He went to work, and soon produced a letter headed, “PRIVATE MADHOUSES.”

In this he related pithily Alfred's incarceration, and the present

attempt to recapture him, with the particulars of his escape. “That will

interest th' enemy,” said he drily. He vouched for Alfred's sanity at

both dates, and pledged himself to swear to it in a court of law. He

then inquired what it availed to have sent one tyrant to Phalaris and

another to Versailles in defence of our Liberty, since after all that

Liberty lies grovelling at the mercy of Dr. Pill-box and Mr. Sawbones,

and a single designing relative? Then he drew a strong picture of this

free-born British citizen skulking and hiding at this moment from a gang

of rogues and conspirators, who in France and other civilised countries

that brag less of liberty than we do, would be themselves flying as

criminals from the officers of justice; and he wound up with a warm

appeal to the press to cast its shield over the victim of bad laws

and foul practices. “In England,” said he, “Justice is the daughter of

Publicity. Throughout the world deeds of villainy are done every day

in kid gloves: but, with us, at all events, they have to be done on

the sly! Here lies our true moral eminence as a nation. Utter then your

'fiat lux,' cast the full light of publicity on this dark villainy; and

behold it will wither, and your oppressed and injured fellow-citizen be

safe from that very hour.”

He signed it and read it out to them, or rather roared it. But he had

written it so well he could not make it bad by delivery. Indeed, he was

a masterly writer of English, you must know. Julia was delighted, but

Alfred shook his head. “The editor will not put it in.”

“Th' editor! D'ye think I'm so green as to trust t' any one editor?

D'ye think I've lived all these years and not learned what poor cowardly

things men are? Moral courage! where can you find it? Except in

the dickshinary? Few to the world their honest thoughts _avow;_ the

groveller policy robs justice _now_--

And none but Sampson dares to lift a hond

Against the curst corruption of the lond.

Now, lad, I'm off to my printer with this. They are working night and

day just now: there will be two hundred copies printed in half an hour.”

“And me, doctor,” said Julia. “Am poor I to have no hand in it? How

cruel of you? Oh pray, pray, pray let me help a little.”

“Put on your bonnet, then, directly,” said he: “in war never lose a

minute.”

“But I am so afraid they may be lying in wait for him outside.”

“Then we'll give them a good hiding: there are three of us; all good men

and staunch,” said the indomitable doctor.

“No, no,” said the pugnacious Alfred. “Julia does not like fighting: I

heard her screaming all the time I was defending myself on the stairs:

let us be prudent: let us throw dust in their eyes. Put me on a bonnet

and cloak.”

“And a nice little woman you'll make, ye fathom.”

“Oh, I can stoop--to conquer.”

Julia welcomed this plan almost with glee, and she and Edward very soon

made a handsome brazen-looking trollop six feet high. Then it had to

stoop, and Edward and Julia helped it out to the carriage, under the

very noses of a policeman and a keeper, who were watching for Alfred:

seeing which--oh frailty of woman!--the district visitor addressed it

aloud as her aunt, and begged it to take care: which she afterwards

observed was acting a falsehood, and “where was her Christianity?”

Alfred was actually not recognised: the carriage bowled away to the

great printing house; it was on that side the water. The foreman entered

into the thing with spirit, and divided the copy, small as it was, among

two or three compositors: so a rough proof was ready in an incredibly

short time; the doctor corrected it: and soon they began to work off the

copies. The foreman found them Mitchell's newspaper list, and envelopes

by the hundred, and while the copies were pouring in, all hands were

folding and addressing them to the London and provincial editors. The

office lent the stamps. The doctor drove Alfred to his own lodgings, and

forbade him to reappear in Pembroke Street until the letter should come

out in the London journals.

That night the letters were all posted, and at daybreak were flying

north, south, east and west. In the afternoon the letter came out in

four London evening papers, and the next morning the metropolis and the

whole kingdom were ringing with them, and the full blaze of publicity

burst upon this dark deed.

Ay, stout Sampson, well you knew mankind, and well you knew the nation

you lived in. Richard Hardie, in the very act of setting detectives to

find Alfred's lurking-place, ran his nose against this letter in the

_Globe._ He collapsed at the sight of it; and wrote directly to Dr.

Wolf, enclosing it and saying that it would be unadvisable to make any

fresh attempt. His letter was crossed by one from Dr. Wolf, containing

Sampson's thunderbolt extracted from the _Sun,_ and saying that no

earthly consideration should induce him to meddle with Alfred _now._

Richard Hardie flung himself into the train, and went down to his

brother at Clare Court.

He was ill at ease. He felt like some great general, who has launched

many attacks against the foe, very successful at first, then less

successful, then repulsed with difficulty, then repulsed with ease, till

at last the foe stands before him impregnable. Then he feels that ere

long that iron enemy will attack him in turn, and that he, exhausted

by his own onslaughts, must defend himself how he can. Yet there was a

pause; he passed a whole quiet peaceful day with his brother, assuring

him that the affair would go no further on either side; but in his

secret soul he felt this quiet day was but the ominous pause between two

great battles: one of the father against the son, the other of the son

against the father.

And he was right: the very next day the late defender attacked, and in

earnest. But for certain reasons I prefer to let another relate it:

_Hardie v. Hardie._

“DEAR SIR,--If you had been in my office when I received your favour of

yesterday relating deft.'s ruffian-like assault, you would have seen the

most ridiculous sight in nature--videlicet, an attorney in a passion.

I threw professional courtesy to the winds, and sent Colls off to Clare

Court to serve the writ personally. Next day, he found the deft, walking

in his garden with Mr. Richard Hardie. Having learned from the servant

which was his man, he stepped up and served copy of the writ in the

usual way. Deft turned pale, and his knees knocked together, and Colls

thinks he mistook himself for a felon, and was going to ask for mercy.

But Mr. Richard stopped him, and said his attorneys were Messrs.

Heathfield, in Chancery Lane; and was this the way Mr. Compton did

business? serving a writ personally on a gentleman in weak health. So

Colls, who can sneer in his quiet way, told him 'No,' but the invalid

had declined to answer my letter, and the invalid had made a violent

attack upon our client's person, avoiding his attorney, 'so, as his

proceedings are summary, we meet him in kind,' says little Colls.

'Oho,' says Mr. Richard, 'your are a wit, are you? Come and have some

luncheon.' This was to get him away from the weaker brother, I take it.

He gave Colls an excellent luncheon, and some admirable conversation

on policy and finance: and when he was going, says this agreeable host:

'Well, Mr. -----, you have had your bellyful of chicken and Madeira; and

your client shall have his bellyful of law.' And this Colls considers

emphatic but coarse.--I am, yours faithfully,

“JOHN COMPTON.”

_“P.S._--Colls elicited that no further attempt will be made to capture

you. It seems some injudicious friend of yours has been writing to the

newspapers. Pray stop that.”

On receiving this letter, Alfred bought another double pistol, loaded

it, hired a body-guard of two prizefighters, and with these at his

heels, repaired to 66 Pembroke Street. No enemy was near: the press had

swept the street alike of keepers and police with one Briarian gesture.

He found Julia and Edward in great anxiety about their father. The

immediate cause was a letter from Mrs. Dodd, which Edward gave him to

read; but not till he had first congratulated him heartily on the aegis

of the press being thrown over him. “The _'Tiser_ has a leader on it,”

said he.

Mrs. Dodd's letter ran thus:--

“My DEAR DEAR CHILDREN,--I am coming home to you heartbroken, without

your poor father. I saw an East Indian ship go to sea, and some instinct

whispered, suppose he should be on board that ship! But, foolishly, I

did not utter my thoughts: because they call these instincts women's

fancies. But now even Mr. Green thinks he is gone to sea; for the town

has been ransacked, and no trace of him can we find. I met my cousin,

Captain Bazalgette, here, and he is promoted to the _Vulture_ frigate,

and sails to-day. I have told him all our misfortunes, and he has

promised to overhaul that merchant ship if he comes up with her: but I

_can see by the way his eye shuns mine_ he has no real hopes. His ship

is the swifter, but he may pass her in the night. And then he is bound

for New Zealand, not India. I told Reginald my poor husband's expression

of face is altered by his affliction, and that he takes himself for a

common sailor, and has his medal still round his neck. Our cousin is

very kind, and will do all he can. God can protect my darling at sea, as

He has ashore: and in His power alone have I any trust. Any further stay

here is vain: my heart, too, yearns for my other treasures, and dreads

lest whilst I am here, and because I am here, some evil should befall

you too. Expect me soon after this letter, and let us try and comfort

one another under this the heaviest of all our many troubles.--With sad

heart, I am, both my darlings' loving mother and friend,

“LUCY DODD”

In the discussion of this letter Alfred betrayed a slight defect of

character. He pooh-poohed the calamity: said David had now a chance, and

a good one, of being cured: whereas confinement was one of the common

causes of insanity even in sane persons. And he stoutly maintained

that David's going to sea was a happy inspiration. Edward coloured, but

deigned no reply. Julia was less patient, and though she was too loving

and too womanly to tell Alfred to his face he was deceiving himself, and

arguing thus indirectly to justify himself in taking her father out of

the asylum at all, yet she saw it, and it imparted a certain coldness

into her replies. Alfred noticed this, and became less confident and

louder, and prodigiously logical.

He was still flowing on with high imperious voice, which I suppose

overpowered the sound of Mrs. Dodd's foot, when she entered suddenly,

pale and weary, in her travelling-dress.

Alfred stopped, and they all started to their feet.

At sight of Alfred she stood dumbfoundered a single moment; then uttered

a faint shriek; and looked at him with unutterable terror.

He stood disconcerted.

Julia ran, and throwing her arms round Mrs. Dodd's neck, entreated her

not to be afraid of him: he was not mad; Dr. Sampson said so. Edward

confirmed her words; and then Julia poured out the story of his wrongs

with great gushes of natural eloquence that might have melted a rock,

and, as anticlimax is part of a true woman, ended innocently by begging

her mother not to look so unkindly at him; and his ankle so sprained,

and him in such pain. For the first time in her life Mrs. Dodd was deaf

to her daughter's natural eloquence; it was remarkable how little her

countenance changed while Julia appealed. She stood looking askant

with horror at Alfred all through that gentle eloquent appeal. But

nevertheless her conduct showed she had heard every word: as soon as

ever her daughter's voice stopped, she seemed to dilate bodily, and

moved towards Alfred pale and lowering. Yes, for once this gentle quiet

lady looked terrible. She confronted Alfred, “Is this true, sir?” said

she, in a low stern voice. “Are you not insane? Have you _never_ been

bereft of your reason?”

“No, Mrs. Dodd, I have not.”

“Then what have you done with my husband, sir?”

CHAPTER XLVII

IT was a thunderbolt. Alfred hung his head, and said humbly, “I did

but go upstairs for one moment to wash my hands for dinner; and he was

gone.”

Mrs. Dodd went on in her low stern voice, almost as if he had not

answered her at all: “By what right did you assume the charge of him?

Did I authorise you to take him from the place where he was safe, and

under my eye?”

Alfred replied sullenly: “He was not very safe, for he was almost burnt

to death. The fire liberated him, not I. After the fire I ran away from

him: he followed me; and then what could I do? I made the best of it;

and gave up my own desires to try and cure him. He longed for the sea:

I tried to indulge him: I hoped to bring him back to you sane: but fate

was against me. I am the most unfortunate of men.”

“Mr. Hardie,” said Mrs. Dodd, “what you have done was the act of a

madman; and, if I believed you to be anything but a madman, the sight

of you would be intolerable to me; for you have made me a widow, and my

children orphans.”

With this she gave a great shudder, and retired in tears.

Alfred rose, pale and defiant. “That is _her_ notion of justice,” said

he bitterly; “pray is it yours, you two?”

“Well, since you ask my opinion,” said Edward, “I think it was rather

presumptuous of you to undertake the care of my father: and, having

undertaken it, you ought not to have left him a moment out of your

sight.”

“Oh, that is your opinion, is it? And you, dear Julia?”

Julia made no reply, but hid her face in her hands and sighed deeply.

“I see,” said Alfred sorrowfully. “Even you are against me at heart. You

judge by the event, not the motive. There is no justice in this world

for me. I'm sick of life. I have no right to keep the mistress of the

house out of her own room: there, I'll go, my heart is broken. No, it is

not, and never shall be, by anything that breathes. Thank Heaven, I have

got one friend left in this bitter world: and I'll make her the judge

whether I have deserved this last injustice. _I'll go to my sister._”

He jumped up and hobbled slowly across the room, while Julia and Edward

sat chilled to the bone by those five little words, so simple, so

natural, yet so incredible, and to the hearers so awful. They started,

they shuddered, they sat petrified, staring at him, while he hobbled

across the room to go to his sister.

As he opened the door to go out he heard stout Edward groan and Julia

utter a low wail. He stood confounded a moment. Then he hobbled down a

stair or two. But, ere he had gone far, there was a hasty whispering

in the drawing-room, and Edward came after him in great agitation, and

begged him to return; Julia must speak with him. He turned, and his face

brightened. Edward saw that, and turned his own face away and stammered

out, “Forget what I said to you. I am your friend, and always must be

for her sake. No, no, I cannot go into that room with you; I'll go and

comfort mamma. Hardie, old fellow, we are very unhappy, all of us. We

are too unhappy to quarrel.”

These kind words soothed Alfred's sore heart. He brightened up and

entered the drawing-room. He found Julia standing in the middle of it,

the colour of ashes. Alfred was alarmed. “You are unwell, dearest,” he

cried; “you will faint. What have I done with my ungoverned temper?” He

moved towards her with a face full of concern.

“No, Alfred,” said she solemnly, “I am not the least ill. It is sorrow,

deep sorrow for one I love better than all the world. Sit down beside

me, my poor Alfred; and--God help me to speak to him!”

Alfred began to feel dire misgivings.

“Yes,” said she, “I love you too well to let any hand but mine wound

you.” And here she took his sinewy hand with her soft palm. “I want to

soften it in the telling: and ah, how can I? Oh, why can I not throw

myself body and soul between you and all trouble, all sorrow?”

“My Julia,” said Alfred gravely, “something has happened to Jane.”

“Yes, Alfred. She met with a terrible accident.”

“Ah!”

“She was struck by an unfortunate man; he was not in his right mind.”

“Struck? My sister struck. What, was there no man by?”

“No. Edward nearly killed him afterwards.”

“God bless him.”

“Alfred, be patient. It was too late.”

“What, is she hurt seriously? Is she disfigured?”

“No, Alfred,” said Julia solemnly; “she is not disfigured; oh far from

that.”

“Julia, you alarm me. This comes of shutting her brother up. May

Heaven's eternal curse light on those who did it. My poor little sister!

How you weep, Julia. My heart is lead.”

“I weep for you, darling, not for her.”

“Ah, that is how they talk when those we love are----One word! I shall

never see my poor little Jenny again; shall I?”

“Yes, Alfred; if you will but follow her steps and believe in Him, who

soothed her last hour, and made her face shine with joy like an angel's

while we all wept around. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, he said he had but

one true friend in the world. Alas it is so; you have but me now, who

pity you and love you more than heart can utter; my own, my beloved, my

bereaved.”

What could soften such a shock as this? It fell, and his anguish

was frightful, all the more so that he ascribed the calamity to his

imprisonment, and mingled curses and threats of vengeance with his

bursts of grief. He spurned the consolations of religion: he said heaven

was as unjust as earth, as cruel as hell.

She cried out and stopped his mouth with her hand; she almost forced

him to kneel beside her, and prayed aloud for him: and when at last his

agony found vent in tears, she put her innocent arms round his neck and

wept with him.

Every now and then the poor fellow would almost shriek with remorse.

“Oh, if I had only been kinder to her! if I had but been kinder to her!”

“You were kind to her,” said Julia softly, but firmly. “Oh, no; I was

always sneering at her. And why? I knew her religion was sincere: but

my little mind fixed on a few phrases she had picked up from others,

and I----” He could say no more, but groaned with anguish. And let his

remorse be a caution to us all. Bereaved we all must be, who live on and

on: but _this,_ bereavement's bitterest drop, we may avoid.

“Alfred,” said Julia, “do not torment yourself. We girls care little

about a few sarcasms; it is the cold heart that wounds us. You loved

Jane, and she knew it well, and joyed in it. You were kinder to her than

you think, and so her dying thoughts were for you. It was for you she

asked, and made your father send for you, and poor I hoped you would

come. And, dearest, her last act was to write a few words to you, and

trust them to her who she knew loved you better than heart can utter.

Since it was her wish, let us try and read them together, the last words

of a saint (I have never seen them), and, if they do not prove words of

love, then I will let you think you were not a good brother to her you

and I, and poor, poor Edward, have lost.”

He made a sad sign of assent; and Julia rose and got the enclosure.

But, as Jane's last written words reappeared on the scene in a somewhat

remarkable way, I will only say here, that both these poor young things

tried in vain to read them, and both in turn burst out sobbing, so that

they could not: so they held the paper and tried to see the words out of

their streaming eyes. And these two mourners had the room to themselves

till midnight; for even Mrs. Dodd's hostility respected Alfred then; and

as for Julia, she was one of those who rise with the occasion: she was

half wife, half angel from Heaven to her bereaved lover through all

those bitter hours.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

No life was ever yet a play: I mean, an unbroken sequence of dramatic

incidents. Calms will come; unfortunately for the readers, happily for

the read. And I remember seeing it objected to novelists, by a young

gentleman just putting his foot for the first time into “Criticism,”

that the writers aforesaid suppress the small intermediate matters which

in real life come by the score between each brilliant event: and so

present the ordinary and the extraordinary parts of life in false

proportions. Now, if this remark had been offered by way of contrast

between events themselves and all mortal attempts to reproduce them

upon paper or the stage, it would have been philosophical; but it was a

strange error to denounce the practice as distinctive of fiction: for

it happens to be the one trait the novelist and dramatist have in

common with the evangelist. The Gospels skip fifteen years of the most

interesting life Creation has witnessed; they relate Christ's birth

in full, but hurry from His boyhood to the more stirring events of His

thirtieth and subsequent years. And all the inspired histories do much

the same thing. The truth is, that epics, dramas, novels, histories,

chronicles, reports of trials at law, in a word, all narratives true

or fictitious, except those which, true or fictitious, nobody reads,

abridge the uninteresting facts as Nature never did, and dwell as Nature

never did on the interesting ones.

Can nothing, however, be done to restore, in the reader's judgment,

that just balance of “the sensational” and the “soporific,” which all

writers, that have readers, disturb? Nothing, I think, without his own

assistance. But surely something with it. And, therefore, I throw

myself on the intelligence of my readers; and ask them to realise, that

henceforth pages are no strict measure of time, and that to a year big

with strange events, on which I have therefore dilated in this

story, succeeded a year in which few brilliant things happened to the

personages of this tale: in short, a year to be skimmed by chronicler or

novelist, and yet (mind you) a year of three hundred and sixty-five

days six hours, or thereabouts, and one in which the quiet, unobtrusive

troubles of our friends' hearts, especially the female hearts, their

doubts, divisions, distresses, did not remit--far from it. Now this year

I propose to divide into topics, and go by logical, rather than natural,

sequence of events.

THE LOVERS.

Alfred came every day to see Julia, and Mrs. Dodd invariably left the

room at his knock.

At last Julia proposed to Alfred not to come to the house for the

present; but to accompany her on her rounds as district visitor. To see

and soothe the bitter calamities of the poor had done her own heart good

in its worst distress, and she desired to apply the same medicine to her

beloved, who needed it: that was one thing: and then another was, that

she found her own anger rising when her mother left the room at that

beloved knock: and to be angry with her poor widowed, mother was a sin.

“She is as unfortunate as I am happy,” thought Julia; “I have got _mine_

back.”

Alfred assented to this arrangement with rather an ill grace. He

misunderstood Julia, and thought she was sacrificing him to what he

called her mother's injustice. This indeed was the interpretation any

male would have been pretty sure to put on it. His soreness, however,

did not go very far; because she was so kind and good to him when they

were together. He used to escort her back to the door of 66: and look

imploringly; but she never asked him in. He thought her hard for this.

He did not see the tears that flowed for that mute look of his the

moment the door was closed; tears she innocently restrained for fear the

sight of them should make him as unhappy as his imploring look made

her. _Mauvais calcul!_ She should have cried right out. When we men are

unhappy, we like our sweethearts to be unhappier--that consoles _us._

But when this had gone on nearly a month, and no change, Alfred lost

patience: so he lingered one day at the door to make a request. He asked

Julia to marry him: and so put an end to this state of things.

“Marry you, child?” cried Julia, blushing like a rose with surprise and

pleasure. “Oh, for shame!”

After the first thrill, she appealed to his candour whether that would

not be miserably selfish of her to leave her poor mother in her present

distressed condition. “Ah, Alfred, _so_ pale, _so_ spiritless, and

inconsolable! My poor, poor mother!”

“You will have to decide between us two one day.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Julia, turning pale at the very idea. But he

repeated doggedly that it must come to that, sooner or later. Then he

reminded her of their solemn engagement, and put it to her whether it

was a moral proceeding in her to go back from her plighted troth? What

had he done to justify her in drawing back from her word? “I admit,”

said he, “that I have _suffered_ plenty of wrong for your sake: but what

have I done wrong?”

Undeterred by the fear of immorality, the monotonous girl had but one

reply to his multiform reasons: “This is no time for me to abandon my

mother.”

“Ah, it is her you love: you don't care for me,” snapped Alfred.

“Don't I, dear Alfred?” murmured Julia.

“Forgive me! I'm a ruffian, a wretch.”

“You are my Alfred. But oh, have a little patience, dear.”

“A little patience? I have the patience of Job. But even his went at

last.”

[I ought to have said they were in the passage now. The encroaching

youth had gained an entrance by agitating her so at the door that she

had to ask him in to hide her own blushes from the public.] She now

gently reminded him how much happier they were than they had been for

months. “Dear me,” said she, “I am almost happy: happier than I ought to

be; could be quite so, but that I see you discontented.”

“Ah, you have so many about you that you love: I have only you.”

“And that is true, my poor Alfred.”

This softened him a little; and then she interwove her fingers together,

and so put both palms softly on his shoulder (you never saw a male do

that, and never will), and implored him to be patient, to be generous.

“Oh,” said she, “if you knew the distress it gives me to refuse to you

anything on earth, you would be generous, and not press me when my heart

says 'Yes,' but my lips _must_ say 'No.'”

This melted him altogether, and he said he would not torment her any

more.

But he went away discontented with himself for having yielded: my lord

did not call it “yielding,” but “being defeated.” And as he was not only

very deep in love, but by nature combative, he took a lodging nearly

opposite No. 66, and made hot love to her, as hot as if the attachment

was just forming. Her mother could not go out but he was at the door

directly: she could not go out but he was at her heels. This pleased her

at first and thrilled her with the sense of sweet and hot pursuit: but

by-and-by, situated as she was between him and her mother, it worried

her a little at times, and made her nervous. She spoke a little sharply

to him now and then. And that was new. It came from the nerves, not the

heart. At last she advised him to go back to Oxford. “I shall be the

ruin of your mind if we go on like this,” said she sadly.

“What, leave the field to my rivals? No, thank you.”

“What rivals, sir?” asked Julia, drawing up.

“Your mother, your brother, your curates that would come buzzing the

moment I left; your sick people, who bask on your smiles and your sweet

voice till I envy them: Sarah, whom you permit to brush your lovely

hair, the piano you play on, the air you deign to breathe and brighten,

everybody and everything that is near you; they are all my rivals; and

shall I resign you to them, and leave myself desolate? I'm not such a

fool.”

She smiled, and could not help feeling it was sweet to be pestered. So

she said with matronly dignity, and the old Julian consistency, “You are

a foolish impetuous boy. You are the plague of my life: and--the sun of

my existence.” That passed off charmingly. But presently his evil genius

prompted Alfred to endeavour to soften Mrs. Dodd by letter, and induce

her to consent to his marriage with her daughter. He received her answer

at breakfast-time. It was wonderfully polite and cold; Mrs. Dodd

feigned unmixed surprise at the proposal, and said that insanity being

unfortunately in her own family, and the suspicion of insanity resting

on himself, such a union was not to be thought of; and therefore,

notwithstanding her respect for his many good qualities, she must

decline with thanks the honour he offered her. She inserted a poisoned

sting by way of postscript. “When you succeed in publicly removing the

impression your own relations share with me, and when my husband owes

his restoration to you, instead of his destruction, of course you will

receive a very different answer to your proposal--should you then think

it consistent with your dignity to renew it.”

As hostile testators used to leave the disinherited one shilling, not

out of a shilling's worth of kindly feeling, but that he might not be

able to say his name was omitted through inadvertency, so Mrs. Dodd

inserted this postscript merely to clench the nail and tantalise her

enemy. It was a masterpiece of feminine spite.

She would have been wonderstruck could she have seen how Alfred received

her missive.

To be sure he sat in a cold stupor of dejection for a good half hour;

but at the end of that time he lifted up his head, and said quietly, “So

be it. I'll get the trial over, and my sanity established, as soon as

possible: and then I'll hire a yacht and hunt her husband till I find

him.”

Having settled this little plan, he looked out for Julia, whose sympathy

he felt in need of after such a stern blow.

She came out much later than usual that day, for to tell the truth, her

mother had detained her to show her Alfred's letter, and her answer.

“Ah, mamma,” said poor Julia, “you don't love me as you did once. Poor

Alfred!”

Mrs. Dodd sighed at this reproach, but said she did not deserve it. No

mother in her senses would consent to such a match.

Julia bowed her head submissively and went to her duties. But when

Alfred came to her open-mouthed to complain of her mother's cruelty,

she stopped him at once, and asked him how he could go and write that

foolish, unreasonable letter. Why had he not consulted her first? “You

have subjected yourself to a rebuff,” said she angrily, “and one from

which I should have saved you. Is it nothing that mamma out of pity to

me connives at our meeting and spending hours together? Do you think

she does no violence to her own wishes here? and is she to meet with no

return?”

“What, are you against me too?” said poor Alfred.

“No, it is you who are our enemy with your unreasonable impatience.”

“I am not so cold-blooded as you are, certainly.”

“Humility and penitence would become you better than to retort on me. I

love you both, and pray God on my knees to show me how to do my duty to

both.”

“That is it; you are not single-hearted like me. You want to please all

the world, and reconcile the irreconcilable. It won't do: you will have

to choose between your mother and me at last.”

“Then of course I shall choose my mother.”

“Why?”

“Because she claims my duty as well as my love; because she is bowed

down with sorrow, and needs her daughter just now more than you do;

besides, you are my other self, and we must deny ourselves.”

“We have no more right to be unjust to ourselves than to anybody else;

injustice is injustice.”

“Alfred, you are a high-minded Heathen, and talk Morality. Morality is a

snare. What I pray to be is a Christian, as your dear sister was, and to

deny myself; and you make it, oh so difficult.”

“So I suppose it will end in turning out your heathen and then taking

your curate. Your mother would consent to that directly.”

“Alfred,” said Julia with dignity, “these words are harsh, and--forgive

me for saying so--they are coarse. Such words would separate us two,

without my mother, if I were to hear many of them; for they take

the bloom off affection, and that mutual reverence, without which no

gentleman and lady could be blessed in holy wedlock.”

Alfred was staggered and mortified too: they walked on in silence now.

“Alfred,” said Julia at last, “do not think me behind you in affection,

but wiser, for once, and our best friend. I do think we had better see

less of one another for a time, my poor Alfred.”

“And why for a time? Why not for ever?”

“If your heart draws no distinction, why not indeed?”

“So be it then: for I will be no woman's slave. There's my hand, Julia:

let us part friends.”

“Thank you for that, dear Alfred: may you find some one who can love you

more--than--I do.”

The words choked her. But he was stronger, because he was in a passion.

He reproached her bitterly. “If I had been as weak and inconstant as you

are, I might have been out of Drayton House long before I did escape.

But I was faithful to my one love. I have some right to sing 'Aileen

Aroon,' you have none. You are an angel of beauty and goodness; you will

go to Heaven, and I shall go to the devil now for want of you; but then

you have no constancy nor true fidelity: so that has parted us, and now

nothing is left me but to try and hate you.”

He turned furiously on his heel.

“God bless you, go where you will,” faltered Julia.

He replied with a fierce ejaculation of despair, and dashed away.

Thus temper and misunderstanding triumphed, after so many strange and

bitter trials had failed.

But alas! it is often so.

CHAPTER XLIX.

Both the parted lovers were wretched. Julia never complained, but

drooped, and read the Psalms, and Edward detected her in tears over

them. He questioned her and obtained a lame account; she being far more

bent on screening Alfred than on telling the truth.

Edward called on the other; and found him disconsolate, and reading a

Heathen philosopher for comfort, and finding none. Edward questioned

him, and he was reserved and even sulky. Sir Imperturbable persisted

quietly, and he exploded, and out came his wrongs. Edward replied that

he was a pretty fellow: wanted it all his own way. “Suppose my mother,

with her present feelings, was to take a leaf out of your book, and use

all her power; where would you be then? Come, old fellow, I know what

love is, and one of us _shall_ have the girl he loves, unless any harm

should come to my poor father owing to your blunder--oh, that would put

it out of the question, I feel--but let us hope better. I pulled you out

of the fire, and somehow I seem to like you better than ever after that;

let me pull you out of this mess too.”

“Pull away,” cried the impetuous youth. “I'll trust you with my life:

ay, with more than my life, with my love; for you are the man for me:

reason is always uppermost with you:

Give me the man that is not passion's slave,

And I will wear him in my heart's core, ay----”

“Oh bother that. If you are in earnest, don't mouth, but put on your hat

and come over.”

He assented; but in the middle of putting on his coat, made this little

observation: “Now I see how wise the ancients were: yes, friendship is

better than love; calmer, more constant, free from the heats and chills

of that impetuous passion; its pure bosom is ruffled by none of love's

jealousies and irritabilities. Solem e mundo tollunt qui tollunt

amicitiam.”

“Oh bother quoting; come and shake hands with Julia.” They went over;

Mrs. Dodd was in the city. Edward ushered in Alfred, saying, “Here is

the other Impetuosity;” and sagely retired for a few minutes. When

he came back they were sitting hand in hand, he gazing on her, she

inspecting the carpet. “That is all right,” said Edward drily: “now the

next thing is, you must go back to Oxford directly, and read for your

first class.”

The proposal fell like a blight upon the reconciled lovers. But Edward

gave potent reasons. The delays of law were endless: Alfred's defendant

had already obtained one postponement of the trial on frivolous grounds.

Now the Oxford examination and Doncaster races come on at a fixed date,

by a Law of Nature, and admit of no “postponement swindle.” “You mark

my words, you will get your class before you will get your trial, and it

won't hurt you to go into court a first-class man: will it? And then you

won't quarrel by letter, you two; I know. Come, will you do what I tell

you: or is friendship but a name? eh, Mr. Bombast?” He ended with great

though quiet force: “Come, you two, which is better, to part like the

scissors, or part like the thread?”

Similes are no arguments; that is why they convince people so: Alfred

capitulated to the scissors and thread; and only asked with abnormal

humility to be allowed to taste the joys of reconciliation for two days.

The third found him at Oxford; he called on the head of his college

to explain what had prevented his return to Exeter in the October term

twelve months ago, and asked for rooms. Instead of siding with a man

of his own college so cruelly injured, the dignitary was alarmed by

the bare accusation, and said he must consider: insanity was a terrible

thing.

“So is false accusation, and so is false imprisonment,” said Hardie

bitterly.

“Unquestionably. But I have at present no means of deciding how far

those words apply.” In short, he could give no answer; must consult the

other officers, and would convey the result by letter.

Alfred's pride was deeply mortified, not less by a certain cold

repugnant manner than by the words. And there came over his heart a

sickening feeling that he was now in the eyes of men an intellectual

leper.

He went to another college directly, and applied to the vice-president,

the vice-president sent him with a letter to the dean; the dean looked

frightened; and told him hesitatingly the college was full; he might put

his name down, and perhaps get in next year. Alfred retired, and learned

from the porter that the college was not full. He sighed deeply, and the

sickening feeling grew on him; an ineradicable stigma seemed upon him,

and Mrs. Dodd was no worse than the rest of the world then; every mother

in England would approve her resolutions. He wandered about the scenes

of his intellectual triumphs: he stood in the great square of the

schools, a place ugly to unprejudiced eyes, but withal somewhat grand

and inspiring, especially to scholars who have fought their keen and

bloodless battles there. He looked at the windows and gilt inscription

of the Schola Metaphysices, in which he had met the scholars of his day

and defeated them for the Ireland. He wandered into the theatre, and

eyed the rostrum, whence he had not mumbled, but recited, his Latin

prize poem with more than one thunder of academic applause: thunder

compared with which Drury Lane's us a mere cracker. These places were

unchanged; but he, sad scholar, wandered among them as if he was a

ghost, and all these were stony phantoms of an intellectual past, never,

never to return.

He telegraphed Sampson and Edward to furnish him with certificates that

he had never been insane, but the victim of a foul conspiracy; and, when

he received them, he went with them to St. Margaret's Hall; for he

had bethought him that the new principal was a first-rate man, and had

openly vowed he would raise that “refuge for the oft-times phoughed” to

a place of learning.

Hardie called, sent in his card, and was admitted to the principal's

study. He was about to explain who he was, when the doctor interrupted

him, and told him politely he knew him by reputation. “Tell me rather,”

said he shrewdly, “to what I owe this application from an undergraduate

so distinguished as Mr. Hardie?”

Then Alfred began to quake, and, instead of replying, put a hand

suddenly before his face, and lost courage for one moment.

“Come, Mr. Hardie,” said the principal, “don't be disconcerted: a fault

regretted is half atoned; and I am not disposed to be hard on the errors

of youth; I mean where there is merit to balance them.”

“Sir,” said Alfred sadly, “it is not a fault I have to acknowledge, but

a misfortune.”

“Tell me all about it,” said Dr. Alder guardedly.

He told it, omitting nothing essential that could touch the heart or

excite the ironical humour of an academician.

“Well, 'truth is more wonderful than fiction,'” said the doctor. And I

conclude the readers of this tale are all of the doctor's opinion; so

sweet to the mind is cant.

Alfred offered his certificates.

Now Dr. Alder had been asking himself in what phrases he should decline

this young genius, who was sane now, but of course had been mad, only

had forgotten the circumstance. But the temptation to get an Ireland

scholar into his Hall suddenly overpowered him. The probability that he

might get a first-class in a lucid interval was too enticing; nothing

venture, nothing have. He determined to venture a good deal.

“Mr. Hardie,” said he, “this house shall always be open to good morals

and good scholarship while I preside over it, and it shall be open to

them all the more when they come to me dignified, and made sacred, by

'unmerited calamity.'”

Now this fine speech, like Minerva herself, came from the head. Alfred

was overcome by it to tears. At that the doctor's heart was touched, and

even began to fancy it had originated that noble speech.

It was no use doing things by halves; so Dr. Alder gave Alfred a

delightful set of rooms; and made the Hall pleasant to him. He

was rewarded by a growing conviction that he had made an excellent

acquisition. This opinion, however, was anything but universal: and

Alfred finding the men of his own college suspected his sanity, and

passed jokes behind his back, cut them all dead, and confined himself to

his little Hall. There they petted him, and crowed about him, and betted

on him for the schools as freely as if he was a colt the Hall was going

to enter for the Derby.

He read hard, and judiciously, but without his old confidence: he became

anxious and doubtful; he had seen so many first-rate men just miss

a first-class. The brilliant creature analysed all his Aristotelian

treatises, and wrote the synopses clear with marginal references on

great pasteboard cards three feet by two, and so kept the whole subject

before his eye, till he obtained a singular mastery. Same system with

the historians: nor did he disdain the use of coloured inks. Then the

brilliant creature drew lists of all the hard words he encountered in

his reading, especially in the common books, and read these lists till

mastered. The stake was singularly heavy in his case, so he guarded

every crevice.

And at this period he was not so unhappy as he expected. The laborious

days went swiftly, and twice a week at least came a letter from Julia.

Oh, how his grave academic room with oaken panels did brighten, when

her letter lay on the table. It was opened, and seemed written with

sunbeams. No quarrels on paper! Absence made the heart grow fonder. And

Edward came to see him, and over their wine let out a feminine trait

in Julia. “When Hurd calls, she walks out of the room, just as my poor

mother does when you come. That is spite: since you are sent away,

nobody else is to profit by it. Where is her Christianity, eh? and echo

answers--Got a cigar, old fellow?” And, after puffing in silence awhile,

he said resignedly, “I am an unnatural monster.”

“Oh, are you?” said the other serenely; for he was also under the benign

influence.

“Yes,” said Edward, “I am your ally, and a mere spy in the camp of those

two ladies. I watch all their moves for your sake.”

Alfred forgave him. And thus his whole life was changed, and for nearly

twelve months (for Dr. Alder let him reside in the Hall through the

vacation) he pursued the quiet tenor of a student's life, interrupted at

times by law; but that is another topic.

WIFE AND NO WIFE.

Mrs. Dodd was visibly shaken by that calamity which made her shrink with

horror from the sight of Alfred Hardie. In the winter she was so unwell

that she gave up her duties with Messrs. Cross and Co. Her connection

with them had been creditable to both parties. I believe I forgot to say

why they trusted her so; well, I must tell it elsewhere. David off her

hands, she was independent, and had lost the motive and the heart for

severe work. She told the partners she could no longer do them justice,

and left them, to their regret. They then advised her to set up as a

milliner, and offered her credit for goods at cash prices up to two

thousand pounds. She thanked them like a sorrowful queen, and went her

way.

In the spring she recovered some spirit and health; but at midsummer a

great and subtle misfortune befell her. Her mind was bent on David night

and day, and used to struggle to evade the laws of space that bind

its grosser companion, and find her lost husband on the sea. She often

dreamt of him, but vaguely. But one fatal night she had a dream as clear

as daylight, and sharp as white pebbles in the sun. She was on a large

ship with guns; she saw men bring a dead sailor up the side; she saw all

their faces, and the dead man's too. It was David. His face was white.

A clear voice said he was to be buried in the deep next morning. She saw

the deck at her feet, the breeches of the guns, so clear, so defined,

that, when she awoke, and found herself in the dark, she thought reality

was the illusion. She told the dream to Julia and Edward. They tried

to encourage her, in vain. “I saw him,” she said, “I saw him; it was a

vision, not a dream; my David is dead. Well, then, I shall not be long

behind him.”

Dr. Sampson ridiculed her dream to her face. But to her children he told

another story. “I am anxious about her,” he said, “most anxious. There

is no mortal ill the distempered brain may not cause. Is it not devilish

we can hear nothing of him? She will fret herself into the grave, as

sure as fate, if something does not turn up.”

Her children could not console her; they tried, but something hung round

their own hearts, and chilled every effort. In a word, they shared her

fears. How came she to see him on board a ship with guns? In her waking

hours she always said he was on a merchant ship. Was it not one of

those visions, which come to mortals and give them sometimes a peep into

Space, and, far more rarely, a glance into Time?

One day in the autumn, Alfred, being in town on law business, met what

seemed the ghost of Mrs. Dodd in the streets. She saw him not; her eye

was on that ghastly face she had seen in her dreams. It flashed through

his mind that she would not live long to part him and Julia. But he

discouraged the ungenerous thought; almost forgave her repugnance to

himself, and felt it would be worse than useless to ask Julia to leave

her mother, who was leaving her visibly.

But her horror of him was anything but softened; and she used to tell

Dr. Sampson she thought the sight of that man would kill her now. Edward

himself began to hope Alfred would turn his affections elsewhere. The

house in Pembroke Street was truly the house of mourning now; all their

calamities were light compared with this.

THE DISTRICT VISITOR.

While Julia was writing letters to keep up Alfred's heart, she was very

sad herself Moreover, he had left her for Oxford but a very few days,

when she received an anonymous letter; her first. It was written in a

female hand, and couched in friendly and sympathetic terms. The writer

thought it only fair to warn her that Mr. Alfred Hardie was passionately

fond of a lady in the asylum, and had offered her marriage. If Miss Dodd

wished to be deceived, let her burn this letter and think no more of

it; if not, let her insert this advertisement in the Times: “The whole

Truth.--L. D.,” and her correspondent would communicate particulars by

word or writing.

What a barbed and poisoned arrow is to the body, was this letter to

Julia's mind. She sat cold as a stone with this poison in her hand. Then

came an impetuous impulse to send it down to Alfred, and request him to

transfer the other half of his heart to his lady of the asylum. Then she

paused; and remembered how much unjust suspicion had been levelled at

him already. What right had she to insult him? She would try and keep

the letter to herself. As to acting upon it, her good sense speedily

suggested it came from the rival in question, real or supposed. “She

wants to make use of me,” said Julia; “it is plain Alfred does not care

much for her; or why does she come to me?” She put the letter in her

desk, and it rankled in her heart. _Hoeret lateri lethalis arundo._ She

trembled at herself; she felt a savage passion had been touched in her.

She prayed day and night against jealousy.

But I must now, to justify my heading, skip some months, and relate a

remarkable incident that befell her in the said character. On the first

of August in this year, a good Christian woman, one of her patients,

asked her to call on Mr. Barkington, that lodged above. “He is a decent

body, miss, and between you and me, I think his complaint is, he don't

get quite enough to eat.”

“Barkington!” said Julia, and put her hand to her bosom. She went and

tapped at his door.

“Come in,” said a shrillish voice.

She entered, and found a weazened old man seated, mending his own coat.

He rose, and she told him she was a district visitor. He said he had

heard of her; they called her the beautiful lady in that court. This was

news to her, and made her blush. She asked leave to read a chapter to

him; he listened as to some gentle memory of childhood. She prescribed

him a glass of port wine, and dispensed it on the instant. Thus

physicked, her patient became communicative, and chattered on about his

native place--but did not name it--and talked about the people there.

Now our district visitor was, if the truth must be told, a compounder.

She would permit her pupils to talk about earthly affairs, on condition

they would listen to heavenly ones before she went. So she let this old

man run on, and he told her he had been a banker's clerk all his life,

and saved a thousand pounds, and come up to London to make his fortune

on the Stock Exchange; and there he was sometimes a bull, and sometimes

a bear, and whichever he was, certain foxes called brokers and jobbers

got the profit and he the loss. “It's all the same as a gambling-table,”

said he. “The jobbers and brokers have got the same odds the bank has at

Rouge et Noir, and the little capitalist like me is doomed beforehand.”

Then he told her that there was a crossing-sweeper near the Exchange who

came from his native place, and had started as a speculator, and come

down to that. Only he called it rising, and used to speak with a shudder

of when he dabbled in the funds, and often told him to look sharp, and

get a crossing. And lo! one day when he was cleaned out, and desperate,

and hovering with the other ghosts of little capitalists about the tomb

of their money, he saw his countryman fall flat, and the broom fly

out of his hand. Instantly he made a rush, and so did a wooden-legged

sailor; but he got first to the broom, and began to sweep while others

picked up his countryman, who proved dead as a herring; and he succeeded

to his broom, and it made money by the Exchange, though he never could.

Still, one day he picked up a pocket-book in that neighbourhood, with

a lump of money, which he straightway advertised in--no newspapers.

And now, Julia thought it time to interpose the eighth commandment, the

golden rule, and such branches of learning.

He became a favourite of hers: he had so much to say: she even thought

she had seen his face before: but she could not tell where. She gave him

good books and tracts; and read to him, and ploughed his heart with her

sweet voice, and sowed the good seed in the furrows--seed which, like

wheat or other grain, often seems to fall flat and die, but comes out

green after many days.

One Saturday she invited him to dine with the servants next day. He came

during church time, and went away in the afternoon while she was with

her mother. But she asked Sarah, who proved eager to talk about him. “He

was a rum customer; kept asking questions all dinner time. 'Well,' says

I, 'you're good company you are; be you a lawyer; for you examines us;

but you don't tell us nothing.' Ye see, Miss, Jane she is that simple,

she was telling him everything, and about Mr. Alfred's lawsuit with his

father and all.”

Julia said that was indiscreet; but after all what did it matter?

“Who knows, Miss?” Sarah replied: “least said is soonest mended. If you

please, Miss, who is he? Where does he bide? Where does he come from?

Does he know Hardies?”

“I should think not. Why?”

“Because I'm much mistaken if he doesn't.” Then putting on a stolid

look, she asked, “Does he know your papa?”

“Oh no, Sarah. How should he?”

“There now,” said Sarah; “Miss, you are all in the dark about this old

man: I'll tell you something; I took him out of the way of Jane's

temper when she began a dishing up, and I had him into the parlour for

a minute; and in course there he sees the picture of your poor papa hung

up. Miss, if you'll believe me, the moment he claps eyes on that there

picture, he halloes out, and out goes his two hands like this here.

'It's him!' says he; 'it's him!' and stares at the picture like a

stuck pig. Forgot I was close behind him, I do believe. 'She's _his_

daughter,' says he, in a whisper, a curious whisper; seemed to come

out of his stomack. 'What's the matter now?' says I, just so. He gave

a great start, as if my speaking had wakened him from a dream, and says

he, 'nothing,' as quiet as a lamb. 'Nothing isn't much,' says I, just

so. 'It usedn't to be anything at all when I was your age,' says he,

sneering. But I paid him a good coin: says I, 'Old man, where you comes

from do the folks use to start and hallo out and cry “It's him! she's

his daughter!” and fling their two arms abroad like a wiumdmill in

March, and all for--nothing?' So at that he changed as white as my

smock, and fell all of a tremble. However, at dinner he perks up, and

drew that poor simple Jane out a good one. But he didn't look towards me

much, which I set opposite to watch my lord.”

“Sarah,” said Julia, “this is really curious, mysterious; you are a

good, watchful, faithful girl; and, to tell the truth, I sometimes fancy

I have seen Mr. Barkington's face. However, I will solve this little

mystery to-morrow; for I will ask him: thank you, Sarah.”

On Monday she called on Mr. Barkington to solve the mystery. But,

instead of solving, her visit thickened it: for Mr. Barkington was gone

bag and baggage. When Edward was told of this business, he thought it

remarkable, and regretted he had not seen the old man.

So do I; for it is my belief Edward would have recognised him.

DAVID DODD.

The history of a man is the history of his mind. And that is why you

have heard so little of late about the simplest, noblest, and

most unfortunate of all my personages. Insanity is as various as

eccentricity. I have spared the kind-hearted reader some of David's

vagaries. However, when we parted with him, he had settled into

that strange phase of lunacy, in which the distant past seems nearly

obliterated, and memory exists, but revolves in a narrow round of things

present: this was accompanied with a positive illusion, to wit, a fixed

idea that he was an able seaman: and, as usual, what mental power he

retained came out strongest in support of this idea. All this was marked

by a bodily agility somewhat more than natural in a man of his age.

Owing to the wind astern, he was enabled to run into Portsmouth before

the steam-tug came up with him: and he did run into port, not because

he feared pursuit, but because he was desperately hungry; and he had no

suicidal tendencies whatever.

He made for a public-house, and called for some bread and cheese and

beer; they were supplied, and then lo! he had no money to pay for them.

“I'll owe you till I come back from sea, my bo,” said he coolly. On this

the landlord collared him, and David shook him off into the road, much

as a terrier throws a rat from him; then there was a row, and a naval

officer, who was cruising about for hands, came up and heard it. There

was nothing at all unseamanlike in David's conduct, and the gentleman

took a favourable view of it, and paid the small demand; but not with

unleavened motives. He was the second lieutenant of H. M. frigate

_Vulture;_ she had a bad name, thanks to her last captain, and was short

of hands: he took David aside and asked him would he like to ship on

board the _Vulture._

David said yes, and suggested the foretop. “Oh yes,” growled the

lieutenant, “you all want to be there.” He then gauged this Jacky Tar's

intellects; asked him _inter alia_ how to send a frigate's foretop

gallant yard down upon deck: and to show how seamanship sticks in the

brain when once it gets there, David actually told him. “You are rather

old,” said the lieutenant, “but you are a seaman:” and so took him on

board the _Vulture_ at Spithead, before Green began to search the town

in earnest. Nobody acts his part better than some demented persons do:

and David made a very tolerable sailor notwithstanding his forty-five

years: and the sea did him good within certain limits. Between him and

the past lay some intellectual or cerebral barrier as impenetrable

as the great wall of China; but on the hither side of that wall his

faculties improved. Of course, the crew soon found out the gap in his

poor brain, and called him Soft Billy, and played on him at first. But

by degrees he won their affection; he was so wonderfully sweet-tempered:

and besides his mind being in an abnormal state, he loathed grog, and

gave his allowance to his messmates. One day he showed an unexpected

trait; they were lying becalmed in southern latitudes, and, time hanging

heavily, each wiled it how he might: one fiddled, another wrote to his

Polly, another fished for sharks, another whistled for a wind, scores

fell into the form of meditation without the reality, and one got a

piece of yarn and amused himself killing flies on the bulwark. Now this

shocked poor Billy: he put out his long arm and intercepted a stroke.

“What is the row?” said the operator.

“You mustn't,” said Billy solemnly, looking into his face with great

dreamy eyes.

“You be----,” said the other, and lent him a tap on the cheek with the

yarn. Billy did not seem to mind this; his skin had little sensibility,

owing to his disorder.

Jack recommenced on his flies, and the bystanders laughed. They always

laughed now at everything Billy said, as Society used to laugh when

the late Theodore Hook asked for the mustard at dinner; and would

have laughed if he had said, “You see me sad, I have just lost my poor

father.”

David stood looking on at the slaughter with a helpless puzzled air.

At last he seemed to have an idea, he caught Jack up by the throat and

knee, lifted him with gigantic strength above his head, and was just

going to hurl him shrieking into the sea, when a dozen strong hands

interfered, and saved the man. Then they were going to bind Billy

hand and foot; but he was discovered to be perfectly calm; so they

remonstrated instead, and presently Billy's commander-in-chief, a

ship-boy called Georgie White, shoved in and asked him in a shrill

haughty voice how he dared do that. “My dear,” said Billy, with great

humility and placidity, “he was killing God's creatures, no allowance: *

so, ye see, to save their lives, I was _obliged._”

*Nautical phrase, meaning without stint or limit, or

niggardly admeasurement as there is of grog.

At this piece of reasoning, and the simplicity and gentle conviction

with which it was delivered, there was a roar. It subsided, and a doubt

arose whether Billy was altogether in the wrong.

“Well,” said one, “I daresay life is sweet to them little creatures, if

they could speak their minds.”

“I've known a ship founder in a fair breeze all along of killing 'em,”

said one old salt.

Finally, several sided with Billy, and intimated that “it served the

lubber right for not listening to _reason._” And, indeed, methinks it

was lovely and touching that so divine a ray of goodness and superior

reason should have shot from his heart or from Heaven across that poor

benighted brain.

But it must be owned his mode of showing his humanity was somewhat

excessive and abnormal, and smacked of lunacy. After this, however, the

affection of his messmates was not so contemptuous.

Now the captain of the _Vulture_ was Billy's cousin by marriage.

Reginald Bazalgette. Twenty years ago, when the captain was a boy, they

were great friends: of late Bazalgette had seen less of him; still it

seems strange he did not recognise him in his own ship. But one or two

causes co-operated to prevent that. In the first place, the mind

when turned in one direction is not so sharp in another; and Captain

Bazalgette had been told to look for David in a merchant ship bound for

the East Indies. In the next place, insanity alters the expression of

the face wonderfully, and the captain of a frigate runs his eye over

four hundred sailors at muster, or a hundred at work, not to examine

their features, but their dress and bearing at the one, and their

handiness at the other. The worst piece of luck was that Mrs. Dodd did

not know David called himself William Thompson. So there stood “William

Thompson” large as life on the ship's books, and nobody the wiser.

Captain Bazalgette had a warm regard and affection for Mrs. Dodd,

and did all he could. Indeed, he took great liberties: he stopped and

overhauled several merchant ships for the truant; and, by-the-by, on

one occasion William Thompson was one of the boat's crew that rowed a

midshipman from the _Vulture_ alongside a merchant ship to search for

David Dodd. He heard the name and circumstance mentioned in the boat,

but the very name was new to him. He remembered it, but only from

that hour; and told his loving tyrant, Georgie White, they had been

overhauling a merchant ship and looking for one David Dodd.

It was about Midsummer the _Vulture_ anchored off one of the South Sea

islands, and sent a boat ashore for fruit. Billy and his dearly beloved

little tyrant, Georgie White, were among the crew. Off goes Georgie to

bathe, and Billy sits down on the beach with a loving eye upon him. The

water was calm: but the boy with the heedlessness of youth stayed in it

nearly an hour: he was seized with cramp and screamed to his comrades.

They ran, but they were half a mile from the boat. Billy dashed into the

water and came up with Georgie just as he was sinking for the last time;

the boy gripped him; but by his great strength he disentangled himself

and got Georgie on his shoulders, and swam for the shore. Meantime the

sailors got into the boat, and rowed hastily towards them.

Now Billy was undermost and his head under water at times, and Georgie,

some thought, had helped strangle him by gripping his neck with both

arms. Anyway, by the boy's account, just as they were getting into

shallow water, Billy gave a great shriek and turned over on his back;

and Georgie paddled with his hands, but Billy soon after this sunk like

a dead body while the boat was yet fifty yards off. And Georgie screamed

and pointed to the place, and the boat came up and took Georgie in; and

the water was so clear that the sailors saw Billy lie motionless at the

bottom, and hooked him with a boat hook and drew him up; but his face

came up alongside a deadly white, with staring eyes, and they shuddered

and feared it was too late.

They took him into a house and stripped him, and rubbed him, and wrapped

him in blankets, and put him by the hot fire. But all would not do.

Then, having dried his clothes, they dressed the body again and laid

him in the boat, and cast the Union Jack over him, and rowed slowly and

unwillingly back to the ship, Georgie sobbing and screaming over the

body, and not a dry eye in the boat.

The body was carried up the side, and uncovered, just as Mrs. Dodd saw

in her dream. The surgeon was sent for and examined the body: and then

the grim routine of a man-of-war dealt swiftly with the poor skipper. He

was carried below to be prepared for a sailor's grave. Then the surgeon

walked aft and reported formally to the officer of the watch the death

by drowning of William Thompson. The officer of the watch went instantly

to the captain in his cabin and reported the death. The captain gave

the stereotyped order to bury him at noon next day; and the body was

stripped that night and sewed up in his hammock, with a portion of his

clothes and bedding to conceal the outline of the corpse, and two cannon

balls at his feet; and so the poor skipper was laid out for a watery

grave, and covered by the Union Jack.

I don't know whether any of my amorous young readers are much affected

by the catastrophe I have just related. If not, I will just remind them

that even Edward Dodd was prepared to oppose the marriage of Julia and

Alfred, if any serious ill should befall his father at sea, owing to

Alfred's imprudent interference in rescuing him from Drayton House.

CHAPTER L

LAW

MINUTE study of my fellow-creatures has revealed to me that there are

many intelligent persons who think that a suit at law commences in

court. This is not so. Many suits are fought and decided by the special

pleaders, and so never come into court; and, as a stiff encounter of

this kind actually took place in Hardie _v._ Hardie, a word of prefatory

explanation may be proper. Suitors come into court only to try an issue:

an issue is a mutual lie direct: and towards this both parties are

driven upon paper by the laws of pleading, which may be thus summed: 1.

Every statement of the adversary must either be contradicted flat, or

confessed and avoided: “avoided” means neutralised by fresh matter. 2.

Nothing must be advanced by plaintiff which does not disclose a ground

of action at law. 3. Nothing advanced by defendant, which, if true,

would not be a defence to the action. These rules exclude in a vast

degree the pitiable defects and vices that mark all the unprofessional

arguments one ever hears; for on a breach of any one of the said rules

the other party can demur; the demurrer is argued before the judges

in Banco, and, if successfully, the faulty plaint or faulty plea is

dismissed, and often of course the cause won or lost thereby, and the

country saved the trouble, and the suitors the expense of trying an

issue.

So the writ being served by Plt.'s attorney, and an appearance put in by

Deft.'s, the paper battle began by Alfred Hardie, through his attorney,

serving on Deft.'s attorney “THE DECLARATION.” This was drawn by his

junior counsel, Garrow, and ran thus, after specifying the court and the

date:

_Middlesex to wit_ Alfred Hardie by John Compton his attorney sues

Thomas Hardie For that the Deft. assaulted Plt. gave him into custody

to a certain person and caused him to be imprisoned for a long space

of time in a certain place to wit a Lunatic Asylum whereby the Plt. was

much inconvenienced and suffered much anguish and pain in mind and body

and was unable to attend to his affairs and was injured in his credit

and circumstances.

And the Plt. claims L. 5000.

Mr. Compton conveyed a copy of this to Alfred, and said it was a sweet

“declaration.” “What,” said Alfred, “is that all I have suffered at

these miscreants' hands? Why, it is written with an icicle.”

Mr. Compton explained that this was the outline: “Counsel will lay the

colours on in court as thick as you like.”

The defendant replied to the above declaration by three pleas.

By statute 8 & 9 Vic., c. 100, s. 105.

1. The Deft. by Joseph Heathfield his attorney says he is not guilty. 2.

And for a further Plea the Deft, says that before and at the time of the

alleged imprisonment Plt, was a person of unsound mind and incompetent

to take care of himself and a proper person to be taken care of and

detained and it was unfit unsafe improper and dangerous that he should

be at large thereupon the Deft, being the uncle of the Plt. and a

proper person to cause the Plt. to be taken charge of under due care and

treatment in that behalf did cause the Plt. to be so taken charge of and

detained under due care and treatment, &c. &c.

The third plea was the stinger, but too long to cite _verbatim;_ it

went to this tune, that the plaintiff at and before the time &c. had

conducted himself like a person of unsound mind &c. and two certificates

that he was insane had been given by two persons duly authorised under

the statute to sign such certificates, and the defendant had believed

and did _bona fide_ believe these certificates to be true, &c. &c.

The first of these pleas was a mere formal plea, under the statute.

The second raised the very issue at common law the plaintiff wished to

try.

The third made John Compton knit his brows with perplexity. “This is a

very nasty plea,” said he to Alfred: “a regular trap. If we join issue

on it we must be defeated; for how can we deny the certificates were in

form; and yet the plaguy thing is not loose enough to be demurred to?

Colls, who drew these pleas for them?”

“Mr. Colvin, sir.”

“Make a note to employ him in our next stiff pleading.”

Alfred was staggered. He had thought to ride rough-shod over

defendant--a common expectation of plaintiffs; but seldom realised.

Lawyers fight hard. The pleas were taken to Garrow; he said there was

but one course, to demur to No. 3. So the plaintiff “joined issue on all

the defendant's pleas, and as to the last plea the plaintiff said the

same was bad in substance.” Defendant rejoined that the same was good in

substance, and thus Hardie _v._ Hardie divided itself into two cases,

a question of law for the judges, and an issue for the mixed tribunal

loosely called a jury. And I need hardly say that should the defendant

win either of them he would gain the cause.

Postponing the history of the legal _question,_ I shall show how Messrs.

Heathfield fought off the _issue,_ and cooled the ardent Alfred and

sickened him of law.

In theory every Englishman has a right to be tried by his peers: but

in fact there are five gentlemen in every court, each of whom has by

precedent the power to refuse him a jury, by simply postponing the trial

term after term, until the death of one of the parties, when the action,

if a personal one, dies too; and, by a singular anomaly of judicial

practice, if a slippery Deft. can't persuade A. or B., judges of the

common law court, to connive at what I venture to call

THE POSTPONEMENT SWINDLE,

he can actually go to C., D., and B., one after another, with his

rejected application, and the previous refusal of the other judges

to delay and baffle justice goes for little or nothing; so that the

postponing swindler has five to one in his favour.

Messrs. Heathfield began this game unluckily. They applied to a judge in

chambers for a month to plead. Mr. Compton opposed in person, and showed

that this was absurd. The judge allowed them only four days to plead.

Issue being joined, Mr. Compton pushed on for trial, and the cause was

set down for the November term. Towards the end of the term Messrs.

Heathfield applied to one of the puisne judges for a postponement, on

the ground that a principal witness could not attend. Application was

supported by the attorney's affidavit, to the effect that Mr. Speers

was in Boulogne, and had written to him to say that he had met with a

railway accident, and feared he could not possibly come to England

in less than a month. A respectable French doctor confirmed this by

certificate. Compton opposed, but the judge would hardly hear him, and

postponed the trial as a matter of course; this carried it over the

sittings into next term. Alfred groaned, but bore it patiently; not so

Dr. Sampson: he raged against secret tribunals: “See how men deteriorate

the moment they get out of the full light of publeecity. What English

judge, sitting in the light of Shorthand, would admit 'Jack swears that

Gill says' for legal evidence. Speers has sworn to no facks. Heathfield

has sworn to no facks but th' existence of Speer's hearsay. They are a

couple o' lyres. I'll bet ye ten pounds t' a shilling Speers is as well

as I'm.”

Mr. Compton quietly reminded him there was a direct statement--the

French doctor's certificate.

“A medical certificut!” shrieked Sampson, amazed. “Mai--dearr--sirr,

a medical certificut is just an article o' commerce like an attorney's

conscience. Gimme a guinea and I'll get you sworn sick, diseased,

disabled, or dead this minute, whichever you like best.”

“Come, doctor, don't fly off: you said you'd bet ten pounds to a

shilling Speers is not an invalid at all. I say done.”

“Done.”

“How will you find out?”

“How? Why set the thief-takers on um, to be sure.”

He wrote off to the prefect of police at Boulogne, and in four days

received an answer headed “Information in the interest of families.” The

prefect informed him there had been no railway accident: but that the

Sieur Speers, English subject, had really hurt his leg getting out of a

railway carriage six weeks ago, and had kept his room some days; but

he had been cured some weeks, and going about his business, and made an

excursion to Paris.

On this Compton offered Sampson the shilling. But he declined to take

it. “The lie was self-evident,” said he; “and here's a judge wouldn't

see't, and an attorney couldn't. Been all their lives sifting evidence,

too. Oh the darkness of the profissional mind!”

The next term came. Mr. Compton delivered the briefs and fees,

subpoenaed the witnesses, &c., and Alfred came up with a good heart to

get his stigma removed by twelve honest men in the light of day: but

first one case was taken out of its order and put before him, then

another, till term wore near an end. Then Messrs. Heathfield applied

to another judge of the court for a postponement. Mr. Richard Hardie,

plaintiff's father, a most essential witness, was ill at Clare Court.

Medical certificate and letter herewith.

Compton opposed. Now this judge was a keen and honourable lawyer, with a

lofty hatred of all professional tricks. He heard the two attorneys, and

delivered himself to this effect, only of course in better legal phrase:

“I shall make no order. The defendant has been here before on a doubtful

affidavit. You know, Mr. Heathfield, juries in these cases go by the

plaintiff's evidence, and his conduct under cross-examination. And

I think it would not be just nor humane to keep this plaintiff in

suspense, and _civiliter mortuum,_ any longer. You can take out a

commission to examine Richard Hardie.”

To this Mr. Compton nailed him, but the commission took time; and

while it was pending, Mr. Heathfield went to another judge with another

disabled witness: Peggy Black. That naive personage was nursing

her deceased sister's children--in an affidavit: and they had

scarlatina--surgeon's certificate to that effect. Compton opposed, and

pointed out the blot. “You don't want the children in the witness-box,”

said he: “and we are not to be robbed of our trial because one of

your witnesses prefer nursing other people's children to facing the

witness-box.”

The judge nodded assent. “I make no order,” said he.

Mr. Heathfield went out from his presence and sent a message by

telegraph to Peggy Black. “You must have Scar. yourself, and telegraph

the same at once: certificate by post.”

The accommodating maiden telegraphed back that she had unfortunately

taken scarlatina of the children: medical certificate to follow by

post. Four judges out of the five were now awake to the move. But

Mr. Heathfield tinkered the hole in his late affidavit with Peggy's

telegram, and slipped down to Westminster to the chief judge of

the court, who had had no opportunity of watching the growth and

dissemination of disease among Deft.'s, witnesses. Compton fought this

time by counsel and with a powerful affidavit. But luck was against him.

The judge had risen to go home: he listened standing; Compton's counsel

was feeble; did not feel the wrong. How could he? Lawyers fatten by

delays of justice, as physicians do by tardy cure. The postponement was

granted.

Alfred cursed them all, and his own folly in believing that an alleged

lunatic would be allowed fair play at Westminster, or anywhere else.

Compton took snuff, and Sampson appealed to the press again. He wrote a

long letter exposing with fearless irony the postponement swindle as

it had been worked in Hardie _v._ Hardie: and wound up with this fiery

peroration:

“This Englishman sues not merely for damages, but to recover lost rights

dearer far than money, of which he says he has been unjustly robbed: his

right to walk in daylight on the soil of his native land without being

seized and tied up for life like a nigger or a dog; his footing in

society; a chance to earn his bread; and a place among mankind:

ay, among mankind; for a lunatic is an animal in the law's eye and

society's, and an alleged lunatic is a lunatic till a jury clears him.

“I appeal to you, gentlemen, is not such a suitor sacred in all wise and

good men's minds? Is he not defendant as well as plaintiff? Why, his

stake is enormous compared with the nominal defendant's; and, if I know

right from wrong, to postpone his trial a fourth time would be to insult

Divine justice, and trifle with human misery, and shock the common sense

of nations.”

The doctor's pen neither clipped the words nor minced the matter,

you see. Reading this the water came into Alfred's eyes. “Ah, staunch

friend,” he said, “how few are like you! To the intellectual dwarfs

who conspire with my oppressors, Hardie _v._ Hardie is but a family

squabble. _Parvis omnia parva._” Mr. Compton read it too; and said from

the bottom of his heart, “Heaven defend us from our friends! This is

enough to make the courts decline to try the case at all.”

And, indeed, it did not cure the evil: for next term another _malade

affidavitaire_ was set up. Speers to wit. This gentleman deposed

to having come over on purpose to attend the trial; but having

inadvertently stepped aside as far as Wales, he lay there stricken

with a mysterious malady, and had just strength to forward medical

certificate. On this the judge in spite of remonstrance, adjourned

Hardie _v._ Hardie to the summer term. Summer came, the evil day drew

nigh: Mr. Heathfield got the venue changed from Westminster to London,

which was the fifth postponement. At last the cause came on: the parties

and witnesses were all in court, with two whole days before them to try

it in.

Dr. Sampson rushed in furious. “There is some deviltry afloat,” said

he. “I was in the House of Commons last night, and there I saw the

defendant's counsel earwigging the judge.”

“Nonsense,” said Mr. Compton, “such suspicions are ridiculous. Do you

think they can talk of nothing but Hardie _v._ Hardie?”

“Mai--dearr sirr--my son met one of Heathfield's clerks at dinner,

and he let out that the trile was not to come off. Put this and that

together now.”

“It will come off,” said Mr. Compton, “and in five minutes at farthest.”

In less than that time the learned judge came in, and before taking his

seat made this extraordinary speech:

“I hear this cause will take three days to try; and we have only two

days before us. It would be inconvenient to leave it unfinished; and I

must proceed on circuit the day after to-morrow. It must be a remanet:

no man can do more than time allows.”

Plaintiff's counsel made a feeble remonstrance; then yielded. And the

crier with sonorous voice called on the case of Bread _v._ Cheese, in

which there were pounds at stake, but no principle. Oh, with what zest

they all went into it; being small men escaping from a great thing to

a small one. Never hopped frogs into a ditch with more alacrity. Alfred

left the court and hid himself, and the scalding tears forced their way

down his cheeks at this heartless proceeding: to let all the witnesses

come into court at a vast expense to the parties: and raise the cup of

justice to the lips of the oppressed, and then pretend he knew a trial

would last more than two days, and so shirk it. “I'd have made that a

reason for sitting till midnight” said poor Alfred, “not for prolonging

a poor injured man's agony four mortal months.” He then prayed God

earnestly for this great postponer's death as the only event that could

give him back an Englishman's right of being tried by his peers, and so

went down to Oxford broken-hearted.

As for Sampson he was most indignant, and said a public man had no

business with a private ear: and wanted to appeal to the press again:

but the doughty doctor had a gentle but powerful ruler at home, as fiery

houses are best ruled by a gentle hand. Mrs. Sampson requested him

to write no more, but look round for an M. P. to draw these repeated

defeats of justice to the notice of the House. Now there was a Mr.

Bite, who had taken a prominent and honourable part in lunacy questions;

headed committees and so on: this seemed the man. Dr. Sampson sent him

a letter saying there was a flagrant case of a sane man falsely

imprisoned, who had now been near a year applying for a jury, and

juggled out of this constitutional right by arbitrary and unreasonable

postponements: would Mr. Bite give him (Dr. Sampson) ten minutes and

no more, when he would explain the case and leave documentary evidence

behind him for Mr. Bite to test his statement. The philanthropical M. P.

replied promptly in these exact words:

“Mr. Bite presents his compliments to Dr. Sampson to state that it is

impossible for him to go into his case, nor to give him the time he

requests to do so.”

Sampson was a little indignant at the man's insolence; but far more at

having been duped by his public assumption of philanthropy. “The little

pragmatical impostor!” he roared. “With what a sense o' relief th'

animal flings off the mask of humanity when there is no easy eclat to be

gained by putting't on.” He sent the philanthropical Bite's revelation

of his private self to Alfred, who returned it with this single remark:

_“Homunculi quanti sunt!_”

Dishonest suitors all try to postpone; but they do not gain unmixed good

thereby. These delays give time for more evidence to come in; and this

slow coming and chance evidence is singularly adverse to the unjust

suitor. Of this came a notable example in October next, and made Richard

Hardie determined to precipitate the trial, and even regret he had not

fought it out long ago.

He had just returned from consulting Messrs. Heathfield, and sat down

to a nice little dinner in his apartments (Sackville Street), when a

visitor was announced; and in came the slouching little figure of Mr.

Barkington, _alias_ Noah Skinner.

DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND.

Mr. Hardie suppressed a start, and said nothing. Skinner bowed low with

a mixture of his old cringing way, and a certain sly triumphant leer,

so that his body seemed to say one thing, and his face the opposite. Mr.

Hardie eyed him, and saw that his coat was rusty, and his hat napless:

then Mr. Hardie smelt a beggar, and prepared to parry all attempts upon

his purse.

“I hope I see my old master well,” said Skinner coaxingly.

“Pretty well in body, Skinner; thank you.”

“I had a deal of trouble to find you, sir. But I heard of the great

lawsuit between Mr. Alfred and you, and I knew Mr. Heathfield was your

solicitor; so I watched at his place day after day: and at last you

came. Oh, I was so pleased when I saw your noble figure; but I wouldn't

speak to you in the street for fear of disgracing you. I'm such a poor

little guy to be addressing a gentleman like you.”

Now this sounded well on the surface, but below there was a subtle

something Mr. Hardie did not like at all: but he took the cue, and said,

“My poor Skinner, do you think I would turn up my nose at a faithful old

servant like you? Have a glass of wine with me, and tell me how you have

been getting on.” He went behind a screen and opened a door, and soon

returned with a decanter, leaving the door open. Now in the next room

sat, unbeknown to Skinner, a young woman with white eyelashes,

sewing buttons on Mr. Hardie's shirts. That astute gentleman gave

her instructions, and important ones too, with a silent gesture; then

reappeared and filled the bumper high to his faithful servant. They

drank one another's healths with great cordiality, real or apparent. Mr.

Hardie then asked Skinner carelessly, if he could do anything for him.

Skinner said, “Well, sir, I am very poor.”

“So am I, between you and me,” said Mr. Hardie confidentially; “I don't

mind telling you; those confounded Commissioners of Lunacy wrote to

Alfred's trustees, and I have been forced to replace a loan of five

thousand pounds. That Board always sides with the insane. That crippled

me, and drove me to the Exchange: and now what I had left is all

invested in time-bargains. A month settles my fate: a little fortune, or

absolute beggary.”

“You'll be lucky, sir, you'll be lucky,” said Skinner cheerfully; “you

have such a long head; not like poor little me; the Exchange soon burnt

my wings. Not a shilling left of the thousand pounds, sir, you were

so good as to give me for my faithful services. But you will give me

another chance, sir, I know; I'll take better care this time.” Mr.

Hardie shook his head sorrowfully, and said it was impossible. Skinner

eyed him askant, and remarked quietly, and half aside, “Of course, I

_could_ go to the other party: but I shouldn't like to do that. They

would come down handsome.”

“What other party?”

“La, sir, what other party? Why Mrs. Dodd's, or Mr. Alfred's; here's the

trial coming on, you know, and of course if they could get me to go on

the box and tell all I know, or half what I know, why the judge and jury

would say locking Mr. Alfred up for mad was a conspiracy.”

Mr. Hardie quaked internally: but he hid it grandly, and once more was

a Spartan gnawed beneath his robe by this little fox. “What,” said he

sternly, “after all I and mine have done for you and yours, would you be

so base as to go and sell yourself to my enemies?”

“Never, sir,” shouted Skinner zealously: then in a whisper, “Not if

you'll make a bid for me.”

“How much do you demand?”

“Only another thousand, sir?”

“A thousand pounds!”

“Why, what is that to you, sir? you are rich enough to buy the eighth

commandment out of the tables of ten per cent.: and then the lawsuit,

Hardies _versus_ Hardies!”

“You have spoken plainly at last,” said Mr. Hardie grimly. “This is

extorting money by threats. Do you know that nothing is more criminal,

nor more easy to punish? I can take you before a magistrate, and

imprison you on the instant for this attempt. I will, too.”

“Try it,” said Skinner coolly. “Where's your witness?”

“Behind that screen.”

Peggy came forward directly with a pen in her hand. Skinner was

manifestly startled and disconcerted. “I have taken all your words down,

Mr. Skinner,” said Peggy softly; then to her master, “Shall I go for a

policeman, sir?”

Mr. Hardie reflected. “Yes,” said he sternly: “there's no other course

with such a lump of treachery and ingratitude as this.”

Peggy whipped on her bonnet.

“What a hurry you are in,” whined Skinner: “a policeman ought to be

the last argument for old friends to run to.” Then, fawning spitefully,

“Don't talk of indicting me, sir,” said he; “it makes me shiver: why how

will you look when I up and tell them all how Captain Dodd was took with

apoplexy in our office, and how you nailed fourteen thousand pounds off

his senseless body, and forgot to put them down in your balance-sheet,

so they are not whitewashed off like the rest.”

“Any witnesses to all this, Skinner?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who?”

“Well; your own conscience _for one,_” said Skinner.

“He is mad, Peggy,” said Mr. Hardie, shrugging his shoulders. He then

looked Skinner full in the face, and said, “Nobody was ever seized with

apoplexy in my office. Nobody ever gave me L. 14,000. And if this is

the probable tale with which you come here to break the law and extort

money, leave my house this instant: and if ever you dare to utter this

absurd and malicious slander, you shall lie within four stone walls, and

learn what it is for a shabby vagabond to come without a witness to his

back, and libel a man of property and honour.”

Skinner let him run on in this loud triumphant strain till he had quite

done; then put out a brown skinny finger, and poked him lightly in the

ribs, and said quite quietly, and oh, so drily, with a knowing wink--

“I've--got--The Receipt.”

CHAPTER LI

MR. HARDIE collapsed as if he had been a man inflated, and that touch

had punctured him. “Ah!” said he. “Ah!” said Skinner, in a mighty

different tone: insolent triumph to wit.

After a pause, Mr. Hardie made an effort and said contemptuously, “The

receipt (if any) was flung into the dusthole and carried away. Do you

think I have forgotten that?”

“Don't you believe it, sir,” was the reply. “While you turned your back

and sacked the money, I said to myself, 'Oho, is that the game?' and

nailed the receipt. What a couple of scoundrels we were! I wouldn't have

her know it for all your money. Come, sir, I see its all right; you will

shell out sooner than be posted.”

Here Peggy interposed; “Mr. Skinner, be more considerate; my master is

really poor just now.”

“That is no reason why I should be insulted and indicted and trampled

under foot,” snarled Skinner all in one breath.

“Show me the receipt and take my last shilling, you ungrateful,

vindictive viper,” groaned Mr. Hardie.

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Skinner. “I'm not a viper; I'm a man of

business. Find me five hundred pounds; and I'll show you the receipt and

keep dark. But I can't afford to give it you for that, of course.”

Skinner triumphed, and made the great man apologise, writhing all the

time, and wishing he was a day labourer with Peggy to wife, and fourteen

honest shillings a week for his income. Having eaten humble pie, he

agreed to meet Skinner next Wednesday at midnight, alone, under a

certain lamp on the North Kensington Road: the interval (four days)

he required to raise money upon his scrip. Skinner bowed himself

out, fawning triumphantly. Mr. Hardie stood in the middle of the room

motionless, scowling darkly. Peggy looked at him, and saw some dark and

sinister resolve forming in his mind: she divined it, as such women can

divine. She laid her hand on his arm, and said softly, “Richard, it's

not worth _that._” He started to find his soul read through his body so

clearly. He trembled.

But it was only for a moment. “His blood be on his own head,” he

snarled. “This is not my seeking. He shall learn what it is to drive

Richard Hardie to despair.”

“No, no,” implored Peggy; “there are other countries beside this: why

not gather all you have, and cross the water? I'll follow you to the

world's end, Richard.”

“Mind your own business,” said he fiercely.

She made no reply, but went softly and sat down again, and sewed the

buttons on his shirts. Mr. Hardie wrote to Messrs. Heathfield to get

Hardie _v._ Hardie tried as soon as possible.

Meantime came a mental phenomenon: gliding down Sackville Street,

victorious Skinner suddenly stopped, and clenched his hands; and his

face writhed as if he had received a death-wound. In that instant

Remorse had struck him like lightning; and, perhaps, whence comes the

lightning. The sweet face and voice that had smiled on him, and cared

for his body, and cared for his soul, came to his mind, and knocked

at his heart and conscience. He went home miserable with an inward

conflict; and it lasted him all the four days; sometimes Remorse got the

better, sometimes Avarice. He came to the interview still undecided what

he should do. But, meantime, he had gone to a lawyer and made his will,

leaving his little all to Julia Dodd: a bad sign this; looked like

compounding with his awakened conscience.

It was a dark and gusty night. Very few people were about. Skinner

waited a little while, and shivered, for his avarice had postponed the

purchase of a greatcoat until Christmas Day. At last, when the coast

seemed clear, Mr. Hardie emerged from a side street. Skinner put his

hand to his bosom.

They met. Mr. Hardie said quietly, “I must ask you, just for form, to

show me you have the Receipt.”

“Of course, sir; but not so near, please: no snatching, if I know it.”

“You are wonderfully suspicious,” said Mr. Hardie, trying to smile.

Skinner looked, and saw by the lamplight he was deadly pale. “Keep your

distance a moment, sir,” said he, and, on Mr. Hardie's complying, took

the Receipt out, and held it under the lamp.

Instantly Mr. Hardie drew a life-preserver, and sprang on him with a

savage curse--and uttered a shriek of dismay, for he was met by the long

shiny barrel of a horse-pistol, that Skinner drew from his bosom, and

levelled full in the haggard face that came at him. Mr. Hardie recoiled,

crying, “No! no! for Heaven's sake!”

“What!” cried Skinner, stepping forward and hissing, “do you think I'm

such a fool as to meet a thief unarmed? Come, cash up, or I'll blow you

to atoms.”

“No, no, no!” said Mr. Hardie piteously, retreating as Skinner marched

on him with long extended pistol. “Skinner,” he stammered, “th-this is

n-not b-b-business.”

“Cash up, then; that's business. Fling the five hundred pounds down, and

walk away. Mind it is loaded with two bullets; I'll make a double entry

on your great treacherous carcass.”

“It's no use trying to deceive such a man as you,” said Mr. Hardie,

playing on his vanity. “I could not get the money before Saturday, and

so I listened to the dictates of despair. Forgive me.”

“Then come again Saturday night. Come alone, and I shall bring a man to

see I'm not murdered. And look here, sir, if you don't come to the hour

and do the right thing without any more of these unbusiness-like tricks,

by Heaven, I'll smash you before noon on Monday.”

“I'll come.”

“I'll blow you to Mr. Alfred and Miss Dodd.”

“I'll come, I tell you.”

“I'll post you for a thief on every brick in the Exchange.”

“Have mercy, Skinner. Have pity on the wretched man whose bread you have

eaten. I tell you I'll come.”

“Well, mind you do, then, cash and all,” said Skinner sulkily, but not

quite proof against the reminiscences those humble words awakened.

Each walked backwards a good dozen steps, and then they took different

roads, Skinner taking good care not to be tracked home. He went up

the high stairs to the hole in the roof he occupied, and lighted a

rushlight. He had half a mind to kindle a fire, he felt so chilly; but

he had blocked up the vent, partly to keep out the cold, partly to shun

the temptation of burning fuel. However, he stopped the keyhole with

paper, and also the sides of the window, till he had shut the wintry air

all out. Still, what with the cold and what with the reaction after so

great an excitement, his feeble body began to shiver desperately. He

thought at last he would light a foot-warmer he had just purchased for

old iron at a broker's; _that_ would only spend a halfpenneyworth of

charcoal. No, he wouldn't; he would look at his money; that would cheer

him. He unripped a certain part of his straw mattress and took out a

bag of gold. He spread three hundred sovereigns on the floor and put the

candle down among them. They sparkled; they were all new ones, and

he rubbed them with an old toothbrush and whiting every week. “That's

better than any fire,” he said, “they warm the heart. For one thing,

they are my own: at all events, I did not steal them, nor take them of

a thief for a bribe to keep dark and defraud honest folk.” Then remorse

gripped him: he asked himself what he was going to do. “To rob an

angel,” was the answer. “The fourteen thousand pounds is all hers, and

I could give it her in a moment. Curse him, he would have killed me for

it.”

Then he pottered about and took out his will. “Ah,” said he, “that is

all right so far. But what is a paltry three hundred when I help do her

out of fourteen thousand? Villain!” Then, to ease his conscience, he

took a slip of paper and wrote on it a short account of the Receipt, and

how he came by it, and lo: as if an unseen power had guided his hand, he

added, “Miss Dodd lives at 66, Pembroke Street, and I am going to take

it to her as soon as I am well of my cold.” Whether this preceded an

unconscious resolve which had worked on him secretly for some time, or

whether it awakened such a resolve, I hardly know: but certain it is,

that having written it, he now thought seriously of doing it; and, the

more seriously he entertained the thought, the more good it seemed to

do him. He got “The Sinner's Friend” and another good book she had

lent him, and read a bit: then, finding his feet frozen, he lighted his

chafer and blew it well, and put it under his feet and read. The good

words began to reach his heart more and more: so did the thought of

Julia's goodness. The chafer warmed his feet and legs. “Ay,” said he,

“men don't want fires; warm the feet and the body warms itself.” He took

out “The Receipt” and held it in his hand, and eyed it greedily, and

asked himself could he really part with it. He thought he could--to

Julia. Still holding it tight in his left hand, he read on the good but

solemn words that seemed to loosen his grasp upon that ill-gotten paper.

“How good it was of her,” he thought, “to come day after day and feed a

poor little fellow like him, body and soul. She asked nothing back.

She didn't know he could make her any return. Bless her! bless her!” he

screamed. “Oh, how cruel I have been to her, and she so kind to me. She

would never let me want, if I took her fourteen thousand pounds. Like

enough give me a thousand, and help me save my poor soul, that I shall

damn if I meet him again. I won't go his way again. Lead us not into

temptation. I repent. Lord have mercy on me a miserable sinner.” And

tears bedewed those wizened cheeks, tears of penitence, sincere, at

least for the time.

A sleepy languor now came over him, and the good book fell from his

hand; but his resolution remained unshaken. By-and-by waking up from a

sort of heavy dose, he took, as it were, a last look at the receipt,

and murmured, “My head, how heavy it feels.” But presently he roused

himself, full of his penitent resolution, and murmured again brokenly,

“I'll---take it to---Pembroke Street to---morrow: to---mor---row.”

CHAPTER LII

MR. HARDIE raised the money on his scrip, and at great inconvenience,

for he was holding on five hundred thousand pounds' worth of old Turkish

Bonds over an unfavourable settling day, and wanted every shilling to

pay his broker. If they did not rise by next settling day, he was a

beggar. However, being now a desperate gamester, and throwing for his

last stake, he borrowed this sum, and took it within a heavy heart to

his appointment with Skinner. Skinner never came. Mr. Hardie waited till

one o'clock. Two o'clock. No Skinner. Mr. Hardie went home hugging his

five hundred pounds, but very uneasy. Next day he consulted Peggy. She

shook her head, and said it looked very ugly. Skinner had most likely

got angrier and angrier with thinking on the assault. “You will never

see him again till the day of the trial: and then he will go down and

bear false witness against you. Why not leave the country?”

“How can I, simpleton? My money is all locked up in the bargains.

No, I'm tied, tied to the stake; I'll fight to the last: and, if I'm

defeated and disgraced, I'll die, and end it.”

Peggy implored him not to talk so. “I've been down to the court,” said

she softly, “to see what it is like. There's a great hall; and he must

pass through that to get into the little places where they try 'em. Let

me be in that hall with the five hundred pounds, and I promise you he

shall never appear against you. We will both go; you with the money, I

with my woman's tongue.”

He gave her his hand like a shaky monarch, and said she had more wit

than he had.

Mr. Heathfield, who had contrived to postpone Hardie _v._ Hardie

six times in spite of Compton, could not hurry it on now with his

co-operation. It hung fire from some cause or another a good fortnight:

and in this fortnight Hardie senior endured the tortures of suspense.

Skinner made no sign. At last, there stood upon the paper for next day,

a short case of disputed contract, and Hardie _v._ Hardie.

Now, this day, I must premise, was to settle the whole lawsuit: for

while trial of the issue was being postponed and postponed, the legal

question had been argued and disposed of. The very Queen's counsel,

unfavourable to the suit, was briefed with Garrow's views, and delivered

them in court with more skill, clearness, and effect than Garrow ever

could; then sat down, and whispered over rather contemptuously to Mr.

Compton, “That is your argument, I think.”

“And admirably put,” whispered the attorney, in reply.

“Well; now hear Saunders knock it to pieces.”

Instead of that, it was Serjeant Saunders that got maltreated: first

one judge had a peck at him: then another: till they left him scarce

a feather to fly with; and, when Alfred's counsel rose to reply, the

judges stopped him, and the chief of the court, Alfred's postponing

enemy, delivered his judgment after this fashion:

“We are all of opinion that this plea is bad in law. By the common law

of England no person can be imprisoned as a lunatic unless actually

insane at the time. It has been held so for centuries, and down to the

last case. And wisely: for it would be most dangerous to the liberty of

the subject, if a man could be imprisoned without remedy unless he could

prove _mala fides_ in the breast of the party incarcerating him. As for

the statute, it does not mend the matter, but rather the reverse; for

it expressly protects duly authorised persons acting under the order and

certificates, and this must be construed to except from the protection

of the statute the person making the order.”

The three puisne judges concurred and gave similar reasons. One of them

said that if A. imprisoned B. for a _felon,_ and B. sued him, it was no

defence to say that B., in his opinion, had imitated felony. They cited

Elliot _v._ Allen, Anderdon _v._ Burrows, and Lord Mansfield's judgment

in a very old case, the name of which I have unfortunately forgotten.

Judgment was entered for the plaintiff; and the defendant's ingenious

plea struck off the record; and Hardie _v._ Hardie became the leading

case. But in law one party often wins the skirmish and the other the

battle. The grand fight, as I have already said, was to be to-day.

But the high hopes and ardour with which the young lovers had once

come into court were now worn out by the postponement swindle, and the

adverse events delay had brought on them. Alfred was not there: he

was being examined in the schools; and had plumply refused to leave

a tribunal that named its day and kept it--for Westminster, until his

counsel should have actually opened the case. He did not believe

trial by jury would ever be allowed him. Julia was there, but sad and

comparatively listless. One of those strange vague reports, which often

herald more circumstantial accounts, had come home, whispering darkly

that her father was dead, and buried on an island in the South Sea. She

had kept this report from her mother, contrary to Edward's wish: but

she implored him to restrain his fatal openness. In one thing both these

sorely tried young people agreed, that there could be no marriage with

Alfred now. But here again Julia entreated her brother not to be candid;

not to tell Alfred this at present. “Oh do not go and dispirit him just

now,” she said, “or he will do something rash. No, he must and shall get

his first-class, and win his trial; and then you know any lady will be

too proud to marry him, and, when he is married and happy, you can tell

him I did all I could for him, and hunted up the witnesses, and was his

loving friend, though I could not--be--his--wife.”

She could not say this without crying; but she said it for all that, and

meant it too.

Besides helping Mr. Compton to get up the evidence, this true and

earnest friend and lover had attended the court day after day, to watch

how things were done, and, womanlike, to see what _pleased_ and what

_displeased_ the court.