Mr Nobody 
 
 * <$ 
 
 Mrs f <Jo#n /Cent Spender 
 
 f fiimriTirTirt&Bwata—

 
 
 rN 

 
 MR. EOBODY. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 NEW AND POPULAR NOVELS 
 
 AT ALL THE LIBRARIES. 
 
 ONLY YESTERDAY. By William Marshall, author 
 
 of ' Strange Chapman,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 ONE FALSE, BOTH FAIR. By John Berwick 
 
 Harwood, author of 'Lady Flavia,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 DI FAWCETT. By C. L. Pirkis, author of ' A Very 
 
 Opal,' ' "Wanted, an Heir,' ' Saint and Sibyl,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 A CHRISTMAS ROSE. By Mrs. Randolph, author of 
 
 ' Gentianella,' ' Wild Hyacinth,' ' Woodroffe,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT. By a New Writer. 3 vols. 
 
 HURST & BLACKETT, 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
 
 MR. NOBODY 
 
 BY 
 
 MES. JOHN KENT SPENDER 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 godwyn's ordeal," "BOTH in the wrong, 
 
 "HER OWN FAULT," "PARTED LIVES," 
 
 ETC. ETC. 
 
 " It is amazing how small a beam of light redeems a soul from the 
 condemnation of utter darkness/' 
 
 Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 " All things tend upwardly, though weak 
 Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, 
 But dream of him, and guess where he may be, 
 And do their best to climb and get to him — 
 All this I knew not, and I failed." 
 
 Robert Browning. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1884. 
 
 All rights reserved.
 
 v. I 
 
 i 
 
 PAET I. 
 
 £- • Can the state thrive 
 
 By the destruction of her innocent sons, 
 In whom a premature necessity 
 -^ Blocks out the forms of nature, preconsumes 
 
 ^ The reason, famishes the heart, shuts up 
 
 The infant being in itself, and makes 
 Its very spring a season of decay ? 
 Can hope look forward to a manhood raised 
 On such foundations ? 
 
 Wordsworth 
 
 Oo 
 
 : VOL. I. B
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/mrnobody01spen
 
 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was in the latter days of December, 1829, 
 before the seasons had begun to puzzle and 
 discomfort agriculturists, or ' to totter,' as 
 Rossetti says, 'in their walk.' It was a time 
 when the months were supposed to act up 
 fairly to their accustomed character. The 
 Yule-log was still expected to blaze at 
 Christmas time, and March was more asso- 
 ciated with the daffodils, ■ that come before 
 the swallows dare,' than with the pale cheeks 
 and red nose of youth, or the dust which 
 brings tears into the eyes of 'reverend age.' 
 
 B 2
 
 4 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 The Shakespearian winter, ' when coughing 
 drowns the parson's saw,' was still said to be 
 succeeded by the mildness of a spring in which 
 young people were fabled to bathe their faces 
 with dew, and to go a-maying decked in white 
 blossoms under sunlit skies. 
 
 Yet the traditions of our fathers were already 
 beginning to be shaken. And the nation, which 
 was suffering from the bad effects of two un- 
 congenial, wet summers, was ill prepared to en- 
 counter another January of extraordinary frost 
 and snow. August and September had not 
 brought the red ripened corn, the warm, sweet 
 twilights, or the soft harvest moons; nor had 
 the ' happy autumn fields ' of October been as 
 genial as usual, with brown nuts, ruddy apples, 
 and touches of russet and gold. 
 
 Winter seemed to be setting-in with greater 
 virulence than ever, and tramps and beggars 
 — who more than fifty years ago were toler- 
 ated nuisances to such an extent that Smith, 
 the ' king of gipsies,' was followed to his 
 grave by a hundred children and grand- 
 children — must have had a bad time of it in
 
 MR. NOBODY. 5 
 
 their wandering life. But these people were 
 hardened from childhood to endure all sorts of 
 changes of temperature. Not so a poor beggar- 
 woman who, at the time of which I write, had 
 been wandering for weeks on foot in spite of 
 bleak winds, and over almost impassable roads, 
 with a patient, careworn face, and a pathetic, 
 heavy-laden expression like that of an over- 
 driven dumb animal in its silent misery, which 
 attracted more than one passer-by. 
 
 When she had set out on her weary walk 
 from the neighbourhood of London, her shoe- 
 leather and bonnet and shawl had been in fair 
 condition ; but now the shoes hardly held to- 
 gether, and her shawl — torn here and there in 
 strips — scarcely protected her emaciated person. 
 The little that was left of the once efficient gar- 
 ment was wrapped in folds round the baby 
 which she clutched close to her breast, as if she 
 would communicate to it the small amount of 
 warmth which yet lingered in her own body ; 
 and the bonnet, w T hich was so draggled as no 
 longer to protect her head, revealed her un- 
 kempt hair, which had once been arranged in
 
 6 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 the fashion of the period, in loose, full curls, 
 falling on either side of the face, and only 
 parted to show the forehead and eyebrows. 
 The forehead was already furrowed, though 
 the woman was still young, and the large, 
 restless eyes glanced nervously at the clouds 
 which were being driven across the sky by the 
 pitiless wind that tore at the chimney-stacks of 
 the cottagers, sending clattering slates from 
 the roofs of the houses, as she passed through 
 the village. 
 
 Now and then she begged an alms, and it was 
 the poor who gave her from time to time of their 
 broken victuals. She was in search of a cottage 
 which she had left in her innocent girlhood in 
 
 the neighbourhood of a town in shire, 
 
 and which for the purpose of my story shall be 
 misnamed Torringmoor, and she was beginning 
 to despair of ever reaching it. She could not tell 
 herself how she had lived through that walk of 
 nearly two hundred miles. It seemed to her 
 that she had walked day and night, eating 
 from time to time the dry crusts which the 
 pitying poor, so kind to each other, spared from
 
 3IR. NOBODY. 7 
 
 their own need. She would have lain on the 
 ground had it been summer weather, but, as it 
 was, she took shelter in sheds and outhouses. 
 She had wandered from village to village 
 singing for pence. Sometimes she had been 
 hospitably received, and sometimes she had 
 been driven away from the farmers' houses 
 with curses. 
 
 It must be acknowledged that the farmers 
 had some reason for being afraid. Tramps 
 were sometimes in league with housebreakers 
 then as now ; and when it was not an uncommon 
 occurrence for men with bludgeons to enter the 
 premises of a farmer, bruising and lacerating 
 his servants, and decamping with all the provi- 
 sions on which it was possible to lay hands, 
 the dread of tramps was not unfounded. 
 
 Even in London a lad had but lately been 
 promised a gratuity for discovering a cave 
 within the iron railings of Leicester Square, in 
 which six or seven sturdy beggars had been 
 accustomed to crouch, smoking their pipes, upon 
 a stone which concealed a number of convenient 
 housebreaking instruments.
 
 8 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 So ignorant was the poor mother of the 
 district through which she was travelling that 
 more than once she retraced her steps. But 
 always a sort of instinct taught her to avoid 
 companionship. If she could get out of the 
 highway, she preferred the cart-track in the 
 fields, or the path in the copses. More than 
 once a merciful waggoner had offered her a 
 lift, but she invariably had refused by a shake 
 of the head. Perhaps she was afraid she would 
 have to join iu conversation as a return for 
 his hospitality, or perhaps she was aware that 
 even hospitality itself might not be safe. It 
 was possible that she might have heard the 
 tale of how a waggoner lately travelling with 
 goods had been attacked by three fellows in 
 smock-frocks, who knocked him down, severely 
 beating him before they stole his packages, and 
 terrifying to death a young woman who had 
 been in the waggon during the affray. 
 
 More than once she had been asked, ' Eow 
 old is your little boy'?' But she had never 
 said, ' Six months.' If she did not exactly re- 
 sent the inquiry, she seemed not to hear it,
 
 MR. NOBODY. 9 
 
 and only answered it by hugging him closer 
 to herself. Once or twice, the people who 
 passed had joked about it. making coarse 
 jokes, but she did not seem to hear them, ex- 
 cept for the somewhat savage expression which 
 crossed her face as she walked on again, almost 
 barefooted, digging her nails into her own 
 flesh. 
 
 All the heroism of which she was capable 
 was owing to the fact of being a mother. 
 Were it not for her child, she would have 
 been a poor, helpless thing, and would long 
 since have sunk down on the ground to die. 
 But as she passed by the happy homes of the 
 rich, with their splendid evergreens, grassy 
 slopes, and holly-trees glistening with the hoar- 
 frost — the ideal old homes for Christmas merry- 
 makings — contrasting strangely with the ' dog- 
 hutches ' which were considered to be good 
 enough for the poor, she felt as if she herself 
 was one of the broken shards of ruin only tit 
 to be cast into waste places, to add to the use- 
 less rubbish-heaps which no sanitary commis- 
 sioner as yet had cleared away. Were it not
 
 10 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 for her child, she would rather have been 
 dead. 
 
 Often, in a state of fever and temporary 
 delirium, she called on the names of those 
 whom she had known in her girlhood, and 
 for whom, in some blind way, she was search- 
 ing again. And then, as the darkness came 
 on, she would feel as if wounded to the heart, 
 putting her hand to her side, and moaning. 
 
 That morning she had felt tolerably strong, 
 as if she could accomplish the remainder of the 
 way. The few people whom she passed did 
 not know what to say to her — some of them 
 deciding that she was mad, the shadow on her 
 eyes betraying the sorrowful thoughts with- 
 in. More than one who had met her on the 
 road had shunned her, crossing over, and pass- 
 ing by on the other side. This solitary, ab- 
 sorbed woman — walking straight on, with her 
 feet almost bare, on the stony roads, clasping 
 her infant so tightly to her, and muttering 
 at times to herself with that strange wildness 
 in her eyes — was not pleasant to encounter on 
 a lonely road.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 11 
 
 1 The creature is mad,' said more than one of 
 the passers-by, with a shrug. * No doubt she 
 has brought her troubles on herself.' 
 
 For those were days in which the tender- 
 heartedness of our times would have been 
 looked upon as a false and foolish sentiment- 
 ality. * Mercy,' it was said, * can be no relaxa- 
 tion of justice ;' and there were certain fatal 
 weaknesses whose criminality seemed to be 
 so ingrained into the character that those who 
 prided themselves on the superiority of the 
 moral sense were ready, w T ith pitiless cruelty, 
 to pronounce it incurable, to be cast out, and 
 trodden under foot. In this stern sense of 
 duty, there remained no room for compassion 
 for the criminal. 
 
 And though, in the middle of that day, when 
 the unhappy tramp fainted on a doorstep, 
 there proved to be one farmer's wife with a 
 larger heart, who helped the swooning and 
 suffering sister into a homestead, which was 
 snug and neat, with a look of smiling hope, 
 plenty and comfort about it — every ox and ass 
 about the place sharing in the warm domestic
 
 12 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 feeling, and seeming to know that it was well 
 cared for — I am afraid it must be admitted that 
 even this gentler and kindlier hostess allowed 
 her conscience to reproach her for a self-indul- 
 gent impulse, and never stayed to reflect how 
 Christ Himself, instead of excommunicating 
 publicans and sinners, openly associated with 
 them, and tried to benefit them. 
 
 ' What is your name ? ' asked the good 
 woman of the house, after she had given 
 milk to the child, and had told the mother 
 that she would kill it if she kept it out in the 
 cold. 
 
 8 I — 1 am not going to tell my name to no- 
 body — I should like to be somebody else — I 
 can't tell why God Almighty created me,' an- 
 swered the poor soul, impressed by the benevo- 
 lence in the pitying eyes, while something like 
 a sob choked in her throat. 
 
 ' Hush ! you have been ill — one can see that 
 to look at you, and you will bring the fever 
 back if you talk like that,' said the farmer's 
 wife, involuntarily retreating a little as she put 
 the child back in the mother's lap.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 13 
 
 Footsteps were heard at the door. It was 
 the men returning to their dinner. 
 
 * Cover me — hide me — don't let anybody see 
 my face — I used to be known in these parts,' 
 said the poor unhappy one, rising in alarm 
 from her unusual place of luxury; and the good 
 woman who listened to her shuddered. 
 
 An hour afterwards she went in search of the 
 stranger, whom she had concealed in an out- 
 house. She found her crouched with her child 
 in the furthest corner of the shelter. 
 
 ' Why do you trouble yourself about me V 
 was the almost fierce inquiry. 
 
 1 You be sick/ was the answer. 
 
 * It is the first words of pity — as anyone has 
 
 said to me — since — my mother ' and she 
 
 broke off the speech, made with but little of 
 
 the shire accent, in an unaccustomed flood 
 
 of tears. 
 
 1 Ye've been in Lunnon,' answered the elder 
 woman, relapsing into the vernacular, and 
 noticing that the stranger was much younger 
 than she had at first imagined. 
 
 She rose slowly, and looked in a dazed way 
 around her.
 
 14 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ' I will go away,' she said, taking no notice 
 of the question. ' I am not good enough for 
 sich as you to come near me. How far is it to 
 Torriugmoor ? I can walk it quite well — I am 
 bound for Torringmoor to-night.'
 
 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The afternoon had already begun to wane 
 when the outcast set out again, nor did her 
 hostess try to detain her. 
 
 'How much further am I?' she had asked, 
 almost fiercely, turning away from her would- 
 be helper, and relapsing once more into the 
 silence which is the refuge of suffering souls. 
 
 Wandering folks were supposed to ! overlook' 
 people's donkeys and hens, and though the 
 very severity of the law against vagrants had 
 a tendency to defeat itself, and the vagrants 
 were left pretty much alone so long as they 
 did not interfere with the farmer's hedges and 
 ditches, the kind woman who had sheltered the 
 wanderer in her benevolence was inwardly not 
 sorry to see her depart.
 
 16 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ' Yon be weak-like,' she said, as she supplied 
 her with an ash stick which one of the farm- 
 labourers had cut from the hedges, and which 
 she thought might help to steady her steps. 
 
 In summer-time the soft downs over which 
 she again began to wander would have been 
 pleasant enough bathed in the evening light, 
 but now the endlessness of the great moor, 
 its vastness, and the immense expanse of 
 of sky above, suggesting the infinite distance 
 of the plain below, was wearying to the ej*e. 
 She — who in old times had been familiar with 
 this moor, watered by a river of which now the 
 brown aud turbulent water rushed over the 
 rocky stones — would have been glad that the 
 darkness was setting in, had not the place been 
 haunted by ghosts and memories of the past. 
 
 Strange stories were then afloat, and were 
 confidently believed by the superstitious, of 
 wildernesses infested by evil spirits, the air 
 being filled with the clash of instruments and 
 with the noisy footsteps of demons ready to 
 pounce upon their prey. Some of these familiar 
 stories returned to the poor woman's memory.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 17 
 
 The bare and denuded branches of the little 
 vegetation about the place only added to the 
 ghostliness of the scene, undisturbed but by 
 the cry of a solitary water-hen, beating its 
 wings and trailing its legs as it flew out into 
 the evening air. 
 
 It was well for the lonely mother that her 
 state was almost that of stupefaction, or all the 
 strange and haunted sense of a wanderer by 
 night — who hears the dead whisper, and can 
 almost see them pass by white in the moorland 
 mist — would have been hers. Suddenly she 
 knew that she was alone, and uttered one cry 
 — a mother's cry, instantly stifled by the effort 
 which she put upon herself. Only the despair- 
 ing could have understood her despair. It was 
 but a few miles further to walk. She could see 
 the smoke from the chimneys of Torringmoor, 
 but her strength was failing her. 
 
 On she went again over dead leaves and dry 
 branches, which crackled under her feet, tear- 
 ing them and making them bleed. She took 
 no notice of the pain ; she might not even have 
 felt it. Her eyes were fixed on the distant 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 18 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 horizon, on which lingered the tints of the 
 wintry sunset — the colours of the Eternal city. 
 It brought back faint recollections to her mind. 
 How long since she had talked to her own 
 mother in childish language of the gates of 
 amethyst and pearl, how long — how very long 
 — since she had read her Bible. Darker it 
 grew, and her consciousness became more than 
 ever confused. She murmured names now as 
 she pressed the crying child to her bosom — 
 tried to comfort and soothe it, but found she 
 had no nourishment to give it. Yet mechanic- 
 ally, as if she remembered a habit of her girl- 
 hood, her eyes began to watch the darkening 
 sky, noting a change in it. The skirts of the 
 mists, which had begun to gather over the dis- 
 tant moon, were now drawn up, revealing 
 clouds which fell away and seemed to retire for 
 a time till the wind should arise like a giant in 
 its fury. She knew that snow was beginning 
 to fall by the small particles which she could 
 feel in the darkness stinging her face. But, 
 by the shorter cut which she had taken, she 
 had but a few fields more to traverse, and
 
 MR. NOBODY. 19 
 
 then she would be able to reach Torringmoor. 
 
 If only her strength had not been exhaust- 
 ed ! She was compelled to sit under one of the 
 hedges for a few moments, having taken the 
 precaution to wrap the child more closely in 
 the tattered remnants of the woollen shawl. 
 And then, remembering the stick, she tried to 
 assist her tottering steps by using it with one 
 hand, and propelling herself forwards. It was 
 rather limping than walking — limping with 
 great strides, each one more exhausting than 
 the effort which had preceded it, and rendered 
 all the more difficult from the fact that the 
 snow was beginning to fall in larger quantities. 
 The flakes were wrestling in furious dance 
 with the wind, which had risen as she expect- 
 ed, and was flinging the powdery white in 
 blinding masses not only into her eyes and 
 face, but into the closest casements of the 
 cottages, so that in the morning it would be 
 found drifted high into heaps wherever the 
 pitiless wind had flung it. 
 
 She had reason to be alarmed. For there 
 had been a night of snow in the preceding year 
 
 C 2
 
 20 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 which had caused much consternation and con- 
 fusion in all parts of the country, at a time 
 when the means of locomotion were fewer and 
 much more difficult than they are now. If the 
 snow were to continue to fall like this, in six or 
 seven hours the roads would be impassable, the 
 coaches would cease running, the mail-bags 
 would have to be brought on horseback at the 
 risk of life ; while — on some of the important 
 thoroughfares — there might be carts and wag- 
 gons buried in snowdrifts, causing an obstruc- 
 tion to all traffic. The chance for a solitary 
 traveller would be desperate indeed, and in 
 spite of the unerring instinct which the human 
 mother shares, under peculiar circumstances, 
 with brute beasts, she did not feel as if it 
 would be of any use for her to fight against 
 fate. The cruel blast of the knife-like wind 
 seemed to cut her face almost into pieces, and 
 every drop of blood in her body felt frozen. 
 The child cried loudei than before, and with 
 the desperate emergency her consciousness 
 partially returned to her, as she sang wild 
 snatches of songs in a low voice, that it might 
 not be terrified at other sounds.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 21 
 
 "Was it her fancy, or did the Christmas bells 
 — for it was Christmas week — sound mingled 
 with that blast of wind as she ceased her 
 singing? She was at the outskirts of the town 
 of Torringmoor, and the churches were close to 
 her. She did not stop to think that the ring- 
 ing of bells could scarcely be heard, and that 
 the ringers would have ceased practising, as 
 it was past ten o'clock. For to the sore-hearted 
 mother the thought of pouring out her agony 
 at the feet of One born of woman had come 
 to her with the sound of those Christmas 
 bells ; and a pitying face — as of One crowned 
 with thorns — seemed to look down at her 
 through the blackness of the clouds.
 
 22 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The snow that night did not prove to be so 
 serious as had been expected. So furious was 
 the rush of wind, when once its power was 
 thoroughly stirred, that the common people said 
 it had ' drev the snew awaa.' 
 
 So it seemed to a middle-aged nurse, who 
 was watching that night in the chamber of 
 another young mother, listening to the tumult 
 of winds round a house in one of the poorer 
 streets of Torringmoor. The woman, who was 
 about forty years old, but who looked older 
 than she was, was urging flakes of fire up the 
 chimney with an enormous pair of bellows. 
 
 There was an expression in her face like 
 that in the face of a good but rather sulky dog,
 
 MR. NOBODY. 23 
 
 ■with whom the world has not gone straight, 
 and who loves but one thing in it, and that 
 a master or mistress whom he is likely to lose. 
 And the young lady who lay in the bed — for, 
 in spite of her sickness and the poverty of the 
 place, she was unmistakably a lady — had spent 
 a portion of that night with both her arms 
 passed round this faithful creature, relieving 
 her overcharged heart in weeping on her neck. 
 She saw that, though her nurse returned her 
 caresses by stroking and petting — much as the 
 dog, in the same case, would have put out its 
 tongue to lick — there was a strange look about 
 her, and that the eyes, generally good and 
 loving, shone like live coal. 
 
 One might have said that, if the intelligence 
 had been high enough to allow of the nurturing 
 of any far-seeing project, there was vengeance 
 in the face, and vengeance of a kind to be 
 dreaded. But, however that might be, there 
 was certainly nothing but love and gentleness 
 in the countenance of the young lady, whom 
 the woman had nursed since her childhood, and 
 to whom she had returned now that all others
 
 24 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 bad deserted her. Though the patient had wept 
 that night on her nurse's neck, hers was natur- 
 ally a buoyant temperament. She had not been 
 one of the overthoughtful ones who find it hard 
 to rejoice when tales of real suffering are rife, 
 and when they can only stand by, with folded 
 hands, and watch the apparent triumph of evil 
 over good. 
 
 Hers, on the contrary, had been a happy, 
 childlike temperament — never perplexed and 
 wavering, and never liable to depression. A 
 bright and cheerful sense of duty would have 
 made duty easy to her, even when it seemed 
 hard to others. And though this was what 
 the doctor had said would probably be her last 
 night on earth, though her dearest wish re- 
 mained still ungranted, and in nurse EIs- 
 peth's eyes she had endured one of the cruellest 
 of wrongs, she could still be confident and 
 hopeful. She was one of those who have passed 
 from life to death because they love in a sense 
 which others cannot comprehend, and because 
 their love is stronger than death, and can con- 
 quer all wrongs.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 25 
 
 Had it been her lot to live, she would have 
 sought to lighten the troubles of others instead 
 of brooding over her own. But the Master had 
 not given her so hard a lot. She had suffered 
 enough for one so sweet and patient in her 
 short, trustful life, and now the Master, who 
 had reserved the crown for the brows so young, 
 which had borne but a few of the thorns, 
 was calling 1 for her. She was listening for 
 the sound of His feet, and the sweet, almost 
 unearthly smile upon the face which had suc- 
 ceeded the fit of weeping, and which was so 
 incomprehensible to the lower intelligence of 
 the servant, told that she was already conscious 
 of it. 
 
 ' Nurse, dear,' she said, presently, in a tone 
 which, though weak and faint, could have made 
 a bystander comprehend how, in the days of 
 health and strength, she had possessed, besides 
 her physical beauty, and the naive grace of her 
 slightest gestures, a childlike intonation in her 
 voice, with a fascination in her smile which it 
 could not have been easy to resist — 'nurse, 
 dear, I do — not think — he will come now ; he
 
 26 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 said — he — would be here before to-night. I 
 am sure — it is not — his fault.' 
 
 The nurse, who was a north-countrywoman, 
 did not speak loud enough for her charge to 
 hear, but muttered to herself, ' She was a fule 
 to thiuk he ever would come.' She did not let 
 her young mistress see her face, but relieved 
 her anger by making greater efforts with the 
 bellows, lashing her indignant feelings into a 
 still greater height of fury as she remembered 
 the hated face of the man who was mentioned, 
 with long falling moustachios, which few people 
 wore then, and which, it was the nurse's im- 
 pression, were probably worn with the intention 
 of not letting the diabolical nature of his smile 
 be seen beneath them. 
 
 'T puir crater/ she muttered to herself; and 
 then, rocking herself backwards and forwards, 
 she groaned, ' Think o' yer sowl,' till a blast of 
 the pitiless wind blew down the chimney, and 
 made her shudder. 
 
 ' I do — think — of it — Elspeth,' said the gentle 
 voice from the bed, ' though — I — may not tell 
 you — all. It will make no difference — now.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 27 
 
 You must let — me — speak to you. This is the 
 week when God removed — the gulf — between 
 me and Himself — when He became flesh like 
 my little baby here — when He was seen—and 
 handled — born of the Virgin Mary. Do you — 
 think — I would deceive — you — though — I may 
 not — tell you — all?' 
 
 There was a pause. The nurse did not an- 
 swer. Only yesterday some of the servants 
 of the man who owned the moustache, and who 
 was still so mysteriously absent on his travels, 
 had spoken of the marriage as an impossibility, 
 and had laughed her to scorn on the subject. 
 She knew that the doctor thought the same, 
 and who was she to flaunt her opinion in the 
 face of her betters ? The world was as bad as 
 possible — it could not well be worse. She be- 
 lieved in her ' young leddy.' but felt confident, 
 at the same time, that the poor lamb had been 
 deceived. One peep at her wedding lines 
 would have been better than all this talk ; and, 
 if her suspicions were not correct, why could 
 not her nursling show her the proofs ? 
 
 There was silence in the room. Elspeth,
 
 28 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 who had risen from attending to the fire, was 
 now feeding the little boy, a baby of some five 
 or six months old. An outsider might have 
 noticed that she eyed it askance when the sick 
 lady was not looking, as if it were the enemy 
 rather than the child of her mistress. From 
 time to time she muttered to herself, in a voice 
 too low for the invalid to hear, 'He's noan 
 coomin',' — ' Chap to coom at my young leddy,' 
 — ' Sich careless craturs,' — ' But he'll be soa 
 alius,' — ' Not coomin', not he, and t' puir sowl 
 nobbut just deeing.' 
 
 She did not see the smile which shone 
 brighter on the face which lay upon the pillow, 
 so bright at times that it seemed to illuminate 
 the room. Exhaustion of body had subdued 
 the lady's power of speaking, but not of recol- 
 lection, not of prayer. She seemed again to 
 hear her lover pleading. 
 
 1 1 cannot help it if I love you past all com- 
 pass and description. The love is as a thing 
 outside myself; I could not help it if I would. 
 They always wanted me to be married to a 
 rich woman — the fortunes of our house required
 
 MR. NOBODY. 29 
 
 it, they said. Cannot you pity me when I 
 tell you they would like me to make a mar- 
 riage simply as a business partnership, with- 
 out one reference to the impulses of the 
 heart '? They would like me to give up one of 
 the sweetest and prettiest of girls because a 
 sum of hard cash cannot be handed over to me 
 on the day of my marriage. It is that which 
 makes a coward and a fool of me. But, my 
 darling, after we are married, properly married, 
 I will outwit them. I will go away and make 
 a fortune, and bring it back with me ; and 
 meanwhile you must keep our secret, or the 
 whole thing will be a failure.' 
 
 She never thought of reproaching him, even 
 in her own mind, for the fact that he had been 
 absent for so long a time that she had pined 
 and died without him. It was characteristic of 
 her that she told herself he had nothing to do 
 with the catastrophe, since there was consump- 
 tion in her family, and she would probably have 
 died anyhow. There were times when she had 
 not even missed him, with the dim dawning of 
 a mysterious other love which made her feel
 
 30 MR. XOBODY. 
 
 brave with the strength of motherhood. She 
 looker! at her baby with a yearning look. It 
 had fallen asleep. The whole room was very 
 quiet now. For the wind, which earlier in the 
 evening had howled down the chimney, shaking 
 the bare trees and. stripping them of the few 
 russet autumn leaves which yet had remain- 
 ed upon them, had now sunk, like her little 
 child, to sleep, and the nurse had told her that 
 the snow, which a couple of hours before bad 
 been driving thickly outside, had also ceased. 
 
 All was quiet save for the dropping of an 
 occasional ember in the fireplace, and from the 
 shutterless window the dying woman could see 
 some of the thousands of worlds taking their 
 places again in the sky — where perhaps there 
 were schools for the souls of those who should 
 attain the resurrection. 
 
 A sense of the wonder at the new and grand- 
 er life seemed to be gently opening before her. 
 The only trial for one so loving was to go forth 
 to it alone. She spoke rather to herself than 
 to the nurse, when she said, a little languidly, 
 
 ■ I sometimes wish I could take my baby with
 
 MR. NOBODY. 31 
 
 me. But that would be selfish — his father 
 would want hino.' 
 
 What if, when her child was waking in one 
 world, she would be waking in another — that 
 was the more likely I She felt very feeble, 
 very care-worn, going in the path of darkness 
 which her Saviour had trodden before her. Had 
 He not told her, 'I go to prepare a place for 
 you?' Perhaps in one of the many mansions 
 which she could see now in the sky ? She spoke 
 more feebly. 
 
 'Nurse — when — I am gone — take the baby 
 away — at once — this is no place for him — take 
 him to his — father's house. I could not tell 
 you — the reason — while I was living — but when 
 — I am gone — you will find — it out. Take 
 him — he is the heir — to the housekeeper's room 
 — and undress him — the morning — air — will not 
 hurt him. When they see it — they will ac- 
 knowledge — him. Promise me, promise.' 
 
 Elspeth gave her one rapid, searching glance, 
 and concluded that she was wandering. The 
 more so because she said, a few minutes 
 afterwards,
 
 32 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ' I feel— just — as if — I were a child — again, 
 hardy — and scampering — over the heather — on 
 — the moor. . Open — the window, and — let me 
 — breathe the air.' 
 
 The older woman humoured her by pretend- 
 ing to let in the cold air, and shutting it out 
 again directly, in the same spirit in which 
 she would have given any number of required 
 promises. 
 
 Yet she was a little awed in spite of herself 
 by the rapt expression in the happy face which 
 did not seem like that of anyone dying. Some- 
 thing in the manner in which the wide open, lus- 
 trous eyes gazed through the window, which she 
 had begged to have opened, at the stars now 
 shining in the sky reminded the nurse of the 
 joyous childhood to which she had just alluded, 
 
 ' When on some gilded cloud or flower 
 Her gazing soul would dwell an hour.' 
 
 ' T' puir bairn wur alius a gowk/ she mutter- 
 ed again to herself, shivering a little, partly 
 with superstitious fear, and partly with the 
 cold, as she noticed the unusual expression in 
 the shining eyes, which seemed in no way to
 
 MR. NOBODY. 33 
 
 notice either herself or her child, but to look 
 through them and beyond them in a manner 
 which alarmed her. 
 
 She would have been surprised if she could 
 have been told that her young lady was ab- 
 sorbed in prayer — not the sort of prayer to 
 which she had been accustomed herself, consist- 
 ing mainly in groans and guttural noises, but 
 in that leaning of the faithful and loving soul 
 upon the Everlasting Arms which are beneath 
 it, which from the habit of a lifetime passes in 
 hours of weakness beyond the meaning of 
 words, and even beyond the need of them, and 
 yet realises the Divine Nature in the most per- 
 fect way, acting in its uttermost necessity upon 
 the human. 
 
 ' I cannot pray for myself ; I am so weak. I 
 have forgotten the words,' the invalid had 
 complained but a few days before. 
 
 But now God Himself seemed to be teaching 
 her that the essence of prayer was purely 
 spiritual, the appeal from spirit to spirit for 
 inward light and quickening help, the coming 
 of the child, by a conscious act, into the merci- 
 
 VOL. 1. D
 
 34 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ful Father's presence. Even the nurse herself 
 seemed to be suddenly conscious of the open- 
 ing of a larger window, than that which she 
 had sulkily pretended to open, to the super- 
 natural, though she could not have guessed 
 that just then, if her eyes could have been 
 opened like those of Elisba's servant, she would 
 have discovered herself to be the least and 
 most insignificant of the numerous presences 
 in that poverty-stricken room. Suddenly the 
 invalid stretched out her arms. The smile, 
 which melted into an unconscious but mut- 
 tered { Abba, Father,' still more lit up her face. 
 
 'Oh! Elspeth, do you not seeV she cried, 
 in a stronger voice. ' They are here — all of 
 them Come, Lord Jesus — I ' 
 
 She could not finish the sentence. The col- 
 our which had suddenly flushed it crept from 
 her face. But the smile still remained. It was 
 Life — more abundant in the fullest sense — which 
 we so ignorantly call by the name of Death. The 
 sentiment of immortality — the conviction that 
 that which we call the 'last act' does not end all 
 for us, but is really a new beginning of which not
 
 MR. NOBODY. 35 
 
 only the New Testament, but our own heart 
 and reason assures us — became overpowering 
 to the more limited intelligence of the looker- 
 on, with a strange and weird conception of 
 the possible fact that the mistress who lay 
 there smiling, in her new, mysterious, frozen 
 beauty, might perchance have the power of 
 punishing her, if she did not obey her behest 
 directly. 
 
 She did not like to think much about death 
 herself, but had an idea that her sweet lady, 
 who had wronged no one, had been somehow 
 badly treated, not only by her fellow-creatures, 
 but by the messenger which had so suddenly 
 come for her, and which did not seem to her 
 to be God's gentle ministrant, tenderly sealing 
 the bodily eyes in His holy slumber, while 
 gentler angels carried the rejoicing spirit to 
 that Paradise described of old in metaphoric 
 speech as ' Abraham's bosom.' Rather was it 
 something horrible, to be struggled with and 
 resisted, and, had it not been for the pride 
 which kept her quiet, the angry woman would 
 have liked to rend the air with her cries, in- 
 
 D t
 
 36 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 forming her neighbours, after the manner of 
 her more savage ancestors, that Death had 
 been let loose upon its ravages. 
 
 But there was no time to be lost. She had 
 first of all to perform the last sad offices for 
 her dear one, that no one should despise her 
 as she lay there, so mysteriously smiling, but 
 still undoubtedly maltreated before her time 
 by the enemy ; and then she had to carry out 
 the promise — which she was rather glad than 
 otherwise had been exacted from her — and to 
 get rid as quickly as might be of the hated 
 baby.
 
 37 
 
 CHAPTER 17. 
 
 The daylight had scarcely penetrated into the 
 little house when Elspeth shuffled as quietly 
 as possible down the wooden ladder which led 
 from the little chamber. She wished to ac- 
 complish her mission as rapidly as possible, 
 and to return secretly before the other people 
 in the house could discover what had happened. 
 The most gloomy evening imaginable had 
 been succeeded by a resplendent morning. 
 The bells which rang out in Christmas week 
 were already ringing again, after an interval 
 of silence — now in a hallowed and consecrated 
 strain, and now again in a merry din, only 
 suitable for a time of human festivities and 
 gladness. Elspeth could not have told the
 
 38 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 names of the hymn tunes which were chiming, 
 and awakening no responsive chord in her 
 heart, but she knew that the burden of them 
 was 'rejoice evermore,' and to her they sounded 
 like a mocking injunction, when all that she 
 cared for in life seemed to be in ruin and 
 collapse. 
 
 The river in the neighbourhood of Torring- 
 moor was frozen. It was an unusual occur- 
 ence, and she knew that on the following 
 evening there was to be a scene of holiday- 
 keeping, when a number of men would be 
 balancing themselves on steel blades, by the flare 
 of torches, and amidst the jocund laughter of 
 those who would be sure to detect the awk- 
 wardness of the natives. And, though the 
 women did not then trust themselves to be 
 whirled about on skates, there would be plenty 
 of amusement for the fair sex. 
 
 Elspeth could imagine the bustling crowds 
 upon the banks of the river, the pedlars selling 
 articles of food and dress, and more than one 
 charlatan willing to turn a nimble penny. 
 
 Already there were tall young fellows busily
 
 MR. NOBODY. 3$ 
 
 sweeping the ice, and hanging lamps between 
 the ribs of the skeleton trees. 
 
 But all the kindliness in the woman's heart 
 had been poisoned. She turned with a sicken- 
 ing sensation of envy from the thought of the 
 happy actors and friendly spectators in the 
 merry scene. Had not her young lady as 
 much right to enjoy herself as the best of them? 
 The despair and contempt which never yet 
 cured any grief were in the faithful, unreason- 
 ing creature's heart, with all that tendency to 
 querulous fault-finding, all that distress and 
 bewilderment at things difficult to be under- 
 stood, which, in a more modern stage of 
 development, have contributed towards the 
 making of many a poor uneducated petroleuse. 
 
 Elspeth had received few kind words and 
 few encouraging smiles during her somewhat 
 hard, dry life, and these had come from her 
 1 young leddy/ who, she was ready to con- 
 clude, had been too good for this earth. And 
 there was now no one to teach the embittered, 
 broken-hearted woman that to dwell on the 
 melancholy hopelessness of some aspects of
 
 40 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 human life, and not to believe side by side with 
 it in the loving mercy of a God, is to be dragged 
 down to the misery of a suffering brute. 
 
 The passion which possessed her had set her 
 usually sallow complexion in a blaze, and she 
 was ready to stamp her foot as she remembered 
 that that evening, when the men and commoner 
 people would be amusing themselves on the 
 ice, a splendid ball would be given in Torring- 
 moor, at which all the beauty and fashion in 
 the neighbourhood would be collected, and in 
 which the merry dance was to be kept up to a 
 late hour, with every luxury and delicacy of 
 the season, so that the New Year should be 
 ushered in with heart-felt glee. A number of 
 fine ladies would be visiting in the neighbour- 
 hood for the purpose, and the woman cursed 
 them in her heart. 
 
 ' Ech th' owld warld is jest so ill, it wur 
 better it wur doon wi' a'together, it nubbut 
 graws wurser,' she said to herself, in a mixture 
 of her own dialect, and her young lady's south- 
 ern speech, little knowing that such sentiments 
 would in the future be honoured by the name
 
 MR. NOBODY. 41 
 
 of * pessimism,' and that philosophical ideas, 
 bearing a remarkable resemblance to her own 
 dreary lament, would fall glibly from the lips of 
 weaklings who would like to be thought wise 
 in depreciating human life. 
 
 She gave a long, searching look at the infant, 
 and began more than ever to realise how im- 
 possible it would be for her to lake the child 
 to the big mansion in the neighbourhood, from 
 which the master, the only nobleman of whom 
 Torriugmoor could boast, was now absent on 
 his travels. The common sense on which she 
 prided herself had always convinced her that 
 her young lady told an incredible story, and 
 that the ' proofs ' of which she had spoken 
 would prove to be a delusion of the poor girl's 
 sick fancy, whilst she herself would be hunted 
 from the lodge-gates with insult for venturing 
 to speak of the reputed father. 
 
 Sheer fright of the dead body had for the 
 time overpowered Elspeth's usual fair share of 
 wits, but her sense of the absurdity of the 
 situation seemed by degrees to be returning to 
 her in the clear, keen, morning air. There
 
 42 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 would be a ghastly make-believe, a forced joke 
 about the thing, which would lead not only to 
 cruel observation, but to cynical satire from the 
 very men-servants of the establishment. True, 
 her lady had told her to inquire for the house- 
 keeper, and to seek for the proof of the child's 
 birth in the housekeeper's private room. But 
 the distinction of rank in a servants' hall, the 
 artificial demarcations imitated from masters, 
 would quite preclude such a proceeding. 
 Elspeth was poorly dressed, the housekeeper 
 would spurn her and snub her. 
 
 Hitherto Elspeth had been walking very 
 slowly. There seemed to be growing upon her 
 a sort of progressive * locomotor ataxy,' — the 
 doctor's gorgeous name for failure to direct 
 one's own steps — both in the physical and the 
 moral sense. But suddenly, as she perceived 
 that she was nearing the nobleman's park, the 
 remnant of her courage deserted her, and she 
 fled. Fled, scarcely knowing or caring w r here 
 her footsteps might take her, towards a barren 
 upland strewn with boulders, where a few of 
 the poorer folks, washerwomen and others,
 
 MR. NOBODY. 43 
 
 were known to congregate, to pick up a scanty 
 living : for they were close upon the moors, 
 and this suburb was well suited to the drying 
 of linen. 
 
 A dreary, desolate place it was, gleaming 
 just now with the cold gleam of snow, which 
 had fallen earlier on the previous night, and 
 had collected here and there in heaps. The 
 wind would be shrieking and moaning here 
 when it had ceased to shriek in other places, 
 and it had risen a little now, and seemed to be 
 playing with a few of the scattered flakes, and 
 rushing along with them against their will. A. 
 dog, a shepherd's colley, whined pitifully, fol- 
 lowing Elspeth ; as, for reasons which she could 
 not have given, she passed on with the baby, 
 which was cooing, and even attempting to 
 make more articulate sounds, so delighted was 
 the little fellow with the change from the sick- 
 room. 
 
 Elspeth scarcely knew whither she meant to 
 take him. She had no respect or sympathy 
 for the bright little creature, whom his mother 
 had so ardently loved, as a fresh link from the
 
 44 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 chain let down from heaven to earth from the 
 ever-working Spirit. Elspeth, as a pessimist, 
 was only reminded by the little one of the 
 short time that the joy of many mothers lasts, 
 when the babies they love are either parted 
 from them betimes, or live to grow up in a 
 separation of heart which is often worse than 
 death. She remembered that the mother had 
 said she wished it had been possible for her to 
 take the child with her. 
 
 Elspeth, who had so loved her, re-echoed the 
 words,, as, scarcely noticing what she was 
 doing, she followed the dog, which, alternating 
 its whine with short deep barks, seemed to be 
 leading the w 7 ay somewhere, she did not care 
 where. Yet she could not help remarking that 
 the animal seemed to have its nose close to the 
 ground, and that in the direction in which it 
 led there were footprints in the snow, as if 
 some one else had tramped that way before 
 her. 
 
 The dog's whine became more eager, and at 
 last it stood quite still before a large and deso- 
 late-looking barn, the door of which was ajar.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 45 
 
 Elspeth pushed it more widely open, her mind 
 still in that strained state, and so fully occu- 
 pied with keeping back its own woes that she 
 troubled herself little about any other grief 
 which was foreign to her own private source of 
 sorrow. But she could not help noticing that, 
 in a sitting posture under the shed, and upon 
 a heap of dirty straw, another woman sat with 
 another child in her arms, and that the child 
 was pressed closely to her bosom, as if she too 
 would protect it from the cold. There was 
 need to do so, for it was freezing hard, and an 
 old neckerchief, more like a rag, which lay 
 at this other woman's feet, was stiff and 
 frozen. 
 
 1 What a to-do the creature was making ! It 
 was no worse for her than for others, and many 
 wanderers must have been homeless that dreary 
 night,' was the first selfish thought, as Elspeth 
 noted the coincidence. But her next idea was 
 one of horror, for, on calling to her fellow-suf- 
 ferer, the latter did not seem to take notice. 
 Her attitude was easy and peaceful as that of 
 a child asleep, but, on closer inspection, it was
 
 46 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 evident that she and the baby in her arms were 
 dead. 
 
 To do Elspeth justice, she was not quite des- 
 titute of feeling, as she took off her own cloak, 
 and tried to pile it on as clothing, hoping that 
 the warmth might help to restore vitality. But 
 such an event was too common an occurrence, 
 in days when the sufferings of the poor were 
 thought to be no one's particular business, and 
 when Christian benevolence had not taken the 
 more active forms which it now so commonly 
 assumes. It was easy to see that what had 
 happened was nobody's fault, and that no one 
 could take in such a wretched creature, not 
 feeling sure of what she might be up to. Easy, 
 too, to surmise that, when the snow had whirled 
 about her during the night, she could not have 
 been able to find her way blindfold, and might- 
 have been bewildered as to landmarks. But, 
 though the Yorkshirewoman had no poetry 
 about her, it struck her with some pathos that 
 the Eternities, as Carlyle would have expressed 
 it, which had looked down on the sons of Time 
 during the preceding night, should have wit-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 47 
 
 nessed the death of two poor mothers of boys 
 of much the same age, and resembling one 
 another. 
 
 Both the children were of about the same 
 size and complexion, while the hair of both was 
 brown, and both had that vague indeterminate- 
 ness in the other features characteristic of baby- 
 life in general. What a good thing it would 
 be if both were dead ! 
 
 The thought had no sooner occurred to a 
 mind capable of strong emotions, explosive 
 passions, but with a want of sufficient principle 
 to resist bad suggestions, and hardly able to 
 exert any form of self-control, than it was 
 followed by another thought with the rapidity 
 of lightning. How the poor outcast got into 
 that shed was altogether a mystery, and was 
 likely to remain a mystery for all the pains 
 that people took to inquire into such things. 
 The infant in Elspeth's own arms was now 
 crying with cold and hunger. A little more 
 would suffice to kill it, and it was not Iter 
 fault that it had been taken out according 
 to its mother's suggestion. Appearances would
 
 48 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 be all in favour of the plan which seemed to 
 be suggested to her by Providence itself. 
 
 She did not wait to parley with temptation, 
 but, hastily stripping the infant in her arms 
 of its somewhat handsome cloak and em- 
 broidered upper garment, she placed it in 
 the arms of the dead woman, and — noticing 
 that fortune seemed in every way to favour 
 her scheme, since the underclothes of both 
 children were more or less ragged, from the 
 want of means, which had forced her to part 
 with some of her lady's baby-linen — she dressed 
 the dead child in the warm cloak and long 
 embroidered dress, wrapping the other up as 
 closely as possible in the woollen, though rag- 
 ged shawl. 
 
 No one else but herself had ever looked 
 closely at her mistress' child ; no one but the 
 doctor and the landlady in whose house they 
 lodged had ever been allowed to come at all 
 near to it, since not a breath of scandal that 
 the servant could prevent had ever been suf- 
 fered to cross the threshold. Nor did her 
 conscience reproach her much as she fed the
 
 ME. NOBODY. 49 
 
 living baby once more with some soft cake, 
 which she had carried with her for the purpose, 
 and noticed that a little colour crept into its 
 cheeks. Such religion as she possessed — a 
 bitter form of Calvinism — had made her a 
 fatalist; and reasoning with herself that, if it 
 were the Lord's will, some neighbour enter- 
 ing the barn would surely save the child's 
 life ; and, if it were not His will, her lady's wish 
 would be granted : she placed the little one 
 in the dead woman's arms, and, regardless of 
 its frightened cries, once more fled. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 50 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HAVING once yielded to a sudden temptation, 
 there was not only no going back for Elspeth, 
 but no time to be lost in conscientious regrets, 
 even had such regrets been likely to occur to 
 her. For I must ask my reader to remember 
 that this woman had been reared in a compara- 
 tively remote period of the century, when such 
 things as school-boards were unheard of. She 
 had associated with ' factory hands,' whose in- 
 stincts were somewhat savage, who were utterly 
 unable to read and write, and who, some of 
 them, as in Moslem countries, not only re- 
 garded women as marketable commodities, to 
 be beaten or kicked in the absence of cock- 
 fighting, bear-baiting, or other soul-stirring
 
 MR. NOBODY. 51 
 
 amusements, but thought that mothers, in the 
 absence of their proper lords, had more or 
 less absolute rights over the persons of their 
 offspring. Probably, in spite of the slight 
 amount of Calvinism which had been grafted 
 upon Elspeth's otherwise heathenish creed, an 
 ethnologist of the present day would have 
 looked upon her with interest, as a * survival ' 
 of the untutored childhood of the nineteenth 
 century, just as the stone axe is a relic of 
 pre-historic times. 
 
 Had any tender and pitiful remembrance of 
 the terrified child, screaming and stretching out 
 its little arms to her, been likely to linger in 
 her fierce bosom, it would have been ex- 
 tinguished by the sight of two pretty, smiling 
 women, who were tripping from the steps of 
 one of the houses to get into a closed coach, 
 as she came back into Torringmoor. They 
 were apparently about the age of her own 
 young ' leddy,' and the contrast struck her 
 cruelly, as she listened to their light laughter. 
 One had on a dress-hat of pink satin, orna- 
 mented with ostrich feathers. Her pelisse and
 
 52 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 tippet were trimmed with marten-skin ; a Chan- 
 tilly lace veil was drawn over her comely face, 
 and her little feet peeped in and out ' like mice ' 
 in her fawn-coloured boots. The other had 
 a walking-dress of light cashmere, quite un- 
 suitable to the weather, as the corset displayed 
 a cambric chemisette, only half hidden by a 
 chinchilla tippet — sleeves a la Caroline, as they 
 were then called — and pale-lavender gloves. 
 
 I fear that Elspeth cursed them in words 
 which it would not do to retail here, not only 
 from the recollection of another stiff white toi- 
 lette on a fairer form in an upper room, but be- 
 cause the money which had been spent on their 
 ' fal-lals ' might have saved the taxes spent on 
 such articles as sugar, candles, and soap, taxes 
 which were severely felt in such a period of 
 distress. 
 
 The hate in her heart seemed to aid her 
 natural shrewdness. What had these Jezebels 
 to do with such worldly vanities in this life 
 which was so full of death ; when but one of 
 their expensive fur or feather dainties, sold for 
 what it could fetch, would have helped Elspeth
 
 MR. NOBODY. 53 
 
 to purchase dainties for the sweet soul which 
 had been left to die ? She clenched her hand 
 and ground her teeth, being in that frame of 
 mind which made her thankful for that which 
 her minister had told her would be the fact, 
 that God would bum up this miserable world, 
 and she hoped He would burn it as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 She had no one but the doctor to outwit 
 now, and her natural shrewdness told her that 
 would be pretty easy, since the distress had 
 been so great among country practitioners that 
 many of them had been unable to keep their 
 families, and were embarking for America and 
 the settlement on the Swan River. The doctor 
 who attended her poor lady had had difficulty 
 enough, as Elspeth knew, to provide sufficient 
 food for the mouths of his own children. One 
 death, more or less, from exposure to cold, 
 amongst the common slaughter of innocents 
 from causes which were preventible, would not, 
 as Elspeth knew, be likely to attract much 
 attention. 
 
 And, though she had her tears and lamenta-
 
 54 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 tions ready, she did not suppose that too much 
 attention would be accorded to her trouble as 
 she stopped at the doctor's shop, where the 
 blue and red lights had been burning all night. 
 The most benevolent of all professions had not 
 then learnt to be afraid of lowering itself by 
 allowing the common people to call its dispen- 
 saries ' shops,' nor did it shrink with horror 
 from defiling itself by having anything to do 
 with exchange and barter. 
 
 As she had expected, the doctor was not too 
 sympathetic. 
 
 ' What? the mother was dead, and the child 
 sick already, and yet you took it out in the cold 
 morning air — what a fool you must be !' said 
 the young man, whose assistance she thought 
 it wise to seek, as she told her plausible tale, 
 and he also told her how senseless it would be 
 to try to restore life by inadequate means, for 
 the boy had been evidently dead more than an 
 hour already. ' And the best thing that could 
 happen, too, though that does not excuse you 
 for your atrocious carelessness, woman,' said 
 the young man, as he somewhat roughly uu-
 
 MR. XOBODY. 55 
 
 fastened for the second time the cloak and 
 dress, and in so doing dislodged a tiny parcel 
 of something which had been sewed into the 
 bosom of the little dress, and which fell down 
 at Elspeths feet. She coloured slightly as she 
 picked it up, and thrust it into her pocket, 
 determining to examine it at leisure when she 
 reached her home. 
 
 In spite of her nervousness she was somewhat 
 angry with the doctor for his haughty, repellant 
 manner, and resented the fact that such a man- 
 ner was reserved for the 'tag-rag and bobtail,' 
 whilst he could be suave enough to the ' quality/ 
 and was not above the snobbishness which 
 made him think it a possible stepping-stone to 
 a fortune to have a right to feel the pulse of a 
 lord, or prescribe for a duchess. 
 
 ' There, don't stand blubbering there any 
 more — my time is precious, and a mistake of 
 this kind can't be undone,' he said, impatiently. 
 
 What could the fool expect of him ? he had 
 enough to do to attend to the living. And, in- 
 deed, when medical science had still to make 
 such strides that the idea of inflating the lungs
 
 56 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 of still-born children was spoken of as a curious 
 experiment only attempted by Paris savants, 
 and problematical in its results ; when anony- 
 mous letters had sometimes to be written to 
 mayors and coroners, before a jury was sum- 
 moned to investigate mysterious deaths; and 
 when itinerant vendors or other unfortunate 
 men could be discovered dead, with their skulls 
 fractured, and jurymen trouble themselves so 
 little about their fate that, from want of evi- 
 dence, they were content to bring in, as their 
 most decisive verdict, 'Found dead, but how or 
 by what means cannot be determined,' Elspeth 
 need not have feared that there would be much 
 ado about a baby's death. 
 
 Meanwhile the little one, which had been so 
 heartlessly abandoned, was not so forsaken as 
 it might have seemed to human ken. Doubt- 
 less its guardian angel was watching over it ; 
 and without speculating as to the true mean- 
 ing of old-world myths, such as that of Romulus 
 and Remus, there was certainly another angel 
 at hand in the shape of a four-footed brute.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 57 
 
 The dog — of whom we are ready so hastily to 
 assume that it is soulless, because we know 
 nothing about the nature of its soul — proved 
 itself in this case, as in many other cases 
 equally well authenticated, to be kinder 
 than a specimen of degraded humanity. 
 It was anxious, though excited, as a mo- 
 ther might have been, keeping, as it were, 
 one eye upon the door of the barn that it 
 might watch what was passing outside, and 
 another on the child, which at intervals it en- 
 deavoured to amuse by wagging its tail and 
 barking. 
 
 I am afraid that this latter kindly mark of 
 attention, which involved some expenditure of 
 strength on the part of the faithful animal, was 
 scarcely needed in this instance, as the child 
 had hardly reached that stage of existence 
 which would have enabled it to appreciate such 
 courtesies. A partial mother might have de- 
 clared it was ' taking notice,' but it was fortu- 
 nate for it that that ' notice,' which had reached 
 the extent of enabling it to make odd noises 
 when it was in Elspeth's arms in the open air,
 
 58 MR. XOBODY. 
 
 did not render it at all uncomfortably aware 
 of its awful companionship. Had it remained 
 with all that was left of its mother in the 
 strangely-curtained room, with the mysterious- 
 ly-covered elevation on the white-sheeted bed, 
 it would still have been in merciful ignorance 
 of the spectre, Death. But in this case, after 
 it had comforted itself with its cake, and had 
 sucked the remnant of the crumbs from its 
 podpy fingers, it discovered nothing strange in 
 the near neighbourhood of an apparently sleep- 
 ing face, from which the premature wrinkles 
 had been smoothed. With the absence of 
 instinct so characteristic of the human infant, 
 it apparently took the face for that of its mo- 
 ther, and, having exhausted itself with crying, 
 and finding the warmth of the old shawl in this 
 protected part of the shed to be better than 
 the cold outside, it betook itself philosophically 
 to sucking its thumb. 
 
 From the thumb the next stage was that of 
 taking an early siesta, a proceeding of which 
 the dog appeared to approve. But when the 
 nap was followed by the infallible consequence,
 
 MR. NOBODY. 51> 
 
 that of waking and becoming aware of the 
 pangs of hunger, and when its tiny fingers, 
 which were somewhat numbed, began to search 
 for its mother's face, and only came in contact 
 with what w T as marble cold, there was no re- 
 source but to burst into a terrified howl. The 
 dog caressed it — otherwise licked it — as I sup- 
 pose its tender predecessors caressed the dying 
 Lazarus ; but the pathetic expression in its 
 faithful eyes deepened, as it recognised its 
 utter inefficiency under the circumstances. In- 
 deed, it had some reason to be depressed in 
 spirits, being with all good-will more incapable 
 than the fabled she-bear. The infantile howls 
 became gradually feebler; the baby was grow- 
 ing weak, and the dog, sitting on its haunches, 
 and lifting its muzzle as if in appeal, gave 
 utterance to one of those long, lamenting, al- 
 most human whines which seemed to protest 
 against the fate that was hovering over the 
 child. 
 
 At that moment a woman, with a plaid shawl 
 thrown over her head, after the manner of the 
 Yorkshire or Lancashire operatives, was passing
 
 60 MR. XOBODY. 
 
 the shed. She was not one of the factory 
 hands, though, from her appearance, an outsider 
 might hastily have concluded so. The expres- 
 sion of her face had nothing of that bold, uu- 
 sexed, and almost supercilious stare character- 
 istic of too many of the women employed at 
 the Torringmoor factories. It was, indeed, re- 
 markable for its patience and docility. It 
 might once have been good-looking, but there 
 was now a greyness of the complexion, a lan- 
 guor in the carriage of her thin, somewhat 
 gawky figure, and an appearance of ill-health 
 which told the tale that Mary Burton was no 
 native of these parts, and that insufficient 
 clothing, poor living, keen air, and the search- 
 ing winds of Torringmoor were breaking down 
 a constitution ill calculated to endure privation. 
 She and ber father had been born and bred in 
 the neighbourhood of London, but had been 
 unfortunate, like others, in a period of agricul- 
 tural depression, when work had been difficult 
 to obtain both in Sussex and Middlesex. 
 
 It was not in the vegetable world alone that 
 the snows and frosts of two successive winters
 
 MR. NOBODi', 61 
 
 were beginning to be perceptible. But, among 
 the occupants of land in many of the English 
 counties, there was said to be a great deal of 
 distress. Sadness and disappointment were 
 already experienced by those who were beaten 
 down by the rigid nature of the laws, and 
 seemed fruitlessly to spend their energies upon 
 the soil. The Burtons had seen better days ; 
 but when starved women had been found in 
 wretched habitations near Battersea literally 
 famished, with some straw in the corners of 
 their rooms, but no covering of any sort, old 
 Jem Burton — who had been tempted by the 
 account of the lace-work which was going on 
 
 in shire, much as Whittington was tempted 
 
 by fables of gold to be picked up in London 
 — had spent his last remaining shilling in de- 
 termining to take his daughter to offer the 
 assistance of her deft fingers to the lace-workers 
 at Torringmoor, rather than remain to starve 
 at Battersea. 
 
 He commenced by spending his shillings on 
 coach-fares, but, when his little store of silver 
 was exhausted, he and his daughter were
 
 62 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 obliged to trudge. Sanguine still, he had com- 
 forted Polly by the reflection that, if they had 
 carried more money on their persons, rogues 
 might have stolen it. But a short time before, 
 as he reminded Polly, a poor working-woman 
 had been murdered on this very road for the 
 sake of the eight shillings which' she carried 
 in her pocket, and which she had earned by 
 her honest toil. The verdict had been, ' Acci- 
 dental death;' and Jem, who did not read 
 his newspaper for nothing, had commented 
 on the circumstance to his uncomplaining 
 daughter. 
 
 They had reached the El Dorado at last, 
 which honest Jem believed in because he 
 prided himself on the possession of thews and 
 muscles, and was still able enough to perform 
 a day's work, while he believed that his Polly 
 would be good at the lace-making. But, if 
 labour was a little more plentiful for Jem, Polly 
 preferred her own quiet modes of life to the 
 gossipping, jealous, and immodest ways of some 
 of the Torringmoor lace-makers. Rather than 
 expose herself to be contaminated by associa-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 63 
 
 tion with them, she had preferred to do a little 
 washing, and to take in some sewing. And 
 there was worse than all this, on which the 
 woman, who never openly complained, was 
 always secretly brooding. Her father's deter- 
 mination — a set purpose from which it had 
 been impossible to deter him, but which she, 
 with her better wisdom, had known from the 
 first to be blind and obstinate — of coming to 
 a strnnge town, had broken Polly's heart and 
 blighted her life. 
 
 The man with whom she had kept company 
 for years, and who was angry with her for 
 leaving Battersea with her father, and not 
 remaining and facing her position with him 
 and all its difficulties, had seen her off with 
 specious speeches and manifold promises to 
 write to her, but had jilted her as soon as 
 her back was turned, and had married a more 
 comely and younger woman. Since then, 
 Polly Burton had tried to face the future with 
 a settled determination to make the best of a 
 life from which she believed all the brightness 
 had gone. She would not deceive herself, or
 
 64 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 make friends with other people. She be- 
 lieved herself to have done with affection 
 of all sorts, unless it was that for her aged 
 father. 
 
 She was passing this shed this wintry morning 
 with a feeling that she had outlived all tender 
 desires. The loving flame, which had once 
 shone so brightly in her heart, burned very 
 low indeed ; the last sparks which made life 
 sweet to her were nearly out. And the divine 
 love seemed to have almost gone with the 
 human, so faint was her interest in anything 
 which God had made, so dull and stolid her 
 determination to plod through her allotted 
 task, so weary her soul. She was almost angry 
 with the people who had given her a little 
 washing, which involved the painful task of 
 fetching it on such a bitterly cold morning. 
 The latter stage of existence with this woman 
 seemed at present as if it would be worse than 
 the former; and yet the former, in which the 
 love in her nature had once asserted itself, 
 and made toil pleasant to her, had left its 
 hand-writing in that look of endurance and
 
 MR. NOBODY. 65 
 
 docility on the sickly face, and her Father in 
 Heaven had not forgotten her. 
 
 She was passing the shed with her head cast 
 down, feeling like a machine, capable of so 
 many hours work every day, and only a little 
 wearier and colder than usual, when the child's 
 fatigued wail struck upon her ear. Her first 
 thought was the severe one, that it was * all of 
 a piece with all the other ill behaviour of these 
 set-up hussies,' the way in which they neglect- 
 ed their children ; but her second thought 
 brought a stirring of some warmth about her 
 heart, as the infant's cry recalled a recollection 
 of her own childhood, of how carefully she used 
 to tend a little baby sister when her mother 
 was otherwise occupied, and how she had loved 
 it. Her third thought, that if her life had been 
 differently ordered she might have had little 
 ones of her own to sweeten and beautify it, 
 brought a sudden wave of colour to her pale, 
 thin cheek. Then she was aware that her 
 dress was being gently pulled by the dog, and 
 that the colley looked as if it could almost read 
 her secret thoughts, and answer, 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 6Q MR. NOBODY. 
 
 f No, you are not a machine. You had once 
 a passionate, loving nature, with a woman's 
 longing after domestic life, for all you pretend 
 to be made of cast-iron, and try, in spite of 
 your ill health, to be always in working order.' 
 
 She yielded to the dog, and let it draw 
 her into the shed, when, lo ! the baby stretched 
 out its little arms to her and wept. And, 
 though it was a matter-of-fact and rather 
 comical travesty of the sweet old idyll of the 
 Egyptian princess with heart warming to the 
 abandoned babe of the despised Hebrew slave, 
 yet the effect was much the same with the like 
 6 touch of nature.' In both cases the woman, in 
 the simple language of Scripture, ' had com- 
 passion,' and in that of Polly Burton it was as 
 if a spring was suddenly touched which hither- 
 to had been lying dormant in her nature, re- 
 vealing a fund of hidden treasure. She was, 
 though she knew it not, emphatically a mother, 
 though she had never brought forth a child, 
 and motherhood in such a case is more unself- 
 ish. From the moment that she took the for- 
 saken little one, and laid it near to her heart,
 
 MR. XOBODY. 67 
 
 wrapping it about with her own warmer gar- 
 ments, pressing her lips on its lips that she 
 might help to keep up the life in it, a new and 
 softening influence brought about a change of 
 feeling in her. 
 
 Her old father, Jem Burton, found that even- 
 ing that he might as well have argued with a 
 wilful little girl who had just had a new doll 
 given to her, and only hugged it the closer 
 when urged to give it up, as to try to remind 
 Polly that nobody required her to burden herself 
 with f other folks' brats.' 
 
 ! Tis a child of ill fame,' muttered old Jem,, 
 whose sturdy honesty made him feel as if he 
 and his would be decidedly ill-treated if the 
 Almighty did not visit the sins of other people 
 upon them from generation to generation. His 
 daughter refused to argue about it, knowing 
 nothing of the perplexing and mysterious ques- 
 tion of indwelling and transmitted evil by 
 which the finer sense of justice has been chilled. 
 She could not answer, because she did not 
 know that, if there be evil in the parent, it must 
 be transmitted, not by any arbitrary re-intro- 
 
 f2
 
 68 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 duction of ignominy into the stock of humanity, 
 but by the natural and inevitable law which re- 
 produces in the brain and character of the 
 child, the inherited or acquired peculiarities of 
 habit and thought in the brain of the parent. 
 
 * From generation to generation,' repeated 
 old Jem, not knowing that he was dabbling in 
 the region of metaphysics, and smacking his 
 lips with a sense of his own superior righteous- 
 ness over the text. ' Tak' my word for it, 
 Poll, the little un 'ill be hup to no good. And 
 if you tak' 'im, my gell, from those as by 
 rights bought to kep 'im, it'll only be the 
 prison or the gallows. If ee comes of gaol- 
 birds, a gaol-bird ee'll be.' 
 
 Then the woman's heart broke out. 
 
 f Shame on yer, father! As if the Lord 
 meant us to keep a-harpin' on that sayin', and 
 t' forget the t'other as He comes to save the 
 lost.' 
 
 * Ain't it 'gainst yer conscience, gell V per- 
 severed the father, honest and ever self-suffici- 
 ent, and he went on, as his fashion was, making 
 the best of every odd moment, and chanting
 
 MR. NOBODY. 69 
 
 an old-fashioned hymn to the strokes of his 
 axe, as he cut up some wood which his daugh- 
 ter had gathered to help with the fire. 
 
 ' Some folks talks of their consciences when 
 they are fools, and of their dooty when they is 
 downright cruel/ answered Polly, who wished 
 her father would not sing, as he always sang 
 out of tune, and somehow the false notes jarred 
 more than ever with the new melody which was 
 singing on deep down in her heart that night. 
 
 She had washed the little fellow, fed him 
 with milk, and propped him upright with a 
 pillow on a fragment of old rug covering the 
 stones before the fire. And the baby cooed 
 with delight, stretching out its podgy little 
 fists to the fire, and making futile attempts to 
 catch hold of one of its pink toes and suck it. 
 
 ' He be blythe and bright-eyed as a young 
 rabbit. And yet his mother was a bad 'un, 
 and the parish 'ill hev to bury 'er,' pondered 
 Jem, with whom the divine virtue which covers 
 a multitude of sins did not come naturally, and 
 was no part of his religion. ' That folks as was 
 honest should do their best for theirsels,' was
 
 70 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 his creed, and his head shook a good deal as 
 he thought of his daughter's strange and un- 
 expected obstinacy, of the injury which she 
 was inflicting on the State, according to the 
 man's rough politics — and Jem Burton, as a 
 London-bred man, liked his pipe and his news- 
 paper — by ' encouragin' o' paupers.' 
 
 The recollection of the few hard-gained 
 earnings, which Mary had carefully tied up in 
 a stocking, did not do much to make him more 
 sympathetic, when his daughter, who had not 
 the gift of speech, tried to express something 
 Avhich she had dimly in her mind about the 
 Pharisees, who had their moral sense ' upside 
 down, and thought they was a-doing right 
 when they was all the time only a-doing 
 wrong.' She did not venture to hint that she 
 would have been glad to help the poor dead 
 creature, whose pathetic face had impressed 
 her imagination as it would certainly not have 
 impressed it if she had only seen it in life. 
 Help in her case would have been too dilatory 
 to be efficient. But Polly's sympathies, since 
 she had suffered cruelly herself, were all on the
 
 MR. NOBODY. 71 
 
 woman's side instead of on that of the man ; 
 and as she had looked at that forsaken sister, 
 and registered a secret vow to cherish her 
 child, something in Polly's heart had cried out 
 against the man who had been allowed to go 
 scot-free, and who had robbed the wretched 
 creature of her fame. 
 
 ' I'd ha' given her shelter, and hev braved it 
 hout wi' 'em all,' she though t, as she remem- 
 bered that no one had come to the poor woman's 
 help.
 
 72 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Polly Burton never regretted the exceptional 
 fit of obstinacy which caused her, in defiance 
 of her father, to adopt the dead woman's child. 
 True, during that first winter, the room, which 
 had been bare of furniture before, became barer 
 than ever, now that there was an extra mouth 
 to feed. But when the spring came, and the 
 March dust was succeeded by warm April rains, 
 Polly got out between her hours for washing, 
 and admired, as she had never done before, the 
 varying shades of green contributed by the 
 larch, oak, ash, and chestnut in the pathways 
 by the river. She put down the child to crawl 
 when she was hanging up her clothes to dry 
 near the moor, and she noticed as she had
 
 MR. NOBODY. 73 
 
 never yet noticed the buttercups and primroses, 
 because the boy crowed and tried to gather 
 them. It was as if a new spring had come into 
 her hitherto blank life, and as if fresh spring 
 corn, giving promise of rich aftermath, was 
 practically being sown in the poor dead heart. 
 
 As the first few years went on, the struggle 
 for the necessaries of life was sometimes a little 
 difficult. But the child, who had as yet shown 
 none of those evil tendencies at which old Jem 
 had so darkly hinted, was always merry as a 
 lark, when he had apparently little to satisfy 
 his bodily cravings. 
 
 He was naturally small and thin, and could 
 not be otherwise than ill-clad, and looked like 
 a lamb that had been sheared of its wool before 
 it had grown to be a sheep. But, in spite of 
 all these drawbacks, the lamb seemed to thrive 
 fairly well, and Jem Burton had now an infi- 
 nitely better prospect before him than he had 
 enjoyed for the last three or four years. He 
 was not yet free from anxiety, but could look 
 forward to the time when the boy would help 
 him. The period was already drawing nigh
 
 74 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 when ' ile Jem,' as he had been clubbed by the 
 neighbours, would be sent for his schooling, 
 and as much learning was not considered neces- 
 sary for boys who could turn an odd penny in 
 the fields fifty years ago, both Polly and her 
 father considered that the desired event was 
 tolerably near at hand. 
 
 Meanwhile the family, which had been absent 
 from Rashleigh Hall, returned to Torringmoor 
 when 4 ile Jem ' was four years old. The old 
 Sir George was dead, and the new one had 
 come into his own, but it was rumoured that 
 the present Sir George Rashleigh had never 
 been the same man since the death of his first 
 wife, while he was absent on his travels. He 
 made no secret, after his father's death, of the 
 fact which he had always intended to make 
 publicly known, that he had been privately 
 married, but that his wife and infant child had 
 both of them died before he had received the 
 news of the birth of the latter. It was con- 
 tended on his behalf that the letter had mis- 
 carried, but it was also said that he blamed 
 himself; and, however that might be, the fact
 
 MR. NOBODY. 75 
 
 was certain that no one dared allude to the 
 circumstances of his early life in George Rash- 
 leigh's presence, his temper being uncertain. 
 
 He had married again, as in duty bound, but 
 his second wife was not much richer than the 
 first. Rumour declared that, in a violent fit 
 of anger, he had vowed to his father that he 
 would never marry a woman who had money, 
 and the same busy rumour hinted again that 
 he married his second wife rather from grati- 
 tude than love. She was an Italian whom he 
 had met abroad — many years older than him- 
 self — and report said that the young Sir George 
 had been nursed by her through a fever which 
 nearly proved fatal, and which had prostrated 
 him when he first received the news of the 
 death of his former wife and child. He might 
 be grateful, but the Torringmoor people con- 
 cluded of him that he was neither affectionate 
 nor genial to the lady whom he had married 
 or anyone else. He had now another infant 
 heir, nearly a year old, and the decadence of 
 ancient families, with their gradual impoverish- 
 ment and consequent decline in honour, was
 
 76 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 said to press heavily on the spirits ot the 
 young father. It seemed to be his doom, as 
 well as that of his ancestors, to see his broad 
 lands heavily mortgaged, and fated to pass 
 into alien hands. Already some of the family 
 plate was said to have gone to the collectors, 
 and other articles of vertu were destined to 
 follow in the same humiliating direction. 
 
 Some of the Rashleighs had been extrava- 
 gant, but no one could account for the aggre- 
 gate of money which, as the price of land 
 had increased, had literally passed through 
 their hands, the tenant farmers not seeming 
 to be much richer than they who roughly tilled 
 the soil years before. It was said that the 
 incessant and reckless activity of self-destruc- 
 tive force was already beginning to be at 
 work in the age, and old tories shook their 
 heads. 
 
 The Rashleighs had been a handsome race, 
 and the present Sir George Rashleigh was no 
 exception to the rule. He was tall and well- 
 featured, carrying his head a little forward 
 after the manner of the Rashleighs generally.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 77 
 
 His profile was considered by connoisseurs to 
 be exceptionally well cut; and the Italian lady, 
 some fifteen years bis senior, was said to have 
 fallen in love with him for bis manly beauty. 
 The Rashleighs, in the good old times, kept 
 pretty w^ell to the rules of life laid down by a 
 gay poet ; rules of hunting and banqueting in 
 the open-air in autumn and summer, and of 
 carousing by the fire in winter days. Of these 
 traditions, George Rashleigh retained but one 
 extravagance. He came of a hunting race, and 
 probably the hunting would be the last thing 
 which either he or his descendants would be 
 inclined to give up. He still managed to keep 
 half-a-dozen hunters, and, when remonstrated 
 with on the subject of this outlay, he would 
 lose his temper, and declare that — rotten as 
 the times might be — it would be long before 
 rents and profits would fall to so low an ebb 
 that country gentlemen would be obliged to 
 deny themselves the solace of their hunters. 
 
 It was somewhat before the days when mer- 
 chants and manufacturers were beginning 
 to be munificent patrons of fox-hunting ;
 
 78 MR. XOBODY. 
 
 but already there were signs that commercial 
 prosperity might follow on the depression of 
 the agricultural, and George Rashleigh was 
 among the number of those enthusiasts who 
 would rather have seen their country mansions 
 follow in the way of the old monasteries than 
 admit that so dire a calamity as the surren- 
 dering of sport must be inflicted upon him as 
 a punishment for the want of foresight of his 
 ancestors. Other modes of economy, however 
 drastic, might be adopted, with the exception 
 of one — that of inter-marriage with the com- 
 mercial classes. In the opinion of his family, 
 George had fallen low enough in marrying, as 
 his first wife, the penniless orphan daughter 
 of an old Yorkshire parson. But just as it 
 was necessary that he should ride to cover and 
 wage war against the vulpine race, so was 
 there the need that he should remember his 
 blue blood and the monumental brasses. He 
 had angered his father by declining to marry 
 a rich lady of title because she had a plain 
 face, but he also inherited the prejudices which 
 had prevented all the Rashleighs from connect-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 79 
 
 ing themselves with the ' commercial classes,' 
 and so re-invigorating with new blood the 
 decaying stock, as well as the ill-supplied cof- 
 fers of the Rashleigk family. He shared ano- 
 ther tradition with his father, which enabled 
 him to keep his hounds. That tradition was, 
 that one might borrow, or mortgage, but never 
 actually sell, one's estate.
 
 80 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The motto which is usually attributed to 
 Madame de Maintenon might have been adopt- 
 ed by Sir George Rashleigh — ' After me the 
 deluge.' 
 
 It did not serve to improve his temper when, 
 on one November afternoon, he rode back from 
 a tolerably successful ' run,' and got separated 
 from some of his friends, to remember — as he 
 passed from the open country into the solitary 
 woodlands — that the ' deluge ' must come on his 
 infant-heir. The sharp frosts which had set in 
 about the end of October had had the effect ot 
 bringing the leaves off the trees, so as to make 
 the district through which he rode nearly as 
 bare as in a dreary December. This was really
 
 MR. NOBODY. 81 
 
 an advantage, as it prevented George Rash- 
 leighfrom losing bis way amongst the innumer- 
 able narrow ' rides ' which he had to traverse 
 in the wood after leaving the moor. But the 
 prospect round him was exceptionally melan- 
 choly, and in his present mood he fell into a 
 dreary reverie, from which he was startled by 
 hearing a little piping voice/ Gi' us a penny, sir/ 
 not in the usual dialect of the countryside, but 
 in an unmistakable cockney intonation caught 
 from the Burtons, who had been in London. 
 
 George Rashleigh could not have described 
 the odd and indefinable sensation with which 
 he encountered a pair of bright, shrewd eyes, of 
 the same colour as the wild hyacinths which 
 used to bloom plentifully in the fields round 
 Torringmoor in spring time — eyes which glit- 
 tered under a brow crowned by matted, curly 
 locks, of a dark brown tint mingled with tufts 
 which had been bleached fair by the summer 
 sun. The eyes and the hair belonged to a 
 very small boy of some four or five years 
 of age, dressed in a sort of wisp of ragged 
 clothing, which clung to the upper part 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 of his person and left the little brown legs 
 bare, except where they were covered with 
 splashes from the brooks and country roads. 
 There was nothing in the little imp to account 
 for the odd mixture of feeling with which Sir 
 George regarded him, but the child, getting no 
 answer, and beginning to suppose that some- 
 thing was expected of him, tried to put his 
 accomplishments into practice, and turned a 
 somersault, rags and all, after the most accre- 
 dited manner in which old Jem had trained 
 him. The unexpected exploit had the effect of 
 startling Sir George's horse, and, with one of 
 those quick revulsions of emotion, not unusual 
 with passionate people, the baronet raised his 
 whip, and shouted, 
 
 ' Get out of my way. you little beggar. 
 AVhat is your mother thinking of not to send 
 you to school?' 
 
 Human consciousness is so complex that, if 
 George could have analysed his feeling, he 
 would have seen that he had almost involun- 
 tarily lashed himself into a rage to escape 
 the softer recollections which were so oddly
 
 MR. NOBODY. 83 
 
 associated with the child — -an experience which, 
 I believe, is also not uncommon to irascible dis- 
 positions — so strange are the mysteries of the 
 inner life, and the conflict of evil and good in 
 the hidden nature of a man. 
 
 The tone of his speech had the effect of 
 arousing a similar anger in the boy, and, as 
 soon as the man had gone, little Jem looked 
 after him, clenching his little hands, and with 
 ugly wrinkles on his young face. 
 
 But the baronet was a magistrate, and had 
 returned to his native place determining to do 
 his duty to it, and to get the people into 
 better order, ruling them, if possible, with firm- 
 ness, as well as justice. He did not see much 
 occasion for suavity Avhere the poor were con- 
 cerned, but he prided himself on being energetic 
 in rectifying abuses, and would have been consi- 
 derably astonished if anyone could have told 
 him that he appeared to those whom he con- 
 sidered to be his inferiors as the hardest of task- 
 masters, and that they looked upon him as a 
 monster with a heart as hard as a millstone. 
 
 He kept little Jem in his mind, and when he
 
 84 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 next met the boy with the woman who had 
 acted as his mother, and who, since she had 
 solaced herself with her scheme of benevo- 
 lence, appeared to have a noble as well as a 
 pensive face, he told Polly that the little one 
 was old enough to be at school, and that he 
 should not be allowed to run lazily about these 
 rambling outskirts, with cottages straggling as 
 if they, like their inhabitants, had no respect for 
 law or order. 
 
 4 Send the youngster to school, or he will come 
 to no good.' 
 
 The words fell somewhat heavily on Polly's 
 ear. They seemed an echo of the dismal pro- 
 phecy hazarded years ago by old Jem. But 
 the baronet was determined and somewhat 
 prejudiced against the child. The fact that his 
 reputed mother was not a native of the place, 
 but had come from the neighbourhood of Lon- 
 don, served to prejudice Sir George, who made 
 no further inquiries about the boy. 
 
 And, though Polly had an unreasonable aver- 
 sion to the school which had been endowed by 
 a former inhabitant of the parish, in which
 
 MR. NOBODY. 85 
 
 boys and girls were educated gratis — with such 
 severity that on one occasion a poor child was 
 said to have hidden himself in a dry ditch, and 
 to have remained there a conple of days, from 
 fear of being cruelly whipped for playing 
 truant — she had no adequate excuse for not 
 obeying the magistrate. 
 
 And now came the dismal fulfilment of the 
 prophecy, for as soon as little Jem went to 
 school the evil part of his nature, which had 
 before been kept in abeyance, came to the front 
 in an amazing and alarming manner. It was 
 perhaps somewhat hard on him that he should 
 no longer have been allowed to tumble about, a 
 dusty imp, amongst the rubbish-heaps near the 
 cottages. It was hard to be made to learn 
 when incapacity for teaching was too often 
 seasoned by hard words and severer blows. 
 But harder still, according to old Jem, that a 
 child like that should be kept to lessons, 
 when he might already be earning some- 
 thing, in days when the farm labourers had 
 only eight or nine shillings a week. Every 
 field had its huge hedgerow, witb pollards for
 
 86 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 firing, which 'He Jem' could gather — a pro- 
 ceeding at which most of the farmers winked, 
 so long as the hurdles were not interfered with. 
 So little Jem's schooling meant an absence of 
 sticks for fuel, as well as an absence of the 
 pennies which he had hitherto been accustomed 
 proudly to bring home as a reward for his 
 cleverness in turning somersaults. 
 
 Polly sent him with much protest. People 
 were more strict with children then, and did 
 not take the same kindly notice of them as 
 they do now ; also the language which they 
 used to them was often cruel and profane. 
 Polly Burton was aware of this when she in- 
 sisted that she ' could larn him herself, for all 
 that such a little 'un need larn,' and further 
 declared that she ' didn't hold to beating with 
 a stick.' Yet it was the stick which was ap- 
 plied to the child's back, and that a little 
 sharply, when, on the first day of his academic 
 studies, he took a field-mouse in his pocket, 
 bright-eyed and agile like himself, which raced 
 round and round the room, to the consternation 
 of the master. It was a bad beginning on both
 
 MR. NOBODY. 87 
 
 sides, and i He Jem/ who was uncompromising 
 iu his dislikes, made up his small mind once 
 and for all on the question of learning. It was 
 not that actively or outwardly he rebelled, but 
 his spirit rose against the bullying treatment, 
 and he hated the very sight of a book. 
 
 He would be a truant, and take the conse- 
 quences of it, and I am afraid that Polly and 
 Jem Burton often connived at this wickedness ; 
 for active of limb, frank and honest, and with 
 a faculty for enjoying himself, little Jem was 
 at least capable and ingenious. He had a hun- 
 dred ways of making the best of it when he 
 determined to absent himself from school, and 
 in those days he could pick up enough to help 
 the elder people. For the curriculum of gout 
 and rheumatism, never likely to end in this 
 world, had commenced for old Jem, and, as the 
 years went on, in his readiness to help, the 
 little fellow determined to brave the wrath of 
 the schoolmaster and of Sir George himself, 
 who every now and then appeared in the vil- 
 lage, with a good many rings on his fingers, 
 a plaid shawl about his shoulders when the
 
 88 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 weather was cold, and a habit of kicking small 
 dogs which got in his path, and of pushing 
 children out of his way with a stick. Polly's 
 foundling used to stare at him with childish 
 wonder in his big eyes. The man's face was 
 not feeble, but it was conceited, and the lines 
 of temper and discontent in it could hardly 
 be concealed. The baronet prided himself on 
 knowing the character of almost everyone in 
 the neighbourhood. He had set himself deter- 
 minately to suppress mendicancy, and the 
 child's saltatory tricks, as well as his cleverness 
 in running away from school, seemed to merit 
 reprobation. 
 
 The insidious disease, which had concealed 
 itself so long in Polly Burton's constitution, 
 made rapid inroads at last, and, though the 
 boy had learnt little, it became necessary to 
 keep him at home to help both herself and her 
 father. But so ignorant was she, and so care- 
 less of new and somewhat necessary regula- 
 tions, in her life which had glided by with little 
 count of rules or days, that she was not aware 
 of the infliction of a fine for truancy, which the
 
 MR. NOBODY. 89 
 
 magistrate, in his desire to make the people 
 grow np virtuous and respectable, had deter- 
 mined to enforce as a matter of regularity. As 
 to the legality, he cared not. Xo one was 
 likely to interfere with his jurisdiction. He 
 had called a committee to assist him, and the 
 committee had determined on this course. 
 
 It was no secret to any of them that the 
 child, which was sometimes called 4 He Jem,* 
 and sometimes ' Little Xobody,' had been found 
 a greater pickle than the schoolmaster could 
 manage ; that, when he had been punished 
 concerning the field-mouse, the boy had next 
 provided himself with a hedge-hog, and that 
 often in summer-time he had been found wan- 
 dering about with shoeless little feet, or sleep- 
 ing on grounds in which he was trespassing, 
 so that it had been necessary to shake him 
 to get him awake. Such a case needed stern 
 measures, the more so that the gentlemen 
 were, one and all of them, by this time ac- 
 quainted with Jem's history, which was no 
 secret in the place. 
 
 Jem's mother had been a tramp, and the
 
 90 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 nomadic tendencies were doubtless inherited. 
 For children of the criminal classes were sup- 
 posed to enter into perdition by a natural 
 title ; the curse belonging to their parents was 
 handed on to them. 
 
 Sir George really supposed that he was emi- 
 nently self-denying in undertaking a nauseous 
 task, when, on the return from one of his rides, 
 he reined-in his horse, and forced himself to 
 speak to the little urchin, who had his tongue 
 in his cheek in a manner which w T as certainly 
 most abhorrent. It was a cold day, and the 
 boy, who had been scantily fed — though he 
 required as little for his wants as a sparrow, 
 which could pick up a grain here and there — 
 was looking thin and sharp-faced, whilst the 
 colour in his usually fresh young cheeks had 
 turned to violet edges from the keen air and 
 want of nourishment. 
 
 ' Tell your mother,' said Sir George, ' that 
 she has a couple of shillings to pay on account 
 of your ill-behaviour, as you have not been at 
 school/ 
 
 The boy vouchsafed no other answer than a
 
 MR. NOBODY. 91 
 
 rapid, somewhat significant glaDce. His tongue 
 was still in his cheek — an irritating grimace. 
 He bore more than one resemblance to the 
 easily-satisfied sparrow. For, like it, he could 
 be occasionally pert, though generally inoffensive. 
 He did not believe in Mary Burton, who had 
 no money to buy food, having to pay fines. 
 It was not in his nature to fear, but he was a 
 little inclined to laugh. 
 
 ' The jackanapes is disrespectful,' thought 
 Sir George, as he glanced down at the impish 
 figure of this ill-mannered child, who shuffled 
 his feet, but made no attempt to doff his hat. 
 
 The waif must have known well enough, as 
 the magistrate reflected, that every well-trained 
 youngster was expected to pull the front lock 
 of his tangled mane when he talked to his 
 betters. All the people round cringed to the 
 Baronet, and Sir George could not possibly sus- 
 pect that by some of the very people who cringed 
 the most he was inwardly detested. He did not 
 fly into a passion, but, with the conviction that 
 anyone who gave the lad a thrashing would 
 be doing a good work, he adroitly used the
 
 92 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 butt-end of his whip to dislodge the hat on 
 the impudent young bead, in spite of a mocking 
 gesture made by the child. But it seemed as 
 if an evil spirit of mischievous glee possessed 
 the strange waif; for when Sir George, priding 
 himself on his self-command, shouted, in a 
 louder tone, 
 
 ' Tell her to pay it by next Monday.' 
 
 The boy shouted back : 
 
 ' She hasn't got it to pay.' 
 
 And then, dodging about the while, he com- 
 menced shying tiny pebbles at the horse's legs, 
 the smile curling the corners of his mouth as 
 the animal began to rear. 
 
 It was the climax. Sir George, who was a 
 powerful man, managed to soothe the horse, 
 and then dismounted, holding the bridle with 
 his right hand, while he grasped the boy as 
 if he had been a puppy with his left, and, 
 flinging him a couple of yards, began to slash 
 him as if he were made of wood. Swish, 
 swish, went the pitiless whip, curling round 
 the lithe, uncovered, sunburnt legs of the little 
 lad, but the pride in the child not only pre-
 
 MR. XUBODY. 93 
 
 veuted him from crying out, but even, for the 
 time, from feeling. 
 
 ' I will teach you to throw stones, and to 
 answer me like that — you ragamuffin — you 
 beggar's brat!' cried the angry gentleman, with 
 little idea of the rage and vengeance which he 
 was rousing in the poor boy's heart. 
 
 It was only Mary Burton who could tell, from 
 the cut clothing and from the wheals on the 
 child's back, that which he purposely concealed 
 from anyone else ; only she who could guess 
 how the mind, just as it had begun to bud, 
 was slowly withering and becoming fit for 
 nought but bitterness. 
 
 'Oh, hush!' said the good woman, thorough- 
 ly affrighted at the clenching of the little fists 
 and at the look of hatred which had been sum- 
 moned with a dark frown on the young face, 
 'you will make me think that I have spoilt 
 you.' 
 
 For already old Jem was shaking his head 
 and reminding her how he had told her that 
 the parent stock was bad, and that from an ill 
 tree like that there could come nought but evil.
 
 94 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 There was as yet little of that precocious 
 speculation and intellectual refining which has 
 come in with the so-called ' march of know- 
 ledge,' and which may make it difficult to im- 
 press on the mind of the youngster of the 
 future the danger of the violation of the Deca- 
 logue. 
 
 There was still a firm belief in the use of the 
 rod, and it cannot be said that Sir George's 
 conscience reproached him in the least when he 
 felt that he had given an ill-taught brat the 
 hiding which he deserved. 
 
 Had Polly Burton lived, the love might still 
 have conquered the hate. But on one morning 
 in the following spring, when the swallows
 
 MR. NOBODY. 95 
 
 were coining home, and when the scent of 
 flowers was on the wind, Polly was found stiff 
 and stark, with but little enough of bed and 
 bedding. It could not be said that she had 
 undergone more privations than others of her 
 neighbours. But the winter again had been a 
 hard one, and Polly had less constitution than 
 others to stand it. Her simple funeral was 
 obliged to be at the expense of the parish. It 
 was fortunate for old Jem that he was becoming 
 a little childish, and, when he was told that the 
 kindly heart had ceased to beat, he comforted 
 himself by repeating over and over, with the 
 simplicity of a child, that she had c gone to 
 glory,' and that his 'time,' he thanked God, 
 could not be long. He still never did anything 
 by halves, and though he sang out of tune with 
 his poor old cracked voice, he took especial 
 pains with his singing, and piped with odd 
 recollections of old melodies about f glory, 
 glory/ when the funeral was over, and he 
 was left with no other companion than little 
 Jem in the house. 
 
 He was beginning to be afraid of the waif,
 
 96 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 whom his daughter had taken in contrary to his 
 approval, and rather winced when he came in 
 contact with the child's shrewd, sharp glances. 
 But Polly had a truer mourner in the little deso- 
 late child whose heart felt as if it would break 
 under the burden which oppressed it. 
 
 Old Jem had a way of drowning his sorrows 
 which Polly might not have allowed had she 
 remained to take care of him. For, though the 
 pothouses did not as yet outnumber the cot- 
 tages, there was a convenient ( public ' near at 
 hand where the farm-labourers and operatives 
 could get their pint of beer. ' It were a hog- 
 gish sort o' a place,' as Jem the elder sometimes 
 declared in a fit of confidence to a boon com- 
 panion when he descanted on the greater 
 glories of the metropolis. But brandy was for- 
 tunately little drunk in it, and almost as rare 
 as nectar. The beer was so weak that it could 
 not do the old man much harm, and some of 
 the neighbours — pitiful at the sight of the 
 wreck of such a grand physique — would ' treat 
 him ' when the * He Jem ' was out of the way. 
 
 Meanwhile, no one seemed to care what be-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 97 
 
 came of the child. He was left to pick up as 
 he could a scanty means of livelihood from 
 gathering the spring flowers, and tying them 
 into bundles for sale. His little sunburnt figure, 
 bare-footed, with keen face, was well known 
 that spring to the visitors at Torringmoor. For 
 the child had sense enough to understand that 
 if he did not do enough to turn honest pennies, 
 old Jem would soon be left to collapse into 
 something worse than what Carlyle called a 
 1 poor-law Bastille,' and, though there was little 
 enough love lost between the two, the boy had 
 a dim sense that Polly would not like it, and, 
 for the sake of what Polly had done for him, 
 he was in duty bound to support her old father. 
 The word 'Polly' in those days comprised the 
 whole of his religion ; it was a sort of fetish to 
 him and served to keep him straight. 
 
 ' There's a deal of wickedness in this place,' 
 Polly Burton had said to him on the day 
 before she died. And, for the sake of the wo- 
 man who had acted to him as a mother, he 
 would run away as fast as his little bare legs 
 could carry him when he heard other mothers 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 execrating their offsprings with volleys of 
 curses up the street. He was thankful to think 
 he had never had a real mother, if that was 
 the way with them. 
 
 For Polly had spoken nothing but good 
 words to him. She had left him her old Bible, 
 but unfortunately he could not read it. And 
 what pleased him since her death best was to 
 get out, on the pretence of gathering flowers, 
 to the loneliness and isolation of the desolate 
 moor. To be there at sunrise, and to see the 
 sun striking through the clouds and illuminat- 
 ing their dark edges, was always a pleasure to 
 him, and a still greater pleasure to watch the 
 great ball of fire throwing open the gates of 
 heaven as it sank into rest. The mystery of 
 interwoven foliage, and of subtle shining re- 
 flections in the pools, which suggested the 
 neighbourhood of the river, did something also 
 to comfort him and to speak with Polly's voice. 
 But best of all was the time when it seemed 
 to his untutored fancy as if invisible hands 
 must be kindling the lights in those far-away 
 mansions where his adopted mother had gone
 
 MR. NOBODY. 99 
 
 to dwell. He scarcely ventured to wait to won- 
 der if, when this solemn hour came,, she might 
 be allowed to look down upon him and help 
 him. For the darkness brought its task, and, 
 hastily gathering together the bunches of wild- 
 flowers which during the day he had failed to 
 sell, he would make his way, under the merciful 
 covering of the gloom, to the graveyard in 
 which they had hastily buried Polly, with the 
 grass not yet grown upon her grave. 
 
 The graveyard was supposed to be closed 
 after sunset. But this could make no possible 
 difference to the agile little figure, which crept 
 along with stealthy steps, and prided itself on 
 climbing every sort of fence. Not only was 
 the wall no impediment, but the child had a 
 sense of having the place to himself as soon 
 as the stars came out. And evening after 
 evening he brought his bunch of wild-flowers — 
 primroses, violets, cowslips, bluebells, and 
 marsh marigolds, as the case might be — and 
 piled them, as any little idolater might have 
 heaped his offerings before a shrine, on Polly's 
 grave, pressing his own little face on the turf- 
 
 H2
 
 100 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 less mound, and watering some of the flowers 
 with tears which no one in the world would 
 have thought he could shed. For, after he had 
 accomplished his pilgrimage, he would return 
 moodily from the churchyard, scowling and 
 getting out of the way whenever his fellow- 
 creatures tried to draw near to him. 
 
 It was scarcely in human nature that this 
 sort of thing should continue without any 
 change, and, after a few weeks, it occurred to 
 the lad that his adopted mother must be tired 
 of always seeing the same flowers. He had 
 seen ladies who were rich with magnificent 
 floral wreaths made of azaleas and camelias ; 
 for though as yet the Protestant feeling had 
 decreed that it was rather an unsafe thing to 
 take to praying' over graves, lest by any chance 
 one might be tempted to take to praying for, 
 or even to, the souls of the departed, yet love 
 overleaped such decrees in its eagerness to give 
 its best. 
 
 He had heard a good deal about trespassing, 
 but it never impressed him in the least. The 
 farmers or the gentlemen round would have
 
 MR. XOBODY. 101 
 
 found it as easy to catch a hare as this swift 
 little trespasser when it pleased him to exercise 
 himself in his neighbour's estates. He was 
 familiar with all their grounds, and though the 
 committee, which in time was to give place to 
 a f Town Council,' had lately taken to putting 
 up trespass-boards, ' He Jem ' could not read 
 them, and so the trespass-boards made no dif- 
 ference. 
 
 Old Jem had once tried to impress upon his 
 obtuseness that Sir George was a magistrate, 
 and had added in his hearing, 
 
 ' What was the use o' going into Torring- 
 moor for magistrates — wasn't the gen'l'man as 
 lived close to them one hisself, as well as the 
 parson as cum on Sundays V 
 
 I am sorry to say that this warning effected 
 a very different purpose from that which it was 
 desired to accomplish, since the child's princi- 
 pal wish was to spite Sir George. It flashed 
 upon him suddenly that in the garden at Rash- 
 leigh were some rare spring flowers, with the 
 cultivation of which the gardener had taken 
 especial pains. There were double narcissi and
 
 102 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 some beautiful waxy hyacinths. To pick the 
 plants in the greenhouse would have seemed to 
 6 Little Nobody' to be a crime. His system of 
 ethics was a strange one, but nothing would 
 have surprised him more than to be told that 
 to pick a flower which grew in the open air, 
 and which seemed to belong, as much as the 
 stars did to heaven, if they did to anyone, 
 would have been looked upon by the magis- 
 trate as an act which obviously required 
 punishment. 
 
 Evening after evening, after the brilliant idea 
 occurred to him, garlands of the golden-centred 
 narcissus and of the creamy hyacinth appeared 
 on Polly's grave. The depredator first of all 
 took three or four, and combined them with 
 the wild ones, but after a time he grew bolder. 
 The gardener set somebody to watch, by the 
 advice of his master ; and the child was caught, 
 with his hands full of the blossoms. Even old 
 Jem had nothing to say for him, when he was 
 told that the punishment would be a fine or 
 else a term of imprisonment. 
 
 ' Some of 'em holds to being conwarted/
 
 MR. NOBODY. 103 
 
 said the old man, over his cups that night at 
 the ' public' f I was never one o' that sort, 
 but seems to me my Polly was alius conwarted. 
 Now this chap comes of a bad lot. I all along 
 sed as he'd go to the gallus.' 
 
 It was ungrateful, to say the least of it, of 
 old Jem. But the little sense which he once 
 had was altogether deserting him. And it 
 never occurred to him to think how he was 
 to ' get along ' when the swift-footed little 
 rascal could no longer run by the side of the 
 carriages in Torringmoor, holding out his 
 bunches of wild flowers, and exchanging them 
 for half-pence. 
 
 It seemed to the little fellow that soon 
 everything would be punishable, when he was 
 asked if he had seen the trespass-board, and 
 read its directions. The comparatively small 
 number of men and women who could read 
 would have made most of them naturally 
 frightened of undecipherable printed directions. 
 But little Jem, who had not troubled himself 
 about them at all, seemed to be only surly- 
 tempered, and had no excuse to offer. He
 
 104 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 never thought of mentioning the sacred matter 
 of Polly's grave, but had somehow an idea 
 that the angels, of whom his adopted mother 
 had so often talked, would be equal to the 
 emergency, and would be sure to protect him 
 — the more so that Polly had urged it upon 
 him with her last breath to keep honest and 
 true and never get into jail. 
 
 The child's silence made the matter worse. 
 His case was considered to be one of contu- 
 macy. He somehow understood that the police- 
 man to whose tender mercies the gardener 
 immediately handed him was a functionary of 
 the law, and, though he felt fairly crazed when 
 he was taken, as a matter of course, to the 
 lock-up for the night, he had sense enough 
 to know that he could not resist the municipal 
 authorities, though he was, as he had been 
 often told, in a free country. He had meant 
 no harm. But when his pockets were searched, 
 and the policeman seemed to think the case 
 looked terribly grave, because they contained a 
 pocket-knife, two stones, and a ball of string, 
 he felt more than ever an apathy of fear, which
 
 MR. XOBODY. [05 
 
 showed itself by grumpiness and silence. Cases, 
 such as that of a man who had recently died 
 in Whitecross prison for a debt of fifteen 
 shillings, had been discussed before him, as 
 well as that of another wretch who, for stealing- 
 two odd shoes, had been sentenced to trans- 
 portation for seven years. Old Jem did not 
 hear the newspapers discussed at the public- 
 house for nothing. 
 
 The child was literally stupified by terror. 
 On the following morning he was brought up 
 to be examined before the magistrates, one 
 of whom was a parson (and Polly Burton, who 
 had taken her charge to the meeting-house, had 
 failed in her duty by not taking him to church), 
 another, who had a jerky, genial manner of 
 speaking, but who looked properly shocked at 
 the appearance of the little beggar, and finally, 
 and worst of all, Sir George himself. That 
 the form of examination was a farce, and that 
 there was a ' foregone conclusion,' as the act 
 was undeniable, was evident from the way in 
 which the gardener, as witness, stated the case. 
 
 Little Jem had never before heard his char-
 
 106 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 acter stated in plain terras. He opened his 
 eyes wide in his accuser's face, and then 
 literally gasped for breath. He began to for- 
 get his terror, and his natural shrewdness 
 came to his assistance. There was an angry 
 glitter in his blue eyes, and more than one 
 of the gentlemen who were present could 
 not help being struck by the shapeliness of 
 his limbs and face, and by the fact that he 
 carried himself erect as no cottage-bred lad 
 ever carried himself, as he answered, saucily, 
 'I am not a vagrant.' 
 A friend nudged his elbow. 
 * Be wise, and hold your tongue, you young 
 rascal,' he whispered. 
 
 Little Jem looked round. There should have 
 been many people to speak a good word for 
 him, he thought, people who had known him 
 since his babyhood, and could have said that he 
 meant no harm to anyone ; but somehow or 
 other they were not there. He was only aware 
 of faces which looked stern and terrible, and he 
 knew that all the evidence went to show that 
 he had taken the flowers. His only hope seem-
 
 MR. XOBODY. 107 
 
 eel to be in speaking for himself, as, breathing 
 hard, with face white and scared, but looking 
 defiantly at his judges, he cried out, 
 
 1 1 never begged from no one. I only sold 
 my flowers.' 
 
 It was an unlucky speech, as one of the by- 
 standers laughed, and said, in a tone loud 
 enough to be heard, 
 
 1 You sold w T hat you had stolen, you young 
 vagabond.' 
 
 1 The lad is a good lad,' said a woman, kinder 
 than the rest, and who stood up for his defence, 
 since she, like Polly Burton, had a natural dis- 
 like to the Torringmoor people, and prided her- 
 self on retaining more cockney speech. ' You 
 would not bracket him with thieves. A beggar 
 in course he is, poor brat, but, saving your wor- 
 ship's pardon, I don't see how he can be any- 
 thing else — coming, as he did, by a wrong tack 
 into the world, and taken up by a weaksome, 
 cranky creature, as always lived more or less 
 on charity. He's down enough in the mouth a'- 
 ready, without throwing o' it into his face.' 
 
 1 He is a vagrant — all the mischief comes of
 
 108 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 his vagrancy,' said one of the magistrates, 
 severely. 
 
 ' That will do, my good woman — you may 
 step down,' answered another. ' We cannot 
 allow uneducated people to pamper mendi- 
 cancy.' 
 
 There was no other attempt made at little 
 Jem's defence. Certainly one neighbour, who 
 wished to magnify his own importance, pretend- 
 ed afterwards without an atom of truth that 'he 
 knawed who did it ; but o' course he warn't a- 
 going to blab.' — ' He'd heerd tell,' afterwards 
 said another, ' that if folks only looked over a 
 gate at a turnip-field,, there'd be other folks 
 ready to swear to a whole waggonfield of turnips 
 against 'em.' 
 
 In each case it was the rustic, as usual, shut- 
 ting his eyes and ears, lest he should be caught 
 and dragged in himself by some of the wheels 
 and pulleys of this horrible machinery called 
 the law. More than one man and woman had 
 come into court intending to say a word respect- 
 ing the ignorance of the waif and the fact 
 which had been guessed by them and confirmed
 
 MR. NOBODY. 109 
 
 by the sexton that the flowers had been pulled 
 in childishness for Polly Burton's grave. But 
 each, when summoned to come forward, fell 
 back like a coward on assumed stupidity, and 
 slipped out of court. 
 
 Meanwhile, the examination, which had made 
 the little fellow's head whirl, was quickly over, 
 and he had to hear the sentence pronounced 
 in this terrible judgment-chamber. 
 
 Tbe gentleman who had the genial manner 
 had asked him if he had anything to say for 
 himself. But when the boy looked round and 
 saw that the neighbours,, who could have 
 spoken in an ordinary way to his industry and 
 readiness to oblige, were none of them there 
 to help, he could only repeat doggedly that he 
 did not know he might not be allowed to pick a 
 few of the flowers. 
 
 'Then it is time you knew now,' said Sir 
 George, who began to speak. And to little 
 Jem, who listened, it somehow became plain 
 that, because he had stolen the flowers, he might 
 some day be guilty of any theft, arson, or mur- 
 der, that the mischief was to be beaten out
 
 110 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 of him, and he was to have twelve days' con- 
 finement with hard labour. 
 
 When he heard of the sentence, the pride 
 which had hitherto kept him up broke down. 
 He burst into a passion of angry tears, striking 
 with his fists at the policeman who took him 
 out of court.
 
 Ill 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 It was but a very unimportant event of every- 
 day life in the neighbourhood of Torringmoor. 
 Old Jem had gone to the workhouse by the 
 time that ' He Jem ' came out of prison. No 
 one had thought of what would become of the 
 lad, who was more than ever ' Little Nobody,' 
 or i Mr. Nobody ' now, as his companions, who 
 wished to be witty, had called him. He had 
 kept the title to himself as soon as he heard it, 
 not knowing that it was already familiar to 
 Polly Burton. Why should he be jeered at 
 because he was ragged, and had hardly enough 
 to eat % 
 
 When he went to look for old Jem, and 
 found that he was gone, a fire of impotent rage
 
 112 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 consumed the boy, and seemed to tear at his 
 vitals. It was not that the old man had been 
 particularly kind to him, but he had looked 
 upon him as a trust, and had promised Polly to 
 4 do ' for him. 
 
 The child's life had required wonderfully 
 little before the term of imprisonment which 
 had branded him as a gaol-bird. A little water, 
 a little bread, a little straw or heather to sleep 
 ODj had sufficed for his daily wants. He had 
 risen with the lark during Mary Burton's life- 
 time, and had been an active, bright-eyed crea- 
 ture, picking up enough for his daily wants in 
 the fields. 
 
 But prison life had changed him more than 
 ever, bringing him in contact with fresh people. 
 He was conscious of new instincts which made 
 him vow revenge, and which told him he could 
 do something in the world some day. Had he 
 been less clever, it might have fared better with 
 him. His retentive memory was far worse for 
 him than if he had had the power of covering 
 his injuries with oblivion. He had not been 
 long enough in confinement to become pallid
 
 MR. NOBODY. 113 
 
 or heavy-eyed — in fact, he had been fed better 
 than usual ; the prison diet was like feasting. 
 It was not his body which had suffered, but his 
 soul. At the expiration of the twelve days, 
 there was not only a wild look in the poor 
 boy's face, but all the self-respect had gone out 
 of him. He hung his head with a sense of 
 shame, as if he could no longer walk erect, and 
 the sunlight, of which he had been so fond, 
 seemed to dazzle him. But this was not the 
 worst. It was not only that life seemed to be 
 almost as much over for him as if the last 
 planks had been nailed over his little body, but 
 that deep down in his heart there slumbered a 
 sullen dull instinct of revenge. 
 
 ' Blast them ! ' he cried, though he had 
 promised Polly he would not use bad lan- 
 guage. ' Blast him ! ' as he thought of the 
 magistrate, with a sudden frenzy of impotent 
 passion. 
 
 The woman who had tried to say a word for 
 him was fairly frightened into the belief that 
 the child's wits had been scared ' out o' him,' as 
 she met him coming away from the tumble- 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 114 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 down cottage in which he had lived with old 
 Jem. Her explanation was afterwards that he 
 was not only grumpy and glum, as if nothing 
 would ever make him smile in this life again, 
 but that he wandered in his speech, and seemed 
 stupid — ' nilly, willy,' as she put it. 
 
 1 1 wish they'd 'ave killed me — it 'ud been 
 soon done wi',' he said, rubbing his fists into 
 his eyes, in his determination not to disgrace 
 his manhood of ten years old. And these were 
 the only sensible words which she could get 
 out of him. 
 
 As to Sir George — of whom the child had 
 heard in prison that he only cared for one 
 stratum of humanity, his own, and the rubbish 
 which lay beneath it might be kicked at and 
 trodden down — he had oddly determined to be 
 equal with him, to make his way in the world, 
 and by-and-by to defy him. 
 
 The boy was quick enough when he chose 
 to learn, and he had proved an apt pupil at his 
 new school, the prison. All pains were to be 
 taken, all means to be justifiable by which 
 tyrants could be met as equals. His ideas
 
 MR. NOBODY. 115 
 
 were perhaps a little confused, but he had 
 almost an iron constitution. From his baby- 
 hood he had been used to bear cold, hunger, 
 and thirst, to sleep anywhere and anyhow, 
 to bend his body into all sorts of extraor- 
 dinary positions, to lift heavy weights, and 
 endure all sorts of privations. He intended to 
 put his abilities to good use. He would emi- 
 grate, work hard, learn everything that he 
 could, and come back with a fortune to defy 
 his would-be masters. 
 
 There was a desperate fellow, who had been 
 in Australia, now in the prison, and this man's 
 stories, told at nights — in the days when the 
 same precautions are not taken as they are 
 now, and when the ' non-imprisonment of chil- 
 dren ' was a question not even debated — had 
 fired the little urchin's imagination. It is 
 likely that these tales of adventure, under any 
 circumstances, would not have left the boy's 
 
 mind, and the drearier his life in shire, the 
 
 more he probably would have longed after these 
 wild exploits of fabulous travel. 
 
 'You're not quite a fool,' one of the map's
 
 116 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 fellow-prisoners had answered, 'but that kind 
 of talk is all my eye.' 
 
 6 Little Nobody ' believed in it, and meant to 
 prove it. Once, on the day after he came out 
 of prison, he saw Sir George's carriage pass, 
 the owner driving with his wife and child, and 
 looking obtuse and self-complacent. He would 
 probably have laughed heartily if he could have 
 been informed that the small gaol-bird had 
 shaken his fist at the carriage until it vanished, 
 that his little body had been contorted with 
 rage, as if the boy were in a fit, that his strong 
 white teeth had been ground together, and that 
 he had tried to pull his once lion-like mane as 
 if he would drag it from the roots, and had 
 been in a greater rage than ever when he found 
 that the prison scissors had only left him short 
 stubbly stuff to torture. 
 
 But the sight of the carriage had done 
 something. It had intensified his resolution. 
 More than ever he was determined that he 
 would not stay in the town where he had 
 been flogged, and proved guilty of a punish- 
 able offence. The punishment which had been
 
 MR. NOBODY. 117 
 
 administered was shameful and degrading. 
 Rather would he walk to his death, with 
 suffocating heart and blistered feet. He had 
 been used to long-continued hunger, and it 
 was nothing to him to plod painfully over hill 
 and dale. The walk to Bristol might be a 
 long and painful one, and he would have to 
 earn his bread upon the way. It was all the 
 more painful now that he believed no more 
 in Mary Burton's angels. If there were any 
 such things as angels, why should they allow 
 such things to be ? 
 
 But, if the child did not believe in angels, 
 he believed in endurance of suffering. One of 
 the men in prison had told a tale of General 
 Jackson — how, when he filled the post of 
 president in the United States, he and his 
 men could bear privations. It was quoted of 
 him that once, when warring against the Indians, 
 he perceived acorns, which were spread on the 
 door of a hut in which they had taken refuge. 
 
 4 Gentlemen,' said Jackson, looking sig- 
 nificantly at the acorns, 'we have no reason 
 to complain of want of food.'
 
 118 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 The story — true or not — had photographed 
 itself indelibly on the memory of the boy, as 
 he thought of the many miles of dusty road 
 which lay before him, and which he should be 
 forced, shoeless, to tread. 
 
 A little girl, who had loved him, and who 
 had been accustomed to play with him in the 
 days before Polly Burton's death, when love 
 of solitude had not taken possession of the 
 unhappy waif, watched for him from one of 
 the cottages with large, liquid eyes, and offered 
 him a crust of bread. But a better instance 
 of the evil which maltreatment had already 
 brought on his nature could not have been 
 given than by the push which he gave his 
 would-be helper, bringing the tears to her eyes, 
 as he burst from her grasp. The poor, little, 
 puckered, woebegone face controlled itself with 
 an effort ; for the child had the intuition of a 
 woman, that ■ He Jem ' would never have 
 given her that surly push, if they had not 
 been cruel to him. 
 
 The girl had belonged to the somewhat par- 
 ticular clique of people whom Polly Burton had 
 liked to favour.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 119 
 
 * Yew're glad yew've a-cum out — aren't yew 
 now'?' she said, twining her arms again about 
 her friend. ' Lord ! who's to pay for yewer vittels 
 and drink, if there's nobody as 'ill employ yew V 
 she added, with sharp precocity. 
 
 This was a difficulty which had not yet 
 occurred to Jem. But, if he needed a further 
 proof that the honest and independent peasantry 
 would have as little as possible to do with 
 prisons, he had it at that moment in the fact 
 that a woman appeared at the door, calling 
 sharply, and the girl, recognising her mother, 
 turned immediately, and went in. 
 
 ' And yet I niver knewed the law, and never 
 i'tended to go 'gainst it — niver,' thought the 
 waif, trying to speak soberly to himself, since 
 one of his resolutions — essential to the carry- 
 ing out of his deeply-laid plan of vengeance — 
 was not again to let his passion visibly get 
 the mastery of him, and to learn to read that 
 he might try to keep himself closely within 
 enactments and statutes, whenever he was 
 likely to be found out. Otherwise his hand 
 was against everyone, and everyone's hand
 
 120 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 against him. He forgot all about Polly Bur- 
 ton and her precepts as he toiled, jaded, foot- 
 sore, and heart-sick for some weary miles, 
 covered with dust or wet with rain. Once 
 a kind woman, to whom he said that he was 
 Avalking to Bristol, gave him a bit of supper 
 and offered a barn for him to sleep in for 
 the night. But oftener he had to lie down 
 in the hay-fields, or by the side of a hedge, 
 gathering wild flowers to sell in the day-time, 
 but no longer caring for the beauty of them. 
 And, during these few days, there was one 
 refrain chiming on in his heart, 
 
 i When I be grew'd a man, I'll back to pay 
 'im in 'is own coin.'
 
 PART II. 
 
 A man's a man for a' that. 
 
 Burns.
 
 123 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ABOUT thirty-three years afterwards, on a bright 
 March afternoon, a man, vigorous in figure, and 
 with one of those picturesquely bearded faces 
 which have become more common in England 
 than they were earlier in the century, with a 
 shaggy overgrowth of hair hiding much of the 
 features, was driving in a hired carriage in the 
 neighbourhood of Torringnioor. This traveller 
 had been borne, like other people, on the ' tire- 
 less wings ' of the spirit of steam past mine and 
 waste and common, past grey rocks and green 
 pastures, watered by shining rivers, to the now 
 flourishing town of Torringmoor, which not 
 only boasted a railway station of its own, and 
 had populous suburbs where once there had
 
 124 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 been fields and flowery lanes, but had even for 
 more than thirty years been allowed to have a 
 voice in the government of its country. 
 
 The express train which had been tearing 
 away at a terrible speed on its south-westward 
 journey, carrying passengers from London, did 
 not astonish the new-comer, and though the 
 Torringmoor people were proud of the rapid 
 growth of their town, in which the old land- 
 marks seemed to have disappeared, he looked as 
 if he thought it a sleepy sort of hole, compared, 
 for instance, with such a place as Chicago. 
 
 Wherever he had spent the earlier portion of 
 his life, the traveller had certainly been used to 
 a world of change and progress, and, if he had 
 anything to complain of in this ' tight little 
 island,' it would have been that the people in 
 it moved too slowly. But he did not, as a 
 rule, reason about anything at all. He was not 
 sufficiently educated to appreciate the intellec- 
 tual development and social improvements 
 which he took as a matter of course, and would 
 have looked puzzled if any philosopher or 
 historian had suggested to him that the present
 
 MR. NOBODY. 125 
 
 age was one of the most wonderful in the 
 history of the world — greater than the age of 
 Augustus in Rome, of Leo X. in modern Italy, 
 or of Louis XIV. in monarchical France, and 
 possibly surpassing in our own country that 
 Elizabethan era which is still to the majority of 
 Englishmen a period the thought of which 
 makes their heart glow with the enthusiasm of 
 national exultation and pride. 
 
 Others might crack mental nuts of that sort. 
 Reuben Sellwood, as he called himself, was 
 more inclined to think that the old country was 
 going to the dogs, and considered himself to be 
 less of an Englishman than a cosmopolitan. He 
 had picked up a sort of polyglot knowledge in 
 his contact with adventurers of all nations. He 
 prided himself on having little sentiment, and 
 was not accustomed to render homage to grand 
 old names, or to analyse high-sounding phrases. 
 He cared less about the success of the age than 
 his own personal success in it, and he would 
 have cared little enough about that had he not 
 looked upon it as a means to an end. He flat- 
 tered himself that he was nearer to the accom-
 
 126 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 plishmeut of that end than his wildest hopes 
 had led him to expect, when — on landing but a 
 short time before in England — he had seen the 
 announcement for sale of a certain property 
 called by its recent owner ' Broadmeads ' — a 
 property which was advertised at an enormous 
 price, and which was built in close proximity to 
 the estate known as 'Rashleigh Park/ That 
 park still existed, but it was an open secret that 
 its owner was no longer the greatest landowner 
 of the parishes of Torringmoor and Waterdale. 
 
 Reuben Sellwood's past history was in a secret 
 drawer. No one knew the trick of it, or could 
 touch the spring. And his own son could not 
 possibly have guessed at the reason why he 
 determined instantly on the purchase of * Broad- 
 meads,' not even seeing the house and land 
 before he closed with the bargain ; still less why 
 it should have been a triumphant day for Reu- 
 ben when the great mine-owner, who had made 
 an almost fabulous fortune, and built for him- 
 self that which he intended to be a palatial 
 residence which should outshine the glories of 
 Rashleigh Park, had suddenly failed, owing to
 
 MR. NOBODY. 127 
 
 the rashness of his speculations, so that ' Broad- 
 meads ' was put up for sale. 
 
 People have their idiosyncracies, and Reuben 
 considered he had right to his. He had never 
 before talked seriously of residing for any 
 length of time in England, though he had sent 
 his only child to be educated in the old coun- 
 try. But then he had never spoken of his in- 
 tentions or plans to anybody. And so im- 
 patient was he now to see the place which he 
 had purchased that, if the driver had not been 
 sure of securing a heavy fare, he would have re- 
 sented the way in which this gentleman with 
 bronzed face, and beard which seemed to have 
 been burnished by too much exposure to the 
 sun, kept urging him forward. 
 
 In the opinion of the driver there was not 
 much to look at in the old moor that March 
 afternoon when, as the sunlight began to fade, 
 the north wind got the advantage and began 
 stinging their faces. And yet the stranger in 
 the carriage, who had not seemed to take any 
 notice when he passed through Torringmoor, or 
 passed people on the road who might observe
 
 128 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 his ' queer ways/ would every now and then 
 start up and look about him, bending his neck 
 as if he would almost dislocate it — a proceeding 
 on which he certainly would not have ventured 
 had he not looked upon the man on the box- 
 seat as a mere machine, not likely to take heed 
 of anything. 
 
 Reuben Sellwood was generally no admirer 
 of landscapes. He might have observed grimly 
 of them (in the same spirit in which he once 
 observed of the sea that it ' took too much 
 room') that he had seen ' too many of them.' 
 Mountain, vale, or wilderness were pretty much 
 alike to him, and he would pretend that he 
 was so utilitarian in his principles that factories 
 and towns like busy ant-hills, with signs of 
 man's determination to wrest gifts out of the 
 hands of Nature, were the scenes which he 
 most appreciated. No sound was so pleasant 
 to him as that of the beating of Labour's heart. 
 He liked to think that other men had spent 
 their lives as he had in the stupid commonplace 
 of getting on, and that few had conquered as 
 he had done. And yet this man, who had
 
 MR. NOBODY. 129 
 
 something bourgeois about the sharp expression 
 of the little which could be seen of his face, the 
 cut of his clothes, and even the shape of his 
 boots. Yet he had none of the joyous swagger 
 of success which is generally to be found 
 amongst the rich bourgeois class. 
 
 As the carriage turned a corner of the road, 
 its occupants came in sight of a river, not flow- 
 ing quietly, as in the gentlest days of summsr, 
 or churned into creamy foam, as it gurgled over 
 brown stones, but full of water, which overflowed 
 the big boulders — hiding the mosses, which 
 could be seen on them when the water was 
 lower, and overflowing even the meadows, as 
 it came bounding with a joyous rush of white 
 through the stony jaws of a little gorge. 
 
 The sight was a fair one, the more so as the 
 afternoon sun was declining, and its faint rays 
 seemed to fall in oblique lines over the moor, 
 which, though it was not now aglow with furze 
 and heather, had yet retained a richness of 
 colouring from its peat-bogs and deep beds of 
 withered bracken — the * red fern ' of the ballad- 
 writers. The reeds, the sedgy grass, the stunt- 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ed oak-trees near the river, and the grey rocks 
 in the distance added to the beauty of the 
 picture, and yet hardly accounted for the man- 
 ner in which Reuben Sell wood drew a deep 
 breath, and struck his sun-burnt but well-shaped 
 fist against the door of the carriage. Possibly 
 he was interested in the surroundings of his 
 new property. 
 
 I have said that he prided himself on not 
 being romantic, and yet the bifold nature of 
 the man — who, like most people, had not only 
 a mixture of black and white qualities in his 
 character, but in whom the shades were darker 
 and the lights stronger than they are in the 
 average man — might have been guessed by a 
 cunning, analyst of human nature. 
 
 The key-note of the moor was still its lone- 
 liness and desolation. Yet the traveller was 
 scarcely likely to feel its ineradicable sadness. 
 The weird impression of the little arrowy 
 torrent dancing in the midst of the desola- 
 tion, and of an old tree which had been hewn 
 down perhaps some forty years before, but 
 which, for some reason, had not been removed,
 
 MR. NOBODY. 131 
 
 so that the frost and rain of years had split its 
 smooth-hewn surface, might have impressed a 
 poet or an artist, but seemed to be little in 
 keeping with Reuben Sellwood's matter-of-fact 
 disposition. He had travelled hard all day, not 
 waiting to break his fast ; and though he had 
 been used to far more fatiguing journeys, and 
 could endure greater bodily hardships, he had 
 possibly not counted on the exhaustion which 
 might be produced by the excitement of pur- 
 chasing his new possessions, and that such 
 exhaustion might render it^jnost difficult for 
 him to maintain his usual unimpassioned self- 
 control. 
 
 As he leant back in the carriage with a 
 muttered exclamation, it might have been the 
 drowsiness caused by the keen air and long- 
 continued exertion which made it a little diffi- 
 cult for him to keep his reasoning powers on 
 the stretch. And he, who w r as accustomed to 
 boast of his contempt for dreamers, lapsed into 
 a reverie which was strangely like a dream, 
 He dreamed that in the old days, before the 
 march of civilization had swept them away, 
 
 k2
 
 132 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 there had been wolves and red deer on this 
 moor ; that there had once been pixies, some- 
 times shaped like rolling balls of heather, and 
 sometimes shrouded in grey cloud, and that he 
 had heard a little child calling to them, 
 
 ' Wee folk, good folk, 
 Trooping all together, 
 Green jacket, red cap, 
 And grey cock's feather.' 
 
 The child's voice seemed to haunt him, as 
 did an odd idea that where some cottages 
 stood in rows there ought to be grand old 
 oak trees, remarkable for the strength and 
 upward spring of their branches. What had 
 become of the wood which seemed as if it 
 ought to stand where there were now black- 
 berry branches trailing and old tree stumps ? 
 How came there to be a growth of rank grass 
 on the open where he had dreamed of a pic- 
 turesque road, with ruts made by the carts 
 of wood-cutters, arched with overspreading 
 branches, adorned with the richest foliage in 
 summer, and enlivened by a joyous flood of 
 bird-music in the young abundance of spring ?
 
 MR. NOBODY. 133 
 
 He — who prided himself on his want of 
 imagination — had done his best to keep back 
 these childish fancies, but they seemed to be 
 born of his overwearied brain, just as mysteri- 
 ous forms, and what Mr. Ruskin would have 
 called ' spiritualising ' mists, were born of this 
 stream of water and the distant tors. He 
 was ready to swear at himself as a fool, especi- 
 ally as the silly old doggerel about ' Wee folk ' 
 kept jogging on in his head. And with it 
 came another shadowy impression that some 
 old woman had once told him about a pack of 
 spectral hounds, whose cry was said sometimes 
 to echo amongst the hollows of the hills. 
 
 The intellectual conception of anything 
 spiritual — even of the humorous sort — had 
 been for years utterly foreign to the man's 
 nature. But, owing to the causes which I 
 have mentioned, a superstitious dread, which 
 is often to be found in connection with scep- 
 ticism — as if the circumscribed nature made 
 its protest against being kept within the 
 narrow bounds which condemn it never to 
 look deeper than the mere material fact of
 
 134 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 its own life — was strangely gaining on him. 
 He was inclined to think his senses were 
 fooling him, when suddenly, at the next turn 
 of the road, he came upon a huntsman be- 
 spattered with mud, riding with impetuous 
 speed. The apparition might have been an 
 optical delusion, for all he knew to the con- 
 trary ; for the driver — who, finding as soon as 
 he had left Torringmoor that his new fare, 
 so far from inviting confidence, was taciturn 
 and a little abrupt, had relapsed into sulky si- 
 lence — did not appear to have seen the hunts- 
 man at all. The appearance was evidently 
 a creation of Reuben's own brain. Surely, if 
 the rider had been what the metaphysicians 
 call ( objective ' instead of ' subjective,' he would 
 have been leisurely returning in a common- 
 sense way to his home, at an hour when a 
 hunt — if it had taken place at all— must have 
 been over. But that the huntsman should still 
 be spurring on his tired mare, whose eyes were 
 glittering, whose little ears were still erect, 
 and nostrils still dilated, as if she and her 
 rider had not had the glory, an hour or more
 
 MR. NOBODY. 135 
 
 before, of being ' in at the death,' was a thing 
 impossible. For the mare and her rider — evi- 
 dently creatures of Reuben's distempered brain 
 — looked a couple to go straight over hedges 
 and ditches, when one after another of the 
 lesser fry had ceased to follow. 
 
 These thoughts dimly shaped themselves in 
 the traveller's mind as the huntsman came 
 nearer, and, with a complexion which was 
 strangely white, in spite of the healthy red 
 which was stamped, like the ruddiness of an 
 apple, into his cheeks, dashed past the carriage, 
 and disappeared at the turn of the road. 
 
 Reuben would have tried to think no more of 
 the apparition, except that his health must for 
 once need the care of one of those superfluous 
 beings called doctors, had not the huntsman 
 been followed, a few moments afterwards, by a 
 boy, bare-headed, and running swiftly, with 
 every appearance of agitation. The driver 
 seemed to wake from the stupor into which he 
 also had relapsed, owing to the snubbing which 
 he had resented, and shouted to the boy, who, 
 more communicative than the gentleman, held
 
 136 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 out a card with a pencilled message on it, as he 
 gasped, short of breath, 
 
 1 It is poor oud Sir George — he be terrible 
 bad — a fit, or summut. Mr. Monckton be a- 
 going for the doctor at Torringrnoor. But 
 there's another as lives nearer, at Tewton, ye 
 sees. I be hurryin' for he.' 
 
 'What was the matter with Reuben Sellwood? 
 Was he, as he himself fancied, in that state 
 from an overstrained nervous system, in which 
 the taxed brain can bear no extra pressure? 
 Why else should the perspiration break out in 
 drops on his forehead, and the deep breaths 
 w T hich he had drawn once or twice when look- 
 ing at the landscape became quicker and more 
 laboured ? Why should his own healthy colour 
 fade even more perceptibly than that of Colin 
 Monckton, who had been for several years the 
 intimate friend of Sir George Rashleigh, and 
 w T ho might well reproach himself for allowing 
 himself to be separated from the old gentleman 
 — having been conscious as usual of the pres- 
 ence of neither friend nor foe from the moment 
 that the first difficult line offences rose stiff and
 
 MR. NOBODY. 137 
 
 straight before him that morning. It was all 
 very natural for Mr. Monckton to feel it. But 
 why should a stranger who prided himself on 
 his want of sentiment have to make two or 
 three ineffectual efforts to speak, and then ask 
 in a quick, sharp tone, and in a voice which did 
 not seem to belong to him, 
 
 'What was that?' he said, 'an accident — a 
 fit — somebody — injured — ivho V 
 
 1 He'll be a stranger to you — Sir George 
 Rashleigh — anyway,' answered the man on the 
 box-seat, slackening the speed of his horses, as 
 he looked with his mouth wide open at the 
 ' foreigneering ' gentleman, who for the first 
 time seemed to take a real interest in anything. 
 
 ' Stranger ! yes, I believe you,' repeated the 
 new-comer — who was afterwards described by 
 the flyman as a ' queer customer ' — bursting 
 into a peal of harsh, unnatural laughter. 
 
 * 'Tis nought to laugh at, as I sees — anyhow, 
 
 he be a-dyin' ' muttered the honest fellow, 
 
 eyeing Reuben Sellwood with something of the 
 same expression with which the pilot's boy 
 might have looked at the ancient mariner.
 
 138 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 < Attend to your horses. I laughed at some- 
 thing connected with my own affairs/ answered 
 Keuhen, angrily, as he resumed his usual harsh, 
 arbitrary manner. 
 
 And the man, a little ashamed of his own 
 uncharitable fancy that there had been some- 
 thing wicked-looking in the expression of the 
 face of the unknown gentleman, drove on as he 
 was desired.
 
 139 
 
 CHAPTER If. 
 
 Reubex afterwards heard what the flyman had 
 failed to tell him — how that morning the 
 rustics near Rashleigh Park had been all agape 
 as an army of gentlefolk had invaded the 
 village, streaming from all directions, most of 
 the ladies gaily dressed and in barouches and 
 pony-carriages, and some of the more enter- 
 prising damsels mounted on horseback. 
 
 In other words, the placidity of Rashleigh had 
 been disturbed by a meet, and Sir George's 
 pack, which had no right to be kept up con- 
 sidering the impecuniosity of its owner, was 
 said to be in * unusually good form ' as it sped 
 away in the eastward direction. Torringmoor 
 lay to the west, and had other excitements of its
 
 140 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 own, its more enterprising' inhabitants looking 
 down on the hob-nailed Cincinnati who were too 
 willing to desert their ploughs to follow the cry 
 of the hounds, and to admire the costumes of 
 the hunters. But, had Reuben Sellwood cared 
 to enter into conversation with the Torringmoor 
 people that morning, he would have heard 
 many remarks of disapproval, and seen many 
 shaking their heads at the rashness of Sir 
 George who, in spite of repeated warnings in 
 the way of a broken collar-bone on one occasion 
 and fractured ribs on another, had yet persisted 
 in ignoring the advance of age, which rendered 
 feats which had been easy of accomplishment 
 when he was younger, absolutely impracticable 
 for him now. And it was well-known that it 
 required no little quickness of eye and skill in 
 horsemanship, to follow hounds over the 
 morasses and rock-strewn hills. 
 
 A moraliser, fond of dealing in common- 
 place platitudes, could have drawn a good pic- 
 ture of the uncertainty of human pleasures from 
 a contrast between the neighbourhood of Rash-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 141 
 
 leigh Park that morning and evening. In the 
 morning there had been a bewildering vision 
 of carriages filled with bright, expectant faces ; 
 groups of men in picturesque costume talking 
 eagerly together, and the villagers had been 
 delighted by the sound of the huntsman's 
 horn, the crack of whips, and the yelp of 
 the dogs, with the blue sky above, in the fresh, 
 invigorating air. Now the temporary excitement 
 was over, the merry party of people which had 
 met together that morning having dispersed 
 under the influence of the bad news which 
 threw a gloom over everything. No one had 
 been with Sir George w r hen the accident took 
 place. He had seemed to lack his usual 
 energy, falling behind the others, as soon as 
 the hounds were on the scent. Some surmised 
 that he had had a fit, others that he had been 
 thrown in carelessly attempting to take a fence 
 which presented no such difficulties as to ac- 
 count for the catastrophe. Anyhow he had 
 been found lying senseless on the grass, with 
 his horse standing by looking as sympathetic 
 as a human being. His friends were so star-
 
 142 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 tied at his appearance when they lifted him up, 
 that they thought it better not to risk the jolt- 
 ing of a carriage, and therefore a litter had been 
 hastily improvised and four stalwart men were 
 now carrying him to Rashleigh Hall. The 
 pony-carriages with their fair drivers had long 
 since disappeared. Only one or two sturdy 
 horsemen lingered about the park gates to 
 see if they ' could be of any use.' But all 
 thoughts of selfish amusement, with all chat- 
 ter and commonplace talk had ceased long 
 before. 
 
 The driver of Reuben Sellwood's carriage 
 had again to slacken the speed of his horses 
 to save being brought in contact with the last 
 remnant of the tag-rag-and-bobtail which — 
 attracted by the new excitement — still followed 
 the mournful procession at a respectful dis- 
 tance. 
 
 The owner of Broadmeads had conquered 
 his transient excitement, and leant back on the 
 cushioned seat of the carriage with a look of 
 passionless indifference almost amounting to 
 boredom, as if nothing disturbed him but the
 
 MR. NOBODY. 143 
 
 slight delay which almost amounted to annoy- 
 ance. Had he been a few minutes earlier, he 
 would not have been able to help seeing the 
 litter carried into Rashleigh, with the figure 
 on it, looking gaunt in the evening light, 
 though the face had been carefully covered 
 up. 
 
 Reuben was on his guard as he gave a 
 passing glance at the little crowd near the park, 
 and muttered, as if to himself, 
 
 ' Well, if report speaks true, he was not in all 
 respects such a neighbour as one would 
 desire — still I am sorry — it should have come 
 to this.'' 
 
 It was the strangest return to the place he 
 had bought. 
 
 ' A bad omen,' the servants said, who were 
 standing in the hall of Broadmeads to meet 
 the new master. He told himself that it was 
 scarcely surprising he should be dazed by the 
 suddenness of the catastrophe; and certainly as 
 he drove in through the splendid iron gates — in 
 themselves supposed to be a culmination of 
 artistic skill, and on which his predecessor had
 
 144 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 lavished a fabulous sum of money — be scarcely 
 noticed their magnificence, nor the beauty of a 
 new plantation in which trees of every variety, 
 from the deodora to the Wellingtonia, had 
 taken root and seemed to flourish. 
 
 His coldness of demeanour was more studied 
 than usual as he walked through the entrance- 
 hall to the dining-room, and informed the man 
 whom he had engaged as butler that he wish- 
 ed to be alone, and would require nothing but 
 a few biscuits and some brandy and water till 
 he rang for him. 
 
 Reuben Sell wood was a temperate man : his 
 temperance had stood him in good stead at 
 certain crises in his life when it had enabled 
 him to triumph over others who were less tem- 
 perate. But on this occasion he helped him- 
 self to the brandy more than once, though — in 
 spite of his long fast — his appetite had disap- 
 peared. He did not ring for some time, exhaust- 
 ed though he was from want of food. He would 
 not have been able to give an account of the 
 strange, conflicting emotions which struggled 
 within him, but these emotions made him
 
 MR. NOBODY. 145 
 
 desire to keep by himself. He was so accus- 
 tomed to keep a strict watch over himself, and 
 if possible to betray no feeling to his fellow- 
 men, and so conscious that the storm which was 
 convulsing his inner man, and which was mak- 
 ing his eyes burn and his strong frame tremble 
 in spite of himself, might betray itself in the 
 tones of his voice or in some passing glance, 
 that he required a little time to recover his 
 habitual reserve. 
 
 His wit was too rude, his intelligence too 
 uncultivated to enable him to analyse these 
 emotions. But now that he was alone, and 
 it was no longer necessary to hide the swift 
 changes of disappointment, vexation, rage, 
 and pity which passed over that usually im- 
 passive portion of his face which he had been 
 unable to veil from his fellow-men, he rose 
 once or twice and walked rapidly up and down 
 the room, murmuring something between his 
 set teeth, and even bursting into another fit 
 of the rather horrible merriment which had so 
 disturbed the Torringmoor driver, and which 
 made it seem as if for some unaccountable 
 
 YOL. I. L
 
 146 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 reason the hate and exultation in his 
 
 heart had been shaken into discordant 
 laughter.
 
 147 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Reuben Sellwood had scarcely noticed the 
 place which he had been so eager to purchase 
 in the shades of evening. He had to wait for 
 the next morning to experience his just keen- 
 ness of disappointment in the fact that — seen 
 by daylight — the mansion, which was partly 
 modern Gothic and partly Jacobean, presented 
 too much of that mixture of styles, that aiming 
 at the combination of inconsistent novelties, 
 which often proves the pitfall for the taste of 
 a self-made Englishman. 
 
 The ivory, the purple, and the cedar had been 
 brought from different climates as for Solomon, 
 but Reuben had heard enough of the ways of the 
 aristocracy to see at a glance that the finishing 
 
 L2
 
 148 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 touch of some well-educated man, or high-bred 
 lady was painfully needed, and there was that in 
 Reuben's temperament, though he was by no 
 means free from vulgarity, which made him 
 wince a little as he recognised the want. If 
 there had been a receipt for withering the furni- 
 ture a little, making it look properly old, with the 
 faded lovelinesses which Reuben had some dim 
 idea would be natural in great people's houses, 
 he might have liked it a little better. But there 
 was nothing in this house stately with age, 
 and the large gilded mirrors and velvet pile 
 carpets reminded him too much of the great 
 hotels with which he was already familiar. 
 
 He was not happy in the house, shutting 
 himself up as much as possible, though the 
 Torringmoor people were ready, as he had ex- 
 pected, to bow before his wealth. He only 
 scorned them for it, and took little interest in 
 any of the cards which were left by the neigh- 
 bours, concerning himself about none of them 
 but the owner of Rashleigh Hall. 
 
 It seemed a little odd that a man who cared 
 so little about his neighbours should trouble
 
 MR. XOBODY. 149 
 
 himself to inquire constantly about the old 
 patrician who lay dying* in the neighbouring 
 hall, and that he should appear to take more 
 than a little interest in the details of the pain- 
 ful bodily suffering caused by those injuries to 
 the spine which were expected by slow degrees 
 to prove fatal. He listened apparently with 
 half-an-ear to the story of how the son, the 
 future Sir Ralph, who led a retired life, had not 
 been the only son, but had had a twin brother 
 who, being by about half an hour the elder, 
 would have inherited the title had he lived to 
 do so. 
 
 8 But that wur the queer part of the story, as 
 I alius ses,' continued the gossiping housekeep- 
 er, ' they do say as that lad Richard, as they 
 called "im, was quite different from the rest of 
 'em, and as how he turned up his nose at 
 what he called shabby gentility when he wur 
 quite a youngster. There was no sich thing 
 as contradicting 'im, but he sets out by hisself 
 to some place among the savages to build the 
 family fortunes, as he puts it. Well, he marries 
 an' all on his own hook, like, and ses as he hates
 
 150 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 all hartificial ways of living — all shams, as he 
 calls 'em — that his sons shall learn to plough 
 and his daughters to milk the cows, and all of 
 'em to live on together in a sort o' Hirish 
 Eden. Then you see, as a body with a bit o' 
 sense might ha' known all along, he died of a 
 fever, and his gentle lady o' pining. And back 
 comes all by herself the most managin' little 
 maid, the last left o' the family.' 
 
 'And what became of the child after she 
 returned from New Zealand V 
 
 ' Well, it wur just for all the world like a 
 fairy tale. Home she comes with roses from 
 the sea-air on her cheeks, and box packed with 
 shells, and seaweed, and feathers, and sich 
 things — and some money, which they do say 
 the old gen'l'man wasted. But the comfort as 
 she wur — that little un with her bright ways, 
 and such a managin' head on her shoulders. 
 For hafter the death o' his mother it's Mr. Ralph 
 who gets married to a furrin lady as was alius a 
 grumbling when she found how poor the family 
 was. Then she would lie with her black eyes 
 a-starm', and little Miss Vere a-tending of her,
 
 MR. NOBODY. 151 
 
 and she a-dwindling away, accustomed all her 
 life to company. And what company could she 
 git ? For what comfort,' suggested chatty Mrs. 
 Rose, who was glad to gossip about anything 
 to which her taciturn bachelor master would 
 listen, ' could all they horsey genTmen be to 
 she?' 
 
 Reuben tried to hide his inquisitiveness. It 
 was no news to him that Ralph had married a 
 foreign countess, and that that lady had brought 
 no money to replenish the family coffers already 
 exhausted by the extravagance of his grand- 
 fathered likely to suffer further still — in spite 
 of Sir George's pretences at economy in other 
 things — on account of his father's mad pro- 
 pensity for hunting. But the story of the elder 
 brother who — directly he had discovered that 
 his chances of doing anything he wanted were 
 likely to be ruined by money difficulties in 
 England — had shown such a strength of will 
 in setting out to do the best for himself and 
 for others, was as interesting as that of the 
 little girl who, with temper unsoured after the 
 death of her parents, seemed to have taken up
 
 152 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 her father's work, and let her daily thought be 
 for the people she lived with. It was easy to 
 guess that the bare notion of emigration would 
 have been distasteful to the retiring and scholar- 
 ly habits of Mr. Ralph. 
 
 ' He wur alius one to sit at home, heven when 
 his lady wur taken from 'im, though they do 
 say as Miss Vere wur a born sick-nurse, and 
 that though she wur but ten year old it wur 
 pretty to see how she took the charge o' that 
 new baby. And I often ses,' continued the good 
 soul, ' how if Mr. Ralph's wife had lived, or the 
 dowager leddy either, old Sir George 'ud never 
 ha' been let ride when he had ought to have 
 been sittin' comferble-like in his arm-chair, let 
 alone the fac' that he had a letter given to him 
 the mornin' of the 'unt — a business letter, as 
 they ses, which was disturbin'-like ; but there, 
 God A'mighty on'y knows whether he was took 
 with a kin' of fit, or whether, when the hoss 
 tries to jump and jerks him a bit, he jes' tum- 
 bles off cos as how he could not sit — leastways, 
 he'll never be the same again, and it is agonies 
 as they ses he suffers in his poor old back.'
 
 MR. NOBODY. 153 
 
 Reuben Sellwood made no remark. He was 
 taciturn as usual. But he shifted his chair, and 
 sat with his head bent down, and his back to 
 the light, as Mrs. Rose, who Jcved nothing so 
 well as to spin a yarn of her own, however 
 unsympathetic might be her listener, continued 
 rapidly, as if she was afraid her communication 
 might be interrupted. 
 
 'And most misfortunate is the famelly, sir, 
 for Sir Ralph as'll soon be — with the poor old 
 genTman having, so to speak, both feet in the 
 grave a'ready — is not much above furty, and 
 beggin' yer pardin', lookin' older than yerself, 
 sir — for not only did he love his lecldy, but his 
 heir as should be is a bit of a gell, and no such 
 right to what is left as Miss Yere as wur the 
 elder brother's child. There be a matter o' ten 
 years, as I ses afore, atween the two. They 
 du say as the eldest is like a mother to the 
 leetle un — bless both their pretty faces. A nice 
 little black-eyed gell, a bit like her furrin 
 mother, that little un — and yet she 'minds me 
 o' un as I buried nigh her age. And her father 
 as weighted with the old gen'l'man's debts, as
 
 154 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 well as his grandfather's that went afore— and 
 all that by Mr. Richard's plans — the crushingest 
 disappointment. No wonder as Mr. Ralph's 
 a bit snarlish-like, he 'ad enufF to worrit him 
 if ever a livin' man 'ad — for both the old gen- 
 tleman and the one afore him in their ways as 
 ye understand — the one a sort o' screw 'bout 
 everything but horses, and the other,' here, to 
 fill up a rhetorical pause, Mrs. Rose held up 
 both her hands, i they were both that extrava- 
 gant — the un with his rowdy ways, and 
 t'other as alius said he weren r t extravagant 
 neither." 
 
 < There, that will do, my good woman,' said 
 her master, in a deep voice which came from him 
 so suddenly and so sharply that, as Mrs. Rose 
 afterwards explained to those whom she called 
 her ' busom friends/ it ' went through her like 
 a dart, and turned her blood all to cuds-like/ 
 'That will do,' said Reuben, with quite un- 
 necessary sternness. 'Remember that the one 
 thing I can never forgive in a cook is unpunc- 
 tuality. Let everything be properly done, and 
 spare no expense to do it, but bear in mind
 
 MR. NOBODY. 155 
 
 that I do not wish to hear anything about it.' 
 Mrs. Rose curtseyed and went away mutter- 
 ing, yet a little mollified by the judicious clause 
 • spare no expense/ which justified her in order- 
 ing a new black silk dress,, and a dress cap 
 which she had long coveted, though, as she ex- 
 plained to her confidants, her new master was 
 1 a hodd one.' 
 
 1 A letter,' — he received a letter that morning 
 — ' I wonder if it was a lawyer's letter,' thought 
 the new-comer, who, without any conceivable 
 cause grumbled at all the dishes which were 
 served to him that day, and told Mrs. Rose to 
 dismiss the cook, though he had hitherto ap- 
 peared not to have a fastidious appetite. An out- 
 sider might have said that the rich man was trou- 
 bled, ashamed in a way which he could scarcely 
 explain, ready to hate himself and everything 
 about him, and to loathe the new house which 
 he had purchased with his savings, if he could 
 have seen him with his head resting on his 
 arms for hours together, deep in thought, dur- 
 ing that day. 
 
 Naturally enough the tragic catastrophe
 
 156 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 "which had happened to the great man of the 
 neighbourhood, whose impoverished fortunes 
 had often before furnished a subject for conver- 
 sation, was the principal theme of talk in the 
 mouths of the few visitors to whom Reuben 
 could not well refuse admission. 
 
 e A more melancholy state of things it would 
 be scarcely possible to picture to yourself,' said 
 one of the Torringmoor manufacturers who 
 volunteered his information to the owner of 
 Broadmeads — Reuben being too downright to 
 excuse himself by the fashionable lady's fib of 
 ' not at home,' and having no excuse for refusing 
 to see a man who sent in his card that he was 
 a bachelor, and would like to make his acquain- 
 tance. ' One might think that a curse had 
 alighted on the family, though it is one of the 
 
 oldest ones in shire. You see, the father 
 
 and grandfather of the man who will soon have 
 the title were both equally selfish. The former 
 fellow was decidedly the most extravagant, 
 but, though Sir George knew how things were 
 going, he was such a dab at fox-hunting, and 
 liked to keep up the name for taking the lead in
 
 MR. NOBODY. 157 
 
 that sort of thing in this part of the comity, 
 that there is no doubt he launched out 
 too much in that direction, whilst he was pre- 
 tending to curtail in another. They do say,' he 
 added, dropping his voice, ' that the property is 
 heavily mortgaged, and that much of it will be- 
 long to Sir Ralph only in appearance. Sooner 
 or later it must pass into other hands — there is 
 some mystery about the mortgagee — these 
 things generally pass into the hands of several 
 people — but they do say ' 
 
 An acute observer might have seen a 
 glance keen as steel dart from the dark blue 
 eyes of Reuben Sellwood, as a change of some 
 sort, like a ripple caused by a sudden gust 
 on ordinary impassive water, passed over his 
 face, and, seeming to deprecate further informa- 
 tion, he held up his hand as if to impose 
 that reticence which he was known to practise 
 habitually himself. 
 
 The Torringmoor manufacturer was not an 
 acute observer, and did not notice how Reuben 
 managed again to bring up the subject 
 which he appeared to have dropped, though he
 
 158 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 seemed as usual to be lending only half an ear 
 to the chatter of his guest. 
 
 'Hard lines for the future Sir Ralph/ re- 
 marked Reuben, with a yawn. The manufac- 
 turer afterwards said to his wife that he was a 
 * rough sort of customer,' and had not learnt 
 manners in being battered about the world. 
 To the rich man he answered, politely, 
 
 'Yes, a laborious sort of fellow — does his 
 best under the circumstances, but proud — proud 
 as Lucifer ; just the sort of man to make an 
 excuse for shutting up his place, and living 
 quietly abroad, because he can't meet the ex- 
 penses. A vast improvement on poor Sir 
 George, who didn't manage to keep out of 
 scrapes himself, though he was a blustering 
 sort of magistrate, and hard enough on the 
 peccadilloes of the poorer folk whom he had to 
 deal with. When Sir Ralph comes into what 
 they call the property, he will find that one 
 half already has taken to itself wings, and the 
 other half is hypothetical. Most of it is mort- 
 gaged, and the curious part of it is that they 
 say there are not many creditors, but that
 
 MR. NOBODY. 159 
 
 the whole is likely to pass to one man, and he 
 a foreigner.' 
 
 • Warranted to go on like a barrel-organ for 
 hours/ thought Reuben, whom nothing irritated 
 like small talk. Yet a refrain of the barrel- 
 organ rang in his ears, and even haunted him 
 in his dreams that night. 'One might almost 
 think there was a curse on the family.' 
 
 The attitude of the cynical new-comer during 
 the next few weeks hardly seemed to justify 
 him in trying to usurp for himself the character 
 of a Diogenes, or even to allow him to class 
 himself with that half of the world which, ac- 
 cording to the celebrated saying of Talleyrand, 
 rejoices at the misfortunes of its neighbours. 
 That the owner of Rashleigh Park was writh- 
 ing day after day in sufferings which medical 
 skill was almost powerless to alleviate, seemed 
 to affect him in a singular way, as if he could 
 give little attention to anything else. 
 
 In accordance with the directions which he 
 had given to Mrs. Rose, gardeners — chipping, 
 chopping, planting fresh flowers, and mowing 
 the beautiful lawns — were busy day after day in
 
 100 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 the gardens of Broadrneads. But though spring 
 was coming in with its golden daffodils, its 
 white narcissi in the gardens, its little pink- 
 headed daisies and its yellow and blue hearts- 
 ease, and though the simple-hearted people in 
 the neighbourhood could enjoy themselves in 
 their little plots of ground — the poorer sort 
 sending their little ones into the green fields to 
 gather the pale cuckoo-flower and bells of blue 
 hyacinth with the yellow primrose and golden 
 kingcup — a heavy weight seemed to lie upon 
 the heart of the man who, avowedly by his 
 own exertions, had been able to beautify his 
 life with such surroundings as few can enjoy. 
 One might have said that the motive which had 
 made exertion pleasant to him, and the fruits 
 of exertion worth coveting, had been suddenly 
 withdrawn. 
 
 Reuben Sellwood still kept up the mask in 
 the presence of others. But, when he was 
 alone, he lapsed into the dulness of languor. 
 The poor peasant in the neighbourhood of 
 Torringmoor, invited that spring by the Divine 
 Master to a feast of beauties which is our ear-
 
 MR. XOBODY. 161 
 
 nest in this life of greater and higher delights, 
 was happier than Reuben. Nature's ritual, 
 with its odorous breezes, its blended tints, and 
 its rush of harmonious sound, did absolutely 
 nothiug to satisfy him ; the feast was spread in 
 vain. He sat alone, and no one could guess 
 that he was secretly troubled by the thought of 
 the poor, disappointed, heart-broken old man 
 who was dying slowly in protracted agonies 
 in a neighbouring mansion. He would not 
 admit that the matter was of any consequence 
 to him, who had prided himself on the fact that 
 his heart had been shut for years to the griev- 
 ances of any of his fellow-creatures. Possibly 
 it was, because he was unused to most of the 
 recreations with which others are accustomed 
 to beguile their leisure, that this event which, 
 if he had heard of it at a distance, would 
 have seemed to be nothing to him, had the 
 power to disturb his peace when he realised it 
 in detail. 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Though, after a time, Reuben Sell wood had 
 judiciously determined not to draw attention 
 to himself by appearing to be too much of an 
 anchorite, and refusing to see the people who 
 called on him from Torringmoor, it could not 
 fail to be a matter of remark that those who 
 had speech with the new-comer knew no more 
 about him than if they had abstained from 
 seeking his acquaintance. 
 
 Had he wife and family, as most respectable 
 men were supposed to have ? Did he hail from 
 America or Australia, and had he made his 
 money in trade ? It was remarkable that no 
 one dared to put these questions point-blank. 
 Many had beaten about the bush, and one en-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 163 
 
 terprising lady from Torringrnoor, more dar- 
 ing than the rest, had ventured upon a sort 
 of prefatory catechism, only to discover that the 
 ' enigma ' — as Mr. Sellwood began to be nick- 
 named — however deficient he might be in other 
 sciences, was a scientific adept in the art of ver- 
 bal fencing. 
 
 One thing was certain, that the e enigma ' 
 made no pretence to be other than a self-made 
 man. Yet it could not fail to be noticed that, 
 though he was ready enough to announce this 
 fact, he never told a single anecdote of his 
 earlier life, and parried all inquiries with a reti- 
 cence which he practised to such an extent that 
 the gossips decided with a sigh of despair that 
 even his nationality seemed to be a point which 
 must be kept shrouded in uncertainty. He 
 called himself a ' cosmopolitan,' an explanation 
 which they were fain to accept. 
 
 ' Even supposing he is an American/ remarked 
 one pompous man, deigniug to explain for the 
 benefit of the weaker sex, ' you see, it would 
 not make him a foreigner, for the English- 
 speaking folk, wherever they dwell, and under 
 
 m2
 
 164 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 whatever government, must be still our people.' 
 
 The name ' Reuben ' was felt to be misleading. 
 The man was fair, and had not the unmistak- 
 able physiognomy to be seen now in flesh and 
 blood, little altered since it was carved on the 
 stones of Nineveh. The men of Torringmoor 
 shook their heads, and again explained to the 
 women, who were inclined to invent a romance 
 like that of the Rothschilds, 
 
 'The fellow is no great commercial prince, 
 no Haroun-el-Raschid, and no great Hebrew 
 financier either, however he may have chosen 
 to adopt a Jewish name.' 
 
 So the tongues wagged for a little while and 
 then found they had nothing further to wag 
 about. 
 
 Little difficulty was made about admitting 
 the rich man to the club at Torringmoor, al- 
 though that club — like most in provincial 
 towns — had prided itself on its narrow ex- 
 clusiveness, apparently because no name had 
 yet been enrolled upon its list which was of 
 any consequence to the world at large. It 
 was difficult for anyone not amongst the
 
 MR. NOBODY. 165 
 
 initiated to steer bis social course so as to keep 
 out of all the little eddies and currents of pre- 
 judices, conservative respectabilities, and sec- 
 tarian sbibboletbs which a new-comer could by 
 no means afford to defy. But Reuben Sell- 
 wood did not defy them ; he simply ignored 
 them. And, unpolished as was his address, he 
 had talents of his own which marked him out 
 from the common ruck. Business men who 
 made his acquaintance soon discovered that he 
 had an aptitude for mechanical invention, and 
 was able instantly to suggest some small im- 
 provements in the machinery they employed, 
 which proved lucrative in the long run, and 
 made them wonder less that he himself should 
 have been able in the course of years to amass 
 a not inconsiderable fortune. 
 
 ' They do these things better than we do in 
 America,' was once more tentatively said. 
 
 1 So I have heard,' answered the man, who 
 was never off his guard, and who was careful 
 never to let slip words which should betray 
 his familiarity with the newer as well as the 
 older side of the ocean, although he was con-
 
 166 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 tinually and almost unconsciously making com- 
 parisons — comparisons which were not alto- 
 gether to the credit of the provincial people, 
 who, with a narrow and unjust heedlessness of 
 the opinions of other nations, were nursing 
 their little prejudices and their insular pride in 
 this out-of-the-way corner of the world, which 
 seemed stirring enough to them, but to which, 
 as Reuben scornfully thought, they could retire 
 like lobsters who had cast their shells and 
 were afraid of being rubbed by too active con- 
 tact with their more enterprising fellows. 
 
 Power is sweet, and flattery not unacceptable 
 to most of us. Reuben had always looked for- 
 ward to enjoying it, and was not philosopher 
 enough to understand the sudden sense of 
 satiety and reaction, which was already making 
 the fruit taste bitter which he had left so long 
 to ripen. 
 
 The man, as his new acquaintances reasoned, 
 had probably gone through much, and been 
 moulded by many experiences. He held his 
 head erect, and looked, they said, as if his hair, 
 as well as his complexion, had been subjected
 
 MR. NOBODY. 167 
 
 to the scorching processes of a tropical sun, 
 whilst his broad chest and powerful physique 
 seemed to tell the tale of his having been braced 
 by more than ordinary exposure and fatigue. 
 His words were energetic and definite, but 
 generally few. They went, said the more 
 sentimental of the Torringmoor folk, like rifle- 
 shot straight to the mark. He disliked what 
 he called hollow babble, and did not mince his 
 speech. ' Poltroons, idiots !' he muttered more 
 than once to himself, as be winced at what he 
 called their ' hollow babble/ And yet he smiled 
 rather grimly to himself when he found that 
 other men deferred, not only to his wealth, but 
 to a capability which was new to them, and 
 consequently rather startling. He owed, as he 
 felt, nothing to anyone, and was scarcely aware 
 how he in his turn had begun to look down on 
 all the little fry of butchers, bakers, and candle- 
 stick-makers, being tyrannical in his dealings 
 with them, and never brooking interference 
 from anyone beneath him. From a habit of 
 watching affairs with an amount of keenness 
 which approximated to genius, he had become
 
 168 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 accustomed to consider his own power as omni- 
 potent, and those who sought his advice found 
 him skilled in the secret of screwing down to the 
 lowest the wages of the most competent work- 
 men, with a decision of will and toughness of 
 heart which had hitherto been unprecedented 
 at Torringmoor. 
 
 It was an ill compliment to that class which 
 is accustomed to be called the higher one, that 
 this tendency to injustice to those beneath him, 
 and also a certain contemptuous inclination to 
 keep aloof from those aspiring citizens who had 
 just cast the chrysalis of the shop, and had 
 retired in the newly-acquired butterfly state to 
 gorgeous suburban villas, should have been 
 taken as a sort of indication that a strain of 
 nobler blood, possibly communicated to him 
 from some remote ancestor, ran in the veins of 
 the owner of Broadmeads. 
 
 ' I don't pretend to know all the ins and outs 
 of my family,' answered Reuben, with ready 
 aplomb, when some fresh adventuress, credited, 
 according to the old tradition, with the curi- 
 osity of Eve, remarked graciously on the pro-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 169 
 
 bability of Mr. Sellwood belonging to that 
 branch of the family of Sell woods which was 
 well-known in Dorsetshire. * Madam, I was not 
 aware that there were any Sellwoods in Dorset- 
 shire.' 
 
 His voice sounded so very determined and 
 defiant, and the look of severity, coupled with 
 keen observation, which formed the main char- 
 acteristic of Mr. Sell wood's face, w r as so terrific 
 that the good lady forgot to detect the owner 
 of Broadmeads in his first unwise admission. 
 
 Reuben was himself aware of the ' slip/ and 
 chafed over it in secret. It worried him nearly 
 as much as the weary feeling which he had 
 had lately, as if the principal concern in his life 
 was over, had worried him lately. 
 
 Meanwhile the crisis of the tragedy w r as fast 
 approaching at Rashleigh Hall. 
 
 On a night towards the close of April, a group 
 of figures was gathered round the bed on which 
 the form, which looked a little more gaunt and 
 tall, had been lying since the beginning of the 
 illness. Sir George had not asked any ques-
 
 170 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 tions, or seemed to take much notice of any- 
 thing which had passed since his accident. But 
 now that waking-up of the intelligence, which 
 the doctors had prophesied would come before 
 the end, warned the watchers that that end 
 was nearer than they had expected. And as 
 the sufferer began to toss about, clutching at 
 the counterpane, he muttered for the first time 
 articulate sounds. 
 
 His son bent down to catch the words, and 
 started as he heard that the revelations which 
 had been dimly hinted at were all too true, 
 ; Could not help it— it was the debts ; could not 
 pay the money — all the estates'
 
 171 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Reuben Sellwood was reputed to love no one, 
 but the world was wrong in so judging. He 
 had a soft place in his heart for his only son. 
 He would have increased his reputation for 
 cynicism if he could have told how — in being 
 battered about in different countries, and com- 
 ing into contact with much of that evil which is 
 so difficult to disentangle from the remnants of 
 good — his experience of women had been unfor- 
 tunate. He had been shaken out of all his 
 finer theories about the sex, and, as soon as he 
 became a victim to that devastating doubt 
 which will sometimes make itself felt in morals, 
 as well as in mental difficulties, he was wont to 
 say,
 
 172 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 'Some of them may be angels, but the 
 larger proportion are — not to use a stronger 
 word — wretched hypocrites. You can't trust 
 'em, and it is no use to make companions of 
 'em.' 
 
 And yet he had married, when fortune began 
 to smile upon him — a girl who was supposed to 
 be somewhat above him in birth. He had no 
 intention of making a friend of her, or of trying 
 to sheath his own rough nature in the softer 
 tissues of hers, but he liked her to be dressed 
 luxuriously, and always to drive in a carriage, 
 and he would boast that she had quite an ' east- 
 ern' love of luxury. So far from not humour- 
 ing her extravagance, he would talk largely of 
 that extravagance as of something s oriental,' 
 which reflected a sort of glamour upon 
 him. 
 
 In this sort of talk he showed his weakness, 
 but in most respects his tact helped him to 
 avoid any solecisms in manners. Whether or 
 not, as the theory was, he had educated him- 
 self, he was certainly fairly well educated. 
 Probably it was owing to a habit of reading
 
 MR. NOBODY. 173 
 
 Shakespeare in his leisure hours that — except 
 for an occasional expression, which, as he was 
 always on his guard, he seldom let slip before 
 strangers — his style in English was far from bad. 
 Better in some cases in its terseness and even in 
 its abruptness, than the style of others who had 
 received a more classical education, — had it not 
 been for the lapses in grammar. 
 
 The wife died ; she was kept for a few years 
 like a canary bird in a cage which was supplied 
 with plenty of seed, cake, and groundsel. She 
 was expected to chirp and not to cry, but possi- 
 bly she pined, as canaries are apt to do, for a 
 little human love, or the companionship of her 
 mate. 
 
 Her boy was delicate like herself. He resem- 
 bled his mother in his fairness of complexion 
 and his delicately-cut features, and he had blue 
 eyes like the father's. His hands were a trifle 
 too white and effeminate in size, possibly it 
 was hard manual labour which had made the 
 father's grow large and bony. 
 
 Reuben had not shown his usual severity to 
 this child, possibly because he had lost two
 
 174 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 others, who died in infancy. The boy had been 
 remarkable before he left school, for a dreamy 
 look in his face — * visionary,' some people called 
 it. He had been apt to wander about for hours 
 by himself, and his father— concluding some- 
 what disdainfully of the lad that he would be 
 like his mother in ' building air-castles and not 
 realities,' and in taking sickly imaginings for 
 reasoning power — had nicknamed him, with 
 tender condescension, his ' poet.' 
 
 ' Poets must not work, they must have others 
 to give them everything,' he would say, as he 
 loaded the child with pocket-money. 
 
 This fair-haired, gentle-looking boy was his 
 only toy in the earlier days when, though he 
 had some capital at his command, he had not 
 achieved his present success. He liked to be 
 seen in public with the lad, as if he knew that 
 the juxtaposition was picturesque. He sent 
 him to England before he returned to the old 
 country himself, that he might be educated 
 at Eton and afterwards at Oxford. He was 
 almost sorry when Godfrey — as the boy had 
 been called to gratify a fancy of the mother's —
 
 MR. NOBODY. 175 
 
 had grown hardier in the course of years so as 
 to lose something of the look of exceeding 
 refinement which the practised eye of a medical 
 man would have recognised as the sign of a 
 state of delicate health. 
 
 It was now seven or eight years since God- 
 frey had begun to think, and had understood 
 that little was known respecting his father's 
 antecedents. 
 
 ' Don't trouble yourself with what does not 
 concern you,' Keuben had answered, a little 
 sternly, when the lad asked a few questions. 
 * You worry yourself with fancies. It is too 
 early yet. You will have time for all that non- 
 sense when, at the university, you take up that 
 humbug called metaphysics.' 
 
 He seldom reproved his son, and, though he 
 privately despised all his youthful enthusiasms, 
 he yet abstained from throwing cold water on 
 them. Nonsensical aspirations were to be ex- 
 cused in ' poets/ And though this was a nick- 
 name which Godfrey would willingly have for- 
 gotten, and his father could have adopted no 
 better method to deter the lad from writing a
 
 176 MR. XOBODY. 
 
 line of verse, yet there was something in his 
 character — which tallied with his frail physique, 
 and which seemed to be shadowed by the 
 memories of his mother's long-continued sick- 
 ness, and his own early life — which gave a satiric 
 sting to the title. 
 
 Reuben put a tolerably high price on this 
 article of his own 'turning out.' 
 
 'I have spared no expense to make him what 
 he is,' he would say to himself of his elegant 
 son, whom he believed to be a thoroughbred 
 product of this highly-strung modern civiliza- 
 tion. 'I cannot talk their language,' he would 
 think to himself. ' There is something which 
 one feels but cannot articulate. But he — he 
 has been brought up to it — he can chatter 
 all their jargon. It is he who shall right me 
 and show that he can hold his own amongst 
 people of any rank. They shall bow down to 
 him. He shall claim a share in their great 
 memories.' 
 
 He tried to repeat this cherished idea to 
 himself on the morning of the day when Sir 
 George's funeral passed a road leading to the
 
 MR. NOBODY. 177 
 
 little churchyard which could be seen from the 
 windows of the house at Broadmeads. It was a 
 windy day with showers of rain, and the cor- 
 tege, swelled by many of the carriages of the 
 gentry in the neighbourhood, had to contend 
 with stormy gusts which threatened to blow 
 over the hearse with long black plumes, which 
 the protests of Dickens and other writers 
 had not yet rendered obsolete. Reuben, who 
 stood at the window which overlooked the 
 road, shuddered and turned away as he 
 thought for the hundredth time of that lawyer's 
 letter, and wondered whether without its inter- 
 vention that man in his old age would have 
 been doomed to a wretched death. Somehow, 
 the bloom had been rubbed off his triumph. It 
 was in vain to puzzle out the causes of his 
 failure. But, as he turned away from looking 
 at the funeral, the turmoil in his mind went on 
 as badly as ever. And Reuben wondered if he 
 was growing superstitious as he felt himself 
 strangely sore at heart and bruised, as if he had 
 just been freed from the assault of visible evil 
 spirits. 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 A few days afterwards Sir Ralph was closeted 
 with the family lawyer, and heard for the first 
 time the full extent of the disaster which was a 
 part of his inheritance. That the estate had 
 -already dwindled to a very meagre portion of 
 what it had been centuries before, was no infor- 
 mation to the new baronet. Aware of the diffi- 
 culties which might befall him, and at the same 
 time not without a rather overweening sense of 
 his own importance and the value to be attached 
 to the home of his ancestors, Ralph Rashleigh 
 had struggled and striven even during the life- 
 time of his father, to perform his own not unim- 
 portant part in diminishing the sorrow which 
 threatened him. But the load of debt seemed 
 like a living thing to take hold of him, and to 
 be for ever pulling himself and his father 
 down — a thing from which he could not escape. 
 Of late days, he and the older man had ceased 
 to have altercations on a subject which was 
 painful to them both. That the place had 
 been heavily mortgaged was no secret to the 
 son, but that more and more of the land was 
 still being mortgaged was a fact that his father
 
 MR. NOBODY. 179 
 
 thought unnecessary to confide to him, know- 
 ing that the estate was as dear to Ralph as it 
 had been to any of his forefathers. The dreary 
 suggestion of a fear as to the possibility of 
 losing it, had more than once presented itself 
 like a nightmare to his morbid imagination, 
 but Ralph refused to be haunted by any such 
 wild suggestion. 
 
 And now as he sat alone, after the lawyer 
 had had his lunch and departed with papers 
 and baggage in the trap to catch the London 
 train — looking cherubic and self-satisfied as if 
 there were no such thing as mortgages and 
 family property in the world — Sir Ralph felt as 
 if the walls of the room and everything about 
 him were falling like a pack of cards. 
 
 It was characteristic of the new Baronet that 
 he sat perfectly still, though the discovery which 
 he had just made was a bitter one. Who could 
 help it ? When Sir George had succeeded to 
 the estate, it was already a rapidly dwindling 
 one. Energy and self-denial might have done 
 much to right things then. But now it was so 
 heavily encumbered that there might be nothing 
 
 n2
 
 180 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 for Sir Ralph to leave to his daughter or his 
 niece. He could wrestle for his own part with 
 the encroaching poverty. But he had loved 
 the land and the surrounding country for the 
 sake of his ancestors. He had ever been a 
 good landlord, caring for the interests of his 
 tenants. And it was a question if he could any 
 longer speak of tenants depending on him. 
 There were, in fact, three sets of people 
 to be considered in a question of this kind 
 — the landlord, the tenants, and the land- 
 lord's creditor. It would be a question for the 
 future whether the landlord's creditor would be 
 harder on the tenants than the landlord. For 
 the latter was a man of straw, existing only in 
 the name. It would certainly have been bet- 
 ter to have no property at all than the miser- 
 able parings which were, after all, his sole in- 
 heritance ; he was thankful for the first time 
 that there was no heir to carry on the family 
 name. 
 
 More than once during this sad soliloquy his 
 fair-haired niece, with the roses blooming on 
 her cheeks, and eyes of the softest Norwegian
 
 MR. NOBODY. 181 
 
 blue — true and tender, with long dark lashes — ■> 
 had looked anxiously into the room. But he 
 sent her away somewhat sternly, for the very 
 reason that his heart was yearning over her, 
 and that he had not the courage to inform 
 the girl of the state of his affairs. In his 
 honesty he was most anxious to pay off certain 
 creditors, but to do so he must be involved still 
 further in the clutches of the outlandish neigh- 
 bour who was the real owner of nearly all that 
 surrounded him. Ralph Kashleigh clenched his 
 fist aud brought it heavily to bear on the desk 
 which, till lately, had hidden the much-detested 
 papers, as he muttered to himself, 
 
 ' Who would have dreamt that the fellow 
 could first of all spin his web with such pre- 
 caution, like a spider to catch a fly ? And 
 then that he would come near to us — he of all 
 others, when he knows that the greater part of 
 the land is Ms V 
 
 He was almost ready to curse the strange 
 luck which had caused the mortgages to be 
 nearly all purchased by one man, and he a 
 stranger, and to think his father was to blame
 
 182 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 for placing them so unreservedly at his disposal. 
 Further thought made him realise how irration- 
 al was this bitterness, and acknowledge that 
 the lawyers who were entrusted with the sale 
 could not pick and choose their purchasers, and 
 that if one man — living abroad and having a 
 fancy for the thing — had come forward through 
 his agents on each occasion, never quarrelling 
 with the price, tbey had no alternative but to 
 sell. 
 
 Was it instinct or was it suspicion which 
 made Sir Ralph conjecture, as perhaps his father 
 had conjectured on the fatal morning, that 
 something was wrong, and that the freehanded- 
 ness which was so eccentric in this fellow might 
 possibly be harmful ? 
 
 Sir Ralph's own keen sensitiveness made him 
 nervously aware of some steady and possibly 
 baneful purpose in the transaction from which 
 his own finer nature revolted. How long his 
 melancholy reverie might have continued is 
 doubtful. It was suddenly interrupted by 
 another tap at the door, and a merry little 
 ten-year-old child, so small as to resemble a
 
 MR. NOBODY. 183 
 
 large wax doll, with dark brown eyes looking 
 black through the long lashes, surmounted by 
 a curly fringe, and a crape dress fancifully cut 
 so as to display to full advantage the graceful 
 little legs, daintily encased in black silk stock- 
 ings, ran into the room, and, taking no rebuff, 
 leaped like a small fairy on her father's knee. 
 
 'Whatever happens, my Dot, nothing shall 
 harm thee/ said the father, laying a caressing 
 hand on the glossy dark hair, and looking as if 
 he were half relieved from his burden as he 
 glanced at the sparkling eyes and red lips of 
 the little one. 
 
 ' It was Vere who sent me,' said the child, 
 stroking his face with loving action in return. 
 ' She said you had been too much alone.' 
 
 The cloud returned to his face. 
 
 ' Vere,' he muttered, ' the girl knows too 
 much. It is bad enough for men to be annoyed 
 by things of this sort — but — women '
 
 PART III. 
 
 Say not no to such a suitor, 
 All I ask is — bless mine, purest of ambitions, 
 Grant me leave to make my kind wise, free, and happy. 
 
 Browning.
 
 187 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was the ' eights ' week at Oxford. 
 
 It is needless to say that the unique city, with 
 its host of historical memories — set in by moist 
 green fields and stately trees in the angle 
 formed by the junction of the Cherwell and the 
 Isis — is more beautiful than usual, like its sister 
 university, in the month of May. In the lonely 
 walks of the college gardens, the flame-coloured 
 pyrus, the sprays of the wistaria adorning the 
 old walls, the laburnums beginning to drop 
 their ' wells of gold,' and the opening lilac- 
 blossoms, hanging like plumes upon the bushes, 
 were lighting up the dignified solitudes with 
 brilliancy of colour. While some old chestnuts 
 with wide-spreading branches — under whose
 
 188 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 shadow perhaps a Heber, a Keble, or divines 
 and scholars of earlier renown, had nursed high 
 thoughts or meditated noble deeds — were put- 
 ting forth their leafy fans, hidden so long within 
 the shining buds. 
 
 The genius of university life has changed, 
 let us acknowledge, in most respects for the 
 better. And nothing on this afternoon in May 
 could be more significant of the changes which 
 have revolutionised Oxford, identifying it with 
 the entire English nation, instead of limiting it 
 to certain sections, than the appearance of the 
 crowds of bustling, well-dressed, happy-looking 
 people who were hurrying down Corn-Market 
 Street in the direction of Christchurch. If the 
 'Philistine' element did not preponderate, it 
 was pretty clearly to be traced in a good many 
 faces of the fathers, mothers, sisters, and friends 
 who seemed, as they streamed through the 
 town, completely to destroy the quasi-monastic 
 appearance of the ancient walls and buildings. 
 They were merry enough as they crowded 
 down the ' avenue ' on their way to the barges, 
 but few among them took heed of the beautiful
 
 MR. NOBODY. 189 
 
 openings between the trees, or the distant vistas 
 of scenery. 
 
 A cynic might have grumbled at the c ag- 
 gressive juvenility ' of some of the youths 
 who were entering for their minor Olympian 
 stakes, with almost as much excitement as if it 
 were that more important race which — as a 
 subject of newspaper chronicling and specula- 
 tion — ranks only second to the Derby day. And 
 if the atmosphere of jollity seemed to have 
 little in common with the medievalism so elo- 
 quently described by Matthew Arnold, and said 
 still to linger in dreamy precincts and seques- 
 tered nooks, it might have pleased Mr. Ruskin 
 as a proof that there is no decadence in our 
 national love of sport. 
 
 It had been raining warm, soft showers that 
 morning. But the rain had only left the spring 
 verdure at its freshest and best. The sky had 
 cleared, and there were cool whispers of soft 
 breezes stirring the leaves of some of the trees 
 in the narrower and more beautiful walks, 
 where lazy undergraduates, ' clad all in virgin 
 while,' had been indulging themselves by sleep-
 
 190 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ily reclining at the bottoms of their punts, lis- 
 tening to the ' soft, sweet pipings ' of birds in 
 
 ' . . . glades all haunted by grey rams, 
 And footfalls of the falling shower.' 
 
 A little while afterwards they were routed from 
 their lairs by the more industrious of their com- 
 rades, as the barges became thronged with 
 anxious spectators, and the boats for their races 
 started, the various inmates trying to look as 
 if they were quite superior to the conscious- 
 ness of the becoming nature of their costumes. 
 Mothers and sweethearts, not so reticent, mur- 
 mured to each other their approval of the pale 
 blue, the pretty pink, the mauve and white, the 
 magenta, or the bright scarlet, as the case 
 might be. In a short time the excitement com- 
 menced. Why describe a spectacle known to 
 so many who have carried memories with them 
 through life of such spring days? 
 
 ' One is not always young,' as a smiling, 
 match-making matron confided to another 
 mother, in excuse for the very evident flirta- 
 tion of Kate and Jennie with James and Harry, 
 whom ' they might never see again,' as, a 
 minute afterwards, she sentimentally added,
 
 MR. NOBODY. 191 
 
 (sharp enough to notice that James had offered 
 a bunch of daffodils to Kate, which the latter, 
 with pink cheeks, was pinning to her dress. 
 
 Had she not made great exertions to secure 
 a place for herself and her girls on the 'Varsity 
 barge, or, failing that, on one of the college 
 barges which were ranged in a row, and to-day 
 were looking more gay than usual ; and had she 
 not wished it were possible to intrigue in some 
 way with the weather, knowing that the spring 
 toilette which she had taken such pains to 
 secure for her girls would make them look 
 all the prettier if they could throw off the 
 wraps which had been rendered necessary by 
 the rain, and a lingering sharpness in the May 
 wind, telling of a recent severity in the weather. 
 Ah ! let us not be too cynical on the weak 
 short-sightedness of all such manoeuvres, for, 
 as another lady observed with a sigh, ' It is 
 not always May,' as memories recurred to her 
 of her own young days, and a miserable climax 
 to such plotting in her own particular case. 
 
 Close to them was a third mother, a Mrs. 
 Vernon-Smith, who had stinted her ill-dressed, 
 pale-looking girls that every farthing that could
 
 192 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 be spared from the merest necessities of life 
 should go to young Hay ward Vernon-Smith, 
 not that he should achieve success in the 
 schools or fit himself for any calling whatever, 
 but win for himself a place in the university 
 eight — a circumstance which was about as 
 likely to take place as that the cow in the old 
 nursery rhyme should jump over the moon. 
 Only that very morning Mr. Vernon-Smith had 
 informed his better-half that she had made a 
 fool of herself in pinching the family for the 
 superstition of a college education for her 
 spoilt darling, when Mary Ann had been order- 
 ed port wine, and they could not afford to give 
 it to her, and the i young dog ' was as likely to 
 be as great a stick at rowing as at classics and 
 mathematics. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Smith had too high an opinion of 
 her offspring to be daunted by these insinuations, 
 but her hand shook and her heart misgave her, 
 as the parasols which had been raised to shel- 
 ter some of the young faces from a glint 
 of sunshine were as suddenly lowered, and 
 the boats were shooting past before the ner-
 
 MB. NOBODY. 193 
 
 vous lady thoroughly understood which were 
 her son's colours and what all the excitement 
 was about. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Smith positively closed her eyes, 
 as the boats with their stalwart figures seemed 
 to swim before her dazzled vision. She after- 
 wards declared that she had seen the pink and 
 violet caps of the Balliol and New College 
 men, with the scarlet of Magdalen — the athletic 
 forms looking to good advantage as they shot 
 past the barges with a clean and even sweep of 
 their oars. But she could not look at the 
 Exeter boat in which her own son was stroke, 
 knowing that this race bore the same analogy 
 to the greater race which she coveted for her 
 boy, as the Bath races bear to Ascot. She heard 
 nothing but a rush of feet on the banks, deafening 
 shouts, ' Well done, New,'— 4 Well done, Exeter/ 
 and cries of half the names of the colleges, after 
 which she seemed to wake again to hear that 
 her boy's boat had been * bumped ' to a more 
 ignominious place on the river. 
 
 1 And the last day too,' said somebody near 
 her, who seemed to have an interest in the 
 
 VOL. I. O
 
 194 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 same boat. ' They say that stroke lost his 
 head.' 
 
 4 Do you hear that, ma V asked Mary Ann, 
 not altogether sorry to retort on her mother, 
 * I always told you he would never do it. 
 Why, he lost his head in the same way when we 
 wanted him to take the poker and go down to 
 attack the thief. I heard somebody saying that 
 they should never have a stroke who is liable 
 to loss of nerve, and who hasn't a good lot of 
 stay.' 
 
 Mrs. Smith was too crushed to put down her 
 daughter with the spirit which she usually 
 showed when Mary Ann opposed her. Terrible 
 recollections of Hay ward's { Battells ' which had 
 amounted to so much more for the last term 
 than she expected, that she could scarcely 
 now summon courage to tell his father, made 
 her silent and absent-minded. 
 
 But Hayward Vernon-Smith was not the only 
 man disappointed. 
 
 ' Well, Sell wood,' said a friend, about half an 
 hour afterwards to a disconsolate-looking man 
 who was walking home with the crowd, and
 
 MR. NOBODY. 195 
 
 speaking to no one, ' you did not do as well as 
 we expected.' 
 
 ' I never do,' was the reply. e I ought to 
 have been firm enough not to have rowed 
 at all, coming just at this time. 1 have 
 made a worse mess of my " Greats " in con- 
 sequence.' 
 
 ' But it does not matter to you,' was the 
 answer. 
 
 Sellwood shrugged. If he could have spoken 
 his secret thoughts, he would have said that was 
 the pity of it. If he had ever had any relation 
 to encourage him, and to care if he made a 
 success or not, instead of being simply told to 
 make friends and to spend an unlimited amount 
 of money — he might have done better in every- 
 thing. 
 
 They were going with the multitude past the 
 beautiful Christchurch meadows. Even the 
 fools who had just struggled out of the water, 
 having upset their boats from the desire to 
 distinguish themselves, had more friends after all 
 than he had, in spite of his father's urgent mes- 
 sages that he would ensure for himself brilliant 
 
 02
 
 196 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 acquaintances who would be useful to him in 
 his future life. 
 
 There was scarcely a soul whom he cared 
 for in all this crowd. What a motley throng 
 of people it was streaming up the far- 
 famed walk, whilst now at every Christchurch 
 window, over banks of flowers, peeped out 
 youog faces, merry, critical, or even cynical, as 
 the case might be, but few of them jaundiced 
 with the midnight oil. He thought a little bit- 
 terly, as he glanced up at them, that these were 
 the swells with whom his father would have 
 liked him to be thick, and that it was a 
 contemptible thing, altogether lowering to a 
 man's self-respect, to be commanded to ' make 
 friends' with any persons, as if such friendships 
 would be of material advantage to his future. 
 It seemed to him that his father must be of an 
 uncommonly sanguine disposition to persist in 
 still clinging to the vague hope that he would 
 attach himself to sprigs of the nobility, when 
 evidently his own antecedents would not bear 
 inspection, and no one but a madman would 
 expect money to do everythiug. In fact, God-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 197 
 
 frey Sellwood's only objection to the dark, 
 energetic, well-knit young fellow who was 
 now walking by hisside, and whose appearance 
 bore a marked contrast to his own fair-haired, 
 fair-skinned, and somewhat graceful but languid 
 face, was that Charles Lloyd was an Honour- 
 able and the younger son of a lord. Charles 
 was a marked contrast to him in every way. 
 Bright and brilliant in his manner, with all the 
 confidence which came to him from the fact 
 that he was well-born if not particularly well- 
 provided in this world's goods, he had not only 
 found Godfrey a valuable ally, always ready 
 with money for every conceivable thing, but a 
 sympathetic friend. For, as he acknowledged 
 to himself, Sellwood — whose connections were 
 probably ' fishy/ from the fact, that though he 
 mentioned a father, the ' old boy ' had never 
 shown himself, and was therefore probably un- 
 presentable — had as much of the manners and 
 tone of real gentlefolk as if he had been accus- 
 tomed to mix with them from his infancy. 
 
 Why Sellwood had not done more was a 
 mystery not only to Lloyd but to most people.
 
 198 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 Great things had been prophesied of him when 
 he was a freshman at St. Anne's. But it could 
 not be said that he had verified any of these 
 prophecies. He had begun well by standing 
 pretty high in an examination for the Hertford, 
 though he himself always declared that the 
 ' mention ' was owing to a lucky hit. He cer- 
 tainly went-in for the Ireland, and was nowhere 
 at all, though his Greek was generally better 
 than his Latin, and though ' he,' as Charles 
 Lloyd was wont to remark, with the repetition 
 of a hackneyed joke, ' was born with no natural 
 aversion to that wretched Aristotle who wrote 
 his horrid philosophy on purpose to stagger 
 men with wits, or that over-estimated Plato 
 with whom most folks were dinned till they 
 were quite as ready to swallow poison as ever 
 Socrates was.' 
 
 4 No, it looked a little fishy,' that friend was 
 wont to declare, with the usual candour of 
 friends, * that Sellwood actually stood well for 
 the Hertford in his first year, and then went-in 
 and did nothing the next. Somehow he lost 
 his first in " Mods," and after that he got dis-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 199 
 
 gusted with the whole thing, and found out, as 
 I could have told him before, that classical 
 education was all a mistake. Why, it makes 
 one shudder to think, if there had not been a 
 bonfire of that Alexandrian library, there would 
 have been a lot more red-ink lines and wretched 
 notes for us to make; 
 
 That was Charlie's explanation of his friend's 
 apparent failure, and probably it was not so far 
 from the truth. After the discovery that clas- 
 sical education was a mistake, Sellwood had 
 taken a little to the sports. He was a ' fair 
 bat,' a ' fair oar,' but not absolutely good at 
 either. Probably because he did not take the 
 pains, and preferred lying lazily on his back, 
 and reading poetry in one of those hiding-places 
 amongst the grasses, to be discovered beside 
 the little Cherwell before it falls into the Isis. 
 Punting on a summer's day in a white flannel 
 suit involves no great exertion of strength, and 
 seemed to be congenial to Godfrey Sellwood's 
 retiring nature. There were occasions, how- 
 ever, on which he could emerge from his ordi- 
 nary shyness, and he had even been known to
 
 200 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 give Lints to his friend, Charlie Lloyd, when 
 the latter was preparing his brilliant speeches 
 for the Union. 
 
 But even at the Union Sellwood had not dis- 
 tinguished himself. His delivery was that of a 
 man who was struggling with his ideas, think- 
 ing, as it were, the thought over and over 
 again, aud labouring to clothe it with such 
 expression as should represent it to his fellows. 
 Nor did it add to his popularity that, though 
 words were not always ready with him, he was 
 fastidious about their right use, and quick to 
 detect the weak part of an epigram, or the 
 confusion of metaphors — marring the construc- 
 tion of some high-sounding sentence, which, 
 picked to pieces, could be proved to mean 
 nothing at all. Unlike the Honourable Charles 
 (who was accused of having ' ratted ' in his 
 political creed since he came to Oxford, his 
 family traditions having been in favour of 
 Toryism, whilst the majority of the more 
 original speakers were Radicals), Sellwood 
 seldom changed his opinions, and clung to 
 ideas which he had formed from boyhood with
 
 MR. NOBODY. 201 
 
 a tenacity unusual for one so young. He sel- 
 dom volunteered a remark in company unless 
 he had something to say. And, although he 
 had joined the debating club, — where the grave 
 questions of whether Mr. Disraeli was or was 
 not a traitor to his country, and whether the 
 Oxford youth should lend its patronage to 
 Church and State, were discussed and settled 
 with a vehemence which was perfectly inno- 
 cent, and proved a whetstone for sharpening 
 wits, — he never made more than one speech of 
 any length. A speech which led to the report 
 that he not only stammered, but had something 
 wrong in his bronchial arrangements, when, 
 after all, he was merely nervous, merely in 
 search of the right words. 
 
 In company he had been somewhat silent, 
 having no taste for wines or breakfast-parties, 
 not intending to be unsocial, but preferring the 
 friendship of a few. Perhaps the natural indo- 
 lence of his constitution, which made it some- 
 what hard for him to exert himself to overcome 
 obstacles, had much to do with this love 
 of retirement ; perhaps it was that the hurry
 
 202 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 and fulness of modern life, the crowd of fresh 
 thoughts, the new discoveries in science, and 
 the desire to grapple with the problems of his 
 age, were together somewhat overpowering to 
 a man of his temperament, and he required to 
 realise them in solitude. 
 
 Alone with young Lloyd he was perfectly at 
 his ease. The ' burden of the mystery ' of life 
 ceased to oppress him, and the crux of how to 
 reconcile religion and politics, looking upon 
 them as one, could for a time be put on one side. 
 The two friends were each moved in different 
 ways by the ' Zeit-geist,' though they might in- 
 terpret it in a different manner. They enjoyed 
 their battles-royal, their skirmishes of words 
 which did not become seriously warlike, for 
 both at heart were Radicals, with a natural love 
 for social equality and a desire to meet others 
 on the same level and enter into their griev- 
 ances. It mattered little by what party names 
 they called themselves. The truest statesman, 
 Conservative or not, must have sympathised 
 with their burning enthusiasm to snap Gordian 
 knots which their fathers had tried to untie in
 
 MR. NOBODY. 203 
 
 vain, whilst be might have smiled a little sadly 
 at their somewhat crude impatience to set right 
 those complicated social problems, whether of 
 land, property, or national health which bad 
 baffled many and harder heads. It was the 
 desire for brotherhood and comradeship which 
 was the hopeful element in their case. And 
 though it pleased Charlie Lloyd to draw back 
 on occasions, or to make a great deal of the few 
 questions on which he had thought it desirable 
 to give out that he had changed his opinions, 
 with a pugnacity that was pertinacious, this 
 was all the more invigorating. 
 
 ' 1 shall come up to your rooms for coffee, 
 after hall to-night/ said the latter with a nod, 
 as the two men separated in High Street, 
 Godfrey Sellwood turning into the quadrangle 
 of St Anne's, and Charlie Lloyd crossing over 
 
 to college, with its queer Dutch windows 
 
 to the chapel, and its Common room where old 
 Sam Johnson, according to his boast, had some- 
 times f drunk off three bottles of port without 
 beiug the worse for it.'
 
 204 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Charlie Lloyd did not ( look in ' quite so early 
 that evening as he had promised, a matter 
 which did not cause Godfrey much surprise. 
 For was not Lloyd one of the most popular 
 men at Oxford ; not a ' fast ' man in the ordinary 
 sense, but up to all the fun which was going on ; 
 not a wine-bibber to any serious extent, but the 
 life of a wine-party? Was it not the ambition 
 of many, who found it difficult to maintain their 
 own standing in a place which shifted its popu- 
 lation every three years, to be seen arm-in-arm 
 as if they were on the closest terms of intimacy 
 with this well-looking, well-born young fellow, 
 who took his social ' honours' in a way which 
 was peculiar to himself.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 205 
 
 Godfrey was not in the best of spirits as he 
 sat alone waiting for him in his picturesque 
 room, which was one of the finest in the quad- 
 rangle, large if low-roofed, and with cushioned 
 window-seats commanding a peaceful view of 
 an old moss-grown churchyard, on which the 
 setting sun had but a short time before cast its 
 golden rays. The stars were coming out now, 
 and Godfrey, who had chosen to dine alone — with 
 his dinner laid by a solemn scout, who looked as 
 if he himself had graduated in all the learning 
 of the university-— now retired from the window, 
 and seated himself in a cozy arm-chair by his 
 reading-lamp. 
 
 It was before the modern revival of domestic 
 art, when ' sestheticism ' as it is called, could be 
 paraded as an excuse for organized attacks on 
 the persons of undergraduates, who burn in- 
 cense or worship peacock's-feathers. It did not 
 occur to Godfrey to have lilies in his room 
 and to offer reverence to them more than to 
 other flowers. But flowers were crowded to- 
 gether in profusion on one of his tables, simply 
 because he cared for those beautiful things
 
 206 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 which seem to be bora of the air and the sun- 
 shine almost as much as the tints of the rain- 
 bow, and had given orders to his scout to see 
 that he was always to be supplied with them. 
 Of course he was cheated about the prices for 
 them, as he was about most things. But, as his 
 father wished him to make a sensation by- 
 spending as much money as possible on the 
 Oxford tradespeople, this was a matter of no 
 consequence. Godfrey was fleeced with im- 
 punity, but the c sensation ' was far off still. 
 
 All that could be said in excuse of this lavish 
 expenditure was that his room was furnished 
 with scholarly taste. Of old china, which was 
 one of the lad's hobbies, there was a plentiful 
 supply (not of plates, as now, crawling up the 
 walls, or hanging from the ceiling in a way to 
 make nervous people feel as if they are stand- 
 ing beneath so many swords of Damocles) but 
 of vases standing on the floor, of various sizes 
 and beautiful shapes. There were pictures, 
 exquisitely selected, of water-colour and oil on 
 the walls, with a few rare line engravings. A 
 glass lamp of artistic design (where now there
 
 MR. NOBODY. 207 
 
 would be a Japanese one) was suspended from 
 the ceiling; and a piano with a finely carved 
 case (it had not occurred to Godfrey to fling an 
 Indian scarf over it) stood open with a vio- 
 lin near it, and some of Mendelssohn's and 
 Beethoven's music on the stand. Iu one corner 
 of the room there was a trophy of pipes, and 
 musical instruments, amongst which was a 
 Syrian drum. Godfrey was a member of a 
 glee club which on the previous evening had 
 performed for a temperance society. They had 
 chosen Mendelssohn's vintage song, as peculiar- 
 ly appropriate for the occasion, and had entered 
 it on the programme as ' Selections from 
 Lorelei.' 
 
 Side by side with the defects in the young 
 fellow's nature were many high qualities — keen- 
 ness of perception, a temperament yielding 
 readily to culture, an organisation as acutely 
 sensitive to changes in the social atmosphere 
 as his musical ear was fine to changes of sound, 
 an inclination to choose employments which 
 were congenial to him, and a retiring tendency 
 which perhaps might have been inherited fron->
 
 208 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 his mother, or perhaps was a result of his 
 peculiar education. To those skilful apprai- 
 sers of character who pride themselves on cata- 
 loguing a man or a woman according to their 
 surroundings in the rooms which they generally 
 inhabit,— forgetting that such things may be 
 studied even when they appear most careless — 
 it would have been easy to form a tolerably 
 accurate estimate of the versatility of Godfrey 
 Sellwoocl. His very books told a tale. English 
 literature figured largely as well as German 
 and French, threatening to outnumber the con- 
 ventional Latin- and Greek. And amongst 
 them were rare editions of the best illustrat- 
 ed literature of the day, and a splendidly 
 bound copy of Turner's ' Liber Studiorum,' for 
 which he was said to have given an almost 
 fabulous price. Probably if the lad had been 
 poor, or if he had had relations to be interested 
 in his success, he might have made a speciality 
 of one of his many gifts. But as he sat with 
 his slippers on, waiting for Lloyd to come in 
 and have one of his usual talks, and as he 
 watched his own thoughts as it were in a cloud
 
 MR. NOBODY. 209 
 
 of curling smoke (having no aunt, cousin, or 
 sister to inform him that smoking was an 
 illicit practice), the provoking part of it was 
 that he saw as plainly as anyone else could 
 have told him, how— because his wages had 
 been a free gift to him, and he had had nothing* 
 to stimulate him — he had been too lazy to do 
 anything. 
 
 ' Put your Irishman in a free cottage, with 
 lots of potatoes to eat, and he'll never rise any 
 higher,' he said to himself — that being one of the 
 questions under dispute between himself and 
 young Lloyd, which one or the other was going 
 to settle for the good of the community. 
 
 ' Now it was the Pater's mistake to keep 
 me like a prince, when he himself probably 
 worked hard enough in his time.' The shifting 
 of the responsibility in this way on -the Pater/ 
 led him for the hundredth time into another 
 reverie. Why, if there was anything in the 
 doctrine of heredity, did he and * the Pater,' 
 have so little in common? His father made 
 no secret of having sprung from the peo- 
 ple, and seemed at times to be proud of it. 
 
 YOL. I. P
 
 210 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 According to Godfrey's theories it was a thing 
 to be proud of — a self-made man had nothing to 
 be ashamed of. But why was there a mystery ? 
 Why did his father seem to have positively 
 no connections? His own experience of the 
 first year of his university training had furnish- 
 ed him with an acute instinct which advised 
 him of the impossibility of attempting to intro- 
 duce people to each other, in the case of the 
 one set being refined, and the other utterly un- 
 presentable. But not only did the young 
 blood in him rise in a sort of scorn against 
 any such meanness as that which disallows 
 honest kith and kin for the sake of a little 
 inconvenience happening to oneself; he was 
 confronted with another difficulty. He could 
 just remember his mother in some foreign 
 country, a pale delicate woman, rather crushed 
 and feeble, but apparently with all the habits of 
 a lady. 
 
 As far as he could recall it, his mother had 
 never had reason to complain of ill-treatment. 
 She had simply been neglected, and his fear 
 was that she had died, as some plants do, from
 
 MR. NOBODY. 211 
 
 the absence of light and sunshine. She could 
 not presumably have had anything in common 
 with the stern, self-reliant man who treated her 
 with deferential politeness, but had apparently 
 centred his attentions on his child. In this 
 case it had not been the usual cause and effect 
 of love begetting love. The young fellow 
 was inclined bitterly to resent, for his mother's 
 sake, a course of conduct which it seemed to 
 him was lowering to womanhood in general. 
 That he himself should be valued was of small 
 importance to him. He knew nothing about 
 his father's antecedents. He did not even 
 know the extent of his fortune, nor did Reuben 
 become more communicative as his son grew 
 up. His father's reputation as a business man 
 had apparently been without a stain. He made 
 a point of keeping his word with his servants 
 and dependents, and, so far as Godfrey knew, 
 he had never wronged a single person. His 
 actions might be a trifle less hard than his 
 words to the people who were beneath him, 
 but words and actions were both hard enough. 
 How would he and his father * hit it off' when 
 
 p2
 
 212 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 they happened to come together, seeing that 
 they held different opinions about nearly every- 
 thing under the sun? He had tried to put off 
 the evil day as long as possible, but now it was 
 close upon him. 
 
 Godfrey's soliloquy was interrupted by a 
 sharp, quick rap at the door of his room. 
 
 ' Come in,' he said, not sorry to hear the rap, 
 and to welcome the brisk man with the big 
 forehead, bright expression of face, and clear 
 brown eyes, whose company was always wel- 
 come to him. ' Hullo, Lloyd ! you won't find 
 most people in the world as patient as I am — 
 coffee gone cold.' 
 
 'I don't exjDecfc to find many as dreamy,' 
 answered the other. 4 No, not that thing with 
 the carved back ; I broke it the last time I was 
 here,' he continued, pushing away the high- 
 backed chair, and flinging himself down on the 
 sofa. ' You are like Carlyle, you know — quite 
 superior to time and space, and all those world- 
 enveloping appearances.' 
 
 ' Space !' said the other, interrogatively, as 
 he looked, in his meditative way, at the
 
 MR. NOBODY. 213 
 
 smoke from his cigar. ■ I'm not a ghost yet.' 
 
 * Yes, you are — a ghost in a body. But you, 
 with your riches, can reduce to a minimum the 
 inconvenience of that body. You can travel 
 almost as quickly as Puck, if it so pleases 
 you ; whilst I, poor wretch, a younger son, 
 and not beiug afflicted with the chronic malady 
 of too many thousands, am doomed to be con- 
 tent with Lincoln's Inn, celibacy, and the Bar/ 
 
 'The Bar?' rejoined Sellwood, to whom the 
 information was new. ' So you have made up 
 your mind? It's a road that begins seduc- 
 tively, and ends — where?' 
 
 ' Well, it leads to most things.' 
 
 ' To those who win/ 
 
 Hitherto Charlie Lloyd, with all his expan- 
 siveness, had had a certain shyness about his 
 plans for the future, with which his friends did 
 not interfere. At one time he had planned to 
 remain at Oxford, but academic life began to 
 pall upon him, and he longed for a wider arena, 
 directly it was found that he had taken a de- 
 gree which was not so good as had been 
 expected.
 
 214 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ' I mean to win,' he responded, with his 
 brightest smile. ' Of course there'll be lots of 
 snubbings to which one has not been used, but 
 they are good for the moral constitution — and 
 there's a chance of being left by the receding 
 tide.' 
 
 * High and dry, like some of the rubbish left 
 behind from a wreck. No, that will be quite 
 impossible for you,' answered Sellwood, with a 
 shake of the head, and looking at him with 
 approving eyes. 
 
 ' Well, I must take my chance of it ; it's a 
 refuge for the destitute, the best I can get. 
 After all, it's the political life which has most 
 temptation for me.' 
 
 ' A future representative of your country,' 
 answered Godfrey, with a smile; 'you must 
 change your ideas a little before that time 
 comes.' 
 
 ' I must be a disciple of patience, to say the 
 least of it,' answered the other, with a sigh, 
 ' wedded to my ink-bottle and musty law- 
 books for the ' 
 
 4 Doubtful hope of becoming a Q.C.,' interrup-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 215 
 
 ted Sellwood, waking into life and throwing 
 away the end of his now finished cigar, ' oh, you 
 won't see much of the chambers in which you 
 will be supposed to spend your life — there will 
 be balls, and dinners, and conversaziones, or 
 whatever else you call them, and then you have 
 your eye upon politics. Good ! You will fight 
 your battles and succeed in them as you suc- 
 ceed in everything you take up. You have the 
 power of concentration — ay, and of fascination 
 too — the fates have denied them both to me. 
 It will be simply for you to go in and win in 
 literature and everything else, just as you have 
 won at the debates here in a certain sense — 
 though you have talked a lot of bosh — you were 
 made for success.'' 
 
 ' Stop, my good fellow — if it's the literature, 
 the cutting language, and anonymous vivi- 
 section of the review which is to deprive some 
 poor devil of an author of this night's rest, I 
 should say it was a precious deal more in your 
 line than mine.' 
 
 1 1 — I have made a mull of everything. My 
 " Greats " are sure to be mulled, and I spoilt the
 
 216 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 chances of our boat because I bad not the cou- 
 rage to say " no " about attempting both. No, 
 I am off at once. I feel half ashamed to show 
 my face.' 
 
 ' Don't you wait for Commem V 
 
 ' Why should I ? If the jokes were worth 
 anything — but they are sure to be stale as well 
 as noisy. It's not quite so bad as it used to be 
 when the noise was like the row in a theatre on 
 Boxing-night. But one can still read in the 
 newspapers about the ' man in the straw hat.' 
 They have established a precedent to let the fel- 
 lows make fools of themselves, and precedents 
 in my opinion are always a mistake.' 
 
 'Not always? answered Lloyd. In spite of 
 being impregnated with the young reforming 
 spirit which likes to sweep away old abuses and 
 to introduce anything new — speculating a little 
 too rashly and perhaps too familiarly on all 
 sorts of subjects hitherto supposed to be unas- 
 sailable — Charlie Lloyd had, as I have hinted 
 before, his own little reserves on which the 
 popular Iconoclasm was not to be exercised. * I 
 can't agree with you,' he continued, with his
 
 MR. NOBODY. 217 
 
 usual combativeness, springing to his feet as if 
 ready for a battle. ' Precedents are not always 
 a mistake. For instance, the law of primogeni- 
 ture is a capital one, though I would not stand 
 in my brother's shoes for something, I can 
 tell you.' 
 
 1 A good many other people would,' answered 
 Sellwood, who was too much out of spirits to 
 take up the glove which he knew had been flung 
 down to him for championship.' 
 
 1 They wouldn't if they knew all. Call a lord 
 free ? Why, he is a slave — the puppet of the 
 people — ten times less free than the peasant 
 who earns enough and no more for his daily 
 meals.' 
 
 Sellwood simply shrugged his shoulders at 
 this outburst, and lit another cigar, while his 
 friend — now standing on his feet with his 
 brown eyes sparkling and looking so much like 
 a young war-horse scenting the battle, that 
 Godfrey almost expected to see his ears go up 
 and his nostrils dilate — went on, as if expecting 
 to be contradicted. 
 
 1 Free ! Why, I'm the free one. I assure you
 
 218 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 I feel sometimes when I am with Newderry as 
 if I have an air of quite impertinent indepen- 
 dence. It is he who has to sacrifice himself 
 for the good of his country — his very name and 
 the way in which people look at him is an 
 infliction ' 
 
 1 Only to be borne by one of a great nature/ 
 said Sellwood, drily. 
 
 1 Ah, yes ; why, when they see us together, the 
 very cut of his clothes and the set of his neck- 
 tie become matters for criticism — he can hardly 
 ever look right, that's because they whisper, 
 Si Look at him, he's the lord." Would you expect 
 a lord to be short, or at all mean in appearance 1 
 The 6l ttoWoI say no, and condemn Newderry 
 accordingly. If the poor wretch is tired they 
 shake their heads and say " dissipated," while 
 as for me I'm let off lightly — " that's his brother, 
 you know, nothing." ' 
 
 ' You're always let off lightly.' 
 
 s I'm used to it, you see, from the time I used 
 to play football, and, not having enough weight 
 to be a " forward," learned to slip in between 
 the fellows' arms and legs like an eel. But
 
 MR. NOBODY. 219 
 
 between ourselves, you know, I expect they'll 
 alter a good deal of all this by-and-by. When 
 lords get sick of state and long for a seat in 
 the lower Parliament where they can express 
 themselves with better effect — it may be only a 
 feather, yet it shows ' 
 
 1 That a tedious parade of greatness begins to 
 pall on them V said Sell wood, interrogatively. 
 From long habit he had been accustomed to 
 finish young Lloyd's disjointed sentences, who, 
 also from habit, expected it of him. 
 
 Both men were well aware that this conver- 
 sation on an old topic which was pretty well 
 threadbare, was kept up with a show of excite- 
 ment on Charlie's part, purposely to ward off 
 another undebateable subject which was upper- 
 most in the minds of both. For as soon as 
 Lloyd had heard, a few weeks before, that Sell- 
 wood's father had settled in shire he had 
 
 invited himself, as a matter of course, to spend a 
 portion of his summer holiday at Broadmeads, 
 and had met with a discouragement. Now 
 without any vulgar fawning upon wealth, 
 Charlie Lloyd was unaffectedly fond of Sell-
 
 220 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 wood, and the latter was too good and useful a 
 friend to be easily lost sight of. 
 
 Yet Sellwood was now leaving Oxford for 
 good. He, on his own part, had declined 
 Lloyd's offers of hospitality with a decision 
 which could not fail to cause surprise; and now, 
 while etiquette forbade that Lloyd should again 
 introduce the subject of his own proffered visit 
 to Broadmeads, Sellwood remained stubbornly 
 silent. 
 
 The latter suffered acutely in maintaining a 
 silence which he knew would be misinterpreted. 
 For, if Lloyd cared for him, he cared ten times 
 more for Lloyd ; his being one of those deep- 
 hearted, sensitive natures, whose loyalty is un- 
 obtrusive and whose love was 'passing the 
 love' of — well, at any rate, of some women. No 
 sour envy had been allowed to mar the good- 
 will which Godfrey had ever felt for his more 
 popular and prosperous friend. To part from 
 him would be one of the keenest trials of his 
 life. If the two friends were to be torn apart, 
 it was Sellwood's nature and not Lloyd's which 
 would be left bleeding at the pith. And yet,
 
 MR. NOBODY. 221 
 
 when Charlie Lloyd broke off in his rattling 
 speech, there was an awkward pause for a min- 
 ute. In that minute Sellwood had for the last 
 time turned it over iu his mind and decided — 
 he could not ask Lloyd to come to Broadmeads 
 — he could not introduce him to his father. 
 
 * What a strange and yet universal law it 
 seems, that other people's lots in life always 
 appear to us better than our own,' he said, a 
 little wearily, by way of breaking the silence. 
 1 This rank, you think, and these vested inter- 
 ests — with which I cannot say I sympathise — 
 bring their own curse. Very likely, but how much 
 greater is the curse of being a sort of social 
 pariah. Do not think I am not proud of the 
 fact that no blood but that of the people runs in 
 my veins. I have often said so, but to have no 
 one belonging to one with whom one can ' 
 
 It was like himself to stammer a little, but 
 unlike himself to leave his sentence in his turn 
 unfinished ; probably to regret that he had 
 commenced it. Lloyd gave him a rapid glance, 
 which he immediately regretted, as the colour 
 sprang to the Saxon face, and spread to the
 
 222 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 roots of the fair hair, though Sellwood still pre- 
 served his meditative attitude. 
 
 ' Surely you would never misunderstand me 
 like that,' flashed out the quick-spoken Charlie, 
 — with about as much thought as when he had 
 ventured a celebrated simile concerning the 
 'pendulum of liberty going jog-trot on the 
 plains of time' — ' We've been too close friends, 
 you and I, for our friendship to be allowed to — ' 
 
 'Allowed to what?' asked Sellwood, with his 
 brightest smile, whilst Charlie, unassisted, mut- 
 tered something about the ' absurdity of being 
 influenced by a hair's breadth of difference here 
 and there in social distinctions.' 
 
 f Getting to your weights and pendulums 
 once more V asked Godfrey. 'Are you going 
 to tell me again " You are one of those people 
 who walk through life on a ladder of paradox," 
 or "You and I are like two mill-stones, grinding 
 one another away till we become like Kilkenny 
 cats"?' 
 
 And both men were not sorry to break out 
 into one of those hearty laughs which made the 
 parting between them easier.
 
 223 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Meanwhile it could not be said that matters 
 went on smoothly between the owners of Broad- 
 meads and Rashleigh Park. 
 
 1 They are neighbours,' said the Torringmoor 
 people, ' but so uncongenial.' 
 
 Sir Ralph was low-spirited and wretched : 
 the wrinkles began to show deeply on his 
 pallid face. Other men, less fastidious, might 
 have fonnd some way of wriggling out of the 
 network with which he had been so skilfully 
 surrounded, but the baronet was too honourable 
 about debt to avail himself of the numerous 
 plans for evading his increasing difficulties which 
 modern subtlety might have suggested. Having
 
 224 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 a conscience which would reproach him for 
 devising means of escape of which other men 
 would not have been ashamed, he tried to think 
 of it as a morbid thing which had done him an 
 ill turn. But the conscience stood firmly in 
 spite of his efforts to be free to it, and he could 
 only vent his vexation on those around him. 
 Misfortune had been to Sir Ralph no sweetener 
 of the temper. He had passed through much 
 suffering in his life, and the suffering had been 
 all the more terrible because it had been quiet, 
 but it had left its marks on him nevertheless. 
 
 He showed these marks more than usual on 
 one evening towards the end of May, when he 
 was sitting alone in his study with a pile of 
 papers before him, and with a very traceable 
 likeness to some of his ancestors whose portraits 
 decorated the walls of the room, aud who seem- 
 ed to stare at him with surprise and dis- 
 approval. 
 
 The impossibility of spending any extra 
 shillings on keeping up the necessary repairs 
 of the house was noticeable from the state of 
 those paintings, as well as that of the tapestry-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 225 
 
 covered arm-chair on which Sir Ralph was 
 reclining, and which bore many signs of the 
 depredations of moths, the horsehair protrud- 
 ing unpleasantly in several places. The por- 
 traits were cracked and faded, displaying the 
 canvas here and there. Some of the worthies 
 had received injuries to their noses, and others 
 to their eyes ; but all stared, and some smiled 
 with cold equanimity. The sadness and soli- 
 tude of the night, the dull light of the wax 
 candles which were burning low in their sockets, 
 and the funereal company of his ancestors_, were 
 overcoming Sir Ralph with the melancholy 
 which had been too constantly his companion 
 of late — when he gave a scarcely perceptible 
 start. He was too accustomed to his niece's 
 noiseless tread to be much surprised when he 
 saw that Vere was standing near him. She 
 often glided into the room with a determina- 
 tion to resist his cynicism, though he sometimes 
 resented her intrusion. 
 
 1 Uncle, it is late, and you are bothering 
 yourself again about those stupid letters,' she 
 said, trying to speak merrily, but with a little 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 catch in her breath which proved that the effort 
 of intruding upon his privacy had cost her 
 something. 
 
 Hers was not one of those weak natures 
 which acquiesce in all that is arranged for them. 
 On the contrary, an energy which was uncon- 
 querable, and a will which was capable of 
 endurance, might have been discerned by a 
 skilled physiognomist in her firm lips and 
 steadfast eyes. The face, if it was not exactly 
 bright, because it had a look of care in it 
 scarcely natural for one so young, was soft- 
 ened by an expression of pitying tenderness, as 
 she stood gazing down upon him with her fair 
 hair thrown into vivid relief by the dark oak 
 panelling of the old room. She could deny 
 herself willingly for those whom she loved, 
 though subjection of a slavish sort would have 
 been impossible to her. 
 
 But it was characteristic of Sir Ralph, and in 
 keeping with his chronic state of petulant dis- 
 satisfaction, that he not only noticed with a 
 pang of disapproval the dark-stuff dress trimmed
 
 MR. NOBODY. 227 
 
 with rusty crape, when he would have liked to 
 see folds of some delicate muslin, just open to 
 display the white gleaming of her neck ; but 
 that he told himself the bright flush which went 
 and came with the varying emotions of the 
 speaker, and the unusual lustre of the blue 
 
 eyes, were due to the shire climate — an 
 
 evanescent lustre of flesh and blood, a mere 
 glory of colour for which a skilful judge would 
 prophesy a very limited duration. 
 
 ' She will be nothing to look at in a few 
 years' time, and I cannot afford to bring her 
 out properly. They will say that I neglected 
 poor Richard's child,' he was thinking to him- 
 self, as he said aloud, a little querulously, 
 
 ' How often have I asked you to dress your- 
 self more prettily? The very servants must 
 blame me, when they see you going about like 
 that,' 
 
 Another girl, proud as himself, might have 
 resented the speech. For she knew that he 
 knew, as well as she knew herself, that he had 
 supplied her with no pin-money for pretty 
 
 Q2
 
 228 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 evening toilettes, and that it was only owing 
 to the most dexterous management of domestic 
 details that she was able to keep her little 
 cousin tidy, and supply the wages for the ser- 
 vants. 
 
 It was only with a deeper flush and with 
 a tender, little, protective air, gracious all the 
 more because she was homely in her dignity, 
 that she answered him, 
 
 ' We are in mourning, you know.' 
 
 * You are in mourning, but you need not be 
 shabby; there is nothing left for you poor 
 children but the scrag-ends, instead of meat.' 
 
 He covered his face with his hand. She did 
 not answer, but drew a chair close to his. She 
 had heard that some people loved each other so 
 well that to be near each other was enough ; 
 their love was of the trusting kind, they did 
 not need to speak. And there was a great 
 yearning for love in the heart of this orphan 
 girl, shut out by her poverty and the circum- 
 stances of her life from the society which her 
 uncle considered to be suitable for one of her 
 birth, and equally debarred from making friend-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 229 
 
 ships with those whom he supposed to be 
 beneath her. 
 
 e You ought to be in bed,' he said, after a 
 pause. 
 
 1 1 thought,' she answered, timorously, ' that 
 perhaps I could help you V 
 
 ' About what V (a little sharply) 
 
 ' About those — letters.' 
 
 1 Have I not told you again and again that 
 women have nothing to do with business V 
 
 'But you know what the doctors say, and, 
 if your heart is not strong, you ought not sure- 
 ly to be sitting up and worrying yourself in this 
 way.' 
 
 ' Who dares to say I worry ? Is it likely 
 that I would degrade myself to be worried — 
 actually worried — by the little gnat-like stings 
 of that pettifogging creature who has come to 
 live near us ? They say he is reserved — reserved 
 indeed — when he is always troubling me with 
 his vulgar, interfering letters. He knows that 
 I do not keep an agent, and so he takes ad- 
 vantage to write like one of those people who 
 have risen and who do not know the manners of
 
 230 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 gentlemen. Our estates, forsooth, join each 
 other, and he has unlimited resources at his 
 command. So at one time he complains of 
 that tower in our grounds, because, forsooth, 
 it obstructs his view ; at another he advises me 
 to thin my timber, because it interferes with a 
 free current of air so that it cannot be good for 
 myself; and at another it is that a pond should 
 be drained, and then he talks nonsense about 
 sanitary commissioners. The fussy, restless 
 interference of these people who are nobodies, 
 just because they happen to have made a little 
 money ! There — I will show you my answers, 
 if you care to look at them — I have kept copies,' 
 and he pushed them before her. 
 
 She read, 
 
 4 It is nonsense to suppose that you must build 
 up a high wall, because our old summer-house 
 — called the Tower — overlooks your grounds. 
 The Tower is rarely used and has stood there 
 for more than a hundred years. If you were 
 to consult the antiquarians, you would hear that 
 some of them think its foundations date from 
 the seventeenth century. It would be madness
 
 MR. NOBODY. 231 
 
 to pull it down, while if you build a wall it 
 will be greater folly to shut out my air aud im- 
 pede my view.' 
 
 And again, 
 
 ' I can by no means agree with you as to 
 the propriety of denying the people the right of 
 way, which they have had ever since I can re- 
 member, in a footpath through the park. We 
 Kashleighs have always prided ourselves on con- 
 ceding these privileges to the poor. It is not 
 my fault that the increasing numbers on the 
 estate have to toil in a state of squalor from 
 year to year, since these have no longer the 
 monopoly of poverty. But while many of 
 their wants might be neutralised by prompt 
 attention on the part of a really rich man like 
 yourself, — the actual owner of a large part of 
 the property — I consider it a piece of selfish 
 interference to deny the poor a right which 
 they have always had/ 
 
 ' Oh, uncle, I don't think that will exactly do,' 
 remonstrated Yere, ' do you think it wise to 
 irritate him like that V 
 
 1 He irritates me,' said Sir Ralph, angrily.
 
 232 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 4 These nonsensical, caddish nouveaux-riches are 
 always interfering with that u longing for con- 
 firmed tranquillity " which, if you had come to 
 my age, child, you would " know," as Words- 
 worth said, "to be one of the inherent wants 
 of humanity." ' 
 
 An outsider would have seen the humorous 
 side in the disputes which were ever cropping 
 up between the combatants, with the victory 
 remaining undecided. More than once the two 
 neighbours had met in their walks through the 
 village with no further result than the meeting 
 of two evenly-matched dogs who growl, show 
 their teeth, and after all turn tail without 
 coming to actual encounter. 
 
 But Vere looked sufficiently grave as she 
 glanced at the correspondence which had been 
 a fruitful source of sleepless nights to her irri- 
 tated uncle. 
 
 ' Fancy the impudence of a fellow,' he 
 continued, ' who could write me such a thing 
 as this, " The trees want thinning on your 
 grounds — the fir-walk especially is in a very 
 bad state." And when I answer, " Thanks, but
 
 MR. NOBODY. 233 
 
 my fir-walk pleases me/' has the positive in- 
 solence to write again, " If yon change your 
 mind, and would like to sell your timber, I will 
 offer you a good price for it." ' 
 
 1 Perhaps he knows — ' began Vere, and then 
 faltered, fearing the expression on her uncle's 
 face, and unable to finish her speech. 
 
 ' Perhaps he knows F thundered Sir Ralph. 
 * If he does, he has no right to brag about it. 
 Depend upon it I know my " Evelyn " on trees 
 fifty times better than he with his vulgar 
 modern theories. I thought you had more 
 spirit, that yon resented as much as I do the 
 change in the old country when a beggar's son 
 can be a millionaire and a good old family 
 reduced to beggary. How can you twit me 
 with " perhaps he knows V ' 
 
 And he, who had been pacing about the room 
 restlessly, while his niece looked at the letters, 
 now sat down again hopelessly, and covered 
 his face with his hands. 
 
 There was nothing more to be done, as Vere 
 knew from sad experience, when once she had 
 blundered on an unfortunate speech. The same
 
 234 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 experience had taught her to avoid altercation, 
 and the unfortunate uncle was positively re- 
 lieved when, on changing his attitude a few 
 minutes afterwards, he found that he 'was 
 alone. 
 
 1 She has obeyed me, and gone to bed,' he 
 said to himself. ' She is much more obedient 
 than my own child. I have not much to com- 
 plain of.' 
 
 And then — though the figures were literally 
 dancing before his eyes — he sat down again to 
 his account-book, telling himself that it was his 
 increasing duty to place his affairs before him- 
 self without reserve. 
 
 It was past one o'clock when he spread another 
 note out before his tired eyes in the hand- 
 writing which was so odious to him, and which 
 had been received but the day before from his 
 neighbour. It convinced him that the man, who 
 seemed to have eyes as sharp and arms as far- 
 reaching as the octopus, was aware of a further 
 loss which had happened to him lately — a 
 disaster which he had supposed to be known 
 only to himself.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 235 
 
 'I wonder bow he, who enjoys a reputation 
 of omnipotence, and who could not endure the 
 slightest reverse, would like to have this sort of 
 patronising letter himself,' he said, shrugging 
 his shoulders. Yet the note might have seemed 
 a kind one to outsiders who knew nothing of 
 the curious relations between the two men. 
 
 It closed with offering the Baronet a loan of 
 ten thousand pounds, if be wished to recoup 
 himself for his loss, and was signed, as it seemed 
 to him. in mockery, 
 
 'I have the honour to be, your obedient 
 servant, Reuben Sellwood.' 
 
 Sir Ralph felt a shiver down his back as he 
 read the words and the signature. Destiny 
 seemed to be against him. He looked round 
 the room, with which he had been so familiarly 
 acquainted since his boyhood, with the unsym- 
 pathetic ancestors staring down at him, and 
 felt as if he were one of those victims exposed 
 to a peculiar form of torture in the middle ages. 
 For the walls seemed to be slowly advancing 
 and closing in upon him, the floor appeared to 
 be rising, and the ceiling, sinking. He would
 
 236 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 soon be crushed between the complex machinery 
 which had been devised to grind him to powder. 
 If he accepted this loan, he would then be more 
 fully than ever in the power of an upstart 
 whom he hated. If he did not accept, he would 
 be in his power still, and some people might 
 consider his refusal to be graceless. 
 
 The painful emotions of pride and agony 
 had never been contending more strongly in 
 his heart than when he seized the pen, and 
 humiliated himself by sa}'ing what was not 
 true, that he was much obliged for the offer, 
 and asking to be given a few days for reflec- 
 tion before he availed himself of it.
 
 237 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Godfrey shirked ' Commemoration,' as he had 
 intended, and returned to Broadmeads by the 
 end of May. 
 
 Had the lad been returning from South 
 Africa, his father could not have made more 
 pompous preparations to receive him ; but, in 
 truth, South Africa or the North Pole would 
 have been all the same to Reuben Sellwood. 
 He had been rather proud than otherwise when 
 his son had shown the slightest tendency to- 
 wards extravagance. 
 
 This had been all very well at a distance. 
 It was years since the father and the son had 
 met, the latter spending his holidays on the
 
 238 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 Continent, and the former supplying him with 
 lavish money for his travelling expenses, 
 like a King Log from the other side of the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 Godfrey knew little more of his father than 
 if he had been King Log. His childhood still 
 haunted him with a number of shadowy recol- 
 lections, amongst which he himself — a very 
 white and solemn child with a good deal of 
 individuality and embryonic philosophy — had 
 seemed to creep, a pale little figure, among the 
 shadows. 
 
 Few children had lived in a more sunless 
 atmosphere. And yet there had been a sort 
 of uncompromising down-rightness about the 
 boy which made him long to get to the heart 
 of things. A longing which was rather in- 
 creased than otherwise, when, as Reuben sar- 
 castically expressed it, the lad had taken ' intel- 
 lectual measles.' Then it was that he found he 
 had nothing in common with the reserved, 
 defiant man, who came across the seas to 
 visit him once when he was at school, who
 
 MR. NOBODY. 239 
 
 seemed to have lapsed into an indifference, 
 as bad as the worst forms of cynicism. God- 
 frey conld not know that the indifference 
 was studied; he was only too well aware 
 that his father would try to crush his own in- 
 quiring spirit, and that he might as well keep 
 to himself all questions which he was ready to 
 venture respecting his birth-place, and the 
 memories which they might be supposed to 
 share in common. 
 
 The two met as if they had been strangers 
 in the new house at Broadmeads on an evening 
 late in May. A dispassionate spectator might 
 have discerned something pathetic in the re- 
 strained feeling on either side which manifested 
 itself in the deferential manner of the son, and 
 in the little expressions which escaped him 
 betraying the tenor of his thoughts, and mak- 
 ing his father conclude that the lad was fear- 
 fully sensitive, just like his mother. Reuben 
 was rather pleased to observe this trait of 
 character, which proved to him that he possess- 
 ed a piece of Parian marble which would re-
 
 240 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 quire more gentle handling than usual, and 
 was quite unconscious that he himself was 
 trembling with some strange repressed feeling, 
 and was scarcely able to articulate at times from 
 excitement. Unknown to himself, he had been 
 queerly anxious about the appearance of his 
 ' poet.' By the light of the flaring gas, which 
 Godfrey mentally likened to that of a first-class 
 waiting-room at a railway station, Reuben saw 
 a tall young fellow with sloping shoulders, a 
 little pale but with features which had been 
 pronounced good by the sex that ought to 
 know, with a build which was slender and mus- 
 cular, brilliant eyes, and a maturity of fore- 
 head which was startling in one so young. He 
 was scarcely familiar with the type, but he 
 looked at him with pride; while the young man 
 himself was relieved to find that his father 
 was not, as he had supposed, vulgar by nature, 
 but was evidently possessed of a good deal of 
 character, 
 
 Godfrey was up betimes on the following 
 morning. He escaped from the brand-new 
 house, with the colours which set his teeth on
 
 MR. NOBODY. 241 
 
 edge, and even from the pictures -which his 
 father had selected, to watch the promise of 
 cloudless splendour in the early dawn, and to 
 console himself for a somewhat sleepless night 
 by listening to the gush of bird-music which 
 filled the pauses of his thoughts, as the first 
 sun-shafts glanced down on the slopes and 
 lawns of freshest grass. 
 
 Even then, it was not the newly planted 
 evergreens which attracted him, nor the green- 
 houses, which were full of pyramids of rose- 
 hued azaleas. Instinctively he bent his steps 
 to the oldest part of the park — that which had 
 not been newly planted, but was a part of the 
 property which had originally belonged to the 
 Rashleighs. He had heard nothing of the 
 story, but his fastidious taste was gratified by 
 the grey trunks of the old oak-trees, and the 
 moss-stained boles of the beeches with glimpses 
 between them of far-off reaches of the river. 
 Beyond the river was the purple moorland 
 melting away into the distance, and from an 
 old gate which led away from his father's 
 grounds, could be seen the roofs of cottages 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 242 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 and orchards with clustering trees still bearing 
 here and there traces of lingering blossom. 
 Something of easy grace in his son's attitude 
 caught Reuben's eye, as he hurried up to him, 
 and saw him leauing against the gate. 
 
 'Well?' he said to him, with a well pleased 
 smile. 'Pleased with the prospect ? I thought 
 as much. By-and-by you will be monarch 
 of all you survey.' 
 
 He forgot himself a little, and rubbed his 
 hands. Something in the action, as well as the 
 quotation which betrayed the direction of his 
 father's thoughts, jarred on the young mau's 
 mood. He shifted his attitude a little im- 
 patiently, and made no longer an attractive 
 foreground to the picture, as he answered, 
 
 'Does it not strike you that we can ad- 
 mire things just as well when we don't pos- 
 sess them? It is surely a poverty-stricken 
 and a selfish spirit, which wo aid lead us to 
 appreciate because we can appropriate V 
 
 He regretted the speech as soon as it was 
 uttered, remembering how, in his childhood, his 
 father had never been contradicted, but had'
 
 MR. NOBODY. 243 
 
 been absolute master in bis mother's eyes, just 
 as if they had lived in feudal times. The re- 
 collection gave him a pang, when he recalled 
 the figure of his gentle mother who had been 
 apparentely a refined woman, but who had 
 always contented herself with the secondary 
 part, watching carefully for her husband's 
 meaning, glossing over his inaccuracies of 
 speech, and endeavouring so to lead up to his 
 best effects that it seemed to Reuben himself 
 as if he had said a fine thing when he had 
 only uttered some bald truism. The remem- 
 brance of the surprising assistance which 
 could be given by a sj'mpathetic wife in 
 doing nothing to irritate an overbearing man, 
 softened Godfrey a little. For his mother's 
 sake he would not wrangle more than he 
 could help over his father's sayings. He would 
 look upon him as much as possible as a dia- 
 mond, though a rough one, and try to ignore 
 the fact that he and his father were opposed 
 to each other in traditions, ideas, religion — 
 everything. 
 
 'I did not mean/ he began, apologetically, 
 
 r2
 
 244 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 f that it is not a fine thing for a man by his own 
 nervous energy to be able to push on, and 
 make the best of every opportunity. In that 
 sense great wealth may represent great labours 
 and achievements — of course it is in the highest 
 degree honourable.' 
 
 4 Eh !' said Reuben, to whom these niceties 
 of expression were almost as incomprehensible 
 as if he had been physically deaf — so near is 
 moral deafness to physical — but who had been 
 listening to his son's explanation as if he were 
 hearing some air at the opera. 'I didn't think 
 you could be such a fool as not to appreciate it. 
 Ah ! all the good things in life come to the 
 young people in the present day. It is the 
 parents who slave, who are ready to cut them- 
 selves up into pieces to please their offspring, 
 and after all — well, everything is taken without 
 a thauk-you.' 
 
 Hitherto, the father and the son had so little 
 understood each other that there had been a 
 sort of fear — unacknowledged on the part of 
 Reuben — always between them. 
 
 The orthography of the father's letters had
 
 MR. NOBODY. 245 
 
 been somewhat extraordinary. And now that 
 he counted on displaying the fields and the 
 timber which he had always coveted to his son, 
 he was conscious of being constrained and un- 
 comfortable. He had been revolving many- 
 thoughts — very earthy and entirely unsenti- 
 mental — in his head, and felt that now he had 
 broken ground it would be his duty to go 
 through with them. He had not been able to 
 shake off his reserve for many a long day, and 
 it would be something to be able to throw off 
 the mask a little in the presence of his own 
 flesh and blood. His spirits were scarcely equal 
 to the occasion, and yet he administered a 
 thumping blow in the mid-chest to his son, at 
 which Godfrey did not stagger, though he 
 looked as if he could have dispensed with it. 
 
 * Yes, it'll all belong to you,' he said, ' thanks 
 to what I have done for you — a good part of 
 the moor, with the cottages as far as you can 
 see — you can cut down the trees if you like ; 
 you can leave your mark on it, anyhow.' 
 
 There was an odd expression in the young 
 man's face as he looked curiously at his father,
 
 246 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 with a significantly humorous curl of the some- 
 what too flexuous lips. 
 
 'I wonder where the right ends? If I were 
 to burn down the cottages, for instance, I sup- 
 pose it would not exactly be legal V 
 
 Again Reuben did not follow him. He was 
 thinking, 
 
 * What a good thiug it is that he should take 
 to early-rising, a virtue,' — as he added to him- 
 self — ' in which many of those Oxford chaps are 
 wretchedly deficient.' 
 
 But Godfrey's spirits sank as his father's rose, 
 and on the following morning his usual languor 
 had gained on him. He had not sufficient 
 energy to turn out of bed. Nature's normal 
 school of sentiment, the family, seemed to be, 
 like other things, a failure. It is a consequence 
 of our rapid civilization that the younger gene- 
 ration should in many cases outstep the elder, 
 and that the sons should be keenly conscious of 
 the ignorance of the fathers. And it is probably 
 only where a son is sensitive that such a con- 
 sequence should seem to take the bloom off the 
 flowers of life.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 247 
 
 The table was heaped with dainties, and 
 adorned with the brightest silver and the finest 
 linen, when Godfrey made his appearance late 
 at the breakfast-table the next morning. But, 
 with a keen sense of what pleased the lad, 
 Reuben saw that his eyes were directed to a 
 bunch of hothouse flowers whose tender, waxen 
 petals adorned a crystal vase in the centre of 
 the table. 
 
 ' Ah, that's somethiug better than picking a 
 lot of rubbish out of the hedges as most folks is 
 obliged to do,' said Reuben, sharply. And again 
 he was conscious that he had managed to touch 
 some wrong chord. 
 
 It was probably his state of exhilaration 
 which accounted for the lapse in his grammar — 
 an unusual one with Reuben, who generally 
 kept too strict a watch over himself to be guilty 
 of any such solecism. He coughed as if he were 
 aware of the mistake directly he uttered it, and 
 Godfrey hated himself for colouring to the 
 roots of his hair, and becoming suddenly un- 
 comfortably conscious of the presence of two 
 tall footmen who handed the breakfast dishes,
 
 248 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 and who seemed to him most unnecessary ap- 
 pendages to the formality of the meal. 
 
 ' Thanks, I prefer something simpler,' he 
 said, as he declined an elaborate dish prepared by 
 the French cook. ' They are pretty enough,' 
 he said a little coldly, to his father in the same 
 breath, ' but I must say I like the plain things. 
 I don't call them rubbish.' 
 
 'As you like a plain egg,' said Reuben, trying 
 to laugh, 'I like it myself.' 
 
 ' Ah, that's the bore of all these luxuries — we 
 cease to relish them,' muttered Godfrey. 
 
 The big room, which was far too big for two 
 men to take their meals in, was a nuisance to 
 him as the rich food was, which Reubeu disliked 
 himself, but had had prepared to suit the dainty 
 appetite of his son. Neither could Godfrey 
 praise the pictures which his father had pur- 
 chased at great cost. The fault might be 
 in the purchaser, but the ambitious historical 
 canvases themselves seemed to prove to the 
 young man how sadly we as a nation had 
 fallen frqm pictorial art of the highest kind, 
 stringing up our taste to concert pitch, and too
 
 MB. NOBODY. 249 
 
 often souDdiDg the keynote while we are 
 unable to get at the tune. 
 
 With the furniture it fared no better, and 
 here Godfrey was outspoken. 
 
 1 1 hate machine-made work. Symmetry, yes, 
 but manufacture of things of this sort is de- 
 structive — fatal to art. I would give more for 
 a little bit of work, real and true like it was in 
 the good old times, coming out of the carver's 
 brain.' 
 
 Reuben began to feel that matters were again 
 going wrong between them. 
 
 1 You can't make men all o' one build and 
 height,' he tried to say, reassuringly, to himself. 
 He reflected that he could part with the furni- 
 ture and purchase new, and that he had known 
 it was not f properly faded-like ' all along, 
 whilst his son was brooding over the hideous 
 arsenic greeas and magenta dyes, and the 
 wretched decorative sham art of the richer mid- 
 dle class. 
 
 What was the matter? Reuben Sellwood 
 did not exactly know. And Godfrey, who had 
 often lamented his loneliness and his want of
 
 250 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 any near relations, reproached himself for not 
 taking everything in belter part. 
 
 It was not his fault that he was artistic, like 
 ing everything that was pleasing to the moral 
 rather than the physical palate, and that he 
 had an involuntary recoil from all that was 
 coarse and trifling. His artistic nature could 
 find plenty of food in studying the moors, 
 the river, and the trees. He was easily dis- 
 gusted at his own amateur efforts in oil or 
 water-colour, and concluded that he had not 
 been endowed with any creative power. But 
 this morning, partly from the want of any- 
 thing better to do, and partly from the revul- 
 sion of feeling which had made him shrink 
 from the unspeakable ugliness of the few 
 gaudy landscapes which had been painted ex- 
 pressly to meet the demand of cotton-spinners 
 at an English manufacturing town, he drew his 
 sketch-book out of his pocket and commenced 
 jotting down pencil notes. 
 
 So his father found him a few hours after- 
 wards, with his dreamy eyes turned towards the
 
 MR. NOBODY. 251 
 
 shadowy moor, just where the grey turrets of 
 the old Hall could be seen against the softer 
 grey sky. towering over the green woods which 
 nestled beneath it. 
 
 'It is beautiful.' said the young man, desist- 
 ing from his task, bat too intent upon the view 
 to notice the slight shadow which flitted across 
 Eeuben's face. 
 
 ' What is beautiful V asked the elder man, a 
 little grudgingly, 
 
 'Why, the old Hall, with its picturesque tur- 
 rets, and iis curious mixture of architecture — in 
 every way delightful. Who would think that 
 there could be anything so extraordinarily beau- 
 tiful in the process of decay, in the many-co- 
 loured mosses, aud the varying tints on those 
 walls which are mouldering with age.' 
 
 'Ah, you would like to possess it,?' 
 
 The light, which had been growing brighter in 
 the young man's face, faded a little as he con- 
 tinued. 
 
 6 1 can admire without possessing. The 
 place must be full of memories. Think of the
 
 252 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 many who must have lived and died in 
 
 it; 
 
 ' A queer reason for liking it. I should like 
 the doghole to belong to you, and then, when 
 it got too narrow for you, I would have you 
 build on it a palace that should rival any place 
 in New York. 1 hate the place,' Reuben con- 
 tinued, thinking of the spindle-legged tables, 
 the worm-eaten oak furniture, and the moth- 
 riddled tapestry, which he had despised as 
 only fit for an old Jew shop on one occasion 
 when he had been admitted to write a business 
 message when the master of Rashleigh had not 
 been at home. 
 
 'Well, tastes differ, you see, and, as I am 
 never likely to possess it, we needn't quarrel 
 over it. To my mind, there is something- 
 stately in old age,' continued the young man, 
 warming to his topic, and making up his mind 
 not to let his father's odd ways seem repug- 
 nant to him, and never to be repelled by his 
 strange words. l Now, if there is any sort of 
 fetishism which / could tolerate, it would be 
 the worship of antiquities. What sort of people
 
 MR. NOBODY. 253 
 
 live in that house 1 Couldn't we get to know 
 them? Are they as antique as their belongings?' 
 
 He looked more like the radiant young 
 Apollo which his father wished him to resemble 
 than he had looked at all since he came to 
 Broadroeads as he asked the question, with fun 
 dancing in his eyes. 
 
 'What sort of people?' repeated Reuben, 
 with one of those sudden flashes of passion 
 which proved a safety-valve for the pent-up 
 forces within him. ' The man who owns it is 
 a contemptible fool.' 
 
 Godfrey arched his brows. 
 
 'Then of course you don't know him. — That 
 would be hardly a kind or flattering way in 
 Avhich to speak of a friend,' he added, beneath 
 his breath, deciding that his father might be 
 classified amongst the professors of strong 
 language. 
 
 4 1 know him I Ah ! just for my own conveni- 
 ence,' answered Reuben, as his son stood 
 motionless and perplexed. 'It is to serve my 
 own purposes that I know him.' 
 
 If Reuben's lips were compressed ironically,
 
 254 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 and if he indulged in a sarcastic smile, it was 
 an aside to himself. The moustache disguised 
 the mouth, but the look on the upper part of 
 the man's face disconcerted his son. It was as 
 if he strove for speech as he laid his hand on 
 his son's arm, and said at last, as the words 
 came slowly. 
 
 1 1 will tell you a secret ; do not talk about it 
 — though, if things go on as they are, it will 
 pretty soon be an open secret,' added Reuben, 
 his voice shaken with some emotion which 
 seemed to be difficult to control. ' You admire 
 the place — in time it will be yours.' 
 
 ' Good heavens ! does there happen to be 
 some curse about me that, immediately I look 
 at anything. I must be told it is mine?' thought 
 Godfrey, half fearful of the detaining arm, the 
 eyes that glittered strangely as they looked 
 into his face, and the breath, ordinarily so 
 quiet, which now came in quick gasps. Aloud 
 he said, 
 
 ' You must be joking. Do you think I have 
 the evil eye, that I covet everything? I was 
 only admiring the colours of the old building,
 
 MR. NOBODY. 255 
 
 which time aud weather seem to have arranged 
 with about as much intention as a bird has 
 when it chooses the mosses for its nest. God 
 forbid that I or anyone should wish to pilfer 
 the nest.' 
 
 So determined was he to treat the whole 
 thing as a delusion, that Reuben — if he had 
 been ready with a confidence — drew again into 
 his shell. 
 
 ' We resemble each other very little,' mur- 
 mured the older man, in disappointment, as he 
 took the younger one to look at the different 
 points of interest in his grounds. 
 
 1 It is very big, certainly ; but that part of it 
 is too new. I like things a little untidy, over- 
 grown — don't you think so V 
 
 1 Newness is like youth, my boy — a fault that's 
 mended in time.' 
 
 "That's true; but there is the lake, with 
 the overhanging trees, where the wild-flowers 
 grow. I call that really beautiful,' answered 
 Godfrey, cordially. 
 
 ' The lake— it is a fever-bed. I mean to have 
 it drained.'
 
 256 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 'Really! It does Dot look as if there was 
 anything malarious about it.' 
 
 'It used to belong to the Rashleighs, with a 
 ghost's walk, and all the rest of it, and is in a 
 wretched state, like everything that belonged 
 to them. Cleared out it must be, and as quick- 
 ly as possible. I mean to have a landscape 
 gardener down from Loudon. A large sheet 
 o' clear water, rockeries, and asphalt e.' 
 
 ' Do you mean to say that you would do away 
 with the bulrushes and forget-me-nots, and all 
 those charming grasses?' 
 
 ' What, the weeds !' cried Reuben in utter as- 
 tonishment. ' In the conservatory you can have 
 fine growths of ' 
 
 *I know — of all sorts of hothouse beauties, 
 from the azalea to the rarest orchis, and they 
 are fine ones/ said Godfrey a little sadly, ' they 
 do to look at in a drawing-room or under glass, 
 but do you really think I care for those 
 cultivated beauties so much as for a tangled 
 growth of the good old English wild-flowers? 
 Father, you must get it out of your head that 
 I am at all ambitious. If the doctors tell you
 
 MR. NOBODY. 257 
 
 to drain the lake, do so if necessary, but for 
 my sake you need not change it. I like it 
 better as it is. And I would respect the feel- 
 ings of the Rashleighs. It is easier to demo- 
 lish a family ghost than to restore it.' 
 
 Again Reuben bit his lip. 
 
 1 Acknowledge,' he said, 4 that, after all I have 
 done for you, you only despise me for it, and 
 look down upon my way o' doing it.' 
 
 6 On the contrary, I try to understand what 
 you like." 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 258 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LOVE founded on duty — on the natural obliga- 
 tions arising out of the ties of blood and of 
 nature — is not for that reason less necessary to 
 be based on real sympathy and regard. It is a 
 mockery to wear a fair outside show to meet 
 the claims of a social ritual, while the inner har- 
 mony of the affections is wanting. 
 
 Godfrey found himself thinking something 
 of this kind when the question occurred to him 
 day after day of how it would be possible for 
 him to make his father understand the sort of 
 life which it seemed to him would be tolerable 
 at Broadmeads. Gifted with a strong religious 
 tendency, so that actual negation was distasteful 
 to him, the lad found himself constantly moved
 
 MR. NOBODY. 259 
 
 to indignation, bordering on disgust, by the 
 expressions of cynicism which seemed to him 
 little less than blasphemous. There were 
 utterances to which Reuben gave vent only in 
 the presence of his son. How could Godfrey 
 tell his father that he saw and resented the 
 satiric intention with which these speeches were 
 barbed, and that it semed to him occasionally 
 as if the words betrayed inconceivable heart- 
 lessness? And how could Reuben tell God- 
 frey that he considered his self-communings to 
 be ridiculous, and that his son's meaningless 
 scruples roused his risibility. 
 
 The men were so divided from each other 
 in spirit that an outsider might have indulged 
 in hilarity at the absurdity, and the utter hope- 
 lessness of their attempting to understand one 
 another. Reuben had at times a faint and 
 somewhat sorrowful perception of the fact 
 that there was a far-away look in his son's 
 eyes, as if he were miles away from him. For 
 there were a thousand ideas and sensations 
 familiar to Godfrey at which Reuben would 
 have sneered had he attempted to speak of them. 
 
 s2
 
 260 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 As to the older man's own religion, Fichte 
 might have said of it, das gar nicht existirte. 
 But though he prided himself on the possession 
 of a certain number of ideas to which he ad- 
 hered with the tenacity of a genius in business — 
 driven like hard nails into his granite head — 
 he was secretly pleased to feel himself eclipsed 
 by the more brilliant qualities of the youth. 
 It even struck him as quite the proper thing 
 that Godfrey should devote a certain portion 
 of his time to the study of church music. All 
 such fancies would have been antipathetic to 
 Reuben, but then he had an undefined idea 
 that benevolent schemes and religious theo- 
 ries were somehow characteristic of the upper 
 stratum of society, and that to take a part 
 in these unpractical notions would fit the 
 piece of Parian marble which he prided himself 
 on having produced, for taking its place on an 
 upper shelf where it could be regarded with 
 admiration. Yet his pride in the superiority 
 of the article which he had turned out did not 
 make him patient with some of the new and 
 startling opinions on the most burning political
 
 MR. NOBODY. 261 
 
 questions of the day, which came naturally to 
 a young combatant fresh from an atmosphere 
 of keen debate. 
 
 The older man, who had been almost de- 
 nationalised by long expatriation, did not 
 trouble himself to fight under any particular 
 political banner, or to help in the solution of any 
 of these questions. Yet he winced when God- 
 frey exclaimed, one morning, 
 
 'Yes, we are of the people. I am proud of 
 belonging to the people. I have a better excuse 
 for loving them and working for them because 
 I belong to them.' 
 
 Sheer astonishment seemed to take away 
 Reuben's breath. He stared in utter amaze- 
 ment as his son continued, 
 
 ' You know I do not care to be a large land- 
 owner, but, if I am to have responsibilities of 
 this kind by-and-by, the sooner I get some sort 
 of knowledge about farming the better.' 
 
 Reuben's face was an utter blank for the next 
 few moments. His jaw dropped as he was 
 slowly taking in the idea, that — whilst he, with 
 all the partiality of a mother, had been bent on
 
 2Q2 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 raising his son, and priding himself on his com- 
 pleteness in education, appearance, and demean- 
 our — the lad was determined to depreciate his 
 own market value. 
 
 ' Humbug/ he said, impatiently ; ' they are 
 some o' them — these others — born in the mud 
 and doomed to live in the mud — like reptiles as 
 relish the shiny ooze and can't wriggle their 
 tails out o' it. But you — to talk like that — 
 why, I slaved and toiled for you or ever you 
 were born — and you to talk of yourself as if 
 you were a common farmer.' 
 
 'Ah, I have no doubt. One can see that 
 some strong desire must have acted upon you 
 to make you work with a dozen times the 
 energy of the average man. The energy was 
 admirable — I envy it. But I reproach myself 
 for letting you work in such a way for me.' 
 
 4 Why not? there are two classes of chaps — 
 the chaps who work and the chaps who don't 
 work, but just sit down and sun themselves 
 like kings. I always intended ye to belong to 
 the idle uns: 
 
 * Thanks,' said Godfrey, repressing his in-
 
 MR. XOBODY. 263 
 
 clination to betray his scorn. (It seemed to 
 him impossible to conceive anything much 
 more prosaic or contemptible than the role 
 which his father had so kindly assigned to 
 him.) 'I fear the toiling has hitherto been on 
 one side. I was just telling you that I reproach- 
 ed myself for leaving St. Anne's in something 
 very like ill-favour, because I had done none of 
 the things which were expected of me ' 
 
 'A fact to be proud of,' said Reuben, slapping 
 him on the back. ' I sent you there to be amongst 
 gentlemen, not to be drenched with learning. A 
 vicious thing that cramming — your Shakespeare 
 and Burns didn't cram. Why, the ancients 
 were for drawing out a man, and the moderns 
 all for putting into him. I heard that sayin' 
 when I was a boy, but I had precious little 
 Greek and Latin to spoil my English.' 
 
 ' That's true. I was going on to say that I 
 didn't take a sufficiently good degree to go to 
 the Bar, and I should not like the responsibility 
 of being a doctor, but that — I ought not to lie 
 quite fallow, and leave you all the laurels. It 
 strikes me that I might do something to help
 
 264 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 you in business which you leave to stewards. 
 Other men have taken up the vexed question of 
 how to help the working classes.' 
 
 • As how V demanded Reuben, lapsing into 
 the vernacular. 
 
 ' Well, you tell me 1 shall probably be a 
 landed proprietor some day.' 
 
 * A precious large one,' answered Reuben, 
 with glittering eyes. 
 
 ' A landed proprietor should know something 
 of agricultural progress. He should have a 
 scientific training which even now it may be 
 possible for me to get. Sometimes I think 
 that if we had consulted over this before, if I 
 had not been too young to properly understand 
 it, we should both have decided that the uni- 
 versity was not exactly the place for me to 
 gain my experience. Why, look at the amount 
 of probation which is required for either of the 
 learned professions, and yet, of all human occu- 
 pations, the one that stands most in need of 
 the safeguards of training and skill is that of 
 tilling the ground and feeding cattle.' 
 
 He did not intend hrs sentence to end in
 
 MR. NOBODY. 265 
 
 bathos, as he felt it had ; nor that his father 
 should stand stock still and look at him as if 
 he were a fit inmate for a lunatic asylum. In 
 default of any other answer, Reuben Sell wood 
 began to laugh. 
 
 4 Stick to your club, my boy, and your music 
 and kickshaws. Some of us were born to be 
 the working-bees, and the rest to be worked for 
 and sit quiet.' 
 
 1 The club may be all very well in its way ; I 
 am for the free expression and ventilation of 
 opinion,' muttered Godfrey to himself, as a 
 vision floated before his eyes of the highly 
 respectable Torringmoor club to which he had 
 just been duly elected, with all its wonderfully 
 fine decorations, and the newspapers — dailies, 
 weeklies, and monthlies — with what they said 
 repeated in a heavier way by the quarterlies. 
 ' I should like to have a free library in Torring- 
 moor, and a lecture-room for working-men,' he 
 said, aloud ; ' the sooner we get them the 
 better.' 
 
 It is doubtful what Reuben's answer might 
 have been, for at that moment the con versa-
 
 266 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 tion was interrupted by cries of distress, and 
 at a little distance one of the gardeners could 
 be seen, apparently out of breath, and dragging 
 a terror-stricken, ragged urchin, who had been 
 trespassing on the property, and who held 
 something huddled up in a basket close to his 
 face. 
 
 The boy was followed by a tiny, round- 
 eyed, wide-mouthed girl, who trotted after him 
 as rapidly as her legs could carry her, and who 
 was howling as loudly as her lungs would allow 
 her to howl. Both children had a wretched, 
 ill-fed appearance, with shrivelled skins and 
 thin limbs, instead of being healthy country 
 children. 
 
 'I tell my gardeners to frighten the brats 
 when they find 'em trespassing here,' said 
 Reuben, in explanation to Godfrey, to whom 
 the sight seemed to have given a shock, as if 
 he were roused out of his usual listlessness by 
 a discord which came into sharp collision with 
 his theories about the future, and his dream- 
 world. 
 
 ' I thought I understood you to say,' he fal-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 267 
 
 tered, in a low voice, as be placed his hand on 
 his father's arm, i that — this place would belong- 
 to me — some day?' 
 
 'Well, what of that?' 
 
 1 It's nonsense about the place really belong- 
 ing to me, if the poor can have no right of way 
 in it. And look — he has been filling his basket 
 with nothing but a few harmless flowers ; per- 
 haps there is a sick mother at home, and he 
 wants to cheer her with them. It is not such 
 a very terrible offence.' 
 
 A flash of expression lit Reuben's usually 
 impassive lace, which was gone as instantly as 
 it appeared. Was it a revelation of something 
 concealed even from his son — the same ' some- 
 thing ' which made Godfrey often wonder why 
 a chance word or look should make his father 
 fire-up when there seemed to be nothing to 
 offend him ? 
 
 ' Eh V he asked, as if to gain time to cover 
 his confusion, and conscious of the altered tone 
 in his own voice. 'I told the gardeners to 
 make an exception if ever a poor brat wanted 
 a flower. Eh? but don't you think I am a
 
 268 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 d — d fool to be so weak about flowers ? There 
 were folks in ray day who would have be- 
 laboured that young un till he could scarcely 
 stand — it was scant mercy then. All they 
 wanted was to rid the world of such vermin, 
 and then pretend they had performed a service 
 to humanity. I knew a boy once — ' he com- 
 menced, looking before him as if he had for- 
 gotten the presence of his son. And then he 
 suddenly pulled himself up, as if he had changed 
 his mind about repeating a story. 
 
 * What were you going to tell me ? You 
 knew a boy once — V said Godfrey, after a 
 pause, in a puzzled undertone. 
 
 'Nothing. I shouldn't think of boring you 
 with an idle story. Tales do for old women,' he 
 said, looking after the retreating child, who was 
 making good his escape. 
 
 'Ah, to be sure,' answered his son, with that 
 wideness of assent which relieved him from the 
 necessity of pressing for further details. He 
 stood stroking his upper lip, deep in thought, 
 while he watched his father's face with a
 
 MR. NOBODY. 269 
 
 curious mixture of fanciful speculation — consist- 
 ing at once of attraction and repulsion, fear and 
 pity, trust and distrust — and the sense of some- 
 thing like a shadow falling on him as he stood 
 in the sunlight. 
 
 He drew a long breath as he asked him- 
 self, 
 
 ' What could the antecedents have been 
 which led to that expression on Reuben's face, 
 something like the look of a fag turned into a 
 bully V 
 
 It was true that there was a widening gulf of 
 silence and unsociability opening more and more 
 between them. Reuben's secrets, whatever they 
 might be, were locked and double-locked in 
 his own breast, and Godfrey had no cabalistic 
 spell. 
 
 Neither of the two was communicative. 
 Reuben gave instructions to the gardeners to 
 let the child be free of the place and help him- 
 self to a few flowers, much to the astonish- 
 ment of the gardeners ; and Godfrey, knowing 
 nothing of Reuben's queer fit of indulgence,
 
 270 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 made a point of finding out the name of the boy 
 and visiting him at his own cottage to give 
 him a present of money. It was Godfrey's first 
 experience of the miserable state of the peasan- 
 try in that part of shire. But he be- 
 came less interested in mediaeval details and in 
 sketching the scenery of the neighbourhood 
 and the artistic contours of the Hall, now that 
 he awoke to the fact of Reuben's tyranny. 
 
 ' If flunk eydom is worse than swelldom, surely 
 plutocracy is more insufferable than aristocracy.' 
 thought the young man, with a shiver to 
 himself. 
 
 For many of his father's notions were absurd 
 and superannuated, and yet — as familiarity 
 without much expansion increased by degrees on 
 either side — it became daily more evident that 
 Reuben could not bear a syllable of contradiction. 
 Though he knew little about politics, he would 
 have liked to have had to settle Ireland or any 
 given number of countries in his own way, but 
 his measures would have been drastic. He was 
 acutely conscious of the deficiencies of those 
 untrained masses of the people, from whom he
 
 3m. XOBODY. 271 
 
 boasted he had risen. He adopted a style of 
 conviction on all possible subjects which was 
 galling to the younger and more impulsive 
 mind of his son — a conviction too pronounced 
 for the trimming of practical politics. He had 
 tested his own faculties in a varied school, and 
 had a contempt for those of his neighbours. 
 He had no charitable tolerance for contrary 
 beings, and no rhetorical blandishments to deck 
 the sternness of his views. 
 
 1 This chap of mine will be riding a hobby to 
 death," he said, when Godfrey propounded a 
 few of those notions which his father consider- 
 ed to be utterly subversive and destructive to 
 society. f I don't want to encourage paupers, 
 vaunting their rags and sores, but the men who 
 can raise themselves. If there was any of the 
 right sort of stuff in them, they would cease to 
 be paupers. Wait till you are a public man 
 before you take up these sort of questions.' 
 
 ' I don't want to be a public man,' laughed 
 Godfrey in reply. ' What is it to be a public 
 man ? To run a chance of having your name 
 placarded against a wall and bespattered with
 
 272 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 abuse in a daily paper, to have to meet your 
 greatest enemy at a dinner, or hear yourself 
 railed at by your opposite neighbour in a rail- 
 way carnage. No, I prefer to do things in a 
 smaller way.' 
 
 And then he attempted in vain to speak to 
 his father of failing harvests, and the heavy 
 losses of the poorer people. 
 
 1 There are some landlords who pay more 
 attention to their partridges than their fellow- 
 men, but you at least should know better,' he 
 tried to say. 
 
 The words had little effect upon Reuben, but 
 unconsciously he was softened. Perhaps it 
 was the effect of Godfrey's violin music, with 
 its infinite variety of passion and pathos, which 
 Reuben had always professed to scorn, but to 
 which he had listened lately, unknown t3 the 
 performer, in an adjacent room. 
 
 Godfrey thought little of his own perform- 
 ance as that of an amateur. But the instru- 
 ment formed a vent for the passionate artistic 
 fervour which the younger man concealed as 
 a rule from others, and combined with other
 
 MR. NOBODY. 273 
 
 ideas of his own which were often unformed. 
 He could scarcely have existed himself without 
 music. But he would have wondered greatly 
 if he could have known that when he sang a 
 favourite song from Handel's ' Samson ' his 
 father's attention was singularly arrested. 
 
 ' Honour and arms scorn such a foe,' 
 
 Eeuben hummed, in imitation of Godfrey's bass 
 runs and trills, when he was alone, 
 
 ' Though I could end thee at a blow, 
 Poor victory ! 
 
 Vanquish a foe that is half slain , 
 So mean a triumph I disdain.' 
 
 How was it that Reuben could not get this 
 
 special stanza out of his head ! ' Poor victory !' 
 
 It rang in his ears in the intervals of his sleep. 
 
 It haunted him when he looked at the turrets 
 
 of the Hall. 
 
 ' Honour and arms scorn such a foe, 
 Poor victory ! 
 
 To conquer thee, 
 Or glory in thine overthrow.' 
 
 ' Ah, I have it/ he said to himself one morn- 
 ing, when, at the sightof a youthful figure in 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 deep mourning flitting up the avenue of beech 
 trees which led into Rashleigh Park, a whimsi- 
 cal solution occurred to him of his difficulty. 
 4 1 shall triumph still — and yet the sleeping 
 dogs will be let lie.'
 
 275 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 In process of time the two neighbours became 
 acquainted. The acquaintance was in fact 
 inevitable as their grounds 'adjoined each 
 other, and it became necessary that certain 
 little matters should be settled which were 
 from time to time cropping up, and which Sir 
 Ralph was not rich enough to be able to en- 
 trust, as he otherwise might have done, to the 
 management of a solicitor. 
 
 There was a picturesque little wooden bridge 
 joining the two estates, which Reuben with 
 characteristic effrontery had ordered to be pull- 
 ed down. The estates still remained 8 two ' in 
 the eyes of the world, especially as Reuben had 
 commenced building the wall which he had 
 
 t 2
 
 276 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 threatened, regardless of the fact that the 
 noise was annoying to the baronet. Yet it was 
 an open secret that the large number of mort- 
 gages on the Rashleigh demesne had somehow 
 fallen into the hands of the interloper who had 
 purchased the place vulgarly called Broad- 
 meads, with a Philistine smack about its very 
 title. 
 
 But a portion of the old property was still 
 intact. And, when it became a nice question of 
 law as to whether the new-comer could claim a 
 right of way for himself and for his people over 
 the somewhat venerable bridge, it seemed the 
 easiest way of settling the matter to order the 
 bridge — that stood on the portion of ground 
 which Reuben had purchased, but which his 
 servants might not use without so much dis- 
 cord — to be pulled down. It was removed in 
 the dead of the night by Reuben's orders, and 
 there were tears of resentment and fury in the 
 baronet's eyes as he recognised his inability to 
 punish the offender. For, whenever it was 
 possible to adopt a high-handed course, the 
 owner of Broadmeads did so. A direct appeal
 
 MR. NOBODY. 277 
 
 to him would have been useless, had the baron- 
 et been able to conquer his pride sufficiently to 
 make it. 
 
 Yet in the course of the dispute, which was 
 conducted with as little outward show of an- 
 tagonism as possible, the two men met for the 
 first time, Sir Halph, with circles round his eyes 
 and wrinkles caused by anxiety, apparently 
 the elder of the two. 
 
 He — having led a retired life, and having 
 thought it right, early in his career, to make a 
 sort of protest by relenquishing the hunting- 
 field and other healthful pursuits of which his 
 father had been so fond — had become more or 
 less a valetudinarian. His aquiline-featured, 
 clean-shaven face was never free from the pallor 
 of sickliness, and he looked with some secret- 
 envy at the better braced and more muscular 
 frame of the stranger. Ralph — who was un- 
 social even to people of his own rank, and who 
 was accustomed to look down on anything 
 which took the form of exchange and barter — in 
 his heart cursed the fate that obliged him to 
 condescend to have business talks with his
 
 278 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 neighbour, or that disturbed the peaceful life 
 in which, previous to the death of his father, 
 he had been more or less successful in keeping 
 disagreeable facts from his recollection. 
 
 Sir Ralph was, as the people of Torriugmoor 
 expressed it, a ' high-tempered ' man. His 
 father had been high-tempered before him, and 
 it was somehow considered that to be high-tem- 
 pered savoured of aristocracy. The temper, in 
 this case, extended itself even to the beautiful 
 collie-dog which constantly accompanied Sir 
 Ralph, and which had the family habit of bark- 
 ing at people whom his master did not favour. 
 The meeting with such a fellow as Reuben Sell- 
 wood — who seemed to be the visible embodiment 
 of all his troubles, and whose very presence in- 
 terfered with Sir Ralph's sedulous avoidance of 
 anything like exposure of the family vicissitudes 
 which might come before the public — could 
 not fail to be annoying to Ralph. 
 
 He had still the house and many acres of 
 fine pasture-land to fall back upon, but the very 
 appearance of this wily neighbour, who had 
 established himself so close to him that he
 
 MR. NOBODY. 279 
 
 might continually sting him like a gadfly, was 
 a reminder that a large part of the old property 
 had been sold, and that the mansion which had 
 been named by the ridiculous title of 'Broad- 
 meads ' — as if those who built it had gloried in 
 their prosperity — was actually built upon the 
 land which had belonged for centuries to his 
 forefathers. Sir Ralph's proud and distinguish- 
 ed head — well poised on his shoulders — was 
 held a little more stiffly than usual in spite of 
 his delicate health when he met the plebeian. 
 
 Reuben laughed in his sleeve. What did the 
 other man's petty pretences signify? Plebeian 
 as he was, he had already become his creditor. 
 He already possessed three quarters of the land 
 which had originally been owned by the Rash- 
 leighs, and he had sworn to become possessor 
 of the other quarter. 
 
 The interview was an amusing one. It was 
 a case of Greek meeting Greek. If Sir Ralph 
 was proud, his antagonist was equally so, and, 
 though it was easy to condemn the latter as a 
 1 born cad,' it appeared that cads were no more 
 free than aristocrats from the ' glorious fault of
 
 280 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 angels and of gods.' It would have been better 
 policy for Sir Ralph to restrain that ' high 
 temper ' which was reputed to be an equally 
 glorious heritage handed down to him from a 
 long line of ancestors. He made many, but 
 somewhat ineffectual, efforts to do so. For 
 Reuben's blue eyes were cold as steel, express- 
 ing the strength of a will against which the other 
 man's passionate insolence would prove weak 
 as clouds of spray perpetually dashing them- 
 selves against an iron coast. 
 
 He spoke little, availing himself on these 
 occasions of a certain number of formulas which 
 he had become accustomed to repeat. He 
 uttered them in a deep voice, with a careful, 
 monotonous intonation, guarding against too 
 great a freedom of speech, and keeping his 
 adversary at a distance. 
 
 In every respect Reuben had the best of 
 it. One might have said that he — having 
 become used to restraining his own temper for 
 his own purposes — betrayed more than once by 
 a humorous twinkle of the eye his consciousness 
 that the more irritable baronet was proving, by
 
 MR. XOBODY. 281 
 
 this very evident manifestation of the old Adam 
 from which he had sprung, his knowledge that 
 both were, after all, descended from a common 
 stock. 
 
 By degrees Sir Ralph grew less irascible as 
 the other proved a skilful strategist. Every- 
 thing which Reuben answered seemed perfectly 
 natural, except a chance expression to which he 
 gave utterance, as both men stood together in 
 the grounds of Rashleigh Park where their ap- 
 pointment had been made, Sir Ralph being de- 
 termined on this occasion not to invite the 
 new-comer to walk into his house. 
 
 ' It used not to have so much moss about it, 
 surely,' Reuben had said, as he gazed at the 
 old grey pile of buildings which looked pic- 
 turesque and beautiful as in a fairy-tale in the 
 evening light, with its stones stained by lichen 
 and rain into every variety of tint. 
 
 1 Used not to V asked Ralph, looking at him 
 sharply. 'I did not know you had ever seen 
 it before.' 
 
 * One would think I had seen it before/ an- 
 swered Reuben, righting himself instantly ; ' but
 
 282 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 the fact is, since I have come back to the old 
 country, I have had a hankering after old build- 
 ings of this sort, and, when you have seen one, 
 it is like seeing a lot of them.' 
 
 ' Oh ! I heard you caught at the adjoining- 
 estate directly it was put up to auction. A 
 man of your sort can appreciate the historical 
 interest belonging to places of this sort,' 
 answered Sir Ralph, a little mollified. 
 
 Reuben nodded. 
 
 ' Well, and you have also a geometric eye, and 
 your own theory about natural frontiers ; but I 
 shall keep what came to me from my ancestors.' 
 
 ' It was not my fault ; the theory was — I had 
 the best advice — Mr. ' 
 
 'I can do without lawyers/ 
 
 i I also. Lawyers are not much in my way. 
 I am a square man, and I only get on with 
 people who are square like myself. Peace is 
 the best thing in the world, still to have peace 
 I must first establish my rights,' said Reuben, 
 firmly. 
 
 The baronet winced. Here was a man out- 
 spoken, but not so vulgar as he had anticipated,
 
 MR. NOBODY. 283 
 
 a man who was so uncommunicative that no 
 one knew the full extent of his fortune ; a man 
 who had him to a certain extent in his power, 
 but whose actions might be less hard than his 
 threats. Square enough he looked, without 
 the appearance of being fagged-out — whatever 
 he had gone through in his life — with shoulders 
 big enough to carry the Alps, if not the world. 
 Whilst Sir Kalph himself had felt for a long time 
 as if the machine were wearing out, and began 
 to require rest. Might it not be to his interest 
 to conciliate the unknown Atlas ? 
 
 ' It's a tine old place — none better in the 
 country/ he said, with a sigh, and yet with 
 that sort of secret satisfaction which a man 
 always has when he hears a thing praised that 
 is nearest to his heart. 
 
 1 Humph !' answered Reuben, speaking a 
 little slowly, as if he were well aware that 
 the sting of each of his words would penetrate 
 through the armour in which the aristocrat had 
 encased himself — * requires a lot of money to 
 keep it up, so I've heard say. That's the worst 
 of these old places.'
 
 284 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 Sir Ralph drew himself up ; but that his sen- 
 sitive pride had been Avounded was proved by 
 his face changing colour. He shut himself in 
 too continually with his books and the old 
 pictures to have any mask of sunburn like that 
 which Reuben had brought from over the seas, 
 to help him to dissemble his emotions. 
 
 It was one of Sellwood's maxims to abstain 
 from pushing a triumph to its utmost, and 
 never to gather grapes till they were ripe. But 
 on this occasion the temptation of regularly 
 rousing the temper of the other, who prided 
 himself on his dignity, proved to be too much 
 for him. 
 
 And, as if it was pleasant to see that his 
 neighbour winced, he continued, 
 
 ' You should go over to America or New 
 Zealand, you people whose fortunes in the old 
 country are going to rags. You could lead a 
 patriarchal life there, feeding your sheep and 
 oxen. Xo come-down in that.' 
 
 Sir Ralph's unwholesome-looking complexion 
 was pink like that of a woman at what he sup- 
 posed to be the coarseness of the taunt. If the
 
 MR. NOBODY. 285 
 
 baronet could have given orders to his butler 
 (one man-servant with that title — a sort of 
 survival of grandeur — had sufficed since Sir 
 George's death to clean the boots, and do work 
 of all sorts except that which fell to the coachman 
 and gardener) to kick the fellow out of his 
 grounds, his rage would scarcely have been 
 satisfied. But, in the midst of his ire, he was 
 forced to remember that he was in this wretch's 
 power, and that to be summoned by him for 
 assault, to say nothing of worse possibilities, 
 would not improve matters with the people at 
 Torringmoor. He made a feeble attempt at 
 meeting him with what he supposed to be his 
 own weapons, and said, with an unamiable smile, 
 
 ' Certainly — no come-down in that, if, as 
 report says, Torringmoor ought to be pleased 
 to acknowledge that — that you ' 
 
 ' I know that all sorts of reports are about, 
 but by what right, sir,' asked Reuben, apparent- 
 ly not discomposed — for, to do him justice, he 
 had intended no allusion to injure Sir Ralph's 
 self-respect — ' by what right do people meddle 
 with what I do not care to reveal V
 
 28 1) MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ' And by what right,' roared the baronet, ' do 
 people venture to discuss my private affairs. 
 You and your financial successes are nothing 
 to me. It is a sheer piece of impertinence for 
 anyone to venture to allude to my difficulties.' 
 
 Again the mask of sunburn, with which kindly 
 Nature still veiled Reuben's countenance, stood 
 him in good stead, as, making a greater effort 
 to conceal the testiness which might otherwise 
 have betrayed itself in his voice, he answered 
 with a shrug, 
 
 ' Ah, as to that, I meant to make a sugges- 
 tion which might stand you in good stead. I 
 thought with the free air around us we might 
 talk like men. Prejudices you must have — you 
 have a lot of them, no doubt — but my right is 
 as clear as possible, and I might have been able 
 to put something before you which would have 
 been to your advantage, still ' 
 
 He broke off with a meaning shrug, as if — 
 though it was about the longest speech which 
 he had been known to make since he came to 
 Broadmeads — it was not in his power to make it 
 longer.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 287 
 
 The shrug, however, was better than rhetoric, 
 and the manner in which he turned on his heel, 
 leaving the fuming baronet to admit that he 
 had made a fool of himself, more eloquent still. 
 
 • So the jackass thought I was going to pour 
 out the story of my life into his long ears,' he 
 chuckled to himself, as he reached his own 
 grounds, ' not so fast : perhaps, when our inter- 
 ests are identical, he may hear a good deal 
 w T hich will make his ass's ears tingle.'
 
 2W 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 June roses were blowing on the walls of the 
 cottages at Torringmoor. Tall white lilies with 
 golden centres and waxen petals were growing 
 in the cottage gardens, in singular contrast 
 with the blazing ribbon-like adornment of the 
 bedding-out system which had been adopted in 
 the conventional flower-beds at Broadmeads. 
 Whilst beyond on the blue moor the river rip- 
 pled merrily over the mossy stones. Cattle were 
 grazing in the lowlands, and labourers were 
 slouching home from their work in the evening 
 light, as Reuben — who in his secret heart cared 
 no more than Godfrey for the buhl cabinets, 
 inlaid tables, tall mirrors, and elaborate cur-
 
 MR. NOBODY. 289 
 
 tains with which the upholsterer had told him 
 it was proper to adorn his new house — crept 
 out into the lanes and fields which surrounded 
 his park. 
 
 The sun was setting in clouds of purple and 
 amethyst as Reuben left behind him the great 
 iron gates. Absorbed in his own thoughts, and 
 feeling no necessity when he found himself 
 alone for keeping up that appearance of stolidity 
 which he did not generally allow himself to 
 drop even in the presence of his son, the man 
 hurried along, his head bent upon his shoulders, 
 and his eyes cast down. Now and then he 
 glanced at the wild flowers, which seemed 
 mysteriously to bring back the dead past, and 
 to be associated in an odd way with that which 
 he tried to think was the triumphant and pros- 
 perous present. There was the ' gypsy rose,' the 
 1 ragged robin,' the ' clematis,' the 4 moon daisy,' 
 the ' monkshood,' and there the blossoms were 
 just coming into bud which he remembered used 
 to be vulgarly called 'kiss-me-quick.' It was 
 astonishing how much in his secret heart he 
 agreed with his son in preferring these simple 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 things with the good old-fashioned names to all 
 the wonders accomplished by horticultural art 
 which he had left behind him at Broadmeads. 
 
 The sunset, though beautiful in colour, had 
 been stormy, and now the clouds iucreased and 
 rain was threatening. The wind began to blow 
 coldly over the desolate moor, but the wind was 
 not more bitter than his own miserable thoughts, 
 much as he was inclined to take praise to himself 
 for the new scheme suggested to him by Han- 
 del's music — a compromise which would still 
 allow him to keep up the unforgiving spirit 
 that could not dwell with love. He was 
 bitter at the acknowledgment which he was 
 compelled to make to himself, that regions and 
 regions of separate existence — with ideas that he 
 could not fathom and motives which he had no 
 means of proving — lay between him and the 
 only creature on earth for whom he cared. 
 
 He was inclined to curse the fate which 
 brought his boy no nearer to him in reality — 
 for, though the lad might prove too dutiful to 
 leave him, there was always an uncomfortable 
 gulf between them. It did not occur to him to
 
 MR. NOBODY. 291 
 
 reflect that an abyss of black nothingness, from 
 which he might shrink back appalled could it 
 be revealed to him, lay yet between his own 
 spirit aud that of the Eternal Father. Strange 
 thoughts were stirring in him, born possibly of 
 that music which reveals yearnings so little 
 understood in the hearts of the worst of us. And 
 Reuben did not consider himself by any means 
 the worst. He prided himself on his heroic endur- 
 ance, on the fact that through a course of years 
 he had grown a hard skin over wounds on 
 which, at Godfrey's age, he would not have 
 been able to endure a touch. Misfortune had 
 been to him, as it is to many of us, no sweetener 
 of the temper. He had passed through terrible 
 suffering — all the more terrible that it had 
 been quiet ; but it had left its mark upon him. 
 Few would have guessed that he had been 
 through any ordeal. The people who met him 
 in an ordinary way respected him as a reticent, 
 but keen, business man, whose opinion on many 
 subjects might be valuable, but credited him 
 with no sentiment beyond a recollection of his 
 adventures. 
 
 u2
 
 292 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ' I care about as much for the lot of 'em as I 
 cared about the opossums,' he said, with a 
 bitter laugh, when he met any of these people, 
 telling himself for the hundredth time that he 
 hated his own kind, and that the exception in 
 Godfrey's case was because the boy was all his 
 own — flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone — 
 and yet, by some cruel trick of Fate, in heart 
 and brain divided from him. 
 
 ' I'll meet Sir Ralph in his own way ; I couldn't 
 propose to him the other thing. After all, 
 perhaps it 'ud be, as the music said, a poorish 
 victory,' he thought, as he found his way, as if 
 by instinct in the fading light, to the path 
 over the heath which led to Torringmoor. 
 
 Much of the way was bare and lonely, with 
 no stars to illumine it, and only a vaporous, 
 watery-looking moon gazing down upon him, 
 with pale, cold face, as he sauntered on. He 
 loitered once by the river, where the perfume 
 of the meadow-sweet and the penny-royal 
 seemed to bring back some of those recollec- 
 tions which are so strangely associated with 
 the sense of smell. And then, with a muttered
 
 MR. NOBODY. 293 
 
 curse at his own absurdity, he hurried on till 
 he came to a little ruined cottage closely ad- 
 joining the moor, and not more than a mile 
 from the gates of his estate. A funny old 
 cottage, which was a very unenlivening sight, 
 naked and miserable, but with traces of former 
 occupation still to be seen in a poor little iron 
 gate which swung open by the ruined wall, and 
 was half eaten through with rust. More than one 
 visitor to Torringmoor had asked why they did 
 not pull it down, and begin building on the 
 site a line of villas — as had been proposed by 
 one of the more stirring inhabitants of the 
 place. But there it stood, windowless and 
 doorless, with the four winds of heaven blow- 
 ing through its broken thatch, and birds 
 building their nests in one corner of the 
 broken chimney. 
 
 A town-councillor who was asked to account 
 for this eyesore generally laughed and shrugged 
 his shoulders. If it pleased that lavish gentle- 
 man who had come to live at Broadmeads to 
 offer a sum which would almost beggar other 
 people for ' this bit of a ruined barn,' just as
 
 294 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 folks were intending to put up the land for 
 auction, it was really, as he answered, ' no busi- 
 ness of his ;' the new owner of Broadmeads had 
 either lost his head in his covetousness for 
 every spare bit of land which he seemed to 
 make a rule of buying up, or he wished to 
 astonish folks with one of the showy vagaries 
 of a millionaire. All that the Broadmeads 
 Town-Council knew was that one day they 
 received a letter from Reuben Sellwood, saying 
 that, as his son was a 'bit of an amateur artist,' 
 and had a fancy for sketching all sorts of queer 
 places, he would buy up the cottage and the 
 piece of land on which it stood. Of course 
 they asked a ' fancy ' price, which Mr. Sell- 
 wood readily paid. He never said anything 
 more about it, but the good people of Torring- 
 moor would certainly have thought he was 
 crazed, if they could have known that he came 
 pretty often to gaze at the cranky thing by 
 moonlight. 
 
 They would have said, as you, my good, 
 critical reader, will probably say, that it was 
 not consistent with character. But the perfect
 
 MR. NOBODY. 295 
 
 consistency of a ' character role '—to borrow an 
 expression from our continental neighbours — is 
 somehow the rarest thing in the world. If an 
 outsider can predicate the actions of nine 
 people out of ten, he is likely to be utterly at 
 sea when he comes to the tenth. I do not 
 pretend to moralise on this infinite variety of 
 human nature. 
 
 But whatever of tenderness, pathos, sin, or 
 suffering lay in the past history of this man — 
 who had so far succeeded in eradicating from 
 his heart the mystery which lies hid in all of us, 
 that he was classed amongst the most prosaic of 
 the matter-of-fact — welled up in his memory and 
 imagination now. He seemed to hear again 
 the song of the nightingale which had once 
 come to soothe the agony of a weary sufferer 
 on a bed of pain, and must have chanted from 
 some trees that once grew on the very spot 
 on which he stood. 
 
 No twitter of birds disturbed the solitude 
 now. It was as quiet as if pains, toils, and 
 passions had never been enacted in it, — quiet 
 as the burying-ground of the poor which Reu-
 
 296 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ben visited as stealthily afterwards, where a 
 mound, no longer distinguishable from those 
 which surrounded it, might have reminded him 
 of the pathetic ending of all heart-burnings, 
 revenges, and sorrows. But Reuben gained 
 nothing from the story of rest which might 
 have been preached to him by that moulder- 
 ing earth. He was thinking again of his son 
 ■who was so superior to the common ruck of 
 men — he must be careful not to jar on him. 
 But the plan which he had to propose was 
 no cruel one — it was benevolent — it would 
 approve itself to everyone, he told himself, as 
 he returned by the familiar paths past the 
 gorse and the heather, and past the quietly 
 rippling river to the roadside, where the 
 great laurel-trees which he had planted on 
 his own estate, backed by a fir plantation, 
 loomed darkly in the night air. 
 
 ' There is no time like the present. I 
 shall catch him in now, and if any soul on 
 earth has a right to tackle him, I have,' he 
 had been saying to himself more than once, as 
 he had been walking across the heath.
 
 •MR. NOBODY. 207 
 
 He bad hitherto been too skilful a strategist 
 to intrude himself on Sir Ralph's solitude. But 
 matters bad come to a crisis now, and he smil- 
 ed a little grimly to himself as he walked on 
 a little further, and handed in what he scorn- 
 fully called his £ nonsensical pasteboard ' to the 
 shabbily-dressed butler at Eashleigh Hall. He 
 knew perfectly well that this would be about 
 the time when Sir Ralph would have finished 
 his dinner, and when he would be sitting mood- 
 ily over his wine — if indeed his circumstances 
 had not compelled him to make a virtue of 
 necessity, and join that teetotal movement 
 which, as Reuben said cynically to himself, was 
 now the cream of the fashion since so many 
 bishops and grandees had joined it. 
 
 s Why, he may even run a chance of having 
 his portrait figuring in the most popular re- 
 views, and may take the chair as president at 
 the what-d'ye-call-it — Social Science Congress, 
 and all because he hadn't enough tin to spare 
 for the stocking of his cellar,' chuckled Reuben 
 to himself, as the man-servant went in with his 
 card, knowing perfectly well that — however his
 
 298 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 neighbour's intrusion might rouse Sir Ralph's 
 temper — the latter would not dare to refuse him- 
 self to him. Had not the baronet been compelled 
 to borrow the offered loan of his money, when 
 creditors had pressed upon him so heavily, that 
 the question of whether he should avail himself 
 of the accommodation or not had been one which 
 no longer brooked weighing in the balance 1 
 
 The baronet's pride compelled him to allude 
 to the circumstance as he invited in the un- 
 welcome guest, who — in the softened light of 
 the candles which left dark shadows in the 
 great room — could not help admiring the old 
 oak side-board, carved with the arms of the 
 Rashleigh family, and still seeming to tell of 
 former splendours. It was in keeping with the 
 equally old massive chairs, and the spare figure, 
 with its worn face of somewhat ascetic expres- 
 sion, which sat, as Reuben had expected, alone 
 at the head of the frugal board. 
 
 Reuben's eyes wandered to the corners of 
 the ancient banqueting-room where there was 
 still the faded tapestry and the damaged old 
 family portraits. The place could have told se- 
 crets had it been in a communicative mood. He
 
 MR. NOBODY. 299 
 
 bad beard descriptions of it by Mrs. Rose, though 
 be bad never set foot in it before. Wbat bad 
 become of tbe great cbina bowls wbicb bad 
 been so long in tbe family, and wbicb bad 
 apparently gone tbe way of all flesh, as if tbey 
 bad made up their minds tbat tbey bad lived 
 long enougb ? Had tbey gone tbe same way 
 as tbe grand old clock wbicb one oftheRash- 
 leigbs w r as said to bave brought from Bruges, 
 with figures which used to come from bidden 
 places and make their obeisances whenever 
 an hour was struck 1 There was a pretence in 
 tbe family tbat tbe new baronet's greyhound 
 had knocked down many of the articles of virtu. 
 Certainly they had vanished one by one, but it 
 would bave increased Sir Ralph's iciness, which 
 was worse than bis occasional fits of irritabili- 
 ty, if Vere herself had dared to hint that he had 
 been compelled to part with them. 
 
 This little fiction of maintaining the dignity 
 of the family was perfectly understood by bis 
 niece. It kept her reticent, courageous, and 
 accustomed to exert herself, forgetting herself 
 in others, and ready to hide her own great un-
 
 300 }IR. NOBODY. 
 
 selfishness, which was ever present as a hidden 
 force behind her restrained feelings. 
 
 * I was charmed to oblige ye with the loan 
 that ye required,' said Reuben, slowly, after he 
 had gazed his fill, with a nod which contrasted 
 somewhat oddly with the stiff, aristocratic 
 bow. 
 
 'Without disobliging yourself?' Sir Ralph 
 said, slowly. ' My friend, if I judge you right- 
 ly, you are not the man to do things impulsive- 
 ly. You have some motive for parting with 
 all this money? You are too shrewd a fellow 
 to throw it away.' 
 
 Sir Ralph, who had been brooding over the 
 matter for some days, had at least as good a 
 comprehension of Reuben's character as Reuben 
 had himself. 
 
 ' Oh, a good bargain pleases two people/ 
 answered the latter, in no way abashed ; " I 
 don't see why all this should make any differ- 
 ence 'twixt you and me.' 
 
 His perfect self-assurance, and the easy way 
 in which he added, f I don't see why you and 
 me should quarrel,' acted as a moral stiffen er
 
 MR. NOBODY. 301 
 
 upon Sir Ralph, who, sitting bolt upright and 
 speaking much as one of Holbein's portraits, if 
 it had been suddenly transformed into life, 
 might be expected to speak, said, 
 
 1 Let us come to business? Do you propose 
 to pay yourself by taking my whole estate V 
 
 1 To put it plainly, I don't see why our inter- 
 ests shouldn't run together.' 
 
 Sir Ralph raised his eyebrows. To his way 
 of thinking, there was but one line of demar- 
 cation in the world which signified very much 
 — that between the man who had a grandfather 
 and the man who had none. Now, so far as he 
 had heard, the impudent creditor who had 
 forced himself into his presence had not even a 
 father, and yet he had the cool insolence to 
 speak of their interests as identical. Sir Ralph 
 was a little afraid of the self-made man, never- 
 theless. Was he not in his power 1 And, 
 though the sherry was poor enough which stood 
 before him on the table, he was so far from 
 openly resenting Reuben's speech that he 
 said, 
 
 i A glass of wine with you ' adhering to 
 
 an old custom.
 
 302 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ' In real truth, I'm downright sorry for ye,' 
 said Reuben, a few moments afterwards, bal- 
 ancing the wine-glass, which he forced himself 
 by way of compliment to empty, between his 
 fingers, 'but you couldn't tide over such diffi- 
 culties. It wasn't you who got into them, but 
 you found them made for you — that's the long 
 and short of it.' 
 
 ' The situation was created for me,' answered 
 Sir Ralph, with a chilling smile. 
 
 It w T as evident that he was now fairly sub- 
 dued in temper, and saw that there was nothing 
 to be gained by recrimination. 
 
 i Yes, and 1 don't see how you can flounder 
 out o' it. It'll take a deal to build up the 
 fortunes of this house, but you will not find 
 me a hard-fisted creditor. Indeed, on one con- 
 sideration — but I don't know how exactly to 
 expound it to ye/ 
 
 'Proceed,' said the baronet, haughtily, 'I am 
 ready to listen.' 
 
 'But I may shock your prejudices.' 
 
 ' Prejudices cost us dear. Poor people have 
 no business with them.'
 
 MR. NOBODY. 303 
 
 ' You have old-fashioned opinions.' 
 
 ' Do you think so ? You may be mistaken, 
 and opinions are not prejudices.' 
 
 'According to my way of thinking, folks 
 must move a little bit with the times. If you 
 don't keep pace with them, you'll be left out o' 
 the running.'" 
 
 'Ah, that's your system of ethics. I admit 
 the altered conditions/ said Sir Ralph, growing 
 if possible more erect and poker-like, as he 
 looked opposite at the rich man sitting on his 
 easiest chair, boasting of his prospects, and re- 
 peating his crude theories. The state of things 
 at Rashleigh must be altered indeed, or else it 
 must all be a hideous nightmare. 
 
 'Good!' 
 
 Reuben's eyes gleamed. He was evidently 
 labouring under some excitement which made 
 his hand a little unsteady and his breathing 
 audible. 
 
 'Good,' he repeated. f l see it is possible 
 we may agree better than I expected. Our 
 interests, as I said, may end by being the same. 
 I have money enough for both.'
 
 304 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 ' If you have, you needn't brag about it,' mut- 
 tered Sir Ralph, a little huffily. 
 
 '• No, I say share and share alike. I don't 
 want to harm ye. Why shouldn't we be 
 friends? He dropped his voice—his agitation 
 had evidently increased. ' On one considera- 
 tion it is possible I may defer all claim.' 
 
 ' And that V said the baronet, whose heart was 
 beating more loudly than he cared to admit. 
 
 1 You have a niece like a Hebe ' (Reuben pro- 
 nounced it Heeb). ' Now, why shouldn't she 
 become the so-called " angel" which every young 
 woman may be to a young fellow fond o' poetry, 
 just fresh from his University trainin', and why 
 shouldn't the two together promise to look 
 after the interests of your own little lass? Keep 
 the estate together and share alike, no one 
 the wiser.' 
 
 The absolute pain which could no longer be 
 concealed made it impossible for Sir Ralph to 
 answer, as the full tide of recollection — of the 
 ignominy of poverty, and the humiliation to 
 which this niece, confided to his care in infancy, 
 had already been subjected — rushed back upon
 
 MR. XOBODY. 305 
 
 him. He waved the impudent intruder into 
 silence with a gesture that seemed to say, 
 4 Why do you profane my private griefs V 
 
 But Reuben's ardour to propound his scheme 
 and his consciousness that he himself had 
 emerged from social twilight, and had passed — 
 not only that shadowy line which, in the eyes of 
 the Torringmoor folk, divided the retail trader 
 from the wholesale merchant, but the further 
 line of demarcation which separated the whole- 
 sale merchant from the large capitalist — made 
 him answer, w T ith equal pride, 
 
 ' And if 1 mention that I have a son, it will 
 be fair to say that he in no way resembles 
 myself, but is in appearance, education, breed- 
 ing — in everything of which you could think — 
 a fit match for the daughter of a queen.' 
 
 The reserve and hauteur of the one man had 
 been rivalled by the high tone adopted by the 
 other. Yet Sir Ralph's hard breathing, and the 
 way in which he stared at the speaker, seemed 
 to intimate that Reuben had committed an 
 offence for which it would be in vain to essay 
 reparation. The drops of perspiration stood in 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 beads upon the baronet's forehead. He had no 
 great appreciation of the finer qualities of Vere's 
 character, but as she was still his niece, and the 
 daughter of the elder brother of the house, it 
 had been an offence to mention her name in a 
 talk like this. To think that the sight of Vere 
 should have touched the heart of an old myso- 
 gynist, for Reuben was a professed woman- 
 hater, was in itself insufferable to him. Why 
 had he not managed to send the girl away from 
 home : why should he be compelled to submit to 
 such an indignity ? 
 
 ' Impossible,' he said, when he was able to 
 speak. ' You do not even know ray niece.' 
 
 ' Oh, don't trouble about that,' answered 
 Reuben, with a vague sense of disappointment 
 at the cold scrutiny of the baronet's gaze. 
 ' I've heerd a lot o' the lass, and ha' had mere 
 than one peep at her, and it 'ud go against me 
 if she was to be left unprovided-for.' 
 
 And he rubbed his hands together with a 
 pleasant glow of generosity which was quite a 
 new sensation to him. 
 
 Sir Ralph groaned. It was as if a bombshell
 
 MR. NOBODY. 307 
 
 Lad fallen at his feet. He had preserved his 
 dignity sufficiently to prevent his start from 
 being noticeable. But he was no longer erect 
 and poker-like. His cheeks and brow were 
 flushed. 
 
 'Disreputable!' he muttered, beneath his 
 breath. And then, clutching his chair with 
 both his hands, he smiled blandly into Reuben's 
 face, recognising that the more he betrayed his 
 mortification or showed any excitement of feel- 
 ing the calmer would his inquisitor become, and 
 the more inexorable in tightening the torture- 
 screw. 
 
 ' You had better think of it/ he said, as he 
 rose to leave. It seemed to him that the ad- 
 vantage of the proposal might be supposed to 
 be on his side. 
 
 ( Give me some days for reflection — the thing 
 strikes me as so extraordinary — so foreign to 
 our English customs. I think you have no 
 right to propose anything of the kind. "Why 
 bring my niece's name into the question V 
 
 1 1 wish her nothing but good. I wouldn't 
 hurt a hair of her pretty head if it were ever so.
 
 308 MR. NOBODY. 
 
 It's not as if she'd have to many my lad 
 straight off the reel. Give 'em time, that's 
 what I say ; it's my belief they were made for 
 each other.' 
 
 Sir Ralph winced as if from a physical blow, 
 and then remembered that ruin and misery, not 
 to say starvation and humiliation, seemed to 
 stare him in the face, and that the critical 
 emergency could no longer be tided over. 
 
 1 If only the man were a gentleman, and not 
 such a horrible cad.' 
 
 He shook hands with him, nevertheless, try- 
 ing to master the indignation and astonishment 
 which were still betrayed by his eyes. 
 
 1 It means thousands — I might almost say 
 millions. There are folk who talk against 
 money — braying like asses a meaningless bray 
 — when they forget all that it has done to 
 benefit the human race. It means in this case 
 that I shall be set free from the curse of my 
 wearing anxieties — free to feel the pure air of 
 heaven blowing round me again without any of 
 those carking cares/ he said to himself, sitting 
 still for hours after Reuben had left him.
 
 MR. NOBODY. 309 
 
 Whilst Mr. Sellwood — well pleased with his 
 evening's work, and with unruffled features 
 which told of nothing that had taken place — 
 had endured to be dismissed with a royal 
 1 Leave me,' was walking home with a con- 
 viction that his banishment could not last 
 long. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY DUNCAN MACDONALD, BLENHEIM HOUSE
 
 \v