FAUCIT OF BALLIOL 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL 
 
 a ^torj in ClMO favts. 
 
 BY 
 
 HERMAN CHARLES MERIVALE. 
 
 IX THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 <Saonb €bition. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 CHAPMAN & HALL, Limited, 11, HEXEIETTA ST. 
 
 CO^^:XT GAEDEX. 
 
 1882. 
 
 [Afl Rights reserved.']
 
 ^ungan: 
 
 CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTEKP.
 
 5^3 
 
 TO 
 
 tJirginia anb Jisatcl Batsman 
 
 IX KIXDLT MEMORY OF THEIR MOTHER, MRS. S. F. BATEMAX. 
 
 TO WHOSE FIRST SUGGESTION AXD FAVOURITE IDEA 
 
 (a SHADOW OF AX OLD LEGEXD IX MODERX LIFE, 
 
 AFTER THE FASHIOX OF 3IISS THACKERAT'S FAIRT-TALES ) 
 
 THE ORIGIX OF THIS STORY IS DL'E, 
 
 THE BOOK WHICH GREW GRADUALLY OUT OF IT IXTO ITS PRESEXT 
 
 PROPORTIOXS IS DEDICATED BY THEIR ATTACHED FRIEXD 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Hazard Side, 
 
 Eastbourne, 
 vf SeiAemher, 1881. 
 
 .f-^ 
 
 C^
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/faucitofballiols01meri
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PA GK 
 
 GUY AND DAISY ... . . . . ... 3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BALLIOL ROOMS ... ... ... ... l^ 
 
 CHAPTER .III. 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HERCULES AND OMPHALE 
 
 30 
 
 50 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OXONIANA ... ... ... ... ... 70 
 
 CHAPTER YI. 
 
 THE ID^LL ... ... ... ... ... 92 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 MOTHER AND SON ... ... ... 110
 
 vui CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 TERM-EATING ... 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 KAIllFlELl) AND 00. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII, 
 :HR. .JOHN BRENT 
 
 PAGE 
 
 122 
 
 13^ 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 COMING EVENTS J ... ... ... ... 151 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MY LORD AND MY LADY ... ... ... ... 169 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 LADY PEPPERPI arrow's HOUSE-WARMING ' ' ... ... 187 
 
 207 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE ... ... ... ... 223 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 OVER ... ... ... ... ... 242 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ALONE IN THE WORLD ... ... ... ... 258
 
 PART I. 
 S^be prologue. 
 
 " Mephistopheles thrown upon real life, and obliged to manage his own 
 plots, would inevitably make blunders." — George Eliot. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GUY AND DAISY. 
 
 Time was made for slaves, not chroniclers ; and I 
 will not undertake to give an exact date, but say 
 that it might have been some fifteen or twenty years 
 ago, when there met, for the first time, among all the 
 gaieties and forgetfulnesses of an Oxford commemora- 
 tion, a young fellow of Balliol and a prosperous city 
 merchant's pretty daughter, to make up their minds 
 respectively in about ten minutes, and to know they 
 had made them up in about as many days, that 
 there never could have been such a Balliol fellow, 
 or such a merchant's daughter, in existence before. 
 They saw each other first " on the banks," dear on 
 a summer evening to the heart of every Oxford 
 man, where Guy Faucit of Balliol, who in taking to 
 the lecture-room had not forgotten his victorious 
 
 B 2
 
 4 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 captaincy of the Oxford eight, was engaged in the 
 mysteries and delight of coaching the present crew 
 of his college for a forthcoming struggle with Third 
 Trinity for the cup at Henley. Guy Faucit was a 
 household word among the mariners of Isis : for for 
 three consecutive years he had left Cambridge in the 
 lurch at the historic goal of Mortlake, first with the 
 matchless stroke which kept such a clean and even 
 swing for the whole length of the course, steady and 
 strong as a pendulum, and never quickening up through 
 loss of nerve or want of reserve of power, till just the 
 critical moment of the finish, when he launched out 
 in the sharp, strong spurt which set all the ranks of 
 Oxford cheering from the steamboats, and defied all 
 the pluck and skill of the Light Blue to redress the 
 balance or to score a vic'tor}^ Tlie '' Faucit spurt " was 
 a proverb, like the ''botte Nevers^' of the "Duke's 
 M<jtto." Then, as the bones grew stronger-fleshed 
 and the muscles harder, he subsided into the less 
 conspicuous place of number seven, and there, too, with 
 his eyes fixed between the shoulders of his stroke-oar, 
 kept him up to the tradition of the conquering stroke. 
 The stroke would row with an energy not his own when 
 he felt that he had Faucit behind him, and it was not
 
 GUV A.XD DAISY. 5 
 
 till Guy, as strong and original at his books as at his 
 oar, had come out as the best first-class man of his 
 year, — repute in this instance being too strong for the 
 alphabetical precedence which at Oxford shrouds the 
 senior classic in a becoming mystery (even before that 
 facile prlnceps for the last vacant fellowship of his 
 college), — and taken his place among the instructors 
 of youth while yet as young a man as many of them, 
 that the sister-university could get a chance of her share 
 in the birthricjht aoain. Guv Faucit's was the stalwart 
 six-foot figure which at a round swing-trot kept pace 
 on the shore with the swinof of the Balliol eig-ht, as she 
 shot through the narrows of "the gut" as straight as 
 an arrow, under the cunning hand of the Honourable 
 James Gosling, who was cut out by nature for a "cox," 
 and regarded the post as the height of athletic distinc- 
 tion. On Faucit he depended with a filial interest, and 
 implicitly trusted him both to marshal him to victory 
 at Henley, and to '"' pull him " through his divinit}^ in 
 the schools. James was very much exercised about his 
 " divinity ; " but a close examination, on his side, of 
 the ways and customs of examiners, having convinced 
 him that to their minds the word conveyed no theo- 
 logical or doctrinal meaning whatever, but resolved
 
 6 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 itself into a question of dates and hard names, he 
 was growing easier about the future. He had learned 
 both to spell and to pronounce Mahershalalhashbaz and 
 Cushanrethashaim, having satisfied himself that, as 
 names of eighteen and sixteen letters respectively, they 
 were the two longest- winded monarchs in the Old Testa- 
 ment, and good enough to floor any examiner withal. 
 He carried an abstract of the list of the kings- of Israel 
 about on his shirt-cuffs in the form of a memovia 
 technica, while the kings of Judah occupied the crown 
 of his hat. And at the foot of his bed, so that it might 
 meet his eyes the first thing in the morning, and 
 preside over the extinction of his candle at night, was 
 a table inscribed with some mysterious hexameters, 
 beginning — 
 
 Crof Deletoff Abaneb Exafna Tembybe Cyruts. 
 
 Years afterwards, when his hairs were turning grey, 
 would the Honourable James remember that hexameter, 
 and wonder what on earth it could have meant. 
 
 Stowed away among cushions in a punt, in the 
 charge of two happy and . envied undergraduates who 
 had the fortune of the acquaintance of ^Ir. Fairfield of 
 the City, merchant, a certain Miss Daisy Fairfield
 
 GUY AND DAISY. 7 
 
 watched the advance of the Balliol eight, and of the 
 figure on the opposite bank, from a lair among the 
 grasses on the Oxford side, somewhere below the point 
 where the lazy little Cherwell tumbles into the arms 
 of Isis, just in time to see many a good ship " bumped " 
 into a lower place. 
 
 The "'Varsity'^ barge, and the lesser barges 
 clustered about it,' were gay with innumerable bunt- 
 ings and bands of uncompromising brass (for the 
 most part hmited in their repertory to the '' Hardy 
 Norseman "), and butterfly toilettes of the most 
 fascinating kind and the most tempting variety, setting 
 off the pretty and wholesome faces of the sweet girl 
 wearers, deeply intent upon the results of this near 
 glimpse into the inner life and youth of the mysterious 
 and more favoured animal called man. He, on his 
 side, divided himself even at that early age into the 
 two classes of the susceptible and the hardened, the 
 duck and the brute, and either huno: entranced on 
 Beauty's notes, and tethered in her ribands, or walked 
 the banks apart, a thing of misogyny, in a suit of 
 flannel even more decided than usual, or with a face 
 jaundiced with an extra dose of the midnight oil, 
 and contracted into that expression of inward pain so
 
 8 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 commonly consequent upon a debauch of Aristotle. 
 Gosling always maintained that, until the birth of 
 Aldrich, no one man had ever caused so much suffering 
 "off his own bat" as the classical monster whom he 
 always described as the " Staggerist." 
 
 Close by where Daisy sate was the punt of the 
 champion punter of the world, hanging out for a 
 motto the rather lugubrious legend, innocent of a 
 personal pronoun, " Saved the lives of many gentle- 
 men." And, dressed in all the bright and daring 
 combinations of colour which Young Summer rejoices 
 in, to the encouragement of healthy-minded people 
 who believe in colours and combinations, the beautiful 
 Christchurch meadows, with dainty little Merton set 
 like a gem in the centre background, looked their 
 pleasantest upon the scene. Not without reason does 
 the Oxonian cherish in his heart a placid conviction 
 that he may set his Christchurch meadows against the 
 famous "backs of the colleges" in the Light-Blue 
 land, and not be afraid of the comparison. 
 
 There then sate Daisy Fairfield, revelling in the 
 beauty and interest of the scene, and in the comfort 
 of her situation, as she nestled among her cushions, 
 trustinir herself to the adroitness of her vouthful
 
 GC/V AXD DAISY. 9 
 
 punters, whose control over their cumbrous instalment 
 occasionally suggested that under more hazardous con- 
 ditions they might be more likely to destroy the lives 
 of many gentlemen than to save them. 
 
 Except, perhaps, the paddle of a canoe, nothing is 
 more capricious than a punt-pole in the ambitious 
 hands of youth, possessed as it is of all the malignity 
 of inanimate objects to a degree not emulated till the 
 invention of the bicycle, that iron fiend, which, when 
 running away with a man down-hill, produces in his 
 mind a sense of helplessness surpassing show. Jem 
 Gosling's first appearance in a punt was never forgotten 
 by his friends, when he embarked upon a race without 
 having tried his hand before, impressed by the obvious 
 easiness of the thing. He got his bark, or had it 
 propelled for him, into the mid-current, swung it round 
 slowlv twice on its own axis, somethino- receding^ in the 
 process, then walked straight over the side after his 
 punt-pole into the water, and wallowed. Daisy's 
 guides, however, were a little more skilled than that, 
 and at this moment were resting on their poles, cradled 
 by the waving grasses under the shore. 
 
 "It's a splendid sight," said Daisy, with enthusiasm, 
 as she saw the Balliol crew coming up with a will, the
 
 lo FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 eight broad and red-striped backs working together 
 like a machine. " Splendid ! " she exclaimed, her eyes 
 lighting up as she watched the men. 
 
 Daisy Fairfield was one of those who move and 
 speak as goddesses among women, with a girlhood 
 promising a very majesty of maturity. Hers was the 
 veined-marble complexion, with the paleness of statue- 
 land, not of ill-health, touched with a tender rose by 
 exercise or excitement; the tall and free and supple 
 figure which matches such complexions best ; the violet 
 eyes with the black bull's eye, and the wealth of wavy 
 hair, of chestnut toned with gold, in all the pride and 
 glory of eighteen. No touch of hardness was in the 
 look or in the voice then, to mar the picture with a 
 thought of ill. It was a picture of happiness and 
 goodness undefiled. 
 
 Oh ye men and women, oh ye women and men, 
 who from selfishness, vindictiveness, perversity, love 
 of gain, any of the paltry and self-avenging motives 
 which grow so fast by what they feed on, and spring 
 up like brambles round the strait gate and the 
 narrow way, to choke the access further, — ye who, 
 in despite of love's simplest message, seem to delight 
 in working your neighbour harm, to the baffling of
 
 GL'V AND DAISY. ii 
 
 the comprehension of more single-purposed hearts, 
 do you never think, I wonder, when you see the 
 outward and visible traces of your doings on the faces 
 and lives of those, at whose expense you did them ? do 
 the terrible warnings of the olden law carry with them 
 no fear, no starting of the conscience that will not die 
 in you, by whatever name you call it — evolution, or 
 indigestion, or what not ? Under those outward and 
 visible signs, too often, lies an inward and invisible scar 
 beyond your healing, though it was not beyond your 
 making ; a scar of the heart or of the mind, or maybe 
 of the soul. Go down on those straightened knees of 
 yours, even at the eleventh hour of the night, and pray, 
 though it be but in the name of the poor modern clay- 
 god called Humanity, that you may yet do unto others 
 as ye would that they should do unto you. If you have 
 wronged your neighbour, ask him to forgive you, and if 
 he humbly holds a better faith than yours, remember 
 this — his creed teaches him to ask for pardon, even as 
 he is ready to give it freely when he is freely asked. 
 But I cannot so read the Divine and loving command 
 as to see that it enjoins the impossible, and asks of man 
 what he cannot do, to forgive unasked. As with the 
 Divine pardon, so with the human, the one condition.
 
 12 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 precedent of forgiveness would seem to be this — let 
 the wrongdoer come, and ask to be forgiven. The Lord 
 "forgave that servant" because he asked Him. 
 
 But I am anticipating here, and would not mar my 
 own memory further, of Daisy Fairfield as she was in 
 those Oxford days. 
 
 Up the river then came the Balliol eight, cheered 
 by an indiscriminate band of admirers racing up the 
 Berkshire bank, and heralded by the " long stern 
 swell" of Faucit's steady and musical lungs. 
 
 A pleasant companion-picture was he to the eye, 
 the English athlete of some eight-and-twenty, with the 
 big forehead and the clear blue eyes, w^hich shall 
 explain themselves later. 
 
 "Put your back into it, three." And three, 
 conscience-stricken, put in his back. 
 
 " Put his back into what ? " asked Daisy, mali- 
 ciously or in good faith. " Where else is it to go ? 
 It's big enough, certainly." 
 
 Tompkins of Trinity explained how backs were 
 put in. 
 
 " Oh ! And who is the director-general of backs on 
 the other bank, who runs so fast and shouts so loud ? " 
 
 " You don't mean to say you don't know ? " cried
 
 CC'V AXD DAISY. 13 
 
 Bones of Balliol, scandalized. ''Why that's Fauci t ; 
 not P. W.,— the other." 
 
 '^Not P. W.,— the other," repeated Daisy, reflect- 
 ively. " Indeed ! This becomes really interesting, and 
 will take time. Forgive me my ignorance, and tell me, 
 first, who is P. W. ? I want to reduce the situation to 
 its primitive elements." 
 
 "P. W.'s Faucit of Exeter, the mathematical fellow, 
 a long thin man in goggles, who was proctor last year, 
 and got it hot in the theatre. I wish you'd heard it. 
 The men all let out like mad, for he'd proctorized half 
 the place." 
 
 " How did he do that, and what is it when it's 
 done ? I'm learning, you know." 
 
 "Well, proctorizing means having a man up for 
 something — going about in mufti, or having a spread 
 at the Mitre, or that sort of thing." 
 
 " It sounds very bad, and should be punished. 
 What does he do for it ? " 
 
 "Generally gets a man gated, you know," said 
 Bones. "It's an awful nuisance in the summer term." 
 
 " It would be. Proctorizing seems to be what the 
 police call taking up." 
 
 " Something in the same line. But the proctor's
 
 14 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 the peeler and the beak all in one — first runs you in 
 and then sits on you. That's not fair any way." 
 
 "As far as I understand it, it isn't. Why don't you 
 apply for a Habeas Corpus when you're gated, and 
 bring an action for false imprisonment ? " 
 
 "Oh," commented Tompkins, "that's law. We 
 haven't got any law here, except the Vice-Chancellor's 
 Court. He's dead the other way." 
 
 " No law ? " said Daisy. " What a delightful place ! 
 How one lives and learns. I never knew that the 
 University was a sort of modern Alsatia." 
 
 " What's that ? " enquired Bones. 
 
 " Don't you know ? They ought to teach you." 
 
 "Don't teach us much later down than Rome. 
 It's not the form." 
 
 " How odd the difference of form is," remarked 
 Daisy. " They don't teach us girls much higher up 
 than the piano. And my education has been so 
 neglected that I never heard of P. W., or of the other. 
 And now I want to know all about him too. You have 
 given me such a description of P. W.'s moral and 
 physical qualities in a few words, Mr. Bones, that I 
 believe I should know him if I met him. Now tell me 
 about the other."
 
 GUV AND DAISY. 15 
 
 " Ah ! that's another sort altogether. That's Fauci t 
 of our place, commonly called 'The Chpper,' and 
 familiarly loved as old Guy. He was the best stroke 
 the 'Varsity eight ever had, and he's a crack tennis- 
 player besides." 
 
 " He might have been one of the best men in the 
 eleven too," chimed in Tompkins, "only he said he 
 couldn't do everj^thing, and hadn't the time to get out 
 to Cowley Marsh often enough." 
 
 "But he can do evervthing^ for all that," added 
 Bones. " Just look at what he did in the brains line — 
 got the Balliol before he came up, and the Hertford in 
 his first year, and the Ireland in his second, and a 
 double-first in Mods, before you knew where you were." 
 
 "And only didn't do the same in Greats," said 
 Tompkins, " because he liked classics best, and said he 
 didn't believe in a man trying too much, just like 
 the cricket." 
 
 "Besides, he wanted to have time for his own 
 reading, which he's very fond of," chorussed Bones. 
 "And he got a fellowship at the old place before he 
 went in for his degree, and the dons said they wouldn't 
 have it done again." 
 
 " Because it wouldn't be fair on the others," quoth
 
 i6 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 Tompkins. " And now he's the best lecturer and the 
 j oiliest don in the place, and as good a fellow with the 
 men of other colleges as he is with his own." 
 
 "And still coaches the eight as nobody else can 
 coach it, and puts on half-fifteen a year at tennis. Ran 
 old Barre himself hard the other day, at the fair odds 
 and side-walls and openings." 
 
 "Puttinoc on half-fifteen and runnino^ old Barre 
 must be wonderfully exciting," smiled Daisy, inwardly 
 delighted with the honest and lovable enthusiasm of 
 her young squires. " You all seem quite fond of ' the 
 other.' " 
 
 " I should think we were," said Bones. 
 "Grand old trump," added Tompkins. And so 
 " The Works of Guy Faucit," as they would have been 
 called in Homer, were sung in the true ej^ic style by 
 his two chroniclers. 
 
 Daisy Fairfield felt really interested and attracted 
 by the history, as she had been at once by the striking 
 appearance of the man with the strong rather than 
 handsome features, the curly crisp brown hair, the 
 fair Saxon complexion, and the look of power upon the 
 face. Daisy was a student in heads, and a foe to the 
 commonplace. She might have asked and heard more
 
 GUY AXD DAISY. 17 
 
 of Faucit, had not the inevitable chaperon — for let not 
 my readers believe that this scene had passed without 
 one — at this moment woke from a refreshing slumber. 
 She was a nice, pleasant-looking specimen of portly 
 middle-age, brooding over the youthful three Hke "a 
 mature duck. 
 
 *'I think, my dear, I should like to go ome to tea," 
 said Mrs. Pepperharrow. " There's the ball to-night, 
 and you mustn't overeat yourself." 
 
 " Overeat herself, Mrs. Pepperharrow ! " said the 
 astonished Bones. 
 
 *' The eat of the sun, Mr. Bones, is great upon the 
 river." 
 
 " Oh ! quite so. I beg your pardon." 
 
 VOL.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BALLIOL ROOMS. 
 
 Midnight ! yet not an eye in the academic city closed 
 in sleep. No eye, at least, belonging to any one with a 
 proper measure of self-respect; for all the world and his 
 sweetheart were at that year's Christchurch Ball. It 
 was what is called a grand commemoration in the year 
 I write of, and beautiful Alma Mater was in her 
 blandest mood of motherhood, favoured by weather 
 which showed her everywhere at her best. Foliage 
 and sward looked their softest and greenest in the fair 
 gardens of Worcester and St. John ; and the leaves of 
 Magdalen Walks, with their belt of trees girdling the 
 old enclosure, whispered their confidences to young 
 undergraduate lovers and their goddesses for the hour, 
 and discreetly kept the secret of those they listened to
 
 THE BALLIOL ROOMS. 19 
 
 in return. The fantastic figures perched on their 
 pedestals in Magdalen quadrangle grinned sympa- 
 thetically at the young people who came in and went 
 out in a more advanced stagje of the world's most 
 chronic malady. It was a line time for pairing, and 
 the opportunity was not lost. Many a young and 
 ambitious fellow of his college, vowed only the week 
 before to celibacy and the comfortable selfishness of the 
 Common Room, began to count the cost of deserting 
 academic life for the bar or the press, winning name 
 and fame by persuasive orations at \Yestminster, or 
 trenchant witticisms in the ' Saturday Review/ and 
 leaving the dead languages to bury their dead, for the 
 sake of some pair of bright eyes which had suddenly 
 flashed in upon his solitude, and burned decided holes 
 in his trencher-cap and gown. 
 
 On the evening before Show Sunday he had been 
 proudly looking forward into a distant future, to the 
 day when he might stand before the world of his 
 measuring-rod as the Provost or Principal of his college, 
 after servincj all the stages of tutor and bursar in due 
 course. Then, perhaps, he would take unto himself a 
 helpmeet upon proper prudential and academic prin- 
 ciples, suitable to him in years and views of life, to sit 
 
 c 2
 
 20 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 at his feet and the bottom of his table, and shine with 
 the reflected radiance of his scholastic glory. To him, 
 perhaps, ^s the old stage-directions say, entered on that 
 Show Sunday some gracious young vision in flowers 
 and lace, entirely frivolous and illogically sweet, with 
 no special charm for many but the bloom of English 
 girlhood, suddenly to upset all his calculations through 
 the open sesame of an " introduction," under the broad 
 interlacing branches which span the Broad Walk of 
 Christchurch in the earliest order of architecture, to 
 the silver Sunday music of Oxford's innumerable bells. 
 Without rhyme or reason would young Suckling of 
 Oriel change his theories of existence at this touch of 
 harlequin Fortune's motley wand, and contemplate 
 "das irdische Gliick" from an altogether different 
 point of view. After all, was he not bom to get it 
 "genossen" in the time-honoured fashion of the 
 majority of healthy-hearted mankind ? 
 
 Is it possible that some such spirit as this, sum- 
 moned in his inscrutable purpose from the vasty deeps 
 of life by the great Enchanter's voice, overshadowed 
 Guy Faucit's strong will and sober nature with a 
 warning, on that afternoon by the river ? Even as he 
 was swinging steadily up the bank, intent as usual
 
 THE BALLIOL ROOMS. '. 21 
 
 just upon what he was doing and no more, keenly 
 marking the merits and defects of the young athletes 
 working their best under his experienced eye, and 
 inwardly resolving the possible results of effecting a 
 change in the boat between numbers six and seven, 
 he caught a rapid gUmpse, in passing, of a girl's 
 figure propped up among the cushions of a punt, 
 in an attitude of genuine interest in the doings of 
 his crew. He just marked her in passing, and as he 
 was crossing to the Balliol barge with a boatful of 
 other men, after the cruise was finished, he saw her 
 again, closer and more at his leisure, springing ashore 
 from her little bark under the emulous guardianship 
 of Bones and Tompkins. They passed him close by, 
 and as Bones saluted him with the proper sign of 
 respect due to his tutor, mingled with an obvious 
 dash of pride in his own new duties, Faucit instinct- 
 ively raised his hat in answer, and bestowed a very 
 honest and respectful look of admiration upon Daisy 
 Fairfield. Whether she looked at him or not at the 
 same moment I cannot undertake to say ; but certainly 
 she saw him. And when a rapid little Parthian glance 
 shot back at him over her shoulder when she had 
 gone a little further with Bones (Tompkins, the s^y
 
 22 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 (log, was sedulously paying court to good Mrs. Pepper- 
 harrow), it fell upon a responsive place ; for the fact 
 is, that Faucit of Balliol was looking after her with all 
 his might and main. 
 
 '' Good Heavens ! " he thought to himself, " what 
 a lovely girl ! " But the vision passed ; and Guy 
 Faucit, his hands in his pockets in attitude profound, 
 whistling to himself a few rather thoughtful bars, 
 strolled homewards through the busy corn-market to 
 his rooms in Balliol. 
 
 The rooms in Balliol, which he had tenanted ever 
 since he took his first class five years before, and had 
 gradually furnished and improved with every evidence 
 of scholarship and taste, making a hobby of them, 
 seemed that evening, he couldn't imagine why, to 
 want something he couldn't conceive what. The 
 pictures were few and grave and good, carefully chosen 
 and paid for at a good round price, for the most part 
 the most careful reproductions that the engraver or his 
 kindred artists could furnish of the solid masterpieces 
 of an olden day. There Titian's daughter carried her 
 fruit and iiowers, with the fair head thrown back in 
 the attitude as perfect in its audacity of pose as in 
 its nature and its grace ; there the pretty choc(jlate-
 
 THE BALLIOL ROOMS. 23 
 
 girl, whom Dresden loves through the eyes of Liotard, 
 proffered her dish of sober drink with the slightly 
 contemptuous air of a young person something above 
 her work, and apt to dream of the marble halls which 
 a posse of Saxon admirers had no doubt placed at her 
 disposal; there Rembrandt's bonnie wife sat perched 
 upon the knee of her painter-husband, her head and his 
 twisted round, the one festively and the other coquett- 
 ishly, over the brimming glass of honest German beer ; 
 and there, in its deep unfathomable awe, the despair 
 of painters past, present, and to come, not all lost or 
 wanting even through the medium of the copyist, 
 above the watching reverence of the upturned baby- 
 faces, the strange, ineffable, thrilling mystery [of God- 
 head upon earth looked down upon the gazer, out 
 of the eyes of the mother and child of Our Lady of 
 San Sisto. 
 
 The books which Hned the walls were kindred to 
 the pictures : so that nothing seemed wanting in the 
 two classes of home-companions, which, with a com- 
 fortable dog curled up on the hearth-rug, make the 
 most loving and responsive company for the \kkpoy^ avrjp 
 of a worthy mould, who lives, from choice or destiny, 
 alone. They were chosen for reading, and looked all
 
 24 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL, 
 
 read, gradually gathered with a gradual patience, so 
 that they were still small in bulk though great in 
 matter. Bindings and editions were not neglected, 
 though not essential : a clear, readable type being the 
 only definite condition grafted upon the contents of the 
 book. The Catholic taste of the reader was evident 
 from the various nature of the subject-matters, and 
 evidently had chosen for its province the masterpieces 
 of style and thought rather than any special line of 
 study. English literature was the staple of the col- 
 lection, though French and German had their proper 
 part in the arrangements, and Latin and Greek, as 
 became a classical tutor, were respectfully, but not 
 overpoweringly, represented. 
 
 The little inner sanctum — for in the larger room 
 the pupils were received — told a tale of another kind. 
 Stags' heads spoke of long-vacation stalkings in the 
 North ; an amazing collection of miscellaneous and 
 polyglottic pipes recorded wanderings over half the 
 tobacco-smoking world ; and silver oars and silver 
 racquets, and tankards whose very sight suggested 
 the Elysian pleasures of a "long drink," sang of 
 many victories in the athletic field. In such a little 
 bachelor's paradise, what was it of which Faucit, who
 
 THE BALLIOL ROOMS. 25 
 
 had grown into his life and his rooms, can suddenly 
 have felt an unrealized want that evening? Did he 
 miss the serpent, or the serpent's inducement ? 
 
 He had ordered a quiet and solitary dinner in his 
 rooms, and in due course his servant appeared with it. 
 The college cook, a discriminating artist, who was quite 
 as capable of catering for the cultivated taste of a 
 travelled fellow, as for satisfying the zoological appe- 
 tites of undergraduates with hunkiform beeves and 
 mutton, provided Faucit with a dainty, but not the 
 less solid repast, of which Guy, whatever the nature 
 of his reflections, ate with an irreproachable zest and 
 a generous capacity, mixing his liquors in defiance of 
 the modern science of Dyspepticism, and correcting 
 bitter beer with his favourite Burgundy. The meal 
 over, he had installed himself in his leathern chair, 
 with a pet pipe and a cup of black coffee, slippered and 
 magazined, when a knock at the door interrupted his 
 occupations. 
 
 " Come in," he said, not altogether sorry to be 
 interrupted, for, hard-worker as he was, he was 
 gregarious of soul; and the figure of the youthful 
 Bones presented itself. 
 
 " Hallo, Bones ; what do you want ? "
 
 26 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 " Well, sir, I came, to ask if you'd excuse me from 
 reading essay to-morrow. The fact is, I've been about 
 all day with friends, and haven't got it done." 
 
 " In which state you certainly can't read it," said 
 Faucit. *' But why don't you go to your rooms now, 
 and work away till you've done it ? " 
 
 *'It would take me a good long time, sir. I'm 
 always slow over my essay- work. And I've got to 
 go, at least I want to go, to the Christchurch Ball 
 to-night." 
 
 " Well, we mustn't be too particular at Commemor- 
 ation time. But remember, the schools ain't very far 
 off, my boy, and you want a good deal of brushing up." 
 
 " I know I do, sir ; and you're so kind in working 
 with me, that I'd even give the ball up and get through 
 the grind if you wished it." 
 
 " I don't wish it," answered the other. " You'll 
 have a day or two after the balls and flower-shows 
 before you go down, and you can finish off the essay 
 easily enough. I suppose it'll be a good ball ? " 
 
 " First-rate, sir. The thing's to be really well done. 
 Ain't you thinking of going ? " 
 
 " I ? " said Faucit. " No ; I've some work of my 
 own on hand, and there's nobody up this time I know
 
 THE BALLIOL ROOMS. 27 
 
 much about. You seem better off. Are you gomg 
 with the ladies I saw you with by the river to-day ? " 
 
 "I'm going to meet them there, sir. Did you 
 see them ? " 
 
 "Just in passing. The girl looked very pretty." 
 
 "That's just what she is," said Bones, "and no 
 mistake about that. And she's as nice as she's 
 pretty, too. My governor knows hers in business in 
 London, so they asked me to call when they came 
 on Saturday, and I've been doing the right thing for 
 them all the week. I had some waltzes with her at 
 the Masonic Ball last night which I shan't forc^et in 
 a hurry, and I'm going to repeat the dose to-night. 
 I wish you'd come, sir. I should like to introduce 
 you to Miss Fairfield." 
 
 " That's her name, is it ? " said Guy. " I don't 
 do much in the ball way now, and haven't since I 
 took my degree : so I'm afraid I shouldn't be much ad- 
 dition to the party. Dance away, and good luck to you." 
 
 "Thank you, sir. I'll be sure to have the essay 
 done before we go down. I wish you'd come ; but 
 if you won't, good night." 
 
 " Good nicrht, Bones." And the vouno^ster took his 
 departure.
 
 28 FAUCIT OF\BALLIOL. 
 
 Guy Faucit smoked on awhile, drank his coffee, 
 and meditated over his magazine. Then he sat down 
 at a well-covered writing-table, and plunged into 
 pen and ink. He had made himself a good name 
 already among the Saturday Reviewers, then a band 
 of keen and ardent spirits, who had given a new 
 impulse to journalism by their fresh and powerful 
 and witty work, and attracted many a young college 
 ambition to their ranks. Strong sense and scholar- 
 ship were Faucit' s best points in the contribution, and 
 even at that age he was not fond of the practice of 
 anonymous vivisection. He did his work carefully that 
 evening, and rather slowly, more than once travelling 
 away from it; but the power of concentration, which 
 was his in a marked degree, existed then as afterwards, 
 and he had a habit of mastering any stray access 
 of wilfulness in an uncompromising way. Age quod 
 ay is stood him in good stead as his motto in every- 
 thing; and he had once distinguished himself by 
 entering under the head of his " favourite occupation," 
 in one of those senseless feminine albums which record 
 a series of imaginary preferences improvised under 
 pressure of invention, " whatever I happen to be doing." 
 
 So he finished his article at the cost of some
 
 THE BALLIOL ROOMS. 29 
 
 increase in the tax on his time, smoked another pipe 
 and turned over the pages of a new novel, and then 
 began to meditate on bed. He looked at his bed 
 and he looked at his watch, plurtma mente revolvens ; 
 and he began to undress, and he walked up and down 
 his room, and again he sat and meditated. Then he 
 contemplated his night-gown comfortably folded on his 
 pillow, while only the sounds of night came up to 
 him from the quiet quadrangle. Then he took a 
 sudden excursion to his wardrobe, and surveyed his 
 evening clothes, submitting them evidently to a mental 
 test of comparison. Then he visited his snuggery 
 again, and from the glass behind the mantel-piece 
 took down a ticket. Then he made that indescribable 
 but definite sound to himself, which appears in the 
 play-books under the form of ''Humph"; and finally, 
 as with a mind suddenly made up at the price of some 
 self-disapproval, he put himself into those evening 
 clothes of his rapidly enough, and after a placid exit 
 through the porter's lodge — that official regarding him 
 with some respectful astonishment — he swung down 
 the street at a steady pace, and as the clock was on 
 the stroke of twelve he found himself among the 
 guests at the Christchurch Ball.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL. 
 
 J3AISY Fairfield was in the full flush of a young 
 girl's triumph. Jf I could choose my experiences of 
 the raptures of life, I should like to be a great states- 
 man for a season, a victorious soldier for another, a 
 successful author for a third, and a reigning beauty 
 for a fourth. In the absolute intoxication of effect 
 I imagine that the last of the four may have the 
 best of us all. There must be something in that 
 spontaneous homage, not called out as the result of 
 labour or of years, but offered without reserve at the 
 shrine of youth in its most winning natural guise, by 
 statesman and soldier and author and everybody else, 
 which has no parallel in the grosser experiences of 
 man.
 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL. 31 
 
 Daisy Fairfield tasted the cup to the full in this 
 her year of grace. Her father was prominent among 
 the sober race of London merchants, becoming fast 
 less well represented than it used to be, who built 
 solid fortunes by sohd and honourable work, and with- 
 out attempting to vie with the magnificent palaces of 
 Belgravian and Kensington districts, which with all 
 their size look as if they were meant to be sold to 
 a company at an early date, contented themselves 
 with strong and comfortable houses on the slopes of 
 Bloomsbury, or, under the influence of the westward-ho 
 movement which seems to be the history of all big 
 towns, in the regions of Portland Place. 
 
 In those broad and airy latitudes our Daisy bloomed. 
 Her father's friends were of that large and varied class 
 which probably, amongst a good deal of dulness, sup- 
 plies about the pleasantest varieties of London society, 
 I do not say of social Hfe. I suppose that the socio- 
 geographer would map it out as part of the "upper 
 middle," whatever that dissective formula may imply. 
 Lawyers rising and risen make perhaps the chief staple 
 of it, and a pleasant staple too. Notwithstanding the 
 fabled preference of the sex for soldiers and curates, 
 the barristers hold their ground very well, by right,
 
 32 FAUCir OF BALLIOL. 
 
 I suppose, of the power of talk which is presumed 
 by privilege and practice to belong to them, though 
 in too many cases on slight ground enough. The 
 '' chambers " which are supposed to receive them daily 
 seem to have a very doubtful existence in some cases, 
 and to leave them free for dinners and balls and 
 junketings innumerable, even sometimes for those 
 two haunts of the acknowledged idlers, which stamp 
 imprudent youth as ''no good to anybody " in the 
 working world — the Park and the five o'clock tea. But 
 others, and, as a rule, it must be admitted pleasanter 
 ones, fight their wig-armed battle of life to a purpose 
 under the god-like discipline of patience, and mean 
 business, as soon as they can get it, very emphatically. 
 In the same set are their successful seniors to encourage 
 them; and the ambitious junior who has just been 
 getting perhaps snubbed in court, much to an inward 
 moving of the spirit and a conviction that till you 
 become a Q.C., and can command success, justice is 
 but a name, is consoled by dining at the same table 
 with the kindly old judge who inserted that flea in his 
 ear, and makes up for it by bestowing on him words 
 of friendly counsel, and the results of his own full life 
 and experience.
 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL. 33 
 
 And the while, and perhaps better still, young 
 Tyro is consoled by a flirtation with his lordship's 
 pretty daughter, whose bright eyes beam upon him 
 with unprofessional encouragement, while her lips 
 assure him that there was a time, and a very long 
 time, when papa despaired of ever getting any busi- 
 ness whatever. 
 
 " Of course he says he never had any connection 
 at all, Mr. Tyro, and got into a big practice at once 
 by his own merits, dear old thing. And his merits 
 were always splendid, you know. But mamma told 
 me that it was nothing of the kind, and that when I 
 was bom she didn't know how they were ever going 
 to get on. And if it hadn't been for a first cousin 
 down in the north who was a big attorney, and wanted 
 to do him a good turn, I don't believe papa would ever 
 have done anything at the bar at all." So the young 
 counsellor lives on hope, and retails pleasant circuit - 
 stories in a very cheery and attractive way. 
 
 Rising and working journalists and writers, doing- 
 mysterious somethings in unconfessed anonyme, and 
 reputed to be dreadfully clever, with here and there 
 a lawless dramatist, the subject of much shaking of 
 the head and evil omen, as of one hurrying downwards 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 on the broad path of self-destruction, but nevertheless 
 of some secret admiration and envy, as the privileged 
 denizen of a mysterious world not open to everybody 
 — these and other waifs and strays of the many-minded 
 ocean of labour, generally thrown high and dry to 
 begin with, by the inhospitable wave of the Bar — with 
 distinguished professional physicians to give the talk 
 another savour no less pleasant in its way, city-toilers 
 to bring their quota of experience, and rose-buttoned 
 government clerks to give an airy jauntiness to the 
 whole, make up the society which has a distinctive life 
 of its own, and provides busy-hearted London with a 
 second and a winter season, full of welcome associations 
 and attractions which belong to it, rather than to the 
 crush and hurry of the spring and summer. In this 
 society Daisy came to grown-up life, to become at 
 once the first prize in the garden. Her mother was 
 a chronic invalid who lived retired ; so she was the 
 pride and charge of various chaperons, but most of the 
 good-natured Mrs. Pepperharrow, who was a general 
 favourite for her known possession of that attribute, and 
 devoted to Daisy. Her husband, Mr. Pepperharrow, 
 was a great success in soap-boiling, and through city 
 matters first had been brought into intimate relations
 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL. 35 
 
 with the Fairfields, who were near neighbours of his 
 in the house in Portland Place. 
 
 Like Scott's imaginary June-rose, Daisy had first 
 ''budded fain" in winter's snow, during this pre- 
 liminary season, with a large and wide-spreading result 
 upon her segment of the circle I have described. 
 The most op^Dosite effects were created in the most 
 opposite minds. The young barrister hitherto devoted 
 to his work grew suddenly neglectful, and appeared 
 at five o'clock teas, a rare and welcome animal, to 
 the delight of the world of womanhood, which at 
 these entertainments is so unfairly in the majority. 
 He shared the masculine honours, probably, with 
 the last and most depressing product of the new 
 civiUzation, the comic- sinorer of the drawino^-room, 
 who "entertains" in the evening in those epicene 
 public resorts which mainly supply the theatric wants 
 of the large class of people who still look upon theatres 
 as something vaguely wrong, and express approval 
 or emotion in nothing: louder than a ojentle sibillant 
 sound, as thus — s-s-s. When Lambkin of the Colonial 
 Office first took up this semi-public line, he was much 
 disconcerted by these sounds, which he thought meant 
 hissing. But after a time he found they were simply 
 
 D 2
 
 36 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 what reached his ear of the confidential and admiring 
 criticism of one fair Philistine to her neighbour, and 
 meant — ''How s- silly ! " Then he was consoled, and 
 l^ersevered in the path of glory. In the afternoon 
 Lambkin was the stay of five o'clock teas, and was 
 never so glad as when he met some wandering solitary 
 male, to whom to confide '' what an awful audience " 
 this was. 
 
 The idle barrister, meanwhile, took an opposite 
 cause, deserted his usual haunts except in the evening, 
 appeared in court regularly at ten o'clock and in 
 chambers afterwards, and dreamed of some un- 
 imagined income to lay at Daisy Fairfield's feet. 
 Her singular charm exercised its power ujDon nearly 
 all who came across her, and made her a prime 
 favourite with young and old, for of the society of the 
 last she shewed herself provokingly fond. She liked 
 somebody who had done something, she would tell her 
 distracted adorers, and was always ready to throw over 
 the best waltzer among them, if he had nothing better 
 than his youth and his waltzing to boast of, for a chat 
 with some older and more travelled mariner on the 
 seas of time. Something grave and deep looked out 
 of the clear blue eyes, more akin, as by some forecast
 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL. yj 
 
 of a troubled future, with the trials and struggles of 
 this life of ours, than with its sunnier and more 
 thoughtless day. A deep reader in her quiet hours 
 at home, loving to steep her mind in the thoughts 
 and the wisdom of the wise and thoughtful, she took 
 enjoyments as they came frankly and happily ; but 
 even while she seemed most thoroughly a part of 
 the world of mere pleasure, she was yet more deeply 
 a careful watcher of the "divine tragi-comedy " of 
 life. She was so happy and frank withal, however, 
 that she never frightened her young worshippers away — 
 many as may have - been the mortal quarrels which 
 rose on her account between Damon and Pythias, or 
 Orestes and Pylades — though she would often find an 
 opportunity, by some quiet word of timely but seem- 
 ingly careless council, to strengthen some waverer for 
 the world of work, some trifler for the life of earnest. 
 There was no fate for her amoncj them, though ; and 
 through the first half-year of her queenly life in her 
 world's eye, she moved like Queen Elizabeth through 
 her own spacious times, in worthy maiden meditation, 
 fancy-free. So her young life passed on through its 
 opening stage, and through the first months of the 
 London season proper, during which she made but
 
 38 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 small incursion into the more fashionable regions of 
 society's latitudes and longitudes, until, through the 
 persuasion of some young Oxonian whom she had met 
 and fraternized with at her father's table, she added an 
 Oxford Commemoration to the scene of her growing 
 experience. 
 
 Her card was full from a very early date, at that 
 Christchurch ball ; but, truth to tell, some of the names 
 that filled it were rather hard to decipher, and occupied 
 some occasional blanks with mysterious pencil-marks 
 of her own. She did not quite know what Oxford 
 might bring forth worth talking to or sitting out with, 
 and wisely reserved herself for emergencies. The 
 scene was very bright and very gay, and Daisy Fair- 
 field was well pleased and happy. She liked her 
 unsophisticated cavaliers thoroughly, had picked up 
 an amazing amount of miscellaneous information on 
 university politics in general, and even mastered some- 
 thing of the secrets of half-fifteen and old Barre, by 
 a careful cross-examination of Tompkins of Trinity 
 between the figures of a quadrille. Never was any- 
 body, some people said, who so much wanted to know 
 everything, or was so nice to tell everything to. The 
 music of Godfrey's "Guards," or "Mabel," whatever
 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL. 39 
 
 was the tarantula-dance of the day, was just over ; and 
 the enraptured Bones had just led his partner to Mrs. 
 Pepperharrow's side. He had -been perplexing him- 
 self over the old problem, what was the most delicate 
 form in which to ask a young lady whether she would 
 like anything to drink, when she solved it by saying 
 that she would like to sit down. And just as 4ie was 
 handing her over to her chaperon, w^ho was confiding to 
 Tompkins that she oped the supper would soon begin, 
 he saw an une:^pected figure standing quietly at his 
 side. Daisy Fairfield saw it too, and her heart gave 
 the most unwarrantable jump for no reason what- 
 ever. She had been speculating on "not P. W. — the 
 other" half the evening, without the least knowing 
 why. 
 
 '' You here, sir, after all ? " said Bones. " Oh, I am 
 glad ! " And without further prelude, and with all the 
 confident ingenuousness of youth, he added : '' Oh, Miss 
 Fairfield, do let me introduce you to our fellow, Faucit, 
 whom we were talking of this afternoon. Miss Fair- 
 field — Mrs. Pepperharrow — Mr. Faucit. Mrs. Pepper- 
 harrow — Miss Fairfield." 
 
 '' May I have the pleasure of a dance, Miss Fair- 
 field?" said Guy.
 
 40 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 How many of the world's lightest or most serious 
 chapters have opened in those familiar words ? 
 
 " I am afraid that you're rather late in the field, 
 Mr. Fa,ucit," she answered, consulting her card. 
 
 The charm of her voice, which was very great, 
 caucjht Faucit's sensitive ear at once. There are 
 women to whom one can shut one's eyes and listen for 
 the sheer pleasure of sound, half inclined to laugh with 
 the pleasure, without even the need of heeding what 
 it is they say, as one listens to the conversation of a 
 piano under a sympathetic hand. Daisy Fairfield had 
 a voice of this kind, and Faucit felt at once that he 
 was in the presence of a masterpiece, one of those few 
 and far-between women, in whom nothing has been left 
 out, as it were. 
 
 " Have I no chance of anything ? " he asked. " Not 
 even of an odd quadrille ? " 
 
 " I am afraid the quadrilles are all — Do you care 
 for a waltz, Mr. Faucit ? " 
 
 " Very much. But I hardly liked to ask for that." 
 
 '' I can give you this one, which is just beginning. 
 I think," she added demurely, " that my partner won't 
 come." 
 
 ** He must be very blind to his own interests,"
 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL. \i 
 
 said Guy, ''if I may judge from seeing you waltz 
 with Bones just now, I am lucky in his mistake." 
 And then, with the long, free, preliminary glide which 
 launches a well-matched pair into one of the greatest 
 of harmless enjoyments, Guy Faucit and Daisy Fair- 
 field made their first step together. 
 
 I who chronicle these things, remember well once, 
 when I had worked myself — I was younger than I 
 am now — into a very aesthetic and well-informed phase 
 of mind, having a profound talk with an eminent 
 American blue-stocking in a public room at Newport 
 or at Narragansett, no matter where. We had got 
 into very deep waters indeed, and I was boldly but 
 gravely propounding some astounding theories of 
 biology which had never occurred to me in my life 
 till that moment, much to my companion's edification 
 and approval. 
 
 " Xow tell me, Mr. Balbus," she said, half-shutting 
 her eyes and throwing back her head, as evidently 
 expecting something from the answer to enlarge her 
 experience, " tell me what you consider the most even 
 sensation of momentary content to which the human 
 soul is capable of rising ? " 
 
 I reflected for a brief space, and replied —
 
 42 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 " I can tell you, Mrs. Pozzy, without hesitation. 
 It is a perfect waltz with a perfect partner, to perfect 
 music, on a perfect floor." 
 
 The shock told, for Mrs. Pozzy sat bolt upright 
 and looked at me. 
 
 "Do you mean to say, Mr. Balbus, that you 
 waltz?" 
 
 " I do indeed ; I delight in it." 
 
 "Then," she said, with that instant appreciation 
 of a situation given to a quick woman, "let me 
 introduce you to my daughter." 
 
 The very next week I was a guest at Mrs. Pozzy's 
 country cottage, and had an elegant time. In the 
 intervals of those ambrosial nights of philosophic dis- 
 quisition, I found Miss Wilhelmina M. Pozzy a very 
 charming partner. 
 
 Guy and Daisy settled down in earnest to their 
 stride. He was a past master in the art, thanks to 
 a perfect development of the time-ear. Tune-ear, 
 oddly enough, he had none, and could never hum 
 ' God save the Queen" with a proximate approach 
 1 correctness, though he knew what music he liked 
 to hear, and understood it in that sense very well. 
 But the time-ear is a different thing, and made his
 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL. 43 
 
 appreciation of a false step in a waltz as keen as 
 of a halting verse. The best singer of his day will 
 often be unable to take one turn in the waltz correctly. 
 Guy had perfected his waltzing during a long vacation 
 in the States, where they understand it better than 
 anywhere. He knew the difference between the 
 Portland glide and the Boston dip, and quick or slow, 
 forward or reverse, he steered his deft course through 
 the w^hirling and converging couples without a bump 
 or a halt, till he could land his partner safely in a 
 quiet comer. He could send her half to sleep in 
 a slow and dreamy measure, or send the young blood 
 coursing through her veins by a swing like a steady 
 racer's. 
 
 As for Daisy Fairfield, he found her one of those 
 partners in a thousand, who learn in a moment the 
 sort of dancer they have to deal with — whether 
 they have to nurse him tenderly through the per- 
 formance, get as little kicked as possible, and do 
 all the steering themselves, or can trust entirely to 
 their cavalier in charge, and give themselves up with- 
 out afterthought to the pleasure of the whirl. They 
 adapt themselves at once, after the first minute, to the 
 step of their partner, w^ho, on his side, meets them
 
 44 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 half-way, and fall into "two step or three" at short 
 notice. Two or three time is a misnomer, by the way ; 
 for whatever the step, all true waltzing is in three 
 time. Such a heaven-born waltzer as Daisy Fairfield 
 was no weight for Guy Faucit to carry ; his arm circled 
 her waist and scarcely felt it, as the lithe and gracious 
 figure sailed on its royal round. They enjoyed their 
 first turn with never a word on either side, and it 
 was a long one-, and the breathing of both was but 
 slightly quickened when they stopped. 
 
 " You waltz very well, Mr. Faucit,". was all 
 she said. 
 
 " I need not tell you the same, Miss Fairfield." 
 
 After a short pause she smiled. 
 ' Are you ready again ? '* 
 
 '' Quite. It's a pity to lose any of it." 
 
 To do them justice, they lost very little. 
 
 To how many couples of the modern day, I wonder, 
 has their first waltz been their opening adventure, their 
 first dallying with the fruits of fairyland ? It is on that 
 ground, I suj)pose, that some good people still object 
 to it, and that its oriorinal sin at first raised a decorous 
 outcry even from such a pattern of propriety as Lord 
 Byron. Why that should be I know not. The roads
 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL, 45 
 
 to that fairyland are many, and it is a country none 
 the worse for the opening up of such a poetic way as 
 this. But a way it is, past denial. To awkward 
 dancers the waltz is a very ordeal, a gymnastic exercise 
 of a trying and often painful kind. But it is a magic 
 key for others, which opens out a vista of possible 
 sympathies. Between two kindred natures, it is apt 
 to establish at once an electric communication. Why 
 not ? Are all possible magnetisms wrong ? As I once 
 heard a hardworking clergyman say, in a capital speech 
 on the supposed wickedness of going to the theatre, 
 " Is a young man or woman to be ticketed for the 
 journey of life like a package, and labelled, ' this side 
 up, with care ' ? " Faith, such a package is apt to 
 be compact of very brittle glass indeed. 
 
 The waltz was over and the music ceased. A few 
 quiet words of commonplace were all that then passed 
 between the two, as they wandered up and down the 
 rooms. 
 
 '' The supper-rooms will be open directly, Miss 
 Fairfield ; so I suppose you will not care for a cup 
 of tea now ? " 
 
 " Not now, thank you. Is your crew likely to win 
 at Henley?"
 
 46 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 '' I hope so ; but I don't feel sure. The Cambridge 
 boat is very strong. You saw us this afternoon, 
 then ? " 
 
 '' Oh yes; and you were pointed out to me on the 
 bank as a sure guide to victory. Both Mr. Bones and 
 Mr. Tompkins, who were with me, seemed to look 
 upon defeat under your banners as impossible." 
 
 Guy laughed. 
 
 " There are no such believers as young believers, 
 Miss Fairfield ; and it is something to have established 
 a name. But I don't think the Trinity men will run 
 away from mine, for all that. Is there any chance of 
 your being at Henley, and seeing the result ? " 
 
 '' I expect so. This is only my first season, Mr. 
 Faucit, and, as you see, I am being taken to everything. 
 A boat-race will be new to me, and from what I saw 
 to-day, it must be wonderfully exciting. I suppose 
 that to rowing men it is something glorious, very 
 different from — a waltz." A very slight hesitation 
 here. 
 
 " Different certainly," he answered, "but not better 
 in its way; at least not always." Daisy inhaled a 
 long sweet breath from the flowers she carried. Guy 
 was one of those partners with whom it is not necessary
 
 THE CHRISTCHURCH BALL. 47 
 
 to set them down, '' The great charm of life, I think/' 
 he went on, "lies in its infinite variety." 
 
 "So I think too," she answered, " woman as I am. 
 I wonder if we shall think so as we grow older." 
 
 "I expect so, if we go the right way to work. 
 Did you ever hear of a saying of Count Cavour's, 
 Miss Fairfield, that to a sensible man two things 
 should be impossible — rancour and boredom ? " 
 
 " I never heard it. It sounds very good and very 
 true. Where did you pick it up ? " 
 
 "In a memoir I have jast been reading of him. 
 A very great and interesting life, over, one would 
 think, just at the wrong time. I wonder what such 
 deaths mean. But I ought to beg your pardon for 
 bringing such matters into a ball-room, just after a 
 first waltz ! " 
 
 "Why? Are you one of the men who always 
 think it necessary to apologise to a partner for 
 supposing that she can care about anything but the 
 musical glasses ? " 
 
 " If you say that," he answered, " I shall have to 
 beg pardon again. But perhaps I am the sinner, for 
 really I can think of very little except that waltz of 
 ours. I wonder if I have any chance of another."
 
 48 FAUCIT OF DALLIOL. 
 
 " Well, I'll see." 
 
 They were close to Mrs. Pepperharrow as Daisy 
 examined her card. That lady was just leaving her 
 seat on the arm of a dignitary who had taken posses- 
 sion of her, and left the emancipated Tompkins free to 
 devote himself to a young person in a white frock with 
 red ribbons, of the primitive order of youthful English 
 millinery. But she looked hapj^y and amused enough 
 to wear anything. 
 
 "Daisy dear," said Mrs. Pepperharrow, "I'm going 
 to ave something to eat. The supper-rooms are open, 
 and Dr. Parley has been kind enough to ask me. 
 Won't you ave something too ? " 
 
 " May I take you in to supper, Miss Fairfield ? " 
 said Guy. 
 
 A young and beaming undergraduate was making 
 his way towards Daisy as the first bars of the 
 "Lancers" struck up. 
 
 " Well, I shouldn't be sorry. And — a little of these 
 very young men does go a long way." Daisy was a 
 full year younger than the object of her description. 
 " Oh, Mr. Billington," she said, " I feel very much 
 ashamed of myself; but will you excuse me for this 
 dance ? I have been dancing every round dance on the
 
 CHRISTCHURCH BALL. 
 
 49 
 
 card, and want to go in to supper. I will find 
 something later for you if I can." 
 
 Billington of Brasenose submitted with the best 
 grace he could, and Guy and Daisy went in to supper. 
 Before they had well begun it they had fallen into talk 
 on men and books, which pleased and interested them 
 both, and long after they had finished they lingered on 
 over the little table at which they were seated together, 
 all unconscious of the sunward flight of time. 
 
 VOL.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HERCULES AND OMPHALE. 
 
 It was full and brilliant morning^ when the last o'uests 
 at the Christchurch ball left the lights and the garlands 
 behind them, after the last visit to the tables, which 
 makes so pleasant a parting for the couples who have 
 been partnered in the closing galop. 
 
 With all her enjoyment of life, Daisy Fairlield was 
 a girl who took her pleasures soberly enough, and, 
 finding plenty for her hand to do wherever she went, 
 was little given to staying out any ball whatever. At 
 the Masonic festivity the night before, Bones and 
 Tompkins liad exerted all their fascinations in vain to 
 win her to their wishes in that respect, and had 
 appealed to Mrs. Pepperharrow to no purpose, Daisy 
 laughingly representing her as the flinty-hearted 
 chaperon who was not to be trifled with.
 
 HERCULES AND OMPHALE. 51 
 
 The soap-boiler's lady was indeed ideally qualified 
 for her post; for, like the Duke of Wellington and 
 others of the truly great, she could sleep how she 
 liked and when she liked, and yet be ready for 
 instant action if called \ipon, at any moment. She 
 had attained to a perfection in the art almost equal 
 to that of a celebrated advocate of late davs, who, 
 having only four hours of bed out of the twenty-four, 
 always went placidly to sleep while the opposino- 
 counsel was demolishing his arguments, no matter at 
 what length or with what natural aggravation of his 
 ferocity, and then, waking dii^ectly the voice ceased, 
 softly demolished Ixim. Mrs. Pepperharrow, too, was 
 ready to undertake unlimited journeys to the supper- 
 room to pass the time, was so good-naturedly responsive 
 in talk that she found plenty of elders willing to talk 
 with her, and took a genuine pleasure in watching 
 the enjoyments of the young people, particularly her 
 favourite Daisy. She would stand to her post till five 
 o'clock in the moruing if Daisy wished ; but quite as 
 readily accepted the responsibility of taking her home 
 early on receipt of the word of command. So she 
 assured Bones and Tompkins that Daisy and she had 
 
 had enough of it, and that Bones and Tompkins, whose 
 
 E 2 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILUUOii
 
 52 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 frank and cordial young ways had quite won her 
 accessible heart, must remember that she was not as 
 young as she had been. In vain Bones assured her that 
 he didn't believe a word of it, and Tompkins broke 
 down in unformed compliments about her beauty-sleep. 
 The young inseparables had to escort the two ladies to 
 their carriage, and then to console themselves with the 
 champagne and plover's eggs. 
 
 At the Christchurch ball, however, Daisy's rule was 
 broken through. I should be afraid to say how many 
 dances after that supper she and Guy danced together. 
 She was always superior to prejudice where she liked a 
 partner, and not afraid of being told that she had 
 exceeded the proper amount of dances with him. 
 
 - As for Mrs. PeiDperh arrow, her confidence in Daisy 
 was so entire, that she would as soon have questioned 
 her dear usband Ugh's knowledge of soaps. 
 
 Daisy Fairfield wrote down Faucit's name in so 
 many of those blanks, and for so many ''extras," that 
 something which was half a smile and half a blush 
 came over the fair face, when she conned over her card 
 with herself on waking in her lodgings in " the High " 
 after her sleep that morning. 
 
 Some few hours earlier than she, for he had braced
 
 HERCULES AXD OMPHALE. 53 
 
 himself for his day's work while the Daisy's petals were 
 still fast closed, Guy Faucit was making a similar studv 
 in the Balliol rooms. 
 
 "What a pretty woman," he thought to himself, 
 "and how full of life and of interest in evervthino-. 
 How lovely she looked in the morning light, which 
 seres and yellows nine-tenths of humanity after a dose 
 of the gas-fumes. With that daring but perfect viulet 
 broidery of leaves which wreathed her rich white dress 
 from the head to the foot, and made her look like a 
 sylvan goddess, she might have brought old Apelles 
 out of his grave. Gad ! if he could have painted that 
 superb tliroat of hers, set on her shoulders like a bit of 
 marble of Paros ! " 
 
 Something like these were the meditations of 
 Guy Faucit at his dressing-table ; and it must be 
 remembered in his excuse that Guy Faucit was a 
 classical scholar and a poet. He rolled about in his 
 bio- bath that mornino- with an extra zest, and whistled 
 to himself during the drying process as if he were 
 grooming a horse, and had a vague and general sense 
 of lightness of heart which was pleasant to his soul. 
 He paused for a long time between two buttons, 
 •recalling with considerable accuracy the tones of the
 
 54 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 last cordial good night and the pressure of the wann 
 hand, just marked enough to indicate the success of 
 the evening, which had passed as he put Daisy into 
 the carriage. 
 
 '' By Jove, what a voice ! " he said aloud, and with 
 convinced emphasis, finishing off the suspended button. 
 
 The even tenour of Faucit's collegiate way had been 
 suddenly and abruptly broken, though he was not of 
 the kind to admit or to know it yet. His breakfast 
 cleared away, he never did a better spell of work than 
 he did that morning. 
 
 There was a flower-show in the afternoon in the 
 gardens of Worcester College, once fabled to be so 
 remote from the centre of Oxford civilization as to 
 require a cab-journey to find it. Then the university 
 poet sang of the men who 
 
 TijXtTTopu) vaiovij'' tvi 'YcTTip*^, tijXoOi Trarpij? • 
 
 and another young academic bard, in one of the funniest 
 parodies ever written, ''Augustus Smalls of Boniface," 
 discoursed of the classic Balliol — 
 
 — whose tliird floor men descry, 
 The distant heights of Worcester 
 Fringing tlie western sky. 
 
 But the broad and fine street which runs by the Taylor-
 
 HERCULES AXD OMPHALE. 55 
 
 Buildings has dissipated the clouds of distance, and 
 the access to the Worcester festival was easy enough 
 when Daisy and Guy met again among the pleasant 
 glades of the college-garden, and listened to the 
 spirited music of the military band, reproducing in 
 an echo, perhaps, some of the dances of the night, 
 and makinor them shut their eves and fancv themselves 
 waltzing again. It is a wonderfully pleasant chapter 
 in vouuCT lives, that first mornino^-meetino^ after the 
 first ball, where the interest has been mutually aroused 
 and the sympathy pleasantly kindled. It was with a 
 sort of freemasonry that our hero and heroine — pass me 
 the good old-fashioned words, my reader — welcomed 
 each other in the garden. 
 
 " Shall you be at the Worcester flower-show to- 
 morrow ? " Guy had said the very last thing; and 
 Daisy had notified that she should, though it was not 
 till they had reached home that Mrs. Pepperharrow 
 received any intimation of the plan. 
 
 " But, my dear, I thought you said — " 
 
 " Never mind what I said, there*s a darling. I had 
 no idea how pleasant the flower-show was likely to be 
 till they told me." 
 
 " They " remained comfortably in the vague ; but
 
 56 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 good Mrs. Pepperharrow asked no questions and sug- 
 gested no difficulties, and was quite content to fall 
 in with Daisy's change of mind. 
 
 They had been sitting in the gardens for some little 
 time, attended by some of the faithful henchmen who 
 were enrolled in their service for the week, before 
 Guy's tall figure made its appearance among the trees. 
 Daisy's eyes had made more than one rapid little 
 reconnoitre all round her during the intervals of talk 
 and music, and contracted, perhaps, just a shade of 
 impatience and uncertainty, Avhen her quick glance 
 detected it coming. She saw Guy in a moment, and 
 saw too, in another moment, that he on his side had 
 seen her, and was making his way towards her group 
 with that studied air of indifference and accident which 
 is invariably worn on such occasions, and suggests so 
 strongly either the primitive deceit of man's heart, or 
 the debasing effects of a hypocritical civilization. He 
 shook hands with one friend, nodded to another, 
 accounted for his presence at the flower-show by the 
 state of the weather, tlie attractions of scientific horti- 
 culture (he didn't know a rose from an oak, except by 
 right of his instinctive love of Nature), an '* off-day" 
 with the crew, in fact, upon various mutually destructive
 
 HERCULES AND OMPHALE. 57 
 
 pleas. He was the most truthful of mankind, and told 
 as many falsehoods before he reached Daisy's side as it 
 cost him minutes to get there. If love laus^hs at the 
 perjuries of lovers to each other, he must find in their 
 little fibs to third persons a perfect storehouse of fun. 
 As for Daisy, she felt most becomingly and unreason- 
 ably pleased, and even then was half inclined to take 
 herself to task for feeling so. But the truth is that, 
 before Guy's appearance at the ball, — where she had, 
 on the strength of that one look upon the river-bank, 
 vaguely expected to see him until she gave it up as 
 too late, — she had extracted from the innocent and 
 willing Bones a few leading and interesting particulars 
 about ''Faucit the other." Faucit Telamon, Gosling 
 called him, in distinction from P. W., who figured 
 in his dictionary as Faucit Oileus, or the oily one. 
 Gosling's acquaintance with Daisy Fairfield, however, 
 was to be a thing of later date than Oxford days. 
 Though he was a Balliol man, and proud of his cox- 
 ship, most of his mates and pleasures were to be found 
 at Christchurch, which was the foster-mother of most of 
 the Gosling family, and numbered his elder brother, the 
 Viscount Gander, among her nurselings at the time. 
 Jemmy was indeed sent to Balliol to keep him out of
 
 53 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 his elder's heir-apparentish influence, and out of respect 
 to a family tradition, which credited him with com- 
 parative brains. His successful matriculation at Balliol 
 was long remembered in the records of the race, and 
 justly set off against the various "ploughs" which 
 rather roughed his subsequent career, till the heroic 
 efforts of Faucit, who took a fancy to the boy, '' pulled 
 liim through" the last struggle, and entitled him to all 
 the honours of B. Adorn. 
 
 But the Honourable Jem has landed us in a 
 digression. We are indebted for it to Bones, who 
 bore to Gosling the astonishing generic likeness which 
 characterizes a certain class of ingenuous youth, and 
 sets an aj^parent limit even on the creative powers of 
 Nature. It is as if she had to turn out a certain 
 number of industrial products every year, and, having 
 to break her best dies when once used for moulding, 
 keeps her common ones constantly at hand. Bones 
 described Faucit to Daisy just as Gosling would have 
 done it, with the same enthusiasm and in the same 
 vernacular, which is more descriptive than eloquence. 
 How completely Faucit had taken his beloved college 
 to wife, with her laurels for a dowry, and was certain 
 to be master of Balliol some day or another; how
 
 HERCULES AXD OMPHALE. 59 
 
 he had once proposed to read for the bar, but had 
 been persuaded by the other dons to stick to his 
 Oxford work, where he was the means of colonizing 
 lialf the university with fellows from Balliol, and keep- 
 incj her a;lories fresh in the schools and on the river ; 
 how he managed the college as he liked with that 
 strong^ will of his, and had done so in his undero-raduate 
 days, when he was an autocrat at the college-meetings ; 
 how vainly, when the sceptre left his hand, that ass 
 Spooner and others had fought for it, with results 
 approaching to intestine anarchy ; how devoted he was 
 to his old mother, who had a small income of her own, 
 but was indebted to Guy's work for her home and most 
 of her comforts ; how impervious he was to feminine 
 attractions, though all women liked him for his nice 
 and pleasant manners with them ; and how the uni- 
 versal tongue of rumour wagged at him for a bachelor 
 foredoomed; — all these particulars and more, with a 
 sort of '' He's a jolly good fellow " refrain pervading 
 his ditty, did Bones of Balliol confide in choice recita- 
 tive to Daisy Fairfield's ear. As became his age, he was 
 quite unsuspecting, and attributed entirely to his own 
 eloquence the welcome apparition of Guy Faucit at the 
 ball. Well-pleased was he that Daisy should, as he
 
 6o FAUCIT OF BALLIOL, 
 
 expressed it to his familiars, "cotton right off" to his 
 favourite hero ; and when, after they had gone in to 
 supper together, he came to claim his dance and saw 
 them deeply engaged in each other's talk, he retired 
 with a discretion beyond his years, and apologized to 
 Daisy for his desertion afterwards on the transparent 
 ground that he could not find her, lest she should be 
 disturbed in mind at his neglect. With the prologue 
 supplied thus liberally by Bones, Daisy, at the end of 
 the Christchurch ball, knew a great deal of Faucit's 
 story and character, and was free to weave herself 
 some pleasant fancies in guessing at more. ■ 
 
 There was no disenchantment on either side in 
 the Worcester Gardens, as there sometimes is in these 
 episodes of ball-room romance. For in truth here was 
 a pair ideally fitted, in all the circumstance of glorious 
 youth, of kindred tastes and sympathies, and of out- 
 ward semblance, to repeat the time-honoured process 
 of falling in love. 
 
 "You at a flower-show, Mr. Faucit, as well as at 
 a ball ! '.' said Daisy, when he had installed himself at 
 her side after the first smiling welcome. " 1 shall 
 besfin to disbelieve altoo^ether the stories I have heard 
 of your severe life."
 
 HERCULES AXD OMPHALE. 6i 
 
 '' I don't think there is much severity about it, Miss 
 Fairfield," he answered. " Perhaps it's because I'm 
 so fond of pleasure that I don't look for it at places 
 where I don't enjoy myself. That sounds more like 
 being selfish than severe, doesn't it ? " 
 
 ''How lucky you are in being able to take your 
 pleasures as you like them. A woman's are all mapped 
 out for her, and some of the maps are very badly done. 
 But I think we have an advantage over you. We 
 don't always want to be ' doing,' as the stronger among 
 you do. We can shut our eyes and enjov such a 
 summer day as this, with the flowers and the music, 
 without very much asking why." 
 
 "And do you think I can't?" said Faucit. ''I 
 think if I might light a pipe under the trees here, 
 put on my oldest shooting-coat, and look at all the 
 pretty women without being asked to talk, 1 could 
 like a flower-show as well as anybody. It is because 
 we always are expected to do something in places 
 where there's absolutely nothing to be done, that I 
 don't profess much love for this sort of thing." 
 
 "Well, you needn't talk to me if you don't wish." 
 . "That's another thing." 
 
 "Is it ? " she said, innocently. '' Why ? As far as
 
 62 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 I am concerned, if you won't be alarmed at the con- 
 fession, I would even permit the pipe." 
 
 " Miss Fairfield ! you don't know what you're 
 saying. The idea of a don smoking in a college 
 garden! [,Why, we should have half the under- 
 graduates taking fire, and doing the same." 
 
 " And why shouldn't they ? " 
 
 " I can't imagine." 
 
 They laughed pleasantly together. They felt 
 amazingly content with the world and with them- 
 selves, and were in the mood to laugh at very little. 
 
 '' Nothing is so terrible to humanity, Mr. Faucit, 
 as a vague fear of consequence. If all the under- 
 graduates smoked, what would happen ? " 
 
 " Judging from the effect upon myself, there would 
 be much less noise. But the result of such a crime 
 would be something like that of being named in 
 the House of Commons — known only to Providence. 
 Mrs. Pepperharrow, what is your opinion of tobacco- 
 smoking ? " 
 
 History must not fail to record the material fact, 
 that Faucit had been duly presented at the ball 
 to Daisy's guardian, and had impressed her very 
 favourably. She was no doubt apt to be favourably
 
 HERCULES AXD OMPHALE. 63 
 
 impressed, but on tliis ' occasiun the impression was 
 more marked than usual. Perhaps there may have 
 been some expenditure of pains on Faucit's part in 
 producing the resuh. He was not a man who often 
 failed to please, when he wished it and tried. 
 
 " He is a most remarkable young man, my dear/"' 
 she had said to Daisy when they were going to bed : 
 " quite what one has the right to expect in these alls 
 of learning. It's rather awful to think of what e'il 
 know if he lives to be seventy. But then I suppose 
 he won't. I've heard these scholars always wear them- 
 selves out vouno-." 
 
 " I hope he won't do that, dear Mrs. Pepper- 
 harrow,^' Daisy had answered. " I don't think he 
 looks much like it at present." 
 
 ''Xo; but it's deceptive. Heart disease always 
 makes a man look big, like my poor dear husband. 
 Then, to be sure, Ugh does eat a good deal; so it 
 may keep is strength up." 
 
 Mrs. Pepperhan'ow was well content to let Guv 
 and Daisy talk and improve acquaintance at her side 
 without interfering in the dialogue. Happy and many- 
 coloured groups passed and repassed them, with the 
 lazy interchange of looks and comments of those whu
 
 64 FAUCIT OF DALLIOL. 
 
 come to see and be seen. Personally appealed to 
 on the merits of tobacco, Mrs. Pepperliarrow had her 
 opinions ready for active service. 
 
 "I think it's a nasty abit myself, Mr. Faucit," 
 she said, " and I wonder at the young men liking it 
 as they do. The way it makes curtains smell is some- 
 times very bad. I ave never felt so sorry as I ought 
 for their cutting off poor Sir Walter Ealeigh's head ; 
 though indeed as he invented potatoes as well as 
 tobacco there's a good deal to be said for him." 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. Pepperliarrow, what an idea ! Will you 
 take us through the tents, Mr. Faucit ? I haven't 
 visited the show proper as yet." 
 
 " Certainly," answered the Oxonian. " It's always 
 the thing to be done at these places. Walk in at one 
 end of an intolerably stuffy tent, with a last lingering 
 look at the fresh air outside ; pretend to admire Prize 
 1 and Prize 2 in flow^ers and fruit, which look like 
 unhealthy specimens of their race, with livers arti- 
 ficially enlarged like Strasburg geese; speculate why 
 Prize 2 didn't get Prize 1, to argue knowledge; 'melt 
 at a peach, and rapture at a rose ; ' and so out again 
 at the other end, followed by the next batch, like the 
 visitors in the Tower of London. I warn you that
 
 HERCULES AND OMPHALE. 65 , 
 
 I know absolutely nothing of flowers, Miss Fairfield, 
 and that I shall be delighted to escort you." 
 
 " If you discourse in that way, Mr. Faucit," an- 
 swered Daisy, " it will be better than several lectures 
 on botany. The proper study of mankind is man, and 
 we can consider him in relation to flowers." 
 
 " So clever of you to talk like that," sighed Mrs. 
 Pepperharrow, as the three entered bravely on the 
 ordeal of the tent together. 
 
 The appearance of her friend Dr. Parley, who was 
 a man compact of science, and his ready offer to guide 
 her through the maze, came opportunely enough to 
 leave the young couple to their own devices, to wander 
 on their way upon the path of flowers. The doctor was 
 a floral enthusiast, and expatiated to Mrs. Pepperharrow 
 upon the forms of development before them, in good 
 Latin words as lonor as Jem Goslino^'s historic stumblincr- 
 blocks, listened to with admiring reverence, which cul- 
 minated at the end in '' So clever of you to talk like 
 that. I am sure I shall understand the Latin language 
 better than I ever did before. I ad no idea that the 
 Latins had so many flowers in their time." 
 
 Guy and Daisy, meanwhile, looked at the flowers 
 or passed them over in a very hap-hazard way, neither 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 of them affecting an interest they did not feel, but 
 finding more and more how many subjects of talk 
 they had in common. To their fresh-air natures, the 
 poor imprisoned plants had something of the effect 
 that the hapless eagles in the Zoological Gardens have 
 upon the observer^s mind in certain moods, producing 
 a lonscino^ to unbar the cell and let them out, under 
 the influence of the look of '' heimweh " in their 
 dulled eyes, turned upon the free sky spread so tempt- 
 ingly over them. The show flowers in tents are always 
 dreadful, flower-shows having long been what every- 
 thing is now-a-days, mere social pretexts — pretexts for 
 things good enough in their way, but apt to divert 
 and to spoil a good many healthy interests. 
 
 To the genuine cricket-mind, for instance, the Eton 
 and Harrow match of the day is but a sorry substitute 
 for the old fights of the public-school week, which 
 meant cricket and business, instead of fashion and 
 champagne. In the middle of carriages six feet deep, 
 and the small fire of remarks about anything but 
 cricket, innocent of the difference between point and 
 long-stop, and showing no personal interest in either 
 side, the mind reverts regretfully to the days of the 
 * chaffing-gallery,' and enthusiastic sisters who knew
 
 HERCULES AND OMPHALE. 67 
 
 as much about cricket as the boys. It is a pretty 
 show, now : but one of many. 
 
 Flower-shows, however, were always privileged fol- 
 lies, and the exhibitions at Oxford were a decree more 
 depressing, from the floral point of view, than their 
 neighbours. Except- by the hideous tradition of the 
 Temple chrysanthemums, which coincides with such 
 satiric mockery with the opening of the legal year, 
 and the condemnation of unlucky suitors to a course 
 of Westminster air, they have not been often matched 
 in that way. Little enough of their influence, however, 
 seemed to fall dispiritingly upon Daisy and Gay. 
 
 "Would you really like to see my rooms ? " he was 
 asking her when they came out of the tent, where, 
 notwithstanding his description of it, they had been 
 going the rounds for an unconscionable time. 
 
 "I should indeed, and very much. The under- 
 graduates have been very pleasant and hospitable to 
 us ; but, except Mrs. *Pepperharrow's friend, Dr. Parley, 
 we have seen nothing of the inner life of a don. 
 You have no idea what dangrerous theories I migrht 
 have formed of the class if I had not met you. I 
 shall never allow now that a don can't dance." 
 
 " I wish that I had had the chance of meeting 
 
 F 2
 
 68 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 you at the Masonic ball. But, at all events, I must 
 try to disperse your dangerous theories as much as I 
 can, for the credit of my race. Do you go back to 
 •town the day after to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Yes, in the morning." 
 
 "Are you engaged all to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Only to the concert in the evening, and at the 
 theatre in the morning, you know." 
 
 " Oh, yes, the -event of the Commemoration, where 
 you will see the degrees given, and hear the under- 
 graduates in their glory. I wonder what sort of 
 theories you will form of that part of our community 
 upon the occasion. Can't you come to luncheon with 
 me afterwards ? I think I can promise a don or 
 two whom you will really like to meet." 
 
 "I'm sure I shall. But I must ask Mrs. Pepper- 
 harrow. — Mrs. Pepperharrow, Mr. Faucit has kindly 
 asked us to have luncheon at his rooms to-morrow, after 
 the theatre." 
 
 " Where, if you will allow me, Mrs. Pepperharrow," 
 said Guy, " I shall be able to point you out all the 
 celebrities, and translate some of the Latin." 
 
 " So kind of you, Mr. Faucit," answered the worthy 
 lady, resuming her charge. " I've been earing a
 
 HERCULES AND OMPHALE. 69 
 
 great deal of Latin in the tents, and perhaps I shall 
 know some of it again. But we shall be giving you 
 a trreat deal of trouble in comingr to luncheon." 
 
 " None at all. Our bachelor rooms have such a 
 treat so seldom, that it does them real good. Will 
 you come ? " 
 
 The chaperon agreed without further pressing, and 
 the arrangement was made. They came out of the 
 gates of Worcester together, and Guy Faucit took his 
 leave, bent upon his duties to the Balliol crew. Daisy 
 Fairfield had seldom looked prettier than she did at 
 the rather formal dinner which Dr. Parley gave that 
 night; but, from what cause deponent sayeth not, she 
 had been seldom more silent or more abstracted.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OXONIANA. 
 
 The proceedings in tlie Oxford theatre, supposed to be 
 the central fact of the Commemoration week, impressed 
 Daisy Fairfield with an unfeigned and ill-pleased won- 
 der, and supplied her with the materials for a searching 
 cross-examination of Faucit, who had stationed himself 
 at her elbow, which he found very difficult of answer. 
 Why, on this of all days in the year, the dignified uni- 
 versity should turn itself into a common bear-garden, 
 allow its own elected officers to be officially pilloried 
 by the universal hiss of public scorn, for nothing 
 particular except doing what they were appointed to 
 do ; * specially invite famous authors, famous soldiers, 
 famous statesmen and diplomatists, to receive their 
 
 * I am delighted to hopetliat this is a thing of the past ; and 
 to see that the Vice-Chancellor of the day feels as if the under- 
 graduates were ' his own children."
 
 OXONIAN A, 71 
 
 honours in an inexplicable dumb-show and noise, 
 and to hear there the names of favourite heroes and 
 leaders, perhaps, proposed for general execration; 
 expose ladies and young girls to a fire of very imper- 
 tinent and unseemly banter, and in more than one 
 instance to considerable fright; — and all this for the 
 behoof of a gang of juvenile rowdies, resembling a 
 boxing-night sixpenny gallery in everything but the 
 wit and the musical ear — will perhaps puzzle the 
 future historian of English manners as much as it 
 puzzled Daisy Fairfield. That young lady detected 
 the beaming countenance of Bones in the front row of 
 the rioters, evidently in a state of profound satisfaction 
 with himself and the whole scene, and gravely ignored 
 the condescending efiforts which he was making to 
 attract her notice. She ''had it out with him^' 
 afterwards, as he expressed himself, in a manner which 
 '' made a man feel himself quite small, you know.'' 
 
 " Three cheers for the ladies in dark-blue " was 
 the cry most in favour in that day's gallery, led by 
 choragus Bones, and suggested to his original mind by 
 the rich deejD-hued dress which Daisy wore in honour 
 of her hostess-city, with a soft lace ruff for boundary- 
 line to unite it with the graceful throat. She felt
 
 72 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 anything but comfortable under the salutation, which 
 she quite understood to be intended mainly for her, as 
 representative of the class apostrophized, and shrank 
 into her shell as much as she could. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Faucit, how very rude and noisy ! I shall 
 be glad to get away." 
 
 "It's abominable," answered Faucit, thoroughly 
 vexed. " I can't think why on earth this sort of thing 
 isn't put a stop to. It goes from bad to worse every 
 year, and will end in putting a stop to Commemora- 
 tion altogether." 
 
 *'If they said any single thing worth hearing, 
 or that one could laugh at," she said, "one wouldn't 
 so much mind. But they're dull enough to be 
 respectable 1 " And a discordant, many-throated howl 
 went up, as a figure in cap and gown came into 
 the hall. 
 
 "Yah! yah! yah!" like the shouts of some 
 fictitious semi-human breed in a fancy of Dean Swift's. 
 
 "Who's that unhappy man, and what has he 
 done ? " 
 
 "That's the proctor; and he is a very good fellow, 
 who has done no harm to anybody." 
 
 "Oh, P. W.?"
 
 OXOAVAXA. 73 
 
 " No, that was last year. Who on earth told you 
 about P. W. ?" 
 
 " Mr. Bones, who is actively engaged in denounc- 
 ing P. W/s successor, and trying to catch my eye, 
 which is not to be caught." 
 
 " The young scamp," said Guy; "he's there, is he ? 
 I'll give him a talking to afterwards." 
 
 " Oh, don't say I told you. And I suppose one 
 oughtn't to mind ; youth will have its fling," added 
 this experienced worldling. 
 
 " It needn't have its fling at other people." 
 
 Suddenly the howls swelled and gathered into one 
 stupendous yell. 
 
 " Yah ! yah ! yah ! Take it off ! take it off ! " 
 
 " Good gracious, what is it now ? " 
 
 ** Vir doctissime et reverendissime." 
 
 "Who's that?" 
 
 " That's the public orator reading something in 
 Latin." 
 
 " Yah ! yah ! yah 1 The man in the straw hat ! " 
 
 " Yah ! yah ! yah ! Take it off ! take it off ! " 
 
 " Three cheers for the ladies in dark blue ! Hip ! " 
 But the diversion was vain, and succeeded no further 
 than the first hip.
 
 74 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 ''Yah! the straw hat ! Take it off! turn him out!" 
 The storm gathered and arose ; proctors and un- 
 popular statesmen were forgotten ; the ladies in blue 
 and in green were set aside ; the face of the public 
 orator grew impatient and disgusted ; a distinguished 
 foreign ambassador who had come to be honoured 
 looked about him in blank and undisguised amaze- 
 ment ; the men of the Faucit type felt and showed 
 themselves thoroughly ashamed, and even the Boneses 
 in the gallery began to wish themselves away, while the 
 majority of its tenants felt themselves more and more 
 the heroes of the hour, and the guardians of public 
 decency and refinement. Many of the ladies looked 
 towards the door and meditated on the chances of retreat, 
 while Daisy's face flushed with disgust and anger. 
 
 " Dear me, Mr. Faucit ! " said Mrs. Pepperharrow. 
 " What are they a-goin' to do ? " 
 
 The poor lady fairly relapsed into a more primitive 
 stage than usual of her early English. 
 
 '' Nothing, Mrs. Pepperharrow,'* said Guy, re- 
 assuringly. "It will be over directly." 
 
 But the yahs arose. The solitary offender in the 
 straw hat, a well-bred and distinguished man of letters 
 who lived in retirement, and innocent of Oxford's
 
 OXONIA.\A. 75 
 
 jealousy for good manners was there by invitation, was 
 for a long time placidly unconscious of the cause of the 
 uproar. As it began to dawn on him, he frowned and 
 took root, and looked thoroughly determined and resent- 
 ful. But modesty and indignation mastered him as he 
 became the mark of all eyes, friendly and unfriendly, 
 and at last he beat a sudden retreat into the street, 
 whence he went straight to the station, and back to his 
 home, to be a foe to university education ever after, 
 and briefly to describe the youth of Oxford as "Brutes." 
 There he did them wrong ; but they were queer cattle 
 once a year, in my time. 
 
 A shout of triumph from the gallery followed the 
 fugitive ; and proudly conscious of having vindicated 
 the laws of breeding, the undergraduates, with trencher 
 caps in different degrees of dilapidation and unsightli- 
 ness, graciously permitted the proceedings to advance 
 to something like an intelligible close. The public 
 orator's well-turned attempts to frame the most modern 
 English sentiments in classic Latin were favourably, if 
 rather satirically, received; and the sonorous couplets 
 of the bard of Newdigate were hailed with an amount 
 of encouraging applause, due perhaps as much to the 
 re-appearance of the English tongue on the scene, as to
 
 76 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 the sentiments expressed. The general sense of relief 
 experienced at this crisis, even by the most accomplished 
 classic present, is apt to invest poetry of the Newdigate 
 type with a halo not its own. An imposing figure was 
 Pope-Scott of Christchurch in the rostrum that day, as 
 he declaimed the peroration of his work in decasyllabics 
 of a faultless caesura : — 
 
 " Majestic centre of enfranchised art, 
 Do in the wondering- world thy glorious part 1 
 For ever and for ever, though to-day 
 Man's short-lived fabrics melt for aye away; — 
 Though not to us be given the power to mould 
 The godlike forms and harmonies of old ; 
 Not ours the skill to bid the marbles don 
 The grace which erst the Parthenon put on, 
 And shape Athenae's arches as they rise, 
 Broad-based on careless Genius, to the skies ; 
 Not ours with master-hand and eye to trace 
 The bold proportions of the stone-girt space 
 Which mighty Caesar's * giant walls embrace ; 
 Though the deft voice of fair Pentelicus 
 Be in her sweeter secrets mute for us ; 
 Though lost the painter's and the sculptor's lore, 
 Yet still for ever (as I said before), 
 Thy name, fair city of the violet crown, 
 Shall travel on the wings of Memory down, 
 And live embalmed, until the death of Time, 
 Linked with all virtues, and a single crime." 
 
 * dc in M^.
 
 OXONIANA. 77 
 
 "Hear! hear!" and "Go it, Homer!" from the 
 gallery ; and " Where did you get that last line 
 from ? " from some freshman more audacious than the 
 rest, who was promptly snubbed and bonneted by his 
 neighbours. There was a well-pleased smile on the 
 faces of the groundlings, and as Pope-Scott bowed and 
 withdrew, to be escorted home with the honours by 
 admiring Christchurch friends, the select audience of 
 the somewhat mixed entertainment dispersed and 
 melted away. 
 
 "I certainly have heard something very like the 
 last line before," said Daisy. 
 
 " Pardon me," answered Guy, as he strolled with 
 her along Broad Street towards his rooms. "Byron 
 expressed an exactly opposite sentiment; and boldly 
 to improve by adaptation is one of the greatest arts 
 of poetry. Like his predecessor Goldsmith, Pope-Scott 
 touches nothing which he feels he does not adorn." 
 
 "Yes; but what does he mean by the single 
 crime ? " 
 
 "I can't imagine, and you shouldn't ask. Mystery 
 is the soul of peroration." 
 
 "Well, it was a good young poem, well delivered. 
 What city did he say it was about ?"
 
 78 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 " Athens. I .believe that the closing lines are 
 modified from one which he wrote last year on Rome, 
 when he ran second. You may infer it from the 
 reference to Csesar's walls, obviously left by an over- 
 sight on the part of the poet and the examiners. What 
 part of the poem did you like best ? " 
 
 "The touch of nature implied in the simple 
 expression, ' As I said before.' It went straight to the 
 lieart." 
 
 Daisy's face was rippling with little smiles as the 
 two indulged in these grave comments. 
 
 " You are quite a critic," said the other as gravely, 
 "and have every qualification to call yourself 'we.' 
 Yes ; you are right. Artistic Bathos is an essential 
 in a Newdigate poem, and is in this instance handled 
 with a master-touch. Pope-Scott has written many 
 lines which should live by his use of it. In a prize 
 poem of his at Cheltenham, upon a distinguished Irish 
 soldier (Pope-Scott is, I believe, a native of that 
 imaginative country), occurs this celebrated couplet, 
 the climax of a fervid description of the hero's 
 honours — 
 
 ' He on the Curragh, so report prevails, 
 Has stood parudc-groimd with the Prince of Wales.' "
 
 OXOXIAA'A. 79 
 
 Daisy broke into a happy and delighted laugh, 
 and fairly clapped her hands. " Oh, what a delicious 
 poet ! Why haven't I met him ? " 
 
 '' It might have been too much for you. To go 
 back into the prosaic world of London, after such a 
 glimpse of the Muses as a poet's society would have 
 given you, would have been too much of a disenchant- 
 ment. I hope his pentameters will leave a pleasanter 
 recollection than the howls in the gallery." 
 
 " I didn't like that. Why do you dons permit it ? " 
 " We shan't for long, I hope. But nothing in 
 England is so dangerous an enemy as a vested interest, 
 however odious to everybody. This has been a sort 
 of Guy Fawkes day with undergraduates from time 
 immemorial, to let the steam off." 
 
 *' I should make them consume their own steam, by 
 act of convocation." 
 
 "I don't know. Boys will be boys." 
 " Then why do they call themselves men ? " 
 "Yourlos^ic, Miss Fairfield," said Guv, "is becom- 
 ing hard to argue with. Luckily for me, here we are 
 at the foot of my staircase. Will you come up ? " 
 
 Daisy Fairfield and Mrs. Pepperharrow were soon 
 installed in the comfortable rooms on the first floor.
 
 8o FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 overlooking the green inner quadrangle of the college 
 of the first Balliol and Devorguilla his wife, and the 
 enclosure of their next neighbour Trinity beyond, 
 divided by the party-wall over which adventurous but 
 gated spirits in the two colleges had once established 
 a mutual right of way. The imprisoned Balliol man 
 would make his escape, by means of climbing this wall, 
 through the gate of Trinity ; while his Trinity brother 
 could as conveniently reverse the process, raising no 
 suspicion in the minds of the deceived college-porters. 
 Tompkins and Bones had pursued the unhallowed sport 
 for some time ; and it was while they were taking their 
 walks abroad together, both under sentence of gates, 
 under this convenient ad eundem arrangement, that 
 they had fallen into the hands of P. W., who had 
 been the author of the conviction. This discovery 
 leading to inquiry, the illegal traffic was exposed and 
 suppressed. Hence much of the Homeric wrath which 
 burned in the bosoms of Tompkins and Bones, who had 
 both suffered from a brief rustication in consequence. 
 Quietly enough the old quadrangle slept in the sun- 
 light that day, as the little party went through. A 
 few undergraduates were scattered about it, a knot 
 of them engaged in a game of bowls upon the smooth
 
 OXOJWAXA. 8 1 
 
 stretch of turf — for in those days lawn-tennis had not 
 descended, like the Colorado beetle, upon all the green 
 spots of English earth. The college-scouts, a worthy 
 race of men apart, Avho seem to have brought into 
 their line of life a distinct academic flavour, and look 
 as if they had a second-hand acquaintance with Plato 
 and Aristotle, w^ere carrying their masters' luncheons 
 to their respective rooms, under those flat-topped covers 
 which are as peculiar to the soil as the mortar-board 
 caps; and the whole scene, even though the unusual 
 presence of more than one bonny lass enlivened it to-day, 
 had that strano-e out-of-the-world flavour which belonos 
 
 o o 
 
 to the enclosures of colleges, and perhaps to no other 
 place, not monastic, since the Thames embankment 
 edged itself in between the Temple and the river. 
 
 In old days, w^hen the hum of work was hushed, 
 and the resident Templars were wandering back to 
 chambers from their clubs and coflfee-houses, the same 
 feeling was yet more strongly in the air over the 
 green gardens, w^ater-lapped, which stretched at the foot 
 of Paper Buildings and of Garden Court. 
 
 A small party of men were soon assembled in 
 honour of Faucit's two visitors. They were men well 
 chosen, wdiose talk gave Daisy genuine pleasure, and a 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 glimpse into the more anient spirit of earnest university 
 life. They were old pnpils of Faucit, or men of his 
 standing ; and it was clear that among them Faucit was 
 an acknowledged leader, which gave the young lady secret 
 satisfaction. For they were all well worth listening 
 to, had conquered their fellowships in various colleges 
 of Oxford, and talked and thought in a style ver}^ dif- 
 ferent from good old Dr. Parley's friends an.l guests. 
 All were impregnated with the young reforming spirit 
 which was springing up everywhere — treated Oxford 
 politics as part of the scheme of the world outside 
 rather than narrowed them in any academic sense, 
 and on some matters, perhaps, were apt to speculate 
 more freely and openly than University traditions 
 might be supposed to sanction. But there was nothing 
 said to shock Daisy, though a little to open her eyes ; 
 and indeed Faucit himself, though as broad in his 
 churchmanship as in other matters, never cared to 
 encourage some lines of thought in his company. He 
 was known to have commended Gosling's jorimitive 
 views on theology, rather than those of more enquiring 
 minds. 
 
 " I am told," that youth had said, ''that Science and 
 the Pentateuch don't hit it off. But I don't interfere
 
 OXOAVAXA. 83 
 
 with that myself, and leave them to settle it between 
 themselves." 
 
 Daisy's own love of reading delighted her with 
 Faucit's library ; and Elia the gentle, and Landor the 
 poetic, gave a pleasant conversational sauce to the 
 dainties on the table. Then an inspection of the pic- 
 tures led to a welcome interchange of art-talk, in which 
 attractive field of discussion most of the men were more 
 or less at home. Daisy herself was deeply imbued with 
 the genuine love of picture-lore, which is a part of the 
 furniture of all imaginative minds, though her travels 
 in picture-land abroad were so far bounded by the 
 Louvre and Dresden, where she had spent some weeks 
 the summer before, while still in her chrysalis condition. 
 
 " No bad beginning. Miss Fairfield," said Guy ; 
 " and no bad beginning and end either, if one wants a 
 deep draught of one spring. I have seen my galleries 
 pretty thoroughly, and that San Sisto picture has no 
 rival for me anywhere." 
 
 " I cannot fancy it surpassed, Mr. Faucit," she said. 
 
 " I used to go to the gallery morning after morning ; 
 
 and tempting as my Battonis and Correggios were, I 
 
 couldn't help spending half my time upon one of the 
 
 settees before it, all alone in its grandeur, and worship- 
 
 G 2
 
 84 ' FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 ping like a votary. It was more worship than anything 
 else/' 
 
 " You were not far wrong there. I never can 
 forgive the Dresdeners for giving those Holbeins a 
 similar post of honour. They are no more to be 
 compared to it than a batch of sign-boards, clever as 
 they are." 
 
 " Those eternal'copyists are still harder to forgive, I 
 tliink ; preventing you from getting a proper view of 
 the pictures, and, in spite of yourself, attracting your 
 eyes from the originals to those dreadful daubs of theirs, 
 though I dare say they are very good in their way. 
 This engraving of yours is a wonderfully .fine one. Is 
 there any picture in the world, but that, with that 
 wonder in the eyes ? " 
 
 " Only one that I know — the.Foligno Madonna at 
 the Vatican. And there one misses the child, whose 
 look is more startling than the mother's. The mother 
 looks as if she . were afraid of the child, with all her 
 tenderness towards it ; but the child looks as if he were 
 fearful of himself, and the strange child-knowledge he 
 must have had of what he was." 
 
 " Yes ; it is a glorious picture. I should like to see 
 the Foligno.'*
 
 OXOXIAXA. 85 
 
 " Rome is a treasure-house to come ; but to me that 
 is its best treasure. I never can care, in comparison, 
 for the more famous ' Annunciation ' in the same room 
 with it. It is noble and beautiful enousih ; but that 
 incredible divinity lives, to me, in those two other 
 Raphaels alone. By right of those two pictures, 
 Raphael has it all his own way, to my mind, as much 
 as Shakespeare among the playwrights." 
 
 "Yes ; but still I love my Titian." 
 
 '"Ah, so do I. And when you meet him at Venice 
 you'll love him more." 
 
 The art-talk ran pleasantly on, transporting the 
 talkers to many lands in turn, as better than any talk 
 it can. The beggars of Murillo and the cavaliers of 
 Velasquez introduced them to the patios of Seville, and 
 the rich art-beauties of the empress of cathedrals, with 
 the cabinet studies of nature, which may be seen in the 
 bright-coloured streets through any of her half-opened 
 doors. Then, by a natural transition, the stately 
 fane of Toledo, with the surroundings of that half- 
 dead and depopulated city of the past, and the grim 
 solitude of the chill Escurial church, fit nurse for 
 Philip's bigotry of blood-thirstiness, were discussed by 
 travellers who had had eyes to see, and kindled a
 
 86 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 longing for wider-wanderings in Daisy Fairfield's re- 
 ceptive mind. 
 
 Guy Faucit, perliaps, tliought how pleasant it 
 would be to be her guide among all these wonders, 
 afloat in a Venetian gondola, or afield in a Yalencian 
 tartana, through scenes where tourists vulgarize in vain. 
 He fought his traveller's battles over again, inspired by 
 his listener's interest ; shivered over a Madrid charcoal- 
 stove in an inclement September, warmed in his great- 
 coat, and racked with a headache afterwards ; he 
 escaped from being boiled alive in Lucerne, to be 
 frozen in a sudden hailstorm on the top of Pilatus, 
 and so brought upon the scene two of his companions 
 who were enthusiastic mountaineers, and could initiate 
 Daisy into some of the deep mysteries of higher climb- 
 ing, at which Faucit confessed himself no adept. Like 
 all true philosophers, he had for his princiiDle live and 
 let live, and saw no objection to men doing these things 
 "if it amused them ;'" but how or why it did, baffled 
 him except from the philosophic standpoint. He 
 expressed the view mildly enough to Longshanks of 
 New, of peaks and passes celebrity ; but Longshanks 
 was ready for him. 
 
 " Faucit sees nothing in Alp-climbing, Miss Fairfield,
 
 OXONIAN A. 87 
 
 because lie hasn't given it a fair trial, and wasn't 
 bitten at starting. And here am I ^\'ho can see nothing 
 in boating, or conceive what pleasure a man can find in 
 turning his back to do his work, fixing another man's 
 flannel shirt for his entire object of vision, and convert- 
 ing himself into a mechanical pendulum. So our odd 
 world goes round. We like our likes with all our 
 might, and see nothing in what other men like. Then, 
 unless we discipline our minds, we get angry with 
 them for liking what we don't, proceed to argue them 
 out of it by fair means, and foul afterwards, and so 
 cause persecutions, religious and political, all because 
 everybody ought to agree with us. Here's your health, 
 Faucit, and thanks for a very pleasant luncheon." 
 
 "With mine in return," laughed the host, "for 
 such a complete edition in little of Longshanks's phi- 
 losophy of history. I have known greater men say 
 less in more words. And I am sure that Mrs. 
 Pepperharrow agrees with me." 
 
 " That indeed I do," said the worthy My ; " and I 
 ave enjoyed listening to you all very much. As for 
 the old masters you've been talking of, I think they're 
 quite perfect, and I'm always wanting my husband to 
 buy them. But e says the new masters are what e
 
 88 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 understands better, and they ought to be encouraged 
 because they're alive." 
 
 "That's philosophy quite as good as Longshanks's, 
 and of great value to many worthy men," said Faucit. 
 
 The luncheon was over and the party broke lazily 
 up, not the least successful of the parties of that Com- 
 memoration. To two of them, at all events, it was a 
 very great success. Faucit, a capital host at all times, 
 had never been a better one than that day. Though 
 essentially a "man's man," he never, like many of his 
 kind, showed to better advantage than with ladies, for 
 he had for them much of that instinctive deference and 
 old-world courtesy whose decay Charles Lamb so feel- 
 ingly deplores. He never gave up his own style of 
 thought and talk in order to fall in with their supposed 
 love of other subjects than men's ; but, on the other 
 hand, he never "talked down" to them by translating 
 himself into another language, as if he were dealing 
 with a different race, after the fashion of some popular 
 orators when addressing an audience of working men. 
 I doubt if any affectation on earth, though the result 
 of mere want of tact, is more intensely provoking to 
 those addressed, or those in sympathy with them. 
 
 With Mrs. Pepperharrow Guy established himself
 
 OXONIAXA. 89 
 
 that day as a favourite ; and as for Daisy, he never had 
 a more sympathetic listener or a more well-pleased 
 guest. 
 
 Fast, fast, fast, the meshes of the net closed round 
 those two; and when Guy parted with his guests at 
 the gate, to go back and meditate over a sociable pipe 
 with Longshanks, an old pupil who wanted some advice 
 upon some question of New College municipal pohtics, 
 it was with an understanding that he meant to be 
 at the concert in the evening. He was there ; and 
 there again the pair took up their parable, over 
 whose earlier stage of development there is no further 
 need to dwell. 
 
 For some reason not to be defined, Daisy carried 
 away quite a lofty impression of the knowledge of 
 musical art possessed by the undergraduates of Oxford ; 
 and Guy himself was astonished at the effect produced 
 upon him by Ponder' s performance of " Oh, ruddier 
 than the cherry," and Piper's declamation of "'Twas 
 in Trafalgar's Bay." He even wrote an eulogistic 
 article on Oxford music for the ' Saturday Review ' ; but 
 it had the rare fate of being returned, with all apolo- 
 gies, by the editor, who thought that Mr. Faucit must 
 have allowed himself to be carried awav, and said that
 
 90 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 his musical critic Avas unable to approve of the senti- 
 ments expressed. 
 
 The next morning^ — mirahile dictu ! — Faucit mi^ht 
 be seen at the station, seeing the ladies off, and 
 accepting a warm invitation to call in town, that Miss 
 Fairfield's parents might thank him for all his kindness 
 and attention, to which she knew that really she had 
 no claim at all, she said. 
 
 " It was so very good of you," Daisy added, demurely, 
 **to waste so much of your time upon us." 
 
 " So very good," echoed the chaperon. 
 
 " I didn't waste a minute of it," Guy said. " My 
 work and my boat will both profit by the change. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 *' Good-bye." 
 
 It had been arranged that Guy was to start for the 
 English lakes with a reading party of yoimg pupils 
 immediately after the Oxford and Cambridge match 
 and the Henley Regatta, which followed the break-up 
 of the term. The pupils were astonished to find their 
 plan disarranged, and to be asked to postpone the 
 expedition for another month, to the close of the 
 London season. When season, reading-party, and long 
 vacation were all over, still more astonished and much
 
 OXOAVAA'A. 91 
 
 distressed was the Oxford world, and not his colleofe 
 alone, to learn that Faucit of Balliol, after six years of 
 tutorhood, and with an established Oxford position, had 
 made up his mind to leave the place and the life, and 
 to study in London for the common-law bar.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE IDYLL. 
 
 The chronicler of Guy Faucit and Daisy Fairfield uses 
 his privilege here, and skims rapidly over the next 
 scenes of their history. 
 
 It was the end of July before Daisy flitted to 
 Switzerland with her parents for her first visit to that 
 fairy playground ; and it was the end of July before 
 Faucit found himself installed in a cottage at the head 
 of Grasmere Lake, with some candidates for ''Greats" 
 assembled for a reading-party. A reading-bee, perhaps* 
 it is called now-a-days, as the dictionaries of Mark 
 Twain and Bret Harte tend more and more, alas ! to 
 the supersession of Johnson and Webster in the old 
 country. They were pleasant things, those reading- 
 parties, in the days when I, Balbus, friend and con- 
 temporary of Faucit, was of them. They differed much
 
 : THE IDYLL. 93 
 
 among themselves, for sometimes there was much 
 reading and sometimes there was none, which turned 
 more upon the character of the coach-in-office than 
 anything else. 
 
 There was no lack of work when Faucit was to 
 the fore. If after a short experience, and the few 
 days grace allowed for settling down, he made up 
 his mind that any one of the pupils, the while on 
 pleasure bent, was not of reading mind, he gave him 
 a gentle warning first, and then sent him about his 
 business. He liked his pupils to do him credit as well 
 as themselves, and would have no shirking ; so, be- 
 lieving that a little leaven leavens the whole lump, he 
 disposed of black sheep summarily. 
 
 Dear old boy ! how he comes before me as I think 
 of him. We were the firmest of allies, and had many 
 a literary taste in common. But my inveterate mis- 
 trust of literature, when veiled in the classic guise, 
 made a subject of chronic disagreement between us, 
 and any success I may since have had in life has been 
 in the teeth of his sombre prognostics. I shied at the 
 fascinations even of poetry when presented to me by 
 Greeks — 
 
 "Tiraui Danaos et dona ferentes,"
 
 94 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 and the last French play, novel, or political treatise — 
 the last I fear not the most — had greater charms for 
 me than I could -find in Plato. I wasted my time 
 systematically in what my father called heroic idleness 
 C'l do believe, Tom," he said to me once, "that if 
 your foot slipped out of the stirrup on horseback you 
 would prefer riding on like that to taking the trouble 
 to put it in again ") ; and yet, alive and merry at it 
 matters not what year, I cannot find that I am a whit 
 the worse of it, in " purse or person ; " but discover 
 that I work at congenial occupations, albeit in no 
 licensed profession, as hard as need be. 
 
 Well, well ; it is no easier to arrive at the expedi- 
 encies of life than it was in Solomon's time, in which 
 respects that worthy old gentleman acted as a kind of 
 moral "taster" to the universe. Years afterwards, 
 thriving on unlicensed occupations in spite of experi- 
 ence, morality, and everything else, I ventured to say 
 to the elder Mr. Balbus, himself a renowned and 
 capable classic, that the great advantage of a classical 
 education was this — you never regret having been idle. 
 He laughed at the joke, but resented tlje inference. 
 
 I am not writing of myself, however, and must not 
 forget that if my lovers — need I say, after the beginning,
 
 THE IDYLL. 95 
 
 Avhat lovers they were before tlieir month of frequent 
 London meetings was over ? — are to interest others in 
 their fortunes, that obtrusive Kttle vowel number three 
 should be kept as much as possible out of sight. 
 
 Guy Faucit's ideas on the classics, and, indeed, on 
 most matters, were more my father's than mine ; and 
 the magnificent energy with which he did everything 
 he put his hand to was part of the strong, sweet nature 
 of the man. Pupils of his could never fail to catch the 
 infection more or less, and the Grasmere days were not 
 soon forgotten by those who were with him there. 
 They were all honour-men except Jem Gosling, whom, 
 out of affectionate personal regard, Faucit admitted 
 into the company, as a sort of little dog in attendance, 
 giviiig him a special portion of his time in the even- 
 ings w^hile the others were grappling with the higher 
 Aristotelic problems, or learning from Thucydides — the 
 discovery, perhaps, to blossom later — how excessively 
 ill a man can write his own lano[uao;e, however beauti- 
 ful, and yet be famous. That eminent historian is a 
 perpetual encouragement to writers who can't write, 
 and Hves again, for the placid cynic, in many a modern 
 misleader of youth, in the ranks of the ' Nineteenth 
 Century ' or the ' Fortnightly Review
 
 96 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 Into the Grasmere Lake the party plunged in the 
 morning soon after seven, for the introductory swim 
 which was to brace them for the day. At eight, after 
 the short household prayers which Faucit would never 
 neglect — odd, men said, in that as in most things — they 
 tackled one of those Oxonian breakfasts which are the 
 memory and the despair of older digestions, and haunt 
 like Tantalic phantoms the ^gg and bacon of later 
 years, where the new Sangradism allows so much. 
 
 "Nothing I know," said Bones simply, on one 
 occasion, " so sharpens the appetite for breakfast as a 
 fried sole and a good bit of steak." 
 
 When the soles and the steaks and the porridge and 
 the marmalade had vanished, and the tea and coffee 
 had been corrected by the early beer, there were four 
 hours of steady work to be done. 
 
 Faucit was a passed master as a guide to the 
 classics, and would have made me like them if any one 
 could. But I never took kindly to any of the set 
 except Aristophanes, whose honest chuckle over every- 
 thing and everybody was amazingly to my taste. Why 
 doesn't our good friend W. S. Gilbert, quaintest in his 
 line of modern English humourists, take a hint from the 
 old fellow, and take up ' Demos ' again in his last new
 
 THE IDYLL. 97 
 
 dress ? I am fond of those old Greeks now, T don't 
 know why ; and perhaps I only wasn't then because I 
 was expected to be. We are a contrary lot we mortals, 
 and that's a fact. 
 
 But like them or lump them, it was a great sight 
 to see Faucit, with his hands deep in his trousers 
 pockets, and the short pipe clearing the mental at- 
 mosphere, walking up and down the little lake-room 
 expounding, while the pupils listened or took notes, 
 or asked and answered questions. He had the whole 
 thing at his fingers' ends, and could dress up Plato's 
 Republic improvisedly, in s}Tnpathetic and attractive 
 English of his own. At another time he could tell 
 anecdotes from Herodotus in a familiar style, quite 
 after the old gossip's manner; and even on the per- 
 plexing mysteries of Aristotle's Ethics he could throw 
 an original light, and moralize — as to me he often 
 did — on the dangers of the career of the apolaustic 
 man. If sometimes he attributed to the philosopher 
 deep meanings and purposes of which he must have 
 been entirely innocent, who shall blame him ? Do 
 not even the commentators of Shakespeare the same ? 
 
 Half-an-hour's " yard-cTricket " in the front of the 
 house, with the centre-piece of the door for a wicket, 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 and a tennis-ball to bowl with, and then the honest 
 early dinner, made the young students fit for their 
 afternoon of hill-work. Long stretches over the slopes 
 of Fairfield, or excursions into the smiling little district 
 of Eydal, pilgrimages to the valley of St. John, whose 
 grim serrated rocks seemed to the more imaginative 
 among them to wear the very shape and form which 
 once shone castle- wise, " in morning splendour full and 
 fair," before the eyes of the Knight of Triermain on 
 his love-quest — scenes where Faucit's loving knowledge 
 of his Scotts and Wordsworths made him as much at 
 home and as pleasant a companion as on earlier but 
 not more classic ground — filled out the long summer 
 afternoons till supper-time, and the two hours more of 
 work which followed before turning in. Varied some- 
 times by boating on the lakes, sometimes perhaps by 
 plunges into the pleasant circle of the local society, 
 where bright eyes were glad to welcome these cheery 
 young squires, and to beam their best on them 
 (Gosling had a special aptitude for making himself 
 acceptable to the owners of those eyes, whom he 
 generically classed as "Maries" from that hour) — 
 those Grasmere days ran -into weeks which left a 
 sunny memory behind them. Every now and again a
 
 THE IDYLL. 99 
 
 period of grace was allowed, when the more enquiring 
 spirits shouldered knapsacks, and started for a tramp 
 over passes and valleys, by rattling ''forces" and 
 smiling meres, to shelter for the night in some cozy 
 " Angler's rest " of the old pre-company pattern, white 
 and clean as its mistress's apron, and nestled under the 
 shelter of the everlasting hills. 
 
 Pleasant days I pleasant times, full of enjoyment 
 for the moment and retrospect for the future. I know 
 not how it may be with others ; but for me, as I grow 
 older, these memories seem to grow more vivid every 
 tlay ; even as oddly enough the very classical gentlemen 
 whom I neglected so heartily at the time, as I fancied, 
 seem to exercise an increasing influence over my 
 thoughts and work even when I don't take them up 
 again. They come and wax unbidden, those associa- 
 tions of the past ; and scenes and events which seemed 
 at the time to make but slight impressions upon a mind 
 then more set, out of work-hours, upon odd comers of 
 itself than anything else, come all of a sudden, as I sit 
 down to write or to remember, out of the little nooks 
 of the brain-house into which they must have crept all 
 unawares. And out they come full-grown, like so many 
 awkward Minervas. 
 
 H 2
 
 loo FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 It was the summer of the comet-year, perhaps ; and 
 many a night-drive home from Keswick, or from handier 
 Ambleside, would our party have after a longer field- 
 day than usual, when the whole firmament seemed lit, 
 and the stars put out, by the lustre of that old phe- 
 nomenon, which has lost none of its strangeness in 
 losing all its terror. It has been explained away, 
 thoroughly; but there it was, all the same. Some- 
 body did it. And Faucit would quote to the rever- 
 ential Gosling the haunting lines of the northern 
 poet : — 
 
 " Oh, on thy sparkling prow to ride ! • 
 
 To cleave the depths of Heaven with thee I 
 To plough the twinkling stars aside, 
 Like foam-bells on a tranquil sea 1 " 
 
 And Gosling would intimate, with much conviction, 
 that he didn't understand it much, but it was "doosid 
 fine." Fair fall thy criticisms, honest Jem ! They 
 were better than wiser that I wot of. 
 
 Guy Faucit, meanwhile ? What was he thinking 
 of all this time ? He never lost himself in his work, 
 for his pupils said that he never went at it harder, and 
 he carried more than one of them into a triumphant 
 first. But in the walks and on the boats he was not 
 quite so companionable as usual, except with one rather
 
 THE IDYLL. loi 
 
 silent member of his reoiment, with whom he consorted 
 for choice to the surprise of the others, and smoked 
 many pipes. 
 
 When one of those parties among Gosling's friends 
 *' the Maries " took place, Guy was apt to excuse 
 himself, take the opportunity of strolling off alone with 
 some book in his pocket, which usually stayed there, 
 throw himself at full length upon the turf which slopes 
 suddenly down into the waters of Grasmere on the 
 E-ydal-ward side, or sit there dreamily and '' corrig " 
 loose boulders into the lake below. 
 
 Unwitting of other presence than his own, he one 
 day nearly ''corriged " into another world Jem Gosling 
 and a Mary, whom that seductive youth had persuaded 
 to go a-flirting with him. 
 
 They were lying on the slope below Faucit, and the 
 boulder shaved the Honourable James's nose. He 
 said afterwards that the Clipper was jealous, and must 
 have a love-fever on him. Guy laughed, and looked 
 very kindly at the lad. His heart had stood still for 
 the moment when he found what an escape he liad had. 
 
 Ah ! that love-fever ! It must run its course like, 
 other tertians, though many doctors try their hands at 
 stopping it, or at '' throwing it out."
 
 I02 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 What were Guy's meditations on the lake-side those 
 lonely afternoons ? He had nothing but his fellowship, 
 and the little that would come to him from his mother. 
 The dear old mother ! how irregularly he seemed to 
 write to her now. He must run down to Devonshire 
 directly the reading-party broke up, for he longed for 
 a kiss to the silvery-hair, a welcome from the silvery 
 voice. It would be a long time, he trusted and prayed, 
 before that little came ; and then it could not change 
 his life. 
 
 He had resolved upon an Oxford career ; for with 
 his fellowship and his pupils, and what he made by his 
 pen — not much, perhaps, that last, for journalism is 
 not an El Dorado, even when exclusively followed — he 
 had now a very good income to boast of in those 
 rent-free rooms of his. 
 
 But — ah ! those buts ! How they come breaking 
 in upon our best soliloquies, worr3nng our strongest 
 purposes, breach -making in our favourite castles of 
 the air ! 
 
 Suppose he changed his plans now, and left 
 Oxford, what should he do ? He could keep his 
 fellowship, of course, as long as — Exactly. "But" 
 again. Why wasn't his what they call a married
 
 THE IDYLL. 103 
 
 fellowship \ but it wasn't. Besides, he was twenty- 
 eight, and an old don. Could he make enough by his 
 pen to make a profession of it ? impossible to say. 
 And it was, he knew, very hard and up-hill work. 
 The bar ? tliat resource of all the ardent spirits with 
 no special professional bent of their own, that mystic 
 profession which " leads to everything," but begins in 
 nothing, except expense, and, alas ! too often ends 
 there. Besides, he could not bear the idea of law. 
 That wouldn't matter to him, though ; and that thought 
 was soon put aside. 
 
 Sir Benjamin Brodie, speaking of his own original 
 distaste for medicine, had said that any man worth his 
 salt could teach himself to like any serious work he 
 had to live by. And the saying was quite after Guy's 
 own heart. Why hadn't he done like his friend 
 Wilmot, who took his first at the same time, and an 
 Oriel fellowship directly afterwards, and then went 
 straight to London to read for the bar ? 
 
 London — there must be great advantages in living 
 in London, of various kinds. There was a very pleasant 
 smile on Faucit's face at this point of the secret 
 discourse. What a pity somebody wasn't there to see 
 it ! Wilmot had been called now three vears, and was
 
 I04 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 already well spoken of on the Western Circuit, where 
 he had made quite a hit by holding some briefs for 
 more advanced juniors, and had distinguished himself 
 on his own account at Exeter sessions, on some knotty 
 point of settlement law. 
 
 He, Faucit, had some friends among the Exeter 
 attorneys, and he could be called in three years from 
 November, if he began at once, and ate the first steps 
 of his way to the woolsack, as by custom recognised 
 and provided. 
 
 Three years ! he would be thirty-one. Well — he 
 wouldn't be less if he began later. And really he 
 nuist do something. This Oxford business was growing 
 impossible — wouldn't do. He believed that half the 
 difficulties of the bar were fables, if you had brains 
 and stuck to work. And wouldn't he ? Why at thirty- 
 five — Then the shadows of Guy's magic-lantern began 
 to shift and move, and to be lit by soft prismatic hues 
 radiating: from the basket of Alnaschar. He saw a 
 prosperous and successful life before him, not prisoned 
 in the quadrangles of sleepy Oxford, but in the busy 
 turmoil of London the magnificent. He saw himself 
 workino- and rising: — first remarked, then distinmiished, 
 then great, and passing away in the fulness of years, to
 
 THE IDYLL. 105 
 
 leave, as his best legacy, his name behind him. He 
 saw many things; but in and through them all he 
 saw just this. Pledged first, then waiting, then 
 united ; always kindhng, helping, comforting, consoling ; 
 he pictured to himself one fair and perfect woman, 
 ever and always at his side. 
 
 It was on one evening towards the close of that lake- 
 sojourn that Faucit made to his pupils the announce- 
 ment which our readers were privileged to learn at 
 the end of the last chapter. 
 
 What was she doing the while, that lady of the 
 dream ? Far away, perhaps, on the terrace which 
 looks down on the curling little river which runs by the 
 town of Berne, where the opposite heights rise suddenly 
 and picturesquely up, and the mighty giants of the 
 Oberland, shaded and softened by the distance, keep 
 watch and ward on the horizon, Daisy Fairfield was 
 sitting alone, with half-an-hour to herself before the 
 table dlwte. Her hands were folded on her lap, and 
 her eyes were set steadily upon the beautiful mountain 
 vision, as the shapes of Schreckhom and Finster-aar- 
 hom were imaging themselves firmly in that keen and 
 open mind. And in the double process of thought 
 which runs so oddly through our lives, even while
 
 io6 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 she drank the charm of that masterpiece of landscape 
 in, she too was dreaming out her sweet and maidenly 
 dream. Oh, so pure, so true, so maidenly ! so full of 
 that fearless innocence of life and thought which, when 
 a man is brought for the first time fairly face to face 
 with its inner secrets, teaches him first to be ashamed, 
 and then to rejoice — to rejoice with fear and reverence 
 over what God has done and does, even over what God 
 can pardon and undo. 
 
 As the young girl sat there, framed like an Ary 
 Schaeffer with the distance in her eyes, one after 
 another the passers-by turned back to look at her; 
 involuntarily, courteously, for she was not one of those 
 who may be looked on too rudely. But she was 
 conscious of no look, no gaze ; she seldom was. If 
 Guy Faucit had known how rare indeed was the glance 
 which had followed him that first day on the banks of 
 the Isis, he would have been many inches a prouder 
 man. Sa the passers-by looked at her unrebuked, and 
 whispered about the "belle Anglaise," or the "schoner 
 Englanderinn," in their various tongues; and Daisy 
 sat dreaming on. 
 
 Sometimes — and in spite of myself — the tears come 
 to my eyes when I write and think of her. My own
 
 THE IDYLL. 107 
 
 dear wife, Dorothy Balbus, owns her for her best and 
 dearest friend : for this is no tragedy I am writing, 
 thank God, thouoh the drama leads throus^h many 
 paths of stone and thorns. And there is no name more 
 often on my wife's lips and mine than the name she 
 now so beautifully bears. She was thinking of Guy 
 Faucit even as he was thinking of her, in a sweet 
 fancy of love and dependence, yet of mutual help. 
 What it meant, her dream of marriage, she neither 
 knew nor asked herself, in any exactness of shape. 
 She knew that she loved Guy Faucit, and was very 
 proud and ambitious for him ; and though no word 
 had been spoken on either part, I think she knew 
 that he loved her. She had talked much with 
 him, as she came to know him during their frequent 
 London meetings, — he had been at her father's 
 house, and often, and had neglected no place where 
 she might be, — of his future and his plans of life, 
 and had urged him much to come to London, and 
 boldly to try the bar. He was too good to waste 
 on Oxford reclusion. At first : — for afterwards, as 
 the better knowledge became better still, there came 
 a certain shyness over those urgings of hers, and she 
 said less. He noticed it, or thought he did ; and
 
 io8 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 passed to much self-questioning as to what it might 
 mean. 
 
 When they parted in London he had, we know, 
 formed no definite idea of leaving Oxford ; and some- 
 thing of her doubts was in her fancies now. Would 
 he really go back to college, and not find something 
 to do in London ? If he did — well. She didn't know. 
 Of the fears and reasons that held Faucit back she 
 knew nothing. She was rich, or would be, in the 
 world's goods, and how could she use them better than 
 in helping a great man to a great career ? For he could 
 be great, she was sure. And I think I can do no 
 better justice to Faucit' s sense or to Faucit' s honour, 
 than by saying that the thought of Daisy's money was 
 not only the last that occurred to him in the matter, 
 but struck him as a serious obstacle in his way. 
 How could he come forward for the rich merchant's 
 daughter, with neither position nor means, and even 
 with brains unproven for the achieving of either ? And 
 therein, perhaps, Guy Faucit measured the canons of 
 society only too well. Meanwhile, however, whatever 
 the future might have in store for them, among the 
 fairest scenes of nature in her most various moods, 
 and among all the surroundings of men and women
 
 THE IDYLL. 109 
 
 who knew nothing of what was passing in their hearts, 
 though they rubbed elbows every day, Guy Faucit 
 and Daisy Fairfield thought from morning to evening, 
 in very plain English, of nothing in the world but 
 each other.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 MOTHER AND SON. 
 
 In a quiet corner of Devonshire, by some one of the tmy 
 Combes which lie between Teignmouth and Torquay, 
 and make the coast-walk from one of those places to 
 the other one of the prettiest which the pedestrian can 
 find on a summer's day, Guy Faucit had found a home 
 for the long- widowed mother, who had till then been 
 his love. He always came back to the old lady with 
 fresh and renewed affection; kept her when he was 
 away constantly informed of all his doings and all 
 his plans, and found in her a wise as well as an 
 admiring adviser. With all her pride in Guy's Oxford 
 successes, and all her sympathy with his enthusiasm 
 for his pursuits there, she had a knack of shaking 
 her head over his monastic theories of life. Charmed
 
 MOTHER AND SON. iii 
 
 witli her only child's exclusive devotion, and repaying it 
 with womanly interest — how much did she not think 
 of him, after all, in comparison to all his thoughts 
 of her ? — she nevertheless was very firmly convinced 
 that the boy ought to marry and would marry, and 
 returned to the charge upon that point with unfailing 
 pertinacity. Many and many a friendly hattle-royal 
 did the two have together in the bright parlour — I 
 like the old-fashioned word where yet not out of place 
 — where the roses clustered round the porch, and on 
 the other side of the little trim garden the limes shut 
 out the road. During his visits to Devonshire, which 
 he made a point of paying for some substantial part of 
 every vacation, Guy carried the old mother about under 
 protest to many of the parties and gatherings which 
 went on in the hospitable western county, at which 
 mother and son were always more than welcome. They 
 provided her with a circle of friends who were sure to 
 look after her and find company for her when he was 
 away, for he didn't like to think of her as dull or too 
 much alone. 
 
 Now it happens, that to the well-balanced taste the 
 young ladies of Devon are possessed of many and great 
 attractions ; and Mrs. Faucit was firmly persuaded that
 
 iT2 FAUCir OF BALLIOL, 
 
 quite the majority of them were secretly in love with 
 Guy already, and asked nothing better than to meet 
 him half-way, if he were disposed to the mysterious 
 step called '' coming forward." When the parties and 
 gatherings were over, thus much would she expound to 
 him in the profoundest confidence, while he gravely 
 smoked his pipe by the roses. There had been a little 
 difficulty over the tobacco at first, Mrs. Faucit having 
 been brought up in ante-nicotian days when smoking 
 was an illicit trade, and relegated to the kitchen or 
 the harness-room. Guy had given in with the best 
 of graces till his mother began to find that she grudged 
 so much of his society to his pipe, and thought it best 
 to make advances to her rival, who now lived with her 
 on the pleasantest of terms. She had been heard to 
 confess that she even liked it, and the final victory was 
 achieved by Guy's machiavellian craft. Mrs. Faucit 
 always said that she could detect the slightest trace of 
 tobacco in a room for days afterwards. For four or five 
 nights consecutively Guy smoked in the dining-room, 
 with the due precautions, after she had gone to bed, 
 and confessed one morning when the old lady's blissful 
 ignorance was apparent. The next night he didn't 
 smoke ; and at breakfast M?s. Faucit, demonstratively
 
 MOTHER AND SON. 113 
 
 sniffing, declared that the smell was intolerable. But 
 she was of a candid mind ; and on the weakness of the 
 proposition being demonstrated, she gave in. So the 
 pipe among the roses became a recognized institution ; 
 and their beauteous majesties of the garden bloomed 
 none the worse for it. 
 
 Here, in the parlour then, many and many a time 
 after they had come home, did these two who were 
 all in all to each other discuss how they might 
 become less. Guy would explain that it was im- 
 possible ; that the Fates had shaped him a course at 
 the university, where, though a wife was a forbidden 
 luxury, a mother was not. When his position was 
 definite enough ; when a certain professorship, which was 
 generally regarded as his reversion, had fallen in his 
 way, and he had fairly settled down to his stride, hi& 
 mother was to leave the Devonshire cottage and keep 
 house for him at Oxford, as he should leave the rooms 
 in Balliol, and set up a homestead of his own. He had 
 mapped out his future upon these definite lines, and 
 he did not mean to disturb it. 
 
 " I've married my mother," he said ; " and 
 the day shall come when she shall be a hostess 
 well-known in Oxford circles, and all the pleasantest 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 society in the place shall meet in her drawing- 
 rooms." 
 
 This was his filial castle in the air ; and men have 
 built worse before now, I think. But Mrs. Faucit 
 could not be brought to agree. 
 
 " Marriage, my dear old boy, is the law for all nice 
 people ; and you were never intended to be one of the 
 exceptions. You ought to be independent, of course, 
 and to be able to make up to any one you choose, and 
 go into Parliament, where you would get a great name, 
 and be asked into the ministry directly. It is simply 
 too bad of James Foster, my only brother in the world, 
 and he with neither kith nor kin of his own, not to give 
 you a handsome allowance out of all that money of his, 
 and acknowledge you as his heir. Whom else has he 
 got ; and whom does he want better, I should like 
 to know ? " 
 
 " Don't talk about him, mother," said Faucit, 
 whose face always grew dark at the mention of James 
 Foster's name. 
 
 " But I must talk about him. How can I help 
 talking about an only brother with his tens of thou- 
 sands a-year, and my poor sister Mary dead and gone ? 
 I wish you'd write to him."
 
 MOTHER AND SON. 115 
 
 " Mother ! how can you even think of it ? when you 
 have so often told me yourself of his conduct to you 
 and my father when you married, and always after- 
 wards." 
 
 "Who knows but he may have been right, my 
 dear ? Your poor father with his half-pay — quarter- 
 pay I called it — and I with my little bit of money ; no 
 wonder that he thought the marriage so rash and 
 wrong." 
 
 " Kash and wrong ! when he could have helped you 
 had he cared, without even feeling it ! Don't talk any 
 more about him ; I hate to hear his name. All his 
 endless meannesses afterwards, about trusteeships, and 
 Heaven knows what besides, didn't make things much 
 better, did they ? Daring to dictate to my grand old 
 soldier-father, and pretend to look down on him from 
 the heights of the stocking-trade ! He had better find 
 his needle's eye to creep through and make haste about 
 it, the old miser ! " 
 
 " Oh, Guy, what a very shocking quotation ! " 
 
 " Awful. I am the profanest of men, as you know. 
 
 Uncle James indeed ! " and Guy laughed. '' Shall I 
 
 ever forget the last and about the only time I ever saw 
 
 him, when I suppose I was about thirteen years old ? 
 
 I 2
 
 ii6 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 Don't you remember, mother, when he drove past us in 
 his gig, and said, ' Is that your boy, Kattie ? Why, 
 he's not brown — he's black ! ' Pleasant creature ! how 
 I should like to kick him ! " 
 
 " Well, dear, it wasn't nice," said the mother with 
 a sigh, who would have done anything for that boy of 
 hers, and was moreover of a placable disposition. " But 
 quarrels in families are such weary things ; and I do 
 believe that if you wrote to him — " 
 
 '' I shan't, you know, mother. We're not rich, but 
 we're comfortable ; and if I go on as I am we shall 
 be more than comfortable some day. I don't like 
 family-quarrels either, and have no objection to making 
 up, even with old grey-shirtings. But — que messieurs 
 les assassins commemQent. When Mr. Foster comes 
 with his hat in his hand and begs our pardon, perhaps 
 we'll ask him to tea. And now let's change the sub- 
 ject. Who was the last young lady you said was 
 breaking her heart for me, at the Powderham archery 
 meeting yesterday ? " 
 
 "I didn't say breaking her heart, dear. I wish 
 you'd be more accurate." 
 
 " But you implied -it, you bad old woman ; you 
 know you did."
 
 MOTHER AND SON. 117 
 
 " Well, dear, Alice Maitland is a very nice girl 
 indeed, and it's no use saying she isn't. And Mait- 
 land' s bank is one of the oldest and best in London." 
 
 "Alice Maitland is nice, and the bank is even 
 nicer. But I think, mother, that I like Rose Plummer 
 better." 
 
 •'•' Do you, really ? Well, Rose Plummer is a very 
 nice girl too, and will have a nice fortune, though she's 
 not as rich as the other. But Sir John Plummer has a 
 great influence in the county, and might sit for it if 
 he liked. Still I do think you oughtn't to flirt so 
 dreadfully with both of them. It isn't fair upon the 
 poor girls." 
 
 "How odd you women are about each other," 
 laughed Guy. '' The moment we like a girl, and talk 
 to her a little more, or waltz with her a little oftener 
 than usual, it isn't ' fair ' ; and we are always expected 
 to 'mean' something. I can't make out how on earth 
 anybody ever marries anybody, as you're always pulled 
 up before you've time to find out anything about a girl 
 except that you rather like her. I don't believe the 
 girls agree with you a bit, or expect anything, or wish 
 for anything except to be left alone for a while, just 
 as the men do I "
 
 ii8 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 The old lady shook her head. " You don't know 
 girls as I do, Guy. How are they to know what men 
 mean ? " 
 
 ''Easy enough, I should think. But I tell you 
 what it is, little mother : if they're what you make 
 them out they're a poor lot, and I don't want to have 
 anything to do with them." 
 
 " But, Guy—" 
 
 " But, mother. Now let's have some backgammon." 
 And the champion of the river and the tennis-court 
 proceeded to devote himself with a single heart, un- 
 scathed by the influences of Alice Maitland and Rose 
 Plummer, to the mysteries of cinq-quater and deuce- 
 ace. Mrs. Faucit shook the box and returned to the 
 charge. 
 
 "Nevertheless, Guy, I should like to see you with 
 a good wife." 
 
 " Very well, then ; find me one. Flirt with her 
 yourself, propose to her yourself, and come and live 
 with us." 
 
 " No, dear, I shan't." 
 
 '' Well, then, I shan't either." 
 
 The discussion stands for many which went on 
 between the mother and son, before the summer when
 
 MOTHER AND SON. 119 
 
 Guy Faucit met Daisy Fairfield at the Clmstchurch 
 ball, and came down to the Devonshire cottacre from 
 the lakes, with a new life and a new feelino^ stirrino- 
 in his heart. 
 
 ^ -x- -x- * -^ ^ 
 
 " Then you are in earnest this time, my dear child ? " 
 
 " I am afraid I am, my mother, very much." 
 
 " God bless you, my son. I am sure that Miss 
 Fairfield is all that I could ever ^\4sh ; and I shall be 
 so glad and proud to welcome her." 
 
 "There's a good deal to happen before that, 
 mother," answered Guy, laughing. "I've got to win 
 her, you know, to begin with." 
 
 " I don't think there can be very much doubt about 
 that," the mother answered, in a tone of very placid 
 conviction. 
 
 Guy laughed again. 
 
 " You dear old prophet of good, may your con- 
 fidence be well grounded. Let me look at you, 
 mother mine." 
 
 He rested his two hands upon her shoulders, and 
 looked down from his height of vantage upon the soft 
 smooth bands of silver hair, 
 
 " Can you give up the dream of the Oxford home,
 
 I20 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 and think of me as the hard-working barrister in 
 smoky old London, toiling for the dear life and the 
 dearer love ? " 
 
 "I never believed in the Oxford home, my boy; 
 and I always told you so. And I shall love to think 
 of the work in London, which is the only place for 
 a man like you. I must do my best to help you." 
 
 " What, mother ? It shall make no difference to 
 you whatever." 
 
 " Oh, but it must." 
 
 " Oh, but it mustn't. Why, I have calculated 
 means, and 1 shall do splendidly. I shall take small 
 living-chambers in the Temple, not to be at double 
 expense. I shall write a good deal more than I have 
 done, for I think I have the connection for that already ; 
 and with my fellowship, which is a good one, I shall 
 be more than able to manage. Not a penny off the 
 help that I have been able to give the mother." 
 
 " Oh, Guy ! it is not right. It is I that should be 
 helping you." 
 
 " You dear old lady ! you look like it, don't you ? 
 Why I wouldn't lose a bit of the pride I have in 
 helping to keep up the Devonshire cottage, not even 
 for all the Miss Fairfields to be found ! "
 
 MOTHER AND SON. 121 
 
 "That doesn't sound like being properly in love," 
 said Mrs. Faucit. 
 
 '' I think it does ; and I don't think Miss Fairfield 
 would agree with you." 
 
 "But the Bar is so expensive. Ain't there all 
 sorts of fees at starting ? " 
 
 "I've saved enough to pay them. You know what 
 an old screw I am ; quite a touch of uncle James. 
 Yes, mother, I am going to try my fortune in London, 
 like so many waifs from Dick Whittington downwards. 
 It's a face to do it for, isn't it ? " 
 
 There was a p LctcgiajL Guy's hands. 
 
 "Yes, dear, it's a lovely face, and a good face. 
 My Guy would never have chosen any other. God 
 bless you and guard you and help you, my boy, and 
 as you will be as good a husband as you are a good 
 son, may He grant you your heart's desire." 
 
 Very fondly the two kissed and embraced and 
 parted; and it was with a heart purified and a will 
 strengthened by the mother's blessing, that Guy Faucit 
 started bravely on the London career which has seen 
 so many win, and so many, to all outward seeming no 
 less gallant and no less deserving, founder and fail.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 TERM-EATING. 
 
 The young Balliol fellow settled to his new work with 
 all the will in him, and soon began to find the truth 
 of the maxim of Sir Benjamin Brodie, with which 
 he had comforted himself. After the historians and 
 philosophers and poets who had grown such familiar 
 friends with him, he found it difficult at first to realize 
 the attractions of style and thought to be found in 
 * Byles on Bills,' or Fearne's ' Contingent Remainders ' ; 
 and 'Smith's Leading Cases' led at times to wandering 
 thoughts, and to a sense of almost impossible boredom. 
 In spite of himself he reverted to some dearly- 
 loved point of classic controversy, and detected himself 
 in the act of fighting old battles over again on the old 
 ground, somewhere in the fields of thought. But I
 
 TERM-EATING. 123 
 
 have elsewhere spoken of Guy's great power over him- 
 self, for he had realized early in life the truth of the 
 maxim which Dickens laid down, which sooner or later 
 every man must realize who is really to succeed in 
 anything. He had mastered while still at school the 
 secret of "patient ungrudging attention," to which 
 Dickens attributed all his own success, thous^h in the 
 case of that high authority perhaps there was some- 
 thing more to start with than falls to the share of most 
 men. 
 
 So at it Guy went again all the harder for 
 these deviations of the compass ; and it was a sight 
 to see him, both his hands holding tight to his hair, 
 and the elbow-seams of his coat suffering considerably 
 from their violent contact with the table, grappling 
 with the " construction," as the grammarians call it, of 
 some sentence of inordinate length, without apparent 
 verb, and with neither beginning nor end, in which the 
 potent, grave, and reverend authors of our law-books 
 can give many points to my old enemy Thucydides 
 himself I hold the authors of law-books as a race 
 altogether apart in the wonders of their style, and 
 their mastery of that art of meaning-no-meaning which 
 is so heavy a tax on their readers. Except some of the
 
 124 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL, 
 
 propounders of the new scientific gospels, I know of 
 none to match them in that way. I hate a page which 
 has to be read live times before any meaning can 
 be distilled from it, and then turns out to be either 
 gibberish, or else some faultless platitude which might 
 have been expressed in a line if it was to be expressed 
 at all. 
 
 Thus not long ago, in the 'Fortnightly Review,' 
 I think, did I find myself studying a profound treatise 
 on the Laws of Rhyme, from which I thought to gather 
 instruction and advantage. One half-page held me 
 riveted for a long time, for it was beautifully fine, and 
 I felt that when I once understood it I should realize 
 some great truth. I was on the eve of discovery, and 
 meditated on my author profoundly. I forget the 
 exact words he used, but they were something like 
 this — 
 
 "In rhyme, everything depends upon a certain 
 assonance and a certain assured sequence in the 
 collocation of what we call the vowels and the con- 
 sonants; and if the strict conditions therein implied 
 fail to be watchfully and systematically observed, the 
 result is a lapse of the delicate concord of musical 
 sound which seizes and arrests the cultivated ear, once
 
 TERM-EATIXG. 125 
 
 attuned to the eternal laws of harmony and proportion," 
 etcetera, etcetera. 
 
 That, or something Hke it, went on for a page ; and 
 at last I found that it meant exactly this, nor less nor 
 more: that a "hat" rhymes to a "cat," but not to 
 a "bag." 
 
 It was a great consolation to Faucit, after much 
 wrestling of the spirit and internal perplexity over the 
 abstruseness of English law, to find that nine-tenths 
 of the abstruseness lay in the way in which it was put 
 — or rather wasn't, the "putting" being often conspicu- 
 ous by its absence — and to discover to his great satis- 
 faction that half the pages he read might have been 
 boiled down into as many words. Writers who under- 
 take to write, especially upon knotty subjects, ought 
 to go through a competitive examination first, based 
 upon primitive syntax and words in not more than 
 three syllables ; for with rare exceptions, never yet has 
 writer won the big prizes save by simplicity of style. 
 Be as eloquent as Ruskin or Newman, if you can ; as 
 witty as Thackeray ; as scholarly as Cockbum ; as 
 fanciful as Charles Lamb ; but mark that the whole 
 setting of the wit and the eloquence, the scholarship 
 and the fancy, are this and only this — simplicity. And
 
 126 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 for the sake of long-suffering mankind, observe one 
 maxim more. When you have nothing to write about, 
 let it alone. The " laws of rhyme," for instance, are 
 briefly contained in the summary I ventured to give 
 of the valuable thoughts of my " assonant " friend. 
 Rhyme has just that law, and no other. " C est si facile 
 de ne fas ecrire," was de Morny's answer to the un- 
 successful dramatist who complained to him that " ce 
 n'est pas si facile d'ecrire une comedie." 
 
 Having solved this original problem to his satisfac- 
 tion, Faucit worked with a will. As he looked at the 
 uninviting calf which began to invade his beloved 
 book-cases, and felt it his duty to furnish the little 
 chambers in Garden Court in orthodox legal fashion, 
 he sighed sometimes over the artistic Balliol rooms. 
 But the purpose that was in him was far too strong 
 for vain regrets, and apart and away from that, the 
 ambition of London life soon began to hold him. 
 If he was not the Caesar that he had been at Oxford, 
 the dominant nature of the man asserted itself in his 
 new life as it did everywhere. 
 
 In the debating societies which met in and about 
 the cozy taverns just east of Temple Bar, to be 
 remembered in future generations, probably, only by
 
 TERM-EATING. 127 
 
 the hideous landmark of the city griffin, where law 
 questions were debated with zest and interest by the 
 self - educating among the sucking advocates, Faucit 
 made his mark at once, as he had done before at 
 the Union, on the grave question whether Mr. Disraeli 
 was or was not fit to lead the Conservative Party, or 
 whether the Oxford youth would or would not lend 
 its support to the foreign policy of the day. 
 
 I fear that the majority of us, for I too tried my 
 'prentice hand at the bar, were content with the 
 education provided for us by the benchers, in the shape 
 of dinners in hall. 
 
 Beginning his work in November, when the fees 
 and the fogs begin circulating together, Faucit 
 deferred till after Christmas the necessary course of 
 reading with a pleader, as he preferred to know some- 
 thing of the elements of his business before he began. 
 
 The hundred guineas were rather a wrench ; but, as 
 he told his mother, he had saved money, and all 
 luxuries he retrenched at once from his manner of 
 living. No more delicate little scout-laid dinners, or 
 choice bottles of wine with a friend ; only the homely 
 mutton and the frothing beer, which my healthy- 
 minded young athlete liked just as well. It disturbed
 
 128 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 him a little to think that he might run to fat, but 
 he forestalled the danger by a vigorous course of 
 fencing at Waite's rooms in Soho Square, and an 
 occasional migration to Lord's for a turn at the tennis. 
 
 A very pleasant set of rooms were those of Faucit's 
 in Garden Court, looking down from their third floor 
 upon the green little gardens of the Middle Temple on 
 the one side, — no embankment stood between that and 
 the water then, — and on the other on the plashing 
 fountain at the head of the steps, which was such a 
 pleasant object both to look and to listen to, like an 
 oasis of rest in the deserts of law-strife. For what 
 reason it was improved off the face of the earth I know 
 not; but when its innocent babble was extinguished 
 there was mourning among the dwellers in Garden 
 Court. 
 
 I had myself been called to the bar some three 
 years when Faucit took up his quarters in the Temple ; 
 and Very welcome was his arrival to me and others of 
 his Oxford contemporaries. I was taking the law 
 easily, as I had taken the classics ; and failing entirely 
 to achieve Faucit' s patience over his law-books, I felt 
 that if I was ever to arrive at greatness in the law, 
 it would have to be thrust upon me by imperious
 
 TERM-EATING. 129 
 
 circumstance. Imperious circumstance did indeed 
 try it for a time, and threw many briefs and a good 
 round practice in my way ; but Xature was too strong 
 in me even for circumstance, and my incorrigible idle- 
 ness was the cause of much mourning in the Balbus 
 family, who predicted untimely ends for me which have 
 not yet come to pass. 
 
 Fred ^\"ilmot was the third of the Balliol , chums 
 who now re-united in the chambers in Garden Court, 
 and consorted in frequent companionship together. 
 
 Fast friends we were in those cheery days, though 
 Wilmot was the very reverse of me, being all that 
 the Wilmot family could desire, and penetrated with 
 le^al ambition and lesral lore. His was a lio^ht which, 
 in consequence, now burns and shines as it ought, for 
 is not Wilmot the acknowledged leader of his circuit, 
 and sure of speedy promotion to the bench ? Only a 
 morning or two ago I was reading with admiration an 
 argument of his in a case in which a clergyman had 
 been imprisoned for breaking the law, wherein he 
 proved, past my contradiction, that an eminent judge 
 who was responsible for the proceeding had broken 
 it in half-a-dozen different places himself. 
 
 Wilmot and Faucit had many a deep discussion 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 I30 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 upon law together, as in old days upon Aristotle or 
 Plato, at which, as in old days also, I assisted as an 
 admiring listener — my remarks, when I made any, 
 being with much consent treated as trivial. I was not 
 in any way regarded as a serious person ; and it was 
 a puzzle to many, myself included, why I chose my 
 special friends, or was chosen by them, from among 
 the more studious spirits of my time, when I should 
 obviously have herded with the drones. 
 
 I am no nearer to any philosophic system of life 
 now than I was when I read Mill, and didn't believe 
 a word of him ; but I fancy that through all that 
 idleness of mine there must have been a large amount 
 of observation and meditation at work, which was to 
 bear fruit for me later, when my emancipated spirit 
 had got out of the legal shell, and had become free 
 to circulate in a literary atmosphere of its own. 
 
 As for Faucit, none of us ever had any doubt that he 
 would come out clear first in anything and everything 
 he chose to put his hand to. Young as he was at the 
 work, he soon found his connection in journalism 
 extending and growing solid, and felt with relief that 
 if the bar failed him he would after all have a pro- 
 fession to fall back upon. But he would not let the
 
 TERM-EATIXG. 131 
 
 pen tempt him too far, or use it for anything but 
 a help at starting. 
 
 A few years before, and even journalism had been 
 under police supervision in a barrister who meant 
 business. 
 
 "There are callings," said Lord ElJenborough, ''in 
 which to be suspected of literature is dangerous." 
 
 But more liberal ideas were beginning to prevail, 
 and even solicitors to allow" that a man cannot live 
 upon hope while he is waiting for their briefs, but must 
 help himself as best he may as long as he does it 
 with a due amount of reticence. So Guy Faucit stuck 
 resolutely to anonymous w^ork, and suppressed his 
 personality in literature. 
 
 As for me, in a weak moment I wrote a farce which 
 was acted in public, and audaciously claimed the 
 authorship. Then all was over, and my prospects were 
 blasted. They have never recovered. Never mind. 
 
 "John, my son," said an anxious parent to a co- 
 barrister and co-author of mine, who had hke pro- 
 clivities, " how can you be such a fool as to w^ite a 
 play ? If you stick to the bar you may become a 
 Brougham." 
 
 "I may," he said- "and if I stick to the plays 
 
 K 2
 
 132 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 I may become a Sheridan. One's just as likely as the 
 other; and of the two I prefer Sheridan." 
 
 John held to his evil courses, and is now making 
 a very handsome income of his own. It is very wrong ; 
 but he is. They have balances at their bankers, some 
 of those dramatists, improper though it be. 
 
 Very strange and very wonderful are the ways of 
 fate; and no stranger lot than Faucit's did she hold 
 in that mysterious urn of hers. There was to be no 
 calling to the bar, no legal name or legal success, for 
 him from whom his friends all hoped so much. Rather 
 they did not hope ; they felt sure. Yet, in one year 
 from the day when we dined with him by way of 
 chamber-warming in Garden Court, upon a feast of 
 oysters, — cheap then and plentiful, and consumed by the 
 young votaries of Themis, not grudgingly or sparingly, 
 or in the uncomforting shifts of Blue-Points or French 
 immigrants, but in rich native luxuriance over the 
 counters of Prosser, — and of beefsteaks and beer, the 
 dream was to be over and the future gone, and our 
 model and hero, all his moorings severed and lost, was 
 to drift away out of sight, as lost to us as Merlin in 
 the hollow oak, and even in' the minds which held him 
 dearest to linger but as a memory. We should have
 
 TERM-EATING. 133 
 
 made more of liim that winter, Wilmot and I, and of 
 all the rich stores we drew from his strono^ sense and 
 scholarship and shrewd imagination, had we known 
 what and how soon was to be the end of that pleasant 
 chapter in our lives. He was one who needed con- 
 fidence and sympathy, and was expansive with his close 
 allies, though with the many he was reticent about 
 himself. 
 
 So it was not long before Wilmot and I knew the 
 reason of his change of plans and life, which had 
 puzzled us at first, well aware as we were of his 
 attachment to Oxford, and of his tenacity of purpose. 
 He was one of those men who seem bound to live heart- 
 whole, and supplied a crucial test of the absurdity of 
 predicating such a thing of anybody. When they do 
 go, these ironclads, they do. Faucit concealed nothing 
 from Wilmot or from me, who kept his counsel. He 
 felt pretty sure that he had made an impression upon 
 Daisy Fairfield's thoughts and heart, and had a con- 
 fidence in her very fine to see. He was in no hurry to 
 speak ; but if she cared about him — and he would spare 
 no effort to make that certain — she would wait as 
 tnistfully as he. She knew well enough what his 
 thoughts and wishes were, he said, even when they
 
 134 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 parted in the summer. Or if she doubted them, what 
 did she think when, towards the close of November, 
 when he had settled well down in harness, they met 
 face to face in one of the winter exhibitions ? 
 
 Very warm on both sides was the shake of the hand ; 
 and Guy's quick eye had "already detected the faint 
 sweet flush which brouoht the rose-tingje to the clear 
 face, whose every line he knew so well. Many of its 
 myriad expressions he had still to learn. So, alas ! had 
 she, poor child ! 
 
 "You in London, Mr. Faucit ? " she said. "Can 
 Oxford spare you just now ? " 
 
 " I have left Oxford," he quietly answered. 
 
 She looked quickly up, and spoke slowly, with a 
 certain pleased surprise. 
 
 " You— have left— Oxford ? " 
 
 "Yes; I am living in chambers in the Temple, and 
 am reading hard for the Bar." 
 
 "I am very glad," she answered, frankly and 
 straightforwardly. " I am sure that you will make 
 yourself a great name in that profession before long." 
 
 " I shall try," he said gravely. " At all events, you 
 see I have taken your advice." 
 
 " Did I advise you to do it ? "
 
 TERM- E A TING. 1 35 
 
 •' More than once. Have you forgotten ? " 
 
 "No; I remember now that I did. But I should 
 not hke to think that I am responsible for so grave a 
 change of purpose." 
 
 "Very many have advised me to it as well as you,'* 
 Guy answered. '' Indeed, most of my friends, I think. 
 So if I turn out a failure I won't sue you for damages. 
 But somehow I don't feel as if I should." 
 
 *' No, indeed. For earnest men, Mr. Faucit, there is 
 no such word as fail. I suppose you will live like a 
 hermit in your Temple chambers." 
 
 '' Not quite, I hope. I never believed in shutting 
 oneself up as the best way of working. Change of 
 mental air is the best receipt for everybody. I shall 
 hope to come and call in Portland Place very soon 
 indeed. Have you been back long ? " 
 
 Jesuistry, Master Guy. He knew perfectly well 
 she hadn't : for had not he and I walked past the 
 house in Portland Place only three days before, and 
 seen the blinds down ? Guy walked very often up 
 Portland Place. He found the air of the Regent's 
 Park bracing, he said. 
 
 "No," said Daisy; "we stayed a little time in 
 Paris on our way home, and only came back yesterday.
 
 136 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 I have so much to tell you of our Swiss tour, and all 
 the delight I had in it. When will you come ? " 
 
 '' Shall you be at home to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Yes ; by five o'clock." 
 
 ** Will you give me a cup of tea then ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 And the next day, at that pleasantest hour of social 
 interchange, the bright silver tea-urn in Portland Place 
 once more took up the accompaniment to the old, 
 old song.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FAIRFIELD AND CO. 
 
 There were signs that winter that all was not well 
 with the house of Fairfield. How is it that people 
 know or suspect mischief in the business air ? There 
 are no outward and visible signs. The house goes on 
 as usual ; the payments are as sure and regular. In 
 the City the same routine goes on with the steadiness 
 of clockwork; and at the West-End Madam has her 
 dinner-parties and receptions, and Miss her horses and 
 her enjoyments. But there are unaccustomed clouds 
 on the face of the master of the house ; certain 
 asperities and inequalities in his ways and speech 
 which betray themselves to the home-observers who 
 know him so well. And in the City chambers there 
 are conferences between the partners, frequent and
 
 138 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 unusually protracted; and the confidential clerk, who 
 is the marrow of the concern perhaps, is summoned to 
 assist at them, and comes out looking rather grave, 
 though nothing escapes him which his curious juniors 
 can build a theory upon. But Dick confides to Harry 
 over the mid-day chop and pint, and Harry wonders 
 if the governor can possibly be shaky, though that 
 anything can really be wrong with Fairfield and Co. 
 seems an idea too absurd to be entertained seriously, 
 etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, — Tjol calumnia e itn venti- 
 cello, — and Harry and Dick, unconsciously enough, 
 perhaps, set the stone of talk rolling, which, unlike the 
 fabled rock of Sisyphus, has a knack of working its way 
 up-hill all by itself when it is once started. 
 
 People in the City spoke doubtfully of the old ship 
 Fairfield and Co. A younger partner had come in, 
 bitten with the new theories of City-progress, and was 
 bent upon enlarging the operations of the firm. 
 
 Old Threadneedle, the confidential clerk, very much 
 disapproved of the new partner, and was for keeping 
 the house in the old and quiet grooves in which she had 
 run without a creak for so many years. He disliked 
 the new order of things very much, and maintained 
 that if the City was to become a colony of Jews and
 
 FAIRFIELD AND CO. 139 
 
 Germans, and to exist for nothing but for the forcing 
 of hothouse fortunes, the old EngHsh traders should 
 hold the more to the old ways, and keep a quiet comer 
 to themselves in the middle of the scamper. 
 
 But in that, as in many things. Conservatism and 
 Obstruction grow something mixed, and the tvrant 
 Progress insists on havino- his wav. It was surelv bv 
 some odd freak worth the meditations of the political 
 enquirer, that it was just when the City was growing 
 more and more revolutionary in her own business-ways, 
 that she suddenly ratted in her political creed, and 
 turned Tory. 
 
 Mr. Fairfield, the head of the house, was to those 
 who knew him casually not a nice man. His externals 
 were ao^ainst him, for his architecture was of the florid- 
 combative order, and he was big and overbearing of 
 manner. His voice was harsh, and creaked and grated 
 in the sound — peculiarities aggravated by the fact that 
 he had a sensitive throat, and was always losing the 
 voice he had. His eyebrows were bushy, and his hair 
 rebellious, more like a white T\dre-fence than an}'thing 
 else. He was rather a bully at home too, or poor 
 delicate Mrs. Fairfield's frightened face belied him. 
 She was always ailing, poor little lady, and nobody
 
 I40 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 ever quite knew what with till she went quietly out of 
 the world without any particular reason, a few years 
 after the time I am writing of. 
 
 Some people there are who are ill in that indefinite 
 way all their lives, and thereby cause pitying affection 
 in some, and irritation in others. 
 
 Mrs. Fairfi.eld irritated her husband, who was 
 assertively strong and rude of health, and furious with 
 the local weakness in his bronchial arrangements, which 
 was tiresome without being in the slightest degree 
 interesting. Moreover, he could have got rid of it in 
 a fortnight by drinking less wine. Moreover, he knew 
 it, and was exceedingly angry if anybody told him so. 
 
 He lectured Mrs. Fairfield on her partiality for 
 doctors, who, indeed, did the poor lady very little good, 
 making general remarks about want of tone which 
 were both obvious and feeble. They were particular 
 about the wine she drank, which varied according to 
 the medical fashion of the season. This year it was 
 hook. Indeed, each season has its special vintage from 
 the physician's point of view as much as from the 
 vine-grower's. However, I don't think the foculty did 
 Mrs. Fairfield any harm, or that there was any harm or 
 good to be done to her, simple, neutral-tinted soul.
 
 FAIRFIELD AND CO. 141 
 
 She clung to Daisy with a fond and close affection, 
 which the young girl returned with interest, watching 
 her mother with a protecting tenderness very good to 
 see. She was a bulwark often between her and the 
 lord-and-master's tempers ; for Mr. Fairfield was in 
 his way very fond and proud of Daisy too, and rarely 
 showed any disposition to bully her. Indeed, with all 
 her sweetness of nature, Daisy Fairfield was not easy to 
 bully. Any attempt of the kind missed its mark some- 
 how, and made itself look foohsh, and perished of 
 inanition. There was a sort of uncompromising and 
 fearless straightness about her, clear-set in the great 
 blue eyes, which baffled dictation as much as it sub- 
 dued impertinence. The latter, somehow, was out of 
 the question with her altogether. 
 
 Daisy Fairfield was fond of her father for his love 
 fur her; and I cannot helj) thinking that it takes a 
 great deal to prevent a child from being fond of 
 a parent. I doubt if anything but absolute and 
 proved un-love will do it, for the fifth commandment 
 is by nature very easy of keeping. He had great 
 schemes for her in his head, and meant to make 
 her an heiress worth a great man's wooing — great 
 of course socially and by right of purse, as such folk
 
 142 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 measure greatness. He had but one other child, a son 
 whom he regarded with much contempt and some 
 aversion, as a very weak vessel indeed. 
 
 Dick Fairfield had shewed no propensity for making 
 money, but a considerable one for spending it on him- 
 self. He had declined to have anything to do with the 
 business, in which he was to have succeeded his father, 
 as Fairfield after Fairfield always did, and as there 
 was no second to fall back upon, " Fairfield " must in 
 another generation be but a nominis umhra in the 
 house, where the new partner would reign supreme, 
 under such fetters of Threadneedle's forging: as he 
 would submit to, Dick had gone into the army as such 
 men do, not to fight, but to loaf; and his father, finding 
 the business hopeless, had allowed him to do it because 
 of the social consideration he supposed would belong to 
 it. But in starting him he had given him clearly to 
 understand, that as he declined to care for the House 
 of Fairfield, the House of Fairfield would not make an 
 eldest son of him, but that Daisy would have her full 
 share of the goods her father might leave behind him. 
 Dick accepted the condition vacuously, as he did 
 everything, being indeed slow both of heart and of 
 intelligence, and a wonder to everybody in that he
 
 FAIRFIELD AND CO, 143 
 
 called Daisy sister. Such wonders of kinship are con- 
 stant, family un-likeness being often more curious to 
 speculate upon than family likeness. 
 
 Daisy thoroughly disapproved of Dick ; and fully 
 shared her father's feeling that he should have felt 
 it a bounden duty, being the only son, to conquer his 
 tastes, or rather want of them, and stand by the house 
 and the business. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Fairfield, of course, could never be 
 brought to see this, which nettled her husband con- 
 siderably. She thought the army delightful, and the 
 uniform most becoming ; and she sympathized deeply 
 with Dick's grievances when, as now, he was relegated 
 to unattractive 'quarters in an out-of-the-way part of 
 Ireland. He ought to have made a stipulation with 
 the Horse-Guards, when he joined, that he never was 
 to leave London. 
 
 Daisy Fairfield, perhaps, did not keenly regret her 
 brother's absence, and for her that Christmas season, 
 which followed on Guy Faucit's plunge into the troubled 
 waters of legal life, was a happy and memorable time. 
 It is a happy, if a restless time, for those of us to whom 
 it is given, that during which the heart's first real fancy 
 takes steady shape and form, and the feeling that " it
 
 144 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 may be " deepens into the conviction that " it must," 
 the belief that "it will." 
 
 Guy Faucit, with his friends and his introductions, 
 at once found himself welcome in the society I described 
 as Daisy's in a former chapter. He was a man to 
 become an acquisition and a favourite at once ; for his 
 Oxford fame had of necessity preceded him to many 
 places in town, where many a man now in advance of 
 him at the bar owned him for tutor and adviser, and 
 looked up to him with unabated reverence. 
 
 Good Mrs. Pepperharrow, who was one of the first 
 people on whom he called, killed a fatted calf for him 
 at once, and sent him down to dinner with Daisy 
 Mrs, Pepperharrow was preternaturally gorgeous, and 
 full of an important move in life which she was going 
 to make. She was about to " take up her hassocks," 
 as a friend of mine describes the progress of migration, 
 and inaugurate a mighty palace in the south-west of 
 London, which she ho2)ed to make a fashionable centre. 
 
 " So good of you if you'll come and help me, Mr. 
 Faucit," she said, " with some acting or a little music, 
 or some tableaux vivans " (I cannot attempt to repro- 
 duce the appearance these two words would assume in 
 the spelling). " I'm sure you're very clever in that way."
 
 FAIRFIELD AND CO. 145 
 
 '* Indeed, Mrs. Pepperliarrow, I know nothing at all 
 about them." 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Fauci t, you can't expect me to believe 
 that. A man of your intellect, who can do anything e 
 likes to do without an effort. Daisy dear, wouldn't Mr. 
 Faucit look well as the Earl of Leicester, with you 
 as Amy what's-her-name, and me as Queen Elizabeth ? 
 Then there would be approjDriate music beind the 
 scenes, and a good supper down -stairs. Mr. Faucit, 
 you really must promise me to do the Earl of 
 Leicester." 
 
 "The Earl of Leicester, Mrs. Pepperharrow," said 
 Daisy, " was slight and delicate and romantic ; and you 
 ^vill have to starve Mr. Faucit down, which I am sure 
 isn't at all in your way. And I'm sure I don't look 
 a bit like that spiritless Amy Robsart." 
 
 " No, indeed," said her neighbour, in a low voice. 
 " Flora Maclvor, or Minna in the ' Pirate,' would be 
 more the line of part to fall to you." 
 
 " Are you to be the desperate Cleveland, then ? " 
 
 " Absit omen ! " muttered Guy in a low voice. 
 
 " Which means ? " asked Daisy, half hearing. 
 
 "Which means that I was quoting Latin at dinner, 
 which is atrocious ; I should have been sconced for it 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 FA UCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 at Oxford. I woiider, Miss Fairfield, if such an invete- 
 rate old don as I must be by this time will ever be 
 civilized up to London level ? " 
 
 "We shall all try what is to be done with you. 
 Mrs. Pepperharrow, do you think we can ever make 
 a London man of Mr. Faucit ? " 
 
 "My dear, I'm surprised to hear you. I'm sure Mr. 
 Faucit would be what he liked anywhere ; though 
 whether we ave to be different in Belgrave Square from 
 wdiat we are in Portland Place, I'm afraid I don't know. 
 I've heard that you ave, and I wonder how it's done." 
 
 "What makes you change from such comfortable 
 quarters as these ? " asked Faucit. 
 
 " My usband Ugh as made a great it," said the 
 lady, rushing at the sentence gallantly and losing every 
 fence. (She generally saved some.) " I'm sure we were 
 rich enough before, and very thankful we ought to be, 
 when there's so many poor people about, and so hard 
 to know what to do for them." 
 
 "Nobody knows better what to do in that w^ay 
 than Mrs. Pepperharrow," said Daisy, looking very 
 kindly on her friend. 
 
 "Well, I know that I try, my dear. And, Mr. 
 Faucit, the poor are very hard to manage sometimes.
 
 FAIRFIELD AND CO. 147 
 
 and do take one in so. I wonder if they're any better 
 in Belgrave Square." 
 
 " Are you going there on a voyage of discovery ? " 
 
 " We're going there because Ugh as more than 
 doubled all his money this year, and is likely to go on 
 makino^ more and more of it now e's once be^run. And 
 I think we ought to do our duty in the states to which 
 we are called, and to see more of the aristocracy. 
 Not," added Mrs. Pepperharrow, hurriedly, '' that we're 
 going to neglect old friends. Neither Ugh nor me 
 would do that. Oh dear me ! Ugh's going to sleep ; 
 look at him nodding at the other end of the table, and 
 Mrs. MacGunter not attending to him because of the 
 canvass-backed ducks. Ugh, dear — ahem" (with knife 
 and fork accompaniments on the table). " Ugh ! " 
 
 The soap-boiler recovered with a start, and poured 
 some wine into Mrs. MacGunter' s plate. 
 
 "You'll come and see us very often in the new 
 ouse, Mr. Faucit," continued the speaker, ha\^ng 
 recovered the interruption ; " and as for Daisy here, I'm 
 going to take her to all the best places and all the best 
 things of next year's season." 
 
 " And make a fine lady of her ? " said Faucit. 
 
 " Painting the lily and gilding the gold." 
 
 L 2
 
 148 FAUCir OF BALLIOL. 
 
 He spoke rather low. 
 
 " Mr. Faucit ! " said Daisy as low. " You don't 
 generally pay banal compliments." 
 
 " I don't think I ever do," he answered. " I was 
 quite in earnest. I cannot see Miss Fairfield in the 
 character of a fine lady." 
 
 "Thank you," she said, laughingly. "Perhaps I 
 can. Why should you think that I am free from the 
 ambitions and the weaknesses of my sex ? " 
 
 " From what I have heard of it, the society craze 
 is neither an ambition nor a weakness. It is a fever, 
 apt to leave the whole system in an unstrung and 
 exhausted condition." 
 
 So the talk glided on into the usual philosophies 
 about the emptiness of fashionable life and the hollow- 
 ness of society, which came of course with tremendous 
 force from these two experienced young moralists. It 
 is astonishing how, in London, that same hollow cavity 
 is proclaimed and proscribed by the flutterers on the 
 edge, who hasten to tumble into it one after another on 
 the first appearance of an opening. 
 
 Guy and Daisy were not near enough to the mouth 
 yet, so they were free to talk with a grave superiority 
 which impressed Mrs. Pepperharrow but little, as far as
 
 FAIRFIELD AND CO. 149 
 
 she heard their conversation, carried on, it must be 
 confessed, in something of an undertone. 
 
 Have I spoken of Daisy Fairfield's voice ? Guy's 
 eyes were sometimes half-shut as he listened, to dwell 
 on the music of the notes. His hostess was on a more 
 fashionable life intent, and undismayed by the auguries 
 of crood-natured friends as to the snubbino^s she misfht 
 have to bear. She relied upon her Hugh's purse, and 
 her own placid persistency of nature, which, combined 
 with the fact that you might as well be rude to a 
 cushion, had served her in good stead in the battle 
 of life. They had begun at the bottom of the scale, 
 she and her husband, and had loved and comforted 
 each other in their honest way throughout. If such 
 people do set their hearts upon social conquests, they 
 do it so innocently and thoroughly that there is no 
 blaming them, and perhaps they win because they 
 deserve it. 
 
 The Pepperharrows' wealth made very many people 
 happy ; and in the hands of such trustees as they, it is 
 apt to increase fast. Fortune, indeed, seemed bent at 
 this time upon showering the favours they most desired 
 upon them. 
 
 Early in the year, just as the big house in Belgrave
 
 I50 FAUCI T OF BALLIOL. 
 
 Square was being prepared for the opening of the 
 season, it fell to the lot of Alderman Hugh Pepper- 
 harrow to preside over some ceremony in the city which 
 was graced by the presence of royalty, and carried with 
 it some special significance deserving of special com- 
 memoration. Within a 'few days, to his wife's undis- 
 guised and pronounced delight, and with the effect 
 of some shame-facedness on his part, veiling much 
 inward satisfaction, the soap-boiler arose Sir Hugh 
 Pepperharrow from under the gracious hand of his 
 sovereign. And it was under such a smiling fortune as 
 this that the ' Peep-Hole ' and the ' Flunkey,' and other 
 organs of the fashionable world, previously primed in 
 the matter, announced beforehand some of the wonders 
 which were to await the 4Vde of the hecm monde in the 
 salons of the popular lady of an excellent knight. On 
 such matters we always write in reverential, if some- 
 times doubtful, French. Even at the same time that 
 fickle and dangerous goddess of the wheel was, alas ! 
 steering for a lea-shore, and bringing gathering rumour 
 in her wake, the older vessel of Fairfield and Co.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 COMING EVENTS. 
 
 No rumours about the house of Fairfield or its fortunes 
 reached the ears of the student in the Temple ; nor did 
 Daisy in Portland Place suspect any reason whatever 
 for her father's increased irritabilities. He growled 
 and glared more than before, and he visibly increased 
 his allowances both of port wine and brandy-and-water , 
 much to the girl's annoyance and distress. She had 
 seen the effect of too much induls^ence in these luxuries 
 upon him too often not to hold them in profound 
 horror, and she had very often been able to prevail 
 on him to mend his ways by judicious remonstrance. 
 
 Mrs. Fairfield had an unfortunate knack of inter- 
 fering at exactly the wrong time, and in exactly the 
 wrong way, and returning weakly to the charge when
 
 152 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 wisdom lay in silence. People like this poor lady 
 are always doing it — unlucky social martyrs, who are 
 quite undeserving of the cruel process of snubbing, 
 very incapable of bearing it, and yet always to a great 
 extent bringing it on themselves. 
 
 The effect of Mrs. Fairfield's mild but pertinacious 
 words was usually to increase the evil ; but with his 
 daughter Mr. Fairfield had the grace to be ashamed 
 of himself and of his bad tempers, when they outgrew 
 the reasonable crossness which is permitted to every 
 right-minded head of a household, in order to signify 
 that he is Sir Oracle, and wants the barking to himself 
 Under the crooked influence of the bottle the crossness 
 sometimes broke bounds considerably, and took fero- 
 cious forms which Mr. Fairfield had forgotten all about 
 the next morning, till his wife began to narrate them 
 in a suffering tone when he woke, making him swear. 
 
 Daisy would say nothing till long afterwards, when 
 some quiet and perfectly good-tempered allusion, 
 lighted up sometimes by some of the humour which 
 had been rather freely bestowed upon this young lady, 
 made papa feel very uncomfortable and very conscious, 
 and grow quite good for a time. If some of the 
 guardian angels would only learn her method, and
 
 COMING EVENTS. 153 
 
 refrain from triumphing over prostrate guilt at times 
 when forbearance is not only mercy but wisdom, con- 
 versions would be more numerous, and there would be 
 less creaking in the domestic wheel. 
 
 But of what am I discoursing ? Is it possible that 
 well-bred young ladies can even be conscious of 
 aberrations of this class, much more take notice of their 
 existence ? Faith, yes ; coffee-taverns and Sir Wilfrid 
 were in their infancy then ; and, indeed, I doubt if 
 good Father Noah's weakness is yet dead amongst us, 
 and perhaps there are a good many houses, if we 
 unroofed them, where the properest young maidens 
 would be found very well used to the sins of fathers 
 or brothers in this matter, and speaking of them and 
 rebuking them very candidly indeed. 
 
 Daisy Fairfield, certainly, had a way of going right 
 to her mark about everj'thing, and her mind and taste, 
 at this period, were making rapid growth under the 
 influence of Guy's companionship. Sadly indeed, and 
 very gravely, did she note how this failing of her 
 father's was growing upon him now. He was not 
 a drunkard, nor did he often exceed the extreme limits 
 imposed by decorum. But he drank too regularly and 
 too much, and it was a vice that did not suit him.
 
 154 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 He was not one of those genial fellows who break up 
 homes and hearts with the most exhilarating signs of 
 good-temper; for when he had well drunk, Septimus 
 Fairfield was not genial. If he had been less prone to 
 the weakness for many years past, Daisy and his wife 
 might have been more ready to suspect that he had 
 something on his mind. As it was, they thought with 
 perturbed spirits of the facile descent of Avernus, 
 and hoped that the old gentleman would yet mend 
 his ways. 
 
 If it had not been for this little rift within the 
 lute, my favourite's enjoyment of this winter would 
 have been perfect. Day after day, and time after time, 
 the intimacy between her and Guy Faucit grew and 
 prospered, and I think they understood each other very 
 well, with that best of understandings which comes 
 about between two loyal hearts like theirs, as the 
 inevitable stream proceeds upon its course. He learned 
 how to assure her of his meaning without definite 
 words ; to convey to her, by many a pleasant intimation 
 which she would live upon for days, the depth of the 
 purpose and the reality of the love that were in him ; 
 and at the same time to make her see why and how 
 he did not care to come forward to her father empty-
 
 COMING EVENTS. 155 
 
 handed, but waited for the not far-off time, when, as 
 he hoped, he might have something Hke a secure home 
 and a definite future to offer. 
 
 When first she reahzed this, it may be that her 
 hero rose higher than before in her esteem, and that 
 she, too, on her side, vowed in that simple maiden 
 heart of hers that she, if so God would, was ready to 
 wait in a quiet confidence for the moment when he 
 might think himself justified in saying all that was in 
 his heart. She made no concealment from herself of 
 the answer which hers was prepared to give him. 
 
 There was no hurry. She was young, and the 
 battered old world was young too for her; young 
 enough to give her the full enjoyment of itself, its 
 friendships and its pleasures, its allurements and its 
 innocent uses, which the sce^Dtics only sneer at when 
 they have employed them badly. 
 
 When they met at the winter dances, the delight 
 of the evening was in her waltzes and her talks with 
 him; but that did not prevent her from dancing through 
 her card with partners many and various, getting out 
 of them all the good they had to give her, and grudg- 
 ing to him no little of the same kind of enjoyment. 
 xV pleasant look of understanding would pass between
 
 156 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 them at such times now and again, and the whole 
 of their love-story was coloured by the radiance of 
 a perfect trust. 
 
 I myself, who made her acquaintance through Guy 
 at this time, was favoured with a good many dances 
 and conversations with her, and thought that I could 
 have wished no better fortune in the world for the 
 friend for whom nothing seemed to me too good, than 
 the companionship, through all change and chance, of 
 such a rare creature as this. 
 
 She was so wonderfully frank and fearless, spoke of 
 Guy with such unconcealed but modest interest, and 
 interested herself so honestly in his friends, just 
 because he had made them his. 
 
 She learned to laugh at me and with me for my 
 avowed incapacity for legal learning,^ sympathized 
 thoroughly with my hopeless predilections for the side 
 of the world which men have asjreed to call Bohemia — 
 though what the word precisely means, and what are 
 its latitudes and longitudes, the social geography book 
 sayeth not in any plain terms — and comforted me 
 when, as sometimes happened, I felt inclined to cry 
 out on my own un-seriousness, by auguring for me a fair 
 measure of success in the irregular pursuits which it
 
 'COMING EVENTS. 157 
 
 was my bent to follow, wherein one may stray without 
 a licence, and work in the morning, or in the middle of 
 the night, or all day, or not at all, as seemeth the 
 unchartered libertine best in his own eyes. 
 
 Never had woman a happier knack of talking just 
 upon the subjects which most interest the person she 
 is talking to, not from any sense of duty, or with any 
 sign of that detestable process known as " j^umping," 
 but because she knew that men are best on their own 
 ground, and she loved to pluck from all the highways 
 and hedges of human nature the very flowers which 
 grew there the most naturally. 
 
 So it was that Wilmot came to the conclusion that 
 there could never be a barrister's wife like that ; while 
 I, though quite agreeing with him in the name and 
 interests of Faucit, secretly felt that Daisy Fairfield was 
 born to share and to console the lot of a literary man, 
 and that after all it was to be hoped that the tyrant 
 Circumstance would end by dispensing that lot to Guy, 
 who had already shown his capacity to accept it. 
 
 Indeed, my chief despair about my own prospects 
 rose out of that capacity of his. Every article he 
 wrote for the ' Saturday,' or for the magazine with 
 which he was for the time connected, teemed with
 
 158 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 an amount of knowledge and information which seemed 
 helplessly beyond my grasp. I wanted to be well- 
 informed ; but it was all in vain. I was baffled by 
 politics, bemused by science, drugged by history, while 
 law drove me frenzied to the nearest oyster-shop. 
 
 I was incurably and conscientiously frivolous, and 
 read my fate in the pitying glances of my friends, and 
 the light subjects on which alone they would discourse 
 with me. 
 
 I used to think of my future gloomily — to see 
 myself a pauper, a tide-waiter, a wanderer living on 
 my poor private means, and might never have found 
 my destiny at all had I not one day chanced upon a 
 French farce which amused me. I then and there 
 wrote an original play (upon the same subject), and my 
 groove was found. 
 
 We have all our grooves, my brethren, I verily 
 believe, if we will but with patience wait for them. 
 I have cited Sir Benjamin Brodie's dictum because 
 Faucit believed in it. I didn't, and I don't. No 
 power on earth — none — would, as I am convinced, have 
 made me like or tolerate the law, through no fault of 
 mine, who did not make myself. Neither could the 
 good Fairy Bountiful herself make me hum " God save
 
 COMING EVENTS. 159 
 
 the Queen" so as to be recognized even by Her 
 Gracious Majesty, often as she must have heard it, and 
 on innumerable keys — even though, like Bully Bottom, 
 I have a "reasonable good ear for music. Let's have 
 the tongs and the bones." 
 
 I hked Daisy Fairfield heartily, just as I liked 
 Faucit, and for the same personal reasons, which are at 
 the bottom of all our real likings and dislikings. I 
 abominate Jones because he doesn't appear to want my 
 company at the club ; when one day, lo, we meet in the 
 coffee-room, he greets me warmly and we have a 
 pleasant talk about nothing in particular, and thence- 
 forward Jones is in my best books. Good fellow, Jones. 
 Probably a precisely similar process has taken place 
 in Jones's mind about me, and he has been cursing 
 me for a stuck-up beggar, when I have been avoiding 
 him because I thought he didn't care to speak to me. 
 Faucit, no doubt, used to abuse me, in the round 
 unvarnished terms of college youth, for not sticking 
 to anything; but when the Dean of Chapel of our 
 joint undergraduate day augured worst of me, and the 
 master couldn't account for my proceedings except on 
 the assumption of some mysterious deficiency in my 
 brain — it was Dr. Phlebotham, I think, who once upon
 
 i6o FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 a time, trying to "reduce" me, said the cerebrum was 
 possessed of too much white matter, and too little grey, 
 or blue, or something — Faucit fought my battles in 
 confidence, and vowed to them that Balbus would do 
 very well for himself some day. The Dean hoped that 
 I should ; but my last essay upon the Theocritean phi- 
 losophy had been something altogether too superficial for 
 Balliol. I had insisted on treating that writer purely 
 as a poet, " the poet of the Bucolics, a Syracusan by 
 race, and the son of Simichides, as he said himself," and 
 had more than inferred that he had no philosophy at 
 all, and would have had as little to say for himself in 
 that way as the needy knife-grinder. 
 
 Poor old Dean Parley 1 worthier and kinder soul 
 never breathed ; but he measured us all in the self- 
 same teaspoon, and his classical curriculum was as the 
 bed of one Procrustes, ordered to suit all lengths. 
 
 Of the brilliant minds and leaders of my college day, 
 who were going to ignite the Thames, and witch the 
 world with noble workmanship, only one or two have 
 struggled to the front at all in the many-marshalled 
 battle of Life, and those who now live and move in the 
 eyes of men were for the most part but a poor sort of 
 creature, ranked with the drones and pricked with the
 
 COMING EVENTS, i6i 
 
 unworthy. Nimmo, the billiard-player, has made one 
 of the finest fortunes of the day by coup after coup in 
 Roumanian railways and Mexican contracts, wrought 
 through energy of purpose and subtlety of brain ; 
 Scourfield, the thrice-rusticated, who would do nothing 
 but hunt, is known through the wide-world as a fight- 
 ing special correspondent, whose rides and escapes 
 astonish the generals as much as his letters delight 
 the penmen ; Mopus the solitary, who seemed to have 
 neither foe nor friend nor occupation, and neither 
 in books nor sports would ever do anything, is the 
 famous poet of many editions ; while Sternhold of the 
 four first classes makes indexes in Lincoln's Inn to the 
 statutes other men draw up ; and the wondrous Impey, 
 the distinguished Ireland, Hertford, and what not ? who 
 even in those days was too well-informed to beheve in 
 anything but himself, is incapable of making a speech, 
 or saying Bo to a British jury ; but devils unbeknown 
 for the Solicitor-General, and saves him, as that officer 
 confesses, a considerable amount of trouble. The wheel 
 goes round, and the little pitchers crop up. There 
 was not enough allowance made for mental varieties 
 in those college days, and too much of pains taken in 
 picking out the plums. It happens sometimes that 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 i62 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 the batter is good, and the plums are naught. Ever 
 and again, though, the great stamp of true and original 
 power asserts itself at the outset to all eyes; and 
 neither tutors nor rowing men — neither friends nor 
 examiners — were even then mistaken in their gauge of 
 Faucit's capacity. Hard and sad enough was the dis- 
 cipline the Dispenser had in store for him ; but as 
 I write and remember, may discipline and Dispenser 
 be thanked, it is bearing its late fruit now. 
 
 I was much with Faucit at that time, and made 
 number four with his sweetheart and himself in more 
 private boxes than one, contenting myself with the 
 task of absorbing Mrs. Pepperharrow, whose convers- 
 ation and character rewarded me thoroughly for my 
 devotion, being to me a source of never-ending dehght. 
 Whether she attached any meaning or seriousness to 
 the romance unfolding itself before her eyes, I am 
 not sure. But such was her confidence in Daisy, that 
 whatever that young lady did was sure to be right for 
 her good-natured guardian, who made Daisy a promi- 
 nent figure in all the mind-pictures she drew of the 
 ouse in Belgrave Square. 
 
 '' Quite a mansion, I assure you ; and so elegant. I 
 am sure if we might ope for anything from your pen
 
 COMING EVENTS. 163 
 
 fur our first performance in the theatre, it would be 
 sure to be a feature, ^Ir. Balbus. A man of your 
 intellect, you know. But I'm afraid you wouldn't have 
 the time." 
 
 I had just followed up the fatal farce with a melo- 
 drama, also of French origin, on the strength of which, 
 not without some inward spasms, I called myself an 
 author. It is the only line of life I wot of in which a 
 translator takes to himself that privilege. Yet do the 
 sins of the adapter recoil upon his oa^ti head, for there 
 is a general impression abroad, both in the public mind 
 and the managerial, that an EngHsh playwright cannot 
 invent his own plots. Why I don't know, as it is the 
 easiest part of the business, which may be fairly inferred 
 from the number of novels which every year provides. 
 The impression has chrystallized into a maxim, how- 
 ever; and it is proved by the simple process of 
 attributing a French origin to all the plots one does 
 invent. So it falleth out that in consequence of the 
 sins of his fathers, and mayhap of his own youth, the 
 British dramatist has a hard time of it. He is always 
 told that he cannot invent his own plots ; and when 
 he does, he is told that they are not his own. 
 
 jSTot loner ago I assured a friend of the absolute 
 
 II 2
 
 i64 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 originality of a story of mine which had just had some 
 success upon the stage ; and he asserted it on my 
 authority at a dinner of some gentlemen " in society " a 
 night or two afterwards. The assertion, he told me, 
 was met with roars of laughter, and the assurance from 
 one of the guests that he knew the dialogue by heart 
 and could repeat it in the original French ! 
 
 Pleasant, truthful creature ! " In less than a w^eek 
 there were some people who could name the father, and 
 the farm-house where the babies were put to nurse." 
 What can be the secret pleasure, I wonder, of railing 
 by precept and detracting by rule ? 
 
 But what am I, that I should keep Mrs. Pepper- 
 harrow waiting upon my wrongs? Her honest mind 
 was troubled with no misgivings about degrees of 
 authorship; and she recognized in me one of those 
 mystic beings at whose shrine she bowed under the 
 generic name of genius. Large and catholic was her 
 interpretation of that word. Muggins, the eminent 
 amateur actor, whose powers of facial expression 
 (grimacial expression Jem Gosling once christened it) 
 distanced J. S. Clarke in his most india-rubber mood ; 
 Josephine Parrott, the eminent tragedienne, who learnt 
 all her parts after the fashion of Pendennis's friend,
 
 COMING EVENTS. 165 
 
 Miss Fotheringay, and concealed a world of emotion in 
 those beautiful eves so efFectuallv that it never orot 
 out of them ; Binks, the successful manager, who did 
 such wonderful things for art that the great upholster- 
 ing firm of Shoddy and Co. made quite an income out 
 of him (his plays he bought in Paris, but encouraged 
 native art by insisting that all the characters should be 
 called by English names, and that new Enghsh repartees 
 should be written for them, thereby proving his respect 
 for the French author's work, and how little that author 
 knew what was good for him) — the drawing-room comic 
 singer of the hour, whose name is immaterial, for he 
 is always the same ; Balbus the dramatist ; Faucit 
 the scholar and Saturday Reviewer; Mr. Millais, the 
 Bishop of Winchester, and !Mr. Gladstone, were all 
 welcome to the routs of Lady Pepperharrow that was 
 to be as representatives of Genius. 
 
 She was an honest, kindlv, and admirincr soul ; 
 and small idea enough had she of the consequences 
 w^iich were to follow, when she took Daisy Fairfield 
 under her affectionate winor. She had no daughters 
 of her own ; only two or three sons, who had taken to 
 country-pursuits, and were but little at home, eschew- 
 ing the society which their mother so loved. So Daisy
 
 1 66 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 filled a void in her life, and willingly gave the time she 
 could spare from the duties of her own home to the 
 service of her friend. Faucit's polite attention during 
 the winter charmed the old lady, who made him ex- 
 ceedingly welcome, and gave opportunities many and 
 various for meetings whose significance would scarcely 
 have escaped the keen eye of Fairfield papa, and would 
 very little have pleased him. But^for the preoccupa- 
 tions which were growing upon him at this time, he 
 might have scented danger even as things were. But 
 he was revolving schemes of his own for Daisy in his 
 own mind, with as small thought of her as the 
 slave-dealer has of the feelings of his plumpest 
 Circassian. 
 
 Kind Mrs. Fairfield had inklings of her own on the 
 matter, for Faucit rallied to the five o'clock urn not 
 unfrequently, and one day she hinted something of her 
 thoughts to her daughter, who met them with a very 
 becoming blush, a little laugh, and a kiss. Daisy was 
 very happy in her simple paradise. Fearless of the 
 man she loved, and undoubting of herself, as she would 
 be fearless and undoubting if ever the day should come 
 when she might seal at the altar the compact already 
 firm and fast in her inmost heart, she went on her way
 
 COMING EVENTS. 167 
 
 rejoicing, and adding day by day more splendours and 
 more adornments to her castle in the air. 
 
 *' 0, but she would love him truly ; 
 He should have a cheerful home ; 
 She would order all things duly, 
 When beneath his rouf they come." 
 
 Daisy Fairfield was modestly conscious of a heart 
 and mind beyond the average of every-day women; 
 and she knew the rich gifts of love and help that she 
 could bring in her hand to the man she could accept as 
 worthy of them. Young as she was, she had attracted 
 admiration enough to turn a light head lightly; but 
 she had formed her ideal from the first, and her ideal 
 protected her till it came in living form, and a very 
 attractive living form too. She recognized in Faucit's 
 nature the complement and magnet of her own. She 
 had the artist's eye to admire his physical manliness 
 and the woman's perception to read his steady truth- 
 fulness of character, and the perfect simplicity with 
 which, conscious on his side of his own superiority to 
 most of the men surroundinsj him, he referred it with- 
 out doubt or question to the source whence he believed 
 it came, and read the lesson of humility so — as it was 
 meant to be read — as so few will deign to read it.
 
 i68 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 That it was his business to do his best with the 
 talents intrusted him, be their number five or ten, or as 
 he expressed it himself, to ''stick his nails into the 
 work that came to him to do," was a conviction with 
 which all Daisy's nature sympathized. And it was the 
 opinion of the chronicler of these events, as he watched 
 and protected his two favourites as best he might, 
 flirted with Mrs. Pepperharrow in a manner to en- 
 danger the soap-boiler's rest, and regarded Fairfield 
 papa with a suspicious and unaccommodating eye, that 
 Nature never formed a pair more nobly fitted to fill a 
 royal space in a rather commonplace world together.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MY LORD AND MY LADY. 
 
 It was the Baroness Luscombe of Lusmere who 
 kindly undertook to issue the invitations for the open- 
 ing festivity at the new house in Belgrave Square, 
 about which the ' Peep-Hole ' and the ' Flunkey ' had 
 been busied with starry paragraphs for weeks before. 
 
 The blushing honours of the soap-boiler's knight- 
 hood were brand-new upon him ; for it was in the 
 February of the winter of which I have been writing 
 that his sovereio^n sin^jled him out of the mistered herd, 
 and gave him antlers in the shape of the manchc a son 
 now, which was so impressive to Sir Barnes Newcome, 
 the banker. 
 
 In the ensuing month of March, when the sun 
 even in London was pitilessly clear, just out of per- 
 versity, and because the east wind was so pitilessly
 
 I70 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 cold, Lady Pepperharrow welcomed all the world and 
 his wife to Glycerine House, Belgrave Square, to the 
 first of the festivities with which the name of that 
 hospitable mansion was to become eternally connected. 
 It was unfortunate that it was Lent, certainly; for 
 the hostess would gladly have respected every prejudice 
 and every feeling under the sun ; but it could not be 
 helped ; and this comparatively quiet season had its 
 advantag^es, for a beojinner in the field of fashion, over 
 the later months, when dates are all filled up, and the 
 fixed stars of the social firmament reign supreme. 
 
 Lady Pepperharrow was at present but a comet 
 with a good deal of tail, so she took the advice of Lady 
 Luscombe, and of that distinguished authority Lord 
 Pentonville, to whom Lady Luscombe introduced her, 
 and compromised with worldliness with a sigh. Nor 
 did the good lady surrender her ancient prejudices 
 without the knowledge and sanction of the Rev. Mr. 
 Birmingham Pope, the favourite minister of her new 
 district. She had frankly consulted him, on her coming, 
 upon the poor of his neighbourhood, and what help 
 she best could give him in his work, and fairly aston- 
 ished him by the roundness of the cheque with which 
 she presented him. He quite stammered his acknow-
 
 MV LORD AND MY LADY. 171 
 
 ledgrments, and owned that from the \Yealthiest neic^h- 
 bourhood in London he did not get quite so much help 
 in that way as he could msh ; for indeed, whatever his 
 social proclivities and concessions to mammon, Mr. 
 Pope was a man who did a great deal of good from 
 the incomings of his church, and would gladly have 
 done more. 
 
 " The subscriptions I must own, Lady Pepperharrow, 
 are not what I could wish. But above all things we 
 should be charitable ; and I know that the members of • 
 my congregation have calls and duties in the country 
 which conflict with their opportunities here. An open 
 hand like your ladyship's will be a blessing not to be 
 over-estimated." 
 
 Mr. Pope delighted Lady Pepperharrow, and was 
 installed as her confessor in ordinary without loss of 
 time. He was consulted about the ^eat house-warminor 
 — if a word so ordinary may be applied to an event of 
 such magnitude, — and while respecting the lady's hesi- 
 tations he fully endorsed the opinions of her secular 
 advisers in the matter. Lady Luscombe herself, he 
 assured her, was a very particular person, and would 
 only advise a great entertainment like this in Lent 
 under exceptional circumstances. Lady Luscombe was
 
 172 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 no doubt quite justified in considering the circumstances 
 exceptional, and there was now-a-days a decided advance 
 in tlie liberality of public opinion upon these matters, 
 which he himself could not but regard as a healthy 
 tendency, if not carried too far. Those who still 
 cherished scruples on the point would consult their 
 own feeling in staying away; but he was far from 
 thinking that, with proper safeguards, pleasant and 
 general social intercourse was not in itself both lawful 
 and commendable at all periods of the year. 
 
 If Lady Pepperharrow had further doubts, they 
 were banished by Daisy Fairfield's straightforward 
 intimation, that she could see no conceivable harm in 
 her friend giving a party in Lent if her friend liked, 
 and it was more convenient than any other time. As 
 Daisy's ways and opinions of thinking were always very 
 simply in earnest, her verdict in the matter, as on most 
 matters about which Lady Pepperharrow consulted her, 
 was accepted as final. 
 
 Lady Luscombe was the first high step in her 
 humbler sister's social ladder. The Lord Viscount 
 Luscombe, gouty and aristocratic almost beyond the 
 permitted limits of aristocracy and gout, passed his 
 days in the fond delusion that he was a Liberal of
 
 MV LORD AND MY LADY. 173 
 
 the modem ad^"^nced school. He was a country 
 gentleman of olden family and good though moderate 
 fortune, who, determining to devote his abilities to 
 the service of his country, was as a series of matters 
 of course elected member for the county division, 
 early introduced to the lesser loaves and fishes of 
 official life, and by steady gradations developed into a 
 Secretary of State. 
 
 When the Liberal ^linistry of 18 — was formed, it 
 was in all quarters felt that Mr. Fulke Vavasour was 
 entitled to a post in the cabinet, from the eternal order 
 of the proprieties. No better reason could be advanced 
 or was suggested. In that position he was found by 
 some of his colleagues, upon trial, to be so eminently 
 and entirely respectable, that upon a reconstruction of 
 the ministry he was translated to the House of Lords, 
 without office, it being thought and indeed stated that 
 his independent support in that position would be 
 of the highest value to the government. 
 
 Wilkins, the advanced member for Radborouo-h, 
 accepted the vacant portfolio. It was early in the 
 session which followed upon these events that a mea- 
 sure was inadvertently suffered to pass the House of 
 Commons, which was rightly regarded in well-informed
 
 174 FAUCIT OF DALLIOL. 
 
 quarters as a serious menace to the existing social 
 system ; and the House of Lords, with the pronounced 
 interest in political matters, and the unselfish patriotism 
 which distinguishes them as a body, rose to the occa- 
 sion. They were assembled in London in numbers 
 quite unusual for the season of the year. 
 
 Lord Luscombe, whose independent support was the 
 implied condition of his peerage, could not be expected 
 to give it against his conscience, and both spoke and 
 voted the other way. He afterwards wrote to the 
 * Times ' in vindication of his principles and action, 
 and the letter was very much admired. A yet more 
 extraordinary result of the political crisis, and a more 
 convincing proof of the keen political insight and 
 anxiety for the public weal which is the true basis of 
 the sturdy English character, was the fact that a whole 
 army of Peers, many of them unknown by name to the 
 more ignorant sections of the public, left their hunting- 
 boxes and their country-houses, and their winter water- 
 ing-places in the Capuan South, to rally round the 
 throne and the constitution. They did not listen to 
 the arguments on the other side, for they knew the 
 value of time ; but voted with the unanimity of the 
 players in the * Critic,' and saved the country. Some
 
 MY LORD AND MY LADY. 175 
 
 of them, it was even whispered, were so much in 
 earnest that they had never been inside the House 
 before, and couldn't find their way. 
 
 The ' Peep-Hole ' recorded the arrival of the Earl of 
 Deadhead at Claridge's, from his villa on the Mediter- 
 ranean; while the 'Flunkey,' in this respect before- 
 hand with all rivals, announced that Lord Pentonville, 
 who had been staying with some distinguished friends 
 in the neighbourhood of Newmarket, had taken up his 
 quarters at his bachelor residence in Mount Street, 
 Grosvenor Square. Even those inseparable friends, the 
 Duke of Surbiton and the Marquis of Norbiton, were 
 visible in London, The great heart of the country, no 
 doubt about it, was thoroughly stirred. 
 
 So much the better for our friend Lady Pepperharrow 
 These throbs of the country's heart sensibly quickened 
 the circulation in her drawing-rooms, in the exceptional 
 pre-Paschal season which resulted from the political 
 crisis. Lord Luscombe, who was very much respected 
 in the city, and had many mysterious things to do with 
 odd and sundry Boards, had, in the course of his 
 financial operations, made acquaintance with Mr. 
 Pepperharrow, and thereout, it must be admitted, 
 sucked no small advantage. He had been put up to
 
 176 FAUCir OF BALLIOL. 
 
 a good thing in connection with the coi/j;,' which estab- 
 lished the soap-boiler's fortune on such a solid basis ; 
 and it was whispered that he was the first cause of the 
 claims of that gentleman to social recognition being 
 brought to the notice of H. M.'s advisers in such 
 matters. And learning from Sir Hugh Pepperharrow 
 the nature of the "buffets and rewards" — for I am told 
 that in such things the two go hand in hand — on which 
 his better half had set her heart, his lordship shewed 
 himself not ungrateful. He called upon the lady and 
 dined with her, in his wife's absence from town, at 
 Luscombe Abbey ; and gave her matter of conversation 
 with her friends and intimates for a long time after, 
 until lords and ladies grew as plentiful with her as peas 
 in June. 
 
 During many of those parties of four of which I 
 have spoken, I heard of nothing but Lord Luscombe' s 
 merits, while the other two, pleasantly and entirely 
 unmindful of such subjects of talk, were straying 
 together in fields and byways of their own. And Lady 
 Pepperharrow having confided to his lordship her wishes 
 and ambitions about the opening of the house in Bel- 
 grave Square, Lord Luscombe in a gallant moment 
 undertook that his wife should be her sponsor.
 
 MV LORD AND MY LADY. 177 
 
 Lady Luscombe was not especially pleased ^Yben she 
 heard of the task assigned her. Certainly a greater 
 difference of style and externals between two women 
 could not well be imagined than between her and the 
 lady given her as a 'proUgee. Marian Fulke Vavasour 
 was barely twenty when she made her appearance in 
 London life under that name, as the young wife of the 
 rising statesman, thirty years older than herself. For 
 at fifty Mr. Fulke Vavasour was still rising; and he 
 might never perhajjs have attained to his highest 
 altitudes but for the rare gift which pertained to his 
 wife. As the French say so neatly of a characteristic 
 which once, at all events, belonged signally to French- 
 women, elle savait fenir son selon. The cold and 
 somewhat fishy, but observant eye of the county- 
 member had detected this c^ift in her, when he met 
 her at her father's table in his vovacje round his con- 
 stituency. He found in her exactly what he wanted : 
 good family and undeniable connexion ; no fortune, 
 which would make her dependent ; much ambition, 
 which would make her helpful ; and an appearance 
 and manner which must make his house and table 
 infinitely attractive to the class of people he wished 
 to attract. For his, too, was a genuine parHamentary 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 FAUCir OF BALLIOL. 
 
 ambition, of the kind wliich has furnished so many 
 officials of a uniform an I serviceable type. He had 
 a steady plodding brain, with no heart to distract it ; 
 no domestic affections, and no taste for pleasure what- 
 ever, though he shot his covers solemnly every year in 
 a pair of characteristic gaiters, and never enjoyed the 
 sport so much as when the game was shy, and he could 
 talk blue-book over his gun to some congenial spirit, 
 invited to Luscombe Abbey for that especial purpose. 
 He worked as hard as any clerk in his office ; some 
 sceptics indeed, conversant with the ways of those 
 gentlemen, said a good deal harder. Therefore Mr. 
 Fulke Vavasour was a man who deserved to rise. 
 
 In the civil contract entered into between him, 
 bachelor, of the one part, and Marian Teesdale, spinster, 
 of the other part, and attested with certain mutual but 
 unbinding: affirmations in the accredited clerical formulas, 
 there was no disguise or pretence upon either side. 
 The lady was weary of the refined and pretentious 
 jDoverty in which she had been brought up from her 
 cradle, and the never-ending bickerings which made 
 her home a picture of small discomfort ; and was quite 
 ready to marry Mr. Fulke Vavasour for his lands and 
 his position, provided he fully understood that it was
 
 xMV LORD AND MY LADY. 179 
 
 fur them she did it. For she was straightforward 
 enough in her way. She knew, and she let him know, 
 that in her opinion she fetched her price, ^ith her 
 good looks and youth and breeding, and the wits and 
 accomplishments which she had quietly and sedulously 
 cultivated, to fit herself for the place she had always 
 intended to fill. Mr. Vavasour was just what she 
 wanted. He might have been ten years younger; 
 anything younger than that she did not msh for, for 
 she liked what was ^osL But as it was it was well 
 enough. So too his fortune might have been larger, 
 in comparison with the growing extent of fortunes now- 
 a-days. But it was good and solid, and would serve ; 
 and with a name and position such as his, there were 
 ways and opportunities of increasing it by wariness 
 and venture properly combined. 
 
 To Marian Teesdale, to do her justice, money was a 
 means as much as an end, for .she wanted to lead, and 
 she could not do that through money alone. Before she 
 attracted Mr. Vavasour she had steadily, and two or 
 three times, refused a prosperous manufacturer of half 
 his years and treble his fortune, who was a very present- 
 able man, and very honestly in love with her. She saw 
 
 at once that she could do nothing with him except 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 possibly conquer for him the position of a nouveaxi ride, 
 which to her meant no position at all. She had drunk 
 in the bluest traditions of race with her mother's milk 
 (or rather with her foster-mother's, who was a farmer's 
 daughter, — It is odd, but so . . ), and was honestly and 
 scornfully surprised to see how "her mother did fret 
 and her father did fume," at her determined rejection 
 of Mr. Thomas Hodges' proposals. 
 
 Poor people ! their narrow means, and, of course, 
 large family, had half harried them to death, though all 
 that interest could do had been done for all the little 
 male Teesdales. Unluckily that is not much now-a-days, 
 in cases where idleness chooses to o^raft confirmed in- 
 
 o 
 
 capacity upon original want of brain. Competitive 
 examinations were almost as great a bugbear to poor 
 Mrs. Teesdale, and as much the object of her denunci- 
 ations, as " them dratted schoolboards " are at this present 
 time to the casual farmer's wife we meet in the railway- 
 carriage. And indeed there had been more plucking of 
 little Teesdales in these merciless ordeals than the Mother 
 Goose could comfortably bear. The parents may perhaps 
 be pardoned even by the sternest moralist, then, if it was 
 with pronounced regret, and after considerable argument, 
 that they let the manufacturer's fortune go. Marian
 
 MV LORD AXD MY LADY. i8i 
 
 bad a bad time of it wben be returned again and again 
 to tbe cbarge ; but sbe beld ber own very calmly. Tbe 
 parents implored in tbe name of ber bretbren, wbo 
 were as many as Josepb's ; and sbe frankly answered 
 tbat, tbouo-b sbe would do wbat sbe could for tbem if 
 sbe could do it some day in ber own way, sbe beld 
 tbeir interests altogetber secondary to ber own, and as 
 tbey didn't seem to be able to do anytbing for tbem- 
 selves, sbe couldn't bonestly feel tbat sbe cared two 
 straws wbat became of them. Sbe retorted very justly, 
 and therefore all tbe more provokingly, upon ber father 
 all the continual variations of noblesse oblige, vrith which 
 be bad played upon ber from childhood ; and the hapless 
 man felt tbat it was difficult to make Theory square 
 with Practise, when tbe latter took such very substantial 
 form. I think, on tbe whole, that it was bard upon 
 him. However, so it was ; and matters took their 
 own way, which, after all, thanks to the young lady's 
 tenacity of purpose, turned out eventually much to bis 
 satisfaction. Mr. and Mrs. Teesdale, to do tbem justice 
 also according to tbeir lights, much preferred Mrs 
 Fulke Vavasour that was, to Mrs. Thomas Hodges tbat 
 should have been, and magnanimously forgave her at 
 tbe altar to which she conducted tbem.
 
 1 82 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 The common moralizing about the bargain and sale 
 of children in this country of ours has always struck 
 the present chronicler, at all events, as a good deal 
 exaggerated. The sweet young victims, in nine of 
 these convenient marriages out of ten, sacrifice them- 
 selves with a good grace and much of their own accord. 
 Negatively, no doubt, parents may have brought them 
 up to the theory of the thing, and may so far be gravely 
 responsible for the evils which follow in its train. 
 But often and often, I believe, if the reverse of the 
 medal could be read, which carries the pithy motto 
 instead of the stamp, we might learn that some of these 
 wicked parents, with their lives half lived and all laid 
 down, with many a stray example and moral in their 
 minds, — sometimes, perhaps, their own among the 
 number, — are not even willing participators in some of 
 the ceremonies of St. George's ; have even warned and 
 besought a headstrong child in vain. She knows better ; 
 life is before her, and with the watchfulness that she 
 will exercise, and the experience by which she will 
 profit, will yield for her fruits they were not able to 
 gather. It is all very well for papa and mamma to 
 deny that happiness can reside in carriages and horses, 
 and dresses and jewels imlimited. She and her friend
 
 J/F LORD AND MY LADY. 183 
 
 Clara have talked it all over and thought it all out, and 
 for them they know that it does. So the fair Iphigenia 
 cuts her own throat at the altar smilingly, and Father 
 Agamemnon, so far from lending a hand to the sacrifice, 
 turns his head away and covers his eyes, even if he 
 does sanction the affair with his presence. Are not 
 these things sometimes so ? 
 
 Marian Gresham Teesdale on her side, and John 
 Audley Fulke Vavasour on his, knew very well what 
 they were about. She assured him very honestly 
 that in this case there was no penniless but cherished 
 suitor in the background ; but that she liked her chosen 
 husband as well as anybody, and s}Tnpathized in his 
 pursuits and his ambition. In a very short time the 
 marriage bore its purposed fruit. A self-possessed and 
 admirable hostess, whose conversation was sensible and 
 brilliant both, and tact and courtesy unfailing, Mrs. 
 Fulke Vavasour soon made her rooms and receptions a 
 fact in London life ; nut in its social phase only, but in 
 its political. All the leaders and supporters of their 
 own party found Lusmere House a centre ; though, by 
 a careful exercise of that same admirable quality of 
 tact, the hostess succeeded in the most difficult of all 
 tasks, preventing it from becoming too exclusively a
 
 1 84 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 party-centre. A pleasant leaven of opposition gave 
 lustre and interest to the whole ; while to art and 
 literature, in the persons of their more famous and 
 favoured sons, Mrs, Fulke Vavasour held out open arms. 
 Nor, while contriving that all this should be, did she 
 neglect the other task she had set herself — that of 
 improving and enlarging her husband's fortune. She 
 made quiet and keen inquiries into the mysteries of 
 city life ; to her it was in the first place owing that her 
 husband became, as we have described here, interested 
 in City matters; the state of trade and of railways, 
 under careful and secret guidance, became to her a 
 thing of familiar knowledge ; she was careful that 
 nothing unbecoming to, or inconsistent with, Mr. Fulke 
 Vavasour's political position should at any time or in 
 any way be connected with his name ; and the Lus- 
 combe estates grew and waxed and prospered quietly — 
 so quietly that men hardly marked how the parties at 
 Lusmere House, and the circle at Luscombe Abbey, 
 increased gradually in brilliancy, and in the outward 
 and visible signs of wealth and solidity. 
 
 Alas ! to what good ? Once or twice during the 
 first few years of their union the Fulke Vavasours 
 hoped for a child. But the hopes were disappointed.
 
 MV LORD AXD MY LADY. 185 
 
 and after a time they were not renewed. Barren as it 
 had been loveless, the marriage was denied that blessing 
 which sometimes sows an after-seed of love ; and as 
 they grew nearer in interests, Mr. and Mrs. Vavasour 
 grew further apart in heart. They were little together 
 except at the hours and times of ceremony, and a 
 separate circle of private friends grew up round each of 
 them. Long and close were Mr. Vavasour's private 
 inteiwiews with his wife ; but if a reporter had been 
 present he would have found them very like a man's 
 visits to his solicitor. Marian was her husband's first 
 man of business, and a good one, and he knew it. In 
 some cases, that is no bad bond of a better union, where 
 wider S}Tnpathies agree. But here the lady was bright 
 and intellectual, the gentleman dull and plodding ; 
 while to him she was as cold as he. Then out of the 
 dulness and the ploddingness came a great blow to 
 them both, which has been already told. There are 
 times in politics which want strong men, and are apt 
 to put averages to the right-about. Mr. Vavasour's 
 greatest social honour was really his final failure, and 
 they both knew it. They both knew very well why at 
 the age of sixty-two, when many politicians have the 
 world still in their hands, the House of Commons
 
 1 86 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 minister blossomed into the pensioned-off lord. His 
 wife wanted him to refuse ; but the intimation that he 
 must not, while very courteous and considerate, was 
 too clear to be mistaken. Mr. Fulke Vavasour was a 
 failure on the post after all, in spite of all his wife had 
 done and all the diplomacies she had used, and the 
 shadows gathered darker round the loveless home.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 LADY PEPPERH arrow's HOUSE- WARMING. 
 
 When Lady Luscombe came to London, at her 
 husband's wish, to preside over Lady Pepperharrow's 
 house-warming, and to play the social godmother to 
 that excellent but inappropriate lady, it was in pur- 
 suance of the compact between herself and her husband 
 which both thoroughly understood. Fastidious in taste 
 and choice, the centre and the favourite of her society, 
 and famous as the first of hostesses from one end of 
 polite London to another. Lady Luscombe was not fond 
 of throwing her fpgis over unqualified aspirants, or 
 sending out invitations for other people. I am not 
 sure, indeed, that she had ever done such a thing 
 before. But she was sore, and smarting from the 
 recent blow. The Lady Luscombe would never, she 
 felt, be what Mrs. Fulke Vavasour had been ; and she
 
 1 88 FAUCir OF BALLIOL. 
 
 saw the prizes she had toiled and contrived for slipping 
 from her grasp, and the objects for which she lived 
 failing her. She was a woman of ready resource, and 
 was ready for a change of part at once. She knew 
 that her political reign was over. As hostess even in 
 the political world she might yet hold her own in a 
 sense, no doubt ; probably the chief regret felt by the 
 heads of the ministry was, that in losing Fulke 
 Vavasour they lost his wife. But it was her husband's 
 position which had given her its weight, and it was gone. 
 When she surveyed her Fulke' s sleeping face, to all 
 outward seeming unperturbed by any sense of failure 
 or rebuff, and the open mouth, which had just 
 swallowed a coronet, snoring contentedly on, it is 
 certain that her ladyship felt a weariness, an indig- 
 nation, and a resentment coming over her which were 
 much at odds with her wifely duties. 
 
 Had she nursed him all those years for this ? that 
 his abominable stupidity — yes, stupidity — should, after 
 all, have brought their joint career to wreck ? It is 
 absolutely on record, that after the catastrophe, on the 
 night when she so gazed upon him, the high-bred 
 Marian then and there, in the silence of the night 
 and the recesses of the bed-curtains, sate bolt upright.
 
 LADY PEPFERHARROWS HOUSE-WARMEXG. 189 
 
 and shook her sleeping lord violently. He never knew 
 till his dying day what was the shock that woke him. 
 It is a fact that these lofty beings have their vulgar 
 passions like other j^eople. 
 
 But the first purpose of the lady's life being frus- 
 trated, the second remained. Love could scarcely do 
 more for many husbands than ambition did for Fulke 
 Vavasour. I can never bring myself to write of the 
 Right Honourable gentleman as Vavasour without the 
 Fulke. For her husband the keen-witted Marian con- 
 tinued to scheme, almost from habit of thought, per- 
 haps ; for, with no son of his or hers succeeding, what 
 had she really to scheme for ? But she had resolved 
 on this course at starting, and it was too late to change. 
 Lord Luscombe cuuld no longer hope to be an in- 
 fluential minister, but he might be made a verv rich 
 man, through those City boards and City mysteries I 
 have told of; and the City, instead of Downing Street, 
 now became the metropolis of Lady Luscombe' s land 
 of action. 
 
 It is not necessary to tell in detail how it was 
 that, as I have already mentioned, the fortunes of Lord 
 Luscombe became connected with those of Sir Husrh 
 Pepperharrow, who had just munificently presented
 
 I90 FAUCI r OF BALLIOL. 
 
 the City with a strange and fearsome monument (which 
 was carefully set up in the middle of a crowded 
 thoroughfare where there was no room for two cabs to 
 pass before), and was knighted accordingly. 
 
 Lord Luscombe and his wife quite understood each 
 other on all matters of business ; but when he learned 
 from Pepperharrow, after much hemming and ha-ing 
 on the part of the soap-boiler, what it was that his 
 Martha had set her heart on, and how she desired to 
 accomplish it, his lordship, who had dined with our 
 old friend, was secretly doubtful how his Marian would 
 take it. But the Pepperharrow connection was vital 
 to him at the moment, and he propounded the sug- 
 gestion, which, to his surprise, was received without 
 cavil. 
 
 A few months before, and Marian would have cer- 
 tainly declined to open her house to the Pepper- 
 harrows, much more to adopt the lady as a social 
 fvole(jee. Lord Luscombe hinted thus much to her, 
 and was puzzled by the tone of covert scorn with 
 which it was answered, that their position in life was 
 changed, and their views and objects must change too. 
 Wealth at any cost. Lady Luscombe explained without 
 definite words, was thenceforward the Luscombe pro-
 
 LADY PEPPERHARROW'S HOUSE-WARMIXG. 191 
 
 gramme. So Lady Pepperharrow's guests were bidden 
 to the opening festivity of Glycerine House by the 
 Baroness Luscombe of Lusmere. 
 
 Very splendid the west-end mansion looked that 
 night. The mysterious couj) — I write about a thing 
 which I do not in the least understand, and never 
 shall — had put the Pepperharrows among the financial 
 giants, and everything was worthy of the occasion, 
 when Lady Pepj)erharrow first put her foot down to 
 trouble the Belgravian waters, and to occupy her large 
 space in the eye of the social journals. 
 
 The staircases were bright and sweet with rich 
 exotics which hned all the walls and filled all the 
 recesses like silent and many-coloured chaperons, there 
 to look after the young people with a friendly interest. 
 The lights were softened by judicious shades, and set 
 off the whole scene a giortio, as gionio should be, clear 
 but not obtrusive. The rooms were furnished with 
 genuine taste, with no pretence of show, but a full 
 sense of richness ; there were people who did say that 
 one Daisy Fairfield, the hostess's particular favourite, 
 had been carefully consulted and actively concerned at 
 every stage of the furnishing, and had relentlessly 
 \etoed several appalling combinations of greens and
 
 192 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 yellows, and a Pactolic superfluity of gilding, whicli 
 had at the outset much commended themselves to 
 Lady Pepperharrow's Oriental fancy — and the sofas 
 and settees were an invitation to confidences and 
 treasons. 
 
 It was strongly asserted that young Cooington, of 
 the Home Office, never left Milly Swansdown's side 
 the whole evening, in that tiny room which " gives " on 
 the first staircase. There really was no more than 
 space for one couple in it, and it was much in demand. 
 But Cooinofton and that bold S;irl held their own in 
 a way which — well, which was very disappointing to 
 other young people with whom they were before- 
 hand. And Milly' s eyes always looked so round and 
 simple and surprised, when anybody looked at her as 
 if she had been holding the fort long enough. 
 
 The large long room, which was the principal 
 attraction of the house, was filled and busy with the 
 buzz of guests. At one end of it, a perfect bijou stage 
 had been erected as a permanent fixture, under the 
 careful superintendence of Muggins, who had super- 
 intended more amateur stages than any man alive ; 
 who talked theatre all day, and dreamed it all night, 
 and was wont to salute his friends, at all times and
 
 LADY PEPPERHARROWS HOUSE-WARMING. 193 
 
 places, with appropriate quotations from John Maddison 
 Morton — a humourist, by the bye, whose whims and 
 oddities, being confined to the little yellow books which 
 have no connection with literature, have never been 
 half recognized for their spirit of exuberant fun. 
 
 The Theatre Royal, Glycerine House, was con- 
 structed to serv^e for every sort of entertainment, from 
 opera to recitation, from tableau vivant to scientific 
 lecture, and was opened that night with a miscellaneous 
 concert, in which the stars of the hour, as many of 
 them as had risen in London at that early season, 
 figured and quavered to the equally miscellaneous 
 audience. 
 
 Lady Luscombe had done her work well, for 
 
 everybody was there. Men busy with the affairs of 
 
 state, whom the poor lady looked upon with a sad eye 
 
 askance, as they offered their congratulations on her 
 
 husband's honours with as little of an air of condolence 
 
 as possible, talked aside in comers of the crisis of the 
 
 hour ; and Society shook its head in the wrong place, 
 
 and instinctively took the wrong side, as the spirit of 
 
 the club and the drawing-room in such cases prompteth 
 
 it. Noble lords mutually congratulated each other on 
 
 the public spirit which had brought them to town at 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 such a time, and wondered where Lady Luscombe had 
 picked up her new chent, and who she was, as indeed 
 did everybody in the room except the small knot of 
 personal friends whom Lady Pepperharrow would not 
 forget in her invitation, even though they had all to 
 be submitted to the approval of the higher authority. 
 
 The world of pure frivolity, the world of dancing 
 and of flirting, were to the fore in force, looking very 
 young and very happy, or else very aging and very 
 bored. Every sort and all sorts, whom Society gathers 
 under her motley wing, came out of curiosity, oat of 
 idleness, out of habit, out of love, out of the main 
 chance, out of business, out of any of the thousand-and- 
 one motives which carry people about, night after 
 night, to meet each other over and over again without 
 giving themselves the time to get anything new to say, 
 in the inexplicable whirl which solved perpetual motion 
 long ago, when Mrs. Noah sent out her first invitations 
 for the ark. So good Lady Pepperharrow' s rooms, 
 large as they were, were crowded to their full capacity, 
 and she stood gallantly perspiring at her post at the 
 head of the great staircase all the night, till a pitying 
 Duke — it was his Grace of Surbiton — asked her to 
 come and have some of her own supper.
 
 LADY PEPPERHARROWS HOUSE-WARMING. 195 
 
 The Marquis of Norbiton had bet him that he 
 would not do it, for the Duke was very young indeed, 
 and had been with difficulty persuaded to leave his 
 hunting-box and come out in the character of a 
 legislator, even by the gravity of the situation, which 
 he confessed he did not fully grasp. But his ancestor 
 had come over with WiUiam the Conqueror, and 
 planted the first tree on Messenger's Eyot : so he 
 rose to his duty, and gave his vote in the House 
 of Peers, shoulder to shoulder with Norbiton. 
 
 The two young men, who said but httle even 
 between themselves upon the subject, agreed thereafter 
 that politics were doosid slow, and abandoned a public 
 career. Indeed, they were scandalously attacked by 
 some low fellows in their local papers, for voting at all, 
 which after their trouble in leaving Leicestershire was 
 doosid ungrateful, and they felt it. 
 
 Surbiton and Norbiton were delighted with the 
 Pepperharrow festival, and especially with the magni- 
 ficent appearance of the hostess, which even Daisy's 
 influence had not been able to keep entirely in check. 
 Some of the patterns, denied to the curtains and 
 chintzes, had surely blossomed out in her attire. 
 
 The two young noblemen watched her with a sort 
 
 02
 
 196 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 of fascination all the evening. " She'll bob herself into 
 two, Sur, I know she will ! " — until the Duke felt 
 impelled to make the recorded bet, and conduct his 
 hostess to supper, an attention for which the poor 
 wearied soul, at the summit of its honest ambition, was 
 unfeignedly grateful. 
 
 " I couldn't have done it," Norbiton said to himself 
 gravely, shaking his head as Lady Pepperharrow's 
 feathers fluttered through the door of the supper-room 
 below ; " but Sur always has the doose's own way with 
 him." 
 
 Thus did these budding rulers of ours beguile the 
 time which they were sacrificing to the labours of 
 the Senate. 
 
 It was as one of the hostess's small knot of personal 
 friends that I was included in the gathering I am 
 enabled to describe ; and I watched much that' was 
 going on with the supercilious envy and contempt of 
 youth, embittered by a deep sense of social wrong and 
 the inequalities of rank. 
 
 " Why should we, my dear Fauci t," — I began. But I 
 am bound to say that Faucit, by this time hard at work 
 in a pleader's chambers, and getting more law into his 
 head in a day than most men can digest in a week,
 
 LADY PEPPERHARROWS HOUSE-WARMING. 197 
 
 gave no encouragement whatever to my radical sen- 
 timents, passed the rights of man lightly over, told me 
 that I should be very glad to be a lord if I could, and 
 sought metal more attractive by a certain young 
 lady's side. 
 
 Deserted and snubbed, I turned upon little Binks 
 the manaorer, who had gotten himself an invitation 
 through his dear friend Muggins, whom he had assisted 
 in contriving the Glycerine stage. He was in a very 
 bad temper, Binks, at the failure of all his plays that 
 season, and profoundly disgusted with the British public. 
 
 " Never know where to have 'em, Balbus, never ! 
 They won't go to anything but trash, blessed if they 
 will, unless it's Shakespeare, or something else that 
 they go to because their fathers went. And I can't do 
 Shakespeare, confound it ! I hate blank verse, because 
 I can't speak it, and you mustn't cut it. If you do it 
 don't scan. As if that mattered ! Don't know what 
 to make of the public, blessed if I do I " 
 
 " Binks, my boy," I answered, " you are wandering. 
 The abused public are Tom, Dick, and Harry ; and as a 
 rule, with but few exceptions, they go to the good things 
 in whatever line, and they won't go to the bad ones. 
 Being human nature in the lump, they cannot well go
 
 198 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 wronor. Therefore, Binks, when I find an actor, or an 
 author, or a manager, abusing the British public, I say 
 unto myself, say I, ' Here is a man that knoweth not 
 his own business.' Be modest, Binks, and instead of 
 abusing the British public, try and give them something 
 worth seeing." 
 
 " Ha, ha ! upon my soul ! mean something of your 
 own, Balbus, I suppose. Got something by you you 
 think would suit me ? " 
 
 " Indeed no," I said. " I don't keep things by me, 
 or make suits of clothes on spec, on the chance of their 
 being made to suit the wearer afterwards. You see 
 authors have to live as well as you, without the advan- 
 tage of drawing a weekly salary. No, Binks, I have 
 nothing by me ; but there are plenty of plays in your 
 drawers which would do very well, I'll be bound ! " 
 
 " Bosh, sir, bosh ! all bosh from beginning to end. 
 Englishmen can't write plays, and those who can won't 
 unless we order 'em. Vanity of authors quite awful — 
 quite disgusting — 'pon my soul." 
 
 "Vanity, my dear Binks," I answered, "has been 
 described as meaning a conviction that you can do 
 things which you can't do, and are not your business. 
 Now, when I bring a play of mine to rehearsal, the first
 
 LADY PEPPERHARROWS HOUSE-WARMING. 199 
 
 thing you actors do is to come round me in a body, or 
 one by one, tell me that this ought to be cut out and 
 that altered, and at last so daze me, that if I don't stand 
 out the play is soon no longer my o^ti. In other words, 
 you insist on teaching me my business instead of doing 
 yours, which is either acting my play or letting it alone. 
 I only ask to be allowed to know my business. I don't 
 teach you to act, though the Lord knows some of you 
 want it. On which side is the vanity, Binks ? " 
 
 " All nonsense ! " said the manager. " Of course we 
 must know all about plays, and you can't. I've tried 
 everything this season — all the pieces which have been 
 the greatest goes abroad. Had one from the German, 
 one from the French, one from the Italian, and one from 
 the Dutch, and none of them brought a penny — not a 
 penny, by Jove. Now I don't know what to try." 
 
 " Bum your dictionaries and try EngKsh, something 
 which hasn't been a go abroad. Good night, Binks." 
 
 Having launched my darts and avenged myself, and 
 being in a better humour with the nobility and gentry in 
 consequence, I strolled about among the bright rooms, 
 after listening for a while to the gymnastics of a popular 
 soprano, who ran up to the chandeliers and down again 
 in a way to defy catching. But when I caught sight
 
 200 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 of Guy Faucit and Daisy Fairfield in close talk together 
 under the shelter of a favouring plant, which might 
 have been transported from the tropics as it stood, after 
 one quick glance I quietly drew away, unnoticed by 
 them. In that one look at the man's face and at the 
 girl's, I knew that my dear old friend had made his 
 confession, and I knew too how it had been answered. 
 
 I never saw Daisy Fairfield look so well as she looked 
 that night, the happiest she had ever known, as it was 
 to be her happiest, poor girl, for many a long year. I 
 do not even remember what dress she wore, but I know 
 that the basis and the ground of it were white, seem- 
 ingly and gracefully adorned. I remember the one 
 purple flower which was set behind the ear, so small 
 and so close to the head ; and the wonderful gloss of 
 which nature that evening had been more liberal even 
 than usual to the sunny hair. In that one glimpse I 
 caught of her face, the shy smile which played about 
 the lips matched so perfectly with the deep seriousness 
 in the eyes, that the two expressions made up one. 
 And as she listened to what Faucit was telling her half 
 under his breath, but in that firm full voice of his, or as 
 she let a few words fall from her in answer, she opened 
 and shut her fan mechanically with her right hand, as
 
 LADY PEPPERH ARROWS HOUSE-WARMING. 201 
 
 the elbow rested upon the arm of the couch on which 
 they were seated side by side. I can recall the quaint 
 watteau patterns upon that fan, a present of Lady 
 Pepperharrow's, and the laces which fringed it, now. 
 Asmodeus the chronicler claims his privilege. WTiat 
 was it that the two said ? 
 
 " Yes, Miss Fairfield, I love you very earnestly. I 
 have done so since the first day I saw you by the river, 
 I think. Haven't you guessed it ? " 
 
 " I hardly know, Mr. Faucit, indeed." 
 
 " But you knew that I didn't intend to speak. I 
 wanted to have something to offer you better than a 
 law-student's belief in himself before I told you what I 
 have told you now. It isn't much, is it ? " 
 
 " With you I think that it is," she said, very simply 
 and frankly ; and Guy's overfull heart gave a great 
 bound as she said it. " It isn't as if you had not shown 
 what you can do, at Oxford." 
 
 There was a pretty pride both in the girl's look and 
 tone. 
 
 " Supposing that to be so, the race is not always to 
 the strong." 
 
 " To the strong and patient," she answered, " I for 
 one believe that it is."
 
 202 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 " But I haven't been patient after all. If you knew 
 how resolved I was not to speak, till I had at least been 
 called to the bar ! " 
 
 " And what was I to do all that time ? " asked Daisy, 
 with a smile which made poor Guy's heart beat faster 
 and faster. Her frankness was so perfect and so winning, 
 , so free from any taint of forwardness, so full of utter 
 trust. It never seemed to enter Daisy's head, from the 
 moment when Faucit opened all his heart to her, "that 
 she was to play at hiding any of hers from him. 
 
 "I suppose you were to wait," he said, with a 
 happy and half-embarrassed little laugh ; " and under- 
 stand all about it all the time. That was to be your 
 part in the comedy." 
 
 " Perhaps I should have grown a little tired of it," 
 she said. " But I would have waited ! " she added 
 suddenly, then blushed fairly at herself. 
 
 " And will wait now ? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," she said simply ; " if you wish it." 
 
 " I must wish it. For I have nothing in the world 
 till I can make it." 
 
 " But I have." 
 
 " I know ; and that's just what I'm afraid of. People 
 would say I asked you for that."
 
 LADY PEPPERHARROW'S HOUSE-WARMING. 203 
 
 " Do you care much for what people say ? " she 
 answered him. " I shouldn't." 
 
 " No ; but your father might say so. You wouldn't." 
 
 " I ! " And there was a touch almost of reproach 
 in her tone. 
 
 " I was stupid even to say it." 
 
 "Well, you wer^ — rather." This with a smile. 
 "But papa is not nearly so hard as you think him. 
 He'll do anything for me ; and he will know that you 
 mean to work and to get on. What better use can a 
 girl find for money, than to help a man who means to 
 do that, at starting ? " 
 
 "You are not a girl," said Guy; ''you are a very 
 noble woman." 
 
 " Am I ? " she answered. " I feel very like a girl 
 to-night. You have made me forget my trouble at 
 home." 
 
 " That was what made me speak, you know. I 
 thought you seemed annoyed and anxious about this 
 stranger — this Mr. Brent, you spoke of; and I couldn't 
 help telling you that there was some one who — some 
 one that — " 
 
 The athlete broke do^^^l in the sentence ; but it 
 served.
 
 204 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 " And, Mr. Faucit, you were right ; and you will be a 
 real help to me. When papa brought this Mr. Brent to 
 dinner and introduced him to me last night, I thought 
 there was something odd in his manner which I couldn't 
 understand. And the man himself was familiar — rudely 
 so even. I haven't been able to shake off an uncom- 
 fortable feeling all day, and came here as if something 
 was going to happen." 
 
 " Something has — hasn't it ? " asked Guy. 
 
 " Yes. But not quite like that." 
 
 " What is this Mr. Brent ? " 
 
 "I don't know. 'Something in the city,' which 
 sounds like anything in the world, from a diamond- 
 merchant to a crossing-sweeper. I don't want to think 
 of Mr. Brent again." 
 
 "And I don't want you to think of him. You 
 have told me that I may go and speak to your 
 father to-morrow, and tell him everything ? " 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Faucit." 
 
 " One thing more." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 " You haven't answered my question yet." 
 
 "What was it?" 
 
 " Whether you love me or not ? "
 
 LADY PEPPERHARROW'S HOUSE-WARMING. 205 
 
 " Haven't I ? " 
 
 " Not in words. Won't you ? Do you ? " 
 
 " Yes ; indeed I do." 
 
 " Ah ! And when will you begin to call me Guy ? *' 
 
 A big pause. Then she said, " Now, Guy." 
 ■X- * ^ ^ -x- 
 
 " What a lovely looking girl \ " said to Lady 
 Luscombe, a little later, as Daisv was walkino- throuo-h 
 the rooms, a dark and singular-looking man -^dth a pale 
 oval face, and jet black hair parted in the middle, who 
 seemed some six-and-thirtv years old, if anv clear o-uess 
 at his age could be made. He had nothing distinctive 
 in his dress, which was very simple ; but evers'body who 
 looked at him looked at him again, and it was to be 
 noted that all who spoke to him spoke to him ^^'ith 
 marked deference. Lady Luscombe was leaning on his 
 arm, and he was twisting a hoop-ring round the fourth 
 finorer of his ricrht hand. 
 
 Lady Luscombe looked carelessly up, as she had 
 been absorbed in some close conversation with this 
 man which the remark interrupted. Her eye was 
 caught too, at once, not more by the beauty of the 
 girl, than by the air of refinement which was especially 
 Daisy's own.
 
 2o6 , FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 " She is indeed," she said. " I wonder who she is. 
 As I don't know her myself, and never saw her before, 
 I must ask Lady Pepperharrow." 
 
 " The young lady doesn't look much like a friend of 
 our gentle hostess," said the other, with a sneer in the 
 words which his tone hardly marked. " But whoever 
 she is we must know more of her. She must be an 
 ornament in your rooms this season; it is always an 
 advantage to introduce a sensation. A fine-looking 
 fellow with her, too; a Briton of the true broad- 
 shouldered Viking type. She is too good for him, and 
 he can be dispensed with." 
 
 "He is very much absorbed by his pretty com- 
 panion," Lady Luscombe said. 
 
 "Clearly. Calf-love to be killed young. There's 
 Pentonville. He'll find out all about the girl's parent- 
 age, prospects, and general health in five minutes. 
 Pentonville 1" 
 
 A tightly-booted and short-sighted little gentleman 
 hopped across the room. " W — w — w — " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " No — what ! W — what is it, Lestrange ? "
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 MR. JOHN BRENT. 
 
 Mr. Fairfield was in his study, closeted with a 
 friend. The friend was not a person who excited feel- 
 ings of sympathy at the outset. He was little and 
 dried-up, like a medlar ; and looked as if the drying 
 process had taken place as much inside as out. His 
 face wore the livery of the burnished sun in the 
 especial form it assumes in complexions which have 
 been tanned and dried in India, from an improper 
 understanding of the conditions of Indian life. Mr. 
 John Brent looked as if he should sit for a picture of 
 liver. He had a little iron-grey head of hair, which he 
 brushed back as far as he could, so that with the help 
 of the baldness at the parting the revealed expanse 
 might pass for a high forehead. The real forehead, 
 which is bounded in anatomy by the frontal bone, was
 
 2o8 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 so low that tliere was nothinof of it, the bone of 
 
 o 
 
 boundary being nearly in his eyes, which were pink and 
 ferrety, and winked like sickly stars. Little iron-grey 
 whiskers, ending half way down his face, and looking as 
 if they were gummed on, they stuck so close, completed 
 the physiognomy of the man very consistently. His 
 voice was shrill and weak, and worked on one note or 
 in an exasperating manner. Neither his tones nor Mr. 
 Fairfield's grating voice were agreeable to listen to; 
 more especially as on the occasion which had now 
 brought them together, there was considerable excite- 
 ment on both sides. 
 
 Mr. Brent had been the Calcutta correspondent of 
 the firm of Fairfield and Co. ; and it was with Calcutta 
 that the younger partner in the house had been 
 coquetting, with the disastrous results which our story 
 has already foreshadowed. 
 
 When Mr. Brent, himself a man of realized fortune, 
 came home from Calcutta to settle down in nabobhood, 
 he brought with him the sentence of death of the firm 
 of Fairfield and Co. if he chose to pass it. The whis- 
 pers on 'Change which heralded his coming were as 
 correct as they were ominous, and Mr. Brent was not a 
 man to let any foolish feeling of sympathy stand in
 
 MR. JOHN BRENT. 209 
 
 his way, or prevent his claiming his pound of flesh to 
 the full. 
 
 It is not necessary to tell, nor could I exactly do it, 
 the process of events by which Mr. Brent had become 
 the arbiter of the fate of the house of Faii'field ; but 
 financial operations on a large scale are apt to lead 
 into no-thoroughfares of the kind, and I am grateful 
 to the Providence which has ordered my lot in other 
 pastures, and saves me from great fears, if from lofty 
 hopes, for the fate of the salt-cellar on my modest table. 
 
 Mr. Brent had had his wings somewhat singed by" 
 the operations of his correspondents in London, though 
 those financial pinions of his, on which he sailed home, 
 were very broad indeed. He resented the injury, and 
 armed with divers acceptances and other documents of 
 a pernicious nature, he came to London breathing- 
 flames and fury against Fairfield and Co. 
 
 The early history of John Brent had absolutely 
 nothing in it to interest anybody. He was one of those 
 gentlemen who make themselves; and in his case 
 nobody could grudge him the exclusive credit of the 
 manufacture. It may safely be predicated of him that 
 he landed in India with the traditional half-crown in 
 Lis pocket, as Benjamin Franklin came to Philadelphia 
 
 VOL. I, p
 
 2IO FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 "After all, when you come to think of it there's 
 nothing in it. Anybody could have done it," says Mark 
 Twain, in the funniest essay he ever wrote. These sort 
 of people, not that I would compare Benjamin Franklin 
 with John Brent, always do begin life with half-a-crown. 
 Where do they get it from ? and why is it always half- 
 a-crown ? The unvarying character- of the sum makes 
 one suspicious of these self-making gentlemen. 
 
 Alexander Dumas, — the Dumas, — the dear old 
 Dumas of 'Monte Cristo,' and ' D'Artagnan,' and the 
 ' Tour de Nesle,' — not he of the morbid Aspasiac school, 
 whom the soul of Binks loveth and worshippeth as a 
 great creator, which indeed he is so far, in that, while 
 another made the world, he made the half- world, — 
 Dumas the first confessed to an original capital of two 
 louis. " My son," he said, nearly at the end of his days, 
 when he was being reproached with his still incurable 
 prodigalities, the big-natured, generous old giant, " My 
 son, there is no charge I deserve less. Sixty years ago 
 I came to Paris with two louis in my pocket, and 
 look," he added, turning it out, "I've got one left 
 still!" 
 
 John Brent was not a prodigal, being indeed one of 
 the meanest persons to be found on a summer's day,
 
 MR. JOHN BRENT. 211 
 
 and his half-crown had made a very large number more 
 when he came to England to enjoy the fruits of his 
 toils and scrapings. " This was a way to thrive, and he 
 was blessed," after the measure of his desires. What 
 sort of enjoyment he would manage to extract from his 
 riches might have been a problem to any one who 
 examined him in Mr. Fairfield's study. 
 
 Now it came to pass that Mr. Brent had no wife ; 
 and that one of the first things he proposed to do in 
 England was to buy one. He was sixty, no doubt, well 
 rung ; but he had been what the world agrees to call a 
 man of no vices, and he flattered himself that his health 
 and constitution must therefore be those of a young 
 man, of necessity. He was as angry with his liver as 
 Mr. Fairfield was with his throat, and would not admit 
 that it could be out of order, or that excessive desk- 
 work and inordinate cheese-paring, coupled with a 
 masterly neglect of all the humanities and liberalities 
 of life, could produce anything of the ill effects which 
 properly follow upon vicious careers. Virtue and self- 
 denial, he felt or asserted, had been his rules of conduct. 
 He had neither chick nor child, and if he had any 
 relations in England, he did not intend to find them 
 
 out or to acknowledge them. His memories of them 
 
 p 2
 
 212 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 were of the vaguest, dating back to the half-crown days, 
 when, as likely as not, some tipsy or improvident father 
 had turned him out of the house to shift for himself. 
 It may well be that it was not so ; that the res angiista 
 domi had been no fault of any one's, and that the 
 parting had been one of bitter tears, and much heart- 
 breaking on some poor struggling mother's part. 
 Perhaps on the boy's too, for if there be some people 
 who seem to be born bad, and some who have badness 
 thrust upon them, assuredly there are very many men 
 who achieve badness for themselves, by a course of 
 deliberate egotism, beginning perhaps in no source that 
 can fairly be called evil. Such men are, indeed, self- 
 made. If there was any such love and tenderness in 
 the far background, there was no trace or shadow of it 
 upon John Brent's spirit now, and he started on his 
 proposed St. Martin's summer with a clear tablet. 
 Whether he had married before, in his youth, I do not 
 know. If he had, history has no record of the first 
 Mrs. Brent, who certainly left no child, and probably 
 died of a broken heart, or of the want of sufficiently 
 g^-enerous livintr. It didn't matter to Mr. Brent, and it 
 doesn't matter to our story. 
 
 When Mr. Brent had been but a few days in
 
 MR. JOHN BREXT. 213 
 
 London, and had brought the head of the house of 
 Fairfield to the verge of distraction, he called one day 
 in Portland Place, and he caught sight of Daisy. The 
 little Indian was overcome by the gracious vision, and 
 saw his opportunity at once. It was in his power, by 
 no great pecuniary sacrifice on his part, to tide over the 
 difficulties which beset the London house, to save the 
 credit of Fairfield's, and to start the firm fairly on its 
 way again. For this Mr. Fairfield had recourse to 
 entreatv, and brous^ht all the influence he could to bear, 
 without being driven to expose the true condition of 
 affairs to the world, in order to work upon the feelings 
 of the arbiter of his destiny. But the arbiter had no 
 feelings to work upon, and frankly said that it was a 
 mere matter of business. He bore no ill-will to Fair- 
 field's whatever, but there was no reason in this case 
 for suspending the ordinary course of events, and he did 
 not see that any consideration was or could be offered 
 which would or could make it worth his while to be 
 merciful. On what compulsion must he ? tell him that. 
 Everything to this sun-dried anatomy was mere bargain 
 and sale, for he was so effectually tanned as to keep out 
 feeling or sympathy as long as the tanner of Hamlet's 
 grave-digger could keep out the water.
 
 214 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL, 
 
 Mr. Fairfield saw nothing before him but ruin. He 
 had not even provided the refuge from the storm 
 secured by a large settlement on his wife, which in such 
 cases has often enabled the bankrupt merchant, while 
 hundreds of people who unfortunately trusted him are 
 left penniless and destitute, to retire into obscure 
 misery on five or ten thousand a year. Perhaps Mr. 
 Fairfield's reliance on his house's credit had been too 
 high ; perhaps he had a conscience of his own in spite 
 of all his failings. In any case so it was. Keeping his 
 counsel as best he could at home, but causing real and 
 increasing uneasiness to his wife and daughter, he saw 
 something very like want stare him and his family in 
 the face, when Mr. John Brent cast eyes of favour upon 
 Daisy. Yera incess ii patult Dea, to him as to mortals 
 of higher and finer grain, this stately and attractive 
 young lady. Mr. Brent did not deceive himself in 
 relation to the purchase which he desired to make, and 
 quite understood that even with his money he might 
 find a deficiency in the market of the precise article he 
 wanted. Therefore he regarded the appearance of 
 Daisy upon the scene as absolutely providential. I 
 have not alluded to a fashion of Mr. Brent's, which gave 
 especial offence to many of those who had dealings with
 
 MR. JOHN BRENT. 215 
 
 liim, of constantly referring to Providence the issue of 
 his keenest bargains. In fact, I don't like to talk or 
 think about it, for to me I know of nothing more 
 terrible than this particular form of hypocrisy. It gives 
 me a feeling of nervous dread for those who indulge in 
 it. Mr. Brent's moral lectures to Mr. Fairfield, on the 
 ordained and divine consequences of commercial remiss- 
 ness, had exasperated that combative old man more 
 than anything else. But indeed it was curious to see 
 how subdued his arrogance was in Brent's presence, and 
 how supplicatory his tone became. 
 
 The returned Indian saw at once that in Daisy 
 Fairfield, if only she should prove a dutiful and amen- 
 able daughter, he had found exactly what would suit 
 him best, and fulfil his domestic ambition. Here was 
 a woman to make his table attractive, to amuse his 
 declining years when they should begin to decHne, 
 which, in his opinion, must be a long way off yet, and 
 till then to shed fresh blossoms ujDon what he secretly 
 believed to be still the fervour of his youth. He saw 
 at a glance, in which he was not pecuhar, though his 
 own penetration pleased him very much, that in exter- 
 nals his victim's daughter was all that heart could wish. 
 Mr. Vavasour did not know better what he was about
 
 2l6 tAULll UP 13/il^l^lUl^. 
 
 or decide more methodically, when he paid Marian 
 Teesdale the compliment of selection. Internals did 
 not matter ; for Daisy was evidently young enough to 
 be moulded by a husband of his tact and experience. 
 John Brent had, he thought, a very successful way with 
 women. 
 
 And so, on the morning of the day of Lady 
 Pepperharrow's gathering, the day immediately pre- 
 ceding that which finds him in the study in Portland 
 place, the Indian millionnaire without much prelude 
 propounded his scheme to the English defaulter, as he 
 took very good care to let Fairfield know, in plain 
 terms, that he was. He had not been informed of the 
 domestic history of his correspondent, and till he acci- 
 dentally sa.w her, he knew nothing of the "one fair 
 daughter, and no more," whom, like Jephthah, judge of 
 Israel, and the excellent Polonius, the poor father from 
 his heart, and in his way, really loved passing well. 
 
 Matters were at a crisis, and Fairfield was resigning 
 himself to his fate. The junior partner, who was young 
 and go-ahead, and had feathered his private nest on the 
 chance of cold weather, about which he said nothing, 
 shrugged his shoulders and preached some philosophy 
 to his elder in a curiously provoking way. He was
 
 really shocked to find ho^Y culpably careless Fairfield 
 had been in not providing for his wife and family, as 
 every good citizen was bound to do in such uncertain 
 times, in the precarious state of business. Poor Fair- 
 field, driven to bay, indignantly declared that there 
 never had been ami:hing precarious in his business at 
 all, never need have been, and never would have been, 
 but for the rashness and experiments of the junior 
 partner, who expressed pity. 
 
 " My dear sir ! As if it is possible for any intelligent 
 man not to move with the times ! WTiat you call 
 rashness and experiments are courage and prudence at 
 once, in the altered conditions of city-life. Why, my 
 dear sir, America would annihilate us, literally anni- 
 hilate us, if we did not keep pace with her as far as 
 we can in the race of commercial enterjorise. ' She has 
 great advantacjes aorainst which we must in' anv case 
 find it hard to hold our own ; but you would handicap 
 us so completely that all English trade would go to the 
 wall. Your theories, my dear sir, are impossible, ex- 
 ploded, out of date. It is true that we have been 
 unfortunate ; but though I would not say anything to 
 add to your distress of mind at such a time, — my own 
 is deep, my dear Mr. Fairfield, very deep, — I must
 
 2i8 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 in justice to myself, say, that our misfortunes are chiefly 
 to be attributed to your most ill-timed conservatism, 
 and the manner in which you have thwarted — yes, my 
 dear sir, I must say thwarted — all my schemes for the 
 welfare of the house." 
 
 Mr. Brent, who had never in his life risked a rash 
 experiment of any kind, entirely endorsed the junior 
 partner s views, and between them they almost per- 
 suaded the unhappy man to regard himself as the prime 
 mover of his own disestablishment. To do him justice, 
 he thought more of his wife and daughter than he did 
 of himself in the ruin which was coming upon them all. 
 The junior partner put on his shining hat, and gloves 
 of faultless kid, and with a clear conscience betook him- 
 self to his club for a basin of soup, and some particular 
 Amontillado, whereon to meditate on the fresh start that 
 he should be able to make when unencumbered with 
 the old-fashioned concern which, after all, he was well 
 quit of, as soon as the nine days' wonder should be over. 
 
 Honest Threadneedle, the clerk, went to his chop- 
 house hopeless and crest-fallen, with something very like 
 tears in his eyes, and denied himself his usual beer. 
 Mr. Brent was left alone with Fairfield, and came 
 straight to the point.
 
 MR. JOHN BRENT. 219 
 
 "You have been constantly asking me, Fairfield, if 
 there was no consideration on which I would consent 
 not to press my claims against your house." 
 
 " Yes, I have. There is nothing in the world I 
 wouldn't do, if you will but give me the time to tide 
 over the difficulty," answered the other. 
 
 " Tiding over difficulties like yours is all nonsense 
 and sheer self-delusion," said Brent, sharply. " You've 
 got into a bad way, and you'll only flounder into worse." 
 
 " Still you might show me some consideration, after 
 all our dealings together." 
 
 " In the name of common sense, why ? " 
 
 " We have done a great deal to build up your 
 business and your fortune. Brent, and that you know," 
 growled Fairfield, though the growl was in a key 
 sufficiently subdued. 
 
 " And what of that ? " snapped Brent. " It was all 
 in the way of business, wasn't it ? You didn't build up 
 my fortune, as you call it, out of charity and consider- 
 ation for me, did you ? " 
 
 " No," acquiesced the other, shortly. 
 
 " No ; of course not. You did it for business, pure 
 business; and if you had taken the advice of your 
 highly intelligent and most honourable junior partner.
 
 220 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 you wouldn't have been in your present position, nor 
 have placed me in mine. However, I shan't waste any 
 more words on recrimination or on sentiment. Senti- 
 ment in trade is silly. Let us come to the point. I 
 have found the consideration you have been looking 
 for." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked Fairfield, eagerly. 
 
 "I mean that I have found the consideration on 
 which I will not only defer, but forego, all my claims 
 against you ; and not only that, but do all I can to put 
 your house safely on its legs again." 
 
 " Brent ! " gasped Fairfield, getting up from his chair. 
 
 A good many men would have hesitated and stam- 
 mered considerably before making the suggestion the 
 other had to make. Not so Mr. Brent, whose comfort- 
 able confidence in himself was equal to all emergencies. 
 He neither stammered nor hesitated at all. 
 
 " I think I have told you, Fairfield, or perhaps I 
 haven't, that now that I want to settle in England I 
 want to find a wife." 
 
 " A wife ! " said the other, in a tone which would 
 have conveyed to anybody else the conviction, that to 
 Mr. Fairfield the idea was entirely new. 
 
 " Yes, a wife, and a young wife. I can make her a
 
 MR. JOHN BRENT. 221 
 
 fine settlement, and she will be very happy. I want to 
 marry your daughter." 
 
 Never till that moment had Mr. Fairfield been in 
 such immediate danger of apoplexy. He grew blue 
 through his natural red, stammered and wondered 
 enough for both, and like Aulus the dictator, scarce 
 gathered voice to speak, or indeed to think. 
 
 " My daughter — Daisy — marry — you ? You haven't 
 even seen her." 
 
 " Yes, I have. I saw her yesterday. I can put half 
 my fortune into your business, and set it on a sounder 
 basis than ever." 
 
 The conversation which followed would not, per- 
 haps, be very nice to record. But one or two things 
 which Fairfield said made the other ipan's eyes glisten 
 in an unpleasant, snake-like fasluon, and he showed his 
 teeth in a way to prove to Fairfield that not till that 
 moment had he fully realized how much he was in 
 John Brent's power. John Brent dined that night in 
 Portland Place, with the result on Daisy's mind in the 
 last chapter recorded. 
 
 It was on the next day, on the morning after Lady 
 Pepperh arrow's dchui in the world of fashion, that the 
 two men were again together in Mr. Fairfield's room.
 
 222 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 They had a long talk together, and Mr. Brent took up 
 his hat and went away with a comfortable sense of 
 satisfaction. Mr. Fairfield sate in his arm-chair by 
 himself, and had some brandy-and-water. Then a 
 servant knocked and disturbed his meditations, and 
 told him that a gentleman was upstairs in the drawing- 
 room with Mrs. Fairfield, and had asked to see him 
 The name on his card was Mr. Guy Faucit. 
 
 " A friend of my wife and daughter, the young 
 fellow who has dined here three or four times," 
 muttered Fairfield to himself. " What does he want to 
 see me for ? " 
 
 He was not sorry to change the current of his 
 thoughts, and when he had finished his brandy-and- 
 water he went upstairs.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 
 
 Mrs. Fairfield was sitting on a low cliair before 
 the fire, looking very small and frightened. Guy Faucit 
 was standincr on the hearthnior near her, frank and 
 much in earnest ; and it was clear that the conversation 
 which had been passing between them must have 
 interested them both in a high degree. Mrs. Fairfield 
 fidgetted in her chair when her husband came in, and 
 looked at him appealingly, rather like a dog who is 
 doubtful whether he has or has not been guilty of some 
 breach of the law, and tries to discover from his master's 
 eyes whether he is going to be beaten or not. Faucit 
 met him in a comfortable, straightforward way, with no 
 consciousness in his manner that there was an}i:hing 
 unusual to be said, and the two men shook hands.
 
 224 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 " I asked to see you, Mr. Fairfield," said Guy, 
 " because I have something especial to say which I 
 wish to say to you myself." 
 
 "What is it, Mr. Faucit?" asked the other, who 
 knew his visitor as a man who had dined at his house 
 and made himself pleasant, but had paid him no special 
 attention. There was not much in common between 
 them to make it otherwise. It is possible that Mr. 
 Fairfield was not fully aware of all the five o'clock teas 
 and other meetings which had taken place, though 
 there had been no conscious concealment in the matter. 
 " Can I be of any service to you ? " The merchant's 
 manner was nervous and pre-occupied, and he did not 
 sit down, but walked about the room. 
 
 His wife watched him uneasily, and then made an 
 appeal to Guy. 
 
 " I think, Mr. Faucit, you had better go now. We 
 can talk about this afterwards." 
 
 " No, Mrs. Fairfield," he answered, " I have nothing 
 to hide. I came to ask you, sir, if I may marry your 
 daughter?" 
 
 The declaration was point-blank enough, certainly ; 
 and I thirdv that, under the circumstances, Mr. Fairfield 
 was a good deal to be pitied. He had been thinking
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 225 
 
 about his daughter, of course, since Brent had pro- 
 pounded his scheme, and about nothing else. Even 
 in that short time he had begun to reconcile himself 
 to the notion of the marriage as far as he was con- 
 cerned. John Brent had given him a full account of 
 himself, and he was richer even than Fairfield had 
 imagined. A more distinguished son-in-law would have 
 been more agreeable to his taste, no doubt ; but the 
 fortune and the security were the chief thing, after all. 
 And the anxiety of the last months had so shaken and 
 worn the merchant under that hard outside of his, 
 that there was hardly any price he was not ready to 
 pay to feel secure again. Fairfield and Co. safe and 
 sound once more, and starting afresh under better 
 auspices than ever; the reign of reason resumed, for 
 Fairfield knew his man, and the odious junior partner 
 suppressed and outvoted : — all this made up a prospect 
 which effectually dazzled Daisy's father, and blinded 
 him, in the attractions of its horizon, to the unsightly 
 character of the foreground. It must be remembered, 
 besides, that Fairfield was not recoo^nized as an aOTeeable 
 person himself, and did not resent the odious character- 
 istics of Mr. Brent as a man of a higher nature would 
 have done. He hated the man certainly, because he 
 
 VOL. I, Q
 
 226 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 was in his power. But if he got out of it he didn't 
 see wliy they shouldn't pull well enough together. 
 
 Yes ; but Daisy ? Mr. Fairfield was an autocrat 
 at home, and his daughter had never failed for a 
 moment in duty and obedience. But all the softness 
 in his nature had been for her, and he would have 
 spoiled her, probably, if she had been to be spoiled. 
 He was an affectionate father to her, and in spite of 
 domestic rubs, and his constant impatience with his 
 wife, there had been always something between them 
 which was even like sympathy, different as their ways 
 and natures were. With her keen sense of fun, Daisy 
 could not help feeling how intensely irritating her poor 
 mother's placid submission, or tactless little provoca- 
 tions, must be to the old gentleman at times ; and her 
 care in smoothing difficulties and averting collisions 
 was exercised as much for the sake of one as of the 
 other. At the bottom of Daisy's character, however, 
 lay a firmness which the father strongly suspected, 
 though so far it had shown itself only in every- 
 day directions. He had more than once been on the 
 verfje of confiding: his whole trouble to her, and deserved 
 genuine credit for denying himself the confession, from 
 real unwillingness to cloud her opening life. What
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 227 
 
 shajDe might that firmness take in the face of such a 
 proposal as John Brent's ? Daisy would not disobey 
 her father by taking any step he disa2:)proved, that he 
 knew ; but whether she would obey him to the extent 
 of doing what she rebelled against herself, was another 
 question. Therefore he was meditating the time and 
 way in which he was to make the full state of the 
 case known, of which Brent consented to let him be 
 the judge, and he had nearly concluded that the 
 sooner it was done the better. Brent suggested fre- 
 quent visits to the house, and many opportunities of 
 wooing ; but Fairfield shrewdly suspected that the 
 opportunities might not turn as much to the wooer's 
 advantas^e as that s^entleman flattered himself. It 
 would be a plunge when it came, and it might be 
 better to take it before the waters had been sounded 
 too closely for reefs. 
 
 Meanwhile, it had been with much satisfaction to 
 both that Fairfield had been able to assure Brent of 
 the important fact that there was nobody else in 
 the way. To that effect had been almost the last 
 words which had passed downstairs ; and then, suddenly, 
 and with the inconvenient promptness of a stage- 
 apparition, started up before the merchant's eyes in.
 
 228 FAUCIT OF BALLTOL. 
 
 liis own drawing-room, one of the finest-looking young 
 men he ever saw in his life, who, with no prospects 
 or position that he had heard of, yet as coolly as if he 
 were a prince of the blood royal asking for a glass 
 of wine, demanded his daughter without prelude or 
 warning, and obviously, as the father felt in a moment, 
 with the daughter's own leave. The daughter was 
 suddenly assuming an importance in the world quite 
 out of proportion to the due order of things. Wasn't 
 he to be considered in the matter at all ? he began to 
 think. In the general confusion of faculties which was 
 taking possession of him. And the effect of Guy 
 Faucit's bomb-shell, suddenly discharged into this dis- 
 organized camp, was to throw Septimus Fairfield of 
 Portland Place and Mincing Lane, merchant, after his 
 first struggle with perplexity, into a most tremendous 
 rage. 
 
 Guy Faucit has been kept, by this disquisition, a 
 lona- time waiting: for his answer, which, when it came, 
 was strangled at its birth in a neckcloth, and was 
 simply this — " Good heavens ! " Mr. Fairfield's vehis 
 -swelled before Faucit's eyes, and his complexion became 
 Homeric in its purple. 
 
 "You have taken me by surprise, sir! 3'ou have
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 229 
 
 taken me by surprise ! I really don't know how to 
 answer such an extraordinary thing. I really — God 
 bless my life and soul ! " 
 
 ]Mrs. Fairfield detected the signs of gathering wrath, 
 and interposed in a nervous tremor, " Septimus dear, 
 ^Ir. Faucit doesn't mean any harm." 
 
 " Good gracious, Jane, don't talk in that way. Mean 
 any harm I God bless me ! God bless me ! Do you 
 know w^hat you are asking, sir ? " in a tone of positive 
 bewilderment. 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Fairfield. I am askincr for vour daugrhter 
 to become my wife some day. I am asking with her 
 own permission." 
 
 " You are ? And you have absolutely, sir, absolutely 
 accepted my hospitahty to abuse it in this manner, 
 and taken advantage of a girl's passing fancy to attempt 
 to secure her affections without her parents' knowledge ? 
 I never heard of such a thing." 
 
 Faucit's face was flushing slowly, and his manner 
 very grave. He was on the point of appealing to Mrs. 
 Fairfield whether she had not been well aware of what 
 had been passing under her eyes, when he read in her 
 face such an unspoken appeal on her side, that with 
 instinctive generosity he let that defence go. He hai^l
 
 230 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 been enough in the house to guess that Mrs. Fairfield's 
 lines were not cast in the smoothest of places, besides 
 gathering much from Daisy. But he answered Fairfield 
 steadily. 
 
 " I have never done anything underhand in my life," 
 he said, " and should not have begun with your daughter. 
 I have never disguised my wishes from the moment I 
 formed them, and I have not lost an hour in speaking 
 to you since having Miss Fairfield's answer." 
 
 " You should have spoken to me first, sir ! " said the 
 other, growing more and more angry with Faucit's calm 
 superiority of tone. He felt already that he was not 
 coming out of it well. 
 
 " I cannot agree with you, Mr. Fairfield. A man 
 has no right to presume so far on a woman's consent 
 as to speak, before he gets it. He can hardly pay her 
 a worse compliment than that." 
 
 " I shall not be lectured about the claims of a parent, 
 sir ! " stormed Mr. Fairfield, who, in the perplexity of his 
 position, was forgetting himself very fast indeed. 
 
 " Septimus, dear Septimus ! " murmured his weaker 
 half. 
 
 "Upon my soul, ma'am, I believe that you must 
 have known of this business and never told me ! this
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 231 
 
 most discreditable business ! To trade on the passing- 
 fancy of a young girl " 
 
 '' Mr. Fairfield, I cannot let you speak like that, 
 even though you are her father. I don't believe Miss 
 Fairfield's feeling for me to be a passing fancy ; but 
 that you can find out from herself. I have the right to 
 know the strength of my own feeling, and to ask you if 
 you will one day allow your daughter to be my wife." 
 
 Guy's manner was so studiously respectful that it 
 was difficult to quarrel with it ; but the weakness of Mr. 
 Fairfield's cause made him quarrelsome. He disliked 
 the vision of Brent in the background very much 
 indeed, and felt that the Indian's chances would be 
 materially lessened by the appearance of so singularly 
 personable a rival. He still kept up his favourite tone 
 of bluster, though he perceived even in his wrath that 
 bullying was thrown away on his troublesome visitor, 
 
 "What prospects have you, sir, may I ask?" he 
 said. " I have heard that you are only reading for the 
 bar." 
 
 " That is the case, Mr. Fairfield," answered Guy. 
 " I can pretend to no j^osition and no immediate 
 prospects; but — " 
 
 " I knew it, sir, I knew it, and could have sworn as
 
 232 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 much ! " The merchant was inwardly delighted with 
 his chance, for if Faucit had had definite prospects to 
 offer, his position would have been more awkward. 
 " Yet you presume to come forward and ask me to give 
 you my daughter, who has been accustomed all her life 
 to a position which I do not intend her to lose ; on the 
 strength, I suppose, of all that you mean to do when 
 you are called to the bar ! No, sir ; I assure you that I 
 do not intend her to lose it, or to share a crust with 
 anybody ! I shall wish you good afternoon, and beg 
 that I may never hear of this again." 
 
 "Mr. Fairfield," said Guy quietly, but in a way 
 which enforced a hearing even from the man he was 
 speaking to, " I hope that you will regret this some 
 day. Nothing will tempt me to show any disrespect to 
 Daisy's father, or to use hard words with him. You 
 give me very hard ones, and, as I think, without reason. 
 I have a very honest love to offer, and I gave up a good 
 and secure position at Oxford that I might be able to 
 offer it. I don't think you should have spoken to me 
 as you have. My Oxford work gives me the right to 
 look for a fair measure of success at the bar, and I 
 have already a good connection in the writing- way." 
 
 Mr. Fairfield grunted at the display of this last card
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 233 
 
 of poor Guy's, which he might as well not have played. 
 " The writing- way," in the eyes of Mr. Fairfield, was 
 a rather disreputable road to starvation. 
 
 " I never supposed," Faucit went on to say, " that 
 you would sanction any immediate marriage with your 
 daughter." 
 
 " Immediate indeed 1 " said the other. " What on ? 
 On my money, do you suppose ? " 
 
 " I suppose there would be nothing unreasonable in 
 thinking you would help your daughter," answered Guy. 
 " She thought so. But I should myself prefer to wait 
 till I had made a good start for myself." 
 
 " x^nd keep a young girl dancing attendance upon 
 hopes for the best years of her life, I suppose. Fairness 
 to her, if you meant that, should have prevented you 
 speaking." 
 
 " I don't think so myself," said the other. " It is far 
 fairer than leaving any one in doubt of a serious feeling. 
 But I see that I have made a mistake in speaking to 
 you, and for the present I shall not say any more. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 " Stop one moment," said Fairfield. " Am I to 
 understand that you give up this foolish nonsense 
 altogether ? "
 
 234 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 " I shall never give it up," answered Faucit, 
 
 " And you tell me that to my face ? " shouted the 
 other, whose temper, in spite of himself, had been quieted 
 by Faucit's tone, but now boiled over again. " I tell 
 you, sir, that I forbid you now or at any time to think 
 of my daughter. And mind, let me hear nothing of any 
 more meetings of any kind ! Before you go, give me 
 your word that you will not attempt to see the young 
 lady again." 
 
 " I don't think that you have the right to ask me 
 for any promise of the kind," said Guy. " Neither Miss 
 Fairfield nor I, you .may be sure, are likely to do 
 anything to be ashamed of" 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Faucit, I'm sure you won't, either of you," 
 interrupted the unlucky third at this disagreeable scene. 
 " Please go now, and don't come again at present. I am 
 sure Mr. Fairfield doesn't mean anything unkind, do 
 you ? " But her lord and master was only fuming. 
 
 " Good-bye, Mrs. Fairfield, and thank you for all 
 your kindness," said Guy, pressing the good-natured 
 hand. " I can't say good-bye to Daisy before I go, can 
 I ? " he added to her hurriedly. 
 
 " She is out for the day, indeed she is," answered the 
 mother. " But you are sure to hear from her or me."
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 235 
 
 " Of course," said Guv. And with another orrave 
 salutation to the excited man of business, he was o^one. 
 Even while he was still on the stairs, he heard the 
 storm bursting upon the head of the devoted Jane. 
 
 Guy Faucit went quietly home to his chambers, 
 revolving. This was a check at starting which he had 
 not been pre2)ared for, though he told himself rather 
 angrily that he ought to have been. He had taken 
 Mr. Fairfield too much on tnist from Daisy, instead of 
 believincr in his own conclusions about her father s 
 purse-pride and want of refinement of mind. There 
 was a little injustice in this, as we know ; and if the 
 merchant had not been fairly driven to the wall by the 
 situation, of which Guy and Daisy were equalh' 
 ignorant, it is probable that his daughter would have 
 had no very great difficulty in bringing him round. 
 She had made Guy feel so convinced that this was the 
 case, that he was fairly astounded at the ferocity of his 
 reception, though he had not of course supposed that 
 Mr. Fairfield would jump at his offer. He felt rather 
 annoyed with Daisy, therefore, as well as with himself, 
 for he could not disguise from himself that the mer- 
 chant's objections were of a nature altogether too 
 strong to be conciliated as they had hoped. Well, it
 
 236 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL, 
 
 could not be helped : the course of true love was going 
 to run roughly, as usual, and the flinty hearts of fathers 
 to inflict the usual bruises on the supplicating hands 
 knocking at the door of them. 
 
 Another man than Faucit would have been more 
 down-hearted than he. He could not, in spite of his 
 annoyance, as yet regard the situation very seriously. 
 He felt as sure of Daisy as of himself, and smiled as he 
 thought of the father scheming for ambitious marriages, 
 or trying to argvie her out of her love. Probably he 
 should not see her for a few days, and their meetings 
 might even be suspended for a longer time than that. 
 But the separation was one which they could both 
 accept, and was too unreasonable to last. 
 
 Guy knew that he should hear from Daisy the next 
 day, and her letter would tell him the line he must 
 take, which it rested with her to decide. He thought 
 that he knew what the letter would be" and could 
 indulge his fancy in watching her think it out and 
 write it, with its calm assurance of the future and 
 counsel of short patience, and regret that for the 
 moment she had misled him. 
 
 With these thoughts in his mind he smoked his 
 pipe placidly enough in his fireside corner, rather
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 237 
 
 amusing himself mentally at the remembrance of Mr. 
 Fairfield's angry airs of Bashawship, but withal a little 
 puzzled by tlieir vehemence, suggestive of something 
 in the air which he couldn't quite understand. Then 
 he migrated to his writing-table, and added a postscript 
 to the letter which he had written to the old mother 
 down in Devonshire, in the first flush of his happiness 
 and pride, making her, as he had done throughout, the 
 confidant of all his proceedings, all his hot and cold fits, 
 wherein the cold had played but a brief and bracing 
 part, and anticipating the day when " the two sweetest 
 women in the world '^ should come to know each other. 
 Daisy had sent through him, in that first part of the 
 letter, a sweet and tremulous message of her* own. 
 
 " Dearest Mother," added the postscript, " I shall let 
 this letter go, as it will tell all the story. But we have 
 counted without our host, if I may describe by that 
 name a gentleman who has incontinently kicked me 
 out of his house, abused me for presumption and 
 fortune-hunting and other pleasant things, and gener- 
 ally behaved like the Emperor of China with a fit of 
 the gout. Indeed, I think Fairfield Papa rather resents 
 the indignity of not being Emperor of China. My
 
 238 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 Daisy made rather a mistake in sending me to him; 
 but it will all come right, and I am not much disturbed. 
 When I can write of her as ' my Daisy ' — doesn't it 
 look nice on paper ? but if you could only hear how it 
 sounds ! — nothing matters very particularly. We shall 
 bring Timour round between ns, Daisy doing the best 
 part of it. I am sure to hear from her to-morrow, and 
 I think I know what the letter will be. God bless you, 
 little mother. This bonnie conquest of my bow and 
 spear will draw you and me together closer than ever. 
 
 " Your own son, 
 
 " G. F." 
 
 Guy worked well on to his usual hour that night, 
 and slept the sleep of the just without dreaming of 
 Daisy, though he wanted and expected to dream of her. 
 He told me long afterwards that he kept on dreaming 
 of me all the night in a perverse sort of way, and 
 resented it in his sleep as a personal injury, wanting 
 some one else, and not knowing why. 
 
 When the laundress had done the fire and cooked 
 the chop, and Faucit came out of his bedroom to his 
 bachelor-breakfast, the post brought the expected 
 letter, and his heart jumped at the sight of the well-
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 239 
 
 known Land. It was a good Land, free and firm, but 
 womanly, and he treasured many scraps of it in small 
 notes of invitation or thanks. It must be admitted that, 
 in the presence of his unseen Asmodeus, Guy kissed 
 the new-comer two or three times before he opened it. 
 But when he did open it, what he read was this : 
 
 " I am too deeply sad and sore to know well how to 
 write to you. But you must forget last night, Mr. 
 Faucit, or that I was ever able to call you anything 
 else. I will not say that Ave shall never meet again, 
 because I hope that one day we shall ; but it cannot be 
 for a long time, and never in the way you wish. I 
 cannot help hoping that this will not prevent your 
 persevering at the bar, for you were born for a great 
 success. But whether you do this, or whether you 
 return to Oxford, my best wishes, and my prayers too, 
 will always be with you. My father owes you an 
 apology for the manner in which he received you 
 yesterday, and so do I for having exposed you to it. 
 Will you let me make them both, for him and me ? I 
 am afraid you will be very grieved and very angry, but if 
 you knew everything you would not blame us so much. 
 I could not let the post go without writinor, as I knew
 
 240 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 you must expect it ; but perhaps if I had had more 
 time, I might have written in some other and better 
 way. But wlien good-bye must be said, perhaps it 
 doesn't much matter how we say it. Good-bye. 
 " Always your friend, 
 
 "Daisy Fairfield." 
 
 Guy Faucit read the letter through and through, 
 and again through, without being able to grasp and 
 comprehend it. A dismissal ! — like that — and from her ! 
 whom he had believed in as in Truth. When he could 
 bring himself to grapple with it fairly, he read in the 
 letter a clear and final decision. If he had laughed at 
 Mr. Fairfield's pronouncement of his sentence, he knew 
 now that the Court of Appeal had positively confirmed 
 it, and without reason given. 
 
 Daisy Fairfield was right when she wrote, that 
 Guy would be grieved and angry. But she did not 
 quite know how sternly so. He was simply stunned. 
 With his strong instinctive sense of right and honour, 
 Guy felt, as soon as he could feel, that if there were 
 reasons in the case, as the letter hinted, apart from 
 that of his position and hers, which the father had so 
 rudely given, those reasons should have been told. I
 
 THE COUP DE GRACE. 241 
 
 do not think that he made enough allowance there, 
 in his fulness of manhood, for the gentler and more 
 shrinkins: fibre of which the noblest womanhood is 
 made. But the result of his view was, that he disbelieved 
 in any such reason at once, and, in the first flush of 
 indignation, at all events, accepted the whole thing as 
 over. It was enough for Guy to make up his mind that 
 if Daisy Fairfield had been what he had believed her, 
 she would not have written that letter. She was only 
 a flirt then, after all ! How cruelly letters often miss 
 their mark, and what harm they do. 
 
 Daisy Fairfield, I think, confidently expected some 
 answer. Either. Guy would write or come, and there 
 would be an explanation between them. The reader 
 will divine, of course, that she had learned the state 
 of his affairs from her father on her return home that 
 day. But Guy neither came nor wrote, but met the 
 blow with characteristic silence. For two or three 
 days he worked on as hard as ever, but said nothing 
 to any one of what had passed. Then he grew sleepless 
 and nervous, and felt that he did not work well. Then 
 he announced that he should take leave of absence 
 from his pleader's chambers for a time, and went straight 
 down to his mother's in Devonshire. 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 OVER. 
 
 Yes; they are deceptive things, those letters, and 
 have caused in this world an infinity of misunderstand- 
 ings, some of which are destined never to be cleared up. 
 My conscience is good and my digestion sound ; yet I 
 shrink from the post instinctively, and rejoice when 
 fate casts my lines in a place where there is no after- 
 noon delivery. I am unable to understand the frame of 
 mind so common to women, which makes the post hour 
 a delight and a curiosity; and always feel a sense of 
 grateful relief if a day comes which brings no letters 
 with it. It seems to me like so many possible disagree- 
 ables the less. Quarrels without end, misconceptions 
 without number, rudenesses, intended or no, which 
 would be impossible at a personal interview, are sown 
 broadcast all over the country every night and morning
 
 OVER, 243 
 
 by those agents of mischief, bearing the Queen's head 
 on them. Very sad are the offences which rise through 
 them, never to be explained till explanation comes too 
 late ; and all, very often, because the receiver cannot 
 read between the lines, or tell anything of the workings 
 and strivings which possessed the writer's heart, but 
 could find no voice upon his pen. 
 
 Very different would Guy Faucit's frame of mind 
 have been, and very different his course of conduct, if 
 he had seen the expression upon Daisy's face when 
 she wrote him that farewell letter. Had he been 
 there to see, he would have seen the tranquil and 
 trustful face moved to a very tumult of passion which 
 he had never suspected in her. One of the fears 
 which he sometimes expressed to his mother was, that 
 there was even too much about her of the cppovijfjia 
 vqvejxov yaXdvas — the spirit of an unrufiled calm. Its 
 charm was great, but it sometimes perplexed him ; 
 and it was that perhaps partly which led to his rapid 
 acquiescence in the outward seeming of her letter now 
 and his belief that in that stately way of hers she had 
 only been playing with him all the time, and was really 
 like the rest of womankind, worldly in her heart. He 
 had thought her something so very different, \\sA held 
 
 R 2
 
 244 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 her so priceless in his esteem, apart even from his love, 
 that for her sake he was beginning to believe that even 
 the rest of womankind were better than the romancers — 
 those of their own sex especially — are so fond of painting 
 them ; and he could not bear to have his idol broken. 
 If he had only seen ! If she had only had no second 
 thoughts, but had sent him straight off, without after- 
 thought or reflection, the passionate adieu which first 
 she trusted t-o the paper, dashed off through a very mist 
 of tears. It was an adieu, no doubt, as was the other ; 
 but it would have brought him within the next hour to 
 her father's house, had he been ten times as roughly 
 expelled from it the day before. An instinct led her 
 to shrink from reading that letter when it was finished, 
 for she knew that it was right and true, and the 
 envelope was in her hand to close when that evil 
 spirit called Expediency whispered to her to pause 
 and to think, and she took the letter out and read it 
 through. Then the hot tears fell faster yet, and the 
 brave heart beat still more loudly, and the blushes 
 o-athered round the tears, and she leant her head upon 
 her hands and thought. Could she, Daisy Fairfield, 
 have written to one to whom she had given herself but 
 the evening before, in the language' of a passion so
 
 OVER, 245 
 
 undisguised as that ? What if he, that manly and 
 perfect lover, should think such lack of reserve un- 
 maidenly ? Oh, no, no ; and she wrote with a sore 
 heart and toilinor head the other letter, whose meanino- 
 she thought he would surely read behind the words. 
 Could she have such a love in her heart, and he not 
 see it ? Could she disguise from him, however carefully 
 she wrote, the passion of pride in him, and happiness 
 for both which had lived in her all that day, from the 
 moment she knew from his own lips that what she 
 hoped was true, and that she had conquered her hero 
 for her very own ? No ; he would answer her, he would 
 demand to see her ; and neither she nor her father, nor 
 any one in the wide world, would have the right to refuse 
 him. So she sent the second letter, and she put the 
 first away — away in a desk among her girl's treasures, 
 where she read and re-read it many a weary time in 
 the year to come. Long, long after, with a blush she 
 showed it him. 
 
 She had come home from Lady Pepperharrow's 
 very bright and full of hope. When she gave her 
 mother the good news, the mother rejoiced in it for her 
 daughter's sake, and promised her to love Guy, and 
 think him the most perfect and fascinating of human
 
 ^46 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 beings. Indeed, she liked him very thoroughly already, 
 for he had always shown her all the deference and 
 consideration, which so wins old ladies' hearts from 
 the young and strong. 
 
 Mrs. Fairfield, however, shook her head over her 
 Septimus, and very much doubted if he would look at 
 the matter in the rosy light with which the imaginations 
 of mother and daughter invested it. To them, it was 
 clear that Guy Faucit would be Attorney-General and 
 Lord Chief Justice in no time, if he did not feel 
 tempted to take to politics and become Prime Minister ; 
 but it was on the cards that Septimus Fairfield might 
 regard this brilliant future as not proven, and require 
 solid guarantees from any candidate for his daughter's 
 hand. Mrs. Fairfield knew that her husband regarded 
 himself as a very considerable personage indeed ; and 
 moreover, she augured ill of the present condition of 
 his temper, with which he had visited her of late 
 so much. 
 
 ''It's that dreadful brandy and water!" she 
 murmured. 
 
 "Not so much the water, I'm afraid, mamma,'* 
 said Daisy. 
 
 *'And I'm sure I tell him about it often enough.'
 
 OVER. ■ 247 
 
 Every morning, regularly nearly now, I have to have a 
 long talk with him." 
 
 Daisy smiled a little. 
 
 "Perhaps there's something wrong in the City, 
 mamma. The City seems to be always going wrong 
 and always coming right. I can't feel out "of spirits 
 now, dear, and I'm sure everything is going to turn out 
 for the best. You will see Guy — Mr. Faucit — before he 
 speaks to papa ? " 
 
 " Yes, my dear," said Mrs. Fairfield. '"' I shall be 
 very fond of him for his own sake, as well as yours ; 
 and he'll be a great comfort to us all — as great as 
 poor Dick." 
 
 " I hope so," answered Daisy, something almost like 
 a sneer curling the pretty Up becomingly enough for 
 the first time since we made her acquaintance. " From 
 something papa said, I believe some of Master Dick's 
 bills have to do with those tempers of his just now, and 
 if so, I'm sure I can't blame him. If there's nothing to 
 do in Ireland, without the pretty language Dick bestows 
 on the place, why is there anything to spend ? Money 
 spent on nothing travels a bad road." 
 
 The young moralist was very angry; and though 
 the poor mother beheved firmly though resignedly in
 
 248 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 her Dick, she was but a weak cudgel-wielder in a weak 
 cause, and soon reduced to her final argument, a sigh ; 
 which always led to Daisy's, a kiss. 
 
 Daisy was not in a mood to dwell on unpleasant 
 subjects, whereas nothing so much as a piece of good 
 news, or a glimpse of happiness, moved Mrs. Fairfield 
 to the verge of tears. She always cried over her con- 
 gratulations to a friend upon anything, and drew little 
 morals which had nothing at all to do with the question, 
 like an undeveloped Cassandra. She shook her head 
 now over the prospect of how Septimus would take 
 it ; but could not discourage her daughter, who at the 
 moment was armed with a full confidence in her own 
 powers of pleasing, and with general auguries of a suc- 
 cessful issue for everything. 
 
 "He's a very good old father, that of mine, and 
 never likes saying *No' to me. He won't begin to 
 like it now, when it would be ' no ' to the whole happi- 
 ness and ambition of my life. Besides, what would be 
 the use ? I shan't change my mind now, and I'm sure 
 Guy won't.*' 
 
 And the young lady sang herself off on her way to 
 her room, rejoicing. She went out at the time when 
 Guy's momentous visit was expected, from some instinct
 
 O VER, 249 
 
 of modesty and shyness, and betook herself to her friend 
 Lady Pepperharrow, jubilant over the success of her 
 festivity the night before. 
 
 "Oh, Daisy dear, wasn't it delightful? All the 
 supper was eaten before the people went away, and 
 everybody said such kind things. There was a friend 
 of Lady Luscombe's who told L^gh he was like Luke 
 Somebody, which L^gh didn't quite understand. E was 
 a Roman nobleman who gave suppers, and was in the 
 best society of his day. Do you know what is other 
 name was ? " enquired her ladyship of Daisy, to whom 
 she was in the habit of referring all her doubtful points 
 in the field of knowledge ; and she had many. 
 
 " LucuUus ? " asked Daisy, laughing. 
 
 " That was the name," said the other, quite satisfied. 
 " But this friend of Lady Luscombe's is quite the most 
 remarkable man I have ever met, and so very interest- 
 ing. Directly you see him you know that he must 
 have been a corsair, or a refugee, or a Fenian, or Don 
 Juan, or something like that. Then he as such a 
 beautiful name — the Count Lestrange. E wants to 
 be introduced to you." 
 
 " Does he ? " answered Daisy, happy with an infinite 
 content which made Lady Pepperharrow wonder.
 
 250 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 Slie had never seen her favourite look so well, and 
 wished that she could introduce her last admiration, the 
 Count, at once. As it was, she made Daisy promise to 
 dine with her on some early day, to meet Lestrange and 
 the Luscombes, and Daisy was well pleased to* promise 
 anything just then. Her heart was full to the brim; 
 and she had all a girl's longing to confide in her friend, 
 and listen to all the delightful sympathy which was 
 sure to be hers. But she had made up her mind that 
 her delicious secret was to be kept until all had been 
 happily arranged at home. So she wandered with Lady 
 Pepperharrow from room to room — watered the droop- 
 ing flowers, and arranged the demoralised furniture, 
 and was so handy and happy, so laughing and helpful, . 
 teasing her friend and caressing her, and so entirely 
 childlike and radiant, that Lady Pepperharrow would 
 fain have adopted her then and there, and have installed 
 her in the new mansion as sole lieutenant and director. 
 It was a pity that she could not ; but there be many 
 such pities in the world. Daisy wouldn't even stay all 
 day, neither to dinner nor to tea ; but growing a little 
 impatient as the afternoon wore on, and she threw 
 frequent looks at the clock, insisted on departing pre- 
 maturely, on the plea that she was wanted at home, and
 
 OVER. 251 
 
 left her hostess with a kiss and a hug which were not 
 to be forgotten for hours. I Hke to linger over poor 
 Daisy's short-Hved happiness, which was to be dissipated 
 at once and cruelly when she reached home. 
 
 Her mother met her in the hall with a frightened 
 face, and in a few sentences told her what had happened. 
 " Your father was very angry, dear, and I'm afraid he 
 was very rude. He forbade Mr. Faucit the house, and 
 said that he had not behaved like a gentleman." 
 
 Daisy's face flushed to the hair. 
 
 " Papa told Mr. Faucit that ! On what excuse ? 
 .low could he dare — ? " She checked herself, but she 
 looked very tall and very straight as she stood there. 
 
 " I don't know what it means," said the mother. 
 " I'm sure that there's something wrong that we 
 know nothing about, or he never could have spoken 
 like that." 
 
 " Where is he ? " 
 
 "In the study; and he asked to see you directly 
 you came in." 
 
 "He shall see me directly," answered the girl, 
 crossing the hall. 
 
 " Oh be careful, be careful, there's a dear child ! 
 Don't make him worse."
 
 252 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 " You need not be afraid, mamma ; I feel very quiet 
 indeed. But I must know why he has done this at 
 once." And with a short firm knock at her father's 
 door, she went in, with a sense of strong indignation 
 and of rebellion in her heart. If there was to be anger 
 in this matter, let it be with her, and let her know the 
 reason. She resented a slight to Guy Faucit in a way 
 that would not be denied. 
 
 Her thoughts changed when she saw her father. 
 He was huddled in his chair before the fire, and looked 
 ten years older. The high colour seemed to have left 
 his face, and there was a dull pain in his eyes. 
 
 " Is it you, Daisy ? " he said, in a voice very unlike 
 his own, when she came in. And that was all. 
 
 " Yes, papa. What is this that has passed ? " She 
 took a chair by his, and rested her hand upon his 
 arm. 
 
 "It is a very painful thing; and of course you 
 know." 
 
 " I know that Mr. Faucit has been here, and why. 
 But I do not know why it should be painful, unless it 
 is that you spoke to him in a way which nobody can 
 deserve less." 
 
 "I can't agree with you there," said Fairfield
 
 OVER. 253 
 
 quickly. " He was bound to let me know before pro- 
 posing to my daughter." 
 
 "I do not quite see why, papa," she answered, 
 getting up and resting one arm on the mantel-piece, 
 while the other hand played with her glove. " It is I 
 whom he wants to marry. He was bound to let you 
 know dhectly he had proposed, and he did." 
 
 "He led me to believe that you care for him, 
 Daisy," said the other ; " but I can scarcely believe it." 
 " Why not ? " she said. " It isn't very difficult to 
 believe" She smiled a little, hoping that the worst 
 was over. " If you knew him, papa, as you will, you 
 would not very much wonder." 
 
 "Good God, Daisy! You don't really care for the 
 man much ! " 
 
 There was real anguish, real regret, in the old man's 
 tone ; and Daisy knew then that the worst had to be 
 heard. She turned very pale, and was very stiU for a 
 moment. 
 
 " Papa ! what is the matter ? " 
 " You can never be his wife, Daisy." 
 " Never is a long word," she said, " especially for 
 two people who know theu' hearts as we do. If we are 
 to wait, we can. But why are we to wait ? "
 
 254 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 " You do not know him, child." 
 
 " Yes, I do. I have been learning since last summer 
 to know him. I have known myself still longer, and 
 know this : that if I ever should meet with anybody 
 who could win me like that, I should not change to 
 him. You are very fond of me, father dear," she added, 
 and knelt at his feet looking up into his face, " and 
 cannot wish me to change." 
 
 " He has neither a penny nor a prospect," argued 
 the father, fighting against the confession which he saw 
 must come ; for he knew what her answer must be. 
 
 " He has all the prospects which brains and energy 
 can give to a man who means to make his way, and to 
 make it for my sake," she said very proudly. "And 
 you have the money to help us at the start easily, if you 
 like, as you always said you should if I married to 
 please you. There is nothing in this that should 
 displease you, papa." 
 
 He struggled with himself for a time with an un- 
 feigned misery in his heart, looking round and round 
 for rescue in his thoughts in vain. Then he got up 
 from his chair and walked to the window, turning his 
 face away from her, and without prelude spoke. 
 
 " Daisy, I am ruined."
 
 OVER. 255 
 
 "Papa!" 
 
 She did not take it in at once ; but he came to her 
 and told her. Very gently and very lovingly, for him ; 
 for she was, after all, the pride of his heart and eyes, and 
 she had told him enough to make him feel the heart- 
 break he was preparing for her. He said nothing of 
 the man Brent as yet ; he could not, and it was not now 
 the time if he ever could. But clearly and briefly 
 enough he put before her the situation as he had too 
 well realized it. Ruin and poverty, real and hard ; and 
 something like — too like — dishonour even in that. 
 Nothing need absolutely be known for a time, and the 
 difficulty might be tided over, perhaps. But for the 
 penniless lover there was neither place nor hope, and 
 Daisy must forget her dream. 
 
 " It has been very short, dear," he said appealingly. 
 
 "Yes, very short, papa. Not longer than my life." 
 
 She went quietly to her room, when she had learned 
 all that she was then to learn. She looked at the thinor 
 as such a woman would look. Money or poverty with 
 her would make no difference to Guy ; but money or 
 poverty, for him, must to her make all the difference. 
 He was going to be a great man ; and proud as she 
 would be to help his career, she would never mar it.
 
 256 FAUCI T OF BALLIOL. 
 
 Was she right ? I do not know, though I think not. 
 A love hke that of those two is too great and rare a 
 blessing to be lost or to be denied upon any terms 
 at all. But the young, when like them, have always 
 the spirit of sacrifice, and do not learn the absolute 
 supremacy of the great claim, till perchance they are 
 too old to profit by the learning. Besides, there was 
 more in the background, and Daisy felt it. When she 
 left her father's room,' it was with the knowledge that 
 all was really over, and that Guy and she had better 
 meet no more. Nor was she privileged to tell him all 
 the truth. So she wrote the letter which she knew 
 must be sent, in a spirit of impossible pain. Then — 
 womanlike — desiring the parting and dreading to meet, 
 she hoped and waited for days for an answer — for him. 
 Neither came ; and the world went on its usual round 
 again. Daisy dined at Lady Pepperharrow's, and made 
 new acquaintances in a world new to her, with the band 
 of an iron sorrow round her heart. But her charm was 
 as ever, and as she saw and heard no more of Guy, it 
 gathered fresh armour from her pride. Beyond the 
 four who knew it, none knew what had passed. 
 
 It seemed the very perversity of fate, that I who 
 knew and loved these two so well, should, on the very
 
 OVER. 257 
 
 morning after Lady Pepperharrow's party, have left 
 England with a friend for a tour in America, long out 
 of the way of letters and of news. I left with a 
 happy heart for them ; and after a shake of the hanel 
 with both, that last evening, which was meant to convey 
 my unspoken congratulations on the unconfessed truth. 
 Of the sadness which followed I knew nothincr till 
 months afterwards, when it was all too late. Guy never 
 wrote a line to me for years, and for years I never saw 
 him again. ^\Tien next I met Daisv, she was a Daisv 
 whom I had not kno^Ti. To his other chief friend, 
 Wilmot, Faucit spoke no word either ; but left him to 
 guess. He guessed, as men do guess where their dearest 
 friends are concerned, all on one side. When next he 
 met Daisy a short time afterwards, he bowed to her and 
 wanted to pass by. In arms as was her pride, she 
 mustered courage to speak to him, and she spoke with 
 a cold constraint she would willingly have avoided. 
 
 "I have not seen Mr, Faucit lately," she said. 
 " Isn't he well ? " 
 
 " He has left London, Miss Fairfield." 
 
 " Altogether ? " 
 
 " Altogether, I believe." 
 
 And the golden dream was over. 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 ALONE IN THE WORLD. 
 
 Guy Faucit went down to his mothers to find her 
 very ill. Unselfish in her loving devotion as she 
 always had been, she would not interfere with her 
 boy's work in London by complaints about herself, and 
 her letters to him neither admitted nor showed any 
 change in her. He was shocked when he saw it, almost 
 into forgetfulness of what had brought him down. 
 For her, she had rejoiced greatly in her son's coming ; 
 for a fear was upon her that her life was drawing near 
 its quiet end. She had -never been strong, and the 
 cold of the winter had tried her severely. And she 
 longed to have her boy with her for a time, if that 
 was to be, as in the old days. If before she left him 
 she could only know that she left him in safe hands, 
 that he would not want a woman's love to care for
 
 ALONE IN THE WORLD. 259 
 
 and to tend him, without which, in one endearing form 
 or another, she held a man's life to be very much alone, 
 she would be well content to fold her hands, and so 
 to the place of those who had gone before. She wanted 
 to know, she longed to hear, that all was arranged 
 between her boy and Daisy; and then she hoped to 
 make the new daughter's acquaintance thoroughly 
 before the end, and to have some sweet confidences with 
 her over Guy's manifold excellences, to tell her how 
 impervious he had been to all the reigning beauties of 
 Devonshire, and how she had been beginning to despair 
 of his ever finding any one to suit him, in spite of all 
 his mother's entreaties and advice ; when suddenly she 
 heard from him how Daisy had descended from the 
 blue, and at the first description made up her mind 
 to welcome the new Mrs. Faucit to the place and 
 heart of the old. She would be able to tell her many 
 things of Guy's tastes and ways, besides all that she 
 would learn for herself, and smooth the path of perfect 
 confidence which those two should tread together after 
 she was gone. Would she have the opportunity of ful- 
 filling this desire of her heart ? The warning was upon 
 her, and she knew that her time was short. Therefore 
 
 she rejoiced with a great gladness over the first part 
 
 s 2
 
 26o FAUCIT OF BALLIOL, 
 
 of that letter of Guy's to her that we have seen, and 
 was painfully affected by the last. She hoped with 
 her boy that all would come right ; but felt that Mr. 
 Fairfield's opposition, against which her brave maternal 
 pride rose all in arms, — indeed, she had strongly urged 
 Guy to speak out; for whom could man desire for a 
 son-in-law better than he ? — might too surely put an 
 end to her dream of knowing Daisy. 
 
 And on her side, the girl of her son's heart was 
 cherishing a kindred hope ; for much, very much, of 
 Guy's talk with her was of his mother, in those times 
 when they were coming to understand each other well ; 
 and for that, as for other things, she loved him more 
 and more. She was full of a wish to love Guy's mother 
 too, for her own sake ; and . on the night when she 
 j^romised to be his they found room for their schemes 
 for the mother in Devonshire, even in the happy 
 after-talk of self which followed upon their common 
 confession. 
 
 " Oh, Guy, do you think your mother will care 
 about me ? Won't she hate me for taking you away 
 from her?" 
 
 " Ask her that yourself, dear," he had answered. 
 
 And the sweet tremulous message I have told of,
 
 ALONE IN THE WORLD. 261 
 
 sent in Guy^s letter, made the disappointment which 
 followed all the harder to the old lady. That message 
 was all she was ever to know of Daisy, who never 
 forgot her regrets for the loss, in the after time. 
 Thank God for the faith of some of us, which tells 
 us inwardly, with a full assurance, that elsewhere, if 
 not here, those lost knowledges shall be. I would not 
 hold a blanker creed than that, for the price of the 
 world's ransom. 
 
 Mrs. Faucit scented danger in the air when she 
 had Guy's news, and though pained and shocked to the 
 heart, was not surprised, when she heard very briefly 
 from him a few days afterwards, that Mr. Fairfield's 
 dismissal had been ratified by Daisy in a way which 
 he could only regard as final, and that he must have 
 been mistaken all along. All the mother's heart went 
 out to her boy in his disappointment, and she wrote 
 at once and begged him to come to her. She was not 
 well, she told him, by way of further inducement, and 
 w^ould be very glad of his society for her own sake, 
 as he would value hers now for his. 
 
 " I do not understand quite what has happened, 
 my boy," she wrote ; " for you speak of it very shortly. 
 I hope all is not so ill as you think ; but if you will
 
 262 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 come here, I can advise you and talk to you as I used 
 in all your boy's troubles. Do you remember ? We 
 stupid old women are wiser in some things than wise 
 and clever men like you." 
 
 He kissed the faltering handwriting, and reproached 
 himself for not seeing sooner how much it did falter ; 
 and he came back to the true mother's heart for 
 comfort and for love. 
 
 He found it there in full ; but he found too surely, 
 at the same time, that he was come only to lose the 
 sacred consolation when he pined for it the most, and 
 would miss it sorely indeed. His mother was fading 
 very fast and unmistakably; and seeing her as he did, 
 without warning and without preparation, he realized it 
 at once. She was unwilling even to speak of herself, 
 could care for nothing but her longing to pour balm into 
 the wound which had gone so deep. At first she tried 
 to persuade Guy that there had been some mistake in 
 the matter, some misunderstanding which would cer- 
 tainly and easily come right. She wanted to write to 
 Daisy herself — had not the girl written first to her ? — 
 and ask her, as she had the right to do, for some 
 fuller explanation of what had passed. But Guy Faucit 
 had the pride of Lucifer, as such men have, and he
 
 ALOXE IN THE WORLD. 263 
 
 would not hear of any compromise here. If she had 
 anything to explain, let her. Though at the time 
 his trust in Daisy had let him jDass it by, he felt 
 deeply afterwards the sting of Fairfield's insolence, 
 which his daughter's action seemed to sanction. She 
 had been persuaded that he wanted her mctney per- 
 haps, after all. 
 
 " Would you let such a suspicion rest on your son, 
 mother ? " he asked. 
 
 And the poor mother was not strong, as she had 
 been, and could not make head ao-ainst a determination 
 which was too great for her, as it had often been in 
 lesser things. She admired that powerful will of her 
 son s, which was with him so strong a characteristic ; 
 but she always feared it for him, and many a time 
 had prayed earnestly that it might not some day take 
 the invidious shape of self-will, and wreck him. She 
 learned to asfree with him as to the meanins: of his 
 disappointment, too, A fuller account of the inter- 
 view with ]\lr, Fairfield showed her that he must be 
 one of those men of whom she had seen so much in 
 her own life, with whom the world and the purse were 
 the be-all and the end-all. Such a man as that was 
 the fit father for a worldly child, and the Daisy of her
 
 264 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 son's fancy must have been a dream of delusion. So 
 grieving from her soul for her son's disappoint- 
 ment, she saw that it was idle to talk with him 
 about it, and she accepted it as an accomplished fact, 
 as he did. 
 
 He put the subject aside after the first few days; 
 and with his strong power over himself, he hid from his 
 mother resolutely and successfully his fierce struggles 
 with his own pain, His duty here, at all events, was 
 clear and straight before him, and he took the duty up 
 in the strength of his great love for the mother who 
 had been everything to him, till this enchantress 
 deluded him for a time for her own amusement. 
 
 The doctor of the place confirmed him in his first 
 fears, and told him that his mother was surely dying. 
 It might be a question of a few weeks or of a few 
 months, but the sentence had been passed and written 
 down. In those weeks or months Guy would not leave 
 her, but devote his heart and soul to making the 
 passage easy to that world of rest and un-striving, 
 whence he himself felt pitilessly far. So he crushed 
 down all his own selfish regrets, and comforted his 
 mother by the assurance that there was no harm done, 
 that the episode in his life had been too short, and he
 
 ALOXE IX THE WORLD, i^i 
 
 had never allowed himself to build upon its issue, and 
 that no doubt some day the proper yAi^ would be found 
 for him, for whom the mother's soul lons^ed. After all, 
 a London flirt would never have done. So before she 
 died she came to think it was for the best, and that her 
 worshipped son had but passed through the waters so 
 many pass, with nothing worse than a wetting. He 
 had never, perhaps, been to her what he was during 
 those closing days. 
 
 When the bright spring came, he could wheel her 
 out in her chair into the garden, and sit by her side 
 chatting and reading. 
 
 There was no pain, happily, attending her peaceful 
 end, and he brought all the resources of his mind to 
 bear upon his dear love. That love was dearer to him 
 than ever, now that he had realized its full truth by 
 contrast, just on the verge of losing it. She tried ever 
 and again to persuade him to go back to London, and 
 resume the work he had so zealously begun. But he 
 put that aside altogether. There was plenty of time 
 for that, he said. 
 
 The end lasted three months, and came noiselessly 
 and without warning, as gently as the visit of a friend 
 to the quiet sick-room. They had been talking
 
 266 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 seriously and soberly -all the long summer-afternoon, 
 with the insects droning their peaceful monotone 
 outside, and the long June shadows creeping lazily over 
 the lawn, on one of those days of still heat when Nature 
 seems crouching for another spring, chiefly of the 
 things above and the things beyond, and the mysteries 
 of that life which had been the mother's chief reality 
 through all her varied days of trouble and of calm. 
 Chief of all her happinesses and prides in her son was 
 her knowledge that he shared that faith as she would 
 have him share it, in the unquestioning obedience and 
 unmurmuring love of a child — the faith that is in one 
 sense higher than charity, in that if it be real it cannot 
 fail to include it. He took up at his mother's request 
 the book they both loved so well, and had read together 
 so often, during those last months especially. And in 
 the deep voice filled with reverence he read to her the 
 opening words of the wonderful chapter in Hebrews — 
 " Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
 of things not seen." Her head fell back in her chair, 
 and she gave a faint cry. He was at her feet in a 
 moment. 
 
 " Where are you, my boy ? " she whispered. And 
 he took the weak arms and clasped them round
 
 ALONE IN THE WORLD. 267 
 
 his neck and i^ressed his lips to hers ; and in that 
 mother's kiss she died, — died as she had always wished 
 to die, — in the full confidence of love, alone -s^dth him 
 whom most she had lived for, with the loftiest words of 
 Divine prophecy leaving, in his voice, the last earthly 
 echo on her ear. She knew the euthanasia she desired, 
 and it was given her. 
 
 He did not call for a moment, for he knew that she 
 was dead. Then he kissed her again, and there broke 
 from hini one low cry. For her the evidence of things 
 not seen was now turned to the things themselves ; the 
 things hoped for belonged to hope no longer, and the 
 glass she had seen through darkly was broken down, 
 to let the fulness of light in for evermore. But for 
 him the fall of that irrevocable fate was as a sen- 
 tence of civil death in the grey and purposeless world, 
 which had for him now no meaning left ; and he rose 
 uj) in that dear dead presence, feeling himself hope- 
 lessly alone. 
 
 ***** 
 
 He went quietly through the days before the funeral, 
 and through the business which had to be done, like a 
 man in a dream ; to all outward seeming unalterably 
 calm. Then he saw his mother laid in the quiet
 
 268 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 country grave, and noted with conscious pleasure the 
 signs of affectionate interest and respect which were 
 shown on every side. She had the gift, that lady, of 
 being truly loved and sincerely mourned, after the ' 
 fashion of the things that pass away, and leave their 
 trace of sorrow, though it be not a deep one, upon the 
 general hurry of surrounding life. 
 
 Guy had every sign of sympathy and kindness 
 shown him, but his nature took refuge in itself, and for 
 a day or two still he lived quietly on at home, with no 
 companions but books and thoughts. His mother's 
 death left him the master, with his fellowship, of some 
 few hundreds a year ; and he had all his plans of life to 
 make again. 
 
 He must do something, he thought ; and his mind 
 began to revert to the old rooms at Oxford, for the bar 
 seemed to have no attraction now. But the rooms at 
 Oxford now recalled Daisy Fairfield, from whose image 
 the strong will could not shake itself free, though he 
 did not know yet how deeply it was graven, distracted 
 as he had been from his first pain by his care for his 
 mother. In spite of himself Hope began to lift its 
 head again, and he began to wonder if there could have 
 been, after all, some strange misunderstanding, and if
 
 ALONE IN THE WORLD. 26^ 
 
 he had not been over-hasty in yielding at once to pride. 
 Was it possible — that last night — that Daisy did not 
 love him ? 
 
 A letter from Wilmot, with whom he had exchanged 
 one or two, came to him at this time. It discoursed of 
 many things, and it told him, casually and quietly, that 
 his friend Miss Fairfield had been a great success that 
 season in London, and that she was going to be married. 
 The stroke went home to the desolate heart ; but this 
 time Guy was resolved to know something more, and 
 by an impulse he did not care to master, he wrote one 
 brief line to Daisy. 
 
 " I hear that you are to be married. Is it 
 true ? If it is not, I think that you owe it to me 
 to tell me so. If it is, silence will be enough. I shall 
 wait a week for your answer, though I hope not to 
 wait so long." 
 
 He waited for a week, and no answer came. No 
 line, no sign, no message. Within one week more, Guy 
 Faucit was on the high seas, alone upon his road to 
 South America, with no definite purpose in his mind 
 but to find out places he had never seen, and to be as 
 if he had neyer been to all who had known him. He 
 left behind him directions that the cottage should be
 
 270 FAUCIT OF BALLIOL. 
 
 sold, and from time to time communicated with his 
 lawyer. And he picked up strange friends and strange 
 acquaintances, and gathered much wide knowledge of 
 life and lands, serious, self-contained^ and silent always. 
 And he was a wanderer on the face of earth for seven 
 years. 
 
 END OF VOL. I.
 
 V