/' Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/ramdassOOfeli tr \ f ♦ / , which, since the nibbling of that apple from the tree at Cawnpore House, has so disturbingly pervaded every speculation in reference to the governess, the mere suggestion of such an idea is pro- ductive in John’s mind of bewildering, and as yet wholly unintelligible, results. That Miss Horseney’s skin is white and silky, her shoulders sloping, her arms round, firm, and EM[ BASS. 261 exquisitely moulded, he has known for some months past quite as well, at all events, as he knows it now. Why should he suddenly have taken to feeling that the order to substitute for the present plain blue serge a. dress more fitted for public appearance in the evening — an order which at any other time in all these months he would have given with no more thought than would have been evoked by a request to shut the door — would be an order now to unveil these beauties for his own especial behoof. Not that the situation defines itself be- fore John’s mental vision with anything like this sharpness of outline. It is still ordy in the very vaguest way that he feels with- out, if the paradox may be excused, the smallest consciousness of feeling. But the feeling is none the less uncomfortable for being vague, and it is with a much more •defined sense of relief that he finds his half- 262 BAM BASS. unconscious difficulty solved by Maud, who, suddenly rising from her chair, seizes her friend by the hand, and whispers, in a coax- ing voice : “ Come, Clarie.” And Clarice goes, to return in some ten minutes or so divested of the high-collared serge, and with neck and arms gleaming once more in their statuesque roundness through the transparent folds of the black barege. Perhaps, had John Sutcliffe understood the full meaning of that coaxing tone, his satis- faction at the result might not have been quite so unmixed. In point of fact, Mdlle. Clarice Orsini had come to a resolution very similar to that adopted by Mrs. Sutcliffe. No small portion of the afternoon had been spent by Maud in the vain endeavour to induce her proud gover- ness to join a party to one, at least, of the EAM DAS8. 263 principal members of which her presence would be so plainly unwelcome. The determination which had resisted, though certainly not with- out difficulty, her young friend’s entreaties, has given way, like Betsy’s, under a conviction of the impossibility of any possible gain from maintaining it as compared with the cost at which it must be maintained. It is better, especially now that Betsy’s surrender has removed all actual grievance, to put her pride so far in her pocket than to be the occasion of any such tremendous “ row ” as would inevitably follow any at- tempt to vindicate it. So the coaxing “ Come, Clarie,” uttered in the almost for- lorn hope that some such effect might have been produced by papa’s startling, but, as events proved, fortunate little outbreak about the tea, is successful, and the mutinous spirit which had so virulently infected no less than three-fourths of the little garrison. 264 BAM BASS. is altogether crushed by the firing of a single random shot. There are other heads of families besides John Sutcliffe whose households are ruled on very similar principles. They do not commonly obtain, or deserve, any reputation for weak or excessive amiability ; but, as a rule, they are loved quite as devotedly by relations and dependents — sometimes more so — and they get their own way with amazing punctuality. Honest John Sutclifie has got his own way now, even down to that regulation of Mdlle. Orsini’s toilette, which he found so great a difficulty in ordaining for himself. And having it, honest John recovers his temper marvellously ; is quite amiable, in his way, when the theatre is at length reached, and on the appearance of Mr. Ram Dass at the door, duly provided, as John had fore- told, with a separate ticket for himself. BAII BASS. 265 chuckles over his Betsy’s groundless fears of his exclusion in a way which goes far towards banishing even the clouds which hang so heavily on the heart and on the brow of that faithful but ill-used wife. The clouds clear up altogether in the suddenest manner at honest John’s next move. In the curious perturbation of his mind, that seat next to the Orsini, which Betsy has been looking to see him take as a matter of course, and which he himself has been regarding at intervals throughout the day as beyond question the most eligible position in the theatre from which to mark the performance of the famous actress who for this week supplies the main attraction, has for the moment lost all its charm. After all, there is no very par- ticular advantage in actually sitting next to her. John has not yet got to that stage of the complaint at which homoeopathy asserts 266 BAM BASS. its rights, and the fever of the blood is only to he quieted by the propinquity which is its most unfailing provocative. He is as well, or almost as well contented to sit at the other extremity of the line, where the curve of the house places him full in view of the handsome governess, and whence he can not only gratify his rapidly-developing appre- ciation of flowing lines and rich colouring, but can at the same time do much towards solving the vexed question of the designs entertained by the dusky gentleman to whom their presence there at all is due. This question of Mr. Earn Dass’s intentions is rapidly assuming serious dimensions in the eyes of honest John. He is a tolerably regular chapel-goer — even John’s talent could hardly have brought him successfully through one or two of the great crises of his career, without the support of some “connection” of the kind — and has heard in his time a nAM BASS. 267 good deal about that difficulty in the com- bined service of two masters, which affords so natural a subject for pulpit eloquence. But he has never yet experienced in his own person any difficulty of the kind. A more single-minded devotion than that hitherto paid by honest John to the service of the one master he has selected to follow, is but rarely to be found in the history of the Saints. Now, for the first time he begins, not indeed to espy, but dimly to scent the possibility of, a divided allegiance. To that one great principle to which, hitherto, he has ever been so true, the friendship and alliance of Mr. Earn Dass is of the very utmost importance. Is it conceivable that a new interest shall even now be springing up in his mind, wholly unconnected with any single interest of Mammon, yet so powerful over his heretofore undivided spirit as 268 BAM BASS. actually to occasion tlie sacrifice of that alliance, the conversion of that friendship into bitterness and hostility ? The question is one which may well agitate a mind never before troubled with any similar speculation : and it does agitate it to so painful an extent that any reprieve from the necessity of its consideration, however temporary, is jumped at with un- conscious rehef. John’s present refuge takes the form of what may be termed, in Parlia- mentary slang, a moving of the previous question. Is it at all certain that this question of divided allegiance need ever arise ? If Mr. Earn Dass have really no designs of any kind upon Mdlle. Clarice Orsini, what occasion is there for honest John to trouble himself with the consideration of what would follow, should those non-existent designs clash with any, as yet, at all events. BAM BASS. 269 non-existent designs of his own ? Clearly, the first thing is to ascertain the views of Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass. That gentleman, it appears, has solved with his habitual readiness the difficult ques- tion of his own position in the party. To have neglected the claims on his support, alike of the mistress of the family, her elderly guest, and her young daughter, in order to seat himself deliberately en perma- nence alongside of the governess, would have been rather a strong measure ; whilst to place himself either between her and Maud on the one hand, or her and Miss Vern- hoyle on the other, would have been simply to saddle himself with the necessity of turn- ing his back upon the only member of the party in whom he feels the slightest interest, in order to keep up a duty conversation with his more important neighbour on the other side. So Mr. Earn Dass decides upon 270 BAM BASS. not sitting next to any one ; and, slipping qiiietly into the second row, takes up his post just behind Miss Vernhoyle. Here, in the very centre or key of the position, with Betsy, as it were, under one hand, and Mdlle. Orsini under the other, the host of the evening overlooks, so to speak, the whole party. The only members of it with whom he would have even the smallest difficulty in communicating are John Sutcliffe himself at one extremity of the line, and Maud at the other end. John notes this fact — not with satisfaction. On the other hand, he very shortly notes, and this time with considerable satisfaction, that comparatively difficult as the communi- cation is, it is to Maud that the brief conver- sations between the acts are almost exclusively addressed. Mrs. Sutcliffe comes in for a civil word or two ; Miss Vernhoyle asks and re- ceives an answer to some common-place ques- BAM BASS. 271 tion touching the performance. Clarice Orsini alone exchanges throughout the evening no single word with the provider of the enter- tainment. Her position, indeed, between him and her pupil necessitates her hearing every word addressed by him to that young lady. But that Mr. Ram Dass does not seem at all to mind. “ Well,” he asks, as the curtain falls on the second act, “ how do you like it ? ” “ Oh, charming ! ” answers Maud, whose unsophisticated young eyes are bright with a moisture which, to judge from the slightly uplifted eyebrow of her more critical neigh- bour, is probably due either to her own inex- perience or to the inherent pathos of the story, rather than to any special genius on the part of the popular actress to whose wondrous powers poor Maud is inclined to attribute it. Mr. Ram Dass would seem to have noticed 272 EAM BASS. that uplifting of the delicate dark eyebrow ; nay, some people might have thought that he was replying rather to it, than to the little rhapsody of the enthusiastic Maud. It is, however, to the latter that he addresses himself of course. “It is true. An artist would have made that enormous.” “ An artist ! Oh ! What do you call her, then ? ” Clarice cannot exactly see her neighbour with her bodily eyes ; but she is somehow conscious that he is silently shrugging his shoulders. “ Well,” retorts Maud, severely, “ the audience don’t agree with you, at any rate. You heard how they applauded her.” “ An English audience is very good. It is told to applaud — it applauds.” “And who told it to applaud just now?” BAM BASS. 273 “ The other audiences which have applauded before it.” “ And who told them, then ? ” “Nay, Mademoiselle. Now you want to know too much.” The speaker pauses a moment, as though considering whether to proceed. But as he does so, his eyes arc certainly not turned to- wards Maud ; and it can hardly be any look of disappointed exjDCctancy on her face, in response to which he continues : “ She is one of those of whom I spoke to you yesterday night. She has been taken up by a powerful man ; one of those men who tell your audiences — poor audiences ! — what they are to think. He has told them to applaud her, and they have applauded her now for two, three, nearly four years. They will not do so four years longer. She has talent — ^pouf ! Just as much as my walking- YOL. I. T 274 BAM BASS. stick. But she has made some thovisands. If she had had genius — pooh ! If she had had one little spark no bigger than to light my cigar ! But there ! She will have made seven, eight, ten thousands now before they Avill find her out.” “For shame, Mr. Earn D ” But here the act-drop rises again, and Maud reserves the expression of her indignation for a more - favourable opportunity. The performance terminates. J ohn Sut- cliffe comes out highly satisfied. He has not the very slightest idea of what the play has been about, but he is pretty clear upon a point, which is, to his mind, just now of much more importance. In this state of satisfaction he remains until Betsy and Miss Vernhoyle are safely stowed away in the fly, and he is in the act of packing away Maud. BAM BASS. 275 Mr. Earn Dass is just beliincl him, waiting- to do a similar office for Mdlle. Orsini, and he is speaking to her for the first time that evening. “ Shall I tell you of what you are think- ing ? ” he asks abruptly. “ I — no. What do you mean ? ” replies Clarice, startled for the moment out of her usual self-possession. “ You were thinking — If I had been in that stupid woman’s place I coidd have played that part as it should have been played. If I had that stupid woman’s opportunities “Mr. Earn Dass — really — I ” “ Hush ! Not a word. You are right — right — right. Ladies, your most obe- dient ! ” The fly drives oft'. Mr. Earn Dass replaces 276 BAM BASS. his hat, and turns to hid farewell to John Sutcliffe. But honest John has vanished. EXD OF VOIi. I. CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS* RAM DASS. VOL. II. RAM DASS BY CHARLES FELIX, AUTHOR OF “THE NOTTING HILL MYSTERY,” ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES. YOL. II. Tlt^SLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND. 1875. [All rights reserved.'\ CirAl?T,ES DTCKEKS AND EVANS, CEYSTAL PALACE PEESS. EAM DASS. CHAPTER 1. Back ! At your peril, back ! In this weak arm the might of Heaven ” “ In the name of goodness, Clarie, what- ever are you doing ? ” “ Maud ! Is that you ? Is anything the matter ? ” And Mdlle. Orsini sits up in bed, pushing back the heavy waves of hair from her flushed forehead, and blinking a startled inquiry at a slender white figure with very widely-opened eyes indeed, stand- ing, candle in hand, by her bedside. VOL. II. B 2 BAM BASS. “ Matter ! I should think there was some- thing the matter. Do you know that you have been shouting out fit to frighten people in Muddingham Lane ? ” “ I ! Shouting out ! ” And then the tell- tale blood, which has been subsiding a little, mounts up again, more vividly than ever, and Clarice searches back among her dreams. “ Eather so, my honoured preceptress. And then when I take . my courage with both hands, and come tearing in to fight with Bogy for you, you begin to call me all sorts of opprobrious names, and tell me to ‘ back, back, at my peril, or ' " “ Oh, Maud ! You don’t mean really ” “But I do mean, though, every bit of it, and — What are you looking for ? — a pocket- handkerchief to hide your blushes ? ” “ Nothing, dear, nothing. I must have been dreaming.” HAM HASS. 3 “ I should think you were — and I know what about too. Now do tell me what you are fumbling after so anxiously.” “ Nothing at all, my dear Maud. I ” “ Oh, but it is something, I know. I shall begin to think you have got a dagger under the pillow, and are going to shoot me. Why — what ” and in a moment Miss Maud is down upon her knees and up again, holding to the light a small oblong square of card. “ Oh ! What a handsome fellow ! ” “Maud, Maud, give it to me directly.” “ Give it to you ! Why ? It is not yours, you know. You were not looking for any- thing.” “Now, Maud, I shall really be quite vexed if you don’t give it to me at once.” “ Mdlle. Orsini, it’s no use trying to look dignified, because the situation — as Mr. Wilkinson says — does not allow of it. I 4 BAM BASS. haven’t a morsel of respect for a governess in a nightcap.” “Don’t be absurd, Maud. You know very well I’m not wearing one.” “ I don’t care if you're not wearing twenty. I’ve quite made up my mind.” “ About what ? ” “About what I’m going to do.” “ Something more sensible than you’ve been doing as yet, I hope.” “ Something so very sensible, Mdlle. Orsini, that I wonder it has not oceurred to you to make room for me to do it before.” “ Make room for — Maud ! What are you doing ? ” “Putting out the candle.” “And how are you going to get back to your room ? ” “Nohow at all. I am like the Greeks, Clarie ; that is to say, I’m like the — ^which is it ? — the reverse, or the converse of them ? ” BAM BASS. 5 “ I think you’re gone mad.” “ Perhaps I have. Perhaps I shall take to spouting soon.” “ Now, Maud, do be rational for a moment, please.” “ I am particularly rational. I tell you I am like the whatever-it-is of the Greeks. They burnt their ships, and I’ve put out my candle.” “Do you mean, that you don’t mean to go away at all 1 ” “I do mean — that I don’t mean— just exactly that.” “ Then what do you mean to do ? ” “ This.” And without further waste of words. Miss Maud slips quietly into Mdlle. Orsini’s bed, and disposes her slender young figure by that young lady’s side. “ Well,” observes Clarice, “ that is cool, at all events.” “ On the contrary,” replies the young in- 6 BAM BASS. vader, “it is very comfortably warm. I am cool, if that is what you mean.” “ That is precisely what I do mean, Miss Maud Sutcliffe.” “And I hope you are properly ashamed of yourself, you inhospitable thing, for letting me catch my death without ever — but there, I forgive you. Now go on.” “ Go on ! I am going — to sleep. Good night.” “ Indeed, you are not ; not till you have told me all about him.” “ I have not a word to tell you about anything.” “ Oh, yes, you have. About the hand- some young man hidden under the ” “Maud! if you go on in that way I shall really be very much annoyed.” “Well, there, then I won’t. But you will tell me all about it, won’t you? Oh, Clarie, you know how fond I am of you. BAM DASS. 7 and I have been so anxious, and — come now.” “ Suppose it is my brother.” “ Suppose it is my grandmother.” “ Very well. Then, there, you see you Icnow all about it.” “ Clarie, you are a wretch. Oh, please don’t be a wretch. I do so want to hear if he is nice, and who he is, and when it will be, and all about it. I promise I’ll never tell anybody. And it will be so jolly to think you’re going to be all right after all. Now do.” And so after a little more fencing on the part of the elder girl, the pertinacious young catechiser at last drags from her the admission that the handsome young original of the photograph is not her brother. Not any relation at all. Only a friend — yes, a very dear friend — well, yes, a lover, Clarice /supposes, if Maud insists upon calling him 8 BAM BASS. so. And Maud does insist very strongly upon this good, plain-speaking nomenclature. She has read of lovers in books, and talked about them enough, and more than enough. Heaven knows, among her fellows at the school. But, as yet, she has been acquainted with this fascinating genus in the abstract only. A concrete lover has never yet fallen in her way, either as her own property or as appertaining to any of her friends. To have got hold now of a real lover, actually belonging to her dear Clarice, is a delight to dream of. Clarice herself, too, now that the ice is broken, begins to find the topic much less disagreeable than at first. She is a proud girl, sensitive, reticent, shy of speaking or even thinking of such feelings in her own breast, however boldly her half-artist educa- tion may have taught her to approach this, as most other subjects regarded from her par- BAM BASS. ticular point of view. It would have been many a long day before she had even hinted at any sueh matter of her own accord to her dearest friend. Now, however, everything has conspired together against her, and she is being, as it were, forced to speak ; and after a time the occupation begins to have in it something not so unpleasant after all. It is months now — years, Clarice is inclined to think, despite the almanack — since she has seen or heard of her gallant young lover ; months since the love which, in her strong nature, does but gather vigour from repres- sion, has had any vent at all save sueh very banalities of sentiment as young misses in frills and trousers are wont, in default of photographs, to interchange with their dolls. The reserve which, to borrow a medical phrase, we may term idiopathic — which exists, as it were, of itself, and is the natural out- come of a cold and unresponsive tempera- 10 BAM BASS. ment — may maintain for a lifetime the frozen silence which only hardens as the Arctic years pass on. The reserve, which is only, as it were, the reaction of extreme depths of feel- ing, is swept away in a moment when once those depths are fully stirred. So the confidences which at first are dragged out of Clarice by her wilful pupil, slowly, painfully, and with as many blushes as though Maud had not blown out the candle, or Clarice herself turned her burning face to the wall, come gradually to flow of their own accord. The face is burning stiU, despite the darkness ; but it is not turned away any longer. It is pillowed now on the shoulder of her young companion, and Clarice is telling her the story of her love, as, half a dozen hours ago, she assuredly never dreamed of telling it even to the original of the photograph himself. It is a simple story enough, a variation in BAM BASS. 11 no very unusual key of the one eternal theme which forms the basis of so many of earth’s melodies. Harry Forester and Clarice had met in Paris — she nineteen, he twenty ; both in the spring-tide flush of that warm impul- sive artist nature to which love, like all other beautiful things, comes as natural as the air it breathes. Sober, respectable, every-day people would call theirs a case of love at flrst sight, and laugh at or patronise it accordingly. To them it did not appear to have any chronology at all. They could give the precise date of their flrst meeting, but as for loving each other, it seemed to them that they must have been doing so for some time before. One is tempted to think, some- times, that love, the one divine element of humanity, has something of this divine eternity, and is in truth altogether inde- pendent of that very earthly imposture — time. 12 BAM BASS. The actual declaration of their love was another matter ; and to this, as to their first meeting, it was easy enough to affix a date. They had known each other by that time for six months or more. Their first meeting had been at the Louvre, into which Harry had wandered one fine day in early winrer, to wile away the very few leisure minutes of a flying visit on some business account. Eicciotto Orsini was busily engaged on his second copy of the Immaculate Conception — not the great Soult, but the smaller one, not very far from it. So far as his own wishes were concerned, he would have much pre- ferred living on to the last in bright, sunny Florence, working steadily day after day at the Madonna della Sedia, of which he had already made more copies than he could count, and his reproduction of which, if not absolutely the best in the market, were suffi- BAM BASS. 13 ciently exact to find a pretty steady sale at a fairly remunerative price. He used to smile a mournful smile when enthusiastic Parisians spoke of the rains and fogs and dismal skies of perfidious Albion, and ask himself what they would think of Paris could they but once spend a year, or even a season, in his own sunny Tuscany. Moreover, living was very much dearer on the banks of the Seine than on those of the Arno, even after the temporary migration to the latter spot of the new Italian court and government, on their way from Turin to Rome, had raised the cost of the very humblest articles to a height which, in the “ bad old days ” of the Tedeschi, would have seemed simply incredible. And finally, it was no trifling matter to him the having to begin again upon a new picture. He had grown so accustomed to the continual travelling over the beaten ground of the great RaffaeUe, that 14 BAM BASS. he had become little more than a mere in- telligent machine, specially constructed for the reproduction of that one picture. Had he been told, long ago, when at the bidding of a wealthy Englishman he re- luctantly put on one side his first great picture, “II Trionfo di Eienzi,” to make, for a sum which at that period would keep him in luxury for twelve months at least, his first copy of the gem of the Palazzo Pitti, he would nearly a score of years later be still working away at his two or three hundredth repetition of the same monotonous task, he would probably have laughed to scorn the utterer of the evil prophecy. Believing it, he would assuredly have sought beneath the waters of his beloved Arno an immediate refuge from so horrible a fate. Destiny, however, and circumstance, had been too strong for Ricciotto Orsini, as they are for so many among us. The triumph of BAM BASS. 15 the great Tribune is very nearly as far from completion now as when that first order came from the wealthy Englishman ; would have been as far, no doubt, from completion just the same, even had no hint been given as to the inappropriateness of the subject, or the probability that the depicted triumph of the popular hero might finally bring any- thing but triumph to its rash commemorator. This latter, however, was the reason always given by Eicciotto Orsini, even to himself, for the final abandonment of all his young dreams of artistic distinction, and adoption of what he contemptuously termed the “ trade ” of the copyist. Clarice herself thought dif- ferently. She knew, what others, less in- terested in such events had forgotten, that it was just after the completion of the first Kaffaelle copy that her mother had died in giving her birth ; and she put her own inter- pretation upon the relinquishment of all 16 BAM BASS. ambitious schemes, which, at all events, dated from that time. Be that as it may, however, there can be no question but that for many years be- fore he left Florence, Eicciotto Orsini had settled into the almost mechanical repro- ducer of the famous Madonna, whilst, even in becoming so, his strong artistic instincts had led him to regard the picture in a manner very different from that of the ordinary copyist. With little of intention, if not, indeed, even with little of consciousness, he had studied and analysed this single work until he seemed, to himself, to follow every stroke of the master’s pencil; from the first char- coal sketch to the final touch of varnish. He still sat, day by day, on his high chair before the glass-covered picture, but so absolutely fixed had been, for the last half- dozen years at least, the order of his work. EAM BASS. 17 that it is more than probable that, had such an idea ever occurred to him, he might perfectly well have dispensed with any further reference to the original, and closing his eyes, have prosecuted his work to precisely the same effect, by grace of the mere mechanical reference to the tubes of colour in his old battered tin box. Unfortunately, this idea did not occur to his mind, or, when circumstances com- pelled his removal to Paris, one of the great troubles of that change would have been spared to him. As it was, the very thoroughness of his previous work proved a sore stumbling-block in the taking up of the new. Until he had mastered the present picture, as he had mastered the old one, he felt as though he could never make any copy of it at all. And the picture was not only a new picture, but a picture by a different hand — nay, by the hand of a master VOL. II. c 18 RAM BASS. of an altogether different school. Poor Eicciotto felt as if he had been sent back to the nursery again to learn the ABC of a new language. He had mastered the alphabet by the time that Harry Forester, strolling through the Louvre with one of his father’s innumerable artist friends, came upon him as he sat, on a higher stool than ever, at his new work ; his daughter, who was rarely to be found very far from her father’s easel, hard at work on one of the pictures close to his own. It was, probably, the most fortunate moment in the whole of the artist’s not too fortunate life, in which a young man of artistic tastes could well have made his acquaintance. The change of subject, though almost painful at first, had in the end done him real service. Almost frozen up for the last twenty years, or assimilating mechanically and unconsciously the mental pabulum afforded by the really BAM BASS. ' 19 •close and exhaustive study of even one single chef-dJ ceuvre, his genius had begun again to bestir itself, in very singular fashion, under the new stimulus thus applied to it. The curious combination of mental forces brought to bear upon his new study by the man, who, to all the freshness and boldness of a genius so absolutely dormant hitherto as to have possessed, almost in their entirety, all the main characteristics of youth, added the solid judgment, the minute, searching, micro- scopic penetration of laborious middle age, could hardly fail to be productive of striking- results ; and had Orsini himself but fully realised the originality and value of many of his own deductions from the labours of those few months, he might have produced ,a. work which should have brought him in a very handsome result — in fame, at least, if not in coin. Eicciotto Orsini, however, was perhaps about 20 BAM BASS. the last person on earth to whom any notion of this sort would present itself. His new ideas were either kept to himself or brought out at odd times, sitting round the fire, when the day’s work was done, for the benefit, at first, of Clarice, ultimately for the benefit also of the pleasant young Englishman who found in their quaint originality so strong an attraction that the few evenings of his business visit to Paris were altogether in- sufficient to exhaust it ; and the very first month’s holiday he had ever asked from the bank, since he entered its service, was spent almost from its first day to its last in s imil ar fashion. It was on the evening before his de- parture for home, after that second too brief period of bliss, that the state of affairs, which had been tacitly, but none the less clearly, understood by both the young BAM BASS. 21 people from the moment of his arrival, was first put into words. Not many words. They were neither of them given to very much talking on matters whereon they felt deeply, and each felt so perfectly clear in his or her own mind of the feelings of both, that words were of comparatively little importance. ‘‘ Clarice,” says Harry Forester, holding her two hands in his, and looking down on the graceful head, with its wealth of waving hair, now drooping a little, partly in shyness, partly in sorrow, from its usual haughty uprightness of carriage. “ You’ll not forget me ? ” And then the girl raises her face again, crimson still with maiden shame, but brave and open in maidenly purity and truth, and lifting straight to his her clear wet eyes, answers simply : 22 BAM BASS. “ You know I will not.” And tken the young lips cliiTg together for awhile, sealing the sweet old promise in the sweet old fashion, and Harry Forester and Clarice Orsini are betrothed. CHAPTER 11. “And so you promised when you left Paris you would let him know ?” “Not exactly a promise, perhaps, but — yes, it was. Why should I tell lies about it ? I did promise him, and — and I think I ought to have done it.” “You think you ought ! Well, Clarie, of all the funny moral sentiments I ever heard uttered by an instructor of youth, as Mr. Squeers says, that is the very funniest. You make a man a deliberate promise, and then ‘think’ you ought to have kept it.” “Yes, dear; but then, you know, every- thing was so different.” 24 BAM BASS. “ What ‘ everything ’ ? Were you dif- ferent ? Had you left off loving him ? Now, / Clarie, I won’t be pinched, and pinching is no answer. Had you?” “ Of course I had not.” “Had he left off loving you?” “ I hope not.” “ It would have served you quite right,” insists the stern young moralist, “ if he had.” And Clarice admits in her own heart that it would have served her right ; but at the same time devoutly hopes she may never be served right in that fashion. “But you knoAV, Maud,” she goes on, pleading her own cause, though with not much hope, or, indeed, much wish for suc- cess. “ Things were very different. He had never got his father’s consent.” “No ; because his father was taken ill the very day after, and he had never had BAM BASS. 25 the opportunity of asking. What had that to do with it V’ “We were not to correspond till he did.” “ Clarice, don’t be a humbug. You know perfectly well that it takes two people to correspond, and that that had nothing to do with your promise.” “No. But then — oh, Maud ! how could I write and tell him of poor papa’s sudden death, and how I was left without — oh, you know — you know.” “ I don’t know anything about it, except that if I was Mr. Forester I should never speak to you again ; no, never, as long as I lived. There !” “ Oh, Maud !” “ Oh, yes ; oh Maud, indeed. As if it wasn’t just the very reason why you ought to have written to him, even if you hadn’t promised.” “No, I don’t see that.” 26 BAM BASS. “ Well, I do. But never mind. You had promised, hadn’t you ?” “Yes.” “ Yery well. And what happens to girls Avho make promises and break them ?” “ I know what has happened to this one.” “ I know what ought to have happened to her, and what will happen to her if she does not repent and amend her ways. Do you repent ?” “ Perhaps I do.” “And will you amend?” “In what way?” “ In the only way. By writing to that poor ill-used young man a humble confession of all your wickedness, and promising never to do so no more.” “ I don’t quite know about the humble confession, Maud. But I’ll — yes, I wiU write to him.” RAM BASS. 27 “ To-morrow ? No, it’s to-morrow long ago. To-day — ^tMs very morning ? ” “ Y — jQ — ^yes. This very morning.” “ Honour bright ?” “Honour bright.” “ Very well. Then I forgive you ; and now you may go to sleep. Good night.” “ Good night, dear. And now give me back my property.” “ Your what ? Oh, the handsome young man. But I don’t feel quite sure yet that he is your property. If I were a young man, and had been served so, I should just put up my guitar, like the gay cavalier, and let the lady take a P. and 0. steamer to Hong Kong.” “ Oh, Maud ! you ought to be good now, you know. I’m sure I’ve done everything you asked me.” “Well, you have been a good girl at last. 28 BAM DA88. Come, confess that you couldn’t go to sleep Avithout it, and you shall have it.” “ Indeed I shall not confess anything of the kind.” “ Very well, then. Good night. Oh, you great bully ! It’s lucky you didn’t tear it in two.” “ Very lucky — for somebody.” “ And now you’ve got it, what are you going to do with it ? ” “ Never mind. Nothing at aU. Good night.” “ Well, there ; I’m not looking. And it’s quite dark. Good night, Mrs. F.” And in another minute Miss Maud Sut- cliffe is fast asleep. How long it is before Clarice Orsini follows her example may per- haps be another question ; but when she does drop off, the theatre, and the performance, and the artfully-suggestive conversation of Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass, which in the earher BAM BASS. 29 part of the night had so fully occupied her slumbers, are all forgotten, and she is wander- ing once more through the long galleries of the Louvre, and out under the quiet shady alleys of the Tuileries gardens, side by side with Harry Forester. CHAPTER III. That seems destined to be but an unquiet nigbt at Maple Lodge. Betsy Sutcliffe has returned from the theatre in a most estimable frame of mind. Her John has behaved himself in a manner altogether exemplary. Has not made the very smallest attempt to approach Miss Horseney ; nay, has of his own accord taken up a position as far as possible removed from that objectionable neighbourhood. Per- haps, had Betsy’s observation been a little more keen, she might have noticed that the business of the stage appeared to possess for him by no means the absorbing interest that BAM BASS. 31 it very • shortly began to have for herself. But, then, the very fact of it possessing that interest for her, naturally drew off her atten- tion from honest John, and she has no more idea of the way in which his time had really been occupied, than John Sutcliffe has of the pains and perils of that terribly interesting heroine in the fortunes and misfortunes of whom his better — much better — half was absorbed. So Betsy has returned home in the most amiable of tempers, has continued therein during the brief interval between the arrival of the fly at Maple Lodge and the subsequent arrival of the pedestrian John, and has pre- served it during a considerable portion of the substantial supper, which has appropriately wound up the unusual dissipation of the day. But, unluckily, at supper time there is no interesting heroine to distract the attention of the watchful wife, and the direction 32 BAM BASS. of her John’s eyes, and still more of his thoughts, very soon become painfully clear to her.- Clarice Orsini, it is hardly necessary to say, is as perfectly unconscious of anything of the kind now as she was at the theatre. Perhaps, if anything, rather more so. Her mind, throughout the evening, has been taken up wholly with the performance. Not that she was carried away by the thrilling inci- dents of the story, as Betsy had been. As Mr. Earn Dass had suggested, her interest has been chiefly of an artistic kind. In plain words, she has been all the evening watching closely every gesture of the much- praised actress before her, listening intently to every inflection of her voice, and picturing to herself how the sentiment or the situation intended to be conveyed might have really been most aptly rendered ; how, in point of fact, she herself would have endeavoured to BAM BASS. 33 render it if she had been in the much-praised actress’s place. So strongly has this mood — strengthened as it has been by the whispered words of her pertinacious new friend, as he hands her to her place in the fly — taken possession of her mind, that she, as has been seen, carries it with her to her pillow ; and it is the declamation, after her own views, of one of the most forcible passages in the play, Avhich brings down upon her the visit of Maud, with all its consequences. So Clarice has eaten her supper in a silence almost as complete as that she has observed throughout the evening, sublimely unconscious of any particular observation on the part of the master of the house, or any particular uneasiness on that of its mistress. On the whole, it is, perhaps, fortunate that Miss Maud Sutcliffe is ready, as to do her but justice she commonly is, to main- VOL. II. D 34 BAM BASS. tain, single-tongued, tlie entire brunt of tlie conversation. Poor Betsy bas started in it gaily enough ; but, before supper is half finished, has dropped altogether into a dead and ominous silence. John has never opened his mouth, in a conversational sense, save once, to ask in any but a pleasant tone where the d — — was the whisky, and on the pro- duction of that stimulant has applied him- self to its absorption at a rate somewhat abnormal. “ Eh, Maud ! ” her mother has at last exclaimed, in a decidedly fretful tone. “Are you going to sit there eating and chattering all night long. Do you know it is just one o’clock ? ” “ All right, mamma ; I’ve done. Come, Clarie. Good night, mamma; good night, dad.” “ And I hope Miss Horseney w ill go straight to bed, and not go a-sitting up a-painting at this time of night.” BAM BASS. 35 “ Certainly, Mrs. Sutcliffe. It is much past my usual time now.” “ Eh, I’m glad to hear it.” “ Good night, madam.” “ Good night to ye.” And as the door closes behind Clarice, Betsy turns to her John, who, to her extreme surprise and disapprobation, is in the act of filling for himself a third tumbler of whisky and water. “ Eh, John ! you’re never going to drink more now ? ” “ Mind your own business.” “ Oh, if that’s the way I’m to be spoken to, perhaps I’d better go ! ” John makes no verbal reply, but the ex- pression of his back as it turns round a little more squarely towards the speaker is suffi- ciently eloquent, and with a “ Well, I’m sure — if ever ! ” his ill-used spouse flounces from the room, the sniff of defiance changing, as D 36 BAM BASS. the door closes behind her, to something very- like a sob. John takes a long pull at his newly-mixed glass, and pulling up his chair to the fire, plants a thick short hand on either knee, and stares steadily between the bars. The fire is blazing now with all the liber- ality of coal at ten shillings the ton, and the whisky in the square, gold-ornamented case bottle, reaches within an inch or two of the wide shoulder. But before John Sutclifle relinquishes that steady inquiring gaze, or moves from his meditative attitude, save just so far as is necessary every now and again, to empty or replenish his glass, the spirit has reached a very low ebb indeed, and the dancing blaze has sunk to a dull red glow, that even now is fading into the grey white- ness of the surrounding ash. Does honest John Sutcliffe see pictures in the burning coal ; that living gallery which to BAM BASS. 37 so many of us has at times so far surpassed in attraction all the wonders of Florence, or Dresden, or Rome ? Hardly, perhaps, very likely ; for this picture-seeing is surely, after all, more or less the offspring of imagination, and imagination is hardly the forte of honest John. And yet, could we look well within-side the hard, dry, not particularly inviting outer envelope of the man, we should be witnesses of a commotion strange enough and strong enough, if not actually to evoke the faculty of imagination from an organisation absolutely barren of it, at all events to stir into very active operation any small germs which might be lying hidden and starved in that unlikely soil. John Sutcliffe himself, indeed, would pro- bably be sorely puzzled to describe in words the changing diorama behind the bright steel bars ; would not impossibly be surprised at 38 BAM BASS: being told that any such diorama was there unfolding itself. His vision is clear enough at ordinary times, and in regard to matters of every-day business. It is anything but clear now ; disturbed by intrusion of elements very far removed indeed from business matters of any kind. But there he sits, hour after hour ; and there, scene by scene, the misty diorama unfolds itself before him ; and ever as it unfolds, the whisky in the square case bottle sinks lower and lower, and the per- turbation in John’s mind rises to its flood. Not a pleasing picture. A picture painted heavily in dull drabs and greys ; a picture of hard, unyielding outlines, of pitiful, sordid details ; mean in conception, coarse in execu- tion ; an horrible outrage upon every artistic sense, save only that one sense of unity and completeness to which the very absoluteness of its meanness and its sordidness affords a satisfaction as thorough as it is revolting.. BAM DA88. 39 The picture of a hard, unlovely life ; a life low in aim, unscrupulous in its pursuit. The panorama of a fifty years’ journey along a path, narrow enough and straight enough, indeed, were narrowness and straightness all, but leading ever downwards step by step — whither ? Aye ! that is just the question. A ques- tion which hitherto has troubled the dreamer little enough — which would trouble him little enough now, were the accustomed path as straight and as narrow as it has been wont to be. That its direction is downwards he would see as little as the seeing would affect — could his eyes be opened — his progress or his peace of mind. Money is not to be dug out of the sky. But the path has suddenly become neither narrow nor straight, and the ground itself seems to grow unsteady under his feet. It is being borne in upon him with a swift- 40 RAM DA88. ness and a force which seems, as it were, to take away his mental breath, that this life Avhich he has been leading for so long with snch entire content, and satisfaction, and triumph, is a life altogether empty and vain, as viewed by the new light which has begun to pour upon it. And then that new light — what a glaring, scorching, consuming glow it has ! How it blinds his eyes, and parches his lips, and hurries on the beating of that dry old leathern case which he is only now beginning to re- cognise even by the name of heart. And in truth, so far as regards any of the purer or loftier sensations, with the evolutions of which we are accustomed to connect the exercise of that organ, it has little claim enough to the title even now. It is but the labouring con- duit through which rushes, with ever-increas- ing swiftness, the turbid torrent of his heated BAM BASS. 41 blood, without growing one whit the purer for the passage. Struggles such as these have raged, ere now, in the hearts of men devoted — as honest John has hitherto been devoted — to Mam- mon’s undivided service, as some good angel sweeping by has touched them with his awakening hand, and have ended happily enough. Perchance, the turn of the good angel may come some day for John Sutcliffe — though he would hardly, it must be ad- mitted, be a likely or a hopeful subject for angelic interference. But it has not come yet. Assuredly, it is no good angel, who, at this moment, is disputing with Mammon the possession of that desirable freehold, the soul of honest John. The clock strikes three as, for the time at least, the struggle comes to an end, and John Sutcliffe, arriving at length at a 42 BAM BASS. definitive resolution, pushes back his chair from before the burnt-out fire, and wends his way, not too steadily, upstairs. At the door of his bed-room he halts, standing, for some moments, with his little bloodshot eyes fixed, not on it, but on another door at the far end of the long corridor. There is no mistake about it now. Even without the aid of the violent perturbation, which of itself had been almost sufficient to houleverser John Sutcliffe’s moral organisa- tion, the quantity of whisky, which in the course of the long struggle before the par- lour fire he has half-unconsciously consumed, would have gone towards the upsetting of his mental equilibrium. The two combined have done their work effectually, and John’s condition is very hazy indeed. So hazy that he begins to totter on the brink of absolute catastrophe. He has actually made an un- BMI BASS. 43 steady step or two in that direction, when the special patron saint of men who, like John, have for the time surrendered the power of taking care of themselves, inter- poses, and the catastrophe is averted, at all events for the time. Interposes in a shape unpleasant, but none the less effectual — the shape of Betsy, appear- ing at her bed-room door in awful array of frilled night-cap and flannel dressing-gown, just in time to arrest her husband’s truant steps. “ John ! ” “Well'?” And John’s face, as he turns back to answer, is not pleasant to behold. “ Where are you going ? ” “ What business is it of yours ? ” “ Oh, John ! John ! That ever ” But at this moment Mr. Sutcliffe, abandoning in mechanical obedience an enterprise of which he had assuredly, in commencing it, not by 44 BAM BASS. any means fully calculated the bearings or consequences, lurches heavily against the door- post, and reveals to his wife’s not altogether unpractised eye the true state of the ease. “ Eh, man,” she continues, not sorry to reduce the offence to the minor category ; “ are ye that droonk ye cannot find your own bed-room door ? Get away to bed with ye, man ; I’m downright ashamed of ye, that I am.” CHAPTER IV. “ What do you want to know when Miss Horseney’s going for ? ” The question, in itself not very amiably framed, gathers, no additional amiability from the tone in which it is put. John Sutcliffe has been in one of his tantrums again all the morning, and the clerks and other employes, not finding the pleasure of these tantrums at all enhanced either by the increasing frequency of their recurrence, or the growing intensity of their development, are very sincerely con- gratulating themselves upon the fact that to- day is Saturday, and that the Median and Persian dictate of modern social economy has 46 BMI BASS. decreed that after 2 p.m. on Saturday after- noon there shall henceforth be no ruore work. Moreover, the scowl which has hung heavily all the morning upon the heavy brow of the maaster,” has settled down more heavily still on the appearance in the counting-house of a visitor, whose entrance is commonly the signal rather for improvement in this respect. Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass has, for some little time past, evidently been very inti- mately mixed up with Mr. John Sutcliffe in business matters ; and clerks, and other employes, watching each new development of their employer’s business schemes, with a keen and single eye to the influence it is likely to exercise over their own fortunes and comfort, are inclined to think that the business in which he is apparently more especially connected with their house, is a business to the master’s thinking, at all events, of a highly satisfactory character. BAM BASS. 47 The “dark gent’s” appearance in John Sut- cliiFe’s counting-house has hitherto been the pretty sure forerunner of unlimited brown sherry, and almost unlimited smiles. To-day the brown sherry does not appear to be forthcoming, and the smiles — which to clerks and other employes, not admitted to privileges of the brown-sherry class, are of much more importance — are absent in the most conspicuous manner. The clerks and other employes begin to fear that the dark gent’s business must somehow have fallen through, and that hence the cloud on the master’s brow. And viewed in a practical light, this is a contingency to be deplored. That any severest and most irretrievable misfortune should fall upon the personal head of their beloved employer, would no doubt have been to everyone among them a source of grati- fication absolute and unalloyed. But business 48 BAM BASS. misfortunes do not fall exclusively upon the private head of an employer, and for his deliverance from business misfortunes honest John’s subordinates are as anxious as himself. They are mistaken, however, in this case. Nothing has gone in any way wrong in the business relations between Mr. Earn Dass and Mr. John Sutcliffe. These relations have, on the contrary, during the last few days drawn together very much more closely, and much to the satisfaction of both parties. More than one confidential conversation has taken place on the subject of the connection of the Lightpool and Mofussil Bank in Broad- ford ; and while both directors have, of course, been interested chiefly, if not solely, in the prosperity of the bank itself, it has never- theless become apparent in the course of them, that this prosperity is best to be attained by a course of action, in respect of its Broadford customers, which falls in remarkably well BAM BASS. 49 with the private interests of honest John Sutcliffe. Mr. Earn Dass, on the other hand, fully concurring in his new friend’s view of the course to be adopted in the conduct of the Lightpool and Mofussil, has been equally successful in impressing, in his turn, upon him the advantage to be gained by a friendly backing of his, Mr. Earn Dass’s, “ little game,” in one or two other quarters ; small enter- prises, not strictly in John’s own special line of business, but quite safe in the astute hands of Mr. Earn Dass, to bring in a considerable profit, even were it not worth while, in any case, to oblige a friend able to render such valuable assistance in re- turn. And yet, despite the continually increasing intimacy of their business relations, the private intercourse of these two friends has not, by any means, during the last few YOL. II. E 50 BAM BASS. days, progressed in friendliness in an equal' ratio. It is Saturday morning now — the Saturday week following the memorable Tuesday, on the evening of which Mr. Sutcliffe and his family made their visit to the theatre, at the unacknowledged expense of Mr. Earn Dass ; that Tuesday, on the evening of which John Sutcliffe had sat looking at the strange picture in the fire, and had been surprised by Mrs. Sutcliffe wandering at 3 A.M., in a direction wherein he should not wander. Since that memorable Tuesday, not a day has passed at Maple Lodge without a visit from Mr. Earn Dass. As John Sutcliffe- more than once observed, with a plainness Avhich savours more of Yorkshire hospitality, as practised on the spot towards those not able to return it, than of the ideal Yorkshire hospitality of story and song, he appeared BAM BASS. 51 to have given up his Lightpool business altogether, and to have settled himself in Broadford for the rest of his life. Indeed it would seem to have been not his Lightpool business only, but business of every kind from Avhich he had withdrawn himself. For business which allows of the afternoon being spent with clock-like regu- larity in doing nothing in someone else’s parlour or on someone else’s lawn, is not the kind of business which, in Broadford at all events, is commonly designated by that in- spiring name. Such, however, has been, during the present week, the daily habit of Mr. Earn Dass. Not a day has passed but the best part of the afternoon has been spent at Maple Lodge ; and even Betsy Sutcliffe, least observant of women, and absorbed in the belief that Miss Horseney’s designs are directed solely towards the capture and destruction of her John, has E 2 52 BAM BASS. begun to realise the fact that those constant visits are in point of fact intended for the handsome governess — a fact, he it observed, which Clarice herself has not been slow to discover, but for which she has accounted to herself by the theory, to which the con- stant allusions of her visitor lend quite sufficient support, that he has been taken by what he fancies he sees in her of talent, and is desirous, from a connoisseur’s point of view, of drawing it out. What is it which makes it so clear to the comprehension of honest John — a com- prehension commonly, in matters of this sort, as far below even that of his wife as hers is inferior to that of Clarice Orsini — that the attraction is of a character altogether different ? He has taken, as yet, no overt step in the direction of the resolution at which he arrived as the result of his fireside medita- BAM BASS. 53 tion ten days ago. Every night, when an extra glass or two of his favourite stimulant has supplied him with the courage which somehow he feels to be sorely requisite to the conduct of this special enterprise, he makes up his mind that to-morrow he will speak out. Every morning, as he finds him- self face to face with the regal beauty which has from the first exercised so strong a power- over him, his courage oozes out, not at his fingers’ ends alone, but at every pore of his miserable carcase. But he is in a state of nervous excitation as strange in its effects as it is novel in its experience, and one of these is to render him preternaturally sensitive to any feeling on the part of any other person directed towards the object by which this perturbation in his own organisation has been set on foot. The hot blood of the Indian is on fire, boiling every day at a fiercer and fiercer 54 RAM BASS. heat in the veins which lie so effectually con- cealed under the dark skin and behind the impassive mask. But, hidden though its course may be, the thick and muddy current in John’s veins, throbbing under the influence of the self-same flame, conveys to him in some mysterious way its sympathy with his, and John knows, as well as though he had been in Mr. Ram Bass’s most intimate con- fidence from the first, that he and his Indian friend are both bent on hunting down the sam*e quarry ; that, unless before many days are past, one or the other should abandon the chase, it must needs become between them very shortly a question simply of the sharpest fangs and the strongest claws to which of them the prey shall fall. Strange to say, this position of affairs has not revealed itself to Mr. Ram Dass. In the first place, his passions, by nature as ardent as the other’s are sluggish, and habituated to BAM BASS. 55 an indulffenee wliicli John’s hitherto exclusive O pursuit of gain has, in his case, altogether prohibited, are at once more powerful to carry him away, and less sensitive to any hostile influence from without. To him, to see and to desire, to desire and to obtain, have been from his youth upwards the one rule of his passions. John Sutcliffe, in his new madness, is ven- turing on wholly untried ground, and is .nervously conscious accordingly of every obstacle, real or imaginary. Mr. Ram Dass is following his natural prey, and never dreams of the possibility of any but the cus- tomary result. In the second place, had it occurred to him to look for a rival, he cer- tainly would never have looked for him in the stolid' money-grubber, who appears to him as to anyone else — as, until within the last few days, he has always appeared to himself — not merely absorbed in that one 56 HAM BASS. pursuit, but by nature unfitted for engaging in any other. So, day by day, John Sutcliffe has grown more captious ; and, day by day, his Indian friend, more and more absorbed by his pur- suit, has set down his captiousness to some temporary cause, or passed it by contemp- tuously, as one of the amenities of intercourse with a race for which, as he at least endea- vours to persuade himself, he cherishes a profound contempt. To-day, however, it is different. It has begun to dawn upon him that there is something more significant in this growing bearishness on the part of John than he has hitherto supposed. Moreover, as it happens, the credit balance in the mutual accommo- dation account between them is just now rather on John’s side. Mr. Earn Dass has at this moment no further scheme in Avhich to interest him ; while, on the other hand,. BAM BASS. 57 the day for the meeting of the Lightpool and Mofussil Board is fast coming round. Now, therefore, if ever, is the time for a little judicious self-assertion on the part of Mr. Earn Dass, and that astute gentleman seizes the opportunity. “ And why not ? ” he replies curtly, to his friend’s remark, as to his interest in Miss Orsini. “ Have you any objection ? ” The reply itself is challenge enough. The tone in which it is uttered accentuates the challenge. The look which accompanies it places the intention of the speaker quite beyond all possibility of mistake. John Sutcliffe starts ; looks for a moment straight into the vicious glitter of the speaker’s long black eyes ; flushes a muddy red to the very tips of his thick, coarse ears, and hesi- tates in his reply. Somehow, the same strange sympathy which has already warned him that it is 58 BAM BASS. from this royal Bengal tiger that he is about to attempt to snatch his prey, conveys to him the knowledge that, as yet, his dan- gerous antagonist is unaware of his design. Prudence whispers, “ Wait ! Time enough to face these teeth and claws when the quarry is your own.” And John, in whose natural temperament the better part of valour seriously preponderates over its inferior part, accepts the warning, and replies to the chal- lenging snarl with the soft answer by which wrath is turned away. Mr. Ram Dass is satisfied. The claws are sheathed again, the curling lip droops down once more over the sharp white tusks, and with a polite farewell, John Sutcliffe’s un- conscious rival takes his departure, saying to himself, as he turns into the street — “ Wednesday. That is quick. I must be in town to-morrow to see Moss. Monday I shall know how all is to turn out. Ha, RAM BASS. 59 ha ! my friend J olm. Within forty-eight hours of Monday night you may be less anxious not to offend your good friend Manockjee Earn Dass. But no. All will go well. I know it, and have no fear, and by the week’s end I am safe again. Safe and rich. Yes, that is good. To-night London. Monday return. Tuesday — Ah, Tuesday ! That will be a day. Will she fly with me, if so it must be ? Ah — h — h — ! But there shall be no need,” and arriving at this satisfactory conclusion, Mr. Earn Dass arrives at the same time at the door of his hotel. Meanwhile, John Sutcliffe has taken a fresh resolution. Of any feeling on the part of the object of his pursuit he, in his absolute ignorance of womankind, in that inherent coarseness which would of itself incapacitate him for appreciating the least refined sentiment of the least refined of her 60 EAM BASS. sex, has no more idea than has his dark- skinned rival, born and bred in the firm conviction that woman is of her nature the destined toy and slave of man, and looking down from the heights of superior knowledge upon the chivalrous follies of the modern and barbarous people among whom his lot is cast. He has a general idea that women are weak and dependent creatures, and that this particular woman, on the winning of whom he is now thoroughly bent, is, at this particular moment, in a more than usually weak and dependent position ; “ first come, first served” and the like. Beyond this all is chaos, and upon it, therefore, if upon anything, must his action be based. Very silent is John all dinner-time on that eventful day. It is a longer and more elaborate meal than on ordinary week-days, for there is no return to the counting-house BAM BASS. 61 on Saturday afternoon ; and after dinner John is accustomed to sit for an hour or two in solitary state, absorbing a glass or two of his favourite beverage, or even on occasion a bottle of somewhat fiery port, picked up a bargain at some bygone sale, John elects for the port this afternoon, and has up a fresh bottle, to the absorption of which he applies himself with more than ordinary energy. He is still drinking it when Clarice declines an invitation from Maud to accompany her into the town, on the plea that she has a particular reason — easily recognised by Maud as the intended composition of the long-promised letter to Harry Forester, never yet sent— for devoting her afternoon to a solitary ramble on the hills out above Keaton. He is still drinking it, when Betsy, having watched her governess carefully from the house, herself starts on some housewifely expedition in the direction 62 BAM BASS. of the town. Then the last few glasses of the- waning bottle disappear with marvellous rapidity, and John Sutclifie himself sets forth. Clarice has not made very much progress with her difficult letter — ^has hardly indeed arrived at a final determination as to the precise way in which its commencement is to be worded, when she is startled by an unexpected shadow falling across her path ; and, looking up, encounters the wavering gaze of honest John. “Mr. Sutcliffe!” “ Eh, Miss Horseney ! Who’d have thought of seeing you here 1” “Is there anything the matter?” “ Nay, not as I knows of.” Then, after a pause, “Eh, but there is though — a deal.” There is another pause. Clarice looks at her employer, and is conscious of a growing feeling BAM BASS. 63 of uneasiness. It is very obvious that some- thing is the matter ; possibly, as Mr. Sutcliffe simply puts it, “a deal.” But of what nature is the difficulty, or whereabouts it lies, she has no data from which to ascertain. An uncomfortable position of affairs in itself, and one the discomfort of which is certainly not diminished by a growing suspicion that the disturbance of the wholesome order of things to which John Sutcliffe refers has chiefly relation to the condition, physical or mental — possibly both physical and mental — of John himself. This suspicion, maturing rapidly under the joint influence of his present manner, and of the swiftly recurring remembrance of the state of things in this respect during dinner, and indeed pretty much throughout the week, is already drawing near the stage of con- viction long before her companion’s thoughts are sufficiently collected, or his nerves suf- 64 RAM BASS. ficiently well in hand, to permit of his say- ing more. “ I will return home at once, sir,” she says, thinking, in this way, to turn the flank of the difficulty, beginning to move off in the direction of Muddingham Lane. But John Sutcliffe stands in the way. The recent bottle of fiery port may have — indeed unquestionably has — introduced among his already perturbed ideas a little extra con- fusion ; but it has none the less provided a full supply of that courage the lack of which has been, unconsciously to Clarice, her safe- guard through the week, and he means to say his say now, come what may. “ Stop a bit, my dear,” he interposes, some- what thickly ; “ I want to speak to you.” But Clarice’s conviction is now growing very strong indeed. She is not one of your Maypole women, but she is tall, and, in military phrase, “ well set up ; ” and as she BAM BASS. 65 draws herself up to the most imposing alti- tude she ean command, she looks down upon her detainer from a vantage ground of at least an inch in height, observing chillingly : “ If there is anything ■jvrong, Mr. Sutcliffe, the sooner I am back at home the better. Be kind enough to let me pass at once.” “ Eh, then, there’s just nothing wrong at home at all. It’s about yourself.” “ About me ! ” John nods ; clears his throat, which has a strange sensation, as though all the inside thereof were somehow hanging loose and ragged ; flushes his muddy red to the tips of the big ears, and, abandoning the futile idea of delicate preliminary approaches with which he set out on his enterprise, plunges desperately in medias res. “ Look here now. Miss Horseney. You mustn’t go to leave us next Wednesday.” “ Excuse me, but that is a point upon VOL. II. F 66 BAM BASS. Avliich I cannot consent to any further argu- ment. If I had consulted my own feelings, I should have gone a month ago.” “ No, no. Miss. Don’t say that. And besides, it’s my feelings I’m thinking of.” “ It was in compliance with your wish that I consented to stay, and you promised that if I would do so, you would see that Mrs. Sutcliffe ■” “D Mrs. Sutcliffe!” “Sir I You forget yourself. Let me pass.” “No, no. Miss Horseney. One minute. I — I’m a plain man ” Again John pauses a moment inarticulate, and despite all her annoyance, a smile flits across Clarice’s lips as the involuntary thought rises in her mind, that he is indeed a plain, a very plain man. Never, perhaps, more plain than now, when the muddy red has given way to a yet muddier yellow, and the thick loose lips are marked only by a dull BAM BASS. 67 tinge of blue, and tbe intensity of inarticulate longing breaks out all over bim in cold heavy drops. That smile supplies the spur to prick the flagging sides of his intent, and he goes on hoarsely : “ You must not go — I will not have it ! I tell you IVe made up my mind. Nay, it’s no good, my blood’s up, and I’ll have my say out. Look here, you shall have your own way in everything. You shan’t have nothing to do with the old woman, nor she with you. I’m a warm man, and you shall have a house to yourself, and furniture, and a carriage, and — and as much money as ever you please — there now ! ” John pauses, partly for breath, partly to await her answer. It is not long in coming. Clarice has stood, during this last outburst, dumb and motionless as a statue, and at 68 BAM BASS. first with not very much more than a statue’s apprehension of the speaker’s mean- ing. For this sort of thing she has been altogether unprepared, and for the moment it fairly takes away her breath, mental as well as bodily. She has recovered it by the time he comes to an end ; but even now the words jostle each other on the way to her lips. “You — you miserable wretch! If you were not so tipsy that you don’t know what you’re saying, I — I think I should kill you. How dare you speak to me in such a manner ? Stand out of the way, sir, this moment, or I shall do you a mischief now.” She bears down upon him so resolutely, this tall handsome girl with the scarlet cheeks, and the great indignant grey eyes blazing as no dead diamond ever yet contrived to blaze in the gaslight, that John Sutcliffe involuntarily gives way. RAM BASS. 69 Yet even now lie cannot quite make up his mind to give it all up and let her go free. He quite — in that confused, dull, aching way — understands the meaning of the blow, which has just come short of knocking all understanding out of him. He knows now that he has made a terrible blunder ; that Mdlle. Orsini is not the type of woman to whom such propositions as that on which he has just ventured can be safely made, nor he himself of the type of man who can wisely make them. Not even his horn- hidedness can fail to appreciate the situation any longer. Yet even now, as Clarice passes him, it seems impossible to let her go. Mechanically he puts out one trembling hand, and lays hold upon her cloak to stop her. It is a rash act. Clarice’s blood is up, and had any deadly weapon been ready to her grasp, she would think as little of using it 70 BMI BASS. as of trampling the life out of a wasp or a viper. Fortunately for John Sutcliffe, the only instrument of offence within her reach is the long-handled parasol with which she has been walking ; but this she uses with equal promptitude, decision, and effect. The detaining grasp has hardly touched her dress, when the handle of the parasol comes down upon the offending fingers with a force which breaks the tough wood fairly in two, and draws from the owner of the hand a yell of mingled pain and rage. For a moment John feels tempted to fly upon his assailant, and reduce her to sub- jection by the same sheer physical force by which he has so effectually cowed his wife. But, somehow, as Clarice stands there quietly facing him, there is a look in her eyes which does not at all resemble any look in the eye BAM BASS. 71 of his Betsy. He thinks better of the idea, and turns sullenly away. Clarice understands that the conflict is over, and walks rapidly off in the direction of Maple Lodge. CHAPTER V. John Sutcliffe knows but little of the flight of time as he stands gazing dumbly down the road from which the last flutter of Clarice Orsini’s dress has long since disappeared ; or strides backwards and forwards along the small stretch of sheltered path which has witnessed his discomfiture. Equally little, probably, could he tell of the thoughts which, as time rushes unnoticed by, rush with it through the chaos of his soul, finding every now and then a half-articu- late vent in curses, sometimes loud as well as deep ; now ground out between his clenched teeth, now launched full-mouthed upon the BAM DA8S. 73 moaning wind, which sweeps over the exposed hill-top, as if eager to carry the message of malediction to the proud woman who has repulsed his dishonouring suit. Nor is it alone on Clarice that the weight of the baffled man’s imprecation falls. John curses, at the same time, and with the same inarticulate, wild beast-like fury, poor Betsy and her jealous folly ; Ram Dass and his pursuit of her who, he would fain persuade himself, might after all, but for that pursuit, have fallen to his own attack ; and last, but not, it must needs be admitted, by any means the least heartily, himself and the unutterable folly which has led him so far astray. These latter items come, as has been said, last among the objects of John’s anathema ; but he is already arriving rapidly at a keen appreciation of their claims in this respect, when a circumstance occurs which at once 74 BAM BASS. directs upon them, for the time at least, the full tide of his objurgations. He is striding now in the direction opposite to that in which Clarice has disappeared, and has thus not noticed the approach of an eager messenger, the sound of whose hurry- ing footsteps has also been carried away by the wind. So he is somewhat startled when a panting voice calls upon him to stop, and a hand, trembling with the rapidity of its owner’s course, thrusts into his the coarse pink square of paper which denotes a tele- gram. “ What the are you doing here ? ” “ Beg pardon, sir,” humbly returns the chief clerk, thus courteously interrogated. “ This telegram, sir — I don’t quite — make it out, sir — but it looks important — and I — I took — the liberty ” “Speak out, man, can’t you?” BAM BASS. 75. “ Beg pardon, sir — a little out of breath, sir — run nigh all the way.” “ Who the d told you I was here ? ” “The foreign lady, sir. Ma’amselle ” But before he can get out the name, so savage an expression comes into his employer’s face, and so fierce a curse is growled out from between his clenched teeth, that the man stops aghast, subsiding finally into an humble, “ Beg pardon, sir. Hope no offence.” But John has already unfolded the telegram. It does not take long to read, but at the first perusal he hardly seems to take in its full sense. As he finishes it for the second time, a fiercer oath than before breaks from his white lips, and he turns sharply upon his frightened employe. “ How long has this been come ? ” “ Oh, three hours and more, sir.” “ Infernal blockhead ! And why the d didn’t you bring it to me before ? ” 76 BAM BASS. “ Beg pardon, sir ; but no one at the Lodge knew where you were. It was only when Mad ” “ Curse you, hold your tongue. There man, don’t stand staring there as if a loss of £7,000 could be made good by twirling your thumbs in that idiotic fashion. Get back to the office as hard as you can go. Send the first cab you come across to meet me. Take the second yourself, and mind that when I get there I find every one of the books ready to my hand, or I’ll know the reason why.” The clerk speeds on his way. As he goes, his thoughts, as you will no doubt imagine, are occupied with reflections on the gracious manner in which his well-intentioned efibrt has been received, and strong resolutions never to be led again into a similar excess of zeal. You could not possibly be more mistaken. Such would no doubt have been BAM BASS. 77 the line they would have taken, had his injudicious employer complimented him upon his zealous service, and as it were apologised for the inconvenience to which he had put himself by this voluntary abandonment of his one weekly half-holiday. Nothing short of a handsome gratuity, to be repeated with- out fail on every subsequent Saturday on which the zealous servant might be fortunate enough to find, or ingenious enough to invent, an ever so partially plausible excuse for a similar act of devotion, could possibly have counteracted in the very smallest degree the evil result of treatment so unwise. John Sutcliffe knows better than to com- mit any such folly ; or, rather, the happy drift of his disposition preserves him from its commission without any deliberate thought or knowledge of his own. Instead of puffing up his servant with praise of what he has done, he swears at him, roundly, for not 78 BAM BASS. having done it better. And the zealous ser- vant scuttles off, rejoicing not a little at having escaped so well. “ Hang it all,” he thinks to himself, as he hurries along, “ I’m not sorry to be safe out of it. He’s a sharp lad is John Sutcliffe ; he is, by the living Jingo. Warn’t he down my throat in less than two tv^os for waiting down at the house there ! Ah ! there’s not many like him.” Meanwhile the astute object of the chief clerk’s admiration follows at an almost equal pace upon the footstep of his flying subordi- nate. In due time the hansom, despatched en route by the latter, meets him on his way, and that which has brought down the clerk himself has hardly drawn off from the office door before the master is established in the counting-house, and burrowing deep into those all-important volumes which the obse- quious minister has taken good care, even BAM BASS. 79 in the short time allowed him, to place in readiness upon his desk. The hours pass slowly by, one by one. Sunday — the dull, dark Sabbath of a York- shire manufacturing town has dawned and died again. A second night is come and gone, and the hoarse throats of the screaming “ devils ” are making morning more hideous than even the endless masses of dull brown brick, the forests of tall brown chimneys spouting forth their ceaseless volumes of foul black smoke, have made it already, with the most truly diabolical uproar ever yet invented for the purpose of arousing the slumbering operatives to the commencement of another week of toil. And still John Sutcliffe sits at his counting-house desk, turning steadily from page to page of daybook, and journal, and ledger ; working out endless sums in all the rules of compound arithmetic, referring to letters and memoranda, and entries of 80 BAM BASS. every kind in note-book and waste-book, and private diary ; tracing out, in short, with all the patience and all the skill of one not only master of his work, but delight- ing in its mastery, the history of the com- plicated transactions of the last few weeks, the miscarriage of one of which, so far as the telegram of Saturday would indicate, has resulted in the loss of some thousands of his solid hard-earned savings. During these five or six and thirty fiercely occupied hours he has been too hard at work, too fully engaged in every faculty of his mind to give time or thought to aught else. Now and then, indeed, and more frequently, perhaps, as the investigation has proceeded, he has growled between his teeth a muttered malediction upon the besotted folly which has led to this imbroglio. But this has been but a passing indulgence. The time for all that, if it ever come at all, must come by- BAM DAS8. 81 and-by. What is now to be done is to strain every nerve towards the repairing, so far as may yet be possible, the mischief that has been already set on foot, to ascertain, clearly and fully, what further evil, if any, may be threatening in the future. And certainly that month’s infatuation has worked grievous things with John Sutclifte’s affairs. Not that there is any irreparable mischief done anywhere, save only, perhaps, in the matter of that seven thousand pounds, or that the working of what may be called his own proper business is affected in any way. But, as ill fate would have it, this madness has come upon John at just the very moment of his own business career at which he could least afford its indulgence. He has been dabbling of late in many things with which his own regular business has nothing whatever to do. He has been making the discovery that money breeds VOL. II. G 82 BAM BASS. money in ways more rapid than those of ordinary trade, and has embarked in those ways a considerable portion of the by no means contemptible accnmnlations of his successful career. Enterprises of this kind require surveillance, especially at first, and it was just in almost the earliest weeks of his embarking in them that he had suddenly become incapable of exercising even his habitual surveillance over his ordinary affairs. John Sutcliffe’s new enterprises are in some- thing: of a tangle — there can be nothing of real doubt about that ; and John, who, for the moment at least, is all himself again, does not attempt to impose upon himself with a false one. Still the mischief is as yet by no means irreparable, and its cause being, as, with something between a growl and a sigh, John at length tells himself,, fairly removed, there is no need for any serious apprehension as to its repair. It is. BAM BASS. 83 not this which, as the chilly hours draw on towards the dawn of Monday once more^ arouses . in him an excitement even greater than that with which he met the first in- telligence of his heavy loss. It is an entry in his private diary which first arouses his attention, and directs his investigations into a course the interest of which increases rapidly to a startling pitch. The clerk, who after joining zealously but sleepily in the work of Saturday night, has been despatched on Sunday morning to warn the inhabitants of Maple Lodge of the master’s probable detention through the day, and who has divided his own personal Sabbath pretty equally between snatches of work at his master’s imperative call, short journeys to and fro between the office and the nearest public-house, in search of periodical refresh- ment for his master and himself, desperate efforts to keep his eyes open by the slaughter 84 BAM BASS. of flies, the balancing of rulers, &c., on fingers, chin, and nose ; the cutting up of pens, and other more or less exciting exertions of a noiseless character, and stolen snatches of sleep, from which the harsh voice from the inner counting-house is sure to arouse him before he is comfortably settled, to a renewed state of preternatural, though none the less temporary, activity, has long since abandoned himself frankly to that slumber, the claims of which he is simply incapable of any longer resisting. By the time John Sutcliffe makes his last memorandum, and closes the last book mth an emphatic bang, and a muttered remark not quite so complimentary to Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass as some he has lately uttered, the unfortunate victim of over zeal has been sound asleep for nearly six hours, during the last four of which he has snored with a per- sistency and a clamour which has gone far BAM BASS. 85 towards rivalling the performance of the most uproarious “ devil ” within hearing of Market Street, and which, had it been in- dulged in at any other hour of the thirty- six, would have led to his awakening in summary and unpleasant fashion. For these four hours, however, John Sut- cliffe has been deaf, dumb, blind to every- thing but the one investigation on which he is bent. Now, however, that investigation is concluded ; and as he sits for a time with the closed books before him, mechanically placing safely under lock and key the almost innumerable sheets of paper covered closely with memoranda and calculations, the sounds of unauthorised enjoyment at length pene- trate to his mind’s sense, and flinging open the little window which communicates with the outer office, he hurls at the unhappy de- linquent an objurgation which startles him not only from his repose, but his equilibrium. 86 BAM BASS. and deposits him on the broad of his back on the counting-house floor, from which he scrambles confusedly to his feet, to face his master with a look of bewildered misery, piteous to behold. Honest John, however, has no pity to waste upon a sleepy clerk. “What the d do you mean, sir?” he roars, in his harshest and most grating tones, “ by snoring in that disgusting manner. Can't you sleep like a gentleman if you’re too lazy to keep awake ? Don’t answer me, sir, but just listen to what I say. Now, look here, Mark Davis. You know me ?” Mark Davis does know honest John, and his look admits the fact very plainly. “You go straight to the Lodge, and tell them that I’ve gone away to Manchester — to Manchester, mind — on business, and that I can’t say when I shall be back. Say the same to Mr, Earn Dass, and to anyone else BAM BASS. 87 who may inquire. Forward my letters, till further orders, to Anderton’s, in Fleet Street, u,nd wire anything there that may be neces- sary. And, look you, Mark Davis ; if you don’t want to find yourself in the street without a character, not one word of all this business to any living soul. Do you under- stand ?” “ I understand, sir,” replies Mark Davis, now wide awake enough. “ Tell Lodge and callers you are gone to Manchester. Letters and wire to Anderton’s. Mum to every one. You may rely upon me, sir, safe.” “ I hope I may, for your sake,” and, seizing the rug and bag which had been brought from Maple Lodge the day before, in anticipation of some possible movement of the kind, John Sutcliffe hurries down to the station just in time to catch the early train, and, flinging himself into a corner .of a first-class carriage, is in another minute 88 BAM BASS. on his way to to^vm, and making strenuous efforts after the sleep in which he has now not indulged since Friday night. For some time, however, he finds sleep, in the present excited condition of his mind, more easily sought than obtained. At Grantham he is still wide awake, and here he takes the pre- caution of telegraphing to his friend, Mr. Moss. He hardly knows he has been asleep, when the demand for tickets arouses him at Peterborough, and for some moments he is rather at a loss to make out where he is, and what has brought him there. The carriage-door, however, is scarcely closed, and the train en route again, before he is once more in full possession of all the facts of the case, and the remaining two hours’ run into King’s Cross is spent in serious cogitation over the situation as revealed thereby. On more mature consideration, the case BAM BASS. 89 as against his Indian coadjutor does not ap- pear quite so clear, or even quite so certain, as it had seemed under the influence of the night’s excitement. There certainly would appear to he some- thing not quite as it should be, in more even than one or two of the matters in which he and Mr. Earn Dass have lately become mixed, up, and more especially in such as have a more immediate connection with the affairs of the Lightpool and Mofussil Bank. It does seem to him, even now, as though somehow he was being made use of in that connection in a way for which he has by no means bargained ; but which, now that he comes to look through the evidence again by the cooler light of reflection, is by no means so easily traced out as it had appeared when the suspicions first crossed his mind. He must do nothing rashly. Mr. Manock- 90 UAM DA88. jee Earn Dass is a dangerous man — how dangerous lie may even yet prove to honest John that thoughtful personage is very far from suspecting — but he quite realises the necessity for caution, and determines to suspend all action until he has ample evidence to guide and support him. Meanwhile, he can, at all events, do no harm by asking of his London acquaintance, Mr. Moss, those few questions which he has come to town specially to ask, and which Mr. Moss Avill certainly have no hesitation in answering, as to the transactions of a client in respect to whom he has so lately consulted John Sutcliffe himself, in that very letter, the memorandum relating to which first aroused his suspicions. So, on reaching King’s Cross, John takes a hansom to his hotel, only a very few hundred yards from Mr. Moss’s office. As he rattles thither he very nearly again falls BAM BASS. 91 asleep. The grinding of the wheel against the curb, as the cab pulls up, arouses him, however, and his first instinctive action is I to snatch his large silk handkerchief from his pocket, and hold it so as to conceal his face. For there, just in the opposite direc- tion, is Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass, threading his way along the crowded street. CHAPTER VI. Maud Sutcliffe is on the look-out for Clarice as she returns from her solitary ramble. Maud has grown very fond of her new friend, who, besides her personal kind- ness to herself — a state of things to which the somewhat spoiled young lady is too well accustomed for it to produce much impres- sion — possesses also the attraction of a superior and artistically-cultivated mind, a luxury to which Maud is, as yet, wholly unaccustomed, and which, young Philistine as she inevitably to some extent is, under pressure alike of birth and training, she has. BAM BASS. 93 nevertheless, enough in her to appreciate, at all events, to some extent. The near approach, therefore, of the fatal Wednesday is a sore trouble to Maud, who, especially since the conversation on Tuesday night, has stuck to her friend like her shadow, and, if truth must be told, has not a little resented the prohibition which has been laid upon her joining in this one particular walk. It is only, indeed, when Clarice, upon whose nervous system the attitude observed by the heads of the family, whether towards herself or towards each other, acts as a continual irritant, has plainly pointed out that unless she can have an hour or two of perfect free- dom and tranquillity to think over what she has to say, the letter about which Maud never ceases to urge her cannot possibly get itself written, that the girl, with a pout, half feigned, half earnest, consents to her depart- 94 BAM BASS. I ing alone, and almost from the very moment of her departure she has been fidgetting from window to window looking out for her return. What, then, is her astonishment, when the happy event at last comes off, to find her eager greeting repulsed almost angrily, as, with scarcely a word, Clarice sweeps past her, and marches straight upstairs to her own room. She is already at the stair-head before Maud recovers her breath sufficiently to utter a faintly remonstrant “ Clarie ; ” and, whether because she is already beyond its reach, or whether for some other reason too direful to contemplate, no answer comes to the appeal. In another minute or so the sound of a distinct sharp click announces that Mdlle. Orsini has not only reached her own apartment, but has closed and locked the door behind her. It is considerably more than an hour before EA^I BASS. 95 poor Maud — dimly conscious these many days past of something very wrong in the general relations of the family and household, but, of course, without the smallest idea of the question really at issue between the various warring authorities — ventures upon any active step in face of this new eomplication, to whieh the absolute impossibility of compre- hension appends an additional element of trouble. At last the eonvietion eomes strongly upon her that Clarice must be ill or have met \ with some accident, the pain of Avhich renders her unable to speak. This new idea seems to Maud to aecount for her friend’s strange manner, in a fashion, if not altogether satis- factory, at all events very much less painful than any upon which she has been as yet able' to fix. Moreover, it is one which admits of, or, more properly speaking, renders abso- lutely imperative some fresh attempt on her 96 BAM BASS. part to re-open communications. Upon this latter view she at once pounces eagerly, and another minute finds her at Clarice’s door. All is quite quiet within, and Maud’s heart begins to beat a little thickly as she pictures to herself in rapid succession half-a-dozen different, but equally terrible reasons for this suspicious silence. She taps, at first very gently ; then when no answer comes, some- what louder. “ Who is there ? ” It is Clarice’s voice, strong and sharp enough. So some of Maud’s worst fears are removed. But she has crossed the Rubicon now, and has no intention of retreating ; so her answer, if not strictly grammatical, is simple and clear. “Me. Maud.” “ Go away, please. I cannot speak to anyone now.” BAM DAS8. 97 “ Oh, please, let me in. Clarice, dear, I’m frightened about you. Is anything the matter ? ” “ Nothing at all, thank you. Oo away like a good girl. I am busy.” “ Busy with what ? ” “ Writing.” “ What, that letter ? ” “Yes, yes. Now do go away, or I shall be vexed.” Maud retreats, snubbed and wondering. It is not kind of Clarice to treat her in this way, and almost on the last day too. She will not go near her any more. Which resolution lasts exactly half an hour. Then she is again at Clarice’s door. “ Clarie ! You must let me in. I don’t believe you’re busy one bit. I’m sure you’re ill or something. Clarie, if you don’t let me in. I’ll go and tell papa something’s the matter.” VOL. II. H 98 BAM BASS. The threat is a somewhat empty one, as. Maud well knows, for John Sutcliffe has not yet returned to the house ; is, indeed, at this moment locked up in his darkened counting- house with the unlucky Mi’. Mark Davis, hard at work upon the hooks. But it is highly effettual in its bearing on Clarice’s movements, and in another minute the door is opened, and the owner of the apartment, still holding it firmly with her hand, stands on the threshold. “Why do you worry so, Maud ?” she begins, somewhat sharply. Then, touched by the wistful look in the girl’s eyes, she stoops and kisses her, adding, in a kinder tone, “ There is nothing whatever the matter, you foolish child — nothing, at least, of the kind you are thinking of I have been annoyed, put out a little, that’s all.” “Who by?” “ Who by ! Oh, Maud, what grammar t BAM BASS. 99 How many pages of Lindley Murray shall I give you to write out for it ?” “As many as ever you please, if you’ll only tell me all the truth. Now do let me in, just one little minute, I can’t see your face a bit here, and — oh-h-h ! ” As she has been speaking, the active lissome girl has fairly turned Clarice’s flank, and is standing now inside the room with eyes wide open in amazement. “ Oh, my darling ! whatever does this mean ?” “ I did not intend that you should know anything about it until afterwards. But perhaps it is best as it is.” “ But you’re not going ? Not now, directly ? ” “ I am, indeed. No, child ; don’t try to dissuade me, and don’t ask any questions. Only understand clearly that I cannot pos- sibly remain here another night, and that I H 2 100 BAM BASS. can never, under any circumstances, explain to you of all persons the reason.” “ Clarie ! I — I don’t know what to make of you. Is it anything I have done ? ” “ No, dear, quite the reverse. You have always been most good and kind. There, you must not ask anything more.” “ Oh, I am so sorry ! ” “ So am I, dear, but it cannot be helped.” “ I’m sure papa will be awfully mad when he comes home.” “ I thought you said he was in the house now.” “ No, he’s down at the office ; and, what’s more, I don’t think he’s coming home to- night.” Clarice pauses a little. If John Sutcliffe be really not coming home, is there any absolute occasion for this hurried departure, which, after all, will entail upon her very serious inconvenience ? UAM BASS. 101 Maud notices the hesitation, and, unwisely for her own wishes, strikes in eagerly : “ There now, that’s right. You won’t go till you’ve seen him, will you ? ” The interposition has, as interpositions have not unfrequently, an effect precisely the opposite of that it was intended to pro- duce. Clarice’s eyes begin to flash again at the mere idea of another meeting with her late employer. Her determination, wavering for a moment, is again fixed. “ There is no earthly consideration, Maud, which could induce me to remain in this house another night.” “ I can’t understand it at all, and — and I do think it’s not kind of you — and you’ve gone and packed up everything without letting me help you with a single thing 1 ” And Maud, still very much more child than woman, gives a great sob, and the tears begin to roll down her cheeks. 102 RAM BASS. Clarice pets and soothes her, eonaforting her with assurances of unalterable affection, and promises to write very soon and tell her all about her doings. Then suddenly Maud claps her hands together, and breaks out : “ Oh, Clarie, the letter ! You said you were writing it ; have you ? ” Clarice shows her the letter, sealed, and ready for the post. “ And may I post it ? ” “ Certainly, dear, if you like. I was going to post it on my way to Ward’s to order my fly. You shall come with me. In fact,” adds Clarice, as though under the influence of an afterthought, “ I shall be particularly glad to have you.” She does not know that, save for once only, and that many a long week hence, she has seen John Sutcliffe for the last time. The hours pass by, however. The letter has been posted, Clarice’s last little arrange- BAM BASS. 103 ments been made, and her boxes are stand- ing ready corded, waiting only to be taken down. Tea has passed off in perfect silence. Clarice does not once open her lips. Maud, following her example, and, indeed, finding conversation on any but the one tabooed subject simply impossible, is equally voice- less. Aunt Bridget is upstahs with a head- ache. Betsy, momentarily relieved by her husband’s absence from that extreme vigilance which has become her normal attitude while he and the governess are in the room to- gether, relapses into a semi-dreamy state, thinking as little of the silence of her com- panions as of her own. She arouses herself very promptly, how- ever, from her dreams, whatever they may have been, when, Maud having withdrawn in compliance with a previous arrangement with Clarice, immediately after tea, the latter 104 HAM BASS. young lady proceeds in brief and very dis-- tinct, though still, of course, courteous terms., to acquaint her with her intention of leaving her house within the next hour, and taking her departure for London by the 9.15 express^ At first, with the prompt revulsion of feeling which would have suggested a denial of the very sunshine, had the governess ven- tured to observe on the fineness of the day, Betsy is inclined to oppose this sudden change of plan, and to insist upon Clarice remaining to the end of her allotted time. Had John been in the house, or had there been any prospect of his returning before the contemplated time of departure, it is more than probable that she would have yielded to the impulse. But the advantages of get- ting her safely out of the house while John’s back was turned are too tempting to be relinquished even for the sake of thwarting Mdlle. Orsini’s plans ; and with a gracious .B,AM BASS. 105 reference to tlie goodness of a “ riddance of bad rubbish,” which very nearly provokes its recipient into acquainting her with the reason of this hurried departure, she finally produces from her private stores the balance due on what she persists in calling her governess’s “ wages,” and amid many a tearful adieu from Maud, Clarice Orsini drives off to the Great Northern station in ample time for the night train. She has not left the house five minutes, when a sudden thought flashes across the mind of Betsy, sorely damping the sensation of triumph with which she has just turned away from the window, where she has been standing to watch the departure. What if she has been taken in, after all ? What if this sudden move on the part of that artful hussy were only part of a con- cocted scheme, of which her John’s absence, so unusual on a Saturday, were the other 106 BAM BASS. half? What if she had, after all, outwitted herself, and in her delight at getting the artful hussy in question safe out of the house, without any more dangerous meet- ings, has been actually facilitating their escape together ? The thought is too dread- ful, and for the moment Betsy stands aghast, trembling all over. But she has not been a factory girl for the first twenty-three years of her life to remain long “ struck all of a heap ” by anything, or to hesitate long or seriously as to the course she shall follow to satisfy her doubts. Hastily snatching at the first plain shawl that comes to hand, she throws it over her bare head, in true factory fashion, dashes from the house, and out into Muddingham Lane — jumps into a hansom, which happens fortunately to be passing by ; and before Clarice’s steady-going conveyance has reached the station, is already BAM BASS. 107 pulling up close by the counting-house door of Sutcliffe and Co., not a hundred yards off. Mr. Mark Davis seems destined to un- pleasant surprises just now, and certainly not the most agreeable of them is the find- ing himself, on going to the door in obe- dience to John’s testy order, to see who is knocking there, face to face with a purple- visaged lady of mature years, in whom he has at first some difficulty in recognising his employer’s wife. “Where’s your master?” “ In there, ma’am, at work.” “Will you swear it?” “ Certainly, ma’am. He’s been there these five hours and Mr. Mark Davis sighs, as he reflects upon the decided nature of the symptoms which appear to indicate that he will remain there a good many hours more. 108 BAM BASS. “ I believe you are telling me a pack of lies. Let me see bim.” “ Certainly, ma’am. Will you ” “ Eh ; don’t be a fool. I don’t want to interrupt him ; but I’ve heard — well, that’s no business of yours, is it ? Is there no way I can get a sight of him without being seen ? ” “ Oh yes, ma’am. Please to step this way.” And through another little glass frame similar to that through which, during the next weary thirty hours or so, he is himself to receive so many objurgations on account of his demonstrative method of slumber, Mr. Mark Davis shows to Mrs. Sutcliffe, stealing on tip-toe through the dark and not toO' luxurious apartment, occupied in the day- time by the inferior clerks, the unmistakable figure of her John, hard at work. Betsy’s mode of requiting extra service is BAM BASS. 109 more liberal than her lords. As she goes out, she presses into the clerk’s not unwill- ing hand two florin pieces — to the intense contempt and disgust of that gentleman, who had taken them by the feel to be half-crowns — darts across the street to the station, and reaches the departure platform just in time to see her late governess enter a second-class carriage. It wants ten minutes yet of the time of departure of the train, and for those ten minutes Betsy Sutcliffe, the big brown shawl drawn closely over head and face, establishes herself in the immediate neighbourhood of the door leadinof from the booking-office to the platform. But no John Sutcliffe appears. The hands move slowdy onwards. The quarter is reached. Bell, flag, and wffiistle give their several signals for departure, and at length the 9.15 express clanks slowly out of the station and up the incline, carrying with it 110 BAM BASS. Clarice Orsini on her way to London, leaving behind it honest John, safely locked up in his Broadford counting-house, hard at work. Betsy breathes freely at last. CHAPTER VII. It will be remembered that Mr. Ram Dass, quitting his friend’s counting-house on that memorable Saturday afternoon, did so with the intention of proceeding to London the same evening. There is nothing, therefore, particularly remarkable in the fact that Clarice arriving in town at about half-past 3 A.M., cramped, cold and hungry, should recognise in almost the first face of which her own somewhat sleepy eyes take cogni- zance upon the King’s Cross platform, the well-known features of her Indian acquaint- ance. 112 BAM DASS. Neither of them, however, having had the slightest idea of the probability of any such movement on the part of the other, or for the matter of that, until almost the moment before starting, on their own part either, both are not a little astonished at the rencontre. Clarice, in that irritable con- dition of mind and nerve into which she has been thrown by the events of the evening, being at first half inclined to doubt whether this meeting has been, on Mr. E.am Dass’s part, so accidental as it appears. That gentleman’s astonishment, however, she is compelled at length to admit, is de- cidedly unfeigned, and once satisfied that she is not the victim of a fresh impertinence, her irritated feelings begin to feel soothed by the pleasant manner and deferential courtesy of the Indian. Mr. Earn Dass has had a good deal more experience in matters of this kind than RAM BASS. 113 honest John, and is able to act with con- siderably more discretion. Moreover, Eastern as he is, and with all an Eastern’s ideas on the subject of womankind very properly developed, he has lived long enough among Europeans to understand something of the white man’s habits in this respect, and to realise the fact that there may be here and there a white woman with whom, even apart from the conventionalities of polite society, it would be inconvenient to treat upon anything like the basis which, to his natural instincts, would appear to be the only safe and solid basis for any negotia- tion of the kind. Now, it must be admitted that to Clarice Orsini, a young and extremely handsome woman, altogether alone, relationless and friendless, the conventionalities of polite society would be a protection of the most shadowy character. Possibly, were she in YOL. II. I 114 BAM BASS. any way to violate those conventionalities, or- were any one else to violate them in her regard, polite society might so far recognise her existence as to visit her with its severe reprobation. Possibly, even so far admit that she had been once within its pale, as formally to cast her out of it. But this would cer- tainly be the very utmost, and even this is something more than doubtful. The extreme- probability is that polite society would simply ignore her existence, and with it equally her- fault or her misfortune. The result in either case, so far as any safeguard is concerned,, would perhaps be about the same. It reflects, therefore, some credit upon the sagacity of Mr. Earn Dass, that he can recognise the impossibility, even under exist- ing circumstances, of proceeding straight to his end, with the engaging frankness which,, in similar position, has characterised the- behaviour of honest John Sutcliffe. BAM BASS. 115 He does recognise it, however, very fully. Even now, when this handsome and entirely unprotected young woman is thrown as it were in his very path, weighted with all the additional disadvantage of recent dismissal from her situation — and that, as honest John has already informed him, “ without a cha- racter,”- — his outward demeanour is as full of deference as ever. Eather more so, if any- thing, for the same subtle instinct which tells him that this English girl is not to be handled carelessly, tells him also, that under such circumstances she will be at once doubly resentful of slight, and doubly open to that subtle appeal of respectful courtesy. And Clarice is, at this moment, very open indeed to the influence of such an appeal. There is balm to her irritated feelings, her sorely wounded pride, in this profound respect exhibited by one so perfectly acquainted with the facts, to the discharged governess. 116 HAM HASS. the poverty-marked second-class passenger, the unprotected girl shivering alone upon the platform of the great London station, at three o’clock in the morning. For respect shown under circumstances such as these must be respect shown as to herself personally, exceedingly indepen- dent of all outward accessories of position. And Clarice, not altogether untouched by the somewhat Bohemian atmosphere of the life of her early years, has a very great fancy for being esteemed and respected on her own personal account, apart from these minor accidents of birth and station. “You have all your things now. Made- moiselle ? ” “ Everything, thank you. There is nothing- more. Thank you very much.” “ Then, where shall I tell the cabman to drive with you ? ” Clarice hesitates, reluctant to show any RAM BASS. 117 lack of courtesy to one who has been at once so respectful and so kind ; not at all inclined to give her new address to Mr. Earn Dass, or to anyone. Mr. Earn Dass sees her hesitation, reads it with perfect accuracy, and proceeds accordingly. “ I trust you will not fear giving me your address. I do not ask it idly, or with the wish to intrude upon you. But, you will remember what passed the other night. I have been making inquiries. I think, by Tuesday, I may have something to say you will be pleased to hear.” And so Clarice gives him the address of the humble friend — an old landlady of her father’s long ago in Florence, now padrona of a small Italian eating-house in Soho — ^to whom she has telegraphed to have a room ready for her this morning, and with whom she knows she will find a willingly-tendered 118 RAM BASS. asylum, at all events until she has had time to look round. Mr. Earn Dass notes the locality with decided satisfaction, and goes on his way smilingly. With a very pleasant smile so long as he remains within view of the cab in which Clarice is slowly rumbling out of the station, on her way to the little Italian trattoria in Soho. Then the expression changes to one by no means so pleasant. Could the daring young artist have transferred to the swarthy features of the doomed conqueror in the great painting of the Ciudita anything at all approaching the expression which, now the mask is withdrawn, gleams on the dark face of Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass, there need have been but little doubt as to the amount of notice the picture would attract, let it be skyed never so ignominiously on the Academy walls. Could she see it for herself now, as the two cabs roll on their several ways, the BAM BASS. 119 lefFect upon her own mind would probably be at the least as striking. Mr. Earn Dass, however, has taken very j)articular care that she should not see any- thing of the kind ; and she retires to her welcome pillow in the dark little back attic of the trattoria with the comfortable sen- sation of having found a friend indeed, at a time when such a treasure-trove is valuable .as it is unexpected. CHAPTER VIII. Mk. Jonas Moss is not a man to whose religious prejudices the transaction of busi- ness on a Sunday afternoon is in any way repugnant. From 6 p.m. on the Friday, to 6 P.M. on the Saturday, not even the fascinations of “ shent per shent ” would induce him to open till or ledger, to plunder of so much as a widow’s mite the most confiding young Gentile that ever held out his own bones for the picking of the Chosen People. As a rule, the first day of the week is for him a holiday also, but this is by no choice of his own. Rather is BAM BASS. 121 it in his eyes a matter of grievance, that, on one of the lawful working days of every seven, the confiding Glentile declines to exhibit his confidence, and the web has to be closed, simply for lack of flies. On this particular Sunday — you would sorely puzzle Mr. Jonas Moss were you to speak of it as “ the Sabbath ” — the early dawn of which has witnessed the arrival in London of Mdlle. Orsini and Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass, the web is spread as usual, and Mr. Moss himself, no bad representative, in the dull grey old rag of a dressing-gown which envelopes his brief and somewhat bloated form, of the natural occupant of that admirable work of destruc- tive ingenuity, sits in his grimy back parlour, in a side street off' Chancery Lane, waiting for a fly. Waiting, indeed, with something more like 122 BAM BASS. anxiety tlian lie is in the habit of feeling when so engaged. For the fly in question is a very big fly ; full, no doubt, of rich and nutritions blood, to all appearances better worth the sucking than any five or ten of the often already half-exhausted specimens of human ephemeridae on which his talent is commonly exercised ; but with a vigour of constitution and a strength of wing which Mr. Moss cannot help feeling may tax to the utmost — perchance even a little beyond it — the strength of the web into which he is about to introduce himself. A fly, more- over, who has the air of having made acquaintance with structures of the kind before. A fly who, were such a monster an entomological possibility, might even be almost suspected of having in his veins a dash of spider blood. In less metaphorical language, Mr. Jonas BAM BASS. 123 Moss has been tempted by the prospect of a “ big thing,” and feels anxious accord- ingly. Commonly his operations are confined to facilitating, for a consideration — a rather handsome consideration as a rule — the pecu- niary self-destruction of officers in the army, clerks in government offices, and young men of all classes endowed by nature with just sufficient financial talent to grasp the means by which the maximum of future prosperity may be converted into the minimum of present enjoyment. It is a business not without its profits, and one which, pursued for upwards of forty years with the unswerving conscientiousness which has in these modern days taken the place of suffering, as the badge of Mr. Moss’s tribe, has placed him at the head of one of those capitals, by the aid of which 124 EAM BASS. alone really “ big things ” can be “ pulled o'ff” To his first big thing Mr. Moss has been introduced, now some weeks since, by Mr, Manockjee Earn Dass ; and Mr, Manockjee Earn Dass has an appointment in Israel Court this Sunday afternoon to discuss its progress. Into the precise nature of the transaction in question it is not necessary to enter. Big things of this kind are, no doubt, to those engaged in them, intensely interesting, even to their smallest details. Those not personally so engaged commonly find a very general indication amply sufficient. All that need be more particularly mentioned here, as influencing in any permanent manner the fortunes of those with whom the pre- sent story is concerned, is the fact that Mr. J onas Moss’s chief anxiety with BAM BASS. 125 respect to it arises, somewhat indirectly, perhaps, but none the less surely, from the peculiarity of that gentleman’s ordinary line of business. Mr. Moss, like many others of his pro- fession, has observed that there is a class of security which derives from its own absolute Avorthlessness a paradoxical value, often very much greater than would be attached to it had it been the unquestionable representative of every farthing noted upon its face. It has become Avith him a distinct article of the money-lending faith, that Avhile signatures written by their legitimate proprietors may be redeemed at maturity, or may not, the same signatures, when affixed in a less regular manner, are absolutely certain of redemp- tion at any cost. Theoretically, this view is understood to be adopted by many of the financial fraternity. Mr. Jonas Moss is one 126 F,AM BASS. of those who put it into practice, and in a small way rather prefer that particular sort of security to any other. Only in a small Avay, however, and the transaction with Mr. Earn Dass is not at all in a small way. That transaction runs, as Mr. Moss would phrase it, a very long way indeed into “five figures,” and the idea that there may be anything paradoxical about a security of this description, is an idea to which Mr. Moss does not take kindly by any means. It will be readily understood that recogni- tion, in any case, of the peculiar species of security here designated, is a result to be effected by inference, rather than by any direct means. Mr. Moss, as a rule, does not find, or expect to find, even his most esteemed clients coming to him with the simple straightforward declaration, “This is EAM BASS. 127 a forged security ; so you may be quite sure that I shall take it up when the time comes.” It is only in strict accordance with the generally paradoxieal character of the whole transaction that such a plain declara- tion of the true nature of the security in question should be felt by Mr. Moss — ■ as Mr. Moss most assuredly would feel it — to do away at once with all the advantages which that peculiar form of signature would otherwise have conferred upon it. The way in which Mr. Moss commonly arrives at a pretty sound conclusion Avith regard to securities coming into this particular category is more subtle, but, on the whole, quite as trustworthy. His estimate of the probable authenticity of any signature offered him is based chiefly on the anxiety or otherwise displayed by the oflerer with regard to the retention of 128 BAM BASS. tlie document to wliicli it is appended in his, Mr. Moss’s, own custody. Of course every one is more or less desirous that his own signature shall not be more than necessarily bandied about the diseount market, and stipu- lations to this effeet are made even more commonly than they are disregarded, which is saying a good deal. Mr. Moss, therefore, attaches no importance, in any way, to re- quests of this kind. But when a borrower exhibits a similar tender regard for the credit of other people, whose names may be appended to the securities he desires to negotiate, Mr. Moss takes an altogether different view of the subject. There is nothing natural in a desire of this kind, and Mr. Moss judges accordingly. Now, as things have happened in this particular case, it has not been until the BAM BASS. 129 worthy Jonas has gone too far with Mr. Earn Dass to draw back with any comfort, or even any absolute safety, that this pecu- liarity has presented itself on the part of the latter, with regard to a terribly large proportion of the securities deposited by that gentleman, on account of the very heavy advance made to him by Mr. Moss. The securities themselves are of an eminently negotiable character — are, indeed, of a kind, the negotiation of which would have been too natural and everyday an occurrence for its absolute, publicity to affect in any Avay the credit of the most delicately placed firm. Under ordinary circumstances, they might travel round the market without attracting the very slightest observation. Why, then, should Mr. Earn Dass be so anxious that they should on no account pass out of Mr. Moss’s own hands ? VOL. II. K 130 BAM BASS. Of course, that gentleman, questioned anxiously and a little suspiciously upon this head, has a perfectly plausible and satisfactory answer to the inquiry — an answer which, no doubt, would have quite set at rest any incipient fears on the part of a negotiator accustomed only to legitimate business. Mr. Moss, however, as we have seen, is not altogether in that position. The articles with which he is accustomed to deal, in his ordinary way of trade, are, so to speak, of an eminently explosive description, and it is characteristic of the habit of mind induced by habitual dealing with matters of this kind, that, side by side with an amount of con- fidence in the handling of them, which to outsiders has - a marvellous look of foolhardi- ness, will exist at times in their minds a tendency to extreme suspicion and cautious- ness in dealing with matters which, in their BAM BASS. 131 turn, to the eye of the outsider, appear quite absurdly free from any necessity either for caution or for suspicion. His position in relation to Mr. Earn Hass is just now somewhat too advanced for the exercise of any effectual caution, but the amount of suspicion in which he indulges, with regard to that gentleman, is, perhaps, on the whole, not diminished by that con- sideration. It is curious that just as these doubts are beginning to assume a very uncomfortable prominence in the Jew’s mind, Mr. Earn Dass, discussing one day some entirely distinct question as to a good name for the board of some new company, happens to suggest that of Mr. John Sutcliffe. At the name Mr. Moss’s eyes twinkle under the overhanging shaggy grey eyebrows like little lucifer- matches; his reply, however, to his friend’s 132 BAM BASS. suggestion does not imply any very intimate acquaintance with the gentleman in question. “ ShutclifFe ! Shutcliffe ! Who is he ? Vat is he ? Vat does he do ? Come now, vat do you know about him V’ Mr. Earn Dass’s answer supplies all requi- site information ' on this head, and Mr. Moss’s eyes twinkle more than ever. But, to the Indian’s extreme surprise, his descriptions of the wealth and position of Mr. John Sutcliffe,, and of his intimate relations with himself, do not appear to impress him with any great idea of the advantas;e of securing his co- operation. “ Yorkshire ! Shtuff and nonsense! Vat do ve vant with Yorks hi re ? Vat’s Yorkshire to us ? Vat’s the company agoing to get out of Yorkshire ? Vat will Yorkshire do towards pulling us through next settling day ? It von’t do, Mishter Earn Darsh ; it von’t do,. BAM BASS. 133 I tell you ; not a bit of it. Now, look here, it’s just posht time ; it is, s’elp me ! You go away, Misther — go away, and think it over. Think it over, will you. Good-day, Misther, good-day.” And Mr. Moss hurries his visitor out of the room, and sitting down once more to his rickety old desk, indites a hurried epistle to his very dear friend, Mr. John Sutcliffe. Perhaps, had Mr. Earn Dass been thoroughly acquainted with the private history of honest John — had he thoroughly understood the story of that remarkable rise in life, the general outline of which has pointed the moral of so many a discourse to inconsiderate youth ; known the important part played in some of its earlier stages, before the affairs of the late Mr. Vernhoyle had become quite hope- lessly involved, and while “ accommodation ” might still avail to stave off from month to 134 BAM BASS. month the inevitable collapse, if not, perhaps,, to make it much easier in the end — ^by the astute and not over-scrupulous old gentle- man who has such a curious fancy for im- perfect securities, he might not have been quite so ready just at this moment to draw attention to his own intimacy in that par- ticular quarter. But this is one of the “ things not generally known,” somewhat,, perhaps, to the advantage of inconsiderate youth, for whom the moral of such lessons might otherwise have remained unpointed. People may say what they will, but to the making of a really successful man there goes something more than mere skill, or judgment, or courage, or genius, or even the thorough-going unscrupulousness which a cynical observer of the necessary everyday working of mundane affairs, as that working presents itself, not to the audience, but to- BAM BASS. 135 the actors and stage carpenters, might be tempted, perhaps, to estimate as rather more than worth them all. This something, as difficult to define as it is rank heresy to mention, is what is commonly, for lack of any other better definition, known as “ luck.” Now as between John Sutcliffe and Manock- jee Earn Dass there is, from a moral point of view, probably not the value of a pin to choose. Neither of them has an aim or an aspiration save such as are of the earth, earthy ; neither of them would be deterred for a solitary moment in the pursuit of his earthy aims by any possible consideration not exclusively of an earthy nature. Could anything bring about so inconceivable a con- tingency as a full and candid confession on either side, the Pope himself would be sorely puzzled to strike a balance of iniquity as between the two. 136 BAM BASS. On the other hand, as regards intellectual acquirements, Mr. Earn Dass is very dis- tinctly the superior. In the ordinary way of his own small business — small be it clearly understood, in regard, not to the amount of “ money turned over,” but only to the nature of the means by which the turning-over process is effected — John is, it need hardly be said, a clever fellow enough. For what may be termed simple “shoddy practice,” there is not his match on any exchange in all the Eidings. Let us not speak disparagingly of honest John. It is only rarely that a man is carried to emi- nence by sheer force of luck alone, without anything to back it, and 'John’s case is not one of these. But when it comes to working on any- thing like a grand scale, John Sutcliffe, as compared with his Indian coadjutor, is BAM BASS. 137 simply nowhere. He is like a Brighton boatman suddenly transplanted from the fair weather fleecing of cockney voyagers doing their “ nine hours at the seaside for three- and-sixpence,” to the weather yard-arm of an overloaded collier, labouring her heart out in a whole gale down in the Bay of Biscay. It is just as well under such circumstances that there should be a steady hand at the helm, and unpleasant as the berth aloft might be, John himself is far too cognizant of the comparative value of his comrade and himself, from an A.B. point of view, to dream of exchanging it for the post at the tiller, when he was on board. Yet, in spite of all this, John has an advantage over Mr. Earn Hass which the latter has hardly taken — has, indeed, hardly the knowledge of the inner history of John’s career, which should enable him to take — 138 BAM BASS. sufficiently into account ; but which is even now about to baffle his shrewdest combina- tions. There is nothing particularly unlucky about Mr. Earn Dass himself, but you may as well be unlucky yourself as bring your ordinary negative luck into collision with the positive good luck of a man endowed with this, most indispensable of Fortune’s gifts. Such, however, has been the case with the Hindoo speculator in his alliance with John Sutcliffe. According to every natural law — those more than Median and Persian institutes, against any operation of which, as our modern phi- losophy teaches us, it is so supreme ‘an absurdity to pray — the latter ought to have succumbed to the really ingenious devices planned out by his new friend for his despoil- ment, as surely as any unwary perch, fat aiid succulent with successful sport among BAM BASS. 139 still unwarier flies, ever assisted to furnish, forth the marriage table of the lordly pike. There have been perches whicli have been awakened from the pleasant process of a dreamy digestion by the swirl of the agitated stream, as the lordly pike departs for ever from his native element, vainly struggling to disgorge the treacherous bait which, as it were, has dropped into h'is jaws just as they opened not half an inch from the sleeper’s tail. Those are the perches who are blessed with luck, and such, a perch would honest John Sutcliffe have been, had he been born in that watery line of life. There could be no possible credit to John Sutcliffe, no possible reproach to Mr. Earn Dass, in the fact of the latter having gone for aid in his own not very estimable schemes to the same old lender upon usury by whose assistance the equally unestimable schemes of 140 BAM BASS. the former happened to have been success- fully carried out years ago. It was simply a curious coincidence. Not quite so curious, perhaps, as might at first sight appear, for the gentlemen who, having singled out for themselves Mr. Jonas Moss’s special line of business, are able subsequently to pursue it to the extent of an amassed capital of five heavy figures, without ever having come into such open collision with the law as to injure their positions for predatory operations on a large scale, are not, after all, so numerous a body as to render a coincidence of the kind absolutely phenomenal. They are sufficiently numerous, no doubt, for all wise and bene- ficent jDurposes ; yet hardly, perhaps, so numerous as to give to such a mishap as has in this instance befallen Mr. Earn Dass the dimensions of an absolute fatality. It is a decided chance, however, for John BAM BASS. 141 Sutcliffe’s luck, and John Sutcliffe’s luck promptly avails itself of it. When the old money-lender’s letter of inquiry first reaches him, John, who is at the moment in the full flush of his early confidence in this most useful new friend, takes hut little notice of it, merely writing back to Mr. Moss a general assurance that his client is a client of the highest position and most scrupulous integrity, whom he has known in the way of business for a con- siderable period — John, though on the whole not particularly subtle, is quite aware of the value of general and somewhat vague phrases as regards time, &c. — and in whom he has himself the fullest confidence. The reply makes Mr. Moss for the time quite easy in his mind on the subject of the doubtful securities, and John Sutcliffe dismisses it altogether from his mind. 142 BAM DAS8. But when, in the course of his energetic application to business on Saturday and Sun- day, he again conies accidentally upon the letter of Mr. Moss, John Sutcliffe’s feelings have become somewhat modified. It is not that he has even yet conceived any especial suspicion with regard to his Indian ally, but that he is in a general state of acute irritation and suspicion with regard to every one. Had there even been a gospel of any kind to which he gave any intelligent adherence, his faith in that gospel would hardly, at this particular period, have with- stood the attacks of the least intelligent of Zulus. Suddenly comes again into his hands this half-forgotten, hardly half-read, letter of his useful — shall we say accomplice ? — of bygone days, asking, in that strict confidence which can be safely employed between allies, each BAM DASS. 143 of whom knows enough to insure, if necessary, the transference of the other’s future opera- tions to the more laborious and less lucrative sphere of a penal settlement — what may be, in his view, the precise position and character of his friend, and giving not detailed, but sufficiently indicative particulars of certain securities on which that friend proposes to raise a very large sum. Like an inspiration it flashes across John’s mind that he has come across these securities before. A little reflection, a very simple tracing back through the brief period during which he has had any business connection with Mr. Earn Dass, and he is, as the French say, “ there.” Unless his memory betrays him strangely — and John’s memory is not apt to betray him with any such strangeness in matters of business — these must be the very securities which already stand pledged 144 RAM BASS. to the Lightpool and Mofussil Bank for an advance, not much less in amount, to Earn Dass and Co. of Calcutta. The more John thinks of it, the more convinced he feels that his luck has in this instance done him a good turn indeed, and that he is on the track of a discovery. Should this which he has surmised prove to he really the fact, Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass is in his power hard and fast. He is his absolute property, he and all that is his, by right of conquest ; his chattel to work out his pleasure for evermore, like any captive of an African bow and spear, under pain, not quite, perhaps, of death, but of such punishment as in the case of the refined and luxurious Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass would probably make death an exceedingly welcome relief. BAM BASS. 145 Honest John casts a rapid eye on some of the many ways in which a chattel of this kind might be turned to account, and his heart swells within him. His first idea is to go at once to Lightpool and examine the securities, if they be still there to examine. His second idea shows him the extreme absurdity of such a course. Suppose the securities to be there ; what has he gained beyond what he already knew before ? Suppose, on the other hand, that they have been — as he fully believes they have been — skilfully abstracted by his brother director. In that case suspicion is at once aroused, the fraud is detected, his brother director duly consigned to penal servitude for the appointed period, and his own golden goose effectually killed without having laid for him one solitary egg. Honest John VOL. II. L 146 BAM BASS. excuses himself to himself on the allowable ground of over - fatigue for having enter- tained, even for a moment, a scheme of such absurdity. Ultimately, as has been seen, he betakes himself to town for the purpose of obtaining from his ancient ally full particulars of the securities impawned by Mr. Ram Dass, and,., if possible, a sight of the securities them- selves. It will be quite time enough to look into the strong-room of the Lightpool and Mofussil when he shall have made himself sure of his facts in this quarter, and when he can do so under the precautions necessary to protect his brother director from possible detection by any one but himself. So far both his luck and his brains have served him pretty well. It is not the fault of either — at least, only their fault indirectly RAM BASS. 147 and to the extent to which they, or either of them, may have to he held responsible for his marriage with his devoted Betsy, and the frame of mind into which his devoted Betsy has of late fallen — that he falls short, at the last moment, of reaping the full fruits of this well -constructed scheme. Before the telegram from Northallerton reaches the dingy little office in Israel Court, Mr. Moss and his Hindoo client have already had a conference, several hours long, and to all appearance most satisfactory in its result. In point of fact, the whole of Sunday afternoon has been spent by these very dif- ferent, yet not wholly uncongenial spirits, in close confabulation over the extensive, and, in some respects, rather complicated affairs in which they are embarked together ; 148 BAM BASS. and when somewhat late that evening Mr. Earn Dass retires to his hotel, and Mr. Moss to the dingy old house at the east end of town, which is such a picture of squalor without, and, if report speak truly, such a vision of luxury within, both are in a high state of jubilation, and quite pre- pared, after their respective fashions, to “ make a night of it.” Mr. Moss indulges in a “feast of fat things.” Mr. Earn Dass dines lightly, but elegantly, retires immediately after to his bed-room, carefully locks the door, and pulling from his breast-pocket a large cigar-case, takes out from an inner divi- sion thereof two small and curiously-made bottles. We have seen these two bottles before, when their owner was displaying to Mr. Sutcliffe and young Forester the various BAM BASS. 149 treasures of his cabinet. One contains little pillets of haschisch ; the other the myste- rious drug described by Mr. Earn Dass, as capable of altogether taking away for a time the intelligence and volition of the person to whom it might be administered. This second bottle, with its sparkling, but altogether colourless contents, the Indian holds for a few seconds between his eye and the light, smilingly. “ I shall not require you,” he soliloquises, not in English, however, but in his own native tongue. “ The stars are propitious, and work without aid. To-morrow I am rich, and out of danger. To-morrow ” and here Mr. Ram Dass smiles more than ever ; “ to-morrow, that too-clever old man will be out of danger too. He would have refused to give those papers up if all had not gone well. Bah ! Of course he would. 150 BAM BASS. He cannot read the stars to know when danger threatens. Yet the stars have been propitious to him also. Arre ! most pro- pitious.” And as he places the potent little phial in its hiding-place, the smile almost ap- proaches the proportions of a laugh. Which done, Mr. Ram Hass, though no longer speaking in audible soliloquy, appears mentally to change the subject. Not, how- ever, as it would seem, for any other a whit less pleasant. On the contrary, whilst the carefully compounded pilules of has- chisch are still melting between his lips, and the delicious intoxication of the drug has not yet masked his features with an outward insensibility, there is a sparkle in the eye, and a flush on the cheek, which speak of any but disagreeable thoughts. Then slowly the sublime intoxication steals BAM BASS. 151 over him, and, as he sinks back amid the soft cushions of his couch, a last word passes from his smiling lips — “ Giudita ! ” CHAPTER IX. As the clock of St. Dunstan’s chimes half- past two the next afternoon, Mr. Jonas Moss becomes fidgetty — so fidgetty, that Mr. Ram Dass, calling by appointment to receive over the impawned securities, now happily released by the success of the enter- prise in support of which they were pledged, cannot but remark on it. He remarks too, though he does not at the time connect the two ideas in any way together, that his good friend Jonas appears, now the actual moment has come, strangely reluctant to part with the documents in BAM BASS. 153 question, for which he seems all of a sudden to have conceived the most violent affection. “ Look here, my dear — look here. You’ll he vanting some money, you know — alvays vants more money, don’t ve ? Better leave ’em here vith me. I’ll take care of ’em, beautiful care, I vill, s’elp me! Nobody von’t take such care of ’em as I vill. I’ll lock ’em up here now in the inner room — I vill — ^the inner room, my dear — all lined vith sheet iron it is, two inches thick — two inches, think of that, a real iron-room, fire- proof and thief-proof. There ithn’t such another room in London. There ithn’t, s’elp me !” “No, thank you. I want the securities, if you please, Mr. Moss, and at once. When I want more money you can have them again.” “ Better leave them here now — much 154 BAM DA8S. better. Look here now. Take something on ’em at once. I’ll lend anything upon ’em. There arn’t nobody’ll lend you so much upon ’em as I will. Take ten thou’ now — You won’t ? Well, look here, take twenty — thirty — take — ” “ I’ll take my securities, Mr. Moss, if you please, and nothing else,” Mr. Ram Dass, who has his reasons for pressing the matter, replies in a tone which admits of no refusal ; and Mr. Jonas Moss produces from his thief-proof and fire-proof room the securities his client is so anxious to carry away ; whilst a stiU. older, if not, perhaps, more valuable client has just, in the telegram lying even now in the drawer of his desk, expressed so urgent a deshe to inspect them before they are handed back. Needless to say that John’s telegram has aroused once more all the old suspicions of BASS. 155 the worthy Jew, who, to his anxiety to oblige so good a customer as honest John, adds, perhaps, in his innermost heart, a vague idea of sharing with that estimable individual any black mail which, through his instrumentality, he may be enabled to exact from the exposure of a fraud. Even now he contrives to keep his im- patient client a full half-hour longer before actually delivering over the precious docu- ments. But Mr. Ram Dass is not exactly a personage to be trifled with ; and when the time appointed by John has been ex- ceeded by at least an hour, poor Mr. Moss gives up the struggle, and the Indian goes on his way rejoicing. Meanwhile, it will be necessary to return for a short time to Broadford, to appreciate the cause of honest John’s unwonted lack of punctuality. 156 BAM BASS. Betsy Sutcliffe had returned to Maple Lodge on the Saturday evening comparatively satisfied. Miss Horseney, at all events, was finally disposed of. Her John might swear a little when he came home and found what had happened. It was very likely — more shame to him — that he would swear a good deal. But no amount of swearing would bring the artful ’ussy back again ; and Betsy’s moral bones were, no less than her physical, of a kind which hard words do not break. Sunday passed by with her in an almost equally satisfactory state of mind. Although her John had not yet returned, and expe- rience had taught her that the strain upon the marital temper of such a prolonged application to business matters was not likely to make matters go off — when, in the end, they should go off — any the pleasanter ; still BAM BASS. 157 there he was in Broaclford still ; not yet, at all events, gone after the artful ’ussy, whose supposed machinations against her peace were still not altogether dismissed from Betsy’s mind. She had, at all events, sense enough to know that every London train which departed on its journey without him, ren- dered any such ultimate step on his part just so much the less probable. But on Monday morning comes the news of her John’s departure. Not to London. Sleepy as he is, Mr. Mark Davis has quite sufficient intelligence left to be able to adhere strictly to the tale prepared for him. The governor has gone to Man- chester. Mr. Mark Davis is, as in duty bound, quite ready to stake his salvation upon the point. The governor’s Betsy, taking, perhaps, on the whole, a somewhat low view of the 158 BAM BASS. faithful clerk’s future prospects, altogether declines, in her own mind, to accept the asseveration even thus backed. She does not actually dispute Mr. Mark Davis’s state- ment, but she cross-questions him sharply and acts for herself upon the result. Her final question is : “ AVhat hotel does your master put up at in Manchester ? ” “ The Eoyal, ma’am,” answers Mr. Davis, with perfect promptitude ; and then, roused by Betsy’s brisk interpellation to an almost preternatural condition of acuteness, he quietly watches that lady down to the telegraph office, and while she despatches her message takes counsel with himself how to act. By the time Betsy comes out of the office again, he has made up his mind, and the result is that when John Sutcliffe arrives at Anderton’s Hotel he finds waiting for BAM BASS. 159 him, in the letter-rack, the following mes- sage : — “ Mrs. S. called. Eeplied as instructed, but seemed dissatisfied. Asked address, which gave at ‘Koyal.’ Al most sure has wired there.” The addition of half a dozen words here and there woidd, no doubt, have made the above more intelligible, but the addition of half a dozen words would have raised the cost to eighteenpence, and he who expects to receive, in intelligible form, a message whose intelligibility is only to be insured by exceeding in its composition the magic limit of twenty words, is no student of nineteenth- century human nature. However, the message is intelligible enough for John’s purposes, and with a good round anathema upon the heads of all meddling women in general, he at once sets to work to circumvent the invidious meddling of his 160 BAM BASS. own particular specimen of the genus now waiting her answer in a mixed condition of triumph at her own cleverness and doubts of its possible result. John’s first step to that end is to tele- graph, on his own account, to the “ Eoyal,” at Manchester, a request for the immediate for- warding of any message which may be await- ing him, and in due course Betsy’s message arrives, containing some small inquiry on household matters — a palpable trap, aggra- vating her John not a little. The young ladies of the Fleet Street office are considerably scandalised by the perusal of that irate gentleman’s reply, which runs as follows : “ What the {improper tiame) do I care ? Don’t be such a (participle) fool.” Betsy herself is not so easily shocked. All that she cares about is that her husband, RAM BASS. 161 Mr. John Sutcliffe, “ of Eoyal Hotel, Man- chester,” has answered her telegram addressed to the Eoyal Hotel, Manchester, and, there- fore, must be at the Eoyal Hotel, Manchester, and nowhere else. Q.E.D. Betsy is quite satisfied, and more than ever convinced, that the electric tele- graph is one of the greatest inventions of the age. Honest John is just at this moment of a different opinion. Taking things altogether, that worthy’s subscription to a statue in honour of the inventor of that triumph of science would probably not go very far to- wards its cost. The sending to Manchester for Betsy’s message, and its re-transmission on to London, has taken up nearly two hours ; not, perhaps, a very unreasonable time, considering the distance to be tra- versed, but time enough to make J ohn — who. VOL. II. M 162 BAM BASS. for fear of accidents, lias been awaiting its arrival- — just an hour and a half be- hind the time of his appointment in Israel Court. Oddly enough, he has not connected in any way the apparition of Mr. Earn Dass, in Fleet Street, with any idea that that gentleman might himself be on the way to an appointment with Mr. Moss. In point of fact, the violent strain of the last two days, the unaccustomed excitement of feel- ing, the thirty-six hours of continuous work, the hurried journey, and the general houle- versement of his naturally sluggish and plethoric constitution, by all the various and contending emotions through which he has passed, have reduced him to a condition of brain not quite so clear as is customary with him. With any subject to which his attention is directed from without, he can BAM DAS8. 163 deal as strongly as ever, but his mental organisation has, for the time, a little lost its initiative. His annoyance, however, at having been made too late for his appointment is quite great enough, • and, as he shoulders his angry way along Fleet Street and Chancery Lane, towards Israel Court, his reflections are chiefly occupied with the extreme satis- faction it would afford him to administer forthwith, and on a much more effective scale, the shaking bestowed upon his too affectionate spouse now just a month ago. A second encounter with Mr. Earn Dass, this time on the very steps of Mr. Moss’s house, supplies to his over-taxed brain the required stimulus, and, with an emphatic anathema on his own stupidity, he at length realises the fact that the hour and a half’s delay has just been sufficient to deprive him of all the 164 BAM BASS. fruits of his journey. If he had hut gone straight to Moss, and left Betsy’s telegram to take care of itself ; or, if Betsy had not been such a , but the remainder of this reflection has no particular edification for any but Betsy herself, and, moreover, is speedily cut short by Mr. Ram Dass. That gentleman has not passed the last few days under the pressure of anything like the distracting influences which have been so destructive to John’s equanimity, and masters the situation very rapidly. At the same moment, too, he recalls to mind that Mr. Moss has pretended not to know even the name of his present visitor, and the coincidence instantly strikes him as of a menacing character. Prompt action, however, is necessary ; the more so as the slight disorganisation temporarily prevail- ing among John’s faculties is plainly visible BAM BASS. 165 in his bloodshot eyes, sallow cheeks, and generally dishevelled appearance. Mr. Ram Dass, without hesitation, takes his bull promptly by the horns. “ Good morning, my good friend. You are late. He waits for you.” “ Who ? Moss ? What do you know about it ? ” Ten seconds ago, Mr. Ram Hass might have answered with perfect truth, that he knew nothing about it whatever. Now, thanks to his own bold policy, John him- self has told him all about it. He passes by the question, however, as immaterial, returning to the charge with a counter- question. “ You have known him well ? ” “ Rather. Only for the last five-and- twen Yes, I know him. In the way of business, you know.” 166 BAM BASS. Mr. Earn Dass is quite satisfied now. Even had there been nothing strange in John’s own manner — and he is far too subtle an observer not to be aware that that manner is somewhat changed — towards him, the mere outside facts of the case ; the old usurer’s denial of any acquaintance with John, his hurried shufiling of him out of the room to save the post, John’s sudden and unannounced journey, Mr. Moss’s evident eagerness to detain him and his precious securities ; and now John’s own admission of being behind time in his appointment, which places beyond all doubt the reason for that eagerness; all these various coincidences piece themselves together in the rapid mind of the astute Hindoo, with a result as clear as it is menacing. John Sutcliffe and Jonas Moss have their suspicions — have them probably in common BAM BASS. 167 — that much is clear. What is the precise nature of these suspicions is a question less easy to discover ; a question no doubt less important in the answering now that the documents in regard to which they have arisen are safely reposing in the security of the leather brief bag, upon the strap of which the lean brown fingers close with a still tighter grip at the thought, yet terribly im- portant, for all that, to the man to whom its answer may mean so much as it assuredly may mean to Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass. Under such pressure Mr. Earn Dass’s brain does its work swiftly. “ I am very glad to meet you, my friend,’ he proceeds, after the scarce perceptible pause which has sufficed him to master the situa- tion and decide upon his course. “ I wish much to speak with you.” “So do I to you.” 168 RAM BASS. “ About the affairs of the bank ? ” “ About the affairs of the bank.” “ That is good. I return to-night by the nine o’clock train. There are some papers at the bank which we should examine to- gether. We can do it to-morrow morning.” “ I don’t see how I’m to get to Lightpool by that time.” “Not if you return to your house ; but that is not necessary. Come with me to Lightpool to-night, I will give you a room, and to- morrow morning — the first thing — we will look to it all.” John Sutcliffe considers a moment. The more, however, he thinks it over, the more clearly advisable it appears to take advan- tage of this remarkable unsuspiciousness on Mr. Ram Lass’s part, and accept his invita- tion. It is just possible that, under clearer conditions of judgment, this extreme un- BAM BASS. 169 suspiciousness might appear to present an element of suspicion. At this moment, how- ever, nothing of the kind occurs to him. This invitation to “walk into the parlour” of the astute gentleman whom he is pro- posing to himself to subjugate by an accusa- tion of forgery, falls in so decidedly with his own desires that he cannot possibly but accept it. So the arrangement is made accordingly. “ That is good. The nine o’clock from Euston.” “ All right. Euston. Nine o’clock.” “ Fly ” proceeds to keep his overdue ap- pointment with Mr. Moss. “ Spider ” walks off smilingly in the di- rection of Soho. He can devote himself to softer matters now without fear. It is quite possible that John’s suspicions may prove to be harmless. 170 BAM BASS. It is quite certain — and as lie smiles over this consideration, the fingers of his dis- engaged hand toy caressingly with the big cigar-case — it is quite certain that, should they prove otherwise, he will he able to render them so. CHAPTER X. The little trattoria is all alive, when Clarice at length lumbers up to the door in her rattletrap old cab at half-past four or there- abouts on Sunday morning. If the old saw be true, the neighbourhood honoured by the presence of the Stella d’ Italia would have been an unhealthy neighbourhood for any kind of worm. Except in Covent Garden or Billingsgate, such early birds as those frequenting the Stella d’ltalia are not to be found anywhere. In this respect, the Stella d’ltalia differs considerably from the majority of houses on 172 RAM BASS. either side of it, as also from those on the opposite side of the Avay. The street is a more or less private street, so far, at least, as that street may he called private which does not devote its ground-floors to the uses of the shop. It was at one time an eminently respectable — nay, even a mildly fashionable street. It is not the least fashionable now ; hardly, perhaps, so to speak, very eminently respectable. During the day-time the prevailing im- pression left by it on the mind of the disQiiented wayfarer, Avho might happen to drift through it — no one Avho had not lost his way hopelessly would ever dream of the possibility of its being on the right road to anywhere — would probably have said that its inhabitants had been some- what recently carried off by some epidemic of a peculiarly infectious and virulent BAM BASS. 173 character, and were waiting, behind the down- drawn blinds, to be carried away in the more literal manner of the undertaker. There is a muscular gold arm raising aloft a mighty golden hammer, which stands boldly out from the corner house, and which a sensitive fancy might picture to itself as the bodily presentment of the arm by which the devastating blow was struck, just raised in the somewhat superfluous act of preparing to strike another. Watching the great gold arm under this idea, the sensitive fancy might, even, as the dreary influence of the place took a more and more powerful hold on it, come to think that it was withheld only because no one appeared on whom the blow should fall, and look nervously from door to door, lest any should venture out and become a victim. 174 BAM BASS. As a rule, however, no one would run that imaginary risk until the disordered fancy had had ample time to recover itself. There is a “ working bookbinder ” on the top floor of No. 13, a “ working ivory-turner ” at No. 9, and two “ working jewellers ” at Nos. 11 and 16. But none of these seem to stir out, save when, at rare intervals and mysterious hours, they will flit rapidly down the street with small parcels under their arms, no doubt the products of their re- spective skill, on their way for disposal at shops in more frequented neighbourhoods. Besides these four highly-respectable indi- viduals, and the padrona of the Star of Italy, with her family and servants, there are, perhaps, not very many of the inhabit- ants who could be deemed any particular credit to the street, or who in the daytime contribute in any special way to its live- BAM DAS8. 175 liness. All night it is lively enough, in more ways than one ; but they are not ways which the inhabitants of ordinary streets would probably care to import. The clients of the Stella dl Italia live, not in the street itself, but for the most part in the small courts and alleys by which it is thickly surrounded. They form, it must be admitted, rather a motley circle. First among them — birds, so early on the wing, that they are not unfrequently joined by birds of a higher class, very much the reverse of early, winging their dull way homewards in the draggled plumage of the evening before — come the French, German, and Italian bakers, snatching a hasty roll and coffee, on their way to make hot rolls for more luxurious tables. Then drops in an occasional organ or image-man, bound this morning for some distant suburb, where 176 BAM BASS. lie proposes to make hideous the early morn for the benefit of local Maries and Betsy Janes, performing their matutinal devotions on the front-door steps. Then the regular stream sets in, and the slam, slam, of the little half-glass door goes on pretty inces- santly till closing-time comes round again, and the rest of the dissipated street wakes up to its nightly feverish life. Everything seems strange enough to Clarice, as strange, oddly enough, in its fami- liarity as in its newness. A blind man, rely- ing only on the senses of nose and ears, would have been quite ready to ask, with a shiver, what had happened to the climate of the dear old country away far south of the Alps. A deaf man would have asked — in varying phrase according to his nationality — either how long it was since the English people had taken to cooking their food, or EAM BASS. 177 who was poisoning the neighbourhood with this beastly smell of oil and garlic. When last Clarice had parted from her good friend, Netta Francesi, a bright young woman of four or five and twenty, she was engaged to be married to an English courier, and was starting off for sunny Florence in charge of half-a-dozen English children, to whom, if truth must be told, Clarice not a little grudged — grown-up young lady and housekeeper as she was — the pleasant tender care her much- regretted nurse was sure to bestow upon them. That is now close upon ten years ago. Netta is a widow now, bright in the old way no longer, but loving and caressante as ever, and radiant to the tender memory of her former nurseling, with all the sunshine of bright Italy and brighter childhood. There is a curious contrast between this memoried N YOL. 11. 178 BAM BASS. brightness and the actualities of a dull Sunday in Soho. The dulness of Sunday, however, especially from a trattoria point of view, has one serious advantage for Clarice. It enables her quite to recover the serenity, alike of mind and body, which the events of yesterday have somewhat disturbed. Netta is almost free to-day, quite free enough, as a rule, to exchange the not very inviting garments of workday life for a re- splendent silk of the bright colours which, on the whole, harmonise better, perhaps, with an Italian than with an English, or especially a London, atmosphere, and give an hour of her leisure to attendance at mass. This portion of the ordinary Sunday’s arrangements, indeed, she proposes, out of consideration for Clarice, to give up. Clarice, however, will not hear of it, insisting, on the contrary, on herself accompanying her BAM BASS. 179 friend ; and in the result they treat them- selves to a little devotional dissipation, and for this day Netta’s quiet little chapel is deserted for the more elaborate and fashion- u,hle function of Farm Street. Afternoon and evening are then spent in pleasant chat over the dear old times — dear alike to the widowed wife and to the orphaned child, to neither of whom can fhat phase of their life ever return again ; and Clarice and Netta smile to one another as each shuts her eyes, and drifts dreamily on the wings of the soft Italian sounds and the strong Italian scents, away from dull, black, gloomy London, far away to the sunny South, Then, while the evening is yet young, ‘Clarice curls herself up between the coarse but clean sheets on the little truckle-bed in the back-room upstairs, where the broken 180 BAM BASS. tea- cup stands full of cheap common flowers, before the little wooden crucifix, and the guardian angel at the bed-head holds out to her in his shallow shell his little modicum of real holy water, duly blessed by Netta’s own priest. It is twelve good hours before she wakes again. The sun — or what passes in Soho for sun, for Netta steadily denies that any- thing of the kind has ever made its appear- ance there during her nine years’ sojourn — is doing its little best to obtain a recognition from the contents of the broken tea-cup, which, as English born and bred themselves, should no doubt be content with small mer- cies in that way, but which hardly seem prepared to admit that this dull yellow glare, filtering laboriously through the semi-solid atmosphere of Soho, can really be the same BAM BASS. 181 sun which was shining upon them out under the hedgerows only a day or two ago. .Fanciful Clarice is half inclined to pity them for their hard fate ; but her pity has hardly yet had time to formulate itself, when pity, and flowers, and the great brown mass of Soho itself all rush swiftly from her sight. For there, just between her and the broken tea-cup, lies something of more importance to her — just now, at all events — than all the flowers that ever bloomed in Eden. A letter ! in a masculine handwriting — the handwriting of her lover. If the flowers in the broken tea-cup change their mind, and admit that the little back attic has, somehow, suddenly become irradiated with a flood of even brighter sunshine than ever glowed upon the old hedgerow days, Clarice, at all 182 BAM BASS. events, will not be in any way disposed to contradict them. Nor, really, could any impartial observer be permitted — as, of course, no observer, impartial or otherwise,, could possibly be permitted — to take for ever so brief a space the flowers’ place on the little dressing-table, would that observer, looking upon the glow and sparkle of the girl’s blushing face. And much to wonder at in their mistake. What bald, senseless, boneless twaddle a love-letter is, when read out with judi- cious emphasis — or want of emphasis — by some dry old chap of a Q.C., or some wicked wag of a rising junior, in the great case of Turtle versus Dove, breach of promise of marriage, damages laid (by the injured Turtle) at £10,000. How we all wonder — audibly — that any man or woman could write such stuff! How we all pray BAM BASS. 183 — secretly — that the wives (or sweethearts) of our respective bosoms may never avenge upon ourselves any breach, of promise or otherwise, by giving to a cruel publicity those terribly similar effusions of our own. And oh ! how nice these terrible effusions were in the bright eyes to which they were addressed, when first they came all fresh from the glowing pen to be kissed by dewy lips, and lighted up by flushing cheeks, and finally hidden carefully and tenderly away in the warm white resting-place, whose every throb , is sacred now to him from whose hand they came. Small doubt but that, subjected to the cruel test of “Turtle v. Dove,” poor Harry Forester’s epistle would fare as badly as many another honest outspeaking has, under a similar ordeal, fared before it. Not that there is anything in Harry’s loving effusion 184 BAM BASS. savouring in the very slightest degree of mawkishness, or false sentiment — anything which a true-hearted lad might not be well satisfied to write, or a true-hearted girl proud and joyous to receive. Simply, that it was never written to be read in cold blood — would have been about the bitterest condemnation that could possibly be self- passed upon its writer, had it been so written — and would, consequently, “ lik e sweet bells jangled,” be simply “ out of tune, and harsh ” to ears attuned to quite another, indeed, truth to speak, to quite a lower key. There is nothing chilly or out of tune about Clarice as she reads, and the sweet bells chime their own sweet music in her heart in rippling peals of perfect harmony. Yet as she reads on through page after page, full of passionate delight at the thought of BAM BASS. 185 meeting soon again, of tender reproach for the long silence, of quiet, hut earnest, pro- testations of unaltered and unalterable love, and eager pleadings for an immediate union, she comes at length to a passage which, true and loving as it is, and thoroughly as she appreciates its lovingness and truth, makes, for the moment, anything but music in her ears. “ You ask me, my own darling,” writes Harry Forester, “ whether I should have any objection to your going upon the stage, and tell me how you have accidentally made a kind and powerful acquaintance, who is both able and willing to push you forward in a career in which you feel that you could make a mark. For Heaven’s sake — for my sake — my own dear wife that shall be — ^give up at once, and for ever, any such thought. You know that I am not prejudiced. There 186 BMI DA88. • is many and many an actress whom I am proud to reckon among my friends, and shall he delighted to welcome among yours. There is more slanderous rubbish talked about honourable and high-minded women on the stage than about all the world beside, and they are none the less honourable and high- minded for that. But, my darling, I couldn’t bear to have slanderous rubbish talked about you.” And then, from the general Harry comes down to the particular, and as plainly as he can dare to speak to one, as yet innocent of the very knowledge of evil, hints at the probable snake under the flowery courtesies of her new friend, the probable under-mean- ing of the almost “ fatherly ” interest in her talent displayed by this amiable new friend, so thoroughly acquainted with all the by- paths and indirect crooked ways, by which BAM BASS. 187 a spurious success may be obtained upon the modern stage. It is a terribly delicate subject for a young man to handle to a girl, even if that girl be engaged to be his wife ; and Harry is obliged to handle it very carefully. But he quite succeeds in making it very plain to her, that in listening to Mr. Ram Dass’s insidious advances, she has committed a great folly, and incurred a great, if not a very intelligible, danger; and she is feeling quite hot enough with the thought, when Harry clinches the matter by a personal allusion, which seems to her to turn her cheeks to flame. “ Oddly enough,” he writes, “ I know very well — and you too will know, by sight, at all events, darling, some day, for he is my employer — a man who must, I should think, be very like indeed to this new friend of 188 BAM BASS. yours. My man is a Hindoo merchant, by name Manockjee Earn Dass.” Clarice’s heart stands still. Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass Harry Forester’s employer, and the sort of man who — who — Well, what sort of man is he ? Let her at least see that. So, with scarlet cheeks and fluttering heart, she reads on. “ One is bound to speak of people as one finds them, you know, dear, and Mr. Earn Dass has really been awfully kind to me. But you can’t think what I should feel were you and he to be thrown together in the sort of relationship you are contemplating with your ‘ generous friend. ’ I would much rather intrust you, in one of his own Indian jungles, to the guardianship of a tiger or a boa-constrictor.” It is half an hour, at least, after reading BAM BASS. 189 this comfortable sentence, before Clarice can collect herself sufficiently to finish the letter. However, it is finished at last, and the con- cluding sentences, in which, having com- pleted his warning, he returns once more to the very far pleasanter love-making of the earlier portion, help, in some degree, to take out the taste of that most unfortunate business about Mr. Ram Dass, and to re- store Clarice’s equanimity. She is comparatively happy again, and, indeed, has already actually smiled more than once over this very summary overthrow of all her airy castles, when her good hostess raps at her door, with the information that it is nearly twelve o’clock, and that they will soon be going to breakfast. Whereon Clarice jumps out of bed in consternation, and with a penitent promise to make impossible haste. 190 BAM BASS. plunges into the tub of cold water which Netta, mindful of the dread observances of Anglo -Spartan girlhood, has taken care, though with much wonderment and many head-shakings over such temptings of Provi- dence, duly to provide. She is very near rushing again up the few stairs she has already descended, and forcing her way into her young guest’s room, regard- less of everything, when, with the sound of the first splash, comes also the sound of an exclamation, which is almost a cry, and which fully conveys to her already misdoubting mind the conviction that the long-anticipated catas- trophe has occurred at last. It is not the bracing, freshening, delicious dolour of cold water, however, which has called forth that exclamation from Clarice’s lips ; it is a sudden thought, a startling BAM BASS. 191 recollection — tlie recollection that that very afternoon she is to receive a visit from Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass. CHAPTER XL It is close upon five o’clock wlien Mr. Ram Dass is, at length, shown into the little private parlour of the Stella d' Italia, where Clarice is enthroned for his reception, in the identical uneasy chair, affected on state occasions by the mistress of the estab- lishment, but vacated now by her in spite of all Clarice’s protestations in favour of her highly honoured guest. The keen apprehension of the Hindoo tells him, even as he enters, that all is not right — that some hostile change has come over the situation, which, when he and BAM BASS. 193 Clarice had parted yesterday morning at King’s Cross, had seemed so favourable. All the way along he has been congra- tulating himself upon the marvellous turn which recent events have taken in his favour. The appearance of the street, in which the “ Star of Italy” is situated, has impressed him still more favourably. Clarice seems to be delivered over absolutely into his power, and Mr. Earn Dass has already poured an imaginary libation to his, it is to be feared, equally imaginary gods, in honour of his now certain victory. The change of the moral atmosphere which asserts itself with unmistakable vigour the very moment he enters the room, comes upon him with something of the effect of a cold douche. For the moment it chills and almost paralyses him. Then comes the YOL. II. 0 194 BAM DA8S. reaction, and the hot current of his blood runs even more fiercely than before. The hours that have elapsed since first the recollection of this afternoon’s appoint- ment came to mar so seriously the delights of her morning’s splash, have been spent by Clarice in very anxious thought as to how best she may acquit herself in the ordeal. Her mind is, of course, quite suffi- ciently made up as to what is to be done. The question is as to the eftest way in which to do it. Mr. Ram Bass’s disinterested proposals are to be rejected, promptly and decisively — there can be no doubt as to that. Nor, so far as the rejection itself is concerned, need there be any great difficulty. To a simple, straight- forward, thoroughly healthy temperament, like that of Clarice, “ no,” under such circum- stances, is as easily said as “by-and-by.” EAM BASS. 195 But then, in this particular instance, there are other things to he considered than the simple saying of a simple No. Clarice is quite convinced that her lover is right, and that Mr. Earn Bass’s disinterested proposals have been very insidious and sinister snares indeed, and there are moments when the old feeling of repulsion comes back more strongly than ever, and she could play the Judith with more than satisfaction. But, on the other hand, there are moments when the remembrance of that respectful kindness of the Indian’s recent manner drives her feelings altogether in a different direction. She does not question Harry’s judgment for a moment, even in thought; yet, after all — perhaps, — he has at all events seemed to be kind. And then again, there is the decidedly more tangible consideration of expediency o 2 196 BAM BASS. on her lover’s own account. Of course, the fact of Mr. Earn Dass being Harry’s employer, does not affect in the very smallest degree the initial necessity of say- ing No. But it does very seriously affect the advisability of saying it with the- smallest possible amount of offence, and Clarice exerts all her ingenuity in the framing of a mode in which to ensure this most desirable end. Accordingly, no sooner is he seated, and Netta — whom on mature consideration she has thought it wiser not to retain by her side — has quitted the room, than, without waiting for him in any way to commit him- self, she takes the conversation into her own hands. “ Mr. Earn Dass,” she says gravely, but sweetly, “ I fear I must apologise for having put you to a great deal of very unnecessary EMI EA88. 197 trouble ; but I have been thinking over all you have so kindly said, and have come to the final determination not to go upon the stage.” “ May I ask, why ? ” “ I. My — my friends would not like it.” “ Your friends ! ” In spite of all his. self-control, the irrita- tion and passion boiling each moment more fiercely within the man, throw him for the moment off his guard, and the word is eloquent with a too candid meaning. It is but for a moment, however. The next he sees the indignant flame rising quickly to her cheeks, and hastens to repair his blunder. “ Believe me. Mademoiselle, though I have but a very recent claim to the title, you have few friends more devoted or more re- spectful than myself.” “ I thank you very much. Let me beg 198 BAM BASS:. of you, as a friend, not to press me* further.” “Then you do regard me as a friend?” “ I hope I may.” “And yet you do not trust me.” “ It is not that — indeed, it is not that,” and, for the moment, as she speaks, Clarice really forgets that there is any ^distrust in question. “ I am sure you are most kind, but ” “ But you will not let me help you ; me, a lover of art, an admirer of your — your talent ; me, v’ho have the power to ” “Oh, Mr. Earn Dass, pray ” But Mr. Earn Dass is not to be stopped. The reaction of the first chilling shock of his reception is setting in fast. The current of his passion, checked for the [moment by the obstacle so suddenly opposed, is aEeady rising only the more strongly against it. He- BAM BASS. 199 has risen from his seat now, and is pacing to and fro across the floor of the little room, speaking in short jerky sentences, half, as it were, to himself. “I do not understand it. There is some- thing wrong. Somebody has Mademoi- selle,” and he turns once more sharply upon Clarice, standing before her with his glitter- ing black eyes fixed on hers, and two lean brown hands stretched out towards her, half in emphasis, half in entreaty. “ See. I have arranged all for you. I have got you an engagement — a noble engagement — ^you shall have money, fame. I have spoken to a lady, who will ” But now the current of feeling in Clarice’s mind changes again. Here is the very proposition against which Harry has just been warning her. The well-paid engage- ment for her who has never yet set foot 200 BAM BASS. upon the boards ; the elderly chaperone who is to Faugh ! In a moment the glamour passes away, and artistic tastes, disinterested friendship, and all the rest of the graceful drapery in which the ugly skeleton has been veiled, falls from it, and leaves her face to face with truth. “ Stop, sir ! I ” “No; I will not stop. I will be heard. Away with all this. I love you — do you hear ? I love you. I am rich, powerful. I can give you all. Be mine, and — ” “ Stop, sir, I say.” And this time the command is uttered in a tone which not only checks for the moment, at least, the torrent of the Indian’s passionate appeal, but brings into the room the mistress of the house, who, already attracted by the raised and excited tone BAM BASS. 201 of the speaker, has for the last minute and more had one hand upon the lock. Manockjee Earn Dass stands for the mo- ment silent, with heaving chest and great drops standing upon his forehead, his glitter- ing eyes glaring, now at Clarice, now at Netta. Clarice’s large grey eyes are by this time flashing as brightly as his own, and it is she who first breaks the brief silence. “ Mr. Earn Dass, your proposition is an insult. Be good enough to leave the room.” “ An insult ! What do you mean ? ” “ Leave the room I say, sir. How dare you come to me with your vile proposals ! How dare you ” Earn Dass’s lean brown hand comes down sharply upon the table. “ There is no insult. You speak without knowledge. Look you, woman. I tell this 202 BAM DA88. young lady I love her. I ask her to naarry Avith me.” “ To marry you ! ” “ To marry me. Why not ? ” It is Clarice’s turn now to feel taken aback. This is a complication indeed, and one of which she has never even dreamed. Something must be done, however, and that promptly ; and the only really effective mode seems to be one of perfect candour. She lifts her eyes from the ground, where they have been busily, if unconsciously, endeavour- ing to make out the long-since undistinguish- ahle pattern of the faded-out old rug, and speaks once more, but in a very different tone. “ I have, indeed, mistaken you very seriously. I beg your pardon ” “ It AA"as my fault,” interposes the other. HAM BASS. 203 eagerly. “ I am Indian, and I do not make myself understood.” But he, in his turn, appears to have mis- interpreted the changed tone of Clarice’s last speech ; and, as he presses forward, evidently with the intention of seizing her hand, she draws hack — not rudely, indeed, hut quite obviously. Then she turns to Netta Fran- ces!. “ Cara mia, forgive me a moment. I must speak to this gentleman.” Netta withdraws, and Clarice, lifting one hand with a grave gesture to check her companion, who shows symptoms of again becoming demonstrative, speaks very quietly, hut very firmly. “ Mr. Ram Dass, I cannot tell you how sorry I am that this should have occurred. I would have prevented it if I could, indeed. 204 BAM BASS. I would ; for you have' been very kind to me, and No, please let me speak. There is something I must tell you ; and, when I have told you, I will ask you for all our sakes to let what has passed this morning be as if it had never been.” “ I do not know what you mean,” breaks in the Indian, impetuously. “ I ask you ” “ Indeed, indeed, you must not ask me anything. I — I am engaged to be married.” Earn Dass turns livid. “ Engaged ! You ? When ? To whom ? ” “ I have been engaged, now, for many months.” “ To Avhom ? Tell me his name — let me To whom, I say ? ” “ Mr. Ram Dass, you forget yourself. And this is no way to question me, even had you the right to question me at all, which I deny.” BAM BASS. 205 - The Hindoo makes a movement of im- patience, but represses it by a strong effort. He is almost beside himself, and little flecks of foam gather here and there on his dull grey lips, as on those of a wild beast. But he puts into requisition all the powers of long habits of self-command, and controls himself mightily. Clarice, too, bites her lips, and forces back the angry defiance which the tone of her Indian wooer’s last speech has again brought very near her lips. “ Let us be friends,” she says, pleadingly, and this time — now that no mistake is any longer possible — holding out of her own accord the soft white hand which has hitherto eluded his grasp. “ I will tell you everything ; for, after all, you have a right to know. You have been very land to us both.” 206 BAM BASS. The sudden lightning flashes from under the Indian’s levelled lids. Like an inspira- tion comes upon him the knowledge of the name even now trembling on Clarice’s lips. “To— hath?” “Yes. My future husband is your clerk — Mr. Henry Forester.” “ Mr. — Henry — Forester — my — clerk ! ” The words come slowly and separately through the clenched teeth, each word, as it were, bitten out from the rest of the sen- tence. Then he stands silent, watching her with glittering eyes. Clarice speaks again. “We will forget it all, shall we not? You are not angry with me — with him ? ” The warm white hand is held out a second BAM BASS. 207 time. This time the brown palm of the Indian closes round it dry and burning, and with a grip like steel. The glittering eyes are bent upon her still, shifting rapidly from face to neck, from neck to bust, from bust to arm, drinking in, as it were, every separate beauty of form and feature. Clarice flushes under the survey, and endeavours to with- draw her hand. But it is still held as within a vice. Then he speaks slowly, and, to all seeming, calmly. “ Good,” he says. “ Let it be so. But we will not forget. No. Some day you will need a friend, you and your — my — Mr. — Henry— Forester. Then "you will come to me, will you not ? ” The hot steely grip of the hand relaxes — not lingeringly, but suddenly, like the grip 208 BAM BASS. of an actual steel spring, and Mr. Earn Dass is gone. “ Poor fellow ! ” murmurs Clarice to herself, as the door closes noiselessly behind him. “ How nobly he bears it ! ” CHAPTER XII. There are few wlio encounter Mr. Ram Dass on his way from the humble Stella d! Italia to his own luxurious West-end hotel, and do not, as he passes, turn for at least a second look at the man with the duskily- livid face, the glittering black eyes, which might be deprived of sight for any use their owner appears to make of them, as he forces his way fiercely along, and the blue-grey lips now again flecked with foam, from which came muttered sounds of what must surely be savage imprecations in a strange, sonorous, unknown tongue. 210 BAM BASS. One timid passenger, coming suddenly upom the encounter, springs hurriedly on one side^ as though from the path of a mad dog.. The action is so marked that in the midst of his preoccupation the man himself per- ceives it, and seems slowly to awake as though from a half trance. His attention once aroused, he soon becomes aware of the notice he is exciting, even among the less impressionable of those among whom he is threading his way, and he resumes, though not without difficulty, his outward com- posure. By the time he has reached his hotel,, his inner man has also somewhat calmed down ; and when, double locking his bed- room door, he begins pacing slowly up and down in deep meditation, his thoughts are once more fully under control. They are thoughts which bode small good BAM BASS. 211 to any one concerned in them ; hut, beyond question, he to whom their boding is the least propitious, is the affianced lover of Clarice Orsini, Mr. Ram Bass’s own confi- dential clerk — -Henry Forester. It is not the first time that the hand- some, fair - haired young Englishman has crossed the path of the vengeful Hindoo, and crossed it unpleasantly. It is weeks ago now, since warm-hearted, even if somewhat feather-brained, Joe Adkins warned his unwary friend against the jealousy awakened in the Indian’s mind, by the too pronounced admiration of Miss Fanni Mont- morenei ; since indeed that impulsive young lady’s own open declaration of preference for ‘‘fair men,” brought the rivalship, which, on Harry’s part, had hitherto been as unconscious as it assuredly was unpreme- ditated, into a publicity at the moment 212 UAM BASS. not a little embarrassing. Mr. Earn Bass’s tact and self-command had passed by the awkward moment, pleasantly enough. How far he has forgotten it, is another question. A question, moreover, which calls for no answer, for had he forgotten never so completely the slight put upon him by the saucy dancing girl, in her openly marked preference for the handsome lad whom he looks upon as his servant, the news he has learned this day would be more than enough to arouse within him a very devil of hatred and revenge. As he strides now to and fro the room, brooding over this fresh grudge against Harry Forester, there are, probably, not many extremities to which he would hesitate to proceed, in the compassing of his vengeance. Naturally, the first thing that occurs to him to that end, is the immediate dismissal, BAM BASS. 213 without a character, of the young clerk, who will, hardly, under such circumstances, find, very easily or speedily, any parti- cularly honest means of supporting the wife of whom he has presumed to deprive his employer. This very simple and commonplace form of retribution, however, soon loses its hold upon his imagination. Young Forester’s bright face and pleasant manner has made him many friends. Who knows whether, after all, the blow might not fall short, and some new patron place him in an even superior position ? Besides, it is a poor vengeance, from which no benefit accrues to himself ; and what benefit is likely to accrue to Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass from a simple, straightforward display of temper, and disappointment, and spite such as this ? Will Clarice Orsini be the more 214 BMI BASS. inclined on that account to reciprocate or to yield to his passion ? Will he himself he in a better position to enforce his will ? Then, suddenly over the blue-grey lips, and into the glittering snake-like eyes, comes a smile once more. A smile that plays awhile like little quivers of lightning around the edges of a full-charged cloud, and then settles down, giving a yet more steely glitter to the eye, and curling the lip into something not unlike the snarl upon that of a wolf. Mr. Earn Dass has quite settled how to deal with Harry Forester. It is now the turn of honest John. This, however, would appear to be a matter calling for simple practical prepara- tions rather than for thought. What to do in this case has clearly been arranged in the Indian’s mind before now, probably during the walk from Chancery Lane to BMI BASS. 215 Solio, on that errand which has been under- taken so triumphantly to end in such utter discomfiture. AVhenever arranged, however, these pre- parations are of a somewhat curious cha- racter. Mr. Earn Dass begins by selecting from his always ample stock of tobacco three of -the finest cigars he can pick out of the case. On consideration, however, he p)uts back one of them. Two will be amply sufficient for his purposes, and it is one of Mr. Earn Dass’s rules never to overdo any- thing. On the remaining two cigars he proceeds to operate in rather singular fashion. First, with a camel’s ham pencil dipped in some liquid taken from his well-supplied dressing- case, he carefully and thoroughly moistens the fine outer leaf in which the first cigar is rolled, unwinding the envelope with steady 216 BAM BASS. hand as soon as it has become moist enough for the performance of this delicate operation, and laying it carefully on one side. Then, still handling the naked -looking bundle of leaves which remains so tenderly that not one dry particle gives the faintest token of his touch, he dips the smaller end about one inch deep in the contents of another bottle, holding it there until that portion of the cigar is pretty well saturated. Next, a gentle pressure amid the soft folds of a delicate cambric handkerchief relieves the soaked end of all superfluous moisture, and then for nearly five minutes the cigar is waved gently and patiently to and fro, until the end which has been operated upon has become, to all appearance, almost as dry as before. Finally, the fine outer leaf is again taken in hand. By this time, however, the liquid used for softening and rendering it flexible HAM BASS. 217 has evaporated from it, and the manipu- lator’s delicate sense of touch soon warns him that even to lift it from the marble-topped wash-hand stand on which it lies will be suf- ficient to break it into pieces. So the soften- ing process has to be gone through again ; this time with incomparably more patience and lightness of handling, for the long slender strip of leaf threatens to break at every touch. Then, finally, the Hindoo’s lissome fingers rewind around the coarser leaves which form the bulk of the fabric, the smooth, glossy, outer envelope, whose rich Imown surface soon shows, except for the dampness which for the time deepens the tint, no sign of having been tampered with. Step by step, with the same minute and laborious patience, the same process is now gone through with the second cigar, and the two are laid out to dry, while Mr. Ram 218 BAM BASS. Dass completes the more commonplace pre- parations for his own departure. Three hours later, and John Sutcliffe and his Indian friend are seated opposite to one another in a first-class smoking compartment of the night express, on their way to Light- pool. Mr. Earn Dass is radiant, John Sut- cliffe is otherwise ; and the more radiant Mr. Earn Dass becomes the more otherwise grows honest John. The radiancy of his companion does not seem to that gentleman any espe- cially excellent augury of the success of his own expedition. “ You do not mind smoke ? ” John grunts a negative, and disposes him- self to make up for the deficiencies of the last two nights by an uninterrupted snooze from Harrow to Lightpool. Strange to say, at this very moment his fellow-traveller’s heavy hat-box, poised with BAM BASS. 219 some delicacy upon the umbrella-net over John’s head, comes suddenly down upon that worthy’s knees like a small avalanche.” “What the devil is that?” “ Ten thousand pardons. I thought it had been quite secure. Allow me.” “ I wish you’d mind what you are about with your infernal rattletraps. I should have been off in another minute, and now the — — ■ thing has knocked all the sleep out of me.” “Never mind, old fellow. Have a smoke. That will send you off.” And Mr. Earn Dass tenders to his companion the open cigar-case, on one side of which are reposing the two cigars, of their owner’s manipulation of which we have just been witness, certainly not the worst-looking couple there. Sulky John has more than half a mind to growl a refusal. But he is not given to 220 BAM BASS. refusing anything that is to be had quite free of cost. Moreover, John is fond of tobacco, and there is a fragrance dispensing itself just now throughout the compartment which is simply irresistible. So he changes his contemplated sulky refusal into an equally sulky acceptance, and the two smoke on silently. John is not a card-player, and has no idea of the meaning of the phrase “forcing a card.” Mr. Earn Dass is a card-player, and has many ideas on that as on other subjects. The upshot of all which is that honest John is now busily smoking away at one of the two cigars so carefully treated three or four hours ago — and that ob- viously with his companion’s most entire approval. Somehow that cigar does not send honest John to sleep. It is a good-sized regalia BAM BASS. 221 and the stump is only sent finally through the window as the train emerges from the Kilshy tunnel. Yet John arrives at Rugby very much more wide awake than when he set out, and possessed, moreover, with a curious feelinac of excitement. As the train hurries and roars along the valley of the Trent, this feeling seems to increase, and the total cessation of all at- tempt at conversation appears rather to encourage than to diminish it. Suddenly John’s wayward thoughts are attracted by his companion’s leather brief bag, lying quite by itself, upon the centre seat just opposite to him. In that bag — he knows it beyond a doubt, now, since his otherwise almost fruit- less interview with Mr. Jonas Moss — in that bag are the securities he has travelled 222 BAM BASS. so far to examine. What, if he conld get a sight of them now ? The idea is simply wild, and that John knows well enough. Yet, somehow, he cannot get it out of his mind. His thoughts will go wandering round and round that small black leather bag, as though there were not another interest in the world worthy a glance. It has a fasci- nation for him — a fascination which each moment seems to increase. Yes. He must make the attempt. There is no resisting it .any longer. ■ Mr. Earn Hass is asleep. Has been asleep — ^to all appearance — for twenty minutes at least. John makes up his mind, and edging for- ward upon his seat, stretches out his hand to the bag. As he does so, he glances once more at its sleeping owner, and encounters the glittering black eyes of Mr. BAM BASS. 223 Earn Dass fixed full upon him, and cer- tainly without a trace of slumber. ‘‘You want your bag ? It is below the seat. That is mine.” John has just sense enough to accept the means of retreat held out to him, and dives beneath the seat for his own bag, thinking the while what he shall extract from it by way of excuse. Mr. Earn Dass, watching him at his task, smiles a smile which displays every white fang in his wolf-like jaws. John, abandoning the search with a mut- tered oath, as he suddenly remembers that he has no bag, having contrived to leave his behind him at the hotel, has for a moment a full view of this smile on the dusky visage of his opposite neighbour, and is aware of a sudden sensation, as though cold water were trickling rather freely down his back. 224 EAM BASS. Jolin’s nerves have been thrown the least bit in the world out of order, and there presents itself an unpleasant suspicion that he is travelling at some five and forty miles an hour down to Lightpool — he is not sure but that it may be even farther — Ute-d-Ute with the Prince of Darkness. A profound consideration of this point now takes the place in John’s mind of the late hankering after his neighbour’s bag. Is the dusky individual, with the blood- chilling smile, sitting opposite, in what was once Mr. Ram Dass’s place, Mr. Ram Dass himself, or Satan in his likeness ? If the former, why does he look so like Satan, or why every time he looks at him does he feel a fresh supply of iced water trickling down his back ? If the latter, how did he get there, and where is Mr. Ram Dass ? If both, then — but, how was that to be ? BAM BASS. 225 And so on, backwards and forwards, round and round, whilst the never-ending “worry, worry ” of the wheels, sets itself to one quaint combination after another, of “ Ma- nockj ee — Manockj ee — Manockj ee, ” “ Lucifer — Lucifer — Lucifer,” and half a dozen inco- herencies beside, as the rudderless brain drifts here and there over the chartless tide of thought. Meanwhile, Mr. Earn Dass himself is deep in calculation as to the advisability, or otherwise, of repeating a dose which has already had a somewhat stronger effect than he had anticipated. He by no means wishes to incapacitate his excellent friend altogether for to-morrow’s task of examina- tion. Quite otherwise. That examination is of even more importance in his eyes than in John Sutcliffe’s own. It is rather an anxious question, and at VOL. II. Q 226 BAM BASS. one time is on the point of being decided in John’s favour. But this has been just before the last stoppage ; and while tickets are being collected John has managed to take a long drink from a bucket of water standing on the platform, and to refresh him- self further, to a very considerable extent, by dashing the remainder plentifully over his head and face. When he returns to the carriage Satan has disappeared. Mr. Earn Dass, occupying his place, ob- serves the change* in his companion’s de- meanour, and decides that that other dose will be safe, at all events, if not absolutely necessary. Once more the balmy fragrance of one of those magic regalias plays about the nostrils of honest John, and this time he has for- BAM BASS. 227 gotten all about his sulks, and does not even wait for an invitation, “I say, you harn’t got another of them cabbage-stalks about you, have you ? ” The cabbage-stalk ” is handed with a courteous smile. Mr. Earn Dass, who is anxious not to push matters too far, being even polite enough this time to cut off the end before handing it to the applicant, and cutting off with it a full third of the medi- cated portion. At this honest John remonstrates. “ Dang it, mon, don’t waste good tobacco,” Nevertheless, it would seem as though Mr, Earn Dass has left him quite sufficient ; and when Lightpool is at last reached, and, after the copious libations of brandy and soda, which constitute his whole share of the delicate little supper, so much enjoyed Q 2 228 BAM BASS. by liis dusky host, honest John makes his way, a little staggeringly, to bed, his head is opening and shutting to an extent which its owner finds somewhat appalling. CHAPTER XIII. It is two o’clock in the afternoon when Mr. Ram Dass enters his guest’s apartment, and, throwing open curtain and shutter, lets in a flood of sunshine upon the occupant of the tumbled bed. Beyond turning his face a little more to- wards the wall, with a grunt which is not unlike a groan, John Sutcliffe takes no notice of his host’s appearance. He is not asleep, for the red eyelids are open, and the trembling hand is shifting restlessly from place to place upon the disordered bed-clothes. He appears to be simply in a state of feverish semi- 230 BAM BASS. stupor ; looking with dull leaden eyes into the inquiring face of the Hindoo as he approaches the bed-side for a nearer observa- tion ; but with a rather glassy expression, hardly indicative of any very intelligent recognition. His host studies him attentively for a minute or two, slightly lifting his eyebrows as the almost momentary application of one dark brown finger reveals the state of the patient’s pulse. Then he paces for some minutes more backwards and forwards across the room, deep in thought. Perhaps it would, after all, have been as well if he had refrained last night from administering the second dose, even in its modified form. There are symptoms about the not very pleasant object there in the tumbled bed, which the Indian’s acquaintance with the results of the too free exhibition BAM 1)A88. 231 of his own drugs, teaches him to regard as rather serious. He does not, indeed, antici- pate any fatal — at all events, any immediately fatal results ; but it seems pretty clear that honest John is in a condition in which such results may very easily supervene, perhaps even without any steps being taken for their encouragement. Mr. Earn Hass is not commonly given to the re-debating in his own mind of matters once settled there ; but it is difficult, in the face of this somewhat unanticipated position of affairs, to avoid recurring for a moment to the question, whether such an encourage- ment should or should not be given. On the whole, he is decidedly of opinion that, unless the nature and extent of John’s sus- picions should, on examination, prove too dangerous for his host to permit of his re- maining any longer alive, his death will be, 232 BAM BASS. on the whole, a decided loss to that hospit- able gentleman’s future plans. The only practical question is, does the choice still main really open ? Is not the semi-comatose occupant of yonder bed already “ too far gone ” to be worth the risk of attempting to patch up. Honest John himself answers the question. Not that he has any realisation of that rather important debate of “to be or not to be,” just now going on in the active brain of his Indian host. It is simply his usual good luck bestirring itself to insure for him a short additional lease of life. His fretful nerves grow irritated at the mono- tonous promenade to and fro, and active irritation overcomes passive sulks. “ I wish to goodness you’d go and walk about somewhere else.” Mr. Earn Hass’s brow clears. EAM BASS. 233 “ How do you find yourself this morning ? ” “As bad as I can be. I believe you have poisoned me with that infernal tobacco of yours.” “It is strong, when you are not used to it. I like them strong. Will you get up ? ” “ Don’t believe I shall ever get up again. My head — oh, Lord ! ” And to do honest John justice, the face which his host is now again regarding, this time with a nearly perceptible smile, is not the face of a man likely to regard with much favour the operations of dressing and breakfast. His host rings the bell, and gives some whispered directions to his servant, who in a very short time returns to excruciate John’s irritated nerves by the jingling of glass. “ What the devil is that ? ” 234 BAM BASS. “ You shall see ; ” and very soon the hissing dash of a syphon sounds to John’s feverish ear like an echo from Paradise, and the bloodshot eyes open with an eager look as he stretches out a quivering hand for the foaming draught, subtlely compounded with drugs and essences cooling and stimulant. “ That is better, eh ? When you are up you shall have another.” Under the influence of that pleasant drink John’s head has for the time left off opening and shutting. The exhausted brain responds to whip and spur, and works on again. Yes ; he must get up. He has got that business of the abstracted securities to look into. What an unsuspecting fool the nigger is, to be sure — just rushing on his fate. He could wish his head were a little clearer. Still it is clear enough to make that out ; BAM DA88. 235 and when that is done hell get home and get some sleep. “ All right. What o’clock is it ?” “ About half-past two. I have sent for all the papers here ?” “The devil you have! What for?” “ I thought it would' be better as you are not well. I expect them every minute now.” John’s little bloodshot eyes turn sharply upon his companion. But he says nothing. He simply tumbles straight out of bed, and steadying himself by a mighty effort, as the room begins to sway up and down under him, proceeds to struggle into his garments, as regardless of the presence of his host as of the soap and water on the wash-hand stand by his side. “You will not be long?” says the former, smilingly, as he opens the door. 236 BAM BASS. ‘‘No, I won’t,” is the prompt reply. “ Don’t you think it.” And honest John is not long. His toilette is not of a festive character. The outer garments have an ah: of having been thrown on with a pitchfork, the inner of having been slept in for • a week, which is not the case, as it is now three nights since their wearer has slept at all. And, finally, it is some- what painfully evident that neither soap, water, nor brush have been considered worth the delay implied even in their most partial application. A sorrier figure than that presented by Mr. John Sutcliffe, as he now enters, for the second time, the luxurious sitting-room of Cawnpore House, it would not be easy to imagine, and its sorry appearance is not improved by the dull yellow pallor which pervades his face, the heavy, red-lidded blood- EAM BASS. 237 shot eyes, the grey, flabby lip, and the thick, three-day stubble which stands out rough and black over cheek and chin. Mr, Earn Dass smiles as he notices these agreeable signs of hurry in his guest’s toilette. Smiles again, and with an increased sense of the humour of the situation, as he thinks of the reason of this desperate hurry on the part of honest John, and of the only too evident triumph with which, sick and giddy as he is, he learns that his object has been gained, and that the messenger despatched to the Lightpool and Mofussil Bank for the securities he is so eager to examine has not yet returned. The smile still plays around his lips as he proceeds to pass once more, in final mental review, the precise procedure by which, should the haste of John’s move- ments prove to have had any practical justi- fication, he proposes to make it quite sure 288 RAM BASS. that his next toilette shall be of a very different and much more effective character. Meanwhile, the relative performances of host and guest at the luxurious breakfast- table are very much the same as those of the supper of last night. Mr. Earn Dass eats with the quiet enjoyment which only a per- fectly sound or — ^which, in this respect, as in some others, is pretty much the same thing — a perfectly elastic conscience can bestow. John can touch nothing but a second edition of the elixir vitce, of which his host has already compounded for him one tumbler, and the new dose of which has just begun to exert its happiest influence, as the fly from the bank draws up, and two gentlemen and a large despatch-box alight from it, and ap- proach the door. “ I am sure you will excuse me, sir,” says Harry Forester’s companion, as he enters the BAM DA8S. 239 room, despatch-box in hand. Mr. Watkins and Mr. Mathews were both out, and I thought it better, as some of these papers represent a goodish bit of money, to bring them up myself.” Mr. Earn Dass bestows, in his secret soul, a hearty malison upon the clerk’s officious- ness. With his bodily tongue he expresses high approval, accompanied by permission to depart. “ Shall I not wait to take back the papers, sir?” “ No, thank you. They are off your hands now. Mr. Sutcliffe and I will give you a receipt for them. You have one ready, of course ?” The list of securities is duly handed over. “ Why, what is this ?” asks the Indian director. “ I do not want these securities 240 BAM BASS. of Earn Dass and Co. How came you to bring them up “ I beg your pardon, sir, — ” begins Harry Forester ; but John Sutcliffe cuts him short. “Not want 'em? Of course we do. At least they’re just what I want, and nothing else.” “ You — want ? Oh, well, then, the mistake is fortunate. There, Mr. Williams, is your receipt. Mr. Forester will bring the papers back. You had better make haste down before the bank closes, and be kind enough to wait till they arrive to take them over. You will, of course, return the re- ceipt to Mr. Forester.” Mr. Williams takes his departure, doubt- ful but obedient. It is not for him to dispute the fiat of two directors. Earn Dass takes out a bundle of papers from the despatch-box, and enters into a BAM DAS8. 241 long, and to all appearance, profoundly atten- tive examination, accompanied by much, refer- ring to memoranda of various kinds in his own pocket-book, and among various neatly- tied bundles of papers in the pigeon-holes of his large writing-desk ; by many little cal- culations on half sheets of paper or backs of envelopes, and by an occasional reference to his brother director, whose answers, it is to be feared, would not be of any very serious value to the inquirer, even had John’s own attention not been absolutely absorbed in the one special bundle of securities which has been placed in his hands. John Sutcliffe’s head is beginning to open and shut again, and his hand to tremble more than ever as he turns over, in a some- what vague and uncertain fashion, the docu- ments on the supposed absence of which he has built so brave a castle in the air. VOL. II. R 242 BAM BASS. It is very strange. There they are, every one. Agreeing absolutely with the list as handed over by Mr. Williams, of securities lodged by Earn Dass and Co., of Calcutta, to cover an advance of £45,000. Agreeing no less absolutely with the other list taken down from the lips of Mr. Jonas Moss, of securities handed back by him the previous afternoon to Mr. Earn Dass. It is very strange, indeed : a mystery altogether beyond John’s power of solution. One thing only seems tolerably clear, even to his bewildered brain, and that is, that whatever may have been the case yesterday morning as regards those securities, they are all right now. There is no further hope of making capital out of them for the sub- jugation of his friend. One might almost have thought that his friend, to all outward seeming so deeply BAM BASS. 243 immersed through all this time in his own special task, must have been keeping one eye at least upon the movements of his co-director, so remarkably does the conclusion of his labours on the other papers in the box coin- cide with that of the investigations of honest John. Well V’ he inquires, handing the various packets one by one to Harry Forester for comparison with the list before returning them to the case ; “ have you quite finished with those papers of Earn Dass and Co. ? ” “Yes, IVe done with them.” “They are all right, I hope?” “Eh — yes. So far as I can see.” “ That is good ;” and could honest John but have looked for a moment into the speaker’s thoughts, he would doubtless have arrived at the sound conclusion, that, for him at least, it is very good indeed. 244 BAM BASS. “ It would not suit me if anything were to go wrong with those papers, I can assure you. Mr. Forester,” and he turns smilingly to his confidential clerk, “ will you kindly hear this in mind, if you are attacked on your way to the bank?” “ All right, sir,” replies Harry, smiling, and departs, box in hand. “Be as quick as you can,” his employer calls after him. “ And I must trouble you, if you please, to return here. I wish to speak to you.” Then he turns sharply upon John, as Harry leaves the room — “What did you suspect wrong ?” “ Eh — nothing, man. Nothing.” “You suspected something. Was it that they had been lost — stolen ? Tell me. I insist.” “Well, if you must have it, I had a sort of idea that they were gone.” RAM BASS. 245 “ And you are quite satisfied ? Why did you not speak, that I might see for my- self ? You are quite sure they are right ? Tell me the truth.” “ Confound them, yes. Infernally right.” “ Then I will say good-bye. You had better get home at once. You are not well, my dear friend. Get home and go to bed.” And in a very few minutes more John Sut- cliffe is on his way into the town in the fly which has already been waiting for him an hour or more, his head opening and shut- ting at what he himself describes to a friend he happens to encounter at the station as “ a devil of a rate.” Mr. E,am Dass takes a turn or two in the fresh air of his neatly-kept garden, and smiles abundantly. Harry Forester hastens upon his errand. He just, as he passes his own gate, takes a 246 BAM BASS. hurried run up to the cottage to tell the old housekeeper of his fresh summons to Cawn- pore House ; but in less than five minutes he is in the high road again, and, catching a return fly as he emerges from his own garden, has in a very short space of time reached the bank, and handed over his precious charge, receiving back in exchange the receipt signed by the two directors. Mr. Williams looks at his watch as he turns the key in the outer door of the iron- room. “ Six o’clock ! A nice time to keep a man in this beastly hole ! ” “ Better off than I am, old fellow. I’ve got to go back again.” And, with a laugh, Harry Forester strides back on his return to Cawnpore House. When he arrives there, he finds his em- BAM BASS. 247 ployer standing at tlie garden gate waiting for him. “Mr. Forester! Mr. Forester! you have been a long time gone. A very long time.” “ IVe done my best, sir, I assure you. Mr. Williams was some time checking the securities. Here is the receipt, sir.” “Good. But I wish Mr. Williams would, be more expeditious. I have waited a long time — a very long time.” Harry feels a little nettled at the repe- tition, but he has fully learned by this time the advisability under such circumstances of holding his tongue, and holds it accord- ingly. It will not be very long before he will heartily wish that he had been less judicious, and had pushed the question home to a comparison of dates. As it is, nothing more is said upon the 248 RAM BASS. subject, and tbe two walk up the garden- path side by side. Suddenly the silence is effectually broken by Pluto, who, as they pass by his kennel, appears all in a moment to be quite over- powered by the sentiment of dislike he has so long cherished against his new master, and with a perfect yell of outraged feeling, flies to the very extreme length of his chain. Instantly, Harry, fearing at first that the poor old dog is free, and will be doing his master a mischief, jumps forward and seizes him by the collar, reproving him at the 4 same time in vigorous tones for his ill- behaviour. The old doar’s little burst of temper subsides at the chiding of the well- known voice, as quickly as it broke out, and rearing himself upon his hind legs, he plants his huge fore paws on Harry’s BAM BASS. 249 chest, and slobbers out an affectionate apology. An idea flashes across the mind of Mr. Earn Dass — a pleasing idea, to judge from the smile which accompanies it. “You are fond of that dog, Mr. Forester? ” “Yes, sir, I am. We are very old friends, indeed. Arn’t we, Pluto ? ” Pluto’s tail waves a dignified, but vigorous assent. “ And you are not afraid of him ? ” “ Oh, dear no, sir. He’s as good-natured an old fellow as ever lived, only a little hasty sometimes. Arn’t you, old fellow ? ” Pluto waves assent again, but this time with somewhat more of dignity, and some- what less of vigour. Moreover, he turns one doubtful eye upon his present master, as though making his reservations. “ Just unfasten his chain, will you. 250 BAM BASS. please ? No. Not at the collar ; the other end. I’ll get you to bring him in, and give him a dose for me. He’s not very fond of me, poor beast ; and to tell you the truth, though I am pretty well used to physicking dogs, he is so big and powerful, I hardly care to handle him. But he’s not quite right, and I have just the thing for him in my cabinet. He will take it from you, you know.” “Oh yes, sir; he will take anything from me fast enough. Come along, old man.” So Pluto is brought into the sitting-room, and fastened securely close by the fire- place. The nights are chilly, and Harry quite forgives his employer the little injustice about the fancied delay for the consideration which decides that the old dog shall sleep after his dose in the warm room. BAM BASS. 251 Mr. Earn Dass sits down in his easy-chair, and requests him to open the cabinet, and take down a certain bottle from a corner of the third shelf. Harry obeys. “No, not that bottle, Mr. Forester. Stay though. It would be rather a curious ex- periment. You know that tincture ? ” Harry shakes his head. “ That is the stuff I showed you the other day. The stuff which para- lyses the will, leaving all the other functions of the body to work as before. I have never seen it tried on an animal. But — no — never mind. Ah ! That is the right one, I think. That on the third shelf — right-hand corner. Yes. That is good. Now, take that piece of chicken — poor Mr. Sutcliffe, he could eat no chicken — cut open a little place. So. Now, pour in twenty drops. Good. Now give it to your friend 252 BAII DASS. — your very particular friend, Mr. Forester — ehr’ “Ah, that he is, sir. Poor old boy. Now Pluto — hi ! ” The old dog sits up on his haunches, pricks his ears, and sets his head inquiringly on one side. In another moment, the piece of chicken has gone down his capacious throat like a pill. “Thank you, Mr. Forester. Your friend will be grateful all his life, I am sure. And now — I think you want a fortnight’s holiday ? ” “ Me, sir ! ” “You, sir. It is not long, but it is all I can spare you, and I can only spare it now at once.” “ You are very good, sir — but I ” “You cannot get married in a fort- night ? ” BAM BASS. 253 “ Married, sir ? ” “ To Miss Clarice Orsini, is it not ? ” Harry is not commonly very easily flabbergasted, but tbat is the only expres- sion for his present state. His employer proceeds. “You had better run up to-morrow morning. You know her address, I think. You have written to her there ? ” “ I have, sir, certainly, but ” “Yes. I thought so. Well, you will t arrive there before noon to-morrow. You will give her the kind remembrances of Mr. Manockjee Ram Hass, and with them this small case, which will help to facilitate matters. No if you please,” for Harry is making a gesture of refusal ; “ the hurry is expensive, and the hurry is for my convenience. It must be as I say. You will then go to Doctors’ Commons for your 254 BAM BASS. license. You will get married as soon as you — and the young lady — please. You will spend the remainder of your time in what you call a honeymoon, and to-morrow fortnight you will be here again. That is all understood ? Good. Now, I will ask you to leave at once. No thanks, if you please. Pluto and I will pass the evening together. Good-night.” “ Good-night, sir, and thank you very heartily for your great kindness. You are really too good.” Harry Forester departs, walking upon air. Mr. Ram Hass wheels round his chair till it faces the old dog, now fast asleep upon the bearskin rug, lights a cigar, and waits. Presently the dog begins to stir uneasily in his sleep. Then he moans, as though in pain. IMr. Ram Dass’s eyes are fixed upon him, but he smokes on smilingly. RAM BASS. 255 The moans become louder and more fre- quent, and now he springs to his feet, trembling violently. Mr. Earn Dass smokes on, smilingly as ever. The poor old dog looks at him for a moment piteously, as though in his pain forgetting everything, except that he is a powerful human being, able, surely, to help him. Perhaps it is the expression of his master’s face which undeceives him — perhaps it is only a fresh spasm of still fiercer pain, but the expression of his honest brown eyes changes suddenly from appeal to fury, and he springs towards him with a howl which almost reaches to the ears of his sorely deceived friend, Harry Forester, now whist- ling merrily upon his homeward way. But the chain is strong and securely fas- tened, and the dog’s furious spring only 256 BAM BASS. brings bim with a jerk to the ground. And now howl follows howl in quick succession as the cruel poison does its deadly work, and the white foam flies from his lips, and his soft black coat grows all drenched and matted with the terrible sweat of fever and pain. And so the hours pass away. And Mr. Earn Dass looks on, as he smokes smilingly in his easy-ehair, as Harry Forester’s four- footed “ friend ” rolls in his long death agony at his feet, and the cries of the tor- tured animal ring out upon the night. END OF VOL. II. CHA.SLES DICKERS AJfD EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS. EAM DASS. VOL. III. RAM DASS BY CHARLES FELIX, A.UTHOR or ‘‘the notting hill mystery,” etc. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. ^attbHtt : TIN’SLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND. 1875. [All rights reservedi] CHABLES DICKENS AND EVANSj CBYSTAL PALACE PRESS. EAM DASS. CHAPTER I. “Oh, Harry! What a little paradise!” “ Ah ! Worth doing without a wedding- gown for, wasn’t it, Mrs. Forester ?” “ No, sir, not the least ; and I wonder you have the effrontery to remind me of such a thing. If it had only been that ” “ Well ?” queries the husband. “ Go on. What was it ? ” “I don’t know, sir, at all. Except that I was a very weak woman. Home, indeed !” “ Suppose I was to say, as you are so VOL. III. B 2 BAM BASS. disrespectful to it, you shan’t go into it at all?” “ Then, sir, I should say that you were a very foolish young man. That it is my house, and that I am going to take pos- session of it — so Oh, good gracious !” “You burglarious young person ! What do you mean by Hallo !” And Harry, following his young wife through the drawing- room window, pulls up almost as suddenly as she has pulled up herself ; and the two stand, side by side, staring with all their eyes at a most unexpected and, to one at least, unpleasant apparition. “ Oh, Harry !” “ What the dickens is it ? Why, Clarie — am I dreaming, or have the responsibilities of married life been too much for my over- wrought brain ?” “ Don’t, Harry ! ” “ I didn’t. It wasn’t me. Looks more BAM BASS. 3 like Why, Clarie, it’s you ! You and — yes, by all that’s incomprehensible — the governor ! And awfully well done, too. What on earth does it all mean ?” “ I suppose Mr. Sutcliffe must have sent it, but ” “ What, you know the thing then ?” “ Know it, you foolish boy ; of course I know it. And I’ll trouble you not to call it a ‘thing.’ Why, I painted it my- self.” “ You ! What, with old Earn Dass for a model ?” “Yes. It was rather shocking, wasn’t it? But he didn’t sit, you know. Indeed, he didn’t know anything about it till ” “Till what?” “ Well, till that silly child, Maud, went and brought them all up into my room, and they ” “ Of course, I remember. And that was 4 EAM BASS. tlie picture, was it ? But how on earth did it get here ? ” “I don’t know, I’m sure, unless they sent it. And then it wasn’t framed.” “AVell, we’ll soon learn,” and Harry crosses to the fireplace and rings the hell. Presently steps are heard in the hall, and the handle of the door moves as though taken hold of, hut no one appears. “Come in?” shouts Harry, thinking the new servant may, perhaps, he hashful. “ Who are you ? ” is the unexpected reply, from the other side of the still unopening door. Astounded, Harry strides once more aeross the room, and flings the door wide open. “ Good gracious, Mrs. Tarlett, why don’t you come in ? ” “ La ! Mr. Harry, sir. Is it you ? ” “ Why, who on earth should it he ? ” “ Indeed, I don’t know, sir. But the hall EAM BASS. 5 door have not been opened to my knowledge — which it is locked up now and the chain up — and there’s a many bad characters about, and— ” “ Mrs. Tarlett, ” interposes Harry, with much solemnity. “Let me assure you, that if I had been ” thieves,’ I should not have rung the drawing-room bell.” “ Well, sir. I hope not. Leastways, I don’t quite know about that, sir,” and Mrs, Tarlett shakes her head, with the air of a person better acquainted with the ways of thieves than Mr. Forester is likely to be. Mrs. Harriet Ann Tarlett is the only daughter of old Peter Ockenden, the gnarled and knotty Adam, to whose limited views upon landscape gardening so much of what the artists and people of that sort look upon as the chief charm of the East Dene garden is due. Mrs. Tarlett is a widow, her late husband. 6 BAM BASS. a member of the Lightpool police force,, having been knocked on the head in a street row, not more than two or three years after her marriage. He had, how- ever, lived long enough to impress his widow’s mind somewhat thoroughly with the disadvantages of matrimony in gene- ral, and the inapplicability to matrimonial purposes of the members of the police force, and its analogous services in parti- cular. His widow has, therefore, been content to remain, since his death, now a dozen or more years ago, in the happily regained state of single blessedness, taking charge of her father’s little house, and assisting, when such assistance is required,, at the cottage. Her chief occupation, however, is the reading; of those interesting and instructive romances, the placing of which in the hands of everyone able to muster up a Aveekly BAM BASS. 7 penny for the purchase, is one of the most striking results of the beneficent modern system of universal education. At this moment she is deep in the twenty - third number of the “ Female Turpin,” &c., &c., and the remembrance of how that lovely and accomplished young lady high way- woman has just marched at the head of her band boldly into the mansion of Sir Hildebrand Alvanley, and tying Sir Hildebrand and his guests to their respective chairs and sofas, rung the bell and commanded the trembling valetaille to serve a sumptuous banquet before finally carrying off the entire service of plate, makes her by no means so certain as Harry Forester apparently feels, as to the habits of the thieving fraternity in respect of bells. Fortunately, however, Harriet Ann, as her father commonly calls her, “for short,” is not aware of any precedent for the master 8 BAM BASS. and mistress of the house breaking, with felonious intent, into their own drawing- room, so, having entered her protest against the general prineiple, she is able to devote her mind to Harry’s question, now repeated for the second time, as to the history of this unexpected promotion of the young mistress’s great picture to the place of honour on the drawing-room wall. What is the astonishment of both when Harriet Ann, with a face by no means ex- pressive of any particular respect or liking for Harry’s employer, gravely informs them that the Giudita has been placed in its present conspicuous position by special order of Mr. Ram Hass. “Which I believe as it were a young lady which paid for the frame ; leastways Mr. Har” — Harriet Ann is rather given to desig- nating people by their initials — “ Mr. Har, when he gave the orders, said as it were a BAM BASS. 9 Miss — Miss — yes, well Sutcliffe it might be, some out-of-the-way name I know it were — Miss Sootcliffe as had sent it, with her love, \ to young Madam.” Harry and his wife look at one another, and break into an involuntary laugh. Clarice, however, is a little conscious about the cheeks even now. It is very good-natured both of Maud and of Mr. Earn Hass, certainly ; but, somehow, the Giudita is rather a sore sub- ject with Clarice, and she is not particularly anxious to have it always hung up in that very prominent position, before the eyes of all their friends and acquaintances. “ It’s very awkward, Harry.” I expect he meant to be very polite. He’s really awfully good, Clarice.” “ But we can’t have it hanging here.” “Well, I don’t know. It’s rather big, certainly.” 10 BAM BASS. “ Oh, big ! I don’t care about that. But just look at it.” “ You’ve put your foot in it, young woman ; that is certain. Stay ! I’ve got it.” “ What ? ” “ You say it’s not half-finished. Let’s have it down again, and put it on the easel in the poor dad’s studio.” “ And get ‘ Mr. Har ’ to come and sit ? Well, perhaps, it will be the best way. But how on earth are we to move it in that heavy frame ? ” “ Oh, I’ll get old Ockenden, and some one else in to-morrow, or next day. We’ll manage it.” “ I only hope to goodness no one will call till it’s done.” “ I’ll tell Harriet Ann we’re not at home to the Pope, or the Emperor of Eussia. BAM BASS. 11 And now come and have one look all round the dear old place, and then I must leave my bird to settle down in her new nest, while I go and look up the governor.” CHAPTEK II. There is no need to enter into any detailed account of tlie various events wliich have taken place since Mr. Earn Dass astonished his confidential clerk by the display of such an extremely intimate acquaintance with his private affairs. The events of the last chapter sufficiently show that that gentleman’s benevolent in- tentions with respect to the young lovers have been carried into effect, and the fort- night’s leave duly devoted to marriage and honeymoon, in such proportions as the abso- lute exigencies of the young lady’s wardrobe may have allowed. To judge from Harry’s BAM BASS. IS reference to the absence of a wedding-gown, the delay on this account cannot have been very serious. And, indeed, Clarice Orsini, though by no means altogether above the little vanities of her sex in respect of toilette, is much too sensible and straightforward a girl, to say nothing of her being also much too little trained in small conventionalities, to raise any objection of the kind, when once it becomes obvious that there is a real reason for any little irregularity. The only thing which has at all troubled her, is the part taken in the affair by Mr. Earn Dass. It has been rather a question in her mind in those very few hours which the, to her, rather startling events of the last fortnight have left her for private reflection, how far she ought to acquaint Harry with what has passed between them ; and at first, she has been every moment expecting some allusion 14 BAM BASS. on his part to the theatrical project of which she had written to him, which should have made a reference to the scene at the Stella d’ Italia almost unavoidable. Fortunately, however, as she then thought. Master Harry’s new and most unexpected good fortune appeared to have put out of his head everything else, even the proposition which had at the time so exercised him, that his promised wife should go and earn her living on the stage, under the auspices of some “art patron” of the type with which his own theatrical experience had rendered him pretty familiar. Once married, and fairly set out upon their brief, but perhaps none the less delightful wedding-tour, neither husband nor wife were troubled with reflections of any kind, save only such as took their roseate hue from the present blissful ex- perience. Needless to say, the ten days RAM BASS. 15 which followed the quiet little ceremony at St. Mary’s, Crown Street, had but one fault — they were not thirty. Now they have come to an end, and with the first footfall upon what, though still enchanted, is nevertheless, by comparison, common ground, this question which has so perplexed the last few hours of Clarice’s maiden life, presents itself afresh upon the very threshold of her married home. Somehow, there is in the young wife’s mind a feeling she can no more exorcise than explain. So — had the feathered tribe ever com- mitted any deadly crime, in expiation of which they, like man, had been cursed with self-analysation — might some young hen de- mand of herself the reason of that strange feeling of repulsion always excited in her speckled breast by the most delicate attentions and softest speeches of Mr. Hawk. As it is, 16 BAM BASS. the hen is possessed of a most -unfair ad- vantage. She troubles herself with no puz- zling speculation as to the meaning or the motives which work behind the bright eyes of her sharp-beaked friend. She simply scuttles out of his way as fast as her tight- booted legs can carry her, clucking, as she goes, to all her innocent brood. Poor Clarice has a vague instinctive sense of beak and claws ; but unkind Nature has endowed her with the faculty of taking her sensations to task, and making them give account of themselves. Now her feeling of repulsion as regards Mr. Pam Dass declines to give any account of itself whatever. So far as her reasoning faculties go, her young husband’s employer, instead of wishing harm to either of them, has been exceedingly active in doing good to both. The worst that she can allege against him is that he offered to promote BAM BASS. 17 her own desire of going upon the stage, and actually took the trouble to procure her an engagement. Was it so absolutely impossible for such a thing to be done from any but a sinister motive, that she should be compelled to assume sinister motives, however incon- ceivable, to account for that which, on the surface at least, has been so kind ? Unquestionably reason is altogether opposed to these uncomfortable feelings in Clarice’s mind, and the girl accordingly resolves to shake them off, and meet her lately rejected suitor, should he call at the cottage, as she feels certain he will, in the friendly manner to which — in view always of the obvious unaccountableness of her feelings — he is by his kindness undoubtedly entitled to be re- ceived. Being a practical young woman, too, she resolves that, to this end, the suggested transference of the Giudita to the late Mr. VOL. III. c 18 EAM BASS. Forester’s studio shall be carried out Avith the least possible delay. She is quite con- scious that, so long as it hangs there, every glance at the eager, sensual face of the amorous general will recall to her mind the very look upon the dusky countenance of Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass, as he poured out his passionate appeal, in the little back parlour of the “Star of Italy,” only — good Heavens ! yes — only a fortnight ago. Clarice is sorely vexed at herself, that,, even as she registers in her mind this deter- mination, the doubt will rise whether, after all, it was not Avith the very design of avA^akening such associations that the picture has been placed there. Harry Forester is troubled AAuth no mis- givings, vexed Avith no self-analysis, or self- reproach of any kind, as he comes striding up the path to the front door of CaAA'npore House. BAM BASS. 19 The world just now smiles upon Harry very brightly. He has passed through his little period of depression — -a terrible period he thinks it, poor fellow, having yet to learn what real trial is — and can look back to the time when the future looked dark enough ; when the necessity of abandoning East Dene seemed a fact fixed beyond all question, and the ultimate winning of Clarice Orsini a possibility too remote to be fairly reckoned as the subject even of hope. But all this is to him now a fact of the dim far-off past — one of the troubles of his early life ; almost, as it would seem, of another life of long ago. He is positively startled as he rings the great clanging bell at Cawnpore House, and recalls to mind the feeling with which he listened to its clamour on the occasion of his first visit to his pre- sent employer, and to think that that 20 BAM BASS. anxious day is now distant, as nearly as may be, just six weeks. At all events, Harry has no misgivings about Mr. Earn Dass. Were even Joe Adkins to indulge in any such semi-jocose detraction of the Indian director, as he had beguiled the way withal, on that memor- able occasion, there is little doubt bvit that even Joe Adkins would get a gentle but decided hint to hold his tongue. Harry Forester is one of those few and foolish people who think of, and regulate their behaviour by, favours past, more than by favours to come. “ By Jove ! ” is his final and emphatic summing-up, as the hall door opens in answer to his ring, “ the old boy is a trump, and if anybody calls him the Nana again I’ll tell ’em of it.” Mr. Earn Dass is in his luxurious sitting- room, very much as Harry left him a fort- BAM BASS. 21 night ago. Pluto is no longer there, of course ; and it suddenly strikes Harry, too busy with his retrospect to notice anything as he came up the path, that Pluto was apparently not in the garden either. His employer, however, is speaking, and he has to post- pone his inquiry for the present. “Well, Mr. Forester, have you carried out my instructions ? ” “ To the letter, sir, and you must let me thank you now in my wife’s name as well as my own.” “ Oh ! I intend your wife to thank me herself, Mr. Forester. With your permission, of course — with your permission,” with a smile which would have afforded Joe Adkins the text of a discourse. “ I’m sure, sir, we shall be most happy, and much honoured,” answers Harry, on whose perceptions Mr. Ram Hass’s curious smile is quite thrown away. 22 BAM BASS. “All lias gone well with you — and Madame ? ” “Quite well, thank you, sir. I hope all has gone well here ? ” “ Perfectly well, I thank you. You re- member those securities you brought up by mistake when Mr. Sutcliffe was here a fort- night ago ? ” “ I can assure you, sir, I thought you had mentioned them with the others ? ” “No doubt — no doubt. It was entirely a mistake on your part, of course. But I am not thinking of that. You remember my telling you it was most important they should be safely restored ? ” “You did, sir. By Jove! I hope nothing has gone wrong with them?” “Nothing at all. I was only going to say that it would have been very aAvkward if anything had gone wrong with them, for, only yesterday, we got a large remittance. BAM BASS. 23 with an order to send them home. It would have been awkward if anything had been wrong with them, would it not ? ” “ Very awkward indeed. You may depend on it, I wouldn’t have parted with them easily.” “Yes. You remember how anxious I was at your being so long upon the road ? ” “ And yet I can assure you, sir — ” “ Oh, of course — of course. For a young gentleman in love I think you were really very quick. You will be at the office to- morrow ? ” “Oh, yes, sir, every day now. And many thanks for the holiday. By-the-by, sir, how is poor old Pluto ? I hope he’s all right.” “ Ah ! Pluto ; I had forgotten him. Do you know, Mr. Forester, I fear you must have made a sad mistake that day.” “ Mistake, sir. How ? ” 24 BAM BASS. “ Can you at all remember the place from which you took the bottle ? ” “ Third shelf, sir.” “ Third shelf. Yes, that is right. Where- abouts ? ” “ Eight-hand corner.” “ Exactly. It is very strange.” “ What has happened, sir ? No harm, I hope, to the poor old dog ? ” “ Well, Mr. Forester, I think I remember saying to you — in jest, of course — that the dog would be grateful to you as long as he lived. He did not live very long; yet I fancy those few hours must have been quite enough to exhaust his gratitude.” “ Good Heaven, sir ! What do you mean ? ” “ I mean that the dog died in the course of the night, after suffering for some hours the most frightful tortures ; yes, frightfuL BAM BASS. If you had heard him or seen him, Mr. Forester ” But, sir — how could it ? I took the bottle as I told you. There must have been some horrid blunder.” “ No doubt. I do not suppose you put your friend to tortures of that kind on purpose.” “ By Jove — I wouldn’t. Hang it, I’d as soon have done it to myself.” “ Can you show me the precise place ? ” “ Oh dear yes ; that is the place, and there is the identical bottle now.” ‘‘ Ah ! ” “Well, sir?” “ My very good young friend, excuse an impertinent question, but do you really not know your right hand from your left ? ” “ Well, sir, I hope I do ! ” “ Which is your right hand ? ” 26 BAM BASS. Hany Forester stretches it out, a little impatiently. “ Groocl. Now which is mine ? ” Harry touches Mr. Earn Hass’s right shoulder, this time a little wonderingly, also. “ Good again. Now which is the cabi- net’s ? ” Harry puts out his hand, pauses, draws it half way back again, and turns to his employer Avith a puzzled air. “The cabinet’s, sir?” “ Certainly. You took the bottle from the right of the cabinet, did you not ?” Harry’s hand falls by his side altogether, and his face falls, too. “By Jove ! Poor dear old Pluto !” “ Well ?” “ Oh, I see what you mean noAV, sir ; and of course, if you come to that, it is the proper way of speaking, no doubt. But, BAM DAS8. 27 honestly, sii’, I think nine men out of ten would have made the same blunder.” “ Well, my young friend, you have quite accounted for the catastrophe, at all events. That bottle you selected contains about the most virulent poison in my whole collection ; and what made the selection more particu- larly unfortunate, so far as your friend was concerned, was, that its action, though very violent, is also very slow. I think it must have been three o’clock in the morning before it was over.” “ And could you do nothing, sir ? ” “ Do anything ! He would not have been a wise man that tried. The beast was raving mad, Mr. Forester, snapping and tearing at everything. He bit himself so savagely, that he was one mass of wounds, and would have bled to death in a very little time more. And a bite from him then, as you may perhaps imagine, was certain mad- 28 BAM BASS. ness. When I want to go mad, Mr. Forester, I have plenty of pleasanter means there.” Harry Forester gives an involuntary shiver, as he follows the direction of his employer’s finger to the cabinet, whose contents have already worked, in his own experience, one such distressing catastrophe. “ Upon my word, sir, without meaning any offence, I can’t help wondering you’re not afraid of having such horrid things loose about you.” Mr. Ram Dass smiles again, and, for the moment, even Harry could half agree with Joe Adkins, as to the expression which that smile gives to his dusky features. “You see, Mr. Forester, I am a little more careful in my manipulation of those ‘ horrid things.’ For instance, when I give myself haschish — and, strictly, between ourselves, I am rather fond of an occasional dose of BAM BASS. 29 haschish — I am particvilaiiy careful not to make any confusion between right hands and left, and help myself to half a dozen drops or so out of this little bottle here, which, I think, I have shown you before.” “Yes, sir, I know. The stuff that makes you not know what you’re doing.” “ Precisely. That would be awkward, would it not, if any one should come in and find me ? ” Harry smiles a little feebly. He quite appreciates what he regards as his em- ployer’s amiable desire to l)righten him up, and remove the unpleasantness occasioned by the discovery of poor Pluto’s terrible end, and its cause ; but he does not feel quite up to the mark just at the moment, and takes his way home much more soberly than he came. Mr. Earn Dass, on the other hand, seems to appreciate amazingly the excellent jest 30 BAM BASS. of liis confidential clerk’s confusion between his left hand and his right. The smile with which he has bidden good-bye to Harry, grows decidedly wider as that young gentleman’s back is turned, and he walks away down the gravelled path. Presently it expands into what Joe Adkins would unquestionably term a grin. Harry has reached that part of the path, on passing by which he has been accustomed to be greeted by Pluto with those affectionate demonstrations which contrasted so forcibly with his by no means cordial reception of his nominal master. Here he stops, and for a moment or two looks sadly at the empty kennel. The ex- pression on Mr. Earn Dass’s countenance the while is a sight to see. CHAPTER III. Save for that untowa. d affair of poor Pluto — with regard to which Harry feels, it must be owned, an amount of remorse which fully justifies his amiable employer’s previsions, and which some of our young men of the period would no doubt consider highly absurd — the course of events at East Dene is now as nearly rose-coloured as it is often the custom of sublunary events to be. They are exceedingly fond of each other, this young couple, so suddenly and unex- pectedly delivered from the difficulties by which, only such a very little time ago, both of them were so grievously beset, and placed 32 BAM BASS. at a bound upon wbat either would have declared before — as both would, if put to the question, unhesitatingly declare now — the very pinnacle of bliss. Perhaps, in the way of relief from anxiety, Harry’s gain from Mr. Ram Dass’s munificence has been, taken altogether, the greater of the two. In any joint dilemma of the kind, the calculation of Avays and means falls for the most part, naturally and properly, to the share of the masculine partner. Not that his helpmeet, if she is to be in any way Avorthy of the name, is without her share even of this trouble. But her share is, and should be, even for her partner’s sake, limited as closely as possible to the eking out, as far and as effectively as she may, the means at her disposal. The chief labour of the providing of those means must inevitably, — except only in cases Avhere the proper rdles masculine and feminine arc interchanged — BAM BASS. 33 fall upon the shoulder of her mate, who will, as a rule, have in her in turn a helpmeet precisely in the proportion in which she recognises this distribution of responsi- bility. When pole or skid-chain breaks going down hill, it is a terrible temptation to loving Joan on the box-seat to do her utmost towards the saving of her darling Darby’s neck by getting her own pretty little hands alongside his upon the reins. As a rule, Joan will find that Darby’s neck — saying nothing of her own, to the safety of which she is comparatively indifferent — will have a much better chance of arriving unbroken upon the next level ground if she will but put it firmly out of her head, and employ the pretty little hands exclusively in the seemingly selfish work of holding on. The anxieties which beset Harry and his betrothed, in their ante-Darby-and-Joan stage. VOL. III. D 34 BAM BASS. had been modified very much, in this sense, by their respective dispositions, without wait- ing for the comparatively artificial division of responsibility effected by marriage. Harry is naturally, as has been seen, of a prudent turn ; given to the looking forward which is so essential a feature of all habits of business, and with an inclination to “see his way ” before going upon it, rather un- usual at his time of life. Clarice, on the other hand, has a natural turn for faith, largely developed by the con- ditions under which her life has hitherto been passed. From hand to mouth is, so far as her brief experience goes, the natural order of existence. It is only within the last few sad months that she has had occasion to speculate even upon that interval, and the speculation has not yet assumed dimensions serious enough gravely to disturb her faith. BAM BASS. 35 There is a good deal of the “young raven” about her still. En revanche, if Harry gets rid of the greater burthen of anxiety, Clarice is un- questionably the greater gainer in respect of physical comfort. To the more than half Italian girl — Italian wholly in everything but the speaking of English, which her father had insisted upon her keeping up, and a certain pride in being an Englishwoman, chiefly fostered by her mother’s dutiful efforts to subdue it — ^the months spent in Broadford and in London — nay, even the year passed under what her English countrymen and countrywomen would call the bright sky of Paris — had been an experience anything but rose-coloured. Of the Yorkshire manufacturing town, with its dirty streets, smoky skies, and studiously boorish inhabitants, she can hardly even 36 BAM BASS. now think without something very like a shudder. To Clarice, coming almost straight from Muddingham Lane and Soho, East Dene is, indeed, as she herself enthusiastically phrased it, at her first introduction, a little Paradise. Perhaps, when spring shall have come round once more with its bright profusion of delicate apple-blossom and glowing red May, and brilliant laburnum, and soft sweet masses of lilac and rhododendron ; or summer follows with its wealth of roses, and honey- suckle, and tall Madonna lily, its luscious air glittering with bright-hued butterflies, and musical with cuckoo and nightingale, and the warm drowsy noontide hum of bees ; then, perhaps, she may learn to believe it possible that there may be a lovelier Para- dise than East Dene is now — always, of course, on the understanding that such still more highly favoured spot shall be none BAM BASS. 37 other than the East Dene of summer or of spring. At present East Dene, in autumn time, is her very ideal of what heaven must be, if it is at all to rival earth. Her artistic nature revels in the mighty symphony of reds and browns, the blaze of fiery Virginia creeper, the intricate harmonies of beech and elm and chestnut, the deep rich bass of cypress and copper-beech and tall stately pine. It is of very little importance that, save for a rare note here and there, the musical season is over in grove and garden, and the feathered professors settled down to the more serious business of life. There is music enough in one young wife’s heart to supply the silence of all the flutterers that ever chirped in Eden ; and even to compare the melody which, when Harry’s short day’s work is done, now fills the leaf-strewn lawn or yellowing shrubbery with any ever yet heard there by 38 BAM DA88. sun or moon, would be, in Clarice’s opinion at least, to pay to nightingale and thrush a compliment altogether out of reason. How much of this enthusiastic delight in her new abode might be fairly due to these really remarkable beauties, so much appre- ciated by the late owner’s artist friends — how much might perhaps be traceable to the decidedly rose-coloured glasses through which they are viewed, it would, perhaps, be too curious to inquire. Both causes, no doubt, contribute ; either might very possibly have sufficed. To an artistic nature, like that of Clarice, such an abode as East Dene could hardly fail of being delightful,, even without the glamour of young and happy love ; to a newly-wed bride, still over head-and-ears in love with her young husband, and still fresh to the change from very dreary dependentship to the freedom of a thoroughly congenial marriage, under BAM BASS. 39 the most entirely comfortable circumstances ; with a handsome, good-natured, by no means dull, young fellow, every whit as deep in love as herself, Soho or Muddingham Lane might have provided a sojourn not alto- gether without its charms. Even household cares — a feature of wedded life which, to the most immaculate aspirants after the Dunmow Flitch, does not appear to preserve for any very extensive period its earlier charms — are, as yet, less a trouble than a delight. Harriet Ann is not, perhaps, a model servant ; the new cook, who, in the course of a very few days, comes to replace her, does not, on the whole, differ from the rest of her intelligent sisterhood, in regarding the dressing of viands as an art altogether contemptible and derogatory to a free-born British female, except in so far as it can be made pro- ductive of “ dripping,” and other small 40 BAM BASS. acknowledged, or unacknowledged, perquisites of her position ; whilst the pretty house and parlour maid has views upon the subject of chignons, and ribbons, and flounces, and Sundays out, and other little matters of this kind, which, to a less indulgent or more experienced mistress, would savour of “ hussy ”-hood, pure and simple. But to happy Clarice, all these are, as yet, matters simply of amusement. As for the ribbons and the chignons, the former quite meet with her approbation. She likes to have pretty things about her and to make the best of them, and Eliza is a very pretty little thing — chosen, indeed, if truth must be told, not a little on that account ; and it would be very hard if she forbade her to make the best of herself, so far as a bright ribbon or two would effect that desirable end. As an artist, Clarice cannot but think the little grisette-cap very BAM BASS. 41 much more picturesque and becoming than the greasy mass of somebody else’s hair which is apt to hang somewhat loosely from the back of pretty Eliza’s empty little head. But pretty Eliza’s empty little head is much too empty to grasp an idea of this kind ; and, after all, it is her affair, poor child, and what does it matter ? The Sundays out, she is inclined to think, come rather too often, but as for the “ follower ” — there is only one, of course, though his appetite at times must be really remarkable— both she and her young husband are clearly of opinion that there can be nothing more conducive to a pretty girl’s good conduct than a recognised attachment, and take great interest in Miss Eliza’s love affair. As for cook, if a hearty young appetite, a healthy young digestion, and the as yet un- consumed better half of a honeymoon, will not suffice to cover a few deficiencies of cuisine. 42 BAM BASS. Heaven help us all in merry England, where, if Heaven have been unusually beneficent in the sending of good meat, we assuredly have been proportionately unfortunate in the quar- ter to which we have gone for our cooks. Clarice has not yet even given up the idea of some day succeeding in teaching Nancy Jane how to dress some part, at least, of a dinner. She has already pre- sented her with a cookery-book, with which the two hold solemn consultation for half an hour or so every morning, Nancy pro- fessing the while the profoundest interest in what she terms to herself “ missus’s vagaries,” and which affords an inexhaust- ible fund of amusement to Nancy and Eliza and Eliza’s young man and — well, anyone else who may happen to drop in now and again for a quiet cup of tea. The results of the consultations afford an almost equal amount of amusement in the dining-room ; BAM BASS. 43 so that, on the whole, the cookery-book, though hardly, perhaps, answering very fully the particular end for which it was pur- chased, may be regarded, by a mind capable of taking a larger view, as a distinguished success. Meanwhile, the smiling tradesmen are not at all in a hurry about sending in their bills— indeed, exhibit a singular dislike to doing so ; and Clarice, secure in her remem- brance of the very few soldi per diem which had sufficed for quite luxurious living on the sunny banks of the dear old Arno, encounters such matters gaily enough, think- ing on the noble surplus she will have at the end of the month, with which to buy Harry a really handsome gold watch and chain, instead of the old silver thing with the plain black guard, which sensible Harry has thought quite good enough for the last eight or nine years. 44 EAM BASS. Very charming is Harry’s young wife found to be by all Harry’s old friends, not at all disposed to be too easy in their esti- mate of what is required from a wife for his father’s son. The girl is so handsome and so happy, so thoroughly convinced that her Harry is the cleverest and best man that ever breathed, and so fully prepared to accept every one who is duly fond of him, as amongst the next best and cleverest of men and women, that there is simply nothing for them to do but accept her in return, and congratulate themselves upon the accession to East Dene of the one thing that always charming abode has for so many years wanted to make it absolutely perfect. Old Ockenden and his daughter are the only two within reach who do not instantly succumb to the charm. No doubt, even with them, it can only be a question of time, or MAM BASS. 45 so, at all events, thinks Harry, not a little irate, at first, at the old man’s lack of cor- diality towards his new young mistress, and only dissuaded by Clarice herself from finally accepting the ‘‘ month’s warning,” which, ac- cording to family tradition, it has been his custom, from time immemorial, to give at least six times in every year, and which, on this occasion, is promptly elicited by Clarice’s sudden swoop, the very evening of her arrival,, upon a whole basketful of “ his ” flowers for the adornment of her drawing-room. Old Ockenden has been used to having altogether his own way. He was a young man when Harry’s father first came to be East Dene’s owner, and that crabbed likeness of father Adam first shouldered spade and hoe in his service. That was now forty -five years ago, and in those forty-five years the old man, who had quarrelled Avith his master on an average, at 46 BAM BASS. least, twice a clay throughout the period, had grown gradually into a sort of dog-like attachment to him, which displayed itself now in singular, and indeed rather awkward, fashion. Every flower “ the master ” had touched ; every path or spot of turf upon which his foot had trodden, are to the old man alto- gether hallowed ; and, as “ the master ” spent at least twelve hours of every fine day in his garden, and, of late years, did perhaps almost as much there as old Ockenden him- self, this connection is, as may be imagined, pretty fairly universal. Now the few flowers “young Master Harry” gathers for himself are all very well. Young Master Harry has been privileged in this respect all his life ; and, moreover, in some ways, old Ockenden is prepared to recognise the principle of “ Le roi est mort, vive le Toi!” But with Master Harry’s new wife. BAM BA88. 4<7 a stranger to the family, and foreigneering young woman to hoot, it is quite another matter. Master Harry intimates, in the unmistak- able tones natural to youth, that Mrs. Forester will do exactly as she pleases with every flower and every stick about the place ; and, in such modified fashion as her good-natured tenderness for the old man’s foible dictates, Mrs. Forester does, of course, Avhat she pleases accordingly. But the grudge on the old gar- dener’s side is very strong indeed. Save only for this one little breath of opposition — an opposition which the girl, with her quick instinct, traces at once to its true source, rather honouring the old man for it than otherwise — Clarice is received by all with open arms ; and the girl basks and revels in the sunshine, literal and meta- phorical, of her bright new home. Even her doubts as to Mr. Ram Hass have vanished 48 BAM BASS. like last year’s ice. Had she even time to think of such things, she would laugh at the absurd misconstruction she had once put upon what, as she views them now, were so evidently the honest kindnesses of a true friend. She has almost got over even the curious physical repulsion, which still somehow seems to creep over her in his company, especially when that old Holo- fernes look comes into his eyes, as she often fancies she can feel it come, even when she is not looking towards him. What it is which gives her that tingling sensation in neck, or arm, or shoulder, as though the glance of those glittering black eyes had actually touched her skin, as it passes over them, she cannot say. It is a purely physical sensation ; and when she does think of it, which is but rarely, she is inclined to attribute it to some peculiarity in the natural glance of the Indian’s eyes. She is BAM DASS. 49 fast growing too accustomed to his presence to think of it at all ; for Mr. Ram Dass is almost constantly at East Dene — so con- stantly, that old Ockenden is fast finding out a fresh grievance, and is already be- ginning to shake his head. So glide away the first few weeks of Clarice Forester’s wedded life ; the halcyon brooding over the bright summer sea, with not a sign in all the broad blue heaven of any coming storm. TOL. III. E CHAPTER IV. It bursts sharply and suddenly when it does come. Nearly six weeks have elapsed since Harry and Clarice came home from their short wedding trip, and these six weeks have been weeks of such unalloyed happi- ness as they shall never again know all their lives long. For, be the sunshine of the after days as glorious as it may, there wiU ever be the memory of this terrible period of storm and darkness, to sober, if not to shadow, it. The little cloud, like a man’s hand, comes stealing up into the sky one November BAM BASS. 51 morning, as Clarice returns from her cus- tomary stroll, with her husband, as far as the commencement of the streets, on his way to business, and takes up two or three tradesmen’s books, which, by dint of per- sistent asking, she has, at last, induced their smiling authors to send in. In ten minutes more, with flushed cheeks, sparkling eyes, and something very like a frown upon her brow, she is again upon her way to the town, this time not to stop short at the commencement of the streets by any means. By the time of Harry’s return, she has collected, with her own hands, a full state- ment of account from every shop at which she has dealt ; has had a long consultation with a motherly old lady, a great friend of her dead father-in-law, to whom she has taken a great fancy, and has finally made up her mind — first, to the extreme improba- 52 BAM BASS. bility, despite the evident robbery Avhicb lias been carried on, of getting so much as a sixpence deducted from the horrible totals which stare her so grimly in the face ; and, secondly, as to the line of conduct to be pursued in future to avoid the accumula- tion of any similar array. “ Harry, I have made a goose of my- self.” “ Have you, darling ? What fun ! Tell us all about it.” “ No, dear, it's not fun by any means. I mean to tell you all about it, of course, but I am afraid you will be very angry.” Harry looks a little puzzled by this solemn announcement, but is about to make some playful reply, when Clarice lays one white hand upon his lips, and with the other lays before him the list of totals duly and accu- rately cast up. “ Phew ! ” It is all that, for the moment. BAM BASS. 53 the young master of the house can find to say. “ I knew you would be shocked, darling, and if you scold me ever so much I can’t be more sorry than I am. But, you see, I had never kept house, except in Italy, and—” Stuff and nonsense, my pet — scold you ! As if I should dream of such a thing, or as if there were anything to scold about. Of course we’ve made a pair of lunatic noodles of ourselves, and shall have to pinch and screw a bit till we’ve made up for it. But there’s no real harm done, old woman — and as for scolding-! — by Jove, I shall, though, if you begin to make your- self miserable about it.” “No, Harry, dear ; I’m not making my- self miserable. I’m only thinking how good you are.” “ Ah ! That’s something like a subject •54 BAM BASS. for contemplation, isn’t it ? And now, just sit down here, and let’s go into committee of ways and means. Can you pay all this 1 ” “ No. That I can’t.” / “ All right, I can. It won’t leave us much in the bank, though, even with what there still is of the governor’s advance to me.” And Harry winces a little as he thinks of the half-year’s salary which good Mr. Ram Dass has insisted on advancing towards the inevitable expenses of settling a young bride comfortably down in a house wherein no female foot has been set for twenty years. There are not very many pounds remaining out of that generous ad- vance unappropriated, and Harry, for the first time, thinks what would happen if he were to be taken ill, or in anyway incapaci- tated from doing his work. And the thought is uncomfortable. “ I have been thinking it all over, Harry, BAM BASS. 65 and am pretty sure that, if we take the bull by the horns at once, get rid of the two servants, who must certainly have robbed us shamefully, have in Harriet Ann every day as before, and cut down the butcher and baker as low as ever we can, we shall be all straight again by Christmas.” So in this way it is settled. Harry, who is a determined and highly practical young gentleman, and not at all disposed to Avaste any further money upon those who most .assuredly must have feathered their own nests from off his proper back pretty Avell already, sends on the spot for pretty Eliza and good-natured Nancy Jane, gives those excellent domestics the choice of quit- ting the establishment within an hour, without beat of drum, or undergoing the examination, first of a constable, and then of a magistrate, into the contents of sundry boxes, now lying .upstairs in a terribly unprepared trim for 56 BAM BASS. such a visitation ; and in due time returns, from seeing them safely off the premises, to sit down, with decidedly restored spirits, to a highly simple refection of cold meat and fried potatoes, prepared and served up hy the white hands of Clarice herself. These decisive measures taken, the young’ couple grow quite merry again. Clarice rolls back the sleeves from her shapely white arms, and proceeds to wash up the dinner things. Harry marches off, with a silver candlestick in one hand and a coal-scuttle in the other, for a supply of fuel. This playing at house- hold work is really rather fun, and they are by no means sure that they are not entering upon a fresh and highly novel phase of enjoy- ment, and half-inclined to dispense even with the assistance of Harriet Ann. Then a sharp ring comes to the hall door. “ Now, John ! ” cries Clarice, laughingly ; and Harry goes off to answer it. BAM BASS. 57 “ If you please, sir, will you come up to the House directly. It’s very important.” The “ House ” is, of course, Cawnpore House, and the messenger is a small boy attached to that establishment for the clean- ing of boots and running of errands. “ It’s a horrid nuisance, darling,” says Harry, returning with a decidedly lengthened face ; “a double nuisance, and just as we were getting so jolly too. But I suppose I must go.” “ Oh yes, dear ; of course. But be back as quick as you can, and I’ll have tea ready for you.” Harry laughingly declines the wet hand she holds out maliciously to him, presses instead some half-dozen kisses on the dimpled elbow, and starts off at his best pace for Cawnpore House. “ Mr. Forester, I want you to help me to decipher this telegram. It is something 58 BAM DA88. about those securities, you remember, that you brought up here by mistake one day, and which were sent out in September by the Pera.” “ Nothing gone wrong with them, I hope, sir ? ” “Well, I’m afraid there is.” Harry looks up, a little aghast. Yet, somehow, the expression on Mr. Ram Hass’s face is not such as he would have expected to see there Avere anything really the matter in so important a business. Of the tvm, Harry would be rather inclined to imagine that his employer had just received some particularly welcome news. Can Mr. Ram Hass be playing with him ? ” “You see,” that enigmatical gentleman goes on, “ the telegram is addressed to me, personally, not to the bank, and is in our private cypher. I can translate it, easily enough, all but the last Avord, and that BAM BASS. 59 makes simple nonsense of the whole. See.” The Indian holds out to his confidential clerk the sheet of thin paper, on which is written in pencil the somewhat quaint and very meaningless-looking collection of words, forming the cypher message: “ Bumhledom dynasty lies dinner-plate.” Harry, however, is too well accustomed to messages of this kind to give even a moment’s thought to the absurdity of the form, and turns at once to the private book. Mr. Ram Dass reads the message, word by word, and word by word he looks it nut. “ Bumhledom ? ” “ Yes, sir ; ‘ Dheen Sahib,’ ‘ documents,’ ^ dungaree.’ ” “ Dynasty f ” “Yes. ‘Five pounds,’ ‘forwarded by.’” 60 BAM BASS. ‘‘Lies?" “ ‘ Last Mail but one — Lucknow,’ and ‘ looking-glass.’ ” “ Dinner-plate ? ” ‘‘‘Foreign,’ sir. Nothing else.” “ That is exactly what I make of it. Now, how do you read it ? ” “ I can’t read it at all, sir. The last word must be ‘ foreign.’ Neither ‘ Dheen-Sahib,’ ‘ five jDOunds,’ nor ‘ looking-glass,’ will come in at all, and what can be meant by either ‘ dungaree ’ or ‘ documents,’ forwarded by ‘ last mail but one ’ being ‘ foreign,’ I can’t understand at all. I suppose there is no doubt about its being ‘ documents ? ’ ” “I should think not. We have forwarded no dungaree at all, have we ? ” “Not since the first week I came, sir. And then it Avas by long sea.” “ Can you suggest anything, or must Ave have it repeated ? ” And again the BAM DA88. 61 curious look comes over Mr. Ram Dass’s face. “ Let me look at the telegram again, sir. Yes, I believe I have it. If you will look, I think you will see something at the end of the word ‘ dinner-plate.’ I believe it ought to be ‘ dinner-plates.’ ” Mr. Ram Dass must have great faith in the powers of discernment possessed by his young clerk, for he does not even glance at the word in question as he replies : ‘‘ I believe you are right. You are always invaluable, Mr. Forester. Please to see what there is under ‘ dinner-plates.’ ” Harry turns again to the code. “ ‘ Dinner-plates ; ’ yes, ‘ Fyzabad ‘ Fish- monger.’ Good God ! ” “ Eh ! I beg your pardon. I did not quite catch that last word.” Without speaking, Harry holds out the code, his finger on the word in question. 62 BMI BASS. Again, a close observer might have fancied that Mr. Earn Dass must have some occult mode of perception, and can read without turning his eyes upon the page. Harry Forester, however, is himself in much too serious a state of perturbation to notice anything whatever. What his precise fear is he hardly knows ; indeed, it is no defined fear which has come upon him. Only a dull, sickening sense of some terrible danger. His very blood runs cold as his employer goes on in his softest voice : “ Certainly, Mr. Forester. That is it, of course. How strange that it should not have occurred to me ! The telegram reads that way perfectly : — “ ‘ The documents forwarded hy the last mail hut one are Forgeries ! ! ’ ” CHAPTER V. It is not very long before the vague feeling of fear and apprehension, wliiclr lias come over Harry’s mind, defines itself with suffi- cient sharpness. The telegram, which has rewarded his skill in deciphering by so startling a reve- lation, is, according to what Mr. Ram Hass has told him, addressed only to that gentle- man, and in his private capacity, not in any way as a director of the Lightpool and Mofussil Bank. There can be no doubt, however, but that, even should no further telegram arrive, the very first mail will bring to the board of that establishment a 64 BAM BASS. letter, detailing the facts of the case, and demanding both investigation and restitu- tion. The question is, can anything he done meanwhile ; and if so, what, and by whom ? This question preys not a little upon Harry Forester’s mind all through the night. It is the first time that he has been brought into personal contact with any complication of the kind ; and though it certainly does not appear, even to his excited imagination, that he himself can personally be in any way a sufferer by it, except by such indirect loss as may perhaps accrue to him through injury to his employer, he yet cannot resist a certain feeling of vague uneasiness ; and long after Clarice is dreaming of a general attack upon her larder by a whole army of servants and tradespeople, effectively routed BAM BASS. GS by Harry and herself under brisk application of the garden-engine, he lies awake anxiously canvassing all sorts of impossible measures for the detection of the forger, and specu- lating upon the probable results to the bank, to his employer, and to himself, should such detection never come to pass. Mr. Earn Dass — perhaps from temperament, perhaps from greater experience in such mat- ters, perhaps from some other cause — appears to take matters much more coolly. And when, in due course, he arrives at his office next morning, the anxious young clerk is so startled at the almost entire absence of any apparent change in his manner that, for the moment, he is half inclined to ask himself whether he has not been dreaming, and whether the whole affair of the cypher tele- gram is not a mere myth. As the day wears on, however, he feels that there is a change in his employer’s VOL. III. F 66 BAM BASS. manner ; thougli it is a change which, like his own feeling of uneasiness, is almost im- possible to define. Harry finally arrives at the conclusion that it is only that Mr. Earn Dass is a little quieter in his manner, and that the black eyes are, perhaps, turned in his direction a little more frequently than usual. Presently he becomes uneasy under this continued, but silent observation ; and, taking- advantage of a moment when his employer had just finished one letter, and appears in no particular hurry to begin another, he boldly goes up to his desk, and asks if any- thing more has been heard about last night’s telegram. “ Nothing whatever. I conclude no mes- sage has reached the bank, or they would have sent to me.” “ It is a very strange business, sir.” “ Very, indeed.” BAM BASS. 67 ‘‘Is there anything I could do?” “I do not know. What do you think ? ” Something in the tone of this last remark seems to jar on Harry’s ears. But he puts the notion aside as fanciful, and answers simply, and without arriere pensee : — “ I cannot tell, sir, I am sure. Shall I go up to the bank?” “ Perhaps it would be as well. And you had better learn, as far as you can, the exact particulars of the manner in which the papers were sent out, and who despatched them. Do not ask from me, you know. It might arouse suspicion. Get at the facts incidentally, as if for yourself.” Harry goes on his way, and in half an hour returns, but with no enlightenment in his face. The documents were despatched in the usual way, and with all the usual for- malities and precautions. The manager him- F 2 68 BAM BASS. self sent them off, and every step in the transaction is as regular and as clearly recorded as possible. No suspicion, he says, in answer to Mr. Ram Dass’s questions, appears to have been excited by his in- quiries. The whole affair was of too regular and commonplace a nature for any question to arise about it in the minds of any con- cerned. One remark, however, has been mad-e, which somehow has produced in Harry’s mind a strangely unaccountable feeling of annoyance. Mr. Williams has happened to be present during the few words which have been said about these unlucky documents, and has once more recalled to his attention a fact which really seems to haunt him. “ What are you talking about ? Those securities of Ram Dass and Co. ? By Jove ! we remember them, don’t we, old fellow ? Close upon eight it was that night, before BAM BASS. 69 I got away. Confound the whole con- cern !” “Not quite so late as that, I think?” “ Egad ! it was, though. Til take my solemn it was ever so much after the half- hour, at all events ; and all for nothing, too, I know.” This continual recurrence on all sides, as it were, to some supposed delay in the deal- ing with those important documents on this particular occasion, makes Harry very un- comfortable — he cannot say why, for of course the occurrence in question can have nothing to do with the present difficulty. But some- how it makes him anxious, and he cannot make up his mind altogether to quit the subject. In another minute his vague uneasiness takes a terribly definite form. “ It’s a very unpleasant business, sir,” he ventures, under this difficulty of silence. 70 RAM BASS. “Very unpleasant indeed, I am afraid. Especially for you.” “ For me ! ” “I fear so.” Then, after just sufficient pause to accentuate the sentence which ensues, and with an obvious intention which sends the blood surging to Harry’s face, he adds, “You clearly understand that I do not purpose saying anything of this to the board until they have been first informed of the matter from Calcutta.” “ In Heaven’s name, sir, what do you o mean ^ And then his employer tells him what he means. Goes through the whole story; not only of the bringing to Cawnpore House, by his mistaken direction, of these documents, so strangely tampered with, and their return under his sole charge, but of all proceedings, on his part, both before and after, which EAM BASS. 71 might seem in any way to bear upon the matter. Harry’s blood begins to run very cold. “You see, Forester, the whole thing is most unfortunate. Here you are left, accord- ing to common report, altogether without fortune. Of course you will understand I speak of report only.” “ It is quite true, sir,” interposes Harry. ■“ Or quite true enough, at all events.” “ At all events, it is what people think. Your late father’s house — always, of course, speaking with the mouth of common report — ^your late father’s house is to be put up for sale ” Harry nods, silently. “ In fact everything indicates that you are by no means well off.” “ Hardly a shilling, sir. I know that ; but what ” What has that to do with the question ? 72 TvAM BASS. Listen, and yon will hear. Suddenly you withdraw your place from the market ; you marry ; you set up an establishment ; you ” “ But, sir,’^ interposes Harry, driven to extremity, “ all this was — — ” “Was my doing ? I do not say other- wise. I am speaking only of what the world will think, and what you will have to meet if you wish to silence it.” “Well, sir, perhaps it is. But how can the world make all this out to have any- thing to do vdth — with- ” “ With these forgeries ? Nothing, perhaps. With the suspicion concerning them, much. Without my instructions- — yes ; do not in- terrupt me. You were under a mistake, of course, but there is just the difficulty. Without my instructions, and just at this time, when you are suddenly entering upon this heavy expenditure, you apply in my BAM BASS. 73 name for these papers, and bring them here. Going back they are intrusted to your sole charge, and, what is the most unfortunate circumstance of all, you appear to have been a long time upon the way. *0f course, you went straight there ? ” “ Well, sir. Almost straight. I just ran up to the cottage as I passed, to tell them to put off dinner. But I was not two minutes.” Mr. Earn Dass’s eyes sparkle here like a pair of malicious diamonds. He has never before heard of this. The chain is complete now, indeed. “You went into your own house — taking those papers with you ? ” “ I did, sir. But, as I said, for barely two minutes. In Heaven’s name, sir, what is it ? You don’t think — you can’t sus- pect ? ” “ My very unfortunate — perhaps I should 74 BAlsr BASS. say my very unwise — young friend, I sup- pose yon inigiit possibly have spent those two minutes to more fatal effect. But you would have required the aid of a pistol — or a rope.” “Why?” “For simple reasons. These papers were carefully verified when taken over by the bank. They have been ever since then in the strong-room of the bank, except on one occasion. On that one occasion they were, on your own shovdng, taken by you — ^without witnesses— into your own house.” “Well, sir? I brought them straight out again.” “It is not I who say you did not. But — stop a moment, please. To those who do say that you did not, how do you propose to prove it ? ” “Why, sir, there the papers are.” “ On the contrary, there they are not.” RAM BASS. 75 “ Not tliere, sir ! Why ” And then Harry stops, aghast. “ Now, do you understand ? ” Poor Harry thinks, hesitates, ruffles his curly brown hair with his hand. “ Ton my soul, I don’t, sir. I see it looks very awkward — somehow. But — I did take them back. And I did give them to Williams, and I saw him, myself, put them back into the strong-room.” “ That is just the point. They are not found in the strong-room.” “Not found there! Where, then, sir?” “Nowhere. They are not found.” “ Why, I thought they were sent. Oh 1 great Heaven ! ” “ Exactly. Now, you see it. The true papers are placed in the strong-room, and I'emain there until given into your charge. The papers handed back by you are kept in the strong-room, until sent out to India, 76 BAM BASS. and then prove to be forgeries. You are . a mathematician, I think ? Let us eliminate the strong-room from both sides of the equation. How does it then stand ? The original papers are handed to you. The papers you return prove to be forgeries, substituted in their place. Do you see 0 now { Yes ; Harry sees it all — ^with very terrible clearness. Somehow it has never occurred to him that these forged papers which have been detected at Calcutta are — or are assumed or asserted to be — really different papers from those originally deposited at the bank. He has had somehow a vague idea that they were the same documents, only in some way tampered with, and that he, as having had them in his hands, is more or less unplea- santly mixed up with the affair. Now, for the first time, he realises his true position. It is not any mere careless- BAM BASS. 77 ness of which he is likely to he suspected, and which, even so, could not have the remotest hearing on the present catastrophe. It is of the actual forgery itself. Of having, with his own hands, stolen the original securities, and then fabricated and substi- tuted the false documents in their place. And upon what evidence ! Harry’s brain is bewildered, rocking, as it were, to and fro with the violence of the shock. But, even so, he recognises but too plainly the fatal, deadly clearness of what, even to him- self, looks almost like proof. For a few moments he stands in absolute silence ; trying, as it were, to steady his reeling consciousness. Then he turns to his employer, and, looking straight at him with his honest grey eyes, says in a low but very clear voice : “ Mr. Earn Dass, will you please answer me one thing?” 78 BAM BASS. “ Certainly.” “Do you in any way suspect me?” “Not the least in the world. I am per- fectly satisfied you know nothing whatever* about it.” “ God bless you, sir.” “But ” Mr. Bam Dass pauses ; and Harry, who has turned away for a moment, very need- lessly ashamed of the moisture which just now fills the honest grey eyes very near the brim indeed, looks round again. “ But I fear you will find but too many who will do so.” “ I fear so, too. Indeed, honestly, looking only at the outside of things, I don’t *see how any one can do otherwise. What on earth am I to do ?” “ Do you ask my advice ? ” “ I shall be most grateful if you will give it.” BAM DA88. 79 ” And will you take it ? ” “Not much, doubt of that, sir, I think.” “Then I should advise you to bow to circumstances, and make the best of your time.” “ Of course, sir. But how ? ” “ Secure your own safety. By the time the mail arrives, you will be beyond reach.” “ Do you mean run away ? ” “ For the time only, of course. Stay — the very thing. We have an agency at Zanzibar — you shall go ” “ Forgive my interrupting you, sir. It’s awfully good of you — but I couldn’t really. Why, it would be as good as saying I had done it.” Mr. Ram Dass shrugs his shoulders, with a grimace which seems strangely mixed up wdth a very decided scowl. “ You are strange, you English. But — as you please.” 80 BAM BASS. ” And, besides, sir, my wife. I could not take her.” “Of course not. We would take care of her.” “You are very kind, sir ; but ” “ But you think you would rather take her to Lightpool gaol ? ” “ I hope and pray it won’t come to that, sir. But, any way, I’d rather stay with her and face the worst.” “ Very good. Please yourself. You’ll have to face it. That’s all.” And Mr. Ram Dass walks off in evident duds-eon. And Harry, in the midst of his own absorbing trouble, looks after him with eyes of astonished gratitude, for the warm interest thus displayed in his concerns. CHAPTER VI. Maple Lodge is shut up. On that memorable Tuesday morning, now more than two months ago, when John Sut- cliffe arrived home from Lightpool, haggard and worn, from unaccustomed want of sleep, and his whole system disorganised — first, by the unwonted exertions he had undergone, and secondly, by the highly deleterious drugs so freely exhibited by Mr. Ram Dass — that luxurious establishment was very near be- coming the scene of a distinct catastrophe. It was supper-time when the master of the house arrived — supper-time, as he remem- VOL. TII. G 82 BAM BASS. liered well, of the clay before that on which Clarice Orsini was to leave his house. All through the wearisome journey this fact had been repeating itself over and over again in the traveller’s over-excited brain. Eepeating itself, not with any particular meaning or any special result in the way of desire, or fear, or anticipation of any kind of seeing her again. Simply a stolid realisa- tion of the fact that there she would be — of the fact rather, as it now appears, that there, according to the pre-arranged order of things, she should have been. The pre-arranged order of things has been, however, as we have seen, altogether dis- arranged. Has been, perhaps, more properly speaking, superseded by another order of things pre-arranged by more effective autho- rity. As honest John pushes open the parlour- door, and stands for a moment blinking his BAM DAS8. 83 bloodshot eyes under the sudden dazzle of the lamp, Clarice Orsini is far enough away, at the Stella d’ Italia, devoting a vast amount of wholly unnecessary anxiety to an entirely superfluous consideration of a future, the disposal of which has already, did she but know it, been very summarily taken out of her hands. Honest John, peering at the table with his bloodshot eyes from under the black and yellow penthouse of his hand, does not see the expected figure — does not see, it strikes him suddenly, even the empty place where the expected figure should have been. Sees only his Betsy, who, in her turn, reads in her John’s eyes the direction of his thoughts, and clears for action ac- cordingly. Her preparations are wasted. The battle is over almost before it has begun. The very first shot from Betsy’s batteries goes 84 BAM BASS. straight into the enemy’s magazine, and blows him out of the water. In less metaphorical terms, the limit of endurance on the part of John Sutcliffe’s constitution has been reached, and before Betsy has been able to get farther in her opening harangue than the words, “Well! John Sutcliffe ” her wifely eyes perceive that things are not well with her John by any means, and her wifely arms are just too late to catch him, as he falls heavily to the ground in a fit. The medical man, for whom Keziah is hurriedly despatched, shakes his head when he looks upon his patient’s haggard and worn-out countenance, and anxiously in- quires if anything has gone wrong with John lately. Betsy, who has the ideas of her class upon the amount of reticence to be observed with regard to affairs of this kind, im- HAM BASS. 85 mediately blurts out to tbe doctor’s atten- tive but by no means highly edified ears, the whole story of her John’s sad lapse from the paths of conjugal fidelity, and of the manner in which he has been led astray by the “ artful ’ussy,” now, happily, departed. The doctor shakes his head over the story for the second time — nay, for the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth times — partly in reprobation of the line of conduct indicated by Mrs. Sutcliffe, as that pursued of late by her husband ; partly to indicate his own utter incapacity for understanding, either the adoption of that line of conduct by honest John, or its apparent results, chiefly because it is always a safe thing to do, combining the maximum of suggestion with the minimum of committal. He is not a very brilliant man ; is by no means the sort of practitioner who would 86 BAM BASS. regard psychology as an essential portion of his studies, or he likely to appreciate, or even conceive of the effect upon the peculiar temperament of a man like honest John, of a feverish and baffled desire — it would be speaking too highly to designate it even as a passion — for one of the opposite sex. Still he has had a good deal of practice among the rough, coarse, phlegmatic con- stitutions of his fellow-townsmen, and can deal with their ailments, perhaps at times more successfully, even, if, as a rule, some- what less scientifically, than some of his more famous brothers of the healing art, accustomed only to dealing with machinery at once more fragile and more delicate. He has one golden rule, the first portion of which is happily becoming more and more generally adopted throughout the profession ; the second being intended to apply solely to the peculiar class of constitution witk BA3I BASS. 87 whichi his own practice is more particularly concerned, and which it appears to suit admirably. It is this, “ Never give ’em anything when you can help it ; but when you do give it ’em — give it ’em strong.” So the worthy doctor, looking upon bleed- ing as almost always a pretty clearly indi- cated remedy in the cases of the majority of his hard-working, high-feeding, little- exercise-taking clientele, and as, beyond question, appropriate to the peculiar malady under which John is labouring, “gives it him strong,” after his fashion, and just, as he phrases it, saves him from death by bleeding him within half an inch of his life. John’s, however, is a Yorkshire constitu- tion, and can stand it. It is a week or ten days before Betsy, quite cured of her jealous fit, for the time at all events, by her hus- band’s danger, can venture to flatter herself 88 BAM BASS. that the ever-receding “ corner ” is really turned ; and the patient, though still near enough to Death’s door to dispense with any assistance in plying the knocker, is, nevertheless, at last in a fair way towards recovery. Improvement progresses. Not very rapidly, perhaps, for even a Yorkshireman cannot make blood by contract, but, still, with a fair degree of steadiness ; and, by the time that the blow has fallen upon the happy little household at East Dene, honest John, though not yet well enough for even the smallest recommencement of business, is yet sufficiently recovered to move into a purer and more invigorating air. Accordingly, Maple Lodge is shut up, and the family remove to the watering-place chiefly affected by their kind, namely, Scar- borough, where the head of the fa mil y gradually recovers his strength, and his BAM DA88. 89 worthy helpmeet, secretly stimulated thereto by John himself, who thinks that his busi- ness credit will have suffered quite enough by his illness, without being exposed to any suspicion of domestic retrenchment — vies, not unsuccessfully, with the other Betsies of that fashionable retreat in the gor- geousness of her own and her offspring’s attire. And so time passes by, and John, who has already been promoted to the dignity of a wheel-chair, in which he promenades back- wards and forwards in the fresh sea-breeze, with a gorgeous wife and a resplendent daughter on either hand, bethinks himself that it is hicjh time to be lookins: a little after business once more, and peremptorily orders that communications shall at once be re-opened with Broadford. On the urgent recommendation of his physician, he confines himself at first to his 90 BAM BASS. own more immediate bnsiness, and, indeed, finds in it ample occupation for powers of mind and body as yet by no means fully restored. The cat has been away from busi- ness for two months now, and the mice, timid enough at first, have of late, as it appears to John, been enjoying themselves finely. The first glance at affairs very nearly brings on a relapse. But the dismissal by telegraph, and without sixpence of “notice,” of half a dozen or so of the principal de- linquents, and the receipt, “ per return wire,” of the intelligence that a cashier who, on the bare hearing that “ the governor ” was well enough to look into things again, had bolted with deficiencies estimated at seventy pounds, has been laid safely by the heels in Wake- field gaol, he recovers his equanimity, and the crisis is averted. Soon John is considered as fairly conva- lescent. And now the embargo is taken off EAM BASS. 91 altogether, and everything relating to busi- ness finds its way as of yore direct to his hands. No sooner, John thinks, than was advis- able. A two months’ absence had not been conducive to the welfare of his own proper business, machine-like as its working has become under the daily and hourly super- vision of more than twenty years. With the new and speculative affairs on which he has entered, in company with Mr. Earn Dass, a three months’ neglect seems to have played the simple “dickens.” John’s health is too firmly re-established now for any fear of a relapse. But even in his direst fury at the mischief which has sprung up, whilst his hands have been tied, he can realise the wisdom which kept the bonds on so long, and knows that had this aggravation come upon him but a very little sooner, it Avould quickly have cured 92 BAM BASS. itself for ever, so far as lie was personally concerned. The most startling thing of all is, that whereas these undertakings into which he has entered, in association with, and under advice, if not persuasion, of Mr. Earn Dass, appear with remarkable unanimity to be either come to, or on the very near verge of something like “absolute smash,” there appears to be on Mr. Earn Dass’s part no complaint, and, indeed, no apparent appre- hension of anything of the kind. There are, indeed, only two letters of any sort from that astute gentleman ; though, strange to say, both of them contain what would appear to be references to other letters not forth- coming. In one of these, moreover, he clearly speaks of one particular enterprise, on which, as would appear, John now stands to lose something like £5,000, as an enterprise with which he himself has no longer any concern. RAM BASS. 93 There is a mystery which J ohn cannot fathom, and it weighs upon him. Perhaps, too, it is the overwork in what is, even now, a state only of convalescence ; hut a feeling which, if honest John were romantic, which he is not, he would probably call a presentiment, is gathering over him, and sturdily refuses to be set aside. It is quite clear that the sea-breezes have ceased to be of any service, and it is arranged that he shall return to Broadford at once. And then, on the very evening before the day fixed for their departure, comes a letter, which throws the late invalid into a state of excitement, the like of which he has not experienced since the week preceding his attack. It is from the manager of the Lightpool and Mofussil Bank, and acquaints him in brief and business-like, but very clear, terms of the arrival of that letter respect- 94 EAM BASS. ing the securities recently returned to Ram Dass & Co., which Mr. Ram Dass and Harry Forester have now, for nearly a month, known to be upon the road. The manager apologises for personally troubling Mr. Sutcliffe with these details at a time when it is known that he is ordered to keep from any unnecessary business. But Mr. Sutcliffe will remember that these very papers — i.e., one or the other of the two sets, the original or the forged — were sent up by his express order, and that of Mr. Ram Dass — or so, at all events, it was stated by the messenger, Mr. Sutcliffe, as it would appear, subsequently supporting that statement — to Mr. Ram Dass’s private house, less than a fortnight before they were finally sent out ; and that he himself examined them on that occasion. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance that any information he can give should BAM BASS. 95 be laid before the board with the least possible delay ; and it is under these circumstances that he, the manager, has ventured to in- trude personally upon him. Having made up his mind, however, that it is his duty so to intrude, the manager gives his director full particulars of the untoward occurrence, not omitting to mention the very strong ground for suspicion against Mr. Earn Hass’s young clerk, to whom, as it appears, they were intrusted by that gentleman for reconveyance to the bank, and who, from his previous position in that establishment, may very probably have had opportunities, of which other circumstances would seem to show that he had availed himself. At first, John is altogether dazzled by this new light so suddenly thrown upon that little transaction with Mr. Jonas Moss, which exercised him so seriously two months 96 BAM BASS. ago, but which, during his illness, has almost ceased to occupy his mind. He goes to bed now, and to sleep, without any clear idea upon the subject. Then, in the quiet small hours, he awakes with a start, and before he has even time to recall his thoughts, and fix them upon some other subject, more conducive to slumber, the whole thing flashes upon him with the clearness of noonday. The sudden appearance in the unmistak- able safe custody of the Lightpool and Mofussil Bank of the identical securities which, according to Mr. Moss’s list, had only been withdrawn from that worthy’s own strong-box that very afternoon, and by the very person who had travelled wdth himself to Lightpool, is now a simple matter enough. The securities so carefully preserved in the iron-room of the bank were no secu- rities. The real securities had been removed. BAM BASS. 97 and re-pledged witli Mr. Jonas Moss. Their place at the Lightpool and Mofussil Bank had been taken by a set of forged dupli- cates, ultimately sent out to India, and there detected. The abstractor and present holder of the originals — the fabricator of the for- geries, which had been substituted in their place — is Mr. Earn Dass. At this discovery, honest John gives vent to something so very like a laugh, as nearly to awaken Betsy slumbering peacefully at his side, in repose much too deep for dis- turbance by any accustomed noise. Suddenly the laugh ceases. Another new light has dawned on John. The person as yet suspected of the deed is not Mr. Earn Dass, but Mr. Earn Dass’s clerk. Mr. Earn Dass s clerk is one Harry Forester, the husband, so honest John has lately learned, of Clarice Orsini. There is no loud chuckle now, as this VOL. III. H 98 BAM BASS. fresh consideration presents itself to his mind,, and, as far as any noisy demonstration is concerned, Betsy may sleep on in peace. But if any inward instinct might avail to warn the sleeping woman of sore coming trouble to herself, of terrible danger drawing swiftly near to the uncouth, ill-conditioned, altogether unlovable animal for whom she nevertheless entertains so true an affection, her slumbers would be cut short enough. No presentiment, no warning comes now to her or to her husband, through whose throbbing brain, as he lies there watching eagerly for the wintry dawn, crowd Heaven knows what unholy thoughts and anticipa- tions of triumph. Earn Hass and Clarice — the girl who has defied, the man who has tricked and swindled him — are both now at his feet. The day is his at last. With the first glimpse of light — yes, it is there now. People are already moving about HAM BASS. 99 the house. There is plenty of light for his purpose, which is simply to write a brief note for despatch by the early post. The note runs thus : — “ Mrs. Forester, — I knoiv the guilty party, and have the meam of proving it. Be at home this afternoon — alone ; and you shall decide ivhether I shall disclose it. I will not speak about it to any one hut yourself. Bear that in mind. From yours, “A True Friend.” A messenger is soon obtained, and the note despatched in ample time for the early mail. Then John Sutcliffe returns to bed. The closing of the door, as he re-enters the room, awakens Betsy. There is no pre- sentiment in her mind, any more than in John’s ; but she asks, half playfully : 100 BAM BASS. “ Why, John ! wherever haye you been this time of the morning ? ” And John answers surlily, but with a ring of triumph in his voice, which comes back to her ears with strange significance not many hours hence — “ Never you mind ; I’m all right.” CHAPTER VIL The month which has gone by since the telegram arrived has been a long month at East Dene. Harry’s first idea is, of course, to conceal from his young wife the whole unfortunate story. Why should he inflict upon her what must surely, after all, prove to be unneces- sary pain ? It seems impossible that such a fearful calamity can really be hanging over him. It is not, indeed, as at first he is almost inclined to think it must be, a mere dream, from which he will by-and-by awake to lend his laughing aid in the merry pre- parations for the servantless breakfast. And 102 BAM BASS. yet it seems impossible that it can be really true ; at all events with such truth as shall ultimately develop into the actual falling of the blow as yet only suspended in the air above his head. Something must certainly turn up before the next mail comes in. It would be simple cruelty to inflict upon poor Clarice this need- less pain. Very soon, however, he finds that this course, desirable or otherwise, is in either case impracticable. It would need a far more skilful and far more practised dissimulator than poor outspoken Harry to conceal from the love-quickened eyes of his' young wife all traces of such a trouble as this. A single day has hardly passed — and it has been a day of sorer trouble to Clarice than even the sorely troubled days which follow it — before the whole business has come out, and the mistress of East Dene knows as well as its BAM BASS. 103 master the danger which threatens the little household. And the disclosure is good for both. The mere liberty to speak of his trouble ; the mere freedom from the intolerable irksome- ness of constant self-restraint, is to Harry, even after this one day’s trial, such a boon as almost for the moment to deaden the very sense of the trouble itself. To Clarice the exchange of an unknown evil, in regard of which she can only fret and frighten her- self by constant tracing of its effects upon her husband’s look and manner, for a known and open danger, however grave, which she can openly and honestly defy, is a relief almost equally intense. That she does defy it with the completest heartiness, that she simply laughs to scorn all idea of her Harry’s being found, or even suspected, guilty of any such offence as that in question, need hardly be said. And, what- 104 HAM HASS. ever Harry may feel as regards its logic, this hearty confidence does him a world of good* Very comforting also — to Harry, at all events — is the entire confidence in his young clerk shown hy Mr. Ram Dass. That gentleman is more at East Dene than ever. And he is never weary of repeating, both to him and to young Mrs. Forester, his own entire conviction that all must in the end be put right. Even at times when business has prevented Harry himself from returning home, Mr. Ram Dass will often be found at the cottage, and his mission there is always that of keeping up the young wife’s spirits by protestations of his own unshaken faith in her husband’s ultimate safety. Why is it that this unvarying formula is so strangely irritating to the wife’s ear ? Why is it that, despite her own absolute conviction, Clarice cannot find in these pro- BAM BASS. 105 - testations the same comfort they afford to Harry ? Clarice herself thinks it must be her own foolishness ; her own lack of power to appre- ciate the value of such evidences of trust and confidence. She is angry with herself for the manner in which she has come to weigh and examine every word which falls from the Indian’s lips. There seems something petty and un- worthy in this ringing, as it were, of every phrase upon the counter of her mind to see whether it be sterling metal, or only a good-natured, but none the less worthless, counterfeit. Clarice could pinch herself when, over and over again, she finds herself repeating that old suggested doubt of those who “ do pro- test too much.” Yet, somehow, the doubt avoids her not for pinching. Of course as to any thought of this per- 106 BAM BASS. sistent display of confidence being part of a deeply-laid scheme — any thought that even now amono- Mr. Earn Dass’s friends and ac- O quaintance, to the most distant degree of “ speaking terms,” and away again to the uttermost verge beyond which his name has never yet been heard, men are beginning to smile, and women to frown, over the grow- ing intimacy of Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass at East Dene, his extraordinary belief in young Forester, and its obvious explanation in the beaux yeux of Harry Forester’s handsome young wife— nothing of the kind has ever entered the young wife’s innocent mind, any more than that mind has conceived or could have conceived of — as a motive for the con- duct which, as a matter of fact, has already led to this result — the desire to effectually discredit beforehand the support which, when the coming scandal shall have fully broken out, he will be compelled in the furtherance of his own schemes to afford. BAM BASS. 107 At last one morning she pnts to him plainly the question which all this time has been preying upon her thoughts. Harry has gone clown to the office more than two hours ago. His employer, on his way thither, has looked in for a moment, as he often does in passing, to bring Clarice a book or a few hothouse flowers, or to ask if she has any message to send to her hus- band, always now treated rather as a friend than a subordinate. This time it is to bring her a book of which they were speaking last night, and which, among other matters of the kind, contains a description of the curious drug which, relaxing after a very few moments of insensibility its paralysing hold upon the body, continues to effect an absolute para- lysis of the will, and leaves the victim exposed to its influence, entirely at the mercy of the administrator. They were talking of this drug last night. 108 BAM BASS. and Harry, half laughingly, half in very sad earnest, was wishing that they could administer a dose of it to the forger, who- ever he may be, of the spurious secu- rities. The idea, however, does not appear very acceptable to Mr. Earn Dass, who has shifted the course of the discussion, with an un- easiness which, though very carefully kept out of sight, has not been able entirely to escape the sharpened perception of the anxious wife. To-day, the remembrance of this incident recurs, as unpleasant reminiscences will recur, at the first mention of the subject. “ Tell me honestly, hlr. Earn Dass,” she breaks in suddenly, not altogether without apparent lack of relevance, “ do you really believe in my husband’s entire innocence ? ” The question so suddenly and pointedly put, with big grey eyes looking firmly, almost BAM BASS. 109 as it might seem defiantly into his, after one of his bursts of confidence, has almost the air of a challenge. And Mr, Ram Dass pauses before replying to it. Not for more than half a dozen seconds. But in those half a dozen seconds the girl’s heart stands still, and the throbbing in her temples becomes so sharp and stunning, that the answer which follows them hardly reaches her ear. “Are you quite sure that you mean it, Mr. Ram Dass ? Why did you hesitate ? ” “ Did I hesitate ? Perhaps. But never mind. You may quite reassure yourself, Mrs. Forester. Rely upon my — maintaining your husband’s innocence to the last.” Again Clarice notices, with a quiver in every irritated nerve, that little momentary pause, as though for choice of words, followed at last by a phrase so carefully excluding the one assurance for which her heart hungers. 110 BAM BASS. “ You are very kind,” she answers, flushing^ up. “ But that is not what I mean. I do not care that you — that any man — should defend my husband, unless he feels convinced that he is in the right. I am proud — for him. I want ” She has a little foreign way of pointing her speech with a freer gesticulation than is in vogue on this side the Channel, and lifts up here a slender white hand to aid her words. Mr. Earn Dass takes it, first in one, then in both, of his, and holds it firmly, so he strikes in : “ Ah ! you are proud ! Yes. That is good. Be proud all you can, and — while you can. And, for me — convinced ? Yes, yes. I tell you yes. I Avill be convinced. I will believe. I will swear. Is it not your husband ? Do not I ” But the girl has snatched away her hand. RAM BASS. Ill and shrinks back under his hurninff ffaze, trembling and white. Mr. Earn Dass checks himself with an almost marvellous rapidity, and is speaking calmly and respectfully again, before she has recovered breath sufficiently to utter a word. “ Forgive me. I have startled you. I did not intend it. Have no fear. Mrs. Forester, do you remember what I said to you in London ? Whatever may happen, my feeling towards your husband and yourself will never change.” He takes up his hat, and bowing, leaves the room; not even offering to shake hands. Clarice sits down again upon the chair, from which she has risen to receive him, flings her arms upon the table, buries her face in them, and for the first time since hearing of the fatal telegram, bursts into bitter tears. 112 BAM DA88. There is no indication of trouble or sor- row upon the face of Mr. Earn Dass, as he walks on with light and jaunty steps to his office. The burning glitter is still in his eyes. But if there be any particular ex- pression upon his lips, it is decidedly in the nature of a smile. And as he goes he hums a tune. The hours pass by. Mr. Ram Dass has been established at his desk some time, and is almost thinking of leaving it again ; and still Clarice sits in the silent room, her face buried in her arms. Luncheon-time has come and gone. The ■short November daylight is almost past. But she takes no note of time. She has had a shock, and her whole physical being seems numbed by the pain. The girl’s own confidence in her husband is shaken not a whit. But it is terrible to know how utterly alone she is in her main- BAM BASS. 113 tenance of it — how even this one unfailing advocate is thus loud in his advocacy, only to mask the weakness of his own lost faith ; only in loyalty, not in trust ; not for his own sake, but — for hers ! It is growing dusk as a ring at the hall bell arouses her, and she goes to the door to receive from the postman a letter in a strange hand, and post-marked “ Scar- borough.” She opens it listlessly — gives a sudden cry of joy, and flings herself on her knees. In flve minutes more she has caught a passing cab, and is hurrying at top speed to the Bald Street office. “ I knew it, darling,” whispers Harry, joy- fully. “ I was certain it would all come out. Look here, sir,” and hardly waiting for the ceremony of knocking, he bursts into his principal’s private room, and lays J ohn Sutcliffe’s anonymous note upon his desk. VOt. III. I 114 RAM BASS. Mr. Ram Dass’s eyes flash fire, and his teeth close together almost with a snap. The handwriting is familiar enough to him, and the danger sufficiently clear and sufficiently imminent. But his mind works rapidly, and in little more time than he has required to decipher John’s scrawl, he has faced the situation, and made up his mind as to the course to be pursued. Then he speaks. “This looks hopeful, Forester. I have not much confidence in anonymous letters, but let us hope — — Mrs. Forester will not be afraid ?” “ I am afraid of nothing, where my hus- band is concerned.” “And I shall be up there, of course, if wanted. And I thought perhaps you too, sir?” Mr. Ram Dass pauses before replying, exactly as he would have paused were his BAM DA88. 115 mind not already perfectly well made up to be there, invited or uninvited. Then he answers quietly : “Certainly, Forester, if you wish it. I must just go to my own house first, but will come as quickly as possible.” He again pauses for a moment in mental calculation, and continues : “ I think you had better go up at once. Never mind those letters to-day. It would hardly do for Mrs. Forester to be quite alone. Perhaps you had better have a little wine or something ready for your unknown friend, eh ? Now olf with you.” So Harry and his wife set off full of eager hope. Mr. Earn Dass consults his Bradshaw, and follows more leisurely. John Sutcliffe will not be here for an hour and a half at the least. He has time to think out his plan ; and as he goes he thinks it out tho- roughly. I 2 CHAPTER VIIL The ring comes to the door of East Dene at last. “ Let me go, darling.” “No. Better not. It is quite dark now, and we do not know who it may be.” “ But you will let me speak to him, who- ever he is ? ” Harry’s reply is a hug and a kiss ; and he goes to open the door. “ Mr. Sutcliffe ! ” “ Oh ! It’s you, is it ? ” Harry is a little startled at the tone, which is by no means that of a very friendly visitor. HAM BASS. 117 “Yes, sir Will you not come in ? My — Mrs. Forester is in tlie drawing-room.” “ Oh ! She is, eh ? Yes ; I’ll come in.” Again Harry is startled. Not so startled as he would have been could he have read the Broadford director’s thoughts ; but still quite sufficiently so even by the tone they impart to his words. There is another exclamation of astonish- ment, not unmingled with indignation, as Harry throws open the drawing-room door, and, with a look upon his features which quite matches with his tone, honest John presents himself before Clarice Forester. “ Yes, ma’am, it’s me. John Sutcliffe. I suppose you were not expecting me ? ” “ We were not, indeed,” begins Clarice. But Harry holds up his hand, restrainingly, and takes the word. “ I conclude, Mr. Sutcliffe, you have come about this unfortunate business ? ” 118 BAM BASS. “ Eh, you conclude that, do you ? And pray- ” “One moment, sir, I beg of you. Here is a letter just come which promises to throw some light upon the affair. We are expect- ing the writer every moment.” John holds in his hand his own letter of the morning, and, as he looks at it, laughs contemptuously. “ Eh, and what may this be ? ” “ As you see, sir. It is a promise to acquaint us with the name of the forger.” “ To acquaint Miss — Mrs. — What’s-her- name, with it, lad. I see nothing about ‘us.’” A startling thought flashes across Clarice and she strikes in breathlessly : “ Do you know anything of this, Mr. Sutcliffe ? ” “ Eh ! what should I know ? ” At this moment the front-door bell rings. BAM BASS. 119 again. Harry is about to leave the room, when, with a quick gesture she stays him. She wants a little space for thought, before acting upon the idea which has so suddenly come into her mind. At the door she finds Mr. Earn Dass, who at once inquires if the expected visitor has come. “ No — that is — I do not know. Somebody has come.” “ Who ? ” “ Mr. Sutclifie.” “ Mr. Sutcliffe ? Oh ! that is bad, I fear. They must know it then at the bank.” “ Perhaps. I do not know. Mr. Earn Dass, the thought struck me just now, that it was perhaps Mr. Sutcliffe who wrote that letter.” “ How so ? What has he said ? ” Mr. Earn Dass speaks sharply, and turns 120 BAM BASS. his head towards the front door — they are still standing in the hall — with a curious listening gesture. “ Nothing, really.” Mr. Ram Dass clearly breathes again more freely. Clarice continues : “ But when we showed him the letter, he fastened at once upon the sentence about not speaking to anyone but me, in a way that Do you hear anything wrong ? ” “ No — no. Nothing. You were saying that ? ” “ That he seemed to speak in a way intended to call my attention to what was said there.” “ About speaking only to you ? ” “Yes. What do you think?” Mr. Ram Dass pauses before replying, no doubt thinking the matter over. His head, however, is again turned aside with that BAM DAS8. 121 listening gesture, and Clarice thinks he appears strangely anxious and watchful. At length he speaks, slowly and, as it were, word by word ; always listening be- tween each, as though for some sound without. “I do not know. It is possible. He is a strange man.” Then, throwing aside his air of listening hesitation, and speaking suddenly with brisk decision, he continues : “ I will go in, Mrs. Forester, at once, and see him.” Clarice turns to accompany him ; but at this moment the sound of rapid footsteps is plainly heard, and the next a loud ring comes to the door. “ I will follow you immediately.” Mr. Earn Dass smiles, and passes quickly into the drawing-room. Clarice goes once more to the door ; opens it, and admits Harriet Ann. 122 BAM BASS. AVhy, Harriet ! What made you ring so violently ? You quite frightened me.” Harriet Ann has evidently run fast, and pauses a moment for breath before she replies. “ Well, ma’am. I’m very sorry, I’m sure. And hope no offence, where none was intended, but quite the contrary. But when mysterious strangers comes to your humble roof at night, and tells you it’s a matter of life and death ” “ In Heaven’s name, Harriet, what do you mean ? What is a matter of life and death?” “ AYell, ma’am, it’s just that as I was going to tell you. And, I’m sure, any- thing more interesting, or more like that beautiful bit in the ‘ Masters of the Midnight,’ where ” “ Harriet, are you crazy, or do you want to make me so ? Please speak plainly. BAM BASS. 123 I am very anxious and troubled, and Hush! Who is that?” “ Why, if it isn’t the old man — my father ! ” “ Hold thy tongue, wench,” pants out the old man, breathless. “ Hast thee given Madame the note ? ” “ The note ! Ho. What note, Harriet ? ” “There it is, ma’am. I was just telling you. Oh, Lud I What is the matter ? ” For Clarice has torn open the note, cast her eyes rapidly over it, and is now leaning faintly against the doorpost, white and sick. The old gardener forgets his feud at the sight, and proffers prompt service. “ Is aught wrong, mum ? Can I do aught ? ” Clarice raises one hand to her forehead, striving hard to collect her thoughts. With the other she holds out to him the fatal note. 124 BAM BASS. Old Ockenden takes out his horn spectacles, fits them carefully on his nose, with hands which tremble even more than commonly, and reads : “ A warrant has been issued against Mr. Forester, lohich will he put into execution this evening.” “ Good Lord ! ” “What must I do, Ockenden? Shall I fasten the door ? Hark ! _ They are there. Quick ! quick ! Come in, both of you.” She invites them both into the house, shuts the door, and has already her hand upon the bolt as the steps approach. She is in the very act of pushing it forward, when, with a scream she looses her hold, as the loud report of a pistol-shot rings sharply through the house. In another moment she is in the drawing- room, followed by Ockenden and Harriet Ann, and almost at the same instant the long BAM BASS. 125 French window is burst in, and the two policemen force their way into the room, and throw themselves upon Harry Forester on either side. He makes no resistance. He hardly even appears conscious of what is passing. Stands quietly by the newly-murdered body of John Sutcliffe. Laughs vacantly, as one of the constables snatches the still reeking weapon from his unresisting hand. CHAPTER IX. It is not for some minutes after Clarice has recovered the use of her scattered faculties that she even begins to appreciate the realities of the situation. Her first sensations are of a vague feeling of rest and relief She is being borne care- fully along by some one ; a strong arm is folded around her. She feels the full beat of a hurrying heart against her breast, the stirring of a warm breath among her loosened hair. She has had a horrible dream. So deep has been the slumber from which she is BAM BASS. 127 even now only lialf awakened that she can- not yet recall the very smallest incident of it. But stie knows that it has been very grievous and terrifying, and nestles more closely into the clasp of the strong arm, whilst the just-parted lips turn half uncon- sciously to the expected embrace of the hus- band whom she has at last awakened to find safe at her side. Then the full awakening comes. She can only hear, not feel, the rapid beating of her own heart now. The strong arm has relin- quished its clasp. The warm breath no longer stirs in her hair, but comes hot and panting on her cheek. Clarice opens her eyes. She is in her own bed, sure enough, and yet, no, not in it — lying on the outside — dressed as when she last went down to the drawing- room, save only that about the throat the dress is all open and disarranged, and that the heavy masses of hair, broken from their 128 BAM BASS. confinement, are streaming in dusky waves over shoulder and pillow. She must have fainted, and Harry must have carried her up here. She is very faint still, and closes her eyes again before they are well opened. “ Harry,” she whispers, and softly stretches out one weaiy hand for his. But the hand on which it closes, the voice which whispers, “ Hush ! hush ! ” are not the voice or hand of Harry Forester. The girl’s numbed senses come back to her now with a rush, as, with a cry of mingled astonishment and terror, she springs to a sitting position, to find herself face to face, not, as she had expected, with her husband, but with Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass. “ What are you doing here — Mr. — ■ — ” Then the remembrance of the whole awful business comes once more flashing over her. BAM BASS. 129 and, for a moment, she is stricken dumb, gasping for breath. Mr. Ram Dass seizes the opportunity, and, as he speaks, his voice is low and ter- ribly impressive. “ If yon value your husband’s life, be silent.” She looks at him wonderingly, donbt- ingly. But in her troubled brain float here and there terrible memories, which give to his words a significance she cannot under- stand, yet dares not resist. But it is all hazy and mixed up, and she cannot dis- entangle it. Only in half instinctive obedi- ence, she lowers her voice to little more than a hoarse whisper, as she repeats the question : “ What are you doing here — in my room ? ” In the same low tone, Mr. Ram Dass replies : VOL. III. K 130 HAM BASS. “You fainted, and I carried you here. Listen, and do not speak. Your brain wanders still, and we are not alone. Your husband is in imminent peril, and a single word from you may be fatal to him. I must speak with you at once, and alone.” “ Alone — here ? ” “Alone and here. You see you are not strong enough to move.” “It is impossible. I shall be stronger in a few minutes, and ” “In a few minutes it may be too late.” “ But I am sure we can trust Harriet. What would people say ? ” “As you will, Mrs. Forester; he is your husband, not mine,” and with a somewhat offended air the Indian turns as if to depart. “ No, no,” cries Clarice after him ; and the promptness with which he stops at the call shows pretty clearly that it has not been unanticipated. “ I cannot risk his life. Stay BAM BASS. 131 here, Mr. Earn Dass. Harriet, will you please go into the passage for a minute. Do not go downstairs.” Harriet opens her eyes, and slightly tosses her head. The proceeding appears to her exceedingly indecorous ; and is, moreover, hy no means in accord with her natural desire to see and hear more of this thrilling new romance actually being carried out under her very eyes. Mr. Earn Dass, however, is hold- ing the door open for her, and she retires. Then the Indian returns to the bed where Clarice lies, and seats himself on a chair beside it. “ Give me your hand — so ! Noav look me straight in the face, and think before you answer. Do you know what has happened ? ” “ I cannot remember ; my head is con- fused. Is he — is he dead V’ “No.” “ Thank God for that.” 132 BAM BASS. “ I do not know ; that will depend.” “ What do yovi mean ? Tell me, for God’s sake — quick !” “ Are you strong ?” “ Yes — yes — speak. You are killing me !” She has lost all thought of her own position now ; all care, hut for her hus- band’s danger. The hand, which hitherto has been jealously holding together the un- fastened folds of her dress, has released its clasp, and is clutching convulsively at the pillow, as she struggles in her eagerness to raise herself again from her recumbent position. “ Your husband- — — ” “ Yes, yes ; go on. Why do you hesitate so?” “Has killed Mr. John Sutcliffe.” The wide grey eyes gaze for a moment at the speaker in silent horror. Then the cloud comes over them again. The pale lips BAM BA88. 133 grow whiter yet. The girl sinks back once more, murmuring hoarsely, “Water! water!” Mr. Ram Dass clips his finger into the jug by the bedside, sprinkles a few drops over the pale face, and pouring some into a glass, holds it to her lips. “Are you better now?” “Yes, go on.” “You quite understand what I have just told you ? ” The reply will not come in words, but she bows her head silently. “ Do you know why he did it ? ” The girl’s half- closed eyes open wide again, with a piteous look of astonishment. “ I — no. Do you ? ” “ Never mind that now. Are you quite sure Mr. Sutcliffe said nothing before before anyone else — tending to show that he knew anything about this affair of the forgery ? ” 134 BAM BASS. “Nothing whatever.” “ You are positive.” “Most positive.” Mr. Earn Dass draws what appears to he a heavy sigh of relief. “ Why do you ask ? Do you ” “ Hush, he silent. Ask no questions if you value his life. It is of that I desired to speak with you alone.” “ But why — if Mr. Sutcliffe really did know who it was ? ” “ Mrs. Forester, listen to me ; I was the only person present when the murder was committed. Upon my evidence will depend, in a great measure, his conviction or his acquittal. I saw it done, hut ” “ You saw it ! You saw my — Harry — kill — Mr. Earn Dass, are we both dreaming ? ” “You know we are not — you know that you yourself saw him hut the minute after with the pistol in his hand.” BAM BASS. 135 The girl falls back again upon the pillow, clasping her disengaged hand on her eyes. She remembers it now only too well. Her senses seem to be leaving her again. He presses sharply the hand which still rests in his, and she struggles hard against the creeping faintness. Then, with an effort, whispering with piteous white lips : “He must be mad — mad!” “ That is what we must say. Do you hear me ? ” Yes, she hears him plainly enough, and the blood comes rushing back to her brain, and she sits up once more, looking at him eagerly. “Yes, yes ; go on.” “ That, I say, must be our line of defence. A sudden attack of madness, brought on, no doubt, by over-anxiety. Do you follow me?” “ Yes, poor Harry — poor darling Harry ! ” 136 BAM BASS. And now the long-needed tears come pouring- in a flood, and the Indian, still seated hy her bedside, knows that it would be vain to attempt to check them. Nor, indeed, does he seem in any huny to do so. There is nothing by any means displeasing to Mr. Earn Dass’s eye in the graceful abandon of the girl’s figure, with its disordered dress and flowing hair, and he watches it with something of the complacent smile mth which the angler regards the struggles of his victim fairly fast upon his line. Presently she raises her face from the wet pillow, and, as she does so, the complacent smile fades promptly from the dusky features of Mr. Earn Dass. “ I beg your pardon ; I could not help it. Please go on.” “ I was saying that his only hope is in a verdict of insanity. That, of course, is plain. What I want to impress upon you EAM BASS. 137 is, that, in order for there to be any chance of our obtaining such a verdict, we must be careful to avoid all idea of Mr, — of the murdered man— having had any knowledge as to the forgery. If it should come out, for instance, that he had any proof against Mr. Forester it would be fatal.” “ But he had no proof. Of course he had none. How could he when — ■ — Oh, Mr. Earn Dass, why do you look at me so ? What do you mean ? ” “ I mean, my dear young lady, that if you do not wish to hang your husband, you will do well to be more discreet. You are convinced, of course, of his innocence. I, as you know, am fully prepared to main- tain the same thing. Do not expect to find any one else m a similar mind. If Mr. Sutcliffe’s visit be connected in any way with any suspicions on his part on the sub- ject of these forgeries, he is lost.” 138 BAM BASS. “But it cannot be so. I can swear there was nothing of the kind said while I was there ; and y ” But the words die on her lips, and her eyes widen with horror as the Indian raises a warning finger. “I tell you once again,” he answers slowly, “let the question not be raised. I will do all in my power to save your husband. No matter why. But what questions I am asked, I must answer — and answer truly. Do you take care that no indiscretion upon your part causes dangerous questions to be raised.” At the worst moment of her insensibility the girl has not been so ghastly white as she is now. There is no mistaking the speaker’s mean- ing. Had he said in plain words, “ I know your husband to be guilty not only of this, but of the other crime ; the murdered man BAM DAS8. 139 taxed him, in my presence, with his guilt, and it was for that he slew him. I saw the deed, and know its motive ; hut because I love you, his wife, I will do anything short of committing actual perjury to save him ” — if Mr. Ram Dass had stood up by her bedside, and spoken these words in plain downright English, she could not have understood his meaning more clearly than she does now. The Indian sees that she understands him, and takes his departure vdthout further words. CHAPTER X. The cloud which hangs over East Dene does not lighten as the days pass by. East Dene itself is closed, or closed as far as Harry and Clarice are concerned, and there is a man in possession, who smokes his pipe, in what, two months ago, was Mrs. Forester’s drawing-room, and toasts his bit of steak at the fire of the once cozy, now deserted apartment, in preference to the more orthodox “ range ” of the kitchen, which is much too regular an institution to suit his nomadic taste. Like everything else, since the very com- BAM BASS. 141 mencement of the connection with Mr. Ram Dass, which seemed, at first, to promise so brightly for Harry Forester’s future, the arrangement which was to free the little domain from the incumbrances which have been now, for some nine years, settling down upon it had come to an unfortunate end. It was to have been Mr. Ram Dass who was to furnish the means of taking uj) the various mortgages, constituting them into a single incumbrance at a lower rate of interest — and, indeed, Harry had been under the impression that this had been actually done. Some hitch, however, or rather some delay, would seem to have taken place in the formal part of the proceedings, and East Dene appears to be at the mercy of some small money-lender, in whose hands the various incumbrances have accumulated in some singular manner, the explanation of which 142 BAM BASS. no one in this time of trouble has time even to ask. Harry himself, lying awaiting his trial for .the wilful murder of John Sutcliffe, has not even been told of it. Clarice has heard the fact — knows that, in some way, the small money-lender has pounced upon her once bright little home, now, alas ! so little likely to be bright again, that she hardly seems, in her sore trouble, to give a thought to its loss. She has already long since left it for a lodging in the town, close by her husband’s place of confinement, and the money which has been realised by the sale of the furniture, pictures, etc., has been devoted to the pur- poses of Harry’s defence. It is no great sum. The only item of any value appears to have been, to her astonishment, as, under happier circumstances, it would assuredly also have been to her BAM BASS. 143 no small pride and delight, her own great picture of Judith and Holofernes. This has fetched no less a sum than fifty pounds, and the thought that she has, even in this small way, and to this trifling extent, been able to contribute her mite towards Harry’s de- fence, has been the only ray of comfort in this dark time. Harry’s defence, indeed, is quite sufficiently provided for. In truth, there is but little to be done. Mr. Earn Bass’s advice, as noted in the last chapter, has quite put an end to any idea of incurring any outlay in the endeavour to trace the real forger ; and all, therefore, that can be done is to employ some first-rate advocate, who shall place before the jury in the most favourable light the one solitary plea of temporary insanity upon which alone they can hope to rest his de- fence. “ Temporary ” insanity the plea must in- 144 BAM BASS. deed be ; for witbiii lialf an hour of the deed, before even the prisoner, taken red- handed in the very act, has had time to be fairly installed in his new quarters in the gaol, the strange attack has appeared to pass away, and he has again become as rational as he has ever been. Half a dozen medical men, learned in the various forms and symptoms of insanity, have visited him from time to time, and four of the half dozen are fully prepared with elabo- rate evidence of mania of the most decided description. But the two examining the case under the auspices of the Crown are equally clear that no mania exists, or could possibly have existed at any period within the last year or more ; and the prison surgeon, the gaolers, and, it must needs be owned, poor Harry himself, are quite of their opinion. And yet Harry cannot but feel that some- thing very extraordinary must have occurred. BAM BASS. 145 His own memory is simply a blank. He remembers the commencement of the inter- view, John Sutcliffe’s surly manner, his repudiation of all knowledge of the anony- mous letter, the departure of his wife, and — dimly, very dimly — the entrance of Mr. Earn Dass. Then he remembers no more until he awakes to find himself in the fly, on the way to prison, his wrists linked closely together, and the two constables winking gaily one to the other, at what they con- sider the somewhat ingenuous transparency of his ejaculations of astonishment, recom- mending him strongly to “ keep his trap shut, and not go a committing of hisself by being too (adjective) clever.” His incredulous horror on learning — as he does at last, in the peculiar “ Oh, of course you know nothing about it ” style^ which is the highest effort of uneducated VOL. III. L 146 BAM DA88. irony — the offence, with the commission of which he is charged, is a fresh source of amusement to his captors ; who, however, before very long, grow weary of what they look upon as an absolute and rather dreary farce, and somewhat surlily desire him to “ hold his row, and keep all that for the beak.” That worthy magistrate though, as befits his position, less demonstrative in his manner of receiving the defence, is obviously very much of the same opinion with regard to its value as the two constables, and Harry is fully committed for trial at the approaching assizes, and that in the fewest words. So, too, thinks obviously every one with whom the unhappy young prisoner is brought into contact. His solicitor, after vainly en- deavouring to elicit from him some more feasible line of defence with which to garnish the brief, at the back of which is to be vHtten BAM BASS. 147 the imposing sum of “ Fifty Guineas,” cuts the interview short in something very like a huff, and only consents to go on with the case on a very strong representation of the mischief it will do to his client, if he goes so far as to throw it up. Mr. Ram Dass undertakes the task of dis- suading him from this intention, and succeeds in his friendly office. It cannot, however, he said that he succeeds by any means in impressing Mr. Waterfield with any additional conviction of the innocence of his client, Avith whom, indeed, after his interview with that gentleman, he finds it unnecessary to hold any further personal intercourse. Mr. Ram Dass himself also keeps altogether clear of the prisoner. Anything more devoted, however, than has been that gentleman’s friendship under this terrible strain upon it could not possibly be conceived. His purse has been at the abso- 148 BAM BASS. lute disposal of his unfortunate confidential clerk and his poor young wife. Would the latter have allowed him, he would have taken upon himself the entire expenses of the defence ; have paid solicitor, counsel, wit- nesses, any expense that can be incurred or devised. He has been quite hurt when Clarice, not ungraciously, but firmly, has declined, with many thanks for his kindness, every offer of this description. Clarice cannot bring herself to accept any- thing of Mr. Earn Dass, even for her husband. She has determined to strip herself to her last sixpence, rather than share with anyone the sad pleasure of paying for his defence ; ♦ and, were it not so, the Indian is quite the very last person she could bear to be joined with her in that sacred task. She cannot tell why. She often, when for the moment she can withdraw her thoughts BAM BASS. 149 from the weary, weary round of hopeless brooding over her sorrow and her darling’s danger, takes herself to task for this unworthy and ungrateful feeling towards one who has done so much for them both, has been so true and unwearying a friend. It would be simply impossible, she tells herself again and again, for any man to do more for another than Mr. Ram |Dass has done for Harry. What right has she to say to him or to herself, “ He does not believe in his innocence, and, therefore, I will reject every favour, every assistance at his hands ?” Is not this, indeed, rather an additional cause for gratitude to the friend, who, even under such adverse circumstances, still re- mains true ? Perhaps — for the windings of the heart are difficult to follow, and it is not always the reason put most prominently forward, even to ourselves, which exclusively or even 150 BAM BASS. chiefly guides our course — perhaps had this been the girl’s only ground for this shrink- ing from any favour at his hands, she might have overcome it so far, at all events, as would have avoided what had certainly now been an appearance of ungraciousness. But it is not her only ground for shrink- ing from any obligation of the kind. Clarice is not a girl very keenly conscious of her own attractions for the opposite sex, or very much given to thinking that they have been effective in destroying the peace of mind of any with whom she may have been brought into passing contact, even when such persons may have given what many another girl would have found amply sufficient ground for arriving at such a conclusion. Moreover, the least of her attractions to which she, as a rule, attaches any sort of importance, or by means of which it could BAM BASS. 151 afford her any conceivable pleasure to effect the most complete and striking conquest, are those personal graces of face and form, which her early association with men of wit and genius has taught her to regard as so thoroughly subordinate and inferior to the graces of the mind. Mere physical beauty is rather associated in her mind with the idea of an “ artist’s model ” ; a poor creature altogether of a lower rank ; a free-born slave, fit only for a toy. And yet she cannot divest herself of the knowledge that, despite all the Indian’s pro- fessions of friendship for poor Harry, despite the unquestionable practical kindness he has shown towards him — despite, in brief, every action and every word she can trace home to him, from the day she confided to him her love for the man who, by his kindness alone, was at once enabled to make her his wife, it is her of whom he is still always in 152 BAM BASS. pursuit, and that, too, in that lowest and most despicable form of passion — that mere animal desire — which seems to drag down its object to a yet lower level than its own. Sometimes it would even seem to her over-strained nerves as though this fancied pursuit were a real actual chase, in which she was being gradually run down. In her dreams she would be some Russian serf tricked out in gay apparel, and bidden to stand behind her master’s chair while he flung the dice which should decide whether the pile of gold that glittered on the oppo- site side of the table should again become his, or whether she also should pass into the possession of the lucky gamester who looks at her with greedy eyes as the winning numbers leap from his hand. Or she would be at the auction mart watching the bidders, as old men vie with BAM BASS. 153 young for possession of the gem of the clay’s sale, till the wolfish glare in the eye of some coarse northern Legree would grow yet hungrier as the hammer falls, and his grimy hand stretches out towards her to grasp his prize. Or she would he captive in the hands of Greek banditti ; or a fugitive in India, hunted down by infuriated Sepoys ; or Andromeda chained to her rock, and yonder, rising from the sea at her feet, the dusky features she knows too well. For it is always the same face that draws towards her at the last with the evil fire in its eyes. Sepoy or bandit, Russian gambler or Yankee Legree, her pursuer, her captor, her purchaser, to whom, as she Avakes with a cry, she is just about to be handed over, bound hand and foot, is ever and always the same — Mr. Manockjee Ram Dass. And Mr. Ram Dass himself knows nothing. 154 BAM BASS. sees nothing, appears — at all events to all outward seeming — to see and know nothing of all this. What may he passing behind that dusky veil, through which glimmers only what to poor Clarice seems the evil light of those two black and glittering eyes, who can tell ? It may be that, in spite of seeming, he reads in the girl’s nervous, shrinking manner, in the involuntary tremor of her hand when his closes upon it, as it now so often does in a friendly consoling grasp, in the hunted air which grows daily more , and more upon her, and the half-frightened look which is begin- ning to replace, at times, the old haughty frankness of her glance, something of the strange horror that is growing upon her, and the presence of which adds so new and terrible a bitterness to the bitter burden of her woe. Perhaps he, too, has dreams, like those BAM BASS. 155 which make night so doubly hideous to the young wife whose husband is lying yonde:^ awaiting his inevitable sentence. Perhaps he, too, finds himself in the gambling-room or the slave market, draws lots with his thievish comrades for the crowning booty of their raid, listens once again to the familiar tumult round the blood-stained building at Cawnpore, and stretches out his hand to reserve his victim for a blacker doom. Perhaps he, too, sees the pure white figure fast chained to the iron rock, and laughs as he draws slowly nearer and more near, to think how safe he is from any Perseus’s sword. But be his dreams or fancies what they may, no hint of them, save only, perhaps, such as may ever be traced in that old Holofernes glitter of the black eyes, makes itself felt as yet through the carefully drawn 156 BAM BASS. veil of friendship, which shrouds him, as it were, from head to foot. If his visits are so frequent that women shake their heads, and find it impossible to lend their countenance to a wife who can act so indiscreetly, even while her husband lies in such deadly peril ; if his public assertions of Harry’s innocence are at once so strangely loud, and so ludicrously at variance with his too obvious con- viction, that men laugh and say how thoroughly Ram Dass is bewitched by the prisoner’s handsome wife ; if, thanks to this demonstrative friendship on his part, the conviction be gradually gaining ground, not in Lightpool only, but throughout all Eng- land, that Mrs. Forester is a heartless and worthless coquette, to whose misconduct the ruin of her weak and unhappy husband is but too probably due — Ram Dass’s manner to the young wife herself is as yet aU that EAM DA88. 157 a friend’s manner should be, and Clarice blames herself — blames herself bitterly some- times — for the unworthy thoughts she yet, struggle as she will, cannot drive away. CHAPTER XI. And so the weeks pass away, and the day of the trial conies round. Everything has been done that could be done. The doctors have duly registered their professional theories upon the subject of insanity. The skilful counsel, fighting yet harder for the almost hopeless honour of a victory under such desperate circum- stances, than for the earning of the heavy fee, which, thanks to poor Clarice’s Giudita, has duly been marked upon his brief ; fight- ing the hardest of all, perhaps, from the very sense of the hopelessness of his task, the consciousness that in the face of such BAM BASS. 159 hopelessness, he is hut too likely to lack due zeal, has surpassed himself in the earnest- ness with which he has impressed upon the jury every little circumstance which may be made to tell in the prisoners favour, the tact with which he has striven to avert the introduction of the dangerous question of the forgery, and especially of its possible connection with the fatal visit of the murdered man. He might as well have tried to avert the rising of the sun, that he might postpone the trial until some other miracle should have brought back the murdered man to life. Mr. Earn Dass, the leading witness for the Crown, has been, to do him justice, at least as anxious as the prisoner’s own counsel to say as little as possible that may damage the defence. So anxious, indeed, as more than once to compel the prisoner’s counsel himself — keenly 160 BAM BASS. watchful of the effect upon the jury of this extreme reticence on the part of the witness as to facts of which he can be in no possible doubt — to urge him to speak more plainly, and recover the lost ground with the jury as well as he can by the assurance that any friend of the prisoner can in no wise secure the interests of that unfortunate young man more effectively than by aiding to bring out the entire truth. The entire truth comes out at last. Not, however, in answer to the appeal for the defence, which only draws forth a hastily checked sigh and an involuntary little shake of the head, the naivete of which calls up on almost every face a passing smile, followed instantly by a seriousness sterner and graver than before. It is dragged out of him, bit by bit, under the steady, quiet, almost judicially passion- less questioning of the Attorney-General ; and BA^tl BASS. IGl when it has been draAvn out, everyone feels that the case is at an end. Mr. Ram Dass deposes, in the first place with very evident reluctance, but yet with- out needing any absolute pressure, to the fact which the evidence of the two police- constables has already made sufficiently clear ; that, namely, of the commission by the prisoner of the actual murder. His evidence in this respect, indeed, though of course required from a formal point of view, is, as a matter of proof, of compara- tively but little importance. The position of the wound puts any possibility of suicide out of the question. There were, therefore, only two persons by whom the deed could possibly have been committed, the prisoner and Mr. Ram Dass himself, whilst the seizure of Harry Forester by the police, almost the very moment after the firing of the fatal shot, and with the pistol, about the muzzle VOL. III. M 162 BAM BASS. of which, the smoke was still hanging, actually in his hand, of course puts that question altogether beyond doubt. All that Mr. Earn Dass can add to it, was his own testimony to the having seen the actual firing of the shot by the prisoner ; and this evidence, however reluctantly it may be given, it is of course impossible for him to withhold. It is when the Attorney-General gets to the question of motive that the witness’s- resistance begins. To meet with a direct negative the de- mand whether he is aware of any quarrel or any ground of quarrel between the deceased and the prisoner is, indeed, obviously beyond his power ; but he fences with the question with a skill and persistency which infuses a new and lighter element of interest into a case which hitherto has been one of unmixed gloom. So, too, with regard to the matter of the BAM DASS. 163 forgery. His first care is to repeat again and again, in the most emj)hatic terms, and utterly regardless of all endeavours to impress upon him the irrelevancy of the statement to the questions asked, his own entire convic- tion of the honesty of the prisoner. He cannot, indeed, give any particular reason for this belief The prisoner has not been long in his employ, nor, though nominally occupying the post of confidential clerk, has he ever yet been intrusted with any business implying serious trust. Mr. Ram Dass cannot say why this has been. Perhaps because there has not been much business of this description while he has been in the office, and witness’s time being, possibly, rather more at his own disposal than usual — though even to this he cannot depose positively — he may have been able, without inconvenience, to transact it himself. But, whatever may have been the cause of s m2 164 BAM BASS. this apparent limitation of his confidence, Mr. Ram Dass is quite certain it can have arisen from no lack of confidence itself. He has the most absolute belief in him, so abso- lute, that no evidence could shake it — no, not even the evidence of his senses. After which, it gradually and reluctantly comes out that other people are of a different mind — that the murdered man himself was of a mind altogether different — so different, that he had actually in that very interview which had ended so fatally, most cruelly and unjustly taxed well, the prisoner, if the Attorney-General insisted upon calling him so ; he, Mr. Ram Dass, proposes calling him his friend Mr. Forester — -had, he would repeat, most cruelly and unjustly taxed him in Mr. Ram Dass’s own presence with being the forger, and that Mr. Forester had then and there drawn a pistol and shot him down. HAM BASS. 165 Mr. Ram Dass does not add in so many words, “ and served him right,” but his manner seems to hint that some such words are not very far from his lips, and the more enthusiastic among the lady portion of the audience wipe away a few pleasant tears at the thought of such staunch friend- ship under a trial so severe. The gentlemen of the bar, more disposed, perhaps, by nature, as certainly by training, to criticism than to sentiment, are less warm in their admiration. The opinion current in that quarter is, that this very friendly witness has done the Attorney-General’s work for him much more effectively than he could possibly have done it for himself, and one junior is heard to whisper audibly to another, as after a few more questions, the counsel for the Crown resumes his seat, “ I don’t suppose the odds were very heavy in the poor devil’s 166 BAM BASS. favour from the first ; but if they had been ten thousand to one, that affectionate cuss there would have hanged him.” Something of the same kind seems to cross the mind of the astute counsel for the defence, and when the Attorney-General’s resumption of his seat places the witness at his disposal for cross-examination, he pauses for a moment undecided. “ Have you anything to ask the wit- ness, brother Andrews ? ” inquires the judge. The learned serjeant still hesitates a moment, then glances at the clock, and perceives, evidently with no small satis- faction, that it is close upon one. “ If your lordship has no objection, perhaps we had better adjourn now for luncheon, and take the cross-examination afterwards ? ” “Would it not be more convenient to finish with this witness at once?” BAM BASS. 167 “ I am entirely in your lordship’s hands.” Somehow, this not very profound little conversation has taken a singular hold uj)on the attention of the crowded audience ; first the initiated, and then, attracted by the effect evidently produced upon them, the common public dropping almost suddenly the various Small conversations, which, as usual, have set in upon the conclusion of any particular stage of the proceedings, and lending their ears to the apparently commonplace remarks passing between judge and counsel, with as hushed an attention as though the foreman of the jury were on his feet to deliver their verdict. To the Serjeant’s second remark the learned judge makes no verbal reply. Instead, he first glances for a moment over the top of his spectacles at the serjeant’s face. The ■Serjeant returns the look equally in silence. 168 HAM HASS. and the judge at once proceeds in his most conventional tone : “ Oh, it will be perfectly convenient to me, brother Andrews. My appetite is quits ready if yours is. The court is adjourned for half an hour.” “ What the devil is old Andrews up to now ? ” asks one junior of another, as they make their way out of court. “Mr. Waterfield,” whispers the serjeant to the solicitor for the defence, “ bring Mrs. Forester to me in the robing-room in- stantly.” Air. Earn Dass, as he disposes of his sherry and sandwich, passes carefully in review, step by step, every word of the evidence he has already given, pulling, as it were, at each link of the chain, as it passes through his memory, to test its soundness. He, too, has noticed the singularity of the interruption, and has marked the hurried EAM BASS. 169 whisper between counsel and solicitor, and asks himself if he can have committed any % oversight. But, no. The time which has elapsed since the murder has been passed in too careful study of what has to be said for any failure of this kind. It is almost certain the prisoner’s counsel will let well alone, and not run the risk of damaging his client by cross-examining a witness who has already, proprio motu, urged everything that can possibly be urged in the prisoner’s behalf. It is the question of the prisoner’s sanity, no doubt, which is making him hesitate ; that must be all. That would not appear, however, judging from the nature of the interview between the learned seijeant and Mrs. Forester, to be by any means all. The first question put by her husband’s counsel startles Clarice like the falling of a thunderbolt. 170 BAM BASS. “ Have you any reason to believe, Mrs. Forester, that Mr. Earn Dass has any ground of enmity against your husband V’ By this, and many other similar questions, the skilful advocate soon draws out the whole story of Mr. Earn Hass’s connection both with her and her husband, so far, at least, as Clarice has any knowledge of it, and narrated, of course, from the point of view from which she herself regards it. The story does not, in the learned counsel’s eyes, leave the situation much clearer than before. However, time is passing away, and on one basis or another the case must proceed. “ I think I shall venture it, Waterfield,” says the serjeant, as they return into court. “ Well, serjeant,” returns the solicitor, “use your own discretion. It’s a risky step, no doubt, but there is one thing in its BAM BASS. 171 favour — it cannot possibly make the case any worse.” There is a feeling of curiosity throughout the court as Mr. Ram Dass’s cross-examina- tion begins, which appears to be shared by the witness himself. It wears off, however, in a few minutes. The Serjeant’s questions are entirely confined, as Mr. Ram Dass has expected, to the state of mind of the prisoner at the time of the murder, and the witness replies to them with the same evident design of producing a favourable impression, the same unfortu- nate result of producing just the worst im- pression possible, which has characterised his evidence throughout. Suddenly, a quickly - put question, upon a rather different point, operates a somewhat striking change. “ Had the prisoner just drunk anything ? ” asks the serjeant, almost sharply. 172 HAM HASS. The witness hesitates. “ No — I think not — perhaps — cannot say. There was some wine on the table.” “ Did you see him drink any ? ” I cannot say. Oh ! you mean was he tipsy — perhaps — 1 don’t — yes, I mean very likely.” And the witness glides back into his for- mer manner, as though some misapprehension had been removed. The trained perception of the serjeant tells him that he has touched a tender spot. But he is working in the dark, and dares not run the risk of going too far. Moreover, the evidence is too strong against any theory of drunkenness, to make the risk worth running. So he changes to another tack, and again with the same sudden access of caution on the part of the witness. “You are q^uite sure the prisoner fired BAM BASS. 173 immediately upon the charge being l^rought against him ? ” Mr. Ram Dass thinks for some moments before he answers shortly : “Yes.” “ Did Mr. Sutcliffe tell him face to face, as I am now speaking to you, that he was a forger?” “He did.” “ Actually looking him straight in the face, as you look at me ? ” “Yes. It was a cruel thing to say.” “ Most cruel. But you are quite sure it was said, and in that way ? ” “Oh yes. Quite.” “ Then how do you account for the wound being in the back of the head ? ” Mr. Ram Dass hesitates here, so long, that the question is at last repeated. Then he answers hesitatingly : “ I do not quite understand you.” 174 BAM BASS. “ You say that when Mr. Sutcliffe spoke, he stood facing the prisoner, and that the prisoner fired immediately. How, in that case, comes the wound to be at the back of the head ? ” The witness appears quite to understand the question, now — or to have had the required time to consider his answer. “ I think,” he says, still speaking slowly, “that Mr. Sutcliffe had turned to the door about something — there was some noise in the hall — I do not quite remember what.” “ How were you standing as regards each other ? Was Mr. Sutcliffe between you ? ” Again the witness hesitates, drawing at last from Serjeant Andrews the remark ; “You seem to require a great deal of consideration for these questions, Mr. Ram Dass. Much more than for the others.” Ram Dass hesitates still for a moment. BAM BASS. 175 - then, in a little burst of cancloiir, extinguishes his examiner altogether. “ I am trying to make quite sure what you want. I should never forgive myself if I were to make a blunder.” Serjeant Andrews is baffled. Indeed he has never had much hope of anything coming of this line of cross-examination ; never, in- deed, any distinct idea of what he ought to wish should come. Only a vague feeling that all is not right with Mr. Manockjee Ram Dass, a feeling which, now that the friendly witness has so effectively vindicated his goodwill, is, on the whole, a little stronger than before. It is a feeling, however, which, if shared in by the judge, is not sufficiently strong to modify in any way his terribly clear and crushing summing-up ; which is not shared at all by the jury, who listen, with scarcely concealed impatience, even to the judge’s rapid 176 BAM BASS. resume of the case, and return their unani- mous verdict of “ Guilty ” without leaving the box. And so that act of the gloomy drama is played out. In just ten days from that which has heard the fatal verdict pronounced, Harry Forester is to be hanged by the neck till he is dead ; “ and may the Lord have mercy upon his soul,” for of any earthly mercy the judge holds out not a hope. CHAPTER XII. Mr. Ram Hass’s conduct, an enigma still to Serjeant Andrews, and to perhaps one or two others skilled like him in reading between lines, is not destined to remain always an enigma to Clarice Forester. Eight out of the nine days her young husband has yet to pass on earth, have already gone by. The ninth is wearing away fast. To-morrow morning will see him a dishonoured corpse. There is no hope of a reprieve. Clarice herself has wasted two of these precious, fearfully pre- cious days, in a wholly vain journey to Whitehall, and has returned with the full 178 BAM BASS. surety that the days of her widowhood are, indeed, close at hand. The world outside has gone on through these eight days very much as before. For one or two of them the “ Lightpool Murder ” has furnished an interesting topic, and thrill- ing has been the eloquence expended in its discussion in the leading columns of the daily press, unimpeachable the morals deduced for the benefit of its million readers from the sad story of Harry Forester. Of these morals it has fallen chiefly to the lot of Clarice to faire les frais. Mr. Earn Dass’s demeanour in the wdtness- box has given a final impetus to the already strongly accentuated opinion among the leaders of the public mind as to the share which has been borne in this grievous busi- ness by her coquetry and love of admiration. Poor Betsy Sutcliffe has been kept out of the witness-box, not without difficulty, and BAM BASS. 179 tonest John/ fortunate in death as in life, has escaped the public exposure of his pursuit of his handsome governess. But Betsy’s tongue, amongst the circle of her private friends, has not been silenced so easily ; and the secret, duly intrusted by them to their own private friends in turn, has very soon become the property of the world at large. That whatever her relations may have been with John Sutcliffe, however, Mrs. Forester has been, and probably still is, the mistress of Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass, is a fact of which no one presumes to doubt. The only question is as to the extent of her hus- band’s knowledge of and complicity in the matter. Of all this, however, Clarice herself has as yet heard no word. For the present the entire world is to her as though it were not. Till that fatal morning shall have dawned N 2 180 BAM BASS. and passed away, lier little universe centres in that gloomy prison-house, from which her Harry — her husband of two short months — will never pass again. Two persons have been true to her — two persons beside that unfailing friend, wha still never fails to look in upon her once, at least, in the course of every day. Old Ockenden has forgiven her all her offences against the garden now ; has become her sworn slave, serving her with a loving fidelity, which throws even his old allegiance to his late master quite into the shade. When the break-up comes at East Dene, he, too, breaks up his humble establishment, transferring himself and the equally faithful, if somewhat less affectionate, Harriet Ann, to a small house close by the gaol, where Clarice has ever since been his lodger, and where a good deal more of the pound or so a week, which he now earns by driving BAM BASS. 181 a cab, is devoted to providing for her comfort than for their own. Evening is drawing on, and the muffin- man is tinkling his little bell invitingly be- fore the lighted windows of the shabby little street, when Clarice returns from her final visit to the gaol. This night Harry is to pass alone. She has seen him for the last time. To-morrow morning, at eight o’clock, he dies. The girl feels as though she were in a dream. She does not cry. She has not cried all through the last awful hour; not while her arms clung about his neck for the last time ; not when the thrill of his farewell kisses died out upon her lips, and the rough gaoler carried her away uncon- scious that the last parting was indeed done. She will not cry all that night, that she quite knows. To-morrow — well, to-morrow, she hopes that she too may die. 182 BAM BASS. Slie comes into the little parlour, mechani- cally lays aside her bonnet and cloak, and as mechanically sits down, work in hand. Not even the sight of that work brings the tears into her eyes to-day. And yet it is & sight which well might bring them to eyes less likely to be melted by it than her own. It is the last pre- paration for the change which must be made in her dress to-morrow — her widow’s cap. She is doing nothing to it, only sitting quite still with the dismal work in her feverish white hands ; her eyes fixed, but seeing nothing — not thinking, scarcely even dreaming — when Harriet comes in from the other room with a large cup of strong tea and some slices of bread and butter. She looks up vacantly for a moment,’ as the work-marked forefinger is laid upon her arm, then gently shakes her head. BAM BASS. 183 “ Thank you, Harriet, you are very good ; but I can’t eat.” Gradually, however, and with a rough kindness hardly to have been expected from the soured temperament "of Harriet Ann, the woman prevails upon her to take first some tea, then a few mouthfuls of the bread and butter. And, as she eats, the girl revives a little, and awakens slowly to the under- standing that her rough but faithful atten- dant is talking fast, and on a subject which at once arouses her own interest. Harriet Ann’s mind is just now full of the hairbreadth escapes of a gallant young nobleman, who being falsely accused by a wicked kinsman, covetous of his estates, is thrown into prison, but delivered by the devotion of his ladye love, who bribes the gaolers to set him free. Something like the faint ghost of a smile flits across the girl’s pale lips at this ro- 184 BAM BASS. mantic suggestion, but it soon passes in the sickening sense of its hopelessness. Such things are not to be done in this commonplace world of nowadays. Harriet Ann, however, is of a different opinion. During her short married life she saw a good deal of nineteenth century policemen and prison-warders, and is by no means disposed to attach too high a value to their incorruptibility. Her own “ man ” was “ on the lock ” for two or three months, and used to add an honest, and very comfortable weekly penny to his income, by smuggling gin, etc., in to his prisoners. Harriet Ann wonders nothing of the kind has been tried in this case. If Mr. Ram Dass is really such a friend, he has money enough to buy up all the warders in the gaol, and it would not be for want of her having given him a hint either. BAM J)A88. 185 So persistent is she in her advocacy of this plan, that it even takes hold of the mind of Clarice, who forthwith begins to torment herself in a dull aching way with the thought that here, after all, is a stone which she has left unturned, a means of saving her husband she has failed to try. The thought is still working in her mind, when the well-known knock comes to the door. She has not intended to see him to-day ; has felt that in this supreme hour of her anguish she must be alone, or her senses will forsake her. But this idea of a pos- sible escape, through means which, in the utterly exhausted state of her own purse, this worthy friend can alone provide, forbids her to deny herself to him. She has even lost her horror at the idea of being further indebted to this man. 186 BAM BASS. There is room in her heart to-day for one single horror only. She rises as he enters, and stands lean- ing against the hack of her chair, her heart beating thickly, with what, in spite of her- self, she begins to feel almost another hope. The Indian pauses, his glittering eyes glide slowly from the nobly-shaped head, still crowned with its wreath of dusky gold, down to the shapely slender foot, just peep- ing from the folds of her plain stuff dress, and the evil smile plays around his lips. The die has been cast, the hammer has fallen ; Andromeda and the monster are face to face at last. Clarice is the first to speak. Steadying herself by a mighty effort, she comes swiftly forward to meet him, and, for the first time in their acquaintance, seizes BAM BASS. 187 his hand of her own accord in the hot dry- clasp of both of hers. “ Mr. Earn Dass, I have a favour— a great, a very great favour — ^to ask of you.” “ Ha ! That is good. I am in the humour to be asked favours.” There is something in the tone strangely unlike his usual deferential manner. But Clarice is too absorbed in her own thoughts even to notice it. “ You have often in your kindness,” she goes on, “ offered me aid in my husband’s defence. I am afraid you have sometimes thought me ungracious in refusing it. For- give me. It is I now who ask you for it.” “You need but ask and have, Clarice. I and all I have are at your disposal.” She does not even notice that he has called her by her Christian name, and goes on breathlessly : “ My good friend here — Harriet — knows 188 RAM BASS. sometliing of — of prisons and their officers. She tells me that with money, people — he — my husband — may be got free.” “ Indeed ? She told me the same thing, and I ” “ Yes — yes — and you — ^you will — ^you have — I see it. Oh, Mr. Ram Dass, God bless you — God bless you for it.” The tears are coming now hot and fast. But she chokes them back. She will not cry. She knows well, that if she gives way one moment, the control over herself will be no longer in her hands. Stiffening every supple muscle of her frame, she keeps her eyes dry and her voice steady, only the light comes back once more to the great grey orbs, and the pale cheek flushes again with something of its old colour. “ I have taken the liberty of bringing with me a man who can tell you more of this than I can. Shall I call him ? ” BAM BASS. 189 The girl hows her head without speaking, and stands still, rigid, her eyes fixed upon the door. For a moment she half expects to see Harry himself enter. But it is not he — only a man whom, even in his changed dress, she at once recognises as one of the warders whose faces have of late become so terribly familiar to her. “ I have arranged with our good friend here,” resumes the, Indian, “ to do exactly what you are speaking of. Prescott, will you tell the lady all about it ? ” “ Well, you see. Miss, this is how it stands. We’re pretty quiet round at our place just now, the ’sizes having pretty well thinned us out, and having hardly any but your good gentleman on our side. It happens, too, as some of my mates is on the sick list, which makes things more easy like ; and the long and the short of it is, I’m on duty to-night over your good gentleman. He 190 BAM BASS. arn’t any ways fettered, you know, being quiet and comfortable like, and there’s only two of my mates on the outer lock. This good gentleman has given me some stuff to put in their supper beer.” “ You remember the drug, Clarice,” strikes in Mr. Ram Dass. “We were speaking of it ” “Yes, yes, I remember well. Go on.” “Well, Miss, there’s not much more of.it. I puts the stuff in my mates’ beer ; watches my time ; opens the gentleman’s cell, and by the time as the chaplain comes in the morning, he’ll be safe enough out of the way. I’ll answer for it.” “And you are sure — there is no fear?” “ Safe as houses. Miss — safe as houses, every bit, if so be as this good gentleman here only gives the word.” Clarice turns once more to Ram Dass with outstretched hands. The Indian takes BAM BASS. 191 them firmly in his ; then turning, slightly, to the turnkey : “ Wait at your own house, my friend, for one hour. If I have any orders to give I will send them there.” The man touches his forelock, and leaves the room. Clarice looks with blank amazement in the Indian’s face, over which there is steal- ing, even now, a look which seems to chill her very soul. CHAPTER XIIL ^'Why did you tell him to wait?” “ Because there is something to be settled first between you and me.” “ Between us ? Something to be ” “ Listen to me if you please ; and remem- ber that we have but one hour. If the opportunity is lost through your delay, do not blame me.” “ Go on,” she murmurs, in a hoarse whisper, and her heart beats thickly once more with fear. “AVhat do you intend to do — after to- morrow ?” BAM BASS. 193 “ Do ! Fly with my husband, of course.” “ That is impossible.” “ Why ? ” “For many reasons. One which will pro- bably suffice is that, hampered with you, he would be recaptured at once.” “ Then I will rejoin him as soon as I can.” “ That will be, perhaps, in a month. What will you do in the meanwhile ? ” “ Support myself, and lay by to help him.” “ How ? ” “ By my art. By painting.” “ Do you think you will earn five shillings a week by it ? ” “ Why not ? My picture of Judith sold for £50.” “ Do you know who bought it ? ” “ No. But what does that matter ? ” “ A good deal. That picture hangs now in my room.” VOL. III. 0 194 BAM DA88. The girl starts back as if he had struck her. “You ! — ^you bought it ? ” “ Do you suppose anyone else bid six- pence for it ? ” Again the words came like a blow. This time a deliberate and vicious blow, aimed with set purpose straight at her heart. The horrible feeling of her dreams is again gain- ing possession of her. But she makes a fierce effort, and controls herself once more. “ Then I must try some other work — I will teach — I will ” “ Do you think you will find anyone to give you work ? Do you know what sort of character you bear to-day through all the length and breadth of this great England of yours ? ” “ Character ! I ? ” For answer, he holds out to her a news- paper folded, so as at once to place before BAM BASS. 195 her eyes the leading article, containing the moral drawn for the readers of that day’s “ Zeus,” from the story of the Lightpool murder. She looks up from its perusal with a blank, speechless gaze of horror. “ Now,” resumes the Indian, each word falling clearly, distinctly, pitilessly, upon an ear the whirring disturbance in which would have drowned any other sound, “ this is how you stand. Your character is gone. You have not a sixpence in the world- — nay, more, you are heavily in debt— fo me. Un- less you wish your husband to be hanged at eight to-morrow morning, you must go still further into my debt to the tune of £200. Shall I tell you now what you must do ? ” “ Go on.” ‘‘You must come to me. I told you your beautiful Giudita was hanging in my room. You must come and ornament that room. 196 BAM BASS. too. It is not up at Cawnpore House. Oh no ! That would make a scandal. It is a charming little place Avhich I have cleared out on purpose for you. You shall he its mistress — till your husband sends for you.” The girl hears him to the end, without a word, without a sign. Only her eyes are glittering now as brilliantly as his, and in the agony-stirred brain strange thoughts and wild imaginings are coursing to and fro, as the very lava-rock itself flows under the action of the loosened centre Are. Suddenly she springs from her frozen atti- tude, and flashes out upon him with a cry that comes from her very soul : “’Twas you murdered John Sutcliffe!” For the moment the Indian starts back as though the flashing of her eye had been very lightning, and had stricken him. Then he laughs — a low, contemptuous, triumphant laugh. UAM BASS. 197 “ Tell that to your husband to-morrow morning. It will comfort him, no doubt.” “ Villain ! ” The Indian laughs again. “ Has ‘ the nigger ’ turned the tables pretty well,” he asked, scofiingly, “ upon the hand- some white lad who crossed his path so lightly ? Has he avenged himself a little for your disdain, my beautiful queen ? Has the Indian tiger tracked down his prey at last, and is the proud English beauty left to choose between seeing her handsome dar- ling swing by the neck till his beautiful fair face grows blacker and uglier even than the ‘ nigger’s ’ own, and submitting herself to be the ‘ nigger’s ’ slave, his toy, his plaything for a week or two till he grows tired and casts her off again ? Why don’t you kneel and weep, and pray for pity ? But no. You are right. I admire you ten times more so, my fierce, beautiful, proud English — slave ! ’ 198 BAM BASS. The girl bears up bravely. A thousand thoughts are thronging and whirling in her brain ; above them all comes the horrible sense of being trapped and hunted down — the feeling that this, revelation has come too late. That she has learned the hideous plot to which her murdered husband has suc- cumbed, when the hour has already gone in which the knowledge could be of any avail to serve him. Yet, under it all, she bears up bravely, and the loving heart works hard to control the overburthened brain, and force it to some helpful action. Earn Dass takes out his watch, glances at it, replaces it in his pocket, and speaks once more. “ The time is up, Clarice. Will you sup to-night at Eose Lawn with Judith and Holofernes ? ” At the words, a sudden thought flashes BAM BASS. 199 like lightning through the girl’s mind. The hand which has been imperiously raised to point the speaker to the door, falls to her side. The colour flushes once more to her cheek, and the light returns to her eyes as she raises them for a brief moment as though in prayer, and then turns them keenly upon the Indian’s dusky countenance. “ How am I to know that you will keep your word ? ” Ram Hass’s eyes sparkle like a thousand diamonds. “ I will send my carriage for you. The coachman shall bring you a note in your husband’s own hand to say that he is free.” The girl bows her head. “ r accept your terms.” “ Remember. No trickery. He will still be within reach.” 200 BAM BASS. “ I have told you I accept your terms. Go.” And as the triumphant Indian leaves the room the girl flings herself upon her knees in an agony of prayer. CHAPTER XIV. It is some months now since Miss Fanni Montmorenci finally vacated the snug little villa overlooking the river, which had been honoured by her residence during the period of her engagement at the Paragon Theatre. Rose Lawn, though, curiously enough, not announced in any way either for sale or letting, has, since her defection from the Paragon, been left, until a fortnight ago, to stand empty. On the day after the delivery of the verdict, however, in the great Lightpool murder case, the landlord has given orders 202 BAM DAS8. that Eose Lawn shall be got in readiness for a new tenant ; and during the time which has elapsed since that period, the luxurious little miniature mansion has been cleaned from floor to roof ; the gorgeous, but not very carefully preserved furniture, furbished up, and various additions made to the cellar stock, which, under the reign of the late tenant, has run rather low. The arrangements are now all complete. Shutters are closed, curtains drawn ; the ruddy glow of the fire is supplemented by the subdued light of several lamps, each deeply shaded with crimson silk, so as to confine its light to the one table upon which it stands ; and the heavy half-intoxicating fumes of some subtle Indian drug float in long grey wreaths here and there, in the still atmosphere of the room. Upon the hearthrug stands the landlord himself, awaiting the arrival of his new BAM BASS. 203 tenant. He is not alone, however. A shabby, weak-eyed woman, in a battered bonnet and greasy black cotton gown, and with an indescribable air of “ stage door ” about her, stands before him ; her own any- thing but resplendent toilette contrasting forcibly with the brilliant mass of silk and velvet which trails from her arm. “You are quite sure that it is made according to the picture ? ” “ Quite sure, Mr. Earn Hass. Look ! You can see for yourself” “ I would rather trust to you, Mrs. Smith. If you are satisfied, it will, no doubt, be all right. Now, take it upstairs and wait there.” Mrs. Smith drops a curtsey and retires. Mr. Earn Dass rings the bell. “ Has anyone called ? ” “There is a man just come, sir. Name of Thompson.” 204 EAM BASS. “Show him in. Well, Prescott; you have carried it through ? ” “ I have, sir ; and successful. I’d a bit of a job, sir, to get the gent to overpower me. Thought it was a plant, he did, and wouldn’t tumble to it a bit till I told him as how you was in it.” “ And that satisfied him ? ” asks Mr. Earn Dass, smilingly. “ Yes, sir. Seemed to think it were all right then. We managed the overpowering business after that, sir ; and I lays quite still for a hour at least, according to instruc- tions. Which my arm aches now, sir ; and I haven’t rightly got the chill of the pave- ment out of my stomach yet.” Mr. Earn Dass goes to the little table standing at one side of the fireplace, tempt- ingly laid with covers for two, and pours out a tumbler of wine. RAM BASS. 205 “ This will remove the chill. Go on with your story, please.” “ Well, sir^ — thanking you, sir, and drink- ing your good health - — - there I lays, as I says, a good hour ; and then I ups and I gives the alarm.” “ Did you get the paper — the note for Mrs. Forester ? ” “ Oh yes, sir. Here it is.” Mr. Ram Dass untwists the scrap of paper, and reads the pencilled lines : “My darling, I am free! God in heaven Mess you and him. Will write again as soon as safe. — H.” “ Gent wanted to write a good bit more, sir ; naming of names, and such like, and saying as how he was coming here.” “You stopped that.” 206 BAM BASS. “ I did, sir, according to instructions.” Good. One moment, please,” and Mr. Earn Dass goes to a writing-table, places Harry’s note in an envelope, addresses it to Mrs. Forester, 7, Star Lane, and rings the bell. “ Give this to Simmons. Tell him to take it at once, with the brougham, to the address, and wait for the answer. There will be some one to bring back. And now, my friend, for the other part of the business. You have your men here ?” “ I have, sir.” “ How many V’ “ Two on ’em. And good ones.” “ And where are they ? ” “ Well, sir, I found the conservatory-door open, as you told me, and there they are.” “ That is well. You see yonder ante-room, with the statues and shrubs ? That leads to the conservatory. The farther door leads to BAM BASS. 207 the room where he will be. Watch from among the shrubs till he is safely housed in that room. Then get your men quietly in from the conservatory, and wait, all of you^ there till he re-enters this room. Mind, as long as he does not enter this room, do not meddle with him. He must pass by the ante-room, where you will be, and till then let him alone. Do you understand ? ” “ Oh yes, sir ; I understand that. But if I understand what’s the meaning of it all I’m ” “ Yet it is simple. You get £200 for aiding a prisoner to escape. You then get £100 more for assisting to retake him. You understand that ? ” “ Oh yes, sir, I understand that.” “ Then you understand all that is neces- sary. You are sure he will come ? ” “That’s him now, sir, I believe, a-tapping at the window.” 208 EAM BASS. “ Good. He must not see you. You quite understand ? ” “ All right, sir. He won’t have time to do much mischief afore we’re on him.” The faithful guardian vanishes among the shrubs in the ante-room. Mr. Ram Hass goes to the window, opens curtains and shutter, and admits Harry Forester. “ Mr. Ram Dass ! How can I ever thank you ? Did ever man have such a friend before ? ” “ Perhaps, Mr. Forester,” returns the Indian with his peculiar smile, as he abandons his lean brown fingers to the young man’s hearty grip, “ perhaps you should rather say, did ever man do so much to earn one ? ” “ So little, you mean. I’m afraid. But there, sir. I’m not very old, but I’ve lived in the world long enough to know that it is not those who most deserve friendship who oftenest get it.” BAM BASS. 209 “You think so ? Nay, I think you have earned all I have done for you — thoroughly. It is a pleasure to repay you — a real plea- sure. And a real pleasure to see you here to-night. By-the-way, curious, is it not, it should be here ? ” “Why, sir?” “You know this house.” ■“No. Never here before in my life.” “Indeed ! You know whose it was?” “Yours, I suppose.” “ I mean, who lived in it. Have you forgotten Miss Montmorenci already ? ” “No, really? Yes. I remember her.” “ And now you remember the house also ? ” “No, sir. As I told you, I never was here in my life.” “ Then it was not for want of asking.” “Well, I don’t know that I ought to tell you, sir. But I don’t suppose it matters much now ? ” TOL. III. p 210 BAM BASS. “ Not at all. Ha ! ha ! You quite cut me out there, eh ? ” “ Showed the lady’s bad Good Heaven ! What is that ? ” “ Ah ! you have seen that before, at any rate.” “ I have, indeed. And I knoM% too, how it comes here. My poor Clarie ! She told me it had fetched a wonderful sum. Oh, Mr. Earn Dass, I — I shall — ^make a fool of myself directly.” And, in truth, the young fellow’s voice has a catch in it which sounds very much as though the operation, thus unromantically described, were not very far distant. Mr. Earn Dass smiles again — that strange, slow smile, whilst the glittering eyes wander over the young man’s figure, as one might imagine the eyes of some hungry boa wan- dering over the victim he is lubricating for the coming meal. BAM BASS. 211 “ What could I do ? Your wife ” — and here the smile expands into a little laugh — such a kindly little laugh it sounds to Harry Forester — “your wife would not take money from me.” “ Poor darling ! She will understand you better, sir, some day.” “ Do you know I think she begins to understand me better already?” “You must not be surprised at people being slow to do it. Pm sure I can hardly understand it even now.” The python-like eyes are playing about their victim more hungrily than ever. “ You will both know all about it soon, no doubt. Hush ! is not that a carriage ? I must chasser you for a time. I have a visitor coming — handsome, charming, ah ! She must not know of you. No ; I shall not tell you who it is. Only a very, very 212 BAM BASS. particular friend of mine, who would be much shocked if you were to see her here.” “ Where shall I go ? ” “ Into yonder room. I fear there are no hooks, hut ” “ I shall have plenty to think of, sir ; if only of all you have done for me.” “ That is nothing. You shall have more than that to think of hy-and-hy. Who is there ? ” Mr. Earn Dass goes to the Moor, at which is now visible the battered bonnet of Mrs. Smith. “ Eefuses to put on the costume ? Ah ! Give her this note, Mrs. Smith, and say I shall expect her in ten minutes. No, Mr. Forester ; no hurry. She has her dress to change. See now. Your supper is in yonder room, I trust you will enjoy it. But before you go, pledge me in one bumper to my honne fortune.” BAM BASS. 213 “ Well,” answers Harry, smiling, “ I am a married man, you know.” “ I know that well. A married man with a very handsome, and very discreet, wife. I have no wife, you know — of my own. So pledge me ! Come ! ” “ Well, Mr. Earn Dass, I wish you in everything all the success you deserve.” This time the equivoque is, though most unintentionally, upon Harry’s side. But though his failure in this last little coup irritates Mr. Earn Dass to a quite disproportionate extent, there is no time for any attempt to enforce the proper wording of the toast, and he hastens the visitor from the room. “ There ! You will find everything there. Everything, but a beautiful companion.” “ Thank you. There is only one beau- tiful companion I should care to have now.” “You would like to have mine — you •214 BAM BASS. would like to kave mine. Ha ! ha ! you should see her. Oh ! bella ! bella ! bellis- sima ! ” The Indian pushes Harry into the inner room, lets fall the heavy festoons of the ■portiere, yet leaving, with a careful hand, a space for the purposes of any curious eye ; then walks slowly to the rug again, and filling himself a glass of the old Madeira, stands before the fire sipping. “ All the success I deserve ! Yes ; it was not badly said, after all. I have deserved it, and it has come ! Ha ! ha ! my married friend, will it be a year, or a lifetime, or a thousand centuries, before your poor pale white brain shall compass a night’s work such as this ? You do not know this house ? Of course not ; you are a married man. And besides — to me, you know — impossible ! Oh, you are quite right — you know nothing at all.” BAM BASS. 215 And Mr. Earn Dass sips on at his Madeira and smiles till every sharp fang glistens whitely in its dusky setting. “Perhaps you will not know her? That would be still more discreet. When the blood that has been cooled by prison fare begins to stir again under the promptings of the ‘ nigger’s ’ wine, it will not be satisfied with- out, at least, a look at the nigger’s beautiful mistress. You shall see her, my friend ; you shall see her. But not yet. A little later on. And then you shall go back to your prison cell, and your chaplain, and your rope ; ha ! ha ! your rope. Your health, my friend ; and may we all meet with the success we deserve.” And, as he drains his glass, the door opens, .and Judith herself sweeps into the room. CHAPTER XV. Me. Manockjee Ram Bass’s hour of triumph has come. Here at his mercy — in his own house at midnight, alone— here stands at last, the proud, pure English girl who has spurned his oilers and despised his love ; who dis- dained to listen, even when, as she thought, he offered her the honoured name of wife. There, on the other side of yonder droop- ing folds of velvet, scarce thick enough to muffle the sounds of the well-known voice, is that same proud girl’s husband, the hand- some, honourable young English gentleman. EAM BASS. 217 for whom she thus rejected him, whose life is her life, his honour her honour- — the hand- some English lad whose blue eyes, and fair hair, and ruddy cheeks have triumphed before now under this very roof over all the Indian’s gold — who is waiting there now, a convicted felon under sentence of death, just respited for one short hour, that he may see with his own eyes how absolute his dusky rival’s ven- geance has been made. Held, both of them, in his iron grasp. At his mercy, husband and wife alike— his mercy — the mercy of Manockjee Earn Dass ! The man feels that the moment is for him almost too supreme. To his dazzled eye the brightness is well-nigh black. His lungs labour in the too vivid atmosphere. The diapason of his triumph swells to such heights and depths, that human senses fail in the effort to grasp its harmonies. It is a mood of mind not without its 218 BAM BASS. dangers, even in itself, this half-bewildering exultation, sprung from an almost too perfect consummation of success. From such moods Fate loves to draw point for her irony, and Nemesis to exact her price. And in the present case this dangerous mood is by no means left to do its work alone. For some weeks now that well-known picture of the Assyrian general and his beautiful destroyer has been hanging, as it hangs now, on the wall of Mr. Earn Bass’s room, and he has sat before it night after night, his eyes fixed, through the curling wreaths from his perfumed pipe, upon the splendid loveliness of the adventurous woman ; thinking how many days or hours have yet to elapse ere yet that glowing canvas shall repeat itself in the living triumph of flesh and blood — thinking, too, how richly that besotted soldier deserves his fate who can toy with one hand with BAM BASS. 219 this beautiful tigress just robbed of her young, even whilst he raises the other to put into his own mouth the enemy that shall “ steal away his brains.” Not often is this reproach to be fairly levelled at Mr. Ram Dass. His Indian blood runs too hotly through the dusky veins to need the artificial stimulus of the grape. This night, of all others, would surely have been observed that golden rule of moderation in this respect, which here, in this very room, has so often been observed by the master of the feast, whilst the tide of libation to the rosy god flowed at its wildest around him. Never yet had its late champagne-loving tenant seen her dusky patron the worse for wine. It is hardly likely that such a spectacle should willingly be permitted to greet her successor. And, indeed, at this moment, Mr. Ram Dass himself does not find himself by any 220 BAM BASS. means the worse for Avine. True, but for the sudden thought, born of the very intoxi- cation of his fast maturing triumph, to make his victim himself pledge him in a bumper to his own dishonour, no drop of any such stimulating liquid would, under the circum- stances, have passed his lips. But even as it is, even with his pulses throbbing under the influence of that second glass, which has followed upon the first almost unconsciously — even thus Mr. Earn Dass does not feel that he has been betrayed into any unwise excess. Feels, on the contrary, that he has done wisely ; departing, to this extent, from the rule a too cautious prudence has laid down ; that only thus can he hope to rise to the full height of a situation so far beyond the most triumphant measure of ordinary events. Besides, what harm has he to fear ? The stalwart young Englishman, with his tern- BAM BASS. 221 perate habits, his love of manly exercise, and that accursed “ pluck ” which played such havoc among the swarming hordes of his own ferocious kinsmen in those never-to-be- forgotten days of Lucknow and Cawnpore, might, indeed, be a dangerous foe, even after the weakening discipline of two months of prison. But between him and this truly formidable avenger are three other English- men, with as much pluck and more than thrice as much strength. There is nothing to fear from Harry Forester. Within less than a minute of the time when his eyes shall have first been blasted by the spectacle so carefully prepared for them, he will be a handcuffed prisoner upon his way once more to the hands of the common hangman. And for this humbled, outraged, desperate girl, there can very surely be nought to fear from her. Mr. Earn Hass smiles to himself, as he thinks that he is a match for 222 BAM BASS. a woman — even an English woman — when no man is by. Perhaps — for Manockjee Earn Dass knows well of old how that the white man’s blood has a dash of Spartan sternness, even in a woman’s veins — ^perhaps, in those few seconds of fierce inward struggle, which preceded her acceptance of her conqueror’s bitter terms, she may have reasoned with herself that, her husband once saved, the remedy for all the rest was in her own hands, and deter- mined not to survive, to be a lasting dis- grace to the life she will have preserved at such a cost ? Mr. Earn Dass laughs to him- self as he wonders how far such a resolution will probably be affected by the discovery, so soon to be made, that the shameful price has been paid, while the life it w'as to have purchased remains forfeit after all. Laughs again at the quaint conceit Avhich follows as natural corollary — the meeting BAM BASS. 223 in tlie Christian’s heaven of the two souls thus launched together upon their path. Mr. Manoekjee Earn Dass has hut a limited belief in the Christian’s heaven, and is willing to encounter this much risk of the baffling of his revenge. She has entered the room and stands within the closed door, silently, her glorious figure erect in its sweeping robes, her round bare arms, bound round the slender wrists with strings of seeming pearl, hanging motion- less by her side ; the white face set ; the great grey eyes, larger than ever in their wide dry gaze, fixed upon the glittering orbs from whose insolent regard the treacherous veil of deference is cast aside — the evil eyes of the man to whom, even by her standing there, she has given the right to call himself her master. “ So, hella Giudita, you have thought better of it ? He was not quite far enough 224 BAM BASS. away yet to indulge in a little rebellion, was be ? It would hardly have been worth while to send him back again just for the sake of coming to your new master in a shabby gown ? You look better thus, eh ! Better ! You look glorious. Come here, my pearl of the zenana, and let the poor ‘nigger' sun himself in the beauty of his proud English sultana. Do you hear ? Come.” Without word or sign the girl obeys, crossing the room with measured step, and standing just beyond reach of the Indian’s arm, motionless as before, and with the ominous light of the great grey eyes still bent on his. Something in that rigid attitude, that strange silent regard, seems to have, for the moment, a curiously chilling effect upon the hot current of the Indian’s blood. It is as though he had seen, looking out from the wide grey eyes of the tortured BAM BASS. 225 English girl, something of that terrible spirit of the Englishman before which he cowers with instinctive dread, as the wild beast of his native jungle cowers, as old stories tell, beneath a human glance. For a moment he feels less certain than he was feeling, only a few minutes since, of his power to cope even with a woman, when the English blood in that woman’s veins has perchance been outraged too far. Still the girl stands there before him, silent, apparently submissive. A sudden thought strikes him, and with an insolent laugh he holds out to her his empty glass. “ Here, girl ; to your duty. Serve your master with more wine.” Again, without word or sign, she obeys him ; taking the glass from his outstretched hand, refilling it from the half-empty bottle, and again holding it out to him. The absolute passive submissiveness of the TOL. III. 226 BAM BASS.. action quite reassures him. The laugh rises= to his lips again, more insolently than before. He has subdued her, this proud English beauty. For the present, at all events, till her task is done, her husband’s ransom worked out, and he safe- beyond her perse- cutor’s reach — till then she is afraid of him — he may trample on her as he will. It is very luxury to the bitter black Hindoo blood, this licence to humiliate at pleasure, for a while, one of the proud conquering race. It would be luxury to rack with every physical pain the body or limbs of the rasfg'edest white urchin from the streets. But thus to wring with bitterest humiliation the proud heart of this refined, handsome, haughty English girl, is pleasure so keen that for the moment it supersedes all other thoughts. She seems so perfectly submissive to her doom that he tries her yet a little further. BAM BASS. 227 “ You are very docile, my proud beauty. I must have none but English girls when I go back to my home. But you have some- thing to learn yet. In our zenanas our slaves serve us on their knees.” For a moment something like a flash comes from the wide grey eyes, a faint tinge mounts to the cheek, the set teeth clench themselves a little more firmly, and the delicate nostrils quiver as though with pain. Her tormentor laughs again, for this time the blow has told. It is no senseless corpse on which his ingenuity is to be practised. His victim can still feel. Just at first, indeed, it seems as though she were about to resist. But the temptation passes. For a moment the white lids fall, and the long dark lashes droop almost on the cheek, whilst the lips move, quickly, but without a sound. Then slowly she sinks 228 BAM BASS. upon her knee, holding up the glass over her bowed head. As he takes it from her, his other hand closes upon hers, and a shudder runs through her frame as, with a laughing glance at the great picture on the wall, he imitates the action of the enamoured general, and toys with the beads upon her wrist. The next moment he stoops forward. She feels his hot breath upon her shoulder, and springs to her feet just in time to avoid the profanation of his lips. “ Gently, my restive beauty. That is not the way to receive the honour of your master’s kiss. Come, that is a graceful pose. Shall I have you taught to dance ? We have many a nautch-girl less active in her spring. But we do not let them spring away from us. Come, I say. Do you think the price is paid by the duties of a serving- wench ? ” BAMDASS. 229 He takes a step towards her, and the girl shrinks yet farther back. The long dark lashes droop again, and the white lips move quickly, though still without a sound. Is it a prayer they are murmuring so rapidly ? And is it heard ? Be that as it may, a change comes over the purpose of her pursuer. He arrests his step, and his glittering eye glances keenly over her cowering form. The attitude is an attitude of fear, not of defiance. Perhaps it is not the will that is lacking to submit herself fuUy to her hideous doom — only the courage ? He laughs again, and points to the well- covered table. ‘‘My gentle dove is coy. She is fasting, and her spirit fails her. Come — we will to supper, and that will give her heart. Is that so, my beautiful — mistress?” 230 BAM BASS. The girl bows her head, and speaks, for the first time, in low, hoarse tones : “Yes — yes. If you please.” “ Why, that is good. We shall be friends, after all. Your hand, my princess. So. The favourite shall sit beside her master, and eat from his dish.” The triumphant Indian is radiant once more, and helps himself and his victim with a liberal hand. The girl struggles hard to swallow a morsel, but her mouth is dry and parched, and she murmurs a scarcely audible request for wine. Delighted with her submission. Earn Dass quickly opens a bottle of champagne, and pledges her in a foaming glass. Her parched tongue seems to loosen, and she speaks to him, for the first time, of her own accord ; but hesitatingly, almost incoherently, with a strange air, not of thinking as she speaks. MAM BASS. 231 but rather of mechanically practising her voice, that she may regain command over it for something that is to be said by-and-by. Her dusky companion hears only that she is speaking, and to him, and hugs himself over this fresh token of the completeness of his triumph. She is his, now — his, body and soul. With a low laugh he flings his arm around her, and tries to draw her to him. But again she shrinks away, and for the third time the white lids droop and the silent lips move rapidly. An angry oath breaks from the baffled Indian ; but she checks it with one uplifted hand, and, still shrinking back from his clasping arm, speaks in a c[uick low tone, and with something in her voice which sounds strangely as though she were saying words learned off by rote. 232 BAM BASS. “ I cannot — I cannot ! Mr. Earn Dass^ have some pity. Give ” “ Pity ! ” he breaks in, hissing out the word between his clenched teeth, and tightening his strong grasp around hen waist. “ Pity ! ” But something in her eyes checks him,, and as he pauses, she goes on again, still with that air of speaking words by rote : “ I do not mean that. I know you have no pity.” Her tormentor laughs a low mocking laugh, but she speaks on, unheeding. Only, as the dusky face draws nearer to hers, the hand which has been raised to stay him draws back and hides itself in her bosom. “ I do not ask you that. But — you have a medicine — a drug — something which takes away the sense and kills the will. Give me that drug. Let me not know what I do.” BAM BASS. 233 Tlie Indian unclasps his hold and laughs gleefully. The notion pleases him, and without a word he rises from her side, walks to a little cabinet, takes out a small crystal phial, and returns, still laughing, to the table. Silently the girl pushes her glass close up beside his. Earn Dass pours into it a full dose of the stupefying drug ; then, placing the phial in his pocket, fills up both glasses witli the creaming wine. Throughout the operation the girl’s dumb white lips have not ceased their rapid mur- mur. But this time her eyes have not closed. They have remained fixed upon the glass into which is being poured the drug that is to deliver her over, powerless and unresisting, to the monster at her side. It is fiUed, and she stretches out to it a trembling hand. Then suddenly, with a cry that is almost a shriek, she glances wildly 234 BAM BASS. over the shoulder of the still laughing Indian, and calls, as in mortal terror : “ Hold ! hold ! Do not fire ! ” Startled at the cry. Ram Dass turns round. But there is nothing. His eyes are not turned away ten seconds ; but in those ten seconds the girl has changed the position, not of the glasses — there is no time for that — but of the hand which she has stretched out for her own. As he turns she draws towards her slowly — half unconsciously, as it seems — one cream- ing bumper ; the startled Indian, half furious, half alarmed, is for the moment, as she has boldly reckoned, much too bemldered to think or notice which. “What, in the fiend’s name, do you mean ? ” She dares not drop the mask too soon, and answers, pantingly: , “ I saw him — him ” RAM BASS. 235 “ Him ! Whom ? Your husband ? Pshaw ! You are dreaming. Drink.” Slowly, and to all seeming reluctantly, she raises the glass to her lips. Earn Dass seizes the other glass, and drains it feverishly at a draught. As he does so, he gives a sudden short sharp cry. For a moment a frightful expression crosses his dusky features, as he recognises the action of the treacherous drug, and knows how he has been tricked. The next, the empty glass shivers on the carpet, and he sinks sense- less upon the sofa. Clarice springs to her feet with a joyful cry. “ Oh God ! I thank thee. Helj) ! help me now.” But at this moment a strange sound, as of a cry of horror, comes from behind her. The startled girl looks round, and there, in the open doorway, from which the heavy 236 BAM BA88. folds of the velvet curtain have been hastily flung aside — there, with a blank look of anguish and dismay upon his careworn young face — stands, in very truth, her husband. CHAPTER XVI. “Harry!” “ Clarice ! ” The two stand for some moments speech- less, motionless, so rapt in the intensity of their own sensations that neither of them so much as hears the rustling among the ever- greens in the ante-room, as the ambushed officers prepare to rush out upon their pri- soner. The girl’s first impulse, as, after a brief space of utter darkness and breathlessness, her heart begins to beat again, is the natural, blind, loving impulse to fling herself at once into her husband’s arms, to pillow her weary 2B8 BAM BASS. head once more on the dear breast on which she had never thought to rest it again. The shrubs in the ante-room rustle again sharply as, in obedience to her first impulse, she pushes aside the heavy sofa which inter- poses between herself and her husband, and makes one hasty, joyous step towards him. But the rustling ceases again, and the men draw back within their ambush ; for there is no answering movement on the part of Harry Forester, who stands there, framed, as it were, in the curtained door- way, motionless, voiceless still ; the deepening horror in his worn white face thrown out in terrible relief against the crimson folds, a statue of living marble. Not into Harry Forester’s mind had entered for so much as a passing moment the thought so confidently reckoned upon by Manockjee Earn Hass. To the young lover, in all the first flush of wedded happiness. BAM BASS. 239 now doubly sacred under the purifying hand of sorrow and threatened bereavement, the so-called charms of venal beauty are in themselves not attractive, but abhorrent. This, however, is of itself but a very minor matter. Had the propensities of Clarice’s young husband been on this point what they might, the idea of gratifying them by availing himself of his host’s hospitality to act the spy upon the little chroniques scanda- leuses of his private life would — strange as Mr. Ram Hass would doubtless think it — have occurred to the mind of this young English gentleman as little then as now. Withdrawn to the farther end of the room, beyond the reach even of the voices in the adjoining apartment, Harry, after a few mouthfuls of much-needed refreshment, has leaned back with closed eyes in his easy- chair, and abandons himself to thoughts of the life before him. 240 EAM BASS. They are not all rose-coloured, these anti- cipations of a life which, even yet, is hardly rescued from the hangman’s very grip, and over which, let it last till his hair is white and his eyes dim with years, the shadow of the gallows must ever fall. But Harry will not look at this black side of the pic- ture now. One thing at least is left him — one blessing, which makes in itself a bless- ing even of that dark halter-haunted life, that, but for it, had scarce been worth the saving. Clarice is left to him still. Clarice, whose love will be his solace, his comfort, his never-failing happiness, let the trials of his coming life be what they may. She has had something to do with his escape ; that much he has learned from the gaoler who effected it, but who could, or would, tell him no more. Suddenly a loud cry from the next room startles him from his meditations, the more BAM BASS. 241 so as, strained and unnatural as tlie sound is, there is something in the tone which seems terribly familiar to his ear. There is a moment’s silence. Then the same voice speaks again ; this time in lower accents, scarce audible through the heavy curtain, even to his strained and anxious ear. But faintly as the sounds come, there is a ring in them which echoes in the very depths of the listener’s heart, and bids it stand still in fear. One brief struggle there is between this terrible dread which has come upon him, and the innate horror of anything like spying or prying, and he springs to his feet. Like the blow of a whip has fallen upon his heart the remembrance of that unknown share in his escape, of which he has but this very moment been thinking so tenderly. What if ? He can debate the point of honour no YOL. III. E 242 EA2I BASS. farther. In half a dozen strides he has reached the door of communication with the other room, and dashing aside the curtain, stands looking upon the scene. Two figures — one seated, the other standing — are in the act of lifting their glasses to their lips. But Harry has eyes for only one of them, and upon that figure, the hack of which, as she sits at the table, is turned directly towards him, his eyes fasten with a terrible eagerness. As they do so, he starts, and glances in- voluntarily at the picture which hangs facing them both. For the moment it seems to him that the figure of Judith must have stepped out of its frame. Even as he does so, however, the two actors in the strange scene before him both change their position. The one sinks, scarcely noticed by him, down upon the sofa. His eyes are riveted upon the other, the gorgeously-robed figure so BAM BASS. 243 strangely like tlie Giudita of the picture, so terribly like Great heaven ! It is her herself ! His own wife — Clarice ! Before he speaks, the pallid horror of his face arrests her advance, even as she springs towards him. Then, as she stands irresolute, the varying emotions chasing each other across her face, like the hurrying cloud- wrack across a storm-swept sky, the hoarse words come at last. “ In the name of God ! Clarice, what are you doing here — at this hour, and in that disguise ? ” She knows, now, what that blank horror of his ^face really means. She looks down upon the flowing purple robe, the bared white arm with its imitation jewels, the whole stage paraphernalia in which she has been compelled to array herself, to make the more piquant sport for her triumphant •enemy, and her heart stands still, as she 244 BAM BASS. realises wliat, to any human eye but her own, they needs must mean. Hitherto she has thought of nothing but simply of the end she has in view. Like a lightning flash had come across her mind, as the taunting Indian jeered her about her picture, the story which that picture embodied, and the moral it conveyed. It had seemed to her an inspiration — that thought which in that same moment had come to her, already almost in the dimensions of a resolve — the thought how she too might be a Judith for her husband’s sake, and to in- sure his deliverance. Patiently and carefully, through the throbbing hours Avhich intervene between her bold promise and the receipt of that brief line from the escaped prisoner,^ which is to be the signal for its carrying out, has she shaped and re-shaped every detail of the proposed plan ; rehearsed with an anxious, eager care no debutante on any BAM BASS. 245 mimic stage could display or feel, every gesture, and word, and tone. She has had no time for any other thought. Now other thoughts come, indeed, and will not be denied — thoughts that in a moment convert her short-lived triumph into utter, blank dismay. What, indeed, does she here, at this hour, and in this disguise ? Here, in the very house of the man with whose name her own has been so freely cou- pled as that of his mistress ; the very house in which she, whom men even now speak of as her predecessor, has, as it were, but this very moment ceded her place ? Here, alone with him in the small hours of the night, tricked out, as he himself has scoffingly told her, in all the meretricious bravery of some favourite of the zezana, eager only to stimu- late the jaded fancy of her lord ? She staggers, catching hurriedly at the back 246 EAM BASS. of a chair, and leaning heavily upon it for support. At the sight her husband starts forward. Heaven only knows the unutter- able bitterness of the thoughts that throng his mind. There can be no question of the truth. Clarice — his wife — ^his one only hope or happiness on earth, is lost to him for ever ; lost, not to him only, but to Heaven ; lost in a sense and in a way compared with which that separation by his own violent and shameful death, to which he had looked for- ward with such bitterness not half a dozen hours ago, would, he feels now, be simple, utter joy. He must never touch her, never see her, never think of her again. And yet, as she reels and grasps with uncertain hand at some- thing that may stay her fall, it is merely impossible that he can hold aloof. In a moment he has sprung forward to her aid. In a moment the men concealed among BAM DASS. ■ 247 the evergreens in the ante-room are upon him, and, without even a struggle — with just one wild cry of “ Clarice ! Clarice ! oh, my God ! ” — Harry Forester falls heavily forward, the bright steel manacles upon his wrist, and from his lips a thin streak of blood trickling slowly to the ground. This time it is the girl who springs forward with a scream. But the strong arm of one of the constables keeps her back— not roughly, but firndy. “ pardon. Miss ; but this gent is our prisoner.” “ He is my husband ! ” “ Sorry to hear it. Miss,” and to the girl’s sore heart it seems as though it were rather on his account that the sorrow is expressed than on hers. “ Sorry to hear it, truly ; but duty is duty. Miss, and you mustn’t come anigh him now.” There comes a moment when the tragedy 248 BAM BASS. of the scene is on the very point of taking an entirely new turn. The girl feels des- perate. Every one — fate itself — is against her. It never occurs to her, even now, that Ram Dass has brought her husband here for the express purpose of witnessing his own dishonour — that these men, into whose hands he has again fallen, have been am- bushed in readiness by the same treacherous hand. All this seems to be the work of a terriblQ chance. Or is it Heaven itself ranging itself openly among her foes ? Heart, hope, faith, temper — all fail her for the time. There are odds against which it is worse than vain to struggle ; and surely it is by such odds that she is baffled now. Shall she throw up her arms and yield ? Once more her hand moves towards her bosom — but at this moment the silent figure on the sofa begins to stir. Long as all this is in the telling, little more than a BAM BASS. 249 minute has even now elapsed since the stupefying draught has been taken, and its first numbing effects are just wearing off, leaving behind them that helpless paralysis of the will, of its power to inflict which he, who is now its victim, has been wont to boast so freely. The sound recalls Clarice from her despe- rate purpose. All is not yet lost. The most important part of her work is yet to do, and can she but do it, her husband’s life is saved, even now. Surely, when all shall have been made clear — ^when he shall have seen for himself the object of her terrible enterprise — surely then he will forgive her ; nay, rather will know that she needs no forgiveness ; has earned only a better title to love and honour than before ? With just one yearning gesture she stretches out her clasped hands towards his 250 EAM BASS. senseless form, Avliicli the warders, with careful gentleness and somewhat solemn faces, have placed upon a little sofa, stand- ing close by where he fell ; then braces her- self with an effort, and turns swiftly ujDon Earn Dass. The Indian has recovered his senses by this time, and is evidently struggling des- perately against the enervating influence of the drug. Inured by constant practice to the action of opiates of various kinds, its power over him is less than would have been exercised over most men by a similar dose ; and, indeed, but for the perturbation into Avhich his mental powers have already been thrown by the unusual amount of wine he has taken, he might not, improbably, have struggled against it with success. The girl sees that the drug has failed of its full effect, and turns sick and cold at the thought that he may escape her after BAM BASS. 251 all. But there is now a terrible addition to the stimulus under Avhich she is acting. The penalty of failure is to herself the same as before ; but of this penalty she thinks, as she has thought, but little. The penalty to her husband has undergone a fearful augmen- tation. Before it was only a question whether ' — free in any case — he should or should not be freed also, by her daring deed, from the charge whose penalty he had escaped. Now, if she fails, the forfeit of her failure Avill be alike his honour and his life. With a mien as firm as her heart is sink- ing, she advances to her work. And now that very imperfectness of action which has seemingly threatened such danger to her enterprise becomes, in truth, its strongest ally. Utterly unacquainted as she is with all the practical details of its working, she has found it almost impossible to study beforehand her oAvn share in this 252 EAM EASS. portion of her scheme, as she has studied that of the previous part. Even now, she is uncertain whether she shall formulate, in so many words, a precise demand for those evidences of his guilt, and her husband’s innocence, she has dared and done so much to Avin ; or, whether, in some less direct way, she may not find a safer and surer means of obtaining them. Earn Dass himself relieves her from all doubt. Thoroughly subdued by the insidious drug, he would indeed have been a passive tool in the hands of anyone who knew the precise Avork to be done and how to do it ; but Avould in himself have been as helpless to suggest as to obstruct. Now, in his half-clear, half-conquered state, his beAvildered brain plays him a grievous trick. With just instinctive action enough to Avarn him Avhat it is Avhich this tall, beautiful mena- cing figure seeks at his hands, and nerve EAM DA8S. 253 liim to work his utmost in its defence, it fails him hopelessly, when the question comes, how that defence is to he achieved. The intellect which might have saved him, had it only been so thoroughly overpowered as to be unable to work at all, works, but works blindly, and in its blind working betrays him to his doom. Before Clarice can speak — almost before she has taken the first step towards him — he springs to his feet, dashes at one bound to the little inlaid cabinet from which, not five minutes before, he has taken the treacherous drug, and stands before it facing her — at bay. The girl’s eyes flash with a new light of triumph. Like the snarl of some savage beast is the inarticulate sound which bursts from between the parted lips of the half-maddened Indian, and fiercer than that which heralds the spring •2o4 BAM DASS. of wild cat or panther is the green gleanr in those vicious, hloodthhsty eyes. But in her present mood, and with this new hope thrilling through every pulse, Clarice Forester would face wild cat or panther without a thought. Straight down upon him she hears, her noble figure drawn to its full height ; a cool, calm glow in the great grey eyes, beneath which the evil glitter in his own shifts and cowers as he draws back before her, still with the wild-cat snarl upon his face, but crouching, not for a spring, but in sheer bodily fear. Straight onward to the little cabinet, where the quaintly carved and gilded key is yet in the lock — where, as the girl’s beating- heart tells her with an almost fearful joy, lie the proofs that, even now, shall set her darling free. The snarl changes to something almost like a yell, as she lays her hand upon the BAM BASS. 255 key ; and the frantic Indian gathers himself, as for a spring. But the girl’s eye, removed for a moment, is again upon him, and again he crouches and cowers beneath it. A change, too, has come over her pur- pose. It will be better that the discovery — for that discovery there will be she now doubts far less than, when the thought of this daring enterprise first dawned upon her mind, she dared to hope it — should be made by some independent person, some one upon whose evidence there can be no shadow of a doubt. She calls to one of the warders, now stand- ing silently by the scarce breathing form of her husband ; and the man, who has no further care as to his prisoner, and whose curiosity is aroused by what has already passed, comes to her at once. “ Be kind enough,” she says to him, “ to open this small casket for me.” 256 BAM BASS. The man lays his hand upon the key, but stops involuntarily at the savage cry which again bursts from the crouching figure of the Indian. Without a moment’s hesitation, the girl places herself between the two, and, bidding the man proceed without fear, stands with her back to the cabinet, and her firm gaze fixed upon Earn Dass while the search goes on. Presently an astonished ejaculation from the searcher brings the crimson blood rushing to her cheeks. “ What have you found ? ” “ By G— , Miss, I’ve found what’ll put the halter round the right neck at last, or my name’s not Jones.” “ Yes ? Tell me, please — quickly.” Look here. Miss. If here arn’t the very fellow of the pistol as done the deed; and here’s a list — splashed with the dead man’s blood, blow me if it arn’t — a list of all them BAM DA88. 257 forged securities, written in the murdered man’s own hand, or I’m much mistook, and noting them as delivered up to Mr. Manock- jee Earn Dass on the 4th November by one Jonas Moss, of Israel Court, Chancery Lane ; and here — why, damme, Miss, you’ll excuse me speaking a bit strong like — ^but d me, if here arn’t the very blessed securities themselves.” Clarice Forester stands silent and motion- less. She has won her desperate venture ; her Harry’s life is saved. She has no thought to bestow upon the worthy officer now. The big bright tears are rolling fast from under the drooping lids, the trembling lips moving rapidly once more, not in supplication now, but in thanksgiving. The officer looks up at her for a moment, nods his head, clears his throat, and sternly repressing all unprofessional sympathy, applies himself once more to the consideration of TOL. III. s .258 BAM BASS. the pieces de conviction before him. Ap- parently his doubts, if such there have been, are soon satisfied, for almost instantly he rises to his feet, and stepping past Clarice, puts out his hand as towards the collar of Mr, Manockjee Earn Dass. But Clarice’s interest in the Indian and his fate is altogether at an end. She is yonder by the couch, kneeling by the side of her rescued husband, from whose eyes are beginning to glimmer the first gleams of returning life — telling him how that he is saved — saved in very truth at last. The gleams of returning life grow stronger ; the awakening senses take in the meaning of the startling, joyful words. Yet no answering brightness comes over the drawn features, only a quiver of sharper agony than they have shown before. What is life to Harry Forester, if it have been purchased at the price he fears ? BAM BASS. 259 Suddenly a change conies over the con- tracted features, a faint gleam of colour comes to cheek and lip, and a light steals into the dim eye as it fastens eagerly upon the open front of the girl’s velvet robe. Her eye follows the direction of his, and once more the warm flush of joy pours richly over her, as quickly thrusting her hand into her bosom, she brings to view that on which his gaze is resting, and places it with a smile in his still fettered hand. It is a small, exquisitely- carved dagger, scarce bigger than a lady’s bodkin, looking in its delicate ivory sheath no whit more dangerous. But Harry Forester knows it well. That little dagger is no plaything. It was the gift, not three months since, of Mr. Ram Dass himself. Its tiny blade would indeed scarce pierce to the heart of .a mouse ; but it does not need to reach the 260 BAM BASS. heart, for it is steeped in deadliest poison to the very hilt. The look of agony disappears. The eyes of the two young lovers meet, and in a moment the girl’s arms are round her hus- band’s neck, her head pillowed upon his breast. “ Harry, darling ! Do you understand, now ? ” CHAPTER XVIL The authorities of Lightpool Gaol, looking nut in the grey of that winter’s morning for the return of one prisoner, are agreeably sur- prised by the unlooked-for apparition of a second. Let us not, however, do injustice to the authorities of Lightpool Gaol. It is not every prisoner whose arrival gives them satisfaction. In a general way, they are as soft-hearted in that respect — where soft-heartedness does not stand in the way of duty — as the soft- heartedest of the general public “ outside.” The satisfaction is in the particular honour of Mr. Ram Dass. And it is great. The authorities of Lightpool Gaol have 262 BAM BASS. Lad some experience in the matter of criminals — Lave grown percLance a trifle sceptical as to tLat absolute innocence wLicL would appear to be the normal condition of all convicted persons — but, in the case of Harry Forester, experience Las, for once in a way, suggested doubts. Suggested them also,, though in an altogether vague and inar- ticulate manner, with regard to that pri- soner’s very urgent, but very fatal friend,. Mr. Earn Hass. One young warder, of an argumentative turn of mind, has even on a particular occasion, not very long ago, been provoked by the obstinate scepticism of an inveterate opponent in the club-room of the “ Constables’ Eest,” to assert roundly that the Indian was himself the murderer; and, though he has not had the opportunity of repeating that assertion often enough to have as yet achieved in his own mind any real belief in it, this sudden and complete con- firmation is, of course, not only a tremendous- BAM BASS. 263 feather in his personal cap, hut a clear triumph for the whole body of his com- rades, over their less sagacious brethren of “the force.” Suddenly, however, a difficulty arises. Of Harry Forester’s entire innocence no doubt whatever now exists in the mind of any one about the prison. But Harry Forester has been duly convicted by a British jury, and duly sentenced by a British judge, and on the governor’s desk lies at this moment the warrant for his execution at half-past eight o’clock that very morning. The question presents itself ; Has the governor, or the sheriff, or any one else, within some two or tliree hundred miles of Lightpool, any autho- rity to set the warrant aside ? Will it not, in point of fact, be necessary to hang the prisoner first and discuss the evidence of Mr. Harry Forester’s innocence afterwards ? This question is somewhat warmly debated in “ official circles,” and the balance of opinion 264 BAM BASS. is decidedly in favour of this latter theory. The young warder, flushed with recent vic- tory, hazards a suggestion that, as the prisoner has been out of their custody and cognizance for some hours, there may be a difficulty — but here he is promptly put down, and, as he himself expresses it, “ sat upon ” by his indignant seniors. This is indeed a sore point. Popular as Harry is among the prison officials, there is a strong feeling that he didn’t ought to have done it ; and it is more than doubtful if this injudicious reference on the part of his indiscreet young partisan might not have gone far towards reconciling his older supporters to the reduction of the generally-received theory into practice. The governor does not take part in the discussion. He is — as governors of gaols are apt to be — a severely practical man, much more given to action than debate. It is just a quarter to seven when Harry arrives, for the second time, at the gaol ; BAM BASS. 265 and it takes exactly ten minutes to put the governor in possession of the new facts of the case. At precisely five minutes to seven an urgent telegram is on its way to the Home Secretary ; and the governor, having seen his old and his new prisoner alike safely bestowed, returns to his room to await the answer. What would have been his course had that answer been, as it easily might have been, an hour and three-quarters upon the road, must unfortunately remain for ever matter of conjecture. The answer arrives in exactly an hour and a half ; and by twenty-six minutes past eight, sheriff and executioners and prisoner are officially certi- fied that there will be no execution at Light- pool that morning. The rest is soon told. In Mr. Ram Hass’s V case, as in that of Harry Forester, a good deal of discussion arises upon various ques- tions, both of fact and law. Like the governor 266 BAM BASS. of Liglitpool Gaol, • laowever, Mr. Earn Dass is a practical man ; and, like Mm, puts an end to all theoretical discussions in an emi- nently practical manner. The result, indeed, of his action in the matter is hardly, perhaps, so satisfactory to himself as is that of the governor; but — and this is the more impor- tant point — it is quite as conclusive. Mr. Prescott is in some little trepidation as to the possible result to himself of his own share in recent events. On the whole, however, he is not without hope that, in view of the now actually demonstrated innocence of the prisoner, Ms escape — not a very plea- sant topic for his custodians — may, perhaps, pass without inquiry. He grows, in course of time, so confident in this belief, as to presume upon it ; not, indeed, so far as to abet the escape of Mr. Manockjee Earn Hass, but far enough to undertake, “ for a con- sideration,” to obtain and convey to that gentleman the contents of one of. the mys- BAM BASS. 2G7 terious little bottles in the old Indian cabinet by which Harry’s late employer proposes to precipitate his exit from a world his remain- ing days in which are so evidently num- bered. But Mr. Earn Dass’s run of luck would appear to be over. Mindful of the “ error ” into which Harry Forester once fell, and from which poor Pluto was so severe a sufferer — Mr. Earn Dass smiles as he remembers Pluto, and thinks that here, at all events, he has won one trick against the young antagonist, into whose hands Fate has dealt such despe- rately winning cards — the astute Indian im- presses upon his messenger most strongly the distinction, grammatical and otherwise, be- tween right and left. So strongly, indeed, that he plunges his messenger’s mind in this regard into a state of absolute chaos. The modicum of poison, undistinguishable in the truly homoeopathic globule bottle, to which, for precaution’s sake 268 BAM BASS. it has been transferred, duly arrives, and is duly swallowed. And if into the canine Paradise enters any sense of “eye for eye” or “ tooth for tooth,” poor Pluto’s soul is comforted, for his cruel death is terribly avenged. ® ( Mr. Prescott’s soul is by no means com- forted, for Mr. Pam Pass’s most urgent care, as with the first burning pang shoots through him the horrible conviction of what he has done is to denounce the blundering agent of his discomfiture, with whom the autho- rities are not, in this instance, slow to deal. Poor Betsy hardly knows whether to be comforted or not — ^whether, in her jealous hatred of Clarice to refuse all credence to the otherwise indisputable evidence of the dead Indian’s guilt, or whether, in con- sideration of the part she has played in bringing her John’s murderer, if not to legal, at least to poetical justice, to forgive her EAM BASS. 26 & all her uncommitted crimes, and take her to her widowed heart. Ultimately, that heart, which, if a somewhat unrefined, is not a bad heart by any means, declares in favour of the latter course. Before six weeks have passed, Clarice is as great a favourite with poor Betsy Sutcliffe as with Maud her- self, and it is from East Dene that the latter is ultimately married to a rising young artist upon whom the Broadford upper hundred look down with supreme contempt ; but who is already doing something to raise him- self in their estimation by the very heavy price his growing metropolitan reputation enables him to exact for perpetuating upon canvas the interesting record of their own noble and distinguished features. For East Dene is not lost after all. Amongst the many things brought to light by Clarice’s bold stroke for her husband’s life and freedom is the connection between the small bloodsucker into whose clutches it has ■270 BAM BASS. fallen and no less a person tlian tlie late Mr. Manockjee Earn Dass. Its restoration to its rightful owner is, of course, a complicated process ; hut it is achieved at last, all pecu- niary difficulties being removed by an im- promptu subscription set on foot one morning upon the Lightpool Exchange by an impul- sive young cotton-broker, whom Harry had never seen, and whose name he has never been able to discover. It must be about in its prime of springtide beauty now, and old Ockenden in the height of happiness and glory. As for Harriet Ann, so great is her triumph at the success which has attended her brilliant suggestion as to Harry’s escape, that she has for some time had serious thoughts of inditing a sensational romance, in twenty-six penny numbers, for herself. Harry and Clarice are quite content to take their romance for the future without any further flavour of sensation ; and there is BAM BASS. 271 every reason to hope that their very reason- able desires in this respect may be gratified. How much of logical soundness there may be in the general deduction of the Light- pool mind, that because Harry has not either robbed the bank or murdered honest John Sutcliffe, therefore he must, necessarily, be the best and trustworthiest young man of business anywhere about the town, may be, perhaps, a question to be asked ; but it is, no doubt, practically sound enough in its result ; and though Harry can only accept one of the many offers of excellent situations which, long before his uncommitted crimes have received their necessary official “ pardon,” pour in upon him from a dozen different quarters, the offers themselves are perhaps as honour- able to ‘the offerers as though they were duly based upon the most academical ,of arguments. And Harry and Clarice are at least as 272 BAM BASS. happy in the expression of the general feeling conveyed in the eleven rejected offers as in the substantial prosperity conveyed by the accepted twelfth. Some few |)ersoiis, no doubt, there still are who believe to this day that forgery and murder were alike .Harry Forester’s work. Some few also, no doubt, in whose minds — or what passes for them — the relations between Clarice and Mr. Earn Dass have never yet been satisfactorily ex- plained. But neither Harry nor Clarice have any near relations, and the number of the unbelievers remains but small. THE END. CHABLES DICEENS AMD SYANS^ CBISIAL PALACE PEESS. ' A'’ ■ ‘-y J. ■ • * V "■■' 'J£ W.:. r t I %