“O sovereign power of love! O grief! O balm!
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years.”
Harrington Dalbrook, having in a manner given hostages to Fortune,
entered upon his new career with a strength of purpose and a resolute
industry which took his father by surprise.
“Upon my word, Harry, I did not think there was so much grit in you,”
said Mr. Dalbrook. “I thought you and your sisters were too much
stuffed with modern culture to be capable of old-fashioned work.”
“I hope, my dear father, you don’t think education and intellect out
of place in a lawyer?”
“Far from it. We have had too many examples to the contrary, from
Bacon to Brougham, from Hale to Cockburn; but I was afraid of the
dilettante spirit, the talk about books which you had only half
read, the smattering of subjects that need the work of a lifetime
to be properly understood. I was afraid of our modern electro-plate
culture—the process which throws a brilliant film of education over a
foundation of ignorance. However, you have surprised me, Harry. I own
that I was disappointed by your want of purpose at the University;
but I begin to respect you now I find you attack your work in the
right spirit.”
“I want to get on,” answered Harrington, gravely, hanging his head a
little in shame at his own reticence.
From so good a father he felt it was a kind of dishonour to keep
a secret; but Juliet Baldwin had insisted upon secrecy, and the
name of every _fiancée_ in the early stages of an engagement is
She-who-must-be-obeyed.
Harrington said not a word, therefore, as to that mighty prime-mover
which was urging him to dogged perseverance in a profession for which
he had as yet no real inclination. He put aside Darwin and Spencer,
Max Müller and Seeley, Schopenhauer and Hartmann, all those true or
false lights which he had followed through the mazes of free thought;
and he set himself to master the stern actualities of the law. He
had not done well at the University; not because he was wanting in
brains, but because he was wanting in concentration and doggedness.
The prime-mover being supplied, and of a prodigious power, Harrington
brought his intellectual forces to bear upon a given point, and
made a rapid advance in legal knowledge and acumen. The old
cook-housekeeper complained of the coals and candles which “Master
Harry” consumed during his after-midnight studies, and wondered that
the household were not all burnt in their beds by reason of the
young gentleman dropping off to sleep over Coke upon Littleton. The
sisters complained that they had now practically no brother, since
Harrington, who had a pretty tenor voice, and had hitherto been a
star at afternoon teas and evening parties, refused to go anywhere,
except to those few houses—county—where Miss Baldwin might be met.
Scarcely had the New Year begun when Miss Baldwin went off upon a
visit to one of the largest houses in Wiltshire, and one of the
smartest, a house under the dominion of a childless widow, gifted
with a large income and a sympathetic temperament, a lady who allowed
her life to be influenced and directed by a family of nephews and
nieces, and whose house was declared by the advanced section of
society to be “quite the most perfect house to stay in, don’t you
know.”
Miss Baldwin did not leave the neighbourhood of Dorchester and her
lover without protestations of regret. The thing was a bore, a
sacrifice on her part, but it must be done. She had promised dear old
Lady Burdenshaw ages ago, and to Lady Burdenshaw’s she must go.
“You needn’t worry about it,” she said, with her off-hand air,
lolling on the billiard-room settee in the grey winter afternoon, on
the second Sunday of the year; “if you are at all keen upon being at
Medlow Court while I am there, I’ll make dear old Lady Burdenshaw
send you an invitation.”
“You are very good,” replied Harrington, “and I should like staying
in the same house with you; but I couldn’t think of visiting a lady I
don’t know, or of cadging for an invitation.”
Sir Henry had asked his friend to luncheon, and now, after a somewhat
Spartan meal of roast mutton and rice pudding, the lovers were alone
in the billiard-room, Sir Henry having crept off to the stables. The
table was kept rigorously covered on Sundays, in deference to the
Dowager’s Sabbatarian leanings; and there was nothing for her son to
do in the billiard-room, except to walk listlessly up and down and
stare at some very dingy examples of the early Italian school, or to
take the cues out of the rack one by one to see which of them wanted
topping.
“Oh, but you needn’t mind. You would be capital friends with Lady B.
We all call her Lady B., because a three-syllable name is too much
for anybody’s patience. I tell her she ought to drop a syllable. Lady
Bur’shaw would do just as well. I suppose, though, if I were to get
an invitation you could hardly be spared from—the shop,” concluded
Juliet, with a laugh.
“Hardly. I have to stick very close to—the shop,” replied Harrington,
blushing a little at the word. “Remember what I am working for—a
family practice in London and a house that you need not be ashamed to
inhabit. To me that means as much as the red ribbon of the Bath means
to a soldier or sailor. My ambition goes no further, unless it were
to a seat in Parliament later on.”
“You are a good earnest soul. Yes, of course, you must go into
Parliament. In spite of all the riff-raff that has got into the House
of late years, boys, Home Rulers, city-men, there is a faint flavour
of distinction in the letters M.P. after a man’s name. It helps him
just a little in society to be able to talk about ‘my constituents,’
and to contemplate European politics from the standpoint of the town
that has elected him. Yes, you must be in the House, by-and-by,
Harry.”
“You told me you were tired of country house visiting,” said
Harrington, who for the first time since his betrothal felt somewhat
inclined to quarrel with his divinity.
“So I am, heartily sick of it; and I shall rejoice when I have a snug
little nest of my own in Clarges or Hertford Street. But you must
admit that Medlow Court is better than this house. Behold our average
Sunday! Roast mutton—rice pudding—and invincible dulness; all the
servants except an under-footman gone to afternoon church, and no
possibility of a cup of tea till nearly six o’clock. A cold dinner at
eight, and family prayers at ten.”
“What kind of a Sunday do you have at Medlow?”
“_Il y’en a pour tous les goûts._ Medlow is liberty hall. If we
were even to take it into our heads to have family prayers Lady
Burdenshaw would send for her chaplain—pluck him out of the bosom of
his family—and order him to read them. She doesn’t _like_ cards on
a Sunday, because of the servants; but after the clock has struck
eleven we may do what we please—play poker, nap, euchre, baccarat,
till daylight, if we are in the humour. The billiard and smoke rooms,
and the ball-room are at one end of the house, ever so far from the
servants’ quarters. We can have as much fun as we like while those
rustic souls are snoring.”
Harrington sighed ever so faintly. This picture of a fashionable
interior was perfectly innocent, and his betrothed’s way of looking
at things meant nothing worse than girlish exuberance, fine animal
spirits: but the _sans gêne_ of Medlow Court was hardly the kind of
training he would have chosen for his future wife. And then he looked
at the handsome profile, the piled-up mass of ruddy-brown hair on
the top of the haughtily poised head, the perfectly fitting tailor
gown, with its aristocratic simplicity, costing so much more than
plebeian silks and satins; and he told himself that he was privileged
in having won such exalted beauty to ally itself with his humble
fortunes. Such a girl would shine as a duchess; and if marriageable
dukes had eyes to see with, and judgment to guide their choice, that
lovely auburn head would ere now have been crowned with a tiara of
family diamonds instead of waiting for the poor sprigs of orange
blossom which alone may adorn the brow of the solicitor’s bride.
“Shall we go for a stroll in the grounds?” asked Juliet, with a
restless air and an impatient shiver. “Perhaps it will be warmer out
of doors than it is here. We keep such miserable fires in this house.
I believe the grates were chosen with a view to burning the minimum
of coal.”
“I shall be delighted.”
Laura was absent on a visit to Yorkshire cousins, strong-minded like
herself, and with no pretensions to fashion. Lady Baldwin had retired
for her afternoon siesta. On Sundays she always read herself to
sleep with Taylor or South; on week-days she nodded over the morning
paper. She had gone to the morning-room with the idea that Henry
would take his friend to the stables, and that Juliet would require
no looking after. It had never entered into her ladyship’s head that
her handsome daughter would look so low as the son of her solicitor.
Juliet was therefore free to do what she pleased with her afternoon,
and her pleasure was to walk in the chilly shrubberies, and the bare
grey park, sparsely timbered, and with about as little forestal
beauty as a gentleman’s park can possess.
She put on an old seal-skin jacket and a toque to match, which she
kept in the room where her brother kept his overcoats, and which
smelt of tobacco, after the manner of everything that came within Sir
Henry’s influence. And then she led the way to a half-glass door,
which opened on a grass-plot at the side of the house, and she and
her lover went out.
“You can smoke if you like,” she said. “You know I don’t mind. I’ll
have a cigarette with you in the shrubbery.”
“Dearest Juliet, I can’t tell you how glad I should be if you would
smoke—less,” he said nervously, blushing at his own earnestness.
“You think I smoke too many cigarettes—that they are really bad for
me?” she asked carelessly.
“It isn’t that. I wasn’t thinking about their effect on your health;
but—I know you will call it old-fashioned nonsense—I can’t bear to
see the woman who is to be my wife with a cigarette between her lips.”
“And when I am your wife, I suppose you will cut me off from tobacco
altogether.”
“I should never be a domestic tyrant, Juliet; but it would wound me
to see my wife smoke, just as much as it wounds me now when I see you
smoke half a dozen cigarettes in succession.”
“What a Philistine you are, Harry! Well, you shall not be tortured.
I’ll ease off the smoking if I can—but a whiff or two of an
Egyptian soothes me when my nerves are overstrained. You are as
bad as my mother, who thinks cigarette smoking one stage on the
road to perdition, and rather an advanced stage, too. You are very
easily shocked, Harry, if an innocent little cigarette can shock
you. I wonder if you are really fond of me, now the novelty of our
engagement has worn off?”
“I am fonder of you every day I live.”
“Enthusiastic boy! If that is true, you may be able to stand a worse
shocker than my poor little cigarette.”
Harrington turned pale, but he took the hand which she held out to
him, and grasped it firmly. What was she going to tell him?
“Harry, I want to make a financial statement. I want you to help me,
if you can. I am up to my eyes in debt.”
“In debt?”
“Yes. It sounds bad, don’t it? Debt and tobacco should be exclusively
masculine vices. I owe money all round—-not large sums—but the
sum-total is large. I have had to hold my own in smart houses upon
an allowance which some women would spend with their shoemaker.
My mother gives me a hundred and twenty-five pounds a year for
everything, tips, travelling expenses, clothes, music—and I am not
going to say anything unkind about her on that score, for I don’t see
how she could give me more. Her own means come to something under
eighteen hundred a year, and she has this place to keep up. Henry
takes all the rents, and often keeps her waiting for her income,
which is a first charge upon the estate. If it were not for your
father, who looks after her interests as sharply as he can, she might
fare much worse. Henry brings as many men as he likes here, and
contributes nothing to the housekeeping.”
“And you owe money to milliners and people?” said Harrington, deeply
distressed by his sweetheart’s humiliation, which he felt more keenly
than the lady herself.
Juliet had lived among girls who talked freely of their debts and
difficulties, of sops to Cerberus, and getting round an unwilling
dressmaker. Harrington’s lines had been set among old-fashioned
countrified people, to whom debt—and especially feminine
indebtedness—meant disgrace. He had come back from the University
feeling like a murderer, because he had exceeded his allowance.
“Milliners, dressmakers, shoemakers, hatters—and ever so many more. I
am afraid I have been rather reckless—only—I thought——”
“I thought I should make a great match,” she would have said, had
she followed her idea to its close, but she checked herself abruptly,
and cut off a sprig of yew with a swing of the stick she carried.
“If I can help you in any way——” began Harrington.
“My dear boy, there is only one way in which you can help me. Lend
me any money you can spare, say fifty pounds, and I will give it you
back by instalments of ten or fifteen pounds a quarter. It would be
mockery for me to pretend I could pay you in a lump sum, now I have
told you the extent of my income.”
Harrington’s worldly wealth at that moment was something under fifty
pounds. His father had given him a cheque for fifty on Christmas Eve,
and he had no right to expect anything more till Lady Day; while he
had to think of the black horse who was steadily eating his head off
at livery, and for whom nothing had been paid as yet.
He could not find it in his heart to tell his affianced that he
was, comparatively speaking, a pauper. He knew that his father had
the reputation of wealth, a man always ready to invest in any odd
parcel of land that was in the market, and who was known to possess
a good many small holdings and houses in his native town and its
neighbourhood. Could he tell her that her future husband was still
in leading-strings, and that the run of his teeth and fifty pounds a
quarter were all he could count upon till he was out of his articles?
No; he would rather perish than reveal these despicable facts; so,
although he had only forty-three pounds odd in his little cash-box,
he told her that he would let her have fifty pounds in a day or two.
“If you could manage to bring it me to-morrow I should be very glad,”
said Juliet, who, once having broken the ice, talked about the loan
with easy frankness. “I must have a new frock for the ball at Medlow.
They are to have a ball on the first of February, the ball of the
year. There will be no end of smart people. I want to send Estelle
Dawson thirty-five or forty pounds, about half the amount of her last
bill. It’s a paltry business altogether. I know girls who owe their
dressmakers hundreds where I owe tens. Let me have the cash to-morrow
if you can, there’s a dear. Miss Dawson is sure to be full of work
for the country at this season, and she won’t make my frock unless I
give her a week’s notice.”
“Of course, dear, yes, you shall have the money,” Harrington answered
nervously; “but your white gown at our ball looked lovely. Why
shouldn’t you wear that at Medlow?”
“My white gown would be better described as black,” retorted the
young lady with marked acidity. “If I didn’t hate the Dorchester
people like poison I wouldn’t have insulted them by wearing such
a rag. I would no more appear in it at Medlow than I would cut my
throat.”
Language so strong as this forbade argument. Harrington concluded
that there was a mystery in these things outside the limits of
masculine understanding. To his eye the white satin and tulle his
betrothed had worn had seemed faultless; but it may be that the
glamour of first love acts like limelight upon a soiled white
garment: and no doubt Miss Baldwin’s gown had seen service.
He walked back to the house with her, and left her at the door just
as it was growing dusk, and the servants were coming home from
church. He left her with a fictitious appearance of cheerfulness,
promising to go to tea on the following afternoon.
He was glad of the six-mile walk to Dorchester, as it gave him
solitude for deliberation. At home the keen eyes of his sisters would
be upon him, and he would be pestered by inquiries as to what there
had been for lunch and what Miss Baldwin wore; while the still more
penetrating gaze of his father would be quick to perceive anything
amiss.
“Oh, Juliet, if you knew how hard you are making our engagement to
me!” he ejaculated mentally, as he walked, with the unconscious hurry
of an agitated mind, along the frost-bound road.
There had been a hard frost since Christmas, and hunting had been out
of the question, whereby the existence of Mahmud, and the bill at the
livery stable seemed so much the heavier a burden.
Somehow or other he must get the difference between forty-three
pounds and fifty, only seven pounds, a paltry sum, no doubt; but it
would hardly do for him to leave himself penniless until Lady Day. He
might be called on at any moment for small sums. Short of shamming
illness and stopping in bed till the end of the quarter, he could not
possibly escape the daily calls which every young man has upon his
purse. He told himself, therefore, that he must contrive to borrow
fifteen or twenty pounds. But of whom? That was the question.
His first thought was naturally of his brother—but in the next moment
he remembered how Theodore in his financial arrangements with his
father had insisted upon cutting himself down to the very lowest
possible allowance.
“You will pay all my fees, Dad, and give me enough money to furnish
my chambers decently, with the help of the things I am to have out of
this house, and you will allow me so much,” he said, naming a very
modest sum, “for maintenance till I begin to get briefs. I want to
feel the spur of poverty. I want to work for my bread. Of course I
know I have a court of appeal here if my exchequer should run dry.”
Remembering this, Harrington felt that he could not, at the very
beginning of things, pester his brother for a loan. The same court
of appeal, the father’s well-filled purse, was open to him; but
he had no excuse to offer, no reason to give, for exceeding his
allowance.
He might sell Mahmud, if there were not two obstacles to that
transaction. The first that nobody in the neighbourhood wanted to buy
him, the second that he was not yet paid for, except by that bill
which rose like a pale blue spectre before the young man’s eyes as
he was dropping off to sleep of a night, and sometimes spoiled his
rest. He would have to sell Mahmud in order not to dishonour that
bill; and if the horse should fetch considerably less than the price
given for him, as all equine experience led his owner to fear, whence
was to come the difference? That was the problem which would have to
be solved somehow before the tenth of March. He would have to send
the beast to Tattersall’s most likely, the common experience of the
hunting field having taught him that nobody ever sells a horse among
his own circle. He saw himself realizing something under fifty pounds
as the price of the black, and having to bridge over the distance
between that amount and eighty as best he might. But March was not
to-morrow, and he had first of all to provide for to-morrow; a mere
trifle, but it would have to be borrowed, and the sensation of
borrowing was new to Matthew Dalbrook’s son. He had frittered away
his ready money at the University, and he had got into debt; but he
had never borrowed money of Jew or Gentile. And now the time had come
when he must borrow of whomsoever he could.
He took tea with his sisters in the good, homely, old-fashioned
drawing-room, which was at its best in winter; the four tall, narrow
windows closely curtained, a roaring fire in the wide iron grate,
and a modern Japanese tea-table wheeled in front of it. Five o’clock
tea was of a more substantial order on Sundays than on week-days, on
account of the nine o’clock supper which took the place of the seven
o’clock dinner, and accommodated those who cared to attend evening
church. Lady Baldwin’s Spartan luncheon had not indisposed her guest
for cake and muffins, and basking in the glow of the fire Harrington
forgot his troubles, enjoyed his tea, and maintained a very fair
appearance of cheerfulness while his sisters questioned and his
father put in an occasional word.
“I’m afraid you are getting rather too friendly at the Mount,” said
Matthew Dalbrook. “I don’t like Sir Henry Baldwin, and I don’t think
he’s an advantageous friend for you.”
“Oh, but we’re old chums,” said Harrington, blushing a little; “we
were at Oxford together, you know.”
“I’m afraid we both know it, Harry, and to our cost,” replied his
father. “You might have succeeded in your divinity exam, if it hadn’t
been for this fine gentleman friend of yours.”
“I’m not sorry I failed, father. The law suits me ever so much better
than the Church.”
“So long as you stick to that opinion I’m satisfied. Only don’t go to
the Mount too often, and don’t let the handsome Miss Baldwin make a
fool of you.”
If it had not been for the coloured shades over the lamps, which were
so artistic as to be useless for seeing purposes, Harrington might
have been seen to turn pale.
“No fear of that,” Sophia exclaimed contemptuously. “Juliet Baldwin
is not likely to give a provincial solicitor any encouragement. She’s
a girl who expects to marry for position, and though she is just a
shade _passée_, she may make a good match even yet. She comes here
because she likes _us_; but she’s a thorough woman of the world, and
you needn’t be afraid of her running after Harry.”
Harrington grew as red as a peony with suppressed indignation.
“Perhaps as the Baldwins are my friends you might be able to get on
without talking any more about them,” he said, scowling at his elder
sister. “I’ve told you what we had for lunch, and how many servants
were in the room, and what kind of gown Juliet—Miss Baldwin—was
wearing. Don’t you think we’ve had enough of them for to-night?”
“Quite enough, Harry, quite enough,” said the father. “By-the-by, did
you read the _Times_ leader on Gladstone’s last manifesto? And where
are the _Field_ and the _Observer_? Bring me over a lamp that I can
see by, Sophy, my dear. Those crimson lamp-shades of yours suggest
one of Orchardson’s pictures, but they don’t help me to read my
paper.”
“They’re the beastliest things I ever saw,” said Harrington,
vindictively.
“I’m sorry you don’t like them,” said Janet. “It was Juliet Baldwin
who persuaded us to buy them. She had seen some at Medlow Court, and
she raved about them.”
Harrington went out of the room without another word. How odious
his sisters had become of late; yet while he was at Oxford they
had regarded him as an oracle, and he had found even sisterly
appreciation pleasant.
It was some time since he had attended evening service, but on
this particular evening he went alone, not troubling to invite his
sisters, who were subject to an intermittent form of neuralgia which
often prevented their going to church in the evening. To-night he
avoided St. Peter’s, in which his father had seats, and went to the
more remote church of Fordington, where he had a pew all to himself
on this frosty winter night, except for one well-behaved worshipper
in the person of his father’s old and confidential clerk, James
Hayfield, a constant church-goer, who was punctual at every evening
service, whatever the weather. Harrington had expected to see him
there.
Hayfield sat modestly aloof at the further end of the pew, but when
the service was over the young man took some pains to follow close
upon the heels of the grey-haired clerk, with shoulders bent by long
years of desk-work, and respectable dark-blue Chesterfield overcoat
with velvet collar.
“How do you do, Hayfield? Isn’t this rather a sharp night for you to
venture out in?” said Harrington, as they left the church porch.
“I’m a toughish customer, I thank you, Mr. Harrington. It would take
severer weather than this to keep me away from the evening service.
I’m very fond of the evening service. A fine sermon, sir, a fine,
awakening sermon.”
“Magnificent, capital,” exclaimed Harrington, who hadn’t heard
two consecutive sentences, and whose mind had been engaged upon
arithmetical problems of the most unpleasant kind. “It is uncommonly
cold though,” he added, shivering. “I’ll walk round your way. It will
be a little longer for me.”
“You’re very good, Mr. Harrington, very good indeed,” said the old
clerk, evidently touched by this unusual condescension. Never till
to-night had his master’s son offered to walk home from church with
him.
The old man’s gratitude was more than Harrington could stand. He
could not take credit for kindly condescension, when he knew himself
intent upon his own selfish ends.
“I’m afraid I’m not altogether disinterested in seeking your company
to-night, Hayfield,” he blurted out. “The fact is, I want to ask a
favour of you.”
“You may take it as granted, Mr. Harrington,” answered the clerk,
cheerily, “provided the granting of it lies within my power.”
“Oh, it’s not a tremendous affair—in point of fact, it’s only a small
money matter. I’m exceeding my allowance a little this quarter, but I
intend to pull up next quarter; and it will be a great convenience to
me in the meantime if you’ll lend me ten or fifteen pounds.”
It was out at last. He had no idea until he uttered the words how
mean a creature the utterance of them would make him seem to himself.
There are people who go through life borrowing, and who do it with
the easiest grace, seeming to confer rather than to ask a favour. But
perhaps even with these gifted ones the first plunge was painful.
“Fifteen or twenty, if you like, sir,” replied Hayfield. “I’ve got a
few pounds in an old stocking, and any little sum like that is freely
at your service. I know your father’s son won’t break his word or
forget that an old servant’s savings are his only bulwark against age
and decay.”
“My dear Hayfield, of course I shall repay you next quarter, without
fail.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harrington, I feel sure you will. And if at the
same time I may venture a word, as an old man to a young one, in
all friendliness and respect, I would ask you to beware of horses.
I heard some one let drop the other evening in the billiard-room at
the ‘Antelope,’ where I occasionally play a fifty, I heard it said,
promiscuously, that Sir Henry Baldwin is a better hand at selling a
horse than you are at buying one.”
“That’s bosh, Hayfield, and people in a God-forsaken town
like Dorchester will always talk bosh—especially in a public
billiard-room. The horse is a good horse, and I shall come home upon
him when I send him up to Tattersall’s after the hunting.”
“I only hope he won’t come home upon you, sir. You’d better not put a
high reserve upon him if you don’t want to see him again. I used to
be considered a pretty good judge of a horse in my time. I never was
an equestrian, but one sees more of a horse from the pavement than
when one is on his back.”
Harrington felt that he must bear with this twaddle for the sake
of the twenty pounds which would enable him to lend Juliet a round
fifty, and would thereby enable Juliet to go to Medlow Court and
flirt with unknown men, and forget him upon whom her impecuniosity
was inflicting such humiliation. After all, love is only another name
for suffering.
Mr. Hayfield lived in West-Walk terrace, where he had a neat first
floor in a stucco villa, semi-detached, and built at a period when
villas strove to be architectural without attaining beauty. The first
floor consisted of a front sitting-room, looking out upon the alley
of sycamores and the green beyond, and a back bedroom, looking over
gardens and houses, towards the church-tower in the heart of the town.
Provided with a latch-key, Mr. Hayfield admitted his master’s son
to the inner mysteries of the villa, where a lady with a very reedy
voice was singing “Far away,” in the front parlour, while a family
conversation which almost drowned her melody was going on in the back
parlour. Mr. Hayfield’s bedroom candlestick and matches were ready
for him on a Swiss bracket near his door, and his lamp was ready on
a table in his sitting-room, where every object was disposed with a
studied precision which marked at once the confirmed bachelor and
the model lodger. “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” “The Christian Year,”
“Whitaker’s Almanack,” and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” were placed with
mathematical regularity upon the walnut loo table, surrounding a
centrepiece of wax flowers in an alabaster vase under a glass shade.
A smaller table of the nature described as Pembroke was placed
nearer the fire, and on this appeared Mr. Hayfield’s supper-tray, set
forth with a plate of cold roast beef, a glass saucer of Oriental
pickle, cheese, and accompaniments, flanked by an Imperial pint
of Guinness’. A small fire burned brightly in the grate, whose
dimensions had been reduced by a careful adjustment of fire-bricks.
“Sit down, my dear Mr. Harrington, you’ll find that chair very
comfortable. I’ll go and get you the money. My cash-box is in the
next room. Can I tempt you to join me in a plate of cold ribs?
There’s plenty more where that came from. Mrs. Potter has a fine wing
rib every Sunday, from year’s end to year’s end. I generally take my
dinner with her and her family, but I sup alone. A little society
goes a long way with a man of my age. I like my _Lloyd_ and my _News
of the World_ after supper.”
He went into his bedroom, which was approached by folding doors,
and came back again in two minutes with a couple of crisp notes,
the savings of half a year, savings which meant a good deal of
self-denial in a man who, in his own words, wished to live like a
gentleman. The old clerk prided himself upon his good broadcloth,
clean linen, and respectable lodgings; and it was felt in the town
that so respectable a servant enhanced even the respectability of
Dalbrook and Son.
Harrington took the bank-notes with many thanks, and insisted upon
writing a note of hand—albeit the old clerk reminded him that Sunday
was a _dies non_—at the desk where Hayfield wrote his letters and
did any copying work he cared to do after office hours. He stayed
while the old man ate his temperate meal, but would not be persuaded
to share it. Indeed, his lips felt hot and dry, and it seemed to him
as if he should never want to eat again; but he gladly accepted a
tumbler of the refreshing Guinness’ upon the repeated assurance that
there was plenty more where that came from.
* * * * *
There was a rapid thaw on the following morning, so Harrington rode
the black over to the Mount in the twilight after office hours, a
liberty which that high-bred animal resented by taking fright at
every doubtful object in the long leafless avenue beyond the Roman
Amphitheatre.
Trifles which would have been light as air to him, jogging homeward
in company after a long day’s hunting, assumed awful and ghostly
aspects under the combined influences of solitude and want of work.
The twilight ride to the Mount was in fact a series of hairbreadth
escapes, and it would have needed a stronger stimulant than the
Dowager’s wishy-washy tea to restore Mr. Dalbrook’s physical balance,
if his mental balance had not been so thoroughly unhinged as to make
him half unconscious of physical discomfort.
“You look awfully seedy,” said Juliet, as she poured out tea from a
pot that had been standing nearly half an hour.
The Dowager had retired to her own den, where she occupied a great
portion of her life in writing prosy letters to her relatives and
connections of all degrees; but as she never sent them anything else,
this was her only way of maintaining the glow of family feeling.
“The black nearly pulled my fingers off,” replied Harrington. “I
never knew him so fresh.”
“You should have taken it out of him on the downs,” answered Juliet,
rather contemptuously. “The grass is all right after the thaw. Have
you brought me what you so kindly promised?”
He took a sealed envelope out of his breast-pocket and handed it to
her.
“Is this the fifty? How quite too good of you!” she cried, pocketing
it hastily. “You don’t know what a difficulty you have got me out of;
but I’m afraid I may have inconvenienced you.”
This was evidently an afterthought.
“‘Being your slave, what should I do but tend upon the hours and
times of your desire?’” quoted Harrington, with a sentimental air.
“How sweet!” exclaimed Juliet, really touched by his affection; yet
she would rather he had told her that fifty pounds was a sum of no
consequence, and that so small a loan involved no inconvenience for
him.
“I’m afraid his father can hardly be as rich as people think,” she
said to herself, while Harrington relaxed his strained muscles before
the fire.
“How I wish you were not going to Medlow!” he said presently.
“So do I; but I can’t possibly get out of it, and then it’s a blessed
escape to get away from here.”
“Do you really dislike your home?” asked her lover, wondering at this
hitherto unknown characteristic in a young woman.
“I loathe it, and so does my sister, though she pretends to be
domestic and religious and all that kind of thing. Lady Baldwin is
an impossible person, and our housekeeping would disgrace the Union.
If I had not had the _entrée_ of plenty of good houses, and been in
request, I should have been found hanging in one of the attics years
ago.”
This candour gave Harrington an uncomfortably chilly feeling, as if
a damp cold wind had blown over him, and then he told himself that
it would be his privilege to initiate this dear girl in the tranquil
delights of a happy home, which, while modest in its pretensions,
should yet be smart enough to satisfy her superior tastes and
aspirations.
“When do you go?” he asked, preparing to take leave.
“To-morrow. Your kindness has made everything easy to me.”
“Come back as soon as you can, love;” and then there was some
lingering foolishness permissible between engaged lovers, and the
beautiful Miss Baldwin’s head reposed for two or three minutes upon
the articled clerk’s shoulder, while he looked into her eyes and told
her that they were stars to light him on to fame and fortune.
“I hope they’ll show you a short cut,” she said.
He left her cheered by the thought that she was very fond of him; and
so she was, but he was not the first, second, third, or fourth young
man of whom she had been fond, nor was it a new thing to her to be
told that her eyes were guiding stars.