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Intending pur- chasers would be amply repaid by sending for one of our lar ge, handsome Illustrated Catalogues, showing ove^ one hundred different styles of Furs manufactured by us. >.. tt.. .„ r .>«" JAA\ES HARRIS 5t G9. Toroaato. P.S. — Importers of Ladies' Silk Riding Hats and Velvet Hunting Caps. H. E. GliARKE & G0. ' 10§ King Street West, Toronto. HAVE FULL LINES IN '1 PICNIC B^SKEm DKESJSINg CRISES Toilet Bags, Purses, Collar & Cuff Boxes, &c„ Ac. /^ TUB Acme Silver Company TORONTO '>•*• « MANUFACTURERS OF THE FINEST PLATED WARE, — AND — KNIVES, SPOONS ^ FORKS Ask yonr Jeweller to show you Goods of our make and guarantee. 3. f AUTHORIZED EDITION, ^,', M .<^ Darell Blake. BY LADY COLIN CAMPBELL. TORONTO: THE NATIONAL PUBLISHING ^OMPANY. I "\ ' ' -I. 2061 DARELL BLAKE. --<♦>— CHAPTER I. DARELL BLAKE walked home slowly and thoughtfully that afternoon from the office of the Middlehorough Herald. He had preferred to walk inHtead of taking a hansom, for he wanted to have some time to himself to think over the possibilities opened up to his mental vision by one of the letters he had found awaiting him on the table of his private room. The day was not so far distant behind him when to possess that private room, and to sit in that editorial chair, had seemed the bummit of his ambition ; but to one of Darell Blake*s calibre, the summit of ambition is never attained, for there is always a greater height in front yet to climb, and Death alone ** gives pause" to the restless- ness that drives such natures as his. The son of a small country solicitor, he had sooii abjured the pursuit of law and turned his atten- tion and hJA eoergief to journalism. Gifted with 10 DARELL BLAKE. a bMlliancj which he probably owed in no small measure to his Irish descent (for there never was a Blake yet who did not claim kinship with those of Galway\ he had not been long in makiug his mark, and having once got his foot on the ladder, he had mounted rung by rung until, little mor« than three years before, he had been appointed to the post of editor of the Middlehorough Herald, a large provincial sheet of considerable political influence. The talents which had successfully obtained him this coveted post had been many and varied, not the least of their number being those whereby he had, some time before his appointment, gained the approbation and affec- tions of Miss Tidmarsh, the daughter of the pro- prietor of the paper. Miss Tidmarsh was fully aware at the time of the fact that she was committing a miaalliance; she had been too strictly brought up to worship the great- ness of the Tidmarshes to allow for a moment that Darell Blake, journalist and son of a small solicitor, was her social equal. But many women find a considerable secret satisfaction in playing -Queen Cophetua ; besides, Darell Blake .with his close-cropped black head, his keen iron-grey eyes and square chin, his intense determination to con- quer Fame and Fortune somehow, his ready tongue and keen intellect, y^ so entirely unlike A DARELL BLAEX. 11 the small ootmtry squires, the stolid merchants, or the bored and listless officers of the yarioiis line regiments usually quartered at Middleborough, that she shut her eyes to all othor considerations, and announced to her dismayed parents her intention of marrying Darell and no other. That Mr. and Mrs. Tidmarsh were aghast at such an idea is not to be wondered at. Though the paper from which they drew a considerable part of their income was a Liberal organ with strong leanings towards Radicalism, no one could be more intensely Conservative than this excellent pair. Universal Brotherhood, the Rights of the People, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, were all admir- able expressions wherewith to conjure and increase circulation. But to suggest a practical exposition of such theories, not at the office of the Middle^ borough Herald^ but at the imposing red-brick mansion of Mr. Tidmarph, would have cast a dis- tinct gloom over that worthy and his fau'ly. They would have unanimously voted such ideas as being in the worst possible taste. The social aspirations of the family were upward ; they were infinitely more concerned to raise themselves in the scale than to raise others, and the fulmina- tions in the family paper against the House of Lords were tacitly labelled *'for external use only." '% jfr^ ' "X. 12 DARELL BLAKE. When Mr, Tidmarsh introduced Darell Blake to his wife and family, and, in a burst of enthusiasm over some particularly bi'illiant leader which that young man had written, and which had attracted a good deal of notice, invited him k) dinner, he had not the faintest premonition of what would be the result of such a step. Neither he nor his wife saw anything more in Darell than that he was a " clever young fellow," as they remarked to each * other with a feeling of liberal condescension, as they would say of a groom that he had good hands, or of a gardener that he miderstood grapes and orchids. In that extraordinarily com- placent yet one-sided self-satisfaction which is so characteristic of nearly all classes of English society, it never occurred to them to imagine that any one in Darell Blake's position would dare to raise his eyes with aught but awe to the Tidmarsh family and its august members. Brains were good, but money was better, and bii*th was best ; and the Tidmarshes, who possessed the second, and worshipped the third, were disposed to think but little, if they condescended to think at all, of Darell Blake, who was endowed with naught but brains in plenty. As to Darell himself, it was with no arrikre pensSe in his mind (.hat he made himself agreeable to Mrs. Tidmarsh and her da^hten; In the duel ^ DARELL BLAKE. 13 h outranee which this young fellow had taken upon himself with Dame Fortune, women did not enter into his calculations. To him« full of restless, toi*menting ambition, and burning impatience to enter into the great arena of life and politics, the primrose path of dalliance had absolutely no attraction, and when his companion journalists, or other young men about the town, would occasionally drag him ofif to a supper-party in honour of some divinities of the theatre or circus, he would usually break away from the festivities, disgusted and impatient with the stupidity of the whole affair. It was this stupidity and iuaneness which displeased him more than anything else. That men, before whom life was opening out, with all its bewildering possibihties of power and satisfied ambition, should care to stop by the way for no better atti*action than a canary-'coloured head, was a thing he could not understand. He felt like a yoang conscript on a mountain-side, looking over a fair and fertile plain from which uprose the turmoil of battle and the clash of arms; and while he was full of eager, burning impatience to join in the fight, he found his companions sleeping by the wine-skins they had emptied. " Queer fellow 1 Blake," was the usual conunent "^of the yQiing^ tneu^of his age. This would "X u DARELL BLAKB, probably have received unflattering additions, bnt they were precluded from calling him a milksop by the fact that he distanced them all when it came to a question of athletics. These Darell looked upon as a necoBsary part of his training, and in them he found a safety-valve for the turbulent life and activity which bubbled up within him, and which were only to be brought into subjection to the sedentariness of a journalist's life by strenuous force of will. He had been pleased by Mr, Tidmarsh's invita- tion to dinner. It had seemed to him a beginning of that recognition of his talents (Darell was by no means blindly modest to his own attainments) which he meant to wrest from the world at large. He had a curious charm of manner, a deferring courtesy towards women which came partly from his want of experience with the sex in reality, and partly from his immense experience of them in the books of bygone generations. The only women he knew anything about were the Celias and Julias of the days of Ben Jonson and Herrick ; and there was in his manner to women a certain old- fashioned distance and courtesy which, combined with his Irish fluency and gift of language, had a quaint foreign sort of quality full of charm to women accustomed to the " hail-fellow-well-met ** style of the present day. Tip manner was not DARELL BLAKE. 15 witnout its effect on both Mrs. Tidmarsh and her daughter. " Quite a nice young fellow^ with such quiet and respectful manners/' pronounced Mrs. Tidmarsh to her lord, in the privacy of the con- jugal chamber, after Darell's first dinner at the red-brick mansion, " and seems to know a wonder- ful deal about everything," What Miss Tidmarsh's opinion %as, is not known, but she put on a superabundance of silver ortiaments when Darell, in response to an invitation made on the occasion of the dinner, came to lunch a few days after. It was not part of DarelFs creed that women were possessed of bi-ains. He knew little about them, cared less, and looked upon them as a part of the economy of the world, into whose actual utility he had neither time nor inclination to inquire. But all the same the vanity which he had in common with the rest of his sex, was gratified when Miss Tidmarsh, one of the acknow- ledged Middleborough belles, asked his advice about the books she should read, and when she would invite him, giving a book into his hands with much jingling of bangles and rustling of skirts, to explain or expound some passage to her. She actually plunged into the works of the great John Stuart Mill in her efforts to gain an inkling of poHtioal economy, and above all into the Radical tenets, on which Parell would hold forth with 16 DARELL BLAKE. such irresistible eloquence; and she tried, as is the way with many women when they are in love with a clever man, to repeat his utterances with a parrot-like precision which should have gone far to open her good mother's eyes to the true state of things. It is impossible to say how long matters might have continued on this footing. Dal^U came frequently to the hbuse of the Tidmarshee, wel- comed there both by the father and mother, whose dinner-parties had gradually assumed quite another character since Darell had become one of the usual guests. Instead of the sober, dull reunions of town and country magnates, where the small local gossip was exchanged, the conversation now took a very different turn. Political discussions became frequent, questions of all kinds were argued freely, and under the encouraging and fostering influence ol Darell Blake's ready tongue and keen, trenchant intellect, the middle-aged and elderly magnates woke up to the fact that they really had opinions, or that, if not, it was worth while listening to this brilliant young speaker and learning from him what were the questions of the day. Mr. and Mrs. Tidmarsh were not slow to perceive the difiEerence in their parties, and though somewhat bewildered at times by the nature of the discussions that arose. an<| u^iiCii whioh it WM DARELL BLAKE. 17 Darell's delight to draw everybody at table, still they were able to appreciate the ohunge for tLe better. They not only gloried in it, but took the credit upon themselves complacently, much as if they had engaged some first-class musician for the enterfiiinment of their guests. Darell Blake per se remained in their estimation at the same point of condescending appreciation to which he had attained on the occasion of his first visit. As I said before, things might have gone on indefinitely on this footing, had it not been for Henry Bumside, an old gentleman who had been a warm friend and patron of DarelFs father, and who, in spite of advancing years and gout, had a clearer vision, mental and physical, than most people. Darell was a great favomite of his, though they held diametrically opposite opinions in politics. But Mr. Bumside, like many another strong aid elderly Tory, had begun life as a member of the Reform Club, and, from the vantage-ground of his age and experience, was disposed to be lenient towards Darell's pronounced Radicalism. "Let the lad cut his teeth," he would say when Darell's faTOer had been shocked to the innermost recesses of his Conservative re- spectability and veneration of the powers that be, by some torrent of denunciation on the horrors of landlordism from Darell's lips, <'iet the lad B IS DARELL BLAEB. alone. He'll get over it, like the measlet or the mumps, and grow out of it as he gets older." Mr. Bumside was not long in seeing how matters stood, on Miss Tidmarsh's side at least ;' a discovery which overjoyed him for the sake of his favourite. He knew the latter too well to utter anything that savoured of sentiment, but he knew equally well how to bait the hook of Darell's restless ambition to get a footing in the world of action. Disregarding Darell's impatient scorn of the idea that a woman could be of any use to him, he quietly explained the advantages that would acciiie from a marriage of the kind — how, with the local influence of the wealthy Tidmarshes to back him up, and — who knows? — perhaps the editorship itself of the Middleborough Herald^ there was no saying where he could climb, once he had got his foot so surely on the ladder. Then having painted the bright side of the picture in the most glowing colours, he administered a judicious amount of cold water by speaking of the certain opposition of the Tidmarsh p^e et Opposition was even as the breath of his nostrils to Darell Blake, and it was the only thing needed to make the picture Mr. Bumside depicted of a possible future, doubly attractive. Besides, in his way, he admired Miss Tidma|8l^ )ier fair large DARELL BLAKE. 19 ^ fac«, with its regular features and rather prominent pale blue eyes, was handsome in its stolid provincial way ; and her love of brilliant-coloured satins and plushes, and multitudinous necklaces and bangles, was in no wa; * a drawback. If he had paused to think about it, he would probably have considered that all these things gave her an imposing and impressive sense of wealth and luxury, which was an Rppropriate setting for the daughter of the wealthy and important Mr. Tidmarsh. Darell Blake was not a man to let the grass grow under his feet when once he had made up his mind to a certain course of action. Whether he had kissed the Blarney Stone is not recorded in history, but if one were to judge by the rapidity with which he brought his courtship of Victoria Tidmarsh to a successful conclusion, one might suppose that that mystic osculatory rite had been performed. The violent opposition of the parents of his^anc^^ only acted as an incentive; he took an almost keener pleasure in winning them over than he had taken in winning their daughter. Between the fair Victoria's stolid determination and Darell's brilliant pleadings, the old couple had perforce to give way ; and once ^hey consented to his being their son-in-law» their one idea was to find him a post which would « .,-■■' ■ 20 DARBLL BLAKE. make the misalliance less patent to the world at large. Mr. Burnside's prophecy proved as true as most of the utterances that fell from that astute old gentleman's lips ; and it was not long after Darell's marriage to Victoria that he found himself installed in that editorial sanctum which had seemed to him, in his younger days, as being something akin in glory to an official residence in Downing Street. Now, an editor of a large provincial paper may be an important local personage, but an editor "^ho is son-in-law to the proprietor of the paper is considerably more bo, and when to these advantages were added Darell's brilliant pen and admirable tact and judgment, it is not to be wondered at that those people who had turned up their eyes in astonishment and horror at "Tidraarsh throwing away his girl" on a com- paratively unknown journalist, now began to suspect that he had been considerably cleverer than they had imagined. It became the fashion of the local wiseacres to prophesy that Darell would be " somebody one of these days," a vaguely mystic utterance which reflected credit on the acumen of its utterer, and yet pledged him to nothing definite. Darell's eloquent tongue as well as pen, his power of not ^ only hitting the right nail on the head, but of DARELL BLAKE. n hitting it bard, so as to drive it home once for al! into the memory of his hearers or readers, soon brought him into prominence. His father-in-law, who bad at first supported him with his influence, on the principle of making the best of a bad bargain, now felt a glow of pride when he found Darell's words quoted with enthusiasm by the men who had been coolest in their perfunctory congratulations at the time of his daughter's marriage. All this and much more came floating on the surface of Darell's thoughts as he walked home slowly from his oflSce through the dim October evening. The street was a long one. Down the centre ran the tram-car rails, and from the far end of the street, between the lessening lines of lamps that dotted the perspective like jewels, the tinkling of the car bell could be heard, the horse's hoofs sounding strangely loud in the evening hush, as the great car swept silently by on its smooth rails. There were but few people about, for it was after the hour when the ordinary business offices closed, and the clerks working therein had all gone home, or to other and gayer parts of the town. A frosty fog filled the air ; a bluish haze had crept up and obscured the crimson glories of the setting sun, and there was a nip in. the air that made most passenuby disinolined to loiter. Darell, however, ■■'% DARELL BLAKI. did not hurry. He had been so busy all day, ■eeing people on businesB matters of all kinds, that he had had no time to himself to think over the letter which now filled his brain with the possibilities it opened up to his quick imagination. The letter contained an offer of the post of editor of a great London daily, brought about by the efforts of one of the proprietors, Mr. Sedley, M.P., who had made Darell's acquaintance when on a political campaign the previous autumn. The campaign comprising political meetings not only at Middleborough, but at other large neighbouring towns, at neai'ly aU of which Darell Blake had been called upon to speak, Air. Sedl'ey had been considerably struck with his eloquence and mental grasp of most subjects. When the meetings at Middleborough took place, he had accepted Blake's invitation to stay with him for the three days; and; having studied* his host at close quarters, he had said to himself that such talents as Darell possessed would be invaluable to the Radical cause, and that he ought to be given the necessary opportunities to make his mark elsewhere than in a provincial town, no matter how great and locally important the provincial town might happen to be. He had mentioned Darell to his co-pro« prietors of the Tnhuney and also to various members of his party, and when about a year ,^" DARELL BLAKl. 28 later the then editor resigned on account of an increase of ill-health from which he had long suffered, Sedley encountered comparatively little opposition when he suggested offering the vacant post to his prot4g4. It was not uncertainty as to his possible action with regard to such an offer that made Darell linger on his homeward way. Uncertainty was a Btate of mind to which he was an absolute stranger. Nobody who looked at the man's square, low forehead, and equally square chin, could asso- ciate such a physiognomy with any idea ot vacillation. Gifted with an almost feminine quickneBs of intuition, as well as a clear common sense, which can hardly be also termed a feminine attribute, he had, as it were, gone round every side of a question while most other people would be still hesitating over the fact of its existence. Over such an offer as the editorship of the Tribune he had not hesitated for a second ; and if he now walked home slowly through the falling twilight, it was more to have a little leisure wherein to savourer his coming triumphs, of which the editor- ship of the Tribune was but the forecast. 'r^f^. u CHAPTER 11. It waiS past six o'clock when Darell Blake got home, climbing the somewhat steep flight of steps which led to his " semi-detached " dwelling, and let himself in with his latchkey. Children's voices coming from the room on his left told him where he should find his wife ; so, sffter hanging up his coat and hat on the Gothic arrangement of pegs which combined the duties of coat-rack and umbrella-stand, he turned the handle of the draw- ing-room door and went in. The room was excellently and admirably typical (as a room should be) of the people of the house. The walls were of a light French grey colour, on which wae a small gold pattern, there was the inevitable dado a of darker colour and a different design; and the inevitable water-colours (which, according to English ideas, are the only pictures allowed to be hung in drawing-rooms) were separated from each other on the walls by battalions of Dresden china plates, either framed in ruby plush or affixed to the wall with large bows of red ribbon. The white marble chiumey-pioce' was ** draped" — ^I DABSLL BLAKB, S5 'N, believe that is the correct term— with ruby plush, curtains of which hung at either side, suggestive of dust traps in summer and conflagrations in winter. There were ruby curtains hanging from an elaborately gilt cornice at the bow window overlooking the street, and also to the window leading into a small conservatory overlooking the little garden at the back. But at this hour the . curtains were drawn, and the room was flooded with light by three gas jets all flaring away at once in the chandelier that hung from the centre of a huge stucco " rose ** m the middle of the ceiling. The *' di'a wing-room suite " of furniture consisted of the regulation number of small chaira, arm- chairs, and Sofia, which no doubt were the pride of the upholsterer's heart who sold them, for red plush and rosewood were rampant in their com- position. There were many small " occasional '* tables (so called, no doubt, on account of the occasions they offer for being thrown down) standing about, chiefly covered with a Zoological Garden of china animals of all kinds and all sizes. A workbasket, laden with wools and crewel- work, and a couple of newspapers, the Queen and the Court Journal, were the only evidences of any occupation which the room contained. Victoria Blake looked round at her husband ..•''^*V>- ,.* h» > DARELL BLAEX. with a certain expression of waiting expectancy on her face. All ideas of Queen Cophetuaship had long vanished from Victoria's mind. Of all Darell's admirers, there was none so pene- trated with a belief in his power and talents as his wife. Her profoimd admiration for him had engendered by degrees a totally novel sensa- tion of humiKty in the ci-devant Miss Tidmarsh's breast. In her secret heart he was to her a prince in disguise, who only needed the proper opportunities that he might make himself known, and enter into his kingdom, borne onwards by public acclamation. Unemotional and unde- monstrative as Victoria was by nature and edu- cation, she was, secretly, intensely proud of her husband ; in fact, it might almost be said that her pride in him was a stronger passion than her affec- tion. As to Love the All-Powerful, the Lord of All, the Controller f the Universe, it may be said that Victoria was as ignorant of his existence or his capacities for good or evil in man ajid woman, as W^as Dafell himself, though she would have cried out at the idea had any one uttered it, and Darell would have laughed. She had married her husband because she admired him, because his manners pleased her, because her small amount ot imagination had been taken by this nineteenth Qentmy young knight who bad Milllfid forth to ,^. ^ DARXLL BLAKE. 27 •I ^ > oonqner Dame Fortune, because the rSle of Queen Cophetua appealed to her, because she was opposed, and a round dozen of other similar reasons ; but the Divine Fire had not touched her heart and brain any more than it touches the hearts and brains of nine out of ten brides and bridegrooms who go to the altar in blissful igno- rance of the fact. After several years of matrimony she was not much changed. Humility in herself and pride in her husband (to a great extent because he was her husband) had replaced her former idea of condescension. She was, as she would have told you, "very fond of her husband," "devoted to her babies," and if some old- fashioned pagan Asmodeus had remarked on the fact that outwarfl signs of affection or caresses were couRpicuous by their absence between the Blakes, even in private, no one would have been more surprised than they at the idea that such things should form a necessary part of their lives. They were " very fond" of each other ; they were both aware of the fact, and as to any petits aoina given or expected — why, Darell was too busy to offer them, and Victoria had been too strictly and carefully brought up to expect anything of the kind. Her occupation in life was to look after the chiidir^l)* to pay visitB, to further Darell's ^11 ■¥^ V: S8 DARELL BLAKI. social relations, and — ^to abstain from bothering him. It was a consideration of this last tenet of her creed that brought the waiting, expectant look into Victoria's eyes when Darell entered. She waited to see what mood he had brought back with him from the office > for sha was. possessed of that blessed form of tact — alas I only too rare — which teaches a few women to leave a worried man alone until he himself puts his annoyances into words. But there was no such need this evening. Dareirs iron-grey eyes were dancing with light and glee as he came across the room to where his wife was sitting, with a black-haired baby girl on her lap, while the fair-haired son and heir tacked on a zigzag course across the room to reach his mother's side. ' " Kiss me, Vic," he said carelessly, as he bent over his wife, and went on, hardly aware whether she had kissed him or not, in his con- centration on the one idea that filled his mind, " The Tribune ofter has come at last, and I am a made man 1 " and as he spoke he lifted his baby daughter out of her mother's arms and danced her up and down at arm's length far above his head. Victoria rose and stood by the ohimney-pieoe looking at him. "x. DARELL PT'^^^' i 29 i» ■^ "What Tribune oflfert" she askea, somewhat blankly. "Did I not tell you about it?" said Darell, still tossing the baby, who was crowing with delight. " Oh, I thought I did, but I have had so much to think of that I suppose I forgot to mention it. Sedley spoke to me about the possibility of it " What is it '^ " intenupted Victoria, who instinctively felt some important announcement was coming, and was impatient to get at it. ** That is what I am coming to, if you will only ^ive me time. The editorship of the Tribune, Now are you satisfied ? " *• The Tribune" said Victoria, in a bewildered way ; *' but that is a London paper. How will you manage to edit a paper in London from here ? " •* Well, that would be somewhat difficult, certainly," sard Darell, laughing ; ** but I have no intention of trying such a herculean task as that. I have to take up the post in a month's time, because the present editor is so ill that they have consented to let him go before his notice time has expired, on condition that I am ready to take the job up. I am not likely to let slip such a chance, so we shall have a busy time of it, Vic, between thi'i and then to find a house in London to suit UB.'V mmnm ao DARXLL BLAEIL ** A house in London, Darell I " gasped Victoria ; " and what shall we do with this one t and what will papa and mamma say to our going away t " ** As to this house, we can let it or sell it, my dear," answered Darell, impatiently. It always chafed him to find people slow of comprehension, and he began to think Victoria dense for not grasping the advantages of the coming situation as quickly as he had done, not remembering the fact that he had been thinking of l^tle else since the morning, whereas she had heard of the plan which was to uproot her whole existence only five minutes before. " And as to your father, he is probably discussing the matter with your mother now, for he came to the office to-day and I talked it over with him. In fact, I may say he seemed a good deal more pleased with the news than you do,'' he added, for in his glowing enthusiasm he felt inclined to resent as an injury Victoria's bewilderment and dismay, which seemed like a dash of cold water on his hopes and dreams. Victoria raised her large pale blue eyes to his face. She was accustomed to these little outbursts of impatience on Darell's part when- ever they discussed any question. She felt she was slow in comprehension, especially when compared to her husband. It wa8^p|^t^of her f^" .»i^J^^,.»? Bf DARELL BLAKl of being lefb behind like some piece of uselefls lumber was by no means to her taste. Darell, with his never-failing energy, his almost rampant vitality, represented as it were the dramatic element in her life ; and she felt that to be left behind at Middleborough while he was entering the arena of his life-long ambitions in London would be unendurable. Darell little thought he had in any way clenched the argument with his last words. He had meant them amiably to show that he appreciated her effort to chime in with his ideas, having a vague intuition that women, like cats, did not like being uprooted too suddenly out of their homes. To him it did not matter much where he lived. He liked the plush furniture and the china pug-dogs, because he thought they were the " correct thing " in a lady's drawing-room, and they gave a certain aspect of wealth and luxury, which appealed to the inner chord of snobbishness irhich is so rarely entirely eradicated from the breast of the inhabi- tants of the British Isles. The ribbon bows over the pictures and plates on the walls were in no wise an offence to him ; on the contrary, if he had been called upon to express an opinion, he would have pronoimced them ** very tasty." They more or less represented to him an order of being into which he had entered by 1^ marriage with DAREIiL BLAEE. 88 "^otoria Tidmarsh, and one which was a distmot advance on his previous ideas of surroundings which had been limited to solid mahogany and profuse antimacassars as evidences of luxury. Victoria, on the contrary, silently grieved at the 'idea of leaving Middleborough. She was not only attached to her house, which her parents had bought and furnished for the young couple at the time of their marriage, but she was assailed with qualms at the idea of going to live in London. She had a vague intuition that though here in Middleborough society she was a. distinct per- sonage, more or less of a social power, whose opinion on social matters was respected, and whose clothes were commented upon in the local press and copied by the local young ladies, all this adulation would be likely to imdergo a con- siderable amount of change were she to leave the place. She did not absolutely tell herself that she would be a mere insignificant nobody in London. Her thoughts moved and formulated themselves too slowly, and also the early Tidmarsh training was too deeply ingrained in her nature, to allow her to arrive at so unflattering a conclusion all at once ; but after the manner of slow ininds and natures, she felt vaguely apprehensive of the- great change that had so suddenly loomed upon her horizon. V/ithout iBOs;actly knowing why, she did ■H HIIIHMH u DARELL BLAKX. not ffttl elated at the extraordinary piece of luck which had come to her hasband. JuBt at this juncture, however, when she felt inclined to pity herself exceedingly after the manner of her sex, her thoughts were recalled by the crowing of the baby. Darell was amus- ing himself with making her turn summer- saults in the air. and as Victoria looked at his resolute good-looking face, a face which even she, with her slow perceptions, felt was the face of a boru gladiator of the world's arena, now shining with happiness and almost boyish enthusiasm, she felt a pang of self-reproach at having even for a moment allowed herself mentally to be a clog upon him. No I whatever befell, she would not be the one to stand in his way; on the contrary, hers should be the task of removing all the obstacles that lay in her power from his path, and she would have her reward when he entered into his kingdom, and every- body's voice proclaimed the worth and ability of her brilliant husband. **Give me baby, Darell," she said, quietly going over to hipa in her undemonstrative way, though she would have liked to throw her arms round his neck in her secret burst of emthusiasm. But sudden demonstrations of aiSection were not amongst the habits of the Blake^ m^ina^tf, and no ■'^lim- ■ DARELL BLAKE. 85 6n% would have been more surprifed than Darell, or more overwhelmed with awkward oonfuaion than Victoria, had she obeyed her secret impulse. **Qive me baby, as I must take her to the nursery. Both she and Peregrine ought to have been in bed half-an-hour ago, for it is almost dinner-time." "All right, Vic," said Darell, "there's her little ladyship, no bones broken this time, I think I I'll go and wash my hands for dinner, and if you like I will take you to your mother's on my way back to the office afterwards. You will like to have a palaver with her over this Tribune affair." Dressing for dinner was not a Middleborough custom except on festive occasions, so that the preparative toilet did not take long. Dinner however, was in Victoria's eyes a solemn rite which required respectful treatment, and so, though Darell was impatient to get through the meal as quickly as possible, he had to sit through the lengthy courses without which Victoria would have felt humiliated in the eyes of the household. 8he was one of those women who look upon their butcher's book as a sort of epitome of their social respectability. A procession of heavy, solid joints through the course of each week was to her as much a moral as a physical necessity. Of the niceties of oooking she was as absolutely ^-* 1 86 DARELL BLAKE. ignorant as nine out of every ten wealthy provincial Englishwomen always are. Of the art of disguising food she had a true British oontempt; "she liked to know what she was eating/' she would say. She was a large eater of meat, wherein she differed from Darell, who was of too highly nervous an organisation to share her taste for the endless joints that graced their board twice a day. A small eater and a small diinker, he would have been happier if he had been given one single dish, and he chafed daily at the length of the dinner which Victoria provided, and through which she made her way with the sort of ruminant slowness which was her chief characteristic. On this particular evening Darell could hardly hold out to the end of the meal. *' For goodness' sake, Vic, do let's out some of these things I " he exclaimed. " Jelly or blancmange V* said the servant at his elbow. " No, I don't want either, nor cheese, nor celery, nor anything else I I do believe you order a longer dinner every day." , " My dear Darell I " apostrophised Victoria, in a somewhat scandalised tone. "I am sure our dinners are never so long as mamma's," she went on, in rather an aggrieved voice^ for any reflection DABEIIi i»T.ACT, 87 on her domestic arrangements toacbed her on a sensitive place. ** You must really allow things to be properly served." "berve them any way you like," retorted Darell, "if you will only be quick about it. How you can willingly sit all this time in one place doing nothing " "Doing nothing I" gasped Victoria, to whom the dinner function was the one crowning event of the day. " Well, it's the same as doing nothing, looking at dishes that one does not want to eat. Thank goodness! the service is over and the congregation is allowed to disperse," he went on, laughing, ail his ill-humour vanishing as soon as he felt himself set free. " There, don't look so scandalised, Vic, but run along and put your things on, for I must be off. There is a lot of work to be done at the office to-night." Mr. and Mrs. Tidmarsh were still in the dining- room when the Blakes arrived. They both liked to sit, for what seemed an endless length of time to the impatient Darell, over dessert after the servants had left the room They were a good- looking pair, he of middle height, with broad shoulders, a kindly, pleasant face and iron-grey whiskers ; she an elderly edition of her daughter, fair, phlegmatic, sensible, matter-of-fact, deeply a '>k 38 DABXLL BLASE. imbued with a sense of her own importance as Mrs. Tidmarsh, of Parkholme House, Middleborough, and rather inclined to an embonpoint which became her years and dignity. She looked quite an imposing figure as she sat at the head of the table under the blaze of tl/e gaslight (the Tidmarshes had no opinion of shaded lights) dressed in her favourite materials of satin and plush, and her head adorned with one of those extraordinary cockatoo-like erections of lace and gold beads which find such favour in the eyes of the British matron. "Ah I that's right, Darell, my lad" said Mr. Tidmarsh, when Darell and his wife came in. " I Avas just telling Mrs. T." (Mr. Tidmarsh never alluded to his wife by any other name) " that you would probably bring Victoria round to see us, and to talk this great bit of news over with her ma. "It is indeed a great piece of news, Darell," said Mrs. Tidmarsh, in a majestic though kindly manner. She. toe, was proud of her son-in-law's attainments, but the humility which had budded in her daughter's secret heart had no place in that of the mofcher. It was right and proper that this young man should prove his talents, and, if possible, make the world resound with his fame, because the more he did so the more it reflected DARELL BLAEEn 39 credit on the Tidinarshes for having raised him and given him the pedestal of position which allowed his intellect to be recognislsd. She ' looked upon all commendation of Darell as being homage to the Tidmarshes, and was disposed to receive him amiably, in much the same way that a sovereign would extend a gracious reception to an envoy who had enhanced his glory in foreign parts. As will therefore be seen, there was a good deal of difference in the nature of the appreciation which Darell received from his wife and her mother — a fact which it is only honest to state was entirely lost upon him. So long as he " got on " well with his wife's parents, he never troubled his head about the point of view from which they regarded him, especially at such a moment when his whole being was alighx, 'vith enthusiasm and impatience. He rather liked his mother-in-law's slow, pompous ways ; they seemed to be a fitting corollary to the heavy, massive luxury which had so strongly impressed him when he was first received in the Tidmarsh household. In fact, the relations between Mrs. Tidmarsh and her son-in-law were con- siderably sn^oothed by the fact, of which they were both to a large extent unconscious, that the individuality of each flattered the vanity of the other. Eve» the newf of ParelFs elevation to the MIP 40 DARELL BLAEE. post of editor of the Tribune^ coming tbougli it did suddenly, in no wise shook Mrs. Tidmarsh's calm. Sitting at the head of her table, she had listened to her husband all through dinner ex- patiating upon what this rise would or might 'mean to Darell and Victoria, and she had ruminated over the question with quiet satis- faction, but nothing moie. There never was any 6lan, mental or physical, about Mrs. Tidmarsh. She might best be described as having a good deal in common with the Hindu images of Bramah, except that she only possessed fche ordinary com- plement of arms. She had the same grave, pip cid, eternal calm ; the same — shall we call it inclinaticn to embonpoint, the same prominent eyes, and large, heavy face, with a faint smile indicating her natural kindliness of disposition, which are characteristic of the Hindu deity, to whom the cow is sacred and also symbolical. ** I am glad you are both pleased," said Darell, standing with his back to the fire, and looking alternately at his father and mother-in-law, who still sat at the dinner-table ; " I need hardly tell you all it means to me. I feel as if I had only just begun to hve since I got Sedley's letter this morning I To think of being placed at the helm of such a paper as the Tribune, to have such a weapon to wield in the cause of liberty and *DARELL BLAKE. 41 manhood; to be able to make the cry of the people heard as it should, and shall he, heard, not only in the country, but in the heart of London itself — that citadel of Toiyism and landlordism — to know that it is one's own hand that will give courage to the poor and the oppressed, one's own voice that will give their faint speech utterance to the farthest points of the earth — ah I it all seems almost too good to be true I " and Darell, with a suggestion of a break in his voice, paused sud- denly, and passed his hand over his eyes, as ii to awaken himself out of a dream. For Darell was not only a believer in the wildest tenets of Radicalism, but his enthusiastic fervour had yet to le^m the fact that many ardent politicians cultivate their ardour from the point of view of Hobbes as regards morality, that it is the best political expedient. That politics are a game habitually played on both sides with loaded dice was a cynical maxim that Darell would have thought rank blasphemy. He would have gone to the stake for the doctrine of universal suffrage, and he would have refused to believe that all men were not as true in their faith, whatever it migh;; be, as he himself. •* Gently, my lad, gently," ejaculated Mr. Tid- marsh. '* Remember, you won't have th^ game illto^etber in yomr hands, Pon't shout your ymft.-g'/ar'jfcgia: 42 DARELL BLAKE * doctrines on the housetops until you know some- thing more of what your proprietors want. You had better ' gang isannily ' for a bit while you feel your ground, as your old friend Henry Burnside would tell you. By-the-bye, have you seen him yet? Does he know about this?" " By Jove, I was forgetting all about him I " said Darell, looking at his watch. *' I sent him a wire to know if he would look in at the oflSce to-night on his way home from the Club, and he must be there now, so I'll be off. You must cheer Vic up a bit, mater," he went on, turning to Mrs. Tidmarsh. " She has been knocked off her pint* by the suddenness of this news from London, and hardly knows yet whether she's on her head or her heels I Can't make up her mind to leavo Rosemount for London ; and I tell her if she does not like to be humed she can stay on a bit there with the chicks, after I leave, but she does not seem to see that either. So you had better talk it all over with the mater, old girl," he went on> in a carelessly affectionate way, laying his hand on her shoulder with a pat as he passed round the table. *' Settle what you like ; it's sure to please me. Why, a child might play with me to-night I I feel so overflowing with human kindness, I could almost forgive the existence of a Tory landlord I '* he added, with a laugh so boyish, no '•!-'%' DARELL BLAKE. 4d infectious in its light-hearted gaiety, that Mr. Tidmarsh laughed too, and even Mrs. Tidmarsh and Victoria broke into smiles. ** What a boy he is at times I " said Mrs. Tid- marsh, as the door closed behind him, and it seemed to Victoria that the room had suddenly grown dull and commonplace. ** It really makes one feel quite young again to hear any one laugh like that" ii 44 CHAPTER in. A TEAR and a half had gone by smce Darell and Victoria left Middleborough, a year and a half marked by many events of importance to Darell. To him it seemed now almost incredible to think he had ever been not nly contented in a pro- vincial town, but actually proud of his position there. As he looked back at his life there in comparison to his present existence, he felt as if he were looking on some stagnant pool, whose surface was fretted with the darting hither and thither of water-beetles and such-like insects, and where the aVrival of a dragon-fly would be an absolute sensation. Sedley had had no reason to regret his idea of nominating Darell to the post of editor of the Tribune ; his proUgS had not only " caught on " from the first, but had thrown himself into his work with an amount of energy that fairly took Sedley*s breath away, accustomed though he was to hard work. No amount of work seemed too much for Darell, no thought of sparing himself in any way ever entered into his head y 1 .■ I- DARELL BLAKIB. 45 he seemed, on the contrary, to revel in finding new openings in every direction for his exhaustless energy. After working the greater part of the night at the Tribune ofece, going over everything with the unerring eye and judgment which never seemed to fail him, throwing off the bader he reserved for his own pen, and, if necessary, almost re-writing others that did not please him — after all this he would be up again at seven o'clock, and downstairs in the little study at the back of the house in Onslow Crescent, to which Victoria had moved the Rosemouut furniture. A poky little room it was, piled up to the ceiling with books in shelves against the wall. A perfect chaos of books and papers littered the floor, for Darell was both too busy and too energetic to be any tidier than the rest of his sex. The state of the room was a perpetual thorn in Victoria's well-regulated mind. In the first days of their London life she had tried to induce Darell to let her "tidy up" his writing- table and itc surroundings. Darell good-naturedly let her have her own way for a time, but one day having wasted a quarter of an hour in an in- effectual hunt after his well-worn copy of "Men of the Time '* or some such work, and finding that Victoria ha4 relegated it to an obscure comer q{ „.J 46 DARELL BLAEE. the shelves, '< because it had no binding left," he then and there put his foot down on the subject of tidiness, and since then, except for a daily tickling on the surface from the housemaid's feather-brush, Darell's study was severely left alone, with a result which can be better imagined than described. Off this room, at the end of a diminutive passage, was a still smaller room, wherein sat Darell's secretary, a sandy-haired youth of cockney parentage and demeanour, answering to the name of Simmonds. To Darell he was an immense help, as any speedy time-saving machine would be ; for he not only took down all Darell's dictations in rapid shorthand, but also marked the extracts of nearly all the important morning and evening papers, which shortened his employer s task of look- ing through them considerably. In spite of this, however, Darell, who never believed in trusting too much to crutches, no matter how good they might be, always spent a couple of hours every morning running through the papers, and by the end of that time he would be literally knee-deep in mutilated copies from which he had roughly torn out any paragraph he required. Then would follow the dictation of his coiTCspondence to Simmonds, during which Darell would pace up and down the narrow Gfpace of his study DARELL BLAKE. 47 BtnokiDg the endless cigarettes without which, as he would say himself, ** he was nowhere." Then would come the twelve-o'clock meal which was his breakfast, but Victoria's luncheon ^ for under the different necessities of his London work, the family breakfast, which had been the rule at Middleborough, had been put aside ; and now Victoria breakfasted with her children upstairs in their nursery at eight o'clock, while her husband was at his work below. Even at this later meal it was seldom that Victoria had Darell to herself; 8ome visitor or other of his was sure to come in to ask him questions or advice on business or political matters, or to discuss some topic of the day ; and even if no one came it did not seem to help poor Victoria much, for every day she had a sort of instinct that her husband was sailing out on the broad ocean of wide thought and expanding intelligence, farther and farther from the quiet •cove in which sne was anchored. She did her best to try and interest herself in the things that interested him. But, alas I Darell was not of a patient nature; and as soon as her ignorance, technical or otherwise, showed itself too plainly, he would drop the discussion with an impatient sigh and a " What is the use of trying to ex- plain things to a woman?" which would cause Yiotoria to shrink into herself, and make her 48 DAESLL BLAKB. even more dull and slow of comprehension than uBual. Not tL.*t Victoria was a fool ; by no means. She was a fair specimen of the ordinary, commonplace young Englishwoman, with as much education as the majority of those around her. She had assimi- lated the usual smattering of languages, history, and " sciences made easy" at her various boarding- schools, where she had always been considered a fair average pupil ; but she had the compound misfortune of being possessed of the slow ruminant nature which is so intensely a British characteristic, and of being married to a man endowed with a quickness of perception utterly un-English, added to an impatience at not being readily understood which he seldom tried to master. Possibly, if Victoria had been married to a man of her own kind, it would never have occurred to her that she was not possessed of a very high-class intellectual power. She would have niled her household and her husband as admirably as one sees done on all sides every day of the year by similar women — as, in fact, had been done by her mother before her with excellent results. But she had had the ill-luck to take it into her head to marry a man wholly unsnited to her, whom she worshipped for that very unsuitable- ness which oairied him daily farther from her. r*" DARELL BLAK8. 48 She was quite intelligent enough to see his supe- riority, which both exalted and humbled her at the same time. With some women that double sense of pride and humility would have served as a mighty awakening stimulus to llieir dormant and lethargic faculties; but with Victoria it had exactly an opposite result. She felt so humbled about herself when she thought of her husband that she doubted of herself in every way; and with that sense of distrust in her own powers came bewilderment and confusion of ideaw. She gradually sank more and more into the back- ground, remaining fast stuck in a slough of despondency with that puzzled, uncomplaining, helpless bewilderment which is often so pathetic to see. If Victoria had had some intimate friend who understood both her and the circumstances of her life, and who would have roused her up out of her lethargy, life would probably have had a different tale to tell; but Victoria essentially belonged to the category of ** dumb beasts that perish." She had no power of uttering her thoughts or feelings, even if she had been capable of the mental effort of formulating them. She had many acquaintances with whom she discussed chiljiren, servants, clothes, furniture, and small gossip of various kinds, but she had not the 50 DARELL BLAEB. spontaneous vitality necessary to make or keep real friends, and consequently, though she made " calls" or received them daily, she was as much alone as a hermit in the Thebaid. She vaguely felt unhappy, that somehow "things" had got tangled in some way : what the things were, or how they had got tangled, she could not have explained, but she felt indistinctly uncomfortable generally, and tried to explain it to herself by her state of health and the somewhat distant prospect of an addition to her family. When she had informed Darell of this fact he had been everything that was most kind and affection- h\e i for, to do Darell justice, he was distinctly fond of his children, and the prospect of their number being increased in no wise alarmed or disturbed him ; but, if the truth must be told, he had ''^rgotten the fact a quarter of an hour afterwt and if he thought about it at all subsequently, did so in a thoroughly detached fashion, as being something which solely concerned Victoria herself. It never occurred to him to try to be more at home, or to give her more of his care and attention when he was there. Victoria never complained, so of course she was all right and happy. And so the hours of the day and night followed each other — he in the full blast of work and mental activity' and a thousand and one interests, bis vanity ■r DARELL BLAKE. 51 daily fed with the incense of snccesfl as he began to hear people mention him as the ** coming man ; " she sitting at home amongst the plush- covered furniture, the antimacassars, and the china pug-dogs, unoccupied, listless, lethargic, and lonely. One night Darell sat in his editorial sanctum at the Tribune office. He had just finished his leader, and had touched a hand-bell for the boy to take it to the compositors' room. As he wiped his pen on the dirty rag which hung from one of the handles of the drawers of the table, his eye glanced over the proof he had been running over and correcting. He had had a heavy night's work. The pupils of his iron-grey eyes were dilated, so that the eyes looked almost black, and his pale skin looked almost white by contract with the eyes and hair. As he wiped his pen he smiled, for the action reminded him of a duel scene in a play he had recently witnessed, where the victor wiped his sword as he looked at the figure of his enemy lying dead at his feet. The simile pleased him, for the leader he had just written was full of the sharp sword-thrusts which he knew so well how to give, and which he hoped would find the joint in the armour of the enemy. The room was full of the boom and throb of the gieat engines, a sound of which Darell never seemed to weary, for to him ^ ■' >i 5S DARELL BLAEE. it was like the clash of steel in the hour of battle ; and the noise was so great that he did not notice the eatrance of the boy for his copy, until he heard a small voice at his elbow, " Please, sir, Mr. Sedley is below and wants to see you." *'A11 right," said Darell, "take these proofs along with you and tell Mr. Sedley to come up." In a few minutes Sedley appeared, a man ot medium height, with light brown hair, somewhat thin and grizzled, and the whiskers so distinctive of the legal profession — essentially a man of the world, a man capable of both work and pleasure, when the one was necessary and the other possible. To him Darell Blake was a perpetual enigma. Possessed of the cynicism which few clever men can avoid developing on their path through life, to him Darell's enthusiasms for ' politics! creeds, the ardour of his belief, were a source of much amusement and study. In the first days of their acquaintance Sedley had supposed that Darell's enthusiasm was "put on," that he did not really believe that the Regeneration of Man was to be found in universal sufifrage and such-like panaceas and creeds ; but he soon had to abandon this opinion, and acknowledge that, luckier than Diogenes, he had at last found an honest man. He had been much interested in studying Darell since the letter's arrival in town* DARELL BLAEE. 53 The power of organisation and the capacity for work which Darell displayed filled Sedley with admiration; but what he could not understand was the way Darell absorbed himself in his work to the exclusion of what Sedley looked upon in his happy Epicureanism as the ordinary pleasures of existence. He had speedily satisfied himself that Victoria counted for little in Dareirs life and thoughts, and the fact that no one else seemed to count any more puzzled him considerably. The problem of the undiscovered possibilities which might lurk in Darell's nature interested him intensely, and it was with a sort of vague idea of experimentalising upon his protege that he had appeared at the Tribune office on this particular night. *• W hat a beggar you are to work, Blake I " he said, as he shook hands with the editor, who had risen from his chair and was standing by the fire, and who bent to poke the coals into a blaze as his visitor spoke. ** Here you have been hard al work for eighteen months on a stretch without taking a single day's holiday, and I'll lay anything you have been doing other folks' ^^ork as well as your own to-night" Darell laughed as Sedley turned over some of the piles of literary litter and printed matter which were heaped upon the table. 54 DARELL BLAKE. ''What does it matter who does the work so long as it's done properly t " he answered, turning his back on the now blazing fire, and leaning against the chimney-piece with his hands in his pockets. " You see, most of these chaps will write what is uppermost in their minds at the moment they have their pens in their hands, instead of writing what will be in the mind of paterfamilias when he sits down to his eggs and bacon a few hours after. To have any influence over the many-headed you must forn^ulate their thoughts for them, not only one's own ; and if paterfamilias says, when he lays down his paper, * Clever chap that, who wrote that article, 1 couldn't have put it better myself! ' one may feel that one has clenched a convert, or given backbone to a disciple far more surely than if one had spoken with the tongues of angels and archangels I " Sedley smiled at Darell's words, both outwardly and inwardly amused at the hit at the vanity of the imaginary paterfamilias, when Darell's own estimation of himself was such a sti'ong factor in his composition. " Well, no doubt you are right, my boy," he said ; " but you must allov that a prophetic eye and pen are not given to everybody, and as other papers seem to get along with an eye which, so far from being prophetic, only becomes aware of DABBLL BLASa H the e:i[i8tence of facts when thej are several days, and of opinions when they are several months old, I think we ouc^ht to take better care of our rara avis in terris, our prophetic-eyed editor, and not let him work himself off his legs, as you will shortly find you are doing, unless you take a pull.*' " We can talk about that later on," said Darell. ** Perhaps I will ask for a holiday this autumn, but it is much too soon to think of such things yet. You see, the Tribune is not satisfied with merely * getting along,' it must show the way to the Rattle- field where we shall all have to fight next autumn ; it must see that om* weapons are ready, that our troops are well drilled, and ready to fall into their places, and that there is not a weak joint in the armour of the party anywhere. So what does it matter," he added, with a half-impatient laugh, " if I do work hard when there is so much to be done t Why, Sedley, if I had as many lives as a cat I would work them all out at once in the same way, if it would only help our side on to victory sooner." " I verily believe you would, you enthusiastic idiot I " answered Sedley. " It's a pity in some ways there are not more like you. We should be at a more comfortable distance from the noble institution of ' carpet baggers ' than we are now if there were many men as single-hearted and ^t*N. 'X !!r=fS! i. 56 DARELL BLASE. disinterested as you in the political field. But I am afraid, my lad, you will have a rough time of it if you stick to your enthusiasm and your illusions on the holiness of political warfare. If you want to believe in human nature keep clear of politicip ; they have a most reprehensible way of letting in sidelights of an imflattering description on one's most cherished idols. Use politics by all meaiM, as a wise man uses all available weapons — position, fortune, women, and any other factor that comes*'handy — for his personal advancement and ultimate comfort in the goal of his desires, the woolsack, the Foreign Office, or whatever else that goal may be ; but the sooner you clear your mind of all enthusiastic ideas on the subject of Universal Brotheihood, the Service of Man, &c., &c., the better you will be able to see wHich of the paths before you leads to the particular form of self gratification and glory that you liiay covet. And God help you, my lad, if you ever believe in a woman with half the fervour that you believe in politics I But, after all, I did not come here to-night to flout your enthusiasms, which I honestly admire, or flaunt my own cjmicism, which I deplore as one of the horrible consequences of advancing years. I came here to-night to meet a party of people whom I promised to take over the printing office. I got the order €n rhgU from your DABKLL BLAEE. 67 manager, 98 it was iiniieceB£(ar7 to bother jou about it." *« All right," said Darell, glad to turn the conver- sation, for Sedley*s cynicism, which he had for a long time combated, to-night had made a different impression on his mind. He had been unable to close his eyes to the self-interest he had found on all sides since he had come to town, the total want of any ideals amongst the men he was daily thrown in contact with ; and eighteen months' disillusions were beginning, if not to undermine his own beliefs, at least to tell somewhat on his own convictions. To-night, when still in the glow and excitement of the article he had written and the sense of good work well done, Sedley's sarcastic utterances had fallen on him with the shock of cold water on a man heated from a race, and in the sudden reaction he felt disheartened, and certainly disinclined to take up the cudgels, as he usually loved to do, against his older friend. Perhaps, after all, Sedley was right, and it was a mistake to put your heart into anything. " Who are your friends ? '* he asked, passing his hand over his forehead as if to brush away the thoughts which had flitted through his mind. ♦* Mrs. Walpole, with whom you are dining to- morrow evening, or rather I should say this evening, as we are getting on into the small hoon^*' 58 DABXLL SLAIOB. i^aid Sedley, looking at his watch, ''and Lady Alma Vereker, wife of old Sir Matthew of that ilk, who presides as often as the gout will dlow him over the distribution of the law in the Queen's Bench Division/* ** What can two old ladies like that want to see a newspaper office in full blast for V said Darell, with a smile. ** They ought to have had their nightcaps on and been safely in bed hours ago." Sedley burst into a roar of slaughter. " Old ladies I Oh, Lord I How I wish Mother Walpole could hear herself called an * old lady ' I Blake, my hoy, you had better learn never to call a woman old till she says she is so herself, and you'll not do so then, either, if you are wise I It is a tender point with them, pretty dears ; and one should respect all illusions — except political ones ! " he added, with a sly glance. " Very well, then, we'll call Mrs. W. young, if you like," agi*eed Darell, smiling. ** But what about the old judge's dame ? Surely she ought to be at home binding up her lord's toe in red flannel instead of prancing * down here to see printing presses?" Sedley had another convulsion of merriment. " Ah I well, perhaps she ought. But then, you see, that giddy young thing, Mrs. Walpole, needed a chaperon, so Lady Alma has kindly taken her in « DARELL BLAKE. 59 tow ; and by-the-bye, this, I tbiak, must be they," he added, as the roll pf a carriage stopping under the windows of the editorial sanctum made itself heard for a moment through the din of the machinery. " 1*11 go down and bring them up," and BO saying he vanished from the room. Darell turned and looked down at the fire, feeling a momentary sense of irritation with Sedley pass over him. Sedley's laughter could hardly be termed a soothing form of cachinnation ; and coming as it did on DarelFs sensitive, over- wrought nerves just after those nerves had already been irritated by Sedley's cynical advice, it made him feel as if he had been rasped with a file. What on earth did Sedley want to come bothering him with visitors at such an hour? He knew that he, Darell, had his hands full of work, and he must needs come plaguing him with a set of foolish old women, simply because they were curious to see the printing and setting up of a great daily I "Well, his blood be on his own head I " said Darell to himself, as he settled himself down to his writing-table again. ** He may take his old cats around if he likes, but he need not expect me to do so." Just then Sedley threw the door open. **Here is the spider in his den, Lady Alma, and let me introduce him to you— Mr. Darell Blake, Lady 60 DARELTj BLAKE. Alma Vereker — two such enthusiastic politicians should certainly be made acquainted with each other, and what more appropriate meoting-plaoe than an editor's room I " Darell Blake had nsen to his feet as his visitors entered, and could hardly retain an exclamation as Lady Alma threw back the black lace that shrouded her head. This the " old judge's dame" who ought to be at home, adorned with a night- cap, binding her lord's gouty toes in red flannel? lie understood now Sedley's outbursts of meni- nient, and he felt more irritated against that worthy than ever. He saw before him a woman utterly unlike any one ho had ever seen before. In what way she was so unlike he would have found it hard to explain, except that it lay peviiaps between her curiously impassive statue- like appearance and the extraordinary vividness of her colouring and expression. On looking at the woman one could not pause to examine the details of her face; the extraordinary brilliancy of colouring absorbed one's atten- tion to the exclusion of everything else. Dressed in black, with the black lace, half fallen from her head^ framing the red-gold of her hair, and bringing into strong relief the clear whiteness of her skin, she almost took DarelFs breath away with the intensity of his surprise. DARSliL fiLAKS. 61 He felt somehow taken aback by tbLs woman, and with his usual contempt for womankind surg^g up in the recesses of his being, he felt, if possible, still more irritated against Sedley who had pre- pared this pitfall for him, and now stood looking on with no doubt much secret amusement at his, Dareirs, discomfiture. In which supposition it may be owned that Darell was perfectly correct. **You must forgive what I am sure is an un- timely intemiption, Mr. Blake," said Lady Alma in gracious, quiet tones, " and bbme our friend Mr. Sedley for our presence here. It is true I wanted to see the turning-out of one of the great daily papers, so as to get some idea of the work which is required to produce what we pay so little attention to, as a rule, when we get our papers in the morning. But I assure you it was Mr. Sedley who insisted upon bringing us in here before taking us oyer the building, and therefore the blame of the interruption lies at his door." *' Not blame, but praise, Lady Alma, sh all be his meed," said Darell, with a smile, quickly recovering himself, and doing his best to look good-humoured, while he mentally vowed he would be even with Sedley ye^, "Our firiend has been so often to America that he beiieves in the charm of 'sur- prise parties,' and if they were all of the nature of .; ! \ •k 68 DARELL BLAKfl. the surprise he had in store for me to-niglit, his belief might be justified,'' he added more amiably as his irritation commenced to subside, and he felt indifTerent to Sedley's chucklea That individual had left the room to find Mrs. Walpole and Sir Hugh Lindsay. Mrs. Walpole had a rooted objection to stairs, and always preferred to climb them as slowly as possible. She had stopped on the way to examine everything and everybody she passed, so much so that Sedley found her only just aiTived at the top step with Sir Hugh, a tall, good-looking, fair young fellow, with the clean- shaven face and giant gardenia de rigueur, in sulky attendance. Sir Hugh chose to look upon himself as Lady Alma's cavaliere servente in chief, a post which he firmly believed reflected the greatest social honour and credit upon Lady Alma. Perhaps she thought so too, or perhaps she thought that, like every- thing in Nature, even a Hugh Lindsay had his uses, of which .she might avail herself. At all events, she had accepted his attentions with that peculiar impassiveness which was so strongly marked a characteristic in her manner. When she conceived the idea of visiting the Trihuney he had offered to accompany her, feeling even as he did Bc, that it was an act of great condescension on ■• S BARCLL BLAKE. 68 his part, for which no doubt she would be duly grateful. His fair, handsome face with its delicate aquiline features bore a most unmistakable look of sulky bewilderment as Sedley approached. He never felt quite at ease with the lawyer, and had a vague suspicion that the latter occasionally turned him into ridicule without his quite know- ing how. "Where is Lady Alma?" he said. ** Mrs. Walpole is quite out of breath with having to hurry alter you two up these interminable stairs." *' You should say rather Mrs. Walpole would have been out of breath if she had humed," chimed in the little lady alluded to, with a laugh ; " but, as I have not hurried myself, I have quite enough breath left to join in your question. Where is Lady Alma ? Has she been broken up into 'head lines* or consigned to the agony column I " *• Say rather that she would fill the poet's corner," rejoined Sedley. "But at the present moment she is filling a far more prosaic, if slightly more important, place — the editor's chair. I left her in Blake's sanctum when I came to look for you. >t "Did you, really? And shall we really see Mr. Blake's own room where he works? How delightful! I}ow too charming!" pushed Mrs, if ,11 64 DARELL BLAKE. Walpole. " And do you really think he will take us round and explain everything to us ? " •' Why, of oourwe he will I You had better ask him," answered Sedley, feeling, as he ushered his two companions into Blake's room, very much like the owner of a menagerie who was going to stir up the lion with a long polo. In his intense curio- sity, nothing pleased him more than to try experi- ments upon people, and the series he was trying upon Darell this evening were various and inte- resting. This time Mrs. Walpole was the instru- ment that should stir up the lion ; but, unfortunately for the success of the experiment, Darell had heard the last words spoken. He instinctively felt that Sedley was indulging his mania for experiments, and he had no intention of being a docile subject. He was not going to be trotted out by Sedley, who had already sprung a mine upon him for his own amusement, and — who knows ? — perhaps for that of his friends. Drrell's vanity took fire at the latter supposition, and Mrs. Walpole's request that *' he would take them round and explain every- thing to their ignorant minds" did not help to soothe him. Darell looked at the middle-aged lady tricked out in red and green bows, with an elaborately frizzled wig on her head, and the crow's-feet around her eyes giving the lie of age to tb0 roUjg® of ^outb oij the obeekfl wd lipa^ DARELL BLAKE. 65 From her his eyes wandered on to Sir Hugh, who was standing suoking the top of his cane in the background. '* Ignorant minds I " and it was for such as these he was to put his work aside, and dance because Sedley piped and pulled the strings ? The sense of the reality of his work and purpose and the artificiality of the life and aims (if they even had any !) of these people swept over him with a rush, and added to the irritation from overwork, past and to come. "I am sorry/* he began abruptly; but just then his glance fell upon Lisidy Alma. The clear steadiness of the look in her eyes struck him as something he had never seen in a woman's face before. Was it possible that this woman was studying and reading him as he had been reading her companions? There was a curious quiet watchfulness in the eyes that met his — an intention in their expression that struck him with a sense of novelty and fami- liarity at the same time, for he, too, looked at people with something of the same quiet scrutiny. Well, if she were watching and studying him, she should at all events see that he was of a dififerent class from either Sedley or Sir Hugh. ** Nonsense I" had come quickly from Sedley as Darell paused, " you are not going to refuse to take these ladies round. I cannot explain the machinery of the whole place to them, and B mmmm 66 DARELL BLAEE. there is no interest in the thing unless one nnder- standu how everything works. You can rush us around as quickly as you like, but come you must. I am sure Lady Alma will not hear of your refusing her." "As I have not yet asked, I cannot well be refused/* said Lady Alma, with a quiet smile. ** If Mr. Blake will take us round it will be, no doubt, an additional interest and pleasure ; but I, for my part, think we have trespassed on his time too much already," and she rose from her chair as if to put an end to the discussion. A consciousness of ungraciousness took hold of DarelL Lady Alma's quiet acceptation of his unwillingness to do the honours of the office made him feel boorish. ** There is no question of trespass, Lady Alma," he said quickly ; ** I have done the greater part of my work and will go with you," but just as he said so there was a knock at the door, and an office-boy entered, " Please, sir, Mr. Robson would be glad if you would run yoiu* eye over these letters before they go in." " Fate is too strong for ue,*' exclaimed Sedley. Lady Alma s eyea contracted for an instant ; she did not like being thwarted, and she wished that • Dfiiell should acknowledge her supremacy by doing what he dearly did not wish to do — le«v/i "yT^rTi""iT DARELL BLAKB. 6T his work for her society; but, after all, he had consented, and the interruption was not of his choosing. •* Thank heaven they are gone I " sighed Darell, as the door closed on his visitors. ** Surely if ever there was matter in the wrong place it is fine ladies in a newspaper office.'' St-r9 •!««», es CHAPTER IV. Her first real dinner-party was somewhat of an ordeal to Victoria. Since her transplantation from Middleborough, she had seen but little society other than that of a few of her husband's journalistic friends and their wives. It had never been Victoria's habit to seek acquaintances. In her girlhood she had always been sought after by the Middleborough maidens, to whom Miss Tidmarsh was in her way a social star. Beyond going on rounds of formal visits with her mother, and helping to entertain the guests at the frequent .feasts which it pleased her parents to give, she had never exerted herself to make either ac quaintances or friends. When, therefore, she was uprooted from her placid Middleborough existence, she found herself fairly at sea in London, with the necessity forced upon her of either seeking fresh acquaintances or else submitting to being pushed on one side and forgotten in the midst of a strange crowd. To a certain extent she did exert herself, when her slow intelligence was brought face to face DARELL BLAKE. 69 with this fact. She had exchanged cards and civilities with the wives of the men with whom Darell was thrown into daily contact. The necessary exertion and the different society had improved her in many ways, and had done some- thing towards breaking the spell of her lethargy. But Mrs. Walpole's invitation was a very different matter from the small informal dinners and " at homes " to which she had hitherto gone. Like the niajority of idle women, Victoria was a diligent reader of the so-called "Society** papers, especially f)f ♦^hose diluted to suit the feminine mind ; and she seldom took up one of these organs without finding mention therein of Mrs. Walpole's name as having been entertaining some of the well-known people at either luncheon or dinner. Everybody who was anypody was sure to be seen in Mrs. Walpole's lists sooner or later, no matter to what section of society he or she might naturally belong ; and Victoria, dazzled by the descriptions of these entertainments, and the society thereat, was not «iware that the tongues of the wicked afiirmed that notoriety was the only thing required for an entrance ito that paradise. Victoria had undergone much mental discipline as to what she should wear. Her eighteen months in London had improved her in dress as well as otherwise, and she no longer wore plushes and 'X -r-yy- •■• WW ' " . i i. y i "^"-' * ,^ ,'i-a.-'-.. i..L...i'.^'.tfii*- 2: :ii::.,iaa..,.....:>:l--^-i-^ -^Jii= ^ 70 DAKELL BLAEB. satins at breakfast as of yore ; but she still clung to the true British idea that the material of her dress mattered a good deal more than its cut and make, and that a rich trimming could hardly be out of place anywhere. She was one of the class of women who prefer to buy their clothes ready made, and who buy them in what I should call a detached frame of mind, because the dress in question is " pretty and stylish " according to the shopkeepers* labels, not because it will suit them individually. As to designing her own clothes in any way, or discarding any particular fashion because it did not suit her style, Victoria would have been simply amazed at the idea. Of course her dressmaker knew best, or if a dress or colour was ** the fashion," what more could anybody want 1 In her perplexity over her toilette for Mrs. Walpole's dinner, Victoria had appealed to Darell for advice ; but his ideas on the subject of female attire were more than vague, and recalled the story of the man who was asked by by his wife, on his return from a wedding, how the bride was dressed. "Tho bride? Let's see oh 1 1 think she was in white." Victoria failed to extract much guidance or comfort fiom her lord, and left to herself had chosen a blood-red satin profusely trimmed with black lace and jet. The dress would /T" rARELL BTiAKFi, n have been more appropriate to the age of her grandmother than to Victoria's twenty-seven years^ but of this she was happily not aware ; and, indeed, as Darell looked at her sitting beside him in the brougham that was conveying them to Curzon Street, with the lamplight bringing out the contrast of the blood-red satin and the fair skin which the black lace made fairer still, he felt that she reflected credit on him in this splen- dour of colour, and congratulated her on the dress she had chosen. A word of praise or com- mendation from Darell was a crown of glory to Victoria ; on such an occasion, when she had been feeling somewhat nervous at the prospect of Mrs. Walpole and her guests, Darell's praise was doubly precious. As the carriage drew up at one of the curious, small, old-fashioned doorways which still exist in May Fair, surmounted by the iron hoop that formerly bore an oil lamp, and flanked by the torch-extinguishers so necessary in the days of sedan chairs, Victoria felt quite reassured as to the merits of Ler social armour, on which she had expended so much thought and care, A small group of individuals, aged yet respect- able, who might have been either waiters at a public banquet or undertakers come to assist at A funeral, ushered Darell and Victoria upstair^ "^ -*■ — „,.— -,*-. 72 DARELL BLAKE. They were not the first to arrive. A tall, burly man, with a large hooked nose and aggressively red whiskers, Sir Henry Goldworthy, got up from the sofa where he had been talking, like an old luiHtui of the house, to his hostess. At the opposite side of the fireplace Lady Margare* Benson, a heavy-looking woman, with large prominent watery eyes, a wide mouth always half open, and magnificent hair, sat listetilxig to the conversation of Mr. Sedley and her husband, a short, thick-set man, with a red face, and an expression of "/««««« bonhomie" which was belied by the sly look of his small narrow eyes. They were talking over the news in one of the evening papers of a gigantic crash in the City, in which, according to the report, the fortunes of many well-known people were likely to be compromised. Jack Benson's cunning little eyes twinkled as he discussed the various victims who would now have " to draw in their horns," as he expressed it Ho himself had taken to business somewhat later in life than most people, and had been rewarded by a success which many looked upon with some suspicion. Mrs. Walpole's face beamed when she saw Darell and Victoria. It did not often happen that in her indefatigable lion-hunt through the highways and byways of London society, she ^■^- i DARELL BTiAKUL 73 really could get a unique beast before any one else had' trotted him out; but she had great faith in Sedley's practical judgment, and, according to that astute individual, Darell Blake was not only an extraordinarily clever editor, who had raised by sheer force of his own personal talent the somewhat waning fortunes of the Tribune^ but he was also a coming man in the world of politics. Victoria looked at her hostess in some amaze- ment. This the leader of society and fashion, this little mincing figure, with its light-brown frizzled wig, painted cheeks, and fantastic dress of black lace and orange silk I Victoria felt so bewildered that she could hardly answer Mrs. Walpole's gushing expressions of gratitude that they had come, *'and dear Mr. Blake so busy, you know!" Fortunately, an answer was the last thing Mrs. Walpole ever required. She wished to be civil to Victoria, as she considered her a sort of unavoidable appendage to her lion, and she had a notion that " those sort of people," as she would have remarked — for Mrs. Walpole, like Sigismund, was apt to speak as if she were super grammaticam — required even more gush than others to put them at their ease. She was still bombarding Darell and Victoria with effusive libaoks, when the door opened, and one of the 74 DARELL BLAKE. mutes from downstairs announced, in a sepul- chral voice, ** Sir Matthew and Lady Alma Vereker I " Lady Alma swept in, radiant in palest green and irises. In her hand she carried a huge bouquet of these flowers of all shades, and at the sight of this regal-looking woman, with her bare shoulders and arms, and the piled-up coronal of red-gold hair, all glistening with diamonds like dewdrops, Victoria recovered her belief in the appearance of the ** salt of the earth," which had received so rude a shock from Mrs. Walpoles looks and dress. " I am so sorry to be late," said Lady Alma to her hostess, "but it hardly is my fault. Sir Matthew has so few days with me, on account of that dreadful law court, that I took him this after- noon,, for his Saturday drive, to the Alexandra Park I We came back by Highgate and Hamp- stead, and only got home so late that I had barely time to dress." ^^ Dear Lady Alma I if all haste had equally good results I " gushed Mrs. Walpole. " You look more lovely than ever. I suppose all this loveli- ness is not meant for me, but that you are going on somewhere — to Lady Montagu's, or to the McTaggarts' r' **To Lady Montagu's," said Lady Alma, ,^' f|pt» . DARELL BLAKE. 75 disdainfully. '* I leave the society of Chicago pork-butchers to Royalty." " Oh, fie I Lady Alma, you talk high treason ! '* gasped Mrs. Walpole, in a scandalised tone. What Lady Alma might have rejoined cannot be stated, as at that moment the door opened and Mrs. Walpole*s butler announced, in a solemn and impressive manner, that " Dinner was served." ** Sir Henry, will you take down Lady Alma t " said Mrs. Walpole. Sir Matthew followed with Lady Margaret, and Mr. Sedley with Victoria, while Mrs. Walpole, who always asserted her right to choose the guest whom she might delight to honour, took Darell's arm. Jack Benson strolled in last, and if Mrs. Walpole. could have seen the queer, half-amused, half-contemptuous expression of the " odd man out " of her party, she would not have felt so amiably disposed to one at least of her guests. *< Rather a sporting place, the Alexandra Park, for an exponent of the law of the realm, eh. Sir Matthew?" laughed Sedley, across the table, to^the judge. Sir Matthew, a tall, thin, elderly gentleman, smiled too. ** I suppose it was, but you see my lady had her little dog there and she wanted to see it" •♦Yes, my poor little Pluck," broke in Lady H 1 .j yj.;r»r > WMH.«i>. -I. tm u u ' ^ 78 DARELL BLAKE. deriving considerable amusement from bis wife's evident desire to captivate Darell, and be could bardly silence a chuckle as he remarked bow entirely impervious and unconscious Darell was under Lady Margaret's blandishments. His wife's failures to extort the admiration she thought her due was an endless source of amusement to this amiable husband. "I assure you," replied Darell, with courteous earnestness, ** that yours is a complete misappre- hension, both as to the exciting character of a journalist's life and also as to its rewards. I should like to believe that the Tribune has half as much influence as you say. I own, however, that I have done my best to infuse into our political side of journalism the idea that the day of the charm of the majestic * WE ' of our old friend the Thunderer is dead, and that if we are not going to conduct our paper on the principle of making it simply an advertising medium for public companies, theatres, and servants out of place, interspersed with a series of dreary foreign coiTe- spondence, stereotyped accounts of social events, and political commonplaces, we must make a public organ not only the purveyor of general news, that has the meiit of being interesting to the public, but also a pap)Br bearing the stamp of individuality, so far as its politics are con- C DARELL BLAHL 79 cerned, in the personal oonviotions of iU editorial staff." '•Convictions? My dear fellow, they are as extinct as the dodo I " laughed Sedley across the table. *• When will you learn that Queen Anne is dead ? "^ " Never while I live, if by her deceased majesty you mean my convictions," retorted Darell, with a bright smile of defiance at his familiar opponent. Lady Alma caught the boyish brightness of the look. ** A man who believes in his convictions I You are indeed one of the past race of giants, Mr. Blake," she said. " Say, rather, the John the Baptist of the future one," said old Sir Matthew, chiming in, and bending forward to Darell with a courteous, old- fashioned bow. Darell flushed with pleasure. The atmosphere of adulation warmed and cheered his pulses like a draught of old wine. *' Well," said Jack Benson, across the table, ever on the look-out for any advantage which might accrue to him, and anxious to stand well with the editor of the powerful Tribune, "I only wish there were more people to share your views. There is no doubt that the public is getting tired of a press like ours that preaches as a rule little else but dull sermone on political matters, accord- nlTTtTni 80 DARELL BLAKE. ing to the orders of the proprietors, who only wish to dress their shop-front for their best customers, or to satisfy their social ambition to stand in with the personality of Ministers or their opponents." •* That is what is called the * policy of the jumping cat,' is it not ? " said Lady Alnia, with a look of qaiet amusement at Darell. "I have heard that expression before, as you can imagine, Lady Alma," returned Darell ; " and it fills my mind with disgust and contempt. This is not the way our working classes look at politics and social questions. They want to learn. They are in terrible, if Ignorant, earnest. Their minds are sincere, and their intellects, if only half taught, are strong. It is for us — it is our privilege — to show them the road, and once they are properly led, they profit by their training." *'Yes, yes, my dear fellow," interrupted Mr, Sedley ; "that is exactly what our French friends did juet a hundred years ago, after the enthusiastic personal influence of the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, and the Encyclopdediols. You would do the same in Ireland to-day if you could, and you would have much tLe same results as those that followed the declaration of Mob Law in France. Don*t tell me that the masses are a bit more disinterested or moro fi?e6 from enyj than ..her. He was rather a favourite of ihers; his brilliant oynicism amused and suited her, •for to a great extent they shared the same ideas ; but what was curiosity in him became vanity with •her. Sedley expected everything and everybody ■to satisfy his curiosity, Xo yield up the innermost -secrets of life and soul ito his perspicacity, to be labelled and put away in the pigeon-holes of his memory, as documents which, if not always useful • (and he always said to himself they might become so • any day), were at least always entertaining. Lady •Alma in the same way expected everything and •everybody to minister to her vanity ; all her It intellect — and she had much — all her beauty, her position, her charm, were only so many trump cards in her hand to win for her the sense of rpower which was as the breath of life to her 'nostrils. An absolutely cold woman, with the contra- dictory fact of a i^trong imagination, she was never so pleased or interested as when she had some fellow-creature to experimentalise upon, much as a biologist will apply the needle to the leg of A frog in order to study the nerve-^ontraotions. 99 88 DARELL BLAKE. m She had that profound eecret disdain for men which many clever women possess, and which men have only themselves to thank for ; and one of the chief reasons of this contempt was the way men had courted and bowed down before her ever since she could remember. Perhaps the only man she had the smallest respect for her was her husband ; he was always courteous to her, with an old-world courtesy which flattered her pride and vanity, but he was never to be coerced into her caprices, and on one or two rare occasions, when their wills had clashed, she had had to give way. For the rest he gave her complete liberty, and as I have said, in return for that and for the luxury with which he surrounded her, the daughter of a penniless Scotch peer, she gave him a respect and consideration which occasionally surprised even herself. " Well, what do you think of my lion ? " ' asked Sedley, as he leant over her chair. " You should take him in hand. He is the coming man, I can tell you, but he wants to be put into shape and taught many things first." "What do I think of him?" repeated Lady Alma, slowly, looking across at Darell as he stood talking to Mrs. Walpole and Benson, the latter doing his best to ingratiate himself. *'I don't quite know — but I will tell you this day month," e DARELL BLAKE. 89 she added suddeuly, with a low laugh, and a mocking light in the biilliant blue eyes that caught Sedley's glance for one biief moment as she rose with lazy grace from her seat. Seuiey bowed. '* 1 have no doubt I shall receive an exhaustive description," ho said, with a satisfied smile, " from so admirable a professor of comparative mental anatouiy as Lady Alma Vereker." m fts M 90 • CHAPTER V. Lady Montagu's ball was fairly under weigh when the Verekers got there. A quadrille was just coming to an end as they made their way up the crowded staircase, under the garlands and balls of flowers which were suspended from the ceiling. Lady Montagu, tall, graceful, and grey- haired, stood at the entrance to the ball-room, receiving the stream of guests that continued to throng in. " How kind of you. Sir Matthew, to come I " she said, as Lady Alma reached her s^de ; *' my ball would have been a failure if you had not ap- peared. I should not have forgiven either of you if you had not brought the other. You see, I am so afraid of my ball being spoiled by Mrs. McTaggart having chosen the same night." Lady Alma moved forward into the ball-room, leaving her husband talking to their hostess. She did not feel inclined to talk, and at the same time she was conscious of a keen sense of excite- ment running through her yeina. She would DARELL BLAKE. 91 have liked to be on horeeback in the country at that moment, and to sweep straight across hill and dale, or, better still, to have some quaiTy to rido down. She felt in a dangerous mood: the hunting inRtiuct, that is ever present in such natures as hers, was aroused, and as she stood in the brilliant liglit, her head thrown back and her nostrils slightly dilated, but otherwise as Ktatuesque and impassive as ever, she forgot her piirroundings in the contemplation of the vague nebidous pictures of possible events that passed th» ough her mind. " Well, Lady Alma, is everybody to be cut to- night ? '* said a voice at her elbow. " For what particular sin am I to be refused rf'cognit ion this evening ? " Lady Alma half turned. " Where there are bo many it might seem invidious to particularise," she answered, with a smile ; " besides, not being *Mr. Facing-both-ways,' you could hardly ex- pect recognition if you elected to stand behind my back." The little man she was speaking to, Kenneth Mackenzie, bowed in an apologetic manner. "One would ahvays sooner stand behind your back than before any one else's face, you know." Lady Alma's delicate eyebrows drew them- selves slightly together. At no time did she care much for oomplimente, she had had them ad > M IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) A //A ^\^^e % / ^ & %' I.C I.I 1.25 1^118 12.5 ■^ 1^ 12.2 H: 1^ 1112.0 1-4 ill 1.6 <^ /a /a %.'- y # Hiotographic Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14S80 (716) 872-4503 •sj \\ ^q) V ^^^-> 1^^.^;?^ ..^ 6^ s:# 6^ 92 DARELL BLAKE. nauseam ever since she could remember ; but she usually accepted them graciously enough, as a sovereign will endure to walk over the flowers that are strewed before his triumphal path. To- night, however, they seemed inexpressibly trite and wearisome, and as two or three other men crowded round her, the burden of whose remarks was much the same as those of Mackenzie, she could hardly suppress a movement of impatience. Heavens ! was it possible for human creatures to be so contemptibly empty-headed, or so blind as not to see the disdain which she felt surging through her whole being I They suddenly seemed to her more vapid, more mesquin, more ill-natured than they had ever done before. Even Sediey*s frank cynicism would be a relief in contrast to their toneless disbelief — a disbelief which was directed just as much against them- selves as against other people, but 'which was as invertebrate and unreal as the rest of their opinions. What compliment was the admiration or the homage of such men to a woman such as she knew herself to be? Less than none, she thought, in the storm of passionate disillusion which was sweeping over her, and in which some of her suppressed excitement seemed to find a vent. Lady Alma, you promised me a waltz last 4t p..-. ,.: € DARELL BLAKE. 98 night ; may I not have this one ? " said Walter Nevill, a young Guardsman, who was one of the group around her. Before she could answer, another voice cut in, that of Sir Hugh Lindsay, who had just come up behind Neville. *'I beg your pardon, Nevill, Lady Alma is going to give me this dance.** Lady Alma turned her head and looked at Lindsay. For one instant she was on the point of denying what every one present felt intuitively was an invention of the moment, and more or less an assertion of intimacy ; but as their eyes met, hers imperious and steady, his smiling and a trifle authoritative, she suddenly changed her mind. She had been longing for a quarry, for something to hurt, and here, delivered by himself into her hand, was the very person whom she could torture and hui*t with the greatest satisfaction to herself. She raised her great bouquet of irises to her face for a moment before replying, while she continued to look at Lindsay, as a man will look »t bis adversary in a duel while they are ** taking distance;" then half closing her eyes, she answered with a quiet smile, " How wise of you to remem- ber I Come to me for the next,'* she added to Nevill, and taking Lindsay's arm, was soon floating round the room to the strains of th« Hungarian band. 94 DARELL BLAKE. " Whew I " whistled Kenneth Mackenzie, softly. '* I feel as if we had had an escape. I did not think sae would have stood being dictated to hke that." "I don't think she will, either" remarked Nevill ; " did you see how she looked at him before she answered? She is * kittle cattle to shoe/ is Lady Alma, and I don't want to change places with Lindsay for the next half-hour. She has a greater talent for freezing a fellow, and making him feel uncomfortable, when she chooses, than any woman I have ever met. I don't think our friend Lindsay is ci la hauteur to cope with her, if she means to show her claws." ^ Lady Alma thoroughly enjoyed her waltz. Lindsay was a rarely good dancer, and the smooth, swift motion which would have disposed many women to soften towards their partner, only heightened Lady Alma's anticipatory enjoyment of the lesson she was going to teach her presumptuous subject. Never had she looked more lovely than when the waltz came to an end, and she stood still, panting gently, the faintest rose-pink flush in her cheeks lighting up and enhancing the blueness of her eyes, which looked darker than usual from the dilation of the pupils. Sir Hugh looked at her with intense admira- DARELL BLAKE. 95 tion and satisfaotion. He also had hardly expected her to take his appropriation of the dance so quietly, and he felt a flush of manly pride and exultation at his victory. " It's the only way to treat women," he thought ; ** they will always come up to the bit if you show who is the master." In his way he was quite per- suaded that he was " awfully in love " with Lady Alma ; she satisfied his ideas of what a beautiful woman should be like and his vanity was flattered at being seen constantly in her society ; but he would have been more than surprised if he had ever had the smallest consciousness of the working of the lady's mind, or of the estimation in which she held him. " By Jove I how well you do look to-night 1 " he said, as he led her to the end of the great con- servatory, built out at the back of the house, which transformed the ordinary London ** cats' garden " into a vision of the tropics. ** Simply ripping I " he added patronisingly, as he looked her over from head to foot, much as if she were a horse in Tattersall's yard. Looking up, he met her eyes fixed steadily upon him with a glance of such unconcealed disdain and contempt that even his obtuse perceptions, blinded as they were by his vanity, received somewhat of a shock. «* Thank you," she said, with a quiet sarcasm 96 DARELL BLAKE. in her voice which astounded him. '*And now as -we have ^n opportunity for a few minutes' con- versation before I go back to dance with Mr. Nevi'l, will you be kind enough to explain what you mean by presuming to take such a liberty with me as you did just now 1 »* " Presume I A liberty I What on earth do you mean ? *' stammered Lindsay, angrily. His rosy visions of Lady Alma's submission to the superior authority of man were so recent that he could hardly grasp the fact of their annihilation. ** I mean," said Lady Alma, with quiet and cutting emphasis, " that I allow no man to afflcher me in public, or to dare to dictate to me as to my smallest action. You know as well as I do, and as every single one of that group around me knew, that 1 was not engaged to you for that dance. You arrogated to yourself the right to dispose of me in a way that I can only characterise as the worst possible form, and you will therefore not be surprised to learn that from this evening I purpose to dispense entirely with your intimate acquaintance." *»Bad form! Afficher you I I like that!" retorted Lindsay, his temper having got con- siderably the better of him at the former suggestion, for he thought himself in his way as much ^ mo4el of behaviour and dcportme^j; ^n A: DABELL BL'^KE. 97 was Lord Chesterfield in his. ** I like that ; as if you had not afficher*d yourself with me all over the place. If you are so mighty particular, why did you allow me always to go about with you everywhere for these last months ? You always seemed deuced glad of my societjV* "That is the ve-y point of my remark,** interrupted Lady Alma, quietly. " What I choose to do * of my own free will/ as you say, is one thing ; what I allow others to do is quite a different matter. I may choose to amuse myself pulling the strings of a puppet if I like, but if the puppet permits himself to rise up and dictate to me, he is apt to return to his box — broken.** Lindsay looked at her in angry bewilderment. There she stood, a palm-tree arching over her golden head, tall lilies rising on each side of her, as fair, as calm, as stately, as impassive as they. In her eyes, and in the corners of her thin, delicate lips, there lurked just the ghost of a smile that was the only outward sign of her intense enjoyment of the whole scene. Lindsay felt, to use his own expression, " knocked all of a heap.*' He seemed to be face to face with a stranger, and indeed in many ways he was, for he had not the faintest true conception of the nature or strength of the woman before him. He fairly choked with rage when he thought that this woman, whom he n liilH 98 DARELL BLAKE. imagined was flattered by being singled out hy his attentions, had been all the time amusing herself with him " as with a puppet," to use her own words (the simile was apt)^ and at the very moment when he thought she had acknowledged his power, had not only slipped from his grasp^. but had also given him what he termed ** the most complete facer he had ever had in his life.'* He- was too angry, too bewildered for utterance. Ho knew he had asserted his claim to that dance in ani authoritative and perhaps offensive way, a momen- tary impulse to " show off "had been ; oomuch forhift small amount of wisdom; and, after all, how should he have guessed that she would have resented it in this way, when nearly all the women he knew would have been flattered by having tho handkerchief thrown to them so openly by Sir Hugh Lindsay ? Lady Alma had been quietly looking at him as he stood, one hand in his pocket, the other pulling at his moustache — that usual refuge for male perplexity. She understood his thoughts perfectly ; they were too plainly written on that good- looking, sulky face for it to be possible not to read the mortified vanity and general bewilderment thereon ; and Lady Alma felt distinctly soothed and satisfied with her tactics. Sir Hugh had begun to bore her somewhat of late with tho DARELL BLAKE. 99 assiduity of his attentions ; she had begun to be aware of his presence oftener than she liked, and she therefore thanked the gods for thus giving her the opportunity of dismissing him at the very moment when she was craving for something of the kind. He had distinctly put himself in the wrong, that was enough. She really felt as if, had she been a cat, that she could now purr with a sense of general satisfaction. " Oh I here you are, Lady Alma," said Walter Nevill, coming into the conservatory, and taking in the whole scene — Hugh Lindsay's sulky, scowling face. Lady Alma's contented smile— at a glance. "I have been looking for you everywhere; you told me to come for you for this dance. What have you been doing to Hugh ? " he went on, as Lady Alma and he passed up the stairs to the ball room ; " he looked as savage as a bear." "Sir Hugh! Oh, he and I have only been squaring our accounts/' said Lady Alma, in her sweetest tones. "They say short accounts make long friends, you know," laughed Nevill. " Yes, but sometimes short acquaintances," rejoined his partner, with a low laugh of amusement and content, as they swept out to the dreamy tones of Metra's last waltz. ti 100* CHAPTER VI. " Darell dear, here is a note for you. The foot- man who brought it is waiting for an answer," said Victoria, coming into Darell's sanctum the morning following Mrs. Walpole's dinner-party, Darell was pacing up and down the room smoking a cigarette. He had just got through his news- papers, which were lying in a dilapidated, untidy heap on the floor beside his writing-table, and was running through his letters preparatory to dictating the answers thereto to Simmonds. He cordially disliked being disturbed at such a moment, and it was with an impatient movement that he turned his head when Victoria came into the room. He hardly listened to what she said, and seeing him so occupied over his letters, Victoria laid her note on the corner of the table and stood silently waiting. Her eyes wandered around the room, and she sighed in her secret soul over the hopeless untidiness and litter that reigned supreme. She would have liked to make it all as spick and span, every book, every chair DARELL BLAKK. 101 every paper m its allotted place, as in her sitting- roDiii upHtairs. " You are forgetting the note, dear," she ventured to say timidly, as Darell continued opening the pile of letters before him, letting the torn envelopes drop on the floor amongst the dis- membered newspapers, with a glorious disregard for the useful properties of a waste-paper basket, "the footman is waiting outside for the answer." "That's tnie, Vic. I hrd quite forgotten it. Give it me — but I do wish people would not send notes that want answers before I have got through with my letters in the morning," he added im- patiently, as he tore the envelope open. As he read it his face changed its impatient expression ; the lines relaxed, but contracted again almost immediately. ** Well, I do call that cool I " he broke out. " What is the matter, Darell dear 1 Who is it from ? " queried Victoria. " I^'s an invitation to lunch to-day from Lady Alma Vereker, whom you met last night." *• Well, that's very kind of her," began Victoria, with a smile, and a flush of gratification rose on her fair skin. *'KindI I call it cool, for see here, Vic, she simply writes and asks me to go. She does not mention you, and I call that bad manners I " „-i»' 102 DARELL BLAKE. **0h, Darell dear, it can't be bad manners 1*' gasped Victoria, scandalised, even though crest- tullen, at Darell's indictment of bad manners against a person who had impressed her so deeply as Lady Alma had done. " It canU be that I It must be that she wants to talk to you about something or other, and she thinks perhaps I would not care or be interested. You know, Mr. Sedley told me she was awfully clever — ' clever all round,' he said — and it must be that she wants to ank you about some important matter. You must not mind her not having asked me," said poor Victoria, stifling a sigh. Sho felt a little hurt, more especially as Lady Alma had been so gracious to her the previous evening, at being thus left out in the cold and ignored; but in her loving unselfishness towards her husband, she stifled all such ideas, intent only upon furthering his interests in any way she could; and surely if this gieat lady, with her beauty and influence, wished to be a help to Darell, she^hould only be too thankful at such interest and con- descension being shown to him. Besides, she had her consolation in Darell's prompt resentment of what he imagined was a slight to her. " She may be clever, Vic, and I think Sedley is right when he says so, but to my mind she would please me better if she had asked you too. If m. DARELL BLAKE. 103 ghe had not met you last night, it would be a different thing ; but when we came up from the dining-room last night — why, you and she aeetned to be as thick as thieves together on the sofa I I call it deuced bad manners, and I shall not go." *'0h, Darell dear, indeed you must," said Victoria, entreatingly, **you must not go and oft'eud people like that, when they only mean to be kind to you. You know it is so important for you tc know influential people of that kind. It is very nice and dear of you to be offended on my account, but there is really no reason; and, besides, even if she had asked me, I could not go, for I promised to take Peregrine to Mrs. Lan- kester's, and to go with her and her children to the Zoo in the afternoon. So do sit down and write to I^ady Alma that you will go, that's a dear. I feel sure she must have been struck by the grand way you spoke last night, and no doubt wants to know you better, and to make you better known ; 80 do go, Darell dear, if only to please me t " This was an unusually long speech for Victoria, and she stopped, almost confused at her own verbosity and the strength of her pleading. It was very seldom that she ever traversed anything that Darell might say, but she not only wished to stifle any selfish pique she may have lelt at first, but also ehe guessed intuitively that Pareli himself %. mm. 104 DAUELL BLAKE. wished to go, and that by pressing him to do so she was pleasing hira. ** Well, if it is to please you, Vic, there is nothing more to say,'* said Darell, laying his hand on her shoulder caressingly, as she stood by the writing- table. "I do not like manners of that kind myself, but as you say, she may be useful to ud, and if you are afraid that I should offend her — all right, I will go," and Darell sat down to write his note, feeling that he was making a Bacrifiee of his own inclinations to please Victoria, who, after all, was a dear, wise, clear-headed girl, and no doubt was quite right to oblige him to go. Victoria was delighted at his acquiescence. It was quite a new thing for her to feel that any suggestion of hers should be followed by Darell, the following of suggestions being in Darell Blake's opinion a department eminently fitted for women's capacities. She therefore felt so elated that any soreness over Lady Alma's slight to her vanished from her mjnd. Later on, as soon as she saw him depart on his drive to Grosvenor Square, she walked oft' quietly with her *little son, to her friend Mrs. Lankester's, and filled that ladv's mind with envy by her descriptions of the dinner at Mrs. Walpole's, and the meeting with Lady Alma, "with whom my husband has just gone to lunch, and to talk over some important questions," she DARELL BLAKBw 105 added, with beaming pride at being able to announce that her lord was so honoured by the high and mighty in the land. When Darell arrived on the steps of 75, Gros- venor Square he found them ah-eady tenanted by two individuals — a short, elderly man with a pleaHant, weather-beaten face, and a tall, thin youtli, with a long neck, sloping shoulders, and a preternaturally solemn countenance, whom Darell recognised as one of those ornamental, if somewhat useless, legislators sent by a dutiful tenantry to represent them at Westminster; When the door flew open, disclosing the typically solemn butler in black and the six-foot Adonises in crimson plush and powder, the three visitors filed in, clothed in the silence of the Englishman who has ''not been introduced." ** Mr. Massingberd, Colonel Forester,** announced the butler, as he threw open the door of one of the ground-floor rooms. "What name, if you please, sir I " he added to Darell, with the tone of voice of a priest inciting a shy penitent to con- fefcision. Darell could hardly help smiling as he gave his name and heard it announced. Lady Alma, who had risen to receive the two other men, turned quickly to the door when she heard Dareirs name, and came to meet him with a radiant smile. She ■ '^^'^ •\. 106 DARELL BLAKE. bad not been by any means as sure of DarelFs response to ber invitation as she would secretly bave liked to be; sbe bad an instinct that tluH man was in some way different from any of those who had till now passed through her hands and sub- mitted to her influence. And the mere fact of his not wearing bis heart on bis sleeve, as most of her male acquaintances did, was in her eyes an attraction. " This is more than kind of you, Mr. Blake," she said, in ber most gracious tones, as she gave him her hand. " I realfjr hardly hoped you would be able to come, and even after I got your note I was still afraid something or other might crop up to prevent your putting in an* appearance. You must be so busy, you must have so many calls upon every moment of the day, and indeed most of the night too, that I should hardly have felt surprised if you had refused to come — and I am all the more glad that you did not," she added in a prettily enthusiastic, confiding way that Lady Alma had often proved to be distinctly valuable. Darell was delighted. The boyishness of his nature was always willing to respond to a certain extent to flattery, to feeling himself ** being made much of." Lady Alma's manner was too dis- tinctly sincere to allow him for a moment to DARELL BLAKE. 107 imagine she was laughing at him, and he let himself go to the influence of the pleasant sur- roundings, the stately room with its subdued colouring and delicately gilded cornice and ceil- ing, the large comfortable chairs and ' sofas, covered not in plush, as in Victoria's room, but in loose cretonnes, the embroidered cushions lying about ; the profusion of flowers and palms of all sizes, and, above all, the charm and beauty of the woman to whom all this luxury seemed but the fit and proper setting. No courtier of the days of Le Roi Soleil had a keener appreciation of the beautiful and luxurious than this young Radical editor, who was foremost amongst his iconoclastic brethren for the ruthlessness of his tenets. To a great extent it was no doubt his Celtic gift of imagination which played hira false in both ways — in his intense love of beautiful surroundings and his fulmhiations against those '* who toil not, neither do they spin ; *' but even to himself he would never have acknowledged that surround- ings c^uld influence him in any way. And so it is with many, if not most, people ; the strongest, the most swaying influences are those that are seldom named or reckoned with. ^'Dear Lady Broadlandsl what a pleasant surprise I'' exclaimed Lady Alma, as the door again opened, and an old lady, tall and majestic 108 DARELL BLAEE. in spito of her years, came in. **I did not know you were in town*." " I only got back from Cannes two days ago, my dear," said the old lady, **and I thouglit I would come and ask you for lunch, and hear all the news before I go down to Broadlands this afternoon." ** That was really nice of you," answered Lady Alma, " though, as to news, I do not know that there is much on hand just now. Everybody has been behaving himself so remarkably well, except the bachelors, who seem more recalcitrant than ever as regards matrimony. And Easter being over, one expects marriages to follow as regularly and naturally as Whitsuntide. However, why should I try and cudgel my poor brains to find news for you when here is the very person who can best supply the article, Mr. Darell Blake, the editor who has set every one talking about the 'irihune, Mr. Blake — Lady Broadlands." " I am afraid Lady Alma has hardly been as correct in her description as usual," said Darell, laughing, as he bowed to the old lady. " I am afraid that the kind of news which may perhaps interest the Tribune readers would hardly interest Lady Broadlands. Ladies as a rule do not care much about politics or the affairs of the world at large." DARELL BLAKE. 109 " Mr. Blake, do not rush upon your own destruc- tion in so headlong a manner I " interrupted Lady Alma. ** Lady Broadlands is a Primrose dame of the deepest dye, on the Grand Council, the Execu- tive Council, and Heaven knows what besides ; dispenses stars and clasps and "diplomas and • badges like a good fairy in a pantomime ; and if it were not that she has known me from my babyhood, and has a sort of reprehensible weakness for me,'* added Lady Alma, passing her hand caressingly under Lady Broadland's arm, ** I believe she would have excommunicated me with bell, book, and candle long ago for my Radical opinions." " It is bec&use I know you do not really believe in them any more than I do, Alma," retorted Lady Broadlands, laughing. " But even so, two to one is not fair, and I am too old a political campaigner to engage in combat with you and Mr. Blake at one and the same time. Give me some luncheon first, my dear, for I have been shopping all the morning and am tired, and then perhaps after that I may have strength to vanquish all my Radical opponents together I" "I was waiting for Mary Mihies," answered Lady Alma, rising ; " but under the circumstances we will not give her any more law. Besides, she is so feather-headed that it is more than probably 110 DARELL BLAEE. she has quite forgotten that last night she asked me if she might come." " I don't think you need wait for Mrs. Milnes," remarked young Massingberd, with the nearest approach to a grin of amusement that his high collar would allow. "Imet her cantering out of the Row just now, and she told me she was hurryiug off to a rehearsal of the new burlesque at the Frivolity, and was dreadfully afraid of missing the first entrance of Geoffrey George. It appears that he comes on the stage walking on his hands, and sings his first song upside down I " Lady Alma frowned. "How can Mary en- canailler herself as she does with music-hall singers and acrobats I " she said, as they passed into the dining-room; **it really is too bad form ! " " Oh, fie I Alma," said Lady Broadlands, " how can you find fault with a woman for acting up to the proper Radical principle that * one man is as good as another, if not better ' t If it were I, for instance, a miserable, benighted Tory, who ex- pressed such opinions, it might be natural enough, but for one of the shining stars of the Radical Women's Association to venture to utter such heresy as that a line should be drawn anywhere ! Never mind, I won't tell on you, so you have escaped the stake this time." DARXLL BLAES. Ill « Well," said old Colonel Forester, " I am of the opinion of the unmentionable insect in the story, that a line must be drawn somewhere ; and though I do not usually share Lady Alma*s' ideas, I must 8(Hce generally * cease from troul)ling' about then." "Well, as I want you to teach me many thiii<;H, politically »?poaking," said Lady Alma, graciously, *' I do not think I can commence my schooling too soon. Will you look in to-morrow afternoon, on your way home from the Tribune ? and instead of Shakespeare and the musical glasses, wo will content ourselves with such trifles as the British Empire and the coming campaign." b*«««» »■■•■, 118 '•^. CHAPTER VII. A MONTH had elapsed since Darell had accepted Lady Alma's first invitation, in obedience to his wife's wishes. He had left his hostess, after that fiinst luncheon, agi'ecably surprised and interested. He was flattered, too, at the evident desire she expressed to increase their acquaintance. Every- thing about Lady Alma conspired to impress a sense of flattery on most men she noticed, and especially on such a one as Darell Blake, who was, in spite of his brains, his keen intelligence and ready gift of intuition, a mere boy as regards his personal knowledge of women. Besides, to Darell, a son of the people, who had raised himself by his own force of will and talent, Lady Alma, with her great position and birth, her pride of race, her beauty and her talents, seemed like a princess in a fairy tale. With the ingrained love of the aristocracy, so characteristic of British middle-classdom, to which even Darell, notwith- standing the puiity of his Radical principles, was not supeiior, the fact of her condescending to DARXLL BLAKE. 119 interest herself in him was a mark of gi'aciousness in which he secretly revelled. His boyish dreams of satisfied ambition seemed all but realised when he sat beside Lady Alma in her dim, perfumed room, amongst the palms and orchids with which she loved to suiTOund herself; and Darell very often did sit in that room, for ho had got into a habit of dropping in at 75, Gros- venor Square nearly every day on his way back from the Tribune office before dinner. Lady Alma encouraged him to talk to her openly about all his plans, his dreatlQS, his enthusiasms, and by degrees he got into a habit of consulting her about everything that in- terested him. It gave a new zest to his work at night, to know that the next afternoon he would hear Lady Alma's opinion on what he had written, and would be able to talk over with her what he was going to write. For the first time in his life he thought he was enjoying, what is after all given to few men to enjoy or appre- ciate, a frank and perfect friendship, a camaraderie of the best kind with an unusually clever woman. He had never had an intimate friend of either sex, one to whom he could talk openly and without reserve, and, above all without the fear of ridicule, which Sedloy, for instance, always had im store for him whenever he 120 DARELL BLAKE. allowed his eDthusiastio beliefs to get the better of his tongue. With Alma Vereker it was quite different; she delighted iu his enthusiasm, though in her secret soul she never shared it, but a man with fervent convictions was a new experience to her, and DareW amused and interested her even moTQ than she did him. For the difference between them was that Lady Alma knew perfectly well to what point this intimacy was drifting, and Darell did not. Not the faintest idea of making love to this beautiful, gracious woman had ever crossed his mind, and as a veracious historian I must confess that this fact imtated Lady Alma more and more every day. In her eyes, any man whom she allowed and encouraged to see her was bound to pay toll with his heart. She looked upon it as her natural due, a thing to be settled at once, and never r Haded to again possibly, but still a due that had to be paid. Sedley was perhaps the only man she had ever known intimately who had been exempted from this imposition of her Custom House, but he was an exceptional individual, and the mere idea of his ever making a declaration of love to any one was too preposterous. With Darell, however, it was quite another matter, and Lady Alma was beginnings to feel, muoh like a Red Indian who sees a ooveted scalp DARSLL BLAKE. 121 still adorning its owner's head, who with persiHt in keeping out of range. Not that she felt inclined to give in, and seek some easier quirry. On the contrary, to a woman who had been courted and fiatt(a-ed all her life, whose every whim had be^n obeyed, the unconscious resistance of this brilliant young fellow, his apparent inability to see in iier anything more femininely personal than a charm- ing and sympathetic camaradsy both instated and attracted her at one and the same time. Matters werei* much in this condition one evening that Lady Alma met Sedley at a reception at the Speaker's. The rooms, dark, dismal, and dingy, were thronged with a most heterogeneous crowd, who wandered through them whenever circulation was possible, in that silent and awe-stricken condition so eminently characteristic of such gatherings. Politicians of all shades had brought then* wives and daughters, to many of whom the Speaker's reception was a sort of dazzling vision of social triumph and recognition which they would remember long after the next election had once more caused a speedy retirement to the provincial solitudes of Little Pedlington. Even the Gothic gloominess of the rooms was ndt apparent to their delighted eyes, and the feelings of genuine British pride with whioh they viewed the dignity of their '*%. 122 DARELL BLAKE. Burroundings failed to give them any appreciation of the dinginess which is so inevitable an accom- paniment of dignity in this favoured land. But though the rank and file of the House, and their feminine appendages, formed the bulk of the crowd, there were yet many other faces better known in the London world. In one corner Mrs. Walpole stood in the middle of a group of friends and political acquaintances, with whom she was eagerly discussing the forthcoming meeting of the Radical Wome'h's Association, a subject she would break away from now and then to make comments, not always of the most good-natured desciiption, on some passing per- sonality. '* Oh, there is Lady Rawdon Crawley," she exclaimed, as a medium-sized woman, with dull, jet-black' hair and a square jaw, passed along the room, accompanied by two or threo young men of the most acute gandin type, who looked curiously out of place in the motley crowd. *' What an excellent institution the Speakers receptions are for a woman like that 1 She can live amongst the gandins and guardsmen she affections all day and the greater part of the night, and yet by coming and showing herself here for half-an-hour she establishes a claim to being a fenime airieusey imbued solely with the idea of furthering her lord*B political j^' DARELL BLASX. 123 interests ! If it were not for the Speaker, she really would be at a loss how to reconcile the just claims of Mammon with the tiresome necesuities of a political husbabd." " Excellent are the uses of civilisation!" laughed Sedley at her elbow, ** and especially of Speakers ! I do think it is quite refreshing to assist at these receptions from time to time, if only to renew one's acquaintance with certain characteristics of the human race. For instance, look at Sir John Bruce over there, talking to that humble little member of his political *tail;* he is only a humble little member, it is true, but Sir John thinks it quite worth while to strut and swell for his benefit ; and he is right, for the humble member's family are standing around, open-eyed and impressed at the condescension of the descendant of kings I After all, if all the world's a stage, there is a con- siderable proportion of hiftnanity which is quite content to play the part of rustic audience, and stand in open-mouthed awe and admiration before ' the antics of the clown and the pompous strutting of the heavy father." " Talking of the stage, here comes the father confessor of the drama," said Mrs. Walpole, as a clergyman, with a head that recalled a Holbein drawing, appeared in the doorway. **Let us ask him his opinion on Les Swpriset t ' ) ■-■i 124 DARELL BLAKE. ctu Divorce, I know he was at the Royalty last night." ♦• 1 think he could tell you more ahout les sur- prises du mariage" rejoined Sedley, with a grin ; " there is no man in London who has to officiate at so many ill-assorted unions. I beHeve match- making mammas like to have their daughters manned bv Richardson, because he has such an unctuous manner that even the most recalcitrant filly would hesitate to break away from the halter he shpo so ' neatly over her neck. Besides, he goes everywhere, and is a sort of walking re- minder to many fair ones of a day they would often only too gladly forget.'* " Why, Mr. Sedley, one would imagine, if one listened to you, that there were nothing but un- happy marriages and reluctant brides in all the world," said Mrs. Hoare, a gentle, pretty, fair woman who was standing by Mrs. Walpole. *' Why, what becomes of the proverb that maniages are made in heaven ? " ** What I think becomes of most proverbs," re- torted Sedley, " that they are proved false in prac- tice. I am entirely pf the opinion of the wise man who remarked that marriages are neither made in heaven nor is heaven found in marriage." " Oh I Mr. Sedley, how can you say such wicked things?*' chorussed the two ladies. **But here is DAHELL BLA£E. 125 Lady Alma, who will be better able to cope with you than we are," added Mrs. Walpole, as Lady Ahna appeared in the doorway, and seeing the group of friends standing by the window, crossed the room to join them. Exceedingly fair she looked as she made her way through the crowd with slow and stately grace, but hardly as amiable and serene as usual. Sedley's quick eye noticed how unusually level the straight eyebrows were, and a certain com- pression of the delicate lips told him tliat her ladyship was not having her own way in some matter as much as usual. To find out wbat that matter could be was of course the first thing that seized upon Sedley's insatiable curiosity. He would have had the same desire about any one Avhom he noticed disturbed aud preoccupied in any way, but Lady Alma's per- turbation was even more interesting on account of the personality of the woman whom Sedley was never quite sure if he read aright. " We want to know your opinion, Lady Alma," he said, as she joined the group, " is heaven to be found in marriage I " *' Of course it is," she answered, responding to the attack; **but do you claim that as an attraction for the holy estate? Heaven is suggestive of calm, of lotus-eating, of perpetual •i'^ 126 DARELL BLAKE. contemplation of the seven cardinal virtues, and self-complacency of having attained thereto, and everything that is most phlegmatic and un- emotional — at least, that is the idea that the word heaven conveys to me, infinite rest after finite labour — and *n all this it very fairly represents matrimony as most people understand it. But while one is in the world one does not want to lead the existence of a statue of Buddha, with crossed hands and a vague smile of content on one's sleepy face, and that is why I do not think that the proRpect of * heaven on earth in mamage ' adds greatly to the attractions of that institution." Mrs. Walpole laughed, while Mrs. Hoare looked bewildered and slightly scandalised ; she hardly knew Lady Alma, and was not accustomed to any woman expressing such opinions in so calmly in- different a tone. But Lady Alma was in a state of suppressed irritation this evening, which made her tongue even more trenchant and unconven- tional than usual. There was a pause, which was broken in upon by a new-comer, who came to ask Mrs. Walpole some question about oue.of her many protegh, and as she and Mrs. Hoare moved forward while speaking to him, Sedley and Lady Alma were left together in the embrasure of the window. < .■^f^' DARELL BliAEE. 127 mockingly. "What existence do you want to lead if that of a Buddha, a Bmiling, stolid image that all fall down and worship, does not suffice ? And talking of worshippers, what about my young friend Darell Blake t Surely it is not his worship that has caused Buddha to lose the vague sraile of content we all know so well 1 " Lady Alma looked at Sedley with that straight, direct glance which, with her, was indicative of annoyance and resentment. " Similes are pro- verbially dangerous things to handle, Mr. Sedley," she said. "I am neither an Eve nor a Buddha, neither craving for the tree of knowledge nor wrapt in self-contemplation ; and Mr. Darell Blake would be the first person to correct you if he heard you speak of him as a worshipper of Buddha, or me, or any one else. The Woi-ship of Man is the only culte to which he bows the knee!" Try as she might, Lady Alma could hardly keep a faint touch of irritation out of her voice as she spoke. Faint though it was, Sedley's sharp ear detected it at once« He was on the look-out to surprise the cause of Lady Alma's secret imtation, and the tone in which she spoke of Darell was enough to put him on the scent. '*Sits the wind in that quarter t '' he said to himself, with the inward delight in irritating a fellow^ creature which was one of bis peculiar charms. J i i .„■( 128 DARELL BLAKE. " Well, he may call it the Worship of Man if he pleHses," he remarked aloud, with a chuckle, '*but to my mind it strougly resembles the worship of woman, and of a particuhir woman into the bar- gain, when none of Inn* oldest friends can ever call at her house without finding him ensconced in one particular armchair ! Why, I should feel as shy of seating myself in that chair as of taking the G.O.M.'s seat on the front Opposition Bench ! And now that I think of it, do you remember a certain promise you made me a month ago at Mrs. Walpole's? When am 1 to have the mental and moral analysis of our young friend ? Do you mean to tell me that you have not turned him inside out yet ? Oh, my lady, I thought better of you ! " Lady Alma had turned to the window, hardly able to conceal her annoyance. She had felt nervous and irritated all day, and Sedley's chaflF was not calculated to soothe her. She remem- bered the careless way she had, as it were, pro- mised Sedley to reduce Darell to abject slavery, and she felt an overpowering childish sense of acutest irritation at having to own to herself that, so far as she knew, Darell was as heart-whole as the first evening they met. She would have dearly liked to turn on Sedley and vent some of her suppressed irritation upon him. But Sedley wab an old friend, au old and often a very useful tvT' DARELL BLAKE. 129 ally, and though he was cursed with an insatiable curiosity and a love of experimentalising, it was yet wiser to keep him as a fritoid than to send him away as an enemy. As a friend she could use him, and an idea suddenly flashed across her posed that " she was not feeling well,*' and placing her hand imder hi \ arm, he said good-night to DARELL BLAKE. 133 Lady Alma and Sedley. Victoria allowed the tips of her fingers to rest for a moment in Lady Alma's hand, while the latter wished her the conventional good-night, to which Victoria listened with lowered eyelids, and responded to by an inclination of the head. . But if Darell's eyes were not quick enough to see what was the matter with his wife, Lady Alma^s read Victoria at a glance. '* She will make him a scene as soon as they get home," she said to herself. ** What will be the effect of it upon him I Will she draw him back oi make him spring forward ? " and with that peculiar sang-froid with which one woman usually views another woman's trouble and discomfiture, she felt instinctively that Victoria's interference would give her, Lady Alma, the victor - Victoria did not speak one word as she and Darell drove home. She lay back in the comer of the brougham, her eyes closed, the tears begin- ning slowly to follow each other down her pale cheeks. Her anger was, to a certain e^^tent, still alive, but the sense of bewildered hope- lessness, of fatality, was gradually absorbing her whole being. For Victoria, in spite of her pro- vincial training and traditions, was, as regards most of the practical issues of life, as great a ■■■'^^ 134 DARfiLL BLAKE. fatalist in practice as any Oriental. Sbe was so stunned, so overwhelmed, not only with the dis- covery of what she thought Lady Alma's feelings to be towards Darell, but also with that other and far more terrible discovery, that her husband had never really loved her, that she felt she had no strength left. These things had come, it was Fate ; what could she do to prevent them, or to stay their course in any way? The utterly unequal conditions between her and Alma Vereker came back to her mind and crushed her to the earth. If she had been able to fall back, in her heart, upon a memory of passiona^ft love on Darell'a pr r)", she would, perhaps, have been able to enter the lists; but by the light of her own suffering she knew that this also had never been given to her. What, therefore, was the use of fighting? The battle was lost beforehand. And so, crushed in heart and mind, Victoria aiTived home at Onslow Crescent. *' You had better come into my room and have a brandy-and-soda," said Darell, leading the way into his den, where a tray was always left ready for his return at night. He was sorry Victoria fell ill, as he imagined, but he was also not feeling altogether pleased at the way she had behaved ; and though he was not going to tel) her so, his tone was not bo affectionate as usual, and Victoria ^^^('''-~ ^^K^.' DABELL BLAKE. 135 perceived the fact. Tbis seemed to be the last straw to her misery. She followed him ioto the room, and sitting down in the armchair at the writing-table, buried her face in her arms, sobbing as if her heart would break. " Why, bless my soul I what's the matter ? " said Darell, almost dropping, in his surprise, the soda-water bottle he was trying to open. Darell, in common with the rest of his sex, hated (and very naturally) to see a woman cry ; but unlike many men, tears, instead of softening him towards the weeper, rather made him feel impatient and irritated. They seemed to him such a puerile waste of time. If things went wrong, by all means do one's best to set them right, or to alter them; but crying never set anything right yet in his eyes. ** What's the matter, Vic 1 " he repeated, a little impatiently, as Victoria continued to sob without answering. He crofted the room and laid a hand on her shoulder. **Look up and tell me what's gone wrong. You are not yourself to-night, but. it is ridiculous to sit crying like this without telling one what it is all about." *' I wish I were dead I '* sobbed his wife, sitting up and covering her streaming eyes with her handkerchief, which was rapidly being reduced to a state of pulp. "If I were, I should be far "^ik i Ids DARELL BLAEE. happier ; and no doubt so would ehe I " added poor Victoria, with a burst of sudden anger, which raised her for a moment out of her profound despondency. Darell looked at his wife in bewilderment. In the course of his placid married Ufe he had never known her behave in such a way before. "She I What she? What on earth do you mean 1 " he asked. " AVhy, of course, Lady Alma I ** sobbed Victoria. ** You know very well she is in love with you, and that is why she is so rude to me." Victoria's anger* under the influence of speech, to which even the most silent woman will respond, was rapidly getting the better of her sense of humiliation. " Lady Alma in love with me ? " repeated Darell, more thoroughly taken aback than he had ever been in all his life. '* My dear Victoria, you have gone stark staring mad I In love with me! Why my dear girl, you don't know the woman I ** " And if I don't," retorted Victoria, roused, " whose fault is it ? Why does she have you per- petually at her house and never ask me I Why does she hardly deign to say two words to me when we meet, while she will talk to you by the hour I From the very beginning it was the same tbiug " •••••• « DARELL BLAKE. 137 ** Ye9, bmt you should remember,** interposed Darell, " that I ouly accepted her first mvitation to please you, and at your special request. It was you who pressed me to go.'* **I don't know Ihat it took much pressing," retorted Victoria, bitterly, ** and anyhow, I remem- ber that then you were angry enough at her slighting me, but you think of that no longer. You have changed this last month in every way, and it is her doing I She has eyes only for you, ears only for you, smiles only for you I and she does not remember, or she does not ere to do so, that you are my husband. Oh, why did I ever come to London ? I wish I had never seen the place ! and I wish I were dead, that 1 do I " and poor Victoria broke into a fresh storm of weeping, as the feeling of loneliness and desolation again swept over her, replacing in its turn the anger which had for once unloosed her tongue. Darell had not attempted to interrupt her final outburst. He stood in the middle of the room, looking at her with a strange expression in his eyes, while he slowly pulled his moustache with one hand. When she ceased and resumed her sobbing, he approached her, and placing one hand under her chin, quietly forced her to raise her face from her hands, and look at him. ** Listen, 138 DARELL BLAKE. Vic," he said, " and don't make a fool of vonrself any longer. You have never done so before in all the years we have been happily married, and I earnestly hope you will never do it again, for I am not a man to stand many scenes of this kind. The work I have to do admits of none of this nonsense, and if 1 had to go through this sort of thing every time yon happened to have a fit ( f the blues, I should b' quite unfitted for my daily task. You know yourself how valuable to me the assistance of EUch a woman as Lady Alma can be, especially at this moment, when it is a question of a Liberal candidate being found for South Peckham. If you had only listened to what Lady Alma was saying this evening, you would have heard that this was what we were beginning to discuss when you interrupted us; and if you had been present at all the interviews which you have referred to, you would realise that your advance- ment and mine has been my only object in keeping up so close an acquaintance. Besides, as you know, women's society is not in my line, and I cannot i^nderetand you, who should know me so well, ever allowing such exaggerated, such absurd ideas to enter your head." Victoria felt appeased by Darell's words, spoken with quiet emphasis, though if she had been a ^ DARELL BLAKF. 139 closer observer she would have noticed that he had practically evaded the position she had taken up, that Lady Alma was in love with him. " Oh ! Darell dear," she said, looking np at him in her usual conciliatory manner, her poor eyes still blurred and red from her tears, " it is no use your saying these things. I know what a drawback I am to you. I have somehow realised it to-night in a way that I shall never forget. Our life is so changed since we left Middleborough ; there I knew I could be of some use to you, but here in London I feel that all these people, who are so necessary to you, while they appreciate your talents and are only too anxious to have you on their side, look upon me as country-bred and in- significant. I can't help feeling at times that, were it not for the children, it would be better if I were not here to be a drag on your future," and the pathetic eyes filled again with teans. Darell, whose disposition was characterised by a strange mixture of generous enthusiasm com- bined with doggedness of purpose, was consider- ably touched by his wife's words. He mentally reviewed in one glance the events of the past two years. The uncertainties of the future that lay before him seemed like a chasm at his feet, and he almost trembled to look over the brink. 140 DARELL BLABX. A rising sentiment for what his old home had been, and for its tranquil, settled calm came to his mind ; and even Lady Alma and all his am- bitions faded for that one moment almost into the background. He could not help, with his strong energetic nature, feeling sorry for Victoria in the contrast which she offered mentally to himself; and her ready renunciation and unselfishness, of which he secretly knew himself to be so completely incapable, touched even his sensibilities. *' Vic, my darling, I cannot bear to hear you talk like this," he exclaimed, taking her in his arms, ** what should I have done without you all these years 1 and if ever there is to be success for me in the future, what pleasure could there be in it to me unless you were there to share it with me ? What am I working for if it is not for you and the children t And you should think of this, little woman, and not get absurd ideas into your head. It's not like you to be jealous, and you know it is not like me to give you cause, so let's put all this ridiculous nonsense aside and not talk any more about it. You are tired and hipped, and conse- quently exaggerate things. Perhaps it is liot wise of you, in your present state of health, to go out of an evening. Would you like to go down to your mother's for a change t I cannot have my DAKELL BLAKE. Ul Vic's good temper going to pieces like this for nothing ! " Victoria smiled a forlorn little smile and shook her head. Oo down to the country and leave him alone in London T Not she ; but she was soothed and comforted by Darell's words and caresses and his anxiety about her health, and as he led her upstairs to her room, before he himself went off to the TribuM office, she began to ask herself how she had dared to find fault with a being so peifect in most respects as her husband* ■\/i 142 CHAPTER VIII. It is said by an old saw that ** The night bringeth counsel." Certainly the counsels which the night following the scene between Victoria and Darell brought to those two were widely divergent. To sum up that divergence in a few words, the one returned to the familiar path ^which she had deserted for a few passionate rr^oments, the other left the road he had so serenely travelled till then. Darell could not get out of his head Victoria's emphatic assertion that Lady Alma cared for him. At the first moment he had put the thought aside as a wild impossibility, born in the fretful brain of a jealous woman ; but the man's vanity had taken fire at the idea, and the impossibility of it, which had seemed so flagrant at first, soon became " small by degrees and beautifully less." Victoria was not a jealous woman, he said to himself, as he sat in his office — far from it ; and if she, with her calm, unemotional, nature, had taken this sudden conviction into her head, it could only DARELL BTAKC. 143 mean that her woman's eyes had seen quicker and clearer into another woman's heai-t than any man conld hope to do. But could it be possible that Lady Alma's feeling for hira was anything deeper than the fiiendly interest in a new political ally, which he had always supposed it to be? And then there came back to him a remembrance of his former scorn of the idea that women could ever have any interest in politics, or know any- thing about them. Was ho nght or was he wrong? He had to acknowledge that in Lady Alma he had found an intellect in many ways equal to his own, and that he had been able to talk to her with that underlying certainty of being understood, which is so charming and rare a sensation to such a man as he. And as ho thought of this admirable intelligence of hers, his vanity whispered that there was no reason why she should not appreciate his equally ; in fact, he was certain she did so, and memories of her gra- ciousness, her sympathetic interest, certain tones in her voice when she addressed him, which it now stiiick him for the first time he had never heard her use when speaking to Sedley or to others, swept over him — memories all invested with a new strange meaning by Victoria's pas- sionate assertion. 144 DAKELL BLAm. A thrill, such as he had never felt before, flhook him from head to foot, as be suddenly remembered that one day at Grosvenor Square Rhe had risen to fetch some book to which she wished to refer, and on returning to her seat she had paused for a moment beside his chair, and as if to arrest his attention to the passage she read aloud, had laid her finger-tips for one moment on his shoulder. Had he been blind then, or was he raving mad now? Darell did not dare attempt to find the answer, but the mere possibility of this ex- quisite friendship developing into something more intimate and exquisite still, filled him with a glow of vanity and satisfaction till his pulses were at fever heat. His whole being was on fire, a fire lit by Victoria's unlucky speech ; and th< ly Outlet that Darell found for his emotion was mentally to exalt Lady Alma on a pedestal far above all the rest of her sex, and to fall down and worship her as he had never done before. He did not, however, acknowledge to himself that what caused the Slan of this new worship, what made him place her on this lofty pedestal, was her supposed active appreciation of Darell Blake himself, for in nothing else had their relations changed, except in the light thrown upon them by Victoria's discovery. DARELL BLARE. 145 When Darell and Victon**' met at the twelve o'clock breakfast next day, the sleepless night that both had passed might be justly said to have borne different results. Victoria had spent the night in agonies of self-reproach; she could not understand how she had ever had the courage to speak to Darell as she had done the previous evening; and he had been so good to her, thought poor Victoria, so good I Why, another husband would have justly lost his temper, as she had lost hers, and said horrid things I Whereas Darell had been kind, and loving, and patient, and had spoken to her as if she were a reasonable being — ** which indeed I was not then," added the penitent to herself. What a wicked, foolish crfiature she had been to go and disturb DarelFs mind, and to worry him with stupid jealousies I Why, of course it was natural that he should like Lady Alma*8 society, and that he should cultivate it, and if that fair lady appreciated Darell at his just value — here poor Victoria gave a gulp — well, ought not she, his wife, the person he was working for, as he had told hf^r last night, be proud that he had met \vnth such recognition, instead of lowering herself by a jealousy that looked as if she distrusted her husband's faith t And in the ardour of her penitence — which, alas I ■■■■■■I wmm 146 DARELL BLAK2. by the irony of Faie, came twelve hours loo late — Victoria would have gladly blacked Darell's boots, if by so doing she could have felt thot she atoned for her outbreak of the night before. ' "Shall you dine at home to-day, dear?" she asked, when Darell rose from the table and proceeded to light a cigarette preparatory to starting on his various business and political visits. The question was one that Darell was awaiting with some anxietj'. He had been too much absorbed in his own feelings to notice the depth of Victoria's penitence ; it was not his habit to probe other people's feelings unless for some special reason. He saw that she was as kindly disponed and amiable as usual, but he had a certain man-like nervousness of provoking another scene, and he was not quite sure how she would take the announcement of the arrangement of his even- ing. He paused a moment before replying, ap- parently occupied with a strangely recalcitrant cigarette. *' No, Vic," he answered ; " I promised Sedley last night to dine with him — er — at the House, to discuss that very question of the Radical candi- dature of South Peckbam." Darell's hesitation JP?'"' DARELL BLAKE. 147 followed by his rapid utterance did not escape Victoria's notice. *' Poor dear lad I " she said to herself, '* he is afraid of hurting me," and with a loving smile she said aloud, " Lady Alma will be one of the party, I hope I ** Darell opened his eyes in surprise. ** Why, yes, \io, she will be there, and Mrs. Walpole too. They are the bosses of the Radical Women's Association, you know, and if they set their organisation going in my favour down there, why, the battle will be as good as won." ** I am so glad, Darell dear," said Victoria, her pure, unselfish soul shining in her eyes as she came up to him and placed a hand on his arm, " You must not think anything of my wicked foolishness of last night. I must have been, as you said, quite crazy ; and I am only too glad if Lady Alma is sufficiently interested in you, as she must be," she added proudly, " to help you on in your career. I know I am too stupid to under- stand political matters as she does, aud she is no doubt quite right in thinking they would bore me. So please don't think anyth.ug more about what I said. I was all wrong, and you were right, and you must forget all about it." •* You are a dear good girl, Vic," said Darell, kissing her. " I do not know whether you under- ■■^ 148 DARELL BLAKE. stand politics, but you understand how to make a man happy in his home, which he never can be if his wife nags and worries him. But, by Jove I it's later than I thought. I must be off, for I have a lot of things to see to before getting to the House for this Iriph debate that is to be on to-day. Good-bye, Vic; kiss the chicks for me; and don't let yourself get hipped and gloomy again;** and kissing his wife with light-hearted careless- ness between two puffs of his cigarette, Darell departed, feeling that Victoria was, as he had said, *' a dear good girl " to have taken in such good part the announcement of his dining in Lady Alma's society ; while Victoria, glowin bcwith the repressed enthusiasm of self-sacrifice which always possesses so powerful an attraction for silent, undemonstrative natures such as hers, felt passionately grateful to Darell for having accepted her self-sacrifice so graciously. « » « ■ • * It was one of those afternoons in the House of Commons which have not been uncommon of late years. The Irish members were on the war-path, and Irish affairs " blocked the way " in the manner only too well known to the sufiering Saxon. There had been a sharp debate on a matter of burning interest to Irish patriots. The brutality of the DARELL BLAEE. 149 eonetabulary and the bloodthirsty rule of the Castle had been denounced in fitting terms by a succession of voluble orators; and the House had lapsed into that tired, stolid attitude of patient ehdurance when Members make up their minds to camp out under arms for a night if necessary, to protect the integrity of the Empire and the fortunes of the Ministry. The House was nearly empty when Darell Blake came down from the Speaker's Gallery, lit embers were dotted about in attitudes of drowsy somnolence, wherein it may be said that ease took precedence of elegance. The lobbies also had but few occupants, while the Library and Smoking-room contained the relays of the army that were on duty in case of a sudden attack in the Division Lobby. The Government had had a hard bout during the afternoon, and the Opposi- tion had complacently held aloof, if not openly sympathised with the Irish party. It was known to a man what the di^^ision would be, but no one knew when it would be allowed to take place. The dinner hour was approaching, and each side had banked their fires preparatory to getting up steam again later. Darell had followed the debate with the keenest interest. He was, of courso, an ardent Home 150 DARELL BLAKE. Ruler, and, even in years gone by, he had advo- cated the cause with an enthusiastic warmth which had brought about many discussions with Mr. Tidmarsh, who trembled lest the fortunes of the Middleborough Herald should be compromised by its editor so openly championing the Irish cause. He felt flushed with the scent of the fray, and longed with every pulse of his being to be down below in the thick of it. He had leaned over the gallery, looking down upon the wild and somewhat purposely unkempt group of Celts beneath, who had carried on the attack ; and the race instinct and sympathies had cried strongly within him aj he listened to them speaking with that passionate and picturesque eloquence which is so pre-eminently an Irish gift. He had watched the calm contentment of the front Opposition bench when Ministers were fussing around, and con- sulting volumes of Hansard, hurriedly sent for, to refresh their memories against some accusation that had been hurled at them with regard to former inconsistencies. Mentally he had written half-a-dozen leaders calculated to pulverise tko Government, '*if only the people would under- stand!" and yet, with all his preoccupation and interest in the debate, he had found time and thought to let his gaze wander from the double DARELL riiAEE. 151 rows of green-leather beDchea below, over the re- porters* gallery, with its rows of oconpants either iu the depths of work or on the heights of abstraction, up to that species of Zenana-like arrangement of gilt trellis-work, behind which he had every reason to beheve Lady Almr was seated, awaiting the dinner hour, when Sedley was to fetch her. The prospect of meeting her so soon, and of being able to disctiBs with her all the incidents of the aftemocto, had given him, if possible, a still keener interest in the debate, and as the hour of their meeting drew nigh Lady Alma's image crept insidiously into his brain, blotting out everything else with the one fact that he was so soon to see the woman who, ttnce the scene with Victoria, had as it were been bom anew to him, and had acquired a significance he in no way dared to analyse as yet. In that unattractive, subterranean vault, which the " best club in London " graciously reserves for the use of its feminine visitors, there were many dinner-parties that evening ; and from the comer, where was placed the small table occupied by Lady Alma, Mrs. Walpole, Sedley, and Darell, a most comprehensive view of the extraordinary mixture of human beings could be obtained. The difference of appearance between the stiff and un- bending Tory of the old school, and the ostenta- 152 DARELL BLAKB. tiously uncouveutional Radical, was hardly as marked as the difference between their various feminine guests; who, howeyer, in most cases, overcome by the novelty of their surroundings, laid aside the ordinary interchange of feminine glances, for unaffected curiosity with regard to the politi- cal lions whom they most wished to see and identify. Lady Alma had glanced keenly at Darell when they met. She was still thinking of the circum- stances under which they had parted the night before, and she was eager, impatient, to know what had been the result of Victoria's interference. Her eyes, as they met Darell's, were sharp enough to detect instantly a change. Darell's glance was to a certain extent troubled ; his eyes did not meet hers with that boyish frankness and open- ness of welcome to which she was accustomed. Change there certainly was, but even Alma's eyes could not pierce sufficiently below the surface to see wherein it lay. AH through dinner the talk turned chiefly on the debate of that afternoon and its probable results, and Darell was glad of so general and impersonal a conversation, for he felt somehow more disturbed than he cared to acknow- ledge. He could not look at Lady Alma across the table, nor meet her eyes, without Victona's DARELL BLAKE. 153 I words recurring to him, **She cares for yon I She has eyes for no one but you I" He did his best to keep up his share of the conversation, but it was uphill work, and Sedley's quick eyes and ears were not long in detecting that his proUgi was not like his usual self. "Is he, beginning to wake up, I wonder?'* thought that astute personage, " or is he getting restless under her ladyship's chain ? By Jove I it is as amusing as a play to watch these two, and I'll take care she has a free hand to play her fish presently. . . « Dqp't you think. Lady Alma," he continued aloud, "that the room is unbearablv hot, and that we might make a move to the terrace. We can have our coffee out there." " Just as you like," said Lady Alma, indifferently; she was always on her guard with Sedley, and had not the least idea of showing her impatience to get away from the dining-room. " I am tired after my long afternoon in that dreadful cage upstairs, and would gladly sit still ; but I suppose I can do that as well on the terrace as down here." " Oh, let us go by all means I " cried Mrs. Walpole ; **but I do not mean to sit still like you Alma. Tou must remember I have not been here this afternoon; I want to hear some of those ■ 154 DARELL BLAKE. delightful Irishmen talk. It is so amusing to see them gesticulate, and tear their hair, and pull each other down by the coat-tails I '* ** All right, Mrs. Walpole, so you shall when you have had your coffee. I'll see to that," said Sedley, jumping at the prospect he saw offered to him of shelving Mrs. Walpole for the evening. The air on the terrace seemed deliciously cool after the stifling atmosphere of the vault they had just left. The ** young May moon," immortalised by Moore, was visible, rising over the dark mass of St. Thomas's Hospital oppopite, a shining silver thread of e crescent against a slcy of lapio-lazuli blue ; still so young a moon that the stars could hold their own against her, their light being almost as bright as hers. The hum of the unceasing roll of traffic over Westminster Bridge came to them across the water which flowed at their feet, reflecting, as in a dark polished surface of steel, the countless lights of the lamps at either side. Groups of people, mostly men, were lounging about, leaning over the parapet, laughing and chatting as they drank the post-prandial coffee, and smoked the cigarette of digestion. Sedley, who was not of a nature to be mentally influenced by the beauties of a moonlight night, continued the theme which they had been dis- DARELL BLAKB. 155 cufifflDg ID the diDing-room during diuner. He knew instinctively that both Lady Alma and Darell had had, momentarily, enough of politica, but he continued to talk on that well- worn sub- ject, partly to irritate them, and also because he had a decisive piece of news to impart to DaroU which he had not been able to tell him in the dining-room, sun'ounded as they were by Members of all shades of political opinions. The idea also occurred to him that this particular piece of news would please Lady Alma. " Well, if things go on as they have been doing lately," he said, ** the Government will not be able to stand the obstruction of the Opposition. They have had to drop more than two-thirds of the measures they announced in the Queen's Speech. The last bye-elections have gone dead a^^ainst them, and they are beginning to get more than uneasy. If only they can get through Supply, they will prorogue Parliament early in August. Shorthouse was telling me to-day that the con- stituencies are in full revolt against the Radical measures of this Tory Ministry. And now, Darell, my boy, I have a piece of news for you. We are going to run you for South Peckham: it. was f Tially and definitely decided this afternoon. If only thefie ladies will be on your committee, their 156 DARELL BLAKE. influence through the Radical Women's Aesooia- tion is sufficient to give you a majority. You are just the man to suit them down there, and the fact of your Irish descent and name will of itself carry the large body of Irish votes in that neigh- bourhood." Darell grasped Sedley's hand in warm gratitude. He had, as he had told Victoria, felt pretty sure he would be chosen as candidate, but still the positive anuouuceraeut of the fact enchanted him. Sedley interrupted his words of thanks with a laugh. *' Don't thank me, thank Lady Alma,'' he said ; " it was her idea, and like all her ideas, an excellent one I And now I think you had better talk your campaign .over with her while I escort Mrs. Walpole to the Ladies' Gallery, for I suspect the fun must be growing fast and furious again in the House by now." Darell turned to Lady Alma as soon as they were alone. They were at the upper end of the terrace, away from the other groups, which were rapidly thinning as the attractions of the debate drew both Members and their guests back to the House. Darell and Lady Alma were practically as much alone as if the four walls of the boudoir in Grosvenor Square enclosed them, and Lady DARELL BLAIOB. 157 Alma shivored with a delicious tremor of anticipa- tion of the victory which she thought had come at last. *' Is it true what Sedley just said ? " said Darell, in a low, eager voice ; " m it really to you, Lady Alma, that I owe this attainment of what is almost my greatest ambition t " Lady Alma turned her head and looked at him with a smile. *' Don't say * attainment ' yet, Mr. Blake," she answered ; ** why, we have not ytt opened fire, and you have already won the battle in imagination I That is going too fast, for we may have a hard fight in store for us. And don't talk of * owing ' me anything. It is true that I suggested to Mr. Sedley that you would be in- valuable in the House, and that such a conHtituency as South Peckham was the very one to suit you ; but that is no more than any one could have done who knew you as well as I ; and I owe you far more than that," she added softly, " for you have given me not only an interest in the affairs and questions of the day such as I have never known before, but you have also taught me to believe that there are some men whose political convic- tions and love of their toiling brethren are sincere, and who are not mere place-hunters, ready to trim their sails to every passing breeze of popular IW DARELL BLAKE. fancy ; and such a belief means a great deal to me in the world I have to live in.** The liist words were uttered with a gentle ead- nesfl, a sort of unexpressed regret that her lot should bo cast amongst cynical and unbeliev- ing souls, by whom she must necessarily have li(T aspirations lowered, that touched Darell to the quick. He looked at her with all his soul in his eyes, for what with the turmoil of spirit in which he had been ever since the discussion with Victoria, the haunting ideas to which that discussion had given rise, and the effect on his nerves of the silence, the dark flowing river, the stfirlight, and the presence of this woman, Darell was losing his head almost as rapidly as even Lady Alma herself could wish. She had turned away as she said the last words, and the tone and movement almost gave them the character of a confession made to his ear alone, of which she almc repented. No one knew better than Lady Alma how to affect the imagina- tion of a single hearer or observer without a spoken word. She was one of those women who could calculate to a nicety, with the most perfect sang- froid, the exact effect which some apparently spontaneous movement might have upon the fly she was endeavouring to attract into her web. ■f»f^A«^ DARELL BLAKE. 150 Almost all men are strangely unaware of tluR dramatic instinct which women of the typo of Lady Alma possess in a marked degree. As she leaned her chin on her hand, and gazed out over the river, Darell could only see her profile delicately outlined like a cameo against the dark background. The black hat she wore threw a mask-like shadow, replete with mystery, across her eyes, which prevented Darell seeing their ex- pression. Her red-gold hair in all the capiicious- of curls and waves, which was perhaps ness its greatest beauty, gleamed almost like metal above the white neck, its colour rioting over the sombre black of Lady Alma's attire. Every curve, every line of her form as she leant against the parapet seemed to breathe the gentle resigna- tion of a.femmedncompri8e ; and Darell who had never seen Lady Alma so tenderly sad before, felt his pulses thrill with a wild chivalrous impulse to defend her — against what? He could not tell, but the charm of the feeling lay in this — that he longed to defend her, and that she seemed to tacitly invite him to do so. " How can you say that you owe me anything," he said huskily — " I to whom you have given a new interest and enthusiasm in ever)? thing? My work, my ambition, my whole life, everything has n J 60 DARELL BLAKE. seemed intensified to me sinoo I knew you. You are a different experience in my life from any that has f^one before. You are the only friend I e.ver had, the only person who has ever shown me true sympathy and interest. I have never known a woman — and indeed I may almost say I have never known a man — to whom I could talk as I have done to you, with the conscious certainty of being understood. And now to everything else, to the increased interest, to the intensity of life that you have given me, you add that of tlie crowning ambition of my existence, and you won't let me than!; you I Thank you in words, it is true, I can- not, but I think you know what I feel, and that I shall never forget your goodness to me." Darell's voice broke oflf suddenly. As he heard his own words, which seemed to hiju to be spoken by some force over which he had no control, he was thunderstruck at the revelation which swepi over him of their truth. It was true that his life seemed completely changed since he had known this woman ; that she had drawn him out of himself as nothing had ever done ; that every interest, every ambition, every pursuit, seemed to relate to her; that she had absorbed and per- ipeated every atom of his whole being. How could he have been so b.^md as not to recognise DA5ELL BLAEB. 161 it before! When, in all his life, had he ever experienced anything like the thrill whioh swept oyer him as he looked at her now, standing in the moonlight, her black draperies falling in straight lines to her feet, her hands with their iiiterlaced fingers showing white against her. dress, ii^hile her eyes, those brilliantly blue eyes he knew so well, looked at him out of the shadow that l%j acrotis them ? And with the sudden realisation of what this woman had become to him, there fell oxa him a sudden great fear — a fear such as might have fallen of old on a devout pilgrim to Ephesus when he entered the temple and found himself at the feet of the goddess Diana. He trembled lest he should offond her, this pure, stately woman; she must never know what his feelings were towards her. Had he, perhaps, let his newly discovered secret slip from him ? He hoped not, with an intensity bom of the sudden insight into the depth of his feelings ; and he instinctively fe- 1 that if he once let himself go, he was lost. Lady Alma had turned from her contemplation of the river as Darell spoke, and had stood listen- ing to him, her half-closed eyes and the almost imperceptible smile on her lips being the only outward and visible signs of her intense secret aatisfaction. " So this was the result of Mrs. L / 1 162 DARELL BLAKE. Blake's interference the night before t" she said to herself, when Darell broke off. There was a pause ; Lady Alma was slightly suiprised ; she waited for him to go on. Why did he stop short in this way, with an expression of banal gratitude for the political lift she had given him I He surely had something more to say than to praise her for her intelligence I But Darell said nothing. He, in his turn, now leaned over the parapet, seeing nothing, only occupied in master- ing the fight that was going on within him. He was blindly aware that Lady Alma had listened in silence, without the slightest movement breaking the erect, statuesque repose that was so character- istic of her; and with the peculiar clearness of vision of a man in love, he felt certain he had already offended her. He could have knocked his head against tiie stone parapet at the thought. And just as he reached the uttermost depth of despair, and when the black, glossy surface of the river at which he was staring began to suggest ideas of suicide, a hand was laid lightly on his arm. " Listen,*' said the low voice of Lady Alma, in the quietest of tones; " don't thank me now, thank me later on, if you will, when I have done all I can to win you the victory. And win it you shall ; there's my hand on it I " DARELL BLAKS. 163 The touch of Lady Alma's cool, slender fiugers, which Davell seized, much as a starving dog will snatch at a bone, was the last straw on the back of his resolution. It is, perhaps, unnecessary to inquire whether she had foreseen the effect ; but as Darell pressed her hand between both of his, with only one idea in his tempest-tossed brain, she threw her head back slightly, as if she already were listening to something she longed to hear. What Darell might have said under these circum- stances will never be known, for at that moment the cheery voice of Sedley broke in upon them. *' Well, Lady Alma, are all the details of the campaign decided on yet? Mrs. Walpole has sent me to ask if you are going home soon, and if you will drop her on your way t . . . . . Just in time to save my young friend, it seems," he said to lumself, as he noticed DarelPs dazed expression as he dropped Lady Alma's hand. 164 # CHAPTER IX. The days and nights that followed that erening at the House of Commons may be said to have taxed Darell Blake's powers of endurance to the uttermost. His whole mnd was concentrated in the effort to keep himself from losing his head, as he had so nearly done on that occasion. He felt bitterly ashamed of himself when he thought of the words that had been on the very brink of utterance when Sedley so providentially appeared. A providential appearance indeed, for without it he would have infallibly spoken the words that were burning his lips, and equally infallibly Lady Alma would have dismissed him and never spoken to him again. The mere idea of telling this radiant, pure, intelligent creature, with her high thoughts, her intense refinement of person and ideas, her repulsion and contempt towards everything that was in any way common or lofv, that he, Darell Blake, loved her as he had never loved anything in his life before, with an intensity and passion that surprised him himself, gave h^ DARELL BLAKE. 165 a shiver of fear and dismay which, however, was not without a certain satisfaction. He never could or would tell her ! the idea was impossible on the face of it. It would be an insult so )iigh-minded a wftman would never forgive, and he felt that it he did anything that would make her banish him from her presence, that that would be the end of him altogether! Not that there was anything common or low in the affection he was ready to pour out like water at her feet. Far from it. She was to him like the orescent moon that had looked down upon them that night on the terrace, ex- quisite, delicate, fair, as far above him as the moon was above the earth — the incarnation of all purity, and as such he worshipped her. It should be remembered, as an excuse for DarelFs almost Quixotic enthusiasm, that he was for the first time in his whole life in love, and from that point of view his schoolboy-like infatuation was natural enough in a man of his headlong impetu- osity and inexperience. No sentimental passages had ever occurred in Darell's life to leave behind them either sweet or bitter memories. He had never loved anything or anybody until he met Lady Alma; hence he had no standard of com- parison in his mind whereby he could gauge the extent of his present absorption. His affection for ^'1 166 DARELL BLASE. his wife was a pleasant equable feeling ; she was a dear, good, unseLQsh creature ; but, if such an ex- pression were permissible, his feeling for her, without his. knowing it, had always been more that of a brother than of a husband. Unfortunately for Victoria, she was not a woman gifted with the particular power to captivate and arrest the interest of a mind so energetic as Dareirs. The small domestic trivialities of every- day life, which she would daily weary and irritate him by discussing, seemed to her to be the most natural subjects of interest between them during their conjugal tite-h-tStes, when Darell arrived home tired and worn out at the end of his day's work. At the same time, the crushing sense of inability to grasp the interests that she dimly felt were ever occupying her husband's mind, acted as a perpetual discouragement to her. Thus it was only too natural that the effect of the con- trast between the minds of these two women, the only two that Darell Blake had ever been thrown in contact with — the one prosaic, timid, and sluggish, yet capable of the most exalted unsellii^h- ness; the other quick, tortuous, unsparing, and devoid of all guiding principle — should heighten the illusion which Lady Alma's personality had produced on DarelPs inexperience. DARELL BLAKE. 167 The man's sentimental nature had lain dormant all his life. From his earliest youth he had lived through his brain alone ; he had been too eager, too restless, too impatient to make his way, ever to think of asking himself whether he had a heart or not. Loving or not loving is far more a habit than most people know or will acknowledge. With Darell it was a habit he had entirely neglected to cultivate, and the result of such neglect was that having at last fallen into the clutches of Love; that enemy of human peace of mind, he found himself struggling vnth a passion that threatened to shipwreck his whole existence unless he got the upper hand. Darell was no weak child, and he struggled bravely, but in such acute cases discretion is the better part of valour, and presence of mind should promptly dictate absence of body. The idea of going away, of leaving London, did indeed occur to him for one brief moment, but he swept it aside. It was impossible he should give up his work, his whole career, at the very moment it was trem- bling in the balance I Besides, in that work, in that career, lay his best hope of salvation ; and he threw himself into the poUtical campaign (which had been opened before him even sooner than he had expected^ owing to the premature resig- I '^'■•••fWirtyMi 168 DARELL BLAKE. ■ i. nation through ill-health of the Member for South Peokham) with an impetuosity which at least had the merit of acting as a relief to his intense mental strain. Only in this way could he let Lady Alma see that the man to whom she had been so graciously kind was worthy of her interest and her approbation. He felt as if he were entering the lists with his liege lady's colours pinned to his helmet, and he resolved in his heaii; that she should have reason to be proud of the champion she had sent into the fray. Only in this way could he ever prove his adoration, both to her and to himself ; and it was, therefore, with the unflag- ging enthusiasm bom of this idea, as well as with the unrest caused by the effort to stifle the passion which strove within him and called aloud for utterance in words, that Darell toiled early and late. Working at the Tribune office, speaking at meetings at South Peckham, where his fervent eloquence had stirred up all the elements of political storm, canvassing, interviewing important people, he gave himself rest neither night nor day, until even Sedley began to look almost grave as he tried to put a drag on his turbulent prot6g4, *• It's all nonsense your working like this, my lad," he said one night in the Trihme office, " no constitution can possibly stand it, especially after i**- DARELL BLAKE. 169 the work you have done, without a single inter- ruption, ever since you came here more than a year and a half ago. You do ten times, fifty times as much as you need, especially while you have this election business on your shoulders. Why don't you leave more to your sub? He is a clever young fellow enough in his way, and if you only knew all that your predecessor left in his hands, you would be surprised." "Hardly a recommendation to me to do like- wise, when I remember where the Tribune had drifted to when you put me at the helm," answered Darell, with a weary smile. He was in that acute state of over-work when one feels as if something must snap in one's brain, and that if it did do so, it would be a relief. He had seen Lady Alma for a few moments that day, and the questions that he read, or thought he read, in her eyes were almost more than he could stand. Not work so hard? Why, his work was the only thing that kept him from going to pieces, the only means whereby he could compel his thoughts in some measure away from Lady Alma ; though no matter how much he strained his attention to other things on the surface, through it all, like the sense of the dominant key in a phrase of music, ran the memory of her beauty, of ber charm, which seemed to hold rmmme A- DARELL BLAEB. every fibre of his being. " You need not worry about me/' he added, ** the JVibune is not going to lose its editor yet awhile. I'll take a holiday in August, and that will set me up again. And as to this extra work just now, the worst of it will soon be over, you know, for the polling is the day after to-morrow. You will be down there with me, won't you t " ** Till the evening, certainly," answered Sedley, '* but I have to dine at the Speaker's that evening, so I must get back to town early, and Hhall not be able to wait to hear the result. Not that I have much fear about it," he added, with a laugh, ** and I have the coi. age of my opinions, for I have backed you for fifty pounds I I have been around to-day to a number of people and they have all promised you their carriages. Lady Alma and Mrs. Walpole have done the same, and they mean to bring down a bevy of workers to whip up the recalcitrant voters. You'll see, everything and everybody will go upon wheels — the pun was unintentional, but we will take it as a good oment So cheer up, my lad, and prepare to accept with becoming dignity the honours that the South Peckhamites are going to shower upon you I " To say that South Peckham woke up in a state of ferment on the morning of the eventful day is DARELL BTiAFE. 171 bnt a poor and inadequate expression. In fact, it can hardly be said to have waked up, insomuch that a considerable number of its inhabitants never went to bed at all, and as these persisted in per- ambulating the streets singing party songs, nrul V heering at intervals for the rival candidates, it may fairly be said that but few South Peck- hamites slept peacefully that night. Never had there been such excitement over an election in that placid constituency before. Both sides had strained every nerve ir. the campaign, but a yet neither had any idea with whom would lie the ultimate victory. The Radical party had felt all along that the fight at South Peckham would be a serious one. It was true that the registration of the Radical electors had been very carefully kept up, but on the other hand Darell Blake was an unknown man to the constituency, while the Conservative party had for once had the intelligence to put forward as candidate a local dry goods dealer, an owner of one of those immense establishments of modern growth which, like Aaron's rod, had swallowed up all the other little retail rods around it. The head of this huge system of local patronage and employ- ment, one Prodgers, was as the straw is to the drowning man to theb Conservative Association. 172 DAHELL BLAKE. 1^-- There had been distinct heartburnings among the titled members of the Tory organisation at the Carl- ton that such a move as this should have to be resorted to. There had been many pourparlers as to the choice between the two evils which had to be faced — i,e,y the loss of a London constituency, or the sacrifice on the altar of Baal by admitting the undeniably parvenu Prodgers to that home of the country gentleman and Tory purist, the Carlton Club. Darell was better known in Pali Mall than in Peckham, and the announcement that he had been chosen as Radical candidate had filled the breasts of the wirepullers at the Carlton with blank dismay. There was no time to be lost in finding a sufficiently strong local influence where- with to oppose this firebrand. It was quite clear that at such a juncture, and with such an op- ponent, it would be absolutely useless to put forward some colourless youth who happened to be the younger son of a Tory peer, so the Prodgers pill was swallowed, though not without many wry faces and murmurings amongst the rank and file of the Conservatives. **Vote for Prodgers, your local Friend and Neighbour," " Prodgers and the Integrity of the Empire," " Prodgers the Public Benefactor," these and many similar placards^ all calculated to appeal DARELL BLAKE. 178 to the self-interest of the population to whom the g^eat Prodgers afforded so much employment, adonied the hoardings and blank walls on every side as you approached the scene of the contest. The battle of the bjll-posters had been carried on with ardour, for Darell Blake's supporters had not been behindhand. There was, perhaps, less froth on the surface, but none the less were there determination and energy. The whole of the Tribune office had turned out en bloc on every occasion that the einployh could get an hour's leave from the printing presses. Many of the most acute battles of the bills had been carried on by the printer's devils from Fleet Street, to whom the guenlla warfare of tearing down the opposition posters had been absolutely delightful. The Radical organisation spent, in compari- son to their opponents, but little money. They had not the. resources of Prodgers behind them. The magnificent fourgons^ with their sleek teams of splendid horses in richly caparisoned harness, bearing the proud device of " Prodgers, Provider," were not procurable on the Radical side to impress and over-awe the electorate. Each little baker, haberdasher, and bootmaker, how- ever who had become abnormally Rad/cal under 174 DARELL BLAEE. the predominating influence of the absorbing Prodgers, was up in arms on this occasion to deal one bold blow against the hated rival, salving their consciences meanwhile with the belief that they were actuated by a spirit of the purest patriotism. Needless to state the orthodox clergy were on the * side of the big fourgonsy the tat horses, the wealth, and the eminently conserva- tive respectability of Prodgers. The dissenting element went therefore " solid " for the Radical candidate — Wesleyans, Baptists, Nonconformists, Salvationiets, all toiled manfully for the man who promised to b'"'ng about the Disestablishment of the Church of England at the earliest possible date, and the prospect of such a distribution of loaves and fishes impelled them to canvass every comer of the district. South Peckham was in a ferment of what it was pleased to consider national emotion. It felt that not only the eyes of all the civilised world were upon this particular election, but that the Ministry itself was trembling in its shoes at what might be the verdict of South Peckham. Had not the Iribune placed this issue clearly before the electorate t Thus it came to pass that while the worthy Peckhamites were working themselves up into a perfect furore of political passion under the stirring speeches of / DARjfiLL BLAKE. 175 Darell, which revealed to many of them, no doubt for the first time, Uj?dreamt-of political issues, they were also enjoying the delicious sensation of being individuals of public prominence, and at the same time gratifying the petty jealousies and local hatreds that are so peculiarly characteristio of the genus of Little PedHugtons. No wonder, therefore, if South Peckham enjoyed ifjgelf when the great and eventful day at last arrived. All day long the streets and tho- roughfares were crowded. Ordinary business was practically at a standstill, for every tradesman in the place, with few exceptions, was an ardent partisan, and every one who possessed any vehicle other than a wheelbaiTOw, was both pleased and proud to lend it for the service of the candidate he supported. Outside help, too, was not wanting, and much amusement might have been derived from studying the faces of the smart coachmen from the West-end, obliged to drivt voters to the poll in what they evidently looked upon with contempt as an uncivilised and unseemly part of London, which no coachman who respected him- self could be expected to know. Most active of all, darting hither and thither through the crowd, was a miniature dog-cart, brown in colour through- out, and driven by Mrs. Chester, a small but most m m 176 DARBLL BLAKE. enthusiastic worker on the Radical Women's Asso- ciation, to whom Sedley had given the appropriate sobriquet of ** Mother Carey's Chicken of Politics," for, like her prototype, she was always the har- binger of storms. The energy of this little lady knew no bounds; and in pursuit of voters she would whip up her little rat of a pony, and reckless of life or limb, or of the safety of the small tiger who occupied a slippery and precarious seat at the back of the tilted-up cart, she would dash through the crowd, and having secured her prey, land him in triumph at the poll, and then swoop off after another. There was no withstanding her eloquence or her energy; and it may safely be said that Mrs. Chester, in the course of that long day, did greater service to Darell than any other individual who worked to secure his election. Lady Alma and Mrs, Walpole were also amongst the workers, but while Mrs. Walpole did her best to emulate Mrs. Chester's feats of activity. Lady Alma remained the greater part of the day at one or other of the committee rooms going over the lists of voters, seeing that no one was forgotten, hearing reports, sending oat mes- sengers, and generally superintending the progress cf the battle. Darell was but little with her, but I 1 I DARELL BLAKE. 177 also this she did not seem to mind. Even her steady pulses were quickened under the influence of the fight that was going on. She felt confident of Darell's victory, and at the bottom of her heart she felt equally confident that her victory over Darell would not linger long behind. She had read him with her usual quickness, and the fight he had been waging with himself ever since Sedley's interruption on the terrace — Lady Alma even now could not think of that inteiTuption without a frown — was not altogether unknown to her; and with her habit of analysing her sensations, she owned to herself that though Darell's elusiveness irritated her, at the same time it had invested him with an attraction which she had never felt in her life before. She had never known a man who struggled against any feeling with which she might have inspired him; and as she watched Darell, and saw not only how he fought with himself, but how that fight was beginning to tell upon him, she told herself, with keen delight of anticipation, how exquisite the moment of victory over such a nature would be when it came. But Lady Alma was one of those rare women who, though they never lose sight of their quarry, understand the science of stalking; and to mix •r *«mi* mmmgigttmaam 178 DARELL BLAEE. U ] eentiment with the tunnoil of an election would be, she felt, a fatal error. Whenever she and Darell met during that long day, she was charmingly amiable, sympathetic, full of interest in the battle, and of encouragement as to the result ; out not in looks, gestures, nor words did she in any way seek to disturb his mind or suggest more personal or tender thoughts. In her cool white embroideries and straw hat, with a bunch of dark blue cornflowers and dark blue ribbon — Darell's colours — at her breast, the sight of her rested him *' like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land." All the sense of struggling seemed to have slipped from him like a cloak from his Ehoulders, in the closeness of interest which seemed to bind them together that day ; he even forgot or only dimly remembered that he had ever struggled at all. He had not time to analyse his feelings, or to ask himself what this new peace which had succeeded the turmoil of the last weeks might mean. There would be time enough to explain and understand later on ; for the moment he could think only of the battle which was raging around him, and in which he felt that his whole life was at stake. Lady Alma had no intention of deserting the battlefield without knowing who had carried oflf the I DARELL BLAKB. 179 might plain could round e was g the >fftho victory, and had accordingly, with Mrs. Walpole and Mrs. Chester, accepted ihe invitation of one of the local dames, the wife of a rising rival of the jedoubtablo Prodgers, to dine and rest at her house while awaiting the result of the counting of the ballot boxes. Not that she really needed rest. She was as untiring, when she was interested, as a wolf or a Red Indian ; and she had never before been so interested as she had been that day. Far otherrvise was it with Mrs. Walpole. That good lady, by the time the evening came on, felt that to spend a whole day away from a looking-glass was a sacrifice on the altar of friendship and popularity which was too severe for her weak nature. It was true she had a powder-puff in her pocket, but what was a miserable puff", after a hot summer's day of work, and talk, and excite- ment, to a lady so carefully built up and artistically made youthful as Mrs. Walpole ? She felt that her toupee, though warranted to have been made of "naturally curling" hair, was growing limp and dishevelled, and she felt distinctly put out when she looked across the table at Alma Vereker and saw what *' naturally curling " hair really meant. What a fool she had been not to have gone straight home, instead of saying she would wait to hear the result, and drive back with Alma an !' ( r I i i 1 DARELL BLAKE, Darell I Poor Mrs. Walpole u UBually good temper had given way under the combined influences of fatigue, heat, and abo^e all of mortified vanity, when she compared her own dishevelled, worurout appearance and flushed, haggard cheeks with the cool serenity of the younger woman opposite. She mentally determined not to court such a com- parison any longer than she could help, and when tlie hour for the declaration of the poll drew nigh, and Lady Alma announced her intention of going to the Town Hall, Mrs. Walpole excused herself on the ground of fatigue, and said she preferred to wait where she was till Alma returned to fetch her. The poll closed at eight p.m., and Darell had adjourned to the Town Hall, whither the ballot boxes had been carried. Each side was in the highest state of excitement, and fully believed it had secured the victory. Prodgers was passing the anxious hours in one of the committee rooms downstairs, surrounded by a bevy of his sup- porters, ^hile hia representative was watching over his mterests upstairs in the room where the counting of the votes was going on under the eye of the sheriff. Darell, in another room, was, with his usual impetuosity, busily employed with his various agents in the occupation known as I- \ I DARSLL BLAKE. 181 ** counting his chickens before they were hatched.** But the hatching was accomplished now, for as Lady Alma arrived at the door of the room where Darell and his supporters were waiting, an excited partisan came tumbling down the broad stairs at the imminent risk of his neck, gasping out that Darell Blake had won the day. The news ran like wildfire, and as the members of both committees accompanied the rival candi- dates upstairs, their ears were almost deafened by the uproar that burst from the crowd outside as the result of the election was passed from lip to lip. Cheers, groans, huzzas, and hisses were freely mingled, and the huge seething mass of humanity surged hither and thither in a tempest of excitement as the sheriff came out on the great balcony abovt the entrance to make the official declaration : — Darell Blake (Radical) 3332 Gustavus Adolphus Prodgers (Conser- vative) 3129 Majority for Darell Blake 203 The hush that had fallen upon the crowd when the sheriff appeared, was but of brief duration, and was followed by a tumultuous storm of applause from every little costermonger and trades- II I fr 182 DARELL BLAKE. man who had gath^^red en masse to assiBt at the dethronemeDt of the almighty Prodgers on this memorable occasion. The Rights of Labour, Free Education, the Disestablishment of the Church, and the most cherished principles of the Liberal creed had vanished from the imagiuations of the en- thusiastic Peckhamite Radicals in the realisation of the personal success which had attended their struggle in this trade feud with the omnivorous Prodgers. The faces of the local magnates, the representatives of prosperous villadom, whose social position in the district had given them the right to be present in the Town Hall on such an occasion, grew longer and longer as they slowly realised that what they believed to be an era of social revolu- tion was at last going to sweep over them. Prodgers, however, with the deep instinct of a tradesman to make the best of a bad bargain, put as smiling a face as he could upon his defeat ; and wi% the same self-complacent, semi-obsequious air with which he would have offered "the last sweet thing in mantles," he came forward and congi-atulated Darell on his victory. Darell, ready to believe in everything and everybody in the enthusiasm of that moment of triumph, seized the outstretched hand of Prodgers, as though the latter had been a long-lost friend and brother. As DAKELL BLAKB. 183 ^0 ree roh, eral jen- ition their )rouB , the social Thtto asion, id that evolu- them. 5t of a lin, put Bit ; and equious he last i,rd and 1, ready in the seized jugh the bher. As this affecting scene took place on the balcony in full view of the crowd, the whole audience howled approval of so admirable and exemplary a ter- mination to the fight. The only exception to this remarkably peaceful electoral picture was the row of vinegar faces of the local magnates stand- ing as a background to the two candidates. As soon as the gush of approving sentiment had somewhat upont it»arell, advancing to the bahiNtrado, looked out o\*t th« sea of upturned faot>« bolvnv, all curiously white and distinct in the 8tvv»ng glare of the gaslight. As he realised that these people were his constituents, that he was their member, that at this moment he wan at lawt touching the height of his boyish ambition, a knot seemed to lise in his throat, and for an instant his emotion almost choked him. But not for long, anc\ recovering himself, his voice rang out clear and strong — " In offering to you, my friends, my thanks and congratulations on the result of our g^eat victory, I feel that there is one portion of my task which is beyond my powers, and that is to make a fitting acknowledgment to those who have fought the fight for me, and to whom, far more than to my own poor efforts, is due the glorious result of ill ! ■ ! ii ! DAWni BLAKB. T indeed both glad »»^^ to-day'. oonteBt. 1 »» ^^^^^^^^ ^ ^ard p,oud that the P"»<='lj;;^„,a ^th victory ; and L should have been ^o.«e ^^^ ^,^, I am the more gUd and ^^^^.^^ ^^ ^, tv,e BhouW have honoured me by ^.^^^^y d champion of -^Xl^and glorious -.a^. ProgreBS. I* « «^^"V conflict on behalf of the a J many year- of ^onfl^ ^^^^^^^^^ ,„t People, to find that they P ^^.^.^^ ^ ,,,,« only in n>y ^f ^now oo- -^-^'^""","w th4m. The day ha« now « ^^^^^.^^^ ^, j^ok claim its rights, .'f*^^?^^; people, and so long as {ortohearthevo»ceof ti^eyj^^^^^^^^ ^ tbey come forward « .^^^^^^^ .„ ^^t themselves actuated by ^^^ ^^ express political 1«-*>°:^,,':ovr^behring power wh.ch tt^eir opinions w^thjheov ,^^^^^ „f ^ they alone poBBe^.»oP ^.^p^lling by aneto- embarrassed Mmistr^ «» ^^ ^g,„,t eratio organisations, wUlb^ ,„„g«tulate you. my them. I bave -°\ ""'^X result of this eectxon friends and «»PP°'^^'^;; offer a tribute of pra»e hut it behoves me also to ^„,„„d way m to the honourable andj^;8^,^„ted. «,eir s.d. ^hioh our opponents have rf the campaign 1 ^^^^ out ^M» A. perfect tempest ot appia DARELL BLAKE. 185 i U le id :d, :he aot jrve look Lg as abow great Ipress wbicb of an aristo- gainst ou,iny lection, praifl® way w^ eir »do Darell ceased speaking, so that it was some time before the tstinmble Prodgers could obtain a hear- ing for a few tiite remarks of sympathy to his dofuated supporters, ending up with the usual promise to reverse the result of the poll on the next occasion. Wliou Darell retired to the back of the balcony after making his speech, and turned round to enter the room, he found himself face to face with Lady Alma. She seemed completely absorbed in the scene that was taking place. Coquetry, thirst for admiration, love of homage, all had, for one brief moment, died out of even her nature. For once in her life Alma Vereker had forgotten her own personality in her admiration for that of another ; and as she had stood there behind Darell while he was speaking, looking at his square, close- cropped black head and lithe, sinewy form out- lined against the gas-lit crowd below and beyond, listening to his clear, mellow voice that rang out with a triumphal defiance in its tones that thrill«d her even as it thrilled the surging mass of people, she felt not only proud of Darell, but was con- scious of a secret wish that it had been her lot to have had such a man, with his indomitable spirit, energy, and enthusiasm, by her side as her partner in life's battles. n 4 fei '^1 IMAGE EVALUATION TES. TARGET (MT-3) C ^°/^ ^.^ 1.0 I.I 1^ tLf. ^ 1^ ■tt 12.2 ^ hi 2.0 L25 ill 1.4 1.8 1.6 Photographic Sciences Corporation 73 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. HSSO (716) 872-4503 V V ^en her heart is engaged, she felt that something was wrong witli Darell. He was less and less at home, pleading always the excuse, which indeed was a good one, of his increased work and of the necessity of his being in the House as much as possible with the stirring prospect of a dissolution at hand. Victoria was sensible enough to acknowledge the truth of what he asserted, but it was not so much '^ DARELL BLARB. 195 when he was absent that she felt the change in him, as when he was with her. There was an unrest, a feverishness about him which was quite different from his former quick boyish impatience of manner. She noticed that he never now men- tioned Lady Alma's name. At first she had been ple£lsed at this ; but in the long silent hours which she spent alone, or with her children, the thought bad insidiously crept into her mind that it was not natural that Darell should never mention the woman to whom he certainly owed so much. At times, too, Darell would have ^.lana of affection and solicitude towards her, which, while they fell upon poor Victoria's aching heart like rain on the parched earth after a summer drought, still would leave her with a strange sense of disquietude and bewilderment, partly owing to the abruptness with which they came and went. Victoria was too single-minded, too unsophisticated, ever to say to herself that these fits of tenderness on Darell's part bore a strong family resemblance to tits ot contrition ; but without being able to explain to herself what it all meant, she had a vague feeling that there was some change working in Darell, that there were thoughts and intcxcsts in his life which she could not fathom, and that a struggle was going on in his mind which, without her 4 196 PAnrXT. niiAKE. kno-wing the cause, yet filled her with a sense of unutterable dismay and dt'Ht)lati()n. All these thoughts Victoria would turn over and over in her mind, ruminating upon them in her slow, pnrposolesH way. never coming to any definite conclusion, and yet suffering through it all in a way who could not put into wordw. All the quiet happiness and comfort of her life seemed to have slipped through her grasp, how or when she could hardly have said ; but she felt as she lay day after day on the sofa in her little drawing- room, panting and exhausted with the heat of a London July, concentrated in a small stuffy house, which, added to the state of her health, was some- times almost more than she could bear, that she was empty-handed and desolate as she had never been before in her life. Sometimes a hope would spring up in her breast, that the birth of her baby would perhaps bring Darell back to her ; but that idea would soon be extinguished as she thought to horself that nothing would ever close Darell's eyes now to the fact that she was but a dull, stupid woman, unable to help him or understand him, as Lady Alma, for instance, did. '* I am only a drag on him, a burden for him to carry," said poor Victoria to herself a dozen times a day. *' I can do nothing for him, and he must despise me ; DARELL BLAKE. 197 ev Lild -by ;ht IVs ull, land •nly Isaid *'I Ime;' and if he does not show it, it is only because he is so good and kind that he would not do anything to hurt me I " At times, under the influence of such thoughts, the drawing-room where she usually spent the day would become too unbearably lonely, even though she kept the chihhen with her as much as possible. At such moments she would waiidir aimlessly downstaire, and generally take rcfugo from herself in the little study, the one room in the house which spoke to her of Darell. Even the fusty atmosphere, redolent of stale tobacco smoke, seemed to bring with it something of liis presence, and recollections of the times when she would sometimes bring her work to sit in happy placid silence in a corner, while he, no doubt unconscious of her presence, smoked and wrote, would throng in upon her. Those times were, after all, not so long ago ; but she never dared to come to that room now when her husband was there. The calm unconscious acceptance on Darell's part of her silent presence had vanished, and she felt intuitively that in its place she would find nothing but the fretful, feverish unrest which now characterised Darell whenever he found himself in her society. She did not dare to come to that room when he was at home; but 198 DARELL BLAKa in his abseDce she would sometimes place herself in the one chair which at all deserved the epithet of easy — a dirty, torn, ancient one of brown leather — that Darell regarded with particular affection as being one of the earliest purchases he had made in the first grinding days of his poverty- stricken journalism. Here she would sit and think of the man who had both made and maiTcd her life — made it by teaching her to love him with her whole heart and .soul, maiTed it by leaving that love ignored and unreturned. With the semi-unconscious imitation of a child she would sometimes take down some old book of his from the shelves, which spread from floor to ceiling all round the room, and, sitting at his writing-table, would try to imitato the attitude which Darell adopted under similar circumstances. Her heart ached so piteously for her husband that even such subterfuges, by which she tried to feel him nearer to her, seemed natural enough. When the memories of their past happy life at Middle- borough, brought back by the sight of all the various books, the battered inkstand, the reafding- lamp, and the many little odds and ends scattered about the table, became too much for her, she would leave the room, her large, prominent grey ^ eyes misty with unshed tears, and either return to DARELL BLAEX. 199 her Bofa in the drawing-room or else climb slowly to the nursery, where she would try to stifle her thoughts by talking and reading to the children. And so, in failing health and utter lone- liness of heart and soul, that pure, unselfish nature bore its slow martyrdom with the uncomplaining heroism granted to such dispositions as hers. It was only on Sundays now that Darell found time to dine at home. From the Tribune office in the afternoon he would go to the House, where he would also dine, returning from there to the office later on to accomplish his night's work on the paper. On the off-nights he nearly always had more or less pressing engagements which kept him away from Onslow Crescent, so that it often hap- pened that if Victoria wished to consult him about any domestic matter she either had to do without his advice or wait for it from one week's end to another. One Sunday evening, at the beginning of August, Darell, in spite of his mental preoccu- pation, noticed how faint and pale Victoria was looking, and with a conscience-prick, the origin of which it is unnecessary to inquire into, asked her whether she was not feeling well. , "I think I am upset by the heat,' replied Victoria. *' It has been so terribly hot and stuffy 'Ml r KJ titjsl 200 DARELL BLAKE. this last week, and you know heat always makes me iU." *' Has Dr. Root been here to-day t What did he say ? " asked Darell. " Oh I nothing but that I ought to go away to the country," said Victoria, reluctantly ; " but you must not mind, Darell dear, I shall do very well here until you get your holiday, and we can then go down to Middleborough, and you will get a thorough rest after all your hard work. I am sure you want a change and rest even more than I," she added, with loving solicitude. Darell did not answer for a moment, and pulled his moustache in thoughtful perplexity. " Yes, but Vic, my girl, I cannot have you getting knocked up like this. It may yet be some time before I can get away, and you had much better not make your going away depend upon me. Besides, as you say, I do want a thorough change and rest after all I have been through ever since we came to London, and I think I shall get away for a fortnight to Homburg, and lirink the waters there. Middleborough would be neither a change nor a rest for me, as you know, and I really do want to be thoroughly set up if I am to fight another election this autumn. So you had better get off at once to the country with the DARELL BLAKE. g^j Victoria ha5 iZiT^:r:f:. *°'^"-" waa another hope failed" for shfhT ''^"* hugged the belief that when lA J^ '"°^*'^ . »-y quietly in the otrt^^^^^f ^-« J«fl"enoes and old .«K,ciatioZ wouL in u^ break down the bamVr k.* . '"sensibly him back to her Now th T° *''^'"' *""» »'"4 H-aag„in,to''Z.X'"IV:o''S-^''"- opposing any wish or intentioi of ZTw ' "' occurred to Viotor,,L^ . j ^'^ * "e^er S'™;;^': -«""-. '»^et.£: None whatever. What H.VI T ""^^ °<'<1«^ went or what happened, ghe m" "'"^ '''^ WloetplacebeslDaJelland'Tul""'"^*''^ of no cousequenoe *''*' '^"^ '^'^ .e^ n^:.,iiTho;r'' ■•- ^ D-11 .id was ,«rtrhnf '• /'-'* -d change t«ribly. She WktHj T face across the fAhU j ^oo^ed at his ". "laggard expression, which she did not 203 DARELL BLAEE. remember having seen there before. How wickedly seMfiih she was to think only of her self I Of course he wanted a complete change after all the strain and excitement of the past months, and it was quite true that Middleborough and the society of herself, her children, and her parents offered no change in any real sense of the word. " Lady Alma's society can hardly be called a change, either," squeaked the shrill voice of the demon of jealousy within ; but Victoria silenced the imp at once, though she winced at the thought, and all intent upon the idea that Darell's health was in any way attacked, she stretched out her hand to him across the table and said with a quiet smile, " Thanks, Darell dear, you are quite right. I did not like to tell you what Root said, because I was afraid of hurrying you and inter- fering with your plans, but he spoke very strongly about my going away at once, as the heat is making me weaker every day ; and so if you have made your plans to go to Homburg ** Here poor Victoria's voice faltered a little, while Darell broke in, in a hurried and somewhat shame- faced way, '* I did not say I had made my plans, Vic ; but that is what I think will set me up quicker than anything else." " Yes, dear, you must go," said Victoria, bravely, Ledly [ Of after >nths, L and [ her »f the called Df the lenced 3Ught, health ut her mth a ) quite •t said, . inter- trongly heat is )u have ie, while i shame- y plans, quicker bravely, DAREIA BLAKB. j^, •; That's a good gnrl," ^^ d^^^„ of intense relief that Victoria U^aV^ *^''"« nonncement of his nil' *''''^" *^« »"- grateful to her that ^ " T"'^- "« f^'* - bending over Lr tilVr ""^ ''' '''''"■^' -<^ r« ten you what J "ll jo x"; '^ "''^'^''- """d • «"* "^"y abroad a few davs In ^ '"*''"°' «oon as I have dor., the .0^' at h' T """^ "' come back to you at ^.,1^ Hoaburg I will «ee. you w,,, nrb: eft tt J"^'' '. ^ *''»*. ^ou Victoria accepted Iec:r!^'T:,7""°"' """ ^as gladdened by it a!d Tn ^'"' " """»«'" -lief was littleTiore i!^ """^"'^ "°^'^«- The and when Darei? went ^ff Tr^"*"'^' ''°"^-••• office. Victoria olJC £';XX'' r^"' her room, her whole Ko- *'''*®^-^'^® stairs to presentiment of^X^S LT"^' *"" "^ -Woh she felt it vain to^st^'r Tr""' .7"^ of the wheels of the Car of T tumbling «> ber brain, and ta Ltf 7"* "^'"^'^ *" iaabihty to arrest its onward "»P°'«°°y. of '*o a nightmare. ShTTald T' ''^'''^"'^ *•«' tbe door of her room /hrblelf " ""'"'"* ''' " > uer Dreath was coming in li U ! 1 ! i the stairs, and partly ^^^^^^^^^ of some human longingB-eptoverherforthetouch o^ ^^^ ^^^^ thing that loved her and tm^nmg 7 ^^^.^ as rfpidly as she -^f^H^^rthe'cot in .hich to the n«..f .^;ild the tiny hands with lay her baby girl, she ""J'^ ^^^^ up out of kisses. But the baby, mMy ^^^ ««sleep,Wrigh^-J-^i%grine. He ^hioh waked up the elder ^^^^ ceptoutof bed and p^-d - ^^^^^^ feet across to ^^^''^^'''TZs it to and fro. to ^ith the baby in her lap, roctong Boothe its fears. ,^^^ .. te said, ^th grave emphasis , ^^^ ^^^ t,ee,i too; and why do !'<;;"'^^„ „i,^„pion, clenching hurtingyouj-aske th -s;^^,,/^,oplehurt^ his tiny fists. 1 ^''°" own lovely mummy. ^^ feed," .. Hush, my son, and go ^^^.^^^ ^^titude «aid Victoria, smilmg at to. P g ^^^ ^^^^.^ through her tears. .T^^^^^;^^, ^ad reUeved ,ead -«i° VS: ov-Lgbt nerves »id the tension "^ J*^ p^,,^j.e noticed had • the tears ^l'*"^^**"'* f P.re«ine obediently calmed and done her good. P«egrm DARELL BLARE. 205 vild nan ^ent itairs , witli )ut of i ^ail 3. He e bare berseU { fro to ^e said, crying ae V)een ieiicbing burt my nt bed,'* attitude oft baby relieved Irves. ft»^ biced bad obedieutly went back to his bed, and Victoria sat oix there in the still, silent night, rocking her baby in her arms, and gazing out over the future with blank, unseeing eyes, only conscious that a sense of coming peace and rest had succeeded that presentiment of evil which had nearly maddened her. • ♦ ♦ ♦ • Other events, however, had occurred that same Sunday which were to have no inconsider- able influence on the plans which Darell had made, for when he told Victoria that he had not actually made any plans, he did not tell the truth. The question of what they should do when the holidays came had beon discussed at length between Lady Alma and Darell at many of their almost daily in- terviews. Though he might plead his overwhelm- ing work to Victoria as an excuse for his rare prtjsence at home, that work never prevented his seeing Lady Alma. She had completely absorbed him, much as a large sea-anemone will enclose some miserable little shrimp in its tentacles, and after sucking it dry, eject what looks like a trans- parent ghost of its victim. The moment of eject- ment had not yet arrived, and Lady Alma's mental palate found Darell a very succulent morsel indeed. His devotion was so absolute, as be had told her, ,, W' l -jMMil tm^tmm 206 DARELL BLAKE. he laid his whole life bo completely at her feet, that her vanity was deliciously flattered, and what she was pleased to call her heart was touched. Her love of power, too, was gratified by the way Darell defended co her judgment in everything. Nothing went on at the Tribune office that she did not know of. Every night, after finishing his work, Darell would sit down and write to her before going home, and in these letters he would tell her everything — what he had been doing, writing, arranging, thinking. When Lady Alma woke up in the morning, Darell's words would come like a daily greeting and encouragement to her vanity, for he was one of those rare specimens, either amongst men or women, who could write a letter really worth reading ; and Lady Alma would own to herself, when Sundays came round, that she really missed her morning budget even more than her Morning Post, *• On this particular Sunday she awoke rather later than usual. The weather was close and over- powering: three fine days had passed and the usual thunderstorm was at hand. Being late, Lady Alma had to practise unusual and unwelcome haste to be ready in time to accompany Sir Matthew and their little boy to church. This was one of the trifles on which the judge was rigid. DARELL BLAEB. 207 He expected Lady Alma to go with him to church every Sunday morning, rain or shine ; and Lady Ahna, as a rule, was nothing loth, for she was quite capable of appreciating the social advantageR and respectability which were to be gained by so admirable an exhibition of conjugal affection and religion combined. This morning, however, she certainly would have prefeiTed to remain at home. She hated being hustled out of her usual calm languor, but Sir Matthew sternly disapproved of people being late at church ; so it was with a feeling of considerable irritation that Lady Alma found herself in the little church ia South Audley Street, looking vp at the tablet to the memory of Wilkes on the wall over her head. She speculated a good deal about this dead and gone celebrity during the sermon. She wondered whether he resembled Darell in character or manner, and smiled complacently to herself as she thought that in looks at least there was no resemblance. And from the recollection of Darell's looks, she wandered off into pleasant speculations of the different surroundings in which they would both be in ten day« or a fortnight's time, enjoying the shady woods of the Taunus, sitting on the rrace of the Eursaai at Homburg, or idling by i i -n "ITTiiWiiM I! i -1 ! i 208 DARELL BLilKE. the Bninnen. What a fortunate thing it was that Darell was not of the same world as Hugh Lin^* say, for instance, an idle, empty-headed youth, whose dangling after any woman could admit in the eyes of the world but on© interpretation 1 Darell, absorbed in his work, had little or no time for society, and besides, if he were occasionally seen in public with her, their common political interests in the campaign carried on by the Tnhune were more than a sufficient excuse. When the sermon came to an end, Lady Alma woke from her reverie, and decorously gathering up her prayer-book and parasol, left the church in the wake of Sir Matthew. The routine of Sunday morning never varied, and after church it was the Verekers' habit to walk down to the green lawn by Achilles, and sit there until the luncheon hour drew nigh. The fact of the season being practically over in no way deten*ed Sir Matthew. He was sure of meeting various of his colleagues on the Bench, kept in town as he was himself; and as for the rest, the old gentleman would declare that he thought the pretty faces of the dwellers in Ty- burnia and Westboume Grove, who flocked to take the places abandoned by the smart butter- flies of May Fair, were just as well worth lookiu at as those of their more fashionable sistera. _^ DARELL BLAKE. 209 in i! ne cal une Ima ring h in iday J the • awu hour cally was in the .8 for Lat he Ty- ied to .utter- tkin On this close August morning the well-known faces were few and far between. Lady Alma and her husband walked round the lawn and then sat down in the shade at the * far side of the grass awry from the dust of the road. She felt dull and listless, and was so apathetic and uninterested in her replies to the few men that came up to speak to her and exchange notes on the weatRer that they one by one dropped off, until she was practically left alone, for Sir Matthew was standing some little way off talking to one of his old cronies about an interesting case he had recently to decide in the Queen's Bench. Presently a sunbeam found out Lady Alma's head, and was soon followed by another and another. She rose and moved higher up the lawn behind the trees, until she found another armchair in the shade, where she ensconced herself, telling her son he might play about if he liked. The heat and oppressiveness of the air made her drowsy and inattentive until she was suddenly galvanised into wakefulness by the remark made by a voice some little way off on the other side of the tree in whose shadow she was sitting. The voice was familiar to her^ and she did not need to make any great effort of memory to recall the fact that it was that of Sir Hugh Lindsay, her quondam admirer. ^t^f /'^W^ II 1 51 T a^v Alma PMO along 'wben we .. Did you see Lady Alma p ^^^^ ^^^^^ arrivedl" he was saying. her in town so late 1 " ,_ ^ ^ soman's "Wby.of ''H tor^erutterauce proclaimed voice, whose t^'ok-tongue* ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^^ to Lady Alma that it ^^« 1^^/ „id creature, ^Uo was speaking. ;-;f /J^^^:::, ,«,,tion to Sir Matthew, too. K he P ^^^^ j ^j^j^^ his wife's behaviour, and less -rr:r.r where the^oet would -00-i<-««^..,rX;Tis^!^'»timeh. takeable sneer, J"^* ^ '^ J , i ^ think she aa look after ^^^^J^^^^^, ,.,y. hut she is was too clever to S'^» g^^ry one at doing it pretty -""P^^f ^ JJ.y ,he ii making the Club is ct'^^^^-'S, t*t m" BUke, that jour- , fool of herself '^^'^^^ ^^ ^^,^^t the other nalist fellow she got >nto ra ^y-" .r^^nre the society of such a "«°" "": TlI wet in horror. She maul" sighed Lady "^ * i,er own account owed Darell Blake a gnidge °n h ^^^^^^^ ^^ had made to »"« o" ^ jf dxo could. ! il DARELL BLaEB. 211 re pa n's led Bon ure, a to hink vonld Ltiinia- ik Bbe she ia on© ••^ naking it jour- e other fucb ft lor. She account ^nce8 she and was e could. being a mere Grub Street writer I If Alma Vereker wished to compromise herself, she might at least have chosen a gentleman ! " "It's quite clear she does not share you^ opinion," answered Lindsay, with a short laugh. He had never forgiven Lady Alma for her treat- ment of himself, and his still aching vanity took a cruel delight in vilifying the woman who had disdained him. ** Mrs. Walpole told md how, on the occasion of that election at Peckham, she got tired and came home with Mrs. Chester, but that Lady Alma insisted upon staying to the end, and drove home alone with Blake at midnight I I don't doubt they both enjoyed their drive exceedingly! " " Good gracious I Did she really do such a thing as that t " gasped Lady Margaret, with the keenest delight, and an admirable and remarkable obliviousness of various occasions when she might certainly claim to have " out-Heroded Herod " in the matter of midnight drives. "Weill it only bears out what Mary Milnes was telling me that she can never see Alma now, and if by dint of persistence she does get admitted, she is sure to find Mr. Blake either just leaving the boudoir, or ensconced in an armchair therein, and looking as if he had been there all the afternoon." •• The fact is»" said Sir Hugh, with relish, <' that ^ m 212 DARELL BLAKE. it is about time my Lady Alma woke up. My aunt, Lady Clapperdale, who certainly is not, as you know, a very severe censor of manners or morals, said the other day that she would not ask the Verekers to any more of her balls so long as Lady Alma chooses for her admirer a vulgar Radical journalist ! " " Oh I so your aimt does not mean to give up entertaining, as some one told me," remarked Lady Margaret. The talk wandered oflF into other channels, and presently the estimable couple got up and left the lawn. Lady Alma from the moment she had over- heard the first remarks of Lindsay and Lady Margaret, had sat as still and rigid as a statue. Her face was very white, the bright blue eyes almost dark from the dila-tion of the pupils, the delicate eyebrows drawn into a straight firm line. She did not look amiable as she sat there in the shade of the trees. So this was the way the world was daring to speak of her I She had always treated Society as her slave, and now for the first time she heard its voice as a master. Her vanity,' her intense love of self and of the homage that had always been lavished at her feet, was up in arms at the thought of what DARELL BLAKE. 213 these two evil-minded gossips had said ; and the remembrance of certain sneering tones in Lind- say's voice caused a sudden crimson flush to rise over cheek and brow, and she clenched her hand with an intense wish to kill the man who had dared thus to speak of her. Well, they should not long have any reason to couple her name with any one's I Darell Blake I What was he in her life more than a passing interest and amuse- ment, an occupation for her idle hours, a satis- faction to her craving for power? And what did all this weigh in comparison to the loss of that social position and estimation which she had grown to look upon as so absolutely hers by right, that it was only the thought of their possible loss, or even lessening, that made her realise that they were- the only things she valued t Darell's love, his unutterable devotion, which she had worked so ceaselessly to gain, were a very inter- esting study as long as it did not cost her anything; but at the very first pin-prick which warned her of danger to her own position, all else vanished, and she remembered the man who yesterday, *with her willing consent, was her humble slave, only as a troublesome encumbrance who must be removed from her path as speedily and effactiyel^ as possible. ., *ff9/^ ^:?-<'i-^'?g^Bgs'yM*fy'P"ww^wMMM ■■ ■MPIIP su DARELL BLAKX, li ' When Darell Blake arrived at the Tribune offioe that Sunday night, he was full of pleasant thoughts. The interview with Victoria had passed off so well, she had heen so sensible and amiable as to his plan of going to Homburg, she had so wisely avdided asking uncomfortable questions as to whether the Verekers were to be there or not, that Darell felt all the delights of an uneasy conscience which has passed through a redoubted interview successfully. He set to work with a light heart, full of rosy anticipations of the time he would have at Homburg. Of course he would try to get away as soon as. possible, not, as he told Victoria, so as to get back to Middleborough the sooner, but because he felt that to be left in London without any chance of seeir '^ Lady Alma every day would be impossible to bear. For an instant a sort of fear came over him at the thought of how entirely she had absorbed his whole life. Suppose anything should happen to her, that she should be taken ill, and perhaps die? Darell almost cried aloud at the horror of the thought, and at the sudden pain it gave him. What would become of him t It would be the shipwreck of his whole being if he lost her I And with a catch in his throat, Darell passed his hand over his eyes to brush DARELL BLASE* 215 away the terrible viBion, and pulling himself together, sat down at his desk. He had got through his work, and was just shoving his litter of papers aside preparatory to beginning his nightly letter to Lady Alma, when his eye was caught by a letter which had slipped oflF the table and lay on the 5oor. Darell stooped to pick it up in some surprise, for Sunday was not a day when he expected to find letters at the oflSce, and he was still more surprised on seeing that it was in Lady Alma's writing. " What can she have to say that she should send a note here by hand on Sunday ? " he said to himself, as he smilingly opened it with the sensation of delight which a sight of her handwriting always brought to him. Lady Alma wrote a firm, clear hand, somewhat spiky and angular, after the female fashion, but certainly more legible than that of the majority of her sex, and Darell's eyes had no sooner rested on the page than he started to his feet with an ex- clamation of unutterable surprise. What could be the meaning of Lady Alma, the woman ho had parted from only yesterday afternoon, whom he was to see again on the morrow, to whom he was in the act of writing his usual nightly words of greeting and adoration — what could she mean by writing to him such words as these T— .. ^^^usasfSi rl^FimaMSSBBB i 220 DARELL BLAKE. brusque, it was only his proper and fitting punish- ment. She had heard that he had called both the Monday and Tuesday before she left London ; but she had given orders that she was ** not at home to Mr. Blake" — orders which had been commented upon with many grins in the servants' hall and housekeeper's room. She was rather surprised that4ie had not written — surprised, and to a certain extent, piqued ; but after all, she thought to her- self, it was much better that he should have tak^a his dismissal so quietly, and she was even willing to allow her vanity to submit to a little wince for the sake of peace and quietness, and the absence of .scenes and letters of recrimination and wild abuse. To such a nature as Lady Alma's, change was essential, and as she sat in her cool rooms on the Untere Promenade at Homburg, looking out into the depth of greenery of the line of trees and the woods opposite, she stretched her arms lazily above her head and admitted ** Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes" and that really, on the whole, she had had enough of Darell. He had been so terribly in earnest, so enthusiastic, so wrapt in his adoration of her as the most peerless created being, past, present, or to come, that she had found it more or less incumbent upon her to DAIIELL BLAKE. 221 into the 30ve dan8 the had c, BO erless .t she er to act up to his ideal ; and Bhe confessed to herself now that though a pedestal might be an honour- able situation, it was also a distinctly precarious and somewhat an uncomfortable one in the long run. Altogether, now that she came to look back upon the past season and her absoi'ption in Darell and his political career, she could understand people making remarks; but instead of acknow- ledging even to herself that she was to blame, she laid the whole burden on the absent Darell's shoulders, and really felt almost grateful to Lady Margaret and Lindsay for having, though un- wittingly, opened her eyes and ears to what was going on around her. As hf^Y thoughts amved at this point, she rose lazily with a smile, as she remembered hbw furious she had felt against those two ten days ago, when she had listened to them discussing her; and ringing for her maid, she proceeded to change the cool peignoir in which she had spent the broiling hot afternoon, for a more conventional toilette. She had induced Mrs. Walpole to come to Homburg with her, and they were going to dine on the Kursaal Terrace with Colonel Forrester, young Massingberd, and one or two other friends. Lady Alma, slightly weary of the society of a man like Darell, who was not only cleverer than herself, I '^^ysiL. 222 DARELL BLAKE. but who often impelled her to use ber brains to an unaccustomed extent in order to keep pace with his arguments, had found a distinct relief in the society of a gandin such as Massingberd. He certainly could not be said to cause her any mental fatigue; and the way he would sit and stare at her, and suck the knob of his stick, used often to cause her a malicious amusement and a refreshing feeling of contempt, neither of which she had enjoyed for a long time. It had been impossible for her to despise Darell. She had had to acknowledge to herself, on many occasions, that he was intellectually far beyond her, and even with regard to the intensity and singleness of his enthusiastic devotion, there was some quality therein which she could not contemplate with the contempt she usually felt towards her adorers, and which evidently, like the devotion of a prewe chevalier of old, was out of date and obsolete in the society to which she was accustomed. With the volte-face which had taken place in her mind on hearing the comments of Lady Margaret and Lindsay, all this superiority on Darell's part had suddenly, instead of helping his cause, been one of the strongest things against him. Lady Alma was too much accustomed to reign alone, to admit for long that any one could not only equal, but DA&ELL BLAKE. 223 •nrpasB her, and she preferred to wipe Darell out of her existence, and resume her own qpm- placent superiority in the society of her usual surroundings. Nor is such a feeling as rare a one as might be supposed; for it may shrewdly be conjectured to lie at the bottom of the choice of silly wives usually made by remarkably clever men. The dinner had gone off extremely well, and Lady Alma was laughing softly at some peculiarly idiotic remark of one of her adorers, as she looked down the length of the brilliantly lit ten'ace, when suddenly her eyebrows contracted into an unmis- takable frown, and her whole expression changed and hardened. Her first impulse on seeing Darell walking up the lane between the tables, was to rise and leave the terrace ; but she saw that he had already seen her, and it was not Lady Alma*s way 4o show the white feather. Besides, the thought flashed through her quick mind, ever ready to look at a situation from every point that would serve her personal advantage, that it would be no harm to let the various people who were dining with her see how little truth there was in the stories of the intimacy between her and Darell — stories which they had, no doubt, disseminated with t\e loving care so characteristic of Society friendships. >'j i §V\.:* -.-.rr—Txr - -11 - 1 •'^-•-"^- ^"-'-"•mrmfflii S24 DARELL BLAKl. I ! Darell Blake*s keen eyes took in the whole gropp with all the rapidity of vision of a man in love, who is torn by conflicting doubt and jealousy. When on two succeeding days he had found him- self, for the first time, refused admittance at Grosvenor Square by Lady Alma's solemn and supercilious butler, flanked by two even more supercilious flunkeys in plush and powder, he understood that writing would be of no avail. He set his teeth grimly as he read and re-read her letter, and the more he read it, the more he marvelled at what could have happened to make her write so absolutely cold-blooded an epistle. For Darell even yet did not, in the very least, know the nature of the woman whom he had worshipped with all the fervour and enthu- siasm of a boy's first love, and all the strength and intensity of a grown man's passion. He still believed that she cared for him underneath the cold and impassive demeanour which, as one of her most saliei^i; characteristics, he had loved; but then he would read the letter, and even his belief would not hold out against the penetrating conviction that no woman who cared two straws for a man, oould write such a letter to him, when she knew of his love for her. Every word seepied to haye he^n calculate^ to ipflici; the greatest ! .1 ^' I ' DAR£LL BLAKB. 225 rth jtill I the of fed; his Itlug :aw8 rhen j^ied ktesi possible pain, and Darell at times almost persuaded himself that she must have been forced to write it at some one else's dictation, until he remembered that for Lady Alma to be forced to write in that way was even more impossible than for her to have perpetrated the letter alone. lie felt that while this mystery was unsolved, work was absolutely impossible. He was in a fever of misery, of jealousy, of doubt of all kinds. Everything seemed to him to be tottering to a fall around him; and he felt that he could neither sleep nor eat till he had had a personal explana- tion of some kind. He told Sedley bluntly that it was perfectly impossible for him to remain any longer in town; and Sedley, who saw plainly enough that the man's whole nervous organisation was at breaking-point from overwork and excite- ment, lent his aid to smooth away all obstacles so effectually that on the Sunday evening, a week after the receipt of that fatal missive, Darell Blake found himself speeding away from London en route for Germany. He travelled straight through. What would have been the use of his stopping anywhere to sleep, when sleep was to him an impossibility? His one idea was to get to his journey's end to see Lady Ahna. His mind went no further. After m DABELL BLAKB. Ha did not care tut. cbao. ™;fj-;jr:;nd was bent .pon what happened n« "^.^^^ lips what was eeeingher. -^^^^--^^^^^^tf ,U hi^ happiness, the -ean^ng of th« --tog ^^^^^ ^^^^^.^^ B, '"^"^•'Vt Llllhe .^ent straight to the house m the Untere r remembered taken ^'-P;^:: ^ ,1" raying she could the day she had got the a ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ """. ? VmTe tetter to read, laughing at some handed ^1°^ ^^^J^J^ t„,,, of the phrases used. „f the an and >pt a same ince. pass 1 she the thii t it foi- I being lion to )Bit:on, Ho )ronKb, and she could have kept out of his way till the madness of his infatuation had cooled down. How- ever, she had taken the wrong path and must now keep to it; but though she had no intention of showing the white feather, she was astute enough to determine that, if it were pcssible, she would avoid a personal encounter and explanation with the man before her. ** I hope your prognostications may be as plea- santly fulfilled as you anticipate, Mr. Blake," she said, with cold politeness, and, turning from him, began talking to young Massingberd of the lawn- tennis match they had seen that day. Darell waited a moment or two, making a pretence of talking to Mrs. Walpole; but seeing that Lady Alma continued to ignore his presence completely, he presently rose, and saying he was tired after his journey, which indeed was but a feeble part of the tnith, he bid the party a general "good night," which Lady Alma barely acknowledged with a slight movement of her head, and left the terrace. As three days passed away without his being able to get a single word alone with Lady Alma, Darell's dogged determination to be revenged somehow on this fair woman grew in intensity. He saw her every day, for he may be said to have If' ,'.5h >■ ,'»>;'. 'I. m ■ffli 230 DARELL BLAKE. fairly haunted her footsteps, aud, in such a place as Homburg, to avoid a person successfully was a task even beyond Lady Alma's powers; but she took care to be always surrounded by a bodyguard consisting of, first and foremost, Mrs. Walpole, who took upon herself the task of engaging Darell in conversation whenever he approached, of Colonel Forrester, Mr. Massingberd, and various young German officers, who were only too glad to bask in the smiles of the famous English beauty. Such a phalanx, led by Lady Alma, was sufficient to defy all attempts on Darell's part to get speech with her alone; but opposition of any kind had aliJrays been the strongest of incentives to Darell, and he knew that his dogged pertinacity was bound to triumph the end. But if, during the week that m I' ' i elapsed in London after he had received Lady Alma's letter, he thought he had suffered all possible agonies, they seemed nothing in com- parison to what he now underwent. Then he had yet some hope that there had been some unhappy mistake or misunderstanding which would be cleared away as soon as they were face to face ; but that hope had been killed as soon as he had seen the look that came into Lady Alma's eyes when she first caught sight of him coming towards her on the terrace of the KursaaL DABELL BLAKE. 231 IB a le rd ho in nel lug ^ iu luch defy iher been . tnew that Lady d all com- e had appy ild be face; on as lAlma's coming [.ursaal. Irritated boredom, surprised and intense annoy- ance, were all written plainly on her face, but of any other or tenderer feeling there was not a sign. For some as yet unexplained reason — which, he vowed to himself, he would shortly know — she had suddenly grown not only tired of him, but had come to dislike even the very sight of the man whom less than a fortnight ago she had allowed to believe she could not live without his society. ]!)arell Blake felt his heart swell to bursting-point as, in his new enforced role of onlooker, he saw all the well-known airs of interest and slow meaning smiles which he had till now imagined had only been called into existence by him, played off on that ** contemptible idiot," as he mentally entitled young Massingberd; for Lady Alma, having returned to the swept and garnished house of social prudence and propriety, had promptly taken unto herself the additional and traditional supply of devils, and she was indulging in a fiendish and savage delight as she played off, for DareU's benefit, on the unconscious but delighted Mas- singberd, the very wiles and graces which she knew intuitively Darell best remembered as being identified with their intimacy. If he would come find thrust himself upon her in this way — well, he #1 41 ..i,:;iTt", i i:Tm w ■■il 232 DARELL BLAKE. should suffer for it I And suffer for it he did, for under the demoniacal skill of that blue-eyed, white-faced torturer, Darell felt madness gaining upon him hour by hour. He was not in a physical condition to stand any extra mental strain. All the overwork of the past twenty months, all the want of sleep, the over-t' -ed resources, the over- <<}xcitement rose up against him now ; and when he watched Lady Alma with Massingberd, and when he found himself eluded and baffled every time he tiied to speak to her, he felt as if almost the only joy left in life would be to fly at that white throat, and strangle her then and there with his own hands I Oh, the joy, the exultation of feeling her hfe bubbling out in gasps under his grip I of seeing those blue eyes, whose damnable deceit- fulness had been his ruin, grow filmy in the death that he, in his turn, dealt to the woman who had tortured him till he could stand no morel All the innate cruelty of the primitive savage, coupled with the cruelty of a man's outraged love and vanity, had sprung to life within him. The former demanded aloud a physical revenge — the lite of this white witch; but the latter, with the intuition of a fellow- feeling, whispered, " Not so ; if you Idll her, the disgrace and punishment will fall on i/ou, while shQ j«?f'. i.iii DARELL BLAKE. 233 wOl be a martyred saint. No, disgrace her in the eyes of the world, of her intimate friends ; wound her vanity to the death, and then you will indeed have sweet revenge for the injury she has done to you I " As may be imagined, Darell had anived at that point of supreme mental excitement and torture when, as the French admirably put it, il ne voyait que du rouge. Lady Alma noticed the change in him with exultation. Every day that passed and found Darell haunting her footsteps, increased the venom of her dislike to this man, who was, as she put it, doing everything he could to endanger her social position and good name. She felt instinctively that people must be beginning to repeat the London gossip that had coupled her name with that of Darell Blake; and she could do nothing to prevent it I She felt trapped, caged, unable to escapa from the obsession of this man's presence ; and she could not see two people talking and larghing together on the terrace or at the Brunnen without being firmly persuaded, like Tony Lumpkin, that she must be the causa of their mirth. She seemed to feel the whisperings of the world in the very air around her, until even Lady Alma's pluck almost gave way under the upreasoning influence of a panic. Such a state of i m ft, •I r . 'I %. iitLZ.^jl^Si^ iBBhSiM '-""v^">'< y».f-y-«« j w. 1.^ *f t*le me fse, last life IVitb vice, truth rt of pole, rasno Dodo Mrs. from Alma, w, my ras not ud not arrived ■iiice he oame to drive the man stark staring mad, and the loDger you delay with so doggedly determmed a lyan as he, the greater the strain on the situation, and the greater the chances of a row I It's a mercy he is an Englishman ! If he had heen one of these German officers, for instance, you would have been the cause of at least a dozen duels befor 3 this, and indeed, until Mr. Blake goes away, you are not safe from some scandal of the kind occurnDg." This was an argument that decided Lady Alma, who was still wavering between her mortified vanity and the expediency of granting an inter- view to Darell. A duel in which her name, Lady Alma Vereker, the wife of the gi'eat judge, should be mixed up, to be blazoned abroad in every Society paper on the face of the globe I This would indeed be the climax I With a very wry face she promptly determined to strike her colours and give way to Darell ; but the mere idea of having to give in to the dogged will and persistency of this man, whom a fortnight ago she could have twisted round her little finger, made her draw in her breath sharply, and there swept over her an intense wish to crush this man who dared, not only to stand in her path after she had swept him aside imperiously, but to dictate, absolutely dictatCy his wishes to her. i a; i ,1 ^'^; ^ 236 DAKELL BLAKE. " Very well," she said, " no doubt you are right, and there certainly is no enjoyment or peace for me until this man is out of Homburg. I would leave myself if I could, but Sir Matthew is coming here in a few days to take the waters, and besides, how do I know that this — this creature " — 4he word came like a hiss through her dosed teeth — ** would not follow me wherever I went t I will write to him now and tell him to meet me at the Stahl- Bnmnen to-morrow at twelve. There is no one there at that hour, and as I do not want the inter- view to be indefinitely prolonged, I iviii ask you to come and meet me there as soon as you have done your dSjeuner,** *' But you know I have asked Mary Milnes, Mrs. Hoare, Colonel Forrester, and one or two other people td breakfast with me, and I do not know if I can leave them," ejaculated Mrs. Walpole in some dismay, for she did not like the idea of missing being, as it were, **in at the death." ** Cannot you postpone your interview till the day after to-morrow ? " " Most certainly not," retorted Lady Alma, with no little asperity. "When I have made up my mind to do an intensely disagpreeable thing, I like to get it over at once. Besides, how do I know that this fool may not make an eeclandre at any ..#•'■' DARELL BLAKE. 237 figbt, cefor Birould ^miDg jBideB, ) word would rrite to Stahl- no one e ipter- tsk you • >u have les, Mrs. o other )t know Jpole in idea of death." the day ma, with e up my Qg, I hke I know •e at any moment? Sitting on the safety-valve is a post only fit for a lunatio," she went on, with a short laugh, " and I confess I am anxious for a quieter situation. But there is nothing to prevent you bringing your guests along ; on the contrary, the presence of a band of people will cut short Mr. Blake*s diatribes even more efifectually than your presence alone would do." The next morning, a little before twelve, Lady Alma was on her way to the wells. Since writing to Darell Blake the previous day, and receiving his laconic reply, *' I shall be there," she had been in a ste^.e of nervous irritation impossible to describe. Never had she been dictated to in like manner before. Even Darell's brief note seemed to her to threaten victory and exultation as well as menace in every syllable. He might have had the common courtesy to thank her for grantiug him the interview ; and yet she knew in her heart that, after the way she had treated him, she would have despised him if he had ! it was this very fact that, though she had gulled this man, had taken possession of every thread of his life and being, had used him as a toy for her idle hours and a supreme satisfaction to her vanity, she could yet not despise him, which caused her to quiver from head to foot in a storm of hatred I ! i 238 DARELL BLAKE. against him I How dare he make her feel that he was her superior in intellect and in indomitableness of will and courage, this man who had been proud to kiss the hem of her garment I That was the proper position for him, the base-born journalist ; and yet here she was, Lady Alma Vereker, going meekly to the tryst which he had obliged her to give him, in spite of herself I She fairly shook with indignation at the thought, and for one instant stopped short with the idea of turning back and letting matters take their course. But then she remembered the open scandal which would inevitably take place, her husband's immi- nent arrival, the paragraphs in the pa»- s (that sword of Damocles to the faithful wort, ^.pers of Mrs. Grundy I), and she continued on her way, but with a repressed bitterness and venom in her heart against Darell that boded ill to that indi- vidual. A certain revulsion of feeling had come over Darell since he received Lady Alma's note ap- pointing the interview for the following day. He had responded to it with characterietic brevity and promptitude, l^ut as he read her note again — only f. few words, saying ** as he seemed desirous of speaking to her alone," she would be at the Stahl- Brunnen, Stc, &c, — and remembered how he DkWSLh DLAKH 2S9 had worshipped the woman up to a fortnight ago, gentler thoughts rose slowly in his mind. '* Hope springs eternal in the human breast/' said a certain poet, with the sententiousness of his tribe ; and nowhere does hope possess so many lives as in the breast of a man so unutterably pos- sessed with the passion and torments of love as was Darell Blake. His want of any former tender experiences came against him even in this matter. She was going to see him alone ; no doubt she would toll him what had happened; perhaps — a bright original thought struck him I — perhaps she had only acted as she had done to try him, to see if his love, the love he had endeavoured so often (and, he was afraid, so clumsily l)to explain to her, was really of tnie metal, of pure gold without alloy of selfishness I and how had he taken this first trial of his novitiate ? He felt overwhelmed and cast down as he recalled what he had thought, and how he had behaved I All through the night he had lain tossing from side to side, as he had done ever since he had got the fatal letter at the Tr'bune office, but with the difference that instead of weaving pictures of rage and fury, he now looked on rosy visions of peace and reconciliation. In the morning' came glimpses of less enthusi- astic ideas ; but with the imminent prospect of at 240 DARELL BLAKE. 'I ! ' I." last being alone once more with Lady Alma, Darell did his best to cling to the pleasant visions of thd night. He was about to make his last throw; what would be the result t He could not tell ; and a8 he sat in the shade, on the raised bank that rings round the Stahl-Brunnen, like the edge of a cup, he felt that the first sight of Lady Alma's face, the first tone of her voice when she addressed him, would tell him, far more than words, what he had to expect, whether he was to have life or death at her hands. His fate was trembling in the balance, and he was in a white heat of impatience, " To put it to the touch, To win or lose it aU." Mechanically he put his hand in the breast pocket of his coat, and drew forth the letter of dismissal which had destroyed all his hopes of happiness and ambition. His hand clenched upon this letter; it had never left his possession. He had read and re-read it until he knew every word by heart, and yet each time he conned it over it seemed to him to distil some fresh venom. How had she dared to advise him to go with Victoria ; she, whose one object had apparently been to separate him from his wifet And then he suddenly remembered that he had not written DARELL BLAKE. 241 irell the ow; tell ; )ank edge Lady a fibe than ras to 5 was white breast tter of es of upon He word It over renom. |o with irently id then ritteo a line to Victoria since he had arrived at Homburg, and, in fact, had not read a letter from her which had reached him the previous day, and which he had stuffed into his pocket unopened. Well, he could not stop to read or write letters until this question between him and Lady Alma had been settled ; everything else had no significance beside what was going to happen in the next hour. He looked at his watch: it was a few minutes past twelve, and he sprang to his feet. Was Fihe again going to play him false, and after appointing the rendezvous, not come to it t Ah I she had better take care and not drive him too far I And just as Darell began pacing up and down in growing fury, he heard a step on the gi-avel, and turning, found Lady Alma com- ing through the opening of the trees into the circular enclosure. Lady Alma's nostrils dilated when she saw DarelFs attitude of furious impatience. So this man not only dictated to her, but expected her to be, like a servant, absolutely punctual to his bidding ? Oh, how she hated him for it I though it is only fair to Darell to say that in Lady Ai.iia's mood, whatever he had done, whether Bhe had found him sitting still or walking up and down, drawing patterns in the gravel with ■'i* IT' I I 242 DARELL BLAKE. his etick or reading a book, would have been equally offensive to her, and equally indicative of an insulting superiority. How she hated her- self for ever having had anything to do with such a man! Thank Heaven I she was meeting him for the last time ; and she promised herself that he should have cause to remember tho interview he had insisted upon having. As Darell advanced towards her, their eyea met in a long, straight look. There was no wavering on either side. At last these two met face to face, and for the first time in all their long intimacy Darell read Lady Alma I Whatever doubt he may have felt beforehand as to the frame of mind in which he should find her, was from that moment dispelled. There was no room for tender doubts in that stony look of concentrated resolve and intense dislike. Lady Alma had for once laid down the mask, and Darell could have recoiled with a cry at the expression on her face. And it was into tho hands of such a fiend as this that he had given up his life, his heart, his peace of mind I Sedley*s words, spoken on the \eiy evening he first met Lady Alma, came back to his mind — **God help you, my lad, if you ever believe in a womaa with half the fervour that you believe in politioaT' DARELL BLASE. 213 ten ive ler- ath :mg L'self the eyes 3 no » met tlieir j,tever io the r, was as no )ok of Lady k, and at the to the given edley's Irst met ♦♦ God woman .Utiofll" Half the fervour t Why, he had believed in this woman as an absolute revelation from on high, she had become to him his whole universe, and now — Sedley was right, God help him indeed I Rigid with a sense of her own injury, Lady Alma turned aside from Darell after that one glance, which had been such a revelation to him. She had not held out her hand to him, and he had not made the smallest movement to offer his when they met. Each recognised a bitter enemy, and each knew that this meeting was a dMel k mort. " Mr. Blake," began Lady Alma, in quiet, measured tones, of which the very quietness and level utterance seemed to caiTy a greater intensity of passionate hatred than if she had shrieked her words aloud, " I have granted you this inter- view because you have made it impossible for me to do otherwise. After the letter I wrote to you in London, you might at least have understood that I had reasons for not wishing your presence here. However, in spite of that letter you still thought fit to come here, and since your arrival you have dogged my footsteps with a persistence that has naturally caused a considerable amount of comment and observation. This is a thing that both for my own sake and that of my m ■ *■,'■ I *r !l 1 244 DARELL BLAKE. husband, Sir Matthew, who is to arrive in a few days, I cannot allow to continue, and I have, therefore, given you this opportunity to explain the reason, if you have any, for the course of ungentlemanly intrusion and annoyance you have chosen to adopt towards me." Not one syllable of her words did Lady Alma hurry over ; they fell on DarelFs ears like measured drops of icy water. There was no hesitation in her utterance, no searching for phrases, and her speech was a further revelation — if, indeed, any were needed — of the cruelty and egotism which were almost the key-notes in the woman's composition. She had had to come in obedience to Darell's doggedness of purpose, but he was not to suppose that he was going to score off her all round. She hated him now even more than she had done five minutes ago, on account of the way he had looked her in the eyes while she was speaking. He had not made the smallest attempt to interrupt her, as she had rather expected him to do ; he looked at her fixedly while she spoke, and as he Ustened to the words, each one of which he recognised as having been chosen and used by her with the express intention of inflicting the greatest possible amount of pain, he felt that at last the scales had fallen from his eyes. A wave rTX" W I DARELL BLAKE. 245 of hatred and repulsion swept over him against this woman. Now at last he saw beneath the surface. The hideous callousness of her mind lay bare before him ; the meanness of her trickeries, the selfishness that prompted all the wiles by which she had lured him on, were all made manifest to him now. The woman that had been, to his ardent imagination, a sort of goddess almost beyond his reach, seemed to him now but a vile spectacle of mental rottenness without one single redeeming feature. Even as he had placed her far above everything in this world, so now she seemed to have fallen im- measurably below anything he had e"^8r dreamed of as possible. Something of what the Philistines must have felt when they found their god Dagon prone before his altar and shattered into a thou- sand pieces, passed over Darell, only with ten- fold bitterness, for his Dagon had been — the woman he loved I **So at last I know you. Lady Alma I" he answored slowly, still looking at her with an expression of such intense contempt that Lady Alma gazed at him in bewildered surprise as well as indignation, for she had never seen this look on any man's face before. ** You are an expert show- woman with the puppets you usually manipulate, 14- 246 DAKELL BLAKE. I but yon have never yet come across a man till now, and your inexperience, no doubt, led you into the error of suppoeing that / was a puppet too I Therein lies the greatest mistake you have ever made. You think to taunt me by insihu- ating that I do not belong to your world. 1 thank God I do not I Your society is a sham from beginning to end, where every kind of insincerity and falsehood is encouraged. The friendships you profess are as inconsequent and hollow as the interests you pretend to take in the great questions of life. In all the moments of our intimacy this is the first and only one when you have really been yourself, and I thank you for the completeness of the revelation I The hand of your , worst enemy could not have drawn away the veil more completely from the beauties of your mind and nature than you have done yourself I For this last act in our closing acquaintance I am your debtor. To me, who loved you with my whole soul, who had never known what this feeling was until I met you, ^ho put you on a pedestal above the whole of the human race, it was necessary that the revelation should be complete, in order that I should see you at last as you really are I If I have made the mistake of crediting you with virtues which you certainly do not possess. ,;J9P'-* DARELL BLAEB. 247 doubtless it is that I am not as well practised in the habits and customs of your world as others whoni you have around you. Rest assured, how- ever, of two things — ^you will find no one else who will make this mistake, and also you have cured me radically of any respect for Lady Alma Vereker, or any desire for her society in the future I " Lady Alma stood before him, quivering as if under the lash of a whip. If he had stormed at her, raved at her, upbraided her with the wildest invective, she would have been neither surprised nor discomposed; but this cutting sarcasm, the unveiled contempt of the quiet voice, were a dif- ferent matter. She was being paid back in her own coin in a way she had never expected, which, frdm its very unexpectedness, shook to a certain extent the firmness of her resolution to be quit of Darell for good and all. In spite of her speechless indignation at his manner and his words, her complex nature still could not withhold a feeling of intense admiration for this man whom she could neither break nor bend.- Had she not come there to put him in his placet and, in- stead, here he was positively not only assuming a mastery over her that she did not seem able to throw off, but actually dismissing her with the most profound contempt* ^ ■i A,, '•vll ' -'WlSt.. 248 DARELL BLAEE. Nobody had ever mastered Lady Alma before, and the novelty of the sensation made Ler pause. She almost wavered in her resolve. Should slie part with him thus t Should she allow the door to be closed on all chance or hope of reconciliation 1 She would miss him much. He was superior to every other man she had known. In spite of the absolute adoration and worship he had laid at her feet, he had never cringed to her, as so many had done. He had been her devoted slave ; yet here he was casting away her friendship as if he were as indififerent to it as he had been in the early days of their acquaintance. Lady Alma would have been less or more of a woman to have stood passively aside and let Darell go at this point. Admiration fot the man's strength, regretful memories of their intimacy, self- love, and vanity outraged by the fact that he could give her up in this way, desire to reinstate herself on the pedestal of his good opinion, all raged together in her heart, mixed with a fierce under- current of irritation and rebellion against the supremacy which she had to acknowledge. All these feelings prompted her to temporise and try, if it were not too late, to call him back to her side !*gain. If she could only get him to listen to her in a different frame of mind, there was no reason .^] r" DARELL BLAEK. 249 9 to le at ny sret he the jason she should not win back her influence, and yet persuade him to leave Homburg also. ** Darell I Mr. Blake I hear me for one moment before you ^o like this/' she sai^, in a low, reproachful voice. ** Is it fair — I could almost say, is it manly — to reproach me so bitterly f Have I not always been a kind friend to you? Have I not worked harder than any one else for yom* advancement? Have I not always sympathised with you t and yet now, because I was forced " — Darell smiled contemptuously — "yes, forced, obliged, to write to you not to come here, and because since you arrived you have made me unpleasantly conspicuous, you turn round and say these bitter things of me 1 You have, by your own indiscreet conduct, made it impossible, to my regret, for us to remain in such a place as this together, but that is no reason why our friendship should be dissolved. Why should you not go away quietly f and I will write to you, and then, when we get back to London, we can be as good friends as ever I Tell me you will do this. Tell it me now, quickly, for 1 hear Mrs. Walpole's voice, who is comiug t.) fetch me." Lady Alma's lucKy tact was certainly on the de- cline. She could npt have made a more infelicitoiui speech in every way. To remind Darell at sach • I ^^-T- 150 DARBLti BLAKV. moment, when he had at last opened his eyes to what she wa$, of all she had been when he believed in her, was to sear his fresh wounds with a red- hot iron. It was the overwhelming remembrance of what he had lost, the beliefs and illusions which lay dead before him, killed by this woman in whom they had been centred, that caused the bitterness of his sufferings now. It -was too late for her to try and revivify them, and it seemed to him that her attempt to do so was as heartless as the way she had killed them. It was not the words she had used which had opened his eyes ; it was the whole tone and manner of the woman, and, above all, the look in her eyes when itiej had met that had revealed her to him in a lightning- flash. And once Darell's eyes were opened he was not a man ever to allow himself to be deceived again. Besides, her closing words, as their meaning became elear to him, dispelled any chance of that. Her dulcet change of tone had surprised him, but when those words came pleading with him ** to go quietly,** he understood her object. She had grown afraid, and was trying to attain her end by gentler means, but the end was the same that she had had m her mind when she had met him. Jiven in granting him the interview she had taken her precautions to have it curtailed, no doubt for fear DARELL fiLAKK. m brought abo«i the hour of M. "^ '"""''•» bad onljr her own oveT-alte" ""T^l '""' •^« combmation which 3 J? t * *" ''"'"'^ ^"^ « the opening between the irt "T'^ '" Darell and Ladv Al» ^ "'"'« "'J' ''here towa«I«thei i:Y^r*' •""""'«' "• *""•««« -vi. With a ^ort'Sttr;*'^:!:;"":-'?'' you probably have gue-ed K « "'*,^'''P°'e. people, «y dlvotion TS^X^." ""^ even you do not g„e« theZ^? J"*"?' •"" r wa. foo, enough to behevt^rhLl.r t"*' Jook up to her a* «» ; «noenty, to wo^anLdMrppLr"''^"""'' °^ *«-<•- her uaua, b„ffi"fri:ti:' f^"'''*'«° J^i^e „y Whole „ind, »y thoLht^'m,*" filing every nook and cranny WW. tr,^ •"d after she moulded each in tun. ZTT ^ '"*««• For aome reason whShlTnotT '*"*"'*"" chosen to throw me «ride. like T T' *' •"« d=« wore la. night;" dj^^l' 7"^^ ^°'^- !>«« killed in me ever^hof ^ °"* "•*"•«' "h* -ything good reS^^t oTi'"""""' •"•* ^ -eof^wWe^;-----h« f^7 "**. 252 DARELL BLAKE. to fly from the society of such a woman — verily, a whited sepulchre full of dead men's bones I She requests me ' to go quietly * away from here, and promises to write to me ; but I have had one letter too many from her able pen I You had better look at this if you wish to know what your friend Lady Alma really is/' and with a brusque movement he pulled from his pocket the ill-fated letter Lady Alma had sent to the Tribune office, little thinking that she was laying up bitter humiliation for herself at the hands of a deter- mined and desperate man, unversed in the con- ventionalities of polite love-making. The letter fell open at Mrs. Walpole's feet. DarelFs headlong torrent of words, spoken in far less time than it has taken my readers to read them, had fairly petrified the knot of light-hearted people who had stepped, as it -Were, unconsciously into the middle of a tragedy. All eyes followed the letter as it fell, and Mrs. Walpole hurriedly picked it up and thrust it into her pocket. **As for you, Lady Alma," continued Darell, turning his pale face €md flaming eyes on Lady Alma, who was gazing at him' in blank terror, . and «ter exhauftion cou.d n T :''"'' '''^ """k "« whimpering to her;?M, ;:: 'f "'■" ^^ «l-% from taking an adorer iow ' '" ^'"" «»"'«' society I •' ' "'''° ''o^' not belong to ou. Hi ■■•^_ ■''%. ^■•\ 254 CHAPTER XII. It was not until after some hours of hard walkiug straight before him that Darell came sufficiently to his senses to realise where he was, and what he was doing. The strong physical nature of the man had needed an outlet in action after the intense mtental strain of the scene he had gone through. Of that scene, however, he as yet could neither remember nor realise anything definitely. He felt as if stunned by some tremendous physical blow received from an unknown hand. A vague sense of the culmination of a calamity, such as he had never before experienced, deadened completely all power of reasoning out the events which had succeeded one another so rapidly. It was practically but a few days ago that he had found that fatal letter at his office, and since that moment the world, so far as he was concerned, seemed arrested in its orbit. Memory, time, sen- sation, all seemed] to b^ temporarily suspended, and it was with the numbness of an intellect paralysed through over-excitement and suffering, '; I\ / DARBLL BLAKB. ^^ detached manTefJf t'r"'''^' '» » P«ely but at the same Cfce JL""^ "'"'^"'«'' »"■■» ^ -nd annoyance at bet ^hteTL' °' ^''«°" suffering,, and he wae oLo ^"^^ •""'' "eaire to get awa, aid ^ tr"" ^' ' '"'^'^ It was late in the atternoon when h« K aware that he wae pta„ • thro^l. *K .^'"""* part of one of thL f "^ . «* *''* "'•«''«st f".mtheTaJeX7hm *'»'""'"'' ^°- torn and dusty fZ 1 " ^"' ''•°'^«'' ^«» ebosen throng ^1X^^.1 ''' ^"'^ and sore, and he felt ,. '« ?*' ^'"^ ^^^^ pausedatlaatinatanT '"'"^^^"7- He -aHttlehXtStZLir'^--'"'' t« ^ by one of the chaprn»l I * '«'"^ » familiar sfgh^ i„ Zt"''"™*"' ^'»° »«> «.oh staggered Lardsft L^T" '"""" »«-« ofwh.•chther.1;CtXt;s^e"'^''•^'• name, looked in. It ^-. / T ?^ *^'^ '» S56 DAREIiL BLAKE. invited guest, worn out with intense fatigue of m^nd and body, and weak from want of food, threw himself on the pile of dead leaves, which evidently formed the sleeping-place of the absent proprietor, and was soon in that absolutely dreamless sleep which is the most blessed gift of the great mother Nature to her weary and suffering children. How long he slept Darell never knew. In the grey of early morning he woke, consumed with a parching thirst. He saw a tin pannikin hanging on the inside of the wide-open door, and rising, he took it off its nail, and sallied out in search of water. The babble of a little stream close by told him he had not far to look, and after slaking his thirst to some degree, he bathed his aching head, his burning hands, and his swelled feet, and then, his faculties somewhat restored, he sat down on a fallen tree. Resting his throbbing head in his hands, he made a valiant effort to realise the events of the past twenty-four hours in all their bearings on his present and future. He thought of his life at Middleborough, of the quiet, cftlm devotion of Victoria, of his two little ohildreo, whose very existence he had lately forgotten; and the remembrance of the gentle simplioity and affection with which he # DARELL BLAKE. J)57 ro kd le Ibe -^ was then surrounded seemed to him now "like the shadow of a great rook*' in the sultry desert of passion through which he had so recently passed. Slowly he began to realise the height of the precipice over which he had fallen duiing the headlong course of his mad infatuation ; and all that he had thrust behind him and i;:;nored or forgotten during those past months of insanity now seemed to him precious as the hope ot salvation and the joys of paradise to the repentant sinner. The thought of Victoria's unselfish, unswerving, unexacting afifection, the depth of which even now he hardly suspected, filled his bruised mind and heart with a sensation of being touched by an angel's wing. From her hands he would receive the balm that should heal his wounds and make him strong again. At present, he was sick unto death in body and mind; he must go home to Victoria, for she alone would und irstand and forgive him. With a feeling of inteni^e col ition towards the woman whom he had deceived and negl§cted, but to whom, in his hour of direst need, he turned instinctively, Darell staggered to his feet, and putting what order he could into his dishevelled appearance, he set forth in the clear rosy freshness of the dawn, through the dew-besprinkled woods where the 258 DARETiL BLARE. birds were beginning to wake from their slumbers, to return on the first stage of the journey -which should lead him back to bis wife. When he got back to his hotel, he found it full of the URual bustle characteristic of the daily hour of departure in such places. There were not many travellers leaving, it was true, but the porters and waiters thought it necessary to bustle about with the few trunks and portmanteaus, adorning them profusely with hotel labels, greatly to the disgust of one irascible old gentleman, who plucked them off his property as soon as they were affixed thereto, snorting with indignation at being "turned into an ambulating advertisement, by Jove I" Darell passed wearily up the steps and into the hall, where he was met by the pro- prietor, who wished him *' Goot-mornin',** and then added, '* Ach I but there iss ein telegram for Monsieur, which did ome yesterday, just after Monsieur went out." The clerk of the hotel bureau brought forward the telegram in question as the proprietor spoke, and Daiell opened it mechani- cally. He staggered as he read it. He must be dreaming, and he passed his hand over his eyes as if to rub the blindness of sleep away. No I there the same words stared at him from the flimsy #'• DARELL BLAKE. 259 )e res [ol f- "% sheet of paper: " Victoria prematurely confined; come at once, Tidmarsh, Middleborough" The shock recalled him somewhat to himself, and it was with almost his old, quick determination of manner that he turned to the hotel proprietor, who was still standing before him rubbing one hand over the other with the characteristic* habit of his tribe. ** Monsieur has no bad news, I hope f " he said, as DarelFs white face caught his eye. •* Yes, very bad, I am afraid/* answered Darell, quickly. " I must leave at once for England. When does the train go ? Bring me the railway guide.** The proprietor looked at his watch in sympa* thetic haste. He was a kindly^hearted man, and he felt that the trouble must be great and serious that would call such a look into the face of a man like Darell. "The omnibus will be round in a quarter of an hour for the morning mail, if Monsieur thinks he can be ready by then ; if not, there is no other through train to England till the evening." Darell was half-way upstairs on winged feet before the proprietor had finished speaking. To toss his clothes into his portmanteaus pell-mell, to cram his toilet accessories anyhow nto his travel- ling-bag, took him hardly more time than I take 260 DARELL BLAEB. to write these words. He had no leism'e to think of anything but the possibility of missing this train. If he missed it he'felt as if he should go mad. He was dowL in the hall again almost as soon as the omnibus came round to the door. The pro- prietor had his bill ready, and be it said to bis credit, he did not take advantage of DarelFb inability to peruse it at such a moment. The irascible old gentleman, having guarded his trunks from the contamination of hotel labels up to the last moment, had at la'it reluctantly allowed them to be hoisted on to the omnibus, and had ensconced himself inside. The driver was get- ting impatient, and had begun to talk about the possibility of missing the train, when Darell came flying down the steps. It was not, however, until he was safely on board the train that the nervous tension of anxiety somewhat relaxed, and he could sink back in his corner and try to recall his bewildered thoughts. He took out the telegram, which he had crushed hurriedly into his pocket, and smoothed it out on his knee. How often one has tried with one of those fatal, flimsy messengers of good or evil (gene- rally the latter) to extort from their jerky, abrupt sentences some greater amplitude of meaning wherewith to satisfy the cravings of one s poignant f ^9 ji/^^ff 0^- 9 DARELL BLAKB. 261 on of ne 1- • ipt int anxiety I Darell pored over the words which had shaken him so abruptly out of his lethargy — ** Victoria prematurely/ confined ; come at once** Only six words, but what a world of possibilities they contained for him I He looked at the date- stamp. It had been sent off from Middleborough early the previous morning, more than twenty- four hours ago. What had happened in those hours t Of course the Tidmarshes had not tele- graphed again, as they would naturally suppose he had started at once ; and now he could get no more news until he himself got home as fast as steam could take him. The abrupt ending of the telegram made him close his eyes with a shiver of apprehension. Why had they not said some- thing more 1 They surely could not mean that Victoria was in danger! He put the thought away from him. In his present condition of un- utterable fatigue, of over-excitement, of mental suffering, and physical exhaustion, he felt that if he was to get back to England alive he must not allow himself to think of such a possibility as • anything happening to Victoria just at this crisis. He thought of her as his one hope of salvation for mind and body — the one person whose hand would rescue him from the depths into which he had fallen. She would never desert him at the one 9 ■% 262 DARELL BLAKE. moment of his life when he most needed her, and just then came a whisper, in the still small voice of conscience, " You have deserted her in her hour of need ; why are you not beside her now t " How he got through the journey, Darell could afterwards form not the slightest idea. Fortu- nately for him, amongst his fellow passengers was a man he knew slightly in London, a friend of Sedley s, named Ibbetson. The race of Good Samaritans is not yet exhausted, and Ibbetson, who was really shocked by Darell's altered looks, and the burning fever of his touch when they shook hands on meeting, no sooner gathered what was the cause of Darell's sudden return to England, than he took him under his wing, and never left him till he had deposited him safely in the train for Middleborough. Darell was by then in a state of stupor, unable to think of anything. The throbbing pain in his head seemed to increase with every mile of his journey, and at the same time he was conscious of a curious numbness creeping slowly up his legs, which made him feel as if he could not control them, as if they belonged to him no no longer. ^ Ibbetson shook his head as the train steamed out of the station on its northern journey. " Poor devil I " he said to himself, ** if he is not in for a DARELL BLAKB. 263 Led root >r a real bad illness, I'm very much mistaken! It's lucky I fell in with him, or I verily believe he would never have got to England at all alone.'* The guard, who had promised Ibbetson to look after Darell and see that he got out at Middle- borough, was as good as his word, and Darell was soon deposited in a fly, and on his way to Park- holme House. He was too ill, too dazed, to realise anything but the one idea to which he clung with all the desperation of a drowning man — he was going to see Victoria, and she would take care of him. He repeated these words over and over to himself, as he sat in the fly, his heavy head buried in his hands. No other thought seemed able to penetrate his whirling brain: he would see Victoria, and all would be well; nothing else mattered. The cab, after jolting through the town over the tramcar rails, at last turned in at the gate and drew up at the door of the well-known red-brick mansion. In the dim summer twilight it looked desolate enough, with all its blinds drawn, but at the sound of wheels on the gravel, the hall-door opened. Darell staggered up the steps into the hall ; but before he could say anything to the servant, his mother-in-law appeared on the threshold of the library door on his right. 264 DARELL BLAES. ** Come in here, Darell,'* she said, in a low voioe. Taking his outstretched hand, she drew him into the room, olosed the door behind them, and sinking into a chair, buried her head in her hands in a passionate outbreak of sobs. Darell gazed at her with blank surprise. He felt as if in the throes of a nightmare, where the sense of everything eluded him. What was the meaning of it all, the silent, hushed house, Mrs. Tidmarsh's sobs t Why did she not let him go to Victoria at once ? And just then there came a soimd of little footsteps running across the hall ; the door opened, and little Peregrine threw him- self into his father's arms with a bitter childish wail of sorrow, "Oh, u.id, dadl Mother's gone I Mother will never come back again I Mother^B dead I '* Darell seized the child roughly, and held him at arm's length. ** What do you say I " he gasped out, almost shaking the piteous little figure of his son, who had hidden his face in his hands, half in grief and half in terror of his father's white face and burning eves. Mrs. Tidmarsh had risen from her chair at the sound of Peregrine's voice, and had tried to interrupt the child, but it had all passed too suddenly. She laid her hand on her son-in-law's arm. " My poor lad," she said brokenly^ DAR£LL BLAILE, 265 the tears coursing ^ach other down her face, " it is only too true I Our darling passed away yester- day morning quite quietly and painlessly, and she left this letter for you." Darell let go Peregrine's shoulder and took the letter. His iron-grey eyes were wide open with a wild, unseeing look in them. They wandered from Mrs. Tidmarsh's face to the letter in his hand, and dwelt there for several seconds before he opened it in a mechanical way. There were only a few lines in the large, unformed writing he knew so well. ^ ' ^ in ice )m Ind lall ** Darell, my darling, I wanted ao muoh to lee jon again, but God wiU not let me wait My baby has gone and I must follow; but if I may not see you again, I leave this to tell you that I love you with all my heart and soul, that I bless you for all your goodness to me, and that I pray you may always be happy. Take care of our little ones. God bless you, my own darling. Good-bye. " Your loving and grateful wife, "Victoria." Darell raised his head, after reading the letter dowly as if he had had to spell out each word* Mrs. Tidmarsh was shaken for the moment out of her own gi'ief when she saw the look of despair frozen on his white drawn face. ** Where is shet" he said almost in a whisper. *• In the blue room, ovei* this one," answered Mrs. M I ^1 '■■aa 266 DARELL BLAKE. Tidmanih, " but, Darell, your looks frighten me ; you are ill ; don't go there now," she added, lay- ing her hand on' \i\» arm as he turned to the door. Darell paid no heed, but suddenly, as if new strength had been given to him, he wrenched open the door and flew up the stairs, leaving Mrs. Tidmarsh almost fainting with emotion and gi-ief. He opened the door of the room where Victoria was. AH was dark except for the tall candles burning beside the bed. The air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers that were scattered over that silent form which lay under its white coverings, at rest in "the lordly repose of the dead." Never had Victoria looked fairer than she did now, lying at peace with her baby in her arms, amongst the mass of white roses and lilies which had been showered upon them. The tiny head was pillowed on her shoulder, nestling in the turn of her throat, for Victoria's last prayer was that her dead baby should be placed in her arms and buried with her in the same coffin. A faint smile of ineffable peace had settled on her face as she passed away, and was there still; and with her arms folded across her bosom enclosing the dead baby. I DARELL BLAKE. 267 by. mother and child looked as if they were asleep, had it not heen for their waxen pallor. Darell stood looking at them in a stunned, dazed way. The heavy, subtle perfume of the flowers seemed to penetrate his brain and oonfuse his senses. Who was it had said — a long time ago it seemed to him — that Victoria, his wife, was (had f He must have dreamt it in a nightmare, for here she was before him, asleep. He would awaken her gently, and sho would forgive him ; from her he would receive the healing pardon, the hope of which seemed to be the only thing that had kept him alive during his journey. And bending softly over the sleeping figure, Darell passed one arm under Victoria's head and pressed his lips to hers. With the touch of those icy lips came Darell's awakening. His heart stood still as he sprang to his feet in terror, realising in one instant, with that terrible, overmastering sense of intense convic- tion which mercifully can only be felt once or twice in a lifetime, the awful presence of the Supreme Mystery, Death I His last hope of mental and bodily salvation had gone. There was a roar of rushing waters in his ears ; darkness closed in around him; and with a cry of despair that echoed through the silent house of mourning, like 268 DARELL BLAKE. the shriek of a lost spirit, " My God I too late j too late I " Darell fell forward lifeless over the dead bodies of his wife aud child. • « • • • One cold, damp, foggy winter's day, many months after that sultry August evening, when all Darell's life and hopes had gone down in the black waters of Despair on realising Victorians death, two men and a little boy were standing on the deck of the s.s. **Ormuz," as she lay in Plymouth Harbour. The great steamer was on the point of starting on her outward journey to Australia. The first bell had rung as a warning to the visitors on boara to take their departure, and the two men in question — Sedley and Darell Blake — ^had just come up from the saloon to say their last words on deck. In the thin, worn, round-shouldered figure, lean- ing on a stick, few of his casual acquaintances would have recognised the erstwhile athletic and upright form of the editor of the Tribune, He had passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a journey no man may make unscathed ; and he had come forth an utterly changed and broken being. The shock of his wife's aeath, added to all the excitement of mental torture he had gone through at the hands of Lady Alma, had been too DARELL BLAKE. 269 much for even hie constitution, undermined as it was by over-work. When Mrs. Tidmarsh, roused by his last awtul cry of despair, had rushed up- stairs, she found Darell in a death-like swoon. The fever which had been upon him for several days, aggravated b} exposure, want of food, and bodily and mental fatigue, had finally seized him in a grip that, for a long time, no medical science seemed able to relax. The struggle back to life had to be fought inch by inch, but Darell's temperate habits and hitherto sound constitution stood him in good st'^ad, and finally won him the day. Tne victory, however, was only a comparative one, for as he crept back into life, his lungs were found to be affected, and a change to a warm climate was pronounced by the medical authori- ties to be absolutely necessary. Such a fiat put an end at once to all question of Darell's returning to his journalistic and political life ; and, indeed, he himself had no wish to do either. The thought of returning to London, to the scene of his tempta- tion and his fall, and perhaps to the possibility of seeing Lady Alma, made him shudder with horror and dread. His one remembrance of her was as of a relentioss fiend, and he prayed he might never set eyes on her again. He seized with delight the offer made by Sedley (to whom theTidmarshes had 270 DARELL BLAKB. written when Darell was stmck down) to find him employment in a great publishing house at Melbourne. Sedley's cynicism had vanished, so far as Darell was concerned. He felt intensely sorry for the man, for the unutterable shipwreck he had come to, and for the furnace of suffering through which he had passed ; and he had exerted himself to the utmost to settle DarelPs afiEairs while the latter v as creeping into convalescence, and to procure him this berth in a friend's house at Melbourne. The two men stool by the bulwarks, looking at the crowd on the quay. Little Peregrine, who was going with his father— Mrs. Tidmarsh having successfully pleaded the Uttle girl's tender years as an excuse to keep one of her grandchildren with her — had wandered off down the deck, full of childish awe and curiosity at all the strange sights he was witnessing. A silence fell upon the two friends. Both were thinking of the past few years, dining which they had been thrown so much together, more by the force of common interests than anything else at the time. But the trouble which had befallen Darell had drawn out of Sedley's nature some better feelings than those he usually flaunted before the world. He felt a sympathetic regard for Darell now, that he had DARELL BLAKE. 271 11 never known before, and he was genuinely sorry for him. Darell intuitively felt this change in Sedley towards him, and in the desert which life now seemed to him he olung to this man's friend- ship with aii intense feeling of gratitude. ** Well, Sedley," he said, leaning against the rail and looking out to sea as if he there saw the map of his past and future life unrolled before him, *^ mine has been a strange life. Had I only adhered to the creed which was the stimulus of my boyhood, I should be to-day another and a different man. It is little or no use looking back to all I have lost. From the mass of broken ideals and perished hopes one thing alone stands foi*th — to have at least the courage of despair I Your friendship, Sedley, is the one thing that has not failed me in my hour of need. It was to you I owed my greatest chance in life ; it is you who have now thrown me the life-rope when I was drowning I I am going forth to another land, peopled with men of our own race who are struggling with all those social difficulties, only under another form, which in my way I tried to combat in this country. I believed that it was my call in life to be the champion of the Cause of the People. I have been stricken down through overweening pride and confidence in myself; cmd in the worship of false gods I betrayed and forgot 272 DARELL BLAEB. the principles which would have carried me to the height of my ambition. With humbler aims and yet with a consistent resolve I will return to the calling of my youth, if fortime favours me in those distant lands where I and my little son are going. We may meet again, you and I, but if we do it will not be, in all probability, for many years. Where our paths have lain side by side, you have done me good in spite of yqur apparent cynicism ; and it is from the bottom of my heart, old friend, that I thank you when I tell you that it is your sympathy that, in the hour of my greatest need, has saved me from utter perdition, and that what small gleam of courage and hope in Ufe is left to me, is owing to you I '* The last bell had rung while Darell was speak- ing. The hands of the two men met in a fast grip, and with a strange and hitherto unknown feel- ing of a lump in his throat, Sedley made his way on shore, where he stood watching the great ship as she slowly steamed off out to sea, until the smoke of her funnels was lost in the damp foggy atmosphere. He was profoundly moved by Darell*s last words and by the utter breakdown of a life's hopes and am- bitions. In some way he felt he had mistaken and misimderstood his prot^gi. He had not realised suffi- <:>•■ DARELL BLAKE. «73 le oientlj that his was a nature uncontaminated by that indifferentism which is so necessary a part of the panoply of the man of the world. Darell had rushed on to his own undoing with a natural impetuosity and a frank -hearted enthusiasm which Sedley bitterly regretted not having more fully realised and understood. He had himself firmly believed in the possibilities of Darell's future ; he had instinctively felt, even in the first days of their acquaintance, all such a nature was capable of. The Philistine in the man had fascinated him, and the thoroughness of Darell's energy had proved to him his sterling value. He had looked to his protigS to do him, Sedley, credit by a glorious and triumphant career. How little had he himself with his Voltairean ideas, estimated the strength and power of a misguided passion when once aroused, that one factor in life which may upset the greatest genius and destroy the most carefully laid plans I As he walked slowly back through the gathering twilight, the events of the past year came vividly before him. The scene in the office of the Tribune^ when he had brought Lady Alma and Darell face to face for the first time, contrasted itself in his mind with the closing scene he had just ■witnessed on board the "Ormuz," the lonely. S74 DARELL BLAKB. broken-down man e^oing off into exil'^, band in band witb his motberless child. As b > tbougbts dwelt upon these two pictures, even Sedley, hardened as he was by the atmosphere of London life, and that tourhillon of change which destroys all feeling and even memory, decided in his mind that he had never met with such an absolute specimen of the relentless egotist as Lady Alma, to whom he could not do otherwise than attribute the ruin of his friend's life. A woman so utterly callous seemed, even to Sedley*s unimaginative mind, distinctly dangerous ; and, as he turned in at the door of his hotel, he mentally resolved that, for the future, he would abstain from the society of Lady Alma Vereker. FINIS. :m '■jr. .'■I " l! ! WHALEY.ROYGEiCO. DIALIRS IN ALL KINDS OP AND MUSIC BOOKS, WHOLESALE AND RETAIl MANUFACTURERS OF THB IMPBBIAL BAND INSTRUMENTS Th« BmI ill lh« WorKi 8 Ymi« Uuarantee. Agents for BESSO/i A m$9tm. h/6tis fi9r9 of th,' •'CAff/IPI/AM MUSICIAN. ' Itnd tor our CaUlOtfUM, th* mo«t oompleU iMiiod by mny House .'• America. 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