Boffins looked under the table and said "Scat," but nothing "scatted."

"She's gone, Mr James."

"I won't have cats in my house," said Mr James, proceeding with his

dinner and feeling rather ashamed of his outburst. "Dear Lord, Patience,

what do you call this thing?"

"The cook," said Patience, "calls it, I believe, a _vol-au-vent_. What

is wrong with it?"

"What is right with it, you mean. Don't touch it, Miss Lambert, unless

you wish to have a nightmare."

"I think it's delicious," said Fanny, "and I don't mind nightmares.

They're rather fun--when they are over, and you wake up and find

yourself safe in bed."

"Well, you'll have some fun to-night," grunted James. "The person who

cooked this atrocity ought to be made sleep with the person who eats

it."

"James, you need not be _vulgar_," said his sister.

"What's vulgar?"

"Your remark."

"Boffins, fill Miss Lambert's glass--let's change the subject. This

champagne is abominably iced--give me some Burgundy."

"James!"

"Well?"

"Burgundy!"

"Well, what about Burgundy?"

"Surely you remember the gout--the frightful attack you had last time

after Burgundy."

"Gout? I suppose you mean Arthritic Rheumatism? But perhaps you are

right, and Dr Garrod was wrong--let us call it gout. Fill up the glass,

Boffins. Bridgewater, try some Burgundy, and see if it affects your

gout. Boffins, that cat's in the room, I hear it purring. I hear it, I

tell you, sir! where is the beast?"

The beast, as if in answer, poked its head from under the

table-cloth--it was in Miss Lambert's lap.

Altogether the dinner was not a success.

"Your father has known my brother some time?" said Miss Hancock, when

the ladies found themselves alone in the drawing-room after dinner.

"Oh yes, some time now," said Fanny. "They met over some law business.

Father had a dispute with Mr Bevan of Highshot Towers, the place

adjoining ours, you know, down in Buckinghamshire, and Mr Hancock was

very kind--he arbitrated."

"Indeed? that is funny, for he is Mr Bevan's solicitor."

"Is that so? I'm sure I don't know, I never trouble myself about law

business or money matters. I leave all that to father."

They talked on various matters, and before Miss Lambert had been packed

into a specially chartered four-wheeler and driven home with Bridgewater

on the box beside the driver as chaperone, Miss Hancock had come to form

ideas about Miss Lambert such as she had never formed about any other

young lady. Ideas the tenor of which you will perceive later on.

_PART IV_

CHAPTER I

"THE ROOST"

Mr Bevan, since his visit to Highgate, dreamed often at nights of

monstrous asparagus beds, and his friends and acquaintances noticed that

he seemed distrait.

The fact was the mind of this orderly and precise individual had

received a shock; his world of thought had tilted somewhat, owing to a

slight shifting of the poles, and regions hitherto in darkness were

touched with sun.

Go where he would a voice pursued him, turn where he would, a face. Wild

impulses to jump into a cab and drive to "The Laurels," Highgate, as

swiftly as cab could take him were subdued and conquered. Perhaps it

would be happier for some of us if we used less reason in steering our

way through life. Impulsive people are often sneered at, yet, I dare

say that an impulse acted upon will as often make a man's life as mar

it.

Mr Bevan was not an impulsive man. It was not for some days after his

visit to "The Laurels" that he carried out his determination to stop the

action once for all. He did not return to "The Laurels." He was engaged

and a man of honour, and as such he determined to fly from temptation.

Accordingly one bright morning he despatched a wire intimating his

arrival by the 3.50 at Ditchingham, having sent which he flung himself

into a hansom and drove to Charing Cross, followed by another hansom

containing Strutt, two portmanteaux, a hunting kit-bag and a bundle of

fishing-rods. An extraordinary accident happened to the train he

travelled by; it arrived at Paddock Wood only three minutes late, making

up for this deficiency, however, by crawling into Ditchingham at 4.10.

On the Ditchingham platform stood two girls. One tall, pale, and

decidedly good-looking despite the _pince-nez_ she wore; the other short

and rather stout, and rather pretty.

The tall girl was Miss Pursehouse; the short was Lulu Morgan, Miss

Pursehouse's companion, an American.

Pamela Pursehouse at this stage of her career was verging on thirty,

the only daughter of the late John Pursehouse of Birmingham, and an

orphan. She was exceedingly rich.

Some months ago she had met Bevan on board Sir Charles Napier's yacht;

they had spent a fortnight cruising about the Balearic Islands and the

Riff coast of Morocco, had been sea-sick together, and bored together,

and finally had, one moonlight night, become engaged. It was a

cold-blooded affair despite the moonlight, and they harboured no

illusions one of the other, and no doubts.

Pamela had a mind of her own. She had attended classes at Mason's

College and had quite a knowledge of Natural History; she also had an

interest in the ways of the working classes, and had written a paper to

prove that, with economy, a man, his wife and five children, could live

on an income of eleven shillings a week, and put by sixpence for a rainy

day; to disprove which she was eternally helping the cottagers round

about with doles of tea on a liberal scale, coal in the winter, and wine

in sickness. When the rainy day came she supplied the sixpence, which

ought to have been in the savings bank, for she was a girl who found

her heart when she forgot her head.

At Marseilles Lady Napier, Pamela, Lulu, and Charles Bevan had left the

yacht and travelled together to Paris; there, after a couple of days, he

had departed for London to look after his affairs. Pamela had remained

in Paris, where, through Lady Napier, she had the _entrée_ of the best

society, and had met many people, including the Lamberts. She had indeed

only returned to England a short time ago.

Outside the station stood a governess cart and the omnibus of the hotel.

Into the governess cart bundled the lovers and Lulu, into the omnibus

Strutt and the luggage. Pamela took the reins and the hog-maned pony

started.

"Hot, isn't it?" said Charles, tilting his hat over his eyes, and

envying Strutt in the cool shelter of the omnibus.

"Think so?" said Pamela. "It's July, you know. Why do men dress always

in summer in such heavy clothes? Seems to me women are much more

sensible in the matter of dress. Now if you were dressed as I am,

instead of in that Harris tweed, you wouldn't feel the heat at all."

Charles tried to imagine himself in a chip hat and lilac cotton gown,

and failed.

"You must have been fried in that train," said Lulu, staring at him with

a pair of large blue eyes, eyes that never seemed to shut.

"Pretty nearly," answered Charles, and the conversation languished.

Rookhurst stands on a hill; it is a village composed of gentlemen's

houses. Country "seats" radiate from it to a distance of some three

miles. Three acres and a house constitute a "seat."

The conservatism of the old Japanese aristocracy pales when considered

beside the conservatism of Rookhurst. In this microcosm there are as

many circles as in the Inferno of Dante, and the circles are nearly as

painful to contemplate.

When Pamela Pursehouse rented "The Roost" and took up residence there

she came unknown and untrumpeted. The parson and several curious old

ladies called upon her, but the seat-holders held aloof, she was not

received. Mrs D'Arcy-Jones--Rookhurst is full of people with

double-barrelled names, those double-barrelled names in which the

second barrel is of inferior metal--Mrs D'Arcy-Jones discovered that

Pamela's father was of Birmingham. Mrs D'Arcy-Johnson found out that he

was in trade, and Mrs D'Arcy Somebody-else that her mother's maiden name

was Jenkins. There was much turning up of noses when poor Pamela's name

was mentioned, till one fine day when all the turned-up noses were

suddenly turned down by the arrival at "The Roost" of the Duchess of

Aviedale, her footman, her maid, her dog, and her companion. Then there

was a rush. People flung decency to the winds in their haste to know the

tradesman's daughter and incidentally get a lick at the Duchess's boots.

But to all callers Pamela was not at home; she had even the rudeness not

to return their visits.

The snobs, beaten back, retired, feeling very much like damaged goods,

and Pamela was left in peace. Her aunt, Miss Jenkins, a sweet-faced and

perfectly inane old lady, lived with her and kept house, and Pamela,

protected by her wing, had all sorts of extraordinary people to visit

her. Sandyman, M.P., the Labour representative, came down for a week-end

once, and smoked shag tobacco in the dining-room and wandered about the

village on Sunday in a Keir-Hardy cap; he also attended the tin chapel,

had a quart of beer at the village pub, and did other disgraceful things

which were all duly reported and set down to Pamela's account in the

D'Arcy-Jones-Johnson notebook.

Pamela liked men, that is to say, men who were original and interesting;

yet she had engaged herself to the most unoriginal man in England: a

fact for which there is no accounting, save on the hypothesis that she

was a woman.

The governess cart having climbed a long, long hill, the hog-maned pony

took to himself wings, and presently, in a cloud of dust, halted.

"The Roost," though a fairly large house, did not boast a

carriage-drive. A gate in a high hedge led to a path through a

rose-garden which was worth all the carriage-drives in existence.

"We have several people staying with us, did I tell you?" said Pamela as

she led the way. "Hamilton-Cox, the man who wrote the 'Pillar of Salt,'

and Wilson--Professor Wilson of Oxford, and--but come on, and I'll

introduce you."

They entered a pleasant hall. The perfume of cigars and the sound of a

man's laughter came from a half-open door on the right. Pamela made for

it, and as Charles Bevan followed he heard a rich Irish voice. "My

friend Stacey, of Castle Stacey, raised one four foot broad across the

face; such a sunflower was never seen by mortal man, I measured it with

my own hands--four foot----"

Bevan suddenly found himself before a man, an immense, good-looking,

priestly-faced man, in his shirt-sleeves, a cigar in his mouth, and a

billiard cue in his hand.

"Mr Charles Bevan, Mr Lambert; Mr Bevan, Professor Wilson; Mr----"

"Why, sure to goodness it's not my cousin, Charles Bevan of the

'Albany'!" cried the big man, effusively clasping the hand of Charles

and gazing at him with the astonished and joyous expression of a man who

meets a dear and long-lost brother.

Mr Bevan intimated that he was that person.

"But, sure to goodness," said the big man, dropping Charles' hand and

scratching his head with a puzzled air, then he turned on his heel:

"Where's my coat?" He found his coat and took from it a pocket-book,

from the pocket-book a telegram and a sheet of paper, whilst Pamela

turned to Professor Wilson and the novelist.

"I got that from your lawyer, Mr Bevan," said he, "some days ago."

Charles read:

"Bevan has stopped action. Isn't it sweet of him?--HANCOCK."

"Yes," said Charles rather stiffly, "I stopped the action, but Hancock

seems to have--been drinking."

"And there's the reply I was going to send, only I forgot it," said

George Lambert, handing the copy of a telegram to Charles.

"Tell Bevan I relinquish all fishing rights. Wish to be friends.--GEORGE

LAMBERT."

"It is very generous of you," said Charles, really touched. "But I can't

have it, we'll divide the rights."

"Come into the garden, my boy," said George, who had now resumed his

coat, linking his arm in that of Charles and leading him out through the

open French window, into the rose-scented garden, "and let's talk things

over. It's the pity of the world we weren't always friends. Damn the

fish stream and all the fish in it! I wish they'd been boiled before

they were spawned. What's the _good_ of fighting? Isn't life too short

for fighting and divisions? Sure, there's a rose as big as a red

cabbage, but you should see the roses at my house in Highgate--and where

did you meet Miss Pursehouse?"

"Oh," said Charles. "I've known her for some time."

"We met her in Paris, Fanny--that's my daughter--and me met her in

Paris. Fanny doesn't care for her much, and wouldn't come with me; but

there's never a woman in the world that really cares for another woman,

unless the other woman is as ugly as sin and a hundred. There's a melon

house for you, but you should see my melon houses in Highgate, the one's

I am going to have built by Arthur Lawrence of Cockspur Street; he's

made a speciality of glass, but he charges cruel. It's the passion of my

life, a garden."

He leaned over the gate leading to the kitchen-garden, and whistled an

old Irish hunting song softly to himself as he contemplated the cabbages

and peas. Charles lit a cigar. He was a fine figure of a man, this

Lambert; one of those large natures in a large frame that dwarf other

individualities when brought in contact with them. Hamilton Cox would

pass in a crowd, and Professor Wilson was not unimpressive, but beside

George Lambert, Hamilton-Cox looked a shrimp, and the Oxford professor

somewhat shrivelled.

"It's the passion of my life," reiterated Fanny Lambert's father,

addressing the cabbages, the marrow fat peas, Charles Bevan, and the

distant woods of Sussex. "And if I'd stuck to it and left horses alone,

a richer man I'd have been this day."

"I say," said Charles, who had been plunged in meditation, "why did

Hancock telegraph to you, I wonder? It wasn't exactly solicitors'

etiquette; the proper course, I think, would have been to communicate

with your lawyers, Messrs Sykes and Fagan."

George Lambert broke into a low, mellow laugh.

"Faith," he said, "I suppose he did communicate with them, and they

answered that they weren't my lawyers any more. I've fought with them,

and that's a fact; and now that we're friends, you and me, I've an idea

of transferring my business to Hancock. I've one or two little suits

pending; and I'm not sure but one of them won't be with Fagan for the

names I called him in his own office before his own clerks. 'I'll have

you indicted for slander,' he says. 'Slander!' said I, 'slander, you old

clothes-bag, have me up for slander, and I'll beat the dust out of your

miserable reputation in any court in the kingdom, ye old

wandering-Jew-come-to-roost,' and with that I left the office, and never

will I set my foot in it again."

"I should think not."

"Never again. He's a red Jew--always beware of red Jews; black Jews are

bad, but red Jews are the devil--bad luck to them! If I'd left Jews

alone, a richer man I'd have been this day. Who's that ringing a bell?

Oh, it's the afternoon tea-bell: let's go in and talk to the old

professor and Miss Pursehouse."

They did not go in, for the Professor and Miss Pursehouse, Lulu Morgan,

and the author of the "Pillar of Salt" were having tea on the lawn.

There were few places pleasanter than the lawn of "The Roost,"

especially on this golden and peaceful summer's evening, through which

the warm south wind brought the cawing of rooks from distant elm trees.

"Have you two finished your business?" asked Pamela, addressing Charles;

"if so, sit down and tell me all the news. I got your note. So sorry you

were bored by old Mr--Blundell--was it?--at the club. Mr Blundell is a

rose-bore, it seems," turning to Hamilton Cox; "he is mad on roses."

"Blundell! what an excellent name for a bore!" said the "Pillar of Salt"

man dreamily, closing his eyes. "I can see him, stout and red-faced

and----"

"Matter of fact, old Blundell isn't stout," cut in Charles, to whom

Hamilton-Cox did not appeal. "He's thin and white."

"_All_ white?"

"No, his face, you know."

"Ah! I had connected him with the idea of red roses. Why is it that in

thinking of roses one always figures them red?"

"Sure, I don't know--I never do."

"I do."

"Well," put in Pamela, "when you escaped from Mr Blundell what did you

do with yourself that day--smoked, I suppose, and went to Tattersal's?"

"No, I was busy."

"What was the business--luncheon?"

"Yes," said Charles Bevan, feeling that he was humorous in his reply,

and feeling rather a sneak, too. "Luncheon was part of the business."

The remembrance of the fried whiting rose before him, backed by a vision

of Susannah holding in one hand a bottle of Böllinger, and in the other

a bottle of Gold-water.

CHAPTER II

MISS MORGAN

It is so easy not to do some things. Bevan, had he acted correctly,

ought to have informed Mr Lambert of his visit to Highgate and all that

therein lay, yet he did not. There was nothing to hide, yet, as Sir

Boyle-Roche might have said, he hid it.

During tea several things occupied his mind very much. The vision of

Fanny Lambert was constantly before him, so was the person of her

father. He could not but acknowledge that Lambert was a most attractive

personage--attractive to men, to women, to children, to dogs,

cats--anything that could see and feel, in fact. Everything seemed to

brighten in his presence. Hamilton-Cox's dictum that if Lambert could be

bottled he would make the most excellent Burgundy, was not far wrong.

Bevan, as he sipped his tea, watched the genial Lambert, and could not

but notice that he paid very marked attention to Pamela, and even more

marked attention to old Miss Jenkins, her aunt.

This did not altogether please him, neither did the fact that Pamela

seemed to enjoy the attentions of this man, who was her diametrical

opposite.

To the profound philosopher who indites these lines it seems that

between men and women in the mass there is very little difference. They

act pretty much the same, except, perhaps, in the presence of mice.

Bevan did very much what a woman would have done in his position: seeing

his true love flirting with some one else, he flirted with some one

else. Lulu Morgan was nearest to him, so he used her.

"I've been in England a twelvemonth," answered Miss Morgan, in reply to

a query, "and I feel beginning to get crusted. They say the old carp in

the pond in Versailles get moss-grown after they've been there a hundred

and fifty years or so, and I feel like that. When I say I've been in

England a twelvemonth, I mean Europe. I've been in England three months,

and the rest abroad. Pamela picked me up in Paris, you'd just gone back

home; Lady Scott introduced me to her. I was looking out for a job. I

came over originally with the Vandervades, then Sadie Vandervade got

married; I was her companion, and I lost the job. Of course I could have

stayed on with old man Vandervade and his wife, but I wanted a job. I'm

like a squirrel, put me in a cage with nothing to do, and I'd die. I

must have a mill to turn, so I froze on to Pamela's offer. I write her

letters, and do her accounts, and interview her tradespeople. I guess

she's getting fat for want of work since I've been her companion. Yes, I

like England, and I like this place; if the people could be scraped out

of it clean, it would be considerably nicer. I went to church last

Sunday to have a good long considerate look at them; they all arrived in

carriages--every one here who has a shay of any description turns it out

to go to church in on Sunday. Well, I went to have a good long look at

them, and such a collection of stuffed images and plug-uglies I never

beheld. I'm vicious about them p'rhaps, for they treated Pamela so mean,

holding off from her when she first came, and then rushing down her

throat when they found she knew a duchess. They'd boil themselves for a

duchess. Say--you know the Lamberts? Isn't Fanny sweet?"

Mr Bevan started in his chair, but Miss Morgan did not notice, engrossed

as she was with her own conversation.

"We met them in Paris; and I don't know which is sweeter, Fanny or her

father. She was to have come down here with him, but she didn't. My, but

she is pretty. And don't the men run after her! there were three men in

Paris raving about her; she'd only known them two days, and they were

near proposing to her. Don't wonder at it, I'd propose to her myself, if

I was a man. But she's a little flirt all the same, and I told her so."

"Excuse me," said Bevan, "but I scarcely think you are justified--that

is--from what I have heard of Miss Lambert, I would scarcely suspect her

of being a--flirt."

"Wouldn't you? Men never suspect a woman of being a flirt till they're

flirted with and done for. Fanny's the worst description of flirt--oh,

I've told her so to her face--for she doesn't mean it; she just leads

men on with her sweetness, and doesn't see they're breaking their hearts

for her. She's a regular trap bated with sugar. How did you escape, Mr

Bevan? You're the only man, I guess, who ever did."

"I haven't the pleasure--er--of Miss Lambert's acquaintance," said

Charles, rather stiffly.

"Well, you're safe, for you are engaged; only for that I'd say 'Don't

have the pleasure of her acquaintance.' What I like about her is that

she makes all the other women so furious; she sucks the men away from

them like a whirlpool. It's a pity she's so rich, for it's simply gilt

thrown away----"

"Is Miss--Miss Lambert rich?"

"Why, certainly; at least I conclude so."

"Did she tell you so?"

"No--but she gives one the impression; they have country houses like

mushrooms all over the place, and she dresses simply just as she

pleases; only really rich people can afford to do that. She went to the

opera in Paris with us in an old horror of a gown that made her look

quite charming. No one notices what she has on; and if she went to

heaven in a coffee-coat they'd let her in, for she'd still be Fanny

Lambert."

"You saw a good deal of her in Paris?"

"Yes, we went about a good deal."

"Tell me," said Mr Bevan very gravely, "you said she was a flirt--did

you really mean that?"

"Why, how interested you are! She is, but not a bad sort of flirt. She's

one of those people all heart--she loves everything and everybody--up to

a certain point."

"Do you think she is in love with any man--beyond a certain point?"

"Can't say," said Miss Morgan, shaking her head sagely; "but when she

does, she'll go the whole hog. The man she'll love she'll love for ever

and ever, and die on his grave, and that sort of thing, you know."

"I believe you are right."

"Why, how do you know? You've never met her."

"I was referring to your description of her. Girls of her impulsive

nature--er--generally do--I mean they are generally warm-hearted and

that sort of thing."

"There's one man I think she has a fancy for," said Miss Morgan, staring

into space with her wide-open blue eyes, "but he's poor as a rat--an

awfully nice fellow, a painter; Mr Lambert fished him up somewhere in a

café. He and Fanny and I and a friend of his went and had dinner at a

little café near the Boul' Miche. Then we got lost--that is to say, I

and Heidenheimer lost sight of Fanny and her friend; and Fanny told me

afterwards she'd had no end of a good time finding her way home; so'd I.

'Twas awfully improper, of course, but no one knew, and it was in

Paris."

"I may be old-fashioned, of course," said Mr Bevan stiffly, "but I think

people can't be too careful, you know--um--how long was Miss Lambert

lost with Mr----"

"Leavesley--that's his name. Oh! she didn't turn up at the hotel till

after eight."

"Did Mr Lambert know?"

"Oh yes, but he wasn't uneasy; he said she was like a bad penny, sure to

turn up all right."

"Good God!"

"What on earth!--why, there was no harm. Leavesley is the best of good

fellows, he looked after her like a grandmother; he worships the very

ground she walks on, and I'd pity the man who would as much as look

twice at Fanny if he was with her."

"Um--Mr Leavesley, as you call him----"

"I don't call him, he calls himself."

"Well, Mr Leavesley may be all right in his way, but I should not care

to see a sister of mine worshipped by one of these sort of people.

Organ-grinders and out-of-elbow artists may be delightful company amidst

their own set, but I confess I am not accustomed to them----"

"That's just your insular prejudice--seems to me I've heard that

expression before, but it will do--Leavesley isn't an organ-grinder. I

can't stand loafers myself, and if a man can't keep up with the

procession, he'd better hang himself; but Leavesley isn't a loafer, and

he'll be at the top of the procession yet, leading the elephant. Oh, he

paints divinely!"

"Miss Lambert, you say, is in love with him?"

"I didn't--I fancy she had a weakness; but maybe it's only a fancy."

"Does he write to her?"

"Don't know--very likely; these artistic people can do things other

people can't. We all went to see the Lamberts off at the Nord, and had

champagne at the buffet; and poor old Fragonard--he was another

worshipper, an artist you know--turned up with a huge big bouquet of

violets for Fanny; we asked him where he'd got them, and he said he'd

stolen them. They don't care a fig for poverty, artists; make a joke of

it you know. Yes, I daresay he writes to Fanny. Heidenheimer writes to

me every week--says he's dying in love with me, and sends poems,

screechingly funny poems, all about nightingales and arrows and hearts.

He's an artist too, and I'd marry him, I believe I would, only we're

both as poor as Lazarus."

"Mr Leavesley is an artist you say?"

"Yes, but he's a genius, but genius doesn't pay--that's to say at

first--afterwards--afterwards it's different. Trading rats for diamonds

in famine time isn't in it with a genius when he gets on the make."

Mr Bevan gazed reflectively at the tips of his shoes. He quite

recognised that these long-haired and out-at-elbowed anomalies y'clept

geniuses had the trick, at times, of making money. A dim sort of wrath

against the whole species possessed him. To a clean, correct, and

level-headed gentleman possessed of broad acres and a huge rent-roll, it

is unpleasant to think that a slovenly, shiftless happy-go-lucky

tatterdemallion may be a clean, correct and level-headed gentleman's,

superior both in brains, fascination, and even in wealth. We can fancy

the correct one subscribing sympathy, if not money, to a society for the

extinction of genius, were not such a body entirely superfluous in the

present condition of human affairs.

"It may be," said Mr Bevan at last, "that those people are very pleasant

and all that, and useful in the world and so on, but I confess I like to

associate with people who cut their hair, and, not to put too fine a

point on it, wash----"

"Oh, Leavesley washes," said Miss Morgan, "he's as clean as a new pin.

And as for cutting his hair, my!--that's what spoils him in my opinion;

why, it's cut to the bone almost, like a convict's. All artists cut

their hair now; it's only Polish piano-players and violinists wear their

hair long."

"Whether they cut their hair 'to the bone' or wear it long is a matter

of indifference," said Mr Bevan. "They're all a lot of bounders, and I'd

be sorry to see a sister of mine married amongst them--very sorry."

Miss Morgan said nothing, the warmth of Mr Bevan on the subject of

Leavesley struck her as being somewhat strange; though she said nothing,

like the parrot, she thought the more, and began to consider Mr Bevan

more attentively and to "turn him over in her mind." Now the fortunate

or unfortunate person whom Miss Morgan distinguished by turning them

over in her mind, generally gave up their secrets in the process

unconsciously, subconsciously, or sometimes even consciously. Those

wide-open blue eyes that seemed always gazing into futurity and distance

saw many happenings of the present invisible to most folk.

Professor Wilson and Hamilton-Cox had wandered away through the garden

discussing Oxford and modern thought. Miss Pursehouse, Lambert, and old

Miss Jenkins were talking and laughing, and seemingly quite happy and

content. Said Miss Morgan, looking round:

"Every one's busy, like the children in the Sunday-school story, and

we've no one to play with; shall we go for a walk in the village, and

I'll show you the church and the pump and the other antiques?"

"Certainly, I'll be delighted," said Charles, rising.

"Then com'long," said Miss Morgan, "Pamela, I'm taking Mr Bevan to show

him the village and the creatures that there abound. If we're not back

by six, send a search-party."

Rookhurst is, perhaps, one of the prettiest and most quaint of English

villages, and the proudest. If communities receive attention from the

Recording Angel, amidst Rookhurst's sins written in that tremendous book

will be found this entry, "It calls itself a town."

"Isn't the village sweet and sleepy?" said Miss Morgan, as she tripped

along beside her companion; "it always reminds me of the dormouse in

'Alice in Wonderland'--always asleep except at tea-time, when it wakes

up--and talks gossip. That's the chemist's shop with the two little red

bottles in the window, isn't it cunning? The old man chemist doesn't

keep any poisons, for he's half blind and's afraid of mixing the

strychnine with the Epsom salts. His wife does the poisoning; she libels

every one indifferently, and she gave out that Pamela was a lunatic and

I was her keeper. She was the butcher's daughter, and she married the

chemist man for his money ten years ago, hoping he'd die right off,

which he didn't. He was seventy with paralysis agitans and a squint, and

the squint's got worse every year, and the paralysis agitans has got

better--serve her right. That's the butcher's with the one leg of mutton

hanging up, and the little pot with a rose-tree in it. He drinks, and

beats his wife, and hunts snakes down the road when he has the

jumps--but he sells very good mutton, and he's civil. Here comes a

queen, look!"

A carriage drawn by a pair of chestnut horses approached and passed

them, revealing a fat and bulbous-faced lady lolling on the cushions,

and seen through a haze of dust.

"A queen?" said Bevan; "she doesn't look like one."

"No? She's the Queen of Snobs; looks as if she'd come out of a

joke-book, doesn't she? and her name is--I forget. She lives in a big

house a mile away. That's a 'pub.' There are seven 'pubs' in this

village, and this is a model village--at least, they call it so; what an

immodel village in England must be, I don't know. There's a tailor lives

in that little house; he preaches in the tin chapel at the cross-roads.

I heard him last Sunday."

"You go to Chapel?"

"No, I'm Church. I heard him as I was passing by--couldn't help it, he

shouts so's you can hear him at 'The Roost' when the wind's blowing that

way--You religious?"

"Not very, I'm afraid."

"Neither'm I. That's the doctor's; he's Church and his wife's Chapel.

She has a sister in a lunatic asylum, and her aunt was sister of the

hair-cutter's first wife, so people despise her and fling it in her

teeth. We can raise some snobs in the States, but they're button

mushrooms to the toadstools you raise in England. Pamela is awfully good

to the doctor's wife just because the other people are nasty to her.

Pamela is grit all through. The parson lives there--a long, thin man,

looks as if he'd been mangled, and they'd forgot to hang him out to dry.

How are you, Mrs Jones? and how are the rheumatics?" Miss Morgan had

paused to address an old lady who stood at the door of a cottage leaning

on a stick.

"That's Mrs Jones; she has more enquiries after her health than any

woman in England. Can you tell why?"

"No."

"Well, she has a sort of rheumatics that the least damp affects, and so

she's the best barometer in this part of the country. She's eighty, and

has been used to weather observation so long, she can tell what's

coming--hail, or snow, or rain to a T. That old man leaning on the gate,

he's Francis, the village lunatic, he's just ninety; fine days he crawls

down to Ditchingham cross-roads to wait for the soldiers coming back

from the Crimea. I call that pathetic, but they only laugh at it here.

He must have waited for them when he was a boy and seen them marching

along, and now he goes and waits for them--makes me feel s'if I could

cry. Here's a shilling for you, Francis; Miss Pamela is knitting you

some socks--good-day--poor old thing! Let's see now, those cottages are

all work-people's, and there's nothing beyond, only the road, and it's

dusty, and I vote to go back. Why, there's that old scamp of a Francis

making a bee-line for the 'Hand in Hand'; n'mind, I won't have to wear

his head in the morning."

Miss Morgan chatted all the way back uninterruptedly, disclosing a more

than comprehensive knowledge of all the affairs of the village in which

she had lived some ten days or less.

At the gate of "The Roost" she stopped suddenly. "My, what a pity!"

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing; only I might have called and seen Mrs Harmer. She has such a

pretty daughter, and I'd have liked you to have seen her, for she's the

image of Fanny Lambert." She stared full at Mr Bevan as she said this,

and there was a something in her tone and a something in her manner, and

a something in her glance that made Charles Bevan lose control of his

facial capillaries and blush.

"Fanny's cooked him," thought the lady of the blue eyes as she retired

to dress for dinner. "But what in the nation did he mean by saying he

did not know her?"

"What the deuce made her say that in such a way?" asked Mr Bevan of

himself as he assumed the clothes laid out for him by the careful

Strutt.

CHAPTER III

A CURE FOR BLINDNESS

"The British thoroughbred is not played out by any means. Look at the

success of imported blood all over the world. Look at Phantom, the

grandsire of Voltaire, and Bay Middleton----" Mr Bevan paused. He was

addressing George Lambert, and suddenly found that he was addressing the

entire dinner-table in one of those hiatuses of conversation in which

every tongue is suddenly held.

"Yes," said Hamilton-Cox, continuing some desultory remarks on

literature, in general, into which this eruption of stud book had

broken; "but you see the old French ballads are for the most part by the

greatest of all poets, Time. Beside those the greatest modern poems seem

gaudy and Burlington Arcady, if I may use the expression. An old

folk-song that has been handed from generation to generation, played on,

so to speak, like an old fiddle by all sorts of hands, gains a sweetness

and richness never imagined by the simple-minded person who wrote it or

invented it.

"You write poems?" asked Miss Morgan.

"My dear lady," sighed Hamilton-Cox, "nobody writes poems nowadays, or

if they do they keep the fact a secret. I have a younger brother who

writes poetry----"

"Thought you said no one wrote it."

"Younger brothers are nobodies. I say I have a younger brother, he

writes most excellent verse--reams of it. Some years ago he would have

been pursued by publishers. Well, only the other day he copied out some

of his most cherished productions and approached a London publisher with

them. He entered the office at five o'clock, and some few minutes later

the people in Piccadilly were asking of each other, 'What's all that row

in Vigo Street?' No, a publisher of to-day would as soon see a burglar

in his office as a poet."

"I never took much stock in poetry," said the practical Miss Morgan.

"I'm like Mr Bevan."

"I can't stand the stuff," said Charles. "_The Boy Stood on the Burning

Deck_, and all that sort of twaddle, makes me ill."

Pamela looked slightly pained. Charles was enjoying his dinner; Burgundy

and Moselle had induced a slight flush to suffuse his countenance. If

you are engaged and a gourmand never let your _fiancée_ see you eat. A

man mad drunk is to the sensitive mind a less revolting picture than a

man "enjoying his food."

"I heard a man once," said Miss Morgan, "he was squiffy----"

"Lulu!"

"Well, he was; and he was reciting _I Stood on the Bridge at Midnight_.

He'd got everything mixed, and had got as far as

"'I stood on the moon by bridgelight

As the church was striking the tower--'

when every one laughed, and he sat down--on another man's hat. That's

the sort of poetry I like, something to make you laugh. Gracious! what's

the good of manufacturing misery and letting it loose in little poems

to buzz round and torment people? isn't there enough misery ready made?

Hood's _Song of the Shirt_ always makes me cry."

"Hood," said Professor Wilson, "was a man of another age, a true poet.

He could not have written his _Song of the Shirt_ to-day; the

decadence----"

"Now, excuse me," said Hamilton-Cox, "we have fought that question of

decadence out, you and I. Hood, I admit, could not have written his

_Song of the Shirt_ to-day, simply because shirts are manufactured

wholesale by machinery, and he would have to begin it.

'Whir--whir--whir,' which would not be poetry. Women slave at coats and

waistcoats and other garments nowadays, and you could scarcely write a

song of the waistcoat or a song of the pair of--you understand my point.

Poetry is very false, the matchbox-maker is as deserving of the poet's

attention as the shirt-maker, yet a poem beginning 'Paste, paste, paste'

would be received with laughter, not with tears. You say we are

decadents because we don't encourage poetry. I say we are not, we are

simply more practical--poetry is to all intents and purposes dead----"

"Is it?" said George Lambert. "Is _King Lear_ dead? I was crying over

him last night, but it wasn't at his funeral I was crying. Is old

Suckling dead? I bought a first edition of him some time ago, and the

fact wasn't mentioned or hinted at in the verses. Is Sophocles dead? Old

Maloney at Trinity pounded him into my head, and he's there now alive as

ever; and if I was blind to-morrow, I'd still have the skies over his

plays to look at and the choruses to hear. Ah no, Mr Cox, poetry is not

dead, but they don't write it just now. They don't write it, but it's in

every one's heart waiting to be tapped, only there's no man with an

augur sharp enough and true enough to do the tapping."

Pamela looked pleased.

"I did not know that you were fond of poetry," she said.

"I love it," said Lambert, in a tone that reminded Charles Bevan of

Fanny's tone when she declared her predilection for cats.

"I declare it's delightful," said Professor Wilson, "to find a man of

the world who knows all about horses, and is a good billiard-player,

and all that, confessing a love for poetry."

"Perhaps Mr Lambert is a poet himself," said Hamilton-Cox, with a

suspicion of a sneer, "or has written poetry."

"Poetry! yards of it," answered the accused with a mellow laugh, "when I

was young and--wise. The first poem I ever wrote was all about the moon;

I wrote it when I was eleven, and sent it to a housemaid. Oh, murder!

but the things that we do when we are young."

"Did she read it?"

"She couldn't read; it was in the days before the Board schools and the

higher education of women. She couldn't read, she was forty, and ugly as

sin; and she boxed my ears and told my mother, and my mother told my

father, and he leathered me. He said, 'I'll teach you to write poetry to

housemaids.' But somehow," said Mr Lambert, admiring with one eye the

ruby-tinted light in his glass of port, "somehow, with all his teaching,

I never wrote a poem to a housemaid again."

"That must have been a loss to literature."

"Yes, but it was a gain to housemaids; and as housemaids seem the main

producers of novels and _poems_ nowadays, begad," said Mr Lambert,

"it's, after all, a gain to literature."

"That's one for you, Cox," said Professor Wilson, and Hamilton-Cox

laughed, as he could well afford to do, for his lucubrations brought him

in a good fifteen hundred a year, and his reputation was growing.

On the lawn, under the starlit night after dinner, Bevan had his

_fiancée_ for a moment alone. They sat in creaky basket-work chairs a

good yard apart from each other. The moon was rising over the hills and

deep, dark woods of Sussex, the air was warm and perfumed: it was an

ideal night for love-making.

"When I left you I had some dinner at the Nord," said Mr Bevan, tipping

the ash off his cigar. "The worst dinner I've ever had, I think. Upon my

word, I think it was the worst dinner I ever had. When I got to Dover I

was so tired I turned into the hotel, and came on next morning. What

sort of crossing did you have?"

"Oh, very fine," said Pamela, stifling a yawn, and glancing sideways at

a group of her guests dimly seen in a corner of the garden, but happy,

to judge from the laughter that came from them.

"Are the Napiers back in England yet?"

"No, they are still in Paris."

"What on earth do they want staying there for so long? it must be empty

now."

"Yes, it was emptying fast when we left, wasn't a soul left scarcely. Do

you know, I have a great mind to run over to Ostend for a few weeks. The

Napiers are going there; it's rather fun, I believe."

"I wouldn't. What's the good of going to these foreign places? stay

here."

Pamela was silent, and the inspiriting dialogue ceased.

A great beetle moving through the night across the garden filled the air

with its boom. The group in the corner of the garden still were laughing

and talking; amidst their voices could be distinguished that of

Hamilton-Cox. Mr Cox had not a pleasant voice; it was too highly

pitched, and it jarred on the ear of Mr Bevan and on his soul. His soul

was in an irritable mood. When we speak of the soul we refer to an

unknown quantity, and when we speak of its condition we refer sometimes,

perhaps, to just a touch of liver, or sometimes to an extra glass of

champagne.

"I can't make out what induces you to surround yourself with those sort

of people," said Mr Bevan, casting his cigar-end away and searching for

his cigarette case.

"What sort of people?"

"Oh, that writer man."

"Hamilton-Cox?"

"Yes--is that his name?"

"I am not surrounding myself with Mr Cox; the thing is physically and

physiologically impossible. Do talk sense, Charles."

Charles retired into silence, and Miss Pursehouse yawned again,

sub-audibly. After a few moments--"Where did you pick up the Lamberts?"

"You mean Mr Lambert and his daughter?"

"Has he a daughter?"

"Has he a daughter? Why, Lulu Morgan, when I asked her what you and she

had found to talk about, said Fanny Lambert----"

"It is perfectly immaterial what Miss Morgan said; some of her sayings

are scarcely commendable. I believe she did say something about a Miss

Lambert. When I said 'has he a daughter?' I spoke with a meaning."

"I am glad to hear that."

"What I meant was, that it would have been much better for him to have

brought his daughter down here with him."

"Do you mean to insinuate that she is--unable to take care of herself in

town?"

"I mean to insinuate nothing, but according to my old-fashioned

ideas----"

"Go on, this is interesting," said Miss Pursehouse, who guessed what was

coming.

"According to my old-fashioned ideas it is scarcely the thing for a man,

a married man, to pay a visit----"

"You mean it's improper for me to have Mr Lambert staying here as a

guest?" "Improper was not the word I used."

"Oh, nonsense! you meant it. Well, I think I am the best judge of my own

propriety, and I see nothing improper in the transaction. My aunt is

here, Lulu Morgan is here, you are here, Professor Wilson is here,

there's a poet coming to-morrow--I suppose that's improper too. I do

wish you would be sensible; besides, Mr Lambert is not a married man,

he is a widower."

"Does he know that you are engaged?"

"Sure, I don't know. I don't go about with a placard with 'I am engaged'

written on it on my back. Why do you ask?"

"Well--um--if a stranger had been here at tea to-day he would scarcely

have thought that the engaged couple----"

"Go on, this is delightful; it's absolutely bank-holidayish--the engaged

couple--go on."

"Were you and I."

"You mean you and _me_?"

"Yes."

"The behaviour of 'engaged couples' in decent society is, I believe,

pretty much the same as our behaviour has been, and I hope will be. How

would you have it? Would you like to walk about, I clinging to your arm,

and you playing a mouth-organ? Ought we to exchange hats with each

other? Shall I call you Choly and put ice down your neck at dinner?

Ought we to hire a brake and go on a bean feast? I wish you would

instruct me. I hate to appear _gauche_, and I hate not to do the correct

thing."

"Vulgarity is always painful to me," said Mr Bevan, "but senseless

vulgarity is doubly so."

"Thanks, your compliments are charming."

"I was not complimenting you, I simply----"

"I know, simply hinting that I was senseless and vulgar."

"I never----"

"I know. Shall we change the subject--what's all this?"

"Please come and help us," said Miss Morgan, coming up. "We've got the

astronomical telescope, and we can't make head or tail of it."

Miss Pursehouse rose and approached the group surrounding an

astronomical telescope that stood on the lawn. It was trained on the

moon, and Hamilton-Cox, with a hand over one eye and the other eye at

the eyepiece, was making an observation.

"Sometimes I can see stars, and sometimes nothing. I can't see the moon

at all."

"Shut the other eye," said Lambert.

"Perhaps," said Miss Pursehouse, "if you remove the cap from the

telescope you will be able to see better. A very simple thing sometimes

cures blindness."

CHAPTER IV

TIC-DOULOUREUX

Mr Bevan found no chance for a _tête-à-tête_ with his _fiancée_ again

that night, perhaps because he did not seek one; he was not in the

humour for love-making. He felt--to use the good old nursery term that

applies so often, so very often, to grown-ups--"fractious."

He retired to his bedroom at half-past eleven, and was sitting with an

unlit cigarette in his mouth, staring at the wood-fire brightly burning

in his grate, when a knock came to the door and Lambert appeared.

"I just dropped in to say good-night. Am I disturbing you?"

"Not a bit; sit down and have a cigarette."

Mr Lambert helped himself to a Marcovitch from a box on the table, drew

up an easy-chair to the fire and sank into it with a sigh.

"It seems funny," said he in a meditative tone, "that I should be

sitting here smoking and yarning with you to-night, and only yesterday,

so to speak, we were fighting like bull-dogs; but we're friends now, and

you must come and see me when you're back in town. You live in the

'Albany'? I had rooms there once, years ago--years ago. Lord! what a

change has come over London since the days when Evans' was stuffed of a

night with all manner of people--the rows and ructions I remember! The

things that went on. One night in Evans' I remember an old gentleman

coming in and ordering a chop, and no sooner had he put on his

spectacles and settled down to it with a smile all over his face, than

Bob O'Grady, of the 10th--Black O'Grady--who'd been watching him--he was

drunk as a lord--rose up and said, ''Scuse me,' he said, and took the

chop by the shank-bone and flung it on the stage. A man could take his

whack in those days, and be none the worse for it; but men are

different, somehow, now, and they go in for tea and muffins and nerves

just as the women used to, when I was twenty; and the women, begad, are

the best men now'days. Look at Miss Pursehouse! as charming as a woman

and as clever as a man. Look at this house of hers! One would think a

man owned it, everything is so well done: brandies and sodas at your

elbows, matches all over the place, and electric bells and a telephone.

That's the sort of woman for me--not that I'm not fond of the

old-fashioned sort of woman too. Fanny, my daughter--I must introduce

you to her--is as old-fashioned as they make 'em. Screeches if she sees

a rat, and knows nothing of woman's rights or the higher education of

females, and is always ready to turn on the water-works, bless her

heart! ready and willing to cry over anything you may put before her

that's got the ghost of a cry in it. But, bless you! what's the good of

talking about old-fashioned or modern women? From Hecuba down, they're

all the same--born to deceive us and make our lives happy."

"Can't see how a woman that deceives a man can make him happy."

"My dear fellow, sure, what's happiness but illusion, and what's

illusion but deception, and talking about deception, aren't men--the

blackguards!--just as bad at deceiving as women?"

Mr Bevan made no reply to this; he shifted uneasily in his chair.

"You live at Highgate?" he said.

Lambert woke up from a reverie he had fallen into with a start.

"Yes, bad luck to it! I've got a house there I can't get rid of, and,

talking of old-fashioned things, it's an old-fashioned house. There

aren't any electric bells, and if there were you'd as likely as not ring

up the ghost. For there's a ghost there, sure enough; she nearly

frightened the gizzard out of my butler James."

He leaned back luxuriously in his chair, blowing cigarette rings at the

fire, whilst Charles Bevan mentally recalled the vision of "My butler

James."

He could not but admit that Lambert carried his poverty exceedingly

well, and with a much better grace than that with which many men carry

their wealth. The impression that Fanny Lambert had made upon him was

not effaced in any way by the impression made upon him by her father.

Lambert was not an impossible man. Wildly extravagant he might be, and

reckless to the verge of lunacy, but he was a gentleman; and in saying

the word "gentleman," my dear sir or madam I do not refer to birth.

There lives many a hideous bounder who yet can fling his

great-great-great-grandfather at your head, and many a noble-minded

gentleman, the present or past existence of whose father is demonstrable

only by the logic of physiology.

Lambert went off to his room at twelve, and Mr Bevan passed a broken

night. He dreamt of lawyers and sunflowers. He dreamt that he saw old

Francis, the village lunatic, waiting at the cross-roads; and when he

asked him what he was waiting for, Francis replied that he was waiting

to see his (Mr Bevan's) marriage procession go by: a dream which was

scarcely a hopeful omen, considering the object of the old man's daily

vigil as revealed by Lulu Morgan.

He came down to breakfast late. His hostess did not appear, and Miss

Morgan announced that her friend was suffering from tic-douloureux.

"'S far as I can make out, it's like having the grippe in one eye. I've

physicked her with Bile Beans and Perry Davis, and I've sent for some

Antikamnia. If she's not better by luncheon I'll send for the doctor."

She was not down by luncheon. After that meal, Charles, strolling across

the hall to the billiard-room, felt something pluck at his sleeve. It

was Miss Morgan.

"I want to speak to you alone for a minute," said she. "Come into the

garden; there's no one there."

He followed her, much wondering, and they passed down a shady path till

they lost sight of the house.

"Pamela's worried," said Lulu, "and I want to talk to you about her----"

"Why, what can be----"

"We've been sitting up all night, she and I, and we've been discussing

things, you 'specially."

"Thank you----"

"Now, don't you be mad, for Pamela's very fond of you, and I like you,

for you're a right good sort; but, see here, Pamela thinks she's made a

mistake."

A queer new feeling entered Mr Bevan's mind, peeped round and passed

through it, so to speak--a feeling of relief--or more strictly speaking,

release.

"Indeed?"

"She thinks you have both made a mistake, and--you know----"

"The fact is, she doesn't want to marry me; why not say it at once? or,

rather, why doesn't she say so to me frankly, instead of deputing

another person to do so?"

"There's a letter," said Miss Morgan, producing one from her pocket.

"She wrote it and told me to give it to you; it's eight pages long, and

all sorts of things in it--she's very fond of you--keep it and read it.

But I tell you one line that's in it, she says she will always feel as a

sister to you, or be a sister to you, or words to that effect--that's

fatal--once a girl says that she's said the last word."

"I don't think she ever cared for me, really," said Mr Bevan--"let us

sit down on this seat--no, I don't think she really ever cared for me."

"What _made_ you two get engaged"

"Why should we not?"

"Because you're too much alike; you are both rich, and both steady and

well-balanced, you know, and that sort of thing. Likes ought never to

get married. Dear--dear--dear--what a pity----"

"What?"

"I was only thinking of all the love-making there's wasted in the world.

Now I know so many girls who would suit you to a T. I'll tell you of

one, if you like----"

"Thank you, I--um----"

"I was thinking of Fanny Lambert," said Miss Morgan in a dreamy voice.

"The girl I told you of yesterday----"

Now, Mr Bevan was the last man in the world--as I daresay you

perceive--to discuss his feelings with any one. But Miss Morgan had a

patent method of her own for extracting confidences, of making people

talk out, as she would have expressed it herself.

"I said to you yesterday that I had never met Miss Lambert: I had

reasons connected with some law business for saying so--as a matter of

fact, I have met her--once."

"Oh, that's quite enough. If you've met Fanny Lambert once, you have met

her for ever. Does she like you?--I don't ask you do you like her, for,

of course, you do."

"I think--she does."

"You mustn't think--women hate men that think, they like them to be

sure. If a man was only bold enough he could marry any woman on earth."

"Is that your opinion?"

"'Tis, and my opinion is worth having. What a woman wants most is some

one to make up her mind for her. Go and make Fanny's mind up for her;

you and she are just suited."

"In what way?"

"To begin with, you're rich and she's poor."

"You said yesterday that she was rich."

"Yes, but Pamela told me last night the Lamberts are simply stone-broke.

Mr Lambert told her all his affairs, his estates are all encumbered. She

says he's just like a child, and wants protecting; so he is, and so's

Fanny; they're both a pair of children, and you are just the man to keep

Fanny straight, and make her life happy and buy her beautiful clothes

and diamonds. Why, she'll be the rage of London, Fanny will, if she's

only properly staged--and she's a dear and a good woman, and would make

any man happy. My!"

Mr Bevan had taken Miss Morgan's hand in his and squeezed it.

"Thank you for saying all that," said he. "Few women praise another

woman. I shall leave here by this evening's train, of course; I cannot

stay here any longer. I will think over what course I will pursue."

"For heaven's sake, don't think, or you'll find her snapped up; I have a

prevision that you will. Go and say to Fanny 'marry me.' I _do_ want to

see her settled, she's not like me, that can rough it, and she's just

the girl to fling herself away on some rubbish."

"I will see," said Mr Bevan. "I frankly confess that Miss Lambert--of

course, this is between you and me--that Miss Lambert has made me think

a good deal about her, but these things are not done in a moment."

"Aren't they? I tell you love-making is just like making pancakes, if

you don't do them quick they're done for. You just remember this, that

many a man has proposed to a girl the first time he's met her and been

accepted. Women like it, it's so different from the other thing--and,

look here, kiss her first and ask her afterwards. Have two or three

glasses of champagne--you've just got the steady brain that can stand

it--and it will liven you up. I'm an old stager."

"I will write to Miss Pursehouse from London to-morrow."

"Dear me! I don't believe you've been listening to a word I've been

saying. Well, go your own gate, as the old woman said to the cow that

_would_ burst through the hedge and tumbled into the chalk-pit and broke

its leg. What you going to do with that letter?"

"I will read it in the train."

CHAPTER V

THE AMBASSADOR

It never rains but it pours. It was pouring just now with Leavesley.

The morning after the excursion to Epping Forest he had written a long

letter to Fanny: a business-like letter, explanatory of his prospects in

life.

He had exhibited in this year's Academy; he had exhibited in the New

gallery--more, he had sold the Academy picture for forty pounds. He had

a hundred a year of his own, which, as he sagaciously pointed out, was

"something." If Fanny would only wait a year, give him something to hope

for, something to live for, something to work for. Three pages of

business-like statements ending with a fourth page of raving

declarations of love. The letter of a lunatic, as all love-letters more

or less are.

He had posted this and waited for a reply, but none had come. He little

knew that his letter and a bill for potatoes were behind a plate on the

kitchen dresser at "The Laurels," stuffed there by Susannah in a fit of

abstraction, also the outcome of the troubles of love.

On top of this all sorts of minor worries fell upon him. Mark Moses and

Sonenshine, stimulated by the two pounds ten paid on account, were

bombarding him with requests for more. A colour-man was also active and

troublesome, and a bootmaker lived on the stairs.

Belinda, vice-president of the institution during Mrs Tugwell's sojourn

at Margate, was "cutting up shines," cooking disgracefully, not cleaning

boots, giving "lip" when remonstrated with, and otherwise revelling in

her little brief authority. A man who had all but commissioned a

portrait of a bull-dog sent word to say that the sittings couldn't take

place as the dog was dead.

Then a cat had slipped into his bedroom and kittened on his best suit

of clothes; and Fernandez, the picture dealer to whom he had taken the

John the Baptist on the top of a four-wheeler, had offered him five

pounds ten for it; and, worst of all, driven by necessity, he had not

haggled, but had taken the five pounds ten, thus for ever ruining

himself with Fernandez, who had been quite prepared to pay fifteen.

The Captain, who had suddenly come in for a windfall of eighty pounds,

was going on like a millionaire--haunting the studio half-tipsy, profuse

with offers of assistance and drinks, and, to cap all, the weather was

torrid. The only consolation was Verneede, who would listen for hours to

the praises of Miss Lambert, nodding his head like a Chinese mandarin

and smoking Leavesley's cigarettes.

"I don't know what to do," said the unhappy young man, during one of

these conferences, "I don't know what to do. It's so unlike her."

"Write again."

"Not I--at least, how can I? If she won't answer _that_ letter there's

no use in writing any more."

"Call."

"I'm not going to creep round like a dog that has been beaten."

"True."

"She may be ill, for all I know. How do I know that she is not ill?"

"Illness, my dear Leavesley, is one of those things----"

"I know--but the question is, how am I to find out?"

"Could you not apply to their family physician? I should go to him,

frankly----"

"But I don't know who their doctor is--do talk sense. See here! could

_you_ call and ask--ask did she get home all right, and that sort of

thing?"

"Most certainly, with pleasure, if it would relieve your feelings.

Anything--anything I can do, my dear Leavesley, in an emergency like

this you can count on me to do."

"You needn't mention my name."

"I shall carefully abstain."

"Unless she asks, you know."

"Certainly, unless she asks."

"Armbruster came in this morning, he's going to America. He's got on to

a big firm for book illustrating; he wanted me to go with him and try

my luck--offered to pay the expenses. You might hint, perhaps, if the

subject turns up, that you think I am going to America."

"Certainly."

"When can you go?"

"Any time."

"You might go now, for I'm awfully anxious to hear if she is all right.

What's the time? Two--yes--if you go now you will get there about four."

"Highgate?"

"Yes--'The Laurels,' John's Road. Have you any money?"

"Unfortunately I am rather unprovided with the necessary----"

"Wait."

Leavesley went to a little jug on the mantel and turned the contents of

it into his hand.

"Here's five shillings; will that be enough?"

"Ample."

"Now go, like a good fellow, and do come back here straight."

"As an arrow."

"Don't say anything about my letter."

"Not a word, not a word."

Mr Verneede departed, and the painter went on with his painting,

feeling very much as Noah must have felt when the dove flew out of the

Ark.

Mr Verneede first made straight for his lodgings. He inhabited a

top-floor back in Maple Street, a little street leading out of the

King's Road.

Here he blacked his boots, put bear's grease on his hair, and assumed a

frock-coat a shade more respectable than the one he usually wore. Then,

with his coat tightly buttoned, his best hat on his head, and his

umbrella under his arm, he made off on his errand revolving in his

wonderful mind the forthcoming interview. To assist thought, he turned

into the four-ale bar of the "Spotted Dog." Here stood a woman with a

baby in her arms, a regular customer, who was explaining domestic

troubles to the sympathetic barmaid. Seeing Verneede seated with his ale

before him, she included him in her audience. Half an hour later the old

gentleman, having given much advice on the rearing of babies and

management of husbands, emerged from the "Spotted Dog" slightly flushed

and entirely happy.

It seemed so much pleasanter and cooler to enter a public house than an

omnibus, that the "King's Arms," where the omnibuses stood, swallowed

him easily. Here an anarchistical house-painter, who was destructing the

British Empire, included him in his remarks; and it was, somehow, nearly

five o'clock before he left the "King's Arms" more flushed and most

entirely happy, and took an omnibus for Hammersmith.

At nine o'clock he was wandering about Hammersmith asking people to

direct him to "The Hollies" in James' Road; at eleven he was criticising

the London County Council in a bar-room somewhere in Shepherd's Bush,

but it might have been in Paris or Berlin, Vienna or Madrid, for all

_he_ knew or cared.

CHAPTER VI

A SURPRISE VISIT

Verneede having departed on his mission, Leavesley resumed his work with

a feeling of relief.

He had done something. There is nothing that strains the mind so much

as sitting waiting with hands folded, so to speak, doing nothing.

When Noah closed the trap-door of the Ark having let forth the dove, he

no doubt followed its flight with his mind's eye--here flitting over

wastes of water, here perched on the island he desired.

Even so Leavesley, as he worked, followed the flight of Verneede towards

the object of his desires.

Leavesley was one of those unhappy people who meet their pleasures and

their troubles half-way. He was an imaginative man, moving in a most

unimaginative world, and as a result he was always knocking his nose

against the concrete. Needless to say, his forecasts were nearly always

wrong. If he opened a letter thinking it contained a bill, it, ten to

one, enclosed a theatre ticket or a cheque, and if he expected a cheque,

fifty to one he received a bill.

This temperament, however, sometimes has its advantages, for he was

sitting now quite contentedly painting and getting on with his picture,

whilst Mr Verneede was sitting quite contentedly in the bar of the

"Spotted Dog."

He was also smoking furiously with all the windows shut. To the artistic

temperament at times comes moods, when it shuts all the windows,

excluding noise and air, lights the foulest old pipe it can find, and,

to use a good old public school term, "fugs."

Suddenly he stopped work, half-sprang to his feet, palette in one hand,

pipe in the other. A footstep was on the landing, a girl's footstep--it

was _her_!

The door opened, and his aunt stood before him.

Since the other night when Fanny had dined with them, Miss Hancock had

been much exercised in her mind.

How on earth had Leavesley known of the affair? Had he referred to Fanny

when he made that mysterious remark about his uncle and a girl, or was

there _another_ girl? She had an axiom that when a man once begins to

make a fool of himself he doesn't know where to stop; she had also a

strong dash of her nephew's imaginative temperament. Fanny had troubled

her at first; seraglios were now rising in her mental landscape. She had

an intuition that her brother had broken the ice as regards the other

sex, and a dreadful fear that now he had broken the ice he was going to

bathe.

"Whew!" said Miss Hancock, waving her parasol before her to dispel the

clouds of smoke.

"Aunt!"

"For goodness sake, open the window. Open something--achu!--do you

_live_ in this atmosphere?"

Leavesley opened wide the windows, tapped the ashes of his pipe out on a

sill, and turned to his aunt, who had taken her seat in an uncomfortable

manner on a most comfortable armchair.

"This is an unexpected pleasure!"

Miss Hancock made no reply. It was the first time she had been in the

studio, the first time she had been in any studio.

She noticed the dust and the litter. The place was, in fact,

extraordinarily untidy, for Belinda, engaged just now in the fascination

of a policeman, had scarcely time even for such ordinary household

duties as making beds without turning the mattresses, and flinging eggs

into frying pans full of hot grease.

As fate would have it, or curiosity rather, Belinda at this moment

entered the studio, attired in a sprigged cotton gown four inches

shorter in front than behind as if to display to their full a pair of

wonderful feet shod in list slippers. Her front hair was bound in

Hindes' hair-binders tight down to her head, displaying a protruberant

forehead that seemed to have been polished. It was the only thing

polished about Belinda, and she made a not altogether pleasing picture

as she slunk into the studio to "look for something," but in reality to

take stock of the visitor.

It would have been much happier for her if she had stayed away.

She was slinking out again when Miss Hancock, who had been following her

every movement, said:

"Stop, please!"

Belinda, with her hand on the door handle, faced round.

"Are you the servant here?"

"Yus"--sulkily.

"And I suppose you are paid to keep this room in order. Where's your

mistress?"

"She's in Margate," cut in Leavesley.

"Stop twiddling that door handle," said Miss Hancock, entirely ignoring

Leavesley, "and attend to what I'm saying. If you are paid to keep this

room in order you are defrauding your mistress, and girls who defraud

their mistresses end in something worse. Go, get a duster."

The feelings of Cruiser, when he first came under the hands of Mr Rarey,

may have been comparable to the feelings of Belinda before this

servant-tamer.

She recognised a mistress, but she did not give in at once. She stood

looking sulkily from Leavesley to his aunt, and from his aunt to

Leavesley.

Miss Hancock had no legal power over her, it was all moral.

"Go, get a duster and a broom," cried Miss Hancock, stamping her foot.

One second more the animal stood in mute rebellion, then it went off and

got the duster and the broom.

"Take up that strip of carpet," commanded Mr Leavesley's aunt, when the

duster and the broom returned in the hands of the animal. "Whew! Throw

it outside the door and beat it in the back garden, if you have such a

thing--burn it if you haven't. Give me the duster. Now sweep the floor,

whilst I do these shelves; Frank, put those books in a heap. Whew! does

no one ever clean this place? Ha! what are you doing sweeping under the

couch? Pull out that couch. Mercy!!!"

Under the couch there was a heap of miscellaneous things--empty

cigarette tins, an empty beer bottle, an empty whisky bottle, half a

pack of cards, a dress tie, a glove, "The Three Musketeers," and an old

waistcoat--_and_ dust, mounds of dust.

Miss Hancock looked at this. Like the coster who looked back along the

City road to see the way strewn with cabbages, lettuces, and onions

which had leaked from his faulty barrow, language was quite inadequate

to express her feelings.

"Go, get a dust-pan," she said at last, "and a basket. Be quick about

it. Mercy!!!"

By the time the place was in order, Belinda, to Leavesley's

astonishment, had become transformed from a sulky-looking slattern to a

semi-respectable-looking servant girl.

"That will do," said Miss Hancock in a magisterial voice, when the last

consignment of rubbish had been removed. "Now, you can go."

As the boar sharpens its tusks against a tree preparatory to using them

to carve human flesh, so had Miss Hancock sharpened the tusks of her

temper upon Belinda.

"No thanks, I don't want any tea," she said, replying to Leavesley's

invitation. "I've come to ask you for an explanation."

"What of?"

"What you said the other day."

"What did I say the other day?"

"About your uncle."

"About my uncle?" he replied, wrinkling his forehead. He couldn't for

the life of him think what she was driving at; he had quite forgotten

his Parthian remark about the "girl," the thing had no root in his

mind--a bubble made of words that had risen to the surface of his mind,

burst, and been forgotten.

Miss Hancock had her own way of dealing with hypocrites. "Well, we will

say no more about your uncle. How about Miss Lambert?"

Leavesley made a little spring from his chair, as if some one had stuck

a pin into him, and changed colour violently.

"How--what do you know about Miss Lambert?----"

"I know all about it," said Miss Hancock grimly. She was so very clever

that she had got hold of the wrong end of the stick entirely, as very

clever people sometimes do. If she had come to him frankly she would

have found out that he was Fanny's lover, and not James Hancock's

confidant and go-between, as she now felt sure he was.

Unhappy Leavesley! his love affair with Fanny seemed destined to be

mulled by every one who had a hand in it.

"If you know all about it," he said sulkily, "that ends the matter."

"Unfortunately it doesn't."

"What do you mean?"

"It's dreadful," said Miss Hancock, apparently addressing a tobacco jar

that stood on the table, "it's dreadful to watch a man consciously and

deliberately making a fool of himself--to sit by and watch it, and not

be able to move a hand."

Of course he thought she referred to himself, but he was so accustomed

to hear his aunt calling people fools that her remarks did not ruffle

him.

"But what I can't understand is this," he said. "Who _told_ you about

Fanny--I mean Miss Lambert?"

"Fanny!" said the lady with a sniff. "You call her Fanny?"

"Of course."

"Of _course_!"

"Why not?"

"Why _not_!"

"Yes."

"The world has altered since I was a girl, that's all." Then with deep

sarcasm--"Does your uncle know that you call her Fanny?"

"Of course not; I've never told him."

Miss Hancock stared at him stonily, then she spoke. "Are _you_ in love

with her too?" she asked.

"What do you mean by 'too'?"

"Frank Leavesley, don't shuffle and prevaricate. Are you in love with

her?"

"Of course I am; every one who meets her must love her. I believe old

Verneede is in love with her. Love with her! I'd lay my life down for

her, but it's hopeless--hopeless----"

"I trust so indeed," replied Miss Hancock.

For a minute he thought his aunt must be a little bit mad: this was more

than her ordinary contrariness; then he went back to his original

question.

"I want to know who told you about this."

"Bridgewater, for one," replied Miss Hancock.

"Bridgewater!"

"Yes, Bridgewater."

"But he knows nothing about it," cried Leavesley. "He couldn't have told

you."

"He told me everything--Miss Lambert's visit to the Zoological Gardens,

her----"

"You may as well be exact whilst you are about it; it wasn't the

Zoological Gardens, it was Epping Forest."

"Frank Leavesley, a lie is bad enough, but a silly lie is much worse.

Miss Lambert herself told me it was the Zoological Gardens; perhaps she

has been to Epping Forest as well; perhaps next it will be a visit to

Paris. _I_ wash my hands of the affair."

"You have seen Miss Lambert?"

"No matter what I have seen. I have seen enough to make me open my

eyes--and shut them again."

Leavesley was now fuming about the studio. What on earth had possessed

Bridgewater? How on earth had he found out about the affair, and how had

he come to twist Epping Forest into the Zoological Gardens?

"----_and_ shut them again," resumed Miss Hancock. "However, it is none

of my business, but if there is such a thing as honour you ought, in my

humble opinion, to go to your uncle and tell him the state of your

feelings towards Miss Lambert."

"I'll go," said Leavesley--"go to the office to-day; and if uncle

chooses to keep that antiquated liar of a Bridgewater in his service any

longer after what I tell him, it will be his own look-out."

Miss Hancock had not reckoned on this, she looked uncomfortable.

"Bridgewater is an honourable man, who has acted for the best."

"I know," said Leavesley. "Now, I must go out; I have some business.

Are you sure you won't have some tea?"

"No tea, thank you," replied Miss Hancock, rising to depart.

CHAPTER VII

THE UNEXPLAINED

It was just as well she refused the tea, for there was no one to make

it. She had hypnotised Belinda, and Belinda coming out of the hypnotic

state was having hysterical convulsions in the kitchen, assisted by the

charwoman.

"Belinda," cried Leavesley down the kitchen stairs, he had rung his bell

vainly, "are you there?"

"She's hill, sir," replied a hoarse voice, "I'm a-lookin' arter her."

"Oh, well, if a Mr Verneede calls, will you ask him to wait for me? I'll

be back soon."

"Yessir."

He left the house and proceeded as fast as omnibuses could take him to

Southampton Row.

Bridgewater was out, but Mr Wolf, the second in command, ushered him

into Hancock's room.

"Well," said Hancock, who was writing a letter--"Oh, it's you. Sit down,

sit down for a minute."

He went on with his letter, and Leavesley took his seat and sat in a

simmering state listening to the squeaking of the quill pen, and framing

in his mind indictments against Bridgewater.

If he had been in a state of mind to absorb details he might have

noticed that his uncle was looking younger and brighter. But the

youthfulness or brightness of Mr Hancock were indifferent to him

absorbed as he was with his own thoughts.

"Well," said Hancock, finishing his letter with a flourish and leaning

back in his chair.

"Aunt came to see me to-day," said Leavesley, "and I came on here at

once. It's most disgraceful."

"What?"

"Bridgewater. You've got a man in your office who is not to be trusted,

a mischief-making old----"

"Dear me, what's all this? A man in the office not to be trusted? To

whom do you refer?"

"Bridgewater."

"Bridgewater?"

"Yes."

"What has he been doing?"

"Doing! He has been sneaking round to my aunt telling tales about a

lady; that's what he has been doing."

"What lady?"

"A Miss Lambert. He told her she had been to the Zoological Gardens

with----"

Hancock raised his hand. "Don't go on," he said, "I know it all."

"You know it all?"

"Yes, and I have given Bridgewater a right good dressing down--meddling

old stupid!"

Leavesley was greatly taken back at this.

"It's not his fault," continued Hancock. "It's your aunt's fault; she

put him on to spy. However, it's rather a delicate subject, and we won't

pursue it, but"--suddenly and in a friendly tone--"I take it very kindly

of you to come round and tell me this."

"I thought I'd better come," said the young man; "besides, the thing

put me in such a wax. Of course, if he was egged on by aunt, it's not so

much his fault."

"I take it very kindly of you, and we'll say no more about it." He

lapsed into meditation, and Leavesley sat filled with a vague feeling of

surprise.

Every one seemed a little out of the ordinary to-day. Why on earth did

his uncle take this news so very kindly?

"I've been thinking," said Hancock suddenly--then abruptly: "How are you

financially, now?"

"Oh, pretty bad. I had to sell a picture of John the Baptist for five

pounds the other day; it was worth twenty."

"When your mother married your father," said Hancock, leaning back in

his chair, "she flew in the face of her family. He was penniless and a

painter."

"I don't want to hear anything against my father," said Leavesley

tartly. "Yes, he was penniless and a painter, and she married him, and

I'm glad she did. She loved him, that was quite enough."

"If you will excuse me," said Hancock, "I was going to say nothing

against your father. I think a love-match--er--um--well, no matter. I am

only stating the facts. She flew in the face of her family, and as a

result the money that might have been hers, went to your aunt."

"And a nice use she makes of it."

"The hundred a year left you by your parents," resumed the lawyer,

ignoring this reply, "is, I admit, a pittance. I offered you, however,

as the head of the family, and feeling that your mother had not received

exactly justice, I offered you the choice of a profession. I offered to

take you into this office. You refused, preferring to be a painter. Now,

I am not stingy, but I have seen much of the world, and in my

experience, the less money a young man has in starting in life, the more

likely is he to arrive at the top of the tree. You have, however, now

started; I have been making enquiries, and you seem to be working, and I

am pleased with you for two things. Firstly, when you came to me the

other day for money for a--foolish purpose you didn't lie over the

matter and say you wanted the money for your landlady, as nine out of

ten young men would have done. Secondly, for coming to me to-day and

apprising me of the unpleasant intelligence, to which we will not again

refer. I appreciate loyalty."

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out his note-case.

"What's your present liabilities?"

"Oh, I owe about ten pounds."

"Sure that's all?"

"Of course, I'd tell you if it was more; it's somewhere about that."

Hancock took a five-pound note and a ten-pound note out of the

note-case, looked at them both, and then put the ten-pound note back.

"I'm going to lend you five pounds," he said. "It will serve for present

expenses, and I expect you to pay me it back before the end of the

week." He held out the note.

"You had better keep it," said his nephew, "for there's not the remotest

chance of my paying you before the end of the week."

"Take the note," said Hancock testily, "and don't keep me holding it out

all day; you don't know what may happen in the course of a week. Take

the note."

"Well, I'll take it if you _will_ have it so; and I'll pay you back some

time if I don't this week."

"Now good day," said Hancock. "I'm busy."

CHAPTER VIII

RETURN OF THE AMBASSADOR

He left the office feeling depressed. Spent anger generally leaves

depression behind it.

Hancock's admission that his mother had been treated harshly by her

family, though a well-known fact to him, did not decrease his gloom. He

considered the thousands that ought to have fallen to her share, that

had fallen to the share of Patience instead. For a second a wild hatred

of the Hancocks and all their ways filled his breast, and he felt an

inclination to take the five-pound note from his pocket, roll it into a

ball, and fling it into the gutter. Not being a lunatic, he didn't. He

went and dined instead, though it was only a little after five, and

having dined he went back to the studio.

Verneede had not yet returned. At ten o'clock Verneede had not yet

returned. Midnight struck.

"Can he be staying there the night?" thought Leavesley, who had gone to

bed with a novel and a pipe and an ear, so to say, on every footstep

ascending the stairs.

People often stayed the night at the Lamberts' drinking punch and

playing cards; he had done so himself once.

He woke at seven and dressed, and at eight he was standing before the

house of Verneede in Maple Street.

"Hin!" said the landlady, "I should think he was hin; and thankful he

ought to be he's not hin the police station."

"Good gracious, what has happened?"

"Woke us up at two in the mornin' hangin' like a coal sack over the

railin's; might a-tumbled into the airy and broke his neck. Disgraceful,

I call it!"

"May I go up and see him?"

"Yus, you can go up--he's in the top floor back--trouble enough we had

to get him there."

Leavesley went up to the top floor back. The unfortunate Verneede was in

bed, trying to remember things. He had brought his umbrella home safely,

but in the pockets of his clothes, after diligent search in the grey

dawn, he had been able to discover only one halfpenny. To make up for

this deficiency, his head was swelled up till it felt like a pumpkin.

"Good gracious, Verneede," cried Leavesley, staring at him, "what on

earth has happened to you?

"A fit, I think," said Verneede.

"Did you go to Highgate?"

"Of course--of course; pray, my dear Leavesley, hand me the washing

jug."

He began to drink from the jug.

"Stop!" said Leavesley, "you'll burst!"

"I'm better now," said Mr Verneede, placing the jug, half empty, on the

floor, and passing his hand across his brow.

"Then go on and tell me all about it."

Verneede had no recollection of anything at all save a few more or less

unpleasant incidents. He remembered the "Spotted Dog," the "King's

Arms"; he remembered streets; he remembered being turned out of

somewhere.

"Tell you about what?"

"Good gracious--about the Lamberts, of course. What time did you get

there?"

"Half-past two, I think."

"You couldn't; you only left the studio at two."

"Half-past four, I mean; yes, it was half-past four."

"When did you leave?"

Verneede scratched his head.

"Six."

"You saw Miss Lambert?"

"Yes."

"Look here, Verneede, you were all right when you got there, I hope?"

"Perfectly, absolutely."

"What did you talk about?"

"We talked of various topics."

"Did you mention my name?"

"Ah yes," said Verneede, "I told her what you said."

"What?"

"About your going to Australia."

"America, you owl," cried Leavesley.

"America, I mean--America, of course--America."

"What did she say?"

"She said--she hoped you'd have a fine voyage, that the weather would be

fine, in short, or words to that effect."

Leavesley sighed.

"Was that all she said?"

"Absolutely."

"Did you say anything about the letter I wrote her?"

"Yes; I remembered that."

"But I told you _not_."

"It escaped me," said Verneede weakly.

"What did she say?"

"She said it didn't matter; at least that is what I gathered from her."

"How do you mean gathered from her?"

"From her manner."

Leavesley sighed again, and Verneede leaned back on his pillow. He did

not know in the least whether he had been at Lamberts' or not--he hoped

he hadn't.

_PART V_

CHAPTER I

GOUT

Since her visit to Leavesley Miss Hancock felt certain that her system

of petty espionage had been discovered: the question remained as to what

course her brother would take. He had as yet said nothing.

One fact stood before her very plainly: his infatuation for Miss

Lambert. She had examined Fanny very attentively, and despite the fact

that she had plotted and planned for years to keep her brother single,

had he at that moment entered the room with the news that he was engaged

to be married to George Lambert's daughter, she would have received it

not altogether as a blow. In her lifelong opposition to his marrying,

she had always figured his possible wife as a woman who would oust her,

but Fanny was totally unlike all other girls she had ever met--very

different from Miss Wilkinson and the other middle-class young women,

with minds of their own, from whom she had fortunately or unfortunately

guarded her brother. There were new possibilities about Fanny. She was

so soft and so charmingly irresponsible that the idea of hectoring,

ordering, directing and generally sitting upon her was equivalent to the

idea of a new pleasure in life. To order, to put straight, to admonish

were functions as necessary to Miss Hancock's being as excretion or

respiration; a careless housemaid to correct, or a shiftless friend to

advise, called these functions into play; and the process, however it

affected the housemaid or the friend, left Miss Hancock a healthier and

happier woman.

The Almighty, who, however we may look at the fact, made the fly to be

the intimate companion of the spider, seemed in the construction of Miss

Lambert to have had the vital requirements of Miss Hancock decidedly in

view.

She had almost begun to form plans as to Fanny's dress allowance, in the

event of her marriage--how it should be spent; her hair, how it should

be dressed; and her life, how it should be generally made a

conglomeration of petty miseries.

On the night before the day Bevan left for Sussex Mr Hancock and his

great toe had a conversation. What his right great toe said to Mr

Hancock that night I will report very shortly for the benefit of elderly

gentlemen in general; Anacreon has said the thing much better in verse,

but verse is out of date. Said the right great toe of Mr Hancock in a

monologue punctuated with the stabs of a stiletto:

"How old are you? Sixty-three? (stab), that's what you say, but you know

very well you were born sixty-five years and six months ago. Wake up

(stab, stab), you must not go to sleep. Sixty-five--five years more and

you will be seventy; fifteen years more and you'll be _eighty_, and you

are in love (stab, stab, stab). _I'll_ teach you to eat sweet cakes and

ice creams; I'll (stab) teach you to drink Burgundy. And you dared to

call me Arthritic Rheumatism the other night, you (stab) dared! Now, go

to sleep (stab, stab) ... wake up again, I want to speak to you," etc.,

etc., etc.

Gout talks to one very like a woman: you cannot reply to it, it simply

talks on.

At eight o'clock next morning, when Miss Hancock left her room, Boffins

informed her that her brother was ill and wished to see her.

"I'm all right," said James, who was lying in bed with the sheets up to

his nose, "I'm all right--for heaven's sake, don't fidget with that

window blind--I want my letters brought up; shan't go to the office

to-day. You can send round and tell Bridgewater to call, and send for

Carter, I've got a touch of this Arthritic Rheumatism (ow!)--do ask that

servant to make less row on the stairs. No, don't want any breakfast."

"Well, Hancock," said Dr Carter, when he arrived, "got it again--whew!

There's a foot! What have you been eating?"

"Nothing," groaned the patient; "it's worry has done it, I believe."

"Now, don't talk nonsense. What have you been eating and drinking?"

"Well, I believe I had an ice-cream some days ago, and--a cake."

"An ice-cream, and a cake, and a glass of port--come, confess your

sins."

"No, a glass of Burgundy."

"An ice-cream, and a cake, and a glass of Burgundy--well, you can commit

suicide if you choose, but I can only warn you of this that if you wish

to commit suicide in a _most unpleasant manner_ you'll do such a thing

again."

"Dash it, Carter--oh, Lord! go gently, don't touch it there! What's the

good of being alive? I remember the days when I could drink a whole

bottle of port without turning a hair."

"I know--but you're not as young as you were then, Hancock."

"Oh, do say something original--say I'm getting old, and have done with

it!"

"It's not your age so much as your diathesis," said the pitiless Carter.

"It's unfortunate for you, but there you are. You might be worse, every

man is born with a disease. Yours is gout--you might be worse. Suppose

you had aneurism? Now, here's a prescription; get it made up at once.

Thank goodness, you can stand colchicum."

"How long will it be before I'm all right?"

"A week, at least."

"Oh Lord!"

"There, you are grumbling. Remember, my dear fellow, that living is a

business as well as lawyering. Take life easy, and forget the office for

a few days."

"I wasn't thinking of the office--give me that writing-case over there;

I must write a letter."

When Bridgewater arrived half an hour later, he found his master

laboriously addressing an envelope.

"Take that and post it, Bridgewater." Bridgewater took it and placed it

in his pocket without looking at the address upon it, and having

reported on the morning letters, and received advice as to dealing with

one or two matters, ambled off on his errand.

That evening at five o'clock, when Patience brought him up a cup of tea

and the evening newspaper, James, considerably eased by the colchicum

and pills of Dr Carter, said: "Put the tea on the table there, and sit

down, Patience. I wish to speak to you."

Patience sat down, took her knitting from her apron pocket, and began to

knit.

"I have written a letter to-day to Miss Lambert."

"Oh!"

"An important letter, a vitally important letter to me."

"You mean, James, that you have written a letter of proposal--that you

intend, in short, to marry Miss Lambert?"

"That is precisely my meaning."

"Humph!"

"Does the idea displease you?"

"Yes, and no."

"Please explain what you mean by 'yes' and 'no'; the expression lacks

lucidity, to say the least of it."

"I mean that it would be much better for you to remain as you are; but

if you do intend to commit yourself in this way, well--Miss Lambert is

at least a lady."

The keen eye of James examined his sister's face as she spoke, and he

knew that what she said she meant. Despite all his tall talk to

Bridgewater about sending his sister packing her influence upon him was

very strong; thirty years of diffidence to her opinion in the minor

details of life had not passed without leaving their effect upon his

will; besides he, as a business man, had great admiration for her

astuteness and power of dealing with things. Active opposition to his

matrimonial plans would not have altered them, but it would have made

him unhappy.

"I am glad you think that," he said. "Give me the tea."

"Mind," said Miss Hancock, as she handed the beverage, "I wash my hands

of the matter; I think it distinctly unwise, considering your age,

considering her age, considering everything."

"Well, all that lies with me. You will be civil and kind to her,

Patience?"

"It is not my habit to be unkind to any one. You have written, you say,

to her to-day; you wrote without consulting me--the step is taken, and

you must abide by it. I hope it will be for your happiness, James."

He was watching her intently, and was satisfied.

"I wish," he said, putting the cup down on the table beside the bed, "I

wish you knew her better."

"I will call upon her," said Miss Hancock, counting her stitches; "she

left her parasol behind her last night, I will take it back to her----"

"No, don't, for goodness sake!" said James, the Lambert _ménage_ rising

before him, and also a vague dread that his sister, despite her

appearance and words of goodwill--or rather semi-goodwill--might be

traitorously disposed at heart. "At least--I don't know--I suppose it

would be the right thing to do."

"I am not especially anxious to call," said Miss Hancock, who had quite

made up her mind to journey to Highgate on the morrow and spy out the

land of the Lamberts for herself. "In fact, the only possible day I

could call would be to-morrow before noon. I have a meeting in Sloane

Square to attend at five, and on Wednesday I have three engagements, two

on Thursday; Friday I have to spend the day with Aunt Catherine at

Windsor, where I will remain over Sunday."

"Well, call to-morrow and bring her back her parasol--oh, _damn_!"

"James!"

"Oh Lord! I thought some one had shot a bullet into my foot. Give me the

medicine, quick, and send round for Carter. I must have some opium, or

I won't sleep a wink."

Miss Hancock administered the dose, and retired downstairs, when she

sent a message to Dr Carter and ordered the lilac parasol of Miss

Lambert to be wrapped in paper. Then she sent a message to the livery

stables to order the hired brougham, which she employed several times a

week, to be in attendance at 9.30 the following morning, to drive her to

Highgate.

But next morning her brother was so bad that she could not leave him.

But she called one morning later on.

CHAPTER II

THE RESULT

The Lamberts as a rule took things easy in the morning. Breakfast was at

any time that was suitable to the convenience and appetite of each

individual; the things were generally cleared away by half-past eleven

or twelve, a matter of half an hour lost in the forenoon made little

difference in the revolution of their day.

At half-past ten on the morning of Miss Hancock's descent upon her,

Fanny was seated at the breakfast-table. It was a glorious day, filled

with the warmth of summer, the scent of roses, and the songs of birds. A

letter from her father lay beside her on the table; it had arrived by

the morning's post, and contained great news--good news, too, yet the

goodness of it was not entirely reflected in her face.

The worries of life were weighing on Miss Lambert; James Hancock's

unanswered letter was not the least of these. She had laughed on

receiving it, then she had cried. She had written three or four letters

in answer to it, beginning, "Dear Mr Hancock," "My dear Mr Hancock,"

"_Please_ do not think me horrid," etc.; but it was no use, each was a

distinct refusal, yet each seemed either too cold or too warm. "If I

send this," said she, "it will hurt him horribly, and he has been so

kind. Oh dear! why will men be so stupid, they are so nice if they'd

only not worry one to marry them. If I send _this_ it will only make

him think that I will 'have him in the end,' as Susannah says. I wish I

were a man."

Besides love troubles household worries had their place. James had gone

very much to pieces morally in the last few days. He had taken

diligently to drink, the writing and quoting of poetry, and the pawning

of unconsidered trifles; between the bouts, in those fits of remorse,

which may be likened to the Fata Morgana of true repentance, he had

expended his energy on all sorts of household duties not required of

him: winding up clocks to their destruction, smashing china, and

scattering coals all over the place in attempts to convey over-full

scuttles to wrong rooms and in the face of gravity. The effect upon

Susannah of these eccentricities can be best described by the fact that

she lived now most of her time with her apron over her head. Housework

under these circumstances became a matter of some difficulty.

It wanted some twenty minutes to eleven when the "brougham with

celluloid fittings," containing Miss Hancock, drove up the drive and

stopped before "The Laurels."

Miss Hancock stepped out and up the steps, noticing to the minutest

detail the neglect before and around her.

She gave her own characteristic knock--sharp, decided, and

business-like; she would also have given her own characteristic ring,

but that the bell failed to respond, the pull produced half a foot of

wire but no sound, and the knob, when she dropped it, dangled wearily as

if to say, "Now see what you've done! N'matter, _I_ don't care."

She waited a little and knocked again; this time came footsteps and the

sound of bars coming down and bolts being unshot, the door opened two

inches on the chain, and the same pale blue eye and undecided-coloured

fringe that had appeared to Mr Bevan, appeared to the now incensed Miss

Hancock.

Just as the rabbit peeping from its burrow sees the stoat and recognises

its old ancestral enemy, so Susannah, in Miss Hancock, beheld the Foe of

herself and all her tribe.

"Is Miss Lambert at home?" asked the visitor sharply.

"Yus, she's in."

"Then open the door, I wish to see her."

Susannah banged the door to, not to exclude the newcomer, but simply to

release the chain. Then she opened it again wide, as if to let in an

elephant.

Susannah had not presented a particularly spruce appearance on the day

when Mr Bevan called and we first met her, but this morning she was

simply--awful.

A lock of hair like a bight of half-unravelled cable hung down behind

her ear, her old print dress was indescribable, and she had, apparently,

some one else's slippers on. She had also the weary air of a person who

had been watching in a sick room all the night.

Miss Hancock took this figure in with one snapshot glance; also the hall

untidied, the floor undusted, the dust-pan and brush laid on the stairs,

a trap for the unwary to step on; the grandfather's clock pointing to

quarter to six, and many other things which I have not seen or noticed,

but which were clear to Miss Hancock, just as nebulæ and stars which,

looking in the direction of I cannot see, are clear to the two-foot

reflecting telescope of the Yerkes observatory.

Susannah escorted the sniffing visitor into the library, dusted with

her apron the very same chair she had dusted for Mr Bevan, said, "I'll

tell Miss Fanny," and left the room, closing the door with a snap that

spoke, not volumes, but just simply words.

The night before, after the other members of the household had retired,

James had taken it into his head to sit up in the library over the

remains of the fire left by Fanny. The room, as a consequence, reeked of

stale tobacco, a tumbler stood on the table convenient to the armchair.

Needless to say, the tumbler was empty.

Miss Hancock looked around her at the books, at the carpet, at the

general litter. She came to the mantelpiece and touched it, looked at

the tip of her gloved finger to assay the quantity of dust to the square

millimetre, said, "Pah!" and sat down in the armchair. A _Pink Un_ of

George Lambert's lay invitingly near her on the table; she picked it up,

glanced at the title, read a joke, turned purple, and dropped the

raciest of all racing papers just as Fanny, fresh and charming, but

somewhat bewildered-looking, entered the room.

Fanny felt sure that this visit of Miss Hancock's had something to do

with the letter of her brother's. She was relieved when her visitor,

after extending a hand emotionless and chill as the fin of a turtle,

said:

"I had some business in Highgate, so I thought I would take the

opportunity of returning your parasol, which you left behind you the

other night."

"Thanks awfully," said Fanny; "it's awfully good of you to take the

trouble. Please excuse the untidiness; we are in a great upset for--the

painters are coming in. Won't you come into the breakfast-room? There's

a fire there; it's not cold, I know, but I always think a fire is so

bright."

She led the way to the breakfast-room, her visitor following, anxious to

see as much as she could of the inner working of the Lambert household.

She gave a little start at the sight of the breakfast things not

removed, and another start at sight of the provender laid out for one

small person. The remains of a round of beef graced one end of the

board, and a haddock that, had it been let grow, would assuredly have

ended its life in the form of a whale, the other; there was also jam and

other things, including some shortbread on a plate.

"Have you had breakfast?" asked Fanny in a hospitable tone of voice.

"I breakfasted at quarter to eight," said Miss Hancock with a scarcely

perceptible emphasis on the "I."

"I know we're awfully late as a rule," said Fanny, as they sat down near

the window, in and out of which the wasps were coming, and through which

the sun shone, laying a burning square on the carpet, "but I hate early

breakfast. When I breakfast at eight I feel a hundred years old by

twelve. Did you ever notice how awfully long mornings are?"

"My mornings," said Miss Hancock, laying a scarcely perceptible accent

on the "my," "are all too short; an hour lost in the morning is never

regained. You cannot expect servants to be active and diligent without

you set them the example. We are placed, I think, in a very responsible

position with regard to our servants: as we make them so they are."

"Do you think so?" said Fanny, trying to consider what part she possibly

could have had in the construction of James and the helpmeet Susannah.

"I am sure of it. If we are idle or lazy ourselves they imitate us; they

are like children, and we should treat them as such. I ring the bell at

half-past five every morning for the maids, and I expect them to be down

by six."

"What time do you get up?"

"Half-past seven."

"Then," said Fanny, laughing, "you don't set them--I mean they set you

the example, for they are up before you."

"I spoke figuratively," said Miss Hancock rather stiffly, and eyeing the

handmaiden who had just appeared at the door to remove the things.

"Give the fish to the cats, Susannah," said her mistress, "and be sure

to take the bones out; one nearly choked," she said, resuming her

conversation with her visitor, "the other morning."

"Hum!" said Miss Hancock, unenthusiastic on the subject of choking cats.

"Do you always feed your animals on--good food?"

"Yes, of course."

"You are very young, and, of course, it is no affair of mine, but I

think in housekeeping--having first of all regard to waste--one ought to

consider how many poor people are starving. I send all my scraps to the

St Mark's Refuge Home, an excellent institution."

"I used to give a lot of food away," said Fanny, "but I found it didn't

pay, people didn't want it. We had a barrel of beer that no one drank,

so I gave a tramp a jugful once, and he made a mark somewhere on the

house, and after that twenty or thirty tramps a day called. We couldn't

find the mark, so father had to have the whole lower part of the house

lime-washed, and the gate pillars. After that he said no more food was

to be given away, or beer."

"There are poor and poor. To give beer to a tramp is in my opinion a

distinctly wicked act; it is simply feeding the flames of drunkenness,

as Mr Bulders says. You have heard of Mr Bulders?"

"N--no."

"I must introduce you. I hope you will like him, he is a great friend of

ours. Your Christian name is Fanny, I believe. May I call you Fanny?"

"Yes," said Fanny. "How queer it is, nobody knows me for--I mean,

everybody always asks me that before I have known them for more----"

"Everybody?"

"Yes."

"Gentlemen, my dear child, surely not?"

"Yes, they do."

Miss Hancock said nothing, but sat for a moment in silence gloating over

the girl before her. Here was a gold-mine of pure correction--the

metaphor is mixed perhaps, but you will understand it. Then she said:

"And do you permit it?"

"Oh, _I_ don't care."

"But I fancy, your father----" Miss Hancock paused.

"Oh, father doesn't mind; every one has called me Fanny since I was so

high."

"Yes, but, my dear girl, you are no longer a _child_. Fathers are

indulgent, and sometimes blind to what the world thinks; consider, when

you come to marry, when you come to have a husband----"

"Oh, I hope it'll be a long time before I come to that," said Fanny, in

a tone of voice as if general service or the workhouse were the topic of

discussion.

Miss Hancock took a rather deep inspiration, and was dumb for a moment.

"I understood my brother to say that he had written to you on a subject

touching your welfare and his happiness?"

Fanny flushed all over her face and neck. Only a little child or a very

young girl can blush like that--a blush that passes almost as quickly as

it comes, and is, perhaps, of all emotional expressions the most natural

and charming.

"I did have a letter," she faltered, "and I have tried to answer it, am

going to answer it--I am so sorry----"

"I don't see the necessity of being sorry," said the elder lady. "One

does not answer a letter of that description flippantly and by the next

post; my brother will quite understand and appreciate the cause of

delay."

"Oh, but it's not the _delay_ I'm sorry for, it's the--it's the having

to say that--I can't say what he wants me to say."

Miss Hancock raised her eyebrows. Miss Lambert's English was enough to

raise a grammarian from the grave, but it was not at the English that

Miss Hancock evinced surprise.

James Hancock was not as old to his sister as he appeared to the rest

of the world, though she knew his age to a day and had quoted it as an

argument against his marriage; she did not appreciate the fact that he

looked every day of his age, and even perhaps a few days over.

It is a pathetic and sometimes beautiful--and sometimes ugly--fact that

we are blind to much in the people we live with and grow up with. Joan

sees Darby very much as she saw him thirty years ago, and to Miss

Hancock her younger brother was her younger brother; and her younger

brother, to a woman, is never old. Besides being in the "prime of life,"

James was clever; besides being clever, he was rich, very rich. What

more could a girl want?

"You mean," said Patience, "that you cannot accept his proposition."

"N--no--that is, I'd _like_ to, but I can't."

"If you 'liked' to do it, I do not see what is to prevent you."

"Oh, it's not that sort of liking. I mean I'd like to like him, I do

like him, but not in the way he wants."

"It is no affair of mine," said Miss Hancock, "not in the least, but I

would urge you not to be too hasty in your reply. Think over it, weigh

the matter judicially before you decide upon what, after all, is the

most important decision a young girl is ever called upon to make."

"I hate myself," broke out Fanny, who had been listening with bent head,

and finger tracing the pattern on the cloth of the table beside her. "I

hate myself. People are always doing me kindnesses and I am always

acting like a beast, so it seems to me, but how can I help it?" lifting

her head suddenly with a bright smile. "If I were to marry them all, I'd

have about fifty husbands, now--_more!_--so what am I to do?"

Miss Hancock sniffed; she had never been in the same position herself,

so could give no advice from experience. The question rather irritated

her, and a smart lecture rose to her lips on the impropriety and

immodesty of girls allowing people of the other sex to "care for them,"

etc., etc., but the lecture did not pass her lips.

Since entering the house of the Lamberts the demon of Order had swelled

Jinnee-like in her breast, and the seven devils of spring cleaning,

each of whose right hands is a cake of soap, and whose left hands are

scrubbing-brushes, arose and ramped. The whole place and the people

therein, from the bell-pull to the cats'-breakfast-destined haddock,

from Susannah to her mistress, exercised a fascination upon Miss Hancock

beyond the power of words to describe. She had measured Susannah from

her sand-coloured hair to her slipshod feet, gauged her capacity for

work and her moral ineptitude, and had already dismissed her, in her

mind; as for the rest of the business, the ordering of Fanny and of her

father, whom she divined, the setting of the house to rights and the

righting of all the Lamberts' affairs, mundane and extra-mundane--this,

she felt, would be a work, which accomplished, she could say, "I have

not lived in vain." All this might be lost by a lecture misplaced.

"Of course you will please yourself," she said. "I would only say do

nothing rashly; and in whatever way you decide, I hope you will always

be our friend. You are very young to have the cares of a house and the

ordering of servants thrust upon you, and any assistance or advice I

can give you, I should be very glad to give."

"Thanks _so_ much!"

"I would be very glad to call some day and have a good long chat with

you; my experience in housekeeping might be of assistance."

"I should be _delighted_," gasped Fanny, who felt like a bird in the net

of the fowler, and whose soul was filled with one wild longing--the

longing to escape.

"What day shall we say?"

"Monday--no, not Monday, I have an engagement. Tuesday--I am not sure

about Tuesday. Suppose--suppose I write?"

"I am disengaged all next week; any day you please to appoint I shall be

glad to come. What a large garden you have!"

"Would you like to come round it?"

"Yes; I will wait till you put on your hat."

"Oh, I scarcely ever wear a hat in the garden. If you come this way we

can go out through the side door."

They wandered around the garden, Miss Hancock making notes in her own

mind. As they passed the kitchen window, a face gazed out, a beery,

leery face, behind which could be seen the pale phantom of Susannah. The

face was gazing at Miss Hancock with an expression of amused and

critical impudence that caused that lady to pause and snort.

"Did you see that man looking from the window?" she asked.

"Yes," said Fanny in an agony, "it must have been the plumber; he came

this morning to mend the stove. Oh, here is your carriage waiting; _so_

glad you called. Yes, I'll write."

CHAPTER III

THE RESULT--(_continued_)

Miss Lambert ran back to the house. She made a bee-line for the library,

sat down at the writing-table, seized a pen and a sheet of paper, and

began writing as if inspired. This is what she wrote, in part:

"MY DEAR MR HANCOCK,--I have written several letters to you in

reply to yours, but I tore them up simply because I found it so

difficult to express what I wanted to say.... I can never, never,

marry you; I don't think I shall ever marry any one, at least, not

for a long time ... deeply, deeply respect you, and father says you

are the best man he ever met. Why not let us always be friends?...

It's a horrible world, and there are so few people who are really

nice in it ... you will quite understand ... etc."

Four pages of this signed,

"Always your sincere friend,

"FANNY LAMBERT."

Now we have seen that Miss Hancock had endeavoured as far as in her lay

to help along her brother's interests with Miss Lambert. Yet on the

receipt of the above letter the conviction entered the mind of James

Hancock, never to be evicted, that his sister had, vulgarly speaking,

"dished" the affair, and, moreover, that she had done so wittingly and

of malice prepense.

Having gummed and stamped the envelope she went out herself and posted

it.

When she came back she found Leavesley waiting for her.

CHAPTER IV

"JOURNEY'S END"

For some days past, ever since Verneede's fiasco in fact, Leavesley had

been very much down in the mouth.

There is a tide in the affairs of man that when it reaches its lowest

ebb usually takes a turn. The tide had been out with Leavesley for some

time, and acres of desolate mud spoke nothing of the rolling breakers

that were coming in.

The first roller had arrived by the first post on this very morning. It

was a letter from his uncle.

"GORDON SQUARE.

"DEAR FRANK,--I am in bed with a bad foot, or I would ask you to

call and see me.

"I want that five pounds back. I made a will some years ago, by

which you benefited to the extent of two thousand pounds; I am

destroying that will, and drafting another.

"It's this way. I don't intend to die just yet, and you may as well

have the two thousand now, when it will be of use to you. Call on

Bridgewater, he will hand you shares to the amount in the Great

Western Railway. Take my advice and don't sell them, they are going

to rise, but of course, as to this you are your own master.--Your

affectionate uncle,

"JAMES HANCOCK."

"Two thousand pounds!" yelled Leavesley, "Belinda!" (he had heard her

foot on the stairs).

"Yessir."

"I've been left two thousand pounds." Belinda passed on her avocations;

she thought it was another of Mr Leavesley's jokes.

He ate a tremendous breakfast without knowing what he was eating, and in

the middle of it the second roller came in.

It was a telegram.

He felt certain it was from Hancock revoking his legacy. It was from

Miss Lambert.

"Only just found your letter. Please call this morning. Good news

to tell you."

"Fanny!" cried Leavesley, as he stood before her in the drawing-room of

"The Laurels" (she had just entered the room, having returned from

posting her letter).

"Think--I've got two thousand pounds this morning!"

"Mercy!" cried Miss Lambert. "Where did you get it from?"

"Uncle."

"Mr Hancock?"

"Yes; he was going to have left me it in his will, but he's given me it

instead."

"How good of him!" said Fanny. She was about to say something else, but

she stopped.

"That's my good news," continued Leavesley. "What's yours?"

"Mine? Oh--just think! Father's engaged to be married."

"To be married?"

"Yes, to a Miss Pursehouse; she's _awfully_ rich."

He did not for a moment grasp the importance of this piece of

intelligence. Then it broke on him. Now that Fanny's father was provided

for, she would be free to marry any one she liked.

* * * * *

"I was nearly heart-broken," mumbled Leavesley into Fanny's hair--they

were seated on the couch--"when you didn't reply."

"The letter was on the kitchen dresser all the time," replied Fanny in

a happy and dreamy voice, "behind a plate."

"And then when old Verneede called, and you seemed so indifferent--at

least, he said you did."

"Who said I did?"

"Verneede; when he called here that day."

"He never called here."

"_Verneede_ never called here?"

"Never in his life."

"He said he did, and he saw you, and told you I was going to Australia,

and you didn't care."

"Oh, what a horrid, wicked story! He never came here."

"He must have been dreaming then," said Leavesley, who began to see how

matters stood as regards the veracity of Verneede. "No matter, I don't

care now. Hold me tighter, Fanny."

* * * * *

Till some one discovers the art of printing kisses, asterisks must

serve.

"But," said Leavesley after an interval of sweet silence, "what I can't

make out is how Bridgewater found out about you and me."

"Bridgewater!"

"Yes; he told my aunt all about us, and our going to Epping Forest: only

the old fool said we went to the Zoo."

Fanny was silent. Then she said in a perplexed voice: "I want to tell

you something. I did go to the Zoo."

"When?"

"The other day."

"Who with?"

"Guess!"

"Not--not Bevan?"

"No," said Fanny, "with your uncle."

Leavesley laughed.

"What a joke! Are you really in earnest?"

"Yes; he wrote to ask if I'd like to go, and I went. We met Mr

Bridgewater."

"Oh, that accounts for it; he's mixed me and uncle up together--he must

be going mad. Every one seems a little mad lately, uncle

especially--taking you to the Zoo, and giving me two thousand,

and--and--no matter, kiss me again."

* * * * * *

"Now," said Fanny, suddenly jumping up, "I must see after the house.

Father wired this morning that he was bringing Miss Pursehouse here

to-day to see the place, and I must get it tidy. Who's there?"

"Miss Fanny," said Susannah, opening the door an inch. Miss Lambert left

the room hurriedly and closed the door. There was something in

Susannah's voice that told her "something had happened."

"He's downstairs in the library."

"Oh, my goodness!" murmured Fanny with a frown; visions of Mr Hancock in

all the positions of love-making rose before her. "_Why_ didn't you say

I was out?"

"I did, miss, and he said he'd wait."

Fanny went downstairs and into the library, and there before her stood

Mr Bevan on the hearthrug.

Her face brightened wonderfully.

"I _am_ so glad--when did you come? Guess who I thought it was? I

thought it was Mr Hancock."

"Hancock?" said Charles, who had held her outstretched hand just a

moment longer than was absolutely necessary. "Oh, that affair is all

over. I stopped the action--by the way, I believe old Hancock's cracked;

sent your father a most extraordinary wire, saying I was--what was it he

said?--a duck, I think."

"Where have you seen father?"

"Why, I was staying in the same house with him down in Sussex for a

day."

"At Miss Pursehouse's?"

"Yes."

"How awfully funny! Did he tell you?"

"What?"

"That he's engaged to be married to Miss Pursehouse. I had the letter

this morning--oh, of course he couldn't have told you, for he only

proposed yesterday afternoon. He wrote in an awful hurry, just a line to

say he's 'engaged and done for.' Isn't he funny? There was another man

after her, and father says he has 'cut him out.' Do tell me all about

them; did you see the other man? and what did you think of father--isn't

he a dear?"

"Yes," said Mr Bevan abstractedly. He was flabbergasted with the news

and irritated, although he was not in love, and never had been in love,

with Miss Pursehouse, still, it was distinctly unpleasant to think that

he had been "cut out."

"I thought he seemed fond of her in Paris," continued Fanny, "but one

never can tell. I'm glad he got the telegram all right. It was I that

sent it. I was going to the Zoo with Mr Hancock----"

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr Bevan.

"I was going to the Zoo with Mr Hancock. Oh, I have such a lot to tell

you, but promise me first you'll never tell."

"Yes."

"Well--guess what's happened?"

"Can't think."

"Well, Mr Hancock proposed to me--but you won't tell, will you?"

Mr Bevan gasped.

"_Hancock!_"

"Yes; he wrote such a funny, queer little letter. It made me cry."

"_Hancock!_"

"Yes, but you've promised never to tell. Every one seems to have been

proposing to me in the last three months, and I wish they'd stop--I wish

they'd stop," said Miss Lambert, half-talking to herself and half to

Bevan, half-laughing and half-crying all at the same time; "it's got on

my nerves. James will be the next--it's like the influenza, it seems in

the air----"

"I came to-day," said Mr Bevan with awful and preternatural gravity, "to

speak to you, Fanny--to tell you that ever since I saw you first, I

have thought of nobody else----"

"Oh, stop," said Fanny, "stop, stop--oh, this is too bad! I never

thought _you_ would do it. I thought I had one f-f-friend."

"_Don't_ cry; Fanny, listen to me."

"I can't help it, it's too awful."

"Fanny!"

"Yes, Charles?"

"Dry your eyes, and tell me this; am I so very dreadful? Don't you think

if you tried you could care for me? I know I'm not clever and all

that--look up." He took her hand, and she let him hold it.

Then she spoke these hope-destroying words:

"If I h--hadn't met _him_, I believe I--I--I'd have married you--if

you'd asked me."

"Oh, my God!--it's all up then," said Bevan.

"We're both so poor," said Fanny, "that you needn't envy us, dear Cousin

Charles; all we've got in the world is our love for each other."

"He's a painter, is he not?"

"Yes," said Fanny, peeping up; "but how did you know?"

"Miss Morgan, that American girl, told me something about him." Mr Bevan

stood silent for a moment, and then went on: "Look here, Fanny, just

think this matter over and tell me your mind. I'll put my case before

you. You like me, I think?"

"Yes, I _do_."

"Well, I am not so very old, and I am rich; between one thing and

another I have about eight thousand a year. We might be very happy

together--don't interrupt me, I am just stating my case--money means a

lot in this world; it's not everything, I admit--there are some men

richer than I, that I would be sorry to see any girl married to. Well,

on the other hand, there is this other man; he may be awfully jolly, and

all that sort of thing, but he's poor--very poor, from what I can

gather. Before you kick me over, think of the future--think well."

"Do you know," said Fanny, "that if you had come yesterday, and had

asked me to marry you, I believe I would have said 'yes,' and then we

would have been always miserable. I would have married you for your

money; not for myself, but to help father. But you see now that he is

going to be married to Miss Pursehouse _she'll_ take care of him."

"He is not married to her yet," said Charles, thinking of Lulu Morgan's

words, and cursing himself for having let days slip by, for he could

have called yesterday, or the day before, but for indecision--that most

fatal of all elements in human affairs.

"No, but he will marry her, for when father makes up his mind to do a

thing he always does it."

"So then," he said, "you have made up your mind irrevocably not to have

anything to do with me?"

"I must, I must--Oh dear, I wish I were _dead_. I will always be your

friend--I will always be a sister to you."

"Don't--don't say anything more about it, please. You can't help

yourself--it's fate."

"You're not angry with me?"

"No--let us talk of other things. How are you getting on, has that man

been giving any more trouble?"

"James--oh, he's been dreadful. His wife has run away from their

lodgings; and now he says she was not his wife at all, and Susannah is

breaking her heart, for she can't bring him to the point. When she

suggests marriage he does all his things up in a bundle and says he's

going to Australia. I'll get father to turn him out when he comes

back."

"Let me," said Charles, who felt an imperative desire to kick some

one--himself, if possible--that being out of the question--James.

"No," said Fanny, as he rose and took his hat preparatory to departing,

"for she'd follow him, and I'd be left alone. Who is this?"

A hansom cab was crashing up the gravel drive.

"It's father--and Miss Pursehouse."

"Who do you say?" cried Bevan.

"Miss Pursehouse."

"Fanny!" cried Mr Bevan in desperation.

"Yes?"

"Don't let them in here, don't let them see me."

"Then quick," said Fanny, not knowing the truth of the matter, but

guessing that Charles as a rejected lover had his feelings, and

preferred not to meet her father.

She led him across the hall and down some steps, then pushed him into a

passage, which, being pursued, led to the kitchen, whence through the

scullery flight might be effected by the back entry of "The Laurels."

End of Project Gutenberg's Fanny Lambert, by Henry De Vere Stacpoole