[OUGHT WE It TO VISIT r ^ HER? m r <***- I MRS, LIBRARY UNIVERSITY Of CAUfOtNIA OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? MACMILLAN'S TWO-SHILLING LIBRARY. Crown 8vo. Bound in cloth. By MRS. ALEXANDER. The Wooing o't. Her Dearest Foe. The Admiral's Ward. The Executor. The Freres. Look Before You Leap. Which ShaU it Be? By RHODA BROUGHTON, Cometh Up as a Flower. Good-Bye, Sweetheart. Joan. Not Wisely but Too Well. Bed as a Rose is She. Scylla or Charybdis ? Belinda. Doctor Cupid. Second Thoughts. A Beginner. Alas! Mrs. Bligh. 'Dear Faustina.' Nancy. By MARY CHOLMONDELEY, Diana Tempest. By MRS. EDWARDES. Leah : A Woman of Fashion. A Bail-Room Repentance. Ought We to Visit Her? Susan Fielding. [June is/A. By J, S. LE FANU. Uncle Silas. The House by the Churchyard. By JESSIE FOTHERGILL Kith and Kin. Probation. Borderland. Aldyth. Healey. The Wellfields. From Moor Isles. By OLINE KEESE. The Broad Arrow. [August yd. By MARY LINSK1LL, Between the Heather and the Northern Sea. The Haven under the Hill. {July yd. Cleveden. {July ijth. In Exchange for a Soul. [August yd. By MRS. OLIPHANT. Kirs teen. By MRS. RIDDELL. Berna Boyle. George Geith of Fen Court. Susan Drummond. By W. CLARK RUSSELL Marooned. By the BARONESS TAUTPHfEUS. Quits ! U*iy yd. The Initials. {July i-jik. At Odds. {June 15'*- By MONTAGU WILLIAMS. Leaves of a Life. By MARGARET L WOODS. A Village Tragedy. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? BY ANNIE EDWARDES AUTHOR OF : ARCHIE LOVELL," "LEAH: A WOMAN OF FASHION, "SUSAN FIELDING," ETC. Uontton MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY IQOO Appeared in 'Temple Bar* Magazine; First Edition, in 3 vols. crown ' * *, n > . *vo . 3IS . 6d., December, ,*,, . Third Edition, in i -vol., crown " /7> 7 n ' > , ecetn- ; and December, 1884. Transferred to Macmillan & Co., Ltd August, 1898; Reprinted, igoo. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGS I. A QUESTION OF FINANCE 1 II. A QUESTION OF DUTY 10 III. ONLY DONKEYS 22 IV. THE PRINCESS CZARTORISKA . . .30 V. FORTUNATELY, THERE ARE RULES ... 36 VI. YOUNG RAWDON GAINS HIS FREEDOM . . 46 vii. THE "GRANDE DUCHESSE" WALTZES . . 53 VIII. THE BOOK OF MARTYRS 70 ix. BLOSSY'S DEPLORABLE PASSIONS ... 86 X. FADED DAFFODILS 98 xi. JANE'S FIRST TASTE OF RESPECTABILITY . . 105 XII. APPROPRIATED ANGELS . . . .117 XIII. LADY ROSE GOLIGHTLY 133 XIV. DOMESTIC AND RETROSPECTIVE. . . . 142 XV. THE CIGARETTE OF PEACE . . . .146 XVI. CHAMPAGNE FROM TUMBLERS . . . .164 XVII. HAS SHE ASKED YOU 1 ? 173 XVIII. IN THE CAMP OF THE PHILISTINES . . .179 XIX. LOVERS 187 834 CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGK XX. FRIENDS 196 XXI. " HAS THE DOLL GOT A HEART V . . . 203 xxii. AMONG "THE PROFESSION" . , .209 XXIII. THOSE DEAR HERVEYS ..... 220 XXIV. A MIDNIGHT MEETING 234 XXV. WITH DOUBTFUL ASSOCIATES .... 241 XXVI. RAWDON CRIES PECCAVI ! . . . . . 250 XXVII. BLACKBALLED 268 XXVIII. ALONE . 278 XXIX. HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF MALTA . . . 289 XXX. " NOTHING IS AGAINST MY PRINCIPLES !" . 297 XXXI. HOPE OR DREAD? 307 XXXII. THE SECRET OF JANE'S LIFE . . . .313 XXXIII. MR. THEOBALD FOLLOWS UP HIS LUCK . . 325 XXXIV. THE RIGHT AND WRONG OF THINGS. . . 330 XXXV. WIVES AND HUSBANDS ! 342 XXXVI. A DAYLIGHT ORGIE 349 XXXVII. ALL THE FAULT OF THE CHAMPAGNE . . 356 XXXVIII. SOCIETY IN FULL DRESS ..... 367 xxxix. "YOUR SWEET LITTLE YES" . . . .378 XL. "GOOD-BYE FOR EVER" ..... 389 XLI. ALONG THE RAILROAD TO RUIN . . .399 XLII. FAST AND LOOSE WITH DESTINY . . , 408 XLIII. LORD BARTY AND HIS FRIENDS . . . 419 XUV. THE CLOSING SCENE 428 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER ? CHAPTER L A QUESTION OF FINANCE. A SITTING-ROOM in one of the best hotels in Spa ; the hour four in the afternoon ; husband and wife alone together. " Forty and eighty are certainly one hundred and twenty," says Mr. Theobald, resting his forehead on his hand, and applying himself resolutely to a sheet of paper covered with figures that lies before him. " From this subtract fifty ; add ten ; divide by six. Jenny, my dear," after a minute or more of intense men- tal difficulty, " I don't know where the balance can be, but on paper, and according to all the four rules of arithmetic, we are exactly fifty pounds better off than I thought." " Then you have forgotten to put down something," answers Jane. "The only kind of arithmetic I believe in is counting one's cash. How much money have you got in your pocket ' Jane's husband takes out a penknife, a book of cigarette- paper, and four napoleons. He is an exceedingly near sighted- man, and has to put up his eye-glass in order to survey his pro- perty as he spreads it, in a neat row, upon the table. " Ridi- culous to think" the eye-glass falls with a clink against his watch-chain "ridiculous to think, in the face of all these rows of figures, that we are reduced to four napoleons, Jane !" " I remember the days when I thought four napoleons riches. Why, only last Christmas I made a winter-dress for myself, and a whole suit for Blossy, with less than four napoleons. Oh, Theobald," looking suddenly up from her work, a diaphanous little blue cloud that shall presently be a bonnet, " what a 1 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER1 queer sensation it is to think we are rich people at last ! that it doesn't matter really whether we happen to have four napoleons or forty in our pockets !" " I don't think any sensation on the subject of money ought to be queer to us," says Mr. Theobald ; " and as to feeling rich why, I never felt in my life before that I was a pauper till now. As long as we lived well, on nothing particular, Jenny, the dregs of capital, ill-luck of friends, and other eccentricities of fortune poverty was too undefined to weigh upon me. To morrow was a scoundrel with whom we had no personal acquaintance. To-day a jovial good fellow with whom we were glad to share our bottle of champagne while it lasted. Now " " Now your cousin is dead, bless him ! and we shall live in a home of our own in our own dear country," interrupts Jane, with visible pride. " I hope we shall like our own dear country when we get there," remarks Mr. Theobald. " Our home, too. We have done very well without a home hitherto ; I mean we have carried it about the Continent very conveniently a meershaum pipe, a work-box, and Blossy's doll ! How could we be more at home than we are at this minute here, and how, my dear Jenny, how, in the name of fortune, do you suppose we are going to keep up a place like Theobald's on our pittance of an income V " Pittance ! You call six hundred a-year (and we shall have every farthing of that the lawyer's letter says so) you call six hun- dred a-year a pittance ! " " Six hundred a-year is enough for any man when it is not an income," replies Mr. Theobald. "Given, no capital, no position, the habits of vagrants, and the principles of well, well, Jenny, let bygones be bygones. But, given certain conditions, and six hundred a-year, got no one knows how, and spent after the same fashion in the course of a year, is sufficient for any man, parti- cularly if he has a wife who can make her bonnets and dresses, and sufficient sense in his own head to keep clear of England." A QUESTION OF FINANCE. " The dream of my life is England," says Jane, with a certain wistf ulness of tone. "Not London I know London too well to dream about that but the country, a jolly homelike old country-place such as Theobalds must be- " " And with the society of English people, all better off than ourselves, both as regards this world and the next, for excite- ment ? Ah, I hope the reality will come within a hundred miles of the dream. We have been very contented as Pariahs, my dear Jenny ; I hope we shall be equally so when we set up as Brahmins." And Mr. Theobald, again having recourse to his eyeglass, takes a meerschaum from his pocket, fills it, strikes a vesuvian, and composedly begins to smoke. " A whole batch of our nearest Chalkshire neighbours are now in Spa, Jane," he resumes after a time, "arrived here from Germany last night. The Crosbies, pere et mere ; the young hopeful, Rawdon ; and the red-haired heiress, Miss Marsland, whom Rawdon's mamma destines him to marry. I ran against them all this morning, thought I remembered old Crosbie's face, and, assisted by the visitor's book, found out who they were. Jenny, my dear, what will life be like when you begin your little battle for social existence with women like Mrs. Crosbie 1 She is clothed in an olive-green silk of the same awful and uncom- promising texture that I remember about niy own sisters years ago. Virtue sits throned upon her forehead, exclusiveness in her eye " " And what does all this matter to us ? and why should there be a battle between me and anybody?" interrupts Jane. "I want these Chalkshire people to like me well, to tolerate me, because I'm your wife ; and for Blossy to grow up " "Into a Miss Marsland?" finishes Theobald, as his wife hesitates. " Quite impossible, Jane. Blossy is your daughter." " Blossy hasn't got red hair," cries Jane, warming. " Blossy mayn't be a lady any more than me, but she will be a pretty 12 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? woman some day, whether your fine country people notice her mother or not. And a pretty woman " But the sentence remains for ever incomplete. Jane gives a significant nod at the reflection of her own bright face in an opposite looking-glass, then bends it down again over her work, and at the end of another five minutes the bonnet is finished. Minute classifications of the human race are, as a rule, failures when we try to reduce them to practice. But it may be said broadly, perhaps, that women can be divided into two sections those who know how to make a bonnet, and those who do not. Jane knows how to make a bonnet right well, and never has she felt the consciousness of triumphant art stronger in her soul than at this minute. " I don't say anything about black lace," she bursts forth ener- getically, and apropos of nothing, as is her habit ; Mr. Theobald, his feet perched on the window-sill at a higher elevation than his head, a cloud of tobacco-smoke floating upward from his lips, turns his head a good half -inch to listen ; " any one not absolutely a fool can make a bonnet out of black lace. But gauze ! blue gauze ! I should like to know whether there's a lady yes, and what's more, a milliner in Chalkshire that could make a bonnet like this V " Not one of them could look as you will look in it, my dear Jenny," says Theobald, in his pleasant lazy voice. Jane turns away with just visible impatience from the com- pliment, and walking across to one of the many mirrors with which the room is lined, begins the process (a process beset with misgivings even to the fairest and youngest woman living) of " trying on" her bonnet. To say that it is not absolute perfection, needing no after- touch, no subtle inspiration of mature genius, would be only to say that the artist is mortal. It must be pinched back off the temples ; must be raised the third of an inch in diadem ; the effect must be hazarded of knotting the gauzy strings around the throat, then of letting them stream unbound upon the shoulders ; A QUESTION OF FINANCE. finally, one must see oneself aided by an opposite mirror in different angles : profile ; three-quarters ; in perspective ! " It is perfect," cries Jane, at last. " I never looked better in a bonnet in my life !" And saying this she advances and stands before her husband ; stands before him, no longer with an air of questioning or doubt, but rather with the calm consciousness of assured artistic success written on her face. What a fresh face it is \ Mrs. Theobald has been married close upon four years, but her cheeks are just as blooming, her blue eyes as limpid, her smile as delightfully frank, as on the day when Theobald, after a fortnight's acquaintance, made her, an unfledged ballet-girl of sixteen, his wife. She is, but scarcely looks, above the middle height of English women, has large well-balanced shoulders, an exquisite waist if judged by a sculptor's, not a corset-maker's standard and decidedly more of undulating, flowing ease in her movements than women of the world are prone to display. " Till I was sixteen till the time you raised me above my station, sir I was trained to move my limbs well," says Jane, when Theobald occasionally hints to her how vividly some trick of gait or manner brings old theatrical associations before his mind. " And although I am in the position of a lady now, I can't remember always to be awkward." Whalebone and steel have as little share in her lithe sym- metry as have Kalydor or pearl-powders with the honest car- nation and white of her complexion. Everything about Jane is real ; terribly real, impostors of all classes are made to feel when they come too nigh her. She is somewhat untidy at times ; being her own milliner, a dress or bonnet, wanted for such an hour, has occasionally to be finished imperfectly as regards the length of stitches ; but clean clean, her husband affirms with gravity, to a vice. The smell of primroses, th( sweetness of April fields, all things wholesome, out-of-door, vernal are irresistibly summoned before your vision when you look at Jane. Her face is the delight of artists, the despair of OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER f photographers. It has not a perfect feature, and yet, with its changeful expressions and brilliant colouring, and absolute naturalness, it is so perfect ! " The good looks of youth and robust health," say her detractors, who are, without exception, of her own sex. " Her mouth is too wide, her eyes are common- place. She has two distinct marks of smallpox on her forehead, and you have only to look at her in a mirror to see that her nose is not set straight on her face." Poor Jane ! And she continues charming still. On this particular afternoon an afternoon destined, in more ways than one, to prove a landmark in her life she is dressed in a little striped blue-and-white muslin of twenty-five francs, with a black-lace cape round her shoulders. A pair of cream- coloured gloves, a white parasol, a fresh-gathered rose for her waist-belt, lie in readiness on her work-table. "You are coming with me, Theobald V For a long minute Mr. Theobald's eyes and pipe have been literally sending forth incense at the shrine of Jane's vanity. " Do now, like a good old soul ! It isn't much trouble to walk as far as the avenue, and then, if these Chalkshire people are about " " Oh ! you are afraid of the Chalkshire Mrs. Grundy, already, are you, Jenny? Well, I'll come and do a little respectability, for her edification, by-arid-by, if I can remember not to fall asleep meanwhile. As a precautionary measure, hadn't you better take Blossy for your chaperon now V " Blossy went out with Elize after her dinner. Young monkey, see what she has been doing here !" Jane picks up a hideously- battered doll, into whose dropsical body shreds of blue crape, ribbon, and other odds and ends of finery, are thickly pinned. " Isn't that taste ] What, not for a baby only three years old ! And see, she's actually cut Nancy's hair short on the forehead, to be in the fashion, bless her heart I* "Bless her bless her!" says Theobald, stretching out his hand theatrically over Nancy's battered head. The colour rises into Jane's cheeks. " Oh, you always turr A QUESTION OF FINANCE. things into ridicule ; you never see any cleverness in what the child does but / do. Very likely she won't be accomplished, book-clever, as your fine county ladies are, but she'll be able to work at her needle, to use her hands, to be useful, Mr. Theo- bald ! and, as far as I can see, those are the first accomplishments men require from their wives." Mrs. Theobald puts Nancy tenderly aside, takes up her gloves and parasol, and moves towards the door. " If Blossy can use her hands (and her tongue) as her dear mother does, Jenny, she'll be a treasure, an inestimable treasure, to the man who is fortunate enough to win her." " Yes you mean so much of that ! I know so well what your compliments are worth 1" But she turns, half mollified. A word can thaw, as a word can chill the girl, so long as the word be spoken by Theobald's lips. Mr. Theobald raises himself from his reclining position, and takes his pipe from between his lips. " I mean it always when I say flattering things of you, my love. If Blossy only inherits half of her mother's admirable qualities, she will be " " Make haste, please. I don't want to lose more than I can help of the band. If poor little Blossy inherits my gifts ? " " She will be an exceedingly charming woman, Jane. A good milliner ; on occasion, a good cook ; a perfect dancer ; a thorough adept in the art of making any young fool who is taken by her pretty face miserable ; and to her husband at all times the most excellent company in the world." The blood is not in Jane's cheeks alone now. It stains her forehead, her throat ; an angry tremble comes round her lips. "A cook a milliner a dancer. Oh, I understand you, Theobald a dancer ! And this, after four years, is the highest praise you can find to give me]" Theobald by now is thoroughly amused. No sarcasm, how- ever bitter, can scathe his well-oiled spirit. How shall he guess OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER f that a jest, lightly spoken, lightly meant, may have power to wound Jane's jealous heart to the quick ! " I dare say I could find much more if you would give me time to think. You have faults, Jenny, of course, who has not] But experience will cure these experience and the salutary advice of judicious female friends, to which our altered position in life will now enable you to have access. There are my sis- ters a little crooked-tempered, a little straight-laced, certainly, but an epitome of all female wisdom and propriety in them- selves, Charlotte especially. Then, if you behave very well, you may get to know our neighbour, Mrs. Crosbie ; perhaps, in time, the archdeacon's wife, and " " And you think sermons preached to me by any of these women will do me, Jane Theobald, good? Where is their right to preach 1 They are better born ; they have never worked for their bread ; have never toiled at a rehearsal, or grilled up among the gas battens in a transformation scene ! Does this entitle them to mount the pulpit 1" " Morally, no ; socially, yes V "Then I hate such socialism." Theobald successfully represses a smile ; " and I despise such morality. And if any of them were to preach to me, and I was to listen which I shouldn't it would demoralise yes, demoralise me !" "Don't use strong language, my dear. It is a question exclusively of finance. If we had come into six thousand a year, instead of six hundred, we should be the nicest people in Chalk- shire, Jenny, and want sermons from no man." "I've read in the papers," goes on Jane, her tone waxing hotter and hotter ; " I've read in the papers lately about the grand model markets set up in Bethnal Green, and such places set up for the poor. Bishops and lords at the opening cere- mony, no selling on Sundays, cleanliness, ventilation, marble slabs every advantage ! And the poor won't go to them, and will sooner get worse things, and pay dearer to their old friends the costermongers in the gutter." A QUESTION OF FINANCE. " The poor are proverbially an ungrateful set of devils," is Mr Theobald's cheerful generalisation. " They are human beings, and I feel as they do," says Jane. "Perhaps because I belong to the vagrant classes myself I don't know about that but I feel as they do. I hate advantages that have a do-me-good flavour in them " " Certainly, my dear, but " "I was born among people, among ideas that no man or woman of your class of life can understand. You raised me from them, Theobald, and if I've become, as you say sometimes, ' an imitation better than the reality of a lady,' it has been by living with you, and getting hold of your outward manners simply, but at heart " "Jennie!" " At heart I've never given up my old associates, or my love for them, or my belief that their lives are as good as other lives, and I never will. No, not if all the ladies from all the counties in England were to preach to me at once. I'd be like the un- grateful, heathen poor. I'd keep to the costermongers still." After this there is silence for a minute. Mr. Theobald is the first to speak. "Come here, Jenny, child," holding out his hand to her, kindly. " No, thank you. I can hear quite as well where I am." "Do you know the meaning of the word 'logic"?" " Of course I do. I wasn't pretending to talk logic. I was talking common sense ; yes, and I was speaking from my heart, straight out, as you as you, Theobald, never do ! " "Do you know, in the very least, how all this animated dis- cussion began 1 ?" " I know how it will end." She has moved across the room, and looks at him, her fingers on the handle of the door. " You said something just now about my having to do battle with fine ladies like this Mrs. Crosbie, the fine ladies of your class, sir, in Chalkshire. A few minutes afterwards you tell me of the good I may get if I choose to listen, humbly and gratefully, to their io OUGHT WE TO VISIT HP:R? advice. Very well. Now, 111 tell you the truth plainly. If our going to England, and our living at Theobalds is to make me a hypocrite I mean if I am to choose between becoming a hypocrite, and declaring war to the knife with every fine lady in Chalkshire, I have made my choice already. War to the knife!" Having uttered which trenchant declaration, Jane, like a whirlwind (in blue and white muslin,) sweeps away from the room and down the staircase of the hotel, and Mr. Theobald is left alone to enjoy his pipe and cull the honey of his own reflections. CHAPTER II. A QUESTION OF DUTY. ALL is bright, sunshiny, cheerful, in the out-of-door world. The season is crude as yet, for it is scarcely past the middle of June ; but there are visitors enough to give an air of quasi- occupation to the streets and avenues of the little mountain town. And to those whose tastes affect sweet sunshine and verdant country, rather than princesses and archdukes, early summer is assuredly the time when Spa has most charms. It is now the gayest hour of the afternoon, and down in the Avenue of the Four Hours a band is playing. How pleasant it is to catch the distant notes, prolonged, hushed, heightened at intervals by the arena of wooded hills which form the walls of the al fresco concert-room ! How gloriously the sun streams through the linden boughs, turning the courtyard pavement of the Hotel Bellevue into a mosaic work of ever-shifting gold ! What an altogether palatable thing mere existence is ! What an Excellent place is this best of all possible worlds to live in ! "Each one of us," says Gothe, "must be drunk once." Emma Marsland, yonder plain-looking English girl, who is eating cakes and drinking afternoon coffee under the shadow of the lindens, is drunk to-day 1 She shows, I must admit, few A QUESTION OF DUTY. n outward signs by which you could guess at her condition. Emma has been brought up in a school that holds betrayal of feeling as a forfeiture of the sex's dignity. Hers, too, is a face not destined by nature to be the index of the soul. But still, for all her calm exterior, the wine of life runs warm and tingling through her veins ; the joyfullest cup we any of us taste, from our birth to our burying, is at her lips. Emma Marsland loves, and believes herself to be loved in return. For one day as likely as not, one only, out of a perfectly sober, common-place life every beat of the little heiress's heart, every breath she draws, is intoxication. " How good the coffee always is abroad, mamma." Not very poetic ; but this is what she says, not what she thinks. " And the kuchen" (Emma has learnt German for seven years in Chalkshire, and pronounces the word coo-ken,) " so crisp and short, better even than we got on the Rhine. I wonder whether they put much butter in them V " I should hope not, for your sake, Emmy," remarks a mascu- line voice at her side. " The dish was brought out, full, a minute ago, and you and mother have pretty nearly emptied it already." " Oh, Rawdon, what a shame ! Mamma, do you hear what Rawdon accuses us off And poor Emma laughs and laughs again, a rather tittering little school-girl laugh, at Rawdon's exquisite stroke of humour. "You are glad enough to get your own sherry-and-bitters of an afternoon, you know you are, Rawdon, and you ought to be content, and not envy mamma and me our coffee and coo-ken. Don't you know they take the place of five o'clock tea to us now we are abroad V 1 "Do they \ n returns Rawdon, in the absent tone of a man who does not know a word he is saying. "La, la, la, la, lira . . ." He follows, half aloud, the opening bars of the distant waltz music, then is seized with a mighty yawn, which he strives gallantly, but in vain, to stifle in its birth ; and then he crosses his arms, pulls his hat a little over his eyes, gazes up 12 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER f at as much blue sky as the lindens leave visible, and begins to whistle. He is bored, poor young fellow, but unconsciously ; takes no livelier interest in Emmy and the dead level of Emmy's small talk than he has done any time during his twenty-two years of life, but is unaware of his lack of interest. If his mother would allow him to smoke he would be happier than he is, doubtless ; and if his mother and Emma would retire to their own apart- ments in the hotel, and leave him and his father to their newspapers and their pipes, he would be happier still. Other anarchy is there none in Rawdon Crosbie's spirit. And yet all the combustible materials wanted for rebellion are ready stored there, waiting only the chance spark that shall kindle them into a flame. Does not every day's experience show us that this slumbering, negative, acquiescent kind of discontent is the very symptom of all others that tells surest when men's hearts are ripe for revolt 1 I have spoken at length of Jane Theobald ; let me give a few words to the group of English people who are drinking their coffee beneath her window ; the Chalkshire neighbours, who are to be Jane's enemies, or friends, her monitors or her execu- tioners, as fate may elect. Mrs. Crosbie was a noted beauty in her youth. She is fifty years old now, but has not forgotten the trick of smile, the turn of head, the downcast bend of the eyelids, which w r ere her strong points when she was the " beautiful Juliana Hervey." The beautiful Juliana Hervey who, after a dozen seasons' fruitless title-hunting, bestowed herself at eight-and-twentyupon Mr. Crosbie, a country gentleman of small means, smaller pretensions, and without a connection in the world worth mentioning. She is dressed always by the first milliner of her part of Chalkshire, adopts with unflinching courage whatever she believes to be the latest fashion of the day, and at the present moment wears a dress, bonnet, and shawl, each unde- niable of its kind, but the sum total of whose effect absolutely A QUESTION OF DUTY. 13 sets your teeth on edge with its cruel discordancy. Were you to talk to Mrs. Crosbie of dress as of a thing relative rather than final, hint to her of subtle combinations of colour, of artistic license, of subduing fashion to the age and complexion of each particular votary, I think she would at once have doubts as to the correctness of your moral character. All the best people about Lidlington employ the same milliner, as they con- sult the same doctor, attend the same church, and talk the same scandal. And as long as the best people of the neighbourhood supply the cue, either to her thoughts, words, or actions, Mrs. Crosbie's conscience is at rest. She is a woman who never moves out of the safe and narrow groove of class prejudice. She knows, and wants to know, nothing about the abstract truth of things. She wants only to dress and dine, calumniate and pray, die and be buried as a woman belonging by birth to the Landed Gentry of her country should, j*nd is content to debit Providence with the results. Young Rawdon Crosbie, aged twenty-two years, and a lieutenant in Her Majesty's regiment of artillery, is a fair average specimen of his nation and class. Across his broad forehead is the genuine " gunner sunmark," or insignia of his craft ; his limbs, displayed by one of those knickerbocker cos- tumes which our countrymen love to wear upon their travels, bear witness to the beneficial results of seven years' classical training on the heights of Harrow. His face is an honest red- and-brown Englishman's face, by no means handsome in its present unfledged condition, but giving you an impression that it may become even strikingly so a few years later on. The head, with its close -shorn black hair, is compact and solid, not precisely an intellectual- looking head, and yet a head that looks 44 full of brains," fuller of them indeed than Master Rawdon's speech and actions up to the present time would seem to betoken. He stands a little under six feet in his shooting boots ; ha& never had a heart- ache or a finger-ache since he was born ; from his earliest infancy has been trained with the extra scrupu- 14 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? lousness usually bestowed upon only sons, and is now destined to marry an heiress ! In all respects, one may say, he is a young fellow with whom the world goes well, and to whom more than his share of the world's goods have fallen. Mr. Crosbie, a middle-aged gentleman with square, grey whiskers, a resigned, fresh-complexioned face, and no very par- ticular features to speak of, sits dutifully guiding his opinions by the Times, at his wife's side ; and between him and Rawdon, and immediately opposite the dish of kuchen is Emma Marsland. I have already broken to the reader that Emma is plain. Let me soften that worst indictment that can be brought against any young woman in the position of a heroine, by adding that she has thirty thousand pounds. ' A girl with thirty thousand pounds can surely afford to do without the foolish carnation hues and sparkling eyes, which, to penniless maidens, are the all-in-all of existence. Her hair well, I wish to speak tenderly of everything belonging to poor Emmy, so we will call her hair auburn. Her skin is of the peculiar dead waxen whiteness that goes with the auburn type of colouring ; and it is a skin that freckles. Her eyes are dark sienna brown ; the brows and eyelashes so much fairer than her hair as to be all but invisible. Were you to analyze her other features, you would, I think, find them correct (correcter, certainly, than Jane Theobald's). But what man analyzes when he has to pass his verdict upon a girl's face? Emma generally gets a suf- ficiency of partners at the Chalkshire balls ; but no man, Rawdon included, dances more than his one or two set duty dances with her. Everyone likes Emma. Everyone has a favourable word to say for her. She is unaffected, amiable to excess, dances fairly well considering her low stature and her plumpness. But no man asks her for more than his duty dances, and no man, despite the thirty thousand pounds, has ever envied Rawdon his future lot as her husband. Like her adopted mother, Emma is dressed by the first mil- liner in Chalkshire, and with not dissimilar results. Deep, A QUESTION OF DUTY. reddish-pink ribbons, for instance, predominate in her attire to-day. Well, Rawdon, of course, has not much practical knowledge of aught pertaining to women's dress, still some glimmering, some intuitive sense of artistic propriety is in his soul, and every time he glances at Emma this sense is disturbed. Sunshine is good, and rose-coloured ribbons are good, and so, in a mediaeval picture, is flame-coloured hair. But the three in juxta-position a tri-coloured glory round the face of a young person who has just devoured a plate of buttery cakes in five minutes ! Poor Rawdon ! Whenever he is away from Emma he believes, vaguely, that he is very much indeed in love. And whenever he is at her side he knows definitely that he is not in love at all ! This is a contradictory, but by no means uncommon condition of the human heart ; and one well worth the study of those curious in such matters. "Juliana, my dear," says Mr. Crosbie, looking at his wife across his newspaper, " who do you think that Englishman we saw this morning turns out to be 1 Our scapegrace neighbour, Francis Theobald. I was sure something about his face was familiar to me. He is here in this very hotel/' Mrs. Crosbie gives a rebellious fold of her silken skirts a furtive little admonition with one shapely finger ; " Mr. Francis Theobald in this hotel % Dear, dear, how inopportune ! Is he," lowering her voice, as if she had just in time remembered Emma's presence" is he alone V " I'm sure I don't know. No, I suppose his wife is with him. I saw him on the stairs afterwards, and he had a little girl in his arms." " A little girl ! Ah, I think I do recollect hearing ... It makes it additionally painful." Mrs. Crosbie looks unutterable things, and Rawdon asks for an explanation. Does "it" mean Theobald, or the hotel, or meeting Theobald in the hotel, and who is especially to be pained by the mal-ct-propos existence of a little girl *? J 6 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER f " Rawdon, you know how much I dislike this sort of idle joking," answers Mrs. Orosbie, gravely. " Mr. Francis Theobald, as you are aware, will before long be our nearest neighbour in Chalkshire." " Yes, mother/' " Well, if you force me to speak of such things in Emma's presence, you must know any one with proper feeling must know that our position as regards him and his household will be most delicate. Emma, my dear, what is that splendid scarlet creeper, yonder, round the trellis-work 1 It would be just the sort of grower we want for the corner of the poultry- house." " Scarlet runners," says Rawdon, decisively. " Don't move, Emmy," laying his brown hand on Emma Marsland's white one. " You are only to be sent out of the way because we happen to be talking of improper subjects. Mother, by the bye," turning round with an air of suddenly-awakened interest to Mrs. Crosbie, "why are the Theobalds an improper subject, and why is our position with regard to them delicate 1 In spite of Emma's presence we may surely discuss this 1" Rawdon is argumentative by nature. By the time he was five years old he was wont to fold his small arms when opposed, and calmly dispute first principles with poor Mrs. Crosbie. " It is not a question for discussion at all, Rawdon. It is a question of what everybody in the neighbourhood will do. A question of duty." " Duty. Well, now, I can't see that. The Theobalds are as old a family as there is in Chalkshire, and Theobald, from what men say of him, is not at all a bad sort of fellow, bar gambling. As for his wife, if she had not been a pretty woman and a nice woman, you may depend upon it he wouldn't have married her. And a pretty woman and a nice woman must be an acquisition to Lidlington society." " But all that has nothing to do with our duty. However much we may pity the position of Mr. Theobald's sisters, how- A QUESTION OF DUTY. 17 ever much we may wish well to his ... wife," the word comes laggingly, as under protest, from Mrs. Crosbie's lips, " the ques- tion for us all will be, ' Ought we to visit herT" " Of course in olden days these little social difficulties were settled more comfortably/' says Rawdon. " Within this century French actors were not even allowed Christian burial. But now, when every one goes everywhere ! Why, mother, don't you know the houses of some of our first-rate actors are allowed to be the pleasantest in London 1 houses everybody tries to get invited to, and " "I know nothing of the kind, Rawdon. Mrs. Coventry Brown told me (for, alas ! the subject had to be discussed as soon as we all heard who was coming among us), Mrs. Coventry Brown told me that this Mrs. Theobald's sister is at the present time a very poor actress at one of the minor theatres, and that her uncle plays the trombone yes, the trombone, Rawdon, in the orchestra of the Theatre Royal. Is this, can this be a person with whom you would desire Emma to associate 1 " Before Rawdon can answer, Mr. Crosbie unexpectedly looks up again from his Times, and speaks. After being the husband for three-and-twenty years of a woman whom he acknowledges, and whom the world acknowledges, to be his superior, Mr. Crosbie has naturally become a man of few words. What he says when he does speak, however, is pretty nearly always to the point. " Do we know anything against this Mrs. Francis Theobald's moral character, Juliana, either before or since her marriage?" " Moral character ] Really, Mr. Crosbie, I must ask you not to make use of such strong expressions before Emma." "Because, if we do not and as we do visit Lady Rose Golightly, my dear I think we might express ourselves with a little more charity. Francis Theobald's father poor old George ! and I were schoolboys together," goes on Mr. Crosbie stoutly, " and whatever you ladies may do, I shall certainly not i8 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER f turn the cold shoulder on George's son, spendthrift and gambler though they say the man has become." " Ah, gentlemen, happily for themselves, can act with inde- pendence in these matters," says Mrs. Crosbie, again rebuking a contumacious fold of her dress. " Mr. Francis Theobald, I have no doubt, in the hunting field and all other places where gentlemen see each other, will never meet with anything to remind him of his painful domestic position." "And Mrs. Theobald is to be reminded of it alone 7'* cries Emmy, who has at last finished her cakes and coffee. " Mamma, is this justice 1 Mr. Theobald is not to be punished for being the husband of an actress, and Mrs. Theobald is to be punished for being the wife of a gentleman." " And it must be remembered that Mrs. Theobald never was an actress at all," puts in Rawdon, looking approvingly at Emma. " She was in training, or so they say, for a dancer, and Theobald ran off with her before she ever appeared in public. If we are to be punished for what we might have been, heaven help us all!" " It is a question, simply and wholly, of duty, of what society owes to itself," says Mrs. Crosbie, going back, as is her invari- able custom when Rawdon argues with her, to her original starting point. " This young person, coming from a different station to our own, and being accidentally transplanted into our neighbourhood, ought we, remembering what is due to ourselves and others, to visit her ? This is the question society will have to decide, and until it is decided, we as individuals must take the greatest care not to form an opinion, or an acquaintance that may hereafter be compromising. Emma, love, we really must ascertain the name of that creeper before we leave Spa." Now, oddly enough, all this kindly chat as to Mrs. Theobald's, impending ostracism has been taking place, in the hotel court- yard, at the very time when Mrs. Theobald and her husband are holding their little domestic discussion within doors. When Mrs. Crosbie began, " It is a question, simply and wholly, of A QUESTION OF DUTY. 19 duty," Jane had reached the trenchant declaration of, " War to the knife !" While Mrs. Crosbie was proceeding with her exordium, Jane was flying, two steps at a time, down the hotel staircase. Finally, just at the moment Mrs. Crosbie finished speaking, Jane, in all the dazzling freshness of her summer dress, and wearing the celebrated blue bonnet, emerged from the hotel door, not half-a-dozen paces from the spot where the party of her future neighbours were sitting. " It must be the Princess," whispers Emma, eagerly. " Mamma Rawdon, look ! It must be the Princess." The great Russian Princess Czartoriska (nee nobody knows of what people, or of what clime) happens to be now staying in the Hotel Bellevue, and Mrs. Crosbie and Emma are already well posted as to the number of her Highness's estates, the mag- nificence of her diamonds, the profound impression produced by her toilettes, her prodigality and her reckless play where- soever she travels. For Mrs. Crosbie's Chalkshire maid is a pretty girl, and the Princess has a good-looking courier, speaking all languages. And on a fine June evening what more natural, when the families are at dinner, than that pretty girls and good-looking couriers should exchange a word in the court-yard or on the staircase of the hotel 1 Emma and Mrs. Crosbie, I say, know these things already. They are not fonder of gossip, perhaps, than most country ladies of respectable position and perfectly unemployed minds ; but they are fond, very fond of it. And must not the smallest details, virtuous or the reverse, of a princely life be as nectar always to a well-regulated English mind 1 So when Emma, misled by the elegance of Jane's dress, whispers the word "Princess," visions of all her Highness's jewels and toilettes visions, even, as to the possibility of becoming acquainted with their owner, rise at once before Mrs. Crosbie's soul "Your hat remove your hat, Charles," she whispers, in a quick aside to her husband. Mr. Crosbie looks up, his finger still marking his place on a 2 2 20 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? leading article, and, seeing a pretty young woman stand before him, encircled by blue and white muslin, does as he is bidden without hesitation, Kawdon following suit. Jane, never sus- pecting the presence of the enemy, gives a smile that shows her white teeth to perfection, accompanying it with a little profes- sional salutation learnt long ago from poor old Adolphe Dido, the ballet-master of the Theatre Royal, and floats on. " And bonnets are worn small, after all," says Emma. " And what a different shape to ours ! " "My dear Emma," returns Mrs. Crosbie, "our bonnets were the fashion six weeks ago, Miss Fletcher assured me so, and I have never had cause to doubt Fletcher's integrity. But in the position, with the wealth of the Princess, every new caprice from head- quarters can be adopted, as a matter of course." " And she wears shoes ! and buckles ! I wish I had a foot that looked well in shoes." " She is an uncommonly pretty woman," says Mr. Crosbie, in his admiration of Jane actually forgetting to go back to his paper. " Looks remarkably young, too ; and yet the Princess Czartoriska why, if it's the same woman who was over in London in '65, she must be forty if she's a day ! " " I wonder if it is the Princess at all 1 " suggested Rawdon. "Before we go into any more raptures, let us be sure the lovely being is not her Highness's lady's-maid." But neither Mrs. Crosbie nor Emma will entertain a doubt on this point. Especially is Mrs. Crosbie sure that they havd received a friendly bow and smile from son Altesse, and no other. The grace, the distinction, the mien ! Mrs. Crosbie might mistake in some things ; she is not likely the instincts of a Hervey are not likely to err as regards these attributes of breeding and high birth. " Then, suppose, Emmy, you and I go after her Highness, in the hope of getting another bow ]" says Rawdon, jumping up, and with his eyes still following Jane. " We'll come back for you, by-and-by, mother ; and, mind, if we get acquainted with A QUESTION OF DUTY. 21 the wrong person, if our gracious friend turns out to be the lady's-maid, not the mistress, you will be to blame." And, so speaking, away Master Rawdon strolls from the courtyard into the street, Emma Marsland trotting, obedient as a little spaniel, at his heels. " How well everything has turned out !" Mrs. Crosbie remarks, in a thanksgiving tone, as she looks after them. " I beg your pardon, my dear. Who did you say had turned out well 1" " The plans, the hopes of my life, Mr. Crosbie. Emma is twenty-one, her own mistress, to-day, and see see the terms on which she and our Rawdon stand ! " A motion of Mrs. Crosbie's hand points in the direction which the two young people have taken. A moment ago they were side by side, but, exactly as she speaks, the airy blue-and- white figure of " the Princess," who has been stopping behind to look into a shop window, chances to divide them an omen Mrs. Crosbie may, perhaps, remember later on. " I do hope Charles, we shall make that sweet Princess's acquaintance," she remarks, almost with fervour. " I hope it will profit us if we do make it, Juliana. A foreign princess reminds me more than I like of a foreign archduke, and the only time I ever knew an archduke was at Boulogne " " And he borrowed twenty pounds of us, and turned out not to be an archduke at all," interrupts Mrs. Crosbie, reddening. " I pretend to no superhuman sagacity, Mr. Crosbie. I confess that I have been deceived by an impostor once in my life.. What has that got to do with the Princess Czartoriska f ' "Nothing, nothing, my love. I was foolish to mention it, perhaps ; only, as you seemed so squeamish about taking Francis Theobald's wife on trust, I thought you might like to make a few enquiries as to this Russian woman's antecedents too." " The Princess Czartoriska is received by every crowned head in Europe, Charles. I have seen her name repeatedly among 22 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER f the distinguished guests at different foreign Courts, and she has been presented in London. Would any reasonable being talk about antecedents after thatT Mr. Crosbie goes on with his leading article CHAPTER IIL ONLY DONKEYS. THE lovers that are to be saunter slowly, meanwhile, along the High Street of Spa, Emma's heart as full of sunshine as the sky above her head, Rawdon in as little lover-like a frame of mind as can well be imagined. He knows perfectly well that before the day is over it is incumbent upon him to make a proposal of marriage to poor expectant Emma. He hopes that, somehow or another, he will be able to pull through it. But he is not elated. Of course he will get accustomed in time to being engaged, and even married. But the proposal what is he to say, what can he say that Emmy does not very well know already ? Why is it not the custom for people to become engaged off-hand without going through any ridiculous preliminary form of proposal and acceptance at all ? When Emma Marsland, an orphan at seven years of age, was first left to Mr. Crosbie's guardianship, nothing could be more admirable, more disinterested, than the sentiments given forth to the world by Mrs. Crosbie. She might, indeed, have wished that this additional responsibility, this sacred charge, had been spared her. She might have wished, for her Rawdon's sake, that the unexpected addition to her cares had been a boy, in which case the children could have pursued their studies together. Still, a trust was a trust a duty a duty. Under heaven's blessing, Mrs. Crosbie would bring up poor little Emmy with as much care, as much love, as though she were indeed her Rawdon's sister. And faithfully, it must be added, was the promise carried out. Few girls in Chalkshire had had a better ONL* DONKEYS. 23 education than Emma Marsland. None had been more dili- gently counselled by maternal wisdom as to the paths wherein they should tread. That the auburn haired heiress and her thirty thousand pounds were destined, in Mrs. Crosbie's mind, for Rawdon from the earliest days when the children lived together under the same roof, is, perhaps, only to say that Mrs. Crosbie was mortal. But on this point, as on all others, she behaved in strictest accordance with the ruling principles of her life. " I do not say that you will never make Emma your wife," she used to tell young Rawdon, while he was still at school. " If, when the tastes of both are matured, your boy-and-girl attachment should remain unchanged, I do not even deny that my fondest hopes would be realized by such a union. Meanwhile, never forget that you must act with the utmost delicacy in the matter. To extract, nay, to permit, a promise from a young girl placed as our dear Emma is placed, would expose you and all of us to an imputation of mercenary motives in the eyes of the world. On the day when Emma is twenty-one, and if she has made no other choice in the meantime, you may speak. Until then, remember she is not only our daughter that she will always be, whatever happens but your sister." And Rawdon, rigidly virtuous, poor fellow, in the absence of temptation, had obeyed his mother's injunctions to the letter. He had never hinted, and never wished to hint, one word of love to Emma Marsland. Love ! why even the boy-and-girl attachment at which Mrs. Crosbie hinted was, Rawdon knew in his heart, a myth. He liked her, of course, poor little patient jog-trot Emma, as he must have liked any young creature that had lived under the same roof with him, and made itself his slave. She was invincibly stupid with her fingers ; could never learn to splice a line, or make a fly, as some girls could ; was a muff at everything to do with horses ; too stout of limb and short of breath to fag out even, as some fellows' sisters could, at cricket Still, she was so perseveringly affectionate, so im- 24 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER t placably sweet tempered under bullying or neglect, that Rawdon could not but like her. "Who in the world could dislike Emma 1" he would say, as the strongest encomium that could be passed upon her. And probably in his own words could be found the most exact exposition of his feelings. He found it impossible to dislike her. Not a very near approach this to the sentiment of love. But Rawdon, up to the hour of which I write, knew no more than the majority of lads of his age of sentiment of any kind. A pair of keen young eyes were in his head ; young blood was in his veins ; every pretty girl he met yes, if he met a dozen in the same walk, occasioned him a quickening of the pulse -very pleasant to experience. This was all. He was rather shy with ladies if the truth must be told ; held aloof in ball-rooms although he loved dancing with a passion had never, as far as Chalkshire knew, had an affair of the heart in his life. And, then, on the day on which she was twenty-one he was to propose to Emma Marsland ! Every one, Emma included, knew this perfectly, and the result was, that Rawdou, like all men engaged or married too young, was just a little crushed. He had young eyes in his head, young blood in his veins ; and there were plenty of pretty women, there was plenty of pleasure, of love-making, of delight in the world. And he stood apart from it all. He was to marry Emma Marsland. The uncer- tainty, the aroma, the sparkling taste of life were wanting to the lad before he, in reality, knew what life was. His household duties were set and sealed for him as are those of royalty. Romance, the possibility of romance as connected with himself, existed not. He was to marry Emma Marsland. Such had been Rawdon Crosbie's frame of mind for the last two years. It was his frame of mind on this, Emma's twenty- first birth-day the day on which they were to become formally betrothed lovers the day on which fate had appointed him to make the acquaintance of Jane Theobald. ONL Y DONKE YS. 25 They walk side by side along the street, the blue and white draperies of " the Princess" fluttering about three yards ahead of them. " Her dress is stylishly made, but cheap, very cheap, when one comes to look at it near," thinks Emma. " She has a perfect figure," thinks Rawdon. " And her ankle by Jove, if that woman is forty, or within fifteen years of forty, III " His meditations are cut short by Emma's voice, a high-pitched piping voice, such as not unfrequently belongs to people of her complexion. " What a dear little path up to the right, Kawdon I I should like so much to go up that little path to the right !" "Why not go, then?" is Rawdon's inevitable answer. And in another minute he and Emma, out of sight of man, are climbing up one of those steep over-arched pathways by which, at every turn, you can escape out of the village of Spa, into the cool, still greenness of the wooded hillside. Of Rawdon, as of Malcolm Graeme, a poet might sing : "Straight up Ben Lomond could he press, Yet not a sob his toil confess ! " But mountaineering is not an exercise for which nature has fitted Emma Marsland. Before they have scrambled a hundred yards, the poor little thing is breathless, panting, clutching at her companion's stout arm, and warmer oh, warmer far, than any heroine of a love scene should ever be ! Things being so, Rawdon considerately suggests that they shall rest awhile, and down on the mossy sward Emma sinks, recovering her breath and her complexion as best she can. Rawdon sits down too. The birds are singing among the boughs, the spot is lonely ; the sweet wild scent of lusty woodland spring is in the air. Now, thinks Rawdon, is the time to propose. He gazes stedfastly away down a sun-tinted vista among the trees, listens to the birds, listens to the far-off music in the 26 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER 1 avenue, drinks in the June air, a love-philter of itself, and the thing seems easy to do. He turns, full of courage, looks straight into Emma's face and begins to whistle. " How funny it seems to be so far from home on my birth- day," she remarks, placidly. " I hope the school children are enjoying their treat. I hope the buns aren't as heavy as they were last year." The Sunday-school at Lidlington is, next to Rawdon, Emma's object in existence, and always on her birth-day, a great affair of bun-cake, prizes, and tea goes on in the village. Rawdon, poor fellow ! entertains towards tea-feasts and Sunday-schools gene- rally the natural instincts of his sex and age, but the speech reminds him of Emmy's kind heart, charitable dispositions, admirable suitability to the country and domestic life. And with a kind of rush he comes to the point thus : "Emma, my dear " "Yes, Rawdon?" " I hope you don't wish yourself back in Lidlington already, Emma?" "Not for good. I wouldn't miss Brussels for anything. Mamma and I are going to get a dress each, and a bonnet (I shall get a blue one like the Princess's) in Brussels. But I should like to be back just for ten minutes to give the prizes, and see the children properly set to their tea. Miss Finch is all very well in school-time, but I don't know how she'll get on alone at a treat ; besides, I should like to be sure that the buns aren't heavy." " Emma" but his voice trembles oh, it is, it is difficult 4< I think sometimes your whole heart and soul are centred in Lidlington !" She looks at him, she knows what is coming, and turns crimson from forehead to chin. An emotion she cannot master holds her dumb. It is the supreme, enraptured moment of ner life this terribly difficult, emotionless moment to Rawdon Crosbiflb ONLY DONKEYS. 27 " How would you like to live" an involuntary sigh escapes him "to live always in Lidlington ! I mean, when we are elderly people, like my father and mother 1 ?" " Why Rawdon what a question ! You know I should like it. You know I always mean to remain with mamma." " Dear Emma ! " This last remark he feels has smoothed matters beautifully. " Remaining with mamma seems," after all, to involve so very slight a change in their present position towards each other. " My dear Emma " And then Rawdon's eloquence comes to an abrupt full stop, and rather spasmodically he puts his arm round Emmy's waist, and kisses her. He has been in the habit of doing so, fraternally, every morn- ing and night since the day when they first lived together as little children. There is, therefore, no reason why this particu- lar kiss should form any new standing-point in their existence. Yet each feels that it has done so. " It is over," thinks Rawdon. " Thank God ! It is over." What Emma thinks could not be put into words so easily. She is as commonplace a woman as ever lived ; but she is a woman, and she loves Rawdon from the depths of her heart, and these first moments, doubtless, to her are as ecstatic as though she were a beauty and a genius. Dandelions and potato- flowers are probably as glad of the spring as are violets and primroses, if we knew the truth. The lowering sun warms all the woodland vistas with richer yellow ; the gnats pursue each other, amatively circling over- head ; the small birds sing in the boughs. Love is abroad, quickening the pulse of all creation, this June afternoon. Rawdon Crosbie, a lover of a minute old, wonders what the mischief he shall say next 1 Love-making, in the common acceptation of the word, would be simply ridiculous betweenhim and Emmy. He has too much deli* cate sympathy for the earnestness of her feelings to begin talking on indifferent subjects. Fortunately she solves the difficulty for him. 28 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER1 " I wonder what mamma will say when when we tell her all about our walk !" The remark is so comprehensive, and at the same time so vague, that Rawdon " blesses her unaware." He has spoken, has spoken definitely, as it was always intended he should speak, on Emmy's twenty-first birth-day, and she understands him, and is happy. Surely things may remain in this comfortable but unacknowledged position for the present. " Is it necessary always to tell mamma, verbatim, where you have been and what you have said, Emma 1 Couldn't you and I keep a secret for one month, well, for one week, then, to ourselves?" She hesitates, not quite knowing whether a clandestine en- gagement would be wrong, but very certain indeed that it would be pleasant. " Do just as you like," says Rawdon, watching her face. " I like what you like," is Emma's answer, as she glances back at him affectionately. "You must decide everything for me now." " My dear little Emmy ! You have always been the best, the kindest " But just as things have reached this tender point, just as Rawdon Crosbie, carried away by feeling that he feels nothing, is on the brink of becoming loverlike in earnest, a cavalcade of donkeys, ridden by foreign ladies and gentlemen in picturesque equestrian dress, and with a great flourishing of whips, breaks in abruptly upon the scene. The cavalcade passes on in due time, but not until Emma has sustained a dreadful fright from the whole herd of donkeys " trying to run over her," as she calls it ; while Rawdon, hot and indignant, has had to shoulder a parasol and stand between his beloved and danger. " You do make yourself so confoundedly ridiculous, Emma," he remarks, the amenities of sentiment rapidly merging back into fraternal straightforwardness when they are again alone. ONL Y DONKE VS. 29 " Yes, but, Rawdon, why should they all begin I know it was down hill but why should the nasty things all begin run ning just when they came near me 1 Oh, ' only donkeys ! ' It- s very fine for you to say 'only donkeys,'" and Emma is vrry near crying, " but I say I don't want to be killed by a runaway horrid donkey, any more than by a horse." What man after such an episode could revert to love-making 1 Not Rawdon Crosbie. He recovers his temper, of course, and begins to "chaff" Emma, just as he used in the old schoolboy days, about her cowardice ; and, as long as they are in the woods, she hangs betrothed-fashion upon his arm in one steepest part of the descent, even transfers her hand for a single, thrilling, delightful instant to his shoulder. But love- making ! Rawdon feels that all the love-making his fate can possibly entail upon him is finished and done with. He has proposed well, has made himself understood and Emmy is contented, and nothing more remains to be said on the subject. As far as he is concerned, love-making is a thing over and done with for ever in this life. A pretty numerous crowd has gathered round the military band by the time they get back to the village : seeing which Rawdon proposes that Miss Marsland shall stroll slowly on in the direction of the promenade while he runs back to the Hotel Belle vue for his mother. " Don't be long, Rawdon," cries Emma, before he has got a couple of paces away. "And be sure you return, too." Expe- rience has taught her what risk there is of losing Rawdon altogether when once she trusts him out of her sight. " Now, promise that you^will return tool" " Don't make me promise too much, Emmy," says Rawdon, looking back. " If I meet the Princess, and she gives me another bow, I won't undertake to answer for what will become of me." " Take care what you say, sir ! If you think so much about the Princess Czartoriska, I shall be jea " But Rawdon is out of hearing ; and Emma, with a sensation 30 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HE R1 of treading on air rather than on solid ground, pursues her way alone down the pleasant shaded road towards the avenue. CHAPTER IV. THE PRINCESS CZARTORISKA. SCARCELY has she reached the outskirts of the crowd, when a succession of infantine shrieks disturbs the decorum of the promenade : another minute, and Miss Marsland finds herself " assisting" at a combat of the most determined, albeit unequal nature. On one side a stalwart Belgian nurse, her hair and cap disordered, her face inflamed with passion ; on the other a bright- cheeked, furious little morsel of an English baby some two or three years of age. The original cause of dispute, as in the case of most wars, seems to be forgotten by both belligerents in the present heat and fervour of the fray. Brandishing her charge aloft, and conscious at least of superior physical force, the nurse is bodily bearing the enemy back in the direction of the village, while a shower of blows, neither weak nor ill-directed, fall upon her broad, red face, and a volley of such abuse as the infant tongue is capable of half German, half English, half Belgian patois is brought to bear upon her moral sense. Emma Marsland pauses, half amused, half sorry for this poo? little plucky British rebel held in durance by the foreigner ; and the child, instinctively scenting an ally, stretches forth its arms in her direction. " Mamsey me want mein Mamsey !" is its piteous entreaty. And upon this Emma stops outright, and going up to the nurse asks, in as good French as she can command, what ails the little one? The reply, to English ears at least, is unintelligible ; but a rent that the nurse points out in the child's elaborately em- broidered frock, and recent gravel marks on the palms of its little rosy hands, tell their own story of the nature of its crime. THE PRINCESS CZARTORISKA. 31 While the "brave Beige ' J amused herself by gazing at some good-looking bandsman, the child had fallen down, and was now being carried home in grief and disgrace for punishment. " Poor little thing ! I don't suppose she could help it," says Emma, good-naturedly. " No, no," the child repeats, in its broken accents. " Me touldn't help it. Bossy touldn't help it." And then, with one swift rush, she frees herself from the nurse's arms, and seeks the side of her new ally, from which position, clutching Emma's skirts tight, she looks back, with all the flush of victory upon her small face, at the foe. A rose-bud bit of mischief of three is Blossy Theobald a bit of mischief delightfully redolent of soap-and- water, fresh air, and health ; long eye-lashed, with teeth like tiny pearls, dimpled hands that she has a pretty trick of clasping, the fingers out- spread, like one of Vandyck's portrait children, upon her chest ; heaven-blue eyes, that look you through and through with the conscious superiority of her age, and assurance ah ! Blossy's assurance, like other of her moral qualities, is a thing to be ex- perienced, not written about. Mistress in a moment of the situation, she briefly remarks, " Bossy go back," and forthwith, still holding Miss Marsland's dress, turns her small steps again in the direction of the music, the nurse following. Here, then, is Emma Marsland, Mrs. Crosbie's daughter of adoption, trepanned into an intimate ac- quaintance with Jane Theobald's child ! Before three minutes are over Blossy has unfolded all the domestic joys and sorrows of her life. She loves Mamsey, and Dada, and her doll Nancy. And which best *? All best. Well, if that cannot be, Nancy. Only Nancy has a broken nose, and her paint is off. " Then I suppose Nancy is about as pretty as I am V asks Emma, who, like most very plain people, is sensitive, overmuch on the subject of her own personal appearance. Blossy .looks up, showing her white teeth and wrinkling her nose as she scrutinises Emma's features, but makes no direct 32 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? inswer. " Madame got pitty zings," she remarks at last, point- ing to a little bunch of charms golden, substantial charms that hangs from Emma's watch-chain. "And me like pitty zings me do." If the compliment savours of mercenariness, it also displays a ready tact, a fertility of resource, which many an older person might not, on the moment, have found to their hand. Miss Marsland stoops and kisses the small speaker on the lips. Just thenBourn, bourn, begins the drum-beat which is to herald in a lively set of military quadrilles. Blossy listens to the first three bars, then, finding the music of a quality that pleases her, lifts her embroidered frock between her two pink thumbs and fore-fingers, poises her right toe aloft, in true professional fashion, and begins to dance. A prettier picture it would be hard to imagine than Blossy, dancing improvised ballets of her own beneath green trees, her gipsy-hat falling upon her shoulders, her yellow curls bare in the sun. She smiles, coquettes, raises one dimpled arm above her head ; she pirouettes, she fantasias. Emma, already ena- moured of the whole world that Rawdon's declaration has dyed rose-coloured, grows more and more fascinated by the little creature as she stands and watches her. When, but not until the band has ceased playing, does Blossy cease to dance. Then, after kissing the tips of her fingers to some imaginary audience, she returns gravely to the examination of Miss Marsland's trinkets. " And who taught you to dance so well V asks Emma, lead- ing the child apart and sitting down with her upon a bench. " No one taughted me," says Miss Theobald, in her dialect " Mamsey dance, and Auntie Min, and Bossy dance too." " And what is your name 1 Bossy Teaball ? oh, but that's nonsense. I mean your real name." " Bossy Teaball, and Auntie Min, and Mamsey, and Dada," repeats the child, evidently determined to go through the family nomenclature exhaustively. " And Bossy like pitty zings ! 7 THE PRINCESS CZARTORISKA. 33 This with great pathos and sincerity, and clasping the whole bunch of Miss Marsland's trinkets between her two small hands. To pleading like this there can be but one result. When is the combination of a sweet tongue, a fair face, and a mercenary heart aught but successful ] Among Emma's toys is a silver fish, with emerald eyes, ruby gills and flexible tail, that Blossy singles out, by unmistakable signs of admiration, from among its fellows ; and before another minute has passed, the fish is detached from Emma's chain and in Blossy's possession. The child jumps, dances, sings with delight, kisses her new treasure, hugs it, as little children do, with rapture to her breast. " Mamsey, mamsey !" she cries out at last, " mamsey see !" and away flies Blossy, the nurse in pursuit, towards a lady who at this moment approaches by a side-walk, immediately in face of the bench where Miss Marsland is sitting. It is the Princess Czaxtoriska ! Emma Marsland recognises the blue and white dress, the affable smile, the aristocratic tread, at a glance ; and her heart beats pleasurably. Her Highness draws near ought she to sit still or stand up 1 Emma feels it must be best to err on the side of over-deference, so stands up. And thus standing, and colouring almost as red as her own hair, waits, while Blossy, volubly explaining her adventure, drags her mother along by the skirts to introduce her to the owner of the " pitty zings." " I am afraid my little girl has been giving you a great deal of trouble." What singularly good English the Princess speaks ! But then, remembers Emma, the Russians are notably the best linguists extant. And how entirely without state are her man- ners I But simplicity, Emma has always heard, is a special attribute of real greatness. " Bloss, what do you say to this lady for being so kind to you V u She got pitty zings," answers Bloss, looking up wickedly from beneath her eye-lashes. " Wherever that child goes, she makes friends," proceeds her Highness, Emma remaining silent from pure humility. "J 3 34 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? never saw anything like it. And she picks all their pockets. Yesterday she came home with a little box of bonbons that some old gentleman or other had given her." What an absence, what a marvellous absence of pride in all this ; Emma stammers out something about her fondness for children, and this particular child's wit and beauty. Such grace, such elegance of movement, too ! Emma hopes before many minutes to have the delight of watching her dance again. " Ah, not much wonder she can dance," says the Princess. " Are you sitting here thanks," accepting, as a little diffident gesture of Emma's invites her to do, the vacant place on the bench. "Not much wonder she can dance; that's an heir- loom." " Yes, I believe all foreign nations dance better than we Eng- lish do," remarks Emma, meaning the speech to be a delicately flavoured compliment. " It's the fashion to say so," answers her Highness, not with- out warmth. " For my part I think the reverse. Just look at the meagre, dark-skinned French women the managers bring over sometimes ! They are agile, certainly, so are monkeys ; but put them beside a troupe mix them, as I've often seen done, in the same piece with a troupe of ordinary English ballet- girls and see where they are, as far as beauty goes, and in these days beauty, for the ballet, is everything." " I don't know much about theatres," says Emma, feeling duly ashamed of her ignorance, " and I've seen very little of the Con- tinent. This is only the second time I've been out of England, and we lead a very quiet life when we are at home, in Chalk- shire." " Chalkshire !" The Princess Czartoriska gives a quick, com- prehensive glance at the dress, the face, the roseate locks of her new acquaintance. " And how do you like the Continent when you compare it to Chalkshire T she asks, quietly. " Oh, very much for a chang v . We have been abroad a fort- night, and I have enjoyed all the sight-seeing immensely ; but THE PRINCESS CZARTORISKA. 35 I shouldn't like to live anywhere out of England. I am not sufficient of a linguist to feel at home when I'm abroad. What wonderfully good English your little girl speaks !" Emma goes on, hazarding compliment number two. " Do you think so ? We think she talks all languages equally badly. We roam from one country to another, seeking a resting place and finding none, and the child, poor morsel, gets a new nurse-girl and a new tongue in each. Last winter we spent in Hombourg, and all she talked was German ; now it is Belgian patois. Come here, Bloss." Blossy obeys with the peculiar dancing movement that seems to be her natural way of walking. " Say ' Good-morning' to this lady directly, in French, in Ger- man, and in English." The child goes through this bit of show-off, with perfect ease and confidence in her own powers, and Emma's enthusiasm re- doubles Ah, how she would like to show the dear little gifted darling to mamma ! " We are staying in the Hotel Bellevue," she finally volun- teers ; diffident, but hopeful. " So are we," remarks her Highness. " And if it would not be too great too great a liberty We shall remain in Spa for a day or two longer, and if I might take your sweet little girl in to see mamma "?" "Thank you, you're very good," says Blossy's mother, the colour deepening in her fresh cheeks. " Of course I'm always glad when anyone takes a liking to Bloss." ** I asked her to tell me her name just now," goes on Emma, growing bolder ; " but the answer was enigmatical Some pet name, I suppose V " Her name is Blossom, a foolish one, isn't it 1 It was a whim of Theo of her father's. She was born in spring, and nothing would do but the baby must be called Blossom. I say it's like a cow. I'm sure the country-people in the after-pieces always call their cows Daisy, and Blossom, and all names like that However, there's no changing it now, and I don't know 32 36 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? that I want it changed. It doesn't seem to me anything would suit the child but Blossy." Emma, secretly wondering, perhaps, at the eccentricities of the great, declares the name of Blossy to be charming. And then the second one 1 ? She is too well-bred to ask a direct question, but confesses that Blossy's pronunciation of the second name had been somewhat difficult for her English ear to catch. " And yet we always think she says her name so well. You must remember her age, only three the second of last April. Bloss, come here, child, and tell your name directly." Blossy, busy on the ground constructing a sand-lake for the fish to live in, turns round her dimpled pink face, and shows her little milk-white teeth. "Bossy Teaball," she cries, but without offering to move. "There, I don't know for a baby of three what could be plainer than that," says the mother, proudly. "Of course little children never can pronounce the Th." " Th ! " falters Emma, across whose mind an intuition of the horrible truth is breaking. " But her name your name does not !" "Our name begins with Th," says Jane, with admirable calmness, and looking full into Emma Marsland's face. " Our name is Theobald." CHAPTER V. FORTUNATELY, THERE ARE RULES. AFTER the first smart of disappointment has passed, Emma Marsland, I must say, behaves herself as well as the burning, the intolerable humiliation of her position permits. She crim- sons with very shame, she moves away as far as she can move from the contagion of Jane's blue-and-white-muslin, she looks as though she would fain sink into the earth and be hidden from the sight of men. But she is decently civil. " I have heard ... I mean I know Mr. Francis Theobald's FORTUNATELY, THERE ARE RULES. 37 name well. We shall soon be near neighbours, I hope that is to say, the Miss Theobalds are old acquaintances of mamma's." Jane interprets aright every stammering word, every shifting expression of Miss Marsland's face, and smiles maliciously, not offering to help her by a syllable. " It must be getting late, almost time for me to be going," says Emma, after a minute's uncomfortable silence. " Oh, won't you stay to hear the next tune V Jane asks this in the most innocent voice imaginable. " I thought you wanted to see another of Blossy's dances V Even as she speaks the band begins to play again, unconscious Blossy to dance. What must Emma do 1 After extolling at one minute the ravishing graces of the infant Czartoriska, how, under what possible pretext, can she turn her back upon the infant Theobald and her mother at the next ! She stays on. By the help of carefully-chosen monosyllables, of ambiguous generalities, even keeps up a show of conversation with her newly-made friend. The band plays mercifully loud ; the crowd is thick ; and Emma is just beginning to hope that she may slip away with no worse mischief established than a bowing acquaintance, which may, or may not, be kept up hereafter in Chalkshire, when lo ! not a dozen paces away, appears the sheen of an olive-green dress that Emma recognises but too quickly, and Mrs. Grosbie and Rawdon draw near. It would be hard to describe Mrs. Crosbie's face on seeing Miss Marsland thus familiarly seated at the Princess's side. No mere vulgar satisfaction, but a tempered, awe-struck serenity overspreads her comely features, an expression that seems to say, " / recognised your Highness's birth and breeding at a glance. Your Highness, guided by a like beautiful reciprocity of sentiment, has been drawn towards me and mine." Though it is as proud a moment as she has ever experienced in her life, Mrs. Crosbie does not forget no, not even in approaching a Princess with nineteen quarterings to her shield that she is a Hervey ! one of that race who, while other families boast of 38 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HERf counting back their poor thousand years or so, did themselves, according to the Hervey legend, exactly a thousand years ago "leave off counting." And her dignified step, her eye, her whole demeanour are worthy of the occasion. " Now for the tug of war," thinks her Highness, apprised by Emma that the lady in olive-green is Mrs. Crosbie. " Thank heaven she is not alone though !" And obeying instinct rather than reason, Jane's April-blue eyes direct a shaft at young Rawdon that does its work but too quickly and too effectually on the spot. Emma looks more and more foolish, Mrs. Crosbie more con- scious ; Rawdon, taking off his hat very low, looks at Jane : Jane, whatever she may feel, maintains a quiet countenance ; Blossy goes on with her pirouetting ; the sun who, as we know, has a republican trick of shining on visited and non-visited people alike,, slants down his golden benisons upon them all. Emma is the first to speak. " Mamma," rising, and thereby putting herself so much nearer the means of flight, " did you ever see a little child dance so well 1 And she's only three, and can talk I don't know how many languages already." Mrs. Crosbie's face bespeaks an almost venerating appreciation of Blossy's surprising talents. " Her mamma has been telling me about her." Without daring to mention names, Emma here goes through a misty pantomime of introduction, upon which Mrs. Crosbie bows very low, and Jane, not rising, bows like- wise, Rawdon in the back-ground, meanwhile, standing stiff, his hat between his hands, in an attitude of attention. " Her mamma has been telling me about her. She is only three years old, and and I have heard her say good morning in English and French and German." All this Emma hurries out in little spasmodic jerks, and in a voice very unlike her natural one. It is plain, Mrs. Crosbie sees, quite plain, that the dear child is dazed by the proximity, delicious but unwonted, of greatness. Let her voice, her de- meanour show that a Hervey, even in speaking to a princess ad FORTUNATELY, THERE ARE RULES. 39 nearly allied with royalty as the Princess Czartoriska herself, can feel that she is but addressing a fellow creature and a peer ! "Your Highness is, I trust, like ourselves, visiting this charming retreat for pleasure, not because your Highness's state of health requires the renovating agency of the springs V This with eyes downcast, and a reverential air of interest as to the reply delightful to witness. Crimson with shame, Emma would fain interfere, but the words die on her lips. A look of blankest amazement, followed, an instant later, by one of dawning intelligence, crosses Jane's face. " I am perfectly well thanks," she answers coolly ; " and I'm thankful to say never tasted a mouthful of any of their atrocious mineral waters in my life." The perfect English vernacular, a certain comical expression in the Princess's blue eyes, bring Rawdon Crosbie by a rapid intuition to the truth, or to so much of the truth as that this blooming English girl of nineteen is not the Princess Czartoriska. But Mrs. Crosbie remains in outer darkness still, and having now abundance of rope at her command, further entangles herself and multiply the horrors of the situation in this wise : "We had the pleasure of seeing your Highness this after- noon." Some gesture, fancied surely, on the part of Jane, here seems to invite Mrs. Crosbie to fill the place vacated by Emma, and down Mrs. Crosbie sits. " We were in the courtyard of the Hotel Bellevue " Janegives another glance at Rawdon, which says " I remember." " In the courtyard of the hotel, when your Highness passed out. As my daughter and your charming baby have made acquaintance might we, might we be permitted, living under the same roof, to pay our respects "? " "You are extremely good, I'm sure," says Jane, as Mrs. Crosbie pauses. "And I shall have the honour of bringing my husband. Rawdon" (Mrs. Crosbie waves her hand to Rawdon to approach). 40 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER 1 " let me have the honour of presenting my son, an officer in our English artillery, to the Princess Czartoriska." " The Princess Czartoriska ! " cries Jane, the key to the rid- dle, the motive to the whole farce laid bare by that one word. " The Princess Czartoriska ! " And then such a burst of laughter as rings forth from her lips ! Well-bred women, I am sure, never laugh like Jane Theobald. But Jane is not well-bred ; and to laugh when she is amused comes just as naturally to her healthy spirit as to eat when she is hungered, or to drink when she is athirst. " I, a princess 1 I ! Oh, I see it all now. And the Princess Czartoriska ! Why, she's forty, and she paints, and she's got the gout!" Each fresh announcement accompanied by such renewed peals of laughter as cause not a few of the nearer spectators to turn round and gaze, open-eyed, at the manners of " these English women." " And arid I am to understand " stammers Mrs. Crosbie. " Mamma, it's all my stupidity ! " Emma exclaims, trying hard to steady her voice. " I suppose I could not have said the name distinctly. This lady is is " oh, with a wrench she has to bring it out, "is Mrs. Francis Theobald." For once in her life Mrs. Crosbie forgets her own dignity the dignity of the Hervey blood everything. She turns green ; she jumps up to her feet, speechless. Rawdon conies forward with a vast deal more eagerness than he displayed towards " her Highness" a minute since. " Mis- take or not, mother," he says, with emphasis, " the accident is a fortunate one, inasmuch as it brings us acquainted with Mrs. Theobald." And as he speaks, the obstinate expression his mother knows only too well comes round his lips. " Yes, I was saying I was remarking to Mrs. Theobald that we shall be near neighbours soon," begins Emma, faintly. But now Mrs. Crosbie, the momentary weakness of panic over, proves herself at once equal to the occasion, and true to f he principles upon which every action of her life is based FORTUNATELY, THERE ARE RULES. 41 " Emma, my dear," she interrupts, in the silkiest, best-contained tone, " you really should be more careful in these foreign places. A mistake of the kind has often entailed the most embar- rassing results. To this lady," icily regarding not Jane's eyes but the exact centre of her forehead, " to this lady we owe, I am sure, every apology for our inadvertence." And quietly passing her hand within Emma's arm, Mrs. Crosbie bows condescendingly towards Jane, as much as to say she will overlook that young person's impertinence in having been mistaken for a princess, and prepares to move away. Up flushes the hot blood over Rawdon Crosbie's face. Before he can collect his temper enough to speak, however, Blossy, seeing that the owner of the " pitty zings" is going, has compli- cated the position by rushing to Emma, throwing her little arms round the heiress's knees, and holding up her face to be kissed. And now Jane feels that the time has arrived for her to throw down the gauntlet of defiance, too, and enter the lists. " Blossy, my pet," and she rises, and, though her limbs tremble under her with indignation, walks, very calm and self-possessed, towards the child, " give back the little fish this lady lent you to play with." " Oh no oh, please !" stammers Emma, her own not ungene- rous heart, and Rawdon's face, and Blossy's uplifted arms, all pleading on one side ; the warning pressure of Mrs. Crosbie's fingers on the other. " I I meant the little girl to keep it as her own if you don't mind." " Give it back at once, child," repeats Jane, sternly. " Me not !" cries Blossy, hugging what she feels to be her own legitimate possession to her breast, and setting her teeth tight. " Me dot mine fiss." Upon this Jane, stooping, lays her hand over the resolute tiny fingers with force, and straightway rises to heaven such a shriek as I trust few small children save Blossy Theobald have the power to send forth. A shriek not of terror, not of weak- ness, but defiance ; the veritablest war-cry that ever issued from 42 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? a pair of coral baby lips. Forward rushes the Belgian nurse, ready for battle, then comes another cry, and another, and then down falls Blossy prone, the fish beneath her in the dust, a passionate-tossed heap of white embroidery, vigorously kicking legs, and dishevelled golden curls. People begin to turn round more and more ; they stare at Jane, at Kawdon, at every member of the group. " Pray do not let this painful scene be prolonged," remarks Mrs. Crosbie, who it must be confessed stands now on vantage ground ; " Emma, my dear, I really must request of you to ac- company me." And with victorious dignity radiating from every fold of her olive-green dress, away Mrs. Crosbie walks, Emma Marsland at her side. So Rawdon is left alone with Mrs. Theobald. The blood runs tingling through his veins with shame ; shame for his mother, for himself, for the very name of Crosbie and all belonging to it. He glances at Mrs. Theobald, and sees that the colour has died down on her cheeks ; something not very unlike tears are in her eyes as she stands and looks after the retreating forms of the enemy. Poor Jane ! The heat, the excitement of the fray are over now, and she is feeling, keenly, scorchingly (as even Bohemian women can feel some things), this slight that has been newly offered to her by the hands of her " sisters." He advances, more humbly than he would have done had Jane been an empress, and falters out some lame and impotent excuse for his mother's conduct. "The stiffness of English manners living a good deal out of the world the pleasure his father and he will feel in welcoming Mr. and Mrs. Theobald as neighbours." These words, and others like unto them, fall indistinctly on Jane's ear, and she knows that one friend, at least, will await her in Chalkshire if she choose. Shall she accept the proffered olive branch, or stand upon her own dignity 1 She hesitates, and Rawdon Crosbie speaks again. " If you are going back towards the Bellevue, perhaps you will let me walk with you, Mrs. Theobald 1 Please do !" FORTUNATELY, THERE ARE RULES. 43 And Jane's determination is taken ; the more quickly in that she can discern how Mrs. Crosbie and Emma, under pretence of sitting down, are watching her movements from a distance. If war is to be waged against her, on a grand and aggressive scale, by the ladies of Chalkshire, why should she not enrol every husband, brother, and son, willing to enter the lists, for her own poor little guerilla system of defence ! " But what will your mamma say, Mr. Crosbie ? In these foreign places, you know, one can't be too careful. What will your mamma and Miss Marsland say to this fresh inadvertence V " Miss Marsland is excessively kind-hearted," says Kawdon, quickly. " You must not judge of Emma by any of the old- fashioned opinions my mother imposes upon her. Emmy never, voluntarily, committed an unamiable action in her life." " 4 Emmy' talked to me for five whole minutes," says Jane, demurely. " And after knowing, too, that I wasn't the Princess Czartoriska ! She also presented a silver fish with green eyes to my daughter. I have every reason to be grateful to Miss Marsknd." At the word ** fish" Blossy uplifts her head, and seeing that her mother smiles, and that the ladies are gone, jumps to her feet, the nurse indiscriminately dusting hair, face, legs, arms, and embroidery with a corner of her apron. " Me dot mine fiss !" she remarks, with triumph to Jane, the moment the process is over. "Yes, miss, as you've always 'dot' your own way in every- thing," answers Jane. Then taking her little daughter in her arms, as mammas of the upper classes are never seen to take their children in public, walks back towards the Bellevue ; young Rawdon (thinking the faces of mother and child the fairest his eyes have ever rested upon) in attendance. " You see, my dear Emma V Mrs. Crosbie remarks, in the dim perspective of the avenue. " You see V " Yes, I do see, and I'm very sorry I ever spoke to her," says Emma, with perfect sincerity. ** I dare say, mamma," but her 44 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER ? voice trembles somewhat, " I dare say Rawdon is trying to be civil to make up for the slight we showed her." Mrs. Crosbie laughs, a quiet, lady-like little laugh, and yet it falls like lead on Emma's heart. " You are always amiable and unselfish, but you are very unversed in the world's ways, Emma, very. What can a person like Mrs. Theobald expect, what can she ever have met with, from ladies, but slights 1" " Oh, mamma !" " Your ignorance of evil does you credit, my dear child, still Emma and remember I speak to you exactly as though you were my own daughter nothing could be more ill-advised, as matters stand now, than for me to permit any intercourse what- ever between our house and the house of Francis Theobald. For you. my dear girl, I do not dread ; your own high feminine standard of right and decorum would, I know, under all cir- cumstances be your safeguard, but . . . there is Rawdon ! If I feel warmly if I seem to have acted a little harshly towards this very-painfully-placed young person, remember my respon- sibilities. There is Rawdon !" A choking sensation comes into Emma Marsland's throat. Is not Rawdon her own especial property ] Half an hour ago did not she and Rawdon kiss as only lovers kiss who one day will be man and wife 1 And now, to hear his mother speak of him as at the mercy of Mrs. Theobald of the first pretty but doubt- ful woman who chooses to look at him with encouraging eyes ! "Rawdon is not made of barley-sugar, mamma" this she says with a sorrowful little failure of a laugh " I don't suppose he will quite melt away, because he happens to walk the length of the street with Mrs. Theobald ! Charming though she may be, you know she is married. Don't let us forget the existence of Mr. Theobald and Blossy." " If she were not married the case would be very different. If, with all her want of birth, yes, and with her antecedents on the stage and her dreadful existing relations, this young woman were Francis Theobald's sister instead of Francis Theobald's FORTUNATELY, THERE ARE RULES. 45 wife, I might feel my duty less plainly marked out before me. With all his faults, I do not consider Kawdon a boy to be guilty of the crime of making a low marriage" " Then what are you afraid of, mamma V exclaims Miss Mars- land, hastily. " Really I can't help thinking that you a little overrate Rawdon's susceptibility ; or do you consider Mrs. Theobald's beauty so transcendent that no man, not even Raw- don, can look at her and survive T " I don't think Mrs. Theobald beautiful at all," answers Mrs. Crosbie. " She possesses the transient attractions of youth, and of a certain meretricious style ' Oh, Mrs. Crosbie, Mrs. Crosbie ! What of the graceful mien, the elegance, the distinction you perceived in Jane as she passed out from the hotel 1 " But she belongs, by birth and association alike, to a class of persons whom society rightly considers dangerous, and puts be- yond its barriers. A class who we know, and regret, must exist. Society will have its opera, and opera necessitates the ballet but with whom no right-minded mother would, voluntarily, allow her young son to be thrown. Your own delicacy of feel- ing, my dear Emma, will, I am sure, make you sensible that I have said enough." But Emma is not to be silenced yet. " I shall do just as you choose, mamma dear, about my own acquaintance with Mrs. Theobald ; and I'm sorry, very sorry, that the acquaintance ever began. But I must say I consider Rawdon perfectly safe in her society ; yes, or in the society of the most beautiful and witty and fascinating actress in London. No doubt young men talk to these sorts of people differently to how they do to us, and and, perhaps, find what they say more amusing !" Emma gives a sigh as she speaks. Far away she can see Rawdon and Jane slowly strolling in the direction of the Bellevue. " As long as we know we hold the first place in their affections, what does it matter V " In these levelling days it is sometimes difficult to know who 46 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER f does hold the first pi ace anywhere," is Mrs. Crosbie's answer, " and, indeed, guided by our own wisdom, it would frequently be embarrassing to decide who should, and who should not, be admitted to our intimacy. Fortunately, my dear Emma, there are Rules, and, fortunately also, there is the conduct of those above us in station to be our guide." "Those above us sometimes number very queer members among their ranks," says Emma ; thinking, perhaps, of some of the ultra well-born, ultra fast people, even in virtuous Chalk- shire. "Never ballet-girls," says Mrs. Crosbie, calmly. "Never ballet-girls, and never persons who play the trombone in orches- tras ! Of private misconduct, my Emma, we, erring creatures of the hour, are not the appointed judges. Sufficient for you and me, and every one of us, to regulate our own conscience, and leave that of persons above us in station in peace." And with the enunciation of this admirable Christian senti- ment the conversation closes. CHAPTER VI. YOUNG RAWDON GAINS HIS FREEDOM. " I SHALL expect to see you at the ball to-night then," cries Jane, looking back over her shoulder with a friendly farewell nod to Rawdon ; " and I promise you two round dances that is, if the powers that be give you leave to come." And away she trips with her child, through the courtyard of the hotel, Rawdon Crosbie his heart, his eyes, full of sunlight watching the airy flutter of her blue and white muslin dress till it is out of sight. The courtyard is empty now. Even Mr. Crosbie has finished his Times, and betaken himself elsewhere to wile away the interminable hours and get up an appetite for his dinner. Rawdon lights his cigar, takes one of the vacant chairs under the lindens, puts his legs across another chair, folds his arms, YOUNG RAW DON GAINS HIS FREEDOM. 47 and begins to muse, with the delicious sense, for a quarter-of- an-hour at least, of being his own master. What a pretty woman Mrs. Theobald is ! He has not the faintest notion whether her nose is classical or celestial, whether her mouth is geometrically straight, or the reverse ; he remem- bers only generalities, the exquisite frank allurement of all that health and youth and freshness ; remembers only that, if he can get leave, she has promised to dance with him at the Casino ball to-night. If he can get leave ! Ridiculous doubt. Who should hinder him ? His mother Emma 1 Certainly not poor Emma ; in- deed, more than likely, Emmy at the last moment may take a fancy to go to the ball herself. At this possibility Rawdon falls with a rush, suddenly, blankly, as one falls from airy heights of nothingness after inhaling the fumes of nitrogen gas or chloro- form. He takes his cigar from his lips, examines its tip of burnt ash gravely, looks up at the sky, and remarks the circles that the swallows are making far away over head. Vaguely it occurs to him that the swallows are enviable. They are free agents, at least ; never consult parents in the matter of their affections ; never commit themselves, as animals endowed with the doubt- ful advantages of speech do, beforehand. Has he committed himself 1 The cigar burns dead, and he re-kindles it by a moment's application to his lips, then holds it idly again between his fingers. Is Emma Marsland his affianced wife or not] He tries honestly to remember what was said before the donkeys came, and his heart answers joyously, " No- thing." And then he remembers Emma's tell-tale face of happi- ness, and the kiss that was exchanged between them, and honour and conscience cry heavily, " Everything." Of course, of course he is engaged, absolutely now, as he has been, virtually, from the time he left off jackets, and Emma is the best-hearted little girl living, and he the luckiest of fellows. He returns his cigar to his mouth, smokes away steadily, and once more looks up at the sky. It is blue blue like some 48 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? women's eyes. And jocund airs are kissing the green leaves in the lindens, and summer and the world are fair, and his heart is young, and he is going to dance with Mrs. Theobald to-night. And because a man is engaged, because a man is married, is no reason, when one comes to think of it, for not loyally making the best of every pleasant hour life may chance to bring within his reach. It is the first time Rawdon Crosbie has ever succeeded in reconciling inclination perfectly and amicably with fate. And more danger lurks hidden, perhaps, under the optimist philo- sophy than he himself knows of. The hours wear away, every minute of which brings those two promised waltzes nearer ; the family-party meet at dinner (it is a formula of Mrs. Crosbie that the " best people," abroad, never dine at tables- d'h6te), but Rawdon does not muster courage to announce that he intends going to the public ball in the evening. No one seems in particularly lively spirits, and the conversation at table flags. Mr. Crosbie, duly informed in connubial solitude of the fiasco about the Princess, and warned by a certain expression in his wife's eye, touches on no subject nearer home than the present position of New Zealand finance. Rawdon gives answers that betray either culpable indifference to our colonial interests, or entire absence of mind, or both : Emma, embarrassed, naturally, by her consciousness as a newly affianced bride, eats her food in silence. Mrs. Crosbie is calm and self-contained as ever, but cold as the ice on the centre of the table ; addresses her remarks pointedly to her husband or to Miss Marsland, never goes within a yard of meeting Raw- don's eye. It is her invariable way of manifesting displeasure towards her son ; a way, I may add, that, from the time Rawdon was a baby, has never failed in putting him upon the defensive, whatever the cause of dispute of the moment might chance to be. After dinner they all betake themselves to the pleasant flower- garden at the back of the hotel. Mr. Crosbie walks up and YOUNG RAW DON GAINS HIS FREEDOM. 49 down the paths, wondering how it is that with this Continental cooking one always feels lighter after dinner than before, and wishing himself back again in Chalkshire. Mrs. Crosbie, a black lace shawl over her head, stands in an attitude, her chin resting on her shapely jewelled fingers, and watches the rising moon. Emma Marsland creeps up to Rawdon, who is smoking again when does Rawdon not smoke 1 under a shady trellised archway at the farther corner of the garden. How handsome he is, thinks the heiress, gazing up at her lover's most unclassical sunburnt face. And what a fine broad- shouldered fellow ! And hers hers ! stealing her fingers under his arm and feeling, even with its attendant cares and jealousies, what a thrilling intoxicating thing love is. Emma is not romantic at ordinary times, but certainly at this moment she would fain be wafted off to some fairy isle in seas unknown with Rawdon Crosbie ; no Mrs. Theobald, or any other ob- noxiously pretty woman of the unvisited classes, to interrupt their bliss ; nightingales to lull the hours ; a good cook to dress their four meals a day, and a pretty little rustic church to attend English service in on Sundays. " Oh, Rawdon," she whispers, and unconsciously her fingers rest closer on his arm, " Isn't it delightful V " Very," answers Rawdon, promptly. The question chimes in so aptly with the subject he is thinking of just now ! " Do you think, by-and-by, if mamma doesn't mind, we might have another walk 1" "What, to-night r " I I thought so. One of those little shady paths among the woods, only not so up-hill." To a man in love, what music would such a proposal sound ] But Rawdon is not in love, and he shirks it with an adroitness that, were Emma more experienced in such matters, might lead her somewhat inconveniently near the truth : " My mother would be sure to mind, my dear Emma. My mother is not in too amicable a mood, it seerns, already. Be* 4 50 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER* sides, aren't we very jolly as we are 1 ?" Pressing her hand to his side with a lover-like warmth that raises Emma to the third heaven of happiness. "Very jolly," she whispers, leaning her cheek against his shoulder. It is dusk, Reader, and the spot where they stand is isolated. " Oh dear ! in spite of all that dreadful mistake about Mrs. Theobald, what a day of days this has been !" The tone of her voice makes Rawdon Crosbie realise 1 is position to the full. They are lovers, formally affianced lovers ; and in the friendly, flower-scented dusk, and in this close proximity (and with the prospect of the ball before him) the young fellow's own heart almost begins to feel tender. "If it wasn't that my mother is watching us, Emma, I should " " Oh, Eawdon, please ! Oh, don't !" If it is possible, she clings a little closer to his side. " Oh, what do you mean T " Do you want me to tell you more plainly V After this there is a long silence. Rawdon gives stealthy such tender womanly forgiveness upon her face as makes her more than pretty, falters " Yes ; " and Jane, standing outside in the cold just opposite the lovers, that is to say, animated and radiant on the Duke of Malta's arm must have her sign! He takes the flower, as she bade him, from his button-hole, and holds it irresolutely. " How odious I used to be about your bits of flower, your withered weeds ! " cries Emma, presently, poor Emma, who feels in her immense new-born happiness that she can never blame herself enough for the jealousy through which that hap- piness was so nearly wrecked ! " I'm wiser now, Rawdon. I ask no impertinent questions about your white rosebud, although I can form a pretty shrewd guess who gave it you. Your button-hole was without adorn- ment, sir, when we danced that miserable dance together at the beginning of the evening." " I have danced with Lydia Pippin, Augusta Brown with I don't know how many charming creatures since then," says Rawdon. And Emmy seems contented. Just at this moment up cornea " GOOD-B YE FOR E PER" 397 Sir John Laurie to ask her for the following quadrille, the last square dance of the evening. Even in the first rose-flush of enraptured reconciliation, Emma cannot resist the honour of dancing with the county member ; and as the good old gentle- man, spectacles on nose, stands writing his name down on her programme, Rawdon gets an opportunity, unobserved, for giving Jane her sign. In a crowded ball-room, everybody Argus-eyed, watching everybody else's affairs, 'tis wonderful how little is known really of what goes on among the different actors. Rawdon Crosbie is evidently trying to patch things up, wise young man, with the heiress, in Major Hervey's absence. That all the world has ^een observing during the past five minutes. Who should notice such a trivial action as his raising a morsel of half- dead flower to his lips, holding it to them with great tenderness, for a second or two, then his sunburnt, unsentimental face becoming livid the while laying it gently down on the floor, just beside the hem of Miss Marsland's ball-dress, and letting it rest there 1 Who, I say, should notice such unimportant non- sense as all this 1 " I'm sure I didn't want any other partner than you to-night," says Emmy, turning to her lover. " But one couldn't refuse Sir John say, Rawdon, could one 1 " " Perfectly impossible, my dear Emma. Now, the right thing, I suppose, for me is to solicit the honour of fat old Lady Laurie's hand, and be your vis-a-vis ? " "I hope you are not beginning to laugh at one, already, Rawdon r " Do I look in such a very laughing rnood, then, Emma V And Emma, after glancing at his face, is forced to confess, a little bitterly, that he does not. Rawdon Crosbie, as I have before remarked, is no expert in the art of feigning emotion. When the waltz is over, Mrs. Theobald begins to walk about on the Duke's arm ; after a time, accidentally or otherwise, passes close to the lovers as they stand talking to Mrs. Crosbie 398 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? at the upper end of the room. She gives Rawdon a furtive smile of congratulation that, with all its kindliness, cuts him to the heart. Then, Emma chancing at the moment to raise her head, the eyes of the two young women meet meet, Emma Marsland may one day be glad to remember, with a look of forgiveness and reconciliation at last. It is considered etiquette at the Lidlington public balls for " everybody" to leave together. Lady Laurie orders her car- riage at two ; Mrs. Coventry Brown, and all minor luminaries, order theirs at the same hour. After her quadrille with Sir John, Emma has one blissful round dance with her lover, then quits the ball-room on his arm ; some bald-headed gentleman, of Chalkshire repute you may be sure, escorting Mrs. Crosbie poor Mrs. Crosbie, ready to weep with maternal joy at the happy turn events have taken, but dignified and well-bred in her demeanour towards Providence to the last. In the vestibule occurs the usual crush of cloaked and hooded ladies, and of gentlemen tripping themselves up over the ladies' trains. " Charming ball, was it not ? " " Oh charming ! Never saw your daughters look so well." " Good-night, dear Lady Laurie." " Hope you will not suffer from the heat ! " " Hope you will not suffer from the cold ! " So the Chalkshire notables, treading on each other's satin toes, and murmuring platitudes in each other's tired faces, fight their way to the front, and vanish from the stage of this little drama. " Mrs. Coventry Brown's carriage." Forth steps the majestic woman, liker to a purring white cat than ever, with her swansdown cloak drawn up around her throat; the two youthful white cats, also in swansdown, following. " Mrs. Pippin's carriage." The watchful barn-door mamma, and her brood of elderly chickens, pass away out of our sight. " Mrs. Crosbie's carriage." No ; the name, this time, has been shouted wrong. Mrs. Crosbie's carriage next but one. " GOOD-S YE FOR E VER 399 " Mrs. Francis Theobald's carriage stops the way." She flutters down the steps, in her white dress and flowers, at the Duke of Malta's side ; the light from the lamps outside shining on her ; flushed, successful as women count success yet with that same hunted look, of which I have spoken, upon her face still : a vision several persons among this Chalkshire assemblage are not likely to forget. The Duke stands bareheaded, eagerly whispering to her for a minute or more after she is seated, heedless it would seem of the string of county carriages, whose progress Mrs. Francis Theobald's hack vehicle impedes. He whispers more and more eagerly ; Jane never answers. At last " If you expect me to remember anything about it, you had better write the name down," she remarks, in a cold hard sort of tone ; Rawdon Crosbie is near enough to hear her words " I never remembered a promise or an address in my life." She hands the Duke her ball-programme ; he scribbles a word or two on the back, and gives it to her again, with another last whisper. And then the door of the carriage is shut, and Jane drives away, the Duke of Malta watching her progress, into the dark- ness of the night. CHAPTER XLI. ALONG THE RAILROAD TO RUIN. AWAY into the darkness ; back, through the hush and sweet- ness of the August night, home. Hannah, the nursemaid, the only watcher in the grim old house, Hannah, with nerves already shaken by rats and creaking boards, stares open-mouthed at the apparition of Mrs. Theobald's face ; ghastly, now that it has cooled from the flush and excitement of the ball ; the blue eyes weary, yet with an unnatural glow of fire in their weariness ; the 400 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER f hair pushed back from the temples ; the lips dry and scarlet j the whole expression of the face changed. Will Mrs. Theobald please to take anything ' Yes, Mrs. Theo- bald will take some brandy-and- water when she gets up-stairs ; the proportion of brandy not small, Hannah ! And then she submits to having pins taken out, and flowers unfastened ; sub- mits to Hannah's talk, and and wants nothing more ! Wants nothing but to be left alone, within locked doors, the reflection of her own face in the looking-glass, the sight of Blossy, asleep and rosy in her cot, for company. In the fine old days, when rack and thumbscrew were called in to the aid of orthodox social opinions, the accused, we read, did, after the first great wrench of nerve and muscle, feel little more ; man's physical capacity for suffering being, thank Heaven, less boundless than man's capacity for inflicting it. Jane should have gone through the worst by now, if the same law hold good in the moral as in the material world, which unfortunately it does not. " In the infinite spirit is room, For the pulse of an infinite pain." She has been in torture throughout the evening ; was in torture while she danced, smiled, planned, radiant with " success," the ruin of all her future years ; is in torture now. The room she and Theobald occupy is the same best or purple room to which her sister-in-law led her on the night when she first tasted respectability : there is the ghostly four-poster in which Cousin James died ; there are the ghostly watch-pockets there the two prim dressing-tables. Nothing altered outwardly. Only the life that then was in its spring laid low by sudden blight, only an unimportant unit about to be added to the sum of shipwrecked and abandoned human waifs with which the world's highways are overstocked ! Is it to be wondered at % Jane took her brandy-and-water at a draught as soon as the servant left her alone, and the result of the stimulant is no merciful stupor, no kindly impairment of ALONG THE RAILROAD TO RUIN. 401 reason, but rather a quickened power of gauging her wretched- ness to its depths. Is this crowning act of her history a thing in any way to wonder at 1 She remembers a score of children who learnt in the same class with her from Adolphe Dido, and who have most of them ended as she will only with less noise and glitter. Some innate tendency of ballet-girls, probably, against which, now that the play of life begins to " work close," 'twere vain to struggle. One's fate ; as well accept fate bravely; make no whine over it ! And yet, and yet what love, resur- gent, what yearning towards all things right and honest, were in her heart four hours ago ! What loathing, what abhorrence, for the future to which she tacitly stands committed, are in her heart now ! Taking her candle, she goes up to Blossy's cot and bends over, looking at her in a sort of blank despair. The child " features" Theobald, as the country-people say, and the likeness comes out strongest when sleep has shut the blue eyes, which are her sole resemblance to her mother. Theobald's fair hair and com- plexion, his forehead, his print of chin Theobald's whole face rises before Jane's sight, with cruel distinctness, as she looks at the baby-face of his little daughter. And she turns from her abruptly yes, turns from her with a feeling wellnigh of hatred ! How should I write the word, if I did not know that love and hatred, under the over-mastering influence of jealousy, are ex- changeable terms 1 She turns from the child, I say, 'and for an instant stands motionless ; then, through a half-open door, walks into a small adjoining room her husband's dressing-room. It is in disorder Esther, the housemaid, having taken her day's junketing at the races just as Mr. Theobald left it after dressing this morn- ing. Three or four summer cravats, failures, are strewn about the dressing-table ; the gloves in which he drove over from The Folly lie on the floor. She stoops, and picks one of these gloves up, in I know not what passion of tenderness, clasps it tight tight to her breast for a moment, then flings it from her with a 26 402 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER ? gesture of abhorrence ! Melodramatic, highly ; but, coming from Jane, natural. If she were dying, the poor theatrical-nurtured girl must be theatrical still. After this shutting and locking the door, as though she would lock him away from her thoughts with the action she comes back to her room, and finishes un- By now a faintest primrose tinge has begun to penetrate through the heavy window-curtains. Jane draws one back, and sees the world already entered upon a new day ; sees the chill light resting on the hoar old elms round Theobalds, and on the faintly-outlined Chalk-downs, that were a thousand years before she was, and will be a thousand years after she has sinned and suffered her little hour and gone to sleep again. What matter her sorrows or her wrongs in this great system of things wherein she holds so poor a place 1 Of what account are they or she to any one 1 ... And then return to her mind the protestations of life-long devotion, the offers of riches, freedom, " position," which have been incessantly whispered in her ear throughout the even- ing. And though she loathes the offers and him who made them alike ; more than this, though with wisdom prematurely learnt in the sharpest of all schools she appraises both protestations and offers at their exact value ; it seems to her that there can be no going back now, that what is coming is not only inevitable, but best. All times of revolution, in nations, or in a girl's ignorant heart, are times of lightning speed. Four hours ago, reckoning time by ordinary computation, Jane was swayed by one fierce passion, simply : in an access of jealousy, desired swift and sure and desperate retaliation upon one offender. She has gone through a whole lifetime since then ; will be avenged, not only for her bruised and despised love's sake, not on Theobald only now, but on the world ; will throw down the gauntlet, not merely to this Chalkshire respectability, which has flouted her, but to all respectability. (An old, ever-new story, Reader : society revolting against the class; the individual revolting ALONG THE RAILROAD TO RtflN. 403 against, and so justifying, society.) How puerile, childish, seems that scheme she once entertained of returning to the stage ! What go through the bitter toil, the heat, the cold, of that hardest slavery, to win the applause of a capricious public, the paltry earnings of some forty or fifty shillings a week ; while Theobald, by good luck rid without signal disgrace of his encumbrance, might return, honourably, to the world that had found no place for her, the world of Lady Rose Golightly ! Work wants a sound heart. If at any time, while he loved and was faithful to her, Francis Theobald had happened to ruin himself utterly, yes, to the wanting of bread, never doubt that Jane would have gone back to the stage short skirts, hard work, modest pay, and all and have pirouetted bravely for his support, yes, and have had him wear fine lavender gloves and embroidered linen, and smoke the best attainable cigars, out of her poor superfluities ! That is just the sort of stuff she is made of. Not now, not now ! She moves across to her dressing-table where lie her soiled ball-gloves, her faded bouquet, her programme ; she takes tip this last, and looks down through the list of dances each *Valse d' Amour' or 'Galop Infernal' marking a station of her ourney along the railroad to ruin ! Then turns over to the other side, and, in the cold green daylight, reads the words the Duke wrote there in pencil, as he stood bareheaded, the county watching, I will not say envying, her " success/' beside the door of her carriage. Only three or four words : the address of a certain hotel in Brussels, with his Grace's initials scrawled in monogram under- neath. But Jane's face turns suddenly ashen as she reads them. Pain, like pleasure, has its intoxications ; pain, hitherto, has lifted her, in some measure, above the level of her guilt. The sight of those few words in the Duke's handwriting, and in her possession, makes her realise, with a shiver of actual bodily terror, what all this is that is befalling her. 262 404 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER f God, can she escape, may she escape 1 Help her, if she be not already past the reach of help ! She hides the programme out of sight in her dressing-table drawer as though its secret could be deciphered by any eyes save her own and going up to her bed, not to the side where Blossy lies asleep, stands, her ashen face growing more ashen, her cold hands clasped together rigidly; then falls down on her knees and tries to pray. She and Min received what would be counted but a heathen kind of bringing-up from poor, strong-hearted, weak-headed Uncle Dick. When the children were young, however, Uncle Dick's wife did, in her scanty leisure, in her unenlightened way, teach these heaven-forsaken little theatre rats to go on their knees and repeat a certain form of words at night. And Jane has clung to the habit since ; no power of Theobald's, even, being able to shake her from what he has often called '"the one mild hypocrisy" of her character. Hypocrisy to Jane were a physical impossibility. Had Theo- bald used the word superstition, he might have been nearer the mark; for, in truth, the "prayer" which has constituted the sole nourishment of her spiritual life is one I should blush to submit to the eyes of educated readers, a formula scarcely to be ranked higher than the distich of which "Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John" is the first line. And still it is a prayer ; an outcry of weakness to strength ; an acknowledgment of some- thing beyond, above, this visible life of ours and its needs. And formula, superstition, parrot-like repetition of soulless words- call it by what name one will Jane has never, knowingly, laid her head on her pillow since she was a child without going through it. She goes through it now ; now, for the first time in her exist- ence, probably, learns what prayer means. For she learns that her formula means nothing ! She is staring at the sickly daylight on the opposite wall, and kneeling, with her hands ioined and lips moving, and her heart dumb. Oh, all you ALONG THE RAILROAD TO RUIN. 405 who have suffered, do you not know the meaning of that awful impotence '? her heart dumb ! Well, these things cannot be forced. Prayerless, hopeless, unrepentant, nothing remains for Jane Theobald but to get into her bed, and watch the green light turn to gold, then to white ; presently, to hear the birds sing, and then the whistle of the gardener's boy, as he passes under her window to his work. After a time, the servants begin to stir in the house, and Blossy, waking, flings her soft arms round her mother's neck, and asks, as she has done every morning since Saturday, " Why Dada him not here 1 ?" and must have her game of romps as usual. And Blossy has her game ; sings nigger melodies at the pitch of her shrill voice ; dances fantasias on the bed, barefooted, with night-gown artistically upraised in the morning sunshine ; Jane forced to listen to her, forced to look at her ! For what might the servants think so low has she sunk already, Jane, who, as long as she was honest, cared not a straw for the opinion of the whole world what might the servants think if she rang earlier than on another morning to have the child taken away to the nursery ] By-and-by comes her own getting up and dressing. Her limbs ache as they never ached after any ball before, her hands tremble, her throat feels parched ; and still, thanks to yester- day's scorching on the racecourse, or to the fever of the night, her cheeks retain their colour. When she comes downstairs she is able to force her voice, as near as may be, into its accustomed tone. The servants, if questioned hereafter, will be ready, doubt not, to affirm that " Missus never looked better nor in better spirits, and took her breakfast hearty, and seemed quite cheerful with Miss Blossy." Trustworthy, discriminative souls ! Is it not upon evidence like this that the history of half our fireside tragedies is written 1 And the morning hours drag slowly by. Blossy's dinner- time comes, and then, as Jane sits at table attending to the child, and making what pretence she can of swallowing food 4o6 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? herself, arrives a servant from The Folly with a note the same that should have been sent over to her last night from Mr. Theobald. " Dear Jane," her lord and master writes, " after what you said to-day, I conclude you will not mind going to the ball alone. Lord Barty Beaudesert has asked me to stay with him for a few days on board his yacht at Cowes. I start to-night. Address to me ' On board the Lai's, at Cowes,' if you should have occasion to write. Impossible to say for certain when I shall be back. " Your affectionate husband, "FRANCIS THEOBALD. " P.S. If you want money, you will find some in my Russia- leather case ; the key must be in one of my waistcoat-pockets in the dressing-room." Well, the postscript is important ; more important, possibly, than Mr. Theobald imagined when he wrote it. Not many human actions, virtuous or criminal, can come to fruition unless they have cash as a basis ; none, certainly, involving railway fares and steamboat tickets ; and Jane was brought by current household expenses to her last sovereign yesterday. Mr. Theobald's thoughtfulness is opportune. She goes upstairs to his dressing-room, searches for the key, happily or unhappily finds it, and gets what money she believes will suffice to carry her to Brussels eight or ten pounds in gold. This done, she divests herself of the few trinkets she chances to have about her, her chain and watch, a brooch of some slen- der value, her rings (except her wedding-ring ; she will wear that a little longer yet); then puts on her hat and shawl, and stands ready to go, richer only by those eight or ten sovereigns and by her wedding-ring than on the day when she came to Francis Theobald as a bride. Now there is one last farewell to be uttered farewell between ALONG THE RAILROAD TO RUIN. 407 mother and child, between soul and body. Get that wrench over with as little thinking about it as possible, and quickly. The train by which she means to go is express, exact to a second. Not too much time left her, as it is, for walking to the station. Blossy is amusing herself alone in the breakfast-room down- stairs. This room, as I have said, is the cheerfullest one in the house the room into which Jane has collected together every- thing in the shape of mirror or ornament Theobalds can boast. It makes a charming little theatre for Bloss, who indeed wants no other entertainment when she has got an abundance of look- ing-glass to reflect her own small figure, and represent imagin- ary audiences as she sings and dances. Especially contented with the world, and everything in it, is Miss Theobald at this moment. Auntie Min brought her a gift of gorgeous cherry-coloured sash and shoulder-knots from London yesterday, requesting, as she gave it, that the finery should be enjoyed, not locked away, too fine for use, out of Blossy's jurisdiction. So over her little holland house-frock the child, in the seventh heaven of enraptured vanity, disports her grandeur. Nor is she quite without company. The paper of the room is of quaint old-fashioned design, all white-and-gold arabesque, with impossible palm-trees inter- mingled, and small green monkeys sitting or clinging by im- possible tails and hands among the boughs. Well, as Jane enters in her travelling-dressleaden-eyed, leaden-hearted Bloss, with infinite grace and vanity of gesture, is just exhibit- ing her ribbons to the monkeys curtseying to this one, extend- ing a shoulder-knot to that, holding forth the smart fringed end of her sash, with disdainful sense of superiority, to another. She takes no notice whatsoever of her mother's entrance, but continues, self-absorbed and grave, to bestow her salutations around. So Jane goes up, and lays her gloved hand upon her head. 408 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? " Good-bye, Bloss," she says, in a thick hoarse voice : then snatches hold of her tight, kisses neither lips nor brow, but buries her face for a moment among the child's mass of silken curls. " Mine zibbons pitty zibbons !" cries Bloss, stroking her ruffled finery with tender fingers, and freeing herself with a little push from the interruption. " Me dot pitty zibbons." And then back to her bows and curtseys and attitudinizing before her friends the monkeys. A natural action enough, that push. What matters the uni- verse, with all the love it contains, to a child still untired of its last new plaything *? But to Jane's ruined heart a death-stab. Even the child wants her not ; the child is Theobald's will be better off, " both as regards this world and the next," with- out her than with her. So that wrench is over the one good-bye she had to speak, spoken. And now out into the open daylight, into the sight of men, and on with her journey. CHAPTER XLII. FAST AND LOOSE WITH DESTINY. JANE'S destination is Dover ; from thence, by night-mail to Ostend, and then on to Brussels after which point our story is not further concerned. She has made no plan in detail of the journey, and on reach- ing Dover learns, to her dismay, that she will have more than three hours to wait. The Belgian steamer, so one of the rail- way porters informs her, does not start till seven passengers not allowed on board till half -past six. Where is she to spend these hours ? how kill this hideous interval of time, without the narcotic of action or movement to deaden her pain still the FAST AND LOOSE WITH DESTINY. 409 remorse that already, the first stage of her journey scarce over, burns at her heart 1 She knows several of the large Dover hotels, having stopped there often in better innocent days with Theobald ; but, dread- ing recognition, will show her face at none of these will sooner bear her three hours' ordeal, alone, unnoticed, in the ladies' waiting-room at the station. However, the atmosphere of the waiting-room makes her faint and sick ; after a time, too, she begins to think (Jane grown a coward in such matters !) that the austere-looking woman who guards the water-bottle and tracts, eyes her with suspicion : and so wanders forth into the streets, resolved, if walking be possible, to pass the remainder of the time until she can go on board in the open air. She finds that it is not possible. Walking wants strength, and Jane, after ten or twelve minutes' trial, discovers, with terror, that she has no strength left. At last, seeing a small but decent inn, not far from the harbour, she enters it, and in a halting voice asks the tawdrily-dressed landlady, who comes out to meet her, if she can have a sitting-room to herself for a couple of hours. She has to wait until the departure of the Ostend boat at seven. The woman gives her a hard look the logic of a landlady's facts disinclining her, doubtless, towards female travellers de- void of luggage or ostensible masculine protection. " A sitting- room 1 Why, yes ; folks can have a parlour to theirselves, of course, by paying for it, but " " I will pay you what you choose to ask me/' is Jane's answer, hurriedly drawing out and opening her purse. At which the hard look mollifies. Next to masculine protec- tion, what so respectable as a well-filled purse ! " Ah, the young lady is going across the water, is she 1 'Tis to be hoped, for her sake, the night will be fine ; but the sailors don't like the look of the sky, and the wind is changing fast." Then, after lead- ing her some steps along a stifling beery passage, mine hostess shows her guest into a stifling beery parlour, overlooking th 410 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? harbour and shipping, and redolent of both, and leaves her alone. The furniture of this parlour consists of a rickety horsehair couch, a table, a couple of chairs, and a shelf holding a few odd volumes of musty leather-bound books. Its adornments are : Dover Castle in shell-work, a bunch of grotesquely unnatural feather tulips, and a mezzotint engraving of H.M. King William the Fourth ; H.M. curveting on a lambswool charger through a lambswool forest, with the towers of Windsor, royally defying every rule of perspective, in the background. Well, before Jane has been here three minutes, it seems to her as though this miserable place and its belongings yes, even to the grouping of the unnatural tulips, the simper on the face of majesty had been familiar objects for years. With such ease do we attune ourselves, in certain overstrung states of mind and body, to each successive accompaniment, or background of our pain ! Her first hope, when the woman left her alone, was that she might sleep. No matter how uninviting the couch ; she would rest her throbbing temples on its pillow, in an atti- tude, at least, of sleep. And sleep will not come near her. The very attempt at rest has but quickened the unrest of her brain. No escape that way. She must face conscience, at last : must bear whatever torture her own thick-coming, morbidly vivid thoughts have power to inflict upon her. They shape themselves, bit by bit, into a retrospect, mocking her sick heart by its brightness, of all the happiest periods of her life. Blankly staring at the opposite wall, and at the face of simpering mezzotint majesty, Jane bethinks her of the child- ish years when she and Min ran wild about the precincts of Drury Lane and Covent Garden of her shortlived girlish dreams of theatrical success of that first day when Theobald " stood, and fell in love with her." despite her darned merino and the shabby roses in her hat, from the half -lit slips of the Royal ! . . . She did not care for him so very much, she remembers, FAST AND LOOSE WITH DESTINY. 41 T in the early days of their courtship ; or so, confident of her power, she used to tell him. She had seen other men she fancied as well before. Mr. Theobald, if he liked, might go. Presents 1 oh, she wouldn't take a present from a prince ! Give up the stage and become a lady 1 With her agreement signed, and her dresses ready, and success certain, thanks ! The honour of Mr. Theobald's preference was great, but she preferred liberty to honour : was too young to know her own mind yet : Mr. Theobald might go. And he went : for two days, during which the world turned black to her, stayed away ; then, suddenly, when she was beginning to think he had taken her at her word and gone for ever, made his appearance at the old corner of Wellington Street, as she was returning home from rehearsal, and said : " Jane, my dear, I want your answer to a certain question there can be only one answer for you to give, you know Will you throw up your engagement and marry me T' And there was only one answer for her to give. She threw up her engagement and married him. She remembers their most Bohemian wedding-day : Theo- bald, in a morning suit, smoking his pipe until he reached the vestry-door ; herself in a bonnet made by her own hands, and a print-dress ; with only just sufficient witnesses in the gloomy London church to render the marriage legal. She remembers their honeymoon (the honeymoon that to Jane's heart never quite waned) on the Continent. Summer was in its bloom ; they went to Ems, Frankfort, Baden-Baden. Oh, the sunshine of those days ! Oh, the nights, white with stars, when, hands furtively clasped, they used to wander, listening a little to the music, and much to their own whispers, among dim-lit Kursaal gardens ! Oh, the out- of-door dinners and suppers, those two alone wanting no other guest, save the invisible guest, Love, who sat between them ! She thinks of their winter in Homburg, of her money troubles light ones in sooth ; was not Theobald her lover still 1 Then 412 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? of her child's birth ; of Blossy's first imperfect words ; of the day, at ten months old, when, miracle of a baby, Blossy ran from her knee alone to Theobald's arms. She remembers . . . Ah, my God, no ! These are not things to think of, unless one would go mad outright. Think, instead, of later cruel days of the neglect, the faithlessness, that are the justification of one's guilt. . . . And thought will not be put in shackles. Thought turns from the living, miserable present; flies back swift -winged, to the honeyed years that are dead the years, with all their sins of omission, undarkened by a solitary cloud of coldness or estrangement. How she has loved life since her marriage ! Homeless, spend- thrift, vagrant though they have been, how few thorns have grown among their roses ! They have lived, openly and avow- edly, for pleasure only, and have found it, or Jane has : pleasure in her dress and balls and vanities, pleasure in her child and husband, pleasure in the mere fact of drawing breath, and of being young and fair. And now all is over ; not a wreck of the old joy left ; and through no fault of hers our souls are kinder to us, sometimes, than life is through no fault of hers. Inch by inch, foot by foot, she has been hurried towards this precipice, upon whose last ledge she stands, wanting, striving to regain her footing, but borne down ever by fate, stronger than her will. If society if six, four, two nay, if one kindly human heart had bidden her Godspeed when she came to Chalkshire : if tlie harsh judgments wrongly visited on her had been visited, righteously, on Lady Rose Golightly ; if but why make one's weary brain wearier with such " ifs V Does right, does jus- tice exist in the world at alU "There's a law for the rich and a law for the poor : a law for men and a law for women : a law for the well-born, and a law for those who are not." The words spoken by Charlotte Theobald yesterday return, abruptly, to her remembrance, and with them returns the thought of Charlotte Theobald's outstretched hand: "If you want a friend, FAST AND LOOSE WITH DESTINY. 413 and the time may come sooner than you think, you'll know where to find one." In that chill offer was there just a last chance of salvation for her 1 Is it possible Heaven, is it possible 1 that it might be her means of salvation yet ? She starts up from the couch, and for a minute or two walks up and down the room ; then, her heavy limbs aching after even this exertion, sinks down again into her former place. Salvation possible, and at the hands of Francis Theobald's sisters ! What ! return, a suppliant for their compassion ; tell the truth (even in such a strait as this no plan involving false- hood crosses Jane's imagination ; to whatever depth she fall, the one virtue of truth must remain linked to her thousand other crimes) ; standing in the Miss Theobalds' starched draw- ing-roomwith the curious self-torturing instinct of the miser- able, she puts the whole scene before herself in detail looking into the Miss Theobalds' starched faces, make her confession. She had abandoned home, child, husband ; deliberately, and of her own free will, set out upon the path of dishonour ; then, at the first stage of her journey, pluck failing her, had come back repentant, to sue for mercy ! What answer would a woman receive at the hands of such women, of any women, to such an appeal 1 Charlotte Theobald would stand by her little doubt of that as Jane has seen a policeman stand by some wretch whom the crowd would roughly handle, but whom it is the policeman's duty to protect and keep intact for the official tor- tures of the condemned cell or penitentiary . . . She, Jane Theobald, would be in a kind of select condemned cell, or pri- vate family penitentiary, for the rest of her life, were she to give herself over to the law in the person of Charlotte Theobald. A woman, not of aristocratic birth, who has made one false step, half a false step, and acknoivledged it, and retrograded, must, as society at present is framed, be branded with a scarlet or other letter until her life's end. Why, to go bravely on, run the whole gauntlet of shame, with 4 i4 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER ? shame's chances (not a few, take them altogether) of final success, were better wisdom, as far as any prospect of social rehabilita- tion goes. She raises her eyes, and Majesty seems to give a smile of be- nign approval at the sentiment ! After a time re-enters the hostess, suspicious, no doubt, that the solitary female traveller may be making away with the chairs and tables. The solitary female traveller rests wearily in the same place on the couch, her head lying back against the wall, her face fever-red and haggard. Will she take dinner 1 tea? Will she take refreshments tartly this of no kindl Soda-and-brandy. To be sure. Excellent thing a soda-and-B. before a sea-voyage, and a Captain's biscuit with it. The last not ordered by Jane, but suggested, as costing an extra three- pence, by the hostess. In another minute some nauseous com- pound in a tumbler, with a plate of villainous-looking fossil sea-biscuits, are set before her. Jane had scarcely tasted food since her luncheon on the race- course yesterday. Excitement has been her meat no very healthy nutriment, as we know, but all-satisfying while it lasts. It satisfies her still. She swallows the contents of the tumbler ; in spite of its nauseous taste feels strengthened by it. Then, with a sense that consumption of food in some shape is required of her, puts one of the fossil biscuits into her pocket, and rings the bell ; desiring to pay quickly that which she owes for her entertainment and start. " Use of sitting-room, a shilling. Brandy-and-soda, a shill- ing. Biscuits, threepence. Attendance, ditto. Total, two-and- sixpence." Jane draws forth her purse to requite this last hospitality her native land shall offer her. It contains only gold yellow tempting sovereigns ; won, did she but know it, at The Folly overnight \ And again the hostess's hard eyes soften humanly. Attendance is charged threepence ; may be made sixpence if a FAST AND LOOSE WITH DESTINY. 415 guest has a mind to behave handsome ; and will the lady be kind enough to wait for a minute or so ? She must just step inside her own sitting-room behind the bar to get change. The lady waits standing beside the shelf of leather-bound volumes I have mentioned. . . . And now occurs to Jane Theo- bald one of those curious chance revelations, which at seasons, in places the most unexpected, through agencies the most out- wardly trivial, do shine in our souls in their hour of direst necessity. She stands, I say, waiting inert, half -stupefied. Her body is weak, the brandy, of its kind, was strong. And, as she stands thus, sees a little marker of red ribbon appearing above the edges of one of the dingy books. If the ribbon had been black, Jane had probably never noticed it. The red strikes her attention mechanically. Mechanically she takes the book an odd volume of sermons by Bishop Por- teous from the shelf ; opens it listlessly at the place marked, and reads, in the big pale type, on the yellow-ribbed paper of a century ago, this passage : " And as it sometimes happens that they who have the weak- est and most distempered frames, by means of an exact regimen and unshaken perseverance in rule and method, outlive those of a robuster make and more luxuriant health ; so there are abun- dant instances, where men of the most perverse dispositions and most unruly turn of mind, by keeping a steady guard upon their weak points, and gradually but continually correcting their defects, going on from strength to strength, and from one degree of perfection to another, have at length arrived at an higher pitch of virtue than those for whom nature had done much, and who would therefore do but little for themselves. " Let us then never despair." Common enough words, it may be said ; Sunday utterances of a place-seeking chaplain, who, in the hope of lawn-sleeves under George III., wrote on the occasion of George II/s funeral, that "earth was not pure enough for the deceased king's abode: his only place was heaven." No matter. They have done good 416 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? work for once; have delivered to one lost soul the highest message a man's words can ever convey to his fellows : redemp- tion for the fallen, strength for the weak, hope for all. " Let us then never despair." Jane walks forth from the inn with limbs that know not their heaviness ; mine hostess watching her departure with sagely pro- phetic shakes of the head. A wedding-ring was on the girFs finger truly, but people may come to no good even with that ! She walks down to the quay through rain, now beginning to fall in heavy showers, and heeds it not. Her brain is on fire, her whole moral nature in a state of exaltation. Material conditions of fatigue or wet affect her not. Arrived, with a string of other foot-passengers, by the side of the Belgian steamer, she stands for a space, because those about her stand: when her turn comes, files across the gangway like the rest " From strength to strength : from perfection to perfection. Let us then never despair." The words lift her to a kind of ecstacy. She repeats them in her heart again and again, as though to repeat them were of itself an act of salvation ! And all the time the vessel is getting up its steam fast, the vessel that is to bear her another stage on her journey to Brussels, and she makes no effort it does not suggest itself to her half-de- lirious thoughts to make an effort to leave it. "From strength to strength ; from perfection to perfection." " Better go down below, mum, hadn't you T says a sailor's rough friendly voice. " You're a-getting wet through up here on deck." " Getting !" Why, her chest and shoulders are wet to the skin already, the sensation, as far as she feels it at all, pleasur- able. However, she obeys instantly; directed by the same friendly voice, goes below ; then makes her way, guided by the flicker of a lamp through a half-opened door, into the ladies' cabin. Ladies are ranged around in berths prepared for sea- sickness ; the stewardess sits chatting to a rosy-faced young woman, evidently in her own rank of life, who holds a child in FAST AND LOOSE WITH DESTINY. 417 her arms. Jane sinks down on the sofa just within the door, and listens hears rather, to listen denotes an act of voluntary attention hears what the two women talk about. They talk dramatically, after the manner of uneducated people, about what " he " said, and " she " said ; they enter, unreservedly and aloud, into the details of their own private affairs. At the end of two or three minutes Jane knows that the younger woman is returning home to her husband, who owns some sort of hotel or lodging-house in Ostend, and that her name is Smith. And she is sensible of a certain remote feeling of comfort from the knowledge. The woman's voice and face are kindly; some faintest clue to human kinship seems given in the fact of know- ing her name. If if this queer sensation of weakness should get worse, one's head more unsteady, it might be well that there were some one near some pitying Christian woman (not of the upper or visitable classes) to hold out a hand of succour in one's need! Creak, creak, go the boards, resounding under many feet overhead ; the wind whistles ; the big drops beat against the skylight. " We shall have a roughish night of it, I'm afraid, ma'am," observes the younger woman, clasping the child she holds tighter to her breast as she addresses the stewardess. " Yes, and the tide against us, too," answers the latter, with the equanimity of a human being to whom an extra rough sea only means extra seasick ladies and extra fees to oneself. " But your little maid's a good sailor, Mrs. S." 1 " Well, yes, bless her ! She don't often ail, by sea or by land." And putting back her shawl with tender hand, the woman reveals to Jane's aching sight . . . Blossy. Not the veritable living Blossy (at this moment, doubtless, asleep and rosy in her cot), but Blossy notwithstanding. To a mother every little child is in some measure hers, and brings her, even more vividly than memory can, into the presence of the one she has left. * A big girl, Mrs. Smith," remarks the stewardess, looking* 27 4 i8 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? down critically at the small sleeper. " I doubt but she's too stout for health?" " Not she," cries the mother quickly. " You should see her shoulders when she stands as upright ! and such a pair of legs ! and only three years old next Michaelmas. Smith was all for keeping her home with him. I was called away, to poor father sudden, ma'am, as you know, and Smith wanted to keep the child home along of him. But, bless you, T couldn't be happy and her out of my sight ! A young child like that, as I say, they're well to-day and sick to-morrow." The stewardess shakes her head with the habitual melancholy of her profession : " You may say that, my dear. ' Well to-day, and gone to-morrow !' And this summer especial. I never knew so much sickness as there is among the young children this summer." Jane starts to her feet ; she turns abruptly from the sight of the sleeping child, and gropes her way out of the cabin. The words of the sermon spoke to her conscience, as we have seen, but from without artificially. She kept upon the road to Brussels still. Every fibre of her nature, bodily and mental, is smitten by the women's careless talk ; smitten through the instinct which lies at the very root and foundation of all con- science. One blind, mighty hunger to get back to the child she has abandoned fills her heart. Blossy's kisses, Blossy's songs and dances, the sweets, the quintessence of her woman's life what mattered the slights of the world, the censure of nar- row brains and dull malice, nay, what mattered Theobald's in- fidelity, while she had these 1 And she has forsaken these : has put a barrier between herself and all that to her is life lor ever- more. Oh, fool ! into what black night of hopekss, loveless despair was she not about to drift 1 Was? ay, foi she will turn back yet. What to her is society, or the reception that awaits her from society 1 She will have Blossy hat> done nothing (God be thanked for that !) to forfeit the pressure of Blossy's arms, the touch of Blossy's lips. LORD PARTY AND HIS FRIENDS. 419 Her strength seems to have come back by miracle. She reaches the deck without an effort. All that remains now is, to walk back on shore and to the station, and take the first train that will bear her, no matter how short a stage, upon her journey home. Home ? No, Jane, not so ; not thus may we play fast and loose with destiny. She reaches the deck, is conscious of a cer- tain tremulous movement of the vessel ; and, looking quickly around through the driving rain, sees a gleam of lights, the out- line of dark moving objects, on either side. A second longer look conveys to her the whole truth. The steamer at this very moment is passing outward through the narrow mouth of Dover Harbour. Return is impossible ! CHAPTER XLIIL LORD BARTY AND HIS FRIENDS. THE club-gardens at Cowes. Picturesque groups of yachting people in after-dinner dress. Mingled exhalations of Havannah cigars, August flowers, and Cowes mud. Conversation a trifle more animated, perhaps, than the after-dinner conversation of the same people would be in London, but abounding in much the same scintillations of wit and intellect. A foreground group, with whom we have concern Lord Barty Beaudesert and the guests who, during the last forty-eight hours, have been enjoying his hospitality and the charms of each other's society on board the ' Lai's/ It is said, pleasantly, by those who should know them best, iheir greatest enemies and their greatest friends, that the race ~f Beaudesert has always consisted, in pretty equal divisions, of knaves and fools. Of the pair of noble brothers who are the race's living representatives, Lord Barty Beaudesert is not the fool ! You need but look into his face to see that. Though, 272 420 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? for my part, I hold that knave and fool are convertible terms. No man would be a knave unless he were in some degree a fool-, no fool have you ever met who had not in him the potential ele- ments, at least, of knavery. Lord Barty has the typical "classic" fool's profile of all the Beaudeserts, with the prominent, lacklustre, Beaudesert eye ; and still something which scarcely rises to intellect the sharp wide-awake look, rather, that you will find in a wiry little fox-terrier redeems his smooth red face from the absolute Beaudesert vacuity. Very wide awake indeed is Lord Barty Beaudesert ; very well known, and with no snow-white reputation, in betting- rings, billiard-rooms, and all other resorts where the winning and losing of men's money is legitimate business. And still Lord Barty is a poor man ; for the son and brother of a duke, a very poor man indeed. He keeps a yacht hires it, rather, captain, crew, and all (nothing in the world is absolutely Lord Barty's own) on prin- ciples of economy. " The cheapest thing going, a yacht," Lord Barty says. " No house-rent, no taxes, no servants. And then you know your outgoing expenses to a shilling." Lord Barty adds nothing about your incoming revenue ; ana this to a hospitable yachtsman, fond of loo and chicken-hazard, and blessed with friends of the pigeon-like nature of little Lord Verreker and, it may be hoped, of this Dundreary fellow Rose is soft about is not inconsiderable. The Dundreary fellow Rose is soft about has not, as things at present stand, proved a very lucrative speculation to Lord Barty Beaudesert. Not a man, at any time, whom I would classify as belonging to the genus pigeon is Francis Theobald, although his extreme guilelessness of manner has more than once led even professional fanciers of those birds astray in their judgment upon him ; and during the past few days, ever since he determined, indeed, to " follow up his luck" at The Folly, Theobald has been enjoying fortune unprecedented LORD PARTY AND HIS FRIENDS. 421 the fortune of a man whom all the gods have conspired to ruin. Last night 'twas a roughish night at sea, as we know ; but weather that might cruelly toss a small mail-steamer in the Channel is comparatively unfelt in the smooth land-locked roads off Cowes last night after the boat-race, there was a dinner, with a little loo, when the ladies left, on board the ' Lais ; ' and Theobald won everything. Young Lord Verreker fell a victim, naturally. For what end do Lord Verrekers of one- and-twenty exist at all (on board the 'Lais' especially), unless it be to fall victims 1 But the same fate befell the veterans ; the same fate befell Harry Desmond and Lord Barty. No science, no combination of science, could hold its own against the aces and kings of Mr. Theobald. I repeat it, a most unfavourable speculation has this Dun- dreary fellow Rose is soft about proved to Lord Barty Beaudesert how unfavourable a one is being discussed between Colonel Desmond and Lord Barty at this moment ; Loo Childers chat- ting, with the innocent frankness that proved Mr. Smylie's undoing, to foolish young Lord Verreker ; Lady Rose and Mr. Theobald talking in low murmurs, on a rustic seat, a little apart from the rest. When men and women, in real life, not romance, talk together in this murmuring fashion, I have ascertained, after much close practical observation, that, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, the exhaustion of tone is accompanied by a corresponding ex- haustion of ideas. You watch some whispered colloquy, every word of which, judging from outward manner, should be fraught with perilous dramatic interest ; you listen, and hear wire-drawn monosyllables about the last change in the weather, or the approaching change in bonnets. The interesting murmuring pair have long ago, to the best of their ability, " said every- thing." Lady Rose has by no means reached this fatal climax in a tender friendship. But Theobald reached it long ago. He is not, as I have often repeated, a ladies' man. With his wife 422 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? he is never bored ; but then Jane is not a lady ! Jane, in her ignorance, her originality, her chamelion-like moods of thought and temper, is always more or less amusing. Lady Rose is not amusing in the least, when one has had six or seven days of Lady Rose Golightly. And Theobald dimly suspects in the inmost recesses of his soul, a horrible suspicion is baginning to gain ground that Lady Rose Golightly, at thirty years of age, is capable of far more constant feelings than was Lady Rose Beaudesert at twenty-two ; capable, it may be, of that last resource of worn-out women of the world, a serious passion. But if he were convinced of this, and convinced that he were to be the object of the passion, Mr. Theobald, you may be very sure, would get on board the next steamer that leaves Cowes for the mainland, and bid Lady Rose Golightly, and every per- son and thing belonging to her, an eternal good-bye ! The murmurs become more and more languid, and Lady Rose's cunning wastes itself in vain efforts to instil into them some kind of galvanic light. Sprightliness, sentiment, veiled half -reproaches, all fall blankly to the ground. At last, happily, occurs a diversion. A boy in red-and-blue uniform enters the gardens not twenty steps away from where Theobald and his companion are sitting, one of the ominous orange-coloured envelopes we all of us know too well, in his hand. "Those terrible little telegraph-boys 1" says Lady Rose. "I have never been able to see one of them without a shudder since I lost my Coco. Coco was my Maltese, Mr. Theobald. The most beautiful dog in London, and affectionate 'the only creature, I do believe, that ever loved me on earth." " Case of a dear gazelle," responds Mr. Theobald, sensible that some kind of murmured imbecility is expected of him. " Case of a dear gazelle, as you say. The poor old love was sickening when I had to leave town, so I gave strict orders to Burton to let me know if he got worse. On the second day after I left I got a telegram. Servants are so cruelly incon- siderate. It would have been just as well, as I had gone, to LORD BARTY AND HIS FRIENDS. 423 spare me the last sad scene. Two of the first dog-doctors had seen Coco, and there was no hope. I rushed up to town that night just in time to see him alive. He died in my arms." " Happy Coco ! " observes Theobald, knocking the ashes from the tip of his cigar. "And from that day to this the sight of a telegraph-boy makes me get cold. I received another most distressing shock, I remember, when my poor mother had her last fatal illness. We were in the Highlands, just in the middle of one of the pleasantest shooting parties. . . . Keally, I think there should be a law that some other hired person should be sent on first, to prepare one for the telegraph-boys." " Or better still, have some hired person to bear one's dis- tressing shocks for one," observed Theobald, " like the deputy mourners at an Irish funeral." " Ah, if civilisation could only arrive at that ! " Lady Rose sighs and looks pensive. Mr. Theobald leans back on the rustic seat, speculating, perhaps, as to whether civili- sation will ever allow of tender friendships being done by deputy, too. The messenger comes nearer. One of the club- waiters, to whom he has addressed himself, seems to point among the group we are watching for the person of whom he is in search. " How glad I am we did not give a definite ' Yes' to Mrs. Dulcimer ! " says Lady Rose. Mrs. Dulcimer, a lady of nautical and other reputation, has asked all Cowes to dance on board her yacht to-night ; but Lady Rose, mindful of Mr. Theobald's prejudices, has left the question of going open. If her strength allowed and if dear Mrs. Dulcimer would take so undecided an answer she would be charmed. But in this hot weather Lady Rose is such a terribly poor creature ; not knowing, till the eleventh hour, what Lady Rose's strength will allow her to do ! ** We should be quite sure of being bored if we wenU" " Quite sure," Mr. Theobald acquiesces ; mentally deciding 424 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? that they would be tolerably certain of that anywhere, and under any circumstances. And the messenger, with the orange envelope in his hand, approaches nearer. " Really and truly I believe the telegram is for us," observes Lady Rose, looking over her shoulder with languid interest. "No, for Barty. Barty gets mysterious messages from his horrid jockeys and horse-racing people from morning till night." But no ; the orange envelope is not for Lord Barty Beaude- sert. Finger to cap, the boy addresses his lordship, and, by a little nod of his lordship's head, has the rightful object of his search pointed out to him. Another three seconds another three seconds, the last, of rose-watered boredom, and tender friendship, and Lady Rose Golightly and the orange envelope is in Francis Theobald's hands. "Martha Smith, 4, Rue de la Cloche, Ostend, to Francis Theobald, on board the 'Lais/ Cowes : " Sir, A lady named Jane Theobald lies here in my house dangerously ill. A letter she has about her bears your address. Please telegraph instructions, or come without delay." Theobald starts up to his feet, his face turning to the ghastly corpse-like hue very blonde-complexioned people do turn when the current of their blood is set suddenly awry. " No bad news from home, I hope V asks Lady Rose, in her quiet voice, as she watches him. With the selfishness of a thoroughly ignoble passion, it seems to Lady Rose Golightly that any bad news from home for Mr. Theobald must be good news to her. He does not reply, does not see, hear her. The thought of Jane, of her love for him, of the first fond days of their mar- riage ... all that there is yet of good in the man's nature gains mastery over him, in this moment's sharpest agony, and holds him dumb. " I am really afraid you have had bad news, Mr. Theobald," cries Lady Rose. And as she speaks she rises, gracefully agi- tated, and stands beside him. LORD BAKTY AND HIS FRIENDS. 425 He puts the telegram, without a word of answer or of com- ment, into her hand. " Most distressing and so sudden !" Thus sympathises Lady Rose, not lifting her eyes from the paper. " We must hope, indeed we must hope, that there may be some mistake or ex- aggeration. So often exaggeration in cases of illness ! Would it not be well to telegraph for details ?" But, even as she says this, Theobald, unheeding her, questions the boy about the Portsmouth steamers. Quietly he speaks death itself could not make Francis Theobald outwardly flurried but in an odd hoarse voice ; Lady Rose can scarcely recognise it as Theobald's ; and with no faintest return of colour to his blanched face. " The steamer, the last steamer to Portsmouth, has not left yet, but the gentleman won't have a moment to lose if he wants to catch it. The boats start sharp in these flood-tides. Trains from Portsmouth ? Well, he doesn't know for certain believes the last steamer from the island runs to catch the mail up." " Something dreadful is certainly going on," remarks Loo Childers, pausing in her flirtation with Lord Verreker. " Don't you think it might be as human for us to inquire what? Just look at the colour of Mr. Theobald's face." Lord Verreker, lifting his hand to the foolish lip where one day there may be a moustache, lisps, " Ya as to be sure ; inquire, shall we T And the pair rise. But by the time they reach Lady Rose (Loo prepared with charming platitudes, adapted to any shade of condolence), Theobald is in the act of leaving. No human being, not even the faithful friend, Loo Childers, will ever know what were the last words spoken between Lady Golightly and the man who was her lover once. But one trifling circumstance Miss Childers notes and remembers perhaps may too accurately remember when the faithful friendship shall have gone the way of all mortal alliances. Lady Rose's handkerchief. 426 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? a dainty perfumed morsel of lace-and -cambric, has fallen to the ground fell there, doubtless, in the moment of her graceful agitation and Theobald's heel grinds it into the dust as he leaves her. A trifling circumstance, of which, Theobald, I am quite sure, is unconscious. But poor Lady Rose has not Lady Rose eyes to see, and a heart to remember, as well as her friend LooChilders? She has more colour in her cheek than usual, more animation in her expression. "Quite a sensational denouement" Lord Barty and Colonel Desmond have by this time sauntered up, and Lady Rose finds herself in the position of narrator to the whole party. " But so exactly what one might expect ! People like Mrs. Theobald cannot even be ill without doing a little theatre. ' Martha Smith to Francis Theobald.' ... Oh, thanks," to Lord Verreker, who restores to her the dust-stained lace-and-cambric. " A lady named Jane Theobald* and so on throughout the telegram. Silence all round, then a low kind of whistle, accompanied by a singularly ill-pleased expression of face on the part of Lord Barty Beaudesert. " The question that naturally presents itself to an inquiring mind is what was Mrs. Theobald doing at OstendT Loo Childers volunteers the observation. " The question that presents itself to my mind is was she there at all ?" remarks Lord Barty Beaudesert. " And to mine, too," growls Harry Desmond, with a ferocious pull of his thick moustache. " And and to mine !" says the little lordling, thinking it savours of worldly wisdom to copy the cynicism of his elders. "Whether she is, or is not at Ostend, Mr. Theobald has flown to join her," says Lady Rose, carelessly. " Poor man 1 the haste in which he rushed off to catch the boat was really exemplary." " Most exemplary, I've no doubt," sneers Lord Barty, looking sulkier and sulkier. LORD BARTY AND HIS FRIENDS. 427 " And you and I may as well be turning our thoughts towards Mrs. Dulcimer, Loo % As the evening is tolerably cool, I sup- pose we may as well go V Loo assents, with a little look of command at Lord Verreker, and the two ladies prepare to start. " I'll just tell you what I think, Rose," says Lord Barty, unable to smother his ill-humour any longer. '* Mr. Theobald is an old friend of yours, and I renewed my acquaintance with him to please you, so I don't want to be unnecessarily severe. But when a man wins the pot of money Theobald won last night, and gets a telegram enabling him to bolt with it, all I can say is, it's a convenient sort of telegram, and a shuffling dirty trick for a man to play." Thus Lord Barty Beaudesert his finest feelings ruffled by even an apparent want of delicacy or honour on the part of an associate. " Oh, come, Barty, it never does to look too closely into other people's domestic concerns," answers Lady Rose, lightly. " I suppose in all cases of really happy wedlock, husbands and wives understand each other pretty well" " I should like to know how much of my money the fellow has got in his pocket at this moment," growls Lord Barty. " I should like," says Loo Childers, " to know what Mrs, Theobald was doing at Ostend !" " And I," says Lady Rose, with a little well-dissembled yawn, " should like, if possible, to forget the whole subject ! We have troubled ourselves about Mr. and Mrs. Theobald's domestic concerns for at least five consecutive minutes. Come, Loo," putting her hand within her friend's arm, " if we really mean to go to Mrs. Dulcimer's, it is time for us to talk toilettes." And so the ladies depart Good-bye, Lady Rose : may you enjoy your ball ! May you enjoy the watches of the night the watches of many another 'dead unhappy' future night that shall succeed ! 428 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER* CHAPTER XLIV. THE CLOSING SCENE. IN the room of a foreign hotel my story opened ; in the room of a foreign lodging-house it comes to an end. A cleanly-fur- nished little bedroom, with nasturtiums twining round the window-sill ; an engraving or two from Reubens' pictures on the walls ; a narrow bed with a girl's face resting, awfully white and still and shrunken, upon the pillow. The window is open, and from her bed Jane can see a square of blue sky, framed round by the glowing orange petals and emerald leaves of nasturtium. The angelus is sounding from some neighbouring church or convent. A bunch of flowers upon the mantelshelf fill all the sick-room with their faint sweet autumn odour. Jane lies white, still, shrunken, but painless no longer racked by fierce tortures in limbs or chest, no longer pursued by deli- rious horrors of the brain. What has been her disease ] What, in three cruel weeks, has brought all that brilliant health and youth of hers to this ? The little Flemish doctor, here in Os- tend, calls it by one long Latin name : the grand English phy- sician, summoned to consultation from Brussels, by another. It must have originated in great mental excitement ; it must have originated in exposure to wet and cold. For, having facts laid before them, 'tis surprising how your really clever doctors will find theories to account for them. The truth would seem to be that Jane Theobald has had nearly twenty years of life, and is to have no more ! And, when it comes to this, any tech- nical difference in Latin names really matters slightly to the person most concerned. Nearly twenty years of life. . . . She lies alone Theobald, to humour her, having gone or promised to go into the fresh air and, looking up at the sky and listening to the angelus, THE CLOSING SCENE. 429 thinks for awhile over those bygone twenty years. Then, with the prescience that comes to us with exceeding bodily weak- ness, conies to us oftenest when prescience is no longer of much practical use, she looks onward to the future. Distinctly she can see it : Theobald given back to his own class in life ; Blossy brought up " as a lady ;" herself forgotten. No. a thousand times, no ! Never that. Herself remembered by Theobald as one who loved much, sinned much, died well, we may say opportunely and whom he forgave, tended, cherished, with tenderness all beyond her deserts, to the last. But upon this, her hands go to her face, the hot tears start, and, yith a pang of bitterness unutterable, Jane realises how dear life is, how closely, eagerly she clings to the hope of life yet ! Blossy is well, in London, with Uncle Dick " perfectly happy and at home," Min's last letter said, " and learning already to play the trombone." It is not because of the child that she yearns for life ; she yearns for it passionately, despite this deathly weakness that assails her because of Theobald. The child can have no second mother ; but Theobald . . . the tears course each other down her cheeks, her wasted frame quivers ! Even death itself the jealousy of this poor ignorant soul can transcend. A hushed step sounds outside ; the door opens, shuts, and Theobald comes up to her bed; Theobald, pale, haggard, unshorn; with eyes hollow from much watching ; all his dandyism, all his Dundrearyism gone. "What, Jenny tears 1" In an instant his arms are round her ; with such small strength as she possesses she has lifted herself to his embrace. " So this is the use you make of your liberty, the first time you have been left alone !" " I know, Theobald, I'm a fool. The bells set me thinking. I was just just wondering how Blossy is getting on." " By Min's account Bloss was never happier in her life ; but if you would like to have her here 1 " " Oh, no ; we are better as we are, alone. I'm glad " after a 430 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER! little tired pause this ; Jane speaks but few words at a time, and those few faintly" Pm glad you sent the child to Uncle Dick, poor old fellow !" " I thought it was what you would have wished, Jenny. Char- lotte was very good." Theobald's glass goes to his eye, instinc- tively, at the mention of his sister Charlotte. " When they first heard of your illness, Charlotte telegraphed to propose that she should come and nurse you " (Jane gives a little shudder), " and that the child should go to Anne. But I settled it differ- ently. Indeed, I had already written to Uncle Dick to take her." " Is all that long ago, my dear 1 Have I been long here f " You have been here three weeks, Jane ; but we needn't talk about anything that is past now. The past is done with." " Very nearly, isn't it ? The past ended for me, I think, when I saw the lights fade away in Dover Harbour. They took me to the cabin, I remember, and I got faint, and Mrs. Smith held my hand ; and after that everything seems blank till I woke up here with you. How good it was of you to come over to me so quick, Theobald !" " Oh, Jane, child, don't let us speak about my goodness !" is Theobald's answer. And then there is silence. Since she rallied since the fever left her, rather, there has been no rallying of strength, Jane will often lie for an hour together supported by Theobald's arms, neither of them speak- ing. But to-night she seems more restless. Her cheeks during the last minute have got the colour in them again that Theobald dreads. A sort of excitement is in her eyes. " Raise me a little," she says to him, after a time" raise me and hold me up, sitting. I want to see how I look in that glass opposite." He obeys her with difficulty; how firmly, tenderly, to raise a thing so wasted is not an easy task ; and she looks at her own image long and wistfully. Shrunken though she be from all her fine proportions, her THE CLOSING SCENE. 431 hair cut short to her head, the carnations of her skin turned to waxen paleness, a stranger seeing Jane for the first time at this moment, would say there was a pretty woman, or the wreck of one. Something sweet, and original, and picturesque, makes her Jane Theobald still, in spite of all that she has lost. She looks at herself, then round into Theobald's face, and laughs. A poor little ghost of a laugh, yet it does him good to hear it once more to hear a laugh of any kind from Jane's lips. " What a hideous scarecrow ! Theobald, I am not human." He answers, as he answers nine out of ten of her remarks, by a kiss. "You wouldn't find it easy to pin roses among my beauteous locks now. I should have to take, like Mrs. Coventry Brown, to tin-tacks and glue." " Should haveT Oh, the agony of hearing that conditional tense from lips we love ! Theobald's heart sinks down again to zero. " You don't pay me any compliments. You are not like my poor little good Samaritan, Mrs. Smith. Mrs. Smith did her best to cheer me this morning. *I had a cousin, Mini,'" though she were dying, Jane must be an actress still : the voice that speaks is Mrs. Smith's " 'A cousin, Mim, had the rheu- matic fever as bad as you, and lived years after, and never got the use of her limbs, and weak -like in her intellick.' Theo- bald, if I recover, I hope I shan't be 'weak-like in my in- tellick ]'" "Don't jest, Jane don't jest ; I can't bear to hear it." He lays her tenderly down upon her pillow, rests hisface byhers, and soon Jane feels tears that are not her own upon her cheek. ... I have never depicted Francis Theobald in any favour- able light. I have shown him to be weak, selfish, indolent ; a gambler ; not too exemplary a husband not up to the mark, it may be, if judged only by the world's code of honour. Yet even in this man there must be good. Even Francis Theobald 432 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? cannot, surely, be all scum, all froth, inasmuch as he can love and suffer yet ! And make no mistake as to his position. Do not think that Theobald holds Jane to his heart, sorrows over her as a man without hope, "not knowing." Theobald knows all knows the whole story of Jane's meditated sin against him, painted, in colours black as night, by Jane herself. During the wild daya and nights of her fever, her delirious ramblings (scarce a sen- tence of which but contained his name and Lady Rose's) told him much. With her first return to reason, with the first coherent words she uttered, he knew all. Truth is strong in her as love ; looking with her wan eyes into his eyes, both were poured forth to him together. And his answer was to take her closer than before to his breast, and forgive her. Not altogether what a man of stoic principles would have done, thus placed. But Francis Theobald, we have long known, has no principles worth speaking of. At all events he forgave her. And with this crowning weakness of his weak unballasted life I, for one, am not disposed to quarrel. " Theobald," says she, softly, after awhile. " There's just one thing I want to talk to you about. I should like to have it out to-night." " Not to-night, Jenny ; to-morrow you will be stronger. You know what the doctors say about your being excited towards evening." "I know. * Madame is apt to get excited towards evening, say you solemnly. ' Then take the greatest care madame does not get excited towards evening,' answer the doctors more solemnly still. However, what I'm going to talk about won't excite me a bit. Theobald" holding his hand between both her own, and looking at him, fixedly "I don't want to diel" Francis Theobald's glass goes to his eye. " There's deuced little in this world for any one to want to live for," he remarks, drearily. THE CLOSING SCENE. 433 " If I was sure certain that my death wouldn't be for the best . . . But of course it would set you free . . . and then if ever she gets free, as I dare say people like that can, and- " What are you talking of, iny poor child !" says Theobald, as Jane falters falters, but holds his hand tighter and tighter between her own. " 'If ever she gets free ! ' Whom do you mean by' she' r " I mean Lady Rose," cries Jane with a gasp. '* Now that I've had courage to say it, I shall be better. Theobald, some day when when all this is over, and when Mr. Golightly is got rid of, you will marry her ! " " If Mr. Golightly were got rid of," says Theobald, speaking more in his natural voice than he has spoken for days, " and if Lady Rose had a hundred thousand pounds, and I might marry her next moment, I would not marry her ! I would rather break stones on the road than spend my life with Lady Hose." "And yet " " Jenny, let us have no more * and yets.' Haven't we agreed that the past is done with 1 We are to go back to the old vaga- bond days, Jane, you and I. I mean to sell Theobalds : I mean that Chalkshire, and everything belonging to Chalkshire, shall be as though they had never been." For a moment she is silent. Then a light, that makes her look almost like the Jane Theobald she once was, trembles over all her worn white face. "The old vagabond days you and me alone, again 1 ? Theo- bald, never mind the doctors ! I can't die. I don't think I'm a coward. As long as I could hold your hand, I'd go anywhere, in this world or the next. . . That wouldn't be death ! But not alone. . . Oh, my dear, put your arms round me close. Love me, and I shall live. Love me, Theobald, me alone in the whole world, and I shall cheat the doctors yet 1" 434 OUGHT WE TO VISIT HER? And she kept her word, Readsr; she lives. The men of science found another many-syllabJed Latin word for the cause of her miraculous recovery. I think, myself, the four letters L. 0. V. E. spell it in simple English. Houseless, vagabond, " un visited" Jane lives, and is a supremely happy woman at this hour 1 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD. MACMILLAN'S SIXPENNY SERIES POPULAR COPYRIGHT WORKS. By CHAKLES KINGSLEY. WESTWARD HO ! YEAST. HYPATIA. ALTON LOCKE. HEREWARD THE WAKE. TWO YEARS AGO. TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS. By T. HUGHES. MR. ISAACS : A Tale of Modern India. By F. MARION CRAWFORD. ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND. By LEWIS CARROLL. With forty-two Illustrations by Sir JOHN TENNIEL. THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS AND WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE. By LEWIS CARROLL. With fifty Illustrations by Sir JOHN TENNIEL. POEMS, including IN MEMORIAM. By LORD TENNYSON. MAUD, THE PRINCESS, ENOCH ARDEN, and other Poems. By LORD TENNYSON. MY FRIEND JIM. By W. E. NORRIS. THE MINER'S RIGHT. By EOLP BOLDREWOOD. OLD CHRISTMAS. By WASHINGTON IRVING. Illustrated by RANDOLPH CALDECOTT. "CARROTS" : Just a Little Boy. By MRS. MOLESWORTH. NANCY. By KHODA BROUGHTON. GREIFENSTEIN. By F. MARION CRAWFORD. THE SQUATTER'S DREAM. By KOLF BOLDREWOOD. [J/fl7/, 1900. COMETH UP AS A FLOWER. By EHODA BROUGHTON. June, 1900. YOUNG APRIL. By EGERTON CASTLE. July, 1900. MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY. By A. E. W. MASON. August, 1900. WATER BABIES. By CHARLES KINGSLEY. September, 1900. BREEZIE LANGTON. By HAWLEY SMART. October, 1900. GOOD-BYE, SWEETHEART ! By EHODA BROUGHTON. November, 1900. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. Novels by Charlotte M. Yonge. Crown Svo. 3/6 each. THE HEIR OP REDCLYFFE. HEARTSEASE. DYNEVOR TERRACE. HOPES AND FEARS. THE DAISY CHAIN. THE TRIAL: MORE LINKS OF THE DAISY CHAIN. PILLARS OF THE HOUSE. Vol. I. PILLARS OF THE HOUSE. Vol. II. THE YOUNG STEPMOTHER. THE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY. THE THREE BRIDES. MY YOUNG ALCIDES. | TEE CAGED LION. THE DOVE IN THE EAGLE'S NEST. THE CHAPLET OF PEARLS. LADY HESTER, AND THE DANVERS PAPERS. MAGNUM BONUM. | LOVE AND LIFE. UNKNOWN TO HISTORY. STRAY PEARLS. THE ARMOURER'S 'PRENTICES. THE TWO SIDES OF THE SHIELD. NUTTIE'S FATHER. SCENES AND CHARACTERS. CHANTRY HOUSE. A MODERN TELEMACHUS. BY WORDS. BEECHCROFT AT ROCKSTONE. MORE BY WORDS. A REPUTED CHANGELING. THE LITTLE DUKE. THE LANCES OF LYNWOOD. THE PRINCE AND THE PAGE. P'S AND Q'S, AND LITTLE LUCY'S WONDERFUL GLOBE. TWO PENNILESS PRINCESSES. THAT STICK. AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK. GRISLY GR1SELL. THE LONG VACATION. THE RELEASE. THE PILGRIMAGE OF THE BEN BERIAH. HENRIETTA'S WISH. THE TWO GUARDIANS. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. RUDYARD KIPLING'S WORKS. Uniform Edition. Extra crown 8vo. Scarlet Cloth, gilt tops. 6s. each. THE DAY'S WORK. Fifty-third Thousand. PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS. Forty-fifth Thousand. LIFE'S HANDICAP. Being Stories of Mine Own People. Thirty-seventh Thousand. MANY INVENTIONS. Thirty-fourth Thousand. THE LIGHT THAT FAILED. Ke-written and considerably enlarged. Thirty-eighth Thousand. WEE WILLIE WINKIE, and other Stories. Fourteenth Thousand. SOLDIERS THREE, and other Stories. Seventeenth Thousand. THE JUNGLE BOOK. With Illustrations by J. L. KIPLING, W. H. DRAKE, and P. FREXZENY. Fiftieth Thousand. THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK. With Illustrations by J. LOCKWOOD KIPLING. Thirty-fifth Thousand. " CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS." A Story of the Grand Banks. Illustrated by I. W. TABER. Twenty-fifth Thousand. STALKY & CO. Thirty-first Thousand. FROM SEA TO SEA. 2 vols. SOLDIER TALES. With Illustrations by A. S. HARTRICK. Tenth Thousand. Crown 8vo. 6s. A FLEET IN BEING. Notes of Two Trips with the Channel Squadron. Fifty-fourth Thousand. Crown 8vo. Sewed, 1. net. ; Cloth, Is. Qd. net. THE NOVELS "OF ROSA NOUCHETTE CAREY. Croivn 8vo. Blue cloth, gilt lettered. 3S. 6d. each. NELLIE'S MEMORIES. 30th Thousand. WEE WIFIE. 22nd Thousand. BARBARA HEATHCOTE'S TRIAL. 20th Thousand. ROBERT ORD'S ATONEMENT. 17th Thousand. WOOED AND MARRIED. 21st Thousand. HERIOT'S CHOICE. 18th Thousand. QUEENIE'S WHIM. 18th Thousand. MARY ST. JOHN. 16th Thousand. NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS. 19th Thousand. FOR LILIAS. 14th Thousand. UNCLE MAX. 17th Thousand. ONLY THE GOVERNESS. 20th Thousand. LOVER OR FRIEND ? 15th Thousand. BASIL LYNDHURST. 12th Thousand. SIR GODFREY'S GRAND-DAUGHTERS. 14th Thousand. THE OLD OLD STORY. 13th Thousand. MISTRESS OF BRAE FARM. 13th Thousand. MRS. ROMNEY AND 'BUT MEN MUST WORK.' 10th Thousand. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. MRS. HENRY WOOD'S NOVELS. Crown Svo.j bound in Green Cloth. Price 2/- each ; Bound in Scarlet Cloth. Price 2/6 each. EAST LYNNB. THE CHANNINGS. MRS. HALLIBURTON'S TROUBLES. THE SHADOW OP ASHLYDYAT. LORD OAKBURN'S DAUGHTERS. VERNER'S PRIDE. ROLAND YORKE. JOHNNY LUDLOW. First Series. MILDRED ARKELL. ST. MARTIN'S EVE. TREVLYN HOLD. GEORGE CANTERBURY'S WILL. THE RED COURT FARM. WITHIN THE MAZE. ELSTER'S FOLLY. LADY ADELAIDE. OSWALD CRAY. JOHNNY LUDLOW. Second Series. ANNE HEREFORD. DENE HOLLOW. EDINA. A LIFE'S SECRET. THE HOUSE OF HALLIWELL. POMEROY ABBEY. COURT NETHERLBIGH. THE MASTER OF GREYLANDS. THE STORY OF CHARLES STRANGE. ASHLEY. BESSY RANB. JOHNNY LUDLOW. Third Series. ORVILLE COLLEGE. LADY GRACE. ADAM GRAINGER. New Edition. THE UNHOLY WISH. New Edition. JOHNNY LUDLOW. Fourth Series. JOHNNY LUDLOW. Fifth Series. JOHNNY LUDLOW. Sixth Series. 600th Thousand. 200th Thousand. 150th Thousand. 110th Thousand. 105th Thousand. 85th Thousand. 130th Thousand. 55th Thousand. 80th Thousand. 76th Thousand. 65th Thousand. 70th Thousand. 80th Thousand. 125th Thousand. 60th Thousand. 60th Thousand. 60th Thousand. 35th Thousand. 55th Thousand. 60th Thousand. 45th Thousand. 65th Thousand. 30th Thousand. 48th Thousand. 46th Thousand. 50th Thousand. 15th Thousand. 15th Thousand. 42nd Thousand. 23rd Thousand. 38th Thousand. 21st Thousand. 15th Thousand. 15th Thousand. 15th Thousand. 15th Thousand. MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON. 20.4.00