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Buried Diamonds. By C. C. FRASER-TYPLER. Mistress Judith. 2] LONDON: CHATTO AND ir/NDf/S, PICCADILLY, iV. THE WAY OF THE WORLD A NEW EDITION CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1889 Digitized Iby the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/wayofworldOOnnurr 823 THE WAY OF THE WORLD. CHAPTER I. A YOUNG man was leaving home and the widowed mother who had made the shabby house homely. He was a very small young man in stature, but rather above the average height in courage, and he believed in himself profoundly. He had as yet failed to decide about the future, except in a general way, and only time could tell whether he would be a London Editor, Prime Minister, or Lord Chief Justice. He was a very small young man indeed, but his hair rose high above a clever-looking face and a compact big head, and his carriage did what it could to atone for the brevity of his figure. He had eyes of singular keenness, but no depth, and he faced the world Avith a heart full of pluck and cheek and self-importance. What with his aspect of alert impudence and courage, his exceeding smallness of body and the upstanding hair wliich crowned his head like the cropped comb of a fighting cock, he was prodigiously like a bantam. A dingy room in a dingy house was the scene of the only farewell the small young man had to offer. The widowed mother was as faded as the furniture, and her drooping air contrasted strangely with the fearless promise of success which was blazoned on her son's face and figure. There was a musty smell in the room, — traceable to the little front shop on which it opened, where the packets of haberdashery on the skimpy shelves had somehow a fatal look of never being untied. The gauze of the smartest cap in the widow's window had lost its crispness, and its artificial flowers had reached an artificial autumn, and looked bedraggled and forlorn. The very painted letters above the window seemed to have faded out of shamefacedness, and 2 THE WAY OF THE WORLD. announced the name they spelled in a sort of husky lettered whisper. Mrs. Amelia was the name painted on the wrinkled scrap of boarding over the shop window, and Ishs. Amelia was the widowed mother who cried at the farewells of the very small young man. " Don't take on, mother," he said, in a crisp, loud voice. " Ten shillings a week will be a help to you, and I can afford that. I can live on thirty. And whatever increase of salary I get, you profit by it ; that's a promise. I shall always send a quarter of my income home." You're a good son, William," said the widow, drying her eyes — vainly just yet. "I mean to be," said William alertly. "But you don't seem sorry to leave home," pursued the widow. " Sorry 1 " said the crisp young man. " Of course not. Why should I be sorry at having a chance to help myself and mend your circumstances % I should deserve to be kicked if I pre- tended to be sorry." " You were born and bred in the house, William," mourned his mother. " I certainly did labour under those disadvantages," the young man answered. His attitude and the expression of his face showed how much he approved of this retort. " You might be sorry at leaving it, poor as it is," said the mother. "I might," returned the young man, "if I were a cat, and •capable of contracting unreasonable affections for localities. But, being blessed with brains, I'm not sorry; and, havmg a con- science, I can't pretend to be." Thus early in life had Mr. William Amelia learned to despise sentiment, i^ow the widowed mother would have liked to see a little sentiment infused into his leave-takings. It would have softened the pang of parting if he could have left her a little tenderly. He was a pearl among sons, and had never neglected his duty. She knew how clever he was, and she knew that he had common sense on his side. But a mother's heart is an exigent foolish thing, and somehow common sense is cold comfort for it. " It's worth while, William," said the faded woman, whose €yes were red with crying, " it's worth while to have some love for a place where you've lived for two-and-twenty years, even if the place is shabby." THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 3 " It's worth while, mother," he answered with unshaken cheerfulness, " to have a definite sense of duty to one's-self- and one's own people. I can't put myself into a grateful attitude and sing ' My humble home, farewell ' ; but I can make forty shillings a week, and send you ten. If I loved the place I don't suppose I should leave it." " But you're leaving me as well, William," said the widovf, with her apron at her eyes again. *' That's a different thing," said the young man briskly. " If an affection is worth anything, it's practical. I'm not going to cry at leaving," and he looked singularly unlike that; " but I'm going to do my duty when I'm gone. The proof of the pudding is the eating of it. Good-bye, mother." The small young man's voice was loud and hard, and when- ever he spoke and whatever he said, there was an air of self- approving smartness about him. " Good-bye, William," said his mother, embracing him. " God bless you ! " " God bless you," returned the young man, alert and business- like — as a shop- walker calls " IsTumber six — forward !" Small as he was he looked too big for his portmanteau, assum- ing it to contain, as it did, his whole possessions. He was eminently respectable in aspect, though his tidy tweed suit and his silk hat had alike been brushed too often to retain their freshness. Every barleycorn of his figure had its full advantage as he walked, and in the clearer light of the streets it was notice- able that the constant tucked-up carriage of his head had creased his cheeks into a line which ran below the chin, and promised, if ever he should grow stout, to make that feature double. Courage and resolution are fine things, and the world would be a poor place without them. The young man had them in plenty ; but after all the world is a big place, and he was such a very small young man that there was some sense of disproportion in the coming battle. And yet, he was really almost as clever as he thought himself, and his life sermon on the great Gospel of Getting-On was likely to be effective. He was as keen as a razor and about as sympathetic. As the result of rare good health and a perfect self-opinion, he was almost always cheerful, though his cheerfulness was sterile and comforted the world no more than the play of light on an icicle. There is no denying that he was well furnished for the progress of a pilgrim whose ultimate bright goal was a booth in Vanity Fair. Mr. Amelia was a member of the Fourth Estate. In less lofty B 2 4 TEE WAY OF TEE WOULD. language, a newspaper reporter. It is probable tbat no other business or profession includes within its ranks so varied aii array of mental endowments. There are menm that line ot lite, too stupid to be bricklayers, and there are men of surprising learning and the keenest acumen. No other profession offers such a range of high and low employment. The range includes the penny weekly sheet issued at Mudhole-cum-Podger and the daily prints of the great cities. The reporter at Mudhole-cum- Pod^^er is sometimes below his business, even there, and the reporter of the great town or city is often more than master pt his work, hard and responsible as it may be. He blossoms m due time into the able editor, he reads for the Bar and becomes a famous pleader, he sits on the woolsack, he writes books and is known all over the world. His origin as reporter is almost a proof of want of riches to begin with. If his parents had had money he would have gone into some recognized profession, or would at least have been bound apprentice. IvTewspaper re- portincT is a business in which you may begin very low down indeed That you cannot spell is scarcely a bar against your aspirations. And through it, and ont of it, you can rise to just such heights as your mental endowments fit yon to stand on Icrnorance and incapacity need hardly starve m it. Ee- spectable mediocrity can flourish in it, and a man with brains and resolution can make it a stepping-stone to greatness. Mr. William Amelia entered at the gates of journalism because they were opened to him when other avenues to the land of independent bread and water wer© closed, but he was not long at the business without reflecting on the chances that lay withm it. It was his first ambition to become a parliamentary reporter. What might come when that desire was fulfilled he could not tell. He would at least have planted both feet on the bottom rung of a ladder which had been known already to reach the very zenith of Fame's firmament. Others had mounted as high as the ladder led them. W^hy not he 1 . . . m He was bound southwards, to a country town a hundred miles from his birthplace, and geographically as well as professionally he made a stride towards London. A young man making a new departure in life may be excused if he looks'' kindly on the dreams Hope spreads before him. _ If Mr. William Amelia, in his mind's eye, saw himself occupying positions which were unlikely for him, he was less mistaken m his estimate of himself than many men have been before him. Ho had never been remarkable for a humble bearing, and THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 5 having just administered a severe relDuke to the Prime Minister from his own independent seat below the gangway in a fancy House of Commons he was none the more likely to look sub- missive now, as he stepped from his third-class compartment to the platform. " Can you direct me to the office of the Whig ? " He put the question to a porter in tones so crisp and clear that an elderly man standing at the little bookstall a dozen yards away turned to look at him, and after a second's pause advanced. " Excuse me if I am mistaken," said the stranger. " Have I the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Amelia 1 " "If it is a pleasure," said the very small young man, "you enjoy it." The elderly stranger smiled, languidly and innocently, like a tired infant. His dress was threadbare and a little neglected ; his hair long, ragged, and inclining to grey. " My name," he said, " is Eider — John Hawkes Eider. I am the Editor of the Whig.'" There was a mighty contrast between the Editor and the new Chief Eeporter. The Editor was a man of evident weak refinement. It was obvious that he had never been a gentleman. Probably he had been a compositor with a taste fo"r reading— local rumour said as much — and a gradual way had been opened for him by the hand of friendly circum- stance. He was not at all like the sort of man who makes his own circumstances. When I heard you asking for the office," he said, "I thought you might be Mr. Amelia." His two thumbs went searching irresolutely in his waistcoat pockets as lie spoke. " I'm afraid," he said by-and-bye, " that I haven't a card. But that doesn't matter." "A stock trick," said Mr. Amelia to himself with a smile. He says that to everybody." " Would you like to see the office % " asked the Editor. " You must be tired. Allow me to carry your bag." Mr. Amelia allowed him, and gave the reins to his own reflections. The new Chief Eeporter of the Gallowhay Whig had not read Shelley — he was no great lover of verse — but he knew from observation that man looks before and after, and pines for what is not. He knew that strength and cunning are useful weapons in life's battle-field, and he did not expect to receive quarter or intend to give it. The fancy which showed him his own figure at the editorial desk might be premature without being ridiculous. His own compact big head was compactly filled with brains, and 6 TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. he knew it ; he overflowed with energy and vitality ; under his leadership the WTdg might become a live organ of public opinion instead of the limp invertebrate thing he knew it. "This is the office, Mr. Amelia," said the Editor ; "walk in." He set the portmanteau down before the stationer's counter, and led the way up-stairs into an untidy and dreary room with a tall desk, a couple of tall stools, a table, and two broken chairs for sole furniture. Lounging against the tall desk were two young men, of whom one looked respectable and dull and one seedy and clever. "This," said the Editor, indicating the respectable young man, " is Mr. Flinch, our second reporter, and this," indicating the seedy one, " is Mr. Kyrle-Maddox, our junior. This is Mr. Amelia, gentlemen, our Chief of Staff." He gave something of a humour- ous pomposity to this announcement, and rubbed his hands with the air of a man who is pleased with his own pleasantry. The seedy junior laid down a briar-root pipe and shook hands with Mr. Amelia. The respectable second folloM'ed suit, though he looked as if the salute went against the grain with him. " This," said the Editor, pushing open a creaking door, " is my own den." The word described the apartment fairly. Mr. Amelia peered through the doorway and nodded. " The thunderbolt manufactory'? " he said. "We thunder very mildly here," responded the Editor^ groping irresolutely at his waistcoat pockets with his thumbs. " There is very little party-feeling in Gallowbay." " That's rather a pity, isn't it % " asked Mr. Amelia. " A pity] Surely not," said the mild Editor, taking off his hat and polishing his head with a crimson cotton handkerchief. " Liberal and Tory, lamb and lion, lie down together here. The county papers never touch politics except at election times, and then they only recommend their several candidates. The Inde- imident is the Tory journal in Gallowbay, but it and the Whig have nothing to quarrel about." Mr. Amelia nodded once or twice, but made no verbal response. If the management of the Wliig should ever come into his hands, he thought he could find reasons enough for warfare. The seedy young man had resumed his pipe, and was smoking like a furnace. I'm glad you've turned up," said he, addressing the new chief. Flinch and I have been filthily overworked since Horner left. Haven't we, Mr. Eider 1 You'll find us both a little sore at first. Flinch thinks he ought to have been chief — THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 7 not that he's fit for it, but human vanity's a comprehensive thing — and I certainly ought to have been second." Mr. Flinch accepted this in sulky silence, the mild Editor chuckled, and Mr. Amelia looked inquiringly at the seedy junior. " That was the proprietor's affair, not mine," said the Editor, defensively. " We know that, sir," said the junior, laughing. The whole condition of things in the Wliig office was evidently, to Mr. Amelia's fancy, subversive of discipline. An editor who voluntarily acted as porter on his first introduction to a subordin- ate, and who allowed himself to be addressed with familiarity by the junior member of his staff, was very far removed from Mr. Amelia's ideas of what an editor should be. It was plain that the junior reporter had been bred in a very bad school. "We're all here together," said that young gentleman, with blundering friendliness, " and I don't think we can do better tlian go round to the ' Cow ' and have a drink on the strength of It. IsTot more than others I deserve, yet God has given me more. I have half-a-crown, and it's pay-day to-morrow. You'll come along, Mr. Amelia 1 " "N"o, thank you," said Mr. Amelia, coldly. " You don't drink 1 " asked the junior. " Unless I am thirsty," responded the new chief in his own crisp way. " Ah ! " said the junior ; "I couldn't afford that. I'm thirsty too often." The inoffensive Editor laughed at the junior's repartee, but catching sight of the great disapproval expressed in Mr. Amelia's face, he himself became grave, and expressed a half apology in the feeble chafing of his hands. " It might be convenient, sir," said the chief, " if Mr. Elinch would go with me through an account of the routine work at once." " Certainly, if you wish it," said the Editor. "Mr. Elinch." The speaker waved an uncertain right hand with a vaguely dis- concerted air, and Mr. Elinch produced a dog's-eared diary, ' labelled "Engagement Book," and opened it before his superior officer. " A glass of beer, Mr. Eider ? " said the junior, inquiringly. "Well," said the Editor, still vaguely disconcerted, "while Mr. Elinch explains " The junior opened the door and Mr. Eider edged through it. j 8 THE WAY OF THE WORLD. Mr. Maddox nodded amicably in answer to ^sh. Amelia's up- lifted gaze, and followed his editor. Mr. Amelia turned Ins eyes back to the pages of the dog's-eared diary, and began his work in cold scorn. He had been fifth reporter on a big daily journal in the north, and he knew what discipline ought Mr Eider and the junior reporter had been absent for perhaps a quarter of an hour, when Mr. Amelia heard a great rush upoa the stairs without, and the seedy youth reappeared, out of breath, but still clinging to his pipe and smoking, though with diiii- culty. Close upon his heels came the Editor, also out of breathy and upon the countenance of each was an expression of high excitement. • -, -d-i « A most extraordinary event has happened, said Mr.^ Kicler, gaspino-ly. " A thing quite outside the ordinary routine." Mr. Amelia looked keen inquiry, but said nothing. ''I shall want to bend all the forces of the office to the task," pursued Mr. Eider, when he had partially recovered breath. "You, Mr. Amelia, will oblige me by going to the ' Windgall Arms,' where you will inquire for Mr. Eagshaw. Give Mr. Amelia a note- book and a pencil, Mr. Elinch. Mr. Eagshaw will tell you all he knows, I have no doubt. You will inquire about the newly- discovered heir to the Gallowbay estates— Mr. Bolsoyer Kim- berley. I shall seek a personal interview with Mr. Kimberley. You, Mr. Maddox, can accompany me, and take a note of the conversation. You, Mr. EHnch, had better Avalk up to the Woodlands and ask to see Mr. Sheeney— Mr. Clarence G. Sheeney— who will tell you all about the enhanced value of the estates." "Perhaps," said Mr. Amelia, "I had better know something of the matter beforehand." "Yes," returned the Editor; "it will be as well The late owner of the Gallowbay estates was a minor, and an orphan. He had no known relatives, and was believed to be the last of his line, the survivor of his whole race. Messrs. Begg, Batter, and Bagg, solicitors, have discovered a perfect title to the estates. It is vested in the person of Mr. Bolsover Kimberley, who was a solicitor's clerk this morning, at a salary, I should say, of thirty shillings a week. This evening he is worth at least a million and a quarter sterling." Mr. Eider took off his hat and polished his head with the crimson cotton handkerchief, glancing from one to another of his staff with an almost bewildered air. TBE WAT OF TEE WORLD. 9 "A miUion and a quarter sterling, gentlemen," he repeated. "A million and a quarter sterling." , . " Tidv lump of money, isn't itl " said tlie junior. " If ah'd got it," said Mr. Flinch, " ah'd travel. <■ To the local Asylum," said the junior _ " Fhnch s intellect he added, ^vith an explanatory manner, "is constructed to bear fpressur; of one shilling a ^veek to the square inch. A thirteen '''"MiSrox™ltd\he Editor, mildly, " you are ungenerous. It has always smned to me as unmanly to say a cruel clever thing to a mln who has no faculty of repartee as it would be to hit a man with his hands tied." « T'™ =,,ve T " Or to kick a cripple," returned the junior. I ^ ^me 1 be- your pardon, Elinch. Not that he knows why, sir, and I m sure he doesn't mind. Doyou, Ehnch? ''Ah don't mind," returned Mr. Flinch, surlily. "You can <;av what you like abalit me." , ^ , ^ £ Mr. Ainelia looked sharply from Flinch to Maddox and from Maddox to Eider, taking mental stock of the three. Flinch was Tviously a dullarf. Kider was a child and a very foolish one. Maddox might have some promise m him apart from the bai- kunlg fea°, but his nails were dirty, his clothes dusty and d°so5ered, his boots unblacked and broken, and his linen and h s hair w re monuments to neglect, Mr. Amelia resolved that Maddox should be polished. It did not suit him to have a junior so disreputable in aspect. The disreputability would be reflected back upon himself. " Excuse me,'' he said, " for breaking m on your conversa on, but si:nce there is work to be done might it not be as we 1 to do it? Perhaps Mr. Flinch will direct me to the 'Windgall ^™We will meet here and compare notes before anything is written," said the Editor. " I can show you to the Arms, Mr Amelia. My business lies there as well as yours. On second thoughts, Mr. Amelia, I fancy that it will be more agreeable to m. Kimberley in his altered position to encounter a stranger than to meet one who knew him in his humbler sphere I think that will be a little more thouglitful-more considerate. He put this doubtfully, as if inviting Mr. Amelia s^opmion. ' ' As you please, sir," returned the new chief. "I think;' said the Editor again, "it will be a lit le more considerate. Mr. Kimberley is not a-a self-possessed gen e- man and I knew him in loss fortunate days, and perhaps the 10 THE WAY OF THE WORLD. remembrance of that fact might embarrass hhn. Oiir functions,"" he added with an uncertain smile, " are a httle inquisitorial, Mr. Amelia, and we naturally like to make them as little unpleasant as possible." Mr. Amelia returning no answer to this doctrine other than that conveyed in a crisp nod which might mean, either assent or its opposite, the Editor once more became vaguely disconcerted, and groped in his pockets without appa- rent purpose. " You will ask Mr. Kimberley to furnish you with the chief facts of his career, Mr. Amelia, and his intentions- for the future. I am afraid you will find him a little embarrassed at first." With this he edged himself from the room, and the others- followed. Mr. Flinch turned up the street to the right and the- other three to the left, Mr. Amelia wonderfully erect and self- important, the Editor walking apologetically on a level with him, and the junior with his hands in his pockets and pipe in. mouth bringing up the rear. CHAPTER II. If you are not anybody in particular— and tlie chances are that you are not— you are invited to ask yourself one question before pursuing this history. How do you think you would feel if you suddenly became somebody very particular indeed ? A little embarrassed, do you think ? I fancy so. Your sympathies are requested for Mr. Bolsover Kimberley, a gentleman embarrassed beyond measure. Perhaps you may be better able to sympathize with him when you know more particularly who he was and how he suffered. There was a shadowy unsubstantial- seeming Commodore in the Kimberley family legends. This Commodore had fought somewhere, and was reported to have secured a good handfuf of prize-money. He had bought land, so the legend ran, and had settled on it and flourished exceedingly, llv. Bolsover Kim- berley used sometimes to speak of his ancestor, the Commodore Lolsover's father had used the phrase before him, and it was- generally conceded that it was a reputable sort of thing to have had a Commodore in the family. Bolsover began life in canary-coloured stockings, blue small THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 11 clothes, and a tail-coat which touched his heels as he walked, a ; pensioner on the bounty of one Harward, who flourished in the-; days of Elizabeth, and left an annual sum of money for the- education of twelve poor boys, and their clothing according to a desicm held to be reputable in his own day. So Kimberley's- earli'est memories were of the jeers of the unsympathetic, and (beino- a boy of great natural meekness and indisposed to popular notice) he suffered grievously through all his school years because- of that absurd livery. The other eleven, his compeers, could fio-ht and being animated by that spirit of brotherhood which is sometimes the offspring of misfortune, they were formidable enough to be left alone. But Bolsover could not fight, and was therefore a Pariah amongst those who should have been his chosen. The history of the chivyings of Kimberiey was varied and prolonged enough to furnish forth an epic. His tortures lasted six years, and when he was set free from them and trans- planted to a solicitor's office, his native shyness and cowardice- were fixed in him for life. His earlier functions in the solicitor's office were to sweep out the rooms, light the fires and run on errands ; but in the fulness of rime he became a clerk. He regarded this as the beginning of life in earnest, but he seemed likely to live to the end of his days in the pursuit of labours no more profitable or pretentious. He was now thirty-five years of age, and honorary secretary to a Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society. He was meek and had no features to speak of. His hair was unassuming and his whiskers were too shy to curi. His eyebrows— always a little elevated— bore in their troubled curve a nervous apology, " I lioye I don't intrude." Sometimes at friendly tea-drinkings^ when, save himself, there were only ladies present, he could be moved to sing. "I have a silent Sorrow here," ''She never told her Love," and "The Lass of Kichmond Hill,"— these were his favourite ditries. Their character and his single estate encouraged the belief that he was consumed by a hopeless and unspoken passion. This conjecture, like some stories of the old school, was founded upon fact. Poor Bolsover burned at times to be rid of his secret, but he felt that he would have been thought no better than a madman if it had once been known. It was an undeniable madness m a solicitor's clerk even to dream of loving the Lady Ella Santerre. You may fancy— and fancy is not greatly exercised to compass the exertion— the sentiments which would have filled the girl s. heart had she known. Bolsover never troubled himself witli 12 THE WAY OF TEE WORLD. .accusations against Fate, iDccause no sliadow of Hope's wing ever came within measurable distance of him. He kncAV per- iectly well what a fool he was, but he was in love for all that. A cat may look at a king. A solicitor's clerk may love an .^arl's daughter. But he is surely wise to hold his tongue about it, if a creature guilty of so astonishing a folly can be said to be wise at all. On the morning of that day on which Mr. Amelia arrived in Oallowbay, Eolsover was seated in a little room with a dingy red desk, a dingy red door, and a cobwebbed skylight. A dusty window showed him nothing — when he looked up from the deed he was laboriously engrossing — but a blank wall baking in the ■dreary and oppressive sunshine. Suddenly a knock sounded on the dingy red door, and the clerk, without looking up from his work, pulled a cord, and cried ''Come in." The person who had knocked entered, and illumined the place — Mr. Eagshaw, senior clerk to Messrs. Eegg, Eatter, and Eagg, the leading firm of solicitors in the county town. Mr. Eagshaw's employers mingled with the county people almost on terms of equality, and Mr. Eagshaw — almost on terms of equality— associated with liis employers. He was, therefore, a person of some distinction, -and his manner displayed a consciousness of the fact, not too obtrusive. His taste in dress was undeniable. The burniiig weather justified a departure from the soberer tints of Eritish fashion, and he was attired in trousers of a large plaid, a buff Avaistcoat, a white hat, a drab dust overcoat thrown open, and .a morning coat of blue cloth with a rose in his buttonhole. He displayed cuffs and a shirt-collar besprinkled with dog's heads in pink. He wore cloth boots and white gaiters, and on his breast glittered an opalescent bulb the size of a bronze .halfpenny, backed by a wide expanse of scarlet scarf. Eolsover received his guest with a befitting reverence. He was quite amazed with the gorgeous creature's condescension when Mr. Eagshaw removed his white hat, and, advancing, proffered his right hand. "My dear Mr. Kimberley," said Mr. Eagshaw, "allow me the honour of shaking hands with you. Permit me, sir, to -congratulate you. I believe that I am the first bearer of good news." Mr. Kimberley held his tongue and turned pale. "You have doubtless, sir," said Mr. Eagshaw, resuming, heard frequent mention of what is known as the Gallowba'v .Estate ? " ^ TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. 13^ Bolsover waved his hand towards the deed he had been>. eiwrossing a minute before. It related to a portion of the property his visitor had mentioned. Mr. Eagshaw cast an %j& about it and then elevated his eyebrows with an expression of genteel surprise. . "At its northern boundary" he _ continued, ''it adjoins Shouldershott Park, the estate of Lord VYindgalL It is bounded on the south by the High Street, and includes the whole of the- northern side of that thoroughfare. On the west it includes the foreshore, and on the east its boundaries are somewhat more intricate.' The leases have all fallen in during the lifetime of its late owner." Bolsover, paler than before, nodded to signify attention, but- still said nothing. "My firm, sir," pursued the splendid creature, "represented the trustees of the late owner, who inherited the estate in early infancy. He died three months ago at the age of twenty, leaving, no known relatives. We instituted a search, sir, which resulted in the discovery of an indisputable title to the estate. Permit me to congratulate you, sir, — the estate is yours."^ Bolsover Kimberley laid his hands on the high stool from which he had recently arisen, and held it to steady himself. H& gasped, and his voice was harsh. "How much]" "The estate, sir," said Mr. Eagshaw, "has almost trebled m value during the long minority of the deceased, and it is now approximately valued at forty-seven thousand per annum." The owner of the Gallowbay Estate lurched forward and fell over the high stool in a dead faint. The senior clerk of Begg, Batter, and Bagg caught him by the shoulders, held him up, and straightened him. The family belief in the existence of the Commodore was justified. But so far as the new-made millionnaire had known he had no kith or kin in the world, and he had never expected anybody to leave him anything. In the forgotten language of the Pistic Eing, he was hit all abroad, knocked out of time by this intelligence. Mr. Eagshaw' s attentions restored him to his senses, and he drank a little water and sobbed hysterically. When he had recovered sufiiciently to understand what had happened, he arose weakly from the one office chair, took off his office coat, rolled it up neatly, and put it in his desk. He next detached the desk-key from the ring on which it kept 14 THE WAY OF TEE WORLD. company with, his latcli-key and the key of his chest of drawers. Then he put on his walking coat and his hat, and went out, leaving the unfinished deed behind him with the first syllable of the word " consideration " staring at the waste of unwritten parchment which lay beyond it. Mr. Ragshaw accompanied him, writhing his own features into an expression of the deepest sympathy, as the owner of the Gallowbay Estate, still much shaken, walked slowly along the shady side of the street. Don't you think, Mr. Kimberley," asked Mr. Eagshaw with profound respect, " that a little something — " They were outside the "Windgall Arms," and Kimberley understood the half-spoken query. Why, yes, sir," said the millionnaire, " but I never keep it in the 'ouse, and having had to pay a tailor's bill this week, I 4on't happen — " Mr. Eagshaw spoke with genuine emotion. " My dear sir, allow me ! " He ushered Mr. Kimberley through the portal. "Ow de do, Kimberley?" said the host, who lounged in the •cool shadow of the doorway with a cigar between his lips. Mr. Eagshaw eyed the landlord with some severity. Show us into a private room, if you please," he said ; and bring up a bottle of cham. Do you keep Heidsieck's monopoly ] All right. Let's have a bottle, and a couple of your best weeds." " Certainly, gentlemen," said the host. There was something in Eagshaw 's manner which overawed him, and Eagshaw was so deferential to Kimberley that the host knew not what to think of it. "There's a swell up-stairs," he told his wife, "as is treating young Kimberley to champagne and cigars." " I don't want the young man ill on my premises," said the Orey Mare, who was the better horse. She had found the money to purchase stock and goodwill when she and the land- lord married. " It's a queer start," said the landlord. " The man's a swell, there's no doubt o' that, and yet he's a bowing and scraping to that Kimberley as if he was a lord." The landlady glided away to listen, and the conversation now to be recorded was public property before closing time. "Are you strong enough to listen to the rest, sir]" asked Eagshaw in tones of delicate sympathy. " Yes," said the landed proprietor. " There is, of course, a large sum of money, the product of the THE WAY OF TEE WORLD. 15 rents of tlie estate during the long minority of the deceased. It has been invested by the trustees in various ways, and it repre- sents, in round figures, a quarter of a million." The listening? landlady gasped at the question which followed. Does that/' said Kimberley feebly, " does that— belong to ''Yes, sir; most undoubtedly, sir," responded Mr. Kagshaw. " When shall I— have HI " "You enter, sir, upon immediate possession of the whole property. My firm has given instructions to our bankers to honour your draft at sight, and I am instructed to hand you this cheque-book. I need not say, sir, that I am delighted to be honoured with such a commission, sir." Oh, dear me," said the millionnaire, and taking the cheque- book he sat crushed. ^ "Pray permit me, sir." Mr. Eagshaw filled up Bolsovers half-empty glass and replenished his own with an air of homage. The landlady arose from her place and went gliding down the stairs. Curiosity was still strong in her, but she was faint and needed support before she could endure farther. " George," she said to the landlord, " give me a little drop of brandy. ''I'm in such a twitter you might knock me down with ,a feather. Now don't you ask me no questions, for I can't stop to answer 'em." , " If I can be of service to you in any capacity, Mr. Kimber- ley," EagshaAV began, just as she resumed her post, " I am instructed to place myself entirely in your hands for a day, or even two. About your temporary abode for a day or two, sir % Will it be convenient for you to stay here "Ye-es," said Kimberley; but the idea more than half- frightened him. ''Any little addition, sir," hinted Mr. Eagshaw, with an almost ladylike delicacy of demeanour; " any little addition to your — wardrobe, sir *? " i • i " I've got another suit at home," returned Kimberley, with much dubiety. ^ "There is a position to maintain, sir,' said KagsJiaw, it i may respectfully mention it." Poor Kimberley took a sip at his champagne. He was un- used to the beverage, and he began to experience a strange wdd glow, an unaccustomed half -hysterical exultation ; so that he hardly knew whether to laugh or cry, and was on the point of doing both together. 1^ TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. "There is something in Avhat you say, sir," he returned. It crossed him, with a feminine sense of the loveliness of bright attire, that he might even dress like Eagshaw, if he cho°se He had never longed for finery. In his meagre, unambitious way, he had been contented with his lot, and what he could not hope for he had never dared to wish for. But now the- egregious plaid of Eagshaw's trousers, his buff waistcoat, the opalescent bulb on his breast, his yellow dog-skin gloves, and all his other outrageous sartorial gaieties, might even be shared by Ximberley, and the late quill-driver's head swam with the first thought of personal vanity which had ever assailed it " Wilkms in the High Street, sir," suggested Mr. Eai^shaw, • IS a very passable tailor. Shall I send for him, sir^ Or' would you prefer to employ a man in town?" kimberley made no response. Perhaps Wilkins will do at present, sir ? He IS a tenant of your own." Kimberley was still silent. You will be expected, sir, to encourage local trade a little, if I may venture to suggest it." " Yes," said Kimberley, tremulously. We'll go presently." " Oh, dear no, sir," returned Eagshaw, blendiiig instruction with worship, as a prince's preceptor might. ''That would never do, sir. We will send for Wilkins, sir." He rang the bell, and the landlady, having noiselessly retired, came up with a bustle, and answered the summons in person " Obhge me " said Eagshaw, " by despatching a messenger to Wilkms, the tailor m the High Street, requesting him to wait npon me here. ^ The landlady, having received this command, retired to put it into execution. ^ " Young Kimberley," said the landlord, addressing a visitor as she entered the bar, " is up-stairs with a swell as is standinc^ nzz to him and the best cigars." The visitor was Mr. Blandy, solicitor, a bald-headed man with an angry branclified complexion; no less a person than Mr. Kimberley's emiDloyer. " Is he, begad % " said Mr. Blandy, with amazement. " That's a new move. " '^\] "cried the landlady ; for the solicitor's voice was not only dogmatic but loud, and the door was open. "Mr. Kimberlev is proved to be the heir to the Gallowbay Estate " rr^^^^r'^^^'^^.^'^^ ^ever enjoyed so supreme a triumph in her CT • . i;ecipients of the astonishing news fairly gaped at her She told what she knew, but omitted to state the means by TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. 17 winch she had acquired her information ; and, as they listened, the solicitor and the landlord each surrendered his tumbler, and let fall the hand which had caressed it. Who is it ]" asked the solicitor, who was the first to recover. " Who is with him ? " " It's a ginger-headed person," said the landlord, " with whiskers of the same, tallish and dressed tip-top." " That's Eagshaw for a fiver," said Mr. Blandy. " For a fiver it's Eagshaw. Begg and Batter were agents for the trustees, and Eagshaw is their head man. God bless my soul ! What a windfall ! Well, there never was a man who deserved good fortune better. I have been honoured by that young man's presence in my office for twenty years, Burridge, and I say of him that he is Avorthy of his good fortune, and that he will be an ornament to any sphere into which it may please Providence to call him. You will remember, Burridge, that I was the first to say so. As an honest man, Burridge, you will bear me out in that." " Certainly," said Burridge. " As an old employer of the young man's, I should say as you ought to be met with a sort of excep- tional favour, so to speak. I should think there could not be a fitter man than you, sir, to conduct the interests of the estate." " Eor once in your life, George," said the Grey Mare, "you're talking sense." The landlord was sensibly elated by this modified compliment, and having sipped at his tumbler, he murmured with the contemplative look of an admitted judge of things : " There is not, I should fancy, a fitter man anywheres." Mr. Blandy felt that his host and hostess were people of sound judgment, and his own prospects brightened in the effulgence of Kimberley's magnificent fortunes. "Wilkins, the tailor, is to be sent for at once," said the landlady. " I'll step down myself," replied the landlord, " and bring him back with me. This ought to bring a bit of prawsperity to Gallowbay, Mr. Blandy. The deceased owner being a minor, there's been no money spent in the town off that estate for nigh on fourteen, or may-be fifteen years." " Kimberley," said the solicitor, " is a local man, and may be relied upon to promote local interests. I have some influence, and you may rely upon me to use it." " I am sure of that, sir," said the landlady fervently ; and Mr. Blandy felt, and, if he could have managed it, would have looked, like a local public benefactor. c 18 THE WAY OF TEE WORLD. Begg and Batter," said Mr. Blandy, when the landlord had gone out° " will doubtless do their best to retain a full control of the estates ; but after an association which has extended over a score of years, an association uninterrupted by one unfriendly breeze, I do not think that Bolsover Kimberley is the man to throw over an old friend." No, indeed, sir," said the landlady. Meanwhile Kimberley and Eagshaw had started on a new conversational tack. " I think," said the new-made man of money with trembimg lips, "that you gave me a notion that the estate adjoins Shouldershott Parkr' . ■ He knew that well enough, and had known it years ago, but he could not help drifting to the question. , , ^ "Yes, sir," said Mr. Eagshaw, in respectful athrmation. ''It was generally supposed," he added, without a guess of the tremor into which this statement would throw his companion, " that the late proprietor of the estate would marry a daughter of Lord Windgall's." , . . « Lady Ella % " inquired Kimberley in a choking voice. " Oh, dear no, sir," responded Eagshaw. " Her sister, Lady Alice Louisa Santerre, who is four years younger. Only fifteen, I believe, sir." . , i i -pi " That's very young," said Kimberley, trying to look as it lie were discussing a matter which had no interest for him. " It was understood, I believe, sir," replied Eagshaw, with the manner of a man of fashion. " These great famdies sir look upon marriage as a sort of affair of state. Lord Windgall is not a wealthy peer." " I never heard," said Kimberley, with the champagne beating wildly in his head, " that Lady Ella was engaged." Well, as a matter of fact there never was an engagement, said Eagshaw, who was as intimate with the affairs of the aris- tocracy as if he had been a reporter to a Society journal. But it was understood, I believe, that there was an attachment A Mr Clare— the Honourable Mr. Clare— a younger son ot Lord Montacute's. The parents, it was understood, were opposed on both sides." ^ , . . . , Oh," said Bolsover Kimberley, and for the time being said no more. But in the middle of a great auriferous glow, the spirit of Heidsieck's extra sec showed him the lovely face and fiaiire of Lady Ella. And it was he himself who was kneeling at her feet. Then, at that amazing awful presumption, he awoke THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 19 and groaned aloud with sudden sLame, and Mr. Eagsliaw jumped to his feet and stared at him across the table. , . , . ^ , • -Are you in pain, sir]" inquired Eagshaw, twisting his features to imply a sympathetic understanding I don't feel altogether comfortable," said the millionnaire. Mr. Eagshaw twisted his features anew, until his face was a mere mass of wrinkles. - Perhaps, sir," he suggested with profound respect, you are not accustomed to tobacco." • . t^- -u i <«Tfi«-n'f " I take a pipe of an evening," said Kimberley. It isnt that. I'm better, thank you." • i ^ ^.^i.. tTp A knock at the door announced the arrival of the tailor Me had heard the news, and so ducked and grinned f Kimb^^^^^^ that if the little man had been m full possession of his faculties he would have thought the tailor deranged. The Patterns were spread out upon the table, and Kimberley, egged on by Eagshaw and the tradesman, found himself choosing an unheard-of num- ber of samples, and ordering clothes enough to make dandies ot half-a-dozen commercial travellers for a year. Eac^shaw followed the tradesman from the room. ^ " It will be worth your while," he said in an impressive whisper, " to see that all those things have the real fashionable cut. It might pay you, sir, to engage a special man. Mr. Kimberley, as a Gallowbay man, will naturally wish to cultivate local interests, but he will need to be well served. You are not ■vPt aware nerhaps "—he Avas sure the man was aware, but ne lanted to know how the story had got abroad-" of the change in Mr. Kimberley's fortunes'?" "Why, yes, sir," replied the tailor, «I learned from Mr Burridge. You may rely upon my doing my best, sir. My first cousin on my mother's side, sir, is cutter-out to one of the best London houses, sir-a Bond Street house-and I shall send the patterns and measurements up to him and ask him to oblige me ^ ' ' Yery good," said Mr. Eagshaw loftily. " I hope your efiorts will be satisfactory. You will push the goods forward ^ Thank ^"^The tailor departed, first to display the selected patterns in the bar, and next, after a friendly glass, to his shop._ Ihen the boot- maker was sent for, and the hatter, and the hosier, preference m each instance being given to Bolsover s tenants. The thing becxan to look like a mad and fantastic dream, and there were moments when the confusion of Kimberley's thoughts mounted to such a height of stupefaction and bewilderment that he wou.d 20 THE WAY OF THE WORLD. have been glad to awake from it and find himself bound to the desk again. To all this excitement and bewilderment succeeded dinner, but Bolsover played a very poor knife and fork indeed, in spite of Ragshaw's promptings. He saw several things he had never seen in all his simple life before ; and the little paper ruffles at the end of the cutlets, the sheet of stiff writing-paper which lay between the fish and the dish on which it was served, the coloured claret-glasses, the table-napkins, the silver forks, the dish-covers, were all new to him. Elack coffee was a curious and distasteful novelty. He had been used to take a very weak and watery decoction of coffee and chicory. He had, in short, been used to all the ways of decent poverty, and had never dined at a hotel table before. It was natural that he should take Eag- shaw as his model in dealing with these unexpected and un- known things, and he held his knife and fork like Eagshaw, and a bit of bread to hold his fish steady whilst he got at it with his fork like Eagshaw ; and whatsoever that cultured being did Kimberley followed suit. The landlady herself served at table, and was embarrassingly obsequious, and but for Eagshaw's presence Kimberley felt that he would have sunk altogether beneath the weight of her atten- tions. He did not quite know it, but he had never been so unhappy in his life before, never so helpless, never so little satis- fied with himself. But the great blow of the day fell when the triumvirate from the Whig appeared, and the landlady ushered in first the Editor, next Mr. Amelia, and last Mr. Maddox, a terrible youth who had publicly chafi'ed him at the weekly meetings of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society, and whom he knew to entertain the meanest opinions of him. When they were announced Kimberley almost clung to Eagshaw. " You won't leave me, sir, will youV said the miserable millionnaire. ''Allow me to take all the trouble from your shoulders, sir," returned Mr. Eagshaw. When the trio entered he ushered each one to a seat with magnificent courtesy. " And now, gentle- men, in what way can we be of service to you 1 " " Well," said the meek Editor defensively, " the sudden change in Mr. Kimberley 's position (upon which I am sure nobody congratulates him more heartily than I do)— the sudden change is of course likely to be very interesting to the towns- people, and indeed to the country at large. I am the editor of the Galloiuhay Whig, as Mr. Kimberley knows, and these THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 21 gentlemen are members of the staff. We are here to ask if Mr. Kimberley will oblige us with a few little details of his career. This is Mr. Amelia, our chief of staff, Mr. Kimberley. Perhaps if yon would be so good as to talk to him for a few minutes whilst Mr. Eagshaw—Mr. Eagshaw, I beheve ?— whilst Mr. Eagshaw gives me a few particulars about the estate, and the tracing of the family connection, we might economize a little time." Mr. Amelia fixed the milHonnaire and drew a chair up to the table near the corner at which he sat. i^'ext he produced a notebook and a pencil ready sharpened. " We may as well begin at the beginning, sir," he said, with cheerful affability. " Kindly tell me the date of your birth." "I was thirty-five last March," said Kimberley feebly, with an appealing glance at Eagshaw. / " Day of the month] " said Mr. Amelia. , "The tenth." " Native place % " "Gallowbay." Christian names of parents ? " " Bolsover and Mary Ann." Kimberley began to find him- self at ease. Mr. Amelia was not abasing himself before him as everybody else had done that day, and his crisp business manner was like a tonic to the bashful man. '' Any facts about your father's history 1 " « I don't think so," answered Kimberley, uncertainly. "Must have been some facts," said Mr. Amelia, cheerfully. "Born somewhere. Died somewhere. Got married betwesn- whiles. Pursued some occupation, probably." " He w^as born in Gallowbay," said Kimberley, thus stimu- lated. I don't think he had any occupation in particular." " Private means ] " asked Mr. Amelia. « Oh, dear no, sir," replied Kimberley. " But he was rather feeble in his health, and, mostly, my mother provided for the 'ouse." " We are willing to give information freely," said Mr. Eag- shaw, breaking in at this point, and leaving a query of the Editor's unanswered; "but we expect discretion to be employed." "Certainly; certainly," says the Editor. "Perhaps Mr. Kimberley would like to see the proofs before we go to press. He can then — eliminate anything he would prefer not to appear." " That will be quite satisfactory, sir; quite satisfactory," said 22 THE WAY OF THE WORLD. Mr. Eagsliaw in his grandest manner; and the examination being continued, Bolsover laid bare his simple annals. The proof-sheets came next day, and he read with blushes, and with pride and shame and a strange crowd of mingled feelings, the life and history of ''our distinguished townsman." He read that he was rather below than above the middle heiglit, of pleasing exterior and unassuming manners. He read that he looked back at his boyhood's days with affectionate regret, and that he still cherished a lively interest in that benevolent found- ation to which he himself owed his early training. He read all the proofs of his descent from the Commodore " on the distaff side,'' and discovered that a far-away ancestor of whom he had never heard before had been ennobled by Eichard the Second. After all he was somebody in the world, and it was a proud thing to know it. But his long life of servitude, his native shyness, and his want of nerve, the habits formed in the thirty-five years for which he had been nobody in particular, all weighed heavily upon him, and he was far from being happy. CHAPTER III. The offices of Messrs. Begg, Batter, and Bagg, solicitors, stood back a little from the High Street of the county town, behind a bower of trees and shrubs, and the senior partner sitting alone, with his window open to the summer weather, could, if he were so minded, see, without being seen, all passengers and equipages that moved along the road. Messrs. Begg, Batter, and Bagg performed the very highest class of business, and enjoyed the confidence of the nobility and gentry. Even though the profits of the firm had to be parted into three shares, each partner drew a fat and comfortable income. The senior partner's sliare was naturally the fattest and most comfortable, and the senior partner himself was a man of genial and tolerant aspect, ecclesiastical rather than legal in his looks ; something like a rural dean — if one could fancy such a thing — in mufti. He sat back in his chair, staring placidly at the street and toying with his gold-rimmed double glasses, a sunny, respect- able, well-to-do old man, with scarcely a care upon his mind. TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. 23 A knock at tlie door awoke him from Ms reverie, and a clerk announced Lord Windgall. ^ „ ^, " Show his lordship this way, Mr. Yielding, said the senior partner, and the clerk retiring, the old gentleman arose, pulled down his portly waistcoat with both hands, and settled his tali collars. , , 1 ,1 "The Earl of Windgall, sir," said the clerk, throwing open the door Mr. Begg advanced to meet his lordship, and shook hand^ in a way which implied a recognition of the privilege bestowed upon hirn. . " A fine day," said the solicitor. " Beautiful growing weather. We should look for a fine harvest this year." "Yes" said his lordship, dropping into the chair the clerk had set 'for him, and laying his hat and cane upon the table. " What's this news about Gallowbay, BeggT' _ The Earl of Windgall was a small man with grey side whiskers and grey tufty hair. He was a good deal withered, and features that had once been dehcate had grown pinched and careworn. His grey eyes Avere kindly, and looked from under his shaggy crrey eyebrows with a glance of sagacity and sometimes of dry humour; but the dominant expression of his face was to be found in the region of the lips, and was almost querulous. " What's this news about Gallowbay, Begg % Is it true % What is the news, my lord % " asked the solicitor, rubbing his hands and smiling comfortably, as if to say that a lawyer should stand out for precision. , n . ^ " That a clerk in the office of that fellow Blandy has turned out to be heir to the Gallowbay estate." , « That is certainly true," said Mr. Begg. « That is undeni- ably true." .no 1 ^ " Ah ! " said his lordship, pulling his gloves off nervously and be^nino- to pull them on again. ''It is true, eh 1 M-m-m. possibility of a flaw in the proofs % No Tittlebat Titmouse business over again " i n i 4-- i Mr. Begg let off a mellow laugh, subdued to the conhdentiai tone, and rubbed his hands again. " Capital story that," he said. " Apart from its treatment ot the legal element, a capital story." " Do you know the man % " asked Windgall. Have you seen him ? " -, . n ^ No," said Mr. Begg, lightly. " We expect him to call to- morrow. Mr. Eagshaw, our managing clerk, went over and communicated the news to him in the first instance." 24 TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. " What sort of a fellow is he 1 " The peer wore a self- conscious and almost guilty look when he put this question, " Can he carry his money ? " " Well," said Mr. Begg, " so far as I can judge from Ragshaw's report, he will find it rather hard to carry his money. He seems to be a shy little man, gauche and — and— underbred, even for his late position." Mr. Begg made this announcement with an air of delicacy. One would scarcely have thought him likely to be so tender to an absent stranger, howsoever considerable his affairs might be. When he had spoken he looked at Lord Windgall, and Lord Windgall looked at him, with an odd kind of reticence in expression. ^' That is a pity," said the withered peer. "Yes," assented the lawyer, "it is something of a pity, certainly." "After all," said his lordship, throwing one leg over the other, and taking up his cane from the table, " these are radical and republican days, and a man who has more than a million is bound to be respectable." He took the cane at either end and bent it to and fro, examining its texture closely meanwhile. " No doubt," said Mr. Begg, as if there were comfort in the reflection ; no doubt." " I should like to see him," said the grey little nobleman, glancing at the lawyer in a casual way. Kimberley was a natural object for curiosity, and it was likely that many people would care to see him. He was the nine days' wonder of the county. " I suppose you will act for him, as you did for poor young Edward 1 " Poor young Edward was the deceased minor — Edward Bolsover — whose early death had wrecked the brightest chances the Windgall family-craft had ever carried. " I suppose so," said the lawyer. " It is not probable that he will take his afi"airs out of our hands. Blandy is after him — his late employer. That, of course," said Mr. Begg, with a gesture of allowance, ''is only natural." " I presume," said the Earl, "that even if he wanted to call in his money you could arrange elsewhere." "With regard to the first mortgage]" asked Mr. Begg. " Certainly. Your lordship need be under no apprehension in that quarter." " And Avhat about the new arrangement 1 " the Earl asked, nervously. THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 25 "Impossible, my lord," returned Mr. Begg, with regretful emphasis. " I regret to say it, but — impossible." " Very well," said the Earl, with a sigh. " I suppose the timber must go." " I am afraid so," returned Mr. Begg, " I am very much afraid so. In fact, I can see nothing else for it — nothing — else —for it." " It looks bad," said his lordship. " It is bad," answered the solicitor. Yery unfortunate. Very. But unavoidable." " If poor Edward had lived," said the Earl, rising and laying his hand upon his hat, "it would all have been very different." " Yes, indeed," assented Mr. Begg. " He was young, but he understood things. He saw, from both sides, the advantages of the match. Birth and beauty on one side, and on the other vast possessions." "But then he wasn't a parvenu," said his lordship, '^any more than I am a pauper. Poor Edward was a gentleman to the finger-tips. He was beginning to take an intelligent interest in politics ; he would have contested a borough or two against the Whigs, and, with his wealth and the influence one could command for him, reward was sure ; he would have had his peerage to a certainty." Lord Windgall sighed again, and dug the point of his stick half-a-dozen times at a particular spot in the carpet. " I can speak to you, Begg, with some freedom," he went on. Mr. Begg bowed slightly in acknowledgment, but the other was not looking at him. " Poor Edward's death was the greatest blow I can remember. Even the death of her lady- ship was not so great a misfortune. Every man thinks his own corns ache worse than his neighbour's, but, upon my word, I seem to be marked out for trouble." Mr. Begg looked sympathetic, but had nothing to say. Tha Earl after a short pause went on again — ' " The timber has to go now, and that's an unpleasant thing to happen, a confoundedly unpleasant thing. But I suppose you're ; right, and there's no help for it." "To tell you the plain truth, my lord," said Mr. Begg, ^i^atramg but the knowledge of the existing engagement between the Honourable Miss Alice and poor young Bolsover prevented the timber from going a year ago. The estates lie side by side, and a union between the two families looked a very natural and very fitting thing. Yery natural. Yery fitting." Mr. Begg was plainly embarrassed, and was doing his best to 26 TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. seem at ease. He and his noble client were friends in a way, and he was as grieved at the Windgall family troubles as any lawyer could be expected to be. He had it in his mind that his lordship was willing to see a way out of his troubles, and the idea disturbed him, because the way seemed disgraceful to an old family, even if it could be taken, and could only be entered on with a sense of meanness. If Bolsover Kimberley had been a gentleman — if he had only been ever so little like a gentleman —it would have been better. Any newly-made millionnaire might rejoice at the chance of a union with the Santerres ; and if the millionnaire were only presentable, the Santerres had right enough to rejoice at the chance of a union with him. "We're asked to pity the poor working classes, begad ! " said the Earl, with a half-hearted laugh. " Who pities a poor peer]" He tried to make jest of this, but it was too obviously a serious thing with him, and Mr. Begg's embarrassment deepened. He could have wished that the head of so noble a family should have been a little more like his own ideal of a nobleman, and he was certain that no troubles of his own would have drawn him into this sort of confidence with a lawyer if he had been a peer of the realm. Most people think more highly of worldly dignities than the holders of them can afford to do. The wearer of any dignity is conscious of the man within the robe. The most undignified pains do not spare him. " I must have a look at this fellow," said Windgall, suddenly, and with as casual an air as he could assume. "All the county's talking about him, and I'm curious to see what manner of man he is. If he isn't actually impossible one can hardly help meeting so near a neighbour." Mr. Eegg allowed a silent sigh to escape him. "He is staying at the ' Windgall Arms,' my lord, at Gallow- bay." "I can't call on him there," said the Earl, hastily. He actually blushed a second later to think how plainly he was showing his hand. But the very shame he felt helped him to harden his heart. " I shall either have to knoAV him or not to know him/' he went on, "and I may as well know which it is to be at once. About what time is he to be here to-morrow ]" " We expect him at noon," said Mr. Begg, accepting the inevitable, though with an audible sigh this time. "If your lordship should care to call at one o'clock Ave could introduce him then. Ragshaw," he added, ''is not the best judge of a THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 27 gentleman in the world, to be sure, but be has formed the meanest opinion of him — the meanest opinion." " Eagshaw % " said the Earl. " Oh ! Your managing clerk ! Yes, I remember to have seen him. Well, you know, Begg, \i the man's impossible, he is impossible, and there's an end of it. Don't bother me about the timber until you have made the best arrangement you see your way to. Good day. I shall drop m to-morrow to have a look at our nine days' wonder." The head of the eminent legal firm himself escorted the Earl to the carriage which waited without, and then returning to his own room rang his bell and asked for Mr. Eagshaw. Mr. Eag- shaw appearing, in raiment of more sober dye than he had worn on the memorable morning of his visit to Kimberley, the lawyer feigned to be busy for a moment or two with the papers on his des\. Two or three of these he handed to the confidential clerk with instructions, and then, with the manner of one who suddenly remembers, he said — ■ "By the bye, Mr. Eagshaw, Mr. Kimberley comes to- morrow?" "Yes, sir." " At what time ^ At noon, did you say % " " At noon, sir." "What sort of a person is he, nowV asked Mr. Begg, turning round in his chair and fixing the gold-bound glasses ok his no°e. "You knew something of hiin, didn't you, before anybody guessed that he was worth a farthing V " I met him once or twice, sir, in the way of business," returned Eagshaw. , "Well, now, what did you think of him then? I don t want to know what you think of him now, for nobody thinks disrespectfully of a man rich as he is; but what were you accustomed to think of him ? " "Why, sir," said Mr. Eagshaw, with a smile which meant, if it meant' anything, that Eagshaw had known the distance between Kimberley and himself, and had not been disposed to examine him too closely. " Speak out," said Mr. Begg. " What did you think of him 1 " Well, sir," returned Eagshaw, smiling still, " I thought him a very inconsiderable sort of person. I don't know, sir, that I thought about him at all, to speak quite truly. He was not the sort of man, sir," added Eagshaw, " that a man feels inclined to think of." " Is^ervous, I think you said 1 " 28 TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. Dreadfully nervous, sir. Very shy and awkward. Tried to cut a raised pie with a spoon at table, sir, and doubled it clean up. Then put the spoon in his coat pocket when he thought I wasn't looking." " Well, now," said Mr. Begg, conversationally, and as if he were in a mood to unbend pleasantly, "he won't ho, able to hide himself. People won't let him hide himself. Do you think he'll polish 1 Is he the sort of man to polish ] Has he any nous or savoir faire at all?" • "I don't think, sir," returned Eagshaw, "that he ever will get polished, since you ask my opinion. I should say yuu might as well try to polish a bath brick, sir." " You might japan or lacquer even that," said the lawyer. " Let me see, how old is he — thirty-five 1 " " Yes, sir," answered Eagshaw, " thirty-five." " M-ni-m ! " said Mr. Begg. " You'll look into that matter of Barber's personally, Mr. Eagshaw ? " "Yes, sir," responded Eag^^haw; and, feeling himself dis- missed, withdrew. The old lawyer turned towards the window and fell to tapping his knuckles with his glasses. " I'm afraid," he said to himself, " that his lordship will find him ' impossible,' as he calls it. And yet I don't know. There are men who would consort with a Caribbean savage hunch- backed, if he owned a million of money. There are men who would consent to become father-in-law to a gorilla for half the money. I shall see the young man for myself to-morrow." He dismissed the theme from his thoughts, and scarcely allowed it again to enter his mind until nearly noon on the following day, when in spite of himself he became interested in the approaching visitor, and wondered what he would be like. The Cathedral clock was chiming " Adeste Fideles " to mark the hour of noon, and the sound came pleasantly subdued through closed windows, when one of the clerks tapped at the door, and, being told to enter, presented Mr. Begg with a card wdiich bore the name of Bolsover Kimberley. " Show the gentleman into this room," said Mr. Begg, and a minute later he had his wish, and beheld the new-fledged millionnaire. Poor Kimberley had lost no time in the adorn- ment of the outer man, and he w^as carefully modelled on the lines which had been presented to his admiring mind by Mr. Eagshaw. The egregious glare of scarlet scarf, the buff waist- coat, the sky-blue morning coat with the rose in the button-hole, the drab dust overcoat thrown open to display these glories, the TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. 29 loud-patterned plaid trousers, the white gaiters, and the patent leather boots — all were there. Kimberley's fingers were cased in kid gloves of primrose colour ; his all-round collar fixed his neck as if he had been pilloried ; he carried a white hat and a tasselled walking cane with a gold knob ; his watch was cabled to his waistcoat by a gorgeous golden fetter. To make matters worse, he was not merely overdressed, but he knew it, and looked as if he knew it. He perspired with shame and vain-glory, and his harmless countenance was a compendium of embarrassments. His meek whiskers drooped as if in deprecation of their owner's splendour, and his meek hair stood up in places as if it pro- tested against any possible supposition of its approval of the vulgar magnificences below it. The old lawyer received him with gravity, and having shaken hands with him, ofi'ered him a seat, and talked trifles for a moment or two to put him at his ease. Then he began to speak of business, and Kimberley listened at first with a pitiable whirl in his head, but later on with some understanding. Mr. Begg was a great man, of course, and Kimberley had known of him almost from the beginning of his own legal career, but had never before been called upon to face him even for a moment. Messrs. Begg, Batter, and Bagg were undoubtedly the first solicitors in the county, and Mr. Begg was senior partner and a sort of monarch among country solicitors, like Kimberley's late employer. But the awe with which the clerk had always regarded him was melting away, and if he had been less burdened by his clothes, Kimberley would have felt almost at his ease. The announce- ment of the Earl of Windgall was like the bursting of a bomb- shell. There was nothing in the world which could have terrified him more. "Pray show his lordship to this room at once," said the lawyer. " Have you met his lordship, Mr. Kimberley 1 " He asked the question in the most commonplace tone, and as if Kimberley to his certain knowledge had been on intimate terms with half the peerage. "H not, I shall be delighted to introduce you." The visitor arose feebly with trembling limbs, and was indeed so alarmed that he found courage to protest. " Not to-day, sir, if you please. I'm very sorry, but I'm " ''You are not at all in the way, Mr. Kimberley, I assure you. I know his lordship's business, and shall not detain you more than a moment." His lordship entered and saluted Mr. Begg, disregarding Kimberley, though he knew perfectly well 30 THE WAY OF THE WORLD. Avlio he was. " Permit me to introduce Mr. Kimberley to your lordship." His lordship turned with a sort of delighted alacrity. " The Earl of Windgall, Mr. Kimberley." The Earl of Windgall was a little man, but Kimberley was still smaller of stature. The nobleman carried himself, if not exactly like a nobleman, like a well-bred man of the world ; and Kimberley shrank and shrivelled before him, so that the differ- ence in physique was emphasised by attitude. There are lawyers' clerks in the world — so high a development has courage reached in man — who would endure a personal introduction to an Earl with a pretence of self-possession, but Kimberley had always been shy, and had never got out of the habit of being crushed by the lecturers whom it was his duty to receive in behalf of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society. " I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Kimberley," said his lordship, shaking the wretched little man by the hand. Mr. Kimberley gasped and gurgled in response, and his meek and distressed little figure-head looked curiously in contrast with the vulgar finery which decorated his person. The Earl took a seat and talked easily with Mr. Begg about the ordinary topics of the moment, and row and then a turn of the head plainly but unobtrusively included Kimberley, who began to feel less oppressed. Really an Earl did not seem to be so terrible a creature after all ; and in a little time Kimberley began to plume himself in harmless trembhng vanity upon sitting in the same room with a nobleman and a great lawyer, and to feel that he was somebody in the world after all. Windgall had seen his perturbation, and gave him time to recover before he again addressed him. " I hope," he said, after a time, but even then he spoke to the lawyer, " that Mr. Kimberley will see his way to a residence amongst us." " I hope so too," said Mr. Eegg, with an inquiring and encouraging eye on Kimberley ; but the mere mention of his name had driven the millionnaire into his shell again. " Property," said the Earl, with a little sigh, " entails responsibilities, of which no man can venture to be unmindful." " The long minority of the late owner," said Mr. Begg, with a regretful air, " was a great grievance to the Gallowbay people — a great and legitimate grievance. Mr. Kimberley will be ex- pected to spend a little time in Gallowbay. Perhaps," he rubbed his hands and laughed, a " little money." " A good deal of trouble," said the millionnaire, with fatuous THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 31 countenance, "but with more wisdom than he was aware of, "seems to go along with having money." He blushed and looked nnhappy, but having found his tongue, he managed to go on in spite of his discomfort. " But if you'll be so good, sir, as to let me know what I ought to do, I shall try to do it. The money might have come into 'ands that could dispense it better^ but into none more willing, I'm sure." " There is good sense and modesty in this yonng man," said the Earl to himself, trying hard to think his best of ^Ir. Kimberley. It is not often that the effort to think well of any of our fellow-creatures makes lis feel mean, but the Earl of Windgall was not proud of himself whilst he tried to think well of Bolsover Kimberley. "I shall always be happy to advise you, Mr. Kimberley," said the lawyer. He did not speak as a lawyer to a client, but as a man of experience to a man of inexperience, and Kimberley so under- stood him, and murmured that he would be very much obliged. "I won't interrupt you further, Mr. Begg," said his lordship, " I am pleased to have met Mr. Kimberley, and I trust we shall see more of each other." Mr. Kimberley blushed, and bowed in a prodigious flutter. The Earl of Windgall would be glad to see more of liim ! There is nobody who does not like to be flattered by his own good opinion ; and to have been shy and humble all one's life is no defence against vanity if it really makes an assault. Whilst the lawyer saw the gracious nobleman down-stairs, Kimberley struck into an attitude of mild swagger, and twirled his cane, though he blushed even as he did so. It crossed him Avith a thrilling sense of daring that he would shave off his whiskers and allow his moustache to grow. He might even take to wearing an eye- glass. Then even the Lady Ella might look at him, and for one minute might forget the lowliness of his first estate. The Earl was driven homeward, and as he went he tried to persuade himself that he was weighing things in his mind, and trying to arrive at an honourable conclusion. In spite of him- self he felt that he was engaged in a shameful enterprise. People would talk if he invited this gilded little snob to Shouldershott Castle, and would know very well why he was asked there. Let them talk. The man was a cad 1 There was no escape from that conclusion. Well — lots of men were cads. 52 TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. " Caddom," said his lordship, with a flash of cynical humour, is not monopolised by the peers. It isn't actually amazing to meet a cad who is a commoner ! " It was very shameful, all the same, to be fishing for a feUow whose only recommendation was his money. " And a very good recommendation too, by gad ! " said the poor peer. " A million and a quarter ! And if I don't catch him, somebody else will, and the people who will be the most bitterly satirical will be the people who have failed." CHAPTEE ly. The Honourable John George Alaric FitzAdington Clare was the second son of Lord Montacute, a nobleman famous for his prodigious losses on the turf. To be as unlucky as Montacute had been almost a proverb among sporting men. His fortune had known no deviation : no big win had ever consoled him. In his youth he went to Baden with an infallible system, intent on breaking the bank ; and, as does occasionally happen, in spite of the most infallible of systems, the bank broke him. He was, until his father died, as poor as Job after this escapade, but the kindly tribes helped him until he came into the family estates and married money. The ma:i who at one-and-twenty could realise his all to set it on the hazard of the black and red, could thereafter borrow at exorbitant interest to lose his borrow- ings. When he came into his own he " went the whole elephant" — an elegant and expressive locution indicative of thoroughness in pursuit of an object — and whatever he could lose he lost. Lut for the entail and the marriage settlement he would have beggared his wife and children. The human intellect is so curiously arranged that there were people who admired him, and he was with many the type of the Good Old English Gentleman. He squandered money which was not righteously his own, he associated mainly with people who were miles beneath him in social state and education, he was an hereditary legislator and the boon companion of jockeys. A hard drinker, a bad husband, and a careless father, he was THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 33 popular with the community he cared most to know, and he died lamented, a nobleman of the old school, whom the sporting prints mourned as the last, or almost the last, of his race. He married an angel of a woman, and but that she was blessed with the care of children, he would have broken one of the sweetest hearts in the world. Lady Montacute had two sons, and she made it her study to breed them like Christian gentle- men. Even when lads do not remember all their mothers' lessons, they remember some of them, and the memory of the sorrowful soul who stayed at home and prayed for them kept them many a time out of mischief of the graver sort. She taught them her own simple religious creed, and if they forgot it, as boys do forget, they cherished, at least, a sort of heathen reverence for sacred things, and led lives which in the main were pure and wholesome. The new Lord Montacute, poor as he was, was a model land- lord, and he laid himself out to secure an honourable position in politics. The Honourable John, his brother, chose the pro- fession of arms, and was a favourite alike with the men of his regiment and with his brother officers. The two young men, in short, conducted themselves with so much probity and good sense, had so high a code of honour, and were withal so genial and likeable, that the heart of their mother was glad in them, and her widowhood made atonement for the unhappiness of her married life. It is not held to be convenient, even in the most leisurely circles, to speak of a man by so lengthy a style as that owned by the Honourable John George Alaric FitzAdington Clare, and it was the custom among his intimates to call the young gentleman Jack. He was a model of graceful strength, and had a plain English face, expressive of many pleasing qualities, amongst which candour and good humour were conspicuous. His hair was of a reddish chestnut hue, and his disposition was proportionately warm, hopeful, and impetuous. He was five-and-twenty years of age, had just got his troop, and was an almost universal favourite. Yet, in spite of all his advantages of youth, health, birth, and temperament. Jack Clare was unhappy, and his sorrows arose from one of the commonest of causes. The young man was in love, very loyally and honestly in love, and he had good reason to believe his passion hopeless. There are few growths of social life so curious as the various D 34 THE WAY OF THE WORLD. conditions of poverty. Jack Clare had his pay and an allow- ance of three hundred pounds a year. The Lady Ella Santerre, to whom he was profoundly devoted, had in her own right an income about equal to her lover's, and she liked him well enough to have married him, if poverty's stern barrier could have "been taken down. The young people, with the improvidence natural to youth, were ready to brave the world on this absurdly insufficient income, but the lady had a father who had known the grip of poverty all his life, and the young man had a mother who had felt its sting for many years, and the one command- ing and the other persuading kept the two children out of mischief. Jack, being quartered at Bryanstowe, was within an easy drive of Montacute Honour, and was naturally often to be seen at home. He made very creditable efforts to appear cheerful there, but both his mother and his brother could see through his artifices, and knew that he was taking his love affairs seriously. Lord Montacute was something of a Liberal amongst the Conservative Peers with whom he sat, and he was regarded by some of the more old-fashioned as being a little dangerous in his views, but Jack, who had never hitherto meddled with politics at all, began to have such awfully freethinkmg ideas that his elder brother trembled for him. "Pll be hanged," he said one day, ''if I can see the good of an aristocracy at all." Lord Montacute looked at his brother with an eye of doubtful expression. Was there a tile loose anywhere, or was there a joke in store 1 " We're all one flesh and blood," said Jack, " and I've got just as many toes and fingers as a ploughman has. And I'll tell you what it is, Charley. There's a smash coming — a break-up — here, there, and everywhere. We can't stand the racket, Charley. Those Radical fellows won't have us much longer unless we wake up and do something." Lord Montacute answered only the concluding sentence of this discontented young man's address. " The loyal party in the country is quite strong enough to hold the Eadicals in check." " I am not so sure of that," said Jack ; " and even if it's true, I am not sure that it always will be, and I am not even sure that it ought to be." "Jack," said Lord Montacute, "these are very serious opinions." They are, indeed," said Jack. THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 35 They are crude and dangerous opinions," said Lord Monta- cute, with gravity. " The only way with them is to think them clearly out." Then Jack Clare arose and delivered an harangue which well- nigh caused his noble brother's glossy and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand on end. Time had been, he declared, when an aristocracy had been useful to the world, and its growth a thing inevitable. Whilst the priesthood con- served learning, the aristocracy conserved or modelled manners, and created a heathen code of morals to supplement and perfect the code taught by the priests. Now their work was done, their day was over, the only thing left for them was to sing Nunc dimittis and gracefully retire. The chariot of public progress was coming down the road, and the aristocratic apple-cart would be overturned. Then, ceasing to be figurative and general, the young man proceeded to handle his own case, and to show by it that an hereditary aristocracy was placed in a false position. " I am as poor as a rat, and I am not only poor, but I am a prisoner. lam hampered by ten thousand absurd conventions." " Mention ten," said Montacute. The Honourable Mr. Clare did not see his way to the im- mediate mention of ten. This kind of request is apt to be disconcerting to an orator, who must needs have a little fervour to get along with. " If I were not a gentleman," he declared, " I should be free to choose whatever career seemed fittest for me." "Do you propose to abolish gentlemen ? " Montacute de- manded. "That's very well as repartee," said Jack, "but it isn't argument. I don't want to abolish a slave because I ask you to knock off his fetters. Why am I poor*? " " You are poor and I am poor," said Montacute, " for reasons which are best not talked about." " I am poor," cried Jack, "because I am the son of a noble- man and the brother of a nobleman. I am poor by convention and general understanding. But I am not poor in reality. My little handful of money goes in things that are necessary to no man's happiness or well-being. If it were reasonably spent it would give me all a man need ask for. Apart from the conven- tions, I am wealthy. Eestricted by the conventions, I am only not a pauper. And these same conventions, let me tell you, Charley, are blackguard and scoundrelly things. See what they lead to in our case. See what they can do, even with an angel D 2 86 THE WAY OF THE WORLD. of a woman like our mother: tlie best woman we ever knew, and most likely the best woman we ever shall know." "What have the conventions done to our mother, Jack]" asked the other, seriously. Jack shrugged his shoulders, and turned away with a blush ujoon his cheek. "You know well enough. It doesn't need that a man should have to storm against them, when he knows that they have persuaded such a woman as she is that her own sons are doing well in trying to marry money." Lord Montacute lit a cigar— it was in his own private den that this conversation was held — and smoked for a minute or two before he answered. " Jack," he said then, " the murder's out." Jack, standing at the window, shrugged his broad shoulders anew, and blushed a second time. " The cat is out of the bag," said his lordship, and again Jack shrugged his shoulders. "These ideas are not political, but personal. I put it to your better judgment : Is it worth while to hold and express such sentiments as I have listened to— sentiments which, if translated into action, would lead to serious consequences, possibly to disastrous consequences, not because you have deliberately and patiently arrived at them by much thinking, but because you have formed an unfortunate attachment to a lady % " Jack Clare responded, without turning from the window. "I submit to your better judgment. Is there nothing at fault in the social rules which makes the attachment unfortun- ate ? Why should the attachment be unfortunate? What is there in the nature of things to make it anything but fortunate?" ^ " The world was made for us. Jack," said the elder brother, not unsympathetically. "If we could make it over again, there are many things in it we might like to alter. But we have to endure it as it is, and, in the main, even as it stands, it's not a very bad Avorld." " It is a bad world," returned Jack, turning upon his brother somewhat hotly, " and at the bottom of your heart you know it. A world full of lies, and humbug, and pretences — a world full of cruelty, and oppression, and bitterness." ''Jack," said my Lord Montacute, from his stand near the fireplace, " I am only half-a-dozen years older than you are, but I have been through the mill myself, and I know what it is; THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 37 and I'll tell you what I did all tlie time, and it's the identical thing I should advise you to do." "You were always a superior person," said Jack, half humorous, half angry. " What did you do '? " " I held my jaw," said his lordship, watching the smoke of his cigar as it curled about him. "All right," said Jack. ''I can take a hint as well as my neighbours. I'll hold mine." He took a cigar from the open cabinet upon the table, lit it, and sat staring out of the window. By-and-by he asked, in a softened voice, " When was it, Charley V' " When I was at Trinity," said Montacute, tranquilly. "Who was shef' Jack could lend a sympathising ear to an unprosperous love tale, when he could do it without looking sentimental, as he surely might do in the case of his own brother. " Who was she'? " " Little girl named Carmichael," answered Montacute, still staring at the smoke wreaths. " Cigar divan — opposite " "Whatl" cried Jack, rising with a gesture almost tragic. *' You have the cheek to tell me that you have been through the mill, because you spooned a girl at a cigar divan before you were one-ancl-twenty ! I supposed — if you honoured me with your confidence at all — that I should hear a story of lady and gentle- man, and not of undergrad and shop-girL" He reseated himself, and smoked with a look of deep disgust, as if his tobacco were turned to wormwood. Lord Montacute smiled, and settled his shoulders against the mantel-shelf. " King Cophetua wooed the beggar-maid," he answered, with no abatement of tranquillity. " You think the parallel between your case and mine unfair. I don't. A man can only be in love, just as he can only be dead. There are no comparatives- dead, more dead, most dead ; in love, more in love, most in love. The thing is absolute, or it is a mere pretence. I was in love. I loathed the world, and I cursed social distinctions. Well, I got over it, and here I am, fairly happy, tolerably contented. But while the thing was on," he concluded, " I held my jaw." " So I should imagine," said Jack, still mightily disdainful and disgusted. Jack dined at Montacute Honour and drove back to barracks in the cool of the evening, beneath a moon which inspired all the quiet landscape, and seemed for all its peacefulness to be in some strange way in consonance with his own unsatisfied desire. It was unwise in him when he had reached his quarters and 38 TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. dismissed his man to take out from a secret drawer tlie photo- graphic presentment of the Lady Ella, and bending over it beneath the lamp to stare at it for an hour together! It was unwise to call to mind all the sweet things the beautiful lips had said to him, and all the tender glances the lovely eyes had given him, before the edict went out for their separation. But this was a sort of unwisdom which is common with five-and- twenty, and not very reprehensible to the mind of the sternest sage who can remember the days of his own youth, when his heart was warm and tender. That we should all have to grow grey, my brethren ! That there should be no help for it ! There were young ladies in Bryanstowe and its neighbourhood who-^ thought well of Captain the Honourable John George Alaric FitzAdington Clare, and some of them had money enough to have kept his starven coffers full for life ; but they knew that smiles were wasted on him. A military man, handsome and nobly born, who has a romantic attachment to a lady in his own station, is likely to be an object of friendly interest to the young women who happen to know him, and Jack's story was, some" how or other, abroad. Js^obody is altogether sure as to the way m which these things come to be known ; but the attempt to keep them secret is very rarely successful And when it became known that Lady Ella was a visitor at the house of her late mother's dear friend, Lady Caramel, and was thus brought withm a dozen miles of Bryanstowe, all the fashionable tongues of that quarter of the world, were busy with conjectures as to what would happen. It was universally admitted that the poor girl's mother would have known better than to have brought her into such close proximity to an old lover— unless, indeed, contrary to general belief, the attachment had only been on one side— and it was owned that a father could not be expected to act with any great prescience in such a matter. For one thing, during the London season, a good mother would have taken care that a marriageable daughter should be in town, where she might have a chance of forming a desirable union, though as a set-off against that argument it was urged that there Avere two or three very eligible gentlemen in the neighbourhood, who were at home m good society, and had money enough to make them welcome to so poor a noble family as the Windgalls. Lady Ella came, and local eyes and tongues w'ere busy. Lady Ella's time of stay was over, and she went away again. The Argus eye had noted nothing ; but something had happened beyond its vision. It had been seen that Captain Clare had not THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 39 accepted, if he had even received, a single invitation from Lady- Ella's hostess, and tha,t he had half-a-dozen times ridden out of town alone in the direction of Montacute Honour. But it was a secret buried in Jack's own breast that on each of these occa- sions he had turned off to the right, and had gone as straight as the roads would carry him towards the house which held his love. It was a secret from the prying eyes and gossiping tongues that he had prowled like a poacher about the park, eyeing the mansion from sheltered places like a thief, or a member of an Irish Brotherhood. It was a secret that on the occasion of the fifth of these visits (when, having left his horse at an obscure inn half a mile away, he had scaled the park-wall), he had been pounced upon by a wary gamekeeper, who prowling about without his gun was at no particular advantage, and not being at first amenable to reason had to be soundly thrashed and then propitiated with three sovereigns and the promise of more if he behaved himself in future. It was a secret also that a part of the reformed gamekeeper's good behaviour — for which Jack Clare gave him high credit, and afterwards, little as he could afford it, a five pound note — was the dexterous smuggling of a missive into the hands of Lady Caramel's maid, who in turn stuck it in the frame of the mirror in Ella's dressing-room. That Lady Ella found the note and knew the handwriting, that she cried over it and kissed it, and that she kept the rendezvous it prayed for, were secrets also, as they had a right to be. I should like to describe the Lady Ella before we go further with the history of her love afi'airs. She Avas proud and tender, and at once enthusiastic and reserved. She was truer in friend- ship than ninety-nine girls in a hundred, and she was not merely- pretty but downright lovely, so that she impressed with a sort of gentle splendour all who beheld her. Her eyes and hair were as dark as an Englishwoman's well can be ; the rich blood mantled in her cheek with any touch of emotion at music, or a lofty thought, or the recital of a good di ed ; her lips were sweet, rosy, and mobile. She smiled rarely, seeing how young she was, but when her smile came it atoned for rarity. She was tall for a woman, and in mould full and fine, and there was an inbred refinement in her which could only come of many generations of gentle living and high thinking. A female novelist has told us recently that the word " Lady" is odious. Eor my part, I like the word so well that it seems worthy to describe this delightful and high-bred young Englishwoman. It is only amongst people of the great Anglo-Saxon race that human products so exquisite ^0 TEE WAY OF TEE WORLD. are found, and there are few general possessions with which a rational patriot would not more readily part. A beautiful youna woman is a benefaction to mankind at large, and when an old Enghsh stock flowers out in the full glory of perfect health and lorm and texture, with a nature serviceable and sweet to suit the frame it lives in, there is no wholesome human creature who can look upon that delicious growth without pleasure. In spirit Jack Clare used to go upon his knees to her when- ever he thought about her, and when, on this especial day he saw her coming through the sunlit woods to meet him, she was like the creature of another sphere to him. "Jack," she said, with only a half -reproach in her candid eyes, " this is wrong and foolish." "Don't say that, dear," answered Jack appealingly. "I must say it," she responded. ''It is wrong, because you promised me " "I know," said Jack mournfully. "It is foolish, because it pains you, and can do no good." ''Pams me?" said Jack, in tender scorn. "Pains me! If you knew how I love you, Ella, you would never think so ' " " Hush ! " she said. " You must not talk so." " I niust," he answered. '' I have come to make a last appeal, EUa. If you care at all to know it, and I think you do, I love you as I don't think a man ever loved a woman before 'l must speak, darling, if it is for the last time. We have very littie but we have enough, and I have been thinking how slavish and poor it is to sit down here in this worn-out country and let the social weeds grow over us until they shut out our last glimpse of sunlight, when we might go away and be free and happy, and perhaps a little useful in the world. If I sell my commission and realise everything "—she raised her hand against him, but he took it m both his own and went on in spite of warnincr— 'I shall have eleven thousand pounds, and with that in I?ew Zealand, or Australia, or Manitoba, or wherever the chances are best and brightest, I could buy land and cultivate it, or rear sheep or cattle, and own more acres and have more money by- and-by than ever the Windgalls and the ^lontacutes owned in all their idle lives. Give me just a word of hope, darling, and 111 go out and work as many years as Jacob served Laban." It seemed to him so possible, so reasonable, so natural that she should see his scheme as he saw it, that his grey eyes flashed with anticipations of triumph, and the diflidence with which he had begun melted into thin air. THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 41 "You pain yourself," she said, looking at him with eyes of pity. " Jack, dear," — he held her hand still, and at this sweet address he thrilled and trembled ; she had never spoken so since they were children — " if I seem cruel now ib is only to save you from more pain and trouble. It is all quite hopeless and im- possible." She did not shrink from his imploring eyes, though her heart ached as sorely as his own. " I must stay with my father till he sends me away." "Till he marries you to some man you can never care for ! " cried Jack ; " some snob with money, Ella. You can't do it. You can't submit to it. It's against nature." Her glance reproached him, and he knew that it was scarcely manly to have spoken so. "I beg your pardon, darling. If I could see you happy I shouldn't mind so much." "I came to see you, dear," she said steadily, "because I could tell you so much better than I could have written it. It is all quite hopeless and impossible. I can't break my father's heart, and I have to stay with him. Good-bye, Jack. The longer you delay the harder it will be to say it. Good-bye ! " There was no use in lingering, and he knew it, and yet he was fain to linger. Well," he said, summoning all the resolution his sore heart could hold, "good-bye. I shan't trouble you again. I'm not going to wear my heart on my sleeve for fools to laugh at. It's hard to say it, but good-bye. God bless you ! Oh, God bless you ! " He kissed the gloved hand twice or thrice, and turned away Once, when he had gone a hundred yards, he looked back, and could see her standing amongst the trees where he had left her. She waved her hand to him, and he went on again. AYhen next he turned the intervening trees had hidden her, and he could not tell that she was kneeling in the fern and crying. He did not think she loved him well enough for that — it seemed almost like a sacrilege of her to dare to think that she loved him at all. He crept half-dispiritedly to his horse and rode to quarters, where he threw a boot at his batman, and sat smoking alone for hours in dogged misery. She went back to her hostess, dressed and dined, and sang and played after dinner, managing her griefs so well that nobody guessed them. They were as real as her lover's for all that, but it was better for him to think her cold to him than to break his heart because she was breaking hers. 42 THE WAY OF TEE WORLD, CHAPTEE Y. Mr. "William Amelia found his lines in fairly pleasant places at the office of the Gallowhay Whig, but he occupied almost the- whole of his leisure in looking about for avenues to fortune. Ambition spurred him, and he was ready to scorn delight and live laborious days. At present his sphere was narrow, and found but small employment for his energies. He had no great native tendency to study, and for a young man who had entered even upon the outskirts of the kingdom of literature he was amazingly ill-read. He knew nothing of history or of poetry or fiction. But in the parliamentary debates, and in the leading articles of the newspapers, there is a prodigious amount of scat- tered knowledge of a handy sort, and these supplied Mr. Amelia's mind with most of the pabulum it drew from foreign sources* With one little leg cocked over the other, and his small person, compact big head and up-standing hair obscured by an open sheet of the Times, he would skim through the debates with searching vision, and long to scarify this or the other honourable gentleman who ran his he_ad against fact or common sense, or reasoned right from wrong premises or wrong from right ones. The young gentleman had had no training in logic, but he knew what the thing was notwithstanding, and false reasoning made him angry. He was often angry when he read the debates in Parliament, and felt, as Hamlet did, that the world was out of joint. At these times of office leisure Mr. Flinch would sit in his respectable frock coat with his well-oiled hair fitting close to his head, and would practise shorthand. " Ah say ! " would Mr. Flinch exclaim, with an accent of triumph. "What d'ye think o' that for a phraseogram, Mr. Amelia % ' I have reason to believe that yon have already received the articles in question.' Ah can write that in Pitman's system Avithout takin' the pen off the paper." " Indeed ! " Mr. Amelia would respond, appearing from behind his Times as if he were getting out of bed, and then would glance at Mr. Flinch' s invention, and return again. Mr. Maddox, with his pipe in his mouth and his volume of fiction or of verse before him, would generally look up and laugh at these times. TEE WAY OF TEE WOELD. 4a " How often do you think you'll want to write that sentence^ Plinch 1 " That's mah business," Mr. Flinch would answer. " Don't you ever get tired of eating sawdust, Elinch % " Eating sawdust ? " cries Flinch. " Nah, what's the fool talkin' about 1 Ah niver mentioned eating anything. I was- talkin' abaht shorthand." " So was I," from the satiric Maddox. " You're a liar," responds Mr. Flinch, whose weapons of con- troversy are unpolished. When things came to this pass, as they generally did, the- seedy junior reporter would drop his book and burst into a shout of laughter disproportionate to the occasion. Then the mild Eider would enter from his own den and look about him for an explanation of the jest. A very small joke served to break the monotony of office life at the Galloiohay Whig. "Flinch was born in Boeotia," said the junior, on one such: occasion, " and was expelled by a catapult, so that he picked up no civilising influences by the way." " Ah was born in Eotherham," Mr. Flinch answered, " and I niver was expelled from anywhere. And I won't have these things said abaht me. Mind that, Mr. Maddox." Then the mild Editor made peace, Avhen the disreputable junior had done laughing, and to soothe Mr. Elinch's wounded feelings invited him to dinner. Mr. Flinch, whose salary was not large and whose habits were enforcedly penurious, becam© gracious at the prospect of a dinner for nothing, and took airs of patronage with his subordinate. Mr. Eider, going back to the manufacture of his column of local notes, bethought him that it was invidious to bid one member of the staff to dinner and exclude the others, and after some battling with himself and many extricately figured reckonings of ways and means, shuffled into the reporters' room again and shyly asked the chief and the junior to be his guests on the same day. They accepting, he retired again, and went over his figures once more somewhat sadly, not seeing his way to an added expenditure of ten shil- lings, and dreading a domestic explosion. Whatever domestic difficulties were encountered in the interim the dinner took place on the appointed Sunday at two o'clock^ and the three reporters turned up in time, Mr. Amelia appearing in a tall hat and new gloves, Mr. Flinch scrupulously respect- able as usual, and Mr. Maddox unexpectedly clean in honour of the ladies. Mrs. Eider was a thin and careworn woman, whose 44 THE WAY OF TEE WORLD. •constant complaint it was that her nose was never away from the grindstone. The actual feature was thin and red, as if the figure were to be taken literally, and the poor woman, Avho had a big family and a wofully small income, was much put to it to make ends meet. The three grown-up girls were present at table, and the members of the staff were introduced with his favourite manner of mildly humorous pomp by the editor. Junior members of the family were heard scuffling and fighting in an upper room, and once or twice, maddened by the know- ledge that pastry was in the house, and stung by the unwonted presence of apples, nuts, and oranges for dessert, they broke into organised rebellion, and descended in a body. These outbreaks ■ overwhelmed the girls with confusion, and threw the head of the house into great discomfort, and it was then that the junior «howed himself worth his dinner, rattling off gay stories (gathered from many years' back numbers of the Family Herald^ whose " Eandoni Eeadings " supply a section of society with liarmless facetiae), and otherwise taking upon his own shoulders the burden of entertainment. An incident occurred which made this dinner an historical point in the career of Mr. Amelia. It arose in this way. The ladies having withdrawn, and the editor and Mr. Maddox having each set his pipe going, the talk drifted about the public a,ffairs of Gallowbay until mention of one Major Septimus Heard was made, and. the junior was found to be suddenly ■choking with smoke and laughter. Being patted on the back by the editor he recovered, and assumed an aspect of preternatural gravity until Mr. Flinch, wlio naturally imagined that he was the object of any mirthful manifestation which might occur in his neighbourhood, took up the matter as being personal to himself, and demanded an explanation. Being much enforced by Flinch, the junior at length drew from his pocket a copy of yesterday's paper and read gravely : " The gallant Major concluded by observing, amidst great applause, that however it might recommend itself to the general opinion, it occurred to him that in goodness lay the only genuine nobility, that kind hearts were infinitely preferable to coronets, and that simple faith was more to be esteemed than i^'orman blood." "Flinch," said the junior, beginning to gasp again, ^Mias been editing Tennyson." " What's the matter?" cried Mr. Flinch. ''Ali've got it on my notes. It's what he said, Mr. Eider. Ah'U swear it's what TEE WAY OF THE WORLD. 45^ he said, only, of course, lie didn't put it in such flowing lan- guage. I think," he added with a touch of pity, " Maddox is laughin'-mad. He's always on the grin." Dear me, Mr. Flinch," said the editor, putting on his glasses and reaching out for the paper. " This is a serious mistake— a very serious error. That is a verse of poetry. Quite a well- known verse of poetry. Dear me." He read it sadly and folded it upon his knees. " What makes it the more lamentable is the fact that Major Septimus Heard is sole proprietor of the Whig. That is a secret, gentlemen," he added a moment later, looking around him with a countenance of added distress, " which I ought never to have revealed. I was, in point of fact, pledged to secrecy about it, bat the shock of this mistake — dear me. Gentlemen, I am sure I may rely upon you to respect Major Heard's wishes, though I have myself been betrayed into an inadvertence." " If he'd only said, ' as the poet says,' ah'd have gone and asked him for the quotation," said Mr. Flinch defiantly ; " but he didn't. He just reeled it off as if it was out of his own head. And you know what Pitman says, Mr. Eider — the func- tion of a reporter is to make good speeches for bad speakers. That's what they call the peroration, and you always reckon to touch the peroration up a bit." " Major Heard is a very precise man, indeed," said the editor,, whose spirits were altogether dashed by the discovery. "It's nothing, after all, sir," said the junior, trying to make light of it. "I oughtn't to have mentioned it, but it was nothing but a joke to me, and I thought we should all enjoy it. If he comes and makes a row about it, sir, tell him I did it. I don't mind." "A knowledge of general literature," said the mild man, "i& essential to journalistic pursuits." " Ah don't think," said Mr. Flinch, with a vengeful look at the junior, " that a man can be expected to have literature at his fingers' ends for thirty shillings a week." "No, Mr. Flinch," said the editor, "not for thirty shillings a week, but for the love of knowledge and the charms of fiction and the delights of poetry. My brother," he went on inoffens- ively, " had a very fine business connection as an ironmonger.. He was entirely a self-made man, as I am" — Mr. Amelia smiledi — " and he offered me a partnership in the concern ; but though it restricted me to narrower means I preferred the literary life.. There is not much pure literature in the conduct of a weekly newspaper," he added, with his own languid and weary smile 46 THE WAY OF TEE WORLD. but there is a certain mental atmosphere in it, after all, which one would miss behind an ironmonger's counter. One feels conscious at times of directing the minds of the masses." His wandering glance fell upon the paper on his knees, and the look 'Of distress his forehead had worn a minute or two before re- turned. " Dear me — this is a melancholy error. We will say no more about it now, but we must exercise greater vigilance in the future." " I don't see how anybody cares to live without reading," said the blunder-headed junior, not meaning to tread on anybody's -corns, but offending two out of the three who heard him. " If there were no books in the world I'd cut my throat." Mr. Amelia said nothing, but it crossed his mind that in such a case the loss of literature would not be without its compensa- tions. He was not a young man who liked to feel inferior, and he made up his mind that, much as he hated poetry, he must begin to read it as a duty. " I'm sorry for poor old Eider," said the junior, when he and his chief left the editor's house pretty early in the afternoon. " The editorship of the Whig is a poor berth for a man with a big family. And he's really a man of very surprising learning. Oood Latinist — fair Grecian — knows Erencli and German thoroughly — knows Orr's ' Circle of the Sciences ' by heart. You can't mention an event in history but he knows the date of it." "General knowledge is a gocd thing, no doubt," said Mr. Amelia ; but what's the use of liaving a bag of tools if you don't know how to handle them 1 Money's a good thing, but it isn't serviceable on a desert island. Mr. Eider can't use his tools. He has gone to live on a desert island — one might sup- pose that he was born there — and there's nothing to buy for all the coins he has gathered." He walked as if he had deluded himself into the belief that he was seven feet high. " A man's mind must be naturally expert," he said, " before any of the tools of knowledge can be useful to him. The expert man " (he was thinking of himself) " can make use of rough and simple tools. The clumsy-minded man may be furnished with the •most delicate appliances for labour, but he can do nothing." Eider isn't a clumsy-minded man, by any means," said Maddox ; and this observation awoke Mr. Amelia to the danger of reposing too much confidence in the junior. " He writes very charming verses." " Mr. Eider was not in my mind when I used the expression," THE WAT OF TBE WORLD. 47 said Mr. Amelia unblushingly. "The aphorism was -General and was not intended for particular application " " ' lhat sentence was a quotation from Friday's Time-, anrl ;t came m usefully. Mr. Amelia learned a great S7in later years, and before he reached his present exalted position his him, but at that time he could not have told you with any Nearness what he supposed an aphorism to be. It was a cood a ernative word for " remark," or " obseryation," and it gay°e an air of finish to the sentence. Mr. Amelia, who had no 4at mental stock as yet contriyed as good a show for the shop oooW "^'Shbours. He was alert in the search for showy .goods; but he was neyer audacious and rarely adyenturous II displaying them so that when they went into the window they looked natural there, and persuaded the obseryer that a larse assortment might be found within ^ very bltf^;?''' °^ '"'"'ii^ ^ ^'"''^ ^^^^^ ^'^ik* knowing very little is pre-eminently the journalistic art, and Mr Amelia had done well m selecting journalism as hi profeVs bn No man can long pursue the calling without learning mu h ( koi^h the cram of to-day drives out the cram of yesterday as often as Bot), but it IS not necessary to know anything an\o u before you handle It for the edification of the world. %Vhat S r Blaise Delorme believed was " much, but nowise certain," and a p actTsed journalist's knowledge is like Sir Blaise's beli f. M^ lmeUa looked for success with an eye almost prophetic in its certa nty t r-j - -io-'y « of '^