LIBRARY ' UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/frompillartopostOOIondrich FROM PILLAR TO POST. % iofaH, LONDON: TINSLET BEOTHEES, 18, CATHEEINE ST., STEAND. 1864. [The Bight of Translation is reserved.] iJOAN STACK LONDON : BaAX)Bl-RY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHIIEFEIARS CONTEXTS. f ^ CHAPTER I. PAGE GOOD — BAD— INDIFFERENT 1 CHAPTER II. A PRETTY STORY ! i ... 33 CHAPTER III. COXFESSIO AMANTIS. LADY HARBLEDOWN STARTS BLANCHE. HER rival's PEDIGREE 65 CHAPTER IV. A CAPJ) PARTY — A HEART TURNS UP 100 CHAPTER V. LOVE IN A COTTAGE 118 CHAPTER \l. A QUEER MEETING— A CRASH 130 CHAPTER Til. NOT MERE TALK — PALLIDA MORS 145 CHAPTER Till. BRAVING IT OUT . 173 CHAPTER IX A GAME OF HAZARD— THE LAST STAKE .... 197 618 IV CONTE^TS. CHAPTER X. PAGE OLD FACES. — BLACKLOCK's STORY 224 CHAPTER XI. A REQUEST REFUSED. — ANOTHER GRANTED , . . .245 CHAPTER XII. TRAYELLIXG COMPANIONS. — ALL OYER .... 254 CHAt^TER XIII. THE ENDING OF THE LANE 273 CHAPTER XIV. THE serpent's SEED CRUSHED 304 FROM PILLAE TO POST. CHAPTER I. GOOD — BAD INDIFFERENT. If, in the first flush of summer, a young fellow rent chambers in the Temple or the Albany ; if lie can occupy three or four hours a-day in the pursuit of some self-imposed purpose, yet do not live in the dread of intermediate sessions, an ill-timed dissolution, or the sudden calliug out of a patriotic militia ; if he have, say 200/. a year clear, with 100/. more a year in credit ; and if, to conclude, the town be only full, the sun will only shine, and he have only found lavender-coloured gloves to fit him without a crease — I know not what is left for him to desire. He is Dis cams ipsis, quippe ter qua- terque, and can receive nothing further even 2 FROM PILLAR TO POST. from tlie bountiful dona- F event es. And it is a miserable world ! I think not, mj good friends. But the preacher said so as recently as Sunday forenoon last! Yes, I heard him, and have little doubt 1 shall hear him say the same thino- Sunday forenoon next, if I have the happiness of escorting you to church. But all / can say is, that in the interval — last night only — I saw our reverend mourner prove himself as jolly an old soul as ever sipped Sauterne, chuckled at a good joke, won the odd trick, or pocketed the pool. A miserable world % Bah ! It was the summit of the season. Her Majesty's was crammed. There was to be a new opera, and a new dameuse. For once, brothers did not vote the singing a bore — for once, sisters had no desire to leave before the ballet ; the}^ accommodated each others' taste in order to be able to gratify their own. iNothing like the urgency of compromise. Young ladies tell you they have a " passion '" for music : would they be horrified if young fellows avowed a " passion " for pas-seids f The horse-shoe tiers were adorned — and not GOOD — BAD — IXDIFFEKEXT. 3 a break in all the rows — with the handsomest busts of the handsomest race you can show me anywhere the whole world through. You prefer fresh faces about half-past eight a.:m., faces glowing from tossed-off slumber and the bracing energies of the bath, looking at you across white damask and a breakfast-table. We will not quarrel about that. But tell me, if in the house this night, there be a nearer approach to the '-'Idalian Aphro- dite beautiful '■ than Mabel Lady Harbledown 1 See; look along the second tier — do you notice the centre box, which the girl with the warm o-olden hair is leaning: out of? Well, further from us — to the right — one, two, foiu'th box from it ; she leans forward. Yes, that is she. '•' Bv Jove ! " — You mav well sav, " By Jove ! " Look at her well. Here are the lorgnettes; take them, quick ! Say she is twenty-seven. May be : more, certainly not. Splendid as she is, I think she is improving still. You can see her to the waist only : but the fear of Horace lest — " Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne" — will not apply ; depend on it, that woman is B 2 4 FROM PILLAE TO POST. not dolphin downwards. And what you see, can you criticise ? Find me a fault. I fear the turn of that head has turned many another ; and the whiteness — I will not liken it to marble — of that perhaps hard face has more than once been said to induce in other faces the colour which is ascribed to envy. Perhaps hard face. Have I recalled the word ? Yes ; for as I spoke, she turned her eyes full towards me, and those eyes completely save her. Strange to see in such a chiselled countenance, under such dark proud lashes, such rapid, revelling, glad eyes ; eyes with not a spark of pride, eyes with not a thought of coldness in them — at least as I see them now — and they are only Tao-rant about the house. Her eves look out- fward. All eyes do ! Ko, pardon me, they do not ; look again, for you are assuredly mistaken. Nothing more common than more or less, and sometimes altogether (physical as well as mental), introverted vision. And so, I say, hers looked significantly outward. Like a Tyrolese sharp-shooter was she ; nothing could live within the horizon of her vision. Down GOOD — BAD — IXDIFFEREXT. 5 upon it at once. Attempt not Delphic signals and telegraphic love-passages within her gaze, if YOU would not have her see you. " My dear ! " she will say to you afterwards, " I saw it all ; but I will not tell. The fairies befriend you ! '" Kind, conscious Mabel ! Tell ! I never knew her do it. And the boy who sits with her, who alone sits with her ; he does not seem to appreciate his privilege as he should. " Cornet of Light Dragoons "" is stamped upon him ; see it in the shirt-front, see it in his studs — nay, I know not where you would not see it. You would be dull indeed to miss it. He is not in love with Lady Harbledown. That perhaps is strange ; but, what is much stranger, he is not in love with himself either. He is clearly of opinion that an opera-box is a good thing ; that well-turned boots are a good thing ; that sitting near so handsome a woman is a good thing ; in fact, that life generally is a good thing. He is a philosopher, without at all striving to be so ; and is wise in his way without having been tutored to it either bv studv or suflferino-. 6 feo^j: pillar to post. Listless, lie is not ; yet he never moves without strict urgency. jN'either is he stupid, though he never speaks to fill up a pause, and is not in the least disconcerted by a proloDged symphony of silence. Light Dragoon though he is, and unmistakeahly is, he respects the alphabet, and recognises the letter '•' r,"" despite its having been cut by the regiment, and dismissed the service generally. If he is not a right good fellow, faces are as false as words. "He never used to be so late as this. I wonder what keeps him. And when he has not seen me for eight months ! '"' '•' If your ladyship knew the lectures I have received from him, in our younger days, for being a couple of minutes behind time. Do you think I shall know him 1 See ; the over- ture begins. He will lose it.'"' A wave of the baton, and the house is hushed. Another, and Genius speaks through a hundred instruments to three thousand listeners. The poor author lacks this precious privilege. The dull, synonymous with the many, can be even momentarily inspired only by the aggregated GOOD — BAD — IXDTFFEREXT. 7 enthusiasm of tlieir kind ; and to compreliend the utterances of the inspired, galvanic inspi- ration at least is demanded. A multitude has electric intercommunication, just as proximate trees shake each other. Few people have com- plete self-sufficient natures, and are frantic in their solitude. In fact, such are themselves the inspired. The first act closes amid plentiful plaudits ; but Ladv Harbledown and the vouno; Cornet are still alone. Thej are talking, and with sufficient cheerfulness ; but the remarks are not brilhant enouo-h for you and me. How should they be ? One of the speakers wants nothing ; and the other, his fair companion to-night, wants somebody else, who comes not — the ungallant I For conversation to be memorable, the inter- locutors must have a purpose — cross-purposes are best. T/ie?i, imder skilful management, talk grows into the dramatic, and does for to-mor- row's meditation. I wonder if any such is astir within the house just now. Since these two will not }^eld us profit, we must go a-wanderiuo-. o 8 FEOM* PILLAR TO POST. Suppose we halt at the box corresponding on the left to the one we have just quitted on the right. The conversation may be neither epi- grammatic nor very didactic ; but there is plenty of it. Its female occupant lacks not satellites, though, for anything you and I know, she too may be thinking of a lost pleiad. She is well screened from the gaze of all save those who are so willinglj^ imprisoned with her : and accepts their gaze with a quiet indifference that does not even rise to the dio-nitv of disdain. But they continue to bestow it, for, having chosen to crown her queen, they must maintain their homage. Twenty is a young age at which to sit there and be careless of compliments ; and she has not long stepped out of her teens. She has the figure, the height, but not the hauteur of an embodied Juno — or, perhaps, Juno without her fulness, for she is slender in her easily-worn stateliness. Her close brown hair is worn with the perfection of plainness : no wreath, no coronet. From a Gothic chain round her lithe neck falls a Gothic pendant on her full, frailly-guarded bust : all gold — not a GOOD — BAD — IXDIFFERENT. 9 jewel in it. Blue enamel mixes with the bright metal in the sinde bracelets — but ao'ain no stones : gems are permitted only on the fingers. One o-love is momentarily off; and if what Byron says be true, that the '* fair symmetry of limbs * may be 2:uessed by their " terminatins; so Tvell."" the enio-ma of her hidden form is solyed. Certainly were I a sculptor, I would haye that head ; were I an artist, I would haye that brown hair, those brown eyes, that nose, straight, but full at the nostrils, that compact mouth and chin ; nor would I bate one shade of colour from that complexion, dark — dark as a deep pool is dark — from the profundity of her nature. '' Splendid girl ! '" most would say ; " somewhat of the she-tiger in her." They would not know her. We will. They call her Lettice Tallington. Do those fiye — six — men and boys amuse her ? Does she entertain them 'i I don't know. They like to be there : their being there proyes it ; and she has little option. If you asked her opinion about our sex, and she were frank with you, she would tell you that we are " fools.*' 10 FEOM PILLAE TO POST. She has good reason to think so. There they sit, and stand, and loll, and stare at her, and utter ineffable nonsense, and would venture on impertinence -would she only allow it. She forbids their originality ; so, though they say much, thev are not the less dull. What can she do \ She can look handsome at them : she can labour to bandy badinage with them : she must labour, for the wit is so poor. That done, she can admire her frail fan ; she can admire her costly white silk skirt ; she can wrap her long full white mohair cloak more closely about her, and then let it fall negligently in skilful folds about her throne. She can look into her own face in the oval glass opposite her, the stage-side the box, see how handsome she is, yet not be happy. She suddenl}" turns her head, for the box-door opens and the five voices exclaim : "The young Rinaldo!'*' And then in mingled discord, ''' How are you, youngster 1 How^s the fair-haired Raphael % All right, old boy % Handsome as ever \ The bonnie wee thing ! "' " Be quiet with you all, you ill-behaved boys. GOOD — BAD — INDIFFEEEXT. 11 111 turn you all out : " and you have discovered that Lettice Talliugton has one charm more — a voice ! A voice that titillates : at least vrhere natures are sufficiently sensitive to the influence of the most delicate but sicrnificant of instru- ments. It goes on : "I will, indeed, if you don't let him come to me. Eeo-inald! Reginald! don't you hear 1 Come to me.*" "Confound these fellows !'' good-humouredly : '•'I can scarcely pass them. That's all right. How is Lettice 1 At least she is beautiful.'"' She touched him with her fan. '•' You must learn not to say stupid things, child. I don't tell you you're handsome, though I know you are, and you know it too. Will you remember 1 '•' Very well. What shall I say 1 I come to see ^'ou, and you scold me. See ! " 23uUing off his glove : " been painting all day — sick to death of it." '•' Who sat "? '' asked one of the party with a laugh. " Your friend Lizzie, Master Morley. Jea- lous 1 '"' 12 FROM PILLAR TO POST. '•' Confound your impudence. YouVe been sketching wicker baskets, crowbars, and step- ladders. I know your old crovernor wont let you do anything else yet.'' "Leave him, Reginald. I tell you I want you to talk to me. Tell me about this opera. You don't know. "Well, the story so far is — ha ! they begin again. I should like silence, for I want to listen. They who jDrefer talking- ma}' go elsewhere. Attend, Reginald, and tell me what you think." He did attend, at first, and it would have seemed as much at least from his own inclina- tion, as from obedience to her behest. Clearly he had " music in his soul/' but no less clear was it that the " lust of the flesh " was strong in that handsome boy, for the laro-e blue eves went wanderins; alono; at last the tiers, the boldest flights of song and most pathetic cadences despite. Handsome boy, indeed, he was, handsome in the privileges of eighteen. Not even down on those clear healthful cheeks, on that Sybarite lip, on that smooth selfish chin, not a freckle, not a hurtful speck on the GOOD — BAD — INDIFFERENT. 13 complexion tliroughout. And a flood of bappy sunlight seemed to be flung over bis whole face from the long golden Avaves of hair, fine eren in its redundancy. What his form lost by want of height, was redeemed by its singular slimness and negligently graceful motions ; and looking on him, I think you might be pardoned even by the most severe, if you conjured up the simiKtude of a stem of corn, ripe and rocking. The second act is over : Lady Harbledown looks not well pleased, and renews her com- plaints. Suddenly, a hasty knocking ! '' Box H ! " The sound of keys — the turning of the lock, and Lady Harbledown has risen, displeasure all departed, has stepped forward, and warmly greets the at length arrived visitant. " At last, Cyril ! How are you 1 So glad to see you, my dear boy. But wdiy are you so late '? " "My dear Lady Harbledown, I could not avoid it. I have grown industrious. I have only just come from the House of Commons." " What were you doing there 1 " " Reporting." He felt that he blushed. 14 PROM PILLAR TO POST. "Learning sliortliancl. I am only practising, but I shall soon be perfect/' " "What new fancy is this 1 Have you given up your studies for the bar '? " " It is no fancy /^ the blush breaking into a well-assumed laugh : "'tis a stern fact. I am learning it in order to be able to report your husband's speeches and get paid for it. But I am also studying to be a barrister.'^ " They must be queer people who will pay you for reporting Sir Wilfrid's speeches : even I never read them. You strange boy ! But tell me — let us leave your — your shorthand — what have you been doing '? Let me look at you. You are taller ; you are handsomer ; yes, sir, you are : but,"' and she sighed, " ^^ou are older r " Older ! Am I gray ? Am I palsied ? Am I crooked '? I am older ; so are you ; but you are — what you were." " You used to be intelligent : I think it is the first time you have misunderstood. Again I say, you are older. I left you a boy ; a boy, with a boy's privileges : I come back and find GOOD — BAD — INDIFFEPcENT. 15 you nearly a man ; a man, -with a inan's restric- tions. Cyril will have to be Mr. YaYasour.'^ " Has a man no privileges 1 " " JSTone tliat I wish you to possess — at least in my regard. I must look out for another boy to scold and spoil.'^ " I will be scolded still, and spoiled, too, if I may. What shall I do'? Shall I ruthlessly destroy this promising growth V And he played with his well cared-for whiskers. " You know you would not for all the women around us, you vain boy. But — what manners. I forgot to introduce you to — your oldest friend.'^ Yavasour turned hastily. '' Stephen ! '' "Yes, old fellow, Stephen. No other. I should not have known you a bit, though Lady Harbledown prepared me. How long is it ? Three — four — nearly five years, isn't it, since we saw each other '"^ '' " Yes, yes. Five, this summer. Have you joined your regiment 1 I saw you were gazetted; but I thought you were in Ger- many." 16 FROM PILLAR TO POST. '•' Oh ! I have lolled about in innumerable places since." " Really, this won't do," broke in her lady- ship. " I merely wished to allow you to recog- nise each other, but I did not intend you to rush into each others' arms in this manner. I see you are both getting interested, and so I had better interfere at once. Suppose you go, Mr. Grafton, and pay 3^our respects — where you will, till the next act. Otherwise this boy here will take no notice of me." '' By all means. I 2:0." " " You'll come back, Stephen ^ '^ " Of course he will, sir, but on my account, not yours. Well, I went to jS'ice.'"' " And elsewhere, surelv *? '' '•'I tell vou, I went to Nice.'* And she looked at him with a questioning face. Vavasour per- sisted in the silence of a stare. " And I looked for a name that used to be on your tongue pretty often, sir, but which YOU seem to have foro-otten. I did not see a lovely face the whole time I was there." GOOD — BAD — INDIFFERENT. 17 " Then be sure you did not see hers. Humph ! " " Indeed ! Where did you learn that grunt of levity 1 We used to have sighs, and starts, and bursts of eloquence and rhapsody. And Frailt3^'s name is Woman, is it '? I think we must have a new christening. So you have forgotten her \ " " Forgotten her ! No, ^^our ladyship — not forgotten, but she has gone — she has chosen to go ; and I cannot follow." " Would you, if you could \ ^' " I will not be questioned. How is Sir Wilfrid ?'' "He is asleep — in the House of Commons somewhere. Why do you ask such stupid questions ? If mine are more inquisitive, they are more entertaining. How did you spend your Long Vacation \ Did you visit Dormer, the artist \ " "Yes; his son has come to town — is studying here. May I bring him to see you % He is such a handsome lad." " You know you may bring him. But he has sisters. Are they handsome \ '* 18 FKOM PILLAE TO POST. " He has a sister, and she is " " Is ^vhat ? ISTow, you know of old 'tis no use trying to deceive me. She is — what '? '' " She is Hke other people ; exactly what lookers-on choose to fancy/' " You have improved in your fencing. But, pray, when did this reporting madness come upon you '? *' " Oh, some time in the autumn." "When you were on your visit to Mr. Dormer 'i Or immediately afterwards ? Can you make much by it '? " Vavasour was deep in blushes again. "Well, I will spare you to-night; but we must have it all out at Yernon Deep. When will you come down '? " " I shall stay away altogether,'^ he answered, with a merry air and a shrug of the shoulders. "I will not have my secrets wrung from me." " Come on Saturday — I will meet you at the station ; and bring young Dormer with you. I shall learn much from him ; brothers have always plenty to say against their sisters." "If I bring him down you must ask him GOOD — BAD — IXDIFFEEENT. 19 nothing. He is under my charge, and I must not lose my dignity in his eyes. Remember — you have said so — I have lived to have the pri- vileges of a man." "The restrictions, I said. Then you must not come to Yernon Deep."' " Yes ; I will." " Then, come ; and play your bo^^'s part still. Mr. Grafton returns. And see — the curtain rises. You had better sit there," pointing to the seat opposite her. Just as Yavasour took the seat suggested, and the curtain rose on the last act, the hand- some lad in Lettice Tallington's box, hastily, and without apparent reason, rose from his, and screened himself behind the girl's chair. Morley took the vacated position. " By Jove ! there's Yavasour ; and ^vith Lady Harbledown, as of old. I have not seen her before, this 3^ear." The exquisites behind came forward, and raised their lorgnettes in the described direction. " What a luck}^ dog that Yavasour is," said one of them, "to be so much with such a 6 2 20 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. splendid woman ; and no one ever abuses either of them for it. His introduction to her Tvas the funniest thing I ever savr." " Yes : I've heard him tell it,'' said Morlev. " Just like one of his mad tricks." " Oh ! I saw it all,"' said the other ; " it was done admirably.'" "What was if?"' asked Lettice, who was leaning out of the box for the purpose of ' taking in' this so much lauded wonder of her sex. "What was it 1" " Simply this. It was at a hop in Hereford Street — some people I know. One of her numerous admirers was beo^o;ino; her to dance with him, and she excused herself. Then, said the fellow, ' Of course, you can't dance with anyone else to-night.' ' Oh, yes ! I will,' she answered, in her way. 'I will dance with Captain Scott,' and she turned to him. Scott of the 11th, an awful muff, who dared not have asked Lady Harbledown to dance with him to get his majority. What did the fool do, but as soon as she said (of course she did not mean it) that she would dance with him, than Scott GOOD — BAD — INDIFFERENT. 21 coloured up, trembled, and blurted out — ^JJm — er — I'm verv sorrv, but I'm en^-ao-ed for the next dance/ Vavasour was standino- close by — had never seen Lady Harbledown before, but had overheard this conversation, and caught her eye just as Scott stammered out his ridi- culous excuse. 'I am not eno-ao-ed,' he said, maliciously ; ' and I will dance with Lady Harbledown.' ' I have not even the honour of knowing your name,' she answered aloud, wdth a malice and humour she is so proud of "We all stared, for none of us knew Vavasour — a mere boy, but a devilish good-looking one. We stared a oood deal more, I can tell you, when he said, with a most self-possessed smile, *If your ladyship will w^ait one moment, I will seek some one who will come back with me and tell it to your ladyship ;' and still more, when, without more ado, she stepped forward, took his arm, and waived the introduction. And she has petted him ever since. I think Sir Wilfrid likes it rather.^^ " Who is Sir Wilfrid r' " Her husband." 22 FROM PILLAR TO POST. " Oh I Do you know liim, Keginald 1 '"' " Know whom V " This Vavasour they're speaking of.'' " Know him 'i rather. Morley and I were at school with him." Lettice, by a quick eye and an interested one, might have been seen ever and anon looking in the direction of Lady Harbledown's box : Lettice, who rarely emerged from behind that yellow damask curtain, and used the lorgnettes so sparingl}^ I suppose she had her reason. Carriages are stopping the way ; linkmen are shouting ; girls are pettishly cross with their brothers, but admirably patient with their lovers, particularly with those who have not yet proposed. A stranger would have wondered how all those people would ever find their carriages and get home. "I must go, Lettice — indeed I must. 'No I I cannot see you to your carriage. I must go ; good-b3^e." " You are very unkind, Reginald ! and very ungrateful. Go then. Frank! Lord Alenderl Give me your arm. Thanks ! " {sotto voce, GOOD — BAD — INDIFFERENT. 23 "What does the child mean V') "Morley, what is Vavasour's name '? " " Vavasour ! " " Mrs. Tallington's carriage stops the way ! '' " 'No — no — Christian name 1 '' " Oh— er— Cyril.'' '' iN'o, Frank ! no ; I go home alone." "See, Cyril! quick. Getting into her car- riage ; long white mohair cloak — no head- dress. Stupid boy ! it's too late — she has gone. Only, a — well, never mind." " Didn't see her at all — was busy looking at you. Good-bye. Saturday, then 1 " "Yes — and your joung protege ." "Well, Mabel, how is young Vavasour? Did he make his appearance ? " " Yes ; and I have asked him to come down to Vernon Deep, and bring a friend of his with him. Did I do right, Wilfrid ? " " Oh yes ! I'm always glad to see him, you know. He's a clever, gentlemanly boy, and talks Tory politics. And then, I know he amuses you, Mabel — a difficult thing to do." 24 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. She laughed briefly. " What have you been doing at the House 1 " " Oh, a wretched Beer Bill — awfully slow. I think debates grow stupider and stupider every night.'' And Sir Wilfrid Harbledown proved his rights to be critical upon stupid people, by flinging himself into an arm-chair and relapsing into silence and a cigar. Not a word — no, not a look, not a glance of pleasant praise for that exquisite i^resence of hers ! Not a syllable — not a hint of appre- ciation of that perfect toilet — daringly original, even in its most serene and classic art ! No gentle hand upon the glossy hair ; no enfolding arm around the tempting foi'm ; no caressing voice ; no fond questioning to that woman's soul, with all its marvellous capacities of reply. We do not all of us prefer Beer Bills, Sir Wilfrid, even when they are stupid, to operas when they are new, and fair women ask to hear them. There are men who indulge neither in brutal silence nor the insulting solace of a cheroot. fool, fool ! other hands may love to rest where they should not ; other lips can GOOD — BAD — INDIFFERENT. 3d utter winsome flatteries A\lieii they sliould pre- serve a decent reticence ; and eyes there are with strange talent for looking dehcate approval of silken folds, and of charms the more sug- gested by the signal skill with which they are concealed. Though a husband forget the offices of a lover, a wife generally remembers the pri- vileo-es of a woman ; and marriage, as well as property, has its duties no less than it has its rights. Does it cost much to praise a glove '? to approve a fan 1 to enquire about a skirt 'I to su2:2:est an alteration in a head-dress '? to seem to steal admiration of a well-enclosed foot \ It is cruel— I say it is savage— to deny homage such as this. Why, I told my dear mother yesterday — my mother with her widow's weeds, and her snow-white hair — that she looked "' so nice," and I vow I made her as happy by those two simple words as if I had dragged her youth out of the grave, and arrayed her in the orange- blossoms of her wedding-morn. Women will pardon you your hatred, and will pass acts of obUvion upon your ill-judged injuries ; but — and they are right— they will never forgive you 26 FPtOM PILLAR TO POST. for the mtoleral3le insult of vour ■Qiimanlv in- difference ! A summons delivered in the shape of sundry kicks at his outer door made Yavasour fling on the coat he had but just doffed, and seek, mth some haste, the excuse of so unceremonious a visitor. " Who can ^ant me at this unearthly hour ? Pest on the door ! — that's it. Why, Reginald ! what brings you here this time of night V " Oh, nothing. Only I'm dead tired. I saw the hght in your window, and"' ■ " You ought to be in bed." Looking at his evening dress. " Where have you been % '' " To the — the theatre with — er — Morley.'' " You are alwavs o-oino- to the theatre with •/CO Morley. You have no right to go to the theatre with him or with anybody as often as you do — throwing away the money of which you have so little, and for which others work." " It cost me nothing. jlorley paid for it." " You ought to be ashamed to let Morley jDay for you as he does. I never saw a fellow with GOOD — BAD — INDIFFERENT. 27 SO little self-respect : I verily believe you would accept a favour — even if it were nione}^ — from a stranger in tlie street/' ''Don't be cross, Cyril! I'm so done up. And" " I have not the slightest doubt you are done up — it would be wonderful if you were not. If you did choose, as you always choose, to go to the theatre at Morley's expense, you might have had the sense to go home after it. It's now a quarter to two. You have not only been to the theatre, but you've been to some dis- reputable hole, and '' " I have only been to Evans's."' " Well, if you won't sleep yourself, / want to sleep ; and therefore the sooner you go, the better." " Do let me stay here in the Temple, to-night — I'm so fagged ! Do, Cyril ! like a kind fellow." *' Stay here '? nonsense. Why, it is • but a mile to your lodgings. Really, this is intoler- able — I will not be knocked up in this way. Now — o'ood nio-ht." 28 FROM PILLAR TO POST. ''Do let me stay, old fellow! I can sleep quite well in the arm-chair.'' '^ It's no use : I won't " " Well, I can't go home — that's certain ; " blurted out the handsome lad with desperate frankness. " And, pray, why not ? " " Because — because " — and then rapidl}^ — '' because I haven't paid for my lodgings for three weeks, and caiit pay for 'em, that's the truth." " Where is the money I got you for those sketches % " " You know I went to the Derb3\" "I know I asked you to go with me : I offered to take you. But that was too quiet for you, and you must needs go in Morley's drag, with a set of spendthrift disreputables, who have however at least this advantage over you — that they are not amusing themselves (or disgracing themselves, for anything I know), at the price of a parent's labour or the expense of a sister's self-sacrifice.'^ The concluding words were uttered with a GOOD — BAD — INDIFFERENT. 29 bitterness of contempt and accompanied with a stare of concentrated scorn that most men — oTown, hardened men — would either have repehed or crouched beneath them. That fair- haired, smooth-faced boy did nor one nor the other. Had Vavasour been sufficiently cool or sufficiently indifferent, he might perhaps have seen that the young culprit was only rejoicing in the mistake of his hot arraign er, who, in accusing him of one baseness, was overlooking the existence of another, and a worse. Sud- denly, though, in the silence that ensued, Vava- sour's memory came back to him. " A He ! Reginald ! " A slight change in the colour now. "How dare you come and ask for shelter here with a falsehood as your excuse '? Why, I did not give you the money till three or four days after the Derby." " I know you didn't. The fact is, (it's no use trying to hide it,) I spent it this very day, like a fool as I am. I know you'll be savage, but I can't help it." And with a pathetic levity, made up of ludicrous penitence for its stupidity and of 30 FEOM PILLAE TO POST. liuraorous indifference to its moral obliquity, the boy went on to explain to Yavasour the pro- ceeding by which he had that day chucked away nearly five pounds. Hang it ! he was very sorry, and it was very wrong, and that sort of thing — but they were such devilish — such TQTii, he meaned to say — such very handsome girls, and it was so brutally wet, and altogether — he could not help offering them his umbrella : and then they were so civil to him for Ms civility — he did not know how it was exactlv, but he found himself in a shop with them, and giving his opinion about their purchases, and offering to pay, and being allowed to do so ; and, hang it ! if they didn't get into a cab, and say they were going home, and leave him standino; in the street, hearino: their very laughter (at him, of course- — he knew that well enough) as they drove away. And that was the whole story : and now Cj^il mio'ht be as savao-e as he liked. The thiuo; was done, and he couldn't help it : but mightn't he sleep in the Temple, that night, at any rate % Very, very quietly Cyril answered him. GOOD — BAD — IXDIFFERE:N^T, 31 '' I am not going to sleep here to-night : you can have my bed. I shall be here in the morning/'' He vrent and slejDt hard by in a not over- comfortable chamber. A girl is asleep in quiet Onchester : far away, is it not '? Far away. But from her slumber, and athwart the dis- tance, she claims gentleness for the boy-brother. "You will be kind to Reginald," had been the last words of a memorable visit. He had promised her with his eyes ; and he kept his faith. "Please, Miss Lettice,'' a handmaiden was saying, much about the same hour of the night, as she passed and repassed the comb through her mistress's long streaming hair, " do tell me all about it again.'' '•But, Bertha, I have told it you a score of times." " But are you sure, miss, that it was he 1 " " Sure % How absurd of you ! I don't easily forget faces : and I am not likely soon to forget his. He is very much altered ; but it was certainly Cyril Vavasour that I saw to-night." 32 FROM PILLAR TO POST. And only too glad to comply with Bertha's request, she began telHng a story which, sure enough, she had told her over and over again. And since she related it more for her own gratification than for her maid's instruction, it is not to be wondered at if the relation was rather straoo-lino-. I therefore will condense CO o her story and tell it in less meandering lan- guage. CHAPTER 11. A PEETTY STORY I r t One October evening, seven years ago, Tvlien C3^ril Vavasour, tlien a boy of sixteen, Tvas sitting witli his fatlier and elder brother, Philip, over filberts and port vrine, he solemnly an- nounced to them his desire to publish a poen?. Had the boy announced that he had a very strong hankering after the moon, or for five hundred thousand pounds, Mr. Vavasour, being by nature both a practical and a dispassionate man, might in the latter instance have senc Philip for his banker's book, and shown his 3'ounger son that he did not possess, and there- fore could not bestow, the wealth so unreason- ably demanded ; and, in the former instance, have himself 2:one to the librarv, taken down the then popular treatise upon astronomy, and proved that the extreme distance of our nightly 34 FROM PILLAR TO POST. visitant prevented all possibility of the yearning youngster's wishes ever being gratified. But how reason with a lad who assured you that he had WTitten poetr^^, and wanted to publish it ? Even Philip, the stolid Philip, put down the nut- crackers, and burst into spontaneous laughter. It must not be supposed that Mr. Vavasour could not and did not appreciate poetry. Far otherwise. He knew by heart — he often quoted, and with the justest emphasis — Goldsmith's ^' Deserted Village," or Pope's '• Essay on Man :" books so dissimilar as to prove that his taste was as hberal as it was correct. Cyril distinctly remembered nine years back hearing him read to Mrs. Vavasour the first canto of Scott's " Lady of the Lake," and could, he thought, trace his own initiation into the delight of verse to that very recitation. Nay, more, Mr. Vava- sour had — and would not have denied that he ,had — written in his youth what, like most of us, he thought at the time very tolerable rhyme. In his courtship of Cyril's mother^ his brain had been unusually prolific in metrical assurances. But as for publishing such rubbish — any such A PPtETTY STOEY! 35 notion had never entered his head. Havh]o; read poetry, and having enjoyed it, he was of course aware that somebody in flesh and blood had written it, and that the existence of verse proved the existence of verse-makers. But that his son should be one of them — that anybody with whom he had the most fragile acquaintance — anybody whom he had ever hap- pened to brush by in the streets — should be one of them, this had surely never occurred to him ; as how should it ? Poets ! Why, they lived in garrets, or in sponging-houses, had quarrels with their landlady about the rent ; if they got money, spent it in sherry ; never had credit anywhere except with their publisher, who had a mortgage upon them, and with Posterity, when they had died of crusts too eagerly partaken of, after long fast ; lived in Drury Lane — Pope said so, and ought to know ; sometimes got 60Z. per annum for gatiging beer : and that sort of thing. What did the boy mean % Was he honestly in earnest ? Did this poetry really exist on paper % Or was it a vaporous fiction, arising in some unimaginable D J 36 feo:m pillar to post. manner 1 Let him bring it do^n. Mr. Vava- sour T\'ould like to jiave ocular demonstration. Cyril went. He returned with a rather formidable pile of papers, which he placed upon the table, looking the while more foohsh than poets who are to take the world by storm ever ought to look. Mr. Vavasour by no means offered to read even one sheet of this closely-written matter, but sat staring at it as though he was not yet perfectly justified in believing his eyes. Yes, there it was, doubtless : stuff, each line of which began with a capital letter. And such capital letters ! Most of it had been written out with such fastidious neatness that there could be no mistake about the destiny which its composer intended for it. That was evidently not the result of leisure hours ; not even the offspring of an ambition which limits itself to " private circulation '" only. That was — doubt it not— to amaze the town ! Philip, having gratified his cynical curiosity, returned composedly to his nut-crackers. Cyril had nothing farther to say, so stood silent ; though he had more than once ^ f A PEETTY STOP.Y . 37 rehearsed wliat he icoiild sav when he made to his father the announcement Avhich had been hurried on rather prematurely this evening, and had gone over in his own mind, and for his own benefit, the dehght with which his father would receive the proofs of his earnest labour, and the results of his honest ambition. In that stern face, every moment, too, be- coming sterner, he could trace, it must be owned, no symptoms of delight : self-flattery could not delude to such an extent as that. But I think he little guessed what were the exact interior workings of Mr. Vavasour's mind, which threw so unpleasant a shadow upon the usually cheer- ful countenance. The fact was, that Cvril's conduct had been, on various occasions latelv, of such a kind as to cause his father — ^justly or unjustly — uneasy misgivings about how he was likely, as the phrase is, to turn out. He was altogether dissatisfied with the boy. He was, in his wav, as fond of this youno'er son as, I believe, was ever father vet. Truth to tell, he was rather proud of him ; nowise underrated his abilities, as far as thev had been manifested, 38 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. and acknoT\'ledged in him the presence of kindly generous impulses, such as favourabh^ influence the least affectionate dispositions, of ^-hich i\lr. Vavasour's assuredly was not. But, all this granted and alloNved for, there remained much to mar the satisfaction of the Present, and to render it a duty to anticipate the Future. Neither the boy's fits of silence, which ^vere both frequent and protracted, nor his outbursts of enthusiasm which, though less common and less lasting, were even more remarkable and more significant, afforded his parent excessive com- fort. Essential!}^ of a philanthropic and genial temperament, it plagued, it anno3^ed him to see any one, how much more one of his own family, in moods which, if they did not betray posi- tive unhappiness, argued at least the absence of ordinarily good spirits. He could not bear, as he said, to see peo^Dle "moj)e,'' and Cyril moped. Yrhen these fits left him, they would be succeeded by extravagant loquacity in wliicli sparkled, doubtless, a wit — sometimes, but rarely, a sarcasm — inconsonant with his age ; but more frequently and more prominently, what appeared A PRETTY STOEY! 39 a Tvild, fantastic, visionary chivalry that, but for the lano'uao'e in Tvhich it vras advanced, would have suited, Mr. Vavasour thought, a boy of twelve rather than one of sixteen. And then there was about him a stupid sensitiveness — a gift of tears, (a fatal one, surely.) coming no farther than the eyes, but apparently as far back as from the heart ; and joined to this were occasional marvellous explosions of the sternest self-will, and a scornful irascibihty, which, though evidently at issue with the lad's chief bent, got a-top sometimes, and played, it appeared to ordinary spectators, some very peculiar antics. All these eccentricities — for such he regarded them — had puzzled Mr. Vavasour considerably. NoiL\ they ceased to puzzle him : non', he had the clue to the illoo;ical labvrinth of the lad's character. A boy who could write poetry and want to pubhsh it, could be expected to go throucrh a sreat manv other almost equally wonderful performances. And did not this poetry, this infernal poetry, explain his whole conduct % Mope ! He might well mope. It would have been verv strano-e if he had not 40 FROM PILLAR TO POST. moped. Then these odJ, out-of-the-waj views, and impossible manias — were thej not either the cause or the result of this rhyming disease, or both % And the self-will % And the stub- bornness 1 And the outbursts of magnificent anger \ A boy who went about in a dream, in a fool's paradise, w^hen woke up by the admonitions of the actual world, was sure to exhibit all three. The puzzle w^as unravelled ; the bov was a mvstery no more. So thought the man of business, as he sat eyeing that wonderful waste of valuable paper. But his thoughts did not halt there. Cyril had Mien into the fatallest error : Cyril from such must be rescued. He must be disabused of his absurd fancies ; must be shown that the track upon which he now was, led absolutely nowhere, or if it led anywhere, led to ver}^ queer places : to j\Iaiden Lane, to Grub Street, the Kings Prison, to the open air in St. James's Square, and other such desira^ble places of entertain- ment. The disease must be attacked at once. Once and for ah, Cyril Vavasour and Poetry must A PRETTY STORY ! -il part company. He was usually, ^vlien liis father manifested conviction, passively submis- sive ; and when most offended, never sulked. Mr. Vavasour little doubted bui submission would result now. " You must promise me, Cyril, to abandon this idle habit, and to write no more verses. When I say ' idle,' I don't mean tlmt 7/ou are idle ; but the occupation is an idle, a useless one ; nay, worse than useless — it is extremely perni- cious. Two classes of people are justified in devoting themselves to it. Firstly, they who have no objection to starving ; secondly, they who, from tlieir wealth, are never likely to starve. I believe vou are sensible enough to appreciate the disadvantage of hunger ; and if not already aware, become so now, that when your education is over, you will have to make vour own wav in the world. The very best result that could come of your publishing that stufif there, would be that you vrould only make a fool of vourself, which I am sure you have no desire to do. Your word will be quite sufficient for me : promise me you will write no 42 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. verses beyond what jour school-duties impose. Promise me, you hear, Cyril I " " Cyril ! " echoed Philip. " My father speaks to you ; don't you hear ? '' Yes, Cyril heard well enough. And Cyril will say something, when he can find the words he wants ; but he is not quite so ready or so eloquent as usual. When the words do come, they are neither very numerous, nor very un- common. " I — I — can — cannot 2:iromise, sir ! '' " But you must. I require — I insist upon it. This sort of thing I will not have. It makes you stupid — ^melancholy — irritable : and will, if persisted in, unfit you for serious work, when serious work comes, as it must soon. Be led. Once more, promise me.'' " I am very sorry, sir ; but — but I cannot. It is — is impossible.'' " Impossible ! What on earth do you mean ? Impossible ? Impossible to give up writing that nonsense 1 What is there impossible in it ? You have only to will it." " But I do not — I cannot will it.^' A PEETTY STOEY ! 43 " Then, sir, do yon mean to refuse to promise me '? In plain words, do you intend to continue this comedy of spoihng good paper % Frankly, now, I will not permit it. For your sake I act ; for yours only. If you cannot take care of yourself — of your interests — I must do so for you. I will be no party to this foolery. Once more I put it to you. Promise me to try to al3andon this habit, and let us say no more about it." ''- 1 will not — I could not deceive you. You know it, sir. In all else I will obey you. But what you ask I cannot do. I cannot even try. For three or four years '" — (think of three or four years to a boy of sixteen ! It had a sound and sense of forty centuries about it,) " for three or four years it has been '' " Enough of this nonsense. I ask you to do a thing, and you refuse. Xow, I will see that it is done. And firstly, as for this " As he spoke, he took hold of the pile of papers with a motion that unraistakeably pronounced the fire to be their immediate destination. Cyril rushed hurriedly forward. 44 FROM PILLAR TO POST. " Stop, sir ! I pray you ! Papa, papa ! You must — vou — I — I " ■ " You promise ? " " Xo ! I hare tolcl you I caunot, and I cannot." " Then into the fire these papers go." Instantly Cyril's whole manner changed. All heat, all hesitation, all nervousness passed away. Like a 3^oung reproachful spectre, pale and motionless, he stood, gazing fixedly on his fiither. " I am your son, sir. To what extent bound to obey you I know not exactly, at this minute; but the moment those papers touch the fire, that moment I leave this house." Quietly, slowh-, deliberately, 3Ir. Vavasour stirred the fire ; separated the papers, and scattered them over the blaze, which lapped them with a savao-e thirst. " Now, sir, I go." Quietly, slowly, deliberately — even as his father had given his heart's treasure to the flames — Cyril turned towards the door ; gently opened, gently closed it. Philip leaped up from his seat. A PEETTY STORY ! 45 '' Cvril ! YOU little stupid ! " " Stay where you are, Philip ! " came ^Ir. Vavasour's voice from the hearth, iu tones strangely harsh. As he spoke, they heard the hall-door close, and then no more. A kind hand from outside pushed back the wooden o;ratino" throuoh which could be seen the horses in their stalls. The Arab slept. " Good-bye, old fellow ! " said doubtfully, and with a sough as of suffocation in it ; then the grating gently replaced. And the mother 1 The loving, ever-exculpating mother ! Iso good- bve to her ! Xo, indeed. She would not have let him go — rightly or wrongly, she had kept him ; the young rebel knew that well enough. He looked up at her window, as he repassed the house from the stables, and murmured some- thing. The very night-air, the still, listening*, wakeful nio'ht-air even, did not catch it. Cvril ! Cyril I As he strode on down the gravel- walk, the laurels caught him. Cyril ! Stay, Cyril ! Cyril ! AVliy, the weeping willow bent lower, lower, and got tangled in his vagrant hair. Cyril ! Cyril ! Heed thee ! heed thee ! 46 FROM PILLAR TO POST. Cyril ! Mournfullj — oli, how mournfully ! — broke the Xovember moon through the dense clouds that had all nio-ht hitherto dimmed her, and looked down — came down — to him. Stay ! boy, stay ! All rustle went the very naked Alwoodley branches, all together. Cyril ! Cyril ! haughty, selfish Cyril 1 . . . Onwards I the gate in view. Along the traversed distance, a neigh — a faint, tremblino- nei^'h — but Attila^s ! Cyril ! What ! A hand upon the gate. It ivill not open. Again. A grating, creaking sound — a heaving of the dissonant hinges. A clang ! and it is done. Cyril ! Cyril ! -» * 4'c -^ * But what has all this to do with Lettice Tallington '? Very much, indeed, if you will only be patient for a few lines more. Cyril had scornfully flung home behind him, and dashed into the thick of London, of which he knew absolutely nothing. He had, however, either the good sense or the good fortune to take small, cheap rooms in the north-west end of the metropolis, where he set himself to work to write out from memory the poem that had A PEETTY STORY ! 47 been so ruthlessly consumecl. In tlie same house were lodging together t^YO young ghis, very little if any older than himself, one of Tvhom was always spoken of by her landlady as Miss, and by her companion as Tiny, Forde. The house was small ; and, constantly meeting each other on the staircase, they soon formed at least a speaking acquaintance. A very few days led Cyril into their sitting-room. He was the sheerest and most innocent child on earth ; but he was very lonely, and not at all indifferent to a pretty face and soft manners. Tiny Forde had both, and, what he wanted still more just now, a sympathetic disposition. ISTearly all young people are egotists, and Cyril was an egotist of the purest water. Would she care to know what he was doing in London ''i Yes, above all things. She had often wondered, but of course had not liked to question him. He told his story, and she certainly did not disappoint him on the score of interest. But he was not quite so gratified when Tiny unmis- takeably manifested it as her opinion that he had been very fooHsh to leave home, and that 48 FROM PILLAR TO POST. the sooner he returned the better. Nothing could come of leaving home, she said very earnestly, but troubles, and sometimes ^^'orse. He could not but believe that she would be very sorry to lose his society, but, "Do go home again,'' she finished ; " do go home again." He could not. That was quite out of the question. She did not know his plans, he w^ould tell her. This same poem he had wTitten again ; he had nearly finished. In a few days he would send it to a publisher. There was only the gap of a few weeks between him and Fame. He read her some passages, which she admired immensely ; and likely enough her admiration, though uncritical, was genuine. He "went on working day by day, and day by day having fireside chats with his new acquaintance. The other girl seemed rather to avoid them when they were together, much to Cyril's com- fort ; for he took almost as strong a distaste for her as fancy for her companion. And less and less, as the young w^ould-be poet came and uttered eloquent rhapsodies about himself, did Tiny dwell and insist iipon his returning home. A PEETTY STORY ! 49 Ke had positively got somebody to believe in him. But she was his first and last proselyte. Fortune does not always favour the brave, as many a fine fellow has found to his cost, and as Cyril after a few weeks found to his. Why should I make a long story of what everybody but himself, and such like boyish ignorant enthusiasts, could guess at once 1 He spent no httle time and underwent no slight mortification in Tisiting pubhsher after publisher, not one of whom would so much as look at his manuscript. At last he found a firm who would be happy to have the opinion of their reader upon it. Three weeks were consumed in waiting for this opi- nion ; a delay, however, which appeared to Cyril but commensurate with the importance of the matter. It was Christmas Eve when he received a letter which stated that the reader had reported favourably ; that there was more merit in the poem than in many recent works which the public had accepted ; and that the writer would be happy to see him on the sub- ject of publication. Here was balm in Gilead 1 50 FROM PILLAR TO POST. The glee of tlie young people was immense. Tiny thought that he had better go at once. So off he ^Yent. Poor fellow ! They thought very highly — very highly — of his poem, and would be most happy to "piihlisli it for him. The expense to lain would be thirty pounds. Cyril was dumbfoundered, and stammered out as much. *' Indeed ! Oh, yes ; the author always pub- lishes at his own risk, till — till he is known. That is alwa3^s our plan."" "I am ver}^, very sorry ,^' stuttered Cyril; "but I — I — in fact, there is an end of it. Plainly, I haven't the money. I'm sorry to have troubled you, but'^ "Oh, no trouble. We are sorry you have had the trouble. I have a train to catch : a'ou will excuse me. Shall we send vour manu- script '? " " No, thank you ; I can take it." Through the snow, now falling fast and thick — through the sloppy streets — through the long distance — Cyril travelled home : faster growing his pace — his head bent to the pitiless wind — A PEETTY STOEY! 51 but minding not at all the flakes that gathered in his long curly hair, settled in his unprotected bosom, and turned his very feverish breath to icicles. Tiny heard him come in, and rose to meet him, and hear his tidino's. But as she reached the landing, she heard his own door close upon him. She wondered he did not come to her ; it was scarcely kind, after all the interest she had taken. Then she thouo-ht that he had gone to take off his wet things and would be Y\'ith her directly ; so she went and sat down again. But no door opened. Still longer she waited, wondering ; still he offered not to come. She trode gently down- stairs ; she stood beside his door. She listened : no sound. She went back to her own room, and again waited. Again she went gently down ; again stood by his door ; again listened. No sound. She knocked timidly. ]^o answer. She knocked again — more firmly. Ko answer. Again : and, this time, loudly. '•' Come in ! " She entered : she had never been there before. He sat in front of the fire in an easy chair ; its E 2 52 FRO-^r PILLAR TO POST. back to the door and to her. He did not offer to move. She walked across. As she reached the hearth, she saw that the blaze of the fire was completely smothered by a pile of half- consumed paper. She put her hand gently on his shoulder. " Cyril ! " She had never yet called him anything but Mr. Cyril ; but she knew it was only his Chris- tian name, though what the other was he had never told her. " What's that, Cyril 1 " — pointing to the fire. " It's the poem, Tiny." And sure enough, it was. With his own hand, spontaneously, unurged, the son had come to perform that very act of sacrifice for which, when performed by the father, he had indig- nantly left that father, the fondest of mothers, Philip, Attila, home, everything, behind. Tiny, however, for the moment forgot all about the poem and its melancholy history ; for she became alive to the state in which Cyril had returned home, and this for the nonce engrossed all her attention. She forthwith began wringing A PRETTY STORY ! 53 his long, neglected curls, dripping as they ^Ye^e with the now thawed snow. She got his sponge and his towel, and did what she could there and then to make the best of it. To all of this he sat submissive, as though he should not care if she were to cut his whole hair off, or disfigure or ornament him in any way she thought proper. At last he made an effort, and tried to sa}^ — " There, Tiny, that'll do ; thanks.'' '' Xo ; but it will not do. You must dry yourself well, and cheer up." And within an hour of his return, thev were sitting together upstairs, roasting chestnuts and being moderately merrj^ One would expect her to be falhng back upon her old opinion, and urerino; him to return home : but on the con- trarY, she was castino* about her to see how he might remain, and yet accomplish his purpose. She could not bear to lose him noY'. '•' Ho^Y foolish of you to burn it ! But I sup- j)0se you can remember it all. You may yet want it. Can't you Y'rite prose as well as. poetry \ '' Cyril thoudit he could. He had done so ^t 54 FEOM PILLAR TO TOST. school often enough, and his style had been the subject of much admiration. " Could you not write a tale in prose, like the tales I showed 3^ou in the journals 1 They are very interesting, and everybody reads them ; and I know the tales are paid for, and you would be paid; and then you might save money to publish the poem yourself. Don't you see'? '"' Yes, Cyril did see, and brightened up pro- portionately. Was she sure those tales were paid for '? Quite sure '? Yes — quite. She could prove it by the '' JSTotices to Correspon- dents." Well, now, suppose he wrote a tale for one of these. A short one, say, at first. "It's all very well, Tiny; and its very clever and very kind of you to suggest it, but it would take me some little time to write a tale, even a short one, supposing I could write one at all — and I dare say I could. But what's to be done in the meantime 1 The fact is " — and here the speaker blushed, and did not look quite comfortable — " the fact is I — I — have got to the end of my — my supplies " — and here he tried to laugh, but it was a poor effort. '-'They A PRETTY STORY I 55 were not very large to begin -with, and they are gone. You know I should have had more if I had been going back to school ; but it was the end of the holidays, and I had not got stocked again. IVe sold my chain ' '• Oh, why did you do that, little goose ^ " - " How could I help it, Tiny 1 " " Very easily ; " and now she laughed, and her lauoh was more natural than his. " I don't see how. Then, there's my watch — all I've got left ; for I sold a pin, too, and I must sell the watch, and I don't like. You l^i^^ow — or you don't know — but mam — my mother gave it me ; and I don't like parting with it — but I must, for all that." '•' Oh, no ! you needn't." And Tiny went on to inform Cyril that he had a rich relation of whom he certainly had never heard before : a well-to-do uncle, that never dies, but has many nephews, all of whom he is ever ready to oblige on an emergency. Plainly, she explained how he might get money by his watch without parting with the full ownership ; and how he would be able to re- 56 FROM PILLAE TO TOST. gain entire possession of it by repayment of the capital, when capital had become plentiful by the sale of these stories. " I'm sure/' she said, '' I would not let you part Avith it at all, if I could help it ; but I am — why, much as you are. I will always help you when I can.'' AVhereupon Cyril intimated, kindly enough, but peremptorily, that he had no idea of letting her or anyone assist him in that fashion. But he thanked her much for the information about the watch, and said he would rather obtain the necessary means through that method than by losing his mother's present altogether. Tiny w^ould do it for him, did he not like going him- self. Would she 1 He did not know how it was done. She might do that, if she would. So she did it : bringing him back eight sove- reigns, and a piece of cardboard, which latter she told him he must by no means lose. And so it came to pass that the project of re turning- home, which on the first blush w^ould have seemed the only practicable scheme left, was never discussed at all; but that Cyril was to A PEETTY story! 57 live on his newly-acquired property, and mean- Avhile coin from his brain wealth-brinoino' tales. He worked aAvfully hard, wrote one tale and sent it off, and set to work at once to write another. The first had been acknowledged in the *' Xotices to Correspondents." The weeks passed on : Tiny thoudit it was time he should make some enquiry about it. He received for reply that the magazine had recently changed hands, that the editor had inherited a mass of manu- scrijDts, among which Cyril "s should be looked for and returned. This was rather a severe blow. Still, there was another journal, and Cyril had completed his second story, which was duly sent off. 3Iore delay, more enqui- ries, more wTeks gone. Cyril grew poor and impatient. He wrote an importunate letter, begging for an immediate reply. He got one, saying that the proprietors of the journal could not pretend to return rejected commu- nications. That night Cyril passed in incoherent ravings, and Tiny in trying to make sense of his speeches and to allay the fever which was on him. The 58 FEOM PILLAE TO POST. morning brought consciousness and something like sleep. Complete rest and a recumbent position were ordered. During this state of things Tiny nursed him T\'ith unsurpassable tenderness and the faithfullest assiduity ; leav- ing him seldom, and then for his Tv'ants, not for hers. And she seemed to have nothino- in the way of remuneration, for the doctor had forbidden conversation ; so talk Tiny would not, despite the invalid's many provocations. Even when she bent over, bathing his hot dry face, she onlv smiled at him, commandino- silence with her finger on her lips, when he moved as if to thank her for her care. Under such ministrations he was coming round, and the fifth day saw him sitting up. The fever once gone, he felt, he said, well enough ; he should like to go out ; he was sure he could walk any distance ; he was quite strong ; what the doctor said was all nonsense. Tinv, however, would be obeyed, confining him strictly to his room ; and now talked to him freely enough upon all topics but the fatal one which had induced this last lamentable state of thino-s. A PRETTY STORY ! 59 The Tveek came to a close ; the doctor pro- nounced him all but convalescent ; the next day he might go out. He would give a new prescription — the last, but an important one, and he should like it to be made up at the Apothecaries' Hall. Tiny said it should be ; she would go herself. The Apothecaries' Hall was at Blackfriars somewhere — a considerable way off ; she should be away perhaps a couple of hours, so Cyril must not tliink her long. She had not been gone a quarter of an hour when Cyril's attention was attracted by a noise proceeding from upstairs. The landlady and Miss Bolton were evidently engaged in an altercation, in which both were clearly out of temper. That, however, was no concern of his. But higher grew the pitch of the voices. Then he recog- nised Tinv's name — ao'ain — and aoain ; then his own, most distinctly. Surely he was inte- rested in this. He went upstairs. As he reached the landing the landlady brushed past him and descended, flushed and hurried. He entered, and foimd Miss Bolton in much the same condition. 60 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. '* What is all this about '? " he asked. '' I hear Tiny's name, and then I hear my o^Yn. So I concluded I had a right to inquire.'' " Oh, it's only between the landlady and me. We cannot pay our rent this week." " Who cannot ? '' " Miss Forde and ir " But what has that to do with me ^ Why should my name be introduced ? " *'Why, you see it's all Miss Forde's fault. She cannot pay her share, though / can ; and ]\rrs. Muster says it comes from waiting upon you. You take up all her time." " How '? She used to be with me before ; at least, I with her." " Yes, but only during the day." It took many more words than we require here, to make the smooth-faced, innocent lad understand of her, who had been best and kindest friend to him on earth, what he knew but in the vaguest sort of way of people whom he fancied he had never seen ; passed though he must have scores of them in his wanderino-s, with his poems or his tales under his arm^ A PRETTY STORY ! 61 tlirougli tlie London streets. Slo^vly, he began to comprehend : slowlv. to feel all outlook of hopefulness drifting from him : slowly, to stare upwards and find no stars in heaven ! Three hours after the sun had set, an iron gate creaked on its heavy hinges in stillen obedience to a hand whose weight it had not felt for near five months. A quick but measured step upon tlie broad, winding gravel-walk broke upon the otherwise all-silent night. The trees did not seem to know their visitant ; the stars seemed to care not about him or his purposes. The laurels had no welcome; the weeping- willow lent no salutation : no neio'h came float- o ins; athwart the distance. The lad walked on. He had reached the hall-door : throuoii its o-lass arches he could see the lamp hanging as of old, he could see the librarv door on the rio-ht, half- ajar, and that lights were within ; and nothing more. He put his hand on the handle of the front-door : it opened to him. He went and hung his hat on the stand, pushed the hbrary door a'entlv back a little farther, and stood 62 FROM PILLAR TO POST. within. On the sofa sat the son ; on the hearth, the father ; besides these, none. " I have come back, sir. Am I welcome ? ^' " Welcome, if you have come to remain : welcome, if you have returned convinced ; wel- come, if you have returned cured ; welcome, if you are penitent. ' " I have returned, sir — thus ! '' "Then stay. Stay to show that you begin better to understand your position ; that you are not so inflated with self-esteem, or so led away by self-will. Your future conduct can prove all these. I hope it will do so. There is my hand, Qjv\\. Let us hear no more of it.^' The hand was scarcelj" taken — the word scarcely said, when a quiet rustle and a quick step were heard in the hall, and the door again was pushed back. Cyril turned. " Oh, my boy ! mj boy ! Cyril ! Cyril ! my boy!" and then only inarticulate sobs, and bursts of woful joy, and many fondhngs. She had him to her breast ; she was feeling his hair, his hands, his pale but feverish cheeks. Yes ; it ivas her handsome boy come back — to A PRETTY STORY ! 63 go aTvav no more. She had no reproaches for him ; no taimis ; no sermons, as yet, at least ; onlv kisses, and tears, and overflowing tender- ness, as if he had saved her heart,, not nearly broken it ; blaming him not that he had gone away, but loving and thanldng him with her fond eyes and famihar touch that he had come to her ao'ain. o • ««• ^*v j*^ J'i J'i Bv a bedside in London, all that night through, a girl knelt and wept. She had come home from her long Citywards journey, splashed and tired, but full of sustaining thoughts : for it was all done towards one for whom she cared, ah me ! as such people will persist in caring. She had the medicine : the dear fellow would soon be all right again. She sought him at once, finding him not, however, but hurriedly writ lines, and a httle golden heart, with a simple, '•' "Wear it for the sake of what lias been. And. Tiny, Tiny, seek your mother, as I seek mine ! '' " Emma ! how could you \ how could vou tell him % You knew — vou must have 64 FROM PILLAll TO TOST. known that I loved him : loved him onlv in all this dreary world ! '^ And so, the hours through, she knelt and wept, with a gift or curse of tears surpassing- all but her sorrows Oh, that lie should have known it ! He, from whom she had stowed it away with such chaste care all along ! That he should come to know what Tiny was ! After all the weeks — after all the months — after all the kind interchanges — the unwary passages of guileless tenderness — all the day ministerings — all the Ion 2; nioht- watches — to end in this wise ! But Time, the great magician, has exorcised all that sorrow. And if there be in the tone of Lettice Tallington to-night anything that recals the miserable break-down and suddenly shattered hopes of the Tiny Forde of seven years ago, it is not in any tear she sheds. " Yes ; this is the little heart he left. I have worn it ever since." " Would you not like to see him again, speak with him, talk it all over 1 " asks Bertha. " If he chose to seek me, yes ; not otherwise. But I am sure my hair will do now."^ CHAPTER III. C0>'FESS10 AMA]S'T1S. LADY HAEBLEDOWX STARTS BLAXCHE. HER EIYAL's PEDIGREE. Sir Wilfrid Harbledowx had had the mis- fortune to be left by his father ^yith an over- pious mother, and ten thousand a-year. Against either of these disadvantages singly he might have struggled perhaps successfully, but both united were too much for him. Had a thoroughly •worldly woman been his guardian when he entered on his manhood, she would have turned his income to good account ; had he inherited nothing but poverty, a devout parent would assuredly have much assisted him in enduring his unhappy lot. But, as it happened, the young baronet's mother only reo'arded his fortune as an additional mundane temptation to her charge against which it was her duty to oppose every safeguard. She knew just enough of the 6Q FROM PILLAR TO POST. world's wickedness to be horrified by it ; slie knew just too little to be at all a judge how it was to be encountered. However, she had her views, right or wrong, and with the peculiar determination of one-ideaed people, she pro- ceeded to enforce them. She was resolved that her son should undergo no unnecessary risks ; and so she married him. She chose the time, she chose the maiden ; and before he was twenty- two. Sir Wilfrid, innocent even of the mild in- ducements wdiich a university career offers to ordinary passions and extraordinary possessions, found himself complimented upon a wife whose beauty was almost equal to her inexperience. Like him, she had never flitted through even a first London season. Mabel had fed Turkey poults, had cultivated prize fuchsias, and had never given her hand to anything more senti- mental than the last-born calf. To say that the two young people did not love each other before they were married would be untrue, for did they not constantly meet and hold sweet inter- course under the watchful eye of Sir Wilfrid's mother '? But to say that they loved from LADY HAEBLEDOWX STAKTS BLANCHE. 67 choice ^ould surely be yet more untrue ; for whom had the one or the other seen -svhom either was hkely to prefer 1 The tall, elegant baronet was not likely to find a dangerous competitor in Tom the gardener, Dick the coachman, or Harry the groom. And to say the least, Mabel was Stellas inter Luna minores — a very queen of the world among the dowager Lady Harble- down's dowdies of servant-maids ; for even these had been chosen with a prudent caution against the possible irregularities of an over- tempted boyhood. Well, now they had " wooed and married and aV^ where were they to hve 1 At Vernon Deep wholly 1 So thought the timid mother, who had little idea of relinquishing her authority now that two instead of one were to be cared for — to be answered for before Heaven, were they not *? But a man cannot come into a baronetcy and ten thousand a year, without the world knowing it ; and the world usually considers that it ought, as well as mothers, to have some little to say to the destinies of one so very convenient to its purposes. It's all very well, said a section of it, for that pious old p 2 6S FROM riLLAK TO POST. worQan (she ^vould never have been called *' old' if she had not been pious — she Tvas scarcely forty) to turn Harbledown into a builder of churches and president of eclectic muffin- meetings ; but a fellow with his position and his money owes something to his county. The old baronet was a Tory, and such must be his son. We are in low water just now, and we can't afford to let all that stream of wealth and influence run to waste. This was the view of one section. Another appeared to hold that it was an outrage upon the first rights of society to withhold from its arena such a pearl of all price as the beautiful, peerless Mabel. "We are sick to sleepiness, they said, of all the old faces ; we have not had an accession to the ranks. Heaven knows when. And here is a Venus Victrix, and her mother- in-law is for keeping her down in that lumber- room of Vernon Deep. Shall she, though '? So they talked. Nor is it to be denied that another section — the bandit section — the section that rides to the Derby on other mens drags, drinks other men's wines, tampers with other men's LADY HARBLEDOWX STARTS BLANCHE. GO best treasures, gets bailed out by other men's ' money, and lives generally on a spendthrift succession of fools — complained most bitterly that its lavrful prey ^as vrithheld from it by that religious old frump down in the country. Xot a pigeon left, said these ; not a single feather. Kever was there such a time. Life is becoming intolerable — not worth the having. Xot a single fellow now to give the long odds. One will have to pay for one's own dinner next. We'll see, though, if young Harbledown can't be brought to the scratch. All these sections the dowager set herself to work to withstand most womanfully. How the battle between '•' the flesh, the world, and the devil," on the one side, and sermons, tea- meetino's, and g-othic architecture on the other,. terminated, I am precluded from teUing. For the various sections, who had nearly given up the game for lost, woke one morning, read their Times, and with many congratulations uttered one to another satirical R. I. P.'s over the de- ceased dowager Lady Harbledown. Sir Wilfrid at once took a mansion in town : and his wife 70 FROM PILLAR TO POST. "was the belle and liimself tlie "best fellow going," of the ensuing season. Five years ago was it since this had hap- pened. Sir "Wilfrid had got into Parliament. The bandit section had had their way with him ; doubtless some other younger and now more inexperienced and more squeezeable fool had attracted them from him when he became (as he did become) not over-responsive to their exorbitant demands. They had not done him very much damage in a financial point of view ; they had only made him just a little negligent of his wife. This of course had improved the opportunities of another section. But when I say that it improved their opportunities, I have told all. The country beauty had developed into the town belle ; the merrily-spoken girl of the garden and the fields had blossomed into the wit of the drawing-room and the fete. But the goodness and the reputation which she had brought to the city, she took away with her whenever she left it. I doubt if any imperti- nence had ever been uttered or offered to her ; and of this I am sure, that even scandal had not LADY HAEBLEDOWX STARTS BLANCHE. 7i tlie courage to traduce lier. While others seemed to think more, her husband seemed to think less of her. Perhaps lie was not to blame. Circumstance is very wayward. Society had cultivated in lier the wit which he could not ajDpreciate, and the tastes which, lie knew not how to indulge. He did not find politics very interesting, but he found his wife still less so. He had not been educated to the wants of women, and after marriage this deficiency of education cannot be suppKed. It is in trying to make ourselves agreeable to women, and so to win them, that we learn how they are pleased. To acquire this, as all other knowledge, a failure or two is necessary. Sir "Wilfrid had never failed. His wife had been won for him bv his mother, and now that she was his, and there was nothing to gain, as far as he saw, by stud^ang her little desires, he very naturally forbore from the study. And the best that can be said of him is that, had he been married to a woman who would have treated him as some will say he deserved to be, he would j^i'obably 72 TROM PILLAR TO POST. hare been yerj tolerant towards the infirmities of which he had been himself the cause. When Cyril had first come across Lady Harbledown in the strange fashion which Frank Morley related to Lettice Tallington, the clever woman of the world conceived a signal liking for him. She had no children — she had no young thing about her. And here was a half- boy, half-man, whom ambition was driving on to manhood, but whose frank enthusiastic sim- plicity still held back almost to the impulses of ,. a child. She, with her sober years (she was twenty-seven), might well be kind to the hand- some, amiable, unpretending lad. Besides, she had discovered between them a relationship on her own side ; a cousinship, such as most of ns could find if so minded, but still a cousinship of which she made the most. Luckily Sir Wilfrid fancied him too, in his indifferent way ; ? for Cyril could drink his wine and talk his politics quite cleverly enough to suit his host. And he was not sorry to find his wife afifect one who was young enough for her to patronise and treat in half-mother's fashion, and yet able LADY HAEBLEDOWN STARTS BLANCHE. 7S enough to amuse and be a welcome companion. So for his Conservatism Cyril got from Sir Wil- frid the best of port, and from Sir Wilfrid's lady, for his vivid egotism, the best of treatment and the kindhest, because the cheerfulest, of conso- lation. With whatever formed intentions of conceal- ment, Cyril had been compelled to revert to the original frankness of his first acquaintance with her sprightly, quick-witted ladyship. He had come down to Vernon Deep this morning (Saturday) as he had promised, bringing Regi- nald Dormer with him. And long before dinner-hour had he been obliged to describe how he was off with all old loves in order to be on with a new one. He might have almost spared himself the confession. She was an excellent judge of character, and she knew his through and through. When she had left England, he was raving about one Amy who had gone to Nice, and whom she was to be sure to find out there. On her return, he had no inquiries to make, was deeply inter- ested in a boy not many years younger than 74 FROM PILLAR TO POST. himself, whose father he had been Yisitins:, and was busy acquiring a knowledge of shorthand for the purpose of reporting. She put all these things together, and formed her conclusions. He had such a dread of her humour, that he was not very eloquent in his self-defence, and could only say that he was young a year ago, and was old now, and that he never could change, &c., &c. " My dear Cyril, I will side with you in the matter. Love whom you will, and as long as you will, only alwa^^s come and tell me. If you don't, I shall find out, and then I shall be merciless. Nay, I am going to give you another chance. The Latimcrs have got back, and Blanche is sure to come in upon us this evening, and I will back my Blanche against your Mary. She is " " No, no, no; I care not what she is; it is not a question of beauty. All the beauties in Surrey are nothing to me. I have everything I want. I do not say that I have not seen handsomer girls. I do not say I have not seen cleverer girls — you see I am impartial''' — (How proud LADY HAEBLED0T7X STAETS BLANCHE. 75 are young people -when tliev think they can say this with justice !) — ''but she is good-looking — at least to me. She is * So wise in all she ougM to know, So ignorant of all beside.' And then, as I told you, she is very rehgious, and a girl not pious is horrible. And I am quite sure, when a man goes to heaven, 'tis his wife gets him there. At any rate, it is wy only chance.'' They were all sitting, dinner over, and the flood of the warm June sunset coming on, on the smooth straidit lawn overlooked bv the long line of Tudor windows that have let in the Hght of heaven on the home of the Harble- downs for upwards of three centuries. The additions and alterations of later vears had much impaired the original simplicity of its architecture ; but a jDrovident destiny seemed to have presided over it, even when submitted to the essays of its most whimsical possessors ; so that even now, thoudi certainly fantastical, it could not be considered misshapen or even altoo'ether incono-mous. Either its red brick 76 fro:m pillar to post. liaci been touched by the skilful hand of modern renovation, or it had strangely preserved its pristine brightness. Something of its fresh- ness was doubtless due to the recently inserted plate-glass, which harmonises so well with the crimson virtue of the hard-baked clay. It was flanked on either side by trees, whose youth might perhaps have seen its foundations laid, so gnarled and knotted were their trunks, so many and so huge their ambitious branches. But in front, right away to the horizon, from the long waving grass in the meadow be^^ond the lawn, and separated from it but by an iron fence to where the Surre}^ hihs gently sloping upwards touched and lost themselves in the evening sky, clear and untrammelled was the prospect. All between was verdure, meadows ripe and ready for the scythe, corn-fields as yet green and immature, and all thoughtless of the warm golden maidenhood to come, and the encirchng sickle that would bear them away. "Well might those boys — for nature never wastes her wealth when she proffers it to the young — well might they, though unaccustomed to sip LADY HAEBLEDOTVX STABTS BLANCHE. 77 their claret every day under the carved but n:iassive oaken ceihng of Sir Wilfrid's dining-hall, declare that they ^vould not be circumscribed by avails, and that they had not come down from town without intendino' to have the most of the summer sunsets and the Surrey air. Of a sudden, from somewhere amidst the dense quiet foliage came upon them the sound — nearer — nearer — nearer — of a voice that had broken into song. A low, rich, yet tremulous voice — tremulous with the burden of its pathos — speaking a girl's soul. Nothing is so true a test of a woman's intelhgence as the way in which she sings. Kot the mere instrument, not the finished skill, not the well acquired art, proclaims her power; but that undiscovered something by which she grasps the meaning of the composer, and gives it adequate utterance. Nearer, nearer, nearer came the voice ; every note, every syllable distinct. Reginald held the crimson fruit suspended in his hand. Stephen woke even to a more satisfied appreciation of his position ; and, stolen from the landscape, Cyril's eyes turned in search for the spot 7s FR0:M PILLAE TO POST. whence came that harmonised and harmonisino: strain. " Hush ! It is Blanche ; she does not know we are here." Singing, she emerged from the trees, and stood full before them. A riding-habit of the simplest but strictest make, with not one careless crease throughout, enveloped but to display her form, and gave to her height perhaps even an additional grace ; though they who had seen her in all costumes, averred that grace was what she never lacked. The suddenness of the interruption had also made her moment- arily pause in her advance towards them ; and as Stephen (who knew her well), seeing her shght confusion, exclaimed, -'You have stricken us into silence. Miss Latimer ; but we applaud — we applaud now,'' — she raised her hat, and let it fall along with her hand to her side, and moved her acknowledgments; a shght, very slight blush mounting from the smile of her parted lips, just heightening the exquisite bloom of those cheeks where youth and health held holiday, deepening the lustrous LADY HAEBLEDOWX STAETS BLA^THE. 79 glamour of her hazel eyes, creeping up the long- narrow brow, and then breaking against the nut-brown hair, and dying away like the last streaks of the sunset amongst the gloom of the distant hills. '•' I had no idea you were so well surrounded ; but I did tliink Sir Wilfrid would be here. He promised to be," she said, refusing the chairs offered her, and seating herself on the hassock at Lady Harbledown's feet, and taking her hand. " How unkind of you not to tell me you had guests. I have only just come from my ride. I dismounted at the httle gate, and sent my horse home. But wont Sir Wilfrid be here ^ '^ " Well, I scarcely know. He promised to come, as you say. What am I to do with these boys, if he does not ; unless you will come to-morrow and help entertain them ^ " " Then I hope my cousin will not come," said Stephen (he spoke of Sir Wilfrid) ; •• better music, even sacred music, than politics and sport. But why may we not have both ^ What is 80 FEO^r PILLAR TO POST. there to prevent Wilfrid from being here ^ Xo House on Saturday/' " But Sunday is a great day for private poh- tical dinners," Lady Harbledown remarked, (did she say it to excuse her husband ?) '•' He may be staying in town for one of them. Don't you €nvy him, Cyril 1 I know you do. By tlie way, Blanche, you have been wanting to know clever, ambitious people. Yes, you have. She has been abusing the whole population of Surrey as vanriens and dull drones, and I know not what. Well, now, I cannot say — at least I must not say — that Mr. Vavasour is clever ; but he is as ambitious of climbing as — as — what, Stephen ? Help me." " As a scarlet-runner or a chimney-sweep ; will that do ^ " Cyril laughed, but coloured, and might per- haps have been utterly at a loss, (not being- willing, in the frank honesty of his youth, to repel a charge substantially so true, and yet not able to turn the charge to his own credit), had not Miss Latimer bravely rushed to the front. " Let us laugh ; but there are many chimneys LADY HAEBLEDOWX STARTS BLANCHE. 81 in this world that want sweeping, and imless some men have a climbing tendency, they will never get swept. And as for scarlet-runners, I cultivate them, don't I, Mabel 1 And I have always noticed that the beautiful flowers become more scarlet and more beautiful as they mount.'"' "•' I am inclined to think, Miss Latimer,'*' Cyril answered gratefully, ''that your flowers are indebted both for their showy colours and their jDrogress upwards to your gentle and encouraging care." Then, with a happy laugh and skilful turn. '•' Witliout it, they would soon be as unornamental and grovelling as — my dear Stephen.'' " You satirical wretch ! "Won't I put on my regimentals when I come down next \ I'm no match for you in mufti, with that skilful tongue of yours. But only let me don my parade tog- gery with the new shako, and then, Master Cyril, I will oive vou ever so much start ! '^'^hy, voti know well enough, you shall write the best book of the year, or iio-ure at Westminster — isn't it I — in the most important case. Comes a young 82 FROM PILLAR TO POST. jackanapes — that's not me, mincl — in a red coat, and you and your favourable reviews, or you and your swell speeches, are nowhere." " Will you keep your promise 1 " put in Blanche. ''Try your theory. I declare, for my part, I like even your flippancy better than your frogged surtout, though neither is much to my liking." " Cousin Mabel ! Cousin Mabel to the rescue ! or I surrender. Can we not rout them 1 '' "Ah, see there displayed wdiat you would have us behove you do not possess ! I will not help you ; you need no assistance. Your cry to me is only the cry of the heart that longs for victory, even in a wit-combat. We all have the wish, though few the power. All would be victors, if they could. Every man is satirical in his heart ; the favoured only with his tongue." " Yes, yes ; and we, Mabel, as well as they. Our ribbons are like their red coats or smooth speeches — small attempts at fame."' '' Fame ! fame ! yes, I am for the fame that brings reward. The place nearest the fire in winter, farthest from it in spring ; the LADY HAEBLEDOWN STARTS BLANCHE. 83 seat near the prettiest girl, the first cup of coffee, the last cup of tea, the largest straw- berries, and the smallest Southdown ; in fact, the IMS everywhere, and in everything ; these are rewards, and if fame will bring them, I am all for fame. But I am pretty sure that all the fame in the world, if joined to an imprudent modesty or an indiscreet reticence, is a much longer and less certain road than the short and safe cut of a well-managed selfishness.'' Such a speech was sure to be groaned down, and was the signal for a general rise. Reginald attached himself to the new comer, and Stephen to his cigar. Alone with Vavasour, the hostess was curious to know what he thought of her Blanche. " What can I think \ I am not, I fancy, one of those who have eyes and see not. It is very good of you, encouraging such pretty faces at Vernon Deep. I will come whenever you will ask me ; and when you don't, if your invitations slacken. How is it one never hears of Miss Latimer % There is scarcely such another girl in London.*' G 2 84 FROM PILLAR TO POST. '• Why, her papa is a singular old man ; he takes her nowhere ; and being ^Yithout mother, and with the most selfish brothers you ever met, what can the child do ? They have no house in town ; I don't think they could afford it. Their place is very handsome ; better, at least more luxurious, than ours ; but J\lr. Latimer must have sunk all or nearly all his money there. He was in business himself as a young man, though his father made the fortune. He soon gave it up, and has hved at the Grange ever since." " But his daughter ^ Why has he educated her so well 1 She is singularly accom- plished." " Oh, with women that is a matter of accident. Really, I don't know where she was educated ; but no doubt there were dozens of girls edu- cated with her who cannot sing a note or con- ceive a remark. But he values her accom- plishments just as much as her beauty : they are to him both accidents, which he would have liked to have avoided. Only the other day, when I was praising her to him, he said LADY HAEBLED0T7N STAETS BLANCHE. S5 it would have been much better for her if she had been born with a hump." '•' Old stupid : " *' Yes, yes ; all very well for you boys. You like pretty faces and pretty dresses, would object to humps, and have not got to pay the bills. 'My Blanche is wonderful in her extra- vagances, even at that quiet place ; in town she would do her best to ruin hiui. Oiu' country people notice them on account of her, and endure from him anv amount of rudeness ; for he does not value or want their acc[uaintance, and shows them as much. Sir Wilfrid cannot bear him, and does not quite like my noticing his dauo-hter : thouo-h, like all of vou, the face propitiates him. But he objects to the retired merchant, thouo-h he himself married the STeat oTand-dauo'hter of a barber, thouo'h he won't let me sav so.'" '• What does he say of me, then ? '" asked Cvril, shly. ''• Xever mind, su\ what he savs of vou. He is verv kind to you. and so am I : and vou need ask no frivolous questions. I am not talking of 86 FEOil PILLAE TO POST. anytliing so slight as you, you egotistical boy. We are talking of Blanche. Xow, tell me, is she not charming 1 ^^ . " Have I not already said so 1 What then 1 ^' '•' What then ! As always happens, to be sure. Let us have no barren admiration. I have started her against your last — or is it already last but one 1 — new fancy. You laugh ; but you blush too. Listen to me. She will have money ; not much, but five, six, perhaps more, thousand pounds. Why are you pishing and pshawing'? Of course you are to love her ; and you are to set to work at once. Her father — I will not compliment you — is not ambitious for her ; and if he were, she would laugh at his ambition, if it so suited her. I fear they don^t get on together very admirably. He considers her vain and reckless ; she him stingy and unreasonable ; and they are both right.'' " What an admirable wife ! What an admi- rable father-in-law ! Really, now, you do teni'pt me. When shall I go in and win ? " LADY HAEBLEDOWX STAETS BLANCHE. 87 '•' I forbid sarcasm. Youug jDeople are al- lowed — are expected — to be conceited (and jon, sir, C[uite fulfil the expectation) ; but they haye no rislit to be satirical : it does not become them. I will not hare my plans scoffed at. You are not to o-o in and win — you are to be patient. I want no more enthusiasm. I laugh when I hear of perfect beings — pious people — and shorthand-writing. You are only wasting your time. Attend to your profession solely, and — and — and marry — four, fiye years hence (she is but just nineteen) Blanche Latimer. That is my plan.'' '•' I am becomingly grateful," said CjtII, gaily, raisins; his hat in mock acknowledo-ment : '• but — but — I haYO my plan, too. I shall see her soon ; when I leaye town, you know. The Assizes will be on there ; "tis the circuit I shall go, and not far from Alwoodley — only some thirty miles. So I shall tell them at home I am going to see practice, and I shall see — her ! Mahomet must go to the mountain." '•' "What an accomplished hypocrite ! I think I must write to Alwoodley on the subject. It 88 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. is SO pleasant to have those things discussed in the family circle under one's ear ! '' " Very ! But m j secret is my own — and yours; but yours only. I have not told any one — not even Stephen ; and I should not have told you if you had not made me. Why should I ? It is all a matter of feeliuo;. I am not bound to advertise my sensations ; and I could not bear to have them talked about. It is different from other things — it's so sacred — and she is so '" " Oh, yes — yes ! — certainly. Amy over again. I thought you had exhausted 3^our superlatives in praising her ; but I see you grow original. The singular part of love-passages is that they all are so different. Never was there anything like each one of them before. Ah ! I know it all. So go to On Chester, and then come back to Vernon Deep. Blanche shall be there." So she bantered him in that kind way, all her own. Philip Dormer had known but one romance in his whole life, but it had come in such a shape, and at such an age, that from its influence he had never escaped. He attained A SHOET PEDIGEEE. 89 twenty-one, and found himself, like Orlando, " with poor a thousand crowns," and as nearly alone in the world as a boy with a handsome face, graceful manners, and avowed talents well could be. His guardian, a strictly honest but not very sensitive man, had regarded both the charge of the lad and of the patrimony as a burden ; and was rejoiced when his protege, become his own master, declared his intention of devoting what remained of his inheritance, from the expenses of his education, to carr^ang himself and his fortunes whither so many eager believers in themselves had thronged before. Dormer would go to Italy ; he would wander through the galleries of inspired canvas and fresco, that have made its cities the studios of the universe ; would learn the secrets of their success, and so foster, yet control, his own. When you are travelling, you can get to know pretty much whom you will. On the Continent even English people are civil ; and so you have nothing but a knapsack, and be a gentleman in your ways, Bloomsbury forgets to be inquisi- tive as to your crest. It was in Florence that 90 TEOM PILLAR TO POST. Dormer met the Chesterfields — father, mother, two daughters, and a son much the same age as himself. The acquaintance had commenced in ordinary fashion enough at a tahle cVJiote, and had ripened more romantically, at least so far as the young people were concerned, in the gal- leries where the artist was at once an agreeable and useful cicerone, a pleasant companion when society was not plentiful, and when what little there was, was not of the best. Mr. and j\rrs. Chesterfield, though country people of no signal mark, were as self-important as though they possessed a province, and had brought up their children with no small appreciation of their position. But, with some, love is stronger even than instilled hauteur, and a heart is sometimes lost even before the very winner becomes aware that he has played for it. Yet, show me the boy who wakes to know what he has won, and will not exclaim, " The very prize I coveted.'^ And if that prize be a dark-haired, dark-eyed, stately girl, and he have staked against her only his eloquence and his conceit, I know well if he will not fling his life's-love into the bargain, and A SHOET PEDIGREE. 91 swear it was joart of the original risk. One second — one throbbing, faltering second — Philip Dormer strangely stole from May Chesterfield her secret imawares ; and the next — throbbing — but no, not faltering — he was TOwed her own, and she was plighted his, for all days thereafter. This is an old story, say you. Very old ; and yet ever renewed. I will be pledged to say the same little performance is going on as I write or you read, in the same picture-gallery, in the same Florence, in this same monotonous whirligig of a world. Of course, then, there was a scene — a tremendous hurricane of taunts, threats, and tears \ Dormer was sent about his business and his painting ; poor May was lectured — scolded — bulHed ; the whole family bustled back to England ; old Chesterfield never lost an opportunity of sneering at sign-painters ; and Miss Chesterfield is now Mrs. Captain Brown, and is famous for her anti-macassars'? Not at all. Not at all. It turned out quite otherwise, or I should not have troubled you to read or myself to narrate it. Dormer was quite 92 FROM PILLAR TO POST. ready to listen to reason, or even to bend before abuse. Five minutes before lie had told May Chesterfield that he loved her, it had never struck him that she was more than the nicest girl he had ever met (he had never met one before) ; and five minutes after, though he loved her much more than the moment when he had so suddenly blurted out his newly-discovered passion, he felt that he was a young fool, and had only not done a dishonourable thing because he had never intended to do anything at all. Malice prepense at least he need not plead to. But Love — young Love especially — is apt to be very sanguine ; and he saw — they both saw — how, in a couple of years, say, at the most. Dormer would be celebrated, and be able to lead his darling home ; and the parents mean- while would patiently suffer an engagement, whose limits were so very clearly defined. Who has not annihilated time and space in this sum- mary fashion himself! Thank God, we have all been famous once for a quarter of an hour — the quarter after stealing, hke bungling imitators of Prometheus, an evanescent fire from the A SHOKT PEDIGREE. 1)6 to- day heaven of a bonnibers benignant lips. Famous, indeed ! Infamous, rather ; at least, so thought indignant papa and mamma. The young jackanapes, to think of their daughter I Who teas the fellow 1 As for May, all girls were alike, and were ready to take up with Tom, Dick, or Harry, so any of those distin- guished personages came in the guise of a pert, soft-tongued troubadour. Dormer felt he had made an egregious blunder, and was quite ready to o'O away and be miserable for a month or two — lono;er, if need were — for he felt fonder and fonder of the impassioned young maiden. Now comes the singular part of the history. Likely enough — nay, there's not a doubt of it — you will think what May did very unwomanly, improper, monstrous, &c., &c. I am not going to stop to argue it ; only, she did it. The fact is my affair ; you may make the propriety 3^ours if you like. As Philip sat a-musing, that night of receiving his dismissal from the hotel of his former friends, a-musing and a-mourning, there came to him a visitor. That visitor was j\Iay Ches- terfield. He was carrying away her heart with 94 FROM PILLAR TO POST. liim, she said ; would be leave herself behind ? He bad owned that her love was bis Hfe, and be was only dividing and destroying both through devotedness to her and what be thought due to honour and her parents' rights. She knew nothing of parents' rights. She knew he loved her ; she knew she loved him — him only — him wholly. Her parents asked him to leave her ; her parents, to whom he owed nothing. She asked him to take her with him — she, to whom be bad promised all things. Do you think them poor arguments ? Be you in the same dilemma, and be sure you will find them logical enough. He did take her with him, and — they were married : boy and girl, with £500, and the whole world frowning on them, as it alone knows how to frown. Of course, he deserted her ^ Or she, in a couple of years, ran away with somebody else 1 iSTo, no, no. I tell you this story is not hke other stories. I know perfectly well — will grant it 3^ou — that May deserved to be finally neglected by the husband whom she had won against all good breeding and the orthodox catechism of A SHOET PEDIGREE. 95 courtship. I know perfectly well — will not deny it — that by all accepted canons, Philip ought to have been awoke some fine morning with a splendid pair of horns on his head, whatever that may mean. Very singular it may be, but very true it is, that these two young simpletons, who came to be married in this marvellous, monstrous manner, loved each other, I verily believe, more tenderly than ever pair loved yet ; and discovered the strict necessity of one to the other to be so real and so complete that they positively held the scorn of the world as of no account, and the neglect of their relations as a misfortune patiently to be borne with, but not for a moment to be weio'hed ao-ainst the con- summate happiness of their mutual truth. Before a year was out, a little face laughed out at them from the cradle ; and in time baby came to be called Mary. They were still in Italy. The wife believed in her husband's o-enius even more unswerving v than he, no great sceptic on the subject, believed in it himself; and she begged him to remain, and spend in that foreign land what was left of his 96 FROM PILLAE TO POST. narrow means, in becoming an accomplished adept in the art which was to vdn for him fame and fortune in their own. It was brave ; it was successful Three years went thus ; and Mary's place in the cradle and in mamma's first thoughts was occupied by a frolicsome ever-crowing baby-boy, who was noi yet called Reo-inald. Just enouo-h money was left to carry them all home ; but they took with them a picture. It was exhibited ; and England held out her hand to another artist. Philip Dormer found himself at once with exactly the same moneyed fortune as on the strange evening when May Chesterfield had come to claim the fulfil- ment of his phght ; but with opportunities of straightway increasing it to ten times the amount, should he accept orders thrust upon him with no little importunity. But he was by nature abhorrent of mediocrity ; critical, and most so of his own attempts, when he went to Italy, he left it with a standard and conception of excellence attainable only by genuine inspi- ration superadded to the skill of acquired workmanship. The latter, once gained by. A SHORT PEDIGREE. 97 never deserts us ; but we can no more com- mand the presence of the other than we can God's sunho-ht or heaven's show of stars. It o visits us but seldom ; and he who strains at art when he is not inspired will soon cease to be inspired at all. Dormer executed one order to enable him to settle himself and his much-loved charges at Onchester. They lived quietly ; but with every comfort that love finds requisite. It was the third year of his abode in England ; the sixth of his sweet married life. He had finished his second picture, and was going to exhibit it the ensuing spring. It had been a long labour of love, made dearer still by his companion's encouragement and warm belief. She had ever been on his side — the side which leaned to slow, patient execution ; had never hurried him, had never once asked him wdien the "Sermon on the Mount" would stand upon the easel, com- pleted. It had been, it is true, somewhat delayed by his wife's being, during the whole winter, more or less out of health. At first, nothing was wrong, the doctor said ; at first 98 FROM PILLAR TO POST. notliing ever is ^vrong. By March it was allowed that everything was wrong. Poor Dormer ! He watched, he prayed, he wept, he vowed. To no purpose, all of it. She grew weaker, day after day ; and the first primroses were on May Dormer's grave. She had told Philip, but an hour before she died, that at that very moment she was thanking Heaven for having been permitted to be united to him, and that she had never for an instant repented the choice of her early years. She had been allowed to remain with him but a very brief period ; but God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. She would have him refuse no oppor- tunity of being reconciled to her family, though he had better not seek further what they seemed so resolved not to concede ; but he must love the dear sweet pets, and his divine art, and work and wait patiently until they met again. The Chesterfields had been all along inexor- able. Dormer wrote to inform them of the sad event. Kone of them came to see May's tomb, Philip's tears, and the orphans' black dresses and wonderino' little faces. Mrs. Chesterfield A SHORT PEDIGREE. 99 ^Tote, giving her son-in-law to understand, in that circuitous language of scornful condolence which women alone can command, that he had killed her daughter, and broken her and her husband's heart : language rather hyperbolical if we consider the fact that, three months pre- viously, they had indulged in merry-meetings and convivial fetes, duly paraded in the pro- vincial papers, on the occasion of their remaining daughter's marriage with a worn-out roue, who if he had nothing else left, had at least ten thousand a year, and the chance of a baronetcy. Tlie artist quietly read the letter, and quietly burned it ; and for the rest devoted himself simply to the strict fulfilment of poor ]\Iay's last requests, loving his "dear pets'' and his painting, now more even for her sake than for their own. His fame increased, but his grief did not lessen, with the growing years. His chief consolation some one, as we have seen, would give a good deal to take away from him. With the success or failure of the enter- prise we are intimately concerned. H 'A CHAPTER lY. A CAKD PARTY A HEART TURNS UP. A NOT large, but, as far as slovenliness TYoukl permit, a luxurious apartment : every cushion soft, every chair easy. Not that ornament at all interfered. The rarest articles of virtii were cross-pipes, rattle-snake sticks, and rainbovr smoking caps. The nearest approacli to curio- sities in the potter's art were German seltzer- water bottles; the mural decorations consisted of "Pas de Fascination," "L'Attente/' nymphs " Aux bords de la Seine " '• Aux bords du Xeva," etcetera, bountifully displaying what I should! think most men would go mad if their sisters did not scrupulously hide. To-night Morley held revel. These were his chambers in the Albany. His family lived down at Twicken- ham, and his father being an invalid, and hLs mother a fond wife, and somev>'liat of a devotee. A CARD PAUTY. 101 Frank was its only representative in to\yn. Ho ■was supposed to be working in the bank of which 31r. Morley was, more or less, a sleeping partner ; but as nobody hail discovered that he could be made very useful, and as everybody hoped he would follow in the slumbering wake of his fEither, he was allowed to follow his own bent : and this inclined him more to bettino-- books than to banking ones, and led him oftener to Lords than to Lombard Street. He was not a bad fellow, after all : being rather an athlete, and having the double advantage of being a fool and knowing it. In all these he had the better of his guests, most of them having just enough wit to be impertinent, and just too little strength to enable them to be straio-htforward. 3Iost of their faces were, like their conversation, a propos of nothing — mere blanks, like tomb- stones waiting for an epitaph, "Born such a Jay — died such another.'' There's our old friend. Lord Alender, whom we once saw at the Opera, and don't care if we never see again. His mouth is like the buno; — liis voice like the gurgle — of a beer-barrel ; his nose the exact 102 FROM PILLAR TO POST. portrait of the chipped stopper of a second- hand decanter. His eyes, ^yith their struggling lashes, transmit as much light, and in fact resemble nothing so nearly, as the cobwebbed Tvindows of a wine-cellar. He Tras at Eton and at one of the Universities, and has brought away from his college career one quotation — Nunc est hibendum; one mathematical axiom — the whole is greater than a joart ; and one economic truth — supply is equal to demand. His lordshi}) has as yet always found it so ; if he does not invariably obtain the whole, he has never been known to take less, or not to desire more than he can get ; and if his translation of " nunc" be peculiar and somewhat extensive, it may be urged in his defence that ''now" is his normal state. He w^ould be always harmless, if he were never drunk ; and quite at a loss what to do with himself, were he ever to find himself sober. Nature gave him a title and a good digestion, both of which she has refused to many a better fellow. What were they all doing ? Well, everybody was talking, and nobody listening ; everybody A CAED PARTY. 103 contradicting everybody, Tvitliout anybody know- ing it. They were opening bottles, filling glasses — sometimes breaking tliem — and trying to injure each other at unlimited loo. I don^t think there was one man there, who, to what- ever stage of sottishness he arrived, could ever be blinded to the fact — if the fact arose — of the pool being undividedly his. There would always be that lode-star left. They would chng to that as some drunken men will to the keyhole. Gain Avas to them the sheet-anchor in an other- wise altogether weltering world. So long as the}" went on playing, that rift of reason would be left ; once they stopped, that little would go, and they would rise from the card-table, and forthwith be as drunk as folding-doors. I forgot : there w^as an exception. Exception to them in everything ; exception, in that beautiful face : exception in the great gift of genius ; ay, and exception in being alone so thoroughly " gone,'' that he went on playing and losing till, now that he had nothing more to lose, he could not even be made to understand it. The exception was Reginald. 104. FEOM PILLAR TO POST. *' I never saw such a fellow as Vavasour," one was saying; "promised to come, didn't be, Morlej ? " " Yes ; of course he did." " And he never turns up, and keeps Grafton away too." (The sound of a closing door.) " Egad, that'll be him." He it was. Surely, no one is thinking that Cyril Vavasour at all affected to be superior to the jovialities — noisy follies, if you like — usual with that part of the population whose blood is still warm with youth ? He was not at all ashamed to be, neither am I at all ashamed to relate that he was at this time, as I have explained, more severe in his morals than most of his peers ; but casti- gator morum neither at this time nor at any other was he, or did he assume to be. And if Time, that brings about such unexpected changes, could ever invest him with that cha- racter, I should leave his history to be con- cluded by some more ardent sympathiser with superior virtue, as I much prefer to narrate men's mishaps than angels' impeccability. And even with these extravagant roysterers he was A CARD PARTY. 1U5 somewliat of a favourite. Would he not sit down ? AVould he not put into the pool ? Why Avas he so late ? AVhere was Grafton ? To all which questions he returned such answers as were truthful. He saw that his new compa- nions were rather too far advanced on the road to excess for him to join them now with much hope of comfort to himself; but I think he would have made the effort fur a time, and trusted to the chapter of accidents for an oppor- tunity to o;et away bv-and-bv, had not the pitiful state of Keginald held him back. '*' You will be kind to Reginald ?"' Sobered stifficiently by Cyril's appearance to wake to his bank- ruptcy, he was not sufficiently sober to know how to hide it ; and in a tone of plaintive bravado began swinging a little trinket back- wards and forwards, offering to put it into the pool. '•' Nonsense, yoimgster ! '' Morley called out ; " there's money for you ! " flinging it across the table. '•'You'll lose it like the rest, but go ahead." Something seemed to have happened to have changed Cyril's intention. No ; he 106 FROM PILLAR TO POST. would not pk}^ — he tvouIcI look on. Yes ; he would help himself. All right. They were to go on, all of them. He would rather watch. Gradually, he brouo-ht himself nearer Cvril. I scarcely think he was watching the game very closely, thougli his eyes were fixed on some- thing or other upon the table. Reginald again was empty-handed. Cyril said he must go. "Would not Pteginald go with him 1 After some remonstrances from the party, awa}' the two went. They were standing in Piccadilly. " You had better go home. Cab ! — Have you any money ? '' (Xo intelligible answer.) "jSTever mind, I'll pay him. Stay; I will, if you'll give me that little trinket — the one you had in yom- hand just now. No, no, no — not that. Yes — there — dve it me.'' He told the cabman where to drive to. But scarcely was the cab out of sight than he hailed another, and himself went rapidly in the same direction. He pulled up at the corner of the street where Reginald lodged, saw him arrive, saw the door open to his knock, saw him admitted, and then walked slowly away. At A HEAET TUPvXS UP. 107 that yerv liour. Marv ^^'ould be kneelin2: and inwyiug for her boj^-brother. The fond artist- sire, perhaps, v\"as praying ^ith her. "Which ■^'ere the more thro^vn away 1 Their prayers, or his endeavours ? But that httle golden heart ! Conjecture was idle ; he would k/wic to-morrow. He went to his chambers, wrote simply, •' Dear Reginald, come and see me to-morrow. Yours affec- tionately ; '' left it on the table for the laundress to post the first thing next morning, and went to bed. The afternoon of that next day, about three o'clock, Reoinald called. Cvril was writins:. On the table was the heart. " Hallo ! Where did you get this ? It's mine.' Cyril looked up. '•' Where did I get it ? Had you been last night as you are now, you woidd know I got it from you. You gave it me." '•' Gave it you ! — don't remember. You'll o'ive it me back 1" " iSTo, indeed. I want to know where ?/oic ]0S FKOM PILLAR TO POST. ^'Ot it ; that is the only reason why I asked you to call on me.'"' '•' Why — I — I scarcely kno^v where I got it. I — er — think" " Look you, Reginald! You do know. Why can't you tell me without ridiculous prevari- cation ?" " Well, some one gave it to me ; a friend of Morleys." " A o'iil. I don't ask you anythino- more than what is her name, and where she lives. I have my reasons for askinir— reasons which do not concern you — so tell me.' " Well, she did not exactly oive it me, a'ou know. I took it to put on my chain. I knew I might, and intended to show it her.^' At another time, Cyril might have indulged in a moral storm at this somewhat peculiar method of obtaining possession ; but now he contented himself with an impatient — " Never mind Iioic you got it ; but whose is it?" "Her name is Miss or," he stammered, *' Mrs. Talhno-ton." A HEART TURXS UP. 109 *' And she lives 1 " ''In Sussex Street, Xo. 149." " Yerv well, thank vou : that's all I wanted you for.'"' " But — but, I should wish her to know tliat I took it away as — as I did." '' You appear to be on such intimate terms with her, that I have no doubt you will have an opportunity of explaining a proceeding that she will in all probability think requires an explanation. But I am going there now. Perhaps you would like to come with me ? " Xo, he could not ; he had a class — in fact, he was late — he must go. And he hurried off. When had he ever shown an anxiety for class before 1 Mrs. Tallington was at home ; she was going into the Park for a drive. If 3Ir. Vavasour would take a seat, she would be down directly. The door opened hastily, and she entered. To Cyril there could be no mistake. Six year.s had elapsed. Before him stood one of the handsomest and most stvlishlv-dressed women in London ; but, for all that, before him stood V / 110 FROM PILLAPw TO POST. the Tinv Forde of the little third-floor back in Somerset Street. Did she leap back as readily throuo;h the intervenino; time ? I think that faltering step, that rush, that pause, that catch- ing of the breath, aj, and that blush — blush that, surviving the shame of years, mounted at the presence of a remembered love — that these, these proved she felt she halted in the presence of the ambitious boy whose despondency she had cheered, whose painful hours she had niu-sed, antl whose disappearance she had so bitterly, so tearfully deplored. Six years ! To you — to me — a paltry interval. But the six years that intervene between sixteen and twentj^-three I Surely these are " eternity to thought.'' Decades of suffering, ages of pas- sion, centuries of sin would leave that marvel- lous sex faith in their earliest concession to the charms of the other : ay, and imagination to d.rag it back and deck it anew from the very dust of the dissipated years. But we — we with om' practical devotion to self — we with our wavering worship between the attainable and the ideal — can 2ive to the retrosoect of time, A HEART TURNS UP. HI if intolerants, a sneer ; if philosophers, at most a smile. Well may she pause in that rush instinc- tively begun ; -^ell may she check that thrill impossible wholly to repress ; for that motion- less Cyril is not the Cyril of the past. " I speak," he said, " to— to " The coldness of his manner recalled her. Y' You speak, ^Ir. Vavasour, to Mrs. Talhng- ton." She took no seat ; she offered none. She let him stand hat in hand. She was dressed for her drive ; her brougham was at the door. His manner proclaimed that not remembrance of the kindness of other days, not desire to renew it in these, had brought him to her liearth. Let him speak his will. "I have brought you back your property. Do you recognise if?" He held out the little golden heart. With tremor she took it ; with tremor she answered him. " Of course I recognise it. With no little concern I thought it lost. J\Iay I ask how YOU came to have it a — a second time "i It is very singular." 112 FROM PILLAR TO POST. " No, not very singular ; indeed, it is simple enough. I got it from Reginald Dormer. I came not to see if J\rrs. Tallington was — pardon me — Tiny Forde ; curiosity has nothing to do with my visit. Neither have I come in order to restore in person a trinket of such paltry value. I could have sent it you. I came to see if Mrs. Tallington, whoever she might be, would grant me a favour. Now that I have discovered who she really is, I scarcely think I shall be refused." " Will you name it 1 '' " That you forbid Reginald Dormer your house. That he is here oftener even than I suspected, I see by traces everywhere visible in this room. I know his sketches ; those " — he pointed to the walls — " and these " — he pointed to the table — " are surely his % You will ask me doubtless as to my right to interfere. Remem- ber, I only ask a favour ; but I will tell you why I ask it. He has a father, he has a sister ; they are poor, and they love him. The knowledge that he comes here at all would break the heart of the one ; the result of his A HEART TUHXS UP. 113 coming here — excuse my frankness — will pro- bably break the purse of the other/' She started as if stung. She stamped her foot hastily, and as hastily replied — *' Hah ! Ever so ! ^lYrono'ed always — even by those who, if memory belonged to men, might suspect at least that I am not all selfish- ness. Xo, sir, / shall not break that father's purse any more than I broke yours before." He would have interrupted her in her terrible rebuke. "Xo, no, permit me my justification. You claimed frankness ; allow it me in return. Do YOU want those sketches i You shall have them, at a gift, though I have paid (handsomely, I am told) for them all. It does not become me, when you are so outspoken, to injure myself by a modesty to which I have no right. From this house Eeginald Dormer has never departed poorer than he entered it ; nay. let me sav it, he has gone away not unoften richer, without even leaving the, to me, valueless substitute of a sketch. You may question the worth of my kindness to the boy, as you perhaps question the \Tor-lli of a by-o-one kindness to yourself, 114 FPtO^I PILLAR TO POST. sincerely if injudiciously bestowed : but at any rate^ if his acquaintance with me will press heavily upon the sister's heart, you may find compensation in the knowledge that it has at least made lighter the pressure on the father's purse.'^ Could he have answered her, scorn for scorn, his sense of justice had been strange indeed. " Tmy ! Tiny ! I did not come here to thank you ; but that does not prevent me from beiug grateful. You were once very, very good to me. God bless you for it — though the prayer here may sound an empty one. I can do no more ; again I thank you.'^ She covered her face. '•' iSi^ay, I will not indulge in superfluous sentiment. I say again, I came here to ask a favour, and I will not wihingly go without its being granted. Forgive my allusion to selfish Aiotives ; I did not require to be told what you have told me now in order to be assured that you are capable of what you esteem to be gene- rosity. But generosity such as yours to that self-loving boy wdll only complete his ruin. For- get the father's poverty ; but tliink of his love ; A HEART TUEKS UP. 115 and if that cannot convince you, you, ^vho are a Tvoman, tliink of his sister. To her I am under pledge to guard him as I best can. That pledge alone could have brought me here. I should not have come to acknowledge past kindness, though beino- here, I confess it, and would fain repay you/*^ She uncovered her face, and trembled towards him. '•' You can repay me. Look at me here. I am w^ell cared for, surely. I lack nothing but happiness ; I seek nothing but a friend. Cyril, one quiet evening — ^one evening, such as many we have spent in that little room in Somerset Street, and I should have found botb. Your last written words " — "They spoke of home, and mother; they were little heeded.*' " I have — I had — no mother, no home ; but I had — bah ! — beauty and despair. Come and comfort me ; comfort me, Cyril ! as, little know- ing it, you comforted me so often before. You cannot be deceived in what I ask : I ask you to be only my friend ! You think I love you. I have not said so. I can act many parts. I 1 -1 116 FROM PILLAR TO POST. shall not fail in a new one ; and you, surely you can easily persuade yourself that an outcast such as I am is incapable of love. Yes, yes, believe it ; but Cyril, give me ^^our friendsliip ; believe that I shall prize that ; believe that with that I shall be fully satisfied. Grant me that favour, and the one you ask is granted too." " Tiny, it cannot be. You ask what I have not the power to grant. If 3^ou will show me how I can help you to abandon your present career, my help you shall have ; that once honestly abandoned, you shall have my friend- ship. Till then you shall have — for I can offer — nothing. I cannot seek your society here ; I cannot accept it elsewhere. Both are impossible. My request is possible ; you will grant it 1 " She was silent a moment, looking meanwhile steadily at him. Then she said, resolutely — " No, I will not." '' God help you, then ! I go." " You go ; but you Avill return. Each has asked the other a favour ; both have refused. Let us wait and see who will ask for the next.'' A HEART TUEXS UP. 117 Marius amid the ruins of Carthage excites our profoundest sympathy ; but what condolences shall we offer to the last man amid the ruins of the London season \ Cyril, anxious to escape that mournful position, abandoned his chambers to his laundress, and turned his face in the direction of Alwoodley. CHAPTER Y. LOYE IX A COTTAGE. It ^vas the first week in August, and the judges were still holding the Summer Assize at Onchester. Cyril had adhered to the scheme ■which he had projoounded to Lady Harbledown. He had sufficiently satisfied himself and his parents that he really wanted to see something of the circuit practice of the profession to which he was to belong ; and for the rest, though silent on that topic, he was glad to be near the presence of ]\Iary Dormer. He had taken lodgings close to the Minster, and not far from the Castle. In this last he spent most of the day ; not much absorbed in its legal jDroceedings, but still unremitting in his attendance, and certainly anxious that time would jog on ajDace. For his evenings were all spent either under the artist's roof, or in the green fields by which it was sur- LOVE IX A COTTAGE. 119 ro-ancled. - From Mr. Dormer and fi'om E.eginald too (who was at home) he receiyed all the atten- tion and hospitality which could be afforded in their modest abode. Generally both, nearly always one of them, had accompanied Cyril and his gentle companion in the eventide strolls which were so charmino; a conclusion to the dav s con- finement in the ill-ventilated courts. Twice it had happened that they had been compelled to take their summer ramble alone, and these, in sooth, had been, to Cyril at least, the most rememberable rambles of all. It happened again to-day. jSTever had he been so happy as during this visit ; never during the visit as on this, almost his last evening. How came it about, I wonder, that this boy, whose custom it certainly was not to entertain or weary his associates with his own feelings and his own history, was marvellously commimicative when alone with the artist's daughter 1 It was only by skill and expert questioning that even Lady Harbledown had made him frank upon some topics ; and even Stephen to himself sometimes complauied that the friend, whom he loved so 120 FROM PILLAR TO POST. well in his manly fashion, had grown rather sh j of late in conceding his confidence. But with this girl it was quite otherwise. Cyril told her the story of his first acquaintance with London with the fullest frankness, always omitting the unhappy discovery which had driven him back home perhaps a day or two before he had otherwise returned. It certainly was not mere egotism on his part that induced him to tell it, since he ever shirked the subject when started ; nor was it blind conceit that led him to falsely suppose that his listener was interested. But his communications did not stop here. Whether it was that in her presence dormant J. restlessness was re-aroused, or that she, bv some undiscoverable influence, led him to avow senti- ments which had never slept at all, but had only assumed the mockery of slumber, I might perhaps be pretending to know too much were I to decide. Certain it is, that he made to her the simplest avowal that the dreams which had caused him to take the rash step which ended in such signal discomfiture, haunted him still with an undiminished — nay, with an accumu- LOYE IN A COTTAGE. 121 lated force. He had thirsted in his early boy- hood for distinction ; now in his youth the thirst was strong upon him still. It had been altogether unslaked by possession, and time and waiting had only rendered it a more press- ing passion. We certainly have heard nothing of this of late. Indeed, had I not occasion but a few pages back to describe how dreams had departed, and how money — money only — was his sole ambi- tion 1 Am I to correct the passage 1 Xo : I have been an lionest and a faithful storier. But, in our youth, the alternate presence and absence of women work in us strange and sudden and shifting' revolutions. Like the stars, the sunset, or the sea, the eyes looking down on us of the Desired One suggest the vast capacities which we have neglected or forgotten, remind us of the powers we have lono; allowed to lie in io'noble abevance, and of the immortality which by our grovelling indul- gences we have ignored. What ! shall we offer to her a heart that throbs with aught less than the beatings of a great, a lofty, a beneficent 122 FROM PILLAR TO P03T. ambition 1 What ! sliall we ask to rest in her bosom a head that is not crowned with the laurels of a splendid success 1 Let us arise and walk in the footprints of the recorded ; and then — not the milhonaires of the market- place, not the Dives of the counting-house, nor the Fortunatus of a huckster s stall, but the surrounded of senates, the beloved of cities, or the darlino; of a nation saved, let us flino; at her feet the fulness of our complemented fame. I am going to write something of what passed between these two young people ; and so I sup- pose I have fallen into a grandiose style which, it will surely be allowed, is more Cyril's than mine. And yet, by any less than pompous periods, I could not have described his pre- sent feelino's. Clearlv he was at the old o-ame* again ; though now, perhaps, with the more practical aim induced by years and disappoint- ment. Still he was for being great : and, in periphrastic language, of course, but which Mary thoroughly understood — and, it must be added, thoroughly admired — he told her so. LOYE IX A COTTAGE. 123 He had aoTeed to leave the Castle earlier than usual the folloTring day, in order to accom- pany his friends to some ruins distant from Onchester about eight miles, and in great favour vitli jIt. Dormer. Finer August after- noon there never 'Nvas ; finer tyjDe of the old monastic architecture had Cyril never seen. Yet his appreciation of the one, and his con- tentment with the other seemed forced to his companions, and ^vere felt as such by himself. Something vas evidently vrrong ; and though nothing was said, they could not help vronder- ing, and the pleasure of all was marred. Once Eeginaid asked if Cyril was unwell. No, he was not ; and there it euded. Poor j\iary was puzzled and alarmed, and glad to be again at Onchester. She had not seen much of Cvril, it was true ; but the less she had seen, and was now hkely to see of him, the less right surely had he to indulge those restless, uncomfortable, and discomforting — nay, half petulant — manifes- tations, which certainly had signalised his beha- viour the whole afternoon. "Would they continue durino' the entire evenino; 1 "What had she 124 FROil PILLAR TO POST. done ? Had she offended ; had she hurt him ? The preceding evening had been the plea- santest, the friendhest evening of all What had intervened ? They say that women are specially gifted ^vith penetration, and we need not dispute the saying. But, in this instance, Mary Dormer scarce upheld the reputation of her sex. For who else does not see plainly enough that Cyril Vavasour had arrived at that stage of excitement, not peculiar to Hamlet, in wdiich a man thinks that if he holds his tongue, his heart will very soon burst. Women very often refuse a man's request, very few refuse flatly to obey a command. So, when skilfully inveigling Jiary away from her father and brother, Cyril told her to take his arm, and led her still farther apart, it was not wonderful tiiat she did not demur. I do not choose to represent him exactly as he appeared in that short walk. There is a subject on w^hich men are more facile with their pen than with their tongue ; and as he upon this subject employed both, let us be content to see what use he made of the more manageable weapon. Yet, w^hen I LOYE IX A COTTAGE. 125 tliink of it, letters are stupid, and love-letters are the worst of all. Let us be satisfied with the result. He has certainly written a sufficiently t/ «^ long letter, in all conscience. It is close on three hours after midnight. And yet, great Heavens ! he is going to write it all out again — fair copy — before he goes to rest. Well, if boys would only do as much to win empires, as they do to win maidens, all our youth would wear the pur- ple. Let him write. Mary had indeed confessed, in no passionate, but yet in quite intelligible, language, her preference for him ; but hearing from him the frank avowal that two — three — perhaps more — years would elapse before they could be to each other more than longing lovers, she had much j^ressed him to withdraw his con- fession, act towards her as thoush he had never spoken to her on the subject, and for the rest trust in God. She shrank from the troubles of the intervening years ; she dreaded the influ- ence of delay, the accidents of time, the wound- ing of his heart, the breaking of her own. Kone of which arguments would Cyril either allow or understand. And what with his words, now 26 FROM PILLAK TO POST. grown more rapid tlian at first, and what witli the pressure of his hand on hers, she had come to yield. They would write to each other, and one at least would so be happy. He had agreed to call some time the follow- ing day, the last he should have ; and so, very early on in it, with the precious burthen (his letter) about him, he set forth. He thought he might have little opportunity of quiet pri- vate chat ; and in any case, indeed, she must have the letter. Mary came down to the study, with her pale face paler than he had ever seen it. He gave her the letter ; she put it down. She was very glad he had come, she wanted much to see him. She had not slept ; she had lain awake and thought. She must repeat her scruples ; she had yielded to his arguments last night, he must now yield to hers. No, they must 7iot write to each other ; they must not now be more than friends — not now, not now ; what might hereafter happen let God see to. Surely he could understand her. He was not refused ; he had not spoken his love at all — that was how he must consider himself placed. It was LOYE i:n^ a cottage. 127 a question of prudence — of conscience. ISo, nOj no ; she could not yield. It must be even so. He pleaded eagerly ; lie pleaded passionately. Life was at best a difficult struggle. Would she not make it easier for him by granting him the consciousness that he loved and wa^s loved 1 Mioht he not have the encourao'ement that would arise from the knowledge he worked for lierf The more he urged, the more she was firm ; to him, it seemed the more cold. He talked rather wildly. Life had become sterile, was without object ; he would go. No 1 friend- ship was no satisfaction ; in fact, would be intolerable after he had aimed higher and missed. Oh, blind dolt 1 He left her ; left her indeed much doubting (to judge from his last words) whether he would ever return. However, about eight that evening he sought Mr. Dormer's. Mary looked pale and miser- able ; but from a glance Cyril saw that she had kept her secret and his own. She brightened at his advent. He sought the first opporcunity of saying to her : — 128 FPtOM PILLAR TO POST. " I Lad intended not to return ; your wish lias prevailed. I will accept your decision. If I ever have the right to ask for more than your friendship, I will ask for it ; if gained, I shall have o-ained what I most covet ; if not, I shall try manfully to bear the denial. Meanwhile, I trust in God, and am your friend. Are you satisfied, Mary 1 " She answered simply — " I have good reason to be," and it ended. At lialf-past nine, Cvril rose to go ; indeed to say good-bye, for that visit at least. In about half an hour more he would have to start homewards. Between Onchester and Alwood- ley was no railway : and even the coach, on which he had booked himself a seat, would leave him ten miles to post alone. So he should spend the night in the inn at Garstone, and drive in for church the following morning (Sunday). There he should meet his family, and so get himself and traps conveyed to Alwoodley. They were all very sorry he w^as o-oing, they said ; in another year he would be called to the bar, and they would then see him LOVE IX A COTTAGE. 1^9 whenever the assizes brought hirn to Onchester. They were standmg in the hall, saying the last adieus. '•' You must not for^'et vour coat/' said Mary. She held it as though she would help him to don it. It was an August night ; but for all that he put it on, and even stood submissively lookino- down on her whilst with her delicate tiny fingers she fastened those large rough buttons across his chest. Oh, what would he not have given to have stooped and kissed that darling head, to have enfolded it in his arms and held it to his heart I He pressed her hand and departed. CHAPTER VI. A QUEER MEETING — A CRASH. After a cheerless ride, and T^'ith a not over- cheerful heart, Cyril arrived at the inn at Garstone. He thought a fire might mend matters ; he had ordered one, and was now sitting meditatively before it. His meditations were intruded on by the entrance of a man, who returned his look of examination with a stare far more inquisitive and prolonged, then threw a knapsack down upon the sofa, dragged a chair to the fire, stretched his long, stalwart legs along the hearth, and exclaimed : " Such a stubborn beast ! Fought it out with him as long as I could, and then gave in. He went kindly enough in the shafts all the way from Onchester till within a mile of this place, when not an inch further w^ould he stir. I tried the argumeiitum hacidimim, or whipcord argu- A QUEER MEETING. 131 ment — not mentioned in Aristotle, I believe, but sufficiently ^ell known to the Schools — all to no avail. He answered me by several vicious circles ; what could I do with so unfair an opponent \ I threw up both the dispute and the reins, sent the gig back to Onchester, and came on here on foot. Have you ordered supper ? '^ Cyril said he had. " Pity ; you ought to have supped with me.'^ '' There is no difficulty. We can have what they provide, together.^' " K'o, no, no. You shall be my guest, or I yours; I don't care which, but one of the two." ^''Then be mine, as I was the first arrival. See ; we can set to work. I too came from Onchester, and am fasting.'' His guest was a man of (in round numbers) forty : tall, strongly-built, handsome ; dark, but with iron-grey plentifully mingled in his black hair. Gentleman he seemed in speech and ease of manner ; but gentleman of a singularly K 2 132 FROM PILLAR TO POST. abnormal kind — o-entleman in the teeth of canons, and the circumscriptions of an arbitrary civihsation. Examined closely, his clothes ^vere intensely shabby ; but his splendid figure, and lordly, indifferent way of carrying it, would have prevented many observers from examining at all. Cyril could not help remembering that he had noticed, walking along the road, with a knap- sack, a man of striking resemblance to his new companion, but certainly considerably more than a mile distant from Onchester ; and further, that the coach had met no such gig as he described to have sent back. Still, with what- ever humour of language he made the assertion, could it be other than true '? Though Cyril declared himself to be fasting, he did not do very comphmentary justice to the viands of the landlord of the Greyhound ; but his shortcomings were thoroughly made up for by his voracious friend. Supper over, they again wheeled round to the fire. " Capital idea of yours, this fire. Temii meditaris avena ^ — you indulge in a short pipe 1 Pardon my latitude of translation. I A QUEER irEETIXG. 133 dare say the eclogue was expounded differently to you at school ; but commentators have not yet lost their rio-hts. You don^t smoke ? I may, of coiu'se ''■ '' And he filled a pipe, drawn fi'om his pocket and coloured by all the care of a connoisseur. '•' So you too come from Onchester 1 " '•' I do, to-dav. I have been attendins; the assizes there."' *' Professionally \ '' '•' AVell ; yes — and no. I am not called to the bar vet : but I have been seekino; some experience in the profession to vrhich I shall belong." " Hah ! I looked into the courts once or twice. A very heavy calendar of prisoners, surely '? Ill-informed philanthropists talk of the diminu- tion of crime : the statistician knows that it does not, and the philosopher that it cannot decrease, under the systems and ideas predo- minant.'^ '•'I certainly heard it allowed on all hands that there had never been more prisoners. Most of them too were old offenders, and so 134 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. jDenal servitude was the sentence of the ma- jority." " Yes ; but not penal servitude for life. That would have reason in it, were the sentence car- ried out ; for the struggling po}3ulation would thus be diminished, and what remained would have the advantage of lessened competition. Yet the tendency of population to j^rovail over pro- vender would soon bring about the same state of things, and a large drafting of men and women to penal servitude would again be required. So that from this view it v»'ould be more logical and more effective to circum- scribe marriage or to drown babies.'' Cyril looked at the speaker, wlio puffed at his pipe, but v/as as serious as either of the judges under whom he had recently sat. " They who object to forbid the banns, or to baptise and decimate babies in the same bucket, are bound to look out for something better than penal servitude for restoring equilibrium.^' " But," said Cyril, somewhat puzzled, yet feeling bound to make a remark, ''you forget A QUEER MEETING. 135 surely that we punish them because they have done wrono'." " Oh, no, we don't," he answered quickly, but without raising his eyes from the hre ; '*' we imnish them because they have done something inconvenient ; in other words, for our own con- venience. A perfectly justifiable ground — I don't deny it for an instant — but it is the fact. Were it otherwise, look you, we should punish vices as well as crimes, which we do not, as you must well know. Let us therefore be logical and reasonable with ourselves. 'We punish, I would rather say we treat, criminals according to our convenience ; it behoves us, therefore, much to see if we are really doing the best for our own convenience. At most, we only keep things as they are, at a great expense ; the same number of sessions, of assizes, — indeed we have had to increase these last ; — the same number of criminal judges, at the same salaries, from year to year without change or amend- ment.'" " Then you think punishment useless '? '' " Perfectly ; and I will tell you what I think 13G FROM PILLAR TO POST. equally so — iDreaching. Pensions would be more effectual than either or both. Pulpits and penal servitude have failed to keep poor men's hands out of rich men's pockets. Priests and gaolers have had their trial and have failed ; let poli- tical economists have theirs. We have had a great deal of morality ; suppose we try money. What say you to a new code and a new religion, — a religion in which 'facias rem' and ' not worth but money makes the man, the want of it the fellow,' will be the favourite texts ; and a code in which people will be hanged, or at least transported for life, for marrying wives or having children whom they cannot support 1 So would our theories be con- sistent with our facts, and legislation be raised through the means of an honest induction to the dignity and usefulness of a science. We throw overboard readily enough the manners and customs of other periods, whilst we pre- serve their moral precepts, which fit us even worse. We strain our faculties in order to maintain in cities the decalogue of the Desert, and to keep inviolate in an age of money A QUEER MEETIXG. 137 the maxims of an a^-e when there was none." " But surely — if 3'ou are serious — morahty never changes : there are principles which are immutable truths, which are immortal.'' "Ah, my good friend, beware of immortal truths ! I have buried many in my time. It is not pleasant to be the sexton to one's own abortive opinions, especially when one feels no promise of a more perfect parturition. Abortive opinions are like other abortive births, they weaken and disfigure the frame, which, had they arrived at maturity, they would have strength- ened and adorned. Morality never changes! ^Ve hear of fashionable vices— not of fashionable virtues : but the latter exist no less than the former. Looking through history as well as around me, I find a morality which has its sanction in the convenience of the majority. The talents that exalted Mercury into a god, now-a-days sink Smith into a felon : the wit that won the former a place in a mythological Walhalla, carries the latter into a matter-of-fact dock. Personal strength used to conquer 138 FEO^I PILLAR TO POST. cro^^ns : it now subjects you to an indictment for assault and an action for damages. In the heroic daj^s, if you were weak you were kicked ; now, you are coddled in an hospital, or propped up with a subscription. Morality not change ! Of course it does : the mischief is, we will not allow it to change enough. The facts have changed — that is certain enough : them we can- not master. Preach from a million pulpits as you will, one day in the sevei], against the lust of mammon-worship, there comes from the crowded cities and from the fallow-fields, on the other six, one huge contradicting Toice, pro- claiming aloud the new and only commandment — Thou shalt not be poor !'' Cyril was silent. The words had come from the speaker with consummate ease : he had used no gesticulation, and he had kept his pipe ahght. Clearly, his language was the result either of profound conviction, arising from long meditation, or of a scorn so subtle, that it assumed the aspect of an unflinching faith. After a considerable pause, he said again : "You are not convinced'^ You still think A QUEER MEETI:NG. 139 that tlie principles of tlie liuman heart are ever the same. Let us take an instance which you, as a vouno- man, ^iH be sure to care for. Take Love — the love betv^xen the sexes/' " Surely that has not changed \ " exclaimed Cyril, rousing himself at the mention of that tie which had for months so tempered the tone of his own mind, and just now monopohsed, at least indirectly, the aim of his every thought and every action. "Xot changed! I can think of nothing that has changed so much. A history of the relationship of the sexes would be the most valuable of contributions to Philosophy : it would be nothing less than the history of the gradual, and as yet far from completed, enfran- chisement of one-half — the larger half, by the way, as statistics show — of the human race from the tyranny of the other. I cannot pretend to present even an epitome. But at last we have hit upon the idea that woman may actually be a companion, the nurse of our ill humours and the supporter of our spleen. This is the highest stage to which she has yet arrived. She will 14:0 FEOM riLLAPc TO POST. yet advance. Yoic may have to make love in tlie now accepted fashion ; but the next generation Tvill no more think of Tvinning their ^\^ives at morning-calls, pic-nics, balls, or twilight rambles, than you think of winning yours by pubhshing sonnets, threatening to poison your- self, or carrying her off at midnight into the marshes. The relationship between the sexes will have changed : more and more equality will the one have gained, more and more tyranny the other lost. ]\Ien will have to seek in women for friends and partners ; not, as now, for toys, victims, or invalids. See — my pipe is out, and the fire soon will be. It is time to o-q to bed. Look you — my nonsense about the gig- was all moonshine. I walked here, just as I shall walk 3.v^rj from here. I got you to ask me to supper, because I could not afford one myself I was born a gentleman, as you must see, since you were evidently born one yourself. My name is Guy Blacklock. Before you go in the morning, pay my bill as well as your own. If we ever meet again, I will do as much for you, if you want it (which is not probable), and if A QUEER MEETING. 1-il (which is still more improbable) I have more money than I have now. Good-night ! and thanks for your entertainment and your talent for listening." He took his candle and departed. At another time an adventure so singular would have set Cyril pleasantly wondering. At another time, when the mere wonder at the new acquaintance had been satisfied, the novel opinions would have set him unpleasantly thinking. He certainly did not go forthwith to bed ; he mended the fire ; he sat before it ; but he had soon quite forgotten both the stranger and his sentiments. How can you expect a man who is in love to care about his fellow- creatures % What was penal servitude to Cyril % Surely the question whether milhons shall be fed or flogged, trained or transported, is but of infinitesimal importance compared with the question whether the girl you worship is think- ing of you or not at that identical moment \ At any rate, the latter was the question which Cyril was at present entertaining. He enter- 142 FEOir PILLAE TO POST. tained it for a long time, but had at last to go to bed ^yitliout a solution. The next mornino; he breakfasted alone, asked for his bill and that of Guy Blacklock, paid both, and started. He was in time for church, seemed to pray thereat very earnestly, and, it over, drove with his mother to Alwoodley. Was it his silence that made her silent 1 — she generally had many words. To-day she was as reticent as himself. When they reached Alwoodley, she took his hand, led him into the library, closed the door, and walked to the mantel-piece. He thought it very odd. She still kept his hand, and looked into his face. '• Can you bear bad news, Cyril % *' '' Yes, yes — well, well — what is it % '"' '' We are ruined I ^' she said, and burst into tears. " Euined \ — ruined % How ruined \ '' " We have not a penny in the world." "Pooh, mamma ! You always ^' The door opened, and Philip entered. " What is all this stuff I hear from " " Now, my good fellow ! do be calm. It is \ A QUEER MEETIXG. 14-3 all true. Mv father owes 25,000/., which he has no means of paying.''' " But you — you — how long has this been so ? Did you not know it '? " " I discovered it last Thursday. You know I am not a partner, so had no means of know- ing. I discovered it by opening a business letter in my father's absence, and forced him to tell me the whole truth. All that we have got to do is — to be quiet and bear it." Four months later, over the December slush, and in the December sleet, was Cyril Yavasour being slowly driven through those Alwoodley gates which he had once slung passionately behind him. Opposite him sat his mother, in her widow's weeds : opposite him sat Philip, with his dark, defiant face. In the rear came traihng along another equipage, occupied by the father, all alone. Mournfully fell the sleet, — mournfully fell the prayers, — mournfully fell the creaking of the lowered coffin on the ears of the sobbing sons. The widow of that money- murdered man heard none of these ; but on her 144 FROM PILLAR TO POST. heart fell the weight of that desolation which not even the recollection of how she had tended him, loved him and been loved bj him to the last, could either dissipate or diminish. CHAPTER VII. XOT MERE TALK — PALLIDA MORS. '•'She gave me the number of the box on Sunday," Vavasour ^as saying aloud to himself, as he read the first page of a note just received ; '' I knew well enough Thursday was the night. What '? ' Whether it was that I was very tired and out of sorts yesterday I don't know, but I had such an awful dream a propos of the person whom we had been talking about, and who has formed the subject of one or two conversations, and you were using the strongest language, which I wonder how I could have got into my head — in the dream of course— so that I was prevented seeing the end of it by awaking frightened. "We will not discuss the subject again, I think, for it only makes me talk of a person with a sort of apparent want of respect, which he is far from deserving ; but I should like you very much, if 346 FRO^I TILLAR TO POST. you had the time, to ^'rite me yom^ opinion on the subject in the form of a letter, so that once and for all I could have your words ahyays by me, for if any could influence me it would be them, spoken so kindly and truthfully as you speak them — already I have wavered a little bit — and then joii know we need never mention it again. " ' Believe me, yours sincerely, "'Blanche Latimee. " ' I trust you will see nothing strange in this. I half regret writing it ; but I cannot help having confidence in you.' " He threw it on the table. " Bah ! what do I care 1 She has spoken to me on the subject, and I must say something ; and having no reason for doing otherwise, I say what I think. But I don^t see Avhy I should be condemned to write about it ; however, away at once, if it is to be done. And Blanche is a jolly girl, very kind, and devilish intelligent. But what a note ! Composition very indifferent, not like her conversation ; punctuation, of course, quite out of the question.'^ XOT ]\IEKE TALK. m He sat down, and wrote a long but hasty letter. It was a dull performance : it was on a dull topic — the question of duty — so I will not reproduce it. The advice simply amounted to this : that the sooner she found out her own mind, the better ; and as soon as she had found it out, the sooner she gave it to the poor ])atient man in India, about whom she wrote again, the better. He should probably look in at the Opera on Thursday, and was Miss Latimer's sincerely. Had Mr. Latimer arrived — Box H, second tier ? Yes. Was it full '? :^ro ; only three in it. All right : take him to it. The box-keeper led the way. Vavasour peeped in. It was all right ; only old Latimer and one of the brothers with la belle Blanche. '' Very glad to see you, Mr. Vavasour. Any news 1 See : take this chair.'*' The old boy was really always very civil. " Yes, I have news, though bad news ; that is why I looked in on you." (Scarcely true, eh?) " Oh, but youTi stay ? X o one else is coming ; l2 ]4S FKOM PILLAR TO POST. or if one of the bovs does, he must find friends somewhere else. But what is the news \ " " Xews that Miss Latimer will not be glad to hear. Lady Harbledown remains in Italy this summer, if not longer." " Eemains in Italy ! Are you sure % " " I have her own assurance. See, I have brought her letter : I will read you that part after the overture commences. But the fact is, that Sir "W'ilfrid is so displeased at the threatened oi^position in the county, which they say is sure to be successful, that he has determined to loll in the sun and the picture-galleries of the south.'' Vavasour expected this news would be a severe blow to Miss Latimer's spirits, for it was certain that she had counted upon getting, through Lady Harbledown's protection, intro- ductions which without her would certainly not be obtained. To his surprise, she seemed to be but little, even if at all, disappointed : nay, sup- posing her sincere in her countenance, and him capable of translating it, it was not without some- thing like joy that she turned it from the infer- KOT MERE TALK. 1^9 mation towards the stage. " Don Giovanni " was the opera. " Why do women;'^ said Miss Latimer, when the act was over, — "'''why do women come to theatres, to operas more especially, and this one still more particularly 1 Is it to see their sex de^Taded ? " '•' You speak as if you did not belong to the sex. '•' It is mv misforttme, not mv fault ; do not taunt me with the accident.'"' '• Xot L surelv. But vou. — vou regret the accident 1 '"' *• Certainly I do. Is it a fine thing to be one of the millc e tre \ " " AVell, no. But are you contemplating the addition of another to that distinguished corps T"' '• Hush, sir, with your wilful and malevolent misinterpretations. You know I speak of the sex to which the ' inille e tre ' belong ; it is only in the light of ' 7?iil/e e tre' that we are repre- sented here. That is why I ask why women come to see themselves thus pourtrayedT' '• Oh, but wait. Let us come again on Satur- 150 FRO:\I PILLAE TO POST. day, and you shall find heroines ^ho are saints and mart^TS.'^ '•' Yes, T^'hen we are not represented as wicked, we are represented as absurd/' " And YOU find the choice difficult.'* '• I did not say so ; but why may we not be fascinating without being — what shall I say 1 — Circes : or models of virtue without being burned or idiotic '? They say that the theatre is a teacher. I think that in theatres we learn little. For life is not a series of grand stage-effect heroisms, but of small back-slum sacrifices.'' " True, as an assertion, but not as an argu- ment. If women did not come to theatres, they would positively know nothing of realities ; as it is, they don't know much.'' " But you don't mean to say that the repre- sentation of hfe on the stage is truer than the life we see off it." '' Who see 1 Xot truer than the hfe / see ; but considerably truer than the life 2/ou see. In a mock-decent and hypocritically decorous age like ours, theatres are required to remind men and positively to inform women of human nature. NOT MERE TALK. 151 Omitting broad farce, our plays approximate pretty closely to representations of either life as it is, or life as it should be." " And the life off the stage '? *' " Represents at once both life as it isn't, and as it shouldn't be.' " You are talking paradoxes. Why will you not be earnest ? Am I beneath your serious- ness 1 '"' " 1 shall begin to think so if you don't under- stand me better. I was speaking au grand serieur : jon had positively entrapped me into an argument. But I will be as illogical as you like. Hush ! — the trio ! " The devils had disposed of the Don. Frank, the brother, had disappeared ; was in the omnibus probably ; and old Latimer was bent forward, quite intent on the commencing ballet. '•' You don't care for that 1 " asked Miss Latimer. " Oh yes I do : or should, if you were not ■J ' ■ XJ here. / am not angry with my sex, or with yours." 152 FROiT PILLAR TO POST. " You are intolerable to-night — tslia! I got your letter.'^ " The post has arrived at marvellous perfec- tion/' " Don't, Mr. Vavasour ! " said so imploringl3\ He ^as standing over her chair. She turned and raised her head, as though she would have him lower his. He lowered it. ''Papa says I am behaving very badly to him," she whispered. " To whom % — to your papa himself? '' " No, no ; you know whom I mean.'"' And she touched her India shawl (now turned into an opera-cloak) significantly. " Such a dream as you made me have." " I ! I can do more for you then than for myself. I never dream. Will you make me dream \ " He touched — it wanted but the muscular action of his lips to kiss — her hair^ And she % Must she not have felt it stirred by his breath, warmed by his words ? It must have been the atmosphere of her tresses that made him add : " make me dream of you V XOT MERE TALK. 15-3 She looked quickly at liira, and saw upon the lips that had spoken a smile that puzzled — it should have warned her. '•'I have no power to bring about either dreams or realities/' she answered ; " you have power over both." " I am not partial to either, unless they can be united. Give me the enjoyment of the one, with the evanescence and after oblivion of the other ; or my attributed power is valueless." "As I have told you before," she said, with rapid consecutiveness in time, if not in mean- ing, " you will marry a pretty fool." " Then it is certain I shall not marry " — he shrugged his shoulders — " yo^-" '' We both know it. It was not necessary to draw the conclusion in words." " I like vivd voce logic." " You hke everything that is harsh." " Then you do not come in the catalogue, ' il catalogo, — ' " and he hummed the air from the opera they had just heard, — ' "il catalogo delle belle che amo,' et cetera, as Lablache has been sino'ino' to us." 151 FRO^I PILLAR TO POST. " No, I am not harsh ; but there is no good in being gentle with you. What pleasure do you find in saying hard things '? " " My dear Miss Latimer ! I only laugh : you must allow me that much freedom for a time. I will try and mend. Let me help you with the major's cloak — 'tis just over."' " Thank you. Can we not take you part of your way'? Oh, but you are going to the Temple." "No. I am o-oino; to the House. There will be a long debate to-night, and I may have another half-hour's reporting to do." " Why do you bother yourself with report- ing r % '' There was not a soul of his acquaintance in London who suspected that it was now his chief, if not sole, means of livelihood. Some fellows have a rich look, and a rich way with them : Vavasour was of these. " To make money, of course." " You don't want it : and it must be often tedious work." " ' Want ' is a relative term : so is ' tedious.^ XOT MEEE TALK. 155 I like money, or what it brings ; and I am not so easily bored 1)y toil as by talk. If I could only report without listening, I should not mind the work in the least. And then if I am to many my pretty fool, I must make money quickly — quickly : must I not 1 " " Then go and make it. How is Eeginald Dormer '? I neyer see him with you now. Bring him to call some day, will you 1 " " 'No ; he can please himself ; but I will not help him to be idle.'' " Is our acquaintance necessarily productiye of idleness 1 " '' It would be to him. Howeyer, 'tis not my affair. I will see you to your carriage.'' The House was still sittino* when Yayasour entered the reporters^ gallery, ^but broke up unexpectedly five minutes after his arriyal. As he recrossed the lobby, a man seemed to hasten after him, but as he had had the start, and was walking rapidly, did not fairly overtake him till he was fully half way down AVestminster Hall, and even then did not gain his side, though fully able to do so, but seemed to wait till they both 156 FJROM PILLAR TO POST. emerged under the lamp of Palace Yard. For a moment it appeared that in again suddenly quickening his steps the man was about to pass on, when a rapid side look satisfied him and brought them abreast. " I thought it was you, but could not be certain without a third look. I saw you first in the reporters' gallery ; I was in the strangers'. Then I waited fi^r you in the lobby ; but there was such a crowd, and you were walking at such a pace. You remember me, surely ? " " dear, yes ; Guy Blacklock. I have not forgotten our supper : I am going to my cham- bers in the Temple ; come with me and I will give you another." Vavasour's manner might not be very cordial : for his reception of people had altered much of late, having lost its old affectionate way of welcome ; but in reality no man had he ever met whom he had so often wished to meet ao-ain as this Blacklock. At the time of their o dehvery, he had listened with little interest — - indeed with perhaps a little impatience — to his companion's sentiments : but the force XOT MEPvE TALK. 157 ^vitli Tfhicli facts, arisins; immecliatelv after that strange conversation, had brought them home to him in his own case, had caused him often since to reflect on their signification, and no less on the odd personage who had so positively pronounced them, y^e are sure always to think much of the man who propounds a theory which explains the facts of our particular experience, just as each one of us prefers and praises that poet who most faithfully and frequently gives utterance to our individual sentiments. The capacity of making rapid inductions is the dis- tino-uishino; feature of those who influence their kind, most minds merely demandiuo- the shortest cut to some positive conclusion. All inductions, with our present limited knowledge, must be more or less wrouQ-. But to 2:ain mastery over men, and more particularly over women, it is not necessary to be right, only to be j^ositive. It is fatal to a man's success to see both sides. Though Vavasour expressed no satisfaction at meetino' his friend of the Greyhound, he felt it : and Guv Blacklock was not the man to 15 S FEOM PILLAR TO POST. refuse a supper on account of the coldness of the invitation. " You paid my bill that morning ; gentle- manly thing of you. You are in clover here, ■wallowing in the fat of the land. I suppose you are just as convinced as ever, from your having plenty of it, that money is not of the slightest importance '? It is impossible for a man who is solutus omni fenm-e, without a debt in the world wdiich he cannot pay, to be really interested in tlic natural history of duns.''' (Vavasour thought of liis bills in Bond Street, and laughed.) " It is a pity,"' continued the other, "that you are not, or at least have not been poor. Poverty is the only philosopher's- stone ; by it a man discovers wdiat little by one man can be known. I read of complaints that the rich and the hio'h-born add nothino- to our social knowledge. The complaint is ridiculous ; they cannot tell us wdiat they have no means of finding out. Suppose us all rich ; we should have a very well-behaved, but a very ignorant and very uninteresting world ; three-fourths of our passions w^ould be annihilated. What NOT MERE TALK. 159 makes modern city existence, to those who really know it, so intensely pathetic '? Simply its wants, and its consequent struggles to satisfy them. What duller than the record of a pas- toral tribe, each man with his so many sheep and so many sons ? We tell young children of these things first, just as we feed them first with pap ; stronger food either for head or stomach would be too stimulating, so we keep both for a later period. Mone}^, mth its multi- plied manifestations, should be the study of him who would tell the century its own secret, and so become the wonder and instructor of the next. In the investio'ation of its influence and action, ^Yil\ the modern wizard find his wand. Let no one attempt to sing now-a-days of ' Arms and the man.' You remember the first ode of Anacreon. Well, that will not do either ; the time for singing of love is also past. If, in our modern tragedies we have battles, it must be the battle of the banks ; and, to use the recog- nised language of Aristotle's jDoetics, the revo- lution or discoyery on which depends the transition in our Epopee, must be a sudden 160 FROM PILLAR TO TOST. depreciation of the currency. You are young ; profit by the hint, and he the Poet of the new period. You do not smoke, I remember ; there- fore you do not smoke here ; but do you allow others '? " " Yes ; " said Vavasour, ''• smoke aAvay ; only I cannot give you either cigars or tobacco. Ha, you have it. Thanks for your last sugges- tion : but when we first met, you were all in praise of money, now you seem to belaud the want of it." " Is 0, no, you have not caught me ; I am not so illogical. It depends on what you want. If YOU want what is called a virtuous, what I pre- fer to call a well-behaved world, you must be (as I asserted, I believe, on the occasion you refer to) an advocate for a universally rich world. But if you want a tragic (or comic, — they are much the same, it depends Jiow you look), — if you want a tragic, an interesting, a pathetic world, a world worthy the study of the poet (and by a poet I ahvays include the idea of philosopher), you will then advocate the unequal distribution of wealth ; a state of things NOT MERE TALK. 161 in which everybody desires to have money, and very few have it. A universally vrell-off world, would be either a world beginning again, or a world worn out. You would occasionally have an interesting murder, or an exciting elopement, but your docks would be empty of charged felons, your gaols of convicts, your streets of outcasts. The admirer of a well-behaved com- munity would proclaim the arrival of the millen- nium ; but the student of human nature would sigh for the records of a police-court, and the blue-books of a hell. As I said, it all depends upon what you want ; whether you regard the economy of the universe with the aspirations of a saint, or the sympathies of a Shakespere.'' Vavasour's attention to-night was of a very different intensity to that with which lie had listened to his guest on a former occasion. As theu, he still said little ; but what little he did say was said with the purpose of making the other discourse. He grasped eagerly at the chance of finding a helping head in the solution of perplexities that largely occupied his own. 162 FROM PILLAR TO POST. " So you think that the equal distribution of money would tend to prevent what we regard as mere vices, as well as what we regard as crimes ? '^ " Surely. Can I doubt it "? An unfortunate would be as rare as a pickpocket or a footpad, in a world such as we talk of. Look you. I know nothing of your concerns. You seem suf- ficiently comfortable for a bachelor; but you are young, and could not, I daresay, marry if you wished it." Vavasour nodded assent. "Well, I will suppose — no extravagant suppo- sition, even if it be not a true one — that you have at some period desired, or do at present desire, to marry some girl altogether suitable, and who would marry you could you keep her.^' Vavasour started. " Well, you cannot. Again I say, I know nothing of your concerns ; but I will suppose — again no extravagant supposition, even if again it be not a true one — that you are no better than your neighbours. ITow " " Suppose you leave my personal sores alone, and continue your argument in the abstract." NOT MEEE TALK. 163 '•' Be it so. My touching the sore only shows that I am more right even than I had any suspicion of. Pardon me. But let no man think that his individual experience is a soUtary one. A man who has discovered his own secret had better go and tell it to his neighbours, for it is their undiscovered secret too. There are thousands like you. JVe are sitting here ; but how many young fellows are there at this moment, within a mile of us, drinking and lolHng in saloons and supper-rooms, who, if they had had so many himdreds a-year more (or other people who give the tone to their society so many hundreds a-year less), would have been sitting with slippered feet on the domestic hearth, teaching their children the Lord's Praver, or readino; to their wives the Pil- grim's Progress % '^ " To be frank," said Vavasour, '* I have never heard you so weak before, and altogether so un- convincing. My experience — it is small, but it is positive as far as it goes — rises against you. I could name scores of men who are in a position to marry, scores of others who are married, H 2 164 FROM PILLAR TO POST. -whom you will find chief actors in the scenes you stigmatise.'^ " Quietly, quietly, my good friend ! I have not convinced you, because I have not completed my argument. But I am glad you see, and have put, what objection remains, in so clear and tangible a form. So long as there are such scenes, there will be firstly many spectators, and afterwards actors, who did not participate in projecting the play. Many men will leave the lawful for the unlawful. But are we not going to do away wdth if? I think so, under our scheme. So many thousand sempstresses, laundresses, farm-servants, waiting to be — led astray, say you '? iN'ot at all ; I answer, — fed ! How many peers' daughters are befooled in a year '? They are mere women like the others, with the difference — of a dinner : that's all. And in the world we talk of, there would be dinner for all ; husbands for all. They who, in a world composed chiefly of poor people, are abnormally rich and consequently mostly without occupation, will of a certainty run the gauntlet of all experiences that are pleasant. Those expe- NOT MERE TALK. 165 riences removed, tliey would necessarily confine themselves to the experiences that remained. It is the difference of fortune that favouring the lust of some, and forcing the hunger, or at least the covetousness, of others, gives us ^\'an- dering women, prurient boys, unfaithful hus- bands, and unhappy wives. The necessities of the weak assist and are in turn assisted by the desires of the powerful. Were we all equally strong, we should all forbear from striking." " But your equality, conclusively cai'ried out,. would end in a complete " " Democracy ; not a doubt of it." " Do you think such possible 1 " " Thank you. I will not discuss that ques--- tion. This at least have I shown : that equality, or as you justly call it, democracy, will do away with nearly all (I could show, all) crime and vice ; and that the only machinery which will bring about this equahty, this democracy, is money. Let then those who are enamoured of a well-behaved — if they prefer the phrase, a virtuous — world, abandon bell, book, and candle, 166 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. and stand honestly out full-blown democratic political economists. / have a weakness for the world as it is, and am off to have another look on it. Good-night ! " " But you will come to see me '? Are you living in London 1 " " Living in London ! Great heavens ! I should think not, indeed. But I know now where ^ou live, and likely enough you will see me again. Thanks for your repeated hospitality." " Stay ; do you want any money 1 I am not rich, of a certainty ; but if " " No, no : if I accepted a sovereign from you now, I might be j)revented in honour from out- witting you out of two on a future occasion, and that might be inconvenient. No; good-night!'^ And with his long, powerful arm he swung the outer door to, and departed. " Who can the fellow be ? The most pohshed Bohemian that ever stepped. A gentleman, a scholar, a beggar, and to all seeming an out- cast ; an intense, if not a deep thinker ; a very Jaques, without his melancholy, but with PALLIDA MOES. 167 superabundant scorn. Who can he be ? I should hke to know his histor}"." He went out on to the terrace in front of the Temple library, though it was after two, and walked up and down may-be half an hour, thinking doubtless all the while of the conver- sation which he had just held. '•' Well ; bed now.'' And he turned in towards his chambers. " Never looked at the paper, to-day : I wonder if my laundress took it back. No, here it is ; nothing in it, I suppose. Great Con- servative Meeting in Essex ; Maine Law ; Mid- dlesex Sessions ; Lord John on the Ballot. Bah! — to-bed, to-bed. Great heavens ! What? Eegret to have to announce that Mr. Dormer, E.A., was found — good God ! — dead in his bed yesterday morning. His unexpected decease is attributed to affection of the heart." His hand and the paper containing the into- lerable intelligence fell together to his side ; his mouth contracted ; and his eyes stared rigidly outwards on the moon that shone in through his open wuidow: shone as it had shone 168 FROM PILLAR TO POST. on the August night ten months ago when he had bid Mary Dormer let it some night shine on their love and their marriage-couch. What had occurred since then ? "What had happened him ^ I do not say, what had happened in his heart, for we can take no true soundings there. Its depths lie too far away for the poor short plummet-hne of our lame observations. Perhaps from the colour of the surface we can make some sort of guess at the deposits of its clandestine distance ; but that is all our most patient skill can achieve. We can do no more. Therefore, leaving altogether what may have happened in his heart, I only ask what had happened in his exterior life. We have seen, for the most part : and what I have not men- tioned till now, must at least have been readily concluded. Who will not be prepared to hear — perhaps some will accuse me of unnecessary garrulousness if I say — that he had been doing his best by silence to weaken the link which existed between him and the Dormers, and which he had once striven (how soon it after- wards appeared, fortunately in vain !) still more PALLIDA MORS. 169 to strengthen 1 It had been his custom, during the year which elapsed between his first and second visit to Onchester, occasionally to send Mary Dormer periodicals and journals in which were written articles or were executed engrav- ings that he could manage to persuade himself "were likely to interest her. After but a single visit, this might seem a stretch of familiarity, though I am enabled to say positively that by that loyal little family it was not deemed such. But surely if, after one kindly period of inter- course, this delicate attention might without scruple be shown, there was every reason to expect that after a second visit, which, though not without interruption to its serenity, was also not without its compensatory assurances, and in which Vavasour at its very close asserted himself (while ambitioning in the distance to be something more) to remain meanwhile at least her friend — I say there would be every reasonable expectation on her side that the attention would be continued. But the post brought now no periodicals, no journals, no skilfully explanatory or apologetic letters for 170 FROM PILLAR TO POST. sending these, as heretofore. Not a line had been written, not a paper sent. Nay, more : Reginald had experienced from Vavasour an indifference about his presence never hitherto displayed, even Avhen he had come to be lectured for past scrapes, or replenished in pocket for the getting into fresh ones ; and as he disliked the lectures, and found more money elsewhere, he only assisted Vavasour's cold distance by his own. This is what had happened : what was to happen now 1 He went to the window ; he leaned out ; he held his face against the air that already began to stir with restless sus- picions of the dawn. It did not cool hira. Again he went unto the Terrace, slowly pacing whilst the great city slept. Another hour had gone ; again he returned to his chambers. He sat down and wroto to Reginald, who would doubtless have rushed away to Onchester. He was generally impatient with his pen, and wrote rapidly ; to-night he was singularly slow in his sentences. The letter consisted but of com- monplace condolences, and yet he was long in NOT MERE TALK. 171 shaping them. Oh! had he but been Trriting the originaHties ^vliich he so sternly repressed, his hand had not halted so. Well, he had nearly done. He should be happy to be of what service he could. Reginald was to ask his sister to share the sentiments expressed by the writer ; and Vavasour was always, but in their sorrows most, hers as well as his sincere and sympathising friend. He addressed and sealed the letter ; and with a face hard as the faces of the monumental Templars, whose stone effigies were in the church below, he lay down and slept. Had there not happened enough to make the soft boy stern 1 Fortunately, his father in dying left but one creditor, the bank that had traded on his misfortunes, and had nothing to gain by making them public. That he had died poor everybody knew ; but they knew no more. Philip had gone to South America, as partner in a firm but too glad to secure his services, and had taken his mother with him. Cyril was left to fight his way as best he could, to bury his love, stamp on his ambition, keep 172 FROM PILLAR TO POST. his head above water, and put a well-to-do face upon it ; all which he seems to be doing- pretty bravely. Was he better for it 1 AVho dares decide ? At anv rate he was harder. %j The back was getting shaped to the burden. CHAPTER VIII. BRAYING IT OUT. There is nothing that puts a man so tho- rouglily into good linmour ^'itli himself, and makes him so favourably disposed towards the world generally, as the first stroll through the west-end London streets after a long sojourn in the country. Fresh eggs are very charming, and Thomson's Seasons in the fields are sooth- ing to the excited nerves after Terpsichore's Se'asons at the Opera ; but for all that one is no more free from the charm of change than the year itself, and one turns with a relieved ear, eye, and heart from sermons in stones to sermons in shop-windows. Vavasour was taking Ms first look about him after his return, and so was in that pleasant frame of mind hinted at. Great admiration for his own infirmities, and perfect toleration 174 rEO:\I PILLAR TO POST. at least for other people's, spoke out from his tread, from the folds of his loose overcoat, from the benevolent simper of his cosmo- politan countenance. He dispensed largesse among the crossing-sweepers with an uncalcu- lating hand, though the ways were as clean as his own spotless boots ; dowered the organ- grinders and the monkey's with silver three- pennies, and positively felt tempted to bowl about in a Hansom from mere gaiete de cceiir. This last temptation, however, he resisted ; and had now gained the top of the vulgarest street in Europe. Who asks if its name be Eegent ? "Well, you need not cut all your friends, because you have been in the country six weeks." " Ho, Morley ! how are you '? Didn't see you. But how is it you are not in the country ? ^' " I am ; but I run up to get a little fresh air in London every now and then ; and I come to Eegent Street to button-hole my friends and walk off with them to Surrey. Come down to us : I'll give you capital shooting, and lots of good lush. Your friend Grafton is coming in bravixCt it out. 175 a fortnight ; lie is quartered at Canterbury again, and will have his leave." "Yes, I know that. Well, you tempt me. m think of it. Let us walk down ; it's cold, standing.'" " Come alono'. Bv the wav, have you seen anything of Reginald ? Xo ? His sister is comino' to us to-morrow, I think, or the dav after.^' " I am verv dad to hear it. I thouo-ht your people did not know her. It Avill be a change for her. I sujDpose Dormer died poor % With whom are they going to live, do you know ? " '•' Of course he died awfully poor. He had only one picture ; a rattling good one, they say (I know nothing about it), but it was unfinished, and hasn't fetched much. And Miss Dormer is coming to us as governess to the 3^oung 'uns. Ha ! ha ! my good fellow ! the cab was half-a- dozen yards from us, — no fear. What a start you gave ! A fellow from the countr}^ ought to have his nerves in better order ; but one soon grows unaccustomed to cab-wheels. Xow, when will you come down I " 176 FPtOM PILLAR TO POST. ''Why — er — you see, I have been idling a good deal of late. I fear I must refuse your invite ; much obliged all the same. I must leave you here." " Nonsense. '' " Yes, I must, positively. I have to be at the Temple by a quarter to six. Good-bye, old fellow ! '' " You'll write to say when you'll come. I go back to-morrow. Do try.^' " Yes, yes, Til write, if I can come ; but — but — good-bye ! " * * * ^ * A nasty November fog had all day clung to the outskirts of Onchester, and, now that the night was closing in, availed itself of the favour- ing darkness to invade the suburban streets, and at length held in its pitiless possession the min- stered city. On the doorstep of what had been the artist's home. Vavasour stood and rang. The bell answered loudly to his hand ; it seemed as if it would never cease ringing. He could hear it peahng through rooms that must be empty. BKAVIXG IT OUT. 177 TTlien — when would it cease '? AYhen — AYlieii — when would some one answer it 1 Was he too late '? The bhnds were taken down ; no fire gleamed through the panes ; the garden so small, but always, when he had known it, so strictly cared for, lay hke an excommunicated plot, the Golgotha of idiotic ghosts. At last, feet on the passage pavement — a hght — a hand on the door. " Miss Dormer : is she within 1 '' It was the dear old servant's face. " Why — yes, sir ; but she is going to start directlv.'' t/ " Say I am here — quick — quick ! '' " Yes, sir ; this way. There is a fire in the httle room that used to be master's studio. I will go and tell her." A fire ; a deal table ; nothing more. The servant had even taken with her the candle. He heard the rustle of a dress down the stairs, followed by a short pause. Then the door opened and closed, and in deep mourning, attired for her journey — only the black veil thrown back — the face stni paler, the dark eye-lashes still more 178 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. treDiulously closing and opening on the blue orbs than ever — Mary Dormer stood before him. " You have only just caught me, Mr. Vava- sour ; I am very sorry to be going immediately ; but there is no help for it. AYhat brings you to Onchester 1 the assizes are not on, are they 1 " " No, no, the assizes are not on ; but — but — nay, can you not guess what brings me here '? I come to prevent your journey ."" '' To prevent my journey ! how can that be "? " She looked at her watch. "I must start in ten minutes ; but, if you will, you can see me, with Martha, to the coach." " Mary ! ^lary ! I am not the impassioned boy of sixteen months ago. I do not come to say to you warm fond words. God knows I said them all then ! But I come at least to tell you what I have told you before : that I would offer you the home — of a wife. I have no wild way of asking now ; frankly accept my offer as it is frankly made ; and then — not before, for my tongue is tied — I will explain what may perhaps seem strange." " Really, Mr. Vavasour, there is nothing to BEATIXG IT OUT. 179 explain. "Who has accused you 1 Nothing to explain, except it be indeed this singular visit." "I heard only yesterday of your plan — of your — your going to Mr. Morley's."^ " Does that explain the visit 1 You come to save your honour. Really it is Tvithout taint, at least in my eyes. And if it be tainted in your own, or those of others (though I know not whose), will my becoming your wife purify it ? Even if it will, is it not a little unreasonable to expect me to marry a man in order to save the sensitiveness of his self-respect? I have chosen an honest means of livelihood; be generous enough, Mr. Vavasour, to leave it me." "But — but — Mary ! Miss Dormer! — my love ! —my—my '' "I am surprised that you do not understand that there are some things which cannot be argued. Conviction is produced without logic. Indeed, I must be starting. You once promised to be my friend ; I sincerely hope that you will still remain so." The words were uttered loyally by her who spoke them, and in her breast was no suspicion N 2 180 FROM PILLAR TO POST. of scorn or satire ; but the recollection of his conduct during the months of her desolate con- dition, now so thoroughly brought home to him in this crowning spectacle of distress, sent them accurately to his heart, barbed with a sarcasm that was intolerable. " Then — then — Heayen help us ! You know not Avhat you do," he said. He hurried away ; and as he slung the gate to, and plunged into the mist, he heaved out, " Well, God see to it ; for she has marred the music of my life.^' ii; :ic il< :H :^ " Very well, very w^ell ; no, we won't be long. If we are, it will be the ungallant cornet's fault, and you may blame Grafton, not me. — Come, old fellow, now that the girls have gone, wheel round to the fire. That's your glass, isn't it 1 Fill up. What a jolly day we've had of it ! — the best bag yet. Confound Vavasour for not coming down.'* " Oh, I should think hell come. I wrote to him last night, and used my influence — and I suppose nobody has more over him in such BRAYIXG IT OUT. 181 matters than I have — to accept your invita- tion. Dear old CjTil ! there's no one hke him." " Yes, he's a capital fellow, though you speak of course as his great friend ; but I like him too, very much, though he's too literary, and that sort of thing, for me. But I hope he'll come. He used to be so awfully pious about a year ago ; but I think he has mended of that." " Um, well, I think he has ; but it's a very pardonable weakness, though not one that you and I, Morley, are likely to suffer from." "Scarcely, my boy. Oh, by the way, I've written to Reginald to come down ; he's sure to come." " All the better. What a charming girl that sister of his is ! You are certainly all of you very kind to her, and she's luck}^ to have found such friends ; but still — dash it ! — one doesn't like to see such a girl as that have to turn governess, you know, anywhere." " Well, no ; but what could she do ? She certainly is a stunning girl, though not hand- some, and very quiet, too ; but there's a some- 182 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. thing about her — jou know what I mean — a — a — well, let us drink to her." " I drink. She is not handsome, as you say ; but she reminds me of what I once heard Cyril say of some one else : that sorrow had made her beautiful.'^ " That's a sentiment ; too much for me. But Eeginald once told me that Vavasour was very fond of his sister, which is more to the purpose." " I don't think that. I dare say he liked her, as most fellows would ; but he certainly never said anything to me beyond that she was a very nice girl." " Oh, I don't mean that he was in love with her, though I think Eeginald fancied so. At any rate, if he ever was, he certainly isn't novr ; nothing seems to satisfy him but Blanche Latimer ; he's always with her. She's very different : jolly enough ; but then she's awfully clever, and sometimes beastly sarcastic. Since your cousin, Lady Harbledown, has been abroad, he has quite transferred himself to her." BHAYIXG IT OUT. 183 " He's only like the rest of iis, fond of pretty women ; Tvitli this difference, that he can amuse them better than most of us can. And if a fellow can only get on well with them, it keeps him to a great extent out of other society less profitable and more expensive ; eh, Morley 1 " " Hit it, sir, exactly ; though some fellows succeed as ill in one as in the other. It was I brought Reginald across Lettice, and, hang it I she has spoiled him ever since." '•'Never introduce your friends anywhere. By the way, how about the Lampreys' ball '? you're all going, aren't you 1 " " I should think so. It s such a way for the gu'ls to rush up to town, and come back again. I, of course, shall sleep in town, and I can give you a bed. No, by the way, I can't. I've promised to give one to Reginald, whom we shall take with us, if he pays his visit. Miss Dormer won't go ; as it is only six months since her father died. Reginald will, however. I'm sorry I can't give you a bed." " Oh ! I couldn't have accepted it — thanks ! 184 FKOM PILLAR TO POST. Cyril has promised me a shake-down ; in fact, I shall dress at his chambers, and we shall go together. "Well — let us go to the drawing- room.^^ " Miss Dormer has heard from her brother Frank,'^ said Mrs. Morley, as her son and Grafton entered the room. " Oh ! indeed. What does he say, Miss Dormer 1 " And he walked over to where she sat. "He thanked you for your kind invitation, and will be ver}^ glad to come." " That's all right.'' It was a large long room, with fire-places at each end : it was profusely furnished, taste being more or less sacrificed to consummate comfort. It was, in fact, a very laiD of luxury. " Yes," Mrs. Morley was saying to Grafton, " it is very hard for her, poor girl, but we do all we can to prevent her from feeling the painfulness of her position. "We treat her exactly as one of ourselves, and, indeed, con- sider ourselves fortunate to have found so BRAYIXG IT OUT. 183 excellent a companion for our elder children, and so good a teacher for the younger ones. She is most amiable, and one of the best and most truly pious girls I ever saw." " How long has she been with you 1 ^' " Let me see — Monday — Tuesday — yes, just a month to-day. Well — will you excuse me 1 I must go to Mr. Morley. Poor man ! the doctors say there is no hope of his ever being anything more than the helpless creature he is at present — hopelessly paralytic. I think you had better not come up with me to-night to see him ; he seems much fatigued. I shall not be away very long. Mary, my dear ! " — to Miss Dormer — "order tea when you want it ; but I shall soon be down again." Grafton addressed himself to the dauditers : fair-haired, fair-visaged girls, with the Saxon complexion joined to the Norman physio- gnomy ; yet in them was nothing of that lofty look sometimes seen in countenances of the combined races. They were pretty, as such prettiness goes — no more. Frank Morley still sat at the other end of the room with Miss 186 FROM PILLAR TO POST. Dormer, holding in his hand her brother's letter, which she had given him to read. '' I'm so glad he's coming. Do you know, I asked Vavasour to come too, but I fear he won't. He said he had wasted a good deal of time during the Long Vacation, and must work again. He's always working." " Yes ; I fancy that he is studious ; he is very clever : is he not thought so 1 " " Yes ; by everybody, I think ; but he's rather — rather — what shall I sayl — visionary, and that sort of thing : at least, people say so. Did you know his father 'i " ''No, I did not ; but I have often heard him highly spoken of." " So have I ; but I fear he died rather in difficulties." ''Really!" " Yes ; I fancy so : I have heard as much hinted at by our people in the City- — but I know nothing. I should think Vavasour can- not have very much ; but, as you say, he's a clever fellow, and, I suppose, sure to get on." BEAYIXG IT OUT. 187 " I am very sorry to hear what you say : are you quite sure of it 1 " '' About his father dying poor 1, Quite sure to that extent ; and not so certain that he was not a httle embarrassed in business. You know the business was given up, and his elder brother is out in South America." "Yes, I heard of Mr. Vavasour's brother o'oino; ; but I knew none of the family but Mr. Vavasour himself, and nothing of their — their concerns.'' " ISTor do I : only what I have heard dropped at the Bank, where you know I rarely go.*' "Don't you think,'' she said, "that you ouo-ht to o-o more "i Don't you sometimes feel the want of occupation 1 " " Yes, I do ; but I shall, probably, be a sleeping partner, hke my father before me. And then one has nothing to work for." He played with the letter. " If— if any one— if any girl — if you. Miss Dormer — were only to be sufficiently interested in me — to care for ine— to make me go, I might improve. See — can you not care for me to that extent ? '' 188 FROM PILLAE TO POST.' She looked up at him : he certamly had a very confused and yet earnest appearance. " You speak either in joke or seriously, Mr. Morley. If in joke, I do not " " Indeed, Miss Dormer, I never was so serious in my '^ " In that case I must ask — if necessary, insist — that you will not speak of it again. Hush ! enough has been said. I am very happy here : you are all most kind to me. Do not drive me away. I esteem ^^ou, Mr. Morley, as I esteem all your family : I shall never do more." "Come, Stephen, old boy! don't be all night. There! you'll do. I shall charge you for keeping my cab standing. Wait : have I got my keys 1 all right : shut the outer door. And the two friends rattled down-stairs to their Hansom. "Sir Bedford Lamprey's — Chesham Place : and bowl away as quick as you like, cabby ! " " You've no idea, Cyril ! how sorry the BRATI^'G IT OUT. 189 3Iorleys were you didn't come down. TVe had capital sport ; and old Morley has stocked a tip-top cellar ; though, poor fellow, he can't enjoy it himself. But the best thing about the place was Miss Dormer — Reginald's sister : you know she's there as " '•' Yes — yes — I know." " It made my heart ache to see her there ; though they behave admirably to her, and she seems quite contented. But for al] that, she must feel it. I tell you what, old fellow ! if I could afford and could make up m}' mind to marry, she is just the girl I should like." '•'She would make anybody an excellent wife, there's no doubt of it. But of course you can afford it. Why, you have 550/. a- year of your own, and then there's your pay. Of course I mean you could afford to marry her, brought up in her quiet way." " No — no — I couldn't : not, at least, till I got my step ; and even then, it would be hard work to make both ends meet. And — bah ! — I have no right to think of marrvino- anv- body. Besides, I am quite sure, if she accepted 190 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. me, that she would make me leave the army. She ^vas very IdncI to me ; but then she knew I was your friend." " I don^t see why that should interest her very much in you. . . . Hey ! cabby ! pull up —that's it.'' They ivere rather late ; the rooms were crowded : and A^avasour was dad to eno;ao;e himself straightway to one of Morley's sisters. '•' How fortunate to meet you at once ! I have only just arrived. You are not engaged for this waltz 1 Xo, you must not be." And he bore her away. " You have only just come. Then you have not seen Frank, or Mr. Dormer % " " ISTo ; neither." " They are both here. We should have hked Miss Dormer to have come with us so much, but she could not on account of her mournino-. Do you know we are in such grief ; she is going to leave us." " To leave you ! Why, she has not been with you a couple of months, has she % " " Not quite two months yet. The fact is — BF.AYIXG IT OUT. 191 but if I tell YOU, you must not tell anybody — anybody, mind — mamma began to be afraid that she and Frank ^Yere getting fond of each other ; she certainly was yery attentiye to my brother. And though you know she is quite a lady in every way, yet she would scarcely be suitable for Frank ; there is a distinction between them, after all. Well, mamma thought it better to guard against the danger, and yery kindl}^ told her that she wished to be frank with her, and that she feared that her youth exposed her to what might ultimately cause her own unhappi- ness, as well as that of others ; and that as soon as she could meet with a home, mamma thought she had better accept ^it, ISTow I know I ought not to haye told you, but you will not mention it, will you '? and, of all people, not to Frank." *•' Certainly not/'' " It turns out yery fortunately that her grandpapa, Mr. Chesterfield, wants her to live with him. He wanted her to do so at first, shortly after her papa's death, but she would not. But as he positiyely refuses — at least I 192 FEOM PILLAE TO POST. have heard this — to assist her brother in his profession as an artist, if she will not, she has consented, particularly after what mamma said to her. I fancy he is a queer man, her grand- jmpa ; he disapproved of her mother marrying Mr. Dormer, and never would have anything to say to them ; but now that only these two young people are left, and he is himself a widower, I suppose he is glad to have Miss Dormer with him/^ Why did Vavasour insist that Miss Morley should dance the next quadrille with him ? Why did he pour into her ear flatteries as stupidly fulsome as any uttered that night, except that they were more skilful 1 Why did he avail himself of the opportunities of the dance to toy with the frail fingers of that gossiping doll 1 Why did he fling into his glance a fond interest, that was only less wonderful if feigned than it had been wonder- ful if felt 1 And why did he beg, ay, and get, the choicest lily from her nosegay, as they stood screened in the verandahed window 1 A moment after^ when he had left her side^ he BRAYIXG IT OUT. 1?^ had crushed it in his hand, and ^vith a curse, flung it into the street. "Ah, Miss Latimer. Your card, yuur card; is it very full 1 '' " You do not deserve to find a vacant dance, after coming so late, and then da^vdhng through a waltz and a quadrille with Miss Morley/' '•' Shall I go away then, with my deserts '? " She gave him her card, and her arm. '' I have had great trouble, I assure you, to keep myself disengaged. What is this new idea of yours '? I lose your identity, when I see you bring pleasant blushes into the blonde cheek of Adelaide Morley." " May I not sit under shadv trees as well as my neighbours ? You know there is an Arabian tree famed for its courtesv, that bends down its branches to every comer ; there are a great many courteous trees here that ought to be famous. But why may not Adelaide Morley blush as well as her betters '? Women avenge themselves for their generosity towards us by their uncompromising selfishness towards each other." 194 FROM PILLAR TO POST. " Xay, I am unconcerned about what Miss Morley may do ; I do not think she has any identity. But you have ; and I do not hke you to lose it." " Do I recover it now 1 " he asked, and shghtly pressed against his the rounded arm he held. Simply, but with a strangely sweet and soft prolongation of the sound that writing cannot represent, she answered : " Yes/'' They had waltzed, and were stepping into the balcony. " I fear you have not suffered enough to be happy,^' Vavasour was saying. "Ah! '' she answered, "if suffering will bring happiness, I must be reaching the promised land." The early night had ghstened with constella- tions ; but the ]iuntress of the sky had come, had chased the stars, and shone in the triumph of her sohtude. Subduedly came the music to their ears ; subduedly the circular rush of faith- ful feet. He bent down and felt for the fra- grance of her flowers. They lay, as did her BRATIXCr IT OUT. 195 hand which held them, across his arm. Was it the intoxication of those rich exotics that led his hand to hers ? " Xever mind, Blanche ; we must try if we cannot both be happy." What did he mean ? Had any one dared to ask him, he would have certainly answered : " Nothino;." But as if he had said too much, he exclaimed immediately : '• Weariness is only another word, inyented by self-loye, for dulness. But human happi- ness, like human truth, is never more than fractional. Youth, with its capacities for love, is denied the one thing — money — which justi- fies its indulgence ; and money pours in when the plenitude of the passions has departed. Yet he who thinks himself more miserable, will soon come to think himself more virtuous than his neighbours, and it needs but these two con- victions to equip an accomplished egotist. Come, let us go and prove that ice are not egotists." And he led her again into the crowd. Where are we ? Music still : lights still : o 2 196 FEOM PILLAK TO POST. dancing still : but assuredly this is not Cliesham Place. I see Morlej, Grafton, Reginald, but not Adelaide, nor Blanche, or if such, suppo- sititious ones. I recognise the faces of the aristocracy of the unrecognised, and — is it so ? look again — yes, I see Vavasour. I think we liad better go away, even though we leave him there. CHAPTER IX. A GAME OF HAZARD. — THE LAST STARE. AViTH no premonitory coyness, but with a single bound, spring had burst upon the land and turned us all glad. Yet it is perhaps at such a period, more than any other, that the thoughtful among us are harried by vagrant regrets, especially if \ye, unlike the year, have no new livery to don ; if to us, less fortunate than external nature, there have come no second creation. There might have been perceived in Vavasour about this time a discontent and fretfulness, which no sarcastic optimism could hide. He had become more skilled in reporting, and had so increased his income ; but he talked like a man who has failed and would not have anyone know it. This frame of mind, however, or at least its outward show, passed away ; and by 198 FROir PILLAE TO POST. the middle of May he was apparently on as good terms with himself and others as before. But whether proclaiming arrogantly that life is a luxury to every man that has a decent palate, or implying through the plaintive medium of sardonic accusation that there are some men for whom the world is not good enough — in either mood, and indeed in other moods (if there were such) he seemed still more and more, since Lad}^ Harbledown yet continued in Italy, gravitating towards the society of Blanche Latimer. Always comprehending him, she ap- peared to like his clouded humours only just less than his sunny ones. At least, she either appreciated or over-rated his abilities ; and in either case he was not likely to find much fault. The least skilful woman, and she was scarcely that, can always reach the stronghold of the most skilful man (and he had as little claim to the one character as she had to the other) through the avenues of his vanity. I make the remark generally, and indeed rather imperti- nently, since I think it has no very great reference to them. Yet thoudi she mioht not A GAME OF HAZARD. 199 harbour the intention of using as a weapon that most dehcate of all flatteries, appreciation, it is certain that she used it, and that it had its effect. Is it wonderful that he had come to say frequently to hinnself, " There's no one Hke Blanche,"' and to carry his belief up to a certain point into practice 1 But thouo'h it mav be very ao-reeable. and even the limit of ambition, to a vouno; man to be understood, more especially by a young, handsome, and admired girl, it is a Kttle unrea- sonable to expect that she should find full remuneration in the mere consciousness of understandino' him. And men, even e2:otistical young men of twenty-fiye, are not all meta- physics. Even they have an iUogical knack of sometimes clinchino; a loose ars-ument vrith a squeeze of the hand, and carrying conviction, when all else has failed, by a skilful, iUicit dis- tribution of the middle of the sofa. And so though, on Tvalking Templewards after one of those evenings in which most heterodox ideas, most classical music, and sentimental passages- of-arms had divided the hours, it might be very 200 FEOM PILLAE TO POST. gratifying to Vavasour to swing his umbrella, walk erect, and swear there was no one like Blanche ; did it ever occur to him to inquire if Blanche might have come to think that there was no one like Mr. Vavasour 1 There is a conceit so concentrated that a man possessed by it will actually cease to ask himself what impres- sion he creates upon his neighbours. Vavasour had been to the first Flower Show of the season, had been dining with Mr. Lati- mer, and was now walking w^ith Blanche (some other of her visitors at no great distance) up and down the private garden enclosures of Regent's Park. " Ah, no," he was saying to her ; " suf- fering is the only thing that makes women faithful." " Then how do you account for men winning women by their tenderness 1 " *' I spoke of ' securing,' not of * winning.' But even taking your modified way of putting it, I account for it by denying it. The way to make a woman love you is to show her that you love — not her, but — yourself You would cease to A GAME OF HAZARD. 201 care for me if you thought I cared for you better than I care for ruyself/'' " Mr. Vavasour ! '"' She stopped suddenly, both in her speech and in her walking. He turned to her. *' Eh bien f " They walked on as before. She spoke rapidly. '•' You are always saying things like what you have said just now, and then turning away with a laugh that is not pleasant. The question arises, not whether you care for yourself better than for me, but whether you care for me at all. I have no mother ; papa troubles himself little about me. I am not a mere girl ; if I do not ask you the question, no one else will.' He brushed the o;rass lazily with his feet as he walked bv her side, raised his eyebrows — perhaps even a little his shoulders — but said nothing. " Do you care for me % " " It is not a good time to ask the question," he said at length ; **' for twihght changes and confuses the colour of our feehngs no less strik- ingly than of our flowers or our dresses." 202 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. " But the question is asked : to put it once is painful enough ; to have to put it a second time would be intolerable, perhaps impossible/' " I think you might have discovered that I do not care much for anybody or anything. You know I profess to be very tolerant ; but tolera- tion is only thrown in when by pain one pur- chases indifference. / have made my bargain. Is it necessary to show you still more than I have already shown you all along, that I am an acceptor of facts and circumstances ? that I have arrived at that stao'O when a man con- siders that to be best which is most readily got and most easily retained ? Prove to me that a thing is impossible, and I cease to regard it as desirable. Really, I want nothino- • unless it be the privilege to live and to laugh. There are many difficulties in life : aro-ument leaves them where it found them ; reflection only aggravates the entanglement ; a laugh or a paradox will solve them all." " And you think this an answer '? You say you want nothing ; why, your conduct — your life — is a constant aggression. There is no A GAME OF HAZARD. 203 design so deep as the design of indifference. But are you indifferent 1 not in your behaviour, surely. You treat me as though you were play- ing a game : you fling out the ball sometimes, but only, before the cord snaps, to pull it back again suddenl}^ and catch it. You will not let it go, nor let it rest. I know that cleverness will often induce the feeling of scorn, and to that extent I understand you ; but that you, you at your age should — I will not sa}^ boast of, lament (if you like) — that you should lament being the victim of indifference, this I cannot under- stand 1 " " How should you 1 I have known 3^ou two years now, have seen much of you ; what do we know of each other 1 Our real sorrows are the sorrows we never mention ; you may be quite sure I have never mentioned mine, though you are scarcely dull enough to suppose that I have not had an}^ I would willingly, like that sheet of water there, give back from my surface the pleasant twilight hues, and say nothing about any fetid matter that may be rotting or rotten deeper down ; but you drag me. Do not then 204 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. complain of ^\'hat you haul up. I can remember well enough — I will not say how long ago — writing in answer to the expressed alarm that time and distance, and in fact life generally might modify my then unfolded passion, writing (and for aught I know the writing exists at this day) the wonderful words, 'my darling, my darhng ! it is impossible.' Well, the then im- possible is the now actual, and — why, we are walking here: that is the answer to it. Through the pitiful veil of a wretchedly-hung timidity, I did not then see — fool that I was not to see! I see it now — the love that would have leaped up wildly to six hundred a-year." It had come to this, had it? This was how he spoke of Mary Dor nay, let him go on. " It needed but a freak of finance to briiio; her heart throbbino; where, by God's truth, it shall never throb. Bah! I raved — and am laughing. Do you want galva- nised lees 1 My love-cup has long since ceased to sparkle. I have seen vulgar people dip bread into the wine from which genuine effervescence had departed, and so create a make-believe effervescence. No household bread, no home A GAME OF HAZARD. 205 leaven, be sure, '^ill do for me even that babv's office. The lees must be galvanised, I say ; A'our hand would soon tire of workino' the battery.'"' " I think/*' she said, '•' we had better leave the past alone. Xothing so wonderfid to a woman — I suppose it is the same with men — as her past, if she have the courage, I had better say the vuloar follv, to look at it. You drao- your heart — not I ; but you neither surprise nor disenchant me. I have met girls who made much boast of their discovery that the bov who loved them had never loved before ; I could never see the grounds of their self-congratu- lation. To love one person after having loved another is (if one would only be philosophical, and you would have us all so) a poorer compli- ment, it seems to me, to the first love than to the second — the second has no cause to com- plain, the first very soon will have. We are inductive animals, as I have heard you say ; and one experiment is not enough to satisfy us." With a most indecent haste and tmseemly 206 FROM PILLAR TO POST. interruption — an interruption, though, which he could not resist, he exclaimed delightedly : " Excellent, excellent ! What good things you say ! You leave me behind. I must remember all that." As though they discussed an abstract proposition, and he were personally altogether unconcerned I She could scarcely fail to notice, but bore with it. " But to say," she continued, " that faith once disappointed, or love once unreturned " " Scarcely that, Blanche ! If my love had not been returned, be sure I never should have told you of it. Nothing so much prevents a man's success with one woman as her knowledge that he has failed with another ; prestige carries many otherwise impregnable positions." How patient she was with him ! " I did not w^ish to assume that your love had ever been unreturned, though to suppose that impossible is to think higher of my sex than my experience wdll allow me. But what does it amount to 1 You believed once what you do not believe now, and so you will never believe again." A GAME OP HAZARD. 207 " Even so : I suffer from a passive incredu- lity. I do not believe in any one : I do not believe in vou : but most of all I do not believe in the person in vriiom I once had the most implicit credence — myself The ' my darling, my darling, it is impossible ; ' looks at me from the page of the past and grins at me ; a very devil's grin vrould it be, could I too not grin back. A strain of music, a warm sundown, beautiful hair when with one's hand one smooths it — these bring a transitory faith. Do you wish me to believe in these ? "Will you lean on such a rotten reed as that 1 I have heard music, I have watched sunsets, I have smoothed tresses, which have excited in me the delirious desire to be the Alexander, the Xavier, the Abelard, of my age : the next evening has found me in the reporters' gallery. A fair share of imao-ination will land a man for five minutes anywhere he likes : it requires some- thing very diflerent to keep him for fifty years faithftilly anchored to the fire-irons. The human nattire which either education or acci- dent has not reduced to the requisite state of 208 FROM PILLAK TO POST. submission, will soon rebel against the slavery of slippers. I am more rebellious by accident even than by character, and the luckiest moment of my life was when, though I swore to my darling that change was impossible, my darling did not believe me." " Your whole moral," she answered, witli a retributive logic that far surpassed his own, " is that all feelings are more or less transitory ; and yet the whole strength of your position depends upon the assumption that your present feelings — or perhaps I should say, absence of feelings — will be permanent. Clearly, it is not a matter of argument, when you argue so badly. Be it so. But mind, I will not lose you as a friend ; only I would ask you to try and be more consistently and equably platonic. If you are not deceiving yourself, and the descrip- tion of your feelings be a faithful one, there is one thing at least which I do not envy you. Do not take away from me entirely, as I fear you have already taken partially, the only pos- session in which I am more gifted than you are. Leave me what little faith you have not A GAME OF HAZAED. 209 altogether sapped to-night ; for a woman cannot afford to be a sceptic in the creed of the heart." I do not know if she really tried to speak the concluding words with firmness ; if she tried, she failed. The halting utterance, the tremulous tones, pierced through the deepening dusk, and told to Vavasour the troubled tale of tears. The serenest scorn that ever sat upon the lip of women can be met with scorn at least as serene ; the most collected coldness with which she thinks to guard her garrison can be starved out with a coldness even better supplied ; her smiles bestowed upon a rival can be successfully encountered by your smiles bestowed upon yourself. Bah ! she will beat you still. She will weep, and you shall sur- render. Artist, take from me a hint, and mould me your Venus Victrix — in tears. He stretched his arm athwart her, and patted rather than pressed her shrinking shoulder. " They say, Blanche, that men are never re- converted ; try you to show that they are wrong. See, they are coming towards us ; indeed it is time to go.'"' 210 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. It Tivas ; for the twilight had all but melted into the inonai'chy of night They walked. Jiomewards ; Vavasour talked gailj with everj- bodj, everybody but with Blanche. She went to the piano in the back drawing-room, and sang Mercadante's ''Soave Imagine.'' He went to her as it drew to a close. " I am going ; good night." She gave her hand, but stiU sat before the instrument. He bent slowly down and kissed her forehead. " Have faith ; it depends on 3'ou whether I shall recover it. After all, it is affectation for any one to pretend to be altogether an indifferent : hfe is a game in which everybody has a part majDped out, and so nobody can be umpire." " Are you going to the Greshams' on the 2nd 1 " asked ^h. Latimer, as Vavasour made his adieux. '• "Well then, dine with us, and we will give you a seat." Vavasour thanked him, and departed. Does any one — nay, do many, think that between his frequent guest and his daughter, a most strange liberality of intercourse was permitted? Doubt- A GAME OF HAZARD. 211 less, a mother would have stopped this skirmish- ing long ago, but fathers are less skilful in bringing love engagements to close quarters. Besides, Mr. Latimer feared his daughter as much on thirty days of the month, as he made her fear him on the thirty-first. Bv abusing her once a month, and losing his temper once a day, he thought he had fully asserted his parental authority and fulfilled his paternal responsibility. He had every reason to suppose that Vavasour would not marr}^ for seven or eight years ^to come, and none to suppose that he would ever marry his daughter. Indeed he considered Blanche quite set apart for his friend in India. He liked Vavasour, though he did not quite like his insolent way of going on. He sneered at him to Blanche one day, and asked him to dinner the next. So that who can say he did not make very handsome repa- ration % " No more wine, Mr. Vavasour ? — ^just a glass of sherry. Very well. If you will go up to p 2 212 FROM PILLAR TO POST. the drawing-room, I will be there directly ; the carriage ought to be round/'' He went up-stairs and lolled on the sofa ; no one was in the drawing-room ; but presently Blanche came in, with a halo of gossamer and smiles. " Admire me, sir, instead of lolhng there. Am I nice 1 Am I horrid ? What am I "? " He stretched out his hands ; she thought it was in order to be raised up, and so gave hers. But he drew her towards him. " You are charming, my dear." She drew back from the calculated salute. "As you will, ' he said with an unruffled countenance, and let go her hands. " But it is scarcely wise to refuse what so many are ready to grant.'' " I know best about that," she rephed ; and Mr. Latimer entered. One of the boys completed the quartet. Vavasour discussed vintages with Mr. Latimer the whole way. He danced his first dance with Blanche, but was most cheerfully distant, said the dullest things in the livehest manner with A GA3IE OF HAZAED. 213 supreme unconsciousness, and lefc her to go and speak to Stephen Grafton. " She's here, with her grandfather ; I am going to dance this next quadrille with her/"' " My good fellow ; ivho is here ? What are vou talkino; about in that excited manner '? Calm yourself ; I really do not understand you." "Of course you do. Miss Dormer is here, with old Chesterfield ; very handsome old boy, but battered." " Oh, she is here, is she 1 Now you grow intelhgible. And you dance this quadrille with her 1 Yes, I see her ; I must go and pay my respects." And he walked over to where she sat, in half mourning still, next to Mr. Chesterfield. She introduced him. A few words were spoken ; might he have the honour of dancing that quadrille with her 1 She was veri/ sorry, she was eno'ao-ed for that dance to Mr. Grafton. o o He bowed and retired. A ball-room in full motion faithfully photo- graphed, would be a greater triumph even than 214 FROM PILLAR TO POST. the scudding clouds, or the scampering tide similarly rendered. These have been done ; can that 1 Leech has often drawn it, and always failed. He need not be annoyed. It is beyond his art, not him. A pen is a clumsier weapon than a pencil, and, in the unskilled hand that holds this, the result would be a caricature that would not even be comic. I forbear, and follow the hours. It is after supper. "Mr. Vavasour," eagerly whispered a voice on the landing, as he was about to re-enter the ball-room. He looked ; it was Miss Dormer. " Pardon me ! Yes *? '^ " Mr. Chesterfield has gone. I fear I was long in looking for my cloak, and he has gone — without me. He is odd sometimes, and does strange things." " And you wish to go, of course ? and you want a cab 1 and ^' " And I do not wa^nt it to be noticed." Her lashes closed over her eyes and opened again in the old way. (He wished she would not do it ! ) "I can ask no one here so well as — as you. Will you be good enough to take A GAME OF HAZ.UID. 215 me home and hide — ^hat has happened 1 It is very humihating. You see. Eeginald is not here.'^ He did it as well as it could be done : and their exit was screened, I fancy, from at least all but strao-o'lino; servants in the hall and the porch. " I am so sorrv to 2:ive vou this trouble/' she said, as the cab drove off ; '•' it is very kind of you. I am subject occasionally to these peculiarities of grandpapa's : but he is very good to me — and to Eeginald.'"' " Yes, yes. Old men of course are whim- sical, lose their tempers and their — grand- children : but there's nothins: in it. The vagaries of the old are the amusements of the young : they should never be taken au grand serieu^T The cab was driven at fuU speed. '•' Are you verv busv. 3Ir. Vavasour ? Are you writing anything — any — any Poem % " '•' Oh, dear no ! " and he laughed. "' I have long since seen the necessity of surrendering iU-chosen and ill-fortified opinions. Poets are 216 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. but a better sort of acrobats. With great difficulty they learn to fling themselves into un- natural contortions, and to mount unsteady and altogether unnecessary ladders. The attempt is dangerous ; the attainment not very digni- fied. If they succeed, they get more plaudits than pence ; if they fail, they break their heads — their hearts, I have heard, but I dis- believe that. Excellent dance ! T\'as it not 1 " " Very : yes — very.^' " Is this your street '? " " No ; the next." *'Very pleasant neigbourhood. No place like London : is there 1 " " I cannot say I am very fond of it. It is a large heartless place." " Perhaps it is : but I am not sure that is not its chief recommendation. If it gives nothing, it asks nothing : it is not generous, but any rate it is not exacting. Ha ! we are here." " I am so " " Oh, no ; not at all : very glad to be of service." The hall-door did not close upon her A GAME OF HAZAED. 217 before she had caught the ^vords : " Back to Mr. Gresham's, cabby ! and as quickly as you can. Mr. Chesterfield had not shown much kind- ness in leaving Miss Dormer behind : he showed even less in his reception of her on her arrival ; but for all that, I scarcely think that this com- bined cruelty and coarseness quite account for that flood of tears which the poor oirl sheds on reaching her soHtary bed-chamber, whose door, with your permission, I will draw gently to. ■S'r 45- '/<: ^^ ^ " I thought you had gone : you were engaged to me for the lancers : and they are over." " Never mind : this galop instead." " I must go after that. Papa has gone, he was very tired, but my brother is here." Vavasour would accept a "lift" in their carriage : the brother wanted to smoke and would ride outside. Excellent brother ! " You have behaved very strangely to-night." " Have I '? I thought I had never been so amiable. I have just been compensating my- 218 FROM PILLAR TO POST. self for your protective customs by the most unrestrained approach of — nay, I must not tell you Tvhom. But then it was after supper ; and champagne is the Cobden of society : the real repealer of duties/^ He laughed and he bantered ; and he gossipped — about everybody but her : he quite forgot the lover's rule to speak of no one save ''d'elle et de moir She felt cross, and looked feverish, but could not make him serious. At last she brightened up, and said cheerfully : " You are very unforgiving : but remember that I too have had — champagne." Her meaning was not very obscure ; but obscure or significant, he was not likely to miss it. He drew her gently towards him, she assisted now, rather than repelled him. His arm was round her waist : his hands held hers ; her cheek rested upon his — rounded damask peach against a hothouse wall. It was difficult to decide, no doubt. There was but one arrow left in the quiver; and manifestly every other had failed of its mark. Should this fall short or fly over, the armoury TEE LAST STAKE. 219 was empty 1 Ought she to have reserved it still ? She thought otherwise, and has aimed : has this last shaft hit or missed the target of his heart '? We must follow up and see. Letters are the sand-banks of love : yet where are the betrothed who are wise enough to eschew them 1 If one note seem not un- satisfactory — not short of the affection due — to him or her who receives it, the next is sure to seem so, unless it surpass in fond inuendoes or epithets the extravagance of its predecessor. The deep must have a deeper still, or will soon begin to appear very shallow : so that this correspondence has to become an arithmetical progression, ad infinitum, which has neither extremes nor mean. Practicallv, this is im- possible. Then come complaints, taunts, regrets, accusations of coldness, rebukes of '-you do not write as you wrote at first," — nay, who does not know it 1 . Does this not account for the silly love-letters which even clever peojDle write, and for the cleverest people refusing to write them at all ? Common-place correspondents can get over 220 FROM PILLAR TO POST. half a dozen, nay, half a milHon, quarrels as easily as they can get over writing or reading erotic rubbish : but better minds will not long submit to the degradation of either. An argument disenchants, a cold letter alienates, a warm letter disgusts, them : they turn from those passionate paroxysms of the pen which only display and still further weaken self- indulgent natures. But they are the men whom women will persist in loving, to their cost. They are the men, say you, who do not love at all. Well, they are: yet blame them not ; they can discover their inabihty to love only by trying. Vavasour tried : and the postman was at his door oftener than heretofore. But if he had acquired the habit of speaking curtly, he wrote even more so ; and never so strikingly as in answer to an aflfectionate letter. If, as though by an intentional change of tactics, there came one cool and cautious, he did not, unless the contents absolutely demanded, an- swer it at all ; but would meet her, who had written it, a few days after, wdth a cheerful THE LAST STAKE. 221 indifference ^hicli she could not fail to see Tvas altogether unfeigned. " I fancy I should make a very decent hus- band," he would sav, " but I shall never know how to play the part of lover. I see no pros- pect of ever being the former : and I have nothino; — I never shall have anvthino; : I am not a money-making animal. As I have told you all along, Blanche, you are very foolish. Look at Morley : those are the men. Now that his father is dead, he must have three thousand a-vear." " I do not see what Mr. Morley has to do with it. Are vou reallv leavino- town on the %/ I/O 30th ^ " It was July. " No doubt of it." " You will only write when I tell you that vou mav : and I must alwavs address to vour chambers, and they will be forwarded *? '" '' Exactlv." Nothing is to me so great a trial of patience as to have to read the correspondence of other people : I conclude your tastes to be similar, and so forbear from producing even extracts 222 FROM PILLAR TO POST. from theirs. It was not, I am bound to say, an unmeritorious correspondence : it really had some very good literary points, and even some quick glimpes into human nature. Instructive it certainly would be : sometimes, perhaps. entertaining ; but, for all, I abstain. Sufficient let it be to chronicle its existence. It was the evening of the 29th of July. Vavasour had packed up : early in the morning he should leave Town, and these last hours were to be spent with Stephen Grafton, at the Club of the latter. It was time to go. There was a postman^s knock. " Stephen's writing, surely 1 " "Don't come this evening, old boy," the letter ran, " I could not bear it ; you can guess whv. There is talk to-day at the Horse-Guards of our regiment going to Canada. In my bitter disappointment, I almost hail this news as a relief " Yours affectionately, "Stephen Grafton.^' " So Mary has refused him. Poor fellow ! THE LAST STAKE. 223 If lie only knew that she has done the same to me. It is idle to pretend to myself that I am sorry, on the whole, though I regret that dear old Stephen should suffer. I suppose I must do as he wishes, and not go to him. Well, I will finish my book and send it back to the Library. And to-morrow for North Wales and some fresh aii\ CHAPTER X. OLD FACES. BLACKLOCK's STORY. If you want to discover how you can spend three months, and yet have nothing to say about them except that they were " very jolly/' go and shoot or fish for twelve consecutive weeks in a hilly country. This had Cyril been doing, and now found himself again before a blazing- fire in his Temple chambers, and a heap of letters before him. " From Blacklock. An age since I saw him. Will come to see me to-morrow night, at half-past eleven. Delighted to see him. Bill. Another. Circular. Dun. Stephen : regiment definitely ordered abroad. Well, let all go. Foreign letters. Yes, by Jove ! from Lady Harbledown. Coming home : will be in town by the 20th of October. That's to-day. Bravo ! And now for this one." " This one," as he called it, was from Blanche OLD FACES. 225 Latimer. It had caught his eye at first ; but he had allowed it to remain to the last. Probablv the sohtude of the mountains had softened his heart, and he had begun to yearn for peace — peace on any terms. Besides, he was becoming more open to conviction that it was to be found in domestic life, even when attended with some denials. And so, I fancy, had it come to pass that he had about six weeks back written Blanche a letter — long, affectionate, and vearnino; : the fondest letter he had ever sent her. A week later came one from her — short, cold, indifferent — sucli indeed as he had never yet received. It consisted chiefly of gossip about Reginald. He did not answer it, feehng indeed annoyed at having written his last long effusion. Doubtless — so he chose to think — she fancies that her triumph has come ; that she has made me love her deeply at last, and will in turn try the power of prolonged indif- ference. Fool, not to know me better ! when I have myself told her that I like best what is most readily got and most easily retained ! So he did not write, nor did she. is'ot till now, at 226 FROM PILLAR TO POST. least, after a five weeks' silence. A letter from her lay before him. He opened it now. It ^vas plaintive and conciliatorj, accusing him of his harsh neglect, and asking if he intended to write to her again. He sat down, and wrote rapidly, "My DEAPt Miss Latdiee, " I have a strong partiality for feelmg that I am right ; none for proving it. When a man has convinced himself, he may be quite sure that he has completed his list of converts. " There are men whom no tenderness can win, whom no logic can convince, but who can be outwitted like sheep. I am of a different type. An argument will satisfy, a spontaneous kiss will persuade, me ; but stratagems orJ}^ keep my head on the alert, and only induce me to still further strengthen the approaches to my heart. "Beheve me, with great resioect, yours sin- cerely, '•'Cypjl Yayasoupv.'' " If that does not bring to a conclusion this detestable affair, what will ? The girl but OLD FACES. 227 wastes my time, and does not help me to either hapjDiness or advancement. But she has been, Hke Tennyson's Juhet — * The suminer pilot of an empty heart Unto the shores of Xo thing ' and so valuable. Summer is over, and — what care I ? To-morrow for Lady Harbledown." If people will go away and leave us behind, they must accept the consequences of their absence. They return, and accuse us of infi- delity ; we wept over their departure, and do not weep over their arrival, only because we have long since ceased to weep at all. They went, and left a complete vacuum ; they come back, and we cannot find them one vacant place. Friends, once separated, should never meet again. Men continue to believe in the illusions of their youth, because they are at a distance ; come face to face with them, and they are as dull as the dinner of to-dav. Cyril Yavasour seeks Lady Harbledown. Two years have intervened since their hands pressed good-bye. You know if he has changed. Query, has she 1 The matrimonial state is not Q 2 2. -28 FPvOM riLLAR TO POST. favourable to mental growth : the progressive minds are the unattached. Will she rally him now % He will yawn. She left an impulsive boy : she will find a measured man. A believ- ing enthusiast provoked her kindly banter : the faith that never wholly leaves a woman will evoke the smile of the sceptic. Why, he has become the very thing he scorned ; the incarnation of what his bovhood so indi'o;- nantly denounced. It is well to tolerate the views of our neighbours, if for no other motive, at least for this, that in condemning theirs w^e mav beforehand be condemnino- our own. The man who is sure that any one thing is altogether right, and its opposite altogether wrong, is easily convinced. Was she as beautiful as ever % That was, I believe, the question he put most anxiously as lie sat awaiting her. It is the question of questions, after all. We grow sentimental over ruined abbeys, dismantled castles, green court- yards, weed-grown graves ; but to me the ruins of a bygone beauty are the mournfullest ruins of all. History is eloquently moral over empires OLD FACES. ^:'9 lost ; but thousands of sceptres slip away from the hands that grasped them gracefully, and no one tells ; la reine est viorte — vice la rclne ! Behsarius on a doorstep, Bajazet in a cage, Kapoleon on a ^yaye-^yashed boulder, have not half the pathos of that unsolicited, supperiess wallflower, who was once the petitioned of the ball-room and the toast of the wine-flask. ^0, she is beautiful still. Mabel, Lady Harbledown need not mourn as yet over the ravao-es of Time the Visigoth. She has been in the land of loveliness, and she seems to have borrowed of its charms, and so to have enhanced her own. But the brilliancy of its sun has not scattered from its face the melancholy that we have all come to regard as the appanage of Italy : and this gift, amongst the rest, it struck Vavasour, had, since their separation, fallen to the lot of her who now stood before him. However much we are to disagree or dislike- each other afterwards, our greetings are always cordial : such was theirs. But why, he won- dered, did tears flood her eyes as their hands met, and remain there, and even mount anew 280 FROM PILLAR TO POST. ever and anon, as they spoke of the lengthened interval which neither had expected 1 Hers had never seemed a tearful nature ; had they changed places in the lapsed period 1 The most skilled of us know not what to say the first time we come together again, provided we are glad at the reunion. Vavasour had felt this before ; but still, the difficulty of conversation, and the constraint which increased as the evening wore on, were not accounted for. They were alone, yet they were not garrulous. She did not question him as of old : perhaps she saw there was too much to tell, and perhaps some of that much which she should not like to hear. She guessed his growth at a glance, but shrank from taking its exact proportions ; nor was he com- municative as to his development. Would she sing to him 1 she must have sung in Italy. She had never made pretensions to great skill ; but she had truth and taste. She sang ; she wavered — trembled — paused — and was again in tears. " I am so nervous, Mr. Vavasour ! you must pardon me. I have not been strong in Italy, OLD PACES. 231 and mj weakness shows itself in this stupid manner." And in that stupid manner did it show itself ao-ain more than once : tears that never tres- passed beyond the eye, or beyond the tone, but never quite abandoned either. Vavasour lingered, hoping that Sir Wilfrid would make his appearance. Yes, she hoped he would come soon : she did not know where he was, but he could not be long. However, he did not come, and Vavasour remembered Blacklock's promised visit. He was very sorry not to see Sir Wilfrid, but must go : he should soon come again, and drive away the nervousness. When had he spent so downcast an evening 1 Was this !Mabel '? He hurried on homewards. When he was about the middle of the Strand, he found the causeway blocked up by a collection of people, which, as is usual in London, gathered and gathered still. " Take her up, can't you '? " '•' Shame ! shame ! " - She's dying ! " 232 FRO:»I PILLAR TO POST. '' Dying ! she's drunk, that's all." '' Now then ; what's it all about I " " Only a woman.'' *•' Carry her somewhere." " Carry her yourself." " I'm sure she's dying." '•' And I'm sure she's drunk." '•' She is neither drunk nor dying/' said Vava- sour, taking her arm as she lay on the step ; " she is dead." - Dead 1 " *' Dead ; not a doubt of it." A couple of policemen came. " Yes, she is dead." And they lifted up the corpse. Vavasour still gazed upon the face whose features had at first so attracted him. He had seen them somewhere, he was sure. It was no use following them any further. He had stared at them till he could carry them away in his eve without more external aid. He walked on, puzzling his memory ; he could make nothing of it beyond this, that the face of the dead woman was not new to him. BLACKLOCKS STORY. 2S3 " Here just before me." Blacklock stood at the outer door. " Hope I have not kept you Tvaitino- • I tliouo-ht I was never o-oino- to see you again. Have you ever called since last December 1 *' " JSTo, never ; last December, was it 1 Yes, nearly a year ago." " Hall ! an excellent fire, with a poke or two. Take the arm-chair ; I am delighted to see you. " And I, you. What about the ' Book 1 ' " "The 'Bookr Oh, yes ! the 'Book.' Still- born, sir, like the paradoxes mentioned in the ' Vicar of Wakefield ; ' the world said nothing to my 'Book,' absolutely nothing. The reviews never noticed it, not one of them." " I hope you feel the compliment. If they could have ridiculed you, they would, depend on it ; it was not likely they were going to helj) you to ridicule themselves. Then there is an end of it 1 " " A complete end of it ; I had forgotten all about it, though it cost me some 3 51., a sum I could not well afford." 23^ FRO},! PILLAR TO POST. " iSTever mind. I often tliink that the fertihty of some men is owins; to the amount of dirt they had to eat in their youth. Swallow yours contentedly. AYe should do with our dead projects, our failures, as gardeners do with dead leaves — use them for manure." " Well ; but you surely have come to London for some time '? I have missed no one so much as you ; you must come oftener/' " Truth to tell, I have come to say good-bye to you for the last time." " How so ? Do you leave England 1 " " Yes, Europe. Like Ulysses, ' my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset ;' and you are the only man I shall take the trouble to part with. You will never see me again : you have behaved kindly to me, and I have faith in your future — probably you have yourself. I am not an egotist, that you must have seen ; but a sketch of my history may prove of use to you, and so you shall have it. You are the one person I have met who never manifested an indecent, ill-bred curiosity ; you are the one blacklock's story. 235 person who will derire the shghtest real benefit from the knowledge of my career.'"' . Vavasour confessed that he had ever felt the curiosity, which he had always concealed. " Xo doubt ; it shall be gratified. My mis- fortunes commenced early ; my first misfortune was to be born a gentleman, and an eldest — nay, an only — son, and from that misfortune I have never recovered. As if I had not been suffi- ciently ill-treated, I grew up both good-looking and clever ; and my people knew and cared for it more even than I knew and cared for it myself I have what is called good blood in my veins ; the man who seriously dwells on such a fiction is a self-condemned fool. I men- tion it in order to be understood. If I am not, and was not then, proud of my parentage, others were ; and looked to me as the restorer of a race which had certainly become rather in want of renovation. I heard much of estates that had passed away — I never saw them ; I saw only a decent manor recently purchased, and not even entailed. I shone at school — the only place where shining is a pleasure — and 236 FROM PILLAR TO POST. went to college. I gave suppers, but I studied too : and I don't care sayino; that I felt — it was well enough known and acknowledged then — that I should leave the University a double- first, the terror of bargemen, and the most popular fellow of ray time. I left it none of the three, for I left it shrouded in a mystery which I well know has never been solved. When a man says he loves a woman, to praise her is mere pleonasm ; and no one will agree with him, except by also loving her — a result not desired. AYhen I say that I loved the daughter of a miller (her father was deadj, I have told you as much as you would care to know.^^ He took a great long breath, and his huge chest expanded like a blacksmith's bellows. His pipe was out ; he lit it again, and went on. " One hears random talk of seduction. If by seduction you mean the cautious use of mea- sured means which, like the machinery for all desired results, will generally accomplish its purposes, I did not "^ He slackened speed in his swift speech, as though he answered an accuser, — "I did not seduce that poor child. I BLACKLOCK S STOEY. 23/ determined she should be mv^'ife ; bat I ^voiild 2:8.m mv colle2:e honours first. "With these in one hand, I coukl. ^vith better grace and better hope of acceptance, lead the miller's daughter to my people's presence with the other. I do not know through whose kind intervention — thank Heaven ! I do not know, or I should have sent him to be judged there long ago — my connection with her became known at my home, even though it was not known at hers. But a few weeks before mv examination, I received a pressing summons home. I went. Frankly my father charo-ed me : franklv I confessed. How far had the affair o-one 1 I told him. He did not sa.v it was wicked : he said it was unfortunate, but he would help me out of it. The girl's mother was sure to dis- cover it : he would himself tell her, and make all necessary arrang-ements — money arrano-e- ments, of course, with which they would be satisfied, and I must not be such a fool again. At once I spoke my secret resolve : I said I would listen to no such proposal, I had all along- intended to marry, and only waited till I could 238 FROM PILLAE TO POST. do SO witli better grace and ^vitli less offence. He stared ; he swore ; he threatened. I held mj peace and showed my purpose. Well, he ■would think of it. He thought of it, and changed his mind. I might do as I would ; it was an intolerable mortification to him, but he saw, he said, it was no using oppos- ing me. At any rate, I should only have greater temptations to waste my time when near her than at home ; and the next few weeks were precious. I worked hard, and then rushed up to college ; when there, I hastened to her. Nor she, nor her mother, was wdiere I left both ; the place was deserted. They had left a fortnight before, w^ithout informing any- one of their intention : no one could answer my earnest inquiries further. Oh, fools ! fools ! We are educated to beheve that it is always allowable to deceive children and women, par- ticularly for their own good ; and I had deceived Nelly at least in this — that I had at first given her a name not my own, and had even gone so far as to represent myself resi- dent in London, and having no connection with blacklock's stoey. 239 the University. Day by clay, though my love grew, did I put off undeceiving her ; thinking only of the reparation I should shortly make. Doubtless she had, in my absence, vrritten to the false name and the false address, and had at once her letter returned and her eyes opened. I hastened back home ; my father affected surprise. I accused him bluntly of deceiving me. He shrugged his shoulders, and said she had, no doubt, gone away with a fool even greater than myself. He knew nothing ; and if he did know, would tell nothing.'^ He leaped to his feet. " There have been moments. Vavasour, when, had I met that man, I would have crushed him with my heel. By my soul's strength ! this is one of them. He help me to marry her ! he laughed in my face. That he had outwitted me he did not care to hide, but would not avow.''' He shook his great body, and flung back into the chair. '• Words would not help you to understand what has followed, if you do not already comprehend it. I parted with my father at my father's door : he cursed me aloud — I cursed him in mv 240 FROM PILLAR TO POST. heart. I think hoth curses have, from all I know, been answered. It is true mv mother was my mother, but she was his wife ; she did not remain either very long. I had sisters ; I talk of them as I think of them — as inanimate objects. One had already quarrelled with her father by marrying against his will ; the other quarrelled with him shortly afterwards through the husband, whom she had married against her own. I do not know whether they live or not ; I should scarcely know where to inquire, and I have no desire to know." His tone had lost all its savage bitterness : he spoke with a gay carelessness. " What a life I have Lad of it ? How well I remember coming to this big place ! At last I got to write and to be paid for articles in a rascally monthly. The manager of a theatre had swindled an author ; I penned an indignant leader. My Editor could not afford to insert it, he avowed, because he had a free admission ! I have driven a cab ; I have been a hair-dresser, and lost three situa- tions from my incurable habit of brushing puppies out of their chair ; I have been the blacklock's story. 241 carver at a dining-room, and lost that post by mj reckless generosity, — the managers said I should ruin them ; I have figured in poses plastiques — in chalk and tights I have defied the lightning many a time ; I have Uved at a toll-gate, — I Kked that because I could read, and could mulct everyone that passed. But they put up ^vhat they call a chain-bar — you must have seen them in the country — and so I as often got tickets as toll. I could not stand that, and I left. And then my existence since ! Oh, how pleasant, in an age which boasts of being civilised, and siu'rounds itself with what it calls sanctions, to sallv from the strono'hold of one's poverty and nonentity, and make this civiHsed world pay plentiful black-mail to the savages whom it cannot altogether extirpate Nay, you need not start ; I have never risked my freedom much. You remember our first supper r I have had manv — myen with a worse o'race,. but given, for all that. I have travelled in: countries where to be huno-ry is to be fed ; but I dislike voluntary charity. I would sooner extort than accejDt. You are the only person 242 PPiO:^! PILLAR TO POST. whose kindness is not an offence ; and I made your acquaintance by swindling you. Ha — ha ! Never mind. 'Tis a funny world — the lost pleiad, as you say ; I think the other six are as well without it." He commenced walking about and singing snatches of a song. " But your father — " " Lives, I believe." ''But when he dies — " " He will not leave his money to me ; but if he did, I would open his grave and fling it in after him. See — Vavasour ! you are a clever fellow, and I think a deal of you : but I want advice from nobody. I came here to give you some." '•' And it is — " "This. Believe in yourself, and take Time hito partnership. Oh the misses we make by impatience ! Time, so we will only let it, is the complement of our shortcomings. It re- trieves our blunders, redresses our wrongs, solves our doubts, answers our questions, reads our riddles, and even satisfies all our desires, since it either fulfils or annihilates them. Do blacklock's story. 243 YOU want to maiTY a maiden, the one maiTel of the UniYerse 1 Well, you will IIyo either to marry her or to thank God you didn't. Are you hungering after laurel-leaYOs 1 They shall encircle your brow, or you shall smile at the man whose brow they do. A kind sleeping partner, truly, this Time. No bill that he y411 not accept — none that he Y'ill not renew, and will let run as long as OYor you like ; with this proviso — mark you ! — that you be not fool enough to discount the hour of triumph by self-flattering anticipation of applause. Xever say, this ^\\s\\ succeed — that ^\\dM succeed; but ever, / shall succeed. Every failure is a step in advance : when you have discovered the difficultY, YOU haYe all but discovered the solu- tion. Never accuse the world, for it is never YTong ; never hastily transfer your former panegyrics of an occupation in which you are annoyed not to have succeeded, to a fresh occu- pation in which you have not yet failed : for these are the petulances of a pestilent self-love. Do not be disenchanted because neither vour neighbours nor Yourself seems to 2:row Y^iser : Pv 2 244^ FROM PILLAR TO POST. Bear, bear, bear ! My idea of a philosopher is of one who feels and manifests perfect tole- ration of human nature. But above all, mistake not the one important condition of the age in which you are to act your part. If you will not understand the paramount necessity of putting yourself above money perplexities, the genius of all the archangels will not save you from dying in a ditch/"' Again, he said, " I know you will not scorn my short sermon ; I am twice your age nearly : my life has been a contemptible failure, and I am really anxious that yours should not be. Whatever good spirits there may be, protect you ! No, I would rather you stayed here." It was the first time he had ever offered his hand ; warmly he grasped Vavg.sour's, and departed. CHAPTER XL A REQUEST EEFUSED — ANOTHER GRANTED. It was the debatable hour in the London streets between dayclose and the advent of the night. Some lamps were lit, some were not; curtains met your gaze from one house, blank windows from another. A o'irl sat alone in a handsome room, with no light in it but the flicker of the fire and what might yet enter through the uncovered panes. She reclined in an easy chair ; her dress was slightly raised; her feet rested on the bright fender ; and an unread book lay open upon her knees. The door was opened quietly. " A lady wishes to see you, miss. She will not give her name." " Never mind, let her come in, Bertha. No, you need not light the lamp." 246 feo:m pillar to post. She did not change her position till her visitor entered. When the door again ojoened, she rose, jDushed away the chair, and turned. Before her was a lady — tall, in deep mourning, and with a veil on, which its wearer did not offer to raise. " I have come to you as a supphant — upon the subject of — my — my son/' ^•' Yes ? '•' " You surely will not marry him 1 " " Not marry him 1 Surely I shall." "]^o, no! I beg — I beseech — I imjDlore of you to have mercy on — on me — his mother — on him — on us all. You do not lore him — you cannot love him — you cannot." " That I cannot love him, as you mean it, I might question ; but I will not deny that I do not love him. That is no reason why I should not marry him. He knows I do not love him ; but he thinks — and perhaps he thinks rightly — that I shall be to him as good a wife — yes, as good a wife — as he will find elsewhere." " Oh ! I would give you all — all I possess. "What is it you would have '? Seven, eight, a A REQUEST REFUSED. 247 thousand a-year ; but you must not marry liim. I — I — his mother — I love him — nursed him — taught him to pray — hve for him — by him. My husband is gone ; he is my — my great hope, and now, now, you tell me, tell me you will make this sacrifice, and God — yes, God will see to you.'^ " You forget," answered the girl, with quiet rebuke, " that a mother, though perhaps not in luxury, bore me, nursed me, and would have taught me to pray, I doubt not, if — if I had not lost her. The narration of misfortune on mis- fortune would not — Ah, I know it well — would not justify — no, not justify, would not excuse — me in your eyes. You would receive from me a favour, but nothing more ; not even an expla- nation. You are ready to give me money, but never pardon.'' " You wrong me, indeed you wrong me : God will pardon, shall not I I "' " Fine words, fine words. God will do more than pardon. He will call me child ; will you I Oh, I know your language ; / read my Bible too. I am bold enough, even now, to call him Father ; 2i8 FROM PILLAR TO POST. and you — you come, not to beg me not to call YOU mother, but not to make you such in your own despite. Yes, God pardons ; I did not need YOU to tell me, in order to be sure of that."' *' But to marry whom you own you do not love, will He pardon that? " " I cannot say; but if He will not, your draw- ing-rooms, madam, let me tell you, are often crammed with the forms of the Unfort>iven ! Perliaps you know more of God than I know, and are right in telhng me of his ways ; but I, girl as I am, know more of men than — yes, thank Your God for it — than you will ever know. Perhaps I cannot o,iYe love ; you say I cannot ; I am not asked for it. There is one thing I shall give, w^hether asked or not, a thing usually promised though the promise be not alw^ays kept, — fidelity. Pardon me, there are not many women who would love your son; I at least (though you may be unable to under- stand this) respect him, in my way. He says — perhaps, again, you fail to comprehend — that he cannot be happy without me ; I will strive to make him happy with me. It is A EEQUEST REFUSED. 249 not an affair of yesterday ; it is I who have resisted and waited for conviction. He has con- vinced me ; and neither a mother's love nor a vroman's scorn vrill change me. Try to change him, and I will not oppose you. You will never acknowledge me as your daughter : you must see that you only insult the painful position from which I am going to escape, if you are not sufficiently successful to keep me in it." '•' Heaven knows I would not keep you in it. I would save vou from it, will save vou from it. But why do vou ask such a sacrifice? — the sacrifice of mv son % I tell vou I will give vou — " '•' Enough, enough. You are proud that you have been a wife, madam ; I will be one, too, even your son's. You have exhausted your arguments, and all but my self-command. I would rather vou went." And she rans; lier bell hastily. *''Who is that — who is that I met on the staircase V^ asked Reginald, eagerly, as he burst into the room. '* "Who was it, Lettice, who was it?" 250 FEOM riLLAR TO POST. '' Xever miud ^Yllo it was ; I am not at liberty to say." '•' Very well, very well : I don't care : am sorry I asked. See : I came to ask you to help me — to help me as you have helped me before. That old screw of a grandfather has sent mc no money, and I want to go into the country for a couple of days. Eeally, I am ashamed to ask you, Lettice, but you are always so — " '• How much do you want \ '' " Oh ! a big sum, rather, if I can get it. Ten pounds.''' •• I can o-ive vou seven, but no more." She O 4/ put out her arm to keep him back. "Xo, Eeginald, there is my hand ; it is enough — you must not kiss me.'' '-' Why not % " " Sit down. I want to tell vou somethins:.'' But as she spoke, there came another knock, and again Bertha entered. *• Please, miss, Mr. Cvril Vavasour wishes to see you particularly, he says." " The devil he does ! " exclaimed Rednald. " I don't wish to see him — at least here. A REQUEST GRANTED. 251 Where shall I go, Lettice 1 See, I can go into the inner room, and then on to the staircase, and so out, whilst he is with you here. Thanks for the money. All right. Don't say I was here." "Go, go. Tell Mr. Vavasour to come up- stairs. Bertha." She went and looked at herself inquisitively in the glass, turning from it as the door was re-opened and admitted Vavasour. He came forward unhesitatingly, and offered his hand. " You were right, you see, in your prophecy. I have come first to ask a favour ; and this time I think you will grant it, though again it refers to Reginald Dormer." "And it is " " Why, the young fool has left London ; has, in fact, eloped with a girl whom I know." '•'How long since '? " He looked at his watch. " Just three hours ago. The girl does not, cannot care for him, or I would not raise my finger in the matter. She is using him for one of her purposes. I am in a position to let him 252 FROM PILLAR TO POST. know the truth. When he knows it, let him please himself. They are making for the border, and for Thistlewood.'' • " Thistlewood ! " " Yes. Now you understand, perhaps, why I come to you. I remembered at once your telhng me that you were born there, and know the country by heart. One blunder in the pur- suit might be fatal to my overtaking them in time to prevent the mischief contemplated. You will come 1 " '*' Yes, I will accompany you with pleasure. But how do you come by all this information 1 ^' " Throu2;h the oirl's maid." Lettice turned to the fire and poked it. ^' Yes— well?" " No sooner has this woman helped in the scheme, and they have started, than, left alone, she repents, and comes to me with the story. Could I not prevent the marriage, and yet keep the adventure a secret ? Like all repentant people, she seemed more in an agony than in her senses." Again Lettice poked the fire. A REQUEST GRAIs^TED. 253 " Thistle wood is close to his grandfather's place — to Mr. Chesterfield's/'' he continued. " Did he ever tell you that '? '' '• Oh, yes ! And I know Thistlewood Manor as well as Kotten Eow. But when are we to start '? "'" Again he looked at his watch. '•In an hour and a half. Can you be ready 1 '' " I am ready now." " It's a fatiguing journey. We shall sjDend all the night in the train ; and we shall have to post the whole of to-morrow. Be ready by six, and I will call for you." " Good ! You may depend on me." CHAPTER XII. TRAVELLING COMPANIONS. — ALL OVER. Thistlewood is on the border-land, the scene in former centuries of many a splendid harry, the shelter of many a titled robber. The hills that rise in lines all but parallel along its limits are of considerable range, though not of height. But their bleak and barren sides had once won for them a border proverb. It had seemed as if in those brackeny wastes Nature bore ten- derer offspring only, like the mothers of Lace- daemon, to expose them to die, scorning to suckle any save the sturdy scions imjDregnated by the spirit of the storm. But Time and the temper of man have somewhat broken that sullen chain of mountains, and made outlying plots at least subserve the necessities of the altered days. Aided by fire and the harsh strokes of the harrow, cultivation has stealthily TRAYELLIXG COMPANIONS. 255 climbed those heights, long deemed inaccessible ; barley waves its beneficent banner on slopes where once the heather would scarcely bloom ; and partridge-broods stir the autumn corn where the bittern boomed over the morass, and the blackcock called along the crags. Yet ever and anon Nature seems to stir, and claim from the theft of man her appanage and her home. Fierce storms awake in the cradle of the hills, and shriek aloud for the parent they have lost. " Great Heavens ! what a nio-ht ! Can vou shelter here 1 " "Anywhere, SH you can. I know these nights of old ; have been out in them on those horrible hills hundreds of times. What a pity the place is in ruins ! The outhouses are best, and the horses will not take much harm ; so I don't see that it matters much." There was no grate, but there was a fire- place, and a chimney with a draught that had not been fed for months ; it sucked up the smoke and heat from the huge logs, that she had already gathered and set a-blazing, with a hungry roar. 256 FPvOM PILLAR TO TOST. " I have not forgotten how to make a fire," she said, as Vavasour returned from the stable ; " Come and dry yourself ; you are nearly wet through in helping the man with the carriage ; he could have done it himself. Oh, it is not so bad, after all ; the windows are more or less right. What a glorious fire ! No, take that yourself, whatever it may be ; I can sit on these logs." It had been a comfortable cottage once, and, fortunately for them, had consisted of a second story. The roof was broken in in parts ; the rain pattered on the rafters overhead, and even began in places to drip through upon them. Still, the door closed, in a fashion ; only a couple of panes w^ere broken ; and the fire glowed like a Cyclopean furnace. And there they sat by it ; the boy who left his home ; the girl who was kind to him in his self-imposed but difficult exile, with the separation and the experience of the vears to meddle w4tli the sensations of their meeting — Cyril, and Tiny Forde. Yet were they again together ; the boy burst into the man, the girl grown into the w^oman. Her TEAYELLIKG COMPAIs^lONS. 257 large liandsome cloak was gathered round her, and over the large nnshapen logs : her hair, travel-loosened, hung waywardly doT^'n ; her dehcate hands, free from jewels, were simply clasped upon her knee ; her large, unwandering eyes, that had lost no lustre, centred upon him ; and her look and figure, from the spot where she sat, fawned as of old, though with none of the old tenderness, upon the once warm friend, now callous stranger, who addressed her. Through every change she had preserved this pristine peculiarity which had won him long ago ! During the journey they had exchanged but few sentences. He had attended to her wants, and for the rest had preserved a guarded cold- ness, which she had met with a cheerful interest in everything on the route, except himself. It is not difficult to be silent in a railway-carriage, nor even (if you particularly desire it) in a post-chaise ; and so their conversation had all along been meagre. They would have to talk now, if they intended to stay where they were for any length of time. 25 S PEOM PILLAR TO POST. " Very odd, very odd;"^ he said, " that we should hear nothing of them anywhere ! I fear we shall miss them. "What an idiot the boy is ! and that — that — '' he was not audible — '*' of a girl : " '' There is no fear of our missing them/*' she answered, with marked quietness ; they must enter Thistlewood by this road, that's certain, and pass through Flinton, that last village, you know. No, we shall not miss them.'' He felt annoyed that her manner should be such a contrast to his own ; that she should speak with a calm confidence, and he with a hesitating anxiety. He was silent again. " Do you remember Emma ? " she asked, after a long pause. He started. '•' It was Emma ; of course, it was Emma.'' '-' What — who was Emma \ '' '' "Wliom I saw the other nio'ht.'' '• Where ^ " ^- On a door-step in the Strand — dead." *•' Dead ! Dear, dear! I got an almost un- readable letter from her a week ago, begging TRAYELLIXG C0.MPAXI02h"S. 259 for assistance. I was at Brighton wlien it ar- rived, and so it lay in London a fortnight. I drove to the address it gave — some dreadful slum in Drmy Lane — as soon as ever I read it, but she Tvas not there, and no one could help me. Dead ! on a doorstep ! Cold and hunger, I suppose ; and I might have saved her had I known sooner. The evenings we have spent together ! '' '•' We 1 Yes, both of us. I remember well." '' Ah 1 and so do L How I loathed her after the night you suddenly left ! We never spoke ao'ain, thouo;h we met often." '' Loathed her ! Why did you loathe her 1 " She stared steadily at him. " The time for affectation has, I should think, left vou ; yet the time that has come might have enlightened you without appealing to me. If you did not know then, you might have ■ looked back since with. the eyes of your expe- rience, and guessed why I loathed her. I loathed her because she taught you to loathe me — to loathe and leave me. I know well enough what hurried you home ; you shrank s 2 260 FROM PILLAR TO POST. from the hand that had never done anything but nursed you. Nay, I am not taunting ; the idea of tauntino; a man for what he did eio-ht years ago ! Of course you are wiser now, and shrink as Httle from this journey with me as I shrink from telhng you of a love which I no longer feel. She is dead ! — hah ! — on a door- step ; you are — aye, I know it — like your neighbours ; and I — I am going to be married. You were right to go, after all ; though you left me a gold heart, which I have yet, and a living, sorrowing heart, which I liave got rid of. I kept even the last a long time, though. I was in earnest when I asked you to stoop to be my friend. I think your refusal completed my emancipation.^' " I had no option but to refuse, as I thought and felt then ; a year later I should have granted your request." " A year later I should not have made it,'' she rephed ; " but tell me, if you will — I am curious — a year later would you have made your request \ " " About Reginald % '' TRAYELLIXG COMPAXIOlsrS. 261 " Yes, about Reginald. Would you ? " *' Yes. Were there any use in it, I would renew it now. That I am here is some proof/'^ " True ; we remain interested in people from habit, long after the motive has left us. That / am here is a proof of that!' " I have answered you one question ; will yoic answer another '? Since you say, or insinuate, that you are here from your former interest in me, why did you refuse my request when you were sufficiently interested to implore my friend- ship 1 " " Oh yes, I will answer it : it has ceased to be of importance. Reginald Dormer has a sister, or had. A sister is naturally interested in her brother ; you owned to a similar interest in the boy ; my interest at once extended to all the three. The explanation is simple. I said that you should come back, and I intended that you should. I came to give up both the desire and the intention ; but you see you have come, for all that. Fate survives our poor plots ; and, as I say, I am going to be married — to a friend 262 FROM PILLAR TO POST. of jours — while Emma freezes to death on a doorstep." " A friend of mind. May I ask his name ? " " Frank Morley only. His mother had not left me ten minutes Tvhen you called yester- day ; had but just risen from her knees — yes, her knees — imploring me not to marry her son/' He made her almost start from her seat by the loud gust of laughter with which he leaped from his, and momentarily drowned the howl of the night wind. He strode up and down the rain-dabbled floor, with his arms out- stretched and his head flung back, breaking out again anon into short, sharp laughs of harsh pleasure that were anything but pleasant ta hear. He was telling to himself again the gossip that had grated on him so when he heard it from the lips of the flaxen-haired doll in the London ball-room, the fairest flower from whose bouquet he had won with tender looks and tender words, and then cursed and crushed beneath his heel. " Ha, ha ! there are distinctions, you know," TP.AVELLIXG COMPAXIOXS. 263 he said aloud, repeating the words that he had never forgotten ; '•' there is a difi'erence between them. What would they all give to annihilate it now 1 "' She had quite recovered from the effect of his first wild outbreak, and sat composedly gazing at the fire. It did not seem his plea- sure to enhghten her as to his soliloquy, so she would not notice it. " Have you ever pubhshed your poem ! " she asked at length, when, though still walking about the room, his face had settled into a smile. He stopped, as if recalled to her presence. " Um — er — pardon me. My poem "l Oh no ; am just where I was. Tiny, eight years ago, or fiulher back, since ^ou believed in me then, and no one believes in me now. So you are goins: to marrv Morlev 1 He resumed his seat. " And Mrs. Morley wants to dissuade you, and cannot 'i " " And cannot. The morahty of moral people strikes me as singular. She is pious, at any rate, and comes and offers me money not to get 264 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. married. Truly, money is sufficiently abundant, without iier generosity ; and the love of virtue more plentiful than she seems to fancy, even in places where she imagines there is none at all. But in those places, as well as in others with which she is better acquainted, the virtue which is its own reward is not over safe. The virtue that wins a husband and an income is the virtue that can best be relied on ; I find morality ready made for me, and I am going to accept it.^' He knew w^ell enoudi how his own mind had grown in the eight years, but he looked, and marvelled if it had developed as extensively as her own. Yet, was there any cause for wonder, except the wonder of conceit 1 The capacity for development is limited neither to sex nor sphere, and the circumstances that encourage the capacity had been at least as favourable to her as to him. " Yes, yes ; '' he said, musingly. " Security and certainty are the aims of our constant endeavours, and ^^ou are right to prefer the harbour of a home." TEAVELLIXG COMPANIONS. 265 " You think so now, do you ? Yet you left yours for an object which you own you haYe not eYcn yet at all accomplished — nay, which perhaps you liaYO abandoned. I may haYe left mine for a reason less paltry than yours, but with a result more disastrous. Suppose I grant that the o-ratification of self was the motiYO of both (it certainly was yours), you may talk of your ^Yhim where you like, and, at most, people will laudi. Talk of mine, and mauY will refuse to talk to you at all. See, I haYe driYon the cattle home from those hills on nights to which this is gentle ; half clothed, ill-fed, noYer thanked ; I have scrubbed that floor." '' This ! " *' Yes, this. This cottage where we sit was my home for years. Do you ask me if I deplore my change \ I should lie if I told you I did. I would rather rechne by a fire than make it ; I would as lief be petted by a lord as sworn at by a boor. It is pleasanter — haYe you tried it \ — to loll in a carriage than to shuffle barefooted and bleeding along the flinty, miry lanes." She drew her tresses forward, 266 FEO.AI PILLAR TO POST. ai]cl played with them against her cheek. '•Perfumes in the hair are preferable to snow and sleet ; and there is a magic in the notes of operatic music which you would fail to find in the lowing of cattle heard in the pauses of the winter wind. Virtue its own reward ! Ko, the world is arranged differently to that. It is a doctrine not difficult to preach when one hand reposes on a velvet cushion, and the other grasps a lace handkerchief worked by the prettiest lambs of a pet fold. I like this lama cloak ; it is warmer and softer than serge, or none at all. Which would Mrs. Morley prefer, or her daughters, think you 1 I fancy we should be found to agree. I do not hke this damp stone floor, do you ? '' She shivered. " It does not suit my thin boots, or my consti- tution. Who has arranged it for me that I am not scrubbing it still, or dead, like Emma, upon another 1 " "You are not defending yourself to me, surely 1 It is altogether unnecessary." " I am defending myself, perhaps, against myself; but I am going to marry Morley, and TEAYELLIXG COMPANIONS. 267 sliall liaye no one then to defend myself against — -except his mother." "Defend yom*self ao-ainst ^vhom you Y'ill, you solve no riddles for me. We each of us think our own history the great practical para- dox ; I have my history too. It is something for us to be sitting here, and both pretty well satisfied ; we are neither of us without a clue to the o-reat enio-ma.'^ It was spoken aloud, and yet scarcely to her. Immediately he added, rising : " It seems to me we shall be here all night ; it is well we are supplied with provisions ; I will have some, you had better do the same." He opened the door and called out to the post-boy who was in the stable. *' He says he is sure nothing has passed. It rains and blows harder than ever, and there is snow too, now. We had better warm the wine ; you will do it better than 1.'^ " There is a risk of cracking this bowl, but I will try.'^ She bent over the fire. " Really, I don't understand this, they must be ahead of us.^' 268 FROM PILLAR TO POST. " ISTo, they are not ; I have good reason for knowing." " What do you know 1 " "I know/' she answered, stirring the wine with a broken twig, " that your friend, whoever she may be, did not leave London yesterday with Eeginald Dormer at the time you fancy." " How can you possibly know that ? " " Because I saw Eeginald three hours after you suppose he started. He left my room •yesterday, just as you entered it.'' "As I entered it! And he did not leave London by the same train as we did, most cer- tainly ; therefore we must have left him " " In town. Exactly." " And 3^ou knew this all along '? " " How could I help knowing it 1 " " D— n ! And you " To find oneself a fool by the machinations of others, is tlie most unpleasant discovery that a man can make. Horribly it dawned upon him that he had been made such by three people, one, if not two of whom had the greatest possible motive to make him ridiculous, w^hilst TKAYELLIXG C0:MPAXI0XS. 269 the third could enjoy a joke hke the rest of the world. The idea of a man being such an ass as to believe the mere word of a waitino--maid. His companion still attended to the sherry. "And you are in the ^^lot with Miss'"' — he checked himself — '•' with them to carry out this silly scheme ? " " With whom ? ISTay, I am no one's confi- dante, not even yours, and certainly not Regi- nald's. He simply called to ask me for what he has often asked before — money ; and when you came with your story, I became a little cuiious to see how my money was to be apphed. Besides, I fancied the journey ; it has already amused me. I think they will come ; yes, yes, they will come ; though I know as much as I have told you, not a word more. The sherry is quite ready, but we have no sugar." He stood and thought. " Very well. This much is clear. Either — though you are not in it — they have played a poor joke, or she wished me to know of the meditated elopement and go after her ; or rather, to start before her and prevent it. In 270 FliO^I PILLAR TO POST. either case my part in the affair is over. I am going to return, if you are not.^^ He opened the door. Distinctly came the sound of wheels and hoofs : the pace was a gallop. She hastily joined him at the threshold. The Tehicle, though invisible, was audibly close upon them. Above the stamp of the horse's feet, and the rattle of the wheels, shot up a voice into the night. '' For Heaven's sake ! Oh ! there ! Yes — great "' A stumble, a fall, a splashing sound, followed by a shower of wet and mud, and the silence was complete. Vavasour rushed into the hut, snatched a log that was well a-flarae from the hearth, and hmTied back. Before him was a horse that had shaken itself from the broken shafts. Blanche Latimer, her teeth set, her right hand grasping her left wrist, her face pale as the falling flakes ; and Tiny on her knees in the road, supporting with her arm the head of Eeginald Dormer. " Yes, yes — so ; he is not too heavy for you? Slowly — slowly ; let the weight fall on me. Mind the door ! Down now, down.'' ALL OVER. 271 They laid him before the fire, placing his back against the logs. Snow was in his golden hair, snow on his smooth face, snow on his dabbled breast ; but side by side with the snow, on his hair, on his hps, on his vest, was blood ! his own. " It's no use — it's no use ; he's dead — stone dead ! " "Dead! No, no, not dead!" And the figure, which had stood huddled against the door, rushed to the motionless corpse. " Yes, dead ! and you have killed him. Leave him, both ! You pair of Sybarites ! leading him with your wily wantonness to his death. You Hked his smooth cheeks — look at them now. Off ! I say. Eeginald ! Eeginald ! I was to be kind to you, for her sake ; and I shall bring her — your corpse." The postiKon stood by, amazed and helpless. "Don't stand there, dolt! The horses, put them to at once. You come, either of you ! Where are you to go ? What is it to me % Comfort each other, as you are well alle.'' " I am ready, sir." 272 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. " Then, to Mr. Chesterfield's. Here, help rae, boy ! You know the manor ? " They placed the heavy inanimate body as best they could inside the carriage, Vavasour following. " No one comes with me ; no one, I say.'' " You must return for us; indeed, you must." " Yes, Miss ; but it'll be a good hour first : it's four good miles each way." "Kow, on! on! as fast as you can." He looked at his watch. " They will yet be up ; but the faster the better. On ! on ! " CHAPTER XIII THE EXDIXG OF THE LAXE. Reekixg ^vitli STveat, and the ^'et mud en- crusting their panting belhes, the post-horses stood before the iron gates of Thistlewood Manor. The rain and snow had been blown away : the moon had broken out high up in the skv, and the tattered clouds scudded across her pale scared form in mad succession. " Ko one at the lodge, sir." '■' But YOU can open the gates, surely 1 Shall I get out and help you ^ " '•'No, sir, no ; it's all right ; that's it." '•'Mind YOU 2:0 round to the back, and as I/O quietly as possible." " Am I to go back for the — the ladies. n ',1 '• Yes, if you like. You will find me to- morrow at the Swan in Thistlewood. I suppose 274 FRO:\I PILLAR TO POST. you will stay there to-night ; you don't intend posting hack home till the morning *? '' " Hardly, sir. Them horses is all hut done. But where will the ladies want taking to \ ' "I cant tell you. I dout know^ That is their affair. But, — look you, — have the sense to hold your tongue ahout this accident. The family may not want an inquest, or any- thing ahout it to get into the papers : it will he worth your wdiile to show your discretion." " I understand all that hard enough. Shall I go on, sir, now^ ? " ''Yes, quietly." He looked at his watch. " Only half-past ten. Good God ! what w^U she say \ wdiat will she do I However, I must perform my part as hest I can." He walked round to the front door, where a servant who had assisted in carrying the dead boy into the house promised to meet him. Sin- gularly enough, the door was open ; hut he waited till the man arrived. " Dreadful business this, sir ; better not tell master to-night. He is up and in the hhrary, but probably asleep, and doesn't let any one go THE EXDIXG OF THE LANE. 275 near him unless lie rings. Better wait till to-morrow/' '•'Yes, yes ; perhaps we had. But I want to see Miss Dormer." " You know her, sir 1 '*' "I know her well. Give her my name — Vavasour — Mr. yaYasom\ I will break it to her." '-' Very sorry there's no fire, sir, in this room ; but perhaps you would not mind."' " Not at all. Only tell her at once." He was alone. Could the remembrance of the last time he had sought her fail to rush upon his mind \ Xeither then nor now had time been given him to collect his words or his resolution ; each time had circumstance hurried him to her presence, novr even more rapidly than then. With the opportunity of hesitation, then and now would he probably have shrunk from his errand. That was not happy even in its commencement : deplorably disastrous in its results. How had' this begun'? how would it end ? She was coming : she was before Inm. He had determined to speak straight away ; but T 2 276 rRO:SI PILLAR TO POST. her appearance silenced him. How altered even from her former self I Her face, when he had seen it in London, had shown a ruddy health compared to its present pallor ; hers seemed a deUcacy of life borrowed from death. Yet it was the countenance of Mary Dormer still, and the sight of it jerked into his a hue that had not been in it for months and months, and an imcertainty into his tones to which they had been lono- a strano-er. Her hand, wdiich she gave him, and which he kept mechanically in his, and she did not offer to vrithdraw, was cold and unlivino*. " I have come, Miss Dormer, with not very good news. Your brother has met with an acci- dent, a severe accident, and there is some " " My brother is dead, is he not 1 tell me. I see by your face that he is dead. Speak, speak ! " '^ He is." He grasped her hand more firmly : he scarce knew what to anticipate ; he was ready to accept the worst. " God's will be done V' she said, simply. The THE EXDIXG OF THE LAXE. 277 tears hesitated in her eyes ; she closed over them the loiio: dark lashes, as he had so often seen and marked her close them in the golden gone-away days ; again she raised them, and the tears seemed to have been sent back. "Thank you, Mr. Vayasour ! thank you. I know you were always good to him. You will be good to him just once more — and to me. He must be buried near papa at Onchester — not here — not here : but in the cemetery where papa is — where mamma is. Will you see to it \ Of course I shall go to the funeral ; and you will — will you not V Yes, yes — he would do all — all — that she might ask : what more could he do \ iS^othing ; that was all. And this was the girl whom he had spoken of as the one whose heart six hundred a-year and a mere freak of finance would have brouo-ht throbbing — where he had sworn by God's truth that it should never throb — upon his own ! He gazed : and he felt that he had foully wronged and foully sworn. Man ! you were a boy again, so at this moment you could perfect perjury, and fold her to your form 1 Fool ! you are not 278 FRO^l PILLAR TO POST. ffoino; to torment her now ? not about to ask her if with her brother's corpse you may divide the empire of her heart '? I know not what he might have done ; his looks were very wild ; but her low patient voice summoned him back from the hot pursuit of his careering brain. '•Do you not hear voices across the halH There is somebody with grandpapa ; listen ! " She opened the door : througli one imme- diately facing it came the sound, momentarily oTOwino* louder. There seemed to be an alter- cation. They could catch the words : " I will know if . . . It's no . . . Now, by . . . Look you ! . . ." " Oh, Mr. Vavasour ! who can it be ? They are both in passion.'^ Louder grew the voices ; louder and more distinct. They crept into the hall ; and clear, fast, and furious came the words. " Then, by the God who made us both ! I will know or will strangle you where you stand ! " They hastened into the room. The old man held a stout stick hidi in the air — it was de- THE ENDI^^G OF THE LANE. 279 scencling ; an arm clutclied at it, wrung it from his grasp, and flung it on the floor with a Laugh of disdain. The hack of the man was turned towards them; the arm might be anybody's; but the scornful laugh was — Vavasour knew it as quickly as he heard — the laugh of Guy Blacklock. "Curse it! shut the door!" foamed out Mr. Chesterfield. "Would you have my menials see this fellow ? . . . Well, then — the woman is rotting in Thistlewood churchyard, and be d to her! as you would have been long ago, if curses could kill." " I might have wronged him, not he me ! " exclaimed Blacklock, bitterly. And pulling his hat over his eyes, and without a glance of recognition at Vavasour, he hurried from the house. The old man had sunk back into his chair. " Come away ; come away ! " Mary wdiispered, and drew Vavasour from the room. " I know not w^hat this is; but it is terrible! terrible I but I shall leave it all now. Go, Mr. Vavasour ! please, go 1 j I will come to Onchester with 280 FROil PILLAR TO POST. poor Reginald ; you ^vill be there 1 Tliursdaj -will be the best day, if it will suit you." " And the hour '? '*' " Half-past ten." " And you can do the rest yourself, here '? " "Quite well — quite Avell. Go, go! He has rung his bell, and may want me ; thank you ! thank you ! Heaven reward you, I cannot." He walked round to the back of the house again, took one last look at Reginald, kissed the callous lids he had never kissed before, and turned awa}^ Down the long winding avenue he slowly strode, defiant of the bitter wind, and would-be defiant of the bitterer sorrow. Faster and faster scampered the loosened clouds ; more and more scared looked the distracted moon, as though she would retire into herself, or away from their unkind mocker}^ and could not. He approached the iron gateway. Over a wicker paling by its side, but without, leaned a figure gazing into the grounds. Yavasour stood and fronted him ; he started. " Yavasour ! " " Yes ; did you not see me just now "?" THE EXDIXG OF THE LAXE. 281 '' See you ! Where 1 " " There ; in the manor ; ^'ith your — your — yom' father." " Xo, no ; ^Yait/"^ He threw back his hair. " Let me think. Surely — yes — some one came into the room whilst I was with — with him'^ (he seemed to avoid the name that Vavasour had used). " Was it you 1 " " I was one. A girl whom I have known lono- and whom I must conclude to be vour niece, was the other."' Quite disregarding the question, he exclaimed, quickly and fiercely : " What did you hear ? " "The first I heard," said Vavasour, quietly and slowly, '•' was a threat sufiiciently horrible ; but it was fi:om youP " Oh, he had maddened me ! You did not hear, then, what preceded it ; if you had ! Oh, if you had 1 I besought him with lip service, with the accents of a beggar, with the humility of a galley-slave ; and for what % Sim23ly to tell me if Nelly lived ; or, if she was dead, where she lay — or anything, anything that 283 FROil PILLAR TO POST. could assure me of her fate, even if it ^'as the worst. He mistook my mood ; at first, he used me with a stupid silence, then with taunts, at last with jeers and ridicule ; and in my wild passion I told him I would wring from him either what he knew, or his lifes breath. It was then you entered. Did you see the paltry rage with which lie struck at me '? His im- potence recalled me to myself. You heard his final words ; they drove me from his presence, for I feared to sta}-, lest at last I might fulfil my threat. Good God ! '' He relapsed into silence, leaning over the gateway, and gazing into an invisible land. The strange fact, altogether unaccounted for, that Vavasour should be at Thistlewood Manor — the new light which had of necessity dawned upon him as to Blacklock s real name and birth — the singularity of their meeting, so shortly after the assurance that they would meet no more, — these would have suggested to most people, if not curious questioning, at least a passing remark. But Blacklock neither inquired, nor appeared to wonder. And as for Vavasour, THE EXDIXG OF THE LANE. 283 had he too not reason to find m silence com- panionship enough '? Who was this strong, outlawed man, whose words had awakened him to new worlds of thought ; whose history, so recently told, had been banished from his mind only by occurrences whose relationship to self had made for a time more predominant 1 The brother of that May Chesterfield, whose daughter had been — aye, still was, the magnet of his life ! The old eyenino's at Onchester came back before him ; scene chasing scene rushed across his mind ; but ever mingling with the brightest, the two orphans, the dead brother, the living sister, the grave of the Artist and poor May. Death over some — Sorrow over all. Love and Hate, Genius and Failure, contradictions and contrasts inextricably intertwined. '•' A melancholy errand,"*^ Vavasour said at last, " brought me to Thistlewood ; it is my first visit. I never saw Mr. Chesterfield but once before ; but 3Ir. Dormer I knew well. Your sister I never knew. That was their orphan who was with me. Did you see her '? '' "No." 2S4j from pillar to post. " I brought her the news of her brother's death, your sister's other child ; your nephew, in fact/^ " I suppose so," he said ; " I suppose so. Both Dormer's children. I recollect meeting him in Italy, his runaway marriage with ]\Iay, and that man's curses, and his forbidding the whole family to correspond with them in any way. That was six months before — before my — you know what I would say. It is idle for me to pretend that I care for, or am interested in, the death of the boy, or the life of the girl of whom you speak ; that I care for any of them. Oh, Nelly ! Nelly ! you thought you had none of my love, and you had it — all ! " " Come," said his companion, " come away. It is perhaps but poor consolation to offer, but there may be truth in the words he spoke, for they were spoken in passion. She 7na?/ he lying asleep in Thistlewood churchyard, and there, perhaps, you may discover memorials to reconcile you at once to the j)ast and the future.'^ Blacklock stopped suddenly and faced him. THE ENDING OF THE LANE. 285 *' There is something in what you say — something in what you say. Thanks! thanks ! Oh, yes ! yes! somethino- in what you sav.'^ They walked on. Vavasour himself was forced internally to own that he at least could not see anything in his own suo-g:estion. "What could brino; ISTellv to Thistle- wood at all ? Yvliy should she be buried there ? Fearful to encourage a false hope, he at length hinted his doubts. " Xo ! you were right at first,'' Blacklock answered, doggedly. " Strange that I should not have thoudit of it before ! It is certain — certain — that his inducing me to remain at Thistlewood those few weeks before returning to the University was part of a scheme ; certain that by some devilish machination he misled both mother and dauditer. and removed them beyond the power of my discovery ; certain that he knew where they were when I rushed back home and taxed him with deceivino: me. "What more likely than that he should eventually bring ^N'elly within his immediate power — here — here ; and that, after I know not what cruel sorrows, she died, and lies where the savage 2S6 FEOM PILLAR TO POST. said she was rotting. Would to God she died — died soon ! '•' yes, yes ! it icould be a con- solation to know that she slept there or any- where, either with grass or waves, or what you will, above her. I should be reconciled ; I should be reconciled. But not to know — to know nothino; ; to be in a^'onisino- io;norance whether she wastes her days in a cellar, a hos- pital, a prison ; to be blind to all, and so be forced to dwell upon the worst ; it is horrible : so horrible, that it drove me again with sub- mission to seek that relentless man whom I must own as father. There may be truth in his words. God grant I may find it so ! I ask for nothing; better than to know — know beyond question that she is dead.'^ '• Do vou mind — walkino- — more — more slowly I ''' asked Vavasour : '•' you blow me.'' His companion's strides were immense, and every moment increased. '• How far are we from Thistlewood viliao-e '? '' o ^' Xot more than a mile now.^' " Well, I sleep there to-night — at the Swan ; there is such an inn. is there not '? " THE EXDING OF THE LAXE. 287 " There used to be." " Well, sleep tliere, too ; to-morrow we can talk this over, and perhaps discover the truth ; at least the mere truth with which you say you will rest satisfied." " Be it so ! " They walked on in silence till they reached the Tillage ; it was past midnight, and they had to rouse the landlord of the Swan from sleep. " Any room for us '? " '' Plenty, sir — plenty.'^ There was no talk of supper that night ; silently they separated to their respective cham- bers ; but Vavasour had only just begun to un- dress, when a knock was given at his door, followed by the entrance of Blacklock. '' I micst come to you again. Do you really think I may hope 1 do you think we shall find her grave 1 Oh, if the day would dawn ! " He strode up and down the room. Vavasour sat upon the bed. A\'as this, he thought, the sneering, defiant, haughty man, whose words of reckless challenge to the world's opinions and the heart's affections had so often made uneasy 288 FROM PILLAR TO POST. his blood 1 Excited, nervous, pitifully anxious, he came to ask a question anew Tvhich a child would scarcely have put once, and no one could answer him. " Do you think there is hope 1 I have wandered up and down country ways, and foul tovrn alleys, peering into rose-guarded cot- tages and fever-held cellars, ever on the gaze for Nelly's face. I kept that toll-bar, thinking she might some day pass. I have given up the search again and again, but ever to return to it. The thought of her has whipped me into re- newals of my melancholy journeys. Slie looked at me from every book I read as soon as I came to love it ; she peeped at me through the blossoming spring hedges ; she gazed at me from the surface of the snow", ever with one face — the face of her as I saw her last. Can we not summon up the sun 1 Ya-vasour, Vavasour ! is there — is there hope ? " •'My dear fellow ! you must speak more calmly, or no discovery could bring you peace. With that face of which you speak you can never hope to see her. If she is dead — yes, dead — and you come to know it, you must believe (and THE EXDIXG OF THE LAXE. 289 it is probable) that she died without too much suffering, and with some kind thoughts of you. Sit here, and hsten to me. After all, ^TOuld it not be better to believe -without further in- quiry 1 He said she was dead : doubtless she is; and if she be in that quiet churchyard, there's an end/*' " Ko, no ! there is not an end. When I left her, I left her, I am sure, with the capacities of a mother ! Even if she be dead, and dead down there, a son — a dau2:hter — mavbe both — tread, perhaps, this earth where for that sad possibility I remain a vagrant. I may solve this doubt, too : is it, unsolved, less fearful than the other 1 Oh ! in this life of mine, in which Action has been forbidden me. Thought has thriven with pestilent and unrestful growth ; and Thouo'ht has shown to me that o;eneration o o is the only act — and it the most responsible and irreparable of all — which man can altogether control. It accomplished, he can do little more than accept consequences, be they what they may. Mv religion — mv beliefs — are not the acknowledged beliefs of mv kind ; but I 290 FROM PILLAK TO POST. have them : and I swear to you, by the Gocl of all, that I have never exercised that power since I last lay by Nelly's side ! " There was silence, save in the palpitation of that vast and agitated form. " But you yourself," said Vavasour at length, " confess that the consequences are not in our own hands ; clearly, the consequences of your act are beyond the power of yours. But I will suppose that she is dead ; and, further (though the supposition is arbitrary), that a child of hers — and of yours — survives. Son or daughter, his or her age would be, as I understand from what you told me the other night, about my age — twenty-five. Suppose a son ; suppose him found. I do not wish to harrow, but I wish to persuade. He may be — we are on suppositions, and such things have happened — a proud young patrician, who would not know you ; or a con- demned felon, whom you would not know.'' Blacklock shook his head sceptically. "Sup- pose a daughter, and her found. Again we are on suppositions. She may be the wife of a man brought up| in the rigid orthodoxy of social THE EXDIXG OF THE LAXE. 291 creeds, and the discovery of what the worki calls her illegitimacy might be as unwelcome to her as to him ; or she may be an illiterate menial — nay, a polluted outcast, whether in splendour or in rags/' " Yarasour 1 Yavasour ! You are young, but I thought your insight was truer than this. I will not upbraid you ; for God has gifted you, and you will live to see differently. But do you talk to me of felons and of outcasts 1 You may think yourself superior to both. I do not pre- sume to exalt myself above either. And if these were my ofifsjoring — felon or outcast — I made them what they are. Look you, Yava- sour ! " — he placed his hand firmly upon the young man's shoulder — " to find an idiot would be hard ; to find an intellect only raised above an idiot's by its reasoning depravity would be little less so ; to find a felon would scarcely bring much comfort to the eyes of a father ; to find — for I understand 3^ou, and you are right to put your case forcibly when all are supposi- tions — to find a harlot would, you think, be a discovery better left alone. But I say to you, u 2 292 FROM PILLAR TO POST. I would be nurse to my idiot, I would fondle my felon, protect, as parent and priest, my penitent prostitute, so I found in the cell or the gutter Nelly s child and mine ! Are we immortal, or are we not '? Have we souls, or bodies only "? If, as some believe, we have individual souls, with the privilege of immortality — souls whom sin can stain, but whose stains One Great Father can cancel, shall the accidental father, with the stains on his own, shrink from the stains that assoil his child's 1 If but material bodies, with gift of transitory life, why, sin is like any other stain that simple skill can remove. And do I refuse your hand because, an hour ago, it was splashed with mud? We prate of piety and pardon ; but we are too proud to touch any sores except our own, and then only to hide them. You argue ill ; or, if you argue well, you argue idly. I have, perhaps, a clue to the labyrinth of my life ; I will follow Jt, if it be to the steps of the gibbet or the threshold of a brothel. Yet do I pray that it will lead me only to the flowers upon Nelly's grave.'* " Well, be it so ; and I will give what help I THE EXDIXG OF THE LANE. 293 can. Go ; and try to sleep. Eeally, I must ; I am worn out with the hardest da}^ I ever had." Vavasour, however, did not sleep soundly ; and woke very easily to the knock of the boots, announcing eight o'clock. '•' There's a young lady below wants to see you, sir," he said, when he brought hot water ; *'' as soon as you are dressed, if you please, sir." He was sorrv he had let the man go without asking her name. He would ring. No ; what did it matter 1 It could be but either Miss Dormer, Blanche Latimer, or Tiny Forde : it might be just as well to go on dressing ; he had plenty to occupy his mind, without knowing beforehand what fresh complexity might have arisen. He went down-stairs. " This is the lady's room, sir \" He entered. Before a breakfast-table, pouring water from the kettle into the teapot, was Tiny Forde. He had not failed already to reflect that he had last night treated her both with injustice and discourtesy. She had undertaken 29i FROM PILLAR TO POST. a long, -svearisome journey at his request ; and he had left her in the lurch ^hen its difficulties were at their highest ; left her, too, with rebukes which, if they were merited, were at least in- appropriate. He quite expected to hear no measured accusation of his behaviour ; but, to his surprise and ease, she greeted him with perfect calmness and good-humour. "You were not over-courteous last night,'' she said ; " but I sent for you, not to scold you, but to enlighten you." " I teas both rude and unjust, and I am sorry for it ; but I was distracted with the sudden passion of grief. It was not your doing, at any rate. "Where did you spend the night ? " " Here, to be sure. The chaise returned for us ; and you had not arrived when we got here. I inquired for you.'' '•' And — er \ " " Miss Latimer '? You see I have learned her name, and a good deal more. She came on with me here, but started back at once in another chaise to Flinton, where she had left her maid — your agonised informant. Keally, THE EXDIXG OF THE LAXE. 295 you have been very blind ; but men are dull in these matters/"' '•' Perhaps they are ; but I think I see clearly enouo'h now. However, tell vour storv."^ '•' I never saw any one so unintelKgible as she was at first ; I began to think she had gone mad. Beyond spraining her wrist, she had not received any damage from the fall ; but I cer- tainly thought she had lost her wits. I gathered a connected story from her in the end. How, with your knowledge of what had jDassed be- tween you, you could have been duped by her maid's tale, I cannot understand. Tl^hy, it seems the girl has been madly in love with you ; that (of course, as she makes out) you have behaved very badly, and that she wanted to save her pride at Reginald's expense. She had not the shcrhtest intention of marrvino- him : but the poor bo}^ was as wild about her as she was about you. She thought you cared for her sufficiently to be jealous of him." Yavasour laudied aloud. *• She thought so, I say, and so found in him a convenient tool. But you see it all ? " 296 FEOM PILLAR TO TOST. " Of course I do, though it ^-as a bold stroke. How fatally it has turned out." He was silent a moment. " As you say, I was an idiot to believe that maid. But how came they to be in a gig, such a night as it was, and how did the accident occur '? Did she explain that ? " " Why, you see, she was all along anxious for delay, he for haste. He feared to be over- taken, she not to be overtaken. At the stage before Flinton — what's the name of it '? " ^' I know where you mean,'' " Yes. Well, it was here he lost his temper, and threatened to turn back altogether if she would not yield to his scheme of saving time by leaving the maid behind, and going forward in a gig ; post-horses they could not get till ■the following morning. They had not gone a ^^ 01 A_c;nrw 11 'fi9 General Library