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 rm 
 
 LIBRAHY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UN IVERSITY 
 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
 623 
 F64j
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 VOL I.
 
 NEW LIBRARY NOVELS. 
 
 THE ONE TOO MANY. By E. Lynn Linton. 
 
 3 vols. 
 
 CHRISTINA CHARD. By Mrs. Campbell Praed. 
 
 3 vols. 
 
 IN DIREST PERIL. By David Christie Murray. 
 
 3 vols. 
 
 DOROTHY'S DOUBLE. By G. A. Henty. 3 vols. 
 
 THE BURDEN OF ISABEL. By Maclaren Cob- 
 ban. 3 vols. 
 
 THE COMMON ANCESTOR. By John Hill. 
 
 3 vols. 
 London : CHATTO & WINDUS, 214 Piccadilly.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 EY 
 
 R. E. FRANCILLON 
 
 AUTHOR OF ROPES OF SAND ' OLYMPIA 'A DOG AND HIS SHADOW ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 JToirboit 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1894
 
 PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 LONDON
 
 s/.l 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME 
 PAKT I 
 
 A DREADFUL DILEMMA 
 
 CHAP. PAG« 
 
 I. CHARLEY BASSETT AND HIS POUR FRIENDS . 1 
 
 II. AN UNBIDDEN GUESr 19 
 
 [IIL PATRES CONSCRIPTI 45 
 
 PART II 
 
 fhcebe's fathers 
 
 I. STANISLAS ADRIANSKI 
 
 61 
 
 II. PHILIP NELSON 78 
 
 III. WINE, WOMAN, WAR 96 
 
 IV. CHANGE FOR AN ARCHDEACON . . . .115 
 V. THE FATE OF PHILOSOPHY 13rf 
 
 VI. A SUDDEN LEAP 154 
 
 PHOEBE'S PICTURE 174 
 
 VII.
 
 vi JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 CHAP. TAUK 
 
 VIII. FROM BOHEMIAN TO BARONET .... 192 
 
 IX. AT THE PLAT 210 
 
 X. THE BEGINNING OF PHC3BE DOTLE . . . 227 
 
 PART III 
 
 MISS DOYLE 
 
 I. JACK dotle's ghost , 247 
 
 II. THE FIE8T DATS 264 
 
 III. 'ONLY A FIDDLER' 279 
 
 IV. UNCLE RATNER AND THE OLD GREY MARE. . 296
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 PART I 
 
 A DBEADFUL DILEMMA 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 CHARLEY BASSETT AND HIS FOUR FRIENDS * 
 
 It may be thought, by some fastidious people, 
 that Mr. Charles Bassett, a young gentleman 
 with a clear four hundred a year of his own, 
 and first cousin to that eminent baronet, Sir 
 Mordaunt Bassett, of Cautleigh Hall, Lincoln- 
 shire, had no business to be living in Bohemia 
 at all. Even people holding more modern 
 and less fastidious views of society may think 
 it a little odd that an amateur Bohemian of 
 his order, who could have made himself 
 welcome and acceptable anywhere, should be 
 hand-and-glove with such regular professional 
 VOL i. B
 
 2 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Bohemians as Robert Urquhart, Richard 
 Esdaile, Ulick Ronaine, and Jack Doyle — 
 above all, with Jack Doyle. But those times, 
 though not very long ago, were not quite 
 these. Lords and ladies would as soon have 
 thought of having a town house in Wapping, 
 as of apeing the manners and customs of 
 those who lived in Bohemia because they 
 were obliged, and who, out of jovial defiance, 
 sang the praises of what was but a land of 
 more or less hard exile after all. Think not 
 you know our grim Siberian Bohemia of 
 London, you who have in your heads 
 pleasant dreams of the ghosts of Weimar, of 
 the CaiFe Greco, of the Latin Quarter ! It is 
 not you who, with plenty of loose cash in 
 your pockets, smoke in studios, get in the 
 way of stage-carpenters, listen to the oracles 
 of literary clubs, and can return among the 
 Philistines whenever you please, who know 
 what Bohemia means : you know it no more 
 than he knows France who has travelled 
 over every mile of every one of its railways. 
 To-day, Charley Bassett as an amateur painter, 
 musical composer, singer, pianist, dramatic 
 author, critic, and poet, with a clear four 
 hundred a year of his own, and of more than
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 3 
 
 merely respectable connections, would have 
 been a drawing-room lion ; he could have 
 called himself' Bohemian,' while living happily 
 and comfortably in Philistia all the time. But 
 the cant of his youth was of a rather different 
 kind. The artist, instead of being a hero 
 because he happens to earn his living by one 
 sort of more or less honest work instead of 
 another, was then hardly a respectable man ; 
 and the gentleman who, out of natural eccen- 
 tricity, preferred such society to that of his 
 peers, required more than four hundred a 
 year, and a better cousin than a baronet, in 
 order to sit comfortably on both social stools. 
 Now if Charley Bassett had a foible, it was a 
 liking to lead without trouble, and to be ac- 
 cepted at his full value ; and if any man with 
 four hundred a year and a baronet for a cousin 
 doubts what these advantages will do for him 
 in the Bohemia of fact and not of fancy, let 
 him try ; he will not be long before he knows. 
 For your true Bohemian is above all things 
 human. Nay, his human nature is apt to take 
 an exaggerated form. So Charley Bassett 
 carried his talents, such as they were, into 
 Bohemia, where he had been welcomed cor- 
 dially. 
 
 B 2
 
 4 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 So much for the amateur Bohemian, the 
 sojourner in that never yet wholly explored 
 and terribly misunderstood land. As for his 
 friends, natives of the country, a few words 
 will suffice for each of them. 
 
 Dick Esdaile, a plain young man with a 
 whimsical twitch of the under lip, was — so his 
 friends, who were not painters, held — the 
 future Sir Eichard Esdaile, P.E.A., who would 
 make the whole world turn up its collective 
 nose at the name of Michael Angelo. Mean- 
 while honest Dick smiled good-humouredly at 
 the prophecy, and, while waiting for fame, 
 worked as a deputy scene-painter at one of 
 the theatres beyond Thames. He never spoke 
 of his family, and was supposed to have fallen 
 from the stars. 
 
 Ulick Eonaine was a Munster man, who, 
 after studying, or otherwise, at half the medical 
 schools of Ireland, Scotland, and Europe, had 
 been attracted to London by a report he had 
 heard of its being the biggest town in the 
 world. For his ambitions, no less for his 
 friends than for himself, were without bounds. 
 He already had a good many patients, of 
 a sort, for the simple reason that, though 
 in all other matters as guileless as the day,
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 5 
 
 he practised an almost incredible amount 
 of foxlike cunning in evading the receipt 
 of fees. How, on such a system, he con- 
 trived to live at all, was a mystery that he 
 himself never attempted to unravel. He 
 did live, and that was all he knew or cared 
 to know. 
 
 Eobert Urquhart was a philosopher from 
 Aberdeen, a student of the Middle Temple, 
 and a rigid economist, both political and social 
 — a character far more common in Bohemia 
 than is popularly supposed. He was the man 
 of theory and system, who reduced the com- 
 monest details of daily life to first principles, 
 and kept debtor-and-creditor accounts of 
 money and time. He considered neither as 
 wasted so long as it was properly set down, 
 balanced, and indexed. Esdaile had said of 
 him that he not only used to put down, under 
 the head ' Malt,' every glass of ale he drank, 
 but where, and when, and why, and of what 
 quality, and with what effect upon himself, 
 and at what cost, and at whose cost, and how 
 long, by the watch, it took in drinking, and 
 whether in combination with oysters, and if 
 so, with how many, together with the exact 
 latitude and longitude of the whole proceeding,
 
 6 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 the direction and force of the wind, and the 
 age of the moon. 
 
 But much as these three differed from 
 one another, Jack Doyle, the big bearded man 
 with the gruff growl and the ragged mane, 
 differed yet more strongly from each and all. 
 He was not more unlike Charley Bassett in 
 his disreputable slovenliness of look and life 
 than from Esdaile in his want of a career, from 
 Eonaine in his want of reverence, and from 
 Urquhart in a sublime ignorance of what the 
 words ' law and order ' mean. The others 
 pinched or scrambled through life ; he floun- 
 dered and rolled — a notoriously, aggressively, 
 typically penniless man, beyond the reach of 
 aid. The only financially satisfactory thing 
 about him was that he never borrowed — not 
 even from such a Croesus as Charley. When 
 he had absolutely no money, he went without 
 as long as nature could endure. When nature 
 could no longer stand starvation, he went to 
 bed and to sleep (men said that he never went 
 to bed except on these occasions). When he 
 could sleep no more, he knew how to find 
 some sort of so-styled literary work, among the 
 back slums of the press, whereby to put him- 
 self in funds again for a day or two. And
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 7 
 
 then he repeated the same course all over 
 again. Eonaine, who was no scholar, held 
 Jack Boyle to be the most learned man in 
 Europe ; but then, in Bohemia, every man 
 who does nothing is always credited with 
 being able to do everything if he pleased. He 
 was morose and sullen in bearing, even to a 
 point that looked like affectation ; but was never- 
 theless not unsociable in his own way. He 
 would drop in upon men at the most unseason- 
 able and inconvenient hours, and would re- 
 main as long as he liked — which was gene- 
 rally for ever. Whence he had come into 
 Bohemia, nobody knew ; but he had become 
 so much part and parcel of it that men took 
 him as a matter of course, and never thought of 
 inquiring. He was never either drunk or 
 sober, and had rather less respect, if possible, 
 for women than he had for men. Perhaps 
 the day might come, not long hence, when 
 Bassett, Esdaile, Urquhart, and even Eonaine, 
 would learn to call Jack Doyle ' Blackguard.' 
 Meanwhile, they were young, and called him 
 4 Friend,' with a youthful pride in his disrepu- 
 table originality. None, as yet, could foresee 
 what growing old means in the case of a Jack 
 Doyle.
 
 8 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Charley Bassett lived in chambers at Num- 
 ber Forty-nine, Gray's Inn Square. His bed- 
 room was up a good many stairs, but his 
 sitting-room was rented of Messrs. Mark and 
 Simple, solicitors, whose offices comprised 
 the whole of the ground-floor. Bassett ' kept ' 
 at the back, so that his window commanded a 
 full and close view of the old terraced garden, 
 where, among the black and learned-looking 
 elms, and over the sombre turf, an ancient 
 family of rooks, even in the heart of London, 
 still build and caw. The quietest of bachelor 
 students could ask for no better home. 
 Around and above was heard, by day, nothing 
 noisier than the occasional smothered slam of 
 a baize door, or the caw of the rooks, which 
 never jars the most finely-strung nerves ; by 
 night not even the hum of Holborn, though 
 so near, could find its way in. 
 
 There was a good deal of character about 
 Charley Bassett's room. Elegant bachelor- 
 hood had not yet become an everyday thing, 
 especially in the least fashionable of the Inns 
 of Court, so that Charley must have been not 
 a little in advance of his time. The room 
 was studio, boudoir, library, and smoking- 
 room in one. The furniture was arranged
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 9 
 
 with a view to effect which, though it would 
 have given any modern aesthete a fit of the 
 horrors, was meant to be artistic in a humble 
 and benighted way. A few tolerable oil 
 paintings were on the walls ; an easel, with a 
 splashed canvas, stood in one corner, and a 
 cottage piano in another, while books, for the 
 most part gorgeously bound, filled a whole 
 wall. There were even flowers, whose breath 
 served to call special attention to a more 
 general aroma of turpentine, Eussia leather, 
 and ghosts of cigars whose name must have 
 been legion, and of that indefinable essence 
 which, when it comes through an open win- 
 dow on a warm evening, tells a blind man 
 that he is in London, and nowhere else in the 
 world. 
 
 Charley Bassett himself sat alone at that 
 open window, taking things very easily indeed. 
 The summer evening was young, but yet, one 
 would think, too old for slippers and dressing- 
 gown and for the fresh remains, on a corner 
 table, of a meal that looked suspiciously like 
 breakfast. Slippers, dressing-gown, and em- 
 broidered smoking-cap were each and all of a 
 pattern much harder to describe than that of 
 their wearer. He was a consciously hand-
 
 i 
 
 10 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER) ,'! 
 
 some young man of five-and-twentjr at most, \\ 
 lazy and languid in his poses, but looking > 
 very well able to look quite otherwise if the 
 humour should seize him ; healthily/ pale in f 
 complexion, with grey eyes,' and ' almost/ 
 femininely delicate lips full of good- humour, 
 and good nature, with a firmly-marked nose I 
 and chin, and thick clustering, brown Jiair. | 
 To match the splendour ; of his costume', he i 
 had adopted the then purely artistic afFecta- 
 tion of a moustache, cheeks and chin being 
 clean shaved. 
 
 Whatever were his reflections, he was 
 evidently not a man who knew much about 
 unhappy ones. Clearly, if he was in love, he 
 had been accepted ; if he had accepted any 
 bills, they were obviously not nearly due. 
 Nor, on the other hand, were they so all- 
 absorbing as to make solitude a necessity. 
 Not a shadow of a frown crossed his fore- 
 head when the thump of a heavy fist fell upon 
 the outer door, and was followed by an 
 imitation of a solo on the big drum. On the 
 contrary, he rose and opened to the perform- 
 ers with unmistakably hearty welcome. 
 ' Come in, you fellows. You've strangled an 
 epic in the bud, as Eonaine would say, but
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER n 
 
 ;. , never* mind. I've got plenty more growing. 
 
 \ i What, doi you want ? Breakfast ? I've had 
 
 \ xmy own — but then, you know, I'm an un- 
 
 \ commonly early bird.' 
 I' |Qharley's friends were as unlike as no 
 /doubt Pylades and Orestes were, and, at the 
 / same time, no less unlike Charley. One was 
 
 i a very dark, sallow-complexioned lad, appa- 
 ll renjpy made entirely of exceedingly tough 
 wir£, with high' cheek bones, deep eyes, an 
 aquiline nose, and a hard and hungry expres- 
 sion which gave him the look of a famished 
 frifd^of prey. He . was dressed neatly and 
 quietly, and bore no sign about him of shar- 
 ing Charley's artistic fopperies. Short of 
 inches as well as of flesh, he did not reach 
 the shoulders of his companion, who had the 
 self-consciously tall man's trick of stooping as 
 he came through the door. Not only was 
 the latter full six feet high, but was of a 
 breadth and girth that required all his inches 
 to carry fairly. If his friend was a hungry 
 hawk, he was a dissipated lion. There was 
 leonine flatness as well as breadth about so 
 much of his face as was unhidden by a full 
 tawny beard, while the mane was well repre- 
 sented by a heavy mass of tangled chestnut
 
 12 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 hair, touched on the temples with grey — the 
 results of that form of Time which is to be 
 measured by nights instead of days. For 
 there was an air of general bedlessness about 
 him ; his complexion was puffed and blotched, 
 his eyes heavy and bleared, his hands unclean, 
 his linen soiled and crumpled, and his badly- 
 made clothes tumbled on anyhow. 
 
 'Breakfast?' growled the latter, deeply, 
 gruffly, and slowly. 'Yes, I've heard of 
 breakfast, it's something they give you for 
 dinner in farmhouses, I believe ; or where is 
 it they give it to you ? Yes, I'll take one. 
 One ought to try everything once. If I don't 
 like it, I needn't do it again.' 
 
 'Vera well put, Jack Doyle,' said his 
 younger companion in a dry tone of didactic 
 approval. ' Yera well put, indeed. Experi- 
 ence, which is but the soom total of separate 
 experiments, is just the entire basis of phi- 
 losophy. Ye may think half-past six o'clock 
 is a bit late for breakfast. So it may be. 
 But then so, ye see, it may not be. Nobody 
 can tell the best time for breakfast till he's 
 fairly tried every minute of the one thousand 
 four hundred and forty that go to a day. As 
 ye vera justly say, a man must try everything
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 13 
 
 before he knows anything, for till he knows 
 everything he knows nothing — nothing at 
 all.' 
 
 ■ Then, on that showing,' said Charley, 
 bringing out decanters and glasses, ' you 
 must commit at least one murder before you 
 can claim to be the infinitesimal fraction of a 
 philosopher? By Jove, Urquhart, when I 
 defend you at the Old Bailey for murdering 
 your great-grandmother, I shall go in for an 
 acquittal on the ground of experimental 
 philosophy.' 
 
 ' My great-grandmother ? ' exclaimed 
 Urquhart, a little quickly. ' Why, she died 
 sixty years ago — before I was born ! And 
 if she were living — if ye think I'll evacuate 
 a philosophical position from any fear of 
 the consequences it leads to — then ye know 
 vera little of me ; vera little indeed.' 
 
 ' But how about suicide, eh ? ' asked 
 Charley. * Mustn't you try that, too ? And 
 about drinking bad port ? or about ' 
 
 ' Ye can't tell if the port is bad,' said 
 Urquhart, ' till ye've tried. And as to 
 suicide ' 
 
 'All port's good,' growled Doyle, 'when 
 you can't get brandy. And as to suicide —
 
 i 4 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 when you can't do better, that's good too. 
 But, as I see breakfast's nothing but Latin for 
 brandy, I can do better than port or poison 
 for to-night, or to-day, or to-morrow, or 
 yesterday, or whatever it is ; and since I can, 
 I will. That's my philosophy, Urquhart. So 
 here goes.' 
 
 ' On the contrary,' remonstrated Urquhart, 
 ' it is not philosophy at all. It is not even 
 theory. Why, it would be just laughed at 
 in Aberdeen.' 
 
 ' Never mind, old fellow,' said Charley. 
 'Leave Jack there alone. Practice first, 
 theory after — your own doctrine, you know. 
 You're all right both of you. " Leap before 
 you look " — that's the finest maxim old Bacon 
 ever made. Come — shut up. I know every- 
 thing you're going to say about Mary Queen 
 of Scots before you begin. By Jove, talking 
 of Mary Queen of Scots, there's a deuced 
 pretty girl just where I saw the ghost of Lord 
 Bacon — he hung out in this Inn, you know — 
 five minutes ago. Isn't she, Jack Doyle ? 
 Bring your tumbler to the window, and see 
 if the black old garden doesn't look a shade 
 and a half brighter than it did half a minute 
 ago. Holloa ! Get out all the tumblers you
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 15 
 
 can find in the cupboard, Jack — I'm in for a 
 levee, it seems.' 
 
 So it did seem, to judge from new thunder 
 on the outer door. Again Charley opened ; 
 but again to no more than two visitors, in 
 spite of a preliminary battery that had pro- 
 mised at least a score. 
 
 The new-comers were hailed as ' Esdaile ' 
 and ' Eonaine.' Esdaile was a short, stout- 
 built, sturdy young fellow, so commonplace 
 in feature that it is needless to consider 
 whether he was pale or red, dark or fair. 
 His small insignificant eyes were quick and 
 clear, and a slight chronic twitch about the 
 corners of his mouth betrayed an inveterate 
 habit of silent jesting. Eonaine's features, on 
 the other hand, were, happily, not common 
 at all. A rough, formless face, looking for 
 all the world as if it belonged to an india- 
 rubber toy in one of its most grotesque con- 
 tortions ; a flattened up-turned nose, and a 
 cloven and twisted chin, a freckled com- 
 plexion, thick lips that never touched one 
 another, a low knotted brow, a pair of light 
 blue eyes thrown in anyhow, a thin crop of 
 straight sandy hair, a lank figure to match 
 the face — thus would Eonaine be represented
 
 16 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 by the sun of the photographers, who re- 
 produces so faithfully everything about a man 
 except that which is alone worth reproducing. 
 What on earth does it signify whether a nose 
 turns up or down? For about Eonaine's 
 ugliness, young though he was, there was 
 something positively winning, he carried it so 
 simply and so bravely. No true friend of 
 Eonaine's would have wished him less unlike 
 Adonis by the breadth of a hair. 
 
 The atmosphere of the room rose per- 
 ceptibly as he came in ; even sullen and dull 
 Jack Doyle nodded to him with a quarter of 
 a smile. 
 
 ' Well, you fellows,' said Eonaine, with a 
 pleasant dash of rough brogue, and the most 
 hideously genial of smiles, ' an' what mischief 
 are y'up to now ? There's a regular triangle 
 of ye. But ye'll have to find two more 
 corners in it for me and Esdaile, if there's any 
 sort of fun alive.' 
 
 ' Any amount of room here for anybody 
 who wants anything, as long as he's content 
 to want nothing but what he finds,' said 
 Charley, throwing rather more than half a 
 cigar through the open window — for he held 
 it an insult to a fine cigar to worry it after its
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 17 
 
 first freshness had gone. • We're looking at 
 a pretty girl in the garden. Come to the 
 front, Eonaine. Contrast is Art's first law.' 
 
 'Faith, Charley, I will. All the beauty 
 shan't be on the other side. ... So, that's 
 what ye call a pretty girl, is it, in London ? 
 I suppose ye'll be calling Venus a pretty girl 
 next, and be hanged to ye. In Ireland we 
 call things by their right names, and when we 
 see a real angel of loveliness like that, we say 
 so — and to her face too! And I've half a 
 mind I will.' 
 
 ' I'd like to see that experiment,' said 
 Urquhart. ' There's no knowing how a girl 
 will take anything till ye've tried.' 
 
 ' H'm ! ' muttered Esdaile dryly. ' I 
 suppose what Charley Bassett would say to 
 any common duchess will be quite good 
 enough for Jack Doyle to say to a slightly 
 less ordinary nursemaid, or housemaid, or 
 whatever Eonaine's last new Venus may 
 chance to be. Why don't you look out at 
 window, Jack ? For she is a pretty girl 
 — as girls go, in these degenerate days.' 
 
 ' Why don't I ? Because I've seen pretty 
 girls before, and don't admire the breed,' 
 growled Jack Doyle from his tumbler. ' Well, 
 
 vol. 1. c
 
 1 8 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 boys ; you're all young yet. Look away if 
 you like, but don't bother me till you've done. 
 I hate petticoats. They do nothing but upset 
 the drink, and set good fellows by the ears.'
 
 19 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST 
 
 'Well,' said Jack, stretching himself after 
 half a doze, and draining his tumbler, ' isn't 
 she gone ? ' 
 
 ' To tell you the truth,' said Charley, ' she 
 isn't yet fairly in view. We're in the position 
 of a lot of astronomers waiting for the transit 
 of Venus. At present she's only a telescopic 
 star, pacing yon distant terrace like a sentry 
 on duty.' 
 
 ' Or waiting for one off duty,' interrupted 
 Esdaile. ' Where a red-coat's concerned, it's 
 always she that waits for him — never he for 
 her. That's a fine poetical image, though, 
 about a telescopic star walking up and down 
 like full-private Atkins. Ronaine couldn't 
 beat that, Charley, in his best brogue.' 
 
 ' " And sentinel stars set their watch in the 
 sky," ■ sang Bassett. ' But, look out. Here 
 she comes ! Here she Oh, hang it all ; 
 
 c 2
 
 2 o JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 she is a nursemaid, after all! A young 
 
 woman, with a baby. You called her 
 
 Venus, just now, doctor. You're only too 
 right — there's Cupid too.' 
 
 ' Venus be hanged in her own zone,' said 
 Doyle. ' I came here to be amused. I've got 
 to write my sermon to-night.' 
 
 1 What ? By Jove, Jack, if I didn't sus- 
 pect you, from the first moment I set eyes on 
 you, of being an archdeacon in disguise — 
 particularly in disguise ! I should like to 
 hear a sermon of yours, Jack, I must say.' 
 
 'Go to church next Sunday, then,' said 
 Jack, ' if you know the way there. And the 
 betting's five thousand to one you'll hear me/ 
 ' Only name the church, and I'm there/ 
 said Charley. ' If I don't know the way my- 
 self, I can find a cabman that will.' 
 
 'There are ten thousand parishes in 
 England. Do you think there are ten thousand 
 Englishmen who can write fifty-two sermons 
 a year ? Do you think there are a hundred 
 Englishmen who can write one real sermon in 
 fifty years ? I tell you, writing a sermon is a 
 tougher job than adapting a farce, any day. 
 Parsons are public-school boys, nine out'of ten ; 
 so they can't often so much as spell. But
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 21 
 
 most of them have got an odd half-crown, so 
 we swap silver and brains. Tall church, short 
 church, thick church, thin church — I've got 
 to be pretty well up in the slang of them all. 
 But it's a matter of three-and-sixpence to-night, 
 so I've got to turn on the agony tap specially 
 strong. I want an idea, well filtered through 
 the commonest brains I can find. Give me 
 one. Is she tall or short, thick or thin ? ' 
 
 1 1 do not vera clearly perceive,' said 
 Urquhart, ' the association of ideas between a 
 sermon and a ' 
 
 6 Petticoat ? ' growled Doyle. ' Turn 
 curate yourself, my lad; and you'll know all 
 about it in half an hour.' 
 
 'Jack's in thorough bad form to-night,' 
 said Bassett aside to Eonaine, as the two 
 leaned together half out of the window with 
 their elbows on the sill. ' I shall have to 
 choose between giving him in charge of the 
 nearest cabman, and keeping him till he walks 
 home. I don't pretend to go in for piety 
 myself, but, hang it all, don't you know, one 
 must draw the line somewhere.' 
 
 ' Is it bad form ? ' said the doctor out loud. 
 i Faith, if it's bad form not to look at an angel 
 of loveliness when he's got the chance, then
 
 22 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Jack Doyle's up to his scalp, and that's over 
 most men's, in bad form. He doesn't deserve 
 to be told what he's losin'.' 
 
 6 And he isn't ass enough,' said Doyle, ' to 
 want anything he deserves. He wants what 
 he does not deserve. He wants ambrosia, and 
 nectar, and the root of the lotus, and a 
 tankard of Lethe, neat, to wash it all down. 
 Come, shepherd swains of Gray his Inn — Tune 
 up your pipes, and eke begin — To praise yon 
 nymph, that so ye may— My long ears tickle 
 with your bray.' 
 
 Charley Bassett was not the man to play 
 second fiddle when the gauntlet of rhyme was 
 thrown down before him. 
 
 ' Tall, fair, and slim is she, I ween — Who 
 treads alone yon garden green — Scares Learn 
 ing's ghosts with Beauty's charms — And . . . 
 And ... H'm ... And ... ' 
 
 'And holds an Infant in her arms,' said 
 Esdaile. 'By Jove, when you go in for 
 laureate, Charley, you'll have to run me 
 hard.' 
 
 ' If ye like to call five feet two inches tall,' 
 objected Urquhart, ' then she is tall. I've 
 got as good an eye for height as any man 
 going.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER " 23 
 
 ' Five feet two ! ' said Bassett scornfully. 
 'Five feet two and a half at least, if she's 
 one. I'm not going to have arrybody's poetry 
 spoiled by any man's prose. " Short, fair, 
 and slim " — what a line ! Beats even 
 Esdaile's ' 
 
 ' Poetry,' said Urquhart dogmatically, ' is 
 just senseless and freevolous rubbish if it does 
 not express truth better than common prose 
 can. But to do that, it must express truth at 
 least as well as prose. And accuracy is the 
 very first condition of truth ; and I'll not let 
 myself be contradicted there. I tell ye that 
 a poem that just expresses the plain, simple, 
 downright truth about anything is better than 
 the finest of any other kind.' 
 
 ' There can, of course, be no question,' 
 said Bassett, ' that " Thirty days hath Sep- 
 tember " is the finest poem in the world. 
 Not even Shakespeare ever wrote anything 
 like that. Nobody's going to contradict you, 
 Urquhart ; but what then ? ' 
 
 < Why, that " tall " and " short " are just 
 comparative terms, that mean just nothing at 
 all. And so I say ' 
 
 4 1 suppose this is your notion of a love 
 poem, Urquhart :
 
 24 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 The maid for whom I sigh alack, 
 Has eyes of blue and boots of black, 
 In which she stands, July eleventh, 
 Five feet, five inches, and a seventh.' 
 
 'If ye make it two inches,' said Urqu- 
 hart, 'I'll say it's better poetry, because 
 it's better truth than I've heard for a long 
 time. If ye think I'm going to surrender a 
 philosophical position from fear of the con- 
 sequences, or of freevolous hypercriticism, 
 then ye know vera little of me — vera little 
 indeed/ 
 
 'And it's blue, ye call that girl's eyes?' 
 broke in Eonaine. 'Faith, they may be 
 called blue in England, but they're what we 
 call black in Ireland — as black and as bright 
 as a pair of blazing coals ' 
 
 'Put it into verse, doctor,' said Bassett, 
 ' or you'll be fined all round. Or I'll bet you 
 even money they're blue, and you'll lose. 
 Now look here, Jack Doyle, as you've made 
 yourself umpire, I'll give you her description 
 like a policeman. Apparent age, nineteen ; 
 height ' 
 
 ' Nineteen ? Five-and- twenty , more likely,' 
 said Urquhart. ' Look at her figure ' 
 
 'Don't interrupt the court,' said Bas-
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 25 
 
 sett. ' Age, nineteen ; height, five feet five ; 
 figure ' 
 
 'Two,' said Urquhart. 'Two and a 
 quarter, at the outside.' 
 
 ' You're fined for contempt. Five feet 
 five ; figure, slender ; eyes, blue ' 
 
 'Black, ye mane,' burst in Konaine. 
 ' Faith, I never heard black eyes called blue 
 in my life before.' 
 
 ' Complexion, rosy ; nose, retrousse ; hair, 
 darkish brown ; air, pensive ; calling, un- 
 known ; dress ' 
 
 1 Divil take the rags ! ' said Eonaine. 
 'Will we talk about a girl as if she'd be a 
 horse, if ye plase ? She's the loveliest bru- 
 nette, Jack Doyle, ye ever set eyes on : with 
 cheeks like peaches and eyes like sloes, and as 
 tall as a lily and as full as a rose. As like an 
 angel, Jack, as ye ever saw ' 
 
 1 Jack Doyle being so particularly in the 
 habit of entertaining angels,' said Esdaile. 
 1 By Jove, the doctor's turned out the laureate 
 after all. But she isn't a bad-looking young 
 woman, all the same, if you add Bassett's 
 passport to the doctor's idyll and divide by 
 two. Her cheeks are not quite like peaches, 
 and I shouldn't admire them if they were ;
 
 26 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 but they're good articles of their kind ; and 
 her eyes which are grey, by the way, are all 
 the better for being more useful to see with 
 than a couple of vegetables would be. As to 
 lilies and roses, I suppose that's poetry for 
 anything you please ; and as to height, well, 
 say five four — a good useful height for a 
 strapping nursemaid. And as to the rest — 
 not above chaff, I should say. Our good 
 company doesn't seem to keep her from 
 coming this way. There she is for you, Jack, 
 sketched on a thumb-nail.' 
 
 ' I'll settle that question,' said Jack Doyle 
 suddenly. He rose, lounged heavily to 
 the window, reached out more than half 
 his bulk, and shouted, in a thunderous 
 voice : 
 
 ' I say, young woman, how tall are you ? 
 And without your boots, mind ! ' 
 
 6 Hullo, Jack ! ' cried Charley, ' I say, that 
 won't do. That isn't the way to do things 
 at all.' 
 
 He, also, leaned out of window, and 
 declaimed, out of an unperformed extrava- 
 ganza of his own writing : 
 
 • Vouchsafe, illustrious damsel, to expound 
 
 How far thine orbs transcend terrestrial ground ?
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 27 
 
 Now, Urquhart, a guinea to eighteenpence, 
 she's five feet five.' 
 
 The girl, who had been straying towards 
 the window, not wholly unconscious of being 
 looked at, looked up suddenly at Jack Doyle's 
 summons ; then, seeing Charley's handsome 
 face and magnificence of costume, let her eyes 
 meet his for an instant, by no means angrily ; 
 and then looked up at the rooks' nests on the 
 tops of the trees. Two things that had been 
 said of her were unmistakably true — she was 
 a pretty girl, and was carrying a baby. As to 
 the rest, who shall decide when Charley 
 Bassett and his friends — each, save perhaps 
 Jack Doyle, a doctor in such matters — had 
 hopelessly disagreed ? 
 
 Charley had caught the glance — he had 
 caught many such in his time — and smiled. 
 
 ' I pause for a reply,' said he. ' Never 
 mind the big fellow ; he shan't eat you. 
 Look after that baby, that's all.' 
 
 6 Yes, he looks like that,' she said, with a 
 toss of her head that was certainly not meant 
 to be thrown away upon unappreciative eyes. 
 
 ' Looks like what ? ' said Charley. 
 
 'Never you mind. But baby shan't hurt 
 him. He needn't be afraid. I'll take care.'
 
 28 JACK DOYLE S DAUGHTER 
 
 ' One for you, Jack ! ' said Charley. 
 * You'd better put yourself inside again.' 
 
 ' No, my dear, it isn't the baby we're 
 afraid of — it's you. You're a most dangerous 
 young person, and I shall speak to the porter 
 not to let you in again. You are not only 
 interrupting our studies, but you have been 
 making us all quarrel about you as we never 
 quarrelled about anything before. I shall 
 have a special bencher set in the garden to 
 keep out every girl who is prettier than she 
 ought to be.' 
 
 ' As if there wasn't some faces at that 
 very window that's fit to scare off anybody 
 you want to ! I noticed how the gardens 
 weren't very full, and it couldn't have been 
 the porter kept people out ; he was good- 
 looking enough, and he had a civil tongue 
 besides.' 
 
 4 One for you, Eonaine, this time ! ' said 
 Charley. ' So take the thing you call your 
 face in. It's your turn now, Urquhart. 
 You've got experience to go upon now, you 
 know. Allow me, my dear, to introduce you 
 to a friend who was never put down in an 
 argument yet, and never will be. My friend, 
 Professor Mac Plato— Miss, miss, miss — if I
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 29 
 
 haven't forgotten your name already! 
 Miss ' 
 
 ' Seeing you never knew it, forgetting's no 
 wonder. And what's more, you won't get it 
 by asking out of me.' 
 
 Tool that I was, not to see that you 
 are the Marchioness of Clerkenwell in 
 disguise ! But your ladyship need fear 
 nothing from me : your secret is as safe as 
 if it were my own. I assure your ladyship 
 that your ladyship need not be in the least 
 afraid.' 
 
 c As if — if I wanted to be afraid,' said 
 the girl, tossing her head again. ' I'd 
 begin with you. I can give as good as 
 I get ; so don't you make any mistake 
 there ! ' 
 
 ' Come, Charley,' said Esdaile, ' we've had 
 enough of this for to-day. I can't say that 
 the brilliancy of the wit is quite up to the 
 mark on either side. Blow her a kiss, and 
 when she doesn't see your head-dress any 
 more at the window, perhaps she'll move 
 on.' 
 
 'Ah, you're jealous, I see, because you 
 don't know how to talk to a marchioness 
 and because I do. Perhaps you're right
 
 30 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 about the wit, but you can't have everything. 
 The girl is pretty ; and not bad fun either, 
 to my mind. Don't you like the way she 
 poses herself to be looked at, and waits 
 to be talked to, and carries indignant modesty 
 to every point short of — moving on ? I called 
 her a marchioness because I've seen the same 
 thing among that sort of people hundreds of 
 times ; only they don't do it in Belgravia 
 half so honestly. Look how slowly she 
 begins to creep off, an inch an hour, and 
 works her shoulders as she goes ; the least 
 grain of chaff, good or bad, would bring 
 her to again. Marchioness or milkmaid, 
 I'd undertake to whistle her through the 
 window in an hour. I do like a bit of 
 human nature, Dick, and it's there. Call it 
 vulgar if you like, but it's there. I'm 
 engaged in one of Urquhart's experiments, 
 you see.' 
 
 ' And the more shame for you, Charley,' 
 said Eonaine. ' There's nothing bad about 
 the girl, that I can see, and if there was, 
 trate her as if there wasn't, and lave her 
 alone.' 
 
 'That's just what she doesn't want to 
 be left,' said Bassett, ' and what woman wills,
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 31 
 
 you know But I do not make a mistake,' 
 
 he called from the window. ' I assure you 
 I am incapable of such a thing. You are 
 afraid ! you are running away this very 
 minute, as if you had a whole troop of 
 the Blues at your heels — you know you 
 are.' 
 
 Bassett was right ; the girl turned round 
 and smiled without any pretence of anger. 
 'That's how much I'm afraid,' said she. 
 ' Perhaps I might be afraid of the Blues ; but 
 the Blues wouldn't sit safe at their windows 
 and take precious good care not to come down 
 — not they ! ' 
 
 ' I confess I am incapable of matching 
 your ladyship in knowledge of the manners 
 and customs of the Life Guards Blue. Ah ! 
 it's all very well not to be afraid of five 
 poor old bookworms like us, who dare not 
 come into the open air for fear of catching 
 our deaths of cold. But you know you 
 wouldn't dare trust yourself on our side 
 of the window. Yes, I most decidedly 
 advise you to stay outside. We are lambs 
 out of doors, but we're terrible fellows 
 at home. Talk of the Blues, indeed ? 
 Did you ever hear of Bluebeard ? We're he.'
 
 32 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 'Ah, I s'pose you think I'm one of them 
 that's caught by curiosity,' said the girl. ' I 
 know a trick worth two of that.' 
 
 ' Fine talking ! You know all the time you 
 wouldn't go through that archway, and 
 into Number Forty-nine in the Square, even 
 for the sake of showing you're not afraid of 
 me.' 
 
 1 Wouldn't I though ! But I'm not going 
 to, because I won't ; so you needn't try 
 to play your tricks. This is the baby, 
 not me.' 
 
 6 So I see ; and though you pretend to be 
 so brave, you wouldn't even trust your baby 
 here, for fear he — she — it — should never 
 come out again alive.' 
 
 ' And no more it would,' said the girl. 
 ' Why, you'd be holding it all legs upwards, 
 poor little dear, and dropping it in the fender, 
 and I don't know what and all — and a nice 
 hot scolding I should have for supper when 
 I got home. Trust you with a baby indeed I 
 —not I.' 
 
 ' On the contrary ; if there is one thing 
 I have studied more closely and exhaus- 
 tively than another, it is the art of nursing. 
 Indeed, I myself have been a baby, so I
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 33 
 
 have had special and personal oppor- 
 tunities ' 
 
 4 Not you. I don't believe you've 
 ever ' 
 
 ' Been a baby ? But I have, indeed. As 
 you seem, however, to doubt my skill, hand 
 it up and see.' 
 
 ' Why, you'd drop it half-way.' 
 
 C I wouldn't drop it a quarter of the way. 
 Come, a child ought to see a little of life, you 
 know. And one ought to do everything once, 
 as a friend of mine here present tells me. If 
 I don't like it, I needn't do it again. Come, 
 who's afraid now ? I'll lay you a new bonnet 
 to nothing that I hold that specimen of 
 humanity, that undeveloped microcosm, as 
 well as if I were the great-grandfather of ten. 
 There's a fair offer of a new bonnet, and I'm 
 a man of my word.' 
 
 ' Faith, and I'd like myself to see Charley 
 with a baby ! ' chuckled Eonaine, who really 
 had some professional knowledge of the topic. 
 4 Wouldn't you, now, Archdeacon Jack ? ' 
 
 But Jack Doyle was in the land of dreams. 
 
 ' Two to one, Urquhart,' said Esdaile, ' he 
 takes hold by one leg instead of two. In 
 half-crowns. Done ? ' 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 ' It may be more interesting than ye 
 think,' said Urquhart. ' It is of very grave 
 scientific consequence to observe how a mon, 
 with only the inner consciousness to guide 
 him, will act under circumstances that are 
 entirely new to that mon. It will be an 
 important experiment in relation to the doc- 
 trine of innate and original ideas, which I 
 wholly repudiate, as ye know. So up with 
 the bairn, my lass.' 
 
 ' Carried,' said Bassett, ' nem. con. Now 
 then, my dear, prove you're the bravest girl 
 out by trusting a man with a baby.' 
 
 ' I'd as soon trust one with my Sunday 
 bonnet. You'll drop it on the gravel, as sure 
 as you're there.' 
 
 fc How can you tell till I've tried ? 
 Besides, we keep a surgeon on the premises, 
 and if it's quite smashed I'll buy you another, 
 as good as new. Come, that bonnet to a lock 
 of your hair I give it you back safe and sound.' 
 
 ' As if I'd give my hair to the likes of you ! 
 But there. I do like to see the conceitedness 
 of the men. They all think they can do 
 everything till they try. There ; try away ! ' 
 
 Charley Bassett reached out, took the 
 child from the lifted arms of the girl, did not
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 35 
 
 drop it, and set it up, awkwardly enough, on 
 the sill of the window. It was a very small 
 creature of scarcely more than a year old, but 
 healthy-looking, and, on opening its dark eyes, 
 it set up a crow instead of a cry in honour of 
 its new situation. 
 
 8 What the deuce is that ? ' suddenly 
 growled Jack Doyle, whose eyes opened 
 simultaneously with the baby's. 
 
 6 It is dangerous, by Jove ! ' laughed 
 Charley, as the creature made a claw at the 
 doctor's face, and crowed again. ' Here, take 
 it yourself, Jack ; I'm hanged if I do know 
 how to hold the thing after all ; or you, 
 doctor, it's more in your line than the 
 parsons. Hollo, young woman ! What are 
 you hanging about outside my window for, if 
 you please ? ' 
 
 ' I'll thank you for the child again, now 
 you've found out how holding one's none so 
 easy. Next time you'll be less free with your 
 bonnets, may be.' 
 
 ' Child ? bonnet ? Excuse me, my good 
 girl, but I don't know what you mean. This 
 is not a milliner's, and I assure you Messieurs 
 Mark and Simple would be aghast at the very 
 idea of an infant, not in Chancery, at Number 
 
 D 2
 
 36 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Forty-nine, Gray's Inn Square. We are 
 young men whose prospects in life depend 
 upon our characters. Go away.' 
 
 ' Ah, that's what's called chaff, I suppose. 
 But it'll be no fun to me when I catch it for 
 not being home by supper-time.' 
 
 ' Catch it then ; one, two, three, and 
 away ! ' said Eonaine, making a pretence of 
 throwing the baby through the window 
 pantomime-fashion. But Bassett stopped his 
 arm. 
 
 ' I forbid infanticide in my chambers/ 
 said he. ' My dear girl, there is a child here, 
 and in the direst peril. Here's a dignitary of 
 the Church who wants to drown it in brandy, 
 and a doctor wants to throw it out of the 
 window, and a painter who wants to take its 
 likeness, and a philosopher who wants to cut 
 it open to see what's inside, and how it's made. 
 I, who would protect it, am but one to four. 
 Would you save it from four terrible dooms, 
 there's but one thing for it. You must come 
 round yourself and fetch it away.' 
 
 ' No nonsense for me ! ' said the girl 
 sharply, holding up her arms. But it was 
 with a glance at Bassett which seemed to 
 contradict the sharpness of her tone.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 37 
 
 Flirtation with a stray nursemaid might 
 not be held a high form of sport even in his 
 set, where tastes in such matters had to adapt 
 themselves to their opportunities. But the 
 girl was really pretty, and Charley liked to be 
 glanced at in that way. % 
 
 ' Nonsense ? ' he asked ; ' I wouldn't pre- 
 sume — and it's not nonsense at all. If you 
 want to see this child again, here you must 
 come. Number Forty-nine in the Square, 
 through the archway. Mark and Simple in 
 whitish letters on the door — ground-floor. I 
 have sworn it, and never did I break an oath 
 to a woman, so long as I meant to keep it, 
 since I was born. Far less would I dream of 
 breaking one made to you. There.' He 
 slammed the window down and drew the 
 blind. ' There,' said he. ' I said I could 
 make her come in a minute if I chose. Act 
 Two, Scene One — enter the Marchioness of 
 Clerkenwell, seeking her child.' 
 
 ' And exit too, I hope,' said Esdaile. ' I've 
 had enough of this game.' 
 
 ' Poor, miserable little imp ! ' said Jack 
 Doyle. 'To think of our having been once 
 like that ' 
 
 8 Speak for your venerable self, arch-
 
 38 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 deacon/ said Bassett. c I never sat among a 
 company of scamps, drinking, and chaffing 
 innocent young women, before I was two 
 years old. Well, my little chap, and what do 
 you think of us all — eh ? I'll bet you a rattle 
 you never had such an experience as this 
 since you were born. Pass the little chap the 
 'baccy, Urquhart, and a clean clay, and the 
 bottle, and we'll let him see what making a 
 night of it means before he goes home. Make 
 your head while you're young, as Bacon 
 says somewhere. Hollo, doctor ! what the 
 deuce is it up to now ? What is it going to 
 do?' 
 
 ' Pooh ! Only going to sleep,' said 
 Eonaine. ' Chuck it on to the sofa — no : the 
 other way up, if you don't want to study 
 apoplexy. That'll do. Hark ! there's the 
 nurse at the door.' 
 
 Bassett opened and looked out. 
 
 'No,' said he. 'Nothing but one of the 
 ghosts out of the hall. She'll have to be fined 
 for keeping the stage waiting. And, in all 
 solemn honesty, I wish she would come, for 
 I've had enough of this nonsense myself by 
 now.' 
 
 4 1 suppose she's punishing us a bit — and
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 39 
 
 serve us right too,' said Esdaile. ' It is non- 
 sense. What made you go in for it, Charley ? 
 I'm hanged if I know.' 
 
 ' Do you suppose I know it myself? ' asked 
 Charley. ' Urquhart's the only man I ever 
 heard of who knows why he does things. 
 There's one thing I do like about women. 
 They're never afraid to own that they do 
 things because they do.' 
 
 ' And what'll ye do with the girl when she 
 comes?' asked Urquhart gravely. 'If ye 
 want her, vera well ; but if ye don't, ye'll find 
 her, may be, harder to get out than to get in.' 
 
 ' True, philosopher ! And therefore I 
 shall not let her in. I shall give her the brat 
 at the door, and dismiss her like a father, with 
 a kiss and a blessing. Or we'll toss for a kiss, 
 for anything I care. What shall we do to 
 begin with — nothing or something ? Improv- 
 ing conversation, or loo ? ' 
 
 4 Loo,' said Jack Doyle. ' If I lose, I'll 
 make my sermon against gambling. If I win, 
 I shall be saved from having to write one at 
 all.' 
 
 ' Loo, by all means,' said Esdaile. ' I want 
 to make a few millions. Wasn't that a tap, 
 Charley ? I'll go and see while you're shuffling
 
 4 o JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 the cards. No. This ought to be the first of 
 April, it seems to me.' 
 
 Bassett set out a card- table, and the game 
 began. It must not be for a moment sup- 
 posed that these men played according to the 
 measure of their means. On the contrary, the 
 Kussian prince of fiction who trusts a whole 
 province to the hazard of a die, would have 
 called this high play. Thousands and tens of 
 thousands were the lowest stakes heard of 
 after the first ten minutes of the game, and 
 the interests of the players became as great as 
 if the colossal fortunes at stake existed any- 
 where but in their own combined imaginations. 
 There would have been no excitement at all 
 in playing for anything that their combined 
 purses could pay. Bassett, indeed, kept per- 
 fectly cool, being really well enough off to take 
 such child's play at its proper value. But 
 Urquhart looked as sharply after every bone 
 counter as if it were one of those famous 
 sixpences by which his beautifully-balanced 
 finances were mostly measured. Esdaile 
 became earnest. Eonaine threw away his 
 hereditary acres, and their millions of rent, 
 w T ith the furious recklessness only to be 
 matched by the fever with which Jack Doyle
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 41 
 
 gathered them in. The latter spoke no word 
 beyond an occasional triumphant exclamation 
 when he made some coup. If Fortune was 
 his foe, her phantom was marvellously his 
 friend. 
 'Nine!' 
 
 It was the bell of Charley Bassett's clock 
 that spoke. And at the same moment 
 another slighter but far more alarming sound 
 happened to catch Bonaine's ear. 
 
 ' Murder an' blazes ! ' cried he. *' It 
 wasn't seven, Charley, when ye slammed the 
 window ; and now 'tis nine, and 'tis there 
 still!' 
 
 ' What's there ? ' asked Charley, looking 
 up from his deal. ' The window ? ' 
 
 ' No, the child ! ' 
 
 ' By Jove ! ' The cards fell from Charley's 
 startled hand. 
 
 ' Come, don't break a run of luck like 
 this,' thundered Doyle. ' Go on, Charley, go 
 on. I mean to win five millions before I've 
 done. Play ! ' 
 
 But nobody heeded him. All eyes were 
 turned upon the sofa in a fixed gaze of would- 
 be comic despair.
 
 42 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 ' This is simply awful ! ' said Charley at 
 last. ' My friends, I blush to confess it — 
 but — we're sold ! ' 
 
 ' In all my experience ' began 
 
 Urquhart. 
 
 ' No, Charley ! ' broke in Eonaine. ' I'll 
 not believe that of nurse or mother. 'Tis 
 against nature that a woman would leave a 
 child ' 
 
 ' H'm ! ' said Esdaile. ' Maternal instinct 
 may be a very pretty thing in poetry, but it 
 doesn't keep little girls from breaking their 
 dolls or big ones from dropping theirs into 
 the Thames, or leaving them at stray doors. 
 I've known them get rid of encumbrances 
 in worse ways. Charley's right, Eonaine. A 
 joke wouldn't have lasted two mortal hours.' 
 
 'A joke, indeed!' said Charley. 'Three 
 several times I told her where to come, and 
 how to get here. She'd have been here in a 
 quarter of a minute ; and a joke of that sort, 
 with a girl like that, would have lasted half a 
 quarter of an hour. No, she wanted to be 
 rid of that child, and we were fools enough to 
 show her how it might be done.' 
 
 'Are you a king or an editor, Charley, 
 that you say " We " for " I " ? ' said Esdaile.
 
 JACK DOYLE[S DAUGHTER 43 
 
 I But never mind that. I won't be hard on a 
 'man when he's down.' 
 
 1 Perhaps, then,' said Charley, for the first 
 time showing signs of temper, ' your wisdom 
 will be able to tell my folly what's to be 
 done.' 
 
 Uneasy silence fell like a cloud — of 
 tobacco smoke, for it took that form — over 
 the whole company. Not even Eonaine could 
 find a laugh, in the face of such an awful 
 situation. The terrible baby slept calmly on. 
 
 Suddenly Jack Doyle rubbed his eyes, and 
 let his millions melt away into their native air. 
 1 Do you mean to say,' he asked, ' that we've 
 — got — that — child — on — our — hands ? ' 
 
 'Aye, archdeacon. Bring your mind to 
 earth ; for the question is how to get what 
 we've got on our hands off again.' 
 
 Jack half staggered from his chair, lurched 
 over to the sofa, and looked down, for the 
 space of a full minute, upon his sleeping fellow- 
 creature. 
 
 ' Wring its neck ! ' said he, and lurched 
 back to his chair. 
 
 ' As a last resource,' began Charley thought- 
 fully. ' But, before we have to adopt such 
 extreme measures — wait a bit.'
 
 44 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 He went to the door, and shouted with the 
 full force of his lungs : 
 
 'Admiral Horatio Collingwood Nelson, 
 ahoy ! '
 
 45 
 
 CHAPTER 'HI 
 
 PATRES CONSCRIPTI 
 
 He who answered the summons was probably, 
 on an average, a man of about thirty-four 
 years old — on an average, because thirty- 
 four, which he certainly was not, is the mean 
 between eighteen and fifty. His age might 
 be either of the two extremes. Possibly he 
 was really thirty-four, and that one-half of 
 him had prematurely hurried on to fifty 
 while the other half had been content to stand 
 still at eighteen. Admiral Horatio Colling- 
 wood Nelson was weedy looking, with sloping 
 shoulders and a long weak neck, like a boy 
 who has outgrown his strength — an effect 
 that was further carried out by a perfectly 
 smooth, un wrinkled face, and by the manner 
 in which his wrists and ankles projected from 
 their proper coverings. He had an inky look, 
 moreover, as if he had just been up to his ears 
 in an exercise that obliged his pen to search for
 
 46 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 inspiration among the roots of his hair. But 
 then, on the other hand, that same hair was 
 extant only in the form of a pinkish -grey fringe 
 round a scalp that shone like a polished mirror ; 
 and the careworn, anxious, down beaten ex- 
 pression of his face could never have been 
 achieved by a boy. His features were all exag- 
 gerated, without being remarkable. The chin 
 was too short, the forehead too smooth and high, 
 the nose too long and fleshy, the eyes too weakly 
 and mildly blue. The mouth, through all his 
 general air of being overladen with anxiety, 
 smiled meekly and softly, almost like a very 
 aged child's. There was not much of the 
 naval officer about the cut of his clothes — a 
 very old dress-coat, well greased and very 
 grey at the seams, and buttoned across the 
 chest wherever a button remained ; a pink- 
 and-white shirt collar, tied with a large white 
 methodist bow ; shapeless grey trousers, with 
 a broad stripe down the outer sides ; a 
 pair of low shoes, tied with ribbons. Behind 
 one large crimson ear he carried a quill pen, 
 and held a long ruler in one of his bony and 
 elaborately white hands. 
 
 6 Admiral,' said Charley, ■ go into the 
 archway, and if you find the murdered
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 47 
 
 corpse of a young woman, just let me 
 know.' 
 
 ' Yes, Mr. Bassett,' said the admiral, 
 with a feeble and flickering smile. ' Is there 
 anything else I can do for you, by the 
 way? ' 
 
 6 Ah ! there spoke the British sailor. 
 No questions, no surprise, all eagerness to 
 do more than his duty. Yes. If you find 
 no corpse, go round the Square and see if 
 there's any young woman anywhere about 
 looking for a baby. If there is, bring her 
 here. 7 
 
 'Yes, Mr. Bassett, certainly. I'll see. If 
 I find a baby looking about the Square 
 after a murdered corpse, I'm to bring 
 them here. Yes, Mr. Bassett, it shall be 
 done.' 
 
 'No, admiral — a live girl, looking for 
 a live baby. Here, drink that, and be- 
 gone.' 
 
 ' That's a mighty queer admiral, en- 
 tirely ! ' said Eonaine, as soon as the mes- 
 senger had gulped down the contents of 
 a tumbler and had set off on his errand. 
 'Who'll he be?' 
 
 ' Horatio Collingwood Nelson ! That's
 
 48 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 his name. And I believe he makes incredible 
 efforts to live up to the responsibilities his 
 godfathers and godmothers thought fit to lay 
 on him. A sort of copying-clerk, or odd-job 
 man — a " super," in fact, to Mark and Simple ; 
 but with a soul above his station, you see ; a 
 lion in a lamb's skin, or a lamb in a lion's — I 
 hardly know which to say. Mark my words : 
 if there ever be a republic in England, 
 Horatio Collingwood Nelson will be its first 
 president, as sure as that confounded baby's 
 on that sofa. He's the most thorough- 
 going desperado — deep down — that I ever 
 knew : a cross between a British pirate and 
 a French regicide, Captain Kidd and Marat 
 rolled into one. He'll be heard of one of 
 these days.' 
 
 'You take things easy, Charley,' said 
 Esdaile, ' I must say. That child ' 
 
 'Won't be got rid of by taking things 
 hard. We must first know if the girl's 
 really and truly gone. If I do seem to take 
 things easy ' 
 
 ' He's bock ! ' exclaimed Urquhart, who 
 had never taken his eyes from the clock 
 since the messenger had left the room. 
 
 6 Well, admiral,' asked Bassett, betraying,
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 49 
 
 by the very lightness of his tone, more Philis- 
 tine anxiety than he cared to show, ' dead or 
 alive ? ' 
 
 But the admiral's manner was strangely 
 changed. The lion seemed to have thrown 
 off his lamb's wool. 
 
 ' And I must and I do say, Mr. Bassett,' he 
 began, in shrill oratorical style, ' that it is not 
 from you, nor from gentlemen that are 
 gentlemen, being friends of yours, which I 
 looked to be treated in a way which I can 
 only term as un-English, Mr. Bassett, sir ; and 
 I furthermore and moreover do say that to 
 despatch an individual, whosoever he may be, 
 to search after corpses and such-like articles 
 in squares and arches, when there's nothing 
 of the species on the premises, is not consi- 
 derate of the comfort or dignity of that in- 
 dividual. If it was the first of April, Mr. 
 Bassett, I could make allowance for the high 
 spirits of youth in the matter of pigeon's milk 
 and strap-oil. I have done so. I may so far 
 tolerate the last obsolete struggles, the dying 
 kicks, if I may so speak, of defunct supersti- 
 tion, as to do it again. But the next occasion 
 which I am called from my duties to my em- 
 ployers to be insulted, I can only tell you, Mr. 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Bassett, plainly, distinctly, firmly, and irre- 
 vocably, that I shall be under the painful 
 necessity of refusing to go, and for the conse- 
 quences of which refusal, Mr. Bassett, the re- 
 sponsibility will be yours.' 
 
 ' You've seen no girl ? ' 
 
 c There's where it is. I have seen a girl, 
 and when I asked her if she was looking for 
 
 any sort of a baby, she But I will 
 
 not condescend to inform you of the indig- 
 nities which, Mr. Bassett, your want of con- 
 sideration caused me to suffer at her hands — 
 to say nothing of her tongue. With your 
 permission, Mr. President — Mr. Bassett, I 
 should say — I think that under the circum- 
 stances, the most convenient course will be 
 for me to withdraw.' 
 
 c Hold hard, admiral ! I'm sorry if your 
 ears have had to suffer at the hands of out- 
 raged propriety, but — alas ! — look there — 
 there, on the sofa — not on the ceiling, man 
 alive ! Do you call that a joke on the part of 
 myself and my friends ? ' 
 
 'Why, Lord help us, Mr. Bassett, what 
 doings are these ? ' 
 
 ' Is it a child ? ' 
 
 'It's that, sure enough,' sighed the
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 51 
 
 admiral, who had spent all the indignation he 
 could find, and had to wait for the secretion of 
 a further supply. 'I know — none better. 
 I've seen six to-day, and all my own.' 
 
 ' Indeed ? Then for six reasons, admiral, 
 I appoint you president of this council. 
 Listen, and learn the absolute awfulness of 
 the situation. That child was handed through 
 that window by a young woman of whom we 
 know nothing — neither name, nor address, 
 nor, in one word, anything whatever. And 
 she has, for reasons only known to herself, 
 left it here on our hands. What are we to 
 do ? You're youngest present, Urquhart ; 
 what do you propose ? ' 
 
 'That is just the vera question,' said 
 Urquhart. 4 For, ye see, without experience, 
 'tis, just impossible to know anything at all. 
 We ought to consult with somebody to whom 
 all this has happened before.' 
 
 6 Thank you very much,' said Charley, ' I'll 
 advertise for such a man. Well, Eonaine ? ' 
 
 ' By the powers ! ' suddenly exclaimed 
 Eonaine, too excitedly to be careful of 
 grammar ; * by the powers ! 'tis a She ! ' 
 
 'A girl ! ' cried Charley, with a start, as if 
 he had never before dreamed that babies 
 
 e2 
 
 UNIVERSE OF «-
 
 52 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 could be otherwise than of the neuter 
 gender. 
 
 ' Poor little thing ! ' said Esdaile, with 
 scarcely a tinge of coldness, and none of 
 mockery, in his tone. 
 
 Jack Doyle took to chewing the ends of 
 his big beard. The admiral's weak blue eyes 
 became weaker and bluer than before. 
 
 Why should the doctor's very simple dis- 
 covery have brought about so sudden a 
 change in the atmosphere ? But so it was, 
 and they seemed to regard the little sleeping 
 creature with entirely new eyes. And it may 
 be safely wagered that nothing of the sort 
 would have happened had It turned out to be 
 He instead of She. 
 
 ' What a blackguard shame ! ' cried 
 Eonaine. ' And here are five men — and the 
 admiral — six men, who don't know what to do 
 with that mite of a girl ! We ought to be 
 ashamed of ourselves.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Bassett. 'We can't let a 
 woman that is to be grow up in a workhouse 
 to be Heaven knows what — that's clear, if 
 nothing else is. We should be less than men. 
 
 But the worst of it is Of course I've got 
 
 sisters, but I should like to see their faces if I
 
 JACK LOYLE'S DAUGHTER 53 
 
 asked their advice about a foundling ! Yes, 
 and when I told them I didn't know the 
 mother, they'd refer me, most unquestionably, 
 to the nearest depot of marines. They're good 
 women. You know what that means,' said 
 Charley, with the shrug of those who are still 
 young enough to fancy they know the world. 
 ' And yet a woman that isn't good won't do 
 to row in this galley. Oh, if I but knew of 
 one good woman who would do a good deed ! ' 
 he cried, out of the cynicism proper to his 
 years. 
 
 Maybe, if he had occasionally strayed into 
 the drawing-rooms of Philistia, he might have 
 known of more than one. 
 
 4 It is a grand opportunity,' said Urquhart, 
 eyeing the child like a famished eagle ; ' just 
 grand ! Think of the experiment of bringing 
 up a woman-child without the intervention of 
 woman-kind ! Nothing has been done in that 
 way since the days of Eve, and that experi- 
 ment was not wholly complete or satisfactory. 
 The chance of all chances, for which the 
 world might have waited for a thousand 
 years — I wouldn't lose it for a thousand 
 pounds. We'll be able to observe the limits 
 of the influence and the determining quality of
 
 t 
 54 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 sex, and all manner of phenomena that will 
 reveal themselves as time goes on and the 
 lassie gets bigger. To think of the thoughts 
 and the feelings, and the instincts and the 
 passions, all waiting in that wee bit of a sub- 
 ject, like the stops and pipes in an organ, for 
 somebody to play on them and find out all 
 they mean ' 
 
 ' Ye cold-blooded blackguard ! ' cried 
 Konaine. ' Ye'd be cutting the bellows open ! 
 Not a bit of it will I stand by an' see that girl 
 vivisected in the name of philosophy, nor any 
 other name. We'll make her just the grandest 
 woman that ever was seen. She's got health — 
 ye can see that, if it's only by the way she's 
 sleepin' — and health means beauty. I'll make a 
 Helen of her, by j udicious physical development, 
 to set the world blazin'. Faith, 'tis the devil's 
 own luck she has, to be sure ! By the time she's 
 that high, she'll be own daughter to a Lord 
 Chancellor, and the President of the Eoyal 
 Academy, and the editor of " The Times," and 
 the cousin to a baronet, not to speak of me- 
 self, all rolled out into five — and it's proud of 
 her we'll be that day.' 
 
 ' But meanwhile,' said Esdaile, ' the Lord 
 Chancellor has never seen a brief, the
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 55 
 
 P.E.A. is a deputy assistant scene-painter, 
 and the editor of " The Times " is — Jack Doyle. 
 And ' 
 
 6 And a child,' burst out Jack Doyle, 
 suddenly waking up again, a child's no 
 more fit to be trusted to a set of good-for- 
 nothing, drunken blackguards like us, than 
 I am to be sub-editor of " The St. Giles's 
 Scarecrow." And I say ' 
 
 ' Holloa, archdeacon,' said Bassett, ' that's 
 a touch too far. But, it is a fact that, whether 
 Urquhart is to turn her into corpus vile, or 
 Eonaine into a phoenix, somebody must mean- 
 while turn her into a — woman. We caa't 
 bring her up by hand. We can pay for her 
 keep — I don't suppose champagne is wanted 
 every day at that age — but whom are we to 
 pay? I'm quite ready to make a compact. 
 We'll put her parentage into commission, and 
 nothing shall be done concerning her, whether 
 by way of experiment or otherwise, save with 
 the unanimous consent and joint action of the 
 whole board. That will give just one chance 
 to Nature. All right, Urquhart, you shall 
 enjoy the experiment of watching the growth 
 of a natural woman to your heart's desire. 
 All right, Eonaine, if we can make her a
 
 56 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 phoenix — a phoenix she shall be. And all 
 right, Jack, we won't teach her to drink, or 
 to swear, or to be anything misbecoming a 
 modest girl. I like you, Jack Doyle, but I'm 
 not going to be told I'm unfit company for 
 man, woman, or child. But now ' 
 
 ' 1 think I heard you say you was inquiring 
 after a good woman, Mr. Bassett,' said the 
 admiral, in a timid and hesitating way. ' They 
 are scarcish articles, to be sure. But I do 
 happen to be acquainted with one ' 
 
 ' Hear, hear ! ' cried Charley. ' Go on, 
 admiral. Fame ! ' 
 
 ' And it occurs to me, Mr. Bassett, that 
 she might not object, if properly asked, to 
 look after the child, and to — and — and — in 
 short, Mr. Bassett, to altogether do for her. 
 She is a good woman, though not without 
 human failings, and lamentably incapable of 
 taking any intelligent interest, or indeed, Mr. 
 Bassett, any interest at all, in public affairs. 
 That is a defect in a woman ; but, happily 
 though it may affect her value as a wife to a 
 public man, it leaves her, as a mother, pretty 
 much as she was before. In short, Mr. 
 Bassett, she happens to be my own wife ; and 
 I wouldn't take a hundred pounds to go home,
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 57 
 
 and tell her I'd left a fellow- creature, however 
 small, to — to ' 
 
 'To the mercies of "a set of good-for- 
 nothing, tipsy blackguards"? Quite right. 
 You're a good fellow, admiral. Take her off 
 to Mrs. Nelson, and here's a five-pound note 
 for cab hire. I suppose that'll be enough to 
 keep a little scrap of a thing like that for a 
 few days. I'll see Mrs. Nelson to-morrow. 
 If matters can be settled to her satisfaction, 
 you must be yourself one of the commission. 
 Gentlemen, we hereby resolve ourselves into 
 a company for executing the office of joint 
 fathers to — to — hang it all ! To whom ? ' 
 
 8 And there's not so much as an initial to 
 her back,' said Eonaine, ' unless Mrs. Nelson 
 may find one, and then it wouldn't be her 
 own.' 
 
 ' She must have a name,' said Esdaile. 
 * Why not give her one ourselves ? ' 
 
 ' Everything's in a name,' said Bassett. 
 1 Marion ? Simple, unaffected, poetical, sugges- 
 tive ' 
 
 ' Of what ? ' asked Esdaile. ' It's all you 
 please, except suggestive. Now, you see, she 
 has no name, practically speaking. To us, 
 she is simply a piece of womankind. She
 
 58 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 comes to us out of a garden. In a word, she 
 is just Eve. Let her be just — Eve. That 
 suggests everything.' 
 
 ' Ah, but she's more than just Eve ! ' said 
 Urquhart, rather sharply. 'Marion is too 
 general. Eve is too universal. What we 
 want is the special name to define her precise 
 relation to the metaphysics of the future. 
 Psyche — the Archetype of the Human Soul ! ' 
 
 6 Call her Physic at once ! ' said Eonaine. 
 f Psyche, pooh ! Give her the name of the 
 biggest woman ye can find. Zenobia ; now 
 there's a name ! Beat that if ye can ! ' 
 
 ' H'm ! ' grunted Bassett. ' Now, admiral, 
 what's your notion of a name for a girl ? ' 
 
 ' They're all good names, Mr. Bassett, one 
 and all. But to my mind, there's no name 
 you can give a girl comes half-mast high to 
 Dulcibella. It's what I'd have called my own 
 last, if it hadn't been a boy. Dulcibella's a 
 beautiful name.' 
 
 6 Well,' said Bassett, ' let's try for a sur- 
 name, as there seems some difference of 
 opinion about the other. I think Marion 
 perfect. Eve comes next ; but Zenobia ! Well ! 
 But as to the surname. Let me see. Smith — 
 no. Vavasour — Davenant — no. Won't do
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 59 
 
 to give her one of our own. Pitt — Fox 
 — Buonaparte. Wait a bit; if we've got 
 vowels enough among our own initials we 
 might make up an anagram ; a joint name. 
 A good notion, and a new. Let's see. Esdaile 
 — Urquhart — Nelson — Eonaine — Bassett — 
 Doyle. Two vowels out of six ; that ought 
 to do. E-U-B-D-E-N : Eubclen. Will that do ? ' 
 
 'Hideous!' said Esdaile. 'She'll be 
 changing it the first chance that comes.' 
 
 ' Eubned,' Bassett went on, shifting the 
 letters, ' Burned — by no means. Bruned — 
 Bruden — Burden ' 
 
 ' Halte-la ! ' cried Eonaine. ' Burden* — 
 there ye are ; Burden : because she shan't be 
 one — and good sounding, too.' 
 
 ' Let me see,' said Bassett again. ' B for 
 Bassett ; U for Urquhart ; E for Eonaine ; D 
 for Doyle ; E for Esdaile ; N for Nelson. Yes, 
 all there. So be it — Burden. Six names in 
 one.' 
 
 ' Zenobia be hanged ! ' broke in Jack Doyle, 
 whose mind had been lagging behind, and had 
 reached no farther than the question of the 
 christian name. ' Call a spade a spade, and a 
 blackguard a blackguard, and a girl a girl. 
 Give her a girl's name. Call her Jane.'
 
 60 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 6 Well, archdeacon,' said Charley, ' since 
 we can't agree we won't quarrel. If a woman's 
 ever to come between us, she shall be more 
 than a year old. Gentlemen, charge your 
 glasses. Silence for the chair. I call upon 
 you, my most respectable fellow-fathers, to 
 drink all happiness, and so forth, to a young 
 lady of tender years, who is destined, not only 
 to solve all the problems which have puzzled 
 philosophers from Thales to Urquhart, but 
 also, with her beauty and genius, to set the 
 Thames blazing from Brentford to the Nore. 
 We, Patres Conscripti, are chosen as the 
 humble instruments for the bestowal of this 
 paragon upon an undeserving universe, thus 
 returning good for evil, and — and — but my 
 eloquence overwhelms me. In short, gentle- 
 men, I call upon you, as one man, to drink 
 health and happiness to Mistress Marion Eve 
 Psyche Zenobia Dulcibella Jane Burden. May 
 she live as long as her name ! Prom this 
 hour forth, we are Seven against the world. 
 Charles Bassett, Alexander Urquhart, Ulick 
 Eonaine, Eichard Esdaile, Horatio Collingwood 
 Nelson, John Doyle, and Marion Eve Psyche 
 Zenobia Dulcibella Jane Burden. Ease. Join 
 hands. Drink. Swear ! '
 
 PART II 
 
 PHCEBE'S FATHERS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 STANISLAS ADRIANSKI 
 
 Thaddeus of Warsaw, Lara, and all their kith 
 and kin ? Why, they were nothing at all to 
 Him. He was Eomance in person. To begin 
 with, he was a foreigner. He was black- 
 haired and black-browed, and he wore his 
 hair long and his brows in a tragic frown. 
 The drooping moustachios that hid his mouth 
 — possibly to the advantage of the latter — 
 were in themselves a glory. It was hard 
 to decide whether the man owned the 
 moustachios or the moustachios the man. 
 True, cleanliness was neither his forte nor 
 his foible. But interesting and romantic 
 foreigners are privileged from the trouble 
 and expense of soap ; if one washes too much,
 
 62 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 one might as well be something in the City — 
 a bull or a bear. 
 
 Not from the City, or from anywhere near 
 it, came Stanislas Adrianski. He was a Pole. 
 What Ireland is to England, such was he to 
 the world. His nationality meant a great 
 deal ; but he was something more even than 
 a common Pole. In war he had waved the 
 sword, in peace he struck the lyre. He was 
 a hero, who taught the piano at three shillings 
 and sixpence an hour ; but he was a hero, an 
 exiled hero, all the same. With sallow face, 
 pathetic black eyes, and long black hair, with 
 an aroma of lost battles and of the pathos of 
 patriotic exile about him, no wonder that he 
 touched a chord in the heart of Phoebe 
 Burden that had thrilled to no meaner, 
 shorter, or cleaner fingers since she had 
 reached the age when such chords are to be 
 thrilled. When he spoke English — sur- 
 prisingly well considering his foreignership — 
 in his heroically melancholy way, she felt a 
 tenderness of accent that seemed to say: 
 ' You understand me. If my country did not 
 hold my whole heart, a considerable part of it 
 would be yours.' 
 
 She was only a sort of daughter to a
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 63 
 
 lawyer's copying-clerk, an elderly widower, 
 always with the wolf at the door ; but she 
 had a soul above circumstance, and Stanislas 
 Adrianski had come nearest to its ideal. 
 Everybody else was so common and so tame. 
 There were her brothers, as she called them. 
 She liked them well enough, but they were 
 rough and common ; even that queer -lad 
 Phil, who liked books a great deal more than 
 she, so long as they had no poetry in them — 
 a form of literature at which he turned up 
 his nose. Stanislas's nose was aquiline, in- 
 capable of turning up at anything, serious, 
 grave, and expressive of power. Phil had 
 been known to turn up his even at Stanislas, 
 which made Phoebe feel how easy it is for the 
 owl to scorn the eagle. The eagle is above 
 scorn. There were her neighbours, too ; but 
 they were nobodies, one and all. 
 
 Phoebe was not one of those girls, if such 
 there be, who take no interest in the natural 
 history of young men. But she was one of 
 those who rise from the study with an incu- 
 rious wonder as to what makes it attractive 
 to other girls. She was ' fond of poetry,' as a 
 certain immature phase of mind used to be 
 described by simple people ; she also believed
 
 64 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 in it ; and it was a standing marvel to her 
 how and whence poets obtained their heroes, 
 until one memorable evening she saw Stanislas 
 Adrianski walking up and down the next- 
 door back garden. The snub-nosed, pimply, 
 pert, vulgar, ignorant and silly race of young 
 men turned out to have a reason for its exist- 
 ence after all. They were the waste of the 
 raw material, the unsuccessful experiments 
 out of which, once in a generation, Nature 
 turns out a Stanislas Adrianski. 
 
 Phoebe had always spent a good deal of 
 her time in that back garden. It was her 
 nearest available approach to the picturesque 
 and the beautiful, for the parks and the 
 grand shops were not for every day. Not 
 much fancy is needed to turn a dead bay-tree 
 into a forest, a fence of broken oyster-shells 
 into the 1 rocks that line the edge of their 
 native ocean, and to see distant blue or snowy 
 hills swelling in the lines on which Mrs. 
 Goodge, three doors off, used to hang her 
 linen to dry. As for animal life, there were 
 more cats behind that row of houses than in 
 any other quarter of the globe, while, except 
 on hot Sunday evenings, there were no young 
 men at all. It was no doubt a kindred,
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 65 
 
 sympathetic likeness in tastes and fancies that 
 led this exceptional young man to meditate in 
 solitude among the cats, the clothes' lines, and 
 the oyster-shells. 
 
 We do not yet know much of Phoebe 
 Burden. For that matter, she did not know- 
 much about herself — even a little less, if pos- 
 sible, than we all know about ourselves. But 
 it is clear that a girl who knows how to 
 conjure with oyster-shells is not likely to come 
 across a stranger like this without feeling a 
 touch of natural curiosity. She was not nine- 
 teen, so far as anybody could tell ; and she 
 found even less trouble in setting up nine 
 romances in nine minutes than in bowling 
 them down afterwards ; though she found no 
 particular trouble in that either. It did not 
 strike her that there was any difference 
 between inventing a non-existent hero and 
 giving the hero's role to a real young man on 
 the other side of one's own garden-wall, and 
 that wall a low one. 
 
 1 Suppose,' thought she, after her neigh- 
 bour, without having seemed to see her, had 
 gone indoors ; ' suppose — let me see, what 
 would be the nicest thing to suppose ? Sup- 
 pose I were some day all by myself in the 
 
 vol. 1. F
 
 66 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 garden — no ; suppose I were looking out of 
 the front window, when a party of soldiers, 
 foreign soldiers they must be, of course, 
 came marching along the street, led by a spy. 
 I should know him by his face to be a spy. 
 They would knock next door, and the officer 
 and the spy would go in. I should wonder 
 what was happening, when, all on a sudden, 
 I should feel my wrist grasped tightly, and, 
 before I could cry out, I should hear an 
 agonised whisper of " Save me, my enemies 
 have discovered me ! " What should I do ? 
 He would have seen the soldiers and run up 
 on to the roof and come down into our house 
 by the chimney. No ; that would make him 
 look like a sweep ; he should have, at the risk 
 of his life, dropped from the edge of the roof 
 to our top window-sill, and scrambled in that 
 way. I should look round, thinking what I 
 should do, when the soldiers would come 
 thundering at our door. " Search the house," 
 I should hear Phil saying. " You'll find 
 nobody here." " Ah ! but we saw him 
 swing himself in through the top window," 
 the spy would answer, and then I should 
 hear them coming, tramp, tramp, up the 
 stairs. " There ! " I should exclaim, point-
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 67 
 
 ing to the cupboard under the stairs. In he 
 would go, and I should lean against the door, 
 covering the keyhole and handle, so that the 
 soldiers would never guess there was a door 
 at all. The spy would ask me to stand 
 forward, but I should crush him with a look 
 of scorn. The soldiers would go, and then I 
 should have to keep him in the house without 
 letting anybody know. I should have to 
 pretend to lose the key of the cupboard, and 
 when the man came to fit a new one, I — I — I 
 have it ! I shall hamper another lock, and 
 tell him that's the one he was sent for to 
 mend. I shall feed the hunted hero by 
 holding a jug of milk to the keyhole, so that 
 he can suck it through with a straw, and I 
 shall prevent running up the milk bill any 
 higher by going without milk in my tea. 
 Oh ! all sorts of things will happen. But one 
 day I shall hear no answer when I speak to 
 him. A horrible thought will come to me 
 that he is dead. I shall break open the door, 
 and find him — gone ! How, I shall never 
 know, but some day, twenty years afterwards, 
 or thirty perhaps, when I had forgotten all 
 about the whole thing, a courier would gallop 
 up the street and pull up his horse just in 
 
 F 2
 
 68 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 front of our door. How all the street would 
 stare ! He would ask for Phoebe Burden. 
 I shall come upstairs, yes, in my very worst 
 gown. And then he will say, before them 
 all : " Thanks to you, His Eoyal Majesty the 
 King of Spain " — yes, he does look like a 
 Spaniard — " His Eoyal Majesty the King of 
 Spain, while exiled from his throne, escaped 
 from his enemies and recovered his crown. 
 I am sent to ask you to be his queen." And 
 then the courier will turn out to be the king 
 himself, too impatient to wait for an answer ; 
 and I shall say : " Well, time must show, but 
 I should like to be a queen." ' 
 
 There was not much harm in romances 
 which might be as reasonably hung upon the 
 dead bay-tree as upon a stray young foreigner 
 in a poor suburban lodging. There was no 
 reason for suspecting him to be so much as a 
 king's fourth cousin ; nor was Phoebe quite 
 such a goose as to take herself in the least 
 seriously, except in the matter of wishing to 
 be a queen. But then it was not upon the 
 dead bay-tree that this particular romance had 
 been hung ; and it was with a touch of new 
 self-consciousness that she next went out into 
 the garden.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 69 
 
 Of course we all know that no girl ought 
 ever to feel the slightest interest in any strange 
 young man, to whom she has never spoken 
 and whom she has only once seen. Of course 
 we know that, in good society, such things 
 are never known to happen — that not even 
 schoolgirls throw the most passing thought 
 upon such things. But, alas ! Phoebe was 
 not in good society ; she was not even a 
 well-brought-up girl, and she had never 
 seen a man quite like Stanislas Adrianski 
 before. 
 
 On the other hand, no thought of his 
 speaking to her ever entered her brain, except 
 under purely imaginary and impossible con- 
 ditions. She wanted a live hero for her own 
 personal poems, and here was one, almost as 
 good as if she had had him made to order. 
 
 That was the beginning, and that looked 
 very likely to be the end, and that would have 
 been the end, had not the interesting stranger 
 continued to live next door. She did not 
 make any attempt to find out his name or 
 calling, though that might easily have been 
 done. Perhaps she did not like to face the 
 chances that his name might turn out to be 
 plain John Jones, and that his .calling might
 
 yo JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 prove less interesting than that of exiled 
 majesty. 
 
 How their first acquaintance came about 
 she hardly knew. May be it is next to 
 impossible for a pretty girl and a fascinating 
 young foreigner to keep a very low garden- 
 wall for ever between them. He never seemed 
 to have anything to do all day but lounge 
 about in company with a cigarette. She was 
 nearly all day at home alone. 
 
 A first ' Good morning, miss,' in such a 
 case, is a stone set rolling down a steep hill, 
 gathering force and swiftness out of all pro- 
 portion to the first impulse that made it go. 
 
 Before long she had learned a story that 
 set her whole heart glowing. There was 
 romance in every syllable of such a name as 
 Stanislas Adrianski. He was not a king. 
 But he had a right to call himself count, if he 
 condescended to such vanity, and he was 
 better even than an exiled emperor ; a 
 banished patriot, who had fought and lost for 
 Poland. Of his unhappy country he never 
 spoke but with tears in his eyes : of Eussia, 
 never without a heat that woke an answering 
 warmth in Phoebe. It was something to talk 
 with a man who had a Czar for an enemy.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 7 i 
 
 How he lived, considering that his estates were 
 confiscated and that he had no ostensible 
 calling, she did not learn. Perhaps it was by 
 conspiracy. It did not hurt him in her esteem 
 that her rough-tongued and would-be witty 
 brothers, who had seen him about, called him 
 by all sorts of contemptuous nicknames. He 
 was above them ; and it was natural that, as 
 British youths, they should throw stones at 
 whatever they could not understand. Their 
 tone added a dangerous touch of piquancy to 
 a relation that derived half its original zest 
 from being apart from all common things. 
 
 There was absolutely nothing to alarm her 
 in the manner of the young man. In point of 
 courtesy, according to her lights, it was 
 everything that could be desired. He was 
 evidently a count, as well as a patriot to the 
 backbone. Sometimes she thought that a 
 touch of sentiment would be a not unwelcome 
 addition to his patriotic tirades. But she 
 never fished for it, and did not think the 
 worse of a patriot for being above such 
 trifles. He flattered her more by talking of 
 himself than either he or she could tell. But 
 the stone had not yet done rolling. 
 
 ' How it is strange,' said Stanislas, one fine
 
 72 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 autumn evening, while she was taking the air 
 on one side of the wall and he on the other ; 
 6 How it is strange that I find you here ! ' 
 
 ' Why ? ' asked Phoebe. ' It is much too 
 pleasant out of doors to stay in.' 
 
 ' That is not who I mean. I mean, you 
 are as a Princess in a history ; you are not of 
 yours, no more as I am of England. That is 
 strange to me. I see your father : you are 
 not like him. I see your brothers : you are 
 not like them. You are like yourself alone.' 
 
 'Yes — I suppose I am like myself, a little.' 
 She coloured slightly at the new excitement 
 of having herself made the subject of talk 
 instead of Poland ; and she did not feel 
 inclined to let the topic go. ' But it would be 
 strange if you knew whether I am like my 
 father and my brothers ' 
 
 ' Am I blind ? No. I see them, and I see 
 you. They are of the earth : you are of the 
 sky.' 
 
 Phoebe coloured a little more deeply ; it 
 was the nearest approach to spoken sentiment 
 that he had ever made, and then the phrase 
 was in itself beautiful poetry : a speech that 
 she was proud to think had never been paid 
 before to any girl.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 73 
 
 c I am not of the sky — you may be sure of 
 that,' said she. ' But — if 1 were like father, 
 or my brothers — that would be strange.' 
 
 6 Pardon. That is who I do not com- 
 prehend.' 
 
 ' Because — because I have no father, and 
 no mother, and no brothers — because I never 
 had any at all.' 
 
 ' Ah ! You mean you are not one of those ? ' 
 
 ' I — I'm afraid — I really don't know who 
 I am ; not even my own name. I hope you, 
 as Count, you know, won't think very much 
 the worse of me ; but it's true. You won't 
 think it so very dreadful ? ' 
 
 'Dreadful? You mean terrible? No. 
 But you interest me, more as tongue to 
 say. I am glad you are not of those. I 
 am glad I am right. I often say to myself: 
 " She is not of those." So — you know not 
 which you are ? ' 
 
 'No. I belong to a mystery. What it 
 means I do not know.' 
 
 1 Confide in me. It can be I may tell. 
 Mysteries ? They are adorable. I love them ; 
 I like them very much indeed. Since Poland 
 is slave, it is the air I breathe. A mystery — 
 and of you ! '
 
 74 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 'I do not know who I am But, 
 
 when I think of it — if I let myself think of it, 
 and I can't help that, now and then — it makes 
 
 me fancy thousands of things I have 
 
 lived here all my life ; but I am not Mr. 
 Nelson's daughter, and my name is not 
 Phoebe Nelson, but Phoebe Burden ; and that 
 is all I know.' 
 
 ' But they know ? ' 
 
 ' They ? Not my — brothers ; and if Mr. 
 Nelson knows, he does not tell.' 
 
 4 And he brings you up — he keeps you ? 
 He pays ? ' 
 
 4 Ah, that is another mystery ! Pour 
 times a year there comes a letter from India 
 with money — for me.' 
 
 Stanislas suddenly stopped in his walk, 
 and leaned his arms upon the to,p of the wall. 
 
 ' Money — from India — for you ? Is it 
 much, mademoiselle ? ' 
 
 ' A great deal. It is ' 
 
 ' Hulloa ! and what the devil,' exclaimed a 
 strong quick voice from behind her shoulder, 
 'what the devil are Miss Burden's money 
 matters to you ? And what the deuce do you 
 mean, Phoebe, by talking to fellows over the 
 wall at this hour ? Come in.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 75 
 
 This rough interruption, to say the least 
 of it, came from a big broad young fellow 
 of not much over one-and-twenty, whose 
 approach from the back door neither Phoebe 
 nor Stanislas had perceived. He was not 
 handsome, though by no means of the con- 
 temptible physique which Phoebe Burden 
 ascribed to young men at large. On the 
 contrary, had he not been that Phil Nelson 
 with whom, as with a real brother, she had 
 grown up from her infancy, she might, perhaps, 
 have regarded him with favourable distinction. 
 As things were, she felt herself turn hot and 
 cold with a sort of shamefaced anger, while 
 Stanislas, in the coolest manner possible, 
 lighted another cigarette and resumed his 
 walk up and down. A hero of romance is 
 not to be put out by a mere Philip Nelson. 
 
 But to be accused of talking to fellows 
 over a wall, when one is really giving one's 
 confidences to the sympathetic soul of a 
 patriot, martyr and hero, is like having one's 
 higher life suddenly degraded and vulgarised. 
 Phoebe turned with a temporary submission 
 to Philip Nelson's rough command ; but it 
 was from a wish to save her hero from rough 
 insult which might too sorely wound his
 
 76 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 sensitive soul — certainly not from any inten- 
 tion of submitting hereafter. 
 
 ' Phoebe,' said Philip more gently, ' I am 
 your brother, you know, and it's my duty to 
 look after you. What does this mean ? ' 
 
 She looked through the deepening twi- 
 light across the wall, and saw the light at the 
 point of the cigarette vanishing into the house 
 to which the back garden over the wall 
 belonged. 
 
 'What does what mean?' she asked 
 quickly. ' What do you mean by insulting a 
 gentleman before me, and me before him ? ' 
 
 ' I didn't mean to listen, Phoebe — I didn't 
 listen ; but I couldn't help hearing. Pel come 
 back to tell you of some good news for 
 myself, thinking you might care — but never 
 mind that now — and it wasn't good to find 
 yon talking like to an old friend to that 
 foreign cad next door. How long have you 
 known him, Phoebe ? I've a right to know, 
 and if I hav'n't ' 
 
 ' You hav'n't,' said she ; ' and a count ' 
 
 ' A count ! Every bagman's a count, 
 abroad. And I don't believe that fellow's 
 even a bagman.' 
 
 ' I know him. He is a Polish patriot, if
 
 J A CK DO YLE 5 5 DA UGHTER 77 
 
 you know what that means. He is a hero, 
 and I am proud ' 
 
 6 Hero enough ! He seemed to know, from 
 the way he sneaked off without a word, that 
 
 my toes felt uncommonly like kicking A 
 
 Pole, is he ? — and a patriot ? — and a count ? — 
 and a hero ? Oh, Phoebe, if this happens twice, 
 a Pole, and a patriot, and a count, and a hero, 
 and a cad, and a coward, will have to learn 
 what a common English fist means. There — 
 once for all — come in ! ' 
 
 It may be thought that Philip Nelson 
 spoke with more than a brother's ill-temper, 
 and if he thought this the way to make short 
 work of Stanislas Aclrianski, it is certain that 
 he was a fool.
 
 78 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 PHILIP NELSON 
 
 A sudden plunge from the warm bed where 
 we have been dreaming all sorts of vague, 
 intangible fancies — all the more luxurious 
 for their being so completely beyond the 
 reach of sense or reason — into the biting 
 reality of a half-frozen bath on a winter 
 morning, is nothing to the sensation of having 
 the first warmth of one's first romance sub- 
 jected to such an uncompromising shower- 
 bath as Philip Nelson's treatment of Phoebe's 
 back-garden flirtation. She was not in love 
 with Stanislas, nor had he, until that evening, 
 suggested the possibility of his regarding her 
 as anything more or better than a sympathetic 
 audience, such as every poet and orator 
 requires. But this evening there had been 
 a tender something in the patriot's manner, 
 suggestive of the possibilities of her becoming 
 a living heroine to a living hero. Nor had
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 79 
 
 she noticed the sudden access of enthusiasm 
 and the deepening of tenderness which had 
 followed his learning that the money from 
 India, four times a year, was a great deal. 
 For that matter, few women could associate 
 the idea of money with Stanislas Adrianski, 
 or him with it, either as desirer or possessor. 
 If he had put money before Poland, he could 
 have had it ; and that he had it not, every- 
 thing about him plainly declared. 
 
 Philip Nelson's whole conduct, therefore, 
 had been no less unjust than vulgar, and 
 Phoebe could not enough admire the delicacy 
 of the Pole in avoiding a quarrel in the 
 presence of a woman. She was angry with 
 Philip, and all the more for being unable to 
 help being rather afraid of him. He was 
 the only one of her family of whom she was 
 ever afraid ; and she was only too ready, 
 since she had started a romance, to give him 
 the necessary part of villain. And, for that 
 matter, the young man looked fierce and 
 sullen enough to suit the most exigent of 
 heroines, as he marched before her into the 
 house, and bade her follow him. 
 
 The interior in which Phoebe had grown 
 up was humble enough, and, being free from
 
 80 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 ever}' sort of feminine intrusion except her 
 own, was also a rough and ugly one. No 
 wonder she was fond of the back garden, 
 and no wonder she drew an altogether one- 
 sided contrast between out-of-doors and in- 
 doors on this particular evening. Philip 
 Nelson — her brother and yet not her brother 
 — was as unlike Stanislas as one young man 
 can possibly be unlike another. Nobody 
 could dream of making Philip a peg to hang- 
 any least rag of romance upon, although, by 
 many eyes, he would be held the better- 
 looking of the two, if only because he was 
 cleaner and more wholesome. That was more 
 than could be said of the Nelsons' parlour, 
 which, though in a girl's charge, did not 
 strike the senses as being either wholesome 
 or clean. But then it had been the common 
 room of a whole herd of rough motherless 
 boys. And what were one girl's hands against 
 so many ? For that matter, as her memory 
 only too justly brought up against him, Philip 
 himself, though by far the least riotous of 
 the whole herd, had been one of the most 
 grievous sinners in the matter of litter. He 
 had been that most uncomfortable and most 
 incomprehensible of young men — a serious,
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER St 
 
 steady, plodding worker in a house where 
 nobody followed his example any more than 
 anybody had set it for him. He had one 
 way, or rather fifty ingenious ways, as Phoebe 
 knew to her cost, of leaving books, papers, 
 and mysterious instruments in [all sorts of 
 inconvenient places, and of expecting to find 
 them, perhaps three weeks afterwards, in the 
 identical spot where he had left them. He 
 was given to spend evenings at home, during 
 which he smoked not over-fragrant pipes 
 over the production of zig-zags, about which 
 Phoebe used to feel that she could have de- 
 signed far more elegant patterns without the 
 pipe in a hundredth part of the time, and 
 with no trouble at all. 
 
 ' Phoebe,' he began again, taking up a 
 judicial attitude in front of the fireplace — 
 'Phoebe, I want to know what all this 
 means.' 
 
 8 What what means, Phil P ' she asked, 
 more innocently than she felt, as she began 
 to clear the unsteady round table and to 
 noisily set out the cups and plates for some 
 kind of meal. 
 
 'Do be plain and outspoken. What do 
 you mean by letting a stranger — and such 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 8a JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 a stranger ! — ask you questions about your 
 affairs ? ' 
 
 1 1 can't help people asking questions,' 
 said she. 
 
 'I don't know about that. I suppose a 
 man doesn't ask questions unless he expects 
 an answer. How long have you known this 
 fellow — what's his name ? ' 
 
 ' Count Stanislas Adrianski ? Oh, I don't 
 know. But why do you talk as if I had been 
 committing some crime? Don't you choose 
 your own friends ? ' 
 
 She was not speaking quite in the manner 
 she would have wished; but it is not easy, 
 without pens, ink, and paper, and an hour or 
 two of preparation, to extemporise the style 
 of a heroine of romance who is being bullied 
 by a high-handed and unsympathetic brother. 
 She felt that she was doing justice neither to 
 herself nor to Stanislas Adrianski. But, 
 always afraid of Phil, she was becoming con- 
 scious that she was afraid. In default of 
 the right words and phrases, she was falling 
 back upon the common feminine (and mascu- 
 line) trick of confusing the issues. 
 
 But Phil was much too logical by nature 
 to allow anything of that kind.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 8 3 
 
 'I'm a man and you're a girl,' said he. 
 ' I'm bound to take men as they come ; but I 
 don't ask them how much money they have 
 a quarter. It won't do, Phoebe — it won't do.' 
 
 ' What won't do ? And why ? ' 
 
 ' Talking to fiddling foreign counts won't 
 do. Picking up chance acquaintances won't 
 do. Eeading trash won't do. As for why — 
 one can't tell a girl everything ; a girl must 
 trust her elders ' 
 
 'By three years? Yes, you are that 
 much older, if I'm really as young as I'm 
 told. But you're not old enough to be my 
 grandfather, Phil, whoever he may have be.en. 
 And I should say that Count Stanislas Adrian- 
 ski is, at any rate, nearer my grandfather's 
 age than you.' 
 
 ' Hang the fellow ! As if I couldn't see 
 through his sort with half an eye ! There's 
 something contemptible about the very sound 
 of the fellow's name. It sounds as if he'd 
 cribbed it from some East-end play. And he 
 suits his name. If a fellow said to me what 
 I said to him, I'd have knocked him down.' 
 
 'You think you deserve to be knocked 
 down? Perhaps the count didn't think it 
 worth while.' 
 
 G 2
 
 84 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Their eyes suddenly met. And, as sud- 
 denly, the young man and the young woman 
 who had grown up together from childhood 
 felt that they had been strangers until then. 
 Her fear of him began to change into a 
 curious certainty that this very plain-spoken 
 young man was neither saying what he meant 
 nor speaking as he wished to speak — some 
 hidden imp was telling her that to dwell 
 upon the name of Count Stanislas Adrianski 
 at full length, and with its title, was a sure 
 way of punishing him badly for his inter- 
 ference ; and this not because the name or 
 title struck him as really contemptible, but 
 rather the other way. And as for him ; what 
 was it that had come to Phoebe that she 
 should show such hitherto unsuspected capa- 
 city for being sharp and bitter ? He was not 
 thin-skinned ; but this was a stab from a 
 needle, which easily pierces what can resist 
 daggers. 
 
 But, though triumphing in her last stab, 
 which she felt to be a good one — so good 
 that her pleasure in giving it almost inter- 
 fered with the careless ease which gives point 
 to scorn — she repented of it almost as soon 
 as it had been made. A flush and frown
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 85 
 
 came over Phil Nelson's face that made her 
 really afraid. It was a look of anger and 
 pain together, of which his face seemed in- 
 capable by its very nature. 
 
 It was a dangerous moment for her, for 
 it gave her a sense, not only of fear, but 
 of power. She had never seen him thus 
 before, and she was beginning, by some new 
 insight, to guess the cause. Was it possible 
 that she, Phoebe Burden, had in one evening, 
 and without leaving her own door, won the 
 sympathetic interest of an exiled Polish noble- 
 man and made another man downright jealous 
 thereby ? Here was the beginning of a real 
 romance, indeed, even if it did no more than 
 end where it began. She could fill up the 
 rest at her leisure, when she found herself 
 alone again. No wonder that JPhil Nelson 
 aroused a new interest in her, just as a real 
 stranger would have done. Even the fear 
 was a pleasant thing to feel, as soon as it 
 fairly took its place as a line in the web that 
 her head was weaving. It was Phoebe's first 
 taste of the pleasures of the coquette, and 
 they had a bewildering charm. She took it 
 for romance, just as she had taken Stanislas 
 Adrianski for a hero.
 
 86 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Perhaps she was right. Women consider 
 themselves to be born with — as a gift from 
 Nature to them, and to them alone — an infal- 
 lible instinct wherewith to understand them- 
 selves and men too. And who ought to know 
 better than they ? But meanwhile, thanks to 
 Stanislas Adrianski and other back-garden 
 fancies, it was beginning to look as if the 
 brother, who was not a brother, were in a 
 fair way of becoming sport to a girl who was 
 not worth the distraction of his mind from 
 the simplest geometrical problem. He looked 
 likely to find harder problems than there are 
 in geometry before he had done — harder to 
 solve, and less worth solving, or more. 
 
 Both flush and frown, however, left his 
 face almost as soon as they had come. 
 
 6 It is enough to put a fellow into a rage,' 
 he said, almost humbly, as if he were in some 
 sort begging her pardon. ' I'd come home 
 with some good news that I wanted you to 
 know before anybody else ; and I will tell it 
 you first, all the same. Only — please tell me, 
 Phoebe, right out, that there's nothing more 
 than common neighbourly acquaintance be- 
 tween you and that fiddling scarecrow. Of 
 course I know there isn't, but '
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 87 
 
 6 But tli ere is, Phil. There's a great deal 
 more. I don't object to scarecrows from your 
 point of view. I very much prefer them to 
 the crows, who can do nothing but croak and 
 make a disagreeable noise, and don't mind 
 their own business, and are generally trouble- 
 some. I have the greatest admiration for 
 Stanislas Adrianski — for Count Stanislas Adri- 
 anski, I should say. It is something to have 
 become a scarecrow, and a fiddler, and — 
 I forget what else you called him — for the 
 sake of his country. Would you become a 
 fiddler and a scarecrow for the sake of 
 yours ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly not ! ' said Phil. ' Nor would 
 anybody with a country worth mentioning. 
 That's all humbug, Phoebe. If a man wants 
 to serve his country, let him work for her, or 
 fight for her ; you can't do her a pennyworth 
 of good by loafing about with your hands in 
 your pockets, and telling women what a fine 
 fellow you are. They believe you, of course, 
 and you may end in serving . one of your 
 countrymen by picking up one of them with 
 a few more pounds than brains. If he was a 
 barrel-organ man I wouldn't mind ; he'd be 
 in his right place, and ask you for your pence
 
 88 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 honestly. But — well, that isn't what I've got 
 to say. Give me your word, Phoebe, that 
 you'll have nothing to say to — well, Count — 
 I won't venture on his name. Give me your 
 word on that, and you shall never hear of 
 him again from me.' 
 
 This began to sound delightfully like 
 tyranny. She had been so little ruled that it 
 would have been almost a pleasure to submit, 
 if only for the sake of the novelty of the thing ; 
 and perhaps, if he had known a little better 
 how such matters are to be managed, he 
 would have got his own way at one big 
 stroke, and have kept it for ever after. But 
 he did not know. And so, for want of just 
 the right word, or perhaps only the right 
 look, at the right moment, her mood suddenly 
 changed, and she broke into a laugh which 
 took even herself so much by surprise that 
 she let a teacup fall and break on the 
 floor. 
 
 6 Oh, Phil, what nonsense ! Why, father 
 himself would be the first to laugh at such an 
 idea. As if I could sit in the house all day 
 long for fear I should be spoken to over the 
 wall ! It's like what one reads about nun- 
 neries and girls in Spain ; and from what I've
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 89 
 
 read, they're not content to keep on their own 
 side of the wall. I am.' 
 
 ' H'm ! But the count can climb, I sup- 
 pose, as well as you ? Well, if he does, I 
 shall know how to tackle him. But as to you 
 — you won't give me your word ? ' 
 
 1 It would be too silly. But I'll give you 
 my word not to ask him to run away with me, 
 though that wouldn't be bad fun.' 
 
 ' He might ask you to run away with him.' 
 
 'Well, perhaps he will. Who knows? 
 But he couldn't do it if I said No.' 
 
 ' But — you would say No ? ' 
 
 4 Phil ! How can I tell ? I should rather 
 like to be a countess, and ' 
 
 1 Don't turn a serious thing into a joke, 
 anyhow. It is a serious thing. Here are 
 you, all alone all day long, with nobody to 
 look after you, and a strange foreigner, who's 
 most likely a scamp, with nothing to do but 
 hang round you. I wish mother was alive. 
 I'm not even your brother, Phoebe. I've no 
 business to order you. But it's my business 
 to tell you what's right and what's wrong, and 
 to keep scamps out of the road.' 
 
 ' Why ? ' 
 
 1 As if you didn't know that as well as I !.'
 
 90 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 c But I don't know it, indeed.' 
 
 6 You don't even want to know,' he said, 
 rather savagely. ' Perhaps if I was a count 
 or a marquis — thank Heaven, I'm only an 
 engineer ! — perhaps you would care then.' 
 
 ' If you were a duke, still more. How do 
 I know that I'm not a duchess myself, Phil ? 
 I do begin to think I must be somebody, and 
 Count Stanislas Adrianski says he's sure.' 
 
 ' How much more stuff has he been saying 
 to you ? I — I can only hope you're joking, 
 Phoebe. If you knew how you're hurting me,- 
 when I meant ' 
 
 'You don't know who I am. Father 
 doesn't know. I don't know. How do you 
 know that I mayn't be a long-lost queen ? ' 
 
 4 I'll put an end to this, anyhow ... I 
 — I don't suppose for a minute you're anything 
 above us, if one man can be called above 
 another till he makes himself so. Fine ladies 
 don't get lost in Gray's Inn Garden. Poor 
 people's babies get lost anyhow and anywhere ; 
 and as for me — I don't care. If you turned 
 out a duchess, you'd be plain Phoebe Burden 
 to me all my days. I want to keep you good 
 and safe — that's all ; and I believe I can do 
 that as well as a duke, and better . . . I've
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 91 
 
 just got the chance I've been working and 
 waiting for. The firm have asked me to go 
 out and take charge of part of a line we're 
 going to construct in Kussia. It's a big thing 
 for me — a thing that older and better men 
 would give one of their ears for. So it's an 
 honour, too ; but it makes me able to ask you 
 something that I've been wanting ever since I 
 was eighteen. I shall come back with money, 
 and, if I do my work well, I shall have my 
 foot well on the ladder. It oughtn't to be 
 long before I'm able to relieve father from — 
 well, from work, and to help all the boys, and 
 to live my own life too ; but I shall be away, 
 
 you see, all the time, and Of course, I 
 
 can't go on, all that way off, without being 
 certain about things. Just say one plain 
 word, out of your heart, Phoebe. I want to 
 work and live for you. Am I to, or ' 
 
 Phoebe could only open her eyes at him — 
 they were large by nature — in sheer, down- 
 right, honest amaze. She knew he was angry 
 and jealous, and that she was the cause ; but 
 this was a very different kind of thing. She 
 very nearly let another teacup fall. 
 
 Here she had been, growing up into young 
 womanhood and young manhood with Phil,
 
 92 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 the heaviest and gravest of the whole house- 
 hold, and had fancied him married to zig-zags, 
 whereas, as he now declared, he had been 
 seeing her face in their contortions and 
 dislocations for years ! 
 
 Well, perhaps it is as easy to see a real 
 girl's face in Asymptotes and Parabolas as to 
 find a romance hanging on a clothes'-line. 
 She was only too quick at fancies when they 
 did not touch her heart, and something of the 
 sort came into her mind in a vague way that 
 half touched her and half made her smile. 
 But to marry Phil ! Only the strangeness of 
 the notion saved it from being downright 
 absurd. How could she dream of herself as 
 the wife of a man whom she had always, even 
 while half fearing him, looked down upon as 
 a brother, and who spoke insultingly of heroic 
 causes and of the heroes who gave up all 
 things for them, and made the question of 
 marriage itself turn upon ways and means ? 
 
 He had not even said one tender word to 
 her ; had not even told her that he loved her. 
 Tenderness had come into his voice, and love 
 into his eyes ; but that was not the way. 
 
 He saw her surprise, and was surprised. 
 It did not occur to him that his one thought
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 93 
 
 for years might possibly seem new to anybody 
 else in the world. He knew he had been 
 speaking awkwardly and terribly out of 
 season. 
 
 As he came home from the office, full of 
 hope and of his new good fortune, he had been 
 painting, in his lover's fancy, a very different 
 scene. He would find her alone, and would 
 share with her his feast of honour and success 
 till the feast should not fail to have a yet 
 sweeter end. 
 
 Nobody will be much amazed to find a 
 plodding, practical, prosaic, slow-minded man 
 in love with a girl like Phoebe, rather than 
 with one of his own kind. It was likely 
 enough that he had learned to care for her 
 because of her faults and follies, and by dint 
 of for ever finding fault with them. But his 
 surprise at her surprise was certainly a little 
 surprising. 
 
 ' Do you want to think of it ? ' he asked, 
 slowly but anxiously. ' You know I never 
 can say half what I want to — but — will you 
 be my wife when I come home ? And — and — 
 now, Phoebe, do you know why I want to keep 
 you out of harm's way ? ' 
 
 ' I — oh, Phil, indeed I hardly know what
 
 94 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 you mean ! No — indeed it can't be. I should 
 never make a wife — for you. Please, Phil — 
 pray don't think of such a thing any more. 
 I'm so glad you've got what you want. I'm 
 
 so sorry you're going away. But ' 
 
 '"No? " For Heaven's sake, Phoebe ' 
 
 ' No, Phil. I suppose the shortest word's 
 best — with you.' 
 
 6 Phoebe — for Heaven's sake,' he said sud- 
 denly, ' tell me it's not that confounded Pole 
 that's in the way ! ' 
 
 It was the most idiotic speech he could 
 have made — it made her feel the infinite dis- 
 tance that lay between her and Phil. And it 
 sounded to her ears even a little insulting. 
 It was again dragging her secret, unspoken, 
 undefined romance into coarse light and vulgar 
 air. 
 
 'Nothing's in the way but myself,' said 
 she, also with rather too much heat to be 
 reassuring. But ' No, Phil,' she said again 
 more gently. 'That's all. That's my last 
 word. There, don't look so angry ! — here's 
 father or some of the boys,' she said as a 
 knock sounded at the street-door. ' Father — 
 he'll be so glad to hear of your good news ! ' 
 
 ' It's not good news at all,' said Phil. ' It's
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 95 
 
 bad news. I shall take it, of course — for the 
 sake of the others — but — I won't tell him 
 now. . . And,' he said to himself, as he left 
 the room so as to escape before the door 
 opened, ' it is that Pole. And to leave Phoebe 
 to a cur like that, who won't even let out 
 when a man insults him to his face before a 
 woman — that shan't be.' 
 
 Love, in Phil Nelson's case, was obviously 
 quite consistent with a decidedly low opinion 
 of the good sense and steadiness of the girl 
 whom he wanted to marry. He had told him- 
 self that he would set himself to cure her 
 faults, and he had tried : and he would not 
 have loved her half so jealously, or so 
 patiently, or so angrily, or so deeply, if she 
 had lost the least of them.
 
 96 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 WINE, WOMAN, WAR 
 
 Ph(EBE did not look in the least like a girl who 
 was fresh from her first flirtation with one 
 young man and from her first offer from 
 another, as she gave her last touches to the 
 tea-table and then went to open the street-door. 
 
 Phil's lovemaking had been much too 
 awkward to satisfy the romance which her 
 Polish hero had for the first time set vibrating 
 at the touch of real living fingers, while her 
 back-garden experiences had not as yet become 
 part and parcel of her common life indoors. 
 It was still one Phoebe who dreamed dreams, 
 and another Phoebe who made tea. So she 
 was just as cool as if nothing had happened 
 at all as she opened to one who looked as little 
 like Phil's father as he looked like hers, even 
 though he was really the one, and not the other. 
 
 The eighteen years or so which had changed 
 Phoebe from a baby into a girl old enough for
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 97 
 
 flirtations and offers had dealt kindly with 
 Horatio Colling wood Nelson. 
 
 He was evidently one of those men with 
 an abnormal faculty for standing still. He 
 still looked less like an elderly man than like 
 a sort of fossilised boy. 
 
 His hair was lank, thin, and grizzled, but 
 his mild blue eyes beamed from a face without 
 the sign of a wrinkle ; his smile retained its 
 infantine weakness, and his wrists their old- 
 fashioned schoolboy trick of projecting limply 
 far beyond the frayed edges of his sleeves. 
 
 Life had not gone well with him on the 
 whole, for he made a bad widower, and all his 
 boys had been troublesome from their cradles, 
 except Phil. But they had tumbled up some- 
 how ; and their father, so far from seeming 
 crushed by care, had kept up a jauntiness of 
 bearing strikingly out of keeping with the 
 cheap and threadbare shabbiness of his clothes. 
 His very hat had an air of saying : 
 
 ' I am second hand, and was a bad one from 
 the beginning ; but whenever I'm put on, I 
 cover brains.' 
 
 6 All the boys still out ? ' he asked, in a voice 
 that he had evidently tried to make strong and 
 manly by pitching it as high as it would go, 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 and rather puffingly, as if time had found out 
 one weak point about him after all. ' Ah, 
 boys will be boys ! I was ; and the old block 
 mustn't complain of the chips — eh? Well, 
 Phoebe, we'll have a carouse together, you and 
 me. You shall put in an extra spoon for the 
 pot, and we'll make it a regular port-wine 
 night — the boys shan't have all the fun.' 
 
 He hung up his hat on a peg behind the 
 door, rubbing his face all over with his coat- 
 sleeve, and sat down at the tea-table. 
 
 It was not often that he had the pleasure 
 of getting away early from his office and find- 
 ing nobody at home but Phoebe ; for Phil, 
 particularly, was the sort of son of whom a 
 father, with the least touch of the prodigal 
 about him, stands in awe. 
 
 With Phoebe, on the contrary, he had a 
 certain sympathy of character; for though 
 incapable of seeing mountainous landscapes 
 in his neighbours' wash, he had his own ways 
 of looking at things, and they were not much 
 more real than hers. 
 
 'I wish I'd thought of bringing home a 
 pint of shrimps,' said he. ' But then I never 
 thought of not finding any of the boys, and a 
 pint wouldn't go far among them. There's
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 99 
 
 one good thing, though, about not having 
 things — one can make it what one likes. As 
 we haven't got shrimps, we'll make it lobsters. 
 You like lobsters, Phoebe ? ' 
 
 ' Very much indeed,' said she. 
 
 c Then, as we haven't got shrimps, we'll 
 think of lobsters. I've got one particular 
 lobster in my mind that I saw coming along. 
 I wish you'd seen it too, Phoebe ; you'd have 
 enjoyed your tea ever so much more. I'd have 
 bought it, in spite of the boys, if it had been 
 just after quarter-day instead of just before. 
 Another cup of tea, if you please. We'll 
 make it champagne this time. I'm in good 
 spirits to-night, as you may perceive. I wonder 
 — I wonder if you know how to keep a secret, 
 £hoebe ? I wonder, now, if you can ? ' 
 
 ' A secret, father ? I should like to know 
 a secret. Is it — is it about me ? ' 
 
 1 You ? Bless my soul, no ! Why should 
 there be secrets about you ? JSTo ; it's about 
 me.' 
 
 For a moment the wild thought crossed 
 her mind that her so-called father might be 
 going to give his boys a stepmother. 
 
 There was something so especially genial 
 about him this evening, combined with such 
 
 n 2
 
 ioo JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 an obvious pleasure at the absence of the 
 terrible Phil, that, being a girl, she could not 
 help the fancy that he might have been 
 doing by somebody as Phil had been doing 
 by her, and with better success than Phil had 
 obtained. 
 
 But then, who could it be that would be 
 willing to unite herself with Horatio Colling- 
 wood Nelson, at his time of life, and become 
 stepmother to a batch of rough lads without 
 enough money for house-keeping ? 
 
 ' What is the secret, father ? ' she asked 
 with exactly the quantity of curiosity he had 
 intended to enjoy. 
 
 ' Ah, woman — woman — woman ! Another 
 cup of tea before it's got to be watered, and 
 then you shall guess twenty times, What I am ! " 
 
 Many different people would have given 
 different, if not absolutely inconsistent, answers 
 to that question, when asked of Horatio Col- 
 lin^wood Nelson. 
 
 Some would have said, ' A fool.' Others, 
 while not altogether denying the fool, would 
 have qualified it by ' knave.' Some would 
 have said, ' A man with a genius for deceiving 
 himself.' Others, ' One with a not inconsider- 
 able talent for deceiving other people.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 101 
 
 I fear that, if the question had been put 
 to Phil, duty would have forbidden him to 
 speak, while truth compelled him to hold his 
 tongue. 
 
 And yet a real fool would have been more 
 careworn, and a knave should not have been 
 driven to go without shrimps when he wanted 
 them. He had, at any rate, the wisdom that 
 bears daily troubles with a light heart and 
 a straight back, and the honesty that, when 
 it cannot get shrimps, is content to sup on 
 imaginary lobster. 
 
 As for Phoebe, she took him as she found 
 him, and even had a sort of faith in him. 
 Nobody else ever played with her at making 
 believe. And, lover or lobster, the game was 
 very much the same. 
 
 ' I'll guess forty times, if you like,' said 
 she, for she really liked guessing, and never 
 looked at the end of a novel before she had 
 reached the end of the first volume. ' They 
 have made you a prince in disguise ! ' 
 
 ' A prince ! Bigger than that, a long 
 way ! ' 
 
 1 Bigger than a prince ? ' she asked, rather 
 surprised that her intended stretch of humour 
 had fallen short of reality. ' You can't mean
 
 102 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 that Mark and Simple have made you one of 
 the firm ? ' 
 
 'Catch them at it! And catch me sell- 
 ing my independence — British independence, 
 mind you ! — for the privilege of having my 
 name painted black on a white ground ! 
 Besides, I've never been articled ; so I 
 couldn't, however willing. No. Something 
 that Mark and Simple couldn't be if they 
 tried.' 
 
 ' It really is something big, then ; very big 
 indeed ! ' 
 
 ' Very, very, very big indeed ! ' 
 
 ' It's true, then. You are going to be 
 married ? Oh father ! to who ? ' 
 
 ' Married ! Bless my soul ! As if being 
 married was a particularly big thing ! Why, 
 anybody can get married, Phoebe. It's done 
 every day. I did think it a big thing when I 
 married your — I mean the boys' mother ; and 
 it did turn out a big family. But no, Phoebe, 
 there are certain positions in which a man has 
 to give up that sort of thing, and to make 
 sacrifices for — if you were a man you'd under- 
 stand what he'd have to make sacrifices for. 
 I — I have been unanimously elected Grand 
 President of the Associated Eobespierres.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 103 
 
 There ! That's what I am. And I'll take one 
 more cup of tea — 
 
 1 Aye, fill (though envious stars may frown) 
 "With blood-red wine the cup — 
 We mean to shake the tyrant down 
 And knock the freeman up ! ' 
 
 Phoebe had heard all her life of a series 
 of associations with various names at which 
 her father had been in the habit of spend- 
 ing occasional evenings, especially when, as 
 happened just four times a year, he had more 
 money in his pocket than at ordinary seasons. 
 She had a general idea that he was considered 
 a great orator — not that she had ever heard 
 him address a much larger audience than 
 herself (for his sons silenced him), but that 
 he had given her to understand as much 
 whenever they were alone together and he 
 was in a confidential mood. She had sup- 
 posed, in her innocence, that these for the 
 most part fiercely-named societies were but 
 forms of the excuse which men past their 
 boyhood seem to require for making them- 
 selves a little more comfortable than they 
 find possible at home. But this appeared to 
 be something very special indeed, and his 
 emphasis gave his burst into verse a flavour
 
 104 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 of reckless grandeur. Her father was, of 
 course, no Stanislas Adrianski. Stanislas, she 
 was sure, would never have stooped from his 
 pedestal to a lobster, or have distinguished 
 himself by tossing off five cups of tea at a 
 sitting. But one does not require one's father 
 to have the fascination of an actual hero and 
 possible lover ; enough if a common detes- 
 tation of something or somebody — tyrants, 
 the income-tax, blackbeetles, it matters not 
 what — forms a link of fellowship between 
 them. She had built up her romance upon 
 the basis of a cruel father. But a sympa- 
 thetic father, and a gloomy, stern, and jealous 
 rival in the person of Phil, would be still better. 
 
 ' I am so glad ! ' said she. ' Tyrants are 
 horrid people ! When one thinks of Poland, 
 it is enough to make one want to have them 
 killed. Is it anything to do with Poland — 
 these Associated ' 
 
 ' Bless my soul ! Why, if you're not a 
 chip of the old block! Wonderful — >Jie 
 influence one gets over minds before one 
 knows where they are ! Just think — here 
 have I been doing my best to bring up my 
 own boys, and there isn't one that knows the 
 difference between a fool's-cap and a cap of
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 105 
 
 liberty. And Phil's the worst and stupidest 
 of them all. And here's a girl that can't hear 
 of me being grand president without feeling 
 her blood boil! Poland? Eather ! I don't 
 know what we should do sometimes for the 
 tail of a speech without the knout, you know, 
 and the Czar, and the exiles of Siberia — 
 Elizabeth, you know. "We're going to begin 
 with ourselves — first come, first served — but 
 the freedom of England means the freedom of 
 the world. If Eobespierre had begun with 
 England instead of abroad, poor fellow, he 
 might have been among us now. I mean to 
 begin with England. But I shan't stop there, 
 not at all. I shall go to Eussia too, and give 
 them a bit of my mind. Haven't you got just 
 one more squeeze of tea P ' 
 
 ' Phil's going to Eussia,' said Phoebe. 
 
 < Eh ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; his firm is sending him out to some 
 railway ' 
 
 • Just what he's fit for. I hope he won't 
 make a muddle with the tickets, or call out 
 the wrong stations, that's all ! No, I suppose 
 they've found out he'd never have done any 
 good at home. Well, families have to grow 
 up and break up, and go all over the world ;
 
 106 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 we mustn't complain. And between you 
 and me, Phoebe, Phil isn't the sort to make a 
 happy home. A sort of calculating boy — no 
 interest in politics, and no genius for any- 
 thing. I don't like those calculating natures 
 — always wanting to know if a herring and a 
 half costs three halfpence, how much you'd 
 have to pay for a penny bun. I like blood 
 and fire, like me and you. I like wine, and 
 woman, and war, Ah, that'll be a first-class 
 toast and sentiment for the A.E. — the Associ- 
 ated Eobespierres ! Wine, woman, war ! War, 
 wine, woman ! How'll it best go ? Let me 
 see. First, wine ; second, woman ; third, 
 war. That's the general run of things.' 
 
 Whence it may be taken that he was not 
 quite so great a fool as some thoughtless 
 people considered him. 
 
 6 1 wish, Phoebe,' said he, after a pause, 
 while he drained the milk-jug ; ' I wish you 
 were a man.' 
 
 ' Why ? ' asked Phoebe. ' I think— I think 
 I'm just as well as I am. Men don't seem 
 worth much — except one or two.' 
 
 'That's true. But if you were a man, 
 you could be an A.E. — an Associated Eobes- 
 pierre.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 107 
 
 ' What should I have to do ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, make speeches, and sing songs, and 
 make tyrants tremble. You'd like it, Phoebe ; 
 and so should I. You're worth all the boys 
 put together, though you're not my child and 
 they are. All the same, you're most like me. 
 Phil's his mother all over. She never could 
 bear politics. She used to say it meant the 
 public-house ; and she was always thinking of 
 the price of chops, and had no more poetry 
 in her than — than Phil. She was a good 
 woman, though, and did her duty, as my 
 great namesake used to say. But I'm the 
 Father of your Mind.' 
 
 ' I wonder,' she said with a sigh — ' I 
 wonder if I shall ever know who I really am ? ' 
 
 ' I hope so, my dear. Anyhow, it's clear 
 you're no common sort of a girl.' 
 
 'And you don't even know who sends 
 that money four times a year ? ' 
 
 ' It comes, don't you see ; it comes, and 
 it would be very bad manners to enquire. 
 Never look a gift-horse in the mouth, Phoebe. 
 The horse might take to kicking, you see. 
 No, no. You leave that to me. What makes 
 you ask me about that now, eh ? You never 
 did before.'
 
 108 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 ' Oh, but I have — many a time. I've 
 often wondered, and wondering has made 
 me think hundreds of things.' 
 
 ' That's curious — so it has me ! Some- 
 times I've thought you might be a young 
 duchess ; but then, I've thought to myself, 
 the aristocracy don't, as a general rule, send 
 out their babies for a walk in Gray's Inn 
 Gardens. But then, your poor mother — I 
 mean my poor wife — used to say your clothes 
 and things were as nice as if you'd been the 
 Princess Eoyal — only you couldn't have been 
 that, you see. There's no knowing. An 
 uncommonly lucky girl you've been, and to- 
 night you've made me proud of you.' 
 
 Meanwhile thought Phoebe : ' A girl with 
 a strange mystery about her disguises her- 
 self and becomes an Associated Eobespierre. 
 She becomes their chief, and leads them to 
 battle, and makes Poland free. Then she 
 turns out to be a Polish duchess, and so they 
 make her their queen. And Count Stanislas 
 Adrianski ' 
 
 She left her thought unfinished, although 
 it was a real waking thought, and not a 
 dream. It is true that she was not acquainted 
 with the military capacities or proclivities of
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 109 
 
 the Associated Eobespierres, and she forgot 
 to notice the incongruity of leading their new 
 grand president to battle. The thought, 
 therefore, was hardly wise. And yet, what 
 wise man who knows the world does not 
 every day coin fancies that are scarcely so 
 sane, whenever he has a minute or two to 
 spare ? 
 
 Alas ! if the whole truth must be told, 
 the real fool of an evening whose events, as 
 seen with Phoebe's eyes, ranged through the 
 whole sphere of fancy and feeling, was not the 
 clerk, who could feel greater than emperors 
 upon a pot-house throne, nor Phoebe herself, 
 nor the Polish exile, who may be taken to 
 know pretty well what he wanted in the 
 matter of a pretty young woman with a 
 quarterly income ; it was Phil Nelson, who, 
 with the world before him, had committed 
 himself to the one idea that he could never 
 be happy unless he married a girl who seemed 
 to have a bundle of weeds for a heart and 
 feathers for brains. He did not even attempt 
 to invent an excuse for his folly. He knew 
 her faults by heart ; and yet he did not say, 
 * I won't even think of her faults,' as so 
 sensible a young fellow ought to have done.
 
 no JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 His great piece of news had become bitter, 
 and instead of looking forward to Eussia as a 
 land of healthy change and forge tfulness, he 
 — though unable to draw back from employ- 
 ment that meant independence and might 
 mean fortune — felt a dread of it as a place 
 where he would spend half his working hours 
 and all his leisure in jealous thoughts of 
 Phoebe. ' Even if she wrote to me,' thought 
 he, when, having heard his father safely 
 settled at tea, he went quietly out of the 
 house and strode along the neighbouring 
 streets— 'even if she writes to me, I shan't 
 trust her letters. She'll be safe to tell me 
 everything except just what I want to know. 
 If there isn't Stanislas Adrianski in every line, 
 I shall be sure she's hiding his name. If she 
 mentions him, I shall be safe to think it's 
 because he's uppermost in her mind ; unless, 
 indeed, it's to tell me that he's got hard 
 labour for swindling. No, she can't be so 
 bad as to take up with the first dirty foreigner 
 that talks to her over a wall. But then she 
 is such a child ! She's enough to make one 
 think sometimes that she hasn't got her fair 
 share of brains, with the nonsense she thinks 
 and the trash she reads. If ever I have a
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER in 
 
 daughter, I hope to goodness she won't be 
 like Phoebe. But— but— but ' 
 
 Thought lost itself in the consciousness 
 that he loved her, faults and all, with all his 
 heart and soul ; and that he would cease to be 
 himself if he ever ceased to love her, faults 
 and all. He did not even wish that he could 
 cease to love her. But it thus felt unbearable 
 to leave her to the fascinations of a man who, 
 he felt by instinct, was not the less dangerous 
 to a woman for being despicable in the eyes 
 of a man. What was he to do ? He felt as 
 if he were two selves — one urging him to 
 throw Eussian railways to the winds rather 
 than leave the field open and unwatched to 
 his rival; the other and more manly self 
 telling him that he must not allow the trust 
 of life and work and duty to himself and his 
 house to be tossed about by the idle breath 
 of a girl. 
 
 ' What am I losing by going away ? ' he 
 asked. ' Only the miserable pleasure of a 
 spy ; I can't even guard her unless I sit upon 
 that wall all day long. And then girls like 
 Phcebe, and fellows like that, would cheat 
 me ; and she'd end by hating me. But — a 
 year of eternally seeing a picture of those two
 
 ii2 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 and that wall ! I shouldn't always see it if I 
 stayed at home.' 
 
 It was the practice for the Nelson boys, 
 when not out in a body, to stay up for one 
 another, so that the latest might have a 
 certainty of being let in by the latest but one. 
 As a rule, though Phil kept the latest hours of 
 all, he spent them at home, but to-night he 
 was the very last to come home, so tired out 
 by hard walking that he had given up 
 thinking, and that even his jealousy had 
 grown dull. 
 
 ' Hulloa ! ' exclaimed the youngest brother, 
 Dick, as, after a good deal of fumbling with 
 the chain, he opened the door, ' here's old 
 Sobersides been out on the spree ! Now you've 
 found out what it's like, p'raps you'll do it 
 again ! Blessed if you aren't as drunk as a 
 lord ! Hold up, old fellow ; I'll hold you up ; 
 I know that sort of thing.' And so, ap- 
 parently, he did ; for, though he spoke plainly 
 enough, he lurched against Phil so heavily as 
 nearly to throw him over. 
 
 6 And this is the house where she's been 
 brought up, poor child ! ' thought Phil, more 
 tenderly and more wisely, as he by no means 
 tenderly pulled Dick together. 'No woman
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 113 
 
 to see to her — father what lie is — and we 
 what we are. I suppose she's drawn to any- 
 body that's different from us. Foreigners 
 don't get drunk, I believe. But — Hulloa! 
 what's that ? ' 
 
 ' Cats, I s'pose,' said Dick, recovering 
 himself from a lurch that sent the banisters 
 creaking up to the highest floor. 
 
 But cats are soprani ; they do not sing 
 light Italian music with tenor voices in 
 finished style. Cats, it is true, perform their 
 music mostly in back gardens, and it was from 
 a back garden that this unfamiliar music 
 came. It was a fine serenade, finely sung t© 
 the thrum of a guitar. 
 
 Phil had no more ear for music than Dick, 
 but he could put two and two together better 
 than most men. 
 
 1 No, foreigners don't get drunk ; but 
 foreigners waul, and foreigners strum ! ' he 
 exclaimed deeply though not loudly. ' That's 
 their notion of love-making ' ; and in a 
 moment he had unbolted the back door, was 
 out into the back garden, and before the eyes 
 of Dick, who had staggered after him, was 
 seen, in the full light of the moon, breaking a 
 guitar upon the head of its owner. 'Take 
 
 vol. T. I
 
 H4 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 that, and that, and that ! ' said Phil, loudly 
 this time, as well as deeply. It was an 
 unspeakably delightful moment. He had 
 been unconsciously longing for a chance of 
 breaking something upon Stanislas Adrianski's 
 head, and now it had come. ' Take that, for 
 waking people up with your caterwauling. 
 If you want my name, I'm Philip Nelson. 
 I'll teach you to sing ' ; and down came the 
 guitar again. 
 
 ' Give it him, Phil ! ' cried Dick from the 
 doorstep. ' That's always the way,' he specu- 
 lated, being far gone in the philosophical stage 
 of liquor. 'When a Sobersides like Phil does 
 go on the spree — well, he goes.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 115 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 CHANGE FOR AN ARCHDEACON 
 
 c Bassett ! ' 
 
 ' Lawrence ! ' 
 
 8 By Jove, old fellow, who'd have thought 
 of seeing you ? ' 
 
 6 The same to you, old fellow. But we 
 must look sharp if we don't mean to be left 
 behind. Here's an empty first-class — in with 
 you!' 
 
 They were two young men who had just 
 crossed from Boulogne to Folkestone, and had 
 just managed not to be too late for the same 
 train to town. Lawrence was plain-featured, 
 lean, and bronzed ; Bassett was not unlike that 
 namesake of his who had, a generation ago, 
 lived in Gray's Inn Square, only his style was 
 less languid and more manly. They had 
 settled themselves comfortably, and had taken 
 out their cigar-cases, when, just as the train 
 was under way, another late passenger found 
 
 1 2
 
 n6 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 just time to throw himself into an opposite 
 corner. 
 
 ' Do you mind our smoking, sir, as this is 
 not a smoking compartment ? ' asked Bassett 
 politely, and pausing while in the act of light- 
 ing. ' I'm rather particular, you see, about 
 my fellow-travellers' tobacco, and always 
 smoke where other people mustn't, whenever 
 I can.' 
 
 His easiness and readiness of address were 
 also characteristic of that Charley Bassett 
 who he could not possibly be, unless, indeed, 
 time had stood even more still with the 
 amateur Bohemian than it had done with the 
 admiral. The stranger's eyes rested upon 
 him rather curiously for a moment before he 
 answered indifferently — ' It won't make any 
 difference to me,' and then betook himself to 
 the pastime of looking out of the window. 
 The two young men noticed that he was an 
 uncommonly tall and powerfully-built man, 
 well on into middle age, with a large beard of 
 mingled brown, red, and grey, and a com- 
 plexion more deeply bronzed than that of 
 Lawrence, but as he looked grave, heavy, and 
 ungenial, and was evidently in no humour for 
 talk, they soon ceased to notice a presence
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 117 
 
 which would not, in any case, have been a 
 restraint upon theirs. 
 
 1 If I'd been asked where you were, 
 Lawrence,' said Bassett, 'I should have said 
 India, and if I'd been asked what part of 
 India, I should have pleaded Not Guilty of 
 geography. You've not been out there very 
 long? I'm glad to see you, anyhow. All 
 right, I hope ? By Jove, barring the brown, 
 I should know you anywhere ! ' 
 
 c It's as odd as it's lucky, old fellow, my 
 tumbling over you the first hour of my 
 coming home. But how was it we didn't meet 
 on board the boat ? ' 
 
 ' Why, for the best of all reasons. I was 
 — but don't ask me to speak of it. I always 
 am. My notion of absolute misery is being 
 on board a small steamboat in a rolling sea 
 for two deadly hours. It's an ignominious 
 confession to make to a fellow like you, but I 
 really am a splendid sailor — on shore. Why 
 don't you engineering fellows get that tunnel 
 done ? ' 
 
 'And what are you doing with yourself? 
 No — I don't mean smoking. I see that, 
 but ' 
 
 'Oh, nothing very particular. I've just
 
 n8 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 been walking up a Swiss hill or two with 
 Aubrey. I walked him off his legs, and he 
 walked me off mine. Aubrey of Merton,you 
 know. I left him in Paris, risking his chance 
 of a fellowship by mooning about with his 
 prettiest cousin. He's a good fellow, though, 
 all the same.' 
 
 'You missed your chance, of course, in 
 the regular way ? ' 
 
 ' Quite in the regular way. The governor 
 made a fuss about loss of time and money, 
 but he never means much when he talks like 
 that, and as soon as he'd paid the bills he was 
 just the same as ever. I'm hanging out in 
 town just now. I'm supposed to be reading 
 for the woolsack.' 
 
 ' Going to the bar ? You ? ' 
 
 ' That's the governor's idea. Of course, I 
 sha'n't practice, but the governor has his 
 notions, and — between you and me, Lawrence 
 — I think he wants to be able to keep an eye 
 on my goings on. I proposed I should go 
 into Capel's chambers — Capel of Trinity, you 
 know ; he's got no briefs, but I'd sooner idle 
 about with him than any man I know, barring 
 you. However, the governor asked about 
 Capel, and as he couldn't hear anything about
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 119 
 
 him from anybody except me, he sent me to 
 an old friend of his own, a priggish sort of a 
 Scotchman, named Urquhart, who's said to 
 be going to be a judge some day. He is a 
 judge already — of old port; but that's the 
 only thing I like in him. So I turn up at his 
 chambers once a week if I've got nothing 
 better to do, and I don't think the governor 
 knows anything more about me than if he'd 
 given the hundred guineas to Capel. Queer 
 fellows the friends of the governor's youth 
 must have been, if Urquhart's a specimen ! 
 I'm going to town now for the beginning of 
 term. Where are you going to put up ? 
 Will you take a shakedown with me? I'll 
 try and show you a tiling or two — if every- 
 thing isn't tame to a fellow that's been stick- 
 ing pigs and shooting tigers, or punkahs, or 
 whatever you call them out there.' 
 
 ' I've never shot a punkah ! By Jove, 
 you're a lucky dog — only an hour or two of 
 work a week, if you feel inclined for it, and a 
 governor who'll pay all your back debts 
 without so much as winking ! Mine didn't. 
 He told rne to go and wipe off the score off 
 my own bat.' 
 
 8 Why, he must have been another of the
 
 120 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 governor's youthful friends. That was a 
 
 d well, it wasn't nice of him, anyway. 
 
 Well, we'll talk about that another time. I 
 am born with a silver spoon, and what's the 
 good of a spoon but to help one's friends ? 
 I was telling you about Urquhart. He makes, 
 I should say, four or five thousand a year at 
 least, and I don't believe his tailor gets a ten- 
 pound note out of the scramble. And he 
 travels on penny boats and knife-boards. You 
 don't have fellows like that out in India, I 
 know.' 
 
 ' Well,' said Lawrence, ' barring the arch- 
 deacon — no.' 
 
 6 The archdeacon? Oh, a parson — parsons 
 are different, you know.' 
 
 ' But the archdeacon isn't a parson. Why 
 he's called the " archdeacon " nobody knows, 
 unless it's because he isn't like one. But then 
 they might just as well have called him a 
 bishop at once. Archdeacon isn't a common 
 nickname for a man. You've never heard of 
 the archdeacon? Why, he's one of the 
 characters of Bengal.' 
 
 ' What does he do ? You see we are not 
 in the way of hearing much about Bengal — 
 except that it's hot, and grows curry- powder.
 
 JACK XfOVLE'S DAUGHTER 121 
 
 In what way is this famous archdeacon 
 queer ? ' 
 
 ' In every way/ said Lawrence. c He's 
 been out some twenty years, and has never 
 been home. He's never even taken a holiday, 
 or been to the hills. He was never seen 
 speaking to a woman under fifty years old ; 
 and we haven't many old women to speak to. 
 He didn't come out in the service, but in the 
 newspaper line ; and, somehow, he's managed 
 to get rich, while other fellows find it a stiff 
 thing to save a rupee for themselves, let alone 
 their duns,' he added with a sigh. ' I don't 
 know what he makes, but it's a big thing ; 
 nor quite how he makes it ; but he's so well 
 known that I shrewdly suspect him of pluck- 
 ing game better worth it than I am. Maybe 
 I'll try the experiment some day, when sixty 
 per cent, mayn't hurt me so much as it would 
 now, or when things get too tight to manage 
 any other way. And all the time they say he 
 doesn't spend three thousand a year — rupees, 
 I mean ; three hundred pounds. And think 
 of that in India ! He must be a regular Jew 
 — perhaps he is one ; and for all his money- 
 making he's never been known to give away 
 a brass sou, or to subscribe to anything. In
 
 122 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 fact, though men don't know him personally, 
 or don't want to seem to, he's famous for being 
 the meanest beast in all Bengal.' 
 
 c And may I ask,' said a deeiD, slow voice 
 from the corner by the opposite window, ' if 
 you are personally acquainted with the arch- 
 deacon ? ' 
 
 6 1 ? No,' said Lawrence a little stiffly, and 
 rather put out by this interruption on the 
 part of a stranger whose presence had been 
 clean forgotten. ' I've never even seen him.' 
 
 ' Then let me advise you,' said the stranger 
 quietly, ' not to judge by hearsay of men whom 
 you do not know. I do know the archdeacon, 
 as you call him. And — though he is no 
 favourite of my own — I know enough to know 
 that you are blaming him for what are not 
 his faults, and leaving his real faults unblamed. 
 He's got real ones enough ; nobody knows 
 that better than I. But ' 
 
 ' I'm sure I beg your pardon, sir,' said 
 Lawrence, frankly enough. 'I like to hear a 
 man stand up for his friends behind their 
 backs ; it isn't too common. And I'm glad to 
 hear the archdeacon has got a friend to stand 
 up for him. I certainly don't know him, so I 
 daresay you're right and I'm wrong. I was
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 123 
 
 only talking common gossip. Is it long, may 
 I ask, since you were in Bengal ? Try one of 
 my cheroots, Bassett.' 
 
 ' I was in India a month ago,' said the 
 stranger. ' And, if I may ask a question,' he 
 asked abruptly, 'I have just heard you call 
 your friend by a name that once meant a great 
 deal to me. And your face too,' he went on, 
 turning to the other, ' reminded me of your 
 name as soon as I saw you. Can you be any 
 relation to Bassett — Charley Bassett, we used 
 to call him — who once lived in Gray's Inn? 
 But you wouldn't know anything about that ; 
 it must have been before you were born.' 
 
 The young man was not yet old enough to 
 mistrust, on principle, a casual stranger in a 
 railway-carriage who claims old acquaintance 
 with one's family ; nor, for that matter, was 
 this stranger's manner of a nature to inspire 
 distrust in any ordinary mind. He spoke with 
 real interest, and without any touch of the 
 geniality which puts the prudent on their 
 guard. 
 
 ' My name is Bassett ; and my father's name 
 is Charles — Sir Charles Bassett, of Cautleigh 
 Hall. Did you ever know him? Perhaps I 
 may have heard him mention you ? '
 
 124 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 1 You are strangely like my old friend ; 
 but he was not the baronet, nor likely to be. 
 There was a Sir Mordaunt Bassett, and my 
 friend was some sort of a cousin ' 
 
 ' My father succeeded Sir Mordaunt ; 
 though only a cousin, as you say, there were 
 some unexpected deaths which made him the 
 next heir.' 
 
 'I see. . . . And Urquhart ; that was 
 another name that we both used to know. So 
 Charley Bassett has become a baronet and 
 Urquhart a great lawyer ? Things seem a trifle 
 changed all round. . . . Yes, Mr. Bassett ; I 
 did know your father, better than I knew 
 most men, before }T>u were born, and when 
 he no more thought of being Sir Charles Bas- 
 sett than I do of being — Sir John. It's odd 
 I never knew it ; but I don't know — it isn't 
 odd, when I come to think of it, at all. The 
 odd thing is, that the first face I have seen 
 in England should be Charley Bassett's son. 
 Did you ever hear your father speak of Jack 
 Doyle ? ' 
 
 ' Well, no ; I can't say I ever did,' said 
 young Bassett, after a slight attempt to re- 
 member the name. ' But my father must have 
 had lots of friends of whom I never heard.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 125 
 
 And I have no memory for names. I shall 
 never make a case lawyer.' 
 
 ' Nor of Dick Esdaile ? Nor of Eonaine ? * 
 
 'Never.' 
 
 ' Well, things do seem a trifle changed. 
 You mean to say you never heard the story 
 of the child with six fathers ? ' 
 
 Young Bassett stared, as well he might ; 
 and his friend Lawrence followed his example, 
 though less openly. 
 
 1 1 never heard the story of the child with 
 six fathers,' said he. ' I say, Lawrence, that 
 must be an uncommonly wise child, if the 
 saying's true.' It seemed to him unlikely that 
 a story of unknown date, connecting his father 
 with an uncertain number of old friends and 
 so remarkable a child, should turn out either 
 pleasant or amusing, and his original respect 
 for the size, strength, and quiet bearing of his 
 fellow-traveller was beginning to be touched 
 with very natural suspicion. ' I suppose,' he 
 said, without any of the cordiality due to one's 
 father's old friends, ' I suppose that you are 
 one of those names— Eonaine, Esdaile, or Jack 
 Doyle?' 
 
 'I am Jack Doyle. I should think Sir 
 Charles Bassett will remember my — name.
 
 126 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 But as he has never mentioned it, never 
 mind.' 
 
 And then he fell back into silence, which 
 continued till the train reached London, and 
 a formal ' Good-evening ' parted him from the 
 two young men. 
 
 ' That seemed a queer customer, Lawrence,' 
 said Ealph Bassett. ' The governor does seem 
 to have known a few queer fish when he was 
 young. But I suppose we all do before we 
 settle down.' 
 
 ' Queer ? Queerer than you think, old 
 fellow, by a long way.' 
 
 ' Why— what do you mean ? ' 
 
 'You noticed how he stuck up for the 
 archdeacon ? That was queer to begin with. 
 And then how he got so interested in your 
 father that he fell off his guard ; for he 
 was on his guard. As he told you his name, 
 why didn't he say at once, "I'm the arch- 
 deacon," like a man ? Didn't I happen to 
 tell you that that infernal money-lending 
 vermin's name is Doyle — John Doyle, alias the 
 archdeacon, alias the deuce knows what be- 
 sides ? Yes, he's all that, and I didn't put 
 things half strong enough in the train ; but I 
 do now. And what's he doing in England at
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 127 
 
 last, and asking after Charles Bassett, and half 
 losing his head when he hears your father has 
 become a baronet and the richest commoner 
 in Lincolnshire ? And those other men he 
 named — other poor devils, no doubt, whom 
 he once had under his thumb, and may also 
 have got to be worth hunting up again after 
 all these years? And asking you about a 
 child with six fathers — it doesn't mean nothing, 
 you may be sure. Of course it'll be all right, 
 but, all the same, old fellow, drop a line to 
 Lincolnshire, and let it be : " 'Ware arch- 
 deacons — look out for squalls." ' 
 
 ' Are you in earnest, Lawrence ? Non- 
 sense. What should my father know of a 
 usurer from Bengal ? ' 
 
 c Nonsense, a hundred to one ; but there's 
 the one chance it mayn't be. Of course it 
 will be all right. Your father, I suppose, is 
 rich enough to snap his fingers ; but then that 
 sort of snapping attracts flies and sharks too. 
 Perhaps your father may have borrowed a 
 hundred or two in old times — who knows ? ' 
 
 6 1 wish I'd asked him,' said Ealph, ' to tell 
 me the story of the child. No, I don't, though 
 — it would have been like pumping and spy- 
 ing. I'll ask the governor if he knows what it
 
 128 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 means. You are a bit of an old woman, 
 Lawrence, now and then. There isn't one of 
 my name who has a ghost of a cause to be 
 afraid of a living man, except of an examiner 
 in the schools.' 
 
 ' But there's no man of any name,' said 
 Lawrence, ' who hasn't had cause to be afraid 
 of a woman, and you can't have a story of a 
 child without having a story of a woman ' 
 
 ' Of an old woman, and that's yourself,' 
 said Ealph Bassett. 'Come, let's talk sense. 
 You shall feed with me at the club, and 
 then I'll introduce you to the prettiest little 
 dancer ' 
 
 'Ealph Bassett, does your father know? ' 
 
 ' Don't be an ass, Lawrence. " Does your 
 mother know you're out ? " is a street question 
 that went out of date in London ages ago. 
 I'm sorry to think it survives in Bengal. 
 Come along.' 
 
 1 Your father does not know everything 
 about his son ; and yet you tell me that you 
 must needs know everything about your father. 
 Did he never hear the chimes at midnight, do 
 you suppose ? But, as you very sensibly say, 
 " come along," and, if he never did, with the 
 help of Shylock we will.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 129 
 
 He who, unlike Kalph Bassett, is able to 
 carry his memory about a generation back, 
 will be at some loss to identify the John 
 Doyle who had left so curious a reputation in 
 India, with that Jack Doyle who had once 
 represented the back- slums of Bohemian 
 London. For the hopeless, aimless, penniless, 
 shiftless sot to develop into a well-dressed, 
 sober, healthy, middle-aged gentleman, with 
 a reputation for too successful usury, was a 
 process of evolution, or rather revolution, 
 that seemed to require at least two eternities 
 and a meeting of the poles, with three or four 
 miracles thrown in. Had Charley Bassett's 
 son ever heard his father speak of Jack Doyle, 
 he could not have hesitated for a moment 
 before setting down his chance fellow-traveller 
 as the most flagrant of impostors. And yet 
 so unconscious are we of the changes which 
 take place in ourselves, however unnatural 
 and extravagant they may seem, that it was 
 the everyday commonplace development of 
 an amateur dilettante Bohemian into a baronet 
 and the father of a grown-up son that struck 
 John Doyle as really remarkable. 
 
 'And yet,' he thought to himself, as he 
 next morning set out to walk in a northerly 
 vol. 1. K
 
 130 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 direction from his hotel in Covent Garden, 
 ' I suppose I was fool enough in my heart to 
 fancy I should find everything standing stock 
 still. I wonder if I really believed that I 
 should find Charley, and Esdaile, and Urqu- 
 hart, and Eonaine, still gambling for millions 
 in Gray's Inn Square? I believe that was 
 what I expected to find. And so Esdaile and 
 Eonaine may be on the other side of the 
 earth, if they're not under it, and Urquhart 
 is going to be a judge, and Charley Bassett is 
 a rich baronet, with a son old enough to take 
 up life at the point where I left the father. 
 I wonder what makes me feel as if he'd 
 changed in more than in that way ? No ; 
 Charley Bassett wasn't the man to be silent 
 about his friends. And never to have told 
 the story of that child — the link that was to 
 keep us all bound together, wherever we 
 might be ! Whatever has become of the 
 others she ought to be nourishing, that girl, 
 with one of her fathers making a fortune at 
 the bar, and another with thousands a year. 
 Why, my miserable allowance must have been 
 a mere drop in the well. Eonaine's right, she 
 ought to be the most accomplished young 
 woman in London. I have it — by George!
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 131 
 
 Charley is keeping her dark out of fear for his 
 son. Yes, if that young man came across any 
 objectionable young woman, there might be 
 the devil to pay before it was all done. Any 
 man can be turned round any woman's thumb, 
 of course ; but that young fellow, to judge 
 from his cut, could be turned round any 
 schoolgirl's little finger. No ; may be, if I 
 were in his boat, I shouldn't care to introduce 
 my son and heir to an accomplished young 
 woman who had been picked up by chance in 
 Gray's Inn Gardens, till she was safely married, 
 anyhow, and may be not even then. ... I 
 wonder how other men feel,' who've bqen 
 spending a quarter of a life abroad, without 
 making a friend, and come home again at last 
 to find no hand to welcome them ; not so 
 much as an enemy's to be raised against them. 
 . . . No, I don't. I wonder what men feel 
 who come back to find welcome, and love, 
 and home? My old garret and starvation 
 were better than this sort of thins;. And then 
 they abuse me for being fond of money ; as if 
 one wouldn't be fond of the ugliest thing on 
 earth if it was the only creature that stuck to 
 one, and the only creature one had to live for. 
 Aren't they fond of money themselves ? But
 
 132 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 then it isn't the one only thing to others that 
 it is to me. Well, one woman has once done 
 one good thing. She's sobered a sot, and 
 made a money-maker out of a madman. I 
 suppose gold and water does make a whole- 
 somer drink than the other thing. I'll make 
 enough to found a hospital for poor devils 
 who don't deserve helping, men who've come 
 to grief by their own faults and their own 
 follies — aren't faults and follies the biggest 
 misfortunes of all ? And I'll make myself the 
 first pensioner, and write a series of sermons 
 on the text about vanity. . . . Some broken- 
 down vagabond will be safe to stick to me 
 like a dog, so that I sha'n't go out of the 
 world without some sort of a shake of the 
 hand, though I daresay of a dirty one. . . . 
 Now, where am I going? I'm hanged if it 
 isn't the old road to Gray's Inn ; as if I should 
 find a soul there ! ' 
 
 His conscious and coherent manner of 
 thinking argued the man who lives so much 
 alone as to have nobody but himself to talk 
 to. The quarter could by rights have no 
 sort of sentimental charm for him ; and yet 
 he lingered. The memory of a garret, in 
 defiance of right, has more than a sentimental
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 133 
 
 charm to the man who has once been driven 
 to live in one, at least so soon as he is driven 
 to live in one no longer. The very smell of 
 Holborn recalled hundreds of hideous me- 
 mories, and yet with something of the pathetic 
 suggestiveness of stocks and wall-flowers upon 
 sensitive nerves. 
 
 'I'll look in a Law List and look up 
 Urquhart,' said he. ' He'll be somewhere in 
 the Temple, I suppose. From what I heard 
 in the train, we're like to have the sympathy 
 of twin gold grubbers, he and I. And I shall 
 hear how the land lies with Charley ; and I 
 may as well hear how that child's turned out 
 after all, though she is a girl. I am glad 
 she's got a baronet for one father and a 
 coming judge for another. That hospital for 
 undeserving incapables will get twenty pounds 
 a year more. I wish I'd known sooner. Let 
 me see, twenty pounds a year and interest ; I 
 might have saved nearly five hundred pounds, 
 instead of, at my time of life, throwing it 
 away on a girl ; a fine lady, no doubt, who 
 spends five pounds a quarter on gloves and 
 ribbons. However, I mustn't complain,' he 
 thought, with a sigh. ' I should never have 
 made my first five-pound note but for her.
 
 i 3 4 J A CK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Whatever I am now, I'm what she's made me. 
 Yes ; I'll look up Urquhart. May be Esdaile 
 or Eonaine may turn out good subjects for 
 that hospital, especially Eonaine. I wonder 
 if they've found it as hard to keep up their 
 twenty pounds a year as I used to do ; or if 
 the fight has ended with them as it has with 
 me?'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 135 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FATE OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 At the end of the very few minutes which 
 carry one from Holborn to the Temple, Doyle 
 (to call him Jack any longer is henceforth 
 out of the question) had discovered the 
 business chambers of Mr. Urquhart in Elm 
 Court, and had knocked at the door. But, to 
 his disappointment, he learned that Mr. Urqu- 
 hart was not at chambers that day ; that he was 
 going out of town to attend some arbitration 
 in the North, but that he would be found at 
 home up to three in the afternoon by anybody 
 who wished to see him urgently. Now, what 
 can possibly be more urgent than the welcome 
 of an old friend who has just come home from 
 India after an absence of many years ? So 
 Doyle, feeling in himself an increasingly urgent 
 need of the long-forgotten luxury of the touch 
 of the hand of a friend, and having nothing 
 more profitable to do, made a short calcula-
 
 136 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 tion of the time it would take him to get from 
 the Temple to Fon thill Gardens, Hyde Park, 
 and stopped the first omnibus that would take 
 him in that direction. Not even the claims 
 and desires of old friendship seemed more 
 urgent than the duty of saving so unprofitable 
 an investment as a cab-fare. 
 
 It seemed odd to him that so distinguished 
 a member of the brotherhood of the close 
 fist, to which Urquhart, unlike the converted 
 archdeacon, had belonged from the beginning, 
 should have a house as well as his chambers. 
 Urquhart had been the man, even in the good 
 old times, to dispense, not only with cheap 
 comforts — they all, even Charley Bassett, did 
 that — but with such much more essential 
 things as extravagant luxuries. It seemed 
 even odder when Fonthill Gardens (which he 
 had some difficulty in finding, seeing that 
 Hyde Park meant a remote corner of Pad- 
 dington) turned out to be one of those 
 obtrusively new No Thoroughfares, which 
 look entirely given over to the very height or 
 depth of respectable domesticity. He was 
 utterly unfamiliar with this aspect of semi- 
 suburban London, and, under the influence of 
 the universal expectation that everything else
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 137 
 
 must stand still, while we ourselves move on 
 from change to change, half wondered whether 
 Mr. Urquhart, of the Temple and Fonthill 
 Gardens, could possibly be the same as the 
 ancient philosopher of Gray's Inn. 
 
 A barrel-organ — the only familiar sight or 
 sound in the place — suddenly broke out into 
 an imperfect and disjointed version of ' Cari 
 luoghi, vi ravviso.' Jack Doyle, of Bohemia, 
 had had an ear for tunes; Mr. Doyle, from 
 Bengal, had a memory for them. And this 
 particular stop of the crazy organ struck him 
 as a very bad joke indeed. He did not throw 
 the grinder a penny as he knocked at Mr. 
 Urquhart's door. For the sake of the badness 
 of the joke, the old Jack Doyle would have 
 thrown him two, if he had them. But times 
 were changed. 
 
 They were changed indeed. The door "of 
 Number Eighteen was thrown open by a man- 
 servant in livery. 
 
 1 Does Mr. Urquhart live here ? ' asked 
 Doyle. ' Is he at home ? ' 
 
 'Mrs. Urquhart is at home,' said the 
 footman. 
 
 Mrs. Urquhart! Then the last possible 
 change had come ; the experimental philoso-
 
 138 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 pher had committed himself to the only ex- 
 periment which he had held too irrevocable 
 to be made. 
 
 Doyle smiled sadly, and sighed grimly. 
 This, then, accounted for the house inFonthill 
 Gardens, and the footman. 
 
 ' Mr. Urquhart is out of town,' said the 
 latter. ' He is not expected back for some 
 days.' 
 
 ' I will see Mrs. Urquhart,' said Doyle, 
 giving his card. ' I must see the woman who 
 was too much for his philosophy,' thought he. 
 But he felt, ' I must know something of my 
 old friends. I must find out if anything is 
 left that isn't changed.' 
 
 The house, he noticed as he went upstairs 
 into the drawing-room, was expensively and 
 even ambitiously furnished, and yet felt 
 wanting in that first duty of every house 
 towards all who enter its door — the sense of 
 hospitality. Nobody can guess how, or why, 
 or whence it comes ; few consciously note its 
 absence ; but nothing on earth is felt more 
 quickly or keenly, whether in relation to a 
 palace or a hovel. He entered the drawing- 
 room in anything but the humour for making 
 a first call on a strange lady. He was dis-
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 139 
 
 appointed at not having found Urquhart, and 
 at having found his friend's life so altered. 
 He was anything but a lady's-man, and was 
 already repenting of the impulse of curiosity 
 which had led him into his present situation. 
 A piece of furniture out of place, or a symp- 
 tom of litter, would have proved a connecting 
 link between the old times and the new. But 
 there was nothing of the kind. 
 
 8 When Mrs. Urquhart asks me to stay 
 here,' he thought to himself, ' I think I'll say 
 —no.' 
 
 He had waited full ten minutes when Mrs. 
 Urquhart came into the room. Of course she 
 was not what he had expected to see ; as little 
 like a subject for psychological experiments as 
 can well be imagined. She was tall, with a 
 great many more angles than curves ; not ill- 
 featured, but with no signs, in her middle 
 age, of having been married for her beauty. 
 Doyle's eyes, indifferent to the details of any 
 woman's looks, passed over her length of nose, 
 bad complexion, and too pronounced redness 
 of hair, but they did not pass over a sour 
 expression that one does not look for in a 
 presumably happy wife and mother. 
 
 ' The experiment hasn't the look of having
 
 140 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 turned out well,' thought he. But then he 
 had always, on principle, looked in marriage 
 for the wrong things. 
 
 ' Mr. Doyle ? ' asked Mrs. Urquhart, not 
 at all ungraciously, but still with a little 
 more of the stiff doubtfulness which, however 
 prudent towards a stranger, is inconsistent 
 with the hope of an early thaw. ' I am sorry 
 to say Mr. Urquhart is from home, but if it is 
 on business ' 
 
 ' I'm sorry for that. I must introduce 
 myself, then. I am an old friend of Urquhart ; 
 I came back from India only yesterday, and 
 he is the first man in London I've called on. 
 I [didn't know there was a Mrs. Urquhart till 
 I knocked at the door. Is it too late to con- 
 gratulate him on — on — on — such a change ? ' 
 
 Mrs. Urquhart did not seem to be im- 
 pressed by seeing for the first time an old 
 friend of her husband's bachelor days. 
 
 ' I've no doubt Mr. Urquhart will be very 
 sorry when he hears you've called,' she said ; 
 6 but he is so busy, and I really don't know 
 when he'll be home.' 
 
 What Doyle, professing contempt if not 
 downright dislike for the sex, had expected 
 from a strange woman, he could hardly have
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 141 
 
 told ; but he had certainly not expected the 
 chilling silence that Mrs. Urquhart allowed to 
 follow her precisely measured phrases. It was 
 almost as much as if she had said, in so many 
 words : ' I take no interest in my husband's 
 bachelor friends, and I don't want to know 
 them, and I don't want him to have anything 
 more to do with them.' But a man's bachelor 
 friends are notoriously slow to read such signs, 
 and Doyle only felt the chill without catching 
 the tolerably obvious cause. And, at any 
 rate, he could hardly take up his hat and 
 leave the room without making some show of 
 talk for at least the formal quarter of an hour*. 
 So much manners, at least, he had learned in 
 Bengal, if, indeed, they were not a relic of 
 some otherwise long-forgotten existence pre- 
 vious to his knowledge of Urquhart, Bassett, 
 Esdaile, and Eonaine. For he must have 
 come from somewhere ; no man was ever 
 born a Jack Doyle. 
 
 ' Urquhart seems to have been carrying 
 everything before him since we lost sight of 
 one another,' said he. ' I hear him talked of 
 for the Bench, and I see that he ought to be 
 the happiest man in the world.' 
 
 Jack Doyle had never been famous for
 
 i 4 2 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 compliments to man or woman, but he was 
 rewarded for this by what might pass for a 
 wintry smile. 
 
 'I suppose you've often heard of those 
 rough old times when he was eating his way 
 through the Middle Temple. They were 
 
 rouo-h da}^s ; but well, nobody is ever 
 
 sorry for having known them. Urquhart and 
 I must make a pilgrimage to the old places, 
 and see how we feel in them now — if they're 
 not changed too.' 
 
 'Yes, Mr. Doyle,' said Mrs. Urquhart, 
 with a sharp little emphasis, 'things do 
 change, and a good thing too.' 
 
 'H'm — that depends. However, Urqu- 
 hart's all right of course? In health I 
 mean? Of course he always used to keep 
 his head cool. I think I was the only man 
 he could never manage to see under the 
 table, but I daresay he could do that now. 
 In India, Mrs. Urquhart, one gets out of 
 training, you see.' 
 
 ' Pardon me,' said Mrs. Urquhart, ' if I 
 do not quite understand what you mean.' 
 
 ' Ah, am I telling tales out of school ? 
 Then you must pardon me. Urquhart was 
 always our good boy.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 143 
 
 c I am quite sure,' said the lady, 6 that 
 Mr. Urquhart never did anything that he 
 would not wish me to know.' 
 
 'Oh, of course. Well, anyhow, here 
 he is, a great lawyer, and a married man, 
 and I don't know what besides. — I can't 
 stand more of this,' thought he, by way of 
 filling up the fresh spell of silence. ' I see 
 how it is ; Urquhart has been trying the 
 experiment of marrying a woman with 
 money, and for money, and for nothing 
 else, I should say. So — well, there's an 
 end of him. — I'm afraid, Mrs. Urquhart, I 
 must be going now. But I mustn't forget 
 to ask after our daughter, though I'm afraid 
 I must plead guilty to having forgotten 
 half her names. I hope she has not quite 
 turned out the prodigy that some of us 
 meant her to be ? ' 
 
 1 " Our daughter," Mr. Doyle? I said Mr. 
 Urquhart tells me everything, of course. 
 But he can hardly be expected to remember 
 every joke that he ever heard made. Of 
 course I'm very sorry if you must go, but if 
 you must ' 
 
 ' 1 mean the child that we named Jane 
 Burden. I remember my own share in her
 
 i 4 4 J ACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 christening, though I'm vague about the 
 rest. Let me see ; she was to be a Psyche 
 to Urquhart, I believe, to represent an 
 
 unformed soul Poor fellow ! ' he thought 
 
 to himself again, 'fancy being tied to a 
 woman who can't understand one word 
 without the help of twenty; I hope she 
 was worth marrying ; but if she were 
 worth the Bank of England, and only cost 
 sixpence, she'd be sixpence too dear.' 
 
 He thought the lady suddenly looked 
 exceedingly grave and strange. She drew 
 herself up stiffly, glanced at the bell-handle, 
 and then looked him full in the face, as 
 she said, in a tone as clear, and as sharp, 
 and as cold as the edge of an icicle : 
 
 ' I cannot possibly be expected to know 
 who you are, except that your card tells 
 me your name is Doyle, and that you pro- 
 fess to have known Mr. Urquhart when — 
 when he did not know me. Why anybody 
 should have come all the way from India 
 to insult me to my own face, I really do 
 not know. So I will tell you at once that 
 you will find it no use — no use at all. I 
 know everything, Mr. Doyle.' 
 
 ' Is the woman crazy ? ' thought he.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 145 
 
 1 Yes, to insult me to my very face/ 
 she went on, without a change of tone. Per- 
 haps — though you mayn't think it — I know 
 more of you than you suppose. I have 
 heard of you, Mr. Doyle, though, of course, 
 I did not care to say so when you called. 
 Indeed, I did not identify you at first. 
 There are a good many people named Doyle ; 
 but I know now, and I am glad I, and not 
 Mr. Urquhart, was at home. I need not tell 
 you of his weakness — how foolishly ready he 
 is to throw away money upon everybody who 
 has ever known him well enough to bow to 
 him. I am a very different sort of person, 
 Mr. Doyle.' 
 
 ' Mad as a March hare ! ' was the only 
 thought that could come to him. ' The wo- 
 man who can accuse Urquhart of throw- 
 ing away a single sixpence must be ripe 
 for Bedlam. Poor fellow ! ' he added, more 
 than half aloud. 
 
 * Understand, once for all,' said she, 
 * that I don't know whether that — that 
 child is named Jane or Sukey, or anything 
 else, and that I don't care. If you want 
 to profit by any trumped-up story of my 
 husband's past life, I can only say you 
 
 vol. 1. L
 
 146 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 have come to the wrong person. When I 
 discovered — never mind how — that Mr. 
 Urquhart was privately paying money to 
 some washerwoman or other for the main- 
 tenance of a child, you may be sure I was 
 sensible enough to ask him plainly what he 
 meant by such a thing. He was weak enough 
 to tell me some impossible story of a nursery- 
 maid and a foundling, which, I need not say, 
 I did not believe. He had to own to the 
 truth at last, for understand that my property 
 is settled on myself, and that I may do with 
 it just what I please — income and all. He 
 had to own that the child was not his — for, 
 of course, if it had been, I could not have 
 forgiven him — but that he was charitably 
 helping to keep the deserted infant of some 
 disreputable acquaintance. No wonder he 
 had tried to keep me in the dark about such 
 a foolish piece of folly ! And he had to con- 
 fess at last that the name of that child's father 
 was — Doyle. I won't repeat the things I 
 made him tell me about that man. I won't 
 suppose that you are that man, though you 
 have the same name. But, if you think I 
 have allowed Mr. Urquhart to continue aid- 
 ing and abetting the immoral conduct of other
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 147 
 
 people, all I can tell you is, that the child 
 may be dead for anything I and Mr. Urquhart 
 know. And the best thing, too — poor, miser- 
 able, deserted, neglected little thing ! ' 
 
 She rose and moved towards the bell. 
 
 Doyle rose also. Mrs. Urquhart certainly 
 did not seem in the least afraid of him, and he 
 gave her no cause. His slight approach to 
 her was heavy and slow, and though his 
 voice deepened, it was certainly not with 
 anger. She was not likely to notice how the 
 bronze of his face deepened also. 
 
 4 1 forgot that, being a woman, you must 
 needs have a woman's heart,' said he. 'As 
 to Urquhart — well, I suppose that married 
 men are bound to get into corners now and 
 then, and must get out as best they can. . . 
 And what's the use of having an absent friend 
 if one can't use his shoulders ? Make yourself 
 easy, Mrs. Urquhart. You say you don't 
 like to tell me what — Mr. Urquhart said of 
 Jack Doyle. I'll tell you, and you shall tell 
 me if I'm wrong. He called me a shiftless, 
 drunken, disreputable sot, living on brandy 
 that other people were fools enough to pay 
 for — an animal, or beast, rather, wallowing in 
 the dregs of other people's vices — a man whom 
 
 L 2
 
 148 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 he was ashamed of having known, half black- 
 guard, half fool ' 
 
 6 He never called you a fool, Mr. Doyle,* 
 said she politely. 
 
 Never did quarrel come off with less show 
 of anger on either side. 
 
 'Then I may take it he did call me all 
 the rest — and every word of it was true ; and 
 as he did not add fool, I do. And now listen 
 to me. I will drag no man's name but my 
 own through the mire, since a woman and 
 a wife, and may be a mother, thinks it mire 
 to be found out in helping a helpless baby 
 not to starve. Don't be afraid. I'm not 
 angry with your husband for speaking of 
 me as he found me. I won't trouble his 
 domestic happiness by reminding him that 
 he once upon a time — before he knew you 
 — knew a blackguard named Jack Doyle. 
 I'll only find out who else has broken the 
 bond that I have kept, and that was to 
 hold six men together against the world, 
 wherever we might be. And then ' 
 
 'Yes, Mr. Doyle?' 
 
 6 Then I shall think better of women, 
 because I shall have to think worse of men. 
 I have been a believer in my own sex,
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 149 
 
 though not in yours. And so, good-morning. 
 You need not even tell Mr. Urquhart I have 
 called, unless you please.' 
 
 ' Then — excuse my anxiety — I may under- 
 stand that the child is yours ? ' 
 
 ' It seems to be nobody else's, anyhow,' 
 said he, with the nearest approach to heat he 
 had shown. 
 
 He could not, before he left the house, tell 
 Mrs. Urquhart, because he had never yet 
 told himself, the story of how he had become 
 changed. But, as he strode away in no par- 
 ticular direction from Fonthill Gardens, and 
 thought of how Urquhart had thrown over so 
 slight and cheap a trust to save himself from 
 the suspicions of a jealous woman, he began 
 to suspect Bassett's silence to his son concern- 
 ing so innocent a story, and to be angry with 
 himself for quite another sort of folly. Had 
 that bond in Gray's Inn Square been a mere 
 farce to fill up an idle hour ? He had never 
 even pretended to care a straw about the fate 
 of the child ; and he could not look back 
 upon his first struggle to fulfil his share of 
 the bond without horror. It was not for the 
 child's, but for his more than half-drunken 
 word's sake, that he had forced himself,
 
 ISO JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 against the hopeless lethargy of mind and 
 body which had become second nature to 
 him, to earn the first instalment of five pounds 
 to be paid into Mrs. Nelson's hands. He 
 remembered still how Charley Bassett had 
 stared when he roughly refused the latter's 
 offer to undertake his share of the burden, 
 saying, only in less decent language, ' No ; 
 when five wise men get tricked by one woman, 
 big or little, five fools must pay.' He did not 
 remember clearly the way in which he had, 
 somehow or other, ground out that first 
 five pounds. The memory was hopelessly 
 obscured by the big drink which had followed 
 an extraordinary spell of desperate sobriety. 
 But another five pounds had to be got in 
 another quarter ; and so, to the sincere 
 though unconfessed relief of all who knew him, 
 he turned over on his side and rolled out of 
 his London garret into the office of some 
 newspaper in India, where, it was fondly 
 hoped, he might speedily be buried under the 
 influence of brandy without pawnee. ' Poor 
 Jack,' was his spoken epitaph : ' He was a 
 
 good fellow, but ' And at ' but ' all that 
 
 could be said of him aloud came to an end. 
 He seemed to have exhausted himself in the
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 151 
 
 feat of working for, and earning, five pounds, 
 without drinking it in sixpences by the way. 
 Jack drunk had been getting bad enough, but 
 Jack sober was not to be borne. He showed, 
 in this condition, too many signs of what the 
 ultra-Bohemian comes to be, when, as some- 
 times happens, he grows old. So, as it seemed, 
 he went out of sight and under water, and 
 was missed for nine not unpleasant days. His 
 friends lamented him warmly ; but how many 
 mourners would be overjoyed if a friend whom 
 they buried yesterday were to walk in at the 
 door to-day ? He would, at any rate, have 
 the bad taste to put everything out, and to 
 throw discredit on his own funeral. Nobody 
 (and he knew it) cared twopence about the 
 end of Jack Doyle. 
 
 How it was that the chance nickname of 
 Archdeacon had followed him out to India, 
 the few, if any there be, who understand 
 such things must explain. It seems likely 
 enough that a nickname , once given, becomes 
 part of a man, from which he cannot be freed 
 without being flayed. No man with a nick- 
 name would be surprised to hear himself 
 greeted by it on a first introduction to some 
 strange mandarin in the heart of China. But
 
 152 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 it no longer bore the old meaning ; indeed, it 
 came to have no discoverable meaning at all. 
 That first fight for five pounds had left its 
 traces upon him ; and, little by little, as time 
 dragged on, the same recurring need became 
 a sort of Fetish — a third nature which gained 
 ground upon the second. Nor could he, after 
 a while, make five pounds without making a 
 good many more. And, unknown to himself, 
 that invisible bond was closely hugged as the 
 only sort of chain that bound him to another 
 living soul. 
 
 ' And it was a farce,' thought he, ' if I am 
 the only one to whom it has been more than 
 a straw. There is Esdaile, and there is 
 Eonaine ; but where are they ? That young 
 fellow had never heard their names. I may 
 be wronging Bassett — and I know nothing of 
 the others ; and so there's only one thing for 
 it. And that is, here goes.' 
 
 Honestly, he would have given a good 
 deal of money, say five shillings, to avoid 
 seeing the girl who had forced him out of 
 Bohemia against his will, and changed him 
 into whatever he was now. But his heart 
 had been growing sore as well as hungry. 
 His business in England was to see his old
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 153 
 
 friends, half thinking to find them as of old, 
 as the one makeshift open to him for home. 
 And he had found one a baronet, and another 
 a henpecked lawyer ; what would the others 
 prove ? 
 
 ' As poor as Job, and much less married, 
 I hope with all my heart,' he thought as 
 he went, at last, towards Gray's Inn. His 
 quarterly remittance had bound him to know 
 that Mr. Nelson's official address was still with 
 Messrs. Mark and Simple. That, at least, 
 had never changed. And, considering all the 
 circumstances, the continuance of the admiral 
 in the same situation for so many years was 
 considerably more remarkable than the change 
 of an amateur Bohemian into a county mag- 
 nate, of a Jack Doyle into a reputed miser, 
 or even of a Philosopher into the husband 
 of a jealous shrew. For, after all, all these 
 things have been known before, from the 
 days of Socrates downwards. 
 
 Doyle had not been in Gray's Inn Square 
 since the night when Marion Eve Pysche 
 Zenobia Dulcibella Jane received her names. 
 And he thought it strange that the hand of a 
 man who had long forsworn brandy should 
 tremble a little as it knocked on that same 
 old door of green baize.
 
 154 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 A SUDDEN LEAP 
 
 For some days after Phil Nelsons adventure 
 with the guitar, Phoebe's garden walks were 
 uninterrupted. Stanislas Adrianski had van- 
 ished, and had left a sense of emptiness in his 
 place which she had never known before. 
 The withered laurel-bush, once so suggestive 
 of boundless forests, had become but a 
 withered laurel-bush not only in fact but in 
 seeming, and sunset upon the snow-covered 
 mountains was reduced to the falling of blacks 
 upon a prospect of damp linen. Even Phil 
 had taken himself off to distant countries with 
 a ' Good-bye ' so cold and short that it had 
 almost made her angry ; and his absence made 
 her miss her romance-hero all the more. She 
 had known nothing of the serenade ; for, just 
 as if she had been the most sensible of girls, 
 sentiment with her never disturbed sleep, and
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 155 
 
 she had only heard of it next morning as a 
 drunken street row — a belief which neither 
 Phil nor Dick, for different reasons, cared to 
 overturn. 
 
 So Phil had gone, and her hero had 
 disappeared, and she had nothing to do but 
 to make up her mind that life, real life, was 
 a sadly empty and unsatisfactory condition of 
 things. She had absolutely nothing else to 
 do, for domestic affairs in that household were 
 matters of minutes, and, these over, she had 
 the rest of the day upon her hands. She 
 could not help thinking of Stanislas, if only by 
 way of filling up her time. Now she thought 
 he had fallen ill ; and, if so, what was the 
 duty of a heroine towards a hero and a 
 patriot, sick and friendless in a foreign land ? 
 Alas ! the duty, considered from a romantic- 
 point of view, was so inconveniently clear, 
 that she gave that guess up as not to be 
 thought of. No ; he could not be ill, because 
 that would oblige her to go and nurse him — 
 a duty which presented such a formidable list 
 of difficulties that she gave up conquering 
 them even in fancy before she was half-way 
 through. Besides, the fact of a neighbour's 
 illness would have found its way through the
 
 156 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 party- walls, which, in their street, had tongues 
 as well as ears. Had Phil's savage rudeness 
 offended him ? But surely a nobleman would 
 not condescend to notice the insults of a sullen 
 boor. Or — could it be, could it possibly be, 
 that the patriot feared for the heart that 
 should be his country's alone ? 
 
 Such thoughts, if thoughts they can be 
 called, do not grow weaker in solitude. She 
 not only thought a great deal of Stanislas 
 Adrianski, but also of the Associated Eobe- 
 spierres, and of the mystery of her own life ; 
 and she thought that she was thinking hard. 
 In spite of her instincts in that direction, 
 nature had not yet taught her to be enough 
 of a coquette to keep resolutely indoors, so 
 that she might learn from a corner of the 
 window if her absence had the power to draw 
 Stanislas into his back garden. She would 
 learn maidenly cunning soon enough, no 
 doubt ; but, meanwhile, she behaved with 
 a simplicity that will be called either straight- 
 forward, or only forward, according to varying 
 views. She could not walk up and down 
 stairs all day for exercise, or look out of the 
 front windows all day long for pastime, so she 
 made herself look as nice as she could, and
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 157 
 
 took a book out into the garden. And that 
 book was ' Thaddeus of Warsaw/ 
 
 But it was in vain. And it was with real 
 vexation and disappointment, as if somebody- 
 had failed to keep tryst, that, after reading 
 three pages at the rate of a page an hour, 
 she went indoors again. She had expected 
 nothing definite when she went out, but felt, 
 none the less, that life was using her badly. 
 That was the day on the morning of which 
 Phil, at desperately short notice, had started 
 for Eussia ; and her present mood made her 
 wish him at home. She wanted to quarrel 
 with somebody about something, and Phil 
 would have done better to quarrel with than 
 anybody she knew. Altogether, she was very 
 lonesome and very dull ; so much so, that by 
 the close of another empty day she began to 
 feel quite superior to the rest of the world, on 
 the score of her capacity for being lonely and 
 dull. She sought food for lofty scorn from 
 the vulgar high spirits of the boys, and found 
 whatt she sought, and listened to her father's 
 eloquence without being able to screw herself 
 up to the proper pitch of enthusiasm for a 
 cause that, in the person of Stanislas, had 
 once more become invisible to her. ' Eevolu-
 
 158 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 tions aren't made with rosewater,' he had 
 quoted to her, with his fiercest voice, over his 
 sixth cup of tea. ' No ; I suppose rosewater 
 would not go well with whisky,' she had 
 answered, without a thought of sarcasm, and 
 with a real sigh. She felt like growing old 
 before her time, and getting behind the 
 scenes. 
 
 The next day she did not feel it worth 
 while to take any particular pains to make 
 herself look nice ; she rather underdid her 
 toilette, if anything. The garden looked so 
 empty and ugly that she did not care to go 
 there, and ' Thaddeus of Warsaw' had grown 
 as stupid as a book could be. It was honestly 
 without the least expectation of seeing any- 
 body that she went out at last ; just as one 
 must when there is the barest apology for a 
 garden, and when one is tired of being alone 
 indoors. So her heart gave an honest leap 
 when she heard over the wall and behind 
 her : 
 
 ' Good-morning, mademoiselle.' 
 
 Stanislas Adrianski's voice was always soft, 
 
 and his accent always, even when talking 
 
 about himself — perhaps especially then — 
 
 caressing and tender. But it was in the
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 159 
 
 coldest of tones, a tone so cold as to surprise 
 herself, that she answered him, shortly : 
 
 ' Good-morning.' 
 
 There was absolutely no reason for her 
 even pretending to be cold, and she was not 
 pretending. And yet she felt her heart 
 fluttering all the while. She turned round, 
 and, in a moment her coldness left her. 
 Stanislas Adrianski looked very pale, and 
 more melancholy than ever — and no wonder, 
 for he wore a long strip of plaister from the 
 middle of his forehead to his left cheek-bone, 
 crossed by another strip above the eye. 
 
 1 Oh, what has happened ? You have been 
 ill ! ' she cried. 
 
 4 But it is nothing,' said he. ' Nothing at 
 all. I have been wounded worse as that, 
 twenty, thirty, forty times. I am glad — the 
 sun shines from your garden into mine, and I 
 forget the pain.' 
 
 ' But what has happened ? Is it the 
 Czar?' 
 
 'No, not the Czar. Never mind. I 
 should not have shown myself, but I saw 
 you, and ' 
 
 He did not finish his sentence, and she 
 was not much attending to his words, full of
 
 i6o JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 romantic promise as they were. She was wish- 
 ing that she had made herself look her nicest 
 to-day instead of yesterday. She was thinking 
 how it always happens that when one looks 
 for something nothing happens, and that 
 something only happens when one expects 
 nothing. And she might have asked herself 
 how far she was answerable for a meeting that 
 she had courted, though it had come without 
 courting. She did not object to the effect of 
 the plaister, nor, though it looked comical 
 enough to common eyes, did it look so to 
 hers. She did not think that the count looked 
 like a fiddler who had been fighting at a fair. 
 Why should a broken head be less interesting 
 than a sprained ankle in a woman or a broken 
 arm in a man ? 
 
 'But you have been wounded ' she 
 
 began. 
 
 6 1 tell you it is nothing. I do not make 
 brags, mademoiselle. Only, when one insults 
 a lady before a gentleman, what can I do ? 
 In my country we do not speech, we blow.' 
 
 « Blow ? Ah, I see ; but who ' 
 
 ' Pardon, mademoiselle. What I have 
 done, I have done ; but what I have done, 
 nothing shall make me tell — no, not even
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 161 
 
 you. We will speak of other things. I 
 hope you are quite well.' 
 
 She thought for a moment. Then a 
 glorious hope came to her — for is it not 
 glory to be fought about by two brave 
 men? If Phoebe had been told that Helen 
 of Troy was ashamed of the fuss made 
 over her, she would not have believed. 
 
 ' Oh, please, pray tell me,' she said eagerly, 
 laying both her hands upon the wall, while 
 her cheeks glowed ; ' pray tell me you have 
 not been quarrelling with Phil ! ' 
 
 He removed his cigarette, bowed down, 
 and put his lips to her nearest hand. The 
 kiss felt like a little sting, and she snatched 
 her hand away, looking round to be sure that 
 Mrs. Goodge or any of the neighbours had not 
 seen. It was the first time such a thing had 
 happened to her, and it frightened her, while 
 it made her proud. 
 
 ' A patriot and a soldier does not lie,' 
 said he. 'I did not mean to say my secret. 
 But, as you surprise him, I cannot deny. I 
 hear to-day he is gone — that young man. 
 He will trouble you no more.' 
 
 It did not strike her, even as a coinci- 
 dence, that Stanislas Adrianski's first re- 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 appearance was on the day of his hearing 
 that Phil Nelson had gone away. She was 
 simply thinking that he was indeed a noble 
 gentleman. 
 
 ' And Phil said nothing about it,' said she. 
 * I am very angry with both of you — very 
 angry indeed. Are you very much hurt? 
 And — how was it that Phil didn't seem hurt 
 at all?' 
 
 ' If you are angry,' said Stanislas, ' I am 
 miserable : the most miserable in the world. 
 He did not seem hurt — no ? Because he 
 attacked melike a man in fury. I challenged 
 him, I mean to say ; but before I could cry 
 " En garde," on he came, and with his weapon 
 struck me where you see. Well, made- 
 moiselle, if you will look, you will find him 
 all over blue and black — under his clothes. 
 I must speak the truth, since I speak some- 
 thing at all. I challenge, but I do not hurt 
 the face — no. That is for cowards ; and 
 in my country we are brave. You must 
 not be angry, mademoiselle.' 
 
 ' You beat Phil ? Why, he is as strong and 
 as brave as a lion ! I didn't think there was 
 a man who could beat Phil.' 
 
 For a moment Stanislas Adrianski did not
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 163 
 
 look quite so amiably melancholy as usual. 
 But it was only for a moment. 
 
 1 For any good cause I would do as much 
 as that/ said he, ' and for your sake I would 
 do more. For your sake I would beat him 
 ten times.' 
 
 1 Once is too often,' she said. ' Promise 
 me ' 
 
 6 Pardon ! I promise what else you will. 
 But not to fight a man who insults you — 
 no.' 
 
 6 You must be very strong and very brave. 
 How is it your country is conquered, if all 
 the Poles are like you ? ' 
 
 ' Ah, mademoiselle, but they are not all 
 
 like me. If they were But I am glad 
 
 they are not, because then I should not be 
 here.' 
 
 Phoebe wanted to say something, but 
 could think of nothing to please her. How 
 was it that he was so ready with everything 
 that a man ought to say? She could not, 
 somehow, manage to think that, were Phil's 
 skin examined, it would be found so very 
 black or blue. But that was all the better ; 
 for, as she would scarcely have liked to think 
 of him as being seriously damaged, she was 
 
 m 2
 
 164 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 thus able to imagine what she liked without 
 any compunction. 
 
 ' Mademoiselle,' said Stanislas, after a short 
 but impressive silence, ' you know me what I 
 seem to be. You do not know what I am. It 
 is not the first time I challenge a man who 
 insults a lady. But that time I did not beat 
 with a stick. I killed him with the sword.' 
 
 Phoebe started, and almost gave a little 
 scream. It was grand and beautiful, but it 
 was also terrible. 
 
 ' You — you have killed a man ? ' 
 
 ' I am a soldier, mademoiselle. A soldier 
 must kill.' 
 
 ' Oh, in battle of course, but Is she 
 
 very beautiful ? ' 
 
 'She?' 
 
 ' Didn't you say it was for a — a lady you 
 — you killed that man ? ' 
 
 ' Did I say that ? But — I did not mean 
 to say my secret. But, as you surprise him, 
 
 I cannot deny. She was beautiful . But, 
 
 on the faith of a patriot, she is nothing to 
 me — nothing at all. We will speak of other 
 things. The poor Natalie ! But she is 
 nothing to you.' 
 
 This was a little more than Phcebe had
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 165 
 
 bargained for, and her curiosity about this 
 new element of romance was almost more 
 than she could restrain. To talk to a man 
 who had killed another man for a woman's 
 sake was better than reading 'Thaddeus of 
 Warsaw ' for the first time. She almost felt 
 jealous that Phil had escaped with only a 
 drubbing. She would not have wished any- 
 thing worse, of course ; but it lowered her 
 own little romance before Natalie's great 
 one. 
 
 ' It does interest me very much,' she said 
 gently. ' How unhappy she must be ! ' 
 
 ' Why ? ' 
 
 c To think of you, who did all that for 
 her sake, in exile, and ' 
 
 ' Oh, no. After all, they console them- 
 selves, those women, for what we risk our 
 honour and our lives. She loved me well. 
 But not so well, when my country called me 
 away, to say, " Go." I loved her very pretty 
 well, too, but not so well as Poland — no. 
 And so she consoles herself, and I love her no 
 more. She is grand dame. I am the poor 
 exile. And that is all.' 
 
 1 Why did you call her " poor " ? ' 
 
 c Because she is rich, mademoiselle. Be-
 
 1 66 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 cause she chose gold, and grandeur, and all 
 such things, before me.' 
 
 Phoebe was touched in a very weak point 
 indeed. 
 
 4 I would have said, " Go " ! ' she said, not 
 only out of her fancy, but out of her heart ; 
 4 and if you had not gone, I would never 
 have spoken to you again ! ' 
 
 She was certainly a girl with the most 
 chaotic of brains, supposing her to keep such 
 things. Even as she spoke the words, she 
 was pleased with them as the echo of some- 
 thing out of some half-remembered story- 
 book ; she meant them to be effective, and 
 yet she felt them and meant them, not think- 
 ing of how much farther they might be taken, 
 in all simple sincerity and zeal. If she be- 
 lieved in shams, and in nothing else, she 
 believed as much as she knew how, and 
 never stopped halfway. To her confusion, 
 Stanislas, without dropping his cigarette from 
 his lips, placed his hands upon the low wall, 
 and vaulted over to her side with much grace, 
 if little dignity. 
 
 'I know it!' he said. 'You would say, 
 " Go," and you would make it death to go ! 
 I thank you, mademoiselle. I believe in
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 167 
 
 woman once more. You wake a dead heart 
 out of the grave.' 
 
 It was indeed lucky that Phil had gone. 
 Though he must needs be miles away, Phoebe 
 could not help looking round for a moment out 
 of an habitual fear of a presence that she now 
 knew she had always feared. Stanislas took 
 one of her hands, and smiled down upon her 
 with an air of defiant protection. 
 
 ' No,' he said, ' I am an exile. I am 
 alone. I am friendless. I am poor. I have 
 only my sword, and my name — Stanislas 
 Adrianski, nothing more. But if you were 
 the Queen of England, I would not be afraid. 
 You would not say, " Go away ; I am, per- 
 haps, great lady. I show you the door." 
 You will only ask, " Is Adrianski a patriot ? 
 Is Adrianski brave ? Does AdriansTd love ? " 
 And you will say, " Yes. Adrianski is a 
 patriot ; Adrianski is brave ; Adrianski loves ; " 
 for it is true, mademoiselle. I leap over the 
 wall because you are the angel of my dream. 
 You are the queen of the soul of Adrianski. 
 Ah, what I suffer for you ! If you have not 
 pity — ah, what death ! ah, what despair ! ' 
 
 This was another sort of wooing, indeed, 
 from poor Phil's.
 
 168 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 He was now holding both her hands, with 
 the tender strength that is not to be denied, 
 and her eyes were held and fascinated by 
 the light and fire that glowed and deepened 
 in Adrianski's. Did she love him? She no 
 more knew that than she knew Stanislas 
 Adrianski. But one thing she did know — 
 that Phoebe Burden, not to speak of the 
 adopted daughter of the Grand President of 
 the Associated Eobespierres, and a possible 
 duchess in her own right, could not tell a 
 poor, homeless, friendless, noble patriot hero 
 to leap back over the wall from the garden of 
 hope into that of despair without a more 
 than commonly kind word. Had he been a 
 Czar, romance itself would have compelled 
 her to say, Go. But how could she do what 
 Natalie had done ? Where Natalie had said, 
 Stay, Phoebe must say, Go. Where Natalie 
 would have said, Go, was not Phoebe com- 
 pelled to say, or at least to look, Stay ? 
 
 It was rather a yellow afternoon, bad for 
 health, but fairly safe for sentiment, seeing 
 that the neighbours were not likely to be 
 looking out of their back windows. 
 
 'Ah,' said Stanislas, looking down into 
 her eyes with a less glowing but more tender
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 169 
 
 gaze, ' when you know who you are — well, 
 you will be like the rest of them ; all I have 
 ever — heard of. You will forget; and you 
 will be consoled/ 
 
 He was taking possession of her, it 
 seemed, without doubt or question. Had 
 Phoebe given herself and her life into the 
 keeping of Stanislas Adrianski ? She could 
 not tell for certain ; but the situation itself 
 was claiming her. Supposing that she had 
 given herself to him, then the charge that 
 she, Phoebe, would or could forget and throw 
 over a man because she turned out to be 
 rich and great, while he remained poor, was 
 too outrageous to be borne. 
 
 ' Never ! ' she exclaimed, speaking half for 
 herself, the true Phoebe, but at least half for 
 that heroine with whom, at last, and after 
 years of waiting, she had become fully and 
 fairly one. ' How could I — how could any 
 woman do that — how could she do it ; that 
 other girl, I mean, who gave you up because 
 you were unhappy; because you were so 
 brave? The greater I was, and the poorer 
 and more unhappy anybody was ' 
 
 'The more you would stoop and raise 
 him up ? I know ; you have a soul made of
 
 170 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 diamonds and pearls. You may be a princess, 
 and you accept the heart and the lyre and 
 the sword of the poor patriot, the poor exile. 
 I am in heaven, mademoiselle. Ah, but I 
 fear ! ' 
 
 It was too late to ask herself if she loved 
 him now. She knew something at last — that, 
 whatever might happen to-morrow, she had 
 to-day fallen into a net from which she could 
 not escape without treason to her views of 
 life, and a sense of being as unworthy as 
 Natalie. Not that she wanted to escape ; but 
 it was rather sudden, this conquest by storm, 
 and she wished this invincible hero had 
 allowed her a little while to think everything 
 out, and say Yes out of a little more freedom 
 of will. And yet it was a proud thing to 
 have love made to her by a real hero, in the 
 real heroic, unquestioning, all-conquering 
 style. It gave her no time to think, and 
 thinking would have meant having to face all 
 sorts of mean and paltry difficulties in detail 
 from which she had been saved. In short, 
 Stanislas Adrianski was as clearly her fate 
 as if she had read it in large letters in the 
 sky. Eight or wrong, for good or ill, it was 
 a glory to spend an hour in having secret and
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 171 
 
 passionate love made to her by a man like 
 this, who had now acquired, in addition to his 
 other attractions, the fascination of being 
 terrible. For had he not proved that he 
 knew how to love, not only with the heart 
 but with the sword ? He had said, ' But I 
 fear.' What could 'fear' mean to such a 
 man as he ? 
 
 ' Ah, but I fear,' he said again. ' Say it 
 is pride, say it is jealousy, say it is what you 
 will. How can I tell this will not be a dream, 
 that I shall wake to-morrow and find you 
 have opened your wings and fled all away ? 
 I, Adrianski, am afraid. Say, whatever 
 happens, whatever comes to you, you will be 
 true as I. You will be a princess, near to a 
 queen, when Poland is free. But one may 
 wait, and wait, and ah, meanwhile ! Say, 
 whatever happens, whatever comes, you will 
 be true. Oh, mademoiselle ! do not again 
 throw me into despair ! Hold my hano^ and 
 say, "Stanislas, my friend, whatever comes, 
 whatever happens, I will be true ; I will be 
 your wife, and of no other man." ' 
 
 For such absolute, [downright committal 
 as this she was certainly unprepared. In her 
 heart she would have preferred an exciting
 
 172 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 chapter of vague feelings, secret meetings, 
 unfettered castle-buildings, ending in some- 
 thing or nothing, whichever the pleasantest 
 end might be. This pledge sounded rather 
 solemn — a distinct pledge to a real man, who 
 had already shown himself her master. 
 
 ' Oh, don't ask me to say that now,' she 
 stammered, beginning to be really afraid of 
 him. ' It is late, and I must go in ' 
 
 ' Now or never ! ' said he. ' To-morrow ! 
 It may never come.' 
 
 4 Oh yes it will. And there Hark ! ' 
 
 She started, for she heard, even in the 
 garden, the sound of a knock at the street- 
 door, so long and so loud as to make it 
 probable that it was the second or third time 
 of knocking. ' Oh, please let me go now — I 
 must go. Somebody is at the door — father, 
 most likely, or one of the boys, and if ' 
 
 For answer he clasped both her hands 
 more tightly. ' Now or never ! I go not 
 back till you say, till you swear. Your 
 father and your brothers may come. What 
 do I mind ? ' 
 
 It was true they could not come without 
 breaking down the door. But she was really 
 frightened now.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 173 
 
 ' What am I to say ? ' 
 
 1 Say — whatever happens, whatever comes, 
 I will be the wife of Stanislas Adrianski, and 
 of no other man.' 
 
 Again came the knock, louder than before. 
 
 ' I say it — there/ she said, as she felt her- 
 self kissed quickly on both hands, on her 
 forehead, and on her eyes. She saved her 
 lips, and escaped into the house, while 
 Stanislas, even more quickly, vaulted back 
 over the wall.
 
 174 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 PH(EBE'S pictuee 
 
 When the door was at last opened, John 
 Doyle (for it was he) saw before him a girl, 
 woefully ill-dressed, and looking, in her fright 
 and confusion, as if she had just been startled 
 out of a sound sleep, or had been interrupted 
 in the middle of a piece of mischief. He had 
 looked for nothing less than to be met on the 
 threshold by the very girl about whom he 
 had come to inquire, and he had formed an 
 idea of her very different, as a matter of 
 course, from the reality presented to him by 
 Phoebe. 
 
 'Does Mr. Nelson live here?' he asked, 
 ' and is he at home ? ' 
 
 He did not put his question very court- 
 eously, for his temper, already tried by Mrs. 
 Urquhart, had not been improved by having 
 to knock three times at a door which he had 
 intended, on coming to London, to avoid. It
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 175 
 
 was not in the child that he was interested, 
 but in the behaviour of his friends. 
 
 * Yes — no,' said Phcebe ; ' I mean he does 
 live here, but he isn't at home.' 
 
 ' Will he be in soon ? ' 
 
 ' I expect him every minute.' 
 
 c Then I will come in and wait for him. 
 It is on business, and I shall not be able to 
 call again.' 
 
 It was an extraordinary thing that any 
 person, other than a collector of debts and rates 
 in arrear, should wish to see Mr. Nelson on 
 any sort of business any more than for pleasure, 
 and Phoebe felt that she saw before her an 
 Associated Eobespierre. He far more nearly 
 came up to her ideal of such a character than 
 her father or any of her so-called father's so- 
 called friends, with his height, his breadth of 
 chest and shoulders, his deep, slow, heavy 
 voice, his bronzed complexion, and big beard. 
 Perhaps he might be the chief of all the Asso- 
 ciated Eobespierres all over the world ; for 
 even in her present excitement she could not 
 leave unused the smallest loophole for a flight 
 of dramatic fancy. 
 
 The world had become full enough of 
 colour at last • almost too full for one time.
 
 176 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 What with love and mystery, she felt plunged 
 at once into the second volume of a novel 
 without having read the first. 
 
 8 Pray come in,' she said, and wished she 
 had had the presence of mind to say ' Pray 
 enter ' — obviously a more appropriate phrase. 
 
 He followed her into the parlour, where it 
 suddenly struck her that she had clean for- 
 gotten to lay out tea. 
 
 The room was now dark, as well as in a 
 general muddle. It was always more or less 
 the last, for what can one unpractical girl do 
 against a host of impracticable boys ? 
 
 So he waited at the door while she tried 
 to turn on the gas — and failed. No hiss fol- 
 lowed her attempt ; and, when she struck a 
 match, the air from the pipe blew it out, and 
 left everything as dark as before. 
 
 ' Perhaps it isn't turned on at the meter,' 
 suggested her visitor. 
 
 ' I'm afraid,' she said, ' it must be one of 
 their days for cutting off the gas ; they do, 
 every now and then, two or three times a 
 year. It's very tiresome. I'm afraid you 
 must wait while I run out for some candles. 
 It's only just round the corner. I sha'n't be a 
 minute gone.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 177 
 
 She ran upstairs for her hat, and Doyle, 
 finding his way to a horsehair sofa, sat down 
 upon a pair of boots. 
 
 He gave up the idea of sitting down, and 
 walked to the window, whence nothing but 
 fog was now to be seen. 
 
 The girl had been gone rather longer than 
 the promised minute, when he heard the 
 click of a latch-key, and then a scuffling and 
 stumbling sound from the passage, followed 
 by an oath or two. 
 
 1 Phoebe, Phoebe ! I say ! ' the voice called 
 out, ' is this a plant to break a fellow's shins ? ' 
 
 The owner of the voice looked in at 
 the parlour -door for a moment, but, seeing 
 nobody, went off again and ran upstairs. 
 
 1 So that was Phoebe, I suppose,' thought 
 Doyle. ' One of the Nelson family, I suppose. 
 A pleasant household this seems to be at first 
 sight — the gas cut off, and people who show 
 they've come home by swearing at Phoebe. 
 I've half a mind to be off again. If this is 
 the way that Urquhart has taken to try 
 experiments, and Eonaine to turn out a she- 
 Phoenix, and Esdaile to do I forget what, and 
 Bassett to do everything, I don't see why I 
 should be bothered to turn out a decent shop- 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 girl or housemaid. I didn't pay my share that 
 the admiral might get into trouble with the 
 gas companies. But ' 
 
 His mind did not follow out the 'But/ 
 which certainly could not have come to 
 much, any way. But he had not made up his 
 mind to escape by the time that the knocker 
 sounded again. And, as neither the person 
 who had sworn at Phoebe, nor anybody else, 
 came to open it, Doyle was himself at last 
 obliged to let Phoebe in again. 
 
 She did not apologise, but took a couple of 
 candles from a newspaper, stuck them into a 
 couple of bottles, after a good deal of balanc- 
 ing, and lighted them. 
 
 ' It seems a bad fog,' said he. 
 
 8 Yes ; I nearly lost my way coming home. 
 Please sit down,' she said, suddenly seeing 
 the boots and throwing them into a corner. 
 6 Father will be back any minute now.' 
 
 He sat down, while she began to lay out 
 the tea, and was glad that this Phoebe did not 
 resemble his idea of the child whom he did 
 not know he saw in her. 
 
 It is true that this form of candlelight 
 was not good for the study of a girl, beyond 
 that one might look at her longer and more
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 179 
 
 steadily than daylight, or even London gas- 
 light, allows. But he saw that she was a 
 more than commonly pretty girl ; and in his 
 view, beauty in a woman was the greatest 
 curse that nature could give her. 
 
 We have hitherto seen Phoebe with no 
 eyes at all, for her father's and her brothers', 
 even Phil's, were all too accustomed to her to- 
 count for anything, and those of Stanislas 
 Adrianski, it may be presumed, were able to 
 see beauty wherever they might find sufficient 
 occasion. For poets are wizards, and can see 
 much where common eyes perceive nothing 
 but an income paid quarterly. 
 
 But Doyle, as a disinterested, or rather 
 absolutely uninterested, stranger saw her 
 simply as she was, and nothing less or more ; 
 neither as one who, like Phil, knew her 
 faults and loved them ; nor as one who, like 
 Stanislas, could know nothing of her but that 
 she was a good deal of a goose, whose eggs 
 might turn out to be at least of silver if not 
 of gold. 
 
 She was, as seen in the foggy candlelight 
 by Boyle, a bright-looking, rather fair-com- 
 plexioned girl ; not short, though by no means 
 tall, slender, and graceful in every way. The 
 
 N 2
 
 180 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 north London air had not given her depth or 
 height of colour, but it had not robbed her 
 of a delicate freshness which spoke well for 
 her health, and, despite all likelihood, of her 
 breeding. Her hair, not too neatly arranged, 
 was of the very light tender shade of brown 
 which has no kindred with either flax or 
 gold ; it hung down in a delicate curly cloud 
 over her forehead, and brought out by con- 
 trast the darkness of nearly straight full eye- 
 brows, which of themselves were enough to 
 give her face a peculiar dramatic picturesque- 
 ness of its own. The nose was rather small, 
 and slightly curved in the anti-aquiline 
 direction. But anyhow it harmonised in 
 Phoebe's case with a fresh, sweetly-curved 
 mouth that was apt, by its silent speaking, to 
 show just the edges of the teeth, whether 
 smiling or grave. 
 
 Doyle, woman-scorner as he was, and non- 
 observant on principle, knew how to look at 
 pictures, and, just as on a picture, he looked at 
 Phcebe and saw what was to be seen. The 
 mouth, he thought, was rather large and 
 generous for academic drawing, but it was 
 womanly in the best and sweetest way ; so 
 much so that, had he known the history or
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 181 
 
 rather mythology of her life he would have 
 wondered a good deal at the contrast between 
 the lips and the mind. 
 
 I, who hold all the doctrines of phy- 
 siognomy in sweeping contempt, do not 
 wonder at all ; but physiognomists will know 
 what I mean. 
 
 He noticed, too, her fine little ears, like 
 ears, and not in the remotest degree like shells, 
 and the graceful turn of her slender neck, 
 which was not the least like a swan's — though 
 something of a goose's it may have been. 
 
 Lastly, strange to say, he tried to see 
 what her eyes were like ; and, failing in his 
 first attempt, tried, as a matter of course, a 
 second time. 
 
 There was something mysteriously beau- 
 tiful about Phoebe's eyes. They were rather 
 large, but the strong dark brows concealed 
 them a little, and their long dark lashes 
 veiled them a good deal more. They were 
 soft rather than bright — that could easily be 
 seen. But though Stanislas Adrianski, who 
 had looked into them both closely and deeply, 
 might know their colour, that secret defied 
 common and distant looking. They were not 
 black, they were not brown, they were cer-
 
 1 82 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 tainly not blue. And so it seems to follow 
 that they must be grey — and perhaps they 
 were. But they were by no means of that 
 clear, constant, open grey that everybody 
 knows. They could soften into one shade, and 
 brighten into another, and then soften into a 
 third, and seemed to take as many expressions 
 in a second as there are seconds in an hour. 
 And change of expression means change of 
 light and change of shade, as all the world 
 knows ; and sometimes the change of shade 
 comes from quick change of thought and 
 feeling, while — ' Sometimes,' thought Doyle, 
 ' it's the other way round, and we fancy all 
 sorts of things behind the scenes because eyes 
 have a trick of changing : your fine windows 
 mean an empty house nine times out of ten. 
 But, all the same, that girl's face would be 
 her fortune — on the stage. . . . You are Mr. 
 Nelson's daughter ? ' asked he. 
 
 'Yes,' said Phoebe, thinking over her 
 garden- scene with Stanislas Adrianski. 
 ' He has a large family, hasn't he ? ' 
 1 Who ? ' she asked, almost with a start : 
 for the question, coming upon the heel of her 
 thoughts, sounded like charging Stanislas 
 Adrianski with being the husband of that poor
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 183 
 
 creature, Natalie. 'Oh, you mean father. 
 Yes, I suppose it is large. We have six boys, 
 five at home,' she added with a sigh. 
 
 He could not help thinking her voice also 
 a part of her beauty, for he was now, having 
 once fallen into that track, observing her from 
 a theatrical point of view. Bohemia was 
 bringing back its own thoughts to the arch- 
 deacon. The voice was rich and soft, and yet 
 full of character, and with a vibration that 
 spoke of healthy strength and the power of mak- 
 ing even a whisper, if it pleased, clearly heard. 
 
 6 And no girl, then ? None but yourself, 
 I mean ? ' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 ' But, surely, I should have thought you 
 would have called yourselves sisters, you 
 
 and ' He saw her puzzled look. ' Do 
 
 you mean to say that no girl lives here 
 but you ? ' 
 
 'But me? No.' 
 
 ' Nor ever did ? ' 
 
 'Never. ... I wish father would come 
 home,' thought she. 
 
 ' It is strange. I hope your father is not 
 likely to be long? . . . This is strange,' he 
 thought. ' Bassett, Urquhart, and now this
 
 1 84 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 fellow of an admiral. What can have become 
 of the child? And where has my money- 
 gone ? . . . I am interested in a girl of about 
 your age. She would be now ' 
 
 A new light came into Phoebe's face. For 
 weeks she had been dreaming the dream that 
 the mystery of her birth and life were on the 
 eve of being revealed. It was Stanislas Adrian- 
 ski who had put it into her head, or at least had 
 made the dream active, for it had always, more 
 or less, been there. Her own mystery had al- 
 ways been a fancied sorrow, a real spring of 
 pride. Everything had of late taken to happen- 
 ing. The foster-daughter of the Grand Eobe- 
 spierre, the betrothed of a hero of romance, 
 the adopted daughter of Destiny ! What was 
 left to happen next but the revelation of the 
 life to which she had been born ? There was 
 nothing strange to her in the manner of its 
 coming. Nothing strange could possibly seem 
 strange to her — for that matter, nothing 
 had ever, except poor Phil's offer, seemed 
 strange. 
 
 She was about to speak, though without 
 knowing what she was about to say, when yet 
 again the summons of ' Phoebe ! ' was heard from 
 the front passage — this time in a high key that
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 185 
 
 the archdeacon would have recognised as the 
 admiral's had he heard it on the other side of 
 the world. Phoebe ran out at once, and, after 
 a hurried word or two, led the admiral in. 
 
 ' At last ! ' thought Doyle. ' There, at last, 
 is one thing that has not changed ! ' 
 
 He rose, but, till this mystery of the child 
 should be cleared up, did not hold out his 
 hand. 
 
 The archdeacon recognised the admiral at 
 once, but it was clear that the admiral had not 
 the faintest remembrance of the archdeacon. 
 And that might well be, for a big beard and a 
 heavy build are too common to swear to, and 
 no man on earth had, in all essential things, 
 within and without, changed more in all those 
 years than Doyle. 
 
 The admiral stood in a hovering sort of 
 attitude, and looked inquiringly. 
 
 'You are Mr. Horatio Collingwood 
 Nelson ? ' asked Doyle. 
 
 1 The same. I am.' His visitor's voice 
 had evidently touched no memory. 
 
 ' Then,' thought Doyle, ' I shall soon know 
 where I am. I shall be able to ask questions 
 without getting answers that I sha'n't know to 
 be lies. ... I have been asking for you at
 
 186 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 your office — Mark and Simple, Gray's Inn 
 Square. They gave me your address, here. 
 I am acting for a friend who is engaged in an 
 inquiry that interests him profoundly. Can 
 you give me five minutes of your time — 
 alone?' 
 
 The admiral looked at the tea-table, and 
 sighed. But then he looked at the candles in 
 the bottles, and sighed more deeply still. He 
 was thirsty for his tea, but five minutes' 
 private conversation might prove something 
 he could ill afford to lose. 
 
 ' Leave us, Phoebe,' said he. 
 
 She left the room, and did not think of 
 listening at the keyhole. That is a thing that 
 heroines of romance never do. Nor did she 
 brave the fog and go into the garden. She 
 could only go into the only room in the house 
 that was fairly safe from invasion from the 
 returned or returning boys — the room where 
 Phil had used to sit up at night working — and 
 wait in the dark, doing nothing, and thinking 
 of too many things at once, and in too equal 
 measure, for a girl who has just promised to 
 be the wife of the man who, therefore, ought 
 to be her whole world and her one thought — 
 at any rate for a little while.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 187 
 
 6 I am come, ad — Mr. Nelson, on behalf of 
 a friend of mine (I needn't mention names) 
 who has found reason to think that somebody 
 in the office of Mark and Simple might know 
 something about a child that was lost in 
 Gray's Inn Gardens a good many years 
 
 ago. 
 
 4 Ah ! H'm ! Perhaps But, before 
 
 we come to that, may I ask your name? 
 Not necessarily for publication, but as a 
 
 guarantee 
 
 ' My name ? I'll give you a name if you 
 like — say Smith — for you to call me by ; but, 
 I tell you honestly, it won't be the real one. 
 Well ? You do know something of the matter, 
 I see. I'll tell you how much I know and 
 my friend knows. A matter known to six men 
 at least isn't much of a secret, as you may 
 suppose. Sir Charles Bassett, of Lincolnshire ; 
 Mr. Urquhart, a barrister ; Mr. Esdaile, a 
 painter ; Mr. Eonaine, a surgeon ; and a Mr. 
 Doyle, charged themselves with the child's 
 maintenance, and left her with you and your 
 wife to bring up and take care of according 
 to your views. Is the child alive ? I asked 
 Miss Nelson just now, and she told me she 
 had never heard of the child ! '
 
 1 88 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 * Eh ? That is a curious thing, now — a 
 very curious thing. You have been asking 
 Phoebe? And you tell me that Phoebe had 
 never heard of such a thing ? Very well, sir. 
 I am in a position — none better — to satisfy 
 any lawful gentleman, or lady, who is 
 interested in this concern. To tell you the 
 naked truth, I've been expecting some such 
 inquiries all along. But it is but fair I 
 should see my way clear, for, though I hold a 
 political position as high as any going, I don't 
 hold it for lucre, and, in some respects, I'm 
 what may be called a struggling man. You 
 might hardly think it, but I have had the 
 child entirely on my hands.' 
 
 ' What, with all that money paid for the 
 child's maintenance ? That is part of the 
 history, mind. Do you mean to say that a 
 man like Sir Charles Bassett ' 
 
 1 Yes, sir, I do mean to say that a man 
 like Sir Charles Bassett. He was like the 
 child's grandfather at first — always turning 
 up with toys and sugarplums. He brought 
 her a wonderful thing that went by clock- 
 work before she could walk, and Phil, one of 
 my boys, took it a]l to pieces, and never 
 could put it together again. It was about
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 189 
 
 the time my poor late wife had a cousin 
 staying with her to help her when my 
 youngest boy was born — an uncommonly 
 pretty girl. But that didn't last. After the 
 third quarter, Mr. Bassett — I should say Sir 
 Charles — went abroad, and there was an end 
 of him. He forgot all about it, I suppose.' 
 
 ' I see. But the others ' 
 
 ' Mr. Urquhart. He went on paying, 
 like that piece of clockwork, for years. But 
 I expect one day his wife got hold of his 
 cheque-book, or something ; any way, there 
 was a row or a rumpus of some sort ; and one 
 day Mr. Urquhart sent for me to his chambers, 
 and told me that he'd done all he could, and 
 really couldn't do any more. He gave me a 
 half-sovereign — that was before he was known 
 at the Bar — and I expect he hadn't a penny 
 in his pocket but what the grey mare allowed. 
 And that was an end of him.' 
 
 'And ?' 
 
 'Mr. Esdaile? Oh, he tumbled off a 
 scaffold and got killed, or something of that 
 kind. And Mr. Eonaine — nobody knows 
 what became of Mr. Eonaine. And Mr. 
 Doyle ' 
 
 ' Well ? '
 
 190 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 ' Well, sir, between me and you and all 
 
 the world In fact, Mr. Doyle cut and run 
 
 off to the West Indies, and there was an end 
 of him. Yellow fever, I daresay/ 
 
 Doyle, for a moment, felt a desire to take 
 from his breast-pocket a pocket-book, and 
 from the pocket-book the admiral's last receipt 
 for the five pounds received from John Doyle 
 just three months ago, and to confront the 
 admiral with the evidence of his own lie. But 
 he thought delay would teach him more, and 
 only asked : 
 
 ' Then why have you kept the girl ? ' 
 
 ' Well, it is difficult to answer that ques- 
 tion in the way that a man of common-sense 
 would understand. But sentiment, sir, is a 
 very wonderful thing ; else why would you, 
 or any other lady or gentleman, be asking 
 after a girl who has been lost from time 
 whereof the memory of man, as we say, run- 
 neth not to the contrary ? I have thought of 
 things — advertising, and private detectives, 
 and — but they're costly things ; and sentiment 
 is cheap, sir ; it is just the cheapest article 
 alive.' 
 
 ' Let me see the girl.' He spoke sternly. 
 
 The admiral, with Phoebe's turn for fancy,
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 191 
 
 was beginning to wonder whether his visitor 
 might not turn out to be a peer in disguise. 
 And why should he own that Phoebe's little 
 fortune had been spent in trying to keep 
 his own wolf from his own door, or commit 
 himself to anything that might open up com- 
 munications with the absent and forgotten 
 Jack Doyle, and thus deprive him of this 
 annuity, welcome, though small, for evermore? 
 Phoebe had cost him nothing, for Phil, with- 
 out saying a word to a soul about it, had con- 
 trived to pay for her clothes, and she had 
 saved him the cost of a maid of all work ever 
 since Mrs. Nelson had died. 
 
 He went to the door. ' Phcebe ! ' he cried. 
 
 Phcebe smoothed her hair as well as she 
 could by the light of a lucifer-match, and 
 came slowly downstairs. 
 
 6 This,' said the admiral, ' is Marion Eve 
 Psyche Zenobia Dulcibella Jane Burden, called 
 Phoebe for short because — well, because — 
 because it is not her name.'
 
 192 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 FROM BOHEMIAN TO BARONET 
 
 It will have been gathered, far more clearly 
 than had been guessed by the archdeacon, 
 that a very great change had happened in 
 the life of him who had once upon a time 
 been that best of good fellows, Charley 
 Bassett, of Gray's Inn, and was now Sir 
 Charles Bassett, of Cautleigh Hall, in Lin- 
 colnshire, for, in truth, the two men were one 
 and the same. I say the two men on pur- 
 pose, because for a man who counts his 
 income by a few hundreds to be identical 
 with one who reckons it by many thousands 
 a year is clearly a social impossibility. He 
 had no more dreamed of succeeding to his 
 cousin's estates and title than he had of work- 
 ing for a living. Sir Mordaunt Bassett, whom 
 he scarcely knew by sight, and was a little 
 Bohemianly proud of not knowing, was un- 
 married, it is true. But he was of that period
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 193 
 
 of middle life when marriage is more likely 
 than in youth, or even than in old age, and it 
 was exceedingly unlikely that, were Charley 
 so much as his heir presumptive, he would 
 keep single for the purpose of letting his title 
 go to an unknown and not too respectable 
 cousin. And, if the title had to go, he was 
 not bound to refrain from making a will in 
 order that the estates and the title might not 
 be parted, while Charley was not his heir 
 presumptive at all. 
 
 But Sir Mordaunt, though of an age when 
 marriage is as likely and death as unlikely as 
 such things can ever be, did not marry and 
 did die. Not only so, but, by one of those 
 chains of chance which so constantly link 
 unlikely people with unexpected inheritances 
 — and of which family histories are fuller 
 than fiction, who is a timid creature, dares 
 to be — baronetcy, land, and everything else 
 worth mentioning, came to Charley. Genea- 
 logies, except to heirs themselves, are noto- 
 riously disagreeable and uninteresting things, 
 nor had his own been particularly interesting 
 to Charley hitherto. It had been for his 
 friends, not for himself, to remember that he 
 was first cousin to Sir Mordaunt Bassett of 
 
 vol. 1.
 
 i 9 4 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Cautleigh Hall. But now lie found cause to 
 be exceedingly interested in Sir Mordaunt's 
 brother, the rector of Cautleigh, who caught 
 cold at the funeral, and died after a baronetcy 
 of three weeks, without leaving behind him 
 so much as a widow. His solicitors — natu- 
 rally his old landlords, Messrs. Mark and 
 Simple, of Gray's Inn Square — still further 
 interested him by the story of how yet a 
 third brother, of whom he had known still 
 less, had died at sea a very short time before, 
 and how an uncle, whose issue had senior 
 claims to the branch which Charley repre- 
 sented, had forgotten to put his children 
 into their proper position by marrying their 
 mother. The family history of the Bassetts, 
 when it came to be turned over, appeared a 
 little peculiar in many ways, and complex 
 enough to require some expensive and rather 
 troublesome looking into. But the end was 
 simple enough. Neither will, nor settlement, 
 nor claim, nor question stood between Charley 
 Bassett and one of the best things in England. 
 The event caused a good deal of stir in 
 the late Sir Mordaunt's part of Lincolnshire. 
 But it was nothing to the excitement in 
 Charley's corner of Bohemia. Would he
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 195 
 
 remain there still ? Would he take a new- 
 house, and keep it open for the benefit of his 
 old friends ? Would five-pound notes be fly- 
 ing about as freely as half-crowns? Before 
 he was two days older he received as many 
 visits from men who were nobody's enemies 
 but their ow r n as if he had just been made 
 Prime Minister. He was at home to them all, 
 and more genial than ever. But he answered 
 the general question in his own way. He 
 said nothing about what he was going to do 
 with his good luck, but pinned a piece of 
 paper on his door with this legend, ' Mr. 
 Bassett will be back in a quarter of an hour.' 
 And there it remained, to the huge enjoyment 
 of all the clerks of Messrs. Mark and Simple, 
 till the quarters had grown into hours and 
 the hours into days and the days into weeks. 
 That quarter of an hour never expired. Sir 
 Charles Bassett was travelling abroad ; and 
 neither into Gray's Inn Square nor into 
 Bohemia did Charley Bassett ever return. 
 And in nine days the generation which had 
 known him forgot him, except when it needed 
 some unattainable half-crown. He left behind 
 him neither an enemy nor a friend. 
 
 A fellow like Doyle might wonder at the 
 
 2
 
 196 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 easy way in which so easy-going a man should 
 forget so easy an obligation as that which he 
 had undertaken towards Marion Eve Psyche 
 Zenobia Dulcibella Jane Burden. But people 
 of ordinary sense and knowledge will see how 
 unfair it would be towards Sir Charles Bassett 
 to expect him, in the midst of new and all- 
 absorbing business, to remember every little 
 jocular folly of which he might have been 
 guilty when he had only some three or four 
 hundred a year. He forgot a great many 
 more important things. He forgot to finish 
 a picture and a comedy. He forgot, and was 
 not at much pains to avoid forgetting, Jack 
 Doyle, who was essentially the sort of man 
 for a country gentleman not to know, and, 
 naturally enough, did not think it needful to 
 solder with gold the trifling link that bound 
 them together. Lawyers, land-stewards, and 
 all sorts of respectable people took up a good 
 deal of his time while he was abroad ; and, 
 when he came at last to his new home in 
 Lincolnshire, he never quite realised that he 
 was the man who had once luxuriously starved 
 for the whole year on what was now not a 
 single month's income. After all, it was 
 because he liked being first, rather than for
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 197 
 
 anything else, that he had lived in a coun try- 
 where a very few hundred a year would make 
 him first without trouble. He simply rose to 
 the occasion, and felt that his title and its 
 accompaniments would be wasted in keeping 
 the first place in Gray's Inn Square, when it 
 might make him a Triton among Tritons 
 instead of among minnows. As constantly 
 happens in Bohemia, and elsewhere, the men 
 who thought they knew Charley Bassett, that 
 prince of easy-going, good-natured fellows, 
 knew him no more than they knew them- 
 selves. And, when it took wind in his 
 solicitors' office that Sir Charles Bassett was 
 going to be married to his neighbour in the 
 country, Miss Florence Lanyon, Mr. Lanyon 
 of Hawlby's second daughter, the office wag 
 changed the notice on the door, so as to make 
 it read ' Gone to be haltered. Friends will 
 please to accept this intimation.' It was the 
 only intimation of his change of life that any 
 of his old friends ever received. He asked 
 to the wedding, as his best man, neither 
 Urquhart, nor Esdaile, nor Eonaine, nor 
 Doyle. He did not think it needful to explain 
 to his bride's family that he had a sixth share 
 in the fatherhood of a little girl. Harmless
 
 i 9 8 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 as such jokes may be, they make people in 
 counties whisper unkind things. 
 
 He had sown his wild oats, and, as land- 
 lord, master, magistrate, husband, and father, 
 left nothing to be desired. If you want to 
 make a Philistine of the Philistines, give a 
 Bohemian a great many thousands a year. 
 He will become a ruler in Gath and a prince 
 in Ascalon. Indeed, by the time he was five- 
 and-thirty, Sir Charles began to show signs of 
 economy which, though not amounting to 
 more than laudable thrift, would have been 
 much more natural in the days when he used 
 to spend every penny of his income every 
 year. It is upon somebody else's horse, not 
 his own, that a mounted beggar rides to the 
 devil ; and, for that matter, Sir Charles had 
 never been really a beggar, though he had 
 always taken a Bohemian pride in calling 
 himself one, and now really thought so. His 
 steward, his bankers, and his stockbrokers 
 knew that he was a richer man every year, in 
 the safest and most real ways. Nobody could 
 accuse him of being a whit fonder of music, 
 painting, or poetry, than his neighbours. If 
 he had only taken to any form of killing 
 birds or beasts, or of any other form of bodily
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 199 
 
 exercise, he would have been absolutely the 
 most respectable baronet in that part of Eng- 
 land. But, by the time he was forty, even 
 his bodily indolence ceased to be remarkable. 
 He was already getting stout, and a little 
 grey and bald ; and his son and heir had 
 arrived at an age supremely interesting to the 
 mothers of many daughters. 
 
 Kalph Bassett was always said to be very 
 like his father. And so he was, with a like- 
 ness that increased every year, but also with 
 a difference that increased likewise. For one 
 thing, he had always known from his cradle 
 that he was heir to a splendid estate and a 
 title, and had never, till he went to Oxford, 
 known what it means to be one's own master. 
 If ever there was a father who wished to save 
 a son from his own youthful fancies and follies, 
 Sir Charles Bassett was that man. Ealph was 
 a good fellow enough, with lively spirits, 
 amiable manners, a superb temper, and quite 
 enough abilities to serve a rich and unam- 
 bitious man ; he would have been regarded as 
 a swan by nine fathers out of ten. And yet 
 he managed to keep on disappointing his 
 father at every turn. He was liked about the 
 place, and at school, and at Oxford, and, in
 
 200 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 spite of his popularity, never fell into any 
 scrape worth mentioning ; but it seemed to 
 Sir Charles that he would never grow into a 
 man — that he would always remain a boy. 
 From his father's increasingly severe point of 
 view, Oxford had been a failure, and so, to 
 keep him from idling about Cautleigh with 
 guns or girls, or travelling all over England 
 with bat and ball, or playing at soldiers, he 
 decided upon making a barrister of him, as a 
 preparation for the heavy legal responsibilities 
 he would sooner or later have to incur as a 
 justice of the peace for Lincolnshire — perhaps 
 as a legislator for the British Empire. 
 
 Now, it so happened that, making inquiries 
 of Mr. Simple with that view, he was told of 
 Mr. Urquhart as a gentleman eminently quali- 
 fied to teach the whole art and mystery of 
 legal practice during such stray minutes of 
 leisure as he could find in about six months of 
 the year. Of course Sir Charles Bassett recog- 
 nised the name, and he remembered all the 
 peculiarities of the experimental philosopher. 
 A long, dormant sentiment warmed his heart 
 to a friend of his youth who had succeeded in 
 life, and with whom friendship might, without 
 the least inconvenience, be renewed.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 201 
 
 When Sir Charles Bassett, of Cautleigh 
 Hall, and Eobert Urquhart, of the Home 
 Circuit, grasped hands, they were really glad 
 to meet again. When they dined together at 
 Sir Charles's club they talked over a hundred 
 old recollections, and even wondered what 
 had become of that poor devil, Jack Doyle. 
 He had drunk himself to death, they sup- 
 posed, and voted him an epitaph the reverse 
 of complimentary. But about Marion Eve 
 Psyche Zenobia Dulcibella Jane Burden neither 
 spoke a word. After all, she had been but 
 the slightest of episodes. As Urquhart, for 
 domestic reasons, did not touch upon a topic 
 that had been an unpleasant one, Sir Charles 
 took for granted that his friend had practi- 
 cally forgotten the sixfold bond as completely 
 as he ; and, in any case, what good or pleasure 
 could come of asking, ' I wonder what has 
 become of that godchild of ours? Has our 
 forgetfulness brought her to the workhouse, 
 or the streets, or where ? Or am I the only 
 one who has forgotten, except you, who 
 would surely mention the matter if you had 
 not kept me in countenance by forgetting 
 too? Or have we been throwing the whole 
 burden on old friends who, ten to one, have
 
 202 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 not become rich baronets or eminent bar- 
 risters ? ' Such a question would be too sug- 
 gestive for any man who respected himself to 
 put to anybody in a like position ; so mutual 
 courtesy and consideration forbade its being 
 made. The baronet knew too much ; the 
 barrister preferred not to know anything 
 at all. 
 
 Urquhart cordially accepted the usual fee 
 for giving his old friend's son the run of his 
 chambers and of his papers, and asked Sir 
 Charles to dine with him at home, to be intro- 
 duced to Mrs. Urquhart, who received her 
 guest with all the cordiality due to her hus- 
 band's oldest and dearest friend. She had 
 often heard him speak of Sir Charles Bassett, 
 of Cautleigh Hall, and, to tell the truth, had 
 incredulously wondered in her heart at the 
 story of an intimacy between so great a per- 
 sonage and anybody in the position in which 
 she knew her husband to have been as a 
 young man. It was a sort of husband's vic- 
 tory to prove his position by actually bringing 
 his lion home. Nor afterwards, when her 
 hospitality was extended to Kalph on his 
 arrival in town, had he any reason to com- 
 plain of the coldness which had, even in his
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 203 
 
 anger, so much impressed Doyle. Nor did he 
 complain ; but, nevertheless, when he was 
 next asked to dinner in Fonthill Gardens he 
 arranged for a previous engagement, which 
 obliged him to refuse. At any rate he was 
 like his father in one thing — he always 
 managed, and always with grace, to avoid 
 doing anything that was not exactly the very 
 pleasantest to him at the time. He liked 
 ladies, and it struck him that Mrs. Urquhart 
 was not a lady. He also liked a great many 
 women who did not pretend to be ladies ; but 
 then Mrs. Urquhart did pretend. Nor could 
 he manage to make out how his father and 
 Urquhart, the husband, could ever at any 
 time have been real friends. But that often 
 strikes outsiders as queer in the case of 
 middle-aged gentlemen who, once upon a 
 time, were young. The time might yet come 
 when the story of an ancient friendship 
 between Ealph and Lawrence, commonplace 
 as it was, might make their descendants stare. 
 Why are moralists so hard on those who drift 
 apart from their old friends, and are always 
 making new? Would they make friendship 
 hinder growth, which must needs mean 
 change? Orestes and Pylades, David and
 
 204 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Jonathan, did not outgrow youth together. 
 Urquhart and Bassett had passed their forty 
 years. 
 
 So Ealph Bassett, without the least inten- 
 tion of becoming Lord Chancellor, or even of 
 prosecuting a thief at his county sessions, lived 
 very much in the manner he had told his 
 friend Lawrence, troubling Urquhart exceed- 
 ingly little and himself not at all. Like his 
 father before him, he had a great many 
 acquaintances, and the circle kept on growing. 
 He found a great many of his Oxford set in 
 town, and he did not find those of them who 
 had their homes in London shy of introducing 
 him to their people, including their sisters. 
 Like most of the Oxford men of his time, he 
 had the fancy for making himself out to be a 
 great deal worse in every way than he was in 
 reality, to make a show of faults that belonged 
 in reality to other people, and to hide his 
 better qualities as if they were sins ; a form of 
 hypocrisy which is for some reason or other 
 considered graceful. It led him into some 
 small and unimportant follies for the sake of 
 keeping up his reputation. But on the whole 
 it seemed likely that he would drift along 
 very safely as well as very pleasantly until
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 205 
 
 nature should make him a baronet, and that 
 he would then drift along in the same manner 
 until nature should pass on the title to his 
 own son, without doing any particular harm 
 to himself and none to the world. 
 
 He did not act upon Lawrence's sugges- 
 tion, and think seriously about that story of 
 the girl with six fathers which he had heard 
 in the railway train. And yet it had struck 
 him more than a little disagreeably. It had 
 seemed odd that his father, seeing what he 
 was now, should ever have been mixed up 
 with underbred people like the Urquharts ; 
 but that there should ever have been any 
 connection between Sir Charles Bassett and a 
 man of the archdeacon's reputation seemed 
 contrary to the nature of things. The untold 
 story, whatever it might turn out to be, ap- 
 peared to have about it a flavour of some- 
 thing wrong ; and then Urquhart's name also 
 had been dragged into it, a matter that seemed 
 even more strange. Of course Lawrence's 
 suspicions were absurd. What hold could 
 any creature have upon Sir Charles Bassett, 
 of Cautleigh Hall ? But still, on thinking of 
 the matter when it came into his head next 
 morning, during the half hour between
 
 206 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 waking and rising, he considered whether it 
 might not be as well to write a letter to his 
 father about things in general in order to 
 introduce his slight adventure with the arch- 
 deacon. But the second thoughts which 
 came after breakfast led him to a different 
 conclusion. Such a letter, being troublesome 
 to write to-day, would keep perfectly well till 
 to-morrow, and the idea of pumping his father, 
 or of seeming to imagine that he could pos- 
 sibly need a warning, was more unpleasant 
 than even writing a letter. So he did what 
 he was very nearly as little in the habit of 
 doing as he had told Lawrence. He actually 
 went to chambers about lunch-time, and 
 amused himself with a novel until about five 
 o'clock, when Urquhart came back from 
 Westminster, or wherever his day's work may 
 have lain. 
 
 ' What — Bassett ! ' said Urquhart, shaking 
 his head with an air of humorous rebuke. 
 6 Now, it's a strange thing, but I was thinking 
 of you only the other day — I suppose by a 
 sort of association of ideas. I'm off to-morrow, 
 for the arbitration in Green and Gray, ye 
 know — or I'm sadly afraid ye don't know. I 
 don't expect I'll be back for some time. But
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 207 
 
 I'll leave ye a case to look up, that came in 
 only to-day ' 
 
 6 Thank you,' said Ealph, closing his novel. 
 ' I happened to be passing, so I thought I'd 
 look in to see how things are going on. I've 
 just come back from Switzerland.' 
 
 8 From Switzerland ! ' Urquhart, of all 
 Phoebe's fathers, had, next to the admiral, 
 changed the least of all. Whatever he might 
 be at home, in the hands of Mrs. Urquhart, 
 he retained in the citadel of his own chambers, 
 as well as in Court, all that aquiline look and 
 dogmatic manner which, with a little formal 
 logic and a shilling or two, had represented 
 the whole of his stock when he first opened 
 accounts with the world. 'From Switzer- 
 land ! Then ye've not even seen the papers 
 in Gray and Green. It's a pity. Ye can 
 see Switzerland any day; but Gray and 
 Green ' 
 
 1 1 don't know,' said Ealph. ' It seems to 
 me as if Gray and Green came into existence 
 before the Jungfrau, and will outlast the 
 Matterhorn. Mrs. Urquhart is well, I hope. 
 By the way, I happened to meet, coming up, 
 a man who used to know you ' 
 
 < Ah! Who was he?'
 
 208 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 ' A man named Doyle. And a queer sort 
 of customer he seemed.' 
 
 ' Doyle ? Doyle ? ' asked Urquhart, passing 
 his fingers through his hair, as if trying to 
 remember the name. ' I never knew but one 
 Doyle ; and your father, Sir Charles, knew 
 him too. But it isn't likely to be he.' 
 
 ' He did say he knew my father too,' said 
 Ealph, 'when they were young men. He 
 said he had been in India ' 
 
 Ealph could see that Urquhart began to 
 look annoyed. 
 
 6 That fellow turned up again ! ' he ex- 
 claimed. ' I hope, Bassett, ye didn't tell him 
 where I live? He just was a poor fellow Sir 
 Charles and I used to know, and who, we 
 thought, had drunk himself out of the world 
 long and long ago. Did he ask ye, as your 
 father's son, to lend him half-a-crown, for the 
 sake of auld lang syne ? ' 
 
 < On the contrary, he looked to me like 
 a man much more likely to lend half-crowns ; 
 and from what Lawrence — a man who was 
 with me, and knew him in India — told me, 
 lending seems to be very much in his line. 
 Then you think my father won't say " thank 
 you " if I re-introduce him to an old friend ? '
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 209 
 
 'Well, since you ask me, I don't think 
 he will. Anyhow, Bassett, I'll be obliged if 
 ye won't re-introduce him to me. He's not 
 the man, ye understand, that I'd like Mrs. 
 Urquhart to know.' 
 
 ' What did he mean by the story of a 
 child with six fathers ? ' 
 
 'Eh? A child with six fathers? Yell 
 excuse me, Bassett, but I must get home 
 early to-day, and I'm off for the North to- 
 morrow. Whatever that fellow told ye is 
 safe to be a pack of lies. There's no liar like 
 a man that drinks — none.' 
 
 Urquhart, from the depths of his domestic 
 terrors, spoke so feelingly that Ealph left, the 
 chambers convinced that there was something 
 wrong. 
 
 vol. 1.
 
 2io JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 AT THE PLAY 
 
 'But I do think you ought just to mention 
 the matter to Sir Charles, all the same,' said 
 Lawrence, over an after-breakfast cigar in 
 Ealph's rooms. ' I've knocked about the 
 world a good bit, and I've got my suspicions. 
 Suspicions are as often wrong as right, of 
 course; but they're — well, I've found mine 
 quite as often right as wrong. There's been 
 something up, somewhere or other, between 
 your governor, and Urquhart, and my arch- 
 deacon. And so ' 
 
 c You mean to suspect,' exclaimed Ralphs 
 
 ' that my father By Jupiter Ammon, 
 
 Lawrence, if anybody else had put things in 
 that way — had talked of suspecting my father 
 of anything you can name — I think he'd have 
 had to know how hot coffee feels outside ! 
 What the deuce do you mean ? ' 
 
 ' Come, old fellow, don't be volcanic —
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 211 
 
 it's bad form. Of course I wouldn't talk of 
 suspecting Sir Charles Bassett, or any people 
 of yours, of anything a gentleman wouldn't 
 do, or that would put him in the dock, or 
 that sort of thing. But there isn't a man 
 going that some rascal mayn't think he's got 
 some sort of a hold over. Mind, I don't say 
 has got a hold, but thinks he's got a hold ; 
 and the way to treat him is to tell him to go 
 to the deuce at once, and tell his story there. 
 But you can't tell him to go anywhere unless 
 you know he's somewhere, and has got a story 
 to tell. I know the world, and I've been in 
 scrapes myself, and I hope to be in a good 
 many more. If I came across a black sheep 
 who said he'd got an old story about you, 
 I should let you know. I don't see why 
 you should treat a fellow badly because he 
 happens to be your governor. Just let him 
 know you've tumbled over a party of the 
 name of Doyle, and then, depend upon it, 
 he'll know what to do.' 
 
 'Well, I suppose you're right. Not to 
 do it would look like — something or other — 
 like seeming as if one was afraid of one's 
 father's being afraid of somebody or some- 
 thing. But how about the child with all the 
 
 p 2
 
 212 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 fathers. Ought I to mention that, or let it 
 alone ? ' 
 
 ' Not knowing how far you and he are 
 on chaffing terms, I don't know. My father 
 does not understand chaff, but yours may.' 
 
 'I'll write, then, to-morrow — no, to-day, 
 while I'm in the mood. I'll do it now. I'll 
 ask for a cheque, or else he'll think it queer.' 
 
 ' Lucky fellow that you are ! By the way, 
 do you mind being bothered with a girl ? ' 
 
 ' I ? That depends on the nature of the 
 bother and the niceness of the girl. Come, 
 don't interrupt an author in the thick of in- 
 spiration. I meant to ask for fifty pounds, 
 and you've made me write five hundred.' 
 
 6 Moral — you see what nothings may turn 
 out to be. Never mind ; if you don't know 
 what to do with the difference, I'm your man. 
 I'm bothered with a girl. I've got a sister 
 Fanny up in town, and I've got to take her to 
 the play. That's what they call it in the 
 country — " to the play." Come too. Doing 
 disagreeable things is good for the soul, but 
 it isn't good for the soul to do them all alone. 
 Besides, I don't know where to take a re- 
 spectable young woman, and you do.' 
 
 ' Of course I do. " Your affectionate son,
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 213 
 
 Ealpli." I don't object to respectable young 
 women at all. I know several sisters who 
 are really quite nice, and no trouble at all. 
 I rather like being chaperon. Let me see. 
 I can't to-morrow, nor Tuesday, nor Wednes- 
 day. Thursday — yes, ' Olga ' on Thursday. 
 Feed here with me, and we'll fetch Miss Fanny 
 and go.' 
 
 ' "Olga ! " Is that the piece where your 
 bayadere does the double- shuffle or the pas 
 de whatever her Natch is called in London ? 
 Ah ! the sacrifice won't be so vast after all.' 
 
 Ealph, for all his professions of advanced 
 manliness, coloured. 
 
 6 Double-shuffles be hanged ! Nelly's one 
 thing, and Miss Lawrence is another,' he said, 
 as awkwardly as if he were the rawest of 
 schoolboys. ' One doesn't mix things. I 
 know some men do, but it's awfully bad 
 form. No ; Nelly's not in " Olga." You 
 needn't be afraid.' 
 
 Lawrence had not been in the least afraid, 
 and he first stared, then smiled a little, from 
 some superior height, at such old-fashioned 
 scruples in a man who was no older in mere 
 years than he. But he said nothing. He 
 liked the future Sir Ealph Bassett so much
 
 214 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 that he would sooner have him for a brother- 
 in-law than any man he knew. 
 
 The letter was written ; and in due 
 course, that is to say on Thursday, Ealph 
 received this answer from Sir Charles: 
 
 'My dear Boy, — You have certainly 
 learned one thing in Urquhart's chambers : 
 the art of coming to the point, and making 
 other people come to it also. You will find 
 enclosed my cheque for the sum you say you 
 want — namely, fifty pounds ; and, as you don't 
 tell me what you want it for, I won't ask 
 you. I was sorry you put off coming back 
 from Switzerland so long that you had to go 
 straight to London instead of going there 
 via home, and I can't quite agree with you 
 (I wish I could) that Urquhart could not, 
 without your immediate personal assistance, 
 have dealt with the difficulties of Gray and 
 Green. 
 
 ' Please to remember that it is a century 
 at least since the heavy father in the country 
 made a point of believing everything that he 
 heard from his son in town. You don't tell 
 me much (to say the least of it) of your 
 Swiss tour ; but I can quite believe there was 
 nothing to tell. It takes a clever fellow to
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 215 
 
 say anything new about the genus Cockney, 
 which is, I believe, the principal production 
 now to be found in that country of patriotic 
 publicans, who find their native land so dear, 
 that they can't rest till they have made 
 foreigners find it still dearer. But you have 
 a sign of grace — you don't retail guide-book 
 gush, and you don't think it interesting to 
 set down how high you have carried an un- 
 broken neck above the level of the sea. Only 
 if you didn't carry these common objects 
 with you, why go at all ? For I don't sup- 
 pose you carried any particular object of 
 your own, unless to give Blackstone a holi- 
 day, which, I'm afraid, was the carrying of 
 coals to Newcastle. I wish I could think 
 you were using your time. I was no idler 
 in London, I can tell you, in my time. By 
 the way, you say you have come across a 
 man by the name of Doyle, who claims ac- 
 quaintance with me. I did have some know- 
 ledge of a literary ragamuffin named Doyle, 
 who I thought had gone to the dogs, and 
 died there, long ago. And, a propos of Doyle 
 and cheques (if this Doyle be that Doyle) if 
 he tries to scrape up an acquaintance with 
 you, on the strength of having now and then
 
 216 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 drunk at my expense, don't let him. He's 
 not a man to know. He's the kind of man 
 who does not vanish when you've lent him 
 half-a-crown. It's the half-crown that vanishes 
 — not he. So he told you that story about 
 the child in Gray's Inn. It was really rather 
 a curious one. I'll tell it you some day. I'd 
 forgotten it myself till your letter brought it 
 back to me. Just as a matter of curiosity, 
 ask Simple if he ever gives work now to a 
 sort of an odd job clerk of the name of Nelson ; 
 and ask Nelson if he happens to know what 
 has become of a girl named Marion Burden. 
 From what I remember of Doyle, I don't like 
 the notion of his turning up at this time of 
 day, and taking so warm an interest in men 
 whom he thinks may be worth looking after. 
 A man like that always ends in one of two 
 ways — he either drinks himself to death, or 
 else he drinks himself into an unscrupulous 
 scoundrel. Nelson was a sort of an idiot, 
 not likely to improve by keeping ; so you see 
 it might possibly be prudent to hear what 
 the idiot has to say before the blackguard 
 gets hold of him ; a girl, for whose bringing 
 up I once paid (till I was firm enough to 
 refuse to be bled any more), might be a card
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 217 
 
 in the hands of an idiot and a knave. Of 
 course they could do nothing really, and I 
 need not tell you that the story you will hear 
 from me and (if he tells the truth) from Nelson 
 might be published from the housetops for 
 anything I care. But, as it might be twisted, 
 I should like to know what Nelson has to say 
 of his own motion. — God bless you. 
 
 ' Your affectionate 
 
 8 Father/ 
 
 It could not possibly strike Ealph, knowing 
 nothing of the circumstances, that it was in 
 the least strange for Sir Charles Bassett, after 
 carelessly ignoring every sort of connection 
 with his old life for a whole generation, to 
 suddenly show an interest in what, not being 
 serious, must needs be the merest of trifles. 
 Nor did he suppose it to be more than a trifle. 
 But he was naturally struck by the coincidence 
 between Lawrence's piece of guess-work and 
 character-reading and his father's views of 
 things. This Doyle was evidently a dangerous 
 man, to be kept at arm's length. Nobody — 
 and the best of men least — can afford to laugh 
 at a lie. So that very morning he asked after 
 Mr. Nelson at Mark & Simple's. As it hap-
 
 218 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 pened, however, Mr. Nelson was out on some 
 errand, and would not be back for at least an 
 hour ; and it also happened that, on that par- 
 ticular Thursday, hours were to Ealph precious 
 things. He had to dine earlier than usual, to 
 go with Lawrence and his sister to the theatre, 
 and he had to dress before dinner, and he had 
 to take a ride before dressing, and before that 
 he had to see a man about a dog for a lady, and 
 to order some cigars, and several equally im- 
 portant matters to attend to ; and neither the 
 next day nor the next would he be able to be 
 near Gray's Inn at all. So, struck by a happy 
 thought, he left this note to be given to the 
 clerk on his return from his errand. 
 
 'Sir Charles Bassett wishes to make in- 
 quiries after Marion Burden. Will Mr. Nelson 
 kindly call to-morrow (Friday) evening at the 
 above address, and give what information he 
 can ? Any time between five and seven.' 
 
 Being in a hurry, and being nothing of a 
 detective, the message was neither so judiciously 
 nor so clearly worded as it might have been, 
 and rather mixed up its actual writer with 
 the writer's father. But of course it did well 
 enough, saved a great deal of bother, and 
 enabled Ealph to send word to his father sooner
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 219 
 
 than, owing to urgent private engagements, 
 would have been otherwise possible. He was 
 equally successful, or at least equally satisfied 
 with himself, in the matter of the dog, and of 
 the cigars. Then he rode, dressed, met Law- 
 rence at the club, dined, and then went to take 
 up Miss Lawrence at the relations' with whom 
 she was staying, but who, as they never went 
 out anywhere, were of no manner of use to a 
 country cousin. 
 
 Fanny Lawrence proved to be a lively and 
 commonly pretty girl, of that too quickly fleet- 
 ing age when a girl, not to be pretty enough, 
 must be very plain indeed, and Ealph took a 
 fancy to her at first sight, as was his usual way 
 with women whose beauty was not so great as 
 to give them the right to make themselves dis- 
 agreeable. For that matter, that was the last 
 right she was in a mood to claim, for she was 
 simple enough to look upon a play as a treat, 
 and upon her brother as a truly great as well 
 as admirable young man ; and yet not so simple 
 as to look down upon a brother's friend, who 
 would be some day Sir Ealph, and was, mean- 
 while, as handsome and nice as if he were only 
 a younger son and captain in the Guards. 
 
 Whether she was interested in ' Olga ' or
 
 220 JACK DO YLE '5 DA UGHTER 
 
 not I cannot tell, for she was by no means one 
 of those uncomfortable ingenues of fiction who 
 so sadly bore their companions by having no 
 eyes or ears for anybody or anything but the 
 stage. From first taking her seat, and after 
 as well as before the curtain rose, she had eyes 
 for everybody and everywhere, down to the 
 very sticks that had rattled on the big drum ; 
 and she could hear and smile at Ealph's very 
 smallest joke in the middle of the most thrilling 
 scene. She did not even refrain from making 
 original remarks on her own account, without 
 any of that painful shyness which makes some 
 people suspect that their companions may 
 possibly prefer the words of the play, at least 
 for the time, to theirs, however witty or 
 profound. She did not wait till the end to 
 criticise, and her criticism took a free and 
 wide range. 
 
 ' Look at that man playing the very big 
 fiddle I ' whispered she, while slow music was 
 accompanying some climax of action. ' Why 
 doesn't he cut his hair ? And why does he 
 wear that long piece of black plaster nearly 
 down to his nose ? ' 
 
 ' The eccentricities of genius, I suppose/ 
 said Ealph.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 221 
 
 4 1 wonder what it feels like,' said Fanny. 
 « Don't you ? ' 
 
 8 What feels like ? You don't mean about 
 having long hair, because I suppose you know 
 that very well. Like having a plaster down 
 your nose ? ' 
 
 ' How absurd you are ! Like being a genius, 
 I mean. A genius for playing on a really large 
 fiddle, or for painting, or poetry, or things 
 that people have genius for. But look at those 
 people up in that box. Do you call her pretty ? 
 I dare say she is, but ' 
 
 ' Up there ? ' asked Ealph, obediently look- 
 ing vaguely upwards. ' Well — no — if it comes 
 to that, I can't say I do. She strikes me as 
 being a little too fat and red, and a great deal 
 too old for perfect beauty. Still, there may 
 be some men who admire that style ' 
 
 Tat — red — old? You must be looking 
 wrong. Oh, I see who you mean! Look, 
 Frank — look at what Mr. Bassett says some 
 people call pretty ! ' The curtain had fallen 
 now upon the last act but one, so that conver- 
 sation might flow more freely. ' I mean up 
 there — that rather fair girl in white with that 
 man with a large beard.' 
 
 « And, by Jove ! ' said her brother, c if
 
 222 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 Bassett says some people call that girl pretty, 
 I'm one of them. She's the only girl I've seen 
 worth looking at since I've been home. Why, 
 she must have come straight from India ' 
 
 6 Oh, Prank ! What — with that complexion 
 and that light sort of hair ? Why, you must 
 be looking wrong too.' 
 
 'Nonsense, Fanny. I don't mean the 
 niggers. I mean the English girls. They're 
 always prettier out in India than they are be- 
 fore they go out, or when they come home ' 
 
 6 Yes ; if only six blackberries came in a 
 season, how people would rave about them, 
 to be sure ! Last year, when we had more 
 peaches than we could eat, we turned up our 
 noses at them. That girl must have been 
 eating too many peaches, I'm afraid. Mr. 
 Bassett, which way do you like a nose to turn ? ' 
 
 Ealph glanced at Fanny's nose, and said, 
 6 If anything, just a trifle down,' and was re- 
 warded with a bright smile. 
 
 6 1 don't pick beauty to bits,' said Lawrence. 
 ' She is just lovely — nose and all. Greeks and 
 Eomans always bring back the bad side of my 
 school days, and Jews — but talking of Jews — 
 by Jove ! Bassett, look at the man with her ! 
 Don't you see ? '
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 223 
 
 Fanny, of course, looked up the quickest, 
 and saw the big man with the big beard lean 
 forward, so that his face could be seen clearly. 
 But she was much more interested in examin- 
 ing the points of a girl who came up so com- 
 pletely to her brother's fastidious taste in 
 beauty. And just then the girl also leaned 
 forward ; and, as she did so, Fanny, through 
 her opera-glass, saw her start, and then half 
 draw back, and then colour hotly all over. 
 Was it a recognition ? Had her brother any 
 special reason for declaring her to be absolutely 
 lovely, even to the point of her nose ? But, 
 following in her lightning-like way the invisible 
 chain that is forged of starts and glances, she 
 saw, not her brother, but the plastered fiddler 
 staring up at the box with all his eyes, and that 
 the straightest of invisible lines ran from his 
 to the girl's, and back again. A man would 
 have seen nothing of all this. But Fanny 
 knew by instinct that she was being favoured 
 with an extra scene by way of interlude to 
 ' Olga.' And she had made it all out before 
 Ealph had time to exclaim : 
 
 ' The archdeacon, by Jove ! ' 
 
 4 I told you he was a dark sort of customer. 
 Fancy him going about with a creature like
 
 224 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 that — that won't do. Money's money, worse 
 luck ; but I'm not going to stand that sort of 
 thing. As sure as my name's Frank Lawrence, 
 I won't go home to-night without knowing 
 that girl's name.' 
 
 Fanny was beginning to feel curious, and 
 Ealph to think that this kind of talk before 
 one's sister was hardly up to his friend's usual 
 good form. But the last act compelled the 
 fiddler back to his bow, and obliged the three 
 to be decently silent — so that for the present 
 nothing more could come of the adventure, if 
 such Lawrence intended it to be. The girl 
 sat rather more back in her box, looked stead- 
 fastly on the stage, and used her fan a great 
 deal. But as soon as the play was over, Law- 
 rence managed to hurry his party out, and, 
 without seeming to have any purpose, to bring 
 them to a stand in the passage until the boxes 
 were cleared. They had not been there more 
 than a minute when the man with the beard, 
 the girl on his arm, passed by. 
 
 ' Ah ! ' he said, affecting a slight start of 
 genial surprise. ' We fellow Indians seem 
 destined to tumble over one another in trains, 
 and theatres, and everywhere. Do you re- 
 member giving me a very seasonable lecture
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 225 
 
 the other day ? And you remember your 
 friend Sir Charles Bassett's son ? If Mrs. Doyle 
 is new to England,' he said, covering the 
 impudence of his self-introduction with the 
 politest and most deferential of bows, ' she 
 must have found the inside of a London theatre 
 worth seeing.' Not that his impudence was 
 very great in his own opinion, for he looked 
 upon the archdeacon as the fairest of all pos- 
 sible game, and upon the girl as both easier 
 as well as fairer. ' Can I see after your 
 carriage ? Or ' 
 
 6 My daughter, Miss Phoebe Doyle,' said 
 the archdeacon, correcting the error in the 
 shortest and quietest way he could, and passed 
 on without another word. 
 
 ' His daughter ! ' said Lawrence thought- 
 fully. 4 Miss Phoebe Doyle. I'll remember 
 that name. The archdeacon may be an un- 
 comfortable creditor to one's friends, poor 
 devils ! but for that very reason he ought to 
 make a first-rate father-in-law.' 
 
 ' Yes, Lawrence,' said Ealph, ' you're 
 about right. She is a lovely girl.' For which 
 speech Miss Fanny did not reward him with a 
 smile. 
 
 ' And her nose does turn up,' said she. 
 
 vol. 1. Q
 
 226 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 When Ealph returned home he found a 
 letter upon his table, which ran as follows : 
 
 1 49 Gray's Inn Square. 
 
 4 Sir, — I have the honour to regret that it 
 will be useless for me to honour myself by 
 paying my respects to you. In answer to 
 your inquiries, I have to inform Sir Charles 
 Bassett of the late lamented death — many 
 years ago — through a fatal illness, of Miss 
 Marion Eve Psyche Zenobia Dulcibella Jane 
 Burden. I have the honour to remain, Sir 
 Charles, yours obediently (without prejudice 
 to principle), 
 
 'Horatio Collingwood Nelson, 
 
 < G.P.A.K.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 227 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF PHOEBE DOYLE 
 
 Think how things had gone with Phoebe from 
 the beginning ; and ask if they must not have 
 been like a dream — like a page torn out from 
 the second, that is to say the most bewilder- 
 ingly complicated, volume of one of her 
 familiar story-books, and applied to herself in 
 a way that out-dreams dreams. 
 
 She had risen in the morning without the 
 prospect of anything more exciting than a 
 silent conversation with that withered bush 
 which stood for the symbol of a dead and 
 empty life, that had to depend upon fancy for 
 all its leaves and blossoms, until fancy itself, 
 from over-work, should become even more 
 barren and sapless than reality. 
 
 She had to conjure, a ruler of nations out 
 of a pot-house orator, a hero of romance and 
 liberty out of a threadbare fiddler, and a 
 mysterious heroine out of herself; and though 
 
 q 2
 
 228 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 it was all easy enough at present, she could 
 not, in her heart of hearts, expect the soil on 
 which she and her bush stagnated together to 
 give them food for new sap every day — rainy 
 days and all. Quite enough little things had 
 lately happened to make the freshly tasted 
 excitement of something in the shape of real 
 food a sort of second necessity. It was as yet 
 no less easy than it had always been to feast 
 on fancies, but she had tasted the salt of real 
 looks and of real words, and this had made 
 the flavour of unsalted fancies feel pointless 
 and poor. 
 
 It was thus she had begun her day. By 
 nightfall she knew that she had given her 
 whole self to Stanislas Adrianski ; before night 
 the mystery of her life had been unveiled. 
 Stanislas Adrianski had, in his knightly and 
 masterful fashion, wooed and won, not Phoebe 
 Burden, a struggling law-clerk's foster-found- 
 ling, but Phoebe Doyle, the acknowledged 
 daughter and heiress of a rich stranger who 
 had at last come back from beyond the seas 
 to do justice and to find and claim his own. 
 
 And yet, dreamlike as it ought to have 
 been, it was all more right and natural to 
 Pheebe than a commonplace flirtation in a
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 229 
 
 ball-room would have been to ninety-nine 
 girls in a hundred. Phoebe was the hundredth 
 girl. If the veil had been torn from the 
 mystery of her birth to show her, standing 
 within the shrine of home-love, some mere 
 grocer or market-gardener, or any other 
 honest but uninteresting person, she would 
 have thought it strange, and have preferred the 
 enjoyment of an unbroken and undiminished 
 mystery. It was, at any rate, something not 
 utterly vapid and ignominious to be the 
 adopted daughter and confidante of a chief of 
 Associated Eobespierres, whose taste for tea 
 and shrimps was merely a great man's foible, 
 and would therefore, as such, fill a respectable 
 corner of the world's history in time to come. 
 She had already read ' Shrimps, His Liking 
 for, page four hundred and seventy-three,' in 
 the uncompiled index to an unwritten bio- 
 graphy of Horatio Colling wood Nelson. But 
 the story that parted her old life from her 
 new did not seem to her strange at all. 
 
 ' We call her Phoebe — because it is not her 
 name.' 
 
 These were the first words of which her 
 ears were conscious when she came down- 
 stairs from her bedroom, and felt, with her
 
 230 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 only too quick and ready instinct — as quick 
 and ready as a flight of fancy- — that the 
 distinguished-looking stranger of middle age 
 and with the big beard, whose acquaintance 
 she had already made, held the key to the 
 secret of her birth and destiny. So they had 
 been talking about her. Who was she ? 
 What was she to be ? 
 
 ' So ! ' said he. ' So this is the child who 
 has been thrown upon charity by her own 
 people, and whom charity has forgotten. I 
 don't blame you, Mr. Nelson,' he said with a 
 certain contemptuous indifference in his tone, 
 not thinking it worth while to express his 
 opinion of a man whom he had mentally 
 convicted of a mean lie to cover a petty 
 fraud. ' You have done more than your 
 duty ' 
 
 ' Pray don't mention it,' said the admiral. 
 1 It is what England expects of every man.' 
 
 c And so you have doubtless expected 
 more than your pay. It is not right you 
 should lose ' 
 
 c Ah! If every man,' said the admiral 
 modestly, ' if every man had his deserts, as I 
 always say ' 
 
 c And so you shall not lose.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 231 
 
 Here, he felt and knew now, was he, after 
 a long, lonely, weary term of exile, undertaken 
 and (till habit and success had hardened and 
 warped it into other grooves) maintained for 
 this very girl's sake, returned to find himself 
 alone true to a compact which he had been 
 taking for the one link that bound him to his 
 fellow men. Lawrence would have allowed 
 him no right to feelings too fine to be mea- 
 sured by gold. 
 
 But it may well be that even a usurer has 
 depths beyond the reach of the philosophy of 
 the very cleverest of young men. He knew — 
 none else can guess — what that compact had 
 come to mean to him. He himself had never 
 known what it had meant till now, when he 
 found how little it had meant to other men, 
 whom it had never cost a moment's struggle 
 against self or a single act of self-denial. 
 
 It was for a chance promise made to a 
 chance baby-girl that he had performed the 
 miracle of changing his nature, whether for 
 good or for ill. Whatever the means, it was 
 for that baby-girl's sake that he had ceased to 
 be whatever he had been, and had become 
 whatever he had become ; as much and as 
 truly for her sake as other men crush them-
 
 232 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 selves, with loving good- will, under the lighter 
 labours that have wives and children for their 
 comfort, and the welfare of wives and children 
 for their ample reward. If it had not been 
 for the one duty of sending a few pounds a 
 year to England what would his life in India 
 have been ? It had been lived alone ; but, 
 save for this seeming nothing, it would have 
 been lived absolutely, unsurpassably alone. 
 And now it all turned out to have been a 
 stupid blunder. Nobody else concerned had 
 cared a straw about the matter, and he had 
 bothered with throwing away so much 
 capital — so his reason, ashamed as usual of 
 his heart, chose to put it — to help a silly 
 knave to pay his rent and to stave off the 
 reprisals of a gas company ; perhaps, and 
 probably, to save the expense of a cook and 
 housemaid. The lost capital had not been 
 much, it is true, but the principle was the 
 same. 
 
 6 And we, calling ourselves, some of us, 
 gentlemen, have united together only to 
 make a present of this child's life to that 
 fellow, who is evidently only just saved from 
 being a whole rogue by being more than half 
 a fool,' he thought to himself, while bending
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 233 
 
 his eyes upon Phoebe in such wise as, without 
 meaning her to be aware of their gaze, to 
 make her feel less excited than confused and 
 shy. Who could he be? Ought that voice 
 of nature, of which stories tell us so much, to 
 command her to exclaim something or other 
 and to fall into his open arms ? It is true his 
 arms were not open ; but then, if they had 
 been, the voice of nature was as stupidly 
 dumb as usual. ' Of course, she is only a 
 girl, and will be only a woman,' he thought 
 on. ' So, of course, no harm in particular has 
 been done to her. But if she had been only 
 a kitten that we . had saved from drowning, 
 we solemnly swore to do the best by her, 
 body and life and soul, that we could ; not to 
 let her coming to smef — as of course she will — 
 be our fault instead of her own. . . . We 
 were bound jointly and severally, as the 
 lawyers say. If Esdaile and Eonaine are 
 bankrupt, and since Bassett and Urquhart 
 repudiate, and since this fellow here does 
 worse than either, and is not fit to bring up a 
 sparrow, on whom does the debt fall? On 
 me. There's no getting out of that, anyhow, 
 twist it and look at it whichever way I will. 
 There's only one possible thing to be done.
 
 234 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 But how ? How can I, at my age, and with 
 my ways, saddle myself with the life of a girl ? 
 Why, I couldn't even meddle in the matter 
 without scandal — though nobody knows me, 
 and I should say that nobody that matters a 
 straw knows her. But then, what have I to 
 do with scandal, or scandal with me ? Here's 
 something that must be done by some one, if 
 only out of common honour, and there's no- 
 body but me to do it ; and ' 
 
 ' I quite agree with your sentiments,' in- 
 terrupted the admiral. ' They are such that 
 do any man honour. I always say myself that 
 all expenses to which a fellow-man is put in 
 the execution of his duty should be punc- 
 tually repaid. It's not the money ; but it's 
 the principle of the thing.' 
 
 The admiral did not speak at all fiercely 
 this time, but very gently and deferentially, 
 merely saving his visitor the trouble of 
 having to complete his own sentence, as it 
 were. 
 
 1 Of course, of course,' said Doyle hastily. 
 ' I never knew anybody who didn't call money 
 " the principle of the thing." They muddle 
 the spelling a little, I suppose. So that is the 
 girl. And so she has nobody in the place of
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 235 
 
 a mother, or of a sister — nobody about her in 
 the shape of womankind ? ' 
 
 Phoebe herself began to disbelieve in the 
 voice of nature ; or was the stranger only her 
 grandfather, and does the voice of nature 
 apply to grandfathers ? He did not even 
 appear to be taking any personal notice of 
 her, but to be speaking of her as if she were 
 a mere nonentity in her own history — a very 
 undignified position for a conscious heroine to 
 be placed in. 
 
 ' I have been father, mother, brother, and 
 sister to Phoebe all in one,' said the admiral 
 solemnly. ' It has been a lofty responsibility. 
 But it has been piously and nobly fulfilled.' 
 
 6 But surely she has been to school ? She 
 knows other girls of her own age ? ' 
 
 The admiral did not answer immediately. 
 He could not but feel that Phoebe's friends 
 might expect her to have been sent to school. 
 But then they might want to know the name 
 of the schoolmistress, and that was a question 
 more easy to ask than to answer. 
 
 ' Well, not exactly to what you might go 
 so far as to call school. But ' 
 
 ' She has not been to school ? All the 
 better. And her friends ? '
 
 236 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 4 Friends ! ' exclaimed the admiral with 
 alacrity. ' Do you suppose that I, as her 
 responsible guardian, would allow her to mix 
 with the people about here ? They are igno- 
 rant and vulgar, sir, to the backbone. I have 
 been her friend.' 
 
 Such a speech might have roused any 
 other man to double pity. But not Doyle. 
 
 ' Strange ! ' he only thought. ' A girl, 
 and without a mother, sister, teacher, school- 
 fellow, or girl-friend ! Why, such a girl 
 might, in truth, become what a woman never 
 is or has been — what a woman ought to be. 
 If I could row in the same boat as Urquhart 
 and Bassett by breaking my word, how could 
 I leave a girl who, thanks to fate, has escaped 
 from women to gain no good out of such a 
 miraculous escape from evil ? She is young, 
 away from women ; her own nature cannot 
 surely as yet have taught her any very irre- 
 parable harm. Mr. Nelson/ 
 
 < Sir.' 
 
 8 1 am a plain-dealing and plain-speaking 
 sort of man, as I dare say you see.' 
 
 6 And I, sir, am a ditto. There's nothing 
 about me that isn't plain. When I say ditto, 
 I mean ditto ; nothing less, nothing more.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 237 
 
 ' Then I need say but few words. I have 
 learned all that I need to know. That she 
 has formed no ties except with yourself, 
 
 and ' He had to beat about the bush ; 
 
 for it was needful that he himself should 
 invent a romance off-hand, and his imagina- 
 tion, despite his having once upon a time 
 been a hanger-on upon the skirts of literature, 
 was neither so strong nor so quick as Phoebe's. 
 1 1 said that I had undertaken to make in- 
 quiries about her on behalf of her friends 
 and family, who have come to hear of the 
 story of her loss — no matter how ; and, as I 
 am satisfied, so will they also be. You have 
 not asked me anything about them, nor who 
 they are. I will tell you all that you need 
 know.' 
 
 He was addressing vacancy, or the ceiling, 
 as most people do who are inventing their 
 facts as they go along. But his eyes fell, for 
 a moment, indirectly upon Phoebe's listening 
 face, and the sight of it inspired him, pro- 
 fessed woman-scorner as he was, with the 
 excitement of a new feeling that this girl was, 
 after all, the only thing that stood to him for 
 a phantom likeness of the purposes that other 
 men live for, and of what they expect to find
 
 238 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 waiting for them when they come home. 
 Had she been the plainest and commonest- 
 looking of all womankind, he felt, there was 
 something in his long-silent heart that was 
 hungering for some of the links, for any of 
 them, that bind a man to his kind. Honour 
 and duty were at the summit of the wave ; 
 but who can guess from what distance, or 
 from what depth, a wave may come ? Cer- 
 tainly not he. 
 
 6 There was once, I am not going to tell 
 you how or when, since my story is not my 
 own, a man of — of good rank and position 
 who secretly married against his father's— 
 and her father's — will a girl, who — well, let 
 it be enough that she was all they say a woman 
 ought to be, except rich ' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' interrupted the admiral ; ' that was 
 sad, to be sure. But then it is odd that her 
 parent should have objected to the young man.' 
 
 ' They had their reasons, I suppose. Per- 
 haps they were of those eccentric people who 
 — I assure you I have known actual cases, 
 strange as you may think it — who fancy that 
 there are more important things than money ; 
 the young man may have been wild, or a 
 gambler, or — who can tell? Anyhow, they
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 239 
 
 married without leave, and then the young 
 man's father, on whom he depended, quar- 
 relled with him and cast him off, and he had 
 to go abroad to make a living. What was 
 worse for him, he had to leave his wife in 
 poor lodgings in London, alone. Time went 
 by. And — and — and when — of course you 
 understand that letters had ceased — when he 
 came home again it was to find that his wife 
 was dead, and that his child had been lost in 
 the streets of London. It had been sent out 
 with a nurse-girl who had never returned. 
 Everywhere he made inquiries — of the police, 
 at the w r orkhouses, in the hospitals,' he went 
 on, his imagination warming as he felt his 
 story working itself together without any too 
 apparent flaw, ' and nowhere could he obtain 
 a clue, until he was obliged to give up his 
 search in despair. But at last, by a curious 
 chain of circumstances, he came to learn, from 
 one who knew all about it at the time, your 
 story of the lost child. Date, even to the 
 hour, descriptions, all possible circumstances 
 agreed. He inquired yet more closely, and 
 to such good purpose that my own final in- 
 quiries to-night will leave not the faintest 
 shadow of a doubt upon my — upon my friend's
 
 240 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 mind that his lost daughter has been found. 
 But there are family reasons why secrecy as 
 to all this past history should still be observed, 
 and — and — why it should not be supposed 
 that his daughter has ever been brought up 
 in a manner unbecoming her position and — 
 and — name. And therefore, to come to the 
 point, will you, Mr. Nelson, besides having 
 the pleasure of restoring your foster-child to 
 her friends — will you undertake to breathe 
 no word of anything you know or have ever 
 known about Miss Burden ? Will you sepa- 
 rate yourself from her as if you had never 
 known her ? Will you consider Jane Burden 
 — whatever her name was — as dead, and keep 
 from all attempts to see her, or to learn her 
 name ? If so, you shall not lose ; you shall 
 have what, as you truly say, every English- 
 man expects — that his duty shall be well paid. 
 You have, you say, hitherto done your duty 
 — piously and nobly — for nothing. You shall 
 henceforth do it yet more nobly — you shall do 
 it for the arrears of that hundred a year for 
 her bringing up that you tell me you have 
 never received. . . . Yes,' he thought to him- 
 self, 'that has to be done too. Since they 
 have done nothing, I must do all.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 241 
 
 Phoebe's ears were still busy in trying to 
 carry all she could gather of this, to say the 
 least of it, meagre history of her birth to her 
 mind. It was not strange to her, foi*%he had 
 read of such romances over and over again. 
 They were commoner than blackberries in the 
 land where the leaves and blossoms of her 
 withered bay-bush grew. More, there was 
 no need at present to understand. But she, 
 looking towards him who had hitherto been 
 her father, and wondering, with some new 
 awe and inconsistent alarms, about who her 
 real new father might turn out to be, less 
 understood the flash of real intelligence that 
 suddenly beamed over the admiral's face — she 
 had never seen such a thing there, or any- 
 thing like it, before. But it was only for a 
 moment — perhaps she had misread what she 
 had seen. 
 
 ' Phoebe ! ' he exclaimed, in a voice pitched 
 so high as to be almost a wail, ' come to my 
 side — to my left side, where my heart is — and 
 tell them all if Horatio Collingwood Nelson 
 is the man to surrender the child of that heart 
 for a sum that— that — in short, isn't worth 
 his taking, and with no more security than a 
 stranger's bare word — I mean for all the gold 
 
 vol. 1. R
 
 242 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 mines of Golconda, paid down ; that's what I 
 mean ! ' 
 
 It was a speech — except for a few words 
 in the middle — after Phoebe's own heart ; it 
 was worthy, she felt, of an Associated Eobes- 
 pierre. What ought a true heroine to do ? 
 Should she not go at once to the side of the 
 only father she had ever known and refuse 
 even coronets and diamonds with scorn ? But 
 it was no natural impulse that called for an 
 answer. She did not go to his side ; and the 
 moment's opportunity for heroism was gone. 
 
 ' I see,' said the stranger quietly. e I forgot 
 the arrears of interest. That will come to a 
 good deal more ; but you're right. You must 
 have that too. It's stiff to reckon off-hand. 
 Suppose we say in round numbers, for arrears 
 and interest, two thousand guineas. As for 
 security for the money, you shall have a 
 cheque that will be duly honoured. I'll make 
 arrangements for that to-morrow ; and, under- 
 stand, the signature will tell you nothing, and 
 any inquiries you make at the bank it is 
 drawn on will tell you nothing more. As for 
 security for getting the cheque, seeing that 
 Miss Burden leaves this house with me in an 
 hour, and without leaving an address, consider
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 243 
 
 that a father is not bound to pay a penny for 
 the recovery of his child. Take a fair and 
 just offer, or leave it ; in offering it, my duty 
 is done, and I shall advise him accordingly. 
 No. I know what you are going to say. The 
 father will not appear to claim his daughter 
 in person. He will act wholly through me.' 
 
 Again — though Doyle saw nothing of it — 
 the look came into the admiral's face that 
 would make a stranger, who only saw him 
 for these passing moments, take him for any- 
 thing but the fool that most people thought 
 him. And yet that look did not prevent him 
 from saying, as simply as if Doyle had not 
 been making him an offer which — as being 
 without a single grain of real security, and 
 based on no sort of sufficient proof — nobody 
 but the most confiding of mortals could be 
 asked to accept or even consider : 
 
 ' Phoebe ! Duty is duty after all. I have 
 been a good father to you, but Heaven forbid 
 that I should allow you to stand in my way — 
 I mean, that I should allow myself to stand 
 in yours — for the sake of a few paltry thousand 
 pounds. You know I have never cared to 
 be rich, but then there is the cause, the cause 
 of mankind. Be a heroine, Phoebe. It is 
 
 b 2
 
 244 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 hard, my poor girl. But tear yourself away, 
 don't cry, think of Mankind ! ' 
 
 'Go?' asked Phoebe. 'With this—this 
 gentleman? Now? And — and — what shall 
 I do about my things? And — who is my 
 father ? Where is he ? Ah ! ' she cried, 
 struck by a sudden light ; ' my father — it is 
 you ! And — and,' she added sadly, ' if you 
 are not, nobody is — though you don't seem 
 like one ; you have not — taken money to send 
 me away.' 
 
 It was not the least like the scene she had 
 planned. It had all gone wrong. There had 
 been no voice of nature ; no agonies at part- 
 ing ; no raptures at meeting. Only a cold 
 instinct that the Grand President of Eobes- 
 pierres was something of an impostor, and 
 that story-books are something of impostors, 
 too. Nevertheless, her broken words did not 
 sound cold. To Doyle, they seemed to ring 
 of something real at last ; and ' My father — it 
 is you ! ' went more deeply through him than 
 he could tell, and struck a chord in him that 
 was sadly strange and sweetly new. 
 
 6 Your father ? ' said he. ' Let it be so, 
 then. ... I did not mean to say so now. . . . 
 But — I am he. You have no other ; and —
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 245 
 
 never mind what you call your " things." 
 Get ready anyhow, and come. Come : — home.' 
 It was the least he could say, and yet, 
 little as it was, it was the most, too. And, 
 though little was the most, there was some- 
 thing in its tone, for all its coldness, that 
 seemed to call her as if he needed her, and 
 to make her able to answer him in only one 
 way. 
 
 And thus it happened that Marion Burden 
 had died, and that Phoebe Doyle, the only 
 child of a rich English-Indian, had come into 
 the world. Only Stanislas Adrianski, who 
 had missed his plighted bride from her garden 
 for many wondering days, had been permitted 
 to recognise, amazed, the ghost of his Phoebe 
 in a fine lady sitting in a box at ' Olga.' And 
 what should he be to Phoebe Doyle? Only a 
 fiddler now — or a hero for ever, whatever else 
 he might be ? 
 
 Only one thing is certain : nobody as yet, 
 not even herself, had ever known the real 
 Phoebe, with those eyes of hers that had so 
 wild a way of seeing all things in all forms 
 and colours except their own.
 
 247 
 
 PART III 
 
 MISS DOYLE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 JACK DOYLE'S GHOST 
 
 There comes a period at least once in every 
 life when we are compelled, whether we wish 
 it or not, to pause and to take stock of our- 
 selves and our surroundings, unless we are 
 content to let ourselves and them drift into 
 hopeless confusion. We have been hitherto 
 obliged to regard the history of Phoebe and of 
 so many of her fathers as do not appear to be 
 hopelessly lost, piecemeal ; following out their 
 fortunes, now with the eyes of a girl who had 
 learned to see all things wrongly, and then, 
 again, with those of a man who, if he saw 
 anything rightly, had not the art of looking 
 round things, or of imagining that anything 
 he saw could possibly have an unseen side.
 
 248 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 As for the admiral, it is plain that his spectacles 
 can be of no value to anybody who has nothing 
 to sell, while Sir Charles Bassett and his old 
 friend had their reasons for being blind, and 
 the new generation of young men had no 
 reason for caring about chance scraps of other 
 people's lives. I cannot help feeling the need 
 of mounting a little higher above the ground 
 over which these people were walking without 
 seeing more than a yard of mist before them, 
 so as to take more of a bird's view of the plan 
 of the paths that now begin so singularly to 
 converge and blend. Phoebe, all unconscious 
 of anything that happened beyond the four 
 walls of an empty backyard, had been, from 
 her babyhood, the means of transmuting a 
 Bohemian of Bohemians into a sober and 
 successful money-lender — unless report, which 
 can hardly be deceived in such a case, did him 
 too much right or too much wrong. Who 
 was she ? Nobody could really tell her that ; 
 certainly not the man who, thinking himself 
 compelled by duty to obey the instincts of 
 heart-hunger — a craving from which there is 
 no reason to think money-lenders more free 
 than money-borrowers — had given her the 
 place in his life which, when empty and before
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 249 
 
 it hardens and closes up for ever, cries out 
 for the love of friend, wife, or child, wherewith 
 to be at least a little filled. The act of adop- 
 tion was sudden ; but it grew as naturally out 
 of his life as interest from principal. He must 
 have been somebody even before those now 
 far back days when he was Jack Doyle of 
 the back slums ; and when a man goes so 
 thoroughly to the dogs, one may safely guess 
 that he has rather more heart than his neigh- 
 bours. The dogs are not fond of hearts that 
 are colder than brains, and had rejected him 
 ever since he had taken to make money. 
 There was nobody who cared for him. That, 
 perhaps, is too common to signify ; but it did 
 signify that there was nobody for whom he 
 cared. He had sworn joint fatherhood to 
 Phoebe, to the extent of some twenty pounds 
 a year — a trifle, but his vow had made him 
 what he was — and he was the only one who 
 had kept it ; a good reason to make him go 
 on keeping it, if only out of pique and pride, 
 to prove, perhaps, that a usurer is as good as 
 a baronet and may be better. In effect, he 
 was proud, angry, disappointed, hungry, and 
 alone. And so — to the admiral's exceeding 
 bewilderment — he had assumed the character
 
 250 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 of the one, true, lawful, and natural father of 
 Phoebe Burden. 
 
 For it must not be supposed that the 
 admiral — who deserves a passing glance from 
 our height of prospect — swallowed such a 
 monstrous story as that a man, though twenty 
 times a father, should come back from India 
 to bother himself with a daughter whom he 
 had never seen, and should pay a stranger over 
 two thousand pounds for silence, unless silence 
 were a very important thing indeed. He was 
 by ho means such a fool as not to argue, 
 6 True, a promise is no security that he won't 
 carry off the girl and leave me to whistle for 
 my money. He gives me neither address nor 
 name to trace him by. But then, why want 
 the girl at all? He either is her father or 
 else he isn't her father. If he is her father, 
 he needn't have offered me a penny. He could 
 have claimed her and proved his claim, and 
 taken her off straight away. And so, being 
 her father, there's something he wants over 
 and above the girl that's better worth buying. 
 And he'll buy, or else he's as sure I shall talk 
 as that I stand here. And, if he's not her 
 father, all the more reason why he should 
 pay. He can't think me such an ass that I
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 251 
 
 couldn't find out what he doesn't choose to 
 tell. That girl worth offering two thousand 
 for ? Then she's worth paying four thousand 
 for. Nothing venture, nothing win. I needn't 
 give up that five pound a quarter from Doyle. 
 And if anybody else asks after her? That 
 isn't likely though, now ; and if they do, why 
 it's easy to make her as dead as a door -nail. 
 . . . And the boys? It's a good job Phil's 
 gone. It won't do, though, to tell them 
 about that two thousand — or three — or four. 
 There wouldn't be much left at the end of a 
 year. Let me see. . . . And I mustn't tell 
 them she found a rich father, or they'd be 
 down on him. ... I wish I could think of a 
 tale for the boys. Let me see. It won't do 
 merely to say that she went out for milk, or 
 candles, and never came home. That might 
 strike them as queer. What would a girl be 
 likely to do ? Put yourself in her place — 
 what should I have done if I'd been a girl ? 
 I should have been sorry to part with me, of 
 course, but I couldn't have gone on living 
 with the boys. I should have gone on the 
 stage. But then that would be a fine excuse 
 for the boys to go to all the theatres in 
 London. No ; I should have gone off with
 
 252 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 somebody, with a young man. By Jingo ! 
 that's the very thing. And it's true, too — all 
 but the young man. She made believe to go 
 out on an errand — no ; when I came back I 
 found she'd gone, and left a note to say she 
 was very sorry and hoped we'd forgive her, 
 and she wouldn't do it any more, but she'd 
 gone off with the man of her heart to be 
 married (naming no names), and — yes, she's 
 the very girl that would do that sort of thing. 
 And the note ? Oh, I can tear that up in a 
 rage. It'll break my heart, I'll never forgive 
 her, and forbid them ever to name her name. 
 And Phil ? Ah, Phil ! it is a good job he's 
 out of the way just now.' 
 
 So, changed even to her Christian name, 
 dead to Sir Charles Bassett, romanced away 
 out of the vision of her foster-brothers, effi- 
 ciently bought from her guardian, there was 
 no reason why Marion Burden, changed into 
 Phoebe Doyle, should ever be heard of again ; 
 while nothing was more natural than that 
 there should be a Phoebe Doyle, Who was 
 she? It would take a clever detective to 
 discover that now. He would have to connect 
 Phoebe Doyle with Marion Burden, and Marion 
 Burden with some unknown child who had
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 253 
 
 been lost in its cradle days and had never 
 been looked for. And the secret was less 
 likely to be found out inasmuch as, except to 
 herself, the solution was of no consequence to 
 a soul, while Phoebe did not dream of ques- 
 tioning the solution she had received. Why 
 should she ? Doyle's impromptu romance of 
 her birth and parentage, though lame enough 
 to the secret mind of the admiral, was real 
 enough to her. She was Jack Doyle's 
 Daughter, and as such her grown-up history 
 begins. 
 
 She afterwards remembered, with shame 
 for such transgression of the first laws of 
 the literature from which she had obtained 
 her knowledge of the world, that Stanislas 
 Adrianski had not entered her mind from 
 the moment when she first knew that she 
 saw her father to that when she found herself 
 beside her new-found father in a cab — a mere 
 common cab, and not a chariot and four. 
 Indeed, she had unlimited reasons for being 
 vexed and disappointed with herself, as soon 
 aa the first whirl was over. The sudden 
 wrench from all the early associations which 
 ought to have become part of her very being
 
 254 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 had not cost her a single pang. She had for- 
 gotten to shed a single tear, while hurrying 
 on her bonnet, for one of the boys, though 
 she perfectly understood that she was never 
 to see one of them any more. She had not 
 felt faint, or resolute, or tender, or anything 
 that became so grand an opportunity for 
 bringing out the behaviour of a heroine. It 
 was really disappointing to find that she had 
 spent years in cultivating herself to this very 
 end, only to throw away the chance when it 
 came. It was too late to know now what she 
 ought to have said and done. Never, so long 
 as she lived, could she hope to be claimed by 
 another long-lost father. But this was all 
 nothing to her love treason. It had been 
 impossible, of course, to proclaim her engage- 
 ment to Stanislas then and there. But she 
 might at least have scribbled a note to her 
 lover, wrapped it round anything heavy 
 enough that came to hand, and thrown it out 
 of a back window into his garden. She could 
 even see, in the air, the very words she ought 
 to have used : ' The secret of my life is 
 revealed. Constant and true. In time you 
 will know all.' And yet, even while she was 
 reading her own unwritten message to her
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 255 
 
 lover, she was doubly troubled by a yet more 
 shameful feeling — the consciousness that she 
 was not even sorry for her failure to act up 
 to her own knowledge of what romance 
 required. 
 
 1 What will he think of me ? ' thought she. 
 'What will he do? The Duke of Plan- 
 tagenet, when he lost Lady Adeline, disguised 
 himself as a groom, and got a place at the 
 castle where she was confined, and threw the 
 marquis who carried her off from the top of 
 a tower. I must let him hear from me ; and 
 how can I write without saying I'll be con- 
 stant and true? And that I love him? I 
 do love him ; of course I do. I must manage 
 to feel it a little more. I'll give myself five 
 minutes, and then I really will love Stanislas 
 with all my heart and soul ' 
 
 'Miss Burden — Phoebe,' said her com- 
 panion, breaking in upon thoughts that, as 
 usual, could not keep themselves within the 
 lines of reality, however wild it might be, ' I 
 don't wonder at your asking no questions. 
 I'm afraid you must be feeling — strange. But 
 — you mustn't go on feeling strange with me.' 
 
 ' Indeed, sir,' began Phoebe, in a tone as 
 if she had been accused of some new sin
 
 256 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 against dramatic proprieties — c indeed, sir, but 
 it is all so strange ! ' 
 
 ' You must learn to call me " father," just 
 as I must call you " Phoebe." ' 
 
 It would have been natural in a father, 
 who had so much missed his lost child and 
 had taken so much trouble to find her again, 
 to have made some outward and visible sign 
 of affection. But there were no tears in his 
 voice, which did not even tremble, and his 
 hands made no movement towards hers. 
 
 She was glad of it, for it saved her from a 
 great deal of trouble ; and yet she could not 
 help feeling that her father was unnaturally 
 undemonstrative and cold. As for him — 
 well, he could not, after all, manage to make 
 himself her father simply by calling himself 
 so, and he felt no temptation to use the 
 advantage which his claim had given him 
 over a pretty and seemingly over-docile and 
 unassertive girl. Had she been plain, his part 
 would have been infinitely more easy. But 
 he simply felt awkward and constrained ; the 
 suspicion never entered his head or heart for 
 a moment that he might possibly have been 
 taking a hand at the old game of fire. He 
 felt himself as safe from that as he had felt
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 257 
 
 from ruin when playing to lose non-existent 
 millions in the old Bohemian days. 
 
 ' Don't you ever want to know your 
 name ? ' he asked after a pause. 
 
 ' Of course. Phoebe ' 
 
 ' You are Phoebe Doyle. My name is John 
 Doyle. I suppose you won't be sorry to 
 know that I am what most people call rich, 
 and you are my only child.' 
 
 A brilliant speech came into her mind. 
 Something to justify her character of heroine 
 she must say or do. 
 
 ' Am I like my mother ? ' she asked. 
 ' Have I her eyes ? ' 
 
 He could not help opening his a little. 
 It was not at the un timeliness of such a 
 question in a dark cab, where faces could 
 only be seen by flashes when they happened 
 to be passing a gas-lamp ; but it seemed to 
 betray a theatrical touch about the girl that 
 did not please him He had noticed her eyes, 
 and his ingrained ideas of women as a sex 
 were strong enough to make him fancy that 
 she knew her own strong point, and wanted a 
 compliment, after the manner of girls who 
 are brought up among such surroundings as 
 hers must have been. 
 
 vol. 1. s
 
 258 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 ' Your mother ? No.' 
 Not even then, to her extreme wonder, did 
 the tone of his voice change. She had only 
 thought of doing justice to the finer part of 
 her own nature, and not of moving him, when 
 she asked her question ; but surely the men- 
 tion of the wife whom he had loved so much 
 by her newly-found child should have moved 
 him deeply. 
 
 'I wonder if I should have loved my 
 mother ? ' she thought sadly. ' I wonder if I 
 can love anybody — except Stanislas, of course ? 
 I wonder if my mother loved my father ? He 
 seems made of stone. And I — do I take after 
 him, that I don't seem able to feel anything 
 at all ? ' 
 
 Doyle, too, fell back into silence, and it 
 was really to think of Phoebe's mother — of 
 that mother who had not only never died, but 
 who had never even been born. 
 
 It was natural, after all, that her child 
 should speak of her. But what was he to 
 say? He had committed himself to saying 
 that she was not like Phoebe. Well, he could 
 make her like or unlike anything he pleased ; 
 and then he thought 
 
 If our bird's-eye view has not yet been
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 259 
 
 high enough to see back into the pre-Bohemian 
 days of John Doyle, it was because they had 
 been dead and buried, even so long ago as 
 when there was a Charley Basse tt, of Gray's 
 Inn, instead of a Sir Charles Bassett, of Caut- 
 leigh Hall. Some ghosts men are able to lay 
 out of their own sight, and therefore from 
 the sight of all men ; but what ghost is laid 
 always and for ever ? Not such a ghost as 
 had once been slept and drunk out of sight 
 — a spirit exorcised by spirits — by the Jack 
 Doyle of old. 
 
 Phoebe, whether we can believe it or no, 
 was the first girl, presumably pure and in- 
 nocent, with whom, for a number of years 
 equivalent to a lifetime, he had spoken more 
 than a chance word. Even in his roughest 
 and worst times he had been a notorious 
 woman-hater, and had taken no share in 
 what used to pass for adventures and bonnes 
 fortunes among Charley Bassett and his friends. 
 It had been a matter of chaff among them — 
 behind his back, at least ; for upon that one 
 point it had always been dangerous to rally 
 him openly. 
 
 But there had been — who can have for a 
 moment doubted it ? — a cause. The cause 
 
 s 2
 
 260 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 was truly not only dead, but buried, as deep 
 underground as the corpses of the past can be 
 laid and buried by hands of men. 
 
 But — no need to say why — the fingers of 
 women are stronger than the hands of men. 
 It was not Phoebe's chance question about a 
 woman who had never been, but Phcebe's 
 mere being in the world, and the sound of 
 her voice so close to his ear, and the imme- 
 diate nearness of her life to his own, that had 
 called up Jack Doyle's ghost to life again. 
 If we have not caught sight of it before, it 
 was because it had been too completely and 
 successfully buried to be seen. 
 
 It was as long ago as when he was a 
 scholar of his college at Oxford — a place 
 where, to the belief of his comrades in 
 Bohemia, he had never been any more than 
 they had been there themselves ; for it might 
 have been noticed that he chose his comrades 
 from a strictly non- collegiate circle — that the 
 shadow of his life began. There were men 
 about in London who would have remembered 
 him well had he allowed them to do so ; but 
 his holding himself out of their ken was 
 hardly needful to save from recognition, in 
 Jack Doyle, the student who was reading for
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 261 
 
 a Fellowship to be followed by holy orders. 
 The sermons that he had written for the price 
 of a bout of brandy he had once meant to 
 preach from the pulpit, and the nickname of 
 archdeacon, which had managed to follow him 
 even to India, was a burlesque upon what 
 might have been a very probable reality. 
 The worst of him at Oxford was that he was 
 so painfully steady a young man. He was 
 more blameless than a young Quakeress, and 
 seemed in as little danger of coming to any 
 sort of grief as if he had been a monk of 
 Mount Athos, where not even so much as a 
 hen-bird is allowed to come. But, I suppose, 
 the rule of the monks is no rule for the air, 
 and that at least a hen-sparrow will chance 
 to perch upon their hardest rocks now and 
 then. And so his doom came. 
 
 It was with an actress — of all people in 
 the world — with an actress at a country 
 theatre, that he fell in love, not in any 
 common way, but to the full extreme of un- 
 known and untried passion. He was spend- 
 ing his last long vacation in reading at 
 Helmforth, the little sea-side town where, by 
 chance, he first met the girl. Of her there is 
 nothing else to be known ; she is only visible
 
 262 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 to his eyes, and to all others dead and for- 
 gotten. The most inveterate playgoer may 
 search in vain for the name of Miss Stella 
 Fitzjames in his memory of the stage. He 
 loved her so much that he made her a 
 goddess, and did not even know that he was 
 a fool. He did not read. He spent all he 
 had to spend upon her, and more. He al- 
 lowed himself to lose the class at which he 
 had been aiming ever since he was a school- 
 boy. He cut himself off from a Fellowship 
 that would mean celibacy. He gave up the 
 calling for which he had unfitted himself as 
 much as a man can. 
 
 Stella became his one thought, his complete 
 faith, his whole world. He made no secret 
 of his love ; he brought himself to part from 
 her in order that he might make a clean 
 breast of it to his friends at home. He had 
 already bought the marriage license, and had 
 left it in her hands. When he came back, 
 after a hopeless rupture with his family, to 
 Helmforth, it was to find that the license had 
 already been used, and that, in the marriage 
 register, there stood recorded his own name 
 as that of the husband of Stella Fitzjames. 
 
 Who had supplanted him, and why in
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 263 
 
 such a way, he did not care to know. It 
 was enough, and more than enough, that his 
 faith in Stella's sex had been destroyed, and 
 that nothing, save death in life, had been 
 given him in return. 
 
 No wonder he shuddered a little at Phoebe's 
 theatrical question — 
 
 6 Am I like my mother ? Have I her 
 eyes ? ' 
 
 It was as if the ghost of Stella had sud- 
 denly laid a finger on his arm. 
 
 ' She shall have had no mother ! ' his 
 thoughts exclaimed. ' She shall be good and 
 true — she shall be like no other woman that 
 has ever been. Phoebe ' 
 
 At last he held out his hand. She could 
 not refuse hers, and he kissed it, but as little 
 like a father as a lover. After all, it was she 
 who had saved him from his worst and most 
 desperate self — this child. He owed her more 
 than two thousand pounds ! In the midst of 
 her wonder at suddenly feeling his lips upon 
 her hand, the cab stopped — she did not know 
 in what part of the town — at the door of an 
 hotel.
 
 264 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE FIKST DAYS 
 
 That inn door at which the cab stopped was 
 no common inn door. For well nigh the 
 first time in Phoebe's life something seemed just 
 what it really was. She knew it to be the 
 gate of the real world, outside which she had 
 stood and waited so long for something to 
 happen. That she believed the real world to 
 be a reflection of cheap romance has nothing 
 to do with the matter ; the door was not the 
 less a real door for happening to lead into 
 nothing better than a common coffee-room, 
 instead of among people whom one could tell 
 at a glance to be heroes and heroines. 
 
 How her father managed to disarm the 
 natural curiosity of the manager of the hotel 
 as to the sudden arrival of a young woman, 
 not too well dressed, and with no luggage 
 worth mentioning, was a detail of business 
 that did not come in her way. She had been
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 265 
 
 running out of one mood into another for 
 hours past ; and her present mood was that, 
 although it was, of course, a proud delight to 
 have turned out a real lady, even without the 
 additional salt of a title, still it would be a 
 relief to wake up and find herself in her 
 own bed at home. Home had never felt like 
 home before. Happily for her self-respect, 
 she never guessed the real cause of this new 
 experience. She had eaten nothing to speak 
 of since breakfast, and had come away with- 
 out her tea. 
 
 In one thing, however, men, stupid 
 they may be in general, are seldom quite 
 so stupid as to forget that women cannot 
 live by tea alone. He himself, late as it 
 now was, had not dined, and was perfectly 
 able to see a ghost now and then without 
 losing his appetite. It seemed to Phoebe that 
 the meal was a gorgeous banquet — as indeed 
 it was, after those slipshod meals of home, for 
 which she had herself been only too answer- 
 able. It made her feel shy; but even shy- 
 ness failed to conquer healthy hunger. Her 
 father seemed shy too ; but she was too tired 
 out with noticing things to notice any more, 
 and the meal passed in silence which did not
 
 266 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 prove the usual awkward burden. In short 
 Phoebe ate a very good dinner, and felt very- 
 much better when she had done. I would 
 have said so at once ; but it is not a nice thing 
 to say of a professed heroine, who, at such an 
 accusation, must have felt compelled to lay 
 down her knife and fork and go to bed 
 hungry. For here was she, eating with a 
 good appetite, though she scarcely yet knew 
 her own name ; though she was torn from 
 the home of her childhood ; and though her 
 lover must, if he had the heart to smoke at 
 all, be smoking the cigarette of suspense and 
 anxiety too terrible to be borne. 
 
 i I suppose/* said her father at last, ' you 
 must be wanting to know what sort of a life 
 ours is to be. I hear you have made no 
 friends or connections of your own — that's 
 well; better than I could have hoped for. 
 What your — what people call education — 
 has been I don't care a straw. The less a 
 woman or a man has of that stuff, the better 
 for her and him. Nor do I care another 
 straw whether you're a good housekeeper. 
 I want a daughter — neither a cook nor a 
 chambermaid. I don't care for many com- 
 forts ; and those I want I can hire or buy.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 267 
 
 I'm going to take lodgings while I look out 
 for a house. I've made up my mind to take 
 a house somewhere in London ; for I sha'n't 
 go back to India, and one can sleep better in 
 London than anywhere in the world, and be 
 less bothered with people. Of course, you 
 won't want balls and parties, or any of that 
 nonsense, as you've never been used to them ; 
 and I'm glad to say I've got no more acquain- 
 tances than you. I think — I hope, Phoebe, 
 we shall get on very well. Only one thing 
 you must promise me. If any of the Nelsons 
 try to communicate with you, in any sort of 
 way, or see you, or if you see them, let me 
 know it instantly.' 
 
 Her latest mood, thanks to satisfied hun- 
 ger, had been almost rose-coloured. But a 
 blank fell over the tint of promise at the 
 words which opened out such a vista of 
 nothingness to a girl of quick instincts, if of 
 nothing more. What was the good of sud- 
 denly finding herself something like what she 
 had always expected if she was to make no 
 friends and never go to a ball? That was 
 not life — so much of the truth even her 
 romances had been able to teach her. Why, 
 when she used to picture herself as a princess,
 
 268 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 it had always been as a brilliant, dancing 
 princess, with partners sighing round her ; 
 never as a royal nun. She might just as well 
 have been left alone with her bay-tree. 
 
 ' Yes,' she said doubtfully. ' No, I have 
 never seen a ball.' 
 
 ' And you mean to say you would like 
 to ? ' asked her father, with a rather quick 
 frown, considering his slow and heavy ways. 
 
 It frightened her for a moment, for it 
 reminded her of Phil, also slow and heavy, and 
 with uncomfortable views about the lives of 
 girls. 
 
 1 Oh no, I don't mean that, of course,' she 
 said weakly ; ' only what am I to do with 
 myself all day long ? ' 
 
 ' Do with yourself? ' he asked, a little 
 puzzled ; ' oh, there's always something to do. 
 What have you always done ? Come, I ought 
 to know something about my own daughter.' 
 
 1 Nothing ; I've never done anything,' said 
 she, with a slight flush, however ; for was it 
 nothing to have engaged herself only yester- 
 day to Stanislas Adrianski ? ' I mean, only 
 darned the boys' stockings, and walked in 
 the garden, and got breakfast and tea.' 
 
 ' Nothing more ? '
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 269 
 
 'Nothing, only I've read a great deal.' 
 
 ' Oh, then, you have read, have you ; and 
 what books? I shouldn't have thought the 
 admiral kept much of a library.' 
 
 'No, but they kept one just round the 
 corner. I've read all the books they've got, 
 nearly. I've read "Lady Ethyline," and 
 "Denzil Wargrave ; or, the Mystery of 
 Mordred Mill," and Thad ' 
 
 She stopped ; that ground was too near 
 the estate in her heart of Stanislas Adrianski. 
 
 ' I mean ' 
 
 ' " Thaddeus of Warsaw." Well ? ' 
 
 ' And " The Haunted Grange," one of the 
 best of all.' 
 
 But she stopped again, and not unwillingly, 
 for this uncomfortable father of hers was lis- 
 tening no more. And she would have been 
 amazed indeed could she have seen into his 
 mind just then, and read there that this big, 
 stern, cold man, who talked as a matter of 
 course of shutting up his only child in a hope- 
 less nunnery of one, had himself written that 
 thrilling, nay, gushing, romance of " The 
 Haunted Grange," by way of desperate hack- 
 work, in a garret, for not quite a farthing a 
 line.
 
 270 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 ' You — has any living creature read " The 
 Haunted Grange " ? ' asked he. ' Then you 
 have read the most idiotic drivel that ever 
 was penned. And I suppose the others are 
 much the same. Well, we can change that, 
 anyhow. I'm glad I know.' 
 
 Doyle, as he smoked his last cheroot of 
 the day in refreshing solitude, could not, 
 somehow, manage to congratulate himself 
 thus far on the prospects of the results of his 
 impulse to adopt a daughter. He did not 
 regret the first step of the experiment, but he 
 felt he had played his part ill, and that Phoebe 
 required a little more educating than he ex- 
 pected to become his daughter indeed. Of 
 selfishness in the matter he had no conscious- 
 ness at all. A sense of duty, as usual, served 
 as a cloak for all other things. And yet, even 
 as things were, he might have found cause to 
 tell himself that he had really done — for him- 
 self, at least — well. He had somebody else to 
 think of, and to think of somebody else with 
 discomfort and misgiving was something to 
 the man who had never had anybody but 
 himself to think of since his ghost was laid. 
 Before he slept, that ghost came back to him 
 once more.
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 271 
 
 As for Phoebe, she fell asleep at once, and 
 dreamed neither of father nor of lover. She 
 dreamed of nothing at all. And so ended 
 her first day as Jack Doyle's daughter. 
 
 It is lucky that strong impulses mean 
 blindness to details, or they would never be 
 followed. Whatever the temptation might 
 have been, it is impossible to imagine for an 
 instant that a man to whom women had 
 become creatures of another planet would 
 have dared to face the sight of the unknown 
 world through which he must travel in order 
 that he might give her the outward varnish 
 of her new position. If possible, he knew 
 even less of her outer requirements than of 
 her inner needs, though, of course, he had a 
 general idea that, leaving home in such a 
 hurry, she must want a good many things. 
 After turning the matter over in his mind, he 
 could only come to the conclusion that she 
 must get them for herself, and that all he 
 could expect himself to do was to pay. And 
 he had got into the habit of not being fond of 
 paying, and called to mind the terrible stories 
 he had heard, and, may be, known of at second 
 hand, out in India, of milliners' bills. 
 
 'If I knew of only one woman with
 
 272 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 daughters, I declare I'd eat my own principles, 
 and ask her to help me,' thought he. ' I 
 suppose Mrs. Urquhart isn't worse than other 
 men's wives ; and she'd be priceless just now. 
 She'd combine experience with economy. I 
 wonder if she'd show me the door again, if I 
 let her know I'm not the poor devil she took 
 me for, with designs on her husband's purse 
 and morals. However, it's too late for Mrs. 
 Urquhart now. I wonder if men think of the 
 chances of daughters when they marry. Not, 
 I should say.' 
 
 The result was that Phoebe, who had 
 hitherto been clothed like the lilies, in so far 
 as she did not know how, but very unlike 
 them in the matters of taste and sufficiency, 
 found herself under general orders to go to 
 any shop she liked, and to buy whatever she 
 wanted in the way of bonnets and gowns (so 
 he profanely called what women wear), and 
 all toilette trappings, so long as she left 
 jewellery alone. He knew he was running a 
 terrible financial risk, but his ignorance was 
 too profound for giving her any sort of advice 
 with detail, and he could only comfort him- 
 self with the reflection, ' In for a penny, in for 
 a pound — she'd better get her whole outfit
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 273 
 
 once for all, and have clone.' But he need 
 not have been afraid. With all the best will 
 to clothe herself gorgeously, Phoebe felt like 
 a little boy who, for the first time in his 
 life, is taken into a pastrycook's by some 
 rashly generous patron, and ordered : ' There 
 — eat as much as you can of everything you 
 like that you see.' The difficulty is not in 
 want of appetite, but in knowing how and 
 where to begin ; so that he becomes credited 
 with a temperance and modesty beyond his 
 years and nature. Phoebe's one practical idea 
 was the draper's where she had been in the 
 habit of dealing, and of leaving anybody who 
 liked — who had liked had been poor Phil's 
 secret — to pay. But she knew that the 
 draper's shop would not do any more, and ye 
 could not think of grander shops without an 
 almost religious awe. She had often looked 
 through windows, but with no more thought 
 of entering, even in her dreams, than of writ- 
 ing one of the books in which she read of the 
 people whom she saw going in. This was a 
 reality ; and it therefore found her unpre- 
 pared. 
 
 ' Do you mean I must go — all by myself?' 
 she asked. ' I — I don't know these streets ; 
 
 vol. 1. T
 
 274 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 and I don't know what people buy — you know 
 we have always been very poor.' 
 
 ' And so you don't want much ? All the 
 better. Yes, shopping must be a nuisance ; 
 but I suppose it has got to be done. By the 
 way, though, I have an idea. We'll find 
 some big place together, and I'll put you alto- 
 gether into the hands of some head woman 
 there, and ask her to do for you. She won't 
 ask questions ; and if she does, we needn't 
 answer them. Everybody will see I'm from 
 India, and they'll take for granted you've 
 come from there too ; and everybody here 
 fancies that anything odd is natural in an 
 Indian. We'll do that first, and then go on a 
 house hunt. So be ready in half an hour.' 
 
 Doyle must really have had a long purse, 
 considering the manner in which, when he 
 fairly faced them, he managed to make the 
 smaller wheels of life go as if they were well 
 oiled. At first Phoebe had really no time to 
 feel herself alone, or the hours empty, see- 
 ing how well the lady who undertook to do 
 for her professionally contrived to fill them. 
 What the latter thought is no matter. Middle- 
 aged gentlemen do now and then have daugh- 
 ters whose outfit for life, owing to various
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 275 
 
 circumstances, has been too long neglected, 
 and who show signs of having had a mother 
 of social position inferior to the father's. 
 And, for that matter, Phcebe, in spite of every 
 adverse circumstance, had not acquired any 
 of the tricks of speech or manner by which a 
 modiste knows better than anyone else to 
 distinguish a ' young person ' from a lady. 
 There was more about Phcebe than her face 
 that went towards fitting her for the stage. 
 
 Phcebe had even failed to find the time for 
 writing that note to Stanislas, and the duty 
 kept putting it off so constantly, and the 
 period of neglect had grown to seem so much 
 longer than it really was, that it became 
 daily doubly difficult to do. When she had 
 been dressing, and her father house-hunting, 
 for a week that seemed as full as ten, she had 
 reached the stage when something that has 
 been delayed so long can just as well be 
 delayed another day without signifying. She 
 did once write half the note, but she could 
 not please herself, and tore it up again, care- 
 fully burning the remains in a candle. The 
 fragment had been disgracefully cold ; and so, 
 perhaps, she thought that it wanted warming. 
 
 Though father and daughter were as far 
 
 T 2
 
 276 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 from knowing one another as ever, still they 
 had become better acquaintances, if not better 
 friends. When shyness sinks very deep, it 
 often becomes invisible. Neither had got 
 what he or she had wanted. But Phoebe was 
 too busy to miss anything as yet, and had her 
 entanglement on her mind ; and Doyle thought 
 himself engaged in a study of the character 
 which he had determined, now that he had 
 apparently given up all other business, to 
 form. So one day, when the dressing busi- 
 ness was nearly over, he said : 
 
 ' I don't know what sort of things you like 
 best yet, Phcebe. It can't be books, because 
 nobody could care for that trash you told me 
 of, except born fools. You've never learned 
 a note of music, thank goodness, and I can't 
 make out that you've got any tastes at all. I 
 want your life to be happy. If you could do 
 just what you liked for a week, what would 
 it be ? Never mind what it is, only tell me 
 honestly, whatever it might be.' 
 
 She had ceased to stare at any of his ques- 
 tions by this time ; and she had also learned 
 that he was not to be denied a really full and 
 honest answer. And, for once, about a full
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 277 
 
 and honest answer there happened to be no 
 difficulty at all. 
 
 'I have never been to a theatre in my life,' 
 she said, ' and I should like to see a real play, 
 more than anything in the world.' 
 
 ' A play ! ' He started ; it was the last 
 thing he looked for. And Stella had been 
 the last actress he had seen on the stage ! 
 6 What on earth can have put that into your 
 head, Phoebe ? A play ? ' 
 
 6 Oughtn't I to want to see a play ? I 
 thought the greatest ladies went to plays, and 
 I've always thought it would be so grand and 
 beautiful to see all the things one thinks of, 
 to see them with one's very eyes. It would 
 be like living in a book — not like reading 
 one.' 
 
 She did not often have the chance of 
 speaking her mind out, and she was apt to 
 lose the chance when it came. But she did 
 not lose it now. She had always felt a dumb 
 hunger for every sort of dreamland in which 
 her eyes and ears might outdo her fancy ; 
 and the prospect of real life seemed likely to 
 prove so woefully inferior to printed dreams 
 that her hunger had been growing for living 
 ones.
 
 278 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 He did not notice how unlike her usual 
 words her last were. For once there was 
 something like a point in them, and more than 
 merely reflected feeling. 
 
 'A play,' said he again. 'No,' he thought, 
 fi I have not lived so long in my own way to 
 change it now, which means — which means I 
 am a coward and a weak fool, who has not 
 outlived and forgotten, and am afraid of find- 
 ing out what an impostor I am. That will 
 never do. . . . I have forgotten, and I am 
 not afraid. What have I taken this poor 
 child into my life for but to begin a new life, 
 as if the past had never been ? As long as I 
 dare not face one least single memory, I have 
 not conquered ; and conquer I will. It shan't 
 be put on my tombstone, " Here lies a man 
 who was such a fool that he couldn't forget a 
 girl, and who was afraid to go to a play for 
 fear he should see the ghost of her ghost 
 there." I ought, by rights, to avoid the play 
 of life, because she was a living woman once 
 upon a time. . . . Phoebe, I will — I mean 
 you shall — see a play.'
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 279 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 6 ONLY A FIDDLER ' 
 
 * You shall go to the play,' was spoken in the 
 tone of a rather angry father towards a dis- 
 obedient boy — as if Phoebe had already been 
 ordered to go to the play, and had stubbornly 
 refused to do any such thing. Of course it 
 was Doyle himself whom Doyle, in spirit, had 
 called ' You ' ; it was one of his two selves 
 addressing the other. But it all came practi- 
 cally to the same thing. His tone of command 
 was, after all, more satisfactory than a mere 
 cold and indifferent 'Very well, then — you 
 may go ' would have been. She had never 
 yet been commanded or ordered about with 
 anything like authority, even by Phil ; and 
 the sensation was a little piquant and not at 
 all disagreeable. Doyle might have fancied 
 himself disappointed could he have seen, in 
 spite of her having had to tumble up anyhow
 
 2 8o JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 among boys, the amount of the natural woman 
 that there was in Phoebe. 
 
 So soon as the matter was settled, it was 
 he, and not she, who set about this simple 
 business of playgoing as if it were a serious 
 affair. He did not say much about it, but 
 any woman, without going a finger's breadth 
 below the surface, could see that it occupied 
 his thoughts quite as much as house-hunting. 
 Phoebe, as we know, was something of a 
 clairvoyant in her way, and though, like 
 clairvoyants in general, she nearly always 
 saw either wrongly or else what was not to 
 be seen at all, she could not, when things lay 
 very much on the surface, help seeing more 
 or less rightly now and then. But it did not 
 strike her that there was anything like a 
 childish streak in this part of her father's 
 behaviour. On the contrary, unsympathetic 
 as its manifestations were, it made her feel 
 that plays are a more really important part 
 of life even than she had supposed. 
 
 She was spared that half-hour of agony 
 during which playgoers, in the first stage of 
 their career, become quite convinced that 
 the inconceivably indifferent middle-aged or 
 elderly relation who is to take them will never
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 281 
 
 have finished drinking his last, lingering glass 
 of wine ; that his last two inches of cigar 
 have grown, daring the last two minutes, 
 longer instead of shorter ; that no cab will be 
 found on the rank ; and that, in short, the 
 farce will have to begin without them. 
 Phoebe's father proved himself a model for 
 playgoers of his age. He was ready to the 
 instant, as if he were a soldier on duty, and 
 yet did not grumble at having been kept 
 waiting by a single look or word. The cab 
 was not late, was not exceptionally slow, and 
 met with no delays ; so that Phoebe's first 
 experience of a theatre was one of unfilled 
 stalls and the curtain down. 
 
 Her father, as they settled themselves in 
 their box, had still the air of a soldier on 
 duty. But it was with a sense rather of dis- 
 appointment than of relief that he found 
 himself by no means so affected with the pain 
 of old memories and associations as he had 
 expected to be. When he had been a play- 
 goer at Helmforth he had been under a spell, 
 which made that shabby little house a more 
 wonderful temple of mystery to him than to 
 the youngest child In the theatre. And it 
 was not the place, he remembered, but the
 
 282 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 spell under which the place had been. Even 
 after the curtain rose, and 'Olga' was exercising 
 all the small magic of which it was capable, 
 the man of later middle age mentally rubbed 
 his eyes, and wondered whether he had 
 been dreaming in those days, or if he were 
 dreaming now. To find himself sitting, after 
 all these years, in a box at a theatre with a 
 young girl by his side was dream-like enough ; 
 but it was among his own once familiar ghosts 
 that he had been dreading to find himself 
 sitting, and not one of them was there. It is 
 a real disappointment, even to a man of the 
 age of reason, to find that one has been afraid 
 of shadows which, as soon as they are faced, 
 fly away, and do not even give one the 
 satisfaction of a battle and a victor}-. So it 
 was with Doyle. The battle-ground on which 
 he had resolved to make the last stroke of 
 conquest over his past turned out to be but 
 a mere empty field, in which no past was 
 present to be conquered. He not only did 
 not, but could not, see the form of Stella 
 floating in the vapour of the footlights, or feel 
 as he had once felt during the pause contrived 
 to give the leading lady an effective entry. 
 So stubborn did fancy prove, that he at last
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 283 
 
 caught himself trying to force up the ghosts 
 of which he fancied himself afraid. Then, at 
 last, like a wise man, he shrugged his shoulders, 
 left off worrying the ghosts, and — more like 
 a middle-aged man, if less like a wise one — 
 took for granted that in so empty a place his 
 companion found nothing more than he could 
 find. ' There's nobody here to play Stella to 
 her— fool,' thought he. ' I'm glad I came. 
 I'm more of a dead man than I thought I 
 was — and a good thing too.' But now that 
 his heart-ache was over, he felt that it had been 
 a sort of luxury while it lasted, after all, and he 
 missed the pain. ' I suppose this is the first 
 sign of growing old — the first real grey hair.' 
 Phoebe lost no time in throwing her heart 
 over stalls, orchestra, and footlights right 
 into the middle of the stage. Although the 
 inside of a theatre was not in the least like its 
 picture in her imagination, she felt no dis- 
 appointment and no disillusion. Something 
 in the very atmosphere was like the effect of 
 native air, and made her feel, for the first 
 time in her life, at home. Or rather it made 
 her feel like one who goes home again after 
 an absence of many years. The excitement 
 she felt was not that of a mere foreign traveller
 
 284 J A CK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 who, after long visions of longed-for lakes and 
 mountains, finds himself at last among them. 
 What she felt was the unconscious, self-forgetful 
 excitement of recognition ; everything she 
 saw and heard seemed to answer to a memory, 
 ]ike the caw of rooks and the scent of wall- 
 flowers in the sun. Every detail, down to 
 the smallest and most trivial, was new, and 
 yet not one was strange. And why should 
 an acted phantom of unreal and impossible 
 life, like this now forgotten Olga, be strange 
 to a girl who had been an actress all her life, 
 with herself for dramatic author, manager, 
 and audience, all in one ? This was her real 
 life at last, because it was the realisation of 
 all unreality. She threw her whole self into 
 Olga ; it was not the actress for whom the 
 part had been written that was acting, but 
 Phoebe Doyle. And the charm of it to her 
 was not, as to simpler minds, that it seemed 
 like reality, but because she knew all the time 
 that it was only a play. 
 
 So another miscomprehension of one an- 
 other, never to be explained away by words, 
 rose between Doyle and her. He saw her 
 thorough absorption, and set it down to the 
 natural effect upon a novice of new excitements
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 285 
 
 and new scenes, regarding it with the tolerant 
 pity of hearts that imagine themselves killed 
 at last for those that are still alive. She had 
 no thought for him at all, but quite under- 
 stood, without the trouble of thinking, why 
 even so severe a father should have acted as 
 if it were the first duty of man and woman 
 to go to the play — why he had not said 
 ' you may,' but ' you shall.' Suppose that the 
 hours of daylight were fated to be spent like 
 those of a cloistered nun — what then, if they 
 were to be regarded but as intervals of rest 
 before the Gas shed her beams over the world, 
 and the Curtain rolled away, and the light 
 which never was on sea or land, save on those 
 which are made of canvas and timber, arose ? 
 I suppose Phoebe was as mere a heathen as a 
 savage who does not know even so much of 
 civilisation as the taste of its fire-water. But 
 who believes, like the savage, in the reality of 
 an ideal world ? Phoebe had not only found 
 hers, but had seen it with her eyes. 
 
 And then, just when nothing was less in 
 her thoughts, her eyes turned and met the 
 fixed stare of Stanislas Adrianski. 
 
 No wonder she started, and turned crimson, 
 and wondered what such a chance could
 
 286 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 mean, and wished — though in other words — 
 that the author of her romance had not made 
 so uncomfortable a blunder as to bring his 
 hero face to face with his heroine just there 
 and just then. The sight of Stanislas made 
 her conscious that the house had an audience 
 as well as a stage ; and her hero, with the 
 gas-light full upon his upturned face, did not 
 look so supremely fascinating as when he had 
 paced his back-yard in a London twilight, 
 and had no comparisons to fear. She knew 
 her sudden flush was of startled guilt towards 
 her neglected, and, as he had every right to 
 believe, forsaken, lover, and she read sternly 
 just upbraiding in his stony stare, and the 
 effects of a heart half-broken in his sallow 
 cheeks and melancholy length of hair. It 
 was as if he were pointing her out to the 
 whole house as a woman who, for the sake of 
 wealth, had thrown over the lover to whom 
 she had bound herself while poor and unknown, 
 because he was poor and unknown still. It 
 was not, it could not be, true ; for what could 
 be a greater sin ? She brought her fan well 
 into play, taught by instinct that it had other 
 uses than those it was made for, and man- 
 aged to glance at her father over her right
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 287 
 
 shoulder. Fortunately, lie was not looking 
 towards the orchestra just now ; but he might 
 at any moment, and what would happen 
 then? 
 
 Happily he did not, or, if he did, saw 
 nothing remarkable in a fiddler's exercise of 
 his right to stare in any direction he liked 
 when his eyes were off duty. But Phoebe's 
 complete enjoyment of her first play was gone. 
 It was a relief when Stanislas was obliged to 
 take his part in the lively music to which 
 the curtain next rose. But it was only a 
 relief from the fear that something might 
 instantly happen, as in books and plays ; the 
 strain of the situation still remained. She left 
 the stage, stepped into the orchestra, and put 
 herself in the place of Stanislas Adrianski. 
 She became now the poor, proud noble, 
 compelled by poetical injustice to make use 
 of his genius for daily bread while his sword 
 was waiting for better times. She had not 
 known, of course, that music was one of her 
 lover's gifts, but it was quite part of the 
 nature of things that it should be so, seeing 
 that romance never fails to be the gainer 
 when it obliges hero or heroine to fight ill- 
 fortune with brush, bow, or pen. She saw
 
 288 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 his mind filled with justly indignant thoughts 
 of her, while, by a picturesque contrast, his 
 fingers had to bend themselves to trivial tunes 
 that meant nothing, instead of extemporising 
 Titanic symphonies of Love, Wrath, and 
 Despair. She knew quite enough of music to 
 know what the magic of romance enables its 
 musicians, and its musicians alone, to do. 
 Have we not known them, by sheer force of 
 natural genius, take up a hitherto unpractised 
 instrument, and, without a moment's thought, 
 put the most finished performers nowhere 
 by making it perfectly express the most 
 delicate lights and the deepest shades of their 
 souls' tragedies ? She could hear, without 
 the help of her everyday ears, that one 
 particular fiddle singling itself out from the 
 rest, and playing unwritten passages for her 
 alone. Would it be quite impossible to ask 
 her father for his pencil, scrawl a few words 
 upon the back of her play -bill, fold the bill 
 up, address it to Count Stanislas Adrianski, 
 and let it flutter down accidentally into the 
 orchestra ? Quite impossible — although, being 
 quite according to the rule of romance, it did 
 not strike her as cunning or mean. Spanish 
 ladies, she had always understood on the best
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 289 
 
 authorities, can say more with a flutter of the 
 fan than other women can with their tongues. 
 But none of her authorities had supported 
 their assertion by showing how it is done ; 
 and besides, her injured lover's eyes were not 
 in the long black hair which — otherwise 
 happily — was all of him that he could turn 
 towards her while he was playing. That was 
 especially fortunate, because the musicians 
 have to remain at their desks throughout the 
 last act of ' Olga.' 
 
 Her father, without any of the awkward- 
 ness that his old friends would have expected 
 from the archdeacon when trying to do the 
 duties of a cavalier in waiting, helped her on 
 with her cloak, and was not too moved by 
 the ancient association of his heavy hands 
 with another scarlet cloak upon another pair 
 of shoulders to notice a bright glow upon his 
 daughter's face that made him pleased to 
 think she could so easily be made childishly 
 happy. Phoebe — how do all girls, as if they 
 were dumb creatures and free from the blind- 
 ness of reason, understand all such things 
 without experience or teaching? — was con- 
 scious of a certain solemn tenderness in the 
 way in which her father covered her shoulders 
 
 VOL. I. U
 
 290 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 before leaving the box ; and it touched her 
 with a new sense of being protected and 
 cared for. What was her precise relation 
 to Stanislas? She wished she knew. How 
 would it be if, that very night, she could 
 conquer her growing awe for the father of 
 whom even yet she knew that she understood 
 absolutely nothing by telling him her whole 
 story ? But there should be little need to set 
 out the army of instincts, doubts, shames, and 
 shynesses which kept a girl who had never 
 made a confidence since she was born recoil 
 from bringing herself to tell the eventless 
 story of a first romance to one who would 
 obviously prove so unsympathetic as he. She 
 would not have known, even, how to tell it to 
 a sister, if only for want of knowing how to 
 bep-in ; and the language did not exist, except 
 in her books, wherein so shadowy a story 
 could be told. And then, thus far, she would 
 have to tell it to her own shame ; and — but 
 one can more easily imagine a moth's taking 
 an elderly elephant into her confidence about 
 the vague attractions of a candle. Phoebe 
 could not quite forget how Phil had taken 
 the affair of Stanislas ; and her father was a 
 great deal more awful in his deference and
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 291 
 
 tenderness than Phil had been with all his 
 rough and jealous ill-humour. 
 
 The corridor was rather crowded, so that 
 it took them several minutes to pass from 
 their box to the head of the stairs. She saw 
 Lawrence speak to her father, and heard 
 herself, for the first time, introduced to a 
 stranger by her full new style of Miss Phoebe 
 Doyle. It was true that Miss Phcebe Doyle 
 was being introduced to Mr. Lawrence. But 
 it would be strange if she did not feel confused 
 as to which of her many selves happened 
 just then to be the real one, for, at the same 
 instant, Phcebe Burden recognised the presence 
 of Stanislas Adrianski not a dozen yards away. 
 It is impossible to conceive any situation 
 more completely like the confusion of a dream 
 in which we are at the same time ourselves 
 and not ourselves, and carry on with ease two 
 distinct and inconsistent lives, unprepared in 
 one of our persons for whatever may happen 
 to us in the other. It seemed as if Phoebe 
 Burden had nothing to do with Phoebe Doyle, 
 and that if Phoebe Doyle confessed as her 
 own the guilty experiences of Phoebe Burden, 
 her confession would not be true. Of course, 
 when thus doubled, we know perfectly well 
 
 u 2
 
 292 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 that only one of us can be the actress, and 
 only one the real woman. But which is the 
 actress and which the real woman ? Phoebe 
 Burden or Phoebe Doyle ? Phoebe, apart 
 from the puzzle of surnames, was no con- 
 jurer, and therefore did not know. Phoebe 
 Doyle passed through her first introduction 
 to a stranger with becoming dignity. It was 
 Phoebe Burden whose eyes did not dare to 
 meet those of her lover — Phoebe Burden's 
 lover, and not Phoebe Doyle's at all. Why 
 should Phoebe Doyle tell tales of Phoebe 
 Burden? That would be really mean. 
 
 I do not know with how much or with 
 how little ease a fiddler, when his duty is 
 over, may transport himself into the corridors 
 from his unknown regions underneath the 
 stage. But were it ten times as hard as it 
 can possibly be, and though the road be 
 barred as high as the chin with fines and 
 orders, I have a certain faith in the creed that 
 love will find out the way from anywhere to 
 anywhere — at any rate if helped by hunger. 
 Poor and unheroic indeed were the soul of 
 that struggling genius who, having gained a 
 girl whom he thought might turn out to be 
 worth a little, should let her go without a
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 293 
 
 stroke so soon as he could see her to be 
 probably worth a great deal more. What 
 might be the relation of his Phoebe of the 
 back-yard to the big man with the big beard 
 who had taken her to the play in the style 
 of a fine lady? There was nothing in the 
 appearance of things to alarm his moral 
 sense. Perhaps love's instinct could trust her 
 purity ; perhaps his moral sense was large 
 and unfettered ; perhaps (for heroes are 
 privileged in such things) he had no par- 
 ticular moral sense at all. But, not being 
 blind, he could read in her disorder of face 
 and bearing, when she met his first gaze of 
 surprise, a hundred proofs that if he chose to 
 lose his influence over her he would be a fool. 
 He did, after all, read, if he failed to compre- 
 hend, the language of her fan. It signalled 
 him to her side ; and, without losing a 
 moment, he was there. ' Miss Phcebe Doyle.' 
 It was a name which, spoken loudly and 
 clearly, was quite easy for the most foreign of 
 ears to catch and remember. So she was 
 clearly a rich man's daughter, and her name 
 was Phoebe Doyle. 
 
 Would he speak to her ? thought Phoebe. 
 Would he make a scene ? Could she prevent
 
 2g4 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 such a chance by any sort of warning or 
 imploring sign? If he had known her 
 through and through, he could not have 
 acted more wisely. He had to thank Nature 
 for having given him a pair of eyes that 
 always, and not only when they had reason, 
 seemed at once to appeal like a woman's and 
 to command like a man's. But it was a touch 
 of real inspiration that brought him to the 
 door of the cab into which Phoebe was just 
 about to be helped by her father. It was not 
 by accident — unless by one of the accidents 
 which never happen except to those who 
 know how to grasp them, and how to win by 
 them. He forestalled a professional copper- 
 hunter and opened the door, throwing upon 
 Phcebe a look that concentrated all tragedy 
 without the help of a word. How could she 
 have suspected so complete a gentleman of 
 being capable of making a scene ? His 
 delicacy smote her with new shame. He did 
 not so much as raise his hat, or bow ; he 
 only took care that her dress should not be 
 soiled. 
 
 ' Sixteen Harland Terrace,' was reward 
 enough for his trouble. 
 
 ' Come, out of the way, my man,' said
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 295 
 
 Doyle, who only saw a pale, patched face and 
 a very bad hat, and was completely insensible 
 to the signs that show nobility down at heel 
 to be nobility still. ' Oh, you want something, 
 I suppose, for doing nothing. There, then.' 
 
 He dropped a copper or two into what he 
 took for the hand of a runner for cabs — not 
 many, for he never threw away small things. 
 To his surprise, they were scornfully tossed 
 under the cab -wheels. 
 
 Stanislas, being poor, threw away small 
 things freely, and not merely when they hap- 
 pened to be sprats to catch mackerel. 
 
 6 Why, what the deuce are you ? ' asked 
 Doyle, remembering the ways of Bohemia. 
 
 4 1 am only a fiddler,' said Stanislas, with a 
 magnificent manner and a magnificent bow, 
 that went to the depth of Phoebe's soul — not 
 that the depth may be thought very far. 
 ' Doyle, Sixteen Harland Terrace,' thought he, 
 and then, the departing cab having left them 
 uncovered, picked up the pence, and put them 
 into his pocket, after all.
 
 296 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 UNCLE RAYNER AND THE OLD GREY MARE 
 
 It may, not quite impossibly, be still remem- 
 bered that the succession of Charley Bassett 
 to his baronetcy and to the family estate of 
 Cautleigh had been both singular and un- 
 expected. There was Sir Mordaunt Bassett — 
 the baronet at the opening of this history — 
 who died unmarried, and who was succeeded 
 by his only brother, the rector of Cautleigh. 
 But he also had found no time to marry before 
 he died, only three weeks after Sir Mordaunt ; 
 and so, as his short tenure had not even 
 allowed him time to make a will, and as he 
 left not so much as an inconvenient sister to 
 part the land from the title, both title and 
 estate should have fallen, in the natural course 
 of things, to a certain uncle, one Bayner 
 Bassett, or to the heirs of the said Rayner. 
 This was all perfectly clear and beyond ques- 
 tion ; and, if this had been all, Charley, whose
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 297 
 
 father had been Eayner's next and younger 
 brother, would have had no more chance of 
 becoming Sir Charles than the admiral of 
 becoming Sir Horatio. 
 
 But, to commit the sin of repetition for 
 the last time, this had — happily or unhappily 
 — not been all. Most families have their 
 black sheep, and Eayner Bassett had been the 
 black sheep of his from the first possible 
 moment after his first birthday. Whether he 
 was absolutely bad I do not know, and have 
 no means of knowing. But the weak strand 
 which must have been noticed from the be- 
 ginning in the rope of the Bassett character, 
 plainly enough in Ealph, and as certainly, if 
 less plainly, in Sir Charles, was multiplied in 
 Eayner's case by ten. He had been an un- 
 lucky child ; he had been an unlucky boy ; he 
 was an unlucky man. He took up life by the 
 wrong end, and stuck to his hold like a bull- 
 dog ; for he was as obstinate as only a weak 
 man can be. He had not even so much luck 
 as to be handsome, or clever, or an agreeable 
 companion, or to have the sort of vices the 
 possession of which sometimes make a man 
 liked the better — even his faults were all at 
 the wrong end. Only once in the whole course
 
 298 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 of so much, of his career as people knew did 
 he meet with a fellow-creature who thought 
 him worthy of a better fate than that of the 
 dog who gets a bad name ; and the expression 
 of the thought is worth noting for more directly 
 important reasons than that of eccentricity. It 
 was when he was nearly eighteen years old. 
 
 ' Bassett minor,' said one of his masters to 
 another, ' is a sneak, and a cad, and a cur. 
 But do you suppose it's because he likes being 
 bullied and called names ? It's because he's 
 miserably vain, and, therefore, miserably shy. 
 I expect when he's asleep, and, may be, when 
 he's widest awake, too, he dreams he's cock of 
 the school. That sort of thing is wretched for 
 a boy ; but it mayn't be so bad for him when 
 he's out of his teens. He's the stuff poets are 
 made of — not the big ones, but those who 
 make a trade of breaking their hearts and 
 selling the bits for a good round sum. It's on 
 the cards that the fellows who now send him 
 to Coventry will some day brag of having 
 known him at school. But if he doesn't catch 
 the trick of rhyming — well, if I had my way, 
 I'd thrash him well if he didn't bring me fifty 
 rhymes a day. I don't want to hear of his 
 being sent to gaol for picking pockets instead
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 299 
 
 of brains. His fault is that he wants to be at 
 the top of the tree ; as he can't jump, he has 
 to crawl, and crawling isn't a graceful thing.' 
 This was the best thing ever said of Eayner 
 Bassett ; and, unluckily, the knack of rhyming 
 never came. He did not, on the other hand, 
 meet with the ill-luck of being caught with his 
 fingers in a pocket that was not his own ; but 
 he fell into the scarcely less unfortunate scrape 
 of presenting at one of the county banks a 
 cheque apparently signed by a certain most 
 respectable farmer, who proved most conclu- 
 sively that the signature was not his own. It 
 was a terrible affair. The then baronet, Eay- 
 ner's father, did all he could to cover it, but 
 in vain. The farmer, an independent Briton 
 who paid his rent to another landlord, was 
 neither to be bought nor persuaded ; he stuck 
 to it that forgery was forgery, snapped his 
 fingers at the Bassetts, and swore that if the 
 bank shirked its duty he would do nothing of 
 the kind. There was nothing for it but for 
 Eayner Bassett to cut and run ; and the last 
 heard of him by his relieved relations was that 
 he had been living under different names, and 
 at different places, with a lady who was pre- 
 sumably his wife, and an increasing family of
 
 300 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 small children. And then he was lost for good 
 and all. 
 
 Of course, the precise nature of his do- 
 mestic relations mattered very little at the 
 time. But when the death, first of his father, 
 then of his brother, then of his nephew 
 Sir Mordaunt, then of his other nephew the 
 rector, left the baronetcy vacant, it mattered 
 a very great deal. If living, he, the more than 
 suspected forger, by this time a probable gaol 
 bird, would be Sir Eayner Bassett ; which was 
 too terrible an idea. So terrible was it as to 
 be presumably impossible. He must be dead. 
 Such inconvenient people as he sometimes die, 
 if they drink enough, but, while alive, they 
 never disappear ; unless, indeed, their friends 
 and relations are hopelessly poor. But he 
 might, though dead, be just as inconvenient 
 as if he were alive. There was that woman, 
 and there were those children. Their exist- 
 ence had been only too certain. And was he not 
 only their father, but had he been married to 
 their mother ? If so, though dead, he had left 
 an heir. 
 
 To do Charley Bassett justice, he, acting 
 under the advice of his solicitors, took all 
 proper steps for the discovery of his missing
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 301 
 
 uncle and unknown cousins. He also — as 
 much for his own sake as for theirs — had dili- 
 gent inquiry made for the fact of any possible 
 marriage made by his uncle Eayner. It was 
 pending the issue of these inquiries that he 
 travelled abroad ; and not till every legal pre- 
 sumption was satisfied of the disappearance 
 from life of Eayner Bassett, unmarried, did he 
 fairly enter upon his new life at Cautleigh Hall. 
 JSTor, even then, until the legal period of pos- 
 session was fulfilled, did he feel absolutely 
 secure. The path from Bohemian to baronet 
 was not a simple one, after all. Eank and 
 wealth were endeared to him by danger. He 
 took to economv as a means of hedging against 
 some possible claim for mesne profits. He 
 tried to make his son and heir a working-man 
 with a view to the worst that might befall. 
 
 But the twenty years of possession were at 
 last fairly complete, and Uncle Eayner had 
 always been far too unlucky a man to have 
 tumbled into idiocy, lunacy, or any other 
 method of extending the term. Sir Charles 
 Bassett might at last feel as secure as any man 
 can be of anything in this uncertain world. 
 He had never seen his uncle Eayner ; but his 
 touch of artistic fancy had painted a very
 
 302 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 complete picture of the scapegrace in his mind. 
 Of course, a family label had been pasted on 
 Eayner, containing his full description ; and, 
 of course, being a family label, it was wrong. 
 Feeble obstinacy in folly had been painted in 
 the darker colours of resolute and desperate 
 villainy. Uncle Eayner was a dangerous pro- 
 fligate, with the physique attaching to such a 
 reputation ; for when a man is supposed to 
 have committed a murder, who does not at 
 once exclaim that he looks the very image of 
 a murderer ? Sir Charles, as an artist, physio- 
 gnomist, and man of the world, was bound, by 
 all reason as well as instinct, to picture this 
 terrible Uncle Eayner as a big, burly, hand- 
 some, gentlemanlike ruffian, invincible with 
 women, dangerous with men ; to be avoided, 
 but not to be despised. He certainly did not 
 picture him as a man likely to forego a great 
 estate out of respect for the prejudices of 
 Lincolnshire. This alone had been moral, if 
 not legal, evidence of death — imagination is 
 the very grandmother of reason. 
 
 So much for the history of Eayner Bassett, 
 as it was known, more or less imperfectly, to 
 his few relations and to the still fewer whom, 
 as a matter of form, he might have called his
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 303 
 
 friends. The conclusion of the whole matter 
 was that, after some twenty years and more of 
 doubt and secret insecurity, Sir Charles Basse tt 
 might breathe freely and safely, and feel him- 
 self to be Sir Charles Bassett indeed. The 
 character of the ex-Bohemian had hardened 
 and stiffened ; but that only made the sensa- 
 tion of relief the more welcome. One must 
 have cramped limbs to know the luxury of 
 stretching them. He might, so far as habit 
 would let him, relax his system of increasing 
 his personal property by investments at the 
 expense of the land, so that, in case he ever 
 should turn out to have been merely a steward, 
 he might not prove to have been a steward for 
 nothing. The twenty years were well past 
 and over now, and the security which duly 
 followed relief had been growing day by day, 
 until the old anxiety was as practically for- 
 gotten as the toothache of yesterday. It was 
 not always that he would have written so 
 light a letter to his son on the latter 's aimless- 
 ness and idle ways ; but then, there was no 
 longer the same need that Ealph should be 
 able, in case of need, to open the oyster of life 
 with a sword instead of a silver spoon. Then 
 there was the land absolutely crying out for
 
 304 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 all kinds of improvements which had been 
 neglected by an owner who could not feel 
 sure, till now, that what he had was his 
 own. The Bassetts of the direct line had 
 been such old-fashioned people, and of such 
 little enterprise, that a considerable portion of 
 the Lincolnshire estate was still mere un- 
 drained marsh and fen. Sir Charles himself 
 was not a particularly energetic or practical 
 person, but his first instinct was to commit 
 some act of unquestioned and unquestionable 
 ownership, and the most obvious act was to 
 set about draining and reclaiming the waste of 
 Cautleigh Holms. There was a certain large- 
 ness, too, about the notion that promised good 
 room for his life to stretch in ; just as, when a 
 young man, he had always liked his canvases 
 to be at least twice as large as his ideas. He 
 had just reached the point of life when the 
 Indian summer of second youth is apt to 
 begin, wherein those who can catch the sea- 
 son do their largest and their best, just before 
 it grows too late to begin anything new. 
 
 So, after turning the matter over in his 
 mind for a few months, he made up his mind 
 in a single hour, and, full of a second birth of 
 zeal, set off that very morning to London, to
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 305 
 
 lay his plans before a well-known firm of 
 engineers. An arrangement for somebody 
 belonging to the firm to come down and look 
 over the Holms was soon made ; and Sir 
 Charles was at leisure, well before dinner- 
 time, to call at Urquh art's chambers in the 
 hope of finding his son there. But Urquhart 
 was still away at his great arbitration case in 
 the North, and Ealph, so he learned, had not 
 been at chambers that day. And, on goin^ 
 to his lodgings, he further learned that Mr. 
 Bassett had gone out an hour ago and was not 
 likely to be back till some time unknown. 
 It was irritating ; and the whole thing looked 
 erratic and- unsteady to the ex-Bohemian. He 
 had not planned a lonely evening, and had 
 looked forward, with a newly-awakened desire 
 for confidences and sympathies, to telling 
 Ealph all about the Holms scheme. The heir 
 might even catch some of the improvement 
 fever ; and that would be a grand thing — 
 better even than a dose of Quarter Sessions as 
 a training for the future squire of Cautleigh. 
 He did not feel inclined to dine at his club 
 with himself for his only guest, and a dinner 
 at his hotel would be worse still. And so it 
 came to pass that a very strange adventure 
 vol. 1. x
 
 306 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 ltappened to him ; stranger than may seem 
 likely to those who are unable to read between 
 the lines of lives. 
 
 His mind was running on the Holms, and 
 this made him a little absent-minded. He 
 was going nowhither in particular, and yet 
 he was bound to arrive somewhere. He was 
 the most respectable of baronets, and yet 
 certain old instincts had been faintly revived. 
 And so the chain of those old instincts, with 
 every link an old association, drew him east- 
 ward until the daylight imperceptibly grew 
 into gas-light, and he found himself at the 
 narrow door of a dark passage within Temple 
 Bar — that gate of a million memories which 
 the story-tellers of the future will have to 
 describe with cold pens, instead of merely 
 naming it, as we may do still, with the re- 
 spectful silence that, for so many of us, its 
 manifold associations with our own lives make 
 its due. 
 
 Charley Basset t — not Sir Charles — had 
 once known that passage well. He had 
 known it as a schoolboy knows every inch of 
 the old school bounds, so that, twenty years 
 after, he can find his way to any corner of 
 them blindfold. For up that court was the
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 307 
 
 ( )ld Grey Mare. The Old Grey Mare went 
 the way that all tilings go for which anybody 
 cares before Temple Bar ; but there are men 
 — some rich, more poor — who remember that 
 very dirty den as their school, college, home 
 — as everything that one house can be to 
 one man. To the profane eye, it was simply 
 a singularly unattractive chop-house, which 
 nobody would enter except for a wager. But 
 nowhere round Bow Bells had the midnight 
 chimes been heard to sound so merrily ; 
 nowhere had headaches been more genially 
 earned. There had been brave nights at the 
 < Ud Grey Mare twenty, and forty, aye, and 
 sixty years ago, when men were not compelled 
 to keep their good things for their printers, 
 but let them out freely upon all comers, and 
 when licensed hours were unknown. It had 
 been a house of talk, where a few famous men 
 had drawn their first blood as wits, and where 
 beaten men had been content, and more than 
 content, to win all their laurels. And there, 
 in what were now the old times, had Charley 
 Bassett, with his pleasant ways and his four 
 hundred a year, once been a greater man than 
 was Sir Charles in I incolnshire. In Lincoln- 
 
 x 2
 
 3 oS JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 shire he was a great landlord. But he had 
 been a great musician, a great painter, a great 
 poet, and a great good fellow at the Old Grey 
 Mare. 
 
 What did Shakespeare do when, settled 
 down respectably at Stratford, he came up to 
 town and chanced to find himself standing 
 before the sign of the Mermaid ? Certainly he 
 went in. Even Sir Charles was not without 
 the touch of human nature which makes the 
 common acts of great men and small men very 
 much the same. Sir Charles Bassett would 
 not have asked his son Ralph to take a chop 
 with him at the Mare ; indeed, a year or two 
 ago he would himself, though without a com- 
 panion, have passed by without a thought of 
 entering. But now — well, he might do as he 
 pleased, and there was nobody to wonder at 
 his choosing such a place for a meal. Charley 
 could not be quite killed by having been 
 turned into Sir Charles, and so all that re- 
 mained of him yielded to natural impulse, 
 broke through the shell of twenty years, and 
 just because there was it and there was he — 
 he turned up the court and entered the 
 Mare. 
 
 Any Lincolnshire neighbour would have
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 309 
 
 suspected some mystery on seeing Sir Charles 
 Bassett, of Cautleigh Hall, forsake the comfort 
 of his club for a hole like this, to which no 
 mere chance could possibly have led him. 
 And the discovery that there was no mystery 
 at all about the matter would not have disap- 
 pointed the neighbour more than the atmo- 
 sphere of the Old Grey Mare disappointed Sir 
 Charles. The place was not the same. It is 
 true that the sawdust-carpet appeared to have 
 never been renewed since he had last dined 
 there, and that the same clock ticked, and that 
 the arrangement of the boxes and their tables 
 was precisely the same as of old. But. the 
 room itself seemed to have shrunk into half 
 its former size, and the ghosts of past meals had 
 taken to clinging about the place in the form 
 of the odour of an ill-kept menagerie. Then 
 there was the company. He had purposely 
 kept on his rough travelling great-coat lest 
 the style and completeness of his clothes should 
 be out of harmony with his surroundings. 
 Alas ! there was no occasion for any such pre- 
 caution. Of course, he did not expect to see 
 any of the old faces, or to recognise any that 
 he might see. But still less did he look to find 
 himself among a herd of smartly-dressed clerks,
 
 310 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 of noisy and probably briefless, but by no 
 means ill-tailored, barristers, and of a majority 
 in general which the old habitues of the Mare 
 would have scornfully regarded as snobs and 
 swells. There were some, it is true, who 
 might be taken to represent the old press 
 element which had once been the special glory 
 of the Old Grey Mare. But even of these the 
 style seemed to have changed. He had come 
 to be a silent listener. But where were the 
 flashes of wit, and the rain of humour, and 
 the thunders of dispute, that, in his recollec- 
 tion, had made the place a temple of good 
 company every day and all night long ? Or 
 was it he, and not the place, that had changed P 
 Had he once taken chaff for wit, and chatter 
 for humour? Were these also imagining 
 themselves geniuses and wits, to wake some 
 day, like himself, to the discovery that wit 
 and humour are always things belonging to 
 one's own youth and no other man's ? He 
 had better have gone to sleep at his club, after 
 all. Suddenly his eyes fell upon one familiar 
 object — that of an old man eating a chop, with 
 a pint of port by his side — the very same old 
 man who, live-and-twenty years ago, had been 
 known to eat two chops and to drink a pint of
 
 JACK DOYLE S DAUGHTER 311 
 
 port at the same hour every day and in the 
 same seat at the Old Grey Mare, who then 
 looked seventy years old, and now did not 
 look more than seventy-one. Surely that old 
 man must be the only reality in a world of 
 shams and dreams. 
 
 'An' faith, Esdaile,' said a hoarse brogue 
 in the box immediately behind Sir Charles, 
 4 it was a mighty queer yarn she spun me 
 before she died. " llonaine," says she — that is 
 to say, " Doctor," says she, "I'd like ye to write 
 a word to me poor father at home — Cox his 
 name is, and so was mine ; I was only Stella 
 Fitzjames, ye know, on the boards." " To 
 tell him ye're dead?" asked I. " No,"* says 
 she, '* to tell him I really was a married wife, 
 after all ; an' there's my wedding-ring. Tell 
 him if he'll go to llelmforth, to the church 
 there, he'll find the marriage of Mary Cox, 
 that's me, to llayner Bassett (that was the 
 name) only in another name." "An' what's 
 the name the villain that's left ye married ye 
 in ? " says I. " He'll see in the church books," 1 
 says she. " 'Twas Doyle — John Doyle." 
 Now, Esdaile, that was queer. If Eayner had 
 been Charles, we'd have had Charley Bassett 
 and Jack Doyle in the same yarn — a meeting
 
 3 i2 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 
 
 of the waters, leastway of the names, to make 
 one think how things are bound to run in pairs.' 
 
 1 Hum ! Things don't run in pairs unless 
 they're harnessed,' was the answer in the very 
 tone which had characterised Esdaile the 
 painter. Sir Charles could almost fancy he 
 saw the twitch of the corner of the mouth 
 that used to give an air of irony to his sim- 
 plest words. ' Nobody ever did know any- 
 thing of the archdeacon, except that he had 
 some spite against womankind. I always 
 thought he must have married, and come td 
 grief over it in some way. Those big babies 
 always do. I suppose some Eayner Bassett 
 has found it convenient to take up with an alias 
 — that's all. Poor Jack ! — or poor Eayner ! — 
 or poor both ! — I suppose it's all one, now. 
 Here's to his memory — Jack Doyle the arch- 
 deacon, alias Eayner Bassett the married man ! 
 So that was the end of Stella ! We began 
 together, she and I ; she played Juliet, and I 
 painted the balcony. Wouldn't I have roasted 
 Jack Doyle if I'd only known ! ' 
 
 Surely something more than a chance 
 impulse must have brought Sir Charles Bas- 
 sett to the Old Grey Mare. And Esdaile, and 
 Eonaine, after all these years ! If this were
 
 JACK DOYLE'S DAUGHTER 313 
 
 true, he was no more Sir Charles Bassett than 
 he was that old gentleman who had eaten his 
 chop and drank his port for fifty years, un- 
 moved by the chances — if of chance they be 
 — that make havoc of less philosophic lives. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME 
 
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