, went down-stairs.

The Duke was in his library thinking what to do, and the Duchess--in her

morning-room, with her heart greatly fluttered by that little royal

speech, which had been reported to her already--sat with, strange to

say, only half a thought of Jane, looking in the face that other dark

and gloomy thing,--the ruin that was approaching. She had palpable

evidence of it before her, and knew that it was now a matter of weeks,

perhaps of days, so that though her heart, like an agitated sea after

the storm, was still heaving with the other emotion, her thoughts for

the moment had abandoned Jane. But the Duke’s mind was full of his

daughter. He would have to _Give In_! Look at it how he would, he saw no

escape for that. “The women,” as Lord Germaine in his slangy way

prophesied, “had made it too hot for him,” and royalty itself--clearly

he could not put his head out of his door, or appear in the society of

his peers again, till this was done. But how was it to be done? To make

his recantation in the eye of day, in the sight even of his household,

was more than he could calmly contemplate. It was no longer, What was he

to do? but, How was he to do it? that was in his mind. He had got up,

unable to keep still, and feeling that some step must be taken at once.

When----

* * * * *

We had already got this length on a previous page. At this memorable

crisis, when all the world seemed to his consciousness to be standing

still to see what he would do, the door of the library was pushed slowly

open from without. The doors in Grosvenor Square did not squeak and

mutter like the wizards in the Old Testament, as our doors so often do,

but rolled slowly open, majestically, without sound. This was what

happened while the Duke stood still, something within him seeming to

give way, his heart fluttering as if what he expected was a visitor from

the unseen. He stood with his eyes opening wide, his lips apart. Was it

a deputation from Mayfair? was it the royal lady herself? was it---- It

was something more overwhelming, more miraculous than any of these. It

was Lady Jane. The reader is already aware who was coming, but the Duke

was not aware. He gasped at her with speechless astonishment, as if she

had been indeed a visitor from the unseen.

She was very pale after her long incarceration, and the hollow, alas!

very visible on her delicate cheek. She was dressed in a long, soft

cashmere gown, black, with an air of having fitted her admirably once,

but which now was too loose for her, as could be seen. But though she

was thin and pale, she held her head high, and there was a sort of smile

in the look with which she regarded her father. Hers was indeed the

triumph. She was too high-minded, too proud to fly. She came into the

room, and closed the door with a sort of indignant stateliness. “I have

come to tell you,” she said, “that by some accident or misadventure my

door was found unlocked this morning, and I have left my prison.” She

held her head high, and he bowed and crouched before her. But yet, had

she but known, her own relief and ecstasy of freedom was nothing to her

father’s. It was as if the load of a whole universe had been taken off

his shoulders.

“This is Martin’s fault,” he said; “the fellow shall be dismissed at

once. Jane, you will believe me or not as you please, but I had meant to

come myself and open the door to you to-day.”

He dropped down into a chair all weak and worn, and held his head in his

hands: his nerves now more shattered than her own. It was all he could

do to keep himself from bursting like a woman into tears.

“You surely do not imagine that I could doubt what you say? I am glad,

very glad, that it was so----” she said, her voice melting. He was her

father still, and she was not guiltless towards him. “I wish that I had

waited till you came,” she said.

“Yes;” he seized eagerly upon this little advantage. “I wish that you

had waited till I came: but it was not to be expected. I do not say that

it was to be expected.” Then he hoisted himself by his hands pressing

upon the table, and looked at her. “Bless me,” he said, “how thin you

are, and how pale!--is this--is this my doing? Gracious! shut up so

long, poor girl!--I suppose you must hate me, Jane?”

Lady Jane went up to him holding out her hands. “Father, I have sinned

against you too. Forgive me!” she cried, too generous not to take upon

herself the blame; and so the father and daughter kissed each other, he

crying like a child, she like a mother supporting him. Such a moment had

never been in the Duke’s long life before.

And we are bound to allow that neither the Duchess, who was his faithful

wife, nor Winton, always ready to appreciate the noble sentiments of

Lady Jane, could ever understand the fulness of this reconciliation. It

is to be hoped that the reader will comprehend better. They were too

resentful and indignant to resume their old relations in a moment as if

nothing had happened, which Lady Jane did with perhaps more tenderness

than before. But into this question there is no time to enter. When Lady

Jane went in softly, as if she had left her mother half an hour before,

into the morning-room, the Duchess flung away her papers with a great

cry, and rushed upon her daughter, clasping her almost fiercely, looking

over her shoulder with all the ferocity of a lioness in defence of her

offspring. She would have ordered the carriage at once to take Lady Jane

away, or even have gone with her on the spot, on foot or in a cab, to a

place of safety: but Lady Jane would not hear of any such proceeding.

She calmed her mother, as she had soothed her father, and in an hour’s

time Winton was in that little room, which suddenly was turned into

Paradise. He had been carrying about with him all this time a special

licence ready for use, and as everything can be done at a moment’s

notice in town, even in February, Lady Jane Altamont, attended by a

small but quite sufficient train, and before a whole crowd of excited

witnesses, was married next morning at St George’s, Hanover Square, like

everybody else of her degree. Needless to say that there was in the

‘Morning Post’ next morning, as well as in most of the other papers, an

account of the ceremony, with a delicate hint of difficulties,

unnecessary to enter into, which had gone before. This was read by many

who understood, and by a great many more who did not understand; but

nowhere with greater excitement than in the rectory-house of St

Alban’s, E.C., where Mrs Marston took the fashionable paper, poor lady,

because in that wilderness she was so out of the way of everything. She

rushed in upon her husband in his study (who had just seen it in the

‘Standard’ with feelings which are indescribable) with the broadsheet in

her hand. “Listen to this, William,” she cried solemnly; “didn’t I tell

you it was none of our business to meddle! and your fine Duke, whom you

were so anxious to be serviceable to, and that never said thank you----

But I told you what you had to expect,” Mrs Marston cried.

THE FUGITIVES.

CHAPTER I.

Helen Goulburn was sitting alone in the great drawing-room of her

father’s country-house on an evening in October. It had been very sultry

during the day, and the great heat had ended in a thunderstorm and

torrents of rain. Now all the tumult and commotion of the elements were

over. The night was cool and fresh. The great windows were open to the

unseen garden, from which a sweetness of honeysuckle and mignonnette

and late roses came in upon every breath of the fitful night air. The

room was an immense room, far too large for a solitary occupant. She and

her lamp and her white dress made a lightness in one corner; the rest of

the huge drawing-room was faintly lighted with candles, of which there

were regiments about on the walls, reflected vaguely from mirrors here

and there, on tables and consoles and cabinets,--but yet not enough to

give anything like light to the vast shadowy room, which was full of

everything that is rich and rare--of everything at least that the

highest price could buy or the best workmen produce. The windows, a long

line of them, all draped in that shadowy whiteness, stood open, as has

been said. Most girls of Helen’s age would have been afraid to sit all

alone, with so many windows opening on to a lawn, which in its turn

swept downwards into the park, at so late an hour. Sometimes the lace

curtains swayed in the night wind as if put aside by a shadowy hand. It

was difficult to keep the imagination from developing some stealthy

figure half hidden in the drapery, some one coming in, out of the

darkness outside. The house was full of wealth, and the temptations to a

sudden raid might have been many. When the branches swayed in the night

air, bringing down a shower of raindrops, or some twig cracked, or one

of the mysterious noises of which darkness is always full, broke the

absolute quiet--any one of those sounds, which yet were scarcely

definite sounds at all, might have conveyed a tremor to the lonely

occupant of all this mystic space and solitude. But Helen sat unmoved.

She was used to the vacant bigness of the great house, often inhabited

by only herself and her little sister, and a crowd of servants. She had

been in the hands of a governess till very lately, and in the routine of

lessons and the certainty that a schoolgirl was not likely to be

interrupted by visitors, had escaped all consciousness of the isolation

of the great house. It was the most splendid in the county, surrounded

by a beautiful park, embosomed in great trees. When Mr Goulburn bought

it from the decaying proud family to whom its glories belonged, Fareham

was already a noble place; and he had added greatly to it, had built out

a room here and a room there, and enlarged it with every extravagance of

convenience that lavish wealth could think of. He had built and

decorated in the most costly way the splendid room in which his daughter

was sitting; he had fitted out for her a suite of rooms worthy of a

princess; the very servants were lodged as half the well-to-do people in

England would have been glad to be lodged. Outside, in the darkness of

the summer night, full of dew and rain and soft fragrance, were acres of

flower-beds and conservatories, tended by a regiment of gardeners.

But notwithstanding all this splendour, the county looked very shyly on

the new member of its sacred and select society. He had brought very

good introductions, and he gave such dinners as were not to be had

within a hundred miles. The Duke called, an honour scarcely less than

royal condescension; but the surrounding gentry showed no enthusiasm in

following that example. Helen was then still in the school-room, which

furnished the ladies with a very good excuse; but even after the ball,

which was given on the occasion of her coming out, and which certified

that event to all the world, no genial circle of neighbours collected

round her. Even her youth, her solitude, her motherless and friendless

condition, did not call forth the sympathy of the county people. Never

was girl more solitary. Her governess, who it had been arranged was to

stay with her as chaperon, had married suddenly the widowed vicar of the

parish, and deserted her not long before the period of which we speak:

and she was left alone, the mistress of the wealthiest, most barren, and

splendid house in all the district. She had crowds of servants to do

whatever she bade--carriages, horses, whatever, as the servants’ hall

said, heart could desire--but no friends. Little Jane, her little

sister, was the offspring of a marriage which her father had made

“abroad,” and of which, except this child, no trace existed. It was

only on his return with the baby, six years before, that his

extraordinary wealth had shown itself. Before that period Helen had been

left at a school in the country--but not in this part of the

country--where she had been happy enough with her companions. But when

her father returned from “abroad,” everything had been changed for her.

An _ayah_ had brought the baby home, and Helen had first become aware of

the existence of a little sister when she saw a big pair of dark eyes

gleaming out of the palest of little faces over the dusky nurse’s

shoulder. She had been taken away from her school from that day, and

ever since had lived the life of a princess, waited upon by innumerable

servants, and living in luxurious houses. But her father had always

lived the life of a bachelor, notwithstanding his possession of these

two daughters. His friends had been all men. There were great dinners

now and then; and occasionally Helen had seen through an open door a

glimpse of a long splendid table laden with plate and crystal, and

baskets of fruit and flowers, where her father’s friends were being

entertained. But no ladies had come to the house, nor, after the

childish companions of her school, had she had any friends in her new

magnificence, except Miss Temple, who had been very good to her, and

whose departure had brought a poignant sensation of loss into the girl’s

mind. It was almost the only keen feeling she had ever known. She had

come into society with something of the bewildered, uncertain vision of

a creature bred in the darkness, who is dazzled and confused rather than

delighted by the light. The people who came to the ball had been as

figures in a dream to her. The whole scene was like something in the

theatre. She was scarcely aware that she was herself not a spectator,

but an actor in it, walking about mechanically among the guests, making

her mechanical curtsey when her father brought up now one strange face,

now another.

And after that one ball, silence had fallen again upon Fareham. The

porter at the lodge received sheaves of cards, and some carriages even

penetrated through the grand avenue to the hall door; but no one entered

the house. Doubtless there were some hearts in those carriages in which

there vibrated some touch of pity for the millionaire’s shy, motherless,

inexperienced daughter. But the county was wonderfully intact, and its

gentry had made up their minds to discourage the advent of Money among

them. A few years of perseverance would no doubt have made an end of

that irrational notion; but in the meantime they distrusted Mr

Goulburn. He was far too rich; it was insolent of a man who, so far as

any one knew, was nobody, to be richer than all the squires put

together. A ball in such a house might be tolerated. It was like a

public ball; you took your own party (for in this respect the

invitations were most liberal), and, save that one of your men had to

sacrifice himself to ask the girl of the house to dance once, you kept

yourselves to yourselves, as you did at the ball for the hospital or any

other subscription assembly. This was what the county people said. And

as for Helen, she was often dull, but she had not learned to blame

anybody for her dulness. She thought it a law of nature--it was no one’s

fault.

All this explanation is to show how it was that Helen found nothing

unusual in her own position, alone in this great dim room, with all the

windows open. The windows always were open, except in the depth of

winter. The darkness without had no dangers for her; it never occurred

to her that any strange apparition might disturb her solitude. She liked

the stillness, the night air, the fragrance from the garden. Though she

usually went to bed early, yet on this night she was not sleepy. She was

reading a novel; that was one of the luxuries which her father provided

regularly. She had not read many books that were worth reading, but of

novels all kinds. When the butler came softly into the room, with the

intention of closing up the house for the night, she stopped him.

“Are you going to sit up to-night, Brownlow?” she said.

“Yes, Miss Goulburn, as usual on Saturdays, till the last train comes

in,” the man replied.

“Then leave the windows open a little longer.”

“Yes, Miss Goulburn,” he said. But he did not go away forthwith; he

extinguished the candles on the distant tables and in the sconces,

moving like a shadow (though he was very substantial) in that elegant

desert of costly furniture, until finally Helen’s figure in her white

dress, lit up by her lamp, became the one definite point in the

darkness. She was at some distance from the windows, in the winter

corner near the fireplace, now all dark. Everything was dark except that

one spot. The soft and almost stealthy closing of the door was all that

testified to Brownlow’s departure; he had become invisible before. In

the great stillness his soft and regular step, subdued and respectful,

as a good servant’s ought to be, yet stately, was heard retiring, thick

though the carpets were and closely fitting every door. He went away

through those softly carpeted corridors and across the great marble hall

to his own part of the house. And once more absolute silence and

solitude abode with Helen. The night air came in softly, swaying the

curtains; sometimes a bough creaked, a long tendril of some creeping

plant shook out a few rain-drops, a moth dashed against the panes. No

other sound in heaven or earth. And Helen in her white dress gave a

heart to the darkness. All alone, no one near her, yet not afraid!

CHAPTER II.

What was it that stirred?

Scarcely a sound at all--not half so definite as the cracking of the

twigs, the boom of the night moth against the window; yet it affected

Helen as those sounds never did. When it had occurred twice she raised

her head. It was nothing, and yet---- Again! What was it? Though you

would not call it a sound, it made the air thrill as no sound of the

inanimate ever does. She looked up, but the light of her own lamp

blinded her. She could scarcely see beyond its charmed circle. Then a

slight jar succeeded to the soft pressure, as of a human foot upon the

turf. A sound that conveys purpose and energy, how different is it from

the aimless noises of nature! She rose up in great, though restrained

alarm, with a cry almost on her lips. Then Helen reflected that all the

servants were far away, that a scream would not help her much; and

though her heart beat wildly, almost taking from her both sight and

hearing, she still could, after a sort, both hear and see. She stood up,

closely drawn against the wall, looking out with puckered eyelids. Then

a hand stole between the curtains of the nearest window: they were

pushed aside, and a dark figure showed itself, at first

indistinguishable, a something merely, an emblem of mystery and danger.

Helen’s scream got vent, but in a low cry only of fright and dismay.

Then all at once the fluttering of her heart stopped, her pulses

regained their steadiness.

“Papa!” she said, “oh, how you have frightened me! Why didn’t you come

in the other way?” It was a great relief, for her terror had been all

the greater that she had never experienced any visionary alarms before,

and her imagination was unprepared. She put out her hand to the bell, “I

will ring for Brownlow----”

Her father did not leave her time even for another word. He sprang

forward and caught her arm. “Don’t do anything of the kind,” he said. “I

want no Brownlow. I am going again immediately. I want no one. I don’t

wish it to be known that I have been here.”

It was certainly her father, but not the placid, prosperous, moneyed man

she knew. His coat, which was of a rough kind she had never seen him

wear before, was beaded with rain. His face was pale and haggard; his

dress bore traces of mud, as if he had scrambled over ditches; his boots

were wet and clogged with the damp soil. She looked at him with a terror

she could not express, and he looked at her with a somewhat stern

inquiry in his eyes.

“But you are wet: you want--dinner--something?” she faltered. “Shall I

run and bid them bring----”

He shook her slightly, still holding her arm. “Are you good for

anything?” he said. “Have you any stuff in you? Now is the time to test

it. Go and get that white rag off. Put on your darkest dress, and come

with me.”

“Come with you? To-night, papa?”

He gave her a slight shake again. “It will neither be to-night or any

other night if you make so much noise. What are you capable of, Helen?

Are you able to be quick, and silent, and brave? Can I rely upon

you?--if not, say so; but make up your mind, for there is not a moment

to lose.”

She grew whiter than her white dress, and looked at him with gleaming,

wide-open eyes. She had read of appeals like this, but she could not

remember how the heroines responded. She said, faltering, “I can be

quick, and quiet, papa.”

“That is all that is necessary; but we have not a moment’s time to lose.

No one must know that I have been here. I shall go out again outside the

window and wait for you. Go up to my room, to the little Italian cabinet

near my bed, on the right hand. You know it, and you know how to open

the secret drawer? Here is the key: bring me a little portfolio, a sort

of letter-case you will find in it. Stop; that is not all. Change your

dress and put on thick boots, and a cloak, and a veil. Then go and

bring Janey----”

“Janey! papa? She has been in bed for hours.”

“Did I say she was not in bed? Take up the child out of her bed, wrap

her in something, and bring her down-stairs. You can surely carry that

little thing down-stairs. After that I’ll take charge of her myself.”

“But, papa, Janey! she is so little. If I wake her she will cry.”

“Not she! But why wake her at all? Lift her, and wrap her in something

warm; she need not be awoke. My poor little Janey! I can’t go without my

Janey,” he said to himself.

Helen scarcely knew what she was saying in her consternation and

surprise. “If you are going anywhere, papa, and want to take Janey--at

this hour--would it not be best to order the brougham?”

“Would it not be best to order a coach and six, with half-a-dozen fools

to draw it?” he said savagely. Just then some far-off sounds were

audible, some one moving in the silence of the house. Mr Goulburn made a

hurried step towards the window. Then paused and said in a half-whisper,

which he seemed to try to make kind, “Let me see what mettle you are

made of, Helen. Do what I have told you without betraying

yourself--without attracting any one’s attention. Show what you are good

for, once in your life.”

He disappeared, and Helen stood for a moment like one in a dream. Was it

a dream? and would she awake?--or had the rest of her life been a dream

to which this was the awaking? She felt that her father was watching her

from behind the white mist of the curtains, and that she dared not

delay. She went up-stairs mechanically. The huge house lay silent like

an enchanted palace. On Saturdays it was always possible that the master

might not return until the late train, and it was common for the great

household of servants, badly ruled and prodigal, to hold a sort of

domestic saturnalia on that night. Faint sounds of fun and frolic were

to be heard from the servants’ hall--very faint, for Brownlow had a

sense of his responsibilities--and all the guardians of the place were

out of the way. Helen went up, unseen and solitary, to her father’s room

and her own. She did what he had told her--changed her own dress, and

took the Russia leather letter-case, which was full apparently of

papers, out of the secret drawer of the cabinet. But there she paused;

the other part of the mission was more difficult; and Helen stood still

again, with a beating heart, outside the door of little Janey’s nursery,

where the nurse certainly ought to be, even if all the other servants

were off duty. What should she do if the nurse were there? Her mission

was difficult enough without that. When Helen went in, however, to the

luxurious rooms appropriated to her little sister, no nurse was visible.

The child of the millionaire slept, unwatched, like the child of the

poorest clerk. A faint night-light burnt in the inner room. There were

acres of stairs and corridors between little Janey and the highly paid

functionary who was supposed to be devoted to her body and soul. She

might have died of fright before any one could have heard her cry. Helen

stood, breathless, at the foot of the little bed in which Janey lay fast

asleep. She thought she had never realised before what perfect rest was,

or the beauty of the child who lay with her pretty round arms thrown

above her head, rosy with sleep and warmth, her soft breathing making a

little murmurous cadence in the stillness. How can I have the heart to

wake her? Helen said to herself; a new sentiment, half tenderness, half

fear, seemed to awaken in her heart. To wake the little one to this

hurried incomprehensible night journey seemed terrible--yet somehow

Helen felt a reluctant conviction that Janey would adapt herself to the

adventure better than she herself should. The child’s sleep, however,

was so profound, and there was something so contrary to all the

prejudices of education in waking her up at that hour, that only the

thought of her father’s severe and haggard countenance kept Helen to her

errand. She had even turned away to go back to him--to say that she

could not do it--when the greater evil of having to return again, and

of, perhaps, meeting nurse next time, prevailed. She got a warm little

pelisse, with many capes--a piquant little Parisian garment, which had

tantalised all the mothers in the district--out of its drawer, and put

the little shoes ready. Then she bent over her small sister and called

her. “Janey, wake up, wake up; papa wants you. Wake up; we are to go

with him if you are quiet and don’t cry.”

The child sat up in her bed, awake all at once, with big, dark eyes,

opening like windows in her pale face. “I am not doing to cry,” she

said, and stared at her sister through the gloom, which was faintly

illuminated by the night-lamp. Janey was, as Helen had anticipated, much

more at home in the emergency than she was. She woke up in a moment, as

children do, not with a margin of bewilderment and confusion such as is

common to us--but wide awake, with all her little intelligence fresh

and on the alert.

“What is it? what is it, Helen?”

“I don’t know; but you are to go down to papa. You are to be quiet; you

are not to cry. We are going with him.”

“Where? where?”

“I don’t know,” said Helen, ready to weep with the strange and wild

confusion, the sense of misery and wretchedness which was involved to

her in this overthrowal of all habits, this sudden secrecy and adventure

in the dark. But little Janey clapped her hands. It was a delightful

novelty to the child. She pulled on her stockings on her own small pink

feet, her eyes dancing with pleasure and excitement. No need to carry

her down asleep, as Helen with terror and doubt of her own powers had

feared.

“You must be quiet; you must be quiet--not to let the servants know,”

the elder sister whispered.

“I am doing to be quiet,” said the little girl, delighted with the

mystery. She thrust her big doll into her bed, and covered it carefully,

while Helen, not knowing what she did, picked up various fugitive

articles, half-consciously, and put them into the pockets of the ulster

which she had put on.

“Be dood, baby, and keep my little bed warm till I come back,” sang

little Janey.

“Oh, hush, hush! you are to be quiet--you are to be quiet,” Helen said.

They crept down the great stairs like two ghosts, fantastic little

shadows, so unlike anything that could have been expected on that grand

staircase at that hour. But they met no one. The sounds from the

servants’ hall were a little more audible as the evening went on. The

master was absent, the master’s daughter too shy and timid, even had she

heard them, to take any notice. The hours of licence were approaching

when even Mr Brownlow relaxed the bonds of discipline. As these sounds

reached them, little Janey clasped her sister’s hand tighter. But it was

the sense of a mischievous escapade, not of a mysterious calamity, which

was in her mind.

“What will Nursey say?” the child said with a low laugh.

Even the whisper frightened Helen. The lights flared in all those vacant

passages, but gloom lurked in every corner; the great rooms were all

dark and empty: not a living being, not a sound of habitation was in the

magnificent costly place, except the squeak of the footman’s violin, the

far-off laughter of the servants--so much for so little! Amid all the

confusion and terror of the moment, Helen always recollected the vacant

lighted staircase, the hall with its marble pillars, the vast darkness

of the dining-room standing open--not a creature near, except those two

helpless creatures equipped for flight; but on the other hand, the

servants’ merry-making, and the squeak of the fiddle painfully

scratching out a popular tune. They paused to listen for one moment,

holding their breath. Then they went into the drawing-room, where

Helen’s lamp was still burning close to the wall, making the darkness

visible. Her book was still lying open on the table. She had left the

heroine at a painful crisis, but it was not so terrible as this.

Helen closed the door behind her with great precautions, and Janey, a

little frightened at the dark, clung to her closely.

“Where is papa? I don’t see papa,” cried the child.

“Oh, hush, hush!” said Helen, frightened by the sound of her voice.

He was standing behind the curtains waiting for them.

“How long you have been!” he said to her in a low, stern voice; but he

opened his arms to the child. “My little Janey--my little darling!” he

said, bending down on his knees to bring himself within her reach. Janey

clasped her arms round his neck, and kissed him, with open-mouthed

childish kisses.

“Where are you doing to take me, papa?” she said, her dark eyes dancing

with excitement. He raised himself up, holding her closely clasped to

his breast, and carried her out into the night.

What a strange night-walk it was--through the country lanes, all heavy

and muddy after the storm, and dark as the darkest midnight; brushing

against the rustling, thorny hedges, stumbling over heaps of stones,

through the pools at the roadside, and upon the slippery grass; here and

there crossing a stile at haphazard, with no guide but instinct; here

stealing past a cottage, shrinking from the lamps of the doctor’s gig,

which threw a suspicious light upon them. Helen, following, dragging her

weary feet through the muddy ways, holding up the long skirts not

intended for such usage in her arms, her veil over her face, felt

herself shrink, too, when the light flashed upon them. But who could

have supposed that it was the master of Fareham and his children that

were out there in the muddy lanes? Once at the turnpike, where they were

all as well known as the day, her father, whom she always saw before

her, a vague, dark shadow with the child in his arms, replied in a

gruff feigned voice, with a fictitious country accent, which gave Helen

a sharp shock, to the good-night of the gatekeeper. To avoid notice was

one thing, to tell a practical lie was another. This, in the midst of

her confused wretchedness, gave her a painful prick of sensation. Janey

in her excitement had begun to prattle at first, but had been summarily

silenced by her father, and now drooped upon his shoulder fast asleep,

her face half hidden in the rough collar of his coat. Between the other

two not a word passed. Helen was too miserable and too much bewildered

to ask any questions; she followed submissively.

The little station was within about a mile of Fareham, but a mile is

long when trudged through mud and rain by unaccustomed feet, in a gloomy

night, and with a heavy heart. A late train going express to town which

otherwise would have scorned this little station, had been arranged to

stop there for the convenience of the man of business, the well-known Mr

Goulburn, whose affairs were on too colossal a scale to be managed by

the ordinary means of communication open to everybody. Sometimes he had

special parcels to send by the guard: sometimes a clerk who had “run

down” for some special directions, or an associate acting with him on

some great city board, whose time was too valuable to permit the loss of

a moment, took advantage of this train; and sometimes he himself,

jumping into a dogcart the moment the latest guest had departed after a

sumptuous dinner, had rushed up to town by it. The station-master and

the porters were like his own servants, and the whole place all but kept

for his convenience. He crept up to it now, keeping carefully in the

shadow, out of the glare of its poor paraffin lamps.

“Keep yourself muffled up, and your veil down, and go and get the

tickets,” Mr Goulburn said, in the low and peremptory tone in which he

had throughout addressed Helen. She went without a word; she who had

never in her life done any such thing for herself. The clerk peered at

her through his wicket; the solitary porter stared as she stood alone on

the little platform. She was left there by herself until the train came

up, and the three persons who formed the _personnel_ of the station had

nothing to do but to stare at her, and ask about the luggage which she

did not possess. When the train stopped with its usual little fret and

commotion, Mr Goulburn suddenly came forward and plunged into an empty

carriage. His high coat-collar, the slouch of his hat, and finally, the

figure of the child asleep upon his shoulder concealed him effectually.

Helen could not help wondering whether she were as effectually

disguised, and the thought once more gave her a sharp pinch of pain. Why

were they hiding themselves? There was not a word spoken while the train

rushed on, tearing through that darkness which they had just traversed

so slowly and painfully. Only once, and that when they were but just

started, did any communication pass between the father and daughter.

They both looked out towards the home they had left, though it was

invisible as they left the little station. Upon the road close by the

lights of a carriage were visible, slowly approaching. It was the

carriage which, when Mr Goulburn was absent, was despatched to meet the

last train on Saturday nights. The last train from London was not due

for half an hour, and the coachman came along at a leisurely pace,

slowly climbing the road to meet his master, who was flying, disguised

and shameful, in the other direction. The contrast was so strange that

he looked at Helen, and their eyes met. Something piteous was in his

look. It contained a whole world of misery, of consciousness, of appeal

which was almost humorous, amidst the profundity of pain. She had asked

no questions, she had scarcely ventured to form to herself an idea of

what the cause of this flight could be, but for the first time her heart

was touched.

“Does she not tire you, lying on your shoulder? I could take her a

little, papa,” she said. She could think of no other way of showing her

sympathy. He shook his head and pressed the child closer to him. Was it

that the touch of her innocence made him feel less guilty? Was it that

to convince himself of the strength of the natural affection in him made

him think himself a better man? or was it only the one real and true

sentiment which may still preserve the least worthy from perdition?

Helen looked somewhat wistfully at her little sister, lying in all the

_abandon_ of childish sleep, helpless yet omnipotent, across her

father’s breast. She had never been a favourite like little Janey. No

passion of parental affection had ever been lavished upon her, and, in

consequence, she knew her father better, and perhaps secretly trusted

him less, than children ought to do--though she had never said this even

to herself. But for the moment, she sitting alone opposite to them,

carried off from all her anchors, swept into some wild sea of the

unknown, looked at them wistfully, and envied the father and the child.

In a few hours more Helen understood much more perfectly what the

metaphor meant which we have just employed. At midnight they embarked in

a steamer which, after feeling its way down the river through a thousand

dangers, plunged into the Channel just as daybreak made the rough waves

and flying foam visible. It was a small, old, almost worn-out boat, and

the voyage was one of the longer and cheaper ones which tempt the

passengers from the ordinary routes, to their profound suffering and

repentance. Helen had never been at sea before. She lay trembling while

the vessel creaked and plunged, not knowing what to reply to Janey’s

inquiry why the ship went up and down. Why, indeed? It seemed to do so

on purpose, tossing them up one moment and down the other with that

sickening repetition which helps to make up the agony of a voyage to

the inexperienced. In the morning, in the perplexing and painful

daylight of which Helen felt afraid, she did not know why, they landed

on foreign soil. Her father had changed during the night, she could not

tell how. Was it possible that already on the previous evening he had

worn the large whiskers and carefully smoothed hair which seemed to have

grown lighter, redder, than it used to be? She scarcely knew him when he

came on deck, and he gave her an uneasy look when he met her eye. She

did not, however, suspect the truth as yet, nor did she in the least

understand his disguise. She was only full of alarm and wonder, not

knowing what to think.

CHAPTER III.

“Where are we going, papa?” Helen had walked some way, bewildered and

wondering, through the foreign streets, confused by the strange language

round her, the unfamiliar look of everything, the strangeness of her

situation altogether. They had set out walking, and seemed, she thought,

to be going on vaguely from street to street without any aim, passing

hotel after hotel, at any of which she would have been glad to rest and

collect her thoughts after the rough voyage and all the agitations of

the night. “Where are you doing to take us, papa?” said little Janey,

running along by his side. The child was pale, too, and her pretty,

costly clothes had already acquired that look of crumpled finery which

garments too good for common use so easily assume. Helen, too, had found

it very difficult to manage her dress, with its train, made for no

greater exertion than to sweep over the velvet lawns at Fareham. It had

dropped from her hand now and then. It had got crushed and crumpled and

a little soiled with the wet deck. It looked like a dress that had been

worn all night. The signs of the night journey and rough sea were

unmistakable upon them. Mr Goulburn made no reply. He murmured something

to soothe the little girl, but made no answer to Helen. Their questions,

however, seemed to rouse him to action. He went into a shop which was

full of _articles de voyage_, and there bought a large second-hand

portmanteau, considerably battered, and one of those iron-bound trunks

which are used by Continental travellers. Then he put a purse into

Helen’s hand, and took her to the door of another shop, in which were

exhibited all kinds of feminine apparel. “Buy what is wanted for

yourself and _her_,” he said. Helen had scarcely ever in her life so

much as entered a shop alone, but necessity overcomes everything, even

the shy inexperience of a girl. She went in submissively, trembling to

face the brisk saleswoman, all her schoolroom French deserting her in

this earliest emergency. Nevertheless, she managed to do what was

absolutely essential. As for Janey, she proved herself much more a woman

of the world than her elder sister. The whole adventure was a frolic to

Janey--a frolic which the voyage had unpleasantly interrupted, but

which had now regained its jollity and excitement. She made her choice

among the different dresses exhibited to them with unfailing

promptitude. “I am doing to have this,” she said in her childish

peremptory tone, to the great delight of the shopwomen, who gathered

round her, offering her their wares. The little English child,

recovering all the vivacity of her childish spirits, and excited by the

laughter and flatteries, though she did not understand them, of the

French milliners, was an amusing little figure, and the scene like a

scene in a comedy. Janey inspected all the garments, feeling the texture

with her baby fingers, assuming a hundred little airs of importance. She

chattered without ceasing, a perpetual flood of remarks, while the women

laughed and admired.

“What does she say?” they asked the one among them who partially

justified the “_Ici on parle Anglais_,” in the shop-window.

“Elle est délicieuse,” the shopwoman said; “elle est jolie comme un

cœur: et d’un goût!”

Janey did not understand a word, but all the same knew she was being

applauded, and her little head was turned by the notice bestowed upon

her. “We came without any boxes or frocks or anything, and papa is doing

to let me buy whatever I like,” said Janey.

The women were curious beyond description when this was rapidly reported

to them by the one who understood. All this strange little scene went on

while Helen, still half dazed, stammered out her orders in her

faltering, imperfect French, and accepted timidly what was offered to

her. The colour came to her cheeks, and a painful prick of life to her

being, when she heard her little sister’s indiscreet explanation. “We

left all our things behind--by mistake,” she said, trembling, a

tingling, smarting blush dyeing her face. The timid falsehood redoubled

her own confusion, but it did not do much more. It changed, Helen

thought, the looks of the women. They followed her about, she fancied,

trying to elicit further revelations from Janey, pressing every kind of

outfit upon her; watching her as if---- What did they imagine? Did they

think she would steal something? Helen’s heart swelled so in her

simplicity that she thought it would burst. She held Janey’s hand

closely in her own, and squeezed it tight. “Don’t talk so, don’t talk

so,” she whispered. And then asked herself, with an indescribable pang,

why should not the child talk? A grey light of knowledge, a vague,

miserable twilight of consciousness, like the first lightening of a

gloomy dawn, was stealing over her. When she had made her

purchases--two frocks for Janey, the simplest which that little heroine

could be prevailed on to accept, and a plain dark dress for herself, and

a supply of underclothing,--she found her father at the door, with the

box he had bought upon a cab. This was how they were provided with the

luggage which is indispensable to respectability. Helen could not but

look at him with different eyes, now that she felt herself a party to

this fraud, which she began to be conscious of, without knowing what it

meant. What did it mean? Almost involuntarily unawares had not she

herself made a false statement in explanation of the extraordinary

straits in which they were placed? She watched her father, and found him

altered, she could scarcely tell how. His hair had changed its colour;

his beard had grown miraculously in a single night. What did it mean?

Her heart ached with the question, but she did not know how to reply.

He took them to the railway after this--to the railway again, after all

their past fatigue. He was not negligent, however, of their comfort, but

made them eat at the buffet, and took a _coupé_ for them, filling it

with all the picture-books and papers he could find, with baskets of

fruit and chocolate and bonbons. “Here is a corner where my little Janey

can go to sleep,” he said, putting the child tenderly into it when the

train had started. Janey jumped upon his knee, and began to chatter and

give him an account of her own achievements at the shop.

“They understood me,” said the little thing, “better than Helen. I can’t

speak French, but they understood me better than Helen. Papa, do you

hear? they understood me----” Here she paused and gave a sudden cry.

She had a pretty way of calling the attention of the careless listener,

drawing his face round with her little hand upon his chin. “Papa!” she

said, in great alarm, “you have dot hair on your chin, and it moves. Oh!

papa!”

His face grew crimson. He turned the child down from his knee, giving

her a sudden sharp blow on the cheek with his open hand--a blow which

was nothing, yet like a revolution of earth and heaven to Janey, and to

Helen too. Then, muttering a curse under his breath, he turned to Helen,

who was watching him, pale with terror and wonder and indignation.

“Well!” he said, defiantly; “out with it! You are a spy upon me too. Let

me hear what you have got to say.”

“I have nothing to say, papa,” said Helen, trembling. She looked at him

wistfully, with miserable insight in her eyes. She saw now that it was

all false--hair and complexion and even expression. It seemed to her, as

she looked at him, that it was not her father at all; that it was some

strange masquerader of whose identity she never could be sure again.

There had been no special devotion between Helen and her father; he had

been kind but careless, and she too had been careless, though

affectionate enough; but the miserable pang with which she seemed to

lose her hold of him, and with him of everything solid and steadfast in

the world, was more terrible than anything she had ever felt before. Her

life seemed to be rent up by the roots. Janey, whimpering and

astonished, took refuge in her corner, and by-and-by, worn out, dropped

happily asleep. But Helen could not sleep. Worn out too, but watchful,

she sat upright by her father’s side, not venturing to look at him,

seeing the long, flat, level lines of the country fly past the

carriage-windows with a tedium that made her eyes ache. And he too sat

bolt-upright, not looking at her. She had found him out; and he

perceived that she had found him out; but yet she had not got a step

farther, or discovered any real clue to the meaning of the flight which

she shared.

They travelled all that night, the second since they left home, Janey

sleeping in her corner, but Helen sitting sleepless, though worn to

death; and next day in the forenoon stopped at a sleepy little French

town, by a slow, pale, chalk river, amid interminable lines of poplars.

Words could not tell the weariness which possessed Helen, the

overmastering desire she felt to lay herself down anywhere, it did not

matter where; while at the same time the routine of the continued

movement had got into her brain, and it seemed to have become natural

to go on and on, watching those long lines of distance, those flying

plains, monotonous and endless, those rivers and fields. When the train

stopped with a jar, and with cramped limbs they stepped out and stood

upon the ordinary soil, the stoppage itself was a shock to Helen’s

nerves. It was midday of a bright October day when they drove over the

stony pavement in a jumbling omnibus, and rattled into a large square

inhabited by a cathedral and town-hall of imposing architecture, with

two little soldiers in red uniforms lounging under an archway, and two

people crossing the sunshine, going in different directions. The white

houses, tall and trim, with their green _persiennes_, the great tower of

the church cutting the blue sky, the two figures crossing the sunshine

printed themselves vaguely on Helen’s mind. She could not see anything

plainly for that vision of her father always before her who was not her

father. She did not like to look at him, yet saw his changed countenance

and false beard all the time with that sense of the insupportable which

only our own flesh and blood ever give us. She could not forget it as

Janey forgot, from whose little mind the incident of the night had fled

like last year’s snow. Janey ran into the bare, carpetless room at the

inn, and climbed up upon the wooden chair at the window, and called to

papa--“Why do they have all the curtains drawn at the windows, and why

is there nobody in the street, and why are the soldiers so little, and

what have they dot red trousers for?” cried Janey. The blow had gone

from her recollection. She thought no more of that novelty of the beard.

She had slept all night, and she was no longer tired, though she was

pale.

“Do you mean to stay here, papa?” said Helen. It is dreadful to sit at

table with any one and not to speak. She could not bear it; if he would

not say anything to her, she must talk to him.

“It does not look a very interesting place, you mean? No

picture-galleries or fine things to see. That is a pity; but if you do

not object to it too much, it suits me to stay here for a little while.”

“I do not object at all, papa,” said poor Helen, ready to cry,

“only--only----” She looked at him with wistful eyes.

“Only what? If you don’t object to me and everything about me, you

should try not to look as if you did. Understand, once for all, that _I_

understand my own motives and you don’t. And I don’t mean to be forced

to explain by any one, much less my own child.”

“Papa,” said Janey, “you souldn’t be cross. You dave me a slap last

night, but I never was cross. I did not look like this,” and she

covered her innocent forehead with the most portentous of frowns. “I

forgave you,” said the child, mastering the “g” with an effort, and

looking up at him with a countenance clear as the day, not like the

troubled face of Helen. The man was more touched than words could say.

He caught her up in his arms.

“Yes, my little darling,” he said, “I did; God forgive me! I gave this

dear little cheek a tap. I may have done other things as wrong, but none

that I regretted so much. But you forgive your poor old father, Janey? I

would not hurt you, my pet, not a hair of your pretty head, for the

world.”

“I knew you would be sorry, papa,” said the little girl, with the air of

a little queen. Then she lifted up her tiny forefinger, with serious yet

mischievous warning, “But you sould never be cross,” she said.

How different was Helen’s state from the innocent, tender play of the

child! She sat immovable and looked on at this pretty scene, seeing her

father’s countenance change, the hard lines melt, a tender light come

over it. He kissed his little Janey with a kind of reverential passion.

“I will try, my little love,” he said, as humble as a child. And while

he kissed her half weeping, and she clung with both her little arms

round his neck, Helen felt herself rigid as stone. She could not be

touched even by that which was most pathetic in this little episode--the

real emotion of the man whose conscience was certainly not void of

greater offences, yet whose heart melted at the pretty majesty of his

child’s reproof, her innocent counsel and authority. Helen sat and

looked on like some one entirely outside, a world apart from this

tender union. She did not share the emotion of it, nor the sweetness.

Her heart seemed made of lead; her eyes were dry as summer dust. She

turned away from them, not to see the innocent rapture of the father and

child. The bare little _salle à manger_, with its long table thinly

covered; the bare board; the windows with their close white curtains;

the all-prevailing odour of soup and cigars; the clashing of the

ostler’s pails outside; the high-pitched voices; the language only half

comprehensible,--made up a scene for her which she never forgot. Their

strange meal was over--a dozen unknown dishes--and they had been left

with a plate of fruit on the table and a bottle of _vin du pays_, which

Helen thought so sour. She was wearied to death, but she no longer felt

that devouring desire to lie down and go to sleep. The pain had roused

her; it seemed to her for the moment as if she could never sleep again.

Then she went up-stairs to the little bare bedroom above, where two

white beds stood side by side, two windows with the same white, closely

fixed curtains, a carpetless, curtainless room, with everything as bare

and wooden, as clean and white, as could be desired. She had to open the

new trunk and take out all their new things, which did not belong to

her, which belonged to a fugitive, the daughter of a man who had fled

from his own country and home in disguise, and at the dead of night. It

seemed to her that she could never tolerate this livery of shame, or

think of it save with a burning as of disgrace upon her countenance.

Perhaps it was partly because she was so worn out that she took

everything so tragically. She went out afterwards to see the town,

following her father, who led little Janey by the hand, delighted by

all her demands. The little girl prattled without ceasing, asking

questions about everything. “Why are they such little soldiers?” she

said; “they are like the little men in my Swiss village; and why have

they dot red trousers instead of red coats? Is it with walking in the

enemy’s blood, papa? like the Bible,” said Janey.

“Hush, hush! there cannot be anything like that in the Bible, Janey.”

“Ah! that is because you don’t read the lessons. You should read the

lessons every day,” said Janey, delighted with her _rôle_ of counsellor,

“like nurse, papa! How funny it would be when nurse went up-stairs and

found only dolly in my little bed, and Janey gone away!” She laughed,

and then looked at him with a look of examination more keen than that

timid, wistful look of Helen’s. “But I like this,” she added; “it is

funny. Why do the little children wear caps? And what funny little

shoes, that make such a noise! And why do they all speak French, papa?

Who taught them to speak French?” Janey, in her fresh wonder, put all

the threadbare questions that everybody has put before. She skipped upon

the rough stones by her father’s side, holding his hand tight; and the

three people who were in the great square (besides the soldiers) looked

upon the pair with kindly eyes, and pointed out to each other that the

newly arrived _Anglais_ worshipped his child. They have the domestic

instinct above all--they adore their infants. “But _tiens_,” they said;

“is it madame the young wife who follows with a look so _maussade_?”

The sympathies of these spectators were all with the father and the

child. Helen followed like a creature in a dream. The great, silent,

empty, open cathedral, with its altars all dressed in artificial

lilies, and the scent of incense still in the air, came into her silent

picture-gallery with all its details distinct, yet strange; and the long

line of boulevard with its trees, and the white houses with their veiled

windows, and the clanking of the _sabots_, and the little soldiers in

the archway. They gave her no pleasure as of a novel sight, but they

completed the vague, feverish world around her, so dim to her mental

perception, yet keenly clear to her outward eye in the sharp blueness of

the sky, the more vivid tints of an atmosphere without smoke. They went

over all the town thus, mounting to the ramparts, going through all the

narrow streets: Janey dancing along with her hand in her father’s, Helen

following, silent, like a creature walking in her sleep, taking in all

the novel scene only as a background to the pain of her soul.

CHAPTER IV.

The little city of Sainte-Barbe was the quaintest and most slumbrous of

little French towns, and that is saying a great deal. The walls were

intact and in good order, supplying the inhabitants with pleasant walks,

which few people took advantage of. Their pretence at defence was

antiquated and useless, but then there was nothing to defend nor any

enemy intending to attack. From the ramparts you looked out upon a great

plain bounded towards the north with hills, and dropping southwards into

those low swelling slopes and hillocks which form the best vineyards.

Sainte-Barbe was on the edge of a rich wine country verging upon the

Côte d’Or; but there were no vineyards close to the town, which rose up,

with its cluster of towers, its high walls and peaked roofs, out of the

plain. It is to be supposed that in former days it had been a centre of

more important life, for the cathedral was large enough for a

metropolis, and the great town-hall, with its fine belfry, looked like

one of the warlike municipalities of the middle ages. These two great

buildings stood and sunned themselves, resting from whatever labours

they might once have known, in a sort of dull beatitude--the one with

half-a-dozen erratic worshippers coming and going, the other with three

little red-legged soldiers under its grand gateway. Now and then a

tourist who had heard of these buildings stopped for a few hours on his

way from Italy to Paris to see them; but the fame of them was fast

fading out, now that nobody thinks of posting from Paris to Dijon, and

it was the rarest thing in the world to see a stranger in the streets.

For the first week the townsfolk said among themselves, “Tiens! voilà

les Anglais!” when Mr Goulburn and his daughters appeared; but at the

end of that time became familiar with the appearance of them. It was a

curious life which they led at the Lion d’Or--in a quaint discomfort,

which may be amusing to tourists in high spirits, but to the timid and

troubled English girl was the strangest travesty of existence. The

mixture of small discomforts with great troubles is perhaps the

combination above all others which procures most entire and complete

confusion in life. And the want of a room to sit in other than that

wooden bedroom, where every movement of a chair jarred upon the bare

planks, began after a while to mingle in Helen’s mind with all the

painful circumstances of their flight, so that she scarcely knew what it

was that made her so wretched, so disjoined from all her past. Twice a

day the little party ate in company with some of the best people in

Sainte-Barbe. M. le Notaire, who was unmarried, an old bachelor, and M.

le Maire, who was a widower, took their meals regularly at the Lion

d’Or. They tied their napkins round their bottle of wine when they left

after one meal, and tucked them under their chins when they next sat

down. On Sunday there was an officer who came in his uniform, with his

sword clanking, who impressed Janey with great awe, accompanied by his

wife and their little boy and _bonne_, who sat down next her charge and

dined too, cutting the child’s meat for him, and having a little wine

poured out for her by her mistress from the family bottle. Janey could

not eat her own dinner, so absorbed was she in watching this party. She

pulled Helen’s dress to call her attention a dozen times in a minute.

“Oh! what would nurse say?” she cried, with big eyes of astonishment.

“Look, Helen! he has some of that that you would not let me have, and he

is so little--much more little than me. And he has dot wine: and oh,

look! he has put his knife in his mouth--he will kill himself. And now

he has his hand in, the nasty little boy!”

“Cela amuse mademoiselle de voir manger mon petit,” said the lady across

the table in a tone of offence.

Helen blushed as if she had been caught in a mortal sin. “Oh no,

madame--only--elle ne sait pas----” she murmured in apology.

“He has dot his knife in his mouth, and that will kill him,” said Janey.

“She ought to tell him. Oh, little boy, little boy! _couteau--bouche!_”

she cried, with the anxiety of her age to put everything right.

Mr Goulburn tried to apologise. “My little girl thinks it is her

business to set everybody right. She takes it upon her to regulate my

conduct and manners. I hope you will forgive the little impertinent.

Besides, she is astonished to see the _bonne_ by your side, madame, at

table. It is contrary to our English usage. Forgive her,” he said.

“Oh, _de rien_, monsieur,” said the French lady, politely. “We all know

that England is the most aristocratic of countries. Do not apologise;

there is great good in that--the _canaille_ are kept in their place.”

“The _canaille_ are in all places, madame,” said M. le Maire. “They are

among us when we least suspect it. Persons of the best manners, the most

irreproachable in appearance----”

“Ah, if M. le Maire takes the point of view of the highest morals! It

is well known that the blessed apostles were but fishermen and

labourers,” said the lady; “but we could not now invite a sailor

smelling of the sea, or a ploughman fresh from the fields, to eat with

us. There are lines of demarcation.”

“Madame,” said the Maire, “I have been warned from the police of a

person completely _comme il faut_, handsome, young, tall, well brought

up, a hero of romance--you would be enchanted with his description,--who

has done everything that a man can do of perfidious and wicked--if he

should pay us a visit here----”

“Ah, monsieur, what a dreadful idea! But perhaps it is evil companions,

bad influences--and then, when one is young, everything may be

recovered.”

“With _le beau sexe_ youth is always the first of virtues,” said the

Notaire.

“Listen--they are not always young; madame should have seen the

journals of England a little time ago--monsieur here could tell us, no

doubt. A great company of merchants in London has lately made

bankruptcy. Impossible to tell you what ruin they have produced. The

great, the small, widows and orphans, poor officers in retreat, little

functionaries, priests--what in England they call clergymen--all ruined,

without a penny, without bread!” said the Maire, throwing up his hands.

“_Mon Dieu!_ even to hear of it makes one suffer. And figure to yourself

the chief--he who was first in this _compagnie_, a man rich as the

Indies, living _en prince_, and for whom nothing was too good, has taken

flight, instead of ending his life with a pistol-shot, as would have

been done in France--has taken flight, with enormously of money in his

pockets! You have seen it, perhaps, in the journals. Such things happen

only in England. _Mon Dieu!_ he has saved himself with the money of

others. And one talks of _canaille_!” the Maire concluded, wiping his

forehead. He was warm with indignation, feeling the force of his own

eloquence.

Helen did not understand all this--or nearly all; but she caught a word

now and then, and her father’s face filled her with alarm. It had been

smiling enough at first, though with that drawn and artificial smile

which she had only remarked of late; but by degrees Mr Goulburn’s head

had dropped, he stooped over his plate, fixing his attention on that,

yet now and then directed a furtive glance from under his eyebrows at

the speaker. And his face grew ghastly pale, yet he took out his

handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it. His hands trembled as he

raised his glass to his lips. The _vin du pays_ was not likely to

inspire much courage, but he drank a large quantity, large enough to

make the Maire and the Notaire stare. All this Helen remarked, though

perhaps no one else did. He did everything he could to preserve

appearances; but her attention was roused, and she was on the alert and

saw everything, and almost more than everything. What had he to do with

this story of disgrace and ruin? Some one came in at this moment, a

stranger, who was placed in a seat on her other hand; but she was so

intent upon her father that she did not even see who it was. There was a

pause, which seemed terrible to her--and to him; but which to the others

was a most natural and simple, nay, flattering moment of silence after

the Maire’s impressive remarks.

“You say such things happen only in England; is no one ever bankrupt in

France?” Mr Goulburn said at last.

“Alas!” said M. le Maire, “misfortune comes in all countries. But a

French _commerçant_ bears it--not so well as your countrymen, monsieur.

I have known men who have undergone that and now hold up their heads

again; and I have known men, _ma foi!_ who could not bear it, who

thought of nothing but a pistol-shot. One follows the customs of one’s

country. I have heard that Englishmen grow fat upon it. Pardon! you

understand that is a pleasantry. No one can have more respect for the

English than I.”

“It is a pleasantry, M. le Maire, which an Englishman hears with very

little pleasure,” said Mr Goulburn. Helen looking at him with her

anxious eyes, felt that her father was glad of some cause for seeming

angry, and caught at this justification of his own excitement. But while

her mind was intent upon him, watching him with an eager anxiety and

curiosity beyond words, she started to hear herself addressed on the

other side. “Is it possible that it is Miss Goulburn? Can I be mistaken?

a pleasant voice said in English. She turned round quickly, and found a

fair-haired and very sunburnt young man, whom she did not at first

recognise, and upon whom she looked with suspicion and alarm. Her fears

had been excited, she could scarcely tell how or why. Every one who knew

her seemed a possible enemy. Were they not fugitives, whatever might be

the cause?

“You do not remember me,” said the new-comer; “which, perhaps, is not

wonderful. I left Fareham four years ago, Miss Goulburn; but I think I

cannot be mistaken in you. You were only a child then; and now!--but

still I think it is you: and perhaps you will remember my name--Charley

Ashton? I went to India----”

“Yes, I recollect. Are you going home now to--to Fareham?” Helen said,

with fright in her eyes.

“That we should meet here of all places in the world! Yes, I am on my

way home; and there is all about the cathedral in Murray, and besides,

there is a bit of engineering I wanted to see, and I had a day to

spare,--what a lucky chance for me! You, I suppose, are making the grand

tour, as it used to be called. Travelling, like necessity, makes one

acquainted with strange quarters. This is not much like Fareham, is it?”

he said, with a laugh. That careless, happy laugh, without thought of

evil! Helen looked at, admiring it as an old man might have done.

“No; we are only here--for a little while.”

She knew by instinct that this would be their last night at

Sainte-Barbe, and that she must not encourage any renewal of

acquaintance. The young man gazed at her with such a look of kindly

inquiry, almost tender in the sympathy that mingled with it, that Helen

felt the tears come to her eyes. He divined that there was something to

be sorry for, and he was ready to be sorry and to sympathise, whatever

the trouble might be--though the troubles, he said to himself with a

smile, of the rich man’s daughter were not likely to be very hard to

bear.

“That is like my luck,” he said; “unless you are going back to England,

which would be the best of all. Then I should ask leave to follow in

your wake. There is no one now to care much when I get home; a day or

two sooner or later doesn’t matter. My mother is not there now to mind.

And to tell the truth, Miss Goulburn,” said young Ashton, “I am just as

glad to put off the first plunge. Poor old father! I daresay he’ll be

glad to see me; but to find _her_ not only gone, but with another in her

place!”

“Poor Mr Ashton was so lonely,” said Helen, coming out of her own

troubles for one moment, “and Miss Temple is so kind: it does you good

to speak to her. She never meant any harm. She was so sorry for him--do

not be angry with Miss Temple. I think I love her,” the girl said, the

tears slowly gathering in her eyes, “better--oh yes, a great deal better

than any one--than any other woman in the world.”

“Do you?” he said, touched by the sight. Charley Ashton did not know how

many other troubles in poor Helen’s heart found grateful outlet in those

tears. They dropped upon her dress and frightened her lest any one else

should see them, but the young man was altogether melted by Helen’s

emotion. “That shall be my best reason for loving--at least for liking

her too,” he said. “Thank you for showing me how much you care for her.

What a lucky inspiration I had to come to Sainte-Barbe! I had been just

thinking of you, wondering if you would be much changed--if, perhaps, I

should find you at Fareham.”

“I think I am very much changed,” she said, sadly shaking her

head--while he looked at her, smiling, with a look of subdued yet tender

admiration. He did not venture to look all he felt, yet he could not

keep it from appearing.

“Yes, I think you are changed,” he said, with a confused laugh. She was

thinking of the last week, he of the last five years. He had admired her

then as a child--for Helen had been tall and precocious. Now he could

not tell her how much more he admired her as a woman, and Helen was too

sadly preoccupied to interpret justly the lingering glance that dwelt

upon her. She had never had any lover, nor was she at all aware that the

vicar’s son had any special recollection of her; that he should

recognise her at all, filled her with surprise. But at the same time the

sense of something sympathetic by her side, of some one who was young

like herself, and English, and looked kindly at her, gave the girl a

sense of consolation. He laughed, but certainly he meant nothing unkind.

The moment after, young Ashton gave Helen, all unawares, a sudden blow

which forced her back upon herself. He said with a little eagerness, but

calmly, as if it were the most ordinary question in the world, “Do you

go back soon to Fareham? I have come home on sick leave. I shall have

only a little while at home. I hope I shall see you while I am there.”

“Oh!” said Helen, trembling all over with the shock, “I do not

know--papa has never told me. Perhaps--we may not be back for a long

time; perhaps--not at all. I don’t know.”

“Not back at all! Has Mr Goulburn sold it?” young Ashton said, and his

changed countenance grew long. He was as much disappointed as she was

startled; and for a moment both looked, though from very different

reasons, as though not at all indisposed to mingle their tears.

“I don’t know,” said Helen. She looked away from him, her voice

shook,--there was trouble indescribable in her face. And he remembered

that he had been gone for four years; that he had not heard very much

about them for some time back; that many changes might happen,

especially in the fortunes of a man in business, however great he might

be, and apparently beyond the assaults of fortune. What could young

Ashton say or do to show his sympathy? He did not even know how far he

might inquire.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. Helen looked up at him timidly, and gave

him a little nod of assent, and a faint smile. She granted him his

pardon freely. She thanked him for the feeling in his face, but she said

nothing more. The secret was not hers, and she did not even know what

the secret was. Meanwhile her father had begun to see what was going on.

He had looked furtively from the corner of his eyes at the stranger, and

had ended by remembering who he was; and he did not know what young

Ashton knew, where he had come from, what he might be doing there. When

he saw that Helen was fully engaged in conversation, he got up softly

and walked away. The sight of a face he had once known made his heart

beat wildly, and filled him with a sickening sensation. He went out by a

door behind, so as never to come within the stranger’s range of vision.

What did he want here? and what would the girl tell him? Would she have

the sense to hold her tongue? though, indeed, the very sight of her

would be enough if young Ashton knew. He began, without a moment’s

delay, to put back his clothes into his portmanteau, and prepare again

for flight. Who would have thought that such a thing could happen here?

Had the danger been greater, he would have understood. For the sudden

appearance of pursuers in search of him, he was always prepared, but

not for the ludicrous simplicity of a peril like this; a neighbour’s

son! What evil genius had brought him here? It seemed a very long time

before Helen came up-stairs. It had relieved her to see her father

disappear, and she had yielded to the pleasure of talking to her

contemporary, her old friend (as she thought). But after all, in about

ten minutes she had held out her hand to him timidly, rising up as she

did so, to go away. “But I shall see you to-morrow?” he said. She only

smiled faintly and said, “Perhaps,” but even as she said so shook her

head. In her heart she felt certain that they would leave Sainte-Barbe

that night.

And so they did. In France all the great trains go by night; there was

one very late which called at Sainte-Barbe, on the way to Paris. The

clatter and clang of the omnibus which met this train disturbed the

whole town at midnight so much, that M. le Maire had set every kind of

machinery in motion to have it discontinued; but as the convenience of

the two extremities of the railway, Marseilles and Paris, forbade this,

the authorities paid no attention to the protest of Sainte-Barbe. The

few guests in the Lion d’Or felt a double grievance this night, in that

the omnibus, after making its usual noisy circuit from the stables,

waited, pawing and champing for five minutes, under the _porte cochère_,

having baggage placed upon it, and carrying away travellers at that

hour. Who could they be? Oh, _les Anglais_: that went without saying.

Certainly _les Anglais_; they were the sort of people who would do such

a thing simply because it was unlike the rest of the world--though it

was the action of a fiend, the landlady exclaimed afterwards, to take

such an infant from her rest at such an hour. Young Ashton was still

astir, smoking his cigar out of the window with a quite unnecessary

regard for the feelings of his hosts, when the omnibus turned out of the

great doorway. He thought he saw a pale face look up at his window in

the uncertain glimmer of the moon, which was dim with flying clouds, and

he let his cigar drop on the head of an ostler below in consternation.

Could it be that they had gone away? “Gone away, because I am here!”

this young man said to himself. But it seemed a thing too impossible to

be true.

CHAPTER V.

It was scarcely daylight of the ruddy but chill October morning, when

the travellers set out from the station at which they had been dropped.

They had been left there to wait for the diligence, which only left on

the arrival of another train from Paris. All had been black and silent

at the little station of Montdard, when they were shot out, to the

dismay of two or three half-awakened officials, who regarded them with

alarm and suspicion. It was very rarely indeed that any one arrived in

the middle of the night at Montdard, except from Paris, the train from

which did not come in till five o’clock. What were they to do in the

meantime? Mr Goulburn had got little Janey in his arms fast asleep. With

her dangling feet, and her pale little head thrown back on his shoulder,

she looked more like a sick young woman, long and wasted, than a child.

Helen followed closely as a shadow, asking no questions, following every

indication of her father’s will, silent and watchful, cold and

miserable. The gloom around and the suspicious looks of the railway men,

and the cold that went to her heart, all began to be familiar. It did

not even occur to her to think of the existence which had ended about

ten days ago, the life of warmth and luxury and softness, which knew no

disturbance, which was waited upon by assiduous servants, and spent in

such careful guardianship. She thought of it no more. What she wished

for was not her draped and curtained room at Fareham, with its carpets

in which the feet sank, but a comfortable bench somewhere, or

rush-bottomed chair in a corner out of the wind, where she could get her

ulster more closely about her, and put a shawl over Janey’s feet; or, as

the very climax of comfort, another white-curtained wooden room with two

little beds, where she could lie down with Janey next to her. Helen in

her heart had bidden farewell to Fareham for ever and ever. She did not

know even where they were going; and it gave her a gleam of comfort to

hear her father explain to the sleepy yet vigilant porter in his blouse,

that he was going to Latour, where there was to be a sale of the woods

on the property of the late Count Bernard de Vieux-bois. Mr Goulburn

explained that he had heard of this only at the last moment, and that,

as he had no time to lose, he had been obliged to bring his daughters

with him, though the journey was so fatiguing for the little one. The

French heart is very open to children, and the man with the blouse

managed to open the door of a dismal _salle_, where at least _la petite_

would be sheltered from the cold wind. How kind they are to Janey! Helen

thought. The rough peasant-porter with his bristly beard, a man who

might have figured in a revolutionary riot, and probably had done so,

one time or another, caressed a floating lock of her fair hair which

fell from her father’s shoulder with his rough hand, with the softest

look of reverence and pity. “_Pauvre petite!_”--he brought an old

braided overcoat, fine, but faded, from an inner room to lay on her

feet--“It would have been better to leave her _à la maison_,” he said.

_À la maison!_ People who know no better, say the French have no word

that means home; but Helen felt this word go through and through her

like a sword. Where was the house to which Janey belonged, where she

could find her little bed and her little corner by right? As for Mr

Goulburn, he put himself on the bench against the wall in the most

painfully constrained attitude to make Janey comfortable. His face, as

he looked down upon the child, was lighted up with the most trembling

tenderness. He had wronged many people and deprived many children of

bread, but he loved his own with a passionate devotion. He could not

separate himself from his child. Helen, so watchful beside him, saw it

all with an ache of wonder in her heart. She did not understand,

perhaps, that clinging of a guilty man to the one thing innocent and

sweet in his life. She was sorry for her poor little sister thus dragged

about the world, and perhaps a little sorry for herself. If it was

necessary for him to fly from one place to another, why should little

Janey be made to fly too? And Helen turned her thoughts back upon the

Lion d’Or with unspeakable regret. It was not an attractive place, but

still it was shelter and safety. What thoughts were going on in her

father’s mind, who could say? There were other places of refuge which

would have been safer than France, but he had little time to choose. It

was not much more than chance which had determined the route they took

in leaving England, and he had remembered Sainte-Barbe as the most

unfrequented place he had ever seen. But the village which he had chosen

must surely be out of the world if ever village was. Among the hills of

Burgundy, above the vineyards, beyond the reach of commerce, in the

country where the old Gauls fought, and where even the Prussians had not

penetrated--what could be more safe? and yet who could guarantee its

safety? “We should have been better in Spain,” he was saying to himself.

The diligence started at five o’clock for Latour. It was speedily

filled, in the little interior, with five or six young peasant-women in

their white caps, each with a baby, little foundlings, or the children

of poor shopkeepers and workpeople in Paris, brought to the country to

be reared--the healthy hills of _la Haute Bourgogne_ being much approved

for that purpose. The travellers managed with great difficulty to get

possession for themselves of the _banquette_, a covered seat like a sort

of phaeton, with leathern curtains capable of closing in front, which

occupies the place behind the coachman in these rural vehicles. They had

ten long leagues to traverse before they got to their journey’s end.

Poor little Janey, very pale and shivering, lost for the first time her

childish adaptability, and whimpered pitifully, with cold feet, and the

wretchedness of her disturbed rest; and a more melancholy and jaded

party never confronted the morning mists. They rattled along as in a

dream, seeing the country gradually unfold itself, now just visible in

the faint grey of the dawn, anon developing into clearer light, the

hills rising black against the yellow east, then showing their grass

slopes and broken bits of cliff as the sun struck here and there a long

golden dart driving away the shadows. A crisp sprinkling of hoarfrost

was upon the fields, and the roads were hard, and resounded under the

horses’ feet, which made sound enough, with all the jingling of the rude

harness, and all the creaking of the springless coach, for a whole

cavalcade. In front of the _banquette_, beside the coachman, sat a large

priest and a man wrapped in the thick blue overcoat with its braided

collar which the French peasant loves. The talk of these two was all of

the old Count de Vieux-bois’s woods. The hills between which the road

passed were entirely bare of trees, and Count Bernard had been the

subject of much pleasantry, the priest said, when he planted his lands

with an unprofitable crop of forest. But time had proved Count Bernard

to be right. These voices went on dreamily in Helen’s ear, making a sort

of drowsy song to the accompaniment of the wheels and the horses’ hoofs.

But Mr Goulburn listened closely to all the heavy talk. The impulse of

trade was strong in him, and the idea of turning over money now in his

present downfall and fugitive condition roused him. He had seized upon

the pretext, catching it up at the moment of necessity from an

advertisement in one of the papers, to give an excuse for his hurried

journey. But the idea pleased him the more he dwelt upon it. He listened

with the greatest attention to all that was being said; he recovered the

activity and energy of mind that was natural to him. To outwit fate in

such a way would be in itself a kind of triumph. He did not disturb

little Janey’s head, which lay on his shoulder, but he withdrew his arm

from her as his thoughts quickened. A man of business is always a man of

business, however direful may be the plight in which he finds himself.

Pale, uncared for, haggard as he looked in the morning light, his

bosom’s lord sat more lightly upon its throne than it had done since he

left England. So far even as appearances went, there was this good in Mr

Goulburn’s false decorations of hair, that they did not grow in the

night.

They passed through a number of villages, changing horses with much

noise and clangour here and there--a proceeding which cheered up Janey

almost as much as the thoughts of a bargain did her father; and through

one quaint and wonderful town, all walled and embattled, where the

lanterns still hung across the streets as in the days when aristocrats

were hanged by that easy method of getting rid of an undesirable

intruder; and by dreary old _châteaux_, grey and homely, without any

softening of trees or park to link them to the surrounding country.

By-and-by, after a long, long waste of road, they came upon the masses

of trees which had hung upon the horizon like clouds, and which showed

where Count Vieux-bois’s estates began. Beautiful feathery larches, big

pines, and sturdy oaks clothed the slopes, and changed the whole

character of the country. And after a while the diligence rattled into

a long village street with a church at one end and a quaint old castle

at the other, more imposing than anything they had yet seen. The street

was irregular, now broad, now narrow, widening out in the centre into a

kind of place or square, in which there were two or three white houses,

several storeys high, with green _persiennes_ half closed. The rest of

the place consisted of cottages, mostly thatched and humble, with a

little post-office, and a cavernous shop in which were all kinds of

possible and impossible goods. The “general merchant” of France is

different from him of England, just as _sabots_ and blouses are

different from country-made shoes and fustian coats. And at Latour the

_sabots_ and the blouses were universal. M. le Curé himself wore a pair

over his shoes in bad weather, leaving them at the door of every house

he visited. The diligence stopped with a jarring shock and noise,

suddenly drawn up before the humble door of another Lion d’Or, a popular

sign in the district. But this one was little more than an _auberge_, a

village public-house, with its description posted up in straggling

letters, _ICI on loge à Pied et à CHEVAL_. There was no _porte cochère_,

no courtyard to mark the importance of the hotel, but only a _salle à

manger_ looking out upon the pavement, low-roofed and dark, and smelling

as usual, but worse than usual, of bad cigars and the _pot au feu_.

There were several men seated at the long table eating their breakfast

when Helen and little Janey followed their father into the room; one or

two others who had finished their meal were smoking their cigars--they

were all talking in high voices, harsh to unaccustomed ears. The farther

end, the only unoccupied place, was far from the window, and in a kind

of twilight. Little Janey grasped her father’s hand tight till the

little soft fingers almost hurt him. “Oh, take me away,” she cried,

“take me away! I won’t do there. Take me home, papa--take me to my own

home.”

He took her in his arms and carried her to the quiet corner. “My little

pet,” he said, “I wish I could; but it’s a long, long way off, Janey.

You must try and be contented here.”

“Oh, papa,” said the child, “I want to do home! I want to do home! I

don’t like it here. I don’t like--nothing at all but--home.”

“Janey, Janey!--speak to her, Helen. You will like it better after: the

people are always very kind to you. And you are tired, my little love.

You will like it better when you know----”

“I want to do home!” cried Janey; but the sudden odour of the soup put

under her nose wrought a revolution in her mind. “And I am so hungry,”

she said, her tears drying up. She raised her head from her father’s

shoulder where she had been past all consolation the moment before--and

slid down from his knee. Ah! why is six so much more easy to console

than eighteen? or eighteen than fifty? might be said in other

circumstances. But in the present case the father and the little child

had both regained their spirits, and it was only Helen whose heart lay

like a lump of lead in her breast.

That evening Mr Goulburn called her into the small room which he was to

occupy, with an air of some embarrassment. There had been no

sitting-room possible at Sainte-Barbe, yet it was practicable to occupy

a corner in the _salle à manger_, when all was quiet there. But in the

Lion d’Or at Latour it was never quiet. In the evening the villagers

came in to consume slowly their sour _piquette_, or bitter _chope_, and

fill the place with clouds of smoke; and the two crowded yet scantily

furnished bedrooms, in which the strangers were lodged, were the only

places in which they could talk. Mr Goulburn called Helen into his room.

He was embarrassed, and did not know how to begin. Helen’s look of

inquiry seemed to paralyse him. He stammered and hesitated and cleared

his throat. At length he said, with the rapidity of one who is anxious

to get over a painful operation, “I wanted to speak to you, Helen. There

is one little matter: unnecessary to enter into my reasons for it. While

we are here, I mean to call myself by my mother’s name, Harford, instead

of Goulburn.”

“Papa!” her pale countenance was suffused with the most violent colour.

Pale, worn out, and weary as her looks had been a moment since, she was

of the colour of passion now.

“I mean what I say,” he said sharply, his own disguised face catching

fire at hers. There was a touch of shame in his anger, yet his eyes

blazed into a sudden burst of fury, which again was partly put on to

hide the shame. “I do not see that I need enter into all my reasons to

you. I am satisfied that it is expedient, or I would not do it; and that

ought to be enough for my child.”

“It is not enough, it is not enough, papa,” said Helen. “I cannot call

myself out of my name.”

“Then you will do what you please,” he said; “but I shall employ the

name I have told you; you can do what you please: but in that case you

shall not be owned as a daughter of mine.”

The world seemed to go round and round with Helen,--the poor little

world so bare and poverty-stricken, the walls with their blue and white

striped paper, the bare boards and white-curtained windows. She looked

at him piteously, seeing his face blurred and magnified through the two

tears of pain and passion in her eyes. “Why is it?” she said with a

pathetic appeal; “oh, tell me why it is! If I knew why, perhaps I could

bear it better. Oh, papa, tell me why!”

His first impulse was to silence her imperiously and send her away, but

a better inspiration followed. “Did you never hear of men in business

who were ruined, Helen? Did you never read of destruction coming in a

single day? I was a rich man a fortnight since, and never dreamt that

such a calamity--was possible. It came upon me all at once. Misfortune

of the most complete kind--ruin. I had nothing for it but to take you

and the child and hurry away.”

“Oh, is that all, papa? are you sure that is all? Not--what they were

speaking of last night?--not--oh, forgive me!--I did not understand;

only the loss of your money--no more that that, papa?”

A painful contraction, almost a grimace, went over his face. The rage

which he had partially assumed before was now real, but he did not show

it. He clenched his fist at her, but kept it in his pocket, and put on a

smile which looked something between a grin and a snarl. “Most people

would think it was quite enough--and more than enough. Now you know my

secret. I did not want--to make you unhappy,” he said.

“Oh, unhappy! it is the contrary; if you knew how happy you have made

me!” said Helen, with the first real smile that had visited them for

days in her wet eyes. “You have taken off the weight _here_--oh, it is

all gone, and I can breathe. You have lost your money, poor papa! I am

so sorry, and yet I can’t help being glad. After all, what does it

matter? We have enough, and we are together. Oh, if you knew the things

that have been going through my wicked, wretched heart! Papa, will you

forgive me?” the girl cried, growing pale and clasping her hands. “Oh, I

ought to ask your pardon on my knees!”

“We will dispense with that formula,” said her father, with a chilly

smile which froze her fervour; “perhaps this will teach you to refrain

from hasty judgment. There can scarcely be a case, let me entreat you to

believe, in which I shall not be the best judge of us two.”

“Yes, papa,” she said submissively: then added with a timid look, “but

would it not have been better to have stayed and met it in the face,

whatever it was? To be unfortunate is not any harm. What could ruin do

to us, but to make us poor? Papa----”

A sharp laugh from him cut her short; he could have struck her as he

struck Janey when she found out his disguise, but he did not dare to

treat the elder sister so, and she was more easily managed in the other

way. “It seems to me,” he said, “that you are doing precisely what you

have just promised not to do. We have agreed that I am the best judge,

and the judge I mean to be, in my own concerns. Therefore go to bed, and

recollect that to-morrow you are Miss Harford--and know nothing about

that other name.”

She shrank a little away, looking at him with piteous eyes. “Yes, papa,”

she said; “but----” and stood looking with a beseeching, tender

entreaty. She clasped her hands, but she did not say anything, though

every moving line of her face, the glimmer of moisture in her eyes, the

quiver in her lips, all spoke. In his impatience he stamped his foot on

the floor.

“By Jove! you will drive me mad,” he cried, “with your fancies and your

hesitations. Do what I tell you--hold your tongue, if you are so

scrupulous about an innocent social pretence. What does it matter to

those French clowns what name I call myself by? Will they be any the

wiser? And I hold that a man has as much right to his mother’s name as

his father’s. It is the same thing. There, Helen, I forgive your

nonsense, because you are tired out, poor child! Go to bed.”

“Yes, papa,” she said, but still she did not budge. All this time the

voices and noises were going on below, sounds of disputation, quick

fire of talk, more vivacious and louder in tone than anything English;

outside and in, there were sounds of conversation going on. All this

babel of sound continued while these two quiet English persons had their

explanation, which meant so much; the rest meant nothing. When Helen

thought of it after, she always remembered the discussion in the _salle

à manger_, and the clatter of words which Jeannette on the top storey

flung down to her mistress below-stairs.

But as for herself she had said her say. Her father bade her good night

in a peremptory tone, dismissing her beyond appeal. But he was very

kind, and kissed her, though she was conscious of a thrill and tremor

about him when he did so, which she could not understand to be

suppressed rage. But as it was, Helen retired with a weight gone from

her heart, as she said--yet not such a complete relief as she had felt

at the first moment. Only ruin, only poverty! these were nothing. But

then--people were sorry for men who had lost all their money, nobody was

cruel to them, or thought it their fault; it was nothing to be ashamed

of; the best people in the world (she reflected) have been poor;

therefore why, _why_ had he fled from home? Why had he not faced the

worst? Better even, Helen thought, to have endured a little vexation, to

have given up everything, than to have become fugitives, and worn

disguises, and feared a friendly face, and changed their name. The

weight came back as these strange details recurred to her mind. That

false beard! would any deprivation, any scorn of cruel creditors, any

misfortune have been so bad, so debasing, so shameful as _that_? And why

should Charley Ashton’s honest face have so appalled him? Ah! Charley

Ashton could meet the gaze of all the world and never flinch; he would

not disguise himself, nor hide himself, whatever might be the danger.

Helen tried to represent to herself that she was not the judge, as he

had said--that her father must know best; but there is nothing so

difficult to believe as this, especially when reason seems all on our

side.

The pain was gnawing again when she lay down by Janey’s side. Poverty:

but we are not poor! Helen said to herself, almost leaping up in her

bed. They had spent a great deal of money and spared nothing; indeed

there had never been any attempt to spare anything. It was not an art

they understood. But, happily, sleep began to steal upon her young

eyes, even in the midst of her agitation. The night before had been one

long vigil; she could not be kept awake, even by the misery of these

thoughts.

END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.