"LI B R.AR.Y 
 
 OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 V.I ^
 
 ^■"^^ZZJa ^'f th^i^^^
 
 MY FRIEND JIM 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 MY FRIEND JIM 
 
 BY 
 
 W. E. N ORRIS 
 
 1 X T w o V o L u ^^ E s 
 
 VOL. I 
 
 ilontion 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK 
 1886 
 
 All Rights Reset Ted
 
 Richard Clav & Sons, 
 
 BREAD STREET HILL, LONDON, 
 
 Bungay, Suffolk.
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 53, Vol. I., line 1,/or "viscounts" rccul "earls." 
 Page 72, Vol. I., line 8, /or "a viscount " read " an earl." 
 
 ,, ,, line 9, for ** an earl " read *' a marquis." 
 
 Page 160, Vol. I., line 3, /or "earl" read, "marquis." 
 Page 53, Vol. II., line 11, /or "earl" rcadj "marquis." 
 Page 206, Vol. II., line 67, /or " viscountess " read. " countess.'
 
 Richard Clay & Sons, 
 
 TT A I-. c-r-n.cITT' Utl I I r>MnAM
 
 
 -i 
 
 r MY FRIEND JIM. 
 
 ^ 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I REMEMBER it all as clearly as if it 
 had happened yesterday afternoon. It is 
 •one of those little scenes which, with- 
 out being specially significant or sug- 
 o^estive, managfe somehow or other to 
 imprint themselves upon the memory, 
 and which remain there while so many 
 - hundreds of others fade away and 
 .: vanish, as the years go on. When I 
 closed my eyes for a moment just now 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 the whole thing came back to me — the 
 dark, musty-smelling study, with one 
 broad sunbeam stretching right across 
 it from the window ; Bracknell, Jim, 
 and I standing close together beside 
 the high, empty fire-place ; old Lord 
 Staines, looking uncommonly smart and 
 spruce (as he always did in those days), 
 a flower in his buttonhole, and a smile 
 of serene beatitude on his handsome 
 face ; and my tutor blinking through 
 his spectacles and addressing himself, 
 after his customary fashion, to no one 
 in particular. 
 
 '' I shall be sorry to lose these three 
 fellows," says he. '' They aren't bad 
 fellows, you know, taking them all 
 round, and I fancy they will succeed as 
 well in the world as they have succeeded
 
 i] MV FRIEND JIM. 3 
 
 at Eton. Yes, just about as well. 
 Bracknell — well, I don't see what more 
 could have been asked of Bracknell 
 than that he should get into the eleven, 
 and avoid getting into any serious 
 scrapes. He is good-looking, he is 
 good-natured, and from time to time I 
 have even observed gleams of — er — in- 
 telligence in him. Bracknell will do ; 
 he will adorn his station. Well, then, 
 Maynard. jNIaynard is clever, if not 
 quite so clever as he thinks himself. 
 I hardly expect him to set the Thames 
 on fire ; but I hope his mother will 
 never have reason to be ashamed of 
 him, and I have written to her, telling 
 her that I consider him my show pupil. 
 More than I oucrht to have said, 
 perhaps, but there's no fear of her 
 
 B 2
 
 4 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 disbelieving me. As for Leigh (here 
 my tutor took a few steps forward and 
 patted Jim on the shoulder), what is to 
 be said about you, Leigh ? In classics 
 you are but moderate ; in mathematics 
 I understand that you are also moder- 
 ate ; you're not in the eleven ; you're 
 not in the eight ; I doubt very much 
 whether you would be in the boats at 
 all if you hadn't so many friends. In 
 short, Leigh, you are mediocre. But 
 you're the best fellow of the lot, all the 
 same. And, that being so," added my 
 tutor, looking up with a queer, kindly 
 smile at the young giant who towered 
 nearly a head and shoulders above him 
 '^ I should be inclined to prophesy, Leigh, 
 that you will always have plenty of 
 friends, and that you will possibly be —
 
 MV FRIEND JIM. 
 
 er — more or less imposed upon all your 
 life long." 
 
 Lord Staines broke out into laughter 
 at this rather cynical prediction. " We'll 
 look after him/' said he ; " we'll see 
 that you aren't imposed upon, Leigh/' 
 
 And I dare say he thought himself 
 quite capable of so doing, although his 
 own career might not have recommended 
 him to an impartial person as being the 
 fittest man in the world to undertake 
 that task. He had always taken a 
 good-humoured and somewhat patronis- 
 ing interest in Jim, whose father and 
 mother were both dead, whose small 
 property adjoined his more extensive one 
 in Berkshire, and who — above all — was 
 his boy's friend. He thought very well 
 of the lad, and indeed w^as kind enough
 
 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 to say as much there and then. As for 
 Jim's being "the best of the lot," that 
 of course was only a joke. It is not in 
 the least likely that Lord Staines would 
 have been angry with any one who 
 should have seriously declared Jim to be 
 Bracknell's superior. When one is for- 
 tunate enough to be the owner of a 
 Derby winner one is not quite so silly 
 as to lose one's temper with a man for 
 proclaiming his own steady, useful road- 
 ster to be the more valuable animal of 
 the two. 
 
 Poor old Lord Staines was a fond and 
 foolish father, no doubt. I have heard 
 him so described with such wearisome 
 frequency that I should very much like 
 to contradict the statement if I could. 
 That being impossible, I will only venture
 
 3fV FRTEXD JIM. 
 
 to assert that there were excuses for him. 
 Evervthino- leads me to believe that if 
 I had a son as handsome, as muscular, 
 as recklessly brave and jolly, and devil- 
 may-care as Eracknell was In those 
 days, I should be proud of him. These 
 attributes may or may not constitute a 
 legitimate cause for parental pride ; but 
 I suppose it will hardly be denied that 
 they usually excite it. At the same time, 
 it must be admitted that Lord Staines 
 was a little bit outrageous in his crowing 
 and chuckling, and one can't wonder that 
 some of his friends lauorhed at him, while 
 others found him rather a bore. When- 
 ever there was a cricket match on he 
 would collect as many cronies as he 
 could induce to accompany him, and 
 would draor them down to Eton to watch
 
 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 his boy bowling and slogging. He him- 
 self never wearied of this delightful 
 spectacle, and could not understand that 
 it might eventually pall upon others. 
 He kept Bracknell supplied with plenty 
 of pocket money, laughing good-humour- 
 edly at the rapidity with which It was 
 spent. I don't suppose that he even 
 minded much when certain longish bills 
 were sent in to him by the Windsor and 
 Eton tradesmen, some of whom respect- 
 fully intimated that they had not been 
 paid for three years. He, too, had always 
 been open-handed, careless and extrava- 
 gant ; probably he thought it only natural 
 that his son and heir should resemble 
 him, and if by any chance he ever con- 
 sidered the effect of two generations of 
 extravagance upon a not very magnificent
 
 I.] MY FRIEND JIM, 
 
 rent-roll, he doubtless said to himself that 
 some day Bracknell Avould marry a woman 
 with money, and that then it would be 
 all right. Such was the course which 
 he had adopted, and it had answered 
 admirably. That is to say that he had 
 not, at the time of which I am speaking, 
 yet reached the last shilling of his late 
 wife's fortune. 
 
 He was, at any rate, evidently free 
 from misgivings on that last day of 
 Bracknell's Eton life ; for he was 
 literally brimming over with contentment 
 and goodwill. He shook hands with 
 us warmly when the time came for us to 
 wish him good-bye, repeating to us both 
 again and again that, although our friend's 
 path in life would no longer be the same 
 as our own (for Bracknell was to join
 
 10 MV FRIEND JIM. [chai 
 
 the 4th Life Guards immediately, while 
 Jim and I were to proceed in due course 
 to Oxford), yet we were on no account 
 to imagine that our friendship was at 
 an end. 
 
 " We shall all meet at Staines Court 
 before long. Well, perhaps not next 
 autumn, because I shall be in Scotland 
 until rather late in the year ; but some 
 time, you know — some time. And Brack- 
 nell w^ill run down to Oxford and look 
 you up. Or why not join us in the 
 north, both of you ? Are you fond of 
 stalking ? Never tried it ? Well, well, 
 everything must have a beginning. 
 Bracknell is as fine a shot for his years 
 as I ever saw. Now mind, we shall 
 count upon seeing you. Good-bye, my 
 dear fellows, good-bye."
 
 I.] J/y FRIEXD JIM. 11 
 
 Then he hurried off to Goodwood, 
 taking Bracknell with him, and, I should 
 think, forgot our existence with very 
 great celerity. 
 
 I remember that, after we had seen the 
 last of them, Jim said, with a sigh, '* What 
 a splendid fellow he is ! " and was quite 
 angry with me for pretending to think 
 that he alluded to old Staines. I never 
 shared Jim's enthusiastic admiration for 
 Bracknell ; but then I am not of an 
 enthusiastic temperament, and have a 
 quick eye (so, at least, I am assured) 
 for any blemishes that may disfigure the 
 characters of my friends. At all events, 
 I thouorht I had discovered some blemishes 
 in Bracknell's character, and that selfish- 
 ness was one of them and fickleness 
 another. My impression certainly was
 
 12 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 that he would trouble himself very little 
 more about us from the moment that cir- 
 cumstances ceased to throw us together ; 
 and I have much pleasure in admit- 
 ting that therein I did him an injustice. 
 We did not, of course, take advantage of 
 that somewhat vague invitation to become 
 • Lord Staines's guests in the Highlands ; 
 but a few months later Bracknell redeemed 
 his father's promise that he should look 
 us up at Oxford, and, falling in with many 
 other old Etonians there, had such a gay 
 and uproarious time of it that he was 
 easily persuaded to repeat his visit at an 
 early date. Indeed, during the following 
 two years, he used to make periodical 
 descents upon Christ Church, where a 
 band of choice spirits was ever ready to 
 welcome him, and where his arrival was
 
 MV FRIEND JIM, 13 
 
 Invariably the signal for a bear-fight upon 
 an unusually extensive scale. On the 
 ensuing day Bracknell would return to 
 London, leaving poor Jim to face the 
 college authorities, who, however, gener- 
 ally let him off easily. I fancy they knew 
 pretty well that he was sure, under all 
 circumstances, to be made the scapegoat ; 
 moreover, it really was not in human 
 nature — no, not even in donnish nature — 
 to be hard upon Jim Leigh. 
 
 Every now and again Jim would get 
 leave to go up to London for a day, 
 whence he would return a little pale and 
 fagged, but quite delighted with the hos- 
 pitality of the officers of the 4th Life 
 Guards, whose existence, according to his 
 account, would appear to have been a 
 merry one. I can't speak of it from
 
 14 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 personal knowledge. Bracknell never 
 asked me to visit him in London ; nor 
 did I participate in the bear-fights to which 
 allusion has been made. For one thing, 
 I was a reading man, and for another, 
 I couldn't have ventured to run the risk 
 of being rusticated and breaking my 
 mother's heart. Jim, as I have men- 
 tioned before, was an orphan, and the 
 worst that could have happened to him 
 w^ould have been no such serious matter 
 in his case. 
 
 On attaining the age of one-and twenty 
 he was duly placed in possession of his 
 estate, together with personal property 
 which, I believe, made his income up to 
 something over five thousand a year ; so 
 that he was in all senses of the word 
 independent. At his request, however,
 
 I.] MV FRIEXD JIM. 15 
 
 his uncle and aunt who had resided at 
 Elmhurst throughout his long minority, 
 consented to remain there until he should 
 marry ; an event which I had reason to 
 think might not be very remote. But 
 this was a profound secret. Jim had let 
 me into it because from our earliest boy- 
 hood he had had no secrets from me ; 
 but to not another soul had he spoken 
 of his hopes — least of all to the lady who 
 was the object of them. 
 
 I should be very glad to be able to 
 write of Hilda Turner with perfect im- 
 partiality ; for were that in my power I 
 should probably convey a far better idea 
 of her to the reader, who if he had met 
 her in the flesh would doubtless have been 
 fascinated by her, as most people were, 
 and might even have fallen in love with
 
 16 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 her, as a great many did. But the simple 
 truth is that I never could endure the 
 girl ; and so my evidence must be taken 
 for whatever that of a prejudiced witness 
 may be worth. I have, at any rate, no 
 hesitation in allowinor that she was ex- 
 tremely pretty, although her beauty was 
 not of a regular order, and that her 
 manners were charming, although they 
 did not happen to charm me. She was 
 one of those very fair people whose com- 
 plexions are of the clearest white, the 
 bloom upon whose cheeks is of the most 
 delicate and exquisite pink, and who sel- 
 dom become wrinkled before they reach 
 extreme old age. I am told that these 
 enviable peculiarities are due to thickness 
 of the epidermis, and I have sometimes 
 fancied that persons so gifted are apt
 
 I.] MY FRIEND JIM. 17 
 
 also to be endued with a certain mental 
 toughness of hide which may perhaps 
 be of some assistance in preserving the 
 smoothness of their brows. But I don't 
 insist upon that point. Hilda had golden 
 hair and blue eyes, and if everybody had 
 teeth like hers the dentists would be 
 driven to find another occupation. To 
 be sure when you began to criticise there 
 were plenty of faults to be found with 
 her face. Her nose, for instance, was 
 too short, her jaw was too square, and 
 her lips were a trifle too thin. I remem- 
 ber once pointing out these defects to 
 my mother, who shook her head, and 
 said that if I expected perfection I should 
 have some difficulty in finding a wife. 
 Certain it is that I am unmarried still 
 (though not, I think, on account of the 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 cause assigned), but I am very sure that 
 my mother would have chosen that I 
 should remain a bachelor to my dying 
 day rather than that I should fall in love 
 with Hilda Turner. 
 
 I suppose that never since the world 
 began did there live quite so poor a 
 judge of character as my dear mother. 
 Partly from having seen very little of the 
 bad side of human nature — for she has 
 been a confirmed invalid, unable to put 
 a foot to the ground, almost from the 
 time of my birth — partly from her un- 
 questioning faith In the wisdom and 
 mercy of an overruling Providence, which 
 causes her to take an optimistic view of 
 everything, her own constant sufferings 
 included ; partly, too, from the natural 
 sweetness of her disposition, which renders
 
 I.] MY FRIEND JIM. 19 
 
 her, I do believe, incapable of conceiv- 
 ing that any one can be intentionally 
 wicked, she habitually regards others as 
 she wishes them to be, and by no means 
 as they actually are. Yet I recollect 
 that upon one occasion she gave me to 
 understand, with a good deal of circum- 
 locution and hesitation, that she feared 
 Hilda Turner was not an entirely 
 straightforward girl. What her grounds 
 were for formulating this tremendously 
 severe charge I could not induce her to 
 divulge ; but I suspect that she had 
 caught the young lady in an unequivocal 
 hb. I could have told her that that was 
 no uncommon occurrence, but I never 
 did tell her such things when I could help 
 it, because the only effect of my doing 
 so was to give her unnecessary pain. 
 
 C 2
 
 20 MV FRIEND JIM. . [chap. 
 
 If she had some misgiving aBout Hilda, 
 she had none at all about Hilda's father, 
 the rector of the parish, of whom she 
 always spoke as *' good Mr. Turner." 
 Good Mr. Turner was — not to mince 
 matters — an ass. There w^as no harm in 
 him. He pottered about the parish, did 
 a little work, preached us a sermon once 
 a week, which had at least the merit of 
 brevity, and was benevolent in a passive 
 sort of way. Hilda ruled him — I won't 
 say with a rod of Iron, for no such for- 
 midable weapon could possibly have been 
 required for so gentle a creature ; but at 
 any rate she ruled him absolutely. 
 
 Our neighbourhood not being a very 
 thickly inhabited one, the few families 
 who lived within a mile or two of each 
 other were naturally intimate. Hilda and
 
 I.] J/Y FRIEND JIM. 21 
 
 Jim and I had grown up from childhood 
 together as companions, and when the 
 Henleys were at Staines Court we also saw 
 a good deal of Bracknell and his sister. 
 However, after Lady Staines's death, the 
 great house was generally empty. Lord 
 Staines was always in London or in 
 Scotland, or at Newmarket, or at some 
 other of the resorts where he spent his 
 money so freely, and it was only at rare 
 intervals that quiet little Lady ?vlildred 
 w^ould come down for a week or so, 
 attended by her governess and accom- 
 panied by one of the aunts who looked 
 after her. She w^as a demure little mouse 
 of a thing, w4th bright brown eyes, which 
 saw a good deal more than was commonly 
 supposed, and as kind a heart as ever 
 beat ; but as she was rather shv, and had
 
 22 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 a way of keeping her opinions to herself, 
 nobody noticed her much. She and Hilda 
 were by way of being friends, although 
 it is scarcely possible that there can have 
 been any real sympathy between them, 
 and when Hilda was in her nineteenth 
 year, Mildred's aunt, Lady Petworth, 
 very good-naturedly invited the rector's 
 daughter to spend a season with her in 
 London, and presented her at Court. 
 
 '' I rejoice," Mr. Turner used to say, 
 in his placid, deliberate way, " that dear 
 Hilda has kept up her friendship with 
 Lady Mildred. I have encouraged It (I 
 dare say he really thought that his en- 
 couragement might be a factor in the 
 question), both because refined companion- 
 ship cannot but be beneficial to the 
 young, and because I feel that it is
 
 I.] MY FRIEND JIM. 23 
 
 desirable that she should see somethinor 
 of — well, of the best society of the day." 
 
 Doubtless Hilda also felt the latter 
 result of her intercourse with Lady 
 Mildred to be highly desirable. As for 
 the refined companionship, I dare say 
 she might have made shift to do without 
 that at a pinch. 
 
 I can't tell whether it was after Miss 
 Turner's introduction to the " best society 
 of the day " that Jim first discovered how 
 desperately he was in love with her ; but 
 it was about that time that — to my sorrow, 
 though not to my surprise — he made me 
 acquainted with the state of his feelings. 
 It was not, however, until more than a 
 year later, when we had both bidden 
 farewell to Oxford, that matters ap- 
 proached a crisis. Up to then Jim's
 
 24 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 attentions had been of a most modest 
 and tentative order. He had a poor 
 opinion of his personal charms, and pre- 
 ferred the agony of suspense to the risk 
 of rejection. I am afraid I must plead 
 guilty to having encouraged his diffi- 
 dence. To confess the truth, I thought 
 it was upon the cards that so captivating 
 a young lady as Miss Turner might 
 chance upon somebody in London whose 
 claims to her regard might be greater 
 than poor Jim's. But such did not 
 prove to be the case. Five thousand a 
 year is not a colossal income, yet, if you 
 will take the trouble to run over the list 
 of your acquaintances, you will find that 
 the bachelors who possess as much are 
 in a small minority ; and it seems possible 
 that Hilda may have made that calculation.
 
 I.] MV FRIEND JIM. 25 
 
 And so, one fine hot month of July, 
 when Cranfield Rectory, embosomed 
 among its spreading trees, looked the 
 very spot for the enacting of a pastoral 
 idyll ; when the great level lawns at 
 Staines Court were gay with flowers, 
 which there was nobody but the gardeners 
 to admire, and when our own humble 
 domain was, as my mother, who took 
 immense pride in it declared, " quite a 
 show," it cam.e to pass that two young 
 people were constantly to be seen, riding 
 or walking together among the lanes and 
 woods, of whom it might be said that they 
 formed a very handsome couple. Not 
 that our big-boned, broad-shouldered Jim, 
 with his hook nose, his quiet grey eyes, 
 and that large mouth of his, which, upon 
 the smallest provocation, would widen
 
 26 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 itself into a smile extending from ear to 
 ear, was strictly speaking a handsome 
 man, but perhaps he was near enough 
 being so to justify the above good-natured 
 description, which was uttered by many 
 persons, the Reverend Simeon Turner 
 included. The Reverend Simeon was not 
 ambitious. A son-in-law with five thou- 
 sand a year, a high moral character, and 
 a malleable disposition was good enough 
 for him. 
 
 I was then about to be called to the 
 Bar, and was busy reading law, a study 
 which I thought at the time, and think 
 still, to be among the most repulsive that 
 a moderately intelligent human being can 
 bring his mind to bear upon. One after- 
 noon, while I was sitting with somebody's 
 Common Law Procedure, and I forget
 
 I.] MV FRIEND JIM. 27 
 
 whose Precedents of Pleadings open before 
 me, Jim lounged into my den, and, seating 
 himself sideways upon the table, remarked 
 that he was the happiest fellow in Chris- 
 tendom or something to that effect. 
 
 When you know that your friend is 
 absolutely bent upon making a fool of 
 himself the very stupidest thing in the 
 world is to tell him so. I endeavoured 
 to look delighted and said, ''Has she 
 accepted you, then ? " 
 
 ** Well, no," he answered ; " she hasn't 
 exactly accepted me, for the reason that I 
 haven't asked her ; but I think it will be 
 all right. Harry, old chap, I don't know 
 what I have done to deserve such luck ! " 
 
 Nor did I. I am quite sure that he 
 had never done anything to deserve it ; 
 but the thing had come upon him
 
 28 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. i. 
 
 nevertheless ; and, after all, one sees 
 many prisoners who hug their chains 
 contentedly. " And why," I inquired, 
 " haven't you proposed to her ? " 
 
 Jim laughed. ''I'm such a duffer!" 
 he replied. " It takes me a long time to 
 get under way, and when I am coming 
 to the point she always manages somehow 
 or other to put me off. Well, it doesn't 
 much matter ; there's no hurry, you 
 know." 
 
 ** None whatever," I agreed, thinking 
 to myself that, so long as the fatal words 
 remained unspoken, there was always 
 just the ghost of a hope left for him. 
 
 And then he threw himself into my 
 armchair, lighted a cigar, and began to 
 rhapsodise after a fashion which it would 
 be as tedious to write about as to read
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 It was at this somewhat critical juncture 
 that Lord Staines took it into his head 
 to come down to Staines Court, with the 
 avowed intention of remaining there for 
 a considerable time. His arrival, which 
 had been preceded by that of his French 
 cook, his house-steward, his groom of 
 the chambers, and heaven only knows 
 how many other domestic functionaries 
 (for his style of living had always been 
 far in excess of that warranted by his 
 income), caused quite a little stir in the
 
 30 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 vicinity, and set everybody conjecturing 
 as to its causes. What these were was 
 revealed to us the next morning by Lady 
 Mildred, who lost no time in walking over 
 to see my mother. 
 
 *' Papa has been very unlucky this 
 year," she said, in her gentle, matter-of- 
 course way. *' First of all, his horse lost 
 the Derby by a head, as you know " 
 
 *' My dear," interrupted my mother, " I 
 am afraid I know nothing about the 
 Derby, except that it is a race which 
 takes place every spring." 
 
 '' No, you wouldn't. But papa knows 
 a great deal about it, and even I know 
 something. Premier must have won if 
 he had not been interfered with. It was 
 nobody's fault, but it was poor papa's 
 misfortune ; and since then he has been
 
 II.] MV FRIEND JIM. 31 
 
 unlucky at Ascct also. So there is to be 
 no yachting this summer, and we are 
 going to remain here quietly and ask 
 hardly anybody to stay with us." 
 
 '' It is an ill wind that blows nobody 
 any good," remarked my mother; "it 
 will be a great pleasure to the young 
 people to have you near them. And, 
 perhaps," she added meditatively, "these 
 losses may prove a blessing in disguise to 
 Lord Staines if they induce him to leave 
 off betting on horse-races, w^hich I can- 
 not think right. Because, you see, if one 
 man wins money others must lose it." 
 
 Lady ^Mildred admitted that that was 
 probably the case, but doubted whether 
 the losers were often prevailed upon to 
 give up the game. *'As for me," she 
 said, '' I would always rather be at
 
 32 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 Staines Court than anywhere else ; and 
 Bracknell is coming- down in a few days, 
 so that it will be quite like old times 
 again. But I am afraid he will find it 
 too dull to stay long." 
 
 '* Oh, but he will have plenty of com- 
 panions," said my mother, in the inno- 
 cence of her heart. " There is Harry, 
 you know, and Jim Leigh, and Hilda 
 Turner." 
 
 Lying there upon her sofa year after 
 year, day following day, with no change 
 or the possibility of it, it was difficult 
 for her to realise how quickly boys and 
 girls become men and women. The 
 boy, it is said, is father to the man, and 
 one must assume, by parity of reasoning, 
 that the girl is mother to the woman. 
 The theory is a somewhat discourao^-ino-
 
 II.] MY FRIEND JIM, 33 
 
 one, when considered, but I am bound to 
 confess that my own observation tends to 
 confirm It. When my tutor predicted 
 that Bracknell would adorn his station, 
 I take It that he spoke with a spice of 
 that good-humoured malice In which he 
 sometimes permitted himself to Indulge. 
 Bracknell at the age of twenty-three was 
 probably very much what my tutor had 
 anticipated that he would be. He was 
 one of the handsomest young men about 
 London ; he was Immensely in request 
 with that class who have come to be 
 known in these latter days as the '^ smart 
 people " ; his affaires de coeur had been 
 numerous and a trifle ostentatious ; he 
 was owner, or part owner, of several 
 horses which had achieved a certain 
 celebrity ; and he was pretty deeply In 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 debt. I should be puzzled to say what 
 good qualities he possessed beyond that 
 of pluck, but I do not in the least 
 wonder at his great popularity. Jim, 
 who persisted in regarding him as a 
 bright particular star, was overjoyed on 
 hearing that he proposed to honour our 
 quiet neighbourhood with his presence 
 for a time, and it struck me that Hilda's 
 eyes glistened' when this cheering intelli- 
 gence was conveyed to her. 
 
 We all — that is, the Turners, Jim, and 
 myself — were invited to dine at Staines 
 Court on the evening of his arrival ; and 
 I declare that we had not been seated 
 at the table for five minutes before it 
 was perfectly clear to me that Miss 
 Hilda intended to make him her cap- 
 tive. What put this beyond a doubt
 
 II.] MV FRIEND JIM. 35 
 
 was the obstinacy with which she de- 
 cHned to have anything to say to him. 
 Lord Staines, who took her in to dinner, 
 was obviously depressed and preoccupied 
 when we sat down ; but Hilda put forth 
 all her very considerable powers of 
 pleasing, and by the time that the fish 
 was removed she had contrived to put 
 her neighbour in the best of good 
 spirits. No man was more truly appre- 
 ciative of feminine beauty and wit than 
 Lord Staines. Meanwhile, Bracknell, 
 who had old Turner on his right hand, 
 speedily realised that he had a very 
 charming person on his left; and it was 
 not a little amusing to see the look of 
 blank astonishment which overspread his 
 features when, after repeated attempts to 
 attract Hilda's notice, it dawned upon 
 
 D 2
 
 36 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 him that she really preferred his father's 
 conversation to his own. I suppose that 
 never before in his life had he known 
 a charming person display such extra- 
 ordinary taste. In vain he brought his 
 ingenuous arts to bear upon her, and 
 forced her to look round while he shot 
 languishing glances full into her eyes. 
 The glances failed to arouse any re- 
 sponse ; she gave him politely but 
 plainly to understand that his interrup- 
 tions were unwelcome, answered him 
 with a few monosyllables or a faint 
 smile, and immediately turned away to 
 resume her remarks to Lord Staines, 
 who was evidently much tickled by the 
 discomfiture of his heir-apparent. 
 
 Jim all this time was very pleasantly 
 engaged in talking over bygone days
 
 II.] AfV FRIEND JIM, 37 
 
 with Lady Mildred, only every now 
 and again his eyes wandered to Hilda 
 and rested upon her with a ridiculous 
 look of pride and affection. Doubtless 
 he was thinking how good it was of her 
 to take so much trouble to amuse the 
 old gentleman at the head of the table. 
 As for the Reverend Simeon and my- 
 self, we ate our dinner, which was an 
 excellent one, and nobody took the 
 smallest notice of us. 
 
 Later in the evening, when we as- 
 sembled in the drawins: - room, Lord 
 Staines became grave and silent once 
 more, black Care having, I presume, re- 
 called herself to his memory. Very 
 soon he murmured some excuse and 
 slipped away — perhaps to try and es- 
 tablish a balance between revenue and
 
 38 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 expenditure in his study. Lady Mildred 
 had some photographs to show to Jim, 
 who may or may not have been as in- 
 terested in them as he professed to be ; 
 Mr. Turner, for lack of a more worthy 
 listener, was fain to favour me with his 
 views upon the subject of secular edu- 
 cation ; and while he was expounding 
 these at some length, I saw exactly 
 what I had expected to see. Bracknell 
 seated himself upon a sofa beside Hilda, 
 who put up her fan and received him 
 with a side glance which was half super- 
 cilious, half encouraging. He began to 
 address her in a low tone of remon- 
 strance. Presumably he was begging 
 to be informed why she had treated him 
 with such marked coolness, for presently 
 I heard her reply, laughing slightly, " I
 
 II.] MV FRIEND JIM. 39 
 
 wouldn't press that point if I were you, 
 Lord Bracknell. If you do, perhaps I 
 may ask for your version of certain 
 stories that I heard about you in 
 London." 
 
 " What stories ? " he returned eagerly. 
 *' Depend upon it, there wasn't a word 
 of truth in them. Surely you don't 
 believe all you are told ? " And so 
 forth, and so forth. 
 
 The remainder of the colloquy was 
 carried on in such subdued accents that 
 the eloquence of the Reverend Simeon, 
 who was standing very close to me and 
 emphasising his periods by repeated taps 
 upon my shirt-front with his fore-finger, 
 drowned it. But, indeed, I was not 
 curious to hear more. How many times, 
 I wonder, has that selfsame dialogue been
 
 40 MY FRIEND JIM, [chap. 
 
 conducted in identical terms since the 
 world began, and how many times will 
 it be repeated before the human race 
 becomes extinct ? Generally, I think, 
 about five to ten minutes elapse before 
 the point is reached when the lady in- 
 vites unreserved confession as the pre- 
 liminary to possible absolution ; and then 
 the man tells her — well, I suppose he some- 
 times tells her the truth, though I should 
 imagine that that is a rare case. What 
 Bracknell said to Hilda, after they had 
 moved away slowly towards the open 
 French window, through which they pre- 
 sently vanished, I have no idea, nor can 
 it be of the smallest consequence. What 
 I do know is that they were absent for 
 the best part of an hour, and that long 
 before the expiration of that time Jim
 
 II.] J/y FRIEND JIM. 41 
 
 had grown fidgety, Lady Mildred was 
 looking anxious, Mr. Turner had fallen 
 sound asleep, and this humble chronicler 
 was well-nigh worn out with desperate 
 efforts to sustain a conversation which 
 flickered and died the moment that it 
 was left alone. 
 
 At length Lord Staines returned. He 
 had been making hay with his hair, from 
 which I concluded that he had failed 
 to discover any arithmetical process by 
 which the greater can be subtracted from 
 the less ; and unless I greatly misjudged 
 him, his inward ejaculation on seeing us 
 was, '* What ! not gone yet ! " But he 
 was far too polite to utter any words to 
 that effect, and he discoursed amiably 
 until Bracknell and Hilda re-appeared, 
 which they did without the least symptom
 
 42 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 of embarrassment on either side. Then 
 old Turner woke up suddenly, rubbed 
 his hands and said that they had had 
 a delightful evening, but that they really 
 mustn't keep the carriage waiting any 
 longer ; whereupon we all wished one 
 another good-night with much alacrity, 
 and the party broke up. 
 
 Jim's dog-cart was at the door, and 
 he had promised to give me a lift 
 home; but as I was putting on my 
 overcoat in the hall, he followed me 
 and said, '' Do you mind waiting a 
 quarter of an hour, Harry ? I should 
 like to smoke a cigar with Bracknell 
 before we go." 
 
 Of course I replied that I didn't mind 
 at all, and accordingly we adjourned to 
 the smoking-room, whither Lord Staines
 
 II.] MY FRIEND JIM. 43 
 
 did not accompany us. I don't think I 
 have ever met any one quite so straight- 
 forward as Jim. It never occurred to 
 him to approach any subject by a little 
 introductory beating about the bush, as 
 almost all of us do. If he had anything 
 to say to you, you might be quite cer- 
 tain that he would say every word of 
 it, and lose no time about doing so 
 either. His cigar was hardly alight 
 before he had explained matters to Brack- 
 nell in the most unequivocal language. 
 
 '* Look here, Bracknell, old chap," said 
 he, "I don't want you to flirt with 
 Hilda Turner. We are all friends here, 
 so I don't mind telling you that I mean 
 to ask her to be my wife, though I'd 
 rather you didn't speak about it to any 
 one else just yet."
 
 44 MV FRIEND JIM, [chap. 
 
 Something in this announcement 
 seemed to tickle Bracknell amazingly ; 
 for his mirth was so immoderate and 
 so prolonged that Jim felt constrained 
 at last to add : " It isn't a joke." 
 
 '' Oh yes, it is, my dear boy," returned 
 the other, still laughing. ''It's a first- 
 rate joke, if you could only see it. Be 
 advised by me, Jim, and drop that 
 young woman like a hot potato. She's 
 not the wife for you." 
 
 " That's as may be," rejoined Jim 
 quietly ; '' but at all events she is not 
 the wife for you." 
 
 '' I should rather think she wasn't ! 
 The wife for me is a lady with 50,000/. 
 of her own. Of course it would be de- 
 sirable that she should have more, but 
 50,000/. is the irreducible minimum ; the
 
 II.] MV FRIEND JIM. 45 
 
 governor has just been telling me so. 
 By the way, do you think the fair Hilda 
 is going to accept you ? " 
 
 Jim, with a becoming blush, admitted 
 that he was sanguine. 
 
 *' Well, she 77tay, Five thousand a year 
 Is not to be sneezed at in these hard 
 times ; and I suppose youVe worth all 
 that, aren't you } " 
 
 Jim got up and leant with his back 
 against the mantelpiece. '' Do you know, 
 Bracknell," said he, '' I don't like that 
 way of talking. I am sure you have 
 no intention of hurting my feelings, but, 
 you see. It Isn't pleasant to me to hear 
 Hilda spoken of " 
 
 " As if she resembled other women. 
 All right, Jim ; I'll spare your feelings 
 for the future, and I don't think I'll
 
 46 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 marry Miss Turner, thank you. I sup- 
 pose I may sometimes speak to her, 
 though ? " 
 
 "• Of course you may," repHed Jim 
 quite gravely. ** If you tell me that you 
 won't flirt with her, that's all I want. 
 Only, don't you see what I mean ? If 
 you began to pay attention to Hilda, or 
 to any other woman, what possible chance 
 could I have '^. It stands to reason that 
 I should have none. I'm neither good- 
 looking nor clever, nor — nor anything. 
 Why, I wouldn't even venture to pit 
 myself against Harry Maynard ! " 
 
 And with this homage to his friend's 
 irresistible attractions and incidental ac- 
 knowledgment of my own, Jim resumed 
 his seat. 
 
 Bracknell was a little flattered, I think.
 
 II.] MV FRIEND JIM. 47 
 
 and perhaps also (though I am not quite 
 so sure about that) a Httle touched. '' Go 
 on and prosper," said he. '' Marriage is 
 the greatest mistake in the world ; but 
 if you will marry, you will. Let me 
 know when the event comes off, and 
 I'll be your best man." 
 
 It is not always easy to tell how far 
 the sense of duty and honour possessed 
 by men like Bracknell may be relied 
 upon. Doubtless there are certain of- 
 fences against their fellow-men which 
 they would under no circumstances com- 
 ,jnit ; but as for the rest, I should imagine 
 that it was very much a question of 
 temptation. Truth compels me to admit 
 that the temptations with which Hilda 
 assailed the heir of Staines Court during 
 the next few weeks were of a nature to
 
 48 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 try the stoutest powers of resistance. I 
 don't say that her tactics were novel ; 
 but I do say that anything more clever 
 than her employment of them I never 
 saw. Of course " the young people," as 
 we were generlcally termed by our elders, 
 were continually together. There were 
 rides, there were picnics, there was 
 lawn-tennis — in short, all the ordinary 
 amusements of country-house life in the 
 summer-time ; and to watch Hilda and 
 Bracknell together on those occasions 
 would have been most entertaining if 
 It had not been also a little distressing. 
 She stirred his curiosity ; she roused In 
 him a spirit of emulation ; she flattered 
 his vanity one day only to wound it the 
 next. Sometimes she ignored him as 
 obstinately as she had done the first
 
 II.] MV FRIEND JIM. 49 
 
 evening ; and every now and again, 
 when Jim's back was turned, she would 
 favour him with a look which I am 
 quite sure must have sent a thrill through 
 his whole person, though he had the 
 credit of being accustomed to such looks. 
 All this time she was charminof in her 
 demeanour to poor old Jim, with whom, 
 however, she now avoided taking solitary 
 walks ; and the upshot of it was that, 
 before a fortnight had passed, she had 
 two sighing lovers at her feet instead of 
 one. That may not have been a very 
 wonderful exploit to accomplish, never- 
 theless it was accomplished with very 
 great skill. 
 
 How matters must end was obvious 
 enough ; yet when the catastrophe (for 
 I suppose it must be called a catastrophe) 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 came, I confess I was slightly startled. 
 It was Mr. Turner who apprised me of 
 it. Strolling out in the direction of 
 Staines Court one hot morning, I came 
 upon him just as he was hurrying through 
 the gates, and he at once pulled up, 
 took off his hat and began to mop his 
 forehead. Evidently he was a prey to 
 conflicting emotions ; and indeed his first 
 words were a confession that such was 
 the case. 
 
 ''My dear Harry," said he, "I am 
 upset — completely upset. Tell me now 
 — for you have an old head upon young 
 shoulders — did it ever strike you that 
 there was anything between my daughter 
 and Lord Bracknell ? " 
 
 I replied that that Idea had suggested 
 Itself to me.
 
 II.] MY FRIEND JIM. 51 
 
 "You don't say so!" exclaimed Mr. 
 Turner. *' Dear me ! Well, I assure you 
 that I never was more taken aback in 
 my life than when Lord Bracknell came 
 to me last niorht to tell me that he had 
 proposed to Hilda and had been accepted. 
 Ah, I see that you are astonished. The 
 fact is that I had formed other — ahem ! 
 — anticipations. Possibly you may have 
 shared those anticipations '^. " 
 
 I signified assent, and he went on : 
 " To tell you the truth, Harry, I should 
 have been better pleased if things had 
 fallen out otherwise. Even now I am 
 not sure — However, we shall see. I have 
 just received a note from Lord Staines, 
 requesting me to call upon him immedi- 
 ately, and I greatly fear that he will not 
 be favourable to the engagement. You 
 
 E 2
 
 52 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 are very observant, I know : have you 
 noticed any signs of his being disposed 
 to — er — welcome dear Hilda as his 
 daughter-in-law ? " 
 
 I was quite unable to say that I had, 
 and I really felt very sorry for the poor 
 man, who seemed, through no fault of 
 his own, to have got between the upper 
 and the nether millstones. Nothing was 
 more certain than that he was about to 
 get Into serious trouble with the patron 
 of his living, and it might be safely pre- 
 dicted that, when he returned home, he 
 would get into trouble not less serious 
 with the controller of his household and 
 his actions. I quite understood why he 
 begged me not to mention this to any- 
 body, and also who was meant by that 
 emphatic " anybody : " for a squire in
 
 II.] MY FRIEND JIM. 53 
 
 the hand Is worth two viscounts in the 
 bush. I willingly gave him the required 
 assurance, and he hastened away towards 
 the house, fanning himself with his pocket- 
 handkerchief as he went.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Lord Staines was a weak man, and, 
 like most weak men, was exceedingly 
 peremptory when roused to anger. It 
 was certainly not poor Mr. Turner's fault 
 that Bracknell had been brought within 
 an ace of making an egregious ass of 
 himself; for, as everybody knew, Mr. 
 Turner had no more control over his 
 daughter than he had over the Empress 
 of China. Still, those who are invested 
 with nominal authority should expect to 
 be held responsible when disasters occur ;
 
 CHAP. III.] MV FRIEND JIM. 55 
 
 and a sad pity It Is that this excellent 
 rule Is not more frequently made to 
 apply to certain high functionaries whom 
 one miorht name. Lord Staines, havlnof 
 got hold of Hilda's ostensible superior, 
 led the unhappy man Into his study, and 
 then and there Q^ave him a tremendous 
 wigging. I made a point of calling upon 
 the Reverend Simeon In the course of 
 the afternoon, and found him quite shat- 
 tered. Never in his life before, he said 
 piteously, had such language been used 
 to him, and although It Avas his duty as 
 a Christian to foro^Ive Lord Staines's 
 words, he feared that it would be long 
 before he would be able to foro^et them. 
 As for Bracknell, he was packed off by 
 the first train, with a flea in his ear, 
 and, I dare say, a cheque in his pocket.
 
 56 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 He wrote a letter to Hilda, in which as 
 I understood, he represented himself to 
 be broken-hearted, but powerless. His 
 father wouldn't hear of the engagement, 
 and, since he was entirely dependent 
 upon his father, there was no more to 
 be said. Upon reflection, I feel quite 
 sure that he must have received a 
 cheque. Lord Staines possessed a fine 
 old-fashioned temper, but he worshipped 
 his son, whose will was a great deal 
 stronger than his own, and if Bracknell 
 had really been determined upon marry- 
 ing the cook, I doubt not but that he 
 would have snapped his fingers in his 
 father's face and married her. Such may 
 not improbably have been also the 
 opinion of the fair Hilda, whose wrath 
 at finding herself thus coolly left in the
 
 III.] MV FRIEND JIM. 57 
 
 lurch was, as I gathered from her father, 
 very great. 
 
 Her disappointment might have been 
 easier to bear, and the whole affair 
 might have blown over quietly, if only 
 Lord Staines had had the sense to hold 
 his tongue about it. But I suppose he 
 was flushed with victory and couldn't hold 
 his tongue. First he told Lady Mildred, 
 which was perhaps unavoidable ; later in 
 the d^, by which time he had fully 
 recovered his good humour, he marched 
 down to see my mother, and boasted a 
 little of the facility which which he had 
 nipped this folly and nonsense in the 
 bud. 
 
 "■ Rely upon it, my dear Mrs. May- 
 nard," said he, '' there is nothing like 
 promptitude and decision in these cases.
 
 58 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 People tell me that I have over-indulged 
 Bracknell, and possibly I have ; but I 
 believe he understands pretty well that 
 there are certain limits which he had 
 better not transgress. I can't afford to 
 have a pauper daughter-in-law, and 
 there's an end of it." 
 
 My mother said it was all very 
 worldly and shocking, and that if Lord 
 Staines had nothing worse than lack of 
 fortune to urge against Hilda, he ought 
 to be ashamed of himself. However, he 
 was not at all ashamed of himself, and I 
 take it that he must have gone about 
 freely extolling the virtue of promptitude 
 and decision, for in a few days the 
 whole neighbourhood was in possession 
 of the facts, together with such emenda- 
 tions and additions as individual taste
 
 III.] MV FRIEND JIM. 59 
 
 had grafted on to them in the process 
 of transmission. 
 
 Among the first to be Informed of 
 what had occurred was Jim, who rode 
 over to our house In a great state of 
 heat to ask me whether I had heard 
 what he was pleased to call " an infernal 
 lying report." When I was obliged to 
 tell him that the report alluded to, how- 
 ever infernal It might be, was substan- 
 tially correct, I really thought for a 
 moment that he was oolncr to hit me 
 between the eyes. But he renounced 
 that intention. If he had ever entertained 
 it, and only dropped Into a chair, with a 
 look of pain and reproach on his face 
 which hurt me almost as much as if I 
 had deserved it. 
 
 ''And you knew that Bracknell was
 
 60 MV FRTEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 humbugging me all this time ? " he ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 I had not said so, but the fact was 
 undeniable. I fancy that, upon the first 
 blush of the thing, he was more grieved 
 by Bracknell's treachery than by Hilda's 
 inconstancy, and I could not get him to 
 pay much attention to the excuses which 
 I made both for the culprit and for 
 myself; though I venture to think that 
 these were neither intrinsically poor nor 
 badly put. But when in the plenitude 
 of my generosity I began to make 
 excuses for Hilda too, he stopped me 
 at once. 
 
 '* That's enough, Harry," he inter- 
 rupted. *' You mean well ; but you don't 
 seem to see that apologising on Hilda's 
 behalf is implying that she is to blame.
 
 III.] MY FRIEND JIM. 61 
 
 I can't admit that for an instant. She 
 never gave me anything in the shape of 
 a promise ; and if I chose to imagine 
 that she cared for me, the more fool I." 
 
 ** Well, perhaps so," I agreed. '' Any- 
 how, it's very evident that she did 7iot 
 care for you." 
 
 '' Yes," he replied sighing ; " that's 
 evident, I suppose. And yet I can't 
 help thinking that she might have cared 
 for me if Bracknell hadn't come down. 
 But there's no good in talking about 
 that now. I shall be oft somewhere 
 for the next few months, I think. You 
 couldn't be persuaded to come with me 
 to Switzerland, and perhaps spend the 
 winter in Italy, could you?" 
 
 I reminded him that I was not a 
 man of independent fortune, and that
 
 62 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 my winter would have to be spent in the 
 less agreeable atmosphere of Lincoln's 
 Inn, where I had already taken cham- 
 bers ; but I strongly advised him to go 
 away and travel. He had so many friends 
 that he was not likely to be left long 
 without a companion. I fear that he did 
 not find me very sympathetic ; and in 
 truth it was all I could do to restrain 
 myself from openly congratulating him 
 upon his escape. 
 
 Presently he said that if my mother 
 was well enough to receive him, he 
 would just go and say good morning to 
 her, and I knew better than to accom- 
 pany him to her room. From that 
 quarter those who were afflicted in mind, 
 body, or estate, could always count upon 
 obtaining sympathy, if not comfort ; and
 
 III.] MV FRIEND JIM. 63 
 
 sure enough, when Jim emerged, after 
 an interview of half an hour, he looked 
 so much less inclined to hang himself 
 that I was afraid my mother had com- 
 mitted the imprudence of advising him 
 to try again. But that, it appeared, was 
 a groundless alarm. 
 
 *' Oh, no," he said quietly, in answer 
 to my inquiry, '^ she didn't give me any 
 hope. She was awfully kind though, 
 and I believe it's quite true that I shall 
 get over this some day. Only I wish 
 Bracknell had been a little more straight 
 about it." 
 
 Well, upon the whole, that seemed to 
 be a very proper spirit in w^hich to 
 meet adversity, and I accompanied my 
 friend down stairs, hoping that, after 
 all, he might not be quite as hard hit
 
 64 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 as I had supposed. But when we 
 reached the front-door, whom should we 
 find talking affably to the groom and 
 caressing Jim's horse, but Miss Hilda 
 Turner in person ! 
 
 Jim started violently, while I, for my 
 part, inwardly commended her to the 
 devil ; for I could not doubt her purpose 
 in waiting outside in that unseemly way. 
 
 '* Why did you not come in ? " I asked 
 with a touch of asperity. *' I presume 
 you called to see my mother, didn't 
 you ? " 
 
 " I did," she replied calmly, and never 
 so much as changed colour ; *' but when 
 I saw Jim's horse at the door, I thought 
 I would wait for him and call on Mrs. 
 Maynard some other day. I know it 
 tires her to have more than one visitor
 
 III.] MY FRIEND JIM. 65 
 
 at a time. Jim, if you have nothing 
 better to do, you might walk home 
 with me." 
 
 *' Good Heavens ! " thought I to my- 
 self, '' is she going to propose to him .'^ " 
 I took the liberty of raising my eye- 
 brows ostentatiously, but I doubt w^hether 
 any evolutions w^hich I could have in- 
 duced my eyebrows to perform would 
 have disturbed her equanimity. She met 
 my gaze with perfect composure, and it 
 w^as I, not she, w'ho eventually had to 
 look the other w^ay. 
 
 The countenance of that foolish Jim 
 expressed mingled surprise, pleasure, and 
 doubt. What was the good of my giving 
 him a surreptitious dig in the back and 
 making grimaces at him w^hen he turned 
 round ? Hilda had but to beckon to 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 him and he would have gone with her 
 to the world's end. He went with her 
 unhesitatingly to the end of our short 
 avenue, leading his horse ; and there 
 they were lost to my gaze. But it was 
 not necessary to be gifted with second 
 sight in order to feel tolerably sure of 
 • what was taking place between them 
 after they had vanished ; and I returned 
 to the study of the law with misgivings 
 which were only too soon to be justified. 
 An hour or so later, while I was im- 
 mersed in pleadings, and was cumbering 
 my brain with the absurd jargon of 
 replications, rejoinders, surrejoinders, re- 
 butters, and the like, I heard somebody 
 ride full gallop up to the house, 
 immediately after which my door was 
 burst open, as by a charge of dynamite,
 
 III.] MV FRIEND JIM. 67 
 
 and Jim, victorious and triumphant, stood 
 before me once more. One glance at 
 his face was sufficient to show me that 
 it was all up with him. 
 
 *'You needn't go into ecstasies," I 
 said snappishly ; '' I know all about it." 
 
 " Now, my dear Harry," he remon- 
 strated, " how can you possibly know 
 all about it?" 
 
 ''At least," said I, '* I know that you 
 are engaged to Hilda Turner." 
 
 He gave me to understand in reply 
 that such was indeed his good fortune. 
 '* And do you know," he continued, '' the 
 truth is — it's so glorious that I can 
 hardly believe it, and yet I feel some- 
 how as if I had always been sure of it 
 ■ — the truth is that she has loved me 
 all along!" 
 
 F 2
 
 68 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 " Then,'* I could not help remark- 
 ing, **she took the very oddest way 
 of showing her affection that ever I 
 heard of." 
 
 Jim said, *^ Not at all odd ; the same 
 kind of thing has often happened before, 
 as everybody knows. It all arose out of 
 my stupid bashfulness. She naturally 
 thought that I couldn't care much about 
 her, since I wouldn't speak out ; and so 
 when Bracknell made his offer she ac- 
 cepted him. She says she would have 
 accepted anybody under the circum- 
 stances — and I can quite understand it." 
 
 Obviously reasoning would be thrown 
 away upon such a lunatic ; nevertheless, 
 to set myself straight with my con- 
 science, I endeavoured to reason with 
 him.
 
 III.] 3/Y FRIEND JIM. 69 
 
 "It appears, then," said I, ''that she 
 sought you out in order to avow her 
 love. If she was not too proud to do 
 that to-day, why in the world couldn't 
 she have done it a few weeks ago ? " 
 
 "Good Lord!" ejaculated Jim, "what 
 a low opinion you have of your fellow 
 creatures ! Sought me out indeed ! Why, 
 my dear fellow, you wouldn't believe 
 what trouble I had to extort the truth 
 from her. What she sought me out for 
 — not that she did seek me out — was to 
 beg me to try and make peace between 
 her father and old Staines. That, of 
 course, led us to speak about Bracknell, 
 and then I couldn't help telling her how 
 long I had loved her, and then at last 
 she admitted that she had only pro- 
 mised to marry him out of pique. But
 
 70 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. hi. 
 
 she was very unwilling to accept me, I 
 can tell you. Harry, old chap, you don't 
 know Hilda ; she's the sweetest girl in 
 England ! " 
 
 If she was, I certainly did not know 
 her ; but to make such a rejoinder as 
 that would only have been to expose 
 myself to a surrejoinder which it would 
 have been altogether futile to attempt to 
 rebut ; so I said what was expected of 
 me with as good a grace as I could 
 command, and as soon as Jim was gone 
 I kicked those odious law books to the 
 other end of the room, in token alike 
 of my abhorrence for them individu- 
 ally, and of my disgust with a state 
 of things which I was powerless to 
 remedy.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 It has ever been my wish to look with 
 an Impartial eye alike upon the just and 
 upon the unjust. Being, I hope, to some 
 extent conscious of my own small fail- 
 ings and very desirous that full credit 
 should be allowed to me for my virtues, 
 it is but fair that I should acknowledge 
 the virtues of those whom I dislike, if 
 by diligent searching I can discover that 
 they possess any. And so I am really 
 glad to be able to say for Hilda Turner 
 that I believe she was as fond of Jim
 
 72 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 as it was in her nature to be of any- 
 body. This concession may the more 
 readily be made because, to tell the 
 truth, it does not amount to much when 
 looked into. Other things being equal, 
 she would, I take it, have preferred Jim 
 to Bracknell ; but other things were not 
 equal, because Bracknell was a viscount, 
 who would some day be an earl, whereas 
 Jim would assuredly never be anything 
 but a moderately well-to-do country squire. 
 Still I am bound to confess that when 
 her first string broke she took up her 
 second with a very good grace. Whether, 
 as I suspected at the time, she precipi- 
 tated her engagement by way of con- 
 veying a slap in the face to the too 
 dutiful Bracknell, or whether she had 
 got wind of Jim's proposed exodus and
 
 IV.] MY FRIEND JIM. 73 
 
 feared to lose him altogether by delay, 
 certain it is that she bore herself with 
 dignity and general amiability in a 
 situation which must have been some- 
 what embarrassing, and also that she 
 made Jim supremely happy. More than 
 that could not reasonably have been 
 required of her. 
 
 The young couple w^ere, to all ap- 
 pearance, thoroughly satisfied with one 
 another, and their satisfaction was very 
 commonly, if not quite universally, shared 
 by their friends and relatives. Old 
 Turner rubbed his plump white hands, 
 and declared that the wish of his heart 
 was now fulfilled ; Lord Staines was so 
 delighted that he could not rest until 
 he had walked over to the Rectory and 
 announced his delight ; and my mother,
 
 74 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 though secretly a little disappointed (for 
 Jim was a great favourite of hers), did 
 not hesitate to aver that all was for the 
 best. It is true that she would have 
 said and thought the selfsame thing if 
 she had just heard me sentenced to be 
 hanged by the neck until I was dead 
 — such being her simple creed. Taking 
 her stand upon certain passages of 
 Scripture, she boldly asserted that it was 
 not for us to judge whether this or that 
 event would be productive of ultimate 
 good or not, and, in short, adopted 
 without reservation the doctrine that 
 whatever is is right. 
 
 To fall in with my dear mother's 
 views in this respect has never been 
 possible to me, and amid the general 
 chorus of approval I found some com-
 
 IV.] MV FRIEND JIM. 75 
 
 fort in listening to a dissentient voice 
 which harmonised with my own. It was 
 a very quiet Httle voice, but it was a 
 sweet one, and was seldom used to 
 utter disparaging remarks about anybody. 
 " Since you ask me," Lady Mildred said, 
 " I am not glad, I am sorry. It seems 
 to me that Hilda is not s^ood enouo^h 
 for Mr. Leigh." 
 
 ** That," I observed, *' is beyond all 
 question." 
 
 ''Yes ; and I don't understand her 
 changing her mind so quickly. Of 
 course it was impossible that Bracknell 
 should marry her ; but if it had been 
 possible they might have got on together 
 well enough, perhaps. I am fonder of 
 Bracknell than of anybody else in the 
 world, and I don't know that she is
 
 76 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 exactly good enough for him either. But 
 he is different from Mr. Leigh. I mean 
 that if he had found out afterwards that 
 Hilda was not quite — quite what he had 
 fancied her, I don't think he would have 
 taken it so much to heart." 
 
 These were precisely my sentiments ; 
 but as no one had the remotest intention 
 of consulting either me or Lady Mildred, 
 we could not do better than keep them 
 to ourselves ; and we kept them to 
 ourselves accordingly. 
 
 Of Bracknell I heard nothing, nor, I 
 suppose, did Jim receive congratulations 
 from that quarter, although I did not 
 like to ask him the question. No doubt 
 he had forgiven his old friend, as he 
 could well afford to do, being more or 
 less in the position of a conqueror. His
 
 IV.] MY FRIEND JIM. 77 
 
 marriage was appointed to take place in 
 the ensuing month of January, and soon 
 after hearlnof of this arranorement I left 
 home to be formally called to the bar 
 and to take possession of the chambers, 
 where I am thankful to say that my 
 legal library has remained unconsulted 
 from that day to this. For then It 
 was that I received my first substantial 
 encouragement to persevere with those 
 literary labours which have since made 
 life pleasant to me, and have even enabled 
 me to afford an occasional pat of butter 
 with my bread. 
 
 During the autumn and early winter, 
 my mother, who writes the most de- 
 lightful letters that ever were penned by 
 mortal hand, kept me fully Informed of 
 all that was going on down at Cranfield ;
 
 78 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 and by her account all was going on 
 quite as it ought. Jim, assisted by the 
 counsels of the bride-elect, was refur- 
 nishing Elmhurst from attic to basement ; 
 his uncle and aunt, a very uninteresting 
 old couple, whom nobody ever saw, and 
 whom nobody but my mother would have 
 dreamt of regretting, had already taken 
 their departure for Bath, where they 
 proposed to reside in future ; " and dear 
 Mildred," my mother added, " is behav- 
 ing so sweetly about it all. She seems 
 quite to share Jim's happiness, and some 
 day, I hope, she herself will be as happy 
 as she deserves to be." I confess that 
 the significance of the above encomium 
 escaped me at the time ; although I 
 certainly might have perceived it if I 
 had not been a little dense.
 
 IV.] MV FRIEND JIM. 79 
 
 A few days before Christmas I seated 
 myself in the down express from Pad- 
 dington, being bound for Cranfield, with 
 the twofold object of spending that festive 
 season at home and assisting at Jim's 
 subsequent nuptials. Just as the train 
 was starting a young man of fashionable 
 exterior jumped into the carriage, tum- 
 bled over my legs, apologised, and then 
 said, " Oh, it's you, Maynard, is it ? 
 Going down to the old shop ? " 
 
 I replied that such was my destination, 
 but that I presumed It wasn't his — not 
 that I really presumed anything of the 
 kind, but because I thought that, taking 
 everything into consideration, Bracknell 
 would have shown better taste by re- 
 maining absent from the paternal abode 
 at that particular juncture.
 
 80 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 " Oh, yes, I'm going to Staines Court," 
 he returned. " Why shouldn't I ? " 
 
 "• If you don't know, I'm sure I don't," 
 I answered. 
 
 '' My dear fellow," said Bracknell, 
 lighting a cigar, '' if you were to be 
 bound to avoid every woman with whom 
 you had ever been in love, your life 
 would be a perpetual game of hide-and- 
 seek. In fact, the thing really couldn't 
 be done. How is that dear old duffer 
 Jim getting on ? Lord ! what an 
 existence he has before him ! It was 
 a bad day for him when the governor 
 refused to let me take Miss Hilda off 
 his hands. That girl will end by 
 breaking his heart, you'll see." 
 
 " She does not," I observed, *' appear 
 to have broken yours."
 
 IV.] MV FRIEND JIM, 81 
 
 Bracknell smiled, but it struck me that 
 he also winced ever so slightly. ''Women 
 are all the same," said he ; "a man who 
 allowed one of them to break his heart 
 would be a great fool. Jim is a great fool." 
 
 ** If being too chivalrous for the world 
 that we live in is being a fool, he 
 certainly is one," I agreed ; and I hardly 
 know what prompted me to add, " I 
 hope you will always be as loyal to him 
 as he is to you, Bracknell." 
 
 It was rather a silly speech to make, 
 and perhaps also rather an impertinent 
 one, but Bracknell did not appear to 
 resent it. He stared for a moment, and 
 then said, " I suppose he didn't like my 
 cutting him out, eh ? It was rough upon 
 him, I admit ; but how the deuce was 
 I to help it ? " 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 Being unable to make any concise 
 reply to that question, I only answered, 
 ** Well, it is all over now, and the less 
 said about it the better." 
 
 So, by way of changing the subject, 
 my companion began to entertain me with 
 an account of a steeplechase in which he 
 had recently taken part, and this, with 
 occasional breaks, lasted us to our 
 journey's end. 
 
 I should have liked to witness the 
 meeting between Bracknell and Hilda, 
 but that pleasure was denied me. On 
 Christmas Day I dined at Staines Court, 
 my mother, who was unable to leave her 
 room, insisting upon my accepting the 
 invitation which had been sent to me to 
 join the party assembled there. The 
 house was full of Henleys and Beau-
 
 IV.] MV FRIEND JIM. 83 
 
 champs, relations of Lord Staines's, who 
 were unknown to me ; but the very first 
 thing that I saw on entering the drawing- 
 room was a Httle group, composed of 
 Hilda, Lady Mildred, Bracknell, and Jim. 
 They were conversing together in the 
 most friendly manner, and had evidently 
 made up their minds to let bygones be 
 bygones. Jim beckoned to me, and very 
 soon drew me aside to whisper, ** Isn't 
 Bracknell a good fellow ? I don't be- 
 lieve there's another man in England 
 who would have taken things as he has 
 done and come down here just to show 
 us that he bears no malice ! " 
 
 It might be that Bracknell had come 
 to Staines Court for that amiable pur- 
 pose, but I had some difficulty in suppos- 
 ing it. In the first place, he can hardly 
 
 G 2
 
 84 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 have thought that any one would suspect 
 him of bearing maHce, and in the second, 
 he might so easily have written a letter 
 calculated to allay such apprehensions. 
 There, however, he was, chatting to 
 Hilda as unconcernedly as ever ; and 
 even if he was bent upon mischief — 
 which, after all, did not seem very likely 
 — it was certain that Jim would never 
 believe it of him. 
 
 Miss Turner was not suffered to 
 retain possession of him long. I think 
 I have already mentioned that Bracknell 
 was one of those happy (one must 
 presume that they are happy) men 
 whom frisky young matrons delight to 
 honour. There were several ladies 
 among the company who answered to 
 that description, and they skirmished
 
 IV.] MY FRIEND JIM. 85 
 
 over him In a manner diverting to 
 behold, and flattering, no doubt, to the 
 subject of their strife. Between them 
 they bore him away, a not unwilHng 
 victim, and until the evening was far 
 advanced we country neighbours could 
 only admire him from afar. Lord 
 Staines, twirling his grey moustache, 
 watched his son's triumph with a benign 
 smile. Probably he had no objection to 
 Bracknell's flirting with any number of 
 ladies, so long as they were not un- 
 married and penniless. He himself was 
 looking younger and more cheerful than 
 he had done in the summer, having, as 
 I learnt in the course of a brief inter- 
 view with Lady Mildred, landed a hand- 
 some sum over the Cesarewitch. 
 
 At a late hour somebody — I suppose
 
 86 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 it must have been Bracknell — suggested 
 a game of pool. About ten of us, in- 
 cluding two or three ladles, adjourned 
 to the billiard-room, and then it was 
 that I was able to take a few mental 
 notes of Hilda's demeanour towards her 
 former lover. Her position was not a 
 very comfortable one ; because every- 
 body in the room knew that she had 
 consented to marry Bracknell only a 
 few months before, and she must have 
 known quite well that they knew it. 
 Her serenity, however, was not ruffled, 
 nor did she fall into any of the mistakes 
 which she might so easily have made, 
 and which a woman of more feeling 
 could hardly have avoided making. 
 She neither shunned Bracknell nor 
 thrust herself upon his notice ; she was
 
 IV.] MV FRIEND JIM. 87 
 
 neither over-friendly with him nor the 
 reverse. When he spoke to her she 
 answered him civilly, and once or twice 
 she even addressed him first, but indeed 
 she was in an unusually quiet mood and 
 spoke very little to anybody. If there 
 was a criticism to be made upon her, it 
 might have been that she was just a 
 trifle too affectionate with Jim, whisper- 
 ing a word or two in his ear occasion- 
 ally, as she passed round the table, and 
 glancing quickly at him for applause 
 whenever she had achieved a brilliant 
 stroke. 
 
 After the game had been going on 
 for some little time Bracknell came and 
 threw himself down on the sofa beside 
 me. '' By George ! " he exclaimed, in 
 an undertone which had a rine of
 
 88 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 vexation in it, *' that girl has no more 
 heart than a stone ! " 
 
 "That," replied I, ''is no news to me 
 and no business of yours." 
 
 " And to think," he went on, without 
 heeding my remark, ** that she has spent 
 the whole of her life in a country par- 
 sonage ! So much for rural simplicity ! 
 Why, there isn't one of these Belgra- 
 vian women who could hold a candle to 
 her for coolness ! " 
 
 I don't know what he had expected 
 her to say or do ; but he was evidently 
 annoyed, and added that he wouldn't be 
 in Jim's shoes for a trifle. He was 
 obliging me with his views upon 
 feminine nature in general, which, I am 
 sorry to say, were too disrespectful and 
 too crudely expressed to bear repetition,
 
 IV.] MY FRIEND JIM. 89 
 
 when somebody called out to him that 
 it was his turn to play. 
 
 He had a lonof and rather difficult 
 shot to make, and at the instant when 
 he was drawing back his cue Hilda all 
 of a sudden stepped close behind him, 
 so that he struck her sharply in the 
 side with the butt end of it. She gave 
 a little cry and fell back upon the sofa 
 where I was sitting. Bracknell, full of 
 apologies and alarm, dropped his cue 
 and peered anxiously at the blanched 
 cheeks of the sufferer ; Jim cam.e tear- 
 ing up from the other end of the room ; 
 somebody ran for a glass of water ; the 
 rest of the players crowded round the 
 sofa, and we had quite a little scene. 
 At length Hilda got back her breath, 
 and, smlHng faintly, assured us that she 
 was not really hurt.
 
 90 MV I'RIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 ** It is nothing — nothing at all," she 
 said. " It was my own fault entirely, 
 and I shall be all right in a few minutes. 
 Please go on with the game and don't 
 look at me." 
 
 To this day I can't feel sure that she 
 did it on purpose. If she did, I am 
 glad to think that she received a con- 
 siderably smarter dig in the ribs than 
 she had bargained for. In any case, 
 this trifling incident had the effect of 
 producing a complete alteration in 
 Bracknell's humour. He was naturally 
 concerned at having hurt a lady, and 
 it may be that his self-reproach was 
 increased by the recollection that he 
 had been saying hard things of her the 
 minute before. He remained sitting 
 beside her after she had gently pushed 
 Jim away, and the otheis, at her request,
 
 IV.] MV FRIEND JIM. 91 
 
 had resumed their game, and I saw 
 that a rapid interchange of words took 
 place between them. Their colloquy 
 was soon Interrupted ; but it had lasted 
 long enough to bring a slightly increased 
 colour into Bracknell's cheeks and a 
 pensive look into his eyes. Knowing 
 what I did of Miss Hilda, I was con- 
 vinced that she must either wish to 
 subjugate him once more or to avenge 
 herself upon him ; and, all things con- 
 sidered, there seemed to be a very fair 
 chance of her succeeding In her aim, 
 whatever that might be. 
 
 When I said as much to my mother 
 on the following morning, after giving 
 her the full account which she always 
 likes to have of what had taken place 
 at the dinner-party and after it, she
 
 92 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 shook her head. '* Ah, my dear Harry," 
 she sighed, " you are too ready to seek 
 for bad motives and study bad people — 
 that is, if poor Hilda is really bad. If 
 I were you, I should find it much more 
 interesting to study Mildred. Is she too 
 good to be attractive ? " 
 
 " Are you suggesting that I should 
 fall in love with Lady Mildred?" I 
 inquired. 
 
 " My dear boy, no ! What would Lord 
 Staines say ? Besides, I am afraid you 
 would be a day too late. Have you 
 really not discovered Mildred's secret, 
 Harry ? — you, who are so quick-sighted ! " 
 
 We all have our weaknesses ; and 
 amongst the many to which I should 
 have to plead guilty, if placed upon my 
 oath, is that of fancying that I can read
 
 IV.] MY FRIEND JIM. 93 
 
 the hearts and minds of my neighbours 
 with some facility. Now, in truth it 
 had not occurred to me until then that 
 Lady Mildred had lost her heart to Jim, 
 but as I could not bear to admit my 
 stupidity, I made no direct reply, merely 
 observing that there was a difference 
 between what was attractive and what 
 was interesting to study, and that bad 
 people were more interesting to study 
 than good ones because, as a rule, 
 their motives of action were more 
 obscure. 
 
 " I suppose so," agreed my mother 
 absently. " Poor Jim !" 
 
 " Really," said I (because I was pro- 
 voked with her for having seen what I 
 had failed to detect), ''I do not under- 
 stand why you should pity him. All
 
 94 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. iv. 
 
 is for the best in the best of possible 
 worlds, you know." 
 
 ** I believe that all is ordered for our 
 good," she answered simply ; "■ though I 
 fear that you do not. We must not 
 presume to say that it would have been 
 better for our friend to marry Mildred 
 than Hilda, who, after all, has a great 
 deal that is nice about her. Poor Jim ! " 
 
 My dear mother permits herself a 
 touch of dry humour at times which, I 
 think, refreshes her. She glanced up at 
 me half deprecatingly after this last 
 ejaculation, and we had a little laugh 
 together. I suppose she perceived as 
 plainly as I did that there was trouble 
 coming, but she did not choose to talk 
 about it before it came, and probably 
 she was quite right.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 I AM but a poor equestrian and can only 
 speak upon such subjects with the diffi- 
 dence which beseems me, but I have 
 always understood from those who ought 
 to know that the hunting in our parts 
 is of an inferior order. The covert- 
 shooting, on the other hand, is fairly 
 good, and that belonging to the Staines 
 Court property may almost be called 
 famous. Now Lord Staines had left his 
 coverts untouched until Christmas, being, 
 as I verily believe, instigated to this act
 
 96 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 of self-denial by a desire to please his 
 heir, who at that time was one of the 
 best shots in England. Great, therefore, 
 must have been his surprise, and great 
 also his disappointment on finding that 
 Bracknell preferred to follow the hounds 
 during his stay, and that he could not 
 even be persuaded to take his gun out 
 of its case on non-hunting days. 
 
 " It seems to me," the poor old gentle- 
 man declared in my hearing, ''that he 
 must have taken leave of his senses. I 
 really can't account for his behaviour in 
 any other way." 
 
 I could have accounted for it ; though 
 I am not prepared to say that my ex- 
 planation excluded the hypothesis of in- 
 sanity. I could have told Lord Staines 
 that, indifferent as the hunting was, there
 
 v.] MV FRTEXD JIM. 97 
 
 was a certain country gentleman in the 
 neighbourhood who was devoted to it, 
 heart and soul ; that this gentleman had 
 recently presented a well-broken saddle- 
 horse to his betrothed ; and further, that 
 when Bracknell was not out huntins: with 
 the couple aforesaid he was amusing him- 
 self in some other and perhaps less in- 
 nocent fashion in the company of one of 
 them. But I did not tell him this, partly 
 because I was not asked, and partly be- 
 cause I am constitutionally averse to 
 being blown up sky-high. I will do my- 
 self the justice to say that I would have 
 risked a good deal of personal discomfort 
 to get Bracknell dismissed a second time 
 from the neighbourhood ; but I was well 
 aware that nothing short of ocular proof 
 would have made Lord Staines believe 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 his son capable of behaviour unworthy 
 of a gentleman. To make love to your 
 friend's fiancde under your friend's nose 
 must undoubtedly be described in that 
 disagreeable way ; and I hardly think that 
 the circumstance of the lady in question 
 being an unscrupulous minx can be 
 admitted as an extenuating one. 
 
 If any palliation of Bracknell's conduct 
 had been discoverable, I suppose one 
 would have had to look for it in the tone 
 of the society which he was accustomed 
 to frequent. In certain sets it seems to 
 be almost imperative upon a man that he 
 should make love to somebody, provided 
 always that she be not a person w^hom 
 he can marry. Bracknell may have 
 opined that Miss Turner was as good as 
 married already, and that she was conse-
 
 v.] AfV FRIEND JIM. 99 
 
 quently a safe and fit subject for his 
 attentions. For the rest, she gave him 
 every encouragement. I used to meet 
 them riding home from hunting together 
 at a suspiciously early hour of the day ; 
 Bracknell was for ever dropping in to 
 luncheon or tea at the Rectory ; and Jim 
 had no words to express his satisfaction 
 at the good feeling which subsisted be- 
 tween his friend and his future wife. He 
 confided to me that he had hardly ven- 
 tured to hope for such a happy state of 
 things. 
 
 When the hunting was abruptly put a 
 stop to by a sharp frost, which In a few 
 days rendered the ice on the great lake 
 at Staines Court thick enough to bear, 
 this estimable pair had further oppor- 
 tunities of showing how well disposed 
 
 H 2
 
 100 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 they were towards one another, Brack- 
 nell excelled in skating, as indeed he did 
 in all sports and pastimes of an athletic 
 nature ; and in Hilda he found an apt 
 pupil. Jim, who was by no means such 
 a proficient, would listen respectfully to 
 Bracknell's instructions, and when the 
 couple skimmed away from him, as they 
 often did, would watch them from afar, 
 with pride and admiration in his eyes. 
 They were the two people whom he loved 
 best in the world, and I believe it gave 
 him far more pleasure to contemplate their 
 achievements than it would have done to 
 obtain any kind of personal distinction. 
 
 For reasons of my own, I usually 
 prefer to shun the giddy throng when on 
 skates. One afternoon I had found a nice 
 sequestered spot, screened from view by
 
 v.] MV FRIEND JIM. 101 
 
 an island, and was very busy practising 
 a graceful piece of figure-skating (outside 
 edge forwards, inside edge backwards, and 
 then down with a thump) when Bracknell 
 and Hilda suddenly shot out from behind 
 the clump of evergreen shrubs w^hich 
 had masked my movements. They swept 
 past me, hand in hand, and in that still 
 atmosphere a few words fell clear and 
 distinct upon my ear. " Oh, what a 
 bore ! Can't we get rid of him some- 
 how ?" And then a low laus^h from Hilda 
 and a reply which distance rendered 
 unintelligible to me. 
 
 An instant later came the sound of 
 short, scuffling strokes, denoting the ap- 
 proach of an unskilful skater, and Jim's 
 colossal form loomed into view. " Hi ! 
 you two," I heard him shout, '' wait for
 
 102 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 me ! " And away he went, full tilt, round 
 the miniature cape which Bracknell and 
 Hilda had already doubled. 
 
 I hardly knew why this brief dissolving 
 view should have set my blood boiling 
 with indignation, for I really had not been 
 in need of any further evidence that poor 
 Jim was being made a fool of; but so it 
 was. '' Oh, you would like to get rid of 
 him, would you ? " said I to myself, start- 
 ing off in pursuit. '' Then, my good 
 friends, you sha'n't get rid of him, nor of 
 me either." 
 
 However, I was prevented from carry- 
 ing out my benevolent intentions ; for 
 I had not got well under way before 
 I encountered Jim, returning post- 
 haste. 
 
 '' Where are you off to in such a
 
 v.] MV FRIEND JIM. 103 
 
 hurry ? " I asked, holding up my hand to 
 stop him. 
 
 He checked his career with some diffi- 
 culty, describing an immense semicircle 
 in order to bring up alongside of me. 
 " Hilda wants her jacket," he explained 
 breathlessly; "she has left it up at the 
 house." 
 
 " And she has despatched you a mile 
 to fetch It ! One would have thought 
 that she might have sent Bracknell. But 
 never mind. You go back to her; I'll 
 get her confounded jacket." 
 
 I could not help confounding her jacket, 
 but I saw that Jim was a little surprised 
 and displeased at my doing so. " My 
 dear boy," he said gently, "there's no 
 occasion for you to give yourself all that 
 bother. I don't mind going."
 
 104 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 " Well, then," I returned, provoked be- 
 yond the limits of prudence, *'/ mind 
 your going. Heavens and earth ! man, do 
 you imagine that it is because she is 
 afraid of catching cold that Hilda orders 
 you off on an errand which will take you 
 a good three quarters of an hour to ac- 
 complish ? Do you suppose, by any 
 chance, that Bracknell has stayed down 
 here all this time because he enjoys third- 
 class hunting, or because he thinks skat- 
 ing on a pond better fun than disporting 
 himself in London ? It is not permissible 
 to be so stupid ! " 
 
 Jim's face became very grave. '' Brack- 
 nell is staying here to be present at our 
 wedding," he replied ; " he has given up 
 a lot of other engagements rather than 
 disappoint us. As for Hilda, I may tell
 
 v.] MY FRIEND JIM. 105 
 
 you that she wouldn't have let me get her 
 jacket for her if I hadn't insisted upon 
 it." He added, with something of an 
 effort : " Harry, we're old friends, and I'd 
 stand a great deal from you before I'd 
 quarrel with you; but I'm bound to say 
 that if you make such an insinuation as 
 that again, we can't be friends any longer. 
 I suppose you have got into a habit of 
 suspecting that every man you meet may 
 be a rascal, and now you can't help your- 
 self. I don't want to preach to you, old 
 chap, but it's a beastly bad habit to have 
 o^ot into, and that's the truth." 
 
 Such was the reward that I obtained 
 for my well - meant, but injudicious 
 meddling. I am sorry to say that I 
 was foolish enough to feel deeply affronted 
 by Jim's rebuke, and a coolness arose
 
 106 AfY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 between us which might not have been 
 easily dispelled, had not subsequent 
 events drawn us together again. It was, 
 at all events, pretty evident that, so far 
 as I was concerned, matters must be 
 allowed to take their course. I could not 
 open Jim's eyes, and to remonstrate with 
 Bracknell would have been sheer waste 
 of breath. 
 
 Somebody was found, however, with 
 sufficient faith in him and in herself to 
 attempt this useless task. It was some 
 days after the ice had broken up, and 
 when we w^ere within a week of Jim's 
 wedding-day, that demure little Lady Mil- 
 dred told me how uneasy the intimacy 
 of her brother with the bride-elect was 
 making her. '* I don't mind talking to 
 you about it," she said, ''because I know
 
 v.] MY FRIEND JIM. 107 
 
 you have seen it all as plainly as I have. 
 I suppose you blame Bracknell very much, 
 do you not ? " 
 
 *'Why, of course I do," I replied. 
 
 '■' Yes ; but he is not really so bad as 
 you think — he does not see anything 
 wrong in it. He only laughed when I 
 spoke to him, and said I didn't know 
 what I was talking about. And so it will 
 go on until something dreadful happens." 
 
 " My dear Lady Mildred," said I, '' I 
 don't think anything dreadful will happen. 
 If I know the charming Hilda at all, she 
 will always stop a little short of dreadful 
 things. People who do dreadful things 
 lose their place in society and have to 
 put up with all manner of inconveniences. 
 She will contrive to amuse herself, no 
 doubt, but so long as her husband shuts
 
 108 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 his eyes, and doesn't mind, what can that 
 matter to anybody ? " 
 
 Lady Mildred did not seem pleased with 
 my philosophy. '' That is as much as 
 to say that you care very little what 
 becomes of your friend," she observed. 
 
 ** Quite so," I returned, keeping my 
 temper. " When I venture to speak a 
 word in season to my friend, he flies 
 at me like a bull-dog, and tells me 
 to mind my own business ; when I leave 
 him alone, you reproach me with caring 
 very little about him. At this rate, a 
 friend seems likely to prove a troublesome 
 luxury." 
 
 The truth was that I trembled for poor 
 Jim's future quite as much as Lady Mil- 
 dred did, but when things are inevitable 
 what can a wise man do but make the
 
 v.] MY FRIEND JIM. 109 
 
 best of them ? My confidence in Hilda's 
 discretion was quite sincere ; and that 
 only shows how mistaken the wisest of 
 us may be every now and then. Could I 
 — could anybody — anticipate what the 
 next move of that remarkable young 
 woman was going to be ? Anyhow none 
 of us did anticipate it. 
 
 A few days before that on which the 
 wedding had been appointed to take 
 place, I was invited to luncheon at the 
 Rectory, it having been intimated to me 
 that I should be expected to make myself 
 useful subsequently in helping to move 
 furniture and carry out other preparations 
 for the feast at which Mr. Turner proposed 
 to entertain his friends after the cere- 
 mony. When I arrived I found Jim and 
 Mr. Sparks, the curate, seated in the
 
 110 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 drawing-room with our host, but Hilda 
 was conspicuous by her absence. Her 
 absence had become quite disagreeably 
 conspicuous when the clock struck half- 
 past two, by which time we were all 
 very hungry, besides having reached the 
 extreme limit of our subjects of conver- 
 sation. In the course thereof it had tran- 
 spired that Bracknell had come over in 
 his dog-cart two or three hours before, 
 and had persuaded Hilda to go out for a 
 drive with him. " But she assured me," 
 said Mr. Turner, fidgeting about uneasily, 
 '' that she would be back very shortly, and 
 I am altogether at a loss to account for 
 this delay." 
 
 '* Oh, they'll turn up all right," returned 
 Jim composedly. '' Bracknell never knows 
 what time of day it is. I don't think
 
 v.] MV FRIEND JIM. Ill 
 
 they deserve that we should wait any 
 longer for them, though." 
 
 Here the curate, a good-natured but 
 not very intelligent young man, judged it 
 appropriate to remark, with a loud laugh, 
 " Upon my word, Mr. Leigh, you will have 
 to look after this young lady. It's early 
 days for her to begin driving off with a 
 gay bachelor and finding his company so 
 aofreeable that she foro^ets to come home 
 to luncheon." 
 
 After this graceful sally on the part of 
 Sparks, we went into the dining-room and 
 refreshed ourselves ; but we listened in 
 vain for the sound of Bracknell's chariot- 
 wheels, and at length Jim, whose lawyer 
 was coming down from London to see 
 him, was compelled to leave us. His 
 composure remained undisturbed up to
 
 112 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 the last ; but as soon as he was gone 
 Mr. Turner confided to me that he, for 
 his part, was becoming seriously alarmed. 
 
 " I would not mention it while James 
 was here," he said, "but it struck me that 
 Lord Bracknell was driving a somewhat 
 restive animal and I cannot help fearing 
 that some accident has occurred." 
 
 If any accident had occurred within ten 
 miles of us, we should certainly have 
 heard of it by that time, and so I told 
 him, but he was not convinced ; and as 
 the poor old fellow was evidently fretting 
 himself into a fever, I could but offer to 
 scour the country in search of the absen- 
 tees. Accordingly I set out in one 
 direction while the good-natured Sparks 
 trudged away in another ; and a very 
 disagreeable walk I had of it through
 
 v.] MV FRIEND JIM. 113 
 
 the rain, which began to come down imme- 
 diately after I started. None of the people 
 whom I met had seen Bracknell, upon 
 whose head I did not invoke a blessing 
 when I reached home after dark, drenched 
 to the skin. I was perfectly sure that 
 neither he nor Hilda had come to any 
 physical harm ; because persons of that 
 kind very rarely get their necks broken 
 (unless it be by the hand of the public 
 executioner, and that only if they happen 
 to belong to the lower orders), but I did 
 think that between them they were carry- 
 ing impudence about as far as it could 
 very well be carried. However, as I did 
 not at that time foresee that I should 
 ever write the history of these delin- 
 quents, I ceased to think about them as 
 soon as I had finished my dinner, and, 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 having made myself comfortable with a 
 blazing fire and a cigar, set to work upon 
 an article of which I hoped to have the 
 skeleton completed before bed-time. 
 
 I was getting on quite nicely, and had 
 scribbled down several epigrammatic say- 
 ings to be scattered carelessly over my 
 composition and to cheer the persevering 
 reader on his way through it, when I was 
 informed that Mr. Turner was down stairs 
 and wanted to see me ''most particular." 
 This announcement was speedily followed 
 by the entrance of Mr. Turner himself 
 in an indescribable state of agitation. 
 On seeing his pale face and rumpled 
 hair, I naturally concluded that I had 
 done Nemesis an injustice, and exclaimed, 
 ** Has there been an accident then after 
 all?"
 
 v.] MV FRIEND JIM. 115 
 
 But he spread out his hands with 
 a gesture of despair and answered, 
 *' Ah, no ! No accident — no accident ! 
 Design ! " After which he became so 
 incoherent and unintehigible that I had 
 to seat him in my arm-chair, and pour 
 out a stiff brandy and soda for him. 
 This he swallowed, throwing back his 
 head and closing his eyes, as if it had 
 been hemlock ; and when he had drained 
 the last drop of it, he felt in his 
 pocket for a note, which he handed 
 to me. 
 
 ** Read that, Harry," said he tragically. 
 ** Read it, my dear young friend, and tell 
 me, if you can, what is to be done ? Be- 
 cause I am willing to confess to you that 
 what to do I know not at all." 
 
 The note, which I perused with no 
 
 I 2
 
 116 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 small curiosity and astonishment, ran as 
 
 follows : 
 
 "Royal Hotel, Stokingham. 
 
 " Dear Papa, — Lord Bracknell and I 
 were married before the registrar here 
 this morning. It is all quite legal and re- 
 gular, of course ; but we think we ought 
 not to' omit the religious ceremony, 
 although circumstances have prevented 
 us from going through it in the ordinary 
 way ; and so we propose to drive over 
 early to-morrow morning and be married 
 again quite privately by you. I am sure 
 you will understand how advisable this 
 is in order to prevent scandal, and I need 
 not warn you that not a word must be 
 said at Staines Court until it is all over 
 and we have left again. Afterwards you 
 can break the news to Lord Staines.
 
 v.] MV FRIEND JIM. 117 
 
 Bracknell thinks his father will not have 
 been made uneasy by his non-appearance, 
 as he often runs up to London without 
 mentioning that he is going to do so. 
 Please tell Sarah that I shall want all 
 my things packed up, and that she must 
 begin doing it at once, and sit up all night, 
 if necessary, as there is no time to lose. 
 I have engaged another maid to meet us 
 in London, and shall not take Sarah with 
 me. Do not distress yourself about this 
 sudden resolution of ours ; you will see 
 that all will come rigrht in the end. We 
 shall be with you soon after nine o'clock 
 to-morrow morning. 
 
 " Your affectionate daughter, 
 
 " Hilda Bracknell." 
 
 I can testify that the above is a strictly
 
 118 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 literal reproduction, because I wrote it 
 down word for word immediately after I 
 had read it, thinking it worthy of remem- 
 brance as a curiosity in the way of 
 epistolary composition. Never, I imagine, 
 was a treacherous act avowed with more 
 cynical effrontery. The writer seemed 
 to have forgotten altogether that she 
 had been engaged to be married in the 
 course of a few days to an honest man 
 who had the folly to adore her. One 
 can't think of everything, and I suppose 
 she was fully absorbed by the import- 
 ant considerations set forth in her letter. 
 She was anxious to avoid unnecessary 
 scandal ; she did not wish to incur the 
 discomfort of a stormy interview with 
 Lord Staines ; and she was determined 
 not to part with her new clothes. If
 
 v.] AfV FRIEND JIM. 119 
 
 she had wandered awav from these main 
 points she might perhaps have confused 
 her father's mind, which, to be sure, was 
 not a very clear one. 
 
 I really could not see my way to offer- 
 ing that unlucky man much comfort. 
 "If you wish for my opinion," I replied 
 when he repeated his demand, " I should 
 say that you had better read the mar- 
 riage service over them and then pack 
 them off with all despatch. After that, 
 it will be your pleasing duty to impart 
 the good news to Lord Staines, keeping 
 well out of the reach of his arm while 
 you do so. I don't know that It is any 
 business of mine ; but in common charity 
 I will undertake Jim. May Heaven send 
 us both a good deliverance!" 
 
 Mr. Turner sighed piteously, and de-
 
 120 MY FRIEND JIM, [chap. 
 
 clared that this would bring his grey 
 hairs with sorrow to the grave. I was 
 really sorry for him ; for in truth his 
 position was not an agreeable one ; 
 so I listened sympathetically while he 
 bewailed himself for a time ; but at 
 length the habit of meek subordination 
 which characterised him restored order 
 to his ideas ; he remembered that Sarah 
 must be instructed to pack the trousseau 
 forthwith, and, jumping up, trotted off 
 homewards. 
 
 As soon as I had got rid of the 
 Reverend Simeon, I went to bed. Now- 
 adays I can take up my work and per- 
 form it with more or less of facility, 
 whatever may be my mental condition ; 
 but I suppose that in earlier life I must 
 have been less callous, for I felt that it
 
 v.] MV FRIEND JIM. 121 
 
 would be out of the question to attack 
 that unfinished article again while I could 
 think of nothing but poor old Jim and 
 the cruel blow which it w^ould be my lot 
 to strike him on the morrow. If any- 
 one who reads these lines has ever been 
 obliged to kill a favourite dog, he will 
 in some measure appreciate my sensa- 
 tions. The thing has to be done ; it is 
 necessary and merciful to do it ; but the 
 necessity is a horrible one, and makes 
 you feel, for the time being, very like a 
 traitor and a murderer. Unfortunately, 
 too, Jim and I were not upon the best 
 of terms, by reason of that fruitless note 
 of warning which I had thought proper 
 to sound in his ear, and I knew that, in 
 acquitting myself of my present mission, 
 I should have the air of saying " I told
 
 122 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 you so!" Not that in reality I had fore- 
 told or foreseen what had occurred, for 
 I had never dreamt that Hilda wished 
 to marry Bracknell, nor, for that matter, 
 that he would be so mad as to marry 
 her if she did wish it ; still it was plain 
 that, under the circumstances, I should 
 be an unwelcome ambassador ; and as I 
 lay broad awake, I almost regretted that 
 I had not rather offered to face Lord 
 Staines, who, if the worst came to the 
 worst, could do no more than swear 
 at me. 
 
 Being thus harassed, I naturally got 
 little sleep that night, and was glad 
 when the first glimmer of dawn gave me 
 an excuse for getting up and stealing 
 out of doors. I wandered about till 
 breakfast time ; but I did not go to
 
 v.] MV FRIEND JIM. 123 
 
 church to witness " the religious cere- 
 mony " alluded to by Hilda, edifying 
 though it would doubtless have been to 
 watch the demeanour of the bride and 
 bridegroom on that occasion.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 As matters fell out, the task of enlighten- 
 ing Lord Staines was thrown upon my 
 shoulders, in addition to that with which I 
 had already saddled myself; for scarcely 
 had I finished my breakfast when Mr. 
 Turner arrived, trembling and breathless, 
 to say that he really did not feel equal 
 to encountering the brunt of his patron's 
 wrath. 
 
 '' Indeed," he added, with a ludicrous 
 effort to regain his accustomed suave 
 pomposity, *' I am not sure that It would 
 be right on my part to do so. I have
 
 CHAP. VI.] MY FRIEND JIM. 125 
 
 not forgotten the very improper terms 
 in which Lord Staines chose to address 
 me when I called upon him once before 
 on — er — a somewhat similar errand, and 
 both for his sake and for my own, any 
 repetition of such a scene is — er — to be 
 deprecated. To you profanity of lan- 
 guage would be less shocking — at least, I 
 mean that you must be more accustomed 
 to hearing it ; and — er — in short — " 
 
 *' In short," I interrupted, not over 
 respectfully — for really the Reverend 
 Simeon's aspect at that moment was not 
 calculated to induce respect — '' you want 
 me to do your dirty work for you. Very 
 well ; I don't particularly mind ; I may 
 as well be hanged for a sheep as for a 
 lamb. Only I don't promise to prevent 
 Lord Staines from going down to the
 
 126 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 Rectory later in the day, and shocking 
 you with profane language. It may not 
 be altogether your fault that your daughter 
 has disgraced herself and inveigled Brack- 
 nell into disgracing himself with her, 
 but you may as well be prepared to be 
 told that it is. If I were in your place 
 I should be a good deal more frightened 
 of Jim Leigh than of Lord Staines." 
 
 *' Gently, my dear young friend, 
 gently!" returned Mr. Turner with dig- 
 nity. "You are excited, and I do not 
 blame you for it ; but to say that my 
 daughter has disgraced herself is to say 
 too much — a great deal too much. That 
 she did very wrong in engaging herself 
 to James, I allow, and he will not find 
 me slow to express my sincere sorrow 
 and sympathy ; but we must bear in
 
 VI.] MV FRIEND JIM. 127 
 
 mind that her affections were given in 
 the first place to Lord Bracknell. I will 
 not say that the young people were 
 justified in taking the law into their 
 own hands ; yet I may doubt whether 
 Lord Staines's motives for forbidding 
 them to marry were of the highest kind. 
 Now do not answer me, I beg of you. I 
 can see that you are not yet master of 
 yourself. If you will allow me I will go 
 up stairs and sit with your dear mother 
 while you walk over to Staines Court." 
 
 Evidently Hilda had been talking to 
 him, and it would be absurd to waste 
 good Indignation upon such hopeless 
 ineptitude. 
 
 '' Pray do so, Mr. Turner," I answered, 
 " my mother will be very glad to see you. 
 Only I hope you will kindly refrain from
 
 128 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 expounding your views to her with re- 
 gard to your daughter's marriage, because 
 she is rather subject to attacks of 
 nausea." 
 
 With this valedictory shot, I set out to 
 perform the first and least painful of the 
 duties which I had accepted. I found 
 Lord Staines in his study, and, apparently, 
 in a rather bad humour." 
 
 " Oh, how do you do, Maynard ? " said 
 he, looking up from the letter which he 
 was writing. " Do you happen to know 
 anything about that fellow Bracknell ? 
 When I was his age it used to be con- 
 sidered the civil thing just to let your 
 father know when you proposed to leave 
 his house or return to it ; but nowadays 
 the young men seem to think that they 
 needn't take any notice of their fathers,
 
 VI.] MY FRIEND JIM. 129 
 
 except when they want money. Here is 
 Bracknell gone off, nobody knows where, 
 at the very moment when I am making 
 business arrangements for which his sig- 
 nature is required. I told him about it 
 two days ago ; but, of course, my con- 
 venience counts for nothing when it is a 
 question of going to some confounded 
 steeplechase or other." 
 
 I thought there was nothing to be 
 gained by putting off the evil moment. 
 *' I can't tell you where Bracknell is. 
 Lord Staines," I replied ; *' but I have 
 come here to give you some very un- 
 pleasant news about him. He was mar- 
 ried yesterday at the Registrar's office at 
 Stokingham to Hilda Turner." 
 
 Lord Staines started up, overturning 
 his chair. A rush of blood made his 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 cheeks crimson for a moment, and then 
 ebbed slowly away, leaving them of a 
 chalky whiteness. For a full minute he 
 uttered never a word ; then he advanced 
 slowly towards me from behind the table, 
 trembling a good deal. '' Maynard, my 
 dear fellow," said he quite quietly, '' it 
 is not possible that you can be telling 
 the truth. Somebody has played a 
 foolish hoax upon you." 
 
 And when I shook my head, '' My 
 good sir," he went on, with rather more 
 Impatience, '' I tell you that the thing 
 is Impossible ! You will allow me to 
 know something about my own son, I 
 suppose. Bracknell Is what you please — 
 I never called him perfect, God knows ! 
 — but at least he Is a man of honour. 
 You don't seem to take in that no
 
 VI.] MY FRIEND JIM. 131 
 
 honourable man could act in the way 
 that you describe." 
 
 '' It is not altogether unprecedented," I 
 ventured to observe. 
 
 " I don't care whether it's unprece- 
 dented or not ; Bracknell never did it. 
 If he had been determined to marry this 
 — this lady, he would have defied me 
 and done it in the light of day, like a 
 man, knowing very well what the conse- 
 quences would be. But as for slinking 
 off with her on the sly and betraying 
 the confidence of his friend — pooh ! 
 don't tell me ! If you brought the 
 whole parish to swear to it, I wouldn't 
 believe it." 
 
 I suppose he was really less incredulous 
 than he professed to be, poor old fellow, 
 for presently he added : '' And pray, 
 
 K 2
 
 132 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 where did you get this precious piece 
 of information from ? " 
 
 And then I told him the whole story. 
 It was one of the most unpleasant things 
 that I have ever had to do in my life, 
 and when I had said my say I wanted 
 to go away and leave him ; but he held 
 me back, gripping my arm tightly. So 
 far he had listened to me quietly enough, 
 scarcely interrupting me, and only once 
 or twice muttering under his breath a 
 word or two which I could not catch, 
 but now on a sudden his anger burst 
 forth in a storm of disjointed, incoherent 
 sentences. 
 
 *' ril never see his face again — never ! 
 You may tell him so from me. He has 
 chosen to take his own way, and by the 
 Lord he shall have it ! Not another
 
 VI.] MY FRIEND JIM. 133 
 
 penny shall he have. I'll stop his allow- 
 ance — a devilish handsome allowance too ! 
 — and his debts, which I've paid again 
 and again, by George ! without so much 
 as grumbling — K fool and his money — 
 but he'll find that I'm not quite the fool 
 he takes me for. Damn it all, sir ! did 
 you come up here with the idea that you 
 were going to talk me over ? You have 
 got up this scheme among you — you and 
 that girl and old Turner, a man who 
 owes everything to me, and thinks he 
 can play me such a trick with impunity. 
 But I'll very soon let him see his mistake. 
 He shall resign the living, as sure as I 
 stand here!" 
 
 '' I think you forget, Lord Staines," I 
 interrupted, '' that I, at least, can have 
 had no conceivable object in furthering
 
 134 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 Hilda's schemes. If I had known any- 
 thing about them, or had had any power 
 over them, I should have done my best 
 to put a stop to them for poor Jim 
 Leigh's sake." 
 
 ** Yes, yes — I know," he answered, with 
 a complete change of tone. " I beg your 
 pardon, Maynard ; don't mind what I 
 said about you ; I didn't mean it. I 
 mean what I say about Bracknell, though 
 — I'll never speak to him again. Oh, 
 Harry, that boy has broken my heart ! 
 He knew it was essential that he 
 should marry money — and then to ruin 
 himself for the sake of such a girl as 
 that I You needn't pity Jim Leigh ; he's 
 well rid of a bad bargain." 
 
 Very likely he was, but unfortunately 
 there was no likelihood at all that he
 
 VI.] MY FRIEND JIM. 135 
 
 would take that view of the matter. I 
 was beginning to say as much, but the 
 words died away upon my hps ; for at 
 this moment the door was thrown open 
 and Jim himself strode into the room. 
 As soon as I saw his face I perceived 
 that some one had been beforehand with 
 me, and that there was no longer any 
 occasion for me to consider in what words 
 he might best be informed of Hilda's flight. 
 
 He glanced rapidly at each of us in 
 turn. *' It's true, then ! " he exclaimed. 
 
 Lord Staines wheeled round upon him 
 with an odd access of fury. " True ! — yes, 
 it's true enough. Why the devil shouldn't 
 it be true ? Did you make the mistake 
 of supposing that my son was an honour- 
 able man .^ Why what a simpleton you 
 must be ! I — I "
 
 136 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 He stopped abruptly, stared at us for 
 an instant with fixed glazing eyes, and 
 then, swaying forwards, would have fallen 
 on his face if Jim had not caught him. 
 
 Between us we lifted him on to a sofa, 
 and then the servants were called, and 
 poor little Lady Mildred had to be sent 
 for. I told her in as few words as possible 
 what was the cause of her father's seizure, 
 thinking it best that she should know 
 the truth ; and, so far as I could judge, 
 she was not very greatly surprised. She 
 kept her presence of mind admirably, 
 displaying no agitation and doing what 
 little could be done until the doctor 
 came. 
 
 Later in the day a great London man 
 was telegraphed for ; but our local 
 practitioner confided to me that he would
 
 VI.] AfV FRIEND JIM. 137 
 
 not have considered this step necessary 
 in the case of a patient of less exalted 
 rank. 
 
 "■ Will he die, then ? " I asked. 
 
 ''Well, no," answered the doctor; "not 
 this time. But he will never be the 
 same as^ain. I have told Lady ^lildred 
 that she may exercise her own judgment 
 about telegraphing to Lord Bracknell, but 
 that in my opinion he should not be 
 allowed to see his father/' 
 
 Jim and I left the house together. We 
 had hardly exchanged a word as yet, and 
 I did not like to begin ; so that we 
 walked in silence as far as the park 
 gates, where our paths diverged ; and 
 there he came to a halt. 
 
 " Good-bye, Harry," said he ; " I'm 
 going away to-morrow."
 
 138 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 '' The best thing you can do," I 
 answered. 
 
 '' Is it ? ^I don't know. Anyhow, I 
 can't stay here. I shall go to India, or 
 Australia, or somewhere — it doesn't much 
 matter. Harry, you are right : this world 
 is peopled by a set of rascals and liars." 
 
 I said the world was bad enough, but 
 that I had not brought quite so sweeping 
 a charge as that against it. 
 
 " Oh, I thought you had. One thing I 
 know : I will never trust man or woman 
 again as long as I live. But it won't 
 bear talking about, and, after all, what's 
 the good of talking ? Good-bye, Harry." 
 
 He turned and walked away a few 
 paces, then suddenly faced about and 
 came back to me. " Some day or other 
 we shall meet a^ain, if I live," he said ;
 
 VI.] MV FRIEND JIM. 130 
 
 " but when that will be I can't tell. Don't 
 forget me, old chap ; I'll write to you 
 when I can." 
 
 And so we parted. I confess that I 
 did not take his words quite literally, and 
 fully expected that he would be over at 
 our house on the following day. But I 
 was disappointed. He left England, just 
 as he had said that he would do ; Elm- 
 hurst was shut up ; its owner was lost 
 sight of, If not absolutely forgotten, by 
 his many friends, and It was years before 
 I saw his honest, kindly face again.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The hero of this narrative is, of course, 
 Jim Leigh. It is true that Jim is not 
 and never has been a particularly heroic 
 personage ; still, so far as writer and 
 readers are concerned, he stands, for the 
 time being, in that proud position, and 
 must abide by the consequences of it. 
 One of these is necessarily the occur- 
 rence of a considerable hiatus in the 
 record of his career ; for what is an un- 
 fortunate writer to do when his hero 
 disappears into the interior of Abyssinia,
 
 CHAP. VII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 141 
 
 or the least frequented provinces of 
 India, and will give no account of him- 
 self for months together? If I only 
 knew something of the circumstances 
 under which, during all those years, Jim 
 slaughtered lions and tigers and ele- 
 phants and bears in the happy hunting 
 grounds of three continents, I should 
 doubtless have many a thrilling adven- 
 ture to chronicle ; but I could never get 
 anything but the most bald and meagre 
 recital of his performances out of him ; 
 nor do I dare to draw upon my imagi- 
 nation, for my own sporting experiences 
 do not extend beyond the shooting of 
 partridges and pheasants, and even those 
 I am ver}^ apt to miss, when flurried. 
 
 Unfortunately, too, Jim Is one of the 
 worst correspondents I have ever had to
 
 142 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 deal with. I did indeed receive letters 
 from him with tolerable regularity; but 
 for any information of interest that they 
 contained, they might as well have been 
 written upon the back of a post-card. 
 ** It is awfully hot here, but I have got 
 accustomed to it and don't mind. Yes- 
 terday we were very lucky, killing two 
 fine tigers ; but our average so far has 
 
 been hardly up to the mark The 
 
 top of Mount Everest is 29,000 feet 
 above the sea, which seems a lot. I 
 wonder why they never taught us modern 
 geography when we were boys. .... I 
 find that there is nothing like cold tea 
 for quenching the thirst." And so forth, 
 and so forth. That is scarcely the kind 
 of thing that one wants to hear from a 
 man who has quitted his native land in
 
 VII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 143 
 
 a state of bitter disenchantment and mis- 
 anthropy, and who at the end of six 
 years ought surely to be much better or 
 much worse than when he started. 
 
 Jim never alluded to his misfortunes, 
 nor made any inquiry as to the fate of 
 those who had caused them. I gene- 
 rously gave him a few items of intel- 
 ligence without having been asked ; but 
 he did not refer to them in his replies, 
 and in like manner he ignored my repre- 
 sentations that owners of landed pro- 
 perty ought not to be absentees for an 
 indefinite period. Once or twice he 
 spoke vaguely of coming home, but 
 something ahvays occurred to make him 
 postpone his return, until, as I have said, 
 he had been w^anderinor about the world 
 
 o 
 
 for no less than six consecutive years.
 
 144 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 In the course of that time we who 
 remained in England had all grown six 
 years older ; it may be that some of us 
 had grown a little wiser, though I am 
 not sure of it ; and some had grown, if 
 not famous, at least notorious. As for 
 me, I had fulfilled my tutor's negative 
 prediction, and had not set the Thames 
 on fire. Nevertheless, I had so far suc- 
 ceeded in my calling as to be always 
 provided with a sufficiency of work, and 
 remunerated by what I suppose I must 
 call a sufficiency of pay. Also I had 
 largely extended the circle of my ac- 
 quaintance, and, during certain months 
 of the year, went a good deal into 
 society, where every now and then it 
 was my great good fortune to meet with 
 somebody who had never written a book
 
 VII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 145 
 
 nor even contributed to a magazine. I 
 have always found such persons excep- 
 tionally clever and entertaining, but they 
 are becoming more and more rare, and 
 will soon, I fear, be extinct. ' The others 
 — the majority, I mean, who have at one 
 time or another put their ideas into print 
 — are given to making conversation 
 dreary for a poor man who gets his 
 living out of literature, and who would 
 naturally rather talk about any other 
 subject under the sun in play-hours. 
 
 Now it came to pass that one hot 
 afternoon in the height of the London 
 season I had returned to my chambers, 
 physically and mentally exhausted, after 
 an intellectual luncheon-party, and was 
 saying to myself — with very great 
 truth and justice — that of all forms of 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 social cruelty luncheon-parties are the 
 
 most wantonly malignant, when a loud 
 
 rat-tat, as from a heavy stick, made me 
 
 glance at the door, through which, after 
 
 an instant of delay, there strode into my 
 
 presence a tall, broad-shouldered, bronzed 
 
 individual, who had Jim Leigh's eyes and 
 
 nose, surmounting a black moustache and 
 
 beard entirely unknown to me. The 
 
 nose, however, was enough to swear by ; 
 
 and I don't know when in the course of 
 
 my life I have been more delighted to 
 
 behold a familiar and prominent feature. 
 
 I welcomed him with a warmth which I 
 
 hope was as agreeable to him as it was 
 
 sincere on my part, and he smiled all 
 
 over his face, quite Hke the Jim of old ; 
 
 so that I freely forgave him his beard. 
 
 *' And now that you have come back
 
 VII.] MV FRIEND JIM. 147 
 
 at last, you mean to stay at home, like 
 a respectable English country gentleman, 
 I trust," said I, after I had made him 
 comfortable with an arm-chair and a 
 cigar, and something cold to drink. 
 
 " Well — I suppose so," he answered, 
 with a shade of hesitation. '' To tell 
 you the truth, I'm utterly sick and tired 
 of foreign lands, and I should like 
 nothing better than to settle down at 
 Elmhurst for the rest of my days." 
 
 "What should prevent you from doing 
 as you like ? You can't mean that you 
 haven't got over the trouble that drove 
 you away yet?" said I, for I thought 
 we had better come to the point at 
 once. 
 
 *^ I believe I have got over it, I don't 
 know for certain," he answered slowly. 
 
 L 2
 
 148 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 *' Let us talk about something else. 
 Tell me all about yourself." 
 
 So I told him all about myself, and 
 his observations upon my literary achieve- 
 ments were flattering and discriminating, 
 though I think he was a little bit ner- 
 vous lest I should ask him whether he 
 had read my works. Then we went on 
 to speak of friends of former years. 
 
 "■ Poor old Lord Staines is still alive, 
 I hear," he remarked. 
 
 ** He is still alive," I replied, '' and 
 not likely to die, so far as I know ; but 
 you would hardly recognise him. On 
 sunny mornings one meets him in a 
 bath-chair in the park, with Lady Mil- 
 dred walking beside him. He doesn't 
 talk much nowadays, but he likes to see 
 people, and he seems to be quite happy
 
 VII.] MV FRIEND JIM. 149 
 
 when he is allowed to have his little 
 grandson with him. I told you that 
 he was reconciled with the Bracknells 
 long ago." 
 
 Jim nodded. " And how do they get 
 on } " he inquired, asking the question 
 with something of an effort. 
 
 ** Many people are curious to know," 
 I answered. " That is, if you mean, how 
 do they manage to pay their way ? 
 They are said to get on together rather 
 indifferently. On the other hand, they 
 have got on in society with a success 
 which leaves nothing, or very little, to 
 be desired. Lady Bracknell has climbed 
 to the very top of the tree, and sits 
 there in a graceful attitude to be gaped 
 at by a multitude of admirers. She likes 
 admiration, as you will remember, and
 
 150 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 takes some pains to obtain it. She is 
 very accessible, too, in spite of her bril- 
 liant position, and if you will go and call 
 upon her in Wilton Place I am sure she 
 will be glad to see you, and will begin 
 exercising her fascinations upon you 
 without loss of time." 
 
 "Don't!" said Jim. 
 
 But I went on all the same. *'You 
 had better call upon her ; I don't think 
 she will fascinate you, my dear Jim. 
 Her hair has changed colour; it is a 
 lovely bronze now, but her complexion 
 requires no aid from art. She dresses 
 exquisitely ; she is addicted to private 
 theatricals ; and once or twice in the 
 season she makes her father-in-law give 
 a ball, and receives his guests for him, 
 so that Lady Mildred may be free to
 
 VII.] MV FRIEXD JUL 151 
 
 remain by his side, in case he should 
 want anything. When he snubs her, 
 as he does every now and again, she 
 won't allow him to see little Lord Sun- 
 ning for a day or two. That brings 
 him to his bearings, and he has to go 
 round to Wilton Place in his bath-chair 
 and apologise." 
 
 " I don't want to hear about her," 
 said Jim. He added presently : " I sup- 
 pose you sometimes see Bracknell, don't 
 you t 
 
 I replied that I did. As a matter of 
 fact, I had latterly been a good deal in 
 Wilton Place, because I am credited 
 with a certain facility for drilling ama- 
 teur actors, and Lady Bracknell had 
 found me useful in helping her to 
 arrange the plays with which she was
 
 152 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 wont to entertain distinguished audiences 
 from time to time. 
 
 ''I wonder," said Jim, ** whether he 
 ever feels sorry for having treated me 
 as he did. We used to be friends, you 
 know, and — and I don't think he can 
 quite have realised what an injury he 
 was doing me." 
 
 That seemed likely enough ; but I 
 was unable to say that I had observed 
 any signs of an awakened conscience in 
 Bracknell. *' I know exactly what will 
 happen," I remarked. *' You will be as 
 great friends as ever by the end of the 
 week ; and before a fortnight Is over he 
 will have borrowed a sum of money 
 from you which may probably be re- 
 presented by four figures. What Is the 
 use of your trying to bear malice, Jim ?
 
 VII.] MV FRIEND JIM. 153 
 
 You ought to have thrashed Bracknell 
 six years ago. You could have thrashed 
 him without any great difficulty ; the 
 process would have been consolatory to 
 you and salutary to him. But instead 
 of doing that, you chose to expend your 
 wrath slowly upon unoffending lions and 
 tigers, and the consequence is that you 
 haven't a spark of it left for home 
 consumption. You are dying to shake 
 hands with your enemy now — you know 
 you are." 
 
 *' I don't know that I am particularly 
 anxious to shake hands with him," said 
 Jim consideringly. " I would rather not 
 think of him as a traitor, that's all. You 
 see, it does make a difference if a man 
 says he is sorry." 
 
 I was beginning to point out that
 
 154 MY FRIEND JIM, [chap. 
 
 expressions of sorrow must be taken 
 for what they are worth, and that, 
 although it may be right to pardon a 
 man who has shamefully deceived you, 
 it is extremely foolish to put faith in him 
 again, when I was interrupted by the 
 entrance of a second visitor, and who 
 should this prove to be but Bracknell 
 himself ! 
 
 It was an odd coincidence that had 
 brought him to my chambers on that 
 afternoon of all others ; for he had never 
 so far honoured me before ; but he had 
 evidently not come with any idea of 
 meeting Jim, whom he glanced at with 
 an impatient frown and did not recognise. 
 Jim was certainly altered, but Bracknell 
 was perhaps even more so. He had lost 
 his good looks to a great extent, and
 
 VII.] MV FRIEND JIM. 155 
 
 carried more superfluous flesh than he 
 was entitled to at his ao^e. His const!- 
 
 o 
 
 tution was a fine one, but I beHeve he 
 mixed his liquors in an appalling manner, 
 and one can't sit up all night and every 
 night, playing cards, without exhibiting 
 traces of fatigue. 
 
 Jim stared at him in a sort of con- 
 sternation ; no doubt the change in his 
 former friend was more apparent to him 
 than it was to me. As he did not see 
 fit to declare himself, the duty of making 
 him known devolved upon me, and I 
 watched with some interest the de- 
 meanour of the two men who were thus 
 unexpectedly brought face to face once 
 more. Jim got up slowly, looking very 
 grave, and said, '' How do you do, 
 Bracknell .^ " But Bracknell burst into
 
 156 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 a laugh, and seized his old schoolfellow 
 by the hand. 
 
 ''Jim Leigh, as I'm a living sinner!" 
 he exclaimed. '' Dear old Jim ! Where 
 on earth have you been concealing 
 yourself for the last hundred years ? 
 Didn't somebody tell me you were 
 going in for big game in Central 
 Africa or somewhere ? I wish I had 
 been with you ! Let me know when 
 you start off again, and I'll see if I can't 
 get out of this for a few months. By 
 Jove ! what a relief it would be ! " 
 
 It was so evident that he had com- 
 pletely forgotten the trifling circumstance 
 of his having once robbed Jim of a 
 wife that I was shaken by internal 
 laughter, and had to turn away to con- 
 ceal my emotion ; but Jim, I dare say,
 
 VII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 157 
 
 saw nothlnof to laueh at in such cal- 
 lousness. 
 
 '' I don't think I am likely to be making 
 any more expeditions of the kind yet 
 awhile," he answered coldly. " I have 
 stayed away from England too long as 
 it is." 
 
 " Have you ? " said Bracknell, whose 
 attention was already beginning to wander. 
 "Well, I don't know ; England's a beastly 
 country to live in, unless one has about 
 thirty thousand a year, clear. You don't 
 mind my smoking, do you, Maynard ? " 
 
 I said I did not ; and he added, 
 lowering his voice slightly, *' I want just 
 to have a word or two with you presently, 
 if you're not busy." 
 
 Jim took this rather broad hint, and 
 put on his hat. After I had ascertained
 
 158 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 his address, and had arranged a meeting 
 with him for the following day, he 
 turned to go ; but Bracknell, starting 
 out of a fit of abstraction, caught him 
 suddenly by the elbow with renewed 
 cordiality. 
 
 '' Going to stay In London for a bit ? " 
 he asked. *' You must look us up In 
 Wilton Place, old chap. You know my 
 wife ? " 
 
 " I had the pleasure of being rather 
 intimately acquainted with Lady Brack- 
 nell some years ago," replied Jim grimly. 
 
 " Oh yes, of course. Well, she'll be 
 very glad to see you again. Come and 
 dine with us some evening. I expect 
 we're pretty deeply engaged just now, 
 but I'll drop you a line." 
 
 When Jim had departed, I could not
 
 vil] my friend JIM. 159 
 
 help remarking, "It must be very con- 
 venient to have such a bad memory as 
 yours ! " 
 
 Bracknell was apparently preoccupied. 
 "• Bad memory ? How do you mean ? " 
 he asked. '' Oh, I see ! But it would 
 be more to the purpose to pity Leigh 
 for having such a confoundedly good one, 
 wouldn't it ? He looked as sulky as a 
 bear. I say, Maynard, will you 'do me 
 a small favour ? " 
 
 '' That depends upon what it may be," 
 I answered. 
 
 '' Oh, it isn't much of a one. You 
 know the editor of the Piccadilly Gazette, 
 don't you ? Well, just run your eye 
 over this paragraph that he has put into 
 his scurrilous paper." 
 
 He drew a newspaper from his pocket
 
 160 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 and pointed to the following oracular 
 announcement : 
 
 '* A certain noble earl is not quite so 
 enfeebled in intelligence as is sometimes 
 supposed. Not satisfied with knowing 
 that his son is heir-presumptive to a vast 
 estate, he is moving heaven and earth 
 to get his daughter married to the pre- 
 sent holder thereof : so that, in case 
 of the advent of an heir-apparent upon 
 the scene;, the property may at least 
 remain in the family. And yet the 
 heir-presumptive is not happy they 
 say." 
 
 '' I don't want Alf Beauchamp to read 
 that sort of thing, you know," said 
 Bracknell. 
 
 '* I can well believe that you don't," 
 I answered ; '^ but how do you propose
 
 VII.] MV FRIEND JIM. 161 
 
 to prevent him from reading it, since it 
 is already in print ? " 
 
 *^ Oh, that's nothing. Very likely he 
 won't see it ; and if he does see it, the 
 odds are that he won't understand. What 
 I want is to stop this newspaper brute 
 from speaking more plainly. You might 
 be a good fellow and manage it for me. 
 Tell him we'll invite him to dinner if 
 he likes, and if that won't do, find out 
 what will do. I suppose he has his 
 price." 
 
 "Very likely he has," I answered, "and 
 I am much flattered by your intrusting 
 me with this delicate mission. But I am 
 like the editor — I demand my quid pro 
 quo, and if I do this for you, you will 
 have to do something for me." 
 
 " With all the pleasure in life ; but it 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 isn't much that I can do for any man, 
 except ask him to dinner." 
 
 *' You can do a Httle more for Jim 
 Leigh, whom I think you will admit that 
 you have treated rather badly. First of 
 all, you can beg his pardon. Is that 
 too bitter a pill for you to swallow ? " 
 
 '' Oh, I'll beg his pardon, if it will make 
 him any happier," answered Bracknell 
 laughing. 
 
 *' Secondly, you must promise that you 
 will neither ask him to play cards with 
 you, nor borrow money of him." 
 
 Bracknell opened his eyes. " Do you 
 know, Maynard," said he, " that that is 
 not very far removed from being an 
 impertinent request ? " 
 
 I replied that I might have said much 
 the same thing of the request which he
 
 vil] my friend JIM. 163 
 
 had addressed to me. Anyhow, I must 
 have his promise, or I should not go to 
 the office of the Piccadilly Gazette, 
 
 So he laughed again and gave the re- 
 quired pledge, and went his way, leaving 
 me somewhat reassured as to Jim's future. 
 Lady Bracknell, I knew, would try to 
 make him fall in love with her again ; 
 but I was not much afraid of her suc- 
 ceeding. Clever as she was, she was not 
 quite clever enough to understand that 
 the surest way of disgusting Jim would 
 be to show him that she was no more 
 true to the husband whom she had chosen 
 than she had been in days gone by to 
 himself. 
 
 M 2
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 One morning not long after this, Jim 
 did me the honour to breakfast with me, 
 and gave me an account of his first 
 interview with Lady Bracknell, which 
 amused me very much and contrasted 
 favourably in point of style with his 
 epistolary efforts. 
 
 *' I thought," said he, " that I had 
 better call and get it over ; so I went 
 to Wilton Place about six o'clock In the 
 afternoon, hoping that she would be in 
 the Park and that I might leave my
 
 CHAP. VIII.] MY FRIEND JIM, 165 
 
 card and retire. But as she was at 
 home, I had to march into the drawing- 
 room, feehng a little shy and awkward, 
 don't you know, as one does after 
 spending such a long time out of reach 
 of civilisation. I dare say I got rather 
 red in the face, and I was horribly con- 
 scious that my boots squeaked. There 
 were a lot of men In the room, young 
 fellows with bouquets in their button-holes 
 and very high collars — I hear you call 
 them ' mashers ' nowadays — and they all 
 opened their eyes and mouths at me, 
 which was like their impudence. I con- 
 fess that they made me uncomfortable 
 at first ; but after a bit I recollected 
 that if I had ordered the eldest of them 
 to run up to the Brocas for me eight 
 or nine years ago he would have put his
 
 166 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 best leg foremost, and that set me more 
 at my ease. Besides, I almost forgot 
 them from the moment that Hilda began 
 to talk to me. My dear Harry, what 
 an extraordinary — what a miraculous 
 change ! You never prepared me for 
 anything of the sort." 
 
 '^ I told you that her hair had become 
 debased from gold to copper," I re- 
 marked. *' If I didn't prepare you for 
 any more startling change, it was be- 
 cause I must own that I can't detect 
 any." 
 
 '' Can't detect any ! Do you mean to 
 tell me that Lady Bracknell Is the same 
 woman as Hilda Turner ? Oh, I know 
 what you are grinning at ; you think the 
 change Is In me and that there never 
 was really any such person as the Hilda
 
 VIII.] MV FRIEND JIM. 167 
 
 whom I was in love with. Perhaps you 
 are right ; but for all that, she has 
 transformed herself into somethino: ven.^ 
 unlike what she used to be. She 
 doesn't look a day older, and speaking 
 impartially — as I can now — I should say 
 that she is prettier, if anything ; but oh, 
 dear ! I didn't like her ways of going 
 on at all. She is quite the modern 
 great lady ; she has all the fashionable 
 slang at the tip of her tongue ; and she 
 said things which — which — well, I hate 
 to hear ladies say such things. And it 
 struck me that the mashers were any- 
 thing but respectful to her. As I 
 listened to her, I wondered how I could 
 ever have been such an idiot — but no 
 matter ! You said she wouldn't fasci- 
 nate me, and most certainly she didn't.
 
 168 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 I am quite cured, Harry, and I suppose 
 I ought to be very glad, but when one 
 has nursed a complaint for years it 
 makes one feel rather queer to lose it 
 all of a sudden. The sensation is some- 
 thing like having- a double tooth out. 
 
 o o 
 
 It's a good riddance, of course ; but it 
 seems to leave an enormous gap behind 
 it. Well, those young swells took them- 
 selves off, one by one, until she and I 
 were left alone, and then — do you know 
 what she did then ? " 
 
 " To be sure I do," I replied. "- She 
 drew her chair close up to yours, put 
 her head a little on one side, gazed 
 pensively at you, and presently gave you 
 to understand that you were the only 
 rrian whom she had ever loved with pure 
 affection."
 
 VIII.] MV FRIEND JIM. 169 
 
 *' Oh, no ; she didn't go quite that 
 length ; though I must say — However, 
 perhaps I ought not to tell you." 
 
 " I do not see the use of having a 
 tried and trusted friend If he Is not 
 to be let into your confidence. I think 
 you decidedly ought to tell me what 
 she did," said I. For I wanted to 
 know. 
 
 "Well," Jim continued, ''she began by 
 abusing Bracknell — said he was a drunk- 
 ard and a spendthrift, and that he ill- 
 treated her, and I don't know what all. 
 Fancy a woman speaking about her 
 husband like that ! " 
 
 Evidently this was a new and distaste- 
 ful experience to Jim. " Perhaps It was 
 true, though," I suggested. 
 
 "If it was, she ought to have been
 
 170 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 the last person to say so," returned that 
 hard-hearted Jim. '' But, between our- 
 selves, I don't believe It was true. She 
 has told me untruths before now, and 
 why shouldn't she tell them again ? I 
 tried to stop her ; but It wasn't a bit of 
 good. She went on about her marriage 
 having been a mistake and about her 
 having been drawn Into It and having 
 repented when It was too late, and so 
 forth. Do you suppose she says that 
 sort of thing to everybody ? " 
 
 I replied that I really didn't know ; 
 but that probably she endeavoured to 
 suit her conversation to her auditor. 
 
 "■ Her conversation didn't suit me, at 
 ail events," returned Jim emphatically. 
 And then he told me how Bracknell had 
 begged his pardon In a very frank and
 
 VIII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 171 
 
 manly way for the wrong that he had 
 done him six years before. 
 
 *' I went to call at Portman Square the 
 next day," he continued. " Poor old 
 Lord Staines was always kind to me 
 when I was a boy, and I think it amused 
 him to hear all about my adventures. 
 He wanted to know whether I had seen 
 little Sunning yet, and began to brag 
 about the boy and his pluck and his 
 beauty very much as he used to brag 
 about Bracknell long ago. Poor old 
 fellow ! it was rather sad to hear him. 
 He said, * I hope you and Bracknell 
 have made It up,' and when I told him 
 that we had, he muttered, ' That's right 
 — that's riorht. Old friends ouo:htn't to 
 quarrel about a woman. Women aren't 
 worth quarrelling about.' After which,
 
 172 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 he pushed his chair back and made a 
 Httle bow to Lady Mildred. ' I don't 
 mean you, my dear,' he said ; ' you're 
 worth your weight In gold, as everybody 
 knows.' I remember your mother used 
 always to be telling me that Lady 
 Mildred was perfection, but somehow I 
 never noticed in those days how pretty 
 she was. I suppose I had only eyes for 
 one person then. Ah, well ! times are 
 changed. I'd very much rather talk to 
 Lady Mildred than to Lady Bracknell 
 now. I had a long chat with her while 
 her father dozed over the newspaper. 
 It was pleasant to find that she hadn't 
 forgotten me at all, though she said she 
 would hardly have known me with my 
 beard, which she didn't consider an 
 improvement."
 
 VIII.] MV FRIEND JIM. 173 
 
 " Is that why you have shaved It off ? " 
 I inquired ; for Indeed Jim's long, thin 
 face had been deprived of that ornament. 
 
 " Oh, well, one doesn't want to look 
 more like a backwoodsman than one can 
 help, you know," he answered. ''As I 
 was saying, Lady Mildred and I had a 
 good talk and discussed you all and en- 
 joyed ourselves very much, until one of 
 Lady BracknelFs mashers came In and 
 interrupted us. A fellow called Beau- 
 champ — do you know anything of him ? " 
 
 " Alfred Beauchamp/' I replied, '' is a 
 young man whom everybody knows 
 something about, by reason of his being 
 quite in the front rank of eligible bache- 
 lors. His rent-roll is said to exceed 
 forty thousand a year ; also he has coal- 
 mines which, I believe, are expected to
 
 174 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 go on increasing in value. He is the 
 only surviving son of the late Lady 
 Staines's brother, and in the event of his 
 dying without issue, the whole of his 
 property would pass to Bracknell. As it 
 would be dangerous to count upon his 
 doing anything so obliging as that, the 
 family have decided to marry him to 
 Lady Mildred ; only I imagine that they 
 haven't ventured to tell him so, because, 
 of course, he is his own master, and he 
 might insist upon his right to choose a 
 wife for himself Did Lady Mildred 
 receive him well ? " 
 
 '* I don't know what you call receiving 
 him well," answered Jim, looking a little 
 displeased. " She was civil to him ; but 
 I didn't stay long after he came in. I 
 must say that he struck me as being
 
 VIII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 175 
 
 rather a young fool and certainly not 
 good enough for her. Do you suppose 
 that she wants to marry him ? " 
 
 '' Lady Mildred is a dutiful daughter," 
 I replied, " and Lord Staines is notori- 
 ously In embarrassed circumstances. I 
 can't say for certain what she may want, 
 but I think I can form a pretty shrewd 
 guess at what she will have to do. She 
 is not so very much to be pitied, after 
 all. There are very few girls in London 
 who w^ould refuse Alfred Beauchamp, I 
 can tell you." 
 
 *' Ah, you're just what you used to 
 be ! " exclaimed Jim impatiently. '' Why 
 should you always take such a delight 
 in representing that everybody is selfish 
 and sordid ? " 
 
 I pointed out that I had made no such
 
 176 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 general arraignment and that, so far as 
 Lady Mildred was concerned, I had 
 meant to imply that, if she married her 
 cousin, she would probably do so from 
 motives of filial and disinterested affec- 
 tion ; but Jim did not seem disposed to 
 listen to me. 
 
 " I dare say you know more about it 
 than I do," he interrupted. *' Anyhow, 
 it s no business of mine." 
 
 I did not tell him that I had reason 
 to doubt whether poor Lady Mildred 
 would be happy with Beauchamp. My 
 mother still maintained that the girl's 
 heart had been given past recalling to 
 Jim ; but it would have been a pity to 
 hint at such a state of things ; because 
 he was evidently a little smitten with her, 
 and it was quite certain that she could
 
 VIII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 177 
 
 not now accept him, whether he wore a 
 beard or not. So I agreed with him 
 that these projected marriages in high 
 life did not concern humble individuals 
 like ourselves, and suggested, by way of 
 changing the subject, that we should 
 drive up to Lord's to see the Eton and 
 Harrow match, as we had previously 
 arranged to do. 
 
 Nothinof is more futile and foolish than 
 to say '' Matters used to be better 
 managed in old days." Such assertions 
 are never believed, and are tolerably sure 
 either to give offence or to provoke 
 covert sneers. At the same time, I 
 should think that there can be few 
 admirers of the present so infatuated as 
 to deny that Lord's on the Eton and 
 Harrow match-day has suffered a change 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 for the worse. It is no longer the 
 pleasant meeting-place that it once was ; 
 it is frequented by a vast concourse of 
 people who care neither for Eton, nor 
 for Harrow, nor for cricket ; and as 
 for chancing unexpectedly upon an old 
 schoolfellow, you have a far better 
 chance of doing that in Pall Mall or St. 
 James's Street than in the midst of such 
 a rabble. Jim and I threaded our way, 
 grumbling, through the deep fringe of 
 spectators, whose persons and vehicles 
 effectually prevented us from catching a 
 glimpse of the game, and, having been 
 provided with tickets by a member, were 
 about to turn these to account when 
 we were arrested by hearing our names 
 called out In a high, clear voice which 
 was familiar to both of us. From the
 
 VIII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 179 
 
 open carriage in which she was sitting, 
 surrounded, as usual, by fashionable 
 youths, Lady Bracknell beckoned to us 
 to approach, and we could not do other- 
 wise than obey her orders. Her lady- 
 ship was clad in Eton blue from the 
 crown of her head to the sole of her 
 foot, and very becoming the colour was 
 to her. She attacked Jim at once. 
 
 " Come and talk to me," she said ; *' I 
 have a thousand things to ask you. You 
 don't want to look at that stupid cricket, 
 do you ? " 
 
 Jim, with a self-assertion for which I 
 should not have given him credit, replied, 
 *' Well, I came here for that purpose." 
 But probably the reluctance of the fly 
 acts as an agreeable stimulus upon the 
 spider. 
 
 N 2
 
 180 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 *' You shall go and look at it pre- 
 sently,'' Hilda said, and signed to him 
 to get into the carriage beside her. 
 
 So I left them together and strolled 
 on, feeling truly sorry for poor Jim, be- 
 cause I am sure that it must be a most 
 unpleasant thing to be obliged to talk to 
 a woman with whom you have once been 
 madly in love and whom you love no 
 longer. 
 
 I had not proceeded very far before I 
 came upon the Staines party — old Lord 
 Staines lying back In his carriage, 
 propped up by cushions which kept 
 slipping down and demanded careful 
 watching on the part of Lady Mildred ; 
 little Lord Sunning, standing upon his 
 grandfather s knee to get a better view 
 of the game ; and Alfred Beauchamp,
 
 VIII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 181 
 
 leanine over the carrlas^e door, and 
 blowing cigarette-smoke into his cousin's 
 face. 
 
 I stopped to speak to them, and Lord 
 Staines said, " So your friend Leigh is 
 back again at last, is he ? — back at last, 
 eh ? Stupid fellow ! if he had stayed at 
 home, he'd have got over his disappoint- 
 ment sooner, and thanked Heaven for 
 it. I see more than that young woman 
 fancies — more than she fancies by a 
 long way." 
 
 The old gentleman had contracted a 
 disquieting habit of thinking aloud. He 
 went on muttering to himself now, and 
 I dare say that if his remarks had been 
 audible, they would have been found to 
 be uncomplimentary to his daughter-in- 
 law, whom he detested ; but who, never-
 
 182 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 theless, had reduced him to a state of 
 tolerably complete subjection. 
 
 Lady Mildred looked a little nervous, 
 I thought, and went on talking very fast 
 to Beauchamp, a fair-complexioned young 
 man, whose conversational powers were 
 not brilliant, yet who was by no means 
 such a fool as Jim had hastily assumed 
 him to be. It struck me that he was 
 bringing his mind to bear upon the 
 thought that it might be a good thing 
 if he were to marry his cousin, and 
 that he was succeeding very fairly 
 well. 
 
 However, his attentions, if such they 
 were, were soon interrupted. Little 
 Sunning, who was rather a friend of 
 mine, had clambered from his grand- 
 fathers knee on to my shoulder, and
 
 VIII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 183 
 
 had just dealt a resounding blow upon 
 the top of my hat, by way of applause 
 to a retiring batsman, when a vision of 
 sky-blue flitted before my eyes, and a 
 high-pitched voice (I forget whether I 
 have mentioned that Hilda's voice had a 
 metallic ring which no effort on her part 
 availed to soften) said : '' You are a nice 
 sort of person to make appointments 
 with, Mr. Beauchamp ! May I ask 
 whether you remember begging me to 
 bring you here to-day ? And are you 
 aware that I kept the carriage waiting 
 for you three quarters of an hour ? " 
 
 And then I heard Beauchamp murmur- 
 ing excuses from the background. " By 
 Jove ! Lady Bracknell, I'm so awfully 
 sorry. What an idiot I am 1 Can't 
 think how I came to forget it ! "
 
 184 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 There was an indistinct rejoinder, 
 followed by a gradual dying away of both 
 voices, from which I concluded that her 
 ladyship had taken the young man by 
 the ear and led him off. Having per- 
 suaded Sunning that he would be more 
 comfortable, and that I should be cooler, 
 if he got up onto the box, and having 
 thus regained the power of turning my 
 head round, I perceived that Jim had 
 taken Beauchamp's place, and was convers- 
 ing with Lady Mildred, whose eyes had 
 grown perceptibly brighter during the last 
 few minutes. She certainly looked very 
 pretty in her white dress, and I could 
 not wonder at the satisfaction which Jim 
 obviously derived from gazing at her, 
 but it was unlucky, to say the least of 
 it, that he should have taken such a
 
 VIII.] MY FRIEND JIM. 185 
 
 long time to discover her beauty. Six 
 years before, when Alfred Beauchamp had 
 had a father and an elder brother living, 
 there might have been some hope for 
 him ; but his chance was now repre- 
 sented by a zero of a type so clear that 
 one could only hope he might be enough 
 of a reasonable being to see it. Reason- 
 ableness, however, was not his distinguish- 
 ing characteristic. 
 
 Presently Bracknell made his way to 
 the carriage and mounted the box beside 
 his son. He took no notice of us, but 
 hoisted the boy upon his knee, and they 
 two became absorbed in contemplation 
 of the game, the elder making occa- 
 sional explanations to the younger which 
 were listened to with interest and re- 
 spect. I suppose paternal fondness, must
 
 186 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 have been hereditary in the Henley 
 family, for Bracknell was not one whit 
 less foolishly devoted to his boy than 
 his father had been to him in days of 
 yore, and, to all appearance, was bent 
 upon reproducing a system of treat- 
 ment which had not been conspicuously 
 successful in his own case. The child 
 had Bracknell's dark hair and grey eyes. 
 I could discern no resemblance to his 
 mother in him, nor, in truth, did that 
 strain of blood seem likely to infuse any 
 fresh qualities of a valuable nature into 
 the race. 
 
 While I was watching the repre- 
 sentatives of three generations. Lady 
 Bracknell and Beauchamp strolled by. 
 The lady was talking with a good deal 
 of animation, and the gentleman wore
 
 VIII.] MV FRIEND JIM. 187 
 
 the air of one who is at once fasci- 
 nated and puzzled. Bewilderment at the 
 proceedings of Lady Bracknell was not, 
 apparently, confined to him, for Lord 
 Staines, following the pair with his 
 eyes, muttered quite audibly : 
 
 '' I do wonder what infernal mischief 
 that woman is up to now! Is it only 
 spite, or is it a plot ? And if it's a 
 plot, what the deuce is the object of it, 
 you know ? " 
 
 Bracknell looked down from the box 
 and laughed. " Well, Maynard," said 
 he, " why are you looking so solemn ? 
 Taking notes, as usual ? It seems to 
 me that you have all the elements of a 
 sensational romance ready to your hand 
 here. There are bound to be some 
 strong situations before long, I should
 
 188 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. viii. 
 
 say, and you had better try to be on 
 the spot when they come off!" 
 
 *'And what is the ddnoHment to be?" 
 I made so bold as to inquire. 
 
 *'0h, don't ask me," he returned. *'/ 
 don't know ; and, between you and me, 
 I doubt very much whether anybody 
 else does either. All I can see is that 
 there will be a row soon." 
 
 '' What's that you say ? " broke in 
 Lord Staines querulously. ''Why should 
 there be a row 1 nonsense about a row ! 
 I wish to heaven, Bracknell, that you 
 could induce your wife to let me manage 
 my own affairs in my own way ! " 
 
 ** I wish I could," returned Bracknell, 
 with a shrug of his shoulders. '' I wish I 
 could induce her to let me manage 7iiy af- 
 fairs in my own way. But I can't, you see."
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 If Lady Bracknell's motives for luring- 
 Beauchamp away from her sister-in-law's 
 side were obscure to Lord Staines, they 
 did not to a reflective person appear 
 quite unfathomable. When only one life 
 intervenes between your husband and a 
 large property, it must, no doubt, seem 
 deplorable that that life should be supple- 
 mented by others, and I can well believe 
 that to see Beauchamp married would 
 have gone to Hilda's heart, even though 
 he should select as his wife a member
 
 190 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 of her husband's family. It is true that 
 she can hardly have hoped to keep him 
 permanently single, but she may have 
 taken into consideration that existence is 
 precarious, and that young men addicted 
 to field sports run frequent risks of 
 breaking their necks. Add to this she 
 did not love Lord Staines, while she 
 detested Lady Mildred with the intensity 
 of an impostor who has been found out, 
 and you have an explanation of her 
 conduct which is at least plausible. I 
 don't say that it is the true explana- 
 tion, because I cannot pretend to be 
 able to follow all the tortuous workings 
 of such a mind as Hilda's ; but that 
 the course which events subsequently 
 took was premeditated and contrived by 
 her in cold blood seems to me too vio-
 
 IX.] MY FRIEND JIM. 191 
 
 lent an hypothesis. In any case, there 
 could be no question as to the fact that 
 she had marked Beauchamp down as her 
 prey, nor did she fail to capture him. 
 The truth is that she very rarely failed 
 in enterprises of that kind. She had no 
 remarkable personal advantages, yet the 
 men whom she wished to adore her 
 almost invariably ended by adoring her. 
 Of the methods which she employed in 
 order to achieve the desired end I have 
 excellent reasons for being ignorant. I 
 suppose that if by an imipossibility she 
 had ever thought it worth her while to 
 captivate me, I should have succumbed 
 like the others ; but she never did think 
 it worth her while, and therefore I have 
 never ceased to wonder at the ease with 
 which her victims were gained.
 
 192 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 Beaucharap gave no trouble at all. 
 He surrendered unconditionally at the 
 first blow, and spent the remainder of 
 the London season upon his knees, 
 metaphorically speaking. I used to meet 
 him and his enchantress pretty frequently 
 at balls and crushes, and always watched 
 them with interest. Other people watched 
 them too, making such spiteful, ironical, 
 or condemnatory comments upon the 
 proceedings of the pair as were prompted 
 by their several dispositions and by the 
 nature of the case : but by the persons 
 who have been introduced into this 
 history it so chanced that they were 
 little remarked. Lady Mildred, who was 
 in constant attendance upon her father, 
 went very seldom into society ; Brack- 
 nell had of late years ceased to frequent
 
 IX.] MV FRIEND JIM. 193 
 
 the circles which, as a bachelor, he had 
 so conspicuously adorned ; and those of 
 Jim's friends who had not forgotten him 
 durinor his long- absence belons^ed for the 
 most part to his own sex, and were not 
 in the habit of giving balls. Thus Lady 
 Bracknell was able to carry out her 
 designs unmolested ; and as Beauchamp 
 continued to pay visits to Portman 
 Square with unfailing regularity, any 
 anxiety that Lord Staines may have felt 
 on the day of the cricket-match was 
 probably soon allayed. 
 
 Sunning, to be sure, very nearly let 
 the cat out of the bag one afternoon 
 when Jim and I called at his grand- 
 father's house. We found him and the 
 old gentleman with a tea-table between 
 them, busily engaged in eating hot 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 194 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 buttered toast. Lady Mildred was pour- 
 ing out the tea, and Beauchamp, re- 
 clining in an arm-chair, looked very 
 much as if he was wondering how soon 
 he might venture to go away. 
 
 '' I do think it is very dangerous," 
 Lady Mildred was saying as we entered ; 
 and after she had shaken* hands with 
 us she appealed for support to Jim. 
 '' Mr. Leigh, do you think it is safe 
 for such a mite as Sunning to ride in 
 the Row with nobody but a groom to 
 look after him ? And he always makes 
 the groom ride a hundred yards behind." 
 
 *' From what I have seen of the 
 equestrian performances in the Row, I 
 don't think it is an over and above safe 
 place for anybody to ride in," answered 
 Jim laughing.
 
 IX.] MV FRIEND JUL 195 
 
 *' But seriously," persisted Lady Mil- 
 dred, *' I don't like to think of that 
 child in the thick of such a crowd. He 
 has one of those wicked little Shetland 
 ponies, too, which might overpower him 
 at any moment." 
 
 Sunning, with his mouth full of but- 
 tered toast, w^as understood to say that 
 he would like to see the pony that could 
 overpower him. 
 
 Lord Staines chuckled. '' He can take 
 care of himself — trust him! All the 
 same, I think Bracknell might go out 
 with the boy." 
 
 Sunning, having swallowed his toast, 
 informed us that his father never rode 
 in London. '' And I mustn't ride with 
 mother when Jies there," he added, point- 
 ing a greasy forefinger at Beauchamp. 
 
 o 2
 
 196 MY FRIEND JIM, [chap. 
 
 ** Eh ? — -what ? — who ? " ejaculated Lord 
 Staines, pricking up his ears. 
 
 And Sunning did not mend matters 
 by continuing, In his Hsping, childish 
 treble, '' Before he came there was 
 another genkleman, but I think he's 
 gone away now. Mother says not to 
 ride with her when there's a genkle- 
 man." 
 
 '' Would he be so very much In your 
 way ? " asked Lady Mildred, turning to 
 Beauchamp, with just the faintest touch 
 of disdain in her voice. 
 
 " Not the least in the world," answered 
 the young man. " I am very sorry If I 
 have prevented Lady Bracknell from 
 taking him out, and next time — if there 
 is a next time — I'll make a point of re- 
 questing the favour of his company.
 
 IX.] JfV FRIEND JIM. 197 
 
 But really, I don't ride with Lady 
 Bracknell very often." 
 
 *'Evely day," said the relentless Sun- 
 ning emphatically. 
 
 This was a little embarrassing, but 
 Beauchamp, though young, was a man 
 of experience, and his serenity was not 
 easily disturbed. " You don't mean to 
 say so ! " he exclaimed. ''I'm very much 
 ashamed of myself, and I'll apologise to 
 Lady Bracknell the next time I see her. 
 But that is just the sort of stupid thing 
 that I am always doing. She good- 
 naturedly asked me to ride with her one 
 day, and I suppose I must have kept 
 on going ever since from force of habit. 
 I'll tie a knot in my pocket handkerchief 
 at once, so that I may remember to 
 forget to go to-morrow."
 
 198 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 I don't know whether he was only- 
 anxious to stifle suspicion, or whether he 
 still contemplated the possibility of an 
 ultimate union with Lady Mildred ; but 
 he made Vreat efforts to be agreeable to 
 her during the next quarter of an hour, 
 and when he took his leave Lord Staines, 
 who had evidently been alarmed for a 
 moment, seemed to be quite reassured. 
 
 Jim, after we had left the house 
 together, informed me casually that he 
 considered the manners and customs of 
 savages very superior upon the whole, to 
 those of so-called civilised Christians, 
 but declined to enter more fully into the 
 subject, when invited to do so. '' It 
 doesn't matter ; only that's my opinion," 
 he said. 
 
 I am not acquainted with the customs
 
 IX.] MY FRIEND JIM. 199 
 
 of savages, except by hearsay ; but our 
 own, I freely admit, might be improved 
 upon. One very tiresome custom, which, 
 I fear, has become almost endemic among 
 us of late, is that of entertaining long- 
 suffering spectators with tableaux vivants. 
 No one who has not been concerned in 
 the getting up of one of these exhibi- 
 tions can have any idea of the worry 
 and trouble that they entail, though a 
 good many people must be acquainted 
 with the tedium of witnessing them when 
 got up. Still, since they are the fashion, 
 there is of course nothing for It but to 
 submit to them ; and Lady Bracknell, 
 who, as I have already mentioned, was 
 dramatically disposed, must needs have 
 her tableaux, like everybody else. No 
 part in them was assigned to me ;
 
 200 MY FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 because, as she informed me, with that 
 laughing candour which, for some reason 
 or other, plain people are supposed not 
 to mind, I really was not good-looking 
 enough ; but I was allowed the privilege 
 of assisting in the formation of the groups. 
 Beauchamp, it must be assumed, pos- 
 sessed the qualification which Nature had 
 denied to me ; for it was at once decided 
 that he should have the honour of figuring 
 in the only tableau of the evening which 
 his hostess proposed to grace personally ; 
 that, namely, in which her ladyship, as 
 Andromeda, with her beautiful bare arms 
 chained above her head and her bronze 
 hair rippling down over her shoulders, 
 was rescued from destruction by a very 
 Saxon-looking Perseus. I ventured to 
 suggest that Bracknell might represent
 
 IX.] MV FRIEND JIM. 201 
 
 the monster, but this was considered to 
 be a proposition of doubtful taste, and 
 as no one else volunteered to undertake 
 that ungrateful part, we had to have an 
 appalling creature constructed out of 
 inanimate materials for the occasion. 
 
 If only it had been permissible to make 
 use of an inanimate Perseus into the 
 bargain, I should have been spared much 
 mental wear and tear and a grievous 
 waste of time ; for Beauchamp declared 
 that he was physically incapable of stand- 
 ing on one leg for sixty consecutive 
 seconds, and it was obvious that unless 
 he stood upon one leg he would spoil 
 the whole thing. I had to put him 
 through a complete course of gymnastics, 
 and even then it was only by the most 
 diligent punching and kneading that I
 
 202 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 could force him into an attitude which 
 was not positively grotesque. Whenever 
 I left his side he, so to speak, tumbled 
 to pieces instantly. However, in the 
 long run we achieved as near an ap- 
 proach to success as could be expected, 
 and when the representation came off, 
 this tableau was received with tremendous 
 applause. I imagine that the majority 
 of the spectators were lost in admiration 
 of Andromeda's arms and shoulders and 
 had no eyes for poor Perseus, who 
 wobbled perceptibly. 
 
 Nevertheless, there were found persons 
 to notice and remark upon Perseus too, 
 if not exactly to admire him ; and it 
 chanced that, on the fall of the curtain, 
 I was standing within earshot of one of 
 these. She was an elderly lady, blessed
 
 IX.] MY FRIEND JIM. 203 
 
 with three marriageable daughters, and 
 in that capacity naturally opposed to the 
 goings on of unscrupulous young matrons 
 such as Lady Bracknell. 
 
 *' It really is a little too bad," she said 
 to her neighbour ; " and I wonder that 
 Lord Bracknell allows it. Of course we 
 know that he is not over-particular, and, 
 as far as that oroes, I dare sav his own 
 manner of life doesn't give him the right 
 to be so, but I should have thought that 
 even he would have seen how outrageous 
 this kind of thing is, considering that 
 Mr. Beauchamp is as good as engaged 
 to his sister. Under the circumstances 
 it's almost indecent." 
 
 I was having a little inward laugh at 
 the " almost " in the above outburst of 
 virtuous indignation when I became aware
 
 204 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 that some one besides myself, had over- 
 heard it. Leaning against the wall 
 behind me, was Bracknell, who had not 
 thought it necessary to be at home in 
 time to receive his wife's guests, but had 
 now come in — probably from his club. 
 From the scowl upon his brow I con- 
 cluded that he had been losing money ; 
 from the brightness of his eyes I feared 
 that he had been drinking ; and from the 
 murderous glance which he shot at the 
 dowager whose speech I have quoted 
 I gathered that her unvarnished stric- 
 tures were not agreeable to him. He 
 muttered a word or two under his breath 
 and turned away, leaving me in some 
 doubt as to whether he was incensed 
 against his wife or against her critic. 
 But very shortly afterwards all uncer-
 
 IX.] MY FRIEND JIM. 205 
 
 tainty as to that point was removed from 
 my mind. 
 
 I had been invited to remain for a 
 quiet supper after the departure of the 
 general company. Beauchamp and a few- 
 others who had been similarly favoured 
 had already gone down to the dining- 
 room, and I was lingering on the deserted 
 stage with the fair Andromeda, when 
 Bracknell suddenly entered and strode 
 towards us. He either did not notice 
 my presence or was indifferent to it. 
 
 ** Hilda," he said, '' you will oblige me 
 by dropping this ; it has gone far enough. 
 You think yourself very clever, no doubt ; 
 but It strikes me that you are in danger 
 of being a little too clever, for once." 
 
 She turned slowly and surveyed him 
 with calm contempt. ''Had you not
 
 206 MV FRIEND JIM. [chap. 
 
 better go to bed ? " she asked. '' Perhaps 
 you may be in a state to explain yourself 
 in the morning." 
 
 Bracknell had the family temper and I 
 thought for a moment that he was going 
 to treat us to a display of it ; but pos- 
 sibly he may have learnt by experience 
 that storming at his wife was a thankless 
 task. " I am sober enough now," he 
 returned quietly, " to tell you that I 
 don't choose to have Mildred's marriage 
 put a stop to for your gratification. How 
 long do you flatter yourself that that 
 young fool is going to trot about after 
 you, like a lap-dog ? Till this time next 
 year ? And what do you suppose will 
 happen when you begin to bore him ? 
 You do begin to bore people after a 
 certain time, I can assure you."
 
 IX.] AfV FRIEND JIM. 207 
 
 ** I dare say that is quite true," replied 
 Hilda meekly ; '' you ought to know. 
 Of course I will obey you to the best of 
 my ability ; but I am afraid I can no 
 more force Mr, Beauchamp to marry 
 your sister than I can prevent you from 
 insulting me before a third person." 
 
 At this juncture the third person 
 executed a strategic movement in the 
 direction of the door. But Bracknell 
 intercepted me. 
 
 '' You needn't withdraw, Maynard," 
 said he with a short lauQ^h. " I've 
 nothing more to say, and now Ave may 
 as well go down and have some supper. 
 I don't often interfere with her lady- 
 ship's little games, but I believe she 
 knows that when I do, she must give 
 them up."
 
 208 MV FRIEND JIM. ■ [chap. ix. 
 
 I observed, however, a slight smile 
 upon her ladyship's lips which convinced 
 me that, in this instance, she had no in 
 tention at all of giving up her little 
 game. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : RICHARD CLAY & SONS, PRINTERS.