CHAPTER XXV.

“Quem Fors dierum cunque dabit

Lucro appone.”--HORAT.

Lionel stood, expectant, in the centre of the room, and as the two

female forms entered, the lights were full upon their faces. That

younger face--it is she--it is she, the unforgotten--the long-lost.

Instinctively, as if no years had rolled between--as if she were still

the little child, he the boy who had coveted such a sister--he sprang

forward and opened his arms, and as suddenly halted, dropped the

arms to, his side, blushing, confused, abashed. She! that vagrant

child!--she! that form so elegant--that great peeress’s pupil--adopted

daughter, she the poor wandering Sophy! She!--impossible!

But her eyes, at first downcast, are now fixed on him. She, too,

starts--not forward, but in recoil; she, too, raises her arms, not to

open, but to press them to her breast; and she, too, as suddenly checks

an impulse, and stands, like him, blushing, confused, abashed.

“Yes,” said Caroline Montfort, drawing Sophy nearer to her breast, “yes,

you will both forgive me for the surprise. Yes, you do see before you,

grown up to become the pride of those who cherish her, that Sophy who--”

“Sophy!” cried Lionel advancing; “it is so, then! I knew you were no

stroller’s grandchild.”

Sophy drew up: “I am, I am his grandchild, and as proud to be so as I

was then.”

“Pardon me, pardon me; I meant to say that he too was not what he

seemed. You forgive me,” extending his hand, and Sophy’s soft hand fell

into his forgivingly.

“But he lives? is well? is here? is--” Sophy burst into tears, and Lady

Montfort made a sign to Lionel to go into the garden, and leave them.

Reluctantly and dizzily, as one in a dream, he obeyed, leaving the

vagrant’s grandchild to be soothed in the fostering arms of her whom,

an hour or two ago, he knew but by the titles of her rank and the

reputation of her pride.

It was not many minutes before Lady Montfort rejoined him.

“You touched unawares,” said she, “upon the poor child’s most anxious

cause of sorrow. Her grandfather; for whom her affection is so

sensitively keen, has disappeared. I will speak of that later; and if

you wish, you shall be taken into our consultations. But--” she paused,

looked into his face-open, loyal face, face of gentleman--with heart of

man in its eyes, soul of man on its brow; face formed to look up to the

stars which now lighted it--and laying her hand lightly on his shoulder,

resumed with hesitating voice: “but I feel like a culprit in asking

you what, nevertheless, I must ask, as an imperative condition, if

your visits here are to be renewed--if your intimacy here is to be

established. And unless you comply with that condition, come no more; we

cannot confide in each other.”

“Oh, Lady Montfort, impose any condition. I promise beforehand.”

“Not beforehand. The condition is this: inviolable secrecy. You will

not mention to any one your visits here; your introduction to me; your

discovery of the stroller’s grandchild in my adopted daughter.”

“Not to Mr. Darrell?”

“To him least of all; but this I add, it is for Mr. Darrell’s sake that

I insist on such concealment; and I trust the concealment will not be

long protracted.”

“For Mr. Darrell’s sake?”

“For the sake of his happiness,” cried Lady Montfort, clasping her

hands. “My debt to him is larger far than yours; and in thus appealing

to you, I scheme to pay back a part of it. Do you trust me?”

“I do, I do.”

And from that evening Lionel Haughton became the constant visitor in

that house.

Two or three days afterwards Colonel Morley, quitting England for a

German Spa at which he annually recruited himself for a few weeks,

relieved Lionel from the embarrassment of any questions which that

shrewd observer might otherwise have addressed to him. London itself was

now empty. Lionel found a quiet lodging in the vicinity of Twickenham.

And when his foot passed along the shady lane through yon wicket gate

into that region of turf and flowers, he felt as might have felt that

famous Minstrel of Ercildoun, when, blessed with the privilege to enter

Fairyland at will, the Rhymer stole to the grassy hillside, and murmured

the spell that unlocks the gates of Oberon,

BOOK VIII.

CHAPTER I.

“A LITTLE FIRE BURNS UP A GREAT DEAL OF CORN.”--OLD PROVERB.

Guy Darrell resumed the thread of solitary life at Fawley with a calm

which was deeper in its gloom than it had been before. The experiment of

return to the social world had failed. The resolutions which had induced

the experiment were finally renounced. Five years nearer to death,

and the last hope that had flitted across the narrowing passage to the

grave, fallen like a faithless torch from his own hand, and trodden out

by his own foot.

It was peculiarly in the nature of Darrell to connect his objects with

posterity--to regard eminence in the Present but as a beacon-height from

which to pass on to the Future the name he had taken from the Past. All

his early ambition, sacrificing pleasure to toil, had placed its goal

at a distance, remote from the huzzas of bystanders; and Ambition halted

now, baffled and despairing. Childless, his line would perish with

himself--himself, who had so vaunted its restoration in the land! His

genius was childless also--it would leave behind it no offspring of the

brain. By toil he had amassed ample wealth; by talent he had achieved a

splendid reputation. But the reputation was as perishable as the wealth.

Let a half-century pass over his tomb, and nothing would be left to

speak of the successful lawyer the applauded orator, save traditional

anecdotes, a laudatory notice in contemporaneous memoirs--perhaps, at

most, quotations of eloquent sentences lavished on forgotten cases

and obsolete debates--shreds and fragments of a great intellect, which

another half-century would sink without a bubble into the depths of

Time. He had enacted no laws--he had administered no state--he had

composed no books. Like the figure on a clock, which adorns the case

and has no connection with the movement, he, so prominent an ornament

to time, had no part in its works. Removed, the eye would miss him for

a while; but a nation’s literature or history was the same, whether

with him or without. Some with a tithe of his abilities have the luck to

fasten their names to things that endure; they have been responsible for

measures they did not not invent, and which, for good or evil, influence

long generations. They have written volumes out of which a couplet of

verse, a period in prose, may cling to the rock of ages, as a shell

that survives a deluge. But the orator, whose effects are immediate--who

enthralls his audience in proportion as he nicks the hour--who, were he

speaking like Burke what, apart from the subject-matter, closet students

would praise, must, like Burke, thin his audience, and exchange present

oratorical success for ultimate intellectual renown--a man, in short,

whose oratory is emphatically that of the DEBATER is, like an actor,

rewarded with a loud applause and a complete oblivion. Waife on the

village stage might win applause no less loud, followed by oblivion not

more complete.

Darrell was not blind to the brevity of his fame. In his previous

seclusion he had been resigned to that conviction--now it saddened him.

Then, unconfessed by himself, the idea that he might yet reappear in

active life, and do something which the world would not willingly let

die, had softened the face of that tranquil Nature from which he must

soon now pass out of reach and sight. On the tree of Time he was a leaf

already sear upon the bough--not an inscription graven into the rind.

Ever slow to yield to weak regrets--ever seeking to combat his own

enemies within--Darrell said to himself one night, while Fairthorn’s

flute was breathing an air of romance through the melancholy walls: “Is

it too late yet to employ this still busy brain upon works that will

live when I am dust, and make Posterity supply the heir that fails to my

house?”

He shut himself up with immortal authors--he meditated on the choice of

a theme; his knowledge was wide, his taste refined;--words!--he could

not want words! Why should he not write? Alas; why indeed?--He who has

never been a writer in his youth, can no more be a writer in his age

than he can be a painter--a musician. What! not write a book! Oh,

yes--as he may paint a picture or set a song. But a writer, in the

emphatic sense of the word--a writer as Darrell was an orator--oh,

no! And, least of all, will he be a writer if he has been an orator

by impulse and habit--an orator too happily gifted to require, and

too laboriously occupied to resort to, the tedious aids of written

preparation--an orator as modern life forms orators--not, of course, an

orator like those of the classic world, who elaborated sentences

before delivery, and who, after delivery, polished each extemporaneous

interlude into rhetorical exactitude and musical perfection. And how

narrow the range of compositions to a man burdened already by a grave

reputation! He cannot have the self-abandonment--he cannot venture the

headlong charge--with which Youth flings the reins to genius, and dashes

into the ranks of Fame. Few and austere his themes--fastidious and

hesitating his taste. Restricted are the movements of him who walks

for the first time into the Forum of Letters with the purple hem on his

senatorial toga. Guy Darrell, at his age, entering among authors as

a novice!--he, the great lawyer, to whom attorneys would have sent no

briefs had he been suspected of coquetting with a muse,--he, the great

orator who had electrified audiences in proportion to the sudden effects

which distinguish oral inspiration from written eloquence--he achieve

now, in an art which his whole life had neglected, any success

commensurate to his contemporaneous repute;--how unlikely! But a success

which should outlive that repute, win the “everlasting inheritance”

which could alone have nerved him to adequate effort--how impossible!

He could not himself comprehend why, never at a loss for language

felicitously opposite or richly ornate when it had but to flow from his

thought to his tongue, nor wanting ease, even eloquence, in epistolary

correspondence confidentially familiar--he should find words fail ideas,

and ideas fail words, the moment his pen became a wand that conjured up

the Ghost of the dread Public! The more copious his thoughts, the more

embarrassing their selection; the more exquisite his perception of

excellence in others, the more timidly frigid his efforts at faultless

style. It would be the same with the most skilful author, if the Ghost

of the Public had not long since ceased to haunt him. While he writes,

the true author’s solitude is absolute or peopled at his will. But

take an audience from an orator, what is he? He commands the living

public--the Ghost of the Public awes himself.

“Surely once,” sighed Darrell, as he gave his blurred pages to the

flames--“surely once I had some pittance of the author’s talent, and

have spent it upon lawsuits!”

The author’s talent, no doubt, Guy Darrell once had--the author’s

temperament never. What is the author’s temperament? Too long a task to

define. But without it a man may write a clever book, a useful book, a

book that may live a year, ten years, fifty years. He will not stand

out to distant ages a representative of the age that rather lived in

him than he in it. The author’s temperament is that which makes him an

integral, earnest, original unity, distinct from all before and all

that may succeed him. And as a Father of the Church has said that

the consciousness of individual being is the sign of immortality,

not granted to the inferior creatures--so it is in this individual

temperament one and indivisible, and in the intense conviction of it,

more than in all the works it may throw off, that the author becomes

immortal. Nay, his works may perish like those of Orpheus or Pythagoras;

but he himself, in his name, in the footprint of his being, remains,

like Orpheus or Pythagoras, undestroyed, indestructible.

Resigning literature, the Solitary returned to Science. There he was

more at home. He had cultivated science, in his dazzling academical

career, with ardour and success; he had renewed the study, on his first

retirement to Fawley, as a distraction from tormenting memories or

unextin guished passions. He now for the first time regarded the

absorbing abstruse occupation as a possible source of fame. To be one in

the starry procession of those sons of light who have solved a new law

in the statute-book of heaven! Surely a grand ambition, not unbecoming

to his years and station, and pleasant in its labours to a man who loved

Nature’s outward scenery with poetic passion, and had studied her inward

mysteries with a sage’s minute research. Science needs not the author’s

art--she rejects its gracess--he recoils with a shudder from its

fancies. But Science requires in the mind of the discoverer a limpid

calm. The lightnings that reveal Diespiter must flash in serene skies.

No clouds store that thunder

“Quo bruta tellus, et vaga flumina,

Quo Styx, et invisi horrida Taenari

Sedes, Atlanteusque finis

Concutitur!”

So long as you take science only as a distraction, science will not lead

you to discovery. And from some cause or other, Guy Darrell was more

unquiet and perturbed in his present than in his past seclusion.

Science this time failed even to distract. In the midst of august

meditations--of close experiment--some haunting angry thought from the

far world passed with rude shadow between Intellect and Truth--the heart

eclipsed the mind. The fact is, that Darrell’s genius was essentially

formed for Action. His was the true orator’s temperament, with the

qualities that belong to it--the grasp of affairs--the comprehension

of men and states--the constructive, administrative faculties. In

such career, and in such career alone, could he have developed all his

powers, and achieved an imperishable name. Gradually as science lost its

interest, he retreated from all his former occupations, and would wander

for long hours over the wild unpopulated landscapes round him. As if it

were his object to fatigue the body, and in that fatigue tire out

the restless brain, he would make his gun the excuse for rambles from

sunrise to twilight over the manors he had purchased years ago, lying

many miles off from Fawley. There are times when a man who has passed

his life in cultivating his mind finds that the more he can make the

physical existence predominate, the more he can lower himself to the

rude vigour of the gamekeeper, or his day-labourer--why, the more he can

harden his nerves to support the weight of his reflections.

In these rambles he was not always alone. Fairthorn contrived to

insinuate himself much more than formerly into his master’s habitual

companionship. The faithful fellow had missed Darrell so sorely in that

long unbroken absence of five years, that on recovering him, Fairthorn

seemed resolved to make up for lost time. Departing from his own habits,

he would, therefore, lie in wait for Guy Darrell--creeping out of a

bramble or bush, like a familiar sprite; and was no longer to be awed

away by a curt syllable or a contracted brow. And Darrell, at first

submitting reluctantly, and out of compassionate kindness to the

flute-player’s obtrusive society, became by degrees to welcome and relax

in it. Fairthorn knew the great secrets of his life. To Fairthorn alone

on all earth could he speak with out reserve of one name and of one

sorrow. Speaking to Fairthorn was like talking to himself, or to his

pointers, or to his favourite doe, upon which last he bestowed a new

collar, with an inscription that implied more of the true cause that had

driven him a second time to the shades of Fawley than he would have let

out to Alban Morley or even to Lionel Haughton. Alban was too old for

that confidence--Lionel much too young. But the Musician, like Art

itself, was of no age; and if ever the gloomy master unbent his outward

moodiness and secret spleen in any approach to gaiety, it was in a

sort of saturnine playfulness to this grotesque, grown-up infant. They

cheered each other, and they teased each other. Stalking side by side

over the ridged fallows, Darrell would sometimes pour forth his whole

soul, as a poet does to his muse; and at Fairthorn’s abrupt interruption

or rejoinder, turn round on him with fierce objurgation or withering

sarcasm, or what the flute-player abhorred more than all else, a

truculent quotation from Horace, which drove Fairthorn away into some

vanishing covert or hollow, out of which Darrell had to entice him, sure

that, in return, Fairthorn would take a sly occasion to send into his

side a vindictive prickle. But as the two came home in the starlight,

the dogs dead beat and poor Fairthorn too,--ten to one but what the

musician was leaning all his weight on his master’s nervous arm, and

Darrell was looking with tender kindness in the face of the SOMEONE left

to lean upon him still.

One evening, as they were sitting together in the library, the two

hermits, each in his corner, and after a long silence, the flute-player

said abruptly

“I have been thinking--”

“Thinking!” quoth Darrell, with his mechanical irony; “I am sorry for

you. Try not to do so again.”

FAIRTHORN.--“Your poor dear father--”

DARRELL (wincing, startled, and expectant of a prickle).--“Eh? my

father--”

FAIRTHORN.--“Was a great antiquary. How it would have pleased him could

he have left a fine collection of antiquities as an heirloom to the

nation!--his name thus preserved for ages, and connected with the

studies of his life. There are the Elgin Marbles. The parson was talking

to me yesterday of a new Vernon Gallery; why not in the British Museum

an everlasting Darrell room? Plenty to stock it mouldering yonder in the

chambers which you will never finish.”

“My dear Dick,” Said Darrell, starting up, “give me your hand. What a

brilliant thought! I could do nothing else to preserve my dear father’s

name. Eureka! You are right. Set the carpenters at work to-morrow.

Remove the boards; open the chambers; we will inspect their stores, and

select what would worthily furnish ‘A Darrell Room.’ Perish Guy Darrell

the lawyer! Philip Darrell the antiquary at least shall live!”

It is marvellous with what charm Fairthorn’s lucky idea seized upon

Darrell’s mind. The whole of the next day he spent in the forlorn

skeleton of the unfinished mansion slowly decaying beside his small and

homely dwelling. The pictures, many of which were the rarest originals

in early Flemish and Italian art, were dusted with tender care, and hung

from hasty nails upon the bare ghastly walls. Delicate ivory carvings,

wrought by the matchless hand of Cellini-early Florentine bronzes,

priceless specimens of Raffaele ware and Venetian glass--the precious

trifles, in short, which the collector of mediaeval curiosities amasses

for his heirs to disperse amongst the palaces of kings and the cabinets

of nations--were dragged again to unfamiliar light. The invaded

sepulchral building seemed a very Pompeii of the _Cinque Cento_.

To examine, arrange, methodise, select for national purposes, such

miscellaneous treasures would be the work of weeks. For easier access,

Darrell caused a slight hasty passage to be thrown over the gap between

the two edifices. It ran from the room nicked into the gables of the old

house, which, originally fitted up for scientific studies, now became

his habitual apartment, into the largest of the uncompleted chambers

which had been designed for the grand reception-gallery of the new

building. Into the pompous gallery thus made contiguous to his monk-like

cell, he gradually gathered the choicest specimens of his collection.

The damps were expelled by fires on grateless hearthstones; sunshine

admitted from windows now for the first time exchanging boards for

glass; rough iron sconces, made at the nearest forge, were thrust into

the walls, and sometimes lighted at night-Darrell and Fairthorn walking

arm-in-arm along the unpolished floors, in company with Holbein’s

Nobles, Perugino’s Virgins. Some of that highbred company displaced

and banished the next day, as repeated inspection made the taste

more rigidly exclusive. Darrell had found object, amusement,

occupation--frivolous if Compared with those lenses, and glasses, and

algebraical scrawls which had once whiled lonely hours in the attic-room

hard by; but not frivolous even to the judgment of the austerest sage,

if that sage had not reasoned away his heart. For here it was not

Darrell’s taste that was delighted; it was Darrell’s heart that, ever

hungry, had found food. His heart was connecting those long-neglected

memorials of an ambition baffled and relinquished--here with a nation,

there with his father’s grave! How his eyes sparkled! how his lip

smiled! Nobody would have guessed it--none of us know each other; least

of all do we know the interior being of those whom we estimate by public

repute;--but what a world of simple, fond affection lay coiled and

wasted in that proud man’s solitary breast!

CHAPTER II.

THE LEARNED COMPUTE THAT SEVEN HUNDRED AND SEVEN MILLIONS OF

MILLIONS OF VIBRATIONS HAVE PENETRATED THE EYE BEFORE THE EYE CAN

DISTINGUISH THE TINTS OF A VIOLET. WHAT PHILOSOPHY CAN CALCULATE

THE VIBRATIONS OF THE HEART BEFORE IT CAN DISTINGUISH THE COLOURS OF

LOVE?

While Guy Darrell thus passed his hours within the unfinished fragments

of a dwelling builded for posterity, and amongst the still relics of

remote generations, Love and Youth were weaving their warm eternal idyll

on the sunny lawns by the gliding river.

There they are, Love and Youth, Lionel and Sophy, in the arbour round

which her slight hands have twined the honeysuckle, fond imitation of

that bower endeared by the memory of her earliest holiday--she seated

coyly, he on the ground at her feet, as when Titania had watched his

sleep. He has been reading to her, the book has fallen from his hand.

What book? That volume of poems so unintelligibly obscure to all but the

dreaming young, who are so unintelligibly obscure to themselves. But to

the merit of those poems, I doubt if even George did justice. It is not

true, I believe, that they are not durable. Some day or other, when all

the jargon so feelingly denounced by Colonel Morley about “esthetics,”

and “objective,” and “subjective,” has gone to its long home, some

critic who can write English will probably bring that poor little volume

fairly before the public; and, with all its manifold faults, it will

take a place in the affections, not of one single generation of the

young, but--everlasting, ever-dreaming, ever-growing youth. But you and

I, reader, have no other interest in these poems, except this--that

they were written by the brother-in-law of that whimsical, miserly Frank

Vance, who perhaps, but for such a brother-in-law, would never have gone

through the labour by which he has cultivated the genius that achieved

his fame; and if he had not cultivated that genius, he might never

have known Lionel; and if he had never known Lionel, Lionel might never

perhaps have gone to the Surrey village, in which he saw the Phenomenon:

And, to push farther still that Voltaireian philosophy of ifs--if either

Lionel or Frank Vance had not been so intimately associated in the minds

of Sophy and Lionel with the golden holiday on the beautiful river,

Sophy and Lionel might not have thought so much of those poems; and if

they had not thought so much of those poems, there might not have been

between them that link of poetry without which the love of two young

people is a sentiment, always very pretty it is true, but much too

commonplace to deserve special commemoration in a work so uncommonly

long as this is likely to be. And thus it is clear that Frank Vance is

not a superfluous and episodical personage amongst the characters of

this history, but, however indirectly, still essentially, one of those

beings without whom the author must have given a very different answer

to the question, “What will he do with it?”

Return we to Lionel and Sophy. The poems have brought their hearts

nearer and nearer together. And when the book fell from Lionel’s hand,

Sophy knew that his eyes were on her face, and her own eyes looked away.

And the silence was so deep and so sweet! Neither had yet said to the

other a word of love. And in that silence both felt that they loved and

were beloved. Sophy! how childlike she looked still! How little she is

changed!--except that the soft blue eyes are far more pensive, and that

her merry laugh is now never heard. In that luxurious home, fostered

with the tenderest care by its charming owner, the romance of her

childhood realised, and Lionel by her side, she misses the old crippled

vagrant. And therefore it is that her merry laugh is no longer heard!

“Ah!” said Lionel, softly breaking the pause at length, “do not turn

your eyes from me, or I shall think that there are tears in them!”

Sophy’s breast heaved, but her eyes were averted still. Lionel rose

gently, and came to the other side of her quiet form. “Fie! there are

tears, and you would hide them from me. Ungrateful!”

Sophy looked at him now with candid, inexpressible, guileless affection

in those swimming eyes, and said with touching sweetness: “Ungrateful!

Should I not be so if I were gay and happy?”

And in self-reproach for not being sufficiently unhappy while that young

consoler was by her side, she too rose, left the arbour, and looked

wistfully along the river. George Morley was expected; he might bring

tidings of the absent. And now while Lionel, rejoining her, exerts all

his eloquence to allay her anxiety and encourage her hopes, and while

they thus, in that divinest stage of love, ere the tongue repeats

what the eyes have told, glide along-here in sunlight by lingering

flowers--there in shadow under mournful willows, whose leaves are ever

the latest to fall, let us explain by what links of circumstance Sophy

became the great lady’s guest, and Waife once more a homeless wanderer.

CHAPTER III.

COMPRISING MANY NEEDFUL EXPLANATIONS ILLUSTRATIVE OF WISE SAWS; AS

FOR EXAMPLE, “HE THAT HATH AN ILL NAME IS HALF HANGED.” “HE THAT

HATH BEEN BITTEN BY A SERPENT IS AFRAID OF A ROPE.” “HE THAT LOOKS

FOR A STAR PUTS OUT HIS CANDLES;” AND, “WHEN GOD WILLS, ALL WINDS

BRING RAIN.”

The reader has been already made aware how, by an impulse of womanhood

and humanity, Arabella Crane had been converted from a persecuting into

a tutelary agent in the destinies of Waife and Sophy. That evolution

in her moral being dated from the evening on which she had sought the

cripple’s retreat, to warn him of Jasper’s designs. We have seen by

what stratagem she had made it appear that Waife and his grandchild had

sailed beyond the reach of molestation; with what liberality she had

advanced the money that freed Sophy from the manager’s claim; and how

considerately she had empowered her agent to give the reference which

secured to Waife the asylum in which we last beheld him. In a few stern

sentences she had acquainted Waife with her fearless inflexible resolve

to associate her fate henceforth with the life of his lawless son; and,

by rendering abortive all his evil projects of plunder, to compel him

at last to depend upon her for an existence neither unsafe nor sordid,

provided only that it were not dishonest. The moment that she revealed

that design, Waife’s trust in her was won. His own heart enabled him to

comprehend the effect produced upon a character otherwise unamiable and

rugged, by the grandeur of self-immolation and the absorption of one

devoted heroic thought. In the strength and bitterness of passion which

thus pledged her existence to redeem another’s, he obtained the key to

her vehement and jealous nature; saw why she had been so cruel to the

child of a rival; why she had conceived compassion for that child in

proportion as the father’s unnatural indifference had quenched the anger

of her own self-love; and, above all, why, as the idea of reclaiming and

appropriating solely to herself the man who, for good or for evil, had

grown into the all-predominant object of her life, gained more and

more the mastery over her mind, it expelled the lesser and the baser

passions, and the old mean revenge against an infant faded away before

the light of that awakening conscience which is often rekindled from

ashes by the sparks of a single better and worthier thought. And in the

resolute design to reclaim Jasper Losely, Arabella came at once to a

ground in common with his father, with his child. Oh what, too, would

the old man owe to her, what would be his gratitude, his joy, if she not

only guarded his spotless Sophy, but saved from the bottomless abyss

his guilty son! Thus when Arabella Crane had, nearly five years before,

sought Waife’s discovered hiding-place, near the old bloodstained

Tower, mutual interests and sympathies had formed between them a bond

of alliance not the less strong because rather tacitly acknowledged than

openly expressed. Arabella had written to Waife from the Continent, for

the first half-year pretty often, and somewhat sanguinely, as to the

chance of Losely’s ultimate reformation. Then the intervals of silence

became gradually more prolonged, and the letters more brief. But still,

whether from the wish not unnecessarily to pain the old man, or, as

would be more natural to her character, which, even in its best aspects,

was not gentle, from a proud dislike to confess failure, she said

nothing of the evil courses which Jasper had renewed. Evidently she was

always near him. Evidently, by some means or another, his life, furtive

and dark, was ever under the glare of her watchful eyes.

Meanwhile Sophy had been presented to Caroline Montfort. As Waife had so

fondly anticipated, the lone childless lady had taken with kindness and

interest to the fair motherless child. Left to herself often for months

together in the grand forlorn house, Caroline soon found an object to

her pensive walks in the basket-maker’s cottage. Sophy’s charming face

and charming ways stole more and more into affections which were denied

all nourishment at home. She entered into Waife’s desire to improve, by

education, so exquisite a nature; and, familiarity growing by degrees,

Sophy was at length coaxed up to the great house; and during the hours

which Waife devoted to his rambles (for even in his settled industry

he could not conquer his vagrant tastes, but would weave his reeds or

osiers as he sauntered through solitudes of turf or wood), became the

docile delighted pupil in the simple chintz room which Lady Montfort had

reclaimed from the desert of her surrounding palace. Lady Montfort was

not of a curious turn of mind; profoundly indifferent even to the gossip

of drawing-rooms, she had no rankling desire to know the secrets

of village hearthstones. Little acquainted even with the great

world--scarcely at all with any world below that in which she had her

being, save as she approached humble sorrows by delicate charity--the

contrast between Waife’s calling and his conversation roused in her no

vigilant suspicions. A man of some education, and born in a rank that

touched upon the order of gentlemen, but of no practical or professional

culture--with whimsical tastes--with roving eccentric habits--had, in

the course of life, picked up much harmless wisdom, but, perhaps from

want of worldly prudence, failed of fortune. Contented with an obscure

retreat and a humble livelihood, he might naturally be loth to confide

to others the painful history of a descent in life. He might have

relations in a higher sphere, whom the confession would shame; he might

be silent in the manly pride which shrinks from alms and pity and a tale

of fall. Nay, grant the worst--grant that Waife had suffered in repute

as well as fortune--grant that his character had been tarnished by some

plausible circumstantial evidences which he could not explain away

to the satisfaction of friends or the acquittal of a short-sighted

world--had there not been, were there not always, many innocent men

similarly afflicted? And who could hear Waife talk, or look on his arch

smile, and not feel that he was innocent? So, at least, thought Caroline

Montfort. Naturally; for if, in her essentially woman-like character,

there was one all-pervading and all-predominant attribute, it was PITY.

Lead Fate placed her under circumstances fitted to ripen into genial

development all her exquisite forces of soul, her true post in this life

would have been that of the SOOTHER. What a child to some grief-worn

father! What a wife to some toiling, aspiring, sensitive man of genius!

What a mother to some suffering child! It seemed as if it were necessary

to her to have something to compassionate and foster. She was sad when

there was no one to comfort; but her smile was like a sunbeam from Eden

when it chanced on a sorrow it could brighten away. Out of this very

sympathy came her faults--faults of reasoning and judgment. Prudent in

her own chilling path through what the world calls temptations, because

so ineffably pure--because, to Fashion’s light tempters, her very

thought was as closed, as

“Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave,”

was the ear of Sabrina to the comrades of Comus,--yet place before her

some gentle scheme that seemed fraught with a blessing for others,

and straightway her fancy embraced it, prudence faded--she saw not the

obstacles, weighed not the chances against it. Charity to her did not

come alone, but with its sister twins, Hope and Faith.

Thus, benignly for the old man and the fair child, years rolled on till

Lord Montfort’s sudden death, and his widow was called upon to exchange

Montfort Court (which passed to the new heir) for the distant jointure

House of Twickenham. By this time she had grown so attached to Sophy,

and Sophy so gratefully fond of her, that she proposed to Waife to take

his sweet grandchild as her permanent companion, complete her education,

and assure her future. This had been the old man’s cherished day-dream;

but he had not contemplated its realisation until he himself were in

the grave. He turned pale, he staggered, when the proposal which would

separate him from his grandchild was first brought before him. But he

recovered ere Lady Montfort could be aware of the acuteness of the pang

she inflicted, and accepted the generous offer with warm protestations

of joy and gratitude. But Sophy! Sophy consent to leave her grandfather

afar and aged in his solitary cottage! Little did either of them know

Sophy, with her soft heart and determined soul, if they supposed such

egotism possible in her. Waife insisted--Waife was angry--Waife was

authoritative--Waife was imploring--Waife was pathetic--all in vain!

But to close every argument, the girl went boldly to Lady Montfort,

and said: “If I left him, his heart would break--never ask it.” Lady

Montfort kissed Sophy tenderly as mother ever kissed a child for some

sweet loving trait of a noble nature, and said simply “But he shall not

be left--he shall come too.”

She offered Waife rooms in her Twickenham house--she wished to collect

books--he should be librarian. The old man shivered and refused--refused

firmly. He had made a vow not to be a guest in any house. Finally,

the matter was compromised; Waife would remove to the neighbourhood of

Twickenham; there hire a cottage; there ply his art; and Sophy, living

with him, should spend part of each day with Lady Montfort as now.

So it was resolved. Waife consented to occupy a small house on the verge

of the grounds belonging to the jointure villa, on the condition of

paying rent for it. And George Morley insisted on the privilege of

preparing that house for his old teacher’s reception, leaving it simple

and rustic to outward appearance, but fitting its pleasant chambers with

all that his knowledge of the old man’s tastes and habits suggested

for comfort or humble luxury; a room for Sophy, hung with the prettiest

paper, all butterflies and flowers, commanding a view of the river.

Waife, despite his proud scruples, could not refuse such gifts from a

man whose fortune and career had been secured by his artful lessons.

Indeed, he had already permitted George to assist, though not largely,

his own efforts to repay the L100 advanced by Mrs. Crane. The years

he had devoted to a craft which his ingenuity made lucrative, had just

enabled the basketmaker, with his pupil’s aid, to clear off that debt

by instalments. He had the satisfaction of thinking that it was his

industry that had replaced the sum to which his grandchild owed her

release from the execrable Rugge.

Lady Montfort’s departure (which preceded Waife’s by some weeks) was

more mourned by the poor in her immediate neighbourhood than by the

wealthier families who composed what a province calls its society; and

the gloom which that event cast over the little village round the kingly

mansion was increased when Waife and his grandchild left.

For the last three years, emboldened by Lady Montfort’s protection,

and the conviction that he was no longer pursued or spied, the old

man relaxed his earlier reserved and secluded habits. Constitutionally

sociable, he had made acquaintance with his humbler neighbours; lounged

by their cottage palings in his rambles down the lanes; diverted their

children with Sir Isaac’s tricks, or regaled them with nuts and apples

from his little orchard; giving to the more diligent labourers many

a valuable hint how to eke out the daily wage with garden produce, or

bees, or poultry; doctored farmer’s cows; and even won the heart of the

stud-groom by a mysterious sedative ball, which had reduced to serene

docility a highly nervous and hitherto unmanageable four-year-old.

Sophy had been no less popular. No one grudged her the favour of Lady

Montfort--no one wondered at it. They were loved and honoured. Perhaps

the happiest years Waife had known since his young wife left the earth

were passed in the hamlet which he fancied her shade haunted; for was

it not there--there, in that cottage--there, in sight of those green

osiers, that her first modest virgin replies to his letters of love and

hope that soothed his confinement and animated him--till then little

fond of sedentary toils--to the very industry which, learned in sport,

now gave subsistence, and secured a home. To that home persecution had

not come--gossip had not pryed into its calm seclusion--even chance,

when threatening disclosure, had seemed to pass by innocuous. For

once--a year or so before he left--an incident had occurred which

alarmed him at the time, but led to no annoying results. The banks of

the great sheet of water in Montfort Park were occasionally made the

scene of rural picnics by the families of neighbouring farmers or

tradesmen. One day Waife, while carelessly fashioning his baskets on his

favourite spot, was recognised, on the opposite margin, by a party of

such holiday-makers to whom he himself had paid no attention. He was

told the next day by the landlady of the village inn, the main chimney

of which he had undertaken to cure of smoking, that a “lady” in the

picnic symposium of the day before had asked many questions about him

and his grandchild, and had seemed pleased to hear they were both so

comfortably settled. The “lady” had been accompanied by another “lady,”

and by two or three young gentlemen. They had arrived in a “buss,” which

they had hired for the occasion. They had come from Humberston the

day after those famous races which annually filled Humberston with

strangers--the time of year in which Rugge’s grand theatrical exhibition

delighted that ancient town. From the description of the two ladies

Waife suspected that they belonged to Rugge’s company.

But they had not claimed Waife as a ci-devant comrade; they had not

spoken of Sophy as the Phenomenon or the Fugitive. No molestation

followed this event; and, after all, the Remorseless Baron had no longer

any claim to the Persecuted Bandit or to Juliet Araminta.

But the ex-comedian is gone from the osiers--the hamlet. He is in his

new retreat by the lordly river--within an hour of the smoke and roar of

tumultuous London. He tries to look cheerful and happy, but his repose

is troubled--his heart is anxious. Ever since Sophy, on his account,

refused the offer which would have transferred her, not for a few daily

hours, but for habitual life, from a basketmaker’s roof to all the

elegancies and refinements of a sphere in which, if freed from him,

her charms and virtues might win her some such alliance as seemed

impossible, while he was thus dragging her down to his own level,--ever

since that day the old man had said to himself, “I live too long.” While

Sophy was by his side he appeared busy at his work and merry in his

humour; the moment she left him for Lady Montfort’s house, the work

dropped from his hands, and he sank into moody thought.

Waife had written to Mrs. Crane (her address then was at Paris) on

removing to Twickenhain, and begged her to warn him should Jasper

meditate a return to England, by a letter directed to him at the General

Post-office, London. Despite his later trust in Mrs. Crane, he did not

deem it safe to confide to her Lady Montfort’s offer to Sophy, or the

affectionate nature of that lady’s intimacy with the girl now grown into

womanhood. With that insight into the human heart, which was in him not

so habitually clear and steadfast as to be always useful, but at times

singularly if erratically lucid, he could not feel assured that Arabella

Crane’s ancient hate to Sophy (which, lessening in proportion to the

girl’s destitution, had only ceased when the stern woman felt, with a

sentiment bordering on revenge, that it was to her that Sophy owed an

asylum obscure and humble) might not revive, if she learned that

the child of a detested rival was raised above the necessity of her

protection, and brought within view of that station so much Loftier than

her own, from which she had once rejoiced to know that the offspring of

a marriage which had darkened her life was excluded. For indeed it had

been only on Waife’s promise that he would not repeat the attempt that

had proved so abortive, to enforce Sophy’s claim on Guy Darrell, that

Arabella Crane had in the first instance resigned the child to his care.

His care--his--an attainted outcast! As long as Arabella Crane could see

in Sophy but an object of compassion, she might haughtily protect her;

but, could Sophy become an object of envy, would that protection last?

No, he did not venture to confide in Mrs. Crane further than to say

that he and Sophy had removed from Montfort village to the vicinity of

London. Time enough to say more when Mrs. Crane returned to England; and

then, not by letter, but in personal interview.

Once a month the old man went to London to inquire at the General

Post-office for any communications his correspondent might there address

to him. Only once, however, had he heard from Mrs. Crane since the

announcement of his migration, and her note of reply was extremely

brief, until in the fatal month of June, when Guy Darrell and Jasper

Losely had alike returned, and on the same day, to the metropolis;

and then the old man received from her a letter which occasioned him

profound alarm. It apprised him not only that his terrible son was in

England--in London; but that Jasper had discovered that the persons

embarked for America were not the veritable Waife and Sophy whose names

they had assumed. Mrs. Crane ended with these ominous words: “It is

right to say now that he has descended deeper and deeper. Could you

see him, you would wonder that I neither abandon him nor my resolve.

He hates me worse than the gibbet. To me and not to the gibbet he shall

pass--fitting punishment to both. I am in London, not in my old house,

but near him. His confidant is my hireling. His life and his projects

are clear to my eyes--clear as if he dwelt in glass. Sophy is now of

an age in which, were she placed in the care of some person whose

respectability could not be impunged, she could not be legally forced

away against her will; but if under your roof, those whom Jasper has

induced to institute a search, that he has no means to institute very

actively himself, might make statements which (as you are already aware)

might persuade others, though well-meaning, to assist him in separating

her from you. He might publicly face even a police-court, if he thus

hoped to shame the rich man into buying off an intolerable scandal.

He might, in the first instance, and more probably, decoy her into

his power through stealth; and what might become of her before she

was recovered? Separate yourself from her for a time. It is you,

notwithstanding your arts of disguise, that can be the more easily

tracked. She, now almost a woman, will have grown out of recognition.

Place her in some secure asylum until, at least, you hear from me

again.”

Waife read and re-read this epistle (to which there was no direction

that enabled him to reply) in the private room of a little coffee-house

to which he had retired from the gaze and pressure of the street. The

determination he had long brooded over now began to take shape--to be

hurried on to prompt decision. On recovering his first shock, he formed

and matured his plans. That same evening he saw Lady Montfort. He felt

that the time had come when, for Sophy’s sake, he must lift the veil

from the obloquy on his own name. To guard against the same concession

to Jasper’s authority that had betrayed her at Gatesboro’, it was

necessary that he should explain the mystery of Sophy’s parentage and

position to Lady Montfort, and go through the anguish of denouncing his

own son as the last person to whose hands she should be consigned. He

approached this subject not only with a sense of profound humiliation,

but with no unreasonable fear lest Lady Montfort might at once decline

a charge which would possibly subject her retirement to a harassing

invasion. But, to his surprise as well as relief, no sooner had he named

Sophy’s parentage than Lady Montfort evinced emotions of a joy which

cast into the shade all more painful or discreditable associations.

“Henceforth, believe me,” she said, “your Sophy shall be my own child,

my own treasured darling!--no humble companion--my equal as well as my

charge. Fear not that any one shall tear her from me. You are right

in thinking that my roof should be her home--that she should have the

rearing and the station which she is entitled as well as fitted to

adorn. But you must not part from her. I have listened to your tale;

my experience of you supplies the defence you suppress--it reverses the

judgment which has aspersed you. And more ardently than before, I

press on you a refuge in the Home that will shelter your grandchild.”

Noble-hearted woman! and nobler for her ignorance of the practical

world, in the proposal which would have blistered with scorching blushes

the cheek of that Personification of all “Solemn Plausibilities,” the

House of Vipont! Gentleman Waife was not scamp enough to profit by

the ignorance which sprang from generous virtue. But, repressing all

argument, and appearing to acquiesce in the possibility of such an

arrangement, he left her benevolent delight unsaddened--and before the

morning he was gone. Gone in stealth, and by the starlight, as he had

gone years ago from the bailiff’s cottage-gone, for Sophy, in waking, to

find, as she had found before, farewell lines, that commended hope and

forbade grief. “It was,” he wrote, “for both their sakes that he had

set out on a tour of pleasant adventure. He needed it; he had felt his

spirits droop of late in so humdrum and settled a life. And there

was danger abroad--danger that his brief absence would remove. He had

confided all his secrets to Lady Montfort; she must look on that kind

lady as her sole guardian till he return--as return he surely would; and

then they would live happy ever afterwards as in fairy tales. He should

never forgive her if she were silly enough to fret for him. He should

not be alone; Sir Isaac would take care of him. He was not without

plenty of money-savings of several months; if he wanted more, he would

apply to George Morley. He would write to her occasionally; but she must

not expect frequent letters; he might be away for months--what did that

signify? He was old enough to take care of himself; she was no longer a

child to cry her eyes out if she lost a senseless toy, or a stupid old

cripple. She was a young lady, and he expected to find her a famous

scholar when he returned.” And so, with all flourish and bravado, and

suppressing every attempt at pathos, the old man went his way, and

Sophy, hurrying to Lady Montfort’s, weeping, distracted, imploring her

to send in all directions to discover and bring back the fugitive, was

there detained a captive guest. But Waife left a letter also for Lady

Montfort, cautioning and adjuring her, as she valued Sophy’s safety from

the scandal of Jasper’s claim, not to make any imprudent attempts to

discover him. Such attempt would only create the very publicity from the

chance of which he was seeking to escape. The necessity of this caution

was so obvious that Lady Montfort could only send her most confidential

servant to inquire guardedly in the neighbourhood, until she had

summoned George Morley from Humberston, and taken him into counsel.

Waife had permitted her to relate to him, on strict promise of secrecy,

the tale he had confided to her. George entered with the deepest

sympathy into Sophy’s distress; but he made her comprehend the

indiscretion and peril of any noisy researches. He promised that he

himself would spare no pains to ascertain the old man’s hiding-place,

and see, at least, if he could not be persuaded either to return or

suffer her to join him, that he was not left destitute and comfortless.

Nor was this an idle promise. George, though his inquiries were

unceasing, crippled by the restraint imposed on them, was so acute in

divining, and so active in following up each clue to the wanderer’s

artful doublings, that more than once he had actually come upon the

track, and found the very spot where Waife or Sir Isaac had been seen a

few days before. Still, up to the day on which Morley had last reported

progress, the ingenious ex-actor, fertile in all resources of stratagem

and disguise, had baffled his research. At first, however, Waife had

greatly relieved the minds of these anxious friends, and cheered even

Sophy’s heavy heart, by letters, gay though brief. These letters having,

by their postmarks, led to his trace, he had stated, in apparent anger,

that reason for discontinuing them. And for the last six weeks no

line from him had been received. In fact, the old man, on resolving

to consummate his self-abnegation, strove more and more to wean his

grandchild’s thoughts from his image. He deemed it so essential to her

whole future that, now she had found a home in so secure and so elevated

a sphere, she should gradually accustom herself to a new rank of life,

from which he was an everlasting exile; should lose all trace of

his very being; efface a connection that, ceasing to protect, could

henceforth only harm and dishonour her,--that he tried, as it were,

to blot himself out of the world which now smiled on her. He did not

underrate her grief in its first freshness; he knew that, could she

learn where he was, all else would be forgotten--she would insist on

flying to him. But he continually murmured to himself: “Youth is ever

proverbially short of memory; its sorrows poignant, but not enduring;

now the wounds are already scarring over--they will not reopen if they

are left to heal.”

He had, at first, thought of hiding somewhere not so far but that once

a-week, or once a-month, he might have stolen into the grounds, looked

at the house that held her--left, perhaps, in her walks some little

token of himself. But, on reflection, he felt that that luxury would be

too imprudent, and it ceased to tempt him in proportion as he reasoned

himself into the stern wisdom of avoiding all that could revive her

grief for him. At the commencement of this tale, in the outline given

of that grand melodrama in which Juliet Araminta played the part of

the Bandit’s Child, her efforts to decoy pursuit from the lair of the

persecuted Mime were likened to the arts of the skylark to lure eye and

hand from the nest of his young. More appropriate that illustration now

to the parent-bird than then to the fledgling. Farther and farther from

the nest in which all his love was centred fled the old man. What if

Jasper did discover him now; that very discovery would mislead the

pursuit from Sophy. Most improbable that Losely would ever guess that

they could become separated; still more improbable, unless Waife,

imprudently lurking near her home, guided conjecture, that Losely should

dream of seeking under the roof of the lofty peeress the child that had

fled from Mr. Rugge.

Poor old man! his heart was breaking; but his soul was so brightly

comforted that there, where many, many long miles off, I see

him standing, desolate and patient, in the corner of yon crowded

market-place, holding Sir Isaac by slackened string with listless

hand--Sir Isaac unshorn, travel-stained, draggled, with drooping head

and melancholy eyes--yea, as I see him there, jostled by the crowd, to

whom, now and then, pointing to that huge pannier on his arm, filled

with some homely pedlar wares, he mechanically mutters, “Buy”--yea, I

say, verily, as I see him thus, I cannot draw near in pity--I see what

the crowd does not--the shadow of an angel’s wing over his grey head;

and I stand reverentially aloof, with bated breath and bended knee.

CHAPTER IV.

A WOMAN TOO OFTEN REASONS FROM HER HEART--HENCE TWO-THIRDS OF HER

MISTAKES AND HER TROUBLES. A MAN OF GENIUS, TOO, OFTEN REASONS FROM

HIS HEART-WENCE, ALSO, TWO-THIRDS OF HIS TROUBLES AND MISTAKES.

WHEREFORE, BETWEEN WOMAN AND GENIUS THERE IS A SYMPATHETIC AFFINITY;

EACH HAS SOME INTUITIVE COMPREHENSION OF THE SECRETS OF THE OTHER,

AND THE MORE FEMININE THE WOMAN, THE MORE EXQUISITE THE GENIUS, THE

MORE SUBTLE THE INTELLIGENCE BETWEEN THE TWO. BUT NOTE WELL THAT

THIS TACIT UNDERSTANDING BECOMES OBSCURED, IF HUMAN LOVE PASS ACROSS

ITS RELATIONS. SHAKESPEARE INTERPRETS ARIGHT THE MOST INTRICATE

RIDDLES IN WOMAN. A WOMAN WAS THE FIRST TO INTERPRET ARIGHT THE ART

THAT IS LATENT IN SHAKESPEARE. BUT DID ANNE HATHAWAY AND

SHAKESPEARE UNDERSTAND EACH OTHER?

Unobserved by the two young people, Lady Montfort sate watching them as

they moved along the river banks. She was seated where Lionel had first

seen her--in the kind of grassy chamber that had been won from the

foliage and the sward, closed round with interlaced autumnal branches,

save where it opened towards the water. If ever woman’s brain can

conceive and plot a scheme thoroughly pure from one ungentle, selfish

thread in its web, in such a scheme had Caroline Montfort brought

together those two fair young natures. And yet they were not uppermost

in her thoughts as she now gazed on them; nor was it wholly for them

that her eyes were filled with tears at once sweet, yet profoundly

mournful--holy, and yet intensely human.

Women love to think themselves uncomprehended--nor often without reason

in that foible; for man, howsoever sagacious, rarely does entirely

comprehend woman, howsoever simple. And in this her sex has the

advantage over ours. Our hearts are bare to their eyes, even though they

can never know what have been our lives. But we may see every action

of their lives, guarded and circumscribed in conventional forms, while

their hearts will have many mysteries to which we can never have the

key. But, in more than the ordinary sense of the word, Caroline Montfort

never had been a woman uncomprehended. Nor even in her own sex did she

possess one confidante. Only the outward leaves of that beautiful flower

opened to the sunlight. The leaves round the core were gathered fold

upon fold closely as when life itself was in the bud.

As all the years of her wedded existence her heart had been denied the

natural household vents, so by some strange and unaccountable chance her

intellect also seemed restrained and pent from its proper freedom and

play. During those barren years, she had read--she had pondered--she had

enjoyed a commune with those whose minds instruct others, and still

her own intelligence, which in early youth had been characterised by

singular vivacity and brightness, and which Time had enriched with every

womanly accomplishment, seemed chilled and objectless. It is not enough

that a mind should be cultured--it should have movement as well as

culture. Caroline Montfort’s lay quiescent like a beautiful form

spellbound to repose, but not to sleep. Looking on her once, as he stood

amongst a crowd whom her beauty dazzled, a poet said abruptly: “Were my

guess not a sacrilege to one so spotless and so haughty, I should say

that I had hit on the solution of an enigma that long perplexed me;

and in the core of that queen of the lilies, could we strip the leaves

folded round it, we should find Remorse.”

Lady Montfort started; the shadow of another form than her own fell

upon the sward. George Morley stood behind her, his finger on his lips.

“Hush,” he said in a whisper, “see, Sophy is looking for me up the river.

I knew she would be--I stole this way on purpose--for I would speak to

you before I face her questions.”

“What is the matter? you alarm me,” said Lady Montfort, on gaining a

part of the grounds more remote from the river, to which George had

silently led the way.

“Nay, my dear cousin, there is less cause for alarm than for anxious

deliberation, and that upon more matters than those which directly

relate to our poor fugitive. You know that I long shrunk from enlisting

the police in aid of our search. I was too sensible of the pain and

offence which such an application would occasion Waife--(let us continue

so to call him)--and the discovery of it might even induce him to put

himself beyond our reach, and quit England. But his prolonged silence,

and my fears lest some illness or mishap might have befallen him,

together with my serious apprehensions of the effect which unrelieved

anxiety might produce on Sophy’s health, made me resolve to waive former

scruples. Since I last saw you I have applied to one of the higher

police-officers accustomed to confidential investigations of a similar

nature. The next day he came to tell me that he had learned that a

friend of his, who had been formerly a distinguished agent in the

detective police, had been engaged for months in tracking a person whom

he conjectured to be the same as the one whom I had commissioned him

to discover, and with somewhat less caution and delicacy than I had

enjoined. The fugitive’s real name had been given to this ex-agent--the

cause for search, that he had abducted and was concealing his

granddaughter from her father. It was easy for me to perceive why this

novel search had hitherto failed, no suspicion being entertained that

Waife had separated himself from Sophy, and the inquiry being therefore

rather directed towards the grandchild than the grandfather. But that

inquiry had altogether ceased of late, and for this terrible reason--a

different section of the police had fixed its eye upon the father on

whose behalf the search had been instituted. This Jasper Losely (ah!

our poor friend might well shudder to think Sophy should fall into

his hands!) haunts the resorts of the most lawless and formidable

desperadoes of London. He appears to be a kind of authority amongst

them; but there is no evidence that as yet he has committed himself to

any participation in their habitual courses. He lives profusely, for a

person in such society (regaling Daredevils whom he awes by a strength

and courage which are described as extraordinary), but with out any

visible means. It seems that the ex-agent, who had been thus previously

employed in Jasper Losely’s name, had been engaged, not by Jasper

himself, but by a person in very respectable circumstances, whose name

I have ascertained to be Poole. And the ex-agent deemed it right to

acquaint this Mr. Poole with Jasper’s evil character and ambiguous mode

of life, and to intimate to his employer that it might not be prudent to

hold any connection with such a man, and still less proper to assist

in restoring a young girl to his care. On this Mr. Poole became so much

agitated, and expressed himself so incoherently as to his relations with

Jasper, that the ex-agent conceived suspicions against Poole himself,

and reported the whole circumstances to one of the chiefs of the former

service, through whom they reached the very man whom I myself was

employing. But this ex-agent, who had, after his last interview with

Poole, declined all further interference, had since then, through a

correspondent in a country town, whom he had employed at the first,

obtained a clue to my dear old friend’s wanderings, more recent, and

I think more hopeful, than any I had yet discovered. You will remember

that when questioning Sophy as to any friends in her former life to whom

it was probable Waife might have addressed himself, she could think of

no one so probable as a cobbler named Merle, with whom he and she had

once lodged, and of whom he had often spoken to her with much gratitude

as having put him in the way of recovering herself, and having shown

him a peculiar trustful kindness on that occasion. But you will remember

also that I could not find this Merle; he had left the village, near

this very place, in which he had spent the greater part of his life--his

humble trade having been neglected in consequence of some strange

superstitious occupations in which, as he had grown older, he had become

more and more absorbed. He had fallen into poverty, his effects had been

sold off; he had gone away no one knew whither. Well, the ex-agent, who

had also been directed to this Merle by his employer, had, through his

correspondent, ascertained that the cobbler was living at Norwich, where

he passed under the name of the Wise Man, and where he was in perpetual

danger of being sent to the house of correction as an impostor, dealing

in astrology, crystal-seeing, and such silly or nefarious practices.

Very odd, indeed, and very melancholy, too,” quoth the scholar, lifting

up his hands and eyes, “that a man so gifted as our poor friend should

ever have cultivated an acquaintance with a cobbler who deals in the

Black Art!”

“Sophy has talked to me much about that cobbler,” said Lady Montfort,

with her sweet half-smile. “It was under his roof that she first saw

Lionel Haughton. But though the poor man may be an ignorant enthusiast,

he is certainly, by her account, too kind and simple-hearted to be a

designing impostor.”

GEORGE.--“Possibly. But to go on with my story: A few weeks ago, an

elderly lame man, accompanied by a dog, who was evidently poor dear Sir

Isaac, lodged two days with Merle at Norwich. On hearing this, I myself

went yesterday to Norwich, saw and talked to Merle, and through this

man I hope, more easily, delicately, and expeditiously than by any

other means, to achieve our object. He evidently can assist us, and,

as evidently, Waife has not told him that he is flying from Sophy and

friends, but from enemies and persecutors. For Merle, who is impervious

to bribes, and who at first was churlish and rude, became softened as my

honest affection for the fugitive grew clear to him, and still more when

I told him how wretched Sophy was at her grandfather’s disappearance,

and that she might fret herself into a decline. And we parted with this

promise on his side, that if I would bring down to him either Sophy

herself (which is out of the question) or a line from her, which, in

referring to any circumstances while under his roof that could only be

known to her and himself, should convince him that the letter was from

her hand, assuring him that it was for Waife’s benefit and at her prayer

that he should bestir himself in search for her grandfather, and that

he might implicitly trust to me, he would do all he could to help us. So

far, then, so good. But I have now more to say, and that is in reference

to Sophy herself. While we are tracking her grandfather, the peril to

her is not lessened. Never was that peril thoroughly brought before

my eyes until I had heard actually from the police agent the dreadful

character and associations of the man who can claim her in a fathers

name. Waife, it is true, had told you that his son was profligate,

spendthrift, lawless--sought her, not from natural affection, but as

an instrument to be used, roughly and coarsely, for the purpose of

extorting money from Mr. Darrell. But this stops far short of the

terrible reality. Imagine the effect on her nerves, so depressed as they

now are, nay, on her very life, should this audacious miscreant force

himself here and say, ‘Come with me, you are my child.’ And are we quite

sure that out of some refining nobleness of conscience she might not

imagine it her duty to obey, and to follow him? The more abject and

friendless his condition, the more she might deem it her duty to be by

his side. I have studied her from her childhood. She is capable of

any error in judgment, if it be made to appear a martyr’s devoted

self-sacrifice. You may well shudder, my dear cousin. But grant that she

were swayed by us and by the argument that so to act would betray

and kill her beloved grandfather, still, in resisting this ruffian’s

paternal authority, what violent and painful scenes might ensue! What

dreadful publicity to be attached for ever to her name! Nor is this all.

Grant that her father does not discover her, but that he is led by

his associates into some criminal offence, and suffers by the law--her

relationship, both to him from whom you would guard her, and to him

whose hearth you have so tenderly reared her to grace, suddenly dragged

to day--would not the shame kill her? And in that disclosure how keen

would be the anguish of Darrell!”

“Oh, heavens!” cried Caroline Montfort, white as ashes and wringing her

hands, “you freeze me with terror. But this man cannot be so fallen as

you describe. I have seen him--spoken with him in his youth--hoped then

to assist in a task of conciliation, pardon. Nothing about him then

foreboded so fearful a corruption. He might be vain, extravagant,

selfish, false--Ah, yes! he was false indeed! but still the ruffian

you paint, banded with common criminals, cannot be the same as the gay,

dainty, perfumed, fair-faced adventurer with whom my ill-fated playmate

fled her father’s house. You shake your head--what is it you advise?”

“To expedite your own project--to make at once the resolute attempt to

secure to this poor child her best, her most rightful protector--to let

whatever can be done to guard her from danger or reclaim her father from

courses to which despair may be driving him--to let, I say, all this

be done by the person whose interest in doing it effectively is so

paramount--whose ability to judge of and decide on the wisest means

is so immeasurably superior to all that lies within our own limited

experience of life.”

“But you forget that our friend told me that he had appealed to--to

Mr. Darrell on his return to England: that Mr. Darrell had peremptorily

refused to credit the claim; and had sternly said that, even if Sophy’s

birth could be proved, he would not place under his father’s roof the

grandchild of William Losely.”

“True; and yet you hoped reasonably enough to succeed where he, poor

outcast, had failed.”

“Yes, yes; I did hope that Sophy--her manners formed, her education

completed--all her natural exquisite graces so cultured and refined, as

to justify pride in the proudest kindred--I did so hope that she should

be brought, as it were by accident, under his notice; that she would

interest and charm him; and that the claim, when made, might thus be

welcomed with delight. Mr. Darrell’s abrupt return to a seclusion so

rigid forbids the opportunity that ought easily have been found or made

if he had remained in London. But suddenly, violently to renew a

claim that such a man has rejected, before he has ever seen that dear

child--before his heart and his taste plead for her--who would dare to

do it? or, if so daring, who could hope success?”

“My dear Lady Montfort, my noble cousin, with repute as spotless as the

ermine of your robe--who but you?”

“Who but I? Any one. Mr. Darrell would not even read through a letter

addressed to him by me.”

George stared with astonishment. Caroline’s face was downcast--her

attitude that of profound humiliated dejection.

“Incredible!” said he at length. “I have always suspected, and so indeed

has my uncle, that Darrell had some cause of complaint against your

mother. Perhaps he might have supposed that she had not sufficiently

watched over his daughter, or had not sufficiently inquired into the

character of the governess whom she recommended to him; and that this

had led to an estrangement between Darrell and your mother, which could

not fail to extend somewhat to yourself. But such misunderstandings can

surely now be easily removed. Talk of his not reading a letter addressed

to him by you! Why, do I not remember, when I was on a visit to my

schoolfellow, his son, what influence you, a mere child yourself, had

over that grave, busy man, then in the height of his career--how you

alone could run without awe into his study--how you alone had the

privilege to arrange his books, sort his papers--so that we two boys

looked on you with a solemn respect, as the depositary of all his state

secrets--how vainly you tried to decoy that poor timid Matilda, his

daughter, into a share of your own audacity!--Is not all this true?”

“Oh yes, yes--old days gone for ever!”

“Do I not remember how you promised that, before I went back to school,

I should hear Darrell read aloud--how you brought the volume of Milton

to him in the evening--how he said, ‘No, to-morrow night; I must now

go to the House of Commons’--how I marvelled to hear you answer boldly,

‘To-morrow night George will have left us, and I have promised that he

shall hear you read’--and how, looking at you under those dark brows

with serious softness, he said: ‘Right: promises once given, must

be kept. But was it not rash to promise in another’s name?’--and you

answered, half gently, half pettishly, ‘As if you could fail me!’ He

took the book without another word, and read. What reading it was too!

And do you not remember another time, how--”

LADY MONTFORT (interrupting with nervous impatience).--“Ay, ay--I need

no reminding of all--all! Kindest, noblest, gentlest friend to a giddy,

heedless child, unable to appreciate the blessing. But now, George, I

dare not, I cannot write to Mr. Darrell.”

George mused a moment, and conjectured that Lady Montfort had, in

the inconsiderate impulsive season of youth, aided in the clandestine

marriage of Darrell’s daughter, and had become thus associated in his

mind with the affliction that had embittered his existence. Were this

so, certainly she would not be the fitting, intercessor on behalf of

Sophy. His thoughts then turned to his uncle, Darrell’s earliest friend,

not suspecting that Colonel Morley was actually the person whom Darrell

had already appointed his adviser and representative in all transactions

that might concern the very parties under discussion. But just as he

was about to suggest the expediency of writing to Alban to return to

England, and taking him into confidence and consultation, Lady Montfort

resumed, in a calmer voice and with a less troubled countenance:

“Who should be the pleader for one whose claim, if acknowledged, would

affect his own fortunes, but Lionel Haughton?--Hold!--look where yonder

they come into sight--there by the gap in the evergreens. May we not

hope that Providence, bringing those two beautiful lives together, gives

a solution to the difficulties which thwart our action and embarrass our

judgment? I conceived and planned a blissful romance the first moment

I gathered fran Sophy’s artless confidences the effect that had been

produced on her whole train of thought and feeling by the first meeting

with Lionel in her childhood; by his brotherly, chivalrous kindness,

and, above all, by the chance words he let fall, which discontented her

with a life of shift and disguise, and revealed to her the instincts of

her own holiest truthful nature. An alliance between Lionel Haughton

and Sophy seemed to me the happiest possible event that could befall

Guy Darrell. The two branches of his family united--a painful household

secret confined to the circle of his own kindred--granting Sophy’s

claim never perfectly cleared up, but subject to a tormenting

doubt--her future equally assured--her possible rights equally

established--Darrell’s conscience and pride reconciled to each other.

And how, even but as wife to his young kinsman, he would learn to love

one so exquisitely endearing!” [Lady Montfort paused a moment, and then

resumed.] “When I heard that Mr. Darrell was about to marry again, my

project was necessarily arrested.”

“Certainly,” said George, “if he formed new ties, Sophy would be less

an object in his existence, whether or not he recognised her birth. The

alliance between her and Lionel would lose many of its advantages; and

any address to him on Sophy’s behalf would become yet more ungraciously

received.”

LADY MONTFORT.--“In that case I had resolved to adopt Sophy as my

own child; lay by from my abundant income an ample dowry for her; and

whether Mr. Darrell ever know it or not, at least I should have the

secret joy to think that I was saving him from the risk of remorse

hereafter--should she be, as we believe, his daughter’s child, and have

been thrown upon the world destitute;--yes, the secret joy of feeling

that I was sheltering, fostering as a mother, one whose rightful home

might be with him who in my childhood sheltered, fostered me!”

GEORGE (much affected).--“How, in proportion as we know you, the beauty

which you veil from the world outshines that which you cannot prevent

the world from seeing! But you must not let this grateful enthusiasm

blind your better judgment. You think these young persons are beginning

to be really attached to each other. Then it is the more necessary that

no time should be lost in learning how Mr. Darrell would regard such a

marriage. I do not feel so assured of his consent as you appear to do.

At all events, this should be ascertained before their happiness

is seriously involved. I agree with you that Lionel is the best

intermediator to plead for Sophy; and his very generosity in urging her

prior claim to a fortune that might otherwise pass to him is likely to

have weight with a man so generous himself as Guy Darrell is held to be.

But does Lionel yet know all? Have you yet ventured to confide to him,

or even to Sophy herself, the nature of her claim on the man who so

proudly denies it?”

“No--I deemed it due to Sophy’s pride of sex to imply to her that she

would, in fortune and in social position, be entitled to equality with

those whom she might meet here. And that is true, if only as the child

whom I adopt and enrich. I have not said more. And only since Lionel has

appeared has she ever seemed interested in anything that relates to

her parentage. From the recollection of her father she naturally

shrinks--she never mentions his name. But two days ago she did ask

timidly, and with great change of countenance, if it was through her

mother that she was entitled to a rank higher than she had hitherto

known; and when I answered ‘yes,’ she sighed, and said ‘But my dear

grandfather never spoke to me of her; he never even saw my mother.’”

GEORGE.--“And you, I suspect, do not much like to talk of that mother. I

have gathered from you, unawares to yourself, that she was not a person

you could highly praise; and to me, as a boy, she seemed, with all her

timidity, wayward and deceitful.”

LADY MONTFORT.--“Alas! how bitterly she must have suffered--and how

young she was! But you are right; I cannot speak to Sophy of her mother,

the subject is connected with so much sorrow. But I told her ‘that

she should know all soon,’ and she said, with a sweet and melancholy

patience, ‘When my poor grandfather will be by to hear; I can wait.’”

GEORGE.--“But is Lionel, with his quick intellect and busy imagination,

equally patient? Does he not guess at the truth? You have told him that

you do meditate a project which affects Guy Darrell, and required his

promise not to divulge to Darrell his visits in this house.”

LADY MONTFORT--“He knows that Sophy’s paternal grandfather was William

Losely. From your uncle he heard William Losely’s story, and--”

GEORGE.--“My uncle Alban?”

LADY MOSTFORT.--“Yes; the Colonel was well acquainted with the elder

Losely in former days, and spoke of him to Lionel with great affection.

It seems that Lionel’s father knew him also, and thoughtlessly involved

him in his own pecuniary difficulties. Lionel was not long a visitor

here before he asked me abruptly if Mr. Waife’s real name was not

Losely. I was obliged to own it, begging him not at present to question

me further. He said then, with much emotion, that he had an hereditary

debt to discharge to William Losely, and that he was the last person who

ought to relinquish belief in the old man’s innocence of the crime

for which the law had condemned him, or to judge him harshly if the

innocence were not substantiated. You remember with what eagerness he

joined in your search, until you positively forbade his interposition,

fearing that should our poor friend hear of inquiries instituted by one

whom he could not recognise as a friend, and might possibly consider

an emissary of his son’s, he would take yet greater pains to conceal

himself. But from the moment that Lionel learned that Sophy’s

grandfather was William Losely, his manner to Sophy became yet more

tenderly respectful. He has a glorious nature, that young man! But did

your uncle never speak to you of William Losely?”

“No. I am not surprised at that. My uncle Alban avoids ‘painful

subjects.’ I am only surprised that he should have revived a painful

subject in talk to Lionel. But I now understand why, when Waife first

heard my name, he seemed affected, and why he so specially enjoined

me never to mention or describe him to my friends and relations. Then

Lionel knows Losely’s story, but not his son’s connection with Darrell?”

“Certainly not. He knows but what is generally said in the world, that

Darrell’s daughter eloped with a Mr. Hammond, a man of inferior birth,

and died abroad, leaving but one child, who is also dead. Still Lionel

does suspect,--my very injunctions of secrecy must make him more than

suspect, that the Loselys are somehow or other mixed up With Darrell’s

family history. Hush! I hear his voice yonder--they approach.”

“My dear cousin, let it be settled between us, then, that you frankly

and without delay communicate to Lionel the whole truth, so far as it is

known to us, and put it to him how best and most touchingly to move Mr.

Darrell towards her, of whom we hold him to be the natural protector. I

will write to my uncle to return to England that he may assist us in the

same good work. Meanwhile, I shall have only good tidings to communicate

to Sophy in my new hopes to discover her grandfather through Merle.”

Here, as the sun was setting, Lionel and Sophy came in sight,--above

their heads, the western clouds bathed in gold and purple. Sophy,

perceiving George, bounded forwards, and reached his side, breathless.

CHAPTER V.

LIONEL HAUGHTON HAVING LOST HIS HEART, IT IS NO LONGER A QUESTION OF

WHAT HE WILL DO WITH IT. BUT WHAT WILL BE DONE WITH IT IS A VERY

GRAVE QUESTION INDEED.

Lionel forestalled Lady Montfort in the delicate and embarrassing

subject which her cousin had urged her to open. For while George,

leading away Sophy, informed her of his journey to Norwich, and his

interview with Merle, Lionel drew. Lady Montfort into the house, and

with much agitation, and in abrupt hurried accents, implored her to

withdraw the promise which forbade him to inform his benefactor how and

where his time had been spent of late. He burst forth with a declaration

of that love with which Sophy had inspired him, and which Lady Montfort

could not be but prepared to hear. “Nothing,” said he, “but a respect

for her more than filial anxiety at this moment could have kept my

heart thus long silent. But that heart is so deeply pledged--so utterly

hers--that it has grown an ingratitude, a disrespect--to my generous

kinsman, to conceal from him any longer the feelings which must colour

my whole future existence. Nor can I say to her, ‘Can you return my

affection?--will you listen to my vows?--will you accept them at the

altar?’--until I have won, as I am sure to win, the approving consent of

my more than father.”

“You feel sure to win that consent, in spite of the stain on her

grandfather’s name?”

“When Darrell learns that, but for my poor father’s fault, that name

might be spotless now!--yes! I am not Mr. Darrell’s son--the transmitter

of his line. I believe yet that he will form new ties. By my mother’s

side I have no ancestors to boast of; and you have owned to me that

Sophy’s mother was of gentle birth. Alban Morley told me, when I last

saw him, that Darrell wishes me to marry, and leaves me free to choose

my bride. Yes; I have no doubt of Mr. Darrell’s consent. My dear mother

will welcome to her heart the prize so coveted by mine; and Charles

Haughton’s son will have a place at his hearth for the old age of

William Losely. Withdraw your interdict at once, dearest Lady Montfort,

and confide to me all that you have hitherto left unexplained, but have

promised to reveal when the time came. The time has come.”

“It has come,” said Lady Montfort, solemnly; “and Heaven grant that it

may bear the blessed results which were in my thoughts when I took Sophy

as my own adopted daughter, and hailed in yourself the reconciler of

conflicting circumstance. Not under this roof should you woo William

Losely’s grandchild. Doubly are you bound to ask Guy Darrell’s consent

and blessing. At his hearth woo your Sophy--at his hands ask a bride in

his daughter’s child.”

And to her wondering listener, Caroline Montford told her grounds for

the belief that connected the last of the Darrells with the convict’s

grandchild.

CHAPTER VI.

CREDULOUS CRYSTAL-SEERS, YOUNG LOVERS, AND GRAVE WISE MEN--ALL IN

THE SAME CATEGORY.

George Morley set out the next day for Norwich, in which antique city,

ever since the ‘Dane peopled it, some wizard or witch, star-reader, or

crystal-seer’ has enjoyed a mysterious renown, perpetuating thus through

all change in our land’s social progress the long line of Vala and

Saga, who came with the Raven and Valkyr from Scandinavian pine shores.

Merle’s reserve vanished on the perusal of Sophy’s letter to him. He

informed George that Waife declared he had plenty of money, and had even

forced a loan upon Merle; but that he liked an active, wandering life;

it kept him from thinking, and that a pedlar’s pack would give him a

license for vagrancy, and a budget to defray its expenses; that Merle

had been consulted by him in the choice of light popular wares, and as

to the route he might find the most free from competing rivals. Merle

willingly agreed to accompany George in quest of the wanderer, whom,

by the help of his crystal, he seemed calmly sure he could track and

discover. Accordingly, they both set out in the somewhat devious and

desultory road which Merle, who had some old acquaintances amongst the

ancient profession of hawkers, had advised Waife to take. But Merle,

unhappily confiding more in his crystal than Waife’s steady adherence

to the chart prescribed, led the Oxford scholar the life of a

will-of-the-wisp; zigzag, and shooting to and fro, here and there, till,

just when George had lost all patience, Merle chanced to see, not in

the crystal, a pelerine on the neck of a farmer’s daughter, which he

was morally certain he had himself selected for Waife’s pannier. And

the girl stating in reply to his inquiry that her father had bought that

pelerine as a present for her, not many days before, of a pedlar in a

neighbouring town, to the market of which the farmer resorted weekly,

Merle cast an horary scheme, and finding the Third House (of short

journeys) in favourable aspect to the Seventh House (containing the

object desired), and in conjunction with the Eleventh House (friends),

he gravely informed the scholar that their toils were at an end, and

that the Hour and the Man were at hand. Not over-sanguine, George

consigned himself and the seer to an early train, and reached the

famous town of Oazelford, whither, when the chronological order of our

narrative (which we have so far somewhat forestalled) will permit, we

shall conduct the inquisitive reader.

Meanwhile Lionel, subscribing without a murmur to Lady Montfort’s

injunction to see Sophy no more till Darrell had been conferred with

and his consent won, returned to his lodgings in London, sanguine of

success, and flushed with joy. His intention was to set out at once to

Fawley; but on reaching town he found there a few lines from Dairell

himself, in reply to a long and affectionate letter which Lionel

had written a few days before asking permission to visit the old

manor-house; for amidst all his absorbing love for Sophy, the image of

his lonely benefactor in that gloomy hermitage often rose before him.

In these lines, Darrell, not unkindly, but very peremptorily, declined

Lionel’s overtures.

“In truth, my dear young kinsman,” wrote the recluse--“in truth I

am, with slowness, and with frequent relapses, labouring through

convalescence from a moral fever. My nerves are yet unstrung. I am as

one to whom is prescribed the most complete repose;--the visits, even

of friends the dearest, forbidden as a perilous excitement. The sight of

you--of any one from the great world--but especially of one whose

rich vitality of youth and hope affronts and mocks my own fatigued

exhaustion, would but irritate, unsettle, torture me. When I am quite

well I will ask you to come. I shall enjoy your visit. Till then, on no

account, and on no pretext, let my morbid ear catch the sound of your

footfall on my quiet floor. Write to me often, but tell me nothing

of the news and gossip of the world. Tell me only of yourself, your

studies, your thoughts, your sentiments, your wishes. Nor forget my

injunctions. Marry young, marry for love; let no ambition of power, no

greed of gold, ever mislead you into giving to your life a companion

who is not the half of your soul. Choose with the heart of a man; I know

that you will choose with the self-esteem of a gentleman; and be assured

beforehand of the sympathy and sanction of your ‘CHURLISH BUT LOVING

KINSMAN.’”

After this letter, Lionel felt that, at all events, he could not at once

proceed to the old manor-house in defiance of its owner’s prohibition.

He wrote briefly, entreating Darrell to forgive him if he persisted

in the prayer to be received at Fawley, stating that his desire for a

personal interview was now suddenly become special and urgent; that it

not only concerned himself, but affected his benefactor. By return

of post Darrell replied with curt frigidity, repeating, with even

sternness, his refusal to receive Lionel, but professing himself ready

to attend to all that his kinsman might address to him by letter. “If it

be as you state,” wrote Darrell, with his habitual irony, “a matter

that relates to myself, I claim, as a lawyer for my own affairs--the

precaution I once enjoined to my clients--a written brief should always

precede a personal consultation.”

In fact, the proud man suspected that Lionel had been directly or

indirectly addressed on behalf of Jasper Losely; and certainly that

was the last subject on which he would have granted an interview to

his young kinsman. Lionel, however; was not perhaps sorry to be thus

compelled to trust to writing his own and Sophy’s cause. Darrell was

one of those men whose presence inspires a certain awe--one of those

men whom we feel, upon great occasions, less embarrassed to address by

letter than in person. Lionel’s pen moved rapidly--his whole heart and

soul suffused with feeling--; and, rushing over the page, he reminded

Darrell of the day when he had told to the rich man the tale of the

lovely wandering child, and how, out of his sympathy for that child,

Darrell’s approving, fostering tenderness to himself had grown. Thus

indirectly to her forlorn condition had he owed the rise in his own

fortunes. He went through the story of William Losely as he had gathered

it from Alban Morley, and touched pathetically on his own father’s share

in that dark history. If William Losely really was hurried into crime by

the tempting necessity for a comparatively trifling sum, but for Charles

Haughton would the necessity have arisen? Eloquently then the lover

united grandfather and grandchild in one touching picture--their love

for each other, their dependence on each other. He enlarged on Sophy’s

charming, unselfish, simple, noble character; he told how he had again

found her; he dwelt on the refining accomplishments she owed to Lady

Montfort’s care. How came she with Lady Montfort? Why had Lady Montfort

cherished, adopted her? Because Lady Montfort told him how much her own

childhood had owed to Darrell; because, should Sophy be, as alleged, the

offspring of his daughter, the heiress of his line, Caroline Montfort

rejoiced to guard her from danger, save her from poverty, and ultimately

thus to fit her to be not only acknowledged with delight, but with

pride. Why had he been enjoined not to divulge to Darrell that he had

again found, and under Lady Montfort’s roof, the child whom, while yet

unconscious of her claims, Darrell himself had vainly sought to find,

and benevolently designed to succour? Because Lady Montfort wished to

fulfil her task--complete Sophy’s education, interrupted by grief for

her missing grandfather, and obtain indeed, when William Losely again

returned, some proofs (if such existed) to corroborate the assertion

of Sophy’s parentage. “And,” added Lionel, “Lady Montfort seems to fear

that she has given you some cause of displeasure--what I know not, but

which might have induced you to disapprove of the acquaintance I had

begun with her. Be that as it may, would you could hear the reverence

with which she ever alludes to your worth--the gratitude with which she

attests her mother’s and her own early obligations to your intellect

and heart!” Finally, Lionel wove all his threads of recital into the

confession of the deep love into which his romantic memories of Sophy’s

wandering childhood had been ripened by the sight of her graceful,

cultured youth. “Grant,” he said, “that her father’s tale be false--and

no doubt you have sufficient reasons to discredit it--still, if

you cannot love her as your daughter’s child, receive, know her, I

implore--let her love and revere you--as my wife! Leave me to protect

her from a lawless father--leave me to redeem, by some deeds of loyalty

and honour, any stain that her grandsire’s sentence may seem to fix upon

our union. Oh! if ambitious before, how ambitious I should be now--to

efface for her sake, as for mine, her grandsire’s shame, my father’s

errors! But if, on the other hand, she should, on the requisite

inquiries, be proved to descend from your ancestry--your father’s blood

in her pure veins--I know, alas! then that I should have no right to

aspire to such nuptials. Who would even think of her descent from a

William Losely? Who would not be too proud to remember only her descent

from you? All spots would vanish in the splendour of your renown; the

highest in the land would court her alliance. And I am but the pensioner

of your bounty, and only on my father’s side of gentle origin. But

still I think you would not reject me--you would place the future to

my credit; and I would wait, wait patiently, till I had won such a

soldier’s name as would entitle me to mate with a daughter of the

Darrells.”

Sheet upon sheet the young eloquence flowed on--seeking, with an art of

which the writer was unconscious, all the arguments and points of

view which might be the most captivating to the superb pride or to

the exquisite tenderness which seemed to Lionel the ruling elements of

Darrell’s character.

He had not to wait long for a reply. At the first glance of the address

on its cover, his mind misgave him; the hopes that bad hitherto elated

his spirit yielded to abrupt forebodings. Darrell’s handwriting was

habitually in harmony with the intonations of his voice-singularly

clear, formed with a peculiar and original elegance, yet with the

undulating ease of a natural, candid, impulsive character. And that

decorous care in such mere trifles as the very sealing of a letter,

which, neglected by musing poets and abstracted authors, is observable

in men of high public station, was in Guy Darrell significant of the

Patrician dignity that imparted a certain stateliness to his most

ordinary actions.

But in the letter which lay in Lionel’s hand the writer was scarcely

recognisable--the direction blurred, the characters dashed off from a

pen fierce yet tremulous; the seal a great blotch of wax; the device

of the heron, with its soaring motto, indistinct and mangled, as if the

stamping instrument had been plucked wrathfully away before the wax had

cooled. And when Lionel opened the letter, the handwriting within was

yet more indicative of mental disorder. The very ink looked menacing

and angry--blacker as the pen had been forcibly driven into the page.

“Unhappy boy!” began the ominous epistle, “is it through you that the

false and detested woman who has withered up the noon-day of my life

seeks to dishonour its blighted close? Talk not to me of Lady Montfort’s

gratitude and reverence! Talk not to me of her amiable, tender,

holy aim, to obtrude upon my childless house the grand-daughter of a

convicted felon! Show her these lines, and ask her by what knowledge of

my nature she can assume that ignominy to my name would be a blessing to

my hearth? Ask her, indeed, how she can dare to force herself still upon

my thoughts--dare to imagine she can lay me under obligations--dare

to think she can be something still in my forlorn existence! Lionel

Haughton, I command you in the name of all the dead whom we can claim

as ancestors in common, to tear from your heart, as you would tear a

thought of disgrace, this image which has bewitched your reason. My

daughter, thank Heaven, left no pledge of an execrable union. But a

girl who has been brought up by a thief--a girl whom a wretch so lost

to honour as Jasper Losely sought to make an instrument of fraud to

my harassment and disgrace, be her virtues and beauty what they may,

I could not, without intolerable anguish, contemplate as the wife of

Lionel Haughton. But receive her as your wife!

“Admit her within these walls! Never, never; I scorn to threaten you

with loss of favour, loss of fortune. Marry her if you will. You shall

have an ample income secure to you. But from that moment our lives are

separated--our relation ceases. You will never again see nor address me.

But oh, Lionel, can you--can you inflict upon me this crowning sorrow?

Can you, for the sake of a girl of whom you have seen but little, or

in the Quixotism of atonement for your father’s fault, complete the

ingratitude I have experienced from those who owed me most? I cannot

think it. I rejoice that you wrote--did not urge this suit in person.

I should not have been able to control my passion; we might have parted

foes. As it is, I restrain myself with difficulty! That woman, that

child, associated thus to tear from me the last affection left to my

ruined heart. No! You will not be so cruel! Send this, I command you,

to Lady Montfort. See again neither her nor the impostor she has been

cherishing for my disgrace. This letter will be your excuse to break off

with both--with both. GUY DARRELL.”

Lionel was stunned. Not for several hours could he recover

self-possession enough to analyse his own emotions, or discern the sole

course that lay before him. After such a letter from such a benefactor,

no option was left to him. Sophy must be resigned; but the sacrifice

crushed him to the earth--crushed the very manhood out of him. He threw

himself on the floor, sobbing--sobbing as if body and soul were torn,

each from each, in convulsive spasms.

But send this letter to Lady Montfort? A letter so wholly at variance

with Darrell’s dignity of character--a letter in which rage seemed

lashed to unreasoning frenzy. Such bitter language of hate and scorn,

and even insult to a woman, and to the very woman who had seemed to

Lionel so reverently to cherish the writer’s name--so tenderly to scheme

for the writer’s happiness! Could he obey a command that seemed to lower

Darrell even more than it could humble her to whom it was sent?

Yet disobey! What but the letter itself could explain? Ah--and was there

not some strange misunderstanding with respect to Lady Montfort, which

the letter itself, and nothing but the letter, would enable her to

dispel; and if dispelled, might not Darrell’s whole mind undergo a

change? A flash of joy suddenly broke on his agitated, tempestuous

thoughts. He forced himself again to read those blotted impetuous lines.

Evidently--evidently, while writing to Lionel--the subject Sophy--the

man’s wrathful heart had been addressing itself to neither. A suspicion

seized him; with that suspicion, hope. He would send the letter, and

with but few words from himself--words that revealed his immense despair

at the thought of relinquishing Sophy--intimated his belief that Darrell

here was, from some error of judgment which Lionel could not comprehend,

avenging himself on Lady Montfort; and closed with his prayer to her,

if so, to forgive lines coloured by hasty passion, and, for the sake of

all, not to disdain that self-vindication which might perhaps yet soften

a nature possessed of such depths of sweetness as that which appeared

now so cruel and so bitter. He would not yet despond--not yet commission

her to give his last farewell to Sophy.

CHAPTER VII.

THE MAN-EATER CONTINUES TO TAKE HIS QUIET STEAK OUT OF DOLLY POOLE;

AND IS IN TURN SUBJECTED TO THE ANATOMICAL KNIFE OF THE DISSECTING

AUTHOR. TWO TRAPS ARE LAID FOR HIM--ONE BY HIS FELLOW MAN-EATERS--

ONE BY THAT DEADLY PERSECUTRIX, THE WOMAN WHO TRIES TO SAVE HIM IN

SPITE OF ALL HE CAN DO TO BE HANGED.

Meanwhile the unhappy Adolphus Poole had been the reluctant but

unfailing source from which Jasper Losely had weekly drawn the

supplies to his worthless and workless existence. Never was a man more

constrainedly benevolent, and less recompensed for pecuniary sacrifice

by applauding conscience, than the doomed inhabitant of Alhambra Villa.

In the utter failure of his attempts to discover Sophy, or to induce

Jasper to accept Colonel Morley’s proposals, he saw this parasitical

monster fixed upon his entrails, like the vulture on those of the

classic sufferer in mythological tales. Jasper, indeed, had accommodated

himself to this regular and unlaborious mode of gaining “_sa pauvre

vie_.” To call once a week upon his old acquaintance, frighten him with

a few threats, or force a deathlike smile from agonising lips by a

few villanous jokes, carry off his four sovereigns, and enjoy himself

thereon till pay-day duly returned, was a condition of things that

Jasper did not greatly care to improve; and truly had he said to Poole

that his earlier energy had left him. As a sensualist of Jasper’s stamp

grows older and falls lower, indolence gradually usurps the place once

occupied by vanity or ambition. Jasper was bitterly aware that his old

comeliness was gone; that never more could he ensnare a maiden’s heart

or a widow’s gold. And when this truth was fully brought home to him,

it made a strange revolution in all his habits. He cared no longer for

dress and gewgaws--sought rather to hide himself than to parade. In the

neglect of the person he had once so idolised--in the coarse roughness

which now characterised his exterior--there was that sullen despair

which the vain only know when what had made them dainty and jocund is

gone for ever. The human mind, in deteriorating, fits itself to the

sphere into which it declines. Jasper would not now, if he could, have

driven a cabriolet down St. James’s Street. He had taken more and more

to the vice of drinking as the excitement of gambling was withdrawn from

him. For how gamble with those who had nothing to lose, and to whom he

himself would have been pigeon, not hawk? And as he found that, on

what he thus drew regularly from Dolly Poole, he could command all

the comforts that his embruted tastes now desired, so an odd kind of

prudence for the first time in his life came with what he chose to

consider “a settled income.” He mixed with ruffians in their nightly

orgies; treated them to cheap potations; swaggered, bullied, boasted,

but shared in no project of theirs which might bring into jeopardy the

life which Dolly Poole rendered so comfortable and secure. His energies,

once so restless, were lulled, partly by habitual intoxication, partly

by the physical pains which had nestled themselves into his robust

fibres, efforts of an immense and still tenacious vitality to throw

off diseases repugnant to its native magnificence of health. The finest

constitutions are those which, when once seriously impaired, occasion

the direst pain; but they also enable the sufferer to bear pain that

would soon wear away the delicate. And Jasper bore his pains stoutly,

though at times they so exasperated his temper, that woe then to any of

his comrades whose want of caution or respect gave him the occasion

to seek relief in wrath! His hand was as heavy, his arm as stalwart

as ever. George Morley had been rightly informed. Even by burglars and

cut-throats, whose dangers he shunned, while fearlessly he joined

their circle, Jasper Losely was regarded with terror. To be the awe of

reckless men, as he had been the admiration of foolish women, this was

delight to his vanity, the last delight that was left to it. But he thus

provoked a danger to which his arrogance was blind. His boon companions

began to grow tired of him. He had been welcomed to their resort on the

strength of the catchword or passport which confederates at Paris had

communicated to him, and of the reputation for great daring and small

scruple which he took from Cutts, who was of high caste amongst

their mysterious tribes, and who every now and then flitted over the

Continent, safe and accursed as the Wandering Jew. But when they found

that this Achilles of the Greeks would only talk big, and employ his

wits on his private exchequer and his thews against themselves, they

began not only to tire of his imperious manner, but to doubt his

fidelity to the cause. And, all of a sudden, Cutts, who had at first

extolled Jasper as one likely to be a valuable acquisition to the Family

of Night, altered his tone, and insinuated that the bravo was not to be

trusted; that his reckless temper and incautious talk when drunk would

unfit him for a safe accomplice in any skilful project of plunder;

and that he was so unscrupulous, and had so little sympathy with their

class, that he might be quite capable of playing spy or turning king’s

evidence; that, in short, it would be well to rid themselves of his

domineering presence. Still there was that physical power in this

lazy Hercules--still, if the Do-nought, he was so fiercely the

Dreadnought--that they did not dare, despite the advantage of numbers,

openly to brave and defy him. No one would bell the cat--and such a cat!

They began to lay plots to get rid of him through the law. Nothing could

be easier to such knowing adepts in guilt than to transfer to his charge

any deed of violence one of their own gang had committed--heap damning

circumstances round him--privily apprise justice--falsely swear away his

life. In short, the man was in their way as a wasp that has blundered

into an ants’ nest; and, while frightened at the size of the intruder,

these honest ants were resolved to get him out of their citadel alive or

dead. Probable it was that Jasper Losely would meet with his deserts at

last for an offence of which he was as innocent as a babe unborn.

It is at this juncture that we are re-admitted to the presence of

Arabella Crane.

She was standing by a window on the upper floor of a house situated in

a narrow street. The blind was let down, but she had drawn it a little

aside, and was looking out. By the fireside was seated a thin, vague,

gnome-like figure, perched comfortless on the edge of a rush-bottomed

chair, with its shadowy knees drawn up till they nearly touched its

shadowy chin. There was something about the outline of this figure

so indefinite and unsubstantial, that you might have taken it for an

optical illusion, a spectral apparition on the point of vanishing. This

thing was, however, possessed of voice, and was speaking in a low but

distinct hissing whisper. As the whisper ended, Arabella Crane, without

turning her face, spoke, also under her breath.

“You are sure that, so long as Losely draws this weekly stipend from

the man whom he has in his power, he will persist in the same course of

life. Can you not warn him of the danger?”

“Peach against pals! I dare not. No trusting him.”

“He would come down, mad with brandy, make an infernal row, seize two or

three by the throat, dash their heads against each other, blab, bully,

and a knife would be out, and a weasand or two cut, and a carcase or so

dropped into the Thames--mine certainly--his perhaps.”

“You say you can keep back this plot against him for two or three days?”

“For two days--yes. I should be glad to save General Jas. He has the

bones of a fine fellow, and if he had not destroyed himself by brandy,

he might have been at the top of the tree-in the profession. But he is

fit for nothing now.”

“Ah! and you say the brandy is killing him?”

“No, he will not be killed by brandy, if he continues to drink it among

the same jolly set.”

“And if he were left without the money to spend amongst these terrible

companions, he would no longer resort to their meetings? You are right

there. The same vanity that makes him pleased to be the great man

in that society would make him shrink from coming amongst them as a

beggar.”

“And if he had not the wherewithal to pay the weekly subscription, there

would be an excuse to shut the door in his face. All these fellows wish

to do is to get rid of him; and if by fair means, there would be no

necessity to resort to foul. The only danger would be that from which

you have so often saved him. In despair, would he not commit some

violent rash action--a street robbery, or something of the kind? He has

courage for any violence, but no longer the cool head to plan a scheme

which would not be detected. You see I can prevent my pals joining in

such risks as he may propose, or letting him (if he were to ask it) into

an adventure of their own, for they know that I am a safe adviser; they

respect me; the law has never been able to lay hold of me; and when I

say to them, ‘That fellow drinks, blabs, and boasts, and would bring us

all into trouble,’ they will have nothing to do with him; but I cannot

prevent his doing what he pleases out of his own muddled head, and with

his own reckless hand.”

“But you will keep in his confidence, and let me know till that he

proposes!”

“Yes.”

“And meanwhile, he must come to me. And this time I have more hope than

ever, since his health gives way, and he is weary of crime itself. Mr.

Cutts, come near--softly. Look-nay, nay, he cannot see you from below,

and you are screened by the blind. Look, I say, where he sits.”