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 1866 
 
 V.I
 
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 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
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 lONDOir : 
 
 PRINTED BY J. OGDEN AND CO., 
 
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 DEAD-SEA FKUIT 
 
 % Mabd 
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OP 
 
 "LADY AUDLET'S SECEET," 
 
 ETC., ETC., ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON 
 WAED, LOCK, AND TYLEK 
 
 WAEWICK HOUSE, rATEEXOSTEE EOW 
 1868. 
 [_All righU reserved]
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PRINTED BY J. OGDEN AND CO., 
 
 172, ST. JOHN STBBET, B.C.
 
 I 
 
 1668 
 
 V.I 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 -**- 
 
 CEAf. PAGB 
 
 I. QUITE ALONE 1 
 
 n. A EETEOSPECTIVE SUEVET 18 
 
 rv. "take back these letters, meant foe, happiness" 38 
 
 rv. UN MENAGE A DEUX 61 
 
 V. the editoe of the "aeeopagus" ... 78 
 
 VI. AT BATHAM 97 
 
 vn. ME. jeeningham's guest 123 
 
 Vm. GEEENLANDS 144 
 
 IX. how THET PARTED 169 
 
 X. THEEE is always THE SKELETON . . . 192 
 
 XI. " J'AIME : IL FAUT QUE J'eSPEEE" .... 209 
 
 XH. THE GEEEN-ETED monstee 240 
 
 Xm. miss ST. ALBANS 264 
 
 XIV. in THE GEEEN-EOOM 289
 
 DEAD-SEA FEUIT. 
 
 -K*- 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 QUITE ALONE. 
 
 The marble image of Hubert Van Eyck stood 
 out against the \rarm blue sky, and cast a 
 slanting shadow across the sunlit flags. The 
 July afternoon was di-awing to a close. Low 
 sunlight shone golden on the canals of Yille- 
 brumeuse, and changed every westward-looking 
 window into a casement of gold. Those are no 
 common windows which look out upon the 
 quiet streets and lonely squares of that sleepy 
 Belgian city. No handiwork of modern specu- 
 lative builder is visible amid that grand old 
 architecture — no flimsy nineteenth-century 
 villa perks its tawdi-y head among those medi- 
 seval splendours — no upstart semi-detached 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 abominations of spurious Gothic, picked out 
 with rainbow-coloured brick, affright the eye by 
 their hideous aspect. To live in Villebrumeuse 
 is to live in the sixteenth century. A quiet 
 calm, as of the past, pervades the shady 
 streets. Green trees reflect themselves in the 
 still waters of the slow canal which creeps 
 athwart the city ; and by the side of the tran- 
 quil waters there are pleasant walks o'er- 
 shadowed by the umbrage of limes, and wooden 
 benches whereon the peaceful citizens may re- 
 pose themselves in the evening dusk. In 
 despite of its solemn tranquillity, this Villebru- 
 meuse is not a dreary dwelling-place. If it 
 has drifted from amidst the busy places of this 
 earth — if the blustrous ocean of modern pro- 
 gress has receded from its shores, leaving it far 
 away across a level waste of reef and sand — this 
 quiet city has, at the worst, been left stationary, 
 while the noisy tide sweeps on with all its 
 tumult of success and failure — its prosperous 
 ventures and forgotten wrecks. The peace 
 which pervades Villebrumeuse is the tranquillity
 
 QUITE ALONE. 3 
 
 of slumber, and not the awful stillness of 
 death. There is a jog-trot prosperity in the 
 place, a comfortable air, which is soothing to the 
 world-worn sj)ii'it ; but the wrestling, and scuf- 
 fling, and striving, and struggling of modern 
 commerce is unknown among the quiet mer- 
 chants, who content themselves with supplying 
 the simple wants of their fellow*-citizens in the 
 simplest fashion. And yet this city was once 
 a mart to which the Orient brought her richest 
 merchandise ; and in the days gone by, these 
 quaint old squares have been clamorous with 
 the voices of many traders, and bright with the 
 hoHday raiment of busy multitudes. 
 
 A young Englishman walked slowly up and 
 down the broad flagged square, across which 
 the painter's statue cast its sombre shadow. 
 He was teacher of English and mathematics in 
 a great public academy near at hand, and his 
 name was Eustace Thorbm-n. For thi*ee years 
 he had held his post in the Villebrumeuse 
 academy ; for three years he had done his 
 duty, quietly and earnestly, to the satisfaction
 
 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 of every one concerned in the performance. 
 And yet he was something of an enthusiast, 
 and something of a poet, and possessed many 
 of those attributes which are commonly sup- 
 posed to constitute a letter of license for the 
 neglect of vulgar every-day duties. 
 
 That was an ardent and an ambitious spirit 
 which shone out of Eustace Thorburn's gray 
 eyes ; but if the fiery sword had chafed the 
 scabbard a little during three years of academi- 
 cal routine and Villebrumeuse monotony, the 
 young man had been patient and contented 
 withal. There was a public library in Ville- 
 brumeuse to which the tutor had free entrance, 
 and in the mediaeval chambers of this institution 
 his leisure had been spent. That dreamy idle- 
 ness amongst good books had been very pleasant 
 'to him ; his work in the academy was endur- 
 able, despite its tedious and laborious nature ; 
 and he had a lurking tenderness for the quaint 
 old city, the slow canals overshadowed by green 
 trees, the simple people, and the old-world cus- 
 toms. Thus, if there were times when the
 
 QUITE ALONE. 5 
 
 eager spirit would fain have soared to loftier 
 and fairer regions, the young student and 
 teacher had not been altogether unhajDpy since 
 his destiny had brought him to this jDlace to 
 earn his bread amongst strangers. 
 
 Amongst strangers ? Were the inhabitants 
 of this Belgian city any more strange to him 
 than all the other inhabitants of this popu- 
 lous earth — except the one man and woman 
 who made the sum-total of his kindred and 
 friends ? Amongst strangers ? Why, if the 
 statue of Yan Ejck could have descended 
 from yonder pedestal, to walk in the streets 
 of the city, the animated effigy could scarcely 
 have been a lonelier creatm-e than the young 
 man who passed to and fi'o athwart the 
 sloping shadow on the flags this July after- 
 noon. 
 
 Looking backward, through the shadows of 
 the past, how many of those images, familiar 
 to most men, were wanting in the mystic pic- 
 tures that memory presented to Eustace Thor- 
 burn ! Memory, let him question her never so
 
 b DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 closely, could not show him any faint tracing 
 of a father's face flickering dimly athwart the 
 half-consciousness of infancy. Nor could he, 
 in surveying the events of his childhood, recall 
 so much as one visit to a father's grave, one 
 accidental utterance of a father's name, one 
 ohject, however trivial, associated with a 
 father's existence — a picture, a sword, a book, 
 a watch, a tress of hair. The time had been 
 when he had been wont to question his mother 
 about this missing father ; but that was long 
 ago. The time had come, and too quickly in 
 this young man's life, when a precocious wisdom 
 had checked his questioning, and he had learned 
 to refrain from all reference to a father's name, 
 as the one subject, of all others, most scrupu- 
 lously to be avoided by his lips. He w^as 
 twenty-three years of age, and he had never 
 been told his father's name or position in the 
 world. For the last ten years of his life it had 
 been a common thing for him to lie awake in 
 the solemn quiet of the night, thinking of that 
 unknown father, and wondering whether he were
 
 QUITE ALONE. 7 
 
 alive or dead. He knew that lie had no claim 
 to the name which he bore, and that he had as 
 good a right to call himself a Guelph or a 
 Plantagenet as he had to call himself Thorburn. 
 How many childless men upon this earth 
 would have been glad to call Eustace Thorburn 
 son! How many of this world's magnates, 
 with mighty names to transmit, would have 
 rejoiced with unspeakable rapture, could they 
 have set the joy-bells ringing for the coming of 
 age of such an heir ! As there are rare and 
 peerless flowers that adorn inaccessible regions 
 where no hand can gather them, where no eye 
 may delight in their loveliness, so there are 
 friendless creatm-es in the world who might 
 make the joy of empty hearts, and be the pride 
 of desolate households. The '^ something in 
 this world amiss," which the poet has sung of, 
 pervades every social relation. The plaintive 
 wailing of the minor mingles itself with every 
 earthly melody ; and it is only by and by that 
 the veil shall be lifted ; it is only by and by 
 that the mystic enigma shall be unriddled, and
 
 8 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 the full chords of perfect harmony peal on our 
 ears, unmarred by that undertone of pain. 
 
 Not often has a nobler face looked upward to 
 the countenance of the statue than that which 
 looked at it with a dreamy gaze to-day. The 
 face of the young man was, like the face of the 
 statue, more beautiful by reason of its nobility 
 of expression than because of its perfect regu- 
 larity of feature. In Eustace Thorburn's coun- 
 tenance the intellectual radiance so far surpassed 
 the physical beauty, that those who looked at 
 him for the first time were impressed chiefly by 
 the brightness of his expression, and were likely 
 to take their leave of him in complete ignorance 
 as to the shape of his nose or the modelling of 
 his mouth. 
 
 It is but a thankless task to catalogue such a 
 face ; the dark gray eyes which pass for black ; 
 the mobile mouth which, in one moment, seems 
 formed to express an unbending pride and an 
 indomitable will, and in the next will T;\Teathe 
 itself into such a smile that it must needs 
 appear incapable of any expression but manly
 
 QUITE ALONE. 9 
 
 tenderness or playful humour ; the loosely 
 arranged auburn hair, which gives something 
 of a leonine aspect to the lofty head ; the com- 
 plexion of almost Tvomanly fairness, T\-ith a rich 
 glow that comes and goes with every changing 
 impulse or emotion — all these go such a little 
 way towards the individuality of the young 
 Englishman, walking up and down the lonely 
 square during his half-hour's respite fi'om the 
 monotonous duties of the afternoon. 
 
 This half-hour's holidav was not Mr. Thor- 
 bum's only privilege. He had two hom's in 
 every day for his own studies — two hours which 
 he generally spent in the public library, for his 
 ambition had shaped itself into a palpable form, 
 and had mapped the outline of a career. He' 
 was to be a man of letters. If he had been a 
 rich man, he would have shut himself in his 
 library and made himself a poet. But as he 
 was nothing but a nameless and penniless strip- 
 ling, with his bread to earn, he had no right to 
 indulge in the luxury of verse -making. The 
 wide arena of Hterary labour lay before him.
 
 10 DEAD-SEA FKUIT. 
 
 and he had no choice but to force his way into 
 the lists, and fight for any place that might 
 happen to be vacant. Fate might make of him 
 what she would — ^journalist, novelist, dramatist, 
 magazine hack, penny-a-liner : but she must 
 use him very cruelly before she could quench 
 the fire of his young ambition, or bend the 
 crest with which he was prepared to confront 
 the world. 
 
 He had selected for himself this profession of 
 literature chiefly because it was the only calling 
 which demanded no capital from the beginner, 
 and a little because the only kinsman he had in 
 the world was a man who lived by his pen, and 
 who might have prospered and won distinction 
 by means of that fluent pen, had he not chosen 
 to do otherwise. 
 
 The half-hour's respite expired presently, and 
 a great clanging bell in the academy near at 
 hand summoned the pupils to their evening 
 lesson. It was a summons for the master also, 
 and Mr. Thorburn ran across the square and 
 turned into the street on which one side of the
 
 QriTE ALONE. 11 
 
 academy looked. He pushed open a little 
 wooden door in the big gateway, and passed 
 under the arched entrance ; but before going to 
 his class-room, he stopped to examine a rack in 
 which letters addressed to the masters were 
 wont to be kept. He rarely omitted to look at 
 this rack, though he had very few correspon- 
 dents, and only received about one letter in 
 a fortnight. To-dav there was a letter. His 
 heart tm'ned cold as he looked at it, for the 
 envelope was bordered with black, and adckessed 
 in the hand of his mother's brother, who very 
 seldom wrote to him. His mother had been an 
 invalid for a long time, and such a letter as 
 that could have but one fatal meaning. For 
 months he had looked forward to his August 
 holiday, which would enable him to go to Eng- 
 land and spend a few happy weeks with that 
 dear mother — and now the holiday would come 
 too late. 
 
 He went out into one of the dismal play- 
 grounds, a gravelled yard sm-rounded by high 
 whitewashed walls, and read his letter.
 
 12 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 His tears fell thick and fast upon the flimsy 
 paper as he read. Ten minutes ago, walking 
 to and fro in the sunshine, he had lamented his 
 loneliness, remembering that he had only two 
 friends in the world. He knew now that the 
 dearer of these two was lost to him. The let- 
 ter told him of his mother's death. 
 
 ^' There is no need for you to hurry back, my 
 poor lad," wrote his uncle. " The funeral is to 
 take place to-morrow, and will be over when 
 you get this letter. I saw your mother a fort- 
 night before her death, and she then told me 
 what she could never find the courage to tell 
 you — that the end was very near. It came 
 suddenly at the last, and I was out of the way 
 at the time ; but they tell me it was a calm 
 and holy ending. Her last words were of you. 
 She dwelt much on your goodness and devotion, 
 Mrs. Bane tells me. The last two days were 
 spent in prayer, poor innocent soul ; and I, who 
 stand in so much greater need of that kind of 
 thing, can't bring myself to it for half an hour ! 
 Poor soul ! Bane thinks it was for you she was
 
 QUITE ALONE. 13 
 
 praying, she rexDeated your name so often — 
 sometimes in her sleep, sometimes when she 
 was lying in a languid state between sleeping 
 and waking. But she did not wish you to be 
 sent for. * It is better that he should be away,' 
 she said ; ' I think he knew that this day must 
 soon come.' 
 
 *'And now, my dear boy, try to bear up 
 against this sorrow like a brave, true-hearted 
 lad, as you are. I say nothing of what I feel my- 
 self, for there are some things which come with 
 a bad grace from certain peoj)le. You know that 
 I loved my sister ; though, God knows, I never 
 knew how dearly till yesterday, when I saw the 
 blinds down at Mrs. Bane's, and guessed what 
 had ha]Dpened. Eemember, Eustace, that so 
 long as I can earn a crust, my sister Celia's son 
 shall be welcome to his share of it ; and though 
 I may be a disreputable acquaintance, I can be 
 a faithful friend. If you are tired of that slow 
 old Belgian city, come back to England. We 
 will manage your establishment here somehow. 
 The impracticable Daniel has a certain kind of
 
 14 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 influence ; and though he rarely cares to use it 
 on his own account, — being so bad a lot that 
 he dare not give himself a decent character, — 
 he will employ it to the uttermost for a spotless 
 nephew. 
 
 " Come, then, dear boy ; a kind of heart- 
 sickness has come over me, and I want to see 
 the brightest face that I know in this world, 
 and the only face that I love. Come, even if 
 you must needs return to the whitewashed 
 saloons of the Parthenee. There are letters 
 and papers of your poor mother's which it might 
 be well for you to destroy. My profane hand 
 shall not tamper with them." 
 
 The young man thrust his kinsman's letter 
 in his breast, and paced the j)layground slowly 
 for some time, meditating the loss that had 
 come upon him. In one of the big class-rooms 
 near at hand his pupils were waiting for him ; 
 and there was wonderment and consternation 
 at this delay in the most punctual of all the 
 masters. His tears had dropped fast upon the
 
 QUITE ALONE. ^ 15 
 
 letter some time ago ; but his eyes were dry 
 now. The dull agony which filled his breast 
 was rather a sense of desolation than a poig- 
 nant grief. He had seen and known that his 
 mother was fading fi'om this troubled earth be- 
 fore his coming to Belgium ; and poverty's bit- 
 terest penalty had been the necessity which had 
 separated him from her. The shadow of this 
 coming sorrow had long darkened the horizon 
 of his young life. The sad reahty had come 
 upon him a little sooner than he had exjjected 
 it, and that was all. He bowed his head, and 
 resigned himself to this affliction ; but there 
 was something to which he could not resign 
 himself, and that was the manner of his loss. 
 
 " Alone — in a hked lodging — with a poor, 
 ill-paid, hard-working drudge for her sole com- 
 panion and consoler ! mother, mother, you 
 were too bright a creature for so sad a fate ! " 
 
 And then there arose before this young man's 
 eyes one of those pictm'es which were continu- 
 ally haunting him — the pictm-e of what his life 
 and his mother's life might have been, had
 
 16 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 things been different with them. He fancied 
 himself the beloved and acknowledged son of a 
 good and honourable man ; he fancied his mother 
 a happy wife. Ah ! then how changed all would 
 have been ! Sickness and death would have 
 come all the same, perhaps, since there is no 
 earthly barrier that can exclude those dark 
 visitors from happy households. They would 
 have come, the dreaded guests, but with how 
 different an aspect ! He made for himself the 
 picture of two death-beds. By one there knelt 
 a group of loving children, weeping silently for 
 a dying mother, while a grief-stricken husband 
 suppressed all outward evidence of his sorrow, 
 lest he should trouble the departing spirit whose 
 earthly tabernacle was supported by his fond 
 arms. And the other death-bed ! Alas, how 
 sad the contrast between the two pictures ! A 
 woman lying alone in a dingy chamber, aban- 
 doned and forgotten by every creature in the 
 world except her son, and even he away from her. 
 " And for this, as well as for all the rest, we 
 have to thank him ! " muttered the young man.
 
 QUITE ALONE. 17 
 
 His face, wliicli until now had been overshadowed 
 only by a quiet despondency, darkened suddenly 
 as he said this. It was not the first time he 
 had apostrophized a nameless enemy in the 
 same bitter spirit. He had very often aban- 
 doned himself to vengeful thoughts about this 
 unknown foe, to whose e^il-doing he attributed 
 every sorrow of his own, and all those hidden 
 griefs and silent agonies so patiently endured 
 by his mother. He kept a close account of his 
 mother's wrongs, and of his own, and he set 
 them all against this person, whom he had never 
 seen and whose name he might never discover. 
 This nameless enemy was his father. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 A EETROSPECTIVE SUKVEY. 
 
 Feom the mediaeval tranquillity of Villebru- 
 meuse to the dreary desolation of Tilbury 
 Crescent is a sorry change. Instead of the 
 quaint peaked roofs and grand old churches, 
 the verdant avenues and placid water, there are 
 unfinished streets and terraces of raw-looking 
 brick, half-built railway-arches, chasm-like cut- 
 tings newly made in the damp clay soil, and 
 patches of rank greensward that mark the site 
 of desolated fields. The sulphurous odours of 
 a brickfield pervade the atmosphere about and 
 around Tilbury Crescent. The din of a distant 
 high-road, the roar of many wheels, and the 
 clamour of excited costermongers, float in occa- 
 sional gusts of sound upon the dismal stillness 
 of the neighbourhood, where the shrill voices of
 
 A RETROSPECTIVE SURVEY. 19 
 
 children, playing hopscotch in an adjacent 
 street, are painfully audible. 
 
 Decent poverty has set a seal upon this little 
 labyrinth of streets and squares and crescents 
 and terraces, before the builder's men have left 
 the newest of the houses, while there are still 
 roofless skeletons at every corner, waiting till 
 the speculator who began them shall have 
 raised enough money to finish them. The 
 neighbourhood lies northward, and the rents of 
 those yellow-brick tenements are cheap. So 
 decent poverty, in all its many guises, comes 
 hitherward for shelter. Newly-married lawyers' 
 clerks take up their abode in the eight-roomed 
 dwellings, and you shall divine, by the fashion 
 of blinds and cmi;ains, the trim propriety of 
 doorsteps and tiny front gardens, whether the 
 young householders have drawn prizes in the 
 matrimonial lottery. Small tradesmen bring 
 their wares to the little shops, which break out 
 here and there at the corners of the streets, 
 and struggle feebly for a livelihood. Patient 
 young dressmakers exhibit fly-blown fashion-
 
 20 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 plates in parlour windows, and wait hopefully 
 or despairingly, as the case may be, for custom 
 and patronage. And in more windows than 
 the chance pedestrian would care to count hangs 
 the pasteboard announcement of apartments to 
 let. 
 
 Eustace Thorburn came to Tilbury Crescent 
 in the blazing July noontide. He had landed 
 at St. Katherine's Wharf, and had made his 
 way to this northern suburb on foot. He was 
 rich enough to have ridden in an omnibus, or 
 to have enjoyed the luxury of a hansom, had 
 he been so minded ; but he was an ambitious 
 young man, and had cultivated the nobler 
 Spartan virtues from his earliest boyhood. The 
 few pounds in his possession would have to 
 serve him until he returned to the Parthenee, 
 or obtained some new employment ; so he had 
 much need to be careful of shillings, and chary 
 even of pence. The walk through the dirty 
 bustling London streets seemed long and weary 
 to him ; but his thoughts were more weary than 
 that pedestrian journey under the meridian sun.
 
 A EETROSPECTIYE SUR^-EY. 21 
 
 and the sad memories of his youth Tvere a 
 heavier burden than the carpet-bag he carried 
 slung across his shoulder. 
 
 He knocked at the door of one of the shab- 
 biest houses in the crescent, and was admitted 
 by an elderly woman, who was slipshod and 
 slovenly, but who had a good-natm-ed face, 
 which brightened as she recognized the traveller. 
 In the next moment she remembered the sad 
 occasion of his coming, and put on that con- 
 ventional expression of profound sorrow which 
 people assume so easily for the affliction of 
 others. 
 
 "Ah, dear, dear, Mr. Thorbm-n !" she cried, 
 " I never thought to see you come back like 
 this, and she not here to bid you welcome, poor 
 sweet lamb ! ' ' 
 
 The young man held up his hand to stay the 
 torrent of sympathy. " Please, don't talk to 
 me about my mother," he said, quietly ; *' I 
 can't bear it — yet." 
 
 The honest woman looked at him wonder- 
 ingly. She had been accustomed to deal with
 
 22 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 people who liked to talk of their griefs, and she 
 did not understand this quiet way of putting 
 aside a sorrow. The mourners whom she had 
 encountered had worn their sackcloth and 
 covered themselves with ashes in the face of 
 the world, and here was a young man who had 
 not so much as a band upon his hat, and who 
 rejected her friendly sympathy ! 
 
 " I can have my — the old rooms, for a week 
 or so, I suppose, Mrs. Bane ?" 
 
 " Yes, sir. I've took the liberty to put a bill 
 up, thinking as perhaps you might not return 
 from abroad ; and if it's for a week only, per- 
 haps you'd allow the bill to remain ? There 
 are so many apartments about this neighbour- 
 hood, you see, sir, and people are that pushing 
 now-a-days, that a poor widow-woman has 
 scarcely a chance. It's a hard thing to be left 
 alone in the world, Mr. Thorburn." 
 
 There was an open wound in the heart of 
 Eustace Thorburn which ignorant hands were 
 always striking. 
 
 "It's a hard thing to be left alone in the
 
 A RETROSPECTIVE SUR^^EY. 23 
 
 world," be thought, echoing the landlady's 
 lamentation. " She was left alone in the 
 world before I was born." 
 
 The landlady repeated her question. 
 
 " Oh yes, you can leave the bill ; but don't 
 let any one come to look at the rooms to-day. 
 I am not likely to be here more than a week. 
 Can I go upstairs at once ?" 
 
 Mrs. Bane plunged her hand into a capacious 
 pocket, and, after much searching the depths of 
 that receptacle, produced a door-key, which she 
 handed to Eustace. 
 
 " Mr. Mayfield told me to lock the door, sir, 
 because of papers and such-like. The bedroom 
 door is fastened on the inside." 
 
 The young man nodded, and went upstau^s 
 with a brisk, rapid footstep, and not with that 
 ponderous, solemn tread which Mrs. Bane 
 would have considered appropriate to his 
 bereaved condition. 
 
 " And I thought he would have took on 
 dreadful !" she ejaculated, as she went back to 
 her underground kitchen, where there was gene-
 
 24 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 rally an atmosphere laden with the steam of 
 boiling soap-suds, or an odour of singed ironing- 
 blanket. 
 
 Eustace Thorburn unlocked the door, and 
 went into the room which had so lately been 
 inhabited by his mother. It was a dingy little 
 sitting-room, opening into a bedroom that was 
 still smaller. It was a lodging of the same 
 pattern as a thousand other lodgings in newly- 
 built suburbs. The personalty of the woman 
 who had left it for a still narrower lodging 
 would scarcely have realized twenty shillings 
 under the auctioneer's hammer ; and yet to 
 Eustace Thorburn the shabby room was elo- 
 quent of the dead. That dilapidated rosewood 
 workbox — for which the auctioneer would have 
 been ashamed to propose a starting bid of a 
 shilling — conjured up the vision of a patient 
 creature bending over her work. The little 
 stand of books — cheap editions of the poets, in 
 worn cloth binding — recalled her sweet face, 
 illumined by a transient splendour, as the in- 
 spired verses of her favourites lifted her above
 
 A RETROSPECTIVE SUR^'EY. 25 
 
 this earth and all her earthly sorrows. The 
 valueless china inkstand, and worn blotting- 
 book, had been used by her for more than four 
 years. Eustace Thorburn took the things up 
 one by one, and -put them to his lips. There 
 was something almost passionate in the kiss 
 which he imprinted upon those lifeless objects 
 — it was the kiss which he would have pressed 
 upon her pale lips, had he been recalled in time 
 to bid her farewell. He kissed the books which 
 she had been wont to read, the pen with which 
 she had written, and then cast himself suddenly 
 into the low chair where he had so often seen 
 her seated, and abandoned himself to his gi'ief. 
 Had Mrs. Bane, the landladv, heard these con- 
 vulsive sobs, and seen the tears streaming be- 
 tween the fingers which the young man clasped 
 before his eyes, she would have had no need to 
 complain of Mr. Thorburn' s want of emotion. 
 For a long time he sat in the same attitude, 
 still weeping. But the passionate grief wore 
 itself out at last. He dashed the tears from 
 his eyes with an impatient gestui-e, and rose,
 
 26 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 pale and calm, to begin the work which he had 
 set himself to do. 
 
 His love for his mother had been the ruling 
 passion of his life. She was at rest now, and 
 he could face the future calmly. He could go 
 forth to meet his destiny with a spirit at once 
 superior to hope and fear. It was for her he 
 had hoped ; it was for her he had feared. He 
 stood alone now ; his breast was no longer a 
 rampart to shield her from "the slings and 
 arrows of outrageous fortune." The arrows 
 might come thick and fast now ; they could 
 only wound him ; and he already had suffered 
 the deepest wound that evil fortune could inflict 
 upon him. He had lost her. 
 
 The bitterest sting of all lay in the know- 
 ledge that she had never been happy. Her son 
 had loved her with unspeakable tenderness. 
 He had protected her and worked for her, and 
 admired and adored her ; but he had never 
 been able to make her happy. That gentle, 
 womanly heart had been too deeply wounded in 
 the past. Eustace Thorburn had known this ;
 
 A RETROSPECTR-E SUR^T^Y. 27 
 
 and knowing this had been patient, because he 
 would not trouble her mild spirit by any show 
 of impatience. He had known that she had 
 been wronged, and yet had never asked her the 
 name of the wrong-doer. He, her natm-al 
 champion and avenger, had never sought for 
 vengeance upon the man whose treachery or 
 unkindness had blighted her life. He had held 
 his peace, because to question her would have 
 been to pain her ; and how could he give her 
 pain ? So he had been patient, in spite of a 
 passionate desire for ever smouldering in his 
 heart — the desire to avenge his mother's 
 wrongs. 
 
 She was at rest ; and the time for vengeance 
 had arrived. The same fatal influence which 
 had destroyed her happiness had shortened her 
 life. In the prime of womanhood, before a 
 wrinkle had lined her forehead, or a silver 
 thread appeared amidst her soft brown hair, she 
 had gone to her grave, unutterably patient to 
 the last, but broken-hearted from the very first. 
 
 The young man put his grief away from him,
 
 28 
 
 DEAD-SEA FEUIT. 
 
 and set himself to consider the new business of 
 his life. 
 
 The one desire of his mind was that of 
 vengeance upon his mother's nameless enemy; 
 and the thought that this enemy was his own 
 father was powerless to soften his heart in the 
 smallest measure, or to hinder him for one 
 single hour from the achievement of his 
 purpose. 
 
 " I want to know who he is," he said to 
 himself. '' My first business must be to dis- 
 cover his name ; my next, to make him more 
 ashamed of that name than I am of my name- 
 
 lessness." 
 
 He went to the chimney-piece, where there 
 was a letter waiting for him, sealed with a 
 sprawling black seal, and addressed to him in 
 the inscrutable penmanship of his uncle. 
 
 The envelope contained only a few lines, but 
 enclosed in it there was a little bunch of keys, 
 with every one of which the young man was 
 familiar. He took them up with a sigh, and 
 looked at them one by one, almost as tenderly
 
 A RETROSPECT^: SURVEY. 29 
 
 as he had looked at the books. The common- 
 est object in that chamber had its association 
 for him, — and with every such association, the 
 grief which he had tried so hard to put away 
 from him took possession of him anew. 
 
 There was a ponderous, old-fashioned maho- 
 gany desk on a side-table, and it was in this 
 desk that the lonely inhabitant of the room 
 had been accustomed to keep her letters and 
 papers, together with those few valueless relics 
 — that pitiful jetsam and flotsam from the ship- 
 wreck of hope and hai)piness which are left to 
 the most desolate creature. 
 
 Eustace unlocked and ojDened the desk as 
 softly as if his mother had been sleeping near 
 him. He had often seen her seated at this 
 desk ; he had once surprised her in tears, with 
 a little packet of letters in her hand, but he 
 had never seen the contents of any of those 
 discoloured papers, tied with faded ribbons, and 
 disfigured by obsolete postmarks. And now 
 that she was gone, it was his duty to examine 
 those papers, — or so he considered. Yet there
 
 30 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 was a shade of compunction in his mind as he 
 touched the first packet, and he felt as if he 
 had been committing a sacrilege. 
 
 The first packet was labelled " My Mother's 
 Letters," and contained the epistles of some 
 good womanly creature, written to a daughter 
 who was away at boarding-school. They were 
 full of allusions to a comfortable middle-class 
 household — a tradesman's household, as it 
 seemed, for there were occasional references 
 to events that had occurred in the shop, and 
 to " my dear husband's over-exerting himself 
 in the business," and to "Daniel's unsettled 
 ways and indisposition to take to his father's 
 occupation." 
 
 Eustace smiled faintly as he read of poor 
 Daniel, whose unsettled ways had been noto- 
 rious before Sir Kowland Hill's post-office 
 amendments, and who remained unsettled in 
 these latter days of electric telegraphy and 
 labyrinthine railway cuttings. 
 
 The letters were very sweet, by reason of 
 the tender motherly spirit which pervaded
 
 A RETROSPECTH-E SURVEY. 31 
 
 every line, — more or less ill-sjDelt here and 
 there, and by no means well written, but over- 
 flowing with affection. Again and again the 
 writer implored her "dearest Sissy" not to 
 fret, and to look forward to the holidays, which 
 would come very soon, when Sissy would see 
 her dear mother and father, whose household 
 love she pined for in the great middle -class 
 boarding-school, as it was evident by the tone 
 of maternal letters which replied to lamenta- 
 tions from desolate home-sick Sissy. There 
 were hampers for dearest Sissy, and little pre- 
 sents, — a coral necklace fi'om father, a sash 
 from mother, and once, a tinselled poi-trait of 
 'Ml. Edmund Kean in the character of Othello, 
 with a tunic of real crimson satin let into the 
 paper, — a tinselled poi-trait which had been 
 poor unsettled Daniel's labom' of love in the 
 long winter evenings, and which the mother 
 dwelt on with evident pleasure. 
 
 Eustace knew that these letters had been 
 written by his grandmother, — the gi'andmother 
 who had never held him in her arms, or taken
 
 32 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 pride in his baby graces. He lingered lovingly 
 over the old-fashioned sheets of letter-paper, — 
 he gazed fondly upon the stiffly-formed signa- 
 ture, "Elizabeth Mayfield," and he dropped 
 some few tears upon the worn yellow paper, 
 which had been blotted with many tears before 
 to-day. It was not possible that he could think 
 of his mother in her innocent school-days with- 
 out emotion. 
 
 The second packet contained only three let- 
 ters, addressed to dearest Sissy at home, when 
 she had ceased to be a school-girl, and these 
 were in a hand not altogether unfamiliar to 
 Eustace. It was a youthful modification of 
 Daniel Mayfield' s inscrutable caligraphy ; and 
 again Eustace Thorburn smiled with the same 
 faint smile. The letters were written from a 
 lawyer's office where the lad was articled ; for 
 Daniel had persisted in his aversion to his 
 father's business, and had declared himself un- 
 fitted for anything upon earth except the law, 
 for which he was assured he had a special 
 vocation. They were pleasant, boyish letters.
 
 A RETROSPECTIYE SURVEY. 33 
 
 and full of the slang of the day — such locutions 
 as "Flare up!" and " "^liat a shocking bad 
 hat I " and " There you go with your eye out ! " 
 and other conversational embellishments pecu- 
 liar to the period. But through all the slang 
 and vounp^-mannish affectations there was an 
 undercurrent of genuine affection for the wi-iter's 
 *' dear little dark-eyed Sissy." He knew no 
 end of pretty girls in London, he told her, but 
 not one worthy to be compared with his darhng 
 Celia. "And when I am on the Eolls, with 
 slap-up chambers of my own in the Fields, and 
 a first-rate business, you shall come and keep 
 house for me. Sissy; and we'll have a little 
 cottage at Putney, and a wherry, and I'll row 
 you up the river every evening after business ; 
 and while my sentimental little sister sits in 
 the stern reading a novel, her faithful Daniel 
 will get himself into training for a sculling- 
 match." 
 
 The first two letters were full of hope- 
 ful allusions to the writer's prospects. The 
 young man seemed to fancy he was going to 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 make a royal progress through the different 
 grades of his profession, and there was scarcely 
 any limit to the pleasant things which he pro- 
 mised his only sister. But, in the third letter, 
 written after an interval of six months, all this 
 was changed. The life of an articled clerk was 
 a slavery, compared to which the existence of 
 a negro in the West Indian sugar-plantations 
 must be one perpetual delight. Daniel was 
 tired of his profession, and informed his dearest 
 Sissy, in strict confidence, that no power on 
 earth would ever make a lawyer of him. 
 
 " It isn't in me, my dear Celia," he wrote ; 
 "your imi3etuous Dan is not fashioned out of 
 the stuff which makes an attorney. I've tried 
 to take to the law, just as I tried to take to the 
 circulating-library and fancy- stationery busi- 
 ness, to please poor father and mother; but it's 
 no use. You mustn't say anything to the dear 
 old dad, for he'd begin to be unhappy about the 
 money he wasted on my articles ; and before he 
 discovers that I don't take to the law, I shall 
 have taken to something which will make me a
 
 A RETROSPECTB-E SUR\^Y. 35 
 
 rich man, and I shall be able to give him back 
 his money three times over." 
 
 And then Daniel May field went on to give a 
 iiomishing description of a very bright and 
 splendid castle-in-the-aii* which he had lately 
 erected. He had found a Pactolus in his ink- 
 stand, and something better than a landed 
 estate in a quire of foolscap. He was a genius. 
 The divine afflatus had descended upon him, and 
 Coke and Blackstone might go hang. He was 
 a poet, an essayist, an historian, a novelist, a 
 playwi'ight — anything you like. He had been 
 a scribbler from the days of his childhood, and 
 of late had scribbled more than ever. And 
 after the innumerable failm*es and disappoint- 
 ments which constitute that Slough of Despond 
 thi'ough which every literary aspirant must 
 pass, he had succeeded in getting an article 
 insei'ted in one of those coarsely-wiitten and 
 poorly-illustrated comic periodicals from the 
 ashes whereof arose that bright Phoenix, Punch, 
 And the editor of the periodical had promised 
 to take further contributions from the same
 
 36 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 lively pen, Daniel informed Lis sister. He had 
 received two guineas sterling coin of the realm 
 for his lucubration, "thrown off in half an hour," 
 he told dear Sissy. And thereupon he entered 
 into a calculation of his future income, at the 
 rate of four guineas an hour for all the working- 
 hours in the day. " Messrs. Screwem and 
 Swdndleton don't get as much for their time, in 
 spite of their genius for running up the six- 
 and-eightpences," WTote Daniel. 
 
 There ^vas a mournful smile upon Eustace 
 Thorburn's face as he read the letters. He 
 knew the wTiter so well, and knew into what a 
 poor, imperfect, dilapidated habitation that air- 
 built castle had resolved itself. The young 
 man had not deceived himself as to his owti 
 powers ; he had only wasted them. The talents 
 had been his, and he had scattered the precious 
 gifts here and there with a reckless hand — too 
 rich to fear poverty, too strong to apprehend 
 exhaustion. He had thrown his pearls before 
 swine, and had allowed his diamonds to be set 
 in worthless crowns of brass and tinsel. The
 
 A RETROSPECTI^-E SURVEY. 37 
 
 flower of his youth had faded, while he, who 
 might have achieved greatness — and that 
 which seems a deal more difficult for genius to 
 achieve, respectability — was only Dan Maj^field, 
 a newspaper hack, one of a modern Jacob Ton- 
 son's " clever hands," a lounger in taverns, 
 a penniless Bohemian, with flowing hah*, which 
 time was beginning to thin, and eyes at whose 
 corners the crow had set the ineftaceable print 
 of his feet. 
 
 Eustace replaced the letters with a respectful 
 hand. Was he not tampering with the ashes 
 of his mother's youth, and was not every paper 
 in that desk sanctified bv the tears of the 
 dead ? 
 
 " Poor Uncle Dan ! " he murmured, gently ; 
 " poor, kind, sanguine Uncle Dan ! "
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 " TAKE BACK THESE LETTERS, MEANT FOR 
 
 HAPPINESS." 
 
 There were several notes and letters in the 
 next packet which Eustace Thorburn examined, 
 and over these he lingered very long — reading 
 some amongst them a second time, and return- 
 ing to reconsider others which he had put aside 
 after a first perusal. These letters were written 
 on the thickest and finest paper, and exhaled a 
 faint odour of millefleurs, so faint as to be 
 only the impalpable ghost of a departed per- 
 fume. Notes and letters were alike dated, but 
 the only signature to be found amongst them 
 was the single initial H. 
 
 Eustace read them in the order in which 
 they had been written. 
 
 " The author of the book which Miss May-
 
 " TAKE BACK THESE LETTERS." 39 
 
 field was reading on Tuesday afternoon has 
 called at the library three times since that day, 
 but has not had the happiness of seeing her. 
 Will Miss Mayfield be good enough to yrrite one 
 line, saying tclien she may be seen ? The 
 writer, who feels himself unworthy of her elo- 
 quent praises, most earnestly wishes for an 
 interview, if only of a few minutes' duration. 
 '' The George Hotel, June 6, 1843." 
 
 "The author of the book?" repeated 
 Eustace; "what book? "Was this man a 
 writer?" 
 
 This letter had been delivered by hand. The 
 next bore the postmark of Bayham, that Dor- 
 setshire watering-place to which Daniel's letters 
 had been addi'essed. It was directed to 
 
 "CM., 
 
 " The Post-Office, 
 
 " Bayham, 
 " To he left till called forr 
 
 " The seducer's favom-ite addi-ess," muttered 
 Eustace, as he unfolded the letter.
 
 40 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 " George Hotel, June 15, 1843. 
 
 '* My dear Miss Mayfield, — If you could 
 know the time I have wasted since Thursday 
 week, in the vain endeavour to obtain a ghmpse 
 of your face, between the sheets of music and 
 coloured lithographs in your father's window, 
 you would be more inclined to believe what I 
 told you on that day. I told you that, if I 
 did not see you, I should write, and I told you 
 where I should address my letter. You forbade 
 me to write, and assured me that my letter 
 would lie at the post-oftice unasked for. But 
 you, who are so sweet and gentle, could hardly 
 adhere to such a cruel resolve. I dare to 
 hope that this will reach your hands, and 
 that you will forgive me for having disobeyed 
 you. 
 
 "I do so much wish to see you again — if 
 only once more — yes, even if only once. I am 
 haunted day and night by the vision of that 
 sweet face which I first saw bending over one 
 of my own books. Do you remember that 
 day ? — only three weeks ago ; and yet it seems
 
 "take back these letters." 41 
 
 to me as if a new existence began for me upon 
 that day, and as if I were older by half a hfe- 
 time since then. Sweet tender face, with the 
 dark eyes and wild-rose bloom, shall I ever 
 learn to forget it ? Will it ever cease to come 
 between me and my books ? I was trying to 
 read a grand old tragedy last night : but you 
 would not let me. You were Electra, and I 
 saw you bending over your brother's funereal 
 urn, as I had seen you bending over the silly 
 volume which vou praised so sweetlv. The 
 Greek traf]jedv reminded me of that doctrine of 
 fatalitv which we laugh at in these modern 
 days. And vet sm-elv Destinv has her hand 
 in the fashion of our hves. I had been writing 
 letters on the day on which I first saw you, and 
 the people here had given me such ^Tetched 
 pens and paper that I sallied out to seek better 
 for myself. If they had given me decent 
 ^mting materials, I might never have seen you. 
 There are three other places in the to^n at 
 which I might have sought what I wanted ; but 
 Destiny laid her hand on my coat-collar, and
 
 42 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 conducted me to your father's library. I went 
 in quietly, with all my thoughts two hundred 
 miles away from Bayham. I saw you sitting 
 behind the counter, with a book in your lap ; 
 and all my thoughts came back to Bayham, to 
 take up their abode with you for ever. You 
 were so absorbed in your book, that you did 
 not hear my modest request for a quire of 
 letter-paper, until it had been three times enun- 
 ciated ; and I meanwhile had time to read the 
 title of the book which interested you. I sup- 
 pose every writer can read the title of his oicn 
 book upside-down. You looked uj) at last, with 
 such a pretty, shy, innocent look, and the wild- 
 rose bloom came into your cheeks. And then 
 I asked you what you thought of the book ; and 
 you praised it with such bewitching eloquence, 
 and wondered who the writer could be. I had 
 heard the book lauded by a great many people, 
 and abused by more ; but I had never until 
 that moment felt the smallest temptation to 
 reveal myself as the author of it. I had, 
 indeed, taken great trouble to conceal my
 
 " TAKE BACK THESE LETTERS." 43 
 
 identity. But when yoii praised my "svork, I 
 flung prudence to the Tvinds. It was so de- 
 lightful to see youi' bright blush, your bewitch- 
 ing confusion, when I told you that it was my 
 happiness to have pleased you. Celia, if 
 you like my book so well, why is it that you 
 distrust and avoid me ? Let me see you, dear, 
 I implore — anywhere — at any time — under 
 any conditions you may choose to impose 
 upon me. I wait in this dull town, day 
 after day, in the hope of seeing you. A hun- 
 dred duties call me away ! and yet I wait. I 
 shall wait for a week after having posted this 
 letter: and if I receive no sim from vou 
 during that time, I shall leave Bayham, never 
 again to ventm-e within its fatal precincts. 
 " Ever and ever faithfullv vours. 
 
 There was an interval of six weeks between 
 the dates of the second and third letters ; and 
 there was a considerable alteration in the tone 
 of the writer. He no longer pleaded for an
 
 44 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 interview with the stationer's daughter. It was 
 evident that he had seen her very often during 
 the interval ; and his letter was full of allusions 
 to past meetings. 
 
 '' My own sweet Love," he began, — (ah, 
 what a change in six short weeks from " My 
 dear Miss Mayfield!") — "my ever dearest, 
 there is no gulf between us, or no gulf so wide 
 that love cannot bridge it over. Why are you 
 so cruel as to doubt and avoid me ? You know 
 that I love you. You told me that you believed 
 in my love last night when we stood by the sea 
 in that sweet twilight, and when there was such 
 a solemn quiet all around us that it would have 
 been easy to fancy ourselves cast away upon 
 some desert island. You talk to me of your 
 humble birth, — as if the birth of an angel or 
 a goddess could be humble, — and you implore 
 me to go back to the world and its slavery, and 
 to forget this bright glimpse of something better 
 than the world. I am only five-and-twenty, 
 Celia ; and yet I fancied I had outlived the
 
 " TAKE BACK THESE LETTERS. 4o 
 
 possibility of such love as that which I feel 
 for you. 
 
 " You told me on Saturday that vour father's 
 anger would be something terrible if he dis- 
 covered our acquaintance. I should put an end 
 to all your fears, dearest, by going straight to 
 Mr. Mavfield and demanding]: the ri(]jht to call 
 you my own for ever, if I were not fettered 
 hand and foot by social difficulties. You have 
 some cause to doubt me, Celia ; and if you 
 were not the most generous of women, I should 
 fear to speak fi-ankly. Whenever we are mar- 
 ried, our marriage must be kept secret until my 
 father's death releases me from bondage. You 
 will think me a coward, perhaps, when I confess 
 to vou that I dare not openly defy mv father ; 
 but you can scarcely imagine how complete the 
 slavery of a son may be when he is an only 
 son, and his father cherishes grand views for 
 his advancement. I write about these wi-etched 
 obstacles to our happiness, my sweet one, 
 because when you are with me I cannot speak 
 of the difficulties which beset us. My troubles
 
 4G DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 take flight when those dear eyes look up at me. 
 I forget this work-a-clay world and all its ills ; 
 and I could fancy this earth still the home of 
 the gods, and foolish Pandora's casket unopened. 
 When I am away from you, all is changed, and 
 hope only remains. 
 
 '' So I shall make no allusion to this letter 
 Avhen we meet, dearest. We will be children, 
 and fancy this world young again. We will 
 wander arm-in-arm on that delicious stretch of 
 golden sand beyond the curve of the bay, and 
 far away from the bustle of the town. AVe will 
 forget all our commonplace difficulties and 
 troubles, and that the gods have abandoned the 
 earth. Ah ! if we had only lived in those 
 mythic ages, when Eros himself might have 
 taken compassion upon our sorrows, and trans- 
 ported us to some enchanted isle, where our 
 youth and love should be immortal as his own 
 divinity ! 
 
 " Let me see you at seven, dear love. I 
 shall await your coming at the old spot, and 
 you will easily shake off your confidante and
 
 " TAKE BACK THESE LETTERS." -il 
 
 companion, Miss K. Can yon suggest any 
 feminine prettiness wliieli Miss K. would care 
 to possess •? I should like to offer her some 
 testimony of my respectful admiration ; she 
 has been so very indulgent to us, in her own 
 prim fashion. Let me know whether it is to 
 be a necklace, or a bracelet, or a pair of ear- 
 rings, and I will see what the Bayham jeweller 
 can do for us. And now, dearest and loveliest, 
 adieu for a few hours ; and may Phaethon whip 
 his horses to the "West, and bring the sweet sun- 
 set horn* and the rosy light upon our favourite 
 stretch of sand. 
 
 " Ever and ever vours, 
 
 There were many more letters — less playful 
 and more passionate — the dates extending over 
 six or seven weeks ; and then there was a con- 
 siderable interval, and then two letters written 
 in the January of the following year. The 
 writer had won his dearest Celia's consent to a 
 clandestine marriage. She was to leave her home
 
 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 secretly, and was to go with him to Loudon, 
 where all arrangements had been made. It was 
 very evident that her consent to this step had not 
 been won without great difficulty. The letters 
 were full of protestations and promises. • The 
 writer was always repeating how his heart had 
 been wrung by the sight of her tears, how the 
 thought of her sorrow was almost more than he 
 could bear. But he had borne it, nevertheless, 
 and had persisted in his o-^ni designs, whatever 
 they might be, for the last letter contained all 
 necessary directions for the girl's flight. She 
 was to meet her lover at the coach-office after 
 dark ; and they were to travel the first stage of 
 the journey by the night-mail, and then take 
 post across country and get to London by a 
 different road ; so that any one following them, 
 or making inquiries about them on the direct 
 road from Bayham, would be completely baffled. 
 This was all — and yet more than enough for 
 the young man, who sat brooding over the last 
 letter with a gloomy face. It was such a com- 
 mon story, and so easily put together : the
 
 '* TAKE BACK THESE LETTERS." 49 
 
 poor, weak, provincial beauty, who is lured away 
 from her quiet home under the pretence of a 
 secret marriage, a marriage which is never so- 
 lemnized, and was never intended to be solem- 
 nized ; then the brief di*eam of hai:)piness, the 
 noontide holiday in a new garden of Eden, with 
 the fatal serpent, which is called Eemorse, 
 always in hiding beneath the flowers ; and the 
 speedy close to that fever-dream of bliss — utter 
 despair and bitterness. This was the hack- 
 ne^'ed romance which Eustace Thorburn wove 
 out of the packet of letters signed with the 
 initial H. ; and it was so cruel and humiliating 
 a story that the young man suffered his weary 
 head to sink upon the little heaps of i)aper, 
 and wept aloud. 
 
 He had recovered in some measure from this 
 passion of grief, and was employed in arrang- 
 ing the letters, when the door was oj^ened, and 
 a man came into the room. The man was 
 somewhere between foi*ty and fifty, and was a 
 very remarkable-looking person. He had once 
 been handsome — of that there was no doubt, but 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 the flower of bis j'-outh had faded in some per- 
 nicious atmosphere, and the chilling blasts of 
 a premature autumn bad blighted him while he 
 should have been still in all the glory of his 
 midsummer prime. He had a fiery red nose, 
 and fiery black eyes, and dark hair, which he 
 wore longer than was authorized by the fashion 
 of the day. There were gray hairs amongst 
 those straggling dark locks, and the man's 
 moustache had that tinge of Tyrian purple in 
 its blackness which betrays the handiwork of 
 the chemist. He was a man of imposing pre- 
 sence, tall and stalwart ; and although he 
 lacked the conventional graces of a modern 
 gentleman, he was not without a certain style 
 and dash of his own. To-day he wore mourn- 
 ing, and there was an unwonted softness in his 
 manner. This was Daniel Mayfield; a man 
 whose genius had been of much use to other 
 people, but of little benefit to himself, and a 
 man who contemplated the visage of his dead- 
 liest foe whenever he looked in the glass. 
 
 Yes, the only enemy Mr. Mayfield had made
 
 "take back these letters." 51 
 
 ^as himself. Everybody liked him. He was 
 your true Bohemian, yom- genuine Arab of the 
 gr^at desert of London. Money ran between 
 his fingers like water. He had been more suc- 
 cessful, and had worked harder, than men whose 
 industry had won for them houses and lands, 
 horses and carriages, plate and linen and 
 Sevres china. His acquaintance were always 
 calculating his income, and wondering what he 
 did with it. Did he gamble ? Did he specu- 
 late on the Stock Exchange ? Did he consume 
 fifteen hundred a year in tavern-parlours ? 
 Daniel himself could not have answered these 
 questions. He wondered as much as any one 
 about this mysterious enigma. He had never 
 known how he spent his money. It went, some- 
 how, and there came an end to it. Jack bor- 
 rowed a few pounds ; and there was a night's 
 card-playing, through which the luck went 
 against jDOor Dan ; and there was a Greenwich 
 dinner on Tom's birthday ; and he took a fancy 
 to a rare old copy of the Diable Boiteux, on 
 large paper, sold at Willis and Sotheran's; 
 
 ^^ OF lU- uc.
 
 52 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 and then there were occasional periods of 
 famine, during which Dan had recourse to a 
 friendly usurer, for whose succour he ultimately 
 paid something like a hundred and fifty per 
 cent. So the money went. Daniel was the 
 last person to trouble himself as to the manner 
 of its de]3arture. When his pockets were 
 empty, he called for pen, ink, and paper, and 
 set himself to fill them. 
 
 To-day this reckless genius was something 
 less than his accustomed self. The fierce black 
 eyes were shadowed by a settled sadness of 
 expression, and the rollicking swagger of the 
 Bohemian was changed to an unwonted quiet- 
 ness of gait and gesture. He stood for a few 
 moments near the doorway, contemplating his 
 nephew. The young man looked up suddenly 
 and stretched out his hands. 
 
 "Dear Uncle Dan!" he cried, grasping the 
 outstretched hands of his visitor. The fierce 
 grip of his uncle's muscular fingers was the 
 only direct expression of sympathy which he 
 received from that gentleman. The men under-
 
 "take back these letters." 53 
 
 stood each other too well for there to he need 
 of many words hetween them. 
 
 Daniel looked at the ojDen desk. 
 
 " You have heen examining your mother's 
 j)apers," he said, in a low voice. ''Have you 
 discovered anvthing?" 
 
 " More than enough, and yet not half what 
 I must know, sooner or later. I have never 
 asked you any questions. Uncle Dan. I couldn't 
 brincj mvself to do it. But now — now that she 
 is gone " 
 
 " I understand vou, dear bov. I know little 
 enough myself (for I never could find it in my 
 heart to question her, God bless her !), but you 
 have a right to know that little ; and if you 
 can put the story together out of anything you 
 have found there — " said Daniel, pointing to 
 the desk. 
 
 " I understand the story — I want to know 
 the name of the man ! " cried Eustace, pas- 
 sionately. 
 
 '*' I have wanted to know that for the last 
 twenty years," answered Daniel.
 
 54 DEAD -SEA FRUIT. 
 
 *' Then you can tell me nothing ? " 
 " I can tell you very little. When I left 
 home to be articled to a brace of London law- 
 yers, I left the brightest and loveliest creature 
 that ever a man was proud to call his sister. 
 We were the two only children of comfortable 
 tradespeople in a quiet little watering-place, you 
 know, Eustace. We lived in a square, brick- 
 built house, facing the sea. My father kept a 
 circulating-library and reading-room, and my 
 mother did something in the millinery line. 
 Between them both they made a very comfort- 
 able income. Bayham was a sleepy, out-of-the- 
 world place, in which a tradesman who once 
 manages to establish himself generally enjoys a 
 snug monopoly. I know that we were very 
 well off, and that we were people of importance 
 in our way. My sister was the prettiest girl in 
 Bayham. She faded so early, became so com- 
 plete a wreck, that you can scarcely imagine 
 what a lovely creature she was in those days. 
 She was ashamed of the notice her beauty drew 
 upon her, and she had a pretty, childish shy-
 
 *' TAKE BACK THESE LETTERS." 55 
 
 ness of manner which made her all the more 
 charming. A great, hulking hobbledehoy of 
 eighteen seldom knows what beauty is ; but I 
 knew that my sister was lovely, and I admired 
 and loved her. I used to boast of her to my 
 fellow-clerks, I remember, and made myself 
 obnoxious by turning up my uncultivated nose 
 at their sisters. I '^as so proud of our Httle 
 Cely." 
 
 He stopped and shaded his eyes with his 
 hands for some minutes, while Eustace waited 
 impatiently. 
 
 "To make a long story shoi-t," continued 
 Daniel, " there came a letter fi-om my father, 
 written in a very shaky style and almost inco- 
 herent in its wording, to tell me that they were 
 in great trouble at home, and that I was to go 
 back to them immediately. Of com'se I thought 
 of money troubles — we are such sordid creatures 
 by nature, I suppose — and I fancied there was 
 commercial ruin at home, and thought remorse- 
 fully of all the money I had cost my father, 
 and the little good I had ever been to him.
 
 66 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 When I got to Bayliam, I found that there was 
 something worse than want of money in the 
 grief-stricken household, CeHa had disappeared, 
 leaving a letter for my father, in which she told 
 him that she was going away to he married ; 
 but there were reasons why her marriage and 
 the name of her husband should be kej^t a 
 secret for some time ; but that he had promised 
 to bring her back to Bayham directly he was 
 free to reveal his name and position. Of course 
 we all knew what this meant ; and my father 
 and I set out to seek our poor cheated girl, with 
 as gloomy a despair at our hearts as if we had 
 gone to seek her in the realms of Pluto." 
 
 "And you failed?" 
 
 '' Yes, lad, we failed ignominiously. There 
 were neither electric telegraphs nor private de- 
 tectives in those days ; and after following seve- 
 ral false scents, and spending a great deal of 
 money, we went back to Bayham — my father 
 looking ten years older for his wasted labour. 
 He died three years after that, and my mother 
 followed him very quickly, for they were one of
 
 "take back these letters." 57 
 
 those old-fasliionecl couples who cling to each 
 other so fondl}^ through life that they must 
 needs sink together into the grave. They died; 
 and the i^oor girl, whom they had forgiven from 
 the very first hour of her offending, was not 
 permitted to comfort their last hours. They 
 had heen dead more than twelve months when 
 I saw a woman's faded face flit past me in the 
 most crowded part of the Strand. I walked on 
 a few paces, with a strange, sudden pain at my 
 heart, and then I turned and hurried after the 
 woman, for I knew that I had seen my sister." 
 
 There was another brief pause — broken only 
 by the short, eager breathing of Eustace, and 
 one profound sigh from Daniel. 
 
 " Well, boy, she had been li^dng in London 
 for more than three vears, hidden in the same 
 big jungle which sheltered me, and Providence 
 had never sent me across her path. She had 
 been living as many such lonely creatures do 
 live in London ; managing to exist somehow — 
 now by means of one starvation work, now 
 another. I went home with her, and we gathered
 
 58 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 her few pitiful possessions together, and carried 
 them and you away with us in a cab, and — 
 you know the rest. She lived with me until 
 you were old enough to be in danger of suffering 
 from a bad example ; and then she made some 
 excuse for leaving me — poor innocent soul, she 
 was afraid lest dissolute Daniel should con- 
 taminate her pet-lamb. In all the time that 
 we were together, I forbore to question her ; I 
 always believed that she would confide in me 
 sooner or later, and I waited patiently in that 
 hope. She told me once that she had made 
 two journeys to Bayham — the first while her 
 father and mother were still alive, and that she 
 had waited and watched, under cover of the 
 winter evening darkness, until she had contrived 
 to see them both ; the second when they were 
 lying in the parish churchyard. This was all 
 she ever told me. I asked her one day if she 
 would tell me the name of your father. But 
 she looked at me with a sad, frightened face, 
 poor child, and said No, she could never tell 
 me that ; he was away from England — at the 
 
 *^
 
 " TAXE BACK THESE LETTERS." 59 
 
 other end of tlie -^orlcl, she believed. This Tvas 
 the only attempt I ever made to penetrate the 
 secret of your birth." 
 
 "The letters — the man's letters — are full of 
 allusions to an intended marriap;e. Do vou 
 think there was no marriage ?" 
 
 "I am sure there was none." 
 
 Eustace groaned aloud. For a long time he 
 had suspected as much as this ; but to hear 
 his suspicions confirmed by the opinion of 
 another was none the less bitter. 
 
 " You have some reason for saying as much, 
 Uncle Dan?" he asked, presently. 
 
 *' I have this reason, Eustace : if my sister 
 could have come back to Bayham, she would 
 have come. The soitow must have been a 
 very bitter one which kept her away fi'om her 
 father and mother." 
 
 The young man made no reply to his uncle. 
 He walked to the window, and looked out at 
 the dreary street, where the perpetual organ- 
 grinder, who seems to grind all our sorrows in 
 a musical mill, was grinding on at the usual
 
 60 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 pace. For the common world the thing which 
 he played was an Ethiopian melody; hut 
 Eustace never afterwards heard the simple air 
 without recalling this miserahle hour, and the 
 story of his mother's luckless life. 
 
 He came hack to his kinsman. Heaven pity 
 him, the law denied him even this human tie, 
 and it was only hy courtesy he could call 
 this man his uncle. He came away from the 
 window, and flung himself on honest Daniel's 
 hreast and sohhed aloud. 
 
 *' And now take me to my mother's grave," 
 he said presently.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 UN MENAGE A DEUX. 
 
 Hakold Jerningham lived in Park Lane. To 
 say this, and to say in addition to this that it 
 was his privilege to inhabit a snug little 
 bachelor dwelling, with bay-windows from the 
 roof to the basement, is to say that he was 
 one of those favom-ed beings for whom this 
 world must needs be a terrestrial paradise. 
 There are mansions in Park Lane, stately and 
 gigantic — mansions with lofty picture-galleries, 
 and staircases of polished marble, and conser- 
 vatories which roof-in small forests of tropical 
 verdure : but the glory of this western Eden 
 lies not in them. Are there not mansions in 
 Belgravia and Tyburnia, in Piccadilly and May- 
 fair ? Palaces are common enough in this 
 western hemisphere, and the roturier may find
 
 62 DEAD -SEA FRUIT. 
 
 one ready for his occupation, seek it when he 
 will. But it is only in Park Lane that those 
 delicious little bachelor snuggeries are to be 
 found, those enchanting toy-houses, " too small 
 to live in, and too big to hang at your watch- 
 chain," as Lord Hervey said of the Duke's 
 cottage at Chiswick — those irregular little edi- 
 fices, with bow-windows, and balconies, and 
 miniature conservatories breaking out in every 
 direction, and with a perfume of the country 
 still about them. 
 
 The house which Harold Jerningham oc- 
 cupied when he favoured the metropolis by his 
 presence was one of the most enchanting of 
 these enviable habitations. The house had 
 been a pretty old-fashioned cottage with bow- 
 windows, when Mr. Jerningham took it in 
 hand, but in his possession it had undergone 
 considerable change. He had transformed the 
 rustic bows into deep roomy bays, and had 
 thrown out balconies of iron scroll-work, whereon 
 there flourished bright masses of flowers, and 
 ferns, and mosses, amidst which no eye save
 
 UN MENAGE A DEIX. 63 
 
 that of the nurseryman's minions ever beheld 
 a faded leaf. He had built mysterious and 
 spacious chambers at the back of the small 
 d^yelling, on ground that had once been a gar- 
 den ; and beyond these chambers you came 
 suddenl}- upon a shady quadrangle roofed-in 
 with glass, where there was a wonderful tesse- 
 lated pavement, which had been transjDorted 
 bodily from a chamber in Pompeii, and where 
 there were ferns and cool grasses, and a por- 
 ph}Ty basin of water-lilies, and the perpetual 
 plashing of a fountain. 
 
 Mr. Jerningham had furnished his house 
 after his own fashion, without regard to the 
 styles that were "in," or the styles that were 
 "out." One rich carpet of dark crimson 
 velvet-pile lined the house from the hall to the 
 attics, like a jewel-casket ; and the same warm 
 and yet sombre tint pervaded the window- 
 hangings and the walls. The ordinary visitor 
 found very little to admire in Mr. Jerningham' s 
 drawing-room. Thin-legged tables and chaii's 
 adorned with goats' heads and festoons of
 
 64 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 flowers ; a shabby little writing-table, consider- 
 ably the worse for wear, but enlivened by 
 patches of china, whereon rosy little Cupids 
 frisked and tumbled against a background of 
 deep azure ; a generally untidy effect of scat- 
 tered bronzes and intaglios, gold-and-enamel 
 snuff-boxes and bonbonnieres, Chelsea tea-cups, 
 and antique miniatures ; and on the walls some 
 tapestry, just a little faded, with the eternal 
 shepherds and shepherdesses of the Watteau 
 school. The connoisseur only could have told 
 that the spindle-legged chairs and tables were 
 in the purest style of the Louis-Seize i^eriod ; 
 that the shabby little writing-table with the 
 plaques of old Sevres had belonged to Marie 
 Antoinette, and had been sold for something 
 over a thousand pounds ; that the bronzes and 
 intaglios, the miniatures and bonbonnieres were 
 the representatives of a fortune ; and that the 
 somewhat faded tapestry was the choicest work 
 of the Gobelins, after designs by Boucher. 
 
 Harold Jerningham was fifty years of age, 
 and one of the richest men in London. The
 
 TN MENAGE A DEUX. 65 
 
 poorer members of the world in -^hicli he lived 
 talked of him as ''a lucky fellow, by Jove, and a 
 man who ought to consider himself uncommonly 
 fortunate never to have known what it was to 
 be hard-up, or to have a pack of extravagant 
 ■sons sucking his blood, like so many modern 
 Tampires, confound 'em !" Harold Jerningham 
 had neither sons nor daughters, and lived in a 
 bachelor's snuggery. But Harold Jerningham 
 "was not a bachelor. He had married a verv 
 beautiful young first cousin some seven years 
 before, and the union had not been a happj' 
 one. It had only endured for two years, at the 
 end of which time the husband and wife had 
 separated, without open scandal of any kind 
 whatsoever. Mr. Jerningham had chosen that 
 occasion for a long-postj^oned journey to the 
 East, and Mrs. Jerningham had quietly with- 
 drawn herself from the toy-house in Park Lane 
 to another toy-house on the banks of the 
 Thames, within two or three hundred yards of 
 Wolsey's old palace at Hamilton. But let man 
 and wife arrange their affairs never so quietly, 
 
 VOL. I. . p
 
 66 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 the world will have its own ideas, and make its 
 own theories on the subject. The world — that 
 is to say, Mr. Jerningham's world, which was 
 bounded on the south by Great George Street, 
 Westminster, and on the north by BryanstOne 
 Square — told several different stories of Mr. 
 Jerningham's marriage. The beautiful young 
 cousin had possessed the real Jerningham 
 pride, which was the pride of the Miltonic 
 Lucifer himself, wherefore the peaceful union 
 of two Jerninghams was an im230ssibility, said 
 one faction. But the majority were inclined to 
 believe Mr. Jerningham in some manner guilty. 
 Neither his youth nor his middle age had been 
 spotless. Too proud and too refined to affect 
 coarse vices or common dissipations, he had 
 done more mischief and had been infinitely 
 more dangerous than the common sinner. The 
 master of a ruined household had cursed the 
 name of Harold Jerningham, and innocent 
 children had grown up to blush at the mention 
 of that fatal name. For three-and-forty years 
 of his life he had been a bachelor, and had
 
 UN MENAGE A DEUX. 67 
 
 laughed at the men who bartered theu' Hberty 
 for the sake of a wife's monotonous companion- 
 ship and the prattle of th'esome ehildi'en. He 
 had not been a deliberate sinner — indeed, the 
 dehberate sinners seem to be a very small 
 minority, and even the man who poisons his 
 wife with minim doses of aconite will tell the 
 gaol-chaplain that he was a poor, weak creature, 
 led away fi'om time to time by the impulse of 
 the moment. The Tempter took him by the 
 hand, and drew him on, foot by foot, to his de- 
 struction. There is a thick and blinding fog 
 for ever hanging over that fatally easy slope 
 which leads to Avemus, whereby the traveller 
 cannot perceive what progress he has made 
 upon the dreadful downward road. 
 
 Mr. Jerningham had not been a deliberate 
 sinner. He was not altogether vile and wicked. 
 He was too selfish a man not to wish for the 
 approbation of his fellow-man ; he was too much 
 of a poet and an artist not to perceive the love- 
 liness of virtue. He was not an honourable 
 man, but he knew that honour was a very
 
 68 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 beautiful thing in the abstract, and he had a 
 vague sense of discomfort when he acted dis- 
 honourably — just such an unpleasant sensation 
 as he would have felt if he had worn an ill- 
 fitting coat or an ill-made boot. He was not 
 without benevolence, and could even be gene- 
 rous on occasion ; but in all his useless life he 
 had never sacrificed his own enjoyment for the 
 good of another. He had taken his pleasure 
 — all was told in those few words — and if 
 pleasure was only to be had at the cost of evil- 
 doing, he had shrugged his shoulders regret- 
 fully, and paid the price. He had gathered 
 his roses, and other people had been incon- 
 venienced by the thorns. The roses were still 
 blooming about his pathway, but Mr. Jerning- 
 ham no longer cared to pluck them. A man 
 may grow tired even of roses. His marriage 
 had been the result of one of those generous 
 impulses which redeemed his character from 
 utter worthlessness. A kinsman had died in 
 Paris, in the extreme depths of patrician 
 poverty, leaving behind him a very lovely
 
 UN MENAGE A DEUX. 69 
 
 daughter, and a letter addressed to Harold 
 Jerningham. The lovely daughter came to 
 London, unattended, to deliver the letter, 
 which she presented with her own hands to 
 the elegant bachelor of three-and-forty. If 
 she had not been a Jerningham, there is no 
 knowinor what storv of sin and foUv this inter- 
 view might have inaugurated. But she was 
 the daughter of Philip Jerningham, and the 
 direct descendant of a Plantagenet prince ; so, 
 after a brief acquaintance, she became the wife 
 of the eldest rei^resentative of her family, and 
 the mistress of that delicious little house in 
 Park Lane, to say nothing of parks and man- 
 sions, farms and forests, in three of the fairest 
 counties in England. 
 
 She ought to have considered herself the 
 most foi*tunate of women, said the western 
 world. Whether she did so consider herself 
 or not, it speedily transpired that she was not 
 a happy woman. For a few months the world 
 had the pleasure of beholding Mr. Jerningham 
 in frequent attendance on his wife. He handed
 
 70 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 her in and out of carriages, he went out to 
 dinner with her, he stood behind her chair at 
 the Opera, he was even seen occasionally to 
 drive her in his unapproachable mail-phaeton ; 
 and this seemed the perfection of domestic 
 felicity. Then there came an interregnum, 
 during which the Jerninghams were rarely 
 seen together. They led an erratic existence, 
 the rule of which seemed to be that Mr. Jer- 
 ningham should be at Sj)a when his wife 
 was in London, and that Mrs. Jerningham 
 should be on her way to one of the country 
 houses whenever her lord came to town. Then 
 all at once arose the awful rumour that the 
 Jerninghams had j)arted from each other for 
 ever. Elegant gossips discussed the subject 
 at feminine assemblies, and men talked about 
 it in the clubs. Why had the Jerninghams 
 separated ? Was he to blame ? Was she ? 
 Had Jerningham, the irresistible, dropped in 
 for it at last ? Or had he been playing his old 
 trick, and had the little woman plucked up a 
 spirit, and cut him ? It is to be observed that
 
 UN 3IENAGE A DEUX. 71 
 
 Mrs. Jerningham was amongst the tallest of 
 her sex ; but your genuine club-lounger would 
 call Juno herself a little woman. 
 
 It became generally understood before long that 
 Harold Jerningham had himself alone to thank 
 for the failm*e of his matrimonial venture. He 
 made his name somewhat notorious just at this 
 time in conjunction with that of a French 
 opera-dancer ; so Mrs. Grundy shrugged her 
 shoulders deprecatingly, and pitied Mrs. Jer- 
 ningham. "A superb creature, my dear ; the 
 very model of propriety; and a thousand times 
 too good for that dissipated wretch, Harold 
 Jerningham," exclaimed the sagacious Mrs. 
 Grundy. 
 
 While the world made itself busy with the 
 story of her brief married life, Emily Jerning- 
 ham endm-ed her wi'ougs and sorrows very 
 quietly in the toy-villa at Hampton. She had 
 an ample income settled on her by her husband; 
 and as she had been steeped in poverty to the 
 very lips before her marriage, it is scarcely 
 strange, perhaps, if she forebore to complain of
 
 72 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 Mr. Jerningham's conduct, and elected to talk 
 about him — whenever intrusive people com- 
 pelled her to mention his name — as her friend 
 and benefactor. The world lauded her gene- 
 rosity, but considered itself injured by her 
 reticence. 
 
 For the first twelve months after the separa- 
 tion, Mrs. Jerningham secluded herself from all 
 society except that of a few chosen friends, and 
 devoted herself to the cultivation of orchids at 
 the toy-villa. She started with the intention 
 of passing the remainder of her days amongst 
 the chosen friends and the orchids ; but she was 
 young and handsome, rich and accomplished^ 
 and society had chosen to exalt her into a, 
 social martyr. So people penetrated the depths 
 of her suburban retreat, and beguiled her to 
 return to the world, of which she had seen so 
 little. She went into society, tolerably secured 
 from the hazard of meeting her husband, who 
 had his own particular circle, and that a very 
 narrow one. Emily Jerningham was liked and 
 admired. She was a beauty of the Juno type.
 
 UN MENAGE A DEUX. 73 
 
 and the Jerningham pride became her. It was 
 not by any means an intolerable pride, never 
 parading itself on unnecessary occasions — pride 
 defensive, and not pride aggressive; the pride of 
 a prince who will be hand-and-glove with his 
 dear Brummell, but who will order Mr. Brum- 
 mell's carriage when the beau is insolent. Mrs. 
 Jerningham was very popular. She had all the 
 charm of widowhood without its danger. There 
 was even the faintest flavour of Bohemianism 
 about her position, spotless though her reputa- 
 tion might be. She was a saint and martyr 
 who gave nice little dinners, and di'ove the most 
 perfectly appointed of pony-phaetons. It was 
 only by an indescribable something — a tranquil 
 grace of bearing, a subdued ease of manner, a 
 pervading harmony in every detail of her sur- 
 roundings, from the unobtrusive colouring of 
 her costume to the u-reproachable livery of her 
 servants — that strangers could distinguish her 
 from other unprotected women of a very differ- 
 ent class. 
 
 Young men were ready to worship and adore
 
 74 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 her. *' If the gurls a fellah meets were like 
 Mrs. Jerningham, a fellah might make up his 
 mind to go in for the domestic," said young 
 Tyburnia to young Belgravia. "S'pose the 
 odds are against Jerningham going off the 
 hooks between this and the first spring-meeting, 
 so as to give a party a chance with Mrs. J. 
 herself," speculates young Belgravia, dreamily. 
 Mrs. Jerningham had enjoyed her quasi- 
 widowhood some two years, when Mrs. Grundy's 
 attention was called to a new phenomenon in 
 connection with that lady. 
 
 It was observed that whoever was bidden to 
 the nice little dinner-parties at the toy villa, 
 there was one gentleman whose presence was a 
 certainty. It was observed that whenever Mrs. 
 Jerningham dropped in for an hour or two at 
 any fashionable assembly, this gentleman was 
 sure to drop in at the same hour, and to depart, 
 listless and weary, as soon as he had handed that 
 lady to her carriage. He was not one of the 
 butterflies, but had been admitted amongst those 
 gorgeous creatures on account of certain gifts
 
 UN MENAGE A DEUX. 75 
 
 and qualities which the butterflies were able to 
 appreciate. He was a powerful satirist, some- 
 thing of a poet, and the editor of a fashionable 
 semi-pohtical, semi-literary periodical, entitled 
 " The xii'eopagus." He was five-and-thirty 
 years of age, as handsome as an intellectual 
 man can venture to be, and as elegant as a 
 Lauzun or a Hervey. He had chambers in 
 the Temple, a hunting-box in Berkshire, the 
 entree to all the best houses in London, and a 
 hundi'ed country houses always open to him. 
 The Bohemians of the press watched his career 
 with envious eyes, and would have rejoiced in- 
 finitely to catch him tripj^ing on the difficult 
 editorial pathway, so that they might band 
 themselves together to rend him in pieces. The 
 first time these watchful enemies obtained any 
 advantage over him was when the western 
 world began to whisper that he had fallen in 
 love with Mrs. Jerningham. Then the literary 
 Bohemians, the " Cherokees " and *^ Night- 
 birds," and all the little clubs and chques in 
 London, set up theii- malicious chatter; and
 
 76 DEAD-SEA FEUIT. 
 
 men who had never heheld Emily Jerningham's 
 face sjDeculated upon her conduct and gloated 
 over the anticipation of some tremendous scan- 
 dal which should terminate in Laurence Des- 
 mond's expulsion from the Eden of fashion. 
 
 The clubs and cliques were doomed to disap- 
 pointment. No tremendous scandal ever arose. 
 After a little discussion, the world agreed to 
 accept this Platonic attachment between the 
 lady and the editor as the most delightful of 
 social romances. Mrs. Jerningham had taken 
 care to provide herself with a perfect dragon in 
 the way of an elderly widowed aunt, whose hus- 
 band had been in the Church — and, sheltered 
 thus, she was free to bestow her friendship on 
 whom she pleased. Time, which sanctifies all 
 things, gave a kind of legality to the Platonic 
 attachment ; and in due course it became an 
 understood thing that Mr. Desmond would never 
 marry until Harold Jerningham's death should 
 
 set Emily free. 
 
 If any rumour of this romantic friendship 
 reached Mr. Jerningham's ears, he received the
 
 UN MENAGE A DEUX. 77 
 
 tidings very quietly. No _2^r^i/a; chevalier ever 
 spoke of his liege lady in a more reverential 
 spirit than that in which Harold Jerningham 
 spoke of his wife. It seemed as if these two 
 2)eople had agreed to sound each other's praises. 
 Emily declared her husband to be the most 
 noble and generous of men ; Harold lauded his 
 wife as the purest and most honourable of women. 
 Malicious people shrugged their shoulders and 
 hinted at hypocrisy. 
 
 ^'Jerningham was always a Jesuit/' said 
 one : ''he is the Talleyrand of social life. And 
 if you want to arrive at what he means, you 
 must take the reverse of what he says." 
 
 " If they are both such delightful creatures, 
 what a pity it is they couldn't live peaceably 
 together ! " said another.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE '' AREOPAGUS." 
 
 Amongst the contributors to the literary perio- 
 dical of which Mr. Desmond was the editor, 
 Daniel Mayfield occujDied no insignificant po- 
 sition. The most genial and good-natured of 
 men was at the same time the most ferocious 
 and acrimonious of critics. When an innocent 
 lamb was to be led to the slaughter, it was 
 Daniel who assumed the butcher's apron and 
 armed himself with the deadly knife. When a 
 wretched scribbler was, in vulgar phraseology, 
 to be *' jumped upon," honest Daniel put on 
 his hobnailed boots, and went at the savage 
 operation with a will. The days were past in 
 which the Edinburgh reviewer apologized with 
 a gentle courtesy before he ventured to express
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE ''AREOPAGUS. 79 
 
 his dissent fi'om the opinions of a lady histo- 
 rian. Criticism of to-day must be racy, at any 
 price. Daniel's strong arm smote right and 
 left, cleaving friend and foe indiscriminately 
 asunder ; and if it was on a woman's head that 
 the blow descended, so much the better. The 
 woman should have been at home studying her 
 cookery-book, or working that domestic tread- 
 mill, the sewing-machine, instead of jostling 
 her betters in the literary arena. "Hark for- 
 ward, tantivy !" cried Daniel the critic ; " run 
 her down, trample her in the mud, make an 
 end of her ! She would quote Greek, would 
 she ? ^"hy, the creature can barely spell 
 plain English ! She would prate of gods and 
 goddesses, whose name she picks haphazard 
 from a cheap abridgment of Lempriere. She 
 would discom'se of fashion and sj)lendour, for- 
 sooth, who was " born in a garret, in a kitchen 
 bred." Daniel the man was tender and coui*- 
 teous in his treatment of all womankind ; but 
 Daniel the racy essayist knew no mercy. 
 
 Daniel the pitiless was one of Mr. Desmond's
 
 80 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 most valued coadjutors, and had received many 
 offers of kindly service from that gentleman ; 
 but the literary Bohemian had refused all. 
 
 "A government appointment for me! "he 
 cried, when the popular editor offered to use 
 his influence with a Cabinet minister in Daniel's 
 favour ; '' why, I should languish in the tram- 
 mels of an official life. Eegular hours and a 
 regular salary would be the death of me in less 
 than six months. I was born a dweller in 
 tents, my dear Desmond, and my instincts are 
 naturally disreputable. I can work seven hours 
 at a stretch, and produce more copy in a given 
 time than any man in London. I have been 
 locked up in a room with a wet towel, a bottle 
 of Scotch whiskey, and half a ream of paper, 
 and have written five-and-thirty pages of a 
 popular magazine between sunset and sunrise. 
 But I must take it out in vagabondage after- 
 wards. I am of the stuff which makes your 
 Savages and your Morlands, and I shall die in 
 a sponging-house when my time comes, I have 
 no doubt. Nevertheless, I will ask a favour of
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE "AREOPAGUS." 81 
 
 you some day, Desmond ; but it shall be for 
 somebody better worth serving than I am." 
 
 Within a week of Eustace Thorburn's return, 
 Daniel Mayfield presented himself at the editor's 
 chambers. He had done no work for the Areo- 
 pagus for some little time, and Mr. Desmond 
 was glad to bid him welcome. 
 
 " I've been thinking of looking you up for 
 the last three weeks, Dan," said the editor, 
 striking his pen across half a page of proof. 
 " What second-hand twaddle this man writes ! 
 We want the sterhng metal of your stylus, old 
 fellow." 
 
 " Any new victim to be flayed alive ?" asked 
 Daniel. " I've been rather seedy for the last 
 week or two, and perhaps a little of the old 
 work will set me right again." 
 
 "You'll find plenty of material there," an- 
 swered Mr. Desmond, pointing to a heap of 
 cloth-covered volumes. "What have you been 
 doing with yourself since I saw you last ? No 
 good, I suppose," he added, without looking 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 up from the proofs on which he was operat- 
 ing. 
 
 *' Well, no, not much good. It's a business 
 I shouldn't care about repeating; but it's a 
 business that must be done — it must be done, 
 Desmond, sooner or later, in every man's life, 
 I suppose." 
 
 The unwonted gravity of Daniel Mayfield's 
 tone surprised his friend. Laurence Desmond 
 looked up from his desk, and for the first time 
 perceived the change in his errratic contri- 
 butor's costume. 
 
 " In mourning, Dan ! I'm sorry to see 
 
 that," he said, gently. 
 
 " Yes ; I have buried the dearest friend I 
 ever had — my only sister. God bless her ! 
 The Freethinker's Quarterly people won't get 
 me to do any more deistical articles for them, 
 Laurence. I'm a bad fellow myself, with no 
 opinions in particular about anything in heaven 
 or earth. How should I have opinions ? I've 
 sold 'em too often to other people to have any 
 left for myself. But I like to think that she is
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE *' AREOPAGUS." 83 
 
 in heaven, and I'll never write a * rational ' 
 essay again as long as I live." 
 
 The two men shook hands upon this, ivithout 
 effusion — as it is the habit of Englishmen to do. 
 
 "And now to business," said Daniel. "You 
 once offered to get me a government appoint- 
 ment, and I told you I wasn't fit for one. I 
 haven't forgotten your offer, or the kindness 
 that prompted it. My sister has left a son — 
 a lad of three-and-twenty. He is clever, hon- 
 om*able, ambitious, and indefatigable; but, 
 except myself, he has neither friend nor relative 
 in the world. He has been a tutor in a great 
 Belgian academy, and the principal will certify 
 his merits. If you can serve him, Desmond, 
 you will do me treble service." 
 
 "What kind of thing do you want for him?' 
 
 " A private tutorship, or the post of secretary 
 to a man worth serving. The lad is a fair 
 classical scholar, and a good linguist. He is 
 a great deal more than this into the bargain ; 
 but I am so fond of the fellow that I am afi-aid 
 of praising him too much."
 
 84 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 " Bring him here to dine to-morrow night," 
 said Mr. Desmond ; "I'll think the matter over 
 in the meantime. I dare say I shall hit upon 
 something to suit him. Why doesn't he take 
 to this sort of thing ? " 
 
 The editor of the Areopagus laid his hand 
 upon the proofs. 
 
 Daniel Mayfield shook his head sadly. 
 
 *' Anything but that, Desmond. I don't 
 want him to be a publisher's hack. I don't 
 want him to put my worn-out old shoes on his 
 brave young feet, and tread the miry road 
 along which I have travelled. I don't want 
 him to make merchandise of his best and 
 purest feelings while the stock lasts him, and 
 deal in sham sentiments and spurious emotions 
 when the real ones are worn out. I don't 
 want him to weep maudlin tears over philan- 
 thropic leaders, or work himself into an unreal 
 fury over the denunciation of a political mea- 
 sure he has barely had leisure to consider. I 
 don't want him to sell his convictions to the 
 highest bidder — to be Conservative one day,
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE *' AREOPAGUS." 85 
 
 Liberal the next, and Eadical the day after. 
 He's too good for my work, Desmond, and he's 
 too good for my company. When he was old 
 enough to be injured by a bad example, his 
 poor mother took him away from me — though 
 I was sorry enough to part with the little 
 rascal, and it went to her heart to give me sor- 
 row. She is gone now, Desmond, and it is my 
 duty to see that the boy comes to no harm." 
 " Has he any of your talent, Dan?" 
 *' He has something better than my talent, 
 sir," answered Mayfield, gravely. " The lad 
 has the soul of a poet, and is destined to be 
 one. There is real genius there, sir — not the 
 marketable trash I deal in. He has written 
 verses which have brought the tears into my 
 eyes ; consider that, sir — tears from such a 
 hardened wretch as your Daniel should count 
 for something. I want some quiet, comfortable 
 position for him, in which he will have a little 
 leisure to think his own thoughts. I want him 
 to bide his time ; and some day, when his in- 
 tellect has ripened and mellowed, the divine
 
 86 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 breath will inflate his nostrils, and we shall 
 have a new poet." 
 
 " I think I can get him exactly the sort of 
 thing you want," answered Laurence Desmond; 
 " but I must first make sure he is fit for it. 
 Bring him at half-past seven to-morrow, and 
 let me see if he is worthy of your praises. 
 You'll take those books, and send me copy to- 
 morrow, eh?" 
 
 Daniel nodded, took the books under his arm, 
 shook hands with his friend, and departed — 
 departed, with peace and goodwill and all Chris- 
 tian feelings in his big, generous heart, to 
 annihilate the luckless wretch who had written 
 a stupid novel. 
 
 Daniel and Eustace dined in the Temple the 
 next evening, and sat late over their wine in 
 the summer twilight. Laurence Desmond was 
 delighted with the young man. He led him 
 on to talk freely on his own sentiments and 
 opinions, while Daniel listened with a fond 
 smile to his nephew's eloquent discourse. It was
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE " AREOPAGUS." 87 
 
 pleasant to Mr. Desmond, -whose lot had been 
 cast in that serene and exalted sphere in which 
 there was no such thing as emotion — it was 
 very pleasant to the popular editor to come in 
 contact with this fresh, young nature, and to 
 discover that, even in this age of high-pres- 
 sure, a man may retain youthfulness of spirit, 
 faith in his fellow-creatures, pure and poetic 
 aspirations, and childlike simplicity of feeling, 
 after his twenty-third birthday. 
 
 " The young men I know have been used up 
 at nineteen," thought Lam-ence; "and there 
 are hardened wretches of five-and-twenty more 
 blase than Philip of Orleans at forty-eight." 
 
 From talking of his opinions, Laurence Des- 
 mond led Eustace on to talk of himself and his 
 own experiences ; and before Daniel and his 
 nephew departed, the young man's future was 
 in some measm*e provided for. 
 
 *' A very old and dear fi'iend of mine," said 
 Mr. Desmond, '*' has for some time been in 
 want of a secretary and amanuensis to assist 
 him in the completion and publication of a
 
 88 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 great work to which he has devoted many years 
 of his Hfe — a work which he calls the History 
 of Superstition, and which, I believe, is as dear 
 to him as his only child. I have been trying 
 to find him the kind of person he wants, but 
 have hitherto failed most completely. There 
 are plenty of shallow, flippant young fellows 
 who would like the position well enough, for 
 the salary will be a decent one, and my friend 
 is the best and kindest of men ; but, until now, 
 I have met no one capable of giving him the 
 assistance he w^ants. Your knowledge of lan- 
 guages and your Villebrumeuse reading — which 
 seems to have been very wisely chosen, — ex- 
 actly fit you for the position. If you can 
 tolerate a quiet life in the heart of the country, 
 I can offer you the situation, Mr. Thorbm'n, 
 and may conclude all arrangements with you, 
 on my own responsibility." 
 
 " If your friend is a gentleman, I say 
 'Done!'" cried Daniel Mayfield, heartily; 
 " nothing could be better suited to this 
 boy."
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE "AREOPAGUS." 89 
 
 He laid his hand caressingly on the young 
 man's shoulder as he spoke. 
 
 "And you'll be safe out of my way, lad," he 
 mm-mured, softly, " and I shall lose my bright- 
 faced boy — so much the better for him, so much 
 the worse for me !" 
 
 " My friend is something more than a gentle- 
 man," answered Laurence Desmond. He is a 
 preiix chevalier. He is the descendant of a 
 noble old Spanish family — a Frenchman b}' 
 birth and education, and half an Englishman 
 by long residence in England. He lives in a 
 pictm'esque old house near Windsor, and on the 
 banks of the Thames ; such a spot as one 
 scarcely expects to see out of Creswick's i)ic- 
 tures. I don't see much of him, for my life is 
 too busy for friendship ; and — and there are 
 other reasons that keep us asunder," added 
 Mr. Desmond, with some slight embarrassment 
 of manner. 
 
 " Can you exist in the country, Mr. Thor- 
 burn ?" he asked presently. 
 
 " I love the country so well that I can
 
 90 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 scarcely exist in London, except for the sake of 
 my uncle's society." 
 
 " Which is about the worst thing you can 
 have!" growled Daniel. 
 
 "Ah! you are a poet, and a poet should live 
 amongst lonely woods and sylvan streams. 
 Well, you will be delighted with my friend, 
 Theodore de Bergerac, and still more delighted 
 with the place he lives in. I'll write to him to- 
 morrow, and tell him I've found the blue dia- 
 mond of the nineteenth century, a young man 
 who does not affect to be old. Can you go to 
 him immediately ? " 
 
 " M. de Bergerac will no doubt wish to hear 
 from my late employer, the principal of the Par- 
 thenee," Eustace answered, after some hesitation. 
 
 " Not at all. I will be responsible for the 
 character and qualifications of my old friend's 
 nephew. There need be no delay on that 
 account," said Laurence. 
 
 " There need be no delay on any account, 
 then," exclaimed Daniel ; "the boy is ready to 
 leave London to-morrow, if necessary."
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE " AREOPAGUS. " 91 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Uncle Dan. Unless M. 
 de Bergerac really wants me immediately, I 
 should be glad of a week's delay," said Eustace, 
 with considerable embarrassment. " I have 
 some business to do before I leave London." 
 
 ''Business!" cried Daniel; "what busi- 
 ness?" 
 
 " I will tell you all about it by and by. 
 Uncle Dan." 
 
 " My friend has waited six months, and he 
 can afford to wait another week," said Laurence, 
 good-naturedly. " Come and see me when your 
 business is finished, Mr. Thorburn." 
 
 "Good-night, and thank you, Desmond," 
 said Daniel, wringing his fi'iend's hand with 
 muscular heartiness. " I told you that a 
 favour to him is thrice a favour to me ; and if 
 ever I have a chance of proving that I meant 
 what I said, I won't let the opportunity slip." 
 
 When the two men had left the Temple, and 
 were walking homewards through quiet back- 
 streets, Daniel Mayfield turned sharply upon 
 his nephew.
 
 92 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 " What the deuce is to keep you in London 
 for a week, Eustace ?" he asked. 
 
 *' I want to go to Bayham, Uncle Dan, to 
 make some inquires that may help me." 
 
 Daniel laid his hand on the young man's 
 arm. 
 
 " Drop that, lad," he said, earnestly. " I've 
 thought about it for twenty years to no end. 
 No good will ever come of it — nothing but 
 disapi)ointment and vexation, shame and sor- 
 row. Forget the past, and start fair ; the 
 world is all before you. You have got your 
 chance now. Desmond is a friend worth 
 having ; and this man De Bergerac may be a 
 good friend too, if you serve him well. Wipe 
 out the memory of that old story, my lad. 
 Your father has chosen to ignore you ; ignore 
 him, and cry quits. The day may come when 
 he'll hear your name, and regret that he has 
 forfeited the right to call you his son. Don't 
 waste your thoughts ujDon him, Eustace. The 
 man may be dead and gone for aught we know. 
 Let him rest."
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE "AREOPAGUS." 93 
 
 '* And my mother's "^Tongs — are they to be 
 forgotten ? Do you remember the other even- 
 ing in Highgate Cemetery, Uncle Dan ? You 
 thought I "^'as praying, perhaps, when I knelt 
 by my mother's grave ; but I was not praying. 
 On my knees beside that newly laid turf I swore 
 to be revenged on the man who blighted the life 
 of her who lies beneath it. I must find that 
 man, Uncle Daniel, and you must help me to 
 find him.'* 
 
 " Was there no clue to his identity to be 
 found in those letters ?" asked Daniel, after a 
 pause. 
 
 " Only one, and that a very slight one. He 
 had written a book, — a book which seems to 
 have been popular, and which my poor mother 
 was reading when first he saw her. Can you 
 remember any particular book which attracted 
 attention in '43 ?" 
 
 " No, my lad ; my memory is not good 
 enough for that. There are people who might be 
 able to remember, and there are literary papers 
 that might help you. But scarcely a year goes
 
 94 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 by in which there are not a dozen books that 
 make some slight sensation. This must have 
 been a woman's book, though, — a poem or 
 a novel, or something of that kind, — or 
 your mother would scarcely have been read- 
 ing it." 
 
 " The book was published either anony- 
 mously or under some nom de plume,'' said 
 Eustace ; " and even if I discover the right 
 book, I may not be able to identify it with the 
 writer. So you see the clue is a very poor 
 one. I shall go to Bayham, Uncle Dan. Ac- 
 cident may help me to some better clue than 
 the letters afford. The man was staying at 
 the George Hotel ; I may make some discovery 
 there. He speaks of a Miss K., a friend and 
 confidante of my mother. Can you tell me 
 who she was?" 
 
 "Sarah Kimber!" cried Daniel, — "un- 
 doubtedly Sarah Kimber, a girl whose father 
 kept a linendraper's shop, and who went to 
 school with Celia. My poor sister and she 
 were fast friends ; but I never could endure
 
 THE EDITOR OF THE " AREOPAGUS." 95 
 
 her. She was a lank, lantem-jawecl, whitey- 
 brown girl, and I always thought her deceitful. 
 Good God ! how the old time comes back as 
 you talk to me ! I can see the little parlour 
 at Bayham, and those two giiis seated side by 
 side on an old-fashioned chintz-covered sofa, 
 with an open window and a green trellis-work 
 of honeysuckle and jasmin behind them. I 
 can see it all, Eustace, as fresh and vivid as a 
 picture at a private view — Celia so bright and 
 lovely; that Kimber girl an unconscious foil to 
 her beauty." 
 
 " Do you know if this Miss Kimber is still 
 alive?" 
 
 " No, lad. Bayham may lie fathoms deep 
 beneath the sea, like the mystic city of Lyon- 
 esse, for anything I know. I have never 
 been there since the day of my mother's 
 funeral." 
 
 " I shall try to find Miss Kimber, Uncle 
 Dan. She may be able to tell me a gi'eat 
 deal." 
 
 " As you will, dear boy. If you took poor
 
 96 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 old Dan's advice, you would let the story rest. 
 But youth is fiery and impetuous, and must 
 take its own course. If ever you do find that 
 man, Eustace, let me know his name, for he 
 and I have a heavy reckoning to settle." 
 
 *N
 
 CHAPTEE YL 
 
 AT BAYHAM. 
 
 Eustace ThorbuPwX went to Bayliam, and took 
 up his quarters at the George Hotel. The 
 Dorsetshire watering-place had once been fa- 
 shionable ; but its fashion had departed, and 
 an atmosphere of decay pervaded the grandeurs 
 of that bygone day. Happily, the departure 
 of fashion, which had never had any hand in 
 the loveliness of the bay and the broad yellow 
 sands, had robbed the Bayhani shore of no 
 grace or charm. The changing opal waters 
 retained their brightest hues, though only 
 west-country gentry came to look upon them. 
 The golden sands were golden still, though the 
 crystal chandeliers and sconces which had 
 once adorned the assembly-room had been sold 
 by auction, and the room itself converted into 
 a Baptist chapel. 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 There had been many changes at the George 
 within the last twenty years. That once 
 popular establishment had been superseded by 
 a gigantic, stuccoed railway-hotel — itself a dis- 
 mal failure — and the last two pro^Drietors had 
 been insolvent. Eustace Thorburn sought in 
 vain for a visitors' book dated '43. All such 
 books had been sold for waste paper years ago, 
 and the only creature to be found in the hotel 
 who had belonged to the same establishment 
 in the year '43 was a semi-idiotic ostler. 
 Eustace abandoned all hope of information in 
 this quarter, and went out into the little sea- 
 side town to look for the house in which his 
 mother's childhood had been spent. 
 
 He found the place easily enough. It was 
 still a circulating -library and reading-room, 
 and as he lingered before the gaily decorated 
 window, Eustace Thorburn could fancy that 
 nameless stranger, who dated his letters from 
 the George, peering between the lithographs 
 and sheets of music in the hope of seeing Celia 
 Mayfield's fair young face.
 
 AT BAYHAM. 99 
 
 " Why could not an honest man have fallen 
 in love with her?" he asked himself, savagely. 
 " Why must it needs be a ^dllain who was first 
 to discover the charm of her innocent beauty?" 
 
 He went into the shop. There was a girl 
 sitting behind the counter, half hidden by a 
 high desk, and busy with some shred of needle- 
 work. The young man pictured his mother 
 sitting in the same spot, and all of a sudden 
 the face and figure of the girl grew dim and 
 blurred before his eyes. He was fain to look 
 about him for a few moments, as if seeking 
 some special object, before he could trust him- 
 self to speak. Then he asked for some sta- 
 tionery, and contrived to occujDy the girl for a 
 considerable time, while he selected what he 
 wanted, and questioned her about the toT^ns- 
 folk. 
 
 " Was there any person of the name of 
 Kimber still living in Bayham ?" he asked. The 
 girl told him that there were several Kimbers : 
 Mr. Kimber, the plumber, in New Street ; Mr. 
 Kimber, the house-agent, at the corner of the
 
 100 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 Parade ; and Kimber and Willows, the drapers, 
 in High Street. 
 
 " The person I wish to find is, or was, a 
 Miss Kimber — Sarah Kimber," said Eustace ; 
 " and I believe her father was a draper." 
 
 " Ah ! " exclaimed the damsel ; *' then that is 
 the Miss Kimber who married Mr. AVillows. 
 Mr. Willows was head-assistant to old Mr. 
 Kimber, w^ho died five years ago. He left all 
 his money and his business to Miss Kimber — 
 being his only daughter, you see, sir ; and as 
 soon as she left off her mourning, she married 
 Mr. Willows. He is a very handsome man, 
 Mr. Willows, and nearly ten years younger 
 than Miss Kimber that was, and they do say 
 Mr. and Mrs. Willows do not live happily to- 
 gether." 
 
 Eustace went straight from the library to 
 the establishment of Messrs. Kimber and Wil- 
 lows. It was a big, glaring shop, with a great 
 deal of plate-glass and gilding, and a gaudy 
 display of dresses and ribbons, bonnets and 
 XDarasols. A smirking young man pounced
 
 AT BATH AM. 101 
 
 immediately upon the stranger, asking what he 
 might 2)lease to want ; and by him Eustace 
 was conducted to Mrs. Willows, who sat at a 
 desk at the end of the shop, in a perfect bower 
 of ribbons and millinery. She was attended 
 by a bevy of damsels, who were busied in the 
 construction of caps and bonnets, and whom 
 she addressed with extreme acidity of tone and 
 manner. She was not a ^Dleasant -looking per- 
 son ; and if old Mr. Kimber's money had 
 changed into withered leaves on her inherit- 
 ance of it, she could scarcely have seemed to 
 have profited less by the dead man's wealth, 
 so pinched and hungry was her aspect. 
 
 She favoured Eustace with the nearest ap- 
 proach to a smile of which her thin lips were 
 capable, but regarded him with evident sus- 
 picion when she heard that he wished for a 
 private interview. 
 
 " If you are travelling in the di'apery lin e 
 you needn't trouble yourself to show your pat- 
 terns," she said, decisively; "we have dealt 
 with Grossam and Grinder for the last twentv
 
 102 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 years, and we never take goods from strangers. 
 There are some new people on the other side 
 of the way who may wish to deal with you, if 
 you'll give them long credit and take their bill 
 for your goods, I dare say ; but I don't recom- 
 mend you to trust them. When people come 
 into a town without sixpence of capital, and 
 try to undersell an old-established house, they 
 have only themselves to blame if they get into 
 the Gazette. However, I say nothing ; it's no 
 affair of mine. The increase of our business 
 is wearing me to the grave, and I should be 
 the last to begrudge new people a chance, how- 
 ever unfair their way of proceeding may be." 
 
 Eustace had been quite unable to stay this 
 torrent of indignation against the people on the 
 other side of the street ; but when Mrs. Wil- 
 lows paused to take breath, he informed her 
 that he was not a commercial traveller, and 
 that he had nothing to do with drapery, either 
 wholesale or retail. 
 
 " I very much wish to obtain a few minutes' 
 conversation with you in private," he said.
 
 AT BAYHAM. 103 
 
 glancing towards the young milliners, who had 
 honoured him with a fui'tive scrutiny while 
 Mrs. Willows was not looking at them, and 
 had retm*ned to their work with an exaggerated 
 appearance of industry directly they felt her 
 cold gray eyes upon them. 
 
 That important personage hesitated. It was 
 rather an agreeable sensation to have a hand- 
 some young man pleading for a private inter- 
 view, and she looked towards the other end of 
 the shop, where her husband was displaying 
 cotton prints to an elderly customer of the 
 housekeeper class^ with the faint hope of 
 awakening in that gentleman's breast some 
 twinge of the jealousy which so often racked 
 her own. 
 
 " If you will step upstaii's to the drawing- 
 room," she said to Eustace, " you can explain 
 your business without interruption." 
 
 Eustace followed Mrs. Willows to an apart- 
 ment on the first floor, an apartment which 
 was made splendid by a great deal of bead- 
 work, and by occasional ghmpses of a very
 
 104 DEAD -SEA FEUIT, 
 
 gaudy Brussels carpet ; but the splendour 
 whereof was somewhat subdued by chaste cover- 
 ings of brown holland and crochet-work. 
 
 The linendraperess seated herself in one of 
 the holland- covered arm-chairs, and arranged 
 the rustling folds of her stiff silk dress. Having 
 settled herself deliberately thus, she sat looking 
 at Eustace with her hard gray eyes, waiting for 
 him to speak. 
 
 And this had been his mother's friend, this 
 hard, prosperous, vulgar woman ! they had 
 been girls together, and had shared all manner 
 of simple, girlish pleasures ! Eustace looked 
 at the woman sadly, thinking how wide a dif- 
 ference there must needs have been between 
 the two girls, and how little real sympathy or 
 womanly tenderness could have ever softened 
 the heart of Mrs. Willows. 
 
 "I have to apologize for this intrusion," he 
 said, after a pause ; " for the business that 
 brings me to Bayham is a personal matter, 
 which can have very little interest for you. I 
 am anxious to obtain all possible information
 
 AT BAYHAM. 105 
 
 respecting a family of the name of Mayfield, 
 and more especially Miss Mayfield, the only 
 daughter of a librarian in this town, who, I am 
 given to understand, was very intimate with 
 you some fom'-and-twenty years ago." 
 
 The lady's mouth, tight and hard at the best 
 of times, tightened and hardened itself to an 
 abnormal degree as Eustace said this. A 'pole 
 fire kindled in the cold, gray eyes, and the stiff 
 shoulders and elbows adjusted themselves anew 
 T\ith increased stiffness. 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Willows, "I knew Celia 
 Mayfield." 
 
 *' You and she were friends, I believe ?" 
 
 "We were companions,'' replied Mrs. Wil- 
 lows, T\dth S23iteful promptitude. " Even at 
 this distance of time I should blush to own 
 that Celia Mayfield and I were ever friends." 
 
 The whitey -brown complexion of the di*aper's 
 wife seemed incapable of anjihing approaching 
 a blush ; but Eustace's face glowed with an 
 angry crimson as the woman said this. 
 
 " May I inquire why you would be ashamed
 
 106 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 to confess your friendsliip for Miss Mayfield?" 
 he asked, his voice tremulous ^ith suppressed 
 passion. It was so difficult to sit quietly by 
 while a spiteful woman belied his mother's 
 name ; it was so difficult to refrain from crying 
 out : "I am her son, and am ready to uphold 
 her as the best and purest of women !" And 
 to own himself her son, would have been to 
 betray the sad secret of her hapless life. 
 
 "May I ask what reason you have to be 
 ashamed of your girlish friendship ?" he re- 
 peated, in steadier tones, when he had waited 
 some moments for Mrs. Willows' reply. 
 
 *' Because Celia Mayfield' s conduct was 
 shameful," answered the woman; *' though, 
 goodness knows, it's not much wonder that a 
 girl who had been spoiled, and petted, and 
 flattered, until she didn't know whether she 
 stood on her head or her heels, did turn out 
 badly. Mr. and Mrs. Mayfield made a fool of 
 their daughter. I was an only daughter, and 
 an only child, too, for the matter of that ; 
 but my father was a sensible man, and I was
 
 AT BAYHAM. ' 107 
 
 never brought up to read novels and think my- 
 self a beauty. I kept house for my poor pa 
 when I was foui-teen years of age ; and if there 
 was a halfpenny wrong in my accounts, he 
 didn't hesitate to box my ears. And I feel 
 the benefit of it now," added Mrs. Willows, 
 triumphantly. " This business would not be 
 what it is if my father's property had been left 
 to a frivolous person." 
 
 " And you considered Miss Mayfield a frivo- 
 lous person?" 
 
 " Frivolous to a degree that makes me won- 
 der I could ever waste my time in her com- 
 pany." 
 
 " Will you do me the favour to tell me all 
 you know of the circumstances under which 
 Miss Mayfield left her home?" said Eustace. 
 ** I can assure you that my motive for making 
 these inquiries is no idle or unworthy one. You 
 will be doing me a great service if you will give 
 me what information you can in relation to this 
 subject." 
 
 '* If you put it in that manner, I will tell you
 
 108 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 all I know," answered Mrs. Willows, "though 
 it is not a pleasant subject — especially to me, 
 who might have suffered by Celia Mayfield's 
 conduct. Goodness knows what people might 
 have said of me if my pa's position in Bayham 
 hadn't been what it was." 
 
 There was a pause, during which the woman 
 rearranged her silk dress, and then she began 
 her friend's story with a stony face, and extreme 
 deliberation of manner. 
 
 ** I suppose you are aware that Celia May- 
 field ran away from her home with a gentleman 
 called Hardwick, or at least calling himself 
 Hardwick, who was staying at the George Hotel 
 when he became acquainted with her, and who 
 it was easy to see was very much above her in 
 station. Indeed, how she could ever bring her- 
 self to think that he would marry her, would be 
 a mystery to me if I did not know ho^ her 
 vanity had been fostered and her looks praised 
 by people who ought to have known better. 
 She did think so ; and when I warned her of 
 the danger her imprudent conduct might lead
 
 AT BAYHAM. 109 
 
 lier into, she persuaded me to think the same. 
 * Very well, Celia,' I said ; ' you know best ; but 
 it isn't often that a gentleman whose pa is in 
 parliament marries the daughter of a stationer.' 
 He had let it slip that his father was a mem- 
 ber of parHament, and he had let many things 
 slip which proved that he belonged to rich 
 people and to high peoj)le." 
 
 ** He was a young man, I believe ?" 
 
 " Five-and-twentv at most, and verv hand- 
 some." 
 
 As Mrs. Willows pronounced these words, 
 her gaze became suddenly fixed, and she sat 
 staring at her \isitor with an expression of ex- 
 treme astonishment. 
 
 " Perhaps you are related to him ?" she said, 
 interrogatively. 
 
 " I never saw him in my life. But why do 
 you ask the question?" 
 
 " Because you are like him. I didn't notice 
 the resemblance until just now; for it's so long 
 since I saw him that I'd almost forgotten what 
 he was like. But as I spoke to you his face
 
 110 DEAD-SEA FEUIT. 
 
 came back to me. Yes, you are very like him. 
 And you are really not related ?" 
 
 " I tell you again, Mrs. Willows, that I never 
 saw this man in my life. It is the Mayfield 
 family in which I am interested. Pray go on 
 with your story." 
 
 The beating of his heart quickened as he 
 spoke. He had discovered something at least 
 from this woman. It was something to know^ 
 that he resembled the nameless father who had 
 abandoned him. 
 
 " The likeness between us is a birthright of 
 which he could not rob me," thought the young 
 man ; " or he would have deprived me of that, 
 as well as of the rest." 
 
 *' I believe the gentleman had written a book," 
 resumed Mrs. Willows : "a story, or a novel, or 
 something of that kind. Celia went on about 
 it in her childish way. It was the most beau- 
 tiful story that ever was written, and so on, she 
 said. My poor pa forbade me reading novels, 
 and I had to give my solemn promise that no 
 book from the circulating-library should ever
 
 AT BAYHAM. Ill 
 
 enter this house, before he would allow me to 
 walk out with Celia Mayfield. "When she began 
 to read the book, she didn't know anjrthing 
 about the author ; but while she was reading it, 
 he hapiDened to go into the shop, and she went 
 on about the story to him as she had gone on 
 about it to me ; and I suppose his vanity was 
 flattered by her childish talk, for there never 
 was such a childish creature about books and 
 flowers and birds. He told her that he had 
 written the book; and then he wrote to her, 
 fii'st a note, which was delivered by his seiTant, 
 who hung about the library until he got the 
 opportunity of giving it to Celia unknown to 
 any one ; and then letters, which were addressed 
 to the post-office : and she showed me the let- 
 ters. I said, ' Celia, these are not letters which 
 a prudent young woman ought to receive.' But 
 it was no use talking to her. The first letter 
 that was sent to the post-office lay there nearly 
 a fortnight before she went to fetch it ; and all 
 that time she went on about it to me when we 
 were out walking ; for he had told her he should
 
 112 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 write, and address his letter to the post-office. 
 Should she fetch it, or shouldn't she ? I said, 
 * If you take my advice, Celia, you will have 
 nothing to do with it. People who mean 
 honourably don't send their letters to. post- 
 offices.' But one evening, when we were coming 
 home from a walk, we passed through the street 
 where the office is ; and she let go my arm all 
 of a sudden, ran into the shop, and came out 
 with a letter in her hand. As soon as we turned 
 the corner into a bye-lane, where there was no- 
 body about, she kissed the letter, and went on 
 like a mad thing, and then she read it to me ; 
 and she was as proud and happy as if a king 
 had written to her." 
 
 "God help her, poor innocent soul!" mur- 
 mured Eustace, tenderly. 
 
 *'I don't know what you call innocence,'' ex- 
 claimed the matron, with severity ; " but if you 
 consider that the conduct of a prudent young 
 woman, I do not. The end of the story proved 
 that I was right. Celia and I had been in the 
 habit of walking on the sands in a sheltered
 
 AT BAYHA^. 113 
 
 place beyond the bay, -where there -was very 
 little company, and where two young women 
 could walk together without being followed or 
 stared at. We walked there almost exery even- 
 ing whe;n it was fine, and the gentleman at the 
 George used to meet us there, and talk to Ceha. 
 I told her that I disapproved of these meetings ; 
 but she had a way of talking people over, and 
 she talked me over, and made me believe what 
 she beheved. If the gentleman really wanted 
 to marrv her, there could be no harm in her 
 meeting him in the company of a young female 
 friend. Things went on like this for some time, 
 and then, when the summer season was quite 
 over, the gentleman went away. Celia fretted 
 a great deal ; but she told me he was coming 
 back in the -winter to see her father and to ex- 
 plain everything, and there' d be an end to all 
 secresy. I said, ' Celia, don't build upon his 
 coming back. It's not my wish to make you 
 unhax^py ; but, if you take my advice, you'll 
 forget all about him.' " 
 "But he did return?" 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 DEAD-SEA FEUIT. 
 
 '* I suppose he did, though I never saw him 
 after the summer. I gave Celia Mayfield good 
 advice, and she wasn't pleased to hear it. We 
 had some words upon the subject ; and as my 
 pa's position was very superior to Mr. Mayfield' s, 
 it was not likely I should suffer myself to be put 
 upon by his daughter. When Celia wanted to 
 make friends with me, I declined ; and from 
 that time we never spoke. I sat under Mr. 
 Slowcome, at the Baptist chapel in Walham 
 Lane, and Celia Mayfield attended the parish- j 
 church ; so we didn't often meet. When we ^ 
 did meet, Celia used to look at me in her 
 childish way, as if she wanted to be friends ; 
 but I made a point of looking straight before 
 me. I heard nothing more of the Mayfields 
 until one morning in the winter, when a young 
 person came into our shop and told me that 
 Celia had run away from home." 
 
 " Was the manner of her leaving generally 
 known?" 
 
 " It was not. The Mayfields kept things 
 very close. There was a great deal of talk, as 
 
 I 
 
 I
 
 AT BAYHAM. 115 
 
 yon may suppose, and people had their 
 opinions ; but nothing was ever known for 
 certain ; and from that time to this I have 
 never set eyes on Celia Mayfield." 
 
 " And you never will," said Eustace, so- 
 lemnly. " She is dead." 
 
 Mrs. Willows murmured an expression of 
 surprise. Her hard, grim face softened a little, 
 and when she spoke again, her tone was less 
 severe. 
 
 "lam sorry to hear that," she said. ''I 
 never expected to meet Celia Mayfield again ; 
 but I am sorry to hear that she is dead." 
 
 Even for this hard natm-e the sanctity of the 
 grave had some softening influence. The linen- 
 draper's wife could afford to think a little more 
 indulgently of the spoiled and petted beauty 
 whose loveliness had been so bitter to her, now 
 that she knew her rival had passed into those 
 shadowy regions where earthly charms count for 
 so little. Some faint touch of tenderness, some 
 memory of her own youth — when Bayham was 
 gayer and more pleasant, and even the sands
 
 116 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 and the sea had seemed brighter to her than 
 now — came back to the grim, purse-proud 
 tradeswoman, and one solitary tear glittered 
 in her stern, gray eye. She brushed it away 
 quickly, ashamed of the human emotion. 
 
 " You can tell me nothing more respecting 
 the man who lured your friend from her 
 home ? " 
 
 " Nothing. Celia told me that the name by 
 which we knew him was an assumed one, but 
 she never tokl me his real name. I don't be- 
 lieve that even she knew it. She told me that 
 he was very grand and very rich ; and it was 
 easy for any one to discover from his con- 
 versation that he was a gentleman, and had 
 travelled half over the world." 
 
 " Do you remember the title of the book 
 that he had written ? " 
 
 Mrs. Willows shook her head. 
 
 " In one or more volumes ? " 
 
 " In one volume. I have seen it in Celia's 
 hand. Mr. Hardwick gave her a copy of it, 
 bound in green morocco.''
 
 AT BAYHAM. 117 
 
 " Had Miss Mayfield any other friend than 
 yourself?" Eustace asked, after a brief pause. 
 " Was there any one else in svhoni she would 
 have been likely to confide ? " 
 
 " No one else. Society in Bayhani is very 
 limited. Mr. Mayfield was so wrapped up in 
 his daughter, and had such high ideas, on ac- 
 count of being the son of a clergyman, that 
 he scarcely thought any one good enough to 
 associate with her. I was Celia's only female 
 fi'iend." 
 
 " I hope you will think more tenderly of her 
 in futm-e," said Eustace, gently; "she is now 
 beyond all human praise or blame, and the tm'f 
 will lie none the less lightly above her grave, 
 let the world judge her never so harshly. But 
 I, who knew her and loved her, would like to 
 think that the companion of her youth remem- 
 bered her kindly." 
 
 A second solitary tear bedewed the eye of 
 Mrs. Willows. 
 
 "I'm sure I bear no malice," she said, in 
 an injm'ed tone. " If Celia and I were at
 
 118 DEAD -SEA FRUIT. 
 
 variance for some months before she left, it 
 was more her fault than mine, for I gave her 
 the best advice, and gave it with the best in- 
 tentions. But I am quite willing to forget all 
 that. Do you know if the gentleman who 
 called himself Mr. Hardwick really did marry 
 her ? People in Bayham concluded, by her 
 not coming back, that she was altogether de- 
 ceived and deluded by his fine i^romises ; and 
 it was said her father's heart was broken by 
 her conduct. He died very soon after, as you 
 may be aware ; and his wife did not long sur- 
 vive him." 
 
 " I know very little of your friend's sad 
 story," answered Eustace; *'but I know that 
 her life for twenty years was as pure as the life 
 of an angel — as self-denying as that of a 
 saint." 
 
 There was no more to be said. Eustace 
 thanked Mrs. "Willows for her compliance with 
 his wishes, and took his departure. He went 
 out into the High Street of Bayham very little 
 wiser than when he had entered the prosperous
 
 AT BAYHAM. 119 
 
 emporium of Kimber and Willows. He walked 
 slowly along the quiet street, and found himself 
 by and by on the outskirts of the town, strol- 
 ling onward in an objectless manner, and medi- 
 tating u^Don his mother's broken story. 
 
 When he paused for the fii'st time to look 
 about him he was face to face with the sea. 
 Behind him a terrace of white houses reflected 
 the full blaze of the southern sun. Before him 
 lay the bay — a wide expanse of tawny sand, 
 with pools of sunlit water glimmering here and 
 there. 
 
 The tide was low, and the sandy amphitheatre 
 lay oiDen to the foot of the x)edestrian. On one 
 side of the bay rose a tall cliff ; on the other 
 a stretch of sand lay beyond the jutting line of 
 rocks. Eustace crossed the bay in this direc- 
 tion. He wanted to see the place in which 
 Celia Mayfield had walked with her false lover, 
 and he knew that this lonely stretch of sand 
 beyond the rocks must be the spot alluded to 
 in his father's letters, and mentioned that day 
 by Mrs. Willows.
 
 120 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 It was a fit spot for a lovers' trysting-place 
 — remote from the voices of the little town, 
 
 and yet within the sound of church-bells, which 
 took a silvery tone as they floated hitherward 
 across the rippling water. Summer visitors to 
 Bayham rarely penetrated beyond the screen of 
 rocks which sheltered the bay, and this smooth 
 stretch of sand was not often invaded by the 
 spades and barrows of noisy children or the 
 feet of idle damsels. It was an enchanted 
 cove, which might have been sacred to the sea- 
 nymphs, so seldom did human creatures disturb 
 its poetic calm. 
 
 Here Eustace lingered for some time, still 
 meditating the story of his mother's youth, and 
 with strangely intermingled feelings of tender- 
 ness and anger in his heart. How could he 
 ever think of her with sufficient love and pity ? 
 How could he ever think of her destroyer with- 
 out considering how, he should avenge her 
 wrongs ? 
 
 " So trusting, so childlike, and deceived so 
 cruelly ! What a villain he must have been !
 
 AT BAYHAM. 121 
 
 what an unutterable villain ! " thought Celia's 
 son, as he contemplated the scene of his mother's 
 love-story. It should have been such a sweet 
 idyll — a modern fairy tale of rustic beauty and 
 princely truth and chivalry — and it had been 
 instead so dark a history of falsehood and 
 shame. 
 
 The sun was low in the west when Eustace 
 left that lonely sea-shore. He had been walk- 
 ing there for hours, indifferent alike to the pro- 
 gress of time and to the fact that he had eaten 
 nothing since nine o'clock that morning. And 
 after leaving the sands he did not return imme- 
 diately to his hotel, but made his way to the 
 parish chmxhyard, guided by the old Norman 
 tower, which stood out in sombre relief against 
 a rosy evening sky. There was just light 
 enough to serve him in his search amongst the 
 tombstones ; nor was he long finding that 
 which he sought — a tall, white head-stone, 
 standing near the low wall which bounded the 
 crowded burial-place. The churchyard stood 
 on rising ground ; and the irregular roofs and
 
 122 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 chimneys of the town, with here and there a 
 glimpse of foliage, and the broad purple sea for 
 a background, made no unlovely picture in the 
 soft evening light. 
 
 Eustace knelt upon the grass beside the sim- 
 ple grave, and in that pious attitude read the 
 inscription on the head-stone : 
 
 ^atuir I0 the Pern org 
 
 OF 
 
 EUSTACE THOEBURN MAYFIELD, 
 
 YOUNGEST SON OP THE LATE SAMUEL MAYFIELD, CURATE OF 
 
 ASHE, IN THIS COUNTY, 
 
 Obiit April 3, 1846, setat. 52 ; 
 
 AND OF 
 
 MAEY CELIA, 
 
 HIS WIDOW, SECOND DAUGHTEU OP THE LATE MR. JAMES 
 
 HOWDEN, PARMER, 
 
 Obiit February 1, 1847, setat. 49. 
 This stone is erected by their affectionate children. 
 
 " Have I any right to think of them as my 
 grandfather and my grandmother ?" the young 
 man asked himself. " The law would tell me 
 no. But I take my stand upon a higher law 
 than that made by political economists, and 
 claim the right to call these my kindred, and 
 to avenge their injuries."
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 ME. JERNINGHAM's GUEST. 
 
 Theodore de Bergerac and Harold Jerningham 
 ■were Mends of thirty years' standing. There 
 was some distant relationship between them — 
 some remote cousinship arising from the mar- 
 riage of an exiled Jerningham of Jacobite 
 principles with a De Bergerac, in the reign of 
 George the Second. But this inscrutable cousin- 
 ship had nothing to do with the fi'iendship 
 between the two men. That was a sincere and 
 spontaneous affection, such as exists now and 
 then between two people as different from each 
 other as it is possible for creatm-es of the same 
 species to be. Harold was ten years younger 
 than his friend in actual years, and his senior 
 by a centm'y in all qualities of heart and mind. 
 The elder man retained the freshness and sim-
 
 124 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 plicity of a child at sixty years of age ; the 
 younger had parted with every attribute of 
 youth before the advent of his twenty-fifth 
 birthday. Both were highly gifted : but one 
 had scattered the treasures of intellect on every 
 road, and w^asted the powers of his brain in a 
 hundred ignoble pursuits ; while the other had 
 enriched his mind unconsciously in the calm 
 seclusion of a scholar's retreat. An angel 
 might have read the innermost secrets of Theo- 
 dore de Bergerac's heart, and would have found 
 therein no taint of earthly grossness ; but there 
 had been times when devils might have rejoiced 
 in the thoughts of Harold Jerningham. And 
 yet the two men were friends, and had preserved 
 an unbroken friendship for nearly thirty years. 
 A Philip of Orleans, steeped to the very lips in 
 the poisonous teaching of a Dubois, will in the 
 hour of his deej)est degradation respect the 
 purity of childhood. Before the stainless robes 
 of perfect innocence the most hardened profli- 
 gate bows his head and covers his face, ashamed 
 of the vices he is wont to be proud of — softened,
 
 MR. JEENINGHAM'S GUEST. 125 
 
 melted, vanquished by that inyincible purity. 
 Thus it had been -^vith Harold Jerningham. 
 For this world-weary, hardened sinner the sim- 
 ple-minded scholar was sacred as a child. De 
 Bergerac knew nothing of that Jerningham of 
 the bachelor's house in Park Lane : Jerningham 
 the irresistible, the man who was an exile from 
 the houses of careful fathers and devoted hus- 
 bands ; the man whose life would have furnished 
 subject-matter for half a dozen romances and 
 more than one tragedy. "When Harold Jerning- 
 ham entered his fi-iend's house he put away the 
 baser half of himself. A little c}Tiical, a little 
 bitter, a little hard and worldly he must needs 
 be, even in that innocent society ; but Jerning- 
 ham the free-thinker and the profligate melted 
 into thin air on the threshold of Theodore de 
 Bergerac' s dwelling. 
 
 The two h'iends did not meet very often, 
 though the house which Theodore de Bergerac 
 had occupied ever since his first coming to 
 England stood on the border of Mr. Jeming- 
 ham's park in Berkshire, — a grand old park, in
 
 126 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 the midst of which there was a great house 
 that had once been splendid, but about which 
 there was now a certain air of shabbiness and 
 decay. How should a mansion preserve its 
 warmth and grandeur when the master crossed 
 its threshold so rarely, and during his brief 
 visits preferred a couple of dingy chambers on 
 the ground-floor to that spacious suite of apart- 
 ments, with panelled walls and painted ceilings, 
 in which his forefathers had held their state ? 
 
 M. de Bergerac was a warm partizan of the 
 Orleans family, and in the revolution of '48 
 had turned his back upon his father's country. 
 He had come straight to England, where he 
 had found a fair young English wife in the 
 person of a Berkshire curate's eldest daughter, 
 and had accej^ted the hospitality of his friend, 
 Mr. Jerningham, so far as to occupy an old- 
 fashioned farm-house on the borders of the 
 park — a house which had been built for a 
 bailiff in the days of some departed Jerning- 
 ham, but which had long fallen into disuse. 
 Harold would fain have persuaded the exile to
 
 MR. JERNINGHAM'S GUEST. 127 
 
 take up his quarters in the big house, ^vith all 
 the lazy, over-fed retainers at his clis^DOsal ; but 
 De Bergerac ridiculed his friend's offer. 
 
 " What should I do with your thirty bed- 
 chambers," he wrote in answer to Harold's 
 letter of invitation, *' and your great corridors, 
 along which one could drive a coach-and-pair, 
 and your housekeeper in a stiff silk go'^n, and 
 all 3'oui' grooms and hangers-on ? I would as 
 soon live in the palace of Versailles. Even 
 kings and queens grow tired of their palaces, 
 you will perceive ; and the man who has sunk 
 millions in the creation of a Versailles must 
 needs seek domestic comfort at Marly. You 
 cannot endure your howling wilderness yom*- 
 self, — you, who have been accustomed to splen- 
 did habitations, — and yet ask me to take up 
 my abode in your thirty bedchambers, and 
 abandon myself to the tyranny of your awful 
 housekeeper. No, my dear Jerningham ; give 
 me the little Trianon — that tumble-down old 
 farm-house you showed me last year, in the 
 midst of a quaint Dutch flower-garden — and I
 
 128 DEAD-SEA FRTJIT. 
 
 shall be happy. All I want is a room big 
 enough and dry enough to hold my books, and 
 I will not envy your gracious Queen her pom- 
 pous chateau of Windsor." 
 
 So the scholar and lover of books came to 
 the farm-house, which Harold Jerningham had 
 taken care to make weather -tight and snug 
 before the exile's arrival. De Bergerac recog- 
 nized the handiwork of his friend in the 
 arrangement of this comfortable English her- 
 mitage. There were a few rare old Dutch 
 pictures, a small head by Holbein, a highly- 
 finished little bit by Canaletti, hanging in the 
 oak-panelled parlour, which no farm-bailiff had 
 been privileged to gaze upon. There were 
 quaint little inlaid cabinets between the win- 
 dows, with that delightful shabbiness of aspect 
 and mellow depth of tint which distinguishes 
 the treasures of Christie and Manson's sale- 
 room from the glaring freshness of modern 
 marqueterie. And on the cabinets were fragile 
 odds and ends of Derby and Worcester, Chel- 
 sea and Battersea, intermingled with those
 
 3km. jerningham's guest. 129 
 
 dingy-looking bronzes and intaglios which the 
 soul of the collector loveth. And the biggest 
 room in the old farm-house, once a kitchen, 
 had been lined from floor to ceiling with carved 
 oaken shelves, for the reception of the new- 
 comer's library ; while the great yawning fire- 
 place, in which hinds and shepherds had supped 
 their evening ale, and roasted their sturdy legs, 
 in the days that were gone, was now lined with 
 encaustic tiles, and furnished with a modern- 
 antique grate of black iron-work and glittering 
 steel. When Harold Jerningham was pleased 
 to be generous, he obeyed his impulses in a 
 princely fashion. He was not a good man ; 
 but his vices and virtues were alike of the vieille 
 roche, and were instinct with a kind of dignity. 
 Let Lucifer fall never so low, he is the prince 
 of devils still, and will show himself grander in 
 his debasement than fiends of meaner rank. 
 
 The country-people in the neighbourhood of 
 Greenlands were ready to receive M. de Ber- 
 gerac with open arms : but he did not often 
 avail himself of their friendly hospitality. He 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 DEAD-SEA FKUIT. 
 
 was serenely happy among his books and 
 manuscripts, in the chamber which his friend 
 had beautified for him, and had no thought of 
 seeking any other kind of happiness. The 
 great scheme of his life, the very beginning 
 and end of his existence, was the completion of 
 a book which was to supply an existing void in 
 the world of books. To this achievement he 
 devoted his days and nights, choosing all his 
 reading with reference to his one great scheme. 
 The subject possessed unfailing fascination for 
 the mind of the scholar. It was an inex- 
 haustible quarry, rich with gems of purest 
 water ; and De Bergerac dug patiently for the 
 precious jewels, content to let the years slip 
 past him unmarked, save by the slow growth of 
 his mighty treatise. When the work seemed 
 ripening, and the hour of its completion near 
 at hand, the scholar trembled, for he remem- 
 bered Gibbon's walk in the moonlit garden at 
 Lausanne, and the desolation which came down 
 upon the worker when he felt that his task was 
 finished. Happily, the hour of completion,
 
 MR. JEENINGHAM's GUEST. 131 
 
 which De Bergerac dreaded, -^as very slow to 
 come. There was an end to the history of 
 ancient Eome ; but it appeared, at times, as if 
 there could be no end to the history of super- 
 stition. 
 
 The exile had passed his fortieth bii'thday, 
 and had been but six months in England, when 
 he married a fair young English girl — in a fit 
 of absence of mind, said the ignorant, who tried 
 to account for this unexj^ected alliance. But 
 Harold Jerningham fathomed the secret of his 
 fi'iend's marriage. The girl was the daughter 
 of a curate, an old Orientalist, of whose reading 
 De Bergerac had gladly availed himself for his 
 beloved work, and in whose pleasant cottage he 
 had therefore been a constant visitor. The 
 cm-ate' s daughter had been charmed out of the 
 dullness of her life by the society of the com-teous 
 exile ; and from looking up to him with reve- 
 rential tenderness as a mentor and fiiend, she 
 had unconsciously grown to regard him with a 
 deeper and more tender feeling than that gentle, 
 womanly fiiendship, A tone, a look, an im-
 
 132 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 perceptible something not to be defined by words, 
 revealed this feeling to De Bergerac before the 
 girl was fully aware of it herself ; and could he 
 be less than grateful, this exile of forty ? could 
 his own heart fail to yield to so insidious and 
 innocent an attack ? Hence arose this marriage, 
 which was so great a wonder to those who had 
 only a superficial knowledge of the Frenchman's 
 character. 
 
 It was a union of perfect happiness. M. de 
 Bergerac' s modest income was more than enough 
 for the Arcadian existence which he and his 
 young wife led in the Berkshire farm-house. 
 The curate's daughter was country-bred, and 
 was a fitting mistress for such an establishment. 
 She brought the garden to the rarest perfection 
 of floricultural beauty, and she distinguished 
 herself by the administration of a wonderful 
 poultry-yard. She was as happy as the sum- 
 mer day was long among her simple duties ; 
 while he, who in her eyes appeared the greatest 
 of human scholars and the most adorable of 
 men, sat alone in the sacred chamber, which
 
 ME. JERNIXGHAM's GUEST. 133 
 
 she entered always with subdued footsteps, as if 
 it had been a rehgious temple. It was her pride 
 and delight to be useful to the man she loved. 
 She worked for him, and managed for him, and 
 hoarded for him ; and he found himself all the 
 richer, even in the matter of sordid cash, for her 
 sweet companionship. The student, looking up 
 from his books and manuscripts, beheld cows 
 grazing in the rich meadow before his window, 
 and was told that the cows were his, and that 
 the produce of those stupid creatm-es could be 
 transformed into money, with which rare old 
 black-letter volumes and manuscripts of un- 
 speakable value could be bought in London 
 sale-rooms. 
 
 For seven years Theodore de Bergerac tasted 
 the perfection of calm domestic happiness, and 
 then the cup was snatched away from him. 
 The bright face faded ; the indefatigable house- 
 wife was fain to rest from her beloved labom's. 
 Little by little the bitter truth — which at first 
 seemed almost an impossibility — came home to 
 the stricken heart of the husband, and he knew
 
 134 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 that he was doomed to survive his young wife. 
 The dreaded hour came, and she left him — very 
 lonely without her, but, happily, not quite alone. 
 She left one little girl — a fairer and brighter 
 likeness of herself; and upon this young hfe 
 the widower set his hopes of earthly happi- 
 ness. 
 
 It was only natural that his unfinished book 
 
 should become so much the dearer to him by 
 
 reason of this great human sorrow. The stricken 
 
 heart refused all comfort, but the agonized mind 
 
 sought to beguile itself into forgetfulness of pain. 
 
 The student went back to his books, and buried 
 
 himself more deeply than of old amidst the 
 
 ruins and ashes of the past. His days were 
 
 spent at his desk. His soul, sorely stricken in 
 
 this lower world of hard realities, wandered 
 
 away and lost itself in the infinite regions of 
 
 mythic poetry. As the years crept past him 
 
 unawares, and his daughter blossomed into 
 
 early womanhood, and the same bright face 
 
 peeped in again at his window which had shone 
 
 upon him in the brief happiness of his married
 
 MR. JERNINGHAM's GUEST. 135 
 
 life, it almost seemed to him as if that terrible 
 anguish, that desolating loss, had been no more 
 than a dreadful di-eam. 
 
 To this man's quiet home Harold Jerningham 
 came sometimes as to a haven of shelter. He 
 was wont to drop in upon the modest Berkshire 
 household unexpectedly, with the bronze of an 
 Oriental sun still upon his face, or a fur coat, 
 in which he had travelled from St. Petersburgh, 
 hanging loosely on his arm. He came hither 
 for rest, for a brief interval of repose fi'om ''the 
 fever called living; " and it was here, in the house 
 that had been built for his gi-eat-grandfather's 
 bailiff, that the owner of three country-seats 
 and an almost inexhaustible revenue found 
 the nearest approach to happiness which he 
 had experienced during the last twenty years. 
 
 Eustace Thorburn's arrangements for begin- 
 ning his new life were of the simplest order. 
 He found a letter from M. de Bergerac waiting 
 for him on his return to London — such a letter 
 as only a gentleman can write — a letter which
 
 136 DEAD-SEA FKUIT. 
 
 placed the secretary at once on the footing 
 of a friend, and gave him promise of friendly 
 welcome. 
 
 The young man spent the last night of his 
 stay in London with Daniel Mayfield. The 
 uncle and nephew dined together at one of those 
 snug little haunts which the literary Bohemian 
 aifected, and Daniel's soul expanded under the 
 influence of Chamhertin at nine shillings a hottle. 
 He had received a cheque in payment of his 
 latest Massacre of the Innocents in the way of 
 reviewing, and it was in vain that Eustace tried 
 to arrest his extravagant orders. 
 
 " The best you can do for us in the shape of 
 dinner, Tom," he said to the waiter, with whom 
 he was on the familiar terms of an habitue; 
 *' and — let me see the wine-card : yes. Dancer 
 sticks to his old prices, I perceive. What nether- 
 most circle can that man expect to inhabit in 
 the under world, I wonder ? Johannisberg with 
 the oysters, Tom : if you were well up in your 
 Charles de Bernard, you would be aware that 
 Chablis is the mistake of the half-educated
 
 ME. JERNINGHAM's GUEST. 137 
 
 diner. After the soup you may give us a bottle 
 of the old Madeii'a — the Madeii'a, remember — 
 no modern French concoction, flavoured with 
 burnt-sugar. We will not go into sparkling, 
 Tom — sparkling is the luxury of the vulgar ; 
 wines that leap and bubble are the pet delusion 
 of the oi polloi ; we will therefore confine our- 
 selves to the borders of the Ehine. If your 
 still Moselle is worthy of a gentleman's atten- 
 tion, you may bring us a bottle. The Cham- 
 bertin I know to be tolerable ; so after dinner 
 we will stick to that.'' 
 
 Never before had Daniel Mayfield introduced 
 his sister's son to any of the haunts in which 
 the best hom's of his own careless life had been 
 wasted. The young man was as temperate as 
 a girl, and the dinner-giver had his carefully 
 chosen wines to himself. But as Mayfield grew 
 gay and eloquent with the warming influence of 
 the Burgundian hillside, Eustace Thorb urn's 
 spirits rose in sympathy with his companion. 
 For there is a subtle influence in wine which 
 communicates itself to the man who does not
 
 138 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 drink as well as to the man who does ; and he 
 must be slow and dull of soul who can sit 
 amongst the worshippers of Bacchus and not 
 feel the fiery presence of the god, let his own 
 beverage be no stronger than water. 
 
 " I have never brought you here before, and 
 I should not have brought you here to-night, 
 Eustace," said Daniel, and he passed his newly 
 filled glass of Burgundy beneath his nostrils, 
 with the gesture of a connoisseur; *' I should 
 not have brought you here to-night, my lad, 
 pleasant though it is to me to see your bright 
 face across the rosy vapour of the South, if you 
 and I were not going to part company. This 
 is Bohemia, Eustace — the land in which jolly 
 good fellows go to the dogs in their own jolly way 
 — and I'm not quite certain that it's the worst 
 way a man can travel to his ruin. We spend 
 our money, and we live in fear of sheriff's offi- 
 cers, and we die in sponging-houses ; but, after 
 all, we escape many of the heartburnings which 
 your very respectable people suffer. We are no 
 shams — we live our own lives ; and are our-
 
 ME. JERNINGHAM's GUEST. 139 
 
 selves alone — no phantasmal simulacra of other 
 men. We take existence lightly — share our 
 own good fortune with our needy brothers — and 
 envy no man his luck. But if you have poetic 
 aspii'ations and noble ambitions, if you want to 
 be a great and a good man, keep clear of us — 
 no gi'eat man ever issued from our ranks. We 
 have talent, we have sometimes even genius ; 
 but we never achieve. Jones is of the stuff 
 that makes a noble historian ; but Jones must 
 have his night in his pet tavern, and a five- 
 pound note at the service of the Pythias of the 
 hour ; so he writes showy essays for the maga- 
 zines. Smith turns his unfinished picture to 
 the wall, in the hour when he was budding into 
 a Piubens, to paint pot-boilers for the fashion- 
 able dealers — a young man and woman in a 
 boat off Twickenham, with spinachy foliage and 
 a flimsy blue sky, spotted with little ragged dabs 
 of the palette-knife ; or a girl in a striped petti- 
 coat playing croquet against a background in 
 which you may count the threads of the canvas. 
 Browne might write a comedy which would re-
 
 140 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 mind the critics of Sheridan ; but he cannot 
 afford to polish the graceful turns of his dia- 
 logue or study the unity of his design, so he 
 does a had adaptation of a bad French vaude- 
 ville, and gets twenty pounds down on the nail 
 for his labour. We possess the elements of 
 greatness ; but we can't wait — we want ready 
 money. The man with a wife and seven chil- 
 dren may struggle out of poverty into greatness ; 
 but for the jolly good-fellow, with half a dozen 
 boon-companions, enduring success is an im- 
 possibility." 
 
 Eustace had never before heard his uncle 
 speak so seriously of himself and his own set. 
 " You may do great things yet. Uncle Dan," 
 he said, earnestly ; ''let me give up this Berk- 
 shire engagement, and stop in town to work 
 with you. Cut all the boon-companions, and 
 let us go in earnestly for honest hard work. I 
 want to see your name allied to some per- 
 fect book ; your talent gets frittered away 
 upon anonymous reviews and essays. Oliver 
 Goldsmith wrote the Vicar of Wakefield,
 
 MR. JERNINGHAM's GUEST. 141 
 
 and you know he was something of a Bohe- 
 mian." 
 
 " He was a Bohemian, who lived among such 
 men as Johnson and Burke and Reynolds, " 
 answered Daniel ; " Bohemia has degenerated 
 since those days. And how many more stories, 
 as perfect as the Vicar of Wakefield, might not 
 simple-hearted Noll have written if he had not 
 been something of a Bohemian ! Your great 
 workers are jog-trot stay-at-home creatures. 
 William Shakespeare was a respectable citizen, 
 who saved money, and settled himself com- 
 fortably in his native town before he was my 
 age, and sued his friend for a trifling debt, and 
 made a will in which his domestic carefulness 
 reveals itself by allusions to bedsteads and such- 
 like household furniture ; whereby you may 
 perceive the legendary character of all popular 
 records of the poet's youth, for the man who 
 began life by stealing deer and holding horses 
 would never have developed into the bequeather 
 of bedsteads. So no more, lad ; I shall hide 
 my light in anonymous essays and reviews as
 
 142 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 long as I live, for I shall always be in want of 
 ready money." 
 
 *' Unless I can make a fortune big enough 
 for us both, Uncle Dan," said the young man, 
 hopefully. At three-and-twenty one fancies it 
 such an easy thing to make a fortune. All the 
 high-roads to the temple of fame radiate before 
 the feet of youth, and it seems a mere matter 
 of choice whether one is to be Shakespeare or 
 Bacon. 
 
 *' If you made the fortune of a Eothschild or 
 a Pereira, you would never make me a rich 
 man," cried Daniel. *' Turn the waters of the 
 Pactolus into my pocket to-day, and before a 
 month is out there will not be left one vestige of 
 the golden river. If I were a second Midas, en- 
 dowed with the power of changing vulgar wooden 
 chairs and tables into so much solid gold, my 
 friends and companions and the tavern-keepers 
 would take the chairs and tables, and leave me 
 a pauper. I must go my own way, dear boy ; 
 and the further my road lies from yours the 
 better for you. Let me hear from you some-
 
 MK. JERNINGHAM'S GUEST. 143 
 
 times ; and even if your letters are left unan- 
 swered, think that they are carried in the 
 pocket nearest your Daniel's heart, and that 
 they are his consolation when the world goes 
 ill with him."
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 GREENLANDS. 
 
 It was the drowsiest hour of a drowsy August 
 afternoon when Eustace Thorburn made his 
 way on foot from the Windsor terminus to the 
 bailiff's house at Greenlands. He had put his 
 luggage into a great lumbering fly, which was to 
 crawl after him to his destination ; and he 
 went on foot through the rich pastoral country, 
 with the grandest castle in the world looming 
 upon him at every turn, in all its proud array 
 of battlemented tower and terrace, keep and 
 chapel. He went to begin his new life, and 
 the country through which he went seemed to 
 him more beautiful than his dreams of Para- 
 dise. Eemember that he had newly come 
 from the sandy flats of Flemish Flanders, and 
 that the fairest landscape he had beheld of late 
 was a row of lindens sheltering a sluggish
 
 GREEXLAXDS. 145 
 
 canal, and a herd of cattle browsing upon sun- 
 burnt table-lands. The shadow of a bitter grief 
 was about and around him, and all the sunlight 
 and beauty of the outer world seemed very dim 
 and remote to him — something fair and beau- 
 tiful in which he had no actual part, like a 
 picture seen from afar off. But the influence 
 of all this outward loveliness penetrated to his 
 poor desolate heart, and warmed and melted 
 it. His thoughts amidst these woods and 
 pastures could never be so bitter, it seemed to 
 him, as they had been in the stony quadrangle 
 at Villebrumeuse. He thought of his mother 
 as he walked slowly along the quiet roads and 
 byways ; but he no longer brooded gloomily 
 upon her wrongs on earth as he had been wont 
 to brood. He fancied her happy in heaven. 
 
 His way to Greenlands led him by the low 
 meads athwart which the Thames winds like a 
 silver ribbon, for the great neglected park of 
 which Harold Jerningham was owner lay on 
 the border of that delicious river. The way 
 was very lonely, and somewhat intricate. 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 Eustace had occasion to stop at more than one 
 cottage-door, and to ask his way of more than 
 one rosy-faced rustic matron, who came from 
 her wash-tub to answer his inquiries, sometimes 
 accompanied by a toddling child, that peered 
 curiously at the stranger from between the lat- 
 tice-work of a garden-gate. The way was long 
 and lonely ; but at last, when the sun was low, 
 the pedestrian came to a gate in a stout oak 
 fence, and knew that he was on the threshold 
 of Harold Jerningham's domain. The gate was 
 unlocked, as the country people had told Eus- 
 tace that it would be. The gate opened into 
 the wildest region of the park ; but at the end 
 of a deep glade the traveller saw the great red- 
 brick mansion, massive and stately, on the 
 summit of a grassy slope. 
 
 " A noble domain," he thought, as he stopped 
 to contemplate the scene before him. *' Per- 
 haps the heir to it is a young man with a 
 father who is prouder of him than of lands or 
 houses, or wealth or name. I can fancy the 
 festivities and rejoicings when he came of age.
 
 GREENLANDS. 147 
 
 There were great tents on the lawn yonder, I 
 dare say, and oxen roasted whole, and monster 
 casks of ale set running." 
 
 Eustace Thorburn's imagination filled in all 
 the details of that possible picture. He could 
 see that imaginary heir walking slowly through 
 a joyous crowd, with his arm linked in his 
 father's. It was upon the image of that father 
 the young man's mind dwelt with a strange 
 melancholy yearning, half sorrow, half bitter- 
 ness. How the proud face softened into tender- 
 ness, and the eyes grew dim with tears, as the 
 father listened to the shouts and clamour of 
 an admiring throng ! This fatherless young man 
 could so vividly imagine the love which must 
 exist between a father and his son. Perhaps 
 he imagined some more exalted feeling than 
 ever did exist in human breasts. Perhaps he 
 exaggerated the joys of such an affection ; as 
 the parched traveller in the desert may imagine 
 unutterable deliciousness in a draught of the 
 water that is spilt and wasted by heedless 
 hands at the public fountain of a city.
 
 148 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 As the traveller drew near to the red-brick 
 mansion the vision of the possible festivity- 
 melted away, for he saw that no festival could 
 have been celebrated in that place for many a 
 year gone by. The palace of the Sleeping 
 Beauty, buried deep in the innermost recesses 
 of a forest, and forgotten by waking mankind, 
 could have scarcely been more lonely or neg- 
 lected of aspect than this old Berkshire man- 
 sion. The rabbits frisked across the young 
 man's pathway as he went through the shadowy 
 arcades, and the golden plumage of a pheasant 
 glimmered here and there among the fern and 
 underwood. Everywhere there was neglect and 
 decay. The grass grew long and rank, and 
 even in the gardens, where the handiwork of 
 the gardener was visible, and where Eustace 
 saw two feeble old men mowing the grass, it 
 was evident that the work was only half done. 
 
 The path which Eustace had been directed 
 to take led him past the gardens, which were 
 only divided by an invisible fence from the 
 park. He could have gone to the bailiff's
 
 GREENLANDS. l49 
 
 house by the high-road had he chosen ; but 
 this short-cut across the park saved him nearly 
 a mile, and was a pleasanter way. To Eustace 
 it was unspeakably delightful. The solemn 
 quiet of the place imparted a new charm to its 
 natural loveliness. A turn in the path brought 
 him presently upon a wide expanse of smooth 
 turf, shadowed here and there by great oaks 
 and beeches, and across this wooded lawn he 
 saw the river, gleaming bright and blue, athwart 
 a fringe of trembling rushes. He paused for a 
 few moments, transfixed by the tranquil love- 
 liness of this English landscape, steeped in the 
 rosy light of a summer evening. 
 
 " I suppose the owner of the place is a poor 
 man, who cannot afford to occupy it," he 
 thought ; whereby it may be seen how a 
 stranger, who judges by appearances, is likely 
 to form a false conclusion. 
 
 Eustace Thorburn was ready to bestow his 
 compassion upon the man who was lord of 
 this enchanting domain, and yet unable to 
 enjoy its loveliness.
 
 150 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 The gray walls and red-tiled roof of the 
 bailiff's house appeared between two masses 
 of foliage as he drew near the border of the 
 park. It was a house with many gables and 
 great stacks of rickety-looking chimneys. Such 
 a house as inspires contempt in the mind of a 
 practical modern architect, by reason of the 
 space that is frittered away on unnecessary 
 passages, and little bits of rooms too small and 
 dark for any civilized inhabitant, and ghastly 
 cupboards in unsuspected places. It was a 
 house in whose ample cellarage a gang of 
 burglars might have lain perdu for a week, 
 without the family being made aware of their 
 presence. It was a house in which one could 
 hardly retire to rest without expecting to see 
 a pair of appalling Eyes staring at one through 
 a crevice in the panelling, or two dreadful 
 Boots emerging from beneath the drapery of 
 the bed. If furniture of the commonest fa- 
 shion, and fresh from the upholsterer, takes 
 to itself awful voices after midnight, and creaks 
 and groans with dismal significance in a mo-
 
 GREENLAND S. 151 
 
 dem London habitatioij, as it '^ill — witness 
 universal experience — what might not be ex- 
 pected from old oak bureaus and Elizabethan 
 arm-chairs in this gabled dwelling ? The 
 out-buildings and disused chambers had that 
 damp, earthy odoui*, which is known to every 
 imaginative mind as the smell of ghosts ; 
 and that ubiquitous and nameless suicide, who 
 seems to have hung himself or cut his throat 
 at some remote date in every old house, had 
 hung himself here, and made himself obnox- 
 ious to simple Berkshire maid-servants by those 
 Cock-lane-like scrapings and tappings and rush- 
 ings which the sternly commonplace mind is 
 apt to attribute to rats. 
 
 This was the place to which Eustace Thor- 
 burn came in the rosy summer evening to be- 
 gin his new life. The garden, which he entered 
 by a low wooden gate, was the growth of a 
 hundred and fifty years, and was as secm-ely 
 walled in by thick and high hedges of holly 
 and yew as it could have been by the work of 
 any mortal builder. The air was odorous with
 
 152 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 the perfume of bright English flowers ; and 
 as the stranger drew near the house he was 
 greeted with such a burst of honest wood- 
 land music from the throats of blackbirds and 
 thrushes, larks and linnets, as he never re- 
 membered to have heard in all his life before. 
 
 They were caged birds that sang so blithely, 
 and their cages hung in the roomy wooden 
 porch with a thatched roof, over which there 
 was spread a curtain of flowering clematis and 
 rich crimson-veined honeysuckle. Out of this 
 dusky porch a great Newfoundland dog sprang 
 at the intruder, awakening distant echoes by 
 his deep-toned thunder. But a woman's voice, 
 very sweet and melodious, as the young man 
 thought, called from the cottage, '' Down, He- 
 phaestus ! — quiet, boy; quiet !" Eustace won- 
 dered what kind of woman this could be who 
 lived in the student's cottage, and called her 
 dog Hephaestus. 
 
 The Newfoundland crouched at the stranger's 
 feet, obedient to the sound of that familiar 
 voice; and then a man's footstep sounded in
 
 GREENLANDS. 153 
 
 the porch, and Theodore de Bergerac came out 
 to meet his secretary. Eustace had been too 
 much occupied by bitter and sorrowful thoughts 
 within the last week to puzzle himself by 
 speculative ideas about his new employer ; but 
 of course he had some vague notion — uncon- 
 sciously conceived — of what M. de Bergerac 
 would be like, and the real M. de Bergerac 
 was the very reverse of that shado^sy creature 
 of his imagining. There had been in his mind 
 some faint pictm-e of a little wizen old man, 
 with a weird face and a black-velvet skull-cap. 
 Why a black- velvet skull-cap he could not have 
 said ; but possibly that kind of head-gear is in 
 a manner allied with the idea of extreme 
 erudition and much consumption of midnight 
 oil. He had fancied a frail, wasted creature, 
 with long, straggling white hair falling in un- 
 kempt locks upon the greasy collar of a dress- 
 ing-gown ; and lo ! the man who came to greet 
 him was tall and stalwart, with a bright, fi*ank 
 face, which had once been very handsome, and 
 was handsome still, and iron-gray hair arranged
 
 154 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 with scrupulous neatness. He walked rather 
 lame, and carried a cane with a head of oxi- 
 dized silver, exquisitely modelled — a gem in 
 its way, like all the surroundings of its pos- 
 sessor, who had the taste of a Bernard or a 
 Bohn. 
 
 This was Theodore de Bergerac, the man 
 who at sixty years of age retained the freshness 
 and gaiety of six-and-twenty. The lameness 
 from which he suffered had afflicted him for 
 the last thirty years, for it was the result of a 
 musket-wound received at the siege of Antwerp. 
 The student had been a soldier in those days, 
 and had done good service under the brave 
 leader he loved so well. 
 
 M. de Bergerac greeted Eustace with friendly 
 courtesy. He spoke the English language 
 perfectly ; and it was only by a certain delicate 
 precision of pronunciation — a somewhat mea- 
 sured accent — and by an occasional Gallic 
 locution that strangers discovered his nation- 
 ality. 
 
 '' Welcome to Greenlands, Mr. Thorburn.
 
 GREENLANDS. 155 
 
 If you are fond of the country, I think you 
 will love Berkshire. It has all the richness of 
 southern France, and all the home-like comfort 
 of Normandy. If we were a little nearer the 
 sea, and could catch the breath of the ocean 
 now and then from the summit of our hills, we 
 should be in Paradise. But a man cannot ex- 
 pect to be quite in Paradise ; and I suppose 
 this is as near an approach to Eden as we can 
 hope for upon earth. Have you dined ? We 
 live as people lived in French provincial towns 
 when I was a boy ; and our hours are as early 
 as those of the country -people round about us. 
 I suppose in London the world is beginning to 
 dress for dinner. We dined half a dozen houi's 
 ago ; but I can promise you an excellent sup- 
 per. My little menagere has made arrange- 
 ments for a perfect banquet in your honour." 
 
 Eustace wondered whether the little menagere 
 and the lady who called to the dog were one 
 and the same person. It was very foolish of 
 him to wish that it might be so, and to imagine 
 that the person must needs be young and beau-
 
 156 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 tiful. But then poetical three-and-twenty is 
 subject to such foolish wishes and imaginings. 
 
 Theodore de Bergerac and his secretary went 
 into the house, where lights began to glimmer 
 here and there in the dusk. The room into 
 which the Frenchman led Eustace had that 
 sweet rustic charm peculiar to country drawing- 
 rooms ; but the stranger fancied it had a certain 
 harmonious beauty which he had never beheld 
 in any other apartment. Every thing in it 
 was beautiful. There were no false forms, no 
 discordant tones lurking here and there to mar 
 the harmony of the general effect. No pert 
 young Cupid in Parian folded his mis-shapen 
 wings, or uplifted his insolent pug nose before 
 the outraged beholder — no hideous form of 
 modern vase or flower-pot — no gaudy abomina- 
 tion of cheap Bohemian glass offended the eye ; 
 no impossible roses and lilies in Berlin-wool 
 and bead-work offered themselves as a flowery 
 couch for the visitor's repose. A subdued har- 
 mony of form and colour pervaded every object. 
 The valuable books scattered lavishly in every
 
 GREENLANDS. 157 
 
 direction made no parade of their costliness. 
 The rare old china needed examination before 
 its beauty revealed itself. Everything Tvas 
 fresh and pure and delicate. There was a per- 
 tume of many flowers mingled with the subtle 
 aroma of Eussia-leather bindings, very plea- 
 sant to the stranger's nostrils. New though 
 the place was to him, he had no sense of 
 strangeness ; he felt rather as if he had come 
 home to some delicious and familiar resting- 
 place for which he had long been yearning. 
 Perhaps this feeling may have been a vague 
 foreshadowing of his fate. Perhaps he had a 
 faint semi-consciousness of the fact that per- 
 fect happiness was to come to him in that 
 house. 
 
 The two men sat for some little time in the 
 dimly-lighted room — lighted only by a pair of 
 small wax candles in antique bronze candle- 
 sticks. They talked of many things, gliding 
 imperceptibly from one subject to another with- 
 out either jerks or pauses in the smooth 
 current of talk. De Bergerac was a delight-
 
 158 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 fill talker — playful and serious, gay and earnest 
 by turns — now childishly emphatic about 
 trifles, now touching the profoundest subjects 
 with a graceful lightness. Eustace was 
 charmed by his new employer, and began 
 to think that his lines had fallen in pleasant 
 places. 
 
 He may have been still more inclined to 
 think so a few minutes later, when a trim little 
 maid-servant announced that supper was ready, 
 and M. de Bergerac led him into the dining- 
 room. 
 
 The dining-room was only an old-fashioned 
 oak-panelled chamber, like the drawing-room ; 
 but the hands which had beautified the one 
 had imparted the same air of grace and refine- 
 ment to the other. There were more pictures 
 and books and china, more fresh flowers in 
 vases of dark-blue Wedgwood : and, above all, 
 there was that sweet home-like aspect, which 
 has a deeper charm than is to be imparted by 
 the choicest treasures of art or the fairest gifts 
 of nature. A small round table was laid for
 
 GP.EENLAXDS. 159 
 
 supper ; and the bright coloui-ing of a lobster, 
 the tender gi'een of a salad, the varied hues of 
 some fi'uit piled high in a basket-shaped china 
 dish, to say nothing of all the ghtter and 
 sparkle of rare old-fashioned glass and silver, 
 or the amber and ruby of wines, made no un- 
 inviting picture under the mellow Kght of the 
 lamp. 
 
 But there was a faii*er picture to be seen in 
 that chamber, which distracted the stranger's 
 gaze fi'om the hospitable prej^arations that had 
 been made for him — the pictui'e of a giii 
 standing by a ponderous old easy-chaii', with 
 her white hands loosely folded on the cushion, 
 and with the great black Newfoundland dog at 
 her feet. 
 
 In the com'se of his eventless life Eustace 
 Thorbm*n had not seen manv beautiful women, 
 so it is a small thing to say that the ghi he 
 saw to-night seemed to him the loveliest crea- 
 ture he had ever beheld. The dark beauties of 
 Yillebrumeuse, rich in the southern graces of 
 their Spanish ancestors, had flashed their black
 
 160 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 eyes upon the young Englishman sometimes, as 
 he paced the quiet streets of their city, but had 
 gone by unnoticed by him. It may have been 
 that to-night his imagination was unusually 
 exalted, his mind peculiarly prone to receive 
 impressions, for it seemed to him as if he had 
 passed out of the dull, beaten tracks of every- 
 day life into an enchanted region, a kind of 
 Arcadian fairy-land, of which this beauteous 
 creature was a fitting queen. 
 
 She was an honest English beauty, and the 
 brightness of her complexion had ripened under 
 an English sun. Her dark-blue eyes seemed 
 darker and bluer by reason of the rosy bloom 
 of her cheeks and the crimson of her perfect 
 mouth. The dusky gold of her hair was no 
 fictitious charm derived from the costly washes 
 of a court perfumer. She was no spurious 
 Venetian beauty, with locks of tawny red ; but 
 a fair English girl, fresh and bright as a wood- 
 land summer morning, pure as a flower with 
 the dew upon its opening petals. Her w^hite 
 muslin dress was unrelieved by a trinket or a
 
 GREENLAXDS. 161 
 
 ribbon ; but what need had she of colour or 
 jewels, whose eyes were more brilliant than 
 the rarest sapphires, whose lips were more 
 precious than Neapolitan coral, and in whose 
 innocent young beauty there was a brightness 
 surpassing the radiance of earthly gems ? 
 
 *' My daughter," said M. de Bergerac ; " my 
 daughter Helen — Mr. Thorburn." Whereupon 
 this enchanting creature greeted the stranger 
 with a bright smile and some indistinct mur- 
 mur of welcome. They seated themselves at 
 the little supper-table presently, and this di\-ine 
 Helen looked on admiiingly while her father 
 carved a fore-quarter of lamb. It was a long 
 time since Eustace had taken a hasty snack of 
 luncheon with his uncle, before starting for 
 Windsor, yet he had little appetite for that 
 innocent Berkshire lamb. His gaze wandered 
 from the contents of his plate to Helen de 
 Bergerac' s fair young face ; and if he had been 
 sharing the Barmecide's shadowy feast, he could 
 scarcely have been more unconscious of the 
 flavour of the viands or the aroma of the wines. 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 *'Help yourself to some of that Medoc, Mr. 
 Thorbiirn," said his host ; " and be sure you 
 do justice to my daughter's salad. Helen is a 
 salad-maker whom Brillat Savarin might have 
 approved. The salad is the chef-d'oeuvre of 
 amateur art. No hired. cook ever yet excelled 
 in the composition of a salad. The task is too 
 delicate for a hand that has been soiled by 
 wages." 
 
 Eustace blushed. Three-and-twenty is so 
 painfully sensitive. Was he not going to take 
 wages in that house ? He stole a look at his 
 host's daughter, and wondered whether she felt 
 a patrician contempt for her father's secretary. 
 She had the blood of Spanish grandees in her 
 veins, despite her English beauty. Heaven 
 knows what haughty hidalgo might have infused 
 his pride into those azure veins. 
 
 *' She is aptly named," thought the young 
 man ; " Helen, the destroyer of ships and of 
 men. Helen, the daughter of Juj)iter and 
 Nemesis — for I will never believe that poor 
 Leda was any more than the nurse of that fatal
 
 GREENLANDS. 163 
 
 creature. Helen, the daughter of Nemesis — 
 let me remember her parentage, and beware 
 of her." 
 
 He discovered one fact in relation to Made- 
 moiselle de Bergerac before the evening was 
 over, though he could only watch her furtively 
 now and then while her father was talking. He 
 discovered that the damsel's heart was already 
 engaged, and that he who came to lay siege 
 to it would have need of patience and constancy. 
 She was in love with her father. She watched 
 him with tender, reverential eyes, and listened 
 to him as to the voice of an oracle. Once, 
 when his hand lay on the arm of his chair, she 
 lifted it gently to her lij)s. And in all this 
 there was no taint of affectation. No dryad of 
 those Berkshire woods could have been more 
 innocently natural than this descendant of 
 Spanish hidalgos. No consciousness of her 
 loveliness and fascination disturbed her sweet 
 serenity as she talked to her father's secretary. 
 She talked to him of pastoral pleasures and 
 pursuits, and he divined from her talk that her
 
 164 , DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 country life was very dear to her. Her father 
 went to London very often, she told Eustace in 
 the course of the evening, to buy books ; and 
 sometimes, but very rarely, took her with 
 him. 
 
 "And then I see the shops," she said ;' and 
 by the tone of subdued ecstacy with which she 
 pronounced this word, Eustace discovered for the 
 first time that she was mortal. " I am afraid 
 you will despise me very much for liking to see 
 the shops. Papa does. He thinks it is the 
 most foolish thing in the world to be fond of 
 standing on a crowded pavement to look at 
 dresses and bonnets that one is never likely to 
 have." 
 
 ** Or to want," interposed M. de Bergerac, 
 looking proudly at the girl's animated face. 
 " What could a little girl who makes butter do 
 with fine silk dresses ; and she is able to make 
 butter for Windsor market, this young lady, as 
 well as she is able to read Greek," added the 
 father, fondly. 
 
 Eustace watched the two faces with a pensive
 
 GREENLANDS. 165 
 
 admiration. Here was that ideal father of 
 whom he had dreamed so often ; here was 
 that pure and perfect love which he had 
 fancied. 
 
 It was late hefore the little party separated, 
 for M. de Bergerac had a student's attachment 
 to the quiet of midnight, and an absent-minded 
 man's unconsciousness of the flight of time. 
 The clock of some village church-tower, hidden 
 away somewhere beyond the beeches and oaks 
 of Greenlands, struck twelve half an hour 
 before the Frenchman conducted Eustace to the 
 room that had been prei)ared for him. It was 
 only a rustic chamber, with lattice casements 
 set deep in a wall of old-fashioned solidity. 
 The white draperies were faintly perfumed with 
 that odour of rose-leaves and lavender which is 
 as the verv breath of the countrv. The lattice 
 was open, and there was a vase of flowers on 
 the broad window-ledge. Eustace wondered 
 who had arranged those flowers. Not the trim 
 little maid-servant surely. She would have 
 squeezed the tender blossoms into a tightly-
 
 166 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 packed circular bunch ; while these were only 
 a few loose half-budding roses nestHng among 
 cool green leaves. 
 
 The lattice was open, and the harvest-moon 
 shone full and bright above the woods of which 
 Harold Jerningham was master. Eustace stood 
 at the open casement for some time after his 
 host had left him. He stood there in the solemn 
 stillness, looking out across those sombre masses 
 of foliage towards the moonlit river — so difficult 
 to believe in by this light as an earthly river, 
 navigable by coal-barges, and instrumental in 
 the turning of paper-mills. He looked out 
 upon that landscape of semi-divine beauty, and 
 thought with a half-contemptuous ]Dity of the 
 man who owned it. Theodore de Bergerac had 
 talked of his friend during the varied course of 
 that evening's conversation, and Eustace had 
 discovered that the lord of Greenlands was a 
 lonely and childless wanderer — a wanderer in 
 first-class carriages, and a dweller in the most 
 expensive caravanseries ; but not the less home- 
 less, and joyless, and purposeless — not the less
 
 GREENLANDS. ,167 
 
 a standing example of the worthlessness of 
 earthly prosperit}'. 
 
 Eustace Thorburn, the nameless and father- 
 less, pitied this childless man. It was scarcely 
 strange if he let the underwood grow wild in 
 his park, and foul weeds He thick upon his lake. 
 For whom should he be careful, for whom 
 should he adorn and beautifv, for whose sake 
 should he plant young trees, or cut new avenues 
 in the woodland ? For what purpose should he 
 heap uj) riches, who knew not what strange 
 hand was destined to gather them ? 
 
 But the secretary did not brood long on the 
 sorrowful fate of that unknown Harold Jerning- 
 ham. A fairer image came between him and 
 the moonlit i^ark, and it bore the likeness of 
 Helen de Bergerac. 
 
 " I waste my thoughts upon a girl's lovely 
 face, when I ought to be thinking of the work 
 that lies before me," the young man said to 
 himself, in angry scorn of his weakness. " Let 
 me remember why I am here, and keep my 
 brain clear of my employer's daughter, in order
 
 168 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 that I may be able to help him honestly with 
 his book." 
 
 He slept soundly and sweetly, lulled by the 
 faint rustling of the foliage and the far-away 
 murmur of the river. But his slumbers were 
 not dreamless. He thought he saw the old red- 
 brick mansion all ablaze with light. Long rows 
 of windows shone on the darkness of the night, 
 joyous music was wafted from the open lattices, 
 and an indistinguishable some one in a crowd, 
 that seemed all confusion and clamour, told 
 him the heir of Greenlands had come of age. 
 
 He woke to see the sunshine in his room, 
 and to hear Helen de Bergerac singing a waltz 
 of Verdi's ; while the song-birds in the porch 
 strained their melodious throats to the utter- 
 most, in the endeavour to drown their mistress's 
 music.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 HOW THEY PARTED. 
 
 In the earlier years of her lonehness, Mrs. 
 Jerningham's efforts in the way of Httle dinners 
 were generally crowned with success. Women 
 liked to dine at the toy-villa, because they 
 knew the most eligible men were to be met 
 there. Men were pleased to accept Mrs. Jer- 
 ningham's invitations, sure that at her house 
 they would encounter none but handsome or 
 agreeable women. She displayed a delightful 
 tact in the selection of her society. She would 
 invite a lovely inanity to sit at her table, as a 
 beautiful object for the contemplation of her 
 guests ; but she would take care to balance her 
 soulless divinity by some decent-looking woman 
 with brains. If the Household-Brigade ele- 
 ment threatened to preponderate, and there
 
 170 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 was reason to dread that the whole talk at 
 dinner would be about the wonderful things 
 '' fellows " present, and other fellows absent, 
 who were the intimate friends of those fel- 
 lows, had done in the way of deer-stalking in 
 the Trossachs, or salmon-fishing in Norway, 
 during the last autumn, Mrs. Jerningham took 
 care to leaven it, and would despatch an invi- 
 tation to some popular litterateur or fashion- 
 able actor, some clever amateur, well up in all 
 the art-gossip, or a gentlemanly young explorer, 
 lately returned from Africa with the last ideas 
 about the source of the Nile, and delightful 
 serio-comic anecdotes about encounters with 
 crocodiles and Abyssinian damsels. 
 
 The mistress of Eiver Lawn made her par- 
 ties pleasant at any cost of trouble to herself. 
 Even the dragon that guarded the enchanted 
 garden, in the shape of an elderly aunt, was 
 a pleasant dragon, who dressed well, and could 
 talk cleverly on occasion. And then the din- 
 ners were not those shadowy repasts which are 
 wont to be served in mansions where a lady
 
 HOW THEY PARTED. 171 
 
 reigns unassisted by masculine counsel. Mrs. 
 Colton, the elderly aunt, had entertained arch- 
 bishops in her day, and knew how to compose 
 a menu. The wines that sparkled into bright- 
 ness under the light of beauty's eye at Mrs. 
 Jerningham's table were supplied by Mr. 
 Jerningham's own wine -merchant, who would 
 not have dared to impose on the lady's j)ossible 
 innocence. 
 
 The house was very agreeable. That slight 
 accident of Mr. Desmond's perpetual presence 
 was only an additional advantage for people 
 who wanted to beg favours from the fashion- 
 able editor — a good word for a new book, or a 
 new play, or a new pictm-e. It had become an 
 established fact, that wherever Mrs. Jerning- 
 ham appeared, Lam-ence Desmond was to ap- 
 pear also. His chosen friends gathered round 
 her, like the knightly circle about a queen in 
 the days when there was chivalry in the land, 
 and a queen was a sacred creature. It was he 
 who had brought that agreeable circle to River 
 Lawn ; how could a poor lonely woman have
 
 172 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 beguiled the shining lights of the crack London 
 clubs to illuminate her dinner-table ? It was 
 Desmond who kept a strict account of her 
 feminine acquaintance, watchful lest the faintest 
 shadow in the reputation of a friend should be 
 reflected on her. The editor of the Areoimgus 
 knew everything and everybody. The inner 
 mysteries of Belgravia and Tyburnia, which out- 
 siders discussed in solemn whispers and with 
 awful shrugs, were stale and hackneyed facts 
 for him. He knew that Emily Jerningham 
 paid a certain price for his friendship — pure 
 and chivalrous though that friendship might 
 be — and that she must continue to pay it to 
 the end. She had been very friendless im- 
 mediately after her separation from her hus- 
 band ; and when the tide of public oj^inion 
 was at its flood, ready to turn either way, it 
 was Laurence's subtle influence which had set 
 it flowing pleasantly for her. But he knew 
 that his friendship cost her a i)rice, notwith- 
 standing. There was the savour of patronage 
 in the friendliness of the peoj)le he had won
 
 HOW THEY P.iPiTED. 173 
 
 to be her intimates. Spotless dowagers visited 
 her and received her ; but they were d.])t 
 to affect a sort of pitying kindness when 
 they spoke of her to other intimates. She 
 was " that poor Mrs. Jerningham, who is se- 
 parated from her husband, you know, my dear 
 — Harold Jerningham, a dreadful person, I 
 believe, though very nice in societ3\ She lives 
 with a widowed aunt, at the sweetest jDlace, 
 near Hampton, and gives charming i3arties ; 
 highly correct and proj^er in every way ; and, 
 you know, I think it a kind of duty to take 
 notice of a woman in that position, when 
 nothing can be said to her j^rejudice ; " and so 
 on, and so on, with inexhaustible variations on 
 the perpetual theme. Laurence Desmond had 
 heard the stereotyped talk a hundred times, and 
 the recollection of it stung him to the very 
 quick, when he thought of it in relation to the 
 woman whom he could remember a giii of 
 seventeen, dressed in white, and walking by his 
 side in a little garden at Passy. 
 
 Yes, he had known Emily Jei*ningham before
 
 174 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 she became the wife of her wealthy kinsman ; 
 he had known her in the days of her genteel 
 poverty — the patient daughter of a peevish 
 valetudinarian. He had been allied with this 
 poorer branch of the Jerningham family by 
 friendships and associations of many years' 
 standing, and had never spent a week in Paris 
 without paying more than one visit to the 
 shabby, little furnished-house at Passy, in which 
 Philip Jerningham dragged out the tiresome 
 remnant of his useless existence with Emily for 
 his companion and nurse, his secretary, butler, 
 and steward. He had come at first prompted 
 by a kindly feeling for the friend of his dead 
 father ; he came afterwards for his own plea- 
 sure ; and those flying visits to Paris, which 
 had been wont to occur two or three times in 
 the year, began to repeat themselves at very 
 short intervals. 
 
 He had fallen in love with Emily Jerningham, 
 and he had sufficient reason for believing that 
 his love was returned. Those evenings in the 
 little flower-garden at Passy were the happiest
 
 HOW THEY PARTED. 175 
 
 hours of his busy life. The paradise was ver}- 
 prim and dusty and arid, and all the roar and 
 clamour of Paris thundered a hoarse chorus in 
 the distance ; but it was Eden, nevertheless ; 
 and when, a few 3'ears afterwards, he wasted 
 an idle hour by going to look at the old place, 
 he was surprised to discover what a shabby 
 scene it was, now that the glamour had departed 
 from it. 
 
 He was a i)roud man, and it was his misfor- 
 tune to live in a world in which the splendour 
 and luxm'ies of the million were accounted the 
 necessities of existence. The women he met 
 were women who would have been panic-stricken 
 if they had found themselves on foot and alone 
 in a crowded London street. They were women 
 who, if suddenly reduced to the depths of 
 poverty, would have thought the delf-plates and 
 mugs of destitution a greater hardship than its 
 bread and water. They were delicate creatm-es 
 — "not too bright or good for human nature's 
 daily food," but quite unable to cope with human 
 nature's pecuniary embarrassments. They were
 
 176 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 creatures who thought that a cheque-book went 
 on for ever, like the Laureate's brook : and that 
 so long as there were any of those nice oblong 
 slips of paper left in the world, papas and 
 husbands and brothers had nothing to do 
 but to sign their names at the bottom of 
 them. 
 
 Laurence Desmond intended to ask Miss 
 Jerningham to be his wife, but he was deter- 
 mined not to marry until he was secure of some- 
 thing like fifteen hundred a year. He reckoned 
 his future expenditure sometimes as he medi- 
 tated by his bachelor hearth, with a cigar be- 
 tween his lips. Two hundred a year for a house 
 somewhere within reasonable distance of the 
 Park; a hundred for his wife's dress, fifty for 
 his own ; a miniature brougham would be rather 
 a tight squeeze at a hundred and fifty ; his own 
 expenses, cigars, diplomatic dinners given at his 
 club, cab-hire, books and newspapers, say two 
 hundred more ; and the remaining eight hun- 
 dred for the vulgar necessities of everyday 
 existence. Mr. Desmond mapped out his future
 
 HOW THEY PARTED. 177 
 
 very pleasantly for himself and the woman he 
 loved ; but in those days he was yet very far 
 from the possession of the indispensable fifteen 
 hundred. So he held his peace in the little 
 flower-garden at Passy, and was content to talk 
 agreeable nonsense to Emily Jerningham, while 
 the poor little fountain trickled and di'ipped in 
 the sunshine, and the gaudy red geraniums in 
 the plaster vases on the wall made j)atches of 
 vivid colour against the hot blue sky, and that 
 hoarse chorus of Paris sounded its perjDetual 
 accompaniment — the roar of wheels and the 
 rattle of vehicles, the tinkling of bells, the 
 jingling of spoons and glasses on the pavement 
 outside the coffee-houses, and the voices of the 
 excited million, all blended into one indistin- 
 guishable clamour, rising and falling like the 
 waves of a distant sea. 
 
 Mr. Desmond waited, satisfied with his pro- 
 spects, content to abide the ripening of his for- 
 tunes, and convinced that good feeling and 
 policy alike were involved in patience. Unhap- 
 pily, the man who plans his own life is like a 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 178 DEAD-SEA FKUIT. 
 
 chess-player in London matched against a chess- 
 player in Paris, and with no telegraphic com- 
 munications of his adversary's moves. His 
 theory of the game is perfect. His plan of 
 action is decided upon with the cool delibera- 
 tion of an accomplished strategist. He sees his 
 way to the very end of the encounter : his castle 
 there, his bishop here, his queen in the centre 
 of the board, and — lo, his enemy is checkmated ! 
 But that hidden player in Paris adopts unima- 
 ginable tactics ; and suddenly, after one never- 
 to-be-expected move, the player in London finds 
 himself ignominiously beaten. 
 
 While Laurence Desmond was dreaming lazily 
 of the future, lingering over his midnight cigar 
 in Temple chambers — nearer the chimney pots 
 than the handsome rooms he afterwards occu- 
 pied — Philip Jerningham took it into his head 
 to die suddenly, and Emily came to London with 
 a letter to her cousin ever-so-many-times-re- 
 moved, the irresistible Harold. By one of those 
 insignificant accidents which make the links in 
 the great chain of destiny, it happened that
 
 HOW THEY PARTED. 179. 
 
 the announcement of Philip Jerningham's death 
 escaped the eye of Emily's undeclared admirer. 
 It was not to be expected that a bereaved 
 daughter, who was left very desolate and help- 
 less, could write ceremonious notes to all her 
 late father's masculine acquaintance; and 
 Emily had the Jerningham pride, and, for some 
 unknown reason, was pecuHarly inclined to be 
 resentful of small offences where Laurence 
 Desmond was concerned. So the editor went 
 on smoking his midnight cigars, and pushing 
 on steadily towards the achievement of the in- 
 dispensable income ; deferring week after week 
 and month after month the Parisian holiday 
 which he was always promising himseK. 
 
 The time di'ifted by him with that impercep- 
 tible progress which is so peculiar to time when 
 a man is always wrestling with the arrears of 
 his labour, and trying to get seventy minutes 
 out of an hour. Time puts on a special pair 
 of wings for the slave who fills a waste-paper 
 basket and uses half-a-crown's worth of postage- 
 stamps every day of his life except Sunday, and
 
 180 DEAD-SEA FKUIT. 
 
 who sits under a popular preacher on that day, 
 weighed down by the consciousness of a hundred 
 unanswered letters, and the knowledge that a 
 hundred offended correspondents are swelling 
 with indignation because of his neglect. 
 
 Mr. Desmond was roughly awakened from 
 his pleasant day-dreams one morning on read- 
 ing the announcement of Harold Jerningham's 
 marriage. The blow was a severe one, and 
 for some days the writer's arguments were ra- 
 ther weak and inconsequential, and the editor's 
 eye unusually careless of flaws and blemishes 
 in the work of his contributors. Only now 
 that Emily was lost to him did he know how 
 very dear she had been ; but even more bitter 
 to Laurence Desmond than the thought of his 
 loss was the idea of his folly. 
 
 "I fancy myself a man of the world," he 
 said to himself, ^' and yet I am the dupe of 
 masculine fatuity wiiich would be contemptible 
 in a stripling newly escaped from the univer- 
 sity. I thought she loved me ; I thought her 
 love was as entirely my own as if I had re-
 
 HOW THEY PAETED. 181 
 
 ceived the assurance of it in the plainest words 
 that were ever spoken." 
 
 The idea that he had been duj^ed by his own 
 vanity stung him to the quick. He studiously 
 avoided the places in which he was likely to 
 encounter Emily Jerningham, and it was not 
 imtil a year after her marriage that he met 
 her. He came upon her suddenly one bright 
 autumn day in an obscui*e foreign pictiu'e-gal- 
 lery. For years after that day he was able to 
 recall the scene of then- unexpected meeting — 
 the quaint old chamber in the com-tyard of an 
 hospital, the grim pre-Eaphaelite pictures of 
 unpleasant martyrdoms, the dusty motes danc- 
 ing in the sunlight, and the listless grace of a 
 woman who stood with her back towards him, 
 leaning on the top rail of a chaii*, with an 
 open catalogue held loosely in her hand. 
 There was no one but this woman in the gal- 
 lery. The door banged behind Mr. Desmond 
 as he went in, and startled by the noise, she 
 turned and looked at him. 
 
 This is how he met Emily Jerningham. The
 
 182 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 white change in her face told him that he had 
 not been the dupe of a delusion when he fan- 
 cied himself beloved. He felt that he must 
 be something more than a common acquaint- 
 ance to the woman who looked at him with 
 that pale, terror-stricken face. For a moment 
 he feared that Mrs. Jerningham would faint ; 
 but the fear was groundless. She belonged to 
 a class in which the women have some touch 
 of the Eoman's grandeur mingled with the 
 sensuous softness of the Greek. The colour 
 came back to her cheeks and lips in a few 
 moments, and she held out her hand to her 
 dead father's friend. 
 
 "How do you do, Mr. Desmond?" she 
 said. " I did not know that you were in Ger- 
 many." 
 
 *' No. I am taking a brief holiday. Is Mr. 
 Jerningham with you ?" 
 
 " Yes ; he had letters to write this morning, 
 and sent me to explore this curious old hos- 
 pital by myself. Do you stay long here ?" 
 
 " I go on to Vienna this evening."
 
 HOW THEY PARTED. 183 
 
 The beautiful face grew pale again. Mrs. 
 Jerningham looked at her catalogue. 
 
 " I think I have seen all the pictui*es," she 
 said. " My guide has gone to look for the key 
 of some mysterious chamber ; I must go in 
 search of him. Good-morning, Mr. Desmond. 
 Oh, here is my husband ! " 
 
 Mr. Jerningham sauntered into the gallery. 
 
 " I couldn't stand any more letter-writing, 
 so I came to see youi* pictures, Emily," he 
 said. " Ah, Desmond, how do you do ? What 
 brings you to this queer old place, so com- 
 pletely out of the beaten track — almost be- 
 yond the ken of Murray ? You know my wife ? 
 Ah, I remember ; your father and her father 
 were great cronies. How is it you never told 
 me you knew Desmond, Emily?" 
 
 Mrs. Jerningham' s reply was only a vague 
 murmur ; but her husband was not one of 
 those men who hang upon the utterances or 
 watch the looks of their wives. He allowed 
 the woman he had chosen ample liberty, only 
 requii'ing that her toilette should be perfect,
 
 184 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 her voice harmonious, her movements graceful, 
 and her reputation spotless. For it is an un- 
 derstood thing, that whatever character Caesar 
 himself may bear, there must be no possibility 
 of suspicion with regard to C£esar's wife. 
 
 Harold Jerningham and Laurence Desmond 
 had met very often before to-day. It happened 
 that the Jerninghams were also on their way 
 to Vienna, and had made their arrangements 
 for travelling by the same train as that chosen 
 by Laurence. They met at the station, and 
 travelled together, Mr. Jerningham being very 
 well pleased to find the tedium of the journey 
 beguiled by masculine companionship. Mrs. 
 Jerningham sat in a corner of the carriage, 
 very silent and impenetrable, but beautiful to 
 look upon in the fitful glare of the railway 
 lamp, or in occasional glimpses of moonlight. 
 
 That night-journey was the beginning of a 
 closer acquaintanceship between Harold Jer- 
 ningham and Laurence Desmond. During the 
 ensuing London season the younger man was a 
 frequent visitor at the house of the elder.
 
 HOW THEY PARTED. 185 
 
 The Jerninghams met Mr. Desmond at parties. 
 They met him in the following winter at a 
 country house ; sat round the same fire at 
 Christmas time, and shuddered at the same 
 ghost-stories ; danced in the same condescend- 
 ing quadrille at a ball of servants and tenantr}*, 
 and plucked costly trinkets fi'om the same 
 Christmas-tree — Harold always more or less 
 distinguished by the tone of a being who had 
 endured a previous existence in every star in 
 the planetary system, and was wearily " doing " 
 his last world before final extinction. 
 
 Mrs. Jerningham had learned by this time 
 to meet her old friend without sudden pallor or 
 sudden blushes. If she met him very often, 
 she met him by favour of that chain of acci- 
 dents which links together the lives of some 
 men and women. She happened to be buying 
 hyacinths in the Pantheon during the hour 
 which the hard-working editor snatched from 
 the cares of journalism in the sweet cause of 
 friendship, bringing to bear all the forces of his 
 mighty intellect on the selection of a squirrel,
 
 18G DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 intended for a birthday-gift to a fellow-worker's 
 little girl. If the purchase of the hyacinths 
 and the squirrel occupied a longer time than is 
 usually devoted to such small transactions, it 
 must be remembered that there is great room 
 for the exercise of taste and discretion in the 
 choice of flowers which are to fill a jardiniere of 
 the real old hleu de roi Sevres, and an animal 
 which is to twirl perpetually for the delight of 
 one's friend. Nor was there anything extra- 
 ordinary in the fact that Mr. Jerningham and 
 his wife encountered Laurence Desmond ever 
 and anon at the Opera, at the Botanical and 
 Zoological Gardens, and at other places of 
 public resort. The circle in which decent 
 people revolve is such a narrow one that there 
 must needs be these accidental encounters at 
 every turn in the crowded ring. 
 
 " I fancy we meet Mr. Desmond a little 
 more frequently than other people," Harold 
 Jerningham said one day to his wife ; and this 
 w^as the only occasion on which he made any 
 special mention of the editor's name.
 
 HOW THEY PARTED. 187 
 
 It was about a week after Mr. Jerningham 
 made this remark, that Emily found a letter 
 awaiting her on the table of her morning-room. 
 The letter was addressed in her husband's hand, 
 sealed with her husband's arms and cipher. 
 It was his habit to wi'ite her little notes in- 
 forming her of his movements when the 
 pressing business of their useless existence sepa- 
 rated them for a day or so ; but he did not 
 usually seal his letters. This letter was sealed : 
 and there must have been something in the 
 appearance of the document which startled 
 Mrs. Jerningham, for she grew very jDale, 
 and her hand trembled as it tore open the 
 envelope. 
 
 The length of the letter was not calculated 
 to alarm a woman who expected a marital 
 lecture. 
 
 " My dear Emily, — The tulip-wood cabinet 
 in which I keep coins is exactly the same as 
 that which you use for yom* letters. The keys 
 are duplicates. I opened yours instead of my
 
 188 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 own this morning, in a fit of absence of mind, 
 and saw some letters. I did not read them. 
 The fact of their existence, their number, and 
 the address they bear — which is not to any 
 house of mine, is sufficiently suggestive. Be 
 good enough to remain at home to-morrow. 
 Mr. Halfont will call upon you in the course of 
 the morning. — Truly yours, 
 
 "H. J." 
 
 This was all. Mr. Halfont was the family 
 lawyer, a person whose name was generally 
 heard in connection with leases. Mrs. Jer- 
 ningham looked at the two cabinets, one on 
 each side of the fireplace. Yes, they were 
 exactly alike. She had known that always, 
 and might have guessed that the locks and 
 keys were the same. But she had never 
 thought on the subject ; the apartment was so 
 entirely her own sanctum ; and Harold Jer- 
 ningham possessed so many cabinets filled with 
 coins and medallions, cameos and intaglios, 
 which he never looked at, and which, after the
 
 HOW THEY PARTED. 189 
 
 feverish delight of bidding for them at Chris- 
 tie's, were supremely indifferent to him. How, 
 then, should she have foreseen the possibility 
 of the accident that had happened ? 
 
 Was it altogether an accident ? 
 
 Emily took a key from a little casket on the 
 table, and went to one of the cabinets — her 
 own. She opened it, and seated herself in the 
 chair before it — the chair in which Harold 
 Jerningham had sat an horn* ago, no doubt. 
 The piece of furniture was half-cabinet, half- 
 secretaire ; and it was here that Mrs. Jerning- 
 ham was wont to fill in the blanks in those 
 lithographed protestations of rapture or ex- 
 pressions of regret wherewith she accepted or 
 declined the invitations of her acquaintance. 
 It was here she wrote her letters, and it was 
 here she kept the MSS. of those correspondents 
 whose letters were worthy of preseiwation. 
 They were in a row of f)igeon-holes ; and 
 amongst those in the pigeon-hole marked D 
 there was a packet tied with ribbon. That 
 tendency to render a bundle of dangerous
 
 190 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 letters conspicuous by a circle of bright-hued 
 ribbon is one of womanhood's fatal weaknesses. 
 
 Mrs. Jerningham took out the packet and 
 contemplated it thoughtfully. 
 
 '' I wish he had read the letters," she said 
 to herself ; "it would have been much better 
 for both of us if he had read them." 
 
 She looked at the address upon the topmost 
 
 envelope : 
 
 ''E. J., 
 
 ''Post Office, 
 
 " Vigo Street:' 
 
 " It was very wrong to have them directed 
 to a post-ofQce," she thought to herself. 
 
 She packed the letters in a sheet of paper, 
 and directed the packet to her husband, with a 
 brief note, the composition of which cost her 
 much trouble. She shed some few tears while 
 she was writing this note ; but she took care 
 that they should not fall on the paper. There 
 was a certain firmness and decision in her 
 manner which was scarcely compatible with 
 the feelings of an utterly guilty woman.
 
 HOW THEY PARTED. 191 
 
 Mrs. Jerningham had a long interview with 
 her husband's lawyer on the following day, an 
 interview which had in it none of the unplea- 
 sant elements of a ''scene." After this the 
 house in Park Lane was abandoned by both 
 master and mistress. Mr. Jerningham was 
 abroad ; Mrs. Jerningham at one of the coun- 
 try houses. It was not till the following 
 season that the world in which the Jerning- 
 hams lived became aware that the Jerninghams 
 had parted. So small an amount of union is 
 necessary to constitute marriage in this uj)per 
 world that the fact of the separation only be- 
 came patent on the establishment of the toy- 
 villa at Hampton.
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 
 
 In this bright summer-time the gardens of the 
 toy-villa were a paradise of roses. The lawns 
 were dotted by great clumps and mounds of 
 blossom ; red and white damask and maiden' s- 
 blush jostling one another in rich profusion. 
 Tall standard-roses climbed skyward on iron 
 rods, rustic baskets brimmed over with the 
 precious flowers ; and there were so many 
 creeping tendrils entwining thin iron-work 
 arches and airy colonnades, that the visitor 
 who approached Mrs. Jerningham made his 
 way to her presence beneath a gentle shower of 
 perfumed petals. 
 
 Under the falling rose-petals went the editor 
 of the Areopagus one sultry morning. He had 
 come from London by rail, and the dust of the 
 journey was white upon his dark-blue coat. He
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 193 
 
 looked a little wan and jaded in the searching 
 July sunshine, a little the worse for late hours 
 and perennial anxieties ; and he sighed ever so 
 faintly as a warm gust of sumraer wind flung a 
 spray of blossom against his face. 
 
 The river lay before him, deeply blue under 
 the cloudless sky ; and on his left, half hidden 
 amongst guelder-roses and the dark foliage of 
 myrtle and magnolia, there was the villa, a 
 fantastical edifice, in which the Tudor, the 
 Moorish, the Italian, and the mediaeval Nor- 
 man forms of architecture had struggled for 
 preeminence ; a house which seemed all win- 
 dows, and in which every window was of a dif- 
 ferent type — the house of all others to be dear 
 to the heart of a woman. 
 
 The garden of roses, the river, and the fan- 
 tastical villa made altogether a very charming 
 picture — a picture which Mr. Desmond con- 
 templated with a half-regretful sigh. 
 
 " Surely one ought to find happiness in such 
 a place ! " he said to himself. 
 
 He had entered by a little gate that was 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 194 DEAD-SEA FKUIT. 
 
 rarely locked ; and lie "went across the lawn 
 towards an open drawing-room window, with the 
 air of a man who has no need of ceremonial 
 announcement. Mrs. Jerningham came out of 
 the window as he approached. 
 
 *' Good morning, Mr. Desmond," she said, as 
 they shook hands. " Have you come by rail — 
 on such a warm day too ? That is very good 
 of you. I think a noonday ride in a railway 
 carriage at this time of year is a species of 
 martyrdom. One thinks of the iron coffin and 
 the Piombi at Venice, and that kind of thing." 
 
 Mr. Desmond looked at the speaker, doubt- 
 fully. This was evidently not exactly the re- 
 ception he was accustomed to receive from Mrs. 
 Jerningham. 
 
 " If you are going to talk to me like a stage- 
 widow, Emily, I had better go back to town," 
 said he, gravely. 
 
 " How should I talk to you ? I see you so 
 seldom now, that I lose the habit of adapting 
 my conversation to your taste. I think stage- 
 widows are very charming people. At any rate,
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 195 
 
 they always find something to say, and that is 
 
 an important consideration." 
 
 '^1 have heen very much occupied lately." 
 " It seems to me that you are always very 
 
 much occupied. I saw your name, by the bye, 
 
 amongst the names of the people at the break- 
 fast at Pembmy." 
 
 '' I was obliged to go to Pembury." 
 
 " And you were at Marble Hill on Tuesday." 
 
 ** I had particular business with Lord Chorl- 
 
 ton." 
 
 " And you chose the occasion of an archery 
 
 fete for your business." 
 
 " I was glad to seize any opportunity. 
 
 Chorlton is not easily to be got at." 
 
 *' Oh, please don't speak of him as if he were 
 
 a jockey," exclaimed the lady, with an air of 
 
 irrepressible irritation. 
 
 " What has happened to annoy you this 
 
 morning, Mrs. Jemingham?" 
 "Nothing — this morning." 
 " But something has annoyed you." 
 '' Yes, I am tired of my life ; that is all that
 
 196 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 ails me, Mr. Desmond. I am tired of my life. 
 Of course you will tell me that it is very wicked 
 to be tired of one's life, and that there are 
 people starving in those dreadful London alleys 
 who would be very glad to come and live here, 
 and stare at the river, and wonder whether the 
 swans are tired of their lives, as I do hour after 
 hour in all the long, long days of the long, long 
 summer. But, you see, that doesn't make my 
 case any better. I am very sorry for the poor 
 people ; and if it were not so impossible to 
 imagine them in conjunction with amber-silk 
 furniture, I am sure they would be very wel- 
 come to come here. I have made a feeble 
 attempt to do some good in my neighbourhood ; 
 but I find that other people can do that kind 
 of thing much better than I, and that my 
 money is all that is really necessary. My life 
 passes, and the time, which is so long as it 
 crawls by, leaves no mark behind it. And then, 
 when I look forward to the future, I see — a 
 blank." 
 
 Her tone and manner had become more se-
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 197 
 
 rious as she went on. They had walked away 
 fi'om the house, and by this time were in a 
 sheltered pathway that bordered the river. 
 
 " Yet the future may not be altogether 
 blank, Emily," answered Laui'ence. " There 
 may come a time when " 
 
 " Yes ; I know what you mean. There may 
 come a time when I shall be as free as you 
 were before you met me in the hosjDital at Bun- 
 dersbad. I sometimes fancy that, if you or I 
 ever see that day, it will come too late. There 
 are sacrifices which cost too much, and the 
 sacrifice which you have made for me is one of 
 them." 
 
 " The greater sacrifice has been on yom- side," 
 said the editor, very gravely. 
 
 " I do not know that, Laurence. I sometimes 
 think that vom* bondage must be harder to bear 
 than mine. For nine years you have patiently 
 endured all the complaints and caprices of a 
 discontented woman, when you might have had 
 a bright home, and a happy wife to bid you 
 welcome in it, but for me."
 
 198 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 " The bright home and the happy wife may 
 be mine yet, Emily." 
 
 " If they ever are yours, they will come to 
 you too late. A home is one of the blessings 
 which must not be waited for. A man loses 
 the habit of home-life. I have seen something 
 of this, you know, in my father's life. He did 
 not marry till he was between forty and fifty ; 
 and when he married, he had lost the capabi- 
 lity of being happy at home. It will be the 
 same with you, Laurence, if you do not marry 
 soon. The hard, worldly way of thinking, and 
 the self-contained feelings of a bachelor, are 
 growing stronger with you day by day, and even 
 a wife whom you loved would hardly be able to 
 make home agreeable to you. And this is all 
 my fault, Laurence — my fault !" 
 
 "This is not fair, Emily," said Mr. Des- 
 mond, almost sternly. "When I lament the 
 restraints of my position, it will be time for 
 you to reproach yourself on my account, and 
 not till then. Pray let us be reasonable. When 
 you and Harold Jerningham parted for ever, it
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 199 
 
 was agreed between us that we should be 
 friends, and friends only, so long as your hus- 
 band's life should last. He is so many years 
 our senior, that it is not possible for us to 
 ignore the fact that in all likelihood the day 
 will come when you and I can be united by a 
 sweeter tie than that of friendship. If there 
 be a sin involved in looking forward to that 
 day hopefully, but not impatiently — I have 
 been guilty of that sin ; but I have been guilty 
 of no other wrong against the man who bears 
 your name. God knows, and you know, that I 
 have been true to oui- compact. I have been 
 your friend, and nothing but your friend. No 
 shadow of a lover's caprice, no touch of a lover's 
 jealousy, has ever clouded our friendship. It 
 has been the one bright oasis in the desert of 
 an anxious and laborious life. And if you think 
 that the treasure is unvalued by me because I 
 do not spend three days a week in the delicious 
 idleness of this garden, or because I do not 
 waste aU my evenings in your drawing-room, 
 you are only a new example of the ignorance
 
 200 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 which obtains among your class with regard to 
 the necessities of a working life." 
 
 Mrs. Jerningham's face brightened consider- 
 ably while Mr. Desmond was speaking. It was 
 a fine patrician face, with the bloom of youth 
 still upon it, in spite of the lady's nine-and- 
 twenty years' residence in this planet. She 
 turned to Mr. Desmond with a smile, and held 
 out her hand. 
 
 " Shake hands, Laurence, and forgive me," 
 she said, gently. It was part of their covenant 
 that they should be at liberty to address each 
 other by their Christian names, but that none 
 of the epithets sacred to the use of lovers should 
 ever obtain currency between them. 
 
 " And you are really not tired of your j)osi- 
 tion?" said Mrs. Jerningham, with a j)leading 
 smile. 
 
 ''Have I ever hinted a complaint?" 
 
 '' No, Laurence. But then you are not the 
 kind of person to complain. You would be 
 like that dreadful Spartan boy one never hears 
 the last of: you would hide the animal — why
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 201 
 
 do some people call it a wolf, and others a fox, 
 by the bye ? — under your waistcoat, and go 
 about the world smiling the smile of martyr- 
 dom. I am so afraid of doing you a gi'eat 
 wrong. Poets and novelists are always preach- 
 ing about a woman's unselfishness ; but I really 
 think that is one of the formulas of their art. 
 Have I not sho^n myself very selfish, Lau- 
 rence ? I allowed my foolish eyes to be dazzled 
 by that Dead- Sea fruit which the world calls a 
 si)lendid marriage ; and having bitten the apple 
 and found the bitterness of its core, I share the 
 ashes with you." 
 
 " I am very well content with the ashes." 
 
 '^ Some day you will be tired of your bondage." 
 
 "When that day comes, I will ask you for 
 my freedom." 
 
 " Will you promise me that, Laurence ?" 
 
 "With all my heart." 
 
 "In that case I am quite hapi^y," answered 
 the lady, eagerly. " And you really do not wish 
 to claim your freedom immediately, Laurence?" 
 
 " Neither immediately nor in the remote
 
 202 DEAD -SEA FRUIT. 
 
 future. If Mr. Jerningham should live to be a 
 hundred years of age, at which period I should 
 be eighty, the bachelor habits which you repro- 
 bate may perhaps have taken complete posses- 
 sion of me ; but as Mr. Jerningham is not the 
 kind of man whose life would be taken on the 
 most reasonable terms by the Norwich Union 
 or the European, I can afford to place my faith 
 in time." 
 
 "Laurence, there is something so horrible 
 in this calculation." 
 
 " I do not calculate ; I wait. And now let 
 us talk of something else. You have not asked 
 me any of your usual questions about the toi- 
 lettes at Marble Hill." 
 
 " I don't want to know anything about them," 
 replied Mrs. Jerningham, frigidly. 
 
 Mr. Desmond winced. A man's intellect, 
 however acute, is rarely equal to the exigences 
 of feminine society. The chatelaine of Marble 
 Hill happened to be one of those matrons who 
 cannot bring themselves to think well of any 
 woman living apart from her husband. Emily
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 203 
 
 Jerningham's name had been wont to figure in 
 the lady's visiting-list, and had vanished there- 
 from immediately after the estabhshment of 
 the villa at Hampton. 
 
 " The fete was rather a dull affair," said Mr. 
 Desmond, presently, with that clumsy hypocrisy 
 which is the male creature's best substitute for 
 tact. 
 
 "What did Lady Laura Paunceford wear ? " 
 asked Mrs. Jerningham, with feminine incon- 
 sistency. 
 
 " Oh, some wonderful costume of blue, very 
 cloudy and voluminous, like the dress of a god- 
 dess in one of Sir Godfi'ey Kneller's ceilings. 
 I believe she wore something that was intended 
 for a bonnet — a blue gauze butterfly, skewered 
 to her head by silver arrows." 
 
 "Did she look well?" 
 
 "By no means ; she is not a daylight 
 beauty." 
 
 " And Miss Fitzormond ? " 
 
 "Miss Fitzormond' s dress was absolutely 
 dowdy. A new style, Mrs. Castlemaine told
 
 204 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 me ; the last rage in Paris ; and supposed to 
 have been developed from the fair Eugenie's 
 inner consciousness. It is rather hard upon 
 the Empress that she should he accredited with 
 every atrocity invented by the enterprising mil- 
 liners of the Fauburg St. Honore." 
 
 *'What was the dress?" Mrs. Jerningham 
 demanded, languidly. 
 
 *' Something mauve, festooned with steel 
 chains and spikes ; Miss Fitzormond looked 
 like a mauve prisoner escaped from Newgate." 
 " Were there many pretty women at the 
 fete ? No ; you needn't answer me. Of course 
 you will declare that you found yourself amidst 
 an assemblage of Gorgons. Men are so fearful 
 of wounding a woman's vanity, that they rarely 
 remember she may by some possibility possess 
 a grain or two of common-sense. Let us go to the 
 dining-room. It is time for luncheon, and I 
 da^e say my aunt has been sending skirmishers 
 out to look for me." 
 
 " There is a parcel of books and music at the 
 station. Will you send for it ? "
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 205 
 
 " With delight. How good of you to bring 
 me more new books ! " 
 
 " Are you prepared to stand a competitive 
 examination in the last I brought j^ou ? " 
 
 " Better than you in the works of the authors 
 you have lately annihilated, Mr. Editor and 
 Reviewer." 
 
 On this they went back to the house, where 
 they were received by the most amiable of 
 dragons, dressed in dove-coloured silk, and a 
 pale-blue morning-cap, which made middle age 
 a state for youth to env}\ The luncheon, in 
 common with all the surroundings of Harold 
 Jerningham's wife, was perfection. The spirit 
 of the elegant Harold himself pervaded this 
 house, across the threshold whereof his foot 
 had never passed. It was Mr. Jerningham's 
 pet architect who had restored the miniature 
 mansion, and Mr. Jerningham's favourite up- 
 holsterer who had decorated and furnished the 
 interior. When Mrs. Jerningham wanted a 
 new servant, it was Mr. Jerningham's steward 
 who supplied the vacancy in her well-organized
 
 206 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 establishment. Life had been made very easy 
 for her since her separation from her husband 
 — a little too easy, perhaps ; for a woman who 
 has none of the ordinary cares of her sex is 
 apt to create troubles of her own. 
 
 People who wondered and speculated about 
 the separation were often surprised to hear Mr. 
 Jerningham say : "I have bought that picture 
 for my wife; " or, '' I am looking for a safe 
 pony-phaeton for my wife ; " or, "I want to 
 find a good binder for some books of my 
 wife's." He took pains to let the world know 
 that he was on excellent terms with the lady in 
 the toy-villa ; and this certificate of character 
 had served Emily Jerningham in good stead. 
 Her husband's diplomacy might have kept even 
 the sacred portals of such houses as Marble 
 Hill open to her, if Mr. Desmond had not been 
 quite so frequent a visitor at her house. But 
 the world is slow to believe in a Platonic at- 
 tachment, and it is not to be denied that the 
 friendship of Laurence Desmond had cost Mrs. 
 Jerningham a certain price.
 
 THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON. 207 
 
 Nor was that friendship altogether pleasant 
 to her. The conversation of this morning was 
 only a variation upon a very familiar theme. 
 Again and again Mr. Desmond had been called 
 upon to listen to the same complaints, and to 
 dispel the same doubts. There were times 
 when he was very conscious of the pain and 
 weariness involved in this state of things. 
 There were times when a still, small voice 
 within him echoed Emily Jerningham's wish 
 that they had never met in the hosj^ital at 
 Bundersbad, never renewed the friendship so 
 near akin to love, never interchanged those 
 foolish, sentimental letters which had caused 
 the separation of Harold and his wife. It 
 seemed such a weak, fiivolous, despicable piece 
 of wrong-doing, now that it was done, and had 
 exercised a lifelong influence upon the destinies 
 of three people. 
 
 K Mrs. Jerningham was doubtful and sus- 
 picious of Mr. Desmond, he, on his part, was 
 not entirely at his ease about her. Was she 
 happy ? He asked himself that question very
 
 208 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 often, and the answer was not always pleasant 
 to him. 
 
 " No real happiness ever came of wrong- 
 doing," he said to himself; "we did wrong, 
 and we are paying the price of our folly." 
 
 It was only to himself that Mr. Desmond 
 ever said so much as this. To Emily Jer- 
 ningham he was always the same — an atten- 
 tive and respectful friend — patient, chivalrous, 
 and self-sacrificing as a social Bayard ; but 
 not to be beguiled from the duties of his 
 professional position, even by the claims of 
 friendship.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 " j'aIME : IL FAUT QUE j'eSPERE." 
 
 Eustace Thorburn found existence altogether 
 a new kind of thing at the old house amongst 
 the Berkshire woods. His sorrow for the death 
 of his mother was no transient shadow, to be 
 dispelled by the first bright gUmpse of sunlight 
 that fell across his pathway. It was a deep 
 and enduring sorrow ; but it was a grief which 
 held a fixed place in his mind, apart from the 
 common joys and vexations of life. All through 
 those bright summer days the young man showed 
 himself a cheerful companion, an enthusiastic 
 student, a wilHng and devoted worker ; and it 
 was only by his mourning dress that those 
 amongst whom he lived were reminded of his 
 recent loss. But every night, in the stiUness 
 of his own room, the familiar agony came back 
 to his breast ; memory and imagination travelled 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 again upon the beaten track ; and he thought 
 of his mother's joyless womanhood and lonely 
 death with a pain as bitter as that which he 
 had felt when he stood beside her newly made 
 grave. 
 
 Such things as these are not to be forgotten. 
 Are they not the "pathetic minor" which un- 
 derlies all the harmonies of earth, heard more 
 or less distinctly, but silent never ? 
 
 The one clue which his mother's letter af- 
 forded had been sedulously followed up by 
 Eustace. The stranger calling himself Hard- 
 wick was the writer of a book first published in 
 the year '43 ; and a book of some repute, as 
 the young man gathered from the letters of his 
 unknown father. Eustace had Mrs. Willows' 
 authority for the fact that the book was some 
 kind of novel or romance ; and acting upon this 
 information, he devoted himself for three con- 
 secutive days to an examination of the critical 
 magazines and periodicals of that year in the 
 reading-room of the British Museum. 
 
 The result of his labours was not particularly
 
 <i 
 
 j'aIME : IL FAUT QUE j'eSPERE." 211 
 
 satisfactory. So many romances published 
 within the year were spoken of as the best 
 novels of the season, or as works bearing the 
 seal of genius, or as the promise of greater 
 things from the matured mind of the writer, 
 that it needed much sifting of all this chaff be- 
 fore the amount of genuine wheat contained 
 therein could be faii'ly estimated. But at last, 
 after a careful study of the Literary Gazette 
 and Athenceum, the quarterlies and monthies, 
 Eustace Thorburn selected, from a long list of 
 brilliant successes and best novels of the season, 
 three books, each of which seemed to bear 
 upon it the stamp of something greater than 
 amiable mediocrity. 
 
 These are the titles of the three books which 
 Eustace Thorburn selected, after having read 
 them carefully and thoughtfully : 
 
 1. Dion : a Confession. 
 
 2. Latimer's Sister : a Story. By Marcus 
 Anderton. 
 
 3. The Spectre of Walden : a Komance. By 
 G. G. G.
 
 212 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 Of these three, Dion was the most singular ; 
 Latimer'' s Sister the most tender ; The Spectre 
 the most poetical. Any one of these books 
 might have exercised a powerful effect upon the 
 mind of a sentimental woman. That they were 
 all three written by men, and by young men, 
 Eustace entertained no doubt. He did not, in- 
 deed, trust entirely to his own judgment ; for 
 he enlisted the services of his Uncle Dan, and 
 induced that practised reviewer to read the 
 three books. 
 
 " All masculine work ! " cried Mr. Mayfield. 
 " No woman could have written Latimer's Sister 
 without telling us when the young lady who 
 figures as the heroine wore blue silk, or how 
 lovely she looked in pink tarlatane. The Spectre 
 is a translation from the German. No English- 
 man would have been as simple and true to 
 nature in his peasant-life ; and I recognize un- 
 translatable German compounds in my friend's 
 phraseology. The book which indicates power, 
 and even genius, is Dion. I have a sort of 
 hazy recollection of hearing that book talked
 
 "j'aime: il faut que j'espeee." 213 
 
 about when I was a young man, and of hearing 
 that it was written by some sprig of quality. 
 In my opinion, Eustace, that story of Dion is 
 the kind of book to fascinate a giri." 
 
 "It is so morbid, so gloomy." 
 
 " Gloom is the very thing a girl loves, espe- 
 cially when it is the gloom of the storm-cloud 
 — passion, and anguish, and so on. Depend 
 upon it, my dear lad, Dion is the book that man 
 wrote — the book your mother was reading in the 
 unlucky hour in which he first saw her face." 
 
 '' I am inclined to believe that you are right. 
 Uncle Dan," Eustace answered, thoughtfully. 
 "It is evidently the work of a scholar." 
 
 "Yes, but of a very young scholar. The 
 learning is there, but in a crude, half-digested 
 state. The pages bristle "svith fragments of old- 
 world wisdom. The wisdom does not underlie 
 the whole, it is not interwoven with the very 
 fabric of the book, as in the work of a matm-e 
 mind. There is passion and poetry, — a hazy 
 kind of poetry, but with a certain fascination 
 and grace of its own, — the poetry of a man
 
 214 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 who has never written for bread, or been troubled 
 by uncertainties about his dinner. That part- 
 ing with the girl Una is very j^retty ; and the 
 dream in the ruined manor-house has a weird 
 power. One almost feels the cold winds blow- 
 ing through the windows that will not shut ; 
 one almost sees the midnight shadows of ash 
 and poplar lying black on the moss-grown flags 
 of the quadrangle, and all the nakedness and 
 desolation of the place. Yes, Eustace, there is 
 the glamour of youth and poetry upon Dioii ; I 
 should not wonder if the man who wrote that book 
 were the man who won your mother's heart." 
 
 Daniel Mayfield spoke with an air of convic- 
 tion that had considerable influence upon his 
 nephew. He went back to the reviews of Dion, 
 in the hope of finding some clue to the writer 
 in the opinions and speculations of the reviewers. 
 
 In this he was disappointed. The reviewers 
 told him no more than his Uncle Dan had told 
 him. They judged the writer as Mr. Mayfield 
 had judged him, from the evidence of the book ; 
 they had evidently no knowledge outside the
 
 *'j'aime: il faut que j'espere." 215 
 
 book. The mystery of anonymous iDublication 
 had been religiously preserved, and as the book 
 had created some sensation at the time of its 
 appearance, there had been considerable specu- 
 lation as to the individuality of the wiiter. 
 
 The result of all this speculation was limited 
 to the following deductions : 
 
 1st. The wi'iter of the book was a young 
 man who had gone through the usual curri- 
 culum of a university education. 
 
 2nd. The style and manner of thinking were 
 eminently Oxonian. 
 
 3rd. The writer was well acquainted with 
 Continental life. 
 
 4th. He was as familiar with German litera- 
 ture as with the classics. 
 
 5th. His j)i'oclivities were aristocratic ; his 
 contempt for the masses supreme and undis- 
 guised. 
 
 6th. His philosophy was Epicurean ; his 
 gods the graceful divinities of Greece; his 
 nature sensuous, selfish, but not altogether 
 base. He was an ardent worshipper of the
 
 216 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 beautiful. He thirsted for woman's love, — the 
 pure, the true ; but it was the purity and truth 
 of earth's primaeval freedom for which he lan- 
 guished, rather than the divine sentiment 
 allowed by Christian rule. 
 
 Upon these points the reviewers were strong, 
 and they had sufficient justification for their 
 opinion. The book was pervaded by the per- 
 sonality of the writer. It was indeed a con- 
 fession, an autobiographical record, in which 
 the events and circumstances of actual life were 
 doubtless altered and disguised, but a record 
 which laid bare the heart and mind of the 
 man. 
 
 Eustace read the book at the British Museum, 
 and persuaded his uncle to read it at the same 
 place. He tried to obtain a copy of the story ; 
 but Dion had long been out of print. The 
 booksellers had only the faintest recollection of 
 a^ book of that name, and of the fact that it 
 had created some slight stir during the brief 
 season of its popularity. 
 
 "I'll get you a copy of the book, sooner or
 
 **j'aime: il faut que j'espere." 217 
 
 later, if your heart is set upon it, lad," said 
 Daniel Mayfield. "You know what a habitual 
 book-stall lounger I am, and how many times I 
 have had my pocket picked while I have been 
 dipping into one of the Neo-Platonists, or an 
 Amsterdam edition of Hysminias and Hysmine, 
 before a second-hand bookseller's emporium. 
 Dion is just the sort of book to figure in a 
 bookseller's box of odd volumes — ' All these at 
 twopence,' — and, depend upon it, I shall meet 
 with the gentleman some day. I know a man 
 who is very clever at picking up any out-of-the- 
 way book I happen to want; and if you wish it, 
 I'll set him to work." 
 
 " I shall be very glad if you do ; I would 
 willingly give a guinea for that book." 
 
 " I'll get it you for half the money ; but I 
 wish to heaven you would abandon all specu- 
 lations about this man, who, after all, may not 
 be the author of Dion.'" 
 
 " That I shall never do while my brain has 
 power to speculate ; so let us say no more 
 about that, Uncle Dan."
 
 218 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 It was rather late in the autumn when 
 Eustace Thorburn made his researches at the 
 British Museum. He obtained a few days' 
 holiday from his employer, and shared his 
 Uncle Daniel's lodgings in Great Ormond 
 Street, — big rooms that had once been very 
 grand and noble, and which, even now, had a 
 pleasant airy aspect, and some remains of old- 
 world splendour. 
 
 The *'few days " stretched themselves into a 
 week before the young man had completed his 
 studies, but at the end of the week he bade his 
 kinsman good-bye, and went back to Berkshire, 
 in no wise sorry to return to the park and 
 forest, the winding river and odorous flower- 
 garden of his new home. 
 
 In no wise sorry ? Could there be gladness 
 more complete than that which filled his breast 
 as he returned to the house he had learned to 
 think of as a home ? 
 
 " M. de Bergerac's book will be finished by 
 and by, and he will have no further need of my 
 services," thought the returning traveller, as
 
 "j'aime: il faut que j'espere." 219 
 
 the sober goddess of common-sense projected 
 lier dark shadow athwaii; the sunlit realms of 
 fancy. " I shall have to bid farewell to these 
 new friends, and begin the world once more 
 among strangers. I suppose that will be the 
 story of my life. I may find friends ; I may 
 attach myself to a stranger's house, until I 
 almost fancy I have kindred and a home, like 
 the rest of mankind ; and then, just when I am 
 happiest, my foolish dream will end all at once, 
 and I shall have to begin life again. Oh, let me 
 be patient when the trial comes ! My life can 
 never be so sad and dreary as hers was." 
 
 Fui*ther reflection developed consoling ideas 
 that brought back a happy smile to the tra- 
 veller's lips. 
 
 " The History of Superstition will not be 
 finished for many a long year at its present 
 rate of progress," he said to himself. " I 
 could wish for nothing better than to live for 
 ever at the bailiff's cottage, working for the 
 kindest of employers." 
 
 He could not, indeed, imagine any state of
 
 220 
 
 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 happiness more perfect than that which he en- 
 joyed in Theodore de Bergerac's quiet home, 
 after all due reservation had been made for 
 that secret sorrow which was not altogether to 
 be put away from his mind, even when his 
 surroundings were brightest. 
 
 Life at Greenlands was very quiet. The 
 scholar and his daughter were a modern Pro- 
 spero and Miranda, with trim maid-servants to 
 wait upon them instead of Caliban ; and the 
 new Miranda's life was not much less lonely 
 than that of her prototype on the enchanted 
 isle. Mademoiselle de Bergerac had very few 
 friends and no acquaintance. She had never 
 been to school, and she had scarcely heard the 
 names of those pleasures and excitements which 
 are the necessities of fashionable damsels. 
 To take tea with the curate's daughters, under 
 the walnut-trees in the prettiest corner of the 
 lawn, was a delightful festivity; to picnic at 
 Burnham Beeches with her father and two or 
 three chosen friends was a matter of almost 
 bewildering excitement ; to creep along by the
 
 a t' 
 
 j'AiarE : IL FAUT QUE j'espere." 221 
 
 willowy margin of the river in her own light 
 skiff, while her father sat in the stern reciting 
 some of Victor Hugo's noblest verses for her 
 edification, was a quiet rapture above and 
 beyond all those unknown pleasures of whose 
 existence she was vaguely conscious. 
 
 Never was maiden better pleased with her 
 own life and her own surroundings than Helen 
 de Bergerac. She had the Gallic vivacity of 
 disposition, the sanguine, romantic temperament 
 of the Celt. She adored her father, and adored 
 the fair English country, and the river, and her 
 dog, and Greenlands ; and it was only some- 
 times, in a tender reverie, that she pictured 
 to herself sunnier lands, — the vineyards of 
 Provence, the towers and steeples of Norman 
 cities, the broad blue waters of the Seine, 
 broken by islets of tender green, and curving 
 like a silver bow, by valley and woodland, 
 chalky cliff and quaint nestling town, gray rock 
 and mediaeval castle, half-fortress, half-chateau. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Bergerac thought of this 
 romantic land sometimes, and sighed for a
 
 222 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 state of things that might bring about her 
 father's return to his native country. For the 
 exiled family she entertained a sentiment that 
 was akin to adoration, confounding all distinc- 
 tion between famille ainee and famille cadette; 
 and beholding in the quiet country gentlemen 
 of Twickenham and Bushey the direct descend- 
 ants of that bold warrior whose white plume 
 flashed like a star athwart the serried ranks at 
 Fontenoy. 
 
 But second only to her affection for that 
 country whereof she knew so little, and which 
 must always be more or less a dreamland 
 for her, was Mademoiselle de Bergerac's affec- 
 tion for Berkshire, the land of her birth, the 
 pastoral scene amidst which there was one 
 corner, one quiet grave in a village churchyard 
 — a grave above which there bloomed roses 
 more beautiful than common flowers growing 
 in common gardens — that must for ever make 
 this one spot holier in her eyes than all other 
 regions of this lower world. To keep her 
 father's house, to supply in some measure the
 
 "j'aime: il faut que j'espeee." 223 
 
 place of that dear companion who was lost to 
 him, to sustain the student's ambition, and to 
 watch the scholar's health, meting out the mid- 
 night oil, and restraining the too eager spirit 
 in the interests of the ill-used flesh, — in these 
 things was comprised the desire of Helen de 
 Bergerac's heart and mind. 
 
 She received her father's secretary with a 
 most delightful cordiality, accepting this new 
 member of the family with a grace as easy as 
 if he had been some long-absent brother or 
 cousin come from beyond seas to take his place 
 in the household. Prudery and affectation were 
 unknown to this sylvan damsel. She found it 
 rather agreeable than otherwise to have a well- 
 bred, well-informed young man in attendance 
 upon her when she inspected her garden, or 
 supervised the arrangement of a rustic banquet 
 under the chestnuts on the lawn. She found 
 it agreeable to be assisted in her reading by 
 some one whose time was less occupied, and 
 whose erudition was less alarming than her 
 father's. She found it pleasant to have a
 
 224 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 friend who went to the extremest lengths in the 
 worship of Beethoven and Weber, — a friend 
 who could discourse most eloquently of Hugo 
 and Shakespeare, Bulwer and Gothe, Balzac 
 and Thackeray, while her father dozed in the 
 quiet summer twilights, wearied out by his 
 long day's labour, — a friend who seemed, 
 strange to say, always intensely interested in 
 every subject that happened to interest her, — 
 a knight-errant who, living perchance in a 
 prosaic century, was fain to demonstrate his 
 devotion by the clipping of faded rose-leaves, 
 and the hunting out of recondite islands and 
 promontories in the classic atlas, — a friend 
 who, by some unerring instinct, contrived 
 always to do and say precisely what she wished, 
 — a friend who was always the right man in 
 the right place. 
 
 " I don't know how it is, but it seems to me 
 that I am always right," remarked the young 
 Duchess of Burgundy with charming naivete ; 
 and Mademoiselle de Bergerac on more than 
 one occasion gave utterance to observations
 
 ''j'aime: il faut que j'espere." 225 
 
 quite as naif on the subject of her new ac- 
 quaintance. 
 
 " I really cannot tell how it is Mr. Thor- 
 burn always contrives to make himself so 
 agreeable, papa," she said. 
 
 The simple-hearted book-worm was no less 
 blind than his daughter, 
 
 " I am glad you like him, my love," he replied, 
 carelessly. "I was rather afraid you might 
 object to a third person in the house. He is a 
 most admirable young man. For hunting out 
 a reference or a quotation, he is, I think, un- 
 rivalled. I only hope I shall be able to keep 
 him till my book is finished ; but that will be a 
 long time, Helen, a very long time — if I Hve to 
 finish it at all." 
 
 "Dear, dear father," murmured the girl, 
 tenderly ; and then she continued, with some 
 appearance of alarm, "Do you think Mr. Thor- 
 burn wishes to leave us ? " 
 
 " No, my dear, I have no reason to think 
 that. But he is very young, you know ; and this 
 must be a dull kind of life for a young man." 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 " And yet I am sure Mr. Thorburn is not 
 unhappy. He had only just lost his mother, 
 you know, when he came to us ; and of course 
 the memory of that loss makes him thoughtful 
 and melancholy sometimes. But I am sure he 
 is quite content to lead our quiet life, papa, 
 and that he takes a very deep interest in your 
 book. He told me the other day that he can- 
 not venture to look forward to the end of that 
 book ; it seems to him like looking forward to 
 the end of his life." 
 
 " It is, indeed, an interesting subject, my 
 love," replied M. de Bergerac, with complacency, 
 " and an almost inexhaustible one — the his- 
 tory of superstition : a mighty record, a vast 
 survey, embracing the length and breadth of 
 this earth, from the monstrous temples of the 
 East to the classic shrines of the West — from 
 the altar of the Carthaginian ^sculapius to the 
 funeral pyre of the Scandinavian Balder. I am 
 much pleased to think the young man likes his 
 work. He is very clever." 
 
 *' Is he not clever, papa ? He wrote a little
 
 "j'aime: il faut que j'espere." 227 
 
 poem the other day, and he asked my opinion 
 of it. As if my opinion could be worth having! 
 It was charming. I do not think your favourite 
 Catullus, whom you praise so much, and yet 
 will not allow me to read, could have written 
 anything more graceful. It is full of that 
 mournful langour that there is in some of 
 Victor Hugo's minor poems, and in Longfellow's 
 — a sweet, calm sadness that pierces one's 
 heart." 
 
 " I am glad he distracts himself by the com- 
 position of verses," said the scholar. " There 
 are some who consider such a course of reading 
 as he is now engaged in dry and laborious ; 
 but to my mind there can be no better nurtui-e 
 for a poet. I trust Mr. Thorburn may achieve 
 some kind of success in the future." 
 
 '' I think he writes or studies a good deal at 
 night, after you have done with him." 
 
 " How do you know that, my dear ?" 
 
 " Through Susan, papa. She is always com- 
 plaining about the candles. You know how 
 economical she is ; and I assure you Mr. Thor-
 
 228 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 burn's consumption of candles is quite an afflic- 
 tion to her. I wonder whether the Grecian 7ne- 
 nageres were angry when their lords consumed 
 the midnight oil. Perhaps that was one of Xan- 
 tippe's grievances. I don't think Socrates could 
 have been a very agreeable husband." 
 
 " That point is open to discussion," said the 
 scholar, slyly. " We possess the sage's opinion 
 of Xantippe, but we do not possess Xantippe's 
 opinion of the sage." 
 
 The weeks and months slipped by, and the 
 fern was sear and brown in Windsor Great 
 Park and Forest, and all the woodlands of 
 Berkshire were leafless ; but Eustace Thorburn 
 showed no signs of distaste for his labours as 
 secretary and amanuensis, collator and colla- 
 borateur. He languished for no change, he 
 pined for no pleasure. His considerate em- 
 ployer had borrowed an extra horse from the 
 stables of the great house, where there was still 
 the remnant of a noble stud ; and at his sug- 
 gestion the young man took long rides in the
 
 "j'Ai^rE: IL FAUT QUE j'espere." 229 
 
 early morning, before the day's studious drudgery- 
 began. It was very pleasant to come home to 
 breakfast in the snug old-fashioned parlour, and 
 to be welcomed by Mademoiselle de Bergerac, 
 whose bright eyes grew brighter at sight of 
 some sprig of rare comb-bearing fern. Life at 
 Greenlands seemed, indeed, to be altogether an 
 existence of perfect and serene delight, only 
 overshadowed now and then by the vague con- 
 sciousness that it was too sweet to last. 
 
 ** The time will come when I shall have to 
 pack my portmanteau and bid her good-bye," 
 the young man said to himself, in moments of 
 sober meditation at night, when he sat alone in 
 his pleasant room, and some break, some stagna- 
 tion in the course of his composition brought him 
 to a stand-still; " or some one will come and 
 see her, and learn to love her as dearly as I 
 love her even ; and he will be in a j)osition to 
 say the sweet words I dare not say to her ; and 
 I shall hear the jangling village-bells some 
 misty summer morning, and she will come in 
 her white bridal dress to bid me farewell. Men
 
 230 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 have to bear such pain as that, and to bear it 
 quietly." 
 
 By these reflections it will be seen that 
 Eustace Thorburn, without fortune, friends, or 
 name, and with the ever-present consciousness 
 of the bar-sinister on his escutcheon, had pre- 
 sumed to fall in love with the only child of his 
 employer. Could he have done otherwise ? 
 " Lives there a wretch with soul so dead " as 
 to be able to inhabit the same dwelling with a 
 Helen de Bergerac for six months and not owa 
 himself her worshipper and slave ere the 
 sixth month is ended ? Eustace Thorburn had 
 surrendered himself an unresisting victim to 
 the pitiless goddess who sways the weak souls 
 of men, as her kinswoman Artemis rules the 
 tides of ocean. He had allowed himself to 
 be cradled in the shadowy arms of Fancy, 
 rocked to the sweetest sleep that was ever 
 broken by bitter waking. 
 
 ** I know that it must end in misery," he 
 said to himself; *'but it is so sweet — while it 
 lasts."
 
 "j'aime: il faut que j'espere." 331 
 
 He loved her, and he feared that his love was 
 hopeless. Simple as M. de Bergerac's life 
 might be, he bore upon him the stamp of the 
 old noblesse. He was of that nation whose 
 derniere grand dame died with Queen Marie- 
 Amelie ; and it was not to be supposed there 
 was no latent pride of birth beneath that grace- 
 ful humility of manner which rendered the exile 
 so dear to the cottagers and peasant children 
 about Greenlands. 
 
 " I think he would give his daughter to a 
 poor man," thought Eustace, when he medi- 
 tated this xiiol question : " for his soul seems 
 to me so pure and noble as to be above all con- 
 sideration of worldly wealth ; and then Helen's 
 simple habits fit her for a poor man's wife. 
 But I cannot think that he would consent to. an 
 alliance with .a man of low origin, or of un- 
 known origin, which to that proud and pure 
 mind would seem worse than the lowest, since 
 it must bear the stigma of shame." 
 
 There were times when a hope — vague but 
 exquisite — awoke in the young man's breast as
 
 232 
 
 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 he pondered on the future. If he was nameless 
 to-day, must he needs go nameless to the grave? 
 Might he not win for himself a renown that 
 would give grace and lustre to that simple 
 family name of Thorhurn, which he had seen 
 on his grandfather's tombstone ? Was it only 
 a foolish presumption, the besotted vanity of 
 a young pedant, which buoyed him up and 
 supported him in his hours of depression ? 
 Was that word Parvenir, which he had taken 
 for himself as his motto, and cherished in 
 secret as the watch-word of his life, only the 
 formula of a braggart ? Was that j)leasant land 
 of dreams, in which he was wont to take refuge 
 when the world of realities seemed dark and 
 dreary, only a fool's paradise ? 
 
 Insomuch as poetic dreams and aspirations 
 can make a man a poet, Eustace Thorburn was 
 a member of that glorious brotherhood which 
 began with Homer ; but it yet remained to be 
 shown whether he were gifted with something 
 more than the vague yearnings and lofty imagin- 
 ings of the dreamer who would fain admit the
 
 "j'aime: il faut que j'espere." 233 
 
 world within the mystic portals of his fair 
 shadowland. To think high thoughts, to di'eam 
 delicious dreams, is one thing ; hut to be able 
 to translate thought and di'eam into the eloquent 
 verse of a Byron, or the polished syllables of a 
 Tennyson, is another thing. To how many eyes 
 the Coliseum and the Adriatic, the Drachenfels 
 and the quiet field that lies beyond Ardennes, 
 may have seemed as fair as they appeared to 
 the eyes of that one lonely traveller who has 
 recorded his wanderings in words that can 
 never die ! How many brains must have been 
 crowded by grand imaginings, how many hearts 
 must have beat high with the dreamer's enthu- 
 siasm, as the youth of England have trodden 
 the ground that is hallowed by the footsteps of 
 heroes and demigods ! and yet, of all the youth 
 of England, there has been but one whose poetic 
 record of his emotions has reached a second 
 edition, and held a place in the memory of 
 mankind. Of all the men who read the rugged 
 legends of Macbeth and Lear, the Italian story 
 of Othello's passion and lago's cunning, there
 
 234 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 was only one man who could give to the crude 
 unshapely records life and form, immortal as his 
 own genius ! 
 
 Whether Eustace Thorburn jDOSsessed that 
 subtle and wondrous power of expression, that 
 mystic sympathy with the minds of his fellow- 
 men, that marvellous perception which is a 
 kind of clairvoyance, time alone could show. 
 He had his moments of proud hope, his hours 
 of abject depression; but he worked on patiently, 
 steadily, devoting more than one quiet hour of 
 every night to the composition of a narrative 
 poem — dramatic, philosophical, passionate, and 
 perhaps just a little tainted with the egotism 
 which is so common in the work of vouthful 
 genius. 
 
 Eustace Thorburn had no suspicion that the 
 hero of his poetic fiction was a shadow of him- 
 self, a projection of his own brain ; but he 
 knew that the heroine was an airy sister of 
 Helen de Bergerac, and that the love of his 
 Egbert for his Amy was very near a-ldn to his 
 own love for Helen.
 
 " j'aime : iL FAUT QUE j'espere." 235 
 
 There was no odour of the niidnight oil in 
 the poet's verses. They breathed the freshness 
 of youth, the perfume of woods and gi'oves ; 
 the harmonious lines were musical ^ith the 
 ripple of cool waters, the low sound of leafy 
 branches swaying gently in the summer wind. 
 The life which Eustace Thorburn led at Green- 
 lands was the ideal existence for which the poet 
 sighs, for which he yearns with fond imaginings, 
 pent up in the darksome city counting-house, 
 chained to the cruel wheel of distasteful labom\ 
 Nor was the Youn<? man unpjrateful to Provi- 
 dence, or to the kindly kinsman who had pro- 
 cured for him so pleasant a position. He 
 thanked God for his easy existence, his con- 
 genial labours ; and he wrote sweet, j^layful 
 letters, full of affection and gratitude, to Uncle 
 Dan, who treasm-ed those effusions, and was 
 pleased to favour his fiiends and boon-com- 
 j)anions with the recital of eloquent little bits 
 in those delightful epistles. 
 
 "What would you give to be able to write 
 like that, Tom Granger?" he said to one of his
 
 236 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 associates. " You write uncommonly well, you 
 know, dear boy, and so does John Harrington, 
 and Ted Eocliester, and Frank Dorset ; and 
 there's plenty of chic in all you do. You all 
 write uncommonly well, Tom ; j^ou can all 
 describe the things you see every day, from 
 the outside, with a certain amount of smartness ; 
 but there is no more evidence of thought in 
 your compositions than if you were so many 
 copying-machines ; and you all write so like one 
 another, that if Frank wrote page one, and Ted 
 page two, and John page three, no one but 
 themselves and the compositors who set-up 
 their copy would be any the wiser. You have 
 all got the slang of the day, and you all write 
 for the current market, and you are all wise in 
 your generation. But the day will come when 
 this boy here will show you that a writer may 
 have something more than * a knack,' and be 
 something better than a publisher's ' clever 
 hand.' " 
 
 *' I wouldn't mind giving you long odds 
 against that immaculate nephew of yours ever
 
 ^* j'aime : iL FAUT QUE j'espere." 237 
 
 writing a book that will sell," replied the incre- 
 dulous Tom, in no wise put out of countenance 
 by his Mend's exordium. " They all begin in 
 the same style, these young uns. Epic poem 
 about King Arthur, or King Alfred, or King 
 Athelstane, that is to be the Iliad of future 
 generations, — high-falutin sentiment, pure as- 
 pirations, and so on. And they write their 
 epic poems, and pass them on from one pub- 
 lisher's office to another, till the poor valueless 
 manuscripts are limp and dirty ; and then they 
 learn to adapt themselves to the requii'ements 
 of their generation, and turn into * clever hands ' 
 like you and me, Dan. They must all go 
 through the same apprenticeshijD, and ' learn 
 in suffering what they teach in song,' — ^that is 
 to say, learn in Whitecross Street what they 
 teach in the monthly magazines, unless they 
 happen to be careful souls, with snug little 
 incomes : in which case they hug their sweet 
 delusions to the last, and publish their epics at 
 their own expense. Epic poems, forsooth ! 
 Do you think the Greeks would have read
 
 238 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 Homer if they had possessed periodical litera- 
 ture ? " 
 
 " I look upon periodical literature as the 
 sworn foe to learning." 
 
 " You are not the first of dirty birds, Daniel 
 Mayfield," cried his friend, sternly ; " and now 
 for the divine Louisa." 
 
 The "divine Louisa" was Mr. Granger's 
 playful name for unlimited loo, a pastime which 
 cost Daniel Mayfield many a five-pound note in 
 the course of the year, but which he had not 
 the moral courage to forswear. He had his 
 reputation as a Bohemian, and he was too old 
 to hope for a new reputation amongst the 
 ranks of the respectable ; so he was fain to be 
 true to the brotherhood in which he had some 
 status. 
 
 " Better to be a prince among the nomad 
 tribes than a nobody among the Philistines," 
 he said to himself. " One might submit to 
 that, if the Philistines were a perfect race; but 
 when a man sees how much malice and selfish- 
 ness there may be in the Pharisees and Saddu-
 
 a t' 
 
 j'aime : iL FAUT QUE j'espere." 239 
 
 cees, he is apt to prefer the society of publicans 
 and sinners." 
 
 These were the arguments with which Daniel 
 Mayfield was wont to stifle the upbraidings of 
 conscience ; for the sinner can forgive himself 
 all his other sins more easily than the one sin 
 of a wasted life. Mr. Mayfield had his hours 
 of depression, his moments of savage bitterness ; 
 and to escape fi'om these, he fled to the scenes 
 he liked and the fi'iends he loved — the friends 
 who in some sort loved him.
 
 CHAPTEK XII. 
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 
 
 Mrs. Jerningham spent her autumn at Spa, 
 where Mrs. Colton, the amiable dragon, drank 
 the waters with the patient regularity of a vale- 
 tudinarian, and wondered at the Continental 
 toilettes with the pious wonder of a well-bred 
 provincial Englishwoman, to whom these daring 
 eccentricities of custom — these hottes a mi- 
 jamhe, en cuir de Russie, these dainty braided 
 jackets a la Rigolhoche, these robes a qiieue- 
 sans-fiuy and chapeaux a V'mfiniment petit — 
 were all so much confusion, the climax of horror 
 and infamy foreshadowed by the Prophet, the 
 abomination of desolation sitting in the high 
 places. 
 
 For Emily Jerningham, life at Spa seemed 
 a very dull business. She had no pet ailment
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 241 
 
 to be subjugated by the mineral waters. The 
 pine-woods and stately avenues were very 
 beautiful on fine summer mornings, or beneath 
 the broad glory of the harvest moon ; but she 
 had seen them before. It seemed to her as if 
 she knew every pine on the steep hill-side, 
 every branch of the lofty oaks in the valley, 
 every hard, worldly face that was to be seen in 
 the Kursaal. AVas there not something want- 
 ing in her life, a something for lack of which 
 she must needs be lonely and purposeless 
 wherever she went ? 
 
 All the pleasures and luxuries that wealth 
 can buy ; all the consideration that a good old 
 name can exact ; all the respect that a reputa- 
 tion which, despite an occasional shrug from 
 some Eochefoucauld of this generation, may 
 fairly be called stainless, can command — were 
 at the disposal of this fortunate lady, and yet 
 she was not happy. She had too much, and 
 too little. If she had been an utterly selfish 
 and narrow-minded woman, she might have 
 found the perfection of bHss in splendid toilettes 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 DEAD-SEA FKUIT. 
 
 and well-appointed equipages, an elegant house 
 and distinguished acquaintance ; but some- 
 thing more than these was necessary to com- 
 plete the sum of Mrs. Jerningham's happiness. 
 "Of what use am I in the world?" she 
 asked herself, wearily, as she drove her graceful 
 pony-carriage through the crowd which admired 
 and envied her. " I am an expense to my 
 husband ; a burden and a restraint for Lau- 
 rence, who no doubt would have married before 
 this, if it were not for me ; and a weariness to 
 myself." 
 
 Perhaps this unspoken lament might have 
 been translated thus ; 
 
 " I have been here a month, and Mr. Des- 
 mond has not found time to come to me. He 
 writes me a hurried letter once in ten days, in 
 which, under an unlimited amount of respect, 
 I perceive the lurking poison of indifference ; 
 and I am too proud to tell him how intensely I 
 wish to see him, too proud to confess even 
 to myself the pain I suffer because of his 
 absence."
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MOKSTEE. 243 
 
 In bidding adieu to Mrs. Jerningham and 
 lier companion at the London Bridge station on 
 the morning of their departure, the editor of the 
 Areopagus had declared that, if he could give 
 himself a holiday, he would take that holiday 
 at Spa; and the eyes of the younger lady had 
 said *' Do !" and the proud line of her lips had 
 softened into a grateful smile. 
 
 " We shall exjDect to see you, Mr. Desmond,'* 
 she said, at the very last, when he had brought 
 her Punch and a damp copy of the newly issued 
 Areopagus. Ah, how many a youthful scrib- 
 bler's ardour has been damped by those cold 
 clammy papers, deadly chill as the skin of the 
 cobra, and venomous as his sting ! 
 
 "We shall expect • to see you — soon," re- 
 peated the lady, with that pretty air of insis- 
 tance which is so charming in an elegant 
 woman. 
 
 " But, my dear Mrs. Jerningham, I did not 
 say I would come. I said, I will come, if I can 
 get a hoHday." 
 
 "As if any one could refuse you a holiday !
 
 244 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 But I will not allow the arrangement to be left 
 in that vague manner. Shall we see you in a 
 week?" 
 
 *' I fear not." 
 
 '^n a fortnight?" 
 
 " I scarcely like to promise anything till this 
 month is over. There are so many rows on 
 the political tapis ; and we are bound to go in 
 for an analysis of all the rows. And there is 
 Cumberland's fourteenth volume of *' Catha- 
 rine II.;" that is a book I am pledged to 
 review myself." 
 
 *' Pledged to the author ?" 
 
 " No ; to the publisher. Do you think any- 
 one on the Areopagus ever writes a review to 
 oblige an author ? I think, in three weeks, I 
 may be free ; and if " 
 
 '* Oh, pray do not imperil the fortunes of the 
 Areopagus for any caprice of mine ! I am sure 
 I should be immensely distressed if my plea- 
 sure interfered with the prompt notice of Mr. 
 Cumberland's 'Catharine,' " cried Mrs. Jer- 
 ningham, with supreme hauteur, and with the
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 245 
 
 injiu'ed air of a woman who thinks your regard 
 for her must be very small, if at her behest you 
 refuse to jeopardize a paltry newspaper which 
 cost only twenty thousand pounds or so to 
 establish, or the reputation of a trumpery 
 author, who has only given the labour of a 
 lifetime to his absurd book. 
 
 The Dover express moved away before Mr. 
 Desmond could reply to the lady's angry 
 speech, and left him standing on the platform, 
 with a smile, that was half-sad, half-c}Tiical, 
 upon his face. 
 
 " They are all alike," he said to himself; 
 " beautiful, delightful, unreasonable, and pro- 
 foundly selfish. How well that tone of grande 
 dame becomes her ! How lovely she looked 
 just now, with that crimson flush of wounded 
 pride, and that angry light in her eyes ! What 
 a pity it is that a woman cannot believe in the 
 regard of a man who is not ready to behave 
 like an idiot in all the affairs of life for her 
 pleasure ! ' You pretend that you love me,' 
 cries offended Beauty, ' and yet you won't for-
 
 246 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 feit a colonelcy in the Life Guards in order to 
 attend me to a garden-party at Miss Burdett 
 Coutts's ! You declare that you adore me, and 
 yet refuse to make a bonfire of your father's 
 family-seat for my amusement !' " 
 
 Mr. Desmond's mind was not altogether in 
 his work that day, and more than once the 
 remorseless pen of the editor lay idle in his 
 hand, while he pondered on a subject which 
 within the last year had become the unan- 
 swerable enigma of his existence. It was much 
 easier for him to soothe Emily's doubts with 
 pretty, reassuring speeches than to satisfy the 
 perplexities of his own mind. 
 
 Was this lukewarm friendship an alliance 
 that good men and pure-minded women could 
 approve — this friendship which must needs be 
 continually measured by the thermometer of 
 -the proprieties, lest it should become a degree 
 or so warmer than society could warrant ? 
 Was it a fair and honourable thing, this tacit 
 engagement, the fulfilment whereof was con- 
 tingent on the death of a man whose hand
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 247 
 
 Laurence had taken in frienclsliip many times 
 in the past, whom he might meet with friendly 
 greeting to-morrow ? No, a thousand times 
 no ! Laurence Desmond was well aware that 
 he occupied one of those false positions into 
 which men sometimes slip unawares, and from 
 which extrication is so difficult. 
 
 Could he bring himself to tell Emily Jer- 
 ningham that this friendship was wi'ong, and 
 that it lacked even the charm that sweetens 
 some wrong-doing? Could he do this, could 
 he inflict pain upon her, when his own con- 
 science told him that the keen sense of the 
 dishonour involved in his position had only 
 arisen in his mind since the position itself had 
 become wearisome to him ? 
 
 Yes, this was the mot de Venigme. He had 
 loved her very dearly ; but he loved her no 
 longer. He looked backward to the days in 
 which he had walked with her in the little 
 garden at Passy, and thought how happy they 
 might both have been if he had been less pru- 
 dent, if he had obeyed the impulses of his
 
 248 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 heart, instead of the hard axioms of the 
 worldly-wise. The time and the opportunity 
 were past and gone, and he felt that some part 
 of his own youth and hope had gone with 
 them. 
 
 He made his appearance at Spa when Mrs. 
 Jerningham and Mrs. Colton had been at that 
 pleasant watering-place for more than a month, 
 and he was received somewhat coldly by the 
 younger lady, who could not forgive him for 
 doing his duty as editor of the Areopagus, But 
 she soon melted. It was not possible that she 
 should long conceal the delight she felt in his 
 presence. 
 
 " I am angry with myself for being so glad 
 to see you," she cried at last ; " but, oh, j^ou 
 cannot imagine how dull and hopeless my life 
 has been in this place ! My poor aunt likes 
 the humdrum gaiety, and the nauseous waters, 
 and the dawdling drives, and the Tauchnitz 
 novels ; and I have stayed to please her. But 
 more than once I have been tempted to take the 
 train for Liege, and offer myself as a novice at
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 249 
 
 the first convent I came to after leaving the 
 station. Why should I not go into a convent, 
 or at least a beguinage ? What use am I in 
 the world?" 
 
 Hereupon Mr. Desmond had to reiterate the 
 old protestations, to the effect that the lady's 
 friendship was the pride and happiness of his 
 life, and that to him, at least, she was a person 
 of supreme importance — the very pole-star, or 
 guiding influence, of his life ; and then, after 
 speaking to her with great warmth and kind- 
 ness, he began to lecture her a httle upon the 
 emptiness of her existence. 
 
 "You would not be so foolish as to imagine 
 these things, if joii were more employed, 
 Emily," he said. 
 
 "How shall I employ myself?" asked the 
 lady, with an incredulous laugh. " Shall I 
 tat ? The tatting of our great -grandmothers 
 has come into fashion. I have tried it, and 
 for a little while it seemed really delightful ; 
 but there is a time when one gets tired even of 
 that. I have worked screens in Berlin wool
 
 
 250 
 
 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 with beads — or have begun them ; my aunt has 
 a knack of finishing my work. I paint ever 
 so little in water-colours ; but after sitting in a 
 damp meadow for two or three hours, exposed 
 to a midsummer sun, the result is only that I 
 hate myself because I am not Creswick. And 
 with music it is the same. The morning-con- 
 certs spoil one for amateur music. I devoted 
 last summer to the harmonium — I suppose 
 because there is such a rage for it ; but it was 
 like the tatting — there came a stage at which 
 it seemed all weariness. If it were not for my 
 orchids, I think I should go melancholy mad ; 
 but for the cultivator of orchids there can be 
 no such thing as satiety until all the forests on 
 the shores of the Amazon have been rifled by 
 exploring botanists." 
 
 " Don't you think it just possible you might 
 find a better source of interest even than 
 orchids ?" suggested the editor, gravely. " Your 
 fellow-creatures, for instance — a little sym- 
 pathy for them might not be thrown away." 
 
 " You mean that I should turn district-visitor,
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 251 
 
 and go about with tracts and packets of tea and 
 sugar," replied the lady, listlessly. "My aunt 
 does all that. She is a clergyman's -^idow, you 
 know, and that kind of thing is very easy to 
 her. My maid goes with her sometimes, and 
 tells me dreadful things about the poor peojDle, 
 as she brushes my hair — the St. Anthony's fires 
 and St. Vitus's dances, and wens and whitlows, 
 and frightful comj)laints that they suffer from : 
 and really there seems a particular class of 
 diseases that poor people have entu'ely to them- 
 selves, just as if they have a coi:)}T.'ight in them, 
 you know. I am sure I am very sorry for the 
 poor creatures ; and when there is anything out 
 of the common way, we send money ; besides 
 which, our rector knows that my cheque-book is 
 at his service in any emergency. I cannot see 
 that I should do any particular good by walking 
 about in the hot sun with tracts." 
 
 " I dare say, so far as your own parish goes, 
 you and your aunt are ministering angels, my 
 dear Emily ; but you see that is a very narrow 
 sphere, and there are people of a higher class
 
 252 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 than those you help who may have more need 
 of your sympathy." 
 
 " If you are going to ask me to be philan- 
 thropic, I warn you at once that it is useless," 
 exclaimed the lady, with a little cry of alarm. 
 " I have not the elements of the philanthropist. 
 I do not care the least in the world for woman's 
 rights ; and if I had the privilege of an elec- 
 tress to-morrow, I should — what do you call it ? 
 — plump unblu shingly for the man who could 
 offer me a new orchid. I do not care about 
 female printers or female doctors. I think it 
 very sad that poor seamstresses should work in 
 stuffy rooms until they fade and die ; but I can 
 only pity them, and send money to the news- 
 papers for them, or for their survivors. I have 
 not strength of mind enough to be of any prac- 
 tical use to them." 
 
 Mr. Desmond sighed. He saw no remedy 
 for the weariness of spirit from which Mrs. 
 Jerningham suffered. Did not Madame de 
 Maintenon complain of a like weariness when 
 she was the envied of all French men and
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 253 
 
 women, thereby drawing upon herself a trench- 
 ant and somewhat impious remark fi-om her 
 brother D'Aubigne ? She was happier, perhaps, 
 in the old days, before Scarron pitied and 
 married her — the days in which she did or did 
 not share the chamber of Ninon de I'Enclos. 
 
 *' I do not ask you to take up the human 
 race," said Mr. Desmond, after a pause ; "but 
 I think your life is too — pardon me if I say 
 egotistical. If you had more fi'iends — I don't 
 mean visitors ; yon have plenty of them, — but 
 intimate acquaintance — intimate enough to fly 
 to you in their perplexities, to consult you in 
 their social arrangements, and to — " 
 
 " They would only bore me." 
 
 " Perhaps ; but they would occupy you, they 
 would take you out of yourself ; and even when 
 they were dullest and most obnoxious, they 
 would give a keener zest to your hours of soli- 
 tude. Depend upon it, one must consent to be 
 bored now and then, in order to appreciate the 
 rapture of not being bored. I am sure, Emily, 
 you would be happier if you took a little more
 
 254 DEAD-SEA FKUIT. 
 
 interest in the affairs of your neighbours, or if 
 you had more people dependent on your kind- 
 ness." 
 
 " You may be right," returned the lady, list- 
 lessly ; *' but I do not care for my neighbours. 
 I cannot bring myself to sympathize with their 
 serio-comic woes about recalcitrant, butlers and 
 flaunting housemaids. Nor have I any depen- 
 dents whom my kindness could benefit. My 
 father and I were the only poor members of the 
 family, and there is no one who would care to 
 profit by my prosperity." 
 
 What could be said after this ? Laurence 
 Desmond felt that this lonely lady's life wanted 
 a something that gives form and pm-pose to the 
 lives of other women. Existence for Emily 
 Jerningham had been made too easy, and, ex- 
 tremes meeting in this as in all other cases, it 
 was fast becoming difficult. She was like some 
 dowager sultana, wearied of palace and gardens, 
 fountains and slaves, peacocks and birds of 
 paradise. All the ease and luxury of her life 
 palled on her, and that most fatal of moral
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 255 
 
 diseases, discontent, was fast gaining a hold 
 upon her mind. That old story of the greedy 
 apprentice in the pastrycook's shop is a fable of 
 wide application. The boy fancies he can never 
 be weary of an existence that is all raspberry- 
 tarts and bath-buns ; and being let loose in his 
 master's shop, makes himself bilious in a week, 
 and hates the sight of a raspberry-tart ever 
 afterwards. 
 
 There had been a time when Miss Jerning- 
 ham, sadly restricted in all the aspu'ations of 
 young-ladyhood, had believed that an open ac- 
 count with a West-end milliner, a perfectly ap- 
 pointed barouche for the Park, and a miniature 
 brougham for shopping, must constitute the 
 supreme good of earthly existence ; but after 
 half a dozen years' enjoyment of these bless- 
 ings, she discovered that the most accomplished 
 of milliners, and the most perfect of establish- 
 ments, cannot give happiness. The toy-villa 
 at Hampton was a place to dream of; but its 
 mistress found the hours intolerably long in 
 those Paradisaic gardens, the evenings unutter-
 
 250 DEAD -SEA FRUIT. 
 
 ably weary in that fairy drawing-room, the 
 drives by Bushey and Eichmond, Kingston and 
 Chertsey, very little gayer than the prisoner's 
 tramp in the grim gaol-yard, under surveillance 
 of a hard-visaged warder. 
 
 The lady had nothing to do. If she read a 
 volume of a novel, and paid a few visits, or re- 
 ceived a few callers, to-day, she could only look 
 forward to another volume, and another visit, 
 or visitor, to-morrow. The days were all alike, 
 and they left no mark behind them. When a 
 year came to an end, Mrs. Jerningham told her- 
 self that she was twelve months older than 
 when it began, and that was the sole effect the 
 passage of time could exercise upon her fate. 
 
 "It is all very well for Laurence to be happy 
 and active," she said to herself. '^He has that 
 odious Areopagus to interest him, and the hope 
 of going into parliament by and by. He is 
 getting rich, and has had the excitement of 
 earning his money. He has his social triumphs 
 and his literary successes, the friendship of 
 great men. It is always the same story. They
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 257 
 
 have ' the coui*t, camp, church ; the vessel and 
 the mart ; sword, gown, gain, glory ; ' and we 
 have only the London Library and Jaques's 
 croquet." 
 
 Mr. Desmond stayed a fortnight at Spa, and 
 then hurried back to the British Isles, being 
 " due " at a ducal palace in the Highlands — a 
 grand old chateau, romantic as a picture by 
 Gustave Dore. To say that he assured Mrs. 
 Jemingham he had not the faintest expectation 
 of deriving pleasure fi*om this visit, and that 
 he went to Scotland simply because the political 
 interests of the Areopagus obliged him to stalk 
 the duke's deer and shoot the duke's grouse, is 
 only to say that he was a man. 
 
 Within a week from his depai*ture Mrs. 
 Jerningham and her companion also turned 
 then* backs upon the romantic Belgian valley. 
 Emily would have liked much to make the 
 return journey under the escort of the editor ; 
 but this would have just a little outstepped 
 the bounds of this carefully regulated friend- 
 ship, and Mr. Desmond was too profoundly 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 versed in the philosophy of his own world to 
 suggest the measure. He knew exactly how 
 much would be permitted to himself and 
 the woman he — had loved, and still hoped to 
 marry ; and he adhered closely to the letter of 
 that unwritten law which is Society's Koran. 
 
 When autumn was fast fading into the chill 
 gray of early winter, Mr. Desmond came back 
 to town, and resumed his visits at the Hampton 
 villa, where his pleasure and his caprices were 
 studied with affectionate solicitude, but where 
 a good deal was exacted from him in return for 
 this solicitude. If Mrs. Jerningham for her 
 part paid a certain price for Laurence Des- 
 mond's friendship, so surely did he for his part 
 pay somewhat heavily for the honour and 
 privilege of the lady's regard. 
 
 In plain English, she was jealous. The 
 agony which neither " mandragora nor all the 
 drowsy syrups of the East " can lull to rest 
 was the agony that racked the soul of Emily 
 Jerningham. Little wonder that the pleasures 
 and luxuries of her life palled upon her. There
 
 THE GBEEN-EYED MONSTER. 259 
 
 was a poison in her cup which flavoured every 
 joy and embittered every pleasure. All the 
 petty doubts and frivolous misgivings of the 
 jealous mind harassed this lady's quiet days, 
 and tormented her through the slow hours of 
 her wakeful nights. She was miserable when 
 Laurence Desmond was away fi'om her ; she 
 was restless and anxious when he was with her. 
 If he were grave, she fancied him bored by her 
 society ; if he were especially gay, her demon- 
 familiar suggested that his gaiety might be 
 assumed. She tortured him by her eager cui'i- 
 osity about the manner in which his Hfe was 
 spent when he was away from her. She in- 
 sulted him by the air of incredulity with which 
 she received his answers. The mention of 
 some beautiful or distinguished woman whom 
 he had met in society sufficed to fan the flame 
 that was always burning. 
 
 *' Why do you pretend not to admii'e Laura 
 Courtenay, and why do you give your shoulders 
 that depreciating shrug when you talk of Lady 
 Sylvester ?" she would exclaim, with suppressed
 
 260 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 anger. '' Do you think I am deceived by that 
 kind of thing ? You dined at the Sylvesters' 
 four times last season ; and you are always 
 dancing attendance upon those Courtenay girls, 
 though you make quite a favour of coming 
 here once a week. I shall ask Laura and 
 Julia Courtenay to stay with me next summer, 
 and then perhaps I shall be honoured by your 
 society." 
 
 Of course Mr. Desmond did his uttermost to 
 satisfy the lady's doubts and cheer her spirits ; 
 but he found it not a little wearisome to repeat 
 the same protestations, the same assurances, 
 week after week, to very small effect. 
 
 " If I could see Emily contented and happy," 
 he said to himself, "■ I should be the last to 
 count the cost of our friendship ; but her tears, 
 and misgivings, and accusations harass and 
 worry me almost beyond endurance." 
 
 Nor did Mr. Desmond feel thus without 
 justification. The lady's jealousy might, in- 
 deed, be the strongest possible evidence of her 
 affection, but it was an evidence which Lau-
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 261 
 
 rence Desmond could have gladly dispensed 
 with. 
 
 *' Surely there must be within the limits 
 of possibility a love that means peace, trust, 
 unselfishness. Is every woman like Emily, 
 exacting, susjHcious, insatiable of devotion and 
 protestation, for ever on the watch to discover 
 falsehood and hypocrisy in the man who loves 
 her ? Poor giid ! I am hard and cruel perhaps, 
 when 1 blame her. These doubts and sus- 
 picions may be some of the penalties of our 
 position. There can be no true union of hearts 
 where there is a separation of existences. It 
 is aU very well to talk sentimental balderdash 
 about the union of souls, the sympathy of 
 minds that think alike, the sighs that are 
 wafted from Indus to the Pole ; but, in spite of 
 poetry and metaphysics, real union means the 
 family breakfast-table, the daily dinner, the 
 constitutional walk, the drowsy home-evening 
 when there are no visitors, the summer trip to 
 Switzerland, the quiet, half-tearful talk in the big, 
 darkened bedroom when first the faint squeal of
 
 262 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 babyhood is heard in the family mansion. Out 
 upon Platonic friendship between men and 
 women who have once knelt together at the 
 shrine of Venus ! It is a delusion, a mockery, 
 a lie ! There is no union except marriage." 
 
 This was the shape which Mr. Desmond's 
 reflections were wont to assume after a painful 
 interview with Emily Jerningham. She loved 
 him, and she would fain have believed in his 
 love, but her familiar demon would not allow 
 her so much peace, such pure delight. If 
 Laurence succeeded in convincing her of his 
 truth and devotion to-ijight, and left her at the 
 gate of her pretty garden, smiling and happy, 
 after a cordial pressure of her soft white hand, 
 it was as likely as not that an hour's solitary 
 promenade and contemplation in the same 
 pretty garden would enable the lady to develop 
 new doubts and misgivings from her inner con- 
 sciousness, which would result in a melancholy 
 letter of five or six pages, written that night, 
 and delivered next morning at Mr. Desmond's 
 late breakfast.
 
 THE GREEN-EYED MONSTER. 263 
 
 Those who knew the editor of the Areopagus^ 
 and knew or guessed his position aupres de 
 Mrs. Jerningham, envied and hated him as the 
 most fortunate of literary highflyers. What 
 more could he desire ? Had he not the regard 
 of one of the handsomest and best-bred women 
 in London, who would in all probability come 
 in for a princely fortune whenever Jerningham 
 
 I should go off the hooks ? Mr. Desmond was 
 the last of men to admit the pinching of the 
 shoe which he wore with so good a grace. No 
 one among his intimates ventured the imper- 
 tinence of a congratulation ; but it was a gene- 
 Ki rally understood thing that he was supremely 
 happy, and that Mrs. Jerningham' s friendship 
 was a blessing which he would not have bar- 
 tered for a kingdom. And while his friends 
 were permitted to suppose this, Laui'ence Des- 
 mond was profoundly miserable. 
 
 " How will it end ?" he asked himself some- 
 times ; " and will it ever end ?"
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTEK XIII. 
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 
 
 As an individual who, by arduous and unre- 
 mitting labour — by the sweat of his brow and 
 the ceaseless working of his brain — had contrived 
 to secure for himself a decent income in the 
 present and a moderate provision for the future, 
 Mr. Desmond was of course a fitting mark for 
 the arrows of that free-lance of modern civi- 
 lization — the begging-letter writer. Men and 
 women whose faces he had never seen wrote 
 him pitiful letters, or impudent letters, as the 
 case might be, urging requests which, if all or 
 even half of them had been granted, would 
 speedily have left him penniless. That he 
 should have those of his own kith or kin — that 
 he should have personal friends, or benefactors 
 of the past with powerful claims upon him in
 
 mSS ST. ALBANS. 265 
 
 the present — that he should have obligations to 
 discharge, or debts to pay, or artistic tastes to 
 gratify, never entered the heads of these poor 
 needy people. His name and address -^ere in 
 the Dii-ectory, and he was supposed to be 
 tolerably well off; so there was no more to do 
 but to procm*e a sheet of paper and a penny 
 stamp, and entreat of him the loan or donation 
 of any given number of pounds, fi'om five to a 
 hundred. 
 
 These applications were as painful to Mr. 
 Desmond as such applications must always be 
 to a man who has power to feel the extent of 
 human want and wretchedness around and 
 about him, without the power to relieve it. 
 He read the piteous letters with a sigh, and 
 passed them over to his sub-editor, who an- 
 swered every appeal with the same polite for- 
 mula. Lam'ence Desmond was not a hard 
 man, however, and to an appeal that came 
 from an old friend or fellow-worker he never 
 turned a deaf ear. 
 
 Such an appeal came to him one dull, wintry
 
 266 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 morning after his return from the ducal chateau 
 in Scotland. Among his letters there was a 
 very painful one from Mrs. Jerningham, with 
 the usual jealous murmurs, the oft-repeated 
 complaints of neglect. This he read with a 
 thoughtful brow, and laid aside with a sigh so 
 heavy as to be almost a groan. 
 
 " I am tired of protestation and justifica- 
 tion," he said to himself; *' there must be an 
 end of these letters. If she doubts my truth 
 because I spend half a dozen days without going 
 to her, she can have little power to appreciate 
 the unselfishness of my regard in the three long 
 years in which I have made myself her slave. 
 There must come an end to a bondage that is 
 intolerable to me, and only a som'ce of un- 
 happiness to her." 
 
 The rest of Mr. Desmond's letters, with one 
 exception, were on business connected with his 
 journal. This one exception was a letter ad- 
 dressed in a hand that was very familiar to him. 
 
 "My old coach, Tristram Alford!" he cried, 
 as he tore open the envelope. *' I wonder how
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 267 
 
 the poor fellow has been getting on since the 
 old days at Henley, when Max Waldon, Frank 
 Lawsley, and I were there with our boat, read- 
 ing for ' Greats.' I suppose he has been wait- 
 ing a book, or doing a translation of a Greek 
 tragedy, and wants me to give him a lift. It's 
 a long time since I've heard anything of him." 
 This was the tutor's letter : — 
 
 " My DEAR Desmond, — If I had not already 
 tested and proved the goodness of your heart 
 when I appealed to you some three or four 
 years since for a loan, — which I then hoped 
 would have been of a temporary character, but 
 which, I regret to remember, has not yet been 
 liquidated, — I should not now ventui'e to ad- 
 dress you as a suppliant. 
 
 " The favom' which I am now about to ask 
 is not of a pecuniary kind, and it is a favour 
 which will be very easy for you to gi-ant. You 
 remember my little girl Lucy, who was so fond 
 of your dogs and boats, and who used to sit 
 listening with open eyes and mouth when we
 
 268 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 were construing Sophocles. The little rogue 
 had an innate love of the drama, and performed 
 the part of Electra with a metal tea-pot in a 
 most affecting manner. Well, my dear hoy, 
 that inborn dramatic taste, which showed itself 
 when the child was in pinafores, has grown with 
 her growth ; and when old enough to consider 
 the question of getting her own living, — the 
 generous-minded child being sensitively averse 
 to remaining a burden to me, — she decided 
 on becoming an actress. 
 
 " I need scarcely inform you, my dear 
 Desmond, that such an idea was to me, at 
 the first blush, absolute horror ; but when my 
 sweet girl urged her predilection for the drama, 
 and reminded me of the handsome fortunes 
 realized byGarrick, Mrs. Siddons, Miss O'Neill, 
 and other professors of that classic art, I re- 
 lented, and allowed Lucy to have her own 
 way. The dear girl had educated herself and 
 reared herself, as it were, with so little help 
 from me, that it would have seemed ill in me 
 to frustrate her hopes by my cold reasoning or
 
 I 
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 269 
 
 timid doubts. Nor had I any very agreeable 
 alternative to offer her. My cii'cumstances 
 have year by year become more embarrassed 
 since that jDleasant summer we spent together 
 at Henley, and the home which I can provide 
 for my only child is of the poorest. Was I, 
 then, to stand in the way of her advance- 
 ment ? 
 
 " To make a long story short, I yielded, and 
 have since that time devoted my best energies 
 to my dear girl's service. She is but nineteen, 
 and has akeady appeared at the Theatres 
 Eoyal, Stony Stratford, Market Deeping, Os- 
 westry, and Stamford, with considerable suc- 
 cess. Her sympathies are with the buskin, 
 rather than with the sock ; but at Oswestry 
 she performed the part of Lady Teazle, and 
 received much applause from an ajDpreciative, 
 although somewhat limited, audience. 
 
 " We have now essayed a bolder venture. 
 My Lucy has obtained, with inordinate diffi- 
 culty, a London engagement. I had, in my 
 ignorance of the dramatic world, fondly ima-
 
 270 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 gined that a young person of unmistakeable 
 genius had only, to apply to the manager of 
 one of the patent theatres, in order to be 
 placed at once upon the boards that Siddons 
 trod. But I find, alas ! that in most cases it 
 is only after years of patient and ill-paid 
 drudgery in small provincial towns the dra- 
 matic aspirant works his or her way to the 
 metropolis, — nay, indeed, there are many who 
 never reach that splendid goal, but who journey 
 through life as the favourite actor of the 
 Theatre Eoyal, Market Deeping or Oswestry, 
 and who are not ill-pleased with their renown. 
 " But to return. My daughter's engagement 
 will be a brief one ; but she is to appear in a 
 wide range of the drama, in conjunction with 
 Mr. Henry de Mortemar, a gentleman of some 
 local celebrity, though as yet unknown to the 
 . metropolitan critics. The theatre is an obscure 
 one, and Lucy must speedily return to the 
 drudgery of a provincial stage unless some 
 powerful and friendly hand shall be interposed 
 in her behalf. Yours, my good friend, is the
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 271 
 
 influence which I would solicit for my dear 
 child. A word from you would doubtless im- 
 mediately secm-e a profitable engagement at 
 one of the West-end theatres. I beseech you, 
 for the sake of ' auld lang syne,' to say that 
 all-powerful word, and to confer a lasting obli- 
 gation on your poor old fi'iend and tutor, 
 
 *' Tristram Alford. 
 
 *' PauVs Terrace, Islington, Nov. 14, 186 — " 
 
 *' Poor Alford ! " murmured the editor, some- 
 what touched by the earnestness of this appeal. 
 "So he has allowed his daughter to go on the 
 stage, and cherishes the fond delusion that she 
 must needs be a Siddons or an O'Neill, because 
 she has a childish fancy for gas-lamps and 
 spangled petticoats. Yes, I remember the 
 little girl — an angular chit in brown holland ; 
 a nice little girl, I think she was, with pretty, 
 dreamy, blue eyes, and shy, childish ways, but 
 an embryo blue-stocking, nevei-theless. I have 
 a faint recollection of her playing at Electra 
 with the tea-pot one night, when she did not
 
 272 DEAD-SEA FKUIT. 
 
 know that Waldon and I were looking at her. 
 Well, I'll do all I can. The West-end managers 
 are tant soit peu difficile now-a-days ; but as the 
 Areopagus comes down rather savagely upon 
 the modern drama and its professors now and 
 then, they may strain a point to oblige me. I 
 suppose the most friendly way of going to work 
 would be to call on poor Alford." 
 
 When his morning's work was over, Mr. 
 Desmond took a hansom from the nearest 
 stand, and rattled up to the topmost heights 
 of Islington, where, after considerable difficulty 
 and aggravating waste of time, the cabman 
 found Paul's Terrace, a shabby little row of 
 newly built houses, on the road to Ball's Pond. 
 The tutor, whom Mr. Desmond remembered the 
 occupant of a pretty cottage near Henley, must 
 indeed have fallen upon evil fortunes. 
 
 ''Mr. Halford 'ave just stepped hout," said 
 a grimy-looking servant-girl who opened the 
 door; "but he won't be gone long, sir; which 
 Miss Sent Halbans is in the parlour. P'r'aps 
 you'd like to wait ? "
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 273 
 
 "Well, yes, I think I had better wait," re- 
 plied the editor, disinclined to sacrifice his after- 
 noon without benefit to his old fiiend. 
 
 The girl opened a door, and admitted Mr. 
 Desmond into a very small parlour, powerfully 
 perfumed with stale tobacco, and occupied by a 
 young lady, who was standing by the window, 
 with a little book in her hand. 
 
 This must of course be the Miss St. Albans 
 of whom the servant had spoken, — a visitor or 
 hanger-on of the old tutor, perhaps. Laurence 
 Desmond wondered how Mr. Aiford came to 
 burden himself with a visitor, and how the 
 visitor came by so fine a name. 
 
 Miss St. Albans was a fair-haii'ed young 
 lady, with a slight, giiiish figure, and one of 
 those faces which some people call '* sweetly 
 pretty," and some only " interesting," — a ten- 
 der, winning countenance, with soft blue eyes 
 and lovely mouth, but without the splendour of 
 complexion and feature which attract universal 
 admiration and secure immediate attention. 
 Nor was this young lady's appearance rendered 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 striking by the art of milliner or mantua-maker. 
 Upon her person, as upon the room she occu- 
 pied, poverty had set its stamp. She wore a 
 brown merino dress that had seen much service, 
 and her head-dress was of the most unsophisti- 
 cated order, consisting only of a small forest of 
 curl-papers. 
 
 Mr. Desmond wondered to behold this ex- 
 ploded style of head-gear, and wondered still 
 more at the manner of the young person, who 
 started and blushed at sight of him, and then 
 came towards him, with a certain hesitation 
 and timidity that were not unpleasing. 
 
 " Mr. Desmond, I think?" she faltered. 
 
 "Yes, my name is Desmond." 
 
 "Ah," murmured the damsel in curl-papers, 
 somewhat regretfully, " I see you have quite 
 forgotten me." 
 
 " Forgotten you ! I don't think that could 
 have been possible, if I had ever had the 
 honour to know you, Miss St. Albans," replied 
 the editor, smiling very kindly ; for there was 
 something in the girl's candid and yet modest
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 275 
 
 demeanour which pleased this blase habitue of 
 West-end drawing-rooms. 
 
 "If you had ever known me!" cried the 
 young lady, reproachfully. " Then you have 
 quite forgotten Henley, and our boat, and 
 
 Champion, the Scotch terrier, and " 
 
 " Not at all. I have a lively recollection of 
 Henley and of Champion ; but I cannot recall 
 the name of St. Albans." 
 
 " Ah, no, I forgot that the name is strange 
 to you. But I must be very much altered since 
 those happy days, or you would scarcely have 
 forgotten Lucy." 
 
 " Lucy— Lucy AKord ! " 
 " Yes, Mr. Desmond. The Lucy to whom 
 you used to be so kind." 
 
 "Was I kind? You are very good to think 
 so. And you are really Miss Alford, my dear 
 old tutor's daughter? Let me shake hands in 
 token of our renewed friendship. Yes, I have 
 a vague recollection of a very nice Httle girl, 
 who had the prettiest blue eyes, and wore the 
 cleanest holland pinafores in Christendom ;
 
 276 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 and I am quite charmed to behold the same 
 young lady, now she has outgrown the pina- 
 fores, but not the eyes." 
 
 " You have only a vague recollection of me ; 
 yet I knew you directly you stepped out of 
 the cab," said the girl, in a tone of disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
 " Yes, but you are more changed than I, 
 Miss Alford. You must consider what a gulf 
 there is between seven and nineteen ; while 
 there is not much outward difference between 
 twenty -three and thirty -five. Thirty-five is only 
 so much dustier, and grayer, and shabbier ; like 
 a garment that has been worn and faded by 
 continued hard wear." 
 
 " Indeed you do not look worn and faded," 
 said the tutor's daughter, with an involuntary 
 glance at the hot-house flower in the fashion- 
 able editor's faultless overcoat. 
 
 " I received a letter from your father this 
 morning. Miss Alford ; and I thought my best 
 course would be to answer it in person. I am 
 all the more happy to attend to my old
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 277 
 
 friend's request because your interests are in- 
 volved in it." 
 
 Lucy blushed again — not the blush of self- 
 consciousness or coquetry, but the honest red 
 of innocent gratitude and impulsive feeling. 
 
 '' It was very, very kind of you to come," 
 she said. " Papa has told me how valuable 
 your time is, and what a high position you 
 hold on the press. He had no idea that you 
 would respond so quickly to his appeal ; and — 
 and I am sure I ought to apologize for receiving 
 you in these horrible curl-papers. They are 
 for Pauhne." 
 
 ''For Pauline!" 
 
 " Yes, I play Pauline to-night in the Lady 
 of Lyons, you know ; and she is always played 
 in ringlets — I don't exactly know why." 
 
 " Pray do not apologize for the cmi-papers. 
 I know there is a prejudice against them ; but 
 I really think them becoming in your case. 
 And so you play Pauline to-night ? I remem- 
 ber seeing Helen " 
 
 "Oh, please don't!" cried the girl, with a
 
 278 DEAD-SEA FEUIT. 
 
 pretty look of piteous supplication ; " every 
 one says that. ' My dear,' the ladies at the 
 theatre say to me, ' I have seen Miss Faucit in 
 that character ; and, without wishing to wound 
 your feelings, I am hound to tell you that if 
 you knew how she played the cottage -scene, you 
 would go home and cut your throat.' At least 
 that's what Mrs. M'Grudder, who plays old 
 women on the Oswestry circuit, said to me 
 after — after I came off, so pleased at having 
 been applauded." 
 
 " The old harridan ! I suppose she is a very 
 great actress herself, this Mrs. M'Grudder." 
 
 " Oh, no ; she speaks the broadest, broadest 
 Scotch ; and in Lady Macbeth the boys in the 
 gallery laugh at her dreadfully." 
 
 *' Then I do not think you need be made un- 
 happy by that lady's sneers. Are you very 
 fond of acting ?" 
 
 *' I love it dearly, and I hope some day to get 
 on, for papa's sake. But I find the life of an 
 actress much harder than I thought, and it is 
 very difficult to get on. And I am so nervous."
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 279 
 
 " You are afraid of your audience ? " 
 " Oh, no, I don't so much mind them ; it 
 is of the other actors and actresses I am most 
 afraid." 
 "Indeed." 
 
 "Yes; they come to the wings and watch 
 me ; and then they tell me what they think ; 
 and they give me advice ; and somehow they 
 always contrive to make me miserable. I am 
 sure sometimes, when I have been playing 
 Ophelia, and have been quite carried away by 
 the part, fancying that I have loved a ]3rince 
 and been forsaken by him, and that my father 
 has been killed, and I am mad, I have hap- 
 pened to look towards the prompt entrance and 
 see Mrs. M'Grudder standing there staring at 
 me in her di'eadful stony way, and have heard 
 her say, ' St — st — st ! ' quite loud, and it has 
 made me break down dh-ectly. You see, most 
 actors and actresses have been a long time in 
 the profession, and they have a kind of pre- 
 judice against amateurs and novices, and try 
 to put them down. Mrs. M'Grudder had two
 
 280 DEAD-SEA FEUIT. 
 
 daughters in the theatre, who both wanted to 
 play the juveniles, and I suppose that's what 
 made her so unkind to me." 
 
 " But I suppose you have done with Mrs. 
 M'Grudder now you have come to Lon- 
 don?" 
 
 ** Oh, no, I fear not. My engagement at the 
 Oxford-road Theatre is only for a fortnight. Mr. 
 Mortemar has taken the house at his own risk, 
 you know, in order to introduce himself to a 
 London public ; and when the season is over, I 
 must go back to the country — and most likely 
 to the Oswestry circuit — unless I can get a 
 permanent engagement in town." 
 
 She glanced at Mr. Desmond when she said 
 this, as much as to say, " You are the all- 
 powerful benefactor who can procure for me 
 that inestimable boon." 
 
 Laurence Desmond understood the meaning 
 of that look, and replied to its appeal. 
 
 *' If any influence of mine can get you the 
 engagement you want, you shall not be long 
 without it," he said, kindly. " I don't think
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 281 
 
 you'll find any Mrs. M'Grudders at the Pall 
 Mall or the Terence." 
 
 Mr. Alford came in while Laurence was say- 
 ing this. He was an elderly man, and he looked 
 older than he was, by reason of the whiteness 
 of his stragghng locks, and the stooping atti- 
 tude which had become habitual to his tall 
 frame. He was a man who bore upon him the 
 unmistakeable stamp of gentle blood — a man 
 whose good breeding no shabbiness of attire 
 could disguise ; and it must be confessed that 
 he was very shabby. 
 
 ''My dear Desmond," he cried, delighted to 
 recognize his old pupil, "this is more than 
 kind ! I expected kindness from you, but not 
 such promptitude as this." 
 
 " I should be very ungrateful if I were other- 
 wise than prompt, when I remember how well 
 you pulled me through when I was reading for 
 ' Greats ' twelve years ago," answered Laui-ence, 
 heartily. " Miss Alford and I have renewed our 
 old acquaintance, and have become very confi- 
 dential. I have pledged myself to do my utter-
 
 1 
 
 282 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 most on her behalf, and if a West-end engage- 
 ment is her supreme desire, I think I can 
 promise to gratify her wishes through my kind 
 friend Hartstone, of the Theatre Koyal, Pall 
 Mall. But I cannot promise to secure her such 
 characters as Pauline or Ophelia. Hartstone is 
 one of the best fellows in Christendom, but he will 
 think he does a good deal for friendship if he 
 gives Miss Lucy some pretty little young-lady- 
 like part in a lever du ricleau.^^ 
 
 And hereupon Miss Alford murmured that to 
 appear at the Pall Mall would be the honour 
 and delight of her existence, however insignifi- 
 cant the character she might be permitted to 
 perform. After this Mr. Desmond and his old 
 tutor entered upon a very pleasant conversation 
 about the coaching days at Henley, and the 
 three jolly young fellows who had boated and 
 read with Laurence at the Henley villa. 
 
 " Poor Max Waldon was ploughed," said the 
 editor. " He was asked who Saul was. * Which 
 Saul ? ' asked Max, in that sweetly calm way of 
 his ; ' Saul of Tarsus ? ' ' No, sir ; King Saul,'
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 283 
 
 « 
 
 replied the examiner, sternly. 'Oh,' said Max, 
 * he was not a bad sort of fellow, only he had 
 a nasty trick of throwing javelins at one.' And 
 they ploughed him ; but he is doing wonders at 
 the Equity bar, notwithstanding. Lawsley died 
 at Pau the year after he took his degree ; and 
 I fear the 'Varsity training and pedestrianism 
 had something to do with the decline that car- 
 ried him off." 
 
 The reminiscences of the Long Vacation 
 seemed by no means unpleasant to Lucy Alford. 
 She took up her work — it was Pauline's bridal 
 veil that she was patching and darning for the 
 evening's performance — and sat quietly by while 
 her father and his pupil talked ; but every now 
 and then her face kindled, and she looked 
 up with a smile that meant, " I too remember 
 that." 
 
 Mr. Desmond had been sitting in the shabby 
 little lodging-house parlour a long time, when 
 he stole a look at his watch, and was surprised 
 to discover the lateness of the hour. 
 
 *' I should like to see you play Pauline to-
 
 284 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 night, Miss Alford," he said, as he shook hands 
 with his tutor's daughter. 
 
 Lucy blushed, and looked at her father. 
 
 " The Market Deeping Examiner compared 
 her to Helen Faucit, Desmond, and I doubt if 
 any lady except Miss Faucit could touch Lucy's 
 Pauline." 
 
 " Papa, how can you say such things! " cried 
 the girl. " Please do not laugh at him, Mr. 
 Desmond. I like the part of Pauline so much, 
 and — and I should like you to be in the 
 theatre to-night, only I know you will make 
 me nervous." 
 
 " What ! do you place me in the same cate- 
 gory as Mrs. M'Grudder ? " 
 
 *' no, no, no ! Only " 
 
 "Only what?" 
 
 " I should be so anxious to please you ; and 
 the more I wished to please you, the more ner- 
 vous I should be." 
 
 " I suppose that is the penalty I am to pay 
 for my editorial position. Very well, Miss Al- 
 ford, I shall not say whether I am coming to
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 285 
 
 the theatre to-night ; but look out for the Areo- 
 X>agus next Satui'day morning, and " 
 
 "And expect a washing," cried the old tutor, 
 rejoicing in the 'Varsity slang. 
 
 "Good-bye, Miss Lucy," said Laurence, lin- 
 gering over these adieux just a little more than 
 was necessary. " Oh, by the way, I have not 
 had the pleasui-e of seeing your fi'iend Miss St. 
 Albans after all. Is she too a member of the 
 di'amatic profession ? " 
 
 ^Ir. Alford and his daughter laughed heartily 
 at this question. 
 
 " The girl has one requisite for comedy if 
 she can laugh like that on the stage," thought 
 the editor. 
 
 " I am Miss St. Albans," said Lucy ; " St. 
 Albans is my stage name, you know. I really 
 thought you understood that just now." 
 
 " Not at all ; I fully believed in Miss St. 
 Albans as a separate entity. And so that is 
 your nom de theatre ! — rather a high-sounding 
 name, is it not ?" 
 
 Mr. Alford blushed.
 
 286 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 ''Well, my dear boy, they like fine names, 
 you see," he explained, '' the managers and 
 the public. In point of fact, they will have 
 something that looks well in the play-bills. 
 St. Albans — De Mortemar : of course the more 
 enlightened public are aware that those are not 
 real names ; but they go down, my dear Des- 
 mond, they go down." 
 
 " I can only hope that the happiness of 
 Miss Alford may be promoted by the success 
 of Miss St. Albans," said the editor of the 
 Areopagus, as he made his farewell bow to the 
 young lady in curl-papers. 
 
 Mr. Alford accompanied him to the street- 
 door, and apologized for his inability to invite 
 his old pupil to dinner. 
 
 " The world has not used me too well, Des- 
 mond, as you must perceive," he said; "and 
 yet I have worked my hardest. I have a 
 couple of tragedies in my desk that might con- 
 duce to the revival of original dramatic litera- 
 ture in this country ; but the ignorance and 
 prejudice of theatrical managers are not easily
 
 MISS ST. ALBANS. 287 
 
 overcome. I look to my daughter's genius 
 to elevate the English stage. She is a star, 
 my dear Desmond — a newly-risen star ; but 
 one that will shine far and wide before long, 
 if she has a chance. Go and see her to- 
 night at the Oxford, and you will find that 
 her poor old father does not exaggerate her 
 merits." 
 
 " Yes, I will go," answered Laurence, smiling 
 at the old man's enthusiasm. " You must let 
 me give you this, Alford, to — to make things 
 a little pleasanter while you stay in town, for 
 * auld lang syne.' " 
 
 It was a cheque for twenty pounds in his 
 friend's favour, which Mr. Desmond contrived 
 to crush into the old man's hand as he said 
 this. He was gone before Tristram Alford 
 could find time to thank him or remonstrate 
 with him ; but the help thus offered by fi'iend- 
 ship was too sweet to be rejected by pride, nor 
 was Tristram Alford a man who had ever 
 cherished that particular sin amongst the 
 deadly seven. There were tears — grateful
 
 288 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 tears — in the old man's eyes when he went 
 back to his daughter. 
 
 ^' That noble-hearted fellow has given me 
 twenty pounds, Lucy, he said ; "we can rub 
 on comfortably for the next six weeks." 
 
 To "rub on comfortably" had been Mr. 
 Alford's highest notion of financial prosperity 
 for the last thirty years. He was a man upon 
 whom the burden of youthful debts, the penal- 
 ties of juvenile indiscretion, had pressed so 
 heavily as to frustrate every attempt at pro- 
 gress in the race of life. Poor at school, poor 
 at college, poor in youth, and poor in middle 
 age, Tristram Alford had come at last to accept 
 Poverty as a fellow-traveller, whose companion- 
 ship must needs be endured to the end of the 
 troublesome journey. The utmost he asked of 
 Providence was a brief interval of rest and 
 refreshment at some wayside inn, while his 
 companion of the chain waited for him at the 
 door.
 
 CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 IN THE GREEN-ROOM. 
 
 It happened that the day on which Mr. Des- 
 mond paid his visit to Paul's Terrace, Is- 
 lington, was a day unmarked by any particular 
 engagement. There had been a time when he 
 was only too glad to snatch such a day for a 
 quiet afternoon at the Hampton villa ; but he 
 no longer felt the same alacrity when the occa- 
 sion offered itself. He was still fully alive to 
 the fact that Mrs. Jerningham was one of the 
 handsomest and most elegant women he had 
 ever seen, and that to be preferred by her was 
 an honour ; but to be submitted to the slow 
 torture of the domestic inquisition is none the 
 less painful because the inquisitor-in-chief is 
 a beautiful woman, from whose fair lips the 
 victim had hoped to hear sweet words instead 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 of captious questionings and ungenerous re- 
 proaches. 
 
 Thus did it come to pass that Mr. Desmond, 
 having no imperative claim on his leisure, 
 found himself at the doors of the Oxford Eoad 
 Theatre, within two or three hours of his visit 
 to Mr. Alford's lodging. He had eaten a hur- 
 ried dinner at his club, and had driven thence 
 to the Oxford, which house of entertainment 
 was to be found amidst a labyrinth of streets 
 northward of Cumberland Gate. 
 
 It is not a fashionable theatre, but amongst 
 the inhabitants of the immediate district it is 
 at times a very popular resort ; while there 
 are other times in which this temple of the 
 drama fades and languishes for lack of public 
 patronage, in common with more brilliant 
 temples of the same order. It is a theatre 
 whose normal splendour is ever and anon 
 brightened by the extra brilliancy of some 
 wandering star, whose name, all renowned 
 though it may be in the district, is compara- 
 tively unknown to the ears of fashionable play-
 
 IN THE GEEEN-ROOM. 291 
 
 goers, or known only as a bye-word and a 
 reproach. 
 
 The great T. N. Buffboote, better known to 
 his admirers as Brayvo Buffboote, is a favourite 
 at the Oxford. Miss Marian Fitz-Kemble, the 
 celebrated lady Lear, here performs her round 
 of tragedy, from Macbeth to Julius Caesar, 
 with much satisfaction to herself and her 
 friends. Here has the famous Transatlantic 
 equestrian, best known to fame as the divine 
 Miss Godiva Jones, pranced and galloped in 
 her celebrated performances of Dick Turpin 
 and Timour the Tartar. Here in the summer 
 months, when the closing of West-end theatres 
 affords a brief respite to manager and com- 
 pany, there come occasionally actors and 
 actresses of higher repute, eager to gather new 
 laurels in these untrodden regions, and not ill 
 pleased to find themselves received with noisy 
 rapture and outspoken admiration by the ruder 
 gods and homelier goddesses of a threepenny 
 gallery. 
 
 But while stars may come and stars may go
 
 292 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 at the Oxford Road Theatre, there is a regular 
 company which goes on for ever, glad to be 
 tragical with Miss Fitz-Kemble, melodramatic 
 with the great Buffboote, or equestrian with 
 the divine Godiva, as the case may be — a 
 company which takes life as it comes, and asks 
 no more from existence than that its swift-recur- 
 ring Saturday shall witness the payment of 
 every man's salary. 
 
 Urged by the promptings of a fiery and am- 
 bitious soul, Mr. de Mortemar had been induced 
 to take the Oxford Eoad Theatre at the very 
 deadest and dullest time of the year — that 
 dreary pause in the theatrical season which 
 precedes the glory of Boxing-day — that fag-end 
 of the year, during which the combined forces 
 of a Macready and a Charles Mathews would 
 scarcely suffice to illumine the profound dark- 
 ness that foreshadows the rising of that bril- 
 liant luminary, the genuine face-distorting, 
 policeman-overturning, baby-squashing, redhot- 
 poker-brandishing, parcel-snatching, crinoline- 
 flourishing Christmas clown — that wonder of wit
 
 m THE GREEN-ROOM. 293 
 
 and humour, who convulses his audience by 
 asking them what they had for dinner the day 
 after to-morrow, or by some sarcastic inquii-y 
 about a missing fourpenny -piece. 
 
 Mr. de Mortemar had a soul above such 
 small considerations as good or bad seasons. 
 He had that within him which whispered that 
 wherever the English language was spoken 
 there must be an audience able to comprehend 
 and admire his rendering of Hamlet and Eomeo, 
 Master Walter and Claude Melnotte, Alfred 
 Evelyn, Charles Surface, John Mildmay, Citizen 
 Sangfroid, Miles na Coppaleen, Sir Charles 
 Coldstream, and Paul Pry. 
 
 In these few characters Mr. de Mortemar {ne 
 Morris) felt himself unapproachable. Other 
 provincial stars might pretend to a wider range 
 of character ; the modest De Mortemar only 
 sought to surpass a Kean in Hamlet, a Gus- 
 tavus Brooke in Master Walter, a Macready in 
 Lear, a Charles Mathews in Coldstream, a 
 Wigan in John Mildmay, a Boucicault in the 
 faithful Miles, and a Wright in the inquisitive
 
 294 DEAD-SEA FKUIT. 
 
 Paul. This much he felt that he could do, and 
 he had no greedy desire to outstep the limit 
 
 m 
 
 which liberal Nature had set upon his genius. 
 
 "I played a burlesque character of Eobson's 
 for my benefit at Market Deeping last year," 
 Mr. de Mortemar remarked to a friend at the 
 little tavern next door to the Oxford Eoad 
 Theatre ; " and the Deeping Examiner said 
 that if it were possible I could excel in any- 
 thing where all was excellence, I did excel in 
 burlesque. But I don't care to make my 
 mark in London as a burlesque actor. A man 
 can't help it if Nature made him versatile, you 
 see, Tommy ; but there's some kind of principle 
 in these things, and what Edmund Kean 
 wouldn't have done, I won't do. That's my 
 principle, and I mean to stick to it." 
 
 "And so I would, Morty, if I was you. 
 
 Whatever Teddy Kean could do, you can 
 
 do," replied the humble Pylades. " And I'll 
 
 take another glass of bitter, if you'll stand 
 
 Sam." 
 
 " I have played clown for my ben," murmured
 
 IN THE GREEN-EOOM. 295 
 
 the great De Mortemar ; " but, though I drew 
 an enormous house, I felt the injury to my self- 
 respect was poorly paid for by a clear half." 
 
 " There ain't nothing you can't do, Morty, 
 from Shylock to a flipflap. That ale's uncom- 
 mon hard ; I think a six of brandy-and-water 
 warm would do you more good, and wouldn't 
 hurt me." 
 
 And thus the simple De Mortemar discoursed 
 of the greatness that was in him, while the 
 scantily furnished benches of pit and gallery 
 attested the badness of the season. 
 
 " They haven't heard of me yet," said the 
 star, serene even in the hour of disappointment. 
 *' London is a large place, and a man can't get 
 a reputation in a week. The metropohtan 
 papers are slow, sir — very slow — to a man who 
 has been accustomed to see a column and a 
 half of criticism written upon every new cha- 
 racter performed by him ; but they can't afford 
 to leave me unnoticed much longer ; and when 
 they do speak, they'll speak out, depend upon 
 it. I look upon the Oxford Eoad Theatre as a
 
 296 DEAD -SEA FKUIT. 
 
 stepping-stone to Drur}^ Lane, and it was with 
 that view I took it." 
 
 Mr. de Mortemar had engaged Miss St. 
 Albans for the heroines of those dramas and 
 comedies in which he intended to shine, not 
 because he believed in her talent — for in plain 
 truth this great man believed in the existence 
 of no talent except his own — but because she 
 was very young and inexperienced, and he 
 could do as he liked with her ; which means, in 
 a dramatic sense, that he could keep her with 
 her back to the audience, in an ignominious 
 corner of the stage, through the greater part of 
 a scene, while he shouted and ranted at her 
 from the centre of the boards ; and that he 
 could take her up so sharply at the end of her 
 most telling speeches as to deprive her of that 
 just meed of applause an approving audience 
 might naturally have bestowed upon her, and in 
 bestowing which they would have divided that 
 coronal of glory Mr. de Mortemar desired to 
 obtain for himself alone. 
 
 Mr. Desmond found that portion of the
 
 IN THE GREEN-ROOM. 297 
 
 boxes plaTfullv entitled the dress-circle in occu- 
 pation of two young women in scarlet Garibaldi 
 jackets and black velvet head-dresses ; one fat 
 elderly lady, in a cap which offered to the eye 
 of the observer a small museum of natural and 
 artistic curiosities in the way of shells, feathers, 
 beads, butterflies, and berries ; three warm- 
 looking young men, sprawling and lounging 
 and giggling and whispering amongst them- 
 selves in a corner box ; and a scanty sprinkling 
 of that class of spectators who come with fi-ee 
 admissions, and rarely come prepared for the 
 removal of their bonnets, which removal being 
 rigorously exacted, leaves them wild and haggard 
 of aspect and soured in temper. 
 
 Amongst this audience the editor of the 
 Areopagus meekly took his place, and prepared 
 to await the rising of the curtain, while a sub- 
 dued crunching of apples and sucking of oranges, 
 mingled with a chorus of sibilant whisperings, 
 went on round and about him. 
 
 Why, in a poorly-filled house, there should 
 always be dispiriting and aggravating delays
 
 298 DEAD- SEA FRUIT. 
 
 between the falling and the rising of the act- 
 drop, unknown to a well-attended theatre, is 
 one of the enigmas of theatrical existence only 
 to be solved by the masters of the craft ; but it 
 is indisputable that a scanty audience, naturally 
 disposed to be captious and low-spirited, is 
 always rendered more dismal and more captious 
 by heart-sickening intervals of waiting, that 
 would spoil the pleasure of an evening with 
 Edmund Kean, or Charles Mathews, but which, 
 when endured for the sake of a De Mortemar, 
 are exasperating in the highest degree. 
 
 During such an interval, Laurence Desmond 
 waited with tolerable patience, entertained by 
 the most hackneyed of waltzes and polkas, per- 
 formed by a feeble orchestra, before the curtain 
 rose for the third act of the Lady of Lyons. 
 The flabby act-drop, with its faded picture, did 
 at last ascend, and, after a little preliminary 
 skirmishing. Miss St. Albans appeared, con- 
 ducted by the great De Mortemar, who wore a 
 long black cloak, and looked unutterable things 
 at the gallery with his solemn eyes, the dark-
 
 IN THE GREEN-ROOM. 299 
 
 ness whereof was intensified by very pal^^able 
 half-cii'cles of Indian ink. Miss St. Albans 
 bad very little to do in this scene. She had 
 only to appear bewildered, and a little alarmed 
 by the gi'inning landlord and servants, and very 
 much in love with her prince. If she had any 
 difficulty in giving expression to such simple 
 sentiments, Mr. De Mortemar saved her fi'om 
 the exhibition of her incompetency, for he con- 
 trived to keep her back to the audience through- 
 out the scene, and so stifled and smothered her 
 against his manly breast, that all Mr. Desmond 
 could see of his tutor's daughter was a slender 
 girlish figure robed in white, and a fair head 
 half concealed by the stiff curve of Mr. de 
 Mortemar' s encircling arm. 
 
 The first scene was short and unimportant ; 
 and after it came the cottage-scene — the great 
 scene for Pauhne — in which the merchant's 
 haughty daughter finds that her Italian prince 
 is only a seK-educated gardener's son, with a 
 mother in a white apron. 
 
 Mr. Desmond set himself to watch this scene
 
 300 DEAD-SEA FBUIT. 
 
 with a critical eye, for he wished to discover 
 what hope of dramatic success there might be 
 for his old friend's daughter. Well, she was a 
 very pretty, winning girl, and she spoke her 
 lines in a low soft voice, and with a gentle 
 accent which stamped her as of different breed- 
 ing from the people who acted with her, but — 
 but she was not a genius ; or if in her soul 
 there was by chance some spark of the divine 
 fire, it was choked and obscured by the smoke 
 of her surroundings, and had yet to kindle into 
 flame. She spoke her pretty poetical speeches, 
 and wept, and trembled, and covered her face 
 at the right moment ; but she was only a timid 
 young actress trying to act. She was not the 
 Demoiselle Deschappelles — proud, loving, pas- 
 sionate, and maddened by the cheat that had 
 been put upon her. The supreme exaltation of 
 mind, the positive intoxication of the intellect, 
 which constitutes great acting, had not yet 
 come to her. She was timid, self-conscious, 
 nervously anxious to please her audience, and 
 secure the reward of a little hand-clapping and
 
 IN THE GREEN-ROOM. 301 
 
 feet-stamping from pit and gallery, when she 
 should have been stung almost to madness by 
 the sense of outraged faith and love abused, as 
 unconscious of spectators as Ariadne at Naxos, 
 or Dido on her funeral pyre. 
 
 But if Miss St. Albans was not yet an actress, 
 it is to be remembered that she was only nine- 
 teen years of age, and had had little more than 
 a twelvemonth's experience or practice of an art 
 which is perhaps amongst the most difficult 
 and exacting of all arts, and which has no for- 
 mulae whereby the student may arrive at some 
 comprehension of its mysteries. It is an art 
 that is rarely taught well, and very often taught 
 badly ; an art which demands from its profes- 
 sors a moral courage, and an expenditui-e of 
 physical energy, intellectual power, and emo- 
 tional feeling demanded by no other art ; and 
 when a man happens to be endowed with those 
 many gifts necessary to perfection in this art, 
 he is spoken of in a patronizing tone as " only 
 an actor;" and it is somewhat a matter of 
 wonder that he should be " received in society."
 
 302 
 
 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 " She is very young," thought Mr. Desmond, 
 when the act-drop had fallen on Pauline's pas- 
 sion and Claude's remorse, and when the star 
 had been recalled by three particular friends in 
 the pit, and one shrill boy in the gallery. 
 " She is very young, and she is pretty and 
 interesting, and might learn to be a good 
 actress, if there were any school in which she 
 could be taught. But to act with such a 
 conventional ranter and tearer as this De Mor- 
 temar, would be destruction to an embryo 
 Siddons. This girl seems eminently sym- 
 pathetic, and is of the stuff that makes our 
 Faucits and Herberts ; but where is she to 
 get the right training ? — ^that is the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 Mr. Desmond kept his place patiently through- 
 out the third and fourth acts of the drama, 
 though the dreary blank between the two acts 
 was a sharp test of man's capacity for suffering. 
 He saw Pauline come downstairs to breakfast, 
 in her smart bridal-dress of lace and satin, to 
 go through all those phases of pride and anger.
 
 IN THE GREEN-ROOM. 303 
 
 tenderness and yielding love, Tvhicb form the 
 crucial test of the young tragedienne's power 
 and genius ; and after the curtain had fallen 
 upon Pauline, the subjugated and devoted, 
 Laurence Desmond left the apple-munehers, 
 and whisperers, and gigglers of the dress-boxes 
 to their own devices, and departed, with the 
 intention of penetrating to those mysterious 
 regions which lie behind the boundarj'-line of 
 the foot-hghts. 
 
 To an ordinary individual the stage-door of 
 the Oxford Eoad Theatre might have been an 
 impassable barrier ; but the name of the Areo- 
 pagus v^sis an "open sesame," against which no 
 stage-door keeper could afford to shut his eyes. 
 The stage-door keeper was not a reader of the 
 popular literary journal, but he had a vague 
 notion that the Areopagus was a paper affected 
 by swells, and that it sometimes came down 
 heavily upon the great ones of the di'amatic 
 world, whose genius no meaner organ dared 
 gainsay. To the editor of such a periodical, 
 Mr. de Mortemar would, of coui'se, desire to be
 
 304 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 civil ; and the door-keeper admitted Mr. Des- 
 niond, after having submitted him to a sharp 
 scrutiny, or, in his own phraseology, " taken 
 stock of him, to make sure as he was none of 
 them milingtary coves a-tryin' it on to git he- 
 hind, and hang about the place a-talking to 
 Mamsell Pasdebasque, which she ought to 
 know better." 
 
 Mr. Desmond had never before been behind 
 the scenes of the Oxford Eoad Theatre, but he 
 had run the gauntlet of the West-end houses ; 
 and except that the passages and stairs in the 
 Oxford Eoad Theatre were a shade or so darker, 
 and dingier, and dirtier, and a little more emi- 
 nently adapted for the spraining of ankles and 
 the breaking of necks, the Oxford Eoad was as 
 other theatres. 
 
 After some groping and stumbling in the wrong 
 passages and on the wrong stairs, the Editor 
 made his way to the green-room. He could 
 scarcely have told himself why he took this 
 trouble in order to say a few kind words to his 
 old tutor's daughter, or whether the saying of
 
 IN THE GEEEN-ROOM. 305 
 
 kind words was at all required from him. It 
 may be that, having given up his evening to 
 this visit to the Oxford Eoad Theatre, he came 
 behind the scenes merely because he could no 
 longer endui-e the dreary misery of the boxes ; 
 or it may be that he wanted to observe the 
 manners and customs of actors of a different 
 class from those he had been accustomed to 
 meet. Mr. Desmond, however, did not trouble 
 himself with any consideration of his motive. 
 He came to the green-room to see Miss Alford, 
 or Miss St. Albans, because it was the humour 
 of the moment to come. He had given him- 
 self an evening's holiday from the ever-alter- 
 nating labours of literary and social life, and 
 he was not sorry to lose the sense of his own 
 cares and perplexities amongst strange sur- 
 roundings. 
 
 The green-room was a long narrow slip of a 
 room underground, fm-nished with a few shabby 
 chairs and benches, some flaring gas-lamps, 
 and a cheval-glass, before which the actors and 
 actresses contemplated themselves afresh after 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 306 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 every change of costume, more or less pleased 
 with the result of their scrutiny. 
 
 Mr. Desmond found his friend's daughter 
 standing before this glass, arranging the scanty 
 festoons of a black tulle ball-dress, dotted about 
 with little bunches of violets — a dress that 
 Mademoiselle Deschappelles could by no possi- 
 bility have worn at any period of her existence, 
 but which poor Lucy Alford fondly believed was 
 the exact thing for the last act. 
 
 " How do you do, once more. Miss — St. Al- 
 bans ?" said the editor, going up to the glass. 
 
 '*How do you do, Mr. Desmond?" the girl 
 said, startled, and blushing brightly beneath the 
 artificial pallor which marked the mental agonies 
 of Pauline. " I — I didn't think you'd come 
 behind; it's not generally allowed, you know; 
 but of course with you it's different. I saw you 
 in the dress-circle. How kind of you to come ! 
 But it made me so nervous.'* 
 
 ** Yes, I could see that you were nervous." 
 
 "You could see it! I am sorry for that!" 
 said Lucy, just a little mortified.
 
 IN THE GREEN-ROOM. 307 
 
 " My dear young lady, if you were not ner- 
 vous, YOU would not be of the sensitive stuff 
 that makes an artist. 
 
 " You — you were not displeased with me ?" 
 
 What could he say when she asked this 
 question ? — in faltering, pleading tones, that 
 seemed to say, "Oh! for i)ity's sake, give me 
 a word of praise, or I shall die at 3'our feet." 
 What could he say, when the soft blue eyes 
 looked up to him with such a beseeching ex- 
 pression ? Could he be candid, and reply, 
 " You are at present the kind of actress whom 
 the coarse-minded critic calls ' a stick ;' your 
 idea of Pauline Deschappelles is a schoolgiii's 
 notion, T\'ithout force, or depth, or passion ; but 
 when you are ten years older, and have thought, 
 and suffered, and studied, and have lost all the 
 youthful beauty which now enables you to look 
 the part, you may possibly be able to act it ?" 
 
 Instead of this, Mr. Desmond fenced the 
 question with diplomatic art. 
 
 *' It gave me gi-eat i)leasm-e to see you act," 
 he said ; " and you looked charming. I think
 
 308 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 fortune is a great deal too kind to Claude in 
 giving him such a lovely and devoted wife after 
 his shabby conduct." 
 
 "Do you like Mr. de Mortemar?" asked 
 Lucy, delighted by the small meed of praise 
 conveyed in this artful speech. 
 
 *' Well, not very much," replied Laurence, 
 smiling; '' he is not exactly my style." 
 
 " And yet he v^as such an enormous favourite 
 at Market Deei)ing," said Lucy, opening her 
 eyes to their widest extent. " But, to tell you 
 the real truth, I do not very much admire him 
 myself; only I wouldn't say so to any one 
 except you for the world, as it was so very 
 good of him to give me a London engage 
 ment." 
 
 "It is not very good of him to keep you in 
 a corner of the stage all through your best 
 scenes." 
 
 " Yes, that is a disagreeable way he has ; 
 but I don't think he knows when he does it." 
 ;■ "Oh yes, my dear Miss St. Albans, depend 
 upon it he knows very well. Ah, here he is."
 
 IN THE GEEEN-EOOM. 309 
 
 Mr. de Mortemar entered the green-room with 
 his grandest tragedy stalk. He had been in- 
 formed of Mr, Desmond's visit." 
 
 *' They have heard of me ahready," he said 
 to himself. " Perhaps the Areopagus will be 
 the first to speak out. I knew they couldn't 
 afford to continue their vile attempt to crush 
 me by silence. They have been j)aid — bribed 
 by some London actors whose names I could 
 mention — to keep my fame from the public. 
 But there must come a time when they will find 
 it dangerous for theii' own reputation to play 
 that game any longer. They attempted to 
 crush Kean, and they are attempting to crush 
 me. But they will find it even harder work 
 to destroy me than they found it to destroy 
 poor little Ted." 
 
 This is what Mr. De Mortemar told his 
 friends, whom he rarely entertained with any 
 other topic than his own triumphs, past, pre- 
 sent, and future ; and this is what he told him- 
 self. Impressed with this conviction, he ap- 
 proached Mr. Desmond, and introduced himself
 
 310 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 to that gentleman with the air of a man who 
 confers a favour, and who is fully aware of the 
 fact. 
 
 " I saw you in the boxes during the third 
 and fourth acts," he said, in his grand, high- 
 tragedy manner. " You could scarcely have 
 chosen your time better for forming a fair 
 judgment of my Claude. I do not consider it 
 one of my great parts, though my friends are 
 pleased to tell me that I have left William 
 Charles Macready some distance behind in my 
 rendering of that character. You were, no 
 doubt, struck by some points which are not 
 only new to the stage, but which go a step or 
 two beyond the original meaning of the author. 
 As, for instance, at the close of the third act, 
 where, instead of the ordinary, * Ho, my 
 mother ! ' — a mere commonplace summons to a 
 parent who is desired to come downstairs — I 
 have adopted the heavy sigh of despair : * Oh, 
 my mother!' — expressive of Claude's remorse- 
 ful consciousness that he has disregarded the 
 widow's very sensible advice in the first act.
 
 IN THE GREEN-E003I. 311 
 
 This reading opens up — if I may be permitted 
 to say so — long ^-istas of thought, and also 
 gives an impoi-tance and an elevation to the 
 character of the Widow !Melnotte, for which the 
 lady performing that pai*t can scarcely be suf- 
 ficientty gi'ateful. ' Oh, my mother ! Oh, my 
 second self, my guide, my counsellor, by whose 
 sustaining ^s^isdom I might have escaped my 
 present degradation and despair ! ' All that, I 
 flatter myself, is implied in the sigh and the 
 gesture which I introduce at this point. Subtle, 
 is it not?" 
 
 "Extremely subtle," said Laurence; "you 
 must have studied the German critics, Mr. de 
 Mortemar ? There is a profundity in your 
 ideas that reminds me of Schlegel." 
 
 "No, sii* ; I have studied this," replied the 
 tragedian, thumping the breast of his green- 
 cloth coat, whereon glittered the tin-foil crosses 
 and spangled stars which the soldier of the 
 Eepublic was supposed to have won for himself 
 in Italy. " " I have di-a^ii my inspiration fi'om 
 my own heart, sir ; and I am the less suriDrised
 
 312 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 when I find that the fire that burns here is 
 quick to kindle an electric spark in the breasts 
 of other men. The people of Market Deeping 
 will tell you who and what I am, sir, if you can 
 take the trouble to interrogate them. There 
 are some there, sir, who know what good 
 acting is, and who know how to appreciate a 
 great actor. In London, you seem not to want 
 great actors. The age of your Garricks and 
 your Kembles is past ; and when new Garricks 
 and Kembles arise, you shut the doors of your 
 principal theatres in their faces, and do your 
 best to ignore them, or to write them down in 
 your newspapers. But this kind of thing can- 
 not last for ever, sir. The voice of the mighty 
 British public is clamorous for a great actor ; 
 and you, sir, garble and misrepresent the truth 
 as you may, cannot long interpose yourself be- 
 tween that mighty public and that great actor. 
 I am, of course, understood to speak in a broad 
 and general sense, sir, and to mean no offence 
 to you in person." 
 
 " Of course not. I shall accept all you say
 
 IN THE GREEN-ROOM. 313 
 
 in a strictly parliamentary sense, as the Pick- 
 wickians did upon a memorable occasion. And 
 believe me, ^Ii*. de Mortemar, when Garrick 
 redivivus appears, mine shall not be the pen to 
 dispute his genius. In the meantime the public 
 must be content with — ah, you are called, I 
 see, Mr. de Mortemar." 
 
 A grimy-faced boy summoned the hero of 
 the night, and the great De Mortemar was 
 compelled to depart before he had extorted 
 from the editor of the Areopagus the smallest 
 modicum of that i)i'9-ise for which his soul 
 hungered. 
 
 Mr. Desmond did not find himself alone with 
 Miss St. Albans on the departure of ]\Ir. De 
 Mortemar. An elderly and bloated individual, 
 in a very shabby gray suit of the Georgian 
 era, hovered near, and smweyed the stranger 
 ever and anon with an observant eye — an eye 
 in which there was that watery lustre, by some 
 physiologists supposed to betoken a partiaHty 
 for strong drinks. Mr. Desmond remembered 
 this gentleman as the parent of Pauline, and
 
 314 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 perceived in his shabby and faded appearance 
 the decadence of the wealthy merchant of Lyons. 
 
 " That's rather a strong case of coals, a'nt 
 it?" inquired this individual, indicating by a 
 turn of his head that the departing De Morte- 
 mar was the subject of his discourse. 
 
 "A case of coals?" repeated Laurence, 
 doubtfully. 
 
 " Yes, coals — nuts — ^barcelonas. The gor- 
 ger's awful coally on his own slumming, eh ?" 
 
 "I really am at a loss — " faltered the be- 
 wildered Laurence." 
 
 "Don't understand our patter, I suppose," 
 said M. Deschappelles, with an affable smile. 
 *' I mean to say that our friend the manager is 
 rather sweet upon his own acting." 
 
 *' Well, yes ; Mr. De Mortemar appears to 
 have considerable confidence in his own powers." 
 
 ** Kather ! Bless your heart, they're always 
 coming up to London like that, thinking they're 
 going to set the to^ii in a blaze. There was 
 "William Harford — Howling Billy, they used to 
 call him on the Northern Circuit — -he came to
 
 IN THE GEEEN-KOOM. 315 
 
 London thinking he was going to put Macready's 
 nose out of joint — and didn't. He was a wicked 
 actor, he was. Satan will have him some day. 
 A man can't go on murdering Shakspeare 
 as Howling Billy did without coming to Satan 
 at last. 
 
 *' P'line ! Deechappells ! — Miss St. Albans ! 
 Mr. Jackson! — last scene!" roared the grimy- 
 faced boy at this juncture, and Mr. Desmond 
 was fain to bid his tutor's daughter a brief 
 good-night. 
 
 He did not retui-n to the front of the house. 
 He had seen enough of Miss Alford's acting to 
 enable him to judge very fairly what she could 
 do in the present, and what she might achieve 
 in the futm'e. 
 
 " I will try my best to get her out of this 
 wretched school," he said to himself. *' I will 
 try to get her away fi'om Mr. de Mortemar and 
 that curious, good-tempered-looking old man, 
 who talked about Satan and Howling Billy. I 
 dare say I can get Hartstone to engage her for 
 the Pall Mall. He wants pretty, lady-like girls
 
 316 DEAD-SEA FRUIT. 
 
 for his farces, and gives very liberal salaries ; 
 and though she won't get the experience that 
 makes a Helen Faucit, she will at any rate get 
 away from the De Mortemar school. I should 
 like to put her in the right path, for poor old 
 Alford's sake." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 J. Ogdeh and Co., Printers, 172, St. John Street, E.G.
 
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